Doriano Carta

Growing up on the mean streets of Newark, NJ we loved the night before Halloween even more than Halloween itself. That night is known as Mischief Night (some call it Hell Night but we liked the term Mischief because that’s what it was all about).
The most important element for that evening were eggs…yes, as many as we could get too. Many an egg were thrown through the years.

I’ll never forget the cold night when I got whacked in the skull with an egg hurled from a long distance in the pitch black. It made such a horrific sound as it smashed into the side of my head and splattered all over my hear. OK that wasn’t a fond memory but it’s there..part of my yute. So is getting chased by the cops after hurling eggs with some friends. We never got caught but it was close a few times.

Some of my friends liked soaping up car windows but I thought it was lame. Others liked to TP homes and trees…but again, not my bag.
I always think of this night and smile as I remember the bonding we guys did as we ventured into the night. Of course, now that I’m a dad I cringe to think of my kids ever doing what we did…still, they are good memories to me.

When I was a kid I used to watch/listen to New York Islander hockey games and get so nervous that I would draw to calm down.

Here’s one of the drawings from an Islander vs Flyers game which would become the Stanley Cup finals showdown in 1980 when the Isles would win their first of four straight Stanley Cup titles. It should have been 5 in a row but Gretzky and the Oilers got help from the NHL when they changed the format from 2-2-1-1-1 to 2-3-2 which totally did the Islanders in.

Notice my boyhood heroes…Chico Resch, Bryan Trottier, Denis Potvin and my favorite scorer, Mike Bossy who was famous as a rookie for scoring 50 goals in 50 games!

Katy Perry Makes Hot 100 History: Ties Michael Jackson’s Record with 5 number ones from same album! http://bit.ly/pnsp1G

This is exciting. I’ve been waiting for this for a few weeks. I knew she had a shot at this rare achievement.

Here’s a video playlist of all 10 songs. I call it the Katy Jackson playlist.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDAF9C699173E697E

Katy Perry’s 5 number ones:
"California Gurls" (featuring Snoop Dogg)
"Teenage Dream,"
"Firework"
"E.T." (featuring Kanye West) 
"Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)"

The late King of Pop sent five songs to No. 1 on the Hot 100 from "Bad" in 1987-88:
"I Just Can’t Stop Loving You" (with Siedah Garrett)
”Bad”
"The Way You Make Me Feel"
"Man in the Mirror"
"Dirty Diana"

Janet Jackson came extremely close to matching and even topping this achievement when she hit the top with 4 songs from Rhythm Nation 1814 and number two with 2 others songs! Talk about so close!!!

The songs were:
1. Black Cat
1. Escapade
1. Miss You Much
1. Love Will Never Do (Without You)
2. Rhythm Nation
2. Come Back to Me

I love when @ChrisBrogan blurts out “You’re doing it wrong” every once in a while on Twitter just as a friendly reminder that there isn’t one right way to do all these social things we’re doing. I think he does it as a reminder for himself more than for us. He’s right too. No matter what we do or how we do it, there will be those that will say we’re doing it wrong because we’re not doing it the same way they are. There are many common sense things that most of us agree with such as not  polluting the tweet stream with endless barrages of promotional spam but there will be many who will disagree with that as well. and so it goes.

I am writing this because I am guilty of being a member of the social media police. I know how stupid it is to ever impose one’s view of how to communicate on social platforms but every once in a while I’ve crossed the line and stuck my nose in somewhere it shouldn’t have been. of course my intentions were good but still, we all have the right to use these platforms the way we want to use them as long as they don’t go against the terms of service for each network and don’t break any crimes.

For example, I was a twitter snob at one point in time. I didn’t mean it to happen but at one point I had a 10 to 1 follower to follow ratio which is very bad. It means I only followed 1 person back out of every 10 that followed me. I don’t know how it happened but one day I realized how out of whack it was and I decided to change it. I decided to follow everyone back that followed me. If it turned out that they were spammers or just not nice, then and only then would I unfollow them. My ratio has quicky improved but it’s still not a 1 to 1 ratio because there are still a bunch of people that still follow me that I didn’t follow back way back when. I know I need to take the time to follow them all back soon. Perhaps I’ll do 10 per day?

Anyway, I mention this because I was being a social hypocrite. I see many people on twitter today with far worse ratios than mine, such as 1000 to 1 or 100,000 to 1 and it baffles the mind. I wonder why they even bother coming to a social network when all they want to do is broadcast. They merely want to shout from their virtual bullhorn and feel like a dictator giving a speech to the huddled masses. It used to irk me to no end but now I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t matter one bit. They aren’t doing it wrong…and I’m not doing it wrong. We’re just doing it the way we want to do it, period.

The old analogy of twitter being like a cocktail party is actually pretty good. It is like a big party and each of us enjoys a party in our own unique way. Some like to be the life of the party and garner as much attention as possible while others prefer to lurk in the shadows and observe from a safe comfortable distance and most like to meet new interesting people and have small groups of conversations. None of those methods are right or wrong, per se. We have the right to mix and mingle or not do it at all. Heck, many choose not to even attend the party and you know what? That’s fine too.

One final note: no matter what you do, in the end, you’re doing it wrong in somebody’s eyes but it doesn’t matter at all as long as it’s your way and you’re enjoying it.

I tried to install the Google toolbar to my “Google” Chrome browser and got this most unexpected error message.

Google toolbar requires Firefox 2.0 or later.

Would you like to download the latest version of Firefox?

Not only is it idiotic that Google’s toolbar doesn’t work on its very own Google Chrome browser, but it even promotes the Firefox browser and even offers to take you there! To top off this experience of Epic Fail, Google has had over 3 years to make their toolbar work with its Chrome browser and still has not made it happen. It’s rather mindboggling when you consider all of the resources they have in manpower and money.

Yes, they have many more important bugs to fix and features to add (and promising startups to acquire and retire) but this is a perfect example of what happens when a cutting edge organization gets big and fat. They have gotten sloppy and they’ve lost their focus. It sure reminds me of another giant search engine outfit that become huge and stupid and lost their way (Yahoo).

Look, I like a lot of Google services (Gmail, Tasks, search is still good, etc.) but they have also suffered the same problems that have plagued other giants such as IBM and Microsoft. Their development teams have become separate silos of services instead of working together to build products that work better together. Remember how Microsoft Outlook had nothing to do with Microsoft Outlook Express? Google needs to tear down their walls, literally, and introduce their development teams. I highly recommend that they all have a movie night and watch the wonderful documentary “The Pixar Story” which is a blueprint on how to work as a team…and how to get a group of talented people to create beautiful things together. It’s currently streaming on Netflix right now.

While I’m bashing Google, I’d like to also suggest a few other things, in case anyone from Google is listening. They should start by rebuilding the atrocious address book in gmail by examining the gorgeous work done by the xobni programmers who’ve built a lovely plugin called Xobni for gmail. They should also do much more with Google Profiles by building a social network around that. Also needed is a Project management system. Their Google Tasks is excellent but it also has been trumped by several other small startups. They can merge tasks with google docs and gmail and its new Google Projects service and add the new social network from Google Profiles and then we would have a serious Facebook killer.

I decided to update my popular 12 Tweets of Christmas from a couple of years ago. It’s amazing how much has changed in just a couple of years online, huh? Hope you like it.

12 Tweets of Christmas 2010
On the first tweet of Christmas
my followers sent to me
an invite to a startup.

On the second tweet of Christmas
my followers sent to me
Two Failin’ Whales
And an invite to a startup.

On the third tweet of Christmas
my followers sent to me
Three check-ins
Two Failin’ Whales
And an invite to a startup.

On the fourth tweet of Christmas
my followers sent to me
Four Groupons
Three check-ins
Two Failin’ Whales
And an invite to a startup.

On the fifth tweet of Christmas
my followers sent to me
Five Facebook Apps
Four Groupons
Three check-ins
Two Failin’ Whales
And an invite to a startup.

On the sixth tweet of Christmas
my followers sent to me
Six iPhones ringing
Five Facebook Apps
Four Groupons
Three check-ins
Two Failin’ Whales
And an invite to a startup.

On the seventh tweet of Christmas
my followers sent to me
Seven laptops crashing
Six iPhones ringing
Five Facebook Apps
Four Groupons
Three check-ins
Two Failin’ Whales
And an invite to a startup.

On the eighth tweet of Christmas
my followers sent to me
Eight angry birds flying
Seven laptops crashing
Six iPhones ringing
Five Facebook Apps
Four Groupons
Three check-ins
Two Failin’ Whales
And an invite to a startup.

On the ninth tweet of Christmas
my followers sent to me
Nine Stalkers stalking
Eight angry birds flying
Seven laptops crashing
Six iPhones ringing
Five Facebook Apps
Four Groupons
Three check-ins
Two Failin’ Whales
And an invite to a startup.

On the tenth tweet of Christmas
my followers sent to me
Ten teens a-texting
Nine Stalkers stalking
Eight angry birds flying
Seven laptops crashing
Six iPhones ringing
Five Facebook Apps
Four Groupons
Three check-ins
Two Failin’ Whales
And an invite to a startup.

On the eleventh tweet of Christmas
my followers sent to me
Eleven bloggers blogging
Ten teens a-texting
Nine Stalkers stalking
Eight angry birds flying
Seven laptops crashing
Six iPhones ringing
Five Facebook Apps
Four Groupons
Three check-ins
Two Failin’ Whales
And an invite to a startup.

On the twelfth tweet of Christmas
my followers sent to me
Twelve spammers spamming
Eleven bloggers blogging
Ten teens a-texting
Nine Stalkers stalking
Eight angry birds flying
Seven laptops crashing
Six iPhones ringing
Five Facebook Apps
Four Groupons
Three check-ins
Two Failin’ Whales
And an invite to a startup!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everybody!

Pai

Here’s a mock movie poster I made from the one for FUEL. Just added the BP logo. Checkout the creative new logos others have created for BP.