Brian Alvey

The second mouse gets the cheese.

I’ll never forget how my friend Carolyn introduced me at a backyard party a few years ago: “This is Brian Alvey. He invented blogging.” I immediately corrected her: “I didn’t invent blogging. I perfected it.” I’ve told that story on stage many times. While it might sound conceited, there is a lot of truth in the statement.Continue reading “The second mouse gets the cheese.”

Me, defending TMZ at breakfast this morning

“It’s not low quality reporting at all. It’s high quality reporting on low quality people. There’s a difference.”

Secret Project X

Back in 2006 when Jason and I were working with some really talented people on a Digg-like social news version of Netscape, I called it Secret Project X. I even registered secretprojectx.com. I love that name. Some of the people from that same Netscape team were also busy working to get TMZ up and running on my old Blogsmith blog platform.Continue reading “Secret Project X”

Three envelopes

I routinely mention the “three envelopes” story when talking to entrepreneurs about how startup CEOs often act when faced with a crisis. Many of them have never heard the story, so I’m recording it here for future reference: A new CEO was brought in to run a tech company. The CEO who was stepping downContinue reading “Three envelopes”

Brett Terpstra’s Systematic podcast

I had dinner with Brett Terpstra in San Francisco recently and it was so much fun that he asked me to be a guest on his Systematic podcast. Half of the show covered the upcoming return of Meet The Makers and the other half covered my quest to find a startup religion that worked for me.Continue reading “Brett Terpstra’s Systematic podcast”

The revenge of QWERTY

Smart designers are asking why QWERTY keyboard layouts still exist on modern mobile devices. @mezzoblue Yep. Especially on smartphones where we don’t have decades of legacy muscle memory.— Mike Davidson (@mikeindustries) June 25, 2014 For a while now, I’ve been thinking that QWERTY actually does make sense on phones in a way that it neverContinue reading “The revenge of QWERTY”

Meet The Makers is coming back

Twelve years ago today, I hosted my first Meet The Makers conference in New York City. Later that year I did two more events in San Francisco and NYC. The events were incredible, featuring interviews with the people responsible for some of the biggest online products and sites like Monster, DoubleClick, Google, E*TRADE and MapQuest.Continue reading “Meet The Makers is coming back”

AOL address books hacked

I woke up on Sunday morning and saw four spam messages in my inbox from an old AOL account of mine that I almost never use. This isn’t a new thing, nearly every email address gets used to send spam via a process called “spoofing.” Spoofing happens because anyone can send email as billgates@microsoft.com via sloppy,Continue reading “AOL address books hacked”

Embedded tweets with photos are hot

If your embedded tweet has an image in it, that image shows up at the top of the embedded tweet. Compare a screen shot of one of my tweets on twitter.com with the embedded version of the tweet here on my site. On Twitter: That is one fine looking embed! As I recall, older versions had theContinue reading “Embedded tweets with photos are hot”

The Contently Show: How Nimble Publishers Survive

I met the Contently founders a long, long time ago when I was co-hosting the NYC Open Angel Forum. Of all the companies who pitched our audience of investors over Shake Shack burgers and beer, I think they’ve gone the farthest. I mean furthest. Anyway, they’re a great NYC startup success story and they interviewed me for theirContinue reading “The Contently Show: How Nimble Publishers Survive”