Over the last month I have been suddenly deluged with a number of requests from friends migrating to Facebook. I signed up after they had opened up originally and quickly found that none of my friends were there. Old guy. But now they are. And in looking at Facebook and that some of my adult/real friends look like they may really be setting up their home there, it made me come to the conclusion that unlike most of the other sites I have signed up for, where I approve any friend request, I am not going to do that again.
Not this time. On Linkedin I am up over 300 people and a surprising number of them are actually friends. Then there are legions of people I met at a conference, or have had one meeting with, or I may have actually met at some time. No more of that. With Facebook I am applying the beer filter. What is the beer filter? I won't do an add friend unless I have actually sat down and had a beer with someone. The only exceptions I am making are people I work or worked with whom I might have had a beer with as part of larger company function. If the beer filter works then I may actually accumulate a good number of people who really are friends, colleagues or people I work with in business. At least that is the hope.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Monday, June 25, 2007
Avoiding Email Bankruptcy
Coming into this year, I realized that the activity level of work just continues to increase. I think there were times at Vivendi when I was possibly busier, but it had a natural ebb and flow that is different than in a startup. In a startup you have the ebb and flow but everything is on a continued upward trajectory.
I spent some time with the Getting Things Done materials and through most of this year kept telling myself that I would get rigid about how I process things. My natural state is to keep a lot of details in my head and switch back and forth very quickly. A lot of that ability was honed in my early 20s when I was a dispatcher at the studios and had to track 50+ people all day long all over Los Angeles. It was sort of like a living video game with screaming studio executives in the background. In retrospect it was really a lot of fun and to this day I can juggle a lot at the same time. This however doesn't scale.
The biggest monkey on my back has been email. I generally hover around 300 to 700 emails that are to be filed or to be responded to. In general, most of those are to be filed. With a number of posts from people like Fred Wilson making posts about email bankruptcy (deleting your inbox and starting over), I paused for a second and considered the option. My anal retentive nature with respect to information made that a bad option for me. I had to bear down and solve it. Last week as I transitioned to a replacement for my two year old laptop, I got the email box to zero. I plan to keep it there. I also am trying to use some structured approaches to deal with the scaling of information. I will keep you posted as to my success.
I spent some time with the Getting Things Done materials and through most of this year kept telling myself that I would get rigid about how I process things. My natural state is to keep a lot of details in my head and switch back and forth very quickly. A lot of that ability was honed in my early 20s when I was a dispatcher at the studios and had to track 50+ people all day long all over Los Angeles. It was sort of like a living video game with screaming studio executives in the background. In retrospect it was really a lot of fun and to this day I can juggle a lot at the same time. This however doesn't scale.
The biggest monkey on my back has been email. I generally hover around 300 to 700 emails that are to be filed or to be responded to. In general, most of those are to be filed. With a number of posts from people like Fred Wilson making posts about email bankruptcy (deleting your inbox and starting over), I paused for a second and considered the option. My anal retentive nature with respect to information made that a bad option for me. I had to bear down and solve it. Last week as I transitioned to a replacement for my two year old laptop, I got the email box to zero. I plan to keep it there. I also am trying to use some structured approaches to deal with the scaling of information. I will keep you posted as to my success.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Mac Attack
So add me to the long list of people who switched from a PC to a Mac. I have never ever been a Mac user but the opportunity to use the Mac, PC and Unix environment on one machine was irresistible, especially as I became more comfortable with the Mac from using the Mini at home.
Yes it is great and I love it. No it isn't a social movement or the next best thing to sliced bread. My only hope is I get another 2+ years from this laptop as I did my last HP Laptop. I am thinking that I will.
One big drawback so far is the support for business nerds. Getting Outlook contacts to a Mac format was a real pain in the ass. I had to buy a $10 software package called Outlook2Mac. How I am going to sync things with my main smartphone is still a mystery to me. One big plus was the set up of my Upstage EVDO handset as a modem using Bluetooth. That ruled. No software, no discs, no drivers. It just worked. As it should.
Yes it is great and I love it. No it isn't a social movement or the next best thing to sliced bread. My only hope is I get another 2+ years from this laptop as I did my last HP Laptop. I am thinking that I will.
One big drawback so far is the support for business nerds. Getting Outlook contacts to a Mac format was a real pain in the ass. I had to buy a $10 software package called Outlook2Mac. How I am going to sync things with my main smartphone is still a mystery to me. One big plus was the set up of my Upstage EVDO handset as a modem using Bluetooth. That ruled. No software, no discs, no drivers. It just worked. As it should.
Monday, June 18, 2007
The Helio Ocean
I have been carrying around the Helio Ocean since the new phone launched. In general I don't like to talk much about carriers or devices because we work with both carriers and handset OEMs. In the past I have made the exception with Helio because I felt that they were targeting people like me as the core of their consumer base (Gadget freak, early adopter). This was based mostly on the early descriptions of their market pre-Myspace deal. The Myspace deal was confusing to me because I think that Helio, which is in general a higher end device carrier than the broad based US carriers that offer lots of phone choice as well as free phones and family calling plans, was targeted at a slightly older and slightly more affluent consumer. Given Myspace's ubiquity that may be a mistake on my part but in general I personally thought it was a head scratcher.
The Ocean, however, is the type of device I would expect from Helio. It is definitely a device like no other on a carrier today. While true their are devices like the LG Envy and others, the Ocean brings an amazing combination of hardware design and usability, with an awesome handset UI and a great network.
Big plus - The action on the Ocean (Pantek) both the traditional and qwerty side are switchblade like and is very similar to the Sony Mylo. The FAST mobile messaging and IM integration is ambitious and fairly well executed. The LBS enabled Google maps application is probably the hottest thing I have seen on a phone.
Big minus - The handset seems like it is bit under microprocessor strain. For example, although the Fast mobile IM works well, there are times when you type on the keyboard and the phone seems like it is hung, until about a minute or so later when it actually types. I can't tell if this is hardware or software related but that's a must fix in the future. No use of the device as a phone modem. Maybe that is going to change?
So to reiterate, I am exited to see Helio push the envelope with a device like this. I can't wait to see what the next devices are going to be absed on this direction. There are a number of concerns I expressed previously about the deck being kind of locked down, the inability to use Opera or Opera mini etc. that may be issues around Pantek devices specifically. In any event, I would bet that in the future those issues will fall by the wayside.
One big question I had that seems to have disappered is the H.O.T or Helio On Top application from the Ocean. I thought that in concept this was one of the coolest things that Helio was trying to do. The software for the Hero was pretty buggy but I figured that would be fixed over time. I wonder if there is a data load issue with that kind of application? Hard to say.
The ultimate question I face when I look at a device is whether or not I would adopt this as my primary phone. In this case I would give the Ocean a pretty high thumbs up in general if not for my involvement with my current phones. Yes, phones. I am still way bought into the Sidekick III. It is almost laughable that I carry a device just for IM, but it is really that good. I think that I could use the Ocean in a serviceable way, and it is certainly better than anything I have seen on other handsets including my SE P990, but it isn't as good as the Sidekick for IM. On other fronts I think it probably beats the Sidekick but as that is my primary use case, I am still going to carry the larger device.
Since I am a smartphone user, it isn't a fair comparison as a replacement for that class of device but it is certainly a top of the list phone if I were to abandon the smartphone class of device.
Hats off to the Helio team for a bold direction with their newest phone. I can't wait to see what is next.
The Ocean, however, is the type of device I would expect from Helio. It is definitely a device like no other on a carrier today. While true their are devices like the LG Envy and others, the Ocean brings an amazing combination of hardware design and usability, with an awesome handset UI and a great network.
Big plus - The action on the Ocean (Pantek) both the traditional and qwerty side are switchblade like and is very similar to the Sony Mylo. The FAST mobile messaging and IM integration is ambitious and fairly well executed. The LBS enabled Google maps application is probably the hottest thing I have seen on a phone.
Big minus - The handset seems like it is bit under microprocessor strain. For example, although the Fast mobile IM works well, there are times when you type on the keyboard and the phone seems like it is hung, until about a minute or so later when it actually types. I can't tell if this is hardware or software related but that's a must fix in the future. No use of the device as a phone modem. Maybe that is going to change?
So to reiterate, I am exited to see Helio push the envelope with a device like this. I can't wait to see what the next devices are going to be absed on this direction. There are a number of concerns I expressed previously about the deck being kind of locked down, the inability to use Opera or Opera mini etc. that may be issues around Pantek devices specifically. In any event, I would bet that in the future those issues will fall by the wayside.
One big question I had that seems to have disappered is the H.O.T or Helio On Top application from the Ocean. I thought that in concept this was one of the coolest things that Helio was trying to do. The software for the Hero was pretty buggy but I figured that would be fixed over time. I wonder if there is a data load issue with that kind of application? Hard to say.
The ultimate question I face when I look at a device is whether or not I would adopt this as my primary phone. In this case I would give the Ocean a pretty high thumbs up in general if not for my involvement with my current phones. Yes, phones. I am still way bought into the Sidekick III. It is almost laughable that I carry a device just for IM, but it is really that good. I think that I could use the Ocean in a serviceable way, and it is certainly better than anything I have seen on other handsets including my SE P990, but it isn't as good as the Sidekick for IM. On other fronts I think it probably beats the Sidekick but as that is my primary use case, I am still going to carry the larger device.
Since I am a smartphone user, it isn't a fair comparison as a replacement for that class of device but it is certainly a top of the list phone if I were to abandon the smartphone class of device.
Hats off to the Helio team for a bold direction with their newest phone. I can't wait to see what is next.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Devices in my Bag - Phone Porn
Two things happened to me a couple of week ago that made me dump my travel bag out on the kitchen table to reassess what I am carrying around in my bag.
First my Sprint Ambassador phone, the LG Fusic expired and I had to switch to a new phone. I have to say that I really loved that Fusic.
Second, I was heading to Europe and I had to free myself of my CDMA phones. I figured that would lighten the load in the bag when you consider that I carry around power cords for all these devices.
So I thought that it might be fun to share which devices I am carrying now including a little editorial where appropriate and the promise of a full review where warranted.
Jawbone - Tom in our office was cruising around a couple of months ago with a bluetooth headset that looked like something from Counter Strike instead of a McDonalds headset. He said it was the Jawbone and it uses special technology that isolates sounds so you could in fact be mowing the lawn and talk on your phone. Not a use case I would consider but a good pitch. I found that after too many times driving my car with one hand up to my ear that I should use one of these devices. It also looks pretty cool. The noise filtering doesn't perform as advertised but how often do you mow the lawn anyways? The added side benefit is that I have been stopped by half a dozen people who have asked me if that is the Jawbone. I am impressed that they have that kind of mindshare when I have never heard or seen an ad. It could be what I am watching. For the record, I don't wear it in the office.
Helio Ocean - I have spent the last four weeks using this phone as a replacement for my Sidekick. It does some things really well and others not so well. I think this one warrants a full review. All in all I would say that it is a thumbs up, but like I said, I think it is a longer discussion.
Bluetooth Keyboard - Underneath the Ocean I have a fold out Stowaway Blue Tooth expandable keyboard. I haven't used it in over a year. I keep business cards in the bag. Reminder. Take out if bag next trip. The device was ok historically, but if I am going to bother with pulling it out, I might as well just get the laptop fired up or use the qwerty board on my other devices.
Sony Mylo - I have written about the Mylo before. Funny how it looks like the Ocean? Except no phone capabilities, and no upslide to complement the side slide. I topped up my Skype out and set up a Skype In account because I thought in Europe there would be hotspots everywhere. In fact, there were hotspots, at around $.36 a minute or $50 a day. What a disappointment. I thought I would come back with a great use case for the Mylo and it didn't happen. On the other hand, if I were in our office in London and had our own network, it would have been infinitely more affordable that using my cell phones. Next time.
The Upstage - What an awesome music phone. I can't get the Flip thing figured out. Apart from the device however, what I found intriguing is that Europeans like to say how far the US is behind Europe in mobile. In fact the media capabilities, LBS capabilites, and quality of service of Sprint and Verizon are insane. If you use some of their advanced technologies, I can't imagine that there are superior services in Europe. Now that could be my North American ignorance, but using my super fancy quad band phone on a smoking hot 3G network didn't strike me as anywhere near as fast as the data rates on US 3G CDMA. This wasn't a benchmark test and it was more my opinion, but I have to say next time I will be trying to test it more aggressively, like actually using the video calling capability.
Samsung A707 - This is my standard demo phone. Not too fancy, not too constrained although it is a 3G device. I have been using this to demo video primarily.
Nokia N73 - I have a couple of demos on this device, primarily around Flash. I generally shun Series 60 devices for demos as I think it deviates to far from where the consumer market is in terms of feature set and price. That said it is certainly a nifty phone on par with any of the high end phones I have used. I am more bought into the Symbian UIQ platform but it feels pretty close.
P990i - I love this device. It is my most favorite ever. In Europe I was able to see the nifty little 3G icon light up for the first time. That was cool.
Moto Q - I demo Windows Mobile on this. If I carried a Blackberrytreoqblackjack, I am pretty certain that this is the one I would carry.
PSP - I love this device. It isn't pictured because it was in the process of filling itself up with movies from my Tivo. Isn't that fricking cool? I can't wait until they fix the keyboard missing thing.
Marc Andreessen Blog & GoMo News
Over this last weekend I was turned on to two new blogs that I want to pass on. First, Marc Andreessen from web browser fame started a blog. It is a great collection of posts about technology, VCs and personal productivity. I'd say it is a definite subscribe given the quality of his first several posts.
The second one is GoMo News which describes itself as Edgy Wireless News. Debi Jones turned me onto it during a conversation where I lamented the shortage of good wireless blogs, or rather new voices. There are in fact a good number of mobile bloggers ala the Mobile Carnival ring, but it seems like there aren't a whole lot of new faces posting these days. Maybe they are working on companies...In any case GoMo looks promising as they are kind of irreverent and we even got singled out as a potential bubble company. Thanks guys!
The second one is GoMo News which describes itself as Edgy Wireless News. Debi Jones turned me onto it during a conversation where I lamented the shortage of good wireless blogs, or rather new voices. There are in fact a good number of mobile bloggers ala the Mobile Carnival ring, but it seems like there aren't a whole lot of new faces posting these days. Maybe they are working on companies...In any case GoMo looks promising as they are kind of irreverent and we even got singled out as a potential bubble company. Thanks guys!
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Europe
Europe was a blast. It was a really busy trip and I had a bad time with jet lag. The purpose of the trip was all business development (carriers, offdeck, community sites). We arrived in London, which was 40 degrees and raining the day we arrived. Glad it was almost summer, I can't imagine what winter is like. ;-)
Our meetings went well and I only have a couple of observations about London. First, the US dollar is in a really sad shape. The last time I had been to London was 3 1/2 years ago and I was blown away by how expensive everything was. I guess those deficits in the US aren't helping.
Second, WIFI is a joke. By that I mean that it was either a. obscenely expensive, or b. it was metered by the minute. Yes by the minute. I guess in some ways that makes sense but for something that probably doesn't have any variable cost it seemed like a big joke.
Third, I love Carphone Warehouse. What a great concept/store. Their selection was amazing and their ubiquity was impressive. I am excited to see what they do with Best Buy over here in the US.
Fourth, transportation in and around London is a pain. Granted transportation is amazing, but to get from one meeting to the next seemed to consume around twice the time that you spend in NYC doing similar things. It could be how we planned things out.
One really funny story. Right after we get to London, we showered, changed and headed to the Express. As the train pulled up, the car that stopped in front of us had a familiar face. It was Tasso Roumeliotis from Wavemarket. Now the odds that a couple guys from the west coast, who happen to work in mobile, happened to be in London at the same time, and just so happened to be on the same train, which just happened to deposit us right in front of each other was beyond comprehension. In any case it afforded us some time to catch up, compare notes and chat. They have been doing some good things with their Kid Finder application and it was good to hear that they are doing well.
In addition to the strictly business aspects of the trip I got to spend a little time with Russell Buckley from Admob who is one of the bloggers at Mob Happy.
London was a bookend on both sides of the trip and in the middle we took some of the exploding Southwest style budget airlines in Europe to Germany for meetings in Dusseldorf and Bonn. I had been to Germany back in 1997 in Munich and really liked it at the time. This time I truly fell in love with Germany. The weather was beautiful and the scenery in the Rhineland reminded me of the Pacific Northwest in summer, or something like North Carolina. Everything was very organized and clean and people spoke a lot more English than I recall.
When I returned home I had some observations about differences in the US and European market in terms of wireless coverage and services but I think I am going to hold off on that editorial until after my next trip when I have more data.
Our meetings went well and I only have a couple of observations about London. First, the US dollar is in a really sad shape. The last time I had been to London was 3 1/2 years ago and I was blown away by how expensive everything was. I guess those deficits in the US aren't helping.
Second, WIFI is a joke. By that I mean that it was either a. obscenely expensive, or b. it was metered by the minute. Yes by the minute. I guess in some ways that makes sense but for something that probably doesn't have any variable cost it seemed like a big joke.
Third, I love Carphone Warehouse. What a great concept/store. Their selection was amazing and their ubiquity was impressive. I am excited to see what they do with Best Buy over here in the US.
Fourth, transportation in and around London is a pain. Granted transportation is amazing, but to get from one meeting to the next seemed to consume around twice the time that you spend in NYC doing similar things. It could be how we planned things out.
One really funny story. Right after we get to London, we showered, changed and headed to the Express. As the train pulled up, the car that stopped in front of us had a familiar face. It was Tasso Roumeliotis from Wavemarket. Now the odds that a couple guys from the west coast, who happen to work in mobile, happened to be in London at the same time, and just so happened to be on the same train, which just happened to deposit us right in front of each other was beyond comprehension. In any case it afforded us some time to catch up, compare notes and chat. They have been doing some good things with their Kid Finder application and it was good to hear that they are doing well.
In addition to the strictly business aspects of the trip I got to spend a little time with Russell Buckley from Admob who is one of the bloggers at Mob Happy.
London was a bookend on both sides of the trip and in the middle we took some of the exploding Southwest style budget airlines in Europe to Germany for meetings in Dusseldorf and Bonn. I had been to Germany back in 1997 in Munich and really liked it at the time. This time I truly fell in love with Germany. The weather was beautiful and the scenery in the Rhineland reminded me of the Pacific Northwest in summer, or something like North Carolina. Everything was very organized and clean and people spoke a lot more English than I recall.
When I returned home I had some observations about differences in the US and European market in terms of wireless coverage and services but I think I am going to hold off on that editorial until after my next trip when I have more data.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Where is Waldo?
Sometime approximately 24 hours ago I was walking through the park adjacent to Buckingham Palace. I had a bit of the jet lag sleep issue and thought a brisk walk would do me some good. Fast forward. Train to Heathrow. Pass out in Admirals Club. Run to plane. Pass out on plane. Land at JFK. Work in Admirals Club. Rush to plane. Board plane. And then the nightmare starts.
We push out and proceed to spend the next four hours touring the airport. Apparently there was some horrible thunderstorms which of course there was no evidence of at JFK. Strange. After four hours, and I began to complain loudly at two hours, they cancel our flight. Having figured as much, I was one of the first of the plane to rebook for tomorrow. Ouch, nothing until 1 PM. LA? Yes, run to gate there is one last one out. Get in plane. Plane pushes out. And we wait. Again. At least I have my EVDO phone and the laptop and they have a bit more tolerance of us tired and angry fliers. Someone said Bush flew in and did this. Seems possible but frankly all I want to do is get in my own bed. Europe was great. Recap later.
We push out and proceed to spend the next four hours touring the airport. Apparently there was some horrible thunderstorms which of course there was no evidence of at JFK. Strange. After four hours, and I began to complain loudly at two hours, they cancel our flight. Having figured as much, I was one of the first of the plane to rebook for tomorrow. Ouch, nothing until 1 PM. LA? Yes, run to gate there is one last one out. Get in plane. Plane pushes out. And we wait. Again. At least I have my EVDO phone and the laptop and they have a bit more tolerance of us tired and angry fliers. Someone said Bush flew in and did this. Seems possible but frankly all I want to do is get in my own bed. Europe was great. Recap later.
Monday, May 28, 2007
London Calling
I am in Boston about to hope on a plane to London. This week includes trips to London, Dusseldorf and Bonn. Should be busy. I think it's been 3 1/2 years since I have been to Europe so it's definitely overdue. Trip report later. I have a feeling that there will be more than a few trips to Europe this year...
Star Wars Recap
The Star Wars convention was awesome. For my son Tate it was a superbowl of activities. We traveled to
The convention was broken up into a commercial area where you could buy just about anything you wanted, a fan hall with things like Jedi training classes and then a variety of meeting rooms and other stuff. We really just spent out time in the commercial and fan hall as well as getting pictures with just about every character you can imagine. Here Tate is with his Jedi outfit and a Storm Trooper helmet which might be a good birthday present in the next couple of months…
Friday, May 25, 2007
Star Wars Anniversary
Tate and I are off to the Star Wars convention today to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars. Nerd pictures to follow shortly...
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Unintended Consequences
It was great to hear from my many friends and acquaintances when we announced our Series B round. It's almost funny when you realize who follows what you are doing and are kind enough to reach out and say congratulations. What wasn't as exciting were the avalanche of unsolicited calls from service providers and salespeople for products we don't really need. It is as if there is a wire that comes out and there is an army of people who wait to see where money is flowing and they are waiting to reach into the river to take a swipe at the fish, er money.
As someone who does a lot of business development and sales, I can totally appreciate the need to reach out to people you don't know and to reach out to people who you think might need your service or product. Where I have a problem, is in the lack of qualification of a prospect. Something on the order of 80% of the solicitations have no relevance to what we do in any way shape or form. Accountants? Ok, that makes sense. Banks? Check. Lead generation services? Not exactly.
In addition to the really bad hit rate, which I think speaks to some laziness on the part of the sales professional or telemarketer, is the method of reaching us. We have a generic phone number that goes into an IPPBX and I get an email with the message attached. When I get a chance I play those messages. Some people are slightly more crafty and they go to our website and look up our email and send a direct email to either Shawn, myself, or both of us. Ok, a little more effort.
The really smart ones actually do a little bit more homework. In my case that would be finding my blog. Once they have found my blog, if they actually look around and read some stuff they will find that I put my cell phone number on here. The very small handful of sales professionals who did this managed to get me on the phone last week. While I didn't welcome the unsolicited interruption, I did in fact either channel those people to the right person or told them there wasn't a need for their product, albeit as quickly as possible. Hats off to the resourceful.
As someone who does a lot of business development and sales, I can totally appreciate the need to reach out to people you don't know and to reach out to people who you think might need your service or product. Where I have a problem, is in the lack of qualification of a prospect. Something on the order of 80% of the solicitations have no relevance to what we do in any way shape or form. Accountants? Ok, that makes sense. Banks? Check. Lead generation services? Not exactly.
In addition to the really bad hit rate, which I think speaks to some laziness on the part of the sales professional or telemarketer, is the method of reaching us. We have a generic phone number that goes into an IPPBX and I get an email with the message attached. When I get a chance I play those messages. Some people are slightly more crafty and they go to our website and look up our email and send a direct email to either Shawn, myself, or both of us. Ok, a little more effort.
The really smart ones actually do a little bit more homework. In my case that would be finding my blog. Once they have found my blog, if they actually look around and read some stuff they will find that I put my cell phone number on here. The very small handful of sales professionals who did this managed to get me on the phone last week. While I didn't welcome the unsolicited interruption, I did in fact either channel those people to the right person or told them there wasn't a need for their product, albeit as quickly as possible. Hats off to the resourceful.
CNN Center
There was this mural at CNN Center in Atlanta I saw this morning while walking around. This particular piece had a number of news terms on a wall. I thought that given the rise in user generated video, this particular segment 'Raw Video In The System" had a funny double meaning as the old and new media worlds collide.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Blogging Birthday - 3 Years and counting
As of today, I have been blogging pretty regularly for 3 years. Back in 2004 when I started I don't think I imagined I would keep doing this. Now, 882 posts later, I find it more enjoyable than ever although my ability to move to a long form of narrative has never materialized. For those who keep tabs on me through this vehicle, thanks for the kind comments and your continued interest.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
We raised a $12 million Series B
The press release is here. We are extremely excited to be working with Venrock. They are a firm with a great tradition of working with entrepreneurs to create great companies. We had met them when we were out raising our Series A, and are glad that we are now in business with them as we move forward in a growth period of our company.
We are also excited to have our previous investors, Avalon and Masthead, involved in our Series B as well. Both firms have been great supporters of ours and I'd like to send my thanks out to the various partners at each firm. We really appreciate their insight, support, and continued involvement in the building of our company.
Without the great team we have built, we wouldn't be able to accomplish the things we have so far, nor would we be able to deliver on the vision we have going forward. A big thanks to our team for all their hardwork and dedication. We expect to do big things in the coming year.
We started this company with the intent to work closely with the carriers to develop a category of applications and to work to build this category in unison with them. We appreciate the support we have had from all of our carrier partners so far and look forward to delivering on the promise of an exciting revolution in mobile data applications.
Most important to me though, has been the support of my wife and my kids. My wife has been a world class startup wife, raising our kids, running the house, and continuing to work 75% time as an attorney. I can't thank her enough for her belief in what we are doing and her strength in helping to make that a reality. Without her, none of this would have been possible.
We have a lot of exciting announcements coming very quickly and we look forward to sharing the news as it becomes available.
We are also excited to have our previous investors, Avalon and Masthead, involved in our Series B as well. Both firms have been great supporters of ours and I'd like to send my thanks out to the various partners at each firm. We really appreciate their insight, support, and continued involvement in the building of our company.
Without the great team we have built, we wouldn't be able to accomplish the things we have so far, nor would we be able to deliver on the vision we have going forward. A big thanks to our team for all their hardwork and dedication. We expect to do big things in the coming year.
We started this company with the intent to work closely with the carriers to develop a category of applications and to work to build this category in unison with them. We appreciate the support we have had from all of our carrier partners so far and look forward to delivering on the promise of an exciting revolution in mobile data applications.
Most important to me though, has been the support of my wife and my kids. My wife has been a world class startup wife, raising our kids, running the house, and continuing to work 75% time as an attorney. I can't thank her enough for her belief in what we are doing and her strength in helping to make that a reality. Without her, none of this would have been possible.
We have a lot of exciting announcements coming very quickly and we look forward to sharing the news as it becomes available.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Location Free P990 Not Available in US
I had someone post a comment to my Location Free post and they asked whether or not the Location Free software for the P990 I found worked in the US. In fact it doesn't. I was pretty bummed and I don't understand why it doesn't. Sony customer service confirmed that it doesn't work and didn't have a release date.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Google History
Have you checked out Google history? You should. It is awesome, and brilliant and scary, all at the same time. If you have read my blog before and wondered about my posts on Attention, or went and read some Goldhaber stuff, or checked out Atten.tv, and you still find that this topic is a bit academic or difficult to grok, then I suggest you go check out Google History.
A week or two ago, I read a post about Google history and quickly signed up and allowed the logging of all my data in a variety of categories. Then I forgot about it, much the same way I keep my Attention recorder running on my browser (By the way...When is Root.net going to fix their security certificate? Very disappointing, but that is another post...).
Earlier this week I went in to see what was in my Google history goodie bag. The main page is a chronological listing of all the pages I clicked on from now going backwards. I have this in Root.net as well but I get to block out certain domains I may not want to record (things like ego surfing my site statistics). Not here, everything gets recorded. Not really a problem, but still kind of freaky when you sit down and think about it and then multiply me by the population of the web world who uses Google. I am creeping you out yet?
I can then slice it more finely by looking at just news, or images or videos etc. especially for Google related services. Not too shabby.
I then click on trends which slices out the top queries, top sites, and top clicks. Are you still wondering why they are making so much money in advertising? Hold on there is more...I almost forgot to add you can slice that by week, month, all time etc.
My favorite part though, and where I think it all really comes together is the tab called interesting items. Here Google has determined other searches, pages, videos and gadgets that might be relevant to what I have been up to while surfing on the web. The list of pages is pretty impressive as we have been doing the fund raising exercise and the top 10 list for me includes nine venture firms and a buyout firm. Uncanny. I am curious though on how they rank them. Could it mean that the sum total of my interests (wireless, media, etc) when intersected with venture fund raising means that these are the best prospects for closing a round with those specific venture firms? Hard to say. In any event I was pretty surprised that there weren't fantasy football references or NFL draft results or other items which given the recent NFL draft would make the most sense. Maybe the algorithm is skewed?
In any case, if you have the slightest interest in Attention or wanting to understand the data you are throwing off when you mindlessly browse and search the web, I would certainly recommend that you check this service out. In any event, Google isn't the only company tracking this data (Yahoo, Doubleclick, AOL, etc.) and I think it is important we all be cognizant of the invisible transactions we are all generating behind the scenes with our web based actions. A final note is that I am not a Google hater or fearer as I know some are. I use Blogger, Google, Gmail, Google Apps and occasionally Google Maps. I get that the price of the services I am using are a value exchange that they need to offset by profiling me in great deal to yield high advertising returns. I would however like for Google to give me the option to keep my own copy of all the data they are keeping on me in the event that I want to use it for my own benefit somewhere down the road. You know, like when I am trying to decide which venture firms I should call on first, or which ones I should cross off the list. :-)
A week or two ago, I read a post about Google history and quickly signed up and allowed the logging of all my data in a variety of categories. Then I forgot about it, much the same way I keep my Attention recorder running on my browser (By the way...When is Root.net going to fix their security certificate? Very disappointing, but that is another post...).
Earlier this week I went in to see what was in my Google history goodie bag. The main page is a chronological listing of all the pages I clicked on from now going backwards. I have this in Root.net as well but I get to block out certain domains I may not want to record (things like ego surfing my site statistics). Not here, everything gets recorded. Not really a problem, but still kind of freaky when you sit down and think about it and then multiply me by the population of the web world who uses Google. I am creeping you out yet?
I can then slice it more finely by looking at just news, or images or videos etc. especially for Google related services. Not too shabby.
I then click on trends which slices out the top queries, top sites, and top clicks. Are you still wondering why they are making so much money in advertising? Hold on there is more...I almost forgot to add you can slice that by week, month, all time etc.
My favorite part though, and where I think it all really comes together is the tab called interesting items. Here Google has determined other searches, pages, videos and gadgets that might be relevant to what I have been up to while surfing on the web. The list of pages is pretty impressive as we have been doing the fund raising exercise and the top 10 list for me includes nine venture firms and a buyout firm. Uncanny. I am curious though on how they rank them. Could it mean that the sum total of my interests (wireless, media, etc) when intersected with venture fund raising means that these are the best prospects for closing a round with those specific venture firms? Hard to say. In any event I was pretty surprised that there weren't fantasy football references or NFL draft results or other items which given the recent NFL draft would make the most sense. Maybe the algorithm is skewed?
In any case, if you have the slightest interest in Attention or wanting to understand the data you are throwing off when you mindlessly browse and search the web, I would certainly recommend that you check this service out. In any event, Google isn't the only company tracking this data (Yahoo, Doubleclick, AOL, etc.) and I think it is important we all be cognizant of the invisible transactions we are all generating behind the scenes with our web based actions. A final note is that I am not a Google hater or fearer as I know some are. I use Blogger, Google, Gmail, Google Apps and occasionally Google Maps. I get that the price of the services I am using are a value exchange that they need to offset by profiling me in great deal to yield high advertising returns. I would however like for Google to give me the option to keep my own copy of all the data they are keeping on me in the event that I want to use it for my own benefit somewhere down the road. You know, like when I am trying to decide which venture firms I should call on first, or which ones I should cross off the list. :-)
Maker Faire and The Star Wars Convention
On May 24th Star Wars Celebration IV, which is a 30th anniversary celebration of the release of Star Wars, comes to the Los Angeles Convention center. My son Tate loves Star Wars so we are going to head up for one of the days to check it out. We saw a bunch of Star Wars types at Comic Con last summer and this figures to be a total blow out for nerds.
The weekend prior the Second Annual Maker Faire takes place up in San Mateo. I mentioned the Maker Faire to Tate before I had heard about the Star Wars event. If given the choice he would do both but if pushed I think the Force is a bit stronger in him. Tate and I have had a lot of fun doing different projects and I think if we could swing it he would really love the Maker Faire. I showed him the promo podcast for the Faire and it really stuck in his head, so much so that last night whe we were talking about having to choose only one of the events, he drug out all his toys and made his own "Maker Faire" on the floor of the family room. Picture here.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Noodles
I like to cook and am a fan of a wide variety of cuisines. I tend to go in phases both in terms of what I am cooking and what I am sampling while pumping up the frequent flyer miles.
Around two years ago my friend Jonathan who manages a bunch of the top bands today (Fall Out Boy, Panic At The Disco, Gym Class Heroes) took me to an old warehouse style noodle shop in Soho for lunch. It was amazing. I didn't recall the name of the place but I knew that if I ever ended up in Soho for lunch I had to find the place. A couple of weeks ago, while in NYC, I had coffee planned with Jonathan and the day before I was determined to find that place he took me took. That place is Kelley and Ping. A slightly blurry picture can be seen here. The featured dish was Roast Pork in Chicken broth with egg noodles. If you are a noodle freak, this is a must stop.
The following week on the left coast, I stopped in at Osha Thai Noodles and had an equally good bowl of noodles although this time with duck as the meat.
Needless to say, Noodles are on my list right now. Know any good places where you are?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)