Just had to share this...could you imagine being stuck in an elevator for 40 hours - almost two days? I can’t imagine all the lost productivity, let alone not being able to use the bathroom for that length of time. At least this guy got some sleep though!

Does [insert your brand] provide such a unique product and customer experience that we would be saddened if it didn’t exist? Does [insert your brand] treat its employees so astonishingly well that those workers would not be able to find another employer to treat them as well? Does [insert your brand] forge such unfailing emotional connections with its customers that they would fail to find another company that could forge just as strong an emotional bond?

Some deep thinking there. What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment.

In this day and age, getting things done is getting harder due to the massive increase in the number of things that grab your attention on the Internet. David Allen is the expert on GTD, or “getting things done” - above you will find a fantastic talk he gave at Google on the subject. This goes out to everything with an overflowing email inbox, tons of open apps on your desktop, or those suffering from continuous partial attention in this Web 2.0 age. If you have 45 minutes, check out the video above. It’s worth it.

Maybe it’s just me, but I would have a real problem swimming underwater with the animal called the killer whale, which can destroy sharks. I’d have an even bigger problem putting my feet on its nose underwater, while it swam towards the surface at top speed, only to jump out and launch me into the air. Look at the picture above - it was taken while we were at SeaWorld Orlando (which Alijah thoroughly enjoyed.) I mean, look at how high that killer whale launched the trainer. Don’t get me wrong, the show is definitely a sight to behold...but, man...crazy.

By the way, if you ever get a chance to see these creatures up close, they are truly magnificent and beautiful.

Believe me - I know the image in this post is of horrible quality, but what do you expect when the lights at Sofrito in NYC dim for a birthday celebration? Above you see my friend, Chris Aarons, enjoying the delightful serenading of the Sofrito waitstaff, accompanying a bowl of ice cream with a candle in it. Oh, except, it wasn’t his birthday at all.

I was actually eating dinner at another table with my family, and it just so happened that Chris was sitting near us at his own table, alongside his partner-in-crime, Geoff, as well as Sal from Geeks.com and Michael from Hardware Geeks. I figured I’d send him something to remember me by, so I told a waiter that I knew for a fact that it was that man’s birthday today. The rest is history.

Oh, and Chris got screwed with the ice cream. The lady at the next table got a tres leches cake. That’s what I expect on my birthday...

A few days ago I put up a video of Alijah and my Dad at the park. I liked how it showed a glimpse of the relationship that they had, even while having only a short amount of time to get to know each other. The next video I wanted to share was one that I think showed my Dad’s sense of humor, as he was even able to make light of his dying of cancer - not that he took it lightly, just that he was able to not dwell on it and always find the silver lining in things.

In this video Alijah starts laughing as my Dad shakes his inhaler, notices a box of donuts (or “no-NEETS") up on the counter, and starts asking for one. I then inform him that he already has one in his hand, that he has been eating for the past few minutes. He looks down at it, looks back at me while doing some sort of “Oh, that’s embarrassing!” dance, and leaves the room.

Ever since my Dad, George Budabin, died of lung cancer back in December 2006, Monica and I had been kicking ourselves for not taking any video of him with our son Alijah. A couple of days ago, I was reorganizing everything I had in iPhoto just so that things would be better tagged and more findable, and I came across a few videos of Alijah and his grandfather that I had totally forgotten about. I will be posting them here over the next few days. This first one is from a day we spent at Wave Hill park in Riverdale, back home in The Bronx. I particularly love the interaction that they have with each other. That was so cool to see for me. Also of note is how my Dad almost tears Alijah’s arm from its socket at the very end.

Here’s an oddity for you - it seems that Internet site Bebo took control of the AIM account of Teresa Valdez Klein just long enough to send me an invitation to check out her Bebo profile. I immediately realized that she wasn’t even online, and even tried responding - to no avail! When I asked her about it, it turns out that while she was signing up for the service, she put in her AIM credentials so that Bebo could find any other friends who were members so that they could hook up, and I would assume it would also allow you to pick and choose who you’d like to send an IM invite to. When she was at that step, something went wrong on Bebo’s end and timed out. She closed the browser, and I got the IM.

So whether it was on purpose, or an error - Bebo devlopers, it’s not cool. You should probably throw in some sort of safety into your code so that, in the event of a timeout, it errs on the side of caution instead of on the side of Bebo advertising. Kthx.

Gear Live network sites have been on Techmeme quite a few times. We didn’t really see any significant boost in traffic or anything else. To some people, it’s almost as if it’s a game in and of itself - “I wanna be on the top of Techmeme!”. Me? I’d rather be the top Google search result for that story. Techmeme is so temporary. The other thing that gets me is the weight put on sites as far as how authoritative they are is done by a human being, Gabe Riviera. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Gabe at all. I’ve met him and he seems to be a cool guy. However, the way sites/bloggers are ranked means that people are going to get missed.

There very well could be someone who writes better than, say, Mike Arrington, about a certain topic. But until Gabe hears of that person, Mike is still considered number one? It would seem to me that Techmeme should have a paid staff of people who rate and rank things, almost Mahalo-style. A group of 20 people is way more efficient (but still not efficient enough) than one guy doing the ranking. You can say that the larger group of people that Gabe uses is the bloggers who are regularly featured on Techmeme - but really, if that is your opinion, you just aren’t realizing how much of an echo chamber the blogosphere has become.

In any event, I’d still recommend checking out Robert’s videos if only to learn how algorithms work.

Here in Seattle, we have two major newspapers - The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Todd Bishop writes about technology issues for the Seattle PI, and I’ve run into him a couple of times at a few technology conferences, and he also came to the first Seattle Mind Camp event that we put on. Heather Flanagan I met at the second Mind Camp event, and found her to be hilarious. We still look forward to working with her very soon on a project or two. In the meantime, I came across this video interview that Heather did with Todd, and figured I’d share it, mostly because my name was mentioned at the start of the interview, which caught me off guard! Either way, this is an interesting look at how people in the traditional media industry see how things are progressing now that we have so many independent people doing news on the web.