I subscribed to Netflix for mainly their streaming service.  You can simultaneously stream on all your home devices (PC, iPad, Xbox360, PS3, media center, blue ray players).  I'm not sure if there is a "live connection" limit per account, probably something to test out.  I found this cool and useful at the same time.  Though realistically I probably haven't used it to it's full worth.

Considering bandwidth and licensing costs I'm sure this is a cash flow negative proposition, even if they aren't streaming their best content.  Interestingly enough, this article about Netflix's future business plan showsthat they are serious about digital streaming:

If this is the case, I wonder why some titles that used to be available streaming are no longer there.  Netflix has 12M+ subs and at $10/mo we're talking $1.44B of revenue per year.   If they are serious about streaming, they should be coming out with more titles faster, and not removing some.  

It's great though that they are able to self fund their own transition as the "unlimited" streaming model will migrate into probably a different pay setup once they have enough market share, and the day physical media goes the wayside.  You have to give them credit for not being stuck in their ways. 

I always felt that people overemphasized the idea that turning 40 meant the beginning of one's decline.  I mean it's just a number, so why would that affect anything?

If we are talking about peaking, then sure, some folks peak at 22, and others never peak.  

So guess what, 3 months after I turn 40, I tear my left calf muscle (gastrocnemeius).  Never did it before.  I'm not thin, but I'm reasonably active.  So how did it happen?  

I play ball hockey twice a week.  I play on 2 teams in a league, and I play in a pickup game.  So typically this comes out to about five 1-hour games per week.  I was playing defense as some players were late, so we were playing iron man (aka no substitutions).  All I did was turn around push hard to chase down the ball, and suddenly felt a sharp pain as if someone hit me with a slapshot.  I even turned around to look, utterly confused, since I knew the ball was in front of me.  Then felt this popping sound.  Similar to a dislocation type of feeling.

1st doctor visit, the next day.   Doc tells me I'm out 12 weeks!  Ugh!

The 2nd visit 2 weeks later.  I say, "can I play goalie?"  Doc says, 1 more month and we'll see. Things are getting better. Started physiotherapy on Monday.  

Then last night, exactly 3 weeks later (nearly to the hour), I just jumped to go up the stairs quickly, and POP. Left calf again!

Arrrghh!!  I'm more pissed than in pain.  

So this is what it means to be 40 years old . 

Consistency
Robert Cialdini, in his book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”, talks about an experiment he did. They asked a group of people to put a huge sign in their yards that said “Drive slow; kids playing”. The overwhelming majority of the people said no. A second group of people were asked to put a tiny sticker in their windows with the same text. Almost everyone agreed. Then they were asked to put the giant sign in their yards. A large percentage agreed.

I think it's more about trust than anything else.  Folks like to test small, no matter even if it's free.  

 
Contrast
The principle of contrast states that “People see things as good or bad depending on what’s around them”. For example, a regular house looks beautiful next to an ugly one but the same house looks ugly next to a gorgeous mansion. 

This one is funny.  He goes on to say that you should have a bad offer on your website.   Not being a seasoned marketer myself, I gotta try this .

The rest of them 9 are here:

http://www.theoutsourcingcompany.com/blog/internet-marketing/9-weird-psychological-tricks/

Article here:  http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/07/google.real.time.search/index.html

This may make sense if only they would allow us to block the real-time noise on the internet.   

This WSJ article talks about Manhattan rent going down.  

I remember when I moved to Silicon Valley in June 2000, just before the 1st dot-com bust, rent was horribly high, and availability was even worse.  I remember seeing a "For Rent" sign up for 6-hours raising 40 applicants.  I remember getting an apartment because I ended up on an accelerated list because my income was over 3X the rent.   

During the following years of recession, I saw rent drop by 50% easily with empty apartments.  This was due to the bad economy resulting in a mass exodus of people.    

The big difference was that during that era, we still had the beginning of the housing boom, so people weren't losing their homes (aka converting into renters).  

Now you would think with today's situation, with foreclosures being nearly at an all time high, there would be more folks converting to renters, and hence driving UP rental prices even though there is an exodus with job losses.  

I guess there are lots of folks leaving Manhattan. 

Check out AdNetworker a one stop shop for Advertising Networks started by Jay Gould of Gamers Media. 

I found these lying on my desktop.  They are pics from TieCon 2004 when we had our first YouSendIt booth.   The booth cost us $3K and we had a cool demo we coded up (well actually Khalid Shaikh and Sanchay Banerjee coded up) that allowed you to send a personalized virtual post card to a friend via YouSendIt.  We could also print it as a souvenir.

 We used a little eye camera, it would take a picture, crop it, and embed it into a virtual postcard which we would save and send.  Actually the longest part of the project was getting a good postcard border.  We tried a few of our "outsourced" friends in India but it kept coming out wrong.  Finally we settled on one that Francis Wu (our Montreal graphic designer) came up with.  

I don't have any pics of me...one of the flaws of being the guy holding the camera . 

Anyhow...the pics....

< need to reupload them > 

I have owned the domain Amirtech.com since 2002.  I used to own AmirShaikh.com but felt it was too difficult for people to spell, especially when using it as your primary domain for email.  In retrospect, it would have been nice to keep AmirShaikh.com as well.

 To make amends, I have registered my sons names, HumzaShaikh.com and YusufShaikh.com.  Who knows if it's worth anything, but $10/year per-domain isn't going to kill me.  

 Anyhow back to Amirtech.com....

It was mainly a combination of a blog, job hunting, and engineering techie stuff website.   I had some hacks that I had done, such as my "Digital Picture Frame".  I still have the device though it is antiquated.  I was also an car fanatic, so had some modification pictures up as well.  

I remember getting frequent emails about the mods, and questions.  I'll see if I can find the pages again and put them up...just for fun.  So you may ask why I got rid of it?  Well..one word..YouSendIt.  It wasn't the best idea to have a site up with too much personal information at the time, so I took it down.  I was new at the funding game, so I wanted to be conservative.  Khalid my brother (and fellow YouSendIt founder) had a huge elaborate site with lots of deep content www.shakenet.com.  Also went down.  It was a sad day .

 So now I'm thinking, what do I want to do with Amirtech.com?? 

 I mean...do I really want a blog?  Am I that vain that I want people to read what i say?  Can I think of it differently that I'm just going to put stuff out there just for the heck of it.  

To be honest...I'm not sure....for now let's just say this is my first entry and leave it at that .