BijanBlog

My Top 10.

This year I opened up my blog's subject matter. It used to be exclusively about my kids and family life. But a few months ago, I decided to open up and start blogging about everything and anything. As a result I have met a bunch of new friends and people. It has also increased communication with people that I care about. It's been great and I'm so glad I made the move.

This was also a year that I started to read other people's blogs daily (or almost daily). The blogroll on the right column have become a small subset of all the blogs that now populate NetNewsWire on my Mac. And that doesn't include the new ones that I discover each week.

So my top 10 is a list of great blog posts from a variety of bloggers. They made my top 10 list because of their humor, insight, honesty or creativity.

Some are old friends, new friends and some I haven't met (yet). Enjoy.

10. How to solve social network invite fatigue. Nabeel Hyatt.

9. Death to User Generated Content. Derek Powazek

8. A Liberal's Pledge. Michael Moore.

7. Life Poster. Jason Yanowitz.

6. First Wallstrip. Wallstrip.

5. We need to open up the bidding for buying off US politicians. Mark Pincus.

4. Munching on your competitor's bones. Brad Feld.

3. 53,651. Josh Kopelman.

2. The End of the Page View. Fred Wilson.

1. The Art of Innovation. Guy Kawasaki

Walking around The Village

  Family picture 
  Originally uploaded by bsabet.

We spent the day walking around greenwich village and soho today. Me, lauren, kids and my parents.

It was beautiful. Around 50 degrees and wonderful.

Photos on flickr.

Location, Location, Location

My friend Nabeel recently told me about a cool location based service called Plazes. I have a Plazes badge now on the lower left column of this blog.

It shows my current location and also where I've been. You can make turn up the privacy dial up or down as you like.

If you are in my social network on Plazes you can get even more information. My username on Plazes is bijansabet

I've only been using it for a few days but I think I'm really going to have fun with this service.

Thanks Nabeel.

Dear Ma Bell : No double dipping

It looks like ATT proposed 24 months of network neutrality to get the BellSouth deal done. The FCC should really take a stand here and get more from Ma Bell. 24 months is not enough.

i'm hopeful that our new congress will mandate network neutrality if the fcc loses their backbone.

George may try double dipping but network operators shouldn't.

Apple iPhone: don't hold your breath

Despite all the wild rumors I don't believe Apple will ship a mobile phone in 2007. For the same reason they won't include CableCARD support in future Macs. Maybe an itunes mobile client app just to have a marker down... but i don't see a full fledged device in the near term.

Steve & Co don't have the patience or appetitive to deal with network operators control their product user experience and schedule.

Consider TiVo. They didn't make their 2006 goal getting into existing Comcast PVRs. I'm guessing TiVo is ready but being held up for whatever reason. Another example, the TiVo Series 3 didn't ship with home networking/tivo2go functionality (like it's poor Series 2 counterpart) because that requires another round of CableLabs certification. The DirecTV TiVo (HD and SD) still doesn't have home networking or TiVo2Go. It's not TiVo's fault.

I think this rumor is actually more likely. New Apple consumer electronics that integrate with our digital lives. First iTV, then maybe a tabletPC, maybe a Sonos like product, etc etc.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love see Apple deliver the ultimate mobile phone.

Just don't hold your breath.

Web 2.0

I think there was some confusion from this WSJ piece.

We are investing in web2 companies. we already did (e.g. veoh, kickapps, me.dium). We will probably do more.

fred captures our point of view nicely and some of the concerns. we aren't looking explicitly for web2 companies for the sake of it. it feels like this might be happening now where vcs and entrepreneurs are doing web2 just because. that's yucky.

basically if you look at todd's very last quote that sums our our basic point. we will continue to invest in big ideas and great people. regardless of the label (web2, web3, etc).

I never liked the name web2.0 anyway.

hope that helps.

Best way to use Google Analytics with Typepad

For the past few months I've been running Google Analytics on this blog.

I figured out the hard way the only way to make it work consistently is to make sure the Google analytics code inside of a typelist is always placed on the bottom right column.

(the alternative is to hack the actual pages but you need a pro account and I'm using a plus account).

Hope this helps.

Tunes for the road

We are going to NY for a few days. I was creating a few playlists for our ipods tonight and rediscovered the Old 97's. They absolutely rock.

Here is Timebomb from the album Too Far to Care. Enjoy.

Snap Preview Anywhere

I just installed Snap Preview Anywhere on this blog. I meant to do this a few weeks back but forgot.

Tonight I discovered Andrew Parker's excellent blog (The Gong Show) and he is using SPA.

Great blog and also great SPA reminder.

Advice Needed: Disney World vacation

Our family is going to Disney World in Feb. First time. We just booked & confirmed the hotel & airfare last night.

Thanks to Lauren we have a plan/schedule mapping out the days we are going to the Magic Kingdom, MGM and SeaWorld.

But we need dinner recommendations. Any suggestions/advice would be great!

ps: my kids don't know about this trip so please don't tell them.