Going Back In Time
I woke up to an awesome holiday gift today. Sitting in my inbox was an email from Greg Galant. Greg had read about the missing Positively 10th Street podcasts from 2005-2007 here on AVC a few weeks ago. So he dug up an old hard drive and found five episodes in his iTunes folder. And he sent them to me.
I just listened to the first episode of the bunch which we did with our kids right after they came back from eight weeks at summer camp in August 2005. It was like going back in time. USV had just gotten going, Twitter didn’t exist but that team was working on a podcasting service called Odeo.
Podcasting has come a long way since then and so has our family. But like pulling out an old family photo album, the ability to go back and hang out with our family as it was eleven years ago is pretty fantastic. So thanks Greg.
And if you happen to have any files in your iTunes folder with a name like this [8-21-05 Positively 10th Street.mp3], please send them my way. I have renewed hope that I may be able to collect all of them eventually.
Comments (Archived):
Crowdsourced archival restoration service. Seems to fit the USV investment thesis.
Yup. Exactly!
Dig Dig LLC
My startup can’t run payroll this month so I can’t really buy any gifts this year, but I have lots of old videos, photos, and audio files that my friends & family would absolutely love to experience again. Thanks for this free great gift idea.
I have been waiting over two months for a check from a big project and am in the same boat. What a great idea! One year, I gave everyone scans from my Grandma’s photo album — this was actually about six weeks after she passed away at age 97.
I have been waiting over two months for a check from a big projectOh shit. I feel the pain. Reminds me of when I was in the graphics business. One of the reasons I sold it actually. We were making plenty of money but I couldn’t take the accounts receivable stress and being jerked around. Then you get new work and a little bit of money for the old work. If you don’t do the new work they have even less motivation to pay you anything. My ex wife went through that as well with her coupon ad book. Would show up for a check and people would have no problem not paying her and making her come back later after saying it would be there. Like no conscience whatever.There were fun parts of course. I once collected money from a now defunct sports team in my city. They couldn’t and wouldn’t pay so I contacted the league office. They said ‘good luck they owe us money as well!!!’. So I called the team and said something that roughly translated to ‘if I don’t get the money the newspapers will know about this’. I actually didn’t say that (because a threat like that would be ignored) [1] but rather words that indicated that would happen. I had my check within 5 days. Then there was the guy who pulled a gun on me when I went to personally get the money that his company owed.The irony that I found was that the customers that were easiest to get were the companies that were stiffing other vendors. This was in the 80’s after I got out of college.[1] The strategy to use is fear of the unknown. An unknown threat will typically work much better than a known threat. In this case they couldn’t wrap their head around what my words meant which means it multiplied in their mind. Basic concept.
Yup. But in this case it’s a public agency and they are just slow. I’m fairly certain I won’t be stiffed but I really want to pay my subcontractors. It’s Christmas and I care about the people who work for me!
Accounts receivable blues, sigh. A good solution for that is to try to put payments as linked activities in the project gantt chart, often between stages. The payment chain is as important as any other process in a project, so late payments do hurt projects.I have always wondered why slow and convoluted is acceptable in public agencies, you would not believe the hassle to get a friggin’ EIN for a company from the IRS, when you are not a US citizen.
Yes, I do have payments tied to milestones/deliverables. It’s a good client. Just slow payers. Unfortunately, due to the size of the project, it’s about a third of my income for year and I’ve had only a few small deliverables this last quarter. It is what it is. I am getting very good at chanting OM.
Being independent is hard sometimes, I think it is also a required step to startup entrepreneurship, dealing with the ups and downs, learning to ride the curves… and well, chanting OM in tune. 🙂
I am old so OM is easy now. Well, at least easier than when I was younger.
I’ve learned how to take shit, power through, and get paid on a whole new level as an independent.
One can dream about getting enough other clients to fire one’s worst.
Hahahah. I actually do have good clients. I have worked hard to make it so. I talked with the client yesterday. It turns out it was just a mistake on the client’s part where the invoice mistakenly sat on someone’s desk without getting processed and then they accidentally sent it to my old address. They are processing a new check today but I probably won’t receive it until next week. Sometimes mistakes happen, even with good clients.
“Then you get new work and a little bit of money for the old work. If you don’t do the new work they have even less motivation to pay you anything.”I feel this pain with one of my clients. It is a hard and continuous fight to not be taken advantage of.
I used to have these clients. I call them the “Asshole Clients.” Most asshole clients are not worth it. I live by the No Assholes Rule.
Fear of what someone knows and can do is critical leverage. Needs to be used with caution and with discretion, but there are lots of unscrupulous people who would not hesitate to stiff vendors, and you really cannot collect cash without being tough, or at least appear to be prepared to get tough.
That is a good idea. I recently started using the Google Photoscan app and it does an excellent job. I was surprised, though, that the scans come out much better on my wife’s iPhone 6s than on my Galaxy S7.
K Berger:We are late to respond but please don’t promote the only good technology in the Apples iPhone. The camera. Everything else is let’s copy Samsung and then sue them for using Technology we troll or acquire by purchasing another company. In technology that isn’t innovation. LG & Huawei should sue Apple about the camera.DISCLOSURE: NO FINANCIAL POSITION WITH APPLE. Post Steve Jobs we think Apple isn’t an innovative company. Just a copycat and ligation troll.
Susan Rubinsky:we can learn much from our non technical elders. My Mom had six albums of photos taken while we grew up. Her husband (Brother of the father of a certain Supreme Court Justice) and his daughter just threw them away. (Still in shock over that) My Mom would never allow anyone to touch it to create duplicates. A Shame. At least you gained possession of priceless memories for your family. Preserve them.
So true! I have some wonderful photos from my Grandma, mostly taken int he 1920’s and 30’s.
I think they’ll love that more than anything you can buy for them.
too cool.cool cause of the way you found it. cooler i think cause you actually got them.digitized and edited many hours of super 8 video without audio from my dad down to an hour of 30-60 sec clips.my dad reading to me when i was three. holy shit!time capsule of our lives become icons of value.congrats on this fred. must be super fun.
Too true Arnold.Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans….
Or when you’re looking the other way …
Cool. I often wonder what the best way to store old movies I took of my kids. Is it in the cloud? I know that over time, the quality of video degrades. My wife and I have old VHS tapes of our wedding that must look pretty foggy by now.
pointsnfigures:http://www.imemories.com/DISCLOSURE: NO FINANCIAL POSITION
Interesting, didn’t know the quality of videotapes degrades – though I have heard that color photos degrade faster than black-and-white. I suppose bits are the only thing that will not degrade, though in practice they have to be stored on a physical medium, which can.
Are you planning on re-posting them somewhere publicly?
Decentralized internet treasure hunt!
plz follow me I only have 8 followers and I will follow u
FRED:since you mentioned Twitter (The Bluebird) there is a mass exodus in talent running out that door. The CTO, VP of Product, Adam Bain. The excuse will be all companies have people come and go. But rarely on the talent level just mentioned.DISCLOSURE: NO EQUITY POSITIONS. SHORT OR LONG.
>Twitter didn’t exist but that team was working on a podcasting service called Odeo.Interesting. I remember reading about Odeo back in the day and might have signed up for their service. Don’t remember for sure now. I was a signer-upper (and still am, though more selectively nowadays 🙂
It would be wonderful if the whole series was unearthed! I have fond memories of those podcasts. Such a nice insight and introduction to the wonderful Wilson family.
Maybe we should get Greg to rerelease _his_ podcast from that time – he interviewed Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman and many more who would be neat to listen to in time capsule. Or maybe there’s a whole Timehop for Podcasts startup to be launched here 😉
Are you planning on making them available online again somewhere? That would be fun 🙂
Is there a formal lost and found service for digital files on the internet? Perhaps limited to files distributed before streaming services but would be pretty cool.
Eight weeks of bliss
I recently watched a video of my mother and father holding me after child birth! What an emotional experience. Then to see the video of my first birthday, and all the characters, in their mid 30s (now in their 60s) … They haven’t changed one bit! To see the ones that have passed on. To see the young love of parents who’ve moved on. Very touching. Upon watching I was overcome with odd feeling of knowing that I was physically present, but had zero recollection or nostalgia for these events.