B I J A N

We are walking everywhere in Paris this week. Or we take the metro. I’ve been enjoying the Metro Paris iPhone app. Lauren seems to know which train to catch without looking at the app. She’s that good.

We haven’t been in a cab once since we arrived except for the car that brought us from the airport to the hotel.

after nearly a week, here are some quick misc mobile observations from Paris

-my iPhone works great here. I’ve takes to the kids every day and not one dropped call. A friend of mine told me a few weeks ago in the States that AT&T is fine it’s the iPhone that has issues. That’s not my experience. I’m receiving calls, txt and data above ground and under ground just fine.

-I have high hopes for Android (my brother loves his htc incredible) but I haven’t seen any android powered phones on the metro. Not one. Smartphones here are either blackberry or iPhone. (I know, small sample size).

-3g is great here. Unlike NYC, I haven’t found any open wifi

-most restaurants have a Foursquare mayor. Only about 10% of the places we’ve been to don’t have a mayor yet. Every place had a foursquare listing. Seems like a short time ago I was manually entering in locations on cape cod so this experience alone is quite cool.

-This is the first extended trip I’ve ever taken without my laptop. I brought my ipad which has served us well. The only thing I haven’t been able to do on the ipad is post a daily song to my blog – which I’ve been doing for years. That’s been a hard habit to break.

-been taking a lot of photos with the gf-1. But wifi in the hotel is pretty bad. One day I’ll be able to have a 4g card on this type of camera.

-Lauren has been keeping a daily recap of our dining along with photos at twitter.com/laurensabet

-google maps has saved us about a dozen times here.

That’s all for now. Time to explore some more.

(please excuse lack of links and typos. Sent via iPhone)

A few weeks ago an entrepreneur at one of our portfolio companies referred to himself as a misfit.

In his words and mind, he couldn’t fit into most places or companies. He’s not a business person or a marketing person or a manager. He creates.

Some stuff is genius and other stuff is experimentation that doesn’t go anywhere. It takes work and it takes courage. But it’s all he knows. He’s a self aware misfit.

Many companies have a hard time with misfits. How do they “manage” them? How do they measure them. How do they take the greatness along with the craziness. Sometimes they do it well and sometimes they just can’t seem to make it work.

One of the best things about startups is that are usually born from the minds and courage of misfits. I think it’s our jobs as investors to support this and add value without messing with the misfit part.

Today I was at the musee d’orsay in Paris. It was a good reminder that the misfits like van Gogh and other artists created things considered revolutionary or outrageous in their time. But years later we can see the brilliance and can cherish them properly.

Management, boards, VCs, colleagues and end users would be well served to remember all of this and not wait years to cherish the misfits.

Let’s celebrate them now.

(please excuse the lack of links or typos. Wrote this post on my iphone).

I remember many moons ago picking up Macworld magazine and reading it cover to cover. Same with Rolling Stone.

And when I mean cover to cover, I mean the entire thing. Letter to the editor, reviews, tips, specs, interviews and ads. Sometimes, especially ads.

Now we all have something called “banner blindness”. We don’t see many or most of the display ads we see online (this post isn’t talking about search ads btw). And it’s more than just “blindness”. I’m told over and over again the most popular firefox extension is ad blocker. And some of my favorite extensions like rapportive blow out the ads on gmail to make gmail better.

As a result of all of this, ads need to get smarter. That’s just evolution at work.

There are many ways ads are getting smarter.

-real time exchanges know more about us than ever. It’s allowing a whole new level of targeting. And the data is getting richer than most people know.

-ad formats getting more interesting. Apple recently announced the new iAd. It’s a highly interactive ad that offers a whole new user experience and combined with your purchase history on iTunes. Personalized and interactive.

-like/dislike. Facebook, hulu and others provide ways for users to directly vote if they like or dislike an ad. I don’t know how many people actually do this but it’s a powerful idea. Maybe there should be incentives or better transparency to give users the feeling that things are improving with these gestures.

-promoted tweets. Twitter recently launched a new ad network around a new thing called “promoted tweets”. They aren’t ads per se, they are tweets that combine earned media with paid media. If the promoted tweet doesn’t resonate they fade away. That’s a smarter ad unit.

There are many more examples of startups and big companies creating and building new ad technologies and compelling formats combined with rich data sets.

I am optimistic that online advertising will significantly improve. We will see ads personalized and as interesting to me as those in MacWorld back in the day or even better.

And that will be a very good thing for everyone. Users, developers, publishers and advertisers.

(please excuse typos and lack of links. Wrote this on my iPhone)