Check out Ms. Dewey

This is pretty cool. http://www.msdewey.com

Try "Chris Rock"

DodgeMallow

This past weekend I went down to Monterey for a church retreat with Baylight. It was a great time of fellowship, worship, and sand football.

What was really hysterically fun, though, was a new sport that was invented by accident late Saturday night by myself, Jason Kuo, Mike Kim, Jay Jansen, Hideo Sataki, and Minho Hyun. We were sitting around with Jason musing to himself that there must be a game we could play with the orange cones he had brought with him (the type used for outlining a sports field). I don't know how we ended up there, but within a few minutes everbody had an orange cone and a marshmallow, and were lobbing them back and forth in a game of catch.

Until I randomly decided to wing one side-arm at Minho and nail him squarely in the chest. 30 seconds later we were lined up in two teams on opposite sides of the small room, with a host of chairs between us, and playing the first ever game of DodgeMallow.

The rules are simple. You throw marshmallows at each other, and if you are hit, you're out. If you catch one thrown at you, the thrower is out and one of your teammates can come back in. As quoted in the game of Dodgeball, it's all about Dodge, Dip, Duck, and Dodge, the 4 D's of Dodgeball. Except in DodgeMallow, you're throwing marshmallows. And of course you are only allowed to throw OR catch the marshmallow in an orange cone, not in your bare hand.

As it turns out, marshmallows fly perfectly straight when thrown from a cone, but there is no ability (or nearly none) to control which direction the marshmallow flies in. Which explains why at one point in the game two guys threw 10 marshmallows at once (5 in each cone) at Jason, and all 10 somehow missed. Amazing.

And so a new tradition is born. Maybe next we'll try Halo-Frisbee...

Yahoo! SuperStar Awards

Today was the announcement of the yearly Y! Superstar winners. I knew quite a few of them, including Brady Wood, Irv Henderson, and Joy Mountford among others. Lots of kudos to those folks.

I am a bit disappointed that neither of the folks that I nominated this year, Praz or Joe, received awards either. Both guys did an amazing job on the project I worked with them on last year, both examplifying the best of what it means to be a Yahoo!, and also going far above and beyond the call. I wonder if I should have "gamed" the system more, and encouraged more folks to write nominations for my nominees, to convince the judging panel by volume, rather than by content...

I have to admit that I'd love to win a SuperStar award someday. It's not terribly likely, to be honest, given the parcity of awards and the large number of employees, but that doesn't make it any less appealing. I love public recognition (this blog does not count), and to be honest, it's rare, at least at Yahoo!. The SuperStar award is the one consistent example that I'm aware of that actually is actually material recognition (Y! putting its money where its mouth is). So someday I'd love to win one. But knowing the winners as I do, and some of what they did, the competition and bar are set incredibly high. But that doesn't keep me from dreaming.

Cameraphones grow up

I'm using a Nokia N73 right now, and it's got a 3.2 megapixel camera on it. Wow. Have to tell you that it's amazing. It's not my 8 MP Canon 20d by any stretch but it's an *amazing* cameraphone. Seriously, why carry around a point and shoot anymore? You can see the pictures I've taken with this phone here. Not many yet, but still cool.

I love it.

Jetlag el sucko

I'm in London for 3 days, starting yesterday, leaving tomorrow. Jetlag sucks. I was fine all-day yesterday, somehow by the grace of God catching a full 5 hours of sleep on the flight over, even though I went to sleep at 6pm my time.

But last night was a different story. I went to bed at 10:30, woke up 3 hours later, worked for 3 hours, went to sleep for 5 more. The fact that I actually got 8 hrs helped, but it's still no fun.

London, however, is cool. I don't really have time to explore much on this trip, but the views from the office are definitely different from those in Sunnyvale. I have at least had some good food for lunch both days, thx to various co-workers.

Back from Vacation

The trip was great. Denali was... wet. The cruise was awesome. Pictures to come later, and hopefully more interesting memories.

The double-edged sword of patents

When we launched Yahoo! Podcasts last year, we put together a quite impressive list of patents to file for. On the one hand, it's cool to have patents in your name. And at Yahoo!, there's a bonus for patents filed. And it's good for Yahoo! So I'm a big fan of patents.

However, they are a *huge* time-suck. Each one requires a number of discussions with attorney's, and at the very least reading a 50 page legal document for each, if not writing sections of it. I am *still* doing patent work for Yahoo! Podcasts, from 9 months ago. Craziness.

And in the meantime my team has put together a list of potential patents (not all of which we'll file, thank God) for stuff we've worked on since then that's more than twice as long as the list from Y! Podcasts.

But it's hard to complain when you get a bonus check in the mail.

From Advanced Products to Mobile Web

Today was officially the first day of a new job for me at Yahoo!. I loved running the Advanced Products Group and am going to miss working with that team on a daily basis. But I'm really stoked about my new gig, running Mobile Web. As one of the designers on APG phrased so eloquently, Mobile Web is the crouching tiger of the mobile world.

I've got tons of learning to do; Yahoo! Mobile has a lot going on, but I'm really stoked to join such a strong team and change the world. For real.

Goodbye standby mode?

According to Engadget standby modes on electronic devices eat up 8% of the UK's energy. That's incredible! And a complete waste. Crazy.

So they're thinking of outlawing it, and from my California environment-friendly perspective (although I do drive an SUV... guess no one's perfect), that's a great idea. It's not like we "need" standby mode.

But then part of me is also like, holy cow, that's going to cause a ton of extra work for lots and lots of companies...

Maybe instead of outlawing standby they should require that devices using standby include their own solar energy cells.

Back from the beach

I went to a wedding and then to the beach in South Carolina for all of last week, and am now back in the flow of my regular life. I have to admit, though, that I miss the beach. Big surprise, huh? 6 days of doing pretty much nothing at all. Wake up when I wake up, read a book, get in the water, read a book, eat, eat, eat, read a book, sleep again. Awesome.

I really needed the break, both from work and from regular life (six weekends in a row of weddings or wedding-related activities knocks the wind out of you). For some reason whenever I actually let myself take a break, I get sick, or nearly so. For the first half of last week I felt like a truck had run over me. Sore muscles, sore throat, headache, etc. Basically I felt like ass. Soph speculated that when I actually let myself relax that much that my muscles release any and all toxins that they'd been accumulating. Who knows. But I do know that after a week of aggressive relaxing, I feel way better. Almost fully awake.

And I've got another adventure/vacation in August. I should be fully functional by September.

Naming conventions for web-products... and the next fad

I had a fun discussion a few days ago with some coworkers about fads in the naming conventions for web products. It started because we were talking about the abundance of products launched in the last year or so with a missing "e". That all started with Flickr, but has continued to Flaggr, Wishlistr, etc. And a lot of Web 2.0 companies have also used new domains (instead of .com) to make interesting URLs, like del.icio.us or blo.gs.

Of course, this isn't just a Web 2.0 thing, it's a web thing. Why are Flickr, Flaggr, and their ilk missing the "e"? Because they all got used up by all the "eCompany" names in Web 1.0. Or the "o" 's got used up by Yahooooo, Goooogle, etc. And the "i" 's got eaten up by iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, etc. Anyway, so now in Web 2.0 we're missing vowels.

Anyway, the point is that web names go in fads. So here's the next fad, Web 3.0. I decided on it today with some coworkers.

Web 3.0: Company or Product names made up of words repeated twice.

• cowcow
• fixfix
• toptop
• boxbox
  

you get the idea. we discovered that most farm animals make interesting product names when used in this way. they don't mean much, but they're fun to say. a lot like the names kicked out by the Web 2.0 Name Generator.

Time for a vacation

I'm exhausted. Work isn't the culprit, really, although it's always moving at 110 mph at Yahoo!. No, this time it's weddings. I thought I made it through the wedding season a few years back, but this must be "Indian Summer" or something. We've had wedding-related activities every single weekend since essentially the 3rd weekend of May. That's like 6 weeks in a row or something.

I'm totally worn out. And we're not just talking about the kind of wedding where you show up, drink some champaign, and take off. No, these are the kind where I'm helping out, standing up, or in charge of something, which means that every Thurs/Fri/Sat for as long as I can seem to remember recently are wedding-filled.

Don't get me wrong; I'm stoked for all my friends. I just need a vacation. Thankfully, it's very close. I have one more wedding this weekend, and then I can take a break. Can't wait.

Digital Sneezing

This is a phenomena that my co-worker, Matt Fukuda, noted yesterday, and he's totally right.

Just about everybody in my group has a Nokia 6682 camera-phone. It's a cool phone, but basically just a basic camera phone to most folks. The cool thing is that it can run lots of next-generation application, like Zonetags, which was put out by Yahoo! Research Berkeley. Zonetags makes it a one-click step to upload camera-phone pictures to Flickr, and also figures out where you are physically in the real world, and adds that information as a tag. Very cool.

It means I put up a ton more photos on Flickr, and also means that I just take a lot more pictures with my phone. Since everybody on my team has this phone, and we all have zonetags, we're all always taking pictures of things. Pictures of each other in embarrassing situations, pictures of each other at our desks, pictures of what we're working on, pictures of buildings, pictures of just about anything.

Here's where the sneezing part comes in. When I see one of these guys take out his cell phone to take a picture of something, I get mine out, pretty much unconsciously, as if *I* should be taking a picture of whatever it is too. And it's not just limited to me. If one person gets out their camera phone, the whole group suddenly has their phones out, and are taking pictures. It's just like when someone sneezes, and a bunch of other people suddenly need to sneeze. What gives? Bizarre, frankly, but entertaining.

And of course terribly geeky (someday it will be totally hip). At a swank Japanese restaurant last week, Nihon (Y! Local info), we were about 10 minutes into appetizers and suddenly more than half the table had their phones out and were taking pictures. of everything. everything. so geeky. so ridiculous.

but so entertaining. and of course the photos are fun to look at the next day, too.

This is just wrong

This site "christian social networking site", ChristianVibes, at least according to TechCrunch, is related to another site called "SmutVibes", which is like MySpace, but actually encourages pornographic photos.

If they really are the same company, that's absolutely ridiculous. Or rather, it's brilliant, assuming you're just trying to use one platform to target two very different constituencies. But there's something offensive about it as well. It would be like having an "anti-gun" site intended to attract the eyes of anti-gun advocates, and using the resulting revenue dollars to run the NRA site.

doh! delete isn't the same as edit

I deleted a comment today by accident, when I was trying to respond. and unfortunately, 360 doesn't give me the option to "undelete", and didn't give me a confirmation dialog. I thought it was standard practice to get confirmation for irrevocable actions?

Unconditional consumer love of Google

For those of you who don't religiously follow the internet industry (what's wrong with you?), TechCrunch is one of the best tech blogs for just keeping up-to-date with recent internet news, and for a quick analysis of new products, and it's relatively evenly delivered.

This article today vents about a lot of the "halo" effect Google seems to enjoy, even when they release products that aren't necessarily life-changing. But somehow everyone thinks they are.

I have huge respect for Google, and actually love the fact that having healthy competition has really benefited consumers (note Gmail and Google Maps). But seriously, the products aren't really "better" than other products out there, or if they are, it's marginally. But people have a love affair with the brand.

As a Yahoo!, it's annoying. I'm sure if I was a Googler, though, I'd be reveling in it, and laughing at folks like at Yahoo! and MSFT. Guess it just provides a nice challenge to those of us without the home court advantage of unconditional consumer love.

Building products fast

I'm giving a talk tomorrow to whatever Yahoo!'s want to hear my $.02 on how to build products quickly. I titled the talk "Building products fast - cutting through the red tape... but not really... but really", in reference to a line from Dodgeball. Quite appropriate in this case, because some of the "red tape" can be cut (ignored, reclassified, avoided, etc), some you can reduce with a little elbow grease, and some you have to deal with. But a lot of folks, myself included at times, get bogged down and end up letting ourselves think that it's the organization's problem, and stop taking the responsibility to just get the job done.

But I digress. Much more important is that while typing up the presentation (which I kept very light-weight, to give more time for discussion), I accidentally wrote a rhyme. Can't really call it a poem, though. That would be demeaning to the art-form. But a rhyme nonetheless. Here's what I wrote.

If your engineers are stuck, so are you.
If your designers are stuck, so are you.
If anything is stuck, so are you.
If you are stuck, your product is too.

Funny that it rhymes. But very true.

Make it burn

I go to a Power Yoga class at the local YMCA twice a week. It's a tough work-out, something I would never have believed before trying it. I thought Yoga was all stretching and calming. Not this one. Lots of stretching, but a serious serious workout.

Today, though, was a whole new experience. Ever "sit" with your back against a wall as though you were sitting in a chair, but simply using your quads to keep you in that position? Remember how it makes your legs burn? That was today. We held a position for 2 minutes, switched to another position that used the same leg and held *that* position for 2 minutes. And onto another position on the same leg. And a fourth. And a fifth. And then we did it all on the other leg.

That's basically 10 minutes making one quad BURN. Burn baby burn. Man. It felt like someone had injected molten lava into the veins in my leg. I had forgotten what that feels like. It's definitely not the same as simply tiring out... it's burning out.

We won the Webby Award!

Yahoo! Podcasts, a product my team launched last September, won a Webby Award for best podcast site. Cool!

Panopticon

What a cool word. What is it? A very interesting type of prison where a very few number of guards can see all inmates, each inmate has a window to the outside world, and no inmate can see another inmate. Check it out on Wikipedia.

I heard the concept in the context of a talk given at Yahoo! by Jamais Cascio (cascio@openthefuture.com), where he talked about the Participatory Panopticon. The idea is that once everyone has a mobile phone capable of recording photos or videos at any time, without the target's knowledge, we basically are in a situation where you live your life as you do, but at any moment you might be recorded (seen by the guards).

Question: If everything is always recorded, does it destory social fabric, or does it require forgiveness, since nothing is forgotten?