Disqus - Latest Comments for Tim Courtney

Re: LEGO: Seven Years Later

Tim Courtney — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 05:43:50 -0000

I watched this interview on Friday and I was very impressed. Particularly when he talked about focusing on the families who are LEGO consumers, instead of diluting the product and developing LEGO for those with shorter attention spans. It's so encouraging to see the CEO openly discuss how they intend to stay true to their roots and core values--especially when, by his own admission, the company had lost its way in years past.

Way to go, Jake!

Re: links for 2007-03-29

Tim Courtney — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:34:18 -0000

Thanks for the anti-smoking link!

Re: links for 2007-04-27

Tim Courtney — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 07:24:04 -0000

Ha! You stuck the Penny Arcade link in there... :-)

Re: Robert Stephens from GeekSquad is cool.

Tim Courtney — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:00:24 -0000

Thanks for posting this. I love hearing from people how they innovate and build culture when starting companies. Lots of nuggets in this one.

Re: Cool thing happened on Twitter today…

Tim Courtney — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:53:03 -0000

So, Twitter worked for you yesterday. I wonder if Facebook will work for me today -- check my status, I'm looking for an Asian gong in Naperville. I've called everywhere I can think of, save Chinese restaurants. Can't spend any more time on it now...but if you or the blogosphere knows, please drop me a line!

Re: Cool thing happened on Twitter today…

Tim Courtney — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:56:43 -0000

PS - need it today, no time to order online :-)

Re: Bebo Launching Platform Tomorrow

Tim Courtney — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 10:20:47 -0000

I log into Friendster once or twice a year now to delete messages from spam profiles. I think only 1-2 people I care about are on there and not Facebook, and those people don't log in either.

Re: Create Events On The Go With QuickVite

Tim Courtney — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:01:06 -0000

Re: your twitter, I just got an evite this week for a baby's 1yo birthday party. The sender wouldn't be considered web2.0 savvy, at least in terms of the 'cool' web sites out there to send invites. Now that I think of it, I've gotten 2-3 other evites in the past from others in the same circle.

I get the sense that evite is still a player among non-techie, casual web users who are more concerned with getting the word out about something rather than using the newest, coolest, most integrated app.

I use Eventbrite for large events, but it seems complex and oriented towards large functions and paid events rather than social invitations like to parties. Another one that's simple and interesting is ImThere (www.imthere.com), though it's its own social network and therefore gaining critical mass to be useful among friends is an issue.

For me, I'd just as soon use Facebook's events, and have, even with people who aren't on Facebook. It's integrated with what I'm doing every day and I don't have to go anywhere else to manage my events. I can even add them to my Google Calendar (that I sync with iCal, Thunderbird, etc).

Re: Great Event Last Night!

Tim Courtney — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 14:17:03 -0000

Hey, congrats on this! Any pictures up on the tubes?

I've had projector foibles before ... an older computer we used for a PPT machine crapped out and stopped displaying sponsors' text. Won't let that happen again! :-)

Re: Why Not Make OpenID the Law?

Tim Courtney — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:58:19 -0000

With that I want a central place to manage all of my subscriptions to anything related to my email address, and postal address for that matter. With a central identity manager, I want control over who sends me solicitations for whatever, period.

I've actually kicked this idea around a little as a business, though haven't been serious enough about it as it looks F/T and I'm not looking to make that kind of jump right now.

And now that I've subscribed to BusinessWeek, The Economist, Wired, and FastCompany (yay frequent flier miles), I'm getting solicitations for everything, including timeshares. Ugg.

Re: How Many People Are Missing The Point of Twitter?

Tim Courtney — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:15:26 -0000

I'm a twitter n00b, and really only have a handful of followers and people I'm following. Is there an easy way to get my Plaxo contacts into Twitter? There I have a lot more business contacts and I think it will become more interesting when I'm able to hear from more people.

Re: Will Social Network Sites Exist 5 Years From Now?

Tim Courtney — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 09:43:26 -0000

Nick, I think you're on track here when you bring this back to the average Joe. I learned a lot one day when I was hanging out with a few completely non-techie friends on their laptops and watched them use Facebook. It was a new playground for them -- one where they added goofy apps, clicked, on ads, and participated in tons of surveys (none of which I do on a regular basis). Us heavy users are fairly advanced in both our understanding of social networking sites and in our knowledge of social graph theory. Until it becomes transparent and natural for the user, this won't happen. That means, until you no longer have to link up various services and mash things together (feed my Twitter updates to FB, etc), this won't be the next TV.

But when it does happen, it'll be fascinating.

Re: The Twitterfication of Profiles

Tim Courtney — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:18:39 -0000

You hit me back on a series of tweets over the weekend. I agree, why fill out another profile? But what about one master profile to feed all others? I also think there are serious privacy/ownership issues at stake, and though I'm not well read on OpenSocial, perhaps they can/will create standards and safeguard this?

Here are my tweets pasted, to get the ideas out there. Reverse-chronological:

timcourtney: @biznickman And how much of ourselves do we own? How much have I signed away in EULAs already? Does it even matter? Food for thought. 05:55 PM March 29, 2008

timcourtney: @biznickman Exciting, very. But I haven't stopped to think re: the implications. Our personal lives are vulnerable even to a simple hacker.

timcourtney: What if I could own my own identity server, like OpenID, & keep all my social data there. *I* would own/ctrl it, and it would feed services.

timcourtney: It would make a sweet movie, too.

timcourtney: What will come of the future of data privacy and ownership? The more I live my life online and in SaaS-land, the more I ask that question.

timcourtney: Living life on the social web is weird. del.icio.us bookmarks fed to Facebook, etc. More strategic links get clicked 'do not share.'

Re: A Personal Brand Revolution Is At Hand

Tim Courtney — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:58:14 -0000

You wrote:

"Last night I finally the realized the significance of the revolution taking place. You can instantly set up your brand via a blog, cross promote it on social networks and suddenly you have distributed brand you to the masses."

That alone is huge. I think the most important piece of this revolution is that you don't have to be the next Apple, Google, Coke, or BMW of what you do. You don't have to be a megabrand. You don't even have to be Gary Vaynerchuk. By branding yourself you're positioning YOU with your skills and interests and a consistent effort at that alone gets you noticed by audiences in your space -- and that space expands beyond the "web community."

Re: Tell Off Your Boss and Hop on Facebook

Tim Courtney — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:03:37 -0000

As CTO, didn't you set the policy for what sites were banned? Or couldn't you at least circumvent them?

Re: Why Big Brands Don’t Sponsor Blogs

Tim Courtney — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:59:12 -0000

With the freedom to blog or talk about whatever you want to comes the responsibility to be held accountable for your words. It's unfortunate that society rewards those who post false accusations. It's the precise reason tabloids are so popular, but yet not reputable.

I'd get more specific on my analysis, but I'd prefer not to pop up on some peoples' radar screens.

Re: Twitter’s Broken, I’m Out!

Tim Courtney — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:28:28 -0000

Nick, I've told you before that I read you because of your tweets about blog posts. I'm getting back into RSS, but still I don't hit the popular blogs as much due to volume. Your headlines grab me on Twitter, and that's why you continue to have my attention, at least from a blog perspective.

My usage is down, too. Really focused on cutting out the intermittent distractions. But, I do use Twitter for instant communication with peeps, and for coordinating meeting up in person (DM's to my phone).

Re: PayPerPost Comes to Facebook

Tim Courtney — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 18:55:35 -0000

One word: "uggg."

Re: Robert Scoble Has Too Many Friends

Tim Courtney — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 23:56:44 -0000

I just added Scoble as a friend yesterday. Today, I messaged his wall (the most effective way to get his attention, according to him) with an invite to Silicon Prairie Social while he's in Chicago for Blog Business Summit, and the possibility of securing some interviews for PodTech that I really believe he will find interesting.

No response yet. I won't take it personally if I don't hear back. He doesn't know me or have a reason to listen to me, and I do know he's busy as a lot of people are trying to get his attention. I would enjoy a response (and would love to see him at the event) though!

My real issue with Facebook friends is dealing with unfriending people I don't know well. My biggest pet peeve is passive-aggressive status updates from "friend-of-a-friend" types or old classmates I only saw in the hallway. It annoys me to see their drama in my feed when I don't know them and I'm not invested in their lives.

Plus, I think it's childish to post updates like that for the whole world to see.

The other day, I unfriended a girl who is a friend-of-a-friend for just that thing. The next day, I get a friend request from her! I thought about it, and clicked ignore because she's probably requesting me via one of those 'import your email contacts' forms, and not putting much thought into it. If she ends up confronting me in person, I'll kindly but honestly explain why.

How do you deal with Facebook friend weirdness?

Re: Will Facebook Completely Open Up?

Tim Courtney — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:07:31 -0000

I really would like to find a way to get all of my FB friends' AIM screen names off of FB so I can add the ones of my choice to my AIM client. I tried FriendCSV, but it doesn't export AIM screennames. Anyone know how to do this?

Re: Charlene Li At Graphing Social Patterns

Tim Courtney — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:37:46 -0000

Thanks for sharing the slideshow.

I want to see this idea of universal identity start being a repository for all of my permissions and all of my accounts, everywhere. Somehow there would need to be incentive for, say a permission-based email marketer, to buy into such a system and honor it (perhaps opportunity to find more subscribers?).

Per the "bill of rights" included, ownership is more and more of a concern/issue now that we cede our data to 3rd party hosted providers. At the end of the day, what do we own? An XML file of our social graph and profile info? How useful does that ownership become if one were to say get booted from Facebook?

Re: “Facebook Anthem” Says We’re Bored of Facebook

Tim Courtney — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:57:48 -0000

@Mari there is, it's a link under the app invite that says Block This Application. I've used that button a lot :-D

Re: Mark Zuckerberg, Sarah Lacy Interview Video

Tim Courtney — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:42:15 -0000

Just watched the interview. The disruptions were only a fraction of what I thought they were, considering how much Twitter erupted over it. Sure, maybe the interview was a bit awkward, but it wasn't a bomb. It's all blown out of proportion.

The one comment I think stands is Sarah's about the "Digg-style community management." As much of a non-issue as this should have been, the crowd was quite immature.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg, Sarah Lacy Interview Video

Tim Courtney — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:42:58 -0000

...if it wasn't for everyone looking for blog-fodder, this would have blown over.

Re: Your Facebook Friends Aren’t Real

Tim Courtney — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:23:04 -0000

I don't have a consistent friending policy. When I get a request from someone I don't know, I look at mutual contacts and their profile to get an idea if I want to connect, and make a decision on an individual basis.

Where it gets dicier is unfriending and selectively friending people you know. I've unfriended a couple loose acquaintances who pollute my newsfeed with melodramatic status updates (only to have them stalk me with requests). I've also *not* unfriended a person because I don't want to deal with the fallout (thank you limited profile groups!).

Re: Video of the Day: Chicago Tribune wins Sun-Times’ prize for Wrigley Field video

Tim Courtney — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:26:33 -0000

Congrats on winning the video, and good job! I'd like to see Zell walk down the street in Chicago if he does change it.

Re: #SocialDevCampChicago

Tim Courtney — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:36:42 -0000

Hey Laura,

Great meeting you -- and thanks so much for all of the effort you put into the registration table!

Tim

Re: 2007/04/15/robotreplay/

Tim Courtney — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:44:58 -0000

This looks great! I'm going to have to try this out once our new site goes live. Thanks for writing about this.

Re: 2007/04/24/myspace-politics/

Tim Courtney — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:14:30 -0000

Thanks for this bit of Myspace news. It's OK to cover Myspace, but you just gotta insert more opinion and elitism into the posts. I'm a non-myspacer because the the profiles hurt my eyes and the people on it hurt my brain. Give me more reasons to feel good about being a Facebookie only ;-)

Re: 2007/06/29/how-to-switch-to-iphoneatt-without-paying-an-early-termination-fee/

Tim Courtney — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:12:25 -0000

Has anyone had experience with this? I'm probably getting an iPhone in a few weeks, and I'd like to avoid my early termination fee while keeping my phone number.

I'm pretty upset at T-Mobile right now, and asked them if I swapped my contract if I could keep my number and they said no. Does anyone have information or experience to the contrary?

Re: 2007/06/30/pownce-invites/

Tim Courtney — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:13:52 -0000

tim.courtney@timcourtney.net

Re: 2008/03/10/zuckerberg-open-qa/

Tim Courtney — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 04:00:48 -0000

Does anyone have a link to a video of the full developer garage Q&A? I found a short clip from searching, but that's it.

Re: The challenge for Europe: keeping tech there instead of the valley

Tim Courtney — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 15:28:01 -0000

While I doubt smoking is the link here, I'll wholeheartedly agree smoking needs to be banned in public.

I live in Illinois, where things are moving slowly towards a smoking ban. Chicago passed one that'll be in effect in 2008, and the suburbs are now passing their own.

If I move anywhere, it'll be to a non-smoking state, like California.

Besides, there's an appropriate time and place for smoking. At 3:00 AM in a dank basement. sheesh. :P

Re: Back to the important news: eBay bans Google Checkout

Tim Courtney — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 22:13:13 -0000

Can we say 'anti-competitive?' Totally obvious they're sheltering PayPal.

Re: A new marital threat?

Tim Courtney — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 01:11:25 -0000

@Christopher Coulter - I stumbled across the whole Brookers thing last night. Wonder what he was thinking, she's not even funny.

Did you catch Terra Naomi on YouTube though? Her song "Say Its Possible" got over half a million hits in a week and now she has a new fanbase and serious bargaining power with labels.

Is anyone tracking these blogebrities and 'YouTube Wonders' anywhere? It'd be great to have a timeline and analysis of the good, the bad, and the annoying to gain a picture of what's really happening with new media successes...

Re: One for my son

Tim Courtney — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 14:01:59 -0000

@ Fred Graves: That sucks. Try doing what the networks do and insert a watermark in the bottom corner of your content?

My first (bad) instinct is to send them a nastygram. Allowing cooler heads to prevail, though, I'd pick up the phone and call them and ask what their intentions were with replacing the slate. Then express kindly but firmly that you don't want them to steal (that's what they're doing...) your content in the future and if they want to re-distribute it, they should distribute it intact.

Also, parse the Creative Commons site and build/use a license that requires others to attribute redistributions/derivatives to you as the source, and choose whether or not to allow commercial uses of your stuff.

Re: Microsoft helping Firefox team?

Tim Courtney — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 11:52:26 -0000

@brem - Makes perfect sense to me. It's a strategic move for the Windows team, not for the IE team. And like Robert posts, I see it as MS wanting to do the best thing for themselves *and* the best thing for the users by sharing knowledge of their OS.

Re: Former boss in the New York Times

Tim Courtney — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 13:21:36 -0000

What qualifies as "late night?" and where? I'm out in Wheaton (1hr west) and I'll buy you a beer if you're in the west burbs.

Re: Former boss in the New York Times

Tim Courtney — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 14:54:17 -0000

There's a place called Taylor Brewing Co, off of IL-56 (Butterfield) and Highland (immediately accessible from I-88). It's about 15 mins from my place near Butterfield & Naperville Rd.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&s...

Re: Blogger dinner tonight in Chicago

Tim Courtney — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 12:16:14 -0000

@2, I second that. The distance puts a kabosh on coming out for me because I have some work to get done at home tonight on deadline. Hope to meet up with you in Chicago sometime, and preferably in the western suburbs :-)

Re: Giving away the photo store

Tim Courtney — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 10:29:11 -0000

LayZ: Do you have anything better to do than (consistently) heckle Scoble?

Re: The changeosphere

Tim Courtney — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:54:58 -0000

I'm curious what people think. While you cite Mark Cuban talking about *newspaper* blogs, what about company blogs? We're in technology, does the word 'blog' carry the same stigma?

My thought is the word 'Blog' tells the audience what type of communication channel you're using, and what they should expect as far as how content is delivered. For B2B, somewhat tech-savvy audiences, does "blog" still carry the stigma of negativity, snarkiness, and amateur journalism?