Pride Puppy

My friend Gillian's dog - ready for Pride Parade.

Benetton Brunch

Had brunch this morning with three other couples - all of whom have kids. All three kids are beautifully, wonderfully multi-racial:

• Persian and White
• Asian and White
• Black, White and Hispanic
  

Perhaps it's because i live in the Bay Area or it's a socioeconomic thing (we all met at stanford), but i'm hoping it's even bigger than that. Sex is political - maybe we're fucking away racism?

Veen's Start Conference: Count Me In

I LOVE Jeff Veen and was just starting to get to know him professionally when he left Google. Fortunately, we have occasion to hang out for a dinner every now and then so I'm managing my withdrawal symptoms. To ensure that I don't get the shakes or a dry mouth, I'll be attending his Start Conference on Entrepreneurship this August in SF. While I'm not planning to "Quit My Day Job" as the site urges, I'm often attracted to those who do :)

YouTube Comments: Classical Trolls

On YouTube, comment trolls extend to even classical music. But i was happy to see the comment properly modded down by the community :)

[hat tip brian glick]

YouTube Comments: Redeemed!

The YouTube comment threads take a lot of beating for the often juvenile exchanges. Well look at this - a grammar lesson on a Kanye West video. A tree grows in Brooklyn!

Lame Link Post

Wow, been busy with YouTube and Caroline's graduation thus no posts. Here's a few interesting bits while i get back into swing of things:

• Addictive Katy Perry song - I Kissed a Girl
• N'Gai Croal scoops that Neil Young is leaving Electronic Arts. My friend Arcadia worked closely with Neal on Lord of the Rings. Neil was a rockstar at EA for a while - most recently was supposed to be leading Blueprint - EA's secret new venture (facebook games, et al).
• On other EA news, their Spore channel is rocking YouTube - 40k uploads from users. Awesome.
• And on other YouTube news, we pushed out a bunch of small features this week but also launched our personalized homepage to 100% of logged-in users (it had previously been at a small percent beta for the last month or so). Personalized video recommendations, subscriptions, YouTube friend activity and more to come. Want to see it? Just go to YouTube and make sure you're logged in.
  

Rob Curley discusses his WaPo "flop"

My friend Rob Curley just posted a thoughtful response to the WSJ story about his WaPo "flop" in hyperlocal publishing. As i said in early 2007, I'm definitely long Rob and can't wait to see what he does in Vegas.

More great redband trailers on YouTube

More redband trailers for you to enjoy:

• Tropic Thunder (epic child tossing scene)
• Pineapple Express (stoner buddy action comedy - what?)
• Step Brothers (Will. Ferrell.)
• Hamlet 2 (with the musical number "Rock me, Sexy Jesus")
  

Staycation fun continues: Financial Times covers Walmart's trademark app

The Financial Times article about "staycations" features a small quotation from my interview:

The origins of the word remain uncertain. Hunter Walk, an internet product manager, bought the domain name staycation.com in December 2005 after spontaneously using it with friends some months before.

At the time, he says, "it was definitely not part of the popular vernacular. I had to keep explaining to people what it was".

Zagat off the block - no buyers

Maybe I'm a little too obsessed with Zagat - blame it on my NY childhood - Zagat was the bible. I've written before about their missed opportunity to be the community ratings system of the web, and their attempts to sell the company. Well, it seems that at $200m, no one wants to buy, so Tim and Nina have taken their eponymous company off the block.

Tie me up, tie me down

From an article in the WSJ about the men's tie association (a trade lobbying group) calling it quits due to the record low number of men wearing ties:

"Some members of the neckwear association sensed the trend two years ago when, at the group's annual luncheon in New York, a number of people turned up tieless."

Walmart is trying to trademark a domain of mine

Amusing - a reporter from the Financial Times contacted me today - it seems that Walmart is trying to trademark the word "staycation" (i own staycation.com).

Excellent! They certainly can't WIPO me - i've owned this domain since 2005 - and while they might still get the trademark, i think that would:

a) make purchasing the domain attractive to them
b) increase direct navigation traffic to staycation.com if they start using the word

Fun stuff - maybe i should ping their legal firm and see if Walmart wants to make me an offer.....

Design for Zuck!

Facebook house ad for UE recruiting? "Design for Zuckerberg" - really?