Source: NBA Sketches

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Completely panicked, I called and left numerous messages with TSA, had my wife go to the airport, and pretty much bummed around all day in a state of shock. I re-played every event and decision, wondering how I could be so forgetful. I also thought about everything I hadn't backed-up. Family photos, work, financial records, and more. Not only that, I had looked at anti-theft services like Prey multiple times, but hadn't installed it, thinking, "It'll never happen to me."

Well, it happened. Fortunately, a honest TSA person picked up my laptop from the bin (wish I knew who it was... I am so thankful), immediately logged it, sent it to LAX TSA lost-and-found, and I was reuinited with my MacBook Air today.

So, to those who were like me, here's my advice.

• Back-up everything (frequently)... preferably to a cloud service, but at least to an external drive
• Make sure everything is password protected
• Put some kind of identifying mark on your computer (a case, sticker, etc), as TSA kept asking me if there was a unique identifier on my computer
• Install anti-theft software

Oh, and don't complain about TSA at the airport again.

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Just had my first cup of Tonx and it is really great! Makes my usual Starbucks pale in comparison. Check them out at: https://tonx.org/

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Check it out... no one likes being in debt. Luckily, Payoff.com is here to help.

Source: How to Ditch Your Debt

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Having worked at Yahoo! in Product for almost four years, I not only have a soft spot for the company, but am always interested in any of their new launches. So, of course, my interest was piqued yesterday by the launch of Yahoo! Search Direct.

In Yahoo!'s words, "Yahoo! Search Direct is the next step in offering answers to user's search queries. Search Direct provides users current, relevant content, improved suggestions, a rich display format, and displays answers instantly to the user as they type the search query in the search box."

Ok, sounds cool. I like that as opposed to Google Instant, which offers the same results that you would normally get, but quicker, Yahoo! is trying to give me answers. 

Having worked on Yahoo! Movies for awhile, my first instinct was to do a movie-related query -- Harry Potter. Expecting something related to the movies or books, what did I get? Legos! Nothing on the movies or books in the primary space, but instead results from Yahoo! Shopping that took me to Amazon.

Hmm... ok. Well, not the greatest first impression, but worth another try. So, my next query -- Avatar. This time I got the result I expected, which was a movie-related result, provided by Yahoo! Movies, with a nice image of the poster, movie info, and links to the trailer, ratings and reviews, and cast.

Working on Movies for so long, I knew my first query of "Harry Potter" was a difficult one in which to define intent. There are books, movies, merchandise, and more. Not only that, there are seven books and movies, so which one is the user looking for if they stop at just "Harry Potter" and do not enter any other information?

I would assume Yahoo! would serve up the most relevant "answer," which might be based on the search popularity, page views on Yahoo! Movies, social shares, and other factors. So, I decided to try out another query with multiple options -- Iron Man. 

Hmm... another curious result. I stopped my query at "Iron Man" and results for "Iron Man 2" are displayed. Could "Iron Man 2" be a more popular query than "Iron Man" -- and enough so that it should be displayed even if my query stopped at "Iron Man?" I checked Google and there are 9,140,000 global monthly searches on "Iron Man" and 5,000,000 on "Iron Man 2." This is only one piece of data and isn't conclusive to say the first is more popular than the sequel, but if my query matched the first movie, I would expect the sequel to be in theaters, just released on DVD, or significantly more relevant to be displayed.

What is more surprising is the third different presentation format from Search Direct for a movie-related query... this one more in the form of Google Instant Search, with the "top sites" related to my query. This isn't an answer or current (which would be Iron Man 3 news), but just links. And why if "Iron Man 2" has been determined to be my intent, did I not get the same nice movie presentation that I did with Avatar?

So, I tried another similar query -- Toy Story. Once more, I got the nice movie answer and presentation of content, and even though I typed in just "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 3" was displayed, this is expected, as it's definitely the most popular of the Toy Story movies at the moment and is coming off a Best Picture nomination.

Figuring I needed to give up on the movies queries and try a different type of search, I went for something I had just looked for in Google -- lightbox plugin. This time, it displayed my query in the left-side navigation of the result, but had no suggestions. Why if it can't determine an "answer" did it not just present the "Top Sites" as it did with my Iron Man query? Presenting nothing doesn't seem like a good option. Does this mean Yahoo! doesn't have anything relevant content or any good answers for my query? Of course not, but it's the impression that a blank box and "no suggestions available" gives and I still have to then go to the traditional search results page to get anything.

I'll always be rooting for Yahoo! and do love to see some of the innovation coming out of there, but as far as my first impression of Search Direct, the answers and results are hit-and-miss and presented too inconsistently to get me to want to give up Google and switch.  

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Everyone is in love with avatars. So, I jumped in on the action and made a couple with EightBit and Androidify.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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There's been a ton of conversation around AngelGate (why does every controversy need the word "gate" in it?) and the secret dinner at Bin 38 (who is the real winner) during the past week, and since everyone has an opinion, I thought I would share my two cents.

While some "Super Angels" and VCs bicker with each other, bloggers speculate about collusion, and people freak out that the Valley is no longer the best place to start a company, those Angels and VCs that are successful now and will be successful in the future are those that are about the entrepreneur. The market is too big for a small group of Angels to drive down valuations and take advantage of entrepreneurs, and there will always be a role for both Angels and VCs.

In addition, I may be completely naive and totally simplifying things, but of those mentioned, I refuse to believe they are looking to take advantage of the entrepreneur community. Ron Conway's track record and history obviously speaks for itself. I don't know Dave McClure personally but I have heard him speak at two conferences (Twiistup and BlueGlass LA) and have followed his blog/Twitter for a long time, and I can honestly say that you can't deny, nor could he fake, the passion and drive he has to help entrepreneurs and see them succeed, and he seems tireless in doing so. And a program like Y Combinator is an amazing opportunity for entrepreneurs and has provided countless prospects for investors.

Of course there are going to be differences in style, philosophies, aggressiveness, and opinions on valuations, convertible notes, and more. Yet, the commonality is that they have a deep passion for entrepreneurs and helping the community, and their success is a by product of doing so. And, at the end of the day, this is what it's about and this is what is going to continue to make entrepreneurs, and the people who fund them, successful.

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This is pretty awesome... Fox and Klout hooked me up with a Party Pack for the new show Lone Star and it included some great swag! Definitely make sure to check out the premiere of the show tonight at 9:00pm EST on Fox.

See the full gallery on Posterous

It's really cool to see companies using social media marketing and trying new ideas, and I have to give it up for both Fox and Klout. Klout has been doing some interesting stuff lately, most noteably their partnership with Virgin to promote their new San Francisco and LA to Toronto routes, and it will be intriguing to see how social media influence continues to shape marketing promotions.

* Disclosure: I was not paid or required to write this post as part of the promotion.

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via movies.yahoo.com

 

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I haven't tweeted in 18 days as of writing this post. 18 days! That is by far the longest I have gone without tweeting since my first tweet in July 2008. I guess fatigue was bound to set in after 2 years and nearly 3,000 tweets.

My Twitter hiatus started back on August 20th. At the time I was just really busy and had no time to check or update Twitter. But, a couple of days later, Leo Laporte published his post "Buzz Kill," in which he discusses no one noticing that his Buzz/Twitter accounts had not been updating due to a glitch.

That got me thinking about my Twitter use. I was really busy, growing tired of trying to keep up, and maybe just had overall social media malaise. Plus, I have less than 1% of the followers Leo does, and if no one noticed his lack of usage, I was pretty sure no one would care if I stopped. So, I decided to take a Twitter break. Did I miss it? A little. I wondered if I was overlooking important news throughout the day. I definitely wasn't as "real-time" as I was when I had my stream constantly docked on my monitor. And I did have the occasional urge to tweet something that was going on in my life. Oh, and for the record, not a single person noticed or said anything as to why I wasn't tweeting.

Yet, I realized not having Twitter wasn't all that bad. I still got all my tech news through Google Reader, my numerous apps, and blogs. I still generally knew what my friends were doing through Facebook and Foursquare. And, I had a bit more time. So, after 18 days, do I know what contributed to my burnout? I think there are five main things:

• Speed: I'm following just over 300 people, which in Twitter terms is not that many, but my stream moves too fast. With being in meetings and having actual work to do during the day, I can't keep up anymore.
• Conversation: What happened to it? Maybe it's just me, but Twitter used to seem so conversational, with people @ replying people they didn't know and starting discussions. Now, it seems people basically converse on Twitter with the same crowd they converse with offline.
• Retweets: People are waaaaaaay to quick with the RT button. I blame this on the new reweet style, in that all it takes is one-click and now few people are adding context or giving a reason for their RT.
• Links: I see the same links Tweeted over and over again. Granted, I'm following a predominantly tech crowd, but it's getting old seeing each Mashable post in my stream 20 times.
• Links... again: Too many users are randomly posting too many links throughout the day. I don't know if people think they can look like an "expert" if they spew links constantly, but it's out of control. I would love if people would only Tweet or RT links that had an impact on them personally (and give a reason why).

But, not all is amiss. I think many of the aforementioned issues can be alleviated by better maintaining and curating my lists. Also, I love the innovation going on outside the .com site, specifically for the iPad with Flipboard and the official app.

So, will I get back on Twitter and start posting again? Yes, but probably not with the same, consistent ardor. And, ironically, I'll start by Tweeting this post.

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Various parodies of 'The Social Network' trailer have been flying around for awhile now, but this trailer for 'The Twitter Movie' is pretty well done and makes me laugh.

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My package is going from Los Angeles to Anaheim.

It probably doesn't need to go to Memphis, TN first... just a thought.

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The Harvard Business Review recently posted a great infographic detailing how users throughout the world use social media.

If you work on social products or strategy, especially globally, this is worth checking out.

Source: HBR

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See the full gallery on Posterous

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I was just scrolling through my Twitter stream and saw the following tweets, within minutes of each other.

Now, I know each blog has hard-working writers and I respect each team. But, numerous times a day, it's basically the same story coming up twice in my stream. At this point, even the headlines are pretty much the same.

What do you think? If you could only read Mashable or TechCrunch, which would you choose?

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As always, Yahoo! Movies is bringing it... this time with the online exclusive premiere of the 'Tron: Legacy' trailer that debuted today at Comic-Con.

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