Yoav's Space

Boston Frisbee Halloween extravaganza!

2009-11-04T20:28:00.004-05:00

I've written about Boston Frisbee before. It's the awesome group that's open and welcoming to everyone, which plays frisbee three times a week. I play sometimes on Sundays, on the grounds of the Boston Common. Logistics and other details are available.

On Halloween weekend, they play a game in costumes. There are some funky special rules added for some points, contests, and more fun stuff. This past Sunday both Alli and I played in our costumes, and we had a blast.

There are a bunch of good pictures now available on SmugMug and Facebook. I'm the orange M&M, and Alli is the yellow belly dancer.

Book review: Orbiting the Giant Hairball

2009-11-03T21:00:00.003-05:00

This is not my usual kind of book, but it was a gift from my great friend Jeremy H. And I really, really enjoyed it.

Every once in a while, I get comfortable thinking: "Hey, we're pretty creative here. We do cool stuff, we're open-minded, we experiment. We're still young, we're not afraid to try."

And then I read a book like Orbiting the Giant Hairball, and I realize I'm far from exercising my creative potential, as are most other people.

The full title is Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace.

The author is Gordon MacKenzie, who was the Chief Creative Officer (and other, better-titled, roles) at Hallmark.

The book is about how to stay creative in a corporate bureaucracy. I think a lot of the advice is hard to implement, maybe even impractical. Some of it is downright ridiculous and would get you fired. But it's surely entertaining to read about, at least, and there are some great nuggets here.

The author likens big companies to giant hairballs, and the creative people as orbiting those hairballs. As opposed to being inside them, which is the default, or inertia-driven, approach. If you're in orbit, you're intimately related to the hairball, but outside of it, and not part of its most annoying parts. It's an interesting metaphor.

More specifically, the author defines the hairball as "the corporate tendency to rely on past policies, decisions, and processes as a formula for future success." That really strikes a chord with me. It's too easy to fall back on these defaults, especially if they give you some initial success.

And that's just the start of a great book. It's worth reading for humor value along.

But the other unusual thing about this book is its designed. I got this as a gift shortly after raving about my Kindle. I still love the Kindle. But this was the first book I read in a long time that reminded me of the beautiful options available with book design.

I'm not talking about Tufte-style visualizations. Rather, I'm talking about the creative use of doodling, illustrations, variance in fonts and font sizes, unusual layouts, and more typographic approaches. This book, which is self-published, by the way, does it really well.

All in all, an usual book in my library. No spies, no assassins, no Mossad, no sci-fi, no bankers, but really fun to read, and maybe even inspirational at times.

By the way, there was an interesting Fast Company article interviewing the author a couple of years ago, for the curious: How Is Your Company Like A Giant Hairball?

Wine review: 2007 Crochet Sancerre

2009-11-03T20:57:00.002-05:00

Usually I write wine reviews about wines I like, or wines I love. I want to remember them, for future purchases, investments, and recommendations to friends.

This one is an exception. This 2007 Dominique et Jeanine Crochet Sancerre was not good. We did not enjoy it, and I don't recommend it.

It's bland, boring. Not really refreshing, not really powerful, doesn't quite nail any fruit. Just meh.

I'm writing this because I had higher expectations for this wine, based on reviews and reading. Oh well, live and learn ;)

Book review: The Assassin

2009-11-01T17:08:00.002-05:00

Stephen Coontz's The Assassin was pretty disappointing to me. Even if you only read the blog posts from today, you know I love assassin novels. Of all kinds, in all areas. I read a lot of them. It's almost pathological. But it also means my level of tolerance for assassin stories is high, and I am relatively easy to please within this genre.

But this book did not please me. It was too trite, too unoriginal, too implausible. I read it on a plane, and it helped pass the time, for sure. But I wouldn't recommend it.

The author doesn't even seem to try developing the characters or adding any depth to them. The settings and scenarios of most of the book are routine and boring. I know Coontz can write better, because I've read (and liked) some of his other books. This book mostly feels like a lazy cop-out.

Book review: House of Cards

2009-11-01T16:53:00.002-05:00

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, by William D. Cohan, is the story of how Bear Stearns collapsed last year. It's kind of similar to A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, which I reviewed last month, and which tells about the collapse of Lehman Brothers around the same time.

The author is a Fortune magazine editor, among other things, and I think that shows in the writing. There is a lot of quoting of people, verbatim, which is actually great. He speeds past some of the financial topics, and I had to look a couple of them up, but that's OK. Overall the writing is more like a novel than a documentary, which I consider a compliment / good thing. I wasn't looking for a dry description of banking transactions, but someone to tell the inside story, and this was pretty cool.

I don't know if the author is objective or not. I don't know if the story is complete or not. The reviews on Amazon seem very split. But I don't really care. This was an entertaining book to read with a lot of primary source evidence, and that's what I was looking for.

It's pretty shocking how quickly the bank collapsed. The first part of the book covers just the last 10 days, with all the frantic deal-making and discussions. Seems like people worked day and night, some to save the bank as-is, and others to creatively find another solution. But it didn't work.

The dealings with the government, and the egos involved, were very interesting. It was a tough time, with some people looking for scapegoats, and others looking for one organization to fail as an example to others.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It's not exactly light beach reading, but as far as these pseudo-documentary books go, it's pretty good.

Book review: Rain Storm

2009-11-01T16:42:00.003-05:00

Rain storm is a fiction novel by Barry Eisler, featuring an Asian assassin character I like, John Rain.

Like the other books in this series, this book has pretty simple premise. The main character is trying to retire to a faraway country (Brazil), but his old employers lure him back for one last mission. Pretty tired / unoriginal there.

But what makes the book good, like the others in this series, are the nitty-gritty details of each assassination. The planning, the execution, and way things can go wrong. And unlike some other novelists, Eisler gives the villains some character development as well, which makes things more interesting.

As readers of this blog know, I'm also a fan of books involving Israeli intelligence, especially the Mossad. So when a Mossad agent comes into play and mucks with Rain's plans in this book, I was excited ;)

The writing is good: clear, concise, taut. The story is interesting, after the uninspired beginning. The locales are excellent, and they make the book for me. Overall, a fun read.

By the way, the author has a pretty good web site, as these things go. He's also active in social media and seems generally clueful, which is cool.

Book review: Lance: The Making of the World's Greatest Champion

2009-10-25T09:40:00.002-04:00

Lance: The Making of the World's Greatest Champion is an awesome book. I enjoyed reading it so much that I even read it twice, the second time being 3 weeks later.

To get the biggest complaint out of the way: I'm not sure the book is completely objective. I think the author makes an effort to represent the doping suspicions fairly, but I also think the same author is a big Lance fan. Just like I am. So if you expect a fully objective investigative report, this is not it.

Everything else about the book is absolutely awesome. The writing is clear, crisp, and well-organized, well-researched. There are many, many original interviews and first-hand / primary source telling of stories. The book's author, John Wilcockson, is a familiar figure. If you follow the Tour, even just on TV (as I do), you will know his voice and presence. His knowledge of the industry is very high, and his connections enabled a lot of the first-hand interviews that make up this book.

The book covers Lance's youth, including his formative teenage years. His initial racing success, his battle with cancer, his return. His training regimen with a lot of details, and his big race success, especially in the Tour. It's all there. In glorious detail, if you're a tech geek like me.

Note: I'm not actually a bicycle rider. I can ride, obviously, but I don't enjoy it much. I get bored. I have a lot of respect for people who are real riders, like my friends and colleague Jeremy . But I am not a rider myself and I know next to nothing about what it takes to be one.

Lance's return from cancer is obviously inspiring to a lot of people. But reading how close he was to death, and how hard he's been working to get back in shape and stay there, makes it all the more inspiring.

Books review: The Defector

2009-10-25T09:34:00.004-04:00

The Defector is another book by Daniel Silva, and the immediate follow-up to the book I just reviewed, Moscow Rules.

Warning: spoiler alert. If you're going to read Moscow Rules, skip the rest of this review until you're done.

In a fairly predictable pattern, since Gabriel Allon (the hero in these two books and a few others) did not kill the ultimate villain of Moscow Rules, the same villain is up to new trouble. So this time, Allon has to finish the job. Nothing particularly creative here.

However, the kind of trouble, and the details of how this villain is to be hunted, are what makes this book. It's a really intricate, detailed story, full of double-crossing and elaborate hoaxes. I love those things, which is why I enjoyed this book.

It still qualifies as a very good plane or beach reading, not classical literature. But then again, there's nothing wrong with that. And I had plenty of plane time on my way to China, which is when I read both of these books.

Book review: Moscow Rules

2009-10-25T09:24:00.004-04:00

Moscow Rules is another Gabriel Allon fiction novel by Daniel Silva. I like Silva as an author, and I like Allon as a character, so it's not surprising I like this book as a whole ;)

I have an affinity for Israeli secret agent books, as readers of this blog probably know. (By the way, talking about readers: it looks like FriendFeed passed GoogleReader as my top RSS subscriber source this month. Interesting.)

Anyways, this book is taken directly from the relatively recent poisoning, in London, of a former KGB agent, using a chemical substance (thallium). You can substitute the name of the substance, the name of the agent who died, the name of the journalist who died earlier, and you'd get pretty close to this book.

Or, as NBC would put it for Law & Order, it's "ripped from the headlines!" ;)

The writing is good, as always. Easy to read, easy to follow, but with surprising twists. The master villain is suitably villainous, the hero (Allon) quirky enough to make it fun. There is an added story line where Allon's bosses back in Tel Aviv want him to come take the top job in the service, but of course he refuses, as it's an office job and he doesn't want to be behind a desk.

Overall, this was a very good beach or plane read. If you liked the other Allon books, or the other Daniel Silva books, you'd like this one as well. The ending is absolutely excellent, and sets up the following book, which I'll review in a few minutes.

Product review: Fig & Olive collection Meyer lemon-infused olive oil

2009-10-24T20:30:00.003-04:00

"Huh?" I hear you say ;) What's this thing about?

I've never written an olive oil review before. This is the first one. And I don't have any others queued up.

Like most foodies, I like experimenting with olive oil. It's just such a wonderful substance, so useful in many ways.

Fig & Olive is a place in New York City that is both a restaurant and a food supply store. They make a variety of things, but olive oil is the emphasis. It's not expensive, not fancy, just good. And guess what? They have an online store where you can buy this and other cool stuff. I wish the Maison du Maille had that too.

Here's the direct link to the online store for this Meyer Lemon oil: http://www.bestoliveoilstore.com/detail_oil.php?group=Infused+Oils+and+Vinegar&cid=25&id=1245

The Meyer lemon-infused olive oil is one of their specialty products that is available for purchase by anyone.

And it's really, really good.

Somehow they managed to infuse the oil with lemon without compromising either the oil or the lemon. Usually with these fancy infused combinations, I get annoyed, because it doesn't taste like anything. But in this case, that's not true.

So if you're looking for a fun, unusual olive oil, and you're tired of the "I'm more virgin than the other oil" labels in the grocery store, this is a decent one to buy.

Restaurant review: Green T. House

2009-10-24T20:12:00.003-04:00

Green T. House is a restaurant in Beijing. We went there near the end of our trip to China, but I have not gotten around to blogging about it. Until now, that is.

This restaurant is spectacular. It is probably the most beautiful restaurant I've ever been to. We have a few pictures on Flickr, but they don't do it justice, because of the lighting for the most part.

The restaurant is like a post-modern version of Alice in Wonderland. It was a visual and auditory heaven. I wish I could have the same decor here at home.

The theme, as you might have guessed, is tea. Many of the dishes involve tea, in various shapes and forms. Parts of the menu are given out as white-out on big tea leaves, which is cool. The food is delicious and service superb, as one might expect. The prices are very high: this is an expensive place, even by European standards.

However, it's well worth it. We were there on a quiet night, with only a couple of other couples around. There was Asian-style belly-dancing entertainment in the middle of the meal, out of nowhere.

This was by far my favorite restaurant of the trip, and by definition, my favorite restaurant in Asia, to date ;) If you're ever in Beijing, you should go there.

Jeff Dean presentation on building large-scale systems at Google

2009-10-24T17:54:00.002-04:00

A bunch of good numbers, heuristics, data, and lessons, from Jeff Dean of Google.

Found simultaneously via Gregor and Paul (on FriendFeed). Thanks, guys ;)

Direct PDF link: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/ladis2009/talks/dean-keynote-ladis2009.pdf.

Sample / key slide:

Computational Complexity of Air Travel Planning

2009-10-24T16:45:00.003-04:00

The Complexity of Air Travel Planning is a wonderful free online presentation by Carl de Marcken, co-founder and former CTO of ITA Software. It was forwarded to me by my colleague Steve L, who used to work at ITA as well. Thanks, Steve!

Direct PDF link for those who prefer PDF: http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-complexity/ITA-software-travel-complexity.pdf.

Reminder: RingCentral goes right to my trash

2009-10-20T15:26:00.001-04:00

As previously covered and explained on this blog.

In the 24 hours since HubSpot's Series C announcement, I've been getting a ton of RingCentral calls. I just happened to note some of them in my spam folder by accident, hence this blog post.

If you need to reach me, please don't use RingCentral. Thank you.

Midnight Madness: college basketball is back!

2009-10-18T15:22:00.003-04:00

My favorite college sport in the US got started this weekend, with the traditional Midnight Madness celebrations. ESPN has a good intro video, and YouTube has plenty more.

I also like college football, but the broken playoff system is so annoying, I don't watch much. College basketball, on the other hand, absolutely has it nailed with the March Madness tournament. My dad and I go to the Final Four each year, and it's always one of the best weekends of the whole year.

Eric Ries is giving a talk at MIT, and his latest blog post is awesome

2009-10-17T14:47:00.003-04:00

I've quoted Eric Ries before. To the point where I might sound like a broken record. But I don't really care: he's that good. I know my friend and colleague @danmil agrees, too.

Eric's latest blog post is awesome, as usual. It's called Innovation Inside the Box, and here are the key nuggets, chopped up and re-spliced by yours truly:

I was recently privy to a product prioritization meeting in a relatively large company... Almost the entire meeting was taken up with interpreting data. The problem was that nobody could quite agree what the data meant... Many custom reports had been created for this meeting, and the data warehouse team was in the meeting, too...

Listening in, I assumed this would be the end of the meeting. With no agreed-upon facts to help make the decision, I assumed nobody would have any basis for making the case for any particular action. Boy was I wrong. The meeting was just getting started. Each team simply took whatever interpretation of the data supported their position best, and started advocating. Other teams would chime in with alternate interpretation that supported their position, and so on.

In the end, decisions were made – but not based on any actual data. Instead, the executive running the meeting was forced to make decisions based on the best arguments.

Here was my prescription for this situation. I asked the team to consider creating what I call a sandbox for experimentation. The sandbox is an area of the product where the following rules are strictly enforced:

Any team can create a true split-test experiment that affects only the sandboxed parts of the product, however:
One team must see the whole experiment through end-to-end.
No experiment can run longer than a specified amount of time (usually a few weeks).
No experiment can affect more than a specified number of customers (usually expressed as a % of total).
Every experiment has to be evaluated based on a single standard report of 5-10 (no more) key metrics.
Any team that creates an experiment must monitor the metrics and customer reactions (support calls, forum threads, etc) while the experiment is in-progress, and abort if something catastrophic happens...

I'll stop here, because I would easily quote the whole blog post.

Eric tends to find a really good balance between the ideal and the practical. Everyone wants to be more data-driven. But most management teams and managers are afraid to do it, because the data might disprove their hypotheses.

At HubSpot, one of our strengths (I think -- chime up if you disagree) is that all of us are relatively data-driven (although not to Eric's level, but we can improve), and none of us has such a huge ego that we let it get in the way of our data. We also have enough of a collaborative, open, transparent culture that if anyone thought a decision was ego-based, they would speak up.

These are two of my favorite things. But I'd still like to be better at A/B-testing the Eric Ries way.

By the way, Eric Ries is coming to give a free talk at MIT next month, and we're co-sponsoring it. I hope you can join us.

Video interview with Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder)

2009-10-15T21:20:00.002-04:00

My friend and colleague Dan A pointed this out to me: The Business Insider interviews Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, on innovation and related topics.

Wine aerator shoot-out

2009-10-12T15:38:00.004-04:00

Via my colleague, @ckeller: The Aerator Shootout on Wine Accessories.com. I'm thinking of buying one of these Soiree things. Have you tried it?

Moutarde Maille au Pain d’épices et Miel de châtaignier

2009-10-11T20:35:00.005-04:00

I think I only have about three readers who understand the title of this post and appreciate it. Isa, Ondine, Bea, this one is for you ;)

The rough translation of the post title is "Maille Mustard with gingerbread and honey chestnut". (Thanks, Google Translate ;)).

Maille is an old boutique food supply store in Paris. They specialize in mustards. When we visited Paris in June, we bought a few at the store. By now we've tried most of them, and this one is the best to date.

Here's the Maille US site, for the curious. It has their classic, long-standing products. But it doesn't have any of the special collection, seasonal ones. Like this one. If you see it, buy it. Buy a handful of them.

For a cool recipe that uses this mustard with some poached salmon, check out PaperBlog.fr.

Clarification: the picture above is of their generic mustard, not the one I'm talking about. It's good. But if you're there, make sure you buy the one with the same name as the title of this post.

Wine review: 2005 Raymond Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

2009-10-11T18:43:00.003-04:00

2005 Raymond Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon: two Napa cabs in a row ;) It's been a good couple of weeks.

This is a classic cab, all black currant, strong up front, smooth finish. The nice aging effect some Napa vineyards have, with almost no acidity at all.

It's a little more expensive than the Cannonball I just reviewed, and tastes a little better. But not much. The Cannonball is a better bargain.

For a more detailed review, check out 2 Days per Bottle.

Wine review: 2006 Cannonball Cabernet Sauvignon

2009-10-11T18:36:00.003-04:00

2006 Cannonball Cabernet Sauvignon: This was a really fun little wine. It's pretty cheap, retaining at $12 - $16 in our local stores as well as online, e.g. on Snooth.

It's spicy, with a big punch of flavor right up front, and a smooth finish. In other words, a crowd-pleaser. Goes really well with red sauce pasta.

Trail of Candy and Resuce the Princess

2009-10-10T10:44:00.002-04:00

This morning I read Stefano's blog post, The "Trail of Candy" design pattern. It's a great post, as usual on his blog. You should read it...

... welcome back ;) Stefano's post reminded me of an earlier blog article, from 2008, about "Rescue the Princess" as a product design pattern. This is over on Danc's Lost Garden blog. You should read that too...

The issue I often struggle with is how to implement this kind of pattern, which I think is awesome, with a business audience. HubSpot, where I work now, is mostly a B2B company. We sell to other small and medium businesses. They are very results-oriented, and I'm not sure how they'll put up with a gaming metaphor.

I don't have an answer. All ideas are welcome...

Automated Deployment with Maven - going the whole nine yards

2009-10-07T13:53:00.001-04:00

Nice presentation from John Smart about using Maven to help (a lot) with deploying Java applications.

Automated Deployment with Maven - going the whole nine yards

View more documents from wakaleo.

Pictures from our China trip now up...

2009-10-06T22:20:00.002-04:00

... we've finally finished uploading all the pictures from our China trip to Flickr. The set is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/yoavshapira/sets/72157622052696889/. Enjoy ;)

For more information on our China trip, including reviews and such, check out the posts at http://yoavs.blogspot.com/search/label/china.

Boston-area startup events, groups, meetups, and people

2009-10-05T22:18:00.003-04:00

I often get asked where to find out about hot and happening startups in the Boston area. These events and people, compiled into a great list by Don Dodge, are probably the best way. I linked to Don's list and added a couple of people / events on the HubSpot dev blog.