The BlackBerry vs. iPhone Experiment

I managed to lose my iPhone for real this time. 4 days later, still missing. Since my life tends to revolve around my phone (I've been using smartphones for 10 years now), I needed to replace it.

So, Sat. I went down to my friendly AT&T store and tried to get a new iPhone.

Try and 'replace' an iPhone right now. Can't do it. None to be had. New iPhone coming out next week donchaknow.

So I decided to try an experiment. I know alot of people who swear by their Blackberry's. So, I picked up a $99 Blackberry Curve. The sales guy told me I had 30 days to return it for a different phone so I'm taking AT&T up on the test drive offer. If I hate it compared to my iPhone (which I spent the last year with, and greatly enjoyed), I'll trade it in for a new iPhone early next month.

In the meantime, we'll see how well this new phone stacks up against my experiences with a year old (feature and function wise) iPhone.

UPDATE: 7/11/08- Well, I couldn't take it any longer. The BlackBerry was 'interesting', but no fun to use (at all). It was clunky, hard to find things and hard to connect activities that are fluid and natural on the iPhone. And no, I didn't get a new 3G. I'm sticking with my old first gen iPhone until it gives out largely because I'm not comfortable with a GPS chip in my phone for some reason and with the 2.0 update, I'm getting pretty much everything the 3G iPhone has (less the GPS 'features'.. which is fine with me).

iPhone: still the best out there.

Time Warner Caps Your Bandwidth

Well, sort of.

In Beaumont, Tx. only, for now:

40GB For $55 per month: Time Warner Bandwidth Caps Arrive

By Ryan Paul | Published: June 03, 2008 - 09:18AM CT

Time Warner Cable will launch a trial program on Thursday which will impose monthly Internet consumption caps on new subscribers in Beaumont, Texas. Following a two-month grace period, cable users will pay $1 for each additional gigabyte consumed beyond the cap.

They claim 5% of the users are 'using up' 50% of the available bandwidth.

First, I'd ask: and how much capacity is actually still unused? If it's less than 100%, isn't that just efficient use of resources by your users? As long as it' not causing overcapacity issues (and they have never said that it is), why is this an issue?

Second, they imply that only the bad guys (those wretched Bittorrent users stealing music and movies) are the ones at fault.

Not so. The article goes on to say:

Time Warner's bandwidth caps might seem like acceptable limitations at first glance, but they look a lot less attractive when one considers the growing number of important services we use that soak up lots of bandwidth. The Internet is increasingly being used as a vector for distributing software and digital video content and also facilitates multiplayer gaming, video conferencing, real-time collaboration, interactive remote desktop access, file backups, and many other bandwidth intensive activities.

The average user using Pandora to listen to streaming music for a few hours a day while working at home, then watching Hulu.com TV shows for a few hours after dinner then playing WoW or SoCom a few nights a week for a few hours can easily hit this limit.

Add in a spouse and 2 or 3 kids with their own computers, and it gets stupid expensive at $1 per GB past the 40 alloted pretty damned fast.

It never ceases to amaze me how bigco's can shoot themselves in the foot.

I'll bet the DSL providers out there (who have alot of POTS and Internet business taken from them in the last 10 years by CableCo's like Time Warner) are rubbing their hands with glee hoping all the Cable Guys get on this boat. This won't hurt the WiMax guy's proforma either.

Our CableCo, Comcast, hasn't jumped in yet, but I'm still calling Qwest about that 20MB pipe they're selling into homes now first thing tomorrow.

The Trouble with Venture Lawyers

Jason Mendleson over at Foundry Partners (he's the guy on the far right) has an excellent post up on his frustration with venture lawyers.

His analysis is better given that, before he became a VC, he was a lawyer.

His two primary points are cost and execution.

The first point on cost resonated strongly. He compared the average VC deal in 1998 to 2008 and concluded that the amount of the deal had gone up about 11%. The salary of a starting venture lawyer, during that same time, went up 114%.

We've felt the pain. Before we call, or even email, our lawyer, we ask ourselves long and hard: do we really need this? The minimum billing for a startup lawyer is 1/6th of an hour. 10 minutes. At the low end, that's $50.

Fifty bucks to send an email asking them to change something on our yearly Delaware filing paperwork. Minimum. More likely $150. They have to read the email (10 min charge- 1 minute of reading time), go do something else, come back and make the changes to the document (10 min charge... 2 minutes of work), go do something else, then come back and put the paperwork in an envelop (10 minutes charge- 1 minute of work).

$150.00

God help you if you want an actual contract reviewed, which comes to the second point re: execution.

We had a large contract with a big company that our then CEO 'ran by the lawyers'. $25,000.00 later, we had a passable contract. Chances are it would have been more if our CEO at the time hadn't left the company. To this day I'm not clear how we spent that much money on a simple contract with pretty clear terms to start with.

Even at $500 an hour, that's 50 hours. I'm wondering if that's really possible. Does it really take 50 billable hours of a partners time to 'review' a contract?

There's definitely an execution problem there. I have no idea if it was on our side or the law firms, but at $500 an hour, it's pretty easy to lay at least part of the blame on the law firms doorstep.

So, I couldn't agree more with Jason's take on venture lawyers.

I do know this: If I wasn't paying $500 an hour for the advice, I'd ask for alot more of it, and I'd count the lawyer as more of a partner in my business than a hideously expensive last resort 'check' to keep us from getting nuked when dealing with a big company or a litigious partner.

It's a little like health insurance costs: You skip getting the health insurance because it's just too damned expensive and pray you don't get sick.

Powers of Ten

I first saw this film in 1988 when I was working at Apple. It was supposed to knock out our assumptions about how to think of scale and how to 'think different' in addressing new problems.



I know this is old hat for many of you (it's been around forever), but it's still worth watching every year or two just to put things into perspective.

Interestingly, the version we saw didn't say anywhere that it was made for IBM. This is the first time I've seen that bit of info. I'm betting, back then, when IBM was still a real competitor to Apple, we'd have seen it was originally made for IBM and either ignored it, or it would have scared the hell out of us.

Sometimes it's just better not to know.

Selling Macintosh Trash

I'm almost (but not quite) speechless.

Someone is actually selling empty Macintosh computer boxes on Craiglist.

We have fourteen 24" iMac boxes in like new condition with styrofoam inserts available.



Best offer...

Only $100, or, as noted, 'best offer'. And styrofoam inserts 'available' (I wonder, is that extra?)

Can you imagine someone doing this with Dell boxes? I don't know what I find more outrageous, someone posting this or the thought that someone might actually buy these off of them.

No wonder Apple's so arrogant.

Fight Club in Silicon Valley

This is pretty amazing. A real fight club in Silicon Valley that pre-dated the movie.



Wonder if we'll get one of these in happening in politically correct Boulder.

My friend, Jon Henderson

We lost a friend last night. Jon Henderson passed away after a 9 year battle with cancer.

I met Jon through boulder free radio where he and his brother David played some fantastic hippie shit music and blues. I saw him many times over the last several years playing gigs, at Conners and, the last time, with he and David at the Boulder Theater a few weeks ago.

He was happy, and he never ever complained, although we sometimes gave him a hard time about how his hair grew back all curly after particularly onerous cancer treatments.

The last thing he did on this earth was visit Conners for a few beers with friends, something he dearly loved to do.

These last words from Jon:

"Oh well, I was lucky to have made it this far. And, I put up a pretty damn good fight. No crying....."

And then in his own writing:

"Enjoy Life"

You will be sorely missed Jon.