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Real-time tweets from CTIA and Showstoppers, 7 October 2009 7 October 2009

Posted by Steve Blum in Tellus Venture Associates.
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Julius Genachowski, FCC chair, CTIA keynote, commends ATT, Verizon for opening iPhone to Internet calls, adopting Android.

Four priorities at FCC, spectrum for 4G, remove obstacles to 4G, “fair” rules of road for Internet, empower consumers.

Ralph de la Vega, ATT CEO up now, thanks Genchowski, but warns of danger of interference.

Ralph saying US mobile industry most innovative, consumer friendly in world, damn we’re great.

Ralph descends into ATT sales pitch, time for a nap.

David Ko Yahoo Mobile SVP up now, he’s excited about Yahoo’s ads.

Ko hands off to tacky home page demo, abuse of a captive audience IMHO, l8r dood.

At Showstoppers event at CTIA show, saw some interesting companies and products.

FloTV is potential disruptor. Originally delivered streaming video for Verizon and ATT, now going direct to consumers.

FloTV will be selling something like 16 TV channels nationwide, via UHF channel 55, for $9 per month.

FloTV demonstrated branded mobile device with $249 price point, but no reason to think their market is limited to mobile subs.

FloTV essentially $9 per month basic cable with streaming news, sports & such. Get rest off air & by download, bye bye cable.

BOLT browser launched out of beta by Bitstream, heats up browser competition, further tilts market away from native apps.

Virgin Mobile showing first nationwide pay-go mobile broadband. $149 dongle, buy bandwidth in $10 or more increments.

Friendcaller.com showing browser to browser VOIP, not revolutionary but still a neat angle that’ll find a market.

Intermap has Accuterra service, runs on iPhone, links GPS data to downloaded maps of parks, wildlands, fine for tourists.

Talked to Zer01 Mobile, claims unlimited data & voice for $70/month, lots of holes in their story though.

Mobile devs aligning into 2 camps: those who do & don’t play nice with iPhone. Is iPhone the Apple II of smartphones?

Quick look around the press room at CTIA, nearly everyone using Macs, even the guy from PC World magazine.

What the gods would destroy they first give to corporate brand managers 25 February 2009

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Took a first look at TikiTag. It’s perfect for Santa Cruz. It could put geeks on the beach. If we can save it from the suits.

Saw it at the Showstoppers event at CES last month, and the TikiTag people were kind enough to send me a demo kit.

That's a TikiTag there. Not something else you might keep in your wallet.

That's a TikiTag there. Not something else you might keep in your wallet for social networking purposes.

Technically, it’s simple. The kit contains a USB-enabled RFID reader and ten sticky RFID tags. Download the app from the website, set up an account, plug in the reader, swipe a tag and something happens.

“Something” is defined by a web-based app on the TikiTag server. For example, one app is a “social business card”. When you swipe the tag, a browser window appears with, say, your current Twitter and Flickr feeds and links to your Facebook and Linkedin profiles. You stick a tag on the back of a business card and give it to someone while you’re networking at Rosie McCann’s. If she has a TikiTag reader too, when she gets home she’ll swipe the card and see you in all your glory.

It can also function as an alternate user interface. Put a tag on a teddy bear, then your toddler smacks the reader with the bear and something absolutely fascinating appears. You get a few minutes of peace and quiet. Combined with a USB-enabled taser, it could be a powerful pedagogic tool.

Another use is simplifying remote access. Borrow a computer at NextSpace, swipe the tag attached to your key ring, and your desktop pops up.

There’s more. Something physical moves somewhere in the world and triggers something else via the web. The TikiTag people call it “the Internet of things”.

If an ecosystem develops, it is a powerful idea. It needs to go viral for the really cool stuff to appear, though.

One promising step they’ve already taken is enabling it via a two-dimensional bar code. It’s something you can print on your card, or send via mobile phone. It’s even conceivable to hack a reader into your phone’s camera. Eliminates the need to buy a gadget.

Unfortunately, it’s starting to lean in a corporate direction. Not surprisingly, it’s owned by Alcatel-Lucent, which is about as grey-suit as it gets.

First sign of trouble is that the suits have renamed the company. It’s now called Touchatag™. TikiTag had potential. It could have become a verb. “Next time you’re in town, why don’t you TikiTag me?” But Touchatagging™ someone sounds, well, creepy.

Why did they do it? It doesn’t sing, but it does look better on the purchase order you submit to accounting. According to their Facebook page:

“We changed our name today, and we hope you love it as much as we do. Touchatag™ expresses exactly what it is about and fits our dream: make every application we use better via an easy, fast and intuitive one touch user interaction.”

Unfortunately, that’s not my dream. I want to make a living sitting on a beach wearing a Samoan shirt while listening to Radio Margaritaville. Slap a TikiTag on an umbrella drink and I’m good to go.

The sun is shining on Monterey Bay, and it’s just dipped below the yardarm. Time to go do a little product development work…


Tweets from Showstoppers at CES, 8 January 2009 8 January 2009

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fyre

Ask yourself: what would Mick Jagger do?

Live from Showstoppers Media Event at MacWorld 2009 5 January 2009

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Last to first, realtime tweets from Showstoppers event at MacWorld in San Francisco, 5 January 2009…

• Advice to Truphone: go ahead, stick it to The Man!

• Truphone guy sez he’s heard about something called hacking somewhere but doesn’t know what it means. Really…

• I will try Truphone next week from New Zealand, if I can figure out how to load it on my hacked iphone.

• Drobo showing usual data back up stuff, it’s good but expensive, now offering a Linux NAS.

• Truphone, Skype potentially very disruptive to mobile model, Newber just seems complicated.

• Newber at Showstoppers again, integrates iPhone with landline service, adds biz line.

• Stellar Info Systems intros media content-specialized data recovery utility.

• Uclick might save editorial cartoonists. What have you done for the planet lately?

• Uclick has neat app, puts newspaper cartoons, crossword puzzles on iPhone.

• Skype introducing screen sharing app, shares videos, powerpoints, spreadsheets, whatever.

• Skype now selling Boingo wifi access by the minute, paid via Skype account.

• Skype at MacWorld & Showstoppers too, Skype guy regarding iPhone app: “watch this space”.

• Truphone runs on other smartphones but first hop is via regular cellular network.

• Truphone only works via wifi connection, 3G blocked ’cause the The Man say so.

• At ShowStoppers, truphone is voip app & service for iphone, free or way cheap calls.

• One kid in line for tomorrow’s MacWorld keynote, being interviewed by 3 reporters.

Recession Can’t Hurt Consumer Electronics Retailers. They’re Already Dead. 3 January 2009

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Thoughts before heading out to MacWorld and the Consumer Electronics Show…

21st Century retailing will be governed by a new Iron Triangle:irontriangle

Online retailers have inexhaustible information and limitless volume. Consumers save time and money.

Big box retailers have as much volume, and a physical presence that allows consumers to touch and feel products however they choose, and have the instant gratification of an on-the-spot purchase. Customers stay in control.

Manufacturers can sit back and enjoy the ride, or they can build the value of their brands by combining their ultimate control of information with a physical and/or virtual presence that promotes a direct personal relationship with consumers.

CES and MacWorld have sprung leaks, with attendance expected to be down. MacWorld’s survival is in doubt. CES will ride out the storm, but even old salts are looking green around the gills.

The two shows suffer from exactly opposite problems. MacWorld is the victim of Apple’s retail success, while CES is being battered by the failures of consumer electronics retailers. Circuit City’s financial meltdown and Best Buy’s preemptive self-cauterization are just the beginning of what will be, for many, a wrenching disruption of the consumer electronics retailing model.

The major CE chains are headed for extinction, killed by the same trends that created them. In the 1980’s, televisions, VCRs, and audio gear became more reliable, easier to use and increasingly compliant with nascent industry standards. The need for hands-on sales, support and service expertise fell. At the same time, logistics and inventory management were transformed from back office, seat-of-the-pants jobs into scientific disciplines with seats on the board.

The less expertise required of sales and other customer-contact personnel, the less the salaries. A small team of number crunchers, transportation specialists and information technologists could run national chains of CE superstores. It didn’t matter how much money they made. In fact, the more they were paid, the farther superstore chains pulled ahead.

With size came the ability to take advantage of ever growing brand building tools. Customers might not have known exactly what they wanted, but they knew where to find it.

The superstores, however, carried the seeds of their own destruction. In a shipping container and a computer, an SKU is just an SKU. From the forklift operator on the loading dock to the clerk at the checkout register, boxes flowed through CE stores in an ever growing torrent.

The problem, for superstores, was that once the expertise required of the customer contact personnel dropped below a second threshold, it didn’t matter what was in the boxes. It could be a television or a washing machine. Or disposable diapers, or children’s clothes, or potato chips. At the same time, there was explosion upon explosion in the information available to consumers. Increasingly, consumers knew what they wanted before they ever set foot in a store.

Now, the not-so-super CE stores look like 98-pound weaklings next to the real big box retailers. The big box guys took even better advantage of the same trends and technologies that fueled the growth of CE superstores.

But they aren’t the only ones who successfully rode these giant waves. Manufacturers did too, taking ruthless advantage of new communications technology and advertising media to leap over distributors and retailers, and establish direct relationships with their millions – billions – of customers. The more that manufacturers spoke directly with consumers, the less they needed retailers. Except to drive forklifts and ring up sales.

For that, you don’t even need a bricks and mortar retailer. The Internet changed the game. If you’re Consumer X, and you have a personal relationship with Manufacturer A(pple), it’s a lot easier to go online, google “iStuff” and click on the lowest price.

If you don’t know what you want yet, you go to the A(pple) store if one is nearby, and look at the iStuff and talk to sales people in black shirts who have actually had a day and a half of training. If that’s not enough, you can have an audience at the geek altar, I mean, a conversation at the G(enius) B(ar).

CE superstores tried to optimize volume, information and physical presence, and did so successfully for a while. But only a while. Bigger players who are maximizing their advantages in just two ruling factors are circled around those erstwhile optimizers, and are rapidly crushing them. There’s no telling how long this new Iron Triangle will rule consumer electronics retailing – the world is not done changing – but it’s clearly in command now.