I'm photo blogging my trip to Paris... if you're in Europe and thinking of going to Le Web 3 I highly recommend it... amazing event. I will in Paris Monday, and the event on Tuesday and Wednesday, doing meetings on Thursday, and flying back to LA on Friday. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasoncalacanis/Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
My MacBook wifi started having problems a year ago. I blogged it, I searched message boards, and I talked to dozens of folks with the same problem. Mac wouldn't even recognize their was a problem. Then I gave Apple more money for OS Leopard (or whatever this is called) and wiped my system clean. Did a complete reinstall. The wifi worked WORSE! Apple will still not recognize there is a problem. I'm in the Starbucks here at LAX airport and my Mac can't connect to tmobile--which I pay for. So, I'm forced to use my Spring EVDO card--which I pay for. This is the second major issue I've had with a Mac... the last one felt like it was going to light my jeans on fire. Combine this with bricking iPhones and I'm starting to wonder: is Apple getting cocky? Why do I need to go to genius bar to get help with wifi. Shouldnt that "just work?" Isn't that the promise of Apple in the first place... it just works! Then again, I love surfing the webwith my iPhone and downloading podcasts with iTunes. I just don't like the Apple laptops.I guess I should just buy the sub-note book when it comes out. :-)Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
We just started paying for NING's premium service. Why?In order to take off the Google Adsense skyscraper on the right and replace it with our new Mahalo Daily skyscraper that let's folks click and subscribe to Mahalo Daily.Why can't I put this skyscraper on Facebook?!?! Oh yeah, that's right... Feel free to use the skyscraper on your site if you like it. Very cool! Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
I've been posting photos to Facebook a couple of times a day. As a reader of my blog you don't get them if you're not friends with me on Facebook. This is your fault, not mine.... you are the one who won't take the time to be friends with me. Really. Everyone knows i accept every single person who asks... so, get moving!http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=504598293No puppy photos for you until you add me. :-)best jPermalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
What's the most deceptive, scariest, and/or horrible thing you've seen online recently? Deceptive PayPerPost splogs? Malware doing clickfraud? Hidden affiliate links? Spyware aimed at kids?Please send me your worst examples of bad behavior online... corporate, individual, web 2.0, or otherwise. jason at calacanis dot com (or in comments below). Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
As folks to this blog know I dropped 25 pounds over the past 18 months, and I'm still looking to drop the final 10. It's not easy, but it's important. The folks in the How To group over at Mahalo, in addition to all the FOOD-related how to articles--have done a great "How To Lose Weight" article that's worth checking out. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
It's Master Lodwick day here at CDC (Calacanis dot com). Here's the most accurate description of Gawker Media I've ever read: Gawker's premise is "people are bad". It acts as if all humans are inherently awful. Any achievement is framed as an accident; a distraction from the achiever's underlying depravity. This worldview is directly at odds with our city's best and brightest. Nick, it won't be easy to recruit someone better than Emily and Choire; as the months march on, the pool of creative youngsters who are willing to turn themselves into professional assholes will shrink. If you would like to reverse Gawker's premise and turn it into something else entirely, we should talk. A publication that celebrates excellence instead of negating it could be a big hit in the near future.In fact, this is better description of Nick Denton than Gawker itself. Nick clearly was not loved enough as a baby, and was frequently teased as a child I'm told. He was odd and awkward as a young adult, and even today his cool facade only covers up 80% of his true need: to be loved--by anyone. The model of love Nick knows best is to throw hate and scorn out in the world and try to win back the people you alienate. When Nick attacks you it's flirting... he's blowing you little kiss from across the room, or giving you a sultry glance while on his way to powder his nose. Nick has turned his life of scorn into a publishing model. Smacking people down is the quickest way to get them to call you--and Nick is staring at his phone right now waiting for a call. After slamming someone, in Nick's mind, you simply convert their scorn--and sometimes fear--into a relationship. Most of Nick's friends are people he's beaten down with his blogs in fact. The result of this is that Nick's inner circle of friends are people who, in fact, distrust and feel sorry for him. Everyone who's worked for him has learned not to hate him, but in fact pity him. Denton is our Grendel--our collective Gollum.We love you Nick, you can stop lashing out!xoxoxox Jason* [ Gosh, sometime I wish I was still running Weblogs, Inc. :-) ]Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
In agreement with Master Lodwick on this one. Happy the kid got a pay day, but for some reason it feels sad--exploitive in fact. I think it's the fact that they actually drenched him in chocolate, which would be like drenching Bono in blood for a remix of Sunday Bloody Sunday to celebrate new no-stick Band Aids. This isn't a rebel song, this is Chocolate Rain.Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Wow... Mahalo Daily is off to an AMAZING start. We've done 15 shows and well over 400k views already (Blip.Tv stats below which don't include syndication to Facebook and YouTube). The shows in the archive keep growing, and the new shows are getting better and better. We're about to hit 1,000 members of the Facebook group as well! Not to shabby. We set the goal of getting to 100k views per day and we're 15-20% of the way there already. That's amazing. We've started talking to some partners who can help us with that goal. Who do you think the top players are who could deliver 100k viewers a day instantly?YouTube/GoogleAOLYahooMSNMySpaceCBSABCNBCSeems like the startups can help you grow, but can any of these deliver serious traffic (defined as over 10,000 views a day over a sustained period)?!?Rev3PodShowPodTechBlip.TVVimeoInterested in hearing who you think we left off this list.Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Travel is one of our strongest categories on Mahalo. We really crush machine search and portal approaches with our pages, and folks tell me all the time that they come to Mahalo when they are planning a trip. Now that we've done:CITYNAME HotelsCITYNAME ToursCITYNAME Vacation For the major cities, we're experimenting with two more types of pages: CHEAP HOTELS CITYNAMEandthe actual names of major hotels with pricing details. What do you guys think of these pages:Bellagio Hotel and Caesars PalaceLas Vegas HotelsCheap Hotels New York, Cheap Las Vegas Hotels and Cheap Flights New YorkYou might think it takes a long time to put something like the table below together, but it's about an hour of work. If 10,000 folks a year do this research already putting a human on the task for one hour makes sense. It really demonstrates how to get the best price, and it's a starting point for folks to share their travel tips with other folks (i.e. we figure out how who has the best price and what discounts work best and that inspires other folks to share their tips with us, and we can add those tips to the page). Thoughts?How would you make these pages better?Would you use a page like this?Would you send your mom, brother, kid, etc. (non-tech savvy person) to these pages?How do you find the best travel deals? Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Remember, if we don't have a tag you want please blog/twitter/delicious with @MahaloToDo in your post/tweet and we will get on it for you. We've done a bunch of these for folks and it really is no big deal since we're plowing through 1,000+ pages a week. Of course, don't ask for something uber-obscure because that's what machine search is best for (i.e. long tail results). Human powered search works best for one, two, and then three word searches (i.e. Paris, Paris Hotels, etc. are all something we will have or get to, but not "paris hotel deals in the 8th district that allow dogs"). Oh yeah... follow the Twitter account we setup at http://www.twitter.com/mahalotodo/ Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
We're covering the republican youtube debate at Mahalo tonight at 8PM EST/5pm PST... check this page often!http://www.mahalo.com/Republican_YouTube_Debate_Live_CoveragePermalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
