So this post is a long time coming but I finally got it together and it’s a doosie. As I had posted a while ago about following my dreams, I in fact went out to Petaluma, CA to hang out with Leo Laporte and his entourage for a week. First, I have to give a big thanks to my wife Kim for allowing this to come to fruition. She is a huge supporter of everything I do and I love her; she completely handled the house and the kids for the week while I was out “playing” with Leo. It was really “work” but when you love what you do and get to hang with your idols it can easily be classified as “play”. I consider myself a Leo Fanboy so I will stipulate that this was more play than anything.
My time in Petaluma was great. Leo’s staff was extremely welcoming and friendly. I immediately got a great vibe from them. They are serious about what they are doing. They want to grow their business but are not going to rush into something simply because they can. And I believe they can. They are able to maintain a high quality of life while continuing to be a force to reckon with the technology media space. Leo was great, down to earth and easy to work with. I could easily see myself moving to Petaluma to work for him…
Come on, one can dream.
I realized before the trip that there was a chance that I wouldn’t actually be able to affect much seeing that I would only be there a week, so upon arrival I focused on things I could easily accomplish or lay ground work for someone else to finish. I think it worked out well even though most of my stuff was probably lost. But that is something you get used to when you build software – it is often 3 steps forward, 2 steps back to achieve greatness. I am happy to see that one project that I worked on with Colleen, Twit Picks, rolled out recently. http://twit.tv/picks
After I left The Cottage, I soon started my new gig at Unigo.com as the CTO. Since then it has been a whirlwind of development, press, and networking. While in Petaluma, my initial thought was that I would keep on consulting on the side for Leo. I really wanted to finish what I started because I really enjoyed working with that group. But after I returned home that idea was quickly put aside for my new CTO responsibilities.
After a couple months at Unigo along with some decent press I reached out to Leo and Amber MacArthur suggesting that my CEO Jordan Goldman would make a great guest on net@night, one of the TWIT Network’s podcasts. net@night covers the Web2.0 space. Unfortunately at that time my emails went unanswered and life went on.
After another month or so, we were able to score an interview with another one of my idols, Robert Scoble.
Jordan and I met Robert downtown at the Club Quarter hotel. Robert was also great and seemed genuinely interested in our business model and our offering. I got to see Robert again just recently at SXSW…but I don’t believe he remembered me. Of course ones memory is impaired while at SXSW. This was the only interview I actually got a little face time. Woo hoo.
A short time later we scored a really big fish AND another one of my idols, Walt Mossberg. We affectionately refer to him as Uncle Walt. Jordan and I trained down to DC to meet Walt at his office. We had heard that he really liked our site and that he may write about us. I was so excited about this interview that I tweeted about it the day before.
After a week and a few dozen back and fourth emails Walt released a very favorable video and in-print review of Unigo in the Wall Street Journal paper and website. SCORE!
With all this great exposure I reached out to Leo one more time. I heard through the grapevine` that Leo had been talking about it, but nothing happened. I let it lie until a week ago when I heard Leo talking about his daughter’s search for information about Emerson College. I emailed Leo again reminding him about Unigo. This time it stuck and with a little luck I was able to get Jordan on net@night a couple days later. The interview was great, at least I think so… Leo gave Unigo great praise and said some very nice things. He also talked about yours truly a little which didn’t hurt either.
So my good friends Dave and Mara just found out they are having a new baby girl. Mazel. As I was ranting about what an expert I am with babies this old diddy came to mind. I figured I would revive it from the archives.
It was late on a balmy evening in October.She had to make a decision.
What would she decide in her current state of mind?
Having slept only 2 hours in 3 days one could question her mindset.But all she was thinking was that she needed to sleep.God knows what she would be like, whose head she would rip off the next day if her condition remained the same.She had to make a call, make the decision that could affect the next 6 hours."How", she asked herself, "Do I accomplish this?"With what little sanity she had remaining and with little regard to the consequences she made the call - she removed the clothing exposing the ominous belly. The belly being the only thing that would tame the beast.
He looked on watching and waiting to see what she was going to do.When it finally happened, he considered saying something even objecting, but knowing her state of mind he thought he would rather suffer the consequences that question her choice.
Trouble subsided quickly and the wish was granted. Her decision paid off.6 hours of blissful, peaceful sleep; uninterrupted…
Early morning came, birds chirping in the darkness and the daily routine started again.Some level of internal satisfaction went unspoken between them not knowing what lied ahead.She wouldn’t know the outcome of her actions the night before until later since she disappeared into the dewy morning leaving them both behind.
He went about his morning - the typical rushed-waiting that he typically experiences at this time of day.Anxiously straightening and fixing things up, trying to stay ahead of the curve he went from one room to the other as quietly as he could.In his mind he was accomplishing something, but in reality it could be debated. Minutes seemed like hours and then finally it happened.The muted shrill emanated from the upstairs bedroom.It hit him like a needle going through his arm.He reacted quickly.Like a trained soldier, he jet upstairs toward the bedroom just like he had done many mornings before. Eighteen months of this routine was ingrained in his soul.He knew what to expect, the anticipated outcome, the possible variations…
As if it didn’t exist, he went through the door toward the screaming. Before he could say "good morning" the thing he had only subconsciously feared came to reality.
It was glorious!It was everywhere!One might say massive.On her hands, her face, the sheets, the walls, the crib…Nothing escaped her wrath.It came so easy to her; as if it was inconsequential. He dug deep into his soul considering the previous 8 hours…What could he had done different?Would it have been worth it?He then came to the only conclusion that made sense.It had proven time and time again to be effective against the child’s will.
In my post-TPR (The Princeton Review) - trying to figure out what I want to do state of mind I decided to do something a little different. All of us get whims and in most cases, at least with myself, I tend to be all talk. Lately, with a sort of "nothing to lose" attititude I decided to attempt to follow through with some of my whims. One of these whims stemmed from my fan-boy status of a particular tech celebrity Leo Laporte. I have been listening to his podcasts for years and watched him on TechTV before they went caput. I have always admired him and been amazed by his overall knowledge of not only the history of technology but all things new and cool.
So here is the beginning of the story. I sent Leo a simple email volunteering my time for a week, where I would fly out to Petaluma and intern for him. I truly didn’t care what I did for him. Be it washing his car, making coffee or something more useful like help with his websites.
To mitigate my barrier to entry I told him I would pay for all my own expenses. A couple weeks later I got a message back from Mara, Leo’s email person. She told me that she would pass my email over to Leo. To be clear she told me that he reads all of his email eventually. To my huge delight, I was soon contacted by Leo who extended the invitation to visit him.
I am planning on going to Petaluma on Sept. 15-18.
This is just another tidbit of info that I have come across through my adventures with Parallels support. In my venture to fully utilize my new baby (Mac Pro beast) I really wanted to be able to take advantage of my three monitors. Unfortunately, it turns out that Parallels doesnt support multiple monitors in full screen mode. It does seem able to utilize multiple monitors when using coherence (able to drag application to another monitor), however that isn’t how I roll. I have been informed from Parallels support that this will be "fixed" in an upcoming version.
A word about Parallels support. If you are willing to pay to get your simple question answered they are quite helpful and the process is straightforward and fast. If you take the free route, expect it to take a week. That said - I got my answer.
I am coming to the quick realization that some Wordpress (2.6) features, some that I am very used to, others that are new to 2.6, won’t work if the permissions on directories and files aren’t set correctly. After some lengthy Googling, what "correct" is seems to be anyones guess based on what OS, webserver, WP version, plugin or theme you happen to be running.
So here is my question:
What should the permissions be on every directory and file within a Wordpress 2.6 installation be for the application to work as intended?
I would really like to hear from everyone - the community at large as well as those close to the Wordpress development. But at the end of the day, I would appreciate hearing from an official source.
Just a quick post so that this information gets out into the interweb some how. It cost me $30 but I am willing to share this info for free since Parallels isn’t.
Now this could be my own ignorance but I had a problem and it just wasnt obvious to me what was causing it.
I have a new Mac, installed Parallels with Vista Ultimate (bootcamp partition). Was working sweet! Not surprisingly, after a while the VM would pause due to lack of activity. Upon Resume, Vista would blue screen. I found many references to this problem when I googled it, but no good solutions.
So I ended up emailing Parallels support a couple times to no avail. I got no response; really don’t believe their system works. I then called Parallels phone support and paying my money.
Turns out - DOH - that it was Vista that was going to sleep first (power settings) which was causing the VM to Pause. After changing my settings to not sleep or hibernate -> all is well.
The Blue Screen is still a bug they need to fix, but I can live with this solution. Also if you want things to sleep do it through the Mac side.
So here we go again. I am going to give it one more try. But I am glad to say things are looking up. I managed to acquire the new device yesterday after a long grueling day on line in the hot sun. See my Twitter for the play by play. I ended up having a huge argument over the phone with AT&T customer service in the middle of the Apple Store. From my other posts on this blog the story goes something like this. I bought the old iPhone, transferred my service to AT&T from Verizon, then when the 3G was announced (rumored) I went back to the AT&T store to figure out the best way to get on the new phone. I ended up returning the iPhone, getting this little crappy, free, refurbished Nokia to hold me over. I was going to go back to Verizon but the sales people assured me that everything would work out and that I should stay with AT&T. Unt I did.
Turns out I was NOT eligible for the incentive price on the new iPhone and that’s where the argument started. Of course back then we had no idea what type of pricing models or incentives AT&T would offer - but that’s not the point. In the end, I wound up buying the new iPhone from the Apple Store because pretty much everyone else in the NJ/NY area was sold out and I was being told that they wouldnt be replenished for 20+ days. Even the Apple Store’s assistant manager got on the phone with AT&T Customer Service to make my case. Really, they made the wrong decision and unless something changes I will feel pretty screwed. BUT, I am holding my judgement. This morning I went back to the original AT&T store to allow them to make things right. Manager wasn’t there so the jury is out. So we’ll see.
I have only used the phone for a few hours but so far I have really enjoyed the experience. Very clean, fast and predictable. Few bullets:
The sound quality seems better.
The phone is still pretty peppy but I am seeing a drag when multiple things are going on
3G is very noticable and the Wifi seems faster too
The iTunes upgrade went nicely and the phone synched perfectly. I still dont understand why iTunes makes you authorize the computer you are use to download stuff. Had to do that for the apps to synch.
Besides for the authorization issue (2 mins to solve) the apps synched perfectly
I havent hooked up the email yet so I have no idea if the "push" is working yet. Loved Apple’s note today. "We really didn’t mean push"
On another good note I was finally approved for the developer program. I can now write applications AND put them on the phone. I haven’t tried it yet, but I am looking forward to it.
While recently listening to an edition of the Net@Night podcast, Amber MacArthur introduced a new segment of the show called Beef of the Week. She explained that she has basically been shutout of her Facebook account for months now. Turns out that she has too many friend requests and the Facebook platform cannot handle it. She is prevented from logging in and accepting the thousands of friends requests she has received. When she reached out to Facebook their answer was basically that there was nothing they could do and that she might try deleting all of the people that were attempting to befriend her. Not very social. Now Amber is kind of a Social Network poster child in that she dedicates most of her time promoting social media and networking and believes that the web is the best place to form communities. Seems to me that building their platform for and supporting users like Amber is in Facebook’s own best interest.
We use social networks like Facebook for many reasons. Most people use it as a place where they can keep up with their friends no matter where they are. But we are also seeing more and more groups being formed that relate to causes and charities. These are very important communities and networks like Facebook become more relevant as they host and support them. I spend a good part of my day thinking about how to promote organized social networks. The questions I ask myself include what tools or mechanisms are best for a particular social network. This typically boils down to a feature set and target demographic. NOW I am thinking I have to also consider if the platform can handle the load.
Should I create social networks on Facebook knowing they may not be able to handle it if it becomes popular?
User loyalty of Social Network websites has proven over time to be fickle. For the most part users go where their friends are. However, as we have seen in the past - my friends used to be at MySpace and now they are at Facebook. In a couple months they could be somewhere else. My main point is that if Facebook as a platform cant handle the vast numbers of people who flock to these types of communities they will fail and the users will go someplace else.
The Mission: To use Facebook against themselves. We must convince Facebook to fix their platform and to support people like Amber so we can continue to build important social communities. Maybe we should create a "Free Amber" Facebook Fan page.
We often talk about telling our children to be careful about what they email, post to blogs or social networks, chat about online, tweet, instant message or whatever the kewl way to communicate is that day; telling them they need to be careful because the "Internet doesn’t forget". There is potential that everything they do online will stay online in some way permanent way. For my day job we think a lot about this because we are trying to help kids get into college. More and more universities are getting more hip and more technically fluent where they understand what a Facebook Wall is. Our kids need to be careful about what they say, who they say it to, what groups they join, etc… so that these universities dont hold it against them later.
