AT&T, Verizon and the IPhone
Reports are starting emerge that Verizon is going to get the IPhone in the 3rd or 4th quarter of 2010. Deadlines are a great motivator for startups, but I wonder if a company like AT&T can turn it around.
If this rumor is true, here is my advice to AT&T. Hire a group of entrepreneurs instead of McKinsey. You have an amazing opportunity, don’t blow it.
I will give you a few ideas for free, if you would like more ask:
- fix the locations with biggest cluster of tech people first
- change your strategy on transparency
- create a new campaign that leverages the people that influence, make them more famous
Good Luck AT&T, I have no reason not to cheer for you. I just want my IPhone to work, let’s go kick Verizons @$s.
If my facebook identity goes away, do i exist
I tried to log into facebook this afternoon, nothing. I tried facebook.com/robertreich nothing, I tried facebook.com/bdnewtech something.
Ok, the site is live, but where am I. Do I exist, if Facebook will not display my profile?
Hacking Add-on-Con
I am organizing Add-on-Con for the second time. During last years event, one of the best parts was putting faces with names. This year during the planing stage I had an idea, to try a game, to accomplish the same effect. I logged on to the web, typed rentacoder.com, popped open Adobe Illustrator and started to draw. The end result can now be seen at Add-on-Con.com.
The game is proving to be great fun and a good way to virally let people know about the conference. I believe it is also achieving the goal of helping people put faces with names.
I originally had the game announce each players score over twitter, but that seemed to be viewed as spam. Not sure I agree, but I asked the developer to change the code. Now it announces each time a player takes over 1 of the top 5 slots and enables each player to announce the score from their own twitter account via a retweet button.
One of the really fun side affects that emerged is the competitive nature of the players. A large subset of the group are software developers, so hacking the game quickly became a popular way to post more impressive scores. Leading one of the player’s who claimed the top spot to claim “yes, this was legit”.
Another developer was kind enough to send me his hack:
<start script>
function myScript() {
setTimeout(‘timer.clicks=18;var mycards = new Array();mycards[0]=card_1;mycards[1]=card_2;mycards[2]=card_3;mycards[3]=card_4;mycards[4]=card_5;
mycards[5]=card_6;mycards[6]=card_7;mycards[7]=card_8;mycards[8]=card_9;mycards[9]=card_10;mycards[10]=card_11;mycards[11]=card_12;mycards[12]=card_13;mycards[13]=card_14;mycards[14]=card_15;mycards[15]=card_16;mycards[16]=card_17;mycards[17]=card_18;mycards[18]=card_19;mycards[19]=card_20;mycards[20]=card_21;mycards[21]=card_22;mycards[22]=card_23;mycards[23]=card_24;for(i in mycards){var cardText = mycards[i].cardText;if (mycards[i].isFound != true){mycards[i].flipCard(\’card_\’+(++i));for(j in mycards){if (i != j && mycards[j].isFaceUp != true && mycards[j].cardText == cardText){mycards[j].flipCard(\’card_\’+(++j));}}}}’,15000);
}
var script = document.createElement(“script”);
script.type = “application/javascript”;
script.textContent = “(” + myScript + “)();”;
document.body.appendChild(script);
<end script>
Thanks kevin, have fun and see you at Add-on-Con on December 11.
Segmenting Spiders Might Help Control Them
Traditional web search engines maintain duplicate copy’s of the internet. They accomplish this by deploying armies of spiders to attack websites at regular intervals. These attacks consume your websites resources.
Techniques and algorithms can be used to minimize load and play fair, but as a site owner you have to decide how much of today’s resources you are willing to allocate to support a possible request tomorrow.
This is where real time search is different; services like OneRiot do not keep replicas of the complete Internet around just in case someone asks. They do not even crawl your website instead they fetch specific pages people think are interesting now. This means the resource load on your website is tiny and directly tied to real traffic patterns.
Grouping real time search with traditional web search does not make sense and it actually minimizes your websites ability to get traffic today. I would like to propose a new identification scheme, one that clearly identifies the type of service accessing your website. This way website owners can throttle with knowledge rather lumping all search engines into a single bucket.
Thoughts?
is it realtime?
What is it:
- Real time
- Realtime
- Real-time
- realtime
- real time
- real-time
Someone please clarify, which realtime is the correct one? I am wasting our natural resources by monitoring all of the different ways someone can spell real time. According to the article “The environmental impact of Google searches” “performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle or about 7g of CO2 per search”.
Help me save the planet.
OneRiot Predicts American Idol Winner
As I walked into the house tonight my kids were watching American Idol and my son informed me that Adam was going to win. I said Ethan, I know he is your favorite but I disagree. According to the analysis done at OneRiot this week Kris was the winner.
He said no way and asked if I wanted a jellybean. The jellybean container actually has two snakes that jump out upon opening. I said no thank you.
Visit the OneRiot Blog to see how they predicted the winner or to search the realtime web visit OneRiot.com.
Techstars Mentors and the Boulder Community
Boulder has this incredible program called Techstars. One of the impressive things they do is leverage mentors both locally and nationwide. The Techstars employees and advisors do a great job of getting these mentors to Boulder. When they overlap with community events like New Tech, for example, they connect these people to the event organizers and the larger Boulder community can network with and gain access to these experienced professionals.
The problem arises that community events only happen a few days a month so members are only getting access to a fraction of the mentors. Over the past week, I have received multiple emails, txts and tweets from Boulder entrepreneurs expressing their envy and their desire to make these mentor trips more productive for the community and the arriving mentors.
I would like to propose a few options and if anyone has other ideas please comment:
- Create a public calendar of visiting mentors
- Hold several of the mentoring meetings per week at CU or some other large auditorium so a portion of the entrepreneurial community can attend
- Do an interview series with mentors, similar to the Entrepreneur’s Unplugged series hosted at CU during the school year.
I am not suggesting these events should be free, though it would be nice. I think most people in the community would pay $5-10 to sit through these sessions, especially if it included snacks.
thoughts, ideas suggestions?
While I am on my Boulder sopabox, I also think Boulder needs a cool tech conference. I propose something like SXSW meets TED.
who’s in?
Bring on the noise bring on the notification fatigue
How do I gain control of my online social life:
I have the Seesmic desktop client running with 7 twitter accounts ranging from 10 to 1000’s of followers plus several active searches. The thing is out of control and requiring my full attention. The concept that twitter is a one way communication is just not true it’s like Facebook, IM or email, certain posts require a response and most are looking for a very timely reply.
I have given up on IM for the time being, I check Facebook and linkedin at least once a day and my email client is always active and taking up way to much space.
What should I do, if I want to be responsive to those who need or want my attention?
The Real Time Web is changing how I consume information
OneRiot released a vertical search engine today, focused on twitter URL’s.
The OneRiot beta search engine that has been available for a few months uses implicitly captured URL’s, while the OneRiot Twitter Search uses URL’s that are explicitly entered by twitter users. The content overlap is fascinating.
I ran a search for G20 at 9:47am:
- Google’s number one result is navigational, followed by News
- Search.Twitter has opinions and comments
- OneRiot Web search has News and Fashion
- Oneriot.Twitter.Search has news
The other real interesting fact for me is time. I ran my test search for G20 again at 10.10am:
- Google had no change
- Search twitter had 641 new updates
- OneRiot had replaced it’s number one result and lost the fashion reference
- OneRiot.Twitter.Search had 4 new updates
The Real Time Web is changing how I consume information.
I included screen shots of my results, and I would highly recommend trying the different engines to see the difference.
Google.com:
Search.Twitter.com
OneRiot.com
twitter.oneriot.com
I am tired of people asking me why they should use Twitter. Why shouldn’t they use it? Besides the medical conditions that it creates, trigger finger, extreme joint swelling and ADD, the service is used by many celebrities and millions of people. So why do so many of my friends think the service provides no value?
I say trigger finger and extreme joint swelling provide value. What if you didn’t feel like playing a game of basketball with a bunch of oversized peeps who show up at the park? A quick tweet and wham, trigger finger. It’s the perfect excuse to avoid any sporting event that requires your hands.
Not all users will suffer from trigger finger and extreme joint swelling , but ADD effects all twitter users at some point. You know you have ADD when you find yourself checking twitter at inappropiate times. Examples include: tweeting during a meeting, in the middle of a conversation, during a congressional session or while having sex.
I admit I suffer from all of the above, and my knee hurts. I wonder if I can blame that on Twitter as well?
Twitter user name: menro
