Quake City Rumble V

Tonight I am riding the San Francisco Fifth Annual “Quake City Rumble” its starting at One Post Street (at Market) and ending at the Benders Bar (S. Van Ness at 19th Street). This is my chance to break into the alleycat scene. I am really missing the races and parties in Brooklyn and NYC.

Not really sure what I am getting myself into with this one. I still don’t really know SF all that well. I guess an alleycat is a great way to get to know the city.

Can’t wait to finally do a race out here!

Tomorrow there is another alleycat with location to be determined. I know they want to keep all the hipsters out of the loop. So I am actually looking forward to tomorrow’s race not allowing anyone with brakes of any kind on their bikes. It keeps it more of a purist sport.

A the Parkside Bar at 5pm on 4th of July will be Goldsprint Finals, Skids, Stands and Freestyle Comp.

I will be wearing a helmet, but the rest is up to the good graces of the gods.

Market Seer

The need to develop web companies that take zero effort is upon us. I am sure there is some sort of a term for this, but I don’t really feel like researching it just yet.

The premise of this discourse is simple. We are living in an age where we have become accustomed to websites that demand user’s attention spans.

We participate in them for various reasons and the results we find can be very unsatisfying.

Take last.fm for instance.

The site caters to music aficionados and based upon your search history it creates a persona for each user. This is not savvy technology, but smart algorithms that work. Aggregating user information into one central location and comparing it for relevancy is an awesome mechanism used in the discovery of music.

The problem in this solution is that you have to be cruising through their website to gain relevant results. To the best of my knowledge, last.fm does not pull up your user history off of iTunes to come to its relevancy results. Instead it pulls from music you are listening to currently (after you have become a member) and your music history is kind of lost in the process.

Digg is attempting to provide a Digg relevancy process that should have come along a year ago. In essence, the websites that you digg and visit are compared to those of other diggers. Thus an extrapolation is imposed that suggests other Diggers who share commonalities with you.

Digg requires a login. Digg is not a passive service. It was designed to allow users to point out their favorite sites. The problem with this is that it requires pointing.

I am a lazy bastard when it comes to the Internet. After spending 12 hours a day glued to my monitor the last thing I want to do is spend more time pointing out, unnecessarily clicking or doing any sort of commenting that requires additional Internet time or Kristian participation.

But I digress…

The next wave will circumvent the process of broadcasting yourself. The function of showing what you are up to will change. We are seeing that people, companies and groups are using products like Twitter to showcase what they are thinking or doing.

Twitter (despite its massive downtime and Fail Whale) is an important innovation in the web-sphere. It allows with minimal effort and within minimal space (140 characters) a person or organization to express an action, emotion or thought very quickly and easily.

The next big Internet service will take discovery and relevancy a step further. Gone will be the need to interact with broadcasting yourself. This should happen simultaneously with your actions. Gone will be these stupid tiny urls. Gone will be 3G (it will be ancient by the time it is widely adopted around the US).

I am thinking of a new human DNA that is not comprised of blood and flesh, but ideas, emotions and actions. We will not have to actively maintain our internet presence (although this will be an option), but instead just by going about our everyday lives we will create our online identity.

The confluence between our intentional actions and those unbeknownst to us will be made available to the general public. I do not want to sound like a doomsday seer, but the reality is that technology is depersonalizing us with each passing moment. Our has become trivial. Children are raised with the notion that posting their lives on Facebook or Myspace is commonplace. This cycle has just begun and the ramifications are gestating in different forms, like life-casting, baby blogs, pregnancy blogs and memorial websites. We are seeing the Internet and our short relationship with it evolve at lightning speed.

The next five years will be fantastic. Can’t wait for the ride.

I hate ZR Net

I hate paying for the internet. Call me a socialist but I think it should be free for everyone.

We aren’t living in the dark ages of the internetz here. Maybe we are in many aspects, since we are clearly in the First Inning of the Internetz Revolution, but I want my internet to be both fast and free. I’ll even take slow, as long as its free.

These people over at ZR Net are quickly taking over the corner coffee shops in San Francisco. Its really pissing me off and making me stop going to a bunch of coffee shops. I am not about to pay for a day pass or a 4 hour block of internet from a cafe.

ZR Net must be going into coffee shops offering them an additional revenue stream “Just picture this $3 coffee, $2 bagels and $5 internet”. Go fuck yourself.

Its my basic mantra that any cafe, restaurant or bar that makes me pay for internet can suck my balls. I will patronize your establishment and happily pay for everything in the place that I consume (like coffee and bagels). But please do not try and become a coffee shop ISP. That pisses me off and I will never come back.

Blogging’s a bitch (then you die)

It takes way too much time to put a blog post together.

Call me new fashionend, but I am just too damn impatient to sit around for half an hour to ruminate each day about the ebb and flow of our society.

When I consider the length of time it takes to read a blog posting versus the time it took to piece together/write the said piece it makes me feel pathetic. I mean really. Its like a 1 to 4 ratio depending on the length of the post.

I like having some sort of text, maybe a picture or two, a couple links and perhaps an embedded video.

I’d like to think that I don’t really ask for much from my readership (in fact, I only want people to name their first borns after me as a mark of devotion).

Thats why everything is shifting to a shorter free hand. One of the cool things about writing a paper in second grade is that the papers are hand written. This leads to three ideas: the graphical, the editorial and the factual.

Firstly, you are using your hands, a piece of paper and a pencil or pen in second grade. You can do no wrong with these three items. Its pretty easy to write a running commentary of posts when its on a piece of paper.

Secondly there is no editor. Sure you can have mom or dad take a stab at correcting your second grade paper, but chances are that its chock full of mispellings, grammatical errors and real emotion. I like this. Its an unedited, raw response to whatever the prompt was that the teacher asked for. I would wager a bet that most of the responses second graders pose have little to nothing to do with the topic at hand. If the question was write five lines about Thanksgiving, half the responses would talk about candy and playing the wii. I am thankful for Nintendo too.

Thirdly, there is little to no factual content in a young child’s term paper. They do not fact check, probably don’t know how. Thats not a bad thing. As stated earlier, its raw. We want raw. There are too many scrubbed, spun and clean stories permeating the mainstream. Why do we read the New York Times? Its because its clean, scrubbed and supposed to be the best.

What I am circumlocuitously getting at is the simple fact that to actually write something takes time and effort. I don’t like wasting my time on the editorial or fact checking process (like linking to supporting articles). Many people love spending the time doing this exercise. But its not a marathon baby. There is no start or end to blogging. It just keeps going.

Hence, its time for our next generation of blogging mechanisms to arise. I am talking about Twitter, Tumblr, Plurk or whatever odd name the next startup takes on. I want links to be intuitive - they should just be there. Pictures should take no time. Call me lazy, call me Susan, just don’t call me a blogger.

Its this California Thing

Today marks a very spooky Friday the 13th. There must be some good literature pointing out why 13 has been annointed the scariest, most horrific day of the month.

Last night I saw the Ting Tings at Popscene. In high school, I recall attending Popscene in awe as I saw all these hipster kids dancing around to Depeche Mode and early Stones beats. Most of the kids were in their late teens/early 20’s back in the day. This age demographic has not changed, but I have added about 8 years to myself. Of course there were the obnoxious drunks, but more importantly there were techy dweebs.

In line I actually was twittering when the guy behind me from Wellington New Zealand showed me (rather I noticed) his WWDC wrist band from Thursday night’s BareNaked Ladies concert. So what does one do in social situations? Naturally we became instant twitter buddies. Check out Brock.

The Ting Tings were great. I had never heard of them previous to last night. I felt kind of like I stumbled upon something awesome. I am not sure who their lead singer is, but I can tell you she is smoking hot and has an amazing little voice. That probably helps record sales. I am about the 54 thousandth person to take notice of them on myspace.

Did I mention that I have been waking up at 6:30 everyday? Why you might ask yourself? Because it makes me feel like an adult. Like I have things to do.

WWDC 2008 blah blah blah

Everyone has something to say about the 3G arena. From what I am hearing through MacRumors.com - there are some pretty awesome milestones being reached with the new iPhone.

-300 hours talk time

-$199 8Gb Starting price

- Offered in a bunch of countries very shortly

Twitter is supposed to be following this well. Hope it doesn’t go out during the keynote. But knowing them…you never know.

New Sunny Week

It was a great weekend in SF. Bright, sunny and warm I really enjoyed myself.  Spent Friday at Jelly with Amit Gupta. Thanks Amit. It was awesome hanging out with other techies all day and learning about the various startups and projects that people around the Bay Area are working on.

Met a designer from LinkedIn and was introduced to some people from method (a eco-friendly product company).

Saturday I took a ride over to Fort Point and looked up at the GG Bridge. It actually inspired me to watch “The Bridge” which is really depressing. So maybe don’t see that flick - its about suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge. They even interviewed a survivor. Pretty crazy.

I ended up at Dolores Park to meet a high school buddy of mine. It is pretty funny how the park self-segregates itself into three cantons. There are the hipsters on 18th-19th along Dolores and then there are two additional Mission/ San Francisco groups maintaining the Upper and Lower portions of the park between 19th and 20th Streets. The Upper portion is mainly gay males and the Lower portion is mostly lesbians. My high school girlfriends said it was okay for me to be in the lesbian area as long as there weren’t more guys than girls in our BBQ.

Did we really go through all this equality and gender fighting just so that an awesome park could be divided? Oh well, I wasn’t there to ponder the strives that California has made in the last 30 years

Yesterday was the 31st Haight Street Faire. The streets were incredibly crowded in Upper Haight. I could barely walk. Lots of food, hippies, tourists and sidewalk food.

I almost forgot to mention that the EuroCup has started yet again. UEFA Euro 2008 to be exact. Matches will run from Saturday, June 7th through June 29th. Not sure who to throw my support behind. Denmark is not even in this tournament. Sad face:(  But Germany, Turkey and Sweden deserve my support.

Quick Trip to NYC and Back to SF

Last week I got the travel bug and decided that a quick week long trip to NYC was in order.

Two of my buddies, Mark and Ben were having birthdays on Friday night. I found cheap (maybe cheap) tickets on Virgin America for $380 round trip from SFO to JFK.

It was awesome landing in NYC without a place to crash and receiving an outpouring of accommodations from my buddies. I ended up staying with Cullin and Audrey, my old flatmates. It was cool to see the changes they had made to my room. Now its an office with a bunch of junk and furniture all over the place (note: I heart them both dearly).

Dinner Friday night was at Pala on the corner of Houston and Allen Street. It was good food, but directly after dinner (around midnight) I felt the need to switch over to Ben’s birthday party in at 40 Avenue C. He did not know I was going to be showing up, so it was an awesome surprise.

The weekend consisted of seeing old friends and spending time running around town. I went to the MET with Britta (new friend from Odessa). The Superheroes exhibit was really cool. Michele Pfieffer’s Cat woman suit was on display as was Batman, Spider man and a bunch of really weird haute courtier designer outfits from french people.

Tuesday I was able to sit and chat with Howard, Jay and some founders from start-up companies we have been working with.

Buddy Media’s Kass and Michael were in full Lazerow force, as were the founders of Geezeo - personal finance website. There is a beat to NYC that I miss, but there is an equally large one pumping away in SF. You just need to know where to look.

Insufficient Security

Most people agree that passwords are extremely important in protecting your identity.

 One thing that really riles me is that for every damn website in the world we have to register. Just the action of giving my email address feels out of bounds. But to register for a site you have to give a little bit of yourself away each time you join a new site. 

 Today was no exception. Upon reading that Outside.in raised a third round from Union Square Ventures, I thought it was about time for me to check this thing out.

After filling out their form with my name, email address, sex, age, whatever. I was told to get a better password. Apparently my little six digit code is not good enough. This really pisses me off. I don’t even get the chance to start using this site unless I come up with an “easy-to-remember” password. 

 Do these people even have a clue how many websites I am registered for? (that would be a rhetorical question)

 The barrier for entry is one of the biggest problems we face as web native beings. How do we get people to use our products, visit our sites, read our blogs without causing stress or losing functionality. Having to remember different passwords is stressful. 

 There is the password I have for my bank accounts, the password for my brokerage accounts, my email accounts have different passwords and then there are my junk passwords. I think most people have a de facto junk password. Something easy to remember for websites that you either do not trust or just do not want to think about. Take Outside.in for instance. If their service is so good and my personal information on the site was something I valued than I would probably put a different, harder to crack password. But as it stands I do not really feel like creating a new password. There are too many things that I have to remember, let alone a stupid password for just another one of the hundreds of websites that I have tried out and stopped using. 
 

OpenID and similar services that are meant to streamline the login process are awesome. We need more people using them.