Google year-end Zeitgeist and my own list

What I found amusing from google's year-end zeitgeist...

Who is... #4. Who is hot
> If g.search can answer this one, I think Google officially passes the Turing Test

How to... #8. How to blog
> Ohh!

Define... #1. define promiscuous
> Who said pop songs can't educate?

Define... #2. define web 2.0
> I'm still trying

Where is... #2. where is matt?
> Yes, where is matt?

2006 Tickets - US... 3. the fray tickets
> Someone get me a pair of those!


.. and my personal list..

Startups to track
1. Yelp
2. Loopt
3. VSee
4. Admob
5. CafePress

Companies ready for (or already on) a comeback:
1. Cisco (Is that a Virtuous Cycle I see?)
2. Microsoft
3. Yahoo! (check out the Peanut Butter Manifesto)
4. Kodak

Wall Street darling: salesforce.com and the SaaS model

Most interesting in my Google Reader (a bit redundant here)
1. Bob Sutton's blog
2. Diego Rodriguez's blog
3. Flickr Blog
4. Barefoot Coffee Roasters' daily (or sporadic) grind

Most influential -- academic
1. d.school

Biggest surprise
1. Timbuk2
2. Wal-Mart's sustainability initiative

Most interested in reading: Made To Stick

Most expensive: opportunity cost

Best quotation: "Fail often, fail early" (props to d.school's Clicks and Bricks)

Cutest baby: Colin (my high school English teacher's son)

Best mass-market tool that I was a sucker for: Canon Rebel XT

Most influential: Perry Klebahn

John Mayer wrote Daughters in the shower?

I found out about this from his profile on last.fm. Last.fm has been impressing me. iTunes democratized music (now conservatively), but this is a new kind of release, of creating a social experience. Probably one of the more hurtful aspects of iTunes is its limiting of the music community. I didn't like that listening quota for people in your community (and lol, iTunes once told me my "iPod was too old" -- serious!).. but what makes last.fm work? 1. Collaborative filtering.. "love this song" ::click:: "this song has been loved".. how sweet is that. And I know that the more songs I listen to, the more tailored the music.. and 2. enabling technology. I'm always discovering new music.. from my "recently loved" list, I've "discovered" Frou Frou's Maddening Shroud and Guster's Homecoming King... would've been hard if I were trying to do it myself.

Really liked this person's testimony of John Mayer:

... I must admit that I'm another John Mayer convert. Back when I was in high school, I was convinced that I would contract a venereal disease if I ever had to hear "Your Body is a Wonderland" one more god damned time. Flash forward to my early college years when I saw Mr. Mayer do that funny little bit on "Chappelle's Show" about how white people gravitate toward music with electric guitars. As he laid some licks down for the sketch, I thought to myself: "Wow. This guy actually has chops." A few weeks ago, I decided to give him a chance by listening to this album through my school's intranet, in which we can share iTunes playlists. I was floored. He's undergone a great metamorphosis. He's got blues sensibility akin to Eric Clapton (whom he acknowledges in the liner notes) and he's retained genuinely good songwriting capabilities as well. The lyrics on "Belief" and "Stop This Train" are perfectly written. Like others, I'm very glad that he's making great music that's not necessarily intended for the teenie-bopper demographic. I look forward to his future releases.

I stay true to John Mayer's music :)

exploration in photos

A personal renaissance started in Summer 2005 in NYC and it's been going on strong since. I went back to New York in Summer 2006 and explorations took me into various pockets while searching for the perfect cup of hot chocolate. Here is the last batch (I think...):

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tiffany glass vases. I could camp in the Met. A gazillion years of art... a gazillion things to stare at forever.




Billy's Bakery.. a lovely little place on 9th and 21st that got rave reviews for their cupcakes. Their secret? The frosting. NY Mag does great reviews on places like this.




Flowers in Central Park.. props to ChenLi for the photo idea.




I have way too many pictures of Junior's cheesecakes...




And the top places for hot chocolate in New York. Make sure to go with an empty stomach...
1. The City Bakery: NY Mag review. Simply the thickest chocolate you'll ever find.. say yes to the large homemade marshmallow.
2. Jacque Torres Chocolate Haven: the cup i got... this place is a great find, and the chocolate smoothness is fantastic.
3. Manon Cafe, inside Leonida's at Hanover.
4. Financier (on Stone Street, a few stores over from Leonidas).

hello world 2.0