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Monthly Archives: September 2007

Sling: Thanks for the memories (part 7: peeps)

Posted on September 30, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

Beyond all the travel tales, tradeshows, product launches and whatnot was Sling Media’s most important asset: it’s people. Some of the people I worked with while at Sling were some of the best I’ve ever worked with in my career. As I observed in my post on the acquisition, I believe the talent is a huge asset that Echostar gets in the deal.

IMG_5912 sling offsite.JPGIMG_5914 sling offsite.JPGIMG_5913 sling offsite.JPGIMG_5916 sling offsite.JPGIMG_5915 sling offsite.JPG

It’s extremely challenging to put together an all-star team. I’m not exactly sure how it was pulled off, but virtually every player in the Sling lineup was extremely well suited for their role. Some with 20 years experience, others with 2. For some it was a major learning curve, for others it was like riding a bicycle. Not to say it was all perfect, there were certainly hiccups along the way, but by and large it was a pretty impressive cast of characters.

IMG_4706 jt rich tiki bar.JPGI could probably write another 10 pages worth of individual stories and escapades. I’ll attempt brevity:

  • Driving to San Diego with Blake and Jason (luckily I passed on the drive to Vegas – there’s only so much Carl’s Jr a man can eat).
  • Gregg Wilkes educating me on the right beverage to drink when out with the sales guy (answer: vodka soda)
  • Stogies on the balcony with Rich (truthfully there are dozens of great times I had with Mr. B., but the times at the tiki bar were some of my favorites)
  • Handing off IR programming responsibilities to Brian M (sorry!)
  • Lunches with Judy
  • Time spent in the dungeon annex with Teresa, Jeff C, and Chris B. Do the phones work there yet?
  • Mutual venting with Dee
  • Tami putting together CES so efficiently that all I had to do was show up (a personal first in 8 years of going)
  • IMG_5585 jt brianJ UK launch.JPGSharon, who I got about 3 weeks of time with, and Dave, who accepted, then rejected, then accepted the gig, after I left.
  • Handing off SlingPlayer Mobile to Vicky (sorry!)
  • Indian buffet with Raghu, Alex, Bhupen, and John. Many more joined after, but they never made it to Sneha.
  • Little Mattie Whitlock, who wasn’t an employee, but still had to put up with my antics.
  • About 100 stories with Brian J, especially trying to find a cab in NYC at 5:30pm in the rain on a Friday outside of Javitz (we walked about 2 miles until we found one); and trying to figure out why our waitress couldn’t calculate 60% of a bill without freaking out. But especially for our unique style of walking tradeshow floors.
  • and countless others – Slingers, please do leave comments if I’ve left something out that you remember fondly…

Thanks again for the memories everybody. If you need me, I’ll be at the colo.
IMG_4139 Team Sling post-CES.jpg

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Sling: Thanks for the memories (part 6: aprés-JT)

Posted on September 30, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

I have one final post for the SlingMemories series, but I decided to switcharoo the order. I left Sling Media in October 2006, and unlike all my ex-girlfriends, we managed to break up and remain on good terms. This was really important to me, as I felt (don’t laugh) pretty emotionally tied to the company. Even today when I talk to clients and talk about “how we did it back at Sling” I still use the word “we” not “them”.

IMG_2673 jt rich buchanan emmyAt CES 2007 I was reunited with the crew as I lingered at the bigger, better booth Rich and Tami had put together. I sat a row away from the team when Blake was on stage during the CBS keynote to announce Clip+Sling. I saw their impressive partner pavilion. And I had my chance to hold the Emmy the Slingbox won. That too was a great moment – how often does a tech/product/marketing geek like me get to be part of something that wins an Emmy?

Over the course of 2007 I’ve watched (and often blogged) Sling’s news (here’s my highlight of the year). I still check on the display of the units when I walk into a Best Buy. I IM with someone from the team every few days, and love seeing them pop up on TechMeme when news comes a-flying. Actually, as I read this, one could almost accuse me of being a stalker.

There are many ways to look back on the ventures we’ve participated in; the products we’ve built. Most of the people I talk to seem to reminisce with negativity, either toward “the management” or to the product/service/company itself. After all, it’s easy to do this, as odds are fairly decent the relationship came to an end at a low note. Heck, we all remember the past either rosier or darker than it once was.

For me, watching Sling in 2007 was generally with pride. I wondered if they’d pull off Clip+Sling. I remained curious about the SlingCatcher. Were there doubts? Yup, I don’t deny. But Sling remained true to the first description I gave my friends when I joined the company: it’s going to be like a rocket ship. I don’t know if it’ll burst into flames on the launchpad, go massively off-course, or make it into orbit, but no matter what it’d gonna be a heck of a lotta fun to watch. I certainly wasn’t wrong about that!

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Sling: Thanks for the memories (part 5: UAL1K)

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

I flew approximately 185,000 miles between January and October 2006. That included 5 trips to Europe, 4 trips to Asia, 2 to Canada, and a few hauls back and forth across the States. The purposes of my trips varied, but were all centered around a few recurring themes: go train the CSRs for a new international support center; go speak at an international launch; or go participate in a tradeshow or press/media event.

IMG_4840 futureshop sells slingboxes.JPGLaunching the Slingbox in Canada was exciting for me personally, as I am from Montreal. For the first time in my life, a product I built was being brought to my home country, and I could tangibly show my family what the heck I do for a living. My parents, inlaws, and other relatives all followed the well-publicized Canadian launch which took place in Toronto. While I enjoyed presenting to the attendees at the event, again my highlight memory was walking into a FutureShop (a Best Buy competitor in Canada. it is owned by… Best Buy) with my Dad and seeing the Slingbox on store shelves. Despite the employee insisting that the product didn’t actually exist, that is…

IMG_5394 jt larry stream europe beer.JPGThe UK launch of the PAL Slingbox involved two different trips, the first was to Amsterdam to train the customer service and support department. It was a good trip, especially considering the location the knowledgeable CSRs there, as it turned out the team had previously supported either media products, networking products, or both. This makes a huge difference; believe it or not there are both good and bad ways to handle even the simplest situations, such as verifying cables are plugged in correctly. The things that seem the most obvious in life typically are anything but that.

IMG_5584 Slingbox UK launch.JPGThe other trip was the actual media launch. The highlight of this story has nothing (well, little) to do with Sling whatsoever, so diehards may want to skip ahead. We were setting up the demos in the bar/club we were using for the event, and they had a few Sky+HD boxes with plasma displays hooked up. Their AV guy informed me they were one of the first HDTV deployments in the UK (HDTV only really launched there weeks after we left) and was showing off the picture quality to me. When I told him it seemed “off” he looked like I had kicked his dog. I asked if he was using HDMI, he said he was. I grabbed the remotes, went through all the settings. All seemed fine. I turned it all off and on again, still crappy looking picture (which, as you recall, they all thought looked great). Finally I went to check the connections myself and found that while he was using HDMI, he had also left a coaxial connector in place, and that was the active input! When I switched inputs to the HDMI, I think he was ready to lick the screen. As I handed back the remote I said “now THAT’s high definition TV.” Looks like a lot of people need some help with HD…

Barcelona Retail Vision.jpgAnother good time in Europe was 4 days in Barcelona with Gregg Wilkes, Sling’s outstanding VP of Sales (I think he might know every single CE retailer internationally!), for the RetailVision tradeshow. RV is a “real” industry event in that the only attendees are those who are absolutely part of the CE-retail food chain. Manufacturers, vendors, distributors, etailers, retailers, and channel support people. That’s it. Virtually no press, no consumers. Since the first time Sling Media showed up at a RetailVision the company won an award there, all the way up until the previous year’s RetailVision Europe when, due to too many overlapping events, nobody from the Sales or Marketing departments could attend, though two quite capable senior execs went in their stead. They came home empty handed. Gregg and I talked quite the smack-talk about it, so we had a lot riding on our demonstrations that session. Let me say this: I’d never, ever want to play poker against European retailers. No expressions, no reactions, no smiles, no guffaws. Even as they named us as a nominee, we had absolutely no insight as to whether or not we’d won until the end. When we did. Huzzah. Unfortunately I missed my flight home the next morning and spent about 18 hours in airports. But at least it was spent trophy in hand.

Taipei's teenage districtOver the course of the year I also did two 2-day trips to Taiwan, a few days in Japan, less than 48 hours in Sweden (plus the 41 hours of travel), and 2.5 days in Hong Kong. To some people this sounds amazing; to others dreadful. Japan was great, because for one, I love Japan (especially here and here), and also I was able to carve the trip out around a weekend and my wife joined me there (where she learned about the most important things: Shabu Shabu and Ippudo Ramen).

I did get to go to many interesting places last year, but would love a bit more time to actually see them. So it was both amazing and dreadful.  I certainly don’t miss the 16-hours flying to Sweden followed by 3.5 hours in a train for less than 2 days’ worth of meetings only to turn around and do it all over again.  But I did meet some great people in all these cities and countries, and will keep a lot of those relationships alive for years to come.  Plus the miles don’t hurt.

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Sling: Thanks for the memories (part 4: ces06)

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

IMG_4055 rich building the booth.jpgCES 2006 was so big for Sling that it needs it’s own post. Team Sling began arriving over a week before the show to build the booth, which expanded from the 4-foot-wide table/pod in ’05 to a 20′ x 30′ massive area for ’06. To add a little spice to the event, both Rich and Tami had foot/knee problems during setup, which is precisely the time you really want to be flexible and mobile.

The demo was more than just a demo. We had an actor (Eldon(sp?)) who did a phenomenal job soaking in the Sling “vibe” and literally packed the area full of people every 30 minutes. At first our neighboring booths in the Sands were a little annoyed at our traffic pull, but once they realized they were able to benefit from the spillover, we were all BFFs.

CES 2006 was the first time we publicly demonstrated SlingPlayer Mobile and was the announcement of the PAL version of the Slingbox (more on that later). It was also the “now-that-we-can-look-back-with-20-20-hindsight-the-way-too-early” announcement of SlingPlayer Mac.

IMG_4074 jt doin demos.jpgPersonally it was a really fun show. The whole team from SlingCommunity was there, helping with demos and hanging out with us at the booth. A half-dozen original Slingbox beta testers showed up, which was a nice treat as I’d never met them in person. I also met Jeff Chiusano, the first (registered) Slingbox owner. Other Slingbox owners/fans were there, as well as tons of people new to the world of Slinging. I had a blast, even with the 18ish-hour days that were spent entirely standing and demoing (the same thing, over and over, for six days). I love CES.

I know a lot of people in the marketing field who hate the show (or all tradeshows). They hate talking to random people who walk up. They hate the grind. They hate the pace. I’m not one of them. I love it. I love the chance to talk to everybody I can, especially if its about a product I built. I love to get the “win” during a demo/pitch. For me that “win” is someone getting why the Slingbox is cool – I don’t as much care about the specific close/sale, I care more about that moment. Probably explains why I’m not in sales…

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Sling: Thanks for the memories (part 3: blastoff)

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

When the product actually launched I was up in Beaverton with the CSR team. I remember a few of us hopping in a car and driving to three different Best Buys looking for Slingboxes and asking the blue shirts questions (I had helped prep some of the training materials for the staff). That first day only a couple of them knew what we were talking about, but the ones who did were extremely excited about the product. The next day I spent a little bit of time on the phones myself, answering questions from the “earliest” adopters. I’ve always been a big proponent of providing outstanding customer service, and I think having direct interactions with your customers is one of the only ways to do it.

DigitalLife Showstoppers (1).JPGThe Summer of 05 was a bit of a blur. We put out a few software updates to boost the video quality of the product quite significantly, and began work on new features and the SlingPlayer Mobile software. All the while we enjoyed watching the growth on SlingCommunity.com and tracking the sales stats from the retailers. At this point, I was still the VP of Product Management but was also running all the community/viral activities, and flying around to speak at conferences and events. I was stretched a bit thin, so when Rich Buchanan (VP of Marketing) came around and asked to me to pick just one of the two jobs I was doing, I decided to try something different in my career. After about 8 consecutive years of product management/marketing/development roles, I took on a full time marketing position as the VP of Market Development. My role was basically “evangelist” but since (a) I was doing a lot more than just that and (b) the term has so many different meanings, we decided Market Development was more appropriate.

IMG_4700 ppc launch.JPGThe last product I worked on before taking the full-time external role was the SlingPlayer Mobile software. This was a very interesting challenge as there were plenty of people getting TV/video onto mobile devices at the time, but our task was trebly hard as we also had to deal with networking/latency issues and the ability to provide an interface to remotely control a connected device (like a TiVo or a cable box). I also like to think we hit the nail on the head for this one, as I may be biased but I still consider the software the best mobile TV experience I’ve seen to date. Special kudos to Vicky for taking the ball and running it into the end zone (and then some)!

For those of you who have only “attended” CES, you should know that for a consumer electronics company, planning starts many months earlier. The months of November and December (yes, including holiday times) are spent fairly dedicated to the humongous tradeshow. Rich and Tami spent many days and nights planning the booth to perfection, while Brian J lined up the back-to-back press meetings for Blake, Jason and myself. But even with those capable hands, there was always things that had to get done to be ready for the show. And we knew CES 06 was gonna be a doozy!

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Sling: Thanks for the memories (part 2: countdown)

Posted on September 27, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

In March 2005 we kicked off our original beta program. We had 100 pre-production Slingboxes painted bright orange ready for testers in the US and Canada. Our testers spent three months performing various tasks such as “try Slinging from 5 different ports to 5 different locations” and “hook up the Slingbox to every gadget you have in your home, and let us know if the IR codes work”. Our testers not only prevailed, but became absolute advocates for the company on various online communities. My friend Brian M did a great job managing the beta program, keeping the community actively engaged while managing the early version of SlingCommunity and having a baby at the same time. Also, a special shout-out to Jim D for the being #1 bug reporter of all time (you’re all in my memories, but I can’t very well list everyone’s names here now, can I?). I still wear my “I had an orange one” t-shirt with pride, and hope the rest of y’all do too.
IMG_3042.JPGRight in the middle of beta we had come to the point where the first production units were about ready to roll off the assembly line. I flew to Xi Xiu, China, a small town (100,000 people) near Shenzhen, and spent a week with the factory workers perfecting the appearance of the Slingbox. I learned a heck of a lot about plastics, molding, tooling, and more while there, but thankfully after 5 long (long!) days they had it perfect (okay, close). It was an odd trip for me as I spent the entire week only having one person to speak with, and not seeing a single other foreigner in the town. IMG_3004.JPGI was literally gawked at in the shopping center. Thanks again Kelvin for being a great host, and introducing me to delicacies like Kung Pao Frog as well as Sweet and Sour Chicken Knees. Okay, I made up the names of the dishes, but you get the picture…

Our official launch was June 30th, 2005. In all candidness, I have never ever seen a team come together more tightly than we did in those 4 weeks leading up to launch. Blake was pushing us all extremely hard, constantly raising the bar on the quality he wanted. I remember one Saturday afternoon he wanted to make sure we really were compliant with the UPnP implementations on most routers. So he went to Best Buy, Fry’s, and CompUSA and picked up every different router model he could find, and hand-tested each one. Needless to say, the bar was, shall we say “high”? But he felt that the only way a startup could really win was to make absolutely excellent products, and good just wasn’t good enough. I have to say, I may have kvetched about it at the time, but looking back there’s no question he was right. I’ve never seen the insides of Steve Jobs’ lair, but I have a hunch there’s the same pursuit of excellence. But would Jobs take you out to the local Red Robin to celebrate the launch? I don’t think so!

The last few days before launch had each team double- and triple-checking its work. We, along with the beta testers, shone the flashlights into every nook and cranny of the setup wizard, the packaging, the documentation, the Web site, the community, everything. I personally flew out to Beaverton Oregon to train our customer service representatives in those last few weeks and showed them every last detail of the way the box functioned. We talked about how to make sure the customer support experience was nothing like how “other” CE companies handled it. Again, massive attention to detail. By the way, while I’m at it – Blake, you were right about the D10.

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Sling: Thanks for the memories (part 1: prebox)

Posted on September 26, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

I first met Blake and Jason Krikorian at CES 2002, while working for Mediabolic and demonstrating the Pioneer “Digital Library”, a home media server device that was way ahead of its time (and unfortunately never shipped). I still recall the day in May 2004 when Blake called my cell phone and said “what are you doing for lunch?” and upon hearing I had no plans, told me he’d pick me up 20 minutes later. Odd, considering he lived in San Mateo, but that is exactly what happened. We went to Johnny Rocket’s in San Francisco then followed it with a coffee in a Starbucks. About 30 seconds later, Blake’s pulled out his Thinkpad, connected to the WiFi, and started watching and his controlling his TiVo back in San Mateo. By the time I heard the first “do-doo!” sound, I knew I was in (although my buddy Ron repeating the phrase “take the job, take the job” to me about 15 times certainly helped).

My first actual day of work as VP of Product Management was almost three months later, in August 2004, after my wedding and honeymoon. I shared an office with Blake, Jason, and Dee (the uber-executive assistant), and was immediately tasked to write the spec. A couple of hundred pages and a week later, I had a draft. I believe that was the last time that document was ever viewed, but needless to say, we built our product. Our first semi-public showing of the “Slingbox” was at Fall RetailVision 2004 where we won the Best Hardware award, despite not showing the hardware to a single person during the show. Very good times.

Next up was CES 2005, where we formally unveiled the Slingbox at a small “pod” booth in the Innovations Tent. Yup, that’s right, Tent. That was a great CES – the entire team (9 of us) worked together really tightly staffing the booth, doing demos, getting food and beverages, and working the typical18-ish hour days. We captured some phenomenal media attention during the show, and were truly overjoyed when we learned we won the Best Home Media Device award in the Best of CES Awards. This was a very gratifying moment for me personally, as the previous year another product I had a big hand in building and demonstrating (the Denon NS-S100 home media server) won the Best of Show (overall!) award. It’s not quite like the Habs winning 5 cups in a row, but it’s probably about as close as a geek like me will ever get!

IMG_2775 JT Greg Delagi TIDC.JPGMy next big demo was a month later at the Texas Instruments Developers Conference, where I joined VP Greg Delagi on stage to demonstrate the Slingbox to about a 1000 TI developers. I demoed after SawStop but before Wakamaru. Nice placement, I must say. Now to properly set up the moment you have to understand, we only had a handful of working Slingboxes at the time, and they were a little delicate. While hauling around my demo kit, the connectors slowly got loose enough to the point where the cables didn’t always fit in right. During my demo, as is the rule, everything was going wrong. When a VP from TI came over to help hold in the cable, he accidentally broke the connector off. I like to think that I didn’t even stutter as it occurred, but something was clearly amiss in the demo. Either way, I still did better than Wakamaru-san.

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I guarantee Amazon's MP3 store is important to you

Posted on September 26, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

I’ll open by saying that despite switching to a Mac recently (because the Sony Vaio SZ-VGN460N is a terrible, terrible laptop) I’m not completely drinking the Steve Jobs Kool-Aid. I don’t like iTunes, and I don’t understand how more people aren’t crying foul at the Apple monopoly that is the iPod + iTunes music store. If it were any company other than Apple, the phrase monopoly would get used a heck of a lot more often. But, as a good friend of mine likes to say “the rules of physics do not apply to Steve Jobs.” He’s right.

So I like the Amazon MP3 store because it is open, not closed. Open content is good for consumers, period. You choose the software player on your computer, as opposed to it choosing for you. You choose the gadget to play it on, whether its your MP3 player or your cell phone. You burn it to your own custom mix CD, or you just listen to it on your PC.

Regardless of how much the current players (RIAA, music labels, Apple, etc) like or dislike this flexibility, this has been the de facto standard for music since the dawn of the cassette deck in the 70s. Let me repeat this, because it’s important: if you are 60 years old or younger, you were brought up in a world where purchasing music gave you rights to consume where, when, and how you chose.

My how this world has changed, and all thanks to the Internet, and for the worse. As consumers our rights are diminishing rapidly, all under the banner threat of “illegal downloading”. In fact the punitive damages surrounding “illegal downloading” are so severe you’d think Al Qaeda invented Napster and BitTorrent.

If I’ve piqued your curiosity, if any of this rings true and you want to learn more about how much the media industry has spent bribing congress to take away your rights, please pick up a copy of Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture. If you are familiar with it, and want to use the most effective weapon you have (aka your checkbook), go buy a few MP3s from Amazon (and read this too). Showing monetary support for an open initiative is important. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but definitely in the long term.

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Posted in LD Approved, Video/Music/Media | 2 Comments |

EchoStar/DISH Networks is buying Sling Media!

Posted on September 24, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

Holy crap, that’s all I can say. OK, not really, I can say a lot more. Mazel Tov. Congrats. Holy f*ing crap! Sling Media (my former employer) just got picked up for a cool $380 million (nice timeline here too). Holy crap! Sorry for all the pseudo-pottymouthedness, but come on, holy crap!

I think this was a pretty solid win-win relationship. Echostar is in heavy competition with DirecTV (and the cable co’s) today, and needs to start bolstering for the pretty much already-in-progress war with the Internets for TV. Sling brings not just the cool gadgets and yet-to-be-released Clip+Sling technology to the company, more importantly it brings knowhow.

Very few folks out there have really done anything “right” when it comes to PC and TV convergence. TiVo? Yes… Then there’s… uhm… let’s see… Apple? No. Microsoft? Kinda. ReplayTV? Who’zat? Seriously, you can count the successes in this space on a finger or two, and the failures can pile up enough terrible technology to fill HP’s garage!  Sling has some knowhow, and Echostar can use it!

I am curious to see what becomes of the hardware side of the business. Will it be “Slingbox from Echostar?” Will we see a combined Dishplayer (the Echostar set-top-box with DVR features) with built-in Slinging? Or will they leave the unit independently running in San Mateo, building up a successful retail/hardware business? After all, they did eat Sony’s lunch when it came to the LocationFree TV (and the Vaio group is lucky they don’t ship laptops, since I could macramé a better one than the SZ-VGN460 – imagine if Sling built one!).

There’s a lot of options for these two companies and I’m excited to watch the future, knowing I was a part of the past. Now for some quick congrats to the whole team, and special thanks to Blake, Jason, and Bhupen for bringing me on board back in June ’04, as well as Rich for always having my back. Even more thanks and congrats to Brian J (best officemate ever), Alex, Raghu, Alexei (no more commuting!), John N, Dee, Cindy, George W (shh!), Brian M (finish your house already!), Vicky (90 hours per week is too many), Dave M (ykhik?), Jamie, Johnny G, Gregg (we’ll always have Orlando), Chris, Jeff (funny guy, no really!), Tami, Dave Z (sure, you’ll work for Brian, but not me?), Sharon (queen of beta), Teresa, Stephan, and every else I’m forgetting but have way too much adrenaline to focus right now.

Mazel Tov!

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Posted in General, LD Approved | 6 Comments |

Unsubstantiated rumor floods blogosphere

Posted on September 24, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

In the past couple of hours, a story that originated at the WSJ has gotten the entire TechMeme-fueled blogosphere in a tizzy. The story asserts Microsoft’s interest in acquiring a stake of Facebook, which would lock in some advertising dollars and send the valuation of FB to roughly $10(ish) billion dollars (which in a completely unrelated twist is the amount of money the US government claims illegal workers somehow “cost” California each year. I’m in a little bit of a funk about the immigration process these days, so sorry for the bizarre display of cynicism). Here’s a little snapshot of TechMeme:

msft_facebook_techmeme.jpg

Now for some quotes from the article:

could value Facebook at $10 billion or more, according to people familiar with the matter.

Google Inc. has also expressed strong interest in a possible Facebook investment, said people familiar with the matter.

a stake potentially valued at roughly $300 million to $500 million, the people familiar with those talks said.

The people familiar with the matter said that the discussions are still preliminary and Facebook could wind up not taking an investment from either Microsoft or Google.

A Facebook spokeswoman and spokesmen for Microsoft and Google declined to comment.

Uh… hmm. First, maybe we can get the article’s authors a thesaurus (I hear they’re online now!) and find at least one other phrase for “people familiar with…” Second, how do we know this is news? Don’t get me wrong, I believe it’s a possibility, but I’d certainly like to get some substantiation here. I’m a little surprised that this has so much attention at this stage (from Valleywag, Mathew Ingram, TechCrunch, Scoble, Om Malik, etc).

I’m also a little surprised that there was virtually no impact to Microsoft’s stock.

ps – don’t forget, the Sony SZ-VGN460N laptop is still one of the worst laptops on the market and even though that has nothing to do with my post, I’m still so unbelievably angry at Sony that I’m keeping the theme alive. Don’t buy it!

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Posted in Web/Internet | 2 Comments |

Dave McClure to VCs & Lawyers: Get your act together!

Posted on September 24, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

Ah, I love a good rant. I especially love one that targets industries that move along at ridiculously sluggish paces when it comes to technology adoption. Dave McClure has apparently been spending a wee bit too much time with lawyers lately, and goes on without pulling punches lamenting their holding on to a “lots of paperwork” approach to getting things done. Here’s a highlight to whet your appetite :

Over the past 3-4 months, i’ve made a few small investments in several startups and become an advisor to a few others. The amount of paper, email, & faxes i have exchanged to get these deals done is F’ING MIND-BOGGLING. Aren’t we in the 21st century? Don’t we all use the web & online transactions for everything? Aren’t you supposed to be ADVISORS to startups that make lives simpler & use the INTARWEB to get rid of all the paper, delay, & complexity we HATE LIKE THE PLAGUE?!? Or did you all grow up with Ted Stevens or something?

Now go read the rest, it’s excellent.

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Posted in No/Low-tech | Leave a comment |

Note to Plaxo – hey, quit it!

Posted on September 19, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

I started using Plaxo years ago as a mechanism to “safeguard” my contacts. In the marketing field, my network (“rolodex”) is one of my more important assets, so having an online service to help me migrate the database from computer to computer is wonderful. I think this is now my 5th or 6th laptop owned since originally signing up to Plaxo, and each migration has gone fairly smoothly. Even to my Sony Vaio SZ-VGN460N, the worst computer I have ever owned in my life.

Now there’s always been a little rivalry of sorts with LinkedIn, even though they both have distinct value propositions (Plaxo being slightly more useful in my eyes). But with rapid onslaught of Facebook in the post-collegiate world this year, it seems like everybody even tangentially related to the social networking space is either jumping on board with a Facebook App (shameless plug – rate Facebook applications here!!!) or trying to compete with a similar styled offering.

Unfortunately, from all outward appearances, Plaxo is taking the “slightly more evil” route of diong business. Plaxo seems to be going down the route of near-invasion of privacy combined with phishing-style email updates. Today I received an email entitled “What’s happening in your Pulse”:

plaxopulse_screenshot.jpg

As you can see from the screenshot, I have a few updates from some colleagues. Now first off, I never asked for said updates, which puts this into the spam category of email. Secondly, I am pretty sure nobody on the list has opted in to having Plaxo track and share this information with me, which is a privacy invasion (yes, I know that these are all publicly accessible things, but without the opt-in, it’s dubious).  Thirdly, it is absolutely ridiculous that these aren’t active links to the activity updates!  I’m supposed to go to Plaxo Pulse just to get the links I want.

In my eyes, this is a shameful betrayal of users on Plaxo’s part.  They have created a “service” designed without any consent on anyone’s behalf.  In doing so, they have most certainly lost me as an evangelist, and have opened the door for any competitor with a similar offering to rapidly snatch me up.  What a terrible business, product, and marketing decision they have made.  I wonder how many people it took to make it?

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About

Jeremy Toeman is a seasoned Product leader with over 20 years experience in the convergence of digital media, mobile entertainment, social entertainment, smart TV and consumer technology. Prior ventures and projects include CNET, Viggle/Dijit/Nextguide, Sling Media, VUDU, Clicker, DivX, Rovi, Mediabolic, Boxee, and many other consumer technology companies. This blog represents his personal opinion and outlook on things.

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