http://bijan.tumblr.com/post/20504562/audio_player_iframe/bijan/m9xs08q3H2dlozlzwQdRnpA8?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Faudio_file%2Fbijan%2F20504562%2Fm9xs08q3H2dlozlzwQdRnpA8

I was thinking of some more songs that I fell in love with this year.

The album “Favourite Worst Nightmare” by the Arctic Monkeys has a killer track called “Fluorescent Adolescent ” that has been on my iPhone since I bought the record. 

So here’s a cover of that track by Kate Nash. She is a cool, young British artist. And I like this cover a lot.

Location, location, location

I’ve been addicted to location based services (LBS) and GPS technologies for some time now. I’ve got them in my car, lauren’s car, on my wrist, my photos and on my phone

Google’s new version of Google Maps for mobile is very cool. It ran just fine on my Blackberry. Check out Om’s review here.

We need to figure out how to bring together user generated content with these new services and technologies. Flickr Places meets GPS & LBS is a start. Fred is thinking about Twitter and LBS. Gaming and social networks is natural. How would LBS & Last.fm work? It would be amazing.

I’ve been playing around with Everyscape lately. Everyscape literally drives around each street of several US cities and they create a 360 view of every street. And they let users contribute as well.

Below is a screenshot from Everyscape of our building at Spark. We are on the 8th floor of this 9 story building on Newbury Street in Boston.

How do we get this type of rich data and LBS everywhere and into web services and mobile apps?

And what’s next? I’m super excited.


http://bijan.tumblr.com/post/20434409/audio_player_iframe/bijan/m9xs08q3H2ccn9858YzXEiNg?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Faudio_file%2Fbijan%2F20434409%2Fm9xs08q3H2ccn9858YzXEiNg

I thought I’d alternate my music posts from now on. New music, then classic rock & roll and then new music and then ……well you get the idea.

One of my favorite rock bands ever is The Who. And my first record by The Who was Quadrophenia. If you don’t own it then take my word, just buy it. One of my favorite songs is 5:15. Love this song. Turn up your speakers and enjoy.

Why can’t every store be as good as Amazon?

I’m doing a ton of online shopping for this holiday season. At this point I’m thinking that I’ll be able to (hopefully) buy all of the gifts on my list except for my wife’s and my mom’s.

But it’ quite sad to see how bad many of these ecommerce sites are in 2007. And many of these stores are “high end” stores as well. Not clear there is any correlation between low end and high end stores in terms of their shopping experience. 

I wish I could name actual stores I’m talking about but it would probably give away the gifts I’ve purchased unfortunately. 

But problems include:

-Complicated registration as a requirement. Let me buy as a guest!

-Complicated shopping carts with up to 8 page views. C’mon. This is a joke. 

-Can’t save for items in my shopping cart for future purchase

-can’t ship multiple items to multiple shipping addresses

A quick google search tells me there is plenty of solutions out there.

So what is going on here? I wish I could buy everything on Amazon.


http://bijan.tumblr.com/post/20246803/audio_player_iframe/bijan/m9xs08q3H28wlll1dQ5gKWjF?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Faudio_file%2Fbijan%2F20246803%2Fm9xs08q3H28wlll1dQ5gKWjF
 I was thinking of my favorite songs from 2007. On this list for sure is “Turn On Me” from Wincing the Night Awayby the Shins. The name of the album is a play on words of Sam Cooke’s “Twistin the Night Away”. Anyway, great song and a fantastic record.

Dear Santa

The kids wrote letters to Santa tonight completely on their own.

Here is Sophia’s letter (and here is Ellie’s letter and James’ letter)

Here is my transcript if you can’t read her writing:

“Dear Santa

This year I do not want so many things! This year I am only having 4 or 5 presents. Instead of presents, I want you to give other children a lot of presents. Kids sometimes do not get a lot of presents. Two of the things I need are books. Their titles are "High School Musical Crunch Time” and “that’s so Raven” book about needing to help her friend and front row seats tickets. I also want an Nintendo DS (like Carolines). I hope you can get me at least 1 of these presents. Thank you!

Your friend,

Sophia Sabet/Sophia Sabet

ps merry christmas!“