shellen dot com

Plinky

2008-06-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

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!

Another way to look at atomization

2008-05-21T02:04:00.000-07:00

Josh Kopelman wrote about "The Atomization of Conversation" the other day:

Conversations are indeed becoming atomized and asynchronous. No need for the "Hey, how are you doing?" discussion. Personal dialog is being replaced by a Mini-feed.

Josh is right. Even this blog post doesn't necessarily need to be a blog post. I could have starred or shared Josh's post in Google Reader and added a note to it and it would just become one of many things that are consumed, streamed or duly noted by my friends and readers. I find what Josh points out fascinating because it's a new problem and one we didn't have a few years ago.

When some of the founding members of the Google Reader team and I were putting together the original product plan we spent a lot of time talking about the death of the shared experience. I remember recounting that time and place shifting had wreaked havoc with the normal water-cooler conversation at work. No longer were there conversations that started with, 'Did you see Johnny Carson last night?' because aside from the fact that Johnny was long gone, there was no single shared event to center around with 180 channels, TiVo, DVD's and the internet. How could we bring back shared experiences in a world where everything seemed so fragmented? Like any good problem I ever spend brain cycles on I came to the conclusion that surely there was a web-app that could solve this problem! Hence some of the features that slowly made their way into our little social-enabled Reader.

FriendFeed, Facebook and Reader each have ways to tell what your friends have liked, read or voted for explicitly but I would love to see more advancement in this area. It's close but not fully fixed yet. One of my inspirations over the years has been the clustering used by the link blog aggregation at HotLinks. Check out one of the levels, like level 3 to see the clustering in action. Simple, but effective in rolling together shared likes.

Back to Josh's atomization question, it feels like there is a new problem. Now that we have good ways of keeping up with people and maybe even having some sort of shared experience filter/aggregation, what next? The insight posed by Mr. Kopelman isn't all bad, I definitely feel more informed about my friends from across the country by using services like Twitter and perhaps that can deepen relationships but there is a larger question. Where do we focus as technologists? Do we improve the quality of conversation? Do we pull together like minded folks around their likes and dislikes? Will FriendConnect, Facebook Connect, and the like mean we will further annoy our friends with the persistent connectedness or will we begin to use them as exclusion lists so we can begin to discover what people think outside of our explicitly named networks?

It turns out it's not just one question but maybe a whole slew of them. For the technologists in the crowd, what problem do you want to solve? What's driving your interest in this brave new world of socially aware applications?

10 things to be happy about on the web

2008-03-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

Some of these are applications and some are content. I don't have a lot of strict rules for lists. List rules are for babies. Please don't tell the babies I said that. They have a strong lobby in my household. Ok, clearly I've lost it...the envelope please....

FriendFeed - It's fun to see what your friends are up to on Facebook. It's even more fun to see what your friends are up to without having to be bit by a zombie.
"How many record execs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" - It's either funny if you don't have to work with labels or painful because you've had a similar conversation.
Twitter - If you don't get it that's cool. You'll be like all those people that gave me a funny stare when I tried to explain what a blog was in 2000.
Tumblr - Like blogging but lighter. Like delicious but heavier or easier or... just try it. Mine is at shellen.tumblr.com.
Weebly - I met the founder at a ballgame recently and thought I would give it a try when I needed to create a quick, easy to edit website for my Mom. Very easy to use and well thought out. This is what Google Pages should have been.
Google's Visualization API - In a few months I wouldn't be surprised if this is the new favorite mash-up API. I can't wait to see what people build. Sorry Google Maps. :(
Merlin Mann's Twitter stream - He's a comedians comedian perhaps but still, I find it funny. I find myself starring every one of his posts.
The anticipation behind Socialthing - Not the actual site, just the anticipation. It's not available yet and I don't have an invite but with sexy looking icons and a first page that screams 'I'm cool, don't you wan't to use me!' I'm looking forward to an invite code.
live.yahoo.com - Who thought Yahoo would make the list? Despite the pending sale to MSFT their secret camp over at the Brickhouse pulled out a fun easy to use site centered around live video streams. Content at night gets a little sketchy though.
Wire & Twine - Love the site design and the shirts.

On paralysis by analysis

2008-02-26T18:41:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me every so often, mostly on days when I'm not consumed by meetings but, working from home reading about all the smart, fun, interesting things that are being launched by friends, competitors, strangers, seniors in high school, cats and the occasional fruit bat - that if you don't shut these things out at some point that one may never actually build anything and certainly without a doubt will not ship it. It also crosses my mind on days like today to yank the ethernet cable out of my router and get back to work.

Vote!

2008-02-04T20:44:00.000-08:00

Design and reminder courtesy of Matt Haughey.

Raid over Moscow

2008-01-16T19:09:00.001-08:00

It's amazing to think that in 1985 I played a computer game based on taking out nuclear sites in the USSR and now years later I'm heading over to get a look at the Kremlin in the flesh. Hopefully it's not really the way it looked in 8-bit graphics on the C-64.

Either way I'm glad that Russia and the US are pals now. I also hope todays kids are smarter than I and play things like 'Humanitarian mission to the Congo'. I would buy a copy.

Macworld SF 2008 Annual blogger lunch and schmoozefest

2008-01-07T17:57:00.000-08:00

It's time to mark your calendars for another edition of the Macworld SF Annual blogger lunch and schmoozefest. Last year I dropped the ball because I was at CES. Sad choice because Apple announced the iPhone and I was left in Vegas looking at suddenly old looking hardware. Onward and upward!

The lunch will be on January 15, 2008 at the Yerba Buena Gardens. You don't need to be attending the conference to come out to lunch, but if you would like to go to the show too you can grab a discounted Macworld Expo Pass from the generous folks at Other World Computing. The nicest thing about this lunch - low formality and purpose, high on chocolate chip cookies and goofing off. I encourage you to let me know if you are planning on attending either in the comments or on the Upcoming page with all the event details and please spread the word! Over the past few years we had a great time and I expect this year to be Mactastic as well. See you there.

Ghosts of Christmas past: 1988

2007-12-24T14:27:00.000-08:00

The Shellen brothers wish you a very Merry Christmas. If there had been a thing such as YouTube in 1988 we would have used our Fisher Price PXL-2000 videocam to make you something with our gifts that day, such as the Nerf flag football set and the Star Stage. This photo actually explains a lot about the Shellen brothers if you look carefully. Merry Christmas everybody, we hope you get a snazzy robe or something flannel.

I'm joining LiveJournal as VP of Product Development

2007-12-19T16:43:00.000-08:00

From the announcement to the LiveJournal community:

We are happy to announce that Jason Shellen will be joining
the team as our new Vice President of Product Development at
LiveJournal, Inc. Jason comes to us with very relevant experience,
having been part of Pyra Labs, which created Blogger. In 2003
Google acquired Blogger and Jason went on to work as Product
Manager for Google Reader and became part of the Google New
Business Development team.

Jason will manage product development for LiveJournal, Inc.
and also oversee the pipeline of new products that SUP is
producing in other markets around the world. He'll be located
out of the LiveJournal, Inc. office in San Francisco.

More on this over the next few days. In the meanwhile, here is the official press release. I'm very excited about this opportunity and hope to build great things over the next few years.

Everyone's a critic

2007-12-19T13:56:00.000-08:00

Regarding my call for feedback on my new blog design the other day:

I took a peek.
You asked, so I'll tell you.
It's great except the lettering on the "shellen.com"
title at the top looks kind of fuzzy and weak.
I know! It looks like it was done on an Etch-a-Sketch!
I think a different font would be better.

Just my opinion.
Otherwise, very impressive.

Love you.
Mom

She's not wrong (or alone in her distaste) the logo has been messed up for about 7 years. It's a mis-use of Kottke's Silkscreen font that was meant for small navigational areas where a bitmap would be best. What am I doing wrong? I'm aliasing it or anti-aliasing... wait, I can't decide if I'm pro or anti-alias. Either way it looks horrible the other way too. I hereby promise a new logo design for 2008. My mother and Biz Stone will be pleased and really that's all anyone can ask for in this crazy world.

Next year: Stephen King novel adaptation in graham cracker

2007-12-18T22:39:00.000-08:00

My youngest brother Grant explains in his post that we had a friendly little graham cracker house making party at Mom's recently. My competitive spirit lay dormant until he reminded me in the midst of building how creative (demented?) I had been in years past.

Jason has been more adventurous, one year creating a graham-cracker car accident that left a gingerbread man severed in half, bleeding red sprinkle blood onto the foil road beneath him, still a smile on his lifeless face.

Morbid but true. This year's house is not quite as full bore as I had hoped but I had to try so I decided to make an American Gladiator joust style event gone awry on the side of the house. The tree turned out odd too.

I think my sister-in-law Heather's tribute to Joseph Eichler would win if Froot Loop trophys had been awarded. Here are a few more photos of my graham cracker house. See Grant's blog for the other more G-rated houses where gingerbread men live happier, sugar coated lives.

I'll say it, Shellen is a tease

2007-12-11T19:44:00.000-08:00

A preponderance of choices from jasonshellen on Vimeo.

The other day I chronicled how I was feeling about a decision or two I'm in the middle of making. I think I've made up my mind but you'll have to wait until Friday for part two.

[update] Why did I promise Friday? These things always take longer in real life. How about next week?

My email is s-l-o-w and I've redesigned

2007-12-05T08:37:00.000-08:00

Since sometime last week all email sent to all addresses at this domain @shellen.com started getting the slowdown treatment. That's because I'm using Dreamhost to host this website and all mail forwards. My email is really being forwarded to my Gmail account. Both Google and Dreamhost seem aware of this issue and yet it's still happening !

A moment ago I received an invitation to have breakfast this morning in San Francisco... sent 6 days ago! If I haven't responded to an email of yours my apologies, please contact me directly at my Gmail address if it's urgent. It's my last name @ gmail.com. Otherwise, SMS or IM or phone all work well if you've got 'em.

In more upbeat news, this is the first post I've made since a little redesign of the blog so if you read this in a feed reader take a peek at the actual site and let me know what you think.

Too much status?

2007-11-27T14:38:00.000-08:00

As my friend Ryan says "You can never have too much status.". That may be true but this is a lot of my laptop screen to devote to Google Talk, AIM, Twitterific, and Skype. I'm sure I'm missing some sort of Desktop app for Facebook messages as well. For all of the people who ask me why I'm not on Skype more this is the reason. Adium would help to collapse the Google Talk and AIM windows but they don't support Twitter or Skype. Google Talk doesn't have a Mac-client yet so I'm stuck with Skype for VOIP calls. C'mon meebo, how about a client app that solves some of this?

A footnote in blogging history

2007-11-07T23:15:00.000-08:00

A long time ago (2002), Dave McClure told me 'Just think, one of these days there will be so many Blogger users you'll have to have a blogging conference!' This weeks Blog World Expo and Conference in Las Vegas isn't the first conference on blogging but it just might be the largest dedicated solely to blogging. I will be moderating the keynote panel on Thursday where I will be speaking with: Roger L. Simon CEO and founder of Pajamas Media, Jeremy Wright CEO and founder of b5 media, Brad Hill Director of Weblogs Inc. at AOL and Richard Jalichandra the new CEO of Technorati. If you have any interesting questions you would like for me to ask any of these folks, please leave them in the comments below.

This is particularly fun for me since about this time seven years ago I had started doing business development for Blogger and was in Las Vegas at Comdex trying to explain to huge consumer electronics and software companies exactly what a blog was and why it would be interesting to work together. It took a few years to wear them down. Tomorrow, I'll be in the same convention hall in front of thousands of bloggers there to talk about... blogging. I know it's not earth shattering but certainly a lot of fun to see it's growth. I've also been reflecting over the past few months on my 10 years of working on the web and specifically on blogging and other social media products. A couple of things are beginning to stand out that I would like to share, but I'm going to get to bed here in Las Vegas and save that for another day.

Happy Halloween, from the bottom of our bags of loot

2007-10-31T21:16:00.000-07:00

Save more than pennies

2007-10-23T16:12:00.000-07:00

Motivated by Blog Action Day and These Come From Trees, I started thinking about all the physical junk mail that I still receive every day of every week even after filling out the JunkBusters form. My main source of frustration is with the PennySaver USA circular that I seem to receive twice weekly. Do you get this too? I always put them in the recycling bin and never, ever read them. I don't receive a paper either but that's probably not surprising.I found out that you can request to be removed from their circulation by writing them a letter.

The quick math on stopping a circular like this from arriving in you mailbox every week: If one Penny Saver is roughly 1 ounce (I'm guessing) and a delivery once a week, you will have saved 3.25 pounds of wasted paper by the end of one year or 32.5 pounds over 10 years! If they send twice weekly as I suspect, then the savings is even greater.

I sent my request using EZ Gram - a service that allows you to write your letter online and they take care of the stamps and envelopes business (even better, EZ Gram allows you one free letter). The site is a little wonky and by that I mean slow and javascript takes a while to load but it's worth the wait and only $1 for additional letters.

Here is what I wrote to the Penny Saver folks:

Dear Circulation Dept,

I am writing to be removed from you Penny Saver circular.
I don't have time to read it and I end up throwing it away
every week. You can save some money by removing my home
address from your circulation rolls:

123 Main St
Anywhere, CA

I appreciate your time and thank you for your assistance with this matter.

Sincerely,

Jason Shellen
Homeowner

Here's hoping it does the trick and I'll be on the lookout for other ways to reduce waste.

[updates: You can unsubscribe online from ValPak coupon mailings. Another large direct mail house that favors sending out a random bundle of leaflets and ads is ADVO, who also have a convenient way to opt-out of mailings online. '5 to 6 weeks until the mailings stop', just in time for Christmas!]

Shaking things up a bit on the blog design

2007-10-01T16:13:00.000-07:00

I figure if I switch to a stock blogger template for a little while it will force me to do the major redesign I've been hoping to do for a long time. Sometimes you need to introduce change to get things moving. Watch for changes on the site, the feed won't change nary a bit.

Best Daddy Ever

2007-09-25T00:39:00.000-07:00

It's weird to have a picture of your kids show up on the front page of Digg. It's weirder to have the resulting conversation on the web make it the actual top result (even if it was just for a day). I contend it's a hyper local search result - have your kids try it and I'll bet the most relevant result depends a lot on location.

Google Docs Presentation tool is out

2007-09-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

Just go to http://docs.google.com and under 'New' create a presentation. Pretty slick, nice work Google.

Nexus of the universe Jerry, nexus of the universe

2007-09-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

Damn these list posts! They are easy to do though. Ok, four things:

I'm back baby. Let's do lunch, coffee, or whatever. Ask away. I'm in San Francisco a few times a week and can even be convinced to come down to Palo Alto/Mountain View if necessary. Bonus points if you want to come hang out in the East Bay.
Are you awesome?I have stumbled into the nexus of the universe in terms of people offering (or asking if I know anyone good to fill) VP/Director and senior product management and business development jobs. The only thing is I'm not really interested in taking a job at the moment but if you are awesome and want one of the aforementioned positions let me know. I may have to implement some sort of job board if this gets out of control. I have a lot of people asking about good designers too. For those, why not use my comments below to post a link to your portfolio and I can point people there, ok?
Inbox zero? Not quite yet, but I'm at 19 email in the inbox down from 2500+ this morning! If I haven't responded to you by now then I've lost it - resend.
It's a secret... but if you want to know when it's no longer a secret, sign up for the mailing list.

The Secret Agency

2007-09-06T15:46:00.000-07:00

Maybe you know the story of how Blogger was born out of a small company called Pyra Labs. It wasn't the first or only Pyra product. Google Reader was birthed out of Google's Labs program. Twitter out from under the wings of Obvious. I've always been a fan of this idea of incubating new ideas in some sort of formal space. I'm announcing the creation of The Secret Agency today as a similar sort of experiment in cooking up new ideas. There isn't much other than our logo on the site today but there will be more in time. For now our plans are on a need to know basis. ;)

Logo design by Biz Stone

ps: Congratulations to the Google Reader team on launching search in Reader today. It's not easy to implement search over one's individual items, just ask the Gmail team. Nice work!

Not retired, fired or tired

2007-08-31T19:16:00.000-07:00

I realized that if I don't post this month then I will have neglected this blog for an entire month. That was a close one, and as long as I'm here a brief update:

I've had enough vacation, for now. It wasn't entirely relaxing but with kids, what is entirely relaxing? Still we had some good fun and I have a tan. Turns out if you go outside instead of staring at a monitor all day that can happen.
One for you kids about to take the SAT: I am to retired what Amy Winehouse is to good decision making. I'm not retired or retiring anytime soon. Stay tuned for news on that front in September.
Allison's Aunt Veronica reads this blog every so often so perhaps I can correct the conspiracy theory that was floated at the last family function that I was fired ('Because why else would you give up such a good job?'). I wasn't, I left of my own volition and Google even asked what they could do to get me to stick around. Hope that clears that up.
Lastly, you can have my iPhone if you pry it from my cold dead hands. Otherwise, you can just buy one yourself, turns out they made enough to go around. Best. Mini-computer. Ever.

Also... we love you Miss South Carolina have a Lol-cat.

Last day at Google

2007-07-20T02:01:00.000-07:00

The response to my last post has been fantastic. I've had a ton of really nice email and an abundance of comments. Thanks to everyone who wrote in and just a few quick follow-ups to provide a bit more clarity:

Where are you *really* going? I see you Twittering a lot, you're going to Twitter aren't you? No. I'm really going to take about 6 weeks off before I dive into the next thing. I've been approached about a few exec/CEO type positions at some smaller companies and I have a lot to think about. If I were betting on me (?), I would say odds are good that I'm going to start my own company in the fall/winter and will pick up on some great discussions I've had with VCs and angels in September. You never know though, there might be something awesome that might be a perfect fit.
Did you leave Google yet? I work here and I saw you lurking in a hallway, should I call Security? My last day is today. In fact, I'm planning to go to my favorite cafe (Charlie's) tomorrow at Noon on the main campus. If you are reading this blog, and are a Google employee and want to have lunch together one last time - let's meet up there, that would be fun. Please don't call Security, yet.
I have an idea and would like to buy you breakfast/lunch/coffee/dinner/iPhone, when is good for you? That's awesome. I love eating things but let's do it in September - I need a break.
My idea is awesome, you're an idiot for not listening to it now! Yes, I probably am.
Now that you're leaving Google, how can I get my business proposal in from of the right person? As I told the folks at the Dealmaker Media "Partnering with Gorillas" session the other night, the front door is always a good approach.
What will you miss about Google? The friends, the food, and the fun secret projects. Not always in that order.
I want to add you to my address book, how should I keep in touch? I like using LinkedIn for business contacts and here is my profile page. Otherwise, if you are just looking to hear about what's next. This blog is always a good way to go.
Did I see that you did an interview for the Wall Street Journal recently? Yes, as a matter a fact I did. Thanks for asking.

Clearly I'm just sandbagging now so I'll move on.

By the way, I'm going to have to work on being more salacious and print worthy. No splashy Valleywag tidbit on my exit, no Techcrunch blurb? Do I have to say something horrible about Nick Denton or Mike Arrington to get coverage in this town? Here you go, Arrington carouses with tarts and Denton... actually I hear mostly good things about him... wait I can do this... he's a cad and enjoys expensive clothes! I think I blew it. I think the last thing was actually a compliment. I think I know where nice guys finish anyway. I'll keep working on it and I'll see you on the other side of this Google thing.

My time at Google, by the numbers

2007-07-11T17:23:00.000-07:00

I joined Google as part of the Blogger acquisition in February 2003. There were only six of us on the Pyra Labs team and we were Google's first acquisition*. Google was only about 600 employees strong. There were times when we felt like royalty and other times when we felt like guinea pigs but all-in-all it has been an amazing ride. I'm very grateful that after joining that I was not only able to contribute on Blogger but to start-up my own product (Google Reader) which by most accounts is now the #1 web-based feed reader. When I wanted to get back to business development I found a great home on a fantastic team and even got to work on products I know and love like Picasa, Reader and Blogger.

I've been working with Blogger for a long time. In October 2000, I tracked down the co-founders Ev and Meg. Having become a Blogger user and fan in mid-2000, I asked if they were making any money and if they could use any help. The answers were "No and Yes." Even though I was an unpaid consultant and friend of the company at the time I devoted myself to what I believed would become huge. I'm glad I was right and even more glad that they accepted my help.

Despite the fun I've had at Google and the weird looks I'm going to get from people for turning down the free Google food, massages, excellent benefits and the like - I feel I've got that entrepreneurial/start-up bug deep within me and I can't help but think about the next thing. I'm going to take a little time off while I think about what is next (hopefully while surfing and riding my bike in Santa Cruz) but I've decided to leave Google. I have a few ideas but if you have a better one - let me know. Below is a quick infographic of some stats I've compiled on the things I've worked or transpired during my time here. To all of my co-workers reading this, you still work at an amazing company and I thank you for your friendship, also I'll be stopping by for lunch. ;)

* Google acquired the assets of Deja.com before our acquisition, but not with live humans.