The Elves of 2007

Since I posted about the existence of Christmas Elves the other day, I thought I'd follow up with a list of some of the Elves that came to visit this year:

The Like-it Elf
The Cozy Elf
The Naughty Elf
The Here & There & Back Again Elf
The Early Morning Elf
The DC Elf
The Lounging Elf
The Rival Elves (apparently from NC State and UNC)
The Asana Elf
The Shiny Elf

And I know that at least a few different Elves showed up out in North Carolina this year at my sister's house (where most of my family was this year):

The Sartorial Elf
The Chance Elf
The Self-Serving Elf

T-Minus 48 hrs to Orange Rolls

My family has a number of long-standing Christmas traditions, most centered around food in one way or another. One of my favorites, though, and one that I've continued since leaving home, is to have Orange Rolls (family recipe) and bacon for breakfast on Christmas day.

Orange Rolls are light and fluffy (at least how I make them) with a mild Orange taste and an orange glaze. And bacon is, well, salty. Salty-sweet perfection. mmmmm.

And it's the perfect breakfast to eat over the course of the gift-opening marathon that takes place Christmas morning.

[sigh] so good.

can't wait.

Christmas is for the Elves

You may not believe in Santa Clause, but at least his Elves are real. At least in my family. Every year I get a number of gifts from various Elves, most nice, some used, some, well, mischevious. And I love it.

My family loves to give gifts, and we give (and get) a lot of them. The typical Christmas morning takes maybe 3-4 hours because of the number of gifts, and because we open them one at a time. Awesome. (plus orange rolls and bacon, double awesome, but that's for another post)

And a lot of those gifts are from Elves. For example, I frequently get great books from the "Used-Book Elf", who must frequent used-book stores looking for the books that other folks in the family have read and enjoyed. I *never* get a used book from someone in the family, even though they have obviously read the same book the Elf is giving me, but then, who gives a used book on Christmas? It's just not right. But the Elves have their own thinking about what's right and what isn't. And the "used-book elf" is a personal favorite since that Elf has particularly good reading taste.

And of course there's the "Sartorial Elf" who leaves me looking dapper. Or the "Cozy Elf" who keeps the whole family warm. There are even college-specific Elves. I know of ones from Duke, Florida State, Miami of Ohio, Vanderbilt... they're everywhere.

And let me tell you, the Elves are multiplying. Every year some new Elf shows up. Or a whole cadre of new Elves. It could be scary to think of this hidden race, slowly propogating without most of humanity's knowledge, except that for the most part they're benign, even benefecial; I mean, the gifts are usually good!

So long live the Elves.

+3:54 of fame

A month or so I ago I presented to the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) in Los Angeles. Afterwards I was interviewed by BnetTV, an online news source. I'm only mentioning it because I clearly need to add it to my "fame counter" (previously at 15 seconds). However, I really can't watch it; maybe you can.

Fame Counter Total: 4:09

Still don't have my face on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine, so I haven't won the $5 bet with my college roommates about who will end up there first.

Modern gift giving to the nth degree

More and more I see friends and family members either giving or asking for gift cards for Christmas. On the one hand, this is great, because they can buy exactly what they want, and if they like shopping (many of the women in my immediate family don't seem to mind), they get to enjoy that, too.

However, it does seem a bit strange to me when two people exchange gift cards.

"Here, I got you $50 to REI".
"Oh, thank you! That's so great. And here's your Christmas present, a $50 gift certificate to Macy's!"
"Awesome!"

Ok... so why don't we just spend our own money on ourselves on behalf of each other? For example:

"Hey! I spent $50 (that I saved myself) to buy a new fleece at REI for myself on your behalf! Thanks and Merry Christmas!"
"Oh, that's great. I spent $50 to buy a new coat at Macy's for myself on YOUR behalf! Merry Christmas to you, too. "

Not quite the way it worked with the Wise Men, I suppose, but seems like the logical conclusion to this trend.

Of course, half the fun of gift giving is *giving* the gift, and figuring out what to give the person is what makes it both fun and meaningful. So while I don't mind getting gift cards, I much prefer to give a tangible present.

Strengths Finder

I realized that I never blogged about this, but I found it on my desk today while cleaning up a bit. A number of months ago my team went through the Strengths Finder program, which is sort of a businessy version of a personality test, to find out what our underlying strengths are (so that we can theoretically focus on leveraging them, rather than trying to fix our weaknesses).

Here were mine:

Futurist
Ideation
Strategic
Communication
Activator

Here are the definitions:

Futurist: People strong in the Futurist theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.

Ideation: People strong in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.

Strategic: People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.

Communication: People strong in the communication theme generally find it eway to put their thoughts into words. They are good conversationalists and presenters.

Activator: People strong in the Activor theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action. They are often impatient.


Fits me pretty well. The really interesting part for me, though, was in the more detailed descriptions, which I'll post later if I can find them. Basically, at least 3 of the first 4 strengths all say that I should partner with an "activator", which is my 5th strength! Split personality?

An unbelievable home-grown dinner

My dinner at home tonight was AWESOME! I got home late after working late and working out afterwards, so just grabbed things from the fridge.

But the key thing I grabbed and that made the dinner amazing was a bunch of *enormous* mission figs from the fig tree in our back yard!! The figs were so ripe they were like jam inside. Ohmygosh.

So I had fresh figs, fresh figs with prosciutto, fresh figs with goat cheese, and fresh figs with goat cheese and prosciutto. What an intensely luxurious but simple dinner.

Figs are the bomb. Now if only I could get mangos to grow in Northern CA...

Quintessential UK, Ireland, Hogwarts, and Vancouver

I was out in the UK and Ireland last week for a few days for work, and had a few really quintessential experiences.

On Tuesday I had a great Indian dinner, which is, of course, pretty British.

On Wednesday I went to Ireland and had a Guiness, which was noticeably better than what we get in the states. It's apparently not pasteurized in Ireland, since it gets drunk fast enough not to need preservation, and it's on tap, all of which meant it was sweeter and slightly less bitter aftertaste than the US variety. And then I had an amazing Moroccan dinner back in the UK later that night. (We were unable to eat dinner before 9pm any night, no matter how hard we tried.)

On Thursday I was back in the UK and took off for Hogwarts. For proof check out the pic of me above at King's Cross Train Station. (Don't mess with me; I know some bad-ass spells now.) I also had a fantastic Tapas dinner that night, which underscores the international flavor of the UK.

On Friday I got up early and went for a run with a co-worker and had the most amazing run. We left the hotel, made two turns, and just jogged along a random street. We ended up passing through Trafalgar Square with the statue of Nelson, and then on past Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, and down along the Thames, then back again. Amazing. I got all my touristing done in less than 30 minutes.

Unfortunately we were late leaving Heathrow on Friday night, and so missed our connection in Vancouver, and were forced to stay the night. We were hungry (even though we'd eaten dinner twice already that long day), and went for Chinese! There were only about 20 Chinese restaurants within a 3 block area of the hotel. Food was good, too. It was a good trip for eating dinner. Lunches were another story for the most part, which is why I haven't described them here.

Is oneSearch one of Yahoo!'s Top 10?

ReadWriteWeb has an article on Yahoo!'s top 10 services, and oneSearch came it at number 9! Considering that other products on the list are things like Yahoo! Mail or Yahoo! Answers, that's pretty cool.


Of course, it should have been number 1...

(thanks to Danny Chai for the link)

Real Ultimate Power

One of my college roomate, RD, and his wife Maria are town for the weekend for a wedding, so we had a "traditional" steak dinner last night with them and the Camps. yummy.

RD mentioned a pretty hysterical YouTube video to me called "Ask a Ninja" (and this particular clip is a great explanation of what podcasting really is), which made me remember a very old but also very funny website, which is all about Ninjas.

Workaholics Anonymous...

Is there any such organization? I think I have a problem. Every time I come back from a vacation, I'm so energized that I go completely nuts at work and risk burning myself out too quickly. I know I should take it slow, but I don't *want* to.

I've been back at work after my vacation to Alaska for 1.5 weeks, and have been working some serious hours every day since then (weekend excepted). And I find myself wishing their were more hours I could put in. I even find myself thinking about doing stuff over Labor Day weekend - for fun - but thankfully I'm not so far gone that I will actually do that.

Nevertheless, as I mentioned once before, work can be incredibly addictive, especially when you're doing something you love, and when you are needed. I'm addicted right now.

At least I've managed to stay away from caffeine for the last two months, even in the midst of all this insanity. I have to admit that I feel better overall as a result, even more awake in the mornings than when I used to drink coffee (although now I drink decaf, since I like a hot beverage).

Upside Down

Soph and I took a 3 hr yoga workshop this Saturday that was all about "inversions", which is a yoga-ese way to say "upside down". We did two types of headstand, handstand, forearm stand, and shoulder stand. Amazingly I got upside down for at least a split second on each of these. Easily the most fun, though, is forearm stand, although I can't really explain why.

I'll probably keep practicing hand-stands the most, though, since I've wanted to be able to do them since I was a little kid.

For what it's worth, a 3 hour yoga workshop is exhausting. I slept 11 hours Sat night and still needed a 2 hr nap on Sunday. Whew!

a Voice in the Wind

I don't know the last time i read a book that made me tear up, or if that has *ever* happened to me, but it did last night. I am reading a series of books by Francine Rivers that Soph read and recommended to me, and as I finished reading "An Echo in the Darkness" I had to stop and take my glasses off to wipe my eyes so that I could see the pages. That's a new experience for me.

The story (fictional) and the characters are just unbelievably challenging on a personal level for me. Some characters represent me, and others who I wish I could be. I can't really explain it. But it moved me.

Pink elephants

I got an SMS from RD today saying something to the effect that he was "on vacation, and what do you use to catch pink elephants?".

I think the answer is obvious, and gave it to him.

To catch pink elephants you use pink elephant bait, without the bobber.

Is GMail the leader in Mail?

Um, no. People in Silicon Valley have a bit too much Google fever, sometimes.

According to comScore Media Metrix over 80 million people used Yahoo! Mail in May, vs. 15 million people using Gmail. Yahoo! Mail also accounts for almost half of all online duration spent in the Mail category, 10 times the amount of duration spent in Gmail.

Yahoo!'s the leader.

This burns me up

I haven't been following the blogging world closely for the last year since I joined mobile, so I just saw today that Google acquired Feedburner, probably last week. What completely drives me crazy is that I pushed for Yahoo! to buy this company two years ago, again and again, and we could just not get over the cost.

So does it matter? Maybe Yahoo! didn't need it... Well, no, I think we missed something. Feedburner fits into the "analytics tools" category that is so appealing to publishers. Yahoo! claims to care about publishers, and yet we do not do anything to engage with the blogging community other than purchasing a ping service, blo.gs.

[sigh]. I won't bother to go into detail about the why's and if's, but let's just say that it's frustrating b/c I feel like Y! missed on a really obvious opportunity.

What blogging system to use?

I've been using 360 now for a while, and it's ok, but I feel a bit cramped in terms of how the page looks, and all the extraneous social networking features that never really succeeded are sort of just in the way now. I've basically switched my social network to Linked In (professional) and Facebook (personal).

360 is now only my blog, but not a very good one at that. I've thought about switching to blogger, and have even gone so far as to cross-post the last few postings there, but haven't really committed yet.

Anyone got an opinion about the best service to use?

Transformers, Reviewed

Um, Optimus Prime. Need I say more? This movie kicked ass front start to finish. Awesome, especially if you loved Transformers as a kid.

Eyes on the Prize

I read a really interesting little book over vacation called "The Dip", by Seth Godin, that talks about when to quit at something and when not to. The basic premise is that anything worth doing will have a long hard stretch in the middle, but that all the rewards are at the end, after that hard stretch. If you're going to quit when you get to that part, you shouldn't ever really have started. If you're going to start, you should see it through. In order to live like this, you have to know what you're pursuing and why, and be intentional about it.

I also went for a run while on vacation this past week in a spot where a long, straight section of sidewalk had been creatively laid out with a number of undulating curves. I realized (because I am a lazy runner) that if I kept my eyes on the very end of the long stretch that I could actually run less distance by running a straight line without taking any of the curves. Anytime I found myself looking off to the side, or nearer than the far end, I ended up running the curves, and taking a longer route.

All of this made me reflect that I get unbelievably caught up in my work, to the point where it pushes everything else in life out. I end up running the curves, and not really focusing on the goal. Furthermore, I'm not always running after the right goals. While I'm a believer in the products I work on, and I love building them, I *know* that they in and of themselves are not my life's purpose. What am I really trying to achieve, and why?

I went to a wedding yesterday of a couple of friends, Melanie Chan and Greg Jimmerson, and it was a fantastic ceremony. It was a fairly non-standard ceremony in many respects, but one of the most meaningful I've been to in a while. One of the things that really struck me was how intentional both Melanie and Greg were not only in their relationship, but how intentional they both were and are in the *purpose* of their lives individually, and now together. They went so far as to write up a family mission statement that they printed in the bulletin. Their mission is:

To bring glory to God
By reflecting the love and truth
Of Jesus Christ
To each other and the world

Freakin' awesome. I want my life to reflect the glory of God, and to share with others what Jesus freely gave. *THAT* is what I want to be my life's goal.

But how does that fit with my day to day life, which is manic? I want to build great products. I want to "win" at whatever I'm doing in the corporate world. I want to be CEO of a major corporation someday. And I'm willing to work my ass off to accomplish those goals. But while I may have those as personal goals, those are not the goals that I want to dictate my life or what I do. I want them to fit into a bigger picture, not the other way around, and to be subject to change by God's hands. The prize I am going for is bigger and more important than any of those. It's a long term goal, and one I want to be pursuing intentionally.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." - Hebrews 12:1

"I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize." - Hebrews 9:23-24

I love the idea of having a life mission statement. A good mission statement in the corporate world is something that is both aspirational, but also something that you can measure or gauge any new efforts against, to see if they really line up with what you are working towards. If they don't line up, don't do them. Soph and I are going to come up with our own mission statement, and we'll probably use Melanie and Greg's as a starting point.

Like sand in a jar of water

Soph and I were on vacation all week this past week, and it was a great chance to really let everything go and just let things settle mentally. The best analogy I can come up with is that pre-vacation I was like a jar of water with some sand in it that had been vigorously shaken, so that the water was effectively opaque. Vacation let the sand settle so that the water in the jar was clear, and let me actually think some things through.

It was really good to take a step back from work, a step back from our house, a step back even from friendships, and just be still. The last 6 months, and really the last year have been all movement, all at a manic pace, and I just have not made sufficient space to rest. This past week was too short, in many ways, but it was soooo necessary. And I feel a *lot* better now than I did beforehand.

"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." - Psalm 46:10

Soph and I are going to make sure going forward that we take at least a long weekend once every 3 months; we'll even plan the next break at the end of the current one. Our next one will be a weekend at Pismo beach sometime in September.

Coke Zero is the Real Thing

I really didn't understand what Coke Zero was supposed to be (I mean, there's already a "Diet Coke", right?) until this past week when my sister explained it to me. According to her, Diet Coke was supposed to taste like Coke but be zero calorie, but ended up tasting enough different to really be its own drink.

Enter Coke Zero. Coke Zero is *also* a zero-calorie version of Coke, but is supposed to actually taste like the original.

Soph and I tried it for the first time yesterday and much to our surprise, it DOES taste like the Real Thing, Coke Classic. Amazing. It tastes great!

I'm a fan.

+15 sec of fame

Yahoo! announced today that we're launching Yahoo! Go 2.0 as "GA" (general availability), which is I guess the opposite of launching a product as "beta". Check out this article, which had a great quote from me. Also, I can't find the link, but I know the article ran in the Wall Street Journal, at least online, yesterday. Here's the quote:

"We have a very clearly stated goal, which is to be No. 1 in mobile," said Lee Ott, director of mobile product management at Yahoo. "We're making a major push to get the service out in everyone's hands."

Ott predicted that "2007 is going to be the tipping point for mobile," because finally "the phones are good enough, the networks are good enough and now, with the new Yahoo Go, the products are good enough."

Wow. I sound smart. That's so cool. I'm always nervous that I'm going to make some comment that is going to get misquoted, or that I'll say something idiotic or that I shouldn't say. So, Whew!

Add 15 seconds of fame to my fame counter.

lee


p.s. Here's a link to the WSJ article.

Congrats Will & Ellie!

Congrats to Will and Ellie! Awesome people, beautiful wedding. Enjoy the honeymoon!

The 5 D's of PR

PR is like a game of dodgeball (in the movie of the same name). It's all about the 5 D's: Dodge, Dip, Duck, Dive, and Dodge.

I sometimes have to do quite a bit of PR for work, and it's a very interesting experience. You are definitely trying to get a reporter excited about what you're doing, and give them enough info to back it up. That part is no problem; I do that in my normal life anyway.

But you definitely get a lot of questions that either a) you can't answer because you don't know or b) you don't want to answer directly for one reason or another or c) isn't related to what you're talking about.

For example, one time I was asked by a reporter during an interview about Y! Go and oneSearch something to the effect of "So tell me. What is Yahoo!'s acquisition strategy?". Excuse me? You want to know why we bought Flickr or GeoCities? I get that it's interesting, but shouldn't you ask Terry Semel or Jerry Yang? What makes you think that I'm qualified to talk to that, or even want to?

The trick of PR is to somehow get the answer to the question to be about what *you* want to talk about, and to make it be (or feel) related to the question.

How bizarre.

(It makes an enormous difference to have a great PR manager, which I do).

lee

extreme outdoors

My new favorite show is "Man vs. Wild", on the Discover Channel. Have you seen this show? Man, this guy is on crack the stuff he does. But it's really cool. And since I like spending time in the outdoors, it's really informative. Some of the stuff he does I already know from my Boy Scout days, but no Eagle Scout knows half of what this guys does in the average show.

Two Thumbs Up for new AMC theater at Vallco / Cupertino Square

Wow. The new theater at Cupertino Square (previously "vallco mall") is incredible! It's brand-spanking new, and super-nice. It's also super-quiet, since it just opened and no one knows about it yet.

I went there last night for SpiderMan 3 with Soph. The movie was sort of "eh", a lot like the original SpiderMan movie and *unlike* SpiderMan 2, but theater was WOW.

The screen is HUUUUUGE. It's bigger than the AMC Mercado 20 even. Taller and wider. Big big big. The sound is fantastic. The seats are nice. And the floors are CLEAN. Of course, I expect the latter to change once folks start going there.

The only downside is that it's wicked expensive... $10.25/ticket. Ridiculous.

Bay to Breakers 2007

I love Bay to Breakers. It's quintessential San Francisco. Even if people don't run it, they should at least go see it.

I run it almost every year, and while for the past few years I haven't been able to, I did this year. Of course, things have been so crazed at work and in personal life that it snuck up on me. I barely registered in time (3 days early), and I have done little to no working out for the past month. Well, let's be honest. I've really done no consistent work out for the last 10 months, since joining Y! Mobile. What a roller coaster.

In any case, I did run today, and WHAT A BLAST. I could do without the old naked guys, but the costumes are hysterical, and there's a fantastic "energy" throughout the race. I had a huge grin on my face until after the Hayes Street hill, and then my lack of conditioning caught up with me. Fun nonetheless, though.

My time kinda sucked, but that's what I get for not working out. Official time: 1:09:17. That's really slow, and I can't even blame it entirely on the crowds. But I'll blame at least some of it on the crowds... ;-)

A great quote about Y! Mobile

This is my favorite quote from the last week's coverage after we launched oneSearch and then announced the Yahoo! Mobile Publisher Network.

"Meanwhile, here we have Yahoo kicking everyone’s ass with something that does everything, does it well, runs great, looks great, and makes me wonder if the others have plans to really compete with this." - Yahoo!'s All-In-One Mobile Product, WebProNews, 3/27/07

Freakin' awesome. We're putting a little bit of that good 'ole "shine" on Y!'s somewhat tarnished halo.

This is what I've been working on - oneSearch

I've been completely buried under a rock, and I'm exhausted. But we launched Yahoo! oneSearch today in the US. Whoo-HOO! Awesome.

Check it out. Go to m.yahoo.com in the browser on your phone and try a search. Try "yahoo", or "pizza" or "ipod".

There's a great blog post summary of it where you can listen to me talk about it (I can't listen to it myself, though) at ReadRightWeb.

Or check out this headline: "Yahoo! jumps ahead of Google on mobile search". Oh SNAP!


Awesome.

Maybe I can get some sleep now. Or maybe not.

A look at back at some old "life philosophies"

Soph and I were packing up this weekend, preparing to move to our new house (yeah!), and I came across some of my notes from a long time ago when I was selling Cutco knives during college. One page was simply titled "Lee's Philosophies". Here's what it said.

>> Be Prepared

>> Always do your best
>> Maintain Balance - Work, Play, Family, Friends, God
>> Learn whatever, whenever possible
>> Keep the Goal in mind; do not settle for less
>> Let God do the driving

Cool so see that while lots of things have changed in my life since then, some things are constant.

Albert's big day

Today is my brother-in-law's wedding day. He's a lucky guy, marrying a beautiful and God-fearing woman named Connie. I'm really excited for him. I have the honor of reading 1 Corinthians 1-13 in the ceremony; should be fun.

And then we'll chow down on some yummy food. We already had some good Chinese food for the rehearsal dinner. Eating is one of my favorite parts of any wedding. Yum.

Weddings themselves are interesting affairs. They are a ton of work for the new couple to pull together, especially today when families are often spread out geographically and can't help with the preparation. It seems to me that they often take on a life of their own. What I end up telling most couples shortly before the wedding is to stop worrying about the details when the day approaches, and just enjoy it. It won't go perfectly, and it doesn't have to. They're going to get married and have a party with their closest friends and family, and that's all that really matters.

Congrats, Albert and Connie. May God smile on your marriage and give you both strength, wisdom, and love for each other for the rest of your lives. Hooray!

We're Moving!!

Talk about a whirlwind of activity. Right after vacation and right after CES (huge time-drain for me), we started looking at houses. Our current place, which we LOVE, only has two bedrooms, and we'd really like a third.

I certainly didn't expect, though, that we'd find a house within days of starting our search for real, but that's what happened. And Thursday night we signed the docs that made it official. So we're moving!!

I'm totally excited about it; the new house is great. Not perfect, of course, but great. For those interested in such things, we'll probably close in two weeks, fix up the place, move, then stage and sell our current place. Exact timing TBD.

Ok, about the house. No pics yet, but coming soon. The house is a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath with a relatively large lot (~10k sq. ft) since it's at the end of a cul-de-sac. Upgraded kitchen with new cabinets and granite counters, large great room with white tile floor, large master bed/bath, etc. There are a few downsides, too, like the apartment complex across from the backyard, but they're all manageable. In general, the house has a lot going for it, but most of all, the thing I love about the house is that it has *potential*. It's in move-in condition already, but I'm as excited about what I *could* do with it as with what it is today. Of course, I'm a product manager. I get paid to come up with ideas.

I already have the first 4 phases of work (next 5-10 years, if we're even there that long) planned out. Phase I: move the stove top to another spot in the kitchen, and landscape everything. Phase II: open up on of the bedrooms into the great room with pocket french doors. Phase III: Add a covered entryway and a bay window for some depth and curb appeal. Phase IV: expand back corner, turning existing bedroom into a hallway, two bedrooms, and a study/family room.

I'm way too broke to do any of these these right now, except for Phase I which I'm keeping my fingers crossed for, but I can dream. And the beauty is that they are achievable dreams! Anyway, I'm stoked.

Moving party date TBD.

Microsoft is pissing me off

When Apple announced Apple TV at MacWorld last week, I was so stoked, b/c it would finally in a convenient way let me get my music from my PC to my TV. Then my friend Danny asked me, "why, you already have an xbox 360". And so I thought about it and decided to give it another go.

Big mistake.


Freakin' MSFT. First I had to install a new version of Windows Media Player, version 11. Then I discovered that Microsoft, for some completely idiot reason, doesn't support .aac filetypes, which is what I have my entire library ripped in (b/c it's better audio quality). And since it doesn't recognize those files for it's library, it won't share them to the xbox (which *will* play them, by the way). And there's no way to force WMP11 to share specific files.

Pisses me off like crazy. I mean, AAC is STANDARD, not company-specific. It's like mp3 but more up-to-date. Apple supports it. And yes, songs from iTunes Music Store are in an Apple-specific flavor that nothing else will play either, but at least iTunes will play (and rip) basic .aac files. And MSFT won't even recognize them.

Truly annoying. By ignoring industry standards and trying to force their own thing, they've basically made my $400 Xbox 360 with all its "media center extender" capabilities a very expensive DVD player (and not even HD). Ridiculous.

I'm even more ticked because I tried *for the second time* to get it to work.


I cannot wait to get my Apple TV. Of course, I'll have to get a big screen TV for it to work...

Yahoo! Go and oneSearch

CES was a blast, and not just because of the *massive* LCD screens (check out my Flickr photos), although those were nice. We launched Yahoo! Go and oneSearch (check it out), two products that I've been working on a LOT for the past many months.
And all that hard work payed off! We got a lot of awesome coverage in the press and with CES attendees, and the general reaction was really positive. It was a ton of fun. And I got do a few entertaining interviews, including one live radio spot, which was a first for me.
Check out my quote. Cool.

Time to Get Your Geek On

It's Sunday night, I'm in Vegas at the Flamingo, and CES starts tomorrow morning. Cool. All your base are belong to us.

21 & 22

I spent the last 2 days scrambling to file some patents on a product that we've been working on furiously for the last many months, trying to get them done before an impending deadline. I was on the phone with one laywer until literally past midnight on Thursday drawing diagrams on a whiteboard, taking pictures with my phone, and sending them to him so that we could communicate effectively long distance.
But I finished the last one last night at 9:30, a full hour before the deadline. Whew!
In the course of the discussion the lawyer asked if I'd done a lot of these, to which I responded yes, but in doing so realized that I didn't actually know how many I'd filed. So I checked. So far as I can remember (I might be missing some), I filed my 21st and 22nd patents yesterday. Cool.
It's only my pride, of course, but for some reason, filing patents gives me a huge sense of satisfaction. I love it. Now, of course, I have to wait 5 years or so to find out if the patent office is going to grant me the patent. With all those filed, I have yet to actually be awarded one. But it's just a matter of time.

More than meets the eye

Oh, boy. I saw a preview for Transformers this weekend, and I can't WAIT! I remember in the cartoons that the transformers were always kind of, well, non-threatening, even when the Decepticons were blowing stuff up. But in the movie, they are SCARY! It's AWESOME. I mean, shouldn't a huge, tractor-trailer-turned-robot be scary, even if he's a good guy? Wow. I'm so stoked. Bring it.

The Good and the bad bad bad

I saw a number of movies last weekend, both in the theater and at home. It was the first time in quite a while that I'd gone to a movie - working too much, I guess - and the popcorn was great.

I went to see Night at the Museum last Sunday (was it really only 5 days ago?). It was a fun fun movie! Totally predictable, inane plot, yes. Clearly someone had an idea about everything in a museum coming to life and tried to put a story around it. Totally transparent. But it was fun anyway. No great acting, no great dialog, no great meaning, but it was entertaining. So good.

Soph and I also rented some dancing movie with Antonio Banderas - Take the Lead - which is based on a real life story. That movie was a lot of fun. It was also predictable, but the plot was at least meaningful, and it was entertaining. Also, the soundtrack was GREAT. Tons of fun, and it sounded fantastic on my stereo. Sooooo nice. I love my stereo.

And finally, when Soph when to see Dreamgirls with Ellie, Will and I went to see Eragon (mostly b/c neither of us wanted watch Dreamgirls). What a mistake. We should have played frisbee golf or something. While the book that Eragon is based on is a really fun read with decent characters and fast action, the movie was HORRIBLE! Like D-. Bad bad bad. The acting was bad. The dialog was worse. The sequencing was awful. If I hadn't read the book I would have had no idea what was going on. Have you ever seen a movie with a scene that's obviously intended to be "powerful" in some way? Like it was supposed to move you to tears, or was supposed to feel really ominous, or was a "soaring moment"? This movie had all of those, but instead of actually being powerful, they only felt like they were *trying* to be powerful. This is one of those things that if you're going to attempt, you need to succeed, because failing is worse than not trying. Unfortunately for Eragon, they tried over and over again, but failed every. single. time. It might have been laughably bad, but I sat through it for 2 hours, so even when I laugh at it, I'm sad. It was just bad. bad bad bad.

When does Transformers come out again?