When Jakob Lodwick left was fired from Vimeo earlier this month, I immediately predicted that Lodwick would be working with Tumblr founder David Karp. It seems this might be closer to reality with some investigative journalism just completed by regular CN visitor and author, James Thomas.

This past Saturday, Lodwick posted about some new domains that he registered. The list includes:

• D***S***.COM
• BA******RO****.COM
• n*****.com & .us
• n*****s.com & .us
• n*****ist.com & .org
• n*****ists.com& .org
• n*****ism.com & .org

The previous day Lodwick posted that he had dinner with Karp per his blog post and calls Karp a, "soon famous face."

This is where Thomas went to work. After some Columbo-type maneuvers, we know the full names of some of the domains that Lodwick registered:

• norbum.com
• norbum.us
• norbums.com
• norbumist.com
• norbumist.org
• norbumists.com
• norbumists.org
• norbumism.com
• norbumism.org

Anyone know what a Norbum is? Let's complete the picture before the new year rings!

Photos by: David Karp & Zach Klein

Having lived through the first Internet bubble I see as many differences with “Web 2.0″ as similarities to the madness of the ’90s. Still, this video from nextNY.org is too funny and timely not to share. So enjoy your tiny bubbles tonight, let’s avoid making another big one, and see you next year!

The site that brought us ‘Crank That‘ is confirmed to present at the January 15 Web2NewYork networking party. Soulja Boy has been telling whoever wants to listen that New York-based SoundClick.com paved the way to his success.

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All of us in the startup community have been debating whether the bubble is once again upon us. It is my strong opinion that indeed it has :)

Dmitry sent me this video when I told him I will be teaching Entrepreneurship next semester, check it out!

Evan Williams has an absolutely wonderful post up about evaluating a new product idea. I think Marc is spot on - the "personally compelling" criteria is the one that stands out.

Last on the list, but probably the first question I ask myself is: How important to me is it that this product exists in the world? If I were evaluating a startup, I'd ask this of the founders.

. . .

In theory, you can get around this with lots of user research. (It's pretty clear neither Slide nor Rockyou's founders are creating widgets based on their own needs and desires.) But you're more likely to get it wrong that way. When I've gone sideways, it's when I wasn't listening to my gut on this issue. Specifically, Blogger and Twitter were personally compelling, while Odeo wasn't.

Clearly, you're better suited to build a best-of-breed product if you're intimately familiar with the space and "scratching your own itch".

But perhaps more importantly, I think what Evan gets at is passion. Building a product and a company is hard. If the end result is not personally compelling, are you going to have the resolve to get through the dips? (And since you're probably going to run into road blocks, the end result needs to be more compelling than just the possibility you might be rich).

I truly believe the best products and companies come from passionate people. You may or may not be the expert in the space today, but if you don't feel passionately about solving that problem you're going to have a long road ahead of you.

Cross-posted to the Notches Blog

Allen Stern, the editor of CenterNetworks, just before the holidays went one-on-one with For Your Imagination CEO Paul Kontonis in a discovery session about For Your Imagination, one of the top online media companies of 2007, and to get Paul's perspective on how For Your Imagination has been able to monetize their content in 2007 and where online video will be in 2008. You'll have to read the interview to get all the details! CenterNetworks' mission is to help new media, technology and web 2.0 industry professionals stay up-to-date on social networking, Web 2.0, and social media news and events. CenterNetworks is also a sponsor of nextNYers, the weekly video interview series that tells you which technology companies in the New York City area should be on your radar through interviews with their top executives.

Murat Aktihanoglu presented his impressive virtual world and social networking mash-up Unype at Tuesday’s Web2NewYork networking party, but has also launched two other Facebook apps - I’ll call them Fapps from now on.

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For Your Imagination, a New York City based online media company, today announced the release of “The Patrice Oneal Show – Coming Soon! Season One: Episodes 1-13” on DVD through a partnership with Amazon.com’s CreateSpace service. The DVD is part of the distribution and monetization plan for Oneal’s comedy web only series that premiered May 2007 on www.patriceoneal.com.

“The sheer popularity of the web series, and the fact that his fans have been asking for this format, made this DVD release the next logical step in our partnership with Patrice,” said Paul Kontonis, For Your Imagination’s CEO. “Plus there are other ways for a web series to make money without having to wait for a sponsor to write a check.”

Oneal is known for his cringe-inducing humor, often making his audience uncomfortable to get laughs. He has hosted VH1’s Web Junk, appeared in FOX’s critically acclaimed “Arrested Development” and NBC’s “The Office”, has performed in HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central specials, been a part of Opie and Anthony’s Traveling Virus Comedy Tour and has appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and The Late Show with David Letterman. Oneal is a regular guest on XM Satellite Radio’s Opie and Anthony program and a top iTunes Comedy podcaster.

“We’ve all been working very hard on this show and I’m happy to have an outlet for all of the things that VH1 wouldn’t let me say,” said Oneal.

Totally unscripted and shot weekly in New York City, “The Patrice Oneal Show – Coming Soon!” has grown into one of the best comedy web series. Along with Patrice, the series features an ensemble cast of seasoned comedians and actors: Vondecarlo Brown, Bryan Kennedy, Dante Nero, Harris Stanton and Wil Sylvince.

The DVD includes the first 13 episodes of “The Patrice Oneal Show – Coming Soon!” web series including fan favorites “Cockfights,” “Last White Man Alive, “ Dyke Punching” and “Child Labor.”  A follow up DVD comprised of the second half of the season will be released in early 2008.

Fans eager to purchase the DVD can do so through on www.patriceoneal.com/dvd and on Amazon.com.

I decided to publish a readers “best-of-2007″ list for my final post of the year based on a Google Analytics site report. Here are a dozen plus two of the best stories on this blog in 2007 (click on the title to go to that post) ranked by number of visits:

Games Meet the Social Web

A handful of US and European developers have been working in stealth mode on game engines and frameworks with low barriers of entry: inexpensive or free, browser based, pre-built components and code. Now that these products are beginning to come into view it’s notable that most are using social media as an integral part of their business model and banking on users to build a good deal of the content.

Sony Eyes Club Penquin

You may have liked my original post but boy was I all wet on this one! I seized on a news story and wrote, “Bringing new meaning to the phrase global warming Sony is in talks to acquire Club Penguin, the virtual world for kids from British Columbia. Sale price is rumored to be in the range of $450m, a 7.5 multiple of Club Penguin’s reported $60m sales… a healthy increment and further evidence of the rapidly growing interest in mmogs and virtual worlds appealing to young kids, a market that includes the educational and social Whyville, purely social worlds like Habbo Hotel and Nicktropolis among others.” As we know now it was Disney and not Sony that ate the Penquin. Still, according to Lane Merrifield who I met at Dust or Magic, it’s all going down quite smoothly.

IBM Gets Torqued

It’s no secret that IBM has been experimenting with Second Life and other virtual world platforms for some time. More recently the “desire to have a more secure intranet environment where we can meet and explore the potential technology and social implications” has prompted the addition of Garage Games’ low-cost Torque engine to their arsenal, according to the eightbar blog this week.

Games, Learning & Society

In his opening keynote at the Game, Learning & Society 3.0 conference in Madison, WI last week, Professor James Gee set the stage for the year’s most substantive conference on learning games and simulations. Among other points made in his opening remarks, Gee observed that:

> The game business has managed to profit from selling products that present extremely challenging learning experiences which players willingly master — the stuff that’s extremely difficult to get kids to do in school.

> Games encourage performance before competency, the opposite of the dominant pedagogy in today’s schools that stress the ability to recite facts in order to pass the test before actually demonstrating competence in a particular domain.

> Games are problem-solving spaces that cultivate a culture of learning, and learning complexity is an altogether legal drug that humans can’t get enough of. The gamers attitude to failure is “fail early, fail often” if it is in the service of learning something critical to success.

> Gamers learn to look past the eye candy to solve the underlying puzzle of the quest or mission that they’re on — just the kind of discriminatory abilities that are core 21 Century skills.

> Games, particularly MMOGs, are highly social systems where players are driven by a common passion or agenda, just as they must be on the cross-functional teams that are cornerstones of today’s globalized businesses.

Serious Game Engine Shootout

Serious games and educational simulations are an unique product category with functional requirements that are different from platform and casual games, MMOGs, and drill-n-skill learning games. The gameplay itself is only the tip of the iceberg: hidden out of sight is an engine the player doesn’t see. As an emerging market, however, little has been written about the best engines for building serious games. This lack of transparency makes it difficult for publishers to choose development partners, and for developers to scope new projects. My article “Serious Game Engine Shootout: a comparative analysis of technology for serious game development” and panel discussion on March 6th at the Serious Games Summit is intended to help address this deficiency. For more on the topic visit my new Resources page.

Web 2.0 Deconstructed

Gamer-Centered Design

I’ve championed user centered design for years and in part that’s behind the argument for using educational games and simulations for teaching: meeting and engaging students on their own terms. Now I’m seeing a gamer-centered design aesthetic begin to emerge in some surprising places, like business software, where you might least expect games to have an influence.

Web 2.0 Mindmap

This is an amazing illumination of the Web 2.0 space that’s worth downloading (8920kb) and spending some time with. One caveat: there are links out to many of the influences he mentions so exploring this could keep you busy for a while.

Moodle Mashup

If you combine the open source Moodle.org learning management system with lesson plans that use Linden Lab’s Second Life you get something like Sloodle.com, a vision of how to use virtual worlds in the classroom. Besides, talking about Moodles and Sloodles turns heads so it’s a great conversation starter

Investing in Education

Part one of three reports on the SIIA’s Ed Tech Business Forum, the leading business and finance conference for the K-12 and postsecondary education technology market that wrapped up a few days ago in New York. This annual event attracts senior management from education software companies, platform technology firms, solution providers, publishers, private equity firms and venture capitalists.

The keynote speaker for this years conference was John Martinson, Managing Partner of the Edison Venture Fund. With 31 years of venture capital experience, including 8 investments for Edison from $3-10M and 12 investments from $250K-12M as an individual, Martinson has significant experience and a unique perspective on investing in the educational technology market.

Kerpoof: 3 Seconds to Fun

Krista Marks has a bold vision to change the way kids interact with the computer and learn about creativity, and her new site Kerpoof is a giant leap forward in that direction. A unique blend of Web 2.0 goodness, user-generated content and social media savvy combined with brilliant design and some of the best Flash programming around, Krista and her team have created a place where fun is not separate from learning but integral to it, where kids can create art, write their own stories, create their own movies, and share them. True to her educational intentions the site offers teacher resources and lesson plans as well. Krista shared her vision in this videotaped presentation at Dust or Magic. For more, visit Kerpoof’s website and see for yourself, or read what TechCrunch and Colorado Startups had to say.

Easy Coding for Kids

Scratch is a new programming language developed at the MIT Media Lab that’s aimed at kids from 8-up. According to the BBC story and video out earlier this week Scratch “does not require prior knowledge of complex computer languages. Instead, it uses a simple graphical interface that allows programs to be assembled like building blocks.”

A Taxonomy of Serious Games

Ben Sawyer’s presentation of a serious games taxonomy at the Annenberg Workshop on Learning Games was picked up on by the Serious Games Blog and 360 Kid’s Scott Traylor, who writes in his post, “Ben began the presentation with a very fitting poem by John Godfrey Saxe about six blind men who went to see an elephant. Each blind man found a part of the elephant — its sturdy side by one, a tusk by another, an ear by yet another, and so on. Each blind man thought they had come to understand the true meaning of what an elephant is. Each person was partially right about what they thought was an elephant, yet all of them were wrong in their understanding.” Though the finished version won’t be published until mid-year Ben will present the latest working draft at the 2008 Serious Games Summit this winter.

Children’s Technology Trends in 2008

Robin has been translating technology into consumer friendly terms for more than 25 years. Today, as a writer, new media consultant, and speaker she spends a great deal of her time focusing on family life in a digital world. Currently she’s featured as a columnist on Yahoo! Tech. She’s been the Editor in Chief of FamilyPC, editor of PC Magazine, and columnist for USA Today Online and the Gannett News Service, winning numerous prizes for her coverage of technology. Robin has authored 6 books about parenting in the digital age for publishers including Random House, Simon and Schuster and Hyperion. Visit Robin’s website to learn more.

I was supposed to head to 15 East for lunch today with a friend/colleague from a strategic venture fund.  We prearranged to meet around 12:30; but around 11:30am, I noticed my Twitter account freaking out when Fred Wilson posted that Union Square was closed off.

Since 15 East was right next to Union Square, I quickly emailed my friend and we arranged to meet down at Blue Ribbon Sushi in the West Village.  Had Fred not alerted Twitter, I would have never found out, and both my friend and myself probably would have been extremely late to the lunch since we were coming from two seperate areas of the city.  Twitter was finally useful.