America Is a Joke (Thanks, The Daily Show!)

Stewart made himself into the leading critic and satirist of the media-political complex, starting with “Indecision 2000,” The Daily Show’s parody of that year’s presidential campaign. His comedy is counterprogramming—postmodern entertainment but with a political purpose. As truth has been overrun by truthiness and facts trampled by lies, he and The Daily Show have become an invaluable corrective—he’s Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, although in keeping with the fragmented culture, he’s trusted by many fewer people, about 1.8 million viewers each night. Years ago, Stewart lost out to Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel for late-night network jobs, but the shifting media fortunes have made him the long-run winner, with vastly more job security and cultural influence than his conventional talk-show competitors—and most conventional journalists.

Satire makes me smile. And for that I'm grateful.

Speaking at MIT Startup Bootcamp tomorrow!

Have an idea? Starting a company is easier than you think.

Startup Bootcamp is a free one-day event featuring talks by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists on how to start a company. Hear from founders themselves about the journey of turning the spark of an idea into a viable product. Get the inside scoop on raising money, term sheets, and how to deal with VCs or angel investors. What should you look for when choosing a co-founder, and when should you incorporate or file patents? What can go wrong in a startup, and how does an acquisition work? Have your questions answered by experts and learn key lessons on how to start a company.

Saturday, September 11, 2010
9:00 am
Kresge Auditorium, MIT

I had the privilege of speaking here last year and was just informed of the chance to return to speak at this year's MIT Startup Bootcamp. (Thanks!)

Needless to say, I jumped at the chance. If you're working on something awesome, I'd love to speak with you this Saturday in Cambridge. Now I've gotta get to work on some slides...

University of Illinois Embraces Reddit

With universities understanding the value of social media, universities are equally competing with companies to establish their brand value on the internet. Almost all universities have embraced Twitter, Facebook and other social networks as a medium of communication to their community.

Today, in a newly launched homepage for University of Illinois at Chicago (www.uic.edu), the home page directly links to a subreddit. And it does not stop with a link to the subreddit, a Reddit widget linking to the top 3 items from the subreddit has been listed as well. With UIC just launching this today, it will be interesting to watch how well the students and staff, would like to participate in this.

It should here be noted that Reddit is popular for its subreddits, which allow dedicated pages on specifically focused topics. This concept of subreddits is what makes this possible, unlike Digg which provides no opportunity for this and also removed all detailed subtopics in its site, creating a huge chaos of links. Reddit which has always been a close competitor to Digg in the social media news arena is slowly starting to take over the first place. Recently, Digg encountered a major debacle in trying to release a new platform supporting a new architecture and also a redesigned site. For almost two weeks, Digg has been in mostly unusable form and users have been steadily migrating to Reddit.

University-based-reddits are something I'd tried to push for a while, but leave it to some redditors to just go ahead and do it on their own. Well done. And on a related note: why haven't you done this yet, UVA? ;)