I Love it! Thank you Jeffery!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Check this out!
Ok- I've seen a TON internet videos in my day, so needless to say it's rare that I find one that really impresses me. Today I was forwarded this by a good friend.
I Love it! Thank you Jeffery!
I Love it! Thank you Jeffery!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The White House on Flickr
This week the Obama Administration released it's official Flickr channel. The pictures are a window into this Administration's first 100 days. Not only do they represent the White House's commitment to embrace social media but also it's fulfillment of promising transparency to the American public. Some of my favorites are below.
But first, while on the subject of the President's first 100 days...let us look back at what Mr. Bush (aka the War President) was able to accomplish during his first 100 days...that of course was when Mr. Bush wasn't taking the record for the most vacations of any US president in history.
In President Bush's first 100 days in office he:
-Refused to help consumers harmed by the Western electricity crisis.
-Opposed comprehensive protections for patients in HMOs.
-Proposed large budget cuts and misguided plans for health care.
-Refused to provide adequate funding for low-income energy assistance.
-Decided to allow cable TV and telephone monopolies to expand.
-Endorsed a bankruptcy bill that excessively punished honest consumers hit by unexpected debts.
-Proposed killing a program to help low-income consumers who cannot afford to open bank accounts.
(source)
Change Is Here.
More pictures of the White House on Flickr can be found here.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
2009 Grilled Cheese Invitational
Los Angeles State Historic Park
1245 N. Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
4/25/09
12:00pm - 6:00pm
Competition starts at 1:00pm
Admission Fee: $5
Competition Fee: $10
More info can be found here.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
StumbleUpon Goes Independent; Backed by Founders and New Investors
StumbleUpon Beats Skype In Escaping EBay’s Clutches (TechCrunch)
Back in September, we reported that eBay was attempting to sell off StumbleUpon, the website recommendation service it bought for $75 million in 2007. That didn’t happen. And now the company has been spun off to start life over as an independent startup, backed by new investors and the original founders.
The new company is led by co-founder Garrett Camp, who now steps into the CEO role. Co-founder Geoff Smith also joins Camp in returning to lead the company, but in an unannounced role. The company is backed by Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners, and August Capital. David Hornik from August Capital and Sameer Gandhi of Accel Partners join the board.
“The company is amply funded. And everyone is glad that the company is away from eBay,” a source tells us. eBay had previously been looking for a minimum of $75 million for StumbleUpon. It’s likely the spin out valuation was significantly lower than that. Our understanding is that Sequoia placed a competing bid, but Camp and investor Ram Shriram went with Accel and August Capital.
It’s not clear if eBay maintains a stake in the company, but that seems fairly unlikely. Really, its interest in the company never made a lot of sense in the first place. StumbleUpon is a way for users to find interesting sites throughout the web. While eBay certainly could have used that technology to find interesting things on its site, it never did that.
And StumbleUpon’s traffic has been falling in the past year. In February 2008, the site was at 2.6 million unique visitors. But in February 2009 that number was down to 1.4 million, according to comScore (chart below). Of course, traffic numbers are a bit odd to use with StumbleUpon because the service doesn’t require that you visit its actual site if you use its popular web browser toolbar. But last year it launched a frame-based toolbar that kept you on the StumbleUpon domain in a way similar to what Digg is now doing with the DiggBar.
Similarly, just as the DiggBar allows users to shorten URLs, StumbleUpon had been working on a way to do this using the Su.pr domain.
This news comes at a time when reports are circulating that VoIP company Skype’s founders are also trying to rip it back out of the hands of eBay. That may be a bit more complicated as eBay bought Skype for a cool $3.1 billion back in 2005.
In its former life as a startup, StumbleUpon raised a $1.5 million seed round of funding in December of 2005.
Back in September, we reported that eBay was attempting to sell off StumbleUpon, the website recommendation service it bought for $75 million in 2007. That didn’t happen. And now the company has been spun off to start life over as an independent startup, backed by new investors and the original founders.
The new company is led by co-founder Garrett Camp, who now steps into the CEO role. Co-founder Geoff Smith also joins Camp in returning to lead the company, but in an unannounced role. The company is backed by Sherpalo Ventures, Accel Partners, and August Capital. David Hornik from August Capital and Sameer Gandhi of Accel Partners join the board.
“The company is amply funded. And everyone is glad that the company is away from eBay,” a source tells us. eBay had previously been looking for a minimum of $75 million for StumbleUpon. It’s likely the spin out valuation was significantly lower than that. Our understanding is that Sequoia placed a competing bid, but Camp and investor Ram Shriram went with Accel and August Capital.
It’s not clear if eBay maintains a stake in the company, but that seems fairly unlikely. Really, its interest in the company never made a lot of sense in the first place. StumbleUpon is a way for users to find interesting sites throughout the web. While eBay certainly could have used that technology to find interesting things on its site, it never did that.
And StumbleUpon’s traffic has been falling in the past year. In February 2008, the site was at 2.6 million unique visitors. But in February 2009 that number was down to 1.4 million, according to comScore (chart below). Of course, traffic numbers are a bit odd to use with StumbleUpon because the service doesn’t require that you visit its actual site if you use its popular web browser toolbar. But last year it launched a frame-based toolbar that kept you on the StumbleUpon domain in a way similar to what Digg is now doing with the DiggBar.
Similarly, just as the DiggBar allows users to shorten URLs, StumbleUpon had been working on a way to do this using the Su.pr domain.
This news comes at a time when reports are circulating that VoIP company Skype’s founders are also trying to rip it back out of the hands of eBay. That may be a bit more complicated as eBay bought Skype for a cool $3.1 billion back in 2005.
In its former life as a startup, StumbleUpon raised a $1.5 million seed round of funding in December of 2005.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
10 Twitter tips from early federal adopters
Having trouble convincing your boss that Twitter isn't a waste of time? Then you might find it interesting to learn that social media evangelists across the U.S. federal government are blasting out Tweets several times a day to their constituents. Here are their suggestions for how to integrate new media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr into a large, old-fashioned bureaucracy:
By Carolyn Duffy Marsan
Monday, April 6, 2009
CVS joins Google Health Rx network
Google Health partners with CVS.
Jason Kincade writes:
The slow but steady march towards a unified online healthcare management system continues. Google has announced that it has forged a new partnership with CVS, one of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains, allowing CVS customers to import their full prescription history into Google Health. CVS joins other major pharmacies including Longs Drugs and Walgreens in offering the same functionality, which combined now allow over 100 million Americans to import their medical histories into Google Health, which launched last May.
It may not sound terribly exciting at first, but the ability to quickly look up a patient’s past and current medications is actually very important in an age when it seems that nearly everyone is on at least one prescription medication. While national pharmacies can typically look up what medications you’ve filled from other branches of their store, they can’t search through the systems of other chains, so they’re forced to rely on the patient to self-report their medical history.
Unfortunately most people have pretty poor memories when it comes to remembering their current and past medications, especially when they’re taking generic drugs, which can lead to some very dangerous drug combinations (the Google blog post notes that as many as 1.5 million Americans a year are harmed by dangerous medication interactions). By aggregating prescription histories in a single place (which users can then share with their doctors and loved ones), Google Health can help cut down on these harmful drug interactions.
Of course, a central hub for your prescription history is only really useful if you can import all of your prescriptions, not just most of them. And Google Health is still missing out on a few major players, including national store chains like Wal-Mart and Target. Google won’t comment on who they’re currently in talks with, but I suspect they’re trying to get as many of these chains on board as possible.
Google Health doesn’t seem to get as much attention as many of Google’s other properties, but my guess is that it will be among the company’s most important assets a few years down the line. The American healthcare system makes accessing past records, prescriptions, test results, and other important data a huge hassle, not to mention the ridiculously confusing (and uncentralized) hubs offered by health insurers and pharmacies. There are privacy issues abound with a centralized system (the fact that Google insists on labeling its health product as a Beta is definitely unsettling, as are the company’s past security issues), but the potential benefits may well outweigh the risks.
Jason Kincade writes:
The slow but steady march towards a unified online healthcare management system continues. Google has announced that it has forged a new partnership with CVS, one of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains, allowing CVS customers to import their full prescription history into Google Health. CVS joins other major pharmacies including Longs Drugs and Walgreens in offering the same functionality, which combined now allow over 100 million Americans to import their medical histories into Google Health, which launched last May.
It may not sound terribly exciting at first, but the ability to quickly look up a patient’s past and current medications is actually very important in an age when it seems that nearly everyone is on at least one prescription medication. While national pharmacies can typically look up what medications you’ve filled from other branches of their store, they can’t search through the systems of other chains, so they’re forced to rely on the patient to self-report their medical history.
Unfortunately most people have pretty poor memories when it comes to remembering their current and past medications, especially when they’re taking generic drugs, which can lead to some very dangerous drug combinations (the Google blog post notes that as many as 1.5 million Americans a year are harmed by dangerous medication interactions). By aggregating prescription histories in a single place (which users can then share with their doctors and loved ones), Google Health can help cut down on these harmful drug interactions.
Of course, a central hub for your prescription history is only really useful if you can import all of your prescriptions, not just most of them. And Google Health is still missing out on a few major players, including national store chains like Wal-Mart and Target. Google won’t comment on who they’re currently in talks with, but I suspect they’re trying to get as many of these chains on board as possible.
Google Health doesn’t seem to get as much attention as many of Google’s other properties, but my guess is that it will be among the company’s most important assets a few years down the line. The American healthcare system makes accessing past records, prescriptions, test results, and other important data a huge hassle, not to mention the ridiculously confusing (and uncentralized) hubs offered by health insurers and pharmacies. There are privacy issues abound with a centralized system (the fact that Google insists on labeling its health product as a Beta is definitely unsettling, as are the company’s past security issues), but the potential benefits may well outweigh the risks.
Tweetfind
Tweefind Applies Google Magic to Twitter Search
(Interesting article from Mashable)
Remember how Google conquered the world of search? They figured out a way to tell which web sites are more important than others, by judging how many links are pointing to them, and called it Google PageRank (it’s a bit more complex than that, but it was one of the key parts of Google’s search algorithm).
Now, Tweefind is doing something similar for Twitter. It’s a Twitter search engine which returns results based on rank, hopefully returning more relevant results and users on top.
Rank is calculated through several parameters. Creator of Tweefind, luca Filigheddu, lists them:
# followers
# following
# of tweets
# of RT he/she receives
# of replies
# of distinct users who reply
# of distinct users who retweet
# of RT he/she makes
# of links the user shares
This approach raises some interesting questions. Are Twitter users with more followers, tweets, replies or retweets more relevant in the context of real time one-to-many conversations? Is there really a “rank” on Twitter that can be calculated and be useful in real world usage? Could an approach similar to Google’s PR algorithm do for Twitter search what it did for Google?
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