StraussBlog

These are my Delicious links for November 21st through November 26th:

• Mr. Tweet -> Your Personal Networking Assistant! - Interesting tool delivering the functionality of the Facebook Friend Finder to Twitter. Just follow @mrtweet on Twitter, and it will analyze the content of your Tweets, your followers, etc to give you suggestions on who to follow.
• Plentitube: Your Agent for Online Video - BusinessWeek - Interesting concept for a low-end disruption of the talent agency model. Plentitube is an online marketplace for connecting online video creators with conventional media distributors (i.e. networks, brand advertisers, etc).
• Jason Nazar’s Blog » Blog Archive » A Tale of Two Tech Cities – Silicon Valley vs. Los Angeles - "At parties in the Bay people talk about Twitter, Friend Feed, what’s being written on Valleywag and Techcrunch, and kickball games between VC’s and entrepreneurs.

  At parties in Los Angeles people talk about a media deal their “closing”, what TV star is at the party, and some “gray hat” spam-like technique that made them an extra 100K last month."

• The Real O’Neal Puts His Cyber Foot Down - NYTimes.com - I've always loved Shaq — I saw "Blue Chips" in theaters, and disowned the Lakers (esp. Kobe Bryant & Dr. Jerry Buss), the team I grew up loving, as a result of them choosing Kobe over Shaq. But, the fact that he's on Twitter makes me love him so much more. Shaq's Twitter account gives us fans a very personal glimpse at his life and personality, and he's even more awesome than I always expected him to be.

These are my Delicious links for November 14th through November 19th:

• RCA Secret 2008 - Really cool concept for an art sale: 2,700 postcards done by different artists of all levels of fame, signed on the back, and sold anonymously at the same price (£40). It's like a grab-bag of fine art
• A Marriage Manifesto… Of Sorts | RD Blog: The Devil’s Advocate | ReligionDispatches - An interesting form of personal protest against bans on gay marriage: don't recognize *any* marriages. Elegant and potentially very effective on a personal level.
• DryIcons.com - Free Icons and Graphics - Pretty solid quality icon and graphics free to use anywhere as long as you provide proper attribution (you can also purchase commercial licenses that don't require attribution). Not sure how these guys are making any money, but I'll take their stuff
• Google Analytics Blog: Want to track Adobe Flash? Now you can! - Google Analytics is now available for Flash-based content through an AS3 translation of the JavaScript tracking code. The AS3 code has also been open-sourced.
• Tryit Editor v1.4 - A handy in browser editor for basic CSS to help dummies like me figure stuff out.
• Eater SF: Eater Map: Your Guide to San Francisco’s Douchiest Bars - Pretty self-explanatory title. I am sad to say that I've been to all of these places at least once (and only a couple more than that), and I fully agree with the assessments of douchebaggery. I'm more than a little relieved that none of my regular spots made the list…phew!

I moved to Palo Alto on June 13, 2004 — my 24th birthday and the day before I started at Yahoo!. I’ve been living in San Francisco since June 2005, first in Russian Hill with Damon and Eugene and on my own in the Marina since June 2006. And, now I’m moving back to LA (more on that later).

It took me 2.5 years of living on a mattress on the floor before I actually got any furniture up here. And now, I’m selling it all on Craigslist:

• Colorful IKEA Area Rug - $25
• IKEA Vitten Rug - $110
• 2 IKEA Snille Visitor Chairs - $25
• 2 IKEA Table Lamps - $15
• IKEA Malm 6 Drawer Chest (Long) - $110
• IKEA Malm 6 Drawer Chest (Tall) - $90
• IKEA Vika Amon Table/Desk - $25
• IKEA Ramberg Bedside Table - $12
• IKEA Hopen Queen Bed Frame - $150
• IKEA Tullsta Arm Chair - $40
• IKEA Glass-Top Rolling Coffee Table - $60
• Simmons Beautyrest Carmel Firm Queen Mattress - $200

It’s interesting to see the bulk of one’s material possessions all listed like that (and, yes, the bulk of my material possessions come from IKEA). I look forward to owning a lot less crap very soon.

And if you’re in San Francisco, come kiss my ass goodbye on December 6!

This is fricken’ unreal!

Steve Carell is either genuinely amused or a very polite man. And, I swear Jay has a kind of “WTF is this world coming to?” expression on his face at the end. But, who wouldn’t really?

As usual, Joel’s first-hand account is worth a read.

P.S. Joel now has an official Wikipedia entry (after repeatedly trying to write his own, only to have it taken down by the Wikipedians)! ROTFL!!!

These are my Delicious links for November 10th through November 12th:

• Official Google Blog: Promote your video with YouTube Sponsored Videos - YouTube Sponsored Videos is a new advertising program that enables all video creators — from the everyday user to a Fortune 500 advertiser — to reach people who are interested in their content, products, or services, with relevant videos. Anyone can use Sponsored Videos to make sure their videos find a larger audience through easy-to-use automated tools allow content owners to decide where they'd like their videos to appear, place bids in an automated online auction, and set daily spending budgets. Then, when people search for videos, YouTube will display relevant videos alongside the search results. These videos are clearly labeled as "sponsored videos" and are priced on a cost-per-click basis.
• Jottings.com - Anti-spam Email Link Obfuscator - A wizard that generates Javascript code to obfuscate mailto links on your site from spambots.
• Generate High Quality YouTube Embed Code · How To Make YouTube High Quality Video - An online script that generates the code to embed a high quality YouTube video. Several different embed size and configuration options to choose from.
• Free Flickr eXporter iPhoto Plugin (FFXporter) - FFXporter is a free iPhoto export plugin for Flickr. This provides a convenient way to upload your iPhoto descriptions, titles, keywords (tags), and ratings along with your photos. It also supports sets (yay!) and preserves GPS tags and other EXIF data.
• GPS Visualizer - GPS Visualizer is a free, easy-to-use online utility that creates maps and profiles from GPS data (tracks and waypoints, including GPX files), street addresses, or simple coordinates. Use it to see where you've been, plan where you're going, or visualize geographic data (business locations, scientific observations, events, customers, real estate, geotagged photos, etc.).
• Google Docs - GPS data logger comparison - Comparison spreadsheet of GPS data loggers reviewed by http://scilib.typepad.com/techreviews/
• Mac geotagging software showdown at bioneural.net - A comprehensive review of various Mac software solutions for geotagging photos based on GPS log data.
• An ABC of geotagging photos on the Mac - Extensive examination of the various options for geotagging photos using a Mac. Long story short, there is no simple turn-key solution. But, this article lays out in great detail the different pieces you can put together to make it work.
• Op-Ed Columnist - Obama and the War on Brains - NYTimes.com - Nicholas Kristof on Obama's candidacy as a blow to anti-intellectualism in American politics. A poignant example of how far we still have to go: "in the final debate, Mr. Obama spoke at a ninth-grade reading level, while John McCain spoke at a seventh-grade level." That a ninth-grade reading level is considered high-brow for discussions of the most pressing issues effecting our nation is not a good sign.

These are my Delicious links for October 31st through November 4th:

• Twitter Technology Blog: We Got Data - Summary of APIs by which one can access data from Twitter: REST API; Search API; Data Mining Feed; Pinging Service (Gnip); Firehose.
• Wonkette: The D.C. Gossip » Blog Archive » San Francisco Voters’ Last Chance To Rename Poop Factory After George W. Bush - This is both hilarious, and one more indictment of California's FUBAR proposition system. Proposition R is a San Francisco ballot measure to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. The argument for is obvious, but the argument against - that this would be an insult to the facility and the people who work there - is pretty compelling.
• follow cost: Is that Twitter celebrity worth the pain? - Calculates the relative cost/annoyance of following an individual user on Twitter. The unit of measure for Twitter annoyance is miliscobles.
• BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | E-mail error ends up on road sign - The Swansea council needed a Welsh translation for a street sign, but unfortunately the translator was out of the office.
• YouTube Blog - YouTube now supports deep linking to a specific time within a video. For example, appending #t=1m15s to the end of the video URL would take you to the video and start it at the 1:15 mark.

I’m writing this on a lunch break from campaigning for Barack Obama in Henderson, NV. My friends Robi, Jenni, and I flew out from San Francisco (*early*) Saturday morning, and have been knocking on doors pretty much non-stop since.

It’s finally Election Day, and we’re each coping with the anxiety/excitement in our own ways.
When we got up at 5am, I was pretty freaked out about all the things that could go wrong today. But, getting out there knocking on doors has been a great (and productive) distraction.  

Now as we sit here with MSNBC on 3 tvs at the bar, it’s impossible to avoid the significance of the historical moment soon at hand. Obviously, I have a tremendously vested interest in the outcome of the presidential election. And, I strongly urge everyone to act still today - if you haven’t voted, do it; if you’ve voted, phone bank or just call or text your friends and remind them to vote.

However, I feel we’ve already won a great victory for democracy in this country just by getting to this point:

• First of all, Obama’s candidacy and his campaign’s focus on the youth vote has succeeded in engaging a generation of voters who have spent their entire lives aliented by the political process. This is a momentous shift that’s impact will resonate for many election cycles to come. 
• Secondly, the nature of Obama’s (largely) issue-oriented and positive campaign (and for that matter, the early part of McCain’s campaign as well) has pulled us back from the antagonistic campaigning armageddon brought about by the disciples of Karl Rove. Though we still have a long way to go in raising campaign discourse back to the level such an important process deserves, I see this election as the first step in the electorate repudiating the political conventional wisdom that negative campaigning is an effective tactic. 
• And finally, I am relieved that a candidate like Obama, who talks *up* to his audience (as does his wife), has overcome both the anti-intellectual attacks of the W. era and defied the sound bite-centric campaigning that has been on the rise since Reagan (and greatly accelerated by Bill Clinton). Not dumbing down the message and talking to voters like adults is the first step to restoring constructive political discourse in this country. <update>Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times echoes this sentiment in a much deeper analysis of anti-intellectualism in America.</update>

I’m extremely happy all of this has already been achieved. And to be honest, I’m not sure I would have believed that even these things were possible just a few years ago. But I’m greedy, and as great as these achievements are, they’re not nearly enough!

Now, let’s get out there and use the rest of this day to do what we can to elect Barack Obama and defeat CA Prop 8!!!