Stewtopia

Scoble on the Zune

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date October 26, 2006

After watching Scoble’s Zune video yesterday, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the Zune, but I did know one thing for sure, the Zune pm lacked something… I know. It was enthusiasm. Man… I know Scoble isn’t MTV, but Microsoft, try sending the guy that makes me wanna buy this thing. Oy.

Bizhack thinks the Zune pm is a buzzword generator.

In any case, Scoble’s take on the “device” is here and it is pretty scathing.

As a big fan of the iPod and a long time Apple fan, I want the Zune to not suck. Competition is good and having someone nip at your heels keeps you on your toes.

Conferences Site News

Business Blogging Summit

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date October 24, 2006

This week, Seattle hosts the Business Blogging Summit from Wednesday, October 25th to Friday, October 27th. I’ll be on hand to pick up valuable tips from the folks that are there as well as meeting up with some people that I met back in July at Gnomedex.

I’m looking forward to meeting up with folks who are interested in social media, so if you are coming to the show, drop me a line so we can meet up.

Consumer Electronics Games Links

Links for Friday, October 20, 2006

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date October 20, 2006

Hands on with the Zune
A little fan boyish, but nevertheless, a first peak at the Zune player from Microsoft. Sharing sounds a little kludgy, but this is a 1st generation concept.

Another point of view on Warcraft
A tale of someone who isn’t addicted to Worlds of Warcraft. I’m not addicted either. I’ve never played it :-).

Google Yahoo

The state of online advertising?

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date October 19, 2006

If you think of Google (GOOG) and Yahoo! (YHOO) as bellwethers for online advertising, you have to be scratching your head today. Or maybe not. I think Yahoo! may be the canary in the coal mine.

Google

Ad Slowdown, What Slowdown? – GigaOm
Google revenues surge on ad strength – Financial Times
Google’s 3Q Profit Nearly Doubles – AP
Google revenues surge on ad – MSNBC

and from a few days ago

Yahoo

Dear Google Bulls: Yahoo! Comments still suggests a problem – Henry Blodgett
Dot com bubble 2.0 – Slashdot.org
Yahoo shares fall on 3Q profit decline – AP

So, we’ve got Om Malik in one corner (who just started his own venture backed, advertising funded blog network) saying online advertising is strong versus Henry Blodget (Web 1.0 cheerleader who helped inflate so many dot coms) who thinks that we might be heading into familiar territory.

So who do you believe? If there is one thing that I have learned from being in business on the net for the last 11 years, diversify your revenue streams. Ad sales is a cyclical business which means you have good years and you have bad ones. Ask CNET or Yahoo! who limped through the downturn in 2001-2004. Ask eBay, who didn’t have any problems during the bust, but who is currently buying its way into growing businesses.

God, I hate to say it, but I think I agree with Blodget…

Links

Links for Thursday, October 19, 2006

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date October 19, 2006

Om on Steam
Mr. Malik today talks about the baby steps that the gaming industry is taking into digital distribution. Steam is the digital distribution arm of Valve Software, makers of the popular Half Life series, and recently they have started distributing other game makers’ games.

Games, while heavily pirated online, would benefit greatly from pure digital distribution as Xbox Live seems to be proving. Valve seems to operate a somewhat “locked box” model like the closed system of the Xbox 360 and presumably the PS3.

Midsummer Night’s Virtual World
Interview with the Indiana University professor, Edward Castranova, who won a grant to create, “Arden: The World of Shakespeare,” online game. The idea behind the game is to create a virtual petri dish to study virtual worlds. Castranova wrote the book Synthetic Worlds last year and is the head of IU’s Synthetic Worlds Initiative. This doesn’t sound like the next WoW, but the study should be interesting.

Turning Social Networks into Dollars
CNET talks today about how social networks are devising ways to make money from their users through targeted advertising.

Mac LightScribe Software
So, unfortunately, if you already own one of these drives, it doesn’t look like this will help, but LaCie has created the first software to create LightScribe discs on the Mac. LightScribe, is a technology for CD burners that can burn an image on the top of discs that you burn. Pretty cool stuff and finally available for the Mac.

Downloads Links Video YouTube

Links for Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date October 17, 2006

PopSugar gets $5mm in funding from Sequoia
Blog network for â€œyoung, hip womenâ€ got a nice kitty from the folks at Sequoia. It looks like PopSugar’s main site has been growing a fair clip on their main blog (see graphic) and are doing a bit more than just blogging with a little bit of social networking thrown in. With women marrying and having kids later in life, this is a strong demographic that is under-served on the net.

UndoTV launches…kinda

Looks like Chris Pirillo and Leo Laporte are getting the band back together for one more show…or an online revival of the TechTV gang of old. The site also looks to be a hub for getting other folks involved uploading their own reviews and tech related content. Looks interesting, although, this could just be a channel on YouTube, so I’ll be curious to see how they differentiate the product.

Apple General

Nerd-tastic!

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date October 16, 2006

A bit of digression-

Here are pix from a couple of events that I’ve gone to recently.

Woz

woz.and.scoble.jpg

First, a couple of Friday’s ago, Steve Wozniak was interviewed on the UW campus by Robert Scoble (I say interviewed, but Scoble didn’t get a lot in edge wise). Woz is someone that I have always respected a lot because it has always seemed that he was a highly unlikely revolutionary. Money and fame hasn’t changed him as he seems to be as lovable a nerd as ever. Great stories from the man who brought computers to the rest of us.

Woz Trivia – apparently, Woz was once the highest scoring player of Gameboy Tetris so many times in Nintendo Power magazine that they asked him to stop submitting his scores.

Hopefully, Scoble puts his video up soon so you can watch this highly animated talk.

John Hodgman

Second, John Hodgman visited Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company to promote his book, Areas of My Expertise, going into paperback. Readers may be familiar with his Daily Show work or maybe his Apple ads as the lovable dufus, the PC. If you get a chance to see John on his book tour, I highly recommend it. His reading and routine are quite witty and his book is side-splittingly funny.

John is pictured with my friend, Suzi.

Apple iPod

Jobs’ saucy Newsweek interview

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date October 16, 2006

steve's-business.jpg Apparently, sex sells iPods, at least according to Steve Jobs quotes in this week’s Newsweek.

In celebration of the iPod’s fifth anniversary, Steven Levy sat down with Steve Jobs to talk about the appeal of the iPod and a bit about where the iPod is going. Two quotes really stuck out at me as being a bit off message for Steve, but maybe a signal of some new marketing coming down the pike.

First, when asked about the iPod’s cool factor waning due to overexposure, Jobs’ replied, “That’s like saying you don’t want to kiss your lover’s lips because everyone has lips.”

Um, ok.

Then towards the end of the interview when asked about sharing songs on the Zune, he comments:

It takes forever. By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left! You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable.

I suddenly understand why the iPod is so popular. It helps you get chicks.

Read

Consumer Electronics Sony

Sony Reader review roundup

Reviews in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal today confirm that the Sony Reader isn’t quite ready yet. Pogue liked it more than Mossberg, but both had reservations.

I saw the Reader back at CES this year and despite my own skepticism, really liked it. The screen was incredible, highly legible and much easier on the eyes than LCD. The technology the Reader is based on, e-ink, has been around for a few years, but there have been no consumer applications until now.

If you’re inclined, here’s a bit from the Times explaining how e-ink works:

Sandwiched between layers of plastic film are millions of transparent, nearly microscopic liquid-filled spheres. White and black particles float inside them, as though inside the world’s tiniest snow globes. Depending on how the electrical charge is applied to the plastic film, either the black or white particles rise to the top of the little spheres, forming crisp patterns of black and white.

In any case, the screen looked great and the device had a lot of promise. Sadly, many of the features (which aren’t core ebook features to most) are either poorly implemented or require Sony’s PC only software. The device, besides reading books from Sony’s store, will also read RSS feeds, pdf and Word files.

And unfortunately, there is the rub. The Reader will only read RSS feeds that Sony has pre-selected and the Reader will only update those feeds once a day.

Pdf files must be re-formated for the Reader to render them properly. From Walt Mossberg’s review:

But the Reader’s claim to display PDF documents proved hollow. In every PDF document I tried, the text was nearly unreadable and the text resizing feature of the Reader didn’t help. Sony concedes that PDF documents work well on the Reader only if they are created for the Reader’s screen size and resolution. But it includes no conversion software to make them fit.

Maybe I’m being too nit-picky. The Reader will fit exactly one of my needs – I read a lot of books, but I never know what I’ll be in the mood to read. The Reader will reduce a stack of books to the size of a paperback and works almost as well as the paper it replaces.

I think I’m still waiting until version 2.

Building Community

Links for Monday, October 9, 2006

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date October 9, 2006

Participation Inequality
Jacob Nielsen talks about how to increase participation on your site.

Different Online Social Networks Draw Different Age Groups
Showing off its incredible command of the obvious, IHT reports Saturday on a study from ComScore that MySpace and Friendster appeal to different age groups. In earlier news, ComScore also reports that the sun will go down tonight.

Google Social Media Video Yahoo YouTube

For Mark Cuban, history repeats itself

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date October 9, 2006

The first thing that I thought today was how strange it was that Mark Cuban had been calling Google “moronic” for thinking of buying YouTube. I don’t imagine that he was telling Tim Koogle that he was “crazy,” for buying his company, Broadcast.com, a company that Yahoo! would spend the next several years dismantling.

Mark’s definitely asking the right question as to whether this is a good deal for YouTube or not. After all, Broadcast.com, which arguably was more of a “real business,” (they had corporate customers, after all), wasn’t making any money and still got $5 billion. YouTube probably should have held out for a lot more money.

Ah, but those were bubble times and everyone thought that the future would come more quickly than it did. Who could have imagined that streaming video would suck so much? Aside – can you pause Real, QT or WMV streaming without waiting for 2+ mins for it to restart yet?

While the YouTube acquisition is similar to Yahoo!’s acquisition of Broadcast.com, I think there are two key differences. First, the iPod (and to a certain degree, the cell phone). Everyone has one (or both) and short form video excels on these devices. I know you can’t carry these YT videos around easily yet, but it’s coming.

Second, and more importantly, is the Class of 2009. If you live anywhere near teenagers, you may have noticed that there are a lot of them. The Class of 2009 (and the years surrounding them) is the largest graduating class in American history. These kids are already powering a lot of Web 2.0. They have always had a computer in their home and they probably can barely remember not being connected to the internet.

Google’s acquisition of YouTube is part of their bet on this upcoming generation of creators. It has taken us a long time, but we’re finally getting people off their butts and making them into content producers not just consumers. Mark Cuban helped lay the groundwork for this revolution and instead of pedantically nitpicking from the side lines, he should be cheering them on.

Now, let’s just hope they find a business model. :-)

picture by respulveda

Google

Yahoo

Woz

John Hodgman