Valuing Facebook
I was in Times Square Friday, watching the news camera crews setting up for shots with the NASDAQ 7-story high marquee behind them, toting the new FB listing. I had actually written this Thursday night, and held off posting it because as much as I thought the Facebook IPO was over-valued, I prefer not to [...]
Facebook Ads and the Long Tail
In advance of the first tick on Facebook stock at the NASDAQ open tomorrow, it seems everyone has a comment about their revenue model and whether it supports a $100B valuation. Unfortunately, a lot of the criticism leveled at Facebook comes from an advertising world that still hasn’t figured out the long tail effect. Forbes’ [...]
Round Three
The Devils win four in a row to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in nine years. There aren’t that many bills I look forward to getting, and Round 3 Stanley Cup Playoff tickets set the bar pretty high. Where do you start being proud of this team, as a fan? [...]
Five Reasons The Devils Can Knock Off The Flyers
The Devils can knock off the Flyers, probably in six or seven games, because they have the right ingredients with the right blend at the right time. 1. They do the little things. Clarkson’s Game 2-winning goal doesn’t happen if Elias doesn’t poke-check the puck away from his man on the half-boards. It’s not on [...]
Instagram Is About Context
There have been lots of bytes written about Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, with the eigenvectors of sentiment pointing in roughly these directions: keep it away from Google, pick up wickedly smart engineers, build on their mobile expertise, get a rapidly growing user base at a reasonable cost per user. The real answer (in my network-centric [...]
Teamwork and Accountability
We can dish out blame for last night’s Devils playoff loss all over the place: the inconsistent referees, the fact that Kovulchuk skated like he’s got a “lower body injury” (groin, hamstring, torn back), DeBoer’s line shuffles that accomplished nothing, Marty’s decision to play the puck without looking at the forecheckers, Volchenkov once again managing [...]
Eureka: Season 5 Opener
[Spoiler alert] I watched my first episode of Eureka in broadcast time tonight, complete with commercial breaks highly useful for checking Twitter #eureka updates. I’ve seen every episode of the first four seasons on iTunes in compressed time (both without commercials and without a week to digest each new plot twist). As the opener unfolded, [...]
Review: “Life on Mars: The New Frontier”
Unrelated to the TV series, other books with similar titles or even the Governator in Total Recall, Jonathan Strahan’s collection of short stories is a superb glimpse into what life might be like on the red planet. What sets it apart is that all of the stories are related through the eyes of its intended [...]
Review: Bill Bruford, The Autobiography
I’ve finished Bill Bruford’s obviously titled autobiography, and I’m almost relieved I made it to the end. Bruford is an accomplished, amazing, creative and adventuresome drummer. The names dropped in his book range from the obvious (Yes, King Crimson) to the obscure (Pierre Moerlen) to the overlooked (Allan Holdsworth). While I learned that Bruford’s drum [...]
Triangulation: In Memory of Pierre Pellaton
Pierre Pellaton, hockey coach for more than 30 years, died last night. He will be sorely missed. Pierre was the one coach that everybody loved. I really do mean everybody – players, parents, other coaches, the NJ Devils Youth Hockey board, refs, the Zamboni guy. It was impossible not to like him, with his outsized [...]