Last week this time I was on a plane bound for Wisconsin. Back in October I had been at a college football game and the husband of one of my wife's friends had talked to me at the game about the school he was teaching at in Wisconsin. Anthony knew I worked in the high tech industry and I knew that he was a professor in a technology department at that school.
I have to admit that I couldn't entirely figure out how an English PHD would be able to, much less be allowed to teach in a technology department but that wasn't my issue. At the time he asked me what we were doing with Flash and I described how I thought that it was one of the important technologies we would be working with over time and how it was something we use a lot in sales presentations.
We talked a little bit about how I visit colleges several times a year to talk about technology and how media is being transformed. He asked me if I would ever consider coming out and talking to his students. I told him that I try to stick to LA, NYC, Boston, SF and other cities where I am doing business but I would consider it if asked.
Fast forward several months and there I am headed to Wisconsin to visit the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point. Earlier this year Anthony had reached out and asked me if in fact I could come out but not necessarily to speak. The University was undergoing a review process on his department and they wanted to have representatives from industry as well as other universities to gain a broad perspective. I have to admit that I wasn't entirely sure what to expect but I agreed to go.
The degree program I was asked to review is the Bachelor's degree in Web and Digital Media Development. The link to the department can be found here. My fellow reviewers and I spent the better part of two days looking at the curriculum, met with faculty, students, community business representatives and university administration.
I have to say that it was a fascinating experience. The degree program they have developed is a fascinating blend of technology and design. When I think about how much time I spend in front of a computer, it makes perfect sense to me why an English professor who can program in Flash would be in a technology department. I personally walked away with a lot of admiration for this school to create a program that today is hard to find but is certainly one that will be widespread in the coming years. It will be interesting to see how they will expand on what they have started and whether or not they will be able to assume a leadership position in a new category.
Two big takeaways for me. One is that it is interesting to see how universities have to grapple with the emergence of new disciplines, especially in areas with rapidly changing technologies. It is not unlike the emergence of computer science degrees out of math departments many years ago. Two, it will be interesting to see how students who are trained in interdisciplinary studies (technology, design, psychology, English, human computer interaction) will impact and contribute to technology in the coming years.
One of the feedback points that I gave to the students when I spoke with them was that although they are doing some pretty amazing stuff with Flash on computers, the opportunities that I see that are significant to me are how will design conform to devices that aren't computers. There are more mobile handsets in the world than computers and as I head to CTIA this weekend one of the devices in my bag has some pretty amazing Flash prototypes that we are working on. Other devices like the Chumby are built around Flash as a core piece of their value proposition and the desire to leverage the large installed base of Flash developers.
I hope that the University of Wisconsin continues down they path they have started on and I can say that I am personally going to try to see how I can help this fledgling department interface with some of the people I know who are working at the intersection of design and technology. Thanks for having me out and best of luck.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Bones in Motion Part 2
Enrique Ortiz saw my previous posts about Bones In Motion and pinged the founder of Bones In Motion Jon Werner to check it out. He sent me a nice email last night and pointed out one technical issue that was present in the post that contained the map. When I was running in downtown Los Angeles there was an apparent wavy motion on my running path, and no I wasn't stumbling through the streets. He explained that dense buildings distort some of the signal and that was what you can see. I frankly thought nothing of it at the time but did notice that while running at the beach, the lines were completely smooth.
Below is an example of that. Unfortunately you can't see with really great detail but when I zoomed in you can even see the ever so small loop that I intentionally did at the turnaround point to see how precise it was and I was very impressed by the accuracy.
I am clearly a new found convert to some of the specific vertical application of LBS technology and Bones can count me as a long time future customer.
Below is an example of that. Unfortunately you can't see with really great detail but when I zoomed in you can even see the ever so small loop that I intentionally did at the turnaround point to see how precise it was and I was very impressed by the accuracy.
I am clearly a new found convert to some of the specific vertical application of LBS technology and Bones can count me as a long time future customer.
Details in the post above. Activity
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Bones In Motion
Last year almost to the day, I was at SXSW and spoke at the Austin Mobile Monday event. I was presenting Rabble and there were a number of LBS providers doing demo's as well. One of the coolest sounding applications, although for what I would consider a specialty market, was Bones In Motion. In a nutshell the idea is to use the GPS in your phone to track your fitness performance. In general I have been skeptical of GPS performance in phones until last weeks Telenav experience. I decided to check out some other LBS applications to see what else might be cool. While going through the Sprint catalog I found the Bones In Motion application.
Last night I stayed in Los Angeles at The Standard Hotel before I head up to Hollywood for the iHollywood forum. The ambient noise from downtown woke me up around 4 AM so sometime after 5 PM I grabbed the sneakers and my phone and headed out for a short run. Downtown LA is a great place for a jog as the topography is generally flat with the exception of Bunker Hill which is where the Disney Concert Hall and MOCA are located. I figured out a short loop that would include that as it is fairly close to my hotel and off I went.
The Bones In Motion application kept track of my time and speed and told me when I had hit the mile mark. At the end of the run I saved the relevant data and returned to my room. I went online to check all the details (which were also available on my phone and thought it would be nifty to have it automatically publish to my blog. Note the integration with maps and the mapping of the elevation gain around Bunker Hill. I can't wait to try this out some more.
Last night I stayed in Los Angeles at The Standard Hotel before I head up to Hollywood for the iHollywood forum. The ambient noise from downtown woke me up around 4 AM so sometime after 5 PM I grabbed the sneakers and my phone and headed out for a short run. Downtown LA is a great place for a jog as the topography is generally flat with the exception of Bunker Hill which is where the Disney Concert Hall and MOCA are located. I figured out a short loop that would include that as it is fairly close to my hotel and off I went.
The Bones In Motion application kept track of my time and speed and told me when I had hit the mile mark. At the end of the run I saved the relevant data and returned to my room. I went online to check all the details (which were also available on my phone and thought it would be nifty to have it automatically publish to my blog. Note the integration with maps and the mapping of the elevation gain around Bunker Hill. I can't wait to try this out some more.
I am checking out the Bones In Motion LBS application and wanted to see what this looks like on my blog. Activity
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Monday, March 12, 2007
The Bag Of Shame
I have been traveling a lot this year and it doesn't look to be letting up anytime soon. Early in the year I had decided I would just buy certain products when I arrived in my city of choice and go from there. Specifically I thought that my hair product of choice came in a container that was just a wee bit too big.
I use products from American Crew whose website is here. One of my favorite products is their Fiber product which is like super glue for hair without the sheen. The container it comes in is 3.53 ounces which was something I wasn't clear on until today.
About a month or two ago I gave up the orchestrations I needed to deal with when I landed and just packed my very own bag of shame that I can carry with me dutifully while the beloved TSA keeps me safe. I rummaged through the pantry and grabbed a clear plastic bag and threw together the stuff I needed that seemed to be small enough. I though the American Crew stuff was just about in the zone and figured if they made me throw it away I would adjust my strategy.
Fast forward through several trips (actually I think 7 flights) and we arrive at today. My plastic bag has developed an interesting sheen that I can only imagine is the collective residue of toothpaste and shaving cream with some amount of evaporation from the left over water. After exiting the bus, I commented to Shawn how I had to make sure I fetched out my bag of shame that contains my various personal items. I told him that I thought it would be an interesting experiment to put in a variety of rubberized products that were either offensive or strange and see if it would elicit a response from the TSA. An idea we had tossed around was a 32 oz bottle that said 2 ounces on it in big bold letters.
We had many good laughs and I should have realized that I had just crossed the threshold of karmic balance in the universe that was bound to backfire on me. After going through the X-ray in my smelly socks with all my electronic gadgets and other metallic devices strewn across three plastic buckets, the TSA agent asked me if my bag of shame was in fact mine. I said, yeah, thinking that he was going to make fun of my over used razor blade. He pulled out my fiber container and looked very closely at the label which said 3.53 ounces. (refer to joke above about mislabeling...mental note...delete labels that document size).
"This container is too large sir, you can check your bags or surrender your fiber." I said, "Are you serious?"
"Regulations specify that you can only carry containers of a certain size sir." I contemplated telling him that I had been carrying that fiber in my bag of shame for many flights and he was the first one to actually read the label but decided this wouldn't help me. "Well, can you open the container so I can decide how much it is worth to me to check the baggage versus giving it to you." He didn't seem too pleased by this request as he might have thought it was a trick. He reluctantly opened the container to reveal that there was less than 10% of the product remaining. My math says that's about .35 ounces.
I was faced with two choices. I could ridicule him for his poor math skills, specifically as it related to measurement of volume, or I could tell him to throw it away calculating that there was about $2.00 worth of hair care product remaining. As the first course of action would probably only serve to get me on a list which would require extra checks in the future I told him that he could keep my fiber. He sort of sneered at me which I can only assume was based on the fact that HE wasn't going to keep my fiber and that he was going to throw it away.
Shawn started laughing hysterically which really underlined the absurdity of the whole process when the TSA agent told me, "Sir, by the way, your bag is a gallon bag and you can only carry a quart bag."
"Ahhh. Thanks. I was in need of replacing my bag so I will make sure I get right on that before my next trip."
Something Kafkaesque tells me that my unintentional civil disobedience, while personally very funny to me, doesn't really take into account the actual risks that are present. Hopefully this noise is an unfortunate byproduct of some really tight security and processes that are keeping the skies safe. One can only hope.
I use products from American Crew whose website is here. One of my favorite products is their Fiber product which is like super glue for hair without the sheen. The container it comes in is 3.53 ounces which was something I wasn't clear on until today.
About a month or two ago I gave up the orchestrations I needed to deal with when I landed and just packed my very own bag of shame that I can carry with me dutifully while the beloved TSA keeps me safe. I rummaged through the pantry and grabbed a clear plastic bag and threw together the stuff I needed that seemed to be small enough. I though the American Crew stuff was just about in the zone and figured if they made me throw it away I would adjust my strategy.
Fast forward through several trips (actually I think 7 flights) and we arrive at today. My plastic bag has developed an interesting sheen that I can only imagine is the collective residue of toothpaste and shaving cream with some amount of evaporation from the left over water. After exiting the bus, I commented to Shawn how I had to make sure I fetched out my bag of shame that contains my various personal items. I told him that I thought it would be an interesting experiment to put in a variety of rubberized products that were either offensive or strange and see if it would elicit a response from the TSA. An idea we had tossed around was a 32 oz bottle that said 2 ounces on it in big bold letters.
We had many good laughs and I should have realized that I had just crossed the threshold of karmic balance in the universe that was bound to backfire on me. After going through the X-ray in my smelly socks with all my electronic gadgets and other metallic devices strewn across three plastic buckets, the TSA agent asked me if my bag of shame was in fact mine. I said, yeah, thinking that he was going to make fun of my over used razor blade. He pulled out my fiber container and looked very closely at the label which said 3.53 ounces. (refer to joke above about mislabeling...mental note...delete labels that document size).
"This container is too large sir, you can check your bags or surrender your fiber." I said, "Are you serious?"
"Regulations specify that you can only carry containers of a certain size sir." I contemplated telling him that I had been carrying that fiber in my bag of shame for many flights and he was the first one to actually read the label but decided this wouldn't help me. "Well, can you open the container so I can decide how much it is worth to me to check the baggage versus giving it to you." He didn't seem too pleased by this request as he might have thought it was a trick. He reluctantly opened the container to reveal that there was less than 10% of the product remaining. My math says that's about .35 ounces.
I was faced with two choices. I could ridicule him for his poor math skills, specifically as it related to measurement of volume, or I could tell him to throw it away calculating that there was about $2.00 worth of hair care product remaining. As the first course of action would probably only serve to get me on a list which would require extra checks in the future I told him that he could keep my fiber. He sort of sneered at me which I can only assume was based on the fact that HE wasn't going to keep my fiber and that he was going to throw it away.
Shawn started laughing hysterically which really underlined the absurdity of the whole process when the TSA agent told me, "Sir, by the way, your bag is a gallon bag and you can only carry a quart bag."
"Ahhh. Thanks. I was in need of replacing my bag so I will make sure I get right on that before my next trip."
Something Kafkaesque tells me that my unintentional civil disobedience, while personally very funny to me, doesn't really take into account the actual risks that are present. Hopefully this noise is an unfortunate byproduct of some really tight security and processes that are keeping the skies safe. One can only hope.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Media Next - Introduction
I am not a long form blogger but for the last several months, maybe even almost a year there have been a number of ideas and issues swirling around in my mind that warrant a long discussion which is not something that I am prone to do. I like punchy or personal. Sometimes that isn't the right approach to address a topic or some specific subject matter.
One of the things I started pushing on at work over the last year wasdoing outreach to colleges to talk about the lessons I have learned over the last several years and to talk about the things that I think are important to share with those who will hopefully determine the future of media and content. I have spoke at a number of schools and have a handful set up for this semester that have really been the catalyst for this post and a series of posts that I want to write in the coming months.
Although different classes have different subject matter and I generally try to tailor what I am saying to the specific audience, there are some recurring themes that I find myself repeating over and over and I realized in the process that these are things that I assume other people consider and that I have never formally put structure around my thoughts. Acknowledging that there is not an original thought, I think we do each synthesize a combination of our experiences as well as material we have encountered in our journeys. The things I plan to cover in the coming weeks or so will be a combination of my experiences and things/thoughts I have encountered in the past. I hope to give proper attribution where I can remember.
So here I am four paragraphs in and I haven't made any meaningful points...
CDs were an incredible invention. As a consumer I recall that I was excited about the idea of a form of media that wouldn't get eaten by a tape machine or melt on the dashboard on my car. So much for vision on my part. What I didn't get at that time way back in the early 80s was that the promise of crystal clear digital sound was the seeds of massive change in what the future would hold for the media and content businesses.
Over a decade later while working at MP3.com I would experience firsthand the intersection of technology and content and watch as both sides grappled with what would come next and what would the future hold as consumers marched rapidly into unchartered territory. A big reason for this was that very same digital CD format that was transformed by the rise of personal computers.
Again almost a decade later the changes continue to come and still the clear cut impact or rather the clear outline of what is to come next is not obvious to me or many others who watch the media and content space. To me there are a number of historical things that are worth exploring and discussing as they give hints to what has transpired and hopefully may give some indications of what the future might hold. I don't pretend to have any answers but I think that a good hearty discussion of the issues might point to some future possibilities.
My goal in the coming weeks is to hit on the following specific topics: The role of scarcity in the creation and maintenance of value in media and content, the rise of personal distribution and publication platforms, the rise of inexpensive content production tools, the differences between open and closed networks, and possibilities for future business models. I don't expect to have any divine revelations but I do hope to get a handful of people engaged in a conversation, if not now, hopefully soon.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Talking Head
I am hitting a stretch of travel and speaking over the next 6 weeks. Next week I am speaking at the iHollywood Forum on Tuesday. Details here. I am on a panel entitled "From Mobile Networks to Mobile Networking". Paul Smith from Mpulse, who I spoke on a panel with at SXSW last year will be there as well as Michael Grossi from Helio. I have been particularly excited by some of the new Helio phones as well as an apparent move towards the early adopter, gadget freak consumer which is what I thought they were going to originally go for when they launched.
A bunch of friends and acquaintances will be there as well including Jim Kaskade from Eyespot, Joe Hurd from Video Egg, and Matthew Evans from NBC/Universal who worked with me back at Vivendi.
A couple of weeks later on March 26th I will be speaking in one of the Ask the Experts sessions at Billboard Mobile Entertainment at CTIA. Link the the show here. Other friends and acquaintances in attendance include Greg Clayman from MTV, Ted Cohen, Paul Palmieri from MillennialMedia, Craig Thole from Boost, Rio Caraeff from Universal Music, and Bryan Biniak.
Later in April I will be speaking at the Dow Jones Wireless Innovations Conference. Details here. More details on that later.
A bunch of friends and acquaintances will be there as well including Jim Kaskade from Eyespot, Joe Hurd from Video Egg, and Matthew Evans from NBC/Universal who worked with me back at Vivendi.
A couple of weeks later on March 26th I will be speaking in one of the Ask the Experts sessions at Billboard Mobile Entertainment at CTIA. Link the the show here. Other friends and acquaintances in attendance include Greg Clayman from MTV, Ted Cohen, Paul Palmieri from MillennialMedia, Craig Thole from Boost, Rio Caraeff from Universal Music, and Bryan Biniak.
Later in April I will be speaking at the Dow Jones Wireless Innovations Conference. Details here. More details on that later.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Rental Cars, LBS and Cellphones
Sometime last week I received an email from the Sprint Ambassador program soliciting feedback for the Phase 2 timeframe. I have to say that I have really dug the program and it has forced me to evaluate things I wouldn't normally look at in the course of my information ferreting process. After giving my feedback I fired up my phone and did some deck cruising to see some of the things they have that I may not normally look at. Combing through the record crates as it were.
For some reason, that is mostly historical, I usually rent cars from Budget. The primary reason I think is that I really like the guy who runs the Budget franchise at Union Station in Los Angeles and he always takes care of me when I am in LA. Beyond that I really am on the fence about Budget, especially the outfit at the airport in Seattle. those people are a case study in miserable customer service.
So yesterday I headed up to San Francisco and Silicon Valley for a busy day of meetings. While booking a car late at night on Monday, budget was sold out at SJC, which happens more than occasionally. Big sigh. I went over to Hertz and found a bunch of cars and went ahead and booked.
The next morning while picking up the car, I was asked if I need satellite radio or GPS or anything special which I declined but I realized that I had a little bit of all those things in my Sprint phone, which is an LG Fusic.
I have to admit that the thought of GPS navigation on my cell phone for the car seemed really ridiculous. I recalled from my previous digging around that there was an application I had subscribed to called TeleNav Navigator. I fired up the application and set it up for directions to San Francisco. I know how to get to San Francisco but I wanted to see how well it works.
As I exited the Hertz parking lot the phone started barking out directions to the city. Very cool. The speaker could be a bit louder but the experience was as good as what I have seen pre-installed in cars with the exception of the sound volume. While flying up the 280 I pulled out the phone and was blown away by the really cool 3D representation of my car cruising up the coast route.
I spent the better part of the day making the application map my directions and all in all it was really good and surprisingly kind to the battery. At $10 a month for an application like this I have to wonder what sort of threat this poses to the guys charging $2000 to load this stuff directly into cars. If I can do a bluetooth connection to a car speaker system I can get the sound piece worked out and I am good to go. Just a thought. I will come back to some other implications of this shortly as it relates to the mobile relevance of applications or not in a post I am working on assuming I actually finish it.
For some reason, that is mostly historical, I usually rent cars from Budget. The primary reason I think is that I really like the guy who runs the Budget franchise at Union Station in Los Angeles and he always takes care of me when I am in LA. Beyond that I really am on the fence about Budget, especially the outfit at the airport in Seattle. those people are a case study in miserable customer service.
So yesterday I headed up to San Francisco and Silicon Valley for a busy day of meetings. While booking a car late at night on Monday, budget was sold out at SJC, which happens more than occasionally. Big sigh. I went over to Hertz and found a bunch of cars and went ahead and booked.
The next morning while picking up the car, I was asked if I need satellite radio or GPS or anything special which I declined but I realized that I had a little bit of all those things in my Sprint phone, which is an LG Fusic.
I have to admit that the thought of GPS navigation on my cell phone for the car seemed really ridiculous. I recalled from my previous digging around that there was an application I had subscribed to called TeleNav Navigator. I fired up the application and set it up for directions to San Francisco. I know how to get to San Francisco but I wanted to see how well it works.
As I exited the Hertz parking lot the phone started barking out directions to the city. Very cool. The speaker could be a bit louder but the experience was as good as what I have seen pre-installed in cars with the exception of the sound volume. While flying up the 280 I pulled out the phone and was blown away by the really cool 3D representation of my car cruising up the coast route.
I spent the better part of the day making the application map my directions and all in all it was really good and surprisingly kind to the battery. At $10 a month for an application like this I have to wonder what sort of threat this poses to the guys charging $2000 to load this stuff directly into cars. If I can do a bluetooth connection to a car speaker system I can get the sound piece worked out and I am good to go. Just a thought. I will come back to some other implications of this shortly as it relates to the mobile relevance of applications or not in a post I am working on assuming I actually finish it.
Friday, March 02, 2007
MP3.com Data Mining Revisted
Over two years ago I wrote a post about some of the data mining we did at MP3.com and then Vivendi Universal that you can find here. To this day I find that entire exercise fascinating and one of the things that I enjoy the most is that the story only gets better with time.
Back in that post I referenced Rick Walker who worked with me trying to identify opportunities to sell data to the record labels back in 2003-2004. The previous post talks about some of the mechanical specifics but it doesn't really do a good job showing what he had developed.
Around the end of the year last year we needed to bring in a new finance person for our current company and coincidentally Rick became available. It's been great having him on the team and we like to talk about how cool that project was and how far ahead of it's time the data was. This is especially poignant as we have seen bands that were essentially baby bands at that time that have blow up in a big way. On the other hand there are also a bunch that became roadkill. This morning I uploaded a sample of the report that we were sharing with A&R folks before Vivendi divested the assets of the various music properties I oversaw. Here is a link to the National chart and some of the larger markets. You can find three other pages here, here, and here. Take a special note of the top band in Chicago in 2003.
Thanks to Rick for dropping this blast from the past on my desk this morning. I have been chewing on a post for a couple of weeks ever since I had a pint with a BBC producer in New York who spoke with me at length on the challenges they face in the future in terms of getting paid. I don't know that I have any answers to that question but I think the framework of my thinking to describe the key drivers and point to some potential ideas is almost complete. As there are a lot greater minds than mine thinking about that problem I don't expect to break any new ground but I think this past experience when colored with some of my current experiences will at least be worth sharing or start some discussions.
Back in that post I referenced Rick Walker who worked with me trying to identify opportunities to sell data to the record labels back in 2003-2004. The previous post talks about some of the mechanical specifics but it doesn't really do a good job showing what he had developed.
Around the end of the year last year we needed to bring in a new finance person for our current company and coincidentally Rick became available. It's been great having him on the team and we like to talk about how cool that project was and how far ahead of it's time the data was. This is especially poignant as we have seen bands that were essentially baby bands at that time that have blow up in a big way. On the other hand there are also a bunch that became roadkill. This morning I uploaded a sample of the report that we were sharing with A&R folks before Vivendi divested the assets of the various music properties I oversaw. Here is a link to the National chart and some of the larger markets. You can find three other pages here, here, and here. Take a special note of the top band in Chicago in 2003.
Thanks to Rick for dropping this blast from the past on my desk this morning. I have been chewing on a post for a couple of weeks ever since I had a pint with a BBC producer in New York who spoke with me at length on the challenges they face in the future in terms of getting paid. I don't know that I have any answers to that question but I think the framework of my thinking to describe the key drivers and point to some potential ideas is almost complete. As there are a lot greater minds than mine thinking about that problem I don't expect to break any new ground but I think this past experience when colored with some of my current experiences will at least be worth sharing or start some discussions.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Advanced Technology circa 1994
During my digitization of old photos I found this gem. This was the first computer I used to access the Internets. At the time of this picture I think I was using it primarily for BBS services but I made the jump to AOL and then Netcom fairly quickly after that. Oh, and I upgraded the computer and the modem shortly thereafter.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Techtidbits
There have been a number of things over the last couple of days that are interesting although nothing that has driven me to post. So here are the notable ones:
30boxes turns a year old. Congrats.
Ning relaunches their social networking in a box platform.
Tellme is rumored to be acquired by Microsoft. Wow.
30boxes turns a year old. Congrats.
Ning relaunches their social networking in a box platform.
Tellme is rumored to be acquired by Microsoft. Wow.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Tivo HME
I haven't been able to do a whole lot with the Tivo as free time has been spare, but this morning I was tinkering around with the device while I was drinking some coffee and ran into the Tivo HME materials. HME stands fr Home Media Engine. It is an open source platform for Series 2 and PC development. It seems kind of like software hacking for your Tivo. I will definitely dig deeper but trying to get a quick bang for the time I checked out the Apps.tv site to find some 3rd part HME apps. I had an aha moment when I set the service up on my Tivo and saw that MP3tunes locker control was available. Michael had shown me this a couple of months back and now I got to add it to my home TV. I also added in one of the Flickr browser apps which is pretty slick. Do check it out if you are a Tivo owner.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Rabble on Virgin Mobile US
Last night Rabble rolled out on Virgin Mobile. We have known the Virgin folks for a long time and are excited to welcome Virgin into the Rabble community. Check it out on your Virgin phone.
Tivo, Directv and my PSP
I have been itching for some kind of new tech toy for a while now but nothing has been jumping out at me. No gadget has raised my interest level. I have been looking at some of the cool Japanese stuff for the PSP like GPS and a Video camera attachment but they are only available as gray market products and honestly besides the nerd factor neither of those have much appeal for me. Ok, maybe the video camera.
The one thing that I have been slightly intrigued by has been the Tivo To Go offering that allows me to take my Tivo shows with me on my PSP. When I had first heard about this I thought it was pretty cool and I checked out my Directv account to see if they offer the Series 2 Tivo, which is a requirement. Not. There is some historical battle between the two that I am not too familiar with with the result being that they don't offer the newer boxes. Because of that, and my undying devotion to Directv, I let that idea float out of my mind.
Recently however, Amazon announced the Unboxed program which will allow people to do pay per view on their Tivo of new releases over broadband to their television. That sounds pretty promising if only because I can now expand the offering beyond what Directv offers me. This new data point combined with the desire to play with a networked Tivo device got me to take the plunge. I picked up the cheapest Tivo Series 2 and eagerly started my exploration.
Right off the bat I hit a pretty substantial snag. The Series 2 Tivo allows you to record two shows at once. My HD DVR from Directv is supposed to do that as well but how it does continues to escape me. On the coax from the satellite I had to install a splitter from the satellite with one end going into my receiver and then other end going into my Tivo. Seems easy enough. For some reason, which I am still investigating, this just doesn't work. My sense is that there is some power issue or some drain on the signal that makes this not work and results in no picture. When I looked at the signal levels there isn't enough strength.
I ended up just plugging one connection into the receiver. This worked but renders my Tivo unable to change the channel on the satellite. Actually that is not entirely true. It sometimes changes the channel but it seems like there is in fact two channels being dealt with. I need to dig in more and my next step is to get a powered splitter. I have a hunch that this will solve the problem. There are a number of other smaller problems around the guide and my need to manually switch channels but with the television on the NFL channel, I am getting a pretty good chunk of off-season programming to help me through my post football grief.
So with my first step at least partially accomplished I went back to the reason I went down this path, to put movies on my PSP for long flights. In order to get content off the Tivo and onto the PSP I have to first get the content off the Tivo and onto a PC or Mac. In the PC case this is easy with the free version of Tivo desktop that you can download from their site. In the case of the Mac, the software from the website allows you to connect your Mac to the Tivo device which allows you to show pictures from your Mac on your TV or to play music from your Mac. While certainly cool, the inability to download and play shows on the Mac is a bummer.
At this point there are two purchases that have to occur, or rather at least one. If you want to get the movies from your PC to your PSP you have to purchase the Tivo To Go software. This is around $25 and allows you to transfer shows to your PSP and various Windows Mobile and other devices. On the Mac front, you can buy the Roxio Toast package that lets you play the shows on your Mac, transfer them to portables, or even burn DVDs. Nice, although the price tag is around $100. Ouch.
For now I have passed on the Mac piece although with a house full of kids you can be sure I will be burning Thomas The Train and Barney before you know it. As far as the PSP piece goes, once you transfer a movie to the PC the software automatically converts the show into a format that is compatible with the PSP. After that you have to connect your PSP to the PC and use the PSP Media software to move the files across. All in all that is pretty labor intensive but the end result is worth it. With my largish frame, sitting in a middle seat on a cross country flight is brutal. Opening a laptop up to watch a show makes no sense. On the other hand firing up the PSP and watching the NFL network or Jackass Number Two is a no brainer. Duh.
So clearly there is some more work to do on my side but I think there are some items worth considering beyond the mechanics I just outlined above. First, the idea that I can time shift and place shift my content is immensely powerful. I can stream live television to my PSP with my Location Free server or package it up for non connected consumption on a long flight. Second, although there are a number of steps and theatrics involved in moving the content around, this can only improve with time. For example, all the devices mentioned, PC, Mac, PSP and my Tivo all have Wifi and in some cases broadband connectivity. Once the mechanics are smooth I'd love to see my PSP talk to my Tivo and grab some shows while it is sitting in my computer bag without me having to do cartwheels.
There are a lot of follow on items to consider when thinking through the various ways this plays out over time but one thing is certain to me and that is that the user is increasingly in charge og what, where, when and how their content is being consumed and independent of any other force, this one is truly out of the bag and how the media companies choose to address this from an economic perspective will be one of the great stories of the coming years. I plan to watch with great interest.
The one thing that I have been slightly intrigued by has been the Tivo To Go offering that allows me to take my Tivo shows with me on my PSP. When I had first heard about this I thought it was pretty cool and I checked out my Directv account to see if they offer the Series 2 Tivo, which is a requirement. Not. There is some historical battle between the two that I am not too familiar with with the result being that they don't offer the newer boxes. Because of that, and my undying devotion to Directv, I let that idea float out of my mind.
Recently however, Amazon announced the Unboxed program which will allow people to do pay per view on their Tivo of new releases over broadband to their television. That sounds pretty promising if only because I can now expand the offering beyond what Directv offers me. This new data point combined with the desire to play with a networked Tivo device got me to take the plunge. I picked up the cheapest Tivo Series 2 and eagerly started my exploration.
Right off the bat I hit a pretty substantial snag. The Series 2 Tivo allows you to record two shows at once. My HD DVR from Directv is supposed to do that as well but how it does continues to escape me. On the coax from the satellite I had to install a splitter from the satellite with one end going into my receiver and then other end going into my Tivo. Seems easy enough. For some reason, which I am still investigating, this just doesn't work. My sense is that there is some power issue or some drain on the signal that makes this not work and results in no picture. When I looked at the signal levels there isn't enough strength.
I ended up just plugging one connection into the receiver. This worked but renders my Tivo unable to change the channel on the satellite. Actually that is not entirely true. It sometimes changes the channel but it seems like there is in fact two channels being dealt with. I need to dig in more and my next step is to get a powered splitter. I have a hunch that this will solve the problem. There are a number of other smaller problems around the guide and my need to manually switch channels but with the television on the NFL channel, I am getting a pretty good chunk of off-season programming to help me through my post football grief.
So with my first step at least partially accomplished I went back to the reason I went down this path, to put movies on my PSP for long flights. In order to get content off the Tivo and onto the PSP I have to first get the content off the Tivo and onto a PC or Mac. In the PC case this is easy with the free version of Tivo desktop that you can download from their site. In the case of the Mac, the software from the website allows you to connect your Mac to the Tivo device which allows you to show pictures from your Mac on your TV or to play music from your Mac. While certainly cool, the inability to download and play shows on the Mac is a bummer.
At this point there are two purchases that have to occur, or rather at least one. If you want to get the movies from your PC to your PSP you have to purchase the Tivo To Go software. This is around $25 and allows you to transfer shows to your PSP and various Windows Mobile and other devices. On the Mac front, you can buy the Roxio Toast package that lets you play the shows on your Mac, transfer them to portables, or even burn DVDs. Nice, although the price tag is around $100. Ouch.
For now I have passed on the Mac piece although with a house full of kids you can be sure I will be burning Thomas The Train and Barney before you know it. As far as the PSP piece goes, once you transfer a movie to the PC the software automatically converts the show into a format that is compatible with the PSP. After that you have to connect your PSP to the PC and use the PSP Media software to move the files across. All in all that is pretty labor intensive but the end result is worth it. With my largish frame, sitting in a middle seat on a cross country flight is brutal. Opening a laptop up to watch a show makes no sense. On the other hand firing up the PSP and watching the NFL network or Jackass Number Two is a no brainer. Duh.
So clearly there is some more work to do on my side but I think there are some items worth considering beyond the mechanics I just outlined above. First, the idea that I can time shift and place shift my content is immensely powerful. I can stream live television to my PSP with my Location Free server or package it up for non connected consumption on a long flight. Second, although there are a number of steps and theatrics involved in moving the content around, this can only improve with time. For example, all the devices mentioned, PC, Mac, PSP and my Tivo all have Wifi and in some cases broadband connectivity. Once the mechanics are smooth I'd love to see my PSP talk to my Tivo and grab some shows while it is sitting in my computer bag without me having to do cartwheels.
There are a lot of follow on items to consider when thinking through the various ways this plays out over time but one thing is certain to me and that is that the user is increasingly in charge og what, where, when and how their content is being consumed and independent of any other force, this one is truly out of the bag and how the media companies choose to address this from an economic perspective will be one of the great stories of the coming years. I plan to watch with great interest.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Photostream Noise
On President's day Jessica and I locked ourselves up in our office at home and cleaned it. I had turned the closet into a rats nest of books, technology parts, and old tapes, betacams, DV tapes etc. from the TV show I worked on. Cleaning the room had been a nagging to do that fortunately we both agreed to sit down and power through.
One of the best by products of that was the discovery of a bunch of photos that had been put away that I had been looking for that chronicles some of my adventures pre-marriage and in early marriage. So rather than risk losing them I piled a big stack on my desk at work and every so often I scan another one. Periodically I dump them to Flick.
I realize that fortunately for me and my generation Myspace wasn't around or there would be a bunch of embarrassing pictures we would have to explain. I don't want to edit too much but alas there are a couple that wont make it up but certainly there are some funny ones. Excuse the personal flashback. Hopefully there are some good laughs that need no explaining.
One of the best by products of that was the discovery of a bunch of photos that had been put away that I had been looking for that chronicles some of my adventures pre-marriage and in early marriage. So rather than risk losing them I piled a big stack on my desk at work and every so often I scan another one. Periodically I dump them to Flick.
I realize that fortunately for me and my generation Myspace wasn't around or there would be a bunch of embarrassing pictures we would have to explain. I don't want to edit too much but alas there are a couple that wont make it up but certainly there are some funny ones. Excuse the personal flashback. Hopefully there are some good laughs that need no explaining.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Valentines Blizzard
The video below is a picture I shot from the backseat of a car that I was being driven in from Philadelphia to a small town about an hour away. My driver was a very interesting Russian guy who would only take cash. Enough said.
I had flown into Philly with the intention of driving to my meeting and then continuing on to Manhattan for several other meetings. Yeah right. I arrived about the same time as a most interesting winter storm that ultimately shut down much of Pennsylvania. I ultimately made the decision to have a local drive me as the roads were in fact super scary. The video was taken while I was following a caravan of 4 snow plows on a semi rural road. While it was a terrible storm, it was pretty cool to see rural Pennsylvania covered in snow.
So after some cars, trains and subways I arrived in Manhattan to probably the grossest conditions I have ever experienced in NYC. I have to confess that I am weather sissy and am really glad to be back on the west coast.
I had flown into Philly with the intention of driving to my meeting and then continuing on to Manhattan for several other meetings. Yeah right. I arrived about the same time as a most interesting winter storm that ultimately shut down much of Pennsylvania. I ultimately made the decision to have a local drive me as the roads were in fact super scary. The video was taken while I was following a caravan of 4 snow plows on a semi rural road. While it was a terrible storm, it was pretty cool to see rural Pennsylvania covered in snow.
So after some cars, trains and subways I arrived in Manhattan to probably the grossest conditions I have ever experienced in NYC. I have to confess that I am weather sissy and am really glad to be back on the west coast.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Rabble Wap
Sometime last summer we rolled out a read only version of WAP kind of as an afterthought at the time but primarily to look at offdeck conversion opportunities. In addition to the read only Rabble site we also experimented with some promotions with big artists at bands.rabble.com and were toying with some indie artist stuff at Wapbands.com.
So early this week we rolled out a full WAP version that can do just about everything our thick client can do within the limitations of WAP. You can check it out at mobile.rabble.com. We are pretty proud of how well we have been able to capture the look and feel of the Rabble 2.0 client. A couple of caveats. First, we haven't rolled out international registration yet. It shouldn't be too far off but we made the choice to get something live sooner rather than later. Second, there are some style improvements we will roll out shortly as well.
So early this week we rolled out a full WAP version that can do just about everything our thick client can do within the limitations of WAP. You can check it out at mobile.rabble.com. We are pretty proud of how well we have been able to capture the look and feel of the Rabble 2.0 client. A couple of caveats. First, we haven't rolled out international registration yet. It shouldn't be too far off but we made the choice to get something live sooner rather than later. Second, there are some style improvements we will roll out shortly as well.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
My Valentine
Happy Valentine's Day to my wonderful wife Jessica. She is the most amazing, woman, mother and partner and I can't wait to get home to share some special time with her. If I could just get out of this nasty storm in Philly...
Anthem and 3 UK
Today we announced an agreement we just reached with the carrier 3 in the UK. The press release can be found here.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Biz San Diego - Interview
I was interviewed last year by a Local Magazine called BizSanDiego for an article about young entrepreneurs. Since I was on the high side of Young I got moved to this month's issues. Check it out here.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Casa Moderna
I met this guy while working at Mp3.com by the name of John Diaz. When I first met John I asked myself, "What the heck is this wacky rocker dood doing at a high tech company?" It made no sense to me. Six months later John became an older brother of sorts as I realized he shrewdly understood technology as it relates to content and media and understood how to navigate the relationships at play in the content world. I have had a ton of fun knowing John and Nancy and I really value their friendship.
Because we both are working on new companies, we haven't seen each other in a very long time. In fact, one of the last times I saw John was right after they had bought this amazing lot that was of normal width but extended back in an area approximately three houses back. John told me they had bought this lot to build a home to replace their home in Santa Monica that was a three story Frank Gehry loft. That house was amazing. John had survived a horrible airplane crash while at MP3.com and he needed something that didn't require him to go up and down all the time. As he described this new home, I only could think who difficult it would be to replace their current home.
Today I was in Los Angeles and had a chance to swing by their knew home that was featured in this story in the LA Times. All I can say is insane. You must look at the pictures. This house is one of the most amazing I have seen and John accurately described it as a modern aztec hacienda. I can't wait to go back and actually hang out with John for more than a half an hour. If you are a friend of Diaz and haven't said hi, drop him a line. Oh, and he was on Oprah last week...
Because we both are working on new companies, we haven't seen each other in a very long time. In fact, one of the last times I saw John was right after they had bought this amazing lot that was of normal width but extended back in an area approximately three houses back. John told me they had bought this lot to build a home to replace their home in Santa Monica that was a three story Frank Gehry loft. That house was amazing. John had survived a horrible airplane crash while at MP3.com and he needed something that didn't require him to go up and down all the time. As he described this new home, I only could think who difficult it would be to replace their current home.
Today I was in Los Angeles and had a chance to swing by their knew home that was featured in this story in the LA Times. All I can say is insane. You must look at the pictures. This house is one of the most amazing I have seen and John accurately described it as a modern aztec hacienda. I can't wait to go back and actually hang out with John for more than a half an hour. If you are a friend of Diaz and haven't said hi, drop him a line. Oh, and he was on Oprah last week...
Chumby, Woot and Attention
I was fortunate to get one of the first Chumbys through a friend (thanks Steve). My Chumby was a bit autistic and recently I had to have it 'operated' on which resulted in a much better performing Chumby. While I still owe Steve a Rabble widget...I thought it would be cool to stick the Chumby in my kitchen near the spices and the wine bottles.
I wasn't sure why I decided to do that when it would make a lot of sense perched on the bookcase near my computer but for whatever reason there it was in my kitchen scrolling through Flickr pics of my family, an occasional Woot ad, Digg headlines and ESPN sports news. Periodically I would find myself walking over to see what was on Digg. Worse, I would remind myself that I need more pictures of the kids posted for grandma and grandpa. Even worse still I found myself walking over early in the morning to see what gadget was on sale on Woot. I don't know how it happened but I am now a Woot addict. I have yet to buy my first gadget, but I know it is coming. I can feel it coming.
My wife Jessica commented that she thought the Chumby was cool but she wanted some of her stuff. I think for Steve and crew this is really good. You just need more stuff for woman who don't read Slashdot. You know something that has the headlines from Defamer or better yet People magazine. I clearly don't relate to the news reading habits of the my age female demographic but if Woot gets me excited in the morning what kind of man am I?
As I have for the last 8 months I find these sorts of moments bringing me back to how Attention is the currency of the future, hell the currency of now. The small reminders of what I have seen on the Chumby has had a impact on me over the last several weeks where I switched from reading my regular blogs to reading Techmeme and Digg on a daily basis while surfing my Sidekick for Woot when I am on the road. I struggle with how I can properly filter my attention and focus on how I spend those rare moments not dedicated to the family and to the business. When I figure that out I will be glad to share with you.
I wasn't sure why I decided to do that when it would make a lot of sense perched on the bookcase near my computer but for whatever reason there it was in my kitchen scrolling through Flickr pics of my family, an occasional Woot ad, Digg headlines and ESPN sports news. Periodically I would find myself walking over to see what was on Digg. Worse, I would remind myself that I need more pictures of the kids posted for grandma and grandpa. Even worse still I found myself walking over early in the morning to see what gadget was on sale on Woot. I don't know how it happened but I am now a Woot addict. I have yet to buy my first gadget, but I know it is coming. I can feel it coming.
My wife Jessica commented that she thought the Chumby was cool but she wanted some of her stuff. I think for Steve and crew this is really good. You just need more stuff for woman who don't read Slashdot. You know something that has the headlines from Defamer or better yet People magazine. I clearly don't relate to the news reading habits of the my age female demographic but if Woot gets me excited in the morning what kind of man am I?
As I have for the last 8 months I find these sorts of moments bringing me back to how Attention is the currency of the future, hell the currency of now. The small reminders of what I have seen on the Chumby has had a impact on me over the last several weeks where I switched from reading my regular blogs to reading Techmeme and Digg on a daily basis while surfing my Sidekick for Woot when I am on the road. I struggle with how I can properly filter my attention and focus on how I spend those rare moments not dedicated to the family and to the business. When I figure that out I will be glad to share with you.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Strange Marketing Decisions
This last week I received a very bizarre email from a development firm. The email told me that they can get me to market faster with my products and they have top tier venture backing and they itemized a bunch of technologies that they are expert at that we of course don't use. Normally I would delete this kind of email but for some reason I felt compelled to ask the question. How can you help me really?
So I fired off an email because I was surprised that they didn't really spend anytime trying to figure out what we do. I asked the person who sent me the email, Bob Jones, to explain how they could help me. (Bob Jones wasn't the name used but it was a similar generic sounding Anglo name).
Bob fired off another marketing speak email that was equally as useless as the previous one but he asked me to just take 10 minutes to talk with him and his VP and he could explain. I thought to myself that he should probably take 10 minutes and figure out how he can help me before I did that but I sighed heavily and picked up the phone. I called Bob. Bob answered and I was surprised to hear that he had a distinctly Indian accent. Bob Jones? Now I have to say that we have worked with outsourcing companies in the past and liked some things about it and didn't like some other things. You know, kind of like family and friends. You get some good and you get some bad. In the future if it makes sense I am more than happy to send work where it makes sense.
I resisted the urge to ask Bob what his real name was and we spoke for a while. They did in fact have some ways they might be able to help me but he told me he was just an inside sales guy and he needed me to speak with his VP. I told him that I would get back to him when I have some time.
I forgot about this until I was driving from San Francisco to Silicon Valley today and Bob called me. I told him to have his VP call me ASAP and that I would chat with him. We had a friendly chat and I am not sure if there is something to do with them or not but I told him that I didn't think Bob was his real name. He laughed and said that in fact it wasn't. I told him that I thought it was pretty strange to me that he would say that was his name when he had a pointed accent. I wouldn't have been any more or less inclined to speak with his company and that I thought it reflected poorly on them that they would do that. We have several Indian and Chinese employees in my company and I can't imagine ever encouraging them to go by the name Richard or Sally or frankly anything other than their real name. Hell, my last name is pretty ethnic.
In an world where the global borders are getting smaller, engaging customers in real conversations and getting them to understand each other as who they are seems like a better goal to doing business and creating real relationships instead of playing silly marketing games that are transparent. All that said I think this company is a fine company but I would hope that in the future they think twice before leaving a lasting impression like they did with me today.
So I fired off an email because I was surprised that they didn't really spend anytime trying to figure out what we do. I asked the person who sent me the email, Bob Jones, to explain how they could help me. (Bob Jones wasn't the name used but it was a similar generic sounding Anglo name).
Bob fired off another marketing speak email that was equally as useless as the previous one but he asked me to just take 10 minutes to talk with him and his VP and he could explain. I thought to myself that he should probably take 10 minutes and figure out how he can help me before I did that but I sighed heavily and picked up the phone. I called Bob. Bob answered and I was surprised to hear that he had a distinctly Indian accent. Bob Jones? Now I have to say that we have worked with outsourcing companies in the past and liked some things about it and didn't like some other things. You know, kind of like family and friends. You get some good and you get some bad. In the future if it makes sense I am more than happy to send work where it makes sense.
I resisted the urge to ask Bob what his real name was and we spoke for a while. They did in fact have some ways they might be able to help me but he told me he was just an inside sales guy and he needed me to speak with his VP. I told him that I would get back to him when I have some time.
I forgot about this until I was driving from San Francisco to Silicon Valley today and Bob called me. I told him to have his VP call me ASAP and that I would chat with him. We had a friendly chat and I am not sure if there is something to do with them or not but I told him that I didn't think Bob was his real name. He laughed and said that in fact it wasn't. I told him that I thought it was pretty strange to me that he would say that was his name when he had a pointed accent. I wouldn't have been any more or less inclined to speak with his company and that I thought it reflected poorly on them that they would do that. We have several Indian and Chinese employees in my company and I can't imagine ever encouraging them to go by the name Richard or Sally or frankly anything other than their real name. Hell, my last name is pretty ethnic.
In an world where the global borders are getting smaller, engaging customers in real conversations and getting them to understand each other as who they are seems like a better goal to doing business and creating real relationships instead of playing silly marketing games that are transparent. All that said I think this company is a fine company but I would hope that in the future they think twice before leaving a lasting impression like they did with me today.
Friday, February 02, 2007
On Being Candid
A young friend, whose name I won't mention, hit me on email the other day. He writes a newish wireless blog and had the opportunity to interview a fairly high level executive at a larbge handset OEM. My friend works at a wireless company and although these two companies don't directly compete on most days, there are certainly environmental tensions between them given how they fit into the entire ecosystem.
My friend had sent a series of thoughtful questions and asked my opinion on them. I thought they were good questions and I was thinking of several others that were even more provocative before he sent me a follow up email saying that he had been persuaded to not go forward with the interview. This of course was very good advice for a couple of reasons, one which some immediately to my mind involves a slight slip I did many years ago.
I started trolling around Usenet groups towards the end of 1994 and I spent a fair amount of time on the alt.cyberpunk board. At that time I was working at Sony Pictures. It is hard to describe my glee when I got the opportunity to help work at the premiere of Johnny Mnemonic given my interest in William Gibson and all things cyberpunk. After seeing the show I posted some comments on the board (which I can't seem to find now) about what I likd about the show, etc.
Later that same day I was emailed by a reporter from the Los Angeles Times by the name of Amy Harmon. She asked me if I would be willing to do an interview. Naive as I was I said sure. The next day I was aghast when I read the less the glowing comments that I had made about the movie that was just opening up. Of course later that morning the head of the studio called my boss to find out what drugs I was on.
I have certainly learned a lot about the press since then and consider myself a much more cautious person as it relates to the press. Beyond this example for me though I think it is important to say something else about blogs and the desire to be candid. If you are a journalist or a pundit I think you can freely say what you want. If you work in an industry I think you have to be extremely careful about what you can and cannot write. Certainly the things that I currently have the most insight on today are related to mobile communities and the wireless industry and the various players within that framework. And in general a reader of this blog will find that I try to avoid any comment, editorial or opinion. Most tragically from my perspective is that I don't really get to share any of the learnings that we have accumulated with Rabble over the last several years. Maybe sometime down the road.
Instead my blog is mean to capture a few things, what technology I am playing with, what I see as important in user created media, and as a communication vehicle to keep in touch with my friends I see infrequently. For me there is plenty to talk about with getting sideways or opening yourself up to misinterpretation by others.
My friend had sent a series of thoughtful questions and asked my opinion on them. I thought they were good questions and I was thinking of several others that were even more provocative before he sent me a follow up email saying that he had been persuaded to not go forward with the interview. This of course was very good advice for a couple of reasons, one which some immediately to my mind involves a slight slip I did many years ago.
I started trolling around Usenet groups towards the end of 1994 and I spent a fair amount of time on the alt.cyberpunk board. At that time I was working at Sony Pictures. It is hard to describe my glee when I got the opportunity to help work at the premiere of Johnny Mnemonic given my interest in William Gibson and all things cyberpunk. After seeing the show I posted some comments on the board (which I can't seem to find now) about what I likd about the show, etc.
Later that same day I was emailed by a reporter from the Los Angeles Times by the name of Amy Harmon. She asked me if I would be willing to do an interview. Naive as I was I said sure. The next day I was aghast when I read the less the glowing comments that I had made about the movie that was just opening up. Of course later that morning the head of the studio called my boss to find out what drugs I was on.
I have certainly learned a lot about the press since then and consider myself a much more cautious person as it relates to the press. Beyond this example for me though I think it is important to say something else about blogs and the desire to be candid. If you are a journalist or a pundit I think you can freely say what you want. If you work in an industry I think you have to be extremely careful about what you can and cannot write. Certainly the things that I currently have the most insight on today are related to mobile communities and the wireless industry and the various players within that framework. And in general a reader of this blog will find that I try to avoid any comment, editorial or opinion. Most tragically from my perspective is that I don't really get to share any of the learnings that we have accumulated with Rabble over the last several years. Maybe sometime down the road.
Instead my blog is mean to capture a few things, what technology I am playing with, what I see as important in user created media, and as a communication vehicle to keep in touch with my friends I see infrequently. For me there is plenty to talk about with getting sideways or opening yourself up to misinterpretation by others.
Helio Discount
A while back I posted a link to a Helio review and for whatever reason I get high Google love for a couple of Helio posts from when they launched. Apparently one of the folks at Helio added a comment to the post that shows a discount code you can use. So if you are interested check it out on this post here.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
So What Is Going On With The Machines?
Back in my industrial days...I was into SRL. I think I have posted about them before. An issue or two ago they were in Make magazine and I was excited to see the article. My son Tate likes robots and I was thinking that I should find some of those old SRL videos we watched in the early 90s. A quick scan of You Tube shows a bunch of stuff so I decided to sneak a look and see if this is age appropriate. Um, probably not but I highly recommend checking it out. The Tesla coil is amazing. I will give Tate a couple of more years before we think about making destructo machines...
30 Days of Deletion - Deleted
I began with much enthusiasm to delete applications from my laptop which was inspired by my annoyance around the practice of payloading applications that is not an uncommon practice. As fate would have it, I ended up coincidentally with some hardcore performance issues that I suspect was caused by 1 or 2 pieces of software that I won't mention since I don't really know the cause. Suffice to say, I sat down and over an hour last week I deleted no fewer than a dozen applications.
The majority of the deletions weren't because I had a problem but were mire because I just don't use the software. Examples of that would include Sharp Reader and Google Video player. Both of these are fine software packages that I just never used.
So the punchline for me is that I didn't walk through 30 days of deletion, rather I just got it all out of the way at once. I would recommend doing that yourself periodically, you know, just like those hard drive backups you do. :-)
The majority of the deletions weren't because I had a problem but were mire because I just don't use the software. Examples of that would include Sharp Reader and Google Video player. Both of these are fine software packages that I just never used.
So the punchline for me is that I didn't walk through 30 days of deletion, rather I just got it all out of the way at once. I would recommend doing that yourself periodically, you know, just like those hard drive backups you do. :-)
Monday, January 29, 2007
What's with Dave?
We have known Dave Harper for a while. It has always been my personal goal to get to know other people who are in the same space as you are primarily because if you believe in what "we" collectively are doing in a space, there are probably opportunities to collaborate, or disagree, or occasionally just grab a drink and hang out. In my opinion, all boats rise if we are collectively right.
In the digital music space, many of the people I met over time, repeatedly ran into each other down the road. A good example that comes to mind was when MP3.com was acquired and I subsequently ran the various music sites. As the strategy was determined at a corporate level I was required to adjust the companies and change the various approaches of business units. In some respects that was getting rid of people in other cases it was promoting people. From my perspective it was always important to do that with dignity. I can proudly say that most of the people with me would agree and that in general I have a good reputation.
When we started this company we spent a lot of time with some of the people who pioneered mobile data who Shawn had interacted with at Moviso. Guys like Fabrice Grinda and Greg Clayman. We also went out and hung out with people like Dan Melinger from Socialight and Tasso Roumelitos at Wavemarket. We also met Dave because we thought what he was doing is/was interesting and he had been going at it for a while.
This morning while looking over the server logs I saw a referral from Dave Harper's blog where he flames us for misrepresenting that we were first in a number of areas. I am not sure what the source of agita is with Dave and I am not sure what is so important for him to slam us in his blog. For the record though Dave, aside from the semantics, you don't do what we do and we don't do what you do. If our broad marketing speak has you upset then I don't know how to help you. We develop thick client applications. We develop platforms that support thick client applications. We currently support Brew, J2ME, J2SE. We are rolling out Windows mobile, Flash and Symbian. Oh, and we also support WAP and XHTML.
Ultimately the market will tell us who is right and wrong in terms of approach and I think that is more important than claims of first. From my perspective that is actually the more important metric. I feel pretty good about what we see in terms of how the market is developing but then hey, that's my opinion. I don't understand your business, I don't know how you make money and I am not really focused on that. When I look at people who compete with us, I look at the carrier's deck. You are not one of the companies that we think about. If you are on deck and I am mistaken, let me know.
I find it fascinating that bloggers, rather than picking up the phone, or sending an email or even hitting someone up on IM (Dave is on my buddy list), that one would resort to an "open letter" post and not give someone a heads up. I recall at Gnomedex how Dave Winer accused someone about not responding to a post on his blog and how dumbfounded I was that he assumed that we were all going to have a conversation on his blog. Did you ever think that we don't all read your blog?
So Dave, rock on. Best of luck to you and I am sure that we will see each other around. Please continue to post whatever you like but if you want a "conversation" with me, I'd recommend using one of the methods that most readily would get my attention.
In the digital music space, many of the people I met over time, repeatedly ran into each other down the road. A good example that comes to mind was when MP3.com was acquired and I subsequently ran the various music sites. As the strategy was determined at a corporate level I was required to adjust the companies and change the various approaches of business units. In some respects that was getting rid of people in other cases it was promoting people. From my perspective it was always important to do that with dignity. I can proudly say that most of the people with me would agree and that in general I have a good reputation.
When we started this company we spent a lot of time with some of the people who pioneered mobile data who Shawn had interacted with at Moviso. Guys like Fabrice Grinda and Greg Clayman. We also went out and hung out with people like Dan Melinger from Socialight and Tasso Roumelitos at Wavemarket. We also met Dave because we thought what he was doing is/was interesting and he had been going at it for a while.
This morning while looking over the server logs I saw a referral from Dave Harper's blog where he flames us for misrepresenting that we were first in a number of areas. I am not sure what the source of agita is with Dave and I am not sure what is so important for him to slam us in his blog. For the record though Dave, aside from the semantics, you don't do what we do and we don't do what you do. If our broad marketing speak has you upset then I don't know how to help you. We develop thick client applications. We develop platforms that support thick client applications. We currently support Brew, J2ME, J2SE. We are rolling out Windows mobile, Flash and Symbian. Oh, and we also support WAP and XHTML.
Ultimately the market will tell us who is right and wrong in terms of approach and I think that is more important than claims of first. From my perspective that is actually the more important metric. I feel pretty good about what we see in terms of how the market is developing but then hey, that's my opinion. I don't understand your business, I don't know how you make money and I am not really focused on that. When I look at people who compete with us, I look at the carrier's deck. You are not one of the companies that we think about. If you are on deck and I am mistaken, let me know.
I find it fascinating that bloggers, rather than picking up the phone, or sending an email or even hitting someone up on IM (Dave is on my buddy list), that one would resort to an "open letter" post and not give someone a heads up. I recall at Gnomedex how Dave Winer accused someone about not responding to a post on his blog and how dumbfounded I was that he assumed that we were all going to have a conversation on his blog. Did you ever think that we don't all read your blog?
So Dave, rock on. Best of luck to you and I am sure that we will see each other around. Please continue to post whatever you like but if you want a "conversation" with me, I'd recommend using one of the methods that most readily would get my attention.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Shawn's Post about Anthem
Shawn wrote a post about our Anthem platform on our company blog that you can see here.
Thomas Ryan is blogging
Yet another smart digital media whore friend of mine is blogging. Tom rules. His blog is here. Subscribe. Tom just left EMI as one of their top digital guys. Tom was one of the founders of Cductive way back in the day. Tom is going to be doing some big things when he decides what he wants it to be. Check out his journey on his blog. Enjoy.
New Intercasting Website
We also just rolled out our new corporate website that provides a lot more clarity. Check it out at www.intercastingcorp.com.
Intercasting Company News
There is an AP story that just came out today that is getting pretty wide coverage that talks about some of our super secret platform strategy. You can see the story here. I will write up a post in the next day or two to talk about what we have been quietly working on for the last year in addition to Rabble.
Also the Business Week link is here.
Also the Business Week link is here.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Virb, again
I was chatting with a guy I advise tonight and we were talking about social networking sites, etc. and in passing he mentioned that he liked Virb but there were some things he didn't and I interrupted , "They launched?"
He said well not really but that he was into some hipster indie scene and got invited and had been checking it out. I said," Cough cough, invite me!' Which he did. Spent a few minutes on tonight. Will do some more tonight. The guys behind it are smart and it's been a long time in the baking. Can't wait to report my thoughts a bit later.
He said well not really but that he was into some hipster indie scene and got invited and had been checking it out. I said," Cough cough, invite me!' Which he did. Spent a few minutes on tonight. Will do some more tonight. The guys behind it are smart and it's been a long time in the baking. Can't wait to report my thoughts a bit later.
30 Days of Deletion - Day 3 The Venice Project
Ok, so I have been slacking. Today's deletion shouldn't count but I am too busy to be creative. Hopefully I get better this week. The Venice Project is now Joost so I need a new file and can delete my old build.
Get a First Life
Sean pointed me to this satire page that makes fun of Second Life - Get A First Life.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
MIT Forum Podcast
I am speaking next week in San Diego at an even called MIT Forum that I believe is being co-hosted by UCSD Connect. I will post more details next week, but in advance of that event I recorded a podcast with one of the organizers that you can listen to by clicking on this link. The interview is approximately 20 minutes and covers a lot of the background of what we do and some of the challenges we face. If you have any interest in what we do with Rabble I would recommend a listen.
Tablet Hotels
The good and bad about blogging for almost 3 years is that occasionally you repeat things. So here is one worth repeating. Tablet hotels rocks. I used to stay at The Standard in Los Angeles almost every week while doing a consulting gig. To book a room I had to use Tablet. Tablet is a booking service for a bunch of trendy as well as cheap chic hotels. When we travel for work, Shawn the Starwood whore usually books the rooms as he is super elite and we get some upgrades that make bunking not so bad. When I travel solo, I go with Tablet.
This trip in particular has been a pleasant surprise. I was looking for a room in Manhattan with little notice. Starwood had the Westin and Sheraton and the W Times square at rates from $275 to $375. Not bad. With the exception of the W though there is very little to do or see except the inside of your room. Since it is freezing this is definitely a consideration.
I checked Tablet and found a smoking hot deal on a hotel called the Hotel QT. It is almost across the street from the W and it was like $250 a night. And there is this really funky swimming pool and bar when you walk into the hotel. I will post some pictures on Flickr later which you can see on this page. The rooms are nice, there is free wifi and the hotel is owned by The Standard. I give it two thumbs up.
This trip in particular has been a pleasant surprise. I was looking for a room in Manhattan with little notice. Starwood had the Westin and Sheraton and the W Times square at rates from $275 to $375. Not bad. With the exception of the W though there is very little to do or see except the inside of your room. Since it is freezing this is definitely a consideration.
I checked Tablet and found a smoking hot deal on a hotel called the Hotel QT. It is almost across the street from the W and it was like $250 a night. And there is this really funky swimming pool and bar when you walk into the hotel. I will post some pictures on Flickr later which you can see on this page. The rooms are nice, there is free wifi and the hotel is owned by The Standard. I give it two thumbs up.
The Venice Project is now Joost
Early Monday morning, west coast time, I got an email that said that The Venice Project is now called Joost. Find it here. The email also said a lot of invites are coming so I will dish them out as soon as I have them.
On the road again
In NYC. I am behind on my 30 days of deletion. Will continue later on this trip. Flights give you lots of time to think so I have about 5 or 6 posts I am working on. More later...
Friday, January 12, 2007
30 Days of Deletion - Day 2 iLike
Today I came into the office and started ripping out some loud rocking tracks. A little Brand New, a little Coheed and Cambria and a little System of a Down. All the time to the right hand side of my iTunes there is this iLike thing. A couple of months ago a couple of my podcasting buddies sent me invitations to join iLike to see their music selections. I went out and signed up and installed the client. It is pretty cool but since none of my friends are using it, I think it needs to go. If I hear more buzz around this on the scale of Last.fm or Pandora then I will check it out again. Note my deletion isn't a reflection of the value of the software it is more that this kind of software has value based on the network associated with it. My network isn't so the value is marginal. Delete.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
30 Days of Deletion - Day 1 Viewpoint
Based on yesterday's exciting installation of the AIMSPAMLAXO client I have decided that for the next 30 days I am going to delete an application a day that is on my laptop. In some cases I will be deleting applications that I just don't use any more and in other cases I will be deleting things I never asked for that were payloaded through some other mechanism.
Since AIM is fresh I thought I would start there. What secret goodies came with yesterday's install? Well Plaxo wasn't installed so I am guessing that it is actually embedded in the AIM client or it has hooks to Plaxo through some APIs. Thanks for not cluttering up the hard drive. I did however get a new goodie called Viewpoint. Do a Google search on Viewpoint. By doing this I saw what appears to be a new Google feature. They cluster the direct results for Viewpoint and they insert a series of results for Viewpoint Spyware. Cool feature. It reminds me of Clusty.
If you click on the spyware link you find links to things like, Is it Spyware? Why is it on my computer? How do I remove it? I have to agree. Yesterday I had a firewall request for Viewpoint and mistakenly thought it was my mouse pointer. Today I know better. Rather than find out what Viewpoint is, I think I am going to delete it. So today's piece of software is Viewpoint. But let's make sure we take care of everything. Starting with my program list I see that I have not one but two entries for Viewpoint. Naughty, naughty. There is the Viewpoint Manager and the Viewpoint Media Player. Must delete both. I search through my browser and look for the various domains with cookies. No Viewpoint. Ok, good. I feel like it's going to a be good 30 days of improving the performance of my machine and becoming more aware of what people are doing with my Attention without my specific knowledge.
Since AIM is fresh I thought I would start there. What secret goodies came with yesterday's install? Well Plaxo wasn't installed so I am guessing that it is actually embedded in the AIM client or it has hooks to Plaxo through some APIs. Thanks for not cluttering up the hard drive. I did however get a new goodie called Viewpoint. Do a Google search on Viewpoint. By doing this I saw what appears to be a new Google feature. They cluster the direct results for Viewpoint and they insert a series of results for Viewpoint Spyware. Cool feature. It reminds me of Clusty.
If you click on the spyware link you find links to things like, Is it Spyware? Why is it on my computer? How do I remove it? I have to agree. Yesterday I had a firewall request for Viewpoint and mistakenly thought it was my mouse pointer. Today I know better. Rather than find out what Viewpoint is, I think I am going to delete it. So today's piece of software is Viewpoint. But let's make sure we take care of everything. Starting with my program list I see that I have not one but two entries for Viewpoint. Naughty, naughty. There is the Viewpoint Manager and the Viewpoint Media Player. Must delete both. I search through my browser and look for the various domains with cookies. No Viewpoint. Ok, good. I feel like it's going to a be good 30 days of improving the performance of my machine and becoming more aware of what people are doing with my Attention without my specific knowledge.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
AIMSPLAXO - or AIM 6.0
Today I got a notice that AIM wanted to upgrade on my laptop to version 6.0 something. In the last several upgrades I have become annoyed with the embedded pieces in the client. Don't get me wrong, I love AIM and it is my primary chat client, but I just want that. The way it is on my Sidekick. Pure and Simple. The way it was meant to be. I went ahead and upgraded and saw the new web 2.0ish, ajaxy look and feel AIM client. While going through the install I saw a dreaded word, Plaxo. Me no like Plaxo. Sorry. I just don't.
During the registration, the reg screen offered to do a proctological exam of my various contacts in Yahoo mail, Hotmail and Outlook. Fortunately, it said powered by Plaxo which was really thoughtful in that it was full disclosure and I resisted any urge to scan my hard drive.
Its difficult to improve on something that is good and for me the chat clients are all they are supposed to be. As a software developer I understand the urge to upgrade and extend, but I think that you do so with a risk of alienating your core users. And if you are a Plaxo user, you just got a great new upgrade with the new AIM.
During the registration, the reg screen offered to do a proctological exam of my various contacts in Yahoo mail, Hotmail and Outlook. Fortunately, it said powered by Plaxo which was really thoughtful in that it was full disclosure and I resisted any urge to scan my hard drive.
Its difficult to improve on something that is good and for me the chat clients are all they are supposed to be. As a software developer I understand the urge to upgrade and extend, but I think that you do so with a risk of alienating your core users. And if you are a Plaxo user, you just got a great new upgrade with the new AIM.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
The Uzees
Lester Craft from Usertainment Watch released a press release with the winners of the Uzees awards which you can see here. The previous post I had here was the video he awarded as best video and I have to admit I loved it. Check out some of the other cool stuff on his list. I met the one of the Ask A Ninja guys at SXSW last year at the Lifehacker party with the dueling Roombas and am a fan of their stuff.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Venice Project Invites Revisited
Over the holiday break I picked up a total of 3 invites to share. I just sent them all out this morning. As I get more I will send them to the people who commented on the last blog post in order of occurrence.
Google Docs
I have been absent from blogging which is pretty normal for me in the transition over a new year. Lots of family time, lots of cleaning. As football season was winding down I wanted to set up some spreadsheets for next year as I have both Keeper and Dynasty leagues which benefit from a little thoughtful planning at the end of the season.
While on the Mac I went to fire up Office and realized that I don't have Mac Office. I do have Parallels with Office on Windows but that seemed like a pain so I decided to venture again into yet another aspect of the Google world, Google Docs.
I signed up quickly and fired up a spreadsheet window. It works! Over a couple of days playing around with it I created something like 6 different spreadsheets and actually shared versions with people remotely. As a fairly extensive spreadsheet user it wasn't as powerful as I would normally require but for student/household/lists it is awesome. I did encounter some connectivity issues that barf the spreadsheet occasionally. I thought that was a pain in the butt but until I figure out if the experience occurs elsewhere I will assume it is my problem with Cox. If you are looking for a quick and dirty spreadsheet tool, I'd say this is a first stop.
While on the Mac I went to fire up Office and realized that I don't have Mac Office. I do have Parallels with Office on Windows but that seemed like a pain so I decided to venture again into yet another aspect of the Google world, Google Docs.
I signed up quickly and fired up a spreadsheet window. It works! Over a couple of days playing around with it I created something like 6 different spreadsheets and actually shared versions with people remotely. As a fairly extensive spreadsheet user it wasn't as powerful as I would normally require but for student/household/lists it is awesome. I did encounter some connectivity issues that barf the spreadsheet occasionally. I thought that was a pain in the butt but until I figure out if the experience occurs elsewhere I will assume it is my problem with Cox. If you are looking for a quick and dirty spreadsheet tool, I'd say this is a first stop.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Welcome 2007
I meant to do a New Years post over the holiday but family obligations made that impossible. Our family had a wonderful time with the occasional rough spots. I think each of us collectively were glad to get back to our respective routines today. Me, I am on an airplane headed to two different cites. Yeah!
So rather than the long post a thought a brief retrospective and some forward looking stuff is in order.
2006 was a year of hard work in all the respective categories. On the family front the kids were very sick for a good chunk of the year with a variety of cough and cold like symptoms (Until mom took them off dairy) and Tate seemed to really enjoy and prosper at school. Jess and I both thought the year was hard but I think we came to the end with a lot of optimism for the coming year. We managed a few family get aways and hope that there will be more in the coming year.
On the personal front I ended up the year weighing less than the previous year although not by much. I have to try to work on that more. I enjoyed a second half of the year that saw me spend a good chunk of my little free time building on my cooking skills and have found that it is a great decompression activity for me a the end of the day and on the weekends when time allows it. I survived turning 40 and was glad that that yearly physical showed improvements in just about every category.
On the business front it was a year of heavy lifting. We developed the second version of our product and quietly worked on a big part of our new strategy that we will unveil early this year. We saw some excellent metrics growth in Rabble in the last quarter of the year and scaled up our team significantly for the hard work ahead.
Across the board 2006 ended with a lot of optimism and knowledge that 2007 can be a great year but that there will be continued hard work to pull all the things together (family, personally, and work).
A big 2006 thanks to my wife who is truly responsible for keeping all the pieces working.
In 2007 I hope to continue my lifelong obsession with technology by dabbling in whatever new stuff comes along. I am certain that on the business side we are looking at a great opportunity we envisioned almost three years ago now and believe that this is the year it all comes together. I hope that personally I get more time with my wife, I have the patience for 3 two year olds at once and continue to give my oldest son all the attention he deserves.
And to you my friends, family and anonymous readers, I hope that 2007 is the best ever for all of you individually.
Cheers.
So rather than the long post a thought a brief retrospective and some forward looking stuff is in order.
2006 was a year of hard work in all the respective categories. On the family front the kids were very sick for a good chunk of the year with a variety of cough and cold like symptoms (Until mom took them off dairy) and Tate seemed to really enjoy and prosper at school. Jess and I both thought the year was hard but I think we came to the end with a lot of optimism for the coming year. We managed a few family get aways and hope that there will be more in the coming year.
On the personal front I ended up the year weighing less than the previous year although not by much. I have to try to work on that more. I enjoyed a second half of the year that saw me spend a good chunk of my little free time building on my cooking skills and have found that it is a great decompression activity for me a the end of the day and on the weekends when time allows it. I survived turning 40 and was glad that that yearly physical showed improvements in just about every category.
On the business front it was a year of heavy lifting. We developed the second version of our product and quietly worked on a big part of our new strategy that we will unveil early this year. We saw some excellent metrics growth in Rabble in the last quarter of the year and scaled up our team significantly for the hard work ahead.
Across the board 2006 ended with a lot of optimism and knowledge that 2007 can be a great year but that there will be continued hard work to pull all the things together (family, personally, and work).
A big 2006 thanks to my wife who is truly responsible for keeping all the pieces working.
In 2007 I hope to continue my lifelong obsession with technology by dabbling in whatever new stuff comes along. I am certain that on the business side we are looking at a great opportunity we envisioned almost three years ago now and believe that this is the year it all comes together. I hope that personally I get more time with my wife, I have the patience for 3 two year olds at once and continue to give my oldest son all the attention he deserves.
And to you my friends, family and anonymous readers, I hope that 2007 is the best ever for all of you individually.
Cheers.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
The Venice Project Invites
I have had a couple of people ask me for invitations to the Venice Project. I don't have any yet but when I am blessed with a couple I will gladly send them out to those who asked on a first come first served basis. Maybe the invite gods will smile upon me soon.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Attention Warfare
Over the last six months or so I have been evangelizing to the people I know about the Attention Economy and Attention Trust. It's a funny thing to do because the conversation sounds like this, "See in the future you will record your attention and then broker it yourself instead of going through Yahoo etc." That ends up in people rolling their eyes or giving me a strange look. I think, soon you will see...
At any rate I am still convinced that this is one of the most important things going on in technology, media and advertising. In that same conversation I tell people that I have been recording my attention since July and I have it stored somewhere for when I need it. I guess that too sounds a bit bizarre. The physical representation of that is the What I'm clicking on badge on the right hand side of the blog. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that out of the blue, the most visited site that I go to each day is http://view.atdmt.com. If you go to that link you will see that it is a 1 pixel gif image served up by a company by the name of Atlas Solutions. Ah, marketing folks.
I found myself both concerned and annoyed that somehow some spyware had infected my laptop. I am pretty diligent in doing my virus scans and I think that Firefox has been really good at keeping my computer virus free and spyware free. I was at a total loss for how this thing had infected me and I wasn't sure when it started. I went into Firefox and blocked the domain atdmt from serving cookies. I figured that I was done and moved on.
About a week later, I looked at the badge and to my surprise atdmt was still at the top. I was pretty mad about that and had to dig in to figure out what was going on. I fired up Norton for a full scan. I did a Google Desktop search for *atdmt*. My mouth dropped to the floor. 71 emails contain links that reference the atdmt cookie. Some fine companies such as Sportsline, American Airlines and Microsoft apparently work with Atlas Solutions. I asked my internal guys about getting rid of this plague from my computer and their suggestion was to run a spyware program. I told them that I didn't care for spyware and thought that Norton should be enough. They said that in fact I should run a separate program. I asked which one and they said unanimously that I should use Windows Defender because Microsoft is taking over the spyware market. There were a number of other things that they said that is worthy of a different post that I will follow up on later.
I ran a full Norton scan, I ran a Windows defender scan and nothing came up. Very disappointing. Maybe Atlas isn't spyware, maybe its valuable marketing intelligence. I think not. I went into my root account and turned off logging for the domain. I also spent some time looking on websites for information about atdmt and one of the most interesting things that came up was that when you download IE 7 you are redirected to the Atlas Solutions domain during the download process. It was theorized that the reason was to track downloads. I am not certain that this was the source of the infection, especially given the wide availability of the tracking cookie with other companies I do business with but I was very unhappy that I had no knowledge of this.
This morning I went back to Firefox and doubled checked my prohibited domains. I was blocking atdmt.com but I didn't have Atlas Solutions blocked. I added them. I also went to look at my cookies and realized that I hadn't deleted the atdmt and atlassolutions cookies. I fixed that this morning and hope that for now the problem is gone.
In summary, this long narrative was an expression of what happens when you start to realize what is going on behind the scenes with your data. Certainly most people wont go through all this trouble and effort. At one point Shawn asked me if this was a good use of my time. In fact, generally I would say no but given the gradual slowdown of my computer over time it felt like an important thing to address. As more and more people become aware of their attention and the value of it, I think stories like this and what I would expect to be a backlash will become more prevalent.
At any rate I am still convinced that this is one of the most important things going on in technology, media and advertising. In that same conversation I tell people that I have been recording my attention since July and I have it stored somewhere for when I need it. I guess that too sounds a bit bizarre. The physical representation of that is the What I'm clicking on badge on the right hand side of the blog. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that out of the blue, the most visited site that I go to each day is http://view.atdmt.com. If you go to that link you will see that it is a 1 pixel gif image served up by a company by the name of Atlas Solutions. Ah, marketing folks.
I found myself both concerned and annoyed that somehow some spyware had infected my laptop. I am pretty diligent in doing my virus scans and I think that Firefox has been really good at keeping my computer virus free and spyware free. I was at a total loss for how this thing had infected me and I wasn't sure when it started. I went into Firefox and blocked the domain atdmt from serving cookies. I figured that I was done and moved on.
About a week later, I looked at the badge and to my surprise atdmt was still at the top. I was pretty mad about that and had to dig in to figure out what was going on. I fired up Norton for a full scan. I did a Google Desktop search for *atdmt*. My mouth dropped to the floor. 71 emails contain links that reference the atdmt cookie. Some fine companies such as Sportsline, American Airlines and Microsoft apparently work with Atlas Solutions. I asked my internal guys about getting rid of this plague from my computer and their suggestion was to run a spyware program. I told them that I didn't care for spyware and thought that Norton should be enough. They said that in fact I should run a separate program. I asked which one and they said unanimously that I should use Windows Defender because Microsoft is taking over the spyware market. There were a number of other things that they said that is worthy of a different post that I will follow up on later.
I ran a full Norton scan, I ran a Windows defender scan and nothing came up. Very disappointing. Maybe Atlas isn't spyware, maybe its valuable marketing intelligence. I think not. I went into my root account and turned off logging for the domain. I also spent some time looking on websites for information about atdmt and one of the most interesting things that came up was that when you download IE 7 you are redirected to the Atlas Solutions domain during the download process. It was theorized that the reason was to track downloads. I am not certain that this was the source of the infection, especially given the wide availability of the tracking cookie with other companies I do business with but I was very unhappy that I had no knowledge of this.
This morning I went back to Firefox and doubled checked my prohibited domains. I was blocking atdmt.com but I didn't have Atlas Solutions blocked. I added them. I also went to look at my cookies and realized that I hadn't deleted the atdmt and atlassolutions cookies. I fixed that this morning and hope that for now the problem is gone.
In summary, this long narrative was an expression of what happens when you start to realize what is going on behind the scenes with your data. Certainly most people wont go through all this trouble and effort. At one point Shawn asked me if this was a good use of my time. In fact, generally I would say no but given the gradual slowdown of my computer over time it felt like an important thing to address. As more and more people become aware of their attention and the value of it, I think stories like this and what I would expect to be a backlash will become more prevalent.
Blogger out of Beta
The changes to Blogger that went into beta last summer are now going live. I was happy to switch over but figured out this morning that because I have a large blog I have to wait a bit longer. Drats.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Case Camp in Second Life
I had the good fortune of being selected one of the 40 people to attend the inaugural Case Camp in Second life. One of the organizers has a good post here with much linkage to writeups etc. I was busy at work and had to drop off half way through, which was a bummer, but I really dug what they were doing and hope I can participate in something like that again. It was one of the first meaningful uses of Second Life I have seen. Imagine a shared whiteboard with people walking around and interacting much like you would in real life. Except some people have tails.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Mallory, Tucker and Brit turn 2
Today is the birthday of our little babies. They are no longer very little and although they have gotten easier than they were as tiny babies, we have the new found joy of sharing among triplets. It reminds me a little bit of A Clockwork Orange and a little of the old ultra-violence.It has been a blast having them in our lives and although I couldn't comprehend life with triplets, I can't imagine life without them. They are each so different and special and fun.
Happy birthday to my babies, Mallory, Tucker and Brit.
Korv Party
Lot's of family stuff going on in the background so I thought I would share a bit. This year we hosted the annual Lindgren Korv making party. Here my son Tate is proudly displaying his capabilities at the sausage meat grinder.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
The Venice Project - Screenshots
The Venice Project Folks gave the greenlight to blog about the service. I will do that later. In the meantime they also sent out a number of screen shots for people to check out. Blogger isn't letting me upload very easily but I put one here. You can also go here to check out some more.
The Venice Project
A couple of weeks ago I was looking for someone to help us with something technical and I thought of our friend Sander who I figured would be bored now that Divx had gone public. Clearly he was bored because he had already departed and began work on The Venice Project.
It sounds like a really cool effort given the pedigree of the various players (here is a Business Week link). If you don't want to follow the link then know that their previous projects include the companies behind Kazaa and Skype. Sander is really smart and I am sure it will be a great ride.
To my surprise last night I got a beta invite and started playing around this AM. There is a non-disclosure associated with the account so I can't say much until I am told explicitly otherwise but I recommend going to the site to sign up for the beta. I think this is going to be pretty cool.
It sounds like a really cool effort given the pedigree of the various players (here is a Business Week link). If you don't want to follow the link then know that their previous projects include the companies behind Kazaa and Skype. Sander is really smart and I am sure it will be a great ride.
To my surprise last night I got a beta invite and started playing around this AM. There is a non-disclosure associated with the account so I can't say much until I am told explicitly otherwise but I recommend going to the site to sign up for the beta. I think this is going to be pretty cool.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Prosper
Sean (The other Shawn) told me over lunch a couple of months ago now about the site Prosper. I think it came up because the Nobel Peace prize was awarded to a person behind micro loans in Africa. Prosper allows people to borrow and lend money to other people through a marketplace format. People can create groups to lend money to other people. The concept is really powerful and reminds me a lot of the ideas that come to mind when I think about the Attention Economy ideas. I plan on spending some time playing with this some more during the holiday downtime.
Fantasy Football 2006 Epilogue
All my fantasy football leagues have come to a close for the year with the exception of the playoffs. It was a great year of football watching and I have to say that it is sort of bittersweet to know that I am heading into the sports blackhole that is life without football. Sigh.
So as it stands currently I am in the final four playoffs of my Keeper league with a strong team but with equally strong opponents. I ended up with the best record in the regular season.
In my normal league I am in a bowl playoff for 3rd and 4th place. Not too shabby considering I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention.
My lone disappointment was my dynasty league where I had the distinction of a 5 way tie for last place, which I of course won and have the honor/distinction/shame of the first draft pick in next years rookie draft. Although I got my butt handed to me, I really like the team I have going into next year and think I have a shot to contend next year.
So as it stands currently I am in the final four playoffs of my Keeper league with a strong team but with equally strong opponents. I ended up with the best record in the regular season.
In my normal league I am in a bowl playoff for 3rd and 4th place. Not too shabby considering I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention.
My lone disappointment was my dynasty league where I had the distinction of a 5 way tie for last place, which I of course won and have the honor/distinction/shame of the first draft pick in next years rookie draft. Although I got my butt handed to me, I really like the team I have going into next year and think I have a shot to contend next year.
P990 Review
This should be easy. I LOVE my new phone. I have the opportunity to check out so many devices that I think I have a good perspective on what is good and what is not good but more importantly I have good perspective on what I like. So before I gush too much let's do the bad.
The Bad.
Cost. This phone is EXPENSIVE. When you can buy a computer or a really neat smartphone, it better be good. I think the P990 hits the mark but its certainly not for everyone.
Buggy UI. The P990 is Symbian 9 and UIQ 3. There are clearly some strange software issues that aren't up in your face but they do surface periodically. Besides the bugginess, which I assume they will fix in an update soon, there was definitely a learning curve in switching from my P910 to the P990. It didn't feel as seamless as I would have expected. I am certain that there are a number of features that I will discover in the future but right now it's just getting back into the old grove with the phone.
Edge. It's probably a carrier issue, but I don't have high speed access on the device(3G network). I am sure Tmobile will get there soon. They just bought a ton of spectrum so its mostly a time issue.
Powercord. After owning 4 Sony Ericsson devices over the last 4 years, they went and switched the power cord. Throw away multiple power cords (home, car, etc.)
The Good.
This phone truly rocks. Rss feed support? Got it. WiFi support? Got it. Multiple audio file support? Got it. Word, PPT, XLS, PDF Support? Got it.
The Very Exceptional.
There are a handful of things that have blown me away. They are...
Battery Life. Something must be terribly wrong, but this battery lasts longer than any power hungry phone I have played with. It also recharges in record time.
WiFi. Trust me, when you get WiFi on your phone, it is going to change your life. I sent 2 megabyte files to my Flickr account over GPRS. Painful. I did it over WiFi. Instantaneous.
Display Quality. The P990 comes with some pre-installed games. I don't play games on my phone (much) but when I checked out the Vijay Singh golf game my jaw dropped. The display is simply insane.
Over the coming months I plan to work the device in a way that maxes out the multimedia capabilities as well as explore new software as it becomes available. Skype please? Stay tuned for more.
The Bad.
Cost. This phone is EXPENSIVE. When you can buy a computer or a really neat smartphone, it better be good. I think the P990 hits the mark but its certainly not for everyone.
Buggy UI. The P990 is Symbian 9 and UIQ 3. There are clearly some strange software issues that aren't up in your face but they do surface periodically. Besides the bugginess, which I assume they will fix in an update soon, there was definitely a learning curve in switching from my P910 to the P990. It didn't feel as seamless as I would have expected. I am certain that there are a number of features that I will discover in the future but right now it's just getting back into the old grove with the phone.
Edge. It's probably a carrier issue, but I don't have high speed access on the device(3G network). I am sure Tmobile will get there soon. They just bought a ton of spectrum so its mostly a time issue.
Powercord. After owning 4 Sony Ericsson devices over the last 4 years, they went and switched the power cord. Throw away multiple power cords (home, car, etc.)
The Good.
This phone truly rocks. Rss feed support? Got it. WiFi support? Got it. Multiple audio file support? Got it. Word, PPT, XLS, PDF Support? Got it.
The Very Exceptional.
There are a handful of things that have blown me away. They are...
Battery Life. Something must be terribly wrong, but this battery lasts longer than any power hungry phone I have played with. It also recharges in record time.
WiFi. Trust me, when you get WiFi on your phone, it is going to change your life. I sent 2 megabyte files to my Flickr account over GPRS. Painful. I did it over WiFi. Instantaneous.
Display Quality. The P990 comes with some pre-installed games. I don't play games on my phone (much) but when I checked out the Vijay Singh golf game my jaw dropped. The display is simply insane.
Over the coming months I plan to work the device in a way that maxes out the multimedia capabilities as well as explore new software as it becomes available. Skype please? Stay tuned for more.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
2006Holiday
4 children stand stage left of the microphone...
One of two uncannily similar looking boys walks up to the microphone.
Brit: Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? Good. My name is Brit. My mom told me that this dad has this thing called a blog. I am not sure what that is but he does spend an inordinate amount of time at the keyboard. Mom said we can talk on Dad's blog this year to say hi to everyone and since I am the spokesman of my triplet siblings I thought I would say hello first.
I had a good year this year. I sleep. I eat. I play. I occasionally pull my brother or sisters hair and sometimes take a swipe at them with my chompers. It's hard keeping them in line you know? Although dad says I am a bit aggressive I am also really into cuddling, Mom says that I have a really innocent look on my face when I am in trouble. She is easy.
I love trains. A lot. I can't seem to get them out of my head.
Tucker: Ok, Ok enough already. I am Tucker. My year was pretty good as well. I like to hang out with my siblings a lot but I also like to figure things out. Like that time when I was 15 months old and I figured out how to climb out of my crib. Or when I took the blender out of the pantry and tried to plug it in. Or when dad found me standing on the book case doing a Vulcan mind meld with the big screen TV.
I really like to climb the most. I can climb the exterior of the staircase bannister. I can climb the armoire and turn on and off the television. My nannies call me "Spiderman". I don't know who he is but Tate thinks he is pretty cool. Like Brit I share a deep love of trains.
Mallory: My TURN! I can't believe those guys. Mom and Dad tell me that they are my brothers and while I have to admit that we share the same room, and have the same birthday, I can't believe that these two knuckle heads could be my siblings. Brit seems to think he is in charge but in reality I only allow him to think he is in charge. You see, I am the uber child who pulls the strings.
So my year...where to begin...I like pretty dresses, and I like football jerseys (Dad is a sucker for football). I like watching my mom get ready in the morning. When the other guys stay downstairs with the nannies in the morning, I sneak upstairs and take a bath when mom or dad are getting ready. I like blankies, and babies and my morning bottle. Most importantly though, I LOVE MY NOOKIE. I wish I didn't but often times there I am thinking about it. Wanting it. Knowing it will calm me down. Sigh. I bet that's going to end soon.
Tate Hi Mally! Ok enough of them. So I am the big brother. As you can tell, I have to share a lot. Mom and Dad have their hands pretty full with the wild ones. I don't mind too much as I get a lot of special time with Mom and Dad. I am in school right now and I really like it. I take an art class on Tuesday and have some really cool paintings I have made. Right now I am playing soccer and my dad is coaching. He is funny.
Our year was good and some of my favorite times included going to Palm Springs with the family and my Grandma and Grandpa. I love them a lot. I really like it when they come and see me or when I get to go to their house. Dad hooked up a video thing so I can talk to them on my computer and can see them on the screen. Dad says they are still in North Dakota when I see them on the screen but I am not sure.
Mom is still working a couple of days a week as a lawyer at Elan Pharmaceuticals. The days when she doesn't I get to hang out with her and do things. We have our special times like yesterday when we went and saw How the Grinch Stole Xmas. I like to cuddle with my mom in the morning.
Dad works on this thing called Rabble. The Rabble guy looks really funny. Dad also has a whole bunch of phones. He has the Sidekick phone and the Rabble phone and the TV phone and some others that I am not sure what they are called. Dad and I spend a lot of time together on the weekends. We go for rides on trains and go to football games and hang out a lot.
Well, we have to go play now. We hope you all have a happy holiday season and that 2007 if full of health, wealth, and success.
One of two uncannily similar looking boys walks up to the microphone.
Brit:
I had a good year this year. I sleep. I eat. I play. I occasionally pull my brother or sisters hair and sometimes take a swipe at them with my chompers. It's hard keeping them in line you know? Although dad says I am a bit aggressive I am also really into cuddling, Mom says that I have a really innocent look on my face when I am in trouble. She is easy.
I love trains. A lot. I can't seem to get them out of my head.
Tucker:
I really like to climb the most. I can climb the exterior of the staircase bannister. I can climb the armoire and turn on and off the television. My nannies call me "Spiderman". I don't know who he is but Tate thinks he is pretty cool. Like Brit I share a deep love of trains.
Mallory:
So my year...where to begin...I like pretty dresses, and I like football jerseys (Dad is a sucker for football). I like watching my mom get ready in the morning. When the other guys stay downstairs with the nannies in the morning, I sneak upstairs and take a bath when mom or dad are getting ready. I like blankies, and babies and my morning bottle. Most importantly though, I LOVE MY NOOKIE. I wish I didn't but often times there I am thinking about it. Wanting it. Knowing it will calm me down. Sigh. I bet that's going to end soon.
Tate
Our year was good and some of my favorite times included going to Palm Springs with the family and my Grandma and Grandpa. I love them a lot. I really like it when they come and see me or when I get to go to their house. Dad hooked up a video thing so I can talk to them on my computer and can see them on the screen. Dad says they are still in North Dakota when I see them on the screen but I am not sure.
Mom is still working a couple of days a week as a lawyer at Elan Pharmaceuticals. The days when she doesn't I get to hang out with her and do things. We have our special times like yesterday when we went and saw How the Grinch Stole Xmas. I like to cuddle with my mom in the morning.
Dad works on this thing called Rabble. The Rabble guy looks really funny. Dad also has a whole bunch of phones. He has the Sidekick phone and the Rabble phone and the TV phone and some others that I am not sure what they are called. Dad and I spend a lot of time together on the weekends. We go for rides on trains and go to football games and hang out a lot.
Well, we have to go play now. We hope you all have a happy holiday season and that 2007 if full of health, wealth, and success.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Sony Ericsson P990
Last week my new Sony Ericsson P990 arrived. I have been spending a chunk of time figuring it out. Expect a review later this week.
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