There’s a new iPhone advertisement that features Redfin’s own iPhone application. It should be airing on TV nationally soon, but until then you can catch it on the apple website: http://www.apple.com/iphone/gallery/ads/#song-large
The app is only there for a couple of seconds, so blink and you miss it…
Congrats to everyone at Redfin who worked on making the iPhone app!!
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Voltzwagen is sponsoring this competition called “The Fun Theory”. The idea is to get people to adopt better habits (for themselves, for the world) by making those things more fun.
My favorite is the piano staircase:
You can see the other ones on their website: http://www.thefuntheory.com/
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http://www.wexley.com
Not actually a school for girls at all, it’s really an advertising company in Seattle. But it probably has the best company name I’ve heard in a long time.
“As youngsters they dreamed of spending their day at a girl’s school, and now they’ve finally made that dream come true.”
Brilliant.
I highly recommend clicking on the “censored” button:
Also, I haven’t actually driven by this place, but this guy did, and he has some great photos of the actual building:
http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2008/09/wexley-school-for-girls-seattle.html
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This is one of the coolest fund-raising efforts I’ve ever seen:
“A Mo Bro starts Movember – the month formerly known as November – clean shaven, and grows a moustache all month long, garnering support from friends and family in the form of donations. What’s more, a Mo Bro is a walking billboard for the cause as his new look opens the door for him to talk about cancers affecting men – making the moustache a symbol, much like the pink ribbon is for breast cancer. Each Movember culminates in a Gala Partè in major cities around the globe where Mo Bros dress up to match their Mo, channeling the likes of Tom Selleck, Gandhi and Ron Burgandy, vying for the ultimate accolade: Man of Movember.”
Unfortunately, I learned about it a little too far into Movember to grow much of a moustache. Maybe next year.
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Yesterday Redfin formally announced that we closed another round of funding:
http://blog.redfin.com/blog/2009/11/greylock_leads_a_10_million_investment_in_redfin.html
Congratulations to Glenn Kelman (our CEO), our board, and everyone else who pitched in to make this happen!
The Venture Capital firm who lead this round, Greylock, has been around for decades and has seen more than 150 of its companies go public. Currently they have investments in lots of well known companies including Facebook, Pandora, LinkedIn, and ZipCar. Also, it appears that they have an office in Herzliya, Israel! 
(…among other places).
On a personal note…
While Pnina and I were travelling around the world, lots of people asked me “so, what do you plan to do when you go back home?” And I told them that I really liked working at Redfin and that my boss invited me to come back, but that frankly I’m not sure it will happen because the economy back home is in the shitter and Redfin is caught right in the middle of a perfect storm (we’re a real estate company that needs venture capital funding to help us grow into a self-sustaining company). The way I saw it, if Redfin was still around by the time we returned from the trip then for sure I would come back to work there, but I just didn’t know. My guesstimate was that Redfin would need to raise its next round sometime over the summer. So when spring came (while Pnina and I were frolicking in Nepal and Tibet) I started paying closer attention to the Redfin blog, looking for a post that announces the new round of funding. Then it was May, then June, July, August, and still no word. So I was starting to accept the idea that I’ll need to search for a new job when we get back home. But when I got back I discovered that my guesstimate was way too conservative because, while I was away, Redfin was busy kicking ass, including its first profitable month, then another, then another (and, to be fair, this much was announced on the blog, but I still wasn’t sure). And our current investors took note of this, and other prospective investors must have also taken note, because, well, the round of funding is now done.
I’m excited to see what we’ll accomplish in the next year – which new markets we will reach and what new features we will bring, both publicly to customers and internally to our agents and other staff.
Go, Redfin, Go!
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At work (www.redfin.com) we use Skype extensively, partly because the engineering team is split geographically (half in Seattle, half in San Francisco) and partly because it’s often quicker to shoot off a quick text message than to walk across the hall (yeah, we’re occasionally lazy like that). Anyhow, we keep one chat room called “Dev Chillout Chit Chat” which is probably my biggest source of geek memes and assorted pop culture. Here are a few items from the last week…
Big Ben Clock
http://twitter.com/big_ben_clock
Someone created a twitter page that gives you the time, on the hour, “bong” style (obviously automated somehow). That in itself is pretty funny, but the really impressive thing is that this guy has over 13,000 followers!! I’m wondering if these followers actually find it useful to be “bong”ed on the hour (as a way of keeping time?) or if they just think this is funny and have the time to waste.
IE 6 No More!
http://www.ie6nomore.com/
This is a website dedicated to getting people who are still using the old Internet Explorer version 6 browser to switch (either to a newer version of IE or to another browser). I haven’t done a ton of DHTML coding but I’ve heard a lot of web developers complain to no end about what a PITA it is to work with IE6 (e.g. you write code, it works beautifully in all other browsers, but on IE6 it just bombs). To achieve this goal, this consortium of websites has code that displays a fancy “please upgrade now” banner. By the way, this website is sponsored by Weebly, which seems like a great service for creating simple general-purpose websites (though I haven’t actually tried it yet).
Save IE6!
http://www.saveie6.com/
This is a gag website who’s goal is to dispell the myths about IE6 being a bad browser and get everyone to switch to IE6. The two websites together have the feel of an election time referendum.
Magic Jack
http://www.magicjack.com
You plug this little USB dongle into your computer, then plug any regular phone into it, and start talking (conversations go over your internet connection). The device costs $40 which includes 1 year of free calls. Each additional year is $20. It’s certainly cheaper than Vonage, etc. It may not be as cheap as Skype but it has the benefit that you use a regular phone (much easier to explain to your grandmother, for example). I’ve been using it for a few days and it works pretty well. Voice quality is pretty good; you do hear minor clicks here and there, but nothing serious. I’ve heard they drop calls occasionally, but we haven’t hit this issue yet, and frankly for $20 a year I’m willing to call back occasionally.
Solid Potato Salad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mVpGmoES3w
I actually heard about this one from Pnina’s parents (and I posted it at work). This video starts “old time silly” and quickly becomes incredibly strange. I wonder if there are camera tricks or if it’s for real.
Magic Mouse
http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/
Apple released their new mouse, the world’s first multi-touch mouse. Instead of a scroll wheel you simply wipe your finger across the top to scroll. You can also do sideways scroll, zoom, and other fancy stuff. I picked up this mouse, not so much because I care about touch as much as the fact that the scroll wheel on our last apple mouse was totally busted – sometimes it scrolled, sometimes it just got stuck. Yes, I did try cleaning it, but eventually that didn’t help either. So now Pnina and I have this fancy new mouse. It looks great and it scrolls fine. Paying $70 is kind of a lot to fix a scrolling problem, but oh well.
Apple Magic Mouse – the new Apple mouse
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