Plaxo 3.0 – All about sync

I’ve been using Plaxo to organize and keep my contacts up to date for over a year now. Of course, I did so intense adverse criticism from the likes of Jason Calacanis and Web 2.0 snob par excellence Michael Arrington notwithstanding.Plaxo’s value proposition is novel yet incredibly simple–use the service to organize your contacts, update all your contacts with any changes in your contact information (new Phone number, new Email address etc.), and request/receive updates on changes on any of your contacts’ details.

Pretty straightforward if you ask me, but it turns out that Plaxo’s request update function was too easy to use. The service got a lot of flak from users who got inundated with update requests and were quick to call the company out on sending tons of notification that many deemed to be spammish.

But if you’re anything like me who spent numerous years in Business Development and Marketing, you’d have over 500 contacts in your address book, a good number of which you consider to be business prospects, your contention would be that you take the good with the bad and there is no better service out there to keep your address book organized and updated.

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il Pirata, Ecstasy

Let me just say that I am not a very big fan of themed restaurants. So, upon arriving Sunday night at il Pirata over at Eastwood City, I was a little suspect. Il Pirata is supposedly a pirate-themed restaurant which boasts of authentic Italian cuisine replete with exotic herbs and spices from the Mediterranean.

From the outside, it doesn’t look at all promising; what with the cheap-looking wooden exterior, gold accents and grinning skulls that make the entire pirate theme look forced, and a pirate ship/kids’ playground which looks like it came straight out of a B-movie.

The restaurant was actually the girl friend’s pick and as with most of her choices as far as restaurants are concerned, it was a little too awkward for me primarily because unlike most people, I do not have this blind fascination with pirates. So yeah, I do not want to run a fantasy of hoisting the Jolly Roger flag and hidden treasures through my head concurrently while I eat. I’m a very pragmatic man and all I really want to do at restaurants is get in, eat my food, check out hot women (and of course go to the rest room every 10 minutes or so for some hand comfort) and get the fuck out to smoke a cigarette. [...]

What the fuck’s up with this chick from work?

There’s this semi-attractive chick who works in another department at work who, when I run into her in the office, looks at me with such terror and lack of respect accompanied by an air of intense dislike that I can pretty much safely assume that she reads this blog. Either that or I look like the guy who premeditatedly and brutally killed her parents back in 1992. And I share the same set of fingerprints with him. And the same DNA. Whutev. Semantics.

Anyway, Miss, and I’m pretty sure you’re reading this, you really don’t have anything to be afraid of/feel disgusted of about me. Just approach me and maybe nod your head in greeting. You’ll find out that I’m actually coy and meek in real life, so I’ll probably decline your approaches and overtures at first, but if you do it long enough, You’ll get me to smile. And eventually, I’ll show you a bloodied butcher’s knife and say in a grating, guttural voice: “I loved the sweet, hot wine that came from your mother’s heart–wine that I sucked from the hole I punctured in her neck with this knife. Also, your father cried like a little bitch…”

Yes. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.

Future Pets: The iCat

Congratulations! You and your iCat™ are Made For Each Other

I would like to be the first to congratulate you on becoming the new proud owner of an Apple iCat™ unit! With proper care, your iPet can provide you decades upon decades of amusement and companionship–all with less financial drain and emotional investment than its predecessors: The Apple iWife™, iGirlfriend™ and iHarlot™.

We here at Apple endeavor to achieve perfection–a perfection made possible only through years of creating overly minimalistic products, positioning them in such a way that they come off affectedly trendy and attaching a hefty price tag to them thus effectively alienating the typical consumer–and we are untiring when it comes to making our products better. If you purchased an earlier model of the iCat™, you might notice slight changes in your new unit. Changes which, we are confident, make this model 420% more efficient and user-friendly than the previous incarnation. [...]

My friend Jay and the greatest conversation opener in history

Surprisingly enough, the start of my week was relatively subdued.  I, however would be derelict as a rising internet celebrity if I didn’t throw in this little gem for you.

This morning, I met up with my buddy Jay who got so fucked up the night before that he couldn’t make his way home to Fairview and apparently ended up sleeping in some girl he met in a bar the night before’s apartment. So yeah, we met up for breakfast over at McDonald’s Katipunan before I headed to work.

If you know anything about the Mickey D’s in Katipunan, you’d know that it gets pretty packed every morning on weekdays and when seated, each customer is only a couple or so feet away from the next table. Now most people, well, at least people who are socially and conventionally correct, might exercise restraint with regards to what they say as in such close distance, eavesdropping cannot really be helped. Well guess what, my friend Jay knows nothing about restraint.

A few minutes into our McMuffins and Hashbrowns, Jay delivered the single greatest conversation starter in human history–much to my chagrin and everyone else in our vicinity’s intense, muted aversion: “Did I tell you I got pretty hammered last night? I don’t think I even got to have sex with this chick I spent the night with and guess what? She didn’t want to do it in the morning so guess what I did? I peed on her sink and left.”

Um yes Jay. You already told me. But guess who you haven’t told yet? The rest of the people who were eating within earshot–A group of college girls who seemed to be studying for an exam and a group of business-y people who looked like they were in the middle of a meeting–who shook their heads in disgust and upon hearing your story, spent the rest of their breakfast listening to us talk.

I hate my friends.