Kevin Warnock

The Red Shoes movie poster, 1948

Last night I watched The Red Shoes on Blu-Ray Disc.

What a beautiful movie. The colors are astonishing. This is a Technicolor movie — the most beautiful Technicolor movie I’ve ever seen.

“What — but you don’t have a TV Kevin!”

I didn’t have a TV — now I do. After going several years without a television, I broke down and bought a modest Vizio flat panel set. It was the cheapest set at Costco in the size I wanted, which is large enough for house movie nights at home with my four roommates. I installed it over the fireplace in the living room between my beloved Polk SDA SRS speakers I bought new in 1986.

My new television is a liquid crystal display model. The plasma sets that were even cheaper looked miserable by comparison — gray and washed out. I was shocked. The Vizio looked just as good as the LCD set at twice the price immediately adjacent to it. Why would someone buy that set I wondered?

The really impressive purchase though wasn’t the flat panel, it was the Vizio Blu Ray player, at just USD $119.00. This player includes Vizio ‘apps’ software applications. The Vizio apps allow you access to Netflix, Vudu and Pandora Internet services via your television using the Blu-Ray remote control. I already had a Netflix account, and it was easy to activate so that it’s accessible from the Blu-Ray player.

The quality of the streaming is just shy of Blu-Ray quality, and much better than standard DVD quality. I am impressed. I have only had the system stop playback for buffering once in about 10 hours of use so far. The online reviews are mixed. Some have trouble keeping the player connected to Wi-Fi and have to go through setup every time they turn the unit on. I had to go through setup twice, but only twice. I read that current firmware fixes the problem, so maybe my unit has the current firmware. I have 90 days to exchange the unit at Costco, so I’m not worried.

Dinner and movie night on my still fledgling urban homestead is Sunday night. We watched the first two episodes of the cable television drama Mad Men. I am already hooked on the show and I had never seen it before. I haven’t had a cable television subscription since mid 2008. The savings from canceling cable paid several times over for my new Vizio TV and disc player. The cable companies really should fear Netflix, which could well put them out of business over the next decade.

Vizio E470VLE LCD television

For dinner, we made jambalaya for the main course. We had watermelon for desert and Whirley Popped popcorn during the Mad Men episodes.

Now, back to The Red Shoes.

I rented this movie because reportedly it’s one of Martin Scorsese’s favorite movies, and I like Scorsese.

Here’s the abstract from Wikipedia:

The Red Shoes (1948) is a British feature film about a ballet dancer, written, directed and produced by the team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, known collectively as The Archers. The movie employs the story within a story device, being about a young ballerina who joins an established ballet company and becomes the lead dancer in a new ballet called The Red Shoes, itself based on the fairy tale “The Red Shoes” by Hans Christian Andersen. The film stars Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook and Marius Goring and features Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine and Ludmilla Tchérina, renowned dancers from the ballet world, as well as Esmond Knight and Albert Basserman. It has original music by Brian Easdale and cinematography by Jack Cardiff, and is well regarded for its creative use of Technicolor. Filmmakers such as Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese have named it one of their all time favorite films.

I am not a movie critic, so I hesitate to try to review this movie. My long ago girlfriend Muire Dougherty has a degree in film from San Francisco State University, and she didn’t think much of the last film I tried to critique, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I rewatched that movie 20 years later, and she was right that the movie wasn’t very good. I just checked on WikiPedia and it says the author of the book on which that movie is based was so unhappy with the result that he never allowed any further adaptations of his writing.

I’m pretty sure Dougherty would approve of The Red Shoes, but I can’t tell you why with authority. I thought about Muire because when we dated she used the first name Moira rather than her real first name Muire, and the star of The Red Shoes is Moira Shearer. I don’t know and have never known anyone else with the name Moira.

I give The Red Shoes my highest rating even though I can’t properly explain why.

Sunset Magazine Celebration Weekend 2011, Menlo Park, California USA

I’ve been dreaming since 2008 or 2009 of creating ecologically conscious homes from ocean shipping containers. I independently came up with the idea of using shipping containers to make eco homes. I soon discovered others thought of doing so many years earlier. I arrived at the idea after reading about Tumbleweed houses, which I love.

In late May 2011 I learned of a company that’s already creating backyard cottages from recycled shipping containers. I found out about HyBrid Architecture Assembly by listening to KQED radio, the National Public Radio affiliate in San Francisco, California USA, where I live.

One of the sponsors of KQED is Sunset Magazine, and each year that home and garden periodical puts on an event at its Menlo Park, California headquarters. Menlo Park is about a 45 minutes drive South of San Francisco. Sunset Magazine advertised its Sunset Magazine Celebration Weekend 2011 show this year by adding the tantalizing news that a ‘shipping container house’ would be on display.

I have never been to a Sunset Magazine event, but this year I attended.

I was impressed by the interest in the displayed shipping container house — the line to tour the home was a city block long at times, as you can see in the photo above. I would say this container house was the most popular attraction at the show except for the Ikea cooking stage, where I estimate over a hundred people could sit at once to watch a live cooking show in a real outdoor Ikea kitchen set up just for the event.

With the intent to blog about it, I took some pictures of the container home and shot an exterior video clip, walking around the perimeter of the house once.

One of the owners of HyBrid didn’t seem to appreciate my enthusiasm for his company’s product, and asked me on video what architecture firm I was with. When I told him I was a blogger, he asked for my card. I don’t carry a blogger card yet, so I gave him my photographer card.

I ran into this same owner at the PCBC building industry trade show at Moscone Center June 22-24, 2011.

The HyBrid owner saw me in the hallway, recognized me and asked me again for my contact information. He handed me his cell phone and asked me to key in my cell number, which I did. He asked me to stop by his shipping container home, the Sunset display model which was now on display at PCBC. He said he had a proposal for me.

I was surprised, as I didn’t see how he knew enough about me to propose anything. But since I had given him my card at the Sunset show, I thought perhaps he had been reading my blog and had learned I’m fascinated by shipping container homes. I was looking forward to making a new friend.

Later that afternoon, I stopped by the container house and the owner asked me to sit down at one of the chairs in the garden.

I started off by introducing myself, and told him I do not build and have decided not to build shipping container homes.

The owner then explained his company’s designs are copyrighted and that if I copied them he would… at which point he stopped his sentence, leaving me to guess the rest of the sentence. My best guess is:  “sue me for copyright infringement.”

He said that the designs for his house took 10,000 (sic) hours to create and perfect. He claimed that the tolerances in the specifications are so tight that in some places if an item were moved by just 1/4 of an inch that the house would not pass building inspections. He went into detail about the sliding ‘barn door’ made from metal that hangs from a track above but does not run in an opposing track at the base. He said that design is the only way to pass code, as inspectors worry a bottom track will trip people passing through the barn door.

I was shocked.

I had told him up front I was specifically not going to start a shipping container housing company, yet he still felt threatened enough that he intimated he would pursue legal action against me if I used his company’s plans, which I did not and do not have.

This was the first and only time I have been so overtly threatened in business, even though he was somewhat covert.

What is particularly curious about this encounter is that I don’t believe that a US Copyright would prevent anyone from manufacturing exact or similar copies of a house. I think multiple United States patents would be required, both design patents and utility patents.

Design patents, to my knowledge, are easy to get around. I think that’s why so many different companies are able to legally make smart phones that look very similar to the iconic Apple iPhone. If there were a legal form of protection to stop these similar looking phones, I have no doubt that Apple would vigourously pursue such protection.

I am 99.9% sure I am correct that a US Copyright is of no value in keeping me or anyone from making houses like those made by the company that is the focus of this post. If I learn otherwise, I will write a follow up to correct this post.

This owner said he earlier had visited my blog and noted I had not posted anything about his company. He asked me not to post anything about his company.

I asked him if I could write about his company if I sent him the copy in advance for his approval, and he said I may.

I have reflected on this strange encounter for a over a month now, and I have decided that I will not write the enthusiastic and favorable piece I had planned to write before this encounter.

I consider myself a journalist, as I have written here before, so I strive to write posts that reflect the truth.

I think that the owner did not handle me well. From the moment he encountered me at the Sunset event, I identified myself as a blogger, so I am perplexed that he did not act with particular restraint, even if he was worried I might some day ‘compete’ with his business in Seattle, Washington, two states away from California, where I live.

I was a fan and was planning to write a really nice article, with high quality photos and video. There aren’t too many independent blog stories about his shipping container house, and I would think he would be thrilled to have someone like me write about it. Instead, what he now has earned is a not so nice article that raises questions.

In my mind HyBrid should welcome press coverage and competitors with open arms, as I believe the field of container housing suffers from its poor visibility. More companies in more locations advancing the concept can only help the cause.

The best thing that could happen to HyBrid is for hundreds of vibrant and profitable companies to spring up making homes from shipping containers.

I continue to be interested in shipping container homes, but I can’t take on creating a manufacturing company right now, as I am too busy with my current company, my chickens, my fish, my garden, my photography and my social life.

I don’t want to tangle with HyBrid, so I have deliberately not linked to their site or named the division that actually makes the house in question. I also have not named the founder, out of concern for his venture. I want him and his company to be wildly successful. I would be thrilled if he sells a million units a year.

The lesson of this strange encounter:

Do not try to intimidate journalists and/or potential competitors you should be making friends with and encouraging.

Move video by Rick Mereki, 2011

Every so often I encounter a video that I like so much that I recommend it to my readers.

The video by Rich Mereki I show below doesn’t make me cry like the just linked to video did and still does. The video below is fun and inspiring.

Mereki’s work was covered in The Huffington Post.

Here’s the abstract from Vimeo, where the video is hosted:

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage… all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ….into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films…..

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

I learned about this video on Digg or Reddit.

APHIDoIDEA shipping container complex

I am a fan of the website Grist because a few weeks ago the editors linked to my blog post The Cube Project – a net zero tiny house in the United Kingdom from their front page.

Many people visit Grist, and I was fortunate to receive a lot of traffic. Thank you Grist.

I wasn’t familiar with Grist until they started sending me lots of visitors. I looked around the site and found some gems, including a brief piece about a Los Angeles think tank that has developed plans for an environmental education center. The center would be built from shipping containers that are not at right angles to each other, as you can see in the computer model above. This ranks this project in my mind as the craziest shipping container project I’ve yet encountered.

Here’s a snippet of what Grist has to say about the wacky concept illustrated in the above graphic.

An LA-based design think tank called APHIDoIDEA has an idea about how to build an environmental education center that practices what it preaches. They imagined an Environmental Center of Regenerative Research & Education — or eCORRE — Complex that would teach visitors about green ideas like solar energy and passive cooling techniques. It would have classrooms, offices, an exhibition hall and a public plaza. Here’s the cool part: the building would be made of 65 shipping containers.

Read more and see more pictures on Grist.

Since about 2005 I have been a Venture Coach at the Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology at the College of Engineering at University of California at Berkeley.

I haven’t done much coaching recently, but when I was helping out regularly, it was a lot of fun. I sometimes had groups of six students in my office. The last time I met with students as a Venture Coach was in 2010.

I will make a special effort to participate in more events this coming academic year. I am very impressed with the quality of ideas from Berkeley’s engineering students.

One of the prototypes I saw in about 2006 particularly impressed me. A team made a refrigerator compressor as small as half my thumb. The compressor used so little electricity it could be powered by a single solar panel, yet it was so capable it could cool down an ice chest like you would take to the beach. The entire solar powered refrigerator would be able to be sold for USD $100.

I don’t know what became of the concept. I still think it’s a great idea. The team had in mind selling these eco refrigerators in the developing world, but I think they would sell well in much of the world, including at Target and Amazon. Who wouldn’t want to dispense with ice on a day at the beach?

Harbor Freight metal shear, press brake and slip roll machine

I’ve been aware of chain hoists for most of my life. Today for the first time I used a chain hoist — a very useful device.

I didn’t think I had a need for a hoist. I once thought I needed one so I could lift boxes into the attic for storage. It turned out it was practical to carry the boxes up a ladder, so I donated to Goodwill Industries of San Francisco the electric Harbor Freight hoist I had purchased for the attic project.

Yesterday I discovered I had a new and immediately pressing need for a hoist. I regretted I had donated the brand new electric hoist to charity. But after today, I am thrilled I donated the electric hoist, because I now know the wonders of a manual hoist.

I paid about USD $40.00 for a brand new 1 ton Harbor Freight chain hoist. This weighs 22 pounds — I received tremendous value for my money. The hoist was on sale for $44.95 but I had a 20% off coupon that brought the price down.

I needed a hoist because yesterday I bought a heavy machine tool that weighs 300 pounds. The staff at Harbor Freight in Pleasant Hill, California loaded it into my car trunk. They had a hydraulic scissor lift table to wheel the machine to the edge of my trunk lip, and then they just tilted it in, without having to ever really lift it.

When I got home, even with three of my roommates helping, I could not safely remove the machine from my trunk. I became scared we might drop it on our feet, so I called off the attempt once I fully appreciated just how heavy 300 pounds is, particularly when it’s in a large wooden crate you can’t really grasp. Thank you to my roommates for trying to help me. I appreciate your willingness to help and your enthusiasm for living here.

I headed back to Harbor Freight with the crate still sticking out of the trunk at 45 degrees.

I got the hoist, a D anchor with a 10,000 pound limit and some lashing straps. I used two 4 inch 1/4 x 20″ lag bolts to screw the D anchor into a 2 x 12″ floor joist in my garage. I positioned my trunk directly under the anchor and hooked the hoist the the D anchor. Then I wrapped two lashing straps around the wooden crate and hooked them over the hoist load hook.

Harbor Freight chain hoist

With a full face protective shield on, I pulled on the ‘up’ chain. For every foot of travel of this chain, I estimate the load chain moved about half an inch.

What’s so great about a chain hoist is you can safely let go at any time and the load will not fall. To lower the load, you pull slightly on the ‘up’ side of the chain and then begin to pull the ‘down’ side of the chain. You can let go at any point and the load will stay put.

I pulled the box all the way out of the trunk and then drove the car forward a few feet. I returned to the hoist and lowered the crate to the floor and detached the hoist. I didn’t need to bother my roommates at all, and I felt safe during the entire process.

I will leave the D anchor attached the ceiling in case I ever need to lift anything else out of my trunk.

I plan to keep the hoist, as it will no doubt be useful for some of the projects I’ve been dreaming about building.

I’ll write a separate post about the heavy machine tool I now have in my garage.

I’ve written about Harbor Freight before.

Harbor Freight is a magical tool store that inspires me to try to do great things. Home Depot and Lowes as tool stores are pathetic. Of course those large retailers sell mostly items that are not tools, so I still do shop at those stores more often than I like to admit.

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I had an unusual trip to the bank today. As I was heading back to my car in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California USA, three Chinese women traveling together asked me for directions to the De Young museum. I pointed them in the correct direction and walked with them a distance.

I mentioned to Lisa that I had a great time during my 2005 trip to China, when I visited Wuhan and Beijing. I can’t recall Lisa’s Chinese name.

By the end of our conversation Lisa had invited me to visit her in Beijing, where she lives. What a nice gesture. Thank you Lisa.

I expect to hear from Lisa as she asked for my card so she could email me. I gave her my card and I’m looking forward to receiving her email.

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Ultimate bachelor pad found on Airbnb (photo from jeremyperson.com)

On July 30, 2011 I wrote a long post about Airbnb. I used to be an active Airbnb host so I’m still on their email list. On August 1, 2011 I received a lengthy email from Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, which I reproduce in double quotes at the bottom of this post.

Starting August 15, 2011 Airbnb will offer hosts a USD $50,000 guaranteed against property damage done by guests that book their stays via Airbnb. This is generous, and much more than I suggested in my July 30th analysis and discussion. I had suggested Airbnb cover the homeowners’ or renters’ insurance deductible, which is likely to be much, much lower than $50K.

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I applaud Airbnb for their generous guarantee, which should reassure nervous hosts that they take on little risk by being a host.

I predict this mess will blow over but that Airbnb will benefit from this small scale incident.

What Airbnb needs to loose actual sleep over is a host being killed by a guest. I hope they’ll take some of the suggestions I wrote up on my July 30th blog post to help guard against that. I pray Airbnb never has to confront a guest killing a host or a host killing a guest. One of the best ways to avoid either situation is to take steps now to make both scenarios less likely.

I’ll expand on my thoughts I wrote in my July 30, 2011 post by saying that the phone apps I suggested could be used by guests to send the identification of the host to Airbnb. I had written that the reverse should happen, but while writing this it occured to me that guests might be concerned about their hosts.

If both sides know their IDs are securely on file at Airbnb before anybody goes to sleep, everyone should sleep better, including the CEO of Airbnb.

Here’s Chesky’s email, from start to finish:

“Last month, the home of a San Francisco host named EJ was tragically vandalized by a guest. The damage was so bad that her life was turned upside down. When we learned of this our hearts sank. We felt paralyzed, and over the last four weeks, we have really screwed things up. Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post trying to explain the situation, but it didn’t reflect my true feelings. So here we go.

There have been a lot of questions swirling around, and I would like to apologize and set the record straight in my own words. In the last few days we have had a crash course in crisis management. I hope this can be a valuable lesson to other businesses about what not to do in a time of crisis, and why you should always uphold your values and trust your instincts.

With regards to EJ, we let her down, and for that we are very sorry. We should have responded faster, communicated more sensitively, and taken more decisive action to make sure she felt safe and secure. But we weren’t prepared for the crisis and we dropped the ball. Now we’re dealing with the consequences. In working with the San Francisco Police Department, we are happy to say a suspect is now in custody. Even so, we realize that we have disappointed the community. To EJ, and all the other hosts who have had bad experiences, we know you deserve better from us.

We want to make it right. On August 15th, we will be implementing a $50,000 Airbnb Guarantee, protecting the property of hosts from damage by Airbnb guests who book reservations through our website. We will extend this program to EJ and any other hosts who may have reported such property damage while renting on Airbnb in the past.

We’ve built this company by listening to our community. Guided by your feedback, we have iterated to become safer and more secure. Our job’s not done yet; we’re still evolving. In the wake of these recent events, we’ve heard an uproar from people, both inside and outside our community. Know that we were closely listening.

Today we are launching a new safety section of the website (www.airbnb.com/safety) with the following offerings:

• Airbnb Guarantee
  Starting August 15th, when hosts book reservations through Airbnb their personal property will be covered for loss or damage due to vandalism or theft caused by an Airbnb guest up to $50,000 with our Airbnb Guarantee. Terms will apply to the program and may vary (e.g. by country). This program will also apply retroactively to any hosts who may have reported such property damage prior to August 1, 2011.
• 24-Hour Customer Hotline
  Beginning next week, we will have operators and customer support staff ready to provide around the clock phone and email support for anything big or small.
• 2x Customer Support Team
  Since last month we have more than doubled our Customer Support team from forty-two to eighty-eight people, and will be bringing on a 10-year veteran from eBay as our Director of Customer Support next week.
• Dedicated Trust & Safety Department
  Airbnb now has an in-house task force devoted to the manual review of suspicious activity. This team will also build new security features based on community feedback.
• Contact the CEO
  If you can’t get a hold of anyone or if you just want to contact me, emailbrian.chesky@airbnb.com.

We’ve also added several other safety-related features to strengthen the trust and confidence of our community:

• Safety Tips
  Suggestions for both guests and hosts on how to utilize our tools to better inform your decisions.
• Verified Profiles
  Our updated user profiles chronicle their public history on Airbnb, giving you more insight than ever about a potential host or guest. Along with standard social information, you’ll also see if a user has verified their phone number, connected to their Facebook account, and whether the majority of their reviews are positive or negative. And as always, you can read their reviews and references.
• Customized trust settings
  We now give hosts the ability to set custom trust parameters for bookings; those who don’t meet the specified requirements will be unable to make a reservation. Selections for Trust Settings include: verified phone numbers, profile descriptions, location information, with more coming soon.
• Product suggestions poll
  Have more ideas on improving safety? Now, you can submit and vote on the best ideas through our new product suggestions poll.

Many more product updates will be released in the coming days. In addition to these new features, there are safeguards already in place to protect the community. These include over 60 million Social Connections, private messaging to screen before booking, a secure reservation and payment system and transaction-based reviews. We also provide verified photographs, fraud detection algorithms, and flagging capabilities.

These steps are just the beginning. Improving the safety and security of our system is ongoing. Although we do have these measures in place, no system is without some risk, so we remind you to be vigilant and discerning. As a member of the community, you have invaluable experience that we hope to draw upon to improve our system. If you have any constructive ideas or feedback, please share them with us at www.airbnb.com/safety.

What’s made us proud during this trying time is the response of our community. Emails of support to EJ poured in; many hosts offered her a place to stay in their homes. It’s been inspiring to see that Airbnb can really bring out the best in people. Like Airbnb, the world works on the idea that people are good, and we’re in this together.

When we first started Airbnb, I told my mom about our plans for the business and she said, “Are you crazy? I’d never do that.” But when I told my late grandfather he said, “Of course! Everyone used to stay in each others’ homes.” We’re bringing back this age-old idea with new technology. Now each day, you and the rest of the community are creating meaningful connections around the world.

Thank you for being part of Airbnb.

Sincerely,
Brian Chesky
CEO, Co-founder
Airbnb
brian.chesky@airbnb.com“

Wok cooking (photo by Flickr user matt512)

I show people how to cook on my fledgling online cooking show.

I use one burner and one wok.

Here’s an entertaining video where one cook uses many burners and woks at once. His intense wok handling makes me think of Carl Palmer of Emerson Lake & Palmer. ELP has a huge drum kit, and Palmer goes nuts on these drums.

I have no idea if the food this chef is preparing is any good, but I did find this video of him strangely fascinating.

Don’t look to my cooking show for instruction on how to cook like this guy. My cooking set would be too hot to remain on if I had that many serious wok burners going at once. My burner is just 12,000 btus. The cook in this video appears to be using hundreds of thousands of btus in total. I bet he’s tired when he goes home.

One of the commenters on this video counted that this cook is performing two operations per second. Enjoy.

Airbnb, formerly Air Bed and Breakfast, is in the news this week.

According to news reports like this one on TechCrunch.com, a host’s home was ransacked by a paid guest. Apparently this is the first time this has happened, even though Airbnb says their site has arranged over 2 million nights of stays.

If this is the worst that’s happened in 2 million nights, that sounds like a better record than hotels and motels likely have. I suspect that the rate of guests being actually attacked in a hotel is higher than 1 in 2,000,000, though I have no facts to back up that hunch.

There is controversy about what happened, with Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator saying the host may be lying. I don’t know what did or didn’t happen, and I’m not taking sides here.

Here are some more links to stories about the controversy:

The Airbnb Horror Story Continues

On Safety — A Word from Airbnb

Airbnb Responds to User Horror Story

AirBNB graphic from their website

I will share my experience with Airbnb below.

I was an Airbnb host in 2009. I made about USD $800.

I offered the living room in my detached San Francisco house at USD $40.00 per night. I had a lot of takers, and I absolutely loved being a host. It was a highlight of that year. I got to meet so many interesting travelers, including guests from France, Czech Republic, Austria, Japan, Oklahoma and even San Francisco.

I never felt unsafe even though I hosted groups as large as four people.

I increased my feeling of safety by installing an electronic deadbolt. I assigned a new door code for each guest or group of guests, and I deleted the code when they departed. So nobody retained access to my house after their visit.

I also made a copy of the government issued identification documents of each guest, and I locked these copies in a safe and scanned them and emailed them to myself. So even if a guest burned down my house, I would be able to give the authorities copies of the IDs of my guests.

I would guess that the person who allegedly had their apartment ransacked didn’t make a copy of the ID of their guest. I think AirBNB should instruct hosts to do so. After all, hotels and motels in the US are required to ask to see your ID, so guests are trained to not think anything of such a request. I’ve been asked for my passport at all the hotels, motels and youth hostels I’ve stayed at outside of the US, so I suspect there is a law requiring such requests almost worldwide.

I suspect that people are less likely to ransack a place after they’ve had their ID copied by the host.

One of the most interesting guests I had in 2009 was a guy who arrived by motorcycle from his San Francisco apartment. He stayed the night but didn’t shower in the morning. He went home for that, I guess. Why did he stay here, alone?

Airbnb was considering hiring him, and part of the hiring process required that applicants try the service. He was very talkative, and since we were both in the Internet field, we had a lot to talk about. I recall Airbnb had fewer than 10 employees at the time. I could tell Airbnb was a great company on its way up, up, up. What a business model — I recall they collect 20% of the rental price for playing matchmaker and escrow agent.

According to recent news reports, Airbnb recently closed a USD $112 million dollar venture capital investment at a valuation of USD $1,300,000,000 (sic). If that guy that stayed with me for a night got hired, he’s likely now worth millions on paper. I’m happy for him.

Here are some links to articles about Airbnb:

AirBNB Could Have More Rooms than Hilton by 2010

My Ultimate Bachelor Pad on AirBNB

I know two people who used Airbnb to book a multinight stay in an apartment in Paris, France. They got the entire place to themselves. I saw pictures and the home was charming and simply lovely. There was no elevator and there were six flights of spiral stairs to climb, but I bet those stairs made the place particularly memorable for the travelers. I am not criticizing Airbnb or Paris for the stairs. I really believe that charming old buildings help their occupants form strong memories. It was probably a pain to lug suitcases up six flights of stairs. But as those memories fade, I believe the fond memories of the apartment will remain, and that even 50 years from now those travelers will fondly remember their cute Paris apartment, but they won’t remember any of the corporate hotels they stayed at back then, no matter how costly or opulent.

I was inspired to become an Airbnb host by my brother Andrew Warnock. On his honeymoon with his wife, they booked an apartment in Prague, Czech Republic by visiting a booking booth in the Prague central train station. He said the apartment was really great, and that he would repeat the experience.

AirBNB founders (picture from their website)

Now, back to the Airbnb property damage controversy. AirBNB is worth more than a billion dollars now. They are famous. They are targets, and they’ll need to deal with that, sadly.

I can easily see a situation where hosts stage a trashing of their home, hoping to get new housing, courtesy of a rich and well liked startup. I would think that Airbnb will ultimately decide to require hosts to email them the IDs of guests on the day of checkin. This will allow Airbnb to be a central repository of the identification documents, and will help greatly if a host is ever hurt such that they can’t point the authorities to the location of the IDs. Airbnb already stores the credit card details of its guests, so storing their IDs should not raise the eyebrows of well intentioned guests. However, it should greatly alarm poorly intentioned guests.

With the widespread adoption of smart phones with cameras, hosts can photograph and send photos by MMS or email. If it’s decided such systems are not secure enough, Airbnb could write a set of phone apps that would use the camera to take the picture. Then, the apps could encrypt the picture and directly connect to servers at Airbnb. In this way, the sensitive ID documents could be securely transmitted to Airbnb while bypassing the Internet’s open email infrastructure.

Again, I don’t know what happened in the current ugly situation in the news. If the host’s home was ruined by a guest, then perhaps AirBNB should pay the deductable for any insurance the host carries. I do think that AirBNB shouldn’t be fully on the hook for all the damages, because that’s what renters’ or homeowners’ insurance is for. What if a guest accidentally burns down an apartment building by careless use of candles or the stove? Should AirBNB have to spend millions to rebuild an apartment building? I don’t think that’s fair or just. The terms of service should require that hosts carry suitable insurance as a condition of being a host.

I’m sure all these issues will get worked out. I met one of the founders of Airbnb in 2009 when he came to my house with his camera and tripod to take pictures for my profile. When he learned I already had pretty good pictures on my profile, he didn’t take any and we used his time at my house to talk about Airbnb. I had a good feeling about him, and I suspect if his other cofounders are similar, that the company will come though this situation stronger. The founders of Airbnb are Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia. I can’t remember which founder came by my house.

I have a website for my house where you can see the pictures I used when I was an AirBNB host.

I continue to be a huge fan of Airbnb and I hope to again be a host. The reason I am not a host right now is I have four young female roommates sharing my house as tenants, and it just doesn’t seem nice to ask them if I can allow random strangers to share their bathroom, as much as I think it’s safe.

Disclosure: I am friends with Sam Angus, a partner at law firm Fenwick & West LLP. Angus represents Airbnb. I haven’t had any contact with Angus about this controversy.