The Cool Geek Blog

Facebook Application Settings OR Finally!!

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 23:15:00 +0000

As you might know Facebook recently made some changes to their privacy settings and they are good! If you are one of those people that haven't even ever pulled up the privacy settings I really urge you to do so. While you are at it also do yourself a favor and read the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities as it's generally useful to know what the service can do with all your precious data. Also if you haven't yet spent some time setting up lists on Facebook I would recommend doing so.

Lists are the equivalent of Google+ Circles and have been part of Facebook for a long time. Unfortunately, lists have been really buried within the product and not central to the experience as with Google+ which in hindsight is obviously a pretty critical shortcoming. This is why not many people really bothered setting up lists. Frankly, that's a scary thought to me given that many users have hundreds of friends. Even with the suboptimal implementation of lists in the past they did allow for users to accept friends but to limit their access to information. Create a list called "people I've randomly met in a club" and don't share your phone number with them or don't let them see your status updates. All that was possible with the previous version of lists in combination with the old privacy settings but the new settings should really incent you to finally get around and organize your Facebook friends.

While in the past you could only set a couple of global rules for lists, you now have so much more control over who can see what on your Facebook page and in your stream. For instance with every item that you post you'll now have the ability to set which lists you would like to share that content with (see screen shot). Compared to Google+ this is still quite clunky but a step in the right direction. This is not what's really new though. What got me really excited is that you can actually now set which lists can see which application posts.

I am a pretty avid foursquare user but I often hesitate posting my checkins to my Facebook as I don't like to divulge my whereabouts to all my 800 odd Facebook friends. That sort of information should only be available to my "Fam", "Bros" and the "Inner Circle". Same goes for auto-posts of my Tripit itineraries. On the other hand I love spreading viral videos so if I see something on YouTube and "Add to favorites" it will automagically post to Facebook. I don't mind those posts to be public to the world. For me this is a big deal and obviously a great reason to actually spend a weekend and go through all those friends and setup some lists. It's painful and certainly not as much fun as setting up Circles but definitively worth the effort.

I'm sure Facebook would have brought these changes eventually but it's thanks to Google+ that there is a bit more competition in the social networking world. Not only does that make things more exciting but it also brings real benefits to users of all platforms. Thanks Vic and Bradley!

Tech is Hotter than Energy OR Financial Markets are Weird

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 18:20:00 +0000

Well, well Apple is officially the most valuable company on the planet. This is obviously a momentous occasion and a reason for all tech geeks (like myself) to rejoice. That said am I not the only one that finds this a bit weird? Granted, I probably couldn't live without my Mac (#addictedtotechnology) but I think my life would be a lot worse without oil, the foundation of our our gas guzzling civilization. Don't get me wrong I'm an environmentalist at heart and want humanity to switch to renewables as quickly as economically feasible but until we have a proper alternative, oil companies still make the world go round and not Apple.

I know that the energy and consumer electronics industries are bigger than Exxon and Apple so my comparison between the importance of my Mac vs. oil is not apples to apples (pun intended). I obviously also know that markets evaluate the worth of a company's financials and not necessarily it's value to society so see this as a cheeky reply to a cheeky headline. Nevertheless, maybe we should evaluate companies more in line with the welfare they create for us all and not on financials (#utopia)? Now stop dreaming and check out the fake iPhone 5 screens that some poor soul has put together to get 2 mins of Internet fame. Maybe Apple provides more value to society after all...NOT!

AirBnB Illegal? OR When Social and Rent Control Laws collide

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:28:00 +0000

I love AirBnB. For the ones among you who haven't heard of the site watch this video:

It's pretty cool to see the humble beginnings of this story and how these guys actually got the idea for the site to their status quo as a billion Dollar evaluated startup.

Recently, they got into a bit of PR trouble due to a flat of an AirBnB landlord being completely trashed and them not responding in the most pro-active way to this mess. The founders did come around eventually though and are now offering a 50,000 USD insurance guarantee for damages.

There are a couple of interesting problems with the service, however, that I feel are pushing the boundary of what is legal. The first has to do with the fact that I've encountered people who are not landlords but still sublet apartments out to AirBnB users. Of course AirBnBs Terms of Service cover this issue:

(a) violate any local, state, provincial, national, or other law or regulation, or any order of a court;
(b) infringe the rights of any person or entity, including without limitation, their intellectual property, privacy, publicity or contractual rights, including but not limited to subleasing an accommodation without the rights to do so;
(g) offer, as a host, any accommodations that you do not yourself own or rent in as living space (without limiting the foregoing, you will not list accommodations as a host if you are serving in the capacity of a rental agent or listing agent for a third party property owner);

So yes, if you do rent out your apartment without having the right to sublet and violate your tenancy agreement you can end up getting into trouble with your landlord. I have seen and heard of tenants doing this frequently which is obviously not really of any concern to the AirBnB folks but is still an interesting development which is challenging the perception of what is legitimate vs. what is legal.

Another point of contention is how sites like Craigslist and AirBnB are promoting the raise of illegal hotels. The argument is that in buildings with a high number of transient guests, permanent residents are exposed to security risks, noise and disruption. Additionally, AirBnB landlords don't pay any Hotel Tax which is most likely pissing off a lot of hotel owners who I'm sure lobbied hard to get this law passed in New York state. This new law makes all apartment rentals under 30 days illegal which should effectively shut down most visitor requests.

I find it interesting that yet another existing paradigm is being challenged by creative startups and the Internet as a whole. Let's see how this one plays out!

Why there is no "I" in Great Leader OR Humility is Sexy

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 16:55:00 +0000

Were surrounded by leaders every day, some with more responsibility and visibility some with less. Irregardless of the scope of their role it's quite easy to distinguish the great leaders from the bad ones. As someone smarter than me once said "Leadership is like Porn. It's hard to define but easy to recognize." While there are countless articles about what constitues a good leader and what doesn't, I'll start my own blog post through which I will keep track of great traits that I experience first hand.

Soft-spoken
There are many leaders out there that play the chest beating game and love using war metaphors to speak about the competition. In a world where everyone is a frenemy (this certainly applies to tech) it's certainly wise to always leave an avenue for future partnerships by not being confrontative in one's rhetoric. Aggressive language also implies a zero sum attitude instead of a win-win or prosperity for all approach which simply reminds me of the unbecoming bi-partisan bickering happening on the Hill. A soft spoken leader exudes the right kind of confidence which says were in control of our own destiny if we focus on our core strengths as an organization/business unit/team.

Magnanimous
One of the biggest and likewise frustrating management mistakes I have observed is the act of taking all the credit. Good managers empower their reports to excel and get out of the way. They understand that when you become a people manager you do not have to cling on to every task yourself and that you have to give up control. The most inspiring managers for me were the ones who gave me more responsibility than I could handle while guiding me along the way. Those managers are usually also the ones who then generously spread the recognition for a task well done. They will happily make your accomplishments known to higher ups without fearing that their standing will be affected negatively. On the contrary, a well performing team speaks for the quality of the manager leading it.

Humble
You would think that this is pretty straight forward but a lot of leaders out there do not understand the concept of humility. I don't need my manager to know everything and I also don't need my manager to be perfect. The good manager evolves with the organizational challenges but can only do so if she knows that there are things she doesn't know. The best leaders in this world are not the smartest people in the world but the ones that know how to manage smart people at their full potential. The good leader knows and shows that their status doesn't make them any better than anyone else. It's very inspiring to see a great humble leader as it makes reaching that goal so much more attainable.

I'll add to this as I experience real leaders first hand that inspire me.

Circles, Lists & Groups Dilemma OR How many Dimensions does my Social Graph have

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 04:31:00 +0000

Oh, what an exciting time it is for Social Media addicts with the addition of another Social Network to the mix of channels through which we can share and connect to the wide web world. Obviously, by now everyone knows that one of the benefits of Google+ is the introduction of friend groups or circles from the ground up. The benefits are manyfold, however, the most immediate for me is that I can now actually share what I want with who I want without having to self-censor myself.

Recently, I have been posting less and less on Facebook as I didn't feel comfortable with sharing all the geeky aspects of my life with my whole social graph. Even though I actually did go through the trouble of (it took me 2 weekends) organizing all my friends in groups, Facebook actually doesn't make it straight forward to share selectively. The little padlock under the posting box allows you to select the sharing settings that you'd find most appropriate for the respective post but the options are silly. The only option that really is useful is "Custom" which I have setup in a way that will hide all my posts categorically from all my "friends" in the "Pseudo" group. Changing the "Custom" setting for every individual post is time-consuming and not worth the hassle. The result being that I stop posting many things that would be interesting to a sub-set of my friends.

Enter Google+ and total control over who I share what with! However, control comes with the burden of organizing your social graph into circles (again) which even though a lot more fun than on Facebook is still tedious. So you have your Google+ invite and have some spare time to setup your circles but what is the right way to go about categorizing your friends? This question has kept me busy for the last couple of days.

People are multi-faceted, well at least the interesting among us, and therefore it's going to be hard to place one person into only one circle. Which dimensions are worth categorizing by? City where they live in, city I met them in? Country they live in? Organization that we are/were part of when we met (school, company, club)? Interests we share? Importance they have in my life (family, bros, acquaintances)? It's quite a complex problem to figure out! Of course it's possible to have 3 circles and use Google+ just fine but that doesn't make the platform justice. If I put in the work and have groups for my close gadget geek friends that live in the US I could reach out to them and ask them what they suggest my next AT&T phone should be. I could tell the comic book fans among my friends how much Green Lantern sucked without having to admit the rest of my social graph how geeky I am.

Assuming you actually somehow manage to figure out what the best way to organize your friends is, how do you keep these lists up to date? People that are important to you today might lose importance in your everyday life in the future. Circles that contain people sorted by company they work for or place they live in will become stale quickly. Does all that work have to be in vain? I hope not! What's the solution to this problem? Automatic circles? For certain things probably yes. For instance if my friends actually add their company info, place of birth and current city they live in as profile information why not allow users to auto-magically create circles according to that criteria which stays continuously up to date.

What about interests? That is indeed a harder problem because not everyone actually bother entering all their interests onto their profiles. A lot of dating sites actually ask users to answer a number of questions to do a better job at matching them up (eHarmony). I wonder if it could be possible to make that part of the sign up flow for a social network to make auto-magic circle creation possible. That way if I do want to tell everyone how bad Green Lantern was (seriously bad by the way, really!) I'd just pick the Sci-Fi circle that was generated for me according to my friends answers. As a matter of fact I met one of the founders of friend.ly who told me that people are crazy about answering questions about their preferences. The site has about 1000 questions and most members have answered them all.

Of course the best scenario would be for any given social network to contextually analyze over time what users are sharing, liking and clicking on to suggest to me who is interested in the type of post that I am about to share. This certainly won't happen any time soon and could obviously also come with a lot of privacy concerns. So for the time being can someone help me overcome my circle dilemma with some smart magic?

5 out of 6 OR NASA's Discovery of a New Life Form

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 22:23:00 +0000

It's always awesome when humanity discovers something that shatters facts previously held for absolute truths. NASA's announcement today was exactly that. Essentially before today scientist believed that all life in the univers has to be based on 6 fundamental elements: carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, hydrogen and phosphorus. Well, non-conformist bacteria found in the Mono Lake in California prove them wrong. These guys sport 5 out of our 6 essential elements but replace phosphorus with the rather toxic arsenic. This find opens a whole new class of planets as potential hosts for life and prompts us to rethink our narrow definition of life and the search for it.

But lets also take this as a lesson in humility and realize for a moment how little we know about the magnificent properties of all things living. Oh yeah and let's not forget to acknowledge the irony in finding alien life in a lake in California.

View Larger Map

Lazy Celebs OR Digital Death on World AIDS day

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 22:23:00 +0000

AIDS is an epidemic and while people in the developed world are rarely in touch with this disease, 33.3 million* people globally are infected. Of those 2.5 million* live in North America and Western Europe and 22.5 million* in Sub-Saharan Africa which makes it quite evident that AIDS is mainly a disease of the disadvantaged and poor. The good news is that 2009 actually was the first year where there was a decline in overall official numbers of people living with AIDS from 33.8 to 33.3 million*. Building on this success lets continue with the good work humanity is doing to eradicate this epidemic!

A small part in this continued effort is the yearly appeal by celebrities to their fans to help save lives by donating. This years big campaign is called Digital Death and celebrities like Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Alicia Keys, Usher and others are partaking in it. The idea behind it is that mentioned celebs will stop using their Facebook and Twitter accounts until 1 million USD has been raised by their update-starved fans. There are a couple of things striking about this year's campaign which I shall touch upon in the following.

First off it's quite remarkable that social media has become the protagonist in this campaign. Who would have thought that celebrities could use not updating on social networks as leverage to collect donations for a good cause? Secondly, it should become clearer and clearer to big brands and companies that social media is here to stay and should be used more effectively by them to reach their users, customers and fans. There is a real value in using these channels and while most of you who are reading this certainly agree, a lot of my agency friends tell me that C-level execs are still quite far away from accepting this as a truth.

The sad thing about this campaign is that someone really thought this whole not tweeting and updating Facebook thing would be a good idea. The premise that I should reward the celebrities partaking in this for them not doing something as silly as updating their statuses is nonsense. What about pooling your talent and selling a song? Why not take a page out of Stephen Colbert's playbook and actually offer to answer or interact with fans on social media sites if 1 million is raised? How much of an inconvenience is it for them to not tweet and update their Facebook status on a daily basis? However bad, how petty is this compared to the plight of someone who is fighting AIDS? This campaign has failed on so many levels that I don't even know where to start. I did donate but certainly not to this effort because I am frankly happy to see less senseless updates by celebrities who think that we can't live without contributions by their social media ghost writers.

*WHO stats

UPDATE - 02.12

Apparently 1 day after the launch of the Digital Death has only collected 160.000 USD in donations. Glad to see that others agree in the silliness of this campaign.

The Price of Transparency OR Wikileaksgate

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 22:23:00 +0000

You got to give it to the man he is very brave. While he is really only offering a platform for whistleblowers to communicate their findings with the wide web world, the bulk of the wrath of the rich and powerful is directed at Mr. Julian Assange. With the recent release of 250.000 diplomatic cables the whole political world has for a moment debunked Osama Bin Laden from the top of their most wanted list and found a new number one.

Most people I have talked to support Assange's mission to make the world more transparent. It is a noble undertaking as open access to information that is purposefully kept secret (with the exception of intellectual property) usually leads to unearthing immoral deeds.

Leaking diplomatic cables goes further than exposing corrupt governments and exploitative business practices though. What good is it if Angela Merkel and the whole world for that matter know what a diplomat thinks about her. Assessments by diplomats about leaders and governments express their opinion and not necessary that of the whole government of that nation.

We need to furthermore consider the implications of total transparency. Releasing information about a diplomat's thoughts about the fragile political state of an allied government does nothing but destabilize said government and the alliance with them. The repercussions can be seen with among others the fallout around the statements about the leaders of Pakistan and Turkey. If full transparency means a less unified world then maybe that's a price too high to pay.

It's great that the Turkish people now know that Erdogan allegedly has 8 Swiss bank accounts but this find wasn't the product of the research done by an enterprising investigative journalist but a statement by a US official. The difference between the two is in the one scenario Erdogan loses his reputation and the journalist gets a Pulizer and in the other Erdogan loses his reputation and there is severe damage in the bilateral relationship between Turkey and the US.

The world is not black and white there are shades of grey all over the place and when it comes to transparency the same applies maybe semi-transparency is better than full disclosure.

The Equilibrium OR Relaunch Post

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:23:00 +0000

I haven't been communicating publicly in the wide web world for a while. There comes a point, however, where the balance between consumption of information and the creation of it gets so out of hand that it becomes an imperative to get back to an equilibrium. Hence me being back at posting little musings for those of you that enjoy the same things in life as me.

How I use Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:30:00 +0000

Twitter has changed the way information flows on the Internet. Quite frankly I don't believe we have completely understood Twitter's impact just yet but some emerging trends are obvious:

RSS vs. Twitter: Many people now follow their favorite Bloggers or media companies on Twitter rather than reading their RSS feeds in a Reader. This is ultimately good news for content producers, as users will now actually go back to their proprietary sites to consume information, ultimately making monetization easier.
Image via CrunchBase
IM/SMS vs. Twitter: Twitter is of course first and foremost a communication service. As opposed to IM and SMS, which are mostly one-to-one, Twitter allows one-to-many communication. In addition to that, it is also possible to communicate with one person publicly or take the conversation private.
Blogging vs. Twitter: Of course Twitter would be rubbish to write a blog post like this, but for many it has become their service of choice for micro-blogging. People update the world about their thoughts and whereabouts via the web or their mobile phones.
Search vs. Twitter: Google search is still the undisputed king in most countries for search, however, as the crawlers don't read all websites in the web immediately, there is a delay between the reality of the web and Google's index. With Twitter search you can find real time Tweets on a certain topic. This is especially powerful for real time events like for instance a Gmail outage. As you can Tweet from your phone or the web, stories often break on Twitter rather than on traditional media.

One of the keys to Twitter's success has certainly been the openness of its platform. Taking the same approach as many of the most buzzing online companies of our time, like Facebook and Google, Twitter has created a whole eco system around their service. This of course means that users can enjoy a wide variety of applications that enhance the Twitter experience and expand its functions.

Hootsuite is my client of choice to send out Tweets. Hootsuite has four distinct benefits over the traditional way of Tweeting: 1. It allows you to manage multiple Twitter accounts seamlessly 2. It helps you with shrinking long URLs into short links that won't take much space in your 140 character Tweets 3. You can get Analytics like information about the clicks on the links you have attached to your Tweets 4. It allows you to monetize your Tweets via Adsense if they contain links.

To receive Tweets I use Tweetdeck because not only is it a slick looking application but it also allows me to group people I follow. This is useful as people behave very differently on Twitter. Here an extract of an interview with Twitter Founder and CEO Jack Dorsey in the LA Times who brings it to the point:

"Why would I want to join this stupid useless thing and know what my brother's eating for lunch? But that really misses the point because Twitter is fundamentally recipient-controlled -- you choose to listen and you choose to leave. But you also choose what to put down and what to share. So if you decide to hook your plants up to Twitter and have it report when it needs to be watered, then that's a valid usage, or if you just decide to report what you're eating for lunch, that's a valid usage too. [...] The whole bird thing: bird chirps sound meaningless to us, but meaning is applied by other birds. The same is true of Twitter: a lot of messages can be seen as completely useless and meaningless, but it’s entirely dependent on the recipient. So we just fell in love with the word. It was like, "Oh, this is it." We can use it as a verb, as a noun, it fits with so many other words. If you get too many messages you’re "twitterpated" -- the name was just perfect."

While I don't understand why people make their life accessible to the global public, potentially forever, by Tweeting about their whereabouts, mundane tasks and actions, I am sometimes interested to read those sort of things about my friends. Tweetdeck allows me to group my real friends, online friends and news sources in different buckets whose updates I can read when I see fit. Tweetdeck is also ideal to Retweet, or in other words forward a Tweet.

I also use Twitterfox which is a Twitter app that lives on the bottom right corner of your Firefox browser allowing you to quickly read incoming Tweets in browser. You can also use Twitterfox to Tweet, however if you are sending a link Hootsuite has the tracking benefit.

As mentioned previously you can have multiple Twitter accounts. I for instance have one public account thecoolgeek where I Tweet cool links I discover on the web and one private account with no friends that I use to microblog a diary. I Tweet all sorts of things to my private account: what I'm doing, what I'm eating, what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling. The great thing with Twitter is that you can update it with the phone or the web so pretty much most of the time. I would never make that feed public though.

The latter point is worth elaborating. While one could argue that public Facebook status updates are no different than public Tweets there is a difference. All public Tweets can be used by third party applications of all sorts to mash those up. This is not the case with your Facebook status as that stays on Facebook. Who knows how long after you account is deleted those third parties will still have your Tweets. The big problem with public Tweets is that they are brodcasted to the net not only to your followers. Your update about that hot waitress will be available to anyone who searches on Twitter search. I guess it really depends on how much of an exhibitionist are, but I'd rather keep my personal Tweets private and my Facebook status only visible to my friends list. That way I still have control over my online identity.

There are of course many other cool applications that exist within the Twitter-verse. They range from enabling micro payments to to-do list aids. To see a comprehensive list go here.

Secret Cinema presents Anvil

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:30:00 +0000

I was going to wait for the Secret Cinema (unfortunately, this is currently a London based event so if something like this doesn't exist in your town and you like the idea, why don't you kick it off?!) folks to get the video summary for the last event out but they are too slow, so I'll go ahead and publish this post.

Last Sunday it was Secret Cinema time. If you haven't heard about it yet, the concept is the following: you buy a ticket to see a movie that remains secret until the night of the event, in a venue that is secret until a day or two before the event. For those of you that are not intrigued by that, should know that the Secret Cinema guys are very good at putting on an amazing show around the whole event. You can't really compare the evening to a normal night at the movies.

First off, the email before the event will usually ask you to wear a certain outfit on the night and bring certain props. Of course, these are also clues to what movie you might be seeing. On the night, actors will be there spicing things up by interacting with you. There usually also is a short movie and some sort of performance before the main feature. All together a very enjoyable evening for the few quid the ticket costs.

That said, last Sunday was special. We were asked to come as Rock Gods or Shady Promoters which already had many of us guessing that the movie would be Spinal Tap. We got to see a cool short film Heavy Metal Drummer, a performance by the Canadian band the Cauldron, and witnessed the UK premier of The Story of Anvil.

The movie is special to say the least. It tells the story of the Canadian band Anvil which toured with Bon Jovi, White Snake and other heavy weights in the 80's but vanished into non-existence while the others went multi-platinum. It is a very honest movie about the passionate dream of die hard rockers that, against all good judgement, never give up on their rock career. It will take you through an emotional rollercoaster ride and leave you with a good feeling at the end. During that experience you will, whether you want it or not, bond with the protagonists Robb and Lips.

We were promised a special guest at the end of the movie and needless to say, Anvil was the special guest. I guess you just had to be there to understand how cool it really was to see the band live in front of you, performing their songs, after you had seen that movie. It was priceless and to me one of the coolest movie experiences I had witnessed in a long while. Thank you Secret Cinema and Anvil for the special evening!

Facebook Terms and Conditions

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:58:00 +0000

Image via CrunchBase

Well, well Mr Zuckerberg are you a bit confused about what you want to do with your Terms and Conditions? For those of you who didn't notice Facebook changed their T&Cs...not.

On Monday, Mark wrote on the Facebook Blog that the T&Cs had changed and that whatever the words were now saying, was actually not meant that way. So although it said they could keep the data forever, they didn't really mean forever. I think Mark is a swell guy but I still don't trust him enough to give him my personal data for the rest of time. God forbid he might sell the company off to Balmer. What would happen to my data then? Anyway, I wasn't the only one who felt that way. Within hours many Facebook users had started groups indicating their dismay with these changes. Enough pressure to prompt their reversal.

On Wednesday this post. In essence: jadda jadda we're sorry blah blah we didnt think these changes would piss you off, so we decided to go back to the T&Cs that you actually agreed on when you created your account and not the ones we dictated to you bing bing bada bu which is why we will now, as a social network, agree on the bill of rights of our web democracy.

I like the idea but we will have see how well they will follow through. My suggestion for the Billorights are 1. I want to keep the rights to my text and media, 2. I want you to delete all my personal data and contributions to the network when I delete my account, and 3. I want you to keep my data as private as I set it to be. Everything else is gravy. What do you think?

Mr. Kawasaki

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:09:00 +0000

I just connected with Guy Kawasaki on Twitter. His updates are highly entertaining and he has a very cool blog called How to Change the World - A practical guide for impractical people. I really recommend spending some time reading some of the entries. One of my favorites is about the Art of Schmoozing. The top 9 tips below:

Understand the goal. Darcy Rezac in his book, The Frog and the Prince, wrote the world's best definition of schmoozing: “Discovering what you can do for someone else.” Herein lies eighty percent of the battle: great schmoozers want to know what they can do for you, not what the you can do for them. If you understand this, the rest is just mechanics.
Get out. Schmoozing is an analog, contact sport. You can't do it alone from your office on the phone or via a computer. You may hate them but force yourself to go to tradeshows, conventions, and seminars. It's unlikely that you'll be closing a big order with someone you met online at MySpace or via Skype. Get out there and press flesh.
Ask good questions, then shut up. The mark of a good conversationalist is not that you can talk a lot. The mark is that you can get others to talk a lot. Thus, good schmoozers are good listeners, not good talkers. Ask softball questions like, “What do you do?” “Where are you from?” “What brings you to this event?” Then listen. Ironically, you'll be remembered as an interesting person.
Unveil your passions. Only talking about business is boring. Good schmoozers unveil their passions after they get to know you. Great schmoozers lead off with their passions. Your passions make you an interesting person--you'll stick out because you're the only person not talking about 802.11 chipsets at the wireless conference. Personally, my passions are children, Macintosh, Breitling watches, digital photography, and hockey if you ever meet me.
Read voraciously. In order to be a good schmoozer, you need to read voraciously--and not just the EE Times, PC Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal. You need a broad base of knowledge so that you can access a vast array of information during conversations. Even if you are a pathetic passionless person, you can at least be a well-read one who can talk about a variety of topics.
Follow up. Over the course of my career, I've given away thousands of business cards. At one point, I thought I was nuts because if all those people called or emailed me, I'd never get anything done. Funny thing: hardly anyone ever follows up. Frankly, I don't know why people bother asking for a business card if they're not going to follow up. Great schmoozers follow up within twenty-four hours--just a short email will do: “Nice to meet you. I hope we can do something together. Hope your blog is doing well. I loved your Breitling watch. I have two tickets to the Stanley Cup Finals if you want to attend.” Include at least one thing to show the recipient that she isn't getting a canned email.
Make it easy to get in touch. Many people who want to be great schmoozers, ironically, don't make it easy to get in touch with them. They don't carry business cards, or their business cards don't have phone numbers and email addresses. Even if they provide this information, it's in grey six-point type. This is great if you're schmoozing teenagers, but if you want old, rich, famous, and powerful people to call or email, you'd better use a twelve-point font. (These are the same folks that need the thirty-point font vis-a-vis the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint.)
Give favors. One of my great pleasures in life is helping other people; I believe there's a big Karmic scoreboard in the sky. God is keeping track of the good that you do, and She is particularly pleased when you give favors without the expectation of return from the recipient. The scoreboard always pays back. You can also guess that I strongly believe in returning favors for people who have helped you.
Ask for the return of favors. Good schmoozers give favors. Good schmoozers also return favors. However, great schmoozers ask for the return of favors. You may find this puzzling: Isn't it better to keep someone indebted to you? The answer is no, and this is because keeping someone indebted to you puts undue pressure on your relationship. Any decent person feels guilty and indebted. By asking for, and receiving, a return favor, you clear the decks, relieve the pressure, and set up for a whole new round of give and take. After a few rounds of give and take, you're best friends, and you have mastered the art of schmoozing.

Kawasaki's project Alltop is also worth checking out. It is in their own words an online magazine rack. You can find a very good list of top RSS feeds categorized by topic nicely presented on one page. The service basically aggregates high quality news for the topics that interest you. I find the content and presentation quite convincing. Give it a try!

Lunch 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:43:00 +0000

I took out Gerd Leonhard to lunch on Wednesday. As he calls himself a Futurist I thought it would be good to take him to a place where food meets geekdom - Inamo.

Inamo has great Pan-Asian food with a twist: you can order food through a digital surface computing platform. Not only that, but you can preview your food on your plate, play a game of Battleship, change the table cloth, view the kitchen camera and much more. It is quite a different experience to normal dining and definitely worth checking out. Gerd liked the place so much that he actually blogged about it right after our meal.

Here a little video of some Germans playing around with the surface computing platform.

For reservations - 02078517051 OR reservations@inamo-restaurant.com

Spotify - Music streaming at its best

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 01:20:00 +0000

You know that you love a service when it gets a slot on your dock next to Firefox. Spotify is that kind of service.

Spotify is a music streaming program that allows you to browse through a catalog of music and play it without delay (P2P streaming). 90% of the songs I have been searching for have been available so far, however some of the more exotic tunes are not available yet. The quality of the music is top notch and the songs start playing instantly, giving you the feeling as if you would be playing a song from your local iTunes.

The UI reminds of iTunes but it's slicker and has less clutter. Recent searches will be stored in a sort of history in the menu bar on the left which is quite useful. Needless to say it is also possible to create play lists that then can be shared with anyone else via http link. If you trust your friend's music you can let them add tracks and make it a collaborative play list. There are already websites like Spotyshare and YourSpotify out there where you can show off your compilation skills by uploading the http links to your play lists to share with others.

I had the pleasure to have lunch with the CEO and co-founder of Spotify Daniel Ek recently which has got me even more excited about the service. While I had a list with 101 ideas of features that I felt needed to be added to Spotify, Daniel made it clear to me that they rather want to be a platform and want others developing additional features rather than adding stuff in themselves. A good example for an added feature is that tunes you play can be scrobbled to your Last.fm account. But hopefully this is just the beginning. At least that is what I hope as Spotify will be opening up their data through APIs for gifted developers out there to create cool apps. Daniel describes Spotify more as a Music search engine and plans to add more track related information to the database. Who is the producer, the drummer, the lead singer on the track? What are the lyrics?

Daniel also got me quite excited about Spotify's mobile future. There are apps in the works that will bring you all of their great features onto your phone and I Can't wait to get my hands on a beta!

Although there have been some issues with the labels recently Spotify is still dedicated to expand their music catalog. If you want to give Spotify a go, drop me a comment and I can send you an invite. I highly recommend it!

Update 20.02: Found another good website with a good selection of playlists - Spotylist, and another one that has top lists, Topsify.

The Media Futurist @ Google

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:43:00 +0000

This talk was a while back but still worth posting. Gerd Leonhard media futurist by trade made it into Google for a presentation about the future of media and advertising. Thanks again Gerd! Here a link to Gerd's blog MediaFuturist. Go and check it out as he has some great content for free i.e. downloadable books.

Micro Media Maze

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 22:23:00 +0000

End of year cleaning of my hard drive presented me with an unexpected Christmas present: notes from the Chinwag panel Micro Media Maze back in September. The session was quite interesting so I will try to make sense of the cryptic shorthand and write up a summary of what were the most interesting points to me. The people standing out on the panel were the very opinionated Umair Haque of Havas, Miles Lewis of Last.fm and Gerd Leonhard the media futurist. The main topic of the panel: "Content is being disaggregated into ever smaller pieces, to be syndicated, widgetised and re-aggregated, for multi-platform distribution by both owners and consumers at accelerating speed. Who have been the winners and the losers in this new dynamic media landscape?"

-Listening brands
There was a big discussion about brands and their current PR and Marketing strategies. Haque pronounced traditional advertising dead. He believes that messages created by brands in a vacuum without their customer will no longer succeed with the advent of social media. While the statement is extreme it does make sense, as there is a lot of data from satisfied, angry, influential and creative customers out there available for marketers to listen to. Social media monitoring tools like Radian8 help with such endeavors by sifting through blog posts, forums, viral videos, status updates etc. to collate such information for marketers to understand the real perception of the brand by product, geography and customer segment.

-Pay by say
An interesting point that Gerd Leonhard raised was that more and more users pay for services by giving providers information rather than money. Take for instance the Last.fm model. Users do not pay a dime for using the service but by tagging songs, commenting on them, linking similar songs by favoring them, create a lot of meta data with value for Last.fm. In other cases I tell the NY Times my sex, age and income bracket to get relevant ads served to me. It all very often comes down to the user trading in information to use a service.

-One reader for everything
Another interesting point by Gerd was the idea of a RSS reader that basically delivers everything to me. Not only news stories could come in through this stream but also video and audio. The problem for content owners is obvious: how can we still monetize our content in a disaggregated scenario like this. When users do not visit the content providers site anymore and consume content in a reader type environment what is the right business model? Ads is one obvious answer but Miles gave us a great Last.fm example. The Last.fm widget has many users which generate a lot of traffic for the website. The key is to get the users back to the site through the social community aspect. Commenting on a song, tagging tunes, or even buying music can only be done on Last.fm which drives the user back to their turf.

-Too targeted ads
Many concerns were raised about how effective online advertising really is and how targeted ads can ultimately be. There is a fine line between serving me the perfect ad and violating my privacy. Users could be turned off by too good advertising and stop using services as they would freak out on the quality of ads. I have to say that I do not share those concerns. Then again I am in my late twenties and probably have a different attitude than the mid thirties panelists. As long as the data is not shared with any third party I am happy to receive ads from my favorite sneaker brand while on Facebook.

-Don't be evil or die
This point ties in very well with the previous one. The idea is basically that many companies today live off the loyalty of their customers. Switching from my Audi to a BMW comes with a hefty price tag, while switching from Google to MSN search doesn't cost me anything (apart from my soul). In such times companies have to act in responsible ways and respect their users privacy to the utmost. In the end of the day it takes one scandal to break your brand.

-Wise up or die
As so many times the music industry was proclaimed dead once again. The traditional music distribution strategy is very far away from the reality of every day life with users legally or illegally sharing, mashing up or listening to music. What to do? Again a lot of wise words from Gerd on this topic which I rather not summarize but recommend you to read in his free book Music 2.o.

All together another interesting event with some great networking opportunities afterwards. Maybe see you there next time.

Location Based Services now...please!

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:37:00 +0000

I attended an interesting panel today on Mobile Search and Location Based Services (LBS) organized by Chinwag. Of the people on the panel by far the most interesting speaker was Felix Petersen co-founder of Plazes which has recently been acquired by Nokia. Here a few interesting thoughts and conclusions:

-Mobile Search vs. Discovery
There are two fundamentally different situations in which location sensitive information is received by the user. One is in the mobile search scenario: the user searches for something on her mobile, which doesn't necessarily have to be something location specific, and gets results that are not only relevant to the context of the search but also relevant to the context of the location. To make it easy let's take the example of a user searching for a point of interest in her vicinity i.e. a coffee shop. Not only does she get a list with local coffee shops but she could also discount coupons from the coffee shops in her immediate vicinity (push). The problem with this type of interaction, however, is that it can easily be perceived as Spam by the user.

The second situation is the discovery scenario: As the user is walking down the road the location aware friend finder service makes her aware of the fact that her buddy is in the coffee shop around the corner (pull). Obviously, this way of receiving location sensitive information is much more pleasant but also quite random and not easy to monetize upon through mobile marketing.

-Pizza & Coffee shop vs. Services
There was an interesting debate about the fact that many users are actually not interested in finding the local coffee shop, as people know where everything is in their own home town. One camp was arguing that POI search is only useful when traveling, which means it will only be relevant to a small percentage of the population. Others were saying that not only in big metropolitan areas but also in smaller places users would still find this feature interesting.

-Tracking vs. Checking in
Tracking means that a service follows your every move and makes that information available to others. These other people can obviously be picked by you very similar to your friends on Facebook. One could argue that it is not ideal to broadcast one's location to everyone at all times. You would for instance would want your work colleagues to know when you are in the office but you don't want them to know where you spend your weekends. So tracking services must come with a lot of different ways to limit the location broadcasting (in other words privacy settings) to work in a responsible way. The user would for instance have to be able to set rules like "broadcast my location to my wife at all times, unless I am at the Wednesday night Poker game or at the strip club on Windmill Street". This might prove to be too complicated for users.

Another alternative that plugs very much into the Twitter, Facebook status mentality, would be checking in into locations. The default in that case is not broadcasting the location, unless the user checks in. I would for instance check in at work and unless I don't check in anywhere else I will still be shown as in work. Again, one could perceive that the user would want certain privacy settings as she would not want to share her location with all her friends, even if she consciously checks in somewhere. It does make the whole privacy issue more manageable, though. One could also tie the check-in with the activation of context aware LBS (i.e. activate friend finder services to tell me who is here, send me coupons of stores near by etc).

-Massive fragmentation
One of the big problems that emerged during the discussions, was the fact that many local services have issues with getting local ad repositories. The reality is if you are making POI data available through an mobile service and want to live off ads, you will have to talk to all those small and medium businesses and sell them your story. The question is if that business will really get what you are talking about and if it does, how many different services it will trust with its marketing budget. The answer is probably not that many. It is quite clear that their is a huge need for an AdSense like solution that LBS providers can use for local context aware ads.

The conclusion for me was that although we all wanted LBS to be available about 5 years ago, their time is still not quite come. With the advent of the G1 and the iPhone we will see a dramatic shift that will accelerate in the short-term to bring us to the age of maturing LBS...finally!

Microsoft + Yahoo Search + Facebook = ?

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:37:00 +0000

There was some interesting noise on the net today about a new potential online strategy for Microsoft. After pulling their offer to buy Yahoo, issuing another statement again yesterday that they might be interested in a partial deal, there are now speculations that they would want to buy Facebook (again). Let's take this apart.

The most likely partial Yahoo deal for Microsoft would be buying the search division. This would give it a significant overall search market share in the US and offer a good platform for ad placement. Buying Facebook has it's obvious advantages: page views (although social network page views are not as easy to monetize) and social data.

Under the premise that Microsoft would do both those transactions Robert Scoble came up with an interes ting theory: Microsoft could use Facebook's social data on Yahoo's search and offer something that gives it an edge over other search engines, namely social search. One of the bigger issues arising out of this is that Microsoft could block social search for Google's crawlers effectively killing all the hopes for an open solution to the social data portability.

Such an extravagant theory by Scoble can, as expected, not escape the scrutiny of TechCrunch. Erik Schonfeld counters the theory with four arguments:
- Microsoft doesn't need to buy Facebook to spider the social data. A deal could do the trick and would be cheaper.
- Microsoft doesn't need to buy Yahoo search. If it wants to offer social data it could do so on it's own search. The availability of social data in a search engine is game-changing no matter on what search engine.
- Only offering Facebook's social data on search is not game-changing enough. There is a lot more social data out there (Myspace, Bebo, Twitter, etc).
- Social network page views are not easy to monetize and Yahoo search can't help with that.

Even if Microsoft would want to buy Facebook I don't think they would sell out. Zuckerberg is sitting on a gold mine and he knows it. If he was in it to get the quick cash, then he could have sold a year ago. With Sheryl Sandberg on his team now he would be stupid to sell before he figures out to turn his gold mine into a diamond mine. So if at all, a partnership seems to me the most likely outcome.

On the other side buying Yahoo search makes a lot sense. It's a preemptive strike against the Google partnership and it helps building up more search reach for it's ad products.

Now as to adding the Facebook's social data to a Yahoo or MSN search...I don't really see the big deal. Yes, it would be an nice differentiating factor but would it make their search engines remarkably better? I don't think so. Would it suck if Microsoft would make Facebook's social data only available on Yahoo and MSN search? Yes it would! How likely is it though, that Zuckerberg would agree to exclusivity like that after saying he wants to speak to Google about Friend Connect to resolve the issues. Apart from that how would the Facebook user base react? Not overly joyful, that's for sure.

In any case, I have to give it to Microsoft for creating so much exiting noise!

Arrington vs. Scoble

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Sat, 17 May 2008 09:23:00 +0000

Micheal Arrington (TechCrunch) and Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) are both men whose opinion I highly value. Yesterday, these two gentlemen clashed big time on Gilmor Gang podcast over the issue weather Facebook was wrong to block Google Friend Connect.

Now why did Facebook block Friend Connect in the first place? "We've found that [Friend Connect] redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge, which doesn't respect the privacy standards our users have come to expect and is a violation of our Terms of Service," say Charlie Cheever in his post to the Facebook blog. This still doesn't really the answer to what Google wants to do different.

To clarify the issue I will borrow from Scoble's post on this. The information we have on a Social network can be broken down into:

1. Social graph (basically your affiliations)
2. Friends’ info (all the things they would input into their profile - email address, gender, etc.)
3. Actual data (photos, videos, status updates, and wall posts)

While Google Friend Connect is an attempt make 1 and 2 available Facebook believes that only 1 should be shared because of privacy reasons. While Arrington believes that only 1 should be shared very much like Facebook, Scoble believes that 1 and 2 should be shared.

My own opinion is that 1 and 2 should be shared. I want to have all my friends aggregated in one place but also want their information. It would solve problems like remembering the birthday of ALL your friends (not only the ones on Facebook). It could also be the foundation of an excellent address book solution. One of the biggest problems for me as a user is having a comprehensive address book. I have friends that I for instance mainly communicate over Facebook with (although I can see their email address in their profile) and some that I just email with. When I want to write my Facebook friends an email I have to go into my account find their email address and paste it into my email client. Wouldn’t it be great to have all your friends email addresses and other relevant information on one page (that ideally allows you to email them from there). I think yes.

So come on Facebook and Google, be friends!

Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:06:00 +0000

So if you haven't heard about Twitter yet, you must have just woke up from a long time coma. In that case welcome back and here a short low down on the service:

Twitter is basically a social micro blogging application that allows you to send out short bursts of information to your Twitter blog and everyone who has subscribed to it. It to a certain degree also resembles IM services as users can comment on someone else's blog entry. This comment will be shown in that persons Twitter blog and he could reply to the it.

One of the coolest things about Twitter, though, is their open API. Following the successful strategy of other open platforms (will be the topic of another blog entry) they allow 3rd party developers to use the data that Twitter generates and repackage it in a new way. This has lead to a load of new cool applications that are worth sharing here.

Twitterfox is basically an application that allows you to engage with the Twitter service without ever pulling up the Twitter web page. The great thing is that it is not another IM client that you have to install but sits neatly on the bottom bar of your Firefox window.

Twitterberry (link takes you to the download page for the Blackberry application) allows you to update your Twitter through the Blackberry. You can also see new Tweets that you have subscribed to coming in. This is a more comfortable way to Twitter than by writing SMS (which you can also use).

TwitterSynch updates your Tweets automatically as your Facebook status. In combination with Twitterfox you can then effectively update both your Twitter and Facebook status through your Firefox browser without having to leave your current web page.

Whoshouldifollow helps you find friends on Twitter. It looks at the people you currently follow and suggests other people that you could subscribe to.

Twitterholic is a page that gives you an overview over the most followed Twitter members and other interesting Twitter related statistics.

Summize is a very interesting service. It basically let's you search all public Tweets for a query that you define. This a great way to find out more about things but also a good way to find new Twitter users t follow.

Tweetmeme is basically bubbling up the most discussed topics and issues on Twitter by analyzing Tweets. It's a great way place to find interesting articles and web sites that seem to be all the rage without you knowing it.

Twitterlocal lets you find Twitter users in your vicinity.

Twistori is an atristic attempt to capture Tweets that contain the words love, hate, think, feel, believe and wish. It's very amusing way to waste time!

This is as you probably have imagined not an exhaustive list of applications built on the Twitter API. If you like to find out more I recommend this excellent article by the Guardian on the topic with loads of links at the bottom.

Singularity

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:04:00 +0000

I recently visited my parents. Luckily enough my grandmother was visiting from Iran so that I got a chance to see her. She is 70 years old and still - knock on wood - very fit. Her mind is sharp and she is capable of adding interesting comments to conversations that are alien to her life. When she grew up in a village in Iran, they didn't have refrigerators, TVs or phones. Still she has managed to understand and even keep up with changes that modern society has brought about. I admire that.

This made me think. How will the world of my grandchildren look like? How alien will the circumstances of my upbringing be to them? Chances are that most of things that we see as so advanced right now will seem ridiculous to them. I laugh at VHS cassettes and am naive enough to buy DVDs thinking that my collection is something to stay. Funnily enough, VHS has been around longer that DVDs will probably be.

Technological progress is accelerating exponentially, as every time we invent a new powerful technology we can use it to invent even more powerful technology. This in turn has lead some scientists like Vernon Vinge to speculate that we are going to reach a point in time when we will invent a super intelligent computer which will be far more capable than the human brain. That computer in turn could design an even more intelligent computer than itself, by itself. Effectively, the invention of the first super computer will be the last invention man kind needs to make. Every subsequent invention can be done by the super computer.

This point in time is called the Technological Singularity. Many fear that this will lead to the drastic consequences for us, as the technologically superior power that we are creating might not need humans anymore. Yes, we are instantly reminded of Matrix, Terminator and similar Dystopias. I think very much like Ray Kurzweil that this is the way things are meant to evolve and want to naively believe that humanity will once again survive.

Human Orchestra

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:41:00 +0000

I love the story behind Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. A traveler from the future comes back in time to save two absolute morons from failing their history class so that they will not be separated from each other (Ted would be sent to military school by his dad) so that they can stay in their band Wyld Stallyns to revolutionize society by the power of their "excellent" music. Will any of the present forms of music have such an effect on future society? Highly unlikely. Although the power of music is without a doubt something that is still a mysterious force, it will probably not be the key to overcome our nasty human habits.

Nevertheless, a particular form of music has had a major effect on modern day society and has spawned a number of very interesting sub-cultures. Yes, I am talking about Hip Hop. It is true that most of the commercial artists, songs and videos of this particular genre are sexist, overly materialistic, homophobic and criminal. At the same time we do have a number of artists out there that still support the core values of the initial movement: creating a cultural platform for youths in the ghettos to express themselves rather than participating in gang violence. Hip Hop in it's roots was a movement by the people for the people, sharing their problems with society and ways to cope with them. The music resulted in the four so called classic Elements of the culture: MCing, DJing, B-boying (break dancing) and Tagging (graffiti). Extended elements are Beatboxing, Hip Hop fashion and the Slang. While most of these elements have been somewhat visible to the main stream, it has been one of the most impressive elements of Hip Hop that has just recently gained the acclaim that it deserves - Beatboxing.

Beatboxing is the art of producing music out of thin air. Beatboxers do not have any instrument to their disposal, however imitate them all with - well their vocal chords, lungs, lips, tongue, throat, nose and anything else that is part of their body capable of creating sounds (without being nasty). The pioneers of this art have been Doug E. Fresh (who we unfortunately lost to Scientology), Biz Markie and the Fat Boys (mainly Buffy, who initially coined the term). Since the 1980's not many people got into contact with this art until it reached the main stream through icons like Rahzel from the Roots, Killa Kela and Kenny Muhammad - the Human Orchestra.

To me the real push of the Fifth Element of the Hip Hop culture into the main stream has happened with the creation of the YouTubes of this world. Online Beatboxing videos spread virally reaching more than millions of viewers. Modern day artists have mushroomed from the ground and it seems that the sophistication of the art from is increasing exponentially from generation to generation.

I had the pleasure to witness the magic of Beardyman the current UK beatboxing champion live and was blown away!

Citizen Astronauts

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:39:00 +0000

Space, the final frontier...those deep and iconic words have been burnt into a generation's brain like the picture of Princess Lea in her golden outfit. Star Trek fascinated generations of viewers around the world with the genius of it's creator Gene Roddenberry and his amazing vision of humanity's future. The stories told, always have a very human component centering around a present day dilemma in a futuristic setting which makes the series ever more appealing. What is most inspiring, however, is the degree of morality the human race shows in overcoming these dilemmas. It shows us how humanity should be without all our eternal vices. As a matter of fact one of the first kisses between a black woman and a white man on television happened between Uhura and Kirk (1968). Quite progressive for back then!

Many people's love for Star Trek spawned their interest for space, the universe and the search for answers beyond religion...like for myself. I'm an atheist which makes looking up into the sky (also admiring everything on planet Earth for that matter) so much more interesting. It is hard to not ask yourself existential questions when looking at the bare scientific evidence that we have so far uncovered. Do we know where we really are at this point in time and space? Far from it. Somehow I believe leaving planet Earth would get me personally a step closer at grasping it all a slightly bit better.

Am I alone in longing for an extraterrestrial experience? I assume not, given all the recent attempts to build out commercial space flight a la Virgin Galactic. Not many humans have had the privilege to leave the planet's orbit. Those that have, describe it as a life changing experience. After being born from your mothers womb, leaving mother Earth's womb is somewhat of a second birth. One that I can hardly wait for.

While we are waiting for the eureka moment in space check out the Space Collective for epiphanies from forward thinking terrestrials.

Mob Mentality

noreply@blogger.com (The Cool Geek) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:14:00 +0000

Monday is going to be the day of deliverance for many die hard fans of one of the most controversial video game series ever created. The newest installment of the franchise will be available in an "Halo-3-esque" midnight sale extravaganza.

Yes, Grand Theft Auto has come a long way from the early days in 1997 when it was a 2d game played from a bird's eye view. But even back then it was somewhat revolutionary. Combining action, adventure, driving and racing elements in one game with a gangster story, topped with extreme and unnecessary violence became instantly gripping. GTA4, the confusingly sixth installment of the series, is at it's core very similar to the first game: you will be playing a reject, an exile from society (this time a Eastern-European thug) returning to his normal gangster habits, trying to make it big by killing, stealing and backstabbing his way to the top. This time set in scene with some amazing graphics, a superb physics engine, extraordinary soundtrack and as always thrilling story a la Scarface.

All this rather violent game play does not come without the respective parental advisory tag. As a matter of fact, the creator (Rockstar) and publisher (Take Two) have been sued over and over for promoting carjacking, hate crimes and violence. It hasn't been helping the game's reputation that many of the twisted US kids involved in senseless shootings have played it before going on their killing sprees. Without wanting to break into an unrelated discussion, it seems to me that the obvious problem does seem to be the easy access to arms - but who am I to question psychiatrists and educators.

As morbid it might sound, much of this controversy has made the franchise even more popular. In fact so popular that Electronic Arts, a leading game publisher, wanted to buy the parent company Take Two before the release date of this new installment. Take Two has successfully delayed the hostile takeover bid to after the release of GTA IV in the hope of an uptake in it's stock price and a subsequently higher valuation. Electronic Arts is still pushing hard to get the deal sealed within the next weeks. No wonder, the word on the streets is that GTA IV will outsell world record breaking Halo 3.

I couldn't care less about any of the controversy or corporate saber-rattling that is happening. All I want is a week off work to kick some ass in Liberty City as Niko Bellic!