Person Of The Social Media Week: Oleg Voss

I attended my final event of the Social Media Week yesterday at Edelman, a Zagat event, and there I spotted the Person Of The Week, food truck owner Oleg Voss.

February 15: EatUp?

Image via WikipediaJanuary 15 was the first ever World FoodSpotting Day, and I made a point to go over to Philadelphia to celebrate. It was an amazing experience. I later tweeted saying I had never had so much fun eating with perfect strangers before.

But once a year is not enough. The 15th of each month needs to be an EatUp day.

My First Smartphone Is Going To Be A Nexus S

Image via WikipediaIf Google ships me a Chrome Notebook for free, as is likely, I am going to buy me a Nexus S phone. I am a Google fanboy. I adore Steve Jobs, he is a living legend. But I have never bought an Apple product. I would like to stay with the masses. I am more of a Dell, Walmart, dollar pizza kind of guy.

Nexus S: The Best Phone Out There
Nexus S Is Da Bomb
The iPhone, Nexus One, Or Droid?

I am going to think I paid for the laptop - I do need a new laptop, I have needed one for months now, this machine has been feeling slow, it's a Toshiba Satellite from years ago - and I got the phone for free. I have to think that way because in the order of things the laptop is the one I can not do without, absolutely not.

The Chrome Notebook Needs No Anti Virus B.S.

Image via CrunchBaseChrome Notebook Pilot User?

There's nothing to infect. What are you going to infect? There is no desktop. It is like every time you start your machine, you are loading the operating system afresh.

That is such relief. The anti virus business has always felt like a scam to me. I have always felt like that annual 45 bucks ought to go to Microsoft instead and Windows ought to be free.

I told them. They did not listen. And now the Chrome OS is going to kill Windows.

Chrome Notebook Pilot User?

This morning I logged into my Gmail account and my first reaction was, oh no, my Gmail account got hacked. My inbox was flooded with emails from just one address. Looked like someone had taken over.

eRockit: Super Bike

Validation From Fred Wilson: Froth

Image via WikipediaWatch the first video here. Fred has come around to using my word: froth.

But then I have also inched a little in Fred's direction. I recently used the phrase mini bubble burst.

I think we are both still blind men trying to figure out the elephant. But at least we are trying to figure out. Most others are simply making wild jumps.

Some real wealth creation is taking place. But every new emerging sector will necessarily be accompanied by froth. That is the nature of the beast.

There will be a slew of sob stories in a few years but I don't see any imminent collapse. We are in the first year of a boom decade.

Related articles

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Fred Wilson, Soraya Darabi: Both Crazy About Music

Image via CrunchBaseFred Wilson
Soraya Darabi

Fred Wilson is the most talked about VC at this blog, and Soraya Darabi is probably the most talked about tech entrepreneur at this blog. It just happened to be that way.

Both are crazy about music.

Both are avid New Yorkers. You have to be one to know one.

Arab Focus, Microfinance Focus

Image via WikipediaWhat is happening in Egypt gives me immense hope. It feels like the Arab world is about to have its Berlin moment. If the misguided people in DC don't mess up, we will see Arab dictator after Arab dictator wiped out.

Arab Dictators Are Shaking
Egypt: A Revolution, Not A Reform Movement
How Many People Could Mubarak Kill?
Arab Dictators Will Fall Like A House Of Cards

Mubarak's fall is not about Egypt, it is about the Arab world at large. Gaddafi has to go. The Saudi king has to go. The king in Jordan has to go. The dictator president of Syria has to go. I don't even know the names of all sorts of small league motherfuckers who rule the smaller countries in the region like those countries were family property. All of them have to go. Just leave.

I am needed. I have done this before, though the scale of what is happening now is much larger than what I did in 2006. I have decided to slow down a little in terms of the running commentaries on all things tech I am used to delivering at this blog. I am going to pour more time into my other blog, Barackface. That's my politics blog.

50 Hours Into One Five Minute Pitch

I might have a major pitch/presentation to make some time next week. And I think I will be putting about 50 hours of work into it. A lot of it will be bifurcated blogging. When I talk about the state of the global microfinance industry, that is a public blog post. But then the DNA formation that is taking place for my startup, that is stuff for my private blog.

There is also the no small matter of having a slide deck. I am not a huge fan of PowerPoint presentations. You can pack more into one blog post than you can into 50 slides. But slides have their place. And people still ask for them. So what I have come up with is a hybrid model. You get a slide deck, some words and phrases there link to some of my blog posts.

Turning The Table Upside Down With Food

Cover of John LennonFood/Social = Physics, Coding = Mathematics
Project Noah: FoodSpotting's Sibling Company

Food has been a weapon for sexism for the longest time. You are a woman, you belong at home, you need to raise children, you need to be in the kitchen, you need to cook. Food.

Raising children is such a beautiful experience, John Lennon took five years out of his life to raise his son full time. But that same act can be used as a weapon of sexism. It has been.

You reject food, you reject children. You take a stand. That was one thread of feminist protests a few decades back. You don't marry.

Project Noah: FoodSpotting's Sibling Company

Image by Nic*Rad via FlickrI just showed up at Fred Wilson's blog, and read through his post for the day. I quit coffee, but have not quit Fred Wilson's blog that I visit near daily. You know I visited because I leave a comment at the bottom of every post I read. I check in the AVC community way.

So I am reading the post and I am thinking, I just found a sibling company to FoodSpotting. Instagram is a sibling company to FourSquare, Project Noah is a sibling company to FoodSpotting.

This is exciting, and underestimated. This is nothing less than a quiet revolution. My first event of the ongoing Social Media Week was the FoodSpotting/Whole Foods panel. I blogged afterwards. I started working on another post right away but never got to completing it. And I am going to cannibalized that for this post. Or maybe it will stay a separate post, my next post: Turning The Table Upside Down With Food.

Food/Social = Physics, Coding = Mathematics

Met The Sixth Bihari

Cover of Denise RichardsI showed up for what I thought was a panel discussion on Assange and Wikileaks earlier in the day, instead much of the discussion was about denial of service attacks.

But the Q and A session surfaced the sixth Bihari I have met in America. The dude went on and on about how great Bihar was but global media, social and otherwise, had not been paying attention to the glorious history and greatness of the 80 million Biharis. It was one of those and your question is moments. My man. Fellow Bihari.

Slumdog Millionaire: A Movie About My People
Third World Guy