Stewtopia

10 tips for meeting people at industry events

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date February 8, 2007
2 Comments on 10 tips for meeting people at industry events

My friend Andrew Chen has posted his thoughts on meeting people at conferences. Great list if you are in the mood to meet folks in your industry. Here are a few of the points:

Use pre-conference time wisely
Arrive early for some 1:1 time
Sit next to interesting people, and introduce yourself
Bring business cards, and ask for business cards

Some of these things might appear dead obvious, but you would be surprised how many people don’t follow them. Fact is, even if you are shy about meeting folks, other people are as well. Keep in mind, the main reason why people attend these events is to meet people.

Andrew, btw, just moved to Silicon Valley from Seattle. He’s an Entrepreneur in Residence at the VC firm, Mohr Davidow Ventures on Sand Hill Road. Sounds like a dream job to me! If you’re looking to get a company off the ground or join a startup, he might just be the guy to talk to.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ll be in Palo Alto this weekend and spending a little time in San Francisco on Monday and Tuesday.

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Apple

Steve Jobs thinks DRM is pointless

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date February 6, 2007

Wow… here’s something I thought I’d never see.

Steve Jobs posted on the official Apple blog, errr, Apple’s press release area a letter entitled “Thoughts on Music.”

Basically, Steve boils it down to 3 possible futures.

1. Stay the course with DRM.
This doesn’t really work for the music companies as they still sell most of their music on unprotected CDs. DRM really only hinders the sale of music on iTunes and other players as folks don’t like being locked in.

2. Apple licenses Fairplay
This doesn’t work for the music companies because ultimately when more companies have access to the DRM, DRM becomes less effective.

3. DRM goes away.
I’m still shocked about this one. You can buy music from anyone and play it on any device. Ultimately, Apple still has the advantage here as they sell the number one player.

So, the big question is why did Steve post this?

Here are some possibilities:

European bans on DRM will affect Apple’s business.
A free market for music would help, not hinder Apple’s music business. Apple doesn’t have 100% player market share, so in theory, they could sell more music. Apple could, in theory, sell more iPods.
iPod battery life would increase. DRM sucks batteries dead because of the additional horsepower required.
DRM is a bad user experience and Steve knows it.

Ultimately, I hope this has some affect on the state of DRM and isn’t just a power play to garner consumer sympathy for Apple’s dilemma.

[via TUAW]

General

Community Next – this weekend

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date February 5, 2007

Sorry, faithful readers for my long departure. I’ve been buried under a few projects. Hopefully, I will be posting more regularly very soon.

In the mean time, I’ll be attending the Community Next conference this weekend at Stanford. If you are at the conference or in the Bay Area and would like to meet up, drop me a line at randy@boxbe.com.

Apple Conferences Home Entertainment HTPCs Macintosh Macworld

Macworld 2007

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 10, 2007

Just a few quick general impressions from the show today.

iPhone and AppleTV

First, iPhone and AppleTV are two huge new platforms for Apple to develop and deserved the spotlight today. That said, not really being able to touch or to truly get a “live” demo of the iPhone was a bit of a bummer. I guess this is why Apple usually doesn’t release products that aren’t done.

[Jan 10, 2007 – David Pogue gets a hands on with the iPhone – “Typing is difficult”

The AppleTV seems to be on the surface of things a great platform for Apple to develop. That said, I think they may need to do some convincing to those of use with HDTVs. While photos look great on this device, video was …lacking. Maybe it’s the fact that I was looking at a 42″ HD set from less than 3 feet away, but video looked kind of horrible. I’m not sure if it is the device or the video, but man, it didn’t look good.

Fanboy Whining

No Macworld would be complete without a little complaining. I know we’ll see it soon, but I really, really wanna see what Leopard looks like. I get that two big products were introduced today, but what’s shipping from today? Typically, we get a little software to play with before the hardware ships, so I’m bummed that we didn’t get iLife ’07 today. I suspect that it is tied to the features in Leopard we haven’t seen yet.

Finally

From a visit to Macworld perspective, Macworld is pretty boring. Folks at home are getting as much of a hands on experience as we are at the show. However, the AppleTV and iPhone launch are the most significant new directions we have seen from Apple in years. Exciting times, indeed.

More pictures from the show

Apple Consumer Electronics Features iTunes Microsoft Portable Entertainment Rumors

Twas the Night Before Macworld

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 8, 2007
4 Comments on Twas the Night Before Macworld

Twas the night before Macworld when all through the town
No MacBook was mooing nor turning brown

At Moscone, nerds were queuing with care
in hopes that Saint Steve would soon be there.

Games Microsoft Social Media Xbox

Xbox Achievements are wildly successful

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date January 5, 2007

So says an article today on GameDaily
It’s kind of funny how people can succumb to something as simple as points and collecting. I feel pressure to beat my friend Charlie on Xbox Live despite the fact that he is a more avid gamer than I am. While I haven’t gone as far as getting the Japanese version of games like the article described (hmmmmm…..), I have rented games like John Madden Football due to their extremely easy to get achievement points, even though I don’t like sports related games.

The point is that the meta-game of Xbox Achievement Points in some ways is more interesting than the real game.

Why do people do this?

Gears of War developer describes the fanaticism:

“It’s nerd cred, man!” says Cliff Bleszinski, lead designer at Raleigh, North Carolina-based Epic Games, whose tactical third-person shooter Gears Of War is one of the hottest Xbox 360 titles around. He was skeptical when Microsoft first informed developers that they would need to participate in the program, but no longer.

“It’s so clever,” he says. “I mean, it’s just a score. You may say it can’t be used for anything, but gamers use them for pride. They’re pride points! You can compare it to the feeling you get when you pull up to a restaurant in a Lamborghini. People go, ‘Oooo, he must be somebody.’ In the virtual world of gaming, points create that same sense of rank and envy, and that’s why gamers have latched onto them. I read that people are picking up the Burger King Xbox games just so they can score additional points. If that doesn’t prove how well this program is working, nothing does.”

The first hit is free

As I’ve mentioned in the past, the gaming mechanism of collecting is very powerful. If given a choice between playing a game on the Wii and playing on the 360, I’d always choose the 360. Sure, the graphics are better on the 360, but it’s the points, man, the points. Gotta… beat… Charlie… I’m never gonna beat Darren, though, he’s more obsessed than I am.

I’m an addict and apparently, I’m not alone.

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[via Slashdot.org]

Tags gamification

Consumer Electronics Games

A Merry Christmas, Indeed

Ok, they weren’t both for me, but add a TMX Elmo, and I may have had all the hot gifts for Christmas in my trunk.

Loving the Wii

The PS3 was for my brother-in-law, but the Wii (or Wheeeeeeee! as we said over the holidays) was all for me. I don’t want to join the choir in the universal praise the Wii has been getting, but wow! It’s pretty spectacular when you can hand any high tech device to someone who isn’t a gadget nerd and they can immediately use it.

This isn’t to say that the Wii isn’t without faults, but as a first generation device (I guess this counts as a first gen device), the level at which this game system just works is nothing short of amazing.

That said, game developers, you have your work cut out for you. While Wii Sports was spectacular, other games were spectacularly difficult for non-gamers, or even hard core gamers. I’ve found that by turning down the sensitivity on the Wii-mote, it tends to work a bit better for me.

It’s just fun

While the graphics fail to compare to the PS3 or the Xbox 360, we had a lot of fun going bowling, playing tennis and hitting the ball out of the park in baseball. I even had fun playing golf! I can’t emphasize the fun part enough. Often, games feel like another task to complete or a skill to acquire, and frequently feel more like work and less like a game.

Clearly, I can’t recommend this system highly enough to non-gamers, but the Wii also fits as a “supplemental” game system (Wii60 anyone?) for so-called “hard-core” gamers.

Downloads Features

Cool Tools – PicLens

This a very simple plugin for Safari that makes full screen slideshows from folders on Flickr and most of the other major photo sites. Nicely implemented and a great use of screen space.

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General

Darfur Wall

There were a lot of good speakers and 5 minute presentations at last night’s Ignite Seattle, but one that stuck with me in particular was Jonah Burke’s Darfur Wall project.

From O’Reilly Radar:

Jonah Burke left Microsoft to found the The Darfur Wall with his father and brother a couple of weeks ago. If you’re not aware Darfur is in a crisis. The Burkes have created a novel website for collecting money. There are 400,000 subdued numbers on the site; each time a dollar is donated a new number is lit. All of the monies go to Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children and others. In just 21 days, they have raised $5052 from 445 donors. Buying a number is fast and easy; consider it. (Blog).

When I look for donations to make during the holiday season, I always try to look for both local and global causes. In some ways, this accomplishes both. Helping someone locally who is trying to affect change globally seems like a perfect mix.

Jonah – I didn’t get to meet you last night, but I really appreciate the work you are doing to help this troubled region.

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DirecTV Dish Network Downloads Features Satellite Radio Satellite Television Video

Ditching Cable has launched!!

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date November 28, 2006
1 Comment on Ditching Cable has launched!!

In the last few months, I’ve become more and more disgruntled with my cable service. The cost is high and I simply don’t watch enough television to justify the price. The video quality is poor and the DVR makes me not want to watch television. The selection of video on demand and movies on the “movie” channels are so poor that we also subscribe to Netflix to supplement our entertainment “needs.”

I looked hard at our television viewing habits and realized that most of the tv programming we watch is freely available over the air. There are some exceptions but by and large our “regularly scheduled programming” comes from the big networks. The value proposition is just not there.

While we do receive HD signals from our provider and that provider is increasing the amount of HD channels on the network, by and large, HD content comes from the major networks. Standard definition, or SD content is so compressed, legitimate download sources are starting to look better.

Crappy picture, lack of selection and high costs leave me with two options.

I could sit and complain about it.
Or, I could ditch cable.

Given all that, we decided to ditch cable and launch this blog to tell you about it.

If you’d like to know more about my little experiment, head on over to Ditching Cable, where I’ll be showing folks how easy it is to get rid of your cable subscription. It’s a little raw right now, but I’ll be spending some of my time fixing it up in the next few weeks.