Over the Edge

When I was writing the FierceVoIP newsletter, I met the founders of GrandCentral. I'd been looking for a service like this for decades: a single phone number that could find me anywhere. That founders Vincent Paquet and Craig Walker are genuinely nice guys with a social conscience was icing on the cake.

Rumors had been flying for about a week, but the companies announced today that Google bought GrandCentral. Congrats to Craig and Vincent; it's nice to see good work pay off.

But why did Google want GrandCentral, anyway?

Google's stated goal is to organize the world's information. Its ability to do that with textual information worries me not at all, and its ability to do that with mapping and video doesn't really bother me, either. I'm a little bugged that I've given Google permission to follow me around the Web, but I can rationalize that by telling myself that it will help Google help me search.

But GrandCentral, used to its fullest, can associate me with phone numbers I call, phone numbers (and -- when they're in the GC phone book -- people and addresses) who call me. GrandCentral stores voicemails; doesn't Google do voice-to-text transcription, too? And when I pick up an incoming GrandCentral call, Google can then tell where I am at that very moment.

Total Information Awareness, indeed.

Consider that when a company or governmental entity (or, for that matter, a matrimonial lawyer) wants dirt on someone, the first thing they try to do is pull phone records. Phone records are incredibly revealing.

GrandCentral is a great service that can revolutionize the way you use your phone. But Google's owning it just kind of creeps me out. Maybe some things are better left unorganized.

People in and around mid-Atlantic states and Southeast. apparently know all about the Five Guys hamburger chain. But unlike the storied west coast In-n-Out restaurants that its fans fetishize, I've never picked up much buzz about Five Guys, though lord knows I've gone out of my way for an In-n-Out double-double. The chain just opened its second New York store, at 138 Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights (there's apparently another in College Point, Queens -- who knew?); it won't stay a secret up here for long. It wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to call Five Guys the East Coast In-n-Out.

It tough to judge a restaurant's operation in its first week. When I checked it out earlier today, there about five times as many workers as were strictly necessary to serve customers. Because of all the training -- and some of the trainees looked like they'd never seen a kitchen before -- food was a little slow coming out. (At least, it had better have been slower than usual; tomorrow's July 4 and there'll be about a quarter million people walking past the place's front door.) But when the food arrived, it proved to be well worth the wait.

First, the fries. Freshly cut, skinny, skin-on, fried in peanut oil. There was about 1000 pound of fresh potatoes, packed in 50 pound bags, stacked in the dining room. The burger patties are thin, about four inches in diameter; the standard burger is a double stack. Also fresh; they claim to not use frozen meat, and it tastes it. There's no "secret sauce," the way there is at In-n-Out, but there's a full range of condiments as well as A-1 and hot sauce. No condiment bar; they prepare the burgers to spec.

There will probably be some traffic flow problems at this particular store. You order at the front (two registers) and pick up at the back, where the place narrows. That's where the drinks fountain is, too, so there will almost certainly be a lot of pushing as people wait for their food and then fill their soda cups, then have to push their way back to the front of the place. There are 16 seats at tables and about the same number at counters along the front window and east wall.

Five Guys is up nine steps from the street. It's worth the climb. The place is across the street from Grand Canyon, a neighborhood hamburger-based diner that's been there since 1983. I love Grand Canyon and all things being equal, I'd rather support neighborhood businesses. But Five Guys is awfully good stuff, and my days at Grand Canyon may be numbered.

If you're not in Brooklyn or Queens, take heart: the web site says they're coming to Levittown on Long Island soon, and are already in the Albany area in Niskayuna and Glenmont, with Rensselaer coming.

What appeared to be a British aircraft carrier was docked tonight at Pier 7 in Brooklyn, where Atlantic Avenue meets the water.

I couldn't get particularly close because of a signicant NYPD presence (including an anti-terrorism van complete with a comlink disk), but the ship was flying a Union Jack at the front, sported an impressive array of communications gear at the top, and looked for all the world -- from street level, anyway -- to have a flight deck. Didn't catch any ship name or number, though...

Normally, Pier 7 only has the Casino St. Charles paddlewheeler docked there, so a warship was kind of odd. The usual news sources are silent about this. Anybody know anything else about it?

It was no secret that the media trade site mediabistro.com was for sale, and the asking price of $25 million was reported so widely that it was easily believable. But yesterday's word that the buyer (for $20 million now and maybe $3 million maybe later) was Alan Meckler and Jupitermedia was, well, pretty surprising.

Alan's a legit internet pioneer and visionary. He parlayed a print newsletter about library IT systems into the Internet World magazine and tradeshows -- one of the most successful expos of any kind in the world. He sold them at the peak, keeping the internet.com domain, then got into the stock photo and imagery business, where he's now one of the world's most successful purveyors of art. Alan's been quite forthright and pleased about the crazy-high profit margins in the stock art business, but his recent business activity shows a continuing affection for tech and the trade show business.

Then he went and shelled out $23 million for mediabistro -- big money for a site that pulls 50,000 unique visitors a month. The online consensus is that he's lost his mind.

I worked for Alan and I've competed with Alan. I like the guy. But Alan has never spent a nickel more on anything than he absolutely had to. I don't know what he saw in mediabistro that was worth that kind of money. I'm sure he likes the busy job board and the likelihood that a trade show or industry association could coalesce around the site. I'm certain he likes the seminar business. I doubt that he cares about the buzz that mediabistro's blogs work so hard to generate, with the probably exception of TVNewser, which is a must-read in that business and probably drives tons of traffic.

Alan's careful but not shy about posting on his blog (by the way, one of the first CEO blogs), and he's been silent about the purchase as of this writing. I'd like to know what he's thinking....