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Author Archives: Jeremy Toeman

Geek Dinner 2007:03

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I skipped February in its entirety, but almost half of March managed to slip by before I was able to pull off another Geek Dinner.  With 20 RSVPS about 15 people in attendance, we again headed out to Buca di Beppo – a nice choice that is convenient for both South Bay and SF residents.

IMG_3554 Geek Dinner March 12 2007This month’s participants (following around the table from L-R):

  • Seth Kenvin – EIR at Venrock Associates
  • Doug Hagan – Netgear Marketing Guy, and more importantly, now a father of two!
  • Larry Chiang – Professional Multitasker
  • Mehrshad Mansouri – Person of ill-refute
  • Alan Peterson – Podcaster-for-hire (seriously, this man has an amazing voice)
  • Melanie Westlake – Has more phones than you do (probably because she works for Yahoo! Mobile)
  • Heidi Pollock – Mobile Web Guru (recently unemployed, so recruiters take note!)
  • Cindy Wang – from her friend Melanie: “she makes cute mobile web apps.  also, she is awesome”
  • Andrew Kippen – Carries “The Hammer” (when he’s not introducing French tech companies to Silicon Valley for the French Trade Commission)
  • Harry McCracken – Knows more about PCs than, well, most everyone else (also Editor-in-Chief for PC World)
  • Jeremy Toeman – About to engage in new career as “professional twitter user”
  • Daniel Riveong – Just *wishes* he can carry The Hammer, instead is merely a Social Media Expert
  • Jason Vagner – Recently employed! Huzzah!
  • Dave Mathews – Backward Thinker
  • Noah Kagan – Trying to find the appropriate floor to sleep on (also recently organized the Community Next event)

Great group with great conversations all around.  One topic we floated through started as “how many gadgets is too many to carry” and ended up being something more like “so what gadget do you really want to carry?”  This originated as follows – if you can think back 10 years ago (try, seriously), the most gadgets we carried around regularly was a cell phone (and that’s only if you were way ahead of the curve).  By 2000 it probably included a PDA as well.  By 2002, throw either an MP3 player or digital camera (or both) into the bag.  It seems pretty clear that people aren’t truly pushing back on carrying more than 2 digital gizmos around these days.  The thing I wonder about is when is enough enough? 

IMG_3575 larry and heidi and their sidekicksI also gave (another) anti-Twitter-hype rant, which then managed to include an anti-Second Life-hype rant, all at the expense of poor Heidi, who had the backbone to defend her postion and the character to not get all pissed at me for debating to the nth degree.  But since I won’t use the T-word more than once per post, that was it, and it’s time to move along!  Also (pictured to the right), Heidi and Larry bonded over having the same phones as 17-year-old girls.

We had another round of “pass around the gadgets” in which I showed off:

  • The latest Seagate FreeAgent Go portable hard drive (full review coming soon – but quick verdict is – very convenient, easy to use, and stylish).  Group consensus: YAY.
  • An AC-DC power converter from TeleAdapt (a division of APC) that works on airplanes AND cars and provides a standard (US) outlet to charge most devices.  Beats carrying “tips” around.  Group consensus: YAY.
  • The Netgear DECT Skype phone which allows one handset to work with both POTS and Skype services.  Group consensus: YAY.
  • Back for a second time, and thanks to Mehrshad now with one extra feature, my favorite Quik-Pod!  Group consensus: YAY.

IMG_3563 divx watchAlso, Dave Mathews showed us a Divx-enabled watch he brought back from Asia.  Not bad, although 15fps video still isn’t all that watchable… Hahahah.  Oh, sorry.  Yes, I know.  Yes, terrible.  Ok, ok, I won’t do it again.

By the way, for those wondering about the original topic on how many gadgets and ideal gadgets?  A common theme emerged: can someone, anyone, just make a basic cell phone that…

  1. has decent reception across the US
  2. has good battery life
  3. doesn’t take photos, play games, show maps, stream TV, or anything else
  4. doesn’t look like it came free in a Cracker Jack box
  5. isn’t a Razr

I’d buy one.  I’m actually in the market for a new phone right now, and I realized how little I do want/need from the phone.  I’ll take anything that meets the above description.  Anyone got a suggestion?

IMG_3564 cables for everyoneLast up, as I mentioned yesterday, I’m trying to rid a lot of cables from my apartment.  I brought a box full of them to the Geek Dinner to see if anyone wanted any.  There were a few takers here and there, but truth be told, it was as much a purging exercise as anything else.   But when Harry told me I made his day by supplying him with a new set of RCA cables, I was thrilled!

As always, email or comment if you’d like to get on the list for the next one…

Got Cables?

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With a wife-mandated “clean up your damned room full of junk” I’m on a monthlong quest to determine what stays and what goes.  I decided to tackle my “box o cables” last night.  It turns out that 10 years of buying, building, testing, and reviewing consumer electronics devices leaves one with a “few” extra cables… IMG_3549 JT's excess cables

I think we counted almost two dozen sets of RCA cables and at least 10 Ethernet cables in the batch, not to mention speaker wire, mini-USB cables, 2 200′ length Ethernets, a dozen coaxial, and a fun batch of proprietary ones (my favorite was the power adapter with a serial cable attachment – I have no clue what it was for).

I’ll be giving some excess ones away at Geek Dinner tonight.  Jealous?  Thought so.

Googling First Names

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Before I get to the heart of the post, my “manual Twitter update” is: I’m sitting on my couch.  More fun lifeblogging later, mkay?

I have no idea what my inspiration here was, but I decided it’d be interesting (kinda) to find the most common first names (in the US) and see the results when Googled.  I know that Google is supposed to be the end-all be-all definitive answer to all things, but as you’ll see fairly quickly, the list doesn’t really reflect “the real world” nearly as much as you might expect.

The Boys

  1. JAMES: The band, James.
    1. Ignoring Google Music, the result is “James Project” – an open-source mail server
    2. The first “person” in the list is James I of England
  2. JOHN: Gospel of John.  John Kerry is the first name in the list
  3. ROBERT: Need you ask?  It’s Mr. Scoble (ahead of De Niro, Redford, etc)!
  4. MICHAEL: Michaels Arts & Crafts Store (that’s some good SEO).  Michael Jackson is first, with Arrington second, then Moore third.  My friend Michael Gartenberg appears on the 6th page, but MJ himself didn’t appear in the first 10 pages!  Says something about where sports, bloggers, technology & Google go together, eh?
  5. WILLIAM:  Wait for it… Actually, I can’t bear to say it.  Go ahead, see for yourself.  No comment.
  6. DAVID: Interestingly it references the former King, with a David Pescovitz nudging in just ahead of Ziggy Stardust.  No, I won’t explain that, or any other pop culture references from this point forward.
  7. RICHARD: Another king, Richard I of England, but he’s followed by another top blogger, Richard MacManus, who is only a few spots ahead of Richard Simmons.
  8. CHARLES: Charles Schwab has SEO’d themselves above King Charles.  Apparently Princes do not fare as well, as Prince Charles can’t beat out “The Fishbowl: Charles Miller’s Weblog“
  9. JOSEPH: Another Biblical reference (Hebrew before Saint), and it’s not until the bottom of the first page until I found professor Jospeh Stiglitz.
  10. THOMAS: Didn’t know about this one before, the THOMAS online Library of Commerce.  Good ol’ Thomas Hawk is the first name on the list (and another blogger – I think I smell a trend!).
  11. CHRISTOPHER: The first link is about Chrisopher Columbus’ ships, and the first name is non-blogger Chris Walken.  If I switch the term to just ‘CHRIS’ then Pirillo’s blog is on top.
  12. DANIEL: First up is a prophet, and new James Bond Daniel Craig is the first written name, but Darren Scocco’s blog is extremely well SEO’d since his name isn’t even in the title!
  13. PAUL: Religion beats blogger in this case, as the prophet is first, McCartney second, and Paul Stamatiou’s blog wins the bronze.
  14. MARK: Mark Pilgrim’s linkblog is up on top, which surprised me as I figured the BlogMaverick would be higher up there (he’s also stuck behind a prophet, which clearly doesn’t bode well).
  15. DONALD: Even before I clicked the button, I was pretty sure I’d find The Donald as the first result.
  16. GEORGE: Quite the popular name in Googling, with the fun Where’s George site ranked above our first president (who is thankfully ranked above our current one).  Scroll down a little and you’ll see Clooney beats out Lucas on IMDB – I guess that’s not ranked by income, eh?
  17. KENNETH: Got Shoes?  More interesting is the second result, a spa in Columbus, Ohio.
  18. STEVEN: Again, a blogger (Steven Berlin Johnson) beats out directors Spielberg and Soderbergh.  I guess I figured Jobs for #1, but he’s barely on the first page.
  19. EDWARD: Naperville’s (Illinois) own somehow managed to eke out the top position above a quite famous King, and Edward Hopper is the first ‘name’ on the page.
  20. BRIAN: ABC has SEO’d some TV show into the first slot, ahead of extremely popular blogger Brian Clark.
  21. RONALD: My favorite result so far, as it juxtaposes Ronald McDonald and Ronald Reagan a few times over.  That’s just plain fun!
  22. ANTHONY: The men’s products company is first (I use two of their scrubs, love em – ain’t that just so metrosexual of me?), and we have no bloggers whatsoever in the first 10 (I smell opportunity).  Tony Robbins and Marc Anthony both place ahead of the first full Anthony, Sir Hopkins.
  23. KEVIN: CNN correspondant Kevin Sites has wedged himself in at #1.  Have no fear, K-Fed is only a few links below.
  24. JASON: The second project on our list, the JASON project, is first up.  Entrepreneur-turned corporate America-turned VC-turned fatblogger Jason Calacanis is in the top 5, just below the Greek myth entry at Wikipedia.
  25. MATTHEW:  I kept repeating in my head “Don’t be Perry, Don’t be Perry!” as I hit the search button.  Biblical reference comes in first, with actor Matthew McConaughey a few steps behind.

…

  1. JEREMY: Damn that Zawodny!!!  I’m up in the first 5 pages, but it seems as if people named Jeremy just like to get their blogging on…

The Girls

  1. MARY: Yup, it’s the Biblical one first (she dominates most of the page actually).  Then the first real name we get to is Mary J Blige.
  2. PATRICIA: A resort chain in Myrtle Beach is the first listing here, then we get famous (?) children’s book author Patricia Polacco’s Web site next.
  3. LINDA: And there we have it, our first result wherein our first listing is adult content.  Congratulations, Linda Tran, you are our winner.  Incidentally, three other Lindas on the first page are also adult-oriented.  So if there are any Lindas reading this who are not working in the porn industry, maybe you can start a blog soon?
  4. BARBARA: It looks like Google considers Barbara Nitke’s “Sexuality Project” the most prominent Barbara, with Ms. Streisand (my mom’s lookalike you know) in second place.
  5. ELIZABETH: Let’s see, we have Movie Reference, Queen, Queen, Queen, Queen, Queen, and Movie Reference.
  6. JENNIFER:  J. Lo may not be as popular in the gossip rags anymore, but she’s still all the rage on Google. 
  7. MARIA: I was genuinely surprised to see WWE “superstar” Maria first and tennis player Sharapova second.  That’s two sports people (well, 1.5?) on top here.
  8. SUSAN: Some astrologist is on top, so I’ll do my share to try to help get blogger Susan Mernit ranked higher.  If you don’t read it already, I humbly suggest you subscribe to Susan’s great blog right away!
  9. MARGARET:  CHO.  IS. FIRST.
  10. DOROTHY:  They’ve got her.  And her little dog too.
  11. LISA:  I think this was the first time two different acronyms had the top two spots.  Lisa Simpson is the first ‘name’ on the page, and a Lisa McPherson is the first ‘real name’ later on.
  12. NANCY:  I feel like we’re getting a little, I don’ t know, desperate at this point.  The “comic” strip is the first entry, followed by Nancy Sinatra and Nancy Reagan.
  13. KAREN:  This little project has just taught me something new.  Did you know there was a tribe of people called the Karen people (I’ll bet ya didn’t)?  I didn’t.  I feel a little bad too, as there are apparently 14 million of them!  We’ve also found another blogger (it’s been a while!), Karen Schneider, the Free Range Librarian.
  14. BETTY: Hm… Pop band I’ve never heard of, color for Hair Down There, some cookbooks, ugliness, … ah, there we go… “Stale Betty: Voted Most Likely to Wear Granny Panties“
  15. HELEN: Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet is probably a minor misnomer, since it seems that Helen of Troy is the sweetheart entry here.
  16. SANDRA: Sandra Bullock is our first named entry, but can’t beat the geeks’ SiSoftware.  I wonder if she’s that high in some part due to the movie The Net?
  17. DONNA: Congratulations to Donna Nammer, the first female blogger to pwn her first name on Google.  I wonder if she knows Scoble?
  18. CAROL: And back we go to corporate stuff.  In fact, the name Carol seems so open on Google that Carole King makes the first page (although that could be due to typos as well). 
  19. RUTH: Mmm, steak house.  Actually, no full-name Ruths made the first page of results at all, unless you count Babe Ruth that is.
  20. SHARON: Utterly dominated by Ariel Sharon, Sharon Stone, and a bunch of small US towns named Sharon.
  21. MICHELLE: Journalist Michelle Malkin is on top.  Have no fear boys, there’s nudity only one link away.
  22. LAURA: Interestingly, more right-wing women are at the top here, with Laura Ingraham and Laura Bush just behind the movie of the same name.
  23. SARAH: Back to the Bible we go, but the Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan is in second place.
  24. KIMBERLY: Get your tissues, all your tissues!  The only actual name on the page is a Kimberley who blogs at Develsaa.com.
  25. DEBORAH: A hospital in New Jersey (what exit?) ranks first, then back to the Bible, then Ms. Electric Youth herself, Debbie Deborah Gibson!

There you have it, the Top 50 Google results for the Top 50 First Names.  What did we learn (remembering that Google ranks primarily based on links)?

  • Bloggers beat actors.
  • Musicians beat actors.
  • Prophets beat bloggers.
  • Kings of England beat everyone other than Scoble.
  • Women often link to men.
  • Women sometimes link to women.
  • Men often link to men.
  • Men sometimes link to women.
  • Men often link to pornography.
  • William Hung’s 15 minutes have last way too long.

Can Movie Gallery Save MovieBeam?

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Unit controlsAlmost a year ago I wrote a review of MovieBeam, wherein I described it as a good, but pricey product.  Since then, a few promos to get the box for $49-149 were offered.  Endcaps at Best Buys were installed.  A few other influential people tried it out.  But it doesn’t seem like much has helped get their sales going. 

When I was first sent a unit, I was told Ethernet support would come by the Summer (of 2006).  It didn’t.  Furthermore, the movie selection over the past few months has mirrored what I typically see on United flights: a few good movies I missed in the theaters supplemented with a list of things I would never watch (although I did get a full 23 minutes into Snakes on a Plane before shutting it down).  This combined with a fairly non-competitive price point was a bit of a circle of doom, in my eyes.

Zatz reported today that Movie Gallery (an East Coast movie chain) is buying them (for under $10 million – ouch), and I wonder what they will do.  Here are the “big” options I see:

  • Keep it running as is, tie in the Movie Gallery brand. 
    This is probably the worst option for them.  The current service just isn’t compelling enough against all the new VOD, IPTV, and HD options from a huge variety of players (including Joost, which I’m now trying out – more on that soon).
  • Shut it down, leverage the MovieBeam brand for a new IPTV service.
    Not bad, as the name does have a nice ring to it, and they have already cleared a huge hurdle of IP distribution rights.  $10 million isn’t a bad deal to get all the relationships with Hollywood in the IP arena (which is virtually completely different that running a video store).  Not bad, but also probably doesn’t have enough legs for longevity.
  • Switch the model into service-based, compete with Netflix.
    This might be the most obvious and logical model for the company.  By using the box, they can offer a subscription service with no need for mailing anything.  Granted it still uses the same datacasting system, but with their access to content libraries combined with a huge customer base, offering it up as a $9.99/month (free loaner box) package could be compelling.  Also, the HD content is a nice plus here.
  • Do the above, but add Ethernet for live streaming and community features.
    If the MovieBeam box was able to stream content live, as well as give me a nice suite of personalization and community/social features, I think we’re in the money.  Especially if I can access huge libraries of content, manage my ‘queue’, select movies to watch with friends, etc.  Also, this opens up the notion of partnerships with Joost or even TV studios for new service opportunities.

Now nothing they are going to do will help improve the performance of the remote/box, but that doesn’t mean they can’t spin out a new unit in the next year.  I hope they look at this as a chance to innovate and differentiate.  I hope they see the potential of what could be done in a “digital home gone right” scenario. 

Nobody’s done it right yet, but the Xbox 360 is close, and Apple TV could be a good shot.  We’ll see if MovieBeam comes back with a vengeance, or just fades into the obscurity of interesting convergence ideas gone wrong (where it enjoys the wonderful company of the Audrey).

A bit about a byte (and a bit)

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I’m about a month into the Netgear blogging efforts, and having a lot of fun with it.  Unfortunately, they don’t have their blog serving RSS feeds yet (although loyal readers’ll notice the titles got updated to reflect content instead of dates – hey, we’ve gotta crawl before we run people!), hence my cross-posting over here.  Anyhow, here’s an excerpt in which I quote.. me!

I might be wrong, but in my opinion one of the most technically confusing areas of consumer technology is trying to figure out how to buy a computer.  For example, I constantly get asked “how much memory should my computer have?” Now the “correct” answer right now is “about a gig, maybe more if you plan to do some gaming or video editing”  But what they are really asking is “how big a hard drive do I need?”

The next most confusing thing in personal tech, in my opinion, is helping make sense of the bits and bytes.  So I’ll start with a couple of simple definitions (and these might not be absolutely perfectly technically accurate to an engineer, but are pretty reasonable to the rest of us):

Enthralled?  I knew it.  Read “How Fast is 1.21 Gigawatts Anyway?” at the Netgear blog, in which I answer such questions as…

  • What’s a Bit?  How about a Byte?
  • Does an 802.11b router provide a fast enough connection to my DSL service?
  • Is it true that Gigabit Ethernet is a leading cause of tooth decay? fast?
  • What actually happened in that Wicker Park movie, because the preview looked a little interesting, but it came and went really quick, and I never really grab it at Blockbuster because it just doesn’t seem that exciting, although I’ve heard good things.
  • And more.

Treasureful Huntings of San Francisco for Make Benefit Glorious New Years of China

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IMG_3465 team Boarat Treasureful Huntings of San Francisco for Make Benefit Glorious New Years of ChinaAround this time every year, a clever man named Jayson Wechter organizes the San Francisco Treasure Hunt.  And every time around this year, a much less clever man named Jeremy Toeman smacks himself in the head for missing out on the fabled event.  But 2007 saw a collision of fate so grand it was impossible to avoid.  The alignment of my birthday and the hunt on the exact same day! 

The first, and possibly most important, task was to come up with a name.  I went gunning to win:

The Jayson Wechter “I Never-Met-a-Pun-I Didn’t Like Award” is given to the teams with the cleverest names, which are often related to the year of the Chinese zodiac (2007 is the Year of the Boar).

And thus… Boarat: Treasureful Huntings of San Francisco for Make Benefit Glorious New Years of China.  Didn’t win.

IMG_3455 clueNext up, the hunt itself.  Not sure when it went up (then down), but there was a Web page with some clues prior to the hunt.  To the right is a sample clue.  That was about the most obvious moment of the event (all my other photos of the event are online here). 

We met up at Justin Herman plaza, ready to psych up for the hunting, and amidst the 900-or-so people (here’s one account and another one here) became determined to finish in the top 5 percentile (for those of you who find that ambitious, keep in mind this means we really just didn’t want to be in the bottom 5).  A glance around at cleverly costumed teams and we felt a little, well, woozy.

IMG_3477 bart station to get under market streetUpon the beginnings of the hunt, we saw most teams grab a sitting place in the plaza or on a nearby table.  We naturally immediately set out for a nearby bar and ordered a couple of pitchers.  We did a little divide and conquer, and about 45 minutes later had all 19 of the clues “mostly solved” and a mapped out plan to find our answers.  Our first clue went off without a hitch, as did our second.  By number three, we hit the Chinatown Parade.  Luckily, we dashed under Market street to avoid the chaos, although got stuck a few more times (although the detour/pee break at the Westin was a nice moment).

Everything was going great through the first 7 or 8 clues.  We’d arrive in a location, quickly narrow down the specific target, jot down an answer, and be off like the wind within moments.  We’d play little games with other teams, making oddball references to nonexistent clues and other forms of misdirection, and our spirits were high.

IMG_3484 steps down from coit towerThen we got stuck on one clue in North Beach.  Then, disaster struck as we made the ever-so-costly mistake of misinterpreting another clue and walking all the way up to Coit Tower.  Yes, all the way up.  We were tired.  Not enough hamantaschen to go around.  One of our flashlights was dying.  But we rallied nonetheless! 

We headed down the steps, toward the water and our next clue.  Within moments we were back on track, but were perilously low on time.  We did a little walk-jogging.  Two, three, then four more clues nailed within minutes.  Team Boarat was back on a roll, we were the virtual kings of our castles. 

With less than 10 minutes left to go, we made the ambitious move of going for two final clues.  One we got, the other we didn’t (we later found out we were less than a block away), and we ran back to Justin Herman plaza to submit our entries.  And with that, we knew we were winners. 

IMG_3485 team Boarat Treasureful Huntings of San Francisco for Make Benefit Glorious New Years of ChinaNot because we got the most right (We got 16 of 19).

Not because we were fastest (The winning team was done 40 minutes earlier.  Jerks.)

Not because we had kick-ass red buttons that said we we finished.

Why?

Because… Well…  Unlike some other teams, I get a clock radio, they cannot afford. Great success!

Digg: Communists or KGB?

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There’s a bit of a brouhaha about Digg right now.  I read an article by David Cohn (formerly of the LD!) yesterday on the so-called “Bury Brigade” (the people who apparently hide unwanted stories from getting well-Dugg) and then today started off with a band as a Wired reporter demonstrated the effectiveness of “buying” her way onto Digg.  This caused quite the stir across the good ol’ blogosphere (read more: Boing Boing, Mike Arrington, and Mathew Ingram).

Now, while I’ve mentioned Digg a couple of times (1 2), this really isn’t the kind of right/wrong debate I typically delve into.  Why?  Well, as I advise my clients, getting Dugg might bring you traffic, but it doesn’t necessarily bring you highly relevant traffic, and can be as much a distraction as anything else.  Also, unless you are a tiny startup trying to get said traffic, it doesn’t necessarily really matter in the long run anyway.

The reason I say this is because the demographics around Digg are so wide and so varied, with a clear leaning towards “high-tech” and, well, young.  Five minutes of reading comments on any random post shows the level of mature thought and discussion is about on par with your typical AOL chat room or MySpace profile.  Again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it also isn’t necessarily a good one.

I’ve always assumed that Kevin Rose and the Digg team have good intentions.  Never met em, I don’t listen to their podcasts, I actually have no personal reason to think that.  But something about the techie nature of the site seemed to imply a certain youthful energy combined with a bit of an innocence that made me feel that they were trying to do some good (and not in the Google way of saying they aren’t evil, yet acting the opposite).

So when I first learned a bit about the concept of the ‘bury brigade’ and the ever-changing algorithms, I had assumed the Digg system was trying to evolve to follow a “Communist” structure.  All people can participate equally.  Those who participate more regularly become more noticed and influential, but ultimately anyone can rise/fall in the “esteem” of the masses.  UPDATE: while further researching this topic, I found Mike Arrington’s article “Digg should sue Wired” is presently the #1 Dugg story on Digg, and not a single negative-to-Digg article is anywhere to be found…

When I read Kevin’s blog post today, my feelings turned from being reminded of a Communist entity, into one more akin to the KGB.  Despite all the points made by so many different people regarding Digg and burying posts, Kevin manages to write an entire post that basically boils down to not providing any new information.  He doesn’t address most concerns, he doesn’t mention plans to fix problems, he basically says “spam is bad” and “the data on this page is inaccurate” (I paraphrased).  Note that Kevin’s post is a top-10 item on Digg (at this moment).

I guess in Digg land, all users may Digg/bury equally, but some do it more equally than others.

Roadmaster Lets you Tell Nearby Drivers how you Really Feel

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Anyone who’s ever been in a car with me driving knows I’m always having two conversations: one with my passenger(s), and the other with other drivers as they cut me off, pass too close, tailgate, or drive a “no sale blue” (a phrase that appears surprisingly absent on the Internet, only good reference here) Oldsmobuick.  Unfortunately, it seems that for the most part, these other drivers can’t quite seem to hear me. 

I heard today that Roadmaster USA is launching two products that allow scrolling messages to display, either in your rear window or on your license plate.  Not only that, it’s a customizable message.  Sounds like a product made it heaven!

The products come priced at $69, and come with a mounting kit and a remote control.  From reading the manual, it seems that the programming process might be a little clunky (obviously, I’d have it work with USB and a simple PC app), but since the pre-programmed messages are things like “Everybody is entitled to my opinion” and “Holiday Opening Hours”, I think I’d need to spice it up a bit.  There’s the obvious “LIVEdigitally” but really, how much fun is that?  I think my vocabulary would probably include:

  • Either “Stop picking your nose.” or “, , was that you?”
  • “No Vacancy” (I don’t know why, I just think it’d be fun)
  • “Days since last accident… 002”
  • “In the time it took you to read this message, shouldn’t you have been watching the road?”

From their Web site, it seems like the units go on sale immediately.  Since my wife’s current mode of ‘convergence’ is really about getting rid of extra gadgets, I don’t think I’ll be picking one up myself, but if anyone grabs one, come back and share your thoughts!

I’m also looking forward to a second generation version, in which I’d love to see the company add SMS capabilities so I can update the message in real-time.  I’m sure that’d be safe, right?

Explaining Routers, Switches, and Hubs

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Does this sound familiar: “Hey, I want to get online, but I don’t know if I need a router or a hub?” or “JT, do I need a switch for getting my office networked?” (well, your version probably doesn’t have the JT in it).  I get asked the question multiple times per month.  So, in my stint as a guest blogger with Netgear, I decided to get some official answers from Sanjay Kumar (the one who isn’t about to go to jail).  Sanjay spent a while with me, explaining a lot of the nuances to how networking works.  So, if you’d like to learn more, read on…

Hey, NBC, stop trying to spoil Heroes for me!

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As I’ve posted before, I’m a big fan of the show Heroes, for many reasons.  One of the things I really like about it is that unlike Lost/Twin Peaks/XFiles, it’s a quirky show that doesn’t have a huge weird mystery that may or may not get resolved to my satisfaction.  It has a plotline, and it clearly has twists and turns, but should it end this season, I won’t be wondering what it’s all about forever.

Also, despite it being so semi-geeky a show, it’s captured the #1 slot for Mondays, and is one of NBC’s highest-rated shows.  But yet any time, day or night, that I turn on NBC, there it is, a preview for Heroes, chock full of suspenseful-looking spoiler-ridden clips.  And it’s driving me nuts.

See, I’ve got this little problem in that, if I see something in a preview, I tend to remember it the whole time I’m watching the show.  So if I see fire in the preview, I’m waiting for fire in the show.  Doesn’t matter how quick, I notice it.  I’m not exactly bragging here, by the way, that part of my brain could clearly be used for more important things, but I just can’t seem to turn it off.

So please, team NBC, I beg of you: stop with all the footage from the upcoming episodes.  You have a huge fan base, and based on the number of fan sites all over the ‘net, you aren’t losing us any time soon.  So how about you let us decide when we want to go find a spoiler, and when we don’t?  You have plenty of footage to continue to get new viewers without ruining it for the rest of us.

And by the way, this goes for your Web site too!  If I want spoilers, I’ll seek them out (probably here – warning, that link CONTAINS SPOILERS!).  It’s not like you’re trying to peddle us on a series based on “From Justin to Kelly” or something…

Mobile Porn Industry: No Viagra Needed!

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I read over at CNet this morning that mobile porn today is a $1.6 billion industry.

I read over at CNet this morning that mobile porn today is a $1.6 billion industry.

I read over at CNet this morning that mobile porn today is a $1.6 billion industry.

Furthermore, in the next five years it’s expected to grow to $3.3B, a figure I actually find fairly low, as all the key contributing factors (3G adoption, more smartphones, better quality displays, etc) are all in heavy growth mode.  I still can’t believe it’s already earning that much!  Ready for the kicker quotes?

“Steven Hirsch, co-CEO of Vivid Entertainment, one of the world’s largest adult film producers, said that mobile distribution currently makes up only about 5 percent of his company’s total revenue.”

and

“The lackluster reception adult entertainment has gotten in the wireless market so far […]”

Only 5%?  Lackluster reception?  Wow.  Mobile porn makes more money than the entire Web 2.0 industry (no source for that, but it’s a safe assumption).  Mobile porn is bigger than the entire e-book industry. On the other hand, I guess it’s like saying Mobile Porn is worth about as much as YouTube…

I’m personally not all that turned on by mobile porn (yes, double-entendre, I know), but I’m also surprised at the hypocrisy within US companies on the topic in general.  There’s a general “don’t go there” type of reaction from the press (unless it’s scandalous, in which case we must rush out and cover immediately) as well as Wall Street (unless it’s really a lot of money, in which case try to hide it in the books as “services”).  I have two friends who work for companies which make a decent chunk of their profits because their technologies get used in the adult space, and in both cases the companies can barely discuss the related income. 

NOTE: from this point on, please use your discretion on following links, as many are “not safe for work”.

I wanted to try to figure out what $1.6B represented in terms of consumption of content, so I went looking for some facts and, heh, figures.  Now Telus Mobile recently decided to drop mobile porn services but, they were charging $4/video.  Adult star Tera Patrick just launched “moistmob” (link) which charges almost $3/minute.  Other services can be as much as $25/day for content streaming (source). A quick Google Blog search (term: “Mobile porn”) pointed me to the recent launch of my.iPlayground, a mobile adult content directory with a wide variety of both free and paid-for content, showing similar rates.

  • At $25/day, that’s 64 million days’ worth of subscriptions (175K years).
  • At $3/minute, it’s 5.3 billion minutes, or 148K days’ worth of consumption.
  • At $4/video (2 minutes long each), 4 billion videos were served for 8 billion minutes.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t seem to matter how you want to break it down.  With an estimated 400 million 3G subscribers worldwide (seemingly correct source), if 7% are paying for the porn (source, but its buried in other stats on that page), that leaves 28 million people spending an average of $57 per year to get their porn in the palm of their hands.

Sounds like a pretty sizable market.  Now let’s be sure to stay quiet about it, because the only safe place for mature content in this country is on the magazines in the checkout stands at groceries nationwide, or on primetime television.

How I Keep up with Tech Topics

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While I am probably not at the utter cutting edge of every bit of news out there, I do tend to stay slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to news in technology.  I’ve noticeed recently that quite a few of my friends and peers ask me how I keep up.  As I tell them, I don’t really spend that much time reading, it’s more that I’ve found a great combination of sources to use and reuse multiple times per day.  Here are my 4 sources, and a bit on when/how/why I use them.

My.Yahoo.  If they had a membership card, mine’d probably say “Member Since 1999.”  I’ve configured my page to show me sports scores & news, entertainment headlines, and more importantly, a variety of “traditional journalist” tech sources, specifically including the AP and Reuters tech feeds and some industry-specific topics such as “peripherals.”  I end up on my My Yahoo! page (that sounds odd) no fewer than a dozen times a day, and I also use it as my primary source for non-tech news.  I know there are more “powerful” options like Pageflakes and Netvibes, but My Yahoo works, it’s reliable, it’s fast to load, and it’s convenient.  It has the added bonus of being integrated into a variety of services I use already.

Techmeme (pronounced “tek-meem”) is my second-most used site of the day, and I use it to keep abreast of active/current technology topics.  Odds are quite good that if something is going on in the high-tech world, it hits the front page of Techmeme within an hour.  I’m there multiple times per day, and it’s probably the single best way to keep my virtual finger on the pseudo-pulse of the artifical heart in the technology world.  If I had but a single complaint with the site is my inability to filter out topics that I don’t personally care about (e.g. “Second Life”), but my eyes seem to do a good job of that on their own.  I also applaud Gabe Rivera (the creator of Techmeme, with whom I spent some time chatting at the IBD Network DealMaker Media event last week), as he built the site himself!

Next up is Bloglines, the first of two different blog/RSS readers I use regularly.  I use Bloglines specifically because there are certain authors whom I want to read above all else, regardless of topic, and I find this is the best way to follow them.  I know there are other methods of following feeds, but this is my favorite way to consume individual writer’s content on a regular basis.  By the way, my absolute top blog reads are (in no order): Michael Gartenberg, Dave Zatz, Jason Calacanis, Mathew Ingram, Thomas Hawk, and Fred Wilson.  I read quite a few others as well, and subscribe to almost a hundred blogs total, but something about the quality of content and the quantity of content makes them the easiest to follow (I like 0-2 posts per day per blogger).  I hit Bloglines about three times a day.

Last, but not least, is Google Reader, which I use once every day or two to look for interesting topics by other bloggers I like, but who may be either too prolific or focus on other domains from my most-needed content.  This lets me scan through sites I really enjoy (like Engadget, GigaOm, Scoble, etc) where I may look for specific topics, but just can’t read all the content they put out.  The Google Reader interface is really well-suited for scanning through headlines, and I’ve even added Techmeme as a source to it, just in case I find something through that means instead.

So there you have it, 4 great sites to keep up with the latest news in technology.  Use them right, and you’re basically assured to be on top of what’s going on. 

As a bit of an aside, the most important “advice” I’ll impart is this: make sure you combine your blogosphere intake with traditional journalists.  I just read this great piece by Dan Farber looking back on a decade of blogging, and I couldn’t agree more with the comments regarding citizen journalism.  Like everything in life, I try to avoid the utter extremes: the bloggers have a lot to say, but aren’t always right, and same thing goes for professional journalists.