Three InSight

The Walkman is dead, MacBook Air, and Amazon

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 15:51:41 EST

A piece of our past is on it's final legs, Sony's last run of cassette based walkmen are coming off the lineâ�¦ The guys reflect on their first experience with the Walkman and how the personal music/media arena has evolved. Michael has ordered the new Macbook Air! Doyle postulates that the 11" could make a very good portable device that could replace his iPad. Amazon is now selling more Kindle books than paper books combinedâ�¦

The NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:40:47 EST

The Non-Disclosure Agreement. Metzger deals with startups - and a lot of them ask for signed NDAs. It makes doing business extremely difficult - they may have a client in the same business. The chances of Metzger taking an idea are zero. Michael says he launched Callisto.fm at Podcamp Boulder 2009 as an idea. A developer stepped up and offered to build it. If there were an NDA, that wouldn't have happened. What would happen to someone that stole that idea? The community is too small. That won't happen in San Francisco, people are more likely to steal idea due to the size of the space. Investors like teams, not ideas in general. Two companies Boulder Open Coffee Club asked for NDAs before they'd share ideas. No one did it. Startups face difficulty - do they share excitement with open betas, or do they keep it locked down until the last minute to fanfare? All agree that the former is better. CNET was recently in trouble for bypassing a press embargo with a hacked code. They were prepared to pan the idea, but ended up giving it a good review. The publisher issued a DMCA takedown. Bad PR move. Apple reveals their hand when they issue a takedown request, most people usually comply. You can give away details without revealing the entire idea. Doyle's clients is launching a new beer brand. Let's go make one too! It's Miller-Coors - interesting. If you don't have at least 5 competitors, your idea is probably not worth a crap. Competition is great for startups. Amazon took what was already in place and made it really easy. iPad will be the same kind of thing. A better version of what's out there already. Apple makes their money on mystery and hype. If they announced everything a year in advance, there'd be no surprise, a lot less hype, and revenue. Should the same apply to startups? Apple does have a great record of super innovative products. Michael organized an iPad launch party: Tabletpalooza. Dell couldn't get away with it. It takes a remarkable product for stealth mode companies to work. They might have the next Segway. Things that don't get feedback may not be commercially viable. Is Apple paying attention to the comments on the iPad? Changing the iPad based on that feedback? We all think the feedback is far more valuable than the NDA. Does Doyle still think the Conan Obrien deal was a plant? Umm, no. But this sets the stage for the next coup. Imagine organizing the big voices to accomplish goals. That's a wrap. Find us in the regular places, specifically Callisto.fm and iTunes!

The Apple iPad and the Geek Girls

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:15:01 EST

For Doyle, the jury is out. He's interested in what the infrastructure and ecosystem will look like. Michael: The device is not for pros, but instead for consumers, literally his mother. She asked about it with no prompting from Michael. iPad runs all iPhone apps, including Skype. Dave: Completely blown away by the device and wants one now. Other handset makers were trying to stuff a desktop OS into a handheld. Subnotebook/netbooks are gone with 18 months as a category. iPhone OS 4 is rumored to support multitasking. What does iPad mean for Hulu and suchlike services. Screen dimensions aren't HD dimensions (16:9). Publishers are giddy about the device. It'll be a great guide "book." What will the Kindle app look like? How well will it work? Dave is a futurist at heart. iPad has attachments (SD card, USB). Who is the target market for this? Will the attachment keyboard suck? It has Bluetooth. Doyle thinks he might divide mobile and desktop operations again (iPad for mobile/email, and iMac for the desktop). Will the iPad, Amazon has even more incentive to make the Kindle app better for iPhone OS. Will more professional apps find their ways to the iPad because the screen is larger? Get one, you'll get all the girls.

Predictions for 2010

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:24:56 EST

First show of the new year. China and Google are no longer friends. CES banter, Doyle and Dave were there. 125,000 people, 3000 vendor exhibits. The show felt better. Doyle went for the parties. EBooks were big. 3DTV was big. Home electricity monitoring systems were big. Monitoring electricity usage causes drops in usage. Electricity bills were high in Colorado! There are still many standards and even iPhone apps for real-time reporting. 3DTV: Way too early - the dorky first gen. Not just glasses, but *their* glasses. Polarized vs. Non-polarized? Sports might be big, ESPN will have a 3D channel. 2010 predictions. Michael: A big fat year for Apple. iSlate will be a game changer. A leaked rumor names a genre (iSlate). Does Apple count replacement iPhone units against sales? If so, there were like 9 phones sold. Doyle says his Kindle is horrible for anything other than reading words. Dave - transition from keyboards to no keyboards. The convertible tablet PC was cool. Multi-touch gestures were hot at CES. Doyle's prediction: Twitter will have an exit of some kind and will become a feature. Bing? Facebook? Google? Who knows? Apple starts shipping the Magic Mouse with all Macs. Dave - 2010 will mark the beginning of the end of netbooks. More focused devices will eat their market. Is the netbook for the consumer, not the producer? Imagine these smart devices with much bigger screens (DROID, Nexus One, iPhone). Doyle's laptop is 500GB, but with a cloud based device, storage is irrelevant. Energy storage is a huge industry. There has to be a better way. Wireless power in Starbucks would be great. We'd choose places based on power. RCA was showing battery tech that gets power via WIFI. (WHAT? That's VOODOO!). If there's enough power to work, not charge, the world would be great! Power is a big problem. Doyle gives NBC credit, he thinks it was a trial balloon. Way too much credit Doyle. Conan has the Twittershphere behind him. Michael thinks Conan should go the way of Adam Carolla - direct to internet content. None of us watch late night TV regularly anyway, so time segment doesn't matter.

John Metzger (and the iPhone)

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:11:38 EST

John loves motorcycles. Some big announcement is coming on the 27th, but it's not just for iWork 10. There are no Microsoft rumor sites. Why? Will Apple introduce iSlate? iPhone OS 4? Will the iPhone have controls on the back? It'd make butt calling easier anyway. Will iWork be touch-enabled? What's the point? Doyle really appreciated the sharing options introduced in iWork 09. Metzger uses both iWork and Office for compatibility. iWork's licensing is great - the family packs are cheap. John can't use Pages - continues to use Word. Formatting problems create issues for a PR firm, so reliability is king. OpenOffice and Google Docs have their own issues. Google Docs allows uploads for any kind of file (G-Drive). MobileMe is sorely neglected - it's a crown jewel, but Apple seems to ignore it. The iSlate would be a second machine for Dave - it'd be nice to be able to use it as a second display. Doyle thinks it'll have to be more than a color Kindle. Will it be a giant iPhone without cell service? Dave finally fixed his iPhone battery issues by disabling Google Calendar syncing. If you're having problems with battery, try the same!

iPhone Apps: Dave likes CardStar. It doesn't with King Soopers (a local grocery stores), but seems to work everywhere else. Doyle likes Tripit. He pays for the premium service - the service takes reservation confirmation emails and organizes your trip. It didn't work for Dave (the iPhone app never synced). Doyle's one gripe is that he doesn't need the trips once he's finished. Location based sharing requires diligence. A danger is letting people know that you're out of town. John likes the Weather app, Stocks, and uses his iPhone to read NYT, etc. The small screen isn't a problem at all for him. He's still so enamored by the fact that he can, that he does. Michael listens to books, no reading. Michael likes GroceryIQ for grocery list management. It's $.99 and lets he and his wife share the list in real-time. It groups the items in sections to make shopping easier.

$.99 is always worth the risk. The gap between those willing to pay $.99 vs. free is amazing. Apple sold 99.4% of all mobile based apps last year. Doyle would be happy to pay the Denver Post for a good app to read news. We've been paying for content for hundreds of years. We're willing to pay for good content. People pay for music now without thinking about it. Doyle has no problem throwing down for a single he learns about via Shazam. Dave tried to get rid of books on cassette but the store wouldn't take them! Radio on the iPhone - streaming radio seems to be a problem for John. It's a bandwidth issue. Michael uses Pandora in the car via bluetooth. The quality will degrade based on bandwidth, but rarely drops out. Gooveshark will have an iPhone app soon. Slacker radio is another option. That's a wrap!

I Want to Hold Your Hand

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:16:31 EST

"I Want to Hold Your Hand" episodeâ�¦ The Beatles record collection is going to be available on iTunes! *YAWN* Facebook announces its new integrated communication services. Do we need yet another email service? And how effective can it be with more businesses blocking access to Facebook and Twitter type interactions. The guys also discuss a possible future for distribution of content in relation to premium membership.

Google Buzz, AT&T in Business Week, Google Gigabit, Blue Microphones

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:04:06 EST

Dave's first thought? Yawn. What's the big differentiator? It's just another place to manage. Doyle doesn't want his communications world in a single window. Michael will follow it to see what happens.

AT&T has an unflattering article in Business Week. Pundits say bloggers don't matter, but when the story reaches Business Week, it matters. Does the story in general matter to someone that really wants an exclusive phone (iPhone)?

Google is doing gigabit internet in select cities. The infrastructure for the rest of the internet needs to be capable of delivering content at that speed. Netflix buffers on 50Mbps connections, why? Dave thinks the government should implement the infrastructure.

Thanks to Blue Rhino, and more importantly Blue Microphones ( http://bluemic.com ).

Episode Two: Hot air balloon

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST

Thanks to Best Western in Kwanah, Texas for lending Michael their business center for a half an hour.

Verizon DROID commercial launches focused on the flaws in the iPhone. For all of the things iPhone doesn't do, DROID does. The ad starts out like an Apple ad, but deteriorates in a scifi like coolness. Will it live up to Verizon's claims? We both like the approach, but you probably have to be a geek to get it. The "There's a map for that" ads are better. It's more about the network than the device in most cases. The worst part of the iPhone is AT&T in the US. Any network provider would have suffered the same network fate. Beware Verizon should you get the iPhone. DROID and Pre are similar in focusing on what the iPhone doesn't do, and should be focusing on what their benefits are. Where's the Pre now? How many Twitter apps? 30? Michael has half of them installed.

Dave recounts his Blogworld Expo experience. It was a great event, they did a great job. It's about hanging in the hallways and after parties. Criticism 1: When going to a party, it shouldn't be in a club with the volume cranked to 12. It was impossible to communicate. Criticism 2: last year the closing speaker was Mark Cuban. He was witty, and was a take no prisoners kind of guy. This year it was Kevin Pollack. He was crude, and unexpected - video clips shown with 700 people, should have been more PG, not X. Leo Laporte was on Adam Carolla's podcast suggesting that "new media" is the media. Is Blogworld the mainstream now since "new media" is the media? Sharlene Lee said she was going to the Web 2.0 conference on Facebook. Aren't we on to the next thing? Move on, new media is the media. The 140 conference had a breathtaking list of speakers. CES will have an iPod and iPhone section. Over all it was like going to home coming. There were really cool people, most of which Dave knew, but he met plenty of new people. Business was being done, Dave has a few new opportunities because of it. He had fun hanging out with friends.

State of the blogosphere from Technorati. The survey tries to get a sense of where new media and blogging are. Survey was comprised of 3000 bloggers and found that 10% were self employed 10% were corporate, and the majority were doing it to serve attract clients and share their expertise. 60% were 18 to 44, but what were the other 40%? AARP bracket maybe? They have an average of four blogs. Aliza Sherman was on Blipcasts and maintains six blogs. 73% agree that blogs are being taken more seriously, the inverse is also interesting. 60% agree that most people will get news from blogs in the next 5 years. Wordpress can have static pages and it turns a blog in to a website. The number one use of Twitter is to promote their blog or promote their business. Not present was giving to the community or creating a dialog. Top reasons: market business, share links, understand topics and interact with readers. We haven't seen the questions, but it's not about engagement, it's about promotion for the respondents. Depending on the surveyed it might make sense. What is a blog? Does Twitter count? Posterous? Can you clarify what a blog is? Dave suggests is a set of tools to accomplish goals, a content management system, presenting data in a temporal (typically newest to oldest).

Balloon boy hoax. Silver balloon with a six year old inside? It felt like someone was gaming the system to Dave from the start. Michael tweeted that when the balloon lands it'd be promoting a balloon festival. It was a scary thought for a father of a 5yr old. It wasn't really possible, but logic was lost on the prospect. The father should be prosecuted legally. He was simply looking for publicity and will make money even if he's fined heavily. He caused $300k in expenses. He'll probably be on SNL, Letterman, and get a book deal. Mission accomplished and there's no way to take it back, unfortunately.

It's been an interesting week. Focus on new media, old media is adapting nicely. They're coming around. It's only going to get better from here. CES has been more and more about new media and web based services. It's a wrap.

Episode Three: What an audience

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST

Admob purchased by Google. First spotting of Admob by Doyle was in the Wall Street Journal iPhone app. Dave is using Admob in his iPhone app. Google is doing right by acquiring for innovation. Microsoft built an empire on that practice, it works for a while. Writely is Google Docs. Writely from Colorado? Mobile is becoming more important in everything we do. It's critical to marketers.

The DROID is a best of class device on Verizon. T-Mobile has the G2, and Sprint the Pre. The DROID is not an iPhone, but the iPhone needs the competition to be a better device. It sold over 100,000 units on the first weekend. It'll at least put pressure on AT&T. There are now options. Ari Newman switched to the DROID and has loved it so far. Competition creates a market. If you don't have competition then you don't have a market. Pressure begets innovation. Jason Mendelson says (at #BOCC ) that he doesn't want to invest in a new piece of fruit. He wants to see competitors in the space. Turn by turn is great on DROID, not available on the iPhone from Google. Competitors are $99 on the iPhone, though Google will release a free one if Apple will approve it. The interface isn't great on the DROID. Michael's son picked up the iPhone's interface at 3 with no help. Apple overtakes Nokia as the most profitable handset maker. David Pogue coins the phrase "App Phone." A phone that accepts apps via download. Dave thinks the consumer doesn't want to have to think about apps. Smart is fine. The handset market is mimicking the desktop space, except Apple is in the lead. Doyle claims the Mac is based on Linux (it's a based on BSD). Goldie Katsu says DROID is a geek's phone at Boulder Open Coffee. Studio audience laughs. Audience attendance is up 1000%.

Michael geeks out on the amount of Javascript that's included in the major sites. There's only one namespace in Javascript, which means that every developer has access to everyone else's variables and functions. Possibilities include grabbing form values intended for another site. Namespace may not be the best term. You can't redefine a function name for example. Javascript is not a very secure language, but it's prevalent. It's relevant to us because of the Boulder tech community. HTML5 doesn't fix this problem, since they're two different entities. HTML5 replace some of the functionality of Javascript. HTML5 is more a threat to Adobe with the media tags, etc. Apple saw this coming? Apple has no social media presence, which is generally a worst-practice. Maybe they're not present because the fan base covers Apple enough. There are 6000ish blog posts on Apple every day. Maybe that's why they're successful. Apple's not selling Pepsi (or sugar water). John Scully wrote the preface to one of Dave's books. The Diesel (Michael Spindler) - where is he? Business week had an all black cover with the text "The death of an American icon" and Wired did a crown of thorns and the word "Pray."

Black Friday is coming. Year by year more and more Black Friday sales are leaking. Ads just show up on people's blogs. Sales might not be as effective as they used to be. Michael says Black Friday sales should be in person sales only. It would take some business from online sales (though most have online presences anyway). Buying big things online make the reviews a goldmine. Is the review system a replacement for the people in the stores. Do you really trust the person at Best Buy (nothing personal)? Do they tell you what you want to hear or are they giving you what's on sale with the best spiff? Are we elite here? Or do most people get stiffed by sales people? Remember EDTV (Enhanced Definition Television)? nothing more than 480P. Yawn. But grandma bought it up.

Retail is evolving to be simple showrooms. Buy now and it arrives in the mail soon. What's next? 3D showrooms? The rise and immediate fall of Cyber-monday was due to dialup and people waiting until Monday to shop on broadband. The battle is now between brick and mortar vs. online sales. Wake up Friday AM, get an email from Target, click, buy, done. So happy it's that easy. Shoppers are not purchasers. We all agree that we're purchasers and don't enjoy the shopping process. We all hang out at the Apple Store because it's fun. We see our peers, and it may have replaced the corner bar and are greeted by the employees. Cheers for the Apple Fanboy. Microsoft store? LOL. It's close... imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. They did a great job! It's a WRAP.

Thanks to the studio audience and The B Side Lounge in Boulder, Colorado.

Episode Six: Google and Facebook. Again?

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 EST

Three InSight, Episode 6. Google's URL Shortener. Do we really have to talk about Google? Yes. URL shorteners have good/bad side. Curious about monetization. Bit.ly Pro now exists because of Google's service. Bit.ly offers the best tracking. Google wants to be able to index shortened URLs, and this is a great way to enable it. Shorteners are becoming a risky proposition, don't click stuff if you don't know the source. Hackers are preying on our trust with shorteners. Will goo.gl links show up in Google Analytics? Analytics and Adsense are paired nicely. Metzger Associates is using Bit.ly in press releases - intentionally. These days the URL/domain isn't so important because everything is being shortened. Big scary URLs are now simple. Dave uses the public library to reserve books and uses Google search to get there so he doesn't have to remember the actual URL. No singing for the holidays in the podcast, that's a promise.

Google's Nexus One - which came first, Nexus One or Nexus Six? Duh :) Palm is coming back with Pre and Pixi - is the dawn of renewed competition on the horizon? Apple started the app abstraction process with the mobile providers - and now Google is taking it one step further with an unlocked phone that works on either GSM network. The price may be reduced if you allow ads on the service. There's plenty of competition in the industry. Hardware should be carrier agnostic. We all want the carrier to simply provide pipes. Oh, MobileMe rocks. Doyle's ISP argument - what if you had to turn in your PC, or get a new one every time you switched ISPs at home? That's the way the mobile world works right now. Comcast buys BNC Universal, is that another step down the path of paid content? If you're a Comcast subscriber, will NBC content get higher priority? Java promised write once run anywhere. People are working on the same for iPhone/Windows Mobile/Android. Once that becomes easy the apps will proliferate. Tablets are on the way - just a matter of time. Amazon has Kindle, Barnes and Noble has the Nook. It's just a matter of time before the Crunchpad (joojoo) and the Apple tablet appear. Netbooks are hot right now but will ultimately vanish. Tablets may just cause their demise. Apple's purchase of Lala could mean that we get to take our iTunes libraries to any device, not just Apple endorsed devices. Stream Lala on the iPhone if you can't fit the whole library on your phone. Devices will become just receivers for content. Dave has a G4 media server... G4? Really? :) The next generation of content will be serverless. Dave suggests that ten of thousands of copies of The Dark Knight might be easily replaced with single digital streams. But what if the server crashes? More data is lost because of user error, that is the case with professionals (Danger! excluded).

Facebook privacy settings. New privacy changes are a nightmare. Yes! Michael got a prompt in Facebook, set some things, and clicked OK. Doyle thinks it's sillyâ�¦ much ado about nothing. Dave's view is that Facebook promised privacy. This dialog and these changes violate that trust. (note: "Everyone" was default only if you hadn't changed the settings previously. If you had, they did their best to match what your modified settings were). Managing these settings isn't for the novice - which arguably is the Facebook population, and weren't well described. Confusion is the cause and result of all of this. They're trying to make it a better place with more control, but may have botched this one in their communication. Google doesn't care about your stuff. Big Brother is watching! (LOL, that's a joke). There are 100 million users and Facebook might be their first experience with social media. Doyle thinks they're over-reacting. Michael thinks the problem is that Facebook assumed a higher level of intelligence in the average American than they should have. But at least they're trying. Doyle suggests that Facebook, when they make a substantive change, should provide videos for each level of user. That way everyone understands. One popup for 350 million people isn't an effective means of communications. Dave suggests that his daughter's content is, and should remain, private. His daughter would have just clicked OK. Everything would then have been public instead of friends only which was the agreement he and his daughter made. Kids in 1840 weren't taught to look both ways before crossing the street. If you're parenting the same way now, you're in for a load of trouble. Dave is sophisticated enough to know how to make that change. We've got to evolve our parenting style to match the technology our kids play with.

Facebook ties to Twitter. Dave wants content filters. Wants to be able filter Facebook by removing the #fb tag. Dave's insistent that people separate their feeds and not cross post. Let's hope this doesn't cause a DOS with Twitter (bi-directional syncing!). Doyle could podcast with himself. We all have friends on both networks that aren't on the other. Social media is facing an oligopoly. Michael only follows people he's met IRL on Twitter but has 780 followers. Facebook is IRL only. Tweetdeck is kind of solving this problem with checkboxes (so is Seesmic). Different networks have different expectations. Twitter can support dozens of updates per hour from someone, where that's not OK on Facebook. LinkedIn now supports Twitter syncâ�¦but why? That's just not OK. It's business focused and people's private tweets don't belong there. They way a guy talks in a locker room is different from the way a guy talks at Thanksgiving dinner. Doyle is proof (based on the studio audience). Do men and women talk differently in a locker room? Yes! Doyle is censoring himself because we asked him to? Props to B-Side, they're done at the end of the year. We're looking for a new home for the podcast. We're open to wealthy potential sponsors too. Happy Holidays!

Reach the hosts: Doyle Albee: http://doylealbee.com, Michael Sitarzewski: http://friendmichael.com and Dave Taylor: http://davetayloronline.com

Thanks for listening!