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links for 2007-06-30
June 30, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Sah-weet... My Voki has a car... props!
Ok, so its not a Mustang, but now some of our characters (and soon all) will have probs. Check out his little convertible. Vroom!
June 29, 2007 in Random Stuff | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Informal iPhone survey
I just pinged a bunch of random non-techie friends... you know, the other 98% of the world... and asked them the following:
1) Are you likely to purchase the iPhone in the next week? Yes/no
2) Are you likely to purchase the iPhone in the next three months? yes/no
3) Are you likely to purchase the iPhone ever? Yes/no
Responses:
Next week? 16 no's. A clean sweep.
Next three months. Another 16 no's.
Ever? 3 yes, 6 no, 7 maybe.
Ok, first of all, maybe wasn't a suggested answer, but besides that, here's what people wrote on the "maybe" side:
maybe if cheap enough, sometime! But it would have to be drop-proof...and waterproof!
i could be persuaded if i didn't have to switch my plan (because i'm really happy with verizon), if it becomes significantly cheaper and only after they get out the inevitable first generation bugs.
iPhone’s only available currently with AT&T, and I have a contract with Verizon.
No, but only cus I'm poor. If I were rich, then yes.
June 29, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Point and Laugh Friday - iPhone, MySpace, Facebook Apps
My favorite radio show, Opie and Anthony, has been doing a "____ day" gimmick to make fun of other radio stations. Yesterday was "Phone call Thursday" and it just featured listeners calling up with absolutely nothing to say just because it was Phone call Thursday. Hilarious.
Today is "Point and Laugh Friday" in addition to being "Mispronunciation Friday" and a few other things, and I think I may just make Fridays into Point and Laugh Friday on this blog as well.
So feel free to point and laugh...
...at anyone at the front of the iPhone line. Including professional line sitters.
...for MySpace for thinking that developers would spend time building apps for them after Facebook has already said anyone is free to make money there and MySpace has a history of bullying the very applications that made the service what it is today. Chris DeWolfe thinks the Facebook platform "is interesting."
...at Yankee fans, who think there's any shot whatsoever of the Yanks making the playoffs.
...at Facebook app developers for thinking that all they had to do is throw any kind of crap up there and get 7 million users, plus have their business plan solved for them as well. Oh, so wait... you still need a marketing strategy, a compelling and viral app that provides utility, AND a business model??
Point and laugh, folks. Point and laugh.
June 29, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Plaxo: Shiny and new, but doesn't quite work
Spam issues in the past aside, I've usually found Plaxo to be a pretty useful service. Having moved companies a few times, the process of moving address books around and keeping up to date with people has been made much easier because of it.
So when they announced themselves as the place to sync everything, I was psyched. Their new interface is terrific. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work.
First off, it somehow triplicated all of my calendar entries. That's ok, though, because they have a premium feature that includes de-duping. Ahh... I see their business model now. Screw up your calendar and than pay to fix it. Clever!
In addition, they sync with GCal, which is fantastic, because GCal couldn't understand the CSV file that I had exported from Outlook. Plaxo told me that I had too many calendar entires (about 3x too many, perhaps?) and that it would sync everything for me in the background. That was yesterday. Is it still working? I have no idea if the feature is broken, it just didn't work that time or if its halfway done.
Perhaps I should wait for Plaxo 3.5?
June 27, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Trip Updates
So we made a little change on the front end... the Cooperstown day ends with a few hours to Ithaca, NY. That will give us 5 1/2 hours to trek across Western NY on our way to the Tribe game in Cleveland.
So here's the map now. Remember, all those west coast stops aren't actually stops.. they're just a way to get Google Maps to drive on the right road.
So, in terms of cities, stops and opportunities to meet folks...
We have a free day in Seattle on 7/11, both day and night. Suggestions are welcome and we'll prob do some sort of happy hour type thing for the handful of folks we know in Seattle.
We're also free the night of 7/14 in San Fran. We might stop in if anyone is hanging out after CommunityNext, but also, @caroliiine is going to be headed into the Bay Area that same night, so we were thinking of maybe doing a NYers invade the Valley thing, too. Up in the air...
I also just ordered my radar detector. That should come in by the end of the week... vroooom.
We picked up a few audio books as well, and I'm thinking of dusting off my XM radio and resubscribing. Does anyone have the car adapter for it? Does it work? I was pretty disappointed with the performance of the adapter for the iPod.
We also managed to avoid camping entirely... Mere called Yellowstone again and found a hotel cancellation, so we don't have to sleep in the woods. That would have been a lot of extra gear to carry around for just one night.
Tickets purchased for Royals game on 7/4 and for LA Dodgers on Monday the 16th. Most expensive seat at Kaufmann was $32, not surprisingly. At least I'll get to see Ichiro, b/c the Mariners are in town. I hope King Felix pitches.
June 26, 2007 in Roadtrip 2007 | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
danah boyd on Class and Social Networking
Wow... thoughtfulness in the blogosphere...
I'll read this kind of thing any day over that ridiculous "people ready" flap that killed off a couple of million collective brain cells over the weekend...
From danah... The part I liked best about this essay was the part that had nothing to do with social networks...
Link: Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace.
People often ask me if I'm worried about teens today. The answer is yes, but it's not because of social network sites. With the hegemonic teens, I'm very worried about the stress that they're under, the lack of mobility and healthy opportunities for play and socialization, and the hyper-scheduling and surveillance. I'm worried about their unrealistic expectations for becoming rich and famous, their lack of work ethic after being pampered for so long, and the lack of opportunities that many of them have to even be economically stable let alone better off than their parents. I'm worried about how locking teens indoors coupled with a fast food/junk food advertising machine has resulted in a decrease in health levels across the board which will just get messy as they are increasingly unable to afford health insurance. When it comes to ostracized teens, I'm worried about the reasons why society has ostracized them and how they will react to ongoing criticism from hegemonic peers. I cringe every time I hear of another Columbine, another Virgina Tech, another site of horror when an outcast teen lashes back at the hegemonic values of society.
I worry about the lack of opportunities available to poor teens from uneducated backgrounds. I'm worried about how Wal-Mart Nation has destroyed many of the opportunities for meaningful working class labor as these youth enter the workforce. I'm worried about what a prolonged war will mean for them. I'm worried about how they've been told that to succeed, they must be a famous musician or sports player. I'm worried about how gangs provide the only meaningful sense of community that many of these teens will ever know.
Given the state of what I see in all sorts of neighborhoods, I'm amazed at how well teens are coping and I think that technology has a lot to do with that. Teens are using social network sites to build community and connect with their peers. They are creating publics for socialization. And through it, they are showcasing all of the good, bad, and ugly of today's teen life. Much of it isn't pretty, but it ain't pretty offline either. Still, it makes my heart warm when I see something creative or engaged or reflective. There is good out there too.
June 26, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-26
June 26, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
The Facebook Problem? Huh? (Scratches head) People, the same rules still apply!
The web is talking about the "problems" with the new Facebook platform.
Last time I checked, customer acquisition was a real benefit, no? Don't people usually pay for customer acquisition? As far as I'm concerned, the main reason why I suggested that Oddcast build a Voki app for Facebook was exactly that... to get more users. That's a phenomenal benefit for developers. Oh, wait.. is Facebook also supposed to invent a business model for you, too. That's like saying that AdSense sucks because it doesn't promise you customer conversions too, just traffic.
The problem of not making money with your app is not a Facebook problem. Its your problem! It shouldn't be up to Facebook to figure out your business model, too! Figure out a way to monetize your audience. If no one wants to pay for the Where I've Been app or you can't figure out how to stick relevant travel ads on it, then it shouldn't exist. If the Where I've Been app existed at whereivebeen.com, it would have the same exact issues. Facebook is not a parallel universe where the rules of needing a business model don't apply. This is real life, folks... and if you can't figure out a way to get the bills paid, well, sorry... This isn't Facebook's fault. Don't put your mouth in front of the firehose and than complain that the water comes out too fast and that you have a small bladder.
I don't really think this is a Facebook specific problem either. In fact, its actually a testament to how pure the signal usually is on Facebook. Right now, I have 25 posts in my newsfeed. Of the 25, 8 of them are notifications related to my friends adding or subtracting applications. The rest are actual usage of those apps, like Twitter updates, or people adding photos or friends or whatever they usually do on Facebook. That might be a lot, but compare that to my e-mail inbox. Of my last 25 threads in Gmail, 14 of them were not from humans. They were confirmations from purchases, notifications for folks joining the nextNY mailing list, ads, etc. On top of that, 4 more were blog comment notifications, which were initiated by humans at least, but not direct conversations.
I'm sure Facebook will adjust this issue, though, but it's not a huge problem. At some point, there will be equilibrium in the app world and people won't be adding or subtracting nearly as many apps. Plus, I don't really need to know when someone took something down... and maybe I shouldn't need to know that someone added something. If you invite me, fine... but I don't need to see that people are just playing.
In any case, I think the same basic rules of needing a business model, needing to be compelling enough to stand out from the crowd, needing to scale, etc. still apply in Facebook. Let's not forget that. It's still the web, people, not Fantasyland.
June 24, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (4) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-24
June 24, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
