While visiting some friends in Utah we decided on a bit of a whim to go skydiving, which ended up being an amazing experience. I can’t wait to go again. I paid the extra for the photographer, so here are the photos and videos they took.
All posts by Matt
iPad 3 Launch Experience
I’m in New Orleans for a few days and, long story short, although I pre-ordered the New iPad it’s arriving to an address I won’t be at for a while, so since I was up early this morning thought I’d go to the nearest Apple store in Metairie and see if I could pick one up, or at least be part of the excitement that always accompanies Apple launch mornings.
The store had opened at 8, but I arrived at about 8:55, and the scene was not at all what I expected. There was a crowd outside the Apple store, but it was of blue-shirt employees, I walked up and said I was there for a 64GB white AT&T iPad, the fellow handed me a card, and 5 minutes later I was checked out. No line, no waits, no anything! Here’s a picture of the front of the store, at 9:20am.
The woman who checked me out said there had been a bit of a line that morning at 8, but just about 20-30 people and she thought that most people didn’t know they were opening at 8 that morning instead of the normal 10.
I walked back outside and grabbed a water bottle from the big pallet they had of them (for the expected line) and a Verizon employee accosted me to show ask if I had gotten AT&T or Verizon. When I replied “AT&T” he said “oh man!” and showed me the speed tests he was getting on his iPad 2 tethered via wifi to a Droid device he had, an impressive 20mbps down. “Think how fast it’d be going direct to an iPad.” (I agree, but I already have a Verizon Nexus device, a T-Mobile Blackberry, a Sprint iPhone, so I wanted to complete the quartet with another carrier and ensure I could have coverage anywhere.) I decided to celebrate with some beignets across the food court from Cafe Du Monde:
So why the lack of a line? Perhaps it was mix up about store opening time, as they suggested. Maybe New Orleans is a Samsung town. Perhaps Apple just did a better job with the pre-orders arriving on launch day, so people didn’t feel the need to go to the store. Maybe people weren’t as excited as I was about the new launch. All in all, it doesn’t matter to me. The screen is gorgeous, it’s restoring now from iCloud backup, and I’m pleased as punch to have one on launch day and I’ll probably spend far too much time today staring at the amazingly high resolution. If you were waiting because you thought the stores might be crazy today, maybe head to them half an hour after open time and skip the queues.
The Olive Garden restaurant making the rounds a few days ago was actually from the mother of a WSJ writer, here’s his take: When Mom Goes Viral: Marilyn Hagerty, 85, Is Talk of Social Media.
The problem with investing based on pattern recognition by Chris Dixon, +1.
Women 2.0: Stop Sabotaging Your Own Success: A Manifesto, by Automattic’s own Sara Rosso.
New iPad Introduction
Guest photographer: the inimitable Om Malik.
Tony’s Party
A surprise birthday dinner with friends for Tony.
Friend and HSPVA alum Robert Glasper’s new album Black Radio is out today and has so far been well-received by a great feature in the New York Times and on NPR. You can grab the album on iTunes ($7) or on Amazon ($9).
Ethiopia Day 4
Saw charity: water’s new drilling rig, was shown some local houses, visiting Gereb Eshiibela where a well had been built, then a drive and portraits in a beautiful valley, and dinner at Geza-Gebreselassie.
Shaktown
Visited a well being hand-dug with dynamite, a drilled well hitting water, and Shak’s sites in Seglemen, Ethiopia.
Second Day in Ethiopia
Climbed Gheralta to visit the church at the top of the mountain, checked into the Gheralta Lodge, and visited a village called Girat Mikdah Keshe that received a well from Charity: Water two years ago. Guest photographers: John Vechey and Scott Harrison.
First day in Ethiopia
Visiting new drilling rig, in Charity: Water yellow, visited a village without clean water yet that’s going to get it later this year, played soccer in Abenaa (lost 2-1, but good game).
En Route to Ethiopia
Flying to Ethiopia and dinner at Yordanos.
Starting in the early 1990s, he began to suspect that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was messing with his mind, he reasoned, it was probably doing the same to others.The parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces, is called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxo for short) and is the microbe that causes toxoplasmosis — the reason pregnant women are told to avoid cats’ litter boxes.
How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy in The Atlantic. Don’t worry, it has a happy ending.
Georgia Aquarium and High Museum of Art
Visiting the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta and the High Museum of Art with Jane.
LIFE magazine has relaunched, powered by WordPress.com VIP. I’m a huge fan of the magazine’s history and the work of photographers like John Dominis.
On the Evolution of Investing
Today Y Combinator announced they are adding two new partners, Garry Tan and Aaron Iba. This announcement is unique because it does not list their academic credentials, their previous investments, the boards of companies or non-profits they have sat on, how many years of experience they have, or any of the usual badges of honor investors parade in their biographies and Crunchbase profiles.
Instead we get accolades of “rare individuals who can both design and program” and “best hackers among the YC alumni.” Take note of this moment.
I was part of a dinner conversation the other night that included institutional and angel investors, entrepreneurs, and someone who was part of the YC program. The group circled with alarming intent on grilling the YC entrepreneur: “How much time did you actually get with PG?” “It’s a cult of personality.” “The average quality of the companies has really dropped as they’ve broadened.” “I can’t wait for this bubble to pop.” I believe it was mostly in jest — few topics were spared that night — but there was some truth in the defensive undertone.
The hackers and engineers of Y Combinator are doing what hackers and engineers do to any industry, they’re efficiently and ruthlessly disrupting the traditional model of venture capital and are going to destroy far more more wealth for their contemporaries than they create for themselves, as broadband did to entertainment, Craigslist did to newspapers, and Amazon did to traditional retailers. This is what outsiders, by definition, do.
The dark humor in this is that the same people who delight and celebrate investing in disrupting other industries are blind or in denial about it happening to their own.
The question then becomes if you’re an investor with a traditional LP model (and expectations), or a more financial background than an operational one, or an operational background more in management than in design or coding, what should you do to stay relevant through this shift?