Yankees To Build New Stadium

Will it be the house that Steinbrenner built?

There is a soft spot in my heart for the current stadium and I am sad to see it go. On the other hand I am happy that they are planning on building the new stadium (or so it appears now) in more or less the same location. I can't imagine calling the Yanks the Hells Kitchen Bombers... Check out the brief article on the move here.

I'm no doctor....

....nor do I play one on TV, but I believe that the right to privacy is a fundamental right in our society. So, despite being very curious about the President's health I felt somewhat disappointed with a journalist while reading an article on Bush's alleged prescription drug use. I consider myself a democrat, appreciating that this information (if true) could help boot Bush in the coming election. In reality, however, it seems as if the journalist is too invasive and the article is too partisan to be credible.

Obama speaks

Barack Obama spoke at last night's Democratic Convention and it appears that it was a resounding success. I have yet to find a computer with speakers to watch the clip but I am looking forward to it. If you want to read more about Obama, check out his website here.

Have you ever wondered how the Apple Product Cycle goes?

Hilarious post about the ups, downs, conjecture and complaint that goes hand in hand with the apple product life cycle. Check it out here.

Explanation from Google going down due to MyDoom

Interesting. Check it out here.

Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?

Great piece by Okrent here where he discusses the liberal lean of teh New York Times and teh need to keep New York as part of the New York Times. Check it out.

moblogging from Yahoo

Interesting development at Yahoo. Who will be next to follow suit? And how do they deal with the multiple types of cameras, phones, geographies? Should be interesting to watch this develop. See article here.

Viral: Fuse Ads parody Apple

This is a pretty fun rip off of the Apple ads. Fuse shows a few different versions of white siloutette'd bodies on pink, blue, and purple backgrounds. They are apparently watching TV and [Fill in inappropriate behavior here]. See them here.

Is this considered viral?

apartments in williamsburg

People will live just about anywhere, check the following link for an example. My favorite part is the "newly renovated" piece. I do hope they are right that it looks better now.

MyDoom knocking out Google

As I mentioned earlier, google is out of commission. It seems that Zdnet has an article which chalks up the outage to the work of the MyDoom worm. Read about it here.

503 Server Error

It appears as if Google is having some problems on their site. See their 503 Server Error message.

Evite Envy

So I received an

Is this going over board?

This is pretty funny. What would happen if you added every toolbar under the sun to your browser? something like this.

Word Count

Have you ever wondered how extensive your vocabulary is or which words are used most frequently in the English language. Even if you haven't, this site may still entertain. Word Count presents a graphical representation of the most popular words in our language and sorts them by frequency of use.

To give you an idea of what to expect, I have included a few examples:
1 - The
100 - got
1000 - james
10000 - sewing
20000 - falkland
30000 - blunders
40000 - untie
50000 - andres
60000 - rous
70000 - drafters
80000 - autocrats
8680 (last) - conquistador

Can you use all of those in a sentence?

Check it out here.

Scorching review of BlogOn

PaidContent author, Rafat Ali, wrote a pretty harsh review of the organizers of the recent Blogon conference. Although there were good networking opportunities and Ragat had a chance to "make some friends", he felt the moderators and conference structure lacked professionalism. Read more here.

Google sets IPO at $108-$135 a share

The much ballyhooed Google IPO took one more step to realization as the Internet juggernaut chose its ticker symbol ("GOOG") and set a range for its IPO price ($108-$135) Simply amazing. Read about it here.

Convention Bloggers

Today is the beginning of the DNC convention. As in years past, the dems will gather for a pep-rally, present their vision of the future, and will nominate their presidential candidate. One thing that has changed from the routine is in how the convention is covered. Although not as revolutionary as the advent of television, blogging from the convention floor will likely change the dynamic and pace at which news is generated from the event. It will be interesting to see if there are any stories broken on blogs. For broad convention coverage, check out this.

Second thoughts on Massive

Just as I close my window to my last post I thought about a few things which make Massive pretty interesting.

1. Audience - As widely reported earlier this year, television viewership is on the decline among young men, while the number of hours young men spend online has increased dramatically.
2. Incremental Revenue Stream - Most game developers are focusing on story line and (re)playability in order to maximize the interest in their title. Linking up with advertisers through Massive can be a low intrusion/medium revenue opportunity for these developers that can help boost bottom lines.
3. Trackability - Presumably Massive can track many different aspects of advertisements, ranging from minutes viewed, to number of players seeing an advertisement, to number of people clicking to learn more about that company (?). That last comment I put a question mark next to because a game doesn't seem like the natural place to have click throughs. But nonetheless, the advertising can be optimized to the particular title demographic. In addition, in a land of increasing transparency, the advertisers are able to more easily see the impact of their investment. Granted, none of this is new in an online environment, it's just a slightly different application.
4. First mover advantage - Who knows how this space will turn out... even if there are competitors and others who do very similar things, I think the fact that these guys are the first in this space with a considerable investment and presence will bode well for them. They seem to be led by some well qualified management and have some notable investors.
5. Lowered costs - spreading the advertising acquisition costs, the data storage costs, the development costs, and other associated costs helps all parties invovled.
6. New models - perhaps it's not so new, but many game developers are not able to charge for their games. If you look at Yahoo, MSN, or any of a dozen other major game sites, they are driving their revenue from advertising and low cost games. Massive could allow for a move robust game given the additional revenue dollars that could be generated and applied to game development.

Just a few thoughts. Please let me know if you agree or disagree.

In Game Advertising for Video Games

I have long been trying to figure out different ways to capitalize on the growth in online gaming. One company that caught my eye earlier today is called Massive Incorporated who evidently is in the business of linking up advertisers with game publishers. Sounds like an interesting proposition. The company has attracted the attention of a few blue chip investors and has established some good relationships so far. I am not sure how big this business can become or if they will be able to get any larger a multiple on their company than a standard advertising agency, but I will certainly be keeping my eye on them.

Venture Capitalists - a list

while doing a little research today, I came across a large listing of venture capital firms. You can find a similar list in a lot of places, but this one seemed especially nice given the consolidated list of links and brief descriptions. Check it out here.

Somehow seeing this list reminded me of my first encouter with venture capital firms, back in 1996. I was just graduating from grad school (for the first time) and thought it might be interesting to get into venture capital. Kleiner Perkins had just raised their java fund, and had a very fancy website with discussions of keiretsu. I had done some Java programming, knew absolutely nothing about venture capital, but becuase everyone seemed to be hiring at the time, well, I thought it was a natural fit. I sent them a cover letter and a resume. I am still waiting for a response.

Great list of blogs from Jeff Jarvis

Jeff Jarvis has compiled a great list of must read blogs, ranging from business and technology to foreign-authors works. Check it out here.

Top Paying Keywords

I have been doing some reading about blogs lately. I have been looking at the area from a variety of angles, including thinking about the technology as an alternative means of journalism, as a growing outlet for specialty groups, and as a potential money maker.

In my reading I have come across a lot of different items that have caught my attention. Most recently I have been reading about how to make money through ones blog. From the counter on the bottom of my blog, I know I have about as many readers as a government issued report on the mating habits of mosquitoes, but I presume that the number of readers might grow over time. Traffic aside, one of the key ways to make money seems to be by gaving content which generates highly valued ads
throgh a program such as AdSense (from google).

Although google does not post the top paying keywords, it appears as if a few other places do. I suppose that this might mean that if I want to make any money, I may want to post about my recent endeavors in to online poker, texas holdem, and refinancing my house.

Small teams making big money

I was at lunch today with a friend and we were talking about potential businesses that although wouldn't be huge, would provide a reasonable, if not very good return. One area we started to talk about was search add-ons, or tools companies, that potentially can be created with a small team and which, if done properly, can be sold for a nice little pay day.

Of course, we felt like the lookout purchase by microsoft was a prime example, and following lunch we returned to our 'normal' jobs. Jeff Nolan has a brief piece congratulating Eric and Mike on the purchase on the company. see his article here.

Young Jackasses

Brad Feld had a nice piece today on a book called The MouseDriver Shronicles, about a few Wharton grads who are trying to build their "mouse that looks like a golf driver" business. I think I may go pick it up.

Here's the link.

Blinkx

I came across a new search site today, called Blinkx. It doesn't have quite the reach of google, but it does have the ability to catgorize content into sensible buckets and allow for deeper searching. I have only been playing with their online version, but presumably their downloadable application is their bread and butter. Take a look.

Live Strong

Last week I was having lunch with a friend of mine, Raul Shum, CEO of This Wireless and I noticed that he was wearing a yellow bracelet with the words Live Strong etched into them. I hadn't seen the bracelet before, but I chalked it up to his renewed athletic focus over the past couple of years.

Then this past weekend I was in Las Vegas taking a shuttle bus from the airport to my hotel (the Mirage pool rocks, btw) when I saw two more people wearing these bracelets, again yellow and with the words Live Strong etched on the side. I was curious, but didn't want to intrude on the people's sojourn.

But then today, i was reading Moore's Law and I came across the link to these
Yellow Wristbands with a description of how they are being sold to benefit the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

It seems as if many people have purchased them, as they are sold out on the website. Hopefully a few more can be made so more money can be raised to help benefit those in need and raise awareness to the struggle many still face today.

Northwest VC: Second Life

Steve Hall has a nice post regarding Second Life, a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). The post caught my eye because of the questions which followed regarding VCs interest in the space.

Many argue (and I think rightfully so) that investing in a gaming company is like investing in a movie company which is especially risky given the fickle nature of a markets reaction to specific titles. Despite this risk, there must be some interesting way to make a good investment in this quickly growing space.

Currently, one company I have been keeping an eye on is called Gaming Open Market. Basically the company allows people to buy and sell virtual currency online. Although they previously served a handful of MMORPG's, they have scaled back to only serve Second Life due to fraud. They have traded ~$200,000 traded since the beginning of the year.

I know, I know. $200,000 isn't much. I agree. It's just that they seem to be growing quite quickly (as evidenced by the numbers on their home page) and I wouldn't be surprised if they become the defacto means of buying/selling currency in the many mmorpg's to come over the coming years.

Amazon.com: What is a Plog?

It looks like Amazon is getting in the blog game with their own version, called Plogs. Seems like a stretch, but I can see how they are hoping to capture user information from the blog in order to serve up more targeted offers on their recommendations page. I am not a believer... yet. Check it out here.

NTT DoCoMo FOMA N900iL: Cellular + Wi-Fi Voice Over IP

This looks like one of the first (if not THE first) WiFi+Cell phones. Snippet available on the DoCoMo phone available at Gizmodo. the sucky part is that (as I understand other articles I have seen) it does not run at WiFi hot spots. Although from a business point of view this might make sense, it makes me as a consumer pretty annoyed.

From John Battelle's Searchblog: Is Subscription the Next Thing?

Great article by John Battelle about the potential of search engines moving in the direction of distributors. John speaks about having someone like google provide a 'googlish' (John's word btw) interface for access to the NYT, BBC, WSJ, etc for $40/month.
Although this may sound like a novel idea there are already a handful of news providers out there doing this or at least trying to do this. A few years back I was working with McKinsey and Company as we looked at news delivery mechanisms on the Internet. An important consideration (as John rightly points out) is that without the heavy weights, such as the NYT, etc., you aren't able to deliver a lot of value. Dow Jones had a great online product which they called DowVision. Dow Vision is also the name of their newsfeed which includes NYT, WSJ, Barrons, etc.

At the time they were charging in the neighborhood of $15 to $20/month and allowing users to keep saved searches. Unfortunately, they took it down about a year ago or so.

Anyhow, to read more about John's thoughts on one possible future of search engines, see here.

Implant in arm of Mexican Attorney General

two is a trend.

Tracking children with RFID

In response to my earlier post in this vein, I thought here might be one more area where RFID is superior, and admittedly scarier, than barcodes: tracking children in Japan. Full article here.

RIP: Laurence Rockefeller

Article here regarding the member of the esteemed Rockefeller family and founder of venture capital firm Venrock Associates.

RFID vs. Barcodes

When describing RFID it is easy to fall into the trap of comparing the technology to barcodes. Obviously RFID can help identify an item, trasmit information, and even help us pay tolls (ala EZ Pass), but finally someone has spelled out the additional uses of RFID beyond those one might initially think of. A snippet is included on the RFID Weblog.

NYC is #1

Gothamist has links to a scoop regarding Travel and Leisure listing New York City as the number one destination in the US. As a native New Yorker I can't help but think, "tell me something I don't know". just the same it is a nice thing to be recognized. here's the article from Gothamist and the article from T&L.

sleep is good.

For $14 you can take a quick cat nap in a futuristic sleep pod in teh empire state building. amazing.

check it out here.

wristwatches

time keeps on slipping, slipping, into the future...

I suppose this watch might be the right one if that is indeed the case:
PIMP watches