Will Harvey Say What?

About a year ago, I found this keynote address by Will Harvey, and it was a little dry but what really caught my attention was one little section, which you can listen to at the top of this blog post (sorry for the poor audio quality) since the keynote is a bit long and this part is hidden in the middle I thought I'd extract this key bit.

Basically, Will Harvey seems to be saying he likes to make it LOOK like IMVU responds (and responds quickly) to their user base, when in reality it is just a clever illusion. I thought that was interesting, especially that he would actually admit that somewhere where he was being recorded (oops?) but then I just sort of carried on with other stuff and half forgot about it.

I was reminded of and motivated to look this keynote address up after learning about IMVU tiers and how they work. IMVU has been promising us developer levels for so long it's like you don't even really hear them when they say it anymore, like that low hum your computer makes...but they are finally actually here! I noticed this several days ago just totally at random, since I don't usually read the IMVU forums. I checked and I was a level 6 out of a possible 7 and I was like "ah, okay, whatever", not understanding what made me a 6 or why I might care. I was even a little excited about the fact that they had finally implemented this, thinking it might give me some more enthusiasm for IMVU and developing (or is that "content creating" now?)

A little later the same day, Kittenkat contacted me to let me know tiers had been implemented. She figured I had probably not been around the forums, and she thought I'd be interested. I didn't really "get" what she was talking about, but after finally reading the thread/poll she started on IMVU's forums and checking out the helpful graph she made: I'm like...wait a minute...this sucks!

I don't even know where to begin...first of all, you have to participate heavily in the forums to get a top developer score. What??? Why??? Second, there are supposed to be awards commensurate with your level and yet they are a big fat secret from us so how do we even know how to react? Like, maybe we are freaking out for nothing? Maybe we are remaining calm when we should be freaking out?

I guess the thing that bothers me the most is what Will Harvey said in his keynote address...that basically it's all an illusion that they are listening to us and doing what the users want/demand. No matter how logical another system proposed (Kittenkat's) may be or how flawed IMVU's system may be...they're going to do it their way pretty much no matter what. Argh.

Yelp Elite Privileges

So, I spent some of my time from May to August this year trying to become Yelp Elite. Why would I want to do that? Well, partly because it was a challenge (although in hindsight, I think almost anyone could get Yelp Elite in about one month, instead of the nearly four months it took me) and partly because Elite members get invited to several events every month that are JUST for Yelp Elite.

Once I became Elite, I had access to the special page of Elite events and started receiving emails about events I could sign up and bring a guest to. We were too late for a special preview of the San Francisco restaurant, Prana, a free event with free menu samples, free Lotus vodka and free Tiger beer. Basically, all the events are free, and almost always include free food and free wine and/or spirits, if it is a venue that wouldn't normally provide alcohol, like The Cartoon Art Museum, then outside vendors will come in and there will still be alcohol.

We were too late for the Jones Restaurant in September, too. I asked my bf if he wanted to go to the Mars Bar and Restaurant with a bunch of Yelpers for free food and wine and he was like, "uh, no."

What?

Why not?

Because my bf is the voice of reason, that's why. Who cares if it's free? I actually signed up and got us put on the list for an event taking place at Charles Chocolates Factory, and my bf says "okay, I'll go if you want to" (which I might mention was extra sweet because he had a really crazy weekend that weekend and the last thing he needed to do was spend time in Emeryville) "but...you know they give tours at other times, too, right? Not just when there is a Yelp Elite event?", "Yes", I say, "but...they are also pairing the chocolate with wine and champagne!", "Okay", he says, "but, we could go to this place, get some chocolates and bring them to Savvy Cellar and pair them with wine and champagne".

He has a point. Here you have a business that is going to give you some stuff for free and probably give you extra special treatment and try to be EXTRA nice to you because they want you to give them a good rating on Yelp. This MIGHT be really cool sometimes, like when a cool new restaurant opens up and you get to eat there before they are open to the public, but really the getting something free part is not that exciting and you have to wonder how that affects the validity of Yelp ratings.

Actually, I thought at first that restaurants/bars/chocolate factories were really brave to host an event. Brave to face the criticism of a community of people eager to give you the real scoop on businesses everywhere. I've changed my mind about that, though, since reading reviews people have written about businesses that have hosted Yelp Elite events. Charlie's Chocolates is a really good example. The event they hosted produced TONS of five star reviews, but if you really read ALL the reviews you will find a few more truthful sounding gems like this one from Beth B:

A star for good graphic design and clever branding - otherwise, blaaaaahhh. The cocoa-powder-covered nuts lacked crunch, and everything else just lacked goodness. The so-called factory tour was a disappointment - it was a bunch of harried on-display confectioners being watched like lab rats. Sad, sad, sad.

Dignity and integrity are lacking from these hand-crafted chocolates that taste generic.

(This is a rating of the chocolates only, but since others mentioned the event: the Yelp Elite event was a promotion of products, disguised as a party. I'd hoped it would be more like a gathering of people who are genuinely interested in quality food tasting & production, and thought the factory tour would be educational. And the sparkling wine was foul. I'd feel bad for dissing free stuff, but advertisements aren't gifts.)

Reading her review, and a few others like it, I realized the power of a Yelp event to generate positive reviews. Wow, even Jones restaurant, which was doing pretty poorly in its Yelp ratings managed to raise themselves to an average of three whole stars by hosting an event. It kind of seems like the events become simply exercises in creative writing for the Elite Yelpers who feel obligated to give a place five stars if they pretty much liked the event and four stars if they had a pretty good time with their friends and staff were nice to them and three stars if they thought it sucked but at least they got free stuff.

I really think overall Yelp is great. I have used it many times the same way I use the reviews on Amazon to choose a product/restaurant, and I think that overall the system works quite well. However, the same way Amazon's results get skewed by authors writing reviews of their own book and getting their friends to do the same, Yelp Elite events skew the results, too. If Yelp really wanted people to give honest reviews, Yelp Elite would get a secret reimbursement to eat someplace or tour someplace or whatever, and it would be subsidized by the restaurant that wanted more reviews. Yeah, that might be a little harder sell with most businesses.

I can't say we'll never go to a Yelp Elite event, and I do hope to hold onto my elite status when 2008 rolls around, but for the moment I'm a bit disappointed in their system, although I do realize they need to make money and getting Yelpers together for fun and free parties is pretty cool.

Thursday my bf and I are going to a Commonwealth Club event featuring the founders of Yelp, and I think/hope it will be quite interesting. I'll probably write another entry about Yelp then. Hopefully the talk will renew my enthusiasm. Of COURSE because this involves aforementioned Yelp founders, the event is followed by a whole Wine and Hors d'oeuvres Reception from its sponsor. Free wine, free food, that's Yelp for ya.

Meanwhile, I'm busy trying to increase my Amazon reviewer ranking. Who knows, if I do okay at it I may end up being sent free books or something by people hoping for a review by me. Probably take a lot longer than on Yelp, but if someone wanted to send me free cookbooks, that's something free I could really enjoy. Their system is wacky, though. Today I checked and although I wrote a few more reviews and got two more "useful" points, my ranking actually went down! What up, Amazon? Sheesh.

Double Baking Disaster

My bf and I have been baking together lately, with some good results and some not so much. There was the time I added an extra cup of water to the pizza dough, the time he said he had oil but didn't, the time he said he had sugar but didn't, various missing cooking implements that caused me to make some scowly faces and now...the infamous yeast incident of 2007.

We bake together to have fun together, but I must admit I am not necessarily that fun to bake with. Just ask some of the people that have assisted me in making gingerbread houses. I think I completely terrorized them. It's just...I've never had a gingerbread house that didn't win first place, and I wasn't about to start. Each house increases the pressure of having to be better to win first place again.

Baking with my bf is kind of the same. It's partly my personality I guess, but it's also because we have an audience (his family) that sometimes just want to watch, or sometimes help or ask questions or maybe just stand in the way. This would probably be okay in a kitchen that I knew my way around pretty well, with people that I know pretty well making recipes that I've made before with someone that already is an experienced baker, but instead I'm using a kitchen I don't know very well (and which doesn't have all the tools I often take for granted, like tonight's lack of an electric mixer), people I don't know well, recipes that are new to me with someone who doesn't know much about baking...which is actually kind of fun, teaching someone something new, but I also think part of the problem (besides me being totally bossy) is his family watching and sort of not giving him credit for doing as much of the work as he is.

Despite all our problems learning to bake together, we did really well last night making some raspberry/almond muffins in these cool silicone baking cups. It was the pizza dough that was our problem.

Sunday we didn't make pizza because we didn't have any sugar (you need some sugar in the dough to feed the yeast, although now that I think about it we could have probably used honey, but also we were rather tired from a long day, it was getting late and pizza takes about 3 1/2 hours to make when the dough is totally from scratch.)

So, tonight we started the pizza dough and then sat down to watch a movie while the dough was rising. While the movie was playing I started wondering to myself, "did I put yeast in the dough?", "did ANYONE put yeast in the dough?" My bf and his sister were both putting in ingredients but I had been telling them how much and spending way too much time blathering about how a quarter cup is the same as four tablespoons so the easiest and most accurate way to measure five tablespoons is, arguably, to measure a quarter cup plus one tablespoon. (I know, snore, right?) But, did I tell them to put the yeast in? I didn't remember doing it. But...the dough had looked so NICE when I was done kneading it!

After the dough had been sitting for two hours and should have doubled in size, I looked and saw some dough that was, well, the same size it had been two hours before. I grabbed the yeast container and looked at the expiration date: 1998! That means the yeast has been expired for nine years and is actually probably more like 11 years old. Yikes! This was the yeast that had been sitting in my bf's pantry, which is kind of sad because I have a bag of nice, fresh yeast I just got from King Arthur's last month sitting around at MY place.

The truth is, though, I don't know if the 11 yr old yeast would have worked or not. I did some research online, and I did find a beer making site where this guys says he had some yeast packets in his refrigerator for four years and they're still good. Now I kind of wish we'd saved that yeast to experiment with. It's not often you have yeast that old to test out! Maybe 11 year old yeast would have worked great, although from what I read on that beer making site, it would have had the best chance if we'd done the whole put-the-yeast-in-a-bowl-with-water-and-sugar thing instead of immediately incorporating it into the dough as called for in this recipe. Give it a bit of a head start.

But yeah, we'll never know if that yeast was still active because the more I think about it, the more I am PRETTY DARNED SURE that the yeast never ended up in that lovely dough. Drat! I guess it's just been too long since I've done much cooking/baking. I'll have to work on that, as well as work on playing well with others a little more.

And I'm not even drunk!

Did you ever do something a bit crazy and stupid when you were drunk? Okay, drunk is such an ugly word, let's just say "tipsy". I mean, specifically, did you ever BUY something you might not have otherwise and then regretted it the next day?

I once knew a flight attendant - and believe me, like most flight attendants she didn't make a lot of money - who was out all night in London and then, still up the next morning, bought a $500 pair of shoes. Whoops! She said they were really great shoes, though.

Most people are probably not going to be up partying ALL NIGHT and until the stores open the next morning and then think "let's go shoe shopping!" but these days you don't have to wait for the stores to open, they're open 24/7 on the Internet.

Not long ago, I read a really funny Yelp review by someone who discovered the joys of checking out music at the public library after drinking one night and waking up the next morning to find she had run up a $140 bill on iTunes. Then there is the book J-pod, in which one of the characters rants about how there should be a lock you can set on your computer that doesn't allow you to use it for 12 hours after you start drinking. Not a bad idea!

The other night, I came home a bit tipsy and I ended up ordering Robyn Hitchcock's "Element of Light" album from Amazon. It's not available on iTunes and the CD is out of print, so only used cds at inflated prices are available. I spent $35 PLUS shipping on that cd.

Really, though, I'd had my eye on that CD for a while. Once it arrives I guess I'll rip it to MP3 and the actual CD will sit with all my other CDs gathering dust (anybody want a mediocre CD collection?) but I'm actually happy I ordered it, I don't have drunken buyers remorse at all.

The thing I've discovered is, I totally don't need to be drinking to do many of the types of things associated with reduced inhibitions, and that definitely includes online shopping.

Yesterday is a perfect example of this. I was feeling rather under the weather, and I basically spent the whole day in bed...with my laptop...researching stuff and shopping. Uh-oh. First I bought some baking supplies. Okay, that wasn't so bad. Then, I decided I finally needed to learn to sew.

So...I bought a few books on sewing. I own a sewing machine already, but I've never sewed a single stitch on it. I even managed to lose the owner's manual, but lucky for me I dated a guy who was going to use the machine so he had found a new manual for it online. When we broke up, I made sure the machine AND the new manual stayed with me. Of course, that was a number of years ago and HE might have actually used the machine while I still haven't. But I'm going to remedy that! So I bought the books. Okay, fine.

Then, I decided I needed a dress pattern. And and apron pattern. One of the books actually comes with a few patterns, but they are for purses and stuff, and I was so excited that I'M FINALLY GOING TO LEARN TO SEW that I thought I might as well take a peek at a few other patterns.

So what did I do late last night? I ordered almost $90 of patterns! Actually, it came to over $100 with shipping and tax. And I wasn't even drinking! I was trying to be reasonable...I went over and over the items in my shopping cart and I did get rid of a few patterns but I was like "I need ALL of them!" I could sew all night and all day and I think these patterns would last me quite a long time.

Especially since...I don't have any fabric. Yup, I bought about a dozen patterns and I have...well, I do have this one piece of fabric I bought many years ago because I fell in love with it and wanted to make a dress with it. It's definitely not enough fabric to make a whole bunch of somethings. Plus, I don't have any of the other things you need for sewing:

Sharp scissors
dressmaker shears
tape measure
yardstick
drafting triangle
tailor's chalk
needles
thread
ironing board
buttons
etc.

I didn't even have a table to put my sewing machine on, but of course I ordered one of those, too, last night. Maybe I'm just permanently drunk or something. All I know is now I need some nice fabric, a few other things, and then I am going to SEW LIKE CRAZY.

Be a nice person and buy Jinx some fabric!

Teen sex clubs and Virtual Reality on prime time tv

I haven't been watching much tv for the last year, but sometimes, like on a Saturday night when my bf is off losing all his money in a poker game and I'm a bit bored, I might take a glance at what's on.

So that's what I did tonight, and I saw on tvguide.com that Law and Order: SVU had a new episode, the plot of which went something like this:

Some 20-something woman has an avatar in a virtual world that looks like it's supposed to be Second Life only the avatars aren't as ugly. The thing is, her avatar is 15. Not only is she 15 but she runs a sex club in this virtual world and has guys like, lined up around the virtual block to have sex with this virtual teenager. Then, the real life woman goes missing and they try to figure out which of her virtual world clients is her real life kidnapper and then prove he did it.

Here is a clip on the NBC website, but it is just a clip with this woman in the hospital and not a clip of the virtual world.

I was trying to film a little of the show with my Flip camera, but I guess I don't use that thing very often because what I thought was the "record" light on the screen was really the "ready" light and I missed the best/most ridiculous part of the whole thing, plus I missed the first ten minutes since it was so random I saw this episode at all, but here are a few clips I got.

This is the avatar's "blog" where she is warning other "girls with clubs" about the avatar she thinks is stalking her...


Not the most interesting clip, now we are starting to get into spoilers if you haven't seen the episode. Conveniently, the virtual world appears to be run by one guy from some room in New York. Well, of course, since Law and Order: SVU takes place in NYC! I just like Olivia's "turn on the sun!" line. One of the best, but cheesiest bits in the episode. What? 5 million virtual world users are going to be sooo confused. Hmmm...if 5 million people are all logged on at the same time, how come these SVU people have never heard of this "AY" place before?



Very end of the episode. Very silly. This thing has a lot of funny, quotable lines that would make great inside jokes, imo.


SVU is such a lurid show. Heheh. I don't think anyone in Second Life is allowed to say their avatar is 15 or that they themselves are 15 and then start up a sex club. However, I suppose they could have some sort of sex club or escort service and their avatar could certainly LOOK 15.

Well, I don't have anything more to say because it took me forever to get this video uploaded, it's late and I'm dead tired. I just thought it was cool that I stumbled onto a reference to virtual worlds in a major primetime tv show. Well, I have to be all bright eyed and bushy tailed for winery brunch plus pizza making tomorrow, so g'night.

Oh, the episode is called "Avatar" if you're looking for a rerun of it.

OLPC BOGO and Foneros

For the longest time I couldn't figure out what BOGO was, they'd talk about it in Payless Shoe ads all the time and I'd go nuts trying to figure it out. I don't remember when I finally figured out it stood for "buy one get one", but now I see it everywhere. Usually I could care less about BOGO deals, it seems like it's just a way to get more of something than you need, but today I found a BOGO deal I'm totally wound up about.

You know those OLPC laptops? My first thought when I saw them was a little less than philanthropic. I thought, "I want one!" I was bitterly disappointed when I found out they would ONLY be available to children in developing nations. Why do THEY get the really cool laptop? Life is sooo not fair!!! (Irony here people.)

Well, I must not be the only person who was thinking more about how *I* would like one of them more than how great it would be for some kid in a developing nation to have one, because they are going to be offering a limited time BOGO starting in November! You buy one to be sent to some kid in a developing nation, and they will let you buy one for yourself, too. Okay, technically maybe that isn't BOGO, it's more like "buy two keep only one", but "BTKOO" doesn't make a cute, easily pronounceable acronym.

I am so totally going to get one of these laptops. Then I can ride around on the train using one while everyone looks at it covetously while simultaneously thinking I am a jerk for owning one and keeping it for myself. Seriously, check this puppy out. You can power it by hand, it has built in wifi, yadda, yadda, yadda. The only thing that would make it better, because they network to each other, would be if someone else I knew had one. Maybe I should move to a developing nation and start hanging out with children.

And on another cool techie note, I was just reading about Fon today in Business Week. You buy a $40 Fon router and that automatically makes you a Fon member and you get access to the WiFi of every other Fon member. That doesn't sound THAT exciting maybe until you realize that there are about 200,000 current "traditional" WiFi hotspots scattered around the globe and Fon already has 280,000. It looks like it won't be long before they have a million hotspots - all free to members.

Sometimes I have problems with my Internet connection so I am interested in this as a way to connect closer to 100% of the time. I NEED that net connection. Sounds great for traveling, too. My current wireless router is totally unsecure right now anyway, so I might as well get some benefit from other people being able to use my WiFi. The site has a handy map so you can see if there are any Foneros in your area. I see a couple spots near me, but then I am in Silicon Valley so it's not that surprising.

I totally want a Fon router. Too bad I spent all my discretionary income on baking supplies! Dang, I think I was reading about this service last year when it was in beta and only cost $5 for the router. Why didn't I jump on it then????