Monday, May 09, 2011

Hunch Is About To Explode

".... more than 25,000 API clients making more than 400,000 calls per day ....."


Source: Chris Dixon: Taste Graph Infographic

Tweet From Husni Mubarak


Former dictators are entitled to tech news as much anyone else. That is what I think. What do you think? By the way, Mubarak, in Urdu, means congratulations. I don't know Arabic, but I have a feeling it might mean the same in Arabic. This bird's name has a meaning.

The Wilsons Were In Cairo Recently

Live Nation And GroupOn: That Offline Component

Madonna at her 'Confessions' Tour at Wembley A...Image via WikipediaTo my understanding, the Live Nation proposition is that you might listen to all the digital music you want, pirated, bought, shared, what not, but when it comes time to pay, you will pay to see those artists perform. And so if the big chunk of the artists' money is coming from live performances, then it makes perfect business sense for that artist to give out her music for free. You want to steal? Steal.

That business model of Live Nation has long fascinated me. And their tickets are pricey. At one point they were giving rise to monopoly accusations. But people are paying.

GroupOn reminds me of Live Nation. GroupOn has not come up with code that has confounded the minds of the Mark Zuckerbergs and Sergey Brins of the world. Their technology is quite simple. You could argue their business model is also equally simple, and hence the hundreds of copycats. But what I notice most is they took that step to go offline. They employ thousands of salespeople who go knock on the doors of local merchants. I find that proposition exciting.

Tweet Embed Option Needed

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter.Image via WikipediaNo, Biz, Twitter Has Real Issues

I think Twitter needs to give me the same embed option that YouTube does. Very often I feel the need to embed a tweet at my blog. And I ended up taking a screen shot, using the Paint software to resize it and all. It is tedious. It is a few different steps. I think it is like five steps. Takes a lot of time I don't have.

Linking to a tweet is not the same thing. Just like linking to a video is not the same thing. And taking a screen shot makes the tweet go dead. The links freeze. There is no retweet button.

A tweet is like an atom. It is a basic building block of the web. And we should have the option to take the atom wherever.

Nick Gray: Bollywood Moves

BollyBrook Says Hello

Good Will Hunting



Sunday, May 08, 2011

26 Best Cities

DSC_0346Image by flemming. d5000 via FlickrAccording to The Atlantic.
  1. New York City
  2. Toronto
  3. San Francisco
  4. Stockholm
  5. Sydney
  6. London
  7. Chicago
  8. Paris
  9. Singapore
  10. Hong Kong
  11. Houston
  12. Los Angeles
  13. Berlin
  14. TokyoSunsetImage by Vicky Tsavdaridou via Flickr
  15. Madrid
  16. Seoul
  17. Beijing
  18. Abu Dhabi
  19. Shanghai
  20. Mexico City
  21. Moscow
  22. Santiago
  23. Istanbul
  24. Sao Paulo
  25. Johannesburg
  26. Mumbai

Am I A Musician?

Social Media And StartUps: Striking The Right Balance

Barack ObamaImage by jamesomalley via FlickrI don't apologize for my active social media presence. But I have to be careful not to take my eyes off my two startups. The startups are where the action is. It is not like I am worried. It is not like I feel like I am losing the balance. For much of 2009 and 2010 I really did not have the option to do the tech startup thing. And then it made a ton of sense to focus primarily on things like tech blogging and networking. But those things don't go away. You don't switch. You learn to juggle a few balls.

Gonna Write For Technorati

I am particularly fond of blogging. My blogs feed into my Twitter and Facebook streams. I set the same for my Tumblr stream, but Tumblr has been messing up the past few days. Many things I read online I have a tendency to tweet out. So if you follow me on Twitter, you get a pretty good idea about what I am blogging and what are some of the things I am reading that day. I read a lot of tech news. And I follow the democracy movements as closely as I can. I was Barack Obama's first full time volunteer in New York City, maybe even the country. (Switching To Obama, Jupiter And Obama, 30 Points Down In The Polls) All that work I would like to cash out on behalf of democracy. I feel very, very strongly about democracy.