all hail the shag

The French Anti-Doping Agency, AFLD, is again embarrassing itself and distracting the cycling world from racing and and clean sport. Why? Because Lance is back and he “insulted” the French authority (but apparently not the tester himself).

My take is that although Lance may have violated a rule about staying in sight once a test is requested the tester didn’t object and the guy was from the lab, the whole dust-up is more about trying to discredit Lance again sell more newspapers. His tests were all negative and the only violation was a taking a shower (which the tester didn’t get to watch). AFLD really wants to open hearings against Lance over this? They want to ban him from racing the Tour, or at least piss him off enough to get him to change his mind. Look out though, because the more pissed he gets the better he’ll race.

Read the full story from VeloNews here.

Uncategorized, the bike cycling

Tom Chikoore (Filtrbox co-founder) has written a great post titled “The Death of the Rocky Mountain News and the Rise of Filtrbox“. Its a good perspective on how content is king, and its the mediums and their models that are evolving.

Several weeks ago, while purchasing a commemorative copy of the Rocky Mountain News, I came to the realization that two distinct stories, symbolic of the shift in media landscape, were playing themselves out on both ends of US-36. In Denver, The Rocky Mountain News, a symbol of traditional mainstream media, was closing down after almost 150 years of publishing. In Boulder, at Filtrbox, a young new media company, we were celebrating the release of the latest version of our service, Filtrbox G2. While the people at the Rocky Mountain News were probably not aware of Filtrbox, I had a keen eye on the daily goings on at The Rocky and I looked at the whole situation at the Rocky as a symbolic passing of the media torch.

Read the entire post here, and let him know what you think about content vs. medium!

boulder, filtrbox "Rocky Mountain News", filtrbox, new media

I’m heading to SXSW (south by southwest) today to check out the conference. It’s been blowing up the last few years, especially the Interactive conference. Getting there on the tail end of things, as I had a few too many demands on on the calendar. Yes, I’m a newbie. No, I won’t be drunk the while time.

Filtrbox is co-sponsoring the CO interactive party tonight, should be a god time. Http://Colorado-interactive.com

Things I’m looking forward to checking out @sxsw…

1. Is there real dialogue on topics or just polite agreement? (note: based on the apparently awesome #specwork09 panel I missed, the answer is yes on the realness)

2. Are people talking about the future of search? What are the other emerging trends (aside from filtering and semantic intelligence).

3. New/breakout apps launching -what’s got people interested and what flops? Apparently AT&T’s cell network blows in Austin, to the point where Wired has written about it and iPhone peeps are pissed! Might make it hard for mobility apps to get the adoption they need.

What are the don’t miss panels/parties/apps/topics? Let me know.

filtrbox, startups, travel filtrbox, sxsw

Its been a busy few weeks (or months) for me and I haven’t had much time to write here (not for a lack of desire however). Lots going on but these are the highlights that I can share…

Filtrbox announced some funding and a new version, Filtrbox G2. To me, the biggest news was that we cut the price in half and are offering UNLIMITED use. The team did a great job and reworked quite a bit of the platform to accomdiate what we want to do with G2 and the new usage model.  Sign up for a free trial here http://www.filtrbox.com/signup.html

Recent coverage…

TechCrunch: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/17/filtrbox-raises-14-million-launches-revamped-market-intelligence-tool/

WebWorkerDaily: http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/02/19/filtrbox-g2-expands-service-and-cuts-pricing/

AppGap: http://www.theappgap.com/filtrbox-provides-market-intelligence-for-the-rest-of-us.html

Filtrbox blog: http://www.filtrbox.com/blog/2009/02/18/filtrbox-launches-g2-proactive-market-intelligence/

VCIR

I’ll be up at VCIR Winter next week Tuesday through Thursday. VCIR is an awesome event and I always look forward to it. Filtrbox pitched last year and it went very well for us. This year I’m just there to network and support the presenting companies. I set up a FiltrFeed to track news and buzz around the presenting companies. This FiltrFeed can be added to any RSS reader and will automatically update when Filtrbox finds a new article that mentions the company name AND VCIR. I turned off Twitter monitoring for this feed to keep the noise down.  http://www.filtrbox.com/rss/WUuPMw8dtTUIz4G10SlTSg==

VatorTv

I was just out in SF with the Filtrbox team for a few meetings and we got to stop by the Vator.tv offices. Meeting the team was great and I was able to record a new video pitch for Filtrbox. You can check it out here: http://vator.tv/pitch/show/Filtrbox?document=aris-pitch. We’ll be doing more with them in the near future, so stay tuned! Thanks to Bambi, Kedric and Meliza for all the help.

Techstars

Techstars-for-a-day is coming up on Tuesday. Its a great even that helps shed some light on the process and creates an opportunity for the candidates, or those thinking about applying, to meet the mentors and graduates. Seeing as how the Techstars office is about 50 yards away, you can bet I’ll be there to mix and mingle.

SocialLeverage, LLP.

Congrats to Howard Lindzon (a Filtrbox investor) and the rest of the team at SocialLeverage – they just announced a new seed fund for social apps. Howard has been great to work with and is a prolific entrepreneur and invesor so I can’t wait to see what they get involved with. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/howard_lindzon_and_friends_lau.php

boulder, filtrbox, startups

Are you trying to get your startup off the ground? Get it funded? Figure out if its worth doing?

Apply to Techstars!

This will be the 3rd year of the program and the companies that have come out already speak volumes about its value and quality. Techstars is like a linear accelerator for your startup – you get to success (or failure) quickly and have access to incredible resources. Even if you know what you are doing, check it out. Even if you think giving up ANY equity is ridiculous, check it out…(’cause you are wrong). In this market, especially, you are going to need every edge you can get to get noticed and funded. Still need convincing? Let me help you out… Of the first year’s program we’ve already seen 3 exits and at least 6 commercial launches. All of these companies got funded (others did too).

• Socialthing! - sold to AOL
• IntenseDebate – sold to Wordpress/Auttomatic
• BrightKite – killer location-based social app
• Eventvue - social networks for conferences
• Filtrbox – google alerts on steroids
• Madkast – sold to ShareThis!

The 2008 class is equally impressive and has been moving quickly – these companies are all revenue-generating already and I believe most got funded too!

• Foodzie – like etzy for gourmet food
• Ignighter – group dating
• Gyminee – get fit with friends

If you are only interested in running a lifestyle business, or a side-show don’t bother applying. If you have a loose concept but no team and nothing to show…get to work.  Techstars selects participants based on the quality and potential of the team, and the potential of the ideas they possess. Your business doesn’t have to be fully baked, but you’d better be able to pitch it. If you have what it takes, and you want to maximize your chances for success I would give this serious thought.  If you have any questions, or need advice just drop a line here!

boulder, startups

I was contacted by a recent college grad who is looking to get to know the companies and the people in the Boulder start up community. I rattled off a bunch of resources and thought I’d share the list. 

boulder, startups

Almost every day it seems a new service or mashup for Twitter comes out. Some will stick, others won’t. That’s the great thing about the internet is that everyone gets to try!  Twitter has reached a point of critical mass now where mining the data and the trends around what’s happening on Twitter is as valuable as the messages themselves. I use twitter for both business and personal pursuits, and have tried a ton of the apps and services that have come out. Here are my favorites;

• Twhirl – AIR based desktop client – there are lots of other desktop clients but I like this the best because it includes URL shortening, retweet, finding users, etc. Its the most feature rich. Tweetdeck is cool too but is short on some of the key features. Since I like to have at least two accounts open at once (arinewman and filtrbox)
• search.twitter.com – a great way to find mentions of anything specific in the twitter stream. At Filtrbox, we’ve taken the twitter search API and integrated it into our media monitoring service so you can set up the searches once and receive daily emails with any new mentions from ANY twitter user (as long as their stream is public). You can also turn these searches into RSS feeds in Filtrbox, but I digress…
• Tweetie – the best iPhone client I’ve used so far. I’ve tried twittelator, twitterific and others and found this new entrant to be superior for a few reasons. Its fast, stable, simple, supports location/photos, multiple accounts, following others, trending topics and saved searches. Totally worth the 3 bucks. Here’s one of the menus… 

 

• Monitter – a cool web UI for search.twitter.com – its pretty basic but enables you to set up a bunch of searches and see the stream of tweets. I don’t use it that much because its an app that requires constant attention, which is impossible. Its on this list because its a great demonstration of the value of the twitter search API.
• Filtrbox – (disclaimer – I’m a founder and President) – a powerful and cost-effective online news and media monitoring service that does keyword-based persistent search across online news, the blogosphere and social networks (twitter and Friendfeed). If you want to track brands, companies, people, hot trends, or any specific topic across all types of online media, Filtrbox is awesome. It supports twitter via the search API, and you can receive emails every day listing all of the mentions on Twitter. You can also post articles the system finds directly to Twitter from the web dashboard. Rather than checking search.twitter.com all the time or running manual searches, its sort of a set-it-and-forget-it thing…if there’s a mention, you’ll see it. With its trending and coverage reports, you can keep track of who on twitter is talking about things you care about. 
• MediaOnTwitter  - a wiki, and overall good resource that identifies what media outlets are on twitter and how to find them. Check out the US page to get an idea…http://mediaontwitter.pbwiki.com/United States

There are a ton of others out there, but these are my faves and what I rely on. Let me know what I missed or what you like better!

filtrbox, info overload, iphone, tech bits filtrbox, iphone, social media, tweetie, twhirl, twitter

Thanks to VeloNews I just discovered a new pair of pants that have reflective material in the pant leg just for commuter-safety. This is a great idea and is quite convenient for those of us that ride to work. Seeing as how I recently shredded a pair of jeans because I was too lazy to roll up the pant leg, and I forget my little reflective ankle-wrap velcro thing half the time, these pants seem like a good solution for those short winter days when its dark well before I get out of the office. 

Only problem is I NEVER wear khakis and they don’t make denim so until then I’ll keep an eye on the site. Check out Cordarounds.com. I’m curious – are they water or stain resistant? Do they hold up well in the seat? Are they Old-Navy or Banana Republic?

the bike

I was doing pretty well for awhile. The whole Inbox Zero thing was working for me, even though its mostly BS. I managed to stay on top of the inbox clutter for about 4 months. Then something happened, some increase in busy and decrease in time, and inbox zero faded into the rearview mirror like a geriatric in the slow lane. My inbox is now at 1400 messages. This works for some people but not for me…I can’t help but feel I’ve dropped the ball on 1400 items somehow. 

I keep thinking I’m going to get the time back, or that I should just wipe the whole inbox and admit defeat. In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to recover and process 300 messages a week of the backlog. Most get deleted, some require responses. I have noticed a 90/10 rule in effect also – 10% of the emails require 90% of the time to deal with. The other 90% of the emails are easy to file or delete.

Update 12/08 – My inbox still has 1k messages in it. I am still hoping to get back on track over this winter holiday and start 2009 with an empty inbox. We’ll see. I’m losing confidence this will happen. We’ll see.

info overload email, InboxZero, info overload

The Newman family was supposed to fly to Puerto Vallarta tomorrow to join the in-laws for a sun (and Tequila) soaked Christmas. While we were busy having kids and starting a company, the rules changed and even kids now need passports to travel to Mexico. Something to do with the new WHTI, which we were not paying attention to.

I feel like a dumb-ass because this isn’t exactly news to most travelers, but we went to Mexico 3 years ago with just a birth certificate for our daughter and hadn’t been out of the country since. So on the eve of our departure we were informed that without passports for the little ones, we couldn’t fly. Even if we got a rush-job for the passports on Monday and paid the outrageous rebooking fees, the vacation would be whittled down to two days. 

No one to blame but ourselves I suppose, but we are pretty devastated over here. No trip for us, so it looks like we’ll be heading out for Chinese food and a movie on the 25th

travel mexico, passport, travel, WHTI