donloeb.com

ok, i can’t justify buying one of these yet. but, i want one.

luckily, we have a few at goog…since these single-brew clover machines are 11k each, my guess is that search is profitable :)

here’s my pic of the machine in action…love the “coffee cake”

great post rick..congrats. my favorite part is your title - “elections hipster” :)

for those that don’t know, rick created a cool site to help folks understand superdelegates…here’s some CNN coverage as well…

as you know, we had our 2nd last monday - hugo mateo loeb. since then i’ve been spending a ton of time not sleeping, but not really being awake either :)

to pass the time (i.,e 10 minute chunks) i’ve been reading books (yes, actual books), posting to twitter, flickr, and my blog, and watching tv and dvds, etc…all without a computer. so, what exactly have i been consuming/posting and what’s different? here’s a quick rundown by media type:

newspapers: new york times exclusively, no change pre/post baby…

books: a ticket to the boneyard (simple page turner) and the ghost map (great analysis of cholera in 19th century england). i highly recommend the ghost map and what’s fascinating is that the author, steven johnson, is also ceo of outsidein. additionally, i’ve been reading these books on my phone. it’s the perfect way to kill 10 minutes and put yourself to sleep in the middle of the night :) and, these “books” can be read with one hand & without a light…critical to reading with an infant in your arms :)

tv: mind-numbing shows to pass the time -> the bachelor, dancing with the stars with mr. cuban, and survivor. and, the best of all, watching cal beat oregon with hugo sleeping on my chest. GO BEARS!

movies: blades of glory was absolutely perfect for my state of mind…no documentaries or award winning films right now :)

and finally, the net: very occasional twittering, lots of flickr posting (all pics of hugo of course), some work-related google reader snacking (on the phone only), scrabulous on facebook (the best facebook app, period!), and a very small amount of email. btw, letting everyone know about hugo via flickr was fantastic. our friends and family had immediate access to the photos without us having to do much. and, they could congratulate us in a very low touch way (via commenting) w/o any expectation of a response…perfect for new parents!

ok, i haven’t written about google products and don’t really plan to…but, i have to point out a couple of new features in google earth and maps. why? because they’re so freakin’ cool…

first off, when i was 17, i wrote a program (on a mac…in basic…ughh) that showed the winter sky from northern california. you could walk toward the horizon and the view would change, etc…and, i also simulated retrograde motion. i had a planet move across the sky while at the same time i showed a bird’s eye view of the solar system in another window so that folks could see why this happens. yeah, i was an astronomy geek…

when i used our new google sky service yesterday, it brought me back 20 (or so) years. words won’t do it justice…just go play around with it. of course, make sure you turn on a bunch of the data layers re planets, etc. and, just to whet your appetite -> here’s a screenshot of orion and then a closeup of the orion nebula (thanks to the hubble telescope).

lastly, just because i love embeds, here’s where i eat lunch most days :)

monday’s links:

- facebook email…should spur adoption…this is a big big deal,

- hp is building a pretty cool system to print docs anywhere in the world from your mobile phone,

- gmail adoption in schools,

- wsj piece on business blogging, and

- skrenta on mahalo and SEO. i need to get my hands on that ppt…

wow, it seems like a lifetime ago that we announced the google acquisition. since then, i:

- went thru orientation (in the ny office - nice digs btw)
- attended my first tech talk
- responded to a mountain of email
- had a ton of meetings with partners
- spoke at nextmedia in banff (every conference should be held there!)
- spoke at digital hollywood in santa monica
- met some fantastic entrepreneurs & participated on a panel re transparency at techstars
- rode my first G bike (that’s rick on the bike) and
- fell in love with the G shuttle (nearly door to door service…not bad!)…

we can finally talk about this…yes, the rumors are true…we’ve been acquired by google. i’m terribly excited as we have the opportunity to leverage their resources and relationships…this is great for our publishers (both big and small) and the future of rss / distributed media…

we’ll have more information soon re what this means for everyone…so stay tuned…

logo courtesy of google blogoscoped

this is great…google’s starting down the offline support path for all apps…and i mean every web app as this is an open source project…frankly, all i care about is that i can now use google reader high above jfk…

seriously - i can’t wait for this to work across g’s suite…

ok, so these are going to be pretty cool someday. i’ll admit that. plus, i don’t like to criticize first gen products - obviously, a ton of features get left on the cutting room floor…

but, for now, these simple user programmable gadgets are lacking one major thing…feeds.

it’s great to be able to update them from google, but why not have the option to input a feed and create a multi-function gadget…one with your logo, maybe a status update ala facebook or twitter, and a feed from a blog or a video service, etc….sort of a “branded gadget of me.” at feedburner, we do that via splicing delicious links and flickr photos into your main feed, but sometimes it’s nice to have things like status updates and video picks as something that’s separate from your main blog feed…

other little nits - the colors are locked down by the “publisher” and therefore don’t match the new themes and the widgets can’t be embedded on webpages….

in any event, they are still pretty neat…and, simple. i’m a huge fan of simple products :)

ps - nice new “igoogle” logo…

for the past few weeks, i’ve been monkeying around wtih how to post my links from myweb, google, delicious, etc. i finally decided that once-a-day summaries from delicious made sense.

at first i used the daily blog posting feature. it’s great, but i don’t blog enough. as a result, my blog became “too delicious.” :) so, i decided to go back to having only real blog posts on my site, but splicing in a daily summary using feedburner’s link splicer. then, those links are only in the feed. of course, i also implemented a sidebar widget (using feedburner’s buzzboost offering) that has my delicious links. so, i think i’ve got everything covered.

the only downside is that my feed now has double postings of my delicious links. it’s temporary..i.,e until i start posting new things, but the posts are there and it’s annoying. so, sorry for mucking up your rss reader.

btw, does anyone have suggestions about how best to do this? i think i’ve found the right solution in that my blog has a set of modules - flickr photos, my delicious and google links, and my blog posts…but my feed has everything. i.e., i’ve spliced stuff together to create a “feed of me” for folks consuming my content via a feed reader.

what does everyone think?