ItSeemstoMe

Thinkpad Envy

Paula and I had our home filled with computer jocks and bloggers yesterday.  We had a grand time of it and didn't get into tech banter until after mass quantities of food and alcohol were consumed.

It started when  Jeff Clavier, needed to check on an eBay auction and he asked to borrow my computer. So, like a proud parent, I trotted out my spiffy new 3 lb Thinkpad X40 for his use. He has the same computer and he immediately enthused about it having the best notebook keyboard ever made.  He now covets the X41, which is the tablet version.  Scoble, of course could not help but fiddle with it for a few minutes, and it generated the ult mate Scoble endorsement.

"Cool," he said.

Maryam recently blogged about her own computer paradoxes and when she got her hands on my X40, all she could say was "I want it. I want it," which referred to the notebook and had no sexual overtones whatsoever.

I am no technology jock.  I have never been a true early adopter. So it had a special  pride for me that the tech that I recently bought was judged to be cool stuff by this knowledgeable gang. But there's a bigger point.  You don't need to have a PowerBook to get excited about technology.  The Thinkpad is generating a good deal f passion under the fingers of most people who touch them.                     

Questions to the World #1

We bloggers love to tell the world what we think.  Collectively, we are sort of this humungous global op ed page, with opinions spilling into all sorts of stuff. It dawned on me that it might be interesting to turn it around and ask the world what it thinks.

So, I'm going to start asking open-ended questions, one at a time. I am not going to enter my thoughts.  I am not going to comment on yours. You can tell us as much or as little about yourself as you wish, so long as you do not respond anonymously or in excessively bad taste. Your comments will endure in the blogosphere from this point forward.

Over time, I hope to have some very lengthy commentary.  I haven't a clue what it will prove or disclose--but here goes with my first question to the world:

From where you are, what do you think the world will look like ten years from today?

Canada's Move to Suppress Bloggers

Recently, I've been feeling envious of America's Northern neighbor. Canada has better schools and health programs than we Californians have.  They have a diverse, growing and active blogging community, and oh yeah, they seem to have wisdom on what wars to stay out of.

Now, my friend Curt over at the Committee to Protect Bloggers, says that all Canada's decency will not extend to bloggers. An op ed piece soon to be published in Montreal's French language press next month, Canada has introduced legislation designed to allow authorities to act with impunity against bloggers and others writing online.

This month Bill C-74 was introduced to Canada's parliament. If adopted, the legislation would do away with the need for warrants and would force internet service providers to hand over subscriber information including names, addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers and cellphone numbers, on the written request of any law enforcement official.

Please note that at this point, this is proposed legislation.  It has not been passed, and I have no idea if it has any chance of it. In the U.S., every year, Congressional representatives introduce all sorts of lame ideas that get spiked by the wisdom of the Congressional crowd. Of course some of it becomes unjust new laws.

I hope this is not the case in Canada.

Dan Gillmor Leaving Mercury

http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/011101.shtml

I'll be leaving the San Jose Mercury Newsnext month to work on a citizen-journalism project. I hope to pull together something useful that helps enable -- and demonstrates -- the emerging grassroots journalism that I wrote about in my recent book. Something powerful is happening, it's in the early stages and I have a chance to help figure this out. I'm not ready to discuss the specifics yet, mainly because I have many more ideas than I could possibly try to put into practice at this point -- and we're early in the process of working out the venture's actual form. Keep in mind that this project is now in what's known as the seed stage. It's not an operating entity yet, though I expect it will be. But we're some time away from that, with many issues to resolve in the meantime. A friend who knew about this ahead of time asked the question I'm sure some others will ask: "Are you nuts?" I hope not. Of course, I amleaving one of the best gigs in journalism. The Merc has been incredibly good to me. There are so many talented and good-hearted folks here. I hate the idea of leaving. But I'd hate not trying this even more. Obviously, there will be much more to say in the days and weeks ahead...

Google Desktop Beta is Fabulous

The only advice I have for anyone using a PC regarding the new Google Desktop Search released in beta today is—use it. The same familiar interface that you know, with a sparse 25 words is there. The only new part is you can do a desktop search. This search may include recently visited Web pages or not depending on user preferences. I just tried to beat it, asking the most difficult or obscure references, and could not get it to deliver precisely what I want in my own computer in a matter of seconds.

But what makes it so great is that you get your results in a Google Page with a little summary graph of what each file contains. It’s, well, so Google-like. It will take a while, but this new service may change lives the way the Google online search has.

Google is a phenomenal company. Every predecessor ignored search as irrelevant to business strategy. Google made it a killer app and in so doing has perhaps made itself the last great dot-com company. Boy, do I regret not buy the stock at 85 on the IPO.

DemoMobile 04

I had a good time covering DemoMobile 04 for Conferenza a couple of weeks back. The social networking aspects are top flight, and I’m usually at my happiest when I’m surrounded by enterprenuers with new ideas and hopes. The were two standouts from the attendee perspective: Aliph, of Brisbane, Calif., who launched Jawbone , a mobile phone headset they developed iwith DARPA, who needed it for battlefield communications. This start up blew away Plantronics and Logitech in a three-way competition.
Also scoring high among attendees was Kansas City-based Handmark, Inc., who launched a suite of handy services designed to let customers view rich data versions of news, white and yellow pages, a street Atlas and driving directions on a handheld device. You could easily use it to one-hand information on a movie, find out where it’s playing, and – perhaps, in the future – buy a ticket and get directions to the theater, all with ease. The service will be available from carriers for $7 a month sometime soon.
But these were the only real standouts among 33 presenting companies it seemed to me. While there were lots of neat improvements and refinements to stuff we’ve seen before, few came close to blowing the socks off my feet. As one veteran VC, John Zeisler pointed out, America continues to trail behind Asia and Europe in wireless innovation.

Two reasons come to mind that may explain this:
(1) Americans had the money to buy notebook PCs. Many people in Asia and Europe didn’t, so users there were quicker to adopt cellular technology and use them for messaging and other services long before Americans even felt the need.
(2) Venture money went through a painful drought three years ago, and the result is that we are seeing fewer watershed innovators in wireless and other sectors.

In any case, the Demo companies loved the conference as much as attendees. One CEO told me getting ink, “was like shooting fish in a barrel with a shotgun.” If you’d like to see a full DemoMobile report, just email me.

Blogger for Hire

I believe the Cluetrain Manifesto concept of marketing as a conversation is among the biggest and best ideas of current times. In an era when customer relationships are relegated to automated hosted software and customer support is shipped to remote locations where untrained personnel read to you from user manuals, the concept of ongoing and egalitarian dialog between companies and their networks is essential and the social media are a phenomenon that will, over time, transform and improve free enterprise.

I have tried four times in recent months to persuade companies to contract me as a consulting blog evangelist. A blogging tools company turned me down because they thought the task should be done by a staff member, so they relegated it to the CEO who posts about once monthly; a VC firm who wants to be known in the social media market considered having their own blog to complicated and time-consuming; a social media start-up decided they were more comfortable with the costs of having an intern be their blogging evangelist and most recently a Global 2000 corporation backed out after I explained they would be obliged to post even adverse customer comments if they were going to use comments.

I think my idea is good and I have confidence in my talents as both a writer and a veteran marketing consultant. If you have an interest or know someone who has an interest, I would jump at the chance to help a company to get closer and be better understood by its customers, prospects, partners and even employees.

Please email me to discuss.

Three Tips on Conference Presentations

As editor of Conferenza Premium Reports , I attend more technology executive conferences than most people would want or afford to, which makes me appreciate my press pass—most of the time. I’ve just completed covering both DEMOmobile and Dow Jones DataCenter Ventures , two very different conferences except they both spotlight promising early stage companies delivering new and occasionally exciting technologies to market. Often the technology may be promising, but the presentation sucks so badly that companies who sometimes have spent years to get to this critical moment do irreparable damage to the company’s future.

Why, I often wonder, are they so foolish to wing their presentations or relegate its scripting to some lower tier member of their company PR or marketing team. Why do CEO’s allow themselves to emote phrase and thoughts that they would never use in conversations with peers, prospects or employees? Why, after putting products through alpha and beta testing, through focus group scrutiny and all sorts of hoops, do they not think investing in the time to get the verbal portions of their presentation tight?

There is no second chance for a first impression and yet companies with perfectly good technology just blow it. At DemoMobile, company executives stood on the dais in front of more than 400 people including a global representation of press and bloggers, investors, companies looking for partners and they read from stilted scripts that failed to deliver suitable messages. I ask a couple of CEOs who stumbled about this and they said they just hadn’t had time.

That seems to me to be a bone-headed answer showing arrogance and a lack of understanding of the importance of the moment. Before stepping on stage executives, should:

1. Write the first draft of their own scripts. When marketing refines them, allow only words, thoughts or terminology you would use with a trusted colleague,
2. Never read a script. Let me put it another way never, NEVER read a script.
3. Be able to say in one sentence, using neither adjectives nor hyperbole just what your technology or company does that is unique, valuable and enduring.

If you cannot do this, if you do not have the time to prepare, my simple advice to you is to sit down and shut up until your ready to taking up the important time of other people.

DemoMobile’s Challenge

I leave in the morning to cover Chris Shipley and DemoMobile in La Jolla tomorrow for Conferenza Premium Reports . This is usually one of my favorite conferences of the year. Shipley has a great, easy-going but thoughtful style and historically displayed a keen eye for companies that show well.

But I wonder about DemoMobile as it enters its fifth year. Conferences seem to me to be at their best usually when they are dealing with new and rapidly changing technologies. Fragmentation may not make for healthy markets, but the fierce positional jockeying between companies before standards are set are always fun to watch and cover.

Mobile computing no longer seems to me to be new category. While the DemoMobile website promises attendees will see the latest innovations in wireless technology, we are not so certain that wireless is in an innovative phase. The standards, players and applications may have pretty much formed and that could make for thin soup in terms of the 35 or so companies demonstrating new technologies. We hope not. We hope our socks will be blown off our feet.

Conferenza is a subscription-based 'zine covering most top tier tech conferences. If you'd like to receive the complete DemoMobile report for free, just email me.

NetworkWorld Singapore Article

Network World has published an opinion piece I wrote on Singapore's broadband policy. I continue to be fascinated by this tiny island city-state and its enormous potential as a technology trading partner for U.S. companies.