Exclamation blog: Stories, Ideas and loud noises
Facebook Opens Up Chat For All. No Converts Here (Yet)
Approximately one year ago I thought I was done with Web chat.
I’d moved on to social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, and had begun to associate instant messaging more with my social-drama-filled adolescence than new and (hopefully) professional adulthood. But then it slowly began to creep back in…
First I graduated from university and started using Google’s Gmail chat to keep up with the international adventures and job hunting travails of my classmates. I was then converted to iChat as another means of communication by my co-workers, and finally caved to Windows Live Messenger– the chat vehicle of choice for my PC-loyalist parents and siblings.
And now Facebook presents another option. Early this month, it was announced on the Facebook blog that an instant-messaging application would slowly be rolling out across networks. A couple of weeks later, the small and supposedly inconspicuous widget appeared at the bottom of the screen– although I have yet to activate it.
Sure, it’s simple, collapsible, unobtrusive and arguably valuable– serving to make communication even easier among Facebook addicts, but do I really have any need for it? Yes, I use Twitter, and one could argue I don’t have much use for that either, but Facebook chat seems at this point entirely superfluous.
As yet another distraction, I’m sure it will slowly gain in popularity over time much like other recent (and initially criticized) Facebook updates like the mini-feed and news-feed.
For now, however, I am content to stay away — we’ll see how long I hold out.
My Tech Obsession Du Jour: The 2-D Barcode
Arguably the coolest thing about life at LaunchSquad is meeting cutting-edge clients who introduce me to new technology that I never knew existed. One such client is StoreXperience, a mobile retail company that harnesses the power of my favorite new tech tool: the 2-D barcode.
I have developed a genuine obsession with 2-D barcodes (often called QR Codes). Though they resemble traditional retail barcodes, 2-D barcodes can be instantly scanned by advanced cell phones to bring complex online content straight to the hands of consumer.
Now all of that tech talk is dandy, but what gets me most psyched about 2-D barcodes is how creative types are bringing this tool into the real world: merging art, technology and design to make a real statement.
Since fashion seems to be the first frontier of 2-D barcode style, here are three companies to keep an eye on:
Lendorff Perhaps the most popular QR Code fashion statement comes from this English company, who have ingrained the barcodes onto scarves. The amazing Rob Walker dedicated his entire Consumed column to these guys last month. I now want to buy one for everyone I know.
Wikd This Dutch tech fashion company embeds individual codes onto shirts and hoodies, allowing wearers to customize the URLs on their clothing — and interested scanners to send private messages via their cellphone.
Denim Code This French company puts 2-D barcodes on the back pockets of their jeans. Can’t imagine this won’t lead to some seriously bizarre pick-up scenarios.
2-D barcodes are already very popular in Japan and Europe, and it is inevitable that they will be more widely seen Stateside soon. To get a peek at what’s in store for you, check out this Flickr gallery of international QR code statements.
All I Really Needed to Know, I Learned on Twitter
Yesterday was a busy day for me. I was in and out of meetings and wasn’t in front of my computer too much. You know, the kind of day when you’re sitting there in a conference room guessing how many emails will be in your inbox when you get back? 50, 75, 100?
Meanwhile, there were two news developments that I was eager to follow: The Pennsylvania primary and Yahoo!’s earnings. Normally on busy work and news days, I rush to my desk, fire up a browser and scan my RSS feeds and a few sites I know can get me caught up.
But yesterday was different. When I got back to my desk, Twitter was open in my browser and before closing out, I did a quick refresh to scan the latest from the people I follow.
Right then, I had one of those Twitter “eureka!” moments. Rafe sums it up elegantly when he says, “The people who laugh at Twitter do not understand it. Pity them.”
You see, as if a genie granted me three wishes, a handful of “Tweets” gave me the gist of the news I was so desperate to follow all day. Special thanks goes out to CNet’s Dan Farber who was live tweeting the earnings call and providing succinct updates as they happened:
-Yahoo CFO: Traffic acquisition costs are up 4 percent because the company has to compete. about 19 hours ago from Snitter
-Yahoo’s headcount dropped from 14,300 at the end of last year to 13,800, including 600 new hires, offset by the company’s layoff. about 19 hours ago from Snitter
-Yahoo generated first quarter free cash flow of $647 million, up 75 percent ….it includes a $350 million one-time AT&T payment. about 19 hours ago from Snitter
-Yahoo CFO: “Advertisers’ budgets may fall, but the ROI of online ads compared to other media may cushion the impact on our industry. about 19 hours ago from Snitter
-Yang affirms that will choose whatever option maximizes shareholder value, including MS….more money! about 19 hours ago from Snitter
In 5 Tweets, I had all the information I needed. Sure, there was no analysis, but that could wait.
On to the election. I read a quick note from Fred Wilson who Tweeted, “i’ve just learned more about the PA primary on Tweetscan than CNN and MSNBC combined,” and posted a URL with the majority of news updates and comments on the election from around the Twittersphere. After a quick scan, Fred and I were on the same page. Too close to call. Anderson Cooper can wait.
As I left the office to head home and watch the final results come in, I couldn’t help but marvel at how easily I was able to catch up on the news of the day thanks to Dan and Fred.
Sure, the era of information overload has its drawbacks, but sometimes we forget how sweet it is when it all comes together just right. Thanks guys. And thank you, Twitter.
Blogger comes out, WaPo not amused
As anyone on the receiving end of one of my link filled IMs, e-mails or Tweets can tell you, I love sports blogs. There’s a small circle of about 10 of them (led by Deadspin, Fire Joe Morgan, Kissing Suzy Kolber and With Leather) that have superlative, hilarious writing and style and attitude that is basically a giant middle finger to the traditional sporting press.
And, as a former sports writer, I can say that gesture is very much needed.
The two worlds collided yesterday after Michael Tunison, aka Christmas Ape on Kissing Suzy Kolber, was fired from the Washington Post after outing himself on KSK. This is interesting in many different ways.
For the most part, the vanguard of the traditional sports press despise bloggers because they aren’t trained journalists who went to school for four years so they can be treated like scum by athletes. For the most part this vanguard is a bunch of self-aggrandizing pathetic writers who couldn’t recognize important prose if it hit them in the face. The Washington Post took offense, not to some of Tunison’s edgier posts on KSK, but to the fact that he said he was “totally f**king hammered” in the picture accompanying his post outing himself. Because, you know, no respectable journalist has ever gotten drunk when his or her favorite team went to the Super Bowl. The parrot may have been a bit much.
It’s pretty obvious that Tunison was canned because of the blog.
Anyway, the reaction has been pretty comical. The fairly sizable KSK and Deadspin communities reacted by taking over Dan Steinberg’s blog at the WaPo online.
The traditional media’s reaction to blogs is a constant source of hilarity. For the sports media to get upset over fans writing about sports is the epitome of stupidity – they are, after all, the people the media is (or should be) writing for. What difference does having a piece of paper make when you’re spouting off about sports? Just because I went to journalism school, does that make me more qualified to write about baseball than the guy with an accounting degree who spends his spare time crunching baseball stats? No. If he knows more than me and can write, well…
There are plenty of reporters who are embracing new media and are doing fantastic work, so it’s very unfair to lump traditional media in one big group, but a message to those who are afraid of blogs: Get over it. You’ll be working for one soon enough.
Cooking With Cindy McCain
Cindy McCain wants you to cook with her. As it turns out, though, “Cindy’s Family Recipes,” are apparently, not so homegrown.
The New York Times and The Huffington Post reported that several of the hopeful First Lady’s ‘family’ recipes were in fact lifted word for word from The Food Network Web site.
Campaign officials were quick to blame the interns for being lazy, Rachael Ray chimed in suggesting that her recipes were meant to be “accessible to anyone” and McCain decided that she preferred “lemon chicken and beef stew” after all.
What this bit of news left me wondering about is, what makes an ‘original’ in today’s blogging, twittering, texting and emailing world? Certainly, calling something a family recipe creates the presumption that it’s not in Giada Di Laurentiis’ ammo, but times have changed, no?
My mother used to write down all of her recipes in a leather-bound, yellow-paged notebook that has seen better days. I remember penning my own “apple cake” recipe. Today, I can take a snapshot of that recipe and throw it into my Evernote. Or, I can post the contents of the book into my own personal blog. The amount of information out there seems to be boundless and originality is harder to come by.
How many rosemary chicken breast or chicken noodle soup recipes are truly ‘unique’? Perhaps my mother had one written into her recipe book, which was passed down to her from my grandmother and previously created by her mother.
While I may consider it to be my family recipe, another girl in another town may consider it to be hers. The same was probably true 50 years ago, only today, we know about it thanks to Google, FoodBlogSearch.com, Facebook and the like.
Cindy McCain and plagiarism aside, in my opinion, the Internet has taken a very personal and time-honored tradition into a globally-shared social activity. With cooking social networks, baking blogs and online video demos, the Web has managed to transform a second shift job into a technology-savvy, working professional’s hobby that still manages to honor both its roots and the technology-driven possibilities for its evolution.
Technology and the Too-Fast Swimsuit
Despite many lessons and summers reluctantly spent at swim practice I was never much of a competitive swimmer. Perhaps the high-tech Speedo LZR Racer suit could have been of some help?
Introduced in February, Speedo’s new suit and it’s ultra-lightweight technology are transforming the sport while creating a great deal of controversy in the run-up to the Olympic Games this summer. 18 of the last 19 swimmers who have broken world records have worn the LZR, and many claim that the groundbreaking technology helps them float and feel as if they are swimming downhill.
Great news or cause for concern? In short, nobody’s quite sure.
Developed based on NASA intelligence, it is clear that the LZR gives its wearers an advantage of sorts — but is this advantage unfair? FINA President Mustapha Larfaoui is adamant that all swimmers be able to access the technology but the issue of accessibility is only the tip of the iceberg.
Who gets credit for world records broken by wearers of the LZR — the athlete or the technology? Should the suits be banned for giving athletes that extra edge? Swimmers already regularly shave their legs before big races, is this really that different? Can this really be considered technological doping (if there is such a thing)?
Questions abound– and in the meantime “swimming’s fastest year” continues.
Tech and the Economy? A Straight Answer is Hard to Find
Everyday we hear stories about the failing economy, whether we’re in a recession and the fallout of some bad decisions by big financial institutions. For many aspects of the economy, people have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen — mortgages will continue to be tough to come by for many people, some more bankers will probably lose their jobs, and Nintendo Wiis will continue to be impossible to get… Well, not sure that last one has anything to do with the economy.
But one aspect of the economy that’s near and dear to LaunchSquad is venture backed technology companies and how they will be affected. Many people have strong opinions and there is really no consensus on what will happen. On several occasions recently I have been asked by people outside the tech industry how the economy has affected, or will affect, the companies we work with and the VCs that fund them. My answer to them is that I really don’t know, and in my never-ending search for the answer to that question, no one else really seems to either.
Back in August, a prominent venture capitalist in San Francisco, Keith Benjamin received some attention from a blogpost he wrote about why the credit crisis would help venture capital. The New York Times and Silicon Valley blog VentureBeat also reported on his theory that venture capital is not based on credit and debt, therefore, investors will be more willing to invest in tech IPOs. There’s one theory.
But, the numbers show that those IPOs have not been plentiful the past few months. Hmmm?
More recently (and by recently, I mean, this week) another article in The New York times paints a dramatic picture of the slowdown in Silicon Valley. Silicon Alley Insider, a New York technology blog, agrees (but then again, they’ll never pass up an opportunity to prove superiority over our West coast counterparts).
On the flip side, here in New York, Union Square Ventures recently announced the closing of their most recent investment fund, apparently without much difficulty. Yesterday Reuters reported that New York is “fertile ground” for technology startups, and VC and tech/finance blogger Paul Kedrosky agrees, at least for financial tech startups. So now you’re telling me things are different based on location? It’s starting to get murky…
Probably the most convincing and level-headed post I’ve read on the topic comes from Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures. Yes, he is a VC and it’s in his interest for people to remain bullish on tech startups and the economic viability of the web, but he makes some good points and concludes that now’s the time for companies to build their business models for the long haul. There’s venture capital money out there waiting to be invested (see above, USV just got $156 million), but the returns may not come right away. So, companies need to build real, sustainable business models since Google won’t snatch them up anytime soon and they’re damn sure not going public… A real, profitable company, what a concept!
In the end, there really doesn’t seem to be an answer everyone can agree on. Overall, it seems that whether the effects of the downturn are negative or positive depends on your role in the tech community. For an entrepreneur, it may be harder to get money and convince VCs that his company can make it in this economy. Bad for them. For VCs, they’ll have to strategize on which types of companies can make it right now and advise accordingly once they’ve funded those companies. Not bad or good, just different. End-users of these technologies? It seems like we/they are put in a position of power. Products need to be made for end-users now, not for Google or Yahoo!, and consumers may ultimately decide whether a company is successful or not. With so many early acquisitions the past few years, widespread consumer adoption and revenue haven’t necessarily been the benchmarks of success for startups.
So, I guess we just need to sit back and watch it all unfold, and the next time someone asks you how the economic downturn is affecting tech, tell them to get comfortable cause the answer may take a while.
Update: Interesting post on Silicon Alley Insider today about computer science graduates not having any problem finding jobs. Seems like engineers are always in high demand though — a company is nothing without its product, and developers bring those to life.
Aweli: Enabling The Long Tail of Video Ads (In About 5 Minutes)
When I ran into Aweli’s Tony Katz at the SXSW festival in Austin, I recognized him from the Wordcamp conference last summer in San Francisco; I’d heard him talking during the Q&A parts of many panels, and thought he was a really sharp guy. So, when I found myself sharing a cab from the Austin airport with his business partner, Joshua Paul, I was able to get the full download on their cool new video ad business, Aweli. While LaunchSquad clients like Brightroll are shaping the horizon of video ads for brand advertisers, Aweli is making developments that might just affect the eBayer next door.
