I first read about Bubbles when Om Malik wrote about it. Essentially Bubbles is a piece of software for Windows that causes Windows to treat common web applications as desktop applications. Essentially you load web applications (like Gmail) into the Bubbles application and then they appear in the Taskbar, you can cycle through them using alt-tab, etc.
Very useful.
If you’ve been to a NASCAR race this season, chances are good that you’ve seen fans walking around with a bright yellow device with a screen and headphones. Called the Nextel FanView at NASCAR, the device broadcasts streaming video, allows replays, allows the user to see different angles on different teams, etc. for the duration of the race. Apparently these FanView devices are selling out (well, “renting out,” since they’re not for sale) every race this season.
Not surprisingly, Gadgetell is reporting that Kangaroo.tv, the manufacturer of the FanView devices is setting its sights on other sporting events. If you make the assumption that the devices cost around $500 (that’s the deposit Nextel requires for renting the device at a race, so it’s probably a little inflated especially with volume purchasing) and Nextel charges $50 per day or $70 per race weekend to rent the device, it’s pretty easy to see that there’s a really good ancillary revenue stream from these kinds of devices.
Gizmodo reports on the PixelRoller, which essentially is a paint roller that outputs programmed lettering and graphics. I’m not entirely sure why I think this is so cool, but it just is, so I’m posting about it.
Engadget reports that single song pricing on the iTunes Music Store will remain at $0.99 per track, keeping the Apple strategy of low-cost, non-subscription music a reality (for now). Of course the post does not address the fact that record companies will probably continue to make certain tracks only available as part of a full album purchase and/or continue to charge more than $9.99 per CD.
Steve Rubel provides full details on the 4 options that are available to you. Rubel tried it on his Blackberry and it worked fine, so I tried all 4 options on my Treo and everything worked fine on the Treo as well.
BackityMac has been updated and finally supports back-up activates to CDs and DVDs with the ability to break back-ups across multiple discs if necessary.
BackityMac remains donationware, so no more excuses for not backing up.
I was just there today and hardcover books were flying off the table like candy (at $15 each), which got my thinking about the impact of the big box retailers on new book sales. It used to be that people would reserve new copies at bookstores or even pre-ordered online, but now, for most big authors, you can just pop into Costco and pick up a new hardcover at pretty good price.
Additionally, I considered the fact that there is limited book real estate in each Costco store, which leads to questions about what authors get table space. The well-known authors (i.e., Tom Clancy) will always get table space, but I wonder if publishing houses actually pay for table space at Costco for authors that aren’t quite as well known.
I still can’t believe that people are willing to pay $2.99 per song. Due to my involvement in the Sprint Ambassador program, I have played around with the Sprint Music Store and can see how it would be tempting with the sound quality out of some of the phones, the speed of the download to the phone, and the fact that you also can download the track to your computer. However, $2.99 is just too steep for a single track in my opinion — apparently there are lots of people out there that don’t agree.
2million songs x $2.99 each = $5.98million
If you stay at the Luxor in Vegas, have a Sprint/Nextel phone, and provide your cell number, the Luxor will provide you with all kinds of goodies:
“Luxor guests who have provided their wireless phone number during the reservation or check-in process can receive coupons for discounted meals, show tickets or other offers from Luxor directly on their phones. Using the GPS technology built into Sprint phones, Luxor will be able to determine whether the guest is on the property to estimate which discount offers might prove most useful to the guest.”
I wonder exactly how Luxor pulls the GPS info without me giving them permission.
More details about the program on the post at Gadgetell.
All nicely organized by category. What sucks is that there are no hyperlinks, but the post does point to this post on From Istanbul to Sand Hill Road, which has all the hyperlinks in place.
Big surprise that it’s in beta, right?
I like the interface and have to admit that I’ve only been playing around with it a little bit. In the calendar settings you can import MS Outlook calendar data, which is very cool, but I’m still waiting for the web-based calendar that is going to provide a continuously syncing conduit to my Outlook calendar.
As expected, the standard Google search interface allows you to search all of your calendar events.
I like the fact that you can drag on dates and time ranges to create events much like you do in MS Outlook.
I’ve got to play around with this some more.
Due to me not paying attention, a lot of my posts from last night got accidentally posted to my House of Blues Denver blog. Instead of trying to delete a bunch of posts over on the other blog, I’ve just re-posted a bunch of the posts here.
My apologies for any confusion.
Rajesh Setty has published a free e-book entitled When You Can’t Earn an MBA. . . Aside from the fact that you can’t use “an” in front of a word that starts in a consonant, the e-book is a worthwhile read.
Those of you that read this blog frequently have read a lot of my previous posts about MBAs and would encourage you to read this e-book if you’ve enjoyed (or violently disagreed) with any of my previous posts.
Link — e-book download
Link — Rajesh’s post explaining why he wrote it
I don’t shop in Payless Shoes, but I get that they essentially rip off uber-trendy designs and sell them ridiculously cheap. Here’s something to consider: If you needed trendy shoes for a particular event and didn’t necessarily ever care about wearing them again, is it better to spend $14 at Payless or to spend a lot more?
I bet your answer is totally different depending on whether or not you’re male or female.
It’s just this simple: Don’t Lie to Yourself
Read the rest of Cuban’s post, become enlightened, stop lying to yourself.
QED
I use tons of stock photos in my presentations, so I was excited to find everystockphoto, which does not host any stock photos, but rather aggregates stock photos from various different services. Please stop filling your PowerPoints with endless bullets and start using everystockphoto to tell your story with pictures — you can’t beat the price.
Someone that I know that works in car racing told me recently that if they had had just 50 more laps, they would have done even better. I’m sure that the statement was absolutely true, but the reality is that the number of laps at any given track is determined months and years in advance of the race actually being run. The statement made me think about the kinds of issues that all kinds of businesses face: trying to win based on the constraints that have already been set.
So how do you win if you can’t get 50 more laps?
For just $199 you too can participate in a Patrick Lencioni webinar for 1.5 hours; only a few hours left to sign up.
I’ll be interested to see how Amazon does with these kinds of products; it certainly makes it much easier to purchase webinars by going through Amazon.
It’s the full version for free — download and back up today.
TJ’s Weblog reports on United Mobile:
"United Mobile is a licensed Mobile Virtual Network Operator and provides worldwide mobile communications services with its own network infrastructure and SIM cards.
United Mobile has developed a revolutionary technology, eliminating expensive roaming costs. United Mobile offers free incoming calls in 80 countries and international outgoing calls at worldwide low rates."
I haven’t heard about United Mobile anywhere else, but this seems like a no-brainer if you are a world traveler (I have gotten some crazy bills just roaming in Mexico).
Check it out.
Shimon Sandler discovered it and posted all about it on his blog. As expected, it mashes up Google Maps with real estate listings, which is very cool. Check out his post for all kinds of screenshots.
No more excuses with all the examples and resources on Design Education.
Hat tip to this post on Presentation Zen.
Originally found at this post on TUAW. I noticed, just like TUAW, that there is no mention if EasyWMA supports the WMA 10 format, which would be especially useful as more and more content is released in that format. In any event, for $10 it’s hard to beat the price for all the things that it does.
I originally saw this on Luxist and it’s a very cool idea. Having done a number of bathroom remodels, I would definitely say that if you don’t have good plumbing and tiling knowledge, you probably want to leave installation to a pro — lots of pre-planning exactly where a tile is going to land and installing the appropriate plumbing the correct location. I’m guessing that the tiles connect to a water source via some sort of flexible tubing to aid in rough-in, but there’s still a fair amount of precision required that does not necessarily exist in other installations.
All of the tiles seem to be in a chrome finish and install over the top of whatever you use a ceramic or marble tiles, so at least you’re not locked into purchasing Kohler tiles to match what the heads are mounted on. Prices seem to range depending on the type of nozzle, but generally seem to be between $150 and $200.
Having never installed a system with a bunch of heads, I wonder if you actually have to install some sort of pressure boosting system to ensure that you get even flow out of all the heads.
Track how often you should be reapplying sunscreen for your kids with SolarSafe wristbands (I don’t see any reason why these wouldn’t work for adults) — you wear the wristband and apply the same amount of sunscreen to it as you do to yourself; the band changes color to show total sun exposure and the weakening of sunscreen.
Interesting stuff.
FeedoStyle allows you to embed RSS modules in a HTML site — originally found at this post on TechCrunch.
My influence is apparently 22,638.4, which seems somewhat high, but really isn’t when I compare it to much more popular blogs. Oh well.
Check you influence.
I have no idea why you would ever want to do this, but SMSresume.com allows you to send your resume via SMS. Are there any recruiters out there that would actually want to receive a resume in this fashion?
UPDATE: Hang on, I didn’t read enough about the service — apparently you upload your resume via SMS and then you can use SMS to send your full resume to any e-mail address, meaning if you are out and about with only a cell phone and see a job ad you want to respond to, you can immediately do so with your cell phone. I guess I’d be a little worried about formatting, but maybe that’s not as big a concern. The service also accepts cover letters.
Check out the Business 2.0 article on Dwell pre-fab homes and chances are good that you’ll be as impressed as I was. The quality and finish of the Dwell homes make me want to go buy some property and spec one of these houses.
Jeremy Wright interviews the CEO of Carbonite to find out about their consumer back-up service. Here’s my favorite quote from the interview:
Our slogan is “Backup for Everyone.” We will back up your whole PC for less than $5/mo, no matter how much data you have. And it is simple. One-click install, then it just works quietly in the background any time you’re connected to the Internet. When the little Carbonite lock icon on your PC’s system tray is green, it means that you’re completely backed up.
Love the business model — quality pricing and ease of use are always attractive.
Companies are spending lots of money leasing luxury items for various different lengths or time, including single day leases. Get out of your head that only cars can be leased because there are all kinds of luxury goods producers that are setting up lease terms.
Check out the full article on MSNBC.
Please read this advice from Seth Godin.
I was staying at a hotel in Houston and noticed that there was an infrared motion detector (one that looks exactly like the kind installed with most standard security systems) on the wall. It took my a little bit of pondering to figure out the purpose. Do you know what it does?
It turns the air conditioner on and off. That probably saves the hotel a bunch of money in electricity costs, which is great for them. My question: Why they couldn’t they make the sensor blend in so that I didn’t have to see it?
I’ve read it and it is very worth checking out if you have any interest at all in business networking.
Mark Cuban doesn’t and neither do I. However, I would like to echo Cuban’s sentiments in case you don’t read his blog regularly:
Is a single research pen mightier than the P&L, Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows? that is the question you must ask yourself.
If you think the answer is yes, and you are an investor, you probably don't know enough about the companies you own stock in to stay in the market.
If you think the answer is yes, and you are a trader, hopefully you have gotten to the point of knowing you are just winging it anyway, and you win some and lose some.
If you are the CEO of a public company and you think the answer is yes. Please email me with the stock symbol of your company. I want to short it.
It’s a big pain in the ass, so I was excited to see this post on Cool Tools about drywall cleats. Essentially once you get one piece of drywall up you can screw the cleats to the edges of the drywall where you want to put the next piece and use the edge of the cleat to hold the next pieces while you screw them in.
The true power of Amazon S3 for consumers will be fully realized when people start programming scripts and front-ends that use Amazon’s very cheap storage solution for the back-end. Russell Beattie reports that there are already people out there writing python scripts to store Flickr photos. I’d love to have some sort of basic front-end that would allow me to back up anything onto Amazon’s service — it wouldn’t need to be too sophisticated, although drag and drop would be a nice feature.
Link — python script for Flickr photos
Russell Beattie has a long post about the “.mobi” domain. I personally think that .mobi is a great idea because so many mobile site addresses are so damn confusing (see some of the examples on Russell’s post).
The .mobi domain launches May 2006 with an early registration for trademark holders. If you own a trademark you may want to think about jumping on this before someone else starts snatching up these domains.
Link — .mobi
Link — Russell’s post
Read all about it at DefenseTech.
Latinos are the fastest growing segment of the population in the United States, so it would seem to make sense that you would want to round out your blog subscriptions with some Latino-focused and/or Latino-authored blogs. Luckily this post on HispanicTrending provides a link to Josue Sierra’s compilation of Top Latino blogs.
Check it out.
I first read about 9cays on TechCrunch and I’ve played around with the unregistered part of the service (instant conversation with 3 people, no sign-up required); I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with the interface. I really need to register to explore more of the functionality, but I just haven’t had a chance. The only things that give me pause about this service are:
Check it out.
Orb is a free alternative to the SlingBox, but is a software solution rather than a combined hardware and software solution like SlingBox. I’ve played around a lot with the Sling device and have to say that I have been very impressed even though it costs around $250. Also, the Sling device is platform-independent whereas Orb is only available right now for Windows XP and all of my home equipment is Macintosh.
Anyway, check it out if your home system is Windows XP and you’re looking for a free remote media streaming solution.
I wrote about Zillow several weeks ago when it launched. Now Real Estate ABC has launched as Zillow’s competition. I ran a few comparative searches on both services of the property I own and properties I have owned and the results are different — I would recommend using both together as a resource when buying and selling a home.
. . . I would post pictures of popular hairstyles on my website. There are lots of publicly available pictures of celebrity haircuts and I just looked up the Flickr tag “haircut” and there are 11,000+ pictures, which means someone might have to do a little work to weed through and link to some of the pictures that are trendy. The unfortunate side to this strategy is that it’s really easy to duplicate, but Great Clips could issue digital cameras to every store and take pictures of real customers and pretty soon not be dependent on free sources.
Those books with pictures of haircuts that are left out in the lobby just don’t cut it anymore — ask any woman and she’ll tell you that she brings in pictures of the hairstyle she wants. Oh, and those posters don’t really work any more either:
Link — Great Clips
Do you know what “tiered access” is? Chances are good that you do not because there has never been a real widespread adoption of tiered access in major areas where it affects the lives of a lot of people. Tiered access essentially means that those who pay more will receive higher quality of service while those who pay less will receive a much lower quality of service.
There’s an interesting article in The New Yorker about how many ISPs are considering a tiered access strategy for companies that use their bandwidth:
Until recently, companies that provided Internet access followed a de-facto commoncarriage rule, usually called “network neutrality,” which meant that all Web sites got equal treatment. Network neutrality was considered so fundamental to the success of the Net that Michael Powell, when he was chairman of the F.C.C., described it as one of the basic rules of “Internet freedom.” In the past few months, though, companies like A.T. & T. and BellSouth have been trying to scuttle it. In the future, Web sites that pay extra to providers could receive what BellSouth recently called “special treatment,” and those that don’t could end up in the slow lane.
Once again ISPs are trying to make money from both sides — they collect money from the consumer to connect to the internet from their home and now they are trying to charge websites to provide better service. Where’s Googlenet when you need it?
Hat tip to Bob Lefsetz for pointing me towards this story.
Someone e-mailed me about CozmoTV, so I went to check it out. I’m trying to figure out exactly what it does, but I think that it does something really cool for my TiVo. One of the big frustrations with scheduling shows to record and season passes for show on TiVo is that you cannot schedule them 3 months out, which is many times when I’m thinking about wanting to record something. I’m pretty sure that CozmoTV solves this issue, but I haven’t been able to play with it enough.
It appears that when I register for CozmoTV, I give it access to my TiVo account (CozmoTV currently only works with TiVo), which essentially allows CozmoTV to access all of the TiVo devices on my account. I’m trying to figure out if I should be worries about providing a 3rd party site with access to my TiVo — after all, TiVo is essentially a computer sitting on my private home network and it interacts with other computers on my network in pulling down iTunes audio and iPhoto photos. I can’t seem to get the Terms of Use or Privacy Policy to load, so I’m not willing to provide any person information until I can read those.
There definitely appears to be a social component to CozmoTV that allows users to rate shows and recommend shows. Most shows that I browsed show their “Price” as being “Free,” which makes me wonder if CozmoTV has plans for exclusive content that will be a premium charge that CozmoTV can push directly to your TiVo box or perhaps CozmoTV wants to be a 3rd party collection site for premium programming for others.
The whole interface for CozmoTV is in Flash, which is pretty slick, but that’s why it runs an initialization prior to booting every time you visit the site.
Once I can read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, I’ll let you know further thoughts.
Hey, I’ve got one, so this matters to me. Does anyone else feel like there have been a really large amount of battery issues on the 15” Powerbook?
This should get automatically download when you run Software Update. Here’s the full description of the update if you need all the technical details.
Before I even start using it:
Link — full Samsung specs
Link — disclaimer (ok, I would link here if Blogger was working right now, but I can’t access the permalink right now)
Here’s my big, bold disclaimer:
I was selected for some reason to receive a free Samsung A-920 phone with 6 months of free Sprint Power Vision service as part of the Sprint Ambassador program. Since I have wanted to try out the Power Vision network, I accepted both the phone and the service — Sprint lets me keep the phone free of charge after 6 months, but will terminate the service.
Here is what Sprint is looking for from me:
As a qualified participant, we will send you one Sprint Power Vision phone and provide you with six months of all-access service (at no charge). You’ll have access to the Sprint Music Store(SM) live TV broadcasts, gaming and more. Yes, you will also have unlimited free calling and data service. It’s a pretty good deal and all we ask for in return is your candid feedback (you decide how much and how often).
Hey, if you’re a reader of this blog you know that I slant a lot of my writing towards technology, so I’m actually pretty excited to try out the service and let all of you know what I think.
I am already a Sprint subscriber, so I should be able to provide some comparisons between traditional Vision data service and Power Vision data services.
I’ll try to provide a link to this disclaimer on all of my posts about the phone and service.
It’s much easier than opening an Excel spreadsheet and you don’t need to know Excel formulas to make it work.
I remember a few years ago that I had to get up in front of a bunch of executives with a microphone in a strangely-shaped room and give a presentation; I got scared and started sweating and gave a horrible presentation. There was really no need for me to present anything, but I had been told that I had to give it instead of deciding that it was the right thing to do. As Seth Godin says:
The best presentation might be no presentation.
If you're going to bother to do something, you ought to do it very well indeed. Otherwise, don't. Don't show up. Don't waste your time (or mine.)
Seth’s got a great a plan on how to give an effective and casual presentation by just being yourself — 4 plain and simple steps that you can follow to give a great presentation with little stress.
Mark Cuban says they aren’t:
. . . the concept of CEO and shareholders interest being in alignment because they both own stock is a big lie. The CEO wants to hit the homerun of their career when they take the job, the shareholder just doesn't want to strike out with their life savings.
Don’t believe him? Read his whole post, it’s pretty convincing.
I saw an Old Navy advertisement today that featured some people dancing and holding hands; at the bottom of the screen was the language “Do Not Attempt.” Perhaps I’m not supposed to dance or to dance barefoot or to hold hands or wear striped Old Navy shirt or maybe wear clothes. To be honest, I’m not really sure what I’m not supposed to attempt and maybe Old Navy isn’t sure either. My guess is that the legal department at Old Navy just told them to slap the language on every commercial because it’s easier and less risky.
What are you telling your customers not to attempt?
They’re piling up again:
Not that this is rocket science, but if you’re looking at wanting to back up your Gmail account, this is a pretty good primer.
It’s definitely worth watching, so I’m trying to use the embedded Google Video on this post below; if it doesn’t work, I’m also putting in a link to the video.
We have All-Clad pots and pans. Our 3qt saute pan developed some sort of problem around the rivets that hold the small handle to the side of the pan — to be honest, the problem looked like electrolysis to me due to the burned black area around each rivet that expanded when heat was applied.
My wife stopped in Williams-Sonoma, which is where we originally purchased the pots and pans. Although Williams-Sonoma does not sell the pots and pans above MSRP, there are certainly other stores that do sell All-Clad at a discount. In any event, she described the problem that we were having and the sales associate told her to bring in the pan.
It is important to note at this point that All-Clad has a lifetime warranty on the products, but in most situations you would have to return the pan to All-Clad to get warranty service or replacement. My wife brought the pan and lid back in to Williams-Sonoma today and left with a replacement lid and pan new in the box.
My guess is that it might be a little bit of a pain in the ass for Williams-Sonoma to deal with the warranty claim on our behalf especially because they already provided us with a replacement pan and lid. The interesting thing is that Williams-Sonoma only asked my wife for her name and zip code; they didn’t make her fill out the full background check form that other stores require for returns. In effect, if Williams-Sonoma sends the pot in and All-Clad denies the claim, then Williams-Sonoma is out the cost of the replacement pan.
The moral of the story here is that sometimes the reason that you do business with companies like Williams-Sonoma and pay full retail price is because of the level of service that they provide. It is experiences like this that will cause us to continue to do business with Williams-Sonoma and encourage others to do business with Williams-Sonoma.
Link — Williams-Sonoma
Link — All-Clad
I did get the time this weekend, as promised, to set up a MySpace account. I’ve already reached out to a few people that I know with MySpace accounts and invited them as friends. The interesting thing to me is how quickly people on MySpace respond to friend requests as compared to LinkedIn and how quickly I’ve built a small network in very little time.
I’ve tried to play with a bunch of features:
There’s a lot of stuff you can do with a lot of the profile features if you know some basic web coding, which has been interesting to try to see the results. I’ve visited some profiles that look like crap because they obviously don’t know anything about webcoding and I’ve visited some profiles that look amazing because the owner knows what they are doing.
I still don’t really get it. There are a lot of features that I use other services for combined in one site and I certainly understand the attraction in that. My next steps are to interview some people that I know that are really into the whole MySpace thing to see how they use it — I’ll post what I find out.
Feel free to add me as a “Friend”, a link to my Profile is below.
So I posted that video of Origami a few days ago and they just updated The Origami Project site today. Engadget is doing some digging and seems to think that Origami is the Ultra Mobile PC the Intel plan to unveil on March 7. Further, Engadget states that if the Origami is indeed the UMPC, then it will be running Windows XP Tablet Edition.
I’ll be honest and say that if this thing can run Excel, I have a very legitimate business use for it simply from a form factor perspective and if the battery life is in the 4–8 hour range then I’ll stand in line to get one of the first one.
I do have to bring up this question: Isn’t Vista shipping in late 2006 or early 2007? I just think it’s a little strange to invest in a device that runs an OS that will not be cutting edge in less than 1 year — it is my understanding that there is a Vista for Tablet PC. In fact in searching about this, I ran into an article from TG Daily that states:
A second batch of UMPCs will follow in the second half of this year and come with Windows Vista preinstalled . . .
So maybe I won’t stand in line for one the first ones with XP and will hold out for Vista.
The biggest thing that no one seems to have an answer about is the price point.
Link — TG Daily
Jeremy Wright posts that MySpace scares him and I certainly agree with him. The scariest thing to me is that I read everything in Jeremy’s post and it all makes sense, but I still don’t get it and I’m not that far in age from the people that are actually using it on a daily basis.
Russell Beattie’s scared of MySpace too and has created his site, tweaked it, and generally played around with the service, but as he says now that he’s played around with the actual technology:
I guess the next step in understanding the whole scene is to find someone who uses it for real and see what they actually get out of it. What’s the really compelling features of MySpace?
If I have time this weekend, I’m going to set myself up on MySpace and see what I can figure out. I actually know some people that use the service frequently, so I’m going to tap them to see if I can get some insight.
Link — Jeremy Wright
Ok, really it’s like dumping trash in my driveway — a furniture store that I bought some items for signed me up for daily newspaper delivery for 6 months as a “gift.” I did not ask for this “gift” and really do not recall opting in to this “gift” when I purchased the stuff from the furniture store. Now the paper is coming every day and filling up my trashcan because neither my wife nor I really read the printed version of the newspaper except on Sundays.
We called the newspaper company and informed that that we did not ask for or want to receive the paper every day, but would be happy to simply receive it on Sundays. Can you guess their response? They responded that we would have to pay extra.
This might be the last time that you read my blog.
This might be the last time that I write a post on this blog.
This might be the last time I put up with a dropped call on my cell phone.
As Seth Godin says:
With so many choices, every business lives right on the edge. When you were the only florist in my town, storming off in a huff cost me as much as it cost you. Now, it's sort of trivial to just type a few different letters into my browser.
The Web 2.0 Blog offers 16 ways to get you going along the right path (if you’re into those sorts of things).
I’m not sure that I care about this; I was really hoping for a full-screen video iPod. There still doesn’t seem to be any sort of proper remote for the iPod — would have been much cooler if there was a video out on the HiFi that just provided a GUI for navigating iPod content (for that matter there doesn’t appear to be any video out, which seems a little silly).
Kevin 2.0 reports that you can just go to the ad agency that worked on the Origami Project and find the full specs. I tried it:
Worked for me.
Scoble says it’s a device and Engadget claims that these are pictures from a good source; both seem to agree that it’s a new device from Microsoft.
Whatever it is, the viral is pretty effective with the information on the official site only releasing information on a weekly basis — the next update is 3/2/06.
Do you know what human directional advertising is? Picture the dude in a chicken suit. Got a good mental image? Good. Apparently “human directional advertising” is the technical term for dressing up in a goofy suit or holding an advertisement on a corner.
I’d never hear the term before.
Micro Persuasion points to the Ruby on Rails wiki that lists out all of the web 2.0 applications that have been developed with Ruby on Rails. Some of the interesting ones that I found were:
Now that I’ve developed my short list, I’m going to have to go play with everything and see if I’ll integrate anything into my daily use. Stay tuned . . .
I had no idea that was the case until I read a post about it on TUAW. Perhaps I’ll turn my Mac Mini into an intranet server for my house.
Ok, it’s actually not a bad list, but it’s a little hard to look at.
I originally saw a version of this on Micropersuasion, but was screwing up some of the operators when I tried to make it work for my blog, so I did a Google search and came up with this site, which I thought would generate the URL for my mobile site; it didn’t.
Here’s what you have to do to get this to work for your site:
Ultimately it seems like it might be easier to make a bookmark to the Google site on your phone and type in the URL of the site you are looking to view on your mobile.
I was playing around with 4INFO today and it’s pretty cool. To test the functionality, I send a SMS to 44636 with “united 352” as the subject and got a reply in about 30 seconds with flight data detail. 4INFO supports lots of things in much the same way like weather, sports scores, etc.
What I really want to see is if 4INFO starts sending me SMS advertising now that I’ve used their service. Although 4INFO is a free service, I have to imagine that there is going to be some sort of advertising component that will come into play at some point; certainly their privacy policy is very clear:
4INFO displays targeted advertisements based on personal information. Advertisers (including ad serving companies) may assume that people who interact with, view, or click on targeted ads meet the targeting criteria - for example, women who have searched for nail salons in a particular geographic area.
All of the information that 4INFO provides I can easily access with my Treo, but I could definitely see how this would be a useful service if you did not have data services active on a phone or did not even have a web browsing option on a phone. I could definitely see a mobile carrier acquiring a company like this or simply cloning its service offerings as a driver for SMS usage instead of advertising revenue.
Go It Alone! can be read in its entirety on the web. Harper Collins, the publisher of the book is attempting to support the free version with Google Advertising on every page (yes, you click through every single page of the book to read it online and every page has Google Ads on the side). In addition to the Google Ads, there is also a direct-buy Amazon link that allows you to purchase the printed version of the book; it appears as though Harper Collins has an affiliate ID set up so that they can get paid a percentage of all generated sales from the site, meaning that they would make whatever they make in wholesale plus a percentage of retail.
It will be interested to see what the conversion numbers are (if Harper Collins ever releases them) and the advertising revenue generated by the site (if Harper Collins ever releases that number). I wonder what the split of Google Ads revenue is with the author (if there’s any split at all).
I called United yesterday to book a flight. Normally I only book online, but I had a ticket that I had cancelled and there is no way on United.com to apply a previously purchased and not used ticket to a new reservation.
As I proceeded through using the IVR phone system, I was never once given the opportunity to tell the system that I was trying to do a ticket exchange. Finally at the end of the IVR system and I arriving at the correct combination of flights, I had to say “speak to an agent” about 30 times before the system finally transferred me to a human.
Surprisingly the human that I spoke to sounded non-Indian, so we were able to converse quite easily. I gave the agent the ticket number of the ticket I was trying to exchange and then was put on hold for 5 minutes.
When the agent came back, he told me that he would have to charge me a $100 change fee, which I was fine with, and then $10 for a phone booking. I requested that he instruct me how to do the ticket exchange on the website and I would be happy to not take any more of his time on the phone. He replied that there was not currently a way that I could do a ticket exchange on United.com, so I informed him that there was currently no way that I was going to pay $10 in addition to a $100 change fee if there was no other method for exchanging my ticket — he put me on hold again.
Five minutes later, the agent told me that he had spoken with his supervisor and the supervisor agreed to waive the $10 phone booking fee. I completed my reservation and immediately received my new flight receipt by e-mail.
United offers some pretty cool bonuses for booking on United.com like receiving 1000 miles for every United.com booking; to be honest, I would have rather done the whole process described above on United.com, but United has not added that feature. I can totally understand that United is trying to push as much of their bookings to their website — if they can convert some percentage of people per year to online bookings then I’m sure they can reduce overhead costs in their call centers. However, it is absolutely ridiculous that United is attempting to charge people $10 when they have no choice but to call in a reservation because United.com does not contain the features that would have prevented the phone call needing to be made.
If you need to call United for a reservation because their website does not support what you are trying to do, I suggest that you refuse to pay the $10 fee; obviously they have empowered supervisors to waive the fee in certain situations (or maybe I just got really lucky).
Think Secret’s track record speaks for itself, so I was excited to hear that many of the rumors of the next gen video iPod having a large touchscreen video display; I’m glad that I did not take the plunge on the current generation of video iPods. Nothing firm on the release date, but Think Secret did have this to day:
Additional details concerning the new iPod have yet to be confirmed, including capacity and a release date, although all indications point to the Spring, possibly as early as late March or early April.
I hope it’s right around April 1 because that’s when I start to get busy traveling. As an aside, I hope that TivoToGo for Mac is released right around the same time as the new video iPod.
Uniquely flavored toothpaste to fit your life. I want to try the espresso and curry because I can’t possibly imagine using those flavors to brush my teeth.
Unlike a lot of the free consumer offerings, CentralDesktop is designed for business and does cost money (ok, there is a free 25MB option, but it’s a limited number of users and doesn’t have a lot of the advanced features that paid plans options). Looking at the screenshots, CentralDesktop seems to provide a lot of the same features that SharePoint provides, but is a hosted solution, so an IT department doesn’t have to worry about the server, purchasing and supporting the software, etc. Also, CentralDesktop is available from everywhere unlike a lot of internal corporate SharePoint sites that require VPN software to access.
Scoble wrote a post about becoming an A-Lister in blogging because he gets asked that question a lot. While Scoble’s post is interesting, I like Jeremy Wright’s take on how not to become and A-List blogger, which I found very interesting — you should check it out.
Fundamentally Jeremy’s post causes me (maybe you too) to question why it is that you are blogging. I freaked out the other day when I say that direct visits to my site had dropped dramatically; I comforted myself by checking distribution of my FeedBurner feed and the number of subscriptions to my feed on Bloglines. Then I reality-checked myself: I started this blog for me and if others happen to read it, that’s great. Certainly it’s nice to be famous and nice to be able to say how many visitors you have; I think at one time or another everyone is focused on the amount of notoriety that they can get and blogging and social software certainly makes it easier than the old metrics of getting your name in the newspaper.
I’ve resolved that I’m not going to look at my tracking metrics for the rest of the week, which, considering that I used to check them more than twice a day, is a big thing for me. Perhaps once I break the cycle of looking at them all the time, I’ll never look at them again.
Why are you blogging? Who are you blogging for? Do you really need to be an A-Lister?
Check out Seth Godin’s blog post on “The Reason:”
The reason the typewriter keyboard is in a weird order is that original typewriters jammed, and they needed to rearrange the letters to keep common letters far apart.
The reason that Blockbuster exists is that VCR tapes used to cost more than $100.
At least I can now access my iTunes content and iPhoto content on my Mini running Tiger, but it’s still a bummer that they haven’t provided TivoToGo support yet.
Engadget is reporting that Taser will be releasing a shotgun model of their popular non-lethal arsenal. Apparently the shotgun will be effective to a 30 meter range and the projectiles will not be tethered to the unit as they are in the handgun model.
I’m guessing that Taser is introducing this size weapon to compete with the current arsenal of shotgun-size non-lethal weapons that fire beanbags and rubber balls or pellets.
I’ve seen people shot by Taser weapons and it’s certainly not an experience that I would want to have, though I bet that it’s better than being shot with a bullet.
I was watching Airline and noticed on the board that they had designated a cancelled flight at “CNCLX”, the “X” obviously standing in for the -elled portion of the rest of the word. That got me thinking about all the other uses of “x”
Seems like you could create your own language as long as the person/people on all sides of the conversations knew what the “x” was standing in for.
Perhaps I’ll become Rx, the person formally known as “Ross,” where “x” means “oss”; although I’d hate for people to think that my parents named me “prescription” or “receive,” so perhaps I won’t after all.
“Windows Defender” is the new and final name for Windows AntiSpyware. Lots of improvements in the beta 2 version of this product (the name, of course, not necessarily being an improvement).
