Ada on Startup Marketing (@adachen)

The Pacific Northwest has a lot more to it than just rain; it has amazing scenery and plenty of outdoorsy activities. I went on Cascade Loop last weekend on a drive with Sachin across the Cascade Mountains and into Eastern Washington. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking, and a great way to see the rest of Washington.

The drive is approximately 440 miles long, and takes a winding route east through the Cascade Foothills, across Stevens Pass, into some little towns towns, along Lake Chelan, and back on the North Cascades Highway – highlighted by Ross Lake and Diablo Lake. It’s worth stopping along the way. Leavenworth is a very cute, touristy Bavarian village that pretends that it’s from the Swiss Alps. The overall effect is charming! There is all this quaint atypical script lettering for chains such as Starbucks, Wells Fargo Bank etc. . . it reminded me of watching Shrek. Another town, Winthrop, looked as if it belonged in a Western movie.

Here’s another one, this time of Diablo Lake on the way back.

See more pictures, including one of Leavenworth. Read the rest of this entry »

In case you haven’t heard, Live Search is now officially live and getting attention.  Jeremy Zawodny did a test-drive and Businessweek had a favorable review on the Live Search experience.

Ada Chen

AllOfMp3.com may be reaching the end of its days with a new Russian law in place.  Uh oh!

I’ve become more and more reluctant to adopt products and services from smaller companies because in all likelihood they will have dramatic changes or not be able to stick around. A few that I love and use regularly are Pandora (music), Meebo (web-based IM), and Wikispaces.  

To reference my last post about Facebook, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg told everyone to calm down and breathe.  I agree with how it’s not a big deal (but still don’t like it), but what?! React to user response! Add an opt-out to ‘classic mode’ to view friends,  allow cancelling the stalkerfeeds if they want, and let everyone get used to it first.  I will say–now that I’ve gotten over my initial response, I think the Notes feature is pretty cool. It’s unearthing blogs from friends I know distantly that I didn’t even know had blogs.

Ada Chen