Craig's Lemonade

TechCrunch – Get your daily dose

I am a long time fan of the top technology blog called TechCrunch, and like any curious, aware, and informed technology CEO I read it daily. It’s a must. Actually, I read it more than daily as I have an icon on my iPhone that take me directly to it so if I’m stuck in line at Whole Foods, I generally will take a peek at the recent stories before I look even at my RSS feeds. I am a startup junkie, no doubt about it. Despite the economic doldrums that hammer us all day in the news – many would be surprised to learn that there is a lot of exciting new stuff coming at us like a fire hose and it is not all doom and gloom.

I still regularly ask folks around town (Portland) if they read/subscribe to TechCrunch and remain amazed at how many folks have either never heard of it, or, only read it occasionally.  While shamelessly showcasing Panels while I am at it, here are some but of course not all of the interesting tidbits in just the last 24 hrs from the venerable TechCrunch:

• Apple, sans Steve Jobs, featured long time VP Phil Schiller and today has been widely regarded as a relatively lackluster affair. The Macworld Expo keynote in years past has been home to some very major product announcements, including the Macbook Air, the MacBook Pro, and perhaps most notably, the first iPhone. This year was a bunch of new software, a 17” MacBook Pro, and the removal of DRM from iTunes. More…
• Otalo, a vacation rentals search engine site, was just launched and looks impressive. What surprised me about this TC article is that some company called "HomeAway" raised $250 Million (with a valuation of a billion. Vacation rentals, who knew? More...
• Move Networks, which powers the Web video streaming for ABC, Fox, and others, reportedly streamed 180 million hours of premium video last year to 55 million viewers. More…
• Pandora, a free personalized internet radio service that has remained among the most popular iPhone apps on the iTunes App Store since its inception today released Pandora 2.0. According to TechCrunch the application will now include artist biographies, streaming samples for songs you’ve bookmarked, and perhaps most notably, the ability to create a station using a single song (much as you would using the iTunes Genius features). Other features in the new release include a CoverFlow-like view for song history, the ability to share stations with friends using Email, and a song progress bar (which has long been annoyingly absent). More…
• Intel reportedly isn’t happy about 12 Inch NetBooks, according to TechCrunch’s editors, who claim that new models from the likes of Dell, Samsung, and others are becoming more popular with consumers despite their serious limitations. More...

So, there’s five stories yesterday from TechCrunch. Sure there are other stories, and there are many other great tech sites, but for light, fun, informed, and a steady stream of tech news. I'm thinking of doing this once a week with the top web 2.0/software stories for my readers. But in the mean time, visit and/or subscribe to it.

ReadWriteWeb is in this same category of "must read" - I'll post about that useful and more technically oriented blog soon.

P.S. The article is much more useful with Panels, don't you think?

Transparency vs. Stealth...that is the question

I saved this wired article by Clive Thompson earlier this year about corporate transparency. It explains what "transparency" means in this web 2.0 world we are living in ranging from the CEO of Red Fin's utilization of transparency to shake things up in the residential real estate market to how some "venture capitalists now demand that CEOs be fluent in blogspeak." I doubt they demand it, though it is worth noting that I did have to explain what a blog was to some of my VCs not so long ago. (And I'm definitely not going to be transparent about that one!)

Thompson writes this about Glen Kelman, Red Fin CEO:

Like some crazed convert, he trumpeted his epiphany: "I honestly believe that if Redfin were stripped absolutely bare for all the world to see, naked and humiliated in the sunlight, more people would do business with us." Follow me, he urged.

All I thought was, wow. That's bold. I like this guy already. I am a very aggressive competitor, and I love going to toe-to-toe with whomever, but sometimes it's the marketplace that needs to be hit over the head. Playing nice (or traditionally) just doesn't work sometimes. Take now for instance, I am spending an inordinate amount of time with powerpoint assisted "water-is-wet-and-the-sky-is-blue" pitches like there is no tomorrow. Changing the status quo is not easy and perhaps "transparency" is a key ingredient for paradigm shifting in high growth markets.

Stealth, Secrecy? Enter Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs practices the exact opposite of transparency - maybe we could call it paranoid stealthaphrania. To say steve fixed Apple and then some is an understatement. I think we can all agree that for a 1.0 the iPhone is pretty fucking cool. And it was all a secret. Yes, I know he is a CEO rockstar with bottomless pockets and arguably the world's strongest brand - but aside from that lame cube the products coming out of Apple are extraordinary.

So, yes, stealth works. And you don't have to be a rock star in my opinion to reap the benefits.

FeedBurner founder/CEO Dick Costolo talks about why stealth is dead, and transparency is good and he makes some good points, but I am still leaning Jobsian. Make his blog "ask the wizard" a must -read. So, since leaving the CEO post at Attensa in April I've been in stealth and getting ready to write about it. Not sure how I'll go about my blogging yet. But there will be a little bit of RSS in there somewhere! ; )

Technorati tags: Attensa, RSS, Red Fin, Transparency, Steve Jobs, Stealth, Glen Kelman

"BlackBerry Orphans" in Wall Street Journal

I am Guilty. Big Time. This "BlackBerry Orphans" article today is spot on and had a profound impact on me. Other than the shower I never let the damn thing out of my sight. I think I just found a new year's resolution that will also serve as a kind of Christmas present to my wonderful daughters (and probably everybody else who know me well or with whom I work.) Girls, please forgive me.

So, it's official, I am cutting way, way back. (Especially while driving, which my eldest will appreciate.)

P.S. One thing that makes it somewhat easy to cut back is that as a long time treo user I foolishly decided to switch to a windows mobile device last week so I could take advantage of the new Cingular 8525 which has a 2 megapixel camera with flash, WiFi, and more.... Ugh, what a UI disaster. Apple...are you there? We need you on this one.

Technorati Tags: Blackberry - Treo

OSX 10.5 Mail has RSS integrated, but still needs "attention"

Apple's WWDC Keynote is now complete and it appears as though the new mail app is getting a lot of new features. The demo (and updated web site) focuses on html templates and interesting features for turning email into to-dos...but the real news for me was the addition of RSS support. This wasn't a big surprise I suppose, as it is becoming increasingly evident in both business and with consumers that RSS belongs in this type of environment. I wrote about this in March, and combined with Microsoft's efforts across IE7, Outlook, etc. there was no way Apple would not integrate it this time around. I also blogged about the Outlook 12 inclusion of RSS too, and, explained a bit more why this is a good thing for Attensa and our business model of value-add (vs. generic RSS plumbing.) While we will continue to develop our enterprise class, attention-laden clients for business users, I feel even more strongly about our opportunities today with the major OS vendors delivering the basics.

Apple's Safari got things started on a large scale for Mac users, and NetNewsWire before it (which previewed a version 3.0 today I just learned) for power users, but OSX 10.5 will bring RSS into use for many more users.Let's face it, the majority of users are not willing to pay for this capability.

RSS integration with the mail app - without overloading the inbox - is the ideal and proper place for consumption. This now opens up exciting possibilities for Attensa to play in the Mac market more effectively and ultimately allow us to bring intelligent, scalable, network enabled discovery and recommendation to the platform. We've got some folks down at WWDC and I'm sure we'll learn more about the opportunity to interface with Apple's mail app and bring sophisticated attention data capabilities to the Macintosh masses. Come to think of it, perhaps we can do the same for NetNewsWire, NewsFire, and Endo?

The net, net is that MSFT and Apple will soon have RSS throughout their offerings covering the basics and there is significant opportunity for Attensa (and others) to improve both the individual user's experience and overall corporate productivity as RSS becomes a mainstay of modern communication.

Tags: Apple, WWDC, RSS, NetNewsWire, Attention, Attensa, Microsoft Outlook