Sorry for the lack of blogging over the past couple weeks, and expect more of the same over the next two weeks. I’m off to Vegas for New Years tonight, will be back in Seattle Wednesday through Sunday, then off to New York City (my 1st visit to the Big Apple) for a week for Real Estate Connect.

Hope everyone has a Happy (& safe) New Years!

I don’t have the energy to write up a meaningful post like some of the other bloggers I follow, or even a cool photo, but I still wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!!

And if you don’t follow the Zillow Blog, I’d encourage you to take a quick peak at the Zillow Holiday card.

Happy holidays.

I don’t know why it’s taken 3 weeks for me to finish this post but, regardless, here it is — FINALLY. As you might or might not know, I was in the Caribbean from November 9th-27th — Puerto Rico for 6 days and then the Dominican Republic for 12. Taking an extended break from work and everyday life connected to everything and everyone online was definitely long overdue. So, what are my thoughts after my trip? Several things…

First, my 1st exposure to life in a 3rd world country was definitely a great life experience, and one I will not ever forget. Culture in the Dominican Republic is unreal and I guarantee I’ll visit the country again.

One of my close friends and I often talk about “how long can the world sustain the environmental damage we are inflicting on it?” — after seeing what it’s like in a 3rd world country, I’m not optimistic AT ALL. Don’t get me wrong, the Dominican Republic is an absolutely beautiful country, but that can’t hide the fact that trash is everywhere. In the DR, taking out the garbage means piling it on the nearest street corner to be picked up by a truck at a later date (no real set schedule). I can only imagine how bad the environment is in places such as India and China that have seen massive, massive industrial growth over the past decade with little environmental regulation. I don’t know how much more environmental damage the world can accomodate.

“Que lo que?” — who knew such a simply saying could bring so many smiles to kids faces. I’ve honestly never seen kids so happy with so little. I’ve said it before — the materialism in the US is pathetic. If kids in the Dominican Republic are happy while having very limited material possessions, why is it that kids in the US need an iPod or a new xbox 360 to “be happy”?

People in the Dominican are amazingly friendly. Very seldom does a visit to a colmado (small supermarket) go by without chatting with someone. It certainly makes me realize that not enough people here in the US spend time just talking and enjoying each other’s company.

Transportation — wow, what a different experience than transportation in the US. There are just about zero laws to obey when driving (I would have said zero except for the fact that someone told me they got pulled over before). I don’t know how a passive tourist from the states would ever navigate the roads of Santo Domingo. It’s not uncommon for cars pull out in front of a line of oncoming cars to cross a street. Streetlights are, well, not very common. “Public cars” (usually Corollas or Accords from the 1980′s) that barely run, often have no door panels and sometimes are without side windows, with rusted out floors (when I stepped out of one, I felt my foot sink halfway through the floor), and transport 6 full grown adults + the driver — cost 12 peses per person for a 10 block ride along a main route. Cross-country bus trips (roughly 5 hours) are often freezing — the AC for one trip I took was set to 16 degrees celsius. Motorcycles are the norm. And, horses are still a somewhat common means of transportation in rural environments.

Microfinance really does make a difference. By now. most of you know I’m passionate about the subject — and this trip definitely only increased that passion. I saw groups of entrepreneurs who received their 1st loans. I visited women running small businesses out of their homes in order to build better lives for their children. I got a 1st-hand glimpse of the significance of giving hard working men and women the means to bring themselves out of poverty.

I think my friend said it best — “In the DR [and the 3rd world in general], people work to live. In the US, we live to work.” That’s a pretty big difference. When you have to worry about food on the table, paying the bus fare to/from work, and finding quality shoes to put on your feet, you don’t really have time to worry about whether you have the latest and greatest mp3 player.

If you’re sitting at your computer reading this, I really do hope you understand how truly priveledged you are.

If you don’t read Fred Wilson’s blog, you’re really missing out. Gems like this post — You Get What You Give — are why Fred’s blog is one of only several blogs that I make sure to read daily. So, even if you’re not a regular A VC reader, make sure to at least read Fred’s latest gem.

Stay tuned for updates on the Zillow Blog

Update: Zillow is now Live with Zillow Smart Search (among other things)

THIS is a cool picture.

[via Stumbleupon]

A colleague of mine, Theresa Morrow, at Zillow went to Uganda for a year and just recently returned to the states. Theresa got some exposure to microfinance in Uganda, and brought a taste of it back to the folks in Seattle — in the form of a Bead Party. Today, a volunteer (I think) for BeadforLife.org came into Zillow’s offices and brought with her beads from Uganda. Below are some of the beads that were brought in and sold to Zillow employees — I definitely found several good xmas presents.

Here’s a CNN article titled “Report: Many young workers ignoring 401(k)s” that I found interesting. Knowing a fair number of people from Generation Y, I can vouch for the fact that not many young people are thinking — or saving for — retirement. I would say maybe 10% of my friends are already putting money into their 40lK’s. That’s a scary figure with the possibility of the social security system being bankrupt by 2042. That’s why I’m taking the approach that I need to fund my own retirement by starting to save now (well, I started 2 years ago).

This is certainly a scary quote if you ask me -

The GAO report estimated 36.8 percent of today’s 17-year-olds will have no money in a 401(k) or similar plan when they retire. The numbers will be worse for low-income workers: 63 percent of them will have zero dollars in a 401(k)-type account when it comes time for them to retire.

I’m not going to analyze the HUGE news on Techmeme, but there’s still one issue I don’t understand — sure, apps built for Facebook can now be integrated into Bebo. BUT, can the iLike app on FB communicate with the iLikfe app on Bebo? If I have both a Bebo & a FB profile, and have the iLike app installed in both environments, will my iLike activity on Bebo show up within FB too?

I hope to see everyone at Lunch 2.0 at Avvo next week. It’s not really a “lunch” this time — instead, Avvo has decided to turn Lunch 2.0 into a happy hour from 4-6 on December 18th.

217 Pine St, Suite 300
Seattle, 98101

Details can be found on Upcoming.

I know Facebook isn’t really going after Microsoft Outlook, but the fact of the matter is that the Facebook platform replaces almost all personal e-mail for Genderations X & Y. Just as with e-mail, some Facebook messages are just FYI’s and some need follow-ups. However, Facebook doesn’t distinguish between the two. My suggestion to FB — add a checkbox somewhere at the end of each message to designate messages as needing a follow up.

Then, give me some way to filter my messages so that I can see all the messages that still need a response.

Seems pretty simple to me — I hope someone at Facebook is reading this.

I was catching up on my RSS feeds earlier today and noticed that Guy Kawasaki linked to a Kiva article. Since I’m a huge Kiva fan, I thought I’d link to it too — Small Change, Big Payoff (from Stanford Magazine).

I just noticed that WorldChanging, one of the better non-profit blogs that I follow, now publishes their complete text of articles in their RSS feed — THANK YOU! They used to always prompt you to click through to their website to read the full article — which I did with articles relating to topics that really piped my interest. But, on the whole, I have no doubt I’ll read more content from WorldChanging now that I can read everything from the friendly confines of Google Reader.

This is interesting — there is now an official “Blog Council” started by 12 corporations to discuss blogging in large corporations. The 12 founding members are AccuQuote, Cisco Systems, The Coca-Cola Company, Dell, Gemstar-TV Guide, General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, and Wells Fargo.

What is the purpose of the blog council?

The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs.

Scoble and Dave Taylor (who both know a bit about corporate blogging) are both skeptical about the value-add here. I think I have to agree with their skepticism.

There’s an interesting article about Marvel Comics on TechDirt worth reading [via Techmeme]. The premise? Marvel is following in the footsteps of the recording industry — straight towards being a non-player in the online world. To me, it sounds like Marvel Comics is shooting themselves in the foot. Fighting online distribution of old content is almost pointless — instead of trying to stop the inevitable, embrace it and earn revenue as a result. Put all your content online and sell advertising against it. Or, at a minimum, let people pay to download it (some people will). People are going to get your content one way or another, it’s just a matter of if you or someone else will help them get it.

I’ll admit, I was never a huge comics collector (I have bought about 5 in my lifetime that are still at my parents house in my closet), so this issue doesn’t really affect me nor do I care what Marvel does with their business — but I can easily related this same issue to the vast library of video footage that the NFL and NBA has in their archives, but isn’t profiting from.

Barry Sanders is by far and away my favorite football player of all time. When I was little, I used to relish the Sundays the Detroit Lions were on TV just for the chance to see Barry juke a defender (or two or three or four) and run 80 yards. That was 10-15 years ago. Where can I watch Barry now? Is there anywhere I can buy an entire Detroit Lions game from Barry’s prime? I’ve searched and haven’t found anywhere. If the NFL sold them on a game by game basis, would I buy quite a few? You bet I would (the quantity would depend on price).

I loved Michael Jordan like any other basketball junkie who grew up in the 1990′s. Why doesn’t the NBA let me download/buy old Chicago Bulls games? Who knows — but whatever logic it is, I think it’s an idiotic business decision. They are leaving massive amounts of money on the table. What Chicago Bulls game do I have on video? Well, I have all 6 games of the 93-94 Bulls vs Knicks play-off series on DVD — but it’s a burned copy, with extremely low quality, copied from an old VHS recording; and Game 6 cuts out halfway through the game. Why? I couldn’t find anything else to buy. Seems pretty stupid to me. There’s obviously a demand for complete video footage from old games, but the NBA isn’t cashing in. Sure, they have the 2007 play-offs for download — but frankly, I’d rather watch games from the 1980′s & 1990′s than last years play-offs.

So, the lesson? Companies with desired content should embrace online content distribution — it’s not going away and they are leaving money on the table by ignoring the opportunity.

Right now, there are two stories on Techmeme that I think are (particularly) interesting.

The 1st is that Google Talk now works with AOL Instant Messenger — about time!!

Though I’m not much of a Flickr user, the Flickr-Picnik partnership will be great for those of you who are. You can now edit your photos from inside of Flickr.

I’m glad to see my employer, Zillow, is number 3 on Marcelo Calbucci’s Seattle Startup Index for December.

Also, a congrats has to go to the guys over at ActiveRain for making the list this month.

[via Brier Dudley's blog]