CapitalOne Summit

Had the pleasure of speaking today at a CapitalOne summit in DC.

Apart from the travel, I actually love doing these things. (I do wanna give JetBlue props though - pretty flawless service, and gotta love the TV. Watched the US Open while working.) Anyway, speaking with colleagues from Microsoft, Google and AOL, as well as CapitalOne, has been a really valuable experience.

At Virage, we used to strive that every employee had some customer touch and engagement. At Yahoo, it's so easy to change roles and join the ranks of our 500m "customers"... Every employee is most certainly a "user" as well... But it's way too easy to not rub up against the third leg of the stool, our advertisers. Gonna do what I can to make sure that my teams get more exposure.

AOL sent Ted Leonsis. Google sent Vint Cerf. MSN sent Joanne Bradford. Typically, DanR would have done this gig but he had prior obligations so I seized on the opportunity. It's been great.

Here's some liveblogging of Ted Leonsis' talk:

Leonsis: Ted Leonsis' secrets to happiness:
- Relationships
- Community
- Self-expression
- Giving back
- Pursuing a higher calling

Leonsis: "As marketers, you must leave more than you take. Gratitude is an unbelievably powerful concept. And saying thank you is an unbelievably powerful phrase."

Leonsis: "The happiest group of people by these measures are evangelical christians."

Leonsis: The Seven Web 2.0 virtues
- be generous
- it's good to share
- politeness matters
- be open
- listen
- respect individuals
- dilligence wins

Cerf:
IPTV is interesting not because of streaming, but because of on-demand possibilities a la iPod
IPTV is interesting because of interpretations of packets v. dumb raster display

Dylan marathon on AOL Radio (XM)

AOL Radio is airing a Dylan marathon over this long weekend. It's back-to-back episodes of his XM radio show. Fun stuff, and I have to admit I've enjoyed his 'tween song banter more than the lost classics he actually plays. Check it out!

Google launches an espgame.org clone…

Google has launched Image Labeler, a clone of Luis von Ahn's espgame. While it's conceptually a clone, it's been reimplemented in DHTML v. Java. Since CMU/Luis have patented IP around this, I'm guessing this is with Luis' consent.

upcoming:event=97532

So congrats to our friends at Upcoming.org and Flickr for their Monday launches. Plenty of coverage all around the blogosphere... it's all been said. Here's what Upcoming did, and here's what Flickr did. Great stuff!

I'm really enamored of the event-related photos feature on Upcoming that knits these two products together. For every event on Upcoming, a canonical tag is generated that introduces a bit of passive structure. Attendees of the event can now use that tag on Flickr to unambiguously associate the Flickr photo with the Upcoming.org event!

I’m a little curious to see how tags like “foocamp06” win, lose, or happily co-exist with tags like “upcoming:event=97532” on Flickr. Cool reverse integration from Flickr back to Upcoming!

Even cooler! ZoneTag integration tying the two together is already done! Congrats Mor, Jeannie, et.al!

In the bad pun department, when press have cornered me into commenting about unreleased and unannounced product plans I say, “The only thing at Yahoo I can talk about that’s upcoming… is well… Upcoming.org.” They groan, but it works