Ephemera

Symbian>Nokia+Android

The Nokia/Symbian deal was announced today. The quoted phrase "simplifying the software supply chain" is priceless in context.

Also, Chetan sent over a link to the Wired story this morning. Interesting read.

CRMbrella vs Bad Software

Charlie and Co. have just released their groundbreaking CRM product for SMBs, CRMbrella. If you're a small business an you're looking for a way to manage your prosepcts and customers, look no further. In celebration of this release, I am linking to customer reviews of one the the dominant competing products, Act!. My favorite review? The one entitled "Just Don't Want to Believe How Bad This? Read the Reviews!"

What a long strange trip it's been

Check out Graeme on Graeme on Steve. It's a great story told by Graeme, one the most dialed-in marketing guys (and bloggers) in MSP.

Breakthrough Devices

SAI has a bit here about Kindle sales. The fact that the original Blackberry, which I owned in 1999, sold only 165,000 in its first year surprises me. That the Amazon may ship as many as 600k units in the Kindle's first year, presumably in the Americas, is pretty impressive when a poll suggests that ~25% of Americans don't read books.

Kindle Up

I've had the Amazon Kindle for just over two weeks. Having followed E Ink for a few years and having played with the Sony Reader, I was a skeptic. Not so much now. A few observations:

• It is smaller and less odd looking than it appears in photos. This is attributable to the angles used to acheive the form factor.
• The display, as anticipated, is great, even in direct sunlight.
• The design and usability are quite good; there is some unpredictable latency.
• While "always on" it lacks simple sharing functionality, presumably because of DRM.
• Whispernet makes it a standalone device- I've not had a need to tether it to my laptop.
• The overall portability makes it great for business travel.

The business model has been beaten tirelessly (and often not well), so I won't address it other than to suggest that anyone who still uses Gilette as a proxy for a consumables business model should pick up a head cleaner for his/her VCR next time he/she is at the local radio store.

Critics who pan the device for lacking a color display are missing the point. The baseline here is ink and paper and a bound publication or newspaper.

Outside of typography, print publishing has arguably seen no consumer-facing innovation or product management for the last five centuries (graphic designers will likely disagree). This, coupled with the fact that most coporeal publications are buried in artifacts of production and efficiency (or lack thereof), means that the reading experience has never been about the reader. The Kindle is meaningful attempt to change that.

Will authors, publisher, and rights holders follow suit quickly enough (or at all) to make the Kindle a success in the mass market? I won't speculate. For the moment, the Kindle has a spot on my nightstand.

03/08/08

I'm at LAX waiting to board SQ011 to Narita, and I'm posting this from a Nokia E61, which has emerged from the drawer as the most versatile world phone I've had. This will be an interesting trip and I'll attempt to blog it as I go. More to come...

Human Banners- Oh Wait, They're Called Sandwich Boards?

HB recently wrote a pretty compelling summary of the relative size of Google, both in terms of market cap and share of the ad market. Eye opening, to say the least: Welcome To The Googleconomy.

Those who have been viewing the gPhone-Android-OHA developments of late as a Symbian rehash or a non-event should look at Google's position in the overall advertising market. It's amazing to me that when a company that makes its money in advertising (and not just any company) leads the launch of a new mobile platform, so much of the discussion remains around software platform and applications.

It's not spam, it's very costly and ineffective unsolicited email outreach.

Chris Anderson publishes a list of banned flack here. Scan the list for familiar names- if you're on the client side it may be a good time to revisit that monthly retainer.

Much ado about...

Over the past few days the discussion around who "invented" video overlay ads has reached a new level of, well, intensity Videoegg greeted YouTube's announcement with a gutsy positioning "welcoming YouTube" to the format, which provoked a response from Jeremy and the discussion devolved into this (you can see my comments here).

While Videoegg's response to YouTube may have seemed a bit silly, it helped create a debate (admittedly with the help of someone looking to start a debate) in which Videoegg is mentioned in the same breath as YouTube and Brightcove.

The interesting thing here is not the debate over the overlay ad, but, given that there are an infinite number of potential formats for ad units in digital video, why anyone would focus on the format itself. The challenge for Internet video is to make new saleable ad units, and that requires participation from major stakeholders- consumers, agencies, and advertisers. The divide between the what is technically possible with Internet video and what is being bought by advertisers is vast- and the energy around something as seemingly simple as an overlay ad only highlights this gap.

Quote of the Day

From the Washington Post:

"Drinking and driving is never a good idea - least of all when the vehicle involved is a multi-billion dollar Space Shuttle or a high performance jet aircraft," said Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), chairman of the Science and Technology committee.

You can read the story here.

System of a Down

As a Flickr user, I concur with Techcrunch- the last line is quite funny:

Adding Another Axis

Speaking of email, this solution is so off course that it's amusing.

Break the Box

Om has written an interesting blurb on email. Email inherits many of the targeting and noise problems inherent in physical mail, only the problem is much worse because the cost of electronic postage is dramatically cheaper.

Folks have been working on aspects of this for a long time. Goodmail is doing a few interesting things in certification. Boxbe is taking the time-honored approach of trying legitimize your inbox as a marketing channel. Others are making a run at validation, electronic postage et al.Google has tried to solve part of the problem with search (presumably Yahoo will through its Bloomba acquisition).

There is no doubt that authentication, categorization, search and relative prioritization are important in email.

Email may need improvements in technology, but it is broken as a consumer product (perhaps it's a victim of its own moniker). The physical mailbox doesn't scale. The mailbox metaphor in email doesn't either. It's a monolith.

For most people (at least people I know), I would venture to say that email is a firehose of too many kinds of information from too many kinds of sources and relationships. I just logged into a Yahoo account that I don't even use that often and I have 12,000 unread messages and 1200 messages marked as spam (assuming it takes me 3 seconds to scan, open, and delete an email, I'd spend 10 hours clearing out my inbox). The solution is NOT to automatically push all of these messages into different folders, nor is it to just let me search for what might be important. The solution is build suitable channels for respective kinds of messages and create software that  best handles the channels.

Meebo, Gizmo, Meetro, 37Signals,and the like  are doing a great job innovating in messaging and collaboration. Xobni is doing some clever stuff. I have yet to see any radical recasting of email.

As I write this I'm down to 11,999 unread messages. Wish me luck.

Happy 4th

In the last few days, the poets have surfaced in an unexpected way in the blogosphere. Fred Wilson quotes Whitman, and Fake Steve (FSJ) riffs on Shelley.

If you live in the US, have a happy holiday.

If you don't live in the US, imagine everyone you know in the US with a beer bottle in one (or both) hand(s) in reasonable proximity to a smoking grill. It might be a good time to send them an email assuming that if you don't receive a reply within a few hours, you'll conclude something that enriches you at their expense.

iPhone

First impressions, in no particular order:

1. The device and OS are great.
2. The network is not great(no surprise there).
3. It pairs seamlessly with the Prius hands free system.
4. It lacks MMS.
5. The SIM is removable with a paper clip.
6. It doesn't seem to recognize and properly configure GAFYD accounts (at least it did not work with mine).
7. Battery life is as claimed- great.
8. Irony: the GSM radio interferes with my computer's sound system. If the rebuttal to this is a suggestion that consumers need to understand RF shielding, it's a miss (to be fair it's an age-old issue).
   
9. It represents a huge breakthrough, not in technology but in product. Industry pundits will rightfully suggest that a lot of the technologies in the iPhone have been around for a while. This is true, but Apple has artfully combined them, in conjunction with their own IP, to create something that will have a much more interesting legacy that a Wikipedia article.  I recommend that everyone (who reads this blog) spend some time playing with an iPhone.

OK

I walked into my local Cingular/ATT store and bought an iPhone this morning. They had plenty of inventory. I'll post some observations soon.

The Jet

Cirrus finally announced The JET. To quote Alan Klapmeier, the CEO of Cirrus "Three words: My Personal Jet."

Beautiful indeed. The VLJ industry is one of the most exciting areas of innovation right now. Eclipse and Diamond are also doing some interesting things.

As you may note from the sidebar, I'm reading Free Flight by James Fallows. Great read.

Personal jets and reinventing air travel may almost be as important as the iPhone. You heard it here first.

IPhone Amusement

From CollegeHumor by way of TechCrunch:

iPhone Redux

Walt's review the the iPhone gives a great assessment while highlighting what we've always known to be the issue: Apple is great at what they do and the phone itself is a breakthrough, but ATT's network leaves something to be desired.

On a lighter note, an interview with the first guy in line in front of the Apple store in NYC from FakeSteve.

Worlds Collide

It's always fascinating to me when accomplished and seemingly collected folks lose it in the face of market realities. At least "The Dean Scream" could have been attributable to a microphone. Via Search engine land and The Register , MacMillan executive Richard Charkin details in his blog how he and a colleague took some laptops from Google's booth at Book Expo America, waited nearby for an hour until Google folks figured out the laptops had been taken, and, when asked, returned them. Why? To make a point about Google Book Search and intellectual property.

The is from the CEO of MacMillan. Never mind the bizarre nature of the "prank" and that it doesn't really parallel the IP issues. The guy and a colleague WAITED AN HOUR. Was he tittering uncontrollably while hiding behind a booth wall clutching the laptops against his blazer and shorts? Perhaps they made a fortress behind the modesty panel of a nearby table?

File under "misfire."

Oh, I thought it was "carbon fiber" footprint......

Charlie touches upon the situation leading to the renaming of my blog here. The Prius has become a badge of good intent for some who would otherwise not suffer inconvenience for the sake of the environment. It's also part of a more serious series of life changes for many of us.

Lest we forget, for some it's a car that gets essentially the same mileage as an '86 Honda CRX. For others it's a way to buy into the carpool lane. I'll take the intent.

Location Redux

Vipin has taken a pass at the geography issue. It's hard to dispute that The Valley is the crucible of a lot of innovation. It's also hard to ignore the great innovations that come from other areas.

But Vipin's thesis, I would say, transcends geography- I think it provides good counsel for any entrepreneur. Whether you're starting a company in Palo Alto or Lancaster, Pennsylvania, if you want to succeed, the ingredients are the same.

The Valley Vs. The City; Amusing (from Valleywag).

Back From NOLA

I just returned from visiting family in New Orleans, and, while I did enjoy taking my mother to Galatoire's for dinner to celebrate Mother's Day, I was astounded at how empty the city seems. A place that figured so prominently in my childhood has been taken apart and has yet to be put back together. Those who remain in the city and persevere with hope are an inspiration.

Prius Continued

I recently came across an amusing review of the Prius. Now that we've added the one of these to our fleet, it's becoming a favorite. Not that I don't still enjoy driving a German car up and down the 405 or 101, which, when either is not a parking lot, is a joy. The problem is that these arteries are parking lots much of the time, and this is where the Prius shines, getting 50 mpg and offering a great hands free experience to boot (my Treo 700p pairs perfectly and even syncs the address book).

On the highway at 80 mph efficiency and fun give way to the feeling that, no matter what the appeal at slower speeds, you're still driving a compact Toyota in the midst of long-haul truck traffic. That said, for local driving and commutes, the car is noteworthy.