Friday, February 29, 2008

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Microsoft to buy xobni?

TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft is negotiating a deal with Xobni.

Xobni makes a software add for Outlook to improve your email experience.


Xobni
Website: www.xobni.com
Location: San Francisco, California, United States
Founded: April 1, 2006
Funding: $4.3M

Xobni, the word “inbox” spelled backwards, has created a new way to look at your email. Xobni takes the effort out of organizing, searching, and navigating your email.

The only thing that has changed with email in the last ten years is that… Learn More

Google's Marissa Mayer Article

Here's the article some of you have been looking for on Marissa Mayer of Google. She spoke at Search Engine Strategies in 2007.


Published on San Francisco online (http://www.sanfranmag.com)
The adventures of Marissa

Feature Features March
Subline:
The serious power and glam passions of Marissa Mayer, the gorgeously geeky Googler who’s generating a new kind of Silicon Valley notoriety.

Author:
Julian Guthrie
[1]
A week before Christmas, Marissa Mayer, the most closely watched woman in the most closely watched company in the world, stands in the bedroom of her $5 million, 38th-floor penthouse at the Four Seasons, surrounded by Googlers who work for her. She is not what you expect.In the many YouTube videos that capture Mayer talking to students at Stanford or making presentations at tech conferences, she comes across like a midlevel associate at an accounting firm. She is precise and methodical, even a bit soporific, and appears attractive in a Brooks Brothers or Talbots sort of way. But in person—tonight, anyway—she looks Grace Kelly gorgeous, a tall, blue-eyed beauty with blond hair pulled back from her fresh face. She is much livelier than you might imagine, and her clothes are anything but humdrum. For better or worse, Mayer is infatuated with the color purple, and she wears a formfitting deep-purple dress by C.D. Greene with small black mirrors that catch and reflect light. Together with the bedroom’s violet walls—replicated from one of her favorite cashmere sweaters—the look announces her love of eye-poppingly bright colors and Marimekko-type patterns.At 32, the phenomenally brainy and driven Mayer—Google’s first female engineer—has already been on the cover of Newsweek, which called her “one of the most powerful women of her generation.” Among tech insiders, she is well known for her laugh—a nerdy, rapid-fire tat-tat-tat that has been made into a YouTube mashup and is available as a ringtone. For gossip websites like Valleywag, Mayer is an easy mark, a machinelike Google executive and (so they say) a social climber who paid $60,000 to win lunch with Oscar de la Renta, once dated Google cofounder Larry Page, and uses her looks for publicity. “Marissa is surprisingly pretty in person,” says Valleywag blogger and editor Owen Thomas. “That in itself is a rarity in Silicon Valley, and you’d have to be naïve to think that doesn’t color people’s views of her.”But whatever else there is to say about Mayer—who is rumored to be worth several hundred million dollars—there’s no doubting her influence at Google. As vice president of search products and user experience, Mayer manages 150 product managers, who direct the efforts of nearly 2,000 software engineers; levels criticism and praise with the same cool gaze; and is an arbiter of much of what goes before Page, cofounder Sergey Brin, and CEO Eric Schmidt, who trust her as their gatekeeper. Just about everything that goes on at the Mountain View company, which is more valuable than the U.S.’s three largest traditional media companies combined (Time Warner, Walt Disney, and the News Corporation), falls under Mayer’s lens—from Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Books, and Google Images to the company’s other services, including news and health.As more revelers descend on Mayer’s bedroom and surround her pet dog, an Aibo robot named Rover, she laughs her throaty laugh. (It is funny to watch the Google brain trust try to get Rover to roll over.) Just outside the door, the party rages on. She expects that more than 300 Googlers will eventually make their way past the hunky welcoming Santa (mischievous grin, no shirt, bulging biceps) to join the 10-deep line at the bar. When she emerges from the bedroom, she’s pretty much the only blonde in a room packed with mostly dark-haired young guys, many of Indian and otherwise Asian descent. Not far from the bar is Matt Rabinowitz, a friend from Stanford who started a genetics company that Mayer has invested in and that specializes in judging the health of embryos preimplantation. He wears jeans and a white cotton shirt with a red-wine stain on the nipple. Brin and his wife, Anne Wojcicki, who runs the genetics company 23andMe, make their way through the crowd. One young engineer, fresh out of Princeton, looks at the display of cakes, which are designed to look like Christmas ornaments, with unease. Are they for eating or admiring? Mayer’s parents, Michael and Margaret, are also here, having flown in from their home in Wausau, Wisconsin, where Mayer grew up. They look a bit wide-eyed at the packed penthouse.Despite Mayer’s nonchalance about the party—she acts goofy and girly and talks a blue streak—I sense the gathering means more to her than she will admit. Just eight years earlier, as a graduate student at Stanford, Mayer was often chided by friends for pulling all-nighters and showing up in the same clothes she had worn the day before. And with her ballerina posture, stolid gaze, and photographic memory, she’s often been pegged as arrogant or aloof. “I think people can be overwhelmed by Marissa’s energy,” says her mother. “She is very definite and precise. But she’s not as mechanical as she appears.” Especially when she’s away from the office. Indeed, now that she’s moved to one of San Francisco’s marquee addresses (she also has a Craftsman in Palo Alto) and begun to cultivate an eclectic array of personal passions, this event can be seen as a coming-out party of sorts for a new kind of Silicon Valley star.The valley may be the Bay Area’s Hollywood, but its newsmakers—from Bill Hewlett to Meg Whitman—have been largely uninterested in the stuff Hollywood lives for: high-impact fashion, entertaining, and style. Even Google founders Brin and Page, now worth an estimated $20 billion each, still shuffle around the office in flip-flops and jeans. Rabinowitz, whom I met at the party, says Mayer is someone who “defies the norm in Silicon Valley. She’s not into fast cars or flying her own plane. A lot of people in Silicon Valley have hobbies to make a social point. Marissa has a totally individual sense of what floats her boat.”Who else in Silicon Valley could report, with absolute seriousness, that she’d recently bought an array of cookbooks to study the cupcake recipes in each, created a spreadsheet for the ingredients, and then tested the recipes before writing her own? (She made another spreadsheet for frosting.) Indeed, for the cakes at tonight’s party, she sent I Dream of Cake 14 different links to ornaments she liked, with notations under each, such as “I like the color” or “I like this for the glitter.” (She has also invested in the company.) Mayer is equally obsessive about her art. Guests entering her apartment can’t miss the ceiling installation she commissioned from the famous glass artist Dale Chihuly: 400 pieces of blown glass in the shapes of sea flora and fauna. (For last year’s party, Mayer had this sculpture replicated in a cake—and actually teared up when she first saw it.) Behind the bar is a wall-size light panel with 576 individually placed Ping-Pong balls, which Mayer made over eight weekends spent home alone, inspired by the light display she’d seen at a 2005 U2 concert. On other walls hang original works by Andy Warhol, Sol LeWitt, and Roy Lichtenstein.But make no mistake: Even in these so-called hobbies, Mayer is fiercely competitive. She wants to make the best cupcake, wear the prettiest dress, have the coolest penthouse. “I’ve never had a conversation with her when she wasn’t completely certain she was right,” says John Battelle, a founder of Wired magazine and the Industry Standard and author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. At heart, the driving force behind Mayer’s personal interests is not all that different from what motivates her most ambitious projects at Google: She likes to create things that make people—“the end user,” in her words—happy. In fact, one of her biggest projects may be the stylish overhaul of the one Google feature that’s come to represent the company’s keep-it-simple philosophy: its home page. After years of defending the minimal white screen for its user-friendly quality, Mayer finally agreed to push forward with a plan to let interested users customize the look of their page. And she’s done it with her trademark brio, approaching a group of exceedingly cool artists—including game designer Will Wright, fashion icons Oscar de la Renta and Todd Oldham, and Mayer’s beloved Chihuly—to create “skins” that users can make part of their iGoogle page. “Designer Themes for Google” is supposed to launch sometime this month. When Mayer first heard the word Google, it was impossible for anyone to know just how well her blend of Midwestern common sense, take-no-prisoners ambition, and love of all things brainy would mesh with a company whose goal was to organize all the information in the world. “Marissa was hired for a programming job,” says Craig Silverstein, Google’s technology director and the company’s first employee. “Now you look at her, and she’s the one deciding what we do.” He says Mayer is the most talented person he’s ever known.Silverstein first met Mayer in the spring of 1999. She was 24 and getting ready to graduate from Stanford with a master’s degree in computer science (she already had a bachelor’s in symbolic systems). She had chosen artificial intelligence as her specialty because she was interested in logic and how it could be replicated in computers.It was a heady time for computer science graduates, who were entering the market at the height of the dot-com bubble. Companies including Yahoo!, MarketWatch, VA Linux Systems, and TheGlobe.com were going public, creating some of the biggest first-day gains of all time. Entrepreneurs were becoming instant millionaires, ushering in an era of lava lamps, wacky ideas, in-office foosball, and lucrative stock options. Mayer had 12 job offers, ranging from a teaching position at Carnegie Mellon to a consulting job with McKinsey to a software engineering job at Oracle. She was gravitating toward McKinsey, where she would work as a consultant to Silicon Valley technology companies.But then, one Friday night in mid-April, Mayer was eating a bowl of pasta in her dorm room and scanning her email when she spotted a message slugged, “Work at Google?” Just as she was about to hit delete—her reflexive response to new recruiting pitches—she leaned over and inadvertently hit the space bar key, opening the email. As she read, she remembered a conversation she’d had in the fall with her mentor, computer science teacher Eric Roberts.She had just returned from nine months in Zurich, Switzerland, where she was working with 30 other researchers to build a recommender system for the web, similar to the one Amazon uses to suggest books based on a customer’s previous purchases. As Mayer talked to Roberts in his office, he nodded and pointed upward. “There are two guys on the fourth floor who are building what you built,” he said. He apologized for not being able to remember specifics about the company they were forming, except that it had a funny name, but he thought maybe she should get in touch.Mayer’s plate was already full. In addition to her studies, she had been selected by Roberts to teach undergraduate computer science, which drew nearly 400 students per class. Besides, she had met enough PhD students to know the type: They don’t shower, they eat pizza for breakfast, and they don’t say sorry when they bump into you. Thanks, but no thanks.But on that spring night, she reread the Google email and remembered the guys upstairs with the crazy ambitions. She would come for an interview, she replied, but it would need to happen fast. She had given herself a deadline of May 1 to make her decision. It was April 22.Four days later, she had her first interview at Google, which by then had moved from a dorm room to a friend’s garage, and finally to a small office at 165 University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto. There were seven employees. The conference room consisted of a Ping-Pong table.Mayer sat on the same side of the table as Page and Brin. Page appeared lost in thought and didn’t say a word the entire interview. Brin, a math whiz whose father taught applied probability and statistics and whose mother worked for NASA, grilled Mayer on artificial intelligence. As she stood at a whiteboard, fielding complex math questions, writing code, and drawing diagrams, she heard someone yell out, “Who wants to go to the VC?” Brin and Page shot up; the interview was over. An office assistant asked Mayer if she could come back the next day. She said yes.The following afternoon, Mayer was interviewed first by Amit Patel, the company’s eighth employee. His opening words to her were, “I’m not sure I’m able to interview you, as I started this morning and I don’t know what we do yet.” He eventually posed a number of general computer science questions about the way memory is allocated in different programs.Mayer was then interviewed by Silverstein, Google’s first full-time programmer. Before he began, he asked her to stop the interview at 4 p.m. to remind him to move his car. (All Googlers had to switch color zones every hour to avoid getting ticketed.) He then asked her to name three things Google could do better. Mayer, who hadn’t used the site much, came up with two ideas. She’d like to reorder results based on clicks, she said, and she thought Google needed a better system of crawling for pages, especially with news. When she stopped talking, she realized it was 4:10. She apologized for overshooting the 30-minute time limit by about 25 percent. Silverstein laughed and said the interview had been worth it.Mayer left Google impressed and nervous—dazzled by Silverstein’s intelligence, but afraid she had not been so dazzling herself. Back in her dorm room, she reflected on the best decisions she had made so far in her life. The first was going to Stanford, even though she had been accepted at Yale and a host of other top colleges. The second was switching majors from biochemistry to symbolic systems. Another was going to work at the Stanford Research Center and later taking the job in Switzerland, where she had known no one and hadn’t spoken the language.The common thread, she realized, was that each of those decisions had allowed her to surround herself with really smart people and to do something outside of her comfort zone. The same would be true if she went with Google, she figured. The guys she had met there were the smartest people she had ever interviewed with, and she had a sense that she would learn more from failing with them than by succeeding someplace else.On May 1, she declined 11 job offers and kept the Google and McKinsey ones alive. Six days later, she verbally accepted Google’s offer, signing with the company on the 12th—12 being her lucky number.On graduation day, Mayer was surprised to see Page and Brin there to cheer her on. They were wearing shorts and traveling on inline skates. As they were talking with Mayer and her parents, Page suddenly said, “Hey, I think I may have graduated today. I should go and see.” He skated away, returning with the master’s diploma he hadn’t yet bothered to pick up. Mayer’s parents took in the spectacle with a bit of trepidation. They wanted to believe their daughter was making the right decision, but they couldn’t help wondering about the wisdom of her signing with a company that had no revenue, no clear strategy for revenue, and leaders who skated to their graduation. On June 24, Mayer arrived for her second day at Google. She was employee number 20, and it was a big day for the nascent company: It had signed a deal to become Netscape’s default search engine. Employees were frantically doing calculations to determine whether they would have enough power to handle the searches that came in. They had about 300 computers at the time and weren’t sure they’d have the capacity. Google told Netscape to send only one of every five queries, but Netscape didn’t listen: It sent Google all its traffic, and Google had to take down its site.At around 11 a.m., Mayer went into the company kitchen for a snack. Peering into the fridge, she sensed she wasn’t alone. She turned around and saw Page standing in a small nook. Startled, she asked what he was doing. “I’m hiding,” he said. “The site is down. It’s all gone horribly awry.”She made it home that night at around 3 a.m., typical for the hours she would keep. As she climbed into bed, she thought, “It’s not exactly confidence building to see the CEO hiding in the kitchen, saying everything has gone horribly awry.” She gave the company a 2 percent chance of succeeding.Working late nights and weekends, the Google crew liked to take time off to attend some of the valley’s many launch parties. Brin, in search of dates, tried to distinguish himself from other dot-com founders by saying that his dot-com would make money.At the parties, Mayer liked to gauge Google’s popularity by noticing people’s reactions when she told them where she worked. (For the first month at work, she was a closet InfoSeek user, turning her computer screen so no one would see.) In August, two months into her job, she finally met one person who had heard of Google. That seemed like a big deal. But within a year, Mayer was finding more and more people who were using the search engine. Soon, the company began to hit major milestones. The site was internationalized to 14 languages in April 2000, and that summer, Google successfully launched its search service for Yahoo!. On the day of the launch, when work was over at 11 p.m., the team celebrated the deal with a bottle of Dom Pérignon and hamburgers from McDonald’s. A year and a half later, Mayer spotted someone using Google in a cybercafé in Switzerland. Around the same time, she’d go to parties and hear, “Oh, I love Google.”And Google loves Mayer—allowing, of course, for the inevitable griping and dishing that come with being the boss of 150 incredibly smart and opinionated people. And why not? Two out of three web searches in the United States today go through Google, and few dispute that Mayer has a lot to do with that. “Her character mirrors the culture of Google quite closely,” says Wired founder Battelle. “Everything at Google depends on how intelligent you are and how well you defend a point of view, and Marissa’s demeanor is very consistent with that. She speaks insanely quickly and has no patience with people who can’t keep up.” She also has an uncanny, and sometimes unnerving, ability to zero in on the problem or solution—a skill she says she honed on her high school debate team, which won the state championship her senior year.No doubt these qualities are what have gained her a reputation for being cold and robotic, but Battelle says that he has seen Mayer “soften” over the years, possibly because of increased media exposure, and possibly because of a realization that “not everybody in the world works the way she does.” Sundar Pichai, a director of product management who has worked closely with Mayer for three years, thinks there’s a real difference between Mayer’s reputation and reality. “I’d heard about how sharp and quick she was,” he says, “how passionate she is about the user experience, and how she bleeds Google. But she was so much better in person. It’s like when I went to the U.S. Open to see Federer play. She functions at the executive level but is just as comfortable at the engineer level.” Plus, he adds, “She’s also unusually gregarious. She loves to talk and is very entertaining.”On a recent afternoon at Google, I see Mayer in action as she leads a string of meetings in a small, nondescript conference room. One after another, teams of engineers stride in, laptops open, and begin their presentations. On this occasion there are no hellos, no socializing. Wearing black slacks, sandals, and a loose-fitting top, Mayer maintains a cool gaze that gives nothing away. The clock is ticking. Each group has 10 minutes. The first team discusses how it’s planning to tie bookmarks to a new Google Toolbar. The objective has been to make it easy to access bookmarks from anywhere, including someone else’s desktop. Google Notebook—part of the Google Toolbar—would allow users to build a page of helpful, bookmarked searches and compile them in one place. As a prototype is projected on a whiteboard, Mayer suggests reverting to a cleaner-looking bookmark. “People understand bookmarks, but don’t understand notebooks,” she says. “I think my mom would be baffled by this.” She pressures them to simplify the model and merge the two products.Indeed, Mayer invokes her mother a lot, which makes sense, given her steadfast devotion to the ease of the end user. More than anything, perhaps, she wants Google to be intuitively simple to operate. “I don’t think we’re where we need to be in terms of search,” she told me during an earlier conversation. “You type keywords. You can’t type concepts. You can’t give it a picture and say, ‘Find other pictures.’ And can you talk to your search engine? Do you receive results in your car? These are some of the questions we’re looking at.”The next team arrives to talk about a yet-to-be-released product that the company is keeping under wraps. Mayer’s first concern is that the directives for uploading or downloading aren’t clear enough. “You need to indicate a mode change,” she says, and advises using the phrases “waiting for download” or “to be downloaded.” She’s also “a little weirded out” by the fact that they’re using a circle to indicate progress, instead of the typical ticking clock or progress bar. Notes are taken, brows furrowed. The team will come back to Mayer with a better version. Another team briefs Mayer on the new gadget directory, which was launched in October, and her response is more of the same: The design’s too busy, the colors hard to read. Throughout the afternoon, Mayer takes no phone calls, doesn’t respond to email, and doesn’t break for food or even her favorite drink, Mountain Dew. She is inexhaustible.Finally, after several more rapid-fire meetings, Mayer is due at her daily office hours. Today, she’s meeting with a physician who is directing what may be Google’s most ambitious project yet, one that is sure to make privacy advocates apoplectic and unsettle even the most sanguine of online users: the new health initiative. Like Google Books (also Mayer’s project), which aims to create a digital library of all the books in the world, this one—another “moon shot,” she said—would have the ability to store the medical records of every person in the world. “At Google, we talk a lot about ‘cloud computing,’ which means you store it in the cloud,” Mayer explains. “We have the computers in place and storage in space and the redundant power. The data would belong only to the user, but it could be stored with Google.” So, in addition to being able to search for all kinds of health information online—regarding symptoms, conditions, medications—people would be able to access their own medical records. But why should consumers trust Google? Mayer nods. It’s a question she’s asked often. “People know they can trust us,” she says. But just in case, “we’re looking into the best possible security. We are not going to put user privacy at risk.”At 8 p.m., Mayer finally shuts her door and heads to her new house in Palo Alto, where she hosts the Google gang for Halloween a few weeks later. (Typically obsessive and methodical, Mayer looked at more than 100 homes before deciding on this one.) As at her Christmas party—and in much the same way as she designs products for the company—she has aimed for what you might call high-end comfort. (Her all-time favorite foods include duck confit Sloppy Joes, sliders of Angus beef with brie, and macaroni and cheese with lobster.) Tonight, the menu includes gourmet pizza, chili, and salads.Outside, a table is laden with gorgeous cakes made by I Dream of Cake; It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Scream, and Psycho are cued up to play on the giant screen installed in the backyard; and several orange-and-black couches dot the lawn, complete with warm blankets to snuggle under. Also on offer are dozens of Mayer’s favorite Sprungli Luxemburgerli (bite-size macaroons), which she brought back from Zurich, where she was on business a few days earlier. She even sent invitees a Wikipedia link to information about the treat.Although this isn’t a costume party, one person wanders through the house in a white latex suit with matching hood. Only his eyes, lips, and nose are visible. Soon, the costumed guest is revealed to be Brin. Several Google employees approach to take his picture, but he declines, saying, “What? This is not a costume!” Throughout the evening, he sticks to his story: that the shorts and sandals he wears during the workweek are the real costume.The party combines Mayer’s cosmopolitan, peripatetic style with her small-town, Midwestern background. Her mother was an art teacher and stay-at-home mom; her father was an engineer for water-pollution control. In addition to being an ace debater, Mayer was a standout on the precision dance team, and her childhood bedroom still has the same Techline furniture, bright teal walls, and Jackie Kennedy doll collection it had when she was young.In many ways, Mayer is still that geeky, super-normal, enthusiastic girl. So it’s no surprise when we spend hours one day at—where else?—I Dream of Cake in North Beach. Mayer samples a piece of cake and says, “I’m a huge fan of frosting. Vanilla fudge is my favorite. It gives you brain euphoria.”Mayer came across the dessert company about three years ago when she was looking for a specialty baker who could make a cake in the shape of a kitesurfer for a friend’s 30th birthday. Owner Shinmin Li, who studied graphic design and animation before launching I Dream of Cake, said she could do it, but suggested a cake that would include all three of Mayer’s friend’s favorite hobbies: kiteboarding, scuba diving, and snowboarding—and have as its theme, “Do it all by age 30.” Mayer was sold, and since then Li has become her de facto cake guru (she’s done the cakes for nearly all of Mayer’s parties). The two call the specialty shop “the world’s first cake gallery.”Mayer is an eager practitioner of the art herself. “I’ve always loved baking,” she says. “I think it’s because I’m very scientific. The best cooks are chemists.” In addition to creating her famous cupcake and frosting spreadsheets, she has analyzed all of the different paper linings available. “The problem with the silver ones,” she says in utter earnestness, “is that they seal the cupcake. You’ve got to go with the classic paper, which allows the cupcake to breathe.”About an hour later, Mayer and I head to her penthouse for a quick stopover before checking out another place she adores: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. One reason she chose the penthouse, she says, is that everything she needs is just a few steps from the front door: not only the museum, but also the new Barneys and her favorite denim shop, AG Jeans. She also enjoys the amenities available at the Four Seasons—the grilled-cheese sandwiches she can get from room service, and the gym that’s open late into the evening. (Not surprisingly, she’s one of those annoying people who need only four hours of sleep a night.)At SFMOMA, we check out Olafur Eliasson’s “Take Your Time” exhibit. The atmospheric, sensory pieces delight Mayer, who analyzes the way the geometric, multicolored works reflect and refract light. She studies each one from all angles, and appears to be having a quiet discourse with herself, until she reaches a point of understanding.Next up: Barneys. She’s looking for a black purse that’s not too slouchy, not too starched, and doesn’t scream of one designer. She knows exactly what she’s looking for, but doesn’t find it. No matter—there are clothes to try on. Her favorite designers are de la Renta and Carolina Herrera. She’s even becoming a fixture in the local society pages. The woman who began her career explaining the mathematical underpinnings of K-means cluster analysis now finds herself talking happily about which designer she’s wearing. At the recent opening of the San Francisco Ballet, she was photographed in a Naeem Khan gown and some 70 karats of borrowed Graff diamonds. In February, she took a trip to check out New York’s fall Fashion Week.At this point, the only thing missing from Mayer’s full life is a romantic partner. Interestingly, the woman who is chatty and opinionated about everything from jeans to cupcakes to the future of search engines, and who lives increasingly in the public eye, demurs when it comes to discussing her romantic life. She does allow that she has had a series of long-term relationships and is dating. (Valleywag has spotted her around town with Zachary Bogue, cofounder of the private equity firm Montara Capital Partners.)As for work, Mayer has no immediate plans to leave Google, though she says that when she hits the 10-year mark, she may take a moment to reflect and consider a change. She will be 34. “I helped build Google,” she says, “but I don’t like to rest on [my] laurels. I think the most interesting thing is what happens next.”“I see her as a superb CEO of some really important company,” says her college friend Rabinowitz. “At some point, Marissa will realize she has more money than she knows how to spend, and she will want to use her brain in other ways,” says Battelle. “It happens with a lot of these people. Look at Steve Jobs’ interest in animation. I hope when that does happen, it is for the good of the world. She has the potential to make a difference wherever she is.”Does Mayer ever see herself going completely low-tech and focusing (professionally or otherwise) on art, entertaining, baking, or fashion? “I’m a businesswoman first and foremost,” she says. Then she adds, with her weird laugh, “My hobbies actually make me better at work. They help me come up with new and innovative ways of looking at things.” Julian Guthrie is a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. She wrote "Why Can't Anyone Say No to Dede Wilsey?" for the April 2007 issue of San Francisco.


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Source URL: http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/adventures-marissa
Links:
[1] http://www.sanfranmag.com/content/mar-08-166-marissajpg

Thursday, February 28, 2008

JPL Lecture

This month’s lecture: Where in the World Will Our Energy Come From?

Summary : Where in the world will our energy come from? What would it take for the world to get away from fossil fuels and switch over to renewable energy? It takes more than willingness to buy a Prius or to install solar panels on your roof. If we want to use wind, solar thermal, solar electric, biomass, hydroelectric and geothermal energy it will take a lot of planning, and willingness on the part of governments and industry. It takes R&D investment, a favorable price per unit of energy to get anyone to produce alternative energy, and plenty of resources to create those energy sources.


Speaker : Dr. Nate Lewis
George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry, Caltech


Location: Thursday, February 28, 2008, 7p.m.

The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA
+Directions

Friday, February 29, 2008, 7p.m.
The Vosloh Forum at Pasadena City College
1570 East Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA
+Directions



Webcast: For the webcast on Thursday at 7 p.m. PST, click here
http://realserver1.jpl.nasa.gov:8080/ramgen/broadcast/live.rm?mode=compact


If you don't have RealPlayer, you can download the free RealPlayer 8 Basic.





Click here to return to the 2008 von Kármán Lecture Schedule.

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HP Ink Printer celebrates 20 years!

Deskjet turns 20: HP celebrates two decades of robbing you blind {Engadget}
Feb 28th 2008 4:52PM
True HP makes a mint selling cartridges. What would be a fair price to charge? $10? Have you tried to fill a cartridge? What a pain that can be and most refilled cartridges are junk ink or toner.

Are extra capacity carts the solution?

The problem is that these printers are not very good to start with either. I've had several Officejet printers, all sorts of jams and print feed problems.

And I have lots of empties here, what do I do with them, just think of all the landfill waste....

There has to be a solution.
I try to buy laser printers when I can, but the toner is very very expensive. Basically I can buy a new printer for the cost of the 4 toner carts.

T-Shirt Outlet for St. Patricks Day


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Wednesday, February 27, 2008

An excerpt from Brian Tracy's The Power of Charm:


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An excerpt from Brian Tracy's The Power of Charm:
The Power of Charm
Four Keys to Effective Listening
Every book, article, or course on this subject ultimately comes to the same conclusion: There are four key elements of effective listening. If you can master them, your "charm quotient" will skyrocket immediately.
1. Listen attentively. Listen without interrupting. Listen in complete silence, as if there is nothing in the world that is more important to you at this moment than what the other person is saying.
If someone wants to talk to you, especially at home, immediately discontinue all other activities and give that person your complete attention.
Turn off the television, shut the book or newspaper, and focus single-mindedly on what the other person is saying. This behavior will be instantly recognized and appreciated, and will give you tremendous emotional power in the conversation.
To listen as if you are transfixed by what the other person is saying, imagine that your eyes are sunlamps and you are giving the person's face a tan.
When a person is intently listened to by another, he is affected biochemically. His brain releases endorphins, nature's "happy drug" which makes him feel good about himself. His self-esteem goes up and he likes himself more. Above all, he likes and trusts you more by virtue of your listening attentively to him. The payoff is extraordinary.
2. Pause before replying. Rather than jumping in as soon as the other person takes a breath, pause for three to five seconds. Allow a silence to exist. Just relax.
When you pause, three things happen, all of them good. First, you avoid interrupting the other person if he is just pausing to reorganize his thoughts before continuing. Second, by pausing, you tell the person that what he said was important and that you are considering it carefully. This reinforces the personal value of the speaker and causes him to see you as a more attractive and intelligent person. Third, you actually hear the person, not only what he said, but what he meant, at a deeper level of mind. Try it once and see.
3. Question for clarification. Never assume that you know exactly what the person meant by what he said. Instead, help him to expand on his most recent remark by asking, "How do you mean?" or "What do you mean, exactly?"
Here is one of the most important rules of communication: The person who asks questions has control.
The person answering the questions is controlled by the person asking them. When a person is speaking in answer to a question, fully 100 percent of his focus and attention is on what he is saying; he cannot think of anything else. He is totally controlled by the questioner.
The trick to charming someone with this technique is to ask your questions thoughtfully. All great communicators know this and use it regularly.
4. Feed it back: paraphrase it in your own words. This is the acid test of effective listening, the proof that you were really paying attention, instead of engaging in the "phony listening" that is so common today.
When a person finishes speaking, you pause and say something like., "So, you just did this, and then this happened, and then you decided to do that, right?"
Only when the speaker confirms that's what he said and meant do you continue, either by asking another question or commenting on what has just been said.



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PolitiFact

This is a good site that helps readers fact check the debates:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/

Clinton and Obama are still going at it.

Gas Price Update

Los Angeles: February 27, 2008: Victor Caballero

We are seeing the average price of gas at $3.32 per gallon in the Los Angeles area this morning.

I paid $2.21 at the Burbank Costco yesterday and then drove by a Chevron on San Fernando and the price was $2.28.

Looking for the best price on gas?

Use various shopping sites including:
www.gasbuddy.com
www.gaspricewatch.com

Cup of Coffee for $1 at Starbucks

Starbucks had it barista training yesterday 2.26.08, the best story to come out so far this morning is that because of the economy Starbucks is market testing $1 cup of regular coffee in the Seattle market.

A good move to continue to build marketshare in the ever increasingly competitive coffee space.

Over $4 per gallon gas?

Experts are predicting that consumers will see gas at over $4 per gallon before Summer 2008.

The current price per barrel can impact prices at the pump by over $.50 a gallon today.

I predict that we will see $4 per gallon gas before the end of June. Actually, I have a bet with a friend, Jeffrey Naumann who doesn't believe we will see $4 before June.

Orange County Restaurant Grading System

Orange County in Southern California is seriously considering implementing a restaurant grading system very similar to Los Angeles County.

This is a good move as it would help consumers to better evaluate their dining options.

There are cities within the County of Los Angeles such as Pasadena that do not use the grading system.

This system can be controversial as it can be unfair to some establishments that cannot control items that are part of the facility.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Chat with Victor Caballero on Google Talk



You can pickup the code here to add this to your website as well:
http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/New

Vonage: How to Cancel???

So I have decided to cancel my Vonage service.

Here's the obstacles you need to overcome to necessary to cancel service with Vonage.

1. You have to call between certain hours.
Account Management Department is available to assist you Monday-Friday 9:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. EST at 1-VONAGE-HELP (1-866-243-4357).

2. You have to navigate through the account management and have them tell you to call back in an hour, that they cannot make any changes to the account. Ask why the systems are down and they have no clue. I tried to call them twice to see if they would give me the same answer.

Why is Vonage taking down a vital system during business hours? Most likely this is a tactic to retain customers? I am now more determined to cancel my service and not let Vonage take advantage of me as a consumer.

I will be calling Vonage back in an hour to see what answer I get this time.

EconSM Registration Begins

Early Bird registration has started for EconSM at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

This event is shaping up to be a great event.

Hope to see you there.

www.econsm.com/register

Early bird is $695 + $9.95 fee, the regular rate goes to $995 after the early bird which should last about a week or two.

Congrats to Rafat Ali and staff for putting together another great event.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Yahoo at IAB Phoenix Conference




Yang and Decker from Yahoo! made an appearance at the the IAB Conference in Phoenix today.

It appears that conversations are still ongoing with Yahoo and Microsoft, although it is a little confusing what is really going on, one thing for sure is that Microsoft is going for it and has started hostile takeover steps with preparations for a proxy battle and the ousting of the Yahoo board.

What will Yahoo do?

At this point it appears is preparing their Apex ad system, which has some buzz. We will see if it is as promised. Indications are good so far.

Along with Apex we should expect to see a Buzz offering from Yahoo.

We haven't heard too much about Yahoo Live, it appears to still be up and running with about 1500 viewers and 100 channels broadcasting live. Most of the video is not worth watching but there are a few that are interesting. How is Live going to be different than ustream and justin tv? That is the question.

Yahoo has to offer a product that is different than anything else out there. Maybe playing catchup and surpassing the competition is part of the strategy?

More to follow.

Disney Movie Club

I am a big fan of Disney movies. Now with the Disney Movie Club you can save a few dollars when you purchase moviews.


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MASH 25th Anniversay Celebration

This past weekend on February 23, 2008 we went out to Aguora with our good friends on a short hike to the Mash site. It was the celebration of 25 years since the last episode was shot on the location.

I took some video and pictures at the location with various celebreties that had come out to show their support and talk a little about MASH.

I was not a huge fan of the show, but it is amazing that they did use the site and the surroundings to make it look like a war scene from Korea.

Mike Ferrell
Loretta Swift

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U.S. Economy: Home Resales Fall to Nine-Year Low

Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Sales of existing homes in the U.S. fell in January to the lowest level since records began nine years ago and prices slid for the sixth time in seven months, posing a threat to consumer spending, the largest part of the economy.

Read more here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aVamiymZfK8E&refer=home

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Paula Abdul releases comeback video




American Idol - Paula Abdul releases comeback video
21 February 2008 - Paula Abdul has released the music video for her comeback single Dance Like There's No Tomorrow.

The song, the first new release from the pop star in over a decade, is the result of a collaboration between Paula and fellow American Idol judge Randy Jackson, who appears in the video playing bass.

Simon Cowell and American Idol host Ryan Seacrest also make a cameo appearance in the video, which, according to E! Online is "terrible and awesome all at the same time".

The Daytona Beach News-Journal claimed that the pop star is "back to her 'normal' self" following questionable antics on previous seasons of American Idol and her reality show Hey Paula.

It also added that the Dance Like There's No Tomorrow single is "not that bad, surprisingly".

The single is part of a compilation album entitled Randy Jackson's Music Club Vol 1, which also features tunes from Mariah Carey, Jason Mraz, Travis Tritt, Bon Jovi's Richie Sambora and Joss Stone, as well as former American Idol finalists Elliott Yamin and newlywed Katharine McPhee.

The album is expected to go on sale on March 11th.

Ready, Set, GoGPS: Fleet Owners




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Friday, February 22, 2008

Discovery Store: Planet Earth HD DVD Set

discoverystore.com sells the Planet Earth HD DVD Set for $79.95.

As a reader of this blog you can get it for $50 off and also enjoy free shipping on this purchase through Monday 2/25!

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Thursday, February 21, 2008

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Significant Announcement from Microsoft This Morning

"Microsoft (MSFT) Executives to Make Significant Company Announcement" this morning and it's not related to the Yahoo deal.

LIVE coverage of the call at 8:30 a.m. PST. Here are the call-in details if you are interested:

REDMOND, Wash., -- Feb. 21, 2008

Who: Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp.; Ray Ozzie, chief software architect; Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business; and Brad Smith, senior vice president and general counsel for Legal and Corporate Affairs.

Note: This announcement is not about Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo! Inc. It will not be discussed during this call.

When: 8:30 a.m. PST (17:30 CET) to 9:15 a.m. PST (18:15 CET), Thursday, Feb. 21, 2008

Teleconference Information: Listen-only news conference U.S. dial-in: (888) 810-3138 (toll-free) or (630) 395-0279 (toll) - Verbal passcode: Microsoft

An executive Q&A session will directly follow the news announcement, during which participants will have the opportunity to submit questions.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Navy Systems Go to shoot down Satellite

There's word that the Navy is preparing to shoot down the Spy Satellite tonight. As early as the next 30-45 minutes.

We have been on and off again for the last few days. Seas are a little rougher than the Navy would like. When the missle is fired it will be traveling at over 20k knots per hour and the impact should destroy the satellite and the benzine fuel that is in a frozen state.

More details to follow.

New Apple Products and Pricing - iPod Shuffle

iPod shuffle - originally $79 is now only $49 and is still eligible for free shipping. (Canada - originally $89 is now only $55 w/ free shipping)

240 songs. Remixed colors. iPod shuffle just $49. Free shipping.


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Bruce Clay Give Away Contest

Thanks to Bruce Clay and Company for creating a fantastic prize to help those interested in helping non-profits.

This was my first year entering the contest and would seriously consider entering again next year. My entry was for Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, http://www.skirball.org/.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/2/prweb710083.htm

Thanks Bruce and company for making this possible. http://www.bruceclay.com/.

Pasadena Traffic Enforcement Sweep

Pasadena Now is reporting that this coming Friday the City of Pasadena will be conducting a citywide sweep at the most dangerous intersections around town.

http://www.pasadenanow.com/_News/publish/article_2047.html

The times are from 7am to 3pm. I would encourage that the city extend this to the later hours at least until 6pm and for sure they need to cover Hill and Orange Grove as well as Hill and the 210. I can't count the number of cars I see running red lights at these intersections. Not only running red lights but speeding.

I hope this program yields some safer conditions on the roads of Pasasdena.

Pentagon Briefing on Spy Satellite From Feb 14, 2008

Pentagon Briefing on Spy Satellite From Feb 14, 2008

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Site of the Day: BigStage.com

Still in beta, Big Stage is a media company whose breakthrough technology allows users to easily create and integrate a life-like 3D avatar of themselves into everything from famous movie scenes, TV shows and video games, to music videos, short video clips, virtual worlds, still images, user-generated content, instant messages, emails, social networks and more - instantly. Big Stage will launch to consumers in the second quarter of 2008.

Signup today: www.BigStage.com

The company is located at:
Big Stage
1010 Sycamore Ave., Suite 309
South Pasadena, CA 91030
Tel : 866-298-7048

Based on the buzz so far this looks like a good company. Expect more details in the next couple of months.

Blue-ray Format Wins!

The Blue-Ray format has won, now that Toshiba has bowed out with their HD format.

I'm sure there will be more on this development, but for now it appears that Blue-Ray which is backed by Sony and the studios is the winner.

The good news is that you shouldn't have any troubles finding movies in the Blue-Ray format.

Spy Satellite Being Shot Down

Reports are coming in that the Navy could be attempting to shoot down the spy satellite that is floating in space as early as this Wednesday or Thursday.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting:
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-na-satellite20feb20,0,4685379.story

Bets are that this is a trial run for testing the star wars defense systems.

Unlimited Service Mobile Plans now becoming available

The cell companies are quickly responding to each other and the announcement of unlimited service offerings.

T-Mobile has announced that it will begin offering a $99.99 unlimited calling and text message plan starting February 21st.

AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, Helio, are giving customers almost exactly the same plan, though unlike AT&T and Verizon.

Sounds like a good deal. I think these are ways to get more users hooked and then upsell the data plans.

I'm sure we will be reading more about these new plans in the coming week.

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BREAKING NEWS: TVT Filing Chapter 11; Staff Fired

BREAKING NEWS: TVT Filing Chapter 11; Staff Fired

New York based independent record label TVT Records terminated the majority of their employees this afternoon, sources revealed to AllHipHop.com today (February 18). TVT, which is home to major recording stars like Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz, Pitbull, Ying Yang Twins, The Polyphonic Spree and others, is expected to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this week. TVT Records was founded by its current President, Steve Gottlieb, who launched the label out of his New York City apartment in 1985. In addition to Hip-Hop music, the label released music by Nine Inch Nails and other influential Modern Rock, Electronica, Industrial and Nu-Metal bands. It is not known how the bankruptcy filing will affect the label’s release schedule, which includes Lil’ Jon’s highly anticipated album Crunk Rock.

For the full story log on: http://allhiphop.com/stories/news/archive/2008/02/18/19308089.aspx

Monday, February 18, 2008

New: Finish Line - Sports Lifestyle Products

As the leading online website for Footwear, Apparel, and Accessories to fit the fast culture of action addicted individuals, Finish Line has the broadest selection of performance and sports lifestyle product that allows you to express your personality and style. We offer secure shopping, privacy protection, online order status, and great delivery time of millions of products throughout the United States.

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Mikasa's Best Selling Products

The last of the Mikasa outlet stores have closed, leaving the online site as the ONLY place to buy Mikasa direct.

The Mikasa brand is stronger than ever and the company isn’t going anywhere. More items in stock, more products in our clearance section, and the addition of two brand new product lines to our collection.

Take a look at some of the top selling items from Mikasa:

Cheers - Stemless Wine, Set of 4

The Pure Red collection from Mikasa. BRAND NEW!

Mikasa's Cocoa Blossom design is our best selling addition to the site. Check it out, today!

Tyler Florence Chef's White Collection

The Glacier Centerpiece Tealight, by Mikasa, gives the perfect illusion of fire and ice.

OPEN UP, Mikasa's new line of break-resistant, flavor enhancing stemware.

Happy President's Day

Happy President's Day

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Wozniak Joins En2Go

Congratulations to Studio City, CA based En2Go for adding Woz "Wozniak" to their board.

The stock trading under the symbol ENGO is at $1.50/share.

En2Go plans to release products in the next 6 months. Flixo is a program that will be designed to stream high definition(HD) video over the net. The other product IMaculate which is designed to speed up internet searches.

Contact Info on En2Go:

En2go International Inc
Studio City, California
USA 91604
1-800-718-9703
info@en2go.net

Sounds like this will be a company to watch in the coming year. The article in the Los Angeles Business Journal mentioned that the company is expected to grow from 20 to 200 people!

Jane Fonda using the C-bomb on NBC

Listen and watch Jane Fonda use the c-bomb(cunt) on national TV, NBC.



"We were talking about The Vagina Monologues and Jane Fonda
inadvertently said a word from the play that you don't say on
television. It was a slip and obviously she apologizes, and so do we.
We would do nothing to offend the audience. So please accept that apology."

Bob Dylan Interview

This is a fanstatic segment on Bob Dylan.



If you live in the Los Angeles area be sure to make it to Skirball to see the Bob Dylan exhibit through June 8, 2008.

AT&T Customer Support Experience

I must say that my experience with AT&T customer service leaves a lot to be desired.

Today I called customer service 877 722.3755 after navigating through all the menus and get through to a support rep. I could not understand a word they said and they asked me what my problem was and then they repeated it incorrectly.
I then proceeded to request onshore support, at which time the representative began laughing. I asked what is so funny? And they said, "that you asked for onshore support" I said I don't think that is funny, could you please get your supervisor on the line. I was put on hold for over 10min, and nobody picked up. This person should be dealt with. AT&T please start paying more attention to customer experience and satisfaction.
So I called back and navigated through the maze and spoke to another rep, who knows where this time same poor line quality, I asked for them to transfer me to onshore support, this rep proceeded to transfer me now questions asked. Apparently what is going on is that tier one is offshore and tier 2 is onshore, but I am not certain.

The rep proceeded to test the line and confirmed that there are problems, after a few minutes she got someone from dispatch who scheduled a call for Monday.
They also went on to say that there may be a charge for wiring issues. I'm certain it is not our issue as nothing has changed on our wiring and it works most of the time until it cuts out and the modem has to be rebooted to work. Perhaps the line signal is too weak or as the rep said there is too much line noise.

Considering that that company I work for has multiple DSL lines with AT&T they should not be playing these sorts of games with us.

Yahoo Layoffs

Layoffs have been taking place throughout Yahoo. Including Yahoo Search Marketing in Burbank on Tuesday.

From various reports online approx 1,100 people got the axe. Word is that Yahoo will continue with cutbacks in the coming weeks. The goal being to cut upwards of 2000.

Search Engine Land has a good posting on the Yahoo layoffs:
http://searchengineland.com/080212-183132.php

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Firefox version 3 beta 3

Mozilla has released Firefox version 3 beta 3. Apparently there is a whole new intereface. I'll be reporting more details after I have a chance to review.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Monday, February 11, 2008

Derek's Restaurant Pasadena

This past Saturday my wife and I went out to celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary.

We decided to go to Derek's after hearing from various people how good the food was.

Derek's is located at:
181 East Glenarm,
Pasadena, CA 91105
Voice: 626.799.5252
Fax: 626.799.1696
Website: www.dereks.com

Yahoo Toolbar Download

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Electronic Games: DonkeyStream.com

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Dylan Seminar at Skirball

This past weekend I attended with my wife Jennifer(who works at Skirball) the Daniel Kramer and John Cohen lecture on photography of Bob Dylan.

They had some truly interesting photograhps and images of Bob Dylan that have been used for 50 years! They also shared some interesting stories about how each of them approached photographing Dylan and how things have changed in the way photographers are able to keep rights to their work and how the business has changed.

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Look for fashion articles coming soon with the top selling items from Enyce.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Buying Music From Bob Dylan

In a previous post we talked about the Bob Dylan Exhibit at Skirball.

There are several online sources to buy Dylan's Music.


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Get a 14-Day free trial to Rhapsody Unlimited then pay only $12.99 per month.


For those looking for royalty free music this is a great source.
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Bob Dylan at Skirball Cultural Center

If you live in the Los Angeles area you need to make some time to visit the Bob Dylan Exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center.

I went this morning and an hour after opening the exhibit is packed. There are booths where you can listen to Dylan's music and watch video clips of Dylan.

The exhibit is opened until June 8 and is free on Thursday, but you have to book tickets online.

Even if you are not a Dylan fan it is worth the visit, spend an hour then be sure to check out the store for various Dylan related items, including his music as well as many books.

It would be cool to have a kiosk at the exhibit where you could burn your own cd of your favorite Dylan songs.

I have to commend Roland for a fabulous interactive section of the exhibit. Roland pieced together various guitars, keyboards, drum kits, slider organs, drum machines, to make this truly an interactive exhibit.

It would be cool to turn the speakers on and allow people to actually play for an hour or two everyday, or perhaps an outdoor area where you can play. The headphones are great though and the sound is excellent. Roland has some amazing equipment available in their lineup and this is a great showcase of their various products.

Skirball Cultural Center: http://www.skirball.org/
Roland: http://www.rolandus.com/

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Site of the Day: LeaseTrader.com

There's a site for those who have a lease on a car and want to get out. The LA Times has a story about one case where one individual was asked to pay $50k to get out of a lease for a Mercedes.

The top list

Friday, February 8, 2008

New Artist Website: Anita Benson

Anita Benson has just launched her new website.
Available at:
http://www.paintingsbyanita.com/

On the site you will find an image gallery, CV, press coverage, links to previous gallery shows, and contact info for those interested in Anita's paintings.

Anita Benson is known for colorful high contrast figurative paintings and her underwater images are particularly inspiring. Don't miss out.

The site will be updated with an expanded gallery in the next couple of weeks.

Yahoo Live Victor

Yahoo! launches Live Video

Available at live.yahoo.com the service streams video live over the net. Very cool. Maybe Yahoo can do it better than the other players. So far it looks interesting and worth a shot.

I'll let you know when I have my channel up and running will also get a channel live from Hothouse Studios.

I'll be back soon.

-Victor

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Affiliate Summit West 2008 Las Vegas

Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas registration is coming to a close.

You will not want to miss this show. It is slated to be the biggest one ever!

Affiliate Summit

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Google Local News Service Launched

Google (GOOG) has expanded their news product today adding an option for customized local news to its Google News service.

The localization option is now available on news.google.com, but does not seem to have been rolled out to country specific news portals as yet. Using the service is as simple as entering your post/ zip code or location into the Local News option box that now appears automatically when you visit Google News.

The feature pulls news stories based on your location, and are presented as a sub-section on the main Google News page, and have a sidebar menu entry and dedicated page as well.

According to Google:

As always, results will be clustered with multiple sources on a story. The top stories for a given area will be at the top of your results. Our article rankings will also take into account a publication’s location so we can promote all the local sources for each story.

Google News attracts a far larger audience than Topix - 47 million/month v. just 6.2 million for Topix (Comscore, December 2007 worldwide audience), but until now they have not provided good local news coverage. Topix now has some serious competition.

AT&T Store Pasadena Robbed

We received a report that the AT&T wireless store on Colorado in Pasadena was robbed. Apparently happened Wednesday Feb 6 in the AM.

The store was stocked with hundreds of phones including the popular iPhone.

We have no word if there are any suspects or leads on this situtation.

If you go in they may not have the iPhone so you can either go to the Apple Store down the street a block or buy online. Now they have the 16gig model and people are buy them.

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Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Yahoo Toolbar

With all the buzz about Microsoft buying Yahoo we should take a look at some of the offerings from Yahoo.

I am a big fan of the Yahoo! Toolbar


The toolbar installer will ask if you want to install for Firefox and it will also to make Yahoo the default search engine and to make yahoo.com the home page.

Agree to the terms. You will be asked to help Yahoo with tracking, I usually answer yes. It really does help make for a better search experience when you supply some of your behavior and per the privacy policy your identity is not used. On the machine I just installed it I didn't have to put in my username and password or even login.

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Bob Dylan at Skirball

The Bob Dylan Exhibit opens this Friday.

Next Friday Brett Dennen will be performing.

BRETT DENNEN Fri 02/15/08
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Zargarian Music Center

This morning I read the story about Zargarian Music Store in Glendale in the Kenneth Village.
Zargarian Music Center is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 1423 ½ Kenneth Road. The phone number is (818) 243-0511.
Owner: Garen Zargarian

He sells and repairs all sorts of instruments. Keyboards, guitars, violins, drum sets, and harmonicas.
Zargarian carries musical supplies and instruments for professional, amateur and beginning/budding musicians

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Google Twiiter Election Coverage

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Who did I vote for?

Barack Obama


Well I had a little reservation making it public, but you know what I am hopeful that there will be change in this country. Things need to improve by creating more opportunities.


The image above is from a poster designed by the Shepard Ferry design company. Apparently Sheppard is a huge supporter. Way to go Sheppard.




Site of the Day: FreeRice.com

This is a very cool concept and idea.

Check it out: www.freerice.com

For every word you spell or use the proper vocabulary, rice goes to needy people.

New iPhone and iPod Touch

Huge news! The Apple Store has just launched two very exciting new products:

The revolutionary iPhone now comes in a new 16GB model for $499!
The all-new 32GB iPod touch model for $499 was just released to join the 8GB and 16GB models, which will continue to be sold.


Apple Store