Jason and Ryan on Boulder, CO.

Jason Mendelson and Ryan McIntyre of the Foundry group have a great post up on why they're glad they live and work in Boulder, CO.

Ben Casnocha's comment on the post is golden and gives both an alternative view from Silicon Valley and shows some of the hubris (sorry Ben, but you do live inside the bubble) common among the digiteri from The Valley.

I'm from Colorado. I grew up in Boulder County. I always thought things moved a little slow for me and eventually got hired by Apple in Cupertino. I moved to Los Altos, dead in the center of The Valley from 87 to 96. I remember thinking the first year 'finally, a place going at the same speed I am'. Then, after a year of the that life, I spent the next 8 years trying to figure out a way to get back to Boulder. I finally made it back and I'm very glad I did it.

Some of what Ben says is true. There's no doubt that there's more money and more overall opportunity for entrepreneurs in The Valley. It is, as Ben notes, a huge ecosystem geared toward supporting startups.

However, our little corner of the start up world, for someone who wants access to some big university talent, a rich culture, a world class sports town in Denver, an environment every bit as beautiful as NoCal, a great community of supportive startup people around them and has a desire to live a full life, it's hard to beat Colorado in general and Boulder in particular.

I also have to take a bit of issue with the comments on the weather and great food. I remember thinking 'where are the seasons?' when I first moved to The Valley. There was this tree in the parking lot of Tower Records at the intersection of San Antonio Rd. and El Camino Real that would go from green to sort of orange for a couple of weeks in the October, but that was about it.

We've got seasons.

And,, regarding the food...we've got The Kitchen, one of the best places to eat between either coast and pretty much any other type of the best kinds of food you would want like real Mexican, Ethiopian, Caribbean, Indian, Nepali, Tibetan, Middle Eastern, French, Italian, sushi (yea.. great sushi) and, of course, lots of organic fare and multiple natural food shopping markets not to mention a better steak then you'll find anywhere in The Valley, New York or Los Angeles.

You just can't beat Colorado, when it comes to steak, or Boulder, as a great place to start a company.

More on non-compete agreements

A few months ago, Bijan Sabet, a partner at Spark Capital blogged about how non-compete agreements, maybe, weren't such a good idea. It created a reasonable amount of gnashing of teeth in the blogosphere at the time. I agreed and relayed my own experience in a blog entry of my own here.

Apparently, Google just did a classic non-compete bait and switch on the Doubleclick folks they recently fired (about 300 of them) after acquiring the company.

Valleywag has the text of non-compete, which looks like this:

8. Covenant Regarding Competition. I agree that for a period of one (1) year after my employment with the Company terminates, I shall not (a) engage in any employment, business or activity that is competitive with the Company's businesses; or (b) solicit business from, do business with or render services to, in any capacity, directly or indirectly, any entity that is or was a Company client or customer within the last twelve months of my employment with the Company, for a purpose or in a manner that is in any way competitive with the Company's business. If, during or after my employment with the Company, I seek work elsewhere, I agree to provide a copy of this Agreement to any person or entities seeking to hire me before accepting employment with or engagement by any such person or entity.

9. Solicitation of Employees. I agree that for a period of twelve (12) months immediately following the
termination of my relationship with the Company for any reason, whether with or without cause, I shall not either directly or indirectly solicit, induce, recruit or encourage any of the Company's employees to leave their employment, or take away such employees, or attempt to solicit, induce, recruit, encourage or take away employees of the Company, either for myself or for any other person or entity.

You can make the argument that it won't stick, but apparently the employees who were fired are worried that it's Google and they don't want to risk crossing Google's legal department. Seems they felt compelled to look for work outside of their industry, following the demands of the non-compete Google asked them to sign, right before firing them.

If I look at my own business and imagine what I'd have to catch up on if I left for a year, frankly, I'd look at it long and hard and wonder if it was worth trying to get back in the game. Things just move too fast in the high tech world.

Now, this brings up some questions about Google's business practices I won't go into here, but more importantly, it makes clear how a big company known to enforce it's legal rights, can really screw up someone's life with a non-compete.

How an employee that was defined as unnecessary after an acquisition can be considered a threat to the business just acquired is beyond me. If they were so critical to the business, why have them sign a non-compete and then fire them?

Giving Google the benefit of the doubt, it's possible it wasn't their intent to lock someone up and then fire them, but the result was they did just that.

Locked em up, then locked em out.

And this underlines (several times) why non-compete agreements are, maybe, not such a good idea.

My personal version of TV's future

Soooo.... what is a home theater/video viewing system today anyway?

Is it a 27" Sony Trinitron with a a bulky 5 speaker surround sound system and a DVD player and a $79 a month cable bill?

I say: no more.

Here's my own personal version of the video future. I designed it just for me to be a sort of video cocoon.

The list of everything needed:

A dual core laptop ($600- Get an HP dv6000 at BestBuy)
A 2nd LCD screen -unnecessary, but I wanted it ($200- any will do, this is a 20" Samsung)
2 high quality studio monitors/speakers ($200- Mine ar Rokit5's by KRK from Guitar Center in Westminister, CO)
A projector ($650 for an Epson C77)
A USB 2 port mixer for the speakers ($100- Guitar Center)
Cables ($50)
Paint for the wall (Movie Screen) ($20 at Home Depot)
Comfy vibrating seat ($99 from Office Max)
3 Misc. tables to hold the gear ($50 at Target)

Total cost (for everything): $1969.00

What do I get? a 10 foot screen that looks pretty good during the day and is just short of mind blowing when it's dark. If I wanted to, I could block the windows during the day, but what's the point when I only really watch TV and movies at night.

I also have two recording studio quality speakers 2 feet from my head on either side. Sound doesn't get much better than that.

The laptop can be anything. This is a Mac, but a dual core HP is $549 on sale at BestBuy right now. And you can play some awesome games you can't using a 'traditional' home theater setup. (note the Quake 4 Arena box on top of the speaker in the forefront of the picture- 10' of violent gore with the equivlent of 15 lb headphones blowing out your ears: Priceless). And, of course, all laptops play DVD's now, gratis. Need I even mention P2P/Bittorrent?

The projector? An Epson PowerLite 77C ($649 at Staples right now). And this is a BIG ( 3 lbs!).

In the next 9 months you'll see things like this:



Or this:




And even this:





These aren't mock ups. This stuff is real. The tiny projectors are supposed to come in later this year for around $300 and project 2000 lumens (my 'big' one does 2200 lumens) on a screen size up to 8 feet across.

So, I look at this setup, and what's coming around the corner and I have to wonder how long before the movie theaters just seize up and go out of business. (other than the ones that get that movie going can be a social thing.. but they are few and far between).

I also have to wonder if the video distributers of today like CableCo/MSOs and Satellite TV providers have a chance.

Mix all this with services like my own Medioh and others like Hulu, Joost and Veoh, not to mention all the networks doing their own internet offerings (and things like South Park putting EVERY episode ever made online, free), well, whats the point of paying for cable?

Who's going to stop the Major Motion Picture studios from doing what SouthPark is doing? Why, if you're creating a great show like, say, FireFly, do you have to worry about 'getting cancelled' if you can put the show on the internet, charge for access (or give it away free with commercials), bring in LESS money but KEEP more of it? I mean, why wouldn't you do that? Why keep supporting the gatekeepers when you can free your content for more people (and more net income for your company?)

Oh...The Screen: I simply painted a nice big 'sliver screen' on the wall. Cost of $20 (of which I only used about $3 worth) of 'Silver Screen' colored paint from Home Depot. And yes, that picture shows just what it looks like: A big square painted on the wall. Nothing more needed.

And this is about the most I could spend to do this. Everyone I know already has a computer (usually a laptop). Few need the sound system levels I like (although at $300 total, why not?), so, in reality, all you need is your existing internet connection and that $650 projecter and you're set.

I talk to my developers (really anyone under 25) and none of them own a standard television set. They use, yep, their computers.

This isn't just a trend, it's where everything's going.

Yes, there are likely to be people that want a TV in the kitchen while cooking dinner, but why not just plop down your laptop on the counter (wireless, battery, no cables) and watch it there? I do. Why NOT you?

This will take time of course. Games, like Rock Band, are still tied to consoles. And innovations like the Wii will take time to migrate to a laptop (Wii like controls? hmmm.. maybe not that long).

However....I still think internet access with low cost projectors and laptops (or just the laptops or any other 'internet enable device with a screen') are going to be more than a simple and easy way to replace your TV and cable bill, they're the real future of TV. Passive AND interactive.

Want an invite to the medioh! closed beta?

Well, look no further.

medioh! is bringing in a few folks for a limited time to play with our system and give us feedback.

If you'd like an invite, send me an email (scott@medioh.com). I'll blast one off to you. Just put the word invite in the title so I find it fast.

What is it? Think: Long tail video aggregator. Another way to put it is a guide to all the video on the internet across thousands of sites with 10's of millions of videos.

We've created some API's for developers that allows you to integrate medioh! video services into your site (and we're adding more capabilities each week).

In the near future, we'll be adding the tools needed to fine tune your 'view' of the internet video world and the ability to integrate it into your website, onto your cell phone or beamed onto your TV screen.

Heard of those internet video capable and RSS enabled TV's, Blu-ray players, set top boxes and wifi enabled hand held devices coming later this year and early next year? Yea... in addition to your business or organizations website, that's where we plan to be.

Later this year, look for medioh!studio, a set of tools that make it simple to publish your own video content. Use it with the filtering tools to get just the right mix of content for your audience, mix them together and you've got your very own television network! (or more accurately, your own custom video network tweaked specifically for your audience that any internet linked device can access). Cool stuff.

Get a peek at the future early... ask me for an invite and check out the medioh! internet video guide today.

Are you a startup personality? (SE+NS+C)*CD*(n)BSC

I've been trying to figure this one out for awhile now: What are the personality traits that make a startup guy?

Why me? Why am I attracted to this life? Is it a disease, a curse or a gift? Frankly, at different times, it's all three.

I've decided that it's really a a specifically balanced combinations of personality traits and genetic makeup; it's this particular 'entrapenuer' combination that seems to attract people long term to starting companies. Usually over and over. I'm also reasonably sure it's not all that complex.

I see it being 5 main components:

Smart Enough (SE): Startup guys need to be smart, intelligence is important, but it's not the deciding factor. This is a weird balance thing. I'm not dumb, but I'm no genius either. I like to think I'm this special intellect, but I know I'm just above average (on a good day). I'll bet you know some pretty successful people that aren't entirely brilliant. I do. I also know some incredibly brilliant people that would make truly pitiful startup guys. There's a sweet spot here that's 'just right'. Usually not a rocket scientist, but not a career dish washer either. Smart enough.

New Stuff (NS): You're the guy with the new car, the new Mac Air (or whatever's hot of late) and you've been to the newest restaurant in town. You're just like that. Ahh.. something NEW.. gotta check that out. This, I think, is a genetic defect that worked against us through most of human history but now works in our favor. It's likely people who liked new stuff were killed off very early in life when we poked that new animal we found sleeping in the shade under that rock and it turned out to be a migrating saber tooth tiger. End of that genetic line. Now? People who are always up on the NS are likely to be the 'go to' guy about something new at work, at home or among our friends. Society morphs and negative traits become, well, useful. It's also why there are, likely, less of us (startup types) than everyone else. These traits were repressed for eons by the environment and are only recently proving valuable.

Curiosity (C): You've got to be curious about things that, frankly, you have no business screwing around with. (see above: Saber Tooth Tiger). This is similar to New Stuff, but 'in addition too'. They don't necessarily go together and you need them both to be a startup guy. I think curiosity tends toward grokking concepts and ideas more than 'stuff', but it's a closely related trait to NS.

Connecting Dots (CD): Very important trait. This is taking the three things above and making sense of stuff, ideas, concepts and the environment in ways other people don't think of. You synthesize ALL the time. Constantly. You can see how, for instance, a 100 million video's on the web scattered across thousands of sites could be aggregated into a video guide that captures the long tail of internet video. Build some filtering tools and viola!, you can now see that you've got something content owners can use to disintermediate the old school distribution channels like cable and satellite TV, or how a commodity hardware manufacturer can add a little cheap processing power (like an RSS reader) into their TV, Cellphone or gamebox and they can disintermediate the old distribution channels. Hell, you could even see how the old distribution channels out of panic and fear would buy your service to keep from being eaten alive by those uppity content and device makers (bastards!). Or maybe you're just noticing that going 23.5 MPH along 20th street in Denver let's you hit all the green lights, all the time. You do it all the time though, and you can't seem to stop it.

Bull Shiting/Charisma (BSC). Yep. Got it, Gotta Have It. Gotta Embrace it. The ability to Bullshit is pretty key to being a startup guy. Most importantly, the ability to BS yourself. You've got to be able to BS yourself into believing something no one else believes, first. Then, you need the ability to do that with people around you, unless you're planning on doing it alone, which isn't a good idea...and potentially down the road a bit with people you're trying to get investment from. Some call this being "Charismatic". There's some of that involved,but it's different... I think it's 60/70% ability to BS, 30/40% being charismatic.

In short: (SE+NS+C)*CD*(n)BSC where (n) is the level of BS and Charisma you can effectively muster.

Of course, I'm no expert and I'm just a indulging in bit of navel gazing here more than anything.

Hell, most likely this is just a bunch of bullshit.

How "Free" Permeates Everything, Even Art

Chris Anderson of "The Long Tail" fame has a new (old?) Meme: Free.

You can read it here. If you haven't already, you really should.

And if you don't buy the Free Meme (pun intended), look around. Music, Opensource software, even the world of street art you can see how giving away your art can create real financial gains.

Banksy, a UK based graffiti artist, has been creating clever street art for years. Effectively, giving away his art on the walls of buildings (among other things) all over the world. He's garnered so much adulation in the art world that his 'free' art is now worth 6 figures.

From Wikipedia:

On 7 February 2007, Sotheby's auction house in London auctioned three Banksy works, reaching the highest ever price for a Banksy work at auction: over £102,000 for his Bombing Middle England. Two of his other graffiti works, Balloon Girl and Bomb Hugger, sold for £37,200 and £31,200 respectively, which were well above their estimated prices.^[15] The following day's auction saw a further three Banksy works reach soaring prices. Ballerina With Action Man Parts reached £96,000; Glory sold for £72,000; Untitled (2004) sold for £33,600 - all prices being significantly above estimated values.^[16] To coincide with the second day of auctions, Banksy updated his website with a new image of an auction house scene showing people bidding on a picture that said, "I Can't Believe You Morons Actually Buy This Shit."^[17]

It get's better. Less than a year ago, this work (below) sold for over half a million dollars.

On April 27, 2007, a new record high for the sale of Banksy's work was set with the auction of the work 'Space Girl & Bird' fetching £288,000 ($576,000), around 20 times the estimate at Bonhams of London.^[20] On 21 May 2007 Banksy gained the award for Art's Greatest living Briton. Banksy, as expected, did not turn up to collect his award, and continued with his notoriously anonymous status.

If you create value, even when you're not trying to and you give it away for free, society will find a way to create value around it. Even if, in Banksy's opinion, your a moron for doing so.

1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars

This is just wrong.

In today's New York Times:

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report. Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

How can the land of the free be #1 in citizens in prison globally?

China: #2. Russian #3.

USA: #1.

Hell, 5 states spend more on prisons every year than they do on higher education.

How this founder found the right CEO

During the last 9 months I've had the 'happens more than you think' founders experience of bringing in the wrong CEO, and then bringing in the right CEO. It was an incredibly enlightening experience. What I learned is obvious in hindsight, and it's pretty simple, really, coming down to one don't and one do.

1) Don't put your trust in others judgment, implicitly, of a potential CEO's fit.

I love my investors. They're great people and I continue to communicate with them regularly and several of them still regularly give me great advice. In this particular case, my investors help in hiring my first CEO didn't work out very well.

This was largely my fault.

This fellow came highly recommended. However, my initial impression of him during our first meeting wasn't positive and I ignored my instincts. It wasn't that he wasn't competent, it was just that we didn't particularly like each other all that much. We had several more meetings and, still, the click wasn't there. But he'd been recommended by folks I trust. They'd been involved in many startup companies and matchedup founders and CEO's many times. My mistake was not listening to my own instincts and saying yes, let's bring him on, before I was sure it was a good fit.

When you're working in a startup company, and assuming you're still involved in the day to day, the person you bring in to run your company has to be someone you really click with. You don't need to agree on everything (it's likely better that you don't.. that way you'll have honest debates and solve problems more quickly with multiple brains), but you need to have an honest respect for each other's point of view. If one person doesn't have equal respect for another persons POV, that's a recipe for trouble. Again: blind agreement on everything is bad, but respect is required.

I didn't do this with our first CEO hire. I'm sure he's the right guy given the right situation, but he wasn't the right guy for us.

2) Do trust your instincts & spent as much time as you need to to get a real feel for the candidate.

During the time things were going downhill with CEO #1, it was becoming clear that one of us wasn't going to stay. I had no idea if the person leaving would be me or him (he was the chosen guy my investors had brought in, afterall. I'd heard all the stories). So, I started talking to lots of people about what to do. Part of these discussions invariability turned to starting new companies.

I explored many potential options with alot of different people. One person, in particular, I really clicked with. We discussed a particular business idea and decided to explore things a little further. He brought in a third potential partner and we started fleshing out the idea in off hours. He was employed at a large local company so we met during the weekends and evenings. This went on or about 4 months with many meetings, discussions, disagreements, realizations and general getting to know each other over dinners, coffee's and beers.

During this time things came to a head at my existing company between CEO #1 and I. I came to the conclusion he wasn't going to leave and between the (perceived) support I assumed he had from the investors who brought him in and my "I'm liking this" rule falling way below 50%, I decided to make things easy for everyone and I offered my resignation which CEO #1 was quite happy to go with. My investors had a different take. To my surprise, they asked CEO #1 to resign and handed me back the keys to the car.

So, I had my company back.

Part of this process was my own realization that founders often find hard to come to and that my investors realized early on: I needed help to take the company to the next level. I'm really good at alot of things, in particular, I build great teams and great products. I'm great at getting things fleshed out and started up. I'm a good 'early early stage' CEO, but I'm not the guy who takes it to the next level. I realized that I'm merlin. But I'm not King Arthur. Maybe someday, but not now. In the meantime- every Merlin needs a King Arthur.

I brought this up with my 'other company' guys and the thought immediately entered my mind: Why not this guy I've been spending time with figuring out how to start a company? He has a deep understanding of my companies business (his bigco job was related to the same industry), he's trying to figure out how to start and run his own company, I loved the way he was going about it and, hell, I really like the guy.

The first time I brought it up with him was during a phone conversation that started out talking about the other company. I just out and out asked him: "would you consider coming on board at my current company as CEO?". He didn't even hesitate. He said he'd be honored. He's now our President and CEO.

Of course, I could still be wrong, but I really doubt it.

One really nice side effect was the growth of my circle of friends and associates that I can now call on for help and advice, and, maybe someday, as potential partners in other future ventures. This is something all successful entrepreneurs, I suspect, either know intuitively or, like me, have to have pounded into their tiny little brains through brute force. Either way, it's invaluable.

The simple and obvious lesson? Trust your initial instincts and spend the time to verify them. It may take a few months, but it's worth it. It'll save you and everyone else involved alot of headaches.

Legal spying and telco's

There is a point where you have to say: I don't care what good they did or could do, this evil they just now committed is enough of a reason to vote them out of office.

Allard helped: I expected it. He's at least doing what he thinks is right (regardless of how misguided). Still, he needs to go.

But this is wrong. Salazar ALSO helped: I didn't expect it. He really needs to go. More than Allard because he can't be trusted to do the right thing or follow his principles.

We need to swap out the congress. We start this election. It'll take a few more elections, but everyone who's there now, tainted by the stink of corruption, needs to go.

We need a fresh start.

Senate Approves Telco Amnesty, Legalizes Bush's Secret Spay Program

By Ryan Singel February 12, 2008 | 5:59:31 PMCategories: NSA

The Senate overwhelming voted Tuesday evening to legalize President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program and grant amnesty to the phone companies that helped out with the domestic spying..

The 68 to 29 vote is a major step in radically re-configuring 30 year-old limits on how the nation's spying services operate inside America's borders. The vote also deals a severe blow to civil liberties groups that are suing companies such as AT&T and Verizon for turning over millions of American's phone records to the government, and for helping the government wiretap American's phone and internet communications without a court order.

Boulder is the smartest city (again)

According to Forbes Magazine, Boulder is (2nd time in a row) 'The Smartest City in America'.

From the Denver Post:

The rankings were based on the percentage of adults 25 and older with at least a bachelor's degree. In Boulder, 53 percent of adults do. Ninety-three percent graduated from high school and 4 percent have a PhD.

Hopefully we won't get arrogant about it. I hate smart-ass cities.

Outlook? Anyone? Or: Gmail. The New Outlook?

As an experiment, I asked a bunch of people I know that are under 25 and not developers if they use Microsoft Outlook- the defacto email program of corporate america. The response I got was consistant.



U25: What?

Me: "You know... for email".

U25: "Is that new? I use Gmail (yahoo, hotmail)"- effectively: web based mail-it's all they use.

The ones who did know what Outlook was were developers and they didn't really answer when I asked the question, they just sneered.

In the startup world, everyone I know uses Google Domains and Gmail (we do).

Gmail. The new Outlook?

To patent or not to patent......

That is the question.

Startups have a devils choice to make when they create new products and services, especially if it's a new area where the process patent's applicable.

But should we do it?

Brad Feld doesn't much care for software patents. Others, such as Jason Haislmaier, a local IP lawyer, beg to differ.

I recently went to an intellectual property crash course for entrepreneurs that Jason gave to a packed room. Most of what he talked about I knew, but much of it had been forgotten over the years. It was enlightening.

Of course, I had to take into account the messenger. Jason makes his living creating IP value by doing things like helping guys like me to create patents. But, he made some excellent points.

He relayed a few stories about how, for instance, a company without much revenue recently raised 30 million in funding based almost solely on the value of one patent they held. And, of course, he pointed out a few things like the famous Amazon one click patent that, if nothing else, got Amazon substantial attention early in it's life that helped it garner the attention it needed to help build it's business.

Brad's post about BigCo's patent machines is true. I worked for Motorola and once spent a week offsite at a retreat with 20 other technologists from my divsion and 4 lawyers. We produced about 200 patentable ideas (many completely unrelated to our area of development 'but good anyway, let's write that one up too'). This team of lawyers (one of many) does nothing but draw out patents from engineering folks. They average 10% hit rates (200 applications = 20 actual patents). They put these patents into their arsenal (their word) and use them offensively to stop competitors from entering markets and defensively to cross license with other patent holders in markets they want to enter and, finally, to create revenue (over a billion dollars a year in license fees).

So, as a small startup, how do you not apply for any potential patent you can?

It's how the game is played.

Without them you're at a distinct disadvantage if you decide to enter a market that already has big players (especially if you're goal is to disintermediate those big companies). Case in point: Vonage. The VoIP provider scared the living bejesus out of the telco's and a tsunami of patent infringement lawsuits from the telcos quickly followed.

You're also at a disadvantage when it comes to funding for your company (as noted by Jason above) or when you're selling your company (when the buyer adds value to your company because of patents you hold that it can add to it's 'arsenal' when they buy you).

If you do file, you're perpetuating the evil use of patents to quash innovation (and software patents most definitively are used to quash innovation). In our world, an idea is good for a few years (almost always less than the 'life' of a patent). The primary use of a software patent, frankly, is the ability to threaten others to stop innovating (and competing, with you).

And, the cost of getting patents, a drop in the bucket for BigCos, can be huge to a startup.

It's deeply frustrating.

You know the 'right' thing to do is to avoid filing patents for things that are, to you, obvious, but are you doing right by your company and your investors if you don't file? Are you lowering your individual value in the market to do the right thing for the overall market? (sadly: yes, you are).

This is particularly morally sticky if you're building your products on top of opensource code. Yes, you can still do patents, but the reality is, if 1000's of people hadn't donated their time, effort and creativity to put the opensource code you're riding on top of into the market- free to use and build on, you would never have gotten to the point where you'd be able to create the cool patentable feature or function to begin with.

It's a devils choice and one that to this day I struggle with whenever one of our developers shows me a 'wow, that's a way cool feature' I haven't seen before. This is compounded by realizations that we're doing things in completely new ways (process patents!) using technology the BigCos aren't even aware of yet at costs that are orders of magnitude below what it costs them to do business.

To date, I've fought the urge to patent. We filed some provisional patents early in our company's life, but we didn't followup with a full application when the 12 months the provisional patent gives you was up. What we were doing (Podcasting) was so new there wasn't any established business to be threatened (and afraid of).

Our company is moving into a new space now, one with lots of big rich companies that will view what we do as a potential threat. That works to our advantage if we decide we want to sell ourselves to one of them (I would bet we get an offer to be bought in 24 months at the outside, and more likely within 12 months). It limits us at the same time though. The option of going head to head with them in the market (and raising money via an IPO) is a more difficult decision at that point.

Unless, we have a bunch of patents to protect ourselves.

Sigh.

MPAA retraction (lies and damned lies)

Whoa....This is interesting:

THE MPAA retracted the findings of a study it used to push for anti-file-sharing legislation since 2005. The Association had consistently claimed that 44% of the movie industry’s domestic losses were caused by illegal downloading of movies on college campuses. However, the true number was actually 15%. The MPAA blames “human error” for the mixup.

It took them 3 years to figure this out?

If I do 'human error' stuff like that, the people I know call it 'lying'.

If I then use it to try to change the law, as the MPAA did here, everyone I know calls it 'fraud'.

But hey, that's just me.

Apple eWorld Art- vintage 1992-1994

As promised in a previous post, here's some artwork from eWorld, an online service we developed during my Apple Era. For context: I was head of R&D for Apple Online Service during this period and these are from a group I ran called CAT (Collaberative Applications and Tools, also know as cool activities and toys).

Most of this wasn't used and is concept only. Special 'wow' to Cleo Huggins, who, along with her small interface team, was the primary design thinking behind this artwork and the concept (at Apple) of creating a tiny virtual 2D version of the world online.

















A version created for France Telecom (minitel):


Early Concept Mockups:

Change is good.

Well, more accurately, change can be good.

As some of you you may know, my day job is running a company called ClickCaster. It's goal was to become the premier podcasting service (create, publish, and find audio and video podcasts) on the web. We built a world class, easy to use and very powerful RSS media platform for the masses.

We were early, we had great technology, a excellent team and a popular service. The big issue was answering the question: How do you monitize podcasts?

It turns out to be a difficult question to answer. To date, no one's really hit it out of the park.

The good news is the technology needed to deliver podcasting is a very malleable thing. It mixes all the cool Web 2.0 buzz words likes RSS, media, audio, video, opensource, RoR's, Ajax, etc. etc. into a powerful platform that can deliver rich media (that's web code talk for audio and video) as channels of content you can subscribe to. You can use tags and directories as a guide to find things and you can use social networks to spot trends and use your friends likes and dislikes to help guide your own. And, of course, you've got great stats and analytics capabilities (we count good).

Channels, content, guides, analytics.... this is sounding like...

Television.

Among other things.

But We like Television. More accurately, we like video. And delivering video via RSS to the 2 foot (on your computer) crowd AND the 10 foot (on your big screen TV) crowd is something we found we were good at.

So, we've created a new business built on the ClickCaster technology platform.

We're calling it:

medioh!

In a nutshell, it's a broadband television middleware platform.

It's built on top of proven ClickCaster server technology (99.99% uptime over the last 2 years handling hundreds of millions of hits). It has a deep media guide with 100's of thousands of channels with access to millions of videos. It has an easy to use set of producer creation and encoding tools and it can use our lightweight streaming P2P based CDN software (co-developed with the University of Colorado) called DistribuStream (which we recently released as Opensource software).

We've partnered with the folks at iPlatform, A newVideo Appliance company to create unique applications and capabilities on top of their set top box platform.

We're also working closely with the folks at Digital Effects to streamline our server technology to work as either a Software As A Service (SAAS) that we provide for you, or as a server appliance you can install in your own data center, co-lo or just set it up on your broadband video server, flip the switch and you've got your very own Television Network.

If you want to reach people in the living room, the lobby (digital signage), a school or training campus or throughout the enterprise, medioh! makes it easy.

Check it out: medioh!

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Time Warner's 'variable pricing' red herring

Media 3.0 dude, Shelly Palmer, has two side by side tidbits on his site today.

One is how Time Warner is planning to charge for bandwidth. The second is how COMSCORE says video stats are going through the roof.

TIME WARNER CABLE is planning to experiment with new variable pricing for Internet access, charging users based on the amount of data downloaded. Tiered data packages will be available similar to the way a phone plan is purchased. A company spokesman says 5% of users take up 50% of network capacity by downloading large amounts of data. Trials are expected to begin in Q2.

COMSCORE has released its latest online video stats, revealing that Americans viewed 9.5 billion online videos during November. Google video sites delivered 31% of all videos and 41.8% of the 138 million viewers. The average YouTube viewer watched 39 videos during the month. MySpace, the second top video site, saw an average of only 9 videos per viewer. The average amount of monthly viewing increased from 3 hours to 3.25 hours.

This 'variable pricing for interenet access' is a red herring on Time Warners part. They want a tiered internet so they can charge more money. Not a bad thing in itself, business is business and maximizing profits is built into a businesses DNA. But not so if they're the primary bandwidth provider with monopoly or near monopoly status.

The Texas state Public Utilities Commission should say to Time Warner: No problem, do your variable pricing thing, but if you do we're forcing you to open your near monopoly network to other providers at wholesale prices that we set.

The RetroMacCast

You know you're getting old when someone calls and asks if you'll do an interview for a 'Retro' podcast aimed at Macintosh (and Apple) collectors.

James from RetroMacCast contacted me and asked if I'd do a podcast interview on eWorld. Sure I said. (hmmm... Are podcasts with specific niche audiences the equivalent of daytime interview shows with out of favor movie or TV star guests? Only here, it's some old tech vs. some old movie or TV show as the topic? hmmm)

I also suggested to James he get in touch with Cleo Huggins, who worked for me and was our primary interface designer for eWorld during the creation phase and he did, indeed, get her to agree and she and I spent an interesting hour recalling some of the old days at Apple and eWorld.

It was about 14 years ago that eWorld was originally announced (1993). Just shortly before Mosaic become Netscape and the internet was (truly) born.

Man, talk about lousy timing.

You have to wonder what would have happened if Apple had embraced the internet sooner. (WARNING: SCOTT APPLE RANT : WARNING) I left the company shortly after this announcement and I haven't seen Apple grok, even today, that the internet was where all this stuff was heading. Yea yea.. it sort of gets the online world, sort of, but not the internet world. It doesn't fully choose to grasp (I think they know, they just don't care) how it could leverage communities/social networks of people in powerful ways.

Why isn't Apple sponsoring a Facebook community? There's plenty there, and they effect Apple and it's brand. But, no official Apple involvement to be found. (sadmac)

I think Apple's relationship with it's customers is a little like the relationship between a 'bad boy' or 'bad girl' and the people that like bad boys and girls. You know who I mean. Those guys with leather jackets, fast cars, and lots of bad habits or the the bad girl... beautiful, a little nasty, spiked heals and leather under an evening gown types.

They love their woman (or man), but are also slightly emotionally abusive and distant and that seems to keep the girl or guy even more interested. That's how many seem to view Apple. A little nasty. Emotionally distant. Elusive. Enticing.

You can participate, if you're willing to put up with the abuse.

Anyway, I digress.

(END OF SCOTT APPLE RANT)

I'll be putting up some artwork that Cleo sent that she'd found in her own private archives of our old work on eWorld as well as some stuff I have in my own archives in some future post(s). I suspect some of the things we were thinking about and trying to implement way back in the early 90's might be worth revisiting now, and obviously, to some point are already happening, like 3D worlds. Stay tuned.

Legalese a the end of your email? Think about getting rid of it.

I periodically get a sales solicitation from a company trying to sell us something. It's usually a cold call type email to see if we're interested in Indian software development services, CDN's or co-location services. These guys do one thing that really turns me off.

They put what looks like (but isn't) a legal contract (but it's just a legal sounding statement) at the end of their email signature. Like this one:

This e-mail is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited.

Hard to read isn't it? Small type, dim on the page.

Doesn't this bug you? Especially if it's from a smaller company (vs., say, AT&T).

Doesn't it make you slightly irritable? Make you think: why does this company put legal language in an initial solicitation email? Do they have so much business (or funding) their lawyers review how emails are signed?

And what's with 'this email is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed....'

doh.

I get it if the emails are legal discussions (such as two CEO's negotiating the sale of asset between companies). But an initial sales call email? I think: asinine.

I've decided that company's that open their initial contacts with me punctuating their emails with a slightly threatening piece of legalese at the end and that has the word 'prohibited' in it, anywhere, get's put on my SPAM list.