Beyond140

Doug Takes A Break.

Things have changed in my life, but I've been at a loss for words to describe them. So here's the scoop:

I'm taking a break.

I have no idea how long this break will be for, and honestly, I'm not sure I know exactly what one does on a break, but I'm not going to work full-time for an unspecified amount of time. And yes, it scares the shit out of me.

See, I've been working full-time since 1992. Out of college, I did my stint in the music business (cue sarcastic laugh from wife). And then, in 1994, I started working at Virgin, my first job at a 'media' company. Since then, with the exception of a glorious 6 months when C and I traveled around, I've been dreaming up new products or writing specs for about 16 years. It's what I love doing, and it's what I think about all the time. And that's why I need a break.

Each of these times I've been in transition, I've promised myself that I would try harder to focus on me, my relationships and friends, and my personal passions for just a little bit of time before I jumped back into tech, and each of those times I've so easily fallen back into what I know and what I do.

In one sense, I've succeeded, but in others, I've failed.

Since I moved to LA, I've become friends with many folks in the entertainment business, who work intensely for short periods of time and then have days, weeks or even months of personal time. I've always found it so foreign - these guys who go for Tuesday mountain bike trips or have hobbies and passions they pursue - because I've always been working. While I had the benefit of a steady job, I became addicted to the habit of 'work days' and 'weekends' and, especially with the arrival of my kids, have taken precious little time for myself.

So, this time, I'm taking a break. Like I said above, I have no idea how long it will be or what it even means. When I've discussed it with others, I think I've mangled my description so badly that folks think I'm either retiring or having a mid-life crisis (I suppose last week's head shaving didn't help). It's not either.. retirement indicates a finality that I couldn't begin to understand, and I had the fortune of getting my mid-life crisis out of the way when I was about 25 (I called it my quarter-life crisis).

But it's also not a vacation. I'm the kind of person who can't spend my days without having some structure and purpose, and I want to push myself to try new things, learn new skills, and do the many things I've pushed off for so long. I'm hoping to travel with my wife, get to know my kids before my daughter realizes how uncool her dad is, write and then write some more, do some form of manual labor, spend a shit-ton of time in Tahoe, and be a better friend, father, son, etc to those around me.

Being the geek that I am, I've already made a list. A Google Doc, to be more specific, but I'm not sharing it quite yet. It's basically a bucket list of things that I want to do - some of them hour-long projects, some of them multi-year endeavors. I'll take any suggestions you got.

I will continue to actively work on new tech products as an advisor or investor - after all, I enjoy it - but I'm making significant time available for new, personal things that I've sacrificed in the last 20 years. 

How long will this last? I honestly have no idea, but I'm trying not to do too much introspection about it. I relish the challenge to make this break stick for a little while. I'm in uncharted territory, and I'm very excited.

Head scratching at Google and Verizon

This morning, possibly out of intrigue or more likely out of boredom, I took a read of the Google-Verizon proposal regarding network neutrality (you can find it here).

I am definitely not a card-carrying EFF member, and I generally don't care all that much about how politics meshes with the Internet. I believe that all companies (especially public ones) are ultimately profit-driven, and their 'public generosity' usually ends they day they have declining quarter-over-quarter profits. I don't think companies are inherently evil, but people often mistake companies with the emotions and moral beliefs normally associated to people - which they are not. They are created to make money, and words like 'loyalty' and 'care' will always be second to 'profit'.

Google, to date, has shown themselves to be a remarkably caring and altruistic company, through a combination of their high-quality free services, their stance on issues like China and their treatment of employees and customers.

Which is why I'm stunned that Google would go out of their way to not only make, but then announce, such a horrible policy. It's as if they want me to not like them.

If you read the policy (and, like I said, it's not exciting reading, but it's not very long either), it basically says that Verizon has agreed not to charge you extra when accessing different sites or services via land-lines, but once you go wireless, the gloves are off. The policy goes further to pander to your emotions by saying that 'health care monitoring' would potentially be a separate, special service but then ends with 'entertainment', which of course is the real reason Verizon wants this policy adopted anyway.

So, in a nutshell, here's what I think this means: In the not-too-distant future, you'll attempt to access certain online sites or services via the Verizon network, and 2 things will happen:

a) You'll have a difficult time consuming certain services because they will fail to load or become painfully slow, to the point where you'll then not be able to consume certain sites/video/whatever while effectively being pushed to purchase/use the 'fast' ones.  Unlike now, where Verizon takes out ads to make fun of AT&T's crappier network and both companies spend tons to upgrade their networks to take market share, they will now be motivated not to improve the network versus a competitor, but rather how best to segment their bandwidth so as to push the subscriber to 'upgrade' to a 'premium bandwidth' package.

b) You'll be perpetually solicited to 'sign up for SuperX', a $4.95 service (but don't worry, you can just text back the #1 and it will be added to your bill) so that you can watch streaming video without interruption or performance issues. Most likely, these services will be bundles like your cable bill, where you'll get 'the best of mobile video' - movies, sports, whatever - and you'll get the 'privilege' of paying for not only your mobile phone bill but also your individually subscribed services, which will this get preferential treatment by Verizon's cell towers.

No matter how you slice it, it means that your cell phone bill will go up and certain services will simply have distribution that others cannot afford. Have a mobile startup that streams video? Good luck to you...unless you pay upfront fees to Verizon to be included in their 'super-video' bundle. Otherwise, well, it might be a while to watch that trailer.

Now, I haven't spent a ton of time on this issue, but I wonder what's wrong with AT&T's new policy they've enacted on iPhones, which would seem to alleviate the concerns that the telco's hide behind when they talk of strained networks. What AT&T has done is basically eliminate unlimited data plans and force you to pay for what you eat (well, at least beyond 2GB per month on an iPhone). No favoritism (at least that I'm aware of), but just making me pay for being a heavy consumer of their network, ostensibly so that they can use my extra revenue to go out and build more towers. 

Now I would never point at AT&T as a good corporate citizen, and I suspect they already have their upgraded wireless bundles ready to go. I guess I'm just wondering why we can't let folks choose the amount of wireless data they want to consume and pay based on that.

Ah, but I know why. Because then cell phone companies would make less money. And we can't have that.

The puzzling degredation of media quality

Was reading this NYT article tonight, and found myself yet again puzzled by the backwards step we've taken in media quality as we've stepped so far forward in media quantity.

The article details a phenomenon I've been observing for years now - namely, that music lovers now have music around them at all times through their portable devices, but the sound quality of this music has become almost an afterthought. Consumers have voted convenience over quality with their pocketbook, which is not something I'd have predicted when I was 15 and spending $10 for Maxell XLII-S chromium cassette tapes to safely capture the warmth of my carefully-maintained vinyl. It wasn't long ago that our parents' (well, our dad's) most treasured home purchase was their hi-fi stereo system, which would dominate the living room with it's ginormous speakers and sheer size.

This same phenomenon has been happening in photos. Most public events are now one person doing something interesting while dozens of cellphones capture grainy video and pictures of these momentous occasions. (I can attest to this personally, having just left the Chelsea Premiership game where every drunk, chanting fool had their own coterie of cell-phone paparazzi). While I have a reasonably high-quality camera on me as I travel, I'm more often than not reaching for my iPhone to record low-quality images which are then compressed as I push them up to Facebook.

(Ironically, I'm traveling with a very talented cinematographer, who was actually banned from bringing his professional-grade camera into the Chelsea game for copyright reasons; so he, like I, was reduced to iPhone snaps).

Still, this quality degradation is not universal. Video seems to be an area that has bifurcated into 2 camps - grainy cell-phone videos and compressed handheld-device viewing, but also an explosion of HD content displayed on beautiful LCD screens. I was over at a relative's house the other day who has pretty much copied the theater experience, complete with 8-foot wide HD and full surround sound, for a fraction of the cost of what the highest home video systems would have cost 10 years ago. 

I've discussed the business opportunities this dilemma presents with a few of my friends. One could easily envision a higher-quality photo sharing service (yes, there are a few high-end products out there), and also a site that sells uncompressed, loss-less (or whatever they call it) audio files for the music geeks out there. Still, I'm guessing these niche industries are temporary, as technology improvements, increased bandwidth and decreasing storage costs will ultimately encourage higher quality. As an example, see Facebook's photos section, which appears to now be serving higher quality images (which will in turn be captured by higher quality cameras, if we are to believe the "lost iphone" saga of a few weeks ago).

All of my blabbering leads us to another, probably bigger problem - in a world where everyone is producing audio and video content, how do we sift through the crap and find the good stuff?

The Resurrection of Anonymity? Voyeurism? Narcissism?

When I started doing stuff on the Web in 1994-5, I was obsessed with meeting new people. Email was great for connecting with folks you knew, but I thought the future lied in services like chat rooms, message boards, groups, personals and places where I could forge new relationships rather than continue old ones.

For a while, my obsession was right on - services like I described above exploded - but not for everyone. Geeks and losers (myself being Exhibit A) used these services, and between the years of 1996-1999 I think I must have met virtually all of 'em in some random dark corner of the web. But a large percentage of my friends - i.e., the ones who had social lives outside of the Internet - looked at me like, well, like I was a loser to spend my days connecting to people I didn't know when there was a world of relationships that needed tending.

Then, as the new century dawned, social media grew up, and by limiting one's social circle (and increasing penetration of the web, and a thousand other reasons), the stigma of meeting new people / losers online faded, and products like Six Degrees, Friendster, MySpace and ultimately Facebook made communicating online more acceptable.  Basically, the addition of exclusivity and walls, which perhaps better imitated real life, made it socially acceptable to gather together online.

Fast-forward to 2010, and the rise of 2 new services that have me scratching my head. The first, Chatroulette, has already been covered in depth in the 2 weeks since it launched, but most of the focus has been on the pornography rather than the anonymity aspects of the service. I get Chatroulette - but I get it because I'm a voyeur, and I like sticking my nose in other people's business. Little did I know that I'm not alone.

The second service, Formspring.me, is basically Chatroulette in text form. Formspring allows you to create a profile and then people can anonymously ask you questions. Yes, it's that simple. And 27 MILLION people are currently using it. I haven't dug into all of the mechanics behind it, but apparently you can just ask anyone between the ages of 12-25 about it and they'll know. As Gawker says, it's basically Truth Or Dare for the Internet. Apparently, it's being used as a place to randomly insult people without consequences, find out answers to the questions you don't have the guts to ask in real life, etc.

Before you shrug both of these products off as stupid teenage prank sites, take a second to think about the power of voyeurism and being a part of the lives of random strangers. These products are perfect depictions of a core human want - curiosity - and they've managed to bottle that in simple, primitive ways that have resonated with not just teens but many adults too. I, for one, am envious of any site that can so clearly touch human beings at their core.

Are we in the midst of a re-birth of random, oddball web personal interactions? Maybe, maybe not. These sites have huge pitfalls - I actually worry less about the pornography on Chatroulette and more about the abuse and hatred that Formspring can enable, especially for teenagers. And I can't imagine any easy way that a site that caters to teens and porn is monetizable. But as a human social experiment, look no further than these sites to understand what makes us tick.

Find my Formspring page here.

(Ed note: Formspring is apparently a completely legit business form company. Um...how weird that they're powering the most popular teenage phenomenon since Britney Spears?)

Chatroulette and The Inevitable Penis

Oh. My. God.

Actually, before I get to what has my jaw dragging along the floor tonight, let me start with a funny story.

In 1998, I was building and managing Community products at Yahoo, working for the amazing Ellen Siminoff. One of my products was Yahoo Messenger, which was a pretty new product in those days (ICQ being the big leader in the space at the time).  The revolution of Instant Messaging products, of course, was the ability to have a real time text, and then audio and video, conversations with your friends.

As you may have noticed, I'm a bit of a voyeur. Not in the perverted 3AM trolling elementary schools sort of way, but I like to stick my nose in other people's business - I'm fascinated by how we all go about our lives. This fascination led me to propose that Yahoo build Yahoo Profiles and Yahoo's Member Directory so that folks could meet other random folks online who shared interests. For a while, these were very big sites at Yahoo, though they never got the attention they deserved (and then, voila - Facebook!).

Anyway, so one day I get an idea - I want to build a directory of folks who are using Yahoo's Messenger product so that people could find random strangers with webcams and connect to them. I figured if you liked the Dave Matthews Band and I did too...well, let's connect the two of us so we can meet and talk and spread some joy in this lonely world. I explained my idea to some co-workers and a few engineers, and before you know it we're furiously hacking away, trying to create a prototype webcam site (we were gonna call it Yahoo Webcams) where you could browse "live" streams in a grid format and jump into private conversation with anyone. Think Justin.tv but like 5 years earlier.

While the engineers are hard at work, I call Ellen away from much more important business so that she can check out this genius prototype site that we're cooking up out of thin air. I haven't seen it yet, as the engineers are aggregating the private streams of folks using Yahoo Messenger so that we could simulate real conversations and get a sense for how people are using the existing product.

Ellen sits down. Behind her, projected on a large screen, is a web page filled with a Brady-Bunch-like grid of 9 squares, each of which is black as the engineers pull in streams from live 1-on-1 conversations happening at that very moment on Yahoo Messenger. And then, as I'm prepping Ellen for this great idea, the engineers turn on the feed.

Immediately, the screen is filled with 9 webcams, all of which are focused on the naked crotches of hairy men, all of whom are pounding and torturing and twisting and generally harrassing their penises in ways I'd like to permanently erase from my mind, but I can't. Imagine Ellen, senior executive at Yahoo in an elegant pant suit, sitting in a conference room patiently waiting for me to begin my speech as a dozen men are working their meat on a screen just above her head. I looked up, then looked at her and just said "Um...forget it. My bad." Meeting fail. My genius idea had been foiled by the penis. (In retrospect, why didn't we launch Yahoo Penis?)

I tell you this story because, well, the penis has arisen again (pun intended). Click this link if you dare - chatroulette (I blame Fred Wilson, who wrote about this tonight). I can't begin to explain it's genius/absurdity/horribleness. Basically, you're put into a live webcam session with a complete stranger. And, approximately 95% of the time, that stranger has focused his camera on his dick, and is furiously pumping away. If you don't like that person, you click NEXT and you go to the next penis, err, person, and so on. It's the end of the world as we know it.

I'm not sure what else there is to say. I could blab about how porn often leads innovation in technology, I could make a statement on humanity, or I could just sit here in shock. I do have one question - why do guys insist on showing their member abuse on the cam? If they want to pleasure themselves, that's fine, but why the spotlight? Do you really think others want to tune into that?

Stay tuned for the forthcoming launch of my new cable channel... ;)

Information Overload (AKA, This Guy Needs To Get Laid)

I love data. At least I think I do. I track my runs via a GPS app. I write down my weight every day. I build Excel spreadsheets modeling out my net worth, with fancy variables. I obsess over my Prius MPG. I'm a guy - I like things quantified.

So, being a Web entrepreneur, I've tried to make businesses that capture data. At DailyStrength, we built weight tracking apps, smoking cessation trackers and many more. At Yahoo, I tried to quantify and average movie critic reviews. At Facebook, I created Pulse (RIP), a product to quantify your friend's taste in bands, politics and sexual orientation.

But here's the rub - data can also be really, really boring when not assembled correctly. Example #1: Blippy. Blippy reports your purchases, and if your balls are big enough to enter your credit card data, it will report every time you get gas, buy a cup of coffee or make your car payment. The premise of Blippy seems so great - "see what all your friends are consuming" - but the execution (so far) whiffs so bad. I don't want it as a lifestream...I want Blippy to interpret and collect the data for me, not make me work for it.

Perhaps a more extreme example, however is Feltron. You've got to see it to believe it - this guy tracks EVERYTHING. Who he talks to, how long he talks to them, how long that relationship lasted...it just doesn't stop. Everything in his life is quantified, and he rolls it up into an overly-designed "annual report" that anyone can browse. And while I'm about about voyeuristic as they come, I've come to an important solution: I just don't give a shit. Kudos to him for tracking all of that, but it's just too much.

I've had this experience a number of times recently. It feels like it would be so cool to aggregate a certain kind of data and put it in a nice bow for people, but then when I see it on a web page, it's just dull. I'm not sure what makes it exciting - certainly an original and functional presentation of the data is key, organizing the data is important as well, stripping data down is perhaps the most overlooked skill (just 'cause you have it doesn't mean I need to see it), and perhaps lastly, the data itself needs to be pertinent to my life (I don't care how many times you've scratched your ass today).

I've been screaming it for some months now, but I'm wondering how folks can aggregate and distill all of the data that's out there, and then bring it to me in a form that suits my needs. It may be a utopian ideal, but it's where I'd like to go.

Google Buzz: First Thoughts

Everyone's buzzing about Google Buzz. Depending on who you talk to, it either sucks or, in the never-subtle Jason Calacanis' view, Facebook has just been killed.

I've been checking in on it throughout my day today (I just got access to it late last night), and while I think it's too early to make a Yea or Nay judgment call yet, I have some definite thoughts.

1) Google needs to learn how to build a decent user interface

I feel weird saying this, as I have good friends at Google who are very, very smart (far smarter than I am) and I know that they test the crap out of everything they do. Still, my first look at Google Buzz leaves me yearning for Facebook's far more attractive, logical layout. Some specifics - one of my friend's posts on Buzz has 85 comments, and Buzz is showing ALL 85...and I know none of those people. Entirely uninteresting. The product feels too male and analytical for a social product.

2) The power of an embedded user graph is very strong

I *think* I've already got dozens of friends, err, followers, on Buzz, and every time I log on I've got an additional 5 or so people waiting for me to follow them. It's funny how folks have written about Buzz as a Facebook killer, but so far it feels more like a Twitter-killer to me...the follow metaphor, the public nature of posts, the Twitter integration (duh).

3) Friends?

I am pretty much stumped about what friending or following someone on Buzz actually means. While it's cute that it's in GMail, it also prohibits a clean interface which would help me to understand my profile and what I'm sharing / not sharing. Right now I'm just randomly clicking to follow people, but I have no idea what privileges I'm getting or receiving for that. It took me three clicks to find my Profile.

4) Picasa? Flickr? Yawn.

Not impressed by those integrations. I thought Buzz would go much bigger, with more partners...I guess I'll have to wait for that.

I don't mean to sound negative, and I'll respect the fact that this product is very new...I'm curious to see where it goes. I'm skeptical about this product given Google's history in social media and yet I think the embedded social graph will create a formidable competitor to Twitter, and possibly Foursquare (if it can be a better Latititude) pretty quickly.

Stay tuned...

Quickie Product Shout-outs: Factual, Kwedit

First, let's talk about Factual. Factual is trying to be a database for everyone; a crowdsourced Wikipedia-meets-Excel with all sorts of different data sets, all easy to edit, export, manipulate, whatever. My friends know that I've been hot on an idea like this for a long time - just seems like there is so much data all over the web, to be able to bring it together, organize it and then offer it in a friendly way to others is both a wonderful public service as well as an intriguing new business. My ideas diverge from Factual a bit, but I applaud them for making a go of boiling the ocean and organizing the world's information into one freease. (Speaking off, there is a similar product called Freebase that's worth a look-see).

In short, Factual harnesses what the Internet does best - harness the power of many - to build out a (hopefully) kick ass knowledge database for all. It's Wikipedia for data, and I love the concept.

Kwedit, on the other hand, gets big points for creativity. First, let's start with the awesome Elmer Fudd-esque name, which so perfectly sums up the product, and the duck mascot. Second, I applaud them for taking a straightforward space and twisting it - Kwedit is essentially an unenforceable IOU which companies can use to entice people (mostly younger kids) to pay for virtual goods, etc. So, when you're buying that new rake for your Farmville plot, you can use Kwedit instead of real cash or an offer, and if you flake, your Kwedit Score (yeah, that's awesome) goes down, theoretically making it harder for you to pay for something with Kwedit the next time. Sound goofy? Not if you're 12. Then, they've got great ideas on accepting payment in non-traditional (read: I don't have a credit card) ways so that kids can make good on their debts. It's just brilliant.

Product Evaluation: Gravity vs Quora

There's not a ton of cool new consumer Web product that come out of this little hamlet called Los Angeles, so I try to pay extra-special attention to the smarter Web folks down here, as it's a pretty small crew. (I exclude myself from any category containing the word "smart"). Anyhoo, so I was intrigued when I first heard about Gravity (formerly called Blue Rover Labs), which was the brainchild of some of the smarter folks at MySpace. August and Redpoint put money in, and I was left with the vibe that some of the smarter MySpace guys had finally jumped out of the NewsCorp molasses, and were going to rock LA with some kick-ass consumer tech.

A side note on MySpace - I've always wondered about the true technical talent at that place. I say that because I've met so few of the hundreds of folks who toil away there, and it was never really known as a tech-focused shop, but more of a media company. I'm not dissing MySpace - for all of it's problems, it certainly was a more successful social net than mine ever was...I just haven't run into any ex-My Space engineers who are doing cooler stuff now...where are they?

So today I finally received my invite for Gravity, which seems to be in some sort of limited beta. I'm not special - I just added my name to their list while they were cooking the damn thing and I got an invite a few months later. So I've played with it, and here's my take:

I honestly don't get it.

Now I don't want to toot my own horn too hard, but I've been doing social media since Nixon was president, and, well, I'd like to think that I can pretty quickly get a feel for what a social product is trying to do. But this product, well, it's got me completely lost. I reg'd for the site and I'm left at a home page with a picture of a dinosaur that tells me to "explore". When I click Explore, I go to a page with entirely random topics, none of which are remotely intriguing, all of which have been started by a single person and have 0 replies. Here's what I *think* it's trying to do:

It's a message board site. With Fourquare's badges.

So it appears I can "like" conversations. I can post replies. I can view someone's profile. All of these functions were available in 1998 when we launched Yahoo Clubs (rest in peace, brotha).

OK, so doing a bit more homework, I see that they've got some sort of distributed model where they're gonna embed Gravity's all over the Web and become the 924th company (Disqus, anyone?) to try to organize / standardize commenting systems. Well, I hope they have something cool going on there, because I'm currently scratching my head. I so badly want to see a SoCal - heck, a WestLA - company kick some ass with some cool new consumer product that the world wants. But this one - with it's motley crew of random people posting even more random thoughts ("Do your tape measure skills stand up?") - ain't lighting my pants on fire.

So let's compare Gravity with Quora, an in-beta startup from Adam D'Angelo, who I knew at Facebook, and a bunch of other smart Valley types. At first glance, both products look similar - a bunch of topics, profiles, and ability for folks to create follow lists. But Quora has an elegance that I'm gaga over. It's a beautiful product, but perhaps more important, it's a beautifully designed product, which somehow seems to know what I'm interested in and provides me with just the right amount of prompting for me to add a question or response to someone else's.

Quora takes removes the complexity from Q&A products and makes it simple to ask and answer.

Now technically speaking, Quora and Gravity are somewhat different. One wants to be the Web's discussion platform, the other is a better Q&A site. But at the end of the day, they're both doing pretty much the same thing, one just so much better than the other. Quora was smart - they launched their product with a small collection of the smartest folks on the Web today, so it's a community I want to be a part of, and they've focused the conversations so that, much like Mark Zuckerberg focused on Harvard before Malaysia, Quora can grow roots with tech influencers who will bleed it out to the rest of the world.

I won't rip into all of the features of Quora, but I encourage you to try it out. As for it's commercial success, I'm on the fence - it's beautiful and elegant (as is Hunch, another similar player in the space), but it's up against folks with longer track records, tons more content and more aggressive SEO (Demand Media's Answerbag, Yahoo Answers, etc). What's special about Quora is the crowd - how can they open the floogates and still keep it a special place where I am surrounded by peers I respect?

Product Evaluations: TheSixtyOne (site), Words With Friends (iPhone app)

I like to rant that my old self barely tries anyting new anymore, but I guess that's not that true. In the last week, I've changed my online behavior yet again, and added 2 new products to my seemingly unlimited time for technology.

TheSixtyOne
www.thesixtyone.com

I'm a big music fan, and I'm always desperate to find new music. However, I'm also lazy, and it's much easier to just fire up iTunes and randomly cruise my existing collection than take a chance on something new. On iTunes, you're limited to 30 second samples of new songs, and while I'm a big Lala fan, it requires more choices than I'd like to make - I want someone to push new music at me, and I'll yay or nay it. Like I said, I'm lazy.

Head to TheSixtyOne and you'll immediately see it's appeal. You click one link and you're listening, while big beautiful images of the band and random bits of info float by. Very attractive, very cool. Which then lead me to post an FB status update about how brilliant the site was.

Unfortunately, I was a bit hasty in my praise. The site is also confusing as hell, and has definitely irritated my lazy ass. First of all, the site is really hard to navigate...for all the beauty of the menu-less page, I find myself continually looking for some basic functionality that seems to be missing, and yet overwhelmed with choices that make no sense. Some easy ones:

- I need a way to "ding" songs that I don't ever want to hear again. Missing? If not, I can't find it.

- I need a way to get back to the main menu - I find that stuff pops up that i can't get rid of - no close buttons.

- Stop bugging me with all the other shit - what's with the Quests?

- It keeps yelling at me to friend others, but for the life of me, I can't find anyone else on the damn site.

- Waaaay too much repetition of songs I've already listened to (and since I can't ding em, especially bad to hear songs you hate twice.)

So, in a nutshell, it's a really great idea - with a solid B- execution. I think there's a big opportunity to add social gaming to music - think Foursquare for music, a way for me to become a music rockstar as I choose bands, offer feedback, listen to shit, etc. Someone get on that for me, will ya?

Words With Friends
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/words-with-friends/id322852954?mt=8

This one's an easy write-up: It's Scrabble for the iPhone. With a key improvement - asynchronous play with push notifications, so I can make my move and then only be pinged when you make your move. (Admittedly, push notifications seem to be broken at the moment, but that's the idea). Clean, easy UI, and simple gameplay. I think the iPhone needs more good asynchronous games so we can all waste time playing our favorite board games. Now that I think about it, I'm sure they're already out there - I just haven't looked.