Josh Petersen

I’m really terrible about maintaining the proper balance of romance and family life (I’m probably pretty terrible at maintaining any sort of balance) but tonight Anne & I are going out to our favorite restaurant in Seattle, for the first time in nearly a year. Hopefully we’ll keep this up at least monthly (and maybe bi-weekly). I’ll mark the goal done when we have 5 in a row.

I know I’m adding to the hype, but I think backpack is that good.

And here is the link http://www.43things.com/about/view/web_service_api

We just launched an area of the site for folks to propose features and discuss 43things.com. It’s called “ideas.43things.com”. Take a look and tell me what you think!

I was telling my colleagues today that this goal is getting easier. Today I read a news article about how we were creating an insidious advertising vehicle. It didn’t even bother me. Water off a duck’s back.

We’d like to find some 43 users who would be interested in talking to reporters about why they use the site and what they like (or dislike) about it. Add this goal to your list, or drop me a line in the comments.

Maybe it’s because I have no time to read, listen to music or watch movies, but I found myself looking at this item on my list and trying to remember why I wanted to do this. Does anyone have a cheesy movie like “Before Sunrise” to lend me, because I got a copy from the library after waiting 3 weeks and it was warped from a cigarette burn through the cover. What sort of folks are using the library these days? I’m not saying I’m deleting the goal. I’m just sayin’

When I was a kid, I had this weird hippy coloring book about Oregon, with a picture of crater lake that had a wizard hat in the middle of the mountain and some other psychadelic imagery around crater lake. When I went and visited, it wasn’t as trippy, but just as magical. And it turns out the island is called “Wizard Island”.

DHH is more of a soda guy. My new goal is to have a cold one in Copenhagen. Cheers, David!

If you go to your account page on 43 Things and click “share more information” you can add your City, State (or Region) and Country. That adds your city to your profile and makes your goals influence the new city pages. You can also just go to the city page, search for your city, and click the “I live here” link.

Doesn’t it seem so typical that there are 18 of us on this goal and no one has written an entry.

I grew up in a family that never said “I love you” to each other. I don’t want my kids to inherit this. I try to say “I love you” to my kids and wife every day, but its harder with the rest of my family. Once in a while, when things get emotional, my mother lets it slip and I always try and respond. Never a word from the paternal side – and no words between the siblings. It’s like we think we’ll all explode if we say it!

I’d love to break this wide open. I’m sure we all care for each other – but that “silence” is hard to break.

Is that the same sort of goal the rest of you had in mind? I’ve always wondered if others who had this on their list had it for similar reasons.

Damn the slings and arrows. This has been a good week for parcticing the art of “brushing your shoulders off”. I owe it to Nicole M for educating me on this line – and I swear it’s become my mantra. When the press calls, you’ve got to brush your shoulders off!

The easiest way to learn about how the site handles your information is to read the privacy policy and the terms of use. You might want to keep in mind, when you are using this site – you are posting to the internet, meaning it will get indexed by search engines, your mom might read it, etc. To use the site all you need is a user name and email – and you can get any number of free email accounts if you are concerned about that – though 43 Things won’t send you spam. Lastly – if you don’t want to use the site – you don’t have to – and it is easy to close your account

Thanks to able bloggers like Jason Kottke the facts about 43 Things are making it out into public view (even if they don’t make for good conspiracy theories).

News.com also has an article where they actually asked questions about the site and how it came about. Over at the Robot Co-op, we’ve also given a fuller account of how our origins unfolded.

Lastly, if you aren’t happy with 43 Things – not only can you close your account but you also don’t have to use the site.

I just posted this to The Robot Co-op blog, but I’ll add it here as it is part of my progress on this goal (and doing so will let me cross-post it to my personal blog). Wow – too many places to manage my profile>

Amazon.com has invested in The Robot Co-op. We think it will get easier to meet our goal to Start a company that survives longer than 2 years though we still have lots of work to do. We are excited that we will have a chance to build products that are innovative and change the way people share information and connect online.

Nothing changes about how we run The Robot Co-op or 43 Things. You can check out the FAQ, the Terms of Use or the Privacy Policy if you have questions about any of those items.

To all the folks who’ve tried out 43 things, reported bugs and thought about how we might change the world, thanks for getting us this far!

Our daughter was 3 years old when our second child was born. We found reading her stories about what to expect from the birth and new arrival worked great to prepare her for some of the new reality that was coming her way.

Here are some of the books we found:

• Hello Baby by Lizzy Rockwell – this was a favorite, a simple, sweet story that my daughter still enjoys
• Za-Za’s Baby Brother by Lucy Cousins – another favorite. All the things to like about a Lucy Cousins book in terms of the characters and colors, and a story line that mixes the changing reality of a new sibling, with good examples of being patient, what the “big day” might be like, and how to help when the new baby arrives. This is a best bet for 2-3 year olds, may be too simple for older siblings.
• The New Baby at your House by Joana Cole – a bit of a heavy hitter, but one that really interested my daughter. This book gives really realistic examples of some of the joys and nuisances of having a new baby brother or sister. I think this is a great one, but might be too much for very young siblings or parents’ who only like the bright side of things.
• I’m a big sister by Joana Cole – honestly, I don’t remember this one too much – but I know we bought it. Not as big a hit as the others.

Good luck!

We added a feature to the site to let users tell us about images on the site that aren’t meeting community norms. Hows that? We wish people were both cooler about nudity and not harshing people’s realm – but it is a big internet – and we are venturing into choppier waters. We haven’t blocked anything yet – but its just a matter of time. If you see something questionable – click on it to get a closer look (ironic, I know) and use the link to let us know about it.

Hopefully history will remember us similarly to Newton & Leibniz and the invention of the calculus. OK, I guess that is not really likely.

1. I point out that they are different sites and yes, it is a funny coincidence.
2. I tell people we sent mail to Merlin to commiserate over the weirdness and promise to be good neighbors in the 43 neighborhood (loan a cup of sugar, put a link to 43 folders on our site if desired, etc). We love 43 folders and want everyone to get more productive and use apple products. We are serious. Some see God’s hand in all this.
3. Lastly, when someone gets hostile about the coincidence (as a few excited meme detectives have) I point out that we registered the 43things¹ domain before 43folders² existed. In no way do I imagine Merlin knew of our plans, just as we didn’t know of his.

In fact, the coincidences continue because 43 Things was also inspired to some degree by Dave Allen – but the idea for 43 only entered on a subliminal level. We considered 23 and 37 as well as well as 43 – we just wanted a prime number less than 50, and settled on 43 as the right number of things to try and do.

We registered the url and set to work building out our company with no idea of any 43 meme. Anyway, if 43 ends up meaning smart, fun and useful – like 411 means info – maybe it will all work out for the best.

¹ Domain Name: 43THINGS.COM
Creation Date: 06-Apr-2004

² Domain Name: 43FOLDERS.COM
Creation Date: 31-aug-2004

I’ve been lucky to work on some interesting projects that have been covered in the business news (most recently 43 Things got some press, and before that somearticles about Amazon’s personalization) and that has got me mentioned in a few papers (including once in the NY Times).

But as much as I admire the work of journalists, rarely is it an undilutedly good experience to be in the news yourself. Too often journalists write their story, then call for quotes to flush out something they’ve already made up. Anyway – fun to say I’ve done it, but in my experience, genuinely not really worth doing. In the future, I’m going to encourage reporters to talk to the people who use the products I work on – not the people who build them. I think that is a more interesting angle anyway.

And started reading through the first chapter. Ouch. The math is harder than the concepts – but I’m pushing on. I’m going to make an ass of myself by doing teach-ins to the other Robots (one of whom is a Maths major).

Tomorrow I’m going to be outlining an idea for using “capture/recapture” for measuring repeat visitors to 43 Things to the rest of the Robots. This is a good real world application of sampling and probability – but it raises funny issues like “why not just count the repeat visiors”. Sampling makes the data size much more manageable and seems like it would allow for things like measuring the repeat and defect rate by “vintage” (when the sample was taken).