Recently in Technology Category

Jokes about the unfortunate name of Dunkin' Donuts' new iPhone app--Dunkin' Runs--aside, I have to agree with Chris Brogan that this little tool sounds pretty useful. Not everyone needs a personal assistant a la Siri, but it's pretty common to need a little caffeine boost at three in the afternoon.

An app that solves a problem you probably already have seems much more useful than one that encourages mindless play, and who doesn't have problems remembering everybody's requests when making a trip to Dunkin', mid-day? Rather than sneak out to get your fix and risk pariah status in the office, the Dunkin' Runs app lets you invite others, place orders online, and then pick them up at a store. According to Mashable, it's all a part of Dunkin' Donuts' recent "social media tear" which includes an interactive website. Call it what you will, Dunkin' Donuts has shown us how to do build an iPhone app (and engage customers through social media) the right way.

Is there a wrong reason to create an iPhone app? Well, yes--it's when you create an app just for the sake of doing it, without offering any real advantage to users. The launch of 3GS has reignited the iPhone frenzy, and now there is even more pressure on companies to produce a trendy app so they can say they have one. But I see that as a big mistake. If you ever make a business or branding decision simply because everyone else is doing it, you're not thinking strategically--you're simply caving to industry peer pressure. Talk all you want about "missed opportunities," but apps that don't address a real need, or cater to an audience your company doesn't have, end up as brand trash littering the path towards a real identity.

A few bloggers have expressed a similar sentiment to mine. Digital Ministry, The Lab Report, and other blogs have pointed out that developing an app for your company can be dangerous territory if you don't have a plan. The Lab Report bloggers--huge Mac and iPhone proponents--also bring up a good point about the bizarre cycle of iPhone app development: that companies either move too slowly to develop an app or too fast. "Depending on the brand and its culture, either of those scenarios can be a bad thing," points out Chris of The Lab Report.

And more common sense from Forrester Research: don't build an iPhone app for your customers (or prospective customers) when market research indicates it's not the phone they use. As Mobile Marketer stated, "Creating an iPhone application for an audience that is mostly using BlackBerry phones isn't going to work."

Usefulness and value are what people want right now and what will make your brand stronger in the long run. If you're considering an app for your brand, make sure you do your homework, listen to your customers, and remember the two aforementioned words as you move through development.

As a BlackBerry user for many years, I've grown so used to having a "real" keypad that I've never been tempted to actually make the switch to the iPhone, even though it looked cool. At first, I felt left out--everyone else was getting flashy new iPhones and here I was choosing to remain on the very useful, but un-slick, BlackBerry. But all the bells and whistles of the iPhone started to ring out of tune when friends complained of dropped calls. Still, there were some cool apps among the dozens of useless ones, I thought. That made it cool, right? Maybe not so much anymore. The combination of the strained AT&T network, and a growing legion of frustrated users has caused me to think twice about "going iPhone." Apparently others share my sentiments. Check out this spoof of an iPhone ad that illustrates some of the issues users have been experiencing (warning--there's some colorful language in the first few seconds, so the easily offended may want to turn down the volume):

Thanks to James Siminoff for posting.

For years it was a rumor that Google ran their massive datacenters within many movable standard shipping containers. On April 1st, April Fool's Day, the company confirmed this and released pictures and video of the centers (no, it wasn't just another Google hoax on April Fool's Day). Google also talked about the custom server design they've been running to accomplish the massive scale they've achieved over the years. What's interesting is how they framed all of this around a goal of energy efficiency and cost savings.

In honor of Earth Day (a belated honor since Earth Day was April 22nd), I'd like to share this video. Any geek, especially ones that run datacenters, will appreciate this video. Pretty cool to move more than 1,600 servers in a self contained shipping container with a huge crane.

There's been discussion about the potential for electric cars for many years, even a documentary about why it hadn't worked called, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" When oil prices were high there were many companies looking into this again and some high end manufactures, like Tesla Motors, are producing them now. One of the obvious issues has been the ability to charge, which begs the question, how far can an electric car actually be driven?

Better Place has a bold plan that is explored in this TED 2009 talk by Shai Agassi. This isn't the typical TED talk with cool visuals or amazing technology but more about a real world solution for a problem that has--and will--continue to drain the economy and call into question relations throughout the world.

The most effective help content in applications is the kind you don't have to look for, and in many cases, don't need to think about. At GotVMail, internally we've called this "passive help," but externally this could be known as "inline help," "context help," or "pop-up help." Good "passive help" might even include the kind of informative information you provide to your customers via your website before, during, and after a sale. If you can provide a user with information before they need to look for it, and in context with what they are doing, it can prevent the need for evening having help manuals.

Some great examples of passive help from around the internet.

Facebook: Educate the user about functions as they see them, then there is no need for help later.

LinkedIn: Show users information about new features, draw attention and let them dismiss it.

Google Gmail: Tell users about new features that require another click to get to but would be helpful. Must be dismissible and Google calls this "hide"

TripIt: Collect contextual feedback in real time.

If you have seen great examples of passive help post a comment or email me with the information, love to see what is out there.

As a syringe filled with this year's flu vaccine pierced my flesh this morning, I thought about how much things have changed since the flu vaccine shortage back in the fall of 2004. At that time, only people who were considered "high risk"--if they were elderly or had a chronic illness, for example--were encouraged to get the vaccine.

Four years later, there is no flu vaccine shortage in the United States. I've heard ads urging people to get the vaccine on the radio, and seen some on TV. Apparently, they're working: I decided to get the shot for the first time in years (and I'm not in any of the "high risk" groups), and the nurse that administered my flu vaccine told me tons of people have been coming in for the flu shot. I travel a lot and thought the vaccine would be a good idea "just in case"--but the ads I heard on the radio kept the idea of getting a flu shot at the forefront of my mind. So, it seems the ads have served their purpose: everyone wants to get vaccinated now, including me.

And, according to Google, people want to know about the flu, too. On November 11, Google launched Flu Trends, which allows users to see if their state has a low, moderate, or high threat of the flu virus based on how and when people search for information about the flu. Google's theory is that people who look for information about the flu online are likely suffering from the virus as well. Google points out, "Of course, not every person who searches for "flu" is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries from each state and region are added together". According to CNN, the Google project was completed in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Depending on how you look at it, this factoid could be either alarming or reassuring: according to the CNN article mentioned above, "In the 2007-08 flu season, Google accurately estimated current flu levels one to two weeks faster than published CDC reports in each of the nine U.S. surveillance regions...". It's no surprise that a government agency can't compare to Google in terms of efficiency, but it's still a little surprising (and scary?) that this also applies to agencies that are entrusted with matters of public health.

Yesterday LinkedIn launched several profile applications for users based on OpenSocial. What I really like about LinkedIn is that it's not for kids (or kid-like behavior) or MySpace users looking for a new playground.

If you know me, you know I'm not a fan of Facebook, or similarly ubiquitous social networking sites. I don't have any desire to receive "hatching eggs" that turn into baby dinosaurs or bright yellow chicks. I also don't want to post shout-outs to people I already know, simply for the hell of having everyone see what I wrote on someone's "Wall." Unlike Facebook, I see LinkedIn as having a distinct purpose: to grow and solidify your business or career network. And now LinkedIn is offering more tools to help move the site beyond simply a place for amassing contacts and recommendations from colleagues.

With new applications like TripIt, BlogLink, CompanyBuzz, and Amazon Booklist, LinkedIn has given us more ways to strengthen our existing connections, and grow new ones--all with a distinctive business slant. Here's a very quick rundown of my two favorite tools from the release:

With TripIt, I can enter information about my travel plans both past and present and the application uses my itineraries to find similarly travelled individuals, if you will. Plus, it allows your contacts to see where you are at any given time (based on the information you enter; again, a good safeguard against stalkers--just kidding!-- and generally having too much info "out there"). By having all of your info, TripIt makes it easy to see when you and your contacts are in the same city or country for a business meeting or an informal meet-up.

Have a blog like me? Rather than simply linking to it from your LinkedIn profile and hoping people bother to check it out, BlogLink puts your blog posts right on your profile with very little effort.

What I find most annoying about Facebook is the pointlessness of many of the applications. You can add an application like "Cities I've Visited" to your profile, but because Facebook has a very unclear purpose (I know, I know, it's to "make friends," but isn't that rather ambiguous these days?), you're never sure how you should use the tool other than to brag that you've travelled to hundreds of cities to people who bother to even look at that part of your profile. I know there will be lots of people who disagree with me about Facebook, but I guess I just don't see the point of posting all of your personal information on a site without getting too much out of it--other than, perhaps, a hatching egg?

The Official Google Blog reports that they'll finally be helping out fools like me who often hear songs on YouTube videos that they'd love to have on their iTunes playlist, but unfortunately, have no idea the identity of the artists that create them. YouTube users who like a song on a video will now be offered "Click-to-Buy" links which the blog claims will be "unobtrusive."

While I think the "Click-to-Buy" idea is great, I also think it might be helpful to the music industry (and, of course, YouTube) to use music recognition software like Shazam or Midomi to automatically link the music/content for purchase. Many people think Shazam does a better job of recognizing songs overall, according to GigaOm, but I suspect that the debate will soon be eclipsed by a larger issue--the issue of how this technology can continue to remain relevant and become useful to us in generating new sources of revenue through YouTube videos and the like.

How could any of the players in this arena take it to the next level, technologically speaking? As it stands right now, any time a song is in a YouTube video, the content producer must go in and tag their content (in this case, a song). Wouldn't it be easier if the process could be automated so that anything in a YouTube video could be identified by applications such as Shazam or Midomi (or an as-yet-uninvented Google app) and automatically tagged? If the technology is already there, then it might be easier than having content producers "claim" a song in every YouTube video.

Midomi's parent company, Melodis, might be ready to set themselves apart from leader Shazam by being the first innovator in this arena: GigaOm reports that they have raised $7 million in Series B funding. Whatever Melodis is up to with their cash is anyone's guess, but one thing is for sure: innovation is necessary to take this technology to the next level. Of course it goes without saying that Google has the resources to simply build an application like this themselves anyway and integrate it seamlessly into YouTube. Guess we'll have to stay tuned and see how it all plays out.

Even though I haven't gone "back to school" for a few years now, I'll always associate September with returning to classrooms and the general excitement associated with starting a new school year. Although I was fortunate to return to classrooms that boasted ample school supplies and a bevy of resources, many kids don't have access to simple things like pencils and textbooks. I'm reminded of how serious a problem this is by my own sister, a teacher in an inner-city classroom. Many of the classrooms at her school and many others just don't have the funding to stock their classrooms with the items their kids need.

Thankfully, there is a way people can help. DonorsChoose is a website my sister introduced me to a year ago. This is how it works: teachers post "projects" on the site. These projects are essentially descriptions of what teachers across the country need to complete a specific project in their classroom--one person recently posted a project with a request for a CD player so she could finally play a set of educational programs for her students. Another teacher works at a school where almost the entire student population has a mom or dad serving in the military, and wanted some art supplies so the kids could express their emotions through drawing and other art projects. These are just a couple of examples in a vast array of requests on DonorsChoose

Recently, I was going through my RSS feeds when I stumbled upon a TechCrunch post about an auction for a copy of a Google Chrome comic book. The comic book, created by Scott McCloud, was one of only a few printed and given to select media. According to TechCrunch, the proceeds from the auction they were sponsoring would go directly to DonorsChoose! Being the geek that I am, the thought of having my own copy of the Google Chrome comic book was appealing. But the prospect of bidding on the comic book and being able to donate that money to DonorsChoose made it even more so. I am happy to report this morning that not only did I win the comic book with a winning bid of $1,600, but another bidder won a second copy with another bid of $1,575. The best part? All $3,175 are going directly to DonorsChoose.

Beyond helping schools and getting a cool piece of geek memorabilia, the folks at Google were kind enough to let us know after the auction closed that the comic book would be signed by creator Scott McCloud and many of the team that created the application. For a geek who wants to do something good, it just doesn't get any better than this.

On August 28th, Comcast announced that it would be setting a new monthly bandwidth limit for customers beginning October 1, 2008. The new limit would allow customers only 250 GB of bandwidth, which Comcast insists is more than enough for the average user. Comcast states on their site (under "Network Management Policy"):

"To put 250 GB of monthly usage in perspective, a customer would have to do any one of the following:

• Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
• Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
• Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
• Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)"

Despite the limit being "more than enough" space for a typical user, the new limit is being established before many users take advantage of downloadable movies, offered by services like Hulu and Netflix. Unlike sending an email or downloading a song, high definition movies can take up a significant amount of bandwidth. If you watch a lot of movies, that cap could be reached rapidly.

But back to this whole thing being no big deal, according to Comcast. Even though the company has assured people they'll never reach the cap, Comcast hasn't bothered to make sure current and prospective customers know about the limitation, other than burying it in their Network Management Policy on Comcast.net and promising to stuff bills with notices that the policy has changed (I'm not sure what happens if you don't get a paper bill anymore). According to MarketWatch, Comcast didn't even issue a press release about the change.

Even though there was no press release about this change to Comcast's policy, the move has set the tech blogosphere ablaze with discussion about what the move means for customers, and the Internet.

If the average Comcast user will probably never exceed the 250 GB limit, what's all the fuss about? The answer to that question is easy: Comcast's limitation of user bandwidth sets a precedent that likely all other high speed Internet service providers will follow, and at a time when innovations such as high definition movies and other media haven't really tested the "bandwidth waters." As peer to peer file sharing expands, and new forms of media explode onto the scene, companies like Comcast don't want to pay for the bandwidth it consumes. In short, the move effectively sets the stage for Comcast and other companies to create a systematized, tiered structure for how we use the Internet.

Comcast's desire to limit specific applications that take up larger amounts of bandwidth is well-known in the industry, but not to your average customer. Case in point was the recent situation that arose when the company sought to specifically block traffic from BitTorrent, a peer to peer application that has buy-in from large, well-known companies such as MTV, Lionsgate, Paramount, and many others. In response, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled that Comcast had in fact violated federal policies on net neutrality. According to the Chicago Tribune, the company admitted to purposely delaying traffic for users sharing larger media files.

The Plot Thickens

In Om Malik's "Open Memo to Comcast: Show Us the Meter for Metered Broadband" he points out another problem with Comcast's new policy: Comcast doesn't offer any standardized tool through which you can monitor your usage. All Comcast states regarding monitoring your bandwidth is this:

"There are many online tools customers can download and use to measure their consumption. Customers can find such tools by simply doing a Web search - for example, a search for "bandwidth meter" will provide some options. Customers using multiple PCs should just be aware that they will need to measure and combine their total monthly usage in order to identify the data usage for their entire account."

So it appears that while Comcast will happily charge you if you go over the allotted amount of bandwidth, it will not offer you an agreed upon tool to determine this usage yourself to avoid overage. If you do go over, you'll be relying on random websites you find (as they suggested you employ for this purpose) to help you prove your case. Gee, thanks, Comcast.

In addition to all of the problems associated with not offering users a means of figuring out how much bandwidth they're using, once you've been identified as a user that's gone over the limit twice in a six month period, your account is automatically terminated (and you can't sign up again for another year!).

These recent developments usher in a host of questions about one large corporation's ability to effectively stymie the growth of some comparatively smaller companies that rely on legal file sharing, such as NetFlix and Hulu.com. If companies such as Comcast continue to limit the flow of data to some users, as it did in the BitTorrent incident, it could have a domino effect on a number of related industries, as well as the users who enjoy their features.

How do you figure out when to schedule a meeting for six busy entrepreneurs that requires at least five hours out of the office? You could spend hours trying to publish online calendars, waste time sending emails back and forth, or break out your BlackBerry/iPhone/other mobile device and scroll through your schedule for an eternity to find a date and time all six of you can break free from the office.

Or you can Doodle.

What is this 'Doodle' I speak of? It's an awesome tool that really takes the onus of planning off of one person or the other, and puts it into the neutral hands of a simple online tool. All that you need to do is name the poll you'd like to create, select the dates and times if required, then send out the unique URL to the voting group. All the group has to do is follow the URL, vote for an option, and that's it.

I use Doodle on a regular basis for events and other obligations pertaining to Entrepreneurs' Organization because our members are spread out across the country, and around the world. Nothing is better than Doodle for arranging a conference call or an all day planning session.

What's cool about Doodle is that it's free, doesn't require registration, special technology, plugins, a specific type of OS or anything. A couple of competitors have popped up, but they've honestly added so many features that it defeats the purpose and singular genius of Doodle. In this case, less truly is more.

Back in February we opened the Austin outpost of GotVMail. Besides being an awesome city with tons to do, Austin has an amazing--and growing--talent pool from which we were able to draw some very strong team members. But having a group located thousands of miles away from us presented some unique challenges, like finding a way to communicate in real time that still made the Austin office feel like a part of GotVMail, and not some far-flung satellite location.

We'd used email, IM, and GoToMeeting in the past to communicate with mobile members of the GotVMail team, but the Austin office was a whole group of people, not just one person, and they'd need to feel like they were a part of the teams in Boston because, well, they actually were. If that interaction felt awkward or one dimensional, it might impact productivity. And we didn't want that.

After a bit of searching, I came upon LifeSize, a company that was, coincidentally, based out of Austin, Texas. LifeSize allows people to teleconference remotely with any device--Macs, PolyCom, Tandem, all the way through free clients available via IM and similar applications. You might think, "Video conferencing is not new--why is LifeSize so special?" It's special because it is ridiculously easy to set-up and outputs in high definition, yet it's sold for less than standard definition systems. In other words, it wouldn't make sense to choose anything but LifeSize if you were looking for outstanding visuals. As an added bonus, it crosses over all of the aforementioned platforms.

We use LifeSize regularly to talk to our Austin people, and even set it up at our company meeting in Boston so that we could include our Austin office in the gathering. Our Engineering team meets every day with their counterparts in Austin using LifeSize. LifeSize's website describes the system as being as "natural as being in someone's office," and it's actually true. Even the sound quality is amazing because of the high end base station that uses about twenty microphones and noise cancellation. I don't really think there's any way we could be happier with our Life Size stuff--except maybe if they came out with a teleporting feature. ;-)

(And yes, that is a Nintendo Wii in the first picture that is connected to the 52-inch Sharp Aquos LCD televison. The local Austin team has gotten very good at tennis and golf. On my next trip to the office I will have to challenge them to a game of Mario Kart racing.)

SlideShare is great for sharing presentations, getting feedback from invited users, or the SlideShare community as a whole. With a smart little embeddable player and easy tools, anyone can take a PowerPoint presentation and make it into a Flash based presentation that everyone can access. So with all these user-centered features--within a culture increasingly high on user generated content--why would anyone dare suggest there could be a problem with the way it works?

Not long ago I was looking for an easy way to post our Q3 company presenation to our company wiki, and SlideShare came to mind. Since there had been so many recent privacy upgrades, like being able to make some presentations private yet still share your content, we thought it was the solution to our slide sharing problem. But in the process of uploading our quarterly company presentation, we encountered some obstacles that underscore SlideShare's true lack of substantial privacy options. Here's what I noticed:

1. During the uploading process, a user cannot set the presentation to private, so you need to remember to do this immediately after uploading.
2. Enabling links or embedding a SlideShare presentation still allows others to forward (share) this content, even if it's private.
3. Posting company information or other sensitive data on SlideShare's non-enterprise network means you have very little control over where that data eventually ends up.

#3 really threw us for a loop, and it should really any user of a site that gathers and retains sensitive or personal data (think about it: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and many other social networking sites do the same thing--you may never truly know how and where your information could be accessed by a third party). It's a problem SlideShare and many other sites similar to it all face, yet because everyone's so eager to jump on the social media/user generated content bandwagon, the issue doesn't get much attention.

After thinking about these questions I set out to find a secure solution that would allow us to control the data storage and access. Did a few quick Google searches and found two sets of products: applications made at least 5 years ago that had horrible players and interfaces, and at the other end of the spectrum, complex PowerPoint replacements with audio, and tons of useless features. A minute or two of despair was followed by a bit more searching, and I eventually found iSpring and their slideboom . With a free conversion tool I was able to convert the presentation quickly and easily and upload the Flash file to our wiki behind our firewall.

SlideShare is a great tool for non-sensitive information, but if you're a company (or a person) interested in privacy and data security, you'll probably prefer a tool like iSpring, which offers total user control on a platform that's very similar to SlideShare.