Who am I?
I'm a Market Research Manager in iTunes at Apple. Before that, I co-founded a teddy bear company called FanZanimal. Before that I went to Harvard Business School. Before that I worked for Bain & Company. Before that I went to Brown University and played lacrosse. Before that I went to Milton Academy. Before that I went to Meadowbrook. Before that I had nothing to do but root for the Red Sox.
See also: AlexBain.com, Twitter, Goodreads, Flickr, Vimeo, Last.fm, TripIt, Facebook, LinkedIn, Furio, My “favs”, & email
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How to Become an Insta-Expert
The author nailed every Oscar pick just by watching prediction markets.
I’ve been doing this with American Idol so far this year. I’ve watched ~30 total minutes of the season, but because I’ve been watching the futures market for the contestants, I actually have opinions about how things will turn out.
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My friends, the Barneses (sp?), put together this fantastic 20 second video of their son Jack’s first experience with crawling.
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Time to update my 3 year-old tradition of documenting how I’m wished happy birthday by medium.
Some thoughts:
- Some friends sent along well-wishes via more than one medium. I double-counted them. I thought about only counting the first, or counting each one as a half, but figured that this exercise isn’t intended to gauge my own popularity so much as the popularity of each medium.
- Similarly, I thought about plotting it on a 100% axis, but liked that the absolute axis made two points:
- Facebook appears to be stealing “share” from email, but not other mediums.
- There seems to be a static amount of kindness generated by the combination of email, Facebook, and in-person greetings, and the other platforms are additive.
- This year was the first year that IM and Tumblr appeared on the list. IM may have been bigger in the past, but I was never signed on. Now I’m attached to IM almost all day long. Tumblr just recently turned on a “replies” feature sort of like comments, and my cousin-in-law, Sarah, took quick advantage.
- I wish there were an easy way to control for things like day-of-the-week and social media connections. I’ve got way more Facebook and Twitter friends now than in 2008, but I don’t have a great record of the historical counts. Oh well.
The whole thing is also a fun reminder of how lucky I am to have such great friends/family.
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The birthday plan
I don’t usually make a big deal of my birthday (especially a funny number like 31), but Lisa very kindly does. She suggested an itinerary for the day, that we tweaked a bit together. Here it is:
- Jog along the water (while she catches some extra Z’s)
- Chai lattés from Coffee Bean
- Hitting the neighborhood indian buffet for lunch
- Practicing the piano together (she’s normally resistant, because she doesn’t like playing on my unnaturally weighted keyboard)
- Reading together at a nearby café
- A nice walk along the water
- Head out to the East Bay for dinner with Lisa’s fam, where there’s a rumor that her mother’s famous applesauce cake may make an appearance.
This is a great way to usher in my 32nd year.
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”The “Notes” app on the iPhone will forever be a simulation of a legal pad; the similar app on the iPad is a legal pad.
This quote from an article on
iPad Application Design stuck out. I hope a lot of the best apps we’ll see for the iPad will have real life metaphors that will feel natural. Reading this made me wish I knew how to write software.Via Gruber
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Just received an email from Tumblr today reminding me that this site just turned 3!
I’m a bit surprised, actually, because my first post here was in July of ‘07.
Back then, I thought Tumblr would be a complement to my Typepad site, but I quickly discovered it was just so much easier to use, and that the Tumblr team was just so much stronger than anyone else out there working in social media, so I wanted to hitch my wagon to their horse. Today’s email from them is a perfect example of the little things Tumblr nails.
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The Barretts had us over for a great dirty risotto dinner, then a jam session. Great hosts!
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My Roger Ebert Story
Moving piece by Will Leitch about his unique opportunity to befriend (and disappoint) his hero.
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”We’re not allowed to discuss RBI anymore - the stat nazis have declared that they no longer matter.
From Bill Simmons’ chat last Friday.
I’d say about 80% of Simmons content is directly related to sports, and none of it is enjoyable for me to consume anymore, because of his attitude that was perfectly captured in the above quote: He has a vague sense that quantitative analysis has advanced recently in sports, but rather than seeing the movement as progress, he openly resents it.
While RBI are dependent on many factors out of a hitter’s control in baseball, we do have access to stats that can isolate a player’s performance. Why would we long for the days when fans focused on a stat we now know to be largely meaningless? I don’t know of many fans that claim they miss watching sports on small, black-and-white screens. This is no different.
I still love listening to Simmons’ podcasts about The Real World, or columns with his take on movies, but he’s lost me when it comes to sports. He’s a really funny guy. He’s both a great writer and interviewer. He’s amazing on Twitter. But Moneyball taught me (with the example of scouts) to be wary of anyone that’s both bad at math and claims “there’s so much more to sports than numbers.”
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learning to type
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“MTV Reinvented”, from ABC news yesterday. I wish I could bring this everywhere I go to answer the...
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Wednesday. A quiet moment: poetry, yogurt, hawthorne valley farms granola, coffee. Inwood, NY.
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Happy St. Patrick’s Day! (AKA the only day I will ever be seen wearing green)
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