I finally decided to take a break and do it in style at the annual FL/GA game in Jacksonville, FL. For those diehard college football fans, this is as good as it gets.

Heading to the Jacksonville Landing now to watch the game with some old friends and will write a follow up tomorrow. In the mean time, here are some pictures courtesy of flickr to give you a sense of how magical FL/GA weekend really is.

Sight & Sound

We are the boys from old Florida

With that, I will try to return from my hiatus from blogging and will post more frequently.

Another Foo Fighters classic. Everlong anyone? I found this song while checking out the new music discovery site, Hype Machine . I will write a more in depth review about Hype Machine in a later post. For now, just know that this is how mashups should be done. Brilliant!

Foo Fighters – Home

He’s at it again. The legendary Carlos Santana (one of my favorite guitarists) joined forces with Chad Kroeger of Nickelback for another awesome collaboration.

After a year of jumping from blog to blog, mostly tech and Web 2.0 blogs, and often as a passive reader, I finally got the push to start my own blog for the purpose of being part of the conversation.

Simply put, I’m an engineer. I chose engineering because of my curiosity for just about everything, or rather it was a creative excuse for my ADD tendencies (I get bored easily). But the truth is that I took the engineering path because I hated writing and want to avoid it at all cost. I avoided writing mainly because of my fear for writing.

As with all engineers, my main flaw is that I’m a perfectionist. Couple that with a very competitive personality, I always despise being associated with anything that is mediocre, or “just good enough,” and writing was no different. This would often lead to hours of frustration when I’m trying to write anything.

Among the many benefits that I’ve gained from the so called “blogosphere,” is that I’ve also gained confidence as a writer from reading what others say on their respected blogs.

As an entrepreneur in the Internet space ( I refuse to use Web 2.0), the blogs about tech and startups have been the best resources for me. Starting with Techcrunch, before knowing it was The place for web startups news, I would only scan it for articles relating to my startup, mainly about social networking. After a month of reading random articles on the front page, I discovered comments. Talk about different. Seeing 128 responses to a short article by Mike Arrington, author of Techcrunch, was mind boggling. The first thought was who the heck is this Mike guy, and who are these 128 people who value Mike’s view so highly? After reading through the first 40 or so, I realized something extremely important about blogs – Mike has tremendous power as the writer behind Techcrunch, and that the commenters are the ones who make the blogging experience interesting and conversational. Ignoring the typical dumb comments by trolls, the discussions/arguments between the commenters following the original blog entry are where things get interesting, and a lot of ideas are thrown around. Amazing! Conversation media and collective wisdom are here! However, I have no idea at the time.

A year later, after reading through thousands of blogs, I’ve decided that it’s time to give back. Collective wisdom works because people with different opinions and ideas openly share their thoughts and join in on the conversations. It’s time for me to do the same. Being on the sideline sucks, it’s time to join the discussions and give back to a blogging community that has given me so much over the last year.

As I blog more often, and get a feel for getting my thoughts onto text, I will be more vocal and join the conversations that I have grown intrigued by over the last year. For now, the best thing I can offer is what I call “The List.” To the right you will find my blog roll that I called “Required Reading.” The bloggers on that list are people who I follow daily, and often more than once. The list comprises of entrepreneurs, researchers, authors, VCs, and most importantly of all, they’re all prolific writers and great thinkers. I must warn you that the list is biased towards people related to the Internet space.

I sometime get approach by student entrepreneurs for advice on how to understand and make sense of the Internet space and entrepreneurship in general. I always email them a version of the “Required Reading” list. Now, that I have a blog, I’m excited to finally have the list readily available, with additional supplements from my posts – how cool is that? Sure, delicious can offer the same thing, but there’s no context behind it.  Of course there are exceptions to this. Marc Andreesen’s blog is an example, where he actually turned off comments altogether, and for good reasons.

On that note, I hope you join me in many conversations as I will try to find interesting topics to talk about over the next year and hopefully beyond.

What I’ve found through reading blogs:

• great discussions
• learn something new everyday
• business contacts
• friendship
• most importantly of all, incredible wealth of knowledge

I would like to elaborate further on the last point. By reading through the writings of the people on my Required Reading list each day, I feel as if I’m a participant in a rare meeting of great minds who thoughtfully share their views and understanding about a particular topic for that day. From a perspective of a recent graduate, it’s like having the opportunity to gather ten of your most fascinating professors, from different fields, and have an uninterrupted conversation where each of them take turn offering their view and wisdom. The responses are well thought out, raw and unique. This is such an empowering revelation that I still think about each day [I will add that a number of people on that list have been off of their game lately by participating in nonsense bickering. I will elaborate more on this at a later post]

The first of many short posts about new music that I’ve found through either pandora or last.fm. I’ll write a follow-up post about the awesome music recommendation engines available on the web, mainly pandora, last.fm and mog.

I often listen to the Jim Brickman or David Lanz station when I work, either writing or designing, and last.fm and pandora would usually recommend George Winston as a related artist. Let’s just say that last.fm and pandora are on the dot with this recommendation every time, no matter the song/piece.

This has been a long overdue “project,” one of my many, that I’ve been wanting to do. Like the name, theSimpleWeb, I like things that are simple (will also be the main topics explored on this blog):

• Technology: Internet, web apps, software, social networks, online communities, improve communication, knowledge management, relevant search
• Simplicity: elegant and intuitive designs, software that simplifies and enriches people’s lives
• Entrepreneurship: behind the scene look into the journey of my startup

more soon…