June 2009
Two ways to plan a trip to Paris
By next spring, lauren and I will be married for 15 years
Why am bringing it up now? Well we decided that for our 15th anniversary we are going to Paris for a week without the kids.
In my mind I’m looking forward to that trip - but its still far off. So I’ve only thought about what particular week will work. As we get closer (ie next year) I’ll do more research on places to...
May 2009
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Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear
Been listening to the...
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Verizon MiFi
Yesterday I picked up a Verizon MiFi.
It’s a 3g modem and a WiFi router inside a very tiny package. It’s smaller than the iphone. And it runs off a battery - about 4 hours in use or 40 hours on standby.
It’s very simple to use. Press the power button and that’s it. The MiFi automatically connects to Verizon’s 3g network and I can share it with up to 5 WiFi enabled...
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Train Song - Feist & Bon Iver (live)
I posted...
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Wave of Mutilation - Rhett Miller
Here’s a...
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More thoughts about the web and pay television
Just last week I wrote about internet & pay television (cable & satellite).
A couple of follow up points:
1 - Live online video is just starting to emerge as I pointed out in that post.
Even since my earlier post on the subject I’ve seen new technologies that will deliver high quality, live online video at a low cost and faster than I thought. That’s huge.
The day I can...
Wave of Mutilation - Pixies
This song is from the...
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WatchTwitter founders: @ev and @biz interview at D7 (highlights)
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A Change Is Going To Come - Arcade Fire
...
“When we met Bijan Sabet at Spark, I remember telling Ev that I liked him a lot....”
– Biz Stone - D7 Interview: Twitter Co-CEOs Biz Stone and Evan Williams | D7 Highlights | AllThingsD
BIz shared this at the D conference last night. He also said it at our recent Spark LP mtg. Had us all laughing.
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Will we see Amazon Connect soon?
About 10 years ago, Microsoft had an idea for portable credentials with a product called Passport and later expanded into suite called Hailstorm. The basic idea: a better user experience across the web for personal information such as credentials & billing information plus other stuff.
Despite owning Hotmail and MSN, Hailstorm never caught on.
But the idea is quite interesting.
Fast forward...
Satellite Skin - Modest Mouse
Brand new single....
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My trouble with iMovie '09
You don’t have to visit this blog too many times to know I enjoy Apple products.
These days we have 4 Macs in our house, two iPhones and 4 ipods.
And I use iPhoto, iTunes and iWork regularly and for the most part happily.
This weekend, I got my hands dirty with iMovie ‘09. In a nutshell the user experience was pretty bad.
Here’s what I wanted to do: make a DVD for a friend...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-5-24) →
Wilco (78)
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band (56)
Arctic Monkeys (50)
U2 (42)
The Strange Boys (18)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
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Buggin - The Flaming Lips
It’s quite hard...
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The fear card is being played on us again
The fear card is being played on us again.
This time it’s fear of closing Guantanamo.
Republicans have created this as a wedge issue. And I’m not surprised. They have been clear since the beginning that they are in favor of that place.
But now my party, the democrats, led by Senator Harry Reid participated in a vote last week, 90-6, in favor of keeping it open.
The rationale:...
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Postcards From Italy - Florence and The Machine
...
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Land Locked Blues - Bright Eyes
I’ve been...
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Live tv coming to a web near you
There a number of reasons why people still subscribe to traditional pay television (satellite, cable, telco).
Just a year or so ago it was about network television shows & movies.
But very quickly those shows are finding their way online. Either thru illegal p2p networks or legal places like itunes, amazon, netflix and hulu.
Plus those traditional shows are just the tip of the iceberg. The...
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Closer - The Format
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Thoughts about Greylock
Yesterday, the big news in the venture community was about Greylock Partners, one of the premier venture capital firms in the world. Greylock is moving its headquarters to Silicon Valley.
Greylock was founded in 1965 and had been based here in MA since inception.
What does this mean for Boston based entrepreneurs and VCs?
Here are my thoughts.
0 - If I wanted to put a positive spin on the...
“Today, at the Boxee board meeting, I showed the board La Blogotheque’s...”
– A Boxee App I’d Love to See Built - Fred Wilson
It’s great being on a board with Fred. How many VCs do you know that will stop a CEO during the board presentation and break into a Bloc Party video.
#TwitterTees
Sweets tees from Threadless.
Now the hard part: which one should i get!
mokoyfman:
I’m really impressed with the latest offering from the Threadless crew: TwitterTees. They nailed it on a number of levels.
1) Crowd-sourcing - Threadless is smartly leveraging their crowd-sourcing expertise across the expanded Twitter network, using Twitter to surface and gather votes on shirts and thereby...
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Fat Bottomed Girl - Queen
Heard this song today...
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My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-5-17) →
Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band (29)
Ben Kweller (26)
Wilco (18)
Billy Bragg & Wilco (6)
The Alarm (5)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
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Drops In The River - Fleet Foxes
Love this band....
The Facebook secondary market
It’s not a secret that there was an active secondary market for Facebook common shares.
And it looks like there continues to be significant interest in the common stock. VentureBeat reports that Facebook employees are selling $150M worth of common shares to a combination of new and existing investors.
Few thoughts on the matter:
1 - The news here is the $10/share number and the total...
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Not Your Lover - Blitzen Trapper
From the...
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The public school system is failing those who need...
Lauren and I went to a lunch yesterday and met with US Senator Michael Bennet.
Senator Bennet talked about a number of things but I felt much of his passion around his desire to fix our public schools. Prior to becoming Senator he was the superintendent for the Denver Public Schools.
He had a balanced view about the blame (all of us adults, not the kids) but he first shared a few data points to...
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“For the 1st time ever, more people are finding my blog from Twitter and Facebook...”
– How Twitter and Facebook Now Compete with Google - Mark Cuban
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Fake Plastic Trees - Jeff Tweedy
Great cover....
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Met with Chris Liddell, CFO at Microsoft yesterday
Don Dodge organized a meeting with a number of Boston venture capitalists and Chris Liddell yesterday.
It was the first time I met Chris. He’s quite impressive and very likable. I had the pleasure to work with Greg Maffei who was the CFO at Microsoft when they acquired WebTV Networks. Greg is now running Liberty Media.
Chris was very open with us. He shared a number of things about how and...
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“One thing I know about a body of work is that it’s never finished....”
– Obama’s Commencement Speech: Never Rest On Your Laurels
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Absolute Reality - The Alarm
I’ve always...
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“The one person we can’t blame is Johnny Damon. He’s come to play. He the only...”
– yankeesdaily.com
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Buriedfed - Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
...
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Content owners will get paid if they open up all...
There are a few ways online content is paid for today.
Advertising. Subscription. Pay per download or use.
There are others forms of monetization making inroads but these are the big three at this time.
Many content owners are still struggling with their digital efforts & strategy. And as a result we (all of us) are still at the early days of figuring all of this out.
Consider:
1 - Books....
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Vanderlylle Cry Baby - The National
Very cool,...
“Five years ago content companies were regarded as king in our industry, but that...”
– Sony Chairman, CEO Howard Stringer — Nikkei Electronics Asia — May 2009 - Tech-On!
You got that right.
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Slowly (Oh So Slowly) - Conor Oberst and the...
“Sometimes we think this is an elaborate edition of ‘Punked,’ ” Mr. Stone said,...”
– A Night Out With - Biz Stone and Evan Williams - The Twitter Guys - NYTimes.com 