Just a quickie – I’m changing mail servers (from GoDaddy to Google Hosted Apps) this morning. Should be smooth, but in case there’s a bounce, please just try again later.
Author Archives: Jeremy Toeman
Mininotebook Lemmingness
Lots of noise in the air today after Dell introduced (well, showed) a mininotebook at D6. I think the category is… interesting(ish), more a novelty than anything else. I’m sure there are some people who look at these laptops as their ultimate solution for computing, and others who scoff. Either way, the space is getting crowded, and unfortunately, I feel it’s crowding up in a boring way. Here’s a short video with my thoughts:
How-to: Use Twitter and FriendFeed without being massively disrupted at work
Short answer: You Can’t. They are inherently distracting services, regardless of whether or not they are useful or relevant to you in a work capacity.
Exception to the above rule if you are one of the following:
- you are a full-time blogger – in this case, odds are being more exposed to “the noise” may actually help you.
- you are someone whose job does not depend on linear work – if you don’t spend hours at a time writing huge documents or lines of code or some other focused task, then you can probably tweet away. Odds are that you probably have a pretty cushy job too. 😉
- you are Robert Scoble – if you are Robert Scoble, then the normal rules simply do not apply.
For the rest of us, it’s noisy and distracting. And it doesn’t matter if you have notifiers on or off, because using either communication stream effectively requires participation. Sure, you can just read a series of streams, and that’s better than nothing, but not by much. Part of the point of it all is being engaged.
I think the best analogy I can come up with (and its a bit of a dramatic one, so take it with a grain of salt) is trying to do all your work in a Starbucks filled with friends, colleagues, and all of their friends and colleagues. And everyone is yelling, and there are no headphones available. And every now and then, someone yells something that you feel the need to respond to. So you do. By yelling.
The next-best solution? Wait for Twitter to be down. (ooh, cheap shot, I know!)
Okay, time for the “real” how-to. It’s a combo of the technology AND the mindset. It isn’t too hard, technically, but it may be a crazy strain on the brain.
Tech: Turn down/off your notification settings (I recommend the same for email, btw). Anything that can pop up over your actual work should go away.- Mind: When you are working on a serious project, close your tabs and anything else with Twitter/FF visible.
- Tech: Create a bookmark folder with FF, Summize, and Twitter all ready to go, so when you are done with work, you can quickly pick up what you missed.
- Mind: Don’t worry that you are missing something. Odds are really good you are not. Anything important will be there when you get back. I promise.
- Mind: Seriously, stop it! Close Twhirl and Twitterific, and leave it alone for a few. The world keeps on turnin whether or not you pay attention to it.
- Mind: Breathe… it’ll be okay.
- Mind: Remind your coworkers and colleagues that they can call you should something important come up.
- Tech: If you are working on something *really* important, turn off your ringer too.
Good luck to you. When in doubt, just remember: there was a world before FriendFeed, Twitter, Email, Cell Phones, and even Facebook (yes, it’s true). There were no tweets, pings, chatrooms, and ringtones. Nobody used to get sheep thrown at them nor did they have to decide between vampires and werewolves (vampires!). And Gary Coleman was once a star, dammit, a big star!
Lifecasting may well lead us to Crime 2.0
This is something that’s been bothering me for a while: with all the push toward lifecasting, should we worry that criminals are going to get a little smarter? I saw a tweet today that really got me over the edge to write this post.
I first got antsy about TMI online when I was reading Scoble’s blog. He wrote a post a few years back divulging his home address (at the time), and I for one thought he was a bit nutso to do it (that nutso quality is probably a part of why he’s so likeable). I see tweets from him (and others) constantly revealing two important pieces of information:
- The fact that they are not at home.
- An easy tie-in to a specific location/event they have recently attended.
Both are better bait to criminals than personal injury videos on YouTube are to drunk college kids. They are basically open invitations for bad people to do bad things. Break-ins. Thievery. Identity theft. etc. I totally understand the desire to lifecast private details, and I occasionally slip myself. It’s easy, and I think the more in a rhythm you get of publicizing your information, they more you get “sucked into” doing it.
Examples:
- Robert Scoble in NYC yesterday
- Tom Raftery in Barcelona right now
- Me a couple of weeks ago
- Alec Saunders just as I began to write this post
My recommendations to anyone and everyone who tweets, pounces, jaiks, friendfeeds, blog posts, facebook statuses, and any other form of lifecasting is to think twice before you write. Recognize that your message is going into the public, in a permanent and very findable manner.
I believe it’s only a matter of time before we see tweets like “just got home, where the F is my plasma?!?” It sucks to think this way, but it’s giving me a little wakeup call myself. Guess we may all need crowdsourced home security one day.
Now signing off from an undisclosed location. I hear there’s a car nobody’s watching at SFO…
16 Simple Ways to Improve FriendFeed
Despite my initial skepticism, I am enjoying using FriendFeed (“FF” from here out). I find interesting stories & news articles from my friends, I hear about news from colleagues, and am able to interact with them all in one place. I also like hearing from “related strangers” and finding new “friends” (Internet friends, that is) through the process. Below is my list of some simple things FF could do to easily enhance the overall experience.
- Subscribing to Subscribers – Right now you have to manually go subscriber by subscriber. FF should add a button next to each person’s name for instant subscribing (like on the “recommended” tab). Also a “subscribe to all my subscribers” would be nice
- Find my Friends – I should be able to point at my Plaxo/LinkedIn/address book, and have FF automagically add whomever’s in there into my subscribers list (should also allow me to choose which ones specifically)
Use “interestingness” more – The current list of “who’s subscribed to me” is stagnant, calculated by some ranking. Use the info from the stats page to show a more dynamic list.- Nested comments – no-brainer.
- Re-ping my Subscriptions – I have friends who I am subscribed to who were surprised to find me on FF. There’s no way for me to easily renotify people I exist.
- Add to the “like” feature – I think a “dislike” button would be interesting (even if the results were hidden) as it could help add to the interestingness meter. Also, I’d like to see “Agree/Disagree With” as options, since they are very different from “like”.
- De-duplicating redundant entries – if I write a blog post then mark it in Twitter or Delicious, FF should be smart enough to remove the extra entries (or group them). This could be crowdsourced as well, in case the automatic version is too hard to build.
- More 2-way data sharing – if I like it on FF, then favorite it on Twitter. If I comment on a discussion, send it to Disqus or the blog comment system. Etc. Edit (per a comment on FF): this should be an option for the user.
- Surface the interesting features more – the ability to see stats, discussions, etc is very cool, but the features are buried away.
- Enable auto-TinyURL in posts – all URLs should get Tiny’d. Edit (per a comment on FF): this should be an option for the user.
- Create filters – I’d like to be able to filter out terms completely – for example, I have no interest in hearing anything political on FF, so would happily filter out Obama, Hillary, McCain, and other terms.
- Add “friends of friends” as a main tab – in addition to “me”, “friends”, and “everyone”, I’d like to see the feeds of my friends’ friends. This would be especially handy when I want to filter them out from my main feed.
- Make history more relevant – how about a timeline? how about seeing all the stuff of mine that other people have commented on? how about seeing my most popular stuff?
- UI clean-up – I read Louis Gray’s post on using the hide function, and while it’s extremely helpful, it just shouldn’t be that hard! Don’t agree? Go read tip#5 in that post again, and you’ll see how unintuitive that process really is.
- Make a control panel – too many things going on (this is really an extension of #14) in too many places. Give me a single place to make all my settings happen, and I’ll be a happy camper.
Fix the glaring typo on this page. Here, I’ll make it easy for ya…
That’s it for now, hope to see some of these happen!
Thoughts on the Netflix box
Bringing you up to speed: Netflix announced a $99 device that hooks up to your TV and streams movies (free to Netflix subscribers) from your queue straight to your set. This is not the first “Internet set-top box” to come out, nor will it be the last. But it’s definitely one of the more interesting ones to discuss. Here are my thoughts on it, in a semi-organized manner:
What I like about it:
- Price point: under $100 is great (under $50 is perfection), especially in conjunction with free movies.
- Netflix brand extension: the company’s followers tend to be fairly loyal (I’ve heard an estimated 5-10% churn before, which isn’t too bad considering the space they are in), and have the financial resources to make a $100 box a near-no-brainer purchase.
- K.I.S.S.: the pictured remote only has a few buttons, and they aren’t making an “all in one killer box” (which would be much harder to market than a specific, focused product)
- HDMI: absolutely essential.
What I don’t like about it:
- Price point: seems like they could’ve found a way to make it free with a committed subscription. I personally pay $17.95/mo for my Netflix subscription, I have to think there’s a point ($25.95?) where I’d upgrade my service for the box. This is how the cable companies “get ya” and I think should be considered by the company.
- Roku’s brand: it’s effectively nonexistent with the masses, which is who this product is targeting. I don’t feel Netflix gains much (other than possibly having complete control over the product, a la Apple)
- It’s a box: like Thomas Hawk said, people don’t want more boxes in their living rooms.
- Competing with cable companies: Comcast offers me dozens of free HD movies per month (hundreds of SD ones), and lots of PPV content to boot. I’m concerned that for $100 I don’t really feel I get much extra, and as I state above, I now have to deal with an extra box in the mix.
Other misc thoughts:
- Initial reviews seem positive, I’m hoping to try it myself soon. I think for the box to succeed it has to be better than “easy to use”, it has to be “compelling to use”. A slam dunk would be my wife not just using it, but loving it enough to tell her friends (which was not true of VuDu, and only partially true of Moviebeam). The process of selecting movies to watch and the actual playback have to work great (think TiVo). Ditto for setup.
- According to CNET, HD content is coming soon, and I think this is a questionable move. I believe launching with HD would make a huge difference in the marketability of the box. Also, it seems that it doesn’t offer upscaling on the SD video, which means I’ll be watching content that looks less good than a standard DVD.
- I wish they had taken a page from the Apple playbook and made a more interesting/attractive product. Either that or follow the Slingbox “purple cow” approach. I totally understand the reasons for the generic gray consumer electronics product, but I feel it’s a tactical error in this case. Netflix has always stood out from the crowd, and I think their box should do the same.
- Their biggest competitive threats are, in order: nothing, a digital cable box, a DVR, a computer (media center or not), an Xbox 360, and maybe an Apple TV. I don’t really see anything else currently on the market as actually competitive.
Back in January I voiced my concerns over this exact product. I like where they’ve gotten so far, but still have a lot of concerns over market viability. I believe with some polish and evolution, combined with paying a lot of attention to early adopters’ feedback (different from beta testers!), and great marketing, they might be able to turn this into a big hit. I’ll definitely be watching!
I don't sound so stupid now, do I?
MacBooks will take 50% of notebook market share within a year
I saw an interesting blog post this week regarding how Apple is immune to the innovator’s dilemma (for those unfamiliar with the term). First, I don’t think the company is immune at all, I think that OS X and MacBooks ARE the innovation relative to Windows Vista and PCs. Second, there’ve been tons of recent articles regarding the company’s climb in market share. Finally, in the interests of full disclosure, I am personally a (small) AAPL stockholder.
Consumers are turning increasingly to their peers, friends, and family for recommendations of products. I’ve personally referred four people to purchase Panasonic plasmas after buying my own (of course, they all got the newer model, but no, I’m not extremely bitter). In each case my friends actually made purchases on nothing but my recommendation. That’s a pretty hefty price tag for a word-of-mouth referral. While there’s constant debate on the “power of influencers” there’s almost no question we all like to have a friendly opinion to back up a purchase decision.
Today, when buying a new notebook, I’ll make the following two statements that I believe are true:
- Virtually all MacBook owners will recommend most MacBook models when asked
- Virtually no Vista notebook owners will recommend most models from any given manufacturer when asked
The second point is probably the more debatable one. I’m not saying there’s *no* PC worth recommending. But, even a person happy with, say a Dell, cannot make a blanket statement “all Dell notebooks are worth buying.” Further, this situation worsens, not improves, over time. A year ago I’d have recommended a Vaio hands-down. Today I cannot (despite mine working quite well now – thanks again Ed!), because I simply don’t believe that all configurations are recommendable. So I’d have to say “Get model XX, with the YY screen and the ZZ video card” and even then, still leave a lot to chance. I wouldn’t be able to personally vouch for it, the cornerstone to any recommendation.
MacBooks do not have this issue, despite the occasional glitch here and there. They are almost completely recommendable, all of the time (although I’d never personally imagine buying the SSD version of the Air, but that’s more a budget/performance issue than anything else).
Also, I think there is a bit of a “trickle-down” effect happening. When I decided to make the switch, virtually all of my peers and industry thought leaders I read, know, and respect had moved to Macs. I had lunch with a VC friend of mine today, he confirmed that well over 90% of the startups who pitch him come in with MacBooks.
I truly believe this is a “perfect storm” for the MacBook (regardless of whether or not there are new models coming):
- Vista is just a disaster (I can count on one hand the number of people I know personally who think it’s a step up from XP), and there’s no solution imminently on the horizon.
- The PC manufacturer’s are caught in an Innovator’s Dilemma moment where the thousands of configurable options on a PC are what their customers have asked for, yet don’t truly want.
- The price point of an entry level MacBook is on par with a Windows notebook.
- Finally, and possibly most importantly, the introduction of BootCamp and Parallels have enabled the “tentative” customers to make the leap, knowing they can run Windows for anything they miss (Outlook!)
It’s not about the 3, 4, 6, or 12% market share they may or may not have across all computer sales. That’s almost irrelevant to address, since desktops have so many types of uses. But notebooks are much more telling of the shifting trends. Notebooks are for both personal and professional use, they have their place in the office and the home (and everywhere in between). Notebooks afford us more choice in the computer we choose to purchase and use.
Will I be wrong on the timing? Time will tell. Is this a slam dunk? Not at all! Can the PC guys do anything to stop it? Absolutely. But all the signs on the walls I read point to a very dominant iFuture.
Updated: a point I forgot to mention was production capacity (thanks yoshi). As was stated there, it’s pretty unrealistic to think that Apple could possibly ramp production up to the capacity that would be necessary to accomplish the feat. But then again, that’s what my friend Peter calls a “high class” problem to solve…
It's Okay To Pitch Here
Short post, just wanted to draw attention to the fact that we’ve put up a “how to pitch us” page. Why, you may ask? Well, first of all, we get a lot of pitches, and frankly, many of them have nothing to do with what we blog about. Enterprise pitches. TV shows. Viraga (and viarga and even v i a g a r a). You get the drift. So I wanted to help add some focus.
Secondly, I believe it’s the “right thing” for bloggers to do. I put up a post on my marketing blog implying as such. It’s not really fair for me to just say “here’s my email” if I don’t tell you what I want to know about.
Lastly, if you’re noticing I wrote “We” above, well, there’s a few new folks joining the team to help write more reviews. I’ve become a little too entrenched into too many different people/organizations to be able to effectively write reviews much anymore. Either I know the person/company behind the device or the PR firm (or both), and I feel way too conflicted way too often. So expect to see some fresh blood showing up in the next few days!
A Weekend of Making
Overall (with one glaring exception, which I’ll write about tomorrow), it was a great weekend down in San Mateo for the 2008 Maker Faire. As far as events go, it’s almost the anti-CES. Instead of expensive, polished booths, most exhibits were on foldout tables. Instead of a team of well-trained booth staffs, the typical demonstrator was the individual or small group who personally built whatever it is that’s on display. Instead of overpriced, greasy, carnie food, we ate… oh, well, I guess some things are universal.
I spent the bulk of the days at the Bug Labs booth, where we were showing quite a few demos of the BUGbase and modules in action. Our plan was to spend much of the time creating new gadgets, but there were so many visitors that the team only created a small handful of new applications. I really liked the “digital level” application, because it was such a great conceptual explanation for the power of the crowdsource-enabled gadgets. The digital level on its own worked just like any other (although Angel, a Bug Labs engineer, coded it in about 8 minutes using the motion sensor/accelerometer module!), but it’s the future of many “connected digital levels” that is so interesting. Still not making sense? Think of it as a globally connected, yet distributed seismograph. Again, not necessarily important on its own, but its the concept that is so important.
The show was a lot of fun. Much bigger than I was anticipating, I heard over 100,000 tickets were sold! I saw some amazing demos and products, including an open-source version of Rock Band, a digital foosball table (yes, I played, and managed to beat the guys who built it – sweet), a killer room of Lego town, warring battleships, DIY everything, geekdad.com RC airplanes, a homegrownremote control R2D2, and, of course, BBQ chicken on a stick. Check out some pix from Laughing Squid and Scoble’s video too. My pix are all here, but these are some of my favorites:
And, the most important photo of all…
AMAZING Lego town at Maker Faire
Is Sezmi a "cable killer"?
As I write this, Comcast is worth 67 billion dollars. Their stock has split 4 times in 20 years, and has grown massively over that time. They have over 24 million subscribers. They are one of several US cable companies, who take on the 2 satellite service providers as the main players in the TV space for the US. And startup Sezmi was labeled today as a cable killer, with TV 2.0, whose advanced set-top box apparently blows away the TV. Wow. That’s quite a strong billing, don’t you think. The last device I recall with this type of hype was supposed to transform the way we build cities.
This isn’t just David vs Goliath by the way, this is David the little tiny ant versus Goliath the elephant. Not only does Sezmi have to compete against huge players, they are doing it in a massively entrenched industry that spends ridiculous amounts of money advertising their own services. And let’s think about that advertising for a second – where exactly is Sezmi going to run their ads? Are they going to pay the very networks they need to compete with?
Now I do need to make a very clear disclaimer here: I have not used their product, nor even seen a demo. I will go on the leap of faith that they have built the very best darn box ever built (even better than the ones I’ve built!). I’m going to assume it’s utterly amazing, and the content quality is stellar, it’s really usable, etc. I’ve only seen one such demo in recent months, but that’s another story for another time. Let’s assume that in the world of “terrible Internet set-top boxes” they’ve built the iPhone of the batch. I still think they have a huge challenge ahead.
First, they need to market the heck out of this thing. I’ve watched MovieBeam try and fail, ReplayTV is gone, Akimbo is a service now, and even everybody’s favorite TiVo isn’t exactly a commonly owned product (somewhere around 5ish million homes is the latest I’ve heard). Each of these companies have spent millions of dollars trying. And I can name a dozen others who’ve tried. Even Apple can’t really move the AppleTV in massive quantities. And massive quantities is the only way to be successful as a startup in this space.
Beyond just “extremely good” marketing, it’s a big uphill battle for Sezmi. Both PaidContent and Engadget refer to the company as confusing. In the articles I’ve read the company’s advantages seem to lie in (1) price, and (2) Internet services. I don’t believe these to be true competitive differentiators in the “taking on the cable industry” space. The players that be have effectively infinite dollars to throw at the problem, and we know they are all working on introducing Internet-enabled devices themselves.
Having spent most of the past 10 years of my career attempting to introduce products just like these, with variations here and there, I do wish the founders the best of luck with the effort. I would love to try the box out, see if it’s exceeding expectations and get a sense of how they plan to accomplish their arduous task. I think the visions of wanting to “change television” are noble, but unrealistics. Just because we have deregulation and things like OpenCable doesn’t mean the window of opportunity is open.
I do believe we’ll see additional interesting new media concepts for digital devices and platforms, but I don’t believe going after the big guys is the way to be successful. It isn’t about a “better than your cablebox” or a “more channels than you have now” or even a “get the Internets on the teevees” kind of play. It’s about counterprogramming against the TV itself. It’s about innovating on other, existing platforms. It’s about moving around the concept of the cablebox and cable company completely. Is Sezmi here with that new Innovator’s solution? We’ll find out soon enough.