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There is a new soon to be viral sensation sweeping through Twitter. It’s call Play Fame and the purpose is to make one person internet famous for a day. You can check it out here. You link your twitter account and every day at Noon the game selects a new person for everyone to follow. Users are incentivized to invite more people, to get more entries, to have more chances to become the person selected.

I will go on the record to say that this thing is going to be huge. In the past hour alone the amount of people playing has doubled. I think it will be huge for a few weeks and then the novelty will wear off. Regardless it’s always good to get in on these things as early as possible. You can Play Fame here.

I had a discussion today with a potential client via e-mail. They wanted my company’s services, but before they could even tell me about the project they demanded that I sign a non-disclosure agreement. I immediately told them no out of principle. Under no circumstances am I going to sign away first amendment rights to a stranger for nothing in exchange. They kept pushing about how great their idea was, so I had to come up with a more substantial response, because apparently doing something on principle wasn’t enough. A few quick google searches and I came up with this great response from Quora:

Should startups have engineers and developers sign NDAs, before scheduling the interview?

No.

Assuming that there is a magic algorithm which guarantees the success of the project, it should be easy enough to avoid any sensitive topics even during extended interviews.

If the idea can be quickly copied by someone, just from having a frank discussion during an interview, then the idea does not have a defensible business model and will be quickly copied by fast followers anyway.

So if this is a big point of concern when even discussing superficial topics, you should consider whether this is truly the right idea.

Perfectly said. It seems like everyone who has seen The Social Network thinks that every web developer or company is out to get them. Andrew Warner also has a good blog post on the subject. Out of all his reasons, my favorite is, “It puts all the obligation on me and none on you. I have to make sure that I never reveal what you say or I’m (potentially) liable. But where’s your obligation?” The potential client kept trying to justifying reasons for me to sign the NDA. At one point he even said that I was actually protecting myself. Protecting myself from what? What a joke.

A couple of internet related trends to be on the look out for:

Facebook app BranchOut is quickly reaching a tipping point. It’s LinkedIn for Facebook friends. It seems like it’s catered to a slightly more blue-collar, less professional crowd. That makes your pool of Facebook friends a much better network. I noticed more and more requests from my friends and then I saw the usage numbers. Definitely getting big and getting big really fast.

Julian Assange launched Friends of WikiLeaks a few weeks back. I haven’t heard much since then, but this is definitely something to keep an eye on. I don’t think we’ve heard the last from him.

Gamification of your life is increasingly becoming a theme. Check out this app. It turns your exercise into a game where you run from zombies. Gamification is a huge motivational tool and we’ve only are only at the beginning of those mechanics being applied to things that aren’t normally viewed as games. It’s only a matter of time before someone uses this idea to really impact education.

Is Facebook prepping an ad platform? This article got me thinking. Facebook already knows everything about you and they also know who you are even if you aren’t on Facebook as long as you are viewing a page with a like button. What if they launch an ad platform to serve adds on third party sites that utilizes their user data. Google’s revenue from AdSense is somewhere in the $2.5B a year range. Facebook could launch a platform and compete overnight. This would be so big.

Pinterest is huge and it’s only getting bigger (if you want an invite, let me know). Every aspect of the service is set up to go viral. The WSJ had a thought provoking piece the other day on whether the service might go the way of Napster. The potential is definitely there, but I don’t think they are ripping off anyone big enough. Napster ripped off the music industry which had a really well coordinated lobbying effort. Freelance photographers don’t exactly have a coordinated lobby group representing them.

Finally search engine DuckDuckGo is exploding. I don’t know if it will ever take on Google, but it’s got the best chance to unseat them at this point.

What do you think? Anything you are seeing that I should keep an eye on?

In the last 24 hours there has been a firestorm created around a NY Times Op-Ed titled “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs.”

The article itself is a great read, but so are all the other reactions.

There are two reasons this is really interesting. The first is that the original article spawned a series of parody articles. In the past 24 hours this has hit full on meme status. But I can’t help but wonder if this is seriously taking away from the original article. It’s almost trivializing the original article’s substance, but at the same time it is getting people talking about it more.

The other interesting aspect is the article itself. It’s not a good sign when any former employee publicly rips on every aspect of a company’s culture and business. It’s even worse when that person is a really high level employee. I was surprised that Goldman Sach’s response was so soft. I was also surprised it didn’t attempt to resort to ad hominem attacks. They basically just reassert how great they are and how much money they pay their employees.

Interesting stuff to think about and worth reading more into as this continues to unfold.

A lot of people have recently asked me what I’m up to these days. This usually happens after they find out I’m now living in New York. The short answer is: living it. I’m no longer dreaming of how in the future things will be better. Instead I’m spending each day doing what I want to do with my life. There is a big difference.

Post college graduation I spent three years living in Indianapolis. It wasn’t that I was particularly unhappy, it’s just that many aspects of my life were largely unsatisfying. I knew there was something bigger and better I could be doing, so I took action and made a major change. So I quit my job and moved to New York without finding a new one.

In hindsight, making this decision has turned out to be a very good one. I’m still very conflicted when I reflect back on those three years professionally. I can’t decide if that needs to be the subject of an incredibly long blog post or not. For now I’ll defer to an aphorism Dr. Dugi would always tell me in college which was, “even a blind pig finds an acorn.” Meaning, try to find something good or beneficial about everything you do or more likely are forced to do.

Fast forward six months. I’m living and working in the greatest city in the world. I helped found a non-profit called CodeSpark. I’m doing exciting things every single day. More specifically, I’m working at a startup called inquvision. Finally working at a startup is every bit as exciting as I thought it would be. It’s also every bit as difficult, but hard work is very rewarding. When I joined, the company was primarily focused on branding itself as a technology consulting firm on Wall Street (our offices are next to Trinity Church), which it still very much is. However, I’m working less on the consulting side and more on the product development side.

I’m given a vague description of a web application that needs to be built and then take that idea fully through the execution process. I do everything from the planning phase to working with our engineering team to work with me on the technical aspects that are beyond my grasp. It’s very satisfying to be doing work that blends creative, technical and problem solving skills on a daily basis. One of my first finished web products should be done soon at which point I’ll be happy to show it off here. Until then I can’t really explain the specifics of what I’m working on (also it wouldn’t make sense without a demo).

So that’s what I’m up to these days. I’m still dreaming, but these days I’m a few steps closer to realizing my dreams.

Here are some brief thoughts on this afternoon’s announcements.

iOS 5.1
People were hoping for iOS 6, but we only got a minor update. Not a whole lot of new stuff.

Slight updates to Apple TV
Who cares about this product? Resolution increases to 1080p signals to me that this is just another step before we finally get the full blown tv with Apple TV built in, instead of just the set top box.

The new iPad
High resolution retina display – Will probably look incredible. I’m guessing similar impact of upgrade from 3GS to iPhone 4.

4G LTE – Separate devices is rough, prelude to next iPhone supporting LTE, but does this mean we aren’t going to have a universal iPhone any more? I doubt it. They’ll find a way to make it happen.

Processor speed – doubled, good stuff.

Video recording – I didn’t realize it didn’t have this already. Who uses their iPad to take photos / video?

Siri Support – Auto-Dictation will be huge on a device that is a pain to type on.

Hotspot – The new iPad just quietly replaced another consumer electronic device. Why buy a hotspot when you can buy an iPad that has it built in?

iLife Updates
Upgrades to iMovie, iPhoto and Garage Band are all great, but I don’t use any of these very often. For people who use these, they will love it. For everyone else, meh.

Upgrade?
I’m not going to upgrade, because for what I use my iPad for (mainly reading on the subway) this doesn’t change much. However, for people who still don’t have an iPad, now is definitely the time.

I’m writing this as I sit on an incredibly long flight (six hours) from New York to Las Vegas. It’s not the longest flight I’ve ever been on (twelve hours to Tokyo), but it’s dragging. But this isn’t really the purpose of this post. I probably should have planned my meals better.

The other day I read an article about the new fast track security measures being put in place at airports as well as this author’s thoughts on how airports not using the TSA could one be a competitive advantage. Both of these were present in my mind when I went through a fairly rigorous search going through security at JFK this morning.

Out of principle I refuse to go through the body scanners in the security line. These scanners are the very epitome of the security theatre the government has constructed around our nation’s airports. We are now spending billions of dollars a year maintaining a set of security procedures, which according to experts, do very little to actually make us safer. Instead they just create the illusion of safety, hence the term security theatre.

I refuse to go through the body scanners because experts can’t agree on how much radiation we are actually being exposed to by going through them. I also refuse as a form of protest against the lack of effectiveness by the machines themselves. They were developed in response to the underwear bomber, with the thought process being that if the TSA had a machine that could see through our clothes, they could detect explosives on our bodies. Never mind the fact that it has have shown that the puddy like explosive substance they are designed to detect can just be rolled flat and rendered invisible to the machine (or that agents are more interested in just seeing people naked). Just another example of security theatre (or nepotism because the former head of the TSA who signed the contract with the company who provides these machines is now their CEO).

But I digress. This morning when I was told to go through the body scanner I calmly replied that I would like to opt out. It’s interesting to see how this process has evolved. It used to be I’d get a quick, “ok” and someone would wave a wand around my body and let me go on. Now I get a TSA agent responding by yelling, “We’ve got someone opting out!” and then turning around and telling the rest of the passengers that the line will now move slower because of me. They then have me go to the side and have a TSA agent go through this ridiculous process of reading all these statements to me and, I kid you not, remove his gloves, put on new ones, and snap them several times. He then proceeds to basically feel me up. But through all this I can’t help but notice that he is clearly much more embarrassed by this whole thing than I am. He stuttered over his words and kept avoiding making eye contact with me. Afterwards he immediately rushed off to a different area in the checkpoint. Even though the entire process is clearly designed to dissuade people from following suit, it really isn’t all that effective.

This brings me back to the original two articles I mentioned. In my mind, having the choice between two airports, where all things the same, the only difference was the presence of the TSA or a private security company, I choose the one with the private company every time. Too bad the TSA must approve any request for an airport to stop using their services and they’ve denied every single request so far.

Considering my stand on the body scanners, I’m really conflicted about what I think about the fast track security plan. Essentially if you pre-register you can have some background checks done to assure the TSA that you’re not a threat and go through a special, faster line at the security checkpoints. On the whole, I don’t see how this concept makes anyone any safer. You’re telling me that when you require people to give their full names and dates of birth when buying airline tickets, you’re not doing these sorts of checks? Sounds like more security theatre. So the real question is, am I giving in by signing up for this and surrendering liberty for convenience? As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

My hunch is no, I’m not really submitting to anything new. The government already knows plenty about me. If anything, the widespread use of this type of fast track line would highlight the ridiculousness of the very idea. That’s just me though, what do you think?

For the first time in at least three of four years, this year I found myself faced with The Academy Awards and the realization that I hadn’t seen hardly any of the films. In years past I not only saw a good 80 to 90% of the films, I also participated in pick ‘em contests. This year there were tons of films I hadn’t even heard of. I thought moving to New York would increase my film viewing, but strangely it hasn’t. This is something that needs to change immediately.

The other day I was chatting on gchat with an acquaintance who I had met a couple of nights beforehand while out with some people. She was asking me about my web site, which had been brought up in conversation by our mutual friend who introduced us. I used this as an opportunity to ask her to google me and tell me what she thought of the results.

She did, but had to admit that she was pretty biased, because although we didn’t know each other that well, she knew enough to not be able to give a very neutral response. I asked her to do this because this is something I often think about. What does your digital trail say about you? What does mine say about me?

I often think back to the news story a few months ago about the American college student who had gone to Libya to fight with the rebels. All the news about him was really basic information pulled from his Facebook profile, because that’s all they had to go on. If I suddenly become the center of a big news story are they going to find some link I randomly tweeted out as interesting and assume I also am a fervent supporter of the views expressed in it? Are they going to take some random tweet totally out of context and base their entire picture of me on it?

I think the only solution is to carefully curate your online presence. This coupled with the shear amount of information out there about me is probably enough to give a future employer or reporter a pretty clear picture.

I’m headed to Las Vegas next week for work. Just a few quick thoughts on the change of working environment and how it affects getting work done.

At my first job out of school I received lecture after lecture about how, while I was an adult, it was totally inappropriate to drink with any of the college students, even if they were of age. The reasons given didn’t really make much sense. They amounted to “we don’t trust you to make decisions on your own,” a sentiment that echoed in how the entire organization operated.

Fast forward to today when we were talking about the upcoming trip to Las Vegas. The message today was, “make sure you find people to go out with every night, even if there isn’t a business opportunity immediately apparent, this is the time to build relationships.” There is a world of difference in the two approaches.

When I was first out of school I didn’t know anything and it seemed normal. Now with the benefit of comparing the two approaches, one makes sense, one does not. I guess that’s called having the benefit of experience. I get significantly more work done when I have the freedom to operate. Is there any example of a reason you would be more productive when you have to get approval to do every little thing? Or any reason that approach would be better? Someone play devil’s advocate in the comments.