7 MVPs
31 All-Stars
And yes, even a couple of my much-loved NY Mets. (Lenny! How could you?)
This is a sad, if not-unexpected, day for baseball fans.
Oh, and one other, unrelated, number – tonight Akismet blocked the 1,001st piece of spam since I switched to WordPress.
We buy our DSL connectivity from a small local provider that we’ve been doing business with for years. We could pay a little less and go with one of the big companies, but when you read stories like this, you might understand why we’re happy with the status quo:
Canada’s largest provider of high-speed internet access is exploring a controversial data substitution technique that lets it add its own content to the webpages customers visit.
[snip]
This is what Net Neutrality is about — it’s not just making sure that data is handled in a competitive and non-discriminatory manner, but it’s also that the data that’s sent is the data that you get — that the content is unmodified, not with messages that are woven into your data stream.
UPDATE: Lauren Weinstein has an interesting solution to the problem: kiss http goodbye.
I wasn’t going to link to the Richter Scales’ awesome “We’re In Another Bubble” video, but after reading Mike Arrington’s thoughtful big-picture post today, I thought it would be an appropriate counterpoint. Together, his article and that video define the yin and yang of the whole crazy technology startup game.
Here’s an excerpt of Arrington’s post on the shadow of the dot-com crash and how the impact still affects people today:
Entrepreneurs who didn’t go through the crash don’t carry that burden. They don’t have memories of looking their employees in the eye as the laid them off. They were never trashed on F*ckedCompany for making ridiculously stupid decisions. Basically, they’re optimists, as any entrepreneur should be. They have no baggage.
And as a result they do exactly what they should do – they take big risks and hope for a big payoff. For the venture capitalists it’s even more important. They need one or two big wins in every fund to generate enough profits to keep their limited partners happy. A gun shy entrepreneur may not take appropriate risks at appropriate times, and the chances for success plummet.
I’m definitely a bit tainted myself. What I saw happen to startups in the first bubble makes me hesitant to raise money (we never have), hire too many people, or generally spend money (our offices are still in my house). I think less about growing the business sometimes than I do about losing what we’ve built so far. That’s part of the reason why I hired Heather as CEO to take over the business side of things. She’s conservative, but knows when its time to take risk and grow the business.
My interactions with Edgeio, a company I co-founded and which went into the deadpool last week, were similar. It seemed like every board meeting I was saying the same thing – stop spending money, stop hiring, stop. I was out voted, and the company followed its own path. The fact that they ultimately failed, though, doesn’t mean I was right. The investors felt that the time to spend and try to grow was now. It doesn’t matter that Edgeio failed, what matters is that it is the right approach if you are trying to make something big. If you want to be conservative, don’t be a silicon valley entrepreneur.
I don’t blame Arrington one bit, because I completely understand that mindset. Fear of failure is poisonous. You can tell yourself any kind of lies you want in an effort to justify your choices to yourself, but if you can’t remember the last time you swung for the bleachers and took a big risk on something, then you’re probably a victim too.
Which is not to say that this video isn’t also true. Some excess and stupid choices are a necessary part of the process. Remember the normal distribution curve? Outliers in both directions are inevitable.
If you live and work in the Valley, this is the life you chose — the excess and the fear, the hits and the misses. You need to be able to take it all in stride, because sooner or later it’s going to be your turn to be the hero, and the goat.
I like to think I can handle it all, but I know I still have work to do in not letting fear shut me down. What about you?
UPDATE 12/15: Sadly, the video’s not on YouTube anymore. Here’s some background on why.
Apparently, funky news website Fark is applying for a trademark on the acronym “NSFW” (Not Safe For Work). Yes, really.
As TechCrunch pointed out, their chances of getting approved are low, so perhaps it’s all a joke. Filing a trademark application through an attorney (as Fark seems to have done) is relatively inexpensive, so maybe they figured “what the hell”. Seems like a funny way to spend your money, but they’re certainly entitled to do so.
But really, what’s the point? Assuming for the moment that they’re not joking about the application, what’s the next stage? If you get a trademark, you need to defend it. Are they seriously going to start suing every website that uses NSFW in a warning next to a link?
So, after lighting the candles & enjoying some latkes tonight, I decided to give the new Flickr / Picnik web-based photo editing a spin.
I didn’t give Picnik a complete runthrough, but what’s there looks good and (if you’ve spent time editing photos before) everything is reasonably intuitive. The red-eye correction tool is particularly nice – better than Picasa’s – and I think overall this is a great addition to the site.
One big drawback, though — they REALLY need to do something about the load time. It’s very, VERY long. That might be because everyone’s giving it a test drive tonight, but still … it’s painful. And then the wait is almost as long again when you save an edited photo back to your Flickr account.
I need to upload an unedited photo or two and put Picnik thought a more thorough test, but for quick fixes Picnik looks good. I definitely don’t regret having re-upped my Flickr Pro account.
Penelope Trunk is catching some flack today for her post on things that drive her nuts about Christmas.
I think she’s a lot more right than wrong. And particularly this bit:
“Christmas is not a religious holiday.”
The only people who think Christmas is not religious are the Christians. Everyone else thinks, “This is not my holiday.”
Oh so true.
Xmas is such a dominant part of American society, it’s impossible to avoid without being completely antisocial or rude, and that’s not who I am. And frankly, I’d be lying if I said there was nothing I liked about the Xmas season. I like the lights and the excitement, and even some of the music. I like any excuse to cook (and eat) lots of tasty foods and get together with my friends. But still, none of that makes it “my” holiday.
Chanukah starts at sundown Tuesday. That’s my holiday.
