LoudSpeakers

In Atlanta, I listened to music on my desktop machine frequently since I was working from home primarily.  Now that we have an office in Boston, I tend to listen to music on my iPod during the subway rides and at the office. 

The net result?  Not as many Last.fm updates to my listening habits.  Sure, you can update Last.fm from your iPod now with the latest versions of their software, but you have to enable automatic synching —– and that sucks.  I like to synch manually since I listen to tons of music while I work and have tons stored on disk. 

Anyway, Boston has changed a few things.  This is just one of them.

The record comes out in a couple weeks — it’s top 10 material for sure.

There are some incredible tracks on this record.  These are my favorites:

1.  $20 — certainly more serious, but the Indian references make me laugh a little — you almost have to speak a Dravidic language to get some of the references.

2.  Bird Flu — more incredible similarities to South Indian popular music — makes me want to do, what would amount to,  awkward looking ass shaking on the subway.

3.  Bamboo Banger — not sure what she’s saying, but this is a catchy-ass song

4.  Boyz — the South Indian music similarities are more subtle, but this is a good track regardless

I have been revisiting my love for Chuck D, Flava Flav, and Terminator X — collectively known as Public Enemy.  I remember driving my parents station wagon (sans built-in tape deck) around in 9th grade with a portable boombox blasting PE’s “Rebel Without a Pause” from “It Take a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.”  The record sounds as fresh, dance-y, and rebellious today as it did then.  It’s hard to keep from busting out a few robot dance moves on the subway followed by an MC Hammer old skool run-in-place.

I had the great pleasure of hanging out with some TechStars entrepreneurs last week in Boulder while I was out there.  I watched them practice their pitches to a closed group of people.  Then I had beers with a handful of smart (and funny) dudes who are building some really neat applications.

There’s something to be learned by hanging out with these guys.  I try to cull tidbits of inspiration from anyone I meet and young entrepreneurs are no exception.  Most of them appear to be in their early twenties and seem fearless.  And they’re not afraid to iterate and move on —– that’s sometimes the hardest part of it all.

One of my favorite things to do at an international airport is to read the departure and arrival boards. It must be the wanderer and traveler in me that longs for far off destinations in search of unusual episodes and thought provoking experiences. Being in perpetual transit has been part of my personality from childhood I suppose.

Anyway, if you’re half-interested, you can get to the following places from Delhi in one hop in the next couple of hours. (Most international flights to Europe leave India
a couple hours later than these)

1. Abu Dhabi
2. Kuala Lumpur
3. Singapore
4. Tokyo
5. Chicago
6. Newark
8. Doha
9. Bangkok
10. Hong Kong

I was doing some work late one evening with the lights turned down low in the room and I happened to glance outside of the window and fixated upon a strange, dark object.  It was a bat —- at the same height as the floor I was on!  I quickly grabbed my camera and sprang into action. 

It eventually flew away.  I suppose it was annoyed with the flash from my camera, but it was a little crazy to see one so close up.

Then the next morning, in the same exact set of trees, I see a wild parrot staring back at me much like the bat was.  I have only seen the bat once, but the parrots can be seen regularly. 

I often find myself trying to explain things about India — to myself even.  Similar metaphors associated with bats and parrots can be found amongst many other contrasting aspects of life here.  India seems a little like a mashup —– different parts fused together or placed side-by-side. 

But one of the most obvious disparities is between India’s rich and poor.  And it’s a gulf that only seems to be getting worse — at least in the short term.  But my fear is that India’s extremely poor will get left behind in the current technology boom.  But that’s what happens in democratic societies with free markets —– things aren’t necessarily fair.  And they’re certainly not balanced.

One could opine and muse all day long about the problems in India, particularly when it comes to infrastructure.  Let’s face it — India’s infrastructure is a mess.  One cannot even classify it as being in disrepair —– because that implies that it worked properly once upon a time.  But the problems are and will get better over time.  But still, each time I visit India, it’s apparent how chaotic things are here because of it.

“Load shedding” happens frequently.  It’s a way of forcing people off the electrical grid when it needs to, well, shed some load.  A very small, lightweight storm came through Pune a few days ago.  We lost power at the house for a brief period.  I lost Blackberry data service for the rest of the evening.  It was the sort of storm that would be a blip on the radar in the States in terms of fear of power loss.  But small storms can amount to large disruptions here because of the infrastructure.

But, just before the storm was starting to set in, I was wandering around on foot (getting a break from my startup) and realized that democracies are chaotic by definition.  Competing interests, capital markets, free flow of information and ideas all have a mysterious way of being chaotic yet somehow manage to work out in seemingly the most challenging situations. 

As people continue to describe India as the “counter-weight” to China, I am reminded that infrastructure in Shanghai is brilliant, but at the cost of slave labor, censorship and basic freedoms.  Give me poor, ailing infrastructure any day along with the ability to speak my mind, read from the free press, and travel freely —– compared to living under a merciless regime with well paved roads. 

I spent a couple of days at BarCampBangalore3 last weekend on the lovely campus of the highly reputed Indian Institute of Management (IIM).  I spoke about BigSwerve, my startup, and the Semantic Web in reference to such.  People get it and the reaction was great —– and I think they’re starting to understand the Semantic Web as well.  There wasn’t much time to really try to explain what the Semantic Web was all about, so I stuck to simple examples of being able to make inferences over data to explain one large difference between the “uppercase” SemWeb and its “lowercase” comrads consisting of things like microformats. 

BCB3 was fun — and it was one of the more thought provoking technology gatherings since it incorporated more than just a pure tech focused discussion.  There was a lively discussion about India’s future as a provider in a services economy or one in a product economy.  I get the feeling that many folks believe a product based approach is more prestigious than that of a service or outsourcer economy. 

I interjected, from a somewhat outsider perspective, that the source of innovation is typically close in physical proximity to the source of the need.  In other words, the western world typically innovates for the western world itself.  And mobile phone are way more ubiquitous compared to personal computer use in India, especially in homes.  Until such a time when Indians can innovate for India, it will continue to predominantly be a services based economy. 

And it’s not a bad place to be either in my opinion —– some people during the discussion raised the age old argument that all the profits from companies like Nokia get returned to Finland, the respective shareholders, and people outside of India.  But they quickly forget the valuable benefits brought on with employment in the local economy and the tremendous wealth being recirculated by such. 

I’m back in India for six weeks as we try to push to reach the next level of our beta release. We’re going to open it up to a wider audience in the coming weeks.

I’m also going to be at BarCampBangalore3 this coming weekend being held on India’s prestigious IIM campus to discuss some thoughts on the Semantic web and how we fit into it.

On another note, I chose to take the direct, non-stop flight to India from the States rather than making the connection in Europe as I previously had in the past. The trip can be painful, but it’s the best way to minimize fatigue. And the prices — at the moment at least — are less than the cost of making the connection in Europe. 15 hours on a plane can be rough though.

It’s been a while since I updated my friends on the progress of the restoration of my 1969 BMW 2002 that was originally started in late 2004.  It was supposed to take 3 months and I would have been driving it just in time for the weather to get warmer in 2005.  The shop that has been doing the restoration delayed the effort significantly for reasons outside of my control and as a result I’m getting a bargain basement price for a complete restoration. 

Anyway, lots of things have changed since I blogged about it last. 

1.  All lights are back in.

2.  The window gaskets and windows are back in.

3.  The seats, seatbelts, carpet, and have been installed though this photograph does not show the front seats being installed.

4.  The headliner has been installed.

There’s still minor electrical work that needs to be completed to fix the hack job of the previous owner.  And I might need to dig up a better dashboard from the pile of ‘02s that this restoration shop has.

You can view all of my previous BMW 2002 photographs on Flickr here.

Here are my previous posts about the ‘02.

I found myself recently doing a ton of Google searches using something like “liquidation preference site:feld.com” or “implicit site:avc.blogs.com” and I realized that I should just create a Google Co-op search using these sites instead. 

I was having a conversation with Rafer recently and he said something that clued me into the name of my new search engine:  VC optics.  I registered the domain before we even finished our phone converation and hilarity ensued.  The intention is to have a simple search interface for VC and entrepreneurial resources. 

I uploaded portions of my OPML file and away we go.  I also made the search portion open to anyone who cares to contribute to the search index by including additional URLs.  Feel free to add your own blog or any others that may be of value.  Hope it’s as useful to others as it will be for me.

 It was almost one year ago exactly that I decided to take the plunge to pursue my startup and leave what was a great career as a “busi-nerd” (all business up front, but all nerd inside) working in the OEM business development team of Documentum within the EMC Software Group.  I was there for almost 10 years through acquired companies, became very well versed in my domain, formed great relationships internally and externally, and was living very comfortably. 

So why did I leave EMC only to take no salary for a year now and pay $500 a month in health insurance in addition to other basic expenses?  The entrepreneurship challenge became all consuming —— to build something novel (and useful) out of nothing is certainly alluring, but I am determined to do more imporant things in life that are otherwise unlikely to happen without the financial means.  I got a small taste of social entrepreneurship last time I was in India by way of the rewarding feeling associated with helping people —- and I’m hooked.  I’ll be making another trip to India again at the end of March and I’ll certainly have more opportunities to help. 

In any case — some of the smartest people on the planet are interested in what my startup, BigSwerve, is pursuing.  It’s a great feeling to have really thoughtful people affirming the very foundation of my company.  By the way, if you’re interested in being kept aware of the launch/alpha/beta/whatevs, register here:  www.bigswerve.com

In terms of our application’s focus, like many startups, things have evolved from where we started out.  There was an “ah ha” moment at one point early in the development cycle that drove us in a new, much more interesting direction.  For now, I can say that the application is focused social networking with a Semantic web core, but it’s not just another social networking site by any means. 

I was living in Washington, DC 10 years ago exactly.  I was near penniless, was living off of my girlfriend’s meal card at American University, and had little prospects for the future on my 22nd birthday.   But I was brave —– I soldiered on, joined a startup as an early employee and stayed with them for nearly 10 years through an IPO and 2 acquisitions. 

10 years later and I’m doing the same thing again —– I’m betting it all.  I moved into my parents basement, gathered some money, quit my job, reduced my personal expenses dramatically and then I started a company —- whatever it takes to succeed.  We’re onto something huge and we’re moving at breakneck speed to show it to the world.  Hopefully, we’ll be able to do that soon. 

Is raising the minimum wage to $7.25 the best plan of action when unemployment can result?  I’m not convinced that it’s a wise move for the benefit of society considering that lower wage workers are the most likely to be affected in the form of unemployment.  Just like Hugo Chavez’s recent actions whereby the luxury taxes on boats and cars were increased, it’s the lower wage workers that suffer the most. 

It’s simple economics:  setting arbitrary price ceilings and floors rather than letting the market govern the price typically has less-than-desirable outcomes because of the surplus or shortage that can result.  But the American Samoans know better —- they were omitted from the wage increase and they know that jobs will be lost if the minimum wage rises. 

I hope the control of the American Congress was not turned over to the Democrats just for political grand-standing.  As Iraq continues to spin further out of control (if that was even conceivable), I hope the Democrats work to steer this ship back on course rather than further out to sea.

One of the inherent difficulties in posting pictures to the web is that some idiot is bound to deep link directly to the photo file rather than download it and upload it to their own site and then link from there.  People go to Google image search, find an image, and link directly to it from there.  It happens to me on occassion, but this time I decided to exact revenge.  I goatse’d my first photo linker. 

Someone linked directly to a photo of Ted Leo, of Pharmacists fame, from their own music blog to this post I wrote a couple of years ago.

Here’s a screenshot from the offenders original page:

And here’s screenshot of his page goatse’d after I changed the deep-linked file:

I chose to use the cookie version of the goatse rather than one of the more graphical ones that are not work safe.