To boot, its creator Courtney is a good buddy of mine, a fantastically smart and good guy.

I had a good laugh when I saw Mashable describe it as “one of the best-looking sites when it comes to researching Android apps” though, as I was recently giving Courtney a hard time about the design. Turns out it’s plenty good I guess

Anyway, the point of this post, if there is any, is to reveal to you the secret of getting traffic to your blog and of adding twitter followers. Ready? Here it is:

There is no further secret that I’ve been able to figure out.

Take, for example, my recent post on How To Be A Good Participant On A Panel. It’s brilliant. Go read it. I’ll wait.

That post got tweeted a number of times, including by Dave McClure, one of the most interesting guys in the startup world, and it got a link from Simon Willison, whose link blog is the single best resource for finding all things of interest in the web/tech world.

I am pleased.

Now let me tell you about that blog post. It took about 45 seconds to write, and I came very close to not publishing it. It is, after all, just a little puff of air.

I have at other times written important, interesting, thought provoking masterpieces and even made some effort to get them noticed. Yet, as often as not, they fail to garner any interest.

My Become an Assassin post, however, still gets quite a bit of traffic (from people who actually want to become assassins).

Go figure.

Which is to say, there is no figuring it. When it comes to blogging or tweeting, the best policy is to not worry about it and just write whatever interests you, no matter how earth shattering or inconsequential it is. Resist the urge to censor yourself; just push publish.

Disagree with other panelists.

A panel of people agreeing with each other is generally tremendously boring, and any topic that’s interesting enough to be brought up as a question to panel must have at least two sides that can be argued.

So argue the other side. Find someone else on the panel willing to go toe to toe with you, and disagree with what they say. The point is not to start a fight, but to create an engaging discussion. It’ll force you to think on your feet and it’ll entertain the audience.

Then there’s the API access that’s been picking up quite significantly – in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it overtakes regular web access in a little while.

For quite a while the web we had a fairly uniform set of entry points – IE and FireFox for the most part, with a smattering of others thrown in. There is so much more variety now, and the variety is significant – for example, the difference between a mobile device and a desktop browser is much more significant than between IE and FF.

I’m hoping other modes of access become commonplace as well – boxee, tablet PCs, etc.

It feels like we’re at a transition point from uniformity to diversity again. This will mean pain the short term as we adjust, but a richer and more encompassing experience once we make it to the other side.

I’m looking forward to it.

A great quote from the talk: “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue – it is that they are incomplete“.

As news sources moved to the web I started to read a wider variety of sources – BBC, Le Monde, Haaretz, NY Times, Google News, various Iranian publications, and so forth. I had a better view.

As RSS took over I started to spend more time in Google Reader, with a larger number of sources. The sources, however, were hand-picked by me and the topics they covered were much more niche.

Sure, I had the feed from the NY Times, BBC, etc, but they just couldn’t compete with the blogs. I would only read them occasionally, and finally I gave up and removed them from my feed.

Nowadays I hang out on Twitter, to the detriment of Google Reader.

My sources of news are even more niche, even more hand-picked, and the news itself is headline-only.

It strikes me that I’ve lost something valuable here. I went from being exposed to a world view, much of which I didn’t agree with, to a series of very short, niche, hand-picked news sources.

I have unwittingly self-applied blinders.

An odd and disturbing trend. Nothing is stopping me from regaining the world view, other than my own choices. Yet I remain mostly blind.

For directions to all these places, use hotstop, gives you subway and walking directions, very nice, there’s an iphone version too.

First of all, why would you ever want to get off the island?

But if you do, definitely go to Brooklyn instead of Queens, the only interesting thing in Queens is little india.  In Brooklyn, you can go to Prospect park, the whole neighborhood there is pretty cool in a hipsterish kinda way. You could also go all the way out to Coney Island, kinda neat to see once, they have the nathans hot dogs and the old rollercoasters.
F train towards Coney Island, get off at Prospect park (for Prospect park) or go all the way and get to Coney Island.

BROOKLYN:

My recommendation, take the F train to Prospect park, look around the park and then walk around the corner to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, makes a nice day.

You can also head to the Bronx to see the zoo (though living in San Diego, it’s probably not worth it).  If you want to get away from the city feel, you can hop over to Governor’s island, go down to battery park, head a little north and there’s a free ferry that takes you out to this almost deserted island, used to be a navy base or something, take some picnic food and lounge out looking back at the manhattan skyline.  But given your limited time, I would recommend sticking to Manhattan.

Places to Eat:

Check out all the menus and phone numbers: menupages .

Village:

John’s Pizza – good pizza in the village, whole pies only, no slices, another branch in times sq and lots more to eat in the village, so up to you [Me: I wasn't crazy about John's Pizza, but plenty of people like it]

Mamouns (you know about) [Me: we always end up eating here a ridiculous number of times. Really excellent falafels. I recommend the falafel sandwich with baba ganouj. In fact my mouth is watering as I write this. The MacDougal location is nice; you can walk over to Rocco's for desert from there: 119 MacDougal St, New York, NY 10012 212-674-8685]

Rocco’s – dessert, definitely get the canolis
243 Bleecker Street (past 6th Ave) [Me: I ended up over dosing on canolis. The mini eclairs, the napoleans, and just about everything else is good too, so experiment]

Brunos – dessert, especially the chocolate mousse
506 Laguardia Pl & Bleecker St (near wash sq park, NYU)

Thai: Spice – cool looking place and good food, great value (on your way from the village to union sq)
39 E 13th St (at University Pl) [Me: Spice is not high end, but it's actually really good. Another place we ended up eating at multiple times. Several locations in the city so it's easy to get to.]

Sushi – Tomoe Sushi is a nice place, but surprisingly the prepared sushi from Morton Williams supermarket (Bleecker and LaGuardia) is also fresh and excellent.

Times Sq Area:

John’s Pizza – best thing if you have to be in Times Sq for a play or something
260 W 44th St (Btwn 7th & 8th Ave)

Margon – Cuban sandwich place, deli style – get a cuban sandwich or the special (oh crap, forgot the ham thing, still get an oxtail soup)
136 W 46th St  (Btwn 6th & 7th Ave)

Lupa – if you’re going to do a an up-scale meal but dont want to spend too much, this italian place is great, modern (mario battali place)
170 Thompson St (Btwn Houston & Bleecker St)

Soho:

Lombardis pizza – crowded, but worth it, you can call ahead and pick up
32 Spring St  (At Mott St)

Sullivan St Bakery- great soho snack as you’re shopping, fresh bread, the olive is great
533 W 47th St (Btwn 10th & 11th Ave)

Kees Chocolates – you have to try the passion fruit chocolates, take some home too
80 Thompson Street (Spring St)

Katz Deli – really for pastrami so not sure if it’s worth it for you guys
205 E Houston St | At Ludlow St

Central Park area:

Burger Joint – great burgers, simple menu, buy and take to the park for a picnic
118 W 57th St (Btwn 6th & 7th Ave) – hard to find, in the lobby of the Le Meridien hotel, look for a small neon burger sign or just ask in the lobby

Other random places:

Sahara’s – Turkish place on the east side mid 20’s , fresh bread, appetizers
513 2nd Ave (Btwn 28th & 29th St)

Shake shack – Burgers in Madison Sq Park
11 Madison Ave | At 23rd St

Pomme Frites – Belgian fries, lots of topping choices, east village snack if you’re near st. marks
123 2nd Ave | Btwn 7th St & St Marks Pl [Me: these are really excellent, give them a try]
Hopefully that’s enough to get you started.  Keep in mind I haven’t lived there in 3 years so things may have changed, but I’ve been going to my favorites (Katz, Lomardis, Brunos, Roccos) regularly on my visits and can still vouch for them,

Enjoy and bon appetit.

Taking out a row boat in central park is surprisingly fun. I recommend it.

The trip back to JFK, should you decide to take the metro and AirTrain, is extremely long. Coupled with the fact that most airlines don’t offer food anymore on the flight, you’ll want to bring some food with you. A couple of slices of pizza and some pad thai from Spice will do you well.

Turns out Delta charges for checking in even a single bag. That annoys me, so I don’t think I’ll be flying them again.

I went to school in ~10 different schools in 3 different continents. I only went to high school in the US for ~ 1 1/2 years, so my experience is limited. I was, however, a very socially inept 15 year old as a senior in high school, so I can claim some geek-in-high-school credit.

My first exposure to U.S. high school violence was in the second week of school. I was walking back from class when a typewriter shattered a window and flew across the walkway. Inside the classroom I saw several large boys attacking each other in a way I’d never seen before: they appeared to be trying to kill each other.

I’m no stranger to school fights. In Iran, even for a studious little boy like myself, fights are common place. I have no idea how many fights I had, but I’d guess maybe once a month. I probably saw at least one fight a day.

In England I had fewer fist fights. Maybe 4 or 5 in ~2 1/2 years.

I’ve seen far fewer fights in the U.S. The fights I have seen, however, have a sickening quality to them. The violent intent is incredible. Elsewhere the goal of the fight is to assert your superiority over the other person. Here it seems to be inflict terrible violence.

Back to Mark’s story: picturing a normal neighbourhood Iran, I can’t imagine a kid needlessly getting his fingers broken while others watched. I left when I was 12 so I may be mistaken, but I just can’t picture it. I don’t think it would fit the culture – someone would step in to stop it.

I can’t really see it happening in England either. I was there till I was 14 so I’m slightly better informed. I’m picturing my school. It just would not happen.

Let me clarify: in Iran I’ve seen grown men get into a fist fight over a taxi, and I’ve seen a crowd gather to egg them on.

I just can’t see the part, however, where one of the fighters, having clearly dominated the other, would start breaking fingers for fun while others watched. The watchers would stop watching – they’d step in.

…

My impression is that physical violence in school in the U.S. is less frequent but more serious than elsewhere. I can’t figure out why.

More than likely I’m mistaken. Let me know your impressions, particularly if you’ve gone to school in multiple countries / states.

Not only were the graphics and the animations dead on, but the site also somehow managed to prevent me from closing the browser tab in Chrome. Even clicking on the tab’s x button didn’t work. I killed the tab via Chrome’s Task Manager, but that killed the whole browser. Not sure how they did that, but I’m impressed.

My 2 cents on this, mostly on Zed’s post. The gist of his argument seems to be that he wrote a very popular piece of software, but was denied recognition and financial benefit due to a conspiracy between the triumvirate of VCs, startup founders, and Al Qaeda, all enabled by an over-permissive license.

I absolutely agree with Zed that the choice of license is the author’s alone, and whoever doesn’t like it can take their ball and go home. Ripping on a project because of choice of license is indeed jerkish, although I don’t know if there was any such ripping in this case. Anyway, license choice belongs to the author, agreed.

Zed’s point on VC’s, however, starts to get murky: “I have no reason to give them unrestricted use of my software since they are only interested in turning my software into a hot IPO 2-5 years from now.” That’s … misguided. Infrastructure software has so very little to do with a company reaching IPO – it’s just not very connected. I’m not saying infrastructure software has no value – in fact it’s quite valuable – it’s just not what’s “turned into an IPO.”

Skipping to Zed’s fifth point: “I’ll always be an open source developer, but quite frankly, we’re dying off because the companies who use our software do not give back.” Huh. That’s another one that misses the mark for me. Open source software is more vibrant than ever, and most of the most interesting stuff seems to be coming from startups. Possibly the same ones Zed’s berating for using his software without giving back.

Anyway, open source is definitely not dying off.

So to Zed’s main point, about recognition and financial benefit from open sores software. It’s reasonable to expect to get consulting offers when your software becomes popular. Everybody I know who wrote reasonably popular open source software has gotten plenty of consulting offers. Hell, I even got a fair amount of offers related to my silly tcl-sql interface that had maybe 500 users back in the day.

So why didn’t Zed? He’s clearly a very smart and capable developer, and his software clearly is popular. So what’s the deal?

Well, it might be related to his reputation. Not related to his ability as a developer, not related to his choice of a BSD license.

His blog used to be called “Zed’s So Fucking Awesome”, and he was world renowned for his rants.

When you’re known more for your rants than for your software (perhaps unfairly), it should come as little surprise if you don’t have consulting offers lined up around the block. Rants scare people. “Fucking Awesome” and talk of how you can kick my scrawny ass because of your martial arts training scares people. Don’t get me wrong – it was very entertaining, and I certainly enjoyed reading his blog, but my very next thought was not to go recommend him for a consulting job. Hell, he might kick my ass if I looked at him wrong!

Now everyone seems to agree the Zed is in fact a wonderful human being when you meet him in person, and my email exchanges with him have been nothing short of extraordinary – he’s been ludicrously helpful. I’m saying, he’s probably a great guy to work with.

But that’s not the image he projected.

So, my point, after all these wasted words, is that Zed’s financial prospects are helped far more by his new blog and demeanor than by his choice of license. I’m not saying he shouldn’t be free to say what he wants – I actually really enjoyed his old blog – but I am saying he shouldn’t be surprised if it impacts his financial prospects.