Monthly Archives: March 2006

First off, this has nothing to do with technology, so if that’s all you are here for today, scroll down to the next article.

Here’s my relatively un-scientific thoughts on fortune cookies:

• About 60% are NOT fortunes, but instead should be called “observation cookies”.  These contain items like “you have a lot of friends” or “honesty is a good way to be happy living”
• The next 20% are more like call-to-actions.  Things such as “you should have more generosity in your relationships” or “eat more Chinese food”
• This leaves us with about 19% of traditional fortunes, “expect good news” or “expect another 30% drop in Google’s stock”

The final 1% is reserved for what I call the “spooky fortunes”, and I got one today.  A spooky fortune is something that is just WAY too specific, like “watch out for the green truck on Van Ness tonight” or “the second most powerful man in the world is going to shoot someone in the face and not even be at risk for jailtime”.

Today I got a spooky one: “You are soon going to change your present line of work.”  Does this mean I need to polish up the resume?   Or is that self-fulfilling?  Am I due to be fired?  Will I be made an offer I cannot refuse (oh, that reminds me, I have the new Godfather game for my Xbox to try out tonight)?

Spooky.

At the end of the original Slingbox beta program, I made a small run of t-shirts.  The batch had exactly enough for all the beta testers as well as all Sling Media employees.  No more, no less.  The shirt had a ‘unique’ flair to it, and it was honestly a proud moment when we sent them out, in fact, it was a bit of an emotional one.

I received today a little package from the Ether team, and before even opening it up, I was almost as excited as I was when I signed up to their beta program. 

Inside the bag I found a cool t-shirt, a nice leather business card holder, and a few printed Ether business cards, with their signature ‘hello’ on the back written in cursive (you remember cursive, right?  that thing we learned in the third grade to screw up our handwriting skills?  if I actually still wrote checks instead of doing all-online banking, I guess it would come in handy, but as far as I can tell it’s right up there with the nine months fifth graders waste learning long division.  but I digress).

I don’t remember how much the Slingbox beta t-shirts cost, but I’m going to assume it’s your typical $12ish per shirt.  The bag I got from Ether might’ve cost a couple of dollars more.  But as far as the emotional trigger it pulls with a beta tester goes, to paraphrase some smart folks over at MasterCard, it’s priceless.

Word to the wise: if you have a product, service, technology, or other offering that needs a ‘grassroots’ or ‘guerrilla’ effect, think about how big the impact is of making your earliest of early adopters a little extra happy one Tuesday afternoon.  It’ll be the best $12ish your company ever spends.

Seriously, who thought this one up? Every winter, we’ll get the entire consumer electronics, PC, mobile phone, software, gadget, technology, and case manufacturer in the world. We’ll put em in, oh, I don’t know, how about Hannover, Germany? It is cold there, right? Ok, next we’ll make the place big, I mean five to ten times the size of CES big. Last thing, and this is important, don’t build any new hotels or temporary residences in Hannover, that way the 400,000 attendees can stay up to two hours away and take trains, metros, subways, buses, and dirigibles in. Perfect.  

Winter in Hannover is cold, people, very cold.

Apparently in Europe, trade shows attract quite some attention – I saw the Chancellor of Germany here! After seeing the King of Spain at 3GSM, I wonder who I’ll see at CTIA next month in Vegas? I don’t think the mayor even shows up there…

I did attend the Intel keynote and saw the unveiling of the Ultramobile PC (the device formerly known as Origami). I want one, no question about it.

Saw a Linux-based Smartphone with built-in GPS. Which naturally combines everything I’ve needed into a single device. Other than Linux, that is…

Retrostar makes corded handsets for PCs or mobile phones. Not practical in any sense, but a shining star in a sea of dullness.

Panasonic’s 103-inch 1080p plasma TV is further evidence of why I don’t need to go to the movies anymore.

Looks like the guys with the speakers built into the backpack have solved the problem I’ve always encountered while hiking through the Marin headlands – where’s my tunes, man?

A company named Skywood was showing an iPod nano knockoff, only theirs had full video (mp4) playback capabilities.

Linksys’ VOIP handsets were a big yawner. Saw em in Barcelona. Saw em at CES. I’ll see em at CTIA. But I sure won’t be buying one soon.

Viliv (not Viiv) was one of about two dozen Taiwanese companies building portable media players. At least theirs is not in the EXACT form factor of a PSP. That’s a neat trick to play on your kids – “here son.” “Thanks dad, a PSP, awesome!” “haha, no, actually it just plays mp3s and some Divx, no games or anything cool.”

To borrow one of my fav terms from the 80s, CeBIT is just plain uncool. For as big as it is, everything is crowded, and you’re pretty much surrounded by smokers (yes, IN the halls) and awful-smelling food stands.

I did grab some brochures from some of the more comical Chinese/Taiwanese OEMs, including one “from your best valued partner”, and I’ll dig through them soon to see if anything else is worth a mention.

Looking forward to CES 07!