Sifry's Alerts

2007 Bernal Heights Soap Box Derby

Today was the last Sunday in October, and that meant that it was time for the annual Illegal Soap Box Derby on Bernal Heights Hill in San Francisco. I brought the family, and it was fantastic. There was a very relaxed atmosphere, and yet many people had brought some pretty sophisticated soap box racers. I bumped into Scott Beale as we were leaving, and he gave me more background of the Derby - appraently, there's no permit, no cops, and thus no safety patrol - and I gotta tell you, that just added to the charm of the event - truly a real San Francisco event that just felt really natural and friendly. It was my first trip all the way to the top of Bernal Heights hill, and even though it doesn't look like much on Google Earth, it really gave a spectacular view of downtown San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, and locations to the four points on the compass - all the way to Twin Peaks to the east, Daly City to the south, the Bay Bridge and Oakland piers to the east, and of course, the downtown financial district to the north. Quite beautiful. Many thanks to Telstar Logistics for getting this organized.

One of the great things about a soap box derby is the sounds you hear - No loud engines, no robots chopping heads off, just a bunch of adults, kids, and dogs hanging out in the beautiful afternoon enjoying some death-defying feats powered only by gravity. Occasionally, a motorcycle was overheard pulling a raer back up the course, sort of a victory lap for the intrepid few who dared to risk the course.

The entire set of my pictures are up on flickr, here's a smattering of my favoritest:

Drafting into Turn 2

Stuntman (and SF native) Jason Pullen impresses the crowd

No Pain, No Gain: Roadrash Edition

Technorati Tags: bernalheights, bernalheightssoapboxderby, bernalheightssoapboxderby2007, puppy, sanfrancisco, soapboxderby

Micah and David (1)

Technorati Tags: comic, dsifry, micah, msifry, comiclife, puppy, sifry

Peoplewatching at The Grove Cafe, October 2007

Technorati Tags: california, espresso, grovecafe, marina, n95, nokia, peoplewatching, chestnutst, sanfrancisco

Loic at his workspace (Seesmic)

I love startups, especially when they're my friends just getting their new businesses off the ground. Here's Loic LeMeur at Seesmic's offices (just being built out) with his tools of the trade.

He's on the phone with one of his investors, telling him about the phenomenal takeup of Seesmic's early alpha.

Technorati brings back charts and authority filtering to search results pages

Ah, I'm really proud of the Technorati team. Richard and the team rolled out a bunch of updates tonight to the core search results that should make a bunch of people happier, as they are direct responses to a lot of feedback that we heard about from bloggers and regular users of the service. First off, doing a search now brings up a full list of posts, not just a select list of the top 3 tagged posts. We still default you to tagged posts (they're often more relevant than just keyword matches), but you can easily toggle between tags and full keyword information.

We also brought back the authority filter and the charts, and you can see them on the right hand side of the page. And yes Virginia, you can now easily set your default filter to whatever you like, and it is sticky between sessions (as long as you're on the same computer, of course).

In addition, now that our enormous server move is done from 365 Main to our new colo facilities, we're experiencing much better stability and performance. Of course, the ops team is still keeping a daily eye out for any nasties, but it feels really great to know that the worst parts of the colo move are now long behind us, and we can let them get sleep (occasionally). I'm really grateful they're around!

Keep up the great feedback and comments that we've gotten in the past few months - we're constantly on the lookout for any issues that might rear their head in the future, and having so many great bloggers out there to let us know about them helps the team enormously. My apologies again if you've been affected by a problem, glitch, or a bug. We're working hard to make that a thing of the past.

Onwards and upwards!

Technorati Tags: feedback, gratitude, jalichandra, operations, pride, team, tech, technorati, update

Back from RIT. Great time, yummy ribs, some photos.

It was my first trip to Rochester, where I spoke at the RIT Entrepreneur's conference. It was a lot of fun, and the folks there really showed a lot of hospitality and rolled out the red carpet for me. The last evening, we went to a famous Biker bar / BBQ place called Dinosaur. Here's a pic of me digging in to the ribs:

Thanks again to Vic, Liz, Eric, Matt, Lane, Richard, Meryl, Donna, and everyone else who made me so welcome.

Here's a picture from a short trip out to one of the finger lakes towns, and the pier on the river:

I put up the entire set of pictures.

Here's one more that I really like, of the green green grass and maple leaves that are changing in color. I just liked the composition.

Technorati Tags: newyork, photos, puppy, rit, rochester, rochesterinstituteoftechnology, speech

Heading to RIT

I'll be in Rochester, NY tomorrow to speak at their Conference on Entrepreneurship - I'm looking forward to it! It'll be great to see old friends like Liz Lawley there as well as meet some of the students who are doing such interesting work. If you're in town, I think you can still get tickets, it's only $50 for the whole day...

Technorati Tags: conference, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, rochester, rit

Brooklyn Bridge Photowalk Pictures

I just put up my pictures from the Brooklyn Bridge Photowalk. Enjoy. Thanks to everyone for coming out and enjoying the day together!

Technorati Tags: bridge, brooklyn, brooklynbridge, brooklynbridgephotowalk, photowalk, photowalk2007, nyc

A New Leader for a Great Company

I admit it: I’m in no way impartial where Technorati is concerned. In my view, Technorati is a great company poised to achieve even greater heights.

So it gives me great pleasure to tell you that how we get to that next great place is now the job Technorati’s newest team member:

Richard Jalichandra, who begins work today as Technorati President & Chief Executive Officer.

This is a very exciting moment for Technorati. As you all know, we’ve been looking for someone to take the CEO mantle since my decision last spring to transition to a role on the board of directors. As Technorati moves from its start-up phase into its revenue stage, we wanted to find a seasoned leader experienced in scaling operations like ours. As the Board and I searched, we had one goal in mind: finding a highly qualified individual who would also be a great match to our culture and mission. So, as both Technorati's founder and now its Chairman of the Board, I feel confident saying that we've now found and signed that person.

I know that Richard is really excited to be at the helm of this company – almost as excited as we are to have him. He is our top choice.

Richard is one of those rare individuals with leadership experience across the media universe: as a client; running several agencies; at several large publishers; and at an advertising network. Prior to joining Technorati, he held significant leadership roles at Exponential / Tribal Fusion, Fox Interactive Media and IGN. Most recently, Richard worked on a variety of Internet media projects as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Battery Ventures, an advisory board member at MyYearbook.com and Pixsy, and as an M&A and strategy consultant for several other Internet media properties.

So, from now on, you’ll be hearing more from Richard than from me where Technorati is concerned. On a personal note, I want to thank our CFO Teresa Malo, our VP of Engineering Dorion Carroll, our VP of Marketing Derek Gordon, and, my fellow board members, especially Peter Hirshberg who has been leading our Conversational Marketing effort, for their stewardship throughout this transition. I expect great things from this extraordinary team moving forward.

Stay tuned!

Technorati Tags: ceo, founder, jalichandra, welcome, technorati, transition