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Gawker for Colleges July 3, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Web 2.0, Money, Ideas, Gawker , 3comments

If you follow SamPurtill.com I’m sure you know that I’m a huge fan of Gawker Media and anything Nick Denton touches. I’ve been kicking this idea around for awhile and felt like publishing it because 1) ideas are cheap and 2) the amount of energy/passion required to execute on this idea are so great that I think the only people that could do it need to contact me. Here are my thoughts.

College Gawker

Overview:
Basis of the idea comes from what we’ve seen Gawker do. There is a huge market for a college gossip blogs with campus reporters. There are several issues that would need researching before launching the company, mostly on the guidelines for what the reporters aren’t allowed to write about (preferably nothing, I don’t believe in censorship).

The Problem:
I think the best way to gather gossip in college right now is through Facebook. Gossip news is the most addicting kind of news because people are infatuated with the lives of others (instead of living their own).

The Solution:
Instead of letting Facebook decide what comes into the News Feed, why couldn’t you hire a few reporters to create news feeds for each college? Although Facebook will report on only the people you let in your Friends list, this would be much more interesting because the reporting would be more unique/funnier/original/HUMAN.

Reporters:
Hire 3-4 students to be reporters. Have 1 managing editor. For the first few reporters, try hiring sophomores/juniors as they would be better for getting to know the audience (as opposed to seniors who are leaving and freshman who don’t know enough people yet). Hire reporters that are well connected, have a large following on Facebook, attend all the parties. Hire from various social crowds.

Reporting Guidelines:
Minimum of 2 posts per day on weekdays. On weekends have 1 reporter make all the posts (SPIEGELMAN!). Posts of all different sizes, whatever drives pageviews. Controversial posts are good. Posts with pictures are better. Posts with videos are even better than controversial posts with pictures.

Reporter Topics:
Party Report. Fameballs. Caption Contest. Drunk People. Fights. So Indie. The Brotherhood. We Read The News So You Don’t Have To. Religious Fanatics. Sorority Girls. Hipsters. Emo Kids. The 90’s Called. Valley Girls. Fanboys. Nerds. Rumors. Someone Needs To Graduate. Dorm Stories. Pure Racism.

Reporter Pay Scheme:
Reporters are paid per amount of views. Every 1k PERMALINK (very important) pageviews the reporter gets $6-7 (depending on how the ad/promotion dollars come out). Also paid a base salary (at the beginning $1-200/mo), but this is contingent on having a following on the site (can’t be paying reporters with a dead site).

Commenters:
Anyone with a school address would be allowed to comment on their school’s blog. Anyone else that would like to comment has to audition, and if the reporters like them they can become a regular. Just like Gawker, commenters can be followed and have friends.

Technology:
Would need to program a simple blogging platform. Record all unique page views to each post. Run a cron job every 10 minutes that updates the # of page views on a post. Posts, comments, users, star commenters, followers, etc. Very simple. Could even use movable type.

How is this going to make money?
Some ideas
1) A hardcore/highly targeted audience is worth a ton of money — more than just the ad dollars that can come from the page views. The INFLUENCE you can have on these people.
2) Using the influence you have on the readers, you can begin to promote parties/events that are going on around the school. Do deals with the event organizers saying for every 100 people that show up, certain amount of money would go to us. Could be big for concert/party promotions around campus that need a minimum amount of people show up to break even

Seeding the network:
The hardest part about this idea will be the beginning of it at each campus. How are you going to get those first 1000 that follow/comment? What’s going to draw them? How will you get the word out? Several ideas
- Controversial posts that get in the news. Mainstream news.
- Be the first to break all the stories around campus, beat mainstream news.
- Post videos/pictures about popular people, promote like crazy on Facebook
- Facebook/MySpace promotion - sharing links, etc.
- Advertising in school newspaper
- Advertising around school - putting up posters/flyers in dorm rooms and apartments
- Advertise on school website (if allowed)
- Events for “elite” commenters
- Slow and steady will win. Will have a very hard time first 4-6 months I think, but after you get your initial commenting users things will start flying. More important than viewers is commenters, because commenters will make the site GREAT.

Downside: defamation lawsuits, getting kicked out of school. I’m sure there are loopholes and ways to get around these laws, would consult a lawyer about it.

Highly doubt I’ll ever do something like this but if I do… Well, you saw it here first.

Set movieclip default properties in flash June 26, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Flash, ActionScript , add a comment

I had to write a function to reset any movieclip in Flash. It’s very simple — you have an array with all the default properties you want to have in the reset. Then you pass any movieclip to the setDefaultProperties function to set the defaults. Now whenever you want to reset the movieclip, just pass it as the first parameter to resetMovieClip.

Done.


var aDefaultProps:Array = new Array('_width', '_height', '_x', '_y', '_alpha');


function setDefaultProperties(mMovieClip:MovieClip):Void {
  for(sProperty in aDefaultProps) {
    mMovieClip['default' + aDefaultProps[sProperty]] = mMovieClip[aDefaultProps[sProperty]];
  }
}


function resetMovieClip(mMovieClip:MovieClip):Void {
  for(sProperty in mMovieClip) {
    if (sProperty.substr(0, 8) == 'default_') {
      mMovieClip[sProperty.substr(7)] = mMovieClip[sProperty];
    }
  }
}

Obama Will Win June 25, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Politics, Money , 7comments

This post is more about media control than who I support in the upcoming election. I will be voting for McCain since he’s not going to rape the rich but dislike both candidates equally (sorry grandpa).

You can’t put a price on the power to control people. Look at history up until the last few decades - the ability to influence a large group of people was very limited due to the distribution constraints. The most widespread form of media prior to TV was the newspaper. If you controlled the papers, you could have your way in that region. Then came the TV and with it a larger market to penetrate. Then came the media conglomerates who bought up networks, newspapers, magazines, and of course, MySpace. Which brings us to today where we have Sumner Redstone and Rupert Murdoch at the healm of two of the most influential media companies that have ever existed. News Corp alone has a media reach of over 4.2 billion people - yes, that was a “B”. (wikipedia this if you think I’m lying)

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the political bias the networks have - CBS, NBC, ABC are all extremely liberal. The only right wing network is FOX, which is on the extreme neo-con end of right wing (makes conservatives look like idiots). The big story this election that hasn’t got nearly enough coverage is Rupert Murdoch and who he is supporting. The man that owns the only right wing network, a flurry of newspapers and - yes this will be important - MySpace.

I’ve been following Rupert Murdoch in this upcoming election since I think he is the only media mogul that matters in the US. He controls what FOX News gets to say, and since it is the only right wing network out there, whoever Murdoch puts his weight behind is going to get a good 50% of the vote. A few weeks ago, he threw his weight behind Obama with a New York Post article about him. The NY Post is a trashy publication, but when asked if he had influenced the editors to put Obama on it at the D6 Conference Murdoch said “yes” without even flinching. Now I’m not sure if this was meant to be a joke or of Murdoch is actually supporting Obama in the upcoming election.

It got me thinking. Murdoch has backed the Republican party for the last century (the guy’s old), what would make him switch right now? It could be very simple. Did McCain block a business deal that Murdoch tried to do in the past? Did McCain go after Murdoch for something he did in the past? It could be complicated to (I wouldn’t know where to start). Maybe Murdoch and Obama have an agreement if Obama becomes the next president (Obama passes some exceptions to anti-trust laws?). Whatever it was, I’m sure if Murdoch decides to back Obama it will have to do with something McCain did to Murdoch in the past.

No matter what you think about FOX news, it does have a lot of influence over conservatives since it is the only station they can turn to where they aren’t constantly maligning President Bush and the Republican party. I know everyone thinks they’re so smart and have the power to form their own opinions, but we’re talking about middle America here. This isn’t San Francisco or New York City that McCain needs (he’ll lose them anyways), it’s the states that always vote Republican but could flip this year if News Corp. decides to put it’s money on Obama.

In the coming weeks we’ll see who Murdoch ends up supporting, but if he decides to back Obama, a win for John McCain will be impossible. I will say this once:

Whoever Rupert Murdoch backs for the 2008 presidency will win.

Explosive productivity June 18, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Life, Advice , 4comments

I think I have a condition of sorts. In the last few months I’ve noticed that I am either really motivated and get a lot of stuff done, or have no motivation at all and am useless. I see it now more than ever because one of the guys I work with is really consistent with how he gets work done. I like to think of my condition as “explosive productivity”.

Take the following example:

I try to consistently do a weekly review on Sunday night or Monday morning and write a todo list for everything that needs to be accomplished in the upcoming week. The weeks that where I do these weekly reviews I always cross everything off the list and have extremely productive weeks. But there are weeks where I have no motivation to do a weekly review (it’s about 1 in 4 now, used to be 1 in 3 so I’m improving). In these weeks I have no direction and am generally pretty lazy about everything - work, communicating with people, even making my bed. I call these my recovery weeks where I realize I’m still 19 and not a machine (yet). They’re quite humbling.

I’ve noticed similar behavior in a lot of people that I’ve gotten to know in Silicon Valley. I feel like there is a perception about a lot of entrepreneurs that says you should be working 24/7 to make a startup successful, but everyone is wired differently. Myself? I can’t work for more than 4 weeks straight without having a “recovery week”. As time goes on I’ve been able to build up more and more stamina, but I have a hard time seeing myself becoming a machine. My logic behind this is as follows: If I can get done in 1 week what takes most people 2 weeks, I should have an explosive 3 weeks and then take a 1 week break to recover and get ready for the next 3. I am tossing the word “recover” around without defining it - by it I mean a week where you’re not at your productivity peak. Maybe you’re at 1/2 of your normal productivity. Whatever it is, this week should be spent planning what the next 3-4 weeks will be like.

I’ve read a lot of books on productivity. The best one I ever read was How To Get Things Done by David Allen. Halfway through the book I slipped a bookmark in it and threw it under my bed, never to pick it up again - kind of ironic. How to get things done eh? :) I’ve come to the sad conclusion that no matter how many productivity books I read, none of them are made specifically for me. They’re made for the “general public”. I think these books are similar to health diets — they last for a few months but aren’t sustainable in the long term for people with strong patterns (like myself).

I have applied methods that the books have taught here and there — one of my favorite is the 2 minute rule that David Allen talks about in his book. If you can get the task done within the next 2 minutes, just get it done and out of your system. Another one is writing everything down (I have a habit of sending myself emails via BlackBerry when I’m not around a computer). I’ve found that this takes a lot of my perceived stress away, because I know if I write something down I won’t forget it. Thinking that I forgot something is where a big part of my stress always coems from, so I’m glad I’ve solved that. But by and large none of these productivity books have boosted my productivity more than methods that I’ve found myself (the recovery week being my best example).

I hope that one day I will figure out how to work non stop for several months at a time - until then I’ll need my recovery weeks here and there.

What are some of the things that make you productive?

Making the switch to Apple June 12, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Apple , 16comments

I finally sold out and bought a MacBook Pro the other day to see what all the hype was about. I am coming from three years of exclusively using IBM ThinkPads (well, Lenovo now). I haven’t used a tower computer since 10th grade so I think it’s safe to say that I’m going to be using laptops/tablets for the foreseeable future. Coming from a ThinkPad is hard — my ThinkPad crashed only once, when I accidentally deleted a hidden 13KB file in the root C directory that deemed the machine useless. I took it to the Geek Squad and they were able to fix it, which is cool cause those guys are completely useless. I’ve been using the MB Pro for the last two days, so here are my initial thoughts on it.

This review is really critical because I’m going through withdrawls from my ThinkPad.

The first thing I will bring up is the fact that this thing gets so hot I could make breakfast on top of it if I flipped it over. This is COMPLETELY unacceptable, I can’t believe the FCC (or whatever body governs products here in the US) let Apple release a computer that could get to the temperatures that mine has already gotten to in the last few days. It has gotten so hot that I can’t even type on the keyboard, which ruins my entire experience with the machine. I’ve talked to a few friends and they tell me to put it on a desk, so I’m trying that out now (was on my lap on top of the Lapinator before). My three year old ThinkPad still has a longer battery life and has never gotten half as hot. I also think it’s weird that this flaw didn’t get much bashing in the media, if a Windows laptop had the problem it would be all over the place. SO besides that rant, here is what I think about the rest of it. Probably the worst part, since I am already a pretty sweaty person, IT MAKES MY PALMS SWEAT. Up there on the annoying scale with babies crying on airplanes right before they land.

The computer is extremely fast, has slowed down in Photoshop editing some photos (I shoot in RAW). I have never cared much about speed because I don’t edit movies/audio, and I don’t mind waiting a few seconds for PS to render things. The hard drive is 250GB so I’ll probably have to get an external drive pretty soon - when are they going to have TB drives in laptops? Better be soon.

The mousepad on the MB Pro is a piece of CRAP, I’ll take the ThinkPad’s one any day. And it doesn’t have the little track ball that the ThinkPad had, I’m already missing that a ton. Also, the Apple mouses are the worst designed products I’ve EVER used. Sure they look nice, but coming from a Logitech mouse that is made for *human hands*, this thing is like using a horse vs a Lamborghini.

Ok. Take a deep breath. My positive review begins here.

The software. Easiest installations I’ve ever run through (literally, I ran through them). It takes a good 15 seconds to install anything (unless you’re installing Creative Suite). I love the dock at the bottom because I really only use 3-4 programs heavily, so I can bring those up any time. I am in love with WriteRoom, this software that lets you turn the screen black and gives you the entire screen to write. Really liberating.

AThe software runs so smoothly, it’s kind of weird. In Windows you’re used to things crashing every few hours, you kind of expect it. I become addicted to pressing CTRL+S (save shortcut) on everything I worked on in fear of a APPLICATION NOT RESPONDING error. Still haven’t hit that on this machine, and I’ve had a lot of apps open at once. Also really liberating.

Everything looks so much prettier. Aesthetically this whole experience is beautiful, and I’m sure that’s what Jobs set out to do with OSX. Job well done.

Overall this thing is awesome, very glad that I got it. This review does a lot more bashing than it should, but I promise you I really like this thing. But for the record: I’m not buying into the Apple hype at ALL. It’s just a computer at the end of the day, and someone is going to come along pretty soon and out-innovate Apple’s OS and all the fanboys will jump on that bus. Congratulations.

Conclusion: I can finally say I’m a Mac user, but will probably never say I’m a Fanboy.

P.S.: I still love you ThinkPad. No really, I’m still going to use you when I get tired of my fingers getting singed.

UPDATE: Thanks to Dustin Curtis, I was able to find smcFanControl 2.1.2 which allows me to set the minimum speed of the fans. Already works, so no problems with the heat anymore, yay!

Living? May 31, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Life , 2comments

I said that I was going to write one essay/post each week after returning from Romania… I’m back now, so there’s no more excuses to putting it off.

I’ve been busier in the last few months with work/family/friends/activities than in any other time in my life. Being busy can be tiring every now and then, but I can say that this has been the most rewarding and happiest time of my life. I could live like this.

In a previous post, I said being well rounded was a bad excuse for mediocrity. My favorite thing about blogging is the fact that I can go back and find my all my uninformed blog posts from the last two years - it’s a nice way to see some of what I have learned in such a short period of time. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am uninformed about nearly everything I have an opinion on due to my limited experiences and knowledge. But I’m not going to let the knowledge of my limited knowledge (make sense?) stop me from voicing my opinions/thoughts here. For the record - I take it back: being well rounded isn’t an excuse for mediocrity - it means you have your crap together. If you can be good at several things simultaneously, it says a lot about you. For example, if you are a great sprinter and published scientist, I can make the assumption that you know how to manage your time pretty well.

Now I’m not saying that I’m well rounded, I’ve got the next 30 years to get there, but I’m starting to work on it. For example, here are some of the things I’ve been able to do in the last three weeks: been to quite a few Giants games, learned how to sail (next up: cooking), traveled to Romania for a week, spent a day with a former refugee from Rwanda, and spent a lot of time thinking about what really matters to me and what I want to accomplish.

When I stepped on the plane to Romania a lot of thoughts began to run through my head. The first were about my immediate security - is this plane safe, are there terrorists. I immediately wrote those fears off because I knew that the pilots were going to do everything in their power to keep the plane from crashing - they value their lives as much/if not more that I value mine. And the chances of a terrorist hijacking an airplane is so infinitesimal that I’d probably have a better chance of winning the lottery. Then I thought about my short term security - will Andrei pick me up when I get there, will I be safe in the city I knew nothing about. I wrote that off after some thinking because I know some people from the US that had already gone and visited Bucharest with Okapi and everything was fine for them.

Then I thought of something that had never really crossed my mind - what am I most afraid of? I have heard a lot of answers from other people (spiders, small spaces, etc), and I think I’ve known my answer to that for quite a while now, I just never asked myself that question. My biggest fear is not living. It’s pretty simple. I’m scared of living a life where I miss out on experiences because of my fear of people, places, perceptions, governments, expectations, etc. I think that is a terribly sad way to live life. Trust your friends, do things that you are afraid of (BASE jumping for me), give back to the world as much as you can cause you don’t have much time here anyways.

I saw a senior from Palo Alto High School on TV the other night who had won the award for the best high school soccer player in the US and was heading to Stanford next year. She said in the clip they played that one of the things soccer had taught her was to have “a passion for living.” I knew right then that she had it right - she found what I am just learning now. People that live life with a passion are the most interesting and exciting to be around. I would know, I work with four of them.

I spent the next few hours on the plane to Heathrow thinking about living life. I’ve had so many opportunities in the last few years that I’ve taken advantage of and opportunities that I’ve passed on. With my trip to Romania, I realized one day (about a month before the trip) that if I kept putting off traveling and doing crazy things that I’d never do them – not because I’m afraid of doing them, I just don’t take the initiative to go out and do them. So I sat down that day, went to Orbitz and booked the trip 10 minutes later. I wasn’t even thinking about the money, it was about the experience. So this is all to say, I am living. I don’t know much about anything, but I am learning with every opportunity and chance I get.

If you have a minute (and a heart), check out Africa Mission Alliance – they’re doing some amazing stuff for kids over in Rwanda right now. Donate.

Wrote this on the CalTrain with my BlackBerry (edited on computer before posting)

7 months into it April 19, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Technology, Life , 1 comment so far

It’s been a long time since I sat down and wrote about what’s been going on. It’s been a little over 7 months since I joined YouNoodle and came to Silicon Valley.

In high school, I always had this picture of Silicon Valley — I thought of it as some magical playground for nerds and crazy libertarians. I heard a lot of different things about what goes on here, but my overall impression was that people were good to eachother and everyone was getting rich. Well, I think this is one of the few times that my first impressions were right.

I got my first taste of how the whole networking shindig works in July of 07 (a few months before moving out) at the Pownce Launch Party. I met a load of people that night that I run into all the time. All the cool kids hang out in this big crowd, and they’re super welcoming to new people. It’s like high school cliques except it’s one unified clique all trying to change the world and make tons of money. I’ve heard people say SV is a big rich family, it really is. It’s funny because I was at the YCombinator dinner for Startup School last night and I took a step back and realized how many people I’ve met in such a short period of time. (As a side note… I love the networking events where you wear name tags because people come up to you and look at your name tag and analyze whether or not it’s worth meeting you.)

I’ve gotten to know some pretty awesome people but I don’t feel like name dropping cause that’s already been done by Jason Calacanis. But I will say that all the WeGame guys rule.

Some of the highlights in the last two months:

Now that I look at it, I’ve done a ton of stuff in the last two months. Coming up in the next few weeks, I have a few things planned (though the majority of what I do is planned day-of)

One last thing! I’d like to say thanks to my grandparents for making so much possible these last few months, you guys are the best.

Church Strategy v2 March 16, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Church , 1 comment so far

I’ve been thinking about a different strategy than the one I originally proposed. This one is a bit more interactive for the members and leaders of the church.

#1) Facebook - everyone is on Facebook and a “fan” of the pastor and church. They’re part of the church group and RSVP for all events via Facebook. All social interactions and most updates go through FB.

#2) Tumblr - create a Tumblr for everything you need. For video and audio, have a church Tumblr that posts it all. Every leader in the church has their own Tumblr where they can post pictures/thoughts/music and more so they can keep all their members up to date on what’s going on. All members have a Tumblr and follow each leader and group within the church that they want. Leaders can have their own blogs but they make sure to import them into their Tumblr. Give all leaders iPhones so they can snap pictures and send them to Tumblrs instantaneously.

Beyond those two things, you can do other cool stuff. They include:

* Stream video via qik or Justin.tv.
* Send quick updates to members using Twitter (this gets aggregated into Tumblr though)
* Aggregate EVERYTHING into FriendFeed just for fun.
* Upload all photos to Flickr and create sets.

But the two core things to use are Facebook and Tumblr I think. Everything else is just gravy…

Ok now I need to get a church to test out this strategy to see if it could work. Any takers?

Church Website and Internet Strategy on a Budget March 5, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Church , add a comment

Churches have horrible internet strategies across America. The only church that I know of that has really gotten it right in my opinion is Mars Hill Church, but they’ve got the resources. Here’s a cheap way to do things right on the internet if you’re a church on a budget.

Social interactions: Facebook

Put your church group and ministries all on Facebook. Make a Facebook group and have all the members of the church join it, then run events and updates through that. Utilize the discussion board to hear feedback from people that go to the church. Make sure the officers are up to date, so this can completely replace the About page and all that garbage that go on most crappy church websites.

Events: Facebook

’nuff said

Website: Tumblr

Nobody’s built anything worthy of mention here. I would actually say to use Tumblr, and just make it really lightweight. Post basic information on the page, and let people subscribe to the RSS feed to get updates about things that are going on (link to events on Facebook and stuff). Let the pastors post updates and write about the upcoming week etc. Also post videos on this (on Vimeo). Tumblr would be cool because you can 1) put it on your domain and 2) customize it like crazy.

Video: Vimeo

Upload all the videos that are made for the church (announcements, sermons, etc) to Vimeo and if you have the resources, use Vimeo HD to have all of your videos stream in HD quality (it’s beautiful).

Photos: Flickr

Post all photos to Flickr after an event/conference and put them into a set. Would be really cool.

Podcasting: ???

I don’t know anything about podcasting because I think it blows.

That’s the advice I’d give, just pounded this out really quickly so comment if you have ideas.

m f r t d February 14, 2008

Posted by sdpurtill in : Rants , add a comment

I’m so bored of the internet, those five letters represent the sites I go to every day. I check out 2-3 more every once and a while, but I usually stick with those (in that order)

m - Gmail
f - Facebook
r - Google Reader
t - Tumblr
d - Digg

Can someone come out with something innovative? Or is innovation on the internet slowing down? I’m sad to say this, but the internet has become extremely boring. I’m going to have to agree with Mark Cuban on this: the internet is dead and boring.

(sorry for the pessimism)