Posted on

When the cloud works

I’m just starting a vacation with my family in an area with fairly limited connectivity. This isn’t a bad thing in fact it’s quite nice on many levels. The house we are renting has an incredibly slow but functional Internet connection which is essentially a satellite point to point from across the lake.

We’ve rented the same place a few times and this year found an AppleTV here which I’ve logged into for streaming music to the stereo, (very) slowly browsing Netflix and as I’ve just realized / remembered streaming a good portion of our home music collection via iTunes Match. We’d beamed some Spotify earlier while prepping dinner but it’s quite nice to have access to what’s yours as well. This is the first time I’ve connected my iTunes account on a new / random AppleTV and it’s quite excellent to see it in action.

At this point only Google an Apple offer such tightly knit systems. Amazon has much of this to provide as well but like Google lack the tightly connected hardware like AppleTV – even in its current hobby state – to make things this simple. Now that I’m logged in we can easily (bandwidth limits aside) stream “anything” on our collection purchased or not. The only restriction with Apple’s solution I’ve encountered is they do not sell an advanced package to upload / sync very large collections. Google Music seemed to enable my collection to upload but it’s nowhere near as easy to stream on a stereo here – or at home.

These services and general consumer knowledge of them are still pretty limited in use – compared to the more mainstream use case of an iPod plugged into a stereo though it’s not a hard concept to grasp … I’d love to even see guest access pop up as a feature … I guess that’s part of the Nexus Q when that makes a return. Could be an interesting fall …

Posted on

Mobile Wallet format wars

First a bit of a disclosure. Through work, I have a business relationship with Google and previously MasterCard and over the past few years have spent a pretty considerable amount of time working on and thinking about payments. I’m don’t think I am biased but you can be the judge…

This week another consortium was announced to develop a mobile wallet solution. Merchants like Best Buy and Target (among quite a few others) are looking to develop a format and technology that would allow consumer payments within their stores. It’s not clear how this will work or even when it will arrive. Today it’s simply a press announcement.

Previously, we’ve seen quite a bit of press from Isis a joint effort between Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. While Isis has gotten some solid press, released their web site and some pseudo demo videos try also have yet to launch. Their proposed launch markets of Austin and Salt Lake City still wait …

While Google Wallet has been live for a year growth appears limited by only being directly offered through Sprint on about half a dozen phones. There’s a lot of opportunity for other carriers though the Isis partnership seems like a pretty clear obstacle until that at least makes it out of the gate.

There are other methods of paying with (tapping) your phone today but they involve the use of a sticker as a proxy for your card and in most cases do not offer any proper interface on the phone to receive back the transaction. An SMS is a start but is pretty lame by today’s standards.

Because the traction on NFC has been slow — and depending on which analyst you ask we are anywhere from 3-5 years from mass adoption — there are some rather interesting bridge solutions ready today that add technology into our traditional card mix. The two that get the most attention are Square and LevelUp. Perhaps PayPal deserves a mention here as well as they are pushing rather hard to break through the virtual barrier into traditional commerce. Though even with theor recent merchant deals it seems like a long road ahead. Both Square and PayPal offer dongles to accept card swipes but also have other methods like phone number (PayPal) or simply your name (Square). LevelUp uses the phone screen to present a QR code much like Starbucks does for it’s own system. While Starbucks an Square announced a recent deal (and investment) one won’t replace the other from what I’ve read instead you will simply have another option in store.

The payment networks and banks are also playing here with wallet tech they hope will be adopted though appears to be a very slow train.

And of course the elephant in the room is Apple. They’ve shown about 80% of a wallet in iOS 6 via Passbook. Like many people I’m hopeful that they will go all the way when the next iPhone shows itself in September. While Apple is likely to light a fire it’s unclear if they will stay proprietary or try to define the industry. It’s likely that we will see some quick arranged marriages following their announcements and the organizing committee is already forming.

The worst possible scenario and frankly the direction a lot of this seems to be heading is that the choices create a stalemate. There are already too many similar potential options and not enough differentiation both between players, but even more importantly from today’s way to pay. Unless an actual problem is solved or benefit added its like the industry is simply talking to itself.

Posted on

Android Sharing

image

Fred Wilson called out Android Sharing today and I agree it is by far one of the coolest and best features I’ve used in a mobile device.  I believe the technology is called intents.  It’s essentially a system pivot and enables most apps to talk quickly to each other to make use of content across the system.  I use it constantly!

Sharing gives me quick access to save articles to Pocket to read later, easily share links from Chrome via email, email images captured as screenshots and a ton of other tricks.  What’s also awesome about Android in general is the multitasking so for example saving a page to Pocket happens in the background and ensures my content is ready without having to open and refresh / sync like on my iPhone.  On iOS some of this is system level, like email, but saving things to Pocket or taking advantage of a screenshot just snapped requires some extra steps.  With the update to Jelly Bean the fluidity of Android is amazing and I’m finding myself reaching for my Nexus devices far more often than before.  Sharing and the actions I’m empowered to use are a big part of this.

Posted on

Nexus 7 initial thoughts

So it’s day one with the new Nexus 7 tablet and this thing is quite nice. It feels great in hand and is quite easy to type on as well as read on – something expect to do a ton.  The size is really nice and surprisingly comfortable considering I’m used to a combination of the iPhone, iPad and Galaxy Nexus.

I haven’t put this thing to the test on any level. A first day is always about really getting started bug thanks to how android syncs that really takes much shorter than expected.  A couple of things I know are missing like a rear side camera and cellular data. One thing that’s unexpectedly mossing though is the longer press shortcuts on the keyboard to quickly get numbers without shift. The keyboard is great otherwise and I’m happily tapping this out. Jelly Bean and the hardware are quite responsive and the 7 feels much snappier than my Nexus which is also now running Jelly Bean. In fact the 7 is amazingly fluid! If you have not experienced Android first hand you might not be familiar with how you can move through applications. With the Nexis 7 this is a certain snap to it that’s fun to see in action.

The Nexus 7 has a gorgeous screen and the few YouTube HD videos I’ve seen looked fantastic. I’m looking forward to some more and longer form content as well. The size is also something that is comfortable. One or two hands are comfortable as are portrait and landscape though I’ve been about 90% portrait so far.

I’m really just getting started here but expect things to improve over time as I get my basic daily flow down.

Posted on

on{x} – remotely program smart contextual actions for your phone

Imagine if you could automate certain actions based on the contextual nature of a situation. on{x} is exactly that. It’s like ifttt (which I also love and use regularly) but remotely connected to your mobile. I’ve used Locale to do some things like this, but while locale seems more focused on my device, on{x} is more about your life. The logic in this system is also a bit slicker and with the community side of things adding easy to modify recipes it’s instantly quite powerful.

I’ve only scratched the surface on this, but highly recommend you check it out. via jmoney

Posted on

TDF Marketing

There’s a pretty high rotation of the commercials on the Tour de France broadcast, but the one I don’t seem to mind seeing is this great spot from Specialized.  It captures the purity of riding …

The other really strong piece is this one from Strava featuring Tim Johnson which captures both the essence of the service remarkably well along with the spirit of riding.

If more companies focused on connecting with their audiences like this, people would probably be more likely to react to the messaging. I know I’m over biased here, but these are really both very solid spots.

Posted on

2012 Pawling Mountain Road Race Report

Yesterday I raced in my second Pawling Road Race and got to actually finish this one after an early crash that knocked me out of contention last year. Overall it went really well and I’m very pleased with my ride. I felt strong, climbed well and did a ton of pacing for the chase group as well.

Racing is still new to me, and after the crash last year I took a chance by starting right off the front.  Generally people are quite happy to have someone else lead the pack and yesterday was no acception.  It wasn’t until the first climb of the day that anything changed … two guys attacked and pretty immediately dropped the rest of us.  A few other guys got ahead of me initially, but I was climbing well and easily fought back driving to the front of the chase.

Following the initial climb is a good long stretch of flat into downhill that stretches for miles.  I stayed in front through this whole sequence and it wasn’t until the turn on 55 that a small group finally decided to take some of the work.  As we climbed up 55, I took a “break” at the end of the train and prepared for the final climb on Old 55.  Making the turn I was able to once again pull ahead of the guys in our group and felt good coming back down the other side.  The descent into Pawling down Old 55 can be rather bumpy and given this was a race, I’d say I was cautiously aggressive in my approach.

The final turn onto Lakeside is a twisty set of rollers heading slightly up.  I felt good still driving, but wasn’t quite sure what was happening right behind me.  Unfortunately the chase pack had been gaining and formed a nice sprint finish passing me at 200m.  I think my final result is 9th though am waiting on the official results to post.

All told a good day. I’ve got a bit to learn (and train) on sprints to make sure I’ve got the gas at the end.  I know I’ve got the power … just how it’s distributed.  In hindsight I probably could have jammed much harder on Old 55 to build a bigger gap for the finish. Always next year …

 

Posted on

Keeping track of everything?

Russell Beattie just posted a great overview of an after-hours project he’s been working on to build a better reader. I’ve been quite loyal to Google Reader as I suppose many info-junkies and given the number of things I’m tracking in there it would be hard to move.

While Google Reader is far from beautiful (though admittedly much nicer with Readable installed) it’s been the hardest working tool I’ve come across in my many years of absorbing it all. I’ve long since really given up on trying to tag feeds too diligently or manage the subscriptions is useful folders. My flow is just that … a flow. I view all and crank through as much as I can per session. I don’t get bogged down with unread vs read items – it’s impossible to do anyway.

Social represents another opportunity for inputs, and that’s a nice way to discover some other things, though I generally find the most within the first pinned tab … which is where Reader lives for me. It’s essential.

Mobile is huge as well and while Reader remains completely un-sexy in presentation, I’ve yet to find an app that beats direct access for efficiency. Loading and downloading stories to read is time, I’d rather spend reading even if the presentation might be a touch nicer … when it comes to information, it’s all about the general consumption, rather than the taste.

Posted on

Moving from Outlook to Mail / iCal

Yesterday I decided to move away from Outlook on something of a whim.  It’s been fine, as Mail is really a nice feeling app and after a day+ of usage I’m feeling really good about the decision.  Search, sorting and conversation threads are much better in Mail vs Outlook.  Search is quite poor actually in Outlook so any change is good there …

There are a few small details I’d love to resolve though in my new system:

  • There’s no way in iCal to NOT send a response when replying to a request.  Outlook gives you the option for staying semi-stealth if you like.
  • Mail seems to add colored backgrounds to text pasted in from certain sites … something I do rather frequently and there’s no obvious way to remove this formatting.  In Outlook, I could just change the background color to white and it would go away.
  • Some structured formats are a bit strange … Today I pasted in a bullet list from Word and it wrapped way left which made it a bit of a challenge to read.  I chose to compose this particular note back in Outlook so it would send properly as it was a client email.

Aside from these somewhat minor issues, I’m likely to stay with the new combo vs Outlook.    I’d still welcome solutions if anyone has thoughts …

 

Posted on

Good Try, Sprint

This ad from Sprint really bothers me.  It’s not the completely smug attitude from the boss – I like the cheeky style.  What’s bothersome is the complete miss by Sprint on who’s paying the bill.  While it’s certainly possible that the bring your own device user base is growing, I can’t imagine that an international business would expect employees to carry their own weight for for data intensive things like video conferencing.  Who’d want to work like that?  Maybe Sprint’s business accounts are limited … 

Posted on

iPad three point oh yes

Tomorrow the new iPad arrives and I’m rather excited for the upgrade. I am currently using the original model which has been great, but there’s much to like in the third generation.

Instead of simply doing a backup and restore to get everything on the new device, I’m going to take a more considered approach and only put the things I really need for now. There’s plenty to go back and get if I want from two years worth of apps – not too mention all the content I’ve also collected.

Remembering back to the original days with my iPad, it was amazing how quickly I started leaving my laptop at my desk and even at the office. I’m not sure that’s completely possible today thanks to VPN requirements, but I definitely see a strong return of the iPad in my campus and client meetings. LTE should also be killer on my commute … I’ve got two hours a day to burn through on the train and the mega speed boost and enhanced screen for reading are what I’m most looking forward to taking advantage of every day.

Posted on

Day 1 in Austin Recap

I’m digging Austin so far. SXSW events kick off today, so aside from my badge pick up and some check-ins (literal and virtual) yesterday was pretty light and gave me some perspective and the ability to scout around a bit.  Even with the light activity, my phones never stopped buzzing and there were more streams of notifications coming in than ever before.  Have to figure out a charging strategy … added an Enercell (thanks Ricky!) as a starting point.

Here’s a quick recap of my first day in town …

Farmer's Market Breakfast @ The Four Seasons
Mandatory visit to Mellow Johnny's
Shrimp Po Boy @ Perla's
The Sampler @ Iron Works BBQ
Posted on

Google’s passive approach to social

There’s been a lot of talk about Google’s forced integration of Search+Social and it certainly is a big deal. Personally, I have not found it to be invasive, nor have I found it to be tainting my results in a negative way. I like seeing that there are signals from my social connections around search as they offer pivot points or likely results in a more obvious way.

Outside of search the social methods including those around the core property are really pretty passively being applied. The +1 button is the lamest offender in this approach. Before Google Reader dropped Share in favor of +1, I used to be able to easy share my read items anywhere I wanted thanks to the feed of my shares being made available. These shares would post to Twitter automatically and drove a fairly decent amount of engagement for me over the years. Since moving to the +1, I have two options and they aren’t the same across mobile and desktop web experiences. On the desktop, I can share from Reader using the same keyboard shortcut (Shift+S) or choose to +1 something which prompts for a share onto G+ and via a circle of my choice. On mobile, where I do a fairly intense amount of consumption thanks to an extended commute I can only +1 something and this is where things really, well suck. The +1 via mobile serves solely as a limited bookmark and saves content links onto my Google+ profile on the +1 tab. This mobile +1 limitation applies to any item on Reader or on a publisher site. There simply is no real way to share into Google+ directly from a mobile experience. On Android, you can use intents to open the share prompt and drop things into Google+, but the limitations again are quickly revealed. Unlike many other services, the Google+ mobile application (on iphone or Android) is incapable of traversing the link to provide any sense of context to what’s being shared. This means your post is just a lame mess. I can’t imagine the goal here is to have us save things in lists via +1. When was the last time anyone visited this tab for a contact let alone themselves? It’s an island of content — the least social you can be. There is no feed available for these items and no way to share them through any additional channels which frankly ends up being pretty de-motivating.

Another red headed step child of the Google social experience is Latitude. This has also remained something of a disconnected island within the ecosystem and I question why we should choose to use it. Google recently added the notion of points and a leader-board to check-ins as well as a proactive prompt to remind us to use it (on Android), but it’s hard to see why you would. The leader-board is for your latitude friends only (a sadly small group of early adopters in my case) and there’s no sense of what the points are used for – at all. There are no badges, no connection to merchant locations for offers. The prompts are even a bit aggressive. It’s also interesting to see that while I can share a check-in quite easily into a Google+ circle, a location appended to a post on G+ does not link back through Latitude. One way?

Right now, Google+ allows neither the syndication of my activity stream (ala Path) nor the ability to aggregate activities from the broader web (or even the Google system) like Facebook. As much as I want to use Google+ and enjoy the general engagement there, I find there’s an incredible amount of friction to use it. Social should not be hard.

PS – sharing this post into G+ also takes a few steps … sigh.

Posted on

Chrome – Keep my Opt-Outs

As someone who works in marketing, I’m a bit torn on removing myself from the selection process in targeted advertising.  That said I was rather stunned to see the sheer number of sites (230!) apparently looking to target against me – according to this helpful Chrome extension.  If interested in going incognito, this might be just the thing for you.

Posted on

No Cablevision, no.

20120227-081116.jpg

Cablevision has been running floating ads when connected on their metro-fi on top of pages to promote their core services. The problem is that these are seriously annoying to existing customers. Our house is a multi-DVR, broadband, and phone triple-play. Cablevision even has the MAC addresses of 4 mobile devices of ours so we can connect automatically (no captive portal) and yet they can’t suppress this messaging.

It’s impossible for me to even sign up for more service. Cablevision knows this. These ads need to go. Wake up Cablevision!

Posted on

About Strava

Cycling Tips has a great interview with Michael Horvath, the CEO and Founder of Strava.  If you’ve been around me at all you know I love Strava and use it passionately to track and share my rides as well as my (less frequent) runs.

Strava very smartly filled the hole left by Nike+ for cycling though took it up a notch as well given the upper end athletic focus.  The somewhat recent addition of running makes it ideal for the multi-sport athlete and the social features and data viz make it habit forming.   Just about everyone I ride with uses it and speaks Strava as well.  I recommend the interview and of course the service as well.

Posted on

Kids and Technology

My wife and I have three kids and like their dad, they enjoy using gadgets.  About two weeks ago we gave Hannah (8), our oldest daughter a semi-retired iPhone 3GS to use essentially as an iPod Touch.  There’s no SIM in it and it’s basically a phone I had previously installed a bunch of kid games on anyway.

Soon after this, I start receiving iMessages from my wife’s phone from Hannah.  We’ve all been playing Temple Run and she’s sharing her score and pretty quickly overtakes my best at the time.

Flash forward to today when I learn about a new music social discovery service called monstro via Scoble.  The gist is that you connect your twitter account and get a suggested stream of tunes based on your collective shares and discussions.  I added a few people to follow based on what I could see they were listening to and then went into my own profile where I saw this:

Imagine my surprise!

These are not guilty pleasure tracks!  I did buy this album for Hannah, but she’s the listener, not me (or my wife).  The crazy thing though is I couldn’t figure out how this was even associated with my account let alone via Twitter.  There’s a good chance Last.FM will pop from a device sync, but I did not overtly connect anything.  After confirming there was nothing in my account settings on monstro, I came back to my profile and noticed the subtle view tweet option which revealed this:

iTunes Ping!  Not something I actively use, though seeing that post I had the instant recall that my twitter account is linked for auto-posting my likes.  Hannah was actively exploring and using the phone (or perhaps my wife’s as the account is shared) and sharing all the things she likes.  She has no idea where this information goes – though I do now and I’m amazed with her self discovery.

When I got home tonight I went to look at the 3GS so I could see about turning Ping off which doesn’t seem too possible, btw.  In the process I noticed a exclamation icon and tapped into messaging where I discovered another pretty cool surprise:

Hannah had tried to send me an MMS!  I think it’s pretty cool that while she doesn’t fully understand the address bar yet, she knew she wanted to add a subject and then a name before sending.  The video is my two year old son, Sam being scared of a spider which is a funny family share captured by Hannah on the phone which is the cherry on top of everything else.

 

 

Posted on

Strava Pro Pages

 

Just reading Ben King’s latest at VeloNews and caught a link to his Strava Profile which regular users will quickly see is rather different from what we usually get.  And like the rest of Strav’s offerings, it’s very well considered.

While this is clearly positioned as a Pro (athlete) page, it’s really very similar to what you might expect to find as a brand page on twitter or facebook though clearly relevant to the service at hand.

You can follow / fan Pros though unlike a usual view of another rider, you don’t get to compare yourself directly through the side by side view typically found.  I’d actually really like to see this added as it’s a something you see frequently when interacting with others on the site.

There are quite a few new things clearly visible:

  • Rider Bio
  • Map of recent rides
  • Race Schedule
  • Sponsors and links out
  • Fans
  • Twitter content inclusion … interesting!

Strava has been adding features pretty rapidly for a while now and they’ve quickly become the defacto cycling tracking site.  I’d expect to see more around pro tracking and fan engagement as the season starts to pick up.  Adding in more linked riders for teams and pro comparisons on rides and segments would be particularly great to see.  Of course Pro Teams need to buy in with sharing their data, but many do already just not perhaps at the same degree of intensity as the more enthusiast cyclist.

Additional nice to haves … at least from my perspective would be the ability to track and be notified when riders you follow post rides based on their shared race schedule.  Fan discussion / debate could also become a lot of fun as well.  That said, while strava does offer comments and kudos I can’t see it easily evolving into a discussion board and think that would take away from the core function which really is ride data visualization.

Great stuff – hoping to see more soon!

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on

What if TV anywhere was real?

Gizmodo notes the soft-launch of Aereo, which will bring TV streaming potentially to a more mainstream group given the complete lack of set-up.

I really like this idea. Sure there’s hardware you could get to do this but the service folds it all nicely into an app. Pricing just needs to be more in line with Netflix rather than much more as it currently stands.

Looking forward to giving this a try next month (or earlier!) if I’m able to get into the beta.