David Beach's Blog

Best Albums of 2005

I compiled a Yahoo! Shopping Pick List of what I think are the best albums of 2005. I don't know if I can ever dismiss the album. I still buy them either on CD or Yahoo! Music or iTunes. It's difficult for me to just buy one song at a time like so many seem to be doing. To me it's all about the artist's complete expression. I feel if only a song or two is the only thing decent on a particular album, then really, the whole thing is crap. Why bother? If the artist can't put in the effort or isn't talented enough, then they don't deserve my attention.

So anyway here's my list: The Best Albums of 2005.

Last Day

Last day of the year. Pat Goddard and his family are coming over tonight to hang out. I haven't done much work this break like I had hoped. It's been a distracting and busy time. That's cool. I've gotten plenty of rest, which is probably most important considering...

Jane and I decided today that we're going to go to Italy next year for the holidays. Take the kids, rent an apartment or house and travel around. Or maybe go from hotel to hotel along a train route. We have a year to plan and save so we'll see.

My brother wants to start a podcast for improvisational jazz. He's a musician, saxophone. Every week or so he'll get a group of his friends together to record a session and post it to the feed. I can't think of a better idea for a podcast. Jazz the way it's meant to be heard, free and improvisational. He has some friends that tour and he'll probably have them join in over time when they come through Berkeley. I'll help him get it started. I'm really excited about this idea.

SNL Narnia Thing

Apple is giving away the video of Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg's rap about seeing Chronicles of Narnia. If you haven't seen it, it's pretty funny. Finally. There's hope for SNL yet. Yahoo Maps, Mapquest and Google Maps are mentioned. It appears that Google wins, but it seems that Yahoo! is the first choice. I don't know. That's the only way I can justify writing about this.  Go ahead and download it. It's worth it.

"You can call us Aaron Burr, from they way we're droppin' Hamiltons!"

1/29/2006 UPDATE: Since so many of you are finding this through search engines, I thought you should know that it seems Apple is no longer offering the video. You can still see it at You Tube, on the SNL page at NBC.com and by doing a Yahoo! Video Search.

 

3/21/2006 UPDATE: NBC has had it pulled from YouTube and other places. So now you can watch it here. At the NBC "Web Favorites" page

Hope this helps...
-beach

New Gadget: Sanyo C5

Last week I spent some time making a DVD from the video of my son's birth. He's 6 and a half years old and none of us has ever seen the footage. Not sure why. It was a C-Section and I remember it being a tad gruesome. But my wife has always wanted to see it and I decided it was finally time. So I got out the old Sony Digital 8 camera and proceeded to piece together the clips from 1999. Turns out the I didn't capture the graphic stuff, just the amazing stuff. Isaac appearing above the drape in the doctor's hands. I saw everything with my own eyes but I guess the camera was a few inches lower than my vantage point. It was great and my wife loved the sentiment. Truly amazing to see us 6 years in the past... we've actually aged. Granted we've been through a lifetime of crap during this period, but it's clear that I'm a different person now than I was then. It also was incredible to see how freakin' cute my daughter Audrey was at two. :)

That brings me to the thought of getting a new camcorder. I like my Digital 8, it still works well, but it's hardly convenient. It doesn't have a screen and it's a bit bulky for sustained or steady use. Chris Saito mentioned getting a hard drive device. This was intriguing so I looked into the options. I stumbled on something different. The Sanyo C5.

Some of you may remember my thoughts on a device that would record "video snapshots"  or "video snaps,"  basically the idea is to have a 5 second snapshot. It would record  5 seconds of video and also give you a high quality digital photo at the same time. This could bring photos to life, in a sense. I talked about some cameras that were close (Kodak and the Casio Elixim),  but these still felt too much like a digital camera and not a camcorder. Though the Casio has a very cool feature called "Short Movie."

The Sanyo C5 is a 5MP digital camera that records MPEG 4 video at 640x480. It's very small. It looks more like a camcorder than a digital camera, as you hold it at its base and control the functions with your thumb. It has a flip out video screen, 5x optical zoom and a flash. You can record full frame video and take a 5MP digital photo at the same time. It's a nice device and I decided that this was the best fit for me right now. The only drawbacks are that it's USB 1.0, and doesn't have a red-eye flash. It slips in your pocket though so it's very convenient to carry around and be at the ready. This is what sold me. I have been very bad about capturing video of my children because I always have to have that clunky camcorder around with Hi-8 tape too boot. The Sanyo records directly to a 2GB SD card for up to 2 hours of footage. It's easy to dump the video onto my mac and then onto a DVD.

Maybe I'll actually use this thing...

Time Off

Well it's that time of year... I usually take some time off during the holidays to spend with my family, recuperate, and work on innovation. It clears my head and gets me fired up for the coming year. Last year was about social software, shopping search, and digital lifestyle management. Some stuff is live and some is being worked on under the covers.

This year I'm focusing on the Yahoo! Shopping homepage. Trying to find its place and focus as a subdomain to yahoo.com and as a destination for shopping is intriguing. We've run lots of studies and pulled a ton of data and I think I have a decent approach. I'm also working on improving the My List and Shoposphere experience and more on shopping search. Hopefully the latter will be seen sometime soon. We did considerable work last year. It was the reason for my trip to India.

I'm most excited about the process. I really do enjoy using some of this time to think about my work unencumbered by the daily grind. No meetings or email to worry about; just pure thought. I realize that some folks don't understand this as being a relaxing way to spend vacation time, but I can't shut it off. So why not put it to good use. Ten years ago I developed the concept for the "interstitial" on my honeymoon (sorry), and once after having eye surgery for a detached retina, I got a dude fired and worked on negotiations to sell our company. At least the firing was a good thing.

Last year was productive. I started this blog for one thing. I worked on Swedelife, and developed the other concepts I mentioned. I don't think this year will be as much. But I look forward to some quiet time, after the kids are in bed, to do whatever comes to mind.

Obsessively yours...

Oh and the Xmas cards finally arrived. I tried calling Shutterfly but they weren't taking calls due to the amount of calls they were getting. That was odd. They didn't even put you on hold. Just a short message saying that you're out of luck.

Christmas Card Photo Troubles

Every year since the birth of our daughter, Audrey, I've dressed in a Santa suit that Jane made and posed with the children for our Christmas card. The first year we were in Colorado visiting my parents and went up to the snow. Audrey was 9 months. The next year was in my 1963 Cadillac, then Isaac came along and we did this thing with Audrey dressed as a reindeer pulling me and Isaac in a Radio Flyer wagon. In 2000, Santa was buried in the sand, and 2001 the kids ambushed Santa coming down the chimney.  In 2002 they were on Santa's lap with a huge wish list. I think... It's all a blur now. In 2003 we went up by Stanford where those big radio telescopes are and took some shots with horses. Last year, Santa was tired of this game and took some time off, though he did make an appearance in the photo. This year we put our dog Thurston in an elf costume and Santa read the paper. You can see where this is going. First we're running out of ideas, and second, this will never end.

A while ago we went digital and got our cards from a photo printing site. Since ofoto was one of the first, we tried that. The quality was never as good as you wished, but it was a lot easier than gluing photos to folded cards. It was also cheaper.

This year I decided to try a new service. I thought I'd see if I could do it through Yahoo! I first went to Flickr. I had gotten some prints from their new printing service and was really pleased with the quality. But Flickr doesn't like Christmas. No greeting cards are available. Okay they like Christmas and all holidays... a good portion of their photos has something to do with a holiday or celebration... maybe next year.

I next tried Yahoo! Photos. But Yahoo! Photos doesn't like Macs. I couldn't make a card through Yahoo! Photos without using Internet Explorer for the Mac. I don't know what Mac user still uses that piece of crap browser any more... I certainly don't. If Microsoft no longer supports it, then I don't know why Yahoo! would. I hope Yahoo! photos decides to either fish or cut bait soon.

Since I couldn't use a Yahoo! service to create our card, I decided to go back to Ofoto, which is now called Kodak Gallery. Whatever. I couldn't remember my password, so I created another account, uploaded the selected photo and went to work finding the right card design. Here's where things went wrong. Their selection of designs and layouts were pretty limited. Nothing appealed to us. The best ones were for Kwanzaa.

Off to Shutterfly. Right away it was clear that this is the better service. The interface and user experience was pretty decent. There were definitely some things that I would improve, but I can say that about any site, especially my own. The best thing was their selection of designs. They had dozens of themes and cards and best of all they had horizontal designs. This way the photo is bigger. With Kodak, their designs were all vertical. Not good.

We found a design which had nothing to do with the holidays, but we liked it the best. We ordered 100 to send to family and friends. This was 8 days ago. We haven't received the cards. Nothing. They promised they'd be here by Friday at the latest. Nothing. I sent a customer service email and have yet to hear from them. I'll have to call tomorrow to see what's up. If I can find their phone number on the site. I hate how e-commerce sites bury their phone numbers and customer service contact information. Try to find a phone number on Amazon. I dare you. Shutterfly seems to be the same. They have no CRM experience to speak of. It's disappointing.

So here's the deal. If you're looking for our silly card this year. You may not get it, or it may be late. So don't think we didn't think of you. Blame the Internet. The card is displayed above. And you can see the collection at Flickr. Go ahead and print it out and pretend we said Mele Kalikimaka and Hau'oli Makahiki Hou to you and yours.

WTF Typepad?

I know thousands of others are probably writing about this, but Typepad was down for the entire day. Not only that, some previous posts were wiped off the site for that period of time.  Read Forbes: Silence of the Blogs.

Yahoo! Shopping Product Team Holiday Dinner

Tonight is the annual holiday dinner for the Yahoo! Shopping Product Team. I think we started doing this in 2001. I know we've done it every year since I started. This is my 5th. Every year they get a little more wild. Though I don't know if anything could surpass last  year. We're going to Nola in Palo Alto, so anything can happen. Hopefully someone will end up in a shopping cart careening down University Ave. again tonight. Be on the look out for Twain Mein, Billy Mills, Greg Gunwall, and other revelers celebrating a pretty kick ass year for Yahoo! Shopping.

We were recently chosen by Consumer Reports and Forbes Magazine as the best comparison shopping site out there. Not too shabby. Especially from Consumer Reports. Those guys really take you to task when they are reviewing your product.

Super Tuesday?

Forget this "Cyber Monday" crap. Today is probably the busiest online shopping day of the year. The second tuesday of December is usually the last day people can order products and expect to get them before Christmas without paying for premium shipping. Sites can see a 100X jump in normal sales activity today. The most activity is happening now, between 8AM and 2PM Pacific, during the lunch hours. So get out there and buy some stuff today... you don't have much time left.

Yahoo! Hack Day

Today was the first of probably many hackathons put on by the Search & Marketplace group. Mr. Chad Dickerson and the Technology Development team put it together. It was slick. Basically you are given one day to get a team and hack something using any available API. There were over 50 hacks created. That was great to see. I felt that some of the best were Local related.

What did I hack, you ask? Nothing. Though I did spend the time to work on a wireframe for something I've been cooking. Maybe I can recruit Jeremy and Pasha to lend a hand now that Pasha's back from Google.

Actually, no one from Yahoo! Shopping built any hacks. There was one attempt, but it didn't get finished in time. This is due to the general feeling of burn-out that occurs this time of year with the Shopping team. We bust our ass to get to the holiday and then pretty much walk around in a daze until the shopping season is over.

Thanks to everyone who put this on... Bradley, Nikki, Chad, Jeremy, and the rest of the team.