An afternoon at the playground
We took the kids to a local playground after lunch today.
The girls made some new friends, played an extended version of tag and james thought he was so cool on the big slide.
More pictures here.
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It ain't about megapixels
The arms race for more megapixels in digital cameras is in full swing.
As an example, Canon has a newer DSLR that is now up to 16.7 megapixels. Sounds yummy but still a far cry from the human eye which is apparently closer to 576 megapixels.
A friend of mine recently asked me which digital camera she should buy. Lots of choices with a wide range of features. Consumers are drawn to the camera's with more megapixels.
But what we really need is better and faster autofocus in our digital cameras.
Here is a recent action shot I took of Ellie with my 7 megapixel Canon SD800is (point & shoot).
And here is a recent action shot I took of Ellie with my 8 megapixel Canon DSLR.
In both cases the lighting was pretty bad. But the focus is clearly better with the DSLR. No contest.
Some company is going to come out with a small digital camera with a lightning fast autofocus. Thats what we really need.
It ain't about more megapixels.
Age of Consent
Thanks to The Hype Machine, I found this very cool cover of Age of Consent by Arcade Fire (original by New Order). I hope they play it when we see them in May.
Enjoy.
More Lijit stats
Todd and the team keep adding new stuff to Lijit since my last post on interesting Lijit stats.
(For those of you unfamiliar with Lijit) Lijit is a search tool that allows readers of my blog to search all of my content on a variety of networks (my blog, my photos on flickr, my profile on linkedin, etc) and it also provides search across my network (friends, blogroll, etc). I've had it on my blog the last few months and recently I put in on my left sidebar above the fold.
I've been using the service more and more lately. I also really like the beefed up stats they now provide.
Here is an example of one of the newer stats they provide.
This is a 30 day snapshot of the number of times people have searched for something, across my network, using my Lijit widget.
I'd really love to see more bloggers use Lijit. It's very cool.
OpenCoffee Boston - 2nd mtg
Thanks to everyone that showed up at OpenCoffee Boston edition today.
It was fun meeting new people and seeing some folks from the first mtg.
We didn't get to play with any toys like the last mtg. But in some ways I thought todays meeting was better. Felt more comfortable.
There was a variety of conversations as a larger group and then smaller group discussions. Good chats about virtual worlds, digg, justin.tv, wikipedia, Snow Crash, evolution of internet video, evolution of MMOs, battlestar galactica and other interesting stuff.
Hope to see you next week if you live in/around Boston. Tell a friend.
Bowling
On Monday night this week I met up with one of my best friends Rob A.
We usually only get to hang out these days with our families and kids together. But this time we were like two old dorks just hanging out. Just like in undergrad (he was my roommate for 3 years).
We went bowling at a local place called Lucky Strike. Right next door to Fenway Park.
It was a lot of fun. Rob kicked my ass but I did get a few strikes and a few spares over three games. A spare is very satisfying. It sort of feels like making a 10 foot putt for par.
He took this photo of me with his cameraphone (when are they going to put a camera in the Blackberry).
Amazon Web Services
It's hard enough starting a company, designing a product, developing the product and then making it available.
But the infrastructure costs have always been daunting.
I'm seeing more and more startups using Amazon Web Services to support their web products & services.
Last year I saw a bunch of startups using S3 (storage). Now I'm seeing more and more EC2 (compute cycles).
Alex Iskold does a great job summarizing how it all fits together and the advantages of using Amazon's infrastructure if you are a small/medium sized company.
I'm guessing that Microsoft and Akamai will offer something competitive this year.
It would also be great if there was a consumer version of S3. I'd love to get rid of my rack/servers in my basement.
Happy Birthday Mom
It's my mom's birthday today.
Happy Birthday Mom!
Heartbreaker
Our youngest daughter, Ellie, has had the same stuffed bunny since she was 1. She's now 5 (and a half she'll tell you). And she's been sleeping with this bunny every night.
Well it's starting to fall apart. And I thought she didn't care.
But when i tucked into bed tonight I found a note under her pillow. She must have asked Sophia to write it.
It said "Dear Bunny Fairy, could you please bring me a brand new bunny to sleep with. Love, Ellie"
This girl breaks my heart.
Googleplex Boston
It looks like Google is about to expand into Boston in a meaningful way. This is great news.
Yes it will be harder for Boston based startups to hire the best engineers. Our west coast portfolio companies find it a challenge to hire great tech folks against Google these days.
For Boston it's a different story though. It will keep smart people here. It will also improve the consumer internet and web services DNA a lot.
And competition is a good too. I love the little guy taking on the big guy.
User Driven Innovation
I'm loving the piece in yesterdays NYT called How to Improve It? Ask Those Who Use It
The theme of the article is based on the concept of value creation by letting users of products modify them or improve them. It's absolutely true. The NYT's story shares a variety of success stories where the end user created brand new products and markets that the original manufacturer didn't even consider or wouldn't have developed on their own. I've recently started to read some of the Eric Von Hippel's work in this area. He is a Professor at MIT Sloan School of Management and a thought leader on this very topic. You can download his papers here.
End user control is happening. It's happening everywhere online with web services. Mashups are popping up all of over the place. And of course we see users increasingly create and share content.
And it's going to happen in hardware as well. Users want more control. I like what Instructutables is doing. They are off to a nice start creating a place for folks who have a passion for making their own things.
The next big frontier for end user driven innovation should be consumer electronics. Historically they have been closed devices but they will need to open up. Why can't you create or download apps for your camera? Or why can't you connect different CE devices to create new functionality? Or why can't you improve your DVR? You should be able to and it's going to happen.
And then we will see some really fun stuff.
Webkinz craze isn't slowing down
Our kids first introduced us to Webkinz in December. I blogged about it then.
Well my kids aren't bored of it yet. They now own more pets and have more stuff going on in their virtual Webkinz world than ever. Their buddy lists are booming. I'm sure they would spend more time and money on this if we weren't setting limits.
Todays NYT describes the Webkinz craze. I like the idea of marrying physical products with online services. In the Webkinz case there is a very light integration between the virtual and real world.
I think we will see more toys and CE products that have a closer relationship to their online counterparts.
It's inevitable. And it's exciting to think about the possibilities.
Good sign
I really have a hard time living in New England in March. It feels like the month just lasts forever.
But fortunately signs of spring are everywhere these days.
These little flowers are showing up all over our neighborhood.
Just in time.
Pulp Secret
I've blogged about Pulp Secret before and I'm really enjoying it. The show is getting better and better. Great energy and fun style.
If you like comic books and super hero stuff (who doesn't) than you should consider adding Pulp Secret to your favorite rss reader. Here's the latest episode (disclosure: we are investors in N3)
Rhett Miller
This morning I'm making a CD for a friend that wants a mellow playlist.
So many songs, so little time.
We are still playing a lot of Old 97's in our house/car. Rhett Miller, the lead singer/guitarist, has a solo career as well but I never really got into it until recently. I'm digging his last album, The Believer.
I picked Question as the first track on this cd i'm putting together. Great tune. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Jawbone rules
I recently picked up a Jawbone bluetooth headset.
Their noise cancellation technology is really incredible. They have a demonstration on their website on how well this thing works with crazy noisy conditions like wind, music and even a jackhammer. I didn't believe how good it would be until I tried it.
You may or may not like the looks of this thing (I bought the silver version). But the audio quality is what this baby is all about.
OpenCoffee Boston 1st mtg
Well Nabeel beat me to the punch about our kick off mtg today.
Thanks to everyone that came by. It was great start.
It was fun meeting new people & also seeing a couple old friends too. I especially loved the opportunity to play with the One Laptop per Child. It is very cool. Thanks Kent. I'm a big fan of this project.
As Nabeel said we are hoping to make it to the next few meetings for sure to do our part.
Little James
Recent picture of our little one next to me and Lauren
AppleTV & viral marketing
Apple continues to make their customers (new & old) very happy with the new AppleTV.
My friend just picked up AppleTV today. Here is the voicemail he left me with his opinion :)
I currently have a MacMini running FrontRow on our HDTV.
I don't think AppleTV will give me any additional functionality over the Mini but let me know if I'm missing something.
Congrats to Wallstrip
My friend Howard blogged about Wallstrip's 100th episode yesterday.
My favorite shows so far was probably the Jack in the Box show and the VCA Antech show (and I had so much fun being part of the blackberry dork-a-thon.)
Great 5 months and congrats to the Wallstrip team.
Update: here is the Wallstrip anniversary show with Howard & Lindsay's top 5.
OpenCoffee Club Boston reminder
Just a friendly reminder that OpenCoffee Club boston edition meets tomorrow.
Come by and say hello if you are around.
Google takes another lesson from BillG
I'm not talking about Bill Gates.
No, Billg in this case is Bill Gross.
Google today launched their pay-per-action service today. This is a big deal and could be a huge opportunity for them and their advertisers.
But just like Google took a page from Bill Gross' Overture's innovative paid listings model (highly controversial model at the time), Google's latest service is again taking a page from Bill Gross' cost per action model at Snap (Bill is the founder of Snap). They announced this model over a year ago.
I don't know Bill Gross personally but he deserves a lot of credit.
Microtransactions in a Virtual World
Nabeel has a great post about the success of microtransactions of virtual products in gaming.
In addition to sharing various microtransaction success stories, he also hits home on a point that he's been making for a long time. Nabeel's thesis has been that MMO's are not hit driven like movies or console games. They are more like social networks.
I didn't think this was true when Nabeel first told me this idea last year but I'm getting it now. Certainly there are plenty of exceptions but generally I like this notion a lot.
Arcade Fire coming to Boston
We are going to see Arcade Fire in May at the Orpheum Theater. Many thanks to Steve for getting us the tix. The latest album, Neon Bible, is so sweet. Really looking forward to the show.
Looks like a lot of other people agree.
yourminis & veoh
Dmitry at Veoh told me about yourminis several months ago. yourminis has a ton of widgets.
They now have a Veoh widget. I configured mine to include all of my public home videos that I published on Veoh. You can change the video size, color, search parameters whatever. This is how I customized mine. I made it small so I can keep in on my right sidebar.
You can scroll up & down to see different videos. One click on the thumbnail plays back the video inside the widget. Click again while the video is playing and it links to the actual video on Veoh (bigger size).
I'm sure only my family members will enjoy this widget on my blog but it's a fun one. You might want to create your own yourminis widget. yourminis & veoh. nice combo.
More from KickApps
Our portfolio company, KickApps, provides a very simple way for website owners to quickly and easily offer social networking functionality and user generated content. It's a white label solution which means it can match an existing websites look & feel.
Last night KickApps launched a new version of their software and service.
Lots of new features including:
-updated profile pages
-personal profile themes
-video advertising options
-video, audio and text blogs
-dns masking
and some more fun stuff
Great job to Alex, Eric and the team.
This shouldn't be so hard
We use Macs at home. We have 3 of them now.
About a year ago I stopped using our digital camcorder and starting taking all of our home videos on our digital camera and importing everything onto the Mac and our home server. As a result I have about 100 "little clips". Each clip varies from a few megs to over 100 megs or so.
I want to simply create a DVD of all these little clips from 2006. The home server is great but it doesn't help me if I want to watch a movie on the road or if I want backups on dvds or if I want to be able to send a DVD to my parents.
The Mac way means that I need to import each one into iMovie. The importing takes forever even though they are all in .mov or .mp4 already
then I have to create an imovie project.
then I'm supposed to send it to iDVD to create a theme, encode it and then burn it.
But this is taking way too long and it shouldn't be that hard.
Here's how it should work:
(for this project I don't want any fancy themes and I dont' want any fancy music in the background).
I just want to dump all my clips into a folder. Then I want to copy that folder to a DVD image on my desktop . Then I want to click some button that says "burn". And then the software should just assemble each clip by date/time stamp. Then the software should ask if I want to burn another disk.
This shouldn't be so hard.
Quicksilver addict
My friends Jason and Stu have been telling me to use Quicksilver for awhile now but i just got around to installing it last week. Now I am an addict. If you have a Mac and you aren't using Quicksilver than you are missing out.
It's an application launcher that is a zillion times easier and better than using the Dock. And it's freeware.
Get it here.
Damien Rice
Damien Rice's first album was overplayed or at least I overplayed it. I haven't listened to him in a long time.
But in my day of all things Irish, I checked out his latest album 9 (amazon link) on YottaMusic/Rhapsody.
Here's the first track - 9 Crimes . If you like this song you will really enjoy the album.
It's a cold gray day in Boston with a foot of snow from yesterdays dumping. We have this album playing on our Sonos now and sipping on cafe lattes.
Perfect.
Happy St. Patricks Day
In honor of my redheaded wife who is 50% irish and my irish kids, here's a rocking tune from the best irish band at an irish castle. The opening of this song when the Edge hits the first power chord at the same time as the camera shot of the crowd in lights is so cool.
What is the best publishing and content management platform
When we launched Spark Capital in the summer of 2005 we went with a minimalist design. We had just launched the firm and we had zero portfolio companies and little news beyond the team we assembled.
Over the past 20 months a lot has happened, we have expanded our team, made 11 investments (more coming) and would like to add more stuff. Our current website design doesn't make sense anymore.
So we are going to re-do it. I'm excited about the change. One thing we need for sure is a simple, easy to use content management system. We want to be able to publish content quickly and syndicate content, subscribe to content, etc. I'm going to evaluate moveable type, wordpress and Mambo.
Would love to hear about any of your experiences or recommendations. Email me or comment is fine.
Thanks in advance.
We want cablecards in the MacMini
Looks like an upcoming Dell/Vista PC is going to support CableCard which means built in premium HD cable channel support.
I can't wait until the MacMini supports cablecards. It's gotta happen soon and that will be beautiful.
Congrats to Santo and BigBand
My partner Santo was an early investor in BigBand while he was a partner at CRV. He invested in the company during very ugly downturn in the market and especially the telecom infrastructure market. A lot of investors didn't want to make this bet. I was at an EIR at CRV at the time. I saw how much he believed in this company and the founders.
Even after leaving CRV, it was obvious how much Santo cared about this company and the friendship with Amir, founder and ceo.
BigBand went public today (NASDAQ: BBND). Stock has gone up +30% in its opening day in a very difficult public market.
I'm very happy for Amir but I'm also really happy for my friend Santo. Congrats.
We need a real viable third party
I've been a democrat for a long time.
I'm trying to support the party that I've been loyal to forever. After Al Gore won I have been arguing with my friends not to leave the party and help make it stronger.
But my party is letting me down. Big time.
Looks like Senator Clinton wants to keep our troops in Iraq forever. This isn't the answer in my view.
I'm going to meet Sen Obama at a local fund raiser next month. I'm looking forward to it and I hope I feel better about my party afterwards.
But we do need a viable third party. Now more than ever.
Streaming Media East
I know this is still a few months away but just wanted to share that I'll be at Streaming Media East in NYC in May. I'm on a panel with folks from tivo, akimbo and aol.
Hopefully it will be interesting and I'm also looking forward to seeing some friends as well.
Let me know if any of you are going to attend
OpenCoffee: boston edition
Following Brad's lead in Boulder, Nabeel and I decided to kick start the same effort in beantown. A very informal gathering of investors and entrepreneurs to gather.
So here's to OpenCoffee Boston edition. We're going to start meeting next week, March 22nd at 10am at Andale Coffee House in Cambridge. Nabeel set up a page with more info about OpenCoffee as well as the location specifics.
Hope to see you there.
Internet Radio at risk
Internet radio sites are about to get hit with a very big bill. I heard about this last week but it didn't sink it at the time. I guess I didn't take it seriously. I mean why would the labels kill off something that is so popular with end users. What would be the logic in that?
Well it looks much more serious than I thought. This is actually ugly news. I've become addicted to internet radio. I recently upgraded to the pay version of last.fm which might be the only way to enjoy the service in the future if this happens.
Internet radio on our Sonos is a joy. We never listen to local terrestrial radio anymore. One of my favorite internet radio stations, SomaFM, is now asking their listeners for donations. They spell out the impact of the new royalties on their site.
The idea of these internet sites shutting down is depressing.
Dan Kantour points out a site called Save the Streams that has a petition to help stop this rate hike.
Pass the link along.
2560x1600 rules
I got an Apple Cinema monitor for my office today.
Thanks to my friends Stu, Jason and Brad for inspiration.
30" display with this many pixels is so sweet.
David Wilcox
Last night Lauren and I saw David Wilcox at Club Passim in Harvard Square. I think the place holds 120 people max and it was sold out with loyal David Wilcox fans young and old.
We love his music and lyrics. His recorded albums are nothing compared to his live shows where his storytelling and humor and gift is something special. We've seen him several times now on the east coast and the west coast. The smaller the room the better. For the guitarists out there his alternate tunings on every song is amazing as well.
This little video clip I took last night doesn't do it justice but anyway.
The Trashcan Sinatras
I was flying around our music collection on Sonos this morning and I came to The Trashcan Sinatras first cd The Cake. I always loved this album.
Here is the first song. Obscurity Knocks
Enjoy
Video mashups
Well I already confessed to being a Battlestar Galactica fan.
The show just announced a video mash up service and tools where fans can download video and audio from the show and mix and mash them up. How frakking cool is that. I can't wait to see what BG fans create.
This should be fun to watch.
And I hope other shows follow this example.
Better compression needed
I enjoyed Om's recent post 10 Fun Facts About Storage
I have always been a fan of putting storage in a consumer products. We may have been the first ones at webtv to put a hard drive in a low cost (<$250) set top box in 1997. It was a long time ago and I might be wrong but I believe Tivo didn't ship until a year later. I think a world where consumers get everything on demand from their service provider requires local storage in the home (not just better network gear).
And while hard drives get bigger, faster and cheaper there is a real need for a better video compression technology. The quote from Om's post hits the point home for me.
"By 2010, the total amount of data will overwhelm the total amount of digital storage by a factor of nearly 2 to 1. 2007 is the year that our ability to stuff bits into the digital universe will outstrip our ability to store them.(WWD)"
Mpeg4 is a step in the right direction. HD in mpeg4 is roughly half (or better) the datarate as mpeg2. No surprise that IPTV and folks like directv are embracing mpeg4 as the only way to in the near term to efficiently offer a wide range of HD programming.
But we need something better than mpeg4 & h.264. Especially for mobile devices and PCs. Sure the video quality of user generated video and professional video sites will get better as bandwidth costs drop but the codec needs to get better too. I had a front row seat as past investor in thePlatform to see what various content owners are paying in CDN fees over time and where it's headed. It's still a challenge to make the math work.
And streaming unicast video to the mobile device absolutely requires a better codec. How many times will the carriers upgrade their data network over the next 5years. The carriers response to the lack of a killer video codec is digital broadcast. And you know what I think about digital mobile broadcast.
Standalone CE devices need this too. My Canon SD800 captures very nice quality video for casual clips. But it eats up 2MB per second. Yep, per second. The Casio line uses mpeg4 so that cuts it in half but that's still not great. Now we have HD camcorders. Where are we going to store this stuff?
I have seen some clever compression techniques over the years. Some never made it out of standards committees. Others never got out of the science project phase.
But someone has to do it. And if I were making a bet today I would say it will come from a startup.
Pulp Secret
N3 just launched their 5th network last night. This one is called Pulp Secret and dedicated to comic book news and culture. Love it. Tim has some more info on the N3 blog.
Here's the premiere episode. (disclosure: we are investors in N3)
Kids in b&w
I've first got the shutterbug in college when I took my first photography class. I loved spending time in the darkroom making photos and experimenting with light. I've since traded in my analog gear for digital gear but still love it more than ever. But I'm not very good. I'm still a hack.
Last month we had a real photographer take some photos of the kids. I thought they came really nice. Here is one of my favorites.
BK
We saw Ben Kweller last night in Boston.
Lauren's favorite song from the night was Penny on the Train Track. I think my favorite tune from the night was The Rules.
He rocked.
Picking a Name
Choosing a name is hard. Whether it's for your kids, pets and especially your company.
For Sophia we agonized. I think it took us 5 months to decide. We didn't know if we were having a boy or girl. We also didn't know if the baby was going to look more like me (darker) or like Lauren (fair skin/redhead). In the end we picked Sophia because we simply loved it. We didn't care if others liked it or not. We never agreed on a boys name which was fine since she was a girl. For our next two kids, Ellie and James, it just came to us as well. We chose Jackson, our lab, because we used to live on the corner of Jackson and Webster in SF. These names mean something to us. They are quite special to us obviously.
Choosing a name for your company is really hard too. In some ways I guess it's even harder than picking your kids names because you have to deal with trademarks and domains. It seems like most domains are taken and as result we are seeing names that are intentionally misspelled (e.g. flickr or loopt) or names that use a clever use of url's (e.g me.dium, tourb.us or last.fm). We had a fun time picking Spark Capital. We thought about more conservative names but in the end we wanted a name that reflected our personalities and the culture we are building.
At the end of the day I think founders need to ask themselves if they love the name they are picking. It has to mean something. Not literally but it needs to mean something to you. It needs to be consistent with the vision of the company. And don't compromise. Don't do it by committee.
Then when you have picked your name commit to it and don't look back. The real work has just started. The name you pick will only be as good as the product you are building.
Ashcroft's new low
Ashcroft built his career around courting the religious right. He is supposed to be the man of ethics, morality, religious conviction, blah, blah, blah.
The WSJ today broke the story that Ashcroft originally contacted XM trying to get a lobbyist contract to sell the merger with regulators. XM said no and then Ashcroft subsequently signed up with the NAB.
This is so ugly.
Privacy
The concerns about privacy exist everywhere online.
Lots of people ask me how I'm comfortable putting personal pictures & videos and other personal stuff online. I'm still figuring this out especially when it comes to my kids & family. Every few weeks I go through my search logs to see what people are googling when they come across this blog. I haven't discovered anything to make me sick, thank god.
But sharing personal data provides me with a lot of value too. And thats probably the main reason why I share and so far don't worry too much about privacy.
Just a few examples:
-Sharing my flickr photos connects me with my friends and family in a meaningful way. Sometimes when I see friends live it's pretty fun to talk about our kids and various trips especially when both of us have seen each other's flickr pix.
-I had this blog for a year or so but never told anyone about it except for close family members. Then this past November I opened it up and told more people about it. I'm so glad I did. This blog connects me with old friends and new ones. I get great support when I need it and I also get differing opinions and information from all of you which is the great.
-Sharing my clickstream on Me.dium provides me with relevant websites that I wouldn't have found on my own. It also connects me to a community that wouldn't have existed to me before.
-del.icio.us started out for me as an easy to use web bookmarking tool. But it has now become part of my daily web experience. I get great data from others that have also opened up and shared their links.
-I haven't invested enough energy keeping my linkedin profile and network active. I'm probably not sharing enough and putting enough into it so it's no surprise I'm not getting enough in return. i'm going to work on this one.
-joining mybloglog is one of my favorite examples about the benefits sharing personal data. My clickstream automatically connects me to different communities. Like Howards community, or Fred's, or Brad's or Santo's or Nabeel's. I dig and appreciate the little community starting to build around this blog. I really like seeeing their photos when mybloglog members post their comment. But the best part is I like seeing who came by to visit so I can see who they are and check out their blogs.
-last.fm. I started out a fan of this service and now I feel like an evangelist. I'm constantly trying to get more and more services to talk to to last.fm. I'm so glad Luke added this to YottaMusic. Sharing my musicstream with others is so cool. And the data I get from other last.fm users is even cooler.
There are plenty additional examples for sure. Too many to mention and more coming. It's exciting.
But none of these would have been possible if the fear of privacy took over.
Apple Store meets the Back Bay
Apple is building a store in the back bay and the demolition started a few weeks ago. My office is just a few blocks away so I can't wait. Here's a blog dedicated to the construction project complete with web cam and other info.
I found this blog on Outside.in which I'm loving by the way. Awesome local content.
The power of Me.dium
Me.dium is really addictive. It already provides me a lot of value. It will only increase as more people use it. But it's also really fun.
Brad linked to this post describing Me.dium on his blog recently. It gives a really nice description of the experience.
If you want to try out Me.dium than here is my invite link. and I'm my id is bsabet if you want to find me on Me.dium
(disclosure: we are investors in Me.dium)
Little Snitch - great mac software
It's nice to find excellent desktop software. Software that just works and provides great value.
Little Snitch is a perfect example. It basically tells you when other desktop software is trying to access the internet. You can then approve that request on a one time basis or always or never. And it works great.
If you have a Mac you should get Little Snitch. If you own a PC then get a Mac :)
Wobbly but determined
James starting walking on his own the last few days. He's wobbly and falls down plenty but his determination is winning.
Great to see as a parent but I think we are in trouble now :)
I took this clip yesterday. Ellie (our 2nd) is in the background cheering him on with me.
Ben Kweller coming to Boston this week
Lauren and I and some friends are going to see Ben Kweller this Tuesday night at Avalon in Boston.
I'm really looking forward to it. He's playing with Gomez. (Does anyone know who is opening? I couldn't find it online anywhere.)
Anyway, here's video of Ben playing an acoustic version of Sundress. This is guy is so cool. Down to earth and just plays his heart out. Enjoy.
Need Acadia advice
We used to go to Yosemite at least once a year when we lived in SF. Sometimes we went a few times a year especially if our east coast friends were visiting. We made it to the top of Half Dome once which was a special experience.
Since moving back to New England we have been meaning to visit Acadia National Park. We are going this summer in July and are now putting our plans together. Anyone have any tips/suggestions on places to stay? Actually any recommendations would be great. Thanks.
Happy birthday Amin
Today is my brother's birthday. Happy Birthday Amin!
Wallstrip Part II
I had a nice chat with Lindsay after the super fun (and embarrassing) blackberry dork-a-thon.
Here's a link to the video interview afterwards.
As I mentioned before the Wallstrip folks have great karma and are so nice. And they usually have much more interesting guests :)
Special thanks to Howard, Lindsay and Adam (bios) for having me on Wallstrip.
Consumer Electronics and the role of retail
If you have HDTV at home you know the video quality is simply stunning. 1080i is a miracle.
But the problem is that HDTV is still too complicated and retailers don't help. About 50% of US consumers that bought a HDTV monitor don't actually watch their video in hidef. It's not surprising I guess. Think about what the consumer needs to have in place. The proper cable (s-video and composite don't work), the right programming package from their cable or satellite operator (ATSC OTA antennas for terrestrial HD are useless very unreliable), the right set top box and you also need to watch the correct channels (lots of analog channels and highly compressed SD channels are still on cable).
Missing any of these steps means no hdtv for you. This past holiday season I (happily) did more than my share helping friends properly set up their HDTV not to mention the hell in setting up their remote control.
It's amazing to think it's easier to buy a computer and get online than connect your hdtv up properly. It's no wonder why tons of consumers are not happy with HDTV and the return rates are too high.
Retail just isn't the best way to educate