Amber Mac’s site has a link to a new site called Justin.tv.
I knew I should have picked up that domain when I was fooling around and picking up justin-blog.com and jamesjustin.com. I guess I missed my chance to pick up a million dollars selling them their domain name. Yeah right! I suppose if it hadn’t been justin.tv they would have gone for emmett.tv or michael.tv or kyle.tv – the other guys involved in this project.
Here’s a look at the site.
As the site itself says, “Waste your life watching other people waste their lives.” What fun!
Of course Justin.tv has no affiliation to me except that we share the same name. Right now I think that is a good thing.
I’m between things right now.
Somewhere between the old and the new. Between this place and that place. Between the east and the west. Between now and tomorrow.
The old things bring back good memories. The new things hold promise. This place is exciting. That place is where I belong. The east has lots of surprises. The west is familiar. Now is where I am. Tomorrow is where I’ll be.
Sometimes it’s hard to figure out where I’m at. But in the end I suppose being between things allows me to get a taste of two worlds and always have something to look forward to.
If you haven’t heard of Twitter then you certainly are not keeping up with the latest fad on the Internet. Twitter is really popular with the geeky in-crowd driving web 2.0 and social networking. If you are not familiar with “web 2.0″ and “social networking” on the Internet… well, you’re obviously not “wired” enough. (Which might be a good thing considering that their really isn’t much point that I can see to things like Twitter.)
A site related to Twitter has just come to my attention called TwitterVision. What is TwitterVision? Well, it links messages posted on Twitter (usually about what people are doing or thinking at that moment in time) with a Google Map so you can see where these people are…and if you watch long enough you see what people are doing all over the world. Which is actually quite amazing if you are someone who grew up in the pre-Internet era.
As probably everyone knows by now, Google is famous for giving its employees free gourmet food. According to a recent Fortune article:
At Google it always comes back to the food. Google runs 11 free gourmet cafeterias at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, and offers all its employees free gourmet meals.
In addition to its cafés, Google has snack rooms which contain various cereals, candy, nuts, yogurt, carrots, fresh fruit and other snacks, and dozens of different drinks including soda and make-your-own cappuccino.
At the Tokyo headquarters of my current employer we used to have also have a company cafeteria. While not free it was heavily subsidized and many employees used it each day. In order to save cost the company closed it some years ago. It was located in the windowless basement of the building and the food was nothing special so the closing was not all that unexpected as the number of users was slowly declining.
On the other I think what Google does is absolutely right on. (The picture to the left is from one of their campus restaurants.) I think other perks like dry cleaning, oil changes, car washes, concierge service, etc. are debatable. But food is something everyone needs at some point and, done right like at Google, can provide a place for employees to interact with each other in a casual and relaxed environment fostering communication. It also can help to keep them on the job longer when required and make the times when O/T might be required a little more enjoyable.
My father worked for GM. I can recall when I was growing up having lunch with him at the company cafeteria from time to time. It wasn’t free, but was probably heavily subsidized. I think this was also a benefit that employees like my father probably appreciated. Being able to share their work environment with their family.
Eating is a basic part of everyone’s daily schedule and when a company can see past just the basic cost of it and decide to use it as a tool for making employees time at work a little more enjoyable and a hopefully a little more effective, it can be turned into an asset of the company like it is at Google.
You can find more pictures of the available at Google here.
As my satellite TV reception is a bit unstable this weekend I decided to buy some DVDs to pass the time. I picked up four titles for the grand sum of 64 RMB, that’s about US $8.30 for the lot. (And I’m sure a lot of locals could get them for even cheaper.) Of course they are all fakes. One of the movies I got, Casino Royale, was available here one month before the scheduled release date. Apparently about 95% of the DVD market here is fake. As for me, I wouldn’t mind paying a little more to get original DVDs. But where? Every DVD store I’ve ever been into around here basically only deals in fakes. And the quality of these fakes is actually quite good, especially if you wait for a few weeks after it first becomes available. I know a few of the studios are trying to fight piracy by releasing authentic versions of movies quickly after their release in movie theaters and making them relatively affordable at prices competitive with the fakes. I hope they succeed and I hope they work on the distribution model otherwise people like myself, who would be happy to pay a little more for a non-pirated version, will continue to be stuck supporting pirates.