Bradley Horowitz › Likes

no. - Paul Buchheit

Wow, how much money are we talking? And does it have to be a US based charity? - Zee.

Send it to the people with the power to bring back the Service Icons (or make turning them on an optional setting). - Matthew DeVries

Zee, it depends, but could be a lot, and yes, it must be recognized by the IRS as a public charity, though that doesn't preclude operating outside the US. - Paul Buchheit

Actually, Zee's question is pretty important. The amount of money is a big factor in recommending where it goes. The same focused non-profit that could really make use of $20,000 to realize a current initiative would likely be devastated if they received a million dollar grant. They wouldn't know how to use it, would probably grossly over-extend, and then go under in a year or two when their new larger funding needs can't be met. This happens all too often... - Kevin Fox

That's a fair point Kevin, and it's reasonable to specify how much is needed and on what schedule in the suggestion. - Paul Buchheit

Here is a fantastic place to start - http://www.facebook.com/inbox... - Tara Maxwell

Donating to laid off friendfeed users? - Burcu Dogan

You are a good man! - Edwin Khodabakchian

I think anything in the Software Freedom Conservancy would qualify, right? For example, Sugar Labs seems like a rather awesome project to donate to. Education focus, reinventing UI, and fully open source. (I think open source can be an awesome thing to spend some money on, because it can touch so many people. Particularly if it's focused on education.) - Dirkjan Ochtman

Does The Human Fund count? - Gabe

I don't know anything about charity: water specifically (how well they are run, what their administrative overhead is, etc), but I think that access to clean drinking water is one of the world's greatest problems. - Tudor Bosman

great idea Paul. - rob friedman

Very cool Paul... changing lives and making a difference - creatively : ) - Mark Harai

I live in an area where a lot of the "social service" agencies are not doing much at all. these agencies have very large national backing already. I think, if you are going to give some money, give it to some people who are passionate about seeing something get done. That may be people who do not have there 501C3 yet, but the funds that you give could be used to "get them going". That... more... - Robert

http://www.givewell.net/ - Sean O'Connor

Paul: what are your goals? The best gifts are when you are passionate about the goal. I love that HP gave millions to Monterey Bay Aquarium because Hewlett's daughter was passionate about that (and remains very engaged to today). Matt Mullenweg helped a school in Vietnam. The Gates got passionate after traveling and seeing just how much of an impact their gift would have. If it were me I would use my money to help get more people on the Internet or help do research on diseases that have affected my friends. - Robert Scoble

Sound advice Robert. I was just at one of the Gates Foundation's new buildings in South Lake Union for a CCN (communitiesconnect.org) board meeting and the images and stories posted on the walls were quite stunning. The messages that resonated were powerful and moving. Clearly shows the passion of the people involved and of the Foundation overall. - Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Some other things we need to put more resources to? Finding ways of helping with climate change. Red Cross, for instance, will deal with people displaced by floods. Energy research will be very important. Water is another issue more and more of us will need to deal with. But to answer this well I would like to know what you are passionate about and what your goal of spending this money is. - Robert Scoble

I second Robert's last comment. - James (!?)

I greatly appreciate that Woz gave our school $40,000 worth of computers. That got my career started and affected more than a few lives. - Robert Scoble

Robert, it's not just about what I'm "passionate" about, it's about results and outcomes. I could give the money to something that sounds very good to me, but what if it is counter-productive and actually makes things worse? That's why I'm interested in trying to get more brains involved in the process, because then it is possible to leverage more people's knowledge and wisdom. I guess you could also say that I'm passionate about collaborative systems ;) - Paul Buchheit

BTW, specific gifts (such as $40,000 worth of computers) are somewhat more appealing to me because it's easier for me to understand the impact (vs giving to some mega-charity that does who knows what with it). Even then though, more computers won't necessarily make a school better if they aren't applied correctly (and are probably less important in schools where the kids already have computers). - Paul Buchheit

Paul: yeah, but you will always have competing uses and the crowd may not pick the most useful places for that money. Me? I am biased toward research and education. Leading and preventing, in other words other people like giving their money to organizations that clean up messes. Orphanages or Red Cross would be examples of those. Other people like to put their money to making people happy. Woz gave millions to the Children's Discovery Museum, for instance. That's why I like a little more direction first. - Robert Scoble

Paul: crowds aren't that good at figuring out vision. For instance, which is best place to spend $100,000 (you'll get the politically correct and most popular). But they ARE great at helping you find something very specific. For instance, if you said "I want to spend $100,000 on a hospital that helps people with breast cancer, what hospital would use that money to help the most people?" The crowd would be awesome at finding you the best one of those. - Robert Scoble

Robert's mention of HP support for the Monterey Bay Aquarium is a fond and emotional issue for me. My father has been a docent there since day one (more or less) and a retired school teacher on the Monterey Peninsula. I remember climbing through the place as a boarded up cannery. He uses his teaching expertise to educate and reach visitors in ways that cannot be duplicated in books and... more... - Rick Bucich

Rick: it's a very difficult question that Paul asked. Who knew that spending money is so difficult? I like the micro finance approaches too, because their gifts have a multiplier effect. I don't have much money to give to charities, so I look for that multiplier effect and/or I want my own money to put smiles on people's faces. So, museums, hospitals, education, music programs, etc are on my own plan. - Robert Scoble

http://www.innocenceproject.org - Chris Johnson

Chris: good group doing good work. So, here's a philosophy question: what if $1,000,000 would save 15 lives with that charity, but 100 with another? Which one should Paul choose? And, can we quantify the rewards that way? That's what the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is trying to quantify. - Robert Scoble

Robert, agreed which is why I don't have a specific suggestion yet:) I spread my own money relatively freely but broadly and in moderate amounts. This process is rather enlightening actually as a realize that outside my own alma mater I haven't really put my best foot forward to support education in general, especially public school districts where it is really needed. - Rick Bucich

Looks like Paul just gave us an example of something that he's passionate about: textbooks: http://friendfeed.com/collabo... - Robert Scoble

Matching gifts is another force multiplier...more thought is needed on the subject. - Rick Bucich

philanthropy? Oh no not another foundation. What's with all the techies forming foundations and giving away organizations to control to strange/crazy ppl ! - Swaroop

how about this cause .... http://vimeo.com/3920032 - Steven Joseph

Remember the days when everyone was copying Yahoo's UI? Seems like everyone's doing the same with Twitter now. heh. - Mike

Jeff, you should give it a few days. You may find it a lot more usable. - Kevin Fox

Once I went beta I never went back. - Daniel Dulitz

I'm diggin the new design - Greg Rosenberg

that's what i thought when i saw it..! - Denis Laprise

"And in the spirit of open communications, we designed this feature using Internet standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat." Come on libpurple! - EricaJoy

Awesome! Where was this last week when I wanted to video-conference in to all the election night festivities from China? :) - Ana

I wish it didn't require installing a plugin though. I'm sure there's a good reason for it but without it working out of the box I doubt I'll ever be able to use it to chat with certain people (my Grandparents use Gmail but I don't think they'd know how to install this). - Benjamin Golub

@Ben Send them to http://mail.google.com/videoch... and tell them to press the big button? - EricaJoy

1/2 Skype + 1/2 Tokbox + Google = death to Skype and Tokbox? - George Lee from twhirl

Benjamin, you're right. And if you have to install something, why not just make it a standalone program? Like an update to the Google Talk client? My mum and sister both use Google Talk but they've never used the web interface of Gmail because they know how to use Outlook Express already. - Tony Ruscoe

no linux support yet =( - Evan Parker

Side-note: When you have Google Update installed as Firefox plugin, then clicking Google's installation button won't trigger a security dialog, but just start the installation. - Philipp Lenssen

@Evan If libpurple can get this implemented, you could just use Pidgin. - EricaJoy

A plugin? Reminds me of the original Google video. Why don't you use flash Keith? - Paul Buchheit

Tony: Updating Google Talk leaves all the Mac users out. Now if I could just get a free VNC client or something that punched through firewalls well on Macs I could install this for my parents now instead of next time I see them. - Brett Cannon

Brett: If you use the listening VNC viewer, you can have your parents make their VNC server connect to you. - Gabe

The NYT's annoying pseudo-paywall is just one of the reasons why I won't miss these kinds of dead-tree media when they all finally become extinct - Adewale Oshineye

@Adewale, pseudo-paywall? - Bindu Reddy

There goes my dartboard theory. - Richard Akerman

Ah, I remember that discussion on why you dislike the phrase... :) - Bindu Reddy

"Mr. Horowitz says every failed idea contributes to future Google products. “There are not a lot of platypuses, these oddities that went nowhere,” he said. “It’s much more evolutionary, in the sense that you can look at the wooly mammoth and say, ‘That shares a lot of DNA with the elephant.’ These things are learning experiences.”" - j1m

I enjoyed it until the bizarre evolutionary analogies at the end. - Neil Saunders

I'm just fond of platypuses :-) and really, they're quite successful in their own way. - Neil Saunders

hey that's jeff in the nyt! woot. - peter

I think of platypi as the antikythera mechanisms of the mammal world. - j1m

@Bindu If you don't have an account then you can't read that article unless your Referer header says you found it via a Google search. Even in that case it won't let you read the entire article, just the first page. This is a silly and annoying restriction since tools like BugMeNot can easily bypass it. All it does is make me automatically ignore links to the NYT. Given that they're in the business of selling advertising it seems especially silly to be deliberately reducing the size of their audience. - Adewale Oshineye

+1 j1m - Richard Akerman

I'd like to hear that metaphor explained. - ⓞnor

@e3r: An elephant never forgets. What is it that the elephant never forgets? It never forgets that it used to be a mammoth. QED - Larry Hosken

wow those are really similar employee numbers! awesome. What did you do at Microsoft? - Susan Beebe

I did some surface shading and batch processing for "Encarta World Atlas" (early precursor to Google Earth). 4GB of height data on a 32MB machine was kinda fun, now that I remember it. - Michael Herf

Encarta! I remember those CDs! those were great :) nice!! - Susan Beebe

Ah, Encarta.. how the internet usurped thee! - alphaxion

I think back as far ago as 1998 or 1999 the same group had an online "terraserver" that could show satellite views via the web. It was a SQL server scalability test I think.... but UI matters! And also, domains you can spell matter too. - Michael Herf

I loved Microsoft's terraserver!! I cried when it went offline...that was such a cool service!!! - Susan Beebe

I was 37528, October '94. And Terraserver was cool as hell! - Moishe Lettvin

The press seems now almost anti-Obama, even MSNBC. There is no way the trip was not a fantastic plus for Obama, yet press was all "will it backfire". Now, why is that? Because they think its more of a story to "sell" than the straight ahead story of what is most obvious, that Obama is "presidential" to the nth degree, and that is a good thing, not somehow a bad thing. Where is the... more... - Richard Hood

Politics aside, I just want a president who can speak clearly and remember what he said 10 minutes ago... Really, is that asking too much? - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

"Now, why is that?" Saturation. - Kirk Kittell

To me, Obama is too "rock-star" like to make a good president. He hasn't even served one term as Senator. How is he planning to run the country? - Gavin

Richard Hood: I know Reagan is untouchable in the USA - but how was he a "great leader" when he supplied Iran with weapons, at a time it was clearly an enemy?! - sebmos

Gavin: Nobody can train to run a country, not even McCain. You can show management and leadership skills, though, and Obama showed both with his campaign: He had an uphill battle to fight against HRC, who was expected (by her, the party and the media) to be the nominee since the day she announced she would run for office. His campaign is the reason why I think he can make a great president. - sebmos

A report on POTUS 08 yesterday said 3 major networks were over 70% negative comments toward Obama. Gavin: why do members of congress have the lowest ratings and yet you want to use that as a measure of success in the office of the Presidency? - LPH™ and his dog P™

sebmos: he's a great leader because he won the cold war and made the USA the sole superpower (or was anyway). it could have easily gone either way between USSR and USA and it could have led to the destruction of many, many people and it didn't. whether he gave arms to the wrong guys pales in comparison to that accomplishment. it's a given that the american foreign policy in the middle east is pretty much terrible across the board - so i'll give him an iran mulligan in the scheme of things... - Morgan

Look at it this way -- if Obama wants to start acting like President, then we're going to start acting as if he were President. Which means thank god Bush is gone, now you're the guy in the hot seat and we're going to be criticizing you. He's a student of history, and he's really smart, so he knows that and is probably prepared for it (as he seems to be prepared for everything else). Milbank is giving him shit because that's what you do with the President! - Dave Winer

God forbid anyone think of building a company that could eventually go public instead of flipping it quickly. - Cyndy

what is silly glemak? I am just sharing... It's a fact. It will get tougher and tougher to raise money in this environment - Loic Le Meur from twhirl

Yet M&A is still happening. Google/Digg, Brocade/Foundry. Are those not exits? - Louis Gray

loic: there are many ways to exit & always will be exit opts, that won't change, what will change is whether the silliness of astronomical exits of recent past will happen, which it won't - whoever on the vc panel said that was just being melodramatic and silly - btw, how can the future be fact ;) - mike "glemak" dunn

sorry, as for tough to raise money, agreed - business models have needed to be solid for awhile now (except for those who are still doing crazy investments like in podshow) but raising & exits are two different sides of the coin no? - mike "glemak" dunn

:( - Andrew Fielding from twhirl

this doesn't sound too problematic if you're starting a business today - a 3-5 year holding period for investments shouldn't break anybody's IRR model. could make things tougher if you've got a portfolio chock full of series c and d companies, though - Charles Hudson

i really hope it's not something bad due to all the yahoo craziness - MG Siegler

I'd put my money on "everything's ok" meeting. Which it probably is - Bwana ☠

Maybe Stewart's coming back :) I wonder if Rev Dan Catt is presenting. Whatever is happening I hope Rev Dan gets a promotion out of it. - Thomas Hawk

In my brief experience, I have not been to a single all hands meeting that hasn't been "A-OK, everything great, etc." ("The rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated.") - Kirk Kittell