Master of 500 Hats

Elvis has left the building

my friend Leonard left eBay the other day, to much fanfare.  right now his going-away souvenir is up to $400 (!) on eBay.

he also started a new blog, called 1298 Blog Street, an update on life after eBay.  personally, i think he was just jealous i was getting too much damn attention after leaving PayPal and blogging up a storm.  can't keep up with the Joneses, eh Lenny?

now he thinks he can do comedy too.  Leonard, lemme give you some advice bubba -- don't quit your day job.  OOPS!  too late...

i guess if Leonard is good for something, it's knowing how to get features green-lighted (and occasionally pulled, again with much fanfare :)  for more on his unique area of expertise, ask him about the 'see attachment' method which is now standard training  for all eBay product managers.

in all seriousness though: Leonard is an awesome guy, and super sharp.  eBay is probably a bit worried that more folks like him don't start looking around for greener pastures.  regardless, Leonard deserves to take some time off before he starts cooking up something tasty again. 

but don't wait too long my friend -- we're all gettin' hungry for your cookin'.

Top 5 Services for Entrepreneurs

5 Most Valuable Services Most Entrepreneurs Can't Afford

this is a great post, just chock-full of good tips & information.  thanks to Paul Allen (in Utah, the one who started Ancestry.com and MyFamily.com, not the one in Seattle who started Microsoft). 

also, here's another great list of resources link from his site.

thanks Paul!

I'm my own Grandpa

Some of you may not know the song reference above, but i find this post on our new startup by Scott Loftesness pretty funny.  The older (more senile?) i become, the more life seems to generate coincidences and other self-referential minutiae. 

I don't know about you, but when stuff like this happens i have to smile... as if some Omnipotent Being were trying to make a series of bad puns on a cosmic scale.  Imagine if you will that God does exist, but turns out he's an amateur stand-up comedian and it's open mike night.  Hey folks, I'm here all millenia -- try the hydrocarbons, they're terrific.  But seriously, take the Mesozoic era, please... oh well.  Then again, maybe this only makes people who are borderline nutcases like me laugh.  whatEVr.  In my book having an easily-tickled funny bone is a genetic advantage.

So anyway, while i was down at Etech, i ended up having dinner with some folks from the Omidyar Network (nee Omidyar Foundation) and a few other friends.  Turns out one of the people at dinner works for A9, and his name is Dave Loftesness, son of Scott mentioned above.  Sharp guy, and very nice to boot.  We talked a bit about travelling in Japan, and seems to be just as much an interesting person to talk to as his dad.  (btw, thanks to Rob Hayes and Doug Solomon for taking us out to dinner and introducing us to Susan, Dave & other good folks :)

I'm sure it's not all that much cosmic coincidence, but it is enjoyable when you have a few random events like that -- makes the world seem smaller, more connected.

Long Tail Jumped the Shark?

I'm guilty as much as anyone, but i'm starting to agree with Nelson that 'long tail' may have just jumped the shark...  however, i'm still riding the meme until i hear non-geeks quote it.  then it will definitely be done.

Folksonomy or Fauxonomy?

 

blogging E-tech... at the Folksonomy session.   Flickr & Delicious etc.

the panel session is thoughtful, but the backchannel IRC conversation is f'ing hilarious -- sometimes the heckling is more interesting than the event itself ;)

the term 'Fauxonomy' seems to have been coined real-time in the IRC chat about 5 minutes ago.  nice pun, i must say...

SimplyHired.com is Alive!

www.SimplyHired.com just went live about an hour ago :)

WOO HOO!

Read about us here and here.

Vertical Search & the Long Tail

I'm running a BOF at E-tech on Vertical Search & the Long Tail

thanks to Jeremy Zawodny for co-moderating (and for letting me "borrow his brand" to fill the room ;)

Jeremy is also giving a talk tomorrow re: Intro to Yahoo! Search Web Services.

Danny Hills, Imagination Engineer

Wow. 

Blogging from E-tech, and i just saw one of the most amazing presentations ever by Danny Hills, now CTO of Applied Minds and former VP of R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering.  Danny showed some video clips of several robots his team has built that do various forms of walking and crawling (6 legs, 4 legs, 2 legs... even a robotic snake with no legs!) that were super cool.  He also showed some mapping software and devices that were absolutely mindblowing -- there was this 3D surface that would display a map and actually CONFORM IN REAL-TIME to the topogrophy. 

Did i say wow already?  One more time: wow.

Weck Product Release

SimplyHired co-founder & CTO Peter Weck shipped product last week, and her name is Maya Lee.

Congrats to Pete and his wife Mindy :)

Who's Going to E-Tech? Kwiki up, dammit.

awright guys... who's going down to San Diego for O'Reilly E-tech, and why haven't you punched up your attendee bio? 

haven't any of you geeks ever heard of a wiki?  i can't believe there's only 25 people coming who know how to use Kwiki formatting rules.

hey Joe, get your long tail ass in gear dude -- Ross already put his up, so you better keep up ;)

for anyone going, look me up & drop me a note, and maybe i'll give you a sneak preview of our new vertical search startup.