I started this post around ‘tone’ but realized it’s much larger than that. I pride myself on honesty, transparency, and hard work, but I find myself coming back to privacy and censorship. Is open better? I oauth everything. Websites, mobile applications, and every startup in the world without a moment of reflection.

I’ve been an advocate of ‘sharing is caring‘ and ‘what do you have to hide‘, but those principles aren’t exactly the same when it comes to your personal blog. Is there a connection between tone and privacy? Should my new home abide within or without those rules of consideration? And, is there much difference between sharing every moment on a social network and your personal blog? Social is connected, but at least it’s buried with additional layers of friendship requests and privacy settings. How does that sit within your personal blog, website, followers, and more importantly producing meaningful and thought provoking content that friends and interesting people across the web can discuss?

I don’t think i’m alone. It’s ‘fight club’. Rule #1. As entrepreneurs, you can’t talk openly about tone and public censorship. Entrepreneurs with social presence and regular website content generally outperform those without. I can’t be the only one starting to struggle, constantly rethinking content censorship.

A good friend states “If it’s over thought, it’s not natural, genuine, or you”. Another friend claims to “Don’t over-think it, just do it. Speak your mind — what’s the worst that can happen? You lose a few angels, some negative press, staff members, board gets pissed? So what.”

I read an article last week about Andrew Mason. Groupon had a town hall to address company spending habits and Andrew fumbled a few words, and quickly covered by joking he had consumed too many beers. Those words were leaked, and before the end of the townhall, twitter was trending with ‘Groupon CEO drunk at the wheel’. Talk about PR nightmare. Regardless of your thoughts on the Groupon business model, it’s another tough break for Andrew, and a perfect example about censorship and how quickly things can be taken out of context and escalate rather quickly. I’m sure he’d love a mulligan, maybe not?

I can’t help but think about Paul Grahams recent quote around regret, and more specifically regrets of the dying – “Don’t ignore your dreams; don’t work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.”

Could or should these same principles be applied to your strategic presence, tone, privacy, and censorship on the web? I think it hangs somewhere in the balance of transparency with borders. Over time, it should auto correct itself.

Would love to hear how other entrepreneurs, CEO’s, and startups handle and address public censorship. What frameworks, rules, overall tone, privacy, and censorship’s do you live by? How do you break the divide from personal and business life. Can both worlds co-exist?

• Ziplocal didn’t work out, senior leadership sent packing on a Thursday (3rd week of May??). That was actually awesome. Thanks for the one of the best summers of my life.
• I moved out of the dark dungeon apartment into a larger space on granville and robson. Best thing about this place? The huge windows that not only bring in so much daylight, but provide endless whiteboard real-estate.
• During the summer I picked up various contract gigs including work with Hootsuite, food.ee, and Invoke.
• Wrapped up a few other contract gigs, and started to spend more time with the Invoke crew.
• Fast fwd a few months, and I joined the Invoke startup program to work on a second screen/social tv startup. I’ll save all of the details for another post.
• My girlfriend is now on the internet
• Started daily vlog, but had vlog fatigue after 23 days
• Pinterest got huge
• Went to CES
• Quit GroupMe and any other time/phone battery sucks
• Jon Cartwright has convinced me to get a bike (i’m looking for a bike right now, got one?)
• Instagram sold for a bill
• Hired dream team
• Finally updated website

Turns out these guys are based out of Australia, but the delivery time was under 8 days. I don’t think there’s such thing as the perfect wallet, but these guys know what they are doing and offer other wallets that will exceed your expectations.

Pros:

• Quality – from the packaging to the intricate stitching, the marksmanship reeks of effort
• Design – super sexy drool design
• Zipper – no more lost cards, money, or photos
• Price – you wont lose your shirt, great price point

Cons:
None, just be careful when closing the zipper with lots of cash in there. This rule applies to any wallet with a zipper.

Final Say
Fantastic Wallet!! My wallet was slightly damaged during shipping, but this is the best wallet i’ve ever used. I would highly recommend this wallet and other bellroy products!

After selling my Mac G5 Tower, I walked down to the Vancouver Apple store and purchased a 13′ Mac Book Pro. I was really torn between the 13′ and 15′, but finally decided on the 13′ as I wanted something small and portable. I need the laptop for day to day use including djing, coding, and making beats. The 13′ comes with 2 gigs of ram and a 5200 rpm 128 gig hard drive, something I wanted to upgrade right away. I used my student discount and apple upgraded my ram from 2 to 4 gigs (in 10 minutes as i played with the beautiful 30′ apple cinema screens.. *drool*).

I found it really strange apple doesn’t offer a 7200 rpm drive on their 13′ models, I suppose they want everyone to upgrade to the 15′ model. Anyways, i spent a few days researching different 2.5 hard drives and finally decided on the Seagate 500 gig 7200 rpm hard drive. I wanted a 7200 rpm hd for music and video editing, and all of the seagate tests blew everything else out of the water. Big warning for those that are looking to upgrade, DO NOT BUY THE ASG MODEL, this model will cause mega problems and headaches. Tons of people had problems after upgrading, including loud noises, vibrations, and random beeps. If you plan on upgrading to this specific hard drive, make sure you buy the non anti shock drive. New egg offers the best prices, but make sure you read the small print and ensure you purchase the right model.

The actual installation process is super straight forward. Equipment wise, all you need is a small screwdriver set, and a torx 6 screwdriver. After removing the bottom cover, i realized i didn’t have the torx 6 screwdriver. I ended up borrowing the screwdriver from London Drugs (thanks buddy that works in computer department on Robson St). Check out the screenshots below, it should only take 5 minutes to swap out the hard drives.

After swapping out the drive, I booted up, formatted the drive, and installed snow leopard. After 45 minutes, the installation was complete and i was back up and running. It’s been a few weeks and still no beeps, pops, or errors with the new hard drive. There were a few errors, but they were quickly resolved with a pram reset and repairing disk permissions via disk utilities. The process is is very straight forward, save time and money, save some money and upgrade the drive yourself!

edit: now installing firmware update to allow SATA 3Gbps transfer - http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacBook_Pro_EFI_Firmware_Update_1_7_

Some useful mac utilities:

• http://osx.iusethis.com/ – Nice little site for finding useful apps
• NTFS-3G – read/write ntfs partitions. Should come in handy for bootcamp users. Works great and is stupid easy to install.
• AppFresh – Keep your apps up to date
• AppCleaner - Completely remove an app including all its settings and other files like those kept in Library
• Adium – IM
• Grow – notifications
• Perian – QT plugin for other media types. This didn’t work that well for me. I still prefer VLC.
• iStat Pro – system monitoring widget.
• iStat Menus – I really like the network monitor and the hard drive activity. You can set it up to display the little color coded activity arrows to mimic the function of a hdd activity led. I really miss my hard drive light and this works just fine. It also displays temps which you can compare to this list of temps
• Onyx – multifunction utility. maintenance
• TinkerTool – easy access to hidden settings and preferences.
• The Unarchiver – It’s no winrar but then again what is.
• ClamXav – antivirus
• coconutBattery – all sorts of neat battery info
• Handbrake – great transcoding utiltiy though I mostly use it on my quad core PC.
• JollysFastVNC – It’s much faster than the built in vnc client and has an interesting zoom mode.
• iStumbler – find wifi hot spots.

If you are in the market for new dj headphones, you’ve come to the right place! I have listed the most popular ones with some user reviews, specs, prices, and pictures. Headphone technology is constantly evolving and things have changed since the last time I shopped for them. Companies are using new materials, new manufactures are born, and new models are created to compete with competitors. The average dj will go through a set of headphones every 12-18 months, hopefully this guide will help you choose the correct headphones for you’re budget and daily needs.

Technics RP-DJ1210
[rating:4.5]
Retail Price:
$149.95
Lowest Price:
$114.59 – amazon.com
Pros: These headphones are tanks and very well priced. I’ve personally used and abused these headphones for 5 years, and only recently have they started to diminish in the functionality and cosmetic departments. The best feature about this headphone is the pivot lock feature. It allows you to move the headphone in different positions and lock em. This is super handy if you like to dj with the headphones resting on your neck vs wearing the actual headphones. They are loud and sound clear at high levels – perfect for club environments. Available in two colours, black and purple or black and silver.
Cons: Small headphone cups – some people like the larger headphones to cover the entire ear (I still found these headphones blocked outside noises very well). Some people don’t like the purple design.

Sony MDR-V700DJ
[rating:4]
Retail Price:
$149.99
Lowest Price:
$89.88 – buy.com
Pros: The cups fully cover your ears. They do a very good job of blocking out external sounds. On a recent plane ride, the headphones successfully defended us from nearby passenger’s and baby cries without forcing us to crank the volume. This is an industry fav.
Cons: Large cups, they might feel too big and might not feel right for every person. They are known as an industry favorite but these headphones are known to break and crack at the swivel joints making it near impossible to wear them (no longer enough support to hold the headphone in place).

Pioneer HDJ-1000
[rating:4]
Retail Price: $200.00
Lowest Price: $129.99 – amazon.com
Pros: Pioneer is a well established brand with quality dj products such as the CDJ series and DJM mixer series. They look and sound awesome.
Cons: Lots of people have problems with cracked joints and the headband becoming detached from the earpiece after 1 year of use. These headphones are still my fav to mix with, and I would encourage anyone to go for them, but if you do.. you have to accept that if you use them a fair amount they will have a pretty short lifespan.

Pioneer HDJ-2000
[rating:1]
Retail Price: 299.00 Euros inc VAT
Lowest Price: $290.66 USD – ebay
Pros: Pioneer is a well established brand, these headphones are the predecessor of the popular HDJ-1000s.
Cons: Price, way way way too expensive. Someone needs to tell Pioneer about the current economy struggle the world is facing. New product, limited reviews and overall uncertainty if product can withhold everyday wear and tear of dj abuse. Not too thrilled about the look, pioneer product usually have a sleek wow finish, something that is lacking here.

Sennheiser HD280s
[rating:3.5]
Retail Price: $199.95
Lowest Price: $99.90 – buy.com
Pros: The sound quality is stunning and all the parts are replaceable. Good price.
Cons: Ear cups can get a bit warm with extended use amd the headstrap is weak and cracks after a few months of use, its obvious these are likely the best sounding headphones on the market, but they will break very easily especially if you are careless and throw your headphones about.

AKG 181
[rating:3]
Retail Price: $279.00
Lowest Price: $159.00 – djdeals.com
Pros: Very comfortable and looks sharp. The mono/stereo option, detachable three-pin cable and (maybe) even the cheesy, left & right earcup “large/small club ambiance” [bass boost] switches might prove useful for some.
Cons: Doesn’t live up to the AKG name. Lackluster and pricey given the middling audio detail resolution, muddy bass response and flat soundstage imaging. Check out the much better-priced and better-sounding AKG K-81 (as seen within this review) if seeking a great sealed-design, portable-application headphone with solid audio performance.

AKG K 81 DJ
[rating:3.5]
Retail Price: $99.00
Lowest Price: $69.00 – djdeals.com
Pros: Typical AKG top notch sound quality at an amazing price! The K-81DJ’s mid-sized, supra-aural earcups rest on top of the ears with nicely plushy pleather-covered earpads that rotate 180 degrees, perfect for fast-paced DJ mono mixing with one ear or for just keeping your head on a swivel when you need to remain aware of your surroundings.
Cons: Headphone cables and overall quality would suit this as great headphones for the house or in the studio, but might not be the best option for clubland.

Again, the price and quality depends on the individual user and their requirements. Use this guide as an educational and unbiased reference with reviews from myself, friends, and other djs. The headphones I included within this review are the most popular headphones within the industry. If you feel I’m missing a model or would like to contribute your own person review, add your comments and let me know.