I love watching Google trends.  Tonight I just read about the tubeless tire -- the tweel.  Terrible name, great concept.   

This weeks goal was to launch a friends and family Alpha of our first Crowd Fusion property.  I pushed myself and team extremely hard and still came up a little short of where I wanted to be.  We managed to launch a very nice Alpha site that is ready for feedback with new features coming online every day, I need to be happy with how far we've come.   The great thing about working every waking moment for 5 days is that you can really feel good about throttling back for a day.  

Tomorrow is the Shelter Island Country Fair and Chamber of Commerce Craft Show.    Carrie is a regular at the Craft Show and Audrey and I have been attending the Country Fair for 4 years running.  I've learned that you have to be in line for the awesome pulled pork sandwich by around 11:45 as the line grows fast, and have the first pick at the Bake Sale.   Audrey is anxiously anticipating the 'bouncy thing' and the sand art.  Maybe afterwards we'll go to the beach or even, dare I say, go out in the neglected boat.

 In the decision handed down today the FCC did slap Comcast on the wrist, but set the ground work for ISPs to make the decisions as to whether your internet usage is lawful.

"We also note that because consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice, providers, consistent with federal policy, may block transmissions of illegal content (e.g., child pornography) or transmissions that violate copyright law. To the extent, however, that providers choose to utilize practices that are not application or content neutral, the risk to the open nature of the internet is particularly acute and the danger of network management practices being used to further anticompetitive ends is strong."

I would be concerned if I was an ISP that if I started to filter some 'illegal' activity, that I would be liable if I didn't filter all of it.  Why can't we leave the job of law enforcement to the government agencies set up to do this.  This is really more ammunition to allow unlimited spying on individuals in their own home by large corporations.

Read Wired for their analysis of the new intrusive ISPs.  And Alley Insider's assessment of what a new bandwidth throttled world will be like.

Wow, what a week, what a team.  Code Jam NYC was a great success.  I had the pleasure of meeting everyone except Nick in person before, but much of the team has been working for more than 6 weeks with people they'd never shaken hands with.  Whenever I think of team building it always brings to mind stereotypical trust exercises and bad commercials.  Team building for Crowd Fusion is working passionately until late hours of the night, heated debates, and eating good food.

From the highlight reel:

• Judith with EpiPen in hand ready to stab me in the thigh
• Nick sticking his camera through the bars at the ESB 
• Randall the official Hole Poker
• Ryan's surprise encounter with a blast from the past
• Waiting out a downpour to get into the Kabaaesque glass box

The week left me with a few question.  Why do movie theaters have seats less than 20 feet from the screen?  Why do hotels let you book rooms with 2 beds and then always give you a single?  Why would restaurants label things as vegetarian that are cooked in fish sauce?  How do you balance a cat on your head? And what was in that chocolate mint?

On the train from Baldwin to Penn Station getting mentally prepared to have the most productive, most fun, best food, best team - Code Jam - EVER !    We still have a couple openings for our Wednesday Demos if anyone wants to get a sneak peek at our platform and our first publication, direct email me craig at crowdfusion dot com.  We'll be working hard refining the user experience during this week, and even harder meshing the editorial teams work flow with the technology that is making them super human content producers.  Looking forward to having the team thats been working together virtually for months to actually come face to face.   

I emailed my partners that the excitement is building, Brian replied building is excitement.  Manhattan here we come.

I've been hearing stories on Shelter Island of Amanda Clark and her sailing ways for years.   It was big news when she made the Olympic Team I'll bet someone will organize a parade if she medals.  It is certainly much easier to get excited about the Olympics when you know of, even through a community, someone competing.  

I remember the Olympics being a big deal to me when I was a kid, and lately I've heard things like, "we'll probably turn off cable after the olympics" and "when are the opening ceremonies".   I think I got turned off from the Olympics in 1996 when NBC was telling Yahoo! not to publish the results from the Olympics until after they aired them on TV,  and the obviously edited programming went on masquerading as live sports.   It does appear that NBC has finally embraced the Internet.  NBC Olympics not only has that great Bio of Amanda including pictures and videos, but an easy to navigate calendar of all the events.   They may have even enticed me to download a Microsoft Plugin to my Mac Book Pro so that I can watch the events I'm interested in, not the 100s of hours of drama and back story.  

Sail Amanda sail, Shelter Island and the world is watching.

Six flags might have to pull there super successful commercial because the Asian American Legal Defense thinks it is offensive.  How sad.  I saw the commercials a couple times or heard them in the back ground, never even realized or thought of the guy as 'asian'.  It was so effective that Carrie and I have been constantly rating the actions of our kids.  They'll do something mildly funny and one of us will Burst out 1 Flag No Fun.   America needs to learn to laugh again.

FBI has been able to obtain warrants to listen in on in-car conversations through the roadside assistance devices installed in luxury cars.

Yes your conversations in your OnStar installed cars can be listened to on the whim of GM or the FBI.  Yes but they need a warrant you say.  Not so, if the Clandestine Services think you've associated with any of the now 1 Million people on the Terrorist Watch list then with the new FISA bill they can watch you for up to at least 7 days at a time without warrants.

Every bit of information you submit to the digital / information world is tracked, analyzed, and recorded for later use by our  government. I imagine everyone knows this, but what they don't understand is what comes next. 99% of us don't have anything to hide from the government watching our communications and Internet usage, however after monitoring comes censorship.  The first to go will be Internet Gambling, it is such an easy target .. that will start us down the slippery slope.

If we don't tell the government now that what we do online is none of their business, we will all be subject to a neutered Internet that's as 'safe' as our air travel.

Today is my first anniversary with Crowd Fusion.  At times I'm astounded with what we accomplished in one year, at times I'm disappointed we aren't further along.  We've built a great Platform. We've prepared ourselves to launch some great brands.  We've secured funding. We've had hundreds of hours of discussions detailing where the platform is headed.  We're building a great business, quality code, and timely brands.  We've even got some worthy adversaries popping up.  One thing we haven't been able to accomplish is stop the press from calling us CrowdFusion as one word. Big Gripe Right ;-)

The thing I'm most proud of is the people we've brought on board.  Brian and I never could have imagined, when we started envisioning how to build out our Crowd Fusion team, that we would find the terrific team that we are assembling.  There were individuals we hoped would come ask to work with us, Judith Meskill and Steve Friedman.   We've been able to cherry pick some superb talent from people we've worked with more than 1 job ago like Veronique Christensen and Randall Bennett.  

The big unknown was the tech team.  We knew we'd start everyone as contractors and look for people that fit our mold.  Timing couldn't be better when we started working with Ryan Scheuermann, he was looking to get out of the contractor racket and had terrific experience building CMS structures on top of Blog Platforms.  Soon people Ryan had worked with in the past were interested in Crowd Fusion and Russell Werner joined the team.  We continue to work with great contractors as well Nicholas Hance, Kyle Sollenberger, Gary Bacon II, George Vilches, and Brian Phillips. 

This team is growing daily and they are what is making our platform and brands great. 

I should do another post about friends of Crowd Fusion.  Having people that are rooting for you is the most rewarding.   I'll never mention everyone, but thanks to the Emurse Team, Alex, Gavin, Michael, and Mike.  All of Indy Hall, Alex and Bart.  And all of Blogsmith - too many to mention.  I'd better not forget Jason Calacanis, Velocity Interactive Group, Greycroft, and Marc Andreesen.  Thank you for believing in us.

Year Two is going to kick ass.  I can't wait to launch our first vertical site.  Stay tuned.

Updated:  Thank you Christoph Khouri for being one of the most loyal friends of Crowd Fusion and for being an all around great Guy.

 OK,  I officially love my Roku box.  I don't have time to write a full review, but I just need to tell the world that they have to watch The King of Kong.  Joystiq has a great review.  Even if you aren't never dropped a quarter into a coin-op you should appreciate the determination of the film's hero to prove that he isn't a 'loser'.

 I've been having some vivid dreams this week.  I dream often, but I seldom remember them.  The other morning I was telling Carrie about my dream the night before.   It was this all about my Mother trying to sell my truck and me having to chase away potential buyers - my truck is not for sale.   There was a lot in the dream about my folks garage that was filled to the brim with boxes and constant shuffling of cars in the driveway.  

My take on the dream was how much I loved my Truck.  Carrie immediately said, "So as much as you want to move into your parent's basement like other geeks your mother doesn't want you."   I don't think I'll be telling her anymore of my dreams.

When I was growing up the best moments that I remember were had during the summer camping on the St. Lawrence River in the Thousand Islands.   It was always filled with joy as the entire family was around, we would have fishing tournaments, cook s'mores, gather round the campfire until all hours of the night, and hike the nature trails.   I remember days when getting onto a raft at one end of the Wellesley Island campgrounds and floating with the current for a mile took hours, and there was nothing I'd rather be doing.

Inevitably the current would take you to the castle ruins.  The ruins were on top of a 40 foot cliff on the top of an outcropping peninsula.  All the cool kids hung out at the ruins.  The cliffs were the gauntlet that proved you belonged with cool kids.  Don't even think of hanging if you weren't jumping.  

I never was the type to run to the top of the cliff and jump because everyone else was jumping.  I am far more analytical than that.  First take a good measure of the cliff -- 35 to 40 feet.  Next watch the way that everyone else jumps, 1, 2, 3 steps then push off (add flare here) hit the water feet first arms down.  OK, no one is coming up bloody, but that's not enough.   Go to the bottom of the cliff and do depth soundings all around the landing spot.  Looks like as long as you land out 12 feet from the base of the cliff you can't hit bottom.

Some kids just jump because everyone else jumps.  Some kids never jump -- they just don't have the stomach for it.   I analyze, validate, weigh the risks.   I ask questions and think about possible danger scenarios.   I may have missed minor opportunities by taking my time and making sure jumping was the proper course of action, but I've haven't yet jumped where I shouldn't have.  Eventually you have to take some risks,  eventually you hold your nose and JUMP !

I've been seeing an increase in desperation for people looking for PHP talent on the newsgroups I subscribe to.   Yesterday I got two clicks to my blog with the phrase trouble finding php coders.  We are doing OK with our recruitment at Crowd Fusion, but we are always on the lookout for more coders.   When I look at the coders we are working with  it is a Perl guy, a Python guy and a Java guy (all of whom can do PHP).   I've got another Java programmer who I'm going to try to convert to PHP, if that works I'm going to stop looking for PHP talent and create it myself.  There is a stigma about PHP with OO programmers, it was well founded 5 years ago, but PHP is now a quality Object Oriented language.

If you want to work with a quality team on great web projects let us know. If it doesn't work out with us, I can hook you up with some other great people I've worked with, specifically Kevin Lee at Didit, and Jason Calacanis at Mahalo.

Can something that feels so good be wrong ?

Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE
Hang the blessed DJ

Panic by The Smiths

Pandora Jam has to be the killer app of 2008 and it will most likely be the killed app of 2008. This product is so addictive it made Brian Alvey switch to a Mac.

Easter was a little early and a little cold to get into the water and go clamming this year, but I did manage to get before the end of April.  I found a remarkably good spot near a 30 ft diameter rock that rises out of the bay a good 8 feet.   I managed to get about 4 - 5 dozen clams in half an hour.  At times I was pulling 4 to 5 clams per rake for 3 and 4 rakes in a row.   The majority were larger clams so I committed to making clam chowder.   It turned out pretty good, but I need to make notes so  I can do better next time.  

1 cup chopped clams + 1 cup clam juice

1 cup diced celery

1 cup diced carrots

1 onion

1/3 lb bacon

5 cubed baking potatoes

1 small can tomato sauce

1 small can diced tomato

1 large can of corn

6 cups of water

I cut the bacon into 1 inch strips and cooked it in the bottom of the bowl.   I added the onion and cooked it to not quite carmalized, next I added the celery and carrots cook them lightly added the tomato, water and potatoes.  I cooked that at near boil added the corn when the potatoes were half cooked.  Added the clams when the potatoes were fully cooked -- let it simmer for another 10 minutes added some parsely a few herbs, pepper and salt.

Things I need to do to make it better.  Cut the bacon up smaller. Don't dice the celery so small.  Don't cook the onions quite as long.  Take the bacon out before the vegetables go in (add it back at the end).  Add some Tabasco Sauce.  Take 1 Cup of the mixture after adding the corn and puree it with a stick blender then add back to the soup.  Half the amount of corn.   Don't cut up the clams quite so small.  All in all a good first attempt at Manhattan Clam Chowder - everyone ate it and no one got poisoned.