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My ten favorite videos from SXSW
March 18th, 2010
I just got back from an exhausting few days at SXSW in Austin. It was my first time ever, and I must say it was great, but I got to see just a sliver of what was going on because I was producing a ton of videos for Tweetshare, which is a service that allows you to follow Twitter conversations around content. While I did some blogging and took a few photos, my focus was videos. In total I produced 47 videos. That’s a lot to consume, so below are my top ten favorites. I have links to all the other videos below. Check them out, and if you like any, please leave a comment on Tweetshare which will automatically send out a tweet to all your followers.
Click on each thumbnail to watch the video. To leave a comment on Tweetshare you’ll need to log in with your Twitter ID and password.
My top ten favorite videos from SXSW (that I shot)
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One quarter of all people who friend me on Facebook don’t respond to personal messages
January 24th, 2010
I’ve just started receiving a flurry of Facebook friend requests from people I don’t even know. And like my mother, Facebook is recommending people for me to be friends with. I suspect the increase in friend invites has everything to do with Facebook’s new design feature which offers friend recommendations on the front page. It’s right there next to my news feed of my actual friends. It’s so intrusive. Just like my mother.
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Is Google dominating or leading the way?
January 10th, 2010
Friday night I appeared on KQED’s “This Week in Northern California” to discuss Google’s announcement of its Nexus One a.k.a. “Google Phone.” As mentioned by one of the reporters on the show, so many articles about Google lead with the headline “Are they trying to take over the world?”
(Video automatically skips ahead to my segment (6 min). Watch larger version.)
Most articles don’t follow through with telling the “Google taking over the world” story. The title comes off as more of a ploy just to get people to read the article. In my appearance I talked about how any business that’s delivering digital goods can get and are getting into anyone else’s business that also delivers digital goods. We’ve already been seeing it with cable companies becoming phone companies and vice versa.
In Google’s case, they’re not just getting into other people’s business, but they’re trying to help others get into each others’ business. Because their ultimate goal is so that their business, selling ads, can be seen on more screens, most notably the ones that everyone is looking at, the new age of smart phones.
See the whole episode and more on KQED’s “This Week in Northern California” site.
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Pepcom: We’d like to invite you to a party that we don’t want you to attend
December 21st, 2009
Last week I received a nice invitation from Pepcom to attend yet another one of their press events, called “Digital Experience” being held at CES next year in January. I’ll be attending CES this year so I said sure, and thanked Pepcom for the invite. Over the past six years I’ve attended a handful of Pepcom’s press-only events such as “Digital Experience” and “MobileFocus” which are connected to existing major conferences such as CES and CTIA, respectively. The advantage of these events over the general trade show floor is I get to see a lot of new companies, new product announcements, plus it’s an opportunity to schmooze with my fellow journalists. I’m a 14-year veteran tech journalist and analyst that’s written and appeared in more than 30 media outlets in print, radio, and TV. I currently write and appear on ABC Radio, Mashable, Socialmedia.biz, Technologizer, Green 960 radio, Cranky Geeks (I’m on this week too), and KQED, not to mention blogging here at the Spark Minute.
After I graciously accepted the invitation to the event, I received the following message:
“Thanks for getting back to me, but unfortunately we will no longer be able to admit you. I just took a look at your site and saw you are doing media consulting. Please see our attached media guidelines. Of course this is nothing personal, just our policy!” – Pepcom representative
You invited me to an event and then you uninvited me? Wow, that’s rude.
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Cranky on AOL and ICQ – who’s still on it?
December 21st, 2009
This week I joined John C. Dvorak, Sebastian Rupley, and David Coursey for another roundtable tech bash-a-thon better known as Cranky Geeks. All of us are old hats having covered the tech industry each for at least twelve years. On the show I asked the question, “Who still uses ICQ?” I honestly don’t know one person who does. One commenter to the show said there are still tons of ICQ users in Europe and it’s worth $200 million. I didn’t think it was worth more than $20. Are you still using it? With Skype, AOL Instant Messenger, Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and tons of other communications tools with lots more users, why? Watch the 30 minute show here.
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The cool and not-so-cool of LeWeb
December 10th, 2009
This week I traveled to Paris with a consortium of fellow bloggers, the Traveling Geeks. We’ve been meeting with tech companies and French entrepreneurs all week. The tour ended with attendance at LeWeb, a two day tech conference produced by tech entrepreneur and Seesmic founder, Loic Le Meur. Here’s my summary of the best and the worst of the event, plus I included some other stuff experienced from the Traveling Geeks tour and Paris in general. For a summary, make sure you watch my end of day show reports from LeWeb (day 1, day 2) and my other end of day report from the Traveling Geeks tour.
Cool – Accordions, Accordions, Accordions – There are plenty of street performers in Paris. Most of them are carrying accordions. On my first day I saw four sets of performers hop onto a train car, play a few tunes, and jump off. On one train a duo jumped on with an accordion and a stand up bass. My favorite was the karaoke accordionist that would also take a mic for a solo himself to sing “Just a Gigolo”.
Not-so-cool – The first day, the conference wasn’t about real-time web – The theme of LeWeb was heavily advertised as being about real-time web. That didn’t seem to be the case with most of the companies demoing, and except for a presence of Twitter and Facebook, and some mentions, there was no major discussion about real-time web on the main stage. After day one we all started asking ourselves, “Where’s the discussion about the real-time web?”
Cool – On the second day, finally the real-time web – If you were interested in the real-time web you could have completely skipped the first day of LeWeb and just come on the second day. Obviously everyone was eager for the real-time discussion because the deep discussion room in the back of the hall was packed for the event’s eventual real-time web agenda. I was very eager to learn more since I just published an analyst report this week on the subject (“Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web” 20-page PDF). The presentations and conversations on real-time were truly excellent, beginning with some great actionable advice from Jeremiah Owyang. On the main stage, Queen Rania of Jordan, who has become an Internet celebrity, spoke about the real-time web, specifically making a call out to the audience to use the real-time web as activism to change the world.
Cool/Not-so-cool – Moderators not agreeing with the topic – Andrew Keen, Author of Cult of the Amateur, led the panel entitled “Content vs. Conversation: The Debate over Real-Time Search.” His attitude towards his panelists from TweetMeme, Netvibes, Collecta, and OneRiot was pretty much “Why the hell do we need real-time search?” While I think it’s a good idea for a moderator to create some controversy (see article: “More Schmooze, Less Snooze: How to Deliver the Most Talked About Conference Session” 6-page PDF), Keen didn’t seem to be too savvy on the real-time search market and he didn’t let go on his opinion. There is a ton of value of real-time search (see business models section in my real-time search report), and until the end of the discussion he kept saying “Why would someone want real-time search?” He was constantly putting the panelists on the defensive.
C0ol – Double-sided name badges – One of the most irritating conference annoyances is name badge flip. Wear a lanyard with a name badge and inevitably it will twist around hiding your name. I must be a master because I think it’s more often than not for me. LeWeb is the first conference I’ve been to where they smartly printed your name on both sides of the badge. Brilliant.
Cool – Our former President is wrong. The French are unbelievably nice – This entire week has been fantastic and the Traveling Geeks have been treated unbelievably well. Everyone. From the people who invited us to any random Parisian I ran into, I’m very impressed with how nice and welcoming everyone has been. Thanks.
Cool – The French speak English – It’s been a while since I’ve been to France and I was amazed at how many people speak English. LeWeb is a conference in Paris, but it’s completely in English. The all-English conference is an obvious incentive to draw people from 40+ countries, most notably the U.S., to the conference.
Not-so-cool – I don’t speak French – I’m a pathetic single language learner. Most people in Europe know at least two languages. And most of them have learned English for lazy clowns like me that haven’t bothered to learn another language.
Cool? – Non-stop photo and video recording of the Traveling Geeks – I think this is cool, or just unbelievably dorky so it’s become cool again. For the Traveling Geeks’ first dinner in Paris everyone was taking pictures the moment we sat down at the table. There were probably 500 photos published from that dinner. And that’s continued throughout the trip. Guilty myself, here’s a video I shot of all the geeks on the Metro with all their digital image recording equipment. For more, here are all the photos taken by the Traveling Geeks crew (full screen).
Not-so-cool – LeWeb is overhyped – Back in San Francisco, I had heard so much about how fantastic and wonderful LeWeb is. I had a lot of hope for this conference, and was overall disappointed mostly because of the hype. The number of demo stations of new companies was anemic and didn’t represent real-time web as I had hoped. While there were heavy hitters on the main stage, they weren’t revealing. But that’s always the case. The bigger your presenters at your show, the bigger the hype. But the bigger they are, the less they’ll talk openly. Often that has to do with working at a public company. But I think the issue is millionaires stay millionaires by not telling their secrets to a group of more than a thousand strangers. There were a few exceptions.
Cool – Credit card scanning on your mobile device – Jack Dorsey of Twitter demoed his new project, Square, a small box that connects to your mobile device’s audio out port and allows you to scan your credit card allowing for quick and easy credit card transactions via mobile devices. While cool, and can work on a huge number of devices, is it really practical? Are people really going to carry around this little black box wherever they go? I think the next step will be to embed this credit card reader in new mobile devices.
Cool - Tim Ferriss on “How to Create a Following for $10K or Less” – One of my major complaints about most of the main stage presentations was the lack of actionable advice or telling the audience something we didn’t already know. I’ve seen Tim Ferriss present before and read his blog and he always delivers on great actionable advice. This was an updated presentation of one I had seen at WordCamp in San Francisco. One tip is to simply focus on the blogosphere and key people in the blogosphere and look for the long haul. Begin by reading Kevin Kelly’s article “1,000 True Fans.”, said Ferriss.
Not-so-cool – Who didn’t pay to go on the main stage? – It appears about half of everyone who appeared on the main stage (panelists possibly excluded) paid in some manner to be there. It could be more. It’s obvious because so many sponsors were on the main stage. None of these seemingly paid appearances were disclosed. I’ve been to plenty of conferences where there were paid presentations. Many disclose that information in the printed programs with the note, “Sponsored presentation.” For a community that keeps talking about the need for “authenticity” online, I think it would be nice if there was some authentic disclosure as to who did and didn’t pay to be on stage.
UPDATE: Loic Le Meur responded and emphatically denied this claim. Saying that none of the people on stage paid to be there. See comments below for more.
Not-so-cool – LeWeb is an old boys’ network – I was thinking this and then I heard it repeated by a few of my colleagues. Loic gets many of the same people to present, interview, and moderate, such as Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington. Since they’re friendly off stage, their on stage presentation has this sense of being an old boys’ network. It’s not the most welcoming feeling for the people in the audience. People were definitely unnerved by it.
Not-so-cool – Chris Pirillo is the Rush Limbaugh of the Web 2.0 community – Rush Limbaugh, a conservative syndicated radio host, became popular because he’s a credible voice that confirms people’s existing beliefs. This is exactly how I felt about Chris Pirillo’s presentation about community. Better known as preaching to the choir, my sentiment was evidenced by the number of tweets that echoed “I agree with him” rather than “I learned something.” Here’s an edited sample of tweets to prove my point: My favourite quote of the day :-), Brilliant!!, i love it!!, Chris Pirillo is right, I’m loving Chris Pirillo’s presentation, The Reverend Chris Pirillo is wrapping up. He actually made be blurt out jesus christ, and Halle-freakin-lujah. One other tweeter saw what I was seeing: Chris Pirillo is Great speecher but only brought self-evident ideas.
I had a conversation with Chris about this last night and I simply said to him that I think he could do better. He has done better. He knows how to educate an audience as a former host of TechTV’s “Call for Help” and in previous presentations. I noted his vision six years ago that RSS would be the Holy Grail. He was right. That’s what I wanted to see at LeWeb and he didn’t deliver. He told us what we already knew which was we need to stop focusing on the tools and think about the importance of community. He didn’t think the audience knew that. The general populace yes, but the LeWeb audience? They know. Pirillo just led a revival to confirm their beliefs.
Cool - A scannable and identifiable model of Paris – Forget Google Streets, through a project called Terra Numerica by a research group called CiTu, they’ve completely scanned and identified elements all around the city of Paris. This information is now in a database that’s been used by developers to create fly-throughs, simulate a flood’s effect on the city, and test security cameras around the city. Watch a video of the fly-through and my interview with Maurice Benayoun, Artistic Director of CiTu. This was during our Traveling Geeks tour, not LeWeb.
Not-so-cool – Europeans’ fear of failure – While we were visiting the startup incubators I heard multiple times that there’s a European culture of fear of failure. This is quite unlike in the U.S. where failing is a learning experience. In the U.S. we’ve actually got a conference entitled FailCon where we learn from each others’ failures. For some, failure is a badge of honor. I remember talking to one entrepreneur who proudly told me about his seven failed startups.
Not-so-cool – Robert Scoble’s outburst at the French entrepreneurs – Well known blogger Robert Scoble joined the Traveling Geeks briefly for one event prior to LeWeb. At this series of presentations by French entrepreneurs, Scoble sat down and immediately wanted to know everyone’s Twitter address. They didn’t have any and instead of just accepting that fact and listening to their presentations, he started yelling and swearing at them telling them they must get on Twitter. He argued that it’s the only way he can promote them to his 100K+ followers. Ubergizmo blogger, Eliane Fiolet, asked Robert, “Could you say that a little nicer?” Scoble responded, “No.” His childish and rude response created a pall over the room and the rest of the Traveling Geeks were very unnerved by his behavior, as it spoke badly for our group. I should note that Robert is a really nice guy and it’s not normal for him to behave like this.
Extremely cool – The Traveling Geeks – I only knew a few of the Traveling Geeks before I went on the trip and I was really impressed by the entire group. Everyone was incredibly friendly, nice, and welcoming. I want to say an enormous thanks though to the lead organizer of the event, Renee Blodgett, and also to Sky Schuyler, and Eliane Fiolet for all their work. I look forward to being on another trip with them in the future. Here’s a silly animated video of us, plus a video of Geeks on a Train, and make sure you check out the thousands of photos (full screen) taken on the trip.
Some of my other coverage of the event.
- Dating tech service Wuiper offers a fun way for people to meet
- Touchable movable video
- How Dell handles customer service and sales through social media
- Parrot’s new Wi-Fi Picture Frame and Wireless Speakers
- Dick Tracy Watch from LG/Orange
- Pearltrees: Bookmarking Program for Organization Lovers
Creative Commons photo attributions Olivier Ezratty, Robert Scoble, Chris Heuer, Matthew Buckland, Rodrigo Sepulveda, and Blogowski.
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Traveling Geeks in Paris: Day 1 video report
December 8th, 2009
Here’s my day one report for the Traveling Geeks trip in Paris, a week long tech tour that culminates with two days at the Web 2.0 conference Le Web. The whole group was fighting jet lag and minimal sleep, but we got to see lots of great new French tech and to listen to many entrepreneurs at the early stages of their products. Watch the report. Links to items mentioned can be seen below.
- Pearltrees bookmarking organization and sharing program.
- Photos so far from Traveling Geeks tour (full screen), including the hundreds from our first dinner. Check out the Traveling Geeks photos .
- Photo of the crappy Traveling Geeks pens.
- psiXpda, small computing device.
- Video interview with Artistic Director of CiTu on Terra Numerica.
- Feedbooks - Standard distribution of eBooks.
- .MXP4 – Interactive audio format.
- Orange’s video search 2424actu, geoblocked outside of France, but will be available sometime in January 2010.
- Video of Dick Tracy watch from LG/Orange.
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Free report “Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web”
December 7th, 2009
Call it good or bad timing, but I just happen to finish a report on real-time search on the day that Google announced its rollout of its integrated real-time search results within its general search results. While I had to do some last minute edits, the report is done and I’m making it available to everyone for free. It’s entitled “Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web.” You can download the PDF, or view it right now on Scribd.
I’m giving the report away for free. All I ask in return is some feedback. Positive, negative, but whatever it is, please make it constructive. I’m eagerly learning as much as I can about this subject. This is an area that I think is going to grow like crazy, and we’re only looking at a thumbnail’s worth of what is yet to come.
Here are some highlights from the report.
- Real-time search could steal away as much as $40 billion from traditional search. Google and Microsoft’s announcement to incorporate real-time search results is a good first step to prevent losses.
- The definition of real-time search is far more varied than the definition of traditional search. You’ll see more variations in what is considered a real-time search engine.
- All real-time search engines are far from equal. The major reason is they don’t index the same content.
- Real-time search engines that only index Twitter are missing up to 90 percent of the real-time web.
- One exciting new aspect of real-time search is the creation of real-time programming that will be complimentary and competitive with traditional programming (e.g. TV, radio, print, and online).
Enjoy and let me know what you think. David
December 10th, 2009 CORRECTION: The article mentioned that real-time search engine Wowd required a plugin for its use. That is not true. Current report is updated to reflect that it’s not required.
Real-time Search and Discovery of the Social Web
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How can policy makers find expert advice?
December 2nd, 2009
At the Supernova conference in San Francisco, Anil Dash, long time blogger and employee #1 at Six Apart, spoke about his new project, Expert Labs, which is an effort to connect policy makers with community expertise.
Anil Dash
The concept of matching questions with expert answers has already been playing itself out in the social media sphere. Most notable is Twitter which has the ability, in the time of need, to match people with questions with followers who have answers. If you’ve got a critical mass of Twitter followers (>1000), you can often ask a question (e.g. What are the best headphones to buy?) and someone will have an answer (e.g. a sound engineer friend suggests Shure headphones, so given his background his advice is the strongest). Twitter is the connective tissue that allows this question and response mechanism to happen. And when you experience this for the first time, it becomes a significant moment because you got an answer in a way you couldn’t have had in any other way. For more, read Sixteen Great Twitter Moments on Mashable.
Anil Dash and Expert Labs asks why can’t policy makers take advantage of this same type of community interaction? This is not a new question. The problem is the path to the solution must go through a long drawn out process. A government agency puts out an RFP and only approved vendors can respond. They look at the responses, and those within the organization who do and don’t have expertise, make a decision to purchase a solution hoping that a few years from now that the technology doesn’t fall into some government tech ghetto. Or the technology quickly becomes antiquated and employees are obliged to use it since the cost outlay was already made.
Instead of going through the same drawn out government process, Expert Labs has a three point plan. From their site:
- We ask policy makers what questions they need answered to make better decisions.
- We help the technology community create the tools that will get those answers.
- We prompt the scientific & research communities to provide the answers that will make our country run better.
The technology community is being requisitioned to help match buyer and seller just like Craig Newmark did with Craigslist. The answer may just be a single technology (e.g. Craigslist) or it may be a collection (e.g. Twitter, Craigslist, discussion groups, etc.).
Creative Commons photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid
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I used to just be a geek, but now I’m a Traveling Geek
November 29th, 2009
Just a short post to let you know that next week I’ll be reporting from LeWeb in Paris with the Traveling Geeks. This is a group formed by Renee Blodgett where more than a dozen tech bloggers attend tech functions and report on the event. Previous Traveling Geeks trips have gone to London, Israel, and South Africa.
For the end of ‘09, the Traveling Geeks’ Paris team includes Eliane Fiolet, Tom Foremski, Robin Wauters, Kim-Mai Cutler, Frederic Lardinois, Matt Buckland, Sky Schuyler, Jerome Tranie, Ewan Spence, Olivier Ezratty, Cyrille de Lasteyrie, Renee Blodgett, Amanda Coolong, Beth Blecherman, and Phil Jeudy.
Following the coverage
And as I mentioned, this Traveling Geeks function will be at LeWeb, but that’s only on December 9th and 10th, and we’ll be doing a lot more reporting before and after. All of these bloggers will be blogging on all their respective blogs which are often more than one.
- You best bet for tracking what’s happening is to simply follow the Traveling Geeks blog (RSS feed). It’s the main feed for all the posts made by the Traveling Geeks during the trip.
- Follow the hashtag #tg09 on Twitter.
- Check out the Traveling Geeks photos (full screen).
- Join the Traveling Geeks fan page on Facebook.
Thanks to our nice sponsors Orange, Answers.com, and Parrot for making this trip possible. And a huge thanks to Renee Blodgett, Eliane Fiolet, Phil Jeudy, and Sky Schuyler for working their respective tails off to pull off this event in just a few weeks. The four of them organized this entire event and I and the rest of the geeks owe them enormous thanks.
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