Sunday, April 17, 2011

SMS Powered Garage Door

Coachella (4)

The Possible Anatomy Of A Dumplings Crawl


Limit the number to 10. Only 10 people allowed. If there are more than 10 people, they can still go for a crawl, but it is going to have to be crawl number two.

Do it in Chinatown. That is a central location. People from all over the city can hope to participate. If it is going to be more than one group on the same day, coordinate such that no one restaurant is visited twice by all groups combined.

What A Party

Permanent War



You’re lucky that I ain’t the president
Cause I’ll push the f*#king button and get it over with
F&$k all that waiting and procrastinating
And all that goddamn negotiating
Bushwick Bill, Fuck a War

Adding Intelligence To The Biggest Screen: TV

"Leopard" Icons in BlackImage via WikipediaApple added intelligence to the smallest screen: the phone. The iPhone happened. If you can move from the PC screen to the small screen, you should be able to move in the other direction as well. The TV screen is what you meet when you go in the other direction. It is not if but when. And Chris Dixon just posted a great blog post on the topic. Go read.
Chris Dixon: Apple And The TV Industry: the reasoning analysts used to predict the failure of the iPhone before its launch in 2007..... Why do you think they call it a Crackberry? Because the lumpy design and confusing interface of the device is causing people to break into cars? No, it’s because people are addicted to it. ...... What Apple ended up doing, however, was creating a phone that was so incredibly desirable to consumers that it completely restructured the industry, causing a massive shift of power away from the carriers. ..... the last thing the cable operators want is for internet-delivered programming that bypasses their cable channels to become widespread – they see that as the fast track to become a dumb pipe ..... let’s imagine Apple develops a TV that is as groundbreaking as the iPhone was. The biggest problem “smart TVs” have today is that they need clunky IR transmitters to control set top boxes because the cable operators won’t willingly interoperate. So a new Apple TV would have to drum up such incredible consumer demand that the operators would feel compelled to support it. This does indeed seem harder in the TV than in the mobile industry. At least in the US you had 4 nationwide mobile operators at the time of the iPhone launch. In TV, consumers normally have at most two real choices for traditional cable programming – cable and satellite – and two real choices for two-way internet – cable and DSL/FIOS...... Perhaps Apple won’t enter the market due to its structure. But that didn’t stop them in mobile phones where the structure was similarly difficult. The mistake analysts made about the iPhone was to assume the current industry structure would be sustained after Apple’s entry. I’d be wary of making the same assumption about the TV industry.

Great To Meet Craig Newmark

Be There, Or Be Square: The FourSquare Day Party At Sidebar

I have been to the Sidebar for quite a few political events before. It was raining when I emerged in Union Square from the underworld. And I am thinking, to have to get in line outside in this rain for someone like me who does not believe in umbrellas. But there was no line. I was able to get in right away. For a minute I thought I was at the wrong venue. How can there be no line into a FourSquare party?



I got to talk to a whole bunch of FourSquare team members. One of the first was this dude who did "server software" for the company. He was actively thinking in terms of a datacenter for FourSquare. I was impressed. I met another guy on that same server software team. We talked some tech. I got to meet Eric again. I told him Union Square Ventures has officially been declared the top VC firm.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

This Week In Venture Capital: Gotham Gal



I have had one very brief conversation with the Gotham Gal and she blew me out of the water. I do read her husband's blog near daily. And I do follow her daughters on Tumblr. Almost every time I see something from them, I tend to reblog it. This crew is good.

The Gotham Gal
The Wilsons Were In Cairo Recently

Fred Wilson: Mark Suster Interviews The Gotham Gal