Archive for the 'soul' Category
Microsoft Cafe - Not quite ready?
October 20th, 2009
UPDATE - 10/23
Looks like I had my facts wrong. The first store opened in Scottsdale, Arizona. I have to say from the photos, it looks a lot different from the Paris version so far.
Check out TidBits for the details - http://db.tidbits.com/article/10676
It has a familiar vibe….seems familiar to me…..could it be…..hmmmmmm
Also - this is hysterical.
Compare
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Hk0ZCqRxg
to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUqKPuEHuu8
Priceless.
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During my recent trip to Paris I dropped by the Microsoft Cafe to see how it was going. Based on all I have read, it seemed as if it would look identical to the Apple Store. Check out the pix - what do you think? According to Gizmodo they are supposed to open Oct 22nd. But based on what I saw on Oct 17th, that seems unlikely. Will they be delayed like a version of Windows? Well, based on Windows 7, maybe they will pull it together in time.
The neighborhood they picked I found to be interesting. I don’t know much about Paris (only there for 4 days), but it wasn’t the "nicest" area. It was definitely bustling, a ton of people and lots of commerce. Seemed to me to be more for your average consumer compared to the high end malls that you typically see Apple stores in.
That’s me to the left!
What goes around… OR Living The Dream
April 17th, 2009
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.
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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.
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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.
http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/unigo-takes-you-college
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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! Review - online.wsj.com/article/SB123499498840816053.html
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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.
Mission accomplished.
Go for your whims.
September 2nd, 2008
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.
Let’s hear it for our whims. More to come…
Parallels, full screen and multiple monitors - No worky
August 28th, 2008
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.
WordPress Persmissions - what should they be? Really!
August 25th, 2008
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.
Update: I got some feedback…wordpress.org/support/topic/199164
