Thursday, January 14, 2010

Hey all,

Today we visited two companies. The first was NetVibes, a really cool dashboard company that I am going to set up after I am done writing this blog. Basically what it allows you to do is have all the information you need from all the websites you check on one page. It is very comparable to an iGoogle page. What they do is really very simple, but it has been done in such a way that it works very well, and across all platforms. The page is basically an open space that allows you drag and drop the widgets you want into place. These widgets are things as simple as the weather or a facebook / twitter feed. They can also be as complicated as tracking the activity of your page, or when certain buzz words are used in a given forum database.

The site is free for individuals to use, and is completely open source, so we could all go write a java script widget and upload it to the site for everyone to use. They also do white label sales to companies that want to run this for their company, and keep it more internal. They will do these white label sales in one of two ways. Either they will keep all of the software on the cloud and allow the company to access it; or, they will send out the actual software to the company so that if they have secrets they don't want floating around, they can keep it completely internal. a prime example of the second case would be this: they just closed a deal with the defense department, and it was focused on the defense department intelligence or something like that. So they will have a lot of eyes only, and top secret things that they do not want NetVibes to have access to, or to be floating around the web.

Chris Damsen, the guy from NetVibes, was very open about the company, and himself personally. One really cool thing about NetVibes is that they are based in Paris, and do not do internships here in the states, BUT, he said that if we got a hold of him and expressed interest in an internship he would put us in contact, and a good word, with the Paris department responsible for the internships. So, I am really going to try for that, see if I can get an internship in Paris. It would be extra nice for me, since that is really an area of development I would like to head towards.

The second company we visited was a non-profit called Kiva. They are basically the middlemen between loaners and companies that do micro-financing. They are active in tons of countries (I forget the number), and they do some pretty cool stuff. They really try to help people from the developing world get money, as a loan, and then they pay it back. Once you have been paid back on a loan you give, you can take the money back or continue to invest it. You will not gain interest on this loan, because the SEC said that they should not be paying people interest on these loans. Personally, I think that there would be more incentive for people to loan money if they were able to gain a little interest; nonetheless, they have incredibly high rates of the number of requested loans that get funded. The number sited was 99.9%, but I find that a little hard to believe. This was a super cool meeting, since we met with seven members at once. They had people there from all the departments so that every question was answered by people in that field. The only thing that I did not like about this meeting was some of the presentation content. At the start it really felt like they were trying to "sell" us their company. They kept talking about all these good things they did, as if they had to legitimize themselves to us. Also, they threw out a lot of 90+%'s on very important statistics, and I feel like these were more stats meant to impress than convey a truthful business.

After this meeting we had about two hours to roam the city. After about 30min my classmates were boring and went back to the hotel to rest. I, on the other hand, went on a rather long walk around some of the piers and around a few blocks in the city. I saw some very interesting things, from artwork, to a car driving down the dedicated trolley tracks. This part of my day was a lot of fun. A great time for some introspection, and to see some things my friends might not have wanted to walk to. I ended up out on the pier, just sitting in the quiet watching the water. Very relaxing, and totally worth some extra walking. Since we were meeting for dinner at 6:00, I had to get on the trolley about 5:40. I was at the stop I needed a few minutes early. I saw the trolley coming, and got up and stood by the tracks ready to board. The driver looked me in the eye as he drove right by the stop. So I had to wait until the next one came around, and that made me a bit late to our dinner meeting. An interesting trolley experience.

For meals today, most of us went to a burger joint that was supposed to rival In and Out. Brad's spies had told him that this was the place to go, and that these burgers were way better than IaO. Taylor's, as it was called, was pretty good; however, it was no IaO (don't worry Adam, I didn't cross over). For dinner we went to Scomas for some sea food. This was a great meal. I had a special for an appetizer, entree, and desert. I can't remember the appetizer, but it was something like Ascannini. For an entree I had wild swordfish. And, for desert I had Tiramisu (spelling?). They were all amazing. I would highly recommend Scomas to anyone in the San Francisco area. There are pictures of my food at the bottom.

Now, we are all having our nightly Blogging Party in the lounge. We are thinking about going out to a bar to just sit and talk for a bit after we are all done here. We don't have to meet until 10:45 and only have two short meetings tomorrow. There is not a lot else going on for me. The weekend plans are still pretty up in the air. We might go see Wicked, and we are pretty sure that we are going to head to a comedy tour that is coming through town. A few of us are also planning on renting some bikes and riding across the Golden Gate Bridge and exploring over around there some.

Something I forgot to mention about Kiva was that while there, I got to hold one of the Olympic torches from the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Picture below.

One of the videos from the Exploritorium. This is the spinning table, and one of the cool things a ring to do. Kaitlin then tried to sabotage my awesomeness with that ball.



Me, picking some statues noes. He looks very taken aback by my actions.

Holding the Olympic Torch at Kiva. Yes, it is real, and yes it is heavy.

These are the pictures of the food, for those of you who like to look at the great food I got.

I will do my best to get more videos up, but I am very surprised that that one even worked. I will try again tomorrow night, or morning when I have some time.

Thanks for reading,

Aaron

P.S. Brad - "Show me time, please!"