Venture Capitalist Speed Dating

Funny title for a KPIX story on STIRR.

Joanne's blurb (with an h-bomb!):

STIRR, a Web networking company, runs the mixer and times the presenters to make them get to the point, according to Joanne Wan.

"Tell them, 'how the hell do you actually make money, and what are you trying to do?' No slide shows -- just you and the mic," she said.

My international travel needs some help though

create your own visited countries map

Early next year, I'll add Fiji. But what is up with me and no trips to Europe (besides that long weekend to Paris a few years ago)? Pretty weak, huh?

States I have visited (the red ones)

create your own visited states map

I have to thank my grandmother (and my mother) for getting me and my brother into the ol' motor home when we were younger, which allowed us to hit up all those West Coast states early on. Travel for work has pretty much put me in each state as well. I can see going to Arizona and Montana for ski trips or to just *see* those states, but not sure about Oklahoma. Besides oil, twisters and lots of steak restaurants, I know very little about that state.

Morph your face

The St. Andrew's Face Morpher allows you to upload an image of yourself (or a friend) and look at yourself differently: young, old, east or west asian, african-american & also some artistic views. Here I am as a manga character. For fun, you can also see what you would look like as a monkey...well, at least 50% of one.

STIRR gets podcasted, again

Vic from HotFromSiliconValley podcasted & snapped pics of STIRR 1.4. Conversations include:

• Andrew Martinez-Fonts, Product Manager, Prosper
• David Snider, Co-Founder, Boompa
• Jeff Zwelling, President & Co-Founder, Echosign
• Jakob Snilsberg, VP Business Development, Jajah

Also...we should be on KPIX (Channel 5) sometime next week, as they were there filming for a couple of hours.

Don't Push The Button!!!

This is one of the most addicting things I've done in a long, long time! Enjoy!

Pirates on a Houseboat!

The gang took off for Lake Shasta for our third annual Fourth of July weekend houseboating adventure. This year we thought it would be cool to have a theme and went with pirates. Everything went smoothly until one idiot decided to hurt himself on Saturday morning. After a five hour pause in the fun, we resumed the festivities on Saturday night. Hiking to our favorite waterfall, eating great food, drinking sangria & Mike's Hard Lemonade and cruising the reservoir at 3mph made for a great weekend. Hoping to make it four in a row next year!

Note: We went with a boat from Sugarloaf Resort this year and would never go to another marina unless forced to do so. They treat you like royalty there!

Google's PageRank -- Why is STIRR.net still a zero?

So...the STIRR.net website has been around since mid-March or so...and we still have a PageRank of ZERO (if you are using Firefox and have the Google toolbar...you will see our unworthiness in Google's eyes). Stirr.com (not affiliated with STIRR.net) is a link farm, so are we punished because our URLs are so similar?

No love on Google Search for "stirr" or on Ask. However, all of these guys have us number one: Yahoo! Search; MSN Search; A9 Search. Anyone have an idea why this is so?

[Update: We ran into a Google engineer that works close to the PageRank team, asked him and voila...we now have a PageRank of 5.]