SoUrban.net - The Best Blog in the East Village

Block Party on Orchard Street NYC TODAY July 9th until 10pm!

Chevon — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:31:48 -0700

Featured LES menswear designers, womens boutiques,jewelry shops and restaurants participating in the block party include:

By Robert James
Still Life
Kaight
Roasting Plant
Dressing Room
Wendy Mink
Katja
Spur Tree
H Optic
Pilgrim

Check the LES BID site for more fun shops...

http://www.lowereastsideny.com/lesdining.htm

Things I can't belive I missed - Part Two: Thrillist's Loft Party

Chevon — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:13:01 -0700

Thrillist Week was a 5-day party (June 8-12) showcasing some of the coolest Thrillist has found, held at the Thrillist Loft:

"one of those sweet dream pads that only prodigal royal family members actually ever live in. The place will be stocked with the likes of Ferrari seats-turned-office furniture, functional clocks made from Yankees helmets, throwing-star magnets, and Zontik board games so luxe, when you see one you’ll fall right off your Chute and Ladder. Beyond the uber-swag, ABSOLUT Vodka will be providing flair bartenders to teach you a few new tricks and flips, making you as talented as a Cocktail-era Tom Cruise, and twice as handsome."

Yeah. I missed this.

kicking myself!

Passive Search and Products

theschnaz — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:34:17 -0700

Passive search will be huge. Imagine how great it would be if information you cared about sought you out in a format you preferred. Instead of looking for info, it would find you. We're getting close to this notion with news and messages. If something is important or interesting enough, I'll probably hear about it through a friend, Twitter, rss, etc.

Alerts When You Want Them

This idea of passive search will play an important role at Hapnin, a hyper-local events platform I co-founded. There are so many great things going on around me, but so few of them come to my attention. (Since I've started using Hapnin I've found significantly more cool things to do, but there are many ways to improve the service.)

Slicing the Hapnin event stream by time, location and type makes it easy to find something fun to do. As easy as this is, it's still an active search. To start offering a passive search feature, I think alerts will be helpful. I should be able to set an alert for a location, type or time and Hapnin should notify me. This is passive search. When there's a sale at the SoHo DC store, I want to know about it.

Buy Me Now

Taking this idea further, what happens when you can passively search for products or events? Not only do I want to know when there is a sale at the DC store, I want to know when their shoes are on sale. Let's say I wanted a shoe and I was willing to pay up to 20% off retail, Hapnin should be able to tell me that. What if I wanted to find drink specials, comedy shows and live music on Friday or Saturday nights and I only want to spend up to $15 for a cover? With passive search, this info should easily come to me.

The stock market already embraces streams and passive search. I can place an order for $goog at $275 for 100 shares. If $goog reaches that price, the order is executed (and I'm notified) without me doing anything else, all done passively.

What type of info would you like to receive passively?

Things I can't belive I missed - Part One, The Bubble Battle in Times Square

Chevon — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 09:50:25 -0700

WHERE: Times Square (W 47th & Broadway). You can’t miss it. Go to Times Square and you’re there!

WHEN: Friday, June 12th 2009 @ 6:15pm

WHAT: A convergence of over 2000 people wielding bubble guns just for the fun of it. Want in on the action? Join the facebook group, then bring bubble toys, bubble generators, bubble solution, and plenty of AA batteries. Loosely based on the Dr. Seuss Classic The Butter Battle Book. We will meet in Times Square, fill our weapons and pull the trigger! After party to follow in Brooklyn.

I am very into bubbles. I bought a bubble gun in March. I couldn't be bothered to wait for summer's arrival. I was walking around the EV blowing bubbles from a gun on a random sunday. I never knew there was a bubble battle in times square!!??? I'm kicking myself right now.

-Chevon

Distribution and Platforms: The Secret Sauce

theschnaz — Fri, 22 May 2009 21:55:46 -0700

The Internet allows us to amplify our messages in ways that were never possible before. This is a big difference between "web 1.0" and "web 2.0" or the social web. Now people expect to be able to reach others quickly.

It would be short-sighted to create a new social web service that didn't harness the power of distribution in some way. The following are great examples of distribution:

Facebook and Twitter: These two are the most obvious. It's now possible to send a text message to 1 million people at the same time. Never before have we had so much reach with so little effort.

Justin.tv: I was playing around on Justin.tv today, distribution is baked-in to this service. A user can broadcast from a camera, which is streamed to the Justin.tv servers and others can watch. Now you could broadcast a company presentation to thousands of employees at the same time.

Shoutcast: Think Justin.tv but for music. On Shoutcast, you distribute your music stream and others can listen.

Distribution naturally leads to platforms. For most of these services you can power other sites with them. For example, you can embed a Justin.tv video on your site.

The power of distribution and platforms is fundamental to a new service I'm working on, Hapnin.com. Hapnin aggregates hyper-local events and organizes them in a useful stream. You can easily see what's going on now and what's coming up.

We designed Hapnin to be a platform from the very beginning and you can see the East Village Events stream on SoUrban.net, powered by Hapnin.com here. Soon users will be able to add their own events, our platform will provide distribution unlike anything seen before.

This is only the beginning for the distributed web. As more information is organized into streams, it will be easier and easier to share and power other services. I'm excited to see what will hapnin next.

Books and Blogs via Recommendations

theschnaz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:38:29 -0700

Today, I left them comment on the Passed Links post from AVC.com. For certain types of media, I'll only consider buying/reading if it comes recommended from a trusted source. Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

This line really struck a chord with me, "I’m getting more and more of my information from the people I’m connected to through email, IM, RSS, Facebook, and Twitter. Also, the nature of the searching I’m doing now is much more targeted and specific."

I started to think about where/how I hear about the media I like (blogs, books, movies, music, games etc.) and I noticed a natural dichotomy between short and long time commitments.

I consider books and blogs to be a long commitment; you can put in a lot of time reading these. Now, I only make a long commitment if a friend or a trusted source recommended it. I thought about the last 5 blogs and books that I’ve read and all have been previously recommended. Seth Godin mentioned this idea on his blog recently, when you start a book, you're "supposed" to finish it, no one wants to read
through one they don't like. How will you know if you'd like it? Your friend recommended it.

Short commitments include music, movies and games. I'll listen to a CD because I’ve heard a song on the radio or I'll see a movie because I saw the trailer. If a friend recommends an album or movie, all the better, but it's not required. A movie only takes 2 hours of my time, so if it's bad, no big deal.

I think this is why Daily Candy and Thrillist are so successful. They act as trusted sources (similar to a friend) that recommend things. If Thrillist suggests something, chances are I'll like it and their readers will too (I have personal experience with this.)

For search, now that I have a G1, almost all of my searches are hyper-specific/local (finding locations, store hours, bus schedules, etc.) I never search for new books or blogs.

To summarize, I'll only consider buying or reading media that requires a long commitment if it has been recommend by a trusted source. Media that requires a short commitment can still be "pushed" to me through commercials or "traditional" marketing techniques.

Think about the last 5 books/blogs you’ve read, how did you hear about them?

It's the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown

Chevon — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:09:04 -0700

It's Easter Week at SoUrban dot net and the Coovents dovecote is all aflutter with joy. but Easter is about more than just hoodrat chocolate bunnies...

It's about watching the classic movie "It's the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown!"
Tonight. At 8pm. on ABC (channel 7) In NYC.

Xs & Os,

Chevon

Happy Easter Week from SoUrban and Team Coovents

Chevon — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:06:45 -0700

For your pleasure, SoUrban dot net and Team Coovents brings you:

"Dude" and "Diva" Da' Bunnies. Pick one up for your Suburban or (SoUrban) Child (or adult) today.

Christ is risen,

~Chevon

She puts the 'diva in Godiva.

The Coovents March Madness of Beers

theschnaz — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:51:39 -0700

16 beers enter, but only 1 will survive The Coovents March Madness of Beers. We're kicking off March with a tournament to find the best beer. So far 17 beers have been nominated.

To nominate a beer, just tweet "[name of beer] http://www.Coovents.com/beers RT for a chance to win $100 and other prizes." Click here to see an example. We'll see your tweet and add it to http://www.Coovents.com/beers. The 16 beers with the most votes will enter our tournament. The beers will go head-to-head for 4 rounds. After all these rounds of voting, we'll know which beer is best.

Everyone may vote once per round and each vote counts as an entry for a chance to win $100 and other prizes!

Music in the Cloud

theschnaz — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:27:15 -0700

I was recently quoted in an article on BusinessWeek.com. I'd like to take a moment to expand on my quote ("If I dump $2,000 into Lala and they go down next month, that's it.")

I think it's natural for music to move to the cloud. Accessing and sharing music has only gotten easier as the mediums have changed from albums, to tapes, to CDs, to MP3s and now the cloud. I think Lala's web-only album (a virtual album) is the biggest step forward since iTunes. Paying roughly $1 for an album feels right. The biggest drawback, which I stated in the article, is if the service provider goes down (Lala, Imeem, etc.), you're left with nothing. Ever since Yahoo! Music closed I've been concerned. Yahoo! was a subscription service so you paid monthly fees, Lala is not. One could spend a lot of money on Lala and if they close, what happens? The cloud offers lower prices, but customers must accept greater risk.

Below is my follow-up comment to the BusinessWeek article:

Doug,

Great article. As we move from physical music (CDs) to digital music on physical drives (iTunes) to cloud-based music (LaLa and Imeem) we dramatically see the price per song drop. Each iteration cuts out large pieces of the puzzle. The move to cheaper music just makes sense.

One thing that can't get cheaper or copied is an artist's time. The drummer from NIN gets this (http://mashable.com/2009/02/20/josh-freese-album-promotion/). For $75,000 (limited edition of 1) you can buy his new album, with a lot of goodies and "take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robins place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna."

I'm not sure if this is a joke or not, but the idea stands. This is the reason I paid $130 to see Radiohead last year. Music is now a ubiquitous commodity, but time is not. Artists must sell more of their time to make more money via trapeze lessons or concerts, etc.

Greg (@theschnaz)
Coovents.com