One of the best bikes I’ve ever ridden.

I love my Triumph Street Triple, in the last few months it’s almost completely displaced my Spyder as my vehicle of choice (basically, unless I need a vehicle with a trunk or there’s heavy wind or I’m driving a long distance I’l probably take the Striple).  So you can imagine how pleased I was to learn that a startup out of Oregan called Brammo had launched an all-electric motorcycle whose ergonomics and design are overtly based on the Street Triple.  It’s called the Empulse and based on everything I’ve seen it looks like a very solid machine.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not in a hurry to replace the Striple, it’s an absolutely awesome little bike.  At 675 hp it’s lightweight, agile, and absolutely perfect for maneuvering in heavy bay area traffic for my commute to the city.  48-52 mpg is nothing to sneeze at either!  I’m planning to ride it for years to come.

The only thing I don’t love about it, in fact, is that even though it’s sipping a lot less fuel then a typical cage (read: car for those of you who don’t ride), it’s still ultimately dependent on a fossil fuel infrastructure that’s completely and irredeemably unsustainable in the long term.  The real question isn’t if we’re going going to stop using petroleum it’s when.

The two big hurdles for electric vehicles are price and range.  Currently, the Brammo Empulse starts at around $17k and the Empulse R (which like the Street Triple R adds improved suspension) is almost $19k.  The Street Triple by comparison is just under $10k.  Given that the gas bike gets damn good mileage and it’d take forever to make back the price difference in fuel savings I just can’t justify making the jump to electric.  For now.  As gas prices continue to climb and electric vehicle manufacturer’s are increasingly able to scale and bring down costs I expect that to change.  So while I can’t justify dropping $20k for a new bike when I already have 2 monthly payments, I feel comfortable saying that when I’m ready to buy my next bike in a year or two I’ll be buying electric.

That just leaves range as the big consideration.  A century of petroleum-based transportation means the US has a pretty well developed fuel delivery system in place for fossil fuels.  Fortunately, the landscape for Electric vehicles isn’t nearly as bleak as you might think it is.  In fact I’d go so far as to say it’s either at or rapidly approaching the tipping point where “where do I charge this thing” will no longer be a consideration.  Plugshare, a new-ish web/mobile app for EV drivers has a great tool that should help drive this point home:

Like most of the best new stuff on the net, Plugshare is partly curated content, partly crowdsourced.  Individuals who find charging stations can list them along with descriptions and ratings.  They even allow users to take the social aspects of the app into the real world – member/users who are willing to share their home outlets with a friendly driver can list their address and what hours they’ll be around and available.  In the Bay Area there are enough public charging stations you’ll probably never need to plug in in a friendly strangers driveway, but in rural areas I can see this being a huge win for EV drivers.

I suppose the moral of the story is that, as usual, the world is changing and, as usual, social and crowd-sourced tools are making that transition friendlier and more human-scale.  I think it’s pretty cool.

There’s no shortage of people who claim to be experts on Social media – I have several close family members who think that the fact that they waste time on Facebook means they’re qualified to list “Social Media” as a skill on their Resumes.  Not trying to be mean here folks, but no.  It doesn’t.  Social Media, as experienced by the end user, is a very very different beast then Social as understood by folks who make their living designing and building the promotions and marketing campaigns designed to attract the attention of end users. Think of it like the difference between baking a cake and eating one – it doesn’t matter how many cakes you’ve eaten, the only way you’ll learn to bake is by baking.

The question many businesses are facing today is how to distinguish the bakers from all the people with crumbs on their faces.  It’s not like there’s a certification you can check after all!  And that my friends is the purpose of this post.   What follows are a few tips designed to help you sort out the actual Social Media experts from the people who just play Farmville or Mafia Wars all day.  You’re welcome.   Continue Reading »

I’m kind of a radical.  I say “kind of” because I’m fairly sure that at 32 my days of living in treesits and getting teargassed at endless pointless protests that don’t change anything are pretty much over.  But I learned a lot along the way and these days I tend to see those lessons or principles as the most valuable part of the ethos.  The old lefty idea of a messianic revolution that will solve all our problems is pretty much completely discredited.   The good news is that there hundreds of mini revolution happening around us all the time.   And the more experience I get in the business world the more strongly I believe that horizontally organized peer groups are more efficient and productive then the standard top-down management structure that typifies governments and most businesses.

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I wrote about this a few months back, but as of today it’s (sort of) live – Facebook Graph Search is now in limited Beta testing: https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch

So what’s the big deal? This is search customized on the Facebook graph so instead of searching for widgets, news, photos, etc and getting a list of everything on the net; you can search for widgets, news, photos, etc that your friends have uploaded, shared, or “Liked.”

The upshot? Flat earthers, creationists, and climate-change deniers never again need to be worried about pesky science articles showing up in their search results and uninformed people of all stripes can now rest safely inside their own little echo chambers.  That’s probably a Bad Thing.  It’s also suddenly a hell of a lot easier to find the information that your friends have shared with you but you might have missed or forgotten about. Assuming that you place some value on that content this is a Good Thing.  It’s anyone’s guess whether the good will outweigh the bad but it makes me a bit uneasy.

This is either the single biggest innovation in Search technology since Google or it’s a sign of the end times. Or possibly both. Either way it’s big news for anyone who works with SEO, Social, or internet marketing of any kind.

Back when I was in college studying Political Science I spent a lot of time (or at least a lot more then I expected going into the program) studying statistics and data.  In retrospect that was a good thing.  Knowing how to get reliable data from focus groups, how to write a survey and avoid bias in my questions,  and how to accurately analyze the bulk data resulting from that survey have all turned out to be very valuable in my work managing user communities.  I’ve found myself thinking about data even more then usual in the last month as I went through the interview process and started my new position at Kontagent. Continue Reading »

This is a new recipe, I’m still working on the proportions but it came out very nicely the first couple times I’ve prepared it.   Continue Reading »

It’s been 6 months and 10k miles since I brought home my shiny new black Can-Am Spyder RS so I figure it’s about time to write about it. After all, I can’t stop at a stoplight or a gas station without people giving me compliments and asking questions. Well, here are the answers.

The first point I want to hit is that most reviewers haven’t really done the Spyder justice. There are a fair number of reviews out there available, but most of them are written by people used to riding a 2-wheeled motorcycle who’ve had the Spyder for a couple hours or a couple days at most so they haven’t had a chance to get over how different the Spyder is.  Continue Reading »

The tech startup world, as anyone who’s spent time in it knows, is a weird place. It’s a strange little bubble universe that’s absolutely awash in cash while the rest of the economy struggles and stumbles along, but the people you might expect to be raking in the cash usually aren’t. Case in point – the people who’ve benefited the most from the tech boom in SF over the last decade are arguably the city’s landlords. There’s a city full of people with 6-figure incomes who each spend half – or more – of their take home pay on insanely overpriced tiny apartments. According to some studies I’ve seen recently (sorry, I can’t find the link atm, will try to add it in an edit later) rents across most of the city have doubled in the past year. And they weren’t exactly cheap to start with! Continue Reading »

I’ve written several times before about the ongoing merger of Search and Social and I expect it’s something I’ll write on a good deal more over time because I think it’s one of the biggest industry changes we’re facing and has the potential to fundamentally change the way people find information online.  Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg told the world I was right.  Not that he mentioned me or anything, I would be incredibly surprised if he even knows I exist, but in his first post-IPO interview he talked at length about Facebook’s plans for Search. Continue Reading »

So last night I had one of the lamest expensive dining experiences I can recall.  I won’t go into the details because they’re all in the Yelp review but basically I paid $100 for a nice dinner out at a place called Casa Dell Matador with a couple old friends only to have terrible service and poorly prepared food spoil it.

Sure I know, it’s not the end of the world by any stretch.  Shit happens and on the scale of issues that people around the world face it’s not even a blip.  First world problem for sure.  But it does provide a useful opportunity to talk about one of my favorite subjects – the way Social Media is transforming the service economy. Continue Reading »