LIVEdigitally

Amazon Xbox Thanksgiving promo gone in minutes!

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Amazon.com Xbox Thanksgiving sale server overloadAs hit the whole geekier side of the Internet last week, Amazon.com had a promo for an $100 Xbox, available today at 11am PST.  I had 3 windows, with up to 6 tabs each, open as of 10:58am.  The site began timing out almost immediately, and so I refreshed the tabs as needed.  By 11:05am the pages that did manage to load showed the deal was sold out.  And I wasn’t the only one…

Amazon.com's Xbox promo sale sold out!

I wonder how many they had in the promo, and also wonder what % of dissappointed shoppers ended up buying something else.  For example, as a consolation prize I was welcome to pick up the “Barbie in The 12 Dancing Princesses: Interactive Princess Genevieve “Let’s Dance” Doll” for only $25.  What a bargain.

 

Gonna Smoke Me a Turkey

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turkey - 15 - ready for servingSorry for the lack of posts past few days, been traveling and prepping for the most important day of the year: Thanksgiving 2006, or “the one where Jeremy smokes a whole turkey (and doesn’t get high).”  My beloved wife bought me a BBQ smoker for my birthday this past year, and I’m putting it to work tomorrow for gobble gobble time.I’ve read a few turkey smoking recipes although at the end of the day it comes down to these simple steps:

  1. Brine the turkey (I generally go for a very simple brine myself – while I am certain that brining matters, I am uncertain that different brines have a major impact on the flavor) overnight.  I’d prefer a full 24 hours, but since my time machine is still on the fritz, I’m going with about 14.
  2. turkey - 02 - 24 hour air dryingAir-dry the turkey.  Again, this would ideally be almost a full day just resting in the fridge, but it’ll probably be a pat-down and about 2 hours at the most.
  3. Rub the turkey.  Don’t be filthy people. I’m going to use roughly the same recipe I do for chickens, which is a spice mix combined with enough olive oil to give a paste-like consistency.  For my devoted readers, I happily provide JT’s Super-Mega-Awesome Chicken Rub Mix freely here:
    1 part Paprika
    1 part Chili powder
    1.5 parts Salt (I like to use both fine and coarse salts)
    1 part freshly ground Black pepper
    1 part cumin
    1 part dried oregano (can be substituted for another dry herb as you’d like)
    1/2 part sugar (or brown sugar)
    1/2 part onion powder
  4. Smoke the sucker.  I’m using apple wood chunks.  I’ve read that about 25-35 minutes per pound is appropriate, so our bird should be good in about 5-6 hours.
  5. JT Thanksgiving 2003Eat.
  6. Drink.
  7. Be Merry.
  8. Fall asleep.

Click here for pictures from my cousin and I cooking a 25-pound bird a few years ago. Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Am I the only guy unexcited about the new consoles?

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Pair of PS3sRobert Scoble observes:

I’m sitting on a sidewalk with the first 30 people who’ve been waiting in line since yesterday (PlayStation 3’s go on sale at midnight). There are about 700 people in line at San Francisco’s Metreon.
…
They are closing four streets for a concert in front of the Metreon at 6 p.m. tonight. They aren’t releasing the names of the bands, but it’s pretty clear this won’t be a high school band playing.

From the AP (and more at Techdirt):

Nine months pregnant, Julie Mosley said she tried to ignore her contractions for the chance to score machines for her family, her daughter’s father and her younger brother.

“I’m going to hold out as long as I can,” Mosley said Thursday as she sat on a cooler in the 19th spot outside a Circuit City in Mount Laurel, N.J., joking about giving birth on the sidewalk.

Also from the AP:

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards acknowledged Thursday that amid his criticism of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a volunteer member of his staff asked the world’s largest retailer for help obtaining a hot new Sony Playstation 3 for Edwards’ family.

I don’t understand!  I’m all for participating in a pop culture social moment, heck I was in line for the advance showings for all three Lord of the Rings films (and accept full mockery for such activities, but at least I wasn’t in costumes).  But I don’t see how this applies to buying a new game console.  Especially not a $600+ PS3 or a Wii with a magic wavey wand (okay, that’s not fair, it does seem pretty cool).  But what’s the rush to buy it the day it launches?  How long does that moment last?

I did find the debates on the price/value proposition of the PlayStation 3 pretty interesting.  My quick guide to getting the most coherent insight is as follows: start on Gizmodo, continue at Good Morning Silicon Valley, hit the Utility Belt, then finish up with Davis Freeberg. 

I just wish the PS3 wasn’t so darn smudgariffic.  Not that I’d be getting one anyway.  I’m much more hot and bothered about the potential $100 Xbox 360 over on Amazon!

Jeremy

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Was doing a little self-Googling today, and noticed the following:

  • Googling “Jeremy Toeman” (results) has this blog first, followed by a variety of stuff related to me in some way or another.
  • Googling “Toeman” (results) gets my actress relative Claire first (darn IMDB), followed by me, and then my great-aunt Zerka later in the page.  If I do “Toeman -claire” (results) it’s mostly me
  • Googling “Jeremy” (results) gets, well, everyone but me.  Amazingly (to me), Jeremy Zawodny’s blog ranks higher than actor Jeremy Irons and porn star Ron Jeremy.  Then there’s a few other famous and not-so-famous people.  But nowhere in the first ten pages do I show up.

I don’t think I can pull off the same thing as Robert Scoble has (google Robert, he’s first!), but I am a bit surprised I’m not even in the first page.

Hopefully this post will help that.  I’ve learned a lot over the past few years about getting into the top results on Google, and am curious to see the impact of a single post named “Jeremy.”

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.

CellPhoneShop.net LG replacement battery charges up

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Real and fake LG batteries next to each otherMy trusty LG VX6100 (aka the HabsPhone) is dying.  Well, the battery is dying, and the phone might be on its way out as well – tbd.  I decided rather than buy a new phone, I’d just grab a new battery.  Went to the Verizon store – $49.99 no joke!  I googled “VX6100 battery” and intentionally clicked on one of the sponsored ads.  Did a couple of price comparisons, and ended up getting two batteries with overnight shipping for $45 all-in.I then googled “cellphoneshop.net review” and most of the reviews were again positive (for the most part).  I figured “what the heck” and bought it.  I immediately sent off an email to their sales email address asking them to confirm it would arrive by today (I’m hopping on a plane tomorrow, and can’t deal with 20 minutes of talk time anymore).

The email bounced.  Uh oh.

But then I noticed it was a typo, and sent off another one.  This one burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp got through.  To my huge surprise, I received a polite email which informed me the batteries would arrive not just on time, but a day early, and then 30 minutes later an email arrived with a tracking number.  Wonderful.

Funny enough, I actually didn’t want the package to arrive early, since I knew I wouldn’t be around to receive it yesterday.  That afternoon, I received another email from cellphoneshop with the fedex info and alerting me to the fact that the shipment wasn’t delivered properly.  This is A+ customer service in my book.

Real and fake LG batteries next to each otherThe icing was on the cake today when I plugged the batteries in and they worked just fine.  Good job cellphoneshop.net, thanks for your service.  You might want to consider a new domain name, but that’s just me musing…

Fake LG battery in the packagingReal and fake LG batteries next to each otherFake LG battery in the phone

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.

Web 3.0: the age of agents

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Blake Krikorian at Web 2.0 conferenceJohn Markoff stirred up the pot this weekend by launching Web 3.0, even while good ol’ Web 2.0 is still in beta (or alpha).  And I didn’t even get to go to the launch party, although I did get to spend some time in the halls of the Web 2.0 conference.  And the halls were the place to be for the conference – that’s where all the cool kids were hanging out (although I did cheer on Sling Media’s Blake Krikorian as he spoke with Beth Comstock from NBC – unfortunately John’s moderation of that session left a little something to be desired in my opinion).Nick Carr is applauding the 3.0 upgrade with his own personal style:

Personally, I’m overjoyed that Web 3.0 is coming. When dogcrap 2.0 sites like PayPerPost and ReviewMe start getting a lot of attention, you know you’re seeing the butt end of a movement. (There’s a horrible metaphor trying to get out of that last sentence, but please ignore it.) Besides, the arrival of 3.0 kind of justifies the whole 2.0 ethos. After all, 2.0 was about escaping the old, slow upgrade cycle and moving into an age of quick, seamless rollouts of new feature sets. If we can speed up software generations, why not speed up entire web generations? It doesn’t matter if 3.0 is still in beta – that makes it all the better, in fact.

Now the whole blogosphere is abuzz debating 2.0 v 3.0 v ???  Nick Bradbury states: “This weekend much of the geekosphere was buzzing about the “Web 3.0” article in the NY Times, but from where I stand, Web 3.0 does not validate.”  Tim O’Reilly, Mr. Web 2.0 himself, isn’t on board, and Robert Scoble wrote a fun piece referring to it as Web 2007.  Dan Farber seems to sit on the fence a little bit, but then Nick at Valleywag (nice redesign) goes straight for the jugular:

In short, the Times wants to announce a trend just in case that trend actually materializes in the next few months. But don’t bet on it — Google smelled a dud and didn’t touch this story, and neither should anyone looking for the real next big thing.

Here’s a summary of what I think, in easy to digest bullet form:

  • The term “Web 3.0” will not gain general acceptance.  Web 2.0 is too nebulous on its own, and since it’s more like an “era” than it is a “version number” it makes more sense that it’ll be identified further into the future as we look back on the era past Web 2.0.
  • Agents are coming.  If Web 2.0 is (roughly) all about AJAX, XML, and open APIs, then the logical evolution of implementing these technologies are intelligent agents.  Agents don’t just tell me when a stock hits a price, agents tell me that I should buy some GOOG because my peers and my portfolio reflect that I’d be interested in it.  Agents figure out that this weekend I am most interested in restaurants X, Y, and Z, and should hit a club where the DJ I like (because he spins the same music I have in my collection) has a set.  Agents use the open datasets and figure things out for me.
  • Data mining technologies are important.  Anyone can collect data.  Anyone can present data.  Anyone can sort alphabetically.  Building intelligence requires much deeper data analysis where datasets are viewed as a matrix of data, where seemingly unrelated information finally comes together to make sense.  These technologies become the building blocks for the next generation of web services (agents, remember?).
  • Buzzwords are getting more obnoxious.  Even if there is a new era right around the corner (which seems doubtful), do we really need to label it???

I still miss the days when you had to design your Web site to ask users whether or not their browser could support tables.  Sigh.

Is Good good for Motorola?

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By the time you’re reading this, all the top tech/mobility blogs have already mentioned the fact that Motorola announced today they are buying Good Technology.  If not, find a source you like and read about it: TechDirt, Engadget Mobile, BBhub, Experience Mobility, PDAstreet, CrunchGear, TreoCentral.  Ok, now you are up to speed, right?  Good.  Or is it?

When I think about the future of mobile phones, convergence, and business functionality, I see the world playing out in two camps:  serving the needs of individuals/small businesses or serving large companies’ interests.  Email on mobile phones isn’t really important for the non-business community, as SMS really serves their needs just fine.  Furthermore the average teenager or college kid can’t really afford a powerful smartphone (or its requisite data plan) and thats a hard sell even for their rich parents.  So let’s make it a bit of a given that acquiring Good is specifically to bolster Motorola’s offerings to the business community.

So for a small business, let’s say an individual like myself (or doctor, attorney, etc) or a small startup, what kind of mobile email needs do they have?  They probably do not have a dedicated Exchange server, so they have hosted POP3 accounts.  Furthermore, odds are pretty good they want to save costs on infrastructure buildout, so ideally they can purchase the phone(s) they need without buying huge servers or other back-end technology.  Also, they really need a solution with minimal IT requirements as they are probably handling this themselves, or have a friend or cheap consultant.  Either way, my hunch is they need solutions that work out of the box with as little maintenance as possible.  While I was a huge Palm fan back in the 90s, the OS has lost its way in the broadband era.  This leaves RIM and Microsoft as the other players in the space.  Motorola ships the Q phone, which runs Windows Mobile 5, which is an ideal solution for the above scenario.  While they’ve bundled the Good application with it, it seems like one of those things that doesn’t get used very much.  In my opinion, Good doesn’t seem to add value in this equation.

Next up, big businesses.  Big companies have IT departments.  IT departments generally prefer hassle-free solutions that are reliable and don’t break down on them, because they don’t like getting phone calls at 2am from their executives who are overseas and can’t check their email while bored in Heathrow.  Again, we come down to RIM and Microsoft as two very viable solutions.  With the inclusion of push-email from Windows Mobile 5, and its excellent integration with Exchange, I again fail to see a compelling value-add from Good. 

Maybe I’m missing something here, but I just don’t get the reasoning for this one.  It seems like an unnecessary buy by Moto.  Maybe they plan to ditch WM5 as an operating system?  Maybe there are some key patents?  Maybe they want to prevent the technology from going elsewhere?  Hopefully this won’t be one of those acquisitions that gets looked back upon as simply being Bad.

Geek Dinner 360

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Geek dinner 3Not sure why, but last night was a bit of a crazy one in San Francisco.  The whole city was jammed with traffic, and it seemed like a “full moon” night.  But the reality is that the whole town was abuzz due to it being Geek Dinner night! 

Now the invite list is slowly creeping up, but we ended up with a smaller crowd for this evening.  Our attendees were:

  • Melanie Westlake, from Yahoo!, knows all about mobile media and technology
  • Yours truly, from, well, my living room couch.  I’ve watched Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins three times this week.
  • Noah Wintroub, JP Morgan’s expert on all things digital media.  Let’s face it, Noah’s possibly the world’s expert on digital media.  Although at last check he still doesn’t have surround sound, so I’ve got him on that one.
  • Dave Mathews, Sling Media’s product/technology visionary.  Dave, we’re at 302 and counting…
  • Brian Curtis, currently consulting in the biotechnology space, also a former VC and expert on interfacing between Chinese and US companies.  Currently in possession of the smallest cell phone in the USA.
  • Nicholas Menaker, got stuck in San Mateo.

We had a great meal at Esperpento (my personal favorite Tapas restaurant in San Francisco) in the Mission district, and between roving Mariachi bands, we had some good geek talk.  I asked everyone to list the gadgets they wanted most for the holidays this year: Melanie wants a Slingbox (amazon link) now that they’ve added Mac support, both Brian and Dave want new digital cameras (although Dave mostly just wants a new home in SF… I guess Foster City isn’t so great for the bachelor lifestyle, eh?), Noah wants a connected media player (but he has to wait for me to design a really good one, since the current crop aren’t up to snuff), and I, in a very surprising move, want a new mobile phone. 

UTstarcom SMT5800Mostly because the battery in my current one is dying a painful and awkward death.  I charge it, and by the time it rings, the battery meter is down a notch.  Within 10 minutes of talk time I’m down to zero notches, but then the phone somehow gives up another 45-60 minutes of talk time.  Very weird.  I’ll probably just get a new battery, since my beloved UT Starcom 5800 isn’t out yet.  My precious…

Next up, our chat ranged to discuss YouTube, and can a sequel emerge.  Most of the table felt the answer was yes, reasons given included looking at Friendster v MySpace, as well as the simple fact that there is tons of user-generated content (or UGC as I heard at the Web 2.0 conference trade show summit yesterday), and even if YouTube is the big leader, there’s plenty enough to go around. 

Another interesting point arose here, which was the discussion of how we all use YouTube.  Nobody in our group “surfs” YouTube, we all go based on people emailing us clips or finding them on blogs.  Which led me to ponder: who exactly does surf YouTube?  Kids?  20-somethings?  Really bored people?

Everyone agreed that Ze Frank (pronounced Zay) is pretty darn funny, and one of the most compelling vlogs (which is probably why he won at the new Vloggies awards event last week).  Dave Mathews added a great piece of feedback to all the online video providers: if you are going to throw advertisements before the videos, how about you cache the video locally on our PCs so we don’t have to wait for the same Microsoft SQL Server ad video cache and buffer every time it repeats itself all over the Internet.

Melanie Westlake poses like a rockstarThe conversation continued through some other topics, from “best technology of 2006” (group: targeted video advertising, icon-based SMS services, cell phone bar code recognition, muvee)  to “what’s a good point-and-click digital camera to buy right now” (group: none, because the SD630 is the right size, and the SD800IS is the right feature set -although if you don’t mind the size, it’s awesome).  We also debated if the Blackberry Pearl supports UMTS or not (nope) and talked about mobile video messaging services like Veeker.  And lastly Melanie makes a critical mistake in her decisions to pose like a rockstar for Brian as he plays with my SD700IS in continuous shooting mode.

Thanks for coming everyone, see you in December!