Recently I decided to kick the Typepad habit and move my blog to self-hosted Wordpress.

Its not so much that there was anything wrong with Typepad, but more in that the flexibility offered through the Wordpress platform was more suited to my goals.

My new site is here: firstnamedotlastname

 

Couple weeks ago I rode in my first road cycling race.  I’ve raced mountain bikes and cyclocross for a number of years and it turns out road riding is just as hard + you have to pay mental attention the entire time.  People tell me the Mead Roubaix wasn’t really a road race; I guess because it has 33% dirt roads to break up the pavement stretches.  Seemed like a road race to me… 

I raced in the first wave.  2 laps of about 20 miles each for about 2 hours total.  The start line had 70+ riders in my group and the whole first lap was nervous and sketchy.  The shots below are from 303cycling in the Cat-3 race later that day. It shows what carnage can happen at 30mph on dirt roads when you’re riding in a pack!  I heard a couple of bikes got destroyed and a few riders were pretty banged-up.

I made it through the first lap unscathed, although I did miss the break and learned a valuable lesson about being attentive to the mood of the group.  Next time I plan not to be caught off guard when the leading riders decide to hit the gas…

This is me coming through the start/finish.  You can tell I’m riding my old stand-by 7-cycles.  Nothing like titanium to smooth out the nasty dirt and washboard sections of the course.

 

 

Last week I checked out the Strava app for my iPhone.  It has to be one of the coolest apps I’ve used recently and its free.  Below are a couple of screen shots I pulled off my phone after I got back from a loop up and around Carter lake.

  

Very fun start to the season here in Colorado.  Next tune-up event I have coming is the Front Range 60.  Which used to be the Front Range 50, but I guess they wanted to make the 5-lap race a 6-lap race.  Longer and more boring than before!  Regardless, it’s a great kickoff to my mountain bike riding for the year.

I like mountain biking analogies.  Like business there are different styles, types, and terrain.  Some people ride singlespeeds, some free-ride, and some ride on bike paths (dirt or no dirt).

I was forwarded recently an excellent article written by Ben Horowitz.  Ben and I've never met, but his candor and insights/opinions are awesomely raw and straight to the point.  Agree with him or not, it doesn't really matter.  You still come away with an interesting opinion and point of view worth considering.

In one of Ben's recent posts, he used the analogy similar to one I often think about - although mine comes from mountain biking.

Anyone that's ever really ridden or raced off-road knows not to stare or fixate on an obstacle.  If you do, inevitably you'll run square into it.  Weird, but true.  The more you focus on the danger, the more likley it is you steer towards it.  Instead: look down the trail.  See the path you want to take.  Acknowledge the rock, root, or rut, but don't focus on it.  Focus on where you want to go and pedal like hell.

Maybe that’s a little too cliché a title… whatever.

I downloaded Color for my iPhone this morning.  At first I didn’t “get it”.  Snap photos, first of myself, then of random things and people. If you’re the only one on Color it worse than sucks – it doesn’t actually make any sense.

After walking around the office for a few minutes, snapping more photos and announcing that I was on “color” a few others downloaded the app and started taking pictures.  BAM!  Its obvious now.  The automagical sharing, seeing, and participating begins.

Then the creepiness factor set in. 

You have little control over what connections are made, shared, and participated on.  Anyone can get the app; anyone can post photos – likely of anything; and you can interact or just lurk.

I put the app away and started the real work of the day.

At lunch I walked down Pearl St. Mall here in Boulder.  Nice, sunny and decently warm day.  Waiting in line at Salvaggios Deli I opened up Color again and immediately started seeing pictures that other Color users nearby were taking, posting, and sharing.  Oliver, Jim, Nicole – none of whom I know, or saw for that matter.  But there their photos were, for me and everyone else on Color to check out.

As I walked back to the office, it sort of struck me that no way would such a group of smart VCs and seasoned entrepreneurs create just a creepy, stalker-esque photo sharing app.  There was more too it.  They raised a pile of cash ($41M) in first round capital.  What occurred to me is that the app is really just a test, or a lure.  A hook to get people on the system – a data collection, mining, and segmentation system.

 ReadWriteWeb article:

When you take a picture or video, Color gathers a variety of information. It collects sound levels, Bluetooth readings, light readings, antenna strength, the time - even the direction you're pointing your phone - and more and uses it all to determine your proximity to other users.

…. Color offers a way to determine location and proximity in such a non-battery draining, accurate manner that an impromptu and "elastic" social graph can be created from the data, without once ever having to purposefully check in.

In essence the app is an advanced data collection mechanism.  Beyond the app, the company seems to be driving at the notion of movement (socially, physically, and spatially) of people.  That’s pretty cool.  Still a bit creepy, but really freekin’ cool.  I’m not sure I’m completely OK with the idea of having a Orwellian tracking monitor voluntarily placed in my pocket by me.  But I do like the idea that Color is driving at and I think this may in fact lead to some really interesting innovations down the road.

What a great metaphor. 

I’ve been recently inspired by a couple of articles on similar subjects.  The first is the ever-entertaining Ben Horowitz in a recent column he wrote for Fortune.  The second a syndicated article in Techcrunch by Mark Suster.

They got me to thinking about what it means to fight above your weight class.  I thought of a few examples of people, companies, and technology that have done this successfully.  It seems to me that if you want to succeed in building a new, innovative, and disruptive company you absolutely have to think, act and hire above your weight class.

1. Flipboard.

Start a new magazine.  Make it personalized.  Take complete advantage of the tablet interface.  Embrace curation like nobody’s business.  Leverage social sharing behavior.  Come out of nowhere and throw a freekin’ hay-maker.  Those guys shook up the world.

Ok maybe that’s a little over the top.. but the fact remains that from where I sit the folks at Flipboard took on the traditional publishing guys and won round 1 hands down.  Even the “fast” followers like The Daily s-u-c-k in comparison.  Great example of coming out and fighting above your weight class.

2. Linux.

Big iron, data-centers, enterprise systems all got kicked in the teeth by open source software.  A virtual army of developers in their basements, home offices, and on their lunch breaks built and the foundation stitched together a series of never-ending improvements to make computing faster, cheaper, and better.  From mainframes to departmental systems there is nowhere to hide if you’re AIX, HPUX, Solaris, Z-OS, or even Windows. 

Caveat: I’m not going there for typical desktop computing ‘cause I think that is still all about the UI and engineers are notoriously bad at the presentation layer.  That’s why we love Steve Jobs and the magic he develops.

3. Travis the Intern.

He’s a guy that is unencumbered by preconceived notions about how things work, and instead thinks about how things should work.  An undergrad with no prior experience in ad-tech, online publishing, or really anything we do here at Lijit.  Travis came to us from CU and immediately made an obvious and measurable impact mostly by not overthinking things and being smart about doing things.  I have mixed emotions because Travis was recently recruited away from Lijit to work in Zuckerland.  I’m sure he’ll kickass at Facebook just as he’s done by fighting above his weight class at Lijit.