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Sifry's Alerts (10 unread)

November 03, 2008
1:38
Offbeat Guides Public Beta!
» ‎ Sifry's Alerts
I'm proud to announce the launch of Offbeat Guides first product in public beta!

[www.offbeatguides.com]

What's Offbeat Guides?

Our first product is quite simple: On-demand, Personalized Travel Books. Travel books that are tuned just for you, only about the place that you're going, with local information like festivals, events, and concerts that are going on during the dates of your stay. We put in local maps that are tuned to where you'll be, and we even customize the guide based on what we learn about you, like the timezone differences from your hometown, electrical plug differences, embassies and consulates nearby, differences in tipping policies, exchange rates, local weather forecasts, and much more.

We provide guides for over 30,000 city destinations around the world - of course we cover New York, Paris, Rome, and Tokyo, but we also have guides to Newark, Paradise, Romeoville, and Tokorozawa, and many more places.

We're trying to solve the problem that most of us have when we travel - you want to know where to go, what to do when you're there, and what's going on while you're there.

We're a company run by obsessive technologists who happen to travel a LOT. We don't come out of the travel industry. We're travelers, just like you. We value your time, so we focused on simplicity. To get started, we only ask you 5 questions:
- Where are you going: We currently cover over 30,000 city destinations
- When will you be there: So we can include information about local festivals, events, club meetings, sports teams, concerts, and other timely information
- Where are you coming from: With this information, we give you contextal information, like timezone differences, embassies and consulates for your home country, language guides, exchange rates, electrical adapters needed, and more.
- Where are you staying: So we can localize the maps that go into your guide, and put your hotel right at the center of things.
- The Traveler's Name: Well, we need to know who you are, so we can put your name right on the book cover! Makes for great gifts, too.
From that, we show you a live preview of your guide, with sights, attractions, restaurants, and hotels - but we also pull in all the local and contextual information we can find, tuning your guide just for you, your preferences, and your trip details.

We also brought on a top-notch team of travel experts, who have gone through the top 1000 city destinations in the world, called the museums, checked on the hotel information, and chatted with the restaurateurs. We built an travel search engine to help us to locate the most interesting information about the other 29,000 destinations, using both freely available information as well as licensed information from partners like Wikitravel, Wikipedia, Flickr, Eventful, Upcoming, Meetup, the World Factbook, and many other local sources. As we continue to build out the site, we'll be adding in many more validated sources as well as incorporating feedback from travelers and locals into the future guides.

Can I customize it?

Of course. You get full control over your guide - so if you already know where you're staying, you can click to deselect all of the information about hotels, for example. You can add customized chapters and fill them with information that you gather from your friends, or from around the internet.

And when you're done, you can get your guide in multiple formats:
- As a beautifully printed full-color book, shipped to your door (or your hotel!) right before you leave on your trip so it has the freshest information in it,
- As a PDF suitable for printing on your home printer, or downloading onto your mobile phone or reading device, or
- On the web so you can read through the book on-line, and update information before and during your trip.
Why only City Guides?

Well, we had to start somewhere. One of the most-requested features from our private beta testers has been to create regional or area guides, for example, for Maui, or for The Napa Valley. We're working on this, it's in the pipeline, but we wanted to open the doors to all of you, even if those country or regional guides aren't ready yet. Another frequently requested feature is for multi-segment trips - where you are visiting multiple places on a single trip. Right now, you'll have to get a guide for each place, but this is something that we're definitely keeping an eye on as we continue to build out the product.

How much does it cost?

It's USD $9.95 to buy the PDF version, so you can print it yourself and save money. It's USD $24.95 + shipping to buy the book, and the PDF comes included - you can download updated PDFs as many times as you want before your trip ends, as well! That's about the same or less than you'd pay to buy a guide in a bookstore, and you'd end up with information that's 12-24 months old, that's not customized to you.

Is there a Money-back Guarantee?

Yes! If you're unhappy with your guide for any reason whatsoever, simply let us know, and we'll refund your money. No questions asked. Even if it is after your trip, and you've used the book. We're committed to making a really great experience for you, so if you're unhappy with the guide at all, we will refund your money.

Where's the catch? Why is it Beta?

This is a pretty ambitious product, and we're really happy with what we've built so far - but there's still so much more to do. We've been testing for 5 months in private beta with over 6,000 people helping us to get things right, but things still crop up, and we want to learn more from you. We're opening up the doors to let anyone come and kick the tires and buy some guides, and we really want to get your thoughts and feedback so we can make the experience and the guide information as good as possible. There will be bugs. We promise to stay in touch both on our blog and on Get Satisfaction and keep you in the loop as we find and fix bugs and issues. We appreciate your willingness to work with us on this and to help us create a great product together.

For our Private Beta Testers

We love you. We really really do! Thanks so much for all the help and feedback, you are the best group of testers I've ever had the opportunity to work with. The free book coupons that you got as a private beta tester are still valid until November 30th; after that they won't work anymore, so don't procrastinate! We'll also be sending you a survey as we close up the private beta - please check for it in your mailbox soon. It should take 10-15 minutes to fill out, but it will really help us to get your thoughts and feedback and to continue to improve the product. Thanks!!!

How to get involved

Well, first off, come and kick the tires! Check out the guide preview for your hometown, or for a place you're visiting soon. Drop us a line and let us know how things look. Are there errors? Problems with the information? Are we missing a great feature? Let us know!

Also, follow us on Twitter! We're @offbeatguides. We love hearing from you.

And Thanks!

Thanks for all of your support. On a personal note, I want to thank the Offbeat Guides Team who have weorked their butts off getting this built. I'm really excited to be taking this next adventure with you!
October 09, 2008
3:15
I'll be on KQED's Forum with Michael Krasny at 9am on 10/9
» ‎ Sifry's Alerts

It's a bit late notice, but I just found out myself - I'll be on Forum with Michael Krasny this morning at 9am PT. I'll be on with Carl Guardino, president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and my old friend Sarah Lacy, columnist for Business Week, co-host of Yahoo! Finance's "TechTicker" and author of "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0". We're going to be discussing the effects of the Financial Crisis on Silicon Valley.

I'm a fan of Michael Krasny - I often listen to the 2-hour long "Forum" show, and I've always found him to be articulate, intelligent, and very well educated on the subjects he covers, making great conversation with his guests - so I'm really looking forward to meeting him in person down at the KQED studios. I'll try to get some photos.

It should be an interesting discussion - especially with the market gyrations in the last 2 weeks, the all-but-closure of the IPO market, and now the tech M&A market, it sure looks like we're in for a cold winter.

But I think there's still room for optimism - busts are the perfect time for large companies with cash on their balance sheets to ride things out and gain market share, and also for small agile companies to develop and disrupt industries. I call this the "barbell theory" - where companies at the large and very small end of the scale will do quite well - but the ones in the middle get slaughtered. It's a time when great talent gets easier to find, rents drop, and it's easier to be heard above the din. But I've got a lot of concern for speculative businesses out there that haven't found a way to get big and build brand and revenue yet (or even a business model!) and are large enough that they're burning through cash. I fear that many Valley and "Web 2.0" businesses in the middle of the barbell are going to have a very difficult time in the coming downturn, especially those that are solely advertising based. There's still an enormous opportunity to create value and build very successful businesses, even in a crisis and downturn like the one we're going through - I think it is incumbent on forward-thinking entrepreneurs and investors to think creatively about how they:
a) Help businesses save money,
b) Increase efficiency or disintermediation reducing friction,
c) Reduce their own costs, and
d) Diversify their revenue streams

I plan on talking more about that during the show - and I'll blog about it afterwards. I'm looking forward to the discussion! I sure hope I'm wrong - Here's hoping for a market upswing!
October 02, 2008
1:06
Offbeat Guides Sneak Peek and Beta Update
» ‎ Sifry's Alerts

We've been hard at work on the private beta of Offbeat Guides, and I thought it would be a good time to give y'all an update on our progress!

We've been making huge strides both in making the site simpler and easier to use, as well as cranking away on the hard tasks of building out a deep semantic search service that dynamically builds guides for over 30,000 different city destinations around the world. We've taken a lot of what I've learned building comprehensive real-time search engines at Technorati, and also what Marina and her team have learned in building and curating a narrative experience when she was with Lonely Planet. We want to give you more than just the facts - to also get you a flavor and some the romance of the place and of your trip. We've expanded the partners we're working with to include even more local photographs, festivals, tickets, and events, and we've put in a lot of heuristic technology to help to make sure we weed out as much irrelevant information as possible. If you want to work with us, drop us a line.

Algorithms can't provide everything though, especially for the top travel destinations of the world - humans mean a lot too. We've got a team of people who have been digging deep into the top 1000 city destinations of the world - calling the shops, restaurants, hotels, fact-checking, and pulling out the cruft, while focusing on bringing you the most interesting offbeat local perspectives, and we also take advantage of all of the great Creative Commons-licensed and Public Domain information thats out there on the internet to help to create a satisfying experience for anyone who is traveling. We're also looking to get feedback from locals and travelers so the guides stay current and completely up-to-date, too!

There's still a lot to do, but I thought I'd put up a screencast (it runs a total of about 13 minutes) that takes you through the main features of the site - a sneak peek of what our private beta testers have been playing with.

We're actively adding more people to the beta, on a first-come, first served basis - so if you want to get involved in testing out our beta, helping us to identify and fix bugs, and get two printed guides shipped free-of-charge to you as part of the private beta, make sure to sign up at the site. This offer won't last forever! :-)

Technorati Tags:
offbeatguides, travel, travelguide, travelguides, book, guide, vacation, webservice, beta, privatebeta, sneakpeek
September 26, 2008
14:44
State of the Blogosphere 2008 Wrap-up: Brands and the Blogosphere
» ‎ Sifry's Alerts
To wrap up a long data-filled week, we've rolled out part 5 of the State of the Blogosphere report, which is all about how traditional brands are perceived and how bloggers interact with brands in the blogopshere. This data is taken from the large survey done on Technorati bloggers earlier this year, as described in our methodology. Here's a few of the interesting things we learned:
- More than four in five bloggers post product or brand reviews, and blog about brands they love or hate.
- One-third of bloggers surveyed have been approached to be brand advocates.
- Of those, more than six in ten were offered payments of some kind.
- One in five bloggers don't think that newspapers will survive the next ten years.
- Half of bloggers surveyed believe that blogs will be a primary source for news and entertainment in the next five years.
- 37% of bloggers surveyed have been quoted in traditional media based on a blog post.
- Bloggers are most open to receiving marketing messages from other blogs. Even non-blog web content is more influential among this group than traditional media sources for brand information.
- Bloggers spend twice as much time online as U.S. adults 18-49, and spend only one-third as much time watching television.
Read the whole section, including charts and graphs. Read the entire 5-part report.
September 25, 2008
19:40
Technorati State of the Blogosphere Parts 3 and 4: How, and How Much?
» ‎ Sifry's Alerts
Technorati continues to release our 2008 State of the Blogosphere report. Here's some highlights from the last two days of posts, on how most bloggers blog, and on blogging for profit (an eye-opening read).
- One in four bloggers spends ten hours or more blogging each week.
- Over half of the Technorati top authority bloggers post five or more times per day, and they are twice as likely to tag their blog posts compared to other bloggers.
- From their use of RSS feeds, video, photos, and mobile updates, top bloggers are also tremendously sophisticated in leveraging the available tools to make their blogs more robust.
- The Technorati Top 100 blogs had more than twice as many postings in June 2008 as the next 500, and more than 12 times as many postings as the next 5000.
- The Technorati Top 100 are prolific, with 43% posting ten times per day or more often. Only 8% post once a day or less frequently, compared to 13% of the next 500 bloggers, and 22% of the next 5000 bloggers.
- Among bloggers who have advertising on their blogs, two in three have contextual ads (such as Google AdSense). One-third of bloggers have affiliate advertising on their blog. One in five negotiate directly with advertisers and one in ten sell advertising through a blog ad network.
- The average annual blogger revenue is more than $6,000. However, this is skewed by the top 1% of bloggers who earn $200k+.
- Among active bloggers that we surveyed, the average income was $75,000 for those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors per month (some of whom had more than one million visitors each month). The median annual income for this group is significantly lower — $22,000.
- Bloggers with advertising invest an average of $1,800 annually in their blogs. U.S. bloggers earn an average of $5,000, though bloggers in Asia earn 50% more on average and European bloggers earn an average of 75% more than U.S. bloggers.
- High revenue bloggers skew the mean revenue. The median revenue for U.S. bloggers is $200 annually (and the median annual investment is only $50).
- The top 10 percent of blogger respondents earned an average of $19,000 annually.
- Three-quarters of these successful bloggers are male, and four in ten are self employed (twice as high as the average blogger).
Get all the details, including graphs and charts.
September 24, 2008
2:44
State of the Blogosphere 2008 Part 2: The What and Why of Blogging
» ‎ Sifry's Alerts
Today Technorati released the second part of our State of the Blogosphere report, and today's topics focus on what bloggers blog about, and why they blog. Technorati surveyed over 1000 bloggers who use the service, and came away with some very interesting statistically significant information:

Some highlights:
- Both personal and professional topics are equally popular, with most bloggers covering multiple topics
- Half of bloggers consider their style to be sincere, conversational, humorous, and expert in nature.
- Although there is a perception of blogging as a means for writing a tell-all or gossiping, those blogging styles fell to the bottom of the list among the bloggers surveyed
- Music is more popular and politics is less popular in Asia, while personal, lifestyle, and religious topics are less popular in Europe.
- International bloggers tend to be less conversational and snarky.
- Asian bloggers tend to be more motivational and confessional, while European bloggers are more confrontational.
- Women tend to be more conversational in their blogging style, while men tend to be expert.
- Those under 34 are more confessional in their blogging style, while those over 35 are more expert in their style.
- When asked why they blog, the majority of personal bloggers do it for fun.
- Twenty percent are currently making some money blogging, and another 42% hope to make money on their blog in the future.
There's lots more in the report, along with some very interesting charts and graphs showing more detailed analysis of what bloggers feel, and how they are motivated. If you missed it, you can check out the first part of the report, which gives more of an overview.
September 22, 2008
13:31
Technorati's State of the Blogosphere, September 2008
» ‎ Sifry's Alerts
I'm very pleased to announce that the next installment of the State of the Blogosphere is out! It has been about a year since the last report, and the Technorati team has really worked hard to make this report something comprehensive, interesting, and informative.

One of the big changes this year is that along with a comprehensive scan of Technorati's complete database, we also did a massive survey of bloggers who have registered with Technorati - a detailed survey with dozens of detailed questions about themselves, how they blog, and more. Altogether over 1,290 completed surveys came in from over 60 countries, with over 1,000 respondents (83%) providing their URLs and email addresses for follow-up. More information about the survey methodology is here. The report is so big, in fact, that we're releasing it in 5 parts:

Day 1: Who Are the Bloggers?
Day 2: The What And Why of Blogging
Day 3: The How of Blogging
Day 4: Blogging For Profit
Day 5: Brands Enter The Blogosphere

Enough of the preamble! Here's some juicy nuggets:
- Technorati is currently tracking 133 million blogs (we've done a LOT of culling spam blogs, and the number of bloggers keeps growing!)
- 7.4 Million blogs have posted in the last 120 days - that's 5.5% of all blogs we track.
- 1.5 Million blogs have posted at least once in the last 7 days.
- There are now, on average, 900,000 blog posts tracked every 24 hours. That means that Technorati's tracking 37,500 new blog posts per hour, or 10.4 new blog posts per second!
Here's some more highlights from the survey of Technorati bloggers:
- The majority of bloggers we surveyed currently have advertising on their blogs. Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800, but it’s paying off.
- The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.
- Median investment and revenue (which is listed in the full report) is significantly lower, around $100-$200 per year.
There's so much rich data in there, lots offered for study. I don't think anyone has ever done as detailed a study of bloggers with as many participants, which means that you can slice and dice the data in a number of ways and still have enough respondents to have statistical significance. For example, blog networks serve nearly women bloggers at more than double the rate they serve male bloggers (16% of women who have advertising use a network, while only 7% of men who have advertising use a network). There's more to come, but go have a look at the initial report, hot and fresh at the Technorati site. If you want to see the older reports to compare, I've got them archived as well.

Kudos to the Technorati team for working so hard and getting this out. I'm really looking forward to the conversations it generates.

Technorati Tags:
report, sotb, technorati, blogosphere, stateoftheblogosphere, blogging
0:56
Kudos to Fred Wilson and Union Square Ventures!
» ‎ Sifry's Alerts

Nice writeup today in the New York Times. Who says that nice guys finish last? Or that good guys can't win? I've been hearing good things about the team ever since their del.icio.us investment and Dick Costolo at Feedburner couldn't say enough good things about them. Fred's also a prolific and thought-leading blogger, who has kept up consistent quality for a few years now - not an easy feat. Congrats, Fred and team! Well deserved.
0:27
Complete Camera Lust: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
» ‎ Sifry's Alerts
I admit it - I'm a bit of a camera junkie. I've been a photographer for 20 years, and I know enough to know that the camera you use is simply a tool - and that the true skill of photography lies between our ears. However, I just couldn't help myself from getting a bit tight-chested when I saw that Canon had announced their newest camera in their lineup this week - The EOS 5D Mark II.

I left the film world behind in 2000, which I gotta tell you, was way too early - I was shooting 640x480 onto floppies way back when, and the pictures looked like crap. But ever since I got the 3 Megapixel Nikon 990, I've been hooked on digital. I have 11x14 prints taken by that camera, and a few are still my favorites, like the one on the right, "Buttes as a Storm Approaches, Monument Valley, AZ". I've upgraded a few times since then, both in point-n-shoots, as well as in workhorse DSLRs - first the EOS 10D, which I used in 2004 to shoot the DNC and RNC political conventions while working with CNN, and then more recently, with the EOS 5D, which I have taken with me all around the world.

I love the 5D. It's got nearly everything that I want as a photographer, in a reasonably lightweight, solid package, and it's built to make most tasks easy and intuitive. I bought it primarily because I love taking wide-angle shos, and the 5D as the first reasonably-priced camera with a true 24mmx35mm sensor - meaning that there is no "magnification factor" when you put a lens on it. A 24mm lens looks like a 24mm lens back when I shot film. A 50mm lens is a normal lens, not a portrait lens like it was on my 10D. It had significantly improved low-ligh characteristics, like really smooth shots up to about ISO 800, which meant that I could get a lot of those birthday-shots-lit-by-a-candle when I fixed a nice fast lens like the 50mm f1.4 to the 5D and shot at 800 or 1600 ISO. My family thanked me, because I was able to get no-flash shots of the kids blowing out birthday candles and I loved it because I could walk around places like Paris and get shots I would never have been able to get before.

So when i heard that Canon was finally doing an upgrade to the 5D, I was very excited. And then I heard about the features of the camera, and some of the preproduction reactions by photographers. Some of the things that impressed me:
- New, higher ISO settings - including shots that look nearly noise free at ISO 1600 and 3200. This is amazing. And the camera can go up to ISO 25,600 for when you really are in nearly no light, but I uspect I won't go any highr than ISO 6400. But still, this increase in relatively noiseless high ISO images is nothing short of fantastic. Basically, this means that I'm going to be able to get greater depth of field or faster shutter speeds later at night. This is a very good thing.
- 21 Megapixels. Now Megapixels aren't the only judge of quality, but it appears that these 21 megapixels are the real deal - it's truly medium format quality in a 35mm body. Often adding pixels means that the overall sensitivity of the camera drastically drops in low light, but see the item above - Canon has made their sensors dramatically more sensitive, even as they made each individual pixel smaller so that they could cram in 21 Megapixels in. Amazing. Again, a big win.
- 3.9 fps. Now this isn't the super-fast 5fps that sports shooters need, but adding essentially an extra frame per second will definitely feel faster, and let me get more expressions when I'm taking portraits. I'm one of those guys who likes to take lots of shots of people and try to get them relaxed to get lots of different expressions - chances are, you'll end up getting at least one well-exposed, natural smile when you d that. The current 5D is 3fps, but the new one will get me an extra frame per second. That's a good thing.
- Live preview shooting (which means a nearly silent shutter) I'm hoping that I'll be able to get lots more fun candid shots. I haven't had a camera with Live Preview before, but it has been available on Canon's (and some Nikons) for a while, so it must be pretty good. I 'll give it a go, anyway.
- The big kicker: 1080p video along with a microphone jack and HDMI output on the camera. Wow. This is amazing. When I heard about the Nikon D90 coming out that could do video, I was envious. Now when I think about the kids of video productions I can create with my current lens lineup, fast zooms, and fast focus, I get very excited. Add to it the enhanced smoothness and noise reduction at high ISOs and shooting with natural light even in low light sounds like it'll be fun too. Definitely looking forward to filling up lots of hard disks with video to play with. Another plus - it shoots directly to 1080p quicktime movies, so there's no transcoding necessary if you want to edit in iMovie or Final Cut Pro. Sweet.
I could go on and on. I think this camera is going to be a huge seller, and I'm preordering mine - I think that if you don't get in now, this camera is going to be backordered for months. There are downsides oo- like the incompatable set of accessories and batteries, meaning that you're going to have to buy new ones when you get the camera. But for a guy who takes care of his tools, I'm really looking forward to having the 5D Mark II as my new primary camera, and the 5D as it's very worthy backup.

And now my Channukah list is complete. This camera comes out sometime in November, just in time for the holiday season. Woo hoo!

Technorati Tags:
cameras, canon, 5d, lust, gear, photography
September 21, 2008
22:08
Giving MarsEdit a try
» ‎ Sifry's Alerts

For many years, I've been using Adriaan Tijsseling's ecto as an offline blogging client. It's not perfect, but it's a damn good blogging client - full-featured, easy to use, and has plugin support, as well as having nice things like Technorati tags built into it. if you're starting out blogging, you should definitely check it out, it is a big improvement from the web-based tools that come with most blogging platforms.

Recently I've noticed, however, that for some reason, I haven't been blogging much. Maybe it's because I've been really busy, or because of the amount of time I'm spending working on Offbeat Guides, I'm not sure. Maybe it's because I've been hanging out a bit more on Twitter and Friendfeed. Who knows?

Well, I'm going to try blogging a bit more often from now on, and we'll see if it sticks. And just for fun, I'm going to go give MarsEdit a try, and see how I like it. So far, it's pretty nice - it gets out of my way, and there's this nice Preview window that gives me a preview of my post that updates while I type. I like that. It supports Technorati Tags, and has support for Flickr, which should make it easy for me to add photos. And it seems to support some Emacs-style keyboard shortcut, like Ctrl-a to go to the beginning of a line, and Ctrl-e to go to the end of a line - little things that just feel right for an old-timer like me.

What's your favorite offline editor for the Mac? Got any good tips or shortcuts when using MarsEdit? Leave a comment below...

Technorati Tags:
marsedit, blogging, tools

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Sifry's Alerts (10 unread)