After nearly 17 years, four children, two companies, we are saying goodbye to our NYC and hello to my home state of Maine.
Read MoreEvery January Spotify releases your personalized top-100 most played tracked from the previous year. I always look forward to this playlist, as it is a most interesting way to self-reflect on your mood, thoughts, and feelings from the past year. The only reason the list below doesn’t list all 100 songs is because my wife sometimes used my account (we moved to a family plan earlier this year), and some of her songs ended up in the rankings. The below 75 are songs I played, along with comments on why they made the list. I’ve also included an embedded Spotify playlist if you are interested in listening to the songs yourself. If you want to go directly to the playlist, MPH’s Top-75 Songs of 2018.
[spotifyplaybutton play=”spotify:user:popcontest:playlist:1NFHcQdxN9G90BXXn9AQRX”]
Rank | Track | Artist | Album | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Yamasuki | Yamasuki Singers | Le Monde Fabuleux Des Yamasuki | This was the top requested road trip song from the kids — and it was often played loud and on repeat |
2 | Shadow | Chromatics | Shadow | I listened to a lot of David Lynch inspired playlists this year — great for when I need to focus on my work |
3 | California Dreamin' – Single Version | The Mamas & The Papas | If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears | First song in my Mamas & The Papas playlist – which I listen to a lot – espcially in the morning |
4 | Tulou Tagaloa | Olivia Foa'i | Moana (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack/Deluxe Edition) | Girl's favorite road album |
5 | (The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance | Gene Pitney | 18 All-Time Greatest Hits | Kejda probably influenced this — still a great song |
6 | Super Trouper | ABBA | ABBA Gold | Rosamund's favorite song |
7 | Sloop John B – Remastered | The Beach Boys | Pet Sounds (Original Mono & Stereo Mix Versions) | One of the best songs and albums of all time |
8 | How Far I'll Go | Auli'i Cravalho | Moana (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack/Deluxe Edition) | Girls / Road Trip |
9 | Golliwogg's Cakewalk No. 6 | Claude Debussy Isao Tomita | Tomita's Greatest Hits | Tomita fan — especially the Debussy covers |
10 | Anywhere | Rita Ora | Anywhere | A little embarrassing to see this one so high up |
11 | No Reply – Remastered 2009 | The Beatles | Beatles For Sale (Remastered) | Favorite song from favorite Beatle's album |
12 | Lightnin' Strikes | Lou Christie | Lightnin’ Strikes: The Very Best Of The MGM Recordings | The girl's love to dance in a circle to this song |
13 | You Baby (Mono) | The Turtles | You Baby / Let Me Be | This song captured my attention this year — got to be The Turtle's best song. This song just feels like 1966. |
14 | Rum And Coca-Cola – Single Version | The Andrews Sisters | 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection: Best Of The Andrews Sisters | I think I've somehow somehow listened to this song once or twice a month. |
15 | Sukiyaki | Kyu Sakamoto | The Best of Kyu Sakamoto | Found out Slick Rick borrowed a verse from a lesser know cover of this classic song (for "La Di Da Di") — and was surprised to see how often covered it was. |
16 | Somewhere Only We Know | Keane | Somewhere Only We Know | Good for late night working |
17 | 96 Tears | ? & The Mysterians | 96 Tears | Great to listen to anytime |
18 | Enough Honey | Alison Sudol | Enough Honey | Late night working background music |
19 | He's a Rebel | The Crystals | He's A Rebel | A top-10 all-time song for me – wall of sound at its best |
20 | I Call Your Name | The Mamas & The Papas | If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears | Mama Cass always |
21 | Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood | The Animals | Animal Tracks | Every year brings lots of Animals and British Invasion – one of my favorites here |
22 | I'll Never Find Another You | The Seekers | The Ultimate Collection | Sounds like something from 1964 Greenwich Village — but this is an Aussie band (Aussie is always a few years behind). Great song and harmonies. |
23 | Time Of The Season (Mono Version) | The Zombies | Odessey And Oracle | The song reminds me most of October and October weather |
24 | Wouldn't It Be Nice – Mono | The Beach Boys | Pet Sounds (50th Anniversary Edition) | Pet Sounds – one of the best of all time |
25 | Walkin' After Midnight | Patsy Cline | The Very Best Of Patsy Cline | This song might be playing if I'm working past midnight. |
26 | Two Faces Have I | Lou Christie | Lou Christie | What a song… |
27 | Monday, Monday – Single Version | The Mamas & The Papas | If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears | The girls also like Mama Cass |
28 | Where You Are | Christopher Jackson Rachel House Nicole Scherzinger Auli'i Cravalho Louise Bush | Moana (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack/Deluxe Edition) | Road trip favorite for the family (see above) |
29 | Clair de Lune, No. 3 | Claude Debussy Isao Tomita | Tomita's Greatest Hits | Debussy by Tomita always wins |
30 | Bad To Me | Billy J. Kramer | British Invasion Gold | Written by the Beatles |
31 | A Lover's Concerto | The Toys | The Toys Sing "A Lover's Concerto" and "Attack!" | Pretty much a perfect song |
32 | Here Comes My Baby | The Tremeloes | Even The Bad Times Are Good | This is the defining song of Wes Anderson's "Rushmore" |
33 | Tower Of Strength | Gene McDaniels The Johnny Mann Singers | Best Of Gene McDaniels | Horns support Gene McDaniel's voice perfectly |
34 | I Am Waiting | The Rolling Stones | Aftermath | One of my favorite Stones songs |
35 | Good Lovin' – Single Version | The Young Rascals | Time Peace: The Rascals' Greatest Hits | I remember my father playing this with his bandmates in our basement when I was a kid |
36 | Dream A Little Dream Of Me – Album Version With Introduction | The Mamas & The Papas | The Papas & The Mamas | More Mama Cass – of course. |
37 | Bring It On Home To Me | The Animals | Animal Tracks | Another song I remember well from my father's band. |
38 | Razzle Dazzle Rose | Camera Obscura | Let's Get Out Of This Country | A song I discovered this year through a Spotify suggested playlist personalized to my listening habits. This band is fantastic. |
39 | Mamma Mia | ABBA | ABBA Gold | The kids love dancing to Abba. I also like them. |
40 | Do You Realize?? | The Flaming Lips | Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (U.S. Version) | I'm not sure I realized this song was by The Flaming Lips. It's good. |
41 | Embryonic Journey | Jefferson Airplane | Surrealistic Pillow | Solid instrumental. Doesn't sound like their most popular songs. |
42 | See You In September | The Happenings | The Happenings | Classic 1960's New Jersey sound |
43 | She's Not There | The Zombies | Begin Here | The Zombies always seem to make my lists. |
44 | Different Drum | Stone Poneys | Evergreen Vol.2 | Linda Ronstadt has a perfect voice. |
45 | Our Day Will Come | Ruby And The Romantics | Our Day Will Come | I could listen to this song anytime. |
46 | Dedicated To The One I Love | The Mamas & The Papas | Deliver | Mamas & The Papas playlist works morning or night |
47 | The Pied Piper | Crispian St. Peters | Follow Me… | Pretty much a perfect pop song – up and down |
48 | Queen Jane Approximately | Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons | Sing Big hits by Burt Bacharach…Hal David…Bob Dylan | I like this version better than the Dylan original. |
49 | We Gotta Get Out Of This Place – US Single Version | The Animals | Animal Tracks | My favorite Animals track |
50 | Weightless Again | The Handsome Family | Through the Trees | Kejda got me into this band after listening to the True Detective title theme "Far From Any Road" |
51 | 3 Chorales for Organ: Chorale in A Minor | M. 40,César Franck David Sanger,Franck: Complete Organ Music | Turn this on with the lights off | |
52 | Abracadabra | Steve Miller Band | Abracadabra | I'm glad to see a Steve Miller track in this year's list – this is one I remember specifically pulling up a few times |
53 | He's Sure the Boy I Love | The Crystals | He's A Rebel | The best of the girl group era |
54 | Douze coffrets studieux: IV. Pour les sixtes (Poem from Lucien Noullez from Debussy's Etudes, L. 136) | Claude Debussy Elodie Vignon Clara Inglese | Claude Debussy: Etudes | Surprised to see this on here — but I listen to a lot of Debussy |
55 | Saturday | Desire | Windswept | David Lynch! |
56 | Sing For Your Supper | The Mamas & The Papas | Deliver | I think this is my favorite Mamas & The Papas song |
57 | Blue Velvet | Bobby Vinton | The Best Of Bobby Vinton | David Lynch! |
58 | Never My Love | Astrud Gilberto | Windy | Great alternative to The Association's version of "Never My Love" |
59 | Broken Hearted Melody | Sarah Vaughan | The Complete Sarah Vaughan On Mercury Vol.3 | Listen to that voice. Wow. |
60 | Ringo | Lorne Greene | Welcome to the Ponderosa | Fun |
61 | Kono Samourai | Yamasuki Singers | Le Monde Fabuleux Des Yamasuki | More road trip music |
62 | Danke Schoen | Wayne Newton | Danke Schoen | I like to ask our daughters if this is sung by a boy or a girl |
63 | Miserere Mei | Gregorio Allegri Armonico Consort Christopher Monks | Naked Byrd | One of the greatest pieces of music ever created by man. Right? |
64 | Uptown | The Crystals | He's A Rebel | 10 out of 10 |
65 | Atlantis | Dory Previn | Dory Previn | This one kept coming back into my playlists. Very sad song. |
66 | I'm A Loser – Remastered 2009 | The Beatles | Beatles For Sale (Remastered) | Makes sense to see this here. Beatles for Sale is my favorite Beatles album. |
67 | Bewitched, Bothered, And Bewildered | Ella Fitzgerald | Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Rodgers And Hart Song Book | I think this song was suggested by a Spotify weekly list and saved it for repeat listens. |
68 | Baby Don't Go | Sonny & Cher | The Beat Goes On | 9.9/10 – Cher's best |
69 | Time Won't Let Me | The Outsiders | Capitol Collectors Series | Another favorite song I remember well from my youth – one my father used to play with his band |
71 | I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City | Harry Nilsson | Harry | I probably listen to less Nilsson (and similar stuff) these days – but this one is really good anytime. |
72 | Pipeline | The Chantays | Pipeline | Not much you can say about this — except of course. |
73 | Young Folks | Peter Bjorn and John | Writer's Block | How old is this song? I have no idea. |
74 | Laugh, Laugh | The Beau Brummels | Introducing The Beau Brummels | Harmonica + vocal harmonies well put will go a long way. Exhibit A. |
75 | God Only Knows – Mono | The Beach Boys | Pet Sounds (50th Anniversary Edition) | Really listen to this song… |
[spotifyplaybutton play=”spotify:user:popcontest:playlist:1NFHcQdxN9G90BXXn9AQRX” view=”list” size=”0″ sizetype=”big” theme=”black”]
Read MoreWelcome to this crazy world, Eleanor. xoxo
Nearly a year ago, we spun a nascent analytics engine called PeekAnalytics out of PeekYou. At the time of the spinout, I left the day-to-day operations of PeekYou and put all our focus into retooling and rebuilding everything, with a focus on bringing this technology to the B2B world; leveraging seven years of knowledge and best practices. I’m proud to announce that we are now live with version 2.0 of our database and platform — and to mark the launch, we are heretofore known as StatSocial. The data and taxonomy we’ve built is unlike anything I’ve seen in the wide world of data. We look forward to leveraging this technology across a number of marketing verticals (analytics, targeting, CRM). Stay tuned.
Read MoreWelcome to the world, Fleur.
Read MoreAfter many months of careful legal review, we’ve now officially spun PeekAnalytics out from PeekYou LLC into a new company. As of today, I am CEO of PeekAnalytics Inc. This spin-out will allow us to better focus resources and deliver to the market what has become an incredible product. I can truly say there is nothing else like it. Stay tuned.
Much of the same can be said for PeekYou, which has now recovered from Hurricane Sandy setbacks. PeekYou is in good hands and won’t skip a beat, with long-time employees Tom Lynch and Lane Gillespie stepping up to man the day-to-day operations. We still believe PeekYou should be one of the top-100 sites on the Web. The good news is we’re climbing back up those rankings. I’m stepping back from day-to-day business, yet will continue to advise the company as a Director.
Read MoreWhat happened in 2012?
My resolution for 2013: no excuses.
Read MoreBig milestone for the PeekYou team today, as we announced the launch of PeekAnalytics.
Here’s how we describe the company:
PeekAnalytics delivers enterprise-class Twitter analytics that help marketers understand their social consumers. By identifying where Twitter users exist elsewhere on the Web, PeekAnalytics offers an unparalleled level of demographic and psychographic insights from consumer data aggregated not just from Twitter, but from over sixty social sites and every major blog platform. What Nielsen® did for television and radio audiences and ComScore® did for web traffic audiences – PeekAnalytics does for social audiences.
And so we’re off and running. I’m also looking forward to adding audience analysis on other platforms later this year (e.g. Facebook).
Read MoreFor the past nine months, Kejda and I (but mostly Kejda) have been working on a new start-up venture. Even though we just launched today, we’re already experiencing a positive ROI. We’re in this one for the long-term but we definitely expect rapid growth.
Her name is Rosamund Louise Hussey and after we pulled an all-nighter, she was launched at 2:51 PM today, weighing in at a healthy 6 lbs and 15.8 ounces. And we love her very much.
Read MoreIn May, we celebrated PeekYou becoming a top-500 US website. We said we’d throw another party when we hit the top-250….and we just crossed that threshhold this month. In five months, we’ve halved the Quantcast rank and doubled our office space. Additionally, we successfully launched into beta our first B2B offering, PeekAnalytics. All-in-all, it has been a great year.
Read MoreI covered what I could in two minutes…which isn’t a whole lot. 🙂
The data for this report came out of our development work for the upcoming PeekAnalytics.
Read MoreKejda and I recently returned from ten days in Costa Rica. For the majority of the trip, we stayed at a resort named Rancho Pacifico, in the coastal town of Uvita. While Kejda was not a fan of the capital city of San Jose, just about everything at Rancho Pacifico was awesome.
Here some of the photos I enjoyed taking. Click the photo for the full resolution images.
Read More
Andrew Keen interviewing me on May 23, 2011, backstage at Techcrunch Disrupt.
Questions Andrew asks:
1) What does PeekYou do?
2) What’s different about a web indexed around people rather than today’s Web or yesterday’s Web?
3) So it’s a more effective or more sophisticated Google search?
4) How does your platform fit into the real-time social web of Twitter and Facebook?
5) What about people, perhaps like myself, who don’t want to be Peeked at?
6) What does your company tell us about the way in which the Internet is changing? Is it becoming, as Sean Parker told us in the Social Network, is the place we really live now?
Read MoreLast night, our team celebrated the ascension of PeekYou into the ranks of the top-500 US websites (according to Quantcast.com).
Many fellow startup entrepreneurs, partners, advisors, investors and members of the press turned out for the event. The most common and gratifying compliment I heard from the attendees was in reference to just how nice the people on our team are. We’re a tight-knit group and everyone genuinely gets along with each other and I am proud to see that shine through.
And for those who couldn’t make it this time, we’re planning to do it again, only bigger, when we become a top-250 website (this fall?).
A few months ago, Kejda and I were perusing Dewolfe and Wood’s bargain book bin. We came across a gem of a book – The Arts by Hendrik van Loon (published in 1937). I’ve much enjoyed reading van Loon’s honest and very personal account of art history, spanning all ages and all types of civilizations.
Included with the book was an original perfect condition bookmark, which I wanted to scan for preservation. I don’t think van Loon would mind me sharing it here with you.
Read MoreOur office is in an old fashion district building at the edge of Hell’s Kitchen (West 37th St). In the back of our building, a fire escape opens up to what has to be a uniquely New York City vista. This photo was taken on the 6th floor, between 37th and 38th St, looking from west to east (from 8th ave to 7th ave side).
To see this photo in the original 1.4 gigapixel resolution, click here.
Read MoreKejda and I just returned from Albania, where we spent two weeks visiting her family and touring the southern half of the country. We keep a separate blog dedicated to our Albanian trips, where we’ll soon describe our daily activities in greater depth.
For my birthday, I bought myself a Gigapan robot it is safe to say I am slightly obsessed with it. What is the Gigapan?
The GigaPan Epic and Epic 100 make it easy to capture incredibly detailed images and works seamlessly with the GigaPan Stitcher and GigaPan.org. The Epic allows your camera to take tens, hundreds or even thousands of photos. These images are combined into a single gigapixel panorama by the GigaPan Stitcher. You can then view, share and explore the incredible detail of your panoramas at GigaPan.org.
Here are some of the panoramas we composed during the trip. Click the images to access the full resolution shots (some as large as 5,000 megabytes).
Read MoreToday we submitted an extensive utility patent with the goal of securing many of the database and web technologies we are pioneering at PeekYou. It has been a privilege over this past year to work with the excellent team at Patterson, Thuente, Skaar & Christensen. I’m very excited about the next stage of our company — much more to come throughout 2009. Stay tuned.
Here it is the patent text in full:
http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20100010993
For the most part, I try to keep my atheism and libertarianism private, as most people are rightly sensitive about religion and politics. While I hold strong views on the role of the State and am averse to mysticism of all stripes, I get along with people from all walks of life. My best friends are libertarians, socialists, evangelical Christians, anarchists, atheists, republicans, democrats, and more. I’m also a busy person, having spent most of my time since 1999 focusing on building new web technologies and businesses, some of which have marginally improved the lives of millions of people across the globe.
About a year ago, in response to a troubling vibe I felt emanating from the Obama presidential campaign, I created the following video under the pseudonym cakesecret. I utilized a song from one of my favorite bands, CAKE, to compare the Obama movement to a religious movement (I wasn’t necessarily the first to note this analogy, but I was certainly ahead of the curve). The video became viral almost immediately, quickly generating over 100K views before YouTube/Google censored it (details here).
Last summer I created a Twitter account under that same pseudonym to help draw attention to what Google/YouTube had done. Due to my video’s success, my Twitter account attracted thousands of followers. After some consideration, my wife eventually convinced me that it was foolish not to take credit for a video that clearly struck a chord with so many, and for which I have nothing to be ashamed. I’ve changed the twitter account from @popcontest and @cakesecret to @husseymichael so you can follow me there, if you like.
Here is the video:
For the record, I did not vote in 2008 (first and last time I did was in 1996, for Bill Clinton). I subscribe to the Peter Thiel view that technology is the greatest practical force for freedom in the modern world, but the underlying philosophical ideas supporting individual rights matter the most.
Read More“I’m very much in favor of free market economics; probably quite a bit more liberal on most of the social issues; and I believe basically that individual freedom is very important, and that we live in a world in the 21st century where there will either be a lot more or a lot less; and that the politics matter and ideas matter because the choices people make will be of decisive importance in determining, you know, how the 21st century is gonna shape up. You know the 20th century was sort of a great and the terrible century at the same time. And I think the 21st has every indication of being far greater and far more terrible.”
Good news.
Patrick Nagle and I have agreed to partner up to re-focus and build RateMyTeachers.com. Patrick is well known for buying RateMyProfessors.com, improving it, and selling it to Viacom/MTVu. He is also the creator of Swooks (originally Switch Textbooks), a used textbook swap and sell service.
Stay tuned, for good things to come.