Aaron's Life

Feb 13

Content Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink

This morning, I woke up and read Nick Bilton’s weekly New York Times’ column. Nick is a friend and one of the best bloggers/writers/journalists out there. But with today’s column, he was way off base.

Having already said what I wanted to say about the Path situation, I debated if I should weigh in again. Then I read Nick’s column again. There’s a way to say what he wants to say, but he goes about it the complete wrong way. I felt like I had to respond.

But before I could, my CrunchFund partner Michael Arrington wrote almost exactly what I would have written — but in a more effective way. As a dog owner/lover, Michael thought up a great analogy: “So the belly is shown.”

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Feb 08

The Rise of Internet Media: Clean Dictionary -

This was done by A student in my NYU class: The Rise of Internet Media.

nethistory2012:

I thought I’d start our class tumblr off with a project that my partner Charles and I just launched in beta today: cleandictionary.com

Clean Dictionary was already well on its way to completion by last Tuesday’s class, but some of the ideas we discussed helped influence and sharpen…

Jan 30

The 2011-12 NBA season has been entertaining, but it could be even better - Grantland

Jan 25

“I don’t think nostalgia is a healthy modality. But nostalgia and a sense of history are not the same thing. Nostalgia is a dysfunction of the historical impulse, or a corruption of the historical impulse.” — William Gibson in TheVerge

Jan 22

Mike and the Mad Dog Afficonadoes Rejoice

From Bill Simmons’ weekend mailbag:

Q: I was watching a shortened Mike Francesa show on YES today. Giants fans only wanted to talk about the blown call on Greg Jennings’ fumble. Mike went on to use the phrase “under the hood” a ridiculous amount of times over the next hour to describe the action of the ref looking at the replay. I finished watching the show but it was bothering me how many times I heard “under the hood”. I was sure it was 40 times at least. I decided to go back and figure it out. Mike used the actual phrase “under the hood” 36 times. Callers used it twice bringing the total to 38. This is where it gets dicey. Mike once said “blew the call under the…” before trailing off. I counted that as 0.75 times . He also used “…before the hood” once. I counted that as 0.25 times bringing the total to 39 and that was it. I missed my theory by one “under the hood”. Now I know how you feel after not covering that Texans-Ravens game. So close. Notes from my study: Mike used the phrase “underneath the hood” once which I counted in his total and all but 1 of the “under the hoods were said in a 60 minute time frame. For the entire 2 hour show Mike’s UTHPM (Under the Hoods per Minute) was 0.65 narrowly edging out Dog’s 0.63 “Unbelieveable”s per minute from 1999 about Darryl Strawberry’s recovery from cancer. If Mike had done the full show he would have been at 195 “under the hoods.” This may or may not be a cry help.
— Mike Z, Decatur, GA

Jan 18

amazing infographic on facebook

Created by: Accounting Degree Online

Jan 09

What should I read into this targeted advertising on Pandora?

Dec 07

mattlehrer:

svpply:

“Since moving to New York I’ve been continuously hunting for what I like to call the “10-year parka.” Basically an unassuming, non-technical, weatherproof coat that will hold up to a decade of near daily winter use. It should eschew fads, break-in like a proper pair of boots, and keep me alive should I find myself huddled overnight at a gusty abandoned bus terminal.

The Isle of Man parka is the best option I’ve found.”

An epic product review by Jace.

Freemans Sporting Club — Isle of Man Parka ($200-500) - Svpply

I hope you get a cut of all the extra sales this review is going to produce, Jace.

Nov 18

An Aaron Dispatch

I’m having a day where my mind can’t keep up with my typing. I need to bullet point it out.

@eisenberg’s this am I listened to an NPR podcast about a woman in Wheaton, IL who lost a good 75k enviromental mgmt job and now works at Target for minimum wage. She’s 45 and doesn’t know what to do and sounded smart.
#Occupy has all kinds of challengers and supporters. VCs @bijan, @fredwilson, @aweissmann have all embraced it very publicly on twitter, tumblr and at last night’s tech fashion show.
Speaking of fashion show, a very glitzy fundraiser held last night for a non-profit dedicated to bringing more engineers to NYC. Essentially Evan Korth and Chris Wiggins created an economic development corporation to support the Internet scene here and everybody turned up to donate money to create more interns for our startups.
Meanwhile my 6th grader son is using google docs in school to do group work with his classmates, but nobody is teaching him to code even though a zillion articles like this one say he must.

There seems to be a massive disconnect between the tech industry and the rest of the world. SOPA is part of this. Media companies have been furious for years. Frankly, non-tech people have been confused, initimidated, resentful, angered and envious of the wealth creation that started with MSFT and has continue through Twitter. With the exception of Hedge Funds, nobody has made more money so quickly and easily.

BETABEAT just published a list of the 20 most poachable executives and most of these non-founders were making 200k plus. The industry sometimes feels like the only one we have awash in capital and open to experimentation. Most normal Americans are grinding it out in a tough economy but @arrington and Kleiner Perkins are investing in high end time share plays.

Something feels Delilloesque to me. It’s like things are slipping away a bit.

That said, here’s some good news. I’m sending my kids to codecademy to preserve their futures. At least somebody is spending time hacking education instead of that brutal problem that so much of the world faces: renting the right mansion in Cabo or Gstaad.

Nov 17

Priceless