Thomas Maloney Online

Fred Wilson points to the new New York Times Video Obituaries section.

Instead, I found myself stuck watching the videos on the NYT Vows section. The section features videos with each partner discussing the story of how they met. I can see this as an addictive feature for the Vows section followers, and the Times would be wise to advertise their other video sections postroll. As it stands, once you’re done watching one couple’s video, another couple’s video starts up. I think the Times should add a little text advertisement: something like a black background with a white text “nytimes.com/video” spliced between each video for one second.

I see advertisements for the Times print subscription on TV.. I wonder why they don’t advertise their online video? Seems to fit the demographic.

I attended BarCampNYC2 this weekend, an unconference intended to stimulate discussion about emerging technology. Topics concerned web apps, like Gmail and Salesforce.com, identity and OpenID, time management for system administrators, privacy in a world of GPS-enabled cell phones, and much much more. It was graciously hosted by Microsoft in there Midtown office, and you had to take your shoes off at the door. I think this was intentional on the part of the BarCamp organizers, not Microsoft. My favorite rule of these type of conferences is the Law of Two Feet: If during the course of the gathering, you find yourself in a situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, then you must use your two feet and go to some more productive place. Check out the BarCamp site for unconferences near you.

By far one of the better conferences I’ve attended, and free. Other conferences I’ve been to thus far this year: The Identity Mashup Conference at the Harvard’s Berkman Center, The Internet Dating Conference in San Francisco, CA, and Digital ID World in Santa Clara, CA. Fun!

One of the things about blogs that I like is finding product recommendations. Sometimes these products aren’t well marketed, or aren’t well-known, and are better than their competition.

I own an iPod, and I think it’s a shame that cases for them cost so much when they really don’t serve their purpose. The purpose of an iPod case, at least for me, is to protect the iPod from scratches and falls. Unfortunately a lot of the time the clear plastic on the cases also get scratched. All I want is to have the screen area of my iPod scratch-free and free of interference.

Thanks to Tekserve in New York City I found two great products for my iPod. My iPod got scratched right away after I bought it. On the recommendation of the sales clerk, I bought a scratch removal product called Ice Cream M by RadTech. It worked wonderfully on my iPod and I highly recommend it. To protect the screen after I polished it, I bought a clear plastic shield that sticks to the screen. It’s called invisibleSHIELD by ShieldZone. It’s really done a bang-up job. And by that I mean, it’s prevented bang-ups!

As far as I know Apple doesn’t carry these two products on their store. They really should.

-Tom