The last few days, I've had trouble using Google at home over Time Warner (sold through Earthlink) Cable internet in Brooklyn.   Google Search, Gmail... have either been really slow or completely non-responsive.   I thought it was a Google issue until I saw this.  Plus, it is working fine in the office.

Are we seeing the beginning of the pipeheads tiering the traffic... testing out some filtering?   Did anyone else experience this?  Is the net neutrality debate coming to a head in Bay Ridge?

I don't talk about music a ton on this blog, but I do like music...   just never really been that good at discovering new music.  Plus, I could never tie together all of the different ways I listen to music.  I used to have XM in my car from GM, and really liked it, but let the subscription slip after I changed addresses on my credit card.  I guess I didn't really like it that much. 

I like Pandora, but never really listen when I'm sitting in front of the computer, so that's pretty much out.   I've found some cool bands on MySpace, like Deep Metal Mechanic, but I can't do anything with them except put them on my page...   can't stream them anywhere... can't even pop the player out of the page.  Kind of useless for really empowering my music discovery.

Breaking my music free from the computer is important to me, so I bought two Netgear MP-101 routers and have been really happy with them considering how much I paid (less than $100 each).   That's been nice, but the real break is that all of the great discovery services out there don't work well off the computer.

If you visit my site, you'll notice I now have a Last.fm badge on the right sidebar.  It contains the last ten songs I listened to, plus after it has enough data, I guess, my most popular artists of the week.   Think of it like del.icio.us and Google.   Google is run by a machine that eats data as is Pandora.  The results are certainly good, but people powered stuff like del.icio.us has the potential to be even better.   That's what last.fm is.  If someone out there listents to similar stuff, it recommends the things that they listen to that I haven't found yet.  Last.fm promises to be a great discovery tool for me, except for the fact that I listen to my stuff through the Netgear routers and my iPod...never on the computer itself.  So, getting it my music listening data isn't easy.

Jscrob solved the iPod issue, which is why you can now see what I listen to when I ride my bike and go to the gym.  It sucks all the data off my iPod when I sync/charge, so you'll be sure to see lots of dark techno, industrial, and movie themes... but don't think that I turn on Rammstein when I get home at the end of a long day... this is only half of my music story, lest you think I'm peculiar.

I need to solve the apartment problem.  Enter UPnP.   Universal plug and play compatability promises to allow me to stream my music to other devices... so I just needed a UPnP server that was compatible with Last.fm and I was good to go.  I tried Tvedia and that looked really promising.  It works with Last.fm just by getting me to enter my Last.fm id/pw, but I haven't gotten it streaming to the routers yet.  The company keeps telling me its something on my end, but I can easily switch back to the Netgear server and that works just peachy.  I'll keep plugging away... hopefully, I can get it working.   I also tried Winamp+this plugin but the plugin didn't seem to install properly.  I wasn't sure if it was on, installed, working... whatever... nothing happened.

So that's where I am... hopefully, I'll be able to get the music I play in my apt into Last.fm through one of these UPnP solutions, and also get Streampad working as well.  Then I can get some better music recommendations than what I get from these Arctic Monkeyheads.  Bring on the hard stuff!

But now that Facebook is more open, I've gotten a lot of invites from very cool people that I know professionally.  I haven't accepted them yet and probably don't think I will.  So, sorry, Fred.  Nothing personal...   It's more a matter of maintaining a community identity.

To me, Facebook is very college-y... very my generation.  The actual physical "facebook", which we called the "meetbook" or "meatbook" depending on how you looked at it, was a very important document as a college student.

I'm not really a fan of the "open" Facebook, but I'll admit that it works to Fordham's advantage, b/c they can't get their act together to give us alumni e-mail addresses (seriously, how hard is that.. its just e-mail forwarding...).   So, at least this way, my Fordham friends in my year can join.     I'm going to keep my Facebook connections within a generation, if that's ok with you folks.   You can still connect to me on LinkedIn, Flickr, MySpace, MyBlogLog, Last.fm, and del.icio.us.

Kinda makes you wonder...

Facebook's traffic never comes out right b/c its been mostly inaccessable to anyone w/o a .edu address...  but as for Hi5 and Friendster, they certainly seem to be gaining in traffic.

So what are we supposed to make of these sites?  How valuable is 3rd place?  You have to imagine someone like AOL or IAC making a run at one of these.  I think, more then anything else, they need an identity. People are clear what MySpace is like and who Facebook is intended for (well, they were until a few days ago anyway...) but everytime I mention Hi5, Tagworld, or Friendster to someone, they immediately say, "Who's on there??"   Well, a lot of people, actually.

I do think there's an opportunity to create a "quieter" version of MySpace.  That was Friendster at one point, and perhaps they've solved the performance issues that drove so many people away in the first place.

Jeremy Shockey said the Giants were outcoached yesterday.

And frankly, I can't say Tom Coughlin has ever really impressed me. 

But then again, this Giant team, save for Tiki, hasn't really impressed me.   So, how do you know when it is the players and how do you know when it is the coach?   Certainly Bill Parcells seemed like a great coach and he's won to prove it...   but what about someone like Willie Randolph?   Second best team in the bigs... so-so starting staff, and yet somehow, I really don't think Willie is such a great coach.  He's made a lot of questionable moves.

There are always going to be standout CEOs--obvious people that everyone points to...  Gates, Jobs, Jack Welch...  but are there examples of great CEOs at mediocre companies?   How long does it take to go from good to great or turn something around?   Can a mediocre CEO take a great product to success?  I mean, seriously...  I could do Joe Torre's job, I think.  With that payroll and lineup...  I'd just say, "Hey guys, Jared Wright is pitching tonight, so do me a favor and score 9 runs."  I mean, he doesn't even need a bench...   never needs to double switch or pinch hit for the pitcher.  How hard could it be?

How do you seperate what a single person has done for a team, a company... hell... even a whole country?   Does Bush suck or are we all collectively sucking?   Or maybe just all the politicians?  As bad as you might say our president is, you gotta admit that there are probably others who deserve blame as well... people on both sides of the Pantone wheel.

This is exactly how I felt about Salesforce:

"Feeding the Monster": Like many knowledge management initiatives, CRM requires end-users to take actions that are not part of their natural work process in order to "update" the system. After all, CRM output is only as good as the input -- "garbage in, garbage out." Most end-users in small businesses, whether a partner in a law firm or an account manager at a consulting shop, interact with customers in their email system (usually Outlook). The act of opening the browser, putting in your password, navigating to the proper account, and filling in a form, fundamentally wastes that user’s time. The only way to motivate most users to "feed the monster" is by forcing them to update the system prior to the weekly meeting. Many sales organizations make updating the CRM system a requirement for getting paid. In fact, we added a paragraph in Groove Networks' sales compensation plan requiring the updating of our customer systems (feeding the monster) as a requirement for getting paid. […CRM needs to learn a lesson from Del.icio.us and the rest of the web2.0 crowd where the application provides real value to the user and incidental value to the network/community.]

Brian hits it right on the head... so much so that I just signed up for the Beta for Hubspot.

Tags: small business, crm, salesforce

Fred is right on with his Typepad comment request.  When I hit "Reply All" to Typepad's notification e-mails, I'd like that to autopost to my blog in addition to going to the sender.  Typepad's comments should Reply to both them and to the commenter.   So many times, I e-mail the sender back, then cut and paste that e-mail right back into my comments.  Its annoying.

Plus, I don't need a comment notification for this for when I post back through the mail.

Also, when I get a spam comment notification, I should be able to hit Reply All and just write "junk".  I hate logging into Typepad to clean up my spam comments... especially when I'm on the subway and offline. 

Tags: typepad, blogging

I've been meaning to write this for a while.

When I joined, I was really excited to get a chance to use Salesforce for the first time.  I had held up Salesforce as a great example of the death of enterprise software and why apps were best delivered over the web.

Now, after having access to it for two months, I have to say, its pretty underwhelming... or maybe I just don't get it.

It seems to me that a great organizational help should help you establish a routine... should provide shortcuts for you and help bring order to chaos...  in a lightweight "companion" sort of way.   It should slip seemlessly into my lack of routine and help maximize my productivity.

So, when I started using Salesforce and its Outlook plugin, I was surprised at how much database setup needed to be done on simple little items.

For example, I started talking to someone from a new company that Oddcast had never spoken to.  I wanted to add that quickly to Salesforce, but you can't add a new contact company on the fly.  You have to set it up in the system first.  That was sort of a pain.  Plus, there's nothing automatic about its e-mail intelligence.  Its like an empty database.  You have to tell it the meaning of an e-mail and who it belongs with...   there aren't algorythms to detect when someone e-mailed me and I didn't e-mail them back.  LinkedIn does that with its new Outlook dashboard.

I'd love to see a little floating hotlist of recent contacts, and people I'd like to elevate to a "watchlist".  E-mails from watchlist people would get automatically sucked into the database and reminders would pop up if I haven't returned their e-mails.  I don't need this whole backend monster... I just need a little ping to remind me to follow up with someone I talked about something with last week.  Salesforce, in spite of its webification, still seems very heavy to me and very difficult to use for people who aren't good about the routine of updating contacts, etc.  I want "automatic for the people."

First off, Sprint tech support sucks.

I spent two hours over various parts of the last week trying to get my phone to work as a broadband wireless modem, and... nothing.   It took four days before the phone's internet was working just as a standalone.  Using it with the laptop was another story.

Turns out I just didn't have the driver.  It seemed like I didn't, but Sprint assured me that, by downloading their connection manager, that I had the driver.  Not so much.

Seems I'm not the only one that was looking for the driver either.

So, if you need a USB wireless modem driver for a PPC-6700, or supposedly any Win Mobile phone, its right here.

I finally got going, and while the connection speed isn't overwhelming (currently in my office, with only two bars on the phone, its 230Kbps...a little slower than DSL), its definitely useable, and much better than searching for hotspots or paying T-Mobile at Starbucks. 

So, until NYC goes WiFi, I'm mobile and Sprint gets an incremental $25 a month from me and my firstborn.

We're looking for someone...   click the play arrow on the TV to hear about the job and then post a link to yourself, your work, etc. in the comments.

In a lot of ways, MySpace is sort of like the Microsoft of Web 2.0. 

Its the platform that a lot of portable applications are going to get built on...or at least built to.  Not every app will live in MySpace, but there has and will continue to be an explosion in the number of applications that are MySpace compatable, even if they'll wind up living on my blog.

And now, they're making overtures about going into the application development space, just as Microsoft did when it saw opportunities to build compelling apps that worked well together.  There are a lot of key differences, though, that will make this roadmap a more difficult one for MySpace.

One, most obviously, not everyone needs or wants MySpace as it is defined as a brand.  It trends younger because of the content that drives its network....the bands, blinking layouts, autoplay videos, etc.  However, as a place to live on the web that is flexible and easy to manage, its pretty good.  I think you have to wonder if there isn't  some value in pushing the architecture into other demographics with some more "serious" content...like an "open" LinkedIn. 

An operating system, on the other hand, was a necessary evil, and so the target market for Windows was much larger.

Another thing that MySpace lacks is a developers network...or at least an established/codified developer spec that someone who is looking to create MySpace apps could reference.  This kills me.  MySpace may see this as having the upperhand, knowing that all of the third party apps could be shut off tomorrow, but the reality is that will just stifle development over the long term.  Venture backed startups don't mind taking a shot at building in MySpace the way YouTube did and risking getting shut off, but if it ever does happen, development will slow to a trickle.  That was the beauty of Microsoft.  They couldn't turn you off, but they owned the distribution channel, so they could make it pretty difficult for you to survive.  At least it appeared as if you had a fighting chance, though, which was nice. 

Still, a true developers network and access to more data (like the way Facebook opens up a person's movie and music interests to behaviorally targeted ads) would encourage more development and make the underlying platform more valuable.  They should position themselves as very developer friendly. Statements like Web 2.0 was built on our backs create a very uneasy relationship with the people who are making your platform rich in content and applications at no cost to you.  Fox execs should be wearing tshirts to work that say "We love Web 2.0.  Come build here." Microsoft certainly seems interested in encouraging development, instead of saying developers are building "on our backs".

Interoperability of web services through APIs, RSS, etc also make this a different game than it was 15 years ago.  Windows wasn't just a place to park your apps...it was a place to make them work together.  Pasting an Excel sheet in a Word doc so easily made both programs more valuable and more sticky, not to mention the proprietary data formats they had. WordPerfect couldn't open a Word doc, so switching became really difficult.  Data is more standardized now.  We can take our blog feeds, tags, and our friends (conceptually, anyway) and port them wherever we want, and still benefit from integrating services.

The other big difference for MySpace today is that just being a platform is not a business model.  Users don't pay for MySpace the way they pay for Windows.  What they should do is to open the door to any and all ad supported or premium products and take a 10% cut across the top, sort of like the way NTT Docomo does in Asia, instead of the way the Carrier Mafia here takes your first born son for every piece of digital content sold.  Carriers... there's another group of platform providers that do as much as they can to strangle innovation and be as unfriendly to developers as possible. 

I'm not friends with Tom anymore, but as the Director of Consumer Products for a product that will hopefully find its away onto my MySpace profile, I'd love to be friends with MySpace...and not feel like I'm waiting for MySpace to drop the hammer on me.

Technorati Tags: MySpace, YouTube, Microsoft

I made a few updates to my site template, mostly aimed at cleaning up all the junk (um.. widgets) I have on my sidebar.   Of course, most of you read via RSS, so you've probably never even seen my page.

I added a third column and put some spaces in between all the widgets.  I think it looks cleaner.

I also added a view widgets, like Meebo.  Now you can IM me when you're on my page.  I really like the concept, but I wish the IMs would go to my AIM client...  I really don't like IMing through a browser, but its a neat concept that people can just stop in and say hello.  I wish AIM would copy this functionality so I can just use my AIM client for this. 

The more I think about it, the more just about every single piece of social software out there should integrate with Meebo, including Oddcast.  I'd love to open up a Meebo chat right where my avatar is...  and since they're both Flash, it should be really easy.   

Other new widgets include a YouTube badge of some of my favorite videos, which is probably too small, a Facebook badge, and yes, some Google ads.

Although, I have to say, my most lucrative program so far, by far, has been my Sitepal affiliate badge.  I've made $90 already from it... you get 30% commission on all the Sitepals you sell over the first full year of the accounts you sell.  So, just selling one ten dollar account nets you $36 in the first year.  That's pretty good.   My Feedburner ads are doing pretty nicely, too...  bringing in about $30 a month.   

Ads keep Charlie powered by Jamba.

Does anyone have a PPC-6700 and have their USB Wireless modem drivers handy... or know one I could use with it? 

I'm trying to use my phone as a modem and apparently, I need some more drivers for it...  and who the hell knows where the original CD that came with the phone went.

So I signed up for Sprint's EVDO service on my phone and it was a pretty good deal in the end.

I had been subscribed to their Vision data plan for getting e-mail and sending pics and stuff, and that was costing me $15, plus $5 more for unlimited texts (I use about 300-400 a month).

They don't have an EVDO phone service that works with unlimited texts, but the EVDO is actually a Vision plan, so upgrading to the $39 service meant that I could knock off the $15, and now its costing me $10 for 1000 texts a month, just to be safe.   So, in total, for an extra $34 a month I now have mobile broadband internet...   

...but that's not really the cool part, because the real savings is that, by plugging my phone into my computer via USB, I can use the phone as a modem and get broadband on my laptop.  For $34 a month, that's TOTALLY worth it, as far as I'm concerned. 

I'll keep you posted on the coverage and how it works...   

I logged into Facebook this morning to see a public notice from Mark Zuckerberg (posted below) about the recent changes to Facebook.  (It wound up in the Facebook blog as well.)   danah asks whether or not Facebook has learned a lesson.  I think they have and I really believe that they were pretty bummed out that they angered so many of their members.  It really takes a lot to admit mistakes, and I think this will go far in making users feel like its their service.  When your users start feeling like they own what you built, you've really got something.

danah wrote "People are taking to the (virtual) streets to object to what the architects are doing their (virtual) city. They don't like the changes in the architecture and they want their voices heard. And it also looks like virtual protesters can raise a far greater ruckus than the ones in meatspace."

Sad, but true...    if only all these people would get as upset over the war or healthcare or just sign up to ban Paris Hilton from all media.  I digress.

In response to this problem, Facebook built a really easy opt-out menu for the mini-feeds. 

Its really amazing to see the expectation level on the part of the users as to how responsive a service should be.  They didn't like a feature, so they banded together on the site and in a very short time, they got a resolution.  Could you imagine anything like that happening in the enterprise software world?  If I don't like any part of Vista, I'm going to make a group called "Vista looks like it was designed by a hyperactive 5 year old" (as one of the FB groups was) and then see how long it takes Microsoft to fix it.  :)

Nice job by the Facebook team to recognize their mistake.  I hope the users move on, because, as I mentioned the other day, this is a service that really has the potential to create positive change on college campuses because of its widespread use among a glocolized audience.

Here's Mark's letter:

An Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg:

We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now.

When I made Facebook two years ago my goal was to help people understand what was going on in their world a little better. I wanted to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted, but also have control over whom they shared that information with. I think a lot of the success we've seen is because of these basic principles.

We made the site so that all of our members are a part of smaller networks like schools, companies or regions, so you can only see the profiles of people who are in your networks and your friends. We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings – to give you even more control over who you share your information with.

Somehow we missed this point with Feed and we didn't build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I'm sorry for it. But apologizing isn't enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends' News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over.

This may sound silly, but I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn't made so many of you angry, I am glad we got to hear you. And I am also glad that News Feed highlighted all these groups so people could find them and share their opinions with each other as well.

About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet, because that's what I believe in – helping people share information with the people they want to share it with. I'd encourage you to check it out to learn more about what guides those of us who make Facebook. Tomorrow at 4pm est, I will be in that group with a bunch of people from Facebook, and we would love to discuss all of this with you. It would be great to see you there.

Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Mark

One more thing:

Interesting thought from UNC Fred on the size of the anti-Facebook Facebook group:

"The group has grown to almost 700,000 users, representing almost 8% of Facebook's total user base. If the equivalent happened in Myspace, the group would have grown to 8 million people. In two days."

"When you go for a all in one feature-set, sometimes u dont end up with anything."

Randy, who won't let me comment without signing in, doesn't really buy Biz Dev 2.0.

He thinks its "Nice for a business that has a handful of employees and no expenses, but it isn’t sustainable."

Handful of employees?

Low on the expense side?

Sounds like these guys.   Yeah... definitely not sustainable.

Here are the problems, as he sees them:

"No barriers to entry. Anyone can copy your business."

How many web businesses out there aren't able to be copied?  How many offline businesses out there can't be copied, other than regulated monopolies, like the electric company?  (Although, I'm pretty sure I can buy my power from somewhere else, too, which I don't quite understand.)   Anyone can copy anybody else's business, yes, but that doesn't mean they'll do it better.

"No barriers to exit. Users can easily leave your business for the next big thing."

Did I mention Randy works for Verizon?  I guess he'd like us to sign two year contracts with all of our web services.   I can leave Skype anytime I want to use Google Talk, too...   but I won't, b/c Skype provides a better service, allowing me to make domestic phonecalls for free.  Oh, you could see Craigslist for that, too.  I think, in the future, we won't see very many businesses that lock in their users at all...  hopefully even wireless... and just compete on making them not want to leave.

"Nothing of value is owned."

So Feedburner owns nothing of value?  Except, well...  most of the rights to run RSS for major publishers, and, um, all the RSS ad relationships they signed up... the blogger relationships.  Yes, they could quit anytime, but its not like anyone else could just replicate that overnight.  Granted its not a bunch of fiber in the ground or rooftop towers, but who wants to own that stuff anyway?

"No control over your own destiny. Being completely dependent on “partners” (I use this term loosely) that have no contractual obligations to each other is dangerous."

Google, believe it or not, isn't in control of its own destiny.  We could all decide tomorrow that we'd rather not have Google crawl our content.  Advertisers could all say online advertising isn't worth it... and the company would be dead in the water.  You're always dependent upon someone else... even if its just your customers.  You can't force anyone to do anything forever.

So, I basically agree with all of his depictions of the landscape, but I look at them as reality, not a list of problems.

Fred posted yesterday about the brilliance of the MySpace "add" feature on their music player, and how most widgets lack the immediacy of this feature.

Most of them provide a landing page, then they have a conversion issue.  Eventually you wind up with some embed code and then its all about hacking your template.   There's no universal "add this to my sidebar/blog" etc.

Or is there?

XML-RPC is what allows services like Flickr to autopost my Moblogged photos directly to my Typepad blog.  All I needed to do was to tell them where to post it, give them my password, and poof, automatic.

Can the same thing be used for my sidebar?

How hard would it be for some social widget to have a "Get this" link that pops up a window, lets you configure, and then all you have to do is give them your blog password and poof, its there up at the top of your sidebar.

Is this possible through XML-RPC?

Are you a digital media young professional in NYC?

Do you have aggressive tendencies?

Do you want to throw things at other people?

Or, do you just want to come, try not to get hit, and meet lots of other cool people in the NYC digital media and technology community?

Join our nextNY Dodgeball league now!  (Starts 9/18... signup ASAP before spots run out)

The term "avatar space" or "avatar market" is sort of a misnomer to me.

I think there are really two spaces here...   the gaming/virtual world space and the personalization/expression space.   On one end of the spectrum is Second Life and on the other end are ringtones.   

The immersive, virtual world that is Second Life and all these MMPORGs will have far less users and a very high ARPU (Average Revenue Per User).   I'd also bet that the overall ROI in the whole space will be much less, and the volitility among the bets will be high, because when they score, they score big, but they also require a lot of capital to get off the ground and maintain.  I'm sure one or two virtual worlds will totally tank after swalling up lots of VC money.

The more immersive and time consuming the experience is, the more binary your userbase will be.  Do you know any "casual" Second Life users?  Most people either love it or get overwhelmed by it in the first few minutes... and at a $20 monthly price point, its hard to be casual.  Building a whole virtual world is like building a web service and also building the underlying database backend, instead of just using what's out there and off the shelf.  I already have a "virtual world"... and its loose bits and pieces of my blog, MySpace, Flickr, AIM and Facebook.  That's why I like MyBlogLog, if it has the potential to tie these together.  (You'll notice that your face now appears next your comments if you're a MBL user.... btw... does anyone know any good templates for MT Comments?  I botched mine and would like to fix it, containing the whole comment in an individual box.)

On the other end of the spectrum, for less than a third of what it takes to build the average MMPORG, whole companies are being built around taking advantage of more lightweight users of avatars...  like as a visual representation on chat clients or as a way to be expressive on a profile.   You could look at these avatars as "virtual lite", but I think of them as "ringtones plus"...  or  "MeTones". 

There are a lot of people integrating avatars and virtual stuff into their offerings... everybody "want's in" and doesn't want to miss out.  I think the key is knowing how this fits into your community.  If you're doing an ad supported strategy and you touch a lot of users a little at a time, a whole virtual world doesn't make much sense for your audience.  If you've blown out a demographic and you see these people for long periods at a time, and there's a very strong sense of community loyality...  you might offer more than just a little personalization.  Either way, the key is to realize that users should be able to take their identities out of your world and play on other places on the web, and that you need ways for your users to interact with others outside of the world.  I may not spent a lot of time in Second Life, but it would be cool to receive e-mails and instant messages from people with their characters, or do the same with a character of my own, even if I'm not in the actual world itself.  Because, if I  need my whole network to be in this virtual world, just like a bad social network, its just not going to work.