Below are the most recent 2 friends' journal entries.

Thursday, August 14th, 2008
news [ theljstaff ]	4:59p	Basic Accounts, India, and LiveJournal Inc. Development Goals and Basic Accounts Last week we updated our development goals for 2008. Generally we noted a number of cool enhancements and investments to LiveJournal that we are working on, including improved search, usability, and site development. We also wanted to let you know how we hope to accomplish all these things, and how we plan on paying for them. In order to accomplish our stated goals for this year and beyond, we need to increase the revenue gained from both groups of LiveJournal accounts: paid subscription accounts and ad-supported accounts. As of August 28th, all users will be able to choose to downgrade their account to Basic through their Manage Account page. Additionally, we will start showing advertising to visitors who are not logged in to LiveJournal when they are looking at Basic Account journals and communities. Basic Account users themselves will not see ads on any Basic journal or community while they are logged in to their account. If you want more information about this, take a look at our new post on lj_2008 where we outline our reasoning. Indian Flash Fiction Contest In other news, we are excited to tell you we've launched "Quick Tales" LiveJournal's first initiative for users in India, in celebration of India Independence day, August 15th. "Quick Tales" is a flash fiction writing contest in which we're partnering with Caferati.com, one of India's largest online literary communites. The contest's winners will receive some great prizes and it is open to anyone with a mailing address in India. We hope that users with an interest in Indian writing or just India will watch LiveJournal's india_writing community. That's where the finalists and winners will be announced, so keep an eye on it towards the end of September! If you're in India then enter the contest - if your story is slick and quick (under 500 words) then you could be the lucky winner! Meanwhile, back at LiveJournal Inc. We have updated and redesigned our corporate site. The goal of the redesign was twofold: first, to update the look and feel (Dystopia users will appreciate it!); second, we want to provide a destination for prospective employees, partners, and members of the press where they can access important information about the company. Kudos to our design team. (710 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 7th, 2008
joel	1:15p	Seattle: Day 1 Woke up at 05h45, left my apartment at 06h00. Arrived at SFO at approximately 07h15, not bad considering that the N Judah was delayed on the way to Civic Center station. After clearing the checkpoint, I took some photographs of the brave men and women of the Department of Homeland Security. These men and women put their lives on the line every day to preserve our freedoms and protect America! As I was taking a few pictures, an officer informed me that taking pictures was not allowed, she walked up and tried to grab my camera. It's no wonder that these brave men and women are unappreciated, how can they be appreciated if we can't take pictures of them in action? My flight was the first time I've flown Virgin America. What a fantastic airline! It doesn't really get better than playing video games while in flight. I took a bus from SEA to Pioneer Square in Downtown Seattle. The Seattle Transit Tunnel is quite impressive! I didn't really know where I was or have any plans about what to do - I was reminded of my arrival in Paris, except I could read the signs. I eventually found my way to Trabant Coffee, I was lured inside because of a sign outside that was advertising iced coffee made from a Clover coffee machine, I was intregued because of the article in Wired magazine about the Clover. The iced coffee didn't taste espically good, but I really appreciated being able to sit down and use the WiFi to plan out my day. I was able to figure out that I was only a couple of blocks from the Seattle Underground and the Smith Tower. I also surprised to find that my friend Tom Music was only a few blocks away at a co-working space. I decided to just show up at Giraffe Labs to visit Tom Music. Tom wasn't there when I arrived, but I did meet Anders Conbere, Theodore Nordsieck and Nathan Kaiser who are all very cool people. Even though I was in a new city and kept thinking that I should probably be doing some sightseeing, I ended up spending several hours at Giraffe Labs - it's the most comfortable co-working space I've been to yet. I went to a local cafe that I found on Yelp called Zeitgeist. I had a fantastic sandwich, ran into Theo again, met up with Adam and Kathleen and went to the Seattle Underground tour. The tour was far better than I had imagined. I was expecting the usual tacky tour used to push merchandising. Instead, we had a man named Rick Boetel as our tour guide. Rick had an astonishing working knowledge of the history of the underground that made the tour very intriguing. He was very open to questions and used them as excuses to delve into fascinating side stories. After the tour was over, Tom, Adam, Kathleen and I went back to the Trabant cafe to sit around and talk. When we got to the cafe, we found that they were closed. One of their employees, a barista named Alex was preparing for a barista competition. However, instead of turning us away, we were invited into Trabant to sample the drinks that Alex was making. As Alex made drinks, we chatted with a friendly lady named Tatiana. It wasn't until after we left that I realized that Tatiana owns Trabant with her husband - I just assumed she was a co-worker who was sticking around to help Alex. While Alex was making drinks, Tatiana gave us all a behind the counter demonstration of how their Clover worked. I had a hot coffee this time, it could be the hype, but it was one of the best cups of coffee I've ever tasted. Tatiana and Alex were so friendly and amicable that we ended up spending over an hour chatting with them and tasting Alex's drinks - he had a specialty drink that was amazing, flavors like I've never tasted before. After leaving Trabant, we walked Tom back to his car. Adam, Kathleen and I then went to an indian resturant for dinner then took a cab back to the house where Adam and Kathleen live. I met the roommates, a cool group of people. I had a great time talking to one of the roommates named Aaron who is a Hadoop expert. Adam and I were up until about 2am discussing Big Ideas. It's far to late in the day, it's time for me to leave the house now. (Comment on this)