Matt Galligan's Comments

VC Adventure : My Big Mac

Wed, 8 Sep 2010 18:23:24 +0000

Apps: 1Password - Keeps all of my passwords very secure and leaves me from having to remember them Adium - The best chat app out there. Works with AIM, MSN, Gtalk, etc. AppZapper - This is the "uninstaller that Apple forgot" Cloud.app - Pretty awesome. When you take a screenshot, it auto-uploads and auto-copies the link to your clipboard. Makes for super easy screenshot sharing. Tips on doing screenshots down below Dropbox - I would die without this Facebook Notifications - Very nice for keeping up with Facebook Flip4Mac - This allows you to play WMV files using Quicktime Google Chrome - Duh Growl - This is awesome for on-screen notifications iWork - Keynote is WAY better than PowerPoint Perian - Adds more movie compatability Pulsar - Not sure if you have Sirius but this is a great way to listen Time Machine - DO THIS I CANT STRESS THIS ENOUGH The Unarchiver - Allows you to unzip more than just ZIP files. Transmission - Great torrent downloader Transmit - Excellent FTP client Tips: Command (⌘) instead of Control - This is true for most things. For instance: ⌘+Q - Quit app ⌘+W - Close window ⌘+TAB - Tab through open apps ⌘+C - Copy ⌘+V - Paste ⌘+Space - Activate Spotlight (this search is your friend) Screenshot - ⌘ + Shift + 3 - Screenshots the entire screen ⌘ + Shift + 4 - Select an area to screenshot ⌘ + Shift + 4 then Spacebar - Allows you to screenshot any window you click on Exposé is your FRIEND * If you have tons of windows open hit F3, it will show you all open windows. This can also be done by putting four fingers on the trackpad and scrolling down. * I use Hot Corners religiously. Basically whenever I hit a corner with my mouse, it does an action. These can be configured in System Preferences -> Exposé & Spaces Keyboard Shortcuts If you don't like a keyboard shortcut in an app you can change it. Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts. Hit the "+" icon and then choose the app you want. Tell it what the menu calls the function (like "Select Next Tab") and then assign a key combination. Hope this helps!

Matt Galligan : Why isn't website search easier?

Tue, 7 Jul 2009 19:26:50 +0000

It would absolutely need to be done on both sides for sure. That's the hardest part about implementation. But once that's done, how much better would it make the web? Think about searching a website (like Facebook, where it's authenticated search) from anywhere...

Matt Galligan : Why isn't website search easier?

Tue, 7 Jul 2009 19:22:07 +0000

Ok good, so I'm not insane...

Foundry Group : Pogoplug: Make your hard drive a cloud drive

Wed, 13 May 2009 15:27:18 +0000

Dave, having just bought one of these Pogoplug thingys, maybe I can answer a few of your questions. A couple of reasons: Storing data in the cloud is great, but can sometimes be unreliable. If you cut out the middle man, and allow a device to connect directly to a computer or storage device, then you're way better off. Also, in the event that you have a computer running just so that you can have data accessible (like through Soonr), that's a computer that has to stay running (and seemingly reliable) for 24/7. The Pogoplug means that I can plug in a simple USB hard drive and just let it do its things. Now I don't have rely on Dropbox or the like to "trust" that things got synced. Also, since it's in my own closed network, I can trust that only I can access the data, and it's not stored in the cloud somewhere. Lastly, have you ever tried to upload 80 gigs of music to the cloud? Yeah, not so much fun. BUT, it's something that I'd love to do because it'd make my music library far more "up to date" across all of my computers. Not to mention someone that's on the go like me, where I'd love to be able to access all of the photos and video I take no matter where I'm at. This is great stuff.

Socialthing! blog : Times, They Are A Changing...

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:08:59 +0000

So one thing to note: Socialthing "For Websites" is a wholly different project and team altogether. The other team, that is working on the Lifestreaming part of Socialthing has been the same all along (pre and post acquisition). Right now, there was no way that the original infrastructure that was built for socialthing.com would have ever been able to support a userbase as large as AOL has. So the (original) Socialthing team has been cranking on the new back end to support many more users. Alternatively, another team had been created to build the Socialthing for Websites product. Hope this helps...

Socialthing! blog : Times, They Are A Changing...

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:09:09 +0000

Maria, our intention is to only pull the plug when there's a comparable release by the Socialthing team. We still use the product too, so we're working on something even better...

Socialthing! blog : Time for an update...

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:48:32 +0000

Everyone...thanks for responding... Please check out our most recent blog post http://blog.socialthing.com/2009/04/27/times-they... to see what's going on. We've been very inactive, but mostly because we've had to keep our mouths shut about what we're working on. Hoping that as we get new things up and running, we'll keep you very informed... Thanks for your support...

Socialthing! blog : Time for an update...

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:47:02 +0000

Joe, I'd encourage you to check out my recent blog post: http://blog.socialthing.com/2009/04/27/times-they... The sole reason that nothing has changed was because it was completely intentional. We simply aren't able to support the old site while we build a back end that can support hundreds of million users. We fully recognize that the other "competitors" in this space are doing great things...after the purchase by AOL, our roadmap changed completely, so that we might bring Lifestreaming to the masses and go big with it...

Mendelson's Musings : So Cal Food Adventures

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:53:17 +0000

Zenbu is so great. I went there last September. Ended up having to sit at the sushi bar because all the seats were taken, but it was likely a MUCH better experience because of it. Our sushi chef made us all kinds of neat creations. You missed out on the Flaming Volcano Roll though! The white wine / raspberry / pear creation that he made us was great. Good choice!

Socialthing! blog : Time for an update...

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:09:29 +0000

Unfortunately Facebook doesn't expose that via the API so we're not actually able to do that, and until they add it to their API functions, we won't be able to. I would really love to see that ability, but as of right now, it's not there...

Socialthing! blog : Time for an update...

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 17:47:35 +0000

Yup...but as we grew we started to realize more and more things...but most of all, understanding that we got acquired by AOL, we have to prepare ourselves for that large of a userbase.

Socialthing! blog : What the heck are we up to?

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:54:59 +0000

Alrighty everyone...check out our most recent post on our blog post for an update!, http://blog.socialthing.com/2008/11/23/time-for-a...

IntenseDebate Blog : Automattic Acquires IntenseDebate

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:31:12 +0000

Congrats guys! That's super exciting...glad to see that it worked out for you and it's very cool that there's more and more focus on Boulder these days!

TechStars Blog : Socialthing acquired by AOL

Mon, 8 Sep 2008 11:03:41 +0000

Nate, good perspective for sure. We definitely consider this an "early exit" but there's plenty of reasons that an early exit might work well for a team. Sometimes making the "big bucks" isn't always the goal. Of course, making a ton of cash off of something so you barely need to work ever again is pretty awesome, but a lot of times there's a lot of other things that you need to consider. One is that Ben and I (the founders) are pretty young (just turned 24). By having an early success (and being acquired by a large company, such as AOL) is huge for our careers. Now whenever we start some other company (in the future) we will have an easier time picking up VC funding for that company. Beyond that, usually you've got three options for running a company...raise tons of cash, get cash flow positive or exit. Unfortunately our business doesn't really easily get to cash flow positive quickly. Because of that, we were stuck raising cash. Now granted, we didn't need a ton of it, but we did need some. The more investment you pull in, the less percentage you have in the company, and the more difficult (more expensive) it is to sell the company. There's a whole lot of things that you have to weigh in on to really decide what kind of outcome is meaningful to you...in this case it was a really meaningful exit for all of us in the company, and meant that we could keep working on our product without the pressures of raising money or running a business. Make sense?

Socialthing! blog : Just added Brightkite, Plurk, Seesmic, Guitar Hero and more!

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:00:41 +0000

Ah, got it now. There's really not a definite reason that there are no promo badges just yet, but one big one is that we're still in private beta. It's disheartening for a user to come to our site via a badge and not be able to use something immediately...but definitely something we're willing to explore

Socialthing! blog : New (old) feature! Twitter @replies and Directs

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:40:11 +0000

Not at all, they're only for your personal consumption...don't go anywhere else, the public can't see them...

Socialthing! blog : Just added Brightkite, Plurk, Seesmic, Guitar Hero and more!

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:28:57 +0000

While I'm not belittling your intelligence in this field by any means, I'm just trying to set forth the limitations of our own app to be able to do this. With 1.0 it was impossible because we weren't even collecting user data...with 2.0 we got closer, but now we need to be able to expose the data to the outside, not just our profiles within our walls. Once we are able to do that, we'll be able to build that into a widget no problem...getting to that point just takes time.

Socialthing! blog : Just added Brightkite, Plurk, Seesmic, Guitar Hero and more!

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:27:44 +0000

To explain a bit better...this initial batch of apps were basically to test our implementation of RSS parsing. We hadn't previously used a straight-up RSS parser (outside of an API) for data on any service before. Before we add services that rely on RSS (which happen to be a lot of the top voted apps: Google Reader, generics RSS, Tumblr, Blogger, Amazon, StumbleUpon, etc.) we had to test the implementation on a few cases. Saying it's "easy" is because the apps we chose to demo this (Plurk and Guitar Hero 3, which has been completed for months) were the easiest implementation of the RSS spec to test it. Generic RSS is tough because there's a lot of sanitizing of the feed that goes on, so that a feed doesn't inadvertently screw up the rest of the app. Rest assured, we're dedicated to being able to provide as many apps as we can, as quick as we can. Now that we've accomplished a few of the big hurdles that were keeping us from apps like Google Reader and generic RSS, we'll be able to get those in within short order.

Socialthing! blog : Just added Brightkite, Plurk, Seesmic, Guitar Hero and more!

Wed, 9 Jul 2008 23:34:38 +0000

Oh just you wait...they're on their way. First we had to build the profiles, and then services to populate the profiles...and then we'd be able to build badges. It's all a very linear sequence of events, so now the time is getting closer...

Socialthing! blog : Just added Brightkite, Plurk, Seesmic, Guitar Hero and more!

Wed, 9 Jul 2008 23:34:06 +0000

We'd definitely like to get a good bit of the messaging services in there. Some are more complicated than others (and not necessarily in the technical side of things, but also the user experience side of things). Pownce has issues with communication. We've been working with them for quite a while on solutions, but haven't really come up with anything solid just yet. I would hope that the Pownce integration gets improved sometime in the near future. And as for IE7? We're very close to being able to support it, just a few more fixed in the CSS and we're good...expect it in a future release with initial IE8 support in there too...