Zadar, Croatia

From September 22-24 I met up with Becky after her Archeology conference in Zadar, Croatia.  Here's the quick rundown of the highlights:

• Dugi Otok: We took a ferry to this outer island in the Zadar archipeligo and rode their shockingly old, but shockingly efficient public buses to a small town on the northern tip called Božava.  The beaches (and most everything on the island) were starkly empty but very picturesque. 


• Sea Organ: It sounds a little absurd, but the seafront has an organ built into the stone steps along the water.  Over the three days we literally spent hours listening to the different sounds produced by the different wave conditions.  Given the number of people like us that would just sit and listen I'm sort of surprised other cities with waterfronts don't install instruments like this.


• Crazy Ice Cream Lady: At 9 am one morning we ran into a crazy old woman eating ice cream and ranting at people that walked by.  Just a little thing that made us smile.

We also visited St. Donatus' Church in the Roman Forum, walked around the old city walls, went to the Archeology Museum (naturally), tripped over stray cats, perused the fish and vegetable market, and ate LOTS of seafood. 

The only lowlight was the the 20 minute drive from the city center to the airport.  We went through some scenic pine forests but it was devestating to see signs posted all along the highway warning that the surrounding land had not been cleared of mines.  It's been over a decade since the fighting ended between the Serbs and the Croats but it's a shame that that remnants of the war last much longer.


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James Bond jumps the language barrier

Tonight we went to dinner with the parents of a friend who is Belgian. There was a lot of conversation despite the language barrier, but I felt bad since I couldn't offer even a bit of pigeon French. However it was interesting to observe the verbal gymnastics as everyone tried to communicate.

At one point the word 'spy' came up which the French speakers didn't recognize and the English speakers found difficult to translate. Someone blurted "James Bond" as an explanation and the word was immediately clarified. It's funny that people can take years of language courses and ultimately a movie is most effective at cutting across the language barrier.

The Walker

Over the weekend Becky and I went to go see The Walker. This movie has a good cast (Woody Harrelson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily Tomlin) but for some reason it never really engaged us. I thought the plot might be entertaining because it's about a male escort in Washington DC who is involved with a lot of high profile politicians and then gets dragged in as a suspect in a murder. The writer tried to give the minimal amount of information about what was going on, which might have turned out to be suspenseful and interesting, but I found it annoyingly confusing. 

It turns out we were a bit skeptical before deciding to go because it had a Rotten Tomatoes ranking of 67%. I wonder what our threshold is for liking a movie? I guess I'll just have to keep tracking this.

CrunchPolitics

Today I came across a great parody of TechCrunch. Mix the terse judgments of Michael Arrington's writing and the everyday call of hunger and you get CrunchFood. The concept is hilarious ("The minute chicken kicked beef to the curb for dominant market share in the DAF (dead animal food) category, we knew it wouldn’t be long before the imitators would come looking for their slice of the pie.") but it also made me consider how the TechCrunch approach adapts to other subjects.

The TechCrunch concept offers timely summaries of internet products and companies. His book-report-style usually includes a summary of the offering, the team behind it, the strengths and weaknesses, and any relevant trends that are embodied by the company. Yes it's superficial, but when hundreds of web companies are popping onto the radar every week it's a useful service.

It occurred to me that this could be very useful in politics. There is loads of news coverage and plenty of outlets for candidate messages, but where can one find a summary of politicans? The recent departure of Alberto Gonzales has spurred many to write retrospective bios. We would have been better off seeing a critical profile of him before he took the job. However, since he was not directly elected this raises another point.

If we evaluated politicians in the same way that investors looked at companies we might make more informed choices. Consider the "team" behind each. For investors, management is a critical factor in deciding to back a company. I assume this is similarly important to the operation of a high-level national politician and yet I'm unaware of any politician that highlights his team. Are there specific experienced staff members that will be brought on board if elected? How will a politician lead a team of people trying to execute on his or her agenda? It might be complicated to try and sort this out but the information could lead to a better selection of politicians. If the team that Bush was planning to bring on board was an issue in the 2000 presidential race I wonder what would have turned out differently.

TrialPay: A new business model?

Today I came across a California startup called TrialPay that is building a platform to support an under-used business model on the web. Previously, companies offering online products relied on advertising, "freemium", subscription, or pay-per-item to support their business. Now TrialPay allows 3rd parties to pay on behalf of customers who get access to specific resources in exchange for allowing that 3rd party to market one very specific item to the customer. The system relies on a customer wanting the online product strongly enough that he is willing to disclose specific demographic information about himself for which advertisers would otherwise pay equivalent values.

I think this may have slow uptake because new customers may be suspicious of these offers or wary that the single offer leads to continuing spam. Also, it's just a bit too confusing for the average person to understand how this works. However, TrialPay raised $3.1 Million from Battery Venture and Index Ventures in series A funding in Dec '06 so they may be able to get the word out and convince customers. PaidContent notes that Zagat (the online restaurant rating site) has used this system successfully to offer customers access to their $25 annual subscription product. About 10% of customers actually accept the TrialPay offer which shows they are appealing and well targeted.

One concern I have about this business is fraud. As far as I can tell, TrialPay relies on the customer's actions to self-select into a specific demographic. Is there any way to show that the user is who she says she is? If this problem were easy to solve there would be a huge industry built around people creating detailed profiles of themselves and auctioning off the right to advertise directly to them. This cuts out the middleman and would allow individuals to chose details they wish to share in exchange for specific offers. Unfortunately, the fraud element has not been resolved. Facebook's new ad targeting efforts are trying to build on the demographic treasure trove of social networking profiles so they may provide an early indication of how well this works.

Distributed Blog Eggs

After a year of blogging internally at work and six months of blogging externally I figured it would be good to avoid putting all my proverbial blog eggs in a single blog basket.