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October 22, 2009
∞
Caterina Fake’s recipe for a focused, productive day. Very cool (and very nicely designed). I wish I had the self-discipline to implement this, but both the nature of my job and the way my mind spins hold me back.
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singletasking (via caterina)
That’s quite a few middle man hops to get from my eyeballs to SportsCenter on ESPN. I count three because there will definitely be competing providers for that authentication layer even through that layer of competition is not visually represented.
There’s a lot of value in this transaction (my cable+internet bill is $100/mo, which is my highest monthly bill, not counting rent). All that money is flowing into the MSOs today, and they’re cutting up the pie, but I don’t think that will be true 5 years from now.
As a simple analogy: If this market image were a sentence, my 6th grade grammar teacher would highly encourage editing of “unnecessary phrases.”
(image via readwriteweb)
October 20, 2009
...Wikipedia Rel=NoFollow
Why are all external links on Wikipedia marked as Rel=Nofollow? For those unfamiliar, rel=nofollow means that search engine web crawlers will not follow these links; therefore, they will not benefit the destination site’s PageRank in Google.
I know the obvious arguement for marking Wikipedia external links as rel=nofollow, which is that it will prevent spammers from using Wikipedia’s PageRank for their own benefit by pointing a bunch of Wikipedia external links towards their own spam sites.
But, that argument is lame because spammers already have PLENTY of incentive to make a bunch of external links to spam sites on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a traffic firehose because of all its visitors, and each external link a spammer points to their external site will generate a bunch of traffic for them. So, I don’t think marking external links as rel=nofollow discourages spammers.
Instead, marking external links as rel=nofollow just punishes legitimate sites that should rightly benefit from being linked to by Wikipedia. For example, The United Nations Human Rights Council page on Wikipedia references the official website for this organization in the first link of the External Links section of the page. Yet, the UN Human Rights Council receives no PageRank benefit for that mention. If anything, the official site of this organization is more canonical than even the Wikipedia page itself and deserves to rank highest for a search on this term. So, it should really receive the benefit of Wikipedia’s link.
If I thought rel=nofollow actually discouraged spammers at all, then I could understand Wikipedia’s decision, but I really doubt there’s any benefit to spam prevention, so I would love to be able to remove the rel=nofollow attribute whenever I make an external link while editing Wikipedia.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Espers - The Pear
New Espers record, III, is out today. It’s great, typical slinky sound but also different than earlier records, there is more space in the songs, more room for the band to breath, the production and sound are amazing, Greg Weeks’ guitar tone is remarkable - I need to ask him sometime how he gets that. In all, wonderful package.
Andrew’s $0.02: This song is terrific and well worth a reblog. Beautiful texture and the female vocals are like an alluring lullaby.
However, the main reason I wanted to reblog this is that Andy puts his finger on a phenomenon that often disappoints me as bands get success. I find the following trend all the time: Band records grungy muddy mess of greatness in their garage on cheap guitars and a couple of 4-track tape recorders linked together. Then Band strikes it big (likely via requisite Pitchfork “Best New Music” knighthood). Band goes out an buys a bunch of big fancy amps, new guitars, etc and the production quality on the recording gets kicked up a notch as they upgrade to a real studio and a brand name producer. Then, the resulting sophomore album sounds way to cleaned up and inorganic, and all the great, original raspy-sounding instruments are gone.
Based on this song, I don’t feel like that has happened to Espers, so that’s good. But, the trend is too common… I wish I could take some of my favorite bands and send them back through a time machine.
October 19, 2009
∞A beautiful cover of LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great” using a Cello. Cello is my second-favorite instrument for use in indie-music (first fav is some banging brass).
October 16, 2009
∞
Redeye VC: Company Math vs VC Math
Great Post… plus this quote is terrific:
“it’s even more scary when you look at it from a micro/fund perspective. Take a $400M venture fund. In order to get a 20% return in 6 years, they need to triple the fund — or return $1.2B. Add in fees/carry and you now have to return $1.5B. Assuming that the fund owns 20% of their portfolio companies on exit, they need to create $7.5B of market value. So assume that one VC invested in Skype, Myspace and Youtube in the same fund - they would be just halfway to their goal. Seriously? A decade ago, any one of those deals would have been (and should have been) a fundmaker!”
October 15, 2009
∞
Buzz Andersen, creator of the excellent Birdfeed, probably after spending some time with the new Tweetie 2.
Andrew’s $0.02: This is why APIs are so important to startups. They are the ultimate iterative design tool. Third party developers crank out features you’d never dream of inventing as the Company, some of which fail and others flourish. For example, who would have thought that social games on Facebook would become as big as they are now? Without the FB Platform API, the only game we’d still have on FB is the “poke.”
October 13, 2009
...Barney Frank Spares Venture Capital
There’s a WSJ article today which credits Barney Frank with sparing venture capital from SEC registration and “systematic risk” testing. That’s great news, and I think it makes a lot of sense because VC is not leveraged, doesn’t use derivatives, etc…
But, I wonder if the fact that Barney represents Massachusetts 4th congressional district had anything to do with it… the 4th district overlaps part of the 128 Beltway, which is littered with VC firms. I’m sure that, as a percentage of overall VCs in the country, Barney is the directly elected representative for a fair number of them. I doubt this overlap had a significant effect on Barney’s decision, but I’d be curious if it came into consideration at all.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Song: Carry the Zero by Built to Spill.
I had a great night last night at the first of four shows Built to Spill are playing here in NYC. They banged out a bunch of classics off of Keep It Like a Secret such as The Plan and the song in this post, Carry the Zero.
I love how despite touring with these songs for over ten years, they can still play them with the same passion as if these songs were written in the garage last week.
I am burying the lead a bit by starting with a review of the show… the real purpose of this post is I’ve got two tickets to tonight’s show that I can’t use. I’ll give them for free to the first commenter/reblogger here. The catch: A) You have to actually use the tickets and go the show tonight and B) you need to swing by my office today (in Union Sq/Flatiron District) to pick them up.
I hope a reader out there can make it. It’s a great show.
October 12, 2009
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
It’s a Matt & Kim kind of morning (strictly post-coffee).
