I love it when I discover that a friend has done something insanely creative for no other reason than to be creative. This is why I am proud to be friends with Micah Laaker. He does stuff like this.

Over the last eight months, while on a self-imposed-too-busy-to-blog-well-so-don’t-
blog-at-all-and-instead-just-lurk-and-occasionally-twitter hiatus, I followed this meme between two of the more innovative and online-community-minded (can I really get away with two hyphenated strings in one sentence?) entrepreneurs with whom I have had the pleasure of working: Todd Sampson and Eric Marcoullier, the co-founders of MyBlogLog. Todd accurately describes exactly why I felt I needed to hit the pause button on my blog.

I was just too busy.

I was teaching a course at USC on Thursdays and Saturdays, and I was traveling three days and two nights a week from LA up to Sunnyvale with Yahoo! while defining, pitching and securing funding for the Y!OS vision. As a result, my blog was just looking pretty lame.

Well, I recently passed the one year anniversary of traveling to Sunnyvale three days a week. It has been well worth it; we have had a whole bunch of exciting things going on and coming up on the Yahoo! front. (And at the very least my now hefty Southwest Rapid Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest account balances will combine to allow me to spend some much needed quality vacation time with Molly at some point!) Outside of Yahoo! on the USC front, this coming Monday marks the start of my second year, with all new students and projects coming in with the new fall semester.

So in other words, I am going to continue to be overwhelmingly busy again this fall. But this time, I’m going to make every effort to open a dialogue about things here as they happen.

Oh, and while I’m busy reattaching the kidsallright mouthpiece, I think I’ll go ahead and use it right away to give a serious shoutout to Ian and Bob at Topspin. It’s not every day that you can say that your friends just put out the new David Byrne and Brian Eno record in a way that is redefining how the music industry works! Stream or buy the whole album below. You’ll be happy you did.

Brb!
-c

Freelance Web Developer

My friend Chris runs a web dev shop in NYC. This has to be the coolest job posting I’ve ever seen. I love the GRAFFITI ARTIST JOB bit at the very end. If you are looking for something, I urge you to apply!

Planning a trip to Europe | overstated

My coworker Cameron gives a really great overview on how to plan a cost-effective and interesting trip to Europe. It’s a must read for anyone in trip planning mode.

The Local (2008)

The latest film from my friend Dan is up on IMDB. Looks like it will be 2008 before it’s done. And to think, if I was still in NYC I could have helped him with really important things like holding the boom or getting donuts. Congrats Dan!

Buzznet Lands $6 Million

Congrats to Anthony and the rest of the Buzznet team. You guys have built a really great site and service, and you’ve done it the right way — because you are passionate about it. I love seeing LA get some significant Silicon Valley VC love.