I’m going to start this post off by saying that I don’t have any rights to the music I’m posting here, all of this is property of the musical group Timeflies, and if they ask me to take it down, I will do so immediately.

On a less serious note, I threw together this Unofficial Timeflies Tuesday Mixtape this afternoon for our listening pleasure. I found myself repeating their videos over and over again on YouTube, and wanted an easier way to put a playlist of these songs on repeat while I was at work.

This  mixtape is a collection of their Timeflies Tuesday releases over the last couple of months, and in some instances I cleaned up the track to edit out some of the talking/preparation that was going on in the video that no one wants to hear while listening to the song (if you did want to hear, I apologize).

After some internal debating, I also included their popular Steve Jobs tribute (iTribute) as an MP3 track and a music video, but I want to strongly suggest that you download this one off of the iTunes store because they’re donating the proceeds to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute to help fund research that will eventually cure the disease that has affected so many people in our lives. I don’t mean to take anything away from that noble cause…

Like I said, I don’t mean to step on any toes here, I’m simply a big fan of Timeflies and I want to help share their music.

Check out their website …. their Facebook … their Twitter … and of course their YouTube channel for even more awesome music.

Until next time…

- Schoon

DOWNLOAD LINK

I hope GoDaddy doesn’t get pissed at all my extra traffic

Facebook now claims that it has more than 800 million active users and has recently been valued at around $70 billion. No big deal.

But a question I’ve been asking myself recently is, “How does a multi-billion dollar company like Facebook still have a major product feature that sucks?”

In September of 1998, Google made a huge step in revolutionizing the future of the internet by streamlining it’s search functionality. Since then, Google (valued at just over $100 billion) has managed to make a majority of it’s profits through advertisements based off of it’s precious search results.

Similarly, instead of nonchalantly spying on us based on the words/phrases we’re searching for, Facebook has somehow managed to convince it’s 800 million users to just hand over a list of their interests so advertisers can just come to them. No search needed. GENIUS!

The problem here is that a major component adding to Facebook’s allure is a users ability to connect with people they know from all walks of life. If you can’t easily find someone whom you’ve lost touch with, you’re basically just creepily following people you see on a daily basis anyway. For instance, without a quality advanced search feature, how am I supposed to stalk down the girl from last Friday night who’s last name I didn’t listen to, and who’s high school I couldn’t even guess?

I do, on the other hand, remember her first name, her birthday, her hometown and the fact that she’s obsessed with the movie Twilight (something she managed to babbled on about for 3+ hours). So why don’t I have the ability to search for her based on that criteria? If Facebook already has most of this information saved anyway, why not open it up to it’s users through a more advanced search feature?

Creepy stalking aside, a more advanced search option can have other positive effects on meeting new connections as well. The other day I was on LinkedIn and was looking through a group that I belong to that consisted of my fraternity’s alumni. Not only could I perform an “Advanced Search” to find guys based on their college, employer, job title or even location, but I could also just search by keyword and see if any of them were proficient in something like Java Programming. What else could I ask for when trying to find potential partners for my latest business idea?

This search feature resulted in me finding fraternity brothers who work with me at IBM and are scattered throughout the world. Those are the types of networking relationships that I want to discover and create, so I can build my network rather than just helping me maintain my current network like Facebook is doing.

Obviously this complaint can be considered by most to be simple nitpicking, but honestly the only way Facebook is going to prove to me that they’re actually worth $70 billion is if they finalize a concrete foundation before focusing too much on the glitz and glamour. You’re not going to become the greatest company on the internet if you overlook the features that matter most to the future evolution of your product.

Last week my friend Tyler and I were talking and we decided that we’re finally grown up and mature enough to make learning a new language a priority. So we obtained a copy of Rosetta Stone, picked a language, and are going to motivate each other to actually learn this stuff.

All of this came from us talking about how much of a joke learning a language in college is because you aren’t actually motivated to learn the language, you’re just focused on passing the class so you can worry about your other classes that are more important to your future success (or at least that how we both felt). But now that we both have full-time profession occupations, and the free time that comes along with it, we figure learning a language could hurt at this point of our lives.

Picking a language was interesting at first because there are obviously so many options out there. We debated learning Mandarin, so we can survive on a Chinese dominated planet, but the barrier to entry (of learning the Chinese alphabet) was a little too steep and we didn’t need a reason to be intimidated right off the bat.

My next suggestion was Portuguese because I had already known (or at least pretend to know)  Spanish vocabulary and I thought it would be an easy transition. Plus Brazil sounds like a sweet place to visit one day. We decided there weren’t enough people in the world who spoke Portuguese to make it worth it (only 193 million… we have big dreams ), so we voted it down.

That lead to our finally decision… Spanish. We’ve both take Spanish in high school/college, so we had a foundation and it wouldn’t be hard to get the ball rolling. There’s also a huge number of spanish speaking people in the world (390 million to be exact… second to only Mandarin), so it’s not a bad thing to know.

The next step was to set some goals…

In an attempt to motivate us a little, we’ve decided to book a trip to Spain from May 22nd – June 6th, 2011. This will give us exactly 7 months to brush up on our Spanish, and have a reason to actually learn it. Then we’ll head to Spain for a little 2 week vacation and see if we can survive out there on our own.

I’ll keep the blog updated on our progress, hopefully this goes better than my attempt to learn Mandarin for work last year…

Barcelona, one of our planned destinations

On top of that, if you “Revoke” Spotify’s ability to publish to your timeline, it actually forces you to logout of Facebook all together which removes your ability to see/listen to your friend’s playlists. There had to be a better way.

After a few days of putting up with them publishing to my timeline, and occasionally masking what songs I was really listening to (by hiding them from my timeline), I finally found a solution that will allow me to listen to my music a little more privately…

I started off looking where most people probably look, and that’s in the Spotify “Preferences”. This helped me a little, by allowing me to stop the application from posting so much information in the “Monthly Roundup” that it puts on the timeline.

This still didn’t fix the problem of it posting each and every song I was listening to. To prevent this, I had to go to “File” and select “Private Listening”…

Now this may have been more obvious to other people, but it was something that was really annoying to me, so I figured I’d post the solution here to speed it up for other people searching around the web.

I heard a while back that some foreign car companies were going to team up and market a low cost car for the masses (here), but now it looks like its not going to happen as planned (here). My idea is to do something similar – small, cost efficient, low emission cars, but then design the interior and exterior of the car so they’re fully customizable. I picture a startup company forming to design and market the cars as the next BIG thing, and then teaming up with an established automobile manufacturer (Ford, GM, etc.) to handle the manufacturing of the product. The startup would be the first to manufacture add-on pieces for their cars, but then they would also publish the designs to the “open ended points” of the car so other 3rd party companies can also create add-on parts.

We’d make it so both the exterior (bumpers, spoiler, lights, underbody, paint job) and interior (stereo, speakers, seats, dashboard) could be fully customized to the owners liking. Similar to the way you can currently change the way your cell phone or XBOX look (although I guess the XBOX idea didn’t really work). The implementation of this would just feature standardized interaction points to the car in integral areas, that these 3rd party manufactures could design their pieces to snap (or screw) in to. Got a job interview and need to look like a professional? Pop off that rear spoiler, and switch out the low riding front bumper and you’ve got yourself an acceptable, grown up approved, vehicle to roll up to the office with…

This idea would hopefully result in somewhat of an “open source”, next generation automobile revolution with the goal also being to create more manufacturing jobs in America. American’s would enjoy the ability to “pimp their rides” however they want, while foreigners would appreciate the environmentally friendly, small design of the car that they’re already used to.

I don’t understand why companies like Honda, who once had the very popular, small, customizable Civic, have altered their design philosophy so that all of their cars come out of the factory looking like its a high end luxury vehicle. Why not have have one model available that is a cheap, customizable, “throwaway” car that every high school/college kid can afford and would immediately consider for their first car?

I remember when I was out searching for my current car (2001 Civic), I went out targeting that type of car because it wasn’t going to cost me much, I could just pay it off while attending college, and then once I got a full-time job just trade it in for a higher end car that I could then afford (although clearly I’m too attached now to let it go ). But now I look around at the prices of cars, and I can’t get anything I want for under $20,000! Even a used Hyundai Genesis starts at around $22,000 (here)! What’s worse is that most people consider Hyundai to be one of the lowest-end cars on the market, and I don’t want to shell out the money for one of them. God forbid I start looking at any car I wish I was driving (example A).

So that’s about all I’ve got for now. I will hopefully revisit this in a few days and post more of my ideas (instead of just ranting). If anyone actually reads this, feel free to comment below and let me know what you think…

It seems like New York City is the place to be for young, innovative techies these days.  Ten years after Silicon Valley’s dotcom bust, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are popping up all over the Big Apple.  And they’re not just popping up, they’re actually exploding.

The California Gold Rush of the mid 1800’s drew people from east to west, and now the NYC Tech Boom of the early 2010’s is drawing them back from west to east.  Investors are flocking to support start-ups.  In fact, some of the new companies are turning investors away because there are just too many.

Start-up entrepreneurs are leaving Wall Street and Madison Avenue to set up companies in New York-centric industries such as finance, media, fashion, and retail.

Despite the recession that’s plaguing the United States and the World, many start-ups in New York are breaking through and growing rapidly.  Many new gimmicks are being employed to woo customers.

One example of a company rising from the wake of the recession is Gilt Groupe, an online retailer that stages “flash” sales.  They offer women’s, men’s and children’s designer apparel and accessories, high-end travel destinations at discounted prices, and designer home goods.  In order to view the sales, people have to become members of the Gilt Groupe.  The sales typically start at noon Eastern Time, and last between 36 and 48 hours.  The sales are also themed according to brand or a small group of brands.  In addition to the “flash” sales, Gilt has now expanded and now includes Gilt City and Gilt Taste.

Gilt City is a location-based discount service similar to Groupon and Living Social.  It started in New York and has now expanded to Boston, Chicago, and Miami.  Gilt has also permeated the global market with Gilt Groupe Japan launching Gilt City japan as a location-based discount service.

Gilt Taste, another subsidiary of the Gilt Groupe, is a public gourmet food site, which gives patrons direct access to artisan products and ingredients.  It also has an interactive magazine filled with original recipes from chefs.  Food experts share their stories on the website.

Another start-up company that just took off in the New York area is Foursquare Labs, Inc.  This member-based mobile networking platform allows people in certain cities to connect with one another and talk about issues, events, and life in general.  When members “check in” via their smartphones or SMS, they share their location with friends.  At the same time, they are able to collect badges and points.  Members are able to bookmark relevant information.  Foursquare has been a hit for merchants and brands that leverage the platform by obtaining, engaging, and retaining customers and audiences.  As of April 2011, over 10 million members had signed up, worldwide with over 500,000 businesses using the merchant platform.

It seems that a technology boom pulling entrepreneurs and investors to New York would not be possible when the country is struggling through a recession.  Investors, however, are saying that the mix of experienced business veterans and young programmers who have descended on the city, have created an interesting phenomenon in the state.  Just in 2010, alone, $2.2billion dollars were pushed into New York by venture capitalists looking for the next big company to invest in and support.  New York has now officially passed Boston as the second largest venture capital location in the country.

Nobody would have guessed that New York City and its surrounding area would be the place where a technology boom would exist.  When the stars are aligned and the right people are in the right places, anything can happen.

About a week ago my job altered our working environment so we no longer have the option to work from home. As you can expect this announcement did not go over well with my co-workers who had become accustom to the flexibility this offered them. I, on the other hand, have only been here for a year and most of that time was too scared to take advantage of this opportunity, so I was never really attached to it, but I can definitely see why everyone’s so angry with the policy change. Technology companies are evolving and have realized that their workers no longer work on a strict 9 to 5 schedule. If I can access my e-mail 24 hours a day, respond to IMs on my phone, and write code while sitting on my couch, why would they want to take that away from me. If anything my work/life balance is probably leaning more towards work, and I should be the one requesting more of a disconnect from the workplace. But again, I’m new to the job and motivated to be working/impressing the higher ups every chance I get, I’m at a point of my life where I’m prepared to dedicate my life to the advancement of my profession. I’m afraid a policy change like this is going to force me sit in my lonely office from 8:30 – 5:00 each day, just like the rest of the corporate world, and eventually hate my life because I’m so stressed out.

On the other (business) side, I sort of agree with my employers decision. Things get done faster when your employees are working face to face. The

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company said that having all their employees present in the office during normal working hours would improve face to face collaboration and joint innovation. This has to be true. There’s no way you can brainstorm with someone over an instant messenger program or the phone and get the same results as if you were sitting in the same room thinking about how to solve a problem together. That’s just how things work. Our ideas branch off of one another and eventually they evolve to not only solve your problem, but most likely innovate to solve an even larger problem. So I can definitely agree with their stance here, but we’ll have to see if it actually works out this way…

So here’s the blog post that John Spence posted back in June that I thought about when my employer made this announcement. I also agree with John’s post because the company I work for prides itself on innovation, but is also one of the biggest corporations in the world. So when I first started here a year ago I wondered how anyone was supposed to innovate with so much corporate red tape hanging everywhere. I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who wonders this…

How Do You Balance Process and Innovation?

June 20th, 2011

A couple of months ago, my friend Puma and I came up with an idea for an online magazine that would be aimed at recent college graduates and hopefully bring entertainment to someone out there in the universe. Well just about 2 months later, launch day is finally upon us and things seem to be taking off nicely.

It’s about 10:30am now and our analytics are telling us that we’ve got about 600 unique views already. This is clearly a result of our huge social media push over the past month, along with the teasers we’ve been posting on our Facebook page. With all of our staff posting and tweeting about the launch, I’m not very surprised that we managed to get this many visitors (we officially launched last night at midnight so it’s already been 10 hours).

Our goals for the magazine are simple really. We just want a place to write about life, travel, food, style, entertainment and any other topics that people our age may be interested in. Then after gaining a little more of a user base we’re looking to make things more location based with the articles you see on the site being directly related to the location that you’re reading from (either your IP address location, or your phone’s GPS location). Then maybe add local movie showtimes, and groupon deals for your area.

With a number of websites looking to become more location based, we think that having a feature based magazine publication that follows a similar business model may work as well. Obviously adding in as many social media elements as we can isn’t going to hurt our overall strategy either.

The biggest unknown here is obviously going to be the quality/quantity of the articles that we can manage to pump out. Being a passion project, we don’t have the largest budget to pay our contributors, so that’s not going to help the content either.

I guess only time will tell from here… Check it out and let me know what you think!

http://CulpritMagazine.com