Ambient Thoughts

Feedback Loops in Healthcare - An Example

2011-03-01T19:56:00.000-05:00

At Massive Health we've been talking a lot about feedback loops, behaviour change and chronic disease. Now let's talk about a technology change that could enable a real shift in the care of one particular disease: heart disease.

We know that heart disease is the biggest killer of people worldwide. We also know that there is a huge impact that can be had through lifestyle change. So what's missing? A feedback loop.

What do you feel when a bowl of pasta urges your body to manufacture loads of triglycerides? Nothing.

What do you feel when abnormally high levels of (inflammatory) insulin is coursing through your veins? Nothing.

As the pounds creep on, and you develop metabolic syndrome (pre-diabetes), what does your body tell you? Worse than nothing: You crave a bowl of pasta to jumpstart your low energy.

Sounds like your body has it in for you.

So where do you get the data you need to make positive change? It's in your veins.

All that pasta is going to slowly increase your insulin resistance over time, and you'll see it in your fasting blood glucose. That invisible inflammation? Check your CRP levels. The expanding cushion around your midsection? You'll see your triglycerides stay elevated.

The problem is that most people will never have such thorough blood work done, and those who do will get their numbers checked perhaps annually. Why? It's expensive and time consuming to draw several vials of blood and run all the labs. Frankly, your physician doesn't have the time or inclination to look at the data so frequently either.

That's all going to change. As more complex blood tests become as simple as a glucose test (just a single finger prick), and the costs begin to drop, these tests - and the data they produce - will be in the hands of normal people.

Imagine if you could get a full do-it-yourself cardiac panel for $10, and get your results in 10 minutes: you could test your blood weekly. You'd have between 50 and 100x more data about your body and what affects it. (!!!!!!!!!!!!)

But data is just half the problem. Once you have all that data, you still need to make meaning of it...

Want to make investments in healthcare?
Next-gen diagnostics = 10-100x more data.
Next-gen software = meaning, from that data.

NB: Yes, Massive Health is in the second group, and we're partnering with companies in the first one.

Massive Health: raised funding, spending it on new hires

2011-02-02T10:20:00.008-05:00

Aza and I have spent the last few weeks trekking up and down Sand Hill road, speaking with investors and looking for firms and individuals who share our mission to help people get healthy, and can help us build a great company. As a result, we’re excited that we’ve raised a $2.25 MM seed round from Felicis VC, Greylock Discovery Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Charles River Ventures and the newly minted Collaborative Fund. (We’ve also got some amazing angels behind us... but our PR folks have asked us to keep the list short ;-)

And now that we are funded, we are hiring.

Our goal at Massive Health is to bring the kind of innovation we expect from the Internet world to health care. As Aza mentioned, we’re excited encourage a design renaissance to health care. We’re also excited to bring “big-data” analysis and other techniques to discover insights that improves lives. Crowdsourcing, game mechanics, and social networking are cool, but applying it to help someone get and stay healthy? That’s exciting. That’s powerful.

There are some great companies in the consumer health space today, so what makes us different? Massive Health sits at the intersection of health care and consumer products. There are some great wellness and fitness apps out there. Whether it’s Nike+, or Cyclemeter (my personal favourite), if you want an app to help you get and stay active, you’re spoiled for choice. But what if you’re actually ill? Then there’s nothing sleek or sexy to help you manage your disease. You’re back to the world of clinical health applications that aren’t especially friendly, easy to understand or use, and certainly aren’t social. Today’s apps don’t appreciate that you’re a person. That’s simply not good enough.

We’re not proposing giving you a badge for eating your broccoli or letting you check-in and become duke of ranch dressing. Tweeting the details of your health isn’t particularly useful either. We are talking about tight feedback loopsand deep insight into the interface which is your body. There is something magical in the intersection of health, motivation, data analysis, and your social graph. That’s where habits are formed, behaviors are changed, and people get healthy.

Doug Soo - our engineering lead - was employee #6 at Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life. They make enormously scalable systems and a product that’s fundamentally about people. It’s not a coincidence that he’s joined us.

We’re still in ninja mode, so we’re keeping the specifics under wraps. What we can say is that we’re looking for great people who believe in the social mission of helping people get healthier. Not just for wellness, but for the real health problems that plague our nation and the world. If our mission resonates with you, and you’re a great engineer with a lot of passion, we’d be honored if you’d check out our open jobs list. Otherwise, stay tuned... we’re excited to share more soon!

Why Android and iOS will kill the mobile security market

2010-09-02T15:00:00.001-04:00

There's been some talk recently about mobile security, with companies like McAfee and others making acquisitions in the space, and companies like Lookout raising impressive VC-funded warchests. The problem is that there's just no way the mobile "security" companies will ever really make it, because the two most important mobile platforms (Android and iOS) stop them from doing anything useful. Oh sure, there're companies that provide provisioning and management dashboards to IT departments: that's a real problem that developers can solve... but they can't solve the problems that'll really matter soon.

Here's the big pitch for mobile security:

As more and more smartphones get on the market, there'll be more malware, spyware, phishing, viruses, network attacks, etc. on mobile devices, just like there is on the desktop. That sounds like a problem worth solving.

Well, yes, but... See, every app on Android and iOS needs to run within a pretty tight little sandbox. App_A can't read or write files that are in App_B's sandbox.

So, let's see, can a "security" app on iOS or Android:

- Detect or stop malware? Nope. One app can't "scan" another app or prevent it's usage.

- Detect or stop spyware? Nope. One app can't spy on another app... so it can't know if there's spyware.

- Stop phishing? Nope. Well, not unless you get the user to use *your* browser instead of the default browser... which will have phishing protection anyway.

- Detect or stop viruses? Nope.

- Prevent network attacks? Nope. An app on Android or iOS can't create/enforce firewall rules on the device, much less put packet filtering in place.

So, what CAN a mobile "security" app do on Android or iOS? Well, backup/sync/destroy contacts/calendar/eMail and locate your phone if you lose it. That's pretty useful, admittedly, but there's a lot of other people providing that capability, like Apple and Google themselves.

Is this all for naught then? No. There might be an opportunity to build a secure version of the Android OS, and sell it to OEM's / operators who want to put a "secure" or "trusted" build of the OS on certain devices. But that's a nightmare of a sales process to begin with, and would you really bet against Google and Apple just making their security policies tighter in the OS itself to prevent malware from running amok on their platforms?

Sad to say, but I think the stratospheric growth rate of iOS and Android, and the security policies they some with (unlike, say, the older Windows Mobile or Symbian platforms) means that anyone with a mobile security play is locked out of the two most important mobile platforms in any meaningful way... Who knows, maybe making Windows Phone 7 secure could be a business?

Android vs RIM ... Asian edition

2010-05-29T11:09:00.001-04:00

Fake BlackBerry Bold, originally uploaded by Sutha Kamal.

On the left is a new BlackBerry Bold 9700 (unsubsidised price $450 USD), on the right is a Chinese knockoff (even the homescreen looks the same!) that retails for $100 USD in Indonesia.

Actually, the knockoff has two features the real BlackBerry doesn't:
- 2 SIM cards (notice the two green Send buttons on the left)
- Rear AND front-facing cameras

The FakeBerry even has WiFi! For $100, unlocked and unsubsidised.

Now, what happens when the processors in the fake devices get a tiny bit faster, and they all just run Android OS instead of the kludgey thing they're running now?

Remember, these Chinese ODM's are going to the bother of getting their crufty OS's to even LOOK like BlackBerry OS. Imagine what they could do if they had the full power of an OS like Android's to build on top of.

Google buys GIPS: It's not just about video

2010-05-24T02:54:00.001-04:00

Lots of people are excited about the video-calling capabilities that Android will be inheriting through Google's recent acquisition of Global IP Sound. What's more interesting - to me, at least - is the ability that Google has to turn the operators into just another IP pipe.

Today, your cellular voice calls are just that: voice calls. They're billed as voice calls. Sure, you can use Skype or Fring on your phone, but there are alot of tradeoffs to doing that (it's not the same phone number you typically use, you need to have a fast 3G connection, dropped calls more often when in motion, it's yet-antother-app instead of your "phone", etc.). Some vendors like Research in Motion have enabled Wi-Fi calling (aka UMA) on some of their devices. When you have a UMA-enabled device, and a UMA-enabled carrier (like T-Mobile USA), and your phone is connected to a WiFi access point, it tries to connect to your carrier's servers, and if the conection is good enough, it'll route all your voice and data over WiFi... so it's like you're using your phone back at home, even though you're in a hotel room in Phnom Penh. Pretty cool.

Well, sort of cool. For this to work, you need to be an old-school telco, with old-school gear from old-school vendors like Ericsson and NokiaSiemens.

But imagine a world where you had a fast IP connection on your phone wherever you went... a 3G, 4G or WiFi connection. Imagine that you'd already chosen a "virtual" telco like Google Voice to be the keeper of your phone number. All of a sudden, you can start making phone calls and just treating the data network as your main bearer network. What happens if you're in a spot with crummy (EDGE or GPRS) data coverage? Not a problem: the phone "app" on your device will just use the native phone network to route your call (like Google Voice does if you use the iPhone web app, for example).

So what piece of this puzzle does Global IP Sound give Google? The pieces that let you deliver high-performance voice (and, of course, video) across a number of different data networks (some fast, some not, some consistent, some jittery) and different devices (smartphones, not-so-smart phones, desktop clients, etc.).

By making the acquisition, Google gets to own what could be a valuable piece of infrastructure as voice (and video) moves from the telco-centric model to a more Internet-centric model. The biggest surprise is that the existing guys (Alcatel-Lucent, NortelSiemens, Ericsson) didn't pull the trigger sooner.

Actually, I guess that's not such a big surprise.

How to save money and stay connected anywhere on earth

2010-02-08T20:05:00.003-05:00

Summary:
Travel much? Here's the quick list of what's worth grabbing:
- BlackBerry 9700 (UMA means free WiFi calling internationally, 3G means it works anywhere on earth)
- iPhone 3GS (awesome browser and maps makes life easy. Skype is also pretty handy. Make sure you unlock it.)
- A Boingo account ($10/month to use lots of WiFi hotspots abroad)
- A Google Voice account (call forwarding, voicemail transcription)
- Gizmo account (call-forward from your Google Voice account to your local prepaid number seamlessly)
- Kindle (with international wireless, you're always getting the news and books you want... it's awesome)

Here're a little more detail:
I just got back from a 3 week trip to Japan and Thailand, and I didn't want to be TOTALLY disconnected, so figuring out how to stay in touch, and not pay $3/minute to AT&T or T-Mobile for roaming was high on my list. Here's what I did and how it worked out for me:

First up, my BlackBerry Bold 9700 on T-Mobile. On T-Mobile you can get a $20/month add-on that includes all the international eMail use you can imagine, which is a great way to control costs. Also, unlike AT&T, T-Mobile has enabled WiFi calling (aka UMA), which allows your phone to use voice and data service over WiFi just as if you were home... meaning, for free.

Next up, the iPhone 3GS. AT&T's data plans are pretty terrible for roaming, but there's no shortage of ways to unlock an iPhone, thankfully. Between a local SIM card, with data services, ($30/month for 3G and unlimited data on TrueMove in Thailand, for example) and GPS, the iPhone becomes an amazing travel guide. Maps, search, Skype, etc. all make navigating a foreign city a whole lot easier.

Whether or not you're taking a laptop on your trip is a big question by itself. In my case, we planned this trip as we went, and since that meant lots of research and online bookings we brought the Mac. One cool thing was that as soon as I got to a hotel room, I plugged my Mac in by ethernet, and used Mac OS X's "Internet Sharing" feature to turn my laptop into a WiFi access point. As soon as I did this, my iPhone and BlackBerry both became totally free to use. Love this.

Speaking of WiFi, it's still expensive to get WiFi in lots of places, from hotels to airports. Unless, of course, you've got a Boingo account. For $10/month, you can get unlimited WiFi access at hotspots all over the world. I've used it in hotels, airports, and cafe's all over the world. It pays for itself the first time you use it.

Voicemail is another of the tricky ways carriers get roaming fees on your bill. Say someone calls you when you're on vacation, and you ignore the call. Well, your phone *forwards* the call back to your home country so it can go to voicemail. Guess who pays for that? So, how to fix this? Well, call your carrier and tell them to turn voicemail *off* on your phone. Then go ahead and get a Google Voice account, and give everyone THAT number instead of your cellphone's number. If people call or text you, you'll still get the call/message on your phone. But if you ignore the call, Google Voice handles the voicemail bit. No forwarding. No roaming charge. You also happen to get email transcription, and a web interface for free... which is really cool.

Want to get a bit more nerdy? Setup a Gizmo VoIP account, and set Google Voice to also forward your calls to your Gizmo number. So when someone calls you, your phone will ring, and if your computer's running, your Gizmo client will also "ring". More interestingly, you can tell Gizmo to forward your calls to your new local prepaid number (the SIM card that's now hopefully in your unlocked iPhone). What's happening here, again? Well, when someone calls your Google Voice number, it'll get forwarded to Gizmo, which will then forward the call to your new local number. What's cool is just how cheap this is. Gizmo, for example, charges 3-cents per minute to forward a call to Thailand. So, when someone in the US called me, I paid 3-cents per minute to receive the call by using Gizmo and a local network provider. AT&T would have charged me $1.99 per minute instead. Yup, AT&T is 66-times more expensive. This is a great way to save some money when roaming.

Finally, get a Kindle. Besides being way easier to carry than a bunch of books, the international wireless feature is fantastic. I was sitting on a beach in rural Thailand (on an island with no paved roads) reading Tim Ferriss' Four Hour Work Week. At some point he mentioned another book that sounded pretty interesting, and I was able to find, buy, and download the other book in less than a minute, without leaving my pina colada. Oh, and while I wasn't likely to get my weekly Economist magazine on an island that doesn't have an ATM or a bookstore, every Friday morning the Kindle received that week's issue electronically.

Other nice things to have around:
- Zagat to Go, the iPhone app from Zagat, has a great list of hotels, restaurants, and cafe's that you can use all over the world. A recent update of the app lets you store these lists right on the iPhone itself. So there's none of the slowness, flakiness, or costs of roaming to deal with.

- TripIt is fantastic. Handles reservations from all sorts of travel services, and neatly organizes them into an easy-to-check itinerary right on your device. Ever need to look for your boarding pass to find your flight number when you're filling out a customs declaration card? TripIt has all the info you need right there. Hope your flight's delayed so you can sleep a few more minutes? TripIt tells you what your flight's status is. Have a connecting flight? Shortly after you land, you'll get an eMail telling you whether your next flight is on time, where it is, and how long you have to make your connection. Really well executed.

-Skype on iPhone is a great app to have around, especially when making lots of calls. Often-times, I was on the BlackBerry and my wife was on the iPhone. With Skype on the iPhone, we still didn't pay for roaming.

What didn't work so well?
- CityMaps2Go is a great idea: Opensource map data from lots of big cities all over the world, all downloaded right to your iPhone, so you can look at maps without needing a data connection... meaning, you don't need to pay for roaming to use the maps. On paper it's a great idea, but in practise, the maps just aren't good enough. Wandering around Tokyo, it was apparent that I was better off paying AT&T for roaming than trying to use CityMaps2Go. As the open-sourced maps get better and more complete, this will be a great way to reduce roaming costs while traveling in future.

- WorldMate. It's like TripIt's under-achieving little brother. Had all sorts of issues with imporing itineraries, and has an interface that seems really powerful, and just ends up being confusing. Also, it appears to have the amazing ability to let you find and book flights right on your phone. In practise, it was too painful, and I ended up using my laptop every time. It feels like they've tried to do too many things, and haven't done many well.

Apple & AT&T allow VoIP? Yawn.

2010-01-30T18:09:00.002-05:00

At last, Apple seems to be allowing iPhone VoIP apps to use the 3G network... first with Fring and iCall, and soon with Skype and other apps.

The blogosphere is buzzing, especially with news that iPad owners will be able to use their $30/month unlimited data packages for VoIP as well... which is cool, except that it doesn't matter.

First off, are we really willing to trust AT&T's 3G network to deliver solid quality for voice? Nope. What about WiFi? Trying to make a WiFi call in your average Starbucks doesn't often end well. Lots of dropped audio, and generally poor quality.

Sure, that's acceptable when it's a free alternative to a paid phone call, but what about when all calls are free anyway?

With all the major carriers offering unlimited voice and data plans from $80-120 USD / month, it's clear that unlimited voice is something that the carriers are already thinking about pretty seriously... and it's not just because they're feeling generous. It turns out the average call to customer service costs a carrier between $10-15. The average customer calls in 4-6 times a year. That's a lot of profit gone each time you call to complain about a dropped call, or an incorrect bill. With an unlimited plan, there aren't any errors on your bill, so you don't call customer service, and with domestic calls costing next to nothing for the carrier, this is a great way to cut costs and grow revenue.

What about carriers building out their 3G networks and adding more capacity? That's great, but the quality of service required to deliver solid voice just isn't a part of the 3G data service that carriers offer... and there's no incentive for them to provide it. (We asked for net neutrality... and we'll get it... meaning, no voice QoS).

My bet? Unlimited voice and data plans will take off in a big way in 2010, and between the decreasing price of voice minutes, and our increasing use of data applications (which, without QoS for voice, means voice-over-3G-data won't work), VoIP over 3G won't get used very much at all. The biggest threat to carrier voice revenue isn't VoIP-over-3G offerings... it's services like Google Voice, which are benefitted by the unlimited voice plans, but compete on the long-distance minute side of the business.

Advancing Android

2009-12-14T14:18:00.004-05:00

Ah, so Nexus One is on the horizon... the true "Google Phone", and there's a lot of people checking their Verizon receipts (and the return policy) to see if they've bought their Droid in the last 30 days or not.

Rumors abound about Google shipping this as an unlocked and unsubsidised GSM handset, and people seem to be wondering just what this might mean...

A few thoughts:

So far, no Android device has been on par physically with the iPhone. Whether it was industrial design, processor speed or otherwise, the iPhone still feels like it's in a league of it's own. This handset gives Google the chance to remove hardware as a reason to buy an iPhone instead.

Unlocked? Hmm... If there's no carrier burden, this can truly become a first class data device... These are devices that really are all about TCP/IP, and just happen to use whatever network is around to get a connection, whether it's cellular, WiFi, or something else... Suddenly, carrier networks, roaming agreements, and fancy technologies like UMA become a lot less interesting... it can really just be all about data, and whoever is able to provide you the right quality of data service, at the right time, at the right price. Changing the game like this isn't dissimilar from Google's participation in the last US spectrum auction.

What does this say to all the OEM's like Motorola who are making large strategic shifts to embrace Android? Is Google competing with their partners? No. The Android ecosystem needs a true iPhone-class flagship device, and by providing one, Google makes things better for all the participants in the ecosystem. While HTC seems to be the OEM building this particular device, I wouldn't be surprised if Google quite freely shares most or all of the design for this device with other OEM's. Building a minimum-spec phone that's competitive with iPhone, and helping the other ecosystem OEM's get to the same point helps developers and customers: less fragmentation, better user experience. While Motorola and others might suffer some near-term drop in device sales, in the long run this is going to be beneficial for the ecosystem.

Where's the money? Is this thing going to ship above the $500 mark like all other unlocked smartphones? Building a new flagship phone that you want traction around, and then pricing it way outside even where early-adopters typically tread doesn't sound like a great way to spread the word. So, either there will be a carrier channel here that'll subsidise it (T-Mobile seems like a good option, given the device's reported 3G frequencies), or Google's going to eat some of the cost. Google could well decide that getting a solid competitor to iPhone well entrenched is worth some subsidy cost,of course... just write a cheque out of the promotional budget... But I think it's more interesting to try and understand just what the combined search and app market revenue looks like per device. If Google can sell a device at a price competitive with subsidised phones, and make up the difference with ads and apps, that's one hell of an endorsement of the platform, and the mobile ecosystem as a whole... and it's signals a huge change in how devices will be sold and subsidised in the next few years.

All in all, it promises to be an interesting Q1 for Android, and the smartphone ecosystem as a whole.

What Droid/Android needs

2009-12-10T12:07:00.002-05:00

So, I've been playing with a Verizon/Motorola Droid for a few weeks now? It's great, but it's just not ready for prime-time... especially not as the flagship device for the Android platform. So what's wrong with Droid, and what does it need?

Better Hardware
Motorola have managed to build a device with a physical keyboard that's worse than iPhone's virtual keyboard. A tremendous engineering achievement.
2 years after the iPhone's launch, shipping a touch screen without multitouch (and at this price, on a flagship device, positioned against iPhone) is just silly
The lack of a decent oil-resistant coating on the screen means lots and lots of wiping the display against your jeans
While I'm sure I'd be able to beat any poor mugger senseless with this brick of a phone, a little elegance in design wouldn't be the worst thing

Some OS suggestions

Android still crashes once every day or so... probably because of third party apps, but it's still crummy. Managing third party apps, and preventing them from taking down my phone would be a great OS addition

Multitasking
Background processing is nice, in theory, but in practice the whole thing feels slow and cumbersome, especially compared to the iPhone. I'd suggest a sort of multi-tiered background processing option:

The app just runs in the background without any modification, but is EXTREMELY CPU, network and memory limited versus other apps, especially when the user is actively interacting with the phone.
The app runs in an "approved" background state, where it's got a sort of QoS guarantee... something like "we'll let you run at full CPU for 5 seconds out of every 60 or 120 or whatever", so the app gets more resources, but only if it's designed to play nice
The app gets to run in the background, with full resources, but the user gets a VERY clear warning about what this might do to performance/responsiveness of the phone, etc.

Push with Payload
So, the other thing that helps some of this along is the ability to give developers the ability to push notifications AND payload data right to their app. Integrate this with some sort of "stored procedure" and you've got a great way to keep "background" apps from breaking the user experience.

Imagine an eMail, IM or stock portfolio app for a minute. The server would push updates (like messages, stock updates, etc.) to the phone, and the OS would take the message's payload, hand it over to a "push procedure" method and say "okay, you have 5 seconds... do what you need with this message". The stored "push procedure" could then stick the message in the app's DB, do some basic parsing, notify the user, etc. But the point is that the app can do all of this while the device is still in the user's pocket... and not suck up cycles when the user's got the phone out of their pocket and want to actually USE the app that might have pending content.

Add push w/ payload to an intelligent background processing mechanism, and suddenly you've got a MUCH more responsive and power-efficient platform. Which translates to a better user experience. Which means closing some of the gap with iPhone, without giving up multitasking.

Some Market Rules
Okay, so the Apple App Store has all sorts of restrictions that drive developers crazy... including the approval process. But they've also got some things right. For example, to put an app in the App Store, you MUST provide screenshots. Android market? Not so. On the App Store, you need to provide an "update summary" to explain to a user what changes you've made in an update that they are able to see before updating the app. Android market? Nope.

So, while some of Apple's decisions don't make developers all that happy, they seem to at least try to get things right for users... and happy users mean more app downloads, which means happy developers. Google ought to take a page out of the App Store book, at least where user experience is concerned.

My Droid's going back to Verizon any day now, but I'm sure I'll be picking up another Android device in the near future... and I'll cross my fingers I get some of my holiday feature-wishlist by then :)

BlackBerry's trying to catch up, instead of striving to lead

2009-11-10T12:11:00.001-05:00

At this week's developer conference in San Francisco, RIM released a slew of exciting new features for the BlackBerry platform: OpenGL ES for games, push messaging to developers, Flash support, and some cool APIs around payments and reverse geocoding.

With BlackBerry competing against iPhone, Android, and Palm, which of these new announcements was an industry first by RIM? Reverse geocoding. Yikes.

Even Apple beat RIM to delivering broadly-available push messaging to delivers. Yes, Apple beat RIM... at push.

Oh, and Apple and Google have both had OpenGL ES since they launched... and, with the App Store, Apple's got payments in the bag.

So, where's RIM sitting then?

- No material improvements to the user experience.

- Despite having bought a WebKit browser company, still no decent browser.

- Despite acquiring Dash Navigation, they aren't close to competing with Android's Google Maps implementation (though, to be fair, *nobody* is).

- Their developer tools are still a far cry from the polished Apple Xcode tools.

On top of all of this, RIM continues to shoehorn new technologies into a dated Java-based OS, while all their competitors are on BSD or Linux. (To be fair, I'll bet the next major BlackBerry OS rev will include a Linux kernel.)

The scary part of this is that RIM's gone from being the market leader and innovator, to continuously playing catchup with the other players in the space. That Apple, Palm, and Google have all built more flexible operating systems, better browsers, and solid multimedia capabilities in the last 2 years, while RIM has struggled to release Storm and Storm 2 is telling.

With Android expected to hit prodigious volumes in the next 2 years, and the growing number of one-way BlackBerry-to-iPhone converts, the BlackBerry platform looks less and less exciting for developers. At a time when each of the major mobile platforms is "good enough" for day to day eMail, SMS and voice, the differentiator is really the app stack and the browser. With RIM falling down on both counts, it really seems like there's less and less upside for developers to focus on BlackBerry, when they could instead be working on their iPhone and Android apps.

So, what's next for RIM?

RIM started out in mobile eMail by building the entire stack themselves, because Palm refused to buy their wireless modem. That's right, Palm could've owned mobile eMail, but RIM ended up building it themselves. They followed a Palm-like strategy of finding exactly the right set of problems to solve, and made the BlackBerry terrific at solving them (talk about a Lean Startup). The problem is that RIM seems to be competing as though the axis' of competition haven't changed: they're still the best at eMail.

But the axis has changed... now it's about the "computer-in-my-pocket"... the web matters, and so do apps. Almost, perhaps, more than eMail.

It seems RIM's next step needs to be a re-invention...
- A new, modern OS
- A browser at parity with everyone else
- Developer tools that are as slick as Apple's

Most of all, all those brilliant folks in Waterloo and Redwood City need to figure out where (besides eMail) RIM's truly going to lead... playing catch-up doesn't appear to be a winning strategy for the company.

It's curious that Palm needed a similar technology/platform/business reinvention, and while Palm's made the leap, it's unclear whether they did it soon enough or not. Will RIM?

Slow Crab Festival 2008 - Disappointing

2008-12-12T03:00:00.002-05:00

I went to this year's Slow Crab festival in San Francisco, held by the Slow Food folks, and while expectations were high... for a $100/plate at the "VIP table", it was pretty disappointing.

- pre-dinner appetizers were a few crackers and cheese, quickly finished within a few minutes of the doors opening. Massively poor planning here.

- They had one white, one red, one sparkling wine, and one beer. Nice. So much for lots of interesting local selection.

- Oh, and they started to run out of every wine they had before the dinner had even started. More great planning.

- The meal? Some basic, not-so-yummy salad... and then crab with butter and lemon on the side. Not so interesting unless all you wanted to do was eat pounds of crab dipped in butter/lemon.

- Desert? Run for the coffee and biscotti at the other side of the room as quick as you can if you want some...

- Speakers? Some were interesting... then there were the angry "rebel without a clue" fisherman talking nonsensically about threatening the Governator (Gov. Schwarzenegger)...

All in all? Not expecting to go to 2009, or perhaps another of the smaller Slow Food events. Shame... it sounded a lot more promising.

Silent trains?

2008-10-30T16:40:00.002-04:00

The Economist has a brief article about train operator C2C in London offering mobile-free phones by coating the phones in an RF-absorptive material. Basically it prevents cellular signals from getting into or out of a train car, and by doing so guarantees silence in the cab.

It's a little heavy-handed for a few reasons, though. Firstly, blocking RF transmission will just put phones into a wildly-seeking-signal state, meaning that many people will end their journeys into London or on their way home with batteries that have been drained more than they ought to. Also, it prevents people from using otherwise silent data services (eMail, SMS, web, etc.).

What might be a better solution? Well, yes, coat the trains such that they don't let phones connect to external base-stations. Then go ahead an put in picocells inside the train cars themselves, or repeater-like technology that Orange and Virgin have already deployed. Allow these systems to only allow services to work on the data channel, and you're done...

And the revenue model? Whoever owns these picocells can charge the operators for allowing their customers to use them. Not an unreasonable "roaming" charge, of course, but something akin to the charge operators charge for terminating calls on their networks, perhaps.

And what's next? Deploy this in the tube. In fact, wouldn't this be a great project for TfL to own, both on commuter rail and in the tube?

Is RIM falling further behind?

2008-10-28T20:36:00.002-04:00

A couple of days ago RIM released a software update to the new Bold. It turns out that the software stack on this device has been the cause of a lot of issues for RIM and it's partners: Some operators (like AT&T) have refused to ship the device with the previous software offering, and others have halted sales of the device until the fixes were ready. All in all a pretty miserable device launch for RIM (especially for a new flagship product).

Because RIM's got access to all of their devices on the network, I happened to get a notice on my BlackBerry telling me that there was an update available, and that I could get it by visiting a certain website. When I got there, I found that (unsurprisingly) I had to download a 93 MB file, launch Windows on my machine (sigh), and go through the update process.

Notwithstanding that having to use only a Windows PC to update my BlackBerry is pretty obnoxious, the entire upgrade process was far from uneventful. See, what happens is that the installer does a backup of your device, wipes it, reloads the new operating system, and then your old data.

Well, mine got half-way through the reloading phase and freaked out. So, I momentarily had a shiny brick instead of a BlackBerry. Great.

I managed to get the new operating system installed on my device... but of course, BlackBerry desktop was too stupid to realise that I'd done this because it had failed in the middle of the update the last time. Yippee.

It turns out that BlackBerry Desktop *does* leave a backup file around that you can use to restore all of your information... or so it seems. After restoring the backup I noticed that I had all my contacts, and settings... but no apps. All those applications I'd downloaded to my BlackBerry, that I *watched* getting saved in the backup process? Gone. Why? Guess RIM thinks it makes sense to store one half of your backup somewhere and the other somewhere else (and hidden). Brilliant thinking, here.

Why is this so upsetting? Well the Bold is supposed to have over-the-air update functionality. Does it? Anyone's guess... but if it does, RIM's sure done a terrible job taking advantage of it. What's worse is that my Kindle... a simple book reader, does OTA updates, and does them beautifully.

I was flipping through the "content manager" on my Kindle recently and realised the menus had a few new (and useful) features there. Where'd they come from? No idea. It seems my Kindle silently upgraded itself, and kept on working splendidly...

Even more a sign that RIM's tech is slipping behind is the fact that Android includes OTA update capabilities, and is actually using them. The first batch of G1 is supposed to get an OTA update, which, considering the device just launched is at once distressing and impressive.

Either way, anything's better than the invasive, time-wasting, multi-step, failure-ridden process that RIM's got going for it today... hopefully they've got some bright folks in Waterloo working on it.

How can Android win developers?

2008-10-05T03:11:00.000-04:00

The first production Android device (T-Mobile's G1) will soon hit the market, and the legions of Google faithful will no-doubt snap up many devices in short order.

Will that be enough to allow Android to be a real competitor in the smartphone wars? The G1 isn't a particularly attractive device, doesn't have as good a media player as the iPhone, doesn't have a browser that can best the iPhone, doesn't provide eMail that holds a candle to BlackBerry, and is locked to a network that's widely regarded as having lackluster coverage. It's unlikely that the G1 is going to be a hit with consumers, and it's not going to ship in volumes that will make anyone at Apple or RIM lose sleep.

That feeds a bigger problem, though: getting developers on side. Unlike the iPhone which got great consumer demand without any third-party apps just by having a sexy device, or BlackBerry which has thrived by providing a rock-solid communications "appliance" that nobody's yet rivaled, Android is going to need to differentiate on killer 3rd party apps.

When it comes to developer platforms, iPhone has a beautiful SDK and distribution mechanism that's sparked widespread adoration from developers. Sure, Apple's exerting far more control on the developer community than perhaps they should, bit they're still a whole lot better than the existing carrier / OEM ecosystem. Also, iPhone is a single, consistent platform... a developer can build one app and have it reliably run on the millions of iPhone 2G, 3G and iPod Touch devices in market. A great, powerful developer toolkit, robust operating system, ubiquitous distribution platform, and consistent device hardware? This is a developer's dream.

The BlackBerry developer platform isn't particularly elegant, doesn't have a great development environment (RIM just recently got decent Eclipse integration), and is a generally underpowered OS when it comes to doing anything involving graphics or media. It's also got a pretty significant number of inconsistencies between OS and hardware versions, which has proved to be an irritation for many RIM developers. It's particularly telling that RIM wrote the Facebook app for BlackBerry, whereas Facebook built their own iPhone app.

That said, BlackBerry provides a reasonably reliable and stable operating system, and millions of devices as an addressable install base (with users who have a disproportionately high usage of data and third party apps vs all the other platforms except iPhone). This makes it a no-brainer for many application developers to target.

So a developer just developing a new application will probably build their first app on iPhone, do a re-write in Java to support BlackBerry, and then give very careful consideration to whether they feel like building an app for Symbian or Windows Mobile. In a competitive marketplace, it's safe to say that if you can hit 30-40MM devices by targeting iPhone and BlackBerry, it's unlikely that you're going to spend anywhere near the same resources to target a platform like Android with <1 MM. Those resources are probably better spent on building either for a platform like Symbian (with broad reach), or towards building version 2 of the iPhone/BlackBerry app.

What's Google to do? Well, how about building a porting toolkit? If a developer decides to build a BlackBerry application, they're already going to be creating a Java version of their application. If Google provided tools to help more quickly port the BlackBerry Java app to an Android Java App, that could significantly reduce the time and effort required to get an app on Android, making the business case for doing so much more viable.

Sure, some classes of apps that are really glued to the hardware (e.g. games), aren't good candidates for something like this, but those apps are in the minority. Also, while Android's Java implementation has all sorts of great features like 3D graphics, rich sound libraries, and more, BlackBerry doesn't, so any app that was a straight port from BlackBerry to Android wouldn't really show off the full potential of the Android platform. Not ideal. But if the porting toolkit were extended to quickly and easily add some of these richer capabilities into the resulting applications, it could prove a powerful motivator for developers.

The name of the game is addressable market, and it's clear that as the new kid in town, Google's got an uphill battle. With a far-from-inspiring first device, the battle's just gotten a bit harder. Taking advantage of the current strength of BlackBerry as a platform is one thing that Google can do to more quickly bootstrap their own developer ecosystem... which would be great for the entire industry.

Yet-another-iPhone request: handle the network gracefully

2008-06-05T13:23:00.001-04:00

Wireless networks can be crap... they don't work, you can't get a signal, etc. We all know this. So why does iPhone not seem to realize this?

If you're in the middle of writing an email on the subway, you might get interrupted by two or three messages telling you that your phone can't connect to the network, activate EDGE, etc. Why? Why not just have a queue of pending network events, and handle them when the network's available, without bothering the user?

Also, if I've written a few emails while out of coverage that are now waiting to be sent, why doesn't iPhone immediately send them when it sees a network again? What purpose does waiting for the next-scheduled send/receive time serve?

iPhone being built on OS X is great for a tonne of reasons, but mobile just isn't the same, and little things like this are good examples of why BlackBerry's market share is climbing and iPhone's has been dropping for the last little while... it turns out that people care about this stuff.

Fingers crossed for a great new update on Monday at WWDC. :)

Unlimited travel... but not.

2008-06-03T14:29:00.001-04:00

Air Canada stupidity, originally uploaded by Sutha Kamal.

So Air Canada is offering a flight pass for "unlimited" travel inside Ontario for $1100 for two months. Wow. That's $550/month for all the travel you want in the province. There aren't a whole lot of airports (their email suggests three), but at least you can spend the weekend in Ottawa / Toronto if you feel like it, or commute between the two for those with jobs that require it.

Except not.

The flight pass explicitly forbids travel between Ottawa and Toronto. So... you can go between Ottawa / Toronto and Niagara? Um. All of a sudden this seems like less of a deal.

What a fantastic way to excite and then tremendously disappoint your customers Air Canada. I wonder why ACE Aviation wants rid of you right now...

New York City launches a seed venture fund

2008-06-03T12:56:00.001-04:00

New York City, with a number of local partners has launched a $2 million seed fund called NYC Seed that will make investments up to $200,000 in local startup companies. There's been much talk about the gap in funding between angel and venture capital, and being able to get a couple hundred thousand dollars could help a lot of companies fill that gap. In a city that's dominated by financial services, it might be interesting to see some of the hedge funds or investment banks put in small amounts of capital as LP's: conferences like Money:Tech are proving there's a lot of innovation in software in that space. Come to think of it, it's something else that cities like London, Toronto and Paris might want to think about for similar reasons.

Is creating a venture fund the best way for a region to grow it's tech sector? Not sure, but it's a great start. Is $2 MM enough to start a small seed fund? Well, there're a few good examples of small seed funds (Jeff Clavier's SoftTech VC being one) that seem to make sense. Personally I'm quite skeptical of the seed-sized convertible-debt instruments that some VCs use to make early stage investments, so for me anything that helps fill that capital gap is an experiment worth playing out.

Ascendance Project in Union Square

2008-06-03T01:53:00.001-04:00

IMG_0034.JPG, originally uploaded by Sutha Kamal.

Great performance from Ascendance Dance Project today in Union Square. Basically it's beautifully choreographed dance, on a rock climbing wall... very cool and unique.

There're still doing a few more performances through the weekend, and it's definitely worth seeing if you can make it out.

iphone wifi needs smarts

2008-06-01T20:32:00.001-04:00

Note to Apple: just being able to connect to a wifi network isn't the
same as being able to send and receive data across it. iPhone really
ought to intelligently test the wifi connection and switch to cellular
data if wifi isn't working properly. Having to go in to settings
multiple times a day to enable and disable wifi isn't much fun.

Next generation gaming... will iPhone lead the way?

2008-06-01T19:50:00.001-04:00

Nintendo's DS has been breaking all sorts of device sales records since launching, and Sony's PSP hasn't done too badly either... but is all that about to change?

Over the next 12-24 months, the chipsets in high-end handsets are going to have graphics processing power roughly equal to or exceeding Sony's PlayStation 2. That's some serious power for a small screen. Devices like HTC's Touch Diamond and Nokia's Tube are all going to ship with high-res touch (multi touch?) screens, as well. So in the not too distant future we're going to have devices with lots of compute and graphics power, memory, connectivity, with beautiful screens and consistent interaction mechanisms (touch and accelerometers, for example).

What's held mobile games back for the last few years? Well, aside from the crapulence of the games themselves (I can't believe that Guitar Hero III Mobile actually wins awards... have you *tried* it on a BlackBerry? Ugh. It's embarrassingly bad.), it's not the easiest thing to go out and find a game. There's all sorts of operator deck nonsense that a user's got to deal with to actually find the game they want. Of course, that assumes that the developer/publisher has actually struck a deal with the operator in question, so that the game's even available for download. Yikes.

Oh, and between the limited storage on devices and the slow network speeds, it's unlikely that you'd be able to download a very large game w/ lots of rich images and sound... at least not unless you feel like receiving one hell of a bill for data transfer.

On the flip side, anyone can walk into a store and pick up whatever game they want for their PSP or DS... and you just pop in the cartridge and away you go.

How might iPhone change this? Well, first of all, the hardware's pretty good so the kinds of games you can develop are pretty impressive. Go ahead and compare something like Tap Tap Revolution (available through Installer.app for jailbroken iPhones) to Guitar Hero III Mobile and I'll bet you'll be impressed just how much better TTR is, even though it was built by one particularly bright 23-year old developer.

Secondly, discovery isn't a problem... just fire up iTunes and browse around the app store for something that catches your fancy, click-to-buy, and it's sucked down at broadband speeds to your computer and quickly sync'd to your iPhone.

Finally, dealing with one company (Apple) is a whole lot easier than dealing with 40 operators, and Apple takes 30% of the sales revenue, compared to 50-60% in some cases with certain operators.

So, the hardware's pretty good, the discovery problem's pretty well solved, and it makes life a whole lot simpler for developers large and small.

If nothing else, Apple's going to put a lot of pressure on the operators, but they're also going to push others like Nokia to execute and innovate on strategies like Ovi.

But how're Nintendo and Sony going to respond? Between Wiiware and the PS3 Online store, both companies understand the importance of game downloads and online purchases. But can they overcome the massive change in phone capabilities? Remember that DS is wildly outselling PSP, and DS has a comparative paucity of compute power: they've innovated (like Wii) on gameplay. Well, with the hardware being equal or better, and in your pocket anyway, are we looking at the end of the portable console market?

Great article on Atari games

2008-05-30T13:57:00.001-04:00

Gamasutra's got a great article on the history and design of Atari games. Especially helpful for people like me, who don't know a thing about gaming :)

Getting Things Done with iPhone

2008-05-29T01:24:00.001-04:00

So it's been a few days since I swapped out my BlackBerry for an iPhone, and one of the biggest iPhone omissions seems to be the non-existent to-do list. Exactly why such an important feature (and one that's built right into iCal on the Mac) got left out is beyond me... thankfully, though, there're a lot of alternative web apps for iPhone including Ta-da List and Remember the Milk.

Apparently the Omni Group are working on a version of OmniFocus for iPhone, which I'm sure will be fantastic, but since I'm using both a BlackBerry and iPhone, Remember The Milk seems like a better choice (MilkSync lets you synchronize tasks to a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile device). That said, with all the great things I've heard about OmniFocus, I'm sure I'll give it a whirl when it ships for iPhone.

Experimenting with a different to-do list gave me a great excuse to start fresh with my task list and build a reasonably clean "Getting Things Done" setup. So here's my experience with getting a GTD solution up and working on iPhone.

First I gave Ta-Da List a shot, and while it's a great for managing simple task lists, it's not really up to the task of being at the center of your to-do list management. There's no ability to search tasks, move them from list to list, or use tags or any other mechanism to otherwise label things. If you're looking for a super-simple flat to-do list for your iPhone, though, it's great, and the site works great on iPhone and because it's so light weight things load super quickly, even over the EDGE network.

Next up (and what I'm currently using) is Remember The Milk. I've got to say it's more than a little intimidating at the outset... all these lists, locations, tags, smart searches, etc. It took me a while to decide on the simplest way to work with it.

What I ended up settling on was a set of lists for important projects, and tags for contexts (e.g. @computer, @ping, etc.)

Oh, there's another aside... @ping is my context for calling or writing someone. Since I'm always on a smartphone, I'm pretty much equally able to send an email or call someone, so I don't have @online / @phone as separate contexts to reach out to people.

I also especially like the smart search lists... For example the "High priority" list is just a saved search for any task with a priority of 1-3. This way on my phone I can just tap on that list to see the most important next actions across all my lists and contexts.

The homescreen on the iPhone version is great and shows you tasks that are due soon, which is always helpful.

Tapping on "Lists" shows you all the lists you've got set up, including your smart lists, and tapping on a list shows you all the tasks in a clean and simple view. From this view you can pretty easily complete or modify the tasks you've got. Of course, you can also navigate by tags from the homescreen if you (like myself) use them for setting task contexts.

Launching the browser on iPhone, and waiting for the not-so-fast EDGE network (assuming you've got coverage) isn't the most fun when you want to quickly jot down a note, so RTM also lets you send yourself an eMail that gets converted to a task and put in the "Inbox" list, where you can later re-file it. I often find this to be much easier than waiting for the browser/network/etc.

What's missing? While Remember The Milk seems to really take advantage of AJAX and JavaScript, to make most actions pretty snappy, it's just not the same as having a native app sitting on the phone. If Apple decides to implement HTML 5 offline storage or Gears, I really hope the folks at Remember The Milk take advantage of it. They've already done a great job of supporting Gears on the desktop website, so my fingers are crossed. On the other hand, I'd be first in line to buy a native iPhone version of Remember the Milk if they happened to come out with one.

Ultimately PIM tools are only good if they're easy to use and don't make you wait for them. Right now the mobile web isn't quite there yet, but until an offline/native version of RTM or another app comes out, I'm pretty happy with RTM for Mobile Safari.

iPhone 2.0 wishlist

2008-05-24T14:43:00.001-04:00

I've played with iPhone off and on ever since it launched, but this week I finally decided to swap out my BlackBerry and start using iPhone exclusively (more on why later). The brilliant browser, great media support, and gorgeous fonts/display make a huge impact, but there're a lot of things missing from iPhone that makes it a less-than-perfect experience, and leaves me longing for my BlackBerry pretty frequently.

So, as I'll be eagerly awaiting the new iPhone software at WWDC, here's my short wishlist for the next couple revs of iPhone software.

Copy and paste. Yes, everyone's mentioned this already... but creating calendar events is a pain when you can't just copy-paste straight from an email.

Search in the address book. Scrolling through the address book is probably okay with a couple hundred contacts, but is pretty laborious with a couple thousand.

Faster auto-complete in email addresses. iPhone is strangely slow when it comes to being able to search through your address book when you start typing a recipient's name for an email.

Faster SMS. Loading the SMS chat screens seems to be quite slow on iPhone.

Better eMail UI. I've got three email addresses set up on iPhone. The number of taps to see a message is enormous. Home -> Mail Accounts -> Chosen Account -> Inbox -> Message is annoying and slow. Single inbox like BlackBerry, please.

Signatures for each account. So each email address should have it's own signature, instead of the one global email signature. A requirement if you've got corporate and personal mail on the same device.

It would be great if iPhone could extract contact and event details straight from an eMail just like Mail.app does on Leopard.

Info on the lock-screen. I shouldn't need to slide to unlock and then enter my PIN just to find out if I have any new mail or not. It'd be great if the lockout screen showed missed calls, SMS and eMail.

To-do list. A striking omission.

A better calendar. Yikes... entering calendar events on iPhone is a chore... can't click the time I want straight on the screen. There's no weekly view (a shame, as it'd look great in landscape view on iPhone). Events don't support time zones.

Working push. The Yahoo! Push solution has been (for me) very flaky and far from a reliable push experience. I hope this gets solved for the next rev. Integrating push for GMail would also be lovely :-)

Maybe a hard-button or two on the casing wouldn't be such a bad thing either. I love the minimalist design of iPhone, but a couple extra hard-buttons might make it a whole lot easier to get to your favourite apps, and that can't be a bad thing.

Fingers crossed ... just a couple weeks till WWDC :)

Taking ownership of your product

2007-11-08T16:38:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting here on hold with O2, because RIM refuses to take ownership of their product. One of my eMail addresses (hosted by Google and pushed via RIM's BIS product) hasn't been working properly for days. I've sent RIM an email to support... and their response is:

As we indicated previously, your service provider is your first point of contact for support. BlackBerry Technical Support is available 24/7 if your provider needs to escalate the issue.

If you would prefer fee-based support from Research In Motion, please dial the appropriate telephone number below and enter option 3 in the phone menu.

So I call O2 from my BlackBerry... and after ages of voicemail hell finally get someone. Guess what? They can't help me. They need me to call back from another number. I said "well, why don't I give you a number and you can call me back?" Apparently they could take up to 48 hrs (!?!?!?) to call me back. Really.

So, fine... I'll bite... what's the number I should call? Some 0870 number (i.e. a TOLL NUMBER!). O2 has the NERVE to charge me for calling them for support!?

Thankfully SayNoTo0870.com had an alternative free number that I could use to call them back (no thanks to O2).

Once I finally got through the second round of voicemail hell, the first-level O2 support person had the nerve to say "Oh... the problem you think you have, isn't possible." Really?! So I'm just imagining this, huh? Please.

After assuring support that I wasn't patently insane I got pushed to a support engineer... a nice enough guy who spent over a half hour coming to no particular conclusion.

Which circle of Hell did Dante reserve for this?

Is it so hard to believe that a company like RIM should actually provide support to their consumers, especially given their huge consumer marketing push of late?

Is it such a great expectation to think that O2 might not want to charge customers for calling in for support?

Sadly leaving Orange

2007-10-22T10:07:00.000-04:00

Looks like I'm making the switch from Orange to O2 (way better BlackBerry data plans - especially for frequent travelers - and they've got EDGE).

I was impressed at how easy they were to deal with. Less than 5 minutes on the phone and they claim to be sending a letter with my porting code.

Almost makes me wish I chose to stay. Too bad about the data plans. :(

The downside of getting to zero

2007-10-15T16:52:00.001-04:00

I've been using a mail filter to help me manage my inbox for the last week or so. I'm already wasting way less time each day just handling email... and find myself needing to look to my BlackBerry far less.

The downside? Not nearly as much to churn through in the tube anymore. :).

Back to audiobooks, I guess.

Heating and Cooling ... from the street

2007-10-15T04:38:00.000-04:00

Arian de Bondt, an engineer at Ooms, came up with a great idea. Use the heat generated by the sun on the road in summer to heat water that you'll later use in winter to heat a building and melt road-ice... then use the cold water that comes out of this process, store it again, so you can use it in summer for cooling.

Very cool.

Reminds me of the water cooling project in Toronto that uses lake water to air condition buildings... but even smarter. Well, if you've got an aquifer on hand :)

Via The Economist

Great service from an Apple Genius.Great service from an Apple Genius.

2007-10-13T05:37:00.001-04:00

The battery life on the 15" MacBook Pro isn't awful, but it certainly isn't fantastic. So like many owners, I've got a spare battery... actually, I ordered it with the computer! Recently, one of the two batteries has been doing something very strange: As the battery gets nearly completely drained, the machine turns off. It doesn't go to sleep. It loses power and turns off. (Like pulling the plug on a desktop computer.) Not very nice. Worse still, there's still some charge left in the battery, so it could have made it to sleep without issue.

I wandered into the Apple Store on Regent St., mentioned this to one of the Geniuses, and a few minutes later he commented that while they couldn't find any similar reports in their tech database (gotta' love being unique, I guess), they were just going to swap out my battery for a new one. So now I have two properly working batteries, and no fear of my machine randomly turning off anymore.

All in all, I'm pretty impressed, not only with the care I received, but that someone in a store was able to make a decision to fix my problem, instead of saying something like "Sorry sir, we haven't heard of this problem before... so we can't really do anything about it," or asking to take my laptop away for a few days of diagnosis.

One more happy Apple customer.

Big brother Blyk

2007-10-12T14:06:00.001-04:00

Join – Blyk UK, originally uploaded by Sutha Kamal.

So, looking at the Blyk signup page ... they really care about deeply authenticating who their subscribers are. This is actually pretty creepy. First it asks you to put in your name, and address. Nothing surprising here, right?

Well, it turns out if you're not on the electoral record (yes, they check the electoral record !!!) you get to provide either a drivers license or a passport number to prove who you are.

So what's this creepiness about? It's a free, ad-sponsored MVNO for youth (16-24). Is this about authenticating someone's age? Want to make sure they qualify for using Blyk, or so they can provide true demographic info to advertisers?

Isn't there a less disturbing way of doing this than using government databases, or supplying government ID?

Or is there another reason Blyk wants to truly verify who you are?

The idea that there's far more security around this than picking up a prepaid SIM at any highstreet retailer seems a bit odd, so I'm curious what it's all about...

Either way, it gives me the creeps.

Moving to where the money is...

2007-10-12T13:31:00.000-04:00

Over on TechCrunch UK, Mike Butcher wrote a post about VCs and geography.

The article centers around an email a TechCrunch reader wrote to Mike...

Hi Mike

I am just dropping you a quick email to help expose what I think is a serious issue with the UK tech industry. As a developer I have been working on a web based product for over a year. There is a huge (untapped) market for this product, it requires minimal overheads and has potential for a massive amount of growth.

So, what’s the problem you may ask?

Unfortunately I am based in XXXXX, which has virtually no VC organisations. Therefore I am having to approach VCs in London. The problem is that they do not have the slightest interest in talking to people such as myself, unless you are refered to them or meet them personally. This is a very big problem from my location! I am taking the time to travel to London in November, but getting VCs to meet you is an even bigger problem.

I’m sure you have lots of other issues and topics to address, but people in this industry exist across the country and its very hard for us to break into the market.

The author of the email certainly sounds like he means well, and who could blame a guy for taking a shot at VCs? :-) ... but in reality, VC's aren't that hard to reach. Their associates are at every event around, for starters... and warm introductions aren't that hard to get: VCs are pretty networked people, so finding a few mutual connections can't be that hard. LinkedIn is a terrific way to connect with VCs as well, if you can't think of anyone who might be a connector.

But even beyond that, a well written pitch email will get you in the door of any VC in the land. Really. Sure, VCs are busy, and you'll hear the bit about getting hundreds of business plans that they can't read. Yup. Business plans. Send anyone a 30-page tome, and you're unlikely to get a lot of responses... but send a well-crafted paragraph or two, and you will get meetings.

The second bit, about only doing local deals... that bit's more difficult. If the company's super early stage, and there's not a lot of experience in the team, then yeah you're going to have people only wanting to do local deals. As the companies get more mature, and the teams more experienced, VCs tend to do deals that are further and further away from home. It's got nothing to do with just wanting to do local deals, and everything to do with wanting to be able to keep an eye on your companies, and help them where you can.

It's the reason Y Combinator gets their startups to move to where they are for a summer.

There're always exceptions to this, but if you're starting a company, and you're committed to it, and you've got a wholly young / inexperienced team, then pack up and move to where the investors (and more importantly the other startups) are... whether that's moving from Memphis to San Francisco, or Leeds to London.

At Web 2.0? Check out Mobile 2.0

2007-10-12T06:33:00.000-04:00

Dan Appelquist and friends at hosting a great Mobile 2.0 conference alongside O'Reilly's web 2 conference in SF next week. If you're in town, check it out, and have a look at Dan's about it.

I heart Mozy.

2007-10-11T16:34:00.001-04:00

Mozy Backup Status, originally uploaded by Sutha Kamal.

So, these guys got bought by EMC recently (congrats!)...

How cool is it to have your computer securely backed up somewhere off in the cloud, with no effort? I wander off for dinner, get back and ... oh... my machine's backed up. Thanks for letting me know :-)

Now that Mozy's proved reliable backing up my work and mail, maybe I'll just let it back everything up...

Mippin goes live

2007-10-11T12:40:00.000-04:00

Prashant and the folks at Refresh Mobile just launched Mippin an in-browser RSS reader (so there's nothing to install) that has all sorts of great features like posting an article straight to Twitter or texting it to a friend.

The media transcoding works pretty well, and lets you read blogs without the crummy experience you'd traditionally expect from a WAP site. It's particularly slick on 3G/HSPA connections with a good browser...

If you've got a decent phone, and kill time reading blogs on your phone, Mippin's definitely something to try.

and I'm not invited?

2007-10-08T10:46:00.001-04:00

Oh BlackBerry... I wonder what the snazzy VIP program is all about...

Getting to Zero

2007-10-08T05:02:00.000-04:00

So, the empty inbox bit about GTD just feels wrong... plus it doesn't sync well to a Berry or other phone (where you really want all your mail in one place).

Here's my solution:

This way I get to look at one folder that always has the messages I have to "touch" in some way before it's been dealt with.

Blyk's missing the point about mobile apps

2007-10-05T11:23:00.000-04:00

Blyk is an ad-supported free MVNO targeted at the 16-24 set. Antti Ohrling, Blyk's founder recently made a few remarks at the MediaGuardian Changing Advertising summit that make me wonder if Blyk's completely misunderstood mobile data and application services.

First he mentions studies that show not many people are using many mobile applications. Yup. Dead on. But why is it that everyone who points to these silly surveys always says "nobody uses mobile services, ergo, nobody wants to use them." Ick. Mistake the first.

Let's set the record straight: people don't use mobile services because, they generally suck!

That's right... name 10 great mobile applications. Hmm... BlackBerry mail... Google Maps... umm... well... er... hmmmm...

I'm exaggerating of course, but my point is that people aren't using mobile because there aren't a lot of great apps for it. We've seen that people pay for a lot of services that they do find value in (the billions of dollars spent on mobile eMail, games, ringtones, and MMS prove this).

Why are applications so bad? Because they're so hard to build. That's a problem that we're going to be solving at planQ, but we'll talk about that another day.

Where else does Blyk seem to miss the point?

Ohrling is quoted as saying "Mobile is a push medium, you call someone they call you, you text someone they text you."

Yup, remember when we used our computers to write documents, and email them to one another? The PCs at our desks weren't used to consume passive applications and content ... but the apps got better, and the web got richer, and we started to do more and more with the PC.

I don't mean to pick on Blyk, but it's strange that so many people seem to suggest that the lack of uptake in mobile apps is tied to some inexplicable and fundamental property of mobile. That's an awfully complicated non-answer.

The easier answer is : mobile apps tend to suck. People will use them... when they're better. Much better.

Verizon changes their minds...

2007-09-28T08:52:00.000-04:00

Seems like Verizon's changed their minds on text message censoring. Great to hear they made the right decision... but it still makes it obvious that laws should be changed requiring them to give SMS the same common-carrier treatment as voice. For that matter, all data should be given common carrier treatment... but that's a particularly sensitive topic with operators.

Via New York Times.

Verizon's censoring your txt...

2007-09-27T09:19:00.000-04:00

Verizon's apparently declined an abortion pro-choice group's application to run a text messaging campaign across their network. All the other US carriers are (understandably) fine with it.

So what's Verizon's rationale? Well, they disallow certain content with certain themes and abortion is one of them. Even stranger, text campaigns are things that people have to explicitly opt in for ... so this is the same as your ISP not allowing email from a pro-choice group to get delivered to your inbox, even if you've signed up for it.

Anyone else think this seems wrong?

Verizon's got a responsibility to protect their consumers from some degree of unsavory content... but suggesting they have the right to dictate what can and can't be delivered as SMS, just because the outdated common carrier laws don't treat SMS the same as voice is absurd.

Definitely feels like a "write your congressman" sort of moment.

From the New York Times via Reg Braithwaite

Aeroplan Music Store ... great idea ... poor execution.

2007-09-27T04:21:00.000-04:00

So I got an eMail from Air Canada about the new Aeroplan Music Store. No link directly to the store, but the link was instead to an "exclusive" Michael Bublé music video. Alright. Fine. I'll click the link.

So what do you get? Instead of using Flash, or QuickTime which would play back without any issue ... there's some QMesh plugin that you've first got to install to view this music video. Strike 1.

Anyway, I start to browse the music store (using miles to pick up music? Not such a bad idea, I guess, if the price is right). It turns out I can't just put in my Aeroplan number/password to start buying music... I've got to go all the way back to the Aeroplan website and redeem my miles for a voucher I can use on the store. Strike 2.

That also means, there's NO price listed anywhere on the site. I.e. it'd really be nice to see how many miles each song/album costs. Maybe as dumb as the Zune "points" thing, but at least it'd give an idea of cost. Strike 3.

Of course, even if I did decide I wanted to pick up a voucher, I'd be out of luck, as the site's down at the moment. Great idea... send out emails announcing a "world premier" and then go down for "routine maintenance."

Strike 4.

To top it all off, only a tiny percentage of music on the site is in MP3 (instead of WMA) format ... and all the MP3 music I saw were from bands I've never heard of. So, for anyone using an iPod ... you're out of luck.

Strike 9, you're done.

Nice try, though, Air Canada... Maybe you should just do a deal with Apple to let us redeem miles for iTunes gift certificates?

iPhone's still far too closed

2007-09-25T08:20:00.000-04:00

Apple's created a terrific new device, touting it's fantastic open Internet capabilities, and then have locked it down to an absurd degree.

It's bad enough that the official way of putting ringtones on the phone is to take a subset of your already-purchased iTunes music and pay $0.99 for a ringtone sample to be created.

It's worse that the only developer API that's exposed officially is nothing more than a pretty plain-vanilla browser.

There's OS X buried under that, and all sorts of developers have been figuring out how to write apps that take advantage of all that power ... who are building the ecosystem that makes the phone more valuable, and what's Apple doing? Telling them their apps may stop working at any point.

And what about the consumers who've shelled out $500 for their shiny new iPhone? Well, if they happen to want to use another network, or install native apps (whicn involves hacking the device), they lose their warranty. Actually, they might even end up bricking their phone.

Now, on the one hand, Apple's got a point: They built the phone, and the operating system. If someone wants to hack what it is that they've built, it's certainly not Apple's responsibility to make sure any future update won't conflict with the hack.

On the other hand, going from a world where the carrier controls the complete user experience isn't much worse than a world where your hardware vendor controls the complete user experience.

The iPhone came out quickly, shook the Motorola's and Nokia's of the world pretty fiercely, and excited developers... all of that is good. It's probably fair to guess that they just haven't had the time to open things up for developers cleanly yet. I'd even bet that Apple are going to release extensions to XCode to let developers build rich native iPhone apps in the not-too-distant future...

But at the moment, they're just scaring their customers, and irritating the developers that are the ones that'll really add value to iPhone going forward.

Rockstartup.com

2007-09-24T18:36:00.000-04:00

They totally deserve credit for creating a novel publicity stunt for
a startup (well, not *that* novel... remember Startup.com?) ... but
why does it seem like they're actively trying to show off a bunch of
juvenile office antics... That can't really help with recruiting. Can
it?

Randy Pausch's final lecture at CMU

2007-09-24T14:35:00.000-04:00

Randy Pausch, a computer science professor just gave his final lecture at CMU... and luckily it's available on video for all of us to watch.

I've admired Randy's work for years, as he started the Alice project, to teach kids computer science by letting them create and animate their own virtual worlds, and it's great to hear him talk about how the idea came about, and where it's going. It's also great to hear him so pleased that it'll be a part of his legacy.

That's because Randy's dying of cancer, and has just a few months left. It's one of the most amazing lectures I've ever seen, and I can't say anything more than it made me wish I'd had him as a professor.

(Via Ryan Coleman -> Google Reader -> Plaxo Pulse)

Google's obscuring their patents. Is that evil?

2007-09-23T09:17:00.000-04:00

A friend sent me an EE Times Asia article on Google hiding patent applications by not clearly listing their name on them.

Basically, if you're trying to see what Google's up to by searching for their name in the USPTO database, you may be out of luck.

But... does that matter?

The quid pro quo of a patent is that the filer gets a monopoly on an invention for a time, but must disclose the workings of this invention to the public as a condition. So, eventually it's a contribution to the commons.

Google hiding their ownership doesn't change this... the inventions still get disclosed. The public still gets the benefit, and Google gets a monopoly on the technology for a time. The only people that get hurt are people using patent databases as a way to figure out what their competitors are up to.

It's a fair (and common) use of the patent databases, but this strategy-disclosure doesn't seem to be a part of the patent quid pro quo (nor does it seem like it ought to be). So in this case, I'm siding with Google... obscuring patent ownership doesn't sound all that evil to me.

O2 lights up EDGE

2007-09-13T13:05:00.001-04:00

All day my BlackBerry has been seeing EDGE on O2 all around London ... woohoo. More indications the iPhone launch is impending?

Going mainstream isn't shark jumping.

2007-09-08T10:19:00.000-04:00

So I was skimming through my newsreader this morning, when I came upon a post from Ben Metcalfe talking about Apple jumping the shark. The post seems to center around the idea that a product needs to be exclusive to foster loyalty and passion.

I happen to disagree.

I'd suggest that great design, and utility foster loyalty and passion. Beetle drivers love 'em ... because they have personality and great design. People love Starbucks precisely because it's consistently good ... everywhere, and for everyone.

BlackBerry users love 'em, despite the thought that using one makes you look like yet another banker/CEO/geek. (Yeah, BlackBerry doesn't have huge penetration, but it's a pretty insular demographic: if you have a BlackBerry, I'll bet a lot of your friends and colleagues do too.) Why? Because they're incredibly functional.

Are customers any more loyal to Tiffany's than to Target? Actually, I'll bet that Target customers are more brand-loyal. Exclusivity be damned.

So Apple's finally gotten to a point where a lot more people can afford a video-enabled iPod. Does that mean it's less exclusive? Absolutely. Does that mean their owners will love them any less? Of course not. Not unless there's a sexier, more useful alternative.

Oh, and about the iPhone price drop... Um... so what?

Nokia launched it's flagship N95 a few months ago. Until recently it was the £500 phone... now it's free on a contract with every operator in the UK. When it launched, I was amazed at how many mobile early-adopters picked one up (at considerable expense). Now, every day I see another "normal" person who happened to pick an N95 because it was free and has a decent camera.

So the suggestion that Apple ought to have given it's former customers the full $200 difference in price back seems a little silly. It's not like Orange and Vodafone (or Nokia) are looking to compensate anyone for the change in price for the N95. That's just a part of life with gadgets... whether it's a phone, camera or laptop.

Moreover, taking a product mainstream and jumping the proverbial shark are totally unrelated. Motorola took it's hugely successful (and originally hugely exclusive) RAZR mainstream, and dominated the handset market for quite a while. Then they deeply discounted the price... and continued to do so (nothing different from Apple or Nokia here).

They jumped the shark because they couldn't deliver a compelling followup product... and that's the important bit ... the ability to innovate, and to keep innovating in places that people care about is the bit that keeps customers loyal and passionate.

Then again, I could be wrong... anyone want a $10.5 MM cellphone?

Roots does window shopping a bit differently...

2007-09-08T06:30:00.003-04:00

Browsing on a window, at the 100 Bloor St W flagship store in Toronto.

RIM finally does good...

2007-09-07T16:02:00.000-04:00

So, they still haven't resolved my first major issue ... but there was recently an outage with their BIS product (which I, and many berry users) use. Not only did they call me and explain things, but the support rep (great dude named Craig) managed to set-up my Google-for-Domains email addresses with the same push message functionality that normal gmail.com addresses get... and here I was thinking they'd never get around to creating such a feature.

I'll hand it to RIM: their people are individually pretty great ... their support and customer care processes need some work, though.

US DoJ aligns against net neutrailty

2007-09-07T08:45:00.000-04:00

From BBC. Yikes!

Write elected officials... join the EFF... this is definitely not a welcome announcement :(

A Guiness a day ...

2007-09-07T05:58:00.001-04:00

the weepies:painting by chagall, originally uploaded by visualpanic.

A BBC article mentions a team of Wisconsin researcher ... They believe that "antioxidant compounds" in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls.

Sweet. Now I just need someone to prove bourbon is good for you too! :)

When in doubt, CC the COO...

2007-09-07T05:06:00.000-04:00

So, I went ahead and sent RIM a note with a link to my previous post, and this time CC'd the COO. Turns out, that got me a pretty quick response. (Surprised, aren't you? :-)

This morning someone at RIM's tech support called me back. Nice guy, super apologetic. Basically said, "Yeah... known issue. We've fixed it. We just haven't released the fix yet. It'll be out in a few weeks." This is good news, and I'm glad to hear it. Releasing software into the wild, in a carrier environment, takes lots of testing and bureaucracy, so I can't fault RIM for taking a while to deploy it. At least they're honest about the timelines/status.

But... RIM still cost me $ for their bug, and while the tech support folks have finally gotten back to me, the customer satisfaction team is still curiously silent.

I woke up this morning to see an open letter from Steve Jobs, apologizing to early iPhone purchasers for the recent price drop, and offering them store credit to make up for it. So, RIM ... how do you handle years-long loyal customers who evangelize your product? Steve just raised the bar.

RIM: Another great product, awful service. :(

2007-09-06T11:48:00.000-04:00

So, a few days ago my BlackBerry suddenly got flooded with a few hundred several months old emails. Roaming over here in the UK, at Rogers' usurious 5 cents a kilobyte means that RIM's gaffe cost me real money.

Like a good customer I went ahead and sent an email to the support and customer satisfaction folks at RIM. Several days later? No reply. Not a peep. Not even a "we got your message, and we'll get back to you" automated reply.

In the same time, I've had three (count 'em, three) friends in as many days here in London decide to get BlackBerry 8800's at my urging. (I'm a bit of a Berry-zealot, it seems.) Even spent a half hr last night helping a friend try and get hers set up... and what do I get from RIM? Silence.

Hmmm... after almost 8 yrs on a berry, someone build a decent push-mail sol'n for the iPhone and maybe I'll deal with the keyboard...

UPDATE: David Terrar (of Blognation and Business Two Zero) wrote "Sutha Kamal of Plan Q was trying to tell me this a few weeks ago over some Japanese food at the height of my enthusiasm for the Nokia E61i. I’m really glad I’ve seen the light and chosen the 8310, which looks particularly cool in its new grey livery and smart leather sleeve."

Hmm... I really hope to hear from RIM soon. I'd like to stay on the Berry.

Going green in Toronto...

2007-08-30T14:06:00.001-04:00

The Economist's "Intelligent Life" has just gone quarterly, and the first issue has a great article about people making a change to be more green. One of them is Vanessa Farquharson, a journalist with the National Post, living in Toronto, who decided to make a bunch of small changes every day, from turning down the thermostat to turning off her fridge, that would have to stick. She's a few months in and seems to have managed to cut her carbon footprint pretty significantly. A few things are a bit wacky (I'm not taking my own napkins to a restaurant anytime soon), but most make a tonne of sense. If nothing else, it's great to know that there're a bunch of things we all can and should be doing.

Her blog's Green As a Thistle. Check it out.

Stupid Beta: Blackline Blip for BlackBerry

2007-08-30T12:21:00.000-04:00

Tris mentioned a Canadian company with a buddy-finder like application for the BlackBerry 8800 called Blip.

I had my reservations about the app actually being useful at all... I mean, I'd say that the majority of my friends don't have BlackBerries... and of those who do, most have an 8700 or Pearl, not the 8800 yet. Anyway, it still seemed like it was worth a quick peek... right up until I noticed that the folks at Blackline seem to think that their beta is worth $10.

That's right... you get to test the app, pay for the data charges you might incur, give these guys feedback, and invite your friends in to have a look (I mean, it's not so useful without friends using it, right?), and they want you to pay for the beta. (?!?!?!?)

How. Very. Strange.

PocketMac wishlist ...

2007-08-30T11:26:00.000-04:00

So, FacebookSync on the Mac isn't a particularly *great* app, but it works reasonably well... and it means that I've got pics for a whole bunch of friends now in my Mac address book.

So, it's unfortunate that PocketMac (who RIM either acquired or did a big deal with) can't sync these new photo's in my address book to the BlackBerry (where in the 8800 the address book supports photographs).

Oh, and the other sync-related gripe? I exported my LinkedIn contacts to a vCard to get any updates into my Mac address book. The Mac's smart enough to notice that many of the cards already exist in it's own address book, and is able to treat the new info from LinkedIn as "updates".

So here's the weirdness... if a contact in my address book has a photo in their profile, accepting the "update" from the LinkedIn vCard removes the picture! Grumble...

Bored in Kitchener-Waterloo?

2007-08-30T10:53:00.001-04:00

Who could blame you ... I mean... the place's nickname is the loo!

Anyway, a friend just launched lifeinkw, which has a great list of restaurants, bars, etc. in the region. Better than the "out of town" section in Toronto Life, I'm betting...

Have a look if you're up in the 'loo one of these days.

Mesh Minds launch party

2007-08-24T10:01:00.000-04:00

It's live! ... well, almost ... one more week and you can sign up to Mesh Minds, the network of business professionals with a creative "second life".

Picture courtesy of Sophie Khan.

Thankfully a week's delay didn't stop Kay Vasey and Jonny Emmanuel, the founders of Mesh Minds from throwing a fantastic launch party at The Spitz Gallery. We got food, wine, screenshots, and even a viral video that's got a financial consultant dancing in the middle of an office square.

If you haven't heard yet, Mesh is all about connecting professionals with creative second lives (a lawyer that writes, a banker that paints... you get the idea) with one another, and judging by the turnout and the mix of people from lawyers and bankers to documentary filmmakers and software startup founders it looks like they're onto something cool.

With a couple hundred friends and founding members showing up to support Mesh, it was a great party with a terrific mix of people, and I'm looking forward to getting Meshed in a week. (Wonder if my not being creative'll get my application rejected :)

Facebook Developer Garage in London

2007-08-16T08:31:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was the inaugural Facebook Developer Garage in London, held at T-Bar, and sponsored by Ankur Shah and the guys at Techlightenment.

It seems like the first event in London drew over 250 people, making it the largest Developer Garage in the world... though, next time I'm bringing a fog-horn... getting a crowd of 250 to quiet down and listen to the presentations is more difficult than I might have expected... (Yes, I was the guy that yelled "Shut the fuck up!" a couple of times.)

Despite some technical difficulties, the guys managed to get Dave Morin (who runs the developer program at Facebook) on video conference to speak to the audience and ask a few questions. It seems Dave's most frequent reply to most questions was "We don't really comment on what we're doing in the future."

The event featured presentations from a few local companies, including Qubox, .name, Mesh, and Techlightenment... Clearly there's a lot of Facebook app development going on, with many attendees developing apps, and others looking to hire developers to build apps.

Looking forward to the next event in September... and maybe even being able to hear the speakers this time :)

No Bombing

2007-08-09T17:49:00.001-04:00

No Bombing, originally uploaded by Sutha Kamal.

Seen at Shoreditch House in London... okay, we all get what it means (the screen is showing video from their rooftop pool), but it's still funny/bizarre... especially in London.

UK broadband prices ...

2007-08-05T13:26:00.001-04:00

My uncle pays £21 a month, and gets 10 Mbit/s broadband (yeah, and
it's actually that fast!), free local calling, and free calling to
Canada, the US and a whole bunch of other providers.

That's ~$40 a month. For broadband, voice, and all of it.

Wow.

PickyDomains - How to piss off potential users.

2007-07-21T03:00:00.001-04:00

So I thought I'd give the "PickyDomains" service a spin (earlier blog
post, which I've since removed). There was a promo to get to try the
service for people who'd blogged about it. I got an unsigned email
(i.e. no name of sender, just support@) back a moment ago, saying "I
have not received any traffic from your blog, hence you don't
qualify. This offer is only for real blogs that have audiences."

Maybe the founder's got a book on tact, or "Being less of a dick, for
dummies" on order... I sure hope so :-)

My quick Ooma questions...

2007-07-19T09:30:00.001-04:00

okay, so lots of folks at talking about Ooma today... and my friend Alec has written a great post summarizing Ooma and past-incarnations of similar companies.

I've got a super-basic question, though... If Ooma uses someone's normal phone line to terminate calls to other people, doesn't this mean it breaks Caller ID?

I.e. Let's say Alice is trying to call Bob... but the call gets routed out through Charlie's home phone line ... won't Bob's caller ID show Charlie's number instead of Alice's?

Oh, and what about privacy? Can't Charlie just splice into his own home line and listen to all the calls that happen to be taking place using his land line? This bit sounds particularly dodgy to me.

Would love to hear how/if Ooma addresses this stuff.

How tech changes travel

2007-07-19T05:25:00.000-04:00

I was at the gym this afternoon with a colleague, and ended up thinking a lot about the Internet... and how it's completely changed the way we discover and share information, and generally learn. Afterward, I ended up thinking a bit about my recent European long weekend tour, and how the Internet, and the way we use it to share and search for information created a trip that wouldn't have been possible a few years ago.

So where do I start...

While my cousin and I were thinking about taking a trip for quite a while, we only ended up truly deciding on it the night before we went. On a random Thursday night we both sat around and talked about how we basically wanted to be boring old men, check into a hotel with a nice view, spend some time in the gym, and the rest catching up on sleep and reading. I know. I'm not *that* old yet either.

Anyway ... after trying Google, Lastminute and a number of other sites, we finally found the hotel by searching through reviews on Tripadvisor. We saw a bunch of pictures of the hotel (stunning) and great reviews as well. A quick trip to Expedia showed that we could get this 5-star hotel room for about £150 a night. Okay, so we were *almost* sold. The hotel was in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and we figured we should have a look at what the drive was going to look like.

We fired up Google Earth, got directions from London to St. Moritz, and after looking at some of the terrain we'd be driving through decided that we had to do this drive!

We used a TomTom GPS (the Volvo XC90 we took for the weekend was incredibly comfortable, but didn't have the navigation option) to get directions during the trip, and so we never had to watch out for exits, turns, gas stations, etc... we let the GPS take care of us. No stressing or fussing with maps. It was fantastic.

Just before we arrived at the hotel we noticed that we had ascended to what we figured was a pretty high altitude. We stopped the truck, and I grabbed my Garmin GPS watch out of the back ... it turns out we were over 7-thousand feed above sea level. Cool!

After spending the first night in the hotel we woke up to see a fantastic view of the alps...

On seeing this in the morning, my cousin exclaimed "forget this old man stuff, we have to check out the alps!" ... and while I'd like to claim that I stood my ground and said we were going to stay put and relax, I agreed with him! But, surely we couldn't just look out at the alps... we had to see the highest peak. Google searching for the highest peaks was somewhat useful... and the Wikipedia entries for the alps were somewhat useful... but then we stumbled upon a KML file that someone had created which had all the highest peaks of the alps labeled on it.

Again we fired up Google Earth, realized that the highest peak that was anywhere near us was in Italy, and plotted a quick route around the mountains. Of course, the fact that the Google-predicted route looked to have some amazing mountain vistas was the major selling point.

As we were getting ready to embark on the day's journey, it occurred to me "Hmm... this thing records the route I'm running, right... so... surely it'll let me record the route that we drive, right?" So off we went... and for the remainder of our trip (all the way back to London) we let the watch record our route.

When we got back to London, we showed my cousin's parents some of the pictures we took... and like all good nerds we did this by popping the MemoryStick's into the PlayStation 3, so we could see the pics on the hi-def screen. Then it occured to my cousin that I had my Mac with me, and we could plug my laptop into the TV...

So there we were, sitting in the living room, showing a Google Earth flyover of the route that we drove through the alps, the rest of Switzerland, up the autobahn (the speed graph was amusing here, of course ;-) and back through France.

It also occurred to us that the photographs have time-taken info in them... and we have GPS data that we could match up with it... My cousin's the programmer, so I'm leaving it to him to write something to crunch all the data together and show it off.

Anyway, somewhere in Italy it occurred to us that we'd never taken a vacation quite so rich and spontaneous. We visited lots of my favourite places in Paris, discovered and randomly tucked into cool little mountain towns in Italy and Switzerland, decided (against the GPS's suggestion) that the best way from Zurich to Paris involved going up A5 towards Offenburg, and swung by the Canadian memorial at Vimy Ridge in France, all before picking up some wine in Calais and heading back to London. All of this happened because we could use search to find data, plot it quickly against a kick-ass 3D map to see what it looked like, and plug some points into a GPS to get us there without worries... and then take all this crazy route data, recorded on a (admittedly large) wristwatch (!!!) and share an incredibly rich and detailed story of our trip with our friends.

What's got me wondering is ... well, clearly we're alpha geeks ... normal people don't do this... but while my aunt and uncle thought the whole Google Earth flythrough was pretty cool, they didn't react as though it was some insanely magical creation... it was interesting, but not wholly unexpected. So how's planning your vacation going to change in three years, when everyone does this? Will we eventually expect that everything's going to be geo-tagged and searchable? Will we just assume this sort of context will be normal? I wouldn't bet against it... and I'm curious to see just what else is going to change.

MOO party on the 19th

2007-07-17T13:45:00.000-04:00

If you're in London on Thurs (and amazingly haven't already heard), MOO are throwing a launch party for MOO Stickers. Sounds like it'll be a fun night out.

Code Monkey Anime

2007-07-13T04:33:00.001-04:00

Via Amber.

Coca Cola Happiness Factory - Behind the Scenes

2007-07-13T04:15:00.000-04:00

Happiness factory -Behind the scenes
Uploaded by firat

we're like one body, you know... it's like we're on different parts of the same body, so that's a question that's like "does your hand trust your foot?", you know do you trust that your foot isn't going to kick your hand? and it's like, yeah, of course it's not going to happen, you know?

Every time I have a Coke, it's like "Hello old friend... we meet again."

Sweetness.

SpinVox ... people, not robots

2007-07-11T14:06:00.000-04:00

So I've been hearing a lot about SpinVox recently... an interesting startup that's on the market (i.e. courting acquisition) and provides voicemail transcription services (i.e. you forward your unanswered calls to them instead of your operator's voicemail, and you get an email w/ the message text).

There's been a lot of discussion around whether SpinVox is powered by super-smart software, or a bunch of people in a room transcribing your notes. It's curious that the company is seemingly so tight-lipped about this.

Anyway, I'm betting it's a bunch of people in a room... I sent a friend a voicemail a few minutes ago with a bit of a test inspired by Daniel Gilbert's fantastic book "Stumbling on Happiness"... "I managed to get the peel from an orange stuck to the heel of my shoe." Except that each *eel word was *cough*-eel ... Now, software's going to have a pretty difficult time using the words orange and shoe after the fact to disambiguate the words... something a human being would do without even realizing they'd done it. SpinVox nailed it. It also wrote my name wrong but had a "(?)" after it... something that software probably wouldn't be smart enough to guess (i.e. the wrong guess it took at my name wasn't a common name... which is what you'd expect software to do)...

So... I'm sure we'll all find out eventually how SpinVox does their thing... but for the moment, I'm betting (and hey, I'd *love* to be proved wrong on this one) it's a bunch of folks listening to and transcribing your messages. Too bad. It'd be cool for a company to finally crack the problem of speaker independent voice recognition on large dictionaries... but it seems that it'll still be an unsolved problem for at least a while longer.

Pics from the European long weekend

2007-07-08T19:47:00.001-04:00

Some pics from the geotagged trip...

congrats to Idée!

2007-07-07T15:02:00.001-04:00

I can't believe I forgot to mention this, but IDC just listed Idée as one of the emerging Canadian tech companies to watch. Congrats to Leila (http://fricfrac.typepad.com), Paul and the rest of the team! Totally deserved!

(Sorry for the lack of proper links... Sent with my Crack...Berry)

A Garmin-powered roadtrip

2007-07-07T06:00:00.000-04:00

It's too bad the Garmin software is awful and can't be trusted to draw out a route nicely... but between LoadMyTracks and Google Earth, here's a map of the roadtrip my cousin and I went on last weekend.

This idea of geo-tagging (geo-tracking?) an entire trip is kinda' cool... if also a little creepy.

Live Earth streaming live

2007-07-07T05:54:00.001-04:00

Courtesy of MSN here.

Tip from Sam @ Blognation.

blognation : technology from around the world...

2007-07-07T05:30:00.001-04:00

If you're not from the bay area, you might wonder from time to time, "why aren't people talking about all the cool tech startups here?"

My friend Sam Sethi, the brains behind Vecosys (the leading tech blog in the UK), just launched blognation, which is a site bringing together a lot of fantastic bloggers that are now covering over 22 countries, and all the cool tech happenings in them. Cool bloggers like Ewan Spence, Amanda Lorenzani, Oliver Starr and Sam himself are contributing great articles and helping the rest of us see just what's happening in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Canada... anywhere that isn't the bay area.

What's also pretty interesting is that Sam's not going after the whole "cult of personality" thing. His face isn't plastered around the blog, and he's not promoting himself as the gatekeeper ... which is pretty refreshing when I compare it to a lot of the other tech blogs out there.

So have a look at Blognation, and if you happen to blog a lot about tech wherever you happen to live, go ahead and reach out to Sam... it's early days for Blognation, and I'm sure they're looking for more fantastic writers.

Tech: Get it right internally first.

2007-07-06T12:26:00.001-04:00

I've got a friend at Woolworth's (yes, they're still around... at least in the UK). I sent this friend a few emails today. Did they make it through? No.

Why? "Well my mailbox is full... so I can't see anything new until I clear it out."

Huh?! In a world where a gigabyte costs lest than a dollar, some companies actually restrict the amount of space someone gets for email? (Hint: This individual probably has just a few megs of email too.)

Stunning.

Oh.. and no "this user is over quota" note either... so anyone sending mail to a Woolworths employee assumes (as you do) that the mail got delivered. Anyone want to make stock predictions about a company that can't get email right?

If only I had such a graph...

Vimy Ridge Canadian Memorial

2007-07-06T11:36:00.000-04:00

By far the most deeply moving experience in my life... definitely worth the visit. If you happen to take the Eurotunnel to France, Vimy is pretty close to Calais, so don't miss it.

Baby Spice?

2007-07-03T05:39:00.001-04:00

Leila mentioned she wanted to see my reaction to Suzie calling me the Baby Spice of the VC world ... or at Celtic... or something (either way it's disturbing)... anyway, here's the reaction.

Presenting on an IMAX screen

2007-06-28T07:20:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's Library House event was held at the London IMAX theatre near Waterloo station. Definitely a very cool facility, and even cooler? The presenters got to throw our slides up on the IMAX screen... :)

... and on a lighter note ...

2007-06-21T09:40:00.000-04:00

via lolcatz

The Third Reich of Sri Lanka?

2007-06-21T09:24:00.001-04:00

Alright, I tend to avoid political discussions about Sri Lanka for a bunch of reasons... not the least of which being that I tend not to understand all the complexities of the situation... and also because it (like every other civil war) is just incredibly difficult how two groups of people can hate each other enough to trade their futures to live the present in a hate-filled war that reduces everyone to living in the middle ages.

Now, all that said, it sounds like there's some crazy stuff going on in Sri Lanka at the moment... and it sounds like the government isn't behaving too differently from the Nazi's several decades ago.

Quick brief: There're two sides of this conflict, the Sinhalese (ruling party/ethnic majority) and the Tamils (widely appreciated as being the repressed party).

A Sinhalese newspaper (The Sunday Leader) published a piece recently, comparing recent government action to the same atrocities the Nazi's committed. This is strange for a number of reasons... not the least of which being that it's a Sinhalese paper.

Some choice excerpts.

Secular Sinhalese hung their heads in shame last week as government storm-troopers rounded up the Tamil citizenry of Colombo and herded them into busses, to be taken to God knows where. Young and old, shy and bold, they were equally affected: no one was spared. Grandmothers separated from their grandchildren, sisters separated from their brothers, diabetics separated from their insulin. In scenes reminiscent of the Final Solution, the Mahinda Chinthanaya swung into action, leaving no one in doubt that Sri Lanka's is a government of the racists, by the racists, for the racists. It is but a short step from here to requiring Tamils to wear a mandatory arm-band with a 'T' (in black, of course) emblazoned on it.

...

It is only a sick and cynical society that can countenance so brazen an assault on human rights and look the other way. It is gratifying that all Sri Lanka's political parties, barring the SLFP, JHU and CWC, vociferously opposed Rajapakse's action. No one knows what brand of Buddhism it is that the monks of the Urumaya profess to follow, but it is evident from their action that it is not that advocated by the Gautama Buddha

(Note: Isn't it curious that in Sri Lanka, even the Buddhists are militant warmongers? Now if this doesn't teach us how dangerous religion can be...)

In the last couple of years we have taken to bombing the villages in the north that are thought to harbour Tigers. One rarely meets a Sri Lankan, however, who sees how utterly bizarre this is - bombing your own people. When the JVP attacked Colombo, did the air force bomb Akuressa and Hambantota, its strongholds? What would people think of a government that bombed Sinhalese? Yet, the Tamils are bombed daily as a matter of routine, and not one Sinhala voice of protest, be it ever so small, is heard. Now we seem slowly to be discovering that there simply are too many dissident Tamils (= 'terrorists') to kill: we are deporting them back to their homeland.

If you want to read more, you can find the full article here.

I really don't know what to say... more stupidity... more blatant acts of government-sponsored terrorism... and the governments of the west aren't doing anything. If anyone's curious why I'm generally of two minds about sending our troops into dictatorial countries, it's because I think that every now and again the world needs a heavily armed cop to put repressive and murderous governments in their place.

It may sound arrogant for those of us in the west to say that we're right and another country/culture/religion/whatever is wrong... but sometimes the world really is that black and white.

... Texas ...

2007-06-20T18:42:00.001-04:00

Just when you think that at least Austin's the civilized part of Texas... "An angry crowd in Texas beats and kills a man who was in a car that hit and injured a young girl."

Turns out the car was moving quite slowly and the girl wasn't seriously hurt. When they stopped to check on the girl the insane beating began...

< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6224538.stm >

Idiotic Toronto politics

2007-06-20T11:05:00.001-04:00

A bunch of city counsellors are arguing over whether or not Toronto should remove the yellow "support our troops" ribbons on Toronto fire trucks.

Who are these idiots? Supporting brave young men and women putting their lives on their line for what their democratically elected government has sent them to do, is not the same as supporting the war. Of course we support our troops and of course the ribbons should stay.

Argh. Idiots.

ARGH re Red Herring

2007-06-20T09:21:00.001-04:00

So, not only did Red Herring disappear from Zinio without any notice for quite a while... they've now relaunched with some browser-based reader from Olive Software that's awful... Offline viewing is a pain at best (involving loading the page in advance, setting your browser to offline mode, etc.) ... which is almost the whole point of an electronic magazine to me : I'd much rather read paper at home or in the office... I use Zinio because I want to read things on my laptop on the plane, without having to lug a stack of magazines with me... and this new reader totally breaks that use case.

Anyone else use electronic magazines this way, or is it just me?

Muslims and Identity

2007-06-19T17:05:00.000-04:00

Via The Economist.

Pew Research Center polled a number of muslims in 5 western countries: Britain, Spain, Germany, France and the US. They were asked a few questions, including whether they considered themselves Muslim first, or if they first identified by their nationality. They were also asked if they thought life was better for women in their country or in Muslim countries.

The scary data? 81% of British Muslims consider themselves Muslim first and British second. The same stat in the US is 47% (personally, as a first-generation Canadian, and a proud one at that, I find even that high a number a bit disturbing).

Even more surprising was the fact that 54% of Spanish Muslims thought that life is better for women in Muslim countries (vs. Spain). Only 38% of French and American Muslims surveyed felt the same.

Understanding and addressing the data seems pretty important to healing the rift that's being created all across the western world between nations and their minority (not just Muslim) citizens. I wonder what the data would show if Canadians (as a whole) and Torontonians (as a subset) were sampled...

Facebook Sync violated Facebook TOS?

2007-06-18T15:36:00.001-04:00

Via Sam.

The website for FSB Software mentions that Facebook Sync was taken down as it violated Facebook's Terms of Service. It's unfortunate, as it sounds like a cool app that took your friend's contact details, etc. from Facebook and piped them into your Mac's Address Book ...

You can totally understand Facebook's take on the whole thing: They want to own the platform, and let you extend it... not take data out of it, never to return again.

... and while these apps are clearly not competitive to Facebook, there's a bit of a slippery slope: they'd probably really dislike a "Export my Facebook to Bebo/Hi5/etc." app.

Makes me wonder: when you open your platform up for other people to embrace and extend, how do you set the ground rules? What's okay, what's not, and how are users and developers going to feel about it?

Keeping Up With The Gouchers

2007-06-15T12:04:00.001-04:00

Nike's got a set of videos talking with and about a couple who happen to also be kick-ass runners. They seem really nice too. Man they make me sick :-)

Seriously though, worth a watch if you're a runner (or, like me, are pretending to be one...)

Morning reading

2007-06-15T09:33:00.000-04:00

Was skimming the recent issue of The Economist this morning and came across some great articles worth checking out.

Biology's Big Bang talks about a lot of fundamental new research in biology, and specifically around RNA ... something that we used to think wasn't terribly exciting or interesting, and are now rethinking. Some cool thoughts on using lipid microbubbles to deliver RNA treatments as well... very cool. Another related article as well.

Thoughts on the changing of the air travel industry ... from newer planes, to the doubling of traffic in the next couple of years... a whole bunch of interesting articles for anyone who travels a lot, or is concerned that air lines contribute 2% of the man-made CO2 released into the atmosphere.

And what discussion of CO2 would be complete without talking about cellulosic ethanol? :) Another great article that seems to be able to get even people with zero understanding of cleantech (like me) up the curve into understanding what all this treethanol stuff is all about.

More reasons to be ashamed of being Canadian? Our intelligence services aren't perfect either, as this discussion about the inquiry around the Air India investigation discusses. The worst kind of imperfection? When we walk away having learned nothing.

And finally on a lighter note cicada's are very cool insects, only emerging every 13 or 17 years... with one brood showing up in parts of the midwest now... kinda' makes me want to hop on a plane and check it out.

Two weeks of running and I'm feeling great...

2007-06-14T09:37:00.001-04:00

So, I got my body-fat composition numbers back a couple of days ago... it's added more motivation (well that and the second test in 6 weeks!) to keep up with the new healthy eating/working out plan.

So far, I've got to say I'm feeling great and have lost a little weight. Still a long way to go before I'm ready for my next race, but I think I should be in shape for the Tahoe marathon by the end of September.

Tip for getting type-A's to keep working out? A friend and I both picked up new Garmin Forerunner GPS watches... the idea is that we can share our run data between each other as a way to motivate one another (i.e. he's running faster AND farther than me? Time to get out for the next run...) and so far so good. I'll let you know how it goes. Though, one note: the Garmin software is incredibly bad. So bad it's amazing they actually shipped it. Their website, MotionBased isn't much better, and has an interface designed by a war criminal. It's surprising that there've been literally years of work that've gone into building these pieces of software that look like pre-alpha stuff to me.

BUT... aside from the crummy software, the watches work well enough, and the software is AT LEAST good enough to view and share your workouts with someone. Fingers crossed they hire a good product manager to redo their software, though...

Why do Canadians still pay long distance?

2007-06-14T09:31:00.001-04:00

In this age of VoIP, why is it that Canadians still pay long distance charges within the country? Each of the local telco's has a coast-to-coast network, with termination points all over. Bell and Rogers are loudly proclaiming free calls amongst their subscribers across the country. Clearly there's no incremental cost difference between a local and long distance call any longer (within the country), and yet, our operators feel free to gouge us for these calls.
There was a time (and I'd guess it's still true) that it was cheaper to call from the US to Japan than to Canada, and I'd guess that the CRTC hasn't given the operators any incentive to change the nearly-usurious termination charges that have lead to this.
On the mobile side of things, T-Mobile USA's myFaves calling plan allows a subscriber to pick 5 numbers across the US and call them for free at any time. It doesn't matter if the number's local, long distance, land line or mobile. Why not? Because the costs don't really matter any more... T-Mobile realized this and created a plan that works.

What's Rogers done in Canada? Created an obvious knock-off plan that includes only local calls. Why? I guess they're afraid of kids off at school calling their parents back home without paying for it.

What country is the Tour De France starting in?

2007-06-08T09:24:00.001-04:00

Not a trick question... this year it's starting in London, in Trafalgar Square on July 7. Aparrently one of 5 or 6 times in the long history of the Tour that it's not started in France.

Anyone got suggestions on where to go to watch? :)

Chinwag party - London, July 5

2007-06-08T09:22:00.000-04:00

via Vecosys

Chinwag, Adobe, Channel 4 and Purple are throwing a 2000+ person party at Imperial College Union in South Kensington, London on July 5. Should be a great way to get out and meet the London web/tech/new media scene.

More info and registration here.

Come out if you're in town!

In London in June?

2007-06-06T08:22:00.000-04:00

I'm speaking at the Library House Essential Web '07 event on June 27. Swing by if you're in town.

Click to comment by PostReach

2007-06-05T13:02:00.001-04:00

Cool feature, awesome demo video :) Check it out...

2 things I hate about Chapters.indigo.ca

2007-06-01T13:21:00.000-04:00

Two basic things, at that...

I was looking for the book Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis. It's got the apostrophe in the title. If you search for the book on chapters.indigo.ca, it won't return the book... it'll show the audiobooks only.

If you search for "Liars Poker" (the wrong title) it'll find the book. Okay, so the book's title is incorrectly entered in the book database, but it doesn't take a lot of fuzzy search magic to realize that a search for "Liar's Poker" should probably return "Liars Poker", yeah?

The second? It always manages to forget my stores... It's in theory a great idea: tell the site which bookstores are near you, and it'll always show you the number of copies in stock for whichever book you're looking at. In theory. In practice it tends to forget the stores you've selected every now and again... grumble...

Amazing TED demo

2007-05-31T16:04:00.001-04:00

Blaise Aguera y Arcas of MSN Live Labs giving an awesome demo of Seadragon and Photosynth. Just watch it. Really. Watch it.

Given that I'm reading a magazine in Zinio right now... I *really* want to see the Seadragon technology get released and used elsewhere... like in Zinio :)

The Ignorance of Crowds

2007-05-31T08:36:00.001-04:00

I was reading JP's blog, and noticed that Nick Carr's written a new article for Strategy-Business.

Always one to pick an inflammatory title, the new one's called The Ignorance of Crowds. Unlike some of his other writing, though, I'm inclined to wholeheartedly agree with this one. Carr talks about the differences between the open and closed source development processes, talking quite specifically about Eric Raymond's seminal work, The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Basically Carr suggests that the bazaar model of development isn't the best fit for innovation. As Carr says,

The open source model has proven to be an extraordinarily powerful way to refine programs that already exist - Linux, for instance, is an elaboration of the venerable Unix operating system, and the open source Firefox browser builds on Netscape's old Navigator - but it has proven less successful at creating exciting new programs from scratch.

It's telling that the majority of open source projects (if Sourceforge is any indicator) are typically run by one or two project founders with very few other contributors. Looking at Firefox as a case study for a job done well, it seems that it's the combination of the core benevolent dictatorship (stewardship?) of the Mozilla Corporation combined with the power and diversity of the community that have made Firefox successful.

So, the community's great at debugging things, and great at incremental development and iterating on code over time. What else? The bazaar model of development works seems to work well for projects that have heavy porting requirements: developers are great at scratching their own itches (wasn't that he whole point of the birth of open source?), and not being able to run a cool app on your computer is definitely an itch worth scratching.

What else?

What are the tradeoffs that come with open sourcing a development project? Is Mozilla the best example of a joint community/corporate development structure, or are there others we can learn from?

Carr's article's a great starting point for beginning to understand the new production model that's beginning to emerge... and the management model that needs to emerge to support it. As for me, I've just got a hundred new questions in my head.. :)

Never. Missing. Another. Workout.

2007-05-27T18:00:00.000-04:00

So, let me start this with a little disclosure:

I've been doing a horrible job keeping up the running and other workouts for a few months now
By horrible job, I mean I think I went for a run a week or two ago.
Doing this has caused me to - as Hans might say - "fat out"
I woke up this morning ill and coughing up phlegm... I'm sure that was great for my breathing...

With that in mind, I still went to Ottawa this weekend for the National Capital Marathon Weekend, to run the half marathon.

First, a bit about Ottawa: this town has spirit... a little too much Senators spirit at the moment, but spirit nonetheless, and everyone was out and cheering in full force... even in the rain. Even Mike and I spent an hour and a half cheering on the 10k runners on Saturday. Go Ottawa!

Now, about that run... for a guy that's fatted out, and who's not been terribly diligent about workouts recently, I was amazed that I was doing a little faster than a 2:00 half-marathon pace for the first 13 km. Then the cramps began.

For the next 8.1k I had to stop 2-3 times a kilometer to nurse the shooting pains in my leg. It's one of those tricky things... think of pain on a 1-10 scale. If the pain gets above 8, you're toast... it's going to hurt like hell, and it's not easily going to stop. So, when you feel around a 6 or 7, you've got to walk (like a sucker... as all those amazingly cheerful spectators cheer you on... for the record, I looked at my feet) for a few minutes. It's also deceptive: you start running, get back to a nice comfortably fast pace with an easy stride and then out of nowhere the pain starts again. This isn't cool.

Another thing about Ottawa: the people doing the race (from O-town or not) are super friendly. During one of my forced walking breaks a nice lady ran past me, turned around and said, "You do!" I stood puzzled for a minute and realized that I was wearing a Nike Run TO tshirt that had "Who runs this town?" written on the back. I assured the kindly lady that this was sweet of her... but untrue. Either way, she got me to grit through the pain for another couple hundred meters.

Another lady around the 1.1km mark came up behind me and tried to fire me up "You're almost there!" she said. "I'm not tired at all... I've got muscle spasms from hell." She'd been through the same last year and sympathetically pulled me along with her. She was even friendly once I explained that my lack of training was causing this (i.e. this was definitely a self-inflicted wound).

I made it another 300m, where I had the spasm of a lifetime. I nearly fell to the ground in pain, clutching my leg. A super friendly medic quickly rode over to me and asked me if it was my calf or my quad. "The worst: both... So I can't stretch it out," I said. On came the latex gloves and he spent the next ten minutes (yes, I looked at my watch) massaging my calf, just so I could limp the last half-mile to the finish line. He rocks.

Oh, so when'd I finish? I think my chip time was like 2:35 or something... pretty bad. Not that the 2:00 I was on track for was particularly good, but wasn't too embarrassing for a guy who'd not trained at all.

Anyway, the shaming's got me motivated, if nothing else: no more missed runs, bikes, swims, or dates with the weight-rack. The goal's to get back in shape by September, maybe do a triathlon, but definitely run the Scotia in September, and get in Boston-qualifying shape in the next four or five years. As much as I admire the elite marathoners, I'd rather have a triathlete's body... the point is that I've finally been shamed into doing something about it.

See you on the trails.

Discovery ISN'T a problem on mobile!

2007-05-16T13:38:00.000-04:00

I've been in a lot of meetings recently with people in the mobile industry. We've spent a lot of time trying to understand just why mobile is as bad as it is. There's one thing I've been hearing from a lot of sides... it's the idea that mobile data service adoption has been held back because of the "discoverability problem".

What is the discoverability problem? The basic idea is that people can't find the cool services that exist on mobile because the interface is too bad. It's too hard to navigate from the home screen of your phone to your browser, and then hard to find most things once you've got your browser open.

Some operators even go so far as to point out "when we drop something right on to the BlackBerry home screen, people click on it."

Admittedly, there is this problem of getting your app/service above the noise floor, and with Plan Q, the company that I'm working on starting, some of my colleagues are thinking of how we can address this problem, but I've also got a contrarian view I'd like to test with you: The discoverability problem isn't real.

Huh? Well, why don't people use all sorts of cool mobile applications? There aren't any. Or at least not many.

Operators will tell you that putting things on their homedecks greatly increases the click-through (and hence discoverability) of applications... which argues that they can help solve the discoverability problem. But this sounds a whole lot like the early days of the Internet, doesn't it? There wasn't much interesting stuff out there (save webcams overlooking beaches in Hawaii) and so portals like Yahoo! were created. Portals on the web solved the discovery problem on the Internet back in the late 90's. As the Internet grew, the portals took on a different role: helping separate out the good sites from the rest. Back then, it was all about the portal. Remember when your broadband provider used to ship you a custom version of their browser that took you to their "rich media portal"? So... um... how's that business model working out these days?

RIM created an incredibly strong mobile brand around BlackBerry because it was incredibly useful, and it spread by word of mouth. The same was true of YouTube, Facebook and all the other social apps we're using. So why should we believe that it's any different on mobile?
When was the last time you used a website that was so mindblowingly cool that you told a friend about it? Now, when was the last time you used a mobile app that was similarly cool? What we're missing in mobile isn't a slicker homedeck or a more personalized home screen on your phone... we need insanely great apps that get you excited enough to share them with your friends...

The other stuff'll sort itself out.

Booq : Great product. Awful service.

2007-05-15T22:08:00.000-04:00

I've got a Booq Folee XM laptop bag... perfect fit for my MacBook Pro, super comfortable, and has lots of space to store all the stuff I lug with me when I travel (display adaptors, power adaptors, sunglasses, spare battery, a book or magazine, passport, ipod, etc.).

So what's my gripe? The bag managed to get a tear in it ... all that wonderful ballistic nylon seems to have held up, but one of the seams hasn't.

I sent Booq an email, and after waiting about a day, got an email telling me that I'd need to send them a copy of a receipt to have them even consider warranty service. Who keeps the receipt for their laptop bag for over a year? Not me. It's got a 5 year warranty, and the product hasn't been in the market for much more than a year!

Anyway, the folks at CPUsed were incredibly nice, and managed to find and fax my receipt to me. I sent it and (per Booq's request) a pair of pictures of the bag, and the damage to it along to Booq.

So... you'd figure they'd see the failure pretty clearly, and then send me a new bag? Nope. They want me to ship at my expense a pretty large laptop bag back to them (and a not-cheap-bag at that), and then if they decide it is considered under warranty, they'll ship it back to me el-cheapo class. Recall that I already sent them pictures and proof of purchase of the bags... shouldn't this be enough?

Anyone else think this is abysmally poor customer service?

Let's compare this to the good folks at Acme. I've got one of their bags as well. I had a problem with a strap once. Sent them an email, and no questions asked, received two replacement straps, couriered to me within a couple of days.

So:

Acme = Great Product + Great Service

Booq = Great product + Awful Service

I almost feel bad for having recommended the Booq bags to so many friends... If they could just add great service to an awesome product, they'd be a no-brainer Tumi-killer for laptop bags.

Ideas aren't worth much

2007-05-15T19:33:00.001-04:00

Recently I've had two friends of mine begin the process of starting companies... and while I'm thrilled that they're doing this, I'm more than a little wary about the perceived value of their ideas...

So, one friend is working with a sibling on a startup. The friend's thought a lot about building a startup in the past (and has her own consultancy) so is definitely ready to give this a world. Her sibling, though, has a bit of a confused view of the value of the idea. Basically, the company is YouTube for a particular vertical, with an e-learning spin on it. It's a pretty cool idea, and I'm pretty eager to see what happens with it.

The problem? The founder here is so paranoid about his idea that he's refused to show it off to potential customers to get feedback on this. I think my friend's managed to get him past this recently... but you get the idea.

The other friend is working on a cool Internet service for the healthcare space. It's a cool idea, and he's got it in trials already, and the feedback so far seems fantastic.

The problem here? He's worried that VCs might copy his idea and is bothered that they don't sign NDAs. Now, while I can think of one particular Canadian VC that DOES copy people's ideas and build companies around these ideas... they're NOT a good VC. Good VCs have lots of deals to choose from : They don't want to build your idea. If they like the space, they'll invest in it... and while that means they may invest in one of your competitors, they're unlikely to steal your idea to start and build a new company: they're better off using the time to go and find other companies they want to invest in.

Guy Kawasaki's got a great quote (I hope I don't misquote him too badly): If you've got a good idea, five people are already working on it. If you've got a great idea, ten people are already working on it.

Let's think about this : we all read the same papers, blogs, and magazines. We all go to the same conferences and talk to the same people. Do you really think that the core idea is something someone else hasn't? It's pretty unlikely.

So what differentiates? Team. Business model. Structurally unfair advantages (i.e. "my entrenched competitors can't do this, and here's why..."... and it's got to be a business reason, not a technical one).

I've felt this way for a while, but recently I've been working on starting a new company. Many friends keep asking "can you talk about what you're doing, or is it all hush-hush?" Most are pretty surprised when I reply by telling them all about it, or just forwarding a slide deck that goes pretty deep into what we're doing.

Most are even more surprised when I talk to people that work for potential competitors and tell them what we're up to.

Why would I do that? Well, for the first part, the feedback we can get to make the company stronger is worth more than any risk of someone "stealing the idea"... and as far as competitors? They're not stupid. They'll see what we're doing soon enough, if they're not already thinking about it ... I'd rather tell someone there why I think we'll win... and maybe they'll decide to come and join us!

So there you go... my quick thoughts on ideas and their value. Don't get me wrong, a fleshed out business plan, team, customer validation, partnerships, etc. All this stuff has real value... but the paragraph pitch? Worthless.

I'd love to hear what other people think about this. It's not just me ... right? :)

The Economist on Toronto

2007-04-28T09:55:00.001-04:00

So, post-run Saturday mornings have turned into a reading time for me, typically with The Economist on the list. Being in London shortly, with a weekend stay I thought I'd check out the city guide to see if there was anything particularly interesting to hit.

What'd I discover? It turns out the city guides are actually pretty interesting, and comical at times.

So, let's quickly compare London and Toronto, shall we?

London

The strongest relationships are forged after work—be that in a pub or at an informal evening meal. The line between work and private life is not as clearly delineated as in America, and the British tend to socialise with colleagues quite regularly. Drunken behaviour on a Friday evening will be laughed off the following Monday, and in some cases is quite the norm.

and

Midday drinking has declined, but it is still normal to have a glass of wine or a beer, with food or without.

Toronto

Once the working week is over, Torontonians value their free time. Important meetings are not typically scheduled for late on Friday afternoons, and you should not try to set up meetings at weekends.

and

Unless your host indicates otherwise, stick to sparkling mineral water during a business lunch; midday meals here tend to be dry.

and

There is a tendency to keep business and private life firmly apart. Don't, therefore, expect to be questioned about your family or recent holiday, or to be invited for post-work drinks.

YIKES! We are known for being boring people that can't have a drink with lunch, have any real interest in the people we're doing business with, or any desire to socialize with them?!

Now, as a general fan of breakfast meetings, I'm not keen on the Brits' distaste for it, or Oscar Wilde's claim that "only dull people are interesting at breakfast," but I'll take it over what we get pegged as, any day.

The worst slam about Toronto (and one that's hard to disagree with, I think) is "Risk-taking and unconventional thinking do not tend to be the norm. In general, expect your business contacts to be cautious, and to value organisation and detail."

It's hard to treat generalizations as anything more than just that, but while I love Toronto, I have a hard time disagreeing with any of this... and that's a sad thing.

Of course, there's also this gem "Many Canadians nurture both inferiority and superiority complexes about America. Tread carefully."

On facebook, from Uncyclopedia.

2007-04-22T17:58:00.001-04:00

Facebook is a mutation of the LiveJournal virus that infects people who consider themselves "way too cool" to have a Myspace. Its precise origins are unknown, but it has been hypothesized that the Facebook mutation occurred after the LiveJournal virus was exposed to a form of delta-radiation known as Internet pretention. It is mainly intended for clinically depressed teenage wanabees, and co-morbidity with the MySpace virus is fairly consistent.

Check it out at Uncyclopedia.

Vista activation, still broken.

2007-04-21T12:56:00.001-04:00

I'm not generally against the idea of software activation: If I paid for your software, and you need to be able to confirm that this is true... okay, fine. (Not a fan, but not violently opposed.)

Well... I was, right up until 5 minutes ago. I had to launch Vista (in Parallels on my Mac) to backup my BlackBerry. Windows started to complain that my version of Vista wasn't genuine, etc. and took me to a website where I could confirm the validity of my license (or whatever).

The site was totally useless, and gave a 6+ step process including running some other app, copying it's output to the clipboard, going to another site, finding the LOCAL tech support resource for Microsoft, pasting the results into a form there...etc. This looks like a massive hassle.

For the record, my copy of Vista? Given to me by Microsoft, box and all... I doubt the folks in Mountain View are handing out bootleg copies of Vista, and I sure haven't changed anything in Parallels in the last several weeks, so ... what gives Microsoft?