« June 2004 | Main | August 2004 »
July 31, 2004
Visual music search engine
musicplasma: "the music visual search engine" is very cool.
Posted by sam at 12:59 PM
July 30, 2004
Dinner with Bill Gates
Notes from an intern dinner at Bill G's house. Wow, the house sounds like Dr. Evil's lair
Posted by sam at 12:04 PM
Guerrilla drive-in
Now Playing, a Digital Brigadoon [also from bubbleg]. Guerrilla drive-in theater in Santa Cruz, CA.
Posted by sam at 11:45 AM
More from Wal-Mart news
Politics of CostCo vs. Wal-Mart [from bubblegeneration].
Posted by sam at 11:42 AM
July 28, 2004
419 bank scam
From a promising email I received today:
I work for Allied Irish Bank (AIB) here in Dublin, Ireland. I am a relationship officer and one of my biggest customers was Isam Mattar, a Lebanese, now deceased. He had a fixed time deposit with my Bank which has matured and remains unclaimed till now. It runs into the value of 24 Million Euro.My god, if you're going to scam me at least promise to give me 50% of the take. I wonder what the typical split offer is in this business...
...
We have decided that your share shall be 30% while we shall take home 35% each. Kindly take note of this to avoid ant future dispute on how to distribute the facility among us.
Posted by sam at 09:39 PM
Spam
Study shows 20% of respondents bought something from spam. That's ridiculous. Maybe the people who buy from spam are more likely to respond to stupid surveys like this one.
Posted by sam at 05:12 PM
July 27, 2004
Vigilante justice
Yesterday afternoon my friend Sam comes into my office and tells me that his car was stolen.
...
My friend starts calling him every 30 seconds. "Bones" ain't picking up. Finally, I decide to call him. He picks up and the following dialogue transpires:
Bones: Who dis?
Me: That doesn't matter Bones...
Bones: Who dis?
Me: I'm the guy who was trained by the IDF who's going to get my friend's car back.
Posted by sam at 09:01 PM
July 23, 2004
I met Scoble at BlogOn 2004
And I came within six inches of Craig from Craigslist fame. There's a summer highlight for you.
Today I'm at the BlogOn 2004 conference on a student scholarship. I'm here as an investor, blogger and shill for SightSpeed.
But if I hear the damn word 'blog' one more time I'm going to run. Something about that word has always bugged me... This whole conference strikes me as a real in-crowd congratulatory "look at all the cool stuff we're doing, oh we're so great; we're going to revolutionize media - blah blah blah." A bunch of smart people focusing on problems that really don't matter all that much.
I think that's what bugs me about 'blog.' Like most jargon it seems designed to differentiate those who know and those who don't. And everybody here 'knows' and the tone of all the talk strikes me as self-congratulatory about knowing.
Early in the day someone even showed a video of short on-the-street interviews in NYC. They asked random people if they know "what blogging is." Most didn't of course, and the whole crowd laughed. Was the laughter at 'us' or 'them'? That was unclear.
Unlike any other conference I've ever been to, when I introduced myself as a Cornell student and intern I kept getting the same feeling, like they were making an instant judgement that I'm a nobody. Eyes would glaze over and their attention was long gone. Never had that experience before.
Posted by sam at 07:10 PM
Johnson School Camp $tart-Up
CU Johnson School's Camp $tart-Up program prepares high school girls for business careers:
Last week 28 young women, ages 12 to 18, came to campus to take part in this summer's Cornell Camp $tart-Up. They got to take classes in Sage Hall geared to high school-age girls on such business-related subjects as finance and accounting, operations and quality control, and sales and service; live in a residential house, Akwe:kon; and in their spare time, hang out where Cornell students on North Campus do, at the Robert Purcell Community Center.
What about statistics? No b-school experience is complete without stats!
Posted by sam at 12:46 AM
17 days, 20 hours and 30 minutes
I haven't slept more than six hours any day this week. It sucks. Between work and summer school there's just way too much on my mind.
Only two weeks to go before Cancun! We're hoping to get an email out in the next few days with some travel tips.
Posted by sam at 12:30 AM
July 21, 2004
The buying funnel
If you've been paying attention (don't worry if you haven't), you know that I learned all of three things in school last year (1, 2, 3). I've learned a few things about startup marketing this summer and I'm going to begin sharing them now. First up, the funnel.
Always know your buying funnel. The funnel is the process a customer goes through to actually buy something. For SightSpeed, the process looks something like this (each stage could even be broken down further):
- Hear about the product
- Visit the web site
- Register
- Install software
- Confirm registration
- Try software
- Buy service
If you know exactly how many people you lose at each stage you can 1) benchmark against industry norms, 2) benchmark against yourself over time and 3) better determine where to allocate resources.
Next up, the power of low expectations.
Posted by sam at 01:29 AM
July 20, 2004
Mens fashion, a new low for tingleff.com
Flying Shirttails, the New Pennants of Rebellion
Dan Peres, the editor of Details, in his suit, Converse All Stars and with his shirttails out. "Maybe for a funeral I would tuck," he says.
Posted by sam at 03:09 PM
July 16, 2004
Martha goes to jail
Martha gets five months in prison:
After completing that service, the judge said Ms. Stewart would have to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet as well as have her phone monitored for five months of home detention.You can bet that's going to be the best darn looking electronic monitoring bracelet you'll ever see.
Posted by sam at 06:11 PM
Happy birthday Breean!
I hope you have a wonderful birthday. Sorry I can't be there!
Posted by sam at 09:47 AM
July 15, 2004
Can you read this? Cause I'm not sure that I can
Posted by sam at 11:43 PM
July 09, 2004
Just in case anyone hasn't seen these
Posted by sam at 10:53 PM
July 08, 2004
Political marketing
'Pessimism' [from scripting.com]:
By taking this single word "pessimism" and using it to characterize the Democracts, the Bush campaign brilliantly defuses any criticism of the Bush presidency. Even better, it shifts the blame to the opposition who is calling attention to the problems.Nobody can claim this is a new technique in politics.
Posted by sam at 04:23 PM
Mystery of the Consul General's wife
I'm having dinner tonight at the Norwegian consulate's house in San Francisco. How did that happen, you ask...
The class I'm taking this summer is 90% Norwegian students, most of whom found the program through the Norwegian School of Entrepreneurship. This school shares an office with the consulate and seems to have close ties with him.
The consulate generously offered to host the entire class for dinner tonight. The invitation says:
The Consul General of Norway
Are-Jostein Norheimand Mrs. Susana Lactoo Norheim
request the pleasure of the company of
...
Just like that, with his wife's name crossed out. Why? What happened?
Update: turns out his wife is just out of town. Crossing her name off the invitation still seems a little strange, no? Would Miss Manners approve?
The Consul General has a very nice house, btw.
Posted by sam at 01:27 PM
July 02, 2004
Banana republic, not the store
Yet another sign that we live in a banana republic: US lawmakers request UN observers for November 2 presidential election.
Several members of the House of Representatives have requested the United Nations to send observers to monitor the November 2 US presidential election to avoid a contentious vote like in 2000, when the outcome was decided by Florida.
Recalling the long, drawn out process in the southern state, nine lawmakers, including four blacks and one Hispanic, sent a letter Thursday to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asking that the international body "ensure free and fair elections in America," according to a statement issued by Texas representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who spearheaded the effort.
Posted by sam at 03:07 PM