Michael Stoppelman

Google speeds up in response to Bing!

2009-08-29T00:50:00.000-07:00

If you didn't notice Google quietly just turned on AJAX search results.

What's AJAX'ing search result pages do?
That means you don't need to reload and re-render an entirely new search result page when you type in a new search query. Only the parts of the page that changed need to be replaced (the results and ads). Re-rendering an entire new page is slower because the browser must look at the HTML, parse, render, and interpret JavaScript every time you load a new URL.

Why does this matter?
Money money moooooney. Site speed is a huge deal for search engines. Speeding up your results usually means more searches. Which also means more ad clicks, bing bing :).

I have a feeling this was in response to Bing being faster than Google when Bing launched. At least we know Google is on it's toes. I'm still a share holder.

Full disclosure: I worked at Google as a software engineer on AdSense from 2003-2007.

New York Times goes social...

2009-06-08T00:43:00.001-07:00

Now when you log in to NYTimes you'll get a login bar like the one above.

Random picture from my weekend walk: Gun holsters lots of them!

2009-03-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

2 questions to ask before you take the offer at a start-up

2009-01-27T00:12:00.000-08:00

A good friend of mine was getting interviewed by a startup last week and asked me what questions he should ask to see if the company is going to be around for more than a few months.

1. How much money do you have in the bank?

Simply the amount of cash the company has in the bank.

2. What's the company's burn rate?

burn rate = revenues per unit time - expenses per unit time

revenues - dollars coming into the business (e.g. AdSense, banner ads, & subscriptions)
expenses - dollars going out (e.g. salaries, computers, & bandwidth)

Example:
If the company has $1 million dollars in the bank and a burn of $500,000 a month they're only going to be around 2 months.

Political Marketing

2008-10-13T23:07:00.000-07:00

It's really amazing to me how republicans are complicit on the bank bailout but they claim they're not big government folks (see this graphic from the nytimes). It's so funny to me how we have these fake differences that liberals are super spenders and republicans are supposedly then angels from heaven that are conservative spenders and for small government. Under Bush we got a new "Department of Homeland Security", in the wake of 9-11. The political marketing machines of the republicans really deserve awards for their spin and neural programming. I really wonder how much research they put into messaging. Are they running fMRI studies folks to see what ads and messages create the largest emotional response? I'm sure. These lines between democrat and republican seems like a bunch of crap to me.

Lack of Feedback Loops in Healthcare

2008-09-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

I just saw a doctor and got some advice for my hip problem a few weeks ago. How do I trust this new information? How do I know he's up on the latest information? What if he picked up the wrong things when he was doing a gait/walking analysis? Would I get different information from another doctor? Doctors don't have code reviews like we do in software engineering. They don't have unit-tests to make sure they get details right. I would love to know what my doctors outcomes have been for other patients (although this has the effect that doctors pick patients that make them look better [recent study]). I would pay for doctors that would release that information. There is no feedback loop for a lot of specialist doctors. Cardiologists have a feedback loop, if the patient dies that's a feedback loop. For a podiatrist, that patient may just go see an orthopedist next. They never hear about it.

Did you know the iPhone headphones have a mic?

2008-07-28T23:57:00.000-07:00

I've owned 3 iPhones (one lost, one bricked, and my current one). I didn't know until today that the iPhone headphones that Apple gives you with your phone actually has a microphone. Here's a picture:

It also has a button on the mic to pause iPod songs. Pretty cool. Thanks to BigO for pointing this out today when I was bitching that I needed to buy a Bluetooth headset.

Yogurt is the new black

2008-07-24T22:58:00.000-07:00

Organic yogurt shops are popping up everywhere in SOMA (otherwise known as 94105)! What's the deal? Are the founders of TCBY Yogurt like locusts? They show up every 17 years or so? Just a few months ago on my walk to work we had no yogurt shops. Now we have 3 on my walk: yoCup, Yogurt Bar, and brand new one right next to Sentinel! It's amazing all the shops would be so synchronized. Seems like the knitting fad that happened after 9/11.

iPhone complaint number 1001

2008-06-15T11:45:00.000-07:00

For work I get hundreds of text messages from our monitoring system. The system sends alerts via SMS. This seems fine doesn't it? Well guess what happens to your iPhone when you have too many (200+) text messages? The entire phone slows down to a halt becoming completely unresponsive to buttons so sending text messages becomes nearly impossible. Your phone is essentially self-bricked. Be careful system administrators! Make sure to clear out your text message conversations.

Oh also a pet-peeve: there is no way to bulk delete text message conversations on the iPhone. You have to delete each conversation individually! This is ridiculous especially when I have 300+ conversations to delete like I did.

If you're wondering, yes, I still love my iPhone even with its faults. Otherwise I wouldn't care about people fixing its problems.

Microsoft really wants to burn its money...

2008-05-21T22:47:00.000-07:00

So today Microsoft announced that they'll be paying searchers to purchase goods using their product search engine (in the form of cashbacks). This is what Google did with "Google Checkout"; this is what "AllAdvantage" did when I was in college. I've got a tip to Microsoft: build something people really like. It's really that simple. If you don't have something useful, people just type in a different url. You really need, to think: users first and revenue second. I would probably take the money that you've just invested in product search find some startups doing cool things in search and buy them instead. I think that has much better odds of panning out.

Microsoft, you're so lost and burning money - send some my way :).

p.s. I'm so glad I never have to use your operating system again, I'm totally mac'ified now and damned happy about it.

The smarter plan for the Google and Yahoo 3% Search Monetization Traffic Test...

2008-04-11T13:51:00.001-07:00

Yahoo is going to start using Google AdWords to monetize 3% of searches. Which searches are they picking? What would be the best strategy for Yahoo and Google? Read on...

Yahoo and Google are now temporary bedfellows. Yahoo used to get search results from Google until 2004-2005. Yahoo has been off the Google search IV for awhile.

Flip forward to 2008. Yahoo is getting crushed by Google on search. They're pretty much the AOL 2.0 of Web 2.0 on search (they still rock on a bunch of content properties). Search is a hard problem, Google has won for now on web search. Google's leadership in search has led it to collect an incredible lead on the search monetization front as well. Adwords is a far more powerful system than Yahoo's competition. The analytic tools, keyword limits, and bidding, all points are to Google. Also, Google has more partners than Yahoo: AOL, Ask, MySpace, etc...

All these factors give Google more advertisers to draw from when picking ads. This is a critical factor for monetization of search. Having more advertisers sometimes leads to having more coverage--which is the number of searches with ads divided by the number of total searches, a higher percentage means you show more ads on more searches. Also, the increased competition of having more advertisers in an auction generates more money as well. For example, if you have 1000 flowers shops on Google competing for Mother's Day related keywords versus Yahoo's 100 flower advertisers; Google is probably going to generate more revenue per search, since more people are bidding for spots in the search results. Google also has the advantage that they control the US market share so some advertisers will only sign up for Google, leading to more advertisers on Google than on Yahoo.

The Yahoo/Google deal solves the Yahoo problem of being sold for far too little. By proving Yahoo is worth 20-50% more than the Microsoft bid, they might end up preserving their independence; if that is their goal. Regardless this test will force Microsoft to pony up more money because Google's ads will show how much Yahoo could potentially be worth.

Lets assume for a second that Yahoo doesn't want to be purchased by Microsoft. They don't want to kill the morale of their employees on Panama (the Yahoo adwords). On the Google end, they're probably worried about the perception of having all search traffic in the US. Google would certainly become a bigger target for the government. If Google and Yahoo are looking for a longer term approach to this 3% test, the best idea is to NOT show ads to a random set of queries.

A much smarter idea would be to target the head of revenue generating queries from Yahoo's traffic. Google could end up boosting earnings by a good chunk just by monetizing a small sliver of Yahoo's traffic. This solves Google's scrutiny problem, and Yahoo's morale problem as well.

Lets walk through a hypothetical and assume only 30% of searches on Yahoo are monetizable. Of those assume a small amount 20% (from the 80/20 rule) generate 80% of revenue. That would mean that only 6% of searches generate 80% of revenue for Yahoo. So by doing this 3% test they might effecting 40% of revenue for Yahoo. Pretty amazing, definitely a smart move if this is really happening.

Full disclosure: I used to be a software engineer at work at Google on the AdSense and AdWords products (2003-2007). I now work at Yelp as a software engineer on search.

New toilet in the mission on 23rd and Harrison...

2008-03-08T18:56:00.001-08:00

New porta-potty in front of my house this morning. Lisa just finished using it when I snapped this photo.

[where: 94110]

"The Prosecution Of Governor Siegelman" from 60 minutes

2008-02-24T22:59:00.000-08:00

Please check out the video below:

Why does ATT care about copyright infringement?

2008-01-21T19:21:00.000-08:00

If you haven't been paying attention AT&T a week back said that they're working with the RIAA on a network based solution to the copyright infringement problem.

Why would AT&T be destroying their brand to help the RIAA? The answer must be a boat load of money. If AT&T is going to be paid everytime a copyright download is attempted they could make a tremendous amount of money for their blocking service. I can see all the MBAs at AT&T were so excited about the numbers. Guys, please think a little bit more about this one. It's the wrong path to walk down, one that's going to give you more shit on your shoes than a walk in the Mission.

BART escalators, what's the deal?

2008-01-20T15:25:00.000-08:00

I've been amazed at how many times the BART escalators are broken. I've tried to snap photos of the normal escalators I see on a day to day basis. I only go between two stations daily: 24th & Mission to 2nd & New Montgomery. I really wonder how these escalators are so broken. Is it that the escalator are crap? Do people put trash in them? What's causing this drain of resources. I can only imagine how many people have to work on the escalator problem. I'll bet you that BART employees at least 20 employees (that's probably 20 * 100k = 2 million to deals with escalators) to deal with escalators considering how many are broken daily.

SFGate 2007 Homicide mashup

2008-01-07T21:19:00.000-08:00

SFgate put together a mashup of homicides and geography around the city for 2007. Check out the homicide map. Kind of sad, and shows I should move considering that 3 of the homicides were less then one block from me. Although on an alternative axis, most of the homicides seem to be of African Americans and Hispanics. I would like to know how many were gang related as well.

I would like to see a assault/robbery 2007 map as well.

Why is this data not easily publicly accessible? No excuses SF, just release your data in CSV so I can parse it.

[where: 94110]

Photo of the day on SFist made me laugh...

2008-01-04T08:49:00.000-08:00

Someone else in the Mission has a sense of humor too...
Check out the post at sfist: http://sfist.com/2008/01/03/photo_du_jour_19.php

Some dude or dudette is sticking American flags in pooh they find on the street in the Mission. Awesome.

The Mission is sad, such a beautiful spot in the city but very few respect it enough to not throw trash everywhere. Just look through previous posting to see what crap I've seen on a day to day basis.

Don't wait for the SF Government for free WiFi order your repeater from Meraki (for free)

2008-01-03T23:22:00.000-08:00

Pretty sweet deal Meraki is creating a wireless mesh network with a bunch of repeaters. They're blanketing lower haight & the mission right now. Sign up here: http://sf.meraki.com/ to receive a free repeater. You also don't need to plug the repeater into your own internet connection. Only 1 out of 10 repeaters need to be plugged into the internet for it to work. Also, you must be able to see the 'Free the Net' wireless network for them to ship you a repeater.

Did I really get an 8G iPhone or is Apple just mocking me?

2008-01-02T17:41:00.000-08:00

Seems like they're mocking me. Seriously, how many bytes are you saving me Apple? What's worse? You can't bulk delete the text messages, you must delete them one by one. Very lame indeed. Secondly, if you don't delete your text messages when you get this message you will not get any new ones delivered! Ugh.

Does Dianne Feinstein support the new FISA bill which will give immunity to telecom companies?

2007-12-17T13:03:00.000-08:00

Here's the response that I received from Dianne Feinstein when I told her that I didn't support legal immunity for telephone companies wrt to the new FISA that's being voted on in the senate today.

Dear Mr. Stoppelman:

Thank you for writing regarding the Bush Administration's request for legislation that would provide liability relief for telecommunications companies that are alleged to have provided assistance to the National Security Agency after September 11, 2001. I appreciate your thoughts on this topic, and welcome the opportunity to respond.

The Senate Intelligence Committee approved a bill on October 18th amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) by a vote of 13-2. That bill, among many provisions, would provide immunity for such companies if they were specifically requested or directed to provide assistance to the government.

The Intelligence Committee's report on the bill includes declassified text stating that the Executive branch provided letters to electronic communication service providers at regular intervals. These letters all directed or requested assistance and noted that the assistance was authorized by the President and was legal. The Committee's report can be found at http://intelligence.senate.gov/071025/report.pdf.

I voted for the FISA legislation that passed out of the Intelligence Committee by a bipartisan vote of 13-2. The Senate Judiciary Committee did not take action on the portions of the bill dealing with immunity. The bill is now scheduled to go to the Senate floor. I am keeping an open mind to whether some other legislative approach besides immunity would be best.

Rest assured that I will make every effort to ensure that new FISA legislation will protect the privacy rights of all Americans without restricting the intelligence community's ability to protect us from attack.

Again, thank you for writing. I hope that you will continue to write on matters of importance to you. Should you have any further comments or questions, please feel free to contact my Washington, D.C. office at (202) 224-3841. Best regards.

Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

If you understand what she said in the above email, let me know. I particularly liked this sentence, "These letters all directed or requested assistance and noted that the assistance was authorized by the President and was legal." Does a normal person talk this way? No, only a politician.

Bubble 2.0 Video, You've Gotta Watch This...

2007-12-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

So true...

Bathroom in the mission part 2 and pictures from the Google office

2007-11-30T19:19:00.000-08:00

Looks like toilets on the street are becoming popular in 94110:

The views from the Google SF office are pretty amazing:

[where: 94110]

Dude walking with no shoes in 94105

2007-11-20T11:50:00.000-08:00

"NOTE: Homicide data is temporarily unavailable."

2007-11-18T22:03:00.000-08:00

"NOTE: Homicide data is temporarily unavailable." is a tiny little by-line when selecting the types of offenses one would like to plot on the San Francisco interactive crime map.

To understand my outrage at this, last night at 3:17am I heard 6 gun shots. I woke up and told my roommates I thought I heard something at around 3 or 4. My one roommate Nate said, "Oh yeah, there were 3 people shot at 23rd and Treat Ave. One dead and the other two are wounded critically." We live at Harrison St on 23rd.

So being the concerned citizen I checked out the sf crime map provided by the city. Low and behold "NOTE: Homicide data is temporarily unavailable." What? Why? No link to a FAQ?

See the screenshot below.

Also, can you please just export you data in a csv format so I can make a simple excel graph? Why make it so hard for me?

Gavin Newsom (I know you're reading this with your Google alert) and I know you don't respond to emails or even have an assistant respond so you can you please look into this?

Pretty freaking ridiculous that a government elected by the people is trying to hide data from the people that elect it. Sounds like they're protecting their own butts just so we the citizens don't see it.

Bano on the street in 94110

2007-11-17T12:40:00.001-08:00

The shopping cart that died!

2007-11-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

Halloween costumes! Gotta love 'em

2007-10-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

What kind of machine is it?

2007-10-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

Jeremy and Russ talking at Forum

2007-10-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

Live band at philz coffee today till 5pm

2007-10-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

Why is viewing a PDF file so painful?

2007-10-16T11:08:00.001-07:00

PDF files are so freaking painful to open in windows. Why is that? Why
does Firefox always crash and burn? Adobe please tell me. Adobe's Acrobat
has been shit for so many years. Fix your crappy product and let me know when
I should click on a pdf file again.

Charles Chocolates elite event

2007-10-13T15:00:00.001-07:00

Only 575 at barney's!

2007-10-07T17:38:00.000-07:00

Fleet week!

2007-10-06T15:18:00.000-07:00

This happens in the Mission all the time

2007-09-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

Is it a person or a pile of clothes?

Photo of woman taking photo of a parrot at sushi groove south

2007-09-26T20:15:00.000-07:00

N95 next to an iPhone

2007-09-25T18:31:00.000-07:00

New startup: Rescuetime

2007-09-24T14:44:00.001-07:00

Rescuetime sucks down all your network and process traffic and makes little reports on how much time you're using in each application.
Kind of scary to see where all your time goes. I love collecting data, so I'm psyched to be using this, especially since I just got the invite code today.

Nice mannequin

2007-09-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

My new conditioner!

2007-09-07T17:58:00.000-07:00

2007-09-07T17:50:00.000-07:00

Looks like Belkin couldn't make a smaller adapter for the headphone jack on the iPhone. Pretty funny, I must say.

Walking through the Mission...

2007-08-21T22:20:00.001-07:00

"In the fucking garden." - Picture taken of my potter right outside my apartment.

"Homeless explosion." - Taken at 23rd and Harrison.

"Couches mating." - Again 23rd and Harrison, next to the "Homeless Explosion".

"The Real Mission bar." - Taken at 23rd and Harrison.

I call this "Bling Bling", it's on 23rd and Mission.

Yelp API -- start your mashups

2007-08-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

We just launched our new developer API.

Main API calls:

Search API - search using a search query (e.g. pizza) plus one of the following: address, geobox, or geo-point w/ radius + search term search.
Phone API - Given a phone number you'll get review snippets/photos back.
Neighborhood API - Given an address or geo-point find out what neighborhood is it in.

Lots of cool stuff to do with it. Leave comments if you have any suggestions for future development...

Apple you suck for making anyone buy this...

2007-07-29T23:31:00.001-07:00

Apple, your iPhone is great, but come on. $20 dollars because you screwed up on designing the headphone jack? Please.

Cool random photo of chocolate bars...

2007-07-29T23:27:00.000-07:00

I went to Chocolate Covered this weekend in Noe to get some dark chocolate and some gifts. I took a picture when I accidentally turned on my phone with the camera pointing into the bag. This might be a cool photo to get printed on canvas.

Here's the photo:

Simply Amazing Sign in the Mission!

2007-07-22T23:48:00.000-07:00

I don't think you could believe that this really is a sign unless I had a picture of it. This was in the Chilli Lemon Garlic window.

vim windows maxed out

2007-07-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

If you're a vim user set this in your vimrc:

:set wmh=0

It will make the windows strink to nothing when you split the screen.

AT&T tell me: why does your network suck so bad?

2007-07-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm fed up with the AT&T network. My iPhone can only be so pretty. I get 'No Service' in my office all day. Sprint was fine in here and Verizon works too. What's the dealio? Also, I was outside and couldn't get any EDGE signal. I think I should only pay for AT&T service when I'm connected to their network. Seriously, I can only use my phone for about 8 of the 24 hours in a day because I'm at work so much. Anyone else having problems with their network?

The only man in the world to have returned an iPhone

2007-07-07T19:06:00.000-07:00

This is Brandon, he's the only man in the Universe to return his iPhone. He was unhappy with it's lack of features and it's slow network. F-u Steve Jobs! Congratulations Bran!

iPhone and Google Maps aren't happy

2007-07-04T03:14:00.000-07:00

I was debugging the main Yelp site tonight on my iPhone, it's random crashing the Safari browser. It seems to be caused by Google maps + Safari on the iPhone surprise surprise. I checked in the macrumors user forums and a bunch of other folks were seeing similar crashes, hopefully Apple will fix this soon.

Can someone from Apple fix this please, thanks :). Great product, regardless, I'm still happy.

AT&T can you please fix your network, my iPhone drops calls like I will drop Aaron in Wii boxing next time. Unless my office is a Farday cage there is no excuse.

I like my iPhone

2007-07-01T23:19:00.001-07:00

I got my iPhone the first day they were available. It's the best cellphone I've ever used. I think Apple's gotten the closeted to best mobile device ever made. Time will tell if I love this thing as much as I do today. The interface is really beautiful. The details between screens and interactions is amazing. As an engineer that works on similar systems, I really appreciate the extra detailing that Apple went through. There are only a few problems I've had with the device.

My list of issues with the iPhone:

Moving my number didn't work, I was trying to migrate from Sprint to AT&T. Didn't work and I didn't feel like not having the phone working that night. I have a new phone number now :).
The youtube video search seems limited, why?
No reviews/stars on Google maps.
Gmaps doesn't rotate like all other apps.
The network is pretty slow even when I'm on wireless, why?
I hate paying for text messages, I have an unlimited data plan come on. So lame Apple couldn't negotate this away. The day text messages die, I'll be a happy man.
Not having my location sucks, I want to have location aware apps!
I want to define my own shortcuts to websites like Yelp.com.

The camera is pretty damn good, here's a shot of Darwin trying to snag a bird.

Congrats Apple, on an iPhone well done! Apple employees, Yelp reviews would be awesome to have at my finger tips, hint hint hint :).

Are you looking for a job at a startup?

2007-06-12T00:26:00.000-07:00

I work at Yelp, if you're not using it, you should be :). We're looking for uber-talented software engineers that love to code and want to work on a consumer product that millions of people use every month. If you've got mad coding skillz and are passionate about your work. We'd love to hear from you. Check out the official job listing here and send your resumes to me at stop__4t__yelp.com.

Using Datamining to Allocate Law Enforcement...

2007-05-26T19:37:00.000-07:00

Why can't you use time of day, pay-days, day of the month, demographic information and past criminal activity to predict where the next crime will happen so that you can allocate cops more effectively? You can using machine learning and it's effective. This is definitely the way we should be allocating where to apply law enforcement. Here's the article that describes a system currently in development in Richmond.

New York Times please stop...

2007-04-17T00:14:00.000-07:00

For some reason the New York Times website nytimes.com decided to linkify every single article word using javascript. So now if you happen to click on the text of an article like "computer" it will open a window and do a search for that keyword (without any indication it's a link). This is extremely annoying to the audience that selects text as they read an article because sometimes you have to click randomly to deselect. I have accidentally done 5 searches before I was forced to write this blog post. I hope this feature doesn't catch on anywhere else. If the New York Times needs more pageviews that bad, please look somewhere else.

Here's a screenshot of the search page overlayed on top of the article I was reading:

Clickfraud and Botnets

2007-04-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

For 3 years I worked for Google on the click-fraud team, I served as a tech lead for two of those years. I started when the AdSense click logs were only 200mb. Before I left Google for Yelp I co-authored a paper with Neil Daswani about a botnet that we investigated together about a year ago. Hopefully, this paper will help the security community understand the threats we face with botnets like this on the loose. More importantly, this paper illuminates how some botnets are monetizing their hundreds of thousands of zombies. One of the most interesting findings from the paper was that out of 24 virus detectors only 7 found Clickbot.A! Seems like the virus writers might be a little more ahead of the curve than most people perceive.

Using Windows for a day you really realize how incomprehensible security must be for a normal human being. Between the Norton anti-virus, Norton firewall, and Microsoft Security Center, and random Windows updates it's amazing anything actually works. I can see how so many machines on the web are so insecure, we make it so impossible for people to actually understand their security situation. I can see why most of my friends in the security world opt for Apple because we see how easy it is for Microsoft based PC to be owned.

Scrollback with Putty and Screen

2007-03-28T14:12:00.000-07:00

If you're having problems with getting scrollback to work in screen in Windows check out this Putty FAQ on how to fix it.

Which cell phone should I buy?

2007-03-28T01:19:00.000-07:00

I'm so unhappy with my choices of cell phones. Here's what I want:

Awesome camera so I can trash my digital camera.

Good buttons.

Small form factor.

A freakin cell phone company that isn't lame enough to charge for txt messages! Txt messages are the biggest shame in the world -- 15 cents for what?!?

Anyone know of a phone that fits my requirements?

Baby Boomer's View: "Not with a bang, but a whimper" bye, bye Microsoft

2007-03-28T01:03:00.000-07:00

My Mom wrote an article on Microsoft's advantage 'patch':
Baby Boomer's View: "Not with a bang, but a whimper" bye, bye Microsoft

I couldn't agree more with my Mother! She's one smart cookie!

I had the joy of installing all the new patches for my new Windows XP install today. After 50 patches I was already set to go! Alas the patching process seemed to freeze on the 50th patch (actually a dialog box had popped under everything else, but you couldn't switch to it because the patch install locked down focus). I had to kill the process and reboot. I rebooted and IE wouldn't load, it would just crash on load. Joy to the world! A co-worker suggested I uninstall IE7 and try again and found out in the process that the IE they Microsoft uses in the system browsing for 'My Computer' was able to open and access the internet. Weird.

How do normal people deal with this crap? I just want a freakin network pc already, no installing stuff, just a monitor. Seriously, Amazon or Google, someone build it. Think: a remote vmware image that I can call my own PC.

My new Thinkpad T60 and new Dell 2407WFP (DVI) don't like each other...

2007-03-28T00:20:00.000-07:00

So I just spent another day of my life on a driver problem in Windows! This time I was seeing jittering on my new Dell 2407WFP when I connected it to my T60. Time to problem solve.

Checked the cables.

Installed the new device driver for the monitor, BTW Dell PLEASE fix your drop down box on the display products on your support website. 2407WFP didn't even exist on the list.

Looked around on the net for jitter problems with the monitor. Found posts about changing pixel clocks and stuff, didn't work.

Gave up and used an old dell monitor for the rest of the day after fighting for about 2 hours this morning.

Came home and looked for problems with the video card (the ATI x1400) and found a confirmation of the problem on the IBM Thinkpad support website here.

Installed new driver which claims to have fixed the jitter problem. Reboot for the 10th time today.

Still jittering!

Call tech support to report the problem, and wondering if anyone else is seeing the problem. It ends up that 27 other people have reported the problem.

Key learnings from this: support sites have lots of room for improvement. Why should I have to call to find out the driver didn't fix the problem for 26 other people? Why can't there be a customer discussion attached to the article?

I love new hardware! I hope someone from Lenovo sees this and does something with it.

Meaningful Corporate Blogging

2007-02-28T16:24:00.000-08:00

In the past few years personal/professional blogging with a corporate edge has become the rage.

Jeremy Zawodny - Yahoo.
Scoble - Former Microsofty.
Matt Cutts - Googler *
Shuman Ghosemajumder - Googler *

How does a company decide what should be allowed in an employees personal blog vs. a company blog? Should individuals be posting information about technical details on internal systems or policies? Is it for a personal voice or because the company is scared to share the information themselves? If the message comes from a personal blog is it more authentic then a nameless external company blog? Doesn't this seem to point towards the need for more authentic company blogs? I love Matt and Shuman, and Jeremy's blogs; I think they've improved the discussion with the user community at large for both companies. No webmaster console would exist, no invalid clicks white paper, etc... Seems to me that there is a disconnect in companies that more personal company blogs are needed and the dry 'we localized to Chinese' doesn't cut it for a blog posting =).

* I work at Google (I've worked with Shuman and Matt directly).

Mom's new license plate tags...

2007-02-09T17:29:00.000-08:00

This is pretty funny and creative -- today my Mom just got her new license plate tags:

You should give her a complement on Yelp if you think they're cool, I did!

swivel data/visualization sharing site

2007-01-27T13:41:00.000-08:00

My friend Amit told me about this site called swivel. It's actually been around since 2005, but they just launched publicly in December TechCrunch. The site is all about sharing data and graphs. You create a profile upload some interesting data create a graph and other people in the community can comment and mash up your data with other data. I'm still looking for some data to upload to them. Maybe I should upload some PopItOrDropIt usage stats =).

Here's a cool data set I found, it shows Google ranking as a function a bunch of different variables domains length, .org, .net, .com, etc... check it out. I sent feedback to the guys at swivel because I wanted to know which queries they used to create this data set, alas I'll have to guess. They need more meta-data on user uploads or the data isn't as useful cause you can't trust it.

Awesome visualization of housing prices in the US...

2007-01-21T18:20:00.000-08:00

Trulia is a real estate search engine. They have a neat feature that tracks the average cost per square foot, average list price, average sales price, number of homes on the market, and median sale price for 1-4 bedroom places. The data seems to be a little stale but it's still pretty neat. Here's a link to the analytics page.

Screw the IPhone I'm going with the Prada phone...

2007-01-18T17:45:00.000-08:00

Even Prada can't say no to the profit margins in the cellphone consumer market. Maybe I should create the bacon phone or possibly the hotdog phone. Oh man, I'll have to mock that one up. I know one girl that would take a loan to get this phone (oh yes you would!).

Google Earth adds a Yelp! Reviews Layer

2007-01-07T23:31:00.000-08:00

Google Earth now has a Yelp review layer. To activate it I had to goto 'Layers' hit the 'all layers' drop down then hit 'Yelp reviews' checkbox. Simple eh =).

Screenshot:

My modeling career is about to take off... (yeah right)

2006-12-30T14:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I entered into the Blissman Spa competition after Jeremy (my brother) forwarded me the info from Nish (the Yelp marketing dynamo). I described myself to the San Francisco Chronicle as someone between "rugged and pretty", this quote will certainly follow me for the rest of my life =). I had fun at the competition; only about 15 people showed up though. I haven't heard back from the Bliss folks whether I'll be headed to NYC for the final competition, but I'll keep everyone posted. You can read about the competition here; My friends at Valleywag picked up on it here.

Popitordropit - international launch

2006-12-11T10:01:00.000-08:00

Just launched a new website called PopitorDropit. Basically it's a hotornot/digg for video. Check it out let me know what you think.

Wii is too much work for gamers!

2006-11-25T11:24:00.000-08:00

According to this article in the Wall Street Journal, gamers are feeling the effects of the new Wii controllers. I'm glad something is making Americans move; the more of this the better for our long-term health.

Documentary on election machines

2006-11-07T14:06:00.000-08:00

After watching this you really wonder who is choosing our leaders. I was shocked at how lame Diebold's defense of their lame security practices were. I hope someone smart starts an election voting systems company. Here's the documentary courtesy of GooTube:

The Newest Trend the Seat Belt Messanger Bag

2006-11-05T13:37:00.000-08:00

I'd like to tell everyone that isn't as hipster as I; that the new trend is the hipster seat belt buckle messanger bag. This type of buckle will probably be in the Gap within 6 months. The bags are made by Chrome.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about here's a picture:

Richard Dawkins interviewing Ted Haggard

2006-11-05T12:42:00.000-08:00

Ted Haggard was the evanglical president who has just stepped down for admitting that he did meth and got a massage from a gay prosititute. Here's his interview with Dawkins before all the meth/massage info came to light:

It's hard work modeling

2006-10-17T13:23:00.000-07:00

Zoolander has finally met his competition...

Yes, I'm the newest addition to the Yelp modeling crew! You can check me out in the Yelp store here.

Porn Meets Web 2.0

2006-09-29T00:33:00.000-07:00

When I first saw YouTube I thought man someone is going to make a porn version of this and dominate. Surprisingly, YouTube came before PornoTube. Porn has led the way on the VHS, internet commerce, the home video camera, etc... Looks like PornoTube is gaining traction looking at this Google trends plot of [pornotube]:

YouTube vs. PornoTube, YouTube crushes PornoTube (blue is pornotube):

How much search volume are they doing?
PornoTube vs. Flickr (blue is pornotube)

Getting scrollback to work in terminal on OS X with screen

2006-09-20T10:59:00.000-07:00

I was really annoyed by OS X's terminal not working with screen's scrollback which is critical to my work. I found the answer on Google groups. It's annoying that we got rid of the Groups onebox result. For all those wondering how I fixed my terminal; all you need to do is edit your preferences and change your term variable to vt100. See more details here.

Search engine to track how U.S. money is spent

2006-09-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

Looks like the government is making a Google-like search engine for gov't spending. This is a great step forward for accountability.

Read the story here.

My new painting...

2006-08-31T19:57:00.000-07:00

My title for the painting is "Wow."

Yelp! does the Los Angeles Times!

2006-08-25T00:29:00.001-07:00

Yelp does LA Times front cover! You can read the article here!

Congrats guys!

A win for women! Plan B approved for over the counter sale.

2006-08-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

Women 18 and over can now get Plan B without a prescription, a big win for women across the country! Read about it here.

Who needs a bacon wallet? I do!

2006-08-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

I present to you the bacon wallet:

My wishlist is now complete. If you ever wondered what I needed desperately this is it! Buy it here.

2006-08-15T01:12:00.000-07:00

Inspirational artwork I found in New Zealand:

More where that came from here.

AOL Research releases non-vetted search histories. Big OOPS!

2006-08-07T11:59:00.000-07:00

AOL seems to have release a bunch of non-vetted search histories to the web cnet article here. This is a big oops for AOL; checkout what this guy found in the data.

UPDATED: new article by cnet, see if you know the person searching. Scary stuff, imagine if Bush had these logs.

Jeremy on valleywag!

2006-08-04T11:32:00.000-07:00

Haha, it's happened Jeremy is on Valleywag for his businessweek article here. Darwin is damned near the cutest dog ever =).

Finding the jeans (sorry girls only!)...

2006-08-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

Hi ladies, it's your special day! You can now find the perfect jeans using a new web 2.0 website called Zafu. Check it out and let me know if it's good!

d3o Design Competition

2006-07-11T21:15:00.000-07:00

There is this new material called d3o, which gets hard only on impact. It's used for soccer gloves, helmets and shoes right now. They're having a competition to come up with new ideas (you can make about 6k USD). Time to start brainstorming =).

Wireless PCs Motivate Students Says Study - Technology News by TechWeb

2006-07-07T10:35:00.000-07:00

Wireless PCs don't make students more motivated. Come on people! Come on people... think!

Watch out for the eyes...

2006-06-28T00:25:00.001-07:00

It seems that just having a picture of eyes will make human beings change their behavior drastically...

did it =)?

Watch out for the eyes...

2006-06-28T00:25:00.000-07:00

It seems that just having a picture of eyes will make human beings change their behavior drastically... <img src=http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn9424/dn9424-1_250.jpg><br><br>So did it =)?

Sunscreens faulted on cancer protection - Yahoo! News

2006-06-17T15:53:00.000-07:00

So sunscreen doesn't really stop you from getting cancer... great! Check out the article here: news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200...

A Dose Of Genius

2006-06-11T14:31:00.000-07:00

There's an article in the Washington Post on focus enhancers today, check it out here .

These so called focus enhancers are just another way to work around what I think is just our culture's love of quick fixes. Our society just has the wrong expectations about learning, we've forgotten that it's a lot of hard-work to get good at something. Granted some kids really need this stuff, but if you're putting these drugs in your body, you better be sure there might some side effects on your body (brain, heart, etc...) down the road.

Then again, I'm sure some people thought immuno enhancers -- or vaccines as we all call them today, are similar in that they articificially improve our ability to stay more fit in the Darwinian sense.

One social network will never rule them all (in the US)

2006-05-29T22:34:00.000-07:00

Friendster, MySpace, Orkut, and Facebook are all the 'in' social networks in their respective countries. Will they still be as 'in' when the next generation of kids end up on the same networks as their parents? Would your teenage daughter or son want to be on the same network as their Dad? It seems Orkut has everyone in Brazil online, it doesn't matter that Mom/Dad/Grama are your friends. Would kids in the US agree? I don't think so.

Free Nationwide Wireless

2006-05-24T01:07:00.000-07:00

A new startup is trying to make wireless access for everyone in the US a reality! Please make this happen faster! I can't believe that I still have to pay for text-messages. Since when were voice and data different? I think telecos have their eyes wide shut right now... the revolution to wireless is happening right now.

Example, this is a new cellphone from Netgear (the people that make networking equipment). It works on your normal 802.11b network and uses skype to dial out -- awesome.

My next painting subject...

2006-05-14T15:24:00.000-07:00

Google Trends

2006-05-10T22:14:00.000-07:00

Google [disclaimer: where I work] just released Google Trends. Lets see what trends says about the world:

Digg vs. Slashdot - Digg is winning!
Myspace vs. Friendster vs. Orkut - MySpace wins!
Youtube vs. Google Video vs. Yahoo Video - Youtube has taken the lead.
Drudgereport vs. Nytimes nytimes wins!
Colbert vs. Daily Show - Tie!
Ebay vs. Amazon - Ebay wins!

Do your own searches here.

Helio -- even their logo rocks

2006-05-07T23:10:00.000-07:00

I checked out the Helio phone at the store today; they only had the white sidekick one. It was pretty sweet, very neat. I want to actually play with a live one before I buy it (the razor operating system is actually slow). First impression is that this is the ipod of cellphones really stylish. I'm excited about it; but not the $85 a month cellphone bill (although it does come with an unlimited data plan).

Doesn't their logo rock?

Google Code - Summer of Code

2006-05-02T22:25:00.000-07:00

I'm really a big fan of the summer of code. When I was a junior in college I worked on an open source project called Omnigene and this led me on a path to a wicked summer internship at Whitehead Institute . I would recommend this to any student looking for a way of being productive over the summer and making a mark on the open source community.

Are you PREPARED?

2006-05-01T23:02:00.000-07:00

Would you guess this is about Jesus and the end of the world? I didn't. I thought my Jesus radar was a lot better. I actually started to read it because I got this right around the time of the 1906 earthquake remembrance was happening around town. They really have a creative marketing director behind this campaign.

Jeremy and Natalie

2006-05-01T23:01:00.000-07:00

Jeremy and Natalie hanging out a party together. Awwwww...

Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner-- President Not Amused?

2006-04-30T10:47:00.000-07:00

Colbert report rocks; check out what he said at the correspondents dinner! Rock out Stephen!

Three great quotes from the article:

Turning to the war, he declared, "I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.

"Observing that Bush sticks to his principles, he said, "When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday - no matter what happened Tuesday." Also lampooning the press, Colbert complained that he was “surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News.

Fox believes in presenting both sides of the story — the president’s side and the vice president’s side." He also reflected on the alleged good old days, when the media was still swallowing the WMD story.Good work Colbert!

I can't concentrate. Can you? (by Jeremy Zawodny)

2006-04-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

Have you found it hard to concentrate at work or school? I've found extremely hard; between all the emails, IMs (and IMs now in email with gtalk), and text messages there's little room for work.

I've got a couple recommendations for getting your focus back (they've helped me a bit):

Filter your email better
Turn off your IM clients

Anyone else have any recommendations?

New Scientist Love special: Six ways to woo your lover - Features

2006-04-27T20:50:00.000-07:00

This is quite amazing from newscientist... "It is estimated that when you meet a stranger, their impression of you is based 55 per cent on your appearance and body language, 38 per cent on your style of speaking and a mere 7 per cent on what you actually say." I knew this subconsciously, but this just puts some structure around it.