The Inquisitr » louis gray

Louis Gray Grows Some Balls and Starts His Own Startup

Duncan Riley — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:53:42 +0000

Louis Gray, one of the smartest guys in Silicon Valley is leaving the corporate teet and is launching his own startup. (Note, the headline is tongue in cheek.)

Louis has joined with a group of unnamed others to form Paladin Advisors Group, “a strategic advisory firm for startups and enterprise companies who are looking for guidance in their marketing, public relations, sales processes, customer influence, Web and social media.”

Louis has taken the role of Managing Director of New Media, a role for which he is eminently qualified.

Louis refers to Paladin as a stealth startup, which is probably fair given their home page is currently offering an ad for “seeking Filipino Women?” He will be extending what he has already done on the side in helping and advising new startups on the finer points of not failing.

Louis and I didn’t get off to the best of starts when he broke into the Silicon Valley scene a couple of years back, but I’ve since come to appreciate him as being one of the most switched on, clever guys working in the space. If I had to say I’m disappointed, it’s only because I would have loved to have seen him doing a full blown tech startup, but none the less this position ideally suits his skills, and I have no doubt that it will do exceptionally well.

Image via Steven Hodson

Psstt.. don’t let Louis Gray hear about this .. kthxbai

Steven Hodson — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:50:17 +0000

Knowing that Louis and his lovely wife are the proud parents of a set of twins is kind of helpful in setting up this piece of news. As well anyone who knows Louis also knows he is a die hard Apple fan so when I saw this product announcement he was the first person I thought of. You see over on ThinkGeek that they have a new product listing for something called a Combi IPod Bouncer which as you can tell from the picture involves a pretty fancy child seat.

It turns out that this nifty seat can bounce to the music supplied by your plugged in IPod; which given Louis proclivity for techno music would make any child’s time spent in the chair resemble something of a carnival ride. Now if you have a young child and think this might be just the coolest geek accessory then here are the rest of the specs for it

For Ages 6 months and up

Weight capacity 25 lbs.

Removable toy bar with three wooden toys

Removable and adjustable canopy to help control light exposure

Rear storage pouch for canopy and other necessities to keep with you

3 point padded harness

Hammock style seat design with 2 position recline

lockable bounce feature

Unique bouncing leg design uses child’s movement or parents input for comforting bouncing motion

MP3 input for customized musical experience

Built in sound and vibration unit

Electronic controls accessible in the back so child is not disturbed when making adjustments

This product can be used with a 5 lb (newborn) in the fully reclined position. With a child weighing less than 5lbs. (preemie) the caregiver should consult their pediatrician.

Dimensions: 7.5" tall x 9" wide x 5" deep

Weight: 5.8 lbs

Not bad though for $80.00 since you can look cool at all those geek get together and let your child think their are on some cool new ride at the same time.

[hat tip to Random Good Stuffhttp://www.random-good-stuff.com/2009/02/04/ipod-baby-bouncer/]

Sarah Palin baby name generator meets new media

Duncan Riley — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:30:28 +0000

From the election that keeps on giving comes the Sarah Palin baby name generator.

Now I’m not one to judge Sarah Palin’s choice in names for her children, but others have called trailer on her selection. The question for me is how some of new media’s leading names fare in the service.

Without much ado, here’s a few new media/ web 2.0 names added to the Sarah Palin baby name generator.

Louis Gray: Duct Idaho Palin
Chris Brogan: Hose Hotrod Palin
Darren Rowse: Khaki Salmon Palin
Brian Solis: Molten Contra Palin
Chris Pirillo: Barrel McRaven Palin
Joel Comm: Hump Gizzards Palin
Michael Gray: Tarp Lazer Palin
Matt Cutts: Bullpen Cola Palin
Michael Arrington: Blowhard Conflicted Palin*
Pete Cashmore: Gamebird Kelp Palin
Om Malik: Drink Hack Palin
Mona Nomura (aka Mona N): Knife Pile Palin
Gabe Rivera: Suckhole Groupie Palin*
Zee: Snowshoe Man Palin
Loic LeMeur: Blitz Harden Palin
Kyle “night krew” Lacy: Shoulder Frontier Palin
Dave Winer: Icepick Motor Palin
Robert Scoble: Hen Waffle Palin
Loren Feldman: Beans Harpoon Palin
Steve Gillmor: Nutty Mumbles Palin*
Owen Thomas: Thump Hummer Palin

Just for the record, I’ve got the same Sarah Palin name as Pete Cashmore: Gamebird Kelp Palin, so I’m in good company.

* actual results may vary

Mionews proves why API’s are a must

Duncan Riley — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:33:27 +0000

Mionews is a new FriendFeed service that delivers FriendFeed through a tabbed, nearly Google Reader or even Outlook type view. Discovered by Louis Gray, the service from Patrick Lightbody offers a different take on FriendFeed data, one, dare I say, that might be an easier gateway into the service from a broader consumer market that has grown up on the look, so is instantly at ease with it.

Some of the cool features include Twitter and blog integration (although I couldn’t get Twitter to work, but I presume it appears as a tab/ choice), the ability to like and hate posts, and a semantic engine that takes that data and filters content based on your choices. You can even set up general keyword tabs that deliver data based on the term, creating a monitoring service as well.

I’m grown particularly fond on the standard FriendFeed layout, but that doesn’t mean that others won’t like this. When I hacked together the FriendFeed Greasemonkey scripts a month back, part of the goal was to integrate others services within the FriendFeed experience via tabs. Mionews does this as well by the external service integration, although they are attempting to do it properly, not just a browser based work around. Only earlier today I was noting on my new Posterous blog that the noise level is getting to the stage again that it’s difficult to keep up with all the various services, Mionews looks like it might be heading in the integrated multi-platform direction, and that’s a very good space to be moving into.

Whether you like Mionews or not, there is one certain thing it does demonstrate: API’s are a must for new services. Here’s a service that will deliver new people to FriendFeed, so FriendFeed wins, and no doubt with a centralized portal role with its own internal sharing (I didn’t mention that previously, but it is offered) the developer(s) of Mionews win as well. For users, we get innovative, new tools that offer exciting and different ways to use our existing services, or as gateways into services we use in the future. Pownce learned the hard way that companies without an API from very early on fail, the growing number of interesting FriendFeed apps shows that FF has a strong future….hopefully though without the failings of the first huge API driven success story, Twitter.

Update: I should have clarified this in the post, Twitter not working in Mionews was an API issue with Twitter, not Mionews’ doing. It should work for others…at the time I tried to set it up, Twhirl wouldn’t connect to Twitter either.

Protagonize Is A Good Read, Help Write “FriendFeed Fan”

Duncan Riley — Sun, 25 May 2008 07:27:14 +0000

Protagonize is a creative writing community dedicated to writing various forms of collaborative, interactive fiction.

Stories on Protagonize start with one author writing a story, and others post branches or chapters to it in different directions. The result is an organic, evolving story where anyone can participate.

Registered members get their own author profile page, can write new stories, branches and chapters, add page markers, subscribe to their favorite authors, add comments, rate stories, keep track of update
notifications, follow conversations between authors, and more.

I’ve seen attempts a collaborative writing projects before, more recently with Cameron Reilly’s Twittories project. Protagonize takes the collaborative path more seriously by offering better accessibility that increases participation.

A service is only as good as how its parts work in action, so I’ve seeded a story titled “FriendFeed Fan” in my best attempt of chic-lit meets technophilia. It’s the story of Melissa, a Twitter refugee who ends up at FriendFeed. The branch suggestions include Scoble, Louis Gray or simply finding love. More here and feel free to build on the story, it may be the first time FriendFeed has been used in modern literature

Why You Should Use FriendFeed

Duncan Riley — Tue, 13 May 2008 03:26:24 +0000

Social aggregation service FriendFeed has turned into this years hot service, and yet to date I’ve have remained unconvinced of its merits. In an age where people are suffering “over-noise” in terms of information input, FriendFeed adds yet another layer with which many may struggle to keep up with.

FriendFeed has an amazingly loyal user base, and chief among the cheer squad has been Louis Gray. Louis and I have some history, but I thought I might ask him to convince me why I should use FriendFeed through a series of questions. Louis graciously responded with an argument on why you should use FriendFeed

Why do you use FriendFeed?

If you get Twitter, and you get RSS feeds, especially Google Reader, you will get FriendFeed. FriendFeed brings both the immediacy and conversation element of Twitter, but the sharing aspect of Google Reader shared items, without the limits that have held each service back, such as total number of characters, adding comments beyond Google Reader Notes, etc.

FriendFeed, essentially, is a single place to both aggregate your own activity, and follow friends and peers’ activity. But more than just aggregating activity, which many different sites do, it enables you to make comments, and show you “like” an item. This may seem small, but it’s this participation that has enabled the FriendFeed community to grow, as users engage and have conversations, longer than 140 characters.

I use FriendFeed to find new sources for information, to discuss items shared by friends, or see what others have said about items I share. FriendFeed has opened my eyes to some very talented tech bloggers, and helped me get answers to questions in real time from a group, rather than using Twitter, and counting @Replies.

What do you get from using FriendFeed?

With FriendFeed, I get a social platform for communication and participation on the day’s news and interesting items, and this platform can be as broad or as narrow as I would like it to be.

As with Twitter, on FriendFeed, I can choose to follow 1 person, 100 people, or 1,000 people. Also, thanks to advanced options that FriendFeed offers, I can choose to hide specific services (like Twitter, YouTube, Seesmic, or Disqus), I can choose to hide specific services from specific people (like hiding all of Robert Scoble’s Tweets), or I can get even more granular, by hiding items shared by Friends of a Friend, or saying I only want to view items that have already received comments or likes, letting only the best links hit my screen.

As you can guess, the service is only as good as the community. During FriendFeed’s private beta stage, it was an excellent way to talk to current and former Googlers, who dominated the early users. Now, as the doors have opened, a flood of new users are now regulars on the site. I’ve tried to stay focused on those engaging with tech blogs, or those who enjoy tech, but anybody’s community can be different.

Why should others use FriendFeed?

Your friends could be using many different services online. They could be updating their blogs. They could be posting photos to Flickr. They could be choosing YouTube favorites, or sending notes to Twitter. FriendFeed lets them put all of their online activity in one place, and lets you subscribe to their activity there, rather than following them around the Web.

FriendFeed lets you not only see what your friends are doing, but act on it. Also, as your friends find more people to follow on FriendFeed, you can be exposed to the best from their friends, getting you to find new people and new interesting items.

What’s your thoughts on FriendFeed being another layer in the over-noise problem

Because FriendFeed aggregates activity from many places, it definitely has the potential to be noisy. But the team at FriendFeed has thought ahead about this, and delivered some extremely flexible filters to reduce the noise and have strong signal:

Using their “Hide” function, you can hide:
* Individual items and conversations
* Entire services (Like Twitter, YouTube, Disqus, etc.)
* Services from specific individuals (Like Flickr from Thomas Hawk or Twitter from Robert Scoble)
* Friends of a Friend globally
* Friends of a Friend per individual (Don’t show me Robert Scoble’s Friends’ items)
* All items or specific services or services by user that don’t have comments or likes.

With all those options, you can really make FriendFeed as noisy or as quiet as you want to. What FriendFeed needs to do to make the noise that remains a little less so is to:

* Address issues with duplicate items shared by multiple friends.
* Address issues with a single user doing multiple things with an item (Posting to a blog, adding to Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, etc.)
* Possibly introduce groups, so you could categorize your friends and see subsets of the stream.

If you pull a Robert Scoble, and follow thousands of people, of course it will be noisy. What I recommend is starting with a core group of people who you know or already follow on Twitter, RSS, etc., and then add as you see others making comments on FriendFeed. You can put your mouse over any name and see their profile, how active they are, and what they share.

Louis Gray is a Marketing and public relations professional in the Silicon Valley with ten years experience for both Internet and hardware companies. His blog, louisgray.com, covers the world of social media, RSS readers, link aggregation and statistics.