April Fools' Day on the web

Every year, Google, Yahoo, ThinkGeek and other companies publish April Fools' Day jokes.

I almost fell for ThinkGeek's 2007 joke. Take a look:

SnūzNLūz - Wifi Donation Alarm Clock

Price:
$39.99

Wake up to the smell of...Animosity...

Connects via WiFi to your online bank account, and donates YOUR real money to an organization you HATE when you decide to snooze!

For years the masses have told you that if you snooze you lose. You never believed them. You held your head high and slept in whenever you wanted to, always without fear of loss. Well, dear friends, the times have changed. The ingenius sages at ThinkGeek Labs(TM) have finally created the Ultimate weapon aginst snoozing - the SnūzNLūz(TM). People who enjoy sleeping in are cowering in fear all across the globe - it's finally true, when you snooze, you lose!

ThinkGeek, it sounds great! But how does it really work?
Glad you asked....it's quite simple actually. The SnūzNLūz uses the very complex psychological phenomemon known as 'HATRED'. Basically it's human nature to wish harm upon your enemies. Similarly, it's human nature not to give your enemies gobs of cash so that they can grow big and dominate the world with their totally wrong, stupid and invalid point of view. ThinkGeek realized that. That's why everytime you hit the snooze button, the SnūzNLūz will donate a specified amount of your real money to a non-profit you hate. The problem of sleeping in is solved.

And it's easy to setup and use too! Just plug your SnūzNLūz in and either connect it to your network via the RJ45 jack on the back, or via WiFi (WPA supported) if available. Then simply configure via the embedded web browser configuration utility. From here it's a snap. Simply select your online banking institution from the list of supported banks (currently over 1600 are supported). Supply your login information and then select your favorite HATED charity or non-profit from the included lists (over 6200 currently supported). Then plug in your donation amount per snooze incident ($10 or more), set the time, and alarm, and voila, instant time profit!

Common Usage Suggestions!
Are you a butcher? Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to PETA
Are you a republican? Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to the ACLU!
Are you a land developer? Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to the Wilderness Society!
Enjoy your freedom? Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to the GOP.
Are you a hippie? Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to the American Coal Foundation.
Are you a Ninja? Set your SnūzNLūz to donate to, hrrrm, we can't find a Pirate Charity at the moment. But there must be one...somewhere...anyways, the point is it's easy to setup once you identify your enemy!

Never before, except for that one time, has a product created the potential for so much time profit in the world. And we are so sure that you'll never snooze again, we've created a very special promise. We promise you'll never snooze again with SnūzNLūz or you'll eventually go broke. It's that simple.

I seriously thought this was a real product as first, not only because of the realistic picture, but also because ThinkGeek has strange products like this all the time. The WiiHelm? That's a joke.

Geek is the new black

Geek is the new black

So why did being geeky suddenly become so popular? Last I recall, geeks (or nerds/dorks, interchangeably) were exiles, pariahs on the social playing field. They didn’t get the girl, they stayed home and chatted online while their peers were out boozing the night away. They weren’t considered acceptable by society’s Abercrombie standards.

That is, until bands like Weezer and films like Napoleon Dynamite made geekiness popular. Cue the resulting flood of self-proclaimed “nerds”, fully equipped with faux-vintage shirts, Converse All-Stars and chunky, black Buddy Holly glasses. Suddenly, being uncool was, well, cool. Which makes it that much better for us Original Geeks then, right?

Not so much. DU sophomore Brian Carrisoza, who refers to himself as a fellow “true geek”, gripes about the new fad, saying that when it comes down to it, these born-again dorks just aren’t the real thing.

Second Life is just like AWABA

Back around 1999/2000/2001, I used to play on virtual 3D worlds. I am just now realizing that those were just like earlier versions of Second Life! There was also another service before AWABA I used to use, but I don't remember the name of it. Eventually that became paid, so I switched to AWABA which was free. Then, Awaba went away. One day the server just went down, and it was gone. I used to build a lot of stuff in those worlds. I remember making little cities and buildings with multiple floors, teleporters, windows, etc.

iPod 1.3.1 and iTunes 7.1.1 - Where's the changelog?

So I got these two messages today...

A new iPod software version (1.3.1) is available for the iPod "Elliot's iPod". Would you like to download and install it now?

A new version of iTunes (7.1.1) is available. Would you like to download it now?

I don't like installing software when I don't know what it does. Where's the changelog?

Paul Graham: You're Not Smart Enough?

Reason number 3 why people don't start a startup:

You're not smart enough

Actually that's probably not a problem, surprisingly.

Because very few people underestimate their intelligence. So if you're smart enough to worry you're not smart enough... you're probably smart enough! Also, frankly, I wish I could claim that being a startup founder meant you have to be super smart, because then I'd be super smart, right?

But frankly, it doesn't. Silicon Valley can work this perspective on this because there's a cult of smartness here. Everyone who's not smart at least tries to act that way.

If you think you have to be super smart to be rich, I'll tell you what will cure you. Go try hanging around for a few days in one of the fancier bits of New York or Los Angeles.

frickin A?

What's the meaning of the very strange phrase, "frickin A"? Can also be spelled as "frikkin A", "fricking A" or "frikking A".

Also heard as "friggin A" or "frigging A".

I like this definition on Urban Dictionary. It's the only one that suggests the origin of the "A" part.

2.	frickin A	4 up, 4 down
	a curse referring to the mammal known as an aardvark. history: back in the day, people would go rabbit hunting and they would see stuff movin in the field and shoot it. But then upon inspection of their quarry, it'd just be an aardvark and they'd be like, "fuckin aardvark." the zoologist exclaimed, "its not an aas, its a frickin A!"

It's a great time to be an entrepreneur

There’s never been a better time to be an entrepreneur because it’s never been cheaper to be one. Here’s one example.

Excite.com took $3,000,000 to get from idea to launch. JotSpot took $100,000.

Why on earth is there a 30X difference? There’s probably a lot of reasons, but here are my top four. I’m interested in hearing about what other people think are factors as well.

Hardware is 100X cheaper
In the 10 years between Excite and JotSpot, hardware has literally become 100X cheaper. It’s two factors – Moore’s law and the rise of Linux as an operating system designed to run on generic hardware. Back in the Excite days, we had to buy proprietary Sun hardware and Sun hard drive arrays. Believe me, none of it was cheap.

Today, we buy generic Intel boxes provided by one of a million different suppliers.

Infrastructure software is free
Back in 1993 we had to buy and continue to pay for maintenance on everything we needed just to build our service -- operating systems, compilers, web servers, application servers, databases. You name it. If it was infrastructure, we paid for it. And, not only was it costly, the need to negotiate licenses took time and energy. I remember having a deadline at Excite that required me to buy a Sun compiler through their Japanese office because it was the only office open at the time (probably midnight) and we needed that compiler NOW.

Compare that to today. Free, open source infrastructure is the norm. Get it anytime and anywhere. At JotSpot, and startups everywhere you see Linux, Tomcat, Apache, MySQL, etc. No license cost, no maintenance.

Access to Global Labor Markets
Startups today have unprecedented access to global labor markets. Back in 1993, IBM had access to technical people in India, but little Excite.com did not. Today, with rent-a-coder, elance.com and just plain email, we have access to a world-wide talent pool of experts on a temporary or permanent basis.

SEM changes everything
Ten years ago to reach the market, we had to do expensive distribution deals. We advertised on television and radio and print. We spent a crap-load of money. There’s an old adage in television advertising “I know half my money is wasted. Trouble is, I don’t know what half”. That was us.

It’s an obvious statement to say that search engine marketing changes everything. But the real revolution is the ability to affordably reach small markets. You can know what works and what doesn’t. And, search not only allows niche marketing, it’s global popularity allows mass marketing as well (if you can buy enough keywords).

So What?
It’s nice that it’s cheaper, but what does it mean to entrepreneuring?

More people can and will be entrepreneurs than ever before
A lot more people can raise $100,000 than raise $3,000,000.

Funding sources explode which enables more entrepreneurs
The sources of funding capable of writing $100,000 checks are a lot more plentiful than those capable of writing $3,000,000 checks. It’s a great time to be an angel investor because there are real possibilities of substantial company progress on so little money.

More bootstrapping to profitability
With costs so low, I think you’ll see many more companies raise angel money and take it all the way to profitability.

Higher valuations for VCs.
And, for those that do raise venture capital, I think it means better valuations because you can get far more mature on your $100,000 before you go for the bigger round.

All in all, it’s a great time to be an entrepreneur.

Post by the Founder of JotSpot

Online Reading Pattern

Here's an interesting article on people's online reading habits and the F-shaped heatmap it forms.

5-year-old kid playing DDR!

He's better than me!

AOL Active Security Monitor

It's a fine application, but I don't need it. I found it annoying how it kept asking if this was my home network whenever I connected to a wireless network-- especially since I move between different networks often. AOL Active Security Monitor is worth trying-- it doesn't seem to have any spyware, adware, or malware-- but I wouldn't keep it permanently. It had two suggestions for my computer:

1) Optimization software
2) Backup software

I already get Diskeeper Lite from Lenovo/IBM on my ThinkPad, and there's also Rescue and Recover (R&R) for backups. I still need to make external backups (on disc), but other than that, I should be OK.

Firefox Saves Form Data

Awesome! Firefox crashed tonight, and when I reopened it and chose "Restore Session", in one of my many tabs I had a comment written which wasn't submitted yet, and the text I had typed into the box was still there.

Amazing! How does it it save that info, and where? Session data?

Firefox rocks!

Getting into Google with a T-Shirt

Wow, I didn't realize this was possible: someone got into Google by a t-shirt. I have lots of Google shirts, and I always wear them with pride!

Locker Gnome offline

Just for my own info, lockergnome.com was offline for a few hours just now. It's back now, but, strangely enough, it went down just as I was submitting a rather long comment. I think it went through, though, it hasn't appeared so I assume it's waiting in moderation. Hopefully they approve it!