Posted on January 25, 2007 @ 10:01 pm
Tonight I went to the PaidContent SF Mixer and met a variety of people from tech startups. The actual content production business is fairly small in SF compared to NY or LA, but here you have all the companies that are using technology to do interesting things with content. I would imagine the NY mixer would get more publishers than SF.
I met people from MobiTV, Singshot, CNET, and a few other companies that I forget off the top of my head. I walked around with my friend Dan and noticed Dave Winer was there (taking photos with people), and I also ran into a bunch of colleauges from Google.
Rafat Ali said that PaidContent is going to host a conference next. I would image they could attract a number of good speakers.
*Update*:
The photo above was shot just before this photo was taken. Interesting that the paidcontent photographer was following the valleywag photographer…
Posted on January 17, 2007 @ 2:52 pm
I was a member of Gorilla Fitness in San Francisco and I cancelled my membership in March of ‘06, after my 3 year contract expired.
Later in 2006, Crunch Fitness replaced Gorilla Fitness and in December 2006 I received a bill on my credit card for Crunch Fitness, 9 months after I had cancelled.
I called Crunch to explain that I cancelled, they stopped billing me in March, and that there must be a mistake. Their customer service rep responded by telling me that their billing system was down for 9 months, which is why I wasn’t billed, and that I would have to visit a Crunch Fitness location to cancel.
What unbelievably awful service! I plan on filing a dispute with my credit card company and will file a complaint with the BBB.
After searching on the web to see if other people have successfully resolved this, it appears that there are *tons* of people with the same exact complaint.
Please don’t ever join a Crunch owned gym or you’ll never be able to cancel. I can’t believe such a large company would provide such awful, dishonest and deceptive service!
Here are other people with the same story:
http://www.crunchclassaction.com/
http://www.topix.net/forum/business/crunch
http://www.authorsden.com/viewnews.asp?AuthorID=23453&id=13969
http://www.consumerist.com/consumer/crunch-fitness-i-wish-i-could-quit-you
http://www.mwns.com/btf/_disbally1 http://www.yelp.com/biz/ebTjd_AD3y3MSscy1zKi8g
Posted on January 15, 2007 @ 7:48 pm
I switched from Verizon to Cingular last week, and as much as Cingular wants people to believe their network has the fewest dropped calls, I am very disappointed so far. I have had 2 dropped calls in the last week in places where Verizon never dropped the call. In fact, Verizon never once dropped a call in San Francisco for the year or so that I was with them.
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Next week Cingular is supposed to be re-branded as AT&T. I hope they do something to improve coverage, especially with the surge of subscribers they will likely get when the iPhone rolls out. In fact, hopefully Apple can apply some pressure to improve things. It could be a PR nightmare for Apple if people switch from a stable network like Verizon, pay a cancellation fee, drop $600 on an iPhone, and get spotty service at best. |
Posted on @ 2:00 pm
It isn’t spring yet, but I’ve started to spruce up my blog and make it easier to use. Search Engine Land had a good article with 25 tips for optimizing your blog, and I’ve tried to do most of them. Some changes you’ll see:
* Feedburner and other common feed reader links on the left
* List of related posts on individual article pages
* Not to much bling in the left column. Just Flickr, LibraryThing, and LastFM widgets. MyBlogLog was too slow, so I removed it.
* #25 in the list says to “Use great sections” – but I don’t think people actually use them. You either read a post, click a related link, or search. I may list my section names in the bottom left to see if anyone clicks them. If not, I’ll remove them again.
Posted on @ 2:20 am
I went to the Sacramento Kings Houston Rockets game last night up in Sacramento. I only go to one basketball game every year or so, and that’s often enough for me. I’m more of a baseball fan and don’t keep up as much with the NFL and NBA. We had a great time and sat 10 rows behind the hoop. Some of the things I realized:
* Compared to the MLB and NFL, the NBA really goes all out to keep people in their seats and entertained. There were dancers and performers during practically every break.
* People in Sacramento cheer a lot for the Kings, even though they aren’t very good this year. I remember “NY Knicks”: fans booing when the Knicks weren’t at their best (like now).
* The Kings are a big part of life in Sacramento. They even show up on the first page of search results at Google when you search for Sacramento. How many other sports teams get that when searching for their city name? None that I could find…
* Visiting Sacramento reminded me how big agriculture is in California. When you walk by the luxury boxes, you see farmers and cowboys entertaining colleagues, friends and family.
* Basketball video games are incredibly realistic. Arco Arena seemed to play the same exact music clips that you hear in a game like NBA Live. And the songs change during each possession — an energetic song with the Kings have the ball, and something more suspenseful when they are on defense.
Posted on January 11, 2007 @ 11:04 pm
I didn’t do any triathlons in ‘06 and that’s something I’d like to change in ‘07. I’ve started running, swimming and biking in order to train for a race this summer. I’m thinking about registering for the half-vineman in Sonoma County.
In order to maintain a training log (for both tracking progress and as a motivational tool) I created an account on WeEndure.com The free version is filled with ads, which I don’t mind, because its really easy to use for tracking my workouts. I’m going to update it regularly and start recording my heart rate as well.
Hopefully I can workout more often than I blog ;-p
Posted on @ 10:52 pm
The holidays were a bit crazy this year and I was travelling a lot – so no time for blogging. Anyhow, my new years resolution is to post more regularly, and now that I’m back and settled into things, let’s give it a shot. Can I do it once a day? Maybe not. A few times a week? Sure. Let’s see how long I can keep it up.