Jeff Random

The Billy Harvey website – clever, understated, technically brilliant. Hat’s off to SoFake.

Via Creating Passionate Users

CHATSWORTH, Calif. – After three years with the AVN Media Network, Jeff Random has announced that he is leaving to pursue other opportunities.

“My time with AVN has been very good for me,” Random said. “The knowledge, contacts and experience have really helped me to grow.”

Random joined AVN.com as online sales manager, and progressed to working across the entire network of companies. Most recently he has served as online marketing consultant with a focus on technology and affiliate marketing.

“Jeff Random has been a valuable and versatile member of our team. His departure comes with no hard feelings, and mutual respect. We wish him the best,” said AVN CEO Darren Roberts.

“I am very proud of my accomplishments and progress we achieved in the last few years,” Random said. “I have enjoyed the opportunities provided to me however now it is time for different challenges.”

“Work It Harder Make It Better Do It Faster, Makes Us stronger” DaftPunk

Looking at revenues & users for Ebay, Yahoo & Google is where new media economics really begins to come into it’s own. This is web 2.0 theory being proven in the market today.

Times of great change mean times of great opportunity.

Web 2.0 is a shift to from tight, hierarchical architectures which realize exponential network FX, to loosely structured architecture which realize combinatorial network FX.

More simply, Web 2.0 is about the shift from network search economies, which realize mild exponential gains – your utility is bounded by the number of things (people, etc) you can find on the network – to network coordination economies, which realize combinatorial gains: your utility is bounded by the number of things (transactions, etc) you can do on the network.

via bubblegeneration – strategy, business models, and innovation

While I have written about The Value of Trust before, trusted computing is entirely different.

This incredible short is both a beautiful example of messaging as well as a good explanation about some of the issues with trusted computing.

watch it now

After watching that, it’s an ideal time to enjoy reading the story
0wnz0red to take your understanding to another level.

Via Boing Boing

Nivi offers a great metaphor for understanding the benefits of granularity for RSS content.

The RSS is the TCP/IP of Web 2.0 is a very interesting read, as is Nivi in general.


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RSS is like an API for content. RSS gives you access to a web site’s data just like an API gives you access to a web site’s computing power. Most important, RSS gives you access to your data that you have locked up on a web site.

Every Web 1.0 company will have to decide what content they will open with RSS. For example, Amazon already makes their content like their book catalog available through their API. But will Amazon open up user-contributed content through RSS?

Will you have access to

• Your explicit content like your purchase history and reviews you’ve written?

• Your drive-by content like the books you have recently browsed on Amazon?

• Other user’s content such as book reviews?

I believe I heard Jon Udell say that the winners of the Web 2.0 orgy will be the sites that don’t lock up user-contributed content. Instead, the winners will create a compelling ecosystem for you to store your content and bring in your content from other sites via RSS. Food for thought.

Note: This is Part 3 of a continuing series called RSS is the TCP/IP of Web 2.0. You may also like Parts 1 and 2.

Metadata that reconstructs the file via the web – exactly what we need these days. The more granular content gets the better this works.

There needs to be a standard so that it’s completely unambiguous just what one means when one says “Copy Optimized DVD Audio disc”. It’s that clear specification that will make embedded players and perfect peer-to-peer network copies possible. A disc containing such files could be popped into your home stereo DVD player and made to play, copy and share with no more user intervention than hitting a button…

Via Boing Boing

“DJ’s are like collaborative filters – but the best ones are also sources of novelty. Noise, if you like, – but good noise. Filters that can jump from peak to peak – from things I might like now, to things I will like when my preferences will evolve (or, better yet, that evolve my preferences). Algorithmic solutions don’t do this yet – and probably won’t for a while, because it’s a (really) hard problem. But it’s also a (really) big market gap.” link

You don’t need an algorithmic solution when you can have your users brute force it for you more accurately, and also introduce novelty.

The question becomes where are you going to get a dedicated group of users who are willing to invest their time, efforts and attention into your system?

Untold numbers of music fans & teenagers seems like a good place to start.

“MTV Hits, an MTV offshoot channel in UK, will turn into a fully interactive service, encouraging viewers to choose playlists and influence the on-screen look of the network.

From later this year viewers will initially be invited to create their own home pages on MTV.co.uk, with features including personal blogs, all-time favourite track lists and current favourites.” –link

Would you like porn with that?

Mobile phone retailers in China are offering free adult video clips as a value add for handset purchasers. – Link

This has almost entirely replaced my use of the SEO Open plugin. It’s incredibly useful when exploring potential link partners for offpage optimization.

One of the most useful extensions for Firefox it will show you PageRank, Alexa Rank & now Compete Rank for each page.

Working for AVN in the Adult Entertainment Industry teaches you the value of relationships. The AVN media network spans magazines, tradeshows, and websites. IMHO the following quote applies to all of them: