I've wanted this for a while now, but I think the bigger problem may be on the cab side of the equation. Half the time, the cab companies aren't even answering there phones. In SF at least, it seems like there simply aren't enough cabs. (most cities limit the number of cabs) - Paul Buchheit
Does Yelp have taxi cab listings? I like the idea, but as a feature, not an app. - Joe Lazarus
It was my understanding that in New York you cannot call a yellow cab, you have to hail them on the street. So this app would only get you the more expensive limos, for example. - Olivier Tharan
This is a fabulous idea, because every cabbie has a Cellphone that can do SMS, and they all care about finding fares as efficiently as possible. If someone wants to build this I'll drop a check on you tomorrow. If no one does in 6 months I'm doing it. - Daniel Dulitz
There definitely aren't enough cabs; from talking to drivers of taxis, it seems like the rental value of a medallion is $1000/month at least. Fix that problem, and you'll fix the inability to get a taxi. - Emmett Shear
Matt, there's already someone working on this app: http://www.talkandroid.com/cal... In fact, they were one of the 50 winners from the first round of the Android Developer Challenge. - Jason Chen
@Daniel, I'll do it. I'm one cube to the left. ;) - Josh
@Josh: I'll be right over if you promise you're not sick. :-) - Daniel Dulitz
Jason Chen, I didn't realize this. Very cool that someone is doing something similar for Android! - Matt Cutts
"Schmidt doesn’t think it was out of the realm of possibility that Google could one day be responsible for 10 percent of the United States’ gross domestic product (GDP). Right now it accounts for .7 percent." This is part of what I always liked about Google -- they think big! - Paul Buchheit
"I never worry about Microsoft" -- That is a true sea change and an iconic sign of the times. I always felt like MSFT was the one element that had the potential to distract us (Google) from focusing strictly on the needs of end users. Many of the management team came from old MSFT foes like Netscape, Sun, Novell, Apple, etc. It would have been natural. But if the landscape has evolved to where Eric really doesn't need to worry about Microsoft, I am a happier Google shareholder. - Sacca
Yeah, I wonder if the Microsoft statement was sarcasm. - Paul Buchheit
I actually think he might be serious. They certainly haven't proven much of a search and ads threat and IE never turned out to be the Trojan horse some had predicted. - Sacca
I link to the videos at the bottom paul, feel free to listen for yourself (they aren't embeddable unfortunately...) from his tone I'd say there's some sarcasm but just as much indifference. - MG Siegler
Probably. Google probably sweated the Yahoo debacle. Yahoo's tech in the hands of Microsoft wold make all kinds of things happen to googles market share. Microsoft has show a willingness to spend money to beef up its search offering. Microsoft may only be a few hot startups away from hitting on somthing big. - Roberto Bonini
I have got an idea for monetizing youtube. 3 sec doubleclick-ad in pre-roll and post-roll - Varun Mahajan
By what measure is Google 0.7% of US GDP? By my math, Google had $16.6 billion in total revenues in 2007 (finance.google.com), and the US nominal GDP for 2007 was $13.8 trillion in 2007 (CIA World Factbook). That gives Google 0.12% of US GDP. It doesn't make sense to compare Google's market cap to GDP because GDP measures only one year of production, not total domestic wealth. Even my comparison is too generous because it compares Google's worldwide revenues to only US (not world) GDP. - Jorge Ortiz
"I never worry about Microsoft." He's lying. - Sprague D
I agree with Jorge -- The notion that Google is .7% of US GDP is nonsense. I know it's hard to comprehend the size of the U.S. economy when you live in the Silicon Valley, but you guys really need to get out a little. - Rex Hammock
sorry guys, .07%, cramer said it wrong first and NBC transcriber apparently missed it, i'll correct. - MG Siegler
Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice, chat, financial transactions, birthday parties, light manufacturing, new housing starts, mining, war-zone security contracting, farming, credit counseling, bartending, forestry, earthquake survival instruction, air traffic controlling, or high-speed pizza delivery. - Neil Kandalgaonkar
Listening to the video is much better... You get to hear Kramer being Kramer. I am a bit skeptical about the thing that Eric says about adding one business after another to maintain the growth rate. AFAIK, this was the exact same strategy that MSFT followed. They moved into video games/TV/mp3 players etc.. Most of these businesses failed because MSFT was/is a large org. and it is extremely difficult to build successful businesses in large orgs. I am not sure Google has cracked this one either. - Bindu Reddy
Tim, time well spent reading this article. I have to make a recommendation to a group soon about this, and from your post I've narrowed it down to JungleDisk or Elephant Drive. Gracias! - Pete Delucchi
no problem.. I have nothing against JungleDisk + S3 - varying prices scare me :) I'd rather stick with an unlimited service, and know I am paying a flat rate, especially when I don't know exactly what is being transferred at any given time. - Tim Hoeck
"Nick, looks like your test of the Disqus 2 API worked well from fav.or.it. As for my coverage of it, sometimes I'll let work and other things get in the way. I knew others would have the story first, and that's just fine. I'm not in a race. :-)" - Louis Gray
Still think Apple is winning this hands down LOL! - DC Crowley
@Charlie lol -- yeah I'm looking to backup my comp. to somewhere other than where I live. - Shey
Thanks for this. I have external hardrive that I keep in a safety deposit box. Would like to use Carbonite. - Kate Kapetanakis
Carbonite has some issues behind the scenes. One of which includes not backing up an external hard drive. I am doing a post shortly with a review of a number of services. It's all I have been playing with the past two weeks :) - Tim Hoeck
Shey - I don't trust myself. I'm gonna trust somebody else? - Charlie Anzman
None. I do multiple full drive image backups twice monthly to external hard drives using Acronis True Image and store them in more than one location. Also mirror all of my data and photos between my desktop and laptop using MS SyncToy every day. That way I have an up to the minute backup on site as well as full drive backups. May sound a bit over kill, but this routine saved my butt big time when one of our careless IT people at work destroyed my PC with a botched profile transfer. Restored in 3.5 hrs - Jeff P. Henderson
@Tim Hurry up!! :) When is it coming? Cuz I'm ready to upload - Shey
Wuala, Dropbox, Mozy, Xackup and S3 :) Fully redundant. Better safe than sorry - AJ Batac
I should mention that I'd like to backup about 500GB...or more.. - Shey
@Shey, oh my. That's a job for a 1TB external HDD :D - AJ Batac
I believe Mozy and/or Amazon S3 would be your best bet. - James Mowery via twhirl
I disagree with a number of these, particularly with that large amount. Amazon/Jungle Disk charge you for storage, and bandwidth use. Dropbox is in beta and only gives 2GB. I have problems with some interface issues with Mozy. It's coming... - Tim Hoeck
You can get a 1TB drive on buy.com for less than $200 shipped. Perhaps use an online backup for frequently accessed files and keep everything else on the physical drive. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
@SB I need to have that 500GB backed up off-site. Tons of client work, personal stuff like music and photos -- I don't know what I'd do if I lost it all. - Shey
idrive.com -- simply the best 12 GB of backup - free and 150 gb for only 4 bucks - Saad Kamal
Carbonite. So far so good. I mostly chose it b/c I could back up an unlimited amount for very little $$. - Shannon Jiménez
@Shey: I'm recommending to a client the get 2 of the 1TB drives. Back up to both, keep on onsite and one in a safety deposit box at their bank. Another option is to consider a VPS hosting account with a fair amount of space. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
@SB is that going to be cheaper than $50/year? - Shey
Dell DataSafe came free w/my computer (for a yr) so I'm using that for now. Plus Live Mesh. - Sarah Perez
for users of online backup, how's the performance? How long does it take to backup 100GB? - Jason Carreira
It took Carbonite about a day to backup my ~150 GB. But the program is great about not interfering with system performance while backup is happening, and everything from then on is automatically backed up only when it changes. - Shannon Jiménez
Does it handle being interrupted in the middle well? My laptop isn't usually in one place for a whole day, so would it die if it went offline and came back online later? - Jason Carreira
Yeah, my internet connection is spotty at times (damn you, Comcast!) and it just remembers where it was when the connection is broken and starts up again when it comes back. - Shannon Jiménez
@Shey: Well, if you get a single 1TB drive for $200 and keep it in a safety deposit box, the cost equals out after a couple of years. So no, it's not necessarily cheaper up front, but it will cost you less over time. Plus, your data is a short drive and transfer away. If it takes a day to upload 150 GB to Carbonite, how long is the download? Or how long does it take to get the DVD backups from them? Basically, in the event of an emergency, how quickly do you have to get everything back? - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
@SB True say. I guess the trade off is easy auto and instantaneous backup - Shey
I backup to my Windows Home Server, it backs up to S3 - Soulhuntre via twhirl
Backup? Is "backing up" some mysterious thing from the land of Canada? xD - Mark Forman
I was using CrashPlan and was ready to drop the cash for it, when I discovered it didn't like JDK6 on OSX (which is apparently now fixed on the next release) - Mark Derricutt
S3 and JungleDisk; used to use Mozy, then Carbonite. Got badly burned with Streamload/Mediamax (now Nirvanix). - Sean McBride
@Shey: http://friendfeed.com/e/b69544... - hope you find it useful.. I tried a number of services the past two weeks. If you have any questions, let me know. - Tim Hoeck
@AJ Batac @Stupid Blogger -- I took your advice and got myself a 1TB backup. I'm still going to use an online one as well but this is a good first step. Thanks! - Shey
From the page: "Apple, through its marketing and visual design techniques, is manufacturing an illusion that merely buying an Apple makes you part of an alternative community. But the technology they use is explicitly chosen to divide people into separate digital cells, and to position Apple as sole warden. When your business depends on people paying for the privilege of being locked up, the prison better look and feel luxurious, and the bars better not be too visible" - Nicole Simon
I disagree with this article. There are plenty of reasons to avoid the iPhone 3G, however the points in this article don't make very much sense to me. While I disagree with Apple's way of doing things, they're not the first to employ these types of software controlling tactics (the gaming industry has been doing the exact same thing for years). Contrary to the first point in this article, it does NOT block free or open source software, either. The FSF is doing contra-FUD yet again. - Liron Tocker
Liron, "others did this before apple" is not a very good argument. It's not about the wrong doing of others, but what Apple has done wrong since they've started producing the iPod. It all started back then, moved over to software (iTunes) and reached it's peak with the iPhone. The FSF tends to be a bit to harsh in their ciricizm, but the core of their argument is correct and needs to be spoken. - Igor Schwarzmann via twhirl
My point with pointing out that "others did this before apple" absolutely wasn't in any way meant to justify these marketing or software distribution methods, the point with this was that many seem to target Apple as the sole peddler of these tactics without noticing (or choosing to ignore) that it's the norm in other markets. - Liron Tocker
Oh, don't fool yourself, this campaign targets every DRM house, not only Apple - Marcos Marado via fftogo
Liron, it's a campaign, they have to focus on somebody to get any attention at all. There is no other way. - Igor Schwarzmann
In general, I agree with points made on DRM by the FSF. But I sometimes feel like they're attempting to sensationalize issues using "Michael Moore-ish" tactics by creating counter-FUD. Why are they not mentioning that Symbian has recently been open sourced, either? - Liron Tocker
@Liron, Symbian wasn't open sourced, Nokia just announced it'll be open source in 2 years. And we don't know how will Symbian Open Source look like, Nokia is a fan of DRM, but it's still early for this subject. I agree with the article, but I think those who buy/bought an iPhone won't care about these matters. - Hassan Ibraheem
“I love the Pandora and AOL Radio apps on my iPod Touch. But I hate the fact that there's no way to minimize them so I can keep listening and go to the safari browser.”
o/s not app issue though - totally agree, its why i mostly listen to podcasts still while browsing on iphone - mike "glemak" dunn
The iPod does the same thing when you stream a file via the Safari browser. You can't switch to another page while you're listening. I'm hoping a future update will allow multi-tasking when streaming media. - Rob Safuto
I want ibat but really women i think those are the perfect shoes for the modern feminists if you didn't get him with the heel after burn him and being Superman I know i am the but what did that have to do with batman? Very funny list thank you Mona - Cecil Sandus
the creepy bat ducke ftw LOL @Cecil: hahaha that shoe = new taser? LOL - Mona N.
hear hear. Why not start tonight? When's the last time you read a book? played a game of REAL scrabble with your wife/partner? Talked to your kid? Go offline. NOW. - melmcbride
We can work on our individual lives and get those in order. But what about the bigger picture? - Mark Dykeman
Wait, smiley's don't count as body language?? ;) - felix
lol@felix It's the best I can do from a keyboard! - Shey
Shey, I don't agree. I find that many people aren't even aware of social media and are missing out. Also social media and real life interactions are not mutually exclusive. - Alan Le
@Alan I think the point Shey's making is that some people in the "Social Media World" (I call them "Tech-Nerds" .. :D) are so engrossed in Social Media that they become ignorant of the REAL Social World -- becoming hopelessly ignorant of the REAL ramifications of their actions. - Jasmin Smith
Re. Soc Media vs RW - You learn best by doing imho? Observation only takes one so far. - Mathew A. Koeneker
@Matthew I think the happy ending is "doing", i.e. a change in how we behave with and relate to one another. But if you don't take a step back and look outside your little bubble -- you get a pretty narrow-minded view. - Shey
"no excess" is believed as one of the most important thought in buddhism. better stay off the online Social stuff somewhat. thx, shey! - Kenichi Matsumoto
Seven months in...I'm still doing that. - Chris Nixon
And the sense of relief when you realize it was just the TV...priceless. - Hutch Carpenter
TVs are scary, I turned them off and now I enjoy life - Dobromir Hadzhiev
I've done that a few times with door knocks and door bells on TV. It's amazing how real the surround sound from the living room sounds when I'm up in my office. - Jeff P. Henderson
You're such a good dad - I hear the baby cry and I wait for my wife to go get him, then if nothing, I go ;-) - Jesse Stay
If this had been me, while wandering back my other half would have said "so you don't know the sound of ours from some random kid on the television?" :) - Jonathan Beckett
Been there, done that. And in India it can be your neighbors baby! - Muthu Ramadoss
Comedians and satirists know the line between satire and extremes and know exactly how to walk that line - thats what makes them funny. I think the point here is that Feldman just is not a good comedian or satirist if that's what he is aiming to be. If he doesn't consider himself a comedian and wants to be taken seriously, then I am going to take what he said in that light - seriously. You can't have it both ways. Conclusion : Either Loren Feldman is a very lame comedian/satirist or he is a loose mouth who doesn't know limits and didn't know he was racist. - Kamath
From the article: "The reality is that Loren is a man, a man who wanted to make a point and failed on two levels. The first was that the joke, the point, got lost somewhere in the translation. The second is that he failed to recognize that the context you assume people will see is not always the context people actually see." - Ontario Emperor
“Hmmmm... the new guy in charge of Flickr at Yahoo Scott Dietzen uses SmugMug to host the photos on his personal weblog. Not saying there's anything wrong with this, just interesting is all. http://www.dietzen.com/”
Here is Scott Dietzen's Flickr account. http://www.flickr.com/photos/d... It doesn't look like he's played around with Flickr much in the past which worries me a tad now that he's running it. I just made him my friend on Flickr. We'll see if he reciprocates, right now he only has one contact on the whole site. - Thomas Hawk
Interesting... it doesn't sound good though, not at all. - Mirko
Maybe Valleywag material. I don't read the rag anymore though. They lie too much. - Thomas Hawk
Thomas, I think the Flickr group will report up to Dietzen but it looks like Kakul Srivastava will be the general manager of Flickr. http://blogpost.counterjumper.... - Mike Doeff
Dietzen's personal website does not inspire confidence - Rafael Robayna
Here is Kakul on CrunchBase http://www.crunchbase.com/pers... . If you look on the left you'll see that she has the General Manager title, although the profile still has her as Senior Director of Product Management. - Mike Doeff
yes, of course, Kakul runs Flickr. She's got Stewart's old job. I was more interested in who she would be reporting up to. - Thomas Hawk
It's kind of ironic that you pointed this out, Thomas ;-) - Dave Roth
Is there anything cool in SmugMug that might/should get brought over into Flickr, features wise? - Gary
Well, you are the ceo of Zooomr and .... :P - Kreg Steppe
It could be seen as a positive. If he currently prefers another site, maybe he will drive improvements at flickr. As pointed out, it is ironic that it is you who brings this up ;) - CJPhoto
@Gary: Smugmug has a ton of stuff that Flickr doesn't - better privacy controls, better image protection with more fine grained control over that, better layouts, it accepts bigger photos, lets you sell prints for a profit, domain name mapping, and you can customize to your hearts content. That said Flickr is more community/sharing oriented, Smugmug is a better product for pros, so I don't know if all those features would fit in at Flickr. - Eric
I haven't used SmugMug enough yet to fully offer an opinion. Their reputation for customer service, however, is outstanding. I had trouble uploading some photos there but I've yet to really give it a go. I love Zooomr and especially the smaller community there. I think Flickr has the best photo sharing site on the web today though and am heavily invested in it from an emotional standpoint. - Thomas Hawk
I doesn't bother me at all that Dietzen uses SmugMug to host his own personal photos while ultimately overseeing Flickr. I'm more concerned that he may not fully understand all the ins and outs of how to make a photo sharing site better or share the passion that some of us have for photo sharing in general. Flickr is a terribly important property for far more than economic reasons. - Thomas Hawk
looks like his design skills are like hm, eh, not available? - Kai Müller
I'd be more worried if he didn't have any photos. I think it's healthy for people to use the competition's products. It shows that they're open to ideas outside their company and won't overlook the features that make the competition useful. The alternative is for them to follow Ballmer who insists that his family can't use any Apple products. - Adewale Oshineye
Eric - Thanks for the SmugMug comparison. I'm still trying to figure out how to share photos. I faved a few of Scott's photos. Loved the water & wildlife shots. Hope he improves Flickr - the interface SUCKS. It's really difficult to find & use features in Flickr. As a new Flickr user, I'm getting lost, and very important features are hard to find (like how to "make someone a contact" - drop-down on icon, had to use search & help). Lousy, lousy UI. Google Picasa & FriendFeed are much easier to use for new people... - Mitchell Tsai
Ok, this is getting a lot more interesting. I've been emailing back and forth with the VP of Corp. Communications at Yahoo, Jennifer Stephens Acree, for the past few hours. Dietzen is not in charge of Flickr, Tapan Bhat is. Tapan Bhat reports up to Ash Patel. Working on a whole different angle for this story. We'll see how it unfolds. - Thomas Hawk
I have to be sensitive about my users' expectations about privacy, but let's just say that there are other VP+ Yahoos (and Googlers and ...) execs using us. I'm not surprised, and I don't think it's a big deal, just saying this is hardly unique. We have Flickr users at SmugMug, too. :) - Don MacAskill
Don, that doesn't surprise me. You guys offer a good service for hosting and sharing your photos. Still, it does surprise me how little Yahoo execs seem to be using Flickr. It would be my hope that maybe a bit more "dogfooding" as they like to say up in Redmond might be going on with Yahoo execs at Flickr. - Thomas Hawk
Flickr excels at the online social elements of photo sharing. I'm not sure Yahoo execs really get social software (their failures are numerous), so I would bet there's a correlation here. They don't want to use it because they don't get it - which, in turn, means they fail when they try to build it. Sad, really. - Don MacAskill
Hilarious! Smugmug is better at displaying photos but not as good for the social aspect. - Stuart Forsyth via twhirl
hmmmm.. this is interesting. This story is now picking up interest by the mainstream press and I'm getting more information out of Acree. Working on another post on this whole thing right now. - Thomas Hawk
Thomas, but Scott could have had his smugmug long before he even joined YHOO, Maybe Scott should speak out NOW , else tis going to be bad for the Flickr team /yhoo.. Once the MSM pick it up, there is no stopping the snowball.. regardless of his personal reason and nothing technically is wrong with hosting personal pics on smugmug ! - Peter Dawson
Honestly, I'm not sure what the problem is. People at Yahoo search on Google all the time. Likewise, plenty of Googlers use Yahoo Finance. Is that so crazy? And Yahoo vs Google is a storied rivalry. I don't think Flickr or SmugMug considers each other rivals in anything other than the broadest sense of the word. - Don MacAskill
Scott was the CEO at Zimbra, before that the CTO at BEA, and before that the head of product management for Web Logic. He practically invented the concept of the J2ME Application Server. Say what you will about J2ME, figuring out how to package those technologies into a product was quite a feat. So was Zimbra. He came into Yahoo when they aquired Zimbra. Getting Scott I'm sure was a big part of the appeal of acquiring Zimbra. - Tom Conrad
Ok, posted my follow up post to this story here: http://thomashawk.com/2008/06/... Appreciate any thoughts or feedback. Thanks for your thoughts on the matter as well Don. - Thomas Hawk
SmugMg has good customer service too- I remember Don stepping and engaged w/us when we cracked the privacy issue some time ago - Peter Dawson
Given that he's uploaded 3 albums in the last 3 years, and he's worked at Yahoo for perhaps a year, I don't think it's too surprising that he seems not to be a flickr user. Not everyone is. - j1m
Well it's something not every president get's. So in it's very own way iot's...unique... - Dennis Bjørn Petersen via twhirl
I think these sicko perverts should be stopped! Had NOBODY considered the psychological ramifications of this senseless act of cruelty??? Come on! Think of the poor workers! THEY'RE the ones who have to work at the GEORGE BUSH every day. - Roy Blumenthal via twhirl
I know this is being done in jest, but doing this to the position of the President of the United States doesn't seem right. Maybe I'm just too old fashioned. - Bryan Clark
@Bryan I hear what you're saying but do think that this particular president has done more to sully the office than anyone before him. - Carla Thompson
@Bryan doesn't seem right to me either. Just very juvenile and vindictive. I think there are more mature ways to make a statement - Shey
I hate this president from the bottom of my heart. but I agree with Bryan as well. The chuckle we get locally won't be worth the scorn we get nationally. - Mauricio
Should we be expected to respect a president who doesn't respect us? Of course, by that logic, we'd be naming all our sinkholes after Nixon. - Carla Thompson
You don't have to respect anyone who hasn't earned it -- but disrespecting someone else is never justifiable - Shey
whatever said and done, freedom of speech does not mean freedom to disrespect a person.. even if he is a lousy president. True happiness can't be gained at the expense of others. - Peter Dawson
