What do Jews usually do on Christmas Day?

Movies. Chinese Food.

Add on Community Service as well.

Last year I participated in the DCJCC’s December 25th Day of Service, and am planning to do it again this year. The earliest slot, 6 AM, is a lot of fun, and the streets of DC are empty! Even if you are observing the holiday, you can be back before everyone else wakes up.

I signed up for Miriam’s Kitchen, 5:50 – 8:30 AM. Are you in? Click here to sign up!

It’s been months since I’ve actually been able to get myself to sit down and read a book all the way through, and Boomsday was definitely worth it.

Boomsday is centered around a blogger who, enraged about the insolvency of Social Security in light of the Baby Boomers, suggests a far-fetched plan…. that actually catches on. Pretty funny.

Christopher Buckley, the author of Thank You For Smoking, wrote it. Didn’t realize it was the same Christopher Buckley whose father, William F. Buckley, is a bit well known.

I yearn for moments of clarity. Those rare times where you put the rest of the world on pause, take a step back, and think about what you’re doing, what actually matters, and where you should go from here. Those times are rare, almost non-existent for me. With the phone ringing, the inbox never empty, and a million things to do, I’ve never given myself a chance to take a step back.

In the past few days/weeks/months, my family has been hit with some pretty big events, and put us in situations we’d never wish on anyone. Dealing with it has been hard, but it’s given me a chance to really evaluate myself, and what’s important to me. What am I doing? What should I be doing? In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter? That conflict you’ve had with another professional doesn’t matter. Making that extra buck doesn’t matter. The newest social media shiny object? What good is that going to do anyone? It’s caused me, in turn, to make some big changes in my own life, as I move towards focusing on what really matters.

Family.
Friends.
Making your difference in the world.
And having an amazing journey doing it.

How to keep myself on track… that’s the challenge.

I had an idea for a widget, and felt like brushing up on my Flash and Actionscript skills.

Here is a very very rough Version 0, with Clearspring already set up!

I have to work a lot more on the style of course. I’m also thinking that these narrow dimensions just arent cutting it.

The biggest source of inspiration for me in my entrepreneurial dreams is seeing people who I know personally succeed in building something from the ground up. Last week, Jared launched AwayFind, which aims to curb distraction from e-mail by offering senders a way of getting in touch with you rapidly, thereby lessening the mental need to check e-mail constantly. I think it’s a great idea, and, while I currently have no problem being constantly in touch under normal operating circumstances, I have it in my e-mail signature.

Jared is a real inspiration. He built something from nothing, and took it to a public launch. Congratulations Jared, and I’m so happy you let me play a very very small part in it.

As I have recently moved into downtown Bethesda, and my girlfriend Alex has moved into Dupont Circle, we find ourselves eating out at a restaurant more often than not (even though we both love to cook). We’re always up for trying new things, so we rarely visit a restaurant more than once. For that reason, we spend a lot of time on Yelp, looking for well-recommended restaurants that we think would both suit us.

More recently, I’ve started experimenting with Thummit, now in beta. It’s done to restaurant reviews what Twitter has done to communication; simple, straight to the point. Instead of the standard five star rating system, you’ve got a thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or neutral. That’s all I really need, right? It comes down to a binary decision; do I go or do I not go? And while there is not much of a technical barrier between allowing someone to type in a few sentences or a few pages, Thummit keeps reviews to 140 characters or less. Smart. When you ask someone about a restaurant, they’ll give you a few points, not pages.

What I like the best  about Thummit is the interface for it. With an SMS and Twitter interface, you don’t ever have to visit the website. More importantly, this allows you to collect your reviews while you’re at the restaurant (if only Alex would let me use my phone!), rather than trying to remember it later. They hope to have more ways of entering and retrieving reviews in the future.

It’s currently in private beta, but definitely worth checking out. Request an invite or drop me a line!

(Full Disclosure: I work at JESS3, which is helping out with social media PR for Thummit)

When evaluating an idea, and considering making a serious push for it, we’re always told to focus on validating the idea. Who says it’s solving a real-life need, and not just a solution in search of a problem?

I looked everywhere for validation on my idea. Of course I felt it was needed, as did a select few entrepreneurs. But I received rejection from everywhere. VCs I met with said it wasn’t really addressing a specific need. An entrepreneurial advisor who had himself tried out a similar idea, said I would probably not succeed. I knew rejection would be part of it, but I kept getting frustrated by the dearth of Eureka! moments as I explained the concept.

The other day I was unloading excess computer equipment from my car, a dozen obsolete CPUs and monitors from my parents house. A construction worker approached me, and started asking for advice about resolving a virus issue on his kids computer. I happy gave him some advice, and he walked away.

A few minutes later, he came back and asked “Hey, can I hire you for a couple hours to come help me out?”

Unfortunately I had to decline.

He then responded “Too bad. I know a ton of people who could use help with their home computers and TVs. The big services are way too expensive, but we need it.”

Validation comes from the most unexpected places.

Watched a really interesting film on SnagFilms (a great startup, and JESS3 client!) this morning, regarding how America, since 2001, has been heading in the wrong direction. It definitely has a propaganda element to the film, but it raises a lot of very disturbing points, especially how some of the tactics, and exact terminology, used in the past 7 years compares to Nazi Germany.

Watch below:

A while back I had posted my thoughts on the future of television. Other people, such as Jeff Pulver, have also had this in their crosshairs.

While others are entrenched in how we will watch TV, and where it’s coming from. I’m more interested in what we do while watching TV, particularly integrating the social element that we have when watching a show with other people.

Looks like CBS is doing it. Here is a shot of their Social Room product. It looks like it’s made by a company called ClipSync.

First off, I love the idea.
The interface needs a ton of work. Chat seems to be an afterthought, instead it’s throwing up a whole lot of junk on one screen, with a lot of wasted space. And the primary interaction is really, really annoying.

Besides the under used chat and the quiz element on the right rail, you also can interact using one of the six icons (including the branded Intel logo). Whatever you do shows up on everyone’s screen, and there’s no way to turn it off! I spent a good 10 seconds pissing everyone off by blowing kisses all over the screen.

I urge you all to try it out. I feel this is the future, but it could definitely use some improvement.

BarcampDC2 was this past Saturday. It was an amazing day with a number of great sessions.

Thanks to all the sponsors for making it possible, and CDIA for hosting. The volunteer organizers, primarily Justin, Shaun, Peter, and John, deserve an infinite amount of praise. The DC community has grown by leaps and bounds in the past year, and were it not for the efforts of people like you, we would not be where we are today, myself included. So thank you. I had attended the first planning meeting, but unfortunately I was unable to attend any others or contribute any time, and I’m sorry for that.

Leslie, Bill, and myself gave a presentation on our awesome work for C-SPAN, through our respective companies New Media Strategies and JESS3. We received great feedback, and high praise for our work throughout the rest of the day. I chose to speak on how I leveraged the codebase in a number of open source projects to turn around each of these complex and high-performing sites in a week (no, I was not kidding), and people kept on coming up to me, shocked that I was able to do that  . Slides will be posted soon.