I watched this in today’s NY Times. I rarely click on these multimedia features, but this one was a spectacular photo and audio narrative of this terrible moment.

We are blessed to be living here in the United States, but as the world continues to converge, the need to be aware of events and consequences of those events around the world only increases in importance. While there is much gnashing of teeth over Iran, our biggest problem is what happens in Pakistan. The linkage between the US and Musharraf is doing us no good, I wonder what the plan to deal with that is…

I want to state for the record, that I really enjoy blogging. Though I can’t claim a huge readership base, I can claim that writing on this blog has done a whole lot of good for my clarity of writing. In fact, I haven’t felt that my writing has been as concise since my journal writing days traveling through Europe. So, to those who don’t blog-the reason I blog is to be a better writer in my everyday life.

Anyway, things have been extraordinarily busy and will remain so for the foreseeable future as I work through a bunch of different things in business and in life. I will post when I can, so definitely grab my RSS feed or email if you are one of my 30-40 average visitors.

Last week, we pitched NY Angels, which was pretty intense. While I would love to say that we knocked their socks off, I must admit that the outcome of that meeting is very unclear. I’ll obviously let you know if something comes of it. We have also been admitted into the Investors Circle newsletter and company database. Investors Circle is a group of about 400 angel investors who seek to make socially conscious angel investments, so we are hopeful on that front.

I have also been spending some time brainstorming with a buddy of mine from a past job, Steve Martocci. Steve is an incredibly vivid and innovative thinker and developer, who is using these skills to develop some exciting things with his company Sympact Technologies. Spending time with him, working to develop his strategy has had a terrific cross-pollinating effect on how I think about PlansForUs. You will see the fruits of that pollination in 2008.

Moving on-Do you read Dy/Dan yet? Are you an educator? Than you must have a look. Are you interested in the debate around technology in the classroom? Than you should be reading. Dan provides an incredibly honest assessment of teaching. His latest post talks of the benefits of a well designed worksheet, a skill which I see on a regularly honed by my wife. The honesty of Dan’s discourse and the clarity of thought is really powerful. Check it out.

Finally, What’s my worldview? I know, you are all fascinated to find out and that’s why I kept it for last. Lucky for you, I am going to share my worldview as analyzed by QuizFarm and Oxygen Media. Leave a comment and tell me what your worldview diagnosis.

What is Your World View? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Postmodernist Postmodernism is the belief in complete open interpretation. You see the universe as a collection of information with varying ways of putting it together. There is no absolute truth for you; even the most hardened facts are open to interpretation. Meaning relies on context and even the language you use to describe things should be subject to analysis. Postmodernist 94% Cultural Creative 81% Existentialist 75% Idealist 50% Modernist 31% Fundamentalist 25% Materialist 25% Romanticist 19%

Does anyone else have a problem with Facebook loading? I find that at least 50% of the time that I click on the links in a Facebook email, it doesn’t log me into the system. Don’t get me wrong, I am totally impressed by the growth of Facebook and business acumen of Zuckerberg and his advisers, but if your company has that many users and that much money, shouldn’t you get the page loading working?

I am in Facebook to explore and learn, I haven’t yet figured out why I love it. I know my brother, who is a senior in college is addicted, but I am still haven’t figured out what problem Facebook is solving for me. For now, I will stick with it and learn from the excellent UI and business execution. That said the only social network that remains truly interesting to me right now is LinkedIN.

Thoughts?

Hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I had a really nice few days with my family in Chicago and also got the chance to meet with some interesting folks who I am looking forward to getting involved in PlansForUs.

In other news, we are in the middle of raising our seed round and thanks to the input on our presentation from this blog’s readers, we are getting a really nice response to our presentation from investors.

Here are a few things that I came across over the last few days and found interesting:

Jens Lekman-You Can Call Me Al
This is a superior cover of an already great song and has quickly become my wife’s favorite track. I hope you enjoy it as much as we have.

Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by Lawrence Lessig
How do you deal with issues of copyright in a world where information so freely moves about? It is a big question that we see grappled with rather inarticulately by the RIAA and Viacom among others. Mr. Lessig’s book is well worth a read for anyone, as it lays out the huge challenges faced by owners of intellectual property. A challenge that is fundamental though not unprecedented. Interestingly enough I am not getting bogged down as I have in the past with these types of books.

Tatebanko-
Not quite sure what this is, but in my search for creative Christmas gifts this popped up on the radar. Thoughts?

Connectivism: Learning as Network Creation by George Siemens
This has been around for awhile and as someone exploring Educational Technology I should probably not admit that I just got around to reading this, but that’s the case. Educational Technology and it’s advocates are a fascinating and passionate bunch who I have learned much from, though I do often cringe at the relentless pursuit of the new/new by these folks. Regardless, I had a favorite quote from the piece:

The tipping point occurs when the node itself has created a strong enough network to begin to influence the entire thought process (neural network). Once it is no longer a rogue node, it continues to embed itself as node that is used by the rest of the network.

I’ll let you read the piece to place the quote in context.

Finally, this piece
Overcoming Bias-Are Almost All Investors Biased?

Enjoy.

I just want to throw out an electoral prediction based on nothing more than my new found enthusiasm for Barack and an interesting editorial from David Brooks.

The November 2008 election is going to be….. Obama v McCain

This ballot presents all sorts of interesting generational differences, beyond just the obvious policy differences. We will just have to see if I am right. Put your prediction in now in the comments, if you get it right, I’ll send you the book I am reading at the time…lucky you.

I know that I still haven’t answered my Maslow’s Hierarchy of Teacher’s Needs question, nor have I posted the updated presentation. The presentation should be up by the end of the week. The hierarchy of needs may take a little bit longer.

Scott Heiferman the founder and CEO of Meetup wrote a great piece a week ago on why he has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to running a tech company in NYC. My favorite line:

I love New York. And I’ve got a great company to grow. Silicon Valley Companies succeed because of who they are, how they are, why they are… not where they are. It’s just been a coincidence. The non-SV companies haven’t had the right who/how/why. A company that NEEDS to exist  — a company with a vital purpose to serve milions of people’s real needs — will attract the people to bring it to life — and it can exist anywhere.

I also love New York and could think of no other place in the world that is a better fit for a company like PlansForUs. Now back to hammering on Steve to fulfill our users needs.

I have been pondering this thought off and on after I saw Jack Welch on CNBC a few mornings ago. Now, to be honest I am less interested specifically in what Jack Welch the person would do (though if you want to leave a comment with the answer Mr. Welch, then I would be honored), but what a personality type like Jack Welch would choose to do if he graduated today.

I mean he got his PhD degree in Chemical Engineering but from his biography seemed to revel more in the social than academic aspects of higher education. So my question is, would Jack Welch still go to work for GE today? or Would he do something else? and what would that something else be?

Enjoy the day.

I apologize my relative quiet on the blogging front. Your regular dose of Tyler was most likely a highlight of your day, but I have been consumed with fundraising for PlansForUs. Next week I will share our fundraising deck, so that you can have a better sense of what we are thinking from a long term perspective.

Having grown up amidst relative affluence I had actually, silly me, thought that the fundraising would be a piece of cake…not the case. Needless to say, I am learning a ton and reaching deeply into my network which has been really great, as I have been able to reconnect with some folks that I had not spoken to in some time.

As for the first part of my title…Do you ever watch No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain? It is on the National Geographic channel and it is absolutely brilliant. I did not know who Anthony Bourdain was until I saw him as a judge on Top Chef. When I saw that he had a show, I figured it would be worth putting on the DVR. A couple shows came and went and then I sat down and watched one. Woah, it’s awesome.

In the show, Tony travels to locales foreign and domestic eating the local food with a heavy focus on street food. The characters that he meets and the food that he eats by adopting this very local style of travel is inspiring. I remember when my wife and I were in Vienna, Austria for a friend’s wedding and yearned to break out from the tourist district and get into the real, local style of Vienna. It is that same yearning that is realized every week on No Reservations.

If you like food and travel then I think you’ll love this show…if you don’t, well then maybe this show is not for you.

As the title would suggest, this post is unrelated to teaching.

Do you enjoy the pulpy goodness of Ken Follett? The riveting pace of John Grisham? or the story telling of JK Rowling? My friend Matt, a real up and comer at the NY Fed, published a piece entitled “Buybacks in Treasury Cash and Debt Management” that for many of you Fed watchers will be a must read. For those of you who are not fed watchers, perhaps the character development will be what hooks you.
Matt has assured me that this piece has none of those qualities, but you have to start somewhere. I can tell you that the phrase “…smoothing week-to-week fluctuations in Treasury bill offerings” sent me right to the download button.

Thanks to Matt and his co-author Kenneth for their hard work in analyzing this complex problem and for allowing us to peer into the heads of these brilliant men.

Back to work.

With the Christmas season fast approaching I have a feeling that the barrage of catalogs that are headed to my apartment is not going to abate. My wife and I don’t mind the Patagonia catalog, but beyond that singular great piece of cataloging, the rest are annoying and an environmental drain. In addition, one of the benefits of living in NYC is that you have all the shopping you could want without the catalogs, so I want to stop getting so many stinking catalogs. I have looked into the Direct Marketing Associations website, but the process seemed annoying and I think it cost me money….which is ridiculous.

So I was excited to see that there is a new website out there, Catalog Choice, devoted to ending this mountain of catalogs filling our tiny mailbox. I have signed up and will report back on the success of this service in curtailing our catalog problem. (It would be kind of funny, if this site were just the Direct Marketing Association harvesting email addresses. If that is the case at least spam doesn’t have such a major environmental impact and my gmail is pretty good at protecting me).

By the way, if you haven’t listened to the National yet, make it a priority. You can most likely find them among my Last.FM selections.

I use Last.FM it is an awesome. There are many reasons I think that it is great, but I want to make this entry short. One of the great things is that it allows me to say I love a track or ban that track from my library.

That’s what got me thinking. I very often will press love or ban a track. It is simple and connected to how I feel about the track. I either love or hate it, all the rest of the stuff is in the middle and I can just skip it if I don’t really love it. But I really want more stuff I love and less stuff that I would ban.

Why doesn’t NetFlix do this? or everyother site that uses ratings. I mean there are really only two meaningful vales on a 1-5 scale. 1 and 5. The rest is just sort of in the middle and can be scanned efficiently because 50% of the time you may like it and 50% of the time you won’t.

So my new position on ratings is: Ask me do I love or hate and the rest give me a simple way to scan through it.

This is totally unrelated to teaching, but is really a hilarious SNL short from Andy Samberg. It is a pitch perfect ridicule of the President of Iran’s remarks on the absence of homosexuals in Iran. It was also interesting that while I intended to embed the video from NBC’s site, they were unable to get it right…so enjoy on YouTube (until they have it removed).

I have been reading about Professor Randy Pausch’s speech since I picked up on the story on Information Arbitrage. Until today, I had not spent the 9:59 to actually watch the speech in its entirety. I am happy to report that I finally did watch the entire speech.

The man and the speech are an inspiration and his legacy will live on through the magic of YouTube and viral distribution. If you do not know about Professor Pausch’s speech here is a quick synopsis of the man, the context and the speech.

The speech is titled How to Achieve Your Childhood Dreams and was given September 18 by a beloved Computer Science professor at Carnegie-Mellon University. The speech was part of a “Last Lecture” series, where top professors give talks as if it is the last lecture they are going to give, ever. For Professor Pausch this very well be among his last lectures as he is going to die of pancreatic cancer within the next two months.

I hope that you will enjoy and spread Professor Pausch’s amazing speech, the entirety of which can be found here. I have embedded a video which is a compendium of good moments from the speech with commentary from WSJ’s Jeff Zaslow.

I have been delinquent in my blogging this past week. For that I apologize, it is not that I don’t have a ton of stuff that I want to share, it’s just that I have been putting off blogging to focus on some business related items like: tidying up our executive summary, putting together a better looking presentation and improving my financial projections. I also traveled to Chicago to see my parents, watch the Cubs and Bears and to meet with a VC friend of the family.

Here are a few entries that I hope to complete this week:

• Are you surprised? Clarence is Already There
• Organize through networks, not Hierarchy
• Signal vs Noise in Teaching

Lately I have learned a ton reading Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade, am looking forward to the Okkervil River show on Friday and enjoyed way too many combos, italian beefs and hot dogs while in Chicago (Go Cubs!!)

Finally, I read something over at Bokardo that reinforced my ambition to improve the visualizing of information and process at PlansForUs. This quote in particular caught my attention:

…show people images or sequences that represent ideas. I’m constantly advocating for a “How it works” section on web applications. Is it because the thing is complicated or there are too many steps to understand? No, not usually. Given enough time most folks can figure out anything. But as a rule we just don’t have time. What visuals do is take abstract thoughts (the words we use to describe the app) and make them concrete in a visualization…instantly.

Given the constraints on teacher’s time, we need to nail the visual presentation at PlansForUs.

In conclusion, if any of you are going to the Okkervil River show at Webster Hall, just tap me on the shoulder and let me know how we can improve PlansForUs. I look identical to my Meez, tall, glasses and shock of blond hair and I would love to hear your thoughts.

I moved to NYC on September 9, 2001 from Winnetka and was to move into my apartment on the 15th. There are better photos, but this one is my own. It is shot from a friend’s roof on a beautiful night in 2004. You can see the two light towers faintly, but distinctly in the right center of the photo. I think that the light towers are a beautiful tribute.