Terrible Car Troubles

17Aug08

My family and I decided to take a trip to Vegas and Arizona. Which was awesome and a lot of fun. But the reason I’m writing this blog post is to tell a different story.

So we take our flight back to Buffalo, via Arizona. We land safely and happily. My dad decided to get our car which is about a 5 minute walk away from the airport, and I’m left with the rest of my family, taking our luggage off the conveyor belt.

We take all of our luggage, drag it out side, and wait for my dad to come back.

10 minutes, 15, 20… by the time it gets to around 30 minutes after he left, we start to see his car drive up. This is where it gets interesting (and crazy). He jumps out of the car, and suddenly an alarm siren from a car goes off. And when I mean car alarm, I mean the one that is loud as hell – the anti-theft one! My first reaction was that the car in front of us was going off. A couple seconds later my dad yells to us: “GET IN THE CAR!”

Now I’m getting completely worried, at the same time confused. He pops the trucks, throws our luggage in, and jumps in the car. Literally hundreds of peering eyes are watching us try and make our way out of the pick-up zone at the airport. We let a security guard know that we actually didn’t hot wire the car, and that we actually had a very low battery, which is why the the alarm is going off. We then drive off, and about two minutes of driving.. it finally stops.

Now for the reason the car alarm was going off: We had left our car near the airport, and by accident, someone left the light in the back seat on. So for the week and half that we were away. That light was on, sucking the battery out of our car. Supposedly, when the battery gets too low, it will start to make the car alarm sound when you open the door. And that’s exactly what happened to us.

Okay, so now that we are in the car safely, car alarm off. The problem is getting out. Doing that will just set off the anti-theft alarm for another 5 minutes (again).

We find a hotel on the road which has free Wi-Fi and instantly I crack open my Macbook and search for a 24-7 customer support number for Acura, on Google. We find the number and my dad decides to take the call. He talks to the guy for a solid 15 minutes and then hangs up the phone. The instructions from the guy was to get out of the car, through the window, take the keys, and insert them into the driver seat door, then unlock and lock the car 3 times.

My dad successfully did this!

Now he is outside of the car. This is the moment of truth. Opening the door without the ant-theft alarm going off.

SUCCESS

Anyways, just thought I’d share this memorable experience with you.

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Interview with co-founder of Reddit.com, Alexis Ohanian

11Jul08

Reddit is one of the top social media sites out there. Being my homepage for years now. And today I got a chance to talk to the co-founder of this awesome site, Alexis Ohanian. A part from reddit, he has also started another note-worthy website called Breadpig. Where, some of his side projects have gone on.

• First off, tell me just a little bit about yourself, and reddit?

I graduated from UVa with Steve Huffman (my co-founder) in 2005 with degrees in History and Commerce.  That summer, we started reddit.com with $12,000 in funding from Y Combinator.  At the time, our aim was simply to create a front page of the web.  Since there was only two of us, it made sense to rely on the community to scour for the great content and build a site that catered to them.  reddit is a place for people to discover, share, comment on interesting links, which rise and fall on the front page throughout the day as readers vote them up or down.

We’ve grown quite a bit since that little apartment in Medford, Mass.  Not in company size, though, as there are only 5 of us working on the site these days, but we get around 4 million uniques a month.

• It’s been about 7 months now since the launch of user created Reddits. Do you have any plans in the future to expand on this idea, possibly making it even better?

We’ve been really impressed with some of the reddits that have already been created (worldnews and environment are two of my favorite successes).  That said, we’d like to evolve the creation and navigation of these many diverse communities so that an even broader range of people can see the value of creating or joining a reddit.

• On a broad scale, where do you see the future of social news heading, in the coming years?

Well, social news is still a very, very small fraction of news consumption for the general population.  I believe time will have the most significant impact on changing people’s tastes, but in the meantime, there’s a significant number of younger news consumers (there I go sounding old) who have no preconceived notions about using the Internet as their primary source for being informed.

We’ve still got a long way to go before social news becomes mainstream, but we’re aiming to get the alien at the front of the parade.

Yes, they’re going to have a parade to celebrate social news becoming mainstream.

• Besides Reddit, you started another website called Breadpig. So what are your main goals for Breadpig? And have you accomplished any of them yet?

Breadpig is an uncorporation I started with the intent of satisfying my design ambitions.  I like creating things that people enjoy buying, I just don’t have any interest in personally profiting from them (hence the “un”).  Geeky shirts and an assortment of unHolidayCards have been the focus so far, but we debuted the world’s first LOLmagnetz (magnetic LOL poetry) at ROFLCon to a great response.  After months of pre-orders, they’re finally shipping next week (sorry everyone, breadpig isn’t my dayjob).

The profits get reinvested into future products and donated to various non-profits I’ve become involved with over the years.  I’d also been planning a small-scale “X-prize” for open source development, but some family matters tabled the breadpig prize — for now.

• I’ve seen videos of you guys with Rock Band equipment playing in the streets. Tell me about that.

That’s the breadpig band (yes, the brand is as versatile as Branson’s Virgin).  The guys I grew up with and I were playing Rock Band one day and had to mute the TV, the result was the most pathetic sound we’d ever heard.  Click, click, click, tap, tap…

Then it dawned on me to take our act to the streets of DC and record people’s reactions.  60K views later, a reporter from the Washingtonian magazine was calling for an interview — about breadpig.  The magic of the Internet.

We’ve got an album (When Will Then Be Now?), too, which we’re trying to get on iTunes.  That will be a sad day for the music industry.

• Finally, do you have any thoughts circling your head, about social media, the internet, or anything else technology related?

If you’re online as much as most of the people I know in this business, take a day off this weekend and go outside to read a book (that’s the alpha-version of your Kindle).  And if you’re as sensitive to sunlight as I am, there’s always a cafe nearby.

Trust me, the Internet will be there when you return.

• Thanks so much for you time Alexis!

My pleasure, Adam.  Keep the great reddit submissions coming.

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The robot that plays air hockey

09Jul08

This is pretty crazy to think. We now have robots that can do just about anything. The robot I came across today, has never lost a game of air hockey (in 32-bit mode).

First, a supercomputer beats a chess master. Then, an artificial intelligence program deals defeat to a poker champion. Next: A robot takes on humans in air hockey. An upgraded robot designed by General Electric Fanuc can beat most human air hockey players, its developers claim.

Well, just thought this was worth sharing with you guys. Below is the 15 second video of this awesome machine in action.

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The future

09Jul08

Just thought I’d let you know what’s in store for the future of this blog.

So, in the coming weeks, there will be a couple more interviews with some pretty popular (internet) people. Not going to say who, just yet. I also plan to update this blog with a lot of my own articles. Productivity and technology would be the big two. Anyways, If you want to get updates from my blog, subscribe to the RSS feed, I’d appreciate it!

Filed under: The Blog   |  1 Comment

Interview with Michael Mistretta

09Jul08

Michael Mistretta is into social media, he has his own blog, he just recently launched a tech Podcast, and he’s also an extraordinary photographer. But the thing is, he’s only 15 years old!

Below is the interview I got to have with him.

• So Mike, tell me a little bit about yourself.

I’m a 15 year old teenager passionate about God, technology, and photography. When I’m not blogging or taking pictures of missionary work in Africa, I’m usually working on various online projects with my friend, Chris Thomson. I guess you can picture me as the kind of guy that lights up when people start talking about cameras or Macs. I’m also Canadian, eh?

• How, and when, did you first get into technology and the computer?

My dad was always one of those people into Web Design and was fascinated with the Internet and forums like CompuServe back in the 90s. Some of that rubbed off on me, and led me to longing for a beeeautifui HP PC. After awhile of saving, I finally decided to purchase my first Mac—a MacBook Pro—in June of 2007. Since then I have grown to love photography and blogging—which eventually led to my purchase of a Nikon D40x in December of 2007, and the launching of my own blog, MichaelMistretta.com, on January 1st, 2008.

• Okay, so I hear you’re: into social media, a photographer, and a podcaster. And on top of all of that, you’re still a student in high school. How do you manage all your time wisely?

Last year I began to teach myself school from home, due to the lack of interest in the education system in the schools. I am able to learn my material and complete the “homework” in 2-3 hours per day. This gives me time to practice my photography, writing, and work on projects. I also get an extra month of summer break, allowing me to go on missions trips throughout the summer.

• Where do you see the future of your data? (on the web, external hard drives, etc.)

I’ve been spending a lot of time contemplating the future of computing, and how we will store our data in the future. There are two products that were recently released, that I think give us a glimpse into the future of our data. MobileMe, from Apple, allows all your vital information—emails, contacts, calendars, small documents—and syncs them, seamlessly, across all you devices. Really, it’s not even sync—it’s pushing the data to the cloud, which then distributes all the data immediately to all your devices. I’ve written about this concept before, and I strongly believe that this system of interacting with data will be the future of living in the cloud. The second product that I believe changes the game for local data is the new Drobo Generation 2. The Drobo is a smart data robot that allows massive, expandable, redundant data. It’s fast. It’s silent. There is no need for additional backups for the data on the Drobo, and you will never run out of space as you can keep expanding the blob of data on the fly. Drobo is what Hard Drives need to make a comeback.

• What are you favourite desktop applications and web services?

Skitch, NetNewsWire, iChat, iTunes, Aperture, iWork, and obviously Twitterrific are some of my favourite applications on my Mac. I use TextMate + Transmit + CSSEdit for web design, and MarsEdit, another amazing app, for blogging. I use MobileMe for my online data, and WordPress for my website. The three big social networks that I’m on are Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook.

• Could you name 5 of your favourite blogs?

Hmm, this could be hard. Shawn Blanc’s blog, The Weekly Review, TightWInd, Daring Fireball, and Chris Thomson’s blog are a couple of my favourites.

• Final question, I heard you just traveled on a month long trip to Africa. So, how was it?

This year, I went to Zambia to help with the AIDS orphans. Zambia is known as the cradle of the orphan crisis in Africa. There are 2 million orphans within Zambia’s 10 million people population. Many orphans have to drop out of school, and go into prostitution or drugs in order to provide for their siblings. It’s not normal for an child to eat more than once or twice a week. We went to help provide them with hope, food, clothes, and a place to stay. We built houses, we played with them, and we showed them love—something they had never felt before. You can see some of the photos from the trip on my Flickr account.

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