volveblog

Life has a Center

 

 

A. Messal, Life has a Center
2011, 48x48, acrylic on canvas
stream of consciousness abstract expression

Elk In Rocky Mountain National Park

Moraine Park, Rocky Mountain National Park

 

Galveston, Late November

Some new pics with my Canon SD4000.  Tell me what you think!

 

 

 

 

Untitled #200

A. Messal, Untitled #200
96x72, acrylic on canvas
stream of consciousness abstract expression

This is my latest painting and first of this size.

Introducing the Open Social Identity

A true social network is defined by its members, not its medium.  In an effort to improve the effectiveness and success of the widely hyped social components in new (and old) technologies the medium must become less coupled to singular disjoint social networks.  Simply put, having separate logins, data feeds, messaging systems, friends lists, etc, is not effective and causes frustration, requires the user to duplicate efforts, and prevents larger social networks from forming.

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google Buzz, LinkedIn, Flickr, and many other websites and companies all offer a similar service - a potential social network, and a portal into that network.  However, there is very little cross network interaction. It takes special tools and setup to simply have a tweet displayed as a status update on Facebook, much less for a comment on a Facebook post about a blog entry to be displayed on the actual blog.  There are many social networks, and little bringing the people in these various networks together.

To solve this problem, I propose the Open Social Identity.  The OSI is your entire social identity: your profile, friend lists, status updates, posts, pictures, messages, events, calenders, etc.  The OSI exists separate from what we currently call a social network.  Instead of defining and storing your identity, current social networks must become social network portals, into your online social life.  Portals will offer different services and features, much like they do currently; however, they must each support the OSI.  Some illustrations to demonstrate the concept.

• A Facebook status update is intrinsically a status update on LinkedIn, MySpace, and becomes a Tweet.
• A comment of a picture in Twitter is also viewable as part of the comments for the same picture on Facebook.
• Adding to your job history on LinkedIn results in a change in your profile on Google Profiles.
• Comments on a TypePad blog entry are shown with posts of that article on Facebook.
• An Evite gets added to your iCal, Google Calendar, and is viewable in Facebook, automatically.

Of course, everything is customizable and configurable so that you can control who sees what and where, but regardless, 100% of your Social Identity is in a single place and owned by you.

The OSI represents a standardization of the data models that social networking sites use.  In following articles I will discuss the advantages of this model, and some of the finer details.

As a teaser, consider integration with your mobile phone's phone book, an address book that you no longer need to manage, using your OSI as a OpenID to login to non-social sites, the ability to monetize your OSI, and more!

Arthur Messal

Aspens, Rocky Mountain National Park

Covered with a thin layer of water.

 

The holy grail, green, yellow, red.

Fall in Rocky Mountain National Park

One of my favorite stands of aspen trees.  Taken about 2.5 miles West of the Cow Creek Trailhead RMNP.

Micro Angel Investing

For about the last three years I've been working on finding a way for small (tiny) investors to invest in brand new startups, pre-IPO companies, and small businesses.  To facilitate this I created a concept called Micro Angel Investing and the Micro Angel Investment Corporation.

For the uninitiated, Angel Investors provide early stage funding for startups.  Their investments are generally very high risk but can offer an extreme rate of return.  They are generally individuals with plenty of expendable income and can range from from a grandfather or friend with a ten thousand dollar investment, to a pool of Angels with a several million dollar investment.

Angel Investors are an important part of the modern startup environment where a lot of ideas are simply too risky for traditional funding methods.  Angels might also provide mentoring, connections, and advice to the entrepreneurs they are funding.

Micro Angel Investing allows individuals to pool many small investments into a single, large, angel investment, thereby spreading the risk but also opening up the potential rewards to a larger group of people.

This concept has recently entered the mainstream with an article published in Wired Magazine by Paul Boutin entitled Let the Little Guys Get in on Pre-IPO.

...you’d think today’s small-time stock traders would be allowed to get in on the pre-IPO action, effectively making them micro angel investors at a time when startup capital from established fund managers is hard to find.

Boutin's concept is different than mine, but equally compelling.  Micro Angel Investing generally occurs at the earliest stages of a startup, a pre-IPO investment might occur just before the actual IPO.

Boutin accurately describes some of the hurdles with either of these concepts, namely, the SEC.  But the Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t let just anyone buy shares in a corporation that hasn’t gone public. Pre-IPO sales are limited to “accredited investors"

At the present, there is simply no way to structure such investments in a cost effective manner.  Hopefully this will change in the future and anyone can own a stake in the best new ideas!

Search is Dead

OK, maybe that is too dramatic.  But gone are the days of firing up your browser with Yahoo or Google as your home page, and thinking what do I want to find on the Internet today?

An article at CNBC today mentions a consequence of this, "The era of Google's dominance in search advertising may be over as social networking site Facebook becomes the portal for web users to access other web sites."

The hype about Google was barely about search, it was about market-share and novelty.  Search is boring, it's a utility, and it has become a commodity.  We don't traverse the Internet by starting at a search engine any more, we start from Tweets, Facebook posts, Digg, and other social media or content aggregation sites. 

The Drudge Report was arguably the first popular site that allowed us to simply browse one page instead of searching for news and visiting news sites.  Visiting Drudge satisfies the desire to know what's going on, as expressed through the lens of Matt Drudge.  And, much like the friend feeds of today, Drudge often posts articles that we probably would have missed otherwise, helping us to find something new.

Back in the days of search it was hard to find something new.  How do you search when you don't know what you are looking for.  Now 15 minutes at a handful of websites can give you a snapshot of news and popular culture far more rounded then you can piece together yourself.  In fact, it's so easy to find the good stuff that we can seemingly exhaust the supply of quality content and move on to the content-for-the-sake-of-content generated by article farms like Demand Media.

Search engines will never go away because we will always need a method to index and locate content across the Internet.  But a search engine is no longer the best starting point for our on-line lives.  Modern search engines are technological works of art that function quite well, but so is my toaster.

- Art Messal

Review - A favorite frozen pizza

I tend to overthink a lot of my purchases, as a result, I am very happy with many of the products that I choose.  I hope to post some reviews about these in the future.

I'll start with a great frozen pizza.  Typically I eat quite healthy, focusing on fresh foods, lots of vegetables, and few processed ingredients.  However, it's easy to find myself without the time required to prepare real food, so about once per week I bake a frozen pizza for dinner.  Often I fortify it with extra toppings, like fresh tomatoes, spinach, and olives.  As a result, I have tried many frozen pizzas!  In my opinion, and for my palate, the clear winner is the California Pizza Kitchen Signature Pepperoni, crispy thin crust pizza.  For a frozen pizza it actually has subtle and interesting flavor.  Good pepperoni, a variety of cheeses, and (if baked properly) a great crust make for a frozen pizza that is balanced and delicious.  The smoked gouda adds a pleasant and unexpected flavor element that works remarkably well.

California Pizza Kitchen Signature Pepperoni, crispy thin crust pizza
Recommended

Available for about $6 at most supermarkets.  I suggest pairing it with any white wine of decent quality or a simpler, less robust red.

Please note that my reviews are for a specific item.  By recommending a product I in no way intend to recommend that brand, product line, or anything else except the specific product mentioned.