Self-Aggrandizement: January 2007 Archives

Web Week: Geni.com
Filed January 31, 2007 4:47 PM.

MySpace is so 2005. And Friendster? Does anyone even remember when that was cool?

Ah, yes, social networking sites. How quickly they catch on, and how equally quickly they fade away. Inherent to them is what I think of as the Pokemon Problem: at first, people set out to 'collect' all of their friends. They use the site frequently, connect and counter-connect. And then, after a little while, the 'collecting' slows down. They're connected to all of their real-world friends, and probably to a slew of random people they could care less about as well. At which point, they have far less reason to come to the site. Sure, they could message friends through it; but they already have their real friends' email addresses, so why bother? And photo sharing? Doesn't Flickr already do that far, far better?

So the site begins to atrophy. User pages become unchecked hulls, perhaps logged into every few weeks just to see if anything interesting has happened. Ad revenue falls, user sign-ups dry out, and visions of billion dollar acquisitions no longer dance like sugar plums in the founders' heads.

But, of course, there's a point at the peak where a savvy exec team could handily cash out of such a site. For which reason, new social networking sites still pop up all the time.

At the moment, the gorilla 'new kid' is Facebook, already hugely popular with the college crowd. But, like any of its forebears, once chasing a market that doesn't have time to log in eight or nine times a day just to profile-stalk the hot girl in chem class - and Facebook, indeed, is now trying hard to expand to the 'grown up' world - the site will run into the same problems of short shelf life.

Even in the case of Facebook, their best efforts of pushing into that 'grown up' market will likely be feeble indeed. Sure, my peers and I will perhaps join up. But my parents? My grandmother? The vast majority of the online market? Not a chance.

So, if the model of a social networking site is to grow fast and sell at the peak, and if the market of young whipper-snappers is already tapped, couldn't a site make a huge amount of money by being the first to successfully target the 34-65+ demographic? I suspect one could. The question, then, is what kind of social networking site my mother and my grandmother might join.

Behold: Geni.com, a social networking site disguised as a snappy, AJAXy, web-based family tree application. You can start filling out what you know about your relatives yourself, then (and here comes the clever viral part!) enter the email addresses for any of those family members to invite them to help continue fleshing out the tree.

As the success of the Mormon Church's Family History Centers as proselytizing tool suggests, people of all ages are fascinated by their past, and eager to map out their biological place in the world. Plus, Geni's investors and exec team are extremely seasoned, savvy, and press connected, so a slew of coverage - the first step in getting this otherwise virally self-spreading effort rolling - is likely just around the corner.

Get on and sign up fast. You don't want to be the slow cousin at this upcoming digital family reunion.

Web Week: Intro
Filed January 29, 2007 5:33 PM.

Despite the Luddite claims of my last post, I am, incontrovertibly, a bleeding-edge technologist. I download software in beta, buy gadgets unlikely to ever cross over to mainstream adoption, and generally waste all kinds of time and energy thinking about and playing with things only total nerds would think are cool.

The upside of that is, tech-wise, I'm usually ahead of the curve. In fact, before I started blogging, for about a year I wrote a newsletter trying to highlight new technology on the rise. And, overall, I did pretty well, pointing out, for example, a new-fangled search engine called "Google" I figured might even give the reigning champ Yahoo a run for its money.

So, hoping to re-channel some of those futurist smarts, this week I'll similarly be showcasing a few new sites I think are, similarly, bound for big things. As many of you readers are rather tech-savvy yourselves, I imagine some of those will be ones you've already seen. But, perhaps, others will be new to you. So, tune in and check out the new New New Thing, just so you, too, can experience the joy of gloating that you knew such-and-such.com way, way back when.

Re-disc-overy
Filed January 28, 2007 6:08 PM.

About seven years ago, when I first copied my entire CD collection to my computer, I carried out a series of blind listening tests. And, through those, I discovered that a 192kbs AAC sounded, to both my and my friends' ears, nearly on par with CD quality audio.

This afternoon, however, with city radio interference causing the music streamed from my Mac to my Airport Express to clip in and out, I defaulted back to listening to the same songs from Ye Olde CDs. And, holy crap, I don't know if we did those first listening tests on shitty stereo equipment, while exceedingly drunk or high, or simply with a more tech-friendly future-hopeful world outlook. Whatever the reason, we were ridiculously kind to those 192kbs AACs, the ones from which I've been listening to all of my music for three-quarters a decade. Because, in short, they sound nowhere, nowhere as good as the same music on CD, at least as played through a pair of Linn Tukan speakers or a pair of Etymotic ER-4P earbuds.

I realize this may soon turn me into the equivalent of the crazy old curmudgeon who still refuses to buy anything but vinyl. And, worse, I've yet to work out a way to steal music on CD rather than BitTorrent. But, regardless, for the time being, I'm sticking with it. Like most of the best music of today, it seems the best music listening of today is similarly, firmly, rooted in music's - and music technology's - past.

Today's Quote
Filed January 26, 2007 5:37 PM.

Time management for entrepreneurs:

"You must systematically, agressively divest yourself of those activities you do not do well, do not do happily, or find routine, so as to systematically invest your time (and talent, knowledge, know-how, and other resources) in those things you do extraordionarily well, enjoy doing, and find intellectually stimulating."
- Dan Kennedy

Footsie
Filed January 25, 2007 5:12 PM.

For the past year or so, I wore and loved a pair of Kenneth Cole boots. They were comfortable. They made me tall. (Or, at least, as close as you can get to tall from a 5'6" starting point.) And they looked good.

Or so I thought.

A few weekends back, however, over pizza at our apartment with our siblings and all their significant others, Jess and the other females went on an extended diatribe, tearing to shreds 'man boots' - what I and three out of the four other guys in attendance were wearing.

And, in short, it turned out that, while we guys all thought we looked good, the girls thought we looked like idiots. Worse, in subsequent polling, I universally reconfirmed that initial split: guys, pro; girls, very, very con.

So, continuing further the field-research-driven footwear rethinking, I polled on replacement ideas, and ended up with a pair of navy Converse Chuck Taylor's and another of tan suede Campers.

Which, on the one have, have elicited such male responses as my brother's, "who's your stylist, Ray Charles?" But, conversely, have been a hit with Jess and every other lady I've come across.

Given my demographic preference, I'm pretty sure that's trading up.

Day Five: Denouement
Filed January 23, 2007 9:14 AM.

Via Blackberry Messenger:

Josh: I'm sitting at a table with Gary Coleman
Jess: Wawaweewa
Josh: Wawaweewa indeed

My Sundance experience is now incontrovertibly complete.

Day Four: Star Struck
Filed January 21, 2007 4:46 PM.

So far today, I've walked past Nick Nolte, Jeremy Sisto, Scott Speedman and Cameron Crowe. Each was mobbed by an autograph-, photograph-seeking crowd. And each reminded me, as ever, that being famous would pretty much totally suck.

Poem of the Day
Filed January 20, 2007 10:09 AM.

"Away In Virginia, I See a Mustard Field And Think Of You"

because the blue hills are like the shoulder and slopes
of your back as you sleep. Often I slip a hand under
your body to anchor myself to this earth. The yellow
mustard rises from a waving sea of green.

I think of us driving narrow roads in France, under
a tunnel of sycamores, my hair blowing in the hot wind,
opera washing out of the radio, loud. We are feeding
each other cherries from a white paper sack.

And then we return to everyday life, where we fall
into bed exhausted, fall asleep while still reading,
forget the solid planes of the body in the country
of dreams. I miss your underwear, soft from a thousand
washings, the socks you still wear from a store
out of business thirty years. I love to smell your sweat
after mowing grass or hauling wood; I miss the weight
on your side of the bed.

- From Barbara Crooker's Radiance

Day Two: Small Victories
Filed January 19, 2007 12:49 PM.

God bless you Sorel and North Face, makers, respectively, of my new low-top slip-on and high-top lace-up winter boots.

It's eight degrees here in Park City, and, for once, I'm not about to lose my toes to frostbite. Which is, perhaps, the best news of the fest so far.

Day One
Filed January 18, 2007 2:23 PM.

The flight attendant told me that, normally, passengers on Delta's 7:25am flight from Newark to Salt Lake City are fast asleep, rarely move around much. But, today, she noted, the aisles were packed with people wandering around, pacing back and forth.

That's because, I explained, Sundance began today, and the plane was completely packed with New York film types too neurotic to sit long in the same place.

The fun begins.

Take Two
Filed January 17, 2007 4:02 PM.

Spurred on by the strong reviews and ongoing box office, the Two Boots Pioneer Theater has extended the run of Ever Since the World Ended by a week.

If you meant to see the film last weekend but never got around to it, here's your second chance.

Equally Quotable
Filed January 17, 2007 10:19 AM.

If I'm slinging other people's wisdom today, here's the best business quote I've come across in ages:

"It doesn't matter what your competitors are doing. The only thing that matters is if they are keeping you from getting to your client."
-- Gerry Lemberg (investor in Apple, Intel & Oracle)

Big Ben
Filed January 17, 2007 10:08 AM.

As it's his birthday today:

"If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten,
either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing. "
- Ben Franklin

No Promises Pre-Game
Filed January 16, 2007 6:12 PM.

This Thursday, I head off to the Sundance Film Festival, during which I will not be blogging at all. Before each such film festival, I usually say that I'll be covering things online, day by day. And then, I get there, post once or twice, stop posting completely, and end up guiltily summarizing the rest of the fest after the fact. So, lest it be said I never learn from my mistakes, this year, I make no such promises. If I post something during, consider it icing on the self-aggrandizement cake.

But, to set the stage for any possible though certainly not promised posts, allow me to repeat an observation I make yearly: by most counts, Sundance, Slamdance, and the other concurrent festivals bring some 70,000 people to Park City, Utah. And while that's not far off from the numbers the Toronto or Tribeca festivals attract, dropping 70,000 bodies into New York or Toronto barely makes a dent. Whereas with 70,000 people added to a city of 7,882, like Park CIty, the infrastructure is completely overwhelmed, everything starts falling apart, and life more or less grinds to a functional halt.

That, along with countless other factors - certainly not the least of which being the nature of all too many of those 70,000 attendees - similarly leads me yearly to the same conclusion about Sundance: it's everything I love about movies, and everything I hate about the movie industry.

Should be 'fun'.

Licensed
Filed January 15, 2007 2:57 PM.

They say it takes seven years to become a New Yorker. And though I've only been here for five and a half, I am now, officially speaking at least, a good step closer. As of last week, I no longer have a California drivers license, and am instead awaiting the mailed arrival of my first New York license.

Granted, this a step most people take within the mandated thirty days of arriving in a new state. But I've been lazy. Without a car, I've had no need to hit the local DMV, and California allowed renewal of my expired prior license by mail.

Of course, I've thought about getting a New York license before. In fact, shortly after I moved here, when September 11th hit and I was living a half block from the UN, I took to carrying my telephone bill in my pocket so police officers would let me through UN barricades and back to my own apartment. And it occurred to me then that I should probably make the license switch to something bearing my actual address.

So, in September 2001, I printed the requisite forms out online, and put them in a folder atop my desk. Where, I am ashamed to say, they sat for the five years since. Sat despite the desk itself having been twice moved to new apartments.

Perhaps the delay has been psychological, symptom of my conflicted feelings about abandoning my West Coast roots. Give up a California I.D., and, at least in some small way, give up my tie to California.

I don't know if I believe that less now, or if I just feel a bit more ready to declare allegiance to this city. But, for whatever reason, at the end of last week, something snapped. Enough seemed enough. I picked up the folder, headed to the DMV License Express, sat, sat, sat, sat, had a bad picture taken, filled out some forms, only winced slightly when they stapled my yielded California license to those forms, and walked out the door with a bona-fide, verified NYS Department of Motor Vehicles Interim License (as the piece of folded paper proudly proclaims).

New York, New York. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, indeed.

All Puns Intended
Filed January 12, 2007 12:17 PM.

Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.

A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."

A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm, and says "A beer please, and one for the road."

"Doc, I can't stop singing 'The Green, Green Grass of Home."
"That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome."
"Is it common?"
"Well, it's not unusual."

An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel, and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office, and asked them to disperse.
"But why?" they asked, as they moved off.
"Because," he said, "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt, and is named "Ahmal." The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan." Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

And finally, there was the person who sent twenty different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least ten of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Get Some, Go Again
Filed January 11, 2007 4:12 PM.

While I'm using this blog as a bulletin board to announce various facets of my life: CrossFit NYC, the workout group I've been helping run, just opened a gym of its very own, The Black Box, in midtown Manhattan.

The gym is essentially a nonprofit, so I don't make any money by pimping it out. Instead, I just honestly believe CrossFit is simply the most effective and most efficient way to get in excellent shape.

We have CrossFit NYC members of every fitness level - from military special forces guys on through to eighty-year-old grandmothers - and as I'm fairly sure you fall somewhere between those two, you should fit right in.

The CrossFit approach has been praised in publications from Skiing Magazine to Men's Fitness (though, conversely, the NY Times did make us sound a bit like whack-jobs). And we have member testimonials galore (consider an attorney who came to us barely able to do a pullup, and was banging out sets of nearly twenty inside of eight months).

So, come on down, and give it a try. Classes are free throughout January, giving you the perfect chance to actually stick to your New Years resolution for a change.

The World Ended
Filed January 10, 2007 11:46 AM.

I mentioned it once before, but Ever Since the World Ended opens tonight in NYC.

We didn't shoot it ourselves, but our distribution arm is putting it out because we think it's great and it deserves to be seen.

Ever Since the World Ended is set twelve years after a plague has wiped out most of the world's population. Two filmmakers set out through a deserted San Francisco, filming a documentary about the tiny community of 186 people still living there.

It's a small film, with a no-name cast. But it's also remarkably good. The New York Times liked it quite a bit, and Time Out New York gave it four stars. Plus, a slew of other publications glowingly reviewed it at earlier screenings.

The film is playing from today (Wednesday 1/10) through Wednesday 1/17 at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater (E. 3rd St and Ave A, ).

Do me and yourself the favor of checking it out.

Thanks for the Tip
Filed January 9, 2007 12:25 PM.

Gawker linked to my recent post on holiday tipping, with the helpful comment:

Furthermore, you live in a building with six fucking doormen. You SHOULD tip those guys for keeping out the crazies. It's not like you can't afford it. Asshole.

To which I say, since when is the editorial staff of Gawker reading my blog?

Book It
Filed January 9, 2007 12:09 PM.

Jess moved in bearing largely two kinds of items: clothing and books. And while, fortunately, my apartment has ample closet space, leaving room for both her and my own (albeit now slightly more compressed) apparel, I had previously filled my own large bookshelf to near bursting, leaving certainly no room in which to store her many, many tomes.

So, to accommodate, we added a second bookshelf and some magazine baskets, commandeered a section of windowsill for library lineup. And, in the process, I also started going through all of my books, to see what I wanted to keep, and with what I might be willing to part.

And while it turned out, unfortunately, that I did want to keep most of my books, I also discovered there were a rather shockingly large number I had never finished, or, worse, even begun. Apparently, armed with an Amazon Prime account, my eyes are bigger than my literary stomach, with even my relatively voracious pace of book consumption falling steadily behind my pace of online book accumulation.

So, making a belated resolution that, in all honesty, I still won't be able to keep: no new books until I catch back up on the old ones. Or, at least, no new books until I'm satisfied having simply judged each unread one by its cover instead.

You're Taking the Couch
Filed January 2, 2007 11:24 PM.

With Jess now fully moved in, we seem to be facing the imminent arrival of a third, phantom roommate: Jae Chang. I have no idea who Jae is, but his Wall Street Journal has begun appearing on my doorstop, and his bank statements in my mailbox. I'm not sure if he, himself, intends to make an appearance, though the management office assures me they haven't double-booked the apartment and that such an occurrence should be unlikely.

Which is good. Thus far, two has been excellent enough to make three, proverbially, certainly a crowd.

Web Week: Geni.com Filed January 31, 2007 4:47 PM.

Web Week: Intro Filed January 29, 2007 5:33 PM.

Re-disc-overy Filed January 28, 2007 6:08 PM.

Today's Quote Filed January 26, 2007 5:37 PM.

Footsie Filed January 25, 2007 5:12 PM.

Day Five: Denouement Filed January 23, 2007 9:14 AM.

Day Four: Star Struck Filed January 21, 2007 4:46 PM.

Poem of the Day Filed January 20, 2007 10:09 AM.

Day Two: Small Victories Filed January 19, 2007 12:49 PM.

Day One Filed January 18, 2007 2:23 PM.

Take Two Filed January 17, 2007 4:02 PM.

Equally Quotable Filed January 17, 2007 10:19 AM.

Big Ben Filed January 17, 2007 10:08 AM.

No Promises Pre-Game Filed January 16, 2007 6:12 PM.

Licensed Filed January 15, 2007 2:57 PM.

All Puns Intended Filed January 12, 2007 12:17 PM.

Get Some, Go Again Filed January 11, 2007 4:12 PM.

The World Ended Filed January 10, 2007 11:46 AM.

Thanks for the Tip Filed January 9, 2007 12:25 PM.

Book It Filed January 9, 2007 12:09 PM.

You're Taking the Couch Filed January 2, 2007 11:24 PM.