Wombat Mobile I should be coding or sleeping instead of this...

I'm intrigued by these performance-enhancing contact lenses. It's a cool concept. It'll be interesting to see if they take off in pro sports as well as among the general public.

They'll come in amber for speed sports, gray-green for other sports (like golf!).

Quote:

Brian Roberts first tried on his newfangled contact lenses about an hour before the Orioles' last spring training game in Florida. He ripped three hits on a day his teammates groused about the difficulties of seeing the ball in the bright sun shining from a cloudless sky.

It's tough to be a customer these days. Companies just don't seem to want them anymore.

First Verizon's CEO, Ivan Seidenberg, starts insulting his customers and probably sends the "Can you hear me now" dude running off to cry in a corner.

"Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?" he said. "The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/16/BUGJ1C9R091.DTL

And now meetup.com's VP of Communications, Myles Weissleder, mocks their customers their official press blog. And then after the unsurprising controversy ensues, he doesn't address it, and sends out his underlings to do damage control.
Story here and also here.

When did it become trendy to insult your customers? Is this some sort of new "tough love" marketing they're teaching in B-School nowadays?

The good news is that this has spawned a movement to create a replacement for meetup.com. It's funny, I've never used meetup.com before, but this story makes me want to contribute time and/or money towards building a replacement.

Is there a tip jar for this project? I wonder what would happen if everyone that was unhappy with meetup.com's new $19/mo contributed half that amount one-time towards building a better open-source replacement?

I didn't bother reading through the Adobe-Macromedia FAQ because I don't have the patience for online pdfs, but it's nice to see that someone has put together a translation about what they're really saying without all the corporate gobbledygook.
[please don't kill Fireworks. :( ]

Adobe-Macromedia Merger Transation

via mobitopia

Time to resurface out of stealth mode for a bit. Things are moving fast with the startup I'm involved with. I've decided to add a new category for startup entries since this might be the bulk of future blogging.

It's interesting to watch a serial entrepeneur work up close. Someone who's already been through this a bunch of times, going from just an idea, then to hundreds of employees, finally to exit. I've tried starting companies previously with a bunch of pure techies, as well as one with a bizdev type straight from B-school, but this one is different. It's like watching a PGA Tour player compared to a bunch of amateurs. Extremely educational.

OK, back to the job at hand. In light of my previous Ocean's Eleven entry, this quote is very relevant:

Rusty: You'd need at least a dozen guys doing a combination of jobs.

Danny: What do you think?

Rusty: Off the top of my head, I'd say you're looking at a Boesky, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros, and a Leon Spinks, not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever.

Cool. OK, we've got a Codd and Gouraud. I don't know what the hell I am, though. Hmm..what's next...got it.

Anyone know any graphic artist/web design types in the Bay Area looking for a full-time or part-time gig?

Wow, CNN was all pope all the time this morning. It looks like the first vote was inconclusive based on the black smoke emanating from the chimney. This whole ritual is bizarre, yet oddly fascinating.

Lots of changes in the betting odds on the new pope name since I blogged about it. Here are the current odds at paddypower.com.

Here's an interesting blogger who's going around registering potential papal domain names. He's registered these six domain names: Benedict XVI, Clement XV, Innocent XIV, Leo XIV, Paul VII, Pius XIII.

Back to the smoke. It's funny reading stories about the various methods of producing the white smoke in the past:

Given the trouble with the smoke bombs, the cardinals in 1963 switched to Italian army flares producing black and white smoke. In the first of two 1978 conclaves, they experimented with chemical additives, but the smoke came out gray when John Paul I was elected.

“Not only did it fail to work outside, but it was nauseous to the men inside,” said Pham, a Vatican official from 1992 to 2002 who now teaches at James Madison University in Virginia.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7506702/

Maybe they should consult some phreakers, who have interesting ideas on how to make white smoke. Or how about adding some different colors to expand the possible messages conveyed via smoke. (red smoke could mean, "we need more wine")

Note to Kids: The above links are for entertainment purposes only. While creating white smoke would add realism to your "playing Conclave" games in the backyard, those methods are dangerous and possibly illegal.

Oy, tasting a bunch of wedding cakes is not a good thing for someone with problems with huge blood sugar swings and hypo/hyperglycemia. I suppose I should have expected this with my mom being a diabetic as well as my aunt and grandfather on my dad's side.

Maybe the modern ritual of tasting wedding cakes is some sort of natural selection process to thin out the weak members of the herd that have trouble processing glucose and cull them before they get a chance to reproduce. Oof, I think I'd better just lie down next to these other sadsack folks. The rest of you guys keep going, we'll catch up later, we always do.

Only two more tasting sessions to go...

Engadget has some sweet pics of Motorola's new Black RAZR. Now, I thought the old silver RAZR was pretty cool looking, but wielding one of these black beauties just might awaken fond memories of battling drow, xorn, and umber hulks at childhood playgrounds like White Plume Mountain and Tomb of Horrors.

For those of you, like me, who have always longed for your own badass Black Razor (and can pry yourselves away from World of Warcraft for two seconds), here's a comparison:

Yow, Google Video ROCKS!

I met an interesting person who works at a mobile startup over the weekend. The company is still fairly small (<50 people), and they make software for cellphones, pdas, etc. I'm not going to name the company, but I use one of their products all the time on my Nokia 6620.

One thing he said that really struck me is that none of the people in the company really use their products very much. They work with them during the day, but when they go home, the devices just stay in the office. They don't seem to possess the mobilephone/pda/crackberry addiction that I would have expected from people in a mobile startup. I guess I was expecting more of the passion of the folks I run into at Mobile Mondays.

I've realized that I spend too much time talking to train commuters, friends in Asia, and hanging out with other mobile fanatics, and I sometimes forget that the culture around Silicon Valley (and the rest of the U.S.) isn't really conducive to a mobile-centric lifestyle. This is why Europe and Asia will likely continue to dominate in the mobile arena.

It's nice to get a glimpse of the world outside my little bubble and be reminded of my life and perspective before becoming a train commuter/mobile fanatic.

More fun with your PSP from Wireless Watch Japan...

Now WWJ has found out that Sony's PSP goes one better with a trick that will make technogeeks sit up and beg -- the Japanese version of the PSP apparently (and unintentionally) works electronic wizardry on Aibo the wonder 'bot as well! Japanese entertainment weekly Famitsu put the PSP through its paces in their 15 April issue and sure enough: pressing combinations of buttons on the PSP will make Aibo do different tricks -– no hacking necessary!

http://www.wirelesswatch.jp/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1276

Via dailywireless.org

This post at VentureBlog made me LOL:

Excerpt:

After a meeting I had earlier today, I thought it would make sense to share some practical advice about presenting your company to the venture community. As a general rule, it is best not to clip your fingernails while pitching your company.

I can't believe someone would actually do this. This is just like a guy in my department, but our guy is worse. The first time I ever met him was in a meeting of 4-5 people where he started clipping his toenails in front of everyone (he was wearing sandals). And he wasn't even pretending to be discreet and keep it under the conference table, he pulled his chair back and clippings were flying everywhere. I couldn't pay attention to anything in the meeting that day, I was so shocked that someone would behave this way.

The second meeting had a couple more people, and he started eating an orange and spat the seeds on the carpet after every bite. Thankfully it was away from everyone and towards the whiteboard, but it was weird that no one said anything. He's been here a really long time and I think people have just accepted his behavior.

I've only had one other meeting with him (thank goodness!), and we're located on different floors, so I'm able to avoid this guy most of the time.

It's interesting to watch bookmakers offering odds on the next pope. paddypower.com, tradesports.com, oddschecker.com

Here's an example:

I don't know about you, but I've always thought that Tettamanzi was overrated. I'm thinking maybe a Quinella Box on Maradiaga, Hummes, and Antonelli. No guess on the name, though. Historical pope names are pretty interesting. I'd love to see "Pope [Adjective]" over "Pope [insert Apostle name]". Maybe there'll be some good proposition bets on the names.

Just kidding, I don't know anything about cardinals except that I expect a tight race between them and the Astros this year with the Astros just edging them out at the end for the NL Central title.

I had dinner last Thursday with someone that completely blew my mind. I can't say much about it, but the experience reminded me of the beginning of Ocean's Eleven where George Clooney is going around rounding up the team to rob the casinos.

But this team isn't about a big heist or anything illegal, it's about a startup. Picture Danny Ocean going around Silicon Valley rounding up engineers for the big score. The goal is damn ambitious, but it's a pretty impressive team so far.

It's a tough call, I don't want to rush into this like I've done with other startups in the past. What to do, what to do....I passed up some gigs in the mid and late 90s that I now regret, is this something that I'll be kicking myself for down the road?

Well, if I start blogging a lot less frequently, this will be the reason why...

I keep trying to focus on other things, but the siren song of LBS just keeps calling me. I'm tired of waiting around for the phone manufacturers and carriers to implement JSR 179 and GPS, and open up the locative wonders that'll come with it. I guess I could jump over to Nextel, who seems to be the only U.S. carrier that has JSR 179 working (with certain Moto phones), but I'm locked in a two-year cingular contract. So it goes.

So I broke down and bought a little Bluetooth GPS device. It's a lot smaller than I expected, since it's only meant to communicate via Bluetooth and doesn't need a display screen. It's surprisingly hard to find these in stores around here in Silicon Valley. Most places (Fry's, BestBuy, Sporting Goods stores) carry the standard GPS devices with the simple screens and no bluetooth, but the only place that had what I was looking for was CompUsa. I guess I could have bought one online, but I'm already tired of all this waiting and wanted one NOW.

I'm interested in experimenting with GPS because I'm not sure I understand it as well as I should. I have a vision of interesting LBS uses that's probably just like everyone else's (where's my friend, where's the nearest gas station, what's a good restaurant nearby), but there's much more innovative possibilities out there that I don't think I can grok until I actually start using a web-connected GPS device.

I remember going to a Cornell alumni talk where Jeff Hawkins was telling stories of the early days when he was inventing the Palm Pilot, and he would carry around a block of wood shaped like the palm pilot to fully understand how it would/could be used. I think this is something that I need to do with my new macgyvered GPS phone to really understand the possibilites.

I just read a great article today by Peggy Anne Salz called Follow The Leader that talks about this sort of user-driven innovation vs. approaching things from a developer-centric perspective.

More interesting things to come on this front (hopefully)...