rebron.org: Everyday Life, Work, Ironman Training

Quick post to get this out of my head. There are three levers in web search engines: 1) International, 2) Content, and 3) Distribution.

No one company can pull all the levers and win it all but a company like Google can come close. There’s too much money and opportunity involved that there has to be multiple players in search.

While in the US we think of Google first as the search engine of choice, that’s not the case in the rest of the world. In China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and several other places Google is second, third, or lower as the search engine of choice. Part of this is due to content, part of it is Nationalism, and the rest is culture. You can play in different countries, but you can’t expect to win everyone of them.

Content is another big lever. The timeliness of the content, the ability to serve it up quickly, correctness of the results, and the breadth of the content. The last bit, breadth of content, is where Google is getting in trouble. They’re looking to add Google+ content into their search results versus the likely more relevant Facebook, MySpace?, Twitter content.

In the past, Google waited to inject their content aka TTF or “try these first” until after their content was actually valuable. If you can recall before Google Maps, Google search results would give you content from Yahoo!Maps, Expedia, and MapQuest. When they built Google Maps, they added Google Maps results, and now all they’ll serve up is Google Maps content.  Same thing is happening now with Google’s search results but with their social content from Google+ versus Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace content.  (Google has done this for just about every vertical they’ve gotten into though).

The last bit is distribution. The big reason Google won in 1999 was distribution, first with Netscape search, then AOL search, then Yahoo! search, then Firefox, Chrome, IE, Android, etc.

If you aren’t relevant Internationally with relevant results and the proper cultural experience, don’t provide “the Web” in a timely manner, and lose important distribution points or miss out on emerging ones, you lose web search.

As an aside. Google isn’t even maxing out their revenue potential on search result pages so they’ve got a really long haul. Their “GoTo” term bidding and advertising based on conversion with consumers actively searching model is way too powerful, proven, and lucrative. But as they forget to deliver us “web” results in favor of “Google” results, others will start chipping away.

I love learning about really cool Oakland based companies — Roy Denim has got to be one of the cooler ones.

Roy makes raw denim jeans for men (for now).  And he makes these jeans all by himself on vintage machines that he collected over several years.  From what I’ve read, he gets his denim from special mills in either Japan (Nihon Menpu) or North Carolina (Cone Mills) that take just as special care in making their denim as Roy does in putting it all together.

Cool video showing Roy making his jeans.

He has a philosophy page which reads “There is one” and I guess it’s meant to read that he does have ‘a’ philosophy.  I read it as ‘there is one… pair of jeans’ you should wear and that’s Roy’s.  Or it could also be, ‘there is one guy’ that made these jeans for you.  Anyway, easily my favorite pair of jeans in just a few wears, and even sweeter that Roy is from Oakland.  It’s going to be cool breaking these in.

**Update**

I learned some more about jeans… (more…)

I’m doing the SF marathon this Sunday.  It’s going to be my fourth time doing this race.  The highlight is running across the Golden Gate bridge.  The low light is all the time spent in Golden Gate Park, we see about every inch of Golden Gate park.  The other low light is that this race has gotten to be too expensive.

I prefer the Oakland marathon that I ran earlier this year.  I like the warts and all course through Oakland much better.  There’s more people cheering at the Oakland marathon and the runners seem a little more laid back and a little more entertaining.  Whatever.  Just being cranky/Oakland prideful.

Anyway, SF marathon should be pretty fun.  Weather is always great, overcast, not too cold and not too hot and not windy, perfect running conditions.  The hills are tough though.

This candy bar — jour et nuit by Bernachon –  my sister brought back from Paris was pretty darn great.  I need to figure out how to get more of this, might be the best chocolate bar I’ve ever had.

The other chocolates and pate de fruits from Patrick Roger were pretty good too.

Just goes to show that “caviar taste on a beer budget” is genetic.

This is our box for the week from Eatwell Farm.  We’ve got apples, oranges, lemons, strawberries, lemon balm, parsley, sugar snap peas, green garlic, spring onions, spinach, carrots, mixed greens.

We’re on the 12 week program (13th week is free) w/ a half dozen eggs, which comes to about $29 a box.  Considering we get our box next door, the fruits and vegetables are organic AND they’re picked the week of delivery, it’s a no brainer value — and ridiculous from a freshness standpoint.

You also get things you might not normally buy at the store like romanesco, daikon, rainbow chard, jerusalem artichokes, rutabagas, and watermelon radish.  And you learn to eat seasonally, which makes you realize we actually do have seasons in Northern California.

There are a few drawbacks.  It’s not always easy to eat everything in a week, and you do have to cook.  You might get weeks of weeks of something you might not like for example red cabbage or kale.  You might not have enough of something to finish a recipe — need one more eggplant or one more onion, so you’ll have to supplement that at the store.  You’ll also never get bananas (obviously) and probably some other “non-standard” vegetable.

Sign up with Eatwell if you’re in the Bay Area or I’d encourage signing up for another Community Support Agriculture (CSA) program like Eatwell Farm.  A lot of them are popping up all over California and the rest of the United States.

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* Hard to say whether or not CSA is scalable, I’m sure less than 1% of the country subscribes to a CSA.  But it would be great to see because in practice we feel healthier and feel better knowing where our  food comes from and the knowing the people who farm it.

I’ve been making these Acai bowls for breakfast or lunch and they’re delicious.  First had these at Lanikai Juice in Kailua and then had them again when I was in Los Angeles at a couple places.

Really simple to make, just need to buy or order the frozen Acai pulp, I get mine from Berkeley Bowl but can also get from Amazon.com.  The fuzion is good but I like the original blend.

To make it, just two of the smoothie packets, some soy milk (or apple juice but I like soy milk) in the blender and blend away.  Put it in a bowl, add fruit like: blueberries, raspberries, bananas, strawberries, and then add some granola.  I’ve seen some with a little bit of yogurt too but maybe too much.  I like Cafe Fanny’s granola but also Blue Bottle’s granola.  It takes at most five minutes to put it all together, which is great too.

This bowl is maybe 300+ calories but if it’s breakfast or lunch it’s not bad.  I like eating it post workout too — just tastes good and looks pretty too.

Nice infographic from Transition Four

I’m #813, for this second year of Ironman St. George.  While I swore never again to do this race — it’s that hard and miserable, I ended up signing up again.

A few reasons:

• I really liked the finisher’s shirt and I want another one
• The coach we work with is doing the race, among other friends
• the Utah bike course is gorgeous
• this course kicked my butt last year and I didn’t like that
• it’s drivable although this year I’m breaking up the drive into two, first LA and then Las Vegas
• needed a race to stay in shape

We’ll see how it goes.  Last year I did this race in 15:42:17 (fifteen hours and 42 minutes).  I’m going to see if I can do it in under 14 hours, but I’ll be happy to just finish and get my t-shirt.

Oakland has some pretty good drinks.  A few that I really like:

• Gin and Tonic from Pizzaiolo; the tonic is a house made tonic by Cate Whalen
• As good as the gin and tonic is, I like their whiskey cocktail better.  It’s made with Buffalo Trace bourbon whiskey (my favorite liquor)
• Linden St. Black Lager or their Common Lager are really nice, can only be found on tap at just a few places.
• Blue Bottle’s Bella Donovan coffee is what I normally drink for coffee (daily basis)

Haven’t really tried Numi tea, another Oakland company.  We want to but just haven’t pulled the trigger we have so much tea in the house.  I get tea from Teance in Berkeley, their ba bao chao and pu-erh teas and we also get tea from Republic of Tea, Ginseng peppermint and several other kinds.  We’ve got a lot of tea.  We’ll try Numi eventually.

I ran the Oakland Marathon last Sunday and I had a few notes:

• What a great event!  A challenging “warts and all” route through Oakland — from City Hall to Rockridge to Montclair to the Mormon Temple to International Boulevard to Jack London Square to West Oakland to Lake Merritt and back to City Hall.
• Great crowd throughout the whole course.  Very “homey/welcome” feeling, not like running the San Francisco marathon.
• There was no rain despite the threat of rain, it was pretty good running conditions.  Hoping next year will be the same.
• I used the day as a “training day” if that makes any sense.  I was strong through 20 miles, slowed down a little bit for the next two, and then put it into recovery mode.  Starting a marathon on tired legs is definitely an interesting feeling.
• A marathon is still a marathon.  I was hoping it was going to be easy but I was getting antsy around mile 17.
• The event was well run, some areas could be improved but not bad for their second time around.
• The Expo the day before was a little meager.  Could use some more vendors but the ones that were there were pretty good.
• The medal is nice.
• The shirt, long sleeve again, could’ve been better.  Needed a better graphic design and maybe a slightly higher quality shirt.
• The massage tent could have been managed better.

I’m hoping to get more people signed up for the race.  I’ll likely going to do it again next year.  It was definitely a lot of fun and it’s great to have a running event like this in Oakland.

These are the sites I visit almost everyday:

• Google News, Google Finance, WSJ.com, Economist.com, SFGate.com, NYTimes.com, ESPN, News.com (I open these all at once in a Tab, and I’ve been visiting these sites for years)
• The most interesting/entertaining: Facebook, Twitter, HuffingtonPost
• New to me: Groupon (group coupons), Pandora (web radio, w/ a great music recommendation engine, Oakland company) – knew about them but was hesitant to sign up

I access Gmail via Thunderbird so only go to Gmail every once in a while to check out new features.

The other sites I visit are only through a quick scan of their feeds, i.e. Lifehacker, Engadget, All Things Digital, Oakland North, Oakland Local, etc.

Would love recommendations on other sites to check out.