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.

Father's Day - I am a Lucky Guy!

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!

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.

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.

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 Los Angeles via the Amtrak Pacific Surfliner. Once we arrived in LA we tool the Metro Red Line Subway, which was his first subway trip and in his opinion the best part of the whole day. At 7^th street we switched to the Blue Line which deposited us at the LA Convention center. There we found the oddest collection of freaks and nerds ever to be brought together in my lifetime. I think if you could have rounded up all the Storm Troopers alone you may have had a regiment of several thousand ready to attack the rebels.

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…

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...

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.

CNN Center

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Originally uploaded by brikmaster.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. :-)

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.

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?

Rabble Schwag

We are going to be getting some new Rabble wear for our community in the next couple of weeks but in the meantime we rolled out some stuff on a CafePress storefront that you can see here.

Steampunk Mouse

Adam from my office sent me this link to a real Steampunk mouse. Check it out here.

Dow Jones Wireless Innovations

Thanks for having us out to present at Wireless Innovations. The parts of the conference I saw and participated in were excellent and I thought they brought together a great crowd. My personal highlights were getting to hang a bit with Sam Altman from Loopt, watching the captivating CEO of Spark Parking Cooper Marcus (we shared a room - use his service!) and especially getting to meet and spend a chunk of time with Andrew Graham CEO of Bones In Motion, my favorite LBS application.

Intercasting Speaking

Tomorrow I will be speaking at the Dow Jones Wireless Innovations, providing a company overview in the LBS track. The same day Shawn will be speaking at the EconSM event in Los Angeles.

Attention Article on Cnet

I was quoted in an article on Attent.tv here at Cnet. I love this part of the title, "an eerie sport".

Location Free Software for the P990.

I did my monthly check for the P990 Location Free player last night around 230 AM and was happy to see that it was finally available. I have been waiting for something like 7 months. I downloaded the SIS and later this AM did the install. Registering my service with the Location Free server took all morning and I was unable to do it as I kept getting a refused to register message from the media server. Grrr. I sent an email to customer support to see if my model of the Location Free device is in fact supported. I am guessing since I have one of the early models they may not support it and I may have to get a new device which is looking like a $199 purchase.

Mowser - Russ is back

When I first started blogging and reading blogs 3 years ago, the strongest voice in mobile was Russ Beattie. Russ wrote great posts that were very thoughtful and comprehensive. Whether or not you always agreed with him was another story. ;-)

I struck up an online friendship with Russ and have kept in touch with him over the last year or so of blogging silence.

Last week he unveiled his new project Mowser which is a fresh take on mobile browsing, i.e. making websites readable on phones. The even better news is that he is keeping a company blog that you can find here.

It will be great to see what he comes up with in terms of the business and it will be extremely fun to see how he tempers his great editorial now that he is blogging in the context of a business. Best of luck to him, now go subscribe and try his product!

Personal Exploitation

When I was in New York this week I had lunch with one of our company advisors who was one of the pioneers in interactive advertising. We were talking at length about user generated content, fame, and personal exploitation. My thesis is that there are two things driving the current generations expressive behavior, 1. The idea that entertainment requires a persons direct involvement to make it personal and worthwhile and 2. A desire for fame or status.

We talked around the topic a bit and he said something to the effect that it is fascinating that people both appear driven to and desirous of exploiting themselves. That is, they either don't understand or in fact don't mind exploiting themselves if they gain some kind of recognition, fame or notoriety. I don't like to think of it that way necessarily but I think a lot rings true to those words. I brought up the Jackass films and he said that although that was exploitation, it was brilliant and what we are seeing is a broad commonness to self exploitation on some of these websites. It was an interesting talk.

That evening as I sat in my hotel in Boston, I sat dumbstruck as I watched the footage broadcast by NBC of the Virginia Tech killer. I couldn't believe that NBC felt compelled to release something that not only provided no real value or insight, but also at some level validated the actions of the killer, at least in the eyes of others who would pursue similar actions in the future.

One of the most interesting things about user generated/edge of the network/consumer media is the potential for media that originates outside of the center of the network to be able to harness the massive reach and distribution of mainstream media. At it's best you have the Adam Stacy subway bombing pictures which provided a haunting and visceral image of news as it happens, at it's worst it is a news organization taking advantage of it's selection by a killer to broadcast his rants and insanity. I have great respect for NBC Universal as a company and I can only hope in the future that they make the decision to avoid these sorts of missteps.

Soil

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Originally uploaded by brikmaster.

I thought this was a pretty cool picture. Tate wanted to keep his "wormy" friend out of the garden but we ultimately convinced him to let the worm snack away on the soil.

Gardening

For the last three or four years, Tate and I have planted a garden around Mother's Day which we would take care of over the summer and enjoy the tasty vegetables as the reward for our work. Interestingly, gardening can both be a therapeutic experience as well as a proxy for your state of mind. More on that later.

Over the years I have tried to focus on planting things I particularly enjoy or things that cost a lot in the store. The best example of that for me has been Heirloom tomato's. I started with a couple and I think that last year I was up to seven varietals. Last year the startup, but more importantly the young children took a toll and I was unable to keep up with the garden. In years past, the morning watering and weekend trimming sessions were a part of my summer ritual which I both love and missed last year. For some reason the combination of things was bad for my garden. By mid summer I had the most amazing overgrown garden you can imagine. Things were rotting on the vine beneath the overgrowth.

This year as a family we resolved to pitch in together and, frankly the little ones just continue to get easier(if we could just get them to stop picking on each other). Jessica took a big role this year and really helped to plan out the whole garden in a thoughtful and methodical way. The three of us spent a good chunk of yesterday doing the initial planting which was a real blast. I decided to scale back my "quest for the perfect tomato" this year and am giving it a go with three varietals (Purple Cherokee, Mortgage Lifter, and Brandywine). The coastal coolness just doesn't get the right amount of flavor development that you get in hotter climates. I am hoping that I can get some good combination of soil treatment and aggressive sucker trimming to make an inprovement over the last couple of years. But even if mine aren't as good as other areas, I was planting in shorts while parts of the country were in a snowstorm. Everything is relative. At any rate, pictures here and on my Flickr page.

Planet Earth

A couple of weeks ago I was hiking with a friend Mike Blake and our respective children in the canyon behind their home. While talking about the various shows we were each watching he told m about the Planet Earth HD series on Discovery. It sounded really interesting so I set it up for my Tivo subscriptions on my HDDVR. The really cool thing they do is to run a bunch of old shows on Sunday night so it is really easy to get all the episodes.

The shows are thematic like, The Poles, The Deep Ocean, The Jungles and they cover some breathtaking scenery all in HD with a particular focus on the animals in each setting. This is the reason you have a big screen television (ok, that and football). I would highly recommend checking this out asap. The link to the website from Discovery is here.

Zannel

Zannel is a new mobile/web user generated content site. I don't usually say much about mobile stuff that is in related areas as us as I have a huge bias about the awesomeness of what we do. ;-)

However, in this case I have to make an exception. Zannel is founded by a bunch of former Infospace and Moviso guys. While checking the site out before they launched I submitted a picture of one of my many kids. It was I have to say an exceptional photo. You can see it from their homepage as it is a featured picture. My kid is the one who is knuckle deep...

Apple TV for families

Late at night several months ago I was scheming about taking a Mac Mini and turning it into a DVR. After a bit of research I decided that it just wasn't worth it and I ended up picking up my Tivo Series 2 box, which I use primarily to load up my PSP for long trips as well as to burn the occasional DVD.

With this meme out of my head I went on my merry way until the Apple TV launched. I read the gushing reviews as well as the criticism of the picture quality. I didn't really care but the noise was pretty loud. In our office we have the Mac guy. He loves Macs and carries on in the way the real die hard evangelists do when they speak of their technology the same way others speak of their religion.

For a week or two I kept looking at the technical specs on the Apple TV and I scratched my head. Why would I care? I was particularly perplexed by why I would want to buy content for Apple to show on my HDTV when I have a bunch of Tivo's and other devices that work just fine. One day when the noise was unbearable I decided to confront Mac Guy. Why would I buy an Apple TV?

His first argument was that it was a great way to leverage his insane home entertainment to listen to his itunes. Buzz. Not for me. Although I am a big music fan, I have yet to buy the mother of all surround sound systems for my house. The best audio equipment I have is a pretty sad little kitchen desktop unit with an iPod dock.

The next argument was that I could network the box with my computer at stream shows to the TV. Buzz. I have a Series 2 Tivo that can in concept do that although I don't ship movies around the house because of the war between Directv and Tivo. But anyway, you get the point.

The 3rd argument was that I could watch video blogs and other content that isn't available over pay per view. While not a buzz, I didn't see this as a big win. I was mildly intrigued by watching some videoblogs and the ability to watch Dora on demand or Power Rangers would make me a big hit with my kids.

The deal sealer for me was the following. I could rip my CDs, stick them on a hard drive and then stream them or store them on the Apple TV. When I consider the number of destroyed DVDs from fingerprints, bending or other physical abuse, the Apple TV is a cheap way to avoid that pain in the future. I strolled across the street and bought my little Apple TV box.

As all the gushing Apple fans continue to say, the UI is just amazing. You plug it in and it works. That's it. This is the difference between them and so many other companies.

So now that I have had one of these devices for a couple of weeks what do I really use it for, what do I like, and what do I dislike?

I use the Apple TV for three things. I do rip DVDs and store them on the hard drive. It works like a charm. I have become a fan of some of the videoblogs that I never could get into when I am looking at them on my laptop but on a 42 HDTV I am sold. Three, the feature that everyone in my family loves, is the photo screen saver that shows pictures from the last five years in a random fashion. Seriously, this alone is worth the price and I venture if you were to see this with your picture collection you would buy one for each TV in the house.

As far as likes, I really like that I can watch a variety of programming that I could never get into on my laptop. I will do a post soon about my favorites but know that this really gives power to videoblogs. I like the UI and I like the small size.

Dislikes? The video quality on certain clips does blow, especially flash clips. The size of the hard drive is way too small but with the help of a hacker you can beef it up for a pretty low price.

All in all a big thumbs up. For families this is a no brainer AV life saver. My kids can watch pictures of themselves for up to a half an hour without a break.

Atten.tv

While away at CTIA a couple of weeks ago, the annual eTech conference took place in San Diego, which I of course missed. One of the people unveiling a product there was Seth Goldstein who announced Atten.tv. This site and software builds on some of the earlier attention work such as the badge on this blog from Root.net, and now has an alpha software client for the Mac that is sort of like a television screen that shows you the various pages that someone is viewing or has viewed while recording their attention with tools like the Attention recorder. The alpha is very alpha in my book and I am anxiously awaiting the full beta.

As mentioned in my previous post, I cleaned up the various widgets on my blog and switched to a new template. Over the weekend I realize that I forgot to include urchin analytical tracking and the root.net badge that I have added now. I don't visit urchin as often as sitemeter but it is definitely another tool that I spend time with when trying to understand my audience or accidental visitors.

If blogging is a fame based or attention seeking medium, then one of the critical pieces to measure the effectiveness is the inclusion of analytical tools to document what is happening as well as tools to share that data with others. I personally like the root badge as it is a way to share at a high level, your activity with others, to the degree you feel comfortable. The development of the viewer (called the Attentron), is a vivid way to demonstrate that aggregate data in a more meaningful way. I have no doubt that this is yet another step in the development of rich tools that will form around the concept of attention going forward.

Spring Cleaning

If you have been here before more than a couple of times, you may have noticed I cleaned up my blog. Three things happened to make this so. 1. I am approaching my 3rd anniversary of blogging next month and it seemed like a good time for a change, considering I have been using the same template for over 1000 days. 2. I really wanted to see what you can do with the new Blogger infrastructure (I am a bit of a creature of habit and if I were to start all over again today I would look long and hard at six apart and word press) 3. Some guy who writes a post about good blog design singled me out as an example of widgets and links gone bad.

The last one cracked me up alot. I saw the link sometime around 6 months ago and I finally felt like I should address his holding me out as a junkyard dog of blogging. When I find the link I will post it. Technorati couldn't help me tonight to find it.

So, the new Blogger templates...Very nice. I like the ease of adding javascript/html. No more scanning a template. This is a big reason I didn't get rid of things. Other than being lazy, it felt like a big risky undertaking. No more. Add a piece/delete a piece fairly easy.

Aesthetically I think the new look is much cleaner as well. Nice and structured. A little plain but I am sure I can fix that with some thought.

As for widgets and add ons other than archives, profile and blogroll, I added three things. 1. A cool Flickr flash badge. Very tricky. My friends and family mostly come to my blog to go to the pictures so I hope they like the improvement. 2. My ad words. I am getting my first check. Woot! Don't spend that $100 too fast. Hey can you guys please click on my ads sometime? I guess I deserve that since I don't click on yours. 3. Sitemeter tracker. Given the low volume of comments on my blog, if I didn't have the stats to secretly track you, I don't think I could carry on with my blogging.

So there it is. Hopefully I will post a similar post in 3 years when I go to the immersive virtual reality template from Google, but who knows. I will be adding more blog junk shortly so enjoy the Spartan look while it lasts.

My Current Media

Music - Brand New, Neil Young, Fall Out Boy

TV - Friday Night Lights, 24, Lost

Radio - NPR, Jim Rome

Videoblogs - Ask A Ninja, Crooks and Liars

Blogs - Digg.com, Techmeme

The Difference Engine

At the beginning of the year one of my silent resolutions was to read a book of fiction each month. I read a ton but over time I have found that I read fiction less and less. For better or worse, I decided to complete my entire reading of everything written by William Gibson, by reading The Difference Engine which he co-authored with Bruce Sterling.

The premise of the book is that Charles Babbage's inventions (The difference engine and the analytical engine) were actually built in the early 1800s and accelerated the computer revolution by over 100 years.

I LOVED the premise and I think I would have been more excited by the book had it dwelled more on the historical implications in an overt fashion. That said, it was a good read even though I did it in bursts over a month or two. It is certainly not my favorite Gibson book (Neuromancer, Burning Chrome, Pattern Recognition) but if you are interested in possible historical alternatives I would say it is time well spent.

Adware? Spyware? Paying Attention

With my Firefox browser I have been running the Attention Recorder for almost nine months and have recorded almost 65,000 clicks. This doesn't include my home computer usage, but it is a pretty impressive number. I continue to noodle over the value of this data but one recurring value is my ability to track spyware when new delivery vehicles pop up. This weeks spyware offender is dg.specificclick.net. Thanks to the Root badge on my blog I realized that my number one most visited site has been dg.specificclick.net. Funny though, I don't ever recall seeing that site. Add to blocklist for browser cookies. Delete from attention recorder. Delete all 7 of the cookies from that domain.

San Diego Breweries

San Diego isn't a place that I think many people would think of when they talk about craft beers or micro brews. When I think of those words I think of Seattle and Red Hook, Pyramid and others. In fact though, San Diego has a great tradition and has some outstanding beers including beers from Ballast Point, Port Brewing and Stone Brewing.

A couple of weeks back a friend of ours invited us to a dinner gathering of a local slow foods group that was being held at Stone Brewery in Escondido. I can appreciate the style of beer produced by Stone, which is really hoppy. Think IPA on steroids. Not my thing as I prefer lagers, pilsners and similar beers, but I get why some people really like that style. I had heard that their brewery was amazing and that it was a must visit. I wasn't sure what it would be like having taken tours from great macro breweries like Rainer and Henry Weinhard's to prestigious craft brewer Unibroue in Montreal.

The Stone facility was simply amazing. This was only outdone by the menu that is out of this world. I happened to miss the tour of the brewing areas but I will certainly be back as soon as I get a chance. If you are in San Diego or visit San Diego, add Stone to your itinerary. How can you not visit a place that makes the Arrogant Bastard Ale?

MR 40

Michael Robertson, who many of his friends refer to as MR, had his 40th birthday party at his ranch east of San Diego this last weekend. It was a complete blast. My pics can be seen on my Flickr page from the pictures below. Do click on the images to read some of the comments and notes. On Saturday I went for a run (which was brutal given the hilly terrain), played tennis with a former MP3.com co-worker and then spent 4 hours playing paintball with a motley crew of executives and other friends of Michael. The paintball games were certainly a highlight for me as I was simply put, a killing machine. I can't recall a time recently where I felt like a child and just literally played all day. It was a really good time. For those MP3.comers who read my blog Michael and Michelle's birthday is tomorrow so send them a birthday hello.

Orlando No Mas

CTIA was good. Lots of meetings. Lots of progress. I mistakenly thought I was flying out at 6AM this morning and I left the MTV party a wee bit too early. When I got back to the hotel I checked my flight and had a moment of regret before I realized that getting a good night of sleep was probably in my best interest. I didn't see anything earth shattering but I did see a lot of friends. I have some thoughts and observations about Orlando but I think I should just keep those to myself. For better or worse, CTIA is going to be there again next year...

CTIA - Mobile Entertainment Live

Orlando? I get Vegas, New Orleans, even Atlanta. Orlando is a place for theme parks. I flew across country yesterday and got in somewhere in the middle of the night. I missed the first part of Greg Clayman's keynote but did catch the second half. I probably won't blog much here as I am mostly in meetings. Hopefully there are some really interesting/products or announcements this week.

New Media Degree Programs

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.

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.

Details in the post above. Activity Route: -- Elev. Avg: 67 ft Location: Encinitas, CA Elev. Gain: -16 ft Date: 03/18/07 Up/Downhill: [+134/-150] Time: 09:31 AM Difficulty: 1.5 / 5.0   Weather: Overcast with Haze   54F temp; 86% humidity   54F heat index; winds SE 6 Performance Distance: 3.02 miles Time: 0:28:56 Speed: 6.27 mph Pace: 9' 34 /mi Calories: 560 Map   Elevation (ft.)   Pace (min/mile)   Splits Mile Pace (min/mile) Speed (mph) Elevation Gain actual +/- avg actual +/- avg 1 9' 35 +0' 01 6.3 -0.0 +53 ft 2 9' 44 +0' 10 6.2 -0.1 -20 ft 3 9' 20 -0' 14 6.4 +0.1 -49 ft end 10' 50 +1' 16 5.5 -0.7 0 ft Versus average of 9' 34 min/mi

Posted from bimactive.com

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.

I am checking out the Bones In Motion LBS application and wanted to see what this looks like on my blog. Activity Route: -- Elev. Avg: 322 ft Location: Los Angeles, CA Elev. Gain: +7 ft Date: 03/13/07 Up/Downhill: [+167/-160] Time: 05:50 AM Difficulty: 1.4 / 5.0   Weather: Fair   57F temp; 61% humidity   57F heat index; winds Calm Performance Distance: 2.04 miles Time: 0:20:27 Speed: 6.00 mph Pace: 10' 00 /mi Calories: 0 Map   Elevation (ft.)   Pace (min/mile)   Splits Mile Pace (min/mile) Speed (mph) Elevation Gain actual +/- avg actual +/- avg 1 10' 54 +0' 54 5.5 -0.5 +82 ft 2 9' 11 -0' 49 6.5 +0.5 -72 ft end 8' 45 -1' 15 6.8 +0.8 -3 ft Versus average of 10' 00 min/mi

Posted from bimactive.com

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.