Behind the Beat

Behind the Beat


Henry Hung Quartet
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong

The above quartet of talented jazz musicians led by Henry Hung deserves much credit for the festive atmosphere of our recent wedding on May 19, 2007. Trumpeter Henry Hung, guitarist Brian Moran, percussionist Micha Patri and the unidentified bassist brought their unique jazz touch to a repetoire spanning Aaron Copland, Cole Porter, Joao Gilberto and the Beatles.

These musicians rocked the house, and even brought my father to his feet in an enthusiastic drum circle. That was no small feat!

Drum Dad

Feel the Beat

Feel the Beat


Feel the Beat
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong

Laura and I pulled off our wedding on May 19, 2007. In celebration of our special moment, we engaged in the traditional drumming of the garbage can lid and cow bell.

We are indebted to our families and friends for helping to make this joyful day possible. I’ve posted some photos taken by guests.

In praise of small homes


Pope Leighey House interior
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong.

Interesting NY Times article this morning about Loren Pope . While the writer focused on Pope’s admirable impact on college counseling, I gravitated to the short mention of Pope’s association with Frank Lloyd Wright.

With further research, I found wikipedia entries on both Pope and the 1200 square foot home Frank Lloyd Wright designed for him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_Pope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope-Leighey_House

What a fascinating individual!

Barack on Flickr


DSC_0045.JPG
Originally uploaded by Barack Obama.

A Yahoo staffer noted this recently… Barack Obama, or more likely his campaign team, has established a flickr photo feed to cover his campaign for the U.S. presidency. Here, he announces his candidacy to the residents of Springfield, Illinois — poetically associating himself with Abraham Lincoln.

I suspect of all the presidential aspirants, he will be covered most extensively by user-generated content and various social media systems.

Rodrigo y Gabriela at The Independent, Oct 24, 2006


Rodrigo y Gabriela, Oct 24, 2006 at The Independent
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong.

An intimate sell-out crowd gathered tonight at The Independent in San Francisco to hear virtuoso acoustic guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela perform. Most of us heard about them the same way… some radio airplay on KFOG or word-of-mouth supported by audio and video snippets on YouTube and MySpace. Social media clearly helps new ideas spread fast with minimal advertising spend, especially when it concerns music.

My personal highlight from tonights performance had to be the guitar duo’s rendition of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. RodGab, as they label themselves for short, will go far. Thanks to social media, even a middle-ager like myself, unconnected to the latest in music, quickly recognized their talents.

Fans may appreciate Mike Peyzner’s excellent photos from the concert, including the shot of Gabriela above.

Flickr geo-tagging


Flickr geo-tagging
Originally uploaded by Lyndon Wong.

Finally, this weekend I had a chance to try out Flickr’s relatively new geo-tagging feature, using images taken on a recent visit to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. I could zoom-in to specific satellite views of the canyon, and place photos from my trip onto specific segments of hiking trails visible in the satellite map imagery. Despite the high number of photos already available for the Grand Canyon region, I applied the world’s first Flickr geo-tags for photos of the Indian Gardens and Plateau Point, both well-known hiking destinations accessed via the Bright Angel Trail below the South Rim. In a modest sense, I felt the joy of a pioneer :-).

Flickr geo-tagging is a fascinating social media user-experience for both the content tagger and the viewing audience. Andy Laakmann, founder of Webshots, actually discussed a very similar notion around the year 2000. But at that time, sateliite-image enhanced maps were not readily available, nor were the rich browser UI capabilities and mapping mash-up API’s that enable a compelling no-install user experience.

All goes to illustrate that every good idea has a proper place and time. Flickr turned out to be the right place, and August 28, 2006 the right time. For the curious mind, this approach surly beats spinning a plastic globe and flipping through textbooks. Variants of the Flickr geo-tagging experience could be of great value for identifying lodging and dining options, submitted either by the user community or advertisers, preferably an orderly combination of both.

HackDay 2006

HackDay 2006

Cool and genuine, this Sept 29 – 30, 2006 HackDay event hosted by Yahoo. Here’s what the Sunnyvale HQ campus looked like, complete with overnight guests:


Flickr photo by laughingsquid

And here’s a funky video commemorating the event by the musician Beck, who performed Friday evening for the assembled crowd of 500 or so:

Thousands of photos on flickr tagged hackday06.

I must concur with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch… “something special happened at Yahoo“.

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Web 2.0 Business Models?

Web 2.0 Business Models?

Spending this early Sunday morning catching up with blog activity from various former colleagues. Especially like thoughtful posts from Adam Wolff, Narendra Rocherolle and Raj Kapoor – all gifted digerati actively grappling with the future of software. They comment on aspects of Web 2.0 that many find befuddling. Why is this important? How does it make money? What is the basis of recent valuations of acquired applications?

The new services seem destined to be free, and to generate economic value only as potential ad media placements or as acquisitions. Presumably, all those teenagers and young adults reveal enough via their open communications for marketers to instigate a stampede to various products and services. And the economic opportunity appears confined to serving the young audience, because older generations do not adopt these Web 2.0 services in sufficiently large numbers to support significant advertising business models.

Interesting riddle.