HEUGE

If you want to do something big in your life,
you must remember that shyness is only in the mind.
If you think shy, you act shy.
If you think confident, you act confident;
therefore, never let shyness conquer your life.

These are the words from Arfa Karim Randhawa as interviewed by Todd Bishop of GeekWire (formerly at TechFlash) in 2005.  Arfa was the youngest certified MCP at age 9, and this is when she was 10.  She has now passed away at age 16.

Read Todd’s GeekWire article here.  He has also placed the MP3 of the snippets on his own site here.  

When I first heard her story, I was ready to dismiss her as someone who had just book-learned how to pass the MCP tests.  I grew up with a bunch of smart kids who all had potential to do the same (if MCP tests had existed back in our stone age of computing).  Todd’s interview really showed her confident and ready to take on the world, and that’s what really impresses.

note: I wrote this in August 2011 when I was back in Rochester, but I never finalized the article.  I figured with the news that they are definitely on the brink of reorganization, it was a good time to post.

This viral video by Nokia filmed with a Bruce Lee impersonator and some clever special effects.  It shows “Bruce” using his nunchucks to set-alight matches that are being tossed at him.  I want to believe that this is him.  I love Bruce Lee.

Last week I’m in my hometown of Rochester, NY, the town which is the original home of entrepreneurship in the US.  Kodak, Xerox, Bauch and Lomb and many other companies were created and prospered here.  These days, Rochester is unfortunately not doing very well, and Kodak is definitely suffering.

Kodak had for so many years been the leader in imaging and thin-film technologies that a transition from analog imaging to digital imaging was never pushed forward as quickly (by a decade) as they should have.  Many key digital patents expired well before Kodak introduced their first consumer cameras.

Recent news articles say that the current value of the Kodak patent portfolio could be worth five times more than their market cap.  This may be due to the recent frothiness in the mobile market, but when you look at Kodak, what I don’t understand is that Kodak seems to have sold off the most valuable patents first, and they were sold-off too cheaply!  Many of the important patents relating to digital imaging and CMOS technologies were sold for only $65MM?  How are they going to get billions of dollars for the remaining patents?  What technologies can they then invest-in to leverage those billions?

I can only shrug.  So yes, it’s difficult running a company with huge pension liabilities, Kodak is never going to be as nimble as a startup, and while they have had many great engineers working in advanced imaging, material science and other advanced topics, the story here in Rochester is that they already fired their best engineers.  This foray into inkjet technology has killed Kodak. The long-term deferred revenue and margins can only exist when people line-up to buy these printers in the first place. I want to believe that Kodak, one of the most well-known American brands will find success.  I love Kodak.  Unfortunately I know that Bruce Lee is dead, and Kodak may follow.

Happy 2012!

Here are a few pics from the Space Needle’s Fireworks Display that I took from my apartment (yup, I live closeby)

Click for bigger versions in a lightbox window.  :)

How to delete Klout.com access from your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn Accounts.

Before the new year, it’s actually a perfect time to review access permissions that you granted to websites and applications on Facebook and Twitter, and while we’re there,  it’s a perfect time to dump Klout.

What’s Klout?

It’s a silly tool to measure your social media influence, but really it’s a great way for a company to collect information on people who may or may not be influencers so that the company can do some direct marketing.  They have over $10MM in VC money, and currently they have zero real value except for bragging rights.  I love data, and I love metrics, but when they claim my third top category of specialization is Tuna, then they certainly are overestimating my consumption of Sushi or underestimating my value in other fields.  Perhaps at some point they will be able to monetize directly by providing qualified experts in certain fields for journalists who need a quote for a news story or a business consultant for a company who needs to work on some randomly obscure topic, but right now I’d prefer to keep my information private from them.

You gave Klout access, go back to revoke it

First go to Klout directly.  Log into their site and authenticate via either Twitter or Facebook.  Once there you should be able to edit your profile and get into your Networks settings

http://klout.com/#/edit-settings/networks

Once here, wipe out access to anything you previously had authorized.  As a note: This was the only place I found to remove LinkedIn application access.  There was nothing on LinkedIn that provided a way to remove applications, only ways to add more of them.

So you’ve removed access from the Klout.com main page.  Now what?  Well it turns out that killing things here doesn’t necessarily wipe out the account authorization that you gave to Klout.  You need to go to each site and wipe out access manually.

Head to Twitter and Wipe out Klout from there

Log into Twitter’s main page and then head over the application settings section
https://twitter.com/settings/applications

find Klout.com

Click Revoke Access.

While you’re in there, look through the list and wipe out anything else that is unnecessary or looks suspicious.  When twitter first started many external sites that hacked accounts were using passwords provided  by a user directly.  Now twitter posts can be done for a user via prior application authorization.   I don’t mind linking access to some applications, but generally this list should be shorter than longer so you better control your communication and limit the risk of you spamming your friends.

Head to Facebook and Wipe out Klout from there

Log into Facebook

Go to privacy settings
Find Apps and Websites, click “Edit Settings”

This should take you to

https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications

You will see list of apps.  You can now find Klout. If you click on “edit” you can see what permissions it currently has, and you can click “Remove App” or just click on the “X” and confirm your selection to remove rights.

Here, it would also be good to delete all accesses that you find unfamiliar.  Some apps may be for mobile phone access, but most will be for games, contests and brands that you might have granted access for earlier.  If you are currently inactive in a game or no longer in the running for a contest, then you might as well prune those accesses out of your account.  If you want to use the app again in the future, you can just as easily reauthorize it.

How about other sites?

Well these plus Google+, to which I never provided Klout access, are the ones that are most active for me.  You’ll need to go to each site individually and check to see if they still have access to read through your entire history and/or post as you.  Third-party authentication is a great tool, but given the ease where we grant it to other companies, it’s a tool we should control more tightly.  Happy Holidays and I hope your Social Media Accounts are nice and clean.

KLOUT Followup and Ocean Marketing (Update 1/2/2012)

So I wiped out permissions just a few days ago, and I’ve dropped from a Klout score of 54 to now 36 (up one from the 35 I got when I stripped everything).  They are still using twitter authentication or a cookie to track me (so I need to wipe those as-well I guess).  Of course the reason I see this is that I was curious about the absolutely FAIL’ed PR company Ocean Marketing which was responsible for the now case study in the worst customer service experience of all time for a gaming accessory company  Well after that implosion, they went UP to 31 from 20!  Somehow that seems wrong.  :)

The Alamo has some of the best videos which encourage folks to not talk/text during movies otherwise bad things (zombies, axe murders, Ann Richards, etc..) will serve violent justice on your ass.  Earlier this year they tossed out a customer, and they got a voicemail response which they turned into one of their PSA’s.

I adore the Alamo Drafthouse.  Run by Tim and Karrie League, this chain of theaters is the preferred venue for most Austinites.  You can sit down, order a burger and a beer, and enjoy a movie.  How do they do this?  Imagine a theater that has every other row of seats ripped-out.  In that empty space a row is allocated to a small tabletop and walking space for a server to take your order (written on paper) and serve your food.  There’s a full kitchen and an army of hard-working wait staff who make sure that everyone is served quickly and quietly.  What makes this extra specials? There is a strict talking loudly is grounds for getting tossed-out, and texting is also grounds for getting tossed.  This means that the audience gets the benefit of a great movie without the distractions that plague less well moderated movie theaters.

I remember going to a theater in Rochester, NY watching The Ghost and the Darkness.  Halfway though the movie some kids started screaming and running down the isles.  At first I was wondering what foolish parents would let their little kids into an R-rated movie, and then after a few minutes without a rebuke, I realized that there were no parents.  Apparently some folks were using the movie theater to babysit their kids while they went to the mall.  These kids didn’t really know any better, but I’ve been to some movies where adults are being similarly disrespectful.

Ann Richards

R. Lee Ermey

George Romero

Patton Oswalt and Jason Reitman recreating the famous voicemail PSA.

Nowadays I turn my phone completely off whenever I go into a movie.  I can enjoy the movie completely, and I don’t worry about being distracted or distracting those in the theater. I hope you do the same.

I need glasses…

I remember thinking.  When I was a kid my sister and I would annually visit our family Optometrist, Dr. Yeh, and he would patiently test our vision.  (little better this way… little better that way…)  My parents had a simple calculation: Better Eyeglasses = Better Reading = Better Grades.  Now I pretty much use glasses for driving/biking, and I prefer to take off glasses when I can.

Well my last pair had been made in 2005, so this year it was finally time for some new glasses.  The old pair cost me a fortune with the special-order titanium Flexon/Nike frames with long-temples, with the high-index lenses with Anti-reflective, Anti-static and Anti-fingerprint coatings to help eat up a flex spending plan that I had overestimated.

This time around I decided to be a bit more frugal this time and order from someplace that might save me a few bucks and then get a second pair online once I had the correct prescription in-hand.  An eyeglass prescription and a PD (pupillary distance) are generally what is required to orderglasses, and there are a bunch of things that a good optometrist will check for in terms of eye health at the same time.

WebMD has a nice link about how to read a prescription.  To simplify things, I’ll try to explain this with my prescription:
-1.75 -2.50 x 180
-1.75 -2.25 x 175

The top set of numbers is the right eye, and the bottom set is the left eye.  So each eye has a set of three numbers.

The first number is the “SPHERE” which designates how farsighted (positive) or nearsighted (negative) I am. For both eyes I’m nearsighted at -1.75 diopters (a diopter is a unit of measure)
The second number is the “CYLINDER” which is related to Astigmatism (warped eye shape) meaning that I have it at -2.5 and -2.25 (diopters)
The third number is the “AXIS” relates to the angle or orientation of the Astigmatism so that they can rotate the lenses on the glasses to match imperfections.  Mine are 180 and 175.

I’ve been told that I’m actually not bad in terms of nearsighted-ness, but I have a big astigmatism.

Now you should try on a few pairs of glasses and note the measurements of the frames.  There are usually three numbers.  On one of my new pairs it’s 54 20-150.  The 54 is the width across each of the lenses in mm’s.  20 is the width of the nose of the glasses and the 150 is the length of the temple going back to your ears.  That means total width of the glasses would be 54 x 2 (two lenses) + 20 = 128mm’s.  Much like pants-sizing and inseam length, these are the numbers you can use to gauge whether you think a pair of glasses are going to fit, and it’s important to understand this before you order frames that are too big or too small for your head.

Wal-Mart screwed-up multiple times

The Optomotrist and Vision Department at Wal-Mart are separate.  The independent Optometrist will do the measurements, then the “techs” will do the PD and help order glasses.  This was a FAIL.  Why? Apparently my prescription is so weak that even through we placed the order, my first set of frames were too-wide to support the lenses because the lenses were too thin!  We chose the alternate pair, and the same issue happened again, and that seemed so ridiculous that I went back in to get this all fixed.  I asked them to remeasure my face, and it turns out that they had the PD incorrect!  I would have been wearing glasses where my eyes would be optimally focused when the left eye looks left and the right eye looks right.  Yikes!  The problem here is that the optical staff was either poorly trained or just not as familiar with optical work as required.  I couldn’t  imagine that they will be there the next time especially because the optician left on the day I went into the exam.

So at this point I nearly cancelled everything, but with the correction and a new selection of less stylish frames, we found a third pair of frames and completed the order.  Of course when the glasses came in, apparently the AXIS were set wrong, so they had to order yet another pair!  How the heck is that possible?  This was completely ridiculous and a waste of time!

So what was the final story with Wal-Mart.  I ordered the highest quality high-index, Nikon lenses on a generic metal frame, and it cost more than both online options even though my vision plan had discounts and paid part of the price.  Even though I spent the most time trying these one, I’m still the least comfortable with these.  I still don’t trust their vision techs, and I wonder whether they actually screwed up the AXIS still with these.

At this point in time I had locked in that I would go not just with one, but two online vendors to compare vs Wal-Mart. Well, wouldn’t you?

• Warby-Parker for the first online pair
• 39 Dollar Glasses for the second online pair

Warby-Parker impresses with the professional presentation

Warby-Parker is brilliant.  For free with a credit card deposit you can order a selection of five frames for you to test-wear for five days (with non-prescription lenses).  It comes in a stylish box, and it costs you nothing except the realization that your face looks funny with some shapes of frames.  When you’ve made your decision on a frame (and after your friends have roundly mocked you), then it’s a straightforward ordering process.  The bonus, if you buy a pair of glasses, they donate money to a non profit to provide glasses to the needy somewhere in the world.  #MoralWin

So what didn’t I like about Warby-Parker?  No metal frames were available, so now I’ve got my first plastic frames ever.  The pricing is not super “cheap,” but it’s fair.  I can’t recall if I paid extra at the time for the anti-glare coating, but what was clever on their part was that after my order, they sent me an email requesting that I do an upgrade to high-index lenses at a pretty reasonable +$30.  Since these were tiny glasses I declined, but while I applaud their clever ability to upsell post-sale, it did make me worry that my order would have been delayed had I not immediately responded.  These arrived perfect in again beautiful packaging in about two weeks.  I think I paid about $100 or so for everything.

39 Dollar Glasses gives the best selection and pricing

39 Dollar Glasses has a more complete selection of glasses and lens options.  This time I went with a nice metal frame sized with long temples and a high-end driving lens (Drivewear NuPolar-Transitions Polarized).  Yeah, this cost a bit more than 39 dollars, but even with all the upside, this company has lots of sales and coupons.  In the end this was the best value option at $113.01 shipped!  The same configuration would have cost at-least double elsewhere.  These are my favorite pair with the nicest lenses and balance, but with the *cough* weather in Seattle it’s very rare that I need sunglasses.  Again, this order process had zero friction, and I would order from them again in a second.

My recommendation

Start by going to the best optometrist or ophthalmologist that you can find.  Someone with years of experience and who is patient enough to go through all the tests and who isn’t rushing you through the exam is whom I would recommend.    There are enough issues with bad prescriptions and small things that could risk blindness that you should get someone you or your friends trust.  Once you have a complete prescription in-hand with a properly measured PD, then going online to pick up glasses seems is what I’d do.

I’ll recommend both Warby-Parker and 39 Dollar Glasses.  Stylish hipsters may enjoy the Warby-Parker selection due to their urban roots, but I find the 39 Dollar Glasses store to have the most selection and lens options, meaning that it’s the better technical option.

“My female friend just described Starcraft 2 to her girlfriend like Farmville, but with attack function.” -nihilion_Zero on reddit

I laughed pretty hard at that quote about Starcraft, but this is also a good description of Zynga’s Empires & Allies. They’ve taken Farmville mechanics and added in some basic attack options.  The game is a single path to sucess (just keep following the guidance), and most of the battle sequences are determined by a simplistic rock-paper-scissors + hit-points attack approach, but the animations are cute, and winning a battle is gratifying.  As a player you have the choice to either help your neighbors (earning resources and red heart kudos), invade your neighbors (earning resources and black heart hatred) and attacking the NPC’s.  Interspersed are quests which request the player to either build or harvest certain things, or to decorate things.  All the while there are limited resources (fuel/wood/minerals) and limited time resources to perform tasks and go into battles.

I have to say, it’s a fun game.   At launch folks picked up this game so quickly, and today AppData.com is showing Farmville at 8.3MM DAU/34MM MAU and E&A at 7MM DAU/44.5MM MAU.  (Monthly Active Users = MAU,  Daily Active Users = DAU, MM= millions)

I’ve enjoyed playing E&A, but the excessive request stream is starting to grate on me a bit.  I did some quick math on direct notifications for a few days in July, and including Independence Day where there was a decline in game activity/notifications, it ended up being 34% of all Facebook notifications with a max of 50% on the first catch-up day after the holiday.

 3

That’s quite a bunch of messages!  What I didn’t add in was “Game Stories,” all of the indirect game notifications where folks self-posted on their own walls that entered my stream. Add those in, and total notifications likely exceeded 70% of all stream traffic.

The question is why do all social gaming companies need to keep up with players, and the answer is that for a cool new game, the rate of new players joining a game will exceed the rate of old players leaving the game, but for older titles there will be a continuous decline in active players once they either get bored of a game or find something else.  Here’s the Farmville graphs from AppData showing a continual decline in Monthly Active Users and Daily Active Users.  As big games decline, publishers need new games  to come in and take over.  Every game company has to be looking to create the next big hit.

So why am I writing this post?  Zynga yesterday added-in the new  Leaderboard to E&A.  It’s a way for folks to compare themselves to friends from an absolute battle perspective, and now it’s providing me some interesting data that may match player retention.  While I was working  at Challenge Games (now Zynga Austin Studios) I had fun working with cohort analysis across all of our game properties.  With this E&A Leaderboard, it game me a quick way to read sixty data points to see whether E&A retention was similar.

So the raw data provided on the leaderboard states the relative ranked position of a player, but more importantly the total battles that they have fought.  While there are many activities that can be done by a player without progressing in the Battle Map campaigns, some of those campaigns are prerequisites into other upgrades, so anyone who is active in the game must complete the Battle Map.

So what did I find?  I took the data, ran a simple formula to group-together clusters of users by battles played (to the highest 25 past 25 battles), and then charted by summed percentages the frequency of those.  The graph below was the result, and it did match what I was expecting.

Of my friends, over half of them who “installed” Empires & Allies may have abandoned the game before finishing the first campaign.

Is that a big number?  Compared with some games I’ve seen, no!  it’s not!  Of course I’m also over-counting the retained-percentage since I really have more than sixty friends playing, but these are only guessed based on sample sizes.  Yes, it’s not a true cohort analysis by set start-time, but it’s a good quick look into player retention through progression.

Every good game designer should work hard to keep those initial players around through at-least the second stage of the game, and while E&A has a great tutorial storyline, it is possible for players to lose interest before they are fully engaged.  The further evidence for lost players is all the farms in E&A that have withered crops even at higher player levels.

For those friends who made it into the 25th battle, there is a continual falling out of players as more time is required to develop resources and structures that will allow game progression.  It could mean a further decline of players who stopped at some point due to a roadblock, or it could just mean some folks progress more slowly.  The fun part is that if I keep track of this daily, I’ll be able to find some deltas on a player-by-player basis, and that overlayed on this type of a graph would help clarify continued engagement.  Well, keeping daily stats for the next month on friends for a game is a bit more work than I want to do in my spare time, but I’ll see if I can get back into the habit of updating my blog more than once every six months.  :)

Today I received an email that smelled of desperation, of a request for forgiveness, of long lost love… from MySpace.

I guess I had to write a response as sort of a Dear John letter

Dear MySpace,

I know we’ve had our good times in the past, but I’ve met someone new, someone who I can really connect with. It’s Facebook. it’s not just that your wardrobe is a bit garish with blinky lights and all, it’s just that Facebook is far more refined for her age, and yeah, she’s just a bit younger.

Well, it’s also about my friends. Frankly, my friends don’t want to hang out with you any longer. It seems that nobody does, except for the musicians. Sometimes I wonder if your relationships with the music industry were just a bit too friendly, but it never seemed to hurt us, and you do help me find some good tunes.

Well, I think that’s it. I think for now it is best that you delete my information and stop emailing me. I don’t know if we can be friends again, but you know where to find me if you want to connect. I also know you had some concerns about LinkedIn, but trust me, she’s just a work friend.  For Serious.

Sincerely,
Eugene

On a more serious note.  We’re hiring at Cheezburger big-time!  If you were an engineer at MySpace we know that you can kick ass with massive scale.  We would love to have you.  Cheezburger Jobs can be found HERE!

If you were a little kid, do you think you would battle so bravely?   What would you use to defend your family from the zombie hoarde?

Thank you Japanese Television for making me laugh to the point of pain.

Some people ask me where I work. It has taken a year or so to explain it to my dad. Well here’s the ABC News profile of Cheezburger Network as shown on Nightline last night. (thank you ABC)
Here’s the embedded video from Hulu.com (thank you Hulu)