The September 3rd, 2008, Geek Dinner at Privé was an interesting and good time. We had a smaller crowd but were treated like kings (I botched the geek dinner invite by sending the venue announcement only a few days in advance, so it was low turnout - that’s what going on vacation and unplugging from geekdom gets me!)
The folks at Privé set us up in our own room. It was unintentional, but to me it was amusingly appropriate - privé translates to private.
The chefs are budding, potential future superstars. Table Talk describes prior Buddakan and Brasserie Perrier experience. While dining we learned of Le Bec-Fin experience as well. The foods here are exotic and fun just to hear described - influenced by countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, with inspiration from chef Peter Karapanagiotis.
Steven Wells of Philadelphia Weeklyaccompanied us, camera in tow, and geeked right in. While we typically geek out on the latest technology and Internet trends, Steven added new topics everyone ate up. Some of the things I remember Steven bringing up: geneology, HD video, security and anonymity (on the Internet), the value of Twitter, and implants (not those kind) for human enhancement (not that kind)… Honestly, it was us who brought up Twitter - Steven raised the question of it having any value. Good challenge!
Breakdown of what we consumed, mostly on recommendation from Mr. Edwards, our water - everything was fantastic…
Been using Google’s Chrome browser for a day, and so far it’s a great experience.
No. Sorry. That’s an understatement. It’s revolutionary. As the comic describes (yes, Google released a comic to introduce Chrome), this browser takes the web to impossible places. It makes the web more like an operating system, allowing each site (tab) an independent process and memory allocation, improving javascript speed - via a virtual machine - by orders of magnitude, and integrating more cleanly with Gears.
I’ve liked the browser enough to find Windows more useful than OS X this morning. A strange feeling indeed.
I’d mentioned in an email yesterday that the question was whether Chrome would quickly grab users away from Internet Explorer and other browsers or if it would be incremental in its chipping. My expectation is that it will still be chipping, but it’s going to be much faster than expected.
Just as the Google search tool grew wildly popular purely out of speed and relevance, the Chrome browser will gain huge momentum because of speed and relevance. Since there are still massive amounts of IE6 installations out there (proving that not everyone goes out and upgrades) a swing won’t happen over night, but it will gain ground more quickly than Firefox or Safari (Opera not mentioned since Chrome pretty much destroys the reason for Opera’s existance - speed).
A couple questions are begged… Is this where we really see web 2.0 take hold? I think so. And how does this affect Google in terms of monopolizing the web? They now own search and could quickly dominate the browser.
I finally went for a bike ride to see Privé in person. What I found was better than imagined, even after reading Michael Klein’s enticing description and having high expectations.
During my drop-in visit I met Kevin Landon, who abandoned a staff meeting to give me a tour (the video below doesn’t do the restaurant any justice, the place is fabulous). From talking with Kevin I learned Privé opened only two weeks ago and has been doing wonderful.
We’ll be one of the first groups there, and probably the first blog-heavy group. He showed me around and I got to see the impeccable cut white stone walls, attractive furniture, sleek lines and spotlit mural. He promises the food to be as good or better than the looks.
And he’s probably right. They’ve hired the young Peter Karapanagiotis, 23, who performed as saute-saucier at Buddakan as well as Brasserie Perrier. It’s going to be a real treat to experience his work while he’s fresh and the restaurant is brand-spankin’-new.
Today I hit 100 miles of running with Nike+. It shows how poorly I’ve been keeping up with running (Galina is in to 200+ now). It’s a nice feature they offer… Rewards keep participants interested. I’d still like to see more non-flash integration with blogs.
The stats for my first hundred with Nike+:
26 runs
3.81 miles per run
Average pace of 7′24″
I’m still tracking with both Nike+ (today’s) and Nokia SportsTracker (today’s). The SportsTracker, with GPS, is slightly more interesting because it maps your progress while on the run and offers live mapping. I’d still like to have SportsTracker integrated in a blog - it’s a pain to share otherwise.
Something else of interest during today’s run… Everyone on the trail was in a great mood! I offered, “Good Morning!” to eight people and received eight positive responses. In Philadelphia this is a first. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s a fluke. But either way, it’s awesome to return from vacation with a strong positive vibe.
It seems like half of the spam I’m getting on Twitter is from a certain six figure income dot com domain (I won’t dignify their site with a link). My complaint about it in a tweet yesterday hit a nerve in quite a few people.
I’m pretty sure it’s one person, sitting in a basement somewhere, who is mass creating accounts and running some mass following scripts.
This is very easy and completely doable by a single person (then annoys thousands). There isn’t a way to filter followers with such criteria, but @chadspacey put a great idea up on Flickr. It’d take a lot of work on the back end, but is a simple and community based approach, a-la craigslist.
Gala and I did the traditional eating of the 1-year-old-frozen-top-tier-of-the-wedding-cake. It wasn’t bad at all.
This tradition is a bit crazy. We wonder how, as my brother-in-law pointed out, this is a tradition at all… It’s not like refridgeration and freezers have been around that long. Found this.
The 2,000 follower limit, it would seem, was put in place to prevent mass following and spam on Twitter. This was pretty frustrating for me since I fell in to their beyond-the-limit zone (I followed over 6,000 people because I loved the information, but couldn’t add any more).
I haven’t seen much attention drawn to the following facts (pun wasn’t intended):
People are more likely to recipricate a follow request from someone with a low following/friend count.
There isn’t a legitimate way to prevent someone from having multiple Twitter accounts (accounts are tied to email addresses).
The Twitter API limits are based on account, not where the call is coming from (one server can make many requests on behalf of other accounts).
From the above simple observations, one can see the easy way to follow an unlimited number of people.
Create a large number of accounts.
Follow a smaller number of people with each account (you’ll have better reciprocation).
Follow a lot of people (the API limitations will apply per account, so your follows-per-hour will actually be quite large).
The people running Twitter are great. They’re really trying to do the right thing. So maybe I’m completely wrong when I anticipate the above and say that this looks like a Facebook move. Facebook’s 5,000 friend limit works for Facebook. Facebook’s API is advanced and robust and complicated enough to not get terribly nailed by multi-account mass spam following.
Additionally, the information load on Facebook is different. You get a clear picture of who a person is that is friending you. You’re given enough information to make a decision. On Twitter, this isn’t the case.
So what’s going to happen?
Spammers are already adapting to the limitation, as described above.
Tweeple will stop trusting low follow-count users (do you trust an eBay user without feedback?)
Twitter’s servers will still be inundated and over capacity.
