The History of the Internet (Picol/RRW)

RWW shared a very interesting movie on the history of the Internet.
The movie was crated by PICOL (picol.org - stands for Pictorial Communication Language) - it's a project that aims to create "a standard and reduced sign system for electronic communication." PICOL is free to use and open to alter.




E.T.

Windows Mobile on the iPhone 3G

It was just a matter of time until someone would hack the iPhone, not to change the mobile carrier, but to run another OS on the iPhone.

In a Blog I saw today, Erik Kristiansen, shows his 'boot-camp' version for the iPhone.



It would be interesting to see how cross-OS capabilities would effect sales of phones hardware. Will iPhone be the best device to run Windows Mobile?

E.T.

Gary Vaynerchuk's "Bipolar" motivation speach

I was following the Web 2.0 Expo (NY) and came across Gary Vaynerchuk's (Wine Library) key note. He talked about "Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape".



Few notes:

• His answer for "What wine goes with fish?" is exactly as mine: "What ever you like".
• Work on things you love. If you cannot make money doing it, either you are not good at it, or you need to keep you day job.
• Building business is tough. Build a real business with a real value.
• Listening to your customers is important. Few actually care about their customer. Show your customers that you care by doing things for them.
• Keep trying.

At the end, I did not know if I am happy, sad, motivated or depressed.
But at least - it made me think.

E.T.

The Wife Song

As a follow up for the 'Mom Song', here comes the 'Wife Song'.

Special thanks to Mickey for forwarding...



E.T.

Aurora: Adaptive Path/ Mozilla Labs concept browser

Have a look at this interesting concept.

"...Aurora is a concept video presenting one possible future user experience for the Web, created by Adaptive Path as part of the Mozilla Labs concept browser series. Aurora explores new ways people could interact with the Web in the future based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios..."

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Looks very cool and intuitive at first, but I do have my concerns, especially in the areas of information overflow and cross generation UI.
It seems as the mobile experience is too similar to the desktop one. Squeezing all this date into a smaller screen will not be as effective.
As for older generation usage, I think the UI should be simplify more, including non-visual interaction, such s voice commands.

E.T.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

I know I am one day late to comment on this.
(Well, I do have a day job).

What can I say.
Zoli saved me a lot of typing...
http://www.zoliblog.com/2008/07/21/the-techcrunch-fablet/




Maybe they would have called it redux-model-2...


UPDATE:
Ismael comments in his Blog:
http://itredux.com/2008/07/23/where-is-the-redux-model-1/



E.T.

i<...>

The Blogsphere is full with echo of the iPhone G3 release fiasco, that could be summarized as:

• iPhone 3G
• iLine
• iFail
• iBrick
• iToldYouSo
  
• iDoNotCare...

E.T.

The Social Media Movie

This is a very nice movie that explains Social Media IN simple English.
At almost makes sense...
:-)




Social Media in Plain English from leelefever.

E.T.

Thoughts About Age and the Entrepreneur

Recently I read an interesting blog by Paul Kedrosky (Age and the Entrepreneur).

I have a theory that there are 3 time frames to start/join a start up:

Age 22:
Just finish army service (I am from Israel..). Young and Naive. Following some crazy ideas with some friends. Work hard and play harder.

After you spend some time in a start up, your spouse (which somehow you manage to find while working 16 hours a day) is fed up with your schedule and "ask" you to "find a real job". Or in my case, the start up is closed and/or acquired by a bigger company.

Age 35:
So you spent some time in a big company and learn how to do things, or how not to do things, you feel it is time to do something yourself. You pick up to phone and call your friends. If you are lucky / got smarter - there are not the same from the first start up... And you start your own or join a start up you believe in and know why you should be there.

(Let's hope your spouse is OK with you following this path again...)

Age 50:
Either you spent more than 20 year in a big company or worked for 10 start ups by now, you are ready to lead or support a new idea. You are a domain expert (or at least, other think you are) with no interest to work in the same domain... So you start, join or consult to a start up.

Does this theory work for you?

E.T.

Yo! Design Advice

Finally some design tips with some rhythm.




If only we could keep this attitude with our developers and designers all the way to production...

:-)

E.T.

Zen Truths

I am working on some new projects I would love to share with you, so please stay tune.

But for now - here is a list of Zen Truths I recently received and would like to share with you:

1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me. Just leave me the &*%$ alone.
2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and leaky tire.
3. It's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it.
4. Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
5. Always remember that you're unique. Just like everyone else.
6. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
7. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
8. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and they're barefoot.
9. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
10. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer.
11. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
12. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
13. Some days you're the bug; some days you're the windshield.
14. Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.
15. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.
16. A closed mouth gathers no foot.
17. Duct tape is like 'The Force'. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the Universe together.
18. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
19. Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving.
20. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
21. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
    Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
    

E.T.

The Mom's Song

I am a full time dad, while I am working (mainly worrying) and especially while I am not working...

My wife sent me this clip, and it seems that the lyrics are so true and the performance is great - so I had to share.



E.T.

Image Data Analysis

I saw this interesting image analysis demonstration few days ago.
Beside the fact that one of the contributors is teaching in the university I 'visited', I thought it could be a good concept for other tools.




Source: Fascinating! Content Aware Image Resizing
And comments: A Tempest In A Teacup?
And more comments: Image Resizing: Third Party Online Working Demo


What if we could apply this to eMail as well?
Let's say that you wake up in the morning to a list of 200 eMails in your Inbox...

Imagine you could resize the Inbox (of use another controller, such as a slider) to filter out eMails, based on the level of 'energy'/'relevancy' and so on.

We all know tools that assist you file and filter these types of eMails - but to actually be able to see the 'spam' vanish would be a great, satisfying experience.

I plan to work on it (when I have some time...)

E.T.

Technorati Tags: image, Adobe

The Fast and the Arrogant

During one of the sessions on virtual worlds at the Under the Radar conference last week, one of the VC panel members talked about "conventional social network" Vs. virtual worlds.
Although I was listening to buzzwords all day long, this phrase caught my attention. I joked about it with Andreas from SAP Venture. It made me feel so old for 'still' having interest in social network and for having the feeling this domain should not be "archived", just yet...

I was thinking about this over the weekend. I could not find the right way to express what I thought about it, until I saw Marc Andreessen's post:

"...

More recently, aided and abetted by new communications technologies such as blogging and instant messaging, the inside baseball effect has become particularly acute and short-sighted among the group Josh Kopelman famously dubbed the Techcrunch 50,000 -- the core group of Internet industry aficionados and early adopters, including myself and many of my friends, who live, sleep, and breathe this stuff.

It works like this: A new technology hits the market in its earliest form -- social networking, or peer-to-peer video streaming, or voice over IP, or widget-style embedding, or now the Facebook platform. Said technology is rapidly adopted by the Techcrunch 50,000, who jump all over it, enthuse about it, dissect it, analyze it, write about it, use it some more, find some limitations in it, tire of it, cynically dismiss it, and then move on to the next thing, almost overnight.

Sometimes the new thing then proceeds to fall over and die, starved of attention and press coverage, and forever confined to life in a tiny niche of die-hards. And the Techcrunch 50,000 say, yep, called it.

But sometimes, the new thing goes on its merry way, ignored and dismissed by the in crowd, and grows, and grows, and grows, and grows, and grows, and grows -- and is ultimately discovered by millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or even billions of people all around the world who incorporate it into their daily lives and don't have the foggiest idea that there was ever a group of insiders who dismissed it a few weeks into its pre-adolescence.

..."

Open questions:

• Are we moving too fast?
• Do VCs dismiss good ideas/products/companies just because they are on a chase for the 'next big thing'?
• Are we 'early adopters' or just beta testers?

Going fast in great, as long as we do not miss or dismiss opportunities and as long as we are not being arrogant to those who think they can improve current products/services/technologies. Event if they are "so 5 minutes ago"...

E.T.

Technorati Tags SAP , undertheradar, VC
, techcrunch

Who Participates And What People Are Doing Online

Very interesting statistics on who is participating in online activities and what they are doing (USA online users) from BusinessWeek.


(Original image)

UPDATE
Could not resist adding this clip




E.T.

Technorati Tags research , marketing

In-video Search and Ads

I would like to share with you some thoughts and questions I had during the “Under The Radar Entertainment and Media” Conference yesterday.

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Notes:

There is a need for in-video search capabilities, both for people and for business. For people – it will allow finding relevant movies from large catalogs and aggregated sites, and even easy navigation to a specific frame within these movies. For business – it will allow a new type of monetization models on top of user-generated-content.

Some of the issues related to ads within Internet-videos (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll) are very similar to mainstream TV. People do not like ads and would skip them if they have a chance. I know I skip them by using Tivo. (I learned that there are already tools for skipping ads within these movies as well…)
Some ads are not related to the show or even the show content is harmful to the marketed brand.

Most companies I saw so far are using Adobe Flash as the delivery format. Using Flash allows merging the movies and the ads into one experience. The main experience I saw so far were textual ads Vs. multimedia ads (a movie within a movie). Encapsulated experience (the information is presented within the player) Vs. Open experience (the ads send the viewer to a Webpage).

Another trend is developing the ads using an ‘ad market place’ where creative professionals and amateurs ‘compete’ on advertisements projects.

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My thoughts:

• Advertising within content (video, feeds, etc.) becomes more relevant as the content available via many portals (destination sites).
• People will continue to skip ads (manually or with some help from independent technologies) while advertisers will continue to push their messages across channels.
• Advertisement agencies leverage creativity from many sources, with a low cost.
• How can content producers be compensated for their content when it been used as a marketing vehicle?
• From “Who own the channel?” to “Who own the clip?”
  

An interesting example for an ad from my friend Craig Cmehil:

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is the new interesting in-video company I saw.
(http://www.pluggd.com/)
With a very interesting text search capability, based on the audio track analysis, as well as "heat map" navigation concept for the scrollbar.
(And again… where was I…)


E.T.

Technorati Tags video, event, marketing, multimedia, undertheradar

LinkedIn or LockedIn?

I've noticed two main trends recently:

1) People are sending more LinkedIn eMails.

2) GTD (getting things done) become popular again.

I received so many LinkedIn updates in the last few weeks I decided to look into this trend. As it seems, my profile was not updated at all (nice feature they have there that shows you how much you are NOT up-to-date ), and my contacts list of very short. I decided to do something about it and started pinging my contacts. Very quickly my contact list grew by over 50% and I started to get endorsements from people I really missed...

Putting LinkedIn aside for a second, I noticed/discovered more and more Blogs and sites dealing with GTD.

"Echo Alert"
The largest collections I saw was from lifehacker.com.

A person could spend so much time picking and trying tools, no work will get done ever.

Coming back to LinkedIn... It is addictive. I must stop before it is too late...

(I guess I should keep my focus on the professional work rather on my professional network, or not?!)

E.T.

Technorati Tags GTD,LinkedIn,Echo

Personal media and consolidation

Few days ago my wife, Nili, told me "we need to move our picture albums". Well, I thought, she will tell me where to put them and I will do the heavy lifting. This was not the case, apparently, we have over 6Gb of images in Yahoo! Photos and the service is shutting down soon.
We have so many new pictures and albums since Nili started Taking Photography Seriously.

As Yahoo! has two competing services (Photos and Flickr) it makes sense to merge/choose one. (Although I think they are targeting different audiences).

But it did make me think again about the constant conflict/tension between Consolidation and Alternatives trends. The "Web 2.0" is a great example for (re)creating alternatives with few to non differentiations (same concepts, same features, same look different mission statement). On the same look-and-feel, but different mission statement). On the other hand, consolidation trends, such as standardization activities in the open source arena.

While thinking of this, I saw this great futuristic movie with an interesting consolidation scenario.

"Echo Alert"

My comments:
1) What do you think will happen to personal media?
2) Interesting to see they vision the future in English...

E.T.

Getting started + "Echo Alert"

Hello *.*
Well, I've decided to surface up.
The main reason I decided to start this Blog is because I see many interesting websites, technologies, design ideas and people along my work day and sometimes people ask me questions about topics I know about. I thought it would be great if I could share the topics I'm working on, before I find myself in the 'where did I see this before?' mode...

One other thing - I may link to other Blogs, sites and other online materials that many other Bloggers post. I really hate it when people just echo and repeat without adding value. I promise to raise the "Echo Alert" everytime I may do the same...

Good luck to us all...

E.T.