Odeo

I have found myself listening to a few podcasts on ODEO. It’s so much easier than subscribing to the podcast on iTunes. Granted I can’t take it with me on my iPod but it is nice to search and find with such ease. It’s worth a shot if you haven’t checked it out. I’ve included a link to an interview from the Economist entitled “Wide World of Wikis”.

This interview was hosted by Brendan Greeley, the blogger-in-chief for the US public radio program Open Source, and the author of The Economist’s survey on new media, Andreas Kluth.

Popularity: 3% [?

Twitter

I think Twitter is onto something. You sign up and anytime you update (send an SMS) it updates your friends and the website (if you’re comments are public). In some aspects this is just an easy way to send out a text to many. Do I care what my friends are doing? Do I want to get a text message anytime a friend sends out a note? Maybe. Maybe not. But maybe the potential isn’t in the updating but rather the ability to get texts (and pictures from cell phones) on a website immediately.

Imagine if you text and it appears on your MySpace page or personal website. Or what if I took a picture from cell phone and then sent and it uploaded to my site with a message. Now we’re talking about cool. I’m not a programmer but I’m guessing it isn’t too hard. I’m not sure though. I might send them a little note.

I did notice that the founders have quite a good track record. I’m sure we’ll be reading about this company soon.

Popularity: 3% [?

Welcome Back!

It’s been a rush the last month. I got back to LA at the end of September and the next day Kelly and I were up to Oregon for Pierce and Kyla’s wedding in Hood River. After the great event we went to Bend to visit Courtney and Adam Bledsoe. Following a wonderful, peaceful few days we drove back up to Portland and flew to SF.

It was there that “Career Search Tour 2006″ really took off. I met with Adam DeVito, the co-CEO at Big Boing. We spent a few hours discussing BB’s upcoming business activities and opportunities. BB is a small, nimble new product and innovation group that partners with large companies - with a strong focus around ‘play’ and right brain development. Their business model differs from most innovation consulting groups because they typically own the intellectual property or at least structure deals in such a way that they have royalties and/or licenses. I have known Adam for several years and he is a very talented individual with a great team around him. It was an excellent start to the career search. In a future post I will discuss more on my thought process regarding the next step in my career.

After Big Boing I visited a friend down at Skype and saw the eBay campus. eBay bought Skype for $1.3 billion back in 2005. It was considered a ridiculous amount by many at the time but considering Google just bought YouTube for even more maybe it wasn’t. Following our visit at Skype Kelly, Scott Berkley and I went up to Yahoo! and attended their first open Yahoo! Hackday. I’m not a programmer so I was a little out of place but it was a fascinating event. It made a lot of noise in tech world, especially considering they brought in Beck - a well known band - that also happened to be one of Scott Berkley’s top 3 bands of all time. Well done Yahoo!

The tour continued when I met up with a young, former Sierra Ventures VC guy, turned entrepeneur - Nisan Gibbay. He just recently left his position at SV to pursue a new opportunity. In the meantime he’s publishing reviews on startups. It’s worth the read: check out www.startup-review.com.

After my time in SF, Kelly and I drove up to Sonoma to meet up with a serial entrepreneur and well respected investor, Jerry Sanders. Jerry came out to Oxford in August and gave a three-day lecture series on start-ups. I attended his class and when I found out he lived in the SF area I arranged a time to visit with him.

Kelly and I took some time to visit a couple wineries and then headed down near Walnut Creek to visit the parents of Kelly’s old teammate Nicole Branagh. It was a great break from the city and all the meetings.

Our time in SF came to end. We headed back to the ‘greater LA area’ also known at The OC.

Popularity: 2% [?

Wethink

Charlie Leadbeater has released an interesting book on mass creativity and innovation (well sort of released, it’s actually now online for mass collaboration). We-Think: the power of mass creativity.

Here’s an excerpt:

The basic argument is very simple. Most creativity is collaborative. It combines different views, disciplines and insights in new ways. The opportunities for creative collaboration are expanding the whole time. The number of people who could be participants in these creative conversations is going up largely thanks to the communications technologies that now give voice to many more people and make it easier for them to connect. As a result we are developing new ways to be innovative and creative at mass scale. We can be organised without having an organisation. People can combine their ideas and skills without a hierarchy to coordinate their activities. Many of the ingredients of these forms of self-organised creative collaboration are not new - peer review for example has been around a long time in academia. But what is striking about Wikipedia, Linux, Second Life, Youtube and many more is the way they take familiar ingredients and combine them to allow people to collaborate creatively at mass scale.

The rest is here:
http://www.wethinkthebook.net/book/home.aspx

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from the website)

Charles Leadbeater is one the world’s leading authorities on innovation and creativity in organisations. He has advised companies, cities and governments around the world on innovation strategy and drawn on that experience in writing his latest book We-think: why mass creativity is the next big thing, which charts the rise of mass, participative approaches to innovation from science and open source software, to computer games and political campaigning.

www.charlesleadbeater.net

Popularity: 5% [?

Wedding Pictures Now Online

Kristen and Rob Venick Wedding

Popularity: 1% [?

Rehearsal Dinner Video

Rob and Kristen Rehearsal Dinner Video

The video shown at the rehearsal dinner. More pictures and videos to come from the wedding.

Popularity: 1% [?

Write And Read E-mails Better

Recently I read an article from entrepreneur.com regarding reading and writing emails better. I thought I’d pass on a few of the recommendations. Most are obvious but that doesn’t mean they are easy to follow. Enjoy.

How to Write Better:

Use a subject line to summarize, not describe.
When you copy lots of people (a heinous practice that should be used sparingly), mark out why each person should care.
Use separate messages rather than bcc (blind carbon copy)
Make action requests clear.
Make your e-mail one page or less.
Understand how people prefer to be reached and how quickly they respond.

How to Read Better:

Check e-mail at defined times each day.
Use a paper “response list” to triage messages before you do any follow-up.
Charge people for sending you messages. [I like this one
Answer briefly.
Ignore it.

For the entire article please go to http://entrepreneur.com/technology/howtoguide/article76952.html

About the author:

Stever Robbins is an authority on overwhelm in the workplace. A veteran of nine startups (can you say: overwhelm to the max?) over 25 years, Stever co-designed the “Foundations” segment of Harvard’s MBA program. He is the author of It Takes a Lot More than Attitude to Lead a Stellar Organization, and has appeared on CNN-fn and in the Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily and Harvard Business Review. Stever and his monthly newsletter can be found at http://SteverRobbins.com/.

Popularity: 2% [?

Drive Home From Yahoo! Music

Yesterday on my way home to Orange County from a lunch meeting at Yahoo! Music, in Santa Monica, I decided to count how many times I changed the radio the station in search the music I felt like listening to. I lost count after 20 switches — and that was before I had made it to the Rosecrans exit — less than 15 miles away. Granted my ADD might have something to do with this but I’d like to think there might be something wrong with the current stations and how they are organized.

First off, I’ve been gone for a year and can’t remember what each station plays so I’m forced to use the dreaded scan button in hopes that a song is playing (which I might is very difficult. At one point I think I had a streak of 10 stations without music. Could you imagine if you had to go to 10 restaurants before you could get served??).

Music provider problems:
- getting the product to the customer with the least amount of hassle (distribution)

Listner problems for music providers:
- not many listeners know exactly what they want anyway (unusual behavior)
- ADD is truly an issue

Popularity: 3% [?

Google Vs. Yahoo

It’s not an easy choice. Since 1999, I’ve been a yahoo guy and over the last year I’ve been ‘testing’ google. I will break it down like a pre-game analysis based on my own personal experiences:

E-mail funcationality (Advantage Google)
E-mail loyalty (Advantage Yahoo!)
Webhosting (Advantage Yahoo!)
Search (Adv Google)
Personal page. i.e., My Yahoo!, Personalized Page (Adv Google)
Fantasy Sports (Adv Yahoo!)
News (Adv Yahoo!)
Finance (Adv Yahoo!)
Overall style (Adv Google)
Content (Adv Yahoo!)

So based on my current metrics (unweighted) Yahoo! is leading 6 to 4. However, based on current new products being produced by Google (like google documents, spreadsheets) as well as recent acquisitions like YouTube, Blogger, Picasa and many more Google gets an additional 2 points for movement. So based on mcfaddenplace.com’s super computer we have a tie.

We’ll see what happens but I’ll tell you I am torn. I like both but especially in terms of e-mail and personal pages it’s not feasible to think I’ll maintain both.

I’ll try to post more on this subject in later posts. In the meantime here’s an interesting note:

The new Yahoo Photos has the right mix of features and ease of use | News.blog | CNET News.com

Popularity: 2% [?