Windy Hill

27 Jan 2009

This past weekend I once again had the opportunity to take advantage of the gorgeous Bay Area weather to hike up Windy Hill in Portolla Valley.  This time, I talked a group of friends into coming with me which was quite a feat for a Sunday morning.

The trails through the Windy Hill area are well marked, but a little confusing in relation to each other.  There are about 12 miles total of trails, and if you just keep walking you’re pretty much bound to make it to the top of the Hill in question (where, as we discovered, it was in fact quite Windy).  We didn’t make it on the loop we had originally intended to take, instead walking up the Spring Ridge Trail and back down again for a total walk of around six and a half miles.  It was a great uphill push on the way to the top and an easy walk back down, all of which contributed to a massive group appetite by the end of the hike – perfect for our post-hike BBQ.

Windy Hill certainly wasn’t as eventful as my hike along the Coal Mine Ridge the week before (no bobcat sitings at anyrate) but for an easy couple hour trek, it offered beautiful views, a good workout and a lot of fun with friends.

I’ve got friends in exciting places

22 Jan 2009

One of the things that I love about the internet is how it allows me to live vicariously through my friends in a way I wouldn’t have believed possible.  The ability to be involved in the day-to-day minutia of people’s lives through Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, blogs and more is in many ways creepy however while at home, it allows me to travel with a friend of mine who is off on her own great travel adventure.

Kate, with whom I attended high school, spent a semester in Paris during college and caught a travel bug of epic proportions.  After graduating, she decided to come home and get a job before heading off but last week took the plunge and flew to Hong Kong to begin a round-the-world tour that she has no current plans of ending in the near future.  After a few days in Hong Kong she’s left for Bali.  From there she’ll travel through Asia, meeting up with friends, make her way to India, through Egypt, up to Turkey, and by fall of 2009, she hopes to be in the UK.

I already love reading her posts on her blog Chasing Hemingway and highly recommend that anyone interested in travel or interesting personal stories takes a look.  It’s definitely going to be an exciting trip and thank goodness the internet lets me play along.

California Trails

20 Jan 2009

It’s difficult to believe it isn’t summer. To begin with, I’m at home for an extended period of time – something that has only happened during the summers for the last half a decade (yikes, that’s a scary thought). Also, the amount of fresh fruit and veggies I get these days are just decadent compared to any other part of the world this time of year. And of course, there’s the fact that it’s hovering around 70 degrees F during the day and is gloriously sunny – yep, California is pulling out all the stops while I’m home.

In honor of the fantastic weather, I decided Sunday morning to take a hike, literally, and wound up on the wonderfully-named Coal Mine Ridge trail system in Portola Valley for a brief jaunt through the woods. I took the Toyon trail as far as it would go (a little over six miles round trip). It was a very easy hike but beautiful and quite an enjoyable way to spend the morning.

But by far the most exciting part of my hike was on my trek back to where I had parked when I rounded a corner and saw on the trail in front of me a bobcat.  It was a couple hundred feet in front of me and didn’t seem to mind me being there.  I followed behind it for a while before it disappearred out of sight into the woods.  I hadn’t seen anyone else on the trail for a while and so was a little surprised to see, a few minutes later, another hiker coming the opposite direction.  I was still excited by my bobcat sighting and so warned him to keep his eyes peeled ahead.  In response, he looked absolutely thrilled and asked if I were “familiar with animal spirit energies.”

I smiled politely and told him that, no, I didn’t believe I was.  He recommended I look them up on Google when I get come because it’s so rare to see a bobcat that it must have a special message for me.  I can’t say I entirely understood the message the bobcat supposedly gave me but overall it was an eventful morning and a great chance to enjoy the weather and the California trails.

In the next few weeks I’ll definitely be doing more casual weekend hiking – in this weather it would be criminal not to.  I might look for something a bit more challenging or simply stick to the easy trails.  You never know where my animal spirit energy might guide me.

The Silicon Roundabout Mirrors Silicon Valley

17 Jan 2009

In the California Silicon Valley, the bar is set by the big local bigshots – the Googles and Facebooks – not the struggling start-ups still living in a garage. However throughout the rest of the world, the bar is Silicon Valley as a whole, with the startup mentality, the business creativity and the culture of risk and, sometimes, payoff. So it is not surprising that outside of California and America, other emerging tech cultures seek to style themselves around the Silicon Valley model. Meet the Silicon Roundabout in London, England and Spoonfed, a London web startup that’s building a name for itself and the area.

A map pinpointing the offices of the tech and media start-ups in London shows a scattershot grouping around Old Street in East London, an area that has become colloquially known as the Silicon Roundabout in homage to the Silicon Valley of California. Moo, Last.FM and Dopplr are a few of the homegrown start-ups that have already caught international business eyes. More recently, Spoonfed, a local events listing site in the vein of Yelp or Trusted Places, emerged as another one-to-watch in the Silicon Roundabout.

Basheera Khan of TechCrunchUK writes in her review of Spoonfed, “the kicker is that it’s location- and preference-specific; tell Spoonfed which parts of London you hang out in, give it a general idea of the types of entertainment you’re into, and hey presto, you’ve got a customised guide to upcoming events….[Spoonfed has] influencers with top notch experience in social networking, big brand advertising, B2B publishing and corporate governance backing a couple of 25-year olds who pitted their combined life-savings of £8,000 against the problem they and their friends shared — never being able to find high quality information about upcoming events across all of London from a single trusted source.”

Spoonfed is ready to take on traditional listings giants with the message that it should be easy and fun to find events you will enjoy locally however their message is two-fold. In addition to a web service that engages Londoners with their local area and events, they also remind world that the Silicon Roundabout and the emerging UK tech scene is certainly one to watch.

Google Map of the Silicon Roundabout:



View Larger Map

Read the full TechCrunch UK Review of Spoonfed

Visit Spoonfed.co.uk

This article is writen by Meaghan Fitzgerald, a Silicon Valley native now living and working in the UK.  Please feel free to republish or link to this post on your blog, or share with your friends using the links below.

DormWise revived?

16 Jan 2009

One of the most engaging projects I undertook while at Colby College was my startup business DormWise.com, a web resource for college students.  I’ve struggled and stressed for quite some time over how to make use of the remains of my effort – and it was quite a bit of effort.  Unfortunately the site has sat at its domain somewhat uselessly since I graduated from college and it’s been frustrating for me to see all that work go to waste.  I’ve sent out some feelers to see if there’s anyone who’d be interested in buying the whole site but the amount I would get for it seems so miniscule that I couldn’t quite justify it.

A number of people suggested leaving the site in place to earn advertising revenue but there isn’t very much traffic (seeing as all of my traffic-driving skills are currently going to my full time job!).  Recently, however, I’ve made a few forum posts to see if there is anyone who would be interested in taking on complete management of the site in return for 50% of the profits.  It’s a fairly good deal for someone who has the skills and drive to run a website but isn’t able to make it themselves, plus I’m paying all of the hostings costs.  I’ve received a fair bit of interest and at the moment I am “interviewing” online a number of the people who responded.  There are a couple of people I believe would do a decent job but if you or someone you know might be interested, of course get in touch.

I’m really looking forward to engaging a few more people with DormWise and while I’m here in California, it’s a perfect time to transfer the control to someone who is excited, driven and, preferably, still in college! Hopefully it’ll be beneficial for both of us.