Plinky in today's New York Times Magazine

Illustration by Peter Arkle

I had the pleasure of being quoted in the NYT Magazine today in an article about Plinky. The article speaks for itself and I thought Rob Walker did a nice job. One thing I've been meaning to write about more is what's coming next for Plinky. The article touches on this:

"Shellen says his company has more projects in the works that are “centered on conversation” but for the moment has been learning more about what sorts of prompts are effective."

More on this soon, I promise.

Labels: plinky

at 10:20 PM | 1 Comments

The doctor ordered "Back to the Future II" and bedrest

I've been sick with a cold. Not any cold, but some super human cold to end all colds. I'm finally feeling better and I've ingested my share of ibuprofen, Sudafed, codeine cough syrup, Tylenol PM, pho, hot tea, home-made soup (thanks Allie), but mostly a bunch of movies. My eyes have been hurting so a lot of the time I just listened to the movies.

Since last Friday I've re-watched (or listened to): Mission Impossible 3, Wedding Crashers, Singles, Batman Begins and watched for the first time: Hitch, Step Brothers, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist. The re-watches were all good to great, the first timers - almost every last one of them horrible. I've learned that when you are sick, go with what you know.

Sequels in general make for great movie watching when you are sick, because plot details don't matter as much and the fact that it's not as good as the original won't matter as much. Plus you have probably already seen it a few times so you can doze off for periods of time and the story still makes sense.

I recommend Back to the Future II or BTTF II as we true fans call it. It's not as good as the first but definitely better than the old West flying train piece of junk that came out after it. Lot's of Biff getting his just desserts and Marty's girlfriend gets upgraded from nameless actress to Elisabeth Shue between BTTF 1 and 2. Not bad! Other things to love about this one mainly appear in the future, Nike self-lacing shoes, Mattel Hover Boards, hover cars, 3-D advertising and a fax machine in every room of the home.

For my money what's better than a movie about the future when being sick essentially puts you in a wormhole to next week anyway.

Try to avoid tense movies like MI3 or The Dark Night, I learned my lesson the hard way. Other recommended sequels would include: Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi.

Roads? Where you're going you don't need roads... Motrin maybe but no roads.

Labels: movies, plinky, sick

at 9:34 PM | 4 Comments

Plinky is live!

It feels like I've been up for about a week straight but we launched Plinky today. Much more on that tomorrow for now, go and give it a spin!

Labels: plinky

at 10:18 PM | 4 Comments

Well I wouldn't say I "missed" work

I'm featured in an article on CNN today called: They left the corporate cocoon to blossom. The article is about people like Vanessa Fox and I who left cushy gigs at big companies to strike out on our own. Highly recommended reading *ahem*.

A couple points of clarification about the article:

• CNN must have some sort of editorial policy against outbound links, you can sign up to be notified of our pending launch at Plinky.com
• The article states that I was "complacent" at Google. I would probably use the word "restless".
• Start-up life isn't for everyone and I certainly wouldn't advise foolishly quitting a perfectly good job because it was my preference to do so. This downturn isn't going to be easy on anyone, least of all small businesses.
• That said, it does feel a lot more like you are living your own life when you have a hand in your own fate. Don't let the economy keep a good idea down. I feel a flurry of motivational quips coming on: "Where there is a will there's a way", "Just do it", "If you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it". The last one snuck in there and might not apply.

For all of you who have been waiting for Plinky... it's just around the corner. More on that soon.

Labels: cnn, plinky, press

at 2:30 PM | 10 Comments

Plinky

Apart from making with the jokes on Twitter, I have been very busy starting a new company, Plinky, Inc.. In short, Plinky will be focused on helping people have fun while creating great content.

I've had an idea for this new web application for a long time and thought about incubating it under the banner of The Secret Agency which I created last fall to do such things. A funny thing happened on the way to the incubator idea though, what happens if one of the ideas consumes you and seems like it really has legs? After iterating since last fall with my friend Sim Simeonov the idea for Plinky was consuming me and I decided to raise some seed funding to help build it out as a company focused on one product. I'm accepting a round of financing from the nice folks at Polaris Ventures in Boston as well as some smart angels (to be announced at a later date). When we are done with the round we should be at about $1.5M raised to help propel us.

We have a small team of web developers and will be hiring a back-end tech lead engineer soon. Drop me an email to jason at plinky dot com if you live in the SF Bay Area and are interested.

I can't wait to have folks try out our application in the Fall/Winter time when we are ready for testing. I'm sorry I can't say more about the product at this time, but it's nice to finally talk about the company building process publicly. Look for more company building blog posts from me in the future. One thing I will say is that this is not a Blogger 2.0 or a MySpace-killer but rather something that should help make using any social site more interesting

Om Malik wrote about our brief conversation about Plinky and my co-founder Sim wrote about starting Plinky. If you want to be notified when we launch, please add your email address to our list over at Plinky.com.

Now the real work begins!

Labels: plinky, startup, work

at 10:25 AM | 11 Comments