Forbes Picks Yay Area for Best City for Singles

The Bay Area, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago round out this year’s top five “Best Cities for Singles” according to Forbes.

I don’t necessarily agree because I live in the Bay Area and…well we don’t need to get into details.

What is amusing about this is the methodology. Factors include coolness, cost of living alone, culture, job growth, online dating, nightlife and singles. While these categories aren’t ridiculous, there is something wacky about the criteria. For example, one factor of cost of living is the cost of a Pizza Hut Pizza. Or the online dating category (led by Houston) is based on the number of active profiles on Yahoo! Personals. Or finally the singles category carried twice the weight of any other category but is defined by anyone above age 15 that has never been married.

Maybe I should conduct my own survey based on my own criterion: coolness (number of persons doing the hyphy dance, ghost riding the whip or wearing stunna shades), cost of living alone (rent, gas, cost of a good Philly cheesesteak and least amount of gold diggers), culture (who’s on the beach, side shows and good concerts), job growth (career growth opportunities, above market value pay and signing bonuses), online dating (active single profiles on MySpace , Facebook or even Craigslist for some of you), nightlife (how many cool places to drink, how late alcohol is served and options for getting home without driving drunk) and singles (number of women of legal drinking age that don’t have kids or dudes not paying child support).

The Power that is the Internet Exposed in London?

Today and tomorrow, or yesterday and today if you’re in the UK is the Financial Times Digital Media and Broadcasting Conference. It should be a great event where many are gathered in London to discuss how the Internet is stealing TVs thunder and maximizing opportunities on the Web. With many broadcasters, internet content providers, ISPs, technology platform producers, media groups, investors and advertisers in attendance, it should be a great event. I’m still thinking that one day my HD Internet idea will be future but we’ll see what the experts say.

Confirmed speakers are from Oracle, Reuters, European Telecommunications Network Operators, National Geographic, Disney, CNET Networks, Sony, Sling, Microsoft, Advanced Micro Devices, MySpace, Sun Microsystems, Mozilla, BBC, Ask.com, and Google.

I'd love to hear more about the discussions from this conference.

When Tom's Not Enough

The New York Times reported yesterday that FakeYourSpace.com was forced offline while it found new models as iStockPhoto.com asked the company to stop using their photos for the purpose of leading people to think that models who pose for iStockPhoto.com endorses a product, Web site or person.

If you haven't heard, FakeYourSpace.com enables users to have model-type females post pictures and comments on your MySpace page for a few bucks.

I'm not a big fan of MySpace, FaceBook, Friendster or any other social networking site. I haven't bought into the hype that my friends say I will cave into sooner or later. I also haven't checked out too many of my friend's MySpace pages but I wonder if they are paying for "make-believe" friends that are actually pictures of real girls but probably comments from dudes somewhere sitting in an office getting paid. And here I thought, people were getting online to stay in touch with friends. Even the quote on the front page of FakeYourSpace.com sounds fake.
Who's laughing now suckas?

Let's Be Sirius, Modern Day Monopoly is not Satelite Radio

Despite the rumblings of the Sirius and XM radio merger being a monopoly, that's very much irrelevant in my hood. With so many music and audio choices from iPods, MP3 players and all the other online ways of getting your music including music videos on Youtube or MySpace, Yahoo! Music, MLB GameDay Audio and one of my favorite's, Pandora, there is no monopoly in music and talk radio. And now with USB ports available everywhere, you can carry up to 16 GB of music, video, games, pictures and other files on a flash drive key chain and plug it into newer TVs, gaming consoles or your computer. That's way better than taking music that you can only listen to on one device. So who cares, let them merge and go down together in flames.

The real monopoly, at least in Richmond, CA is Comcast. Unless I subscribe to Direct TV, I'm stuck with Comcast as my only cable provider that wishes to charge me $50 for 15 channels I do want and 60 channels that I could care less for. I can't even find another Internet service provider in my area.

Comcast Triple Play? Only for new customers. I called to see how I can take advantage of any packages for being a "loyal" customer and I basically got the big middle finger. Shouldn't current customers get discounts? But if you operate a monopoly in a region, you can screw your existing customers and give discounts to new customers. I was however, offered a discount to upgrade, which would cost me more money. And here I thought I called to save money.

Who Hates Blogs? I Do

For more than a year, I've been exposed to the blogging world. I've always thought of it as an unedited, uncensored and public way for people to share thoughts both for good and evil. I hated the way it has become so commercial and part of the reason I have stayed away from social sites like MySpace and Friendster. Does anyone still use Friendster?

But sites like YouTube have given me hope that people will do anything to be famous or get rich.

I'm not trying to get famous and I hear there's no money in blogging but I'm hoping to be discovered by Mark Cuban, Donald Trump or Billy Beane. If I ever come up with a bright idea and start my own business, the way these guys operate will help me define how my company is run.

The challenge: One Good Idea

The good thing about blogs is the feedback and I'm hoping that will lead me to One Good Idea.