Huis - Jake Matthews

A New Yorker: Fresh Back from London

I recently took a vacation to London and had a bunch of fun over there.  I've been to London a bunch of times so I didn't spend a lot of time taking pics, but I did do this one which was not quite Abbey Road :-) I traveled with my brother and we really enjoyed ourselves.  A couple of notable things that we did:

• A day trip out to Cambridge.  Cambridge is an outstanding town to visit for a day.  One can walk the famous university campuses and explore the cobblestone streets.  It a truly gorgeous city with tons of history.  Here's a helpful Cambridge visitor's site.
• Notting Hill Gate and the great restaurants in that area.  I recommend Black and Blue Steakhouse for a delicious, affordable meal.  Stay away from the Hyde Park portion of NHG b/c there's a bunch of touristy junk there.
• Clarke's Restaurant on Kensington Church Street (off of Notting Hill Gate) - this place is pricey, but a very nice dining experience.
• For a Saturday afternoon lunch, I highly recommend The Ebury in Chelsea.
• If you are into a really cool cocktail place that slowly advances into a club in the evening check out The Collection in South Kensington - on Brompton, just around the corner from the South Ken. tube stop. (they have the worst website!) 
• Westminster Abbey - this place is awesome.  Darwin is there; so is Isaac Newton. Do not miss this.
• St. Paul's Cathedral - this place left me speechless and I think a tear came to my eye when I looked up at the vaulted ceilings. Do not miss this if you go to London.
• 3 jogs in Hyde Park and Kensington Garden's kept the blood flowing and shed some calories after all of the great meals.
• Queens Gate is worth checking out of course.  That's just near Royal Albert Hall
• One of the most fun things for me, being such a sports-car buff was all of the outstanding vehicles in London - it's absolutely insane.  A highlight was seeing the Ferrari Owners Club of London run through the streets with about 50 cars in tandem!  Really a site to see.
• I took the trip through Virgin Vacations. Virgin had and amazing 6 night deal on the Royal Lancaster Hotel right on the north side of Hyde Park and very affordable round-trip on Virgin Atlantic.  Flying Virgin Atlantic is really great - they have an awesome entertainment system and really nice planes.

There are probably 100 other things that we did while we where there on this visit.  It was so spectacular.  A special thanks to my friends Charlie and Isabella who I've not see in so long - you guys are welcome in NYC ANYTIME!  Can't wait to get back to London.

Search Security

Aaron posted a really relevant article about the security of on-line search.  It's worth a read for sure and has some good links to studies and other posts to view in it as well.

Direct "junk" Mail

Recently I've been ranting about what I don't like and what I'm sick of, so I'll continue in that vein:

I think that there should be laws banning direct mail.  It's a waste of beautiful CO2 reducing trees and an insult to human intelligence.

Can anyone give me one good reason that direct mail is a good thing for business or society in general? To have constant, irrelevant marketing messages smashed into your face, in your home, mixed in with important mail - it's unjust. To boot, the ROI on this marketing tool is horrible, as I understand it, so why are marketers even interested in it?

If you live in a city (where there are a lot of rental apartments - like my place in New York City - NYC) one of the worst parts about receiving direct or "junk" mail is that you get the wrong people's junk mail, which doubles the volume of the junk that you get - it's simply absurd.

So - does anyone know of a good place that you can go to register your name and address to stop receiving junk, direct mail?

How to use the Long Tail in Search Marketing

Maki at Dosh Dosh put together a good post on how to maximize the Long Tail in Search.  I recommend reading this one for sure.

Go Away, Paris Hilton

I'm so sick and tired of hearing about Paris Hilton.  What is this country coming to? Honestly; will someone please enlighten me?

10e20 in LA Times: Search Engine Mahalo

10e20 commented yesterday on the new buzz surrounding Mahalo, a hand edited search engine.  I've not yet had time to test it out, but we will certainly be picking it apart and working with it as much as possible.

Dan Farber comments as well over at ZDnet blogs.