LIVEdigitally

Monthly Archives: October 2006

Slingbox for Mac now available in beta!

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I’ll start by being a little upfront about something here – I’m not a “Mac guy.”  While I don’t really identify as the “PC guy” from the commercials either (although the spoofs are great), I don’t own a Mac, and probably won’t get one any time soon.  I have no problem with the Mac folks out there, and appreciate all the ingenuity Apple brings to their products.  But I’m not a Mac guy (or an iPod guy either for that matter, but for a totally unrelated reason).

Funny enough, back when I worked at Sling Media, I was a huge proponent of enabling SlingPlayer Mac support for the Slingbox.  I believe the Mac community, as a whole, appreciates the convergence of computing and media, and tend towards early adoption of most new media technology.  I think the iTV product is more likely to succeed in the “get your home media collection from your computer to your TV” vision that so many others have failed in delivering in the past.  With any luck, Apple will help open the “digital home” marketplace for many others to come participate in, as none have shown success to date.

Back to the matter at hand: Sling Media made SlingPlayer for OSX available in beta today (here’s the download).  There’s already a flood of conversation on the SlingCommunity, and even a great note from Blake himself talking about the issue.  I’m thrilled to see the build come out within the adjusted schedule (here’s about 900 or so posts on the topic if you want some backstory on the issue), and I know the team back at Sling HQ must be pretty happy with the launch – way to go y’all.

As I’m not a Mac guy myself, I don’t have a review to offer up, but it’s already being mentioned on TUAW, RealTechNews, and my friend Dave Zatz managed to get a post up just before sneaking off to bed (poor East coaster).  To get an unbiased account of the software, check out the very in-depth review one of the beta testers wrote here. 

Happy downloading!

links for 2006-10-31

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Arrested Development Chicken Dance. COME ON!

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While hanging out with Steven Jones from Capable Networks tonight, we did a little A.D. reminiscing (Ron was there too, but he doesn’t watch the show, so he gets no credit). It left me a little sad and longing, and even after watching a couple of episode from my DVR with the ol’ Slingbox I still wasn’t quite ready to move on. I needed a little of GOB’s Chicken Dance, and it only took a single search on YouTube to find a perfect compilation:

links for 2006-10-28

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links for 2006-10-27

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An obvious nonacquisition

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About a year and a half ago the blogosphere was, shall we say, all-a-twitter, about a new startup called Odeo.  They were founded as a “podcasting company” and that was pretty much the last we ever heard from them (which could be because they seem to have annoyed Mike Arrington, which is apparently a curse worse than death in the Web 2.0 world).  Although if you’d ever had the chance to run into someone who worked there, you’d generally get lectured on end about how amazing they were and how much they were going to change the world.  I even recall a Stanford intern who visited my office and was choosing between working for them or for Google (my hunch is that he chose… poorly).

While doing a little research, I found a great article on GigaOm where the founder of the company, Evan Williams, espoused on some mistakes they made.  Notably absent from the list are things like “generating revenue” and “have a sales and marketing plan.”  That said, I do applaud anyone who takes the time to reflect as such, especially in a public forum.

Today Evan announced that he is now founding a new company, called Obvious Corp, and they have purchased Odeo’s assets (which is marketing-speak for “bought the chairs, desks, servers, logos, a little software, and the foosball table”).  So the question that comes to mind for me is: what is going to change?

From Evan’s blog:

The Obvious model goes something like this:

  • Build things cheaply and rapidly by keeping teams small and self-organized.
  • Leverage technology, know-how, and infrastructure across products (but brand them separately, so they’re focused and easy to understand)
  • Use the aggregate attention and user base of the network to gain traction for new services faster than they could gain awareness independentlyAs services mature, the goal is to get them to profitability with advertising and/or subscriptions, so they can add to the network (and fund more building). 

    • As Fred Wilson stated, this is, in fact, fairly obvious.  It’s the classic Idealab model, and it’s definitely a fun way to run a company.  But it’s also an extremely expensive model.  Roughly 9 in 10 startups completely fail, and then roughly 9 in 10 of the ones that “make it” have minor acquisitions that make a few people a nice chunk of change, but leave the majority of the teams involved unsatiated.  This leaves us with about 1% of companies that can “pull a Youtube” (although Idealab did start the company which eventually became Overture, which Yahoo bought, so that’s probably a pretty good win in the long term). UPDATE: I originally posted that Google acquired Overture, but Ryan pointed out it was Yahoo – thanks for the comment Ryan!

    So the question at hand is (it’s a 2-parter): how much money does Obvious have to run (and where is it coming from) and how big is the team they are building to create all these new services.  Hopefully they can spin something out fast enough to generate enough revenue to pay for the development of the rest of the services – I do like the model of aggregating all these types of resources together.  Maintaining Google Labs is a lot easier when you have an Adsense to pay the hosting fees.

    I Dugg something: Borat is the new Mahir!

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    Jason Calacanis wrote a simple post with a picture of Mahir, and it reminded me how much the “Mahir craze” had me going.  I had Mahir wallpaper, burned a Mahir CD, and even had a Mahir lunchbox.  No, not really on the last one, but I did think it was utterly hysterical and recall laughing to the point of crying over and over again.  Thanks for the reminder, Jason.

    ps – this is my second foray at Digging something.  Am I a Top Digger yet?

    pps – was I supposed to use Netscape instead of Digg?  Does it matter?

    links for 2006-10-26

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    Gadget Search: Testing Google Co-op

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    For those of you who live in caves, up on trees, or under rocks, Google launched a Custom Search feature this past week (lots more coverage here). The basic concept is this: anyone can go to Google co-op, login, and create a new custom search with their own favorite sites and some predefined search categories (called refinements).  So here’s the LD Gadget Search:

    Try searching for some kind of, well, gadget.  Go ahead, it won’t hurt.

    Ok, if you don’t want to do so, I’ve gone ahead and done some searches to try it out.

    For my first test, I tried PPC as my search term.  In gadgetland, we know PPC means PocketPC (search results here), but check out if you search for PPC in all of Google.  Pilgrims Pride??

    Second try, searching for the Slingbox.  LD Gadget vs Google general.  Well, in this case the search sites are basically news/reviews/blogs/pricing sites, and don’t include any manufacturers, so my custom search did not outperform the generic one.

    Third test, searching for iPod prices.  I used the ‘Prices’ refinement (which I built with a few comparison and shopping sites) to get these results, versus searching for ipod prices on Google.  I think my customization here gave significantly worse results, and will need to go see if its something I should do different (bad grammar out of courtesy to the Apple marketing department).

    Fourth up, looking for Zune news.  I figured I’d try a hot term, and built a ‘news’ refinement (results here) to compare against Google.  Now these results are quite interesting, as the generic search surfaced the dozens of new Zune news sites which have popped up.  Personally, I prefered the custom results, as I am more interested in Engadget’s update than I am in adding ZuneNation to my news sources (no offense or anything to that site, I just don’t feel like adding more sites to my already overlong bookmarks and links lists).

    I’ll keep working on the LD Gadget Search to see if I can make it a really useful resource over time.  In the meantime, please feel free to add any suggestions to the implementation.  Also, in the very nature of the “co-op” it’s easy to have additional folks come in and edit the sites and settings, so come on in, the water’s fine!

    links for 2006-10-25

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    Do you Need HDTV? Absofreakinglutely!

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    I was perusing Dave Zatz’ site this morning and noticed his new contributor Mari (congrats!) mused on HDTV with the post “Does Mari Need HD?”

    I’ve had a DVR for five years now, but I still haven’t picked up an HDTV. Honestly, I have trouble believing I need it and trouble believing it will make that much of a difference in my TV-watching career. Which is why Dave Winer’s recent commentary got my attention: He didn’t offer any great new analysis, but he proclaimed HD is “a life-changer.”

    JT HDTV (4)I couldn’t agree more.  But I somewhat understand Mari here, because I feel there’s a big “my living room effect” that needs to occur before you can really understand how much you need it.  Especially as all the HD tech can be confusing – plasma or DLP or LCD?  HDMI or Component video?  Cable vs OTA vs Satellite – blech, that’s a lot to learn about and even then you have to go throw down about $1500 to really get started.  I did write a post to help explain HDTV technology, but I acknowledge the buying process is still much more painful than it should be.I’ve watched HDTV demos at shows like CES and CEDIA for the past 7 or 8 years.  Cool.  Beautiful looking.  I’ve been to the headquarters of companies such as Sony and Pioneer in Japan, saw the state of the art displays and sound demonstrations.  Awe-inspiring stuff.  I’ve walked the aisles of Best Buy seeing all the maxed-out brightness on display.  Very very nice.

    And then I had a moment where I was able to get a 32″ LCD extremely cheaply, and I took the plunge.  A week later and I’m watching my Syntax Olevia set connected to my Motorola DCT 6412 dual-tuner HDTV DVR.  And I’m transported into a new state of TV. During hockey, I can see all the game.  The nature shows on Discover HD are unbelievable.  Regular dramas look like movies.  Here are some of my quick pictures of my setup, and here are a few from my friend Dave.

    To be clear: ALL HDTV looks better than ALL REGULAR DVDs (and HD-DVD/BluRay look about equivalent).  So when ABC aired Pirates of the Caribbean a few weeks ago, it looked better than the picture of the DVD, even on my upscaling Samsung DVD player.

    The entire quality of the experience is so much better that standard definition TV is becoming harder and harder to watch.  I actually started dropping shows from my DVR’s subscription list just because they weren’t broadcast in HD!  I have about 20 channels today, of which 3 were added in the past few months, and I’ve been told more are coming soon.  Also, HD is going to be one of those driving factors as to why TV still has a bit of a pulse, as opposed to those who think it’s dead.

    JT HDTV (2)Watching HDTV is like putting on glasses when you need them.  Would you take your glasses off while driving down the street?  Doubtful, but you might not have realized you need to wear them.Ultimately, I think the biggest way people get won over to HD is not by reading posts like this, but by being in someone’s house and watching it.  Not just that it’s on the in background, but watched.  So Mari (and other nonbelievers), pick your favorite “mainstream” show (CSI, Grey’s, Heroes, etc) and for the next two weeks, try to find a friend who has HDTV and watch it with them. 

    That just might help you find the need for the glasses.

    Feed Reader Comparison: IE7 vs Google Reader vs Bloglines

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    With last week’s launch of IE7 (see the massive coverage here), and the recent improvements to Google Reader, I thought I’d do a little compare and contrast with these tools and Bloglines, my RSS reader of choice.  Now I’m going to preface the whole article by saying I still feel RSS is a very young technology and has a long way to go before getting into the true mainstream population.  In fact, as much as I as a “techie guy” understand how to leverage RSS for both personal and professional use, I still find my email newsletters are an easier way to digest news content.  So disclaimer aside, let’s take a look at the state of these tools today.

    3ie7 rss viewInternet Explorer 7
    In many ways IE7 is a significant improvement upon IE6, and is really a very usable browser (I’m not getting into a Safari, Opera, Firefox debate – use whatever you like, I picked IE and that’s that).  Microsoft added a “Command Bar” which includes a Feeds option.  Simply enough, when browsing a Web page with any RSS links inside, the Feeds button lights up.  Click it, and you can fairly rapidly add the feed to your favorites feeds.

    Clicking on this option brings up a new page, that shows you a preview of what the feed looks like, along with an option to subscribe. Personally, I found this option pretty unnecessary, and could be accomplished much faster with a popup dialog. When you do subscribe, a simple dialog appears to sort which folder you want this new feed added to.  I think this two-step process should definitely be merged into a single interface.

    Once added, it appears as one of your favorites, when you choose to view your favorites feeds.  Which you unfortunately have to do manually.  In the favorites feeds view, all you can see is the number of new items and when it was last updated, and the only way to even see this much information is by hovering your mouse over the feed.  The last option with IE7 feed support is a properties dialog:

    Microsoft decided to treat Feeds roughly the same as Favorites, which I really dislike.  Ultimately, it’s a sign to me that, for whatever reason, Microsoft either isn’t taking RSS feeds seriously or they just don’t get it.  If I were grading them on it, I’d give them a D-, it’s a totally unacceptable mechanism for dealing with an emerging technology.  I wish I had two more hands so I could give it four thumbs down.

    10google default viewGoogle Reader
    The last time I tried Google Reader it was a pretty poor experience.  Everything was too techie and too clunky, basically it had that “built by engineers for engineers” Google-ish feel to it.  With their most recent upgrades, I found it was a lot friendlier to get started, you are immediately prompted to enter a URL or term and off you go.

    8google add subscription

    Once you’ve added a feed, the reader displays a view of What’s New (which shows you, well, what’s new with the feed(s) you are subscribed to).  I added in a few of my favorites, and had a pretty easy to understand view that showed the feeds together.  Also, on the right side of the screen was a display of the various keyboard shortcuts available while using the reader, which I’ll address in a moment.

    10google default view

    Google Reader has a nice variety of viewing and display options, and I was easily able to set the view to default to a list display, in date/time order.  Everything was looking good, so I decided if I wanted to put it really to the test, I’d need to use my whole list of feeds (which at ~40 is already a ridiculous amount of incoming discussions, but that’s another topic).  I exported from Bloglines and imported into Google, a process that took literally under a minute and worked flawlessly. 

    12google configure

    The interface (shown above) for configuring a larger number of feeds was fairly unpleasant to use, but thankfully I didn’t really need to do anything else at this point.  Where Google Reader really started to shine for me was several hours after I had imported my blog/RSS list.  At this point, the list view made it very easy to see all the headlines aggregated together chronologically. 

    11google list view

    As I mentioned before, Google implemented a ton of keyboard shortcuts for quickly navigating the feed display. For advanced users, this is pretty neat (Robert Scoble loves it), but I still feel their interface is missing the mark on getting average users up and running with RSS.  Google is often praised for their simplicity in interfaces, but frankly I find both Reader and GMail ugly and overly complicated.  There is nothing to usher in a user’s learning process, it’s more like being thrown into the deep end of the pool and then being chided by all the kids who already know how to swim.  Overall, I’m granting Google Reader a solid B (but I feel they already have the features necessary to get up to an A, so it’s up to the UI guys now.  they do have a few, don’t they?).

    Bloglines
    Bloglines was actually my second attempt to integrate RSS into my world (my first was Attensa 1.0 for Outlook, which I didn’t like at all, although I hear v2 is better).  For a long time it was really Bloglines vs using bookmarks/favorites, and even now I still just run through links about 25% of the time.  The actual clincher that got me to adopt Bloglines was their mobile integration, which gives me access to all my feeds from my PPC6700, which I’ll discuss in a moment.

    Adding a feed to Bloglines is pretty easy, and one nice feature is all the options you’d want to have accessible are present as you add the link.  Once added, Bloglines uses a simple framed layout to present your subscriptions on the left side of the screen (complete with icons to represent the pages, using the favicon standard), and the right side is your “reader” window.  Click on a feed, see the results on the right. 

    6bloglines view

    That’s it, couldn’t be simpler.  Also, the company added a piece of technology to integrate Bloglines as an option when adding feeds to IE7 (here’s the link to the plugin):

    Only thing is, now that I’ve tried Google Reader, I’m really wanting to see an “Aggregate View” option within Bloglines.  Other than that, I find Bloglines a great option.  It also has a ton of features I’ve never even dabbled with, including integrating to your own blog (I’m trying it now with this post) as well as clipping services.  Overall, it gets a B+ (yes, I prefer it to Google Reader for now).

    Mobile Access
    Just wanted to touch on getting to mobile subscriptions.  Both Bloglines and Google Reader have integrated mobile access into their readers, and both have similar feature sets.  I found the Bloglines version was much easier to read on my 2.2″ phone screen, but again I think Google’s got a slightly more compelling feature set.  It’s probably a bit of a toss-up as to which one I’d ultimately go with if your priority is mobile (but you can definitely rule out IE7).

    Overall Conclusion
    Clearly RSS is here to stay, and clearly it’s way too complex to hit the masses yet.  As I’ve said before, technology needs to become invisible to get mass acceptance (in other words, adding and viewing RSS feeds should be as clear and easy to use as bookmarking and viewing Web sites).  For now, I’d have to say Bloglines is my “mass viewer” recommendation, and Google Reader is my “power user” recommendation.  And IE7 needs to get back to work on integrating RSS into the browsing experience.