redditAll: alien artist blog

all the way from Singapore, iLead coming to the reddit hq tomorrow

2008-07-23T21:10:00.000-04:00

iLead, a group from the University of Singapore, is touring Silicon Valley on a study mission and they'll be visiting us tomorrow.

In a blog entry that called us "the company with one of the cutest icons" (well played), the iLead team announced their upcoming visit to our Soma offices.

To me, Reddit is a cool site to obtain the latest news items from all over the globe. My personal favourite? The ‘controversial’ tab that provides links to the most controversial news items.

I knew I wasn't the only one who liked that controversial tab...

Anyway, I'd developed a relationship with some students there after attending a conference at NUS during the summer of my junior year at UVA.

This turned out to be quite a fateful trip, as it's where I decided I was going to start a startup after graduating. It was on that trip that I emailed Steve and told him my plan and that I was going to need him in order to pull it off.

I dug up the old email a little while back. I swear I don't normally use that many ellipses in my emails -- I think I was just a little too excited.

Looking forward to meeting everyone tomorrow. Bobbleheads shall be distributed.

i'm (pierre francois) speaking at joel spolsky's business of software conference

2008-07-21T07:19:00.003-04:00

This is going to be fun. I was pleased to learn that I was accepted as one of the 8 finalists to speak (perform?) during the Pecha Kucha portion of the 2008 Business of Software Conference in Boston.

I didn't know what Pecha Kucha meant either, so here's a synopsis:

The speaker gets 6 minutes and 40 seconds: no more, no less. You submit exactly 20 slides. Each one is shown for exactly 20 seconds and then flips automatically. At the end, even if you're almost done and just have one more thing, the mic cuts off and you sit down.

It seemed like just the thing for Pierre Francois, Web 2.0 guru. We haven't seen him since BarCamp Boston a couple years ago, but he's got a lot to say (in exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds) about starting, running and selling a web 2.0 startup.

Thanks for the opportunity -- Pierre shalln't disappoint. He's genetically incapable of anything less than 110%.

safety first in bangkok

2008-07-17T10:27:00.005-04:00

Liz sent me this poster from a restaurant - yes, a restaurant - in Bangkok. They take safe-sex practice very seriously.

baby antarctic penguins being frozen!

2008-07-17T00:53:00.002-04:00

Skeptics of climate change, it's come to this: frozen baby penguin guilt.

the reddit alien eats xckd's multi-colored poo

2008-07-15T17:02:00.005-04:00

Here's the proof. A response to this recent XKCD comic.

interview with adam fuhrer, the arbiter of cool

2008-07-12T18:59:00.006-04:00

Adam (noname99) has been one of our top users for a long time. As a result, he was named an wizard of buzz by the Wall Street Journal -- all before his thirteenth birthday.

So when he asked for an interview to post on his blog, I was happy to oblige. Plus, he even asked about breadpig. How could I say no?

rental cars are totally negotiable at the counter, who knew?

2008-07-11T04:22:00.003-04:00

Thought I'd share this revelation I had over the weekend. At the counter of the Dollar rental car of Oakland International Airport, I was offered the chance to upgrade from my mid-size to an SUV.

I laughed. Why would I just want to pay for more gas to drive a vehicle that would never leave asphalt? She said I had a point.

Undeterred, the sales rep. offered a convertible.

Well, we were going to be doing some scenic driving around Yosemite and Tahoe, maybe it would be fun with the top down, I thought.

"Maybe... How much more would it be?"

She punched in some numbers and quoted me at $280 for the week. I guess turning 25 was worth it. But on a lark, I thought I'd haggle -- make my Armenian relatives proud.

"I'll give you $200. That's such a rounder, prettier number."

OK. She typed away on her computer and through some combination of black magic and Midi-chlorians, arrived at a daily rate that would be < $200. The final total turned out to be $185.

"Thank you!" I cheerily replied as I did a little jig that thankfully was obscured by the counter.

I wish I'd known this back during our startup days, so I thought I'd pass this along for you to try out during your next trip out to Sand Hill Road.

All that said, Zipcar still reigns supreme in my book, despite being haggle-free; three years sans car ownership and I couldn't be happier.

summing jenny 8 lee up in one word (one number would have been too easy)

2008-07-09T18:42:00.005-04:00

New American Media aims to "expand the news lens through ethnic media" -- and now I've played a small part in the lens expansion.

My friend Jenny 8 Lee has a delicious book, the Fortune Cookie Chronicles, which I've been lucky enough to see since it was a humble proposal on her laptop. It's come a long way and brought her quite a bit of success and attention on what's already been a remarkable career. She's shared the fun with plenty of her friends, including at an event she had in New York, which I attended a little while back.

There, plump with dim sum and Tsingtao, I got the chance to sum Jenny up with one word:

But even if her nom de plume were bereft of that lucky number, chances are that Lee would be no less memorable. “Effervescent” is how Alexis Ohanian, designer of the book's blog and co-founder of a news sharing site, describes her. Occasional appearances in gossip columns and multiple mentions on meta-media website Gawker.com paint her as a social butterfly with the uncanny ability to charm anyone who crosses her path. This assertion is more true than not. She constantly invites people into her home, even if they are near-strangers, and even though it's New York City, where it's possible to befriend someone for years without ever stepping foot into his or her residence.

Many years ago, then just a wide-eyed startup founder looking making Chinatown bus trips into New York from Boston, I was one of those folks she graciously invited into her home. I'm not ashamed to say that I spent more than a few nights on her sofa; New York is a great city to couchsurf through, especially when you're a salary-less startup founder.

yourweek getting some love from all over the internet

2008-07-03T11:01:00.001-04:00

This most recent write-up in Citizen Tube best summarizes just what we're aiming to do with YourWeek. We'll see if we get there, but the second taping I just watched (yes, version 2.0) is another step in the right direction.

The recently-waterboarded Christopher "Believe me, it's torture" Hitchens provided some great footage in his interview with Rich and Michelle. It made the rounds on a variety of right-wing blogs: LittleGreenFootballs and Hot Air got lots of discussion from a video with such choice soundbites as "If the GOP were a dog, it should be shot."

A few other sites blogged segments, including Primetime Politics and Wired Science (re: Frankenmeat).

And we had the help of the talented designer, Callie Peck, who created a couple house ads for us to run:

Stay tuned for an update about whether or not the show gets picked up...

the 1 way you need to attack shyness

2008-07-02T15:09:00.012-04:00

Inspired by this recent article, I thought I'd sit down and compose my secret for talking to people. I've been lucky in that I've never had a problem with shyness, (edit: largely, I believe, because I've had this mentality since as early as I can remember - only with less profanity. Despite being someone who thinks Meyers Briggs tests are a joke, I'll mention that I'm only a borderline "E") but I think this is sound advice.

It worked with Paul Graham the first time Steve and I met him in Cambridge after his reading of How to Start a Startup. He courteously accepted my offer for a drink in exchange for hearing our startup pitch.

This was before Y Combinator, mind you, so I suspect this would be much harder to pull off with his current schedule.

Unfortunately, this didn't work with Scarlett Johansson in the lobby of the 4 Times Square building -- I couldn't think up anything clever in time and didn't want to be "that guy."

Nonetheless, I still feel like this has served me exceptionally well over the last twenty-five years:

Everyone eats, shits, and dies*

Remember that, we're all equal, so what are you waiting for?

*Not to be confused with "Everyone eat shit and die!"

the college of arts & sciences (uva) is renaming their alumni magazine and reddit is helping

2008-07-01T08:01:00.002-04:00

The original title, Arts & Sciences, needs to be replaced and they're tapping into the UVa alum network for a new name.

Submitting and voting end on July 10th, so get your entry in now and harangue everyone around you to vote it up. If you're the winner, you'll be credited in December's issue and be given the keys to Monticello.

OK, that last part isn't true, but the bragging rights alone are nice.

reddit does economics

2008-06-29T02:25:00.004-04:00

The economics reddit community has grown quite nicely since we opened up user-generated reddits. As a result, they earned a customized reddit logo. I flashed back to my ECON 201 class at least thrice during the creation of the logo. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Supply and demand curves will probably haunt me in my sleep tonight.

technical difficulties at justin.tv today, but the alien visits israel

2008-06-27T03:56:00.009-04:00

Instead of a talk from Pierre Francois, we ended up playing a LAN game of StarCraft. Yes, I got pwnd. I really need to work on my mid-game Zerg strategy.

Hopefully Pierre will get another chance for a tech talk, but in the meantime, here are some photos of Inkling's Adam Siegel rocking his reddit gear in the Middle East.

Here he is in Israel, representin' in a state park after some cliff climbing.
And here's another reddit alien in front of a ruined Jordanian tank. Our mascot had nothing to do with that.Aside from being the co-founder of a fellow Y Combinator company, Adam's a pretty cool dude. He even let team reddit crash at his place once.

pierre francois is back! on justin.tv

2008-06-26T17:08:00.002-04:00

After a long hiatus since his last public speaking appearance, Pierre is back to share his web 2.0 wisdom.

Come visit the Justin.tv office today @ 5:30 (there'll be pizza @ 5) if you're in SF or just tune in to HackerTV.

one advantage to having bizarre (and rotating) 404 messages

2008-06-26T14:40:00.003-04:00

Sometimes people will blog about them. This was the case with AK over at MyDigitalLife.

These 404 aliens are pretty ancient relative to our site's lifespan, but I'm happy new users are discovering them (tho, that also means they've done something wrong -- or we have). I guess I'm ambivalent about it.

Anyway, here's his favorite - the sunken forehead reddit alien:

Discover them all!

we have a winner!

2008-06-22T16:27:00.001-04:00

With all the TechCrunch speculation surrounding our party invite, I ran a poll of my own for readers to guess our big announcement. Sure enough, someone figured it out (though, I really do just like penguins -- Tux is just one of them).

Reddit is going drink the linux cool aid and go open source, which will be free, as in beer ;)

Right on, David W. You're the winner of a limited edition reddit open source t-shirt in the size of your preference for being the first person to guess correctly (and hours before the announcement).

Here's a picture of Jeremy modeling said shirt (he's not included).

I'll also offer to replace the TechCrunch shirt a lucky TechCrunch reader won with one of our open source shirts. Just email me.

when in doubt, just ask reddit

2008-06-20T22:10:00.004-04:00

It's a simple formula I recently used to figure out a custom logo to give the comics community. I had no idea what to doodle and thought Bill Watterson deserves better than a modest alien homage. This is something I've been doing for redditor-created communities that have taken off.

Fortunately, the comics community had plenty of ideas. I ultimately went with a comic panel look suggested by irrelevantnotch.

Oh yes, that's "fightin' Splashy" in there.

redditors do some alien doodling of their own

2008-06-20T19:20:00.003-04:00

Thanks to qgyh2 for pushing this my way.

A redditor named (I'm not making this up) JewStyleKungfu submitted a link to a reddit alien modeled in Blender.

Not to be outdone, Manthrax submitted his own:

My amateurish stop-motion video starring the alien peaked over 10K views on YouTube, yet I feel the next one I do should be using Blender. Watch out, Pixar.

open sourcing reddit, as explained by the alien

2008-06-18T09:34:00.002-04:00

Haven't heard yet? reddit is now open source.

I was asked to create some kind of video starring the alien to explain the announcement. Not that I have any experience in video production. Stop motion was harder than expected thanks to having a bobblehead instead of an action figure. Nonetheless, I'm still pretty happy with it.

what's techcrunch so curious about? i love penguins

2008-06-17T20:26:00.004-04:00

This has been well documented over my last three years of blogging. Nonetheless, check out the TechCrunch coverage our party invite got.

Like I commented, I believe I should have included a breadpig -- that would have really confused people.

Since TechCrunch is offering a shirt for whomever guesses correctly, I thought I'd match the deal on my blog and give one of the shirts we've made in honor of tomorrow's event.

i love it when reddit is the source of apple gossip

2008-06-17T18:06:00.004-04:00

Lookie, ZDNet sources reddit in a recent blog entry about Snow Leopard -- I'm not going to send a takedown notice, though....

Meanwhile, reader Mythic on Reddit last week said he had interviewed at the Apple team working on Open Computing Language. He offered more information on the scope of Apple’s work:

I think it’s more than that. I interviewed with Apple’s GPGPU group (they do have several people working full time on this stuff) a few months ago and got the impression that OpenCL is intended to abstract over a variety of cards and computing platforms. So you could write your program once in OpenCL and be able to run it on an ATI card, an NVIDIA card, or just your multi-core CPU. More interestingly, you could run it in tandem on your GPU and CPU with some sort of adaptive load-balancing performed automatically. I have no idea how much of this actually made it into Snow Leopard, but it’s a cool idea.

clips from yourweek (reddit-powered tv news) are online

2008-06-17T10:18:00.003-04:00

re-posted from dev blog

I'm pleased to report that the long-awaited Internet release for the pilot of YourWeek is now upon us.

Watch it now (more segments will be uploaded throughout the day).

Now, we were a bit handicapped in putting this together, because we couldn't properly notify the community of a television news show that didn't exist yet, but producers were able to find popular stories from the reddit corpus to report on. If YourWeek gets picked up, we're expecting every week's show to be shaped by your feedback on what you think matters.

The five of us know remarkably little about television production; we're incredibly grateful to all the folks at PBS for bringing this concept to fruition. Hopefully there'll he more reddit-powered television in our future.

in san francisco this wednesday night? reddit has an announcement to make (with free booze!)

2008-06-17T02:59:00.003-04:00

Come join us this Wednesday, June 18th, from 6:30 to 8:30pm at Swig (561 Geary St) in downtown San Francisco.

There'll be plenty of beer, miniature hamburgers, and something else even more intoxicating and delicious...

Please remember to RSVP by emailing redditRSVP@wired.com.

even if spore never gets released, at least reddit aliens have already been created

2008-06-16T17:20:00.005-04:00

I'm not the only one looking forward to Spore's release (and also still somewhat skeptical that it'll ever happen), but I've yet to create my own version of the reddit alien. Fortunately, some enterprising redditors went ahead and did just that with the Spore Creature Creator.

But it turned out p337 had already made a Spore-version of the reddit alien, which happened to also be my favorite.

And thus it was immortalized in today's reddit logo:

flashback to a startup school presentation i gave back in 07

2008-06-13T14:18:00.005-04:00

Kevin Hale of Wufoo (the form of choice for FeedbackFail) just published a slightly belated write-up of a presentation I gave back at Startup School 07. OK, so it's more than slightly belated, but I'll take it!

Read the article, check out the slides, or listen to the audio -- or do all three at the same time.

Thanks for the great review, Kevin. I must admit that I've been asked more than a few times since to give that presentation: The [Abridged] Story of Reddit.com (Or, how to build a popular website without ever being on TechCrunch.) But I think you've nailed the crux of it:

I think that if you’re not careful and that if you’re doing this solely for the money, that you’ll easily lose one of the few motivations that sustains anyone through anything difficult : love. [...] Don’t take yourself so seriously. A startup can and should be fun. It doesn’t have to be a 24/7 party in your pants fun, but you should at least be smiling a lot.

Great. Now no one is going to want to hear my presentation anymore ;)