Window shot - NYC approach: This morning, I shot a series of photos out the window during the approach to LaGuardia. I used the photo-merge feature of Photoshop Elements to create the panorama above. It’s the first time I’ve tried to merge photos so I wasn’t quite sure how it worked. After I finished, I realized I’d duplicated some buildings. Here’s a bigger version on Flickr.

Technorati Tags: flickr

P-to-P finance: Borrowing money from friends or family is about as old as letting your friend borrow a CD to rip and burn, so I guess it was just a matter of time before folks figured out a better way to do it online.

Recently, when I was tracking down some employee alumni of the 1.0 version of Smallbusiness.com, I discovered that Nashville-native Hill Ferguson is in San Francisco (actually, I knew that already as he went there years ago to work at Yahoo!) and has just launched Loanback.com, an online service that provides friends and family and small businesses a means to set up legal loan agreements and payment schedules — (side benefit: less soured friendships.)

Marc Hedlund blogged LoanBack the other day. Quote:

“Their idea is to make it much easier to arrange informal loans — the kind friends or family might give to each other, for instance. What’s notable about LoanBack, and is so often missing from the many, many, many Web 2.0 startups I see, is that LoanBack started with a need and then found the best technology to meet that need, rather than the other way around.”

Here’s the LoanBack blog.

Great idea, Hill. Good luck.

(Oh, I guess because of this article in today’s Wall Street Journal, I should disclose that I have no official or unofficial relationship with LoanBack other than sharing a foxhole with Hill a few years ago. Oh, and unofficially I advised Hill he should add a link to his blog’s syndication feed.)

Technorati Tags: smallbusiness

A free Lamborghini: For anyone who will start using Yahoo search.

Drop dead simple RSS update: (From the SeattlePI.com Buzzworthy blog) “Here’s another data point about RSS penetration: Downloads of SeattlePI.com feeds have increased twentyfold in the past year: from 759,399 in January 2005 to 15,503,595 in January 2006. Google Desktop is far and away the most active — if not actually the most popular — feed reader used by SeattlePI.com readers. Its penchant for aggressively finding, subscribing to and grabbing feeds helped it generate more than 12 million of last month’s nearly 16 million RSS downloads.”

I guess this proves Fred Wilson’s point about RSS having to be brain dead simple before it will gain broad acceptance. The Google Desktop (http://desktop.google.com/), like the Google personalized homepage (http://www.google.com/ig), uses RSS to display headlines only, but both are brain dead simple to understand — and if you’ve never used an RSS newsreader, perhaps they may be a good brand dead simple way to experience subscribing to content via RSS. On the other hand, the Google newsreader (http://www.google.com/reader/lens/) is a full-featured, honest-to-goodness newsreader, but is not very brain dead simple to use — at least for me — (and it even has a non-intuitive URL, why not lens.google.com or newsreader.google.com?)

I guess having a feed of merely headlines is better than nothing.

Update: Thanks for letting me know that reader.google.com and www.google.com/reader both work. Those are both brain-dead simple.

Technorati Tags: rss

In the future, everyone will be vilified by fifteen people: I apologize in advance for the “heavy” nature of this post. However, last night I got fed up with seeing a lot of wasted talent being poured into the mocking of people and their efforts who don’t deserve it.

Many years ago, David Weinberger provided a witty and insightful spin on Andy Warhol’s famous “15 minutes of fame” aphorism. “In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen people,” said David. I’m afraid that a corollary of David’s now-famous observation is that “In the future, if you’re famous to 15 people, then there’s another 15 people who will decide it’s their duty to convince the others that you suck.”

I guess it’s a microcosm of what happens to “real” celebrities. “Fans” emerge who appreciate a, say, baseball player. A few of these fans go hardcore and develop a real or imagined bond with the player. Some even become dead-head-like devotees, and have a near religious-zeal towards the “star.” Some become lunatics.

Not quite to that level, but I’ll admit I’m a fan of a few “narrow niche” (or, perhaps, “long tail”) celebrities. On the blogosphere, I practice hero-worship of Doc Searls. I’ve met him a couple of times that he wouldn’t remember, but I’ve probably read every word on his blog for five years. Indeed, he’s why I blog. I don’t have posters of him on my wall, but I do subscribe to an RSS feed of his Flickr account and I even follow this group. Weird, huh? But I haven’t crossed the line into perceiving I have “a relationship” with Doc. Markets may be conversations, but I think the metaphor stops short of me thinking I should drop by his home unannounced at sunset and expect a beer by the pool.

Unfortunately, as “fame” becomes more miniature, it appears that the way we are quick to turn on celebrities has miniaturized as well. As much as I enjoy (and even, from time to time partake in) parody and satire when the targets are pompous and mighty, I find it sad when some folks focus their obvious humor and wit into mocking and taunting ordinary people for their efforts to create a new product or start a new venture. It reminds me a little of how I may have been amused by the website Fk’d.com when it first appeared and its focus was on the unwinding of the outrageously funded, zany concepts of the dotcom boom era. But soon, it became an exercise only the sadistic could enjoy as the focus of the site became tracking who was losing their jobs at tinier and tinier companies.

And while I believe the phrase “Web 2.0″ has very little meaning, I am still impressed when I see people starting up businesses or developing new innovations. Likewise, I find it helpful when those like Michael Arrington and others provide some insight into what a new concept or idea is about.

However, I find it unfortunate — even sick — there is another group of talented people who have weblogs devoted 100% to mocking the individuals — not merely the ideas but the individuals — who are trying to develop these innovations.

Maybe it comes with the territory…just like with fans and baseball players. Maybe “the fans” can’t separate the “star” from the “person” and think anyone is fair game for mockery and public humiliation. So I guess the new rule is becoming: If you gain any measure of recognition for doing something, even if that something is perceived as “good” and it’s so obscure only a few dozen people in a narrow niche will ever know who the heck you are or what you’ve done, you still need to prepare yourself for the possibility of ridicule, gossip and spite.

Sad.

Update: I didn’t want to provide any links or mention names, but Fred Wilson is also not impressed with at least one source of my contempt.

Technorati Tags: blogging

Travel update: I’m in New York and finally passing through some wifi. I’ll be catching up on some posts as soon as I catch up on the email.