Bindu's blog

Hanging out on Google+ at MyLikes

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 01:26:00 +0000

11 out of our team of 15 employees are ex-Googlers. So it was no surprise that our start-up came to a stand-still a couple of days ago when all of us were very furiously IMing and texting our friends over at the big G to get a sneak peek at their new product - Google+.

The tour and their start-page looked remarkably un-Googley. A black top nav bar and features called Sparks, Circles and Hangouts! Whatever happened to the mono-chrome let's call a spade a spade culture! This sounded like fun and we wanted in!

Luckily in a few minutes Nick, one of our engineers at the Santa Monica office and I managed to get an invite and were soon creating Circles of friends. You can easily get totally addicted to creating those circles - so much fun to play with and there was the distinct Google signature - The interface was fr**king fast.

With my first circle created, it was time to start sharing. This is no different than what you would do on Facebook. You can share links, photos, videos and check into places. Once you share something it appears in the Incoming stream, aka Newsfeed. Interesting but not that different from Facebook groups or Twitter lists.

+1 has all the staple features of a social network - notifications, friend suggestions and chat. The UX is clean and pretty intuitive. The feed semantics are very similar to those of Buzz. Stream items move to the top when they receive new comments.

Also the one-way follow semantics makes it more like Twitter/Buzz which means that the signal-to-noise ratio on your stream is likely to be quite low.

I had to run off to a couple of meetings and came back to several chat windows open with messages from various co-workers and ex-colleagues who had now procured their invites, inviting me to join a Hangout on Google+. I couldn’t install the browser plugin fast enough and soon 5 of us were in a hangout together. It was awesome and tons of fun.

With 4 offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, we are constantly using Skype or FaceTime. Getting all of the 4 offices together on a live Group chat is always a challenge during company meetings. It seemed SUPER SIMPLE with hangouts.

With hangouts you can invite multiple circles which means any of your online friends can join a hangout that you create. ChatRoulette, done right?

This is by far the killer feature of Google+

In fact, I would go so far as to say that they should make Google hangouts a separate product. It has the potential to become really big in no time. Separating hangouts from + will also help in terms of naming. I spent most of the day calling Google+ - Google Circles, sparks or plus one and Hangouts is currently getting lost in the mix.

They also have a huge edge over Facebook with the Android Mobile app that uploads instantly to the cloud and allows you to easily share your media. With Apple recently integrating Twitter into the iOS, suddenly it seems like Facebook needs to figure out their device strategy in a hurry.

Finally, Google can also leverage the extremely high-fidelity phone contact list on Google+ by automatically creating a Circle of your phone contacts and enabling sharing. Did someone say Path again?

All in all, I am extremely proud of my ex-employer and many of my ex-colleagues who worked on this for shaking the “Google can’t do social” meme with Google+ and with time I am sure we will definitely see some very interesting stuff emerge from the Google+ effort.

Congrats to all Googlers!

Fiesta Del Mar Too

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 22:27:00 +0000

Just back from lunch at this place. One of the best margaritas in Mountain view. I also like their Mole Pablano

Dior Show

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 09:53:00 +0000

The dior show is the best mascara you can use for really long eyelashes. It is expensive but IMO quite worth it.

Some kinda of Gorgeous

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 07:14:00 +0000

I hardly ever put on serious make-up to ever use foundation. I am learning, thanks to all those YT make-up videos. For those time, when I want to pretend I can actually know a thing or two

Rock and Republic

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 01:20:00 +0000

I am not sure I can really explain why everyone seems to be crazy about boots. Because it is winter? Walk around our shared office space in SOMA and you won't see a single woman who is not wearing boots :)

WhiteyBoard Rocks! - Sponsored Post

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 01:05:00 +0000

Cool whiteboards. I actually just got one for the office. They seem really cheap as well

MyLikes and the Oscars

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 23:49:00 +0000

The Wall Street Journal just wrote on article about MyLikes talking about an Oscars campaign we are doing for Gilt groupe. I am extremely excited about this campaign as it goes to the heart of how brands should leverage word-of-mouth and social media marketing.

I am sure everyone who is into red carpet fashion has a favorite designer that they think will come out with the dress every one will be talking about. Gilt Groupe wants to know who you think that designer is going to be? In anticipation of the Oscars, they also have a red carpet sale going on right now -> Get Oscar Glam

They have gowns from Pucci and clutches from Judith Lieber (seriously who buys these clucthes anyways :) )

Anyways become a user on MyLikes (http://mylikes.com) and check out our Oscar campaign and tell me what you think?

Engineers need to join start-ups

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 01:21:00 +0000

To amend Dickens ever so slightly - These are the best of times for Engineers to be experimenting by either starting a company or joining one.

Check out my blog post on TechCrunch about it

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/13/engineers-startups/

37signals Draft for iPad: Simple sketching and sharing

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:23:00 +0000

This is the most expensive iPad app I bought. I spent a lot of time trying to find a good iPad app to sketch wireframes last night and unfortunately didn't find any. This was the best of the lot but still not all that great.

Maybe the real issue was that I was using my fingers to sketch when I should have been using some sort of a stylus.

Also, convinced the iPad is too heavy. Can't wait for the next generation.

The black on white color theme on this app was pretty great on eyes though

Forever 21

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

They rip-off designer styles and everything costs less than $30. Had way too much fun shopping for stuff with a couple of teenagers last week. Now I am all set to make one of those haul videos ;)

My IPad - all entertainment and no work...

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Thu, 20 May 2010 04:53:00 +0000

After a few months of using the iPad... I am convinced that sooner or later everyone is going to have one. Love the fact that I can play games, check email instantly and read books. I can see the following features being incorporated in later versions including

Multi-tasking so I can have multiple apps at the same time
Notifications where I can see new facebook / twitter updates
Better typing, It would be fantastic if one could type on the iPad much like you can type on the

Anyways, looking forward to the new iPad features and the iPad taking over the world

Referral marketing done right?

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:04:00 +0000

Pretty much every web start-up / retail store tends to have a referral / affiliate program. While referral / affiliate programs are great in that they provide an incentive for your customers or other influencers to refer your product / service to their friends / audience, they usually don't help much in new customer acquisition and tend to be a small part of a company's marketing budget.

The big reason why referral programs don't work well is that there are no instant rewards for influencers for sending potential customers your way . When your users tell their friends/followers/subscribers about a particular new product/service, more often than not they are intrigued by it, but they are not going to run off and immediately purchase it. What happens instead is that when they are planning on purchasing something in that space they are more likely to purchase the product that was recommended by their friend.

Most referral / affiliate rewards are lead / action based - i.e. Pay-per-action. So in essence, while the influencers/your customers are generating value for you in driving relevant customers who are engaging with your brand/product/service they are not rewarded for it until there is an actual purchase made.

What works better is to incent users for each customer they send to your website (i.e. do referral / affiliate payouts per click). You can still be selective and say - you will only pay out for customers from a particular location or for referrals from teenage girls. This give users an immediate reward even if it is a small amount and motivates them to work harder to drive potential customers your way.

We did a bunch of experiments to understand user motivation and every time people were rewarded immediately for their efforts, they responded very well. This is part of the reason why we built MyLikes that way. Check it out and give us feedback - http://mylikes.com

My Blog beginning to come alive again?

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:53:00 +0000

Now that Friendfeed is not that active anymore I had decided in the beginning of the year to devote more time to this blog. Unfortunately that has not been happening. I have been really busy with MyLikes

Our current challenges include

Determining the best pricing model for the platform. There are a number of alternatives including CPC, CPA and CPM.
Trying to figure out the best way to scale advertisers - self-serve / google adwords, telesales, direct sales to ad agencies
Payment integration with credit cards/bill me later
Potential partnerships with other ad agencies/ad networks

If you are into advertising and have feedback about some of this drop me a line or comment...

Scary DoubleClick's Like.com ad that is following me everywhere

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 21:22:00 +0000

Recently I went to Like.com to browse the site and check out some of their handbags and shoes. After that where-ever I go on the internet this ad seems to follow me. I have seen this ad on more than 10 websites including YouTube. Check out the screenshots below....

Here is what is happening

It seems like most of the web uses one display ad-network - DoubleClick
Like.com dropped a DoubleClick cookie on my browser when I visited Like.com
DoubleClick's ad servers detect this cookie and serve me a Like.com ad
Creepily the ad follows me everywhere I go...

What should Google do? - big original ideas vs. slightly better me-too products

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:50:00 +0000

For obvious reasons I am a big fan of Google. Like many others I have always been impressed with their bold approach to big problems. Of late, however I am becoming less and less impressed. Instead of focussing on core innovation my sense is they are becoming more focused on fighting their competition.

A few years ago Google was as innovative as any another small start-up. As an example the Google Video product came out at about the same same time as YouTube's. Even though it did not succeed, it was an original big idea. Same goes for projects like Google Books and Google News.

However lately it seems like all Google can do is to come up with a me-too product in markets that already have established leaders. Google's products still follow the Google mantra of being fast-loading but their products are not that much more innovative. Example of products like this would include Google Checkout, Google Chrome and to some extent Android. Don't get me wrong I am a fan of Google Chrome as well but it's not really a game-changer like Google Search/Maps was.

The only exception to the rule has been Google Wave. However Google Wave seems to be half-baked and released too early. Many people find it confusing and slow-loading. There is also the issue of Google having way too many products in the collaboration space - Google Docs, Google Wave, Gmail etc. This reminds me of enterprise software companies that have 15 products that pretty much do the same thing.

If I were Google I would spend more resources and time on making new original big ideas work. Instead of working on 60 products work on 6 big original ideas.

MSFT-Yahoo Deal

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:13:00 +0000

I was wondering last night what I would do if I were Google give the new MSFT-Yahoo deal.

The first question to probably ask is should Google worry about this in the 1st place? Short answer is Yes. Search is not a very sticky product and anyone with a better product and decent distribution can easily start taking marketshare from the leader. MSFT definitely has the money to pay for distribution and even though Bing's "search quality" is pretty bad (i.e Search results on Bing for most queries is much worse than that of Google's . Good example is the query - "How to do Good Seo" on Bing vs. Google ), Bing clearly does a decent job of the UX and latency. They are also doing a FANTASTIC job of marketing to the press and the world in general resulting in largely great coverage for the product. Now with the Yahoo search deal, there is some chance that GOOG might start seeing Bing taking some marketshare.

So what than should Google do? My answer, Google should adopt an extremely aggressive strategy against Microsoft

Innovate more on Search - All said and done. Google's search improvements are subtle and timid at best. It's amazing that Twitter launched real time search before Google did :). Google is hardly in the news for it's innovative search improvements. I would set an aggressive goal of one major improvement per month

Put more resources on Chrome, Promote it more - Chrome is gaining market share but where is the Mac version? Use the Google home page and the search results page to promote Chrome. Every Google page should have a promo for Chrome. Chrome is a good browser so Google should be able use it's massive distribution to market the hell out of this product.

Start taking the fight to Microsoft - The Chrome OS is still vaporware but Google Apps is a real tangible product. Google should spend a lot more time/money/resources getting large companies to adopt Google apps. Get 10% of the Fortune 500 to switch and MSFT is going to really start worrying. Google can actually offer to pay for the cost of switching and deploy IT resources to actually do some of the hard work that IT departments might have to do to switch. Also spend more engineering resources in developing the features these companies want. End of the day MSFT gets a lot of money from these large organizations. If you can cut of some key revenue streams MSFT is going to start to worry.

Develop on OS and open source it ASAP - These things take a long time to happen. This means Chrome OS should be high priority

Advertise - While Google is still very cool to the geeks. The masses don't find it all that cool anymore. It's Facebook, YouTube and Twitter that are the cool kids on the block. Big companies can be cool as well... Apple and Nintendo are good examples. Having an equivalent of a "I am a Mac" campaign won't hurt Google.

Anyways nothing like some good competition to spur some innovation. Let the games begin :))

My friendfeed wish list - 5 features/product improvements that would make me happy :)

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:33:00 +0000

I have been addicted to Friendfeed lately and find it far more entertaining than TV :) These five features/product improvements would make me friendfeed a LOT more. FriendFeeders, I hope you are listening :)

Ability to address specific people in my posts/comments. Ability to say @paul or @spidra would be great. Especially if I want to draw that user's attention to my post. The @ posts could all show up in a separate tab or something. So I could click through to see all the @bindureddy posts and respond to them
Ability to read a blog post directly on FriendFeed. Clicking to the blog and reading takes time and energy. It would be much nicer if I could just click a zippy to read the blog post. This would be very much like Reader/iGoogle.
An easy way to scans 100s of posts/read state. Right now, the constant next page clicking is giving me RSI. I have also divided my FF into lists which actually doesn't work all that well for me. I hardly ever scan anything but my home feed. Read my ff post on this here
Power-user feature: If you comment and like stuff a lot, you end up spamming all your friends on FriendFeed. It would be really nice if I could turn that stuff off. I want my friends to only see my posts not my likes and comments.
This one has more to do with feel of the site than with any particular product improvement. Right now FriendFeed seems pretty much more for geeks/power-users than for normal people. Sometime ago, I got my cousin to try it and she wasn't sure what to do other than than to like a couple of people she knew. She has no feeds that she can import so she imported nothing. She left to go back and hang out at Facebook where she is on pretty much all the time. Part of the issue is the "liking technology" which makes FF seem like one large loosely-coupled community vs. small groups of people hanging out with each other.

Friendfeeding....

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:04:00 +0000

Lately I have not been posting too much on my blog... However I do friendfeed - http://friendfeed.com/bindu

My brain on music

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 07:47:00 +0000

Writing this post more as a note to self... Music has always had a strong effect on my mood. As a child, I would get up and start dancing every time a favorite song of mine came on TV. This was pretty unusual as I was a very shy kid. I would be afraid to say hello to strangers but did not seem to have a problem with dancing.

Every time I am feeling low or depressed, I just need to listen to good music and there is an immediate effect on my brain. In some ways it is similar to a glucose/sugar high. The effect does not last for long however. I am happy for a short period of time, about 15 mins. after the music stops playing and I go back to being in the mood I was in before I started playing the music.

Clearly music has a profound and interesting effect on the human brain. Something I need to read up on...

My $0.02 to start-up founders - Recessions are a good time to start companies

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:43:00 +0000

I have been reading a lot lately about how many founders are stressed out about raising money, laying off people and weathering through recession. IMHO recessions tend to be better times to start and grow a company than when the economy is doing well.

- If you are laying people off, it most likely means that you hired one too many. Most web start-ups don't need too many people. Yet I see people growing their company to 15-20 people, sometimes without a product or user growth/revenue. If you are just starting, be very very careful about hiring. My own philosophy is to find people who are really passionate about what you are doing and offer them a larger equity share vs. trying to hire another 'employee'. You are much more likely to find talented passionate people interested in what you are doing during a recession than not.

- Web companies should focus on business model and revenue AS WELL as user growth. Trying to focus on user growth alone unless you are confident you will grow at a viral/phenomenal pace is a bad idea. There are numerous times, where I have seen start-ups come with good ideas which gain some traction and die off once the fad dies. Keen.com from the early 2000s was one such and I am sure every one can think of a cool web start-up that died because they couldn't make money. Sometimes it might take some time to figure out how to make money. Don't even think about raising a 2nd VC round if you don't know how you will be making money. Betting that your start-up with get acquired for millions for dollars because it has some traction is a pretty risky bet. Remember most large companies don't acquire start-ups during risky times. Use the recession to experiment with revenue models/ways to improve user growth vs. focussing on raising a 2nd round

- Don't raise funding unless you really HAVE TO. How many times does one hear that and how many times does it get ignored? This might sound a bit heartless - but it is better to lay people off and get down to a really small size and focus on user growth/business model than to spend your time worrying about pay-roll. Remember that services such as Amazon EC2 etc help you run very large jobs without buying expensive hardware. If the only reason you need the VC funding is to get more hardware because you are growing phenomenally and you have a great business model, getting VC money should be slam-dunk. Recessions help you focus on the bottom line vs. spending all your time competing with other start-ups to hire good people

- If you really HAVE TO raise VC funding for whatever reason. Put in the effort to make your case on why your company will provide real value. I will grow to be a multi-million pageview site because this is a fun/viral concept and I will make money by advertising is a bad pitch. Show strong early user growth and some revenue growth before going to the VCs.

- The number of companies started during recession usually tends to be pretty low which means you will have less competition

- You don't have to worry too much about the opportunity cost of doing a start-up. Recessions tend to be ugly times for large companies, so you are not missing much by leaving a large corporation to start your own.

That said this time around it might be a tad difficult to get talented people to leave large successful companies (e.g. Google) and join start-ups as everyone is predicting that the recession will be a really long one and people tend to prefer to have safe jobs.

LinkedIn badly needs a facelift - better UX and fewer features

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:57:00 +0000

I rarely use LinkedIn except to respond to invites. Today I decided to play around with it a little more and I was a bit horrified about how badly designed it is.

The biggest issue seems to be the that the designers are trying to fit a bunch of disparate features into the site. The multiple nav bars - one on top and one to your right increases the clutter considerably.

My guess is that in an attempt to increase engagement on the site, the PMs have added a bunch of random features. They have the ability to update status, a news gadget and even a amazon reading list widget!

I suspect LinkedIn is mainly used as a online resume hub and to find jobs/contacts. They probably would be much better of designing a very streamlined experience around this core focus and adding features that increase depth in that area. They would also be better of killing a few features that are not being used too much. Right now, they seem like a really un-cool, cluttered, 'professional' version of MySpace/Facebook.

Google's Friend Connect and Facebook Connect - Not really the same

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:36:00 +0000

I am not really sure that comparing Google FriendConnect vs. Facebook Connect makes much sense. They are basically two different APIs/products with different purposes.

Facebook Connect allows you to basically take your Facebook login, profile and friends with you to any site and see the site and site's data through Facebook's 'social lens'. Examples include - See all the videos favorited by my Facebook friends on YouTube or all the products bought by my Friends on eBay. Facebook connect allows you to easily weave Facebook profile and friend data into the core functionality of your site.

This is a REALLY powerful API and has the potential to be very popular on the web. The only real drawback that I see is that, Facebook is being territorial by not giving out a user's address book/friends' email-addresses, even when users want to export that information to the 3rd party site. The single sign-on feature that Connect offers is interesting but I doubt it will be used widely. Sites will end up using their own registration processes along with Connect.

On the other hand, Google Friend Connect is more like a gadget that you include on your website. I don't see serious web sites such as Yelp or YouTube ever using Google Friend Connect. It simply won't fit into their look and feel/functionality etc. If you look at examples, the Friend Connect site showcases it is clear small sites are using this. FriendConnect is more like another version of MyBlogLog.

While this is pretty interesting, I don't think Friend Connect is going to be a big game changer.

Calculated Risk - Watching the TED spread and LIBOR

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 06:53:00 +0000

If you are interested in following the financial crisis and are constantly monitoring the TED spread and such. I recommend reading Calculated Risk - http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/

Why Barack is going to win

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 22:33:00 +0000

I am going to put the odds of Obama winning this election at 90%... Funny intrade odds are only around 65%

Regardless of how close some of the polls maybe (btw Obama has opened up a significant lead in them right now) the fact of the matter is -

1. Obama's campaign has a MUCH better ground game than McCain's. On election day they are going to be much better at getting out the vote. This in itself is going to be a HUGE advantage

2. Even if assume that there is a racial bias against Obama amongst the whites. Black turnout is going to break all records. Every one who is black is going to prob. turn out and vote for Obama

3. Old people who like McCain are scared about their social security and believe Obama's populist policies are going to aid them in these 'dire times'. So there is going to be swing against McCain and his plan for privatisation of social security.

4. Obama's policies are clearly more 'populist' and geared much more towards social engineering and government intervention than McCain's. Like it or not, the free market system is not viewed favorably at the moment and this will be another BIG reason why Obama is going to win and McCain is going to lose.

Why I am not so excited about Obama anymore..

bindureddy@gmail.com (Bindu Reddy) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 23:03:00 +0000

Anyone who has spoken to me in the first half of this year, can tell you that I was a Obama-maniac. I was extremely impressed by his speech in Iowa after he won the caucus. I read all his speeches, saw all his videos on YouTube and even read his book.

I was convinced that with Obama as the president, we would usher in a new era not only in government, but also in other critical areas such as big business, finance and technology. To have someone who seemed like an idealist, who did not accept the status quo but questioned it, who believed in transparency and in the notion that everyone can make a difference, as the president would inspire a nation.

Unfortunately, after the primary and in the last 2-3 months, I have become more and more disillusioned. He seems to be all words and no action. The thing is words can only go that far, if you want to inspire a nation, you need to lead with your actions.

In fact, of what I have seen of Obama's actions lately, he seems to just another extremely ambitious, slightly arrogant, extraordinarily brilliant man.

For example -

- His VP pick of Joe Biden, his first presidential decision is underwhelming. Biden seems like your garden-variety old Washington dude. I watched him on Meet the Press, where he spent all the time defending HIS proposal for Iraq, which no one seemed to have taken seriously. His career in the senate seems pretty unremarkable and he would be pretty much the last person I would pick to challenge the status quo. HE IS THE STATUS QUO! Obama, made this pick because he could counter McCain's arguments on experience, not to bring about change in Washington.

- Obama came out and said he would say no to wiretaps and would accept public financing. In fact, he writes about this in his book. This was earlier in the year. But when it came down to it, he flip-flopped on both these issues. It wasn't in his benefit to accept public financing, so he did not. This is not change we can believe in, this is more of the same. The status quo in Washington is to change positions when it benefits you and that is exactly what Senator Obama did.

- Late last year, when the chances of him getting the democratic presidential nomination were low, he said he would love to debate republicans. Now, he refuses to do townhall meetings with McCain. His excuse for not doing them is so flimsy, it is unbelievable! He says he wants to spend more time campaigning in swing states. If that were true, how come he has time to show up on national and news shows every week? The townhall meetings would have received extensive viewership and television coverage and could have easily been held in swing states. This is not change you can believe in, this is more of the same. More of the same tendency to not be transparent and upfront with the American people. Why risk townhall meetings which might decrease your comfortable lead in the polls.

- His speech when he accepted the nomination was extremely unremarkable. It was not inspiring and did not have any new ideas. All his policy positions are recycled from the Clinton era. One other big issue was his emphasis on "I" vs. "We". Listen to the speech and you will see how many times he used "I". There is a sentence there that almost sounds like - I will cure world poverty, hunger and bring peace. You have got to be kidding me! This is not change WE can bring about.

-Finally, his stance on drilling: His position on drilling has evolved in exactly the same way the democratic position on it has evolved. His answers to the question have been the same as Nancy Pelosi's - almost word for word. First she would not even consider it and now she is ready to talk about it as part of a comprehensive energy plan. If the democrats were more tolerant and receptive, they could have put forward a comprehensive energy plan proposal from day one without having to go through this huge drama. Again this is more of the same. He blindly took the party position without taking the time to consider and study the issue.

Considering he voted with the party 97% of the time and voted present on hard topics (BTW, he talks about this in the book), this is not a guy with a bipartisan record. This is the guy who knows to work his party and the American people for his own rise to fame.

Trust me, I want to be wrong but want to believe he is the right guy for our nation but at the moment it is just too hard.