Category: PR

FSJ Redeems Himself (a la Twitter)

~ rbonini

After “PodtechGate” ( see this, this, this and this). With this:

TWITTER UPDATE: This just in from Scoble’s Twitter feed. PodTech receiving an investment from unnamed large industry player at a $20 billion valuation. Bubble be damned!
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble denying on Twitter the rumors of investment at $20 billion valuation.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble now in his car, talking on iPhone about $20 billion rumor.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble now off iPhone, thinking about $20 billion valuation.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble believing it may actually be true.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble stopped at red light.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble making right on red.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble thinking about coffee.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble in Starbucks.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble tells barista PodTech now worth $20 billion. Offers to pay for coffee with a share of Podtech stock. Barista declines.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble on phone to Google, asking for Sergey.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble on hold.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble on hold.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble on hold.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble realizes line is dead.
TWITTER UPDATE: Scoble redialing. Willing to settle for $15 billion.

Thinking about Facebook

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

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Above is Shel Isreal’s Friendwheel of his Facebook Contacts . In the interests of disclosure, I’m not on it. In fact I’m not even on Facebook. And I’m exploring why in this post.

The above picture shows a true social network, pardon the term for a minute. Most people who know Shel know others in his contact list as well.

There are a few hundred contacts here, and it is a reasonable number of people to know and be in contact with. See the difference between being like Scoble who has 5000 people who happen to read his blog and having a shortlist of  “real” people that you know personally and do business with?

If you sit down and consider this for a moment, you’ll see the logic of that statement. We all have  lists of contacts, in Outlook, Messenger, in our Mobile Phones or perhaps written in a phonebook. They are there because we know these people personally and communicate with them often.

Now I would not have the email address and phone number of my readers ( assuming I have regulars who read my blog) on my mobile in Messenger or in Outlook ( actually Google Mail, now).

Why should it be any different on FaceBook???? Why do people add contacts that they’ve never met in person?

 (And Scoble, by the very nature of his work, needs to keep a pulse on the Valley – thus his large contact list. I was just using him as an example)

Now I DO concede the point that this is exactly what happens in business – people exchange cards on a whim in the hope of acquiring business or services from someone else.

Which leads us to the next question? What do you characterize Facebook as? Is Shel’s Facebook Contacts made up mostly of froends, ore mostly of people in the same line of work ( I guess its the latter)? In other words, is Facebook a social of a business contact site?

I ask since Facebook was originally a students only site.

So why am I not on Facebook? Simple. I don’t need to be.

PS. I addition to the above, where does Facebook add value? If its business-oriented how does it do this? If its Socially-oriented, how?

WHS Update: Dell Customer Service

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

Well, yesterday I ordered  1Gb in new memory for my Windows Home Server from Dell. I intend to install a Tv Card and SageTv and get more bang for my buck out of said server, thus the new memory.

Since I was lazy, I originally got a Dell PowerEdge SC440 for Whs to run on.

However, the memory I ordered yesterday was/is incompatible with the SC440 (this being despite the fact that I went to Memory Upgrades for the SC440 on Dell’s Website). So Dell Helpfully called to inform me of the fact.

Within minutes, the old order was canceled and the new order submitted and the earth once again revolved on its axis. Easy as pie.

Well, not quite. The new memory is not quite twice the original amount I paid- once again blowing the budget out of the water.

Nevertheless – congratulations to Dell.

So I’ll need to wait slightly longer than anticipated for the TV card.

I’ve not decided between:

Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T 500 – Dual Digital Freeview TV tuner

and 

Hauppauge WinTV HVR4000 – True HD TV tuner – Quad mode (Analogue, Digital, Satellite both DVB-S and HD DVB-S2)

(For those outwith the British Isles, Freeview is our version of free-to-air digital TV)

In typical fashion, the first is half the price of the second.

Not exactly Media Centre Edition, but the whole idea here is to the extend functionality of the Server – which spends most of its day idiling (truth be told, its only really busy between noon and 3pm when it backs the pcs up and SyncToy moves files to to the server). Though, Ill have to fiddle around with the backup times once the Sage is Installed.

And second, the Current PVR is hopelessly deluged with recordings that are usually watched weeks later (its only got 100GB of space).

And third, finally, I’d rather keep the recordings for than delete the everytime the space runs out.

I’ll keep you posted.

And kudos to Dell, again. for their customer service (and I don’t really mind the extra costs as a result 🙂 )

Open Source at Microsoft

~ rbonini

A contradiction in Terms? Well, no. But I can’t blame you for thinking it.

Port25, Microsoft’s open source blog, is worth subscribing to because of posts like this:

Today, Microsoft has published 175 projects on CodePlex, we have written a pair of open licenses that are under a page in length and over the 500-project mark in adoption as others in the community have decided to use them

As Microsoft’s engagement with open source grows, we have to move from being trailblazers to being road-builders. When you’re blazing a trail, organization, bureaucracy, and majority rule are a burden. In the beginning, a passionate group of people with strongly held beliefs and the will to persevere in the face of doubts and doubters is what it’s all about.

Never thought I’d see the day when this was corporate strategy at Microsoft.

In my view this about-face has come about because of a change in the environment that Microsoft operates in.

Think of it. Sun completely open sourced Solaris. The rise of the blog,  the wiki and the Twitter (perhaps not in that order, but humor me) has lead to an increasingly networked community where people’s calls for change can gain plenty of traction. And if Microsoft wasn’t going to do something about them, others would – and did. Think of Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office – or even Linux.

Secondly, Microsoft had a huge pool of untapped resources in the form of techies who had a great deal of experience in Microsoft products and blogged about it. I mean what better to find out what gripes (or ideas, for that matter) people had than by reading their blogs. And Microsoft could always hire the best ones.

And finally, the perception that Microsoft was opening up and actively engaging with the community has done wonders to its once-flagging reputation.

So while Microsoft may not be on the road to open sourcing its flagship products (Windows, office, Visual and Expression Studio), it is opening up.

Inside the Developers Studio

~ rbonini

From Sony comes the Official Playstation Blog. Its rather new and they started off in style with an Inside the developers Studio series in time for E3.

I’ve always wanted to take a peek behind the scenes of game development so I really enjoyed the series .

Its finished now, but here are the episodes:

Hermen Hulst, Guerrilla Games – Killzone 2
Julian Eggebrecht, Factor 5 – Lair
Evan Wells & Richard Lemarchand, Naughty Dog – Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
Dylan Jobe, SCEA – Warhawk
Sarah Stocker, SCEA – SingStar
Seth Luisi, SCEA – SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation
Brian Allgeier, Insomniac – Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
Nina Kristensen, Ninja Theory – Heavenly Sword
Felice Standifer, SCEA – The Eye of Judgement
Erich Waas, SCEA – NBA ‘08
Travis Williams, SCEA – PAIN
Cory Barlog, Ready at Dawn – God of War: Chains of Olympus

Don’t forget to subscribe.

Shel Isreal needs help

~ rbonini

Shel’s engaged in a new project to, in his words:

I have 60 days to produce three anecdotal research reports on The Americas; Asia Pacific and Europe-Mediterranean-West Asia and I need your help.

A report on what?

Here’s what I am doing.  I am trying to answer a single, overwhelming question: “What is going on in the world with regard to social media? I am looking for useful statistics, but those are often outdated before they are published as we learned with the book.

And Shel needs our help on this project:

I suggested to Mike that we conduct and report on this project, transparently, online on this site in the same way Robert and I wrote Naked Conversations. If the book had magic, had not come from the research or the actual writing.  It came from the collaboration we had shared with the blogosphere.  Bloggers gave us leads. They corrected the facts.  They let us know when we were making valid points and when we had gone over the top.

I proposed that we do the SAP Global Social Media Research on this blog, in collaboration with the blogosphere, that we do it transparently and that what we find we share on this blog. This, as far as I know, would differentiate it from any market research and the process in itself would become an example of thought leadership.

…

I want your stories.  For those of you who started reading this blog after the book was published, I interviewed most of the people in a Q & A style and posted them on this site.  Then other people left comments.  Those interviews got incorporated into chapters.  Early versions of the chapters were then posted and we received more comments before finalizing the chapter.

So, please start those cards and letters coming now.  If you have a story that reveals something about blogging, blogging trends in any country of the world please let me know.  SAP is more interested in business than consumer, but what people are doing is  valuable in that it shapes  all markets. You are encouraged to leave a comment here.  If you are shy you can email me at shelisrael1@gmail.com.

 

I’m looking forward to seeing this unfold ( I missed this the first time around with Naked Conversations). I fully intend to participate.

Well, what are you waiting for?

HD versus Blu-Ray

~ rbonini

Note: I’m far from an expert on this subject, but have been watching from the sidelines

I was at ASDA yesterday (that’s Walmart here in the UK) and found a few titles in both HD and Blu-Ray formats. It was exceedingly modest compared to the huge “normal” DVD collection that surrounded it. It seems to drive home the point that a single, unified format that runs on all devices works.

My collection of DVD’s ( about 100) can be played on any capable device I can find. From my PC to the my laptop to the DVD player to the Playstation 2. The only thing that changes is the screen size and controller format. Simple – no thinking require, literally.

As far as I could tell (and I didn’t look that hard to be honest – I wasn’t planing to write this post), the only device capable of playing either format was the PS3 (of which there were only 4 on sale). The reason for the lack of a) players and B0 titles to choose from comes from the confusion over which title is going to make it to the big time. Its a rather chicken-and-egg problem. Do you take a risk and back one over the other and hope that it will make it with enough pushing? or do you sit it out and wait for it to make it to the big time.

The thing is that once a format dominates, both manufacturers studios and retailers stand to make huge amounts of money since all the confusion will have cleared up and consumers will feel much more comfortable spending large amounts of money. Its not just the disks, its the whole eco-system that surrounds it. I’ll have to buy a new CD-drive capable to playing the new format. I’ll have to by a new player for the TV. I’ll have to by a HD-TV ( already done). I could go a bit further an by a HD set top box. And then there’s the disks (both with movies on them and for burning stuff to )

Since there is so much to gain, I don’t get it when manufacturers are prepares to duke it out to the death (or one or the other does a repeat of VHS’s move against betamax)

The thing is,  a push is already happening:

On the one hand, it looks like Blockbuster is going all Blu-ray (in other words, no more discs that conform to the HD-DVD format). According to a story from the Associated Press as seen on Fox (there’s also a blog on News.com about it)

…

Could Blockbuster’s move mean the death knell for HD-DVD? Is Blockbuster even relevant in this market where people are getting their video on-demand and through outlets like Netflix?

…

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Net, questions are being raised about Blu-ray discs engineering. Via Engadget comes a report that certain Blu-ray discs are “rotting” to the point that they’re unplayable.

I watch with interest, while I save my pounds and penny’s to spend on the winner – to the victor, the spoils.