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Category Archives: LD Approved

And I’m Back…

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backbabyRemember that time when I implied I was going on some kind of long break and/or walkabout? Yeah, well, that’s over, because today I’m joining CBS Interactive to run Product for CNET! #Awesome

As I pondered my next steps in my life/career, I spent some time reflecting on where I’ve come, what I’ve learned, and the road ahead. Of my 20 years in the workforce… 

  • I’ve spent 10 running my own ventures, 10 working for other people
    • 14 years working with less than 10 people
    • 19 years working with less than 100 people
    • 8 years consulting
    • 12 years in entertainment/media
    • 11 years in consumer electronics
  • I’ve founded the following startups
    • Focus Consulting (1996, sold in 1998)
    • Palmtastik (1997, closed in 1999)
    • Mediabolic (1999, sold to Rovi in 2006)
    • Stage Two Consulting (2006, sold in 2011)
    • Legacy Locker (2008, sold to PasswordBox in 2013, sold to Intel in 2014)
    • Nudgemail (2010, still running)
    • Dijit Media (re-founded in 2012, sold to Viggle in 2014)
  • I was one of the very first employees at Sling Media (VP Products, sold to DISH in 2007)
  • I’ve spent all but 7 years directly responsible for cash flow, payroll, etc

So when it was time to consider, “what’s next???” the first major decision I had to make was – startup or not? And as I reviewed the above list, and realized how much more I have yet to learn, I decided that “not startup” was the right answer for me. So then what?

What DO I want to learn/do? In no particular order, here’s what matters most to me (not including some basic Maslow-ish needs of remaining local to SF, working with amazing teams, etc):

  • I want to continue working in a Product role/capacity – I really enjoy building stuff (probably why I kept all my Lego bricks from my childhood)
  • I want to continue working in a consumer/media segment – My lofty goal of “make tech easier for my mom to use” remains.
  • I want to work on products that are used by *huge* quantities of people – I’ve built products in use by the low millions – I want to up the ante and take on a bigger challenge.
  • I want to work with teams where I can learn new skills, as well as continue mentoring people who work for me – never stop learning!

I first met Jim Lanzone (CEO/President of CBS Interactive) when he was gearing up to launch Clicker. Two things created an instant bond: our mutual abilities to quote Fletch, and our love and belief in making great products. Over the years we’ve stayed in close touch, and had a bimonthlyish lunch during which we’d kvetch, talk shop, talk kids, talk movies, talk industry, etc. And literally every time I walked out of his office I’d always have learned something new. When I emailed to Jim I was looking for my next thing, I was back in his office that day, to come hear about some perfect role he had for me. And keeping a long story medium, he was right.

I’m very excited about this next journey, and thanks for all the well wishes over the past few weeks. Only bummer was making literally zero progress on Orphan Black, but it’s still in the queue!

Time For a Change

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Change!

Today is my last day at Viggle, and it was a heck of an amazing journey. A quick look back:

The early days

While it’s still a vivid, present memory for me, it was almost 4 years ago that I joined Dijit Media, as head of products. Over the next 6 months we watched the company’s first app, the Dijit Remote, grow and evolve, while planning the “next big vision” for our startup. While initially the company focused on solving the challenge of “Control” in home entertainment, we realized there were even bigger opportunities on the horizon. In the Winter of 2012 we rebooted (aka “pivoted”) the company to focus on solving “Discovery” instead, raised new funding, and I moved into the CEO role.

Launching NextGuide

Over the following few months, the team got heads-down, huddled, hacked, and had fun with alliteration, until we launched NextGuide, which we called a “hyper-personalized TV discovery experience” – optimized for the iPad. The vision at the time was to solve for “what should I watch next?” – tons of research has shown that for the most part TV viewers sit down with clear intent for a specific show, but highly infrequently with a followup show in mind (though this is clearly changing in the OTT/binge-viewing era).

The app did quite well at launch, and we grew and evolved it over the coming months. Fundamentally we knew we were solving a real problem and building a product people really liked to use. We launched an iPhone and a Web-based version as well, each of which were fine-tuned for their respective environments. Further, I continued fundraising from esteemed Angel investors like Dan Robichaud and Martin-Luc Archimbault (of the “Montreal/Silicon Valley mafia”) as well as firms such as Alsop-Louie Partners and Menlo Ventures. We even acquired another startup, GoMiso, along the way.

Partnering with Hollywood for TV Reminders

One of the more popular features in NextGuide was the ability to set reminders to get notifications when a show has new episodes on live TV (or Netflix, Hulu, etc). During a team brainstorm one random day, we evolved the idea into “what if we partnered with TV networks to let them serve reminders to their audiences?” and with that, the NextGuide TV Reminder Button was born. Again, an amazing team effort later and not only did we have a working product, but partnerships with major TV networks!

Over the following months, we entered trials with almost every US-based network, and saw the feature soar in popularity. After all, as our logic went, why wouldn’t a network want to remind their audiences about their TV shows? This turned out to be a critical differentiator for the company, as we found a real solution to a commonly held problem by the networks. Further, by supporting major streaming services we were operating from a position where we could actually help the TV industry evolve from its broadcast/analog/nebulous data origins into the OTT/digital/big data future. Oh, and it worked – really well.

Viggle Acquisition and Journey

In late December 2013, while actively raising a fairly large Series A fundraising round, we entered partnership/acquisition discussions with New York-based Viggle, Inc. Dijit had a great team, solid product and features, and good customer acquisition. Viggle had a huge user base, active revenue, and tons of resources. Also, the technology Dijit built was not yet present in the Viggle app, and was highly complementary to the experience. The fit was obvious.

Post-acquisition the combined teams got to work and began cross-implementing technology and features. We added a “Celebrity Alert” feature to the company’s Wetpaint website. We included NextGuide “show pages” into the Viggle mobile app. We added Viggle Points to the NextGuide website. And much more. #synergy

Personally, I moved into the SVP of Products role, running strategy and innovation, as well as all West Coast operations. I had the opportunity to work with the NYC-based product and engineering team, as well as the highly skilled management team. In all my experiences this was my first getting real exposure to mobile advertising, learning about rewards systems, running remote personnel, and much more.

Moving on

It’s been a great journey. And as all journeys go, they eventually come to an end. So today’s my last day at Viggle, and I’m leaving my team in great hands. No regrets.

As for what’s next? More on that as I sort it out, but here are my priorities right off the bat (in no particular order):

  • Family time
  • Get outside – do some hiking & camping
  • Binge watch Orphan Black (this is important!)
  • Build something and/or rebuild my garage workshop area

I may blog and tweet a lot. I may go silent and introspective for a bit. I honestly have no idea – I haven’t had any official career “gap” since leaving Mediabolic and joining Sling Media (during that gap I got married and had a honeymoon, so not sure I can top that). I’ll be sad to leave this amazing team behind, but looking forward to see where the next journey takes me.

25 Apple Watch Impressions, Wants, and Thoughts

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Screenshot from my Watch of me using Watch to take picture from iPhone. Whoa. Meta.

Buying the Apple Watch on day one for me was the precise opposite of buying an iPad – I had absolutely no idea why I was buying it, but figured I’d either like/love it, or return/eBay it – in other words, no downside. One week into using it, and I’m well into Like, but not yet at Love. I’d hold the core Watch functionality at 50% accountable for the Like, 30% for Apple apps, and 20% for third-party apps.  Or, as I see it, as long as better apps come along, which is inevitable, I may soon Love the Watch. And astute readers know that I must end this post with “only time will tell” – apologies.

If you want to learn more about the Watch, or read countless “must-get” App lists, I’m sure you can figure that out. I’m focusing specifically on my personal impressions and experiences. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. Having the Watch is relaxing.

I put this first, as it’s the most important thing about the Watch. My iPhone now spends about 90% more time in my pocket, I don’t leave it out on tables or my desk, it’s just away. I can deal with at least 2/3 of my notifications through my Watch, and they go away. Further, I feel less urges to glance at my phone – ever. Considering how much I find notifications distracting and frustrating, yet utterly necessary in modern life, the Watch is a clear win on the claim of helping you deal with the basics of modern interruptions.

2. There are some useless apps:

For non-Apple Watch owners, know this: 100% of your regular Notifications will appear on the Watch. So much like how annoying apps that just show you the content of a blog can be, Watch apps that just show you something you’d get via Notifications are pretty silly at this point. Perhaps my feelings on this will change with more than a week’s exposure, but I’m seeing a lot of things I don’t need to see.

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3. There is a lot more iPhone co-dependency than I thought/expected

The Watch doesn’t talk to any other of my Apple products – so notifications from iPad/Macbook don’t hit my wrist. It’s specifically an extension of the iPhone. Further, there are many Watch apps, including those from Apple, which require significant phone-based interactions to work. This isn’t a good/bad thing, but it’s an important mindset.

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Letterpad game

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Post-Shazaming a song

4. Prediction: App Management is going to become a problem

Installing Apps happens via your iPhone, where you manually, on an app-by-app basis, “install” them to your Watch. It’s seamless and elegant. Or it is as long as I still have less than 50 apps with Watch functionality. When this hits 100+ apps, it’s going to be a nuisance. Ditto for “navigating” apps on the Watch.

 

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Installing an app on the Watch

5. The Digital Crown is awesome, intuitive, and I love using it. And I forget about it a lot.

It’s smooth and elegant, and whenever I remember to use it, it works exactly as I’d hope/expect it to. But most of the time I forget it’s there, as I’m soooo used to everything being touch-based. Not that it should work different on the Watch, but it’s a “Getting Used to it” curve.

6. Some very clever app examples.

There really aren’t a ton at this stage, but the “promise of what’s to come” is already clearly in the air. Here are my standouts:

a) Uber

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Perfect use of Watch. Either Summon your Uber, or see Current Status of Uber. A+ implementation.

b) Apple MapsIMG_6578

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Browsing, Searching, Contacts’ addresses, and everything you might want. Well done.

c) Apple Maps Navigation mode

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Having the Watch vibrate right when I need to turn is amazingly helpful. Possibly the most useful specific feature on the Watch overall.

d) Charles Schwab

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Pulls in my portfolio with quick at-a-glance info. Not particularly better than Apple’s own Stocks, but it’s my personal/actual portfolio, so no manual changes necessary.

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This is Apple Stocks – also nicely done, just showing for comparison.

 

 

 

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“Force Push” in Schwab app enables a 1-click to start a trade, which you complete on the Phone. Perfect use of “get a notification, trigger an action.”

e) Transit

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Real-time, geo-located public transportation. So much better than pulling out the iPhone for same info.

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Also able to pull up most recently booked trip on your iPhone

One caveat re Transit – I think it’s just a bug, but I’ve found it just doesn’t always update properly, and sometimes I’m at the office and it still thinks I’m at home.

f) SPG

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Upcoming Reservations, Points/Status, and keyless entry!

g) Yelp

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Find restaurants near you in seconds. And it works. And they keep it simple.

h) Circa

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Candidly I don’t use Circa as much as Zite for my news reader, but their integration of recent headlines is perfectly done. Haven’t tried Flipboard yet.

i) Mailchimp

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I really like the at-a-glance look at email campaign statuses. Another example of a non-ambitious, useful little app. That said, I doubt I’ll actually use it much, as I rarely just want to look at campaigns from such a high-level.

j) Wunderlist

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If you are already a Wunderlist user, their Watch extension works exactly right. Quick glances, ability to mark things done, etc.

7. There’s also a lot of “still waiting for the a-ha moment” apps. 

I have to imagine as an app developer with no prior history of the Watch that it’s a very difficult thing to have projected the how of people using it. So I think there’s a lot of “1.0 efforts” that will get better over time, but for now leave me a little “huh?”

 

Also, I think there’s a lot of apps that just didn’t need full extensions to the Watch, where a basic Push Notification does the job. Some examples:

a) Calm

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So it’s like the built-in timer, but with nicer background? Am I supposed to stare at this? Because if so, I’m not feeling Calmer…

b) Mint

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Granted I haven’t seen any real improvements to Mint since their acquisition, but this is a real throwaway. Poorly implemented, confusing to set up, and questionable value proposition. Would be better as simple push notifications.

c) Apple Store

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Haven’t yet figured out why I need this app. Maybe I just don’t buy enough products?

d) Starbucks

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Maybe when any Starbucks actually put Apple Pay terminals in place I’ll love this, but until then, it’s pretty useless.

e) Twitter

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Twitter seems to make a lot of people’s “top Apps for Watch” list. For me it’s a pretty mediocre experience, with hard-to-read individual Tweets (often cut off before 140 characters), impossible to Tweet usefully (no links, hashtags, @replies, etc). Twitter on Watch seems like just a bridge too far for an already difficult-to-use Twitter experience.

f) Skype

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I honestly don’t know what I was/should’ve been expecting here, but Skype on your Watch without even support for audio-only calls is pretty weak.

There’s oodles more, including some native apps, that could do a lot better, but again, 1.0.

8. Siri is making a lot more sense, and it’s working really well.

I’ve always enjoyed Siri, even as a fairly infrequent user, I thought it was a great foray into trying to make computing more invisible. On the Watch, though, I use it a lot, and find it works better than I expect – particularly for texting folks.

9. Evernote and Uber are the kind of apps that will lead to Love

Evernote on my wrist is nice for quickly searching for important info. But it’s much much cooler as a record a memo feature. My only wish would be recording audio memos – something I’m shocked isn’t default functionality  between the Watch and iPhone.

Uber, however, may be the most perfectly designed Watch app out there. Launch the app, and within a few seconds the familiar “get an Uber” button appears. Perfect, as I don’t care about my Profile or Invite a Friend or the few other things Uber can do in the iPhone app. Then, with an Uber en route, I get the visible countdown and map/status until the driver’s arrived. Them, while driving, I see the map of where we’re going. It’s just perfectly done.

IMG_656610. Photos is far more compelling than I’d have projected

I was pretty skeptical of any use of Photos on the Watch – considering how small they are. But I really enjoy having my Favorites album synched – it’s visually very attractive, a great reminder of using the Digital Crown, and a nice/comfortable feeling.

11. Force Touch is a great experience concept.

Your fingers have a tremendous amount of nerve endings and are incredibly sensitive “devices”. So having the “push a little harder to cause an action” is welcome, easy, and intuitive, and I’d hope to see it come to other touch-input products in the near-term.

12. I’m more impressed with battery life than I was expecting

I find I only need to charge it every other night – which, as a non-Watch-owning friend pointed out to me is quite frequent from a watch perspective. But considering the expectations were set around charging it nightly, I’m pretty happy so far.

13. The Remote and Navigation are the best apps from Apple

Beyond basic notifications, the apps I use the most proactively are Remote and Nav. For Remote, it just works really well, and I frequently misplace my Apple TV remote as it is. For Nav, the physical reinforcement of “turn soon” works great in areas where you really need your GPS – especially those “do I turn here or the next block???” moments.

14. I haven’t gotten my head around Activity yet

I like getting told to stand up once an hour – and generally I’m doing whatever it tells me to. And I like seeing the steps, and calorie count, etc. I don’t know if it does (or doesn’t) motivate me, and I don’t trust the accuracy (not that I distrust the effort/intent, just that I doubt all fitness tracking at present). Maybe I just don’t care much about quantified self – I feel pretty good with unquantified me.

15. I want more extension-of-my-iPhone functionality

My Watch should tell me when my iPhone is low on power or fully charged, and should give me the option to show iPhone battery life in the Watch Face. Ditto for cell signal/wifi connection. In both cases (power/network), these are essential pieces of information for actually using my Watch, and should be available at a glance.

16. Want. More. Faces.

17. The Watch could be a bit smarter.

It’s super-easy to add Timer or Stopwatch to the Faces. But if I don’t have it on, and I do have a timer going, shouldn’t this be a “trumping” level of visibility? I really like using timers in general (17 minutes of intermission between periods), but feel this should be perennially visible when active.IMG_6565

18. The Watch-to-Watch functionality is cool, but too hard to get using.

There’s literally no way for me to determine which of my contacts has a Watch, which really tears apart the concept of how cool the “send a gesture/tap” to a friend features are (and they are cool). Shouldn’t something in my iCloud ecosystem help me figure out who these potentially wonderful people are, and even where?

19. No more Phantom Ringing Upper Thigh

I’ve stated several times how calming the Watch is – but one especially pleasant side effect is I never “wonder” if I got a notification anymore. Phantom Wrist doesn’t appear to be a thing, and I already have stopped expecting it elsewhere.

20. Phone calls sound surprisingly good

Not sure where the mic is on it (and frankly, I don’t care), but I’ve had a few calls on it without the other party even thinking they were on speakerphone, let along Dick Tracy style. I’ve also noticed that if I take calls on it in windy environments, it actually outperforms the iPhone for avoiding wind tunnel conversation effect.

21. It’s not 100% calibrated

I definitely find times when I “pull up” the Watch, only to see a blank screen. And even a shake or two might still leave it blank. Further, sometimes I just have my arm at an angle and the Watch seems to think I’ve “noticed” a notification. I assume this will improve over time.

22. I don’t feel as lame as I’d think using the Watch

Whether it’s taking a call, replying to a quick text, or looking at a notification, it feels much more natural than I’d expect. That said, I’ve caught myself several times in the “I should really just pull out my iPhone” phase of things. Curious to see how this calibrates over time for me personally.

23. Others get very excited to see it.IMG_6560

Was at my bank a few days back, I think I sold 3-4 of them in the span of 2 minutes just by answering a text. There’s something that’s gotten people really excited here. Again, not sure how this plays out in the long term.

24. I want more in-iOs integration

On my iPhone, a calendar location is instantly linked to launching Maps. Not true on Watch – but I don’t see why not. When I scan an email on my Watch, all links have been stripped. Why not just give me the chance to pull it up in Safari on my iPhone, I can look at it later. It could even go into Reading List automatically. There’s a lot of these little “in between” moments that I think could be improved over time.

25. It’s still a keeper

I can’t project 3 months out, once the fascination has worn off. But as of now, I have no desire to return it, I enjoy wearing it from morning til night (I don’t bring any “connected” products into my bedroom/sleepytime places), and I feel it’s a general improvement to digital living. Or is that living digitally?

Will I say the same in a year? Well, as forewarned many words ago – only time will tell.

 

NextGuide, now with Amazon and more awesomeness

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NextGuide, my personal favorite TV Guide app (that I built at the company I run), is now updated to include Amazon Prime and Amazon Instant Video alongside live TV, Hulu Plus, iTunes, and Netflix.  It’s really a great experience to browse all providers simultaneously and to search for shows and actually know where they are watchable. You can get the update here on the App Store.

That’s the “big” news (yes, adding a streaming provider with tens of thousands of hours of streamable shows and movies is a big deal IMHO), but we also took the time for a lot of across the board improvements to the app.  Here are some of the highlights:

>> New Gestures – two-finger swipe within showcards, pinch to hide, fullscreen media gallery, and more!

One of my favorite things about a great iPad experience is gestures. One of my favorite favorite things about any app is hidden features. While it’d be fun to document them everywhere, we’ve loaded up the NextGuide experience with many new gestures.  Explore around, let us know what you find and think of them!

>> Enhanced Cast & Crew with 1-click saved searches and Wikipedia biography lookups.

File this under “finally!”  When we shipped the 1.0 version, the cast and crew view just wasn’t that useful.  Now, go to the cast and crew tab for any movie or show, and tap on a person you are interested in.  Want to find more stuff from them?  Tap “add to interests.”

>> New Category Editor with easy drag & drop category setup

While we made removing/hiding categories really easy in the app, it’s always been a pain to add them. Now, push and hold on anywhere in the “Category Bar” to get a slick interface to add genres, custom genres, and trending topics.

>> Channel Setup now part of Initial Setup Wizard

The customer is always right, and lots of ours told us they didn’t like the fact they couldn’t customize their channel lineups until after launching the app.  Now you can.

>> Improved “Your Picks” algorithms

Let’s face it, recommending content is a very hard thing to get right. Our focus is to get beyond the baseline concept of “if you like this then you’ll like that.”  We’re constantly working to improve it, and I think our users will see a lot of progress in this department.

>> Lots of other little new features for you to explore throughout the app

Thanks again to every one of our users, even the 1-star reviews in the App Store – its the best way to learn, and learning is what we’re doing!

ps – sorry about not blogging much, just been working on, you know, everything you just read about.

Introducing NextGuide

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It’s my pleasure to unveil my newest product, NextGuide.  NextGuide is a hyper-personalized TV listings guide designed specifically for the iPad™.  It’s been a six month labor of lots and lots of love, and I’m extremely excited to tell you about it.  In a nutshell?  We went to the drawing board and utterly reinvented the concept of the TV program guide.

If you think about the concept of a “guide” it’s something that’s evolved over 60 years from supporting 3 to 13 to 80 to 500+ channels.  But that’s really all it does, and let’s face it, we no longer live in a 500-channel world.  We live in a 500 channel, plus tens of thousands of hours of streaming content on services like Netflix, huge libraries of video on demand from our cable and satellite companies, as well as iTunes itself.  It’s effectively an infinite content landscape, and having so much content has crippled the formerly easy process of discovering shows to watch.

As an example, in my house at night, we start by browsing our DVR library, don’t see anything we’re in the mood for, then switch over to live TV.  After browsing (painfully) the grid for a while, we give up, turn on the Apple TV, and head to Netflix.  Netflix is great, but I have a tendency to see stuff I already know about – Mad Men, Dexter, Weeds, Breaking Bad, etc – all great shows, but not really anything new that I’m ready to consume.  Part of the problem here is catch-up TV: if I’ve never watched Mad Men before then I’m a good 80+ hours away from catching up to live, and that sounds painful.  Anyhow, after an unsuccessful attempt to find something to stream, I generally end up watching whatever’s on (either Cops, the Shawshank Redemption, or an infomercial), then go to sleep.  Sound familiar at all?

So we invented NextGuide, designed to actually help me discover things I *want* to watch. We do that by tilting the concept of Channels, Times, and Genres on its head a little, and instead focus on Shows, People, and Interests.

Shows – we believe people care more about the show they watch than the channel number or time it airs.  So NextGuide uses beautiful show cover art to make it easy to find things and “escape” the grid view of numbers and times.

People – we believe TV remains a central zeitgeist component to modern society. When was the last time you chatted with any friend about a show you like (or love)?  Probably in the past day or so.  NextGuide makes it ridiculously easy to turn conversations, not to mention Facebook Likes, into easily discoverable shows.

Interests – we believe people care about finding things of interest to them, personally.  We all have interests, from bands to sports, from cities to hobbies, and these interests define so much of our lives. NextGuide connects you to your interests, and finds them all on TV and streaming services, in a seamless, organic way.  Examples of what NextGuide’s found for me over the past few weeks: Bill Murray’s guest appearance on Letterman (seriously, how would I even have known that unless I watch every night??), a live Coldplay concert on Palladium (I didn’t even know the channel was in my lineup), and Bizarre Foods goes to San Francisco (not a show I normally care for, but had to see what Andrew found in my city).

That’s enough writing already, this is one of those apps you just have to experience to get a sense of what we’ve done. It’s a complete paradigm shift for TV viewing, and I’m happy to share it with you.  You can download it from the App Store, or watch our quick intro video below.

Introducing NextGuide from Dijit Media on Vimeo.

I can’t wait for your feedback, thanks so much for trying out the app.  Thanks to Apple for inventing the iPad so we could have such a cool platform to bring something like this to life. Extra special thanks to my family, friends, coworkers and investors who have made the process of inventing something disruptive more fun than I think I really deserve.

We are getting some amazing press so far today, here are some great pieces:

Oh, and here’s the actual announcement on our newly revised site!

My Top 8 iPad Apps of 2011

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On Friday I listed my top iPhone apps that I’m using frequently.  Here’s the list of what I love on my iPad:

Evernote

Evernote is one of my few mobile/iPad/Web/OS X utilities – I use it everywhere.  I have notes, future blog post ideas, libraries (I have virtually every quality “Future of TV” article written archives in a Evernote folder), lists, etc.  I keep copies of everything in my wallet, just in case.  I have an archive of every serial number of all white good appliances in my house (for when I call for service – especially the often-needed repairs – I’m looking at you, Miele and Whirlpool).  Everybody should use Evernote, all the time, for all purposes.  It might just save the world. Free (with paid upgrades for heavy users).

Note: saving the world not guaranteed by myself nor the makers of Evernote.

Jack and the Beanstalk

This “interactive storybook” has kept my 4 year old entranced for months.  It’s a simple retelling of the classic story, with some fun humor, and lots and lots of interactive elements.  There’s a little “golden egg” hidden somewhere on every page, plus tons of other clever little items.  One of my top 2 kids apps.  Paid app.

Doodle Buddy

This is a great sketching tool, useful for me and fun for my kids as well – a very rare combination.  The app has simple tools for drawing and doodling, can import your photos for fun, and has a great “stamp” tool.  Only downside is each new build seems to add some new popup that wants me to pay for something – which I “get” as it’s free, but I’d happily pay them something to get rid of the popups forever.

TowerMadness

This is the best Tower Defense game I’ve seen on the iPad (and I’ve tried most of them so far).  Easy levels are fun, hard levels are challenging, and the “madness” levels are so tough that beating them feels like a real accomplishment.  And unfortunately, I’m not Ender, so killing all these aliens is squarely a waste of time (except that I think everyone should play more video games.  possibly the real way to save the world, since I was definitely wrong about it being Evernote).  Awesome game, and one that the developers continue to improve, which is a major plus for me – one of the few games I’ve played on the iPad that keeps getting enhanced!  Paid app.

iMockups

I do a lot of wireframing work, most of which I do using Balsamiq, one of the few desktop apps I’ve purchased in the past few years (worth every penny).  iMockups is not quite as polished a tool, but gives me the ability to do the same via the iPad.  It could use a few enhancements (search!), and isn’t the most beautiful app I’ve seen, but it’s a solid performer.  Paid.

World of Goo

I’m rarely a big “immersive experience and storyline” gamer – I tend to care about the gameplay, balance, and flow more than anything else.  But World of Goo is the only game I play where I make sure the sound is on and I can get into it for a while.  The game itself is a fun puzzler, it’s perfectly suited for touch, and the storytelling and ambiance is perfect.  I’m hoping for a sequel, but in the mean time keep coming back to finish the OCD levels (don’t call it that!).  Paid.

Toontastic

Parents: go download Toontastic now.  No, seriously, get it.  It’s an animated storybook creator, and the user experience is so great my 4 year old can fully make the animations himself.  And that includes the narration, background effects, character and scene selection, and every other perfectly customizable detail.  It’s really great, and even has tons of online sharing features for those into that kind of stuff (I’m not, but I know everyone else is).  Oh, and not only is it that great, it’s free. Wowza.

Zite

Zite is the only app to make both my iPhone and iPad lists.  It’s my ultimate source of “being informed” on topics I care about.  Yes Flipboard is more popular, and Editions is beautiful (and built by friends of mine but I had already gotten so deep into using Zite that I just couldn’t switch – sorry guys), but Zite just does it for me (and personalized flow of info is a big deal when it comes to news reader type of apps, so I understand why people get so loyal to the ones they start with).  When Zite got acquired by CNN I was pretty happy for the guys behind it, and now, months later, I’m still happy that it hasn’t become the “CNN” of news reading apps.  Love. Free.

And, just like in iPhone, here are the runners up:

  • AppShopper – keep track of when the paid apps I’m interested in go on sale
  • #sworcery – it’s beautiful, I just don’t find myself with the time to play as much as I want
  • NHL Gamecenter – on the plus side, I can watch the Habs play, either in real-time or catch-up.  on the unbelievably pathetic down side, I can rarely watch catch-up without seeing the score in advance, because apparently the NHL doesn’t seem to care about those of us who cannot watch live hockey at 4pm multiple days per week.
  • Sundry Notes – this is an amazing note-taking / scrapbooking style tool.  super powerful, probably awesome for college students.
  • Tilt to Live HD – fun quick action game
  • iSpadez – great spades game, with live multiplayer!
  • Ticket to Ride – perfect adaptation of board game, just wish they’d let me speed up all the animations.
  • Majesty – another fun non-RTS RTS game
  • Dropbox – yup, it’s Dropbox – on the iPad. moving on.
  • Kayak – taking the depth of booking travel and making it work on an iPad is a challenge, and the Kayak app hits it out of the park
  • Waze – great on the iPhone, even greater on the iPad – free turn-by-turn nav!
  • Catan HD – would make my main list, but the app is just too unstable.
  • ColoramaMask – another fun drawing app for kids
  • Fingerzilla – crush, stomp, tap, destroy!!!
  • Pat The Bunny – good kids interactive experience
  • Talking Tom – silly fun
  • IMDB – if you are a movie nerd like me, you probably don’t need to be told about the app…

The most interesting revelation I had whilst writing these two lists is the breakdown of paid vs free apps.  On my iPhone only 2/10 “top” apps were ones I shelled out invisible coins for.  Whereas on the iPad, 5 out of 8 were paid (though if memory serves at least one was a free weekend download, but I could be wrong).  If I was a real reporter I’d go through my transactions to figure out how much money I’ve spent on each platform.  But I’m not, so instead, thus endeth the blog post.

Why the Mac App Store is Game-Changing

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Apple today launched their “Mac App Store”, something I must admit I didn’t fully “get’ at first.  Originally I assumed it was simply a dashboard-like interface for easily porting iOS apps to OS X.  It’s not, it’s far from it.  It’s actually solving one of the biggest problems plaguing “typical” computer users – downloaded and installing software.

This conversation should sound familiar to anyone under the age of 40 who has parents who use computers.

Me: did you try out [[[SOFTWARE]]] yet?

Parent: I couldn’t get it to work.

Me: huh, why not?  it’s pretty simple to use.

Parent: I don’t know, it’s just not on the computer, I don’t know why.

Me: did you install it?

Parent: Yes!

Me: okay, so what’s the problem?

Parent: Not sure, after I went to their website I never could get it to open.

Me: what happens?

Parent: It always tells me its installing.

Me: so you ran the installer?

Parent: yes.

Me: so what’s the problem??

Parent: I have no idea, fix it next time you come over.  How are the kids?

The reality of the world is tons of folks are downloading, but the successful installation and execution of software on computers is an utter mess.  And yes, even on OS X it’s a mess – why would I want to drag into the Applications folder?  Why isn’t that automatically done?  How do things get in the dock?  Etc.  The App store fixes all of this, and fixes it well.

With the latest OS X upgrade, the App Store appears in the dock automatically.  Upon launching the user is required to sign in to their Apple account (probably the worst part of the experience, as it should just pull in iTunes account info), then they can download/install/run new software as effortlessly as they can on an iPhone/iPad.  The new app automatically installs and adds itself to the dock – that’s it.

One other “oh, sweet” moments I had while perusing the App Store?  No, it wasn’t Angry Birds (seriously, yawn much? it’s an okay game, but it’s time to move on.  it’s like after they started airing “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” seven nights a week!).  It was finding iMovie ’11 available for individual purchase.  This is another important move, as Apple is unlocking the previously bundled iLife (and iWork) suites.  Perfect for folks like me who like the features of one ’11 app but not the other (in my case – I don’t want iPhoto ’11 yet).  This creates a lot of opportunity not just for Apple, but for other software vendors seeking to “break up” packages and make incremental additional revenue from the extras.

It’s not perfect, by any means.  There’s still no solid UNinstall, which is a big missing part (try AppZapper – thanks @MG!). For example, I can’t sort by Ratings, there’s no ability to preview apps, etc. The store is so simple that at times it truly feels simplistic. Some categories seem odd (does weather need a whole category?) and others completely under-developed (games? one category for ALL games?).  I’d also like to see screenshots get replaced with screenflows/video demos.  But that’s about the entirety to my complaints at this time, and that ain’t bad all things considered.

Since the original dot-com explosion, the tech industry in general has avoided new consumer-facing software like the plague.  Half (or quarter) baked Web ideas or apps get funding out the wazoo, but tell an investor that there’s downloaded software involved (worse yet – a plug-in), and they run for the hills (well, not really, since they’re probably on Sand Hill already, but that’s just a weird wording thing).  It’s funny that we’ve needed the success of the mobile app market to revitalize the “old fashioned” software market, but that’s exactly what the Mac App store is going to do.

If there’s one thing we can truly say the App store “killed” today, it’s the traditional installer.  And rest in peace, but you won’t be missed.

Would you like to become an infamous blogger?

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Been a big fan of LIVEdigitally for hours/weeks/years?

Have opinions on gadgets, convergence, digital home stuff, or other consumer lifestyle technology?  Or just an opinionated guy/gal?

Want to get on random media mailing lists from big companies, get PR blasts, butthen get questioned when you ask for review units?

Feel like expressing yourself in more than 140 characters at a time?

Enjoy writing opinions months before the “big guys” do, only to see them share the same thought but as front-page headlines?

Like saying “no it’s live digitally, not living digitally or live digital” over and over again?

Want to toil until the wee hours of the night writing stuff, all for no compensation whatsoever?

Then this is the place for you!  Shoot me an email, or leave a comment here and I’ll get in touch!

Introducing Legacy Locker

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It’s with tremendous pride and excitement that I use my first blog post in over a month to announce the launch of Legacy Locker. I’m one of the founders of the site, and I wanted to share a little backstory to where it came from and how it got here.

Two different personal events occured to me in the summer of 2007 that led to the conception of Legacy Locker.  My grandmother unfortunately passed away, but at the age of 94 it’d be hard to say she didn’t live a full life.  She and I used to exchange emails, a pastime of hers she also enjoyed with other friends and family around the world.  My father and I tried to figure out a way to get into her Hotmail account, but had no luck and basically the account is, for all intents and purposes, unavailable.

On a more uplifting side, my wife and I had a son earlier that year, and in the summer sat down with an estate planner to establish a will (did you know in the state of California that if you don’t have a will/estate/trust, probate attorneys will claim 4% of your assets, including your life insurance money?  scam).  Anyhow, after literally hours of discussing my family tree and my various assets (car, 401k, signed Jean Beliveau picture, etc), I had a huge binder: our “estate” (I always pictured something with a mansion).

Last summer on a flight (yup, I remember that well), I had one of those “moments” in life, where I realized that while my physical assets were protected in my estate plan, I had nothing in place to deal with all of my online goods and assets.  My computer’s password, my email accounts (all 5 of them), my Amazon store credit, my wordpress login, etc.  If anything happened to me, virtually all of these assets would become literally inaccessible to my wife (or others), despite the fact that I had a will.  While they were legally protected, in all practical terms they’d become effectively worthless (including the 70+ domains I own through GoDaddy).  Legacy Locker was born.

JT and AdamWhen I returned home, I talked with my wife about the concept, and she completely recognized the need as well.  I went to my business partner Adam, he too thought it made sense.  I talked to a few other friends and close colleagues, and not a one said “nah, dumb idea, what are you thinking?”  So Adam and I raised some money, and hired a team to get things done.

The site is pretty simple to actually use and understand.  Users register, fill out a profile, and assign verifiers (people they trust to confirm their passing).  Next, they create assets and beneficiaries.  An asset is the online account information to a website, basically a username, password, and some notes.  The beneficiary is the person they’d want to receive the asset.  The last feature is called “Legacy Letters”, which are emails that get sent to family, friends, or colleagues with a “goodbye” note (in the future we’ll incorporate video as well).  For more on how it works, click here.

So this morning the site goes live.  The actual working service won’t come online for a few more weeks, as the final touches get put in place.  We’re looking forward to getting everything up and running, collecting feedback, and building a great service.  Our primary goal is to bring Legacy Locker to the attention of willmakers, attorneys, and estate planners who help service the 12.6 million households who have wills in place (and 900,000 new people every year), hence our slightly early launch.

I’ve been building consumer technology, from gadgets to websites, for the past 13 years.  While I’ve worked on some amazing products in my time, this is my first opportunity to use technology in a way to truly help people.  Thinking about loss is hard (which is why not enough people do backups and only 1/3 Americans have wills to protect their families).  Dealing with loss is even harder, and if we can help make that part of life a little easier for some people, I consider that a great accomplishment.

Thanks,
Jeremy

ps – sorry about the no blogging all month thing – I was in the hospital dealing with a nasty combination of appendicitis and Crohn’s disease, but I’m doing much better now thanks!

Firemail iPhone app – Now I'm Typin' Widescreen

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I’ve always detested one (or two) thing(s) about my iphone. My primary moan? Why not make the landscape keyboard more widely available? On a scale from 1 to 10, using a portrait keyboard to type emails on an iPhone is immensely sucky.

Apple made landscape work in Safari; if you’re in the browser and have to type (in the URL, or in a form) the keyboard pops up in landscape mode. This means the keys are bigger, more widely spaced, and significantly easier to tap. This is good usability. In either SMS or email mode, I can only use the portrait keyboard. This is poor usability. Given the fact that the capability exists, I can’t see any reason not to make the functionality universally available.

Lots of people told me that I’d get used to the keyboard if I gave it enough time. They were wrong. It sucks. It sucked a year and a half ago, and it sucks now too. Hence my joy, my excitement, my joie de iPhone that Firemail exists. Firemail is an application available in the App store that lets a user type emails with a landscape keyboard. Lawdy lawdy, I thought the day would never come. The folks at Conceited Software are to thank for this handy piece of code. Let me do so now. Thank you Conceited Software. Try not to let it go to your head. Pun intended.

Now, the mechanics of the thing are not entirely ideal. In order to write these blessedly quick and easy to type emails, you have to load Firemail from your homescreen, not the email app. When the app opens you will be able to compose a subject and message. Once done with your composition you can save a draft (called a bookmark) or send to email. This is great for writing a new email. But what about replying to old emails? That too is possible, here’s how:

  • Open your email app
  • Open an email
  • Hit reply
  • Hit the home button
  • Open Firemail
  • Draft your response
  • Select “Send to Mobile Mail”
  • Boom shaka laka. Your email is now a reply to the email you were reading before.

I didn’t even know you could do this till I read a couple other reviews of this app. iPhone Hacks put a great one together, and so did Ben Boychuck at Macworld. Personally, I think it’s a very strong app, and it has a place on my homescreen. I do wish it integrated a little more seamlessly with the iPhone email, but it’s a very solid app and allows me to do something that’s frustrated me since my very first week with the iPhone.

The app used to be free – it was free when I downloaded it a couple months ago. Now they charge 99 cents for it, and I think it’s definitely worth that fee. It turns iPhone email from something frustrating and terrible into something that’s reasonably not sucky. If I were forced to give Firemail a numeric rating between 1 and 10, I’d call it a 7.

This entry is also posted at 1TO10REVIEWS.

Firemail demo on 12seconds.tv

Holiday TextExpander Giveaway Contest

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You may remember our post showing how to automate Bit.ly using AppleScript
and TextExpander. Since then, TextExpander has been bumped up to version 2.5, and in doing so SmileOnMyMac included our bit.ly URL shortening script in the new release.

To celebrate we’re having a holiday contest and giving away two TextExpander licenses!

Contest the First:

TextExpander has one of the cheekiest registration screens around; it offers up data on how many times you’ve triggered an abbreviation, how many characters have been replaced, and how much time you’ve saved typing. The first license will go to the reader who guesses the number of characters (as of the time of posting) that TextExpander has spared me from typing. The Price is Right rules apply: closest guess (without going over) wins.

TextExpander Register Screen

Contest the Second:

This started off because I came up with a new snippet; now it’s your turn. The second license will go to the reader who suggest the best idea for a new snippet, as judged by the LiveDigitally team. Extra points for contest entries with working code snippets. (You can download the trial version to get started.)

Submit your guesses and ideas in the comments (you can link to a blog post if your idea is too long to fit.) The contest deadline is midnight on Wednesday, December 31st, and we’ll announce the winners in the new year. Good Luck!