I am excited to see the availability of great movies on the web, in this case, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is on Hulu.com. So I am hosting showings right here on my blog. 
Click to see a bigger version of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
I am a huge fan of the New York Times web site and the more time I spend on it, the more pleasant surprises I see. Needless to say, the reporting is top notch as it has been historically. But specific to the web site: I think the design is perfect for their site. It is easy to read and conveys a lot of information quickly. On those days with big news, the site easily accommodates major headlines that conveys urgency and prominence.
But more importantly, nytimes.com takes advantage of being on the web by doing much more than just repurpose text and images. The site includes a ton of video, audio, slideshows and applications that are very informative and/or helpful. Here are a few of many standouts:
While I watch CNN for their analysis and their cool touchscreen maps, I come to the New York Times for their Delegate Maps. The county-by-county information is updated as quickly for the readers as it is for their own editors. It’s very cool.
Their audio and visual slideshows can be a lot of fun. Their writers are not always the most dynamic personalities but the audio certainly adds a good perspective.
This is a fun and simple application to see the Top Surnames in the US. The information design is terrific (larger fonts denote higher rank). My surname doesn’t make the Top 5,000 but my wife’s is in the Top 500.
This is another example of an information application that the New York Times has done well. This is an application to help you figure out if you are better off renting or buying. Depending on when you bought your house, you will be either like or hate its findings.
The New York Times spent several months with updates on Life After Katrina. The stories are nicely displayed here on this map.
And when the New York Times started publishing blogs of their own, I found them immediately useful.
Now, not all is perfect with the New York Times. In fact, they have probably my biggest pet peeve on the Web. If you click into a story off the front page and then double-click on any word or phrase, a pop-up window will appear that shows a “reference search” for that word or phrase. Now, I am a “clicker” by habit; I will just click on a web page for no reason whatsoever. On the nytimes web site, that means I am poppping up useless windows left and right. This is a bad attempt, or should I say dirty trick, on generating pageviews with ads.
But other than that (huge) nit, I find myself spending more time on the New York Times web site than ever before. Nicely done.
I have a terrible memory and I find myself asking friends and families to recount events for me. For my son, I would rather not forget his childhood. So I was pleased to see Rafe Needleman’s post today on Webware on “Using Gmail as a baby book.” Have a read, but it basically is an easy way for parents who spend a lot of time in front of email to save quick notes about their children.
I got my boy a gmail account when he was born so I sent a note to it today. [My first note: My son sent his alarm for 5:30a so he could make mom breakfast in bed on her birthday. Of course, the alarm wasn't waking him up so mom turned it off for him, thinking it was a mistake. When he woke up, he was distraught because he had missed his opportunity to get mom her breakfast. It took my wife a few minutes to get him to articulate the problem. When mom figured it out, it was a heart-warming moment.]
Anyway, I love this “daddyhack.” Now if I can only remember to use it…
Danica Patrick became the first woman to win an IndyCar race. This is a terrific milestone for the sport. Adding to that is this terrific pose by first place Patrick with second place Helio Castroneves (a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner).
Way back, when I was in business school, my marketing class was working on a case study having to do with dish-washing liquids. The challenge was to explore a niche that the new entrant would take. Would it be low-cost, soft on the hands, cuts grease, etc?
As a young bachelor dude living off take-out food, I raised my hand and expressed confusion about why anyone would care about such features. Price was what counted, I confidently declared. SOOOO quickly, I was taken out back and shot. Many in the room jumped on me and expressed that they cared deeply about the features of the dish-washing detergent. The professor used me as the prime example of the trap of thinking YOU are the customer.
Almost everyone who designs products and starts companies fall into the trap of designing with your own emotions and needs in mind. Even after my highly-public b-school fail, I fall into the trap. But dammit, unless you are Steve Jobs (who has the rare skill of knowing what the customer wants), stop it!
I am a baseball fan and this year, my San Francisco Giant’s team is supposed to be pretty bad. But when spring training comes around, anything is possible. The fans look for the possibilities and scenarios that may take the team to the playoffs.
Well, if the pitching staff performs at or above expectation and we get a above average year from one of the veterans and a breakout season from one of the young rookies, then…
This sort of optimism and, frankly, wishful thinking is both at the heart of the seedround of startup life as well as spring training. Once the season starts, however, the grind of reality take over. But I do love the feeling of spring training and a startup’s seedround.
UPDATE: Found out today that the Giants have Las Vegas 100-1 odds of winning the World Series. Still optimistic tho!
Photo by StuffEyeSee
I am very metrics- and numbers-driven. Just wanted to share a quick article that put campaign spending into perspective. I think most Americans believe that campaign spending is completely out of control and wasteful. Portfolio Magazine has a terrific and short article about how the presidential campaign spending compares to ad spending by large companies.
The author argues that campaign spending is a bargain:
Given the magnitude of the decision and the cost of any branding campaign, the election industry’s spending of a billion dollars (over a four-year period) hardly seems overblown—especially for candidates who race onto the field with little or no brand identity.
Just like that, a deeply entrenched belief has been shattered. It is a good day.
UPDATE:
In the comments, Dave notes that the Biz360 technology shows that Hillary and Obama each got $1B of media coverage in Jan alone (thanks Dave). It’s true, Tide does not get that kind of coverage.
I spend a lot of time with entrepreneurs and the Next Big Thing is always on their mind. It’s always on my mind as well. Although I cannot go after every interesting trend, I really do love to read about them. I find the following sites pretty interesting and fun to read. Perhaps you would enjoy as well.
I subscribe to the newsletters and, every so often, I get inspired. How often can you say that?
This is an installment of the ongoing “Fatherpreneurship Series”, which is defined here.
Scientific American has a terrific article about raising kids, titled The Secret of Raising Smart Kids. The article confirms my own instinct that raising your child to be “hard-working” rather than “smart” leads to success in school and life. I encourage you to read the article; here’s one of many interesting insights:
In studies involving several hundred fifth graders published in 1998, for example, Columbia psychologist Claudia M. Mueller and I gave children questions from a nonverbal IQ test. After the first 10 problems, on which most children did fairly well, we praised them. We praised some of them for their intelligence: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” We commended others for their effort: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.”
We found that intelligence praise encouraged a fixed mind-set more often than did pats on the back for effort. Those congratulated for their intelligence, for example, shied away from a challenging assignment—they wanted an easy one instead—far more often than the kids applauded for their effort. (Most of those lauded for their hard work wanted the difficult problem set from which they would learn.) When we gave everyone hard problems anyway, those praised for being smart became discouraged, doubting their ability. And their scores, even on an easier problem set we gave them afterward, declined as compared with their previous results on equivalent problems. In contrast, students praised for their effort did not lose confidence when faced with the harder questions, and their performance improved markedly on the easier problems that followed.
When hiring, I try to look for “grinders,” people who will work hard to solve problems. In fact, I will take a grinder over a merely smart employee any day. In the article:
In 1972, when I taught a group of elementary and middle school children who displayed helpless behavior in school that a lack of effort (rather than lack of ability) led to their mistakes on math problems, the kids learned to keep trying when the problems got tough.
I find that putting smart people around the table can lead to interesting (and often long discussions), but put together a bunch of hard-workers, well, progress happens. Now when we can find people who are wicked smart and hard working, well, these people we do anything to keep for life.
I spend a lot of time on my computer and using tons of software. And there are certain software features that make me smile and some that make me grumble bad words (ask Dan who sits a few feet away from me in the office). Here are my current poster children for a terrible flaw and a delightful feature.
Grrrr…. The Annoying Flaw
I usually try not to negatively comment on irritating features. I’ve been in the software business for many years and I have been associated with my fair share of poorly implemented features and design. But this one really bothers me.
The culprit is Quickbooks 2006. It is generally pretty good but has a few shortcomings, some which seem to be there for the sole reason for you to buy one of their services (I am looking at you, Quickbooks Payroll Service).
So there is data entry in an accounting package, right? OK, there are numbers to be entered, right? And the numbers in an accounting package tend to be currency, right? So what the @#%$^%@*# does Quickbooks considers a number with a dollar sign (like $10) to be invalid???!! This really really slays me. I copy numbers from spreadsheets and online banking pages into Quickbooks all the time and I have to delete the $ sign. Come on, people!
Thoughtful Software Design… ahhhhh…
Just thinking about a well-designed feature will calm me down. Thoughtful software design is very tough and my example for a useful, clever and probably relatively easy to program (great combination here) feature is the ability to click and drag a route in Google Maps to change driving directions.
In my example below, I plot a map from San Mateo to Oakland. It recommends going over the San Mateo Bridge. If I wanted to go up the Peninsula first and then over the Bay Bridge, I merely click on the route and drag it towards the route I wish to go.
The feature is obvious, gives good feedback and is even fun. Try it; I know you will like it. Yahoo Maps also supports the same feature now.
