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Category Archives: Product Announcements

Apple plays the speeds and feeds game

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Apple’s (disclosure: I own AAPL stock) long-awaited MacBook and MacBook Pro revisions were announced today, and surprised many by simply making upgrades.  While I’d have loved to have seen a whole new lineup of laptops, the reality is this move made a lot of sense for the company.  First, let’s not be so quick to forget that it’s been less than 2 months since they announced the Air, and it already has a competitor.  So for us to expect new form factors, designs, or massive changes to the “standard” lineup was not just optimistic, it probably didn’t make much business sense for Apple.

First, designing a product is expensive.  Apple invested a lot into the current MB and MBP lineups, and just finished the Air.  This all doesn’t come cheap (especially for a company that only invests 3% of sales into R&D efforts).  Like it or not, they are still the “up and comer” in the market, so they need to literally squeeze the profits out of every line they can.  It’s also likely that due to expanding sales volumes Apple is driving the costs of producing MBs down further and further, so they are enjoying economies of scale.  Creating a new chassis alone would mess that up.

Next, the company has made steady inroads into the overall laptop market, there’s no real business case for bringing out a whole new lineup.  The Air enables Apple to compete in the ultraportable AND ultrasexy computing spaces.  The MacBook Pro represents the “power laptop” and the MacBook is probably the best budget laptop on the market.  One has to examine the market opportunity (other than existing MB owners) before demanding a costly new revision to a fairly successful product.

So they are left playing the “speeds and feeds” game, wherein the upgrades are about numbers.  Bigger hard drives.  More RAM. Faster CPUs.  Same prices.  The goal here is to show how the units can perform (or outperform) PC counterparts.  I got my MacBook last August with 80GB of storage, which today is way too small – now it comes with 120GB standard.  These enhanced stats are good for the comparisons and the technically sophisticated shopper, but don’t really bring much “wow” to typical consumers.  It’s unlikely that my mom’s going to call me tonight all excited about the new Penryn-powered Mac she heard about.

Would I have loved to see Air-inspired MacBook Pros get announced today?  Sure.  Was I expecting it?  Eh, maybe a little bit.  Am I going to buy a Pro?  Now that’s the question I can’t answer yet.  I do know I’m feeling like my current MB isn’t enough (Photoshop loads slower than my Vaio!  No, I’m just kidding – nothing is slower than the Vaio, which I believe I have successfully sold to a potential scammer on eBay.  Awesome!).  I think I’m going to burrow back into wait-and-see mode for a few more weeks while I sort out the options.  But I’ll probably buy something, just, well, because!

Coming Up For Air?

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Had a fun morning keeping up with the Apple keynote from afar (though Mathew Ingram’s take on it was one of my favorites). I don’t really care that much about the online movie rentals topic, I’m sure others have that one cold. I don’t think Apple TV 2 (point oh!) will do much better than the dot-com version (what was with the madhouse cheering when he announced it had surround sound? hello, 1992 called, it wants it’s sound technology back). People just don’t want another box that has roughly the same content as their cable box. I think they should’ve put a Blu-Ray drive in it, then allowed it to do the “virtual drive” thingy (so smart!) back to the Air. Or at least have a Blu-Ray version. People would buy an iBluRay Steve, I promise. Then again, we’ll buy iDoggiePoop too…

Onto the Air. Wow. It’s well done, I must say (and far from useless, but nice linkbaiting there Devin!). Here’s my quick take on it, without having used one personally, starting from the dislikes to the likes:

TERRIBLE: 80GB hard drive? Seriously? Is that a joke? It’s one thing on my rapidly-getting-outdated MacBook, but in the newest of the new, it’s too small. My only hope is this is due to excess inventory from iPods, and they’ll bump it up to the 160GB version soon. And I’m not even going to address the 64GB SSD option, as $3K is out of the question in my eyes.

BAD: micro-DVI (mini-DVI was bad enough, come on!), no removable battery (but as a friend observed, I don’t have a spare battery for my MacBook either – I just hate not even having the option), lack of ExpressCard or built-in EVDO (that AT&T deal isn’t really paying off in this regards), price (it’s not outrageous, but it’s steep for what you truly get).

AVERAGE: expandability (I know there’s only one USB, but with a Bluetooth mouse, I think it’s fine), no optical drive (I just don’t think it really matters that much anymore, but I might be a little optimistically naive. That said, Apple did take the first step to kill the 3.5″ floppy…), missing Ethernet (ditto)

GOOD: screen, iSight, battery life (5 hours promised is like a *real* 3.5 hours, which is perfect).

GREAT: size (duh), weight, keyboard, touchpad (I knew they’d extend the gestures beyond the iPhone).  It might look like the “great” list is much shorter than the bad ones, but I felt those needed more explanation!

All in all, this is a very very impressive laptop. I believe CEOs, marketing execs, and traveling salespeople all across the country are buying it. I don’t agree with conjecture that it’ll cannibalize existing MacBook (or Pro) sales, I feel this is yet another arsenal in the Apple inventory as they slowly climb in laptop market share. Remember – the future of computer sales is all about laptops, and the more they offer in that category, the better that future looks.

As for will I buy one? Decent odds. If the HDD was 160GB I’d be a lot closer (for the record, I have a MacBook with an 80GB hard drive that is constantly full). I feel like it’s a step up, but not a big one, from what I have today. The biggest thing that is holding me back is the concern that they’ll end up revving the MacBook Pros with the new screen and touchpad in the coming months and I’ll have buyer’s remorse about it. I’m on the verge of the pre-order right now, will probably decide in the next 48 hours or so.

Full disclosure: I became an Apple shareholder today.

So… Macworld's tomorrow…

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I’d like to see a new MacBook Pro. The MacBook I have works just fine, but the hard drive is small, it’s heavy, and frankly, it gets really dirty really fast (and I use enough baby wipes on my 8 month old, thank you very much). There’s lots of rumors and speculation. I previously conjectured on what I called a “MacBook Touch“, and while I want it, I have to say it seems a lot less likely (despite continuous rumors).

I also don’t think they’re doing WiMax, unless AT&T is about to announce WiMax, which I doubt. It’s just a big gamble on a very big tech that is way too “out there” in my eyes. Jobs makes amazing products, and makes some big bets along the way, but this one seems illogical. So if “MacBook Air” really means something, my guess is it’s either (a) a very lightweight laptop or (b) a laptop with AT&T Edge services built-in.

But remember – “something in the air” could just as easily refer to direct-to-iPhone movie rentals…

Mark Evans is waiting for the iPhone “A” edition. Wait for it… Wait for it… No? Don’t have it? It’s the iPhone, eh? Hahahaha. Sorry, but I’m Canadian, I can do those things.

I won’t get to go to the keynote, although I may lurk around the Moscone with Robert and Patrick Scoble. Maybe we should sit in the Apple store and follow Engadget’s live coverage? I guess the other alternative is to chill in the Irish pub around the corner and play CrunchGear’s Steve Jobs Keynote Drinking Game.

No question that January is the most fun gadget month of the year.

Bug Labs makes CES announcements

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Bug Labs (whom I work with) announced a bunch of updates today, the day before we head off to LV for CES. For those of you following the company, whose “Lego of Gadgets” is catching a lot of great attention in the tech community, here are the highlights:

Pricing (including an Early Adopter Discount):

  • BUGbase $349 ($299 w/discount)
  • LCD module $119 ($99 w/discount)
  • GPS module $99 ($79 w/discount)
  • Camera module $79 ($69 w/discount)
  • Motion detector / Accelerometer $59 ($49 w/discount)

Availability:

  • Pre-orders start on 01/21
  • Fulfillment starts by 03/17

New module:

  • The Von Hippel module (named after MIT professor Eric von Hippel) is a “breakout box” for the BUG platform

New promotions:

  • Early Adopter Discount – price break offered to consumers who purchase/pre-order within the first 60 days. Now that’s technology.
  • BUG+EDU – promotions aimed at educational institutions, no specific details announced at this time.

For the first time, the company issued a press release in addition to the blog post, if you are curious as to why, take a look at my marketing blog post. Coverage is popping up online at Engadget, Gizmodo, Geek.com, PC Magazine, EE Times, Random Thoughts, Mashable, and Brad Feld, Fred Wilson’s and Bijan Sabet’s blog (note: these three are investors).

See you in Vegas!

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?

Is that 12GB in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

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Seagate driveFor the past couple of years, Seagate’s portable 5GB drive was quite popular. But 5GB is so 2004. Now Seagate is introducing a whole new line of portable hard drives, ranging from pocket-sized to pocketbook-sized (official press release). The smallest unit will come in either 12GB or 16GB when it ships later this year, which is a perfect amount of storage to have accessible when you are on the move. Here’s a little video we shot at Seagate’s booth during CES 2007:

I think it’s interesting that they are referring to the drives as “data movers” (under the Freeagent brand). I’m not sure if that’s exactly the terminology I’d be using to market portable storage. I see the concept that you use the drive to “move data” from one PC to another, but with 12GB, that’s a lot of data to move. I think a 1GB or 2GB USB flash drive is more appropriate as a “data mover” (unless you are doing a lot of video editing). To me, 12GB is a good chunk of a personal media collection. It’s all your digital photos, or much of your music collection. Don’t get me wrong, I love the product, I just think the marketing may need a tweak.

This becomes even more true on the higher volume Freeagent drives (500+ GB!) which are clearly more for personal backup than anything else. And keep an eye on backup – I’m predicting it’ll be a big trend in 2007!

More Seagate CES coverage: Engadget, Tech Digest, and Electronista.

Sling Media shows Clip+Sling at CES2007 – CBS Keynote video

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IMG_2713 jason krikorian - cbs keynoteLong long ago (last year), in an office far, far away (San Mateo), Blake Krikorian (Sling Media CEO) had a vision wherein Slingbox owners could easily share clips from favorite TV shows with each other. We knew it was a good idea, but didn’t want to push to far forward due to industry relations, copyright issues, bandwidth issues, etc. Looks like they’ve come a long way in the few months since I left, and a lot of these issues got worked out, which is very exciting. They announced two major new things at CES 2007: SlingCatcher and Clip+Sling.

SlingCatcher coverage is fairly pervasive, and I’ll hold off on adding any commentary of my own until we get closer to product launch. Watch this video or read about it at Zatz Not Funny, Engadget, Crave UK, MobilitySite, or ShinyShiny.

For Clip+Sling I was able to attend Les Moonves’ keynote during CES, and recorded a video of the whole demonstration:

IMG_2758 chad hurley - cbs keynoteIt was great to watch Blake up there, especially as Chad Hurley had been on stage as well. YouTube is definitely great for user-generated content, like the videos we all make with our cameras these days. It’s a real pain for most users, however, when it comes to TV content. Most consumers have no idea how to record video to their PC, or even worse how to edit down to the clips they want. I think Clip+Sling with a centrally hosted server launched in conjunction with CBS and other networks could be extremely disruptive in the online video space. I’m looking forward to the launch later this year.

More Clip+Sling coverage: Engadget, Laptop magazine, PVRWire, SlingCommunity, and Zatz Not Funny.

Disclosure: I am a former Sling Media employee and have some stock. In fact, I just found a couple of videos of me doing Slingbox demos with the nice people at BuyTV (and the Slingbox Pro too)

Also, I video’d the CBS “media” presentation during the keynote.

Netgear knocks it out of the park at CES

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Opening disclosure: I am working on a consulting project with Netgear, but that work is unrelated to my blogging about them.  I was invited to their press conference and chose to attend and got to see three new products that I was previously unaware of.  This blog post is because I am genuinely amazed with a product of theirs.

IMG_2328 2006 v 2007Now, onto the story.  Netgear had a press conference this morning and unveiled three new products which I will list and describe in ascending order of excitement and interestingness.  Before the demos, Debbie Williams (Netgear’s Chief Marketing Officer) gave a brief “state of the union” for the company.  Basically: 10 years old, market cap of $883M, products sold in >16K retailers, and they introduced 50 new products in 2006 (methinks about 42 of them were routers, but I guess it counts anyway, right?).  She then went on to discuss how 2006 was the year of building the home network for the digital lifestyle (love that term, but I think I may have heard it before), and 2007 is the year of delivering the experience. She then introduced Vivek Pathela, Netgear’s VP of Product Marketing to do the demos (again, listed here in my order, not theirs):

  1. IMG_2342 storage central turboStorage Central Turbo.  This updates 2005’s Storage Central device by adding the capacity to expand to multiple terabytes of data as well as gigabit Ethernet.  If you aren’t paying attention to the bits and bytes, it means it can store and stream HD movies around your house.  This is a fairly evolutionary/logical enhancement to the product line.  The MSRP is $249 (with no included hard drives, which makes sense since it’s so much cheaper for you to buy your own anyway) and the product should ship “early” this year.  More pics:
    IMG_2343 storage central turboIMG_2341 storage central turbo
  2. IMG_2348 dualmode cordless phone with skype GUIDual-Mode Cordless Phone with Skype. Now we’re seeing some interesting convergence happen.  Quite a few companies introduced Skype or VoIP phones in 2006, some worked well, some didn’t.  Netgear seems to have added a clever twist by incorporating a standard telephone in the same handset (aka Plain Old Telephone Service, or POTS).  This is a very smart combination, as it lets a consumer have just a single home phone that can work with both Skype and POTS systems.  Also, you can get multiple handsets all working with the same base station (although an audience member asked a great question: can more than one handset make a simultaneous POTS call? which stumped the Netgear team – I sure hope it’s a yes).  The demo went great as Vivek called Patrick Lo, Netgear’s CEO, and had a quick live call with near-excellent audio quality.  MSRP $199, available now (on Amazon)!
    IMG_2345 dualmode cordless phone with skypeIMG_2346 dualmode cordless phone with skypeIMG_2350 dualmode cordless phone with skypeIMG_2351 dualmode cordless phone with skype - patrick lo
  3. IMG_2333 digital entertainer HD GUIEVA8000 Digital Entertainer HD.  Oh my is this one interesting.  It’s a, well, “box” that hooks up to your TV and your home network connection.  It then streams your music, photos, and videos from any PC or networked storage device (NAS) to your TV.  It also streams from YouTube (they demoed a classic Diet Coke/Mentos video, which about 90% of the audience reacted as if they’d never seen it before – wow).  It also works in high definition (up to 1080p resolution), including full upscaling/downscaling of video.  It supports almost every video codec, including MPEG-4 HD, WMV HD, DivX, MPEG-2, H.264, etc etc.  It also streams iTunes (including protected content if from a Windows PC, sorry Mac folks).  It also has USB to locally connect a flash drive or an iPod.  It also supports multiple units so you can start a video in one room, then finish it in another.  It also has full PVR (TiVo-like) capabilities.  And from the demo, it looks like it works very well!  As a guy who has spent about 8 years designing award-winning devices just like these, I am quite impressed.  Quite!  MSRP $349, available early 2007.
    IMG_2330 digital entertainer HDIMG_2334 digital entertainer HD diet coke mentosIMG_2335 digital entertainer HD diet coke mentosIMG_2336 digital entertainer HD diet coke mentosIMG_2337 digital entertainer HD diet coke mentosIMG_2338 digital entertainer HD multiroomIMG_2339 digital entertainer HD multiroomIMG_2353 digital entertainer HDIMG_2355 digital entertainer HD

IMG_2326 dave zatz and sakshi goelI’ve seen a bit of other coverage already of the conference.  MacUser compares it against iTV and calls the UI “uninspired” which is a fair point, but I think making comparisons against a product that’s not really been “announced” yet isn’t quite appropriate.  Also, I disagree that Apple will beat the $349 price point, as I think they’d rather rip into their loyal customer base who are more willing to overpay for the Apple brand.  More coverage from Ed Kohler, Eric Savitz at Barron’s, Gadgetell, and SciFi.com, but for very extensive details, here’s the Engadget transcript.  I also bumped into Dave Zatz (with Sakshi Goel of Netgear), Netgear’s resident CES blogger.

So there’s my front-runner for most interesting new product of CES: the Netgear Digital Entertainer HD.  We’ll see how the rest of the show pans out!  More Netgear conference pics below and the whole CES collection is here.

IMG_2352 netgear new productsIMG_2340 full house at netgear press conferenceIMG_2331 vivek pathela, vp product marketingIMG_2329 debbie williams, cmoIMG_2327 stage

Europeans can now watch Slingbox on their mobiles

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Stickered PhonesWhen it comes to mobile technology, it seems that major carriers and phone manufacturers around the world have a common mantra: “they do it in Japan and Korea, therefore …”  The statement applies when trying to convince other industry players that a given service/feature will have huge adoption rates in the US or other countries.  The phrases sound like this: “The Japanese play 3 hours of video games a day on their handsets, and spend $1023 per month for social networking services and content, so we need to bring this to the US as soon as possible!”  For the most part, it’s a lot of malarky (is that really a word?). Why?  Well, if let’s say you have one country/culture in which 2-4 hours per day of train-based travel is the norm. And you have another one in which the average commute is done by car and is under an hour.  Sounds like you don’t have much of a match, doesn’t it?  So a few years back when the discussions of mobile TV first started blossoming in the US, I was personally a bit of a skeptic.  And then I helped design and build SlingPlayer Mobile, and I saw the light.

I’ve used SPM (as we were known to call it) to kill time on the tarmac.  I’ve programmed my DVR from the long lines at Starbucks.  I even watched some of the NHL Playoffs last year on my commutes home (yes, my wife drove, I’m not that bad).  Funny thing is, I was once quoted as saying “Nobody’s going to watch the entire Super Bowl on a cell phone.”  And while I stand by that statement, for this year’s game I did have my PPC6700 showing the game live in the bathroom so nobody would have to miss a minute’s action (go Stillers!).

As was announced today, Europeans (starting in the UK, spreading outwards in 2006) can soon have the same joy.  Instead of Heroes they’ll be watching Eastenders.  Instead of the Superbowl, they’ll do the World Cup (in a few years).  Instead of The Office, they’ll do.. oh. well… The Office.  Hmm.

In an interesting twist, Sling Media launched SlingPlayer Mobile in Europe with a mobile operator, 3.  Now 3 is going for some kind of quintuple or octuple-play by bundling a few other options and services with their new X-Series offering (live Webcast tomorrow), and you can read more details about it over at the SlingCommunity site (or Unwired or Gadgetell) .  Seems like an interesting play, but I’ve gotten spoiled I guess, since I’m a Windows Mobile user, and the extra services are all available to me on the 6700 I use. 

Slingplayer on Nokia N73The other interesting element here is this is the first time the Slingbox is viewable from a non-Windows Mobile device.  The handsets for the launch are the Nokia N73 and the Sony Ericsson W950i.  I think it’ll be interesting to see the performance comparisons as more and more users adopt the service.

Good thing the Internet rumor mill didn’t go too far after Blake mentioned something about a mobile carrier at last week’s Web 2.0 show.  Check out speculation at Unwired, MocoNews, and Engadget.  It doesn’t take too many hops in the blogosphere to go from “idle comment” to “solid fact” these days.  Either way, congrats to Sling and 3 for putting together a great relationship that brings smart value-added services to their customer bases.

Akihabara Subway stopWell, time for me to get back to playing 3D interactive multiplayer video games on my mobile phone with built-in GPS, DVR, MP3, and waffle-making capabilities.  I’ve got a long way to go to get to Akihabara.

Facial Recognition Firm Polar Rose gets funded!

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I like Flickr for storing and sharing my online photos (I like Zooomr too, but Flickr is my current home).  Works great, easy to upload, easy to use, easy to share.  I’ve made my sets, tagged some pictures, and organized the majority of my pictures there.  I’ve even taken the time, for reasons yet to be clear even to myself, to “geotag” many of my photos.  Geotagging is cool, but until it’s built-into more cameras, it’s mostly a waste of time.  Why do I say that?  Because, in my opinion, to gain true mass adoption of advanced organizational tools, they need automation.  Enter Polar Rose.

Polar Rose has something in common with my old couch and some shelves in my kitchen – it’s from Sweden.  The company has technology that allows for automatic facial recognition in digital photos.  A more techie version of this can be found here:

Collective intelligence is a key part of the Polar Rose technology. It will be used to improve search for photos and search algorithms, according to the company’s founder and CEO and Chief Technology Officer, Jan Erik Solem.

This all translates to something like this:  the more people who positively identify faces in pictures, the better the whole system works.  This creates a nice rosy image (ugh, what an awful awful pun) of the future for better organization of pictures.  Don’t get it yet?

Imagine you and your friends take a bunch of pictures on your road trip.  Now your well-organized, almost-OCD-like friend takes the time to tag all the pictures.  Then you upload yours, and every picture you are in is automatically labeled with your names.  You never have to touch them.  Ever again.

They received $5 million Kroner US in funding, and if they can even pull off a rudimentary version of what they are promising, I can only envision a… yes… it’s coming… again… wait for it… rosy future!  More on the funding news today at Red Herring, StartupSquad, and Digital Media Wire.

I wanted to get some kind of pun pertaining to the polar part, but it’s not as easy to roll in as rosy was.  One could call it, in fact, the polar opposite.

Like.com: great concept, if they can market it

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As is becoming more and more of the case these days, a new site or service launches, and it’s all anyone is talking about.  And here I am, following in the footsteps.  Sigh.

Over the last couple of years I’ve met senior executives from virtually every major electronics (and mainstream) retailer, and have learned a tremendous amount about consumers and how they shop (both online and offline).  For example, did you know that in traditional, married households the so-called “head of household” (read: man) makes less than 5% of all major purchasing decisions alone, whereas almost 90% of the decisions are made solo by the wife?  And I’m not being sexist here, I know there are tons of people and lifestyles that don’t fit this pattern.  But in the majority of US households, most spending in the home is done by the woman, without consulting the husband. 

Want another neat data point?  Men buy things based on features, descriptions, etc.  Women buy things visually.  You know how most online retailers work today?  Lots of descriptions, text, features and benefits, complemented with a few pictures. So what does this all add up to?  Most online shopping sites today are missing out on the majority of buyers.  What’s missing? The visuals.  Welcome to like.com.

Like.com (from Riya) is a visual shopping system.  There are a few hands-on reviews and commentary you can read (pick your favorite: ZDNet, GigaOm, TechCrunch, BusinessWeek, Robert Scoble, Thomas Hawk).  I’m going to skip the usual rigamarole of anaylizing how good their algorithms work, go check out one of the others’ for that.  Whether it’s perfect or not today, I generally have enough faith in engineers and entrepreneurs that they’ll continue to improve it to the point where it works as promised.  And if they don’t, well, someone else will come along instead.  Instead, I’m a bit more interested in the launch itself.

Right now, they have focused on fashion (a move Don Dodge likes).  If you go back and read above and recall that the biggest category of shoppers in the US is women, I think this is a phenomenal move.  I’ve seen other newfangled attempts to launch online stores, with wikis and whatis and kiwis and whatnot, but at the end of the day, in my opinion there is no opportunity for doing this in the tech market.  If you want to buy a digital camera or a Slingbox or a plasma, buy.com + amazon.com + cnet is sufficient for 90% of the market. 

But if a woman wants to buy shoes or purses online, the current offerings are in every way unsatisfactory.  Yeah, there’s some pictures and all, but it’s not enough.  It approaches the sale from a male perspective.  Like.com is the right approach to this huge, untapped market.  So now the question is, can they market the service correctly?

Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington give them praise for their methods of swamping the blogosphere (more details from the CEO himself).  I agree with them, they did hit the bloggers and hit them perfectly.  But my question is – did they hit the right blogosphere?  They sure got the Web 2.0 and technology bloggers abuzz.  And I’ll bet they got a ton of guys to hit the site today.  But I have a hunch their sales numbers are going to be dismal compared to their traffic.

Like.com needs to do some very aggressive viral and traditional marketing, and they need to do it to the right audience.  The traffic from today’s spike may well diminish to nothing very very quickly, unless all us technophiles are out there telling their wives and girlfriends about the site.  I’m sure they’ll own the term “visual shopping” in Google for a while, but who cares?  It’s not as if there are flocks of women googling that term right now (otherwise you’d already see different results from that term than you do today).

So congratulations on the launch, team Like.  You have built a potentially huge success.  Executing on it is a big challenge, and hopefully you’ll set your sights on the right market, because the one you are after did not hear about your site launch today.

UPDATE: Robert Scoble pointed out that in his interview with Munjal Shah, Like.com/Riya’s CEO, Munjah mentions an extensive press tour with fashion and consumer magazines.  Scoble also did a video demo of Like.com which you can check out as well.  But unlike Maryam, my wife does buy stuff online (and sells stuff too), however she didn’t have a great Like.com experience today – but I’m sure I can get her back to try again… 

Slingbox for Mac now available in beta!

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

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

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

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

Happy downloading!