Must Read Monday: Original Sin, MediaREDEF and Net Neutrality

Last week, I came across a post on Pando that linked me to Jason Hirshhorn's MediaREDEF newsletter. You should go to the site and sign up now. So far, daily emails with really really good content -- many must reads.

One of the links brought me to this story from the Atlantic -- Advertising as the Internet's Original Sin. It's a long piece, but is absolutely a Must Read article for any modern marketing pro. This is not a spoiler, but I love the whole breakdown of "Investor Story Time" and along with the breakdown of the real value of Facebook advertising. If you've ever sat across from someone telling you that one of their monetization paths may be to add advertising, the notion of being better than Facebook is pretty funny.

Another one on my reading list for today (and has been in my thoughts a bunch recently) is this post on algorithm driven content and Net Neutrality. Again, it's a reminder that there's a big difference between reality and the reality that we are served through most of the web.

Secrets of the Creative Brain

During the Friday commute home, I caught parts of this a story about creativity on NPR. Intrigued, I tracked down the article online and read through it on Saturday. It's quite interesting and definitely worth a read.

The piece is Secrets of the Creative Brain, A leading neuroscientist who has spent decades studying creativity shares her research on where genius comes from, whether it is dependent on high IQ -- and why it is so often accompanied by mental illness, by Nancy Andreasen. It's not a short read, but it is a pretty easy read nonetheless. And if you're into creativity -- understanding it, leveraging it, or just being around it -- I think it's a helpful read as well.

It reminded me a lot of Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors, a book that I really enjoyed and would recommend. In her study, Andreasen dives into the associative part of the brain and it's relation to creativity. This harmonizes well with many of the ideas presented by Evan Schwartz in Juice. 

At the same time, one aspect of Andreasen's piece that I found amusing from the creative perspective is the idea that, within the mind of the creative person, the unusual (creative) associations seem so obvious that they tend to take them for granted. Put a different way, while some may see an unusual or creative idea, that creative person probably considers the association as normal. This can create a disconnect between a creative person and an audience that "just doesn't get it". And that can be a good thing to keep in mind when you're dealing with creatives -- or as a creative person looking out.

Frank Zappa Albums are Available on iTunes

News Flash: Tons of Frank Zappa albums are available on iTunes now. I'm not sure when this went live, but I know that a few months ago I was looking for Zappa and couldn't find anything. I went around to all the CD shops looking for used, out-of-print Zappa CDs and that turned out to be less fruitful that I expected. Then tonight I fired up iTunes and one of the promo images was Zappa!

Good stuff. Joe's Garage. Zappa in New York. Lot's more. Check it out!

Cool Tech from the Holiday Blogging Desk

Apple sent out a post-Xmas promotional email this morning that featured an interesting device / gift, the iBike Dash Cycling Computer.  They also sell the deluxe model. Being the cyclist and technology nut that I am, this link actually pulled me through for a look.

In years past, my friends and I have talked about how cool it would be to be able to use your iPhone as a bicycle computer. In our minds, it was the potential of being able to carry one less device combined with all of the cool functionality that is native to the iPhone that held such great promise. So I clicked through to check it out.

Brief Aside: My History of Using Cycling Computers
My first cyclometer was a Cateye Solar. This wonderful device logged speed, distance and cadence. When my Cateye Solar died, I didn't replace it (not much money and most cyclometers didn't display cadence). When I upgraded to my current bike, I went ahead and purchased a new Vetta cyclometer that just logged speed and distance -- my main interest at that point was simple distance tracking. But when I started training for The Death Ride, a coaching seminar that we attended recommended using a heart rate monitor. I have always been skeptical of heart rate monitors -- I've seen to many people addicted to the tech of cycling and miss the part about finding love in basic time on the bike. But the argument for using a heart rate monitor -- to maximize your body awareness and better manage your pace for demanding rides -- made sense to me.

My next (and current) cycling computer is the Polar 720i. It tracks all of the important cyclometer stuff -- distance, speed, and cadence -- but it also adds heart rate, elevation and temperature. It also uses this data to do an approximate calculation of calories burned. You can even add a power calculation by taking measurements off the chain, but I didn't see any ROI in investing in that option. Having logged many miles using the Polar, I can say that there are things that I like about it and things that I don't, but it has become the standard by which I measure other cycling computers.

Several years ago, Garmin introduced a cycling computer that integrated a GPS into the system -- functionality that I feel like marked the next logical advance in cyclometers. But when I looked at the early models, it seemed like there were some issues that outweighed the cool features for me (I think software support was one issue). Since then, I've hoped for improvements, but I haven't been logging enough miles to actively track the technology evolution.

Using the iPhone as a Cycling Computer: the iBike
The iBike brings the promise of using your iPhone as a cyclometer to reality. Basically, the unit is your iPhone, combined with a waterproof handlebar mount, and some Bluetooth-based sensors that can allow you to track speed, distance, cadence and power. Since it uses your iPhone, you have GPS tracking for route and elevation. All cool features.

One thing that I've always hated about the Polar is that it only works with Windows -- there's no software support for Mac -- it's one of the only reasons that I actually own a PC. Since the iBike works on the iPhone, I would expect that their software might have actually be better than the Polar, but I haven't explored it in detail. Another thing that might be cool about the iBike is that, since it uses the iPhone, they have more flexibility in designing the interface. In short, you might expect that this flexibility would translate to more options for you, the user -- I don't know if that's true, but it could be cool.

Of course, after looking at it more closely, the iBike has a pretty serious downside -- battery life. The site specs say "5 hours of continuous operating time when used with the spare battery". While this might be great more than enough for casual riders or shorter weekday rides, if you want to log serious distance on this thing, I expect that your going to wrestle with battery issues. This strikes me as the fatal flaw with this whole concept -- say what you will about the capabilities or problems with the Polar watch, even if you ran it continuously, you don't have to change the battery more than about once a year or two. It's also unlikely that your battery will die when you're in the middle of a ride. That may not be a big issue when you're riding back and forth to work, but if you've been out to Pescado, just left San Gregorio and you're on your way up Tunitas Creek, you're probably not going to find a place to plug in and recharge.

Imagine the Possibilities: ANT+
All that being said, the aspect that I found most interesting about the iBike is it's use of ANT+ sensor technology. Before reading about it in the iBike specs, I was unfamiliar with ANT+. Here's a clip about ANT+:

ANT+ facilitates the collection, automatic transfer and tracking of sensor data for monitoring information anywhere, anytime.  The key advantage of this unique managed network is device specific interoperability which enables wireless communication with other ANT+ products.  This interoperability function (added to the base ANT protocol) now facilitates the reliable transfer of data between sensors and display devices such as watches, heart rate monitors and bike computers.  Applicable in sport, wellness management and home health monitoring, ANT is proven with several million nodes shipped to date.

ANT+ is basically an interface standard for communicating with these motion sensors. On the site, they also show an announcement at Interbike where Fox has combined ANT+ sensing with their mountain bike shocks and a special adjustment mechanism to make dynamically adjusting shocks. Imagine your mountain bike adjusting it's suspension based on the terrain and your desired ride characteristics. Cars have been doing this kind of stuff for years, but there are wires and electronics and systems. With ANT+, small wireless sensors can be integrated into devices that previously would have been implausible. When linked to an intelligent central brain, imagine the possibilities. Very cool.

Real World Gamification

I came across this interesting story of gamification yesterday. It's an interesting read.

AIDS Puzzle Solved By Computer Gamers

Techcrunch, Soap Operas, Start-ups, Exit Strategies and Hunter Thompson - This Ain't The Bubble of Love

If you missed the news -- or failed to Tivo your soaps -- the drama surrounding the staff at Techcrunch has continued through the week and into the weekend. Sunday morning while going through my usual blog-reading ritual, I came across this story, TechCrunch Writer Skewers New Editor In Resignation Letter, over on Talking Points Memo. Anyone that's been watching already had some idea of where this was going, it was simply a matter of which writer.

Here's a link to Paul Carr's last post, I’m Leaving TechCrunch. Here’s Why. It's worth a read. If you're into the soap opera, you can also read Erik Schonfeld's, Paul, I Accept Your Resignation. The whole thing is probably the best example of a Silicon Valley gossip story since Valleywag was gobbled up.

Still, I found Paul Carr's piece interesting and inspiring on a number of levels. This post isn't so much about the current events at Techcrunch. Let's start with brief synopsis of the big picture story of the Techcrunch events:

• Guy founds start-up based on unique product and experiences unexpected success. 
• Start-up grows and grows, hiring people and expanding their audience.
• Eventually, a larger company sees that success and thinks that they need them some of that money.
• The big company eats the little company and two things happen:
  - The people at the little company realize that it is not a little company any more
  - The people at the big company run around saying, "Oh my god, oh my god, can you believe what they were doing? We have to fix this."
• Big company people try to fix, little company people become former, and the combination makes that which was acquired not be that any more. 

In essence, this is little more than a cycle of life in the world of start-ups and M&A. Within this cycle, you'll also see the people from the little company -- people who have lived and breathed the birth of the little company entity -- passionately morn the demise of the little company. These people have tasted the fire and have dreamed of changing the world. They have seen the world of possibility.

What Does It Mean When You Buy A Blog?
So what does it mean when you buy a blog -- do you buy a writer, do you buy a voice, do you buy an audience or maybe even a community? Is it similar to what News Corp. got when they purchased MySpace? Is it what Time Warner got in it's deal with AOL? Perhaps it's like buying a cast of puppets, dreaming of all of the new ways that you can use them to make money, then pissing off the puppeteer and pushing him to quit -- even if you own the puppets, do you really own the characters, the voices, or the show?

It's hard to fault the founders of a start-up for finding an exit strategy and a payout. Finally, there is a financial return on all that work, all of those hours invested. Perhaps it stabilizes the business, perhaps it brings the infrastructure that you need -- there are many reasons that it may be a good idea, strategic justifications for the choice. But for the big company with the fat wallet, the equation is different. I think that I would have a hard time recommending the purchase of a web media property or the idea of 'buying' a relationship. Sure there are a host of meta-justifications that you can use -- it will look good to investors, expand our market opportunities, open a whole new world of consolidated advertising options, etc. -- but you can't buy the audience.

Paul Carr's post opens with a quote from Hunter S. Thompson. Full disclosure, I've always been a fan of Thompson and invested in many of his published works. It goes without saying that I'm not the only fan of Thompson. As with successful start-ups, there have been many that have attempted to mirror Thompson's style, to clone his formula -- maybe make it gonzo journalism in the cloud or gonzo journalism for web 2.0 -- then expect success. A common formula for the Thompson wannabes is lots of drink, maybe some drugs, a dash of crazy, then maybe try to write something. But try as they might, it's never the same.

Like many start-up guys, I think Hunter Thompson carried a certain amount of loathing for the take-over and monetization of the culture that was before it was 'The Summer of Love.' As a cultural record, gonzo journalism like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is deeply nuanced. Much of the joy and the humor is only really available if you understand the history, if you understand the culture, if you are the audience. For the rest of the world, it's just some silly story about some crazy guy who takes a lot of drugs. Inspiration? Or perhaps it's similar The Man Show once Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla left.

In life, in history, there are moments. They last for the blink of an eye and then they are gone. Even Bob Dylan is amazed by the things that he wrote when he was younger. But it's not a recipe. Sure, you can look around and find an amazing amount of genius cooking right here in the bay area -- the perfect environment to culture sourdough and free-form ideas -- but you don't get there just by being here. So while the world imagines a bay area like The Social Network or they dream of their dot.com 2.0 riches, perhaps they will sit back and think, "what we need is an office like Yelp with a beer keg and an Xbox room". We were just outside of Atherton when the VC funding kicked in...

Over the past day or two, I've found myself occasionally skimming through the Techcrunch headlines and bylines, looking for something... toothsome. Instead, what I've felt most strongly is a sense of absence. Something is gone now. Sure, I've seen a couple of posts from people who were theoretically in the drama, some from people who didn't appear to be involved -- but there is a meta-layer of energy that's gone.

And for Paul Carr, I wish him well and I'll probably follow him on Twitter. For Paul I would borrow this quote from Where the Buffalo Roam.

Well I guess if I had to swear one way or another, I'd say Lazlo wasn't insane. He just had very strange rhythms. But he stomped on the terra. Lord Buckley said that. It's hard to say he got what he deserved, because he never really got anything, at least not in this story. And right now, this story is all we have ... It's sad. But what's really sad is it never got weird enough for me.

An Amusing Look at Unusual Resumes

I've written about unusual resumes on several occasions. Here's a post with some amusingly unusual resume examples. It's probably worth noting that most of these are creative people seeking creative jobs... marketing is creative, right?

http://www.businessinsider.com/insanely-creative-resumes-2011-6?op=1

Emerging Tech Trends: The Internet of Things

This last weekend, I was listening to music while cleaning my apartment. The music, a digital audio file, was playing in iTunes, stored on the laptop in my bedroom. The music was routed across my local network to two Apple Airport Express wireless units connected to separate stereo systems, one in the bedroom and one in the living room, enabling me to play music simultaneously in both rooms. I also use the Apple Remote application, enabling me to manage what's playing on iTunes remotely with my iPhone. Multiple rooms, multiple devices, and many packets of data flowing back and forth, harmoniously working together to create an enhanced user experience. Sadly, my stereo receivers are old and dumb, so I have to manage them using traditional IR remotes.

The Smart Home Evolved
Years ago, when I worked in the DSL industry and we were watching the emergence of broadband, people talked a lot about the Smart Home. Refrigerators and ovens connected to the Internet, your television as a conduit to the Information Superhighway -- you remember the buzz. We've come a long way since that time: home networks are as common as cordless phones and many of our media devices are Internet enabled. And with Apple's iPhone and the success of the iOS platform, component vendors have been freed from competing on the central management unit -- now, they can build a management app for iOS or Android and reach a large, established user base.

Still, you don't see a lot of smart refrigerators or other appliances. Part of the reason behind this has been the challenges involved in adding this kind of intelligence. Several years ago, while I was working with a team on an industrial control device, I repeatedly suggested adding a web-based management interface option for the device. At the time, the project engineer's response was that it was too complicated. In addition to the physical interface, we would have needed an additional processor to handle the network management and another layer of software for the entire process -- it wasn't simply an additional PHY.

On the product side of things, anyone that was considering developing or adding a Smart Home interface needed to take into account many factors:

• What network would it connect to (protocol, interface, etc)?
• How sophisticated did you need to make your on-board network/management unit?
• What would you want to do to the product through that network interface?

As technologies have evolved, it's easy to overlook how technological evolutions have changed these factors. Imagine trying to connect all your smart appliances using Ethernet cords. Think back ten years ago and reflect on the smallest Internet-enabled device -- imagine if every smart appliance needed to have a hard drive and run a version of Microsoft Windows. And when you get down to the question of what would you want to do, remember that many traditional analog systems don't have intelligence -- there's no log file for your stove or your microwave oven.

The IR Remote Control: Yesterday's iPhone
For many years now, device manufacturers have enabled us to manage systems using IR remotes. These devices offered many advantages for manufacturers, but probably the biggest was simply knowing that it would work from a technology standpoint. The network wasn't a limitation and if you wanted additional functionality, you could just add a button or a menu-driven interface. The remote and the appliance didn't really need to worry about anything else on the network, there was no need to worry about communication standards or APIs, it just worked. And that's part of the reason why we wind up with so many remote controls, all with different buttons and different keyboard layouts.

Now, you're seeing more and more entertainment system manufacturers offering management interfaces for the iPhone or iOS devices. Some AV Receivers offer iPhone adapters or applications that enable you to use your phone like a remote. The dedicated IR remote may not be dead, but it's days are numbered.

The Internet of Things: Moving Beyond the Media Center
Adding Internet to your media center is an easy sell: you already have cables running to it, you interact with it, it probably has a display that you can use. What happens when you move outside of that world and into your other appliances? As noted, three of the big challenges are network access and utilization, system sophistication, and application layer functionality, but many of these issues are being addressed through the evolution of the market, advances in technology, and increasingly sophisticated SoCs and IC functionality.

With the widespread use of WIFI, appliance manufacturers can now make some positive assumptions as to the available network access. Bluetooth is also available as a potential protocol for a management interface. Recently, I've also seen announcements about an Android-powered mesh network for LED lightbulbs. In short, these LED bulbs can talk to one another in order, enabling monitoring, management, and potential savings in power and operational costs.

The junction between increasingly sophisticated processing capabilities like you find in smart phones and tablets, and the streamlined functionality of open-source and embedded software is making network functionality more accessible than ever before. As many of these approaches bring common Unix/Linux architectures to embedded software development, many of the common network and application-level programming aspects become more universal and web-ready.

What's more, at a recent Embedded Systems Conference, one company rolled out a series of products for embedded cloud services. Now, instead of having to develop build some application-layer functionality on the device, you can build those applications in the cloud. While the ICs handle the network connectivity, application functionality is provided through remote servers in the cloud. As more and more ICs integrate this kind of functionality, you can expect to see increasingly sophisticated functionality moving into the embedded world.

From firewalls and security to a cloud-enabled application stack, as more and more network intelligence gets integrated on chip and into the embedded world, the more our world -- and our relationships with our devices -- will evolve. The Internet of Things is coming online.

Reflections on Freakanomics Radio Podcasts

Recently, I've been listening my way through the series of podcasts from the Freakanomics Radio team. If you aren't familiar with them, this is from the same guys that wrote Freakanomics and Superfreakanomics. The catchphrase that they use a lot is "exploring the hidden side of everything."

One of the themes that runs through most of the things that they explore is that, often, when we think about incentives that drive behavior, we underestimate some hidden incentives that actually have a powerful effect on behavior.

One example of this is highlighted in their episode on World Cup soccer. As part of their exploration of soccer, they talk about penalty shots and how the results correlate closely to game theory. At the same time, they point out that, statistically, penalty kicking players under-utilize a kick to the center that should result in more goals if they kicked the ball there. However, players are driven by the hidden incentive of not looking like an idiot if they kick the ball straight and the goalie just stands there and catches it.

What struck me with this is, in our daily lives, how often we are affected by people who are driven by the hidden incentive of not looking like an idiot. This incentive is drilled into us as we grow up. It's something that we learn when we answer questions in front of our class. It's something we are reminded of when we speak in meetings. It's something we participate in when we hide behind consensus.

Creativity, on the other hand, often flies in the face of the not looking like an idiot incentive. It's exploring an under-utilized, under-exploited path. Creativity is a high-wire act where a successful effort results in a goal but everything else falls short.

So the question you might ask yourself is, how many of your successes came as a result of ignoring the incentive of not looking like an idiot? How would you measure those accomplishments in the overall scope of your history? Is there a theme there?

Spacesuit: How Playtex Engineered An Iconic Piece of Space Technology

I was listening to NPR's Science Friday during lunch today and they had a great segment on the history of the Spacesuit used for the Apollo missions. It turns out that the suit was made by Playtex, the same company noted for their bras.

The discussion talks about the process of engineering the suit and the amazing technical aspects of the suit. But perhaps equally or more interesting, is the story of the designs that weren't used and how Playtex was not really who the engineers at NASA wanted to work with. Monchaux talks about how NASA engineers wanted to work with engineers, not people who made underwear, to craft this one-person spacecraft. And yet, Playtex's innovation and expertise in designing for humans won out. This looks like a great story about design and engineering.

Here's a link to the Science Friday segment pod cast. For fun, I've also embedded a video that they put together that features many of the suits that were considered but weren't used. Enjoy!

Here's from Amazon's description of the book:

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface in July of 1969, they wore spacesuits made by Playtex: twenty-one layers of fabric, each with a distinct yet interrelated function, custom-sewn for them by seamstresses whose usual work was fashioning bras and girdles. This book is the story of those spacesuits. It is a story of the Playtex Corporation’s triumph over the military-industrial complex—a victory of elegant softness over engineered hardness, of adaptation over cybernetics.

Playtex’s spacesuit went up against hard armor-like spacesuits designed by military contractors and favored by NASA’s engineers. It was only when those suits failed—when traditional engineering firms could not integrate the body into mission requirements—that Playtex, with its intimate expertise, got the job. In Spacesuit, Nicholas de Monchaux tells the story of the twenty-one-layer spacesuit in twenty-one chapters addressing twenty-one topics relevant to the suit, the body, and the technology of the twentieth century. He touches, among other things, on eighteenth-century androids, Christian Dior’s New Look, Atlas missiles, cybernetics and cyborgs, latex, JFK's carefully cultivated image, the CBS lunar broadcast soundstage, NASA’s Mission Control, and the applications of Apollo-style engineering to city planning. The twenty-one-layer spacesuit, de Monchaux argues, offers an object lesson. It tells us about redundancy and interdependence and about the distinctions between natural and man-made complexity; it teaches us to know the virtues of adaptation and to see the future as a set of possibilities rather than a scripted scenario.

An Animated Look at Where Good Ideas Come From

Here's another RSA whiteboard animation worth watching.

Motivations In The Workplace Animation

A friend sent over a link to this earlier this week, tucking into an NPR planet money post. In discussing, the presentation has been around for a while, but the animation is really what helps make this interesting.



There are more video presentations that have been animated using this whiteboard style of animation posted on YouTube, so check them out if you get a chance.

Worth Reading: Why Products Suck post on Techcrunch

Heads up on an amusing post over on Techcrunch. It's Why Products Suck (And How To Make Them Suck Less) by David Barrett, CEO of Expensify. It's a worthwhile read. I particularly like the connection to the movie 12 Angry Men. If you've ever been in a marketing meeting where you had to overcome the objections of one individual who just didn't get it, this post is for you. It's a good reminder about the reality of team and consensus dynamics. Sometimes those consensus obstacles that you face can be a single voice causing you to completely recalculate the lowest common denominator. And suck.

Solved: An Easy Workaround for Some iPhone 4 Reception Problems

If you have an iPhone, then you're certainly familiar with the challenges of AT&T cellular coverage. While AT&T's network performance has gotten a lot of press around the iPhone, their service has been problematic for ten years or more -- that's one of the reasons why I used GTE (which then became Verizon) back then. I think that part of the issue is that the GSM signal simply doesn't perform well going through building walls, so when you're inside -- or your antenna is obstructed -- you have signal problems. The worst part of this is that "inside" is a word often used to describe you at home, work, or somewhere else interesting.

We've all seen the press on the iPhone 4 and it's antenna, but what you might not know is that the iPhone 4 also holds a secret workaround for some reception problems. What's the solution? Facetime.

Who Needs Social Networking Anyway?

These days, you can't throw a rock without hitting yet another software service pushing social networking features. Social is the next killer app, or so we're told. Social is the feature that will vault your ho-hum service into the realm of Facebook or Twitter. Social is the must-have feature for services like touch is for smart phones.

The problem with social is that, while it makes sense to some, some isn't everyone. For all of those that are interested (or should be interested) in what somebody else is doing, there is an equal or larger number (I'll let you estimate the multiple) of people who not just don't care or can't be bothered -- knowing is an inconvenience. This is particularly true in the business world -- understanding why social is relevant can be difficult for many business users.

This issue is getting pushed to the front burner with the newest update to Salesforce.com, Winter 11. With the Winter 11 release, Salesforce has activated Chatter for everyone -- force-feeding it to their customer base so to speak. If you're dealing with a user base that get's freaked out by changes or new technologies, this may have dropped you into a hurricane, but is it actually a tempest in a teapot?

Social Networking for Business
In the early days of Twitter, many of us dove into the technology, thrilled by the power of "follow". For many business users, follow was a cool idea, but Twitter wasn't secure for business communications. Then there was start-up company Yammer, and some similar knock-off companies that followed -- basically Twitter for business. We did some experimenting with Yammer, and while it did perform like Twitter, we struggled to find an effective use case for the platform. With Yammer -- simply basic Twitter functionality -- we found that emails and direct communications tended to supersede Yammer posts. Essentially, the problem with social was that it was like adding a layer of social to our social business interaction.

When they were first introducing Chatter at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference last year, initially I had the same feeling. Here was something that wouldn't really change the way that we use the software, instead acting like yet another add-on. But as I realized the potential impact of being able to follow key account or opportunity records, I started to get really excited. Here was an opportunity to roll up all of your important business activity into a single feed.

When Chatter first rolled out, I pushed and pushed to become part of the beta, and when we finally got it activated, my excitement turned to disappointment. While I had envisioned a system that, if you follow an account, would let you know when there were any related records that appeared (or were updated), the actual implementation didn't work that way. Currently in Chatter, you have to follow specific records to receive feed updates from those records, and it only generates feeds based on that record. In order words, you can follow an account and still not know if anything has happened (in terms of activity) on that account. Theoretically, this functionality will be implemented in a future release, but until that time, Chatter remains yet another social layer.

Don't get me wrong -- Chatter stands unique among most social networking tools for business in that it integrates business records, not just people. This has the potential to swing the balanced for business users that don't think that they care "what other people are doing." I'm truly looking forward to the future implementation of this functionality -- assuming they don't get side-tracked by adding some of the other "social" functionality features.

The Real Cornerstone of Social
While people and follow are often considered the core for social networking, I think that the real cornerstone of social is the aggregate feed. Whenever people ask me about Facebook or Twitter (particularly questioning their value), I try to explain it to them in terms of the feed. By simplifying and aggregating brief updates of all of the things that you follow -- and creating your own headline news -- you can more easily feel connected to the things that are important to you.

When Salesforce can get this functionality fully implemented into their platform with Chatter, it promises to be an incredibly powerful tool. Imagine following a key account in Salesforce and receiving an update whenever an invoice is sent to that account from an integrated Oracle system. Or maybe you need to see when your parts shipped from China. Imagine being able to get that data and review it on your iPhone while you're standing in the checkout line at Costco. Meanwhile, your account manager can customize their feed to follow any new cases created at their key accounts.

Simply put, the key to social is the customizable follow-feed relationship. With Salesforce.com, Chatter, and your key business objects, you can see the lights coming, but there's still some time remaining before it runs over everything else. Hopefully they can get it implemented before they alienate the anti-social business users.

Multi-tasking, Distracted Driving, and How We Pay Attention

NPR's Science Friday program this week featured an intestesting segment on How We Pay Attention. As part of the show, they included these two video tests available on their site.

Watch the first video, then watch the second. I wound up wrestling with frame drops from YouTube, so you may want to try and let the entire video load before you watch it.

1. Here's the first video:




2. Here's the second video:


Here's a link to the Science Friday segment on attention on NPR.
Here's a link to the book that's referenced in the segment. I won't mention the title as it might work like a spoiler for your video tests. FYI, there's more great stuff on their web site.

Breaking Bad: the AT&T MicroCell and Your Craptacular Mobile Signal Strength at Home - Initial Review

If you found this post, it probably means that you have poor cell coverage at home and you're wondering whether the AT&T 3G MicroCell can solve your problem. I've had the AT&T MicroCell running for several days now. While my time on calls using the 3G MicroCell is still somewhat limited, I wanted to share some operational experiences with you.

General Background
The 3G MicroCell has been offered by AT&T as a solution for improving your coverage in areas where the existing cell signal is week. Functioning like a wireless router, the device connects to your broadband connection and provides an access point for up to 10 AT&T phone lines. Note that these phone lines must be registered with AT&T, and it only works on 3G phones. Also, like a wireless router, it's signal radiates out from the unit and walls reduce the distance that the signal can go.

Set-Up and Configuration
As noted in my earlier post, set-up and configuration were fairly straightforward. You need to be able to log into your AT&T account on line to register the unit, and when you first set it up, it wants to be close to a window so that it can get a GPS signal. It uses GPS and a registered location for 911 tracking. My only comment on this is that I'm surprised by how long it takes for the unit to train.

Basic Performance
Once I activated the 3G MicroCell, I've been getting 4-5 bars throughout my home. The unit alerts you when you are connected to the MicroCell by changing the network display indicator on your phone. However, even with the unit centered inside my home, when I go outside, I find the signal falls off quickly.

I haven't dropped a call while talking on the 3G MicroCell when I've been in 'strong' coverage areas of my home, but I have experienced several calls where the call quality had issues. Basically, the call seems to experience some sort of packet drop -- like someone turned on a metronome and every click is a moment of silence. A couple of times, I've wound up redialing the person in an effort to correct the issue.

The place were the 3G MicroCell causes the biggest problems is when you get close to the edge of coverage. Theoretically, the MicroCell should shift your coverage over to the strongest available 3G cell signal (your local tower); however, if you have been on the 3G network for any length of time, you probably already know that switching networks is one of the times when calls frequently drop. And drop they do -- so far I've dropped nearly every call near the edge of the 3G MicroCell coverage. Of course, even if the switch between networks was seamless, you are probably still moving into an area with craptacular coverage, so you'd expect some issues.

Yesterday, I actually wound up unplugging the 3G MicroCell.  For whatever reason, yesterday my iPhone decided to stop receiving incoming calls -- this has happened to me before. Instead, I would simply get an alert that there was a new voice mail on my phone. After restarting my iPhone several times and wrestling with the same issue, I decided to unplug the 3G MicroCell.

Is the 3G MicroCell the Solution for You?
If you have really bad cell service in your home (0-2 bars), you might want to consider the 3G MicroCell. However, the decision may not be straightforward. Here are some guidelines that you might use to make your decision:

• If you are in a location where the 3G MicroCell is all that stands between you and no coverage (like your cabin in the mountains), you may want to consider it. The device will create a cell signal. However, it definitely has issues with range and it's not clear how much bandwidth requires on your broadband connection. If you have multiple people using the 3G MicroCell at the same time, I don't know well it will perform.
  
• If you are in a location where you have spotty coverage in your home and you can expect to be inside or within the 3G MicroCell coverage area for extended periods of time, you might want to consider it. The device would be a better supplemental solution if it didn't take so long to activate.
  
• If you have spotty coverage but you frequently run errands while talking on the phone (going in and out of the coverage area), I wouldn't recommend the device unless you intend to plan periods of time when you don't leave the coverage area. I experienced too many call drops at the edge of the 3G MicroCell network to recommend it as a solution.
  
• If you have 2 or more bars of coverage in the area around your home (inside will always be worse), I wouldn't recommend the 3G MicroCell. The dropped calls that you experience are inconvenient, but you'll probably experience more headaches with the device than without it.

A Few Weekend Links You Might Have Missed

Here's a quick roll-up of some good reading you might have missed over the weekend:

Behind The Bidding War: The Real Reasons Why HP And Dell are So Desperate For 3Par - This is a nice overview of the quest to purchase 3Par.

Founder Institute: How To Launch In 10 Steps With Less Than $2,000 - A nice recipe for baking a start-up.

And some hiring / employment culture posts from Techcrunch:

Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men. - An interesting read from Michael Arrington on the lack of women who lead start-ups.

Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age - is an interesting look at the age and salary in Silicon Valley. It profiles a study out of UC Berkeley. The general take away -- don't expect to grow old as a code monkey.

Last but not least, there was this very cool gadget / artwork post -- check this one out:
An Interview With Japanese Steampunk Artist Haruo Suekichi

A Quick Tip For Using Blogger

This morning I was working on a couple of blog posts that I've been writing. As I worked my way through a draft, I realized that, essentially, I wanted to revert to the version that I started with, and I started undoing the changes that I had made. Unfortunately, Blogger seems to remember only a select number of those changes -- once you go beyond those, it basically deletes your entire post and lets you start from scratch. Follow that up with a quick, software-based auto-save, and the next thing that you know, you have gone from making edits to rewriting your entire post.

Some Blogger features that could stand some improvement:

1. Control over the auto-save settings -- while it's great to save frequently, it would be nice to be able to control a timer or provide a setting that enabled you to block autosave.
2. A revert feature -- sometime similar to subversion that allowed you to roll back to previous drafts would be really helpful. This is basically a standard feature in most design and publishing software. 

Hopefully, this will be helpful for you. For me, it's back to the drawing board on two posts that I was working on.

A Netflix App for the iPhone is now available for download

I saw where the Netflix app is now available for the iPhone. I just loaded this on my iPhone4 and watched a quick round of Wallace and Gromit over wifi. Let me just say, it's pretty awesome. I highly recommend it.

As I write this, I'm sitting back with a smile, reflecting on a time when I couldn't imagine watching video on my cell phone and now feeling like I've been sold on the concept.