At the Airport on 9/11

I spent part of the sixth anniversary of 9/11 at the airport, traveling back from Phoenix.

CNN Headline News was playing all over the Sky Harbor Airport. Relentlessly, they jumped between live footage of the memorial service at Ground Zero to various reporters describing the events that unfolded on that horrible day. After a bit, I realized that the CNN Anchor was crying as she read the news. Most of the people around me were glued to the screen. I couldn't help but watch it either.

Boarding the plane was surreal ... frightening ... was I ever glad to reach my destination.

Kings of Leon At The Marquee

After reading Fred's raving posts about the Kings of Leon, I was lucky enough to catch them at the Marquee Club in Phoenix last night.

They didn't disappoint.

At different points of the show, I almost felt like I was watching a new millennium version of the Ramones. Many of their songs were two minutes or less, played loud and fast. I lost track of how many tunes they ran through - I would guess it was about 30 (all in under 2 hours!). We were treated to many of the songs off Aha Shake Heartbreak which were incredible to see and hear.

The Kings also played a good number of songs off their most recent release, Because of The Times. As I was hoping, they played Arizona, which given the location of the gig, went over pretty well with the packed house. The melody of the song, as well as Knocked Up's are burned in my brain. I spent a number of hours squirreled away, the disc on repeat, wiring up Struts and Scriptalicious (along with StrutsTestCase)

Overall, an incredible show.

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Love is F8

I snapped the picture below tonight in Palo Alto on my camera phone.

The license plate on the Mercedes reads "[HEART] is F8"

The driver was a 50-ish woman while the backseat was occupied by a 20-something male with brown hair.

I didn't get a great look at the passenger, but I'm still wondering if Mark Zuckerberg was being driven somewhere by his mother...

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comScore Adjusts Metrics

NewTeeVee has a post detailing changes comScore is making to count not only page views, but video streams and embeds.

Liz Gannes includes a table showing that Revver is likely underrepresented in the Hitwise numbers LeeAnn Prescott posted a month ago.

As I posted at the time, services like Revver and Blip.tv that have an embedding strategy have to be evaluated against the other video services in a similar fashion. As embedding is added to the vast majority of video sites, page views alone won't show an accurate picture of utilization. As advertising moves into video, accurate metrics will become crucial.

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Eight Weeks Till Portland!

This week marks the halfway point for those of us training for the upcoming Portland Marathon (those of us on a 16 week training schedule anyway)

Just to give myself a little extra preparation, I actually added a 5 week "pre-training" schedule where I increased my weekly overall mileage and my weekly long run.

So, whether you are doing training using the Furman method, working with Team in Training or just plain hardcore (four 20+ mile runs? Ouch), buckle up - you're halfway there! The next 6 weeks are going to require proper nutrition, rest and endurance. After that comes a much-needed taper and then race day!

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Censored at Lollapalooza

I tend to avoid political commentary on this blog. However, this bit of news really caught my attention:

Pearl Jam posted today that AT&T, the official home of the Lollapalooza webcast, censored a portion of the Pearl Jam song "Daughter".

 

To the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall", singer Eddie Vedder sang the following:

"George Bush, leave this world alone."

 

and

"George Bush find yourself another home."

Both were "missing" from the webcast. Check out this post and the comments for more, particularly this comment

 

"has anyone noticed the audio cuts out during the amoco song and when eddie begins to sing about george w during another brick in the wall. maybe its me.....at&t??"

Pearl Jam committed no crime, there was no foul language, libel, etc. Simply a singer in a band expressing his opinion about a political leader. Last time I checked, this type of speech was protected by the First Amendment. Of course, just a little diligence shows that the overt cronyism at the FCC via the appointment of Chairman Kevin J. Martin is probably the root of the issue. Like other areas of government (Health and Human Services, NASA, etc) the Bush/Cheney cabal is hard at work to limit dissent. Just like Putin is doing....

 

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The Start of What's Next

Today is the start of What's Next Two years and a few months after the acquisition of MessageCast, the company I started in my living room, I've begun transitioning my responsibilities to a peer at Microsoft. The change is bittersweet; I am looking forward to tackling new projects but at the same time find it hard to let go of an idea I had in 2001. The assembled team was one of the strongest I have ever built. We faced a number of tough technical and organizational challenges. I learned many things along the way, one of which is that to be successful at Microsoft, all paths lead to Redmond. Working from a satellite campus like SVC, the opportunities pale in comparison. Once I've finished transitioning my responsibilities I'll be starting the next chapter. A little frightening, but overall, working on What's Next is as exciting as it gets.

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Cramer on Housing

Some food for thought via Cramer - he thinks 100% (yep, 100%) of mortgages written in 2006 are worthless - he says there is no difference between sub-prime and prime when it comes to 2/28 loans. Big implications for the economy?

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7e9H4zTqk4]

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YouTube Has Twice the Traffic of All Other Services Combined?

Interesting analysis over at LeAnn's Prescott's Hitwise blog today - she claims

As of May 2007, YouTube's market share was 50% greater than those 64 sites combined.

(The "64 sites" are unspecified). She also includes the following chart showing the Top 10 video sites in terms of traffic.

Jeremiah Owyang then publishes this verbatim without looking at something quite important - the study *does not* include embedded video players. As she notes in her post

this only includes site visits, not streams or streams from views on embedded videos

Without this key piece of data, her study inflates the views and is really an apples-to-oranges comparison. Sites like Blip and Revver use their embedded player all over, yet neither shows on her list in the Top10.

Color me skeptical.

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