Sunday, March 14, 2010
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Not everyone can make it to MIX10 in person, so Channel 9 is coming to the rescue by broadcasting LIVE from http://live.visitmix.com (this is the same URL as the keynotes).
Join the keynotes on stage, starting at 9am March 15th and 16th with the live stream beginning immediately after each day until 5:30pm.
The Channel 9 team will be tuned in to Twitter, so post your questions and comments as tweets to @ch9live (you have to follow them to tweet).
Thanks to Nic Fillingham for the Channel 9 Live broadcast schedule in: “Channel 9 Live at MIX10 – Who, What, Why, when and How?”.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
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This is a way cool technology I saw at this year’s TED .. running atop SeaDragon, it’s an amazing new way to visually explore data.
When exploring the web, we tend to treat our interaction as separate activities .. we search for results and answers, we browse to similar information and we receive recommendations as we move about. Each step is typically discrete: that is, we move from one page to another, drilling in and clicking the ‘back’ button to re-acquire our original context.
:: whew ::
It is easier to watch than it is to describe:
Pivot focuses on the intersection of our web activities, allowing us to manage our desire for information into a unified experience.
Check out the TED video.
Learn more and Download Pivot from Live Labs.
If you aren’t, you should be! MIX10 is your opportunity to speak with us in the design, mobile and web context .. and our opportunity to share with you all the tools we provide to make it so.
Ready to register? Please visit the Registration page.
Not going? Going, but want the early bits as they happen?
We are planning lots of live content online, so be sure to tune in.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
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His first tweet:
Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me.
That scamp. Is there a band?
Follow Conan O’Brien on Twitter.
Check out his farewell to NBC in “Conan is all class”.
Monday, February 15, 2010
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We just previewed Windows Phone 7 Series (a mouthful) at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. I’d give you the hands-on story, but I don’t have one yet .. for now, here’s a spiffy YouTube video:
Very smooth interface .. 4x4 screens that let you keep the information you want the most right at your fingertips.
In the news:
Want more? Sign up for a backstage pass for updates and availability.
The new phones will be available holiday season 2010.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
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Thanks to an OffBeatMammal for sharing “Where Are The Moonicorns?: Moonbow Picture” from the Geekologie blog. Check out the photo:
![moonbow-1[1]](http://www.geekologie.com/2010/02/09/moonbow-1.jpg "moonbow-1[1]")
This looks like a rainbow .. but it’s not. Captured in long-exposure photography, the camera picks up differences in color the eye would miss in dim light.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
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.. and get lots of exposure anyway. Here’s how ManCrunch (a gay dating site) did it:
Just look at all the money they saved. But what did they get?
- Publicity. Lots of it. Cannot swing a dead cat on the video sites without running across this. Note that we’ve seen guys kiss on super bowl commercials before .. remember the Snickers ad from 2007?
- Impressions. Lots of them, and well before the game. 207,000 on YouTube so far and thousands more scattered around the video sites.
- News. Bing gives us these answers to the search.
Super Bowl XLIII had an estimated 98.7 million viewers, per KiwiPulse (“Super Bowl XLIII Commercials 2009: Final”). It remains to be seen how many of those viewers saw any of the ads, and if they’d see this one.
Folks get nuts about these commercials. They talk about them for weeks prior, ensure they’re in their seats at the appropriate (and publicized time) to see them during the game and then go to aggregation sites to watch the line-up of what they’ve missed. That rate them, trash them, discuss them at the water cooler and espresso bars for days.
It’s bigger than this though. Is this a hoax, or very clever marketing? I’m guessing the latter, and I applaud the chaps who put it together.
We’ve seen eHarmony and Match.com ads on the television .. these sites position themselves more as ‘relationship’ (versus ‘hookup’) sites. I cannot tell from the limited information thus far, where ManCrunch site on that scale.
I suspect we’ll all know more in the coming weeks. Will be fun to watch. Thanks to Jessi for the referral.
.. and you should have (I did), apply this critical security patch. Select your operating system and browser version. The patch checks to see if it has been applied and advises you whether to proceed.
The cumulative security update resolves seven privately reported vulnerabilities and one publicly disclosed vulnerability in Internet Explorer. The most severe made the news and could allow an attacker to control your system.
If you use Microsoft Windows Update (embedded in Vista and Windows 7; URL is for older operating systems) on a regular basis, or have automatic updates enabled, you should have the patch .. but it doesn't hurt to check.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
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The King of the World, James Cameron has done it again: helming the world’s biggest movie (by box office): ‘Avatar’ just replaced ‘Titanic’ in this honor.
Thanks to MSNBC for “‘Avatar’ sinks ‘Titanic’ as world's biggest movie”.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
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Monday, January 18, 2010
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The latest numbers, and some comparisons from the last tests (15 months prior):
I've posted these over time:
I need to do some dietary review .. the cholesterol numbers are all going the wrong way. Other stuff is good though .. will test again in July.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
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Why yes, yes you are. Lots of you, in fact. And why not? The quality of results is superb, and decisions are better than questions.
According to recent ComScore report, not only are the searches increasing, but the rate at which they’re increasing is increasing.
Some nice analysis from TechCrunch: “Bing Is Growing Faster Than Ever, Keeps Gaining Search Market Share”.
Friday, January 15, 2010
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Seems like only yesterday, that I posted “In the “I’m not surprised” realm .. Verizon and Data Plan Pricing Changes”, calling out some changes Verizon may have been considering in the mobile data realm, thanks to the AT&T ‘education’ with data-heavy iPhone devices.
Oh. It was yesterday.
For the record: I’m not psychic (or psycho, for that matter), but Unstrung posts a great analysis of Verizon’s plans in “Verizon Mandates 3G Data Plans” calling out such fun facts as (quotes from the article):
- all new 3G "multimedia" phone users will have to purchase mandatory data plans with their contracts
- the mandatory data plan starts Jan. 18 -- and it's mandatory whether the customer uses it or not
- The minimum spend is $9.99 for a 25-megabyte-per-month package and $29.99 for an "unlimited" one, which is actually capped at 5 GBytes a month. The previous $19.99 data package option for 3G multimedia phones has been dropped
On data versus voice, the article quotes:
Regular readers of Unstrung will recall that top Verizon Wireless executives have been saying for a couple of years that unlimited data is an unsustainable model for wireless carriers looking to make data -- rather than voice -- their cash cow in the future.
Regardless of who said it: I think they’re right, and for some reasons like the following:
- physics (not management, not the market) will test bandwidth capacity in an ever-growing mobile market .. it is unlikely that wireless carriers can deploy enough antennas to serve the mobile phone population over the long term .. even in sparsely-populated regions, I’m guessing accountants will hold sway over antenna construction crews.
- extremely valuable BI referenced in “ATT Data Capacity Challenges” has demonstrated that a small number of data-hungry users can impact an entire infrastructure .. for today, it’s AT&T .. tomorrow, the world!
Change is good .. for the (smart shopping) consumer, and those with two-year contracts. Read the fine print, examine your personal use cases (voice versus data) and make your decisions carefully before signing a new contract.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
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That is, you have to visit their home page and click through a bunch of stuff.
Better than it was: thankfully, you don’t need to download iTunes to get Quicktime (however, there was a time).
Lame.
Apple doods: sort this out. It’s a big pond.
AT&T took on the iPhone with some RSGs making intelligent guesses with regard to data plan usage. The result? They were mostly right. However, News referenced in “ATT Data Capacity Challenges” and “Friday’s “Operation Chokehold” .. for shame” (links within the articles) suggest they (understandably) underestimated demand. How would anyone predict such a behemoth?
That aside, other carriers (including Verizon) have collected massive amounts of data on usage (and PR) challenges experienced by AT&T.
Why, you might ask? I think the iPhone arrived at the same time the third wave (of social technology) did. The iPhone (and, for that matter, smartphones, in general) gave users, looking only for their experience a means to access their data, in their time frame. “Information Snacking”, anyone?
Back to the facts (only because I’m usually way to early to declare myself as “right”): CNET: “Verizon looks for more revenue in wireless data”.
I’ve been quoting this (a bunch) of late and promised to write a post. This puts me into dangerous territory .. I am wearing a fireproof suit.
This is as best that I can explain Social Networking technology adoption (purely from observations) at the 200,000-foot level.
The first wave included geeks, techies and an enlightened mouthpiece or three (I’m in the third batch, with smatterings of the first two).
The second wave included the ‘cool kids’: folks who could use ‘it’, base (or extend) their careers on ‘it’ and famous folks (celebrities and celebutards), politicians and social lights with great PR staffs. Enlightened mouthpieces were here as well, riding the wave and advising.
The third wave (here’s the pain .. for them, and for us) includes:
- Your mom.
- Your dad.
- Your non-technical friends.
- Your butcher, your baker and your candlestick maker.
- Your bartender (the guy / gal with the Acer netbook from CostCo). Keep these kids close: they know the WiFi codes at your watering hole.
- The rest of your kids (your hipsters adopted in the second wave).
- Most everyone else.
How did these waves behave?
- The first wave was paranoid .. but for technical reasons. These folks wanted to play in the new sandbox, but were careful of what they said, posted, shared, etc. Without this group, we’d never have worked out the bugs.
- The second wave was paranoid .. but for PR reasons. They accepted the system had flaws, and chose to share only what they wanted to appear .. in carefully-worded statements (with the exception of the celebutards, who posted not-so-carefully-worded statements themselves .. PR handlers hate the iPhone).
- The third wave appears to have no clue. Pictures of crazy activities (silly hats and drunken poses), posts of “I’m on vacation this week and I love it” (meaning their house .. the address of which they shared somewhere, is unoccupied), “I’m eating a bagel for breakfast”, and the like.
Apply this to Twitter and Facebook (both of whom who reached heights in roughly the same timeframe), but not so much to MySpace .. they reached the second wave early, but did not go as mainstream, for any number of reasons. Windows Live? In the game, and with huge worldwide numbers, but not exactly critical mass in cocktail conversation.
What do you think?
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
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I find it amusing that KOMO-TV (our local ABC affiliate) sees fit to include Forks, Washington (the fictitious adopted home town of Bella Swann, for the uninitiated) in their KOMO News Doppler Radar.
Of course, the Forks Chamber of Commerce has embraced the Twilight set .. so, why not a metropolitan television station that’s 140 miles away?
Actually: I can forgive KOMO for that; their radar does great work in showing weather patterns along the Strait of Juan de Fuca and on the Washington coastline. This was just a fun observation (I’m looking to recover certain joys in the new year).
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
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If you participate, shame on you. Get a life. Your desire to participate in a protest at the expense of vital services is tantamount to terrorism.
I don’t consider the viewing of a YouTube video or streaming Internet radio (get an FM chip and support your local radio station, willya?) to be a vital service. For those of us need to stay connected; relying on SMS or email alerts to live their lives (think about a wage slave (like me) who needs to know their child is ill at school). Potential affect on 911 services, for that matter .. such behavior is reprehensible.
Now that I have your attention .. what is “Operation Chokehold”, you might ask? In the news:
On Friday, December 18, at noon Pacific time, we will attempt to overwhelm the AT&T data network and bring it to its knees. The goal is to have every iPhone user (or as many as we can) turn on a data intensive app and run that app for one solid hour. Send the message to AT&T that we are sick of their substandard network and sick of their abusive comments. The idea is we'll create a digital flash mob. We're calling it in Operation Chokehold. Join us and speak truth to power!
This is from the Gizmodo post: “Operation Chokehold A Plan to Destroy ATT This Friday”.
I’m not keen on bad service as the next guy, but let’s look at the map (okay, the Verizon map from their TV commercials, if you must): when it comes right down to it, data services only really suck in areas like LA, San Francisco and NYC. According to customer reports, the service is already at (or near) its knees in these markets. Big meetings of techies also suffer bad data service (our company meeting, for example). So:
- Why must this be a nationwide effort? If it sucks where you live, why try to kill it even more? If it doesn’t, why bother?
- Who is really learning what from this exercise? That the service is bad? That you’re mad at your carrier?
- Do you think that a cell carrier can expand their network by this Friday to accommodate spoiled brats with data-hungry iPhones?
- Do you think some folks need to unplug this month? It is the holidaze, after all.
AT&T offers (read: charges) an all-you-can-eat (AYCE) data plan with a two-year commitment for iPhone users. Bully. They should. They made the decision to take all the risk (note that other carriers are sitting back and watching .. although bids, negotiation and contracts have something to do with it) on a popular consumer device. Note that this is a device that had no reliable reference / track record as to potential data usage .. usage that might cause service-level-agreement (SLA) challenges. Beyond failing SLAs, the risks include garnering press like this (disclaimer: I post, therefore, I am):
Kids: one-price AYCE exists in food services. Think buffets in Las Vegas; but check out your home town (Granny’s Buffet and such). Use cases herein are far more predictable than a discovery-based, subscription model (what is the next-coolest application I simply MUST have on my mobile device .. for two days, give or take). Note that there isn’t a one-price AYCE for gasoline or electrical power.
So, please; resist the urge to drain your battery life in something this silly and irresponsible.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
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I’ve been keeping an eye on the data usage woes currently felt by AT&T. Most of these are blamed on high usage by iPhone users .. here’s a “whoa” quote:
“Just 3 percent of ‘smart’ phone users are consuming 40 percent of the network capacity ..”
Ouch.
Back in September, I posted “iPhone: The Hummer of Cell Phones?”, referencing a New York Times article from when the problem was starting to gain some notoriety. The current five-gigabyte monthly cap on data usage isn’t doing much to quell usage of high-volume customers.
One culprit: always on, constantly streaming internet radio. Another: videos (apparently lots and lots of videos).
One way to stem the tide: better (read: near-real time) consumption reporting, helping users to see when they’re getting to the limit. Problematic for an ‘unlimited’ data plan, at best (requires re-writing the plan). An FM chip wouldn’t hurt either (does the iPhone have an FM chip? My HTC Fuze and HTC Tilt 2 devices do).
In the news:
Far from over. Stay tuned.
Monday, November 30, 2009
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I tinkered with WordPress over the holiday weekend .. was fun, but to no avail. The import from my antiquated .Text (0.9) foiled my aspirations.
I need:
- A place to host this blog.
- A means to export a fair bit of prior content (comments are not as important as the articles themselves .. happy to take on the task of moving the comments manually). Suggests BlogtML .. but I don’t have a (some) click converter.
- “Expected” functionality:
- Ability to control / approve / remove comments en masse.
- Ability to place adverts for those who like to click on them.
- Editing offline, via email or Windows Live Writer.
Suggestions, comments, connections?
Thanks in advance.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
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As announced at PDC09, Windows Azure is a core component of our “three screens and a cloud” strategy. We released a Community Technology Preview only a year ago (at PDC08) for early adopters.
It’s been a busy year: our teams have engaged with customers, partners and developers, listening, learning and reshaping the Azure offering to go live.
During the PDC09 day 1 keynote featuring Ray Ozzie and Bob Muglia, we announced a phased roll-out plan for Window Azure with initial customer billing going into effect on February 1, 2010. We highlighted several customers already going live on the platform, including:
- Lokad delivers sales, demand and call volume forecasts for more than 300 customers ranging from small e-commerce companies to multinational retailers. Advanced forecasting tools and models required significantly more computing power than the company had available, so Lokad implemented their software-plus-services forecasting application on the Windows Azure platform and as a result, reduced IT maintenance costs compared to traditional approaches while delivering more powerful and accurate forecasts to its customers. Happy to add that Lokad is a BizSpark One company. Review the case study.
- Kelly Blue Book is a premier provider of vehicle pricing information to consumers, automotive dealers, governments, finance and insurance industries. Already deployed on the .NET platform, the company decided to host and manage the Web site using a software-plus-services model. The company implemented the Windows Azure platform, easily transferring their code base into the cloud and reduced capital expenditures for new hardware and use IT resources more strategically. Review the case study.
Windows Azure is designed as a cloud OS for the future, yet made familiar for our current tool set, thus making it easy to extend developer skills and current code bases into the cloud.
We’ve a number of case studies for you to review on the “Windows Azure Platform - Case Studies” .. many more to come!
In the news:
Friday, November 27, 2009
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In previous years, PDC has been a ‘futures’ conference .. what’s next, what will be hot, what can you play with and provide feedback, etc.
PDC09 was a bit different. REAL products, REAL platforms (not to mention REAL tablet / laptops to the attendees). Lots of progress announced at this year .. we’ve made tremendous progress since the last PDC. We see:
There’s more:
- We will be releasing Office Web Applications (now in beta).
- Windows Azure has taken center stage at this PDC; has only been a year since we announced the platform .. and we announced pricing (starting in January 2010) this year. We even introduced companies on the stage at PDC who are going live on Azure.
- Powered by Azure, we are continuing to deliver on our strategy of providing compelling multi-screen experiences, and enabling skill and investment leverage for users, developers and IT.
There’s more (there always is). Stay tuned.
Nice to see some Bing outreach at SeaTac, just before the holiday. Members of the community team were offering travelers $15 MasterCards to offset their checked baggage fees.
Why cards for free WiFi you may ask? Many holiday travelers resent having to pay for checked luggage (I’m a business traveler, and I do) .. many won’t carry laptops or have time to use them in the terminal during the holiday rush.
This bit of outreach just makes their travel a little easier at a crowded time. Kudos to the smart folks for putting it together.
Bing Community: “Bing – Making someone’s travel day that much easier”.
Monday, November 23, 2009
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BizSpark One came out from under wraps at PDC09 in Los Angeles this past week as a depth extension of the BizSpark brand.
BizSpark One is an invitation-only depth engagement program that focuses on providing opportunities to enable the success of the startup.
I am keen to talk more about some of the successful companies who have been invited to join the program .. culled from company profiles on StartupZone (where you’ll find much, much more), here are some quick bits for your review:
- ActionBase: Fills the gap between Business Process Management and human collaboration efforts, working with a wide variety of verticals.
- Artesian Solutions: A software plus services provider that automates the process of specific intelligence gathering from the web to drive commercial performance.
- Corefino: Hailed as the “future of 21st-century accounting”, Corefino is account software, by and for accountants. The company provides connections to the accounting community to enable businesses to obtain quality accounting services to extend their internal efforts.
- dezineforce: An engineering design search and optimization service that combines cutting-edge design search, industry-leading simulation tools, integrated workflows and a high performance computing architecture for cost-effective web-based design.
- Formotus: Design and deployment infrastructure to deliver InfoPath forms to your mobile device.
- Huddle: Online collaboration platform providing secure work spaces that enables teams to work more effectively across internal and external boundaries.
- Kinoma: Mobile software that puts a home entertainment system into your pocket. Kinoma powers the media experience for millions of devices on fourteen carrier networks.
- WAYN: An acronym for “Where are you now”, WAYN is the largest travel and social networking web site in the world (15MM members in 193 countries at the time of this writing). WAYN enables members to share experiences, finding and to keeping track of each other. This connectivity provides a rich, experience opportunity through highly-targeted advertising.
- Wild Pockets: Web-based, 3D gaming engine provided at no cost to the developer community. The engine is rich, providing physics, scripting language and monetization capabilities to developers.
- Yammer: Enterprise micro-blogging, akin to the more public Twitter, Yammer provides a simple way for employees of a company to connect with each other in a secure environment. As contributors and audience grow, the content becomes an easy-to-search repository of activities in an enterprise, across groups and disciplines.
Kudos and thanks to these companies. We are proud to have these (and other .. watch for more articles) successful startup companies participating in our program.