Reflecting on 2005

Taking a page from last year, I thought I would hit the highlights of this year for me:

1. A year of health and survival for my wife Jessica, daughter Mallory, and sons Tate, Tucker and Brit. Tate turned 3 and Mallory, Tucker and Brit had their first birthday. We managed two family trips including a long week in Palm Springs in the spring and a trip to the Midwest in the summer. Note to self, no traveling with four small children for a little while. Soon, just not now.

2. We launched Rabble on Verizon Wireless. We had hoped to do this earlier in the year but wireless development and rollout on a carrier's network involves some serious heavy lifting. That said we are really happy with what is going on in the Rabble world and expect to make some major announcements in Q1 of next year.

3. We raised $5.5 million in a series A round. We have been really happy with how we managed the process and the decision we made to work with Avalon and Masthead. They have been supportive and helpful and we expect to reward them in the future for their trust in our vision and our execution.

4. I continued, although a bit impacted, my blogging. Work has really transformed my ability to blog about technology the way I originally intended to but continuing to maintain the discipline to sit down behind the keyboard if however infrequently or briefly is it's own reward, at least to me.

5. I continued, in an even more impacted way, podcasting. Although the legwork that it takes to do a show has been a bit too much for me, I did manage to put together 28 shows by the end of this year and hope to push out 29 by tomorrow night. At least that's the hope. On the other hand, the original inspiration for me to start podcasting was to raise awareness about copyright issues that will impact podcasting. On that front we have around 70 shows on the Association of Music Podcasting site, I spoke on a panel on copyright law at the inaugural Podcast Expo, and I am leading a session on copyright law at the inaugural Podcastercon next week. The raised awareness has been great to see and I think there are going to be some really cool developments in the distribution of music content via podcasts in the coming year.

6. My many travels this last year put me in touch with a ton of great people who I have become friends with over the last year like Tom Ryan from EMI, John Hiler from Xanga, and Adam Rugel from Odeo, to name just a few. The work it takes to maintain and increase your friendships is more than offset by the good times you have with those people you spend time with. I expect a lot more of that in the coming year.

7. I started coaching soccer for my son's soccer team. Although I must admit that I am more of a football nut than anything else(American Football), I have always felt that if you want to have an opinion on things then you have to be willing to get involved. Whether it is youth sports, school boards, or local government, I think that we have a responsibility to contribute. At least I plan to do so. We can't do much about those things we see on CNN or Fox News but we can do things to make our neighborhood a better place.

May you and yours have a joyous, healthy and prosperous 2006. Thanks for visiting.

Holiday Recap

For the last dozen years or so I have spent Christmas in North Dakota. Very cold and very white. Last year was complete chaos as the triplets were born and Jessica has a terrible health scare after what seemed like a normal delivery.

This year was sort of the first year where we establish some of our own Christmas traditions. I don't know what the future holds but we made a first cut at some traditions. Jessica's aunt Mary came out to be with us which was awesome as she is always fun to have around and was a great help with all the kids. It can be scary being outnumbered by kids but we seemed to pull it off.

On Christmas Eve we did the family church service where the kids barely made it to the end. Afterwards we fed the triplets and put them to bed before having present opening with Tate. Late that night Santa showed up to bring the everyone their goods.

In keeping with the Swedish theme that was mentioned earlier in the post about Korv, we made a Swedish dish called Frask Pankaka. Sounds like something pretty gross? Well it is basically Swedish Quiche fried in bacon and bacon grease that is then topped with whipped cream and lingonberry sauce. That's what I am talking about. We couldn't find the lingonberries so we substituted marionberry. Here is what the dish looked like before the sweet toppings:

Intercasting / Rabble Named As A Top 50 Futurecentric Company

Wow. That sounds really cool. Apparently PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Thomson Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association selects 50 companies each year that are "entrepreneurial companies building ideas that are shaping the future." Blush.

We received a notice yesterday that we had been selected but didn't really know what it was at first. This is their 3rd annual list. You can find the list here. We are in some pretty good company. I am not familiar with many of the companies in pharma or biology or anything else like that, but I am familiar with Feedburner who many of my podcasting brethren are big fans of, Blue Frog, Digital Orchid, and GoTV.

MySpace Podcasting and RSS Support

This must be the week of quiet rollouts. Jason from Insomnia Radio/Kill Your FM pinged me on Skype this morning and told me to check out that MySpace has rolled out podcasting support on their site. At the bottom of the blog their is a box for your podcast enclosure. I went ahead and added the link to my file of my last show (reminds me, time for another one) and posted. I then went to Bloglines and found nothing when I subscribed to the RSS feed. Hey they added RSS support too! We played around a bit and didn't get anywhere but I did manage to subscribe to the RSS feed in iTunes and download the show. Hmmm. Ok so maybe there is a reason they haven't announced it. Here is my Myspace RSS - http://blog.myspace.com/blog/rss.cfm?friendID=1859573

Streethive

A company that is loosely in a similar space to Rabble called WaveMarket has launched their application Streethive on Cingular. I hadn't seen any press on it but ran across it on the Cingular deck. I will be spending some time on it tonight. I am not sure which handsets they support but I ran across it on a Nokia 6620.

Nutcrackers

Four years ago, Jessica started buying me Nutcrackers. I used to buy my dad beer steins from Germany for Xmas so this was kind of an update on that. Here is a picture of my first Nutcracker, a Santa and my latest one, a William Shakespeare nutcracker. Doesn't that rule?

CardScan

Since before Tate was born we have been in the habit of sending cards out to people around the holidays. We started with family pictures but quickly shifted to pictures of our kid and now kids. Jess made an amazing card this year so I felt an extra level of need to get a list of people to send cards out to this year. I rummaged through my office and realized that I have a stack of approximately 500 business cards that weren't in my PIM. Holy crap!

I started typing cards in (haha). After three I realized this wasn't going to work. I had heard mixed reviews on card scanners and decided to take the plunge. I ended up buying a CardScan scanner, I crossed my fingers and set everything up. Shawn laughed at me and told me that I would be scanning cards for days.

Surprisingly I blew through the stack in around an hour and have to say that the OCR was amazing. There are certainly some things that don't scan well but in most cases it worked great. I am a big fan.

I think my hesitation to use a card scanner was primarily because of the bad experience with products like Dragon naturally speaking and other voice recognition technologies, which I have to assume have also gotten better since I last checked.

So if you want a card send me your address! Or your business card. ;-)

Melodeo

I have a post to write later today if I get the time about business cards and technology. If you read that then you will understand that I am doing some catch up. Back at the Podcast Expo, one of the guys I ran into was from a company called Melodeo. Melodeo was interested in talking with our various podcasters in AMP because they want to have content to showcase their Mobilecast podcasting client for phones.

Occasionally I find myself in an interesting situation where on the one hand I want to distribute my podcast as widely as possible, and on the other hand we are working at Intercasting on creating tools for user generated content for mobile devices. Generally I think that most people have complimentary approaches to the market so it's at least fun enough to have a conversation.

So after chatting with Frank, I told him that I definitely wanted to add my show to their directory and that I would check out their client later.

Yesterday I decided to tinker with Mobilecast. I figured that they are probably focused more on the higher end of the handset matrix so I initially tried to download the client to my P910. Not supported. Hmmm. I checked out the list and grabbed one of our S710's from the office phone pool.

The client is pretty cool, and pretty straightforward. I dug through the music directory and found my show. I was given the option of downloading (doh!) or streaming. I selected stream and was pleasantly surprised to hear a not too bad down sampled version of my show. The audio support on handsets clearly has a way to go, but the first inkling of a start is there. I am a little busy with end of year stuff so I didn't get a chance to do much beyond that but the two questions I hope to answer later are what impact this has on a phone bill and battery life.

The most interesting thing about Melodeo to me was that during our VC fund raising process we had an encounter with one of the founders of Melodeo when they were still in the licensed content business. We, being strong believers in the user created content model, made a pretty strong argument for our type of business as opposed to the existing licensed music business. There is clearly a business for licensed content businesses but I just don't see it as a startup. I am sure it wasn't because of our meeting alone, but soon thereafter Melodeo was a mobile podcasting company.

Mobile Monday San Diego

We are hosting Mobile Monday San Diego in our offices next week on the 19th. The link to the site for information on speakers etc is here.

Holy Crap! It's my birthday

The Boys waiting for the show,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

I can't believe that it has been a year, but tomorrow Mallory, Tucker and Brit turn 1. It is certainly a surprise when you are doing a startup and plan on having child number 2 but end up with child # 2, 3 and 4.

It has been an awesome year of joy, sleep deprivation and pure chaos. But I wouldn't change it for the world. Their mother Jessica and brother Tate have been amazing. I have been on airplanes and am so proud that they have kept it all together. As I recall year 2 was even better than year 1 with Tate so I can't wait to see what is ahead of us.

Podcaster Con

I am leading a session on copyright law and podcasting at Podcastercon in early January. Here is the session description.

Korv Party

December 4 2005 031,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

This weekend I went to a sausage making party. That doesn't sound right, but it is true. It is impossible to be around a bunch of adults and spend time shoving meat into stomach casings and not make a bunch of really crude and off color jokes. This is one of the less obscene pictures I took. For the uninitiated, Korv is a rather bland Swedish sausage that is similar to bangers and it apparently is served around the holidays along with things like pickled herring and lutefisk. More pictures on my flickr page.

Gcast

Garageband just launched their consumer podcasting site at Gcast. I am uploading my last podcast up right now.

PSP Software 2.6

Right after finishing the write up on my insane new Location Free media server, I saw that Sony had released a new version of the core software for the PSP. Russ Beattie did a good review here.

In a nutshell the new upgrade has a couple of features. 1. It supports WMA. Cool for those who use that. I have MP3 files of everything I listen to. 2. It supports Podcasts via a thing they call RSS, which to me makes sense, but to many they think it is confusing and a missed opportunity. That's probably true but it seems that the frequency of releases for the PSP isn't giving them much time to let the marketing folks come up with fancy new names for things everyone else calls something standard.

One more quirk, or feature that is important to note is that when you subscribe to a podcast you don't get to download the MP3 file. Instead the PSP streams it to your player. Although this really isn't in the spirit of podcasting for some, to me it's perfectly fine as it avoids me putting a bunch of stuff on my hard drive that I have to delete later or creating a CD to fill up the landfills.

The last kind of cool thing I will mention is that every artist on AcmeNoise has a podcast link on their artist page. This functionality is really cool with the PSP as you can go around and sign up for music from your favorite bands on the site and then stream them whenever you like.

Location Free Review

Around my birthday I have been given a chunk of cash from a family member with the explicit instructions to go buy myself something just for me that nobody else could use. I love those kind of missions.

After hanging out at the podcaster convention, and seeing a couple if video iPods, I was sure that I had to go get one of those. But I paused for a second, Why would I get a video iPod when I have this rocking device called the PSP that has a screen the size of an iPod. I spent some time working with the various client software and came to the conclusion that generally speaking, the PSP is a by far superior device for what I want/need. Back to the drawing board.

I thought for a couple of seconds about a Series 2 Tivo, but decided to wait for just a wee bit longer as I have several Tivo's in the house and I should just start to swap them out over the coming months. The Tivo to go for the PSP had me really intrigued. While looking for the Tivo to go stuff I found something called Location Free. Oh my God. Wow.

So get this, I buy a little media server that I hook up to my home network via my router. I then take my media server and plug any sort of AV device I have into the media server. This could be a DVD player, TV, Tivo, etc. Once I have this set up I have to go and make sure that I have the most current version of PSP software, which of course I have. Additionally there is a disk that comes with the server that I can use to load software onto my PC.

Once the connections are made and the software is installed I can pair my PSP or Laptop with the media server. It essentially makes a WEP key sort of connection between the device and the media server. Once the connection is made, I can stream the AV from the media server to either the PSP or the PC wherever I am in my house. So for example while Jessica was watching the Macy's parade, I was busy cooking turkey and watching the football game on my PSP in perfect quality video. This is simply insane.

But it really wouldn't rise to the level of cool that it aspires to if it was restricted to just my house. With a couple of tweaks, I can access my home TV and media anywhere in the world where I have a Wi FI connection on my PC or my PSP. This is without question an amazing thing. Bored in a hotel room in New York? Nothing on TV? How about I go to the hard drive on my HDTV Tivo at home and stream a show to my PSP? Now that's cool. CNN? No problem. Local TV back in San Diego? Easy.

Aside from the gee whiz technical aspects this type of device, and I know that there have been other pieces of client software that do stuff like this but I would argue not as elegantly, there are amazing implications for personal media services and how we consume media in the future. I am currently demoing some advance software from MP3tunes called Oboe that is essentially a music locker service that Michael is rolling out. I'll post more on that later. To me it is very much in the vein of Flickr or Google Video or whatever celestial device there is in the sky

As a user of these types of services I totally see the value in it. The problem I have is that it requires me to do something to transmit the media elsewhere. The reality for most of us is that we have machines or hard drives lying around that have all this media that it would be really cool for us to access remotely. If it was made seamless and easy then it would preclude us from having to use some centralized service. In a way it kind of speaks to the difference between centralized services and peer to peer services. I know that I have small subsets of media on every service you can imagine. But I know that I have every picture I have ever taken on a digital camera on a hard drive stashed away on an old machine. If I can get to each of them in a simple fashion my guess is that the latter is better than the former. It will be interesting to see which is true.

Sidekick II software upgrade

About two months ago, Dave Harper was telling me that he had a new software upgrade for his Sidekick. I was jealous. I wanted to force an upgrade but alas that was not to be. This last weekend it finally came. Here is a link to the information contained in the upgrade. For the most part to me it was largely a small feature tweak with two exceptions that I thought were cool. First of the web browser now supports Javascript. This really helps make the web experience on the device a good one. The second main upgrade was around instant messenger. I can now see icons, I can see how long people have been online, I can read their away message etc.

I can't wait to see the Sidekick III!

Henry Rollins

My good friend Damon came down from Los Angeles to join us for Thanksgiving and to insist that I go to see the closing night of Henry Rollins spoken word tour.

For those who don't know, Henry is the former lead singer of Black Flag. Black Flag was one of the main hardcore punk bands from Los Angeles. They original founders also started up the SST record label and one of the members, Keith Morris went on to found The Circle Jerks which is my favorite punk rock band.

I had seen Henry do a spoken word show in Los Angeles probably about 7 years ago. I can't believe I had waited that long for the next one. He was AMAZING. Please do yourself a favor and see him the next time he comes around. Or buy one of his books. He is a brilliant renaissance guy who not only is a great artist from the music world, but an intelligent social commentator and an occasional actor.

Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving. Here is a post from last year about it. This year Jess said that I should keep a diary of the dinner to refer back to. So for better or worse I figured it just put it here and then I can pull it up on the Internets in the future when I am looking for it.

My brother Rodney and I did all the cooking this year with two exceptions. Shawn came over the night before for the annual "Get boozed up and cook party" which was in fact very tame and small this year. Shawn made an amazing Acorn Squash Soup. We served it the day after Thanksgiving and everyone wanted to know how he made it.

My niece Alexis did all the pumpkin pies.

Rodney and I made the following:

Herb Rubbed Turkey - 24 lbs. Same one I have been making for 12 years. It makes the most amazing gravy so I can't seem to break tradition and make something else. By the way, I made the most unbelievable gravy this year.

Mashed Potatoes

Vanilla Infused Sweet Potatoes

Raspberry Cranberry Sauce

Jess's moms stuffing

Cornbread stuffing with Chestnuts

Green Beans with Bacon and Cocktail Onions

I put some pictures on Flickr and Zoto of the whole clan.

Urchin

I am a big stats junkie, as you may or may not know. Of course I was very intrigued when I had heard of Google's new analytics package Urchin. I decided to check it out and see what a free analytics package would look like. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, so after a couple of days of waiting, I finally got to see a report. WOW. WOW. WOW.

If you are even a mild stats junkie, rush out and install this on your various domains and wait to see all the data goodness coming in.

I only have a couple of days worth of data to look at, and I haven't really dug in yet, but I really m amazed at the depth of data available with just a couple of embedded scripts to your website templates.

AMP Guys

AMP Guys,
originally uploaded by goodbeershow.

Here is most of the crew.

C21 Tones

A person who is involved with the C21 Arts project sent me a link to a site they launched several weeks ago that is an arts project that is focused on creating original ringtones for free distribution. The site can be found at www.c21tones.com.

Intercasting in the San Diego Union Tribune

They wrote an article today that you can find here. The article was a profile on a number of companies that came out of Mp3.com. Lot's of our friends were featured in this article, including Trusonic where I am on the board.

The $250 Million Radio Show #28

The Show can be found here. The show notes here.

Happy Birthday to Jason

So I just finished $250 Million Dollar Radio Show #28 and pinged Jason from Insomnia Radio online. We had been meaning to chat about an article I am going to write for the Kill Your FM zine. I asked him if he wanted to talk today. He said he was splitting for the day to celebrate his birthday. I was like NFW! I couldn't believe it. Of the six of us who started AMP two of us had the same birthday? Strange. Happy 30th Birthday Jason! Rock on.

Team Building at Intercasting

You don't create the platform to enable the intersection of user generated content and personal media devices without a strong team. We have been slowly building up the team at Intercasting and wanted to say a little bit about that.

Next week we have two new additions to what we think is a strong and impressive team that we have already assembled.

About a year or so ago I began a conversation with Debi Jones who happened to share a lot of similar interests with us as it relates to mobile blogging and social media. Our conversations were interesting and insightful and this ultimately led to a broader conversation that culminated in her joining us starting next week. We think she is going to bring some great insights to the foundations we have established and look forward to her ideas finding their way into Rabble as well as our other products currently in development.

Our other new hire starting this week is a quiet giant who I have had the pleasure to know since 1999. John Hardin is one of the brightest people I met during my time at MP3.com. Although we had an impressive number of amazingly smart engineers, John was among the cream of the crop who is widely respected among his peers here in town. John played a variety of roles at MP3.com including playing a part in the core team that developed My.Mp3. We recently plucked John from Napster where he was one of the top developers within the company. If you are going to build a strong platform for user published content, few people have the type of experience that John has given his experience in media serving and content management.

They join an assortment of other strong players including Deborah Critten, who oversaw our interactions with the labels at Mp3.com, ran our community efforts, and managed our most significant relationship with luxury brands company LVMH during the entire life of our deal with them.

On the technology side John will be joining a strong group of developers and some expected additions who will help to realize our vision of Intercasting on a handset near you. Stay tuned.

Almost 40

When I turned 31 my wife immediately started telling me that I was almost 40. Each year I had to protest that she was unreasonably aging me and that revenge would be sweet as two can play that game. Well today I turned 39. At last I have to concede that I will soon be turning 40. Sigh. 38 has been an interesting. Triplets, a new company, raising money etc. I suspect that 39 will be as interesting as 38 and frankly my entire 30s have been.

Music Licensing Link from Podcast Expo

Matt just sent me this link that has the audio of the session I was on at the podcast expo in Ontario. Unfortunately the first 5-10 minutes were cut off. When I find a better link I will post it. In the meantime you can get the idea of the conversation.

The AMP Guys at the Podcast Expo

The AMP Guys at the Podcast Expo,
originally uploaded by zaldor.

Hey that's me on the left!

PSP Media Manager - What do you mean its for my PC?

Over the weekend, some of the guys at AMP who publish the PSP zine Kill Your FM told me that they had landed a sponsorship deal from Sony for the PSP Media Manager. They guys were saying that this was the iPodder or iTunes equivalent for the PSP. I was intrigued. I had also seen the headline in my RSS reader that Russ Beattie had reviewed the product as well. What I hadn't done was read Russ's review.

My initial use of the product yesterday made me recall that you should never assume anything. I assumed that the PSP manager was a client application that resides on your PSP and allows you to download podcast and videoblogs and what have you for playback on your PSP. I mean I primarily use the device around the house to do a quick check of Google News, Fantasy Football Updates, and to check up on my RSS feeds. The device is like a little wi-fi web browser for me. Unfortunately my big disappointment was that the client is in fact a PC based client that you need to connect to your PC to synchronize. What a disappointment.

So after the initial let down, I started playing with the client and subscribed to KillyourFM, and loaded some podcasts and started subscribing to videoblogs. I'll spend some more time with it later today and if I have any insight will post something.

I have been really happy with the PSP and in an earlier post said that I was surprised that there was nothing that allowed content creation. I think that the lack of a device side client, at least for now, is yet another small shortcoming that I hope they fix in the future. At least on the client side, that is something you can do with software.

Quote about AMP

Check out this link. I love the point about AMP about halfway down.

Portable Media Expo - Postscript

I had some family illness that cut short my trip to Ontario. My panel went well. I expected some copyright Bolsheviks in the audience but in general over the last year people have finally come to accept that the copyright issues around podcasting are pretty daunting. Given that reality people are trying to understand how things will unfold. That seems pretty straightforward to me in that certain subgroups will adopt this as a great marketing opportunity and ultimately so will the copyright holders. The question how long is that cycle. I think two years.

It was amazing to see how fast this thing has grown up. That is truly impressive.

I loved getting to meet Kevin and Renmarie from Bandtrax as well as Julien from In Over Your Head. They were fellow co-founders of AMP before they took of to work on Podshow.

As for AMP, we had a great turnout and great reception from the various people we are working with or in the process of working with. I especially enjoyed getting to know and hang out with Matt Galligan, Chris MacDonald and Brian DeWitt. That combined with meeting others such as Ewan Spence, Eric Rice in person, David Betz, Samantha Murphy (in San Diego a week ago) and many others involved makes me psyched to be working with such a diverse and talented group of people. I expect lots of good things ahead for what we are trying to do.

At Portable Media Expo

Man I got in late. I posted some pictures and am off to bed. Very cool day standing around in a room with a hole bunch of people you know through phone/IM/and listening to their podcasts. All of us music people got a chance to hang out. More later.

The Portable Media Expo

Dave Winer linked to a Wired article about the Portable Media Expo where I am speaking at Friday on behalf of AMP. It should be a good time. Matt Galligan from AMP is rolling into San Diego later today to hang with me before the event and then tomorrow I am hooking up with CC Chapman, some of the Odeo folks and some other friends. It is the first big podcasting event so if you happen to be in Southern California in the next couple of days do go check it out.

Arnold gets Terminated

Arnold's threats to take back Cali - fornia were thwarted yesterday as the people of the state rejected all of his "tools" to take back the government and fix California. Amazingly, every initiative on the ballot was rejected. I know I voted no across the board. Although some of the measures may have had some merit, the libertarian in me said that this was a big stupid waste of time and money for no good reason. So let's tell the whole crowd no. What a great way to spend $60 million dollars. I think across the spectrum of centrist voters there was a feeling of stop playing games and get back to your job of running the government.

Adam Curry Finds God

Or something like that. I have been so head down at work that I missed the fact that yesterday, Adam Curry FINALLY had the awakening that if he continues to play copyrighted music, he will get sued into oblivion. I am sure that his new investors were excited to hear about the potential exposure. It's funny but over a year ago I made that point in my first podcast which Adam played. I guess a year isn't that long.

The interesting thing to see is whether or not the various publishers decide to go back through his over 275 shows and slap him with a serious lawsuit that will liquidate the pile of capital from the Silicon Valley VCs. My guess, you can take that to the bank.

It's unfortunate if that happens as it really will be bad for podcasting in general. On the other hand, there is a great new opportunity for those who embrace this medium as a means to distribute their music.

Mobile Users Vs. Internet Users

I read with a very big smile an article about Mobile Phone Data Useability sucks from Evan/Rabble over at Odeo. I know that I had at least one conversation with him about our approach to consumers and I think it is valuable to repeat it here. There are consumers who use their phone as their primary interface for communications. When I say communications I mean not just voice. These are people who use SMS the way I use Instant Messenger. These users are the earliest adopters of this sort of technology, and like all the good pioneers before them, they have managed to find ways to work around the limitations of the first or second instance of a platform.

When you think about mobile data, we are in the very very early stages. Phones are still being broadly manufactured to allow people to use the voice facility to speak with each other, not to surf the web or find their friends or other things that most people would use a computer for. Over time the usability will improve as more and more mainstream consumers start using those kinds of technologies.

When I look at what we are doing with rabble, we are focused on making the experience as strong as possible for users of this still early platform. To that end we have spent out time and resources focusing on the part that matters to people who use the phone as a primary device. What we haven't done has rolled out a website for our users. Our experience in the past has shown us that most people who are mobile data focused, don't necessarily want to mix that experience with the web. For those consumers who want to mix and match we have integrated Rabble with sites like Blogger and Live Journal because quite frankly, they do really good job for those of our users who use those tools.

We do plan on rolling out our website in the next couple of weeks. I'll be sure to post about that, but I am fairly certain that when our site goes live it will be a bit of a yawn for a bunch of our users. In the meantime I'd encourage you to check out the Rabble site where we are profiling some of our current users and their posts. It's good for some laughs.

iSportscaster

I received an email from someone on the staff of iSportscaster saying that since I was a aficionado of user generated content that I should check this out. I haven't played with it yet but I LOVE the concept. If I had the time I should grab the Chargers, but I can guarantee that isn't going to happen.

Rabble Featured in LBS startups to watch article

We were plugged and profiled in the Red Herring article you can find here.

The Neighborhood Kids 5

The Neighborhood Kids 5,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

My kids are the Yodas on each end.

Three Computers Later

If it hadn't been such a miserable time, I would have loved to post about the misery that has been buying a new laptop. I will only say that the two Sony VAIOs that I bought and had to return made me really pissed that I hadn't bought a mail order laptop. I am now typing this from my new HP laptop that I am surprisingly happy with. I have installed my main business apps and am now starting to transfer over archived information, which is giving me a lot of food for thought about user generated content and how us digital people are creating an amazing amount of leave behind digital media. More on that later.

The Great Laptop Meltdown

A couple of weeks ago, my trusty laptop of over 2 1/2 years, began to act like a stroke victim. Nothing too serious at first. Some strange boots. Some long load times. Then some funny errors. This kept getting worse. I bought a backup drive and have been dumping on and off over the last week. I kept kidding myself that it might have gotten better.

So in the midst of heavy travel, heavy hiring, and all the normal stuff, I am doing the laptop migration. I ended up buying a Sony VAIO. I was leaning towards an IBM T43, but the deal killer for me was I needed three things, USB 2.0, Firewire, and Bluetooth. Unfortunately the T43 didn't have the Firewire which really bummed me out as those machines are tanks. The VAIO is super light and fits my overall Sony life style (Phone, Camera, DV Cam, PSP, TVs, etc.) but it has me worried about durability. I guess I will find out soon enough.

Although I am pretty uptight about the pain it will be to migrate all my stuff, I am excited about a new clean machine with no baggage to speak of. I immediately started deleting all the nonsense that comes shipped with the machine and then downloaded Firefox. Ah, very nice. I set it as my default and start to move tomorrow. I cant wait until we have a Web OS.

Platinum

Last week I received an email from American Airlines, my airline of choice, that notified me that I had made Platinum status. I didn't know if I should celebrate or cry. I am thinking cry. I can't believe that I have traveled that much this year without any international flights. Ouch.

Verizon Launches Blogging Category on Get It Now

Last night Verizon Wireless launched a blogging category on Get It Now. Its in the Get Going section and it currently includes Rabble and UPOC. I think this is the first time that a carrier has created a category like this anywhere in the world and we are excited as it is evidence that there will be more blogging options to come in the coming months. We expect that there will be similar moves from other North American carriers shortly.

Rabble and Zoto

Yesterday at BlogOn we announced our integration with Zoto here. Now you can send pictures from your Rabble Gallery to Zoto or publish pictures from Zoto to Rabble.

Rabble and Travelpod

We announced integration today between Travelpod and Rabble earlier today here. Users of Travelpod can update their blogs from Rabble and view their posts on Rabble now. Our partnerships allow people to publish content in a uni-directional or bi-directional way to allow our partners a way to mobilize their audience and to let Rabble work as a tool for existing web users. We have another announcement today at BlogOn and more to come in the following weeks.

A year later

This morning I jumped on the treadmill for a quick run. I mean a run that was slow that didn't consume too much time. Recently running has fallen off of my routine but I am resolved to get it back on track. I was listening to a podcast on the shuffle and I realized that it was this time a year ago that I created my first podcast.

It's fascinating to see how fast a new segment of self expression has grown from a handful of people to a fairly well funded segment that has also been embraced by media incumbents and a large number of people. I thought today was my one year anniversary but actually it is two days from now so I plan on getting together a special one year podcast show. Stay tuned.

Bands on Rabble

We announced today some of the bands on Rabble in a press release here. We have some deep relationships with a bunch of labels going back to MP3.com and we want to make sure that as our community develops that we find ways for fans of bands to find each other. Lots more to come but these labels got in with us early and have been great working with us.

Chance Podcast Simulcast

Tonight I sent out a special MP3 feed of my show The $250 Million Radio show. It is a live concert from the artist Chance. Go check out his site and check out the show. I haven't done this before but felt that it was really important to support what he is doing with this show. He has managed to corral 35 of us podcasters into playing the simulcast through our feeds. Very cool marketing. Definitely ground breaking in terms of clever marketing ideas for a new distribution platform. I am sure that this is only the first of many cool things to come on the podcasting and videoblogging front.

Flock

Ok, I am done for the day on this stuff. Matt told me to check out Flock a new social networking browser. Or something like that. I know the feeling. It's kind of mobile blogging meets social networking. Yeah. It's not live yet but there is a Business Week article here.

Ning

More new stuff. I want more time to play with new stuff. :-(

Ning is "A playground for building social applications". They have a framework that you can use to develop your own version of craiglist, Match, Flickr, etc. Interesting. Since I am not a developer I'll have to find someone to give me their $.02 but I'll definitely check out some of the Ning fed apps on the homepage.

Videonary

There is a new startup in San Diego that Bruce told me about called Videonary. Go check it out. There are some interesting possibilities.

BitTorrent Funding

I didn't post anything when BitTorrent was funded. I am really excited to see people putting some real cash behind this kind of technology. I don't know the founder, but my fear is that unless he is careful he runs the risk of getting sideways with the content industries. That would be unfortunate but hopefully the new investors are aware of this and will seek to find meaningful ways to work with companies who want to take advantage of this kind of distribution.

Creating Company Infrastructure

This week we brought a new person on board and I realized that we are actually a company now. I mean not just that we have people working in an office, we have evolved to the point that after sitting down with her for a couple of minutes I had to have our system administrator set her up with email, intranet access, WEP key for Wi-fi etc. I found myself laughing and later after our company meeting (I think that's funny too) I thought it might be interesting to share some of the tools we use.

Phones - VOIP. We are in this giant 14,000 sq. foot office where we have been on a month to month lease for over a year. And we get a great deal. Because we wanted to be able to move quickly if need be we started out with Vonage. I have been using them for around 3 years and have been pretty happy. Unfortunately they aren't as good for office stuff so we move over to Junction Networks for outbound VOIP and we finally broke down and installed a POTS line for fax.

PBX - For our PBX we use Switchvox where our good friends are busy cranking away making the world of IPPBX good for normal business users like us. We use softphones so far but I imagine at some point we will get some SIP phones.

Intranet - At MP3.com we had the mother of all Intranet's known as Gotham. At Intercasting we have our own little version of that intranet brought to you by some of our former/current co-workers at MP3.com. On the Intranet we have a Wiki from Media Wiki. (The same tool that powers Wikipedia) We use a calendar that nobody is really happy with yet called WebCalendar. You can tell a marketing person didn't name that tool. I want to get a client based tool that synchs with WebCalendar. I have been playing with Sunbird but it is still a bit early for that.

For stats we use Awstats but will move to a custom solution from one of our friends known as Cheeseburger in the coming months.

We also use some geeky tools like Nagios for system monitoring and Bugzilla for bugs. I am hoping we get some kind of open source contact management and project management tools in the coming months.

Blush

It was a good trip. This is typical of the response we had during demos. Lots of work to do but we feel like its been a good start.

The $250 Million Radio Show #27

I finally did a podcast. First time in a long time. The direct file is here. I'll post show notes later. Its a longish show for me. A bit of rock, a bit of indie, and a chunk of hardcore.

Delay & Co.

It's great to be back in the office. Been catching up on a to do list a mile long. I have to admit that yesterday I spent a bit of time crawling the various political blogs to get a read on the Delay indictment. I don't have much to say other than how I find it funny that politicians from both parties blame partisan politics on their legal woes. At the point that an indictment is handed down, it seems like its time for that story to end and that it's time for your lawyer to start doing the talking. Tom, shut up. If you are innocent you will be acquitted. I'd enjoy not hearing you talk for a while.

Tate's First football game

58ON0144.jpg,
originally uploaded by brikmaster.

I had some stupid self inflicted, repeated schedule problems over the last several weeks. One of the last one's involved me going to boo Eli Manning last Sunday evening. Rather than reflect on the chaos preceeding the game, I'd like to share that Tate got to see his very first football game. I expected this to be a little bit less than tame version of a normal Chargers game but boy was I wrong. The whole crowd booed everytime Eli Manning was on the field. Tate had to plug his ears often but seemed to have a blast. Much to my surprise the thing he seemed interested in most were the cheerleaders. It must have been the pom poms! The Chargers crushed the Giants. I am sure that Eli will dread visiting this town for years to come.

CTIA

Spent time speaking on two panels yesterday and the attending the press reception with Qualcomm showing Rabble to reporters.

I have a pretty full day of meetings and then my four week death march roadtrip ends. I have a ton of follow up work to do but will be glad to be doing it from home rather than hotel rooms and on planes.

I look forward to catching up on my reading, putting together some podcasts that are long overdue and getting to spend some much needed time with the family.

Phone Geek and the Mobile Activists

IMG_0626,
originally uploaded by DevelopmentSeed.

What an amazing conference I am at. I can't wait until I can spend some time to regroup and talk about some of the things we are covering at this conference. Suffice to say, go check out www.mobileactive.org.

Sony PSP - Personal Media Device

Two of the primary trends that we focused on when we founded our company Intercasting were the rise in self expression or consumer content creation and the evolution of the mobile device into what we refer to as a Personal Media Device or PMD. I have written several posts on my blog in the past about some of the devices I consider as advanced PMD’s. They would include the Sony Ericsson P910 and the Sidekick II.

In the last several weeks I have picked up some new devices that I believe warrant a closer look as PMDs. The two newest devices I have been working with are the Sony PSP and the Nokia N90 camcorder phone. I haven’t spent enough time with the Nokia phone yet, but will be doing so over the coming days as I am attending a conference in Toronto called Mobile Active that is focused on using mobile devices as tools for social activism. I have spent a lot of time with the PSP and have a number of thoughts on this device.

The PSP is at first look, one of the most amazing PMDs I have ever seen. The form factor is generally nice. The UI is fairly straightforward. The screen is beautiful. The performance is excellent for it’s primary functions.

When we look at PMDs we think of these devices as devices that have components that allow for both the consumption AND creation of content. The PSP is all consumption. From a consumption perspective though, it is simply amazing. I wasted no time in taking my toy out of the box and immediately went to the Network settings to connect my device to the local WiFi network in my house. I had read about all the cool hacks that people had created for the first version of the software, but rather than explore that, I knew that having web connectivity with a browser was one of my primary use cases and I immediately updated the software to version 2.0.

From this point on I began to explore the various consumption methods available to me. The PSP allows me to view pictures from my memory stick Duo that I have taken on my P910 camera phone. I can also view other pictures if I can get them onto that small little memory stick. I know many people are not found of the memory stick but as a die hard Sony devotee, I am invested in this platform.

In addition to viewing still pictures, I downloaded some MP3 files and really liked the audio quality on the device. I had intended to download some beefy podcasts before I wrote this piece, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. I’ll try to load up the device for my next long flight.

I am not a fan of the little DVD format UMD, but I have to admit that it is really small and the playback is really good. Overall the video quality is just amazing. I haven’t spent much time yet trying to playback any mpeg 4 files from my p910 but expect to do that in the next couple of days. The number of titles available for the device is currently small from my perspective which didn’t give me much to choose from but I ended up picking up a copy of Sin City and really enjoyed it.

Gameplay is awesome. I am primarily a football/strategy game/first person shooter player and didn’t see any titles that appealed to me right now, although Madden comes out in a couple of weeks. I opted for Tony Hawk Remix 2, which is a great way to waste time flying back and forth across the country when you don’t have a power outlet for the laptop, which is my primary use of the device.

Web browsing is very gee whiz to me in that it is really cool to know that I have a readily accessible web device that I can whip out at any airport to do a quick check of webmail or go onto our company intranet for my calendar, our wiki, or our reporting area. Unfortunately it feels really slow. Painfully slow. I have had intermittent connection issues and I have been having out of memory issues when I load heavier websites. I am not entirely sure why that is as I have been using a 128 meg memory stick.

All in all a very cool device. What it is missing is anything that allows me to create content. Or at least create content easily. I conceivably could use the web interface to update my blog but the UI for text entry leaves a bit to be desired.

The PSP really showcases how you can step up media consumption from where it is today with the various Ipods to something approaching a nuclear device of consumer time wasting and media overload. What completely baffles me is why there was no thought about people using the device to capture content. I understand that a USB keyboard is coming soon, but it would have been really cool to add some things like a camera. Or Bluetooth to use with my cell phone when I can’t get wifi, which unfortunately is all too common.

As I head out on the plane today with my bag of gadgets I look at each of my devices and find some great things that they each have and some missing pieces that in some configuration would be an ideal device or two for me. I love the P910 for its Opera browser and fairly easy email functionality. I also love that I can take passable quality video and pictures that I can share with others that are mobile originated. I love the instant messenger integration of my Sidekick II and the form factor of the keyboard which lends itself to good textual content origination. The web browser leave a bit to be desired and I can’t wait until they have a better camera. The PSP is the mother of all media consumption for me but that’s about it.

As we continue to see the increased awareness in the general public that we are entering an age where more and more consumers want to create content to share with others, and also consume content not originated from the center of the media network, I believe that we will see the emergence of devices that really begin to marry the best attributes of the many new devices we see in the marketplace. I don’t believe that we will ever get to the fabled one device, but I think we will increasingly find new devices that bring together a deep and useful feature set that will empower users at the edge of the network to become the media broadcast and distribution nodes that we believe is the next inevitable evolution of what we think of as media.

The change of seasons

This summer has been amazing. I am currently sitting on an airplane on my way to Toronto to participate in a conference around social activism and cellular devices. In my pocket is a piece of paper with a list of to do’s that MUST get done this week. While sitting on the plane I realized that today is the last day of summer/first day of fall.

I am extremely excited that I am going to have power on both of my flights today because I know that I have an outside chance of getting caught up on a backlog of emails from the past four weeks and some time to catch up on some blog posts I have been meaning to write. I can review some agreements. I can actually do the work that results from spending time with people in face to face meetings. There has been a lot of meeting and now there is a lot of work. It’s a source of anxiety about being able to get everything done but it is also exhilarating to see things take shape.

What I have found over the last two months is that a lot of what I am working on is stuff that I can’t really blog about. It is killing me to not talk about the various cool discussions we have been having and the really smart people I have made friends with over this summer. Maybe later. Suffice it to say, it has been an amazing time and a lot of the things that we envisioned when we started working on this company, and that I started exploring when I started this blog, are coming to life on a daily basis. We will obviously be able to share more company stuff down the road, but I only hope that later when I can write more freely that I don’t forget to mention some of the awesome conversations and people who I have come to call friends that I have encountered on this really cool journey.

Business Week

Thanks to all who sent us some Business Week love. We ended up making the editors picks in the Tool box, Wireless services section. This has sent a lot of visitors our way over the last several days. Please do check out the other cool sites in the survey that you can find here.

Fellow Podcaster in a Coma

A really cool guy, Derek from Skepticality went into a coma last week. He is one of our fellow members in AMP and you can read about it here. Someone pinged me today and said there was a rumor going around people that I know that I was in a coma. Not me. I just had really really ugly heartburn. Derek, he needs your prayers.

NFL Sunday Ticket

I am an obsessive football fan. I sat with great joy this Sunday watching a variety of games. Hands down the coolest thing about this last weekend was the new Red Zone Channel from Direct TV. I have been a subscriber to NFL Sunday ticket for several years now, and as an insane fantasy football player, I happily jump from channel to channel watching games. The Red Zone Channel, which unfortunately only focuses on games on Fox, is a channel that switches from game to game for you when scoring opportunities occur. Wow. This is so cool. They kept mentioning that this was a sneak preview and I didn't know what they were talking about as they already had my fee for the season. So the scoop is as follows:

There is a new Superfan option which is another $99 and it gives you the Red Zone Channel as well as a bunch of other stuff including a ton of games in HD. You mean I could have been watching everything in HD yesterday??? Loser. So I guess I need to sign up. Check this out if you are a football fan.

Six Feet Under

Yesterday was a strange day. I had been in New York the entire week before and was really wiped out this weekend. Yesterday was a lot of time with the kids and opening week of football. More on football later.

So I take the triplets for a walk in the stroller and have Tate in a backpack and we head out to our local favorite market. I pick up a really nice piece of Coho Salmon, a beer, and some sparkling water at the store for dinner later that night.

On the way back from the store I slam a good portion of the sparkling water. Once I get home I take the salmon and cover half of it with some really good cajun spices and leave the other half untouched as Tate loves salmon but not spices. While cooking I leisurely enjoy the beer and the first part of the Colts and Ravens game.

After the salmon comes out, I set up plates for Tate and a friend and I start noshing on the spicy piece. About half way through my portion, I notice that I have the worst heartburn I have ever had. I take 4 Tums. It doesn't help. It feels like a serious knot in the middle of my chest, near the diaphragm. Not good. I then start to sweat. I keep hoping that the Tums will kick in. Not happening. Jess looks at me strangely. "Are you OK?". Um, not really. This really hurts. I am thinking I am going to drive over to the hospital nearby.

I call my doctor. He asks about my heart and light headedness. Nothing. Just this really bad pain that comes in waves and some sweating. He doesnt like the sweating. He tells me to call 911. Not good. He says it's prolly not a heart thing, but minutes count. I don't like the sound of minutes count.

Several hours later I am discharged from the hospital with some serious reflux spasm thing. Glad I am alive and glad it wasn't really a big deal after all. I was really glad that I know that if things aren't going well, I have the presence of mind to not tough it out but to make sure that everything is really alright.

New Orleans

I am a great fan of New Orleans. It is one of the few cities I have repeatedly visited for vacation. I have certainly spent more time in New York and San Francisco (and I still consider Los Angeles home). I have been to at least four Jazzfests, one Mardi Gras, one CTIA, and several other random trips to New Orleans just because. I love this city.

I had been stewing on what had happened for a number of days and then I had dinner with John Diaz in Venice last week. John, a plane crash survivor who worked with me at MP3.com has deep New Orleans roots. His family goes back several generations and his elderly parents (80s and 90s) had just been evacuated earlier that day. John was clearly shaken, and that's a lot to say for one of the most iron willed people I know.

I can't even imagine how long it is going to take to rebuild. It is truly a tragedy. My favorite places include Laffite's Blacksmith shop. Rumored to be the oldest bar in North America. The Napolean House. The best place to chill in the quarter. Note that their website is down. Cafe Du Monde. Nola. It goes on and on and on. It is so hard to believe.

What is even harder to believe is the tragedy that the many people who call this city home are going through. No jobs. No house. Nothing.

Podcasting Time Bomb

I guess I should have linked to this story about Terms of Use in my last post. And this one in Boing Boing.

AMP Library live

It can be very difficult for a ragtag group of merry indie music podcasters, who have day jobs, and don't have money as a group, to come together and pull something off. But sometimes we actually do just that.

Back in the day, pre AMP schism, we had started to form a library of music where our members can draw upon a database of music that has been cleared by the artists without any sort of heinous restrictions or over-reaching licensing. Just a straight up you can use this and we will credit you and there you have it.

So after much time and effort, we have put it live. We have a lot to put back in there, and a lot of work to do to get it going the way it should, but its a start.

Check out the library if you want to peek. If you are in a band head on over to the signup page and send some music our way. Please read the terms and conditions carefully. We want you to know we respect you.

Podcaster Overload

So over two days in San Francisco, I met with the following music podcasters:

CC Chapman - Accident Hash
Chris Rockwell - The Daily Download
Big Mike - Extra Super Action Show
Michael Butler - The Rock and Roll Geek show

CC had told me he was going to be at the SF Podcast meetup and I didn't realize it was going to be a "Podshow" heavy gathering. They had the whole crew in town. Even Ron Bloom. CC showed off their music site.

Earlier in the day I had been over at Odeo talking about AMP and other stuff. Fortunately for me that evening, the Odeo guy who showed up at the meeting was none other than Rabble their head geek. I had the opportunity to show him our Rabble.

The next day I was in LA for a couple of things and got to hang out for a couple of hours with Jason Evangelho from Insomnia Radio, arguably the biggest music podcast and a fellow AMP founder. Very good time and great to get to put a face to a name.

San Diego Mobile Monday

I have been asked to speak at the inaugural Mobile Monday meeting for San Diego on September 19th. Please come by if you get a chance. We will show the group Rabble and talk about of the various things we are working on at Intercasting.

San Francisco Podcast Meetup

CC Chapman from Accident Hash is in SF this week doing some stuff for Podshow. He mentioned to me that there is a Podcast meetup in SF tonight so I will definitely be checking it out.

Google Talk

I woke up this morning to several invitations to join Google Talk, Google's new IM client. I downloaded it and set it up. I am derrick.oien. Very creative of me huh? The invitations I received were from two fellow podcasters. It's been interesting to see how my Skype list grows daily and my AIM list is staying flat. Most of the Skype growth is European business associates or podcasters. I am thinking podcasters are generally the most early adopters I have met.

Rabble in Best of The Web Survey From Business Week

We are flattered that Rabble is one of the entrants in the Business Week Best of the Web competition that you can find here. I would humbly ask you to click on the Wireless Services category under the Toolbox section if you get a chance.

September Madness for Travel

I just booked my travel for the month of September. Ouch. I am speaking on two panels prior to CTIA in SF. One on creating mobile communities and one on emerging technology in the mobile software value chain forum. I am also presenting at a conference on mobile activism. That should be really cool. So September includes Toronto, NYC, SF and some other odd trips. Should be a long month.

Godcasting

I had lunch today with Craig Patchett founder of The Godcast Network. Craig is one of the early celebrities of podcasting and happens to be local. We had been meaning to get together for a long time and finally got the chance today. Glad we finally did it.

Office Space

So we are starting to fill out our once vacant office with stuff. More photos here.

Summer Thoughts

I was driving home down the coast the other day and I realized that I am somewhere on the other side of summer, well past the half way point but still somewhere in that place that I love about Southern California. And I realized that I haven't really taken the time to stop and enjoy this bit of time.

The last two to three months have been nothing but crazy and I am longing for a quick break that isn't coming anytime soon.

I then stopped and realized a couple of things.

My wife has been really slammed the last several months as she has returned to work and is still maxed out with the triplets. She is amazing.

The triplets have become increasingly easy, although that is almost a joke to say when you consider how many little creatures they are and how quickly they are developing.

My oldest son is now a school kid. And he has been playing pee wee sports, which is really funny and really cool.

I have been dying to write things in my blog out of a compulsive need to keep up my frequency of posting, but doing this has only resulted in a number of posts that when I look back on them aren't the type of things I expected to write about when I began. I guess I need to be patient and know that it's ok to not write stuff, especially if you are doing it for the wrong reasons, i.e. frequency over quality.

I am at that interesting cross roads in a company where you move from hard core startup to quickly growing company, which is simply amazing when I reflect on how far we have come and where we plan on going.

I am on the road all of the time, and although it is going really well and I am really excited about what we are working on, its a delicate balance to make it all work.

I guess what I am trying to say, is that, things are good yet very busy, and I am both happy and thankful for where things stand today. I don't expect to be blogging as frequently as we really start to do some heavy lifting, but when I do blog, hopefully it will be better than the last couple of months.

Podcasting Funding

Lots of funding this week. Podshow raises $8.8 million. Odeo raises an undisclosed amount.

We closed our Series A round for $5.5 million

As Shawn pointed out here, and Dave Beisel here we closed our Series A round for $5.5 million last week, which we announced yesterday in this press release.

It was an interesting process going through fund raising and along the way we met a bunch of really smart and interesting people. We are very excited about our new partners and expect that we can make a lot of headway in the coming months.

Leak about us - funding

Guess that's how it works. Check it out. I'll post something after I land in Seattle later today.

AMP'ed Podcast

Some of the folks in AMP put together a weekly review show of a slice of what we are doing each week. We pushed the first one live last Friday. By Saturday it was the #22 ranked podcast. By Sunday it was #8. This morning we are at 12. Please go check out the AMP site for the subscribe button or check out iTunes and look for the Top Podcasts to subscribe.

The Helmet and MMS

I think this is Tucker. It could be Brit, but I am pretty sure it is Tucker. Our triplets have slight flattening on the back of the head that at some level is a cosmetic issue, but because it could have some minor health issues we have opted to have them get the helmet. The helmet is fitted to their little skull and it helps their head get more symmetrical. I wish my parents had fixed my head when I was a baby.

The reason I am posting this though was because it was the first MMS message I have ever received. I was shocked today when my wife Jessica, who had to do the appointment without me sent me this picture from her phone to mine. She is on Cingular and I am on TMobile. (To be clear I also have a Verizon and Virgin Mobile phone, but I have been with Tmobile for years).

It's great to see carrier interop on MMS starting to happen. We obviously think we can help make picture sharing happen with Rabble, but anything that allows consumers to start to understand that what used to be known as a phone is now a media production and consumption device is goodness in our books.

Derrick Oien and Shawn Conahan

Derrick Oien and Shawn Conahan,
originally uploaded by Sander van Zoest.

Wow! A group of us set up an MP3.com alumni group on Flickr to share pictures. While browsing through the pics I found this one of Shawn and I at the MP3.com IPO party. That may have been one of the last really outrageous party sessions I have had in my life. Well maybe not, but certainly it was a very long night and an even longer next day.

I can't believe how young we look in this picture. Hmmmm.

Kill Your FM Zine

A group of my co-conspirators at AMP have just released their second issue of the Kill Your FM zine. You can find it at the AMP homepage. The really cool thing about it to me is that it is targeted for the Sony PSP. That's just amazing, and one more reason for me to go buy one. The issue has reviews of bands, tech writeups and MP3 files. Very nifty.

Mobilecast

Moconews reported on a story today about a product called Mobilecast that allows you to convert podcast files (mp3 files) to AMR which is the format many cell phones use. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks interesting. I'll report back when I get a chance to play with it.

First Rabble Review

We had our first review of Rabble. We were very pleased with the write up entitled Joining the Rabble: Making Mobile Community Work. The article can be found at TelecommWeb. A subscription is required. Shawn did a write up here with some excerpts.

Although there are some great comments about the product from a feature standpoint, I was really excited about some of the commentary about the community, which is without question the key component to making something like Rabble a success.

From the article

So whom does Rabble attract and what sorts of content do they make? From what we have seen, the early user base is young 20-somethings who most often post images of themselves and who ask such earth-shattering questions as whether they should let their hair go curly or straight? We get a lot of new- car posts; the occasional semi-nude body advertising his/her physique; and a lot of semi- drunk gal pals taking pictures of themselves in bars, asking the eternal question of life: "Whassup?"

It's very difficult to strike the right balance of product feature set to match a demographic. We set out to create a community that would allow our target demographic to interact and create content much in the same way that they have on some of the leading youth focused blogging sites and the social networking sites. To us, the early indications are that the users understand this immediately and know what to expect, albeit in a mobile environment. Another important piece of the puzzle is to have early members of the community to take a leadership role and model the behavior norms of the other users. The reviewer understood this and commented as follows:

Trivial? Yes. Mundane? Often. Thoroughly absorbing? Absolutely. Whether someone is complaining about an intense family problem or just showing off his or her body (or how drunk they can be while still holding a phone cam), the ephemeral postings quickly can germinate into ongoing soap operas or conversations among a group of simpatico souls. Learning the hard lessons of online communities that often go bust, Rabble does an excellent job of bringing the most active and interesting content to the top. It tracks the most- frequently-subscribed channels, the most popular and frequent posters, and "cool content." It is in these areas where we find serial postings from people whose personalities come through. Rabble already has its own grassroots celebrities. "LiberalFury" is an activist chronicling his journey to Washington, D.C., while "fayble" is a young lady who is away from her boyfriend and obsessively pining away in endless posts. This reviewer is a couple of decades away from his early Twenties, and yet the angst and trivia of these posts is absorbing. Rabble also has seeded the community with minor rock bands who post images and thoughts from the road as they tour.

It is still early and we have a long way to go, but we are excited by both the activity of our users as well as the interest of outside parties.

Football is coming

This morning I received my first email alert from my fantasy football service of choice, The Huddle. Wow, it's time, football season is upon us. As someone who is only a fan of football, this time of year is my most fixated on things of a sports nature. Whether it is high school, college or professional, there is nothing quite like football in my book. It's been a long time since the superbowl, glad it's back.

Rabble at BlogHer Con

I can't say for sure, but Debi might demo Rabble at her session at BlogHer Con on Mobile Blogging. If you are there definitely ask her to let you check it out.

PodcastMusic.com

What is this....hmmmm.

11th anniversary

Tomorrow marks 11 years of marriage with the most awesome woman in the world. I knew life would be an interesting journey, and I can't imagine having shared it with anyone better. Here's to my wonderful wife Jessica, a true partner in my life.

Pageant of the Masters

We are going to the Pageant of the Masters tonight. I recall that the first time I heard of it I thought it was a really stupid idea. People getting up on stage and recreating famous works of art. Yawn. In reality it is one of the coolest things you have seen as they show you how they do it and it is amazing how it turns out. It's a definite recommendation if you get to Laguna Beach in the summer.

Rabble at MOMEMO

If you haven't had a chance to check out Rabble yet, we are presenting it at the Los Angeles Momemo on Monday.

The $250 Million Radio Show #26

A little train podcast can be found here. Credits here.

Libsyn Feed

I set up my Libsyn account. My Libsyn feed is here. As soon as we can detail what we are doing with them I'll let you know. What I can say, not having been a Libsyn user, that their stats are AMAZING. Being a stat junkie I really dig this stuff and hosting my own stuff and using AWSTATS and other cheesy server stats packages has been less than optimal. I don't plan on moving my podcast feed from my Acmenoise feed anytime soon, but if you haven't listened to my show and want to help me check out the stats in more detail, feel free to subscribe to the feed above or check out the page I set up on Libsyn here.

Libsyn and AMP

At AMP we are finalizing a deal with Libsyn to do some cool stuff with our shows and their service. More details soon. Later today I hope to send some links to my feed coming from Libsyn as well.

Sidekick -- PMD

For the last several weeks I have been using a recently purchased Sidekick device. I find it ironic that the developer of the device is a company called Danger as I think this is the device that will ultimately get me in an accident due to my use of Instant Messenger while driving.

At our company we speak a lot about PMD's or Personal Media Devices. To us a PMD could be a Sony Ericsson P910, which is an elegant piece of mobile technology that allows a wide variety of media creation or, on the other end of the spectrum my LG-6000 running Rabble which allows me to create posts and add pictures, etc. Nothing too fancy, but when you think about what most phones can do, its definitely a hint of where we are going.

Over the last two months I have seen more and more people using the Sidekick. One of our night nurses had one. The guy running the Ferris wheel at the fair had one. A couple of friends started popping up with them. What I found most fascinating was that none of the people I saw with this device were what I would call early adopters. These people were mainstream tech users who happened to be typing on this little QWERTY keyboard. I figured I must be missing something.

To be brief, I am extremely fascinated by this device in my short time using it. It comes with a lot of functionality in a small user friendly form factor, and I can see how different features would appeal to different users. I am using it for one thing, AIM. My P910 is great for email, phone calls, reviewing docs, etc. Where it really falls down is IM. I have tried repeatedly to use one of the more popular interop mobile clients but have been really disappointed with the experience. The Sidekick has this nailed. They appear to cache sessions on both sides for those periods when you lose connectivity and then resumes the session with the stored text on either side.

The other features on the device include a phone (how quaint), email capability, a web browser, and a variety of PIM type features like contact management and notes as well as a camera. I would definitely use this for email if I wasn't conditioned to use my P910. The other features seem to work well, but they are not the big use case to me. For different users I could see the appeal of certain combinations of the feature set.

From a hardware perspective it is a great device. The screen easily flips, the keyboard is a good size and the overall device size isn't too bulky although it is by no means a small device. The price point of around $250 keeps it just a hair above what I would call a mainstream consumer device, but it isn't far off like many of the smart phones.

As far as a PMD, I think this device has great potential as it relates to blogging and photo blogging. I can take a quick picture of my son at soccer. Email it to my photo blogging place of choice. Pull up a web browser for blog entry, and post for all to see. Or I could use a client based application like Rabble, although Rabble isn't currently available for this device. The QWERTY keyboard lends itself to quick, yet longer form data entry although we have seen amazing amounts of text entry from standard phone keyboards. The nice combination of features from a hardware perspective would be nicely accented by similar software.

What does it need? My wishlist would be the following:

High Speed Connectivity - 3G network option
Deeper access to applications.
Open platform to other IM or Communication type software like other IM clients or Skype.
A better Camera.
WiFi Connectivity

All in all its a great device and I am sure that the next one is going to continue down the path of an awesome feature set path as more users discover what you can do with it.

iTunes Podcasting support Part Three

Ok, my show, The $250 Million Radio Show, was added to iTunes. I like to think it was coincidence, but it appears that almost all of the shows in our group were added. Power in numbers. Feel free to go and subscribe!

LiveJournal on Rabble

We rolled out support for Live Journal on Rabble over the weekend. If you use Rabble and Live Journal you can send posts from Live Journal to Rabble and back.

iTunes Podcasting support Part Two

The following is a press release that our podcasting association AMP released today:

Is Apple Thwarting Independent Music Podcasters?

Despite the widespread proliferation of podcasts through Apple’s new iTunes version 4.9, it appears music podcasters that legally distribute independent music are being left behind and effectively locked out of the iTunes podcast directory, which is fast becoming the primary vehicle to find podcasts.

The Association of Music Podcasting (AMP) represents the largest podcasting content group in the world, with forty three members. As of this release, three weeks after the delivery of the latest version of iTunes, thirty four AMP podcast feeds remained unlisted in the iTunes directory. These podcasts were subsequently either listed in the iPodder.org directory that served as the initial basis for the iTunes client ,or were submitted within twenty-four hours of the iTunes release.

It appears Apple has placed procedural obstacles for many older, established podcasts to quickly enter its iTunes directory. Despite that brand new podcast submissions appear to be taking a reasonable amount of processing time (approximately 48 hours), many legacy podcasters have waited weeks to no presence on iTunes.

Moreover, podcasts taken from the original iPodder.org listing are barred from resubmission, with no available option to resolve the issue of podcasts "on hold."

“It’s frustrating,” says Chris MacDonald, owner of IndieFeed Podcasts, founding member and Director of Legal Affairs at AMP. “We’ve been podcasting since mid September of 2004, when this thing really got started. I have thousands and thousands of listeners; yet our fans can’t migrate to iTunes easily. We are losing loyal listeners who aren’t technically savvy or who choose not to run two podcast aggregators at a time. It’s silly to suggest Apple can’t add those feeds to their directory in a reasonable amount of time. It’s also very odd that my non-music feeds, which were provided to Apple at the same time, migrated to the iTunes directory in only two days.”

"Corporations are looking to take advantage of the roadwork that the existing podcasting community has created via an unfettered, open-choice format,” says Derrick Oien, President of AMP. Oien is one of the earliest legal music podcasters, going back to the fall of 2004. His show is among many not yet listed in the iTunes directory. Oien adds, “It appears that Apple is more concerned with molding the community to their immediate commercial needs than with embracing this open community and adhering to an effective long term strategy. We have witnessed the early evolution of podcasting at a break-neck pace, partly because podcasting’s open format rapidly adapts to fit the needs of the community at large, and successful corporations will embrace rather than attempt to control this phenomenon. AMP continues to rapidly amass a large and dedicated collective audience, and we are working with people and organizations that approach podcasting in the spirit in which it was conceived. We look forward to working with them. At some point we expect that the support we receive daily from listeners and artists will get Apple's attention."

Rabble and Influx Insights

We received a mention in Influx Insights today in an article about the decline of Kodak and the rise of services like Flickr and Rabble. Check it out.

Gardening Thoughts - Heirloom Tomatoes Part Two

I am on the board of a company called Trusonic. They do really cool things with music and messaging in retail establishments. It's a great company with a bright future in a space ruled by basically two companies, Muzak and DMX.

One of the other guys on the board is Eric, who is the chairman & CEO of Pepperball. They make those nasty rubber bullets that basically mace you if you mess with the police.

At lunch we were talking about business stuff and other things when Eric said that the overcast skies were making it tough for his tomatoes to grow. What followed was a long conversation about the different varieties we are each growing, successes etc.

So far I am really pleased with where mine are. I have had two turn red so far and am looking at a summerful of some really good tomatoes.

3Hive.com

During my many travels, I got to hang out with the guys from Nitro Records, which is the label of great bands like The Offspring, Rufio, The Letters Organize and the Aquabats. Great stuff and great guys. Sean, who is the head of A&R also is a contributor to an amazing MP3 blog at 3Hive.com. If you like great indie music, I would recommend checking it out. Now if we can just get them podcasting...

The $250 Million Radio Show #25

Just pushed out Show #25 here. Credits here.

MySpace Acquired

For over $540 Million. Wow. Check this out. Congrats to them.

Back from the East

Man was the weather bad in Boston and New York. Hot and Muggy. I have a backlog of posts for today and a podcast. It was worth mentioning that we got to hang out with Dan and Mike and Dave Harper on our trip, in addition to all the meetings that were directly related to business. In town for two days and then taking a much needed break to Jackson Hole on Wednesday.

AMP and Odeo

We signed an agreement with Odeo this week to work closely with them and AMP. We are excited by their vision and look forward to doing some really cool things with music podcasting together. More details to follow.

Tate Turns 3

So Tate turned 3 yesterday. I am bummed that it coincided with an important trip, but we are going to have a big celebration on Saturday and pretty much through the whole weekend. Wow has time flown by so fast.

4th of July Pictures

Here are the kids on the fourth.

Traveling Yet Again

Boston and NYC next week. Figure it will be a light week for blogging. I have a couple of things I need to post before I leave. I am thinking there is a 50/50 chance that happens.

Blogger Image Upload

I have never used the Blogger web interface to put pictures on my blog. I have always used Flickr or Picassa. Here is one using the web.

Blogger on Rabble

Last night, after the many trials and tribulations that come with development, we rolled out Blogger integration with Rabble. What does that mean? Well for one, this post, as soon as it hits the Internet will be available for people who subscribe to my channel on Rabble to view. It makes it a really nice way to integrate what I do on the web with what I do on my phone. In addition when I post stuff on Rabble I can set it up to post on one of my Blogger blogs, including the pictures in my camera phone post. While posting from a phone to a website isn't earth shattering and many others have done it, the posts coming back from the web to the phone is to my knowledge certainly unique as is a lot of what Rabble does. If you are a Rabble user reading this and you use Blogger, please check it out. If you use one of the other blogging sites, we expect to make that available to you very soon.

Also if you haven't visited the Rabble website, we have finally rolled out login for existing users. Right now it is only set up for blogging synchronization, but soon you will be able to use it to do a lot of the things you do on Rabble from a PC. Except maybe carry it around in your pocket.