It's hard to believe that this was the cover of Business Week in 1996 (full story here)
Everyone at the time was predicting the downfall of Apple Computer.
And today Apple announced yet another amazing quarter. They sold 10M ipods, 2.1M macs and 1.1M iphones this quarter. They generated $3.5B in net income for the year. The company now has over $15B in cash and no debt. And the are telling the street that Q1FY08 is going to be huge.
This company is simply incredible.
Go Apple.
(disclosure: i own apple stock. and i'm not selling anytime soon)
Over the weekend Dave Winer sent me a link to his latest creation. Essentially, it's the entire NYT listed in outline form and by keywords. Dave's post describes his thinking behind this creation.
It's pretty exciting. It certainly a better way to navigate the NYT. So simple. No clutter, no fuss, no seductive editorial titles steering your attention. Just the news. Ready to digest.
I think it could have important implications for news and other content types as well.
And I'd love to see mobile news sites presented this way.
Dave Winer just sent an email with his slide show from the web 2.0 summit today. Yours truly is somewhere in the bunch along with some other familiar faces & friends.
I think Steve Ballmer probably had the most memorable line at the event today.
During an animated discussion at the Web 2.0 Summit moderated by
organizer John Battelle, Ballmer took a paternal tone, saying
Microsoft's own Web search technology needed improvements.
"You're
just 3 years old, and we've got you in there playing basketball with a
12-year-old," Ballmer gushed and gesticulated, nearly popping out of
his seat. "You're growing up quick and getting better every day, and
you've got all the potential in world, and it may take you 'til you're
7, 8, 9 or 10, but you're gonna dunk and you're gonna dunk on the other
guy some day, Johnny." [from CNNMoney via GigaOM].
It was actually really funny....delivered only the way Steve can do it.
Oh, and I also have a tree planted for me in Niger. It was the attendee gift from the event. This is so much better than typical conference swag.
In addition to seeing some old friends, I've met a ton of new companies and new people trying to change the world. I met too many people yesterday with new ideas that my head is spinning. The excitement is infectious.
With all of the entrepreneurs running around, VCs running around, and panel after panel, it's not surprising that many folks are wondering if we are in another bubble and if Crash 2.0 is coming soon. My friend Scott Rafer believes we are months away from the next bust. Josh on the other hand points out why the crash-predictors have been actually been with us for a long time.
During one of the panels I actually sat in on, the founder of Topix had a slide about broadband penetration in the US since 2000. Its hard to remember but when the stock market tanked the last time around, broadband penetration in the US market was just under 10%. In retrospect it's hard to believe that we were able to build so many businesses going after so few users. Yes, I know people will remind me that sites in those days were optimized for dialup but c'mon, we know that was just a bandaid. The user experience for dialup is just lame. (think about mobile internet for a moment).
I can't predict when the next crash will come. As an investor, I wish I could.
But I'm encouraged by some entrepreneurs and VCs trying to learn from the past. And I'm encouraged that there are more of us online & connected than ever.
I had Dan Gillmor in my office yesterday who is one of the founders of the service and a really cool guy.
He asked me how the service could be improved. I told him three things :
1. Outlook and gcal sync. Obvious.
2. Twitter support. I want to broadcast on twitter from dopplr automatically when i'm traveling on the day of travel.
3. LinkedIn style questions to my network on Dopplr. Imagine sending out a question like "what hotel should I stay at for my upcoming trip to nyc?" or it could be used to answer howard's question about SF. That would be powerful. And would be a big step towards User Reviews 2.0. Content with context.
I've been wanting waiting for Rhapsody TV. Feels like forever. I want Rhapsody on my existing cable set top box which in my case is the Comcast HD DVR.
Well today Rhapsody and TiVo agreed to devilver Rhapsody TV on TiVo boxes. Henry Blodget says this one is a loser. I think it's smart and can only hope that this service shows up on the upcoming TiVo service on Comcast.
My friend Nabeel is a big fan of the TiVo HD box with cable card. I've been holding off because it doesn't do VOD.
But Rhapsody TV may just push me over to Nabeel's camp.
So I can't remember who first invited me to Dopplr. It was either Rafer or Prashant.
Dopplr is an online service for frequent travelers. You put in all of your upcoming trips and you hope that your traveling friends do the same.
I joined several months ago. And in the beginning I didn't get it. It felt hard to use. It felt like yet another weak social network asking me to re-create myself online. I had to invite more friends to yet another service.
Lots of folks asked me what I thought and I would just reply, "it's okay". Which is code for "it's not for me".
But I was wrong. Way wrong.
It clicked about a month ago for me. Once I had a core group of friends using the service it became incredibly useful. Now I love Dopplr. It's fantastic. It's made for folks like me that travel a lot and have friends that travel a lot. Using Dopplr I've been able to connect with my west coast friends while I'm traveling or when they are in NYC or Boston.
I'd like to see some improvements to Dopplr. Integrating with Twitter is a no-brainer. Also, to sync based on categories to Outlook or Gcal is also a must.
I was wrong about you Dopplr. I'm glad I stuck it out.
Dopplr is still in private beta but if you want to give it a try leave a comment here and I'll send you an invite. Here's my profile on Dopplr.
Everyone seems to be tickled with all of the various open source and proprietaryalternatives to Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Especially Mac users, since we have been offered the same old version of MS Office for years and years. It doesn't even run native on the Mac yet.
I wish Mac-heads would stop putting so much energy on Word, Excel and Powerpoint alternatives. That's not the problem and hasn't been for years. The two apps that are important for us Mac users is a browser and email app. Thankfully Firefox has come to our rescue. Remember how bad browsing was on a Mac before Firefox.
But we haven't solved the email nightmare. We need an alternative to MS Entourage! We need a new open source or proprietary mail client that works with Microsoft Exchange. The reality is that business world ain't moving off of Exchange any time soon (I'm counting on Google and/or Yahoo's Zimbra though).
Apple's own Mail.app doesn't work with Exchange. In fact there isn't any mail client that runs on the Mac that works with MS Exchange except for.....Microsoft Entourage (2004 edition). It's so bad that folks like Fred now has a Windows machine in his office.
I really enjoy my friend Howard's interviews on Wallstrip. His weekend show is called Naked Putz.
Last week he interviewed David Karp. I met David over a year ago when he was consulting for our portfolio company Next New Networks. David is the creator of Tumblr and super guy.
The NYT today has an article about Michael Dell's return to Dell Inc.
They have a big task in front of them. But some are optimistic. Fred is going to give Dell another try. Dell needs to do something different. It cant' be about more efficient manufacturing/logistics/distribution. Those were the reasons in the 90's why Dell was a leader. Now they need a real product strategy. The best looking Windows laptops these days easily belong to Sony. If I was going to ditch Apple, I'd buy this machine. The best corporate Windows laptop is Thinkpad. What is Dell known for these days? Low price consumer computers? Not good enough.
I think my friend Tim could be a secret weapon that many folks don't consider. Tim was the founder/ceo of Zing which Dell recently purchased. Prior to Dell, Tim was the VP of Macintosh Engineering at Apple and ran everything minus the iPod. I had the pleasure of working with Tim at WebTV & Microsoft. Tim is fantastic. He knows how to get cutting edge consumer products out the door, on schedule and under budget. He's been doing it his whole career. I'm sure getting Tim on board was a big motivation behind the Zing deal. Smart.
Speaking of founders coming back to run their companies....
When is Billg going to come back and run Microsoft? Probably never but it seems like Microsoft has lost it's way. Yeah, they do have some great products these days (Xbox 360, Microsoft IPTV is the market leader with telcos worldwide, Windows Mobile is growing, and Microsoft keyboards are the best). On the other hand I don't know what to think about Vista, Zune, that odd coffee table PC thing, paying $6B for Aquantive? MSFT without Bill doesn't feel like MSFT to me.
I think people (customers, market, employees) would love a Bill Gates return to the corner office.
Email isn't going away for me. But my emails are becoming more brief. And it's harder to manage. That's for sure.
My personal & business correspondence on IM is increasing quite a bit. I probably chat with Peter on AIM as much as email. And I chat with Kimbal on Me.dium of course.
I'm using Twitter more and more too. It's nice to catch up on what my friends & colleagues are doing quickly & easily. And it's my killer cameraphone broadcaster.
But perhaps my favorite twitter thing these days is that its also my multi-phone messaging system. I've got a few phones these days so texting my actual phone the "old fashioned way" doesn't work for me because I may not have the right phone with me. Since the iphone doesn't actually have push email, Twitter direct messaging is the best push email service I've got.
And unlike IM, I don't feel obliged to respond right away on Twitter.
I love data. Data from my blog is very interesting to me. I really like the data that Lijit gives me. For example here are the Top 25 searches from visitors that use the Lijit widget on my blog.
I actually have four services that help me keep track of my blog's traffic. Typepad has some data but it's really not helpful.
While they all provide unique value - none of them seem to agree with each other on basic information (unfortunately).
I feel like I'm constantly hearing from various startups that their server logs aren't exactly the same at GA or the various other web analytic tools & services out there.
That's a problem. And an opportunity.
The other opportunity in the world of web analytics is better insight on the various online ad networks. I think there are a few hundred ad networks right now and growing very fast. They are financing the world web content. But how are they doing per publisher or by category or by geo? If I'm a blogger which ad network should I use? Right now I use Feedburner's Ad network because it's easy and integrated with Typepad. And it works. But it's also because monetizing my blog is a low priority (even though it's a good cause. I give it all to charity). And it's hard to get better info on the alternatives.
But what if I was a blogger in a different country. Or what if my content was radically different. Or what if my visitor traffic was bigger. Or smaller? Or what if I only wrote about tech issues. Or politics? Which ad network would i choose then.
I'd love to hear about better analytics that help publishers of all kinds/sizes make better choices about the ad networks they support.
One day we will have the all singing, all dancing set top box in our house.
This set top box will have a few terabytes of storage and it will connect to a massive hard drive in the sky. We will have a fiber to the home. And tons of bandwidth going up & downstream. We'll have multi-room DVRs. We'll have intelligent media sync across all devices in the household. And it will connect everything in the home in an intelligent way.
And while I believe this is all going to happen sooner rather than later - we aren't there yet.
But there is so much that MSOs can do now with the existing network and existing set top hardware in the home. Few ideas.
1. Enable the hardware that exists. I've owned Comcast's state of the art HD DVR for a few years now. The Motorola 6412 (yes that really is the name) has 1394, USB and ethernet. And none of these are enabled. So silly. Let me connect hard drives, WiFi, NAS, or other stuff. If you are worried about copyright than go-ahead and give me some flexible DRM. But my god, what are you waiting for? Let me connect it to my home network.
2. The electronic program guide is broken. The model for todays EPG worked when we had 100 linear channels. But it doesn't work when you have hundreds of broadcast channels, plus thousands of hours of VOD content plus a DVR. Why must i remember HBO in HD is on channel 870?
Instead please just give me a real search engine. Give me a way to customize the guide. My guide shouldn't look the same as everyone else. Give me a web browser interface so i can skin my guide, take out unnecessary channels, highlight channels I love. Let me re-arrange my guide like I rearrange my.yahoo. Look at how Buzzwire allows me to customize my phone's media thru a browser. And just do the same sort of thing for TV. (disclosure: Buzzwire is a Spark Capital portfolio company)
3. Most set top boxes don't have a cable modem yet. So the return path is very weak. But there is a return path. That's how VOD works. Use the same skinny return path (either QPSK or DAVIC) and let users tag and share links to content. Wouldn't it be great if there was a verison of StumbleUpon for TV. Or how about a way to post links to Tumblr from TV. None of these things would require a fat upstream network. None of them would even have to be real time. Just batch them up and do them off peak.
4. Give me Rhapsody over VOD infrastructure. Integrate with the MSO's internet portal as well.
5. Do more with your internet offering. If I buy a show over VOD, give me a window to also download the same show to my Mac or PC. And the other way around.
6. Make the DVR software smarter. If there isn't tuner contention then just record every show an additional 10 minutes just in case it goes over. Or 20 minutes. Or let me choose.
7. Do more in the network. Time Warner's StartOver is a fine idea. Except don't force me to watch commercials. Instead pay attention to which ads I'm watching and which ads I'm skipping. Give me better ads.
8. Support Veoh, YouTube and Flickr with existing VOD infrastructure. I know some very cool startsups that can help you with the transcoding to MPEG2 since the current settops don't do flash or mpeg4.
9. TiVo software & service is about to ship on the Motorola 6412. Promote it everywhere. Don't price it out of market. It's way better than the current DVR software. Customers will rejoice.
I'm in the market for a new car. I think I'm picking it up today actually.
I did a fair amount of research. Many thanks to my friend Emil for the various pointers.
And fortunately except for our actual test drive, everything else was online.
But along the way, I was reminded how much I hate the standard pre-roll ad unit. I know ad agencies & advertisers love the pre-roll. It's the status quo. And they get to recycle tv ads spots.
The worst offender in my book is Cnet. Yes, they have pretty cool video clips. But the clips are 1 minute long. And the ad is technically 15 seconds but it feels so much longer since there is noticeable delay before and after the pre-roll. Blech.
Lots of folks are trying to find an alternative to the standard pre-roll. I'm going to take a wait and see attitude but they really still feel like banners moved from the header and stuck into the video stream.
I had breakfast with my friend Will Richmond today. We were talking about the challenges of the standard pre-roll and the obvious problems when you force people to watch an ad like TWC is trying to do. In my view, forcing your consumers to do something is a bad idea.
I asked Will about my simple idea. How about a 15 second preroll but after 2-3 seconds the user has the ability to fast forward or close/skip the ad. If the ad intrigues me I'll watch it. If not I'm gone anyway. I'm never going to buy a pickup truck so why show it to me over and over again.
Will wasn't crazy about my idea. But I'm hoping someone gives it a try.
I've been a Flickr addict for awhile. I have over 5k pictures on flickr. And those are just the ones that I've uploaded.
Uploading to flickr is a piece of cake with a cameraphone. Email the photo right from the phone and presto. Everything works just fine.
I always wanted to sync up my twitter updates with my flickr activity. This twitter in May is a classic twitter update from me.
Sometimes I would add the url, sometimes I wouldn't. Flickr and Twitter were living parallel lives in the past. And if they connected up, it was awkward and clunky at best.
But thanks to Dave Winer, I'm now using the coolest solution. Dave has been blogging his progress with his Flickr-to-Twitter creation. This is my favorite post of his on the subject.
I simply take a photo and email it to Flickr from my iPhone or Curve to Flickr. Dave's software grabs it and updates my twitter feed with the name of the photo and a link to it. The software evens converts it to tinyurl.
I've got it set up so it grabs pix from my phone (vs all the photos I upload to flickr). Now when I upload a photo to flickr from phone, my twitter update looks like this. And it just works.
A bunch of friends have asked me how my experiment is going.
As my friends know, I've been a die hard blackberry user for awhile. We use Microsoft Exchange at the office and blackberry enterprise server. That trio is like gold. It just works.
But I wanted more. Don't we all?
For the past week, I've been using my iPhone exclusively. The Blackberry Curve has been in my desk drawer at the office. And turned off. Cold turkey.
My experience so far:
1. Screen. Unfucking-believable. Gorgeous. I love having (& showing off) photos of my kids. I watch funny N3 and Wallstrip videos when I'm at the airport or when I'm bored. The screen makes all the difference.
2. WiFi. Apple did WiFi right. The range is better than my MacBook Pro. And set up couldn't be easier. WiFi combined with the built in browser is a winner. Love Facebook, nytimes and reading blogs on iphone w/wifi. Browsing on iphone on the ATT Edge network is a loser though. I usually don't do it
3. Keyboard. The keyboard isn't a blackberry. Not even close. And if I'm ever asked to defend my crown, I will absolutely use a blackberry to avoid getting my ass kicked by fred, howard or any other contender. Yet after just one week my iphone typing skills are getting better. Really. Two tips to become an iphone typing jedi
-hit the keys at a 90 degree angle. this is a must.
-don't edit any misspellings until you complete the word. The built in dictionary is quite good and will prompt you in a very intuitive way. Similar experience as Blackberry SureType. Finish the word first. always.
4. Telephone. I like the phone features much better on the iphone than my blackberry. It's easier to hold, dial, mute, redial, hang up, navigate auto-attendent systems, turn ringer on/off etc. Visual voicemail works really well. Pet peeve: phone numbers listed in calendar or email aren't clickable.
5. SMS. The SMS app on iphone is very cool. Some may disagree but I like that SMS are separate than email (unlike the blackberry). I really like how it keeps threaded messages together. It's the ultimate Twitter device.
6. Camera. Very easy to use. Photos are a bit nicer than the Curve. Syncs with iPhoto. Easy to upload to flickr via email. Love that. I also like that photos of my contacts appear in full screen with callerID for incoming calls. So far my friend Stan has the best photo ID in my address book. I won't include it here but it's very funny.
7. Contacts. The contacts/address book app is really sweet and really bad at the same time. It's very easy to call, email and sms your contacts. Contact integration with google maps is just magical. But the iPhone doesn't have contact search (yet).
8. Super iPod. Listening to music on iPhone is awesome. Coverflow is dreamy.
Incoming phone calls fade out the music perfectly. iPhone headphones also has a mic so you can talk on them as well. Even though I've been an ipod owner since the beginning of time, I didn't always carry my ipod with me. with iphone, i do. And that's excellent.
9. Form factor/durability/stability. The iPhone is solid. Hasn't crashed on me once. The keyboard does slow down every so often but not bad. Form factor is outrageous. Screen seems very durable. No scratches after a week or normal use. I do tend to baby this thing a bit though. I don't just throw it on my desk like the blackberry.
10. Dealing with Microsoft Exchange. Email is easy for those of you that use gmail, aol, yahoo, pop3 or imap. Exchange is not easy on iPhone.
By enabling IMAP on the Exchange server, the iPhone works with your corporate email. It's not push email like blackberry though. Instead iPhone can at best fetch every 15 minutes. You can also manually fetch your email. I thought this was going to a headache but I can live with this.
There are two huge problems with iPhone for Exchange users though:
-Calendar and contact sync can only happen locally. And requires a cable. No over the air sync and no bluetooth sync. Sad but true.
-Even worse, any Exchange-based meeting invites sent to you are not received on iPhone. I believe it's because IMAP is for email and can't deal with the calendar protocol in exchange. It's not made for that. I cannot accept or reject an incoming meeting invite from the iPhone mail client. (This doesn't effect meetings I schedule myself obviously). My workaround is to check Outlook Web Access periodically where I can accept/reject mtgs.
So after a week, I've decided to continue using the iPhone as my primary phone. It's far from perfect but at this time I like it the best. And it's fun. I've never felt that way about my Blackberry.
When I travel more than a day, I'm going to keep the Blackberry in my bag just in case meetings suddenly change and I need to stay on top of it in real-time.
But for days in/around the office, quick day trips to nyc and weekends, I'm going all iPhone, all the time.
I'm having a ton of fun with the camera on my new blackberry curve.
The resolution is nothing like my canon rebel xt or even our sd800is. But I always have my blackberry with me. (I'm writing this blog post on the Curve).
And while we are up at acadia national park and bar harbor this weekend I'm taking lots of photos with all of our cameras. I intentionally left my laptop at home.
So the only one photos from our vacation on flickr at this moment are the ones from the blackberry curve. It a breeze to email those photos from the blackberry to my flickr account (see my flickr sidebar badge).
The blackberry Curve accepts microSD cards (up to 4gigs). And it has a mini usb connector. It would be super cool if I could connect my canon cameras to the blackberry, transfer the pix and then upload/email them to flickr.
Has anyone created such an app for the blackberry yet? It should be possible.
Fred has an excellent post today about Facebook apps. After reading his post and looking at my Facebook mania post a few weeks back, I'm still excited about Facebook applications and what opportunities it might bring to startups.
However, I've gathered & refined my thoughts when it comes to facebook application developers:
Generally there are two types of application developers on facebook right now.
a) Those that are building apps just for facebook and don't have a service outside of facebook (and myspace). I've seen a bunch of companies in this category. They can build FB apps cheaply and quickly, get user feedback, build more apps, build value. Life is good. But I'm not sure these companies should raise venture capital. Especially if they don't plan or want to build services outside of their facebook. Angel funding might be a better approach.
b) Those that are building apps on facebook as a way to learn, get user feedback and use their facebook apps as a way to drive low cost traffic to their (current or future) services outside of Facebook. I like this model the best for vc or prospective vc backed companies or large companies even. This is the comment I wrote in response to Fred's post:
"great post.
i've been encouraging our appropriate portfolio companies to develop
fb apps. Veoh launched one at the platform launch and we have another
one that is going to launch a fun one soon.
since it's relatively cheap to develop fb apps, the first goal for us is about learning. Learning what's possible, what isn't.
For me, the ROI isn't about incremental ad dollars on the FB
"canvas" pages though. Most likely it will be to drive (low cost)
traffic back to their respective websites.
That's why my favorite fb application biz models are those that have
services outside of fb as well. It will be a lot trickier if the apps
only live inside of fb (at least for vc backed companies)."
Alex Blum, the CEO of KickApps, has an interesting post today about the dramatic increase in social media usage online.
We all know in our gut that social media has been on an absolute tear over the past few years but the numbers are quite impressive.
We made the investment decision in KickApps late in 2005. It was the second investment we made after starting Spark. We believed then, as we do now, that web sites will need social media applications. There are thousands of big and small websites using KickApps to easily add social media experiences to their existing web sites.
I like BET's recent use of the technology. The BET audience was invited to submit their own award category introduction videos for the BET Awards 2007 show on cable last night. The audience voted on their favorite videos and the top videos were on the actual television show.
I thought this one was pretty clever for the "Best Collaboration" award intro.
When my dad bought our first computer, the Apple II, it didn't come with any applications. But it did come with BASIC. And that kept us busy. Really busy.
It was fun to try and learn the language and build simple applications. That was my first "hello world" program.
When I was in undergrad I studied a bunch of computer languages, Cobol, Assembly, Pascal, LISP, C etc. These languages allowed us to build complicated software. And that was the problem for me. Everything was so complicated. They just got in my way. Did I really need five spaces in the first line in COBOL? Why?
Then in the late 80's I discovered Apple's Hypercard. Man that was a like a breath of fresh air. Brilliant really. It was so easy and fun to create applications, mixing media types, visual effects. And people were sharing Hypercard apps everywhere (floppies, aol, etc).
I love that Lego Mindstorms NXT comes with a programming kit and kids are creating and sharing apps. Giving kids easy software and hardware is smart. I also think Digital Brix could be on to something by allowing users the ability to create and share simple and fun games.
There is pent up demand here. Yahoo Pipes is interesting but maybe still too complex.
Give people the tools and web services to create simple applications. Software and hardware. Let's bring back the fun and passion that came with the Apple II and TRS80.
And not just for highly technical folks but for early adopters, creative types and ultimately mainstream consumers.
(n.b. thanks to this person for having a hypercard photo)
Today Me.dium announced that they raised $15 million. Me.dium is one of our portfolio companies and is building a real-time, collaborative browsing environment. You can see your friends online wherever they are at the moment. And even better, you can see people activity online based on your online attention.
We have been believers in the vision behind Me.dium since the day the co-founders Robert and David first came to see us in our temporary office in Cambridge early last year. It's just great working with Kimbal and the team.
I was going to write a post about the technical ambition behind this company but Brad's post today just nailed it much better than I could have.
I'm online at Me.dium a lot. Add a bunch of friends and it becomes quite addictive. Feel free to follow me online if you want to join the fun. My me.dium handle is bsabet. I'll have to add that to my growing list !
Update: Earlier today, during Steve Jobs keynote at WWDC , it was fun watching the crowd huddle around various Apple related websites. Just look at the crowd around MacRumors.com which gave a minute by minute update of the keynote. Here's a screen shot of Me.dium taken at the time.
I've been following the very good TEDBlog's coverage of TEDGlobal 2007 this week. Well worth reading. Powerful information.
A few days TEDBlog posted an earlier video of Bob Thurman's talk (taken on 12/06) about how an all connected world, delivered by technology means that we can know anything at anytime. From TEDBlog:
"And this mass enlightenment, says Thurman, is our first step toward
becoming Buddha. When we can know everything, we can see how everything
is interconnected -- and we can begin to feel compassion for every
living being."
Wow.
Here's the video. Hope you like it as much as I did.
I think that's all of them. Based on all of this info, it would be interesting if there was an automated way or streamlined way to build a tag cloud for my profile across the web. Lijit has a nice approach with one particular angle based on search/blog data.
Spock is tagging people and relationships as a cool people search engine. MyBlogLog already has had relationships and recently added people tags. So far this is how I've been tagged by others . I like that "dad" & "friends" are listed. Feel free to add some tags - but be nice :)
A few months ago Biz Stone introduced me to Adam Rugel. Adam is the founder of 71Miles which is a network of travel sites focused on regional travel.
They started off focusing on Northern California. The content and user experience is fantastic. I've been recommending the site to friends and have been meaning to blog about it for awhile.
Big Sur is one of our very favorite getaways. It's a special place. Surprisingly I know a lot of bay area folks that have never been. Here is a taste of what 71Miles has to offer on Big Sur. Very nice local content and even a slide show with audio.
Looking for the best backup solution out there. I need to back up documents (scanned images, quicken files, etc), music, photos and home videos. Its about 300 gigs and growing.
I'm open to either softtware backup to a mac server in the house or online somewhere.
When you see a product or service that nails the user experience it often feels obvious.
The wheel on the ipod The feel of the TiVo remote control The consistency of what's listed under each menu on all Apple applications Shopping on Amazon
But the reality is that getting the user experience is really hard stuff. Many times I hear from entrepreneurs something like "oh, we're definitely going to hire a great UI guy...."
Or VCs might look at a web service created by a 19 year old and think how hard could that be. Where is the secret sauce to this product?
Watching companies consistently and dramatically improve their UI is something I love to watch. Veoh for example has been improving their website and player consistently over the past 18 months. And it's really paying off. They are now ranked under 250 on Alexa and growing like crazy. They aren't doing any marketing really. Users love their product.
Contrast that with the UI that some cable operators ship on their DVRs. Over the memorial day weekend, I was visiting my parents in Long Island. They have a HD DVR cable box from Cablevision. I couldn't believe how unusable the on screen guide was. We are now more than 11 years since TiVo and WebTV introduced really easy EPGs for DVRs. Is it really hard to nail a season pass UI or UI dealing with scheduling conflicts on a DVR. My guess is that the folks working on the Cablevision box really aren't obsessed with the user experience. It feels like the UI is merely a check box and they are moving on to other things. Or check out the user interface that comes with your digital camera or HDTV. Horrible.
Getting the user experience right is a rare gift. It's art. It's much more than a good use of technology. You either have it or you don't.
At last week's D conference Bill Gates had a memorable quote about Steve jobs:
""I'd give a lot to have
Steve's taste - in terms of intuitive taste for people and products,"
he said. "The way he does things, it's just different. It's magical."
But more than a gift or magic, it requires obsession. Not just passion. But
constant obsession to details.
We should appreciate this when we see a startup get this right. It's ain't easy and it's big barrier to entry.
There are a few web services that come a long every few months that grab you, take hold and won't let go.
One of those very web services is MyBlogLog. They are cool guys and I have enjoyed getting to know them since before the Yahoo acquisition. When I'm in SF and everyone's schedule lines up we have been grabbing coffee and keeping in touch. They are in my social network on Twitter as well so I always know when Eric is playing games, that Scott is now in Europe and Todd is hard at work.
I've had the MyBlogLog reader roll on the right sidebar since I met them. I actually added it the day I turned my blog from a family only place into a work/family/& 'everything else in between' blog. And it's been one of the best ways I've gotten to know folks that visit my blog. I met Howard through MyBlogLog and consider him a friend (we had great sushi yesterday in NYC).
Today I logged into my profile on MyBlogLog and was thrilled to see that now there are over 500 kind souls that have joined my blog's community. All I can say is thanks.
Santo and I were playing around with Google's new Street View this afternoon.
It's amazing.
This Sunday night Lauren and I had dinner at Tartine in the west village in nyc. It was a beautiful night. The city was mellow and the food was great. And eating outside is just the best.
I didn't bring my camera but here is a photo of Tartine from Street View.(click image to see larger version) or here is the actual link
I can't wait to see what Street View mashups will come out first.
Local advertising is going to get really interesting.
Peter at Bug Labs suggested several months ago that I read Snow Crash . I've been meaning to read it for a long time. It's pretty well known that Linden Labs cite Snow Crash as the inspiration for creating Second Life.
I picked up the book on a trip to SF last month and finished it pretty quickly afterwards. It's a great story and I highly recommend it. It's hard to believe that this novel was published in 1992.
Neal Stephenson predicts many concepts in this novel. The Gargoyle might be the most interesting. Stephenson's Gargoyle's are individuals that are rewarded by creating and uploading content to the Metaverse (i.e. Internet) 24x7. They are so into this that they cover their body with gear to help them capture/upload data to the network constantly. And they watch, record and update.
Powerful idea. Blogging, twitter, flickr, veoh, youtube are key ingredients. And so are things like Justin.tv, Stickam, and Scoopt which provide different types of tools and incentives.
And while some might be worried about BigBrother issues, I see it as a powerful idea to connect us all. In a good way. No wonder video from things like Michael Richards all the way to the tragic gunfire at Virginia Tech came from a camera-phone. Just wait until the mobile phone can broadcast live content.
It's part of my social network online and on the go. I'm addicted to updating but I'm also addicted to checking in on my friends on twitter.
I've tried to express why it's valuable to me but I think Dave Winer's post today really nails it. It's hard to understand the true value until you join, add your friends and start using the service. Online and on your mobile phone (SMS or wap)
So, Howard, jump in the pool. The twitter water is great :)
I've been using Lijit for awhile and highly recommend it. It's a nice way to search this blog and also search my content on the various sites that I belong to as well as my network.
Todd Vernon over at Lijit and I have been trading emails about my recent scanner purchase. After I convinced him that this scanner was killer, he told me about Lijit's latest feature called Re-Search.
I added it to my existing Lijit search widget on the left sidebar of this blog. So now if you do a Google search on "bijan webkinz" for example and then click thru on the second link you will see this on my blog.
I think this is a powerful idea. You get a nice interface to the results and results from my network. I love it.
I have a few more ideas on how to further improve Re-Search that I'm going to send to Todd tonight.
I'm sure he is already miles ahead of me though :)
I've been playing with the latest version of Google Analytics. I have running it on this blog for the past 8 months.
Some of the browser/OS data of BijanBlog readers is interesting to me
69.7% of the folks that read this blog use Windows vs about 30% use a Mac
The Mac number is much higher than I would have thought. Apple's market share has grown significantly recently. Analysts are saying Apple now holds about 6% in the US market.
At the same time the IE number is higher than I would have guessed. Wow, 37% are using IE on Windows to read this blog. I understand why some folks don't want to make the switch to Macs. I get it.
But to my Windows friends, you gotta install Firefox.
A few months ago the show Battlestar Galactica started providing tools for their fans to create video mashups. They also included video and audio clips from the show.
Looks like they struck a chord with their audience. Unfortunately, I can't embed the videos on my blog but you can see the various video mashup creations here. You will probably only enjoy these if you are a fellow BSG fan.
This is really interesting and a good sign of things to come. I am not aware of any other show that is doing this. But can you imagine if the creators of South Park, Simpsons, Lost or Sopranos allowed video mashups and provided video & audio clips. It would generate tons of fan loyalty plus new creative content and new business models/revenue st
. I've been meaning to read it for a long time. It's pretty well known that Linden Labs cite Snow Crash as the inspiration for creating 
