Ryan j Budke

A Couple of My Rules for Startups - Blog Maverick.

One of my favorite parts:

6. An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine.

I just got done watching a documentary about the drug (specifically cocaine) traffic in Miami in the late 70’s/early 80’s called Cocaine Cowboys. It’s absolutely mind-boggling the impact that the drug had on the city. There was so much cash involved that banks in MIami went from dealing with on average $12 million annually with the federal reserve, to $600 million cash. A 5000% increase!! Whole sections of the town’s business survived on not only the money itself, but the type of clients that the money brought in, so when the trade went bust, so did the town.

The face of Miami was literally changed by cocaine. They suspect that an insane 85% of urban development was in some way shape or form funded by drug money during the city’s rapid 1980’s growth.

It’s a hard line to draw, the one where someone is spamming your site with submissions, or just honest to goodness trying to get their voice out there. Although we do allow anyone to post a link to anywhere (within reason) else on the web, we are a "social" site, and I think that’s where it’s easiest to tell between those who are just in it for themselves, and those that are trying to give as much as they receive.

Eliot sums up our stance on mass submissions in this article from WAXY.ORG

So Digg is apparently having just a few issues at the moment in how its top users have felt they’ve been treated. A topic that I think deserves a long hard look. We’ve had similar situations at Propeller (formerly Netscape), and they’re never easy, but we always came out a much stronger and richer site because of it. Personally, I don’t like Digg’s behind the scenes methods, I think that leads to a very us against them mentality. It’s also naive to think that any completely open and social site could survive without an editorial layer. There’s always going to be spam, there’s always going to be questionable content, and there’s always going to be a need to combat those things. The major difference is that at Propeller, we put those parts of the site on display. That way you not only have a more direct means of reporting problems, and thus helping the site to grow, but also someone that can be held accountable when it’s not living up to your standards.

I’d like to invite anyone from Digg that’s feeling “disenfranchised” to come and spend some time at Propeller for a few days. Not only that, but if you have any questions, comments or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get a hold of me directly either via email (Ryan@propeller.com) or IM (Ryan45209). I’m not trying to “steal” users from Digg in doing this (some of our paid employees are among Digg’s top users, and I read the site everyday), I just want the guys and gals who feel like they’ve been put out by Digg to know that there are other venues who may appreciate them more.

Again, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Heath Ledger passed away some time either today or last night. There are still a lot of details coming in, so there’s all kind of discrepancies (anyone from his pharmacist, Mary Kate or Scientology could have led to his death at this point). I wouldn’t go so far as to say he was one of my “favorite actors”, but he was certainly someone I always liked to perform. He was phenomenal in Brokeback Mountain, Lords of Dogtown is worth skipping through for his parts only, and I’ve always had a soft spot for 10 Things I Hate About You (mostly because it led to a hilarious conversation between some of my best friends and an ex of mine with the punchline being “You’d make a horrible lesbian”).

Heath Ledger is also playing the part of the Joker in this summer’s Batman Begins sequel, and he’s been getting tons and tons of early buzz about this role. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before… The best Joker ever… etc. It’s going to be extremely disappointing to have to watch that in retrospect. My thoughts and prayers go out to Heath’s family and friends.

Not only did JJ Abrams (and crew) create one of my favorite recent movies, and one of my favorite tv shows in Lost, but he also seems to be a generally all around cool guy. Eliot sent me this video of him giving a talk at the TED Conference, and it shows that he’s got a wicked sense of humor and a love for all things magic. For those that didn’t know, he’s also remaking Star Trek which will debut in December, and in doing so gets to almost fulfill one of Randy Pausch’s lifelong wishes.

If you’re asking who Randy Pausch is, I could tell you (a Computer Science Professor at Carnegie Mellon with terminal cancer), but it wouldn’t hold a candle to the man himself. When you can, please watch this video, it’s long, but after it’s over, you’ll realize that it wasn’t really that long.

JJ Abrams saw this video as well, and wrote this to Mr. Pausch:
Hi there — I’m JJ Abrams, director of the new Star Trek movie.

Best,
JJ

Very cool JJ, very very cool.

To read some more details about it, you can check out Mr. Pausch’s blog at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html.

I was going to write this first thing in the morning, but I just couldn’t wait. Cloverfield is unlike anything that you’ve seen before. It’s truly truly awesome. I’m sure it won’t live up to the hype for everyone, and there’s going to be people that hate just because everyone else loves it (I’m sure C.K. will say it jumped the shark), but for me, it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time, probably ever (I need to let it sink in a little bit before I declare that). That’s not to say there aren’t things wrong with it (take a dramamine if you’re susceptible to motion sickness), but they are minuscule.

It’s an immense, intense movie, the scope is massive, but the perspective the story is told from makes everything going on seem that much bigger. That same perspective, however, creates and insanely personal experience. It’s a short movie by any standard (barely an hour and a half) but in that time you become a part of this close knit family. That’s in no small part thanks to the show-stealer, our cameraman Hud. Except for a few brief moments, he’s our eyes, our focus, and our frame of reference. Again, this is a very small story, and during more than a few moments there’s an almost voyeuristic feeling to everything as you watch things that you know were only supposed to be between these people.

I want to say so much more but want everyone else to experience it for themselves and not spoil anything. Go see Cloverfield, you won’t regret it.

Does anyone have any good podcast recommendations for me? I’ve been listening to a bunch of audiobooks and music while I’m at the gym, and I’m almost through the books and already a little tired of the same old songs. I’ll take any thoughts you have, but I’m not really interested in TWiT, Digg or the like. Right now I’ve got This American Life (an absolutely amazing show), ESPN’s PTI (didn’t know they had a podcast, badass), and Learn Spanish with Coffee Break Spanish (yea, I need to learn this).

If you know of anything, please don’t hesitate to send it along.

Apple unveiled their long rumored “ultra portable” laptop yesterday, the Macbook Air, and I’m far from impressed. I talked with a bunch of people yesterday, but I feel like it has a lot of good ideas, but the sum of its parts somehow less than the whole. An LED screen? Great idea; it’s bright, saves on power, but what the hell is up with the low resolution and the inch wide bevel all along the edge of the screen. A solid state drive? Great idea; insanely fast, saves on power, but it’s a $1,000 upgrade, and for all that money I only get 64gb? Five hour per battery charge? Awesome, if I believe Apple. I’m supposed to get 3+ hours on my Macbook Pro, but I don’t get anywhere close to that and I’m on my second battery. Also, I can’t change the battery myself? Lame. I think the multi-touch trackpad is pretty cool, but it feels a little tacked on. The only thing I can use it for is viewing photos? Great, that’ll be useful for like 1% of my computer time. All of that, and it’s still upwards of $3,000 just to take advantage of the best options? No thank you.

Again, these are the beginnings of trends I’m very interested in. I like the LED screen, LOVE the solid state drive, and there’s no denying it’s in a sexy package, but I think I’ll pass (not that I had any choice in the matter considering the price). I’m sure most of these features will be implemented into the rest of the Macbook line at some point this year (hopefully sooner rather than later), and maybe then it’ll be a little more polished. Shooting for the stars here, but it’d be awesome to see a dual drive option. My operating system and other files on a solid state drive for speed and low power consumption, and a traditional drive for the space. It’d be like the hybrid of hard-drives.

The Time Capsule though? Me likey.

Twitter… down
Engadget & Tuaw…. sporadic
Joe’s Goals… down
All other Weblogs Blogs… slow at best
Google Reader… crawling

Way to go Apple, you just gave the bsod to Web 2.0