Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection

LoJack for Laptops

2008-05-09T14:29:00.000-07:00

I just purchased a three year subscription to LoJack for Laptops from Amazon.com.

What is LoJack for Laptops?

LoJack for Laptops is software that is installed on your Mac or PC behind the scenes and can report in to Computrace LoJack it's location most of the time if your PC is stolen.

According to LoJack for Laptops their service works like this: if your computer is stolen:

1. You file a police report and notify our Recovery Team.

2. When your stolen computer contacts our Monitoring Center, it is placed on high-alert and starts calling us every 15 minutes, allowing our Recovery Team to closely track your computer’s location.

3. Our Recovery Team provides law enforcement with tracking information and documentation essential for procuring search warrants and leading them to the location of your computer.

4. The police recover your computer and return it to you!

The company claims to recover 3 out of 4 stolen computers that use their service. The company says that their software is tamperproof and still stays on your computer even if the drive is reformatted or a new OS is installed.

So why did I pay $90 to better protect my laptop?

Well for a couple of reasons.

First off I've had laptops stolen in the past. It really sucks. A lot of times what sucks even worse than the laptop theft are the files that are stolen with a laptop. Even more than this though is the sense of victimization that you feel when someone has stolen something from you. The satisfaction of knowing that someone who stole from me was caught and hopefully pays a legal price is probably worth more to me than even the value of the laptop itself.

Oftentimes someone who steals a laptop is likely involved in other crime and so it would also make me feel good if they caught them and other people got their stolen property back too.

Also I'm out and about quite a bit with my laptop. One of my main uses for my laptop is to offload photos that I take from my CF cards to the laptop's hard drive. For this reason my laptop goes with me in my photo backpack every single day. Frequently I worry about walking around with so much expensive gear on me. Not only do I keep my laptop with me everywhere, but I keep my Canon 5D and 4 L Series lenses with me everywhere I go as well. There is a good chance that if someone stole my backpack and I could track the laptop that I might also be able to recover my camera, lenses, batteries and CF cards if they were stolen with it too.

I had my first Canon 5D stolen in the Bahamas two years ago and that really sucked too.

Chances are of course that your laptop will not be stolen. LoJack cites pretty high statistics though. They say 1/10 laptops are lost or stolen and 97% are never recovered. I think if you ask around you probably already know someone who has had one stolen before. For me, the cost of $30 per year for a little extra piece of mind is well worth it.

Thanks, by the way, to Martin Taylor who tipped me off to LoJack for Laptops. I found out about this service when I posted a note on FriendFeed saying I'd pay $200 for a chip to track my laptop with GPS and he brought this service to my attention.

PicLens, The Most Beautiful Way to Browse Photos on the Web

2008-05-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

Well I've been using PicLens for a few months now, and I'm a bit late with this post, but if you haven't installed PicLens yet for browsing photos on the web you are missing one of the most beautiful ways to view photography on the internet yet.

The screenshot above does not do justice to the visual experience. PicLens is hands down the best I have ever seen photos look online.

PicLens is an add on for Firefox users. You can go get it here. When you add PicLens to your Firefox experience, photos on many internet sites (including Flickr and Zooomr) have a little play type triangular icon over them. When you click on this icon it transforms your viewing experience and takes photos to a brand new level. Only photos are loaded on the screen and you can move your mouse to scroll through the photos or enlarge or shrink photos in your viewing experience.

With PicLens photos float through your browser like beauty flowing from a waterfall. The motion effects are outstanding. Best of all though, PicLens allows you to see photos in the true splendor that they are best seen in. Large. One of the problems with viewing many photos large on the internet is that you have to click and wait for a new page to load. This gets boring and tiresome. Not with PicLens though. Simply move your mouse scroll button up or down and photos get larger and smaller.

As amazing as PicLens is for browsing photos on the web I do wish that they improve one thing.

Right now interacting with photos on PicLens is very difficult. While you can click through to any photo to fave/comment/bookmark/etc., when you do this PicLens ends abruptly. After you interact with the photo there is no easy way to get back to the PicLens page where you were browsing before you clicked out of your PicLens experience.

What would most easily fix this would be if PicLens allowed you to ctl-click (on a PC) or cmd-click (on a Mac) and have that photo's page load in Firefox in the background. This way you could browse someone's entire stream, favorites, etc. in PicLens, all the while cmd-clicking (in my case) as you go to go back and interact with the photos that you liked best once you were done.

Alternatively, TranceMist suggests that people simply could be allowed to fave/comment on a photo from within PicLens.

Looking at photos on PicLens is like seeing them in a fine art gallery or museum. Photos take on a whole new beauty. But more interactive features are still needed.

More on PicLens from Read/Write Web and Webware.

SmugMug Gallery Fiasco

2008-05-08T15:34:00.001-07:00

SmugMug Gallery Fiasco, originally uploaded by noeltykay.

See update below.

My friend Noel Kleinman (who takes some of the most *amazing* photographs of children and especially his son Jack) uploaded a series of photos to his photostream on Flickr today that document a recent print job that he had done using SmugMug. The photos Noel uploaded really highlight what an awful job SmugMug did on the printing job.

What makes this story worse, is that the photo print (which cost $60) that Noel had made up was a very special print. Noel took some photos of his friend's kid while he was out of town and had planned on giving him the print as a gift for his 40th birthday this Saturday.

Now this is the worst kind of PR a company can have in my opinion. A great photographer saying that their printing sucks and documenting in detail online.

So what should SmugMug do? Well, if I were them I'd have the print redone as professionally as possible and do everything within power, including overnight mail or special delivery, to get the print to Noel before his friend's birthday on Saturday night. I'd probably also comp him a free print in the future and hope that this one bad example could be chalked up to a single mistake and not the general type of production quality that SmugMug stands for.

I'd probably also check into who was doing SmugMug's printing and make sure that they had adequate quality control in place to prevent this from happening in the future.

Where did I first see this problem that Noel was having with SmugMug? On FriendFeed. Don MacAskill, SmugMug's CEO, is on FriendFeed too so it will be interesting to see if indeed a company's CEO can turn a PR problem into a PR solution.

I don't really blame SmugMug for the bad print job. Anyone can get a print wrong. But it's what you do when your customers have a bad experience that counts most of all.

This is also why every company should have a person (or a PR company) that monitors the blogs, twitter, digg, reddit, friendfeed, flickr, etc.) for opportunities to turn customer service problems into customer service solutions.

Update: Two things. First, it should be noted that despite this most recent printing problem, Noel Kleinman holds SmugMug's customer service in very high regard. Also it is nice to see that SmugMug's CEO Don MacAskill monitors social media very closely and personally responded to this blog post in less than an hour. That's to be commended for sure. Not very many CEOs personally monitor social media on their company. I'm printing both Noel's comment and Don's comment from the comment section below to this original post.

From Noel: "Thomas...

SmugMug has ALWAYS provided quality prints to both me and my customers who order from my site.

I have been a SmugMug client for a year now and in that year I have sold several thousand dollars worth of prints and all of my customers have been extremely happy with their prints.

There was one instance last November where a client made two seperate orders...the second order ship prior to the first order. The first order was time sensitive and the client contacted me on a Saturday night. I in turn e-amiled SmugMug support on a Saturday night and had a response within 15 minutes apologizing for the snafu. SmugMug reprinted the first order and sent it overnight to the customer. The original order shipped and the client had two sets of images.

SmugMug customer support is FANTASTIC! In a perfect world the canvas would have been fine...it wasn't. But SmugMug has been a great company to deal with in every aspect imagineable!!!!

Noel
www.nkpix.com"

From Don:

"We'll definitely make this right. SmugMug has an extremely simple, legalese-free print guarantee:

"If you are unhappy with your prints or gifts, SmugMug will reprint or refund your order, whichever you prefer."
http://www.smugmug.com/prints/our-guarantee.mg

In actual practice, we often go much much farther, from custom color correction by our in-house Pros to overnight shipping, refunds, and even sourcing from other labs. A simple Google search will validate that hundreds, if not thousands, of times over.

I just found out about this particular problem, but it turns out our Support Heroes are already all over it - they told me I was lagged. :)

Thanks for blowing the whistle - certainly makes our job easier when we know about problems."

American Bald Eagle

2008-05-08T12:38:00.000-07:00

Pownce Increases File Size Limits

2008-05-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

Pownce becomes more useful (Scripting News)

Dave Winer blogs about Pownce increasing their file size limits from 10MB to 100MB for free accounts and from 100MB to 250MB for paid Pro accounts.

I'm a Pro member on Pownce and think it's definitely worth it. One of the nicest features on Pownce is that you can use the file share feature to share mp3s with your friends.

Nice work Pownce!

Is Flickr Worth $4 Billion?

2008-05-08T09:45:00.000-07:00

Is Flickr Worth $4-Billion? | Mark Evans: Mark Evans does some financial analysis and asks the question, is Flickr worth $4 billion (with a "b")?

Evans suggests that if Flickr were able to better monetize their traffic that they could generate much more revenue than they do today.

Of course part of what has made Flickr as successful as they are in my opinion is exactly that advertising is fairly sparse on the site. It's Flickr's clean attractive look as much as anything that makes it a pleasant place for people who love visual stimulation to hang out at.

From Evans: "With online advertising gaining so much traction, Flickr would be a very attractive target given its traffic and user demographic. For the sake of argument, let’s assume Flickr changed business tactics and introduced two high-profile advertising slots throughout the service. I choose two because it would be significant without pissing off most of Flickr users, who regard Flickr as their property and are resistant to change of any kind.

If Flickr could get $5/CPM, that would generate $10-million in advertising/year based on the assumption it’s getting about 100 million global pageviews/month. It’s not a lot of revenue given the conservative approach to how much advertising Flickr would present and how much it would charge but, nevertheless, it would give Flickr an additional $250-million based on Blodget’s formula.

Then, you’re looking at a company worth $1.75-billion to $3.25-billion. Add on a takeover or IPO premium of perhaps 25%, and you’re looking at a valuation of $2.2-billion to $4-billion."

I do question Evan's $5 CPM guess on Flickr. I'm not sure that Flickr could get CPMs this high. Google doesn't include ads on their image search pages. My guess is that when people are looking at and for specific imagery that advertising may be less effective than when used contextually in other ways like Adsense.

Still a $4 billion valuation on Flickr is interesting nonetheless. As a very active Flickr user though I sure hope I don't see all those monetization advertisements any time soon.

Why Microsoft's Netflix DRM Sucks the Big One

2008-05-08T06:26:00.000-07:00

Well remember yesterday when I blogged excitingly about the latest Microsoft Media Center Plug in which reportedly allows you to watch Netflix "Watch Now" movies on XBox 360 Media Center Extenders? The one I was going to try out in the next few days?

Well, it might work for you but it isn't working for me. In fact I can't even get Netflix "Watch Now" to work on my Vista Media Center PC at all. The reason why I can't Netflix's "Watch Now" to work on my Vista Media Center PC?

Yep, you guessed it. DRM. Digital Rights Management. Screwed over by DRM yet again.

Here I am, a law abiding good consumer, paying Netflix for my content, and once again I'm treated like a criminal and not allowed to play legally purchased content on my PC. And this has nothing to do with the plug in that I was trying to install.

It all started early this morning (I got up early because I was super excited about installing Netflix "Watch Now" on my Media Center PC -- actually I tried last night but Netflix was offline for maintenance until 2:30am). Before installing the plug in that I blogged about yesterday for Media Center I wanted to make sure that I could first watch Netflix movies in regular old Internet Explorer on my new Vista PC. Since "Watch Now" doesn't work in Firefox, I launched Windows Explorer and went to Netflix's website to test a movie.

And here's where the trouble began (see screenshot below).

Ok, so, My Microsoft DRM needs to be reset. Annoying, but, oh well, ok, why not. Being that I'm fairly adept at using a computer I figured I'd go through the reset by myself with the friendly little utility that was being suggested.

And then I got *this*

Waaiiiiitttt a minute. The Reset Utility may remove licenses to other content using Microsoft DRM? What? So you mean like if I legally paid for a movie from Amazon using Microsoft's DRM that movie is now going to be toast if I want to get this Netflix thingy up and running. Dude, that sucks. But, on the positive side since I don't generally buy content with DRM crap, I'm probably ok. Whew. Dodged a bullet on that one. But still that totally sucks. And then I got this (I guess they really want to make sure I'm not going to be upset when none of my other DRM stuff works anymore):

Ok, after that last screen I could almost feel it coming. Any second now and I'd be watching Dexter on my hot new Vista PC -- it's a Dell by the way. Dude I got a Dell.

But... Oh NO MR. BILL!!!!!!!!! Then I got this! Big old sad face for Mr. Thomas Hawk.

Ok, I'm not one to give up easily, so my next call was to Netflix. First off, I told the phone rep I'd be blogging this. I don't do this to try and get better support, I do this because the father of all blogging Dave Winer said he does it to be fair to the person he's talking to.

So we tried a bunch of stuff on my computer. Restarting it. Killing processes with control-alt-delete. Running Netflixy stuff from adminstrative mode. etc. etc. And NOTHING would work. Finally the Netflix guy gave up on his end and suggested that it was a problem with my hardware. What? You mean this brand new Dell PC that I bought just a few months back? Yep.

He told me that my problem likely had to do with something called COPP (certified output protection protocol) or HDCP (he wasn't sure that this was but looked it up and told me that it was High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection). Sounds like fancy names for plain old DRM if you ask me.

He said that the error code that I'd been getting was showing up in other cases as well for some "odd reason," adding "we're not actually sure why these videocards are doing this."

He said I could try a few new things. He recommended that I check with my video card maker to see if there was a more updated driver. He also recommended that I reset the resolution on my monitor to below 1200x800 (presently it's set at 1920x1200 which he said could be a problem). He also said that instead of using the DVI cable that I'm using that I might want to try a VGA cable. And finally he added that I might need to hook up a second monitor to my PC and run it in dual monitor mode.

Ok, so like the title says. Why Microsoft's Netflix DRM Sucks the Big One! I still have no Netflix "Watch Now" even though I'm paying for it.

And that cool little Media Center Netflix plug in that I blogged about yesterday? I'm a long, long, way from getting that up and running.

By the way, I'm not the only one that this is happening to. Check out Davis Freeberg's similar experience with Netflix's DRM here.

Doesn't it suck when DRM gets in the way of legitimate use?

Half Dome and the Better Half

2008-05-08T05:48:00.000-07:00

Photo Shoot

2008-05-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

If You Put That Picture on the Internet I'll Call My Lawyer

2008-05-07T13:55:00.001-07:00

Photo by Jeremy Brooks.

My friend Jeremy Brooks blogged an altercation he had with some bozo (see photo above) on the street in San Francisco. He blogs about his experience here.

From Jeremy:

"This guy was on the corner of Stockton and Columbus in San Francisco yelling at a homeless man. Anger, conflict, drama — sounds like a great shot to me. I crossed the street but was unable to get anything interesting, since I only had my 50mm lens on the camera and I was just too far away.

However, Mr. Angry Overreaction Man decided that he now had a problem with me. He confronted me, demanding my camera. Of course, I refused. He got in my face and started threatening me, telling me that I cannot take his photo without his permission. I told him that yes, in fact, I can. He then walked up and bumped into me, trying to act tough. I told him that one more touch and I would call the police.

Of course, he didn’t like that very much, and at that point told me that if I put his picture on the internet, he would call his laywer. I assured him that his photo would be on the internet, and he then walked up and grabbed my camera lens. Well, that’s just not something that I will put up with, so I pulled the camera away from him and reached for my phone and started dialing. Once he saw that he turned away, still yelling threats, and continued on his way.

I felt bad for his daughter, who was with him, because she was obviously embarrassed by his antics and kept pleading with him to stop. I have a great shot showing her looking up as if saying “Oh boy, here he goes again”. But I’m not going to post that one, as she was not acting like an idiot and I don’t want to embarrass her. Mr. Angry Overreaction Man seems to do enough of that.

So, Mr. Angry Overreaction Man, your photo is now on the internet. Call your lawyer. Tell him somebody on a public sidewalk took your photo while you were on a public sidewalk. Then tell him you physically assaulted the photographer. See what he says."

First off, Jeremy is absolutely within his rights to photograph anyone he wants to in public. There is no law that protects people from having their image taken or from you posting it on the internet. When someone goes out on a public street anyone can legally shoot them and publish their image within standard editorial context (i.e. news, fine art, etc.).

Now I've had my fair share of run ins with people who object to my taking their photograph in public. And my basic rule is this. If I shoot someone and they object and act civilly like a human being I'm more than happy to oblige their request not to publish their photograph. On the other hand if they are an asshole and are confrontational, chances are not only will I publish there photo on the internet, I very well may blog about my experience with them as well. And I might also use whatever social network I can (digg, reddit, flickr, etc.) to further share with the rest of the world what a prick they are.

It's easy. Someone's polite with me, I'll probably be polite back with them. Someone threatens me or tries to touch my camera or person or is unpolite, then I figure they have it coming.

I've had lots of people email me and ask me to remove photos of them that I have on the internet. And I've removed dozens of photos I've published on the internet. Be respectful and you'll get my respect. Be disrespectful and it won't get you anywhere.

If you have the inclination digg Jeremy's original blog post here. It would be nice to share with the rest of the world that being a jerk when someone takes your photo in public doesn't pay.

On reddit here.

Pop and Drop

2008-05-07T11:02:00.001-07:00

vmcNetFlix, Netflix Watch Now on Your Media Center Extender

2008-05-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

vmcNetFlix - Official Site: My pal Davis Freeberg tells me that he has intstalled the vmcNetFlix plug in for Media Center and has successfully been able to watch Netlifx "Watch Now" content through his XBox 360 as a Media Center extender.

I haven't tried this plug in yet myself, but plan on installing it and checking out the watch now feature in the next few days here.

Although Netflix "Watch Now" content doesn't include the hottest TV shows or new release content, they do have a large library of video content available to stream for free to Netflix customers who are on 2 disc or more a month plans.

I cancelled my DirecTV service a few months back and have been getting by just fine with my Netflix subscription and free HD network OTA (over the air) TV on my Media Center PC.

I do have a laptop hooked up to my TV in the kitchen where the kids watch kids programming on Netflix watch now, but if this plug in works, it will be great to have Netflix "Watch Now" content on the other Xbox/TV extender set ups in my home.

Ok, I've Now Signed Up For All 35 Social Networking Sites That FriendFeed Supports

2008-05-06T14:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I just finished signing up for every single service that FriendFeed supports. For whatever reason, two of the services that I'm signed up for Gtalk and Facebook don't show up under FriendFeed's collection of favicons that they use next to your name on the site.

Also I couldn't get FriendFeed to find my seesmic account which is under thomashawk and wasn't able to import that yet. All in now I'm signed up for 35 different sites which can be aggregated at FriendFeed.

I haven't used all 35 different sites of course, but I do plan on trying all of them out over the course of the next few weeks. I also wanted to make sure that I got the thomashawk account name on each of these networks as I have no idea which networks I'll be using the most down the road.

The site that I found the easiest to use and sign up for (that I hadn't already been using) was iLike -- which I think I might actually get into.

The site that was the most confusing for me and that worked the least well was seesmic. But seesmic is still in alpha so that ought to be expected.

I was surprised that I was able to sign up for SmugMug without a credit card. I'd always thought that their service was pay only, but it seems that you can sign up for a 14 day free trial without giving them any payment information.

With most of the sites my user name is thomashawk or sometimes Thomas Hawk. If you use any and like them feel free to add me as a contact.

Or better yet, add me as a contact on FriendFeed and see them all.

Credit Extension

2008-05-06T13:24:00.001-07:00

Accomplice

2008-05-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

On the Importance of a Good Lens

2008-05-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

Glass (Part One) - OnTakingPictures Photographer Bill Wadman has a post out talking about the importance of lenses.

From Bill:

"OK, listen up. The most important component of your camera is the lens. If there is a place to spend the money, it's on the glass. I'd take a 5 year old 20D with a good lens over a top of the line 1Ds MkIII with a crappy lens any day of the week. I can't tell you the number of people I see who have this all wrong. Last year at the Grand Canyon, I saw a girl with a high-end Gitzo tripod, 5D body, and some crappy consumer level zoom lens on the front. Honestly, I almost pushed her over the edge."

Bill knows his stuff. He is one of the best portrait shooters around today. A lot of people ask me what camera to buy all the time. My answers always come back with a camera body *and* a lens. Kit lenses suck. If you're going to spend dough on a Digital SLR, do yourself a favor and at a minimum buy a cheap 50mm prime to go with it.

My favorite lens personally is the Canon 135mm f/2 telephoto.

Remember When Thomas Hawk Said If He Were Microsoft He'd Lower His Bid for Yahoo?

2008-05-03T17:21:00.000-07:00

Remember?

Remember?

Get ready to watch Yahoo's stock get pounded on Monday morning?

From Balmer: "I first want to convey my personal thanks to you, your management team, and Yahoo!’s Board of Directors for your consideration of our proposal. I appreciate the time and attention all of you have given to this matter, and I especially appreciate the time that you have invested personally. I feel that our discussions this week have been particularly useful, providing me for the first time with real clarity on what is and is not possible...

...I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table.

But clearly a deal is not to be."

That's rich.

According to News.com Microsoft's pulled it's Yahoo bid. My bet, Microsoft lets Yahoo twist in the wind a bit, lets the shareholder lawsuits get all tangled. Then pays a lot less than they were going to in the first place.

How many billions will Jerry Yang's ego end up costing Yahoo shareholders?

More from TechCrunch here and Kara Swisher here.

Like a Bird That Flew

2008-05-02T15:32:00.001-07:00

FriendFeed, Why Canabalizing Successful Web 2.0 Properties Benefits the Consumer

2008-05-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

You can add me on FriendFeed here.

Yesterday I noticed that John Battelle, tech blogger extraordinaire and the guy that does the ads for my blog, announced that he's finally starting a Twitter account. Which is great, but I can't help thinking that John's missing the boat by jumping on Twitter now, a year too late, just when all of the early adopters are moving from Twitter to FriendFeed.

Why are the early adopters moving from Twitter to FriendFeed? Because on FriendFeed you get the exact same thing you can get with Twitter... but better.

Yep, that's right. FriendFeed essentially delivers a better version of Twitter than Twitter does itself. The biggest improvement? The ability to hide things. One of the biggest problems with Twitter has always been the noise. As much as you can find great, fast breaking news on Twitter, you also get tons of crap on Twitter.

For a while I was faving every Twitter message that Jeremy Zawadony twitted mentioning food and what he was eating. Just for the fun of it. On Twitter you get a lot of noise. With FriendFeed you can filter a lot of this noise out by simply hiding certain people's twits. You can still get back to their stuff by clicking on the "Show 19 hidden entries" link, it's not permanently gone, like if you dropped a contact on Twitter, it's just temporarily gone. Which can be a very good thing to reduce noise.

On Flickr one of the things that I always hated was how Flickr only shows you the last 5 photographs uploaded by your contacts on the most recent photos from your contacts page. Every so often I'd go to one of my contact's photostreams directly and find some photo from a year ago that I somehow missed. And I'd say to myself, damn, that's a great photo, how did I miss that one. The answer is that since Flickr only shares with you the last 5 photos your contacts upload, anything more than that gets buried and effectively hidden from you.

FriendFeed built a smarter way to watch your Flickr friends' photos. They show you the most recent 7 uploads and then they've got a little icon that shows you that there are more. At least for the most recent photos from your contacts, FriendFeed does a *better* job than Flickr does itself.

FriendFeed also allows you to build "imaginary" friends on the site to make sure you don't miss photos from your Flickr friends who haven't joined FriendFeed yet.

How else does FriendFeed do Flickr better? Well as of yesterday they've started including your friend's favorited photos in their stream as well. Why is this cool? Because now all of a sudden you're being served up great new photos that have already been filtered by your friends as being great shots. A lot less work than hunting and pecking through Flickr looking for great photos yourself. Many hands make light work. Since the faves are coming from your friends, people whose taste you trust, it's better than the random boring crap being served up by Flickr itself on Explore.

Now when companies like Twitter and Flickr start seeing a new site coming out that is essentially using the benevolence of the Web 2.0ish "open API" to essentially pull views from their own properties you might think that they'd be concerned. And maybe they are or maybe they aren't. At least publicly they can't say that they don't like this because being Web 2.0ish is all about being "open" and grumbling about someone pulling views from your site with your open API would sound somehow unsportsmanlike.

But make no mistake about it. As FriendFeed continues to innovate (and it seems like they are continuing to innovate almost daily) they will continue to pull traffic from the webs most successful social networks.

Now, why do I think that this is a good thing? Because I *love* competition. With competition the consumer always wins. Should Twitter have a hide feature? Absolutely.

Should Flickr show you more than the last 5 photos from your contacts? Absolutely as well.

Now why these two premium services don't offer this functionality is unknown. Maybe they think other things are more important. Maybe they're just lazy. Maybe development resources are being spent on scaling infrastructure rather than new features. But whatever the case, when a newcomer like FriendFeed shows up they are at some point going to have to take notice, because it's only a matter of time before the early adopters pull over the rest of the semi-early adopters and possibly even later the mainstream.

The best thing about FriendFeed may possibly end up being that they force your favorite web 2.0 site to get better, faster in order to compete and keep you on their site.

And for those of you naysayers who say that FriendFeed is mehhhh, just ok. Pay attention. Remember four years ago when Robert Scoble told the higher ups at Microsoft to buy Flickr? And Remember when Robert Scoble went on and on and on and on about Techmeme 3 years ago? And now it's an established Web 2.0 darling. And remember 2 years ago when Robert Scoble couldn't blog enough about Twitter? And now you can't listen to an episode of TWIT without hearing the word Twitter at least 2,000 times. Well pay attention to what Scoble's doing and talking about now. It's FriendFeed. Now I'm not sure if Scoble is spending more time on FriendFeed or more time on Twitter these days, but when the number 5 most followed Twitter user starts banging the drum hard about FriendFeed, it's worth noticing.

Whether you like FriendFeed or not it's definitely someplace you are going to want to start spending time on. Because the key to FriendFeed, more than anything (as Louis Gray aptly points out) is participation.

Oh and that little site Facebook? Dead. Dead. Dead.

Wood Tavern, Best Restaurant in the East Bay

2008-05-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

Warm Chocolate cake and yellow tail tartare from Wood Tavern.

Well I've been to Wood Tavern (6317 College Avenue, Oakland, CA) three times now, and after each visit I keep telling myself that I'm going to write up a blog post on the restaurant. I don't do as many restaurant write ups as I used to, but after eating there three times I just have to write it up. If you want to skip the majority of the review just take away this one point:

Wood Tavern is by far the *best* restaurant in the East Bay. Better than more expensive places like Alice Water's Chez Panisse. Better than Bay Wolf or Jojo or Dopo or any of the other new up and comers.

The restaurant already is gaining a strong reputation as one of the new great restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. The San Francisco Chronicle gave it a strong write up here. The Examiner had similarly positive things to say here. The blog Gastronomie called it their new favorite restaurant. And already it's packed every evening. Reservations are booked out well into the future, but the bar seats first come first serve and the bar is actually, in my opinion, the best place to eat in the restaurant.

To start with the atmosphere at Wood Tavern is casual warm and cozy like a big family living room. Dark wood accents an open air kitchen where you can watch Chef Maximilian DiMare prepare the evening meals while you wait to be served. The bar makes excellent cocktails and has some great beers on tap to bide you over while you're waiting for your seat at the bar or for the food that you've ordered.

Speaking of the bar, this is the best place to eat at the restaurant. The bar gives you plenty of space and you have ample room to enjoy your meal side by side with someone else (in my case my wife, who loves the restaurant as much as I do). The bartender/waiters who work the bar are friendly and informative and give you the inside scoop on the best new items on the menu which changes frequently.

There are a couple of consistent regular dishes that I'd heartily recommend from the menu. The Grilled Double Cut pork chop is to die for and the Wicked Good Seafood Stew is also top rate. They also do a number of different versions of salads with poached eggs which are also fantastic.

Wood Tavern also has some great cheese plates and even better desserts. I've had both the warm chocolate cake (pictured above) as well as the Southie Affogato and both seriously rock.

The service at Wood Tavern also is fantastic. A large staff works the small venue and take great care to ensure that every detail is just as you like it. From the hostess to the waitresses to the bartenders to the owners, Rich & Rebekah Wood (who seemed to be working there on every visit we've had so far) everyone is fun, nice and pleasant adding to the family like feel of the whole experience.

Best of all, Wood Tavern's prices are reasonable for a restaurant of its caliber. You'll spend much less than you would at the more expensive Chez Panisse while getting a better meal.

After only three meals at Wood Tavern my wife and I are already regulars. We'll be back again and again. We've tried most every highly regarded restaurant in the East Bay (where we live) and this one feels (and tastes) best of all.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay area, or find yourself over in the East Bay for a visit in the near future, do yourself a favor and check out this gem in Oakland.

Erica Jumping on a Sofa in Mid Air with Guitar and Daliesque Halsmanish Cat in the Air by Merkley??? on My Sofa, Buy This Cat's Book!

2008-05-01T10:33:00.000-07:00

Hot Donkey!

Look what just showed up in the mail at my house!

Yep, yep. That's right. Merkley's magnum opus and first edition book of nudes 111???. You mean the same Merkley that the New York Times Magazine profiled last weekend? Yep, the very one.

The book is a limited edition release, numbered and signed by the main man himself. Take it from Thomas Hawk folks, your virtual online art advisor and curator, this book is art and you'd best buy one now for $111 before there aren't any more left and you have to pay $1,111 for your copy on eBay.

Certainly what you are buying with this book is the art. Fine art. But aside from that, hands down, this is the highest quality self published fine art book I've ever seen. Someday when Thomas Hawk does his own book I'll be going to Merkley to find out who the hell printed such a beautiful work of art.

I've seen a lot of self published books and this book is no self published Blurb sort of thing. This book is indistinguishable from one that you'd find in the SF MOMA bookstore -- except rather than having photos by Lee Friedlander in it, it's got photos by your one and only Merkley in it. But mark my words folks, as sure as Friedlander's nudes are hanging right now as of this writing in the SF MOMA, it's only a matter of time before you see Merkley's photos right up there on the 5th floor where Friedlander's nudes hang today.

And when that happens you'll be able to say to the that hot little number on your arm at the swank museum on a Tuesday afternoon (because you only go to the SF MOMA on the first Tuesday of the month when it's free as a protest to their no photography allowed policy, and even then you take renegade pictures like mad), yeah babe, I was into Merkley wayyyyy before these lemmings ever heard of him, hell, I've got his first edition book he ever did back at my 65th floor condo overlooking the Bay Bridge, wanna come check it out?

And then that hot, hip, beautiful thing on your arm (and it could be male or female, young or old, depending on what sex you are and which way you swing), will say, damn baby, you've got a first edition 111???, I'm so in!

More info on the book.

How many photos? 111 to be exact. 111 photos of naked women on sofas. And trust me when I tell you that these women look far, far, better in an oversized large format 11x14 fine art book than they do on Flickr. Some women have guitars. Some women have cats. Some women have tattoos. But all of them are on sofas. And all have their portrait and a personalized page for their names. That's 222 pages in total. This book is thick, heavy, and full of great art.

Check out Merkley's Blog here. Check out his Flickrstream here. And buy this man's book before there are not any copies left. He only printed up 1,111 copies.

Lens Baby, Plate 3

2008-05-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

Visions and Dreams of Rothko

2008-04-30T16:18:00.001-07:00

San Francisco Skyline

2008-04-30T15:22:00.001-07:00

74 Things Merkley Learned About Being Mentioned in the New York Times

2008-04-30T11:06:00.000-07:00

merkley???: I May Not Be God, But at Least I'm Real.: 74 Things I Learned About Being Mentioned In The New York Times

"74. "The New York Times" dropped into various conversations with any human, dog or reflective surface who will listen along with "yeah they mentioned me in this ginormous article about radness..." makes you sound like a dick."

You'll have to check the list to read the rest of them.

This man is the king of sarcasm!

Buy his book here!