The C64 emulator has passed Apple’s review process and is now available in the app store. I just picked it up and I must say it’s very well done.

If you ever got the chance to use one of these beauties you’ll enjoy the flashback. And for you kids (said in my best “get off my lawn” voice), take a look at a life before Xbox.

More info over on Touch Arcade.

I just unfollowed 10,000 people on Twitter and boy are my arms tired. WAKKA WAKKA.

Actually thanks to SocialToo the process was fairly painless. For $25 they’ll run a script to remove all your followers and give you a fresh start. Since I was auto-following everyone back my list had basically become useless.

Thanks to massive Twitter spam and other crap, it had become an experience much like the pop-up wars of Internets past. An endless stream of bots, questionable marketing and get rich quick scams.

I actually opened a second “secret” Twitter account so I could follow a small group of folks I really wanted to listen to. Until now that account was the primary method I used to view the site. Sneaky I know.

But now my main @seanpercival account is once again enjoyable to use. I’ve run a few additional scripts to locate people I want to listen to, but if I missed you please let me know with an @reply msg. As long as you’re real and have something interesting to say, I’d be happy to listen.

Taken today while driving down the 10E.
Somewhere around Downtown Los Angeles.

Scorching temperatures continued to stoke wildfires across Southern California on Friday, creating anxious moments in the mountains north and east of Los Angeles, where thousands of residents fled flames that skipped through canyons, edging toward one neighborhood after another.

More than 2,700 firefighters and a small air force of air tankers and helicopters managed to stop the blazes before they swept into hillside housing tracts. But smoky air from the fires continued to create unhealthful conditions in parts of the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys.

-Via The Los Angeles Times

So I’m making an exit from my day job at Tsavo. If you’ve followed me long enough this probably isn’t a huge surprise. Three startups in under three years, not a great track record I know. But this is tech, the space moves fast and I’m just trying to keep up. Sometimes the only way to do that is by playing a little leap frog.

I had the experience of a lifetime with these startups. Along the way I learned a few things, did a few things right and have made my own share of mistakes. With each iteration I leveled up, doubled down and left with a new lens on pretty much everything. There is something unique about the startup environment, so unique that you might also call it fragile. Much like the software it produces, there are always challenges scaling its very existence. When you take a group of dynamic people and a few millions dollars you can’t always predict the outcome.

I’ll save you the back story and instead send out a big thanks to the teams at Tsavo I’ve had the pleasure to work with, both here in Santa Monica and our office up north. I’m really proud of the work I’ve done, but even more inspired but what I’ve seen others do. Together we learned how simple it can be to drive web traffic and make an inappropriate amount of money in the process. OK it’s actually needlessly complex, but that’s what makes it interesting, to me at least.

Not ready to announce what’s next, but I would assume you could hear about it first here.

(Tsavo office photo by RatherFancy)

I just got back from an amazing week down in the Caribbean on St Maarten Island. Those are my pale (now sun-burnt) feet in the sand there.

It had been a while since the wifey and I took a serious vacation, it was much needed. I took the opportunity to completely “unplug” and just slow down. I also got the chance to compose my thoughts on a few things. I’d thought I would share some of them here:

• Tune In, Stream Out: Tuning out for a week on Twitter, news, and the web in general helped me realize just how much I was over-consuming these days. Today’s activity streams are very easy to get lost in–I should say drown in. I’m hoping to be more mindful of how much time I spend with my various data sources.  I’m also continuing to look for more ways to optimize the experience, to surface the most important items and cut through the time-consuming noise. Less social networking = more actual working.
• Tech Should Probably Get Over Itself: The amount of news coming out of the tech/startup space is staggering. Since we built most of the new publishing tools we certainly love to use them, don’t we? Of course it’s smart to stay on top of the news, just don’t let it consume you. Big moves are big news, but everything is probably not very important. Don’t obsess over the details and the latest echo chamber trend.
• My Next Steps: Ever since Mike Jones and Mike Macadaan left for MySpace I’ve been getting lots of questions about my future with Tsavo. Of course losing some key staff can be devasting to any company, more so when they are as talented as these guys. Truth is, because of their work Tsavo is setting huge records in both traffic and revenue. It would make sense to stay the course and help see this company to a great exit. At the same time, I’m continuing to get approached for new opportunities each week. These are essentially what you might call dream jobs with epic salaries. It’s not a horrible position to be in, but a difficult one. Things will either change or they wont. If they do it’ll happen next week.
• My Own Thing: A few folks have also asked me why I don’t roll my own startup. Especially now that I’m sitting on some cash. Honestly there is nothing I want more. However like with love, timing is everything. I have big ideas, I just don’t think you’re ready for them. Maybe in 1-2 years.
• The $12 Startup: I received a great response to my story of the $12 startup. As I mentioned in the post, I want to share the details of how I did it. So I’m hoping to release a weekly post that walks you through each step. I’ll take you through it all, from picking a good domain name to SEO and even monetizing your website. I can already think of 100 techniques that are sure to help some of you.

As for now, its back to a life behind the screen. Although to me, the Internet has always been a paradise in its own right.

You can checkout some of my photos from the trip on Flickr.

Big news today, Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. Overall this is a huge win for Facebook, and a super smart buy. But what happens to FriendFeed?

I’ve been an active user since its inception, honestly, I really love the platform. However FriendFeed is a geeky toy, not something the mainstream is likely to go gaga over. It’s just too techie. Normal people want to simply consume content, not program feeds and build aggregated streams. Normal people like those on Facebook for example. So if you can somehow merge the right tech with the masses, you’ll have something really compelling. Best of luck to both teams and congrats all around.

But what is to become of FriendFeed.com? It remains for now but its future is uncertain. I present to you a terrifying look into the the Facebook inspired future. Click to enlarge, if you so dare.

The time has come to end the automatic direct messages on Twitter.

Yes, you’re welcome for the follow, but I’m not interested in your diet blog. You joined the Mafia, good for you but no thanks. Yes I know about Blip.fm, my friends won’t stop telling me about it. I’m sorry, who are you and why should I take your survey? Wow, you made that much $$$ by spamming Twitter? That is just AWESOME.

You get my point?

Please join Jesse Stay, Chris Brogan and many others by making a stink about it.

Here is what you can do:

• Send out a mighty tweet about the issue including the hashtag #endautodm
• Encourage friends who send you spammy DMs with a note back. Help them understand why this sucks. Or just block them.
• Use Seesmic desktop to report the worst offenders to @spam. Also go ahead and block them too. If any profile gets enough blocks it triggers spam filters at Twitter HQ.
• Be careful where you provide your Twitter login. Many services can tweet on your behalf without you knowing it. When in doubt do a Twitter search for the service’s name, look for any complaints or spammy activity.

Of course those tips can help, but they won’t fix the problem. Marketers will be marketers, users slow to understand their own noise levels.

As @jesse has pointed out before, the openness of Twitter’s API is usually to blame here. We need more granular controls to adjust the volume across social services like Twitter. Starting with a mute button for services that want to annoy us to death.

From Zuno -

Twiistup 6 panel “Leveraging the Social Web”. This session focused on being authentic and connecting with your audience in a natural meaningful way with insights from some of the most powerful leaders in social media.

Panelist include, Chris Brogan President of New Marketing Labs, Micah Baldwin starter of #FollowFriday and Ben Huh Chief Cheese Burger of Icanhascheezeburger.com. The panel was moderated by Sean Percival.

The beginning of the story of how I built a profitable web business for $12 and sold it for $100,000.

Despite always being very technical, some 10 years ago I found myself working as a janitor cleaning office buildings. One of those offices happened to belong to Vegas.com, one of the larger vacation sites of the first bubble. Each night I’d arrive there after midnight, only the find the office packed and full of energy. Employees were playing pinball, drinking Mountain Dew and occasionally doing some code. The boss would put his feet on his desk, smoke cigars and build his various digital empires. The vibe was intoxicating, I knew it was for me.

So after a string of IT and small web jobs, some 10 years later I was finally there. Although Red Bull has replaced Mountain Dew, and bosses do more tweeting than smoking these days, the experience is still equally unique. In 2 short years I edged my way into a few startups here in Los Angeles, starting with Mahalo, then Docstoc and finally Tsavo. I picked these companies for two reasons mostly, to gain experience from some of the best entrepreneurs in the area, but also to be part of quick (and hopefully profitable) exit. I felt those startups were “built to flip” and could sell quickly, but due to the economy and other influences, well, I swung and missed three times.

However all this time I was also pushing my own silly web dreams on the side. I tried about a dozen different ideas, some made money, some never even got off the ground. I affectionately called these $12 startups because I essentially launched them for just the cost of the domain name itself. Once the site started to generate revenue I’d roll some profits back into it, growing the property further.

One of those ideas was an e-commerce site selling what can best be described as a niche automotive part. I had no experience in the space, but figured I’d learn what I needed along the way. I had no idea that would cover everything from programming to SEO, and of course social media marketing. Developing these skills not only helped the business (it became profitable within two days) but the exercise gave me great skill set. And guess what, I finally got my exit. I just sold that silly idea for $100,000.

Sure $100,000 is not much compared to what some startups go for, but when your investment is so low, and you’re the sole shareholder, that represents a great return on my initial investment of $12 and one weekend to build the site.

So as you try to push your own digital dreams, remember sometimes the simplest ideas can be the best. While it may be exciting to build the next real-time-location based-micro blogging-mashup, perhaps it would be better to create something more tangible, both in terms of product and profitability.

In fact I hope to show you how it’s done.

Stay tuned.

Yes Twitter has a new homepage, and it’s beautiful.

Search is BIG now, as it should be. Current tweet trends are dramatically but eloquently exposed. Over all it’s a huge win for Twitter.

Logout to see it for yourself. Oh and be sure to run a few queries or click through on some of the trends. You’ll notice the search pages (or SERPs) have also had some work done. They look even better and offer data on why some topics are currently trending.

From the official blog:

Twitter began as a rudimentary social tool based on the concept of status messages but together with those who use it every day, the service has taught us what it wants to be. From features invented by users to applications built on the platform, we’re still discovering potential. Twitter has moved from simple social networking into a new kind of communication and a valuable source of timely information. Also, it’s fun.

That it is.

What’s also fun is completely leapfrogging Google to create the ultimate real time search product. Cheers to that.

What Others Are Saying:

• LA Times
• TechCrunch