December 23, 2004

Off to Guatemala!

OK, I'm off to Guatemala, where I'll be visiting Atitlan and elsewhere.

See you all on January 3rd!

And in the meantime, don't forget to check out my other company, $100K+ job website and newsletter: TheLadders.com -- we're the earth's largest resource for $100K+ jobs!

Final E-Mail Count for the Year

At work, my final e-mail count for the year was 25,939 e-mails sent.

That doesn't include my work's "on the road" webmail or the home account, so the total total is probably well north of 30,000.

I don't know whether I should be proud or depressed about that.

Freedom Winter

We fought our historic struggle for civil rights for all in the Freedom Summer of 1964. During those efforts, three CORE workers were murdered -- James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner -- by those forces opposed to equality for all.

Iraq now faces it's own Freedom Winter. Those who murdered two Iraqi election workers in broad daylight are part and parcel of the fascist fragments of history that want to impede progress in any place on the globe where freedom springs.

These people, they must be defeated. Now and in Iraq, not later and at our door.

And my sense, from the good people in Iraq to those who support them so fervently here in America, is that "we shall overcome".

December 20, 2004

Free Avnish Bajaj

My HBS classmate, Avnish Bajaj, has been arrested in India.

He is the head of eBay's India unit, and is being mistakenly prosecuted for the foul behavior of a cretin who posted an offer for a pornographic video on the eBay India site.

We all wisj for Avi's quick release and the clearing of his name in this mistaken abuse of the government's prosecutorial powers.

December 17, 2004

Worker fired for selling pudding

The Queen sacks a fella after he BOUGHT pudding from the Royals at a 100% markup!

Funny quote:

'There were supporting documents to show it came from Buckingham Palace.'

Bureacrats in action!

Spin Magazine Names the Top 10 Most Accurately Rated Bands

In a world where music is either overrated or underrated, these ten artists got exactly what they deserved. :

3. Blue Öyster Cult: The BÖC song everyone pays attention to is the suicide anthem “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” However, that song is stupid and doesn’t use enough cowbell. The BÖC song almost no one pays attention to is the pro-monster plod-athon “Godzilla,” and that song is spine- crushingly great. So, in the final analysis, Blue Öyster Cult is accurately rated—by accident. This happens on occasion; look at Scottie Pippen.

Pretty good!

Thomas Keller interview

Pretty interesting Chef Profile at Epicurious.com on the Per Se artiste.

DSO!

Yes, they are *still* Deader than the Dead.

For the record, the show last night (my 12th or 13th since discovering them last May) was a Seattle '94 gig:

December 12, 2004

Asteroids

Fond memories of the YMCA.

December 09, 2004

Innovation and UI

A great interview with TiVo's Director of User Experience, Margret Schmidt on designing, iterating, and testing a category creating product:

It can be difficult to test an innovative product because people are often not good at predicting their own future behavior. We overcome this by using a variety of research methods including in home studies, usability studies, in depth interviews, card sorts, surveys, field experiments, data analysis of existing behaviors to a name a few. By using different methods we are able to triangulate and get a sense of future use in the development process.

Very insightful.

The New Bush Cabinet

Your handy guide from WSJ.com:

December 08, 2004

Valuations of the past

So it's interesting to look at eBay's valuation in the past to see what a successful growth stock does.

eBay, in December 2000, was trading at 16 times EBITDA.

16 times 2004 EBITDA, that is! Crazy, right?

Lileks on Closer

Pithy:

If you believe that puddle-deep self-obsessed people engaged in two-backed beast construction is somehow the most illustrative example of the human condition, I suppose the movie will strike you as high art, but the notion that trivial people screw a lot and argue afterwards is as illuminating as the fact that dogs don't get married after they knock paws.

and true.

December 07, 2004

Is it really more than a year?

Seems like only yesterday we were asking: Is this thing on?

GIF Magic

ouch!

December 04, 2004

Historical Football Helmet Alamanac

This is an amazing collection of the history of football helmets, all illustrations apparently inked by the site creator himself!!

December 02, 2004

The Amazing Google Machine

A a very thoughtful interview with Google's VP Engineering. The by-products of having the world's largest search engine are terribly valuable:

Spelling: Google wrote its own spell checker, and maintains that nobody know as many spelling errors as it does. The amount of computing power available at the company means it can afford to begin teaching the system which words are related - for instance "Imperial", "College" and "London". It's a job that many CPU years, and which would not have been possible without these thousands of machines. "When you have tons of data and tons of computation you can make things work that don’t work on smaller systems," said Hölzle. One goal of the company now is to develop a better conceptual understanding of text, to get from the text string to a concept.

Read it all for more Googliana.