Archive for the ‘tech.commentary’ Category
Email Center Pro – New Video Introduction Launched
I work with a great group of people at Palo Alto Software developing a collaborative email application called Email Center Pro. Today, we unveiled a new video that introduces the service – it’s featured on emailcenterpro.com. We love the video,it’s fantastic, we’ve watched it dozens of times – it does a great job of communicating the problem Email Center Pro solves. Take a look and tell me what you think.
Credit: Principals – Jason Gallic (Email Center Pro Marketing Manager) worked with Christian Martel Atelier Transfert Design to produce the movie.
History of the Internet
Do you want to brush up on the history of the Internet? IF(ANSWER=TRUE, “watch this”, “don’t”).
History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.
Facebook Users = Country
How many users do you have? That’s a question you hear a lot in the Tech Industry. Most people are really skilled at creatively inflating the number because users = money, success, influence, and more. If you’re talking valuation in the Tech Industry it usually looks something like valuation = users * inflated user value.
Scanning my feed stream today I happened across a post by Mark Zuckerberg. If you don’t know who Mark is – well, just stop reading this and go back to work. Mark wins the award, IMO, for best answer to the "How many users do you have?" question.
"Today, we reached another milestone: 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria." — Mark
Here’s why I think Mark wins the award:
- He says "actively" and then backs it up with "almost half of them are using Facebook every day" – most people stretch the definition of "active" or don’t even bother using it
- He gives the number of users real meaning and context by creating a country for them which happens to be larger than Japan, and Russia
- and it helps to have 150 million users
Nicely done Mark. Hats off to Facebook – a service I seem to be using more and more as friends of all kinds jump on the bandwagon.
Email Center Pro – Collaborative Email
I spent quite a bit of my time in 2008 working on a collaborative email solution for the SMB market called Email Center Pro.
Email Center Pro is a web-based service that makes it easy for business people to collaborate on and manage "shared" email addresses like customerservice@ and info@. I like to say that Email Center Pro turns "shared" email addresses from "money takers" into "money makers" by improving response time and response quality.
We officially launched Email Center Pro in April of 2008 and since then we’ve been using feedback from our customers to rapidly evolve the service. Some of the new features we’ve added over the last eight months have been documented on the Dead Simple Software blog. I’m a big fan of our recent improvements to the way we display conversation history.
I’m really proud of of the way we’ve evolved the service this year and I think our subscribers appreciate the work we’ve been putting into the service. I’m looking forward to the continuing evolution of Email Center Pro in 2009.
FriendFeed and Twitter ROI for Robert Scoble?
Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch thinks Robert Scoble needs a FriendFeed intervention. Michael believes Scoble’s reputation as a "blogger" is suffering because he’s spending too much time on FriendFeed and Twitter and not enough time on his blog. On Twitter Robert has nearly 45,000 followers and has written over 16,000 messages. On Friendfeed Robert has nearly 23,000 subscribers.
Scoble responds to the attempted intervention on his blog and on FriendFeed.
What do I think? I applaud Scoble for risking his reputation as a blogger to put the wider social network and micro-blogging to the test. I think Scoble has increased his influence in 2008 by establishing himself (and his brand) on FriendFeed and Twitter. I don’t think it will take much effort on his part to get his Web 1.0 blog numbers back up again – if that’s what he wants to do. I think Arrington is probably jealous that Scoble (essentially a one man shop) has him beat on the FriendFeed and Twitter metrics. Arrington is probably looking at 2009 wondering how he can catch up ; )
Keep up the good work Robert! I think your investment in FriendFeed and Twitter will pay off.
Azure Services Platform
I spent a little time today trying to get to know Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform. Why? Because with a name like Azure it’s hard not to take notice. Kidding. The Azure Services Platform is a competitor to a service we use at Palo Alto Software so I felt like I should at least get up-to-speed with Microsoft’s shot at offering cloud computing services.
The Azure Services Platform includes: Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services.
Windows Azure is at the core of the platform. Microsoft describes it like this:
To build these applications and services, developers can use their existing Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 expertise. In addition, Windows Azure supports popular standards and protocols including SOAP, REST, and XML. Windows Azure is an open platform that will support both Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages and environments.
Clear as mud right?
Frankly, I’m having a hard time getting excited about the Azure Services Platform. Why? Because I’m a big fan of AWS . AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing services, has a better feature set (IMO) and it just passed its’ one year anniversary. Additionally, pricing for AWS is established and a solid SLA is already in place. Nobody knows what the Azure Services Platform is going to cost and there are a lot of other details that still need to be flushed out. The Azure Services Platform is currently only available as a CTP. On top of all of that, Windows Azure is more like the Mosso service than it is Amazon’s EC2. In my experience a heavily abstracted server architecture (Windows Azure) presents a lot of challenges given the tools available to the majority of developers today. We’ve benefited on a number of occasions from the low level access we have to our EC2 instances. You might not need it, but if you do, it’s really nice to have.
I’m glad to see Microsoft entering the cloud computing space because deep pockets are required to compete and I think we’ll all benefit from more competition in this space. It’s just hard to get excited about because it isn’t all that innovative.
Will the Azure Services Platform flame out?
Sources:
Azure Services Platform
David Aiken on Azure
Wikipedia – Azure Services Platform
TechCrunchIT – Azure: Video
Jason’s 120% Solution
If you aren’t already subscribed to Jason Calacanis’ mailing list – subscribe. Jason is smart guy with a lot to say and he gets things done. Jason replaced his blog, for the most part, with a mailing list a while back – I’m a subscriber and reader. Jason’s email today – The 120% solution – talks about the economic crisis, why it happened, and suggests possible solutions. Check it out – it’s a great read.
Pandora Ads Rock
I love Pandora. Pandora is a free Internet Radio service that uses the Music Genome Project to send you a constant stream of fresh tracks based on your music preferences. I love rocking out to the music streams Pandora sends my way every day.
The core music service Pandora offers is impressive but Pandora impresses in a lot of other ways.
Pandora’s user interface contributes a lot to the success of the service. The user interface is beautiful and a pleasure to use.
Pandora is an ad supported service and I’ve always been impressed by the way they’ve integrated ads into the user interface. Ads are usually integrated into a website as an afterthought – slammed into the right margin or simply dumped into a header or footer. Pandora on the other hand integrates, or blends, the ad into the user interface. I think this makes the ad far more effective.
Recently, Pandora has been making more of the ads integrated into their service interactive. Today the HP TouchSmart ad really impressed me – it was beautiful and a pleasure to interact with. I think this type of ad is a very effective branding tool. Ads like this might not convert well on the spot but I do think they’re great for brand building.
Encyclopedia Britannica’s iPhone Apps for Kids
0 CommentsTuesday • September 7, 2010 • by admin
I’m lucky to work with a great team of developers and artists at Concentric Sky, and we’re doing some work that I’m really excited about. Recently, we completed work on a line of iPhone applications for Encyclopedia Britannica that we think kids are going to love.
Encyclopedia Britannica’s Volcanoes, Ancient Egypt, and Dinosaurs, now available for download, were designed with kids in mind. The applications feature a variety of games and a lot of interesting content. Kids can test their knowledge by taking, and re-taking, the built in quiz. Quiz high scores can be shared with friends on Facebook or Twitter.
The games included were developed from the ground-up by our developers. Memory Match, Jigsaw Puzzle, Magic Square, and Scratch Off were all designed to get kids interested in the content to improve learning. My kids love playing Memory Match, the cards are themed for each application and the pictures are pulled from a large media collection. Pics and Videos, the built in media gallery, provides easy access to a large collection of pictures and videos. Pictures and videos are cross-referenced with the content and games included in each application. Pictures and videos are mapped to the globe, making it easy for kids to zoom-in on a satellite view of a volcano or a pyramid in Egypt. High-resolution graphics were included to take advantage of iPhone 4’s new Retina Display – and it was worth the extra effort.
We think kids, and parents, are going to love this line of applications from Encyclopedia Britannica.