That was the subject line of an email that came ot me this morning from pal Brad: "Mario Batali and Michael Bauer need Public Square." If you know what a crazed foodie I am, you know that hit home.
Reading Batali takes on bloggers
I am in Batali's camp when it comes to anonymous comments by unknown parties. I've taken many hits on my blog from people who accuse me of certain things, and it's hard to know how to respond. However, if someone who uses his or her name, I take the comments more seriously.
Well yes, we can help with that. Personally I think anonymous comments should just be stricken form the web-- bloggers shouldn't permit them. It allows for drive-bys and *ssholes to not even have to raise a finger in the effort of perpetuating their drivel. Moreover, a content reputation system makes it easier for tired bloggers and publishers to enlist the help of the readership to weed out the armchair critics.
Adam Gopnik, one of my favorite New Yorker Writers, brings us this lovely literary look at how two letters can make all the difference: Annals of Biography: Angels and Ages: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
Coming to the end of the book, to the night of April 14, 1865, and Lincoln's assassination, I reached the words that were once engraved in every American mind. At 7:22 A.M., as Lincoln drew his last breath, all the worthies who had crowded into a little back bedroom in a boarding house across the street from Ford's Theatre turned to Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's formidable Secretary of War, for a final word. Stanton is the one with the long comic beard and the spinster's spectacles, who in the photographs looks a bit like Mr. Pickwick but was actually the iron man in the Cabinet, and who, after a difficult beginning, had come to revere Lincoln as a man and a writer and a politician—had even played something like watchful Horatio to his tragic Hamlet. Stanton stood still, sobbing, and then said, simply, "Now he belongs to the ages."...
For the flight home, I picked up James L. Swanson's "Manhunt," a vivid account of the assassination and the twelve-day search for John Wilkes Booth that followed. Once again, I came to the deathbed scene, the vigil, the gathering. The Reverend Dr. Gurley, the Lincoln family minister, said, " 'Let us pray.' He summoned up . . . a stirring prayer. . . . Gurley finished and everyone murmured 'Amen.' Then, no one dared to speak. Again Stanton broke the silence. 'Now he belongs to the angels.' "Now he belongs to the angels? Where had that come from? There was a Monty Python element here ("What was that? I think it was 'Blessed are the cheesemakers' " the annoyed listeners too far from the Mount say to each other in "Life of Brian"), but was there something more going on?
Yogi Berra once said "No one goes there anymore — it's too crowded." He could have said it about Coupa Cafe. This cozy -comfy cafe in Palo Alto is too cozy, as it's packed to the gills with tech workers, students, VCs (although they are relocating to other venues) and locals. The food is awesome, especially the Argentinian specialty, Arepas.
Power Outlets: Lots along the wall in the main room. They don't let you plug into them if you are in a center table, though.
WiFi: yes, though they've been known to turn it off during mealtimes. You can sometimes crib from the teahouse next door.
VC Spotting: Perhaps they come back if things quiet down...
I've decided to start a new "series": Homes for the New New Migrant Worker, or Cafes that Won't Kick You out.
Our inagural cafe: Cafe del Doge in Palo Alto.
The cafe has had a few other names in the past, but this latest incarnation looks like it will make it. It's arrogantly, vigorously Italian. I've been abused for wanting to add more milk to my hot chocolate (which is the best in the valley, if a bit strong for my taste. Think melted chocolate bar.) It's a narrow space, and the key seats are in the mezzanine where you can look down on people.
Power Outlets: yes. At least two upstairs
WiFi: Yes, not a bad connection. If it goes down, you can sometimes crib from Neotte next door.
VC sightings: plenty
Tripped over this little fellow on the british ZDNet. I wonder if he's working as well for them as Linkedin's progress bar works for them.
On the other hand, i can't say I found myself overwhelmed with the desire to email everyone I knew a whitepaper just to see the line change.
Great article The WCM Renaissance(pdf), and particularly gratifying is this quote:
Web 2.0 is also exposing cracks in WCM space. Much the same way that WCM specialists accuse ECM vendors of "not getting it," many WCM tools that only recently added blog and wiki functionality suffer from complicated interfaces, unfriendly URLs, and other un-Web 2.0 shortcomings.In particular, the prevalence of sexy Ajax interfaces on the public web makes traditional WCM contributor interfaces seem very outdated. Vendors point out that re-engineering their product UIs is not a trivial matter.
Growing interest in user-generated content (UGC) has also created architectural challenges for integrated WCM packages the same way that the rise of the web caught many document management vendors flat-footed. In enterprise settings, most web-content management services and repositories live in a protected zone behind the firewall, and don't naturally lend themselves to authors coming in from the public web.
To be sure, most enterprise customers don't know yet what it means to "manage" user-generated content, and important questions are stalling some initiatives. Should we put UGC through an approval workflow? Do we need to archive it? Do we expose our internal classification scheme so we can cross-reference internal and user content? And so on.
I couldn't have paid someone to better explain the PublicSquare approach. USG is a gruesome acronym, mind you, but the idea is crucial: publish with your audience, not at them.
The publications that willingly erase the line between "them" and "us" will charge ahead. While we see plenty fo pure-play user media companies, such as YouTube, and some cautiously inviting the audience to help out like US Today's digg-like new features, I wonder where the future hybrids are coming from? When will we see a reader byline on the New York Times? When does the audience get to help write and edit? When do the sandboxes start to share sand? okay, bad metaphor, but still..
in any case, I may not know when, but I can tell you how: it's PublicSquare. We have built a system -- you see it now on Boxes and Arrows and on Found|Read -- that allows the readers to write. Any smart comment becomes a story acorn, any blog post can be trackbacked into the idea pile! then off to a happy editorial process where it can be fact checked and grammatically corrected and become digestible by humans like you and me. And we did it with a sexy Ajax interface.
I don't want to sell you; don't get me wrong.
I want to gloat.
We built something cool.
Reading Six Apart - Movable Type News - "Why do you care about business blogs so much?"
Outside of the blogosphere's echo chamber, most people who want to publish a page on their intranet at work are still stuck asking a geek down the hall to make the changes, and then waiting 3 weeks for it to happen, and another 3 weeks for the fixes for the mistakes in the first update. Those people deserve a tool as powerful and simple as blogs, if only to help preserve their sanity. And just maybe, some of those people will start to think "Hey, there really is something interesting about blogging."
Having an easy way to publish to your website is critical, and overdue. There is nothing more painful than knowing exactly the small change you need to make, and being a prisoner to an engineers schedule, believe me I know.
That said, I would hate to see blogging -- short form diary-style public personal unedited musings-- become a synonym for content management or publishing. Too often corporations put up a "blog" which is heavily edited and very much the party line, and the only thing it has in common with blogs is length. And sometimes not even that.
Corporate blogging is a huge opportunity for companies to speak to their constituencies in honest, informal terms. Let's not let them think they can buy a tool and get instant credibility.
blog.pmarca.com: The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 1: Why not to do a startup very useful, and you gotta love the closing metaphor
C-3PO: Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.
Han Solo: Never tell me the odds.
I got an invite to Spock, and they have a ways to go yet. The invitation and the site itself gives you no sense of who they are, but they feel very comfortable asking you for passwords to your linked in, myspace, friendster and email accounts. And then they do it again. and guess what, having put in my linked in password twice, they asked for it again.
Okay guys, first I don't know you from adam, but thought I'd give you a try, and now you are proving insufficiently competent to keep that trust. Finally I run a search on my latest favorite author, Steven Gary Blank. No results. Search 101: there must always be results. At least roll over to Google guys, otherwise I need never. ever. never ever try you again.
Yeah it's private beta, but if you want to bet with my passwords, my network of friends and my trust, you aren't getting a second try. Go back and fix the messaging. Hire a writer.
They when you suck, at least you can show a cute cat and EXPLAIN what the heck is going on so I feel like giving you a second chance.
Results for "innovator." Pretty funny.
delightful slideshow on design
Matt haughey rules my world. From Some Community Tips for 2007 on fortuitous
If I had to give a reason why most newspaper blogs are filled with cranky screeds posted anonymously, I'd have to say having a generic blank comment form is key. Most every community that I contribute to offers a comprehensive user profile/history page, letting members customize to their hearts content and allow their profile to reflect their personality. When I think of mainstream news, TV, and newspaper sites trying to solicit comments from readers, I've yet to find something close to even a basic community site. The New York Times requires me to register to read most stories, but their blog system gives me a blank generic comment form when I want to comment on a blog post.
Yet again, pants are the source of my happiness.
Reading Design Observer: Everything I Know About Design I Learned from The Sopranos
I was struck by how many of the quotes he chose applied just as nicely to running your own start-up. With excuses to Beirut's hard work at selecting these quotes (and do go read his original...)
On your userbase (and pricing):
"When you're bleeding a guy, you don't squeeze him dry right away. Contrarily, you let him do his bidding, suavely. So you can bleed him next week and the week after, at minimum."
Pricing is tough. Your customer is your partner, and when your partner goes out of business, you go out of business. Anytime you find a way for your customer to make money and you take your piece of the action, that is better. More suave.
On creative blocks:
"My advice? Put that thing down awhile, we go get our joints copped, and tomorrow the words'll come blowing out your ass."
Paulie's advice to frustrated amateur screenwriter Christopher: good advice for us all. When you are banging your head against the wall trying to work on the slide set, or the forecast, or whatever... sometimes walking away is the only answer. Getting your joint copped is a bonus.
Sometimes sitting and staring at a problem actually cannot produce the solution. (in my case, I'm blogging instead of working on my slides, and it's loosening up my writing muscle, getting me warm.)
On professional behavior:
"You don't think. You disrespect this place. That's the reason why you were passed the fuck over."
Some founders think they can go crazy because they are a wacky founder: goofy t-shirts, weird behavior, etc. Hey, you are the genius who founded this beauty! But if you don't want to wake up morning to a freshly appointed CEO sitting in your chair the next morning, respect your board, respect your customers and respect the place. And always, always think. I don't care what Blink taught you, thinking is still a useful skill.
On appropriation:
"Fuckin' expresso, cappucino. We invented this shit. And all these other cocksuckers are gettin' rich off us."
"Oh, again with the rape of the culture."
Steal: good stuff everywhere, and you are dumb or proud or both if you don't copy the good stuff. Every time I hear the story of Apple and Xerox parc and the mouse, the storyteller suggests Parc was the bad guy because they were too slow to do something with the cool item they had invented. The road to bankruptcy is paved with good intentions.
On the unintended consequences of technology:
"It sounds to me like Anthony Jr. may have stumbled onto existentialism."
"Fucking internet."
Those of us in the internet business have to remember we are not in control of the 'net, nor our users, not the interactions between the two. The winners will ride those wild waves, handing over control as often as possible to the users and let tehm show us what we've built is really good for. 50 times more true for us platform-types.
On commitment:
"I came home one day, shot her four times. Twice in the head. Killed her aunt, too. I didn't know she was there. And the mailman. At that point, I had to fully commit."
This has been the hardest lesson for me to learn. A start-up means you do not
* think about quitting
* think how nice the lunches are at google
* think about doing a little something on the side, for a couple bucks for a new ipod
* start another company (dilution is death)
You are in, or you are out, and if you are in, you are in all the way. Or else you might as well walk over to the toilet and empty your savings straight in.
And finally:
"More harm is done by indecision than by wrong decision."
Dang! Too true...
Talk on importance of brand and how to manage it. Sorry for the abrupt ending-- I had to remove some confidential stuff.
I was just uploading some old slideshows to slideshare, and found this guy. IN 2004, I was invited to give some talks in scandanavia. Since talking about basic IA principals was starting to bore me, I thought I'd jazz it up by trying to guess where IA was going to go next. I just realized that I got 6 out of 7 dead on. Feeling kinda sassy right now.
(note, first half is about IA, takes awhile to get to the actual predictions.)
Product loyalty: consumers mistake familiarity with superiority
Overall, the results suggest that all the years of arguments over the relative merits of things like the Mac and Windows user interfaces were a waste of time: we're generally convinced that whatever we're familiar with is the best.
What is Ambient Intimacy good for? I think it's incredibly good at providing phatic expression online. Phatic expression being the language we use for the purpose of being social, not so much for sharing information or ideas. It's like the virtual 'what's up' or 'how're you doing'?'
San Francisco, CA, USA - Google Maps catches a man with... er... lost keys?
Google's typical indifference to human beingss sense of privacy being upturned plays out in street view, but it's not all down side:
There is one shot from downtown San Jose, however, that should be preserved even if the images around it change. Taken as the Immersive VW passed the corner of Santa Clara and Market, it shows Cornelius Van Der Vies and his beloved dog Boo-Boo at their permanent spot. Cornelius was homeless by choice, spent his nights in a van and his days on the corner, but with his pleasant and polite demeanor had been sort of adopted by the office workers who passed every day. Cornelius died in late April after a fight with another homeless man who’d been yelling at Boo-Boo, and crowds came to his public memorial. Like many, I imagine, when I walk downtown, I’ll always picture the two of them on that corner, and it warms my heart knowing that image lives on.
