Innovation in … pants
Monday - January 09, 2012.
Filed in: Innovation | Review
. An american company “born in the mountains” puts a new spin on a product we wear everyday, with an innovative philosophy:For that statement alone I was attracted to buying their pants.Born from our rebellious philosophy to question everything, break the rules and reject the status quo.
Kühl completely redesigned the comfort of pants with stitchings and fit unmatched by the standard mold its predecessors are based upon. While their fabric is rugged and should really be used as outerwear, its unique comfort and fit is makes these pants ideal for daily use wherever you are. Every aspect of these pants has been redesigned to produce a better fit and I wholeheartedly recommend them. The company has expanded to a complete range of outerwear, and after having worn their innovative pants for a while I may just explore the wider offering soon.
Full disclosure: I have no equity in products or companies I evaluate publicly on this site except that they - according to my review - adhere to the promises they make. I pay for the products I want myself and receive no promotional fees of any kind. If you agree with the discretionary role technology should play in our lives I describe in my blogs so frequently, you will find my observations of the implementation of innovation useful in determining whether or when you should buy them.
The future of photo editing
Tuesday - January 03, 2012.
Filed in: Innovation | Startup | Fundraising
Read the complete article...
KLM social seating
Wednesday - December 07, 2011.
Filed in: Innovation
. A great idea and service for those interested in socializing because they cannot sleep on long transatlantic flights. The service will allow Facebook and LinkedIn users that opted in to select who they want to sit next to (or not). Curious to see if other airlines will follow. Now if we could only find out from social networks who snores the most…Google does not care
Tuesday - November 29, 2011.
Filed in: Innovation
We recently received an e-mail from the company Apture, the online service we used to automatically make live references to Wikipedia and to enable on the fly deep dives into certain terms we use on our site, stating they have been acquired by Google and will be terminating the service in about one month.
More than a disappointment that the service will disappear, it demonstrates how both the employees at Apture and Google think about customers. Terminating a service without a respectable forwarning to “thousands of publishers” demonstrates how many technologists are merely opportunists, trolling from one financial reward to another while trampling its hard earned early adopter customers in the process.
Here is the gist of the e-mail Apture sent on November the 11th, 2011:
I will easily forget about Apture, but I will never forget about the real reputation of Google as witnessed by the actions of the company it acquired. It is not smart to bite the public hand that feeds you, and it hurts those trying to make an earnest living in the innovation’s business.
More than a disappointment that the service will disappear, it demonstrates how both the employees at Apture and Google think about customers. Terminating a service without a respectable forwarning to “thousands of publishers” demonstrates how many technologists are merely opportunists, trolling from one financial reward to another while trampling its hard earned early adopter customers in the process.
Here is the gist of the e-mail Apture sent on November the 11th, 2011:
On December 20 we will discontinue Apture's product and services. When this happens, users will no longer be able to highlight and search terms with Apture on your web pages.
I will easily forget about Apture, but I will never forget about the real reputation of Google as witnessed by the actions of the company it acquired. It is not smart to bite the public hand that feeds you, and it hurts those trying to make an earnest living in the innovation’s business.
Eat to scale
Wednesday - November 23, 2011.
Filed in: Innovation | Review
If you are tempted to eat too much during the holiday season, check out the Withings (awful company name) digital scale that sends your measurements including those of 7 other family members to the cloud where you can keep track of weight, lean mass, body fat and BMI on a constant basis.
With WiFi built-in, the scale is easy to use and will automatically send new measurements to your account after you step off. That is, if you manage to get passed the outright cumbersome installation process ill-suited for non-technologists, with incorrect installation requirements and no installation documentation to speak of.
The scale functions perfectly as a regular digital scale, yet with its automatic connection to the cloud combined with a beautiful iPhone and iPad app to chart out your weight objectives turns the Withings scale
into an effective weight management tool. Price $160, available from the Apple Store
(and other places) now.Full disclosure: I have no equity in products or companies I evaluate publicly on this site except that they - according to my review - adhere to the promises they make. I pay for the products I want myself and receive no promotional fees of any kind. If you agree with the discretionary role technology should play in our lives I describe in my blogs so frequently, you will find my observations of the implementation of innovation useful in determining whether or when you should buy them.
Bye bye Time Warner OnDemand
Thursday - October 20, 2011.
Filed in: Media
In an age when time shifting of media is crucial in achieving mass consumption, Time Warner has regressed to bow down to its advertisers by disabling fast-forward in its OnDemand recorded TV programming. I refuse to spend 20 minutes of one hour of TV programming wasted to advertisements. So long On Demand.
LightZone is dead
Thursday - October 13, 2011.
Filed in: Innovation
Read the complete article...
Caution in the cloud
Sunday - September 25, 2011.
Filed in: Innovation
Read the complete article...
Missing Steve Jobs already
Tuesday - September 20, 2011.
Filed in: Corporate
It does not take a genius to make the prediction that after the incredible high Steve Jobs has given Apple a slow glide downwards in the company’s future performance is expected. Nothing against Tim Cook, I don’t know him - so I can only judge by what I see. And I see a few dark clouds brewing.
The challenge in building successful innovation is to marry macro-economic behavior with support from modern information technology to create tangible social economic value. Apple like no other company has succeeded beautifully, yet not perfectly in that objective.
The danger to Apple is that it can be beat only where it just beat other technology companies; macro-economically. And content will topple distribution. Apple is very vulnerable with the staunch implementation of media sales - it does not own - through iTunes, and unchanged it will only take a smarter technology company to support the labels with the freedom they previously enjoyed. Winner-takes-all marketplaces, by economic principle, cannot be achieved through marketplaces that are not economically free. And iTunes violates free-market principles. Proprietary marketplaces such as iTunes can become free (not the other way around), but the timing has to be just right. So far few technology companies have the smarts to challenge Apple macro-economically and thus it continues to gain momentum successfully.
The first sign of trouble for me is to find the mention of a restart option (depicted above) if the computer freezes in the energy panel of Apple’s new operating system (Lion). That small detail, an admission of guilt if you will, is something Steve Jobs with his presence of mind would have never allowed to enter. For Steve Jobs would rather have delayed the OS to figure out why their computers freeze than let this pass by quality control. And since Macs already rarely freeze, providing an option for restart in that extreme scenario communicates how people without the rigor and tenacity of Steve Jobs are now suddenly allowed to think and act for themselves.
It is a small but important signal of how Tim Cook’s management style (to defer) and Steve Jobs’ (trust but verify) are already deviating. Steve Jobs is a product guy, realizing that product capability, perfection and ultimate-user-experience beat operational excellence - Tim’s forte - on any day. For me that single option in the energy panel demonstrates that the slide of Apple has begun, even though in the land of the blind its future will remain brighter than many other technology companies for quite some time.
In full disclosure: I have been a staunch Apple user for more than 20 years and have been “forced” to use a PC on occasion but always bought Apple, way before the fair-weather supporters of Apple entered the fray. I believe in Apple because it feeds a more pressing and more profitable computing need that serves the world, rather than the technocrats. And I have converted many a neighbor PC user to Mac.
iChat does not (yet) quack like a duck
Tuesday - August 23, 2011.
- Apple's iChat does not quite quack like the Adium duck just yet. Expanded with Yahoo! chat in the recent Lion release, iChat has difficulty reconnecting with many of its chat services (AOL, Yahoo!, Google and Facebook through Jabber) and fails to reconnect to Facebook's chat. Adium, with its open source code also offers connectivity to Skype's chat capability through a free extension. [Links: Adium
]
Bose Videowave impression
Monday - August 15, 2011.
The Bose VideoWave is therefor in our opinion a strategic misfit, dragging some impressive engineering with it into its demise.
Read the complete article...
Quark quake
Tuesday - August 09, 2011.
Filed in: Reference
- Quark, the leader of desktop publishing tools before Adobe took the reins has been taken over by Platinum Equity (financial terms undisclosed). Finally, because not its products lacked capability but Quark's macro approach remained unchanged to a market that has fundamentally changed in composition. It would be good for the marketplace if Adobe were to be given a run for its money. [Links: PEHub]
Calibrate; Thunderbolt; MacBook Pro dead
Wednesday - July 27, 2011.
Filed in: Technology
- First thing every new Mac needs is display calibration, right out of the box. In my twenty years of buying Macs I’ve never encountered one that is close to correctly calibrated. Expect more realistic colors from your Mac when calibrated with a piece of hardware such as Pantone’s HueyPro (priced below $100). [Links: Pantone
] - For many years I bought into maximizing my Mac experience and thus into Apple’s serial interface dance, reaching all the way back to the Apple Desktop Bus, that many times has led to an accessory stalemate at the next rendition of innovation. So I couldn’t be more surprised to discover (not published anywhere but in the new MacBook Air’s manual) that Apple’s Thunderbolt interface is compatible with Mini Display Port, which means last year’s 27 inch monitors will work with the new MacBook Airs released last week. [Links: Apple]
- Those MacBook Pros are awesome laptops, just not as portable as Macbook Airs. And Apple knows it, rumor has it Air is going to replace the whole MacBook Pro line-up. [Links: AppleInsider
]
Lion spam boon
Friday - July 22, 2011.
Filed in: Technology
- The new Mail application in Lion no longer supports turning preview off in its default new look, which is a boon for spammers. Suddenly all e-mails that did not get detected by the spam filters get opened by simply selection and with some clever HTML reference and inclusion alerts the spammer who did so. Expect your information to get collected and to get spammed even more. Automatic mail previews is a insecure concept. [Links: Lion’s new mail]
Gesture (on PC) is out
Thursday - July 21, 2011.
Filed in: Technology
So, I am disabling most of the gestural recognition in the preference pane, not because I don’t want my iPad and MacBook to behave the same, but simply because they are not.
Read the complete article...
Palm's bad apple
Wednesday - July 06, 2011.
- Palm’s former CEO Jon Rubenstein proves HP bought a bad apple, and worse he rebuts poor Touchpad reviews with correlation to the past. Poor strategy is once again married to bad PR. Success in technology is no longer dependent on just cool hardware, but a seamless user experience that blends the previously disparate components. And that emphasis does not only require a skill Palm does not have, it requires something HP does not have today either. HP needs to make harder calls to compete in this marketplace, self cannibalization would be an appropriate strategy for a company who’s customers have already voted against them. [Links: AppleInsider]
New photo camera technology
Wednesday - June 22, 2011.
As the former CEO of LightCrafts, the creator of LightZone photo editing software and avid hobby photographer we know quite a bit about photography. After years of research at Stanford, Lytro has just gotten off the ground with a new “light field camera” that changes photography as we know it and allows you to establish focus and other aspects after the picture has been taken. We will do a more in-depth analysis when we get more information about the camera.
According to Mashable Andreessen-Horowitz put about $50M in to fund its development, another deal subprime VC could never touch. Innovation is alive and well if as an investor you put the right shingle on your door. [Links: Lytro
, Mashable
]
According to Mashable Andreessen-Horowitz put about $50M in to fund its development, another deal subprime VC could never touch. Innovation is alive and well if as an investor you put the right shingle on your door. [Links: Lytro
, Mashable]Ostendo curved display
Tuesday - June 21, 2011.
]HP unchanged
Tuesday - June 14, 2011.
Filed in: Corporate
- HP reorganizes itself again, now with an employee reporting to the CEO in essence becoming a boss of the CEO, as a board member. Clearly HP does not understand how to turn a page nor the aforementioned benevolent dictator concept. Change is not change, unless it involves real change. [Links: MacNN]
PhD bubble
Monday - June 06, 2011.
Filed in: Behavior
on what it means to have a PhD in relationship to being the master of many trades you need to be as an entrepreneur or an experienced VC. It demonstrates visually how we should not put so much stock in formal education or what Peter Thiel refers to as the most worrisome bubble in the U.S. today. More on how valuable a college degree is here.Leave Ballmer; How low can you go
Tuesday - May 31, 2011.
- Influential hedge fund manager David Einhorn called Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer "the biggest overhang" on the company's stock at an investment conference, six months after we suggested he should leave. The problem however is not the executives Steve got rid off, but the ones he did not. The only change that can save Microsoft is a change to its core operating principles, and many large companies guided by socialistic boards will simply die in consensus before they ever give in. [Links: AppleInsider]
- Talking about elephants that take a while to kill, GoDaddy CEO did the inexcusable and rebutted his actions on their website. Rather than to defend his actions as helping the locals protect their crop, he should have funded an operation to relocate the close-to-extinct animal. But he revels in turning the controversy into a monetary benefit. No surprise perhaps from someone who uses boobs to sell internet real estate. How low can you really go? Now you know why he shows up in Haiti too. [Links CNN]
Oprah Masterclass; Higher Education bubble
Monday - April 11, 2011.
- Every entrepreneur should watch Oprah's Masterclass where she describes her rise from suppression in a way every entrepreneur will. Follow your heart and authentic passion, and ignore prejudice and precedents (my words). [Links: Oprah
] - Peter Thiel (PayPal co-founder, hedge fund manager and venture capitalist) says what I believed for a long time. Higher education is in a bubble, and business gives too many free passes in life to students who don't deserve (just yet) such real world credentials. I have never hired on academic credentials in startups, only on passion, desire and ability to execute. Being a judge on the Venture Capital competition (VCIC) underscored the fact academic credentials in Finance represent an even bigger bubble. Few MBA's wanting to become VCs are taught or understand that you cannot put a valuation on a company when you don't know the business and its conversion rates. Hats off Peter. [Links: TechCrunch
, VCIC]
eBay post-mortem
Thursday - April 07, 2011.
Filed in: Corporate
eBay has completely lost my trust, confirmed by telephone. After eBay demonstrated 3 times in a row to be a platform for scam buyers I decided to leave it for good and remove my account, exasperated by eBay's support for a buyer who tries to do business outside of eBay, rather than pay for the item. eBay's trust should be embedded and enforced by the system, not outside of it. Because then one might as well use craigslist. After a one hour phone call I did manage to get eBay sales commissions invoice reversed for a product that didn't sell, huray! What a waste of time and energy. Who wants a shiny previous generation MacBook Pro?
Bye bye Ebay
Sunday - March 27, 2011.
Daniel Leffel, a former eBay employee wrote an interesting piece a while ago of how eBay allegedly manipulates transactions thereby destroying the trust its free-market relies on. It is a must read to anyone who is trying to do business on eBay.
Even for a casual seller like me, who is trying to get rid of a hardly used PowerBook, eBay has lost the trust I put it in by harboring three false buyers in a row. And worse, leaves one supposed buyer the ability to leave negative seller comment, without actually forking over the money that was agreed to. Instead suggesting to circumvent eBay's protection policies, a trap I won't fall for. Yet, in terms of feedback left in the marketplace, a buyer who is not prevails, "supported" by eBay.
You could argue how to prevent each of these fake buyers to participate on eBay (and it should), but the fact that eBay has become a marketplace in which a highly popular item does not sell is a sign eBay has lost its credibility. No amount of free listings can compensate for that. Three strikes and you are out for me.
Nice knowing you eBay.
a while ago of how eBay allegedly manipulates transactions thereby destroying the trust its free-market relies on. It is a must read to anyone who is trying to do business on eBay. Even for a casual seller like me, who is trying to get rid of a hardly used PowerBook, eBay has lost the trust I put it in by harboring three false buyers in a row. And worse, leaves one supposed buyer the ability to leave negative seller comment, without actually forking over the money that was agreed to. Instead suggesting to circumvent eBay's protection policies, a trap I won't fall for. Yet, in terms of feedback left in the marketplace, a buyer who is not prevails, "supported" by eBay.
You could argue how to prevent each of these fake buyers to participate on eBay (and it should), but the fact that eBay has become a marketplace in which a highly popular item does not sell is a sign eBay has lost its credibility. No amount of free listings can compensate for that. Three strikes and you are out for me.
Nice knowing you eBay.
TV is dead
Tuesday - March 22, 2011.
Filed in: Media
Read the complete article...
Another new HP; the good, the bad and the ugly
Wednesday - March 16, 2011.
Filed in: Corporate
I listened to the full 39 minutes of Leo Apotheker's (former SAP) pitch to press and analysts and the press interviews later. I have always had a warm heart for HP, since its innovative alphanumeric HP-41C ignited my affection for technology when I was about 12 years old, that I used to program my way out of the Dutch clay. I have since had many experiences with HP, through a partnership relationship at Oracle, the sale of one of my startups and individual consulting arrangements after. I'd like to see HP become less of a commodity player that merely pleases Wall Street. Industry leadership success does not come from a great new story you tell the press, it comes from an authentic belief customers subscribe to by purchasing innovative products.
Good
The good part about Leo as the new CEO of HP is that we must assume he knows software better than anybody at HP ever has. It is probable that Leo will be able to strike a more healthy balance between the delivery of hardware, software and services that makes for a meaningful information technology ecosystem to customers.
Bad
The bad part about Leo's story is that open and best-of-breed just don't go together. There is overwhelming evidence in tech and non-tech that openness is diametrically opposed to deliver the ultimate experience to end-users. So, to an experienced strategist Leo's story is not plausible, albeit his execution in certain segments (which he declined to discuss) may not coincide with his generic proclamation of strategy to the press.
Ugly
What will be ugly is how HP employees for the third time in five years will be faced with a new strategy to which they suddenly need to learn how to dance to. But by now those employees who are still at HP will know how to ensure that when everything at HP needs to change, their role will stay exactly the same.
I will start to believe in change for HP when certain executives (I won't name any names here) will drop out of change. Because their unwillingness to change will mean that this time around, change is indeed change. [Links: VentureBeat
]eBay's losing gambit, no iPad2 for me
Wednesday - March 16, 2011.
- I love how eBay started out with an electronic version of the Dutch auction free-market principles of selling. I have used eBay sporadically in the past and just recently tried it again by selling a fully maxed out built-to-order 2010 MacBook Pro that I had used for two weeks. My experience was not great: the first buyer was someone who used someone else's account without their approval, the second one was a new buyer from Latvia (even though the transaction restricted shipment to US only). So, rather than eBay swaying new transactions and launching 50 free-listings beginning the month of April perhaps it should ensure that the trust of its tenants is secured first. Because arguably, both of the above described fake transactions should not need to occur if eBay over the years had spent more time building software algorithms and protections to nail down those who inevitably try to abuse a free-market system. eBay's price reductions are a losing gambit if it does not protect the trust of those who enter its free-market system. If my third attempt does not reach a trusted buyer I will invoke the three-strikes-and-you're-out rule.
- I was an early adopter of the first iPad last summer and have since settled on a fully-loaded MacBook Air for work and passed my iPad to my eager six year old who now also enjoys watching Cable TV on it. The reason I am not buying the iPad2 is that there is no smooth migration strategy from the "old" way of computing to the new. Or perhaps more distinctly, the iPad is great for information consumption and not very suited for information creation. And once you find yourself switching those modes frequently, the iPad is not for you. Apple should focus more on the software support for iPad rather than trump the hardware specs, a "Rosetta"-like transparent migration to iPad would have been great. But then again, I can understand how chasing a massive greenfield of customers may just be too tempting for Apple. At least equip the Macbook Air with a 3G/4G antenna already, so we get parity on the connectivity side of things. [Links: Apple]
Cable TV on iPad
Tuesday - March 15, 2011.
Filed in: Corporate
Time Warner just released TWCable TV on the iPad and it works like a charm over WiFi, producing a clear HD TV signal straight on the iPad - for existing Time Warner subscribers only. That will kill the need for TV's in every kitchen and kids room. A great reason to buy an iPad if you still needed one. A $500 iPad is not a bad TV replacement, quite the opposite. This is a big deal. [Links: iTunes
]Kid Rocks
Monday - March 14, 2011.
Filed in: Innovation | Adoption
- Kid Rock in his interview with Piers Morgan states how he agrees with my analysis that iTunes' stance on music is wrong. iTunes should embrace multiple pricing mechanisms rather than attempt to displace the labels' or musicians' right to do so. Apparently, Kid Rock is doing just fine without iTunes. [Links: Piers Morgan on CNN]
The Chinese Internet
Friday - March 11, 2011.
Filed in: Adoption
Global public relations and communications firm Burson Marsteller publishes a presentation on Chinese Internet trends. Some interesting stats:
- 450M internet users
- 10M new internet users per month
- 98% broadband
- 303M mobile web users
]At ease with Drobo; $1B pre-nup
Tuesday - March 08, 2011.
- Everyone with loads of data collected on their computer over the last decade should buy a Drobo. Having daisy chained Firewire 800 external backup drives to a server for quite a while, I have seen the fragility of these commoditized (and sometimes low quality) drives with numerous failures. One such failure wiped out a set of original photographs of which only smaller digital replicas remained. No longer, Drobo can host a minimum of 4 standard SATA drives (one 2TB drive now costs around $79) and automatically and transparently protects against any single drive failure. Without any downtime the system reconfigures itself around one fewer drive, and a simple replacement (or upgrade) of the failing drive re-establishes the storage capacity. Drobo is a must have for anybody with a large iTunes, photography or business library of files and should really be built into many OEM computer strategies. Why VC investors Greylock, NEA, RRE and Sutter Hill have not been able to blow up this company in size and to an IPO already is a mystery to me, or is it? [Links: Drobo]
- Microsoft allegedly paid Nokia a $1B to play nice. Tells you who is the ugly rich guy in this marriage. Both companies need a pick-me-up, but not from each other. What do you think will happen when two losers collide? [Links: BusinessWeek, two losers don't make a winner]
Bye bye Microsoft
Saturday - March 05, 2011.
Filed in: Corporate
Microsoft is putting more emphasis on getting rid of its own menace, than launching products people want. Internet Explorer was one of those products where Microsoft tried to change the way the web works and make it theirs, which failed. For years developers had to create separate versions of their websites to make them compliant to IE6 (Microsoft is still doing proprietary things today, such as limiting embedded CSS, again forcing developers to jump through hoops).
In Microsoft's own words: "Friends don’t let friends use Internet Explorer 6. And neither should acquaintances. Educate others about moving off of Internet Explorer 6". A dangerous proposition for Microsoft, because a re-evaluation of the browser on an old computer leads to a reevaluation of the computer. And today's best computers are not running Microsoft.
But what is more interesting to see is how many people still use this outdated browser and thus, use an outdated computer. More than 1/3 of internet users in China use an old computer, other countries with quite a bit of stale information technologies are India, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam. All great candidates for post PC era iPads.
on getting rid of its own menace, than launching products people want. Internet Explorer was one of those products where Microsoft tried to change the way the web works and make it theirs, which failed. For years developers had to create separate versions of their websites to make them compliant to IE6 (Microsoft is still doing proprietary things today, such as limiting embedded CSS, again forcing developers to jump through hoops). In Microsoft's own words: "Friends don’t let friends use Internet Explorer 6. And neither should acquaintances. Educate others about moving off of Internet Explorer 6". A dangerous proposition for Microsoft, because a re-evaluation of the browser on an old computer leads to a reevaluation of the computer. And today's best computers are not running Microsoft.
But what is more interesting to see is how many people still use this outdated browser and thus, use an outdated computer. More than 1/3 of internet users in China use an old computer, other countries with quite a bit of stale information technologies are India, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam. All great candidates for post PC era iPads.
Nintendo laurels
Thursday - March 03, 2011.
Filed in: Gaming
- Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata made a foolish statement that ignores how the definition of gaming has changed. Full-body gestural recognition like Kinect have proven to broaden the appeal to console gaming and mobile games have in volume of titles and customer appeal obliterated the old console model. Nintendo would be better off supporting games wherever customers want to play them, rather than forcing them to use a specific hardware configuration. The powers that be have shifted, and it is time for Nintendo to stop resting on its laurels.
Apple please dump Ping, LinkedIn time-bomb
Friday - February 25, 2011.
Filed in: Technology | Corporate
By economic principle Facebook is a winner-takes-all (if it doesn't trip up), or put differently social networking is not a category but a platform (to which extensions and applications can be built) owned by Facebook. Hence building Ping, a social network around music from Apple (and integrated in iTunes) is poised to fail. Apple instead should stick to its knitting and enable Facebook "likes" to optimally cross-pollinate media content to some 500 Million users instantly. Segmentation of social networks is not in the interest of users, because it is impossible to segment people's social behavior and subsequently expect them to maintain its fragmented access.
Mark my words.
Even LinkedIn is doomed if it tries to encroach on Facebook's territory with more social networking capabilities for business. All Facebook needs to do is turn their social attention to business (which is still somewhat rudimentary today). LinkedIn is not a free-market as it does some pretty shady and in-transparent things when people are looking for a job, such as providing unwarned access to people who are not your references (something I was offered when I was evaluating people through LinkedIn for a startup). LinkedIn better run for its IPO real fast, while the public has no clue of how much shorter its shelf-life has become since Facebook.
Back to Ping: you can drag the album art in the Store directly to the "add link" section in Facebook, should you want to do Apple a favor.
Mark my words.
Even LinkedIn is doomed if it tries to encroach on Facebook's territory with more social networking capabilities for business. All Facebook needs to do is turn their social attention to business (which is still somewhat rudimentary today). LinkedIn is not a free-market as it does some pretty shady and in-transparent things when people are looking for a job, such as providing unwarned access to people who are not your references (something I was offered when I was evaluating people through LinkedIn for a startup). LinkedIn better run for its IPO real fast, while the public has no clue of how much shorter its shelf-life has become since Facebook.
Back to Ping: you can drag the album art in the Store directly to the "add link" section in Facebook, should you want to do Apple a favor.
Best Buy doesn't translate
Friday - February 25, 2011.
- According to Bloomberg Businessweek Best Buy the electronics chain popular in the US is closing its stores in China in favor of opening 40-50 more higher end Five Star stores it acquired locally in 2006. A sign that brands don't simply translate. Having lived in Silicon Valley for 17 years and enjoyed shopping at the much more geekier Fry's Electronics stores I always thought Best Buy was the electronics store for uninformed America. And people in China treat their electronics as a status symbol, to which the commodities sold at Best Buy don't lend themselves well.
Free everything for startups
Thursday - February 24, 2011.
Filed in: Startup
- Startups can now get free office space with internet in Durham, North Carolina if they just have a good idea (says who?). And Obama's StartUp America will hold its first roundtable there. Let the stampede for money and office space begin. Do we really believe that we get better returns on innovation when we make everything free? Great karma but without better innovation arbitrage deployed by VC this will simply spawn more of the subprime ideas that were responsible for generating minus 4.6% VC returns over the last ten years. Nothing will change unless we change the financial system that holds innovation hostage.
Twitter value, Closed is better, Illy to scale
Monday - February 21, 2011.
Filed in: Reference | Healthcare
- Twitter is close to being valued at $5B but I do not believe Twitter is worth one more cent than it is making. I base that on my own experience in having deployed our well regarded blog entries over Twitter for quite a while know, only for those messages to be submerged in what I call the barking dog syndrome; excessive spamming of categories by people with less thoughtful content. What Twitter is missing is a reputation method, a way of letting people determine by virtue of their actions what content deserves exposure. Now Twitter is just a cesspool in which the frequent barking of the little dog drowns out the more thoughtful (yet less frequent) bark of the big dog. And a house full of barking dogs is an unpleasant place to be. I can think of many other spamming platforms that could similarly be valued at more than $1B, if we use sheer presence as the metric of valuing companies.
- Why closed is better than open, for end-users.
- Italian coffee maker Illy appears to make a run for scaling itself a-la Starbucks with more Italian style coffee bars in the U.S. and more restaurants serving Illy espresso after a great meal. But Illy better start making fully automatic machines that make the espresso the way it aught to be made real soon, to avoid waiters watering down the quality of what is served in that Illy branded cup. The unique experience and taste of Illy espresso can only be produced by a diligent barista (in person or as a machine), or put differently: the quality of an experience is highly dependent on the quality of distribution. Having experienced Illy espresso in quite a few restaurants now, Illy's current distribution quality is deflating its brand rather than expanding it.
Newspapers are reborn
Friday - February 18, 2011.
Filed in: Media
- Pay attention to Paper.li from Swiss private company Small Rivers proving that online newspapers are not dead just yet. We have recently seen a disproportionate uptick of traffic coming from their site to ours. With Paper.li everyone can create their own newspaper, composed of RSS and social media feeds in the same way many traditional news sources would pluck from Reuters and the Associated Press. Newspapers are alive and well if you trust the collectors as much as the creators of news.
AT&T dreamer, Facebook Offline Chat
Wednesday - February 16, 2011.
- AT&T’s chief wants cross-platform mobile apps sales through standardization of store programming methods (through the carrier). Oh please Randall Stephenson, now that your iPhone cartel ride has evaporated you want standardization. Like Java? Remember the damage that did to my DVD player at home? I prefer the rat race on completely proprietary, yet ultimate computing experiences that earn their merit based on authentic customer adoption, rather than complex developer collusions that break so easily.
- With Adium on a Mac you can now connect directly to Facebook chat, without a Facebook page open. Simply add a Jabber account with your Facebook username (not your email address, can be found under the account profile menu) composed as follows: username@chat.facebook.com and enter your Facebook password, and that’s it (do not add a Jabber server etc.).
New Whole Home Time-Warner DVR
Monday - February 14, 2011.
- Rumored for a while by its technicians but whole house DVR’s are now available from Time Warner. Watch in one room, continue in the other will be a favorite in our household. Some nice changes on the broadband Internet side are on the docket too. Do you hear me now Comcast, with your empty 3-year old promise of a Comcast Tivo box?
Microsoft and Nokia, Apple iAds, Cisco's consumer, Faster medical device adoption
Friday - February 11, 2011.
Filed in: Education | Experiences
- Nokia and Microsoft are teaming up. Do two losers make one winner? Good luck blending two losing platforms together. The problem is your business model Microsoft, from which you can never build an ultimate computing experience.
- Apple’s iAds are hurting according to TechCrunch. No surprise, since when does a company that builds great value to consumers and gained their trust expect to be successful in attracting technology that does the opposite? Traditional online advertising is dead anyway (in terms of producing real turnover), social recommendations are much more valuable and less disturbing.
- Cisco’s top consumer executive is leaving. What a surprise, coming from a little company called Flip video cameras that Cisco acquired in 2009. Cisco’s proficiency in consumer technologies requires a rebuild of their DNA. For the exact same reasons Oracle has a problem driving anything into the market beyond its core business model. I have been there, tried that.
- Did you know medical device introductions happen 1-3 years faster in Europe than they do in the US? So says the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency. Request the study here. I am sure the FDA has something to do with that. You can probably get them to market even faster in Mexico.
Used iPads
Wednesday - February 09, 2011.
You know you have succeeded in reaching social economic acceptance when less than one year after the introduction a whole commercial website is dedicated to selling used versions of your product (the iPad) in addition to many vying for new ones. Just kidding. I passed mine on to my very happy daughter.
I am just “proud” that I was able to beat Walt Mossberg
somewhere on the planet (Malaysia?) with my last summer’s first 48 hour review of the iPad.Microsoft re-org
Tuesday - February 08, 2011.
Filed in: Corporate
- Microsoft will clean house. Problem is Microsoft’s business model which it perceives as its strength, actually is its weakness. You simply cannot build an ultimate computing experience from discombobulated pieces and agendas from other vendors. At some point you are going to have to put the car’s ultimate driving experience together.
Walt On Verizon iPhone
Thursday - February 03, 2011.
- Verizon beats AT&T in voice calls for iPhones, according to Walt Mossberg at All Things Digital, unless you travel to many other countries frequently (except for China) where Verizon phones are rendered useless. AT&T’s network averaged 46% faster at download speeds and 24% faster at upload speeds he concludes.
Jaguar experience, Skype Access
Friday - January 28, 2011.
Filed in: Government | Reference
- Driving a (rented) Jaguar is a treat, except for the deplorable built-in GPS. It is a driving experience all right, just not ultimate. But their external styling is amazing.
- Skype Access saved my few hours layover in Washington airport (IAD), it delivered flawless wireless experience on a per minute basis (directly taken out of my reserve) where a multitude of wireless providers struggled to compete for the attention of a block of time charged to my credit card. I will give Skype Access a try more often. You can find it at the bottom of the File menu in Skype.
Dutch treat, Simple Localization
Wednesday - January 26, 2011.
Filed in: Global
- The commute is just as nasty as the weather in Holland. Most amazing are the cameras that compute your average speed along a certain route, and send you a ticket when your average speed surpasses a certain threshold. Information technology at work to produce a splendid Dutch treat, apparently Hertz is getting boxes full of tickets.
- Using Google from another country changes it language from english to local. Really Google? Since it knows so much about its users, can’t it figure out that I prefer english based on my domicile, wherever I go?
No Air, Ex-pedia, Get it together Apple
Monday - January 24, 2011.
Filed in: Government | Education
- Sometimes my Macbook Air is without air, especially when switching screens with my 27 inch display. Panic crash report alludes to problems with NVIDIA, maybe time for Apple to make their own graphics cards and step away from PC derived commodities? But when it has air, this little computer is the best one I have owned so far, gotta love 6-7 hours of battery life.
- More free-market lies. Not only do travel sites suggest to give you the ultimate selection of available flights to a certain destination and charge airlines a fee to come out on top, they also omit certain flights that do not involve flying to a preferred vendor’s hub first. Such is the case with my flight to Amsterdam today, where the only way to book it from Raleigh to Amsterdam via (the shortest path) Washington is to do it the old-fashioned way, directly with the airlines. Good to know Expedia.
- More excellence needed at Apple. Ever noticed that the definition of iTunes varies based on the computing device you use? On the Mac it is the all encompassing music library, on the iPhone iTunes is where you purchase and iPod is where you play, on the iPad the same as the iPhone except that videos play in an external video app. Get it together Apple!
Location-location-location
Friday - January 21, 2011.
Filed in: Technology
- Location based services from Google Maps trump those from secular vendors TeleAtlas (now TomTom) and Navteq (now Nokia) strategically. Think of the latter two as proprietary databases and Google Maps as the application that can seamlessly map multi-nodal information derived from anywhere to serve dynamic routing and information requirements. Because of that Google Maps is not only more flexible in what information it can present but often way more complete and accurate than TomTom claims to be. After almost 4 years TomTom still cannot find the street I live on, and neither does the Navteq service in my BMW.
Air Temperatures
Wednesday - January 19, 2011.
Filed in: Experiences
- Traveling in large groups is really an uncomfortable endeavor, for many reasons: cramped spaces, unfriendly service, bad food. Everyone has their own pet peeves. But regardless of whether you are in business class or coach where some incriminating circumstances can be alleviated, temperature and humidity are the best indicators of how pleasant a flight will be. So, I bought a temperature and humidity gauge and measured boarding and cruising altitude temperatures on some of my recent flights. Temperatures above 80F are considered uncomfortable, and your car’s default temperature position is set to 72F. The chart below shows that the temperature on some Delta flights is out of control, but many other airlines appear to struggle or care less about maintaing healthy comfort levels. We’ll keep aggregating and reposting as we fly those “friendly skies”. Based on those aggregates we will make our decisions on what to fly next.
Zinio iMagazine, University programs
Thursday - January 13, 2011.
- I love Zinio on my Macbook Air which beats carrying around stacks of magazines when traveling, and I am surprised they haven’t been scooped up yet. Apple is undoubtedly going to enter the magazine business, in fact I wonder why they have not already tucked magazines right into iBooks.
- A university employee yesterday described to me the entrepreneurial programs at universities as an oxymoron, where some high and mighty educational bureaucrat thinks he can ‘direct’ these university companies to success. Kind of like an admin telling an entrepreneur how to become an entrepreneur. I happen to think universities can be great sources of innovation, the minute they are pulled into the real world cleanly, and once they are firmly attached to macro-economic need. At that point students would be very well served by someone teaching them which investors to avoid.
Respect as currency
Tuesday - January 11, 2011.
Filed in: Behavior
- Establish a relationship before you ask people favors, is what I told an investor today who deployed loan-shark tactics to a European startup and having the company moved to the U.S. now finds out that growing the business requires more than money, it requires authentic vision and relationships based on respect. Squeezing entrepreneurs does not garner my respect.
iPhone 5
Tuesday - January 11, 2011.
Filed in: Innovation | Experiences
- Waiting for iPhone 5. Forget “Antennagate”, its problems are exaggerated anyway. I like my iPhone 4 functionality but hate its industrial design. An angle of 0.3 degrees slides the phone off of most surfaces (arm-rests, desks), as a result this phone is prone to dropping. Its symmetric design also does not allow the phone’s position to be recognized without looking at it, dangerous in the car, dark environments or other precarious situations and the source of many fumbles. The asymmetric iPhone 3 with a curved back and flat front was much better. But it can’t beat Retina.
Homeland Security, Airport security
Monday - January 10, 2011.
Filed in: Government
- Amazing to see how leadership at Homeland Security operates in a fog. With super advanced smart card technology from LaserCard (under) utilized in green-cards for years, we can ensure that every american citizen, legal alien, or migrant worker is at least who he/she says he/she is, and connect their reputation to a taxable income for the United States and a much stronger sense of homeland security. The United States can learn a lot from the water management lessons learned from the Dutch; who realized that when you can’t prevent the water from entering, you at least control where it goes. We should apply that lesson to immigrants. But the new cards would cost $5 instead of $1 for the old drivers license, perhaps a better way to spend money than putting up a Berlin wall in the south?
- Heads up Apple Airport users. To get the maximum speed out of your network set the security to WPA2 Personal (not the default). Any other setting reverts the speed back to a meagerly 54Mbps, according to an Apple document.
iTunes, Bose, Logitech, Philips, Android, Time Warner, BMW
Friday - January 07, 2011.
Filed in: Government | Reference
- No official word from Apple, but I am expecting iTunes to run in the cloud real soon, with reduced tethering dependency on the PC.
- I love my Bose 901s, but a recent visit to their stores demonstrates that their best speakers will not work with any recent home theater amplifiers that support HDMI. So I guess buying 7(.1) of them is no longer an option. Time to look around.
- With flawed Venture economics as the main reason why Venture Capital cannot perform and 95% of VC being posers with no performance to back up the merit they claim, why does Mark Suster of GRP Partners keep hammering on how entrepreneurs need to meet GP expectations? Isn’t that the world upside-down? Instead, VCs need to learn how to locate real entrepreneurs who know how to make VCs big bucks. General Partners need help, not entrepreneurs.
- The Canon 5D mark II is a great camera but suffers from BMW’s iDrive menu control complexity and redundancy, the Rebel XT user-interface was better. Nothing I can’t master, but hard for technology novices with a good eye. With professional optics the camera lacks sufficient controls to balance aperture with speed.
- Philips gave up on their powerful, but cumbersome to program Pronto Universal remotes last summer, and I switched to Harmony’s Universal remotes (now Logitech) with cloud based configuration. Not perfect, but not bad at all. But which genius at Harmony decided that when the battery runs out, docking or hooking up USB charger disables all capabilities. Yet when it is charged it passes “the girl test” in our house. Check out the fantastic channel resources on RemoteCentral
. - After a bit of searching the most crisp font for the new MacBook Air - for now - is embarrassingly (to Apple) the Android font available
from Google. Download for free and select Droid Serif in Mac Mail and notice a newfound clarity. Hope Apple’s new quality control guy picks up on this one, and that he fixes some anti-aliasing that is broken on the Air and in Safari. - Time Warner has released an impressive beta version
for online scheduling of DVR recording, for a PC web experience that is. Manages multiple DVRs as well. But who needs multiple DVR’s with their new one DVR-in-the-home service. Better internet upload speeds for consumers (Roadrunner +) are coming, apparently driven by World of Warcraft latencies experienced by many Time Warner users. The power of gaming. - BMW’s second to last iDrive (still in some of today’s models) explains the main issue in User Interface Design vendors struggle with, where not its consistency but the language is the problem. The new one on the brand new BMW 5 series is slightly better.
CNN, Bose, Tumblr, Ads, OSX apps
Friday - January 07, 2011.
- Apple launches the AppStore for Mac OSX, don’t buy the suggested update to iWork just yet, it’s a bug. And what about transferring purchases to a new computer? But found some great new pieces of software, including a vital one that cleans up the address book.
- Puzzled about what traditional media is thinking comes from the 30-second ads that accompanies every video on CNN you want to watch. The same Google Chrome ad every time makes me want to use Internet Explorer first. Even worse are the new ad curtains, whose advertisers have become the spammers of a new age. Pay attention to your brand experience guys!
- Why this blog is not on Tumblr, 20 second load time of a reference site is unacceptable. Nor would I trust “giving my content” to technologists who have taken subprime money, without a solid export strategy.
- Fantastic parental new years resolutions from family psychologist John Rosemond.
- Bose releases the first in-ear headset that stays in my ear while running, make sure to order the MIE2i headset for iPod/iPhone control. Wonder what marketing genius came up with that name.
Apple's iTunes stance is wrong
Wednesday - November 17, 2010.
Read the complete article...
In the land of the blind Apple is King
Sunday - October 24, 2010.
Filed in: Education | Government
Read the complete article...
The need for a new habitat of innovation
Friday - September 03, 2010.
Filed in: Innovation | Behavior | Education
Read the complete article...
Idiot entrepreneurs
Monday - August 09, 2010.
Filed in: Innovation | Startup
Read the complete article...
The first 48 hours, my iPad review
Monday - May 03, 2010.
Read the complete article...
Why entrepreneurs should not follow an investor compass
Thursday - April 08, 2010.
Filed in: Fundraising | Startup
Read the complete article...
How to set and ask for valuations
Tuesday - September 15, 2009.
Filed in: Fundraising | Startup
Read the complete article...
Idiot CEOs
Monday - May 11, 2009.
Read the complete article...
Why "ServiceForce" is a bigger deal than SalesForce
Tuesday - April 07, 2009.
Filed in: Corporate | Experiences
Read the complete article...
The new HP way; the inverse of now
Tuesday - April 07, 2009.
Read the complete article...
Don't take TheFunded serious
Tuesday - March 31, 2009.
Filed in: Fundraising | Startup
Read the complete article...
How not to raise money, real world examples
Tuesday - March 24, 2009.
Filed in: Startup | Fundraising
Read the complete article...
Not so fast, US defectors
Saturday - March 21, 2009.
Read the complete article...
How to compete with Apple
Wednesday - March 18, 2009.
Read the complete article...
How sub-prime VC stings twice
Wednesday - March 04, 2009.
Filed in: Fundraising | Startup
Read the complete article...
Introducing the new VC blacklist: 217 and counting
Monday - February 23, 2009.
Filed in: Fundraising | Startup
Read the complete article...
Fotonauts: a smooth piece of the photography puzzle
Monday - February 23, 2009.
Filed in: Innovation | Review
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Why Comcast still does not deserve my triple play
Thursday - February 19, 2009.
If you can’t service one single offering well, don’t expect to sell three...Read the complete article...
While Steve Jobs is away; 10 priorities
Wednesday - January 28, 2009.
Filed in: Corporate | Innovation
Read the complete article...
Innovating back to the future
Thursday - January 22, 2009.
Filed in: Innovation | Media
