LIVEdigitally – Page 44 – Jeremy Toeman's Blog

A bit about a byte (and a bit)

Posted on March 6, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

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

Posted on March 6, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

Around 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.

Next 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.

Upon 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.

Then 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.

Not 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?

Posted on March 1, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

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

Posted on February 28, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

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?

Spotplex – A different kind of Site Voting

Posted on February 28, 2007 by Guest Contributor

A new site called Spotplex launched recently and it has a different way to find highly rated sites different than the way Digg does. Instead of having users rate your site like Digg does, your site is rated by how many views a certain page or post receives. The more views the higher rated your page or post receives. This is done by the webmaster putting a small java script in the page and whenever it is viewed it gets counted by Spotplex.

The results on their site look similar to Digg, showing very popular content, latest content, or by tags or publisher.
The first thing that comes to mind is how they are going to handle the possibility for abuse or mislabeling. Hopefully they have thought this through carefully and have devised some ways to handle it. They also do not have a place to comment on the post, like Digg does To comment you would have to go to the original site and page. This is great for the original site because it forces people to go back to the originating site to make comments. Not too great for the user, most like to comment directly at the post, like Digg does.

They are taking only 1,000 blogs right now, and is still in Beta. I can definetly see a problem with the loading speed of the site. They will need to fix this right away if people are going to stick around and they are going to grow. They also have several different ways sites can create widgets or embed code into their own page to show specific posts based upon a selected criteria. They also have added RSS feeds to the site. But, again the feed is very slow to load.

Explaining Routers, Switches, and Hubs

Posted on February 27, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

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!

Posted on February 26, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

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!

Posted on February 26, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

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

Posted on February 25, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

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.

Trying a New Stereo: Pioneer VSX-80TXV

Posted on February 23, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

Back before there were many gadgets and gizmos, cool mobile phones and MP3 players, the hot topic of consumer technology centered around audio/video gear. Personally, my first home surround sound setup involved a HiFi VCR and a Dolby Pro Logic receiver. We’ve come a long way from there, with 7.1 (or more) channel digital surround sound, pre- and post-processing, digital filters, and more.

My current stereo is a Sony DA30ES with 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS support. It has a bunch of inputs and outputs, although all are analog. I received a pretty little (well, not-so-little) package in the mail this week with a new Pioneer VSX-80TXV A/V receiver. Oooh, integrated HDMI switch! Ahhh, THX-certified. Ohhh, so many ins and outs. Me likey!

I’m going to make the switch this coming week, although I’m going to have a little ‘guest panel’ come over beforehand so we can do a little comparison testing. It’s a little tricky to test since it’s so subjective and based entirely on short-term memory, but we’ll do our best. Some pictures below, more online here.

Australia's Broadband Drought……. Caused by?

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Guest Contributor

So the broadband problem in Australia is “getting worse”, according to a propaganda message by Telstra yesterday at their ~~Back Telstra – Campaign~~ Don’t-Hate-Us campaign. Which I definitely agree, that our broadband adoption rates are falling that behind of even emerging countries, yet alone against the developed ones.

Now We’re Talking

Some key points to note in the meeting were:

– They said: We’re not a monopoly in the market. I point out:(Telstra has 65% market share)

– They said: There are several hundred service providers in the market I say:( (Yes, and Telstra leases lines to 98% of them)

– They said: Talks regarding broadband de-monopolisation broke down because of the regulators I say:( (Well obviously because you didn’t want to let go of your market share!)

Then he went on whinging about how Australia needs to adopt broadband faster and no one’s doing anything about it. As you can clearly see, if you were the Monopoly, you have to make the first move and stop blame shifting it on everyone else.

And what’s worse! This happened: Telstra Raises Prices- AGAIN

I’m amazed at the irony where a service provider who owns the copper lines, can also compete in the market where they provide products to resellers, and then compete against them. It surely doesn’t separate Telstra’s power to, “Hey! Let’s screw everyone and raise the cost of our Leased Lines so that we can compete”. And they go ahead and compete against these resellers by selling broadband, fixed line services and mobile services.

Well then, if Telstra had a mum, she’d cane him for this nonsense.

Dialing in to the Emerging Telephony Conference

Posted on February 21, 2007 by Jeremy Toeman

ETel logo As any of my regular readers have figured out, I love CES, it’s my favorite technology conference (as opposed to CeBIT, which is my least favorite – ugh, Hannover). The next-most enjoyable tech activities to me are the ones where you get to see upcoming stuff that’s either just reaching the market as well as the stuff that may never hit the market (Wired’s NextFest is a great example). So when I heard about O’reilly’s eTel conference here in my own backyard (SF Airport Marriott), I thought it sounded like a good thing to check out.

Here’s the official blurb:

Opportunity Doesn’t Always Knock, Sometimes it Calls. Have you answered the call yet to attend the hottest telephony conference of the year? The Emerging Telephony Conference takes place next week February 27 to March 1, 2007 in Burlingame, California. ETel explores the strategies for taming disruption and exploiting opportunities being created by web telephony innovations.

You can see the list of speakers here and the full schedule is here. I’m not exactly sure if I’ll make it to all the sessions or just 2 of the days, but if anyone wants to geek out at lunch or something, get in touch.

Also, the kind folks at O’Reilly are giving LD readers a special 40% off discount. Not too shabby, eh? Register today with code etel07fnf40.

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