BlogSat

LinkedIn recently did a pretty slick integration with Twitter ... its one of the smartest things they've done in a while. I'm a great example of the kind of user that LinkedIn and possibly Twitter were hoping for. It has me more engaged with my LinkedIn connections and I even had a few people on LinkedIn reach out to me that hadn't in ages because of something I'd tweeted. The integration seems to working to get more LinkedIn users engaged with the site even when they're not looking for a business connection. I think that's the risk of the integration as well though. To grow in terms of users and page views, LinkedIn has added a lot (their app platform, this integration etc.) More than most social networking sites, LinkedIn has to lot to lose because of noise, but I can see why the product team there had no choice to move in this direction. Back in the good old days, LinkedIn was where you had professional contacts (the pitch was Resume 2.0) and Facebook was ...

Google has proved a surprisingly good place not just for great work and good food, but also pretty savvy management advice. Something I've heard from execs at Google a few times (appropriately!) now is the need to repeat to get your message it across. I've heard it stated two ways that I've really liked: "By the time you start to get bored saying something, is the time other people are starting to believe what you're saying" or "It takes saying something 20 times, before people start to get it" I have to admit this was something that annoyed me when I first started here. I'm sure I encountered it before Google as well, but it seemed much more often out here (both internal and external to Google.) I'd often find myself thinking "...but I'd told you this" or "we'd talked about this last week" even as I went over it yet again. It'd get a little annoying. But I've realized that ideas and messages just take time...

Promotions work; they're a great way to close that on-the-fence customer and differentiate your product. This one below (50 songs on emusic.com with a pretty cheap broom) was... shall we say unexpected. :) Call me silly, but I actually think its a pretty slick move by the marketing folks at both the broom company and eMusic, assuming it was relatively low-effort to execute on. Brooms are as close to a commodity as you can get (even the shiny, yellow one that I bought.) And eMusic is one of a few underdogs in the online music space. You need to take any the little wins that may be available. Anecdotally, I'm not sure how much the eMusic promo swung me in the direction of buying the broom, but it didn't hurt.:)

The other benefit of train travel is that I get to people-watch again. :) I was unsurprised that on the ride home 5 people around me had the familiar while earbuds in their ears. Yes, yes; everyone has an iPod/iPhone and they listen to it on their daily commute. The music takes the pain away. What did surprise me was when one of these people (a rather dour-looking young girl with blue streaks in her hair) pulled out what her earbuds were connected to, I didn't see the shiny device that is apparently the everlasting testament to Steve Job's genius, but the device that I had in my pocket at the time. Clearly she was using her Android phone as her primary music device. I looked at the other 5 people, wishing some of them would pull out the device they were listening to. One did; it was an iPod, and perhaps the others were as well. But I'd like to believe that as Android devices have more adoption, this is an experience that will be much more common! :)

Living in NYC and taking the trains now means I actually might have time to get some reading done! Woohoo! So let's start with the books: I finished " The Dip " by Seth Godin (really slim) The message (or more accurately what I remember): First, know when to quit; second, remember there is disproportionate reward for being the "best"; third, being the best requires having the will and determination to power through "The Dip". Great examples, and fun and useful read in a psychology-for-people-who-re ally-want-to-over-achieve kind of way. I definitely recommend it. I'm about two-third's of the way through Nassim Taleb 's " The Black Swan " It a very engaging read. The book goes over a number of biases we humans have and the fallacies and errors in judgement we perpetuate. Lot of great examples of how we don't really know how much we think we know, how we try to force logic and ill-fitting explanations on situations and most ...

I'd nearly forgotten why I was an avid Michael Jackson fan growing up, and would have most likely skipped this movie. As part of an event at work, I happened to go out and catch this and was soo happy that I did. Watching him dance, sing, and meticulously plan what would have been a surprising and worthy comeback brought back some great memories. It really was inspiring to see that underneath and despite all the tabloid fare, an incredible performer still existed and was able to show it. Its tragic that the world didn't get to see what he'd planned, but the film (which is really just edited footage of him rehearsing) offers Michael Jackson - the performer some redemption and those that loved his work solace that despite everything (controversies, age, health, personal issues etc.) the incredible performer was still alive and near the top of his game.

... Google's paid homage to Sesame Street all of this week with different Doodles across the globe. As someone who grew up on Sesame Street, the doodle below makes me really happy. :):) It's been a pretty great set of Animated/puppet doodles the last few months , including this Dilbert series .

... 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.