Fuze Blog | © Bryan Landaburu (aka Willie Vega) | Reno-Sparks-Nevada Blogger

San Francisco Supercross - attitudes & advertising

 

I blog to you from Club Level section 215 at AT&T Park in San Francisco and the 2008 AMA Monster Energy San Francisco Supercross. As someone who raced and appreciates the talent in the sport, I have been a fan of supercross for many years.  We are also very involved with the industry through our representation of LivFast Freestyle Motocross team - managing their events & sponsor deals, and their clothing line. I have to say I after tonights event, I am disapointed in the current state of MX for a number of reasons:

• team extreme - these are the black hoodie, flat bill hat, semi-adult, angst ridden, monster truck drivin, ready to fight in a second, inked sleeves and hardware faced extrEMEists who give the sport a bad name.  Its no longer about family and competition but instead its who's the baddest ass.
• the format - there are literally 6 races all night...not a lot of racing and not a lot to get excited about.
• no more heros - the greats of the sport are gone so there are no more riders everyone knows, no more rivalries, just riding.
• 10 lap main event BECAUSE OF RAIN - WTF??
• Commercials - worst of all.  In a 3hr program there were 6 races, each lasting about 10-20min - this means we watched OVER AN HOUR OF COMMERCIALS AT A LIVE EVENT. Holy crap what a waste. Not to mention every square inch of eye space covered with a logo of some sort. It's really overload - AN I'M IN ADVERTISING!

Anyway...thats my 2 cents on the state of supercross.  The sport is still one of my favorites to participate in and my son will have a tricked out mini bike when he's 3yo I am sure.  It was still fun but nothing like days past.

WBV

(another treo post - sorry for the typos)

Trusting your world to web services: Basecamp outage

In our ever connected lifestyles we put a TON of faith in the availability of these whiz-bang hosted web services being unconditional and forever.  Some businesses rely completely on the functionality of 3rd party hosted applications for the management of their extended teams, clients, projects, and in some cases all aspects of their business.

Today, our project management application, the wildly popular Basecamp from 37signals took a big dump on us and was unavailable for almost 6hrs.  Here is their story:

• Basecamp Outage Explained

It caused us a bit of gas because our standing project meetings had to be conducted manually from memory and we were not able to open new projects as we normally would.  For us, it was a speck of inconvenience, but for others who are more reliant on Basecamp and similar systems, i can imagine today was not fun at all.

I am sure Basecamp will "refund" us , and others who complain for the 6hrs of downtime, but the $150 or so that amounts to, doesn't come close to lost time and productivity. Buried deep in some SLA I am certain there is a limit of 37signals liability, but who reads those? I wonder if this should be a wake up call  to myself and others, that this is always a possibility? Should we have a plan B "at the ready" like we do for backups and file servers? Is this just the nature of the beast?  Thinking about it, there are 20ish web services I use on a daily/weekly basis, some of which I pay for, some of which are free, but I rely on them to keep me organized, billing, working, and enjoying life.  What is a fair expectation of availability of these services?

We'll keep using Basecamp for the time being, but this outage certainly has me looking at alternate solutions, and that is something I would have NEVER considered until today.

WBV

Hot Damn, I'm an Oracle Stockholder

Interesting to me though maybe not everyone...a big enterprise software acquisition was announced yesterday.  Oracle has agreed to acquire my Alma Mater, BEA Systems for $8.5 Billion.  This is a great fit for Oracle and very likely good for BEA as well. Rumors about IBM or Oracle buying BEA were flying way back during my years there, so this has been on the table for quite some time. I am anxious to see how it all shakes out. 

I also hope all my friends that are still there enjoy the ride. For the record, Ellison has better boats, but Alfred has way better cars!

BL

Bulimic computer epidemic: Reaction to New Apple Laptop

Couldn't resist passing along this "thin-eNVy" parody (courtesy of Nalt) for the new Apple Macbook Air (starting at only $3500). Short & sweet...enjoy.

Thin is [always] in!

WBV

Wanna look up the definition of "real-man" - Start at Mavericks

I am one who has a tremendous respect for Mom Nature and all her power & glory.  Those who tempt MOM eventually lose.  That said, here in the bay area (cali), folks are all chompin' at the bit for Mavericks Surf competition to start tomorrow.  They cancelled 2007 because the swells "didnt qualify" size wise (no SPAM pun intended).  Now, as someone who has ridden in 6'+ swells on a jetski, and broken bones as a result, my respect goes out to those who stare 20' waves in the face and say..."ya, I'll have a bit of that."

So if you want to look up the definition of "Real Man" you can start your search at:

• Mavericks Surf 2008

This year Maverick's got a good healthy dose of "technology" with realtime streams, and a number of other cool web tools on their site.  If you're down here, and have never witnessed Mavericks, the waves and competition are a must-see.

Surf's WAY up!

WBV

Real Estate MLS Standards? It's about g'damn time!

As an agency that is quite vested in the real-estate industry, I have to say that this movement to develop a standard for MLS listing is about the best news I have head in years.  For anyone with significant RE clients, dealing with the various issues with data provided in MLS feeds presents one challenge after another.  Its a nightmare.  Outside of integration of listings into a brokers website, you also face challenges of feeding your listings to loads of aggregate and services that are used by the general public (ex. Trulia, Zillow, etc.). 

Things are looking up on the horizon as some of these significant players press for standards.

• This ClickZ article made me salivate this morning

Fingers crossed that this happens at breakneck speed.  God speed RESO! Make it happen.  Nothing but good can come of this.

WBV

A couple new downloads I'm diggin'

Tonight, while watching a marathon of Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 1 on DVD (one of my best Christmas gifts) I started surfin the ol' web and realized I had downloaded Flock some time ago and never installed it.  As i got it installed and started tinkering with it, I really like it. 

The browser is Firefox based with a big juicy wrapper of social media, web2.0, whatever-the-frig you want to call it and its really, really cool.  I can log into my Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, TypePad, del.icio.us, etc., etc. accounts and watch them all mash up before my eyes...all the while without disrupting my standards compliant browsing experience. Its got some great image and web clipping functions built right in, detects feeds, has a lot of the same plug-ins as Firefox, overall there's a lot to explore. I will try it as my default browser for a bit and see if it sticks.  So far, so cool. One thing to note is that Flock is a little Yahoo heavy and a little light on the Google.  Would really like to see Flock include GoogleBookmarks in its whopping list of 2 online favorites options. 

Another service that came to me as a result of Flock is Me.dium.  This is a really sexy browser inclusion that gives surfing and social a whole new paint job.  Some serious web/tech going on here.  Get some friends together and surf together, commenting and clipping and researching silly. I am anxious to try this on our next big web project as we get started as a team doing research.  Another service i recommend taking for a test drive. 

As always, my gamertag on both services is 'FUZE'. Give 'em a whirl if you are social-ite (or wanna be) like me.

Enjoy.