thanksgiving etc

We've had family in town the last few days. Ranee's parents came in on Monday before thanksgiving and her brother, sister and brother in law came in on Thanksgiving. As a result of her mother being here, we've been eating very well.

We took Ranee's parents to see Cavalia the night before Thanksgiving - its billed as Cirque du Soleil with horses but I think you really have to be into horses to think that...

Although we're nominally hosting thanksgiving (for the first time ever!) all we're really doing is providing the venue, with Ranee's mother doing all the great cooking. Thanksgiving dinner did feature turkey ... in the wonton soup! Plus eggrolls and dumplings. It was a very Chinese Thanksgiving dinner

Some thoughts on Google Base and citizen generated media

I'm
late to the party to comment on Google Base, but thats the luxury
of being unemployed! Over the summer, I developed a framework for
thinking about user generated content and what was the right format to
take advantage of it:

A/ One right answer (e.g. encyclopedia definition, best way to clean
things, lyrics for a particular song, synopsis of a TV show) > wiki
B/ Many right answers (e.g. books reviews, recipes, photos of a person
or thing) > User generated searchable, taggable and sortable database
C/ No right answer (e.g. op-ed, debate about politics, religion,
current events) > Blogs, message boards, chatrooms

This explains for example why wikipedia has been successful, but
wikitorials (LA Times) or even wikipes (recipes) have not - wrong
choice of platform for the content type. Similarly successful examples
of type B include Hotornot.com, and Amazon's book reviews.

The thesis was that "community"/citizen generated media is interesting
not because its user generated, but because its free/cheap. And as with
all all content, evergreen content is more valuable, which makes
classes A and B more interesting than class C above.

As is often the case, Google builds technology and not necessarily
products. And in this case, they've built in Google Base an excellent
platform for all the verticals that lie in class B. By opening this up
to the public, they are hoping to see what grows organically in their
petri dish, rather than seeding the petri dish with specific verticals.
Its slower to start but takes a lot of risk out for them. So thinking
about this purely through the "classifieds" lens (as some have done) is
I think too narrow an interpretation of what Google Base will enable
for Google. Ebay, Hotjobs et al should certainly watch nervously, but
so too should everyone from CitySearch to epinions to Cooking.com

Catching up with friends

Last few days have been surprisingly busy for someone without a job. Spent a few days in New York catching up with friends and colleagues and being reminded what a great city New York is, and also that I'm too old and married to appreciate the city to its fullest any more.



Over the weekend we ducked down to Naples for the wedding of one of Ranee's colleagues, Keith Tomatore, then had some friends (Jay and Torrey, Taylor and Elena, Karine and Pat) over for dinner Sunday night. I think its the first time we've ever really used our new dining table.

Good movies

Saw a couple of great movies in the last few days. Enjoyed both of them for the same reason, although they're pretty different movies - some very snappy dialogue. You had to actually pay attention or you'd miss some of the reparte.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang I can own up to liking unashamedly. Pride and Prejudice was also pretty great I thought.

Housewarming and Farewell party

Had a few people over last night for a combination house warming and farewell party. It was a lot of fun. Best thing about hosting a party is that you know everyone there! Massively overcatered though - oops. It was good to finally be able to have some people over to the new condo, after all the time we've put into the renovations and getting it furnished and set up. Shame we'll be leaving it all soon

Pittsburgh is no Miami

I spent the last three days in Pittsburgh (Ambridge to be exact) visiting my cousin, Karen, and her family. They just moved there from Singapore and will be there for the next couple of years as her husband, Jon, attends a Seminary there. Ambridge is definitely a town that has seen better days - lots of old and abandoned factories everywhere. Still, it was great to see Karen and Jon again, and to spend some time with their kids, two of whom I hadn't seen in five years and one who I was meeting for the first time. From L2R in the photo here thats Elizabeth, Rachel, Dan and Karen.

We went out to Pennsylvania Dutch country to "soak in the atmosphere" (excuse me, where can we see some Amish people?) which brought back memories of an early and nixed idea for a Netscape ad campaign. Fought hard, and eventually succumbed to, the urge to point and say "look". A bit embarassing really - its not like its a museum, but it's at least some consolation that I saw one Amish kid point at us as well - maybe he hadn't seen too many Chinese people either!

We also went to the Ambridge Veteran's Day parade which was an interesting experience. Lots of high school marching bads. My memories of high school don't involve so many large people. Width and Height have both seemed to increase. Width especially. Not sure if that's a function of rose colored memory glasses, the times, the US, Pittsburgh or the nature of marching bands and flag teams, but it was certainly noticeable.

One Vietnam vet waved at us and said "Hello Charlie". It really annoyed me. Its probably the first time in over 15 years that someone has made a racial comment to my face. But its hard to get into it with a guy marching on Veterans Day and not look like you're the jerk, so I let it go. Its actually hard to even know where to start with a comment quite as offbase as that. Later that day, at lunch at the "Eat'N'Park" a couple of WWII vets came by to say hello to the kids and one of them pointed to his T-shirt and said "this is what I looked like in '45, when I was in your country". He was being perfectly friendly, and his buddy at least had the presence to ask if we're Japanese (which we're not) so I guess it puts the comment into context of ignorance rather than malice, as is usually the case. Its a good reminder that the world that I am lucky enough to inhabit, of tolerant and reasonably well educated people, isn't necessarily a good sample set for all of the US.

Are the terrorists winning?

Saddens me to say that they're at least having an effect on us - we just struck Jordan off of our list of places to visit on our trip thanks to the bombs that exploded on Thursday. Argueably since we live in DC and were in NY on 9/11 we're not actually any safer at home than as a tourist in Jordan, but familiarity certainly takes the edge off of daily concerns

Last day

Yesterday was my last day at AOL. I'm already feeling separation anxiety from my laptop and email. Its a bit pathetic really. Here is a photo of Amy (my ex EA) and me outside my ex-office.

Our friend Karine

Got some nice comments about the photo of us I posted recently. The photographer is our friend Karine Aigner who is at Nat Geo in DC and also does parties and weddings. See a link to some of here work here. She is pretty awesome.

preparing for our trip

I wrap up at AOL next week and Ranee finishes at Washingtonpost.com at the end of the month. We're hoping to start our trip on Dec 1st and get back around Feb 25th. So far we have a rough idea for an itinerary (some subset of Cambodia/Laos/Vietname through December, India & Sri Lanka in Jan and somewhere in North Africa in Feb) but don't have tickets, visas or any innoculations. I guess we better get moving

Its looking like we may be able to use Delta miles to get round the world tickets - good news. I'm waiting on my "Advanced Parole" to come from the INS so that I'll be able to get back into the US when we finish up.