SoUrban.net - The Best Blog in the East Village

Jonte Shut the Fuck Up

Chevon — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:22:13 -0700

classic

Good Music

theschnaz — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:02:54 -0700

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
by Phoenix

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix - Pho...

Kanye List

theschnaz — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:51:16 -0700

Playing with Lala.com.

Check out the playlist I made!

Kanye

July 11, 2009 (7/11) is Free Slurpee Day at 7 Eleven Stores!

Chevon — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 07:45:00 -0700

This Saturday is 7-Eleven Day, and the day the world’s first convenience retailer celebrates its birthday. This year promises to be the biggest ever, with 7-Eleven planning to give away close to 5 million free 7.11-ounce Slurpee drinks to celebrate its 82nd birthday at more than 6,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada.

The retailer has added something new to its annual tradition of giving away cups of its iconic frozen drink – live music. As an extra birthday bonus, this year’s cups feature a Slurpee Nation rewards code worth 2 rewards points, enough to enter the 7-Eleven Day instant win game online at www.slurpee.com*

Upon entering, all players will receive a code to buy reduced-price Live Nation** concert tickets for some of the hottest acts on tour this summer.

Cup codes can be entered at www.slurpee.com or texted to 33992.*** The7-Eleven Day instant win game runs from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. (CDT) for a chance to win one of 711 $50 Live Nation Concert Cash prizes, redeemable for concert tickets sold at www.livenation.com.

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?