I’m not sure when it went live since I’ve been gone awhile, but I absolutely love facebook’s “People you may know” suggestions that can now be seen on the right side of your Facebook profile. I just discovered it and I’ve found many of the recommendations are pretty good — it popped up quite a few contacts from high school and my fraternity that I didn’t have as friends on Facebook.

As far as I’m concerned, Facebook is just destroying Myspace by continuing to innovate and launch new features like this — I don’t see much hope for myspace to make a comeback.

Update: I forgot I wrote this in February, but I definitely hadn’t used the feature until about 15 minutes ago

I’m in Asia on vacation, but not totally unconnected to the world — I’m still checking my facebook and gmail accounts. My colleague sent me a link to a new video he and a couple buddies produced and I wanted to help him spread the word by sharing the link.

It’s the same guy who put together the Mac or PC rap video I mentioned awhile ago (over 2.2 million views). If you find the video good and/or entertaining, please help spread the word.

So, my buddy and I just arrived at our hostel in Hanoi, Vietnam after a 30 hour (yes, you read that right – 30) train ride from Saigon arriving at 4:30 am. It’s 5:55 am here, and we can’t check into our hostel yet, so I have some time to do a quick update with some of my thoughts.

Bangkok, Thailand – Definitely a cool city with a unique culture. The temples are the main attraction, and they were certainly worth the visit. We took a river tour in a longboat that took us through back canals to see part of Bangkok that we wouldn’t otherwise have seen (recommended if you visit).

Koh Phi Phi island (Thailand)– my new favorite place on earth. An extremely relaxing beach town with no cars. The only means of transportation are boat, bicycle, or by foot. We took a boat tour to, among other places, Maya Bay and Monkey Beach. Monkey beach was littered with fat monkeys who get fed bananas by tourists all day long.

Phnom Phen, Cambodia — A relaxed city, yet still bustling with activity. The Royal Palace is definitely worth a visit.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia — We toured the ancient temples on the backs of motorcycles. We could have taken a tuk tuk (picture), but motorcycles sounded funner (I’d highly recommend the experience). The steps up to the top of several of the temples were essentially straight up. The sunrise at Angkor Wat is worth getting up at 5:30 am for. I have some pictures, but no way to get them off my digital camera here in Hanoi. We met up with a huge group of backpackers at a local pub for St. Patricks Day for a fun night. We didn’t even realize it was St. Patrick’s Day until we walked by the bar around 7 pm and saw a group of 15 people, some of them wearing green, recruiting passing tourists to come drink with them. We even took a shot of Absense with an Irishman.

Saigon, Vietnam — can you say motorcycles galore? A local tour guide told us there are upwards of 22 million motorcycles in Vietnam, with more than 5 million in Saigon alone. They are EVERYWHERE you look. Truthfully, I have no idea how people keep track of their bikes when parked in the city – if I lived there, I’d have to paint my motorcycle florescent green to find it amidst the hundreds of bikes parked on the streets. We visited the Viet Cong tunnels, which are tiny. 20 meters was a long way in a tunnel I could barely waddle through. I can only imagine how hard traveling 11 kilometers into Saigon must have been (it was said to take 18 hours).

Random thoughts:

• I’ve said it before, but materialism serves no purpose. You don’t need material goods to be happy.
• I’ve been a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan for awhile, but after having read Anthony Kiedis’ book, I’m even more hooked now. It’s fascinating to hear the stories behind some songs like Under the Bridge and Californication and what experiences in his life inspired those words. Definitely one of the most addicting books I’ve read in quite some time.
• If you haven’t traveled the world, by all means, do it.

And yup, I do think about work from time to time over here. For instance, I’m happy to see Dueling Digs launched successfully.

Forgive any spelling or grammer mistakes, as I definitely rushed this summary. I’ll try to write more about the trip after returning to the states in another week.

I’m in Thailand at the moment, and have another couple weeks of vacation in Southeast Asia — that means no blogging unless I find time to upload a couple photos. I’m looking forward to Halong Bay (among other places).

At Zillow, we’re getting close to unveiling the consumer-facing mortgage product we hinted at quite some time ago. The news tonight is that lenders can now sign-up (veryyy soon) — lenders CLICK HERE. We’re still a few weeks from launching the consumer piece of the product, so we can’t provide details of exactly how it will work yet — but I can personally say I’ve been extremely excited for the release of this product for quite some time.

Update 9:46 pm: Here’s the announcement on Zillow Blog.

Here’s some very early coverage:

• The story was broken by Greg Swann at BloodHound
• Morgan Brown at Blown Mortgage
• Todd Carpenter
• Rhonda Porter

A picture you don’t like — I got a good chuckle from this post by Fred.

I totally agree with him — if I saw this picture on my profile, I would change it as quick as I could. It may be a sleezy incentive, but it’s probably a smart way to increase the number of profile photos uploaded to your site.

I tend to try to avoid politics on this blog, but I’m an Obama fan and thought Marc Andreessen’s post was a good 1st hand perspective of Barack — take a look.

I’m guessing not, but look no further than this video of Nate Robinson (who went to High School locally at Rainier Beach).

I just Stumbled on to photos of the world’s largest pool — head over to Oddity Central for more photos.

It’s kind of ironic that I have been reading traditional print magazines (Economist, Newsweek, and ESPN) for a lot of today, but I’m writing a post citing the growing trend in Americans turning toward online sources for their news.

If you get your news from traditional print or television, which sources do you consume? If you get your news online, what sites do you use regularly?

For the most part, I fall in the online news consumption category — and I use CNN.com.

I actually read Mountains Beyond Mountains several months ago at the end of my trip to the Dominican Republic, but am just now putting some of my thoughts into words. A volunteer working in Hato Mayer passed the book to me — and boy, am I glad she did. It’s one of the most inspiring books I’ve ever read; definitely one of those books that just kept my eyes glued to the pages as I flipped page after page on my flight home in November.

The book is Tracy Kidder’s account of Paul Farmer’s life, through both interviews and 1st hand experience traveling with Paul. If you don’t know who Paul Farmer is, head over to Wikipedia and take a look at his long list of accomplishments — most notably, his medical work in Haiti. Farmer is involved in many foundations, including Partners in Health (founded by Farmer in 1987). The vision of PIH directly reflects Paul’s mindset toward medical care –

Whatever it takes
At its root, our mission is both medical and moral. It is based on solidarity, rather than charity alone. When a person in Peru, or Siberia, or rural Haiti falls ill, PIH uses all of the means at our disposal to make them well—from pressuring drug manufacturers, to lobbying policy makers, to providing medical care and social services. Whatever it takes. Just as we would do if a member of our own family—or we ourselves—were ill.

I won’t detail all of Farmers’ accomplishments (there are too many), but what Tracy Kidder’s book really brought to light is Farmer’s unselfishness and dedication to helping others. Though it shouldn’t be, his approach to medical work is revolutionay — he won’t let anything stand in the way of helping his patients. Just as you wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of getthing help for a family member, Farmer doesn’t let anything prevent him from helping his patients — no matter what their monetary situation or who they are.

The book helped me realize there is truly no limit to what you can do to help others; Farmer continually goes above and beyond what could possibly be expected of a physician in Haiti, or anywhere in the world for that matter. His passion for helping others is contagious, and he’s not someone who throws money at a problem and expects someone else to solve it — he throws HIS time, expertise, and effort at issues that come up. His passion, dedication, and spirit makes Paul one of those people that others seem to find (close to) impossible to turn down when he asks a favor.

If we had a world full of Paul Farmers’, I’d expect to see lack of available medicine as a non-issue worldwide. I’d highly recommend reading Mountains Beyond Mountains; if you are not inspired by it, you obviously didn’t read the book carefully enough…or just don’t care at all about helping others.