BlogSat

... so I was pretty glad to see this one: Invictus directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. So far I've watched it about ten times. :) ( Video below)

...after just over a week in the city. Food: more options than the Bay Area, but not necessarily better Food: available till much later in the night than the Bay Area but still not better Energy: 4am in mid-town NYC on a weeknight is about the same as 9pm on Saturday in Mountain View Everything: Costs more. Apartments: Double the cost for half the space and twice the "yikes" People: Everyone walks faster than me People: Nearly everyone dresses better than me Working for Google here: Still just as awesome

Just got served this on Facebook. "Special Feelings" just seems wrong...immature giggle-worthy at least. :) ...also the ad copy is grammatically awkward to boot. On the other hand, I'm pleasantly surprised by some of Bing's slicker features (link to video)!

Occasionally, you find presentations that say interesting things; very rarely you come across and preso that says things in an interesting way... ... so naturally I smile pretty widely when I come across a preso that does both.:) Pretty great Slideshare predo below. Worth flipping through. Trust me the 250+ slides go by really quickly. Digital Strangelove (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet) View more documents from David Gillespie .

The NBA regular season is here, which means I have a reason to visit the Sports guys World again, and delight in articles like this . Excerpt below. " 3b. Khloe Kardashian Raise your hand if you're excited about Khlomar! (Happily raising hand.) Look, I don't have much ammo for the teams I hate right now. The Colts have been ruined for me; Peyton Manning has become such a monolith of clutchness that I can't even toss grenades at him; if anything, I respect the hell out of him. The Yankees are pulling for each other, slamming shaving pies into faces and looking unbeatable; even worse, it's the kind of likable, quirky (albeit, expensive) team that the Red Sox once had before they dumped their front office, ignored human intuition, decided that "business-like" was better than "personable," and used complicated statistical engines to assemble their 2009 roster. (Wait, we didn't do that? It just seemed like it. Sorry.) So really, hating the hatea...

I spent some of my Sunday watching v ideos from the Web 2.0 summit ( fun way to spend a Sunday evening, huh?) This video below is marginally interesting, but also incredibly bizarre. The folks who paid however-many-ks to attend the Web 2.0 summit, sit for 35 mins and listen to 5 pretty normal teenagers being interviewed. They listen in rapt attention to answers about "What do you think of Twitter?" and "Do you use Facebook?" and the priceless "When you're 25 you will..." Yikes! There's some interesting stuff there, but really my take-away was that kids aren't really as different from us old people. I'm planning to watch these four (Google/UChicago-affiliated) videos next:

If I'm able to not mess it up, I should get my new corporate laptop issued next week, which means its goodbye to my laptop with far too-many stickers. Photo below:

Great GCN ad targeting? or not? :) Check out the ad I was served in Reader with my last blog post.

Interesting... More from Engadget here . I haven't really seen the phone that's being advertised (despite working at Google :)) and while I like the idea of a strong Android-based competitor to the iPhone, I'm always wary of positioning a product as something that is "better than... " or "in opposition to... " If you compete on (and even better) some features, but don't measure up on others (like usability, aesthetics etc.) you're going to take a beating. :) Also the "Droid does" line and horror-movie music at the end is clearly designed to appeal to a young, male, techy demographic. That's probably a pretty sound segmentation/marketing bet given the product, but its still impressive to see any phone company bet like that. :)

Ummm... The video is linked off Bloomberg's site , and the article clearly makes a leap from "yeah, thanks for coming Mayor " to "4 more years" but still... ... as a culture/people, when the U.S. President very eloquently acknowledges your holidays and reasonably prominent politicians (or their minions) seek endorsements from your B-list film stars, you have to wonder if this is as mainstream as you want to be. :)

Woohoo, example of how competition benefits consumers, but also why competing on price is dangerous (especially when you're sitting on piles of cash!) C'mon Walmart! Lower the price one more time! :) From this SeekingAlpha article First blow: (10/14 - in the am) - Wal-mart announces they will offer 10 pre-release hard covers for $10. Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez is quoted as saying: "If there's going to be a 'Wal-Mart of the Web', it is going to be Walmart.com. Our goal is to be the biggest and most visited retail Web site." in this WSJ piece. Second blow: (10/14 pm ) - Amazon counters Wal-mart with $10 on each books and of course free shipping for Prime/$25 super saver. Third blow: (10/15 in the am) - Wal-mart lowers prices again to $9 Fourth blow: (10/15 hours later) - Amazon matches the $9 price target.

Wow. Now William's story (interview below) is having a healthy disregard for the impossible . Inspiring! The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c William Kamkwamba www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Instead of trying to figure out what to pack, and what not to... I think I've kicked my Feeding Frezy addiction by finishing the game. :) Yes. I can be pretty infantile.

I love examples of being delighted by a service or product. This mostly happens when the service goes above and beyond and helps you do something much faster than you expected or gives you something you did not expect. I just picked up new spectacle frames about a month ago and here's what my optometry store sent me. Inside was a handwritten note by the doctor. You bet I'll take my business there the next time.:)

Nice!