Mostly Twittering

October 14, 2008 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Technology

Thoughts are shorter-form these days. Twitter is a good place to follow me. Example:

New Macbook video: http://bit.ly/1xNvDH Awesome emo marketing, utter techporn, richly deserves to be parodied.

So there's that....

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Spirograph

May 9, 2008 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

Gwad, I loved the Spirograph.

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Adjacent Social Objects == Gonzo Marketing

March 4, 2008 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

Chris Locke, after co-authoring the Cluetrain Manifesto, went on to write a great book called Gonzo Marketing. Wicked unlucky for him, the book was released on October 1, 2001 - kind of a bad season for US commerce. The book gets mixed reviews – sometimes because it's somewhat dated, but primarily for the writing style, which I'll call brash for lack of a better word – but the key takeaway for me was the idea of indirect benefit.

The idea is that a company sponsors an online service/community/project, one which is related in some way to their business, but does no direct selling there. It's all about providing value, for which people thank you by buying your product or service. So rather than pushing mass-market stuff through broadcast, you do something cool to enable people to enjoy using your product.

Today come Social Objects. I've read and thought about this for about a year, but haven't blogged about it, as far as Google knows. I thought I had. Anyway, Rajesh Setty is a smart, thoughtful writer, and today he introduces adjacent social objects. It's a good post.

Ajdacent Social Objects are those that objects that are not directly related to your product or service but are close - they are in the periphery.

Our own example is a site called All About Steak (which is a site that’s all about steak - recipes, grilling tips etc.) which was built in partnership with Kansas City Steaks. All About Steak is an adjacent social object for Kansas City Steaks.

This is the future of marketing. Rajesh coined a good term for it. Gonzo Marketing provides some important background. And you can always stand to read Cluetrain every five years or so.

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Fully Immersed in Something

February 1, 2008 | Arts & Culture | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Technology

For when you truly have money to burn, Ultra Geeky Home Cinemas.

Instead, perhaps consider this? (All 4:21 are worth it, lyrics and images.)

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Technolust, defined

January 15, 2008 | Products & Opportunites | Technology

Macbook Air

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Small Cars Can Be Safe

November 29, 2007 | Products & Opportunites

A lot of folks think big cars are safer than small cars. Ever wondered what happens when one of these tiny Smart Cars crashes into a wall at 70mph? Have a look! Summary: It's all about the engineering, not the size.

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Ricoh GR II

October 30, 2007 | Products & Opportunites

Well here's a nice material thing to lust over.

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Letter from Steve

October 30, 2007 | Products & Opportunites | Software

As usual, John Siracusa wrote the definitive review of the new Mac OS (Leopard). Upon reading about the continued slide into foolishness that is today's Finder, I sent the following email to Steve Jobs' public email address:

Hi,

Please hire John Siracusa to lead the conceptual design of the next Finder revision.

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/12

It's worth reading the section "An application divided against itself" in detail, with an open mind.

Thanks,
Michael J.

I received this response from The Man himself:

This person feels strongly about one way of doing things. Others feel strongly about doing them another way. You can't please all the people all the time, but we try our best.

Steve

I replied:

Realizing you don't have time to dialogue on this, I'd just point out that he presents an approach that would allow the current Finder evolution to continue, and still allow a more spatial approach as well. His views have evolved as has OSX. In any case, thanks for the response; Apple rocks, mostly.

And Steve said:

We think we have a much better approach.

Steve

So there you have it. Maybe the Leopard Finder is awesome.

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A Better Clock Radio

October 16, 2007 | Products & Opportunites

Have you noticed how bad most clock radios are? Here is a product that virtually every person in the industrialized world uses every day – twice, actually; once to set the alarm and once to wake up – and nearly everything about clock radios is horrible. Setting the alarm is nutso stoopid or hard. Some don't have battery backup so every time there's a power glitch you're setting the clock and the alarms again. The radio tuner sucks, big time. The volume control has no granularity at the low end, so you either have silent, or too loud. Etc. The problem is even worse in most hotel rooms, where, 1) you have an unfamiliar set of controls, and 2) you usually have an important meeting and you must wake up on time. Talk about your product development opportunities.

The best clock radio I ever had was a Sony, in the mid-1980s. I bought it because it was a stereo model, though it turned out that didn't matter much. The hidden feature that turned out the be the best thing since sliced bread was the rotary control on the front panel for setting the alarm time. You turned the left knob for the hour, and the right knob in five-minute increments for the minute. As a college student, who had a different alarm setting every day, this was a godsend. I was heartbroken when that unit broke and I had to buy a new one.

Sometime last year I discovered that if I set the alarm before 6 AM, my local NPR station was playing classical music, and I could wake up before the news came on. This turned out to be a real mood enhancer, and I started getting up earlier just to avoid having all that war-mongering in my ear first thing in the morning. Then, maybe six or nine months ago, they started in with the news at 5 AM, but also launched a 24/7 classical station. So I switched over to the classical station and never looked back.

But then about three or four or five weeks ago, the classical station stopped working. Just a hum where there used to be a station. So I ignored it, figuring they'd fix the problem and it would return. After a week, still humming, so I emailed saying, "Hey, did you know I haven't been able to hear 88.1 for a week? Are you closing that down or what?" They never wrote back, but within an hour it was working again. That hum was probably a loose wire, and they were probably embarrassed, and who could blame them – off the air and no one told them for a week!

But then a week after that they switched the old station to a 24/7 news format, and started pitching the classical station as an alternative. Fine. But simultaneously, the classical station got real static-y. Really hard to listen to. I thought, "This is beat."

When radio and television stations first go on the air, the engineers set the transmitter power in an approximate manner. Then, after a while, a few weeks to a few months, they drive around the coverage area taking measurements, and adjust the power patten to fit their license. This is probably what hosed me: They finally got around to precise measurements, and my area had to be turned down for some reason. Hence the lousy static.

Well, boo hoo hoo. Wake up to whatever, Notio.

Yeah, that's more or less what I thought, too. So I just set it back to the news station, loud and clear, and didn't think much about it. Until maybe a week later, when I noticed that I'd had a really bad week. My mood was off, optimism was hard to come by, and life kinda sorta sucked. And then from the depths of what's left of my psychoacoustic memory arrived the thought: Maybe it's the news.

Yeah, that seemed totally plausible. The news is beat. Talk about your lack of depth. So I spent 20 minutes very carefully tuning the crappy tuner to get as close as possible to the least static on the classical station. Move close to the radio, less static. Move away, more static. Adjust so that when near the radio, more static, but when moved away, less static. Lay in bed and see if the static cares how close to the edge of the mattress I am. Finally, I got it as good as it could be gotten, and I went to sleep.

And then for a week I woke up to static-y classical music. Which was better than the news, by far, but it was just not floating my boat. Finally one day I decided, My state of mind is valuable. A lot more valuable than this crappy ten-year old piece of crap clock radio. I will buy a new one.

Fifteen minutes on Amazon and I realized that there are two categories of clock radio: Under $25, and $120 to $250. Are you kidding me? I can't spend, say, $50 or $60 and get a decent clock radio? I have to spend a hundred bucks? And will it not suck, even then?

So I pondered that for a day or two, and decided – well, rationalized really – that in fact, my state of mind is worth a hundred bucks. In other words, I got my head around this ridiculous affluenza pricing, and went back online.

Eventually, I ordered the Boston Acoustics Receptor radio, for about $120. They pitch this thing as having a top-notch tuner, solid controls, and damn good sound. The only missing feature is an aux-in jack for the occasional iPod use, but that's not in my spec, just a "nice-to-have."

It arrived last Friday, and I set it up that night. First impression: It's big, takes some room on the nightstand. But indeed the controls are very, very good. I won't go into the details here, this blog post is long enough as it is, and virtually content-free to boot, but things work pretty much exactly as they should. Someone thought about it, and made some decisions, and the decisions were good. I wish the light dimmer had an even dimmer setting, as the 'dim' is not all that dim, but that's my only real complaint, interface-wise.

On the topic of the tuner, which was the driving force for the buy, the matter is more mixed. Granted, I live in the sticks. But if there's a signal there I want the radio to pick it up. And while messing with the included loose wire antenna, it sometimes did. Problem was, it was never clear why, or when, or how to make consistent the perfect signal quality, vs the crappy static that was sometimes present. I messed with that wire antenna for 20 minutes, and sometimes it was stunning perfect, and sometimes it was no better than the $10 clock radio. Arrrrggg!! Gag me with a spoon.

Eventually I went downstairs to the big rig stereo, and disconnected my $75 Terk AF1 Q powered, amplified, tunable antenna and cleared yet more space on the nightstand. Nearly unbelievably, this too required messing around, turning it this way and that on the nightstand to optimize the sound. But when I hit the spot, oh man, now that's a clock radio!

The sound is clear, and deep, and spot-on tuned in. The volume control works well throughout the range (hello log potentiometers!). It gets loud, and it plays well soft. I can easily set the alarm to a different time every day. I wake up to a much fuller sound of the orchestra, and I'm certainly much happier in the first hours of the day. It's definitely rockin' good, and I'm glad I bought it.

So if you're willing to spend $200 on this combination, you too can have great sound, a solid tuner, and well-designed controls. It's absolutely crazy that it takes $200 to get a decent clock radio that works in the woods, but I suppose that's late-stage capitalism in action.

Just thought you'd like to know.

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Branding is Dead, part XCMXLLIV

October 10, 2007 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

I was thinking today that one reason branding was so important in the industrial age is that there were so many players in the chain. If you had any hope of having your "message" reach the end-user, you had to line it all up clear as a bell. And industrial organizations were so big, too. The chain was something like: CEO, VP Marketing, [several other VPs, including Sales, Finance, Operations, etc], copywriters, designers, vendors for manufactured parts, graphic design, printers, distributors, warehousers, sales representatives, retail buyers, retail sales clerks, etc.

Rules of the telephone game therefore required that you have one message, one value proposition, one identity. But now, in the age of conversation, and especially on the web, it's not clear that any of this matters, at least not nearly as much. Sure, you need a logo, and consistency is nice on all fronts. But you might be having "market conversations" with lots of different kinds of people, partners, and customers. The "value proposition" will be different for each one of them. Reducing all the richness down to a single tag line doesn't seem helpful, to say nothing of being plausible. You may still have to define it, but it may be presented and interpreted differently by each stakeholder.

Doc Searls has probably said all this and more years ago. I'm slow sometimes.

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Apple's .plan

September 11, 2007 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

In Unix culture there is the idea of the ".plan" (dot-plan) file. It lives in the user's home directory, and is a place to write updates about your life or work. It pre-dates blogging and Twitter by nearly a hundred years, but was typically updated much less frequently than either. The id software founder and programmer John Carmack had a somewhat famous .plan file for a while, blending both hardware-level graphics programming explorations with high-speed car racing on airport runways.

I think of Steve Jobs' live presentations as Apple's .plan file. What's new, what's up, what they are thinking about. The mainstream press focuses on the "literal" facts of the show – price cuts, happy customers, annoyed customers, new partners, projected earnings, impact on margins, etc. – while the Mac digerati focus on interpretations from the Mac/iPod/iTunes/iPhone ecosystem.

Here's all you need to know about the recent show, though it's still worth spending the 90 minutes watching the online stream if you are a student of design, marketing, or product and business development.

• Ringtones: Apple is making it fun to make ringtones. Customers are not just buying them, they're making them. You can select any segment of the song, up to 30 seconds long, choose the looping, and it automatically adds the fades and syncs with the iPhone. Oh, and, by the way, the price of the song plus the ringtone is $1.98, less than the current phone carrier offerings. Sell to the prosumers, and ignore the legacy carrier approach. [Update: Gruber says there's room for improvement.]
• iPod Nano: Revising the best-selling mp3 player in the world. New shape, and thinner. More memory for same price. The real news in this is that there are some major product design changes are under the hood. Pitched repeatedly as the "enhanced user interface," the new iPods are driven by OS X, the same foundation as the iPhone, and today's Mac OS. This is a very big deal, as an entirely new (and very rich) software platform is will be running on several million devices, offering new features like coverflow, along with potential bugs and the following requisite updates. [Update: Yup.]
• iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store: The fundamental change that iTunes brought to the market, from the consumers point of view, was the 30-second preview of every song, prior to buying. Instead of buying something based on a recommendation, you now buy based on what you hear. IOW, a measurement of the industry's product merit was put in place. Prior to that the industry was measured on their ability to market product – now they are judged by whether the product is worth buying. Big diff. Is anyone surprised their sales are off? It's not piracy, gents, its your product. Nuf' said. [Update: Oh, the iTunes wi-fi music store? Accelerates the changes. More below.]
• Partnership with Starbucks: This extends the music preview and buying experience away from the computer and into the retail environment. Moves offline buying experience from music as store, to music as environment. Music stores tried selling coffee, didn't work too well. Coffee stores selling music, this will be a blockbuster. Shows what's playing now and the last ten songs played in the store. Because the physical roll-out will go through 2009, both companies will have incremental yet cumulative increases, and will have another dimension of progress to announce for the next two years. Expect more deals at other retail stores. [Major update: see below.]
• Everything you need to know about Howard Schultz's presentation on the Apple stage: If you sell an addictive product, customers will buy it very frequently, and you'll need to open a lot of stores to keep up with the demand. As the business progresses, you'll make so much money that you'll need to invent brand extensions to consume the cash. Steve and Howard are both old hippies, and they both thank their sweet lucky stars that they get to do all this for the love of music. Thank you very much.

Update: There's one other thing worth noting here. Twice now, this year, Apple has done deals with another very large company, and convinced them to make fundamental changes to their "business operating system" – that is, the software that runs their customer-facing operations – to get the partnership deal. The first was AT&T, who had to modify their cellular telephone network software to create "visual voicemail." Visual voicemail is a fundamental change in how the customer interacts with their device, their carrier, their messages, and therefore their whole cell phone communications world.

The second instance is with Starbucks, who will be installing the capacity to upload to iTunes HQ, in real-time, what song is playing at this moment is each and every Starbucks cafe around the world. This will become an international real-time cultural baraometer, par excellence. It becomes possible to imagine a "flash" hit single, that spreads around the world and could sell a million copies in an hour. In effect, Apple has announced Phase III completion of their re-engineereing effort on the music business. Phase I was the iPod. Phase II was iTunes. Phase III is persistent purchasing, buying whatever music you want, wherever you are.

Much bigger news than the iPhone price cut is this idea of Apple entering the enterprise software ecosystem. Instead of typical enterprise deals where the vendor supplies software or hardware to re-engineer, say, the purchasing department, Apple is doing customer-facing enterprise deals, where they build or specify the software customers use. This is huge. Major huge.

Even better, there's a Sarbanes-Oxley rule where companies have to spread the revenue accounting of a product over two years if the company provides free updates that add features. Apple is doing this with the iPhone, AppleTV, and maybe some other products. This means that the revenue growth will show up slowly, over time, without much notice. Until say, in 2009, when they're still recognizing revenue from your iPhone purchase last month, and you've already bought another one, maybe two.

You can safely go very long on Apple stock.

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Introducing Handmeon

August 31, 2007 | Arts & Culture | Life | Products & Opportunites

Okay, enough with the hints. In January I started a new company with two co-founders, and today we released the second major revision to our first product, Handmeon. To quote some draft marketing material:

Handmeon turns giving into a shared creative experience. Inspired by ancient circles of exchange, Handmeon lets people create renewable resources of expression through gifts endowed with history and trajectory, humor and thought. Rejecting material consumption and accumulation, Handmeon seeks a return to giving as a vehicle for human connection.

The basic idea is to take an objet, perhaps something small, perhaps something beautiful, perhaps something with an interesting background, and create an online presence for it. You upload a photo, write an inscription, and make blog posts regarding the object. Eventually you give it away, and the new keeper can write posts and enjoy the objet's sojourn with them. As the object moves between people, you can see the travels with integrated Google maps. After 4 hops, or 20, or 40, the object develops a rich history, accumulating stories online.

In other words, we're playing with the integration and separation of the real-world and the Internet. These objects are passed from one friend to another – when you hold an object you received it from a friend, and you'll give it to a friend, perhaps in person, perhaps by mail. And they'll give it to a friend, perhaps one you haven't yet met. The object becomes a connecting thread between a line of people, all connected one friend to another. I'm hopeful that it will expose the connections and therefore the interdependencies between people who haven't ever met.

You can take a tour, or explore the site to get a sense of what the early adopters are doing. For instance, Kathryn wants to learn more about meditation. Trippy the Frog wants to travel. The Roller just completed a sojourn with Jer. John wrote a post about a brush with celebrity. Jeff went meta, right out of the gate. And so on. You can create public, private, and secret objects.

To make money, we'll sell the permanent tags that turn objects into Handmeons and give them a URL. So the creator buys a tag, and everyone else can claim, post, and release the object for free. Speaking of free, right now the tags are free – so go register and order some! Make some Handmeons! See what it feels like to imbue something with meaning online, and then give it away. Experience the gratitude that this act of generosity engenders. You can create the online Handmeon before your tags arrive, so you can get started right away.

Eventually we'll charge money for the tags. Pricing is not set, but we want it to be affordable, maybe three tags for $12.95 or something. We have to model the object's long-term pageview cost and whatnot, and we haven't finished that yet. Three tags for $19.95 is probably the highest price we can imagine right now.

Of course, there's a blog, newly minted. We're going to try for one solid software release each week for a few weeks. Comments are on over there, and we are actively looking for feedback and enthusiastic participants. Come over and play in this new interaction space!

Oh, and, as a self-funded startup, we're looking for links! Tell your friends. ;) Thanks.

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Shipped

August 8, 2007 | Life | Products & Opportunites

Our project went live an hour ago.

I'll tell you all about it in a couple of weeks, after vacations. For now, just marking the date.

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FontBook

July 28, 2007 | Arts & Culture | Products & Opportunites

I'm trying to hold back, as a nod to the budget, but I'm not sure I'll be able to resist much longer. (FontBook)

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Toilet 2.0

July 5, 2007 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

If you've been thinking that you use too much toilet paper, the Washlet might be for you. It also claims to increase happiness.

Bubblegen provides a good overview of the strategic challenge.

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Fake Steve on the iPhone Launch

June 29, 2007 | Arts & Culture | Products & Opportunites

I'm just going to post the whole thing, to save you the effort of the click.

Today we make history. Today we change the world. Today we put a dent in the universe. Today -- June 29, 2007 -- we release iPhone. It has taken years of work from all parts of Apple. First advertising, of course. Then feng shui consultants, and design and engineering and manufacturing. Countless emergent designs, countless meetings, countless all-nighters to make every part of the iPhone, from its custom-made integrated circuits to its sleek glass screen and metal case, absolutely perfect. To those of you who serve under me at Apple, I say this: Yes, I have berated you, and insulted you, and exasperated you. Yes, I've fired your friends for no reason, and made you work harder than you ever thought you could work. Yes, I've taken you away from your spouses, your children, your transgendered domestic partners. In some cases your devotion to me has cost you your marriages. You've sacrificed a great deal for this. But has it not been worth it? For the rest of your life, you'll be able to say that you were working at Apple when the iPhone was introduced. You were here on the day when the course of human history was changed forever. Plus, you'll get a free 4-gigabyte iPhone, a $500 value. Not bad, right?

Already, around the United States, thousands of Apple faithful are lining up outside our retail shrines, waiting for iPhone. Some will approach on their bare knees, like pilgrims approaching the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Peru. Just a few minutes ago we received a report that Apple faithful are also lining up outside retail shrines around the globe, even though those stores do not have iPhones and will not have them for months, maybe years. The response is, in a word, stunning. We are saving the satellite photos showing the clusters and will use them as part of our promotional material. Apple employees, view these photos and see what you have done, and then go home and tell your children -- those smallish people who live in your house, the ones you haven't seen in a couple of years -- tell them, You see those people suffering outdoors, enduring the heat and rain and monsoons just so they can get a cell phone? I did this. This was my work.

To those Apple customers who are already congregating in thousands outside our retail shrines, I say: Thank you, much love, and namaste. You have endured taunts and jeers and the incessant attention of a media starved for material in the midst of a slow summer news cycle; you've been spat upon, abused, attacked by police with firehoses and nightsticks and guard dogs; you've peed into bottles and lived on junk food. But you stuck to your principles. You remained true to your beliefs, the core one being that yes, you are special, and you deserve to be among the first in the world to obtain a device that combines telephony, Web browsing and music playing. Yes, we'll still be selling these devices a week from now, and the week after that. But you want yours now. You're making a statement. The world is hearing you.

Let's be honest about why this is happening. This is not a fad. This is not some phony hyped-up astroturfing Microsoft campaign. This is a genuine outpouring of love and enthusiasm and excitement from people whose souls have been stirred by the wonder of technology and the ability to communicate with other human beings in ways that have never before been possible. That's what this is about. It's about communicating. It's about connecting. It's about bringing the world together in common cause. It's about saying, Look, I realize there's something bad happening in Darfur, and there's some kind of AIDS epidemic in Africa, and there's some crazies who want to blow us all up, and there's a war in Iraq where thousands of people are dying for no reason -- and yes, those things are important, and someday we may take to the streets to say something about them, if we can think of anything to say about them, but for now we Americans take to the streets for this cause. Right here, right now, we take a stand. This is our moment. From pole to pole, from north to south, from east to west, let the message go out. We are Americans, and we have values. Hear us, world. Hear us and say, Wow.

The iPhone stands for something very simple -- freedom. Apple faithful, you march today in the tradition of the marchers at Selma, in the tradition of Gandhi at the Salt March to Dandi. You have made your point. There are some things, you said, that are worth suffering for. I am proud to have given meaning to your life. I am proud to have invented iPhone and designed iPhone and brought iPhone to the world. I feel, in a way, humbled by your adoration. But in another way not humbled. Anyway. My whole life has built up to this moment. I believe that this is what I was put on the earth to achieve. I thank you all for sharing this historic day with me.

Namaste. Much love. Peace out.

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Hot Apple News

March 6, 2007 | Arts & Culture | Products & Opportunites

Apple Unveils New Product-Unveiling Product

The iLaunch, as the new product is called, was then raised up from below the stage, prompting the audience of technology journalists, developers, and self-professed "Apple fanatics" to burst into a five-minute standing ovation.

Microsoft announced they are working on a similar competitive product.

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Stop Buying This Crap

February 15, 2007 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Technology

Rant, defined.

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Panasonic Lumix FX-01 Digital Camera

February 8, 2007 | Products & Opportunites

I took the Panasonic Lumix LX-1 to Europe last year and loved it. But it was too big for my front pocket and I wanted to downsize to a consumer-grade point 'n shoot. So I bought the FX-01 and loved it even more. Since then I've recommended it to several people (Chris, Jeff, Marc, Graham, Sarah) and they all love it. It's small, fast, high-quality, and easy to use. The two big reasons it's great is that 1) it has a 28mm lens, very wide for a cheap camera, and it's good for indoor group shots of people as well as outdoor scenic shots; and 2) it has optical image stabilization, so you can often turn off the flash indoors for more natural photos. Currently $229 at Amazon.

In getting the links, it turns out that the LX-1 is now the LX-2, and the FX-01 is now the FX-07 or the FX-30. The 28mm lens is the must-have feature. Everything else is gravy.

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Ryu at Dartmouth

January 11, 2007 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

Wow, I had no idea this was a local person. Excerpt from PaidContent.org:

And then Pogue introduced us to an 18-year-old Dartmouth student named Phillip Ryu. The kid ran a competition called Mydreamapp.com, where amateurs competed to design their fantasy Mac application. The winner, a product Atmosphere ("an ambient way to see your weather") is now being built. Ryu and friends also produced something called MacHeist where they bundled shareware applications and sold them for $49, donating 25% of proceeds to the buyer’s charity of choice. MacHeist raised $200,000. Pogue got it right when he said the future of the tech looks good if it is in the hands of kids like Phillip Ryu.

The story is not quite that simple. Yes, they raised money for charity, but many people are upset that the developers got a fixed price, while MacHeist sold far more than expected and made a killing. The cooperative model would have been to share a percentage of the profits with the developers. For a summary, see this Wired story. For the details, read Jon Gruber's always-amusing posts (1, and 2) at Daring Fireball.

There's no doubt this project was a marketing masterpiece. Ryu and team probably made north of $400,000 in one week. [Yeah, four hundred, not forty.] But that doesn't mean I'm excited to put the future in their hands.

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Completely Redefining What You Can Do

January 9, 2007 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

I will be one of approximately 143,215,697 people to mention this today or tomorrow, but this is as close as it gets to product-orgasm. Cell phones have sucked forever, and this is a whole new game.

iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.

The picture is so good you are nearly drooling. [Note switch to second-person voice for a bit of self-revealing distance.] This product is far, far better than I expected, even with all the pre-hype. It's a big year for Apple. See also, no slouch either: AppleTV.

David Pogue comments on it all. Better, this Time magazine article on the culture and attitude that produces an object like this. And, Joshua Allen on some of the potential problems with Apple's approach.

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Design Is Good For Business

January 3, 2007 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

DETROIT, Jan. 3 — The Chrysler Group was the only Detroit carmaker to report a sales increase for December, while the Japanese carmakers Toyota and Honda both saw their sales grow last month, figures from the auto companies showed today.

I assert Chrysler gained sales because of design, with a capital-D. Of the US automakers, they are the only one with cars that spark the imagination. Anyone who is practical has done the math and found that Toyota or Honda will be the most reliable. If you are going to buy a car that falls apart it may as well look nice, since it will appear dated soon and you'll want to replace it.

This is the reason why design is good for business. (c.f. iPod.)

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Mattresses

January 2, 2007 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

How to cut through the marketing gimmicks.

The secret to mattress shopping is that the product is basically a commodity. The mattress biz is 99-percent marketing. So just buy the cheapest thing you can stand and be done with it, because they're pretty much all the same. And that's all you need to know.

Not sure I agree entirely, but it is a confusing market, with lots of re-branding, and essentially the major differences are firmness and price.

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Wesabe

December 12, 2006 | Products & Opportunites | Software

Been meaning to post this for a while: Wesabe. There's a good tour describing the app.

Wesabe is a community of people who share our experiences with our money so we can help each other make better financial decisions. We do this by aggregating and analyzing our community members' personal financial data, and showing tips — recommendations to get the most from our money. These tips and recommendations come from the collective wisdom of our entire community. When one of us figures out how to make a great decision, we all learn.

Really interesting approach, requiring great trust, with potentially strong benefits to the participants.

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Rich People Don’t Care About Gas Prices

December 4, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

Great essay, with attitude, on why Ford, GM, and Chrysler are sucking eggs so hard.

We’re looking at two strategies here. Toyota: build affordable transportation for the masses at a quality level that slightly exceeds expectations relative to price. GM et al: build oversized, under-engineered and fuel inefficient cars for people who don’t care about money while palming off sub-standard cars on mainstream customers.

Recall that GM has underfunded its pension and Ford just laid off bought out 40,000 workers, and you realize how they've already lost the game. There won't be any decent American cars to buy in a few years. Just government subsidized Yugo-clones that attempt to preserve a national pride of manufacturing. Oh well; we still have the entertainment industry.

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What's a Wovel, You Wonder?

November 30, 2006 | Products & Opportunites

Brilliant: The Wovel wheeled snow shovel.

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Getting Connected

October 16, 2006 | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Technology

Classic Steve Jobs quote:

Microsoft has announced its new iPod competitor, Zune. It says that this device is all about building communities. Are you worried?

In a word, no. I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable.

The guy sure knows how to give good media.

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Advice on Work

October 6, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

Paul Graham:

The best place to work, if you want to start a startup, is probably a startup. In addition to being the right sort of experience, one way or another it will be over quickly. You'll either end up rich, in which case problem solved, or the startup will get bought, in which case it it will start to suck to work there and it will be easy to leave, or most likely, the thing will blow up and you'll be free again.

It's mostly focused on advice for graduating college students, but I especially like the focus of a job as a temporary condition. Another nugget:

Professors will tend to judge you by the distance between the starting point and where you are now. If someone has achieved a lot, they should get a good grade. But customers will judge you from the other direction: the distance remaining between where you are now and the features they need. The market doesn't give a shit how hard you worked. Users just want your software to do what they need, and you get a zero otherwise. That is one of the most distinctive differences between school and the real world: there is no reward for putting in a good effort. In fact, the whole concept of a "good effort" is a fake idea adults invented to encourage kids. It is not found in nature.

If you're self-employed you learn this fast, or you find yourself a job PDQ. More:

You know from an early age that you'll have some sort of job, because everyone asks what you're going to "be" when you grow up. What they don't tell you is that as a kid you're sitting on the shoulders of someone else who's treading water, and that starting working means you get thrown into the water on your own, and have to start treading water yourself or sink. "Being" something is incidental; the immediate problem is not to drown.

As usual, the whole essay is a good read.

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Best Seminar Chair, 2006

September 23, 2006 | Life | Products & Opportunites | SoL | Travel

I sat in these chairs 32 hours last week. I would not want to work full-time in this chair, but it is, by far, the best seminar or workshop chair I have ever experienced. Very comfortable. They deserve an award for designing a chair that fits the body, and Ford deserves an award for purchasing decent chairs for large group meetings.

The Notio award for Best Seminar Chair, 2006, goes to the arper Pamplona, designed by G.Terin & G.Topan, made in Italy.

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The iPod Suit

September 14, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Products & Opportunites | Technology

From Eleksen, the iPod suit:

The Bagir suit jacket integrates Eleksen’s ElekTex® smart fabric touchpad technology, which transforms a lapel into a five-button electronic control panel. The ElekTex-enabled iPod Suit is both fashionable and functional. The suit is machine-washable and wrinkle-resistant, making it the ideal choice for today’s music-savvy and style conscious business professionals.

My life is now complete.

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Quote of the Day

September 14, 2006 | Products & Opportunites | Technology

John Gruber, on Steve Jobs:

Remember his on-stage demo last year [of the Motorola Rokr] iTunes-compatible phone? His contempt for the device was palpable; when he failed to successfully switch from song playback to accept a call, he seemed poised to just toss the thing off-stage and cry out that it was a piece of garbage.

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Users GOOD, Groupware BAD

September 12, 2006 | Products & Opportunites | Software

I read this Jamie Zawinski essay last year, but it's worth another look.

The trick you want to accomplish is that when one person is using your software, it suddenly provides value to that person and their entire circle of friends, without the friends having had to do anything at all. Then, later, you pull the friends into the fold: if one of them starts using the software, they become their own hub, and get the benefit they have already witnessed from a distance.

The reason I landed there was because yoga classes are starting all over the Upper Valley, and I thought, It would be monster cool if there were a website where yoga studios could enter their class schedules, and publish them to a centralized (and, natch, localized) calendar where I could view them all together. And it would be even cooler, if that web app could generate iCal-format downloads that I could import into my desktop calendar. Ten seconds later I realized that yoga classes were a specific example of a much more general use-case with very realistic and widespread needs (school sports come immediately to mind, in addition to live music).

What I want: A consumer-grade website where I can "login," and "create," "edit," "delete," "search" or "browse" for one or more "topics" "within X miles" of "zip code," view that in a "list, week, or month-view calendar," "select items of interest," and "generate iCal" (and other standard) format downloads of that selection.

If you know of such a service please tell me so I stop designing it when I have client work to do. Related and useful: hCalendar and other assorted microformats.

Update: Doug asked about standards. Here are the links that probably matter most. I'm sure there are other standards, I'm just taking an open-format Mac-centrc approach.

• CalDAV on Wikipedia.
• CalDAV resources from the OSA Foundation.
• Calconnect consortium.

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Kids Don't Use Mail

September 11, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

If you think email marketing is going to work forever, you might want to think again.

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Link Roundup

September 10, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

Miscellaneous tabs still open from last week:

• Robert Young on the fat belly of the Long Tail.

• Kiko threw in the towel and put the company up for sale on eBay. It went for $250K. Tucows explains why they bought the technology.

• Another excellent minimalist layout a la Craigslist and Facebook. More good content, too.

• Useful: How to Have Better Conversations.

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Facebook Mini-Review

September 7, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Software

Well, I had a demo of Facebook, and it's a very nice web application. [Previously: Attention Metastream. Today: Fred Wilson on the changes (good comments thread).]

(I have removed names from this screenshot.)

It's hard to get a sense of it from the picture, but I can tell that if I were a college student it would be easy to live here and check in frequently and see what my friends are up to and post about my life. There are nine million Facebook users, so they're doing something right.

I also note there is zero "flashy design" on this site. Note the one-color plus black palette, the simple obvious layout, the single ad in the left column, the simple unobtrusive logo in the upper left. It's a beautiful minimalist approach. This has the beneficial side-effect of lowering the server load and bandwidth costs for high-traffic sites.

It seems like the most popular websites either have bad design, or minimal design. You might want to think about that the next time you spend two hours getting the rounded corners just so in your incremental design update. Better to hire a good writer, or to think about your use-cases and user-centric design. As always, design has to support the message and function, not overtake the purpose of the effort. Facebook is a good example of What People Want.

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Attention Metastream

September 5, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

I don't yet have access to Facebook, but this TechCrunch review notes the key element in successful web applications:

Facebook clearly gets the idea of an attention metastream, where page views aren’t the currency that matters but rather how effectively the service allows users to communicate. Facebook users will now have a much easier way of staying up to date on what their friends are up to. It may mean less page views for Facebook in the short run as users rarely have to leave their home/admin page to see what’s going on with friends, but if it makes users love Facebook more (is that possible?), it’ll pay off in the end.

Whether for business or pleasure, information, passion, and interaction are key.

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WoW Update

September 5, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Software

In June 2005, I wrote about World of Warcraft (WoW):

Conservatively, there was a one-time revenue stream of just under $100 million dollars, and an on-going monthly revenue of just under $26 million (just under $312 million annually). They are opening the game up in China soon, where there are 500,000 players in the open beta period. It's not hard to imagine cumulative revenues of over a billion dollars, or perhaps two.

Today's NY Times brings news that indeed, they are on track for a billion dollars this year:

Less than two years after its introduction, World of Warcraft, made by Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif., is on pace to generate more than $1 billion in revenue this year with almost seven million paying subscribers, who can log into the game and interact with other players. That makes it one of the most lucrative entertainment media properties of any kind. Almost every other subscription online game, including EverQuest II and Star Wars: Galaxies, measures its customers in hundreds of thousands or even just tens of thousands.

The Times also addresses the employee head-count, which I had guessed at 350 a year ago:

Since the game’s introduction in November 2004 the company has expanded to more than 1,800 employees from around 400. Almost all of the additions have been customer-service representatives to handle World of Warcraft players, helping them with both technical advice and billing concerns.

That's $555,555 of recurring annual revenue per employee, for the business modelers out there.

And why do people play this game? First, it's easy for beginners to get started, but it also has a lot to engage long-term players. But the most important aspect can be gleaned from an interview with this 3,000-hour player:

“Think about it: I’m a 33-year-old guy with a 9-to-5 job, a wife and a baby on the way,” Mr. Pinsky said. “I can’t be going out all the time. So what opportunities do I have to not only meet people and make new friends but actually spend time with them on a nightly basis? In WOW I’ve made, like, 50 new friends, some of whom I’ve hung out with in person, and they are of all ages and from all over the place. You don’t get that sitting on the couch watching TV every night like most people.”

People want to be engaged—some might say entertained—and they want to extend their networks. Yochai Benkler might call it social production.

Please make a note of it.

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Now In Clogs

August 24, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Life | Products & Opportunites

On May 10 I cracked a sole on my Birkenstock Chicago shoes. No biggie, they were six years old, and it was my second pair. The first pair failed the same way at about the same time. Not so bad: Spend $200 on shoes and wear them almost every day and they last six years. They were also super-comfortable—I could go to a trade show in NYC and walk on concrete for 16 hours and my feet were fine.

So on May 11 I went to the local store to buy another pair, and I found they had discontinued the Chicago model. Okay, what's the replacement? I ended up in the Wexford, which looked a little more business-like, but had a thinner sole and the Footprints low-arch footbed. I like the high-arch footbed, but this model didn't allow the swap. Oh well. $195 later I'm out the door.

The following week it rained. Not hard pouring rain, but a steady drizzle. And walking down Main Street, my feet got soaked. Not because I stepped in a puddle or anything, just from the rain. Bad sign; the Chicago's never did this.

The week after that I noticed that my feet were killing me, and I was mostly just walking to work and sitting all day at the computer. Another bad sign: the Chicago's never did this either.

So I stopped in the store to see if anyone had had similar problems. Of course the store hadn't heard anything.... so I went on my merry way thinking, "No way am I wearing these for six years. I'll last the summer, switch to winter boots when it snows, and then buy some Rockports in the spring, and put Birkenstock insoles in them for the high-arch comfort."

Then this morning I went to put my shoes on and the right one was completely blown out on the side. I hadn't noticed yesterday or last night, but there was a six-inch tear in the seam between the leather and the sole. When did I buy these again? It appears to me that they've either cost-cut this thing to the point of worthlessness, or I got a real bad apple.

I stopped in the store on my way to work, and the owner, who sold me the shoes, was there. He was genuinely surprised. His brother has worn these for the past two years without a problem. We talked about the history as related above. Long story short, not wanting another pair of Wexford's, I'm now in some stylish Alton clogs. Comfy, easy on and off, a firmer sole, and a high-arch footbed.

We haven't actually sorted out the money yet. He wanted to talk to Birkenstock, but if they didn't "do something" he would. I said that weighing 160 lbs, with only three months of use, I didn't really want to eat it, but I'd trust him to sort it out in the next couple of weeks. I'm a 15-year Birkenstock customer, so I'm assuming that they'll do the right thing here.

Meanwhile, for business shoes, I'm headed for the waterproof Rockport with Birk insole option.

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Drivemocion

August 24, 2006 | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

I have wanted something like this for years. (Horrible website alert.)

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Continuing Examples of Music Industry Stupidity

August 21, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

This is worth a lengthy quote:

NY Times: Now the Music Industry Wants Guitarists to Stop Sharing

Lauren Keiser, president of the Music Publishers’ Association, says guitar tablature Web sites reduce the earnings of songwriters.

In the last few months, trade groups representing music publishers have used the threat of copyright lawsuits to shut down guitar tablature sites, where users exchange tips on how to play songs like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Highway to Hell” and thousands of others.

“People can get it for free on the Internet, and it’s hurting the songwriters,” said Lauren Keiser, who is president of the Music Publishers’ Association and chief executive of Carl Fischer, a music publisher in New York.

So far, the Music Publishers’ Association and the National Music Publishers’ Association have shut down several Web sites, or have pressured them to remove all of their tabs, but users have quickly migrated to other sites. According to comScore Media Metrix, an Internet statistics service, Ultimate-Guitar.com had 1.4 million visitors in July, twice the number from a year earlier.

The publishers, who share royalties with composers each time customers buy sheet music or books of guitar tablature, maintain that tablature postings, even inaccurate ones, are protected by copyright laws because the postings represent “derivative works” related to the original compositions, to use the industry jargon.

So, let me get this straight. There are 1.4 million web surfers addicted to guitar tablature. And there is an existing legal arrangement where the publishers share royalties with the artists.

Listen up bubba, this right here is what we call a strategy: The publishers should license the websites to use the material and find the natural market price point.

D'oh, he said.

I mean, come on! This is not rocket science. Charge $0.99 a song for guitar tablature PDFs and see what happens, fer cryin' out loud! There might be varying degrees of sophistication among the PDF products, and maybe some tabs are worth $1.49, or even $2.99 per song. Maybe some are only worth $0.49 or $0.29. Who cares? Internet distribution removes friction. You can make money at any price by scaling to the market.

Instead of shutting them down they should be creating a new market.

I can't even believe people are this dumb sometimes.

So here's your Web 2.0 startup solution: Define a standard XML format for guitar tablature, and a server-side translator to take this XML, render it through template(s), and generate PDFs on the fly. Optionally, develop and support some sort of digital rights management scheme that is not ridiculously onerous. Tie this into a mass-customized MLM marketing, e-commerce, and community-driven web interface, and get started in the indie low-budget music scene. Build an audience, and a revenue stream, and sign on the heavyweights. At some point they will realize that while it might be worth reverse engineering the software and building their own system, they can't replicate the community.

Then you have your liquidity event, as they say.

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What Is Lingr?

August 13, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Software

Coming soon...

Now live: "Lingr is the place for chat on the web. That's it, seriously- nothing could be simpler."

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Declaring First Use

August 9, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

I want to take this moment to claim first use and moral rights on the following trademarks.

• Governance for Design and Technology™
• Feed-Forward Governance™
• Strategic Website Leadership™
• People, Process, and Positive Feedback™
• Feed-Forward Methods for People and Process™
• Proportional Budget Matrix™
• Factor-Based Peer Review™
• Weighted-Factor Competitive Review™
• Concentric Roles™
• Fast-Feedback Design/Build™
• Polyrhythmic Iteration™
• Small-Multiple Deliverables™
• Loosely-Coupled Timeline™

All of the above have zero Google hits as of today.

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Small-Scale Music Marketing

August 3, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

Last weekend I recorded my friend Chris and his band, testing out the new gadget. I sat in the second row and held the recorder in my hand on my thigh. Considering the situation, the recording is surprisingly good.

I gave Chris copies of the audio and the .wav file, and encouraged him to post it online. Of course, the band needs to make the decision as a group, and they might want to break it into tracks instead of one 56 minute piece, but the idea was to put it out there.

Chris responded:

I don't think I'll post the whole thing -- our playing isn't up to our snuff throughout -- but definitely snippets.

My internal reaction was, "What if the Grateful Dead or Phish had only put out their perfect playing?" Rarely did a full Dead or Phish show contain flawless playing. We never would have heard anything but official recordings under this criteria. It's also worth noting that I listened to the recording the day after the performance and didn't hear a single error—not that they don't exist, just that the typical listener is not working from the score to easily hear or find mistakes.

Chris' music is much more formal and structured, so you could argue that this style should have a higher quality standard than rock 'n roll. But I would retort by pointing to the boatload of lame classical releases which pale in comparison to the premiere performances of any given composition. Chris' response got me thinking about what I would do if I had a band and wanted to spread the music (assumption alert: they may not want to spread the music). Here's what I consider the basics of small-scale music marketing.

On the website, have a music archive page, and put up mp3's of every show, or at least put them up on Archive.org and point to them there. (This is what Oshe did before they broke up.) Then, sell compilations of the best cuts. Create CD-length "albums" that you can buy (or download from iTunes) that have good flow, that put things together in a new way, that are built around a theme, whatever.

The basic idea is to give away the full-length works for the hardcore fans, for people who went to the show, for people who are going on a long drive and want a full-length work, etc. Then sell the "best of" discs/downloads as the consolidated snapshot. List these at the top of the music page. Feature them on the home page of the website. "Lead" with them, as they say in journalism. Encourage your hardcore fans to buy the compilations to support you, even though they already "own" everything. Present it as a new experience, the Band's Choice, as it were.

This is the model that the Grateful Dead pioneered in the '60s and '70s. Use the free trading to drive people to the live experience. Give away full performances, because what people want to pay for is a unique experience, either live in person or via the "official" CDs. The advantage of putting up everything comes later on, when someone discovers your music and wants to dig deep. Now they've got a huge archive to listen to, and while they're focused on you for a few weeks or months they'll tell their friends, who will go check it out too. If there's just a bit of music posted, you can't create the depth of engagement. And that depth is what will hook people.

Now, having decided what they should do, it might be good to ask them what their goals are. Oh, wait, did I reverse the order?? Sorry, I was acting like a manager, getting all tactical first, not a consultant, starting with the goals. Oh well, this is only what I would do after all.

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A Cooperative Solution

August 1, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Cooperatives | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

An excellent 3,300 word article in Strategy + Business on the cooperative advantage. A very good read.

Cooperatives are often assumed to be merely local affiliations of small and midsized companies, and therefore limited in scope and reach. But their deep roots in their countries of origin — as well as their surprising pervasiveness and stability — are exactly what puts cooperatives in a strong position in the new global economy. Through their highly participative governance models (involving both members and employees in making decisions), the cooperative system is particularly well suited to combining entrepreneurial and social objectives. Because it encourages internal checks and balances and general transparency, cooperative structure also makes it easier to avoid the ethical and legal lapses that have brought down the management of many investor-owned companies.

Also quotes my SoL colleague Arie de Geus, former head of Royal Dutch/Shell scenario planning and author of The Living Company on the value of cooperatives for being people-based and long-term focused. (Thanks Chris.)

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RMA Please

July 28, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Life | Products & Opportunites

Dear Andrew,

I'd like an RMA to return the microphone stand purchased on order #L23298760, invoice #6098612.

The reason for the return is that the metal boom of the stand, when delivered, had two stickers on it, put there by the manufacturer. One was a white paper UPC bar code sticker. The other was a long silver foil sticker with a purple stripe that said, "On-Stage Stands." As it turns out, these two stickers make a difference.

The paper one tore off in tiny pieces that took nearly five minutes to remove—though, granted, using only my fingernails and sailor slang—leaving a sticky glue residue. The second one peeled off easily leaving only a lightly tacky film of glue.

I attempted to remove the glue using the spray cleaner called Fantastic and a paper towel. Much to my surprise, the UPC glue came off easily, but the foil glue became stickier. I then used Windex, which helped loosen the glue, but did not remove it. Additional elbow grease was applied and had some minor effect. Bringing out the heavy artillery, I used Clorox spray cleaner with bleach. Nor did this powerful agent have any impact on the glue.

I guess what it comes down to is that when I buy something I don't want to spend ten minutes taking stickers off the thing, and I especially don't want to own something on which the sticker glue cannot be removed using only everyday cleaners commonly available in the average kitchen.

Does anybody at On-Stage Stands ever purchase their own products and try to use them as a customer would?

It is unacceptable to me to use the stand with the glue residue as it is. It seems like my only other alternative would be to re-order the stand and use it with the stickers attached. But I don't want to use the stand on-stage (har har) with the stickers—especially the purple stripe one; the UPC one is kind of ironic and cool—hence, best to return it.

This is the sort of thing I can buy at the local guitar store and not pay for shipping. It's too bad I had to spend $15 shipping (plus return) to figure that out.

Thanks,
Michael J.

PS: If you have a staff contest for best return requests, I hope that this letter at least merits an entry. If not, please forward some examples for my study and self-improvement.

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Tesla Roadster

July 26, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Technology

Now here's an electric car worth waiting for. Lots of new here. It will be sold over the web starting next summer. According to their blog they have engaged Lotus for key contract engineering skills.

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Guitaring

July 22, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Life | Products & Opportunites

On Thursday I picked up the guitar for the first time since at least January. The last time I had callouses on my fingertips was at least a year ago. Around that time I had wanted to build a positive feedback loop with my playing, and rented a gadget that connected to the computer to record my guitar doodles. But it was too much setup hoo-ha—get the computer out, fire up software, close down other apps, plug the box in, set the levels—I just wanted something physical where I could press a button when I was hacking around and immediately capture the moment. So I didn't buy the gadget and didn't get a feedback loop in place.

But Thursday I had a lot of fun playing, and I removed some disincentives by setting up the guitar processor on top of the stereo and keeping the guitar plugged in. And then I remembered a new gadget I saw a few weeks ago. The Edirol R-09 is about the size of a deck of cards, and records high-quality sound on SD memory cards. I was able to borrow one for the weekend (thanks Chas!), and last night played around.

Here are some of my experiments, about 20 minutes total. Most of these songs don't go anywhere, they're more like chord explorations and emotional states. I'm pretty happy with them, especially given a first effort. I've sequenced them into something of a flow, for those that dare listen to the whole set.

Sweeping Birds.mp3 (1:22)

Interior Waves.mp3 (3:20)

Minor Grunge.mp3 (4:46)

Tangerine Mining Company.mp3 (4:17)

Eee Space.mp3 (4:03)

Swoop.mp3 (1:08)

The Edirol recorder is pretty sweet, and the built-in mics are better than decent. It's a complete splurge, but I think I'm going to buy this on Monday instead of returning it to the store. Add in some stealth mics, and there might be some undercover recording returning to my future.

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Perfect Music Marketing

July 21, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

This whole weblog thing is pretty amazing. I wrote that post the other day on finding music – it was a toss-off, essentially, a cool service that made me think about how I used to find music and how much harder it is now (for me). Then, in the comments, this:

Hello Michael J.

I liked your post on finding music. It's funny how more options means more hassles. But here's another way to find new music. Have it come to you. My name's Kevin Griffin. I'm a singer songwriter out of Boston. I noticed you like Paul Simon. He's been one of my favorites for many years. My music's even been described as if Paul Simon and Johnny Cash were sitting around a campfire singing eachothers songs, that's me.

Anyway, I'm still not good at this self promotion stuff but I have a new song that was just named a semi finalist in the International Songwriting Contest and I'm trying to get new ears to hear it. So here's my link to Itunes so you can check it out.

Here´s the link to ITUNES and the lullaby.

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=157683341&s=143441

Thanks and I hope you like the music. If you do, let me know.

Kevin Griffin

Now, it would be easy to say, "Yo, no self-promotion on my blog!" But that's not what I feel at all. What I feel is, Cool! Why? Kevin notes my post. He references my previous post on Paul Simon. He connects himself to that lineage. He has social proof in the form of an award. He clearly states he's trying to get more people to listen to the song and his music. He thanks me. He signs his name.

Kevin, rock on buddy. Perfect music marketing. The opposite of music industry PR spin. The opposite of hype. You didn't tell me I'd love it – you said you think it's like some other things I love and maybe I'd like to check it out. You link to iTunes, the default mechanism for easy previewing. You link to your website so I can explore more.

How did Kevin find my post? Who knows? I have somewhere between insignificant and non-existent tracking systems in place on Notio. He's never commented before. I don't know if he dropped in on that post or has been following along for three years. It doesn't matter. He respects the medium, and is using it effectively. I'm happy to promote that comment to the top of the fold. Well done.

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Finding Music

July 18, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

Finding enjoyable new music is hard. [Is that "is" of predication or "is" of identity?] Radio gave up the ghost years ago due to industry consolidation. Now all we have on the dial are programmed playlists driven by payola. I can drive for hours and hear the same manufactured songs over and over regardless of the city, state, or region. So let's agree: Radio is a cultural wasteland, only slightly better than TV. Yes, there are exceptions, especially around colleges, but even then a lot of them suck.

The iTunes Music Store is a bit better, if only because I can drive my choices, and I can bail out of the 30-second preview whenever I want. Plus you get the browsing-helpful "customers who bought X also bought Y." And, one-click instant gratification. What's not to like? Well, Apple's DRM I suppose, but it hasn't gotten in my way so far, and the terms are reasonable IMO.

Today comes MusicLens a graphical dashboard which allows you to set musical parameters and then returns a list of songs that match your criteria. You can preview the songs, and I suppose there's some way to buy them. I like this better than Pandora because I can change the settings, myself, on the fly. Worth playing with.

Update: Fred Wilson posted today about music discovery too. Must be in the air.

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Strategy is a Commodity

July 13, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

Umair on strategy and creativity:

In a world where strategy is a commodity, creativity becomes the vital factor from which value flows. When everyone can think strategically about everything, the locus of value creation shifts from out-thinking everyone to out-creating them. The prime mover of value creation becomes putting the ability to create (goods, services, processes - even strategies) at the heart and soul of the firm.

The low cost of building web applications means creative startups have many golden opportunities in front of them.

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Examples of Categories

July 11, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | Life | Nature & Environment | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Science | Software | Technology

Art: Leonard Cohen and Sonny Rollins on live TV. (Thanks Jon.)

Commerce: Do Patents Encourage or Stifle Innovation?

Culture: On media elitism and the "derivative" myth

Technology: On playing with my Holux GPS unit...

Cool: Velcro Being Pulled Apart

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Make Something People Want

July 9, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Software | Technology

I hesitate to point to every Paul Graham essay that comes along, but these links are useful for future research. Excerpts:

The idea of building something popular then figuring out how to make money from it was born in the Bubble. It sounds irresponsible, but it works. Requiring founders to have a carefully worked out plan for making money is not hard-headed business sense. It's what hackers call "premature optimization." The really important thing is to make something people want.

Startups will be ever more common because they're now so cheap to start. In most of the startups we fund, the biggest expense in the first year is simply food and rent. It costs little more to start a startup than to hang around doing nothing. And instead of having to go work in a cubicle in some office park, you get to work with your friends on your own project. If you succeed, you get rich.

We look for two things in startup founders: brains and commitment. One thing we've learned in this past year is that commitment matters more than we thought, and brains less. The founders can't be stupid, but as long as they're over a certain threshold, the most important thing is commitment.

A sense of design is also a big advantage. Big companies treat design almost as if you could paint it on after the fact. A hacker with design sense is really dangerous, especially as a startup founder. We don't care too much about the initial idea, except as evidence of brains and commitment. The idea will change. What matters most is that the founders really want to do a startup.

A lot of the most characteristically lame startups of the Bubble were that way because they were started by business guys, who then went looking for hackers to implement their ideas. That model may have worked in 1960, but it didn't work so well in 1998, and it gets more obsolete every year. I think the future belongs to the hackers. Technology is an ever larger component of business, so of course power is shifting to the people who are experts in that, rather than management or finance.

As always, there's more via the link.

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Nano-Enabled Advances

July 1, 2006 | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites | Technology

Email from Amazon alerted me to this new book: Nanotechnology Applications And Markets, by Lawrence Gasman, $79.

Discover nanotech opportunities the smart way with the first "down to business" market analysis that separates commercial reality from hype and gives you the tools you need to forecast nanotech’s impact on any company. This professional-level book spotlights the most viable R&D now taking root, what nano-enabled products will likely emerge in what industries first, and what timeframes you can expect before market rollout. You get a rich understanding of technical, business and legal essentials, and a solid framework for assessing commercial potential without either overheated expectations or overcautious pessimism. This indispensable resource focuses on the best nanotech-driven opportunities arising in the computer/electronics, medical/biotech, and energy industries — from nano-engineered microchips and fuel cells to nano-enabled drug discovery and delivery. You see where the "low hanging fruit" will be and won’t be in each field, and how nanotech will change each industry. The book also highlights nano-enabled advances taking place in such diverse industries as textiles, specialty chemicals, automotive, aerospace, agriculture, and building materials. What’s more, a unique and well-detailed "impact assessment audit" helps you identify how nanotech may soon change your company’s products, R&D, and production processes, and what new opportunities or threats to your business may emerge as the result of nanotech. Rounding out the coverage are extensive resource lists for further research in this up-and-coming sector.

This is going to have a major impact on society over the next 10 to 30 years—in other words, in our lifetimes. Bigger than personal computers.

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Should Exist

June 30, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Software

A craigslist for op-ed. Talk about a flow machine.

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Internet Economics 2006

June 28, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites | Software

Would you like to tune into a wavelength describing state-of-the-art Internet business models? If so, Jason Calacanis has what you want.

You see, Battelle's model is predicated on Rafat and Om deciding to stay in phase two or keep their relationship with Federated in phase three--which they are obviously not willing to do. That's why we canned the Federated Media /BlogAds model when we started Weblogs, Inc. We started out with the reveune share/repping model and Brian and I quickly decided that owning the IP/brands was a much better play. [Background.]

It appears easy to get $1 million to fund a web startup right now.

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The World Now Has a Lot More State

June 27, 2006 | Products & Opportunites

Another good Paul Graham essay, recently delivered at RailsConf.

Almost everyone makes the mistake of treating ideas as if they were indications of character rather than talent-- as if having a stupid idea made you stupid. There's a huge weight of tradition advising us to play it safe. "Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent," says the Old Testament (Proverbs 17:28).

Well, that may be fine advice for a bunch of goatherds in Bronze Age Palestine. There conservatism would be the order of the day. But times have changed. It might still be reasonable to stick with the Old Testament in political questions, but materially the world now has a lot more state. Tradition is less of a guide, not just because things change faster, but because the space of possibilities is so large. The more complicated the world gets, the more valuable it is to be willing to look like a fool.

Filled with wisdom and funny asides. And good approaches to business.

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Will Desktop Affordances be Useful?

June 24, 2006 | Products & Opportunites | Technology

Computer technology demos are always interesting, but sometimes you wonder if it would actually be useful in real life. And the opposite is true: Blogging doesn't demo well, people have a hard time understanding why, but it turns out to be valuable. This week's impressive demo is BumpTop, showing "physically-based casual interfaces and pen-centric interactions."

Well, it's totally cool. The seven-minute movie is worth your attention. It makes your computer desktop look archaic. But I tend to agree with Merlin that I'm not sure I'd use it for that purpose.

See, here’s the thing: once your computer (and your related world, writ large) has excellent indexing, search, and access via something like Quicksilver, this kind of “physical” interface metaphor starts seeming quaint, if not downright exhausting. I guess I just never find myself shuffling and re-organizing large numbers of files in a way that isn’t more than satisfactorily addressed with sorting, Smart Folders, icon views, and searching. I throw stuff into the most general piles I can stand, then let Quicksilver and Spotlight do all the heavy lifting. Maybe that’s me, but this seems like a recipe for non-stop fiddling.

Reminds me of David Gelernter's project called Lifestreams, which looked cool but ultimately hasn't taken hold. It was core research, however, so maybe something will come of it someday.

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Finally, an Innovation in Newspapers

June 22, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Products & Opportunites

Great idea from Guardian called G24:

...which allows readers to download and print out a rolling version of the newspaper that is updated every 15 minutes. G24 is an eight- to 12-page PDF covering either general news, international news, economics, sport or media stories. The new product is aimed at the lunchtime and evening commuter market who may want an updated print product to read on the train or bus.

I would love it if my local paper published, once a day, a PDF of all the local stories and the op-ed/letters section. I would pay for it, or they could run ads. I dislike getting the physical paper everyday, throwing away the sports and classifieds sections, skimming the feature stores for the occasional piece that targets me, and only reading the local news. So I rarely buy the paper.

The Guardian is charging about $12 a month for the service. Before I looked that up I decided I'd pay $5 a week or maybe $15 a month for my local paper in this format. It turns out they charge $16 a month for a printed, delivered copy—so this would lower their costs dramatically (after an initial capital investment) and be a real win-win for both of us.

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Making Money on the Internet (cont.)

June 12, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

Video blogging is hot. Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft for PodTech.net (whose servers are so overloaded they can't even load a homepage).

And then, he mentions this:

Yesterday I was talking with Amanda Congdon, one of the co-founders of Rocketboom. Her videoblog is now seeing about 300,000 viewers a day. That's, what, a year or so old? Did you know that advertisers are now paying her $85,000 per week? That's almost as much money as I made in an entire year of working at Microsoft.

Rocketboom is pretty idiosyncratic—if they can make $85K a week, lots of other people can too.

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Tufte's "Beautiful Evidence" About to Ship

June 6, 2006 | Arts & Culture | Business & Commerce | People & Society | Products & Opportunites

Very interesting thread on complex bookmaking. Start around March 9 to pick up the recent info. He's self-published 1.2 million books since 1983, and the detail with which he prints these books is unbelievable. Highlights from the link above:

• We await a test printing of some of our color tin