buzznovation

Live from Search Champs V4

I have spent last night and today at Microsoft search Champs V4. I had the good fortune to be a versions 1 & 2, and am delighted to be at V4. We are in the non-nda portion of the program, and Alex Daley of Microsoft is showing off Windows Live Local. Very, very cool stuff! Look carefully at the Scratch Pad idea, very excellent plan, and you can share that Scratch Pad with friends.

Next up..Live.com, front door to Windows’ live services. Some very cool stuff related to the media center experience. You have the ability to add a search as a link, or as a RSS query.

Next up….MSN adCenter….interesting discussion, I don’t know quite how I would use this product with ActiveWords

Next up…Windows Live Fremont.., not yet exposed…It appears to be yellow pages, with the ability to deal with trusted sources. 

Words of love...so soft and simple!

Earlier today the cable guy showed up, and the Comcast version of a Tivo showed up on top of my TV. Now TV works the way I want it to.

But as I was surfing the 99 channels that come with cable TV,  I found myself watching public television and up popped this PBS special about the “Mamas and Poppas”.

I am not sure that I understand the connection between this type of special and public television other than the pitch to aging baby boomers to contribute to the local public broadcasting station to insure that this kind of content is available.

But watching the program and listening to the music, and time tripping back to the 60’s is a pretty powerful metaphor, for those of us who were there once.

Watching the black and white video of programs like “Shindig” is truly remarkable! I can remember being in my fraternity section with the guys, watching and listening, I can see them all now as if they were frozen in time.

But when the music stops, and the guy shows up, and tells me what number to call to give them my credit card, the magic ends!

Broback hits the Times....

My pal Steve Broback got some nice ink the the New York Times today…On Business, and Blogging on the Road !

The gist of the article is that business travelers aren’t blogging.

Steve’s quote is dead on from my perspective…

“But that appears to be changing. "Just wait," said Steve Broback, a business traveler in Woodinville, Wash., who edits the new blog Inflighthq (www.inflighthq.com) and is an organizer of a blog conference called the Blog Business Summit. "The rush is starting."

Mr. Broback, whose Web journal is sponsored by Connexion, Boeing's wireless division, writes about the plight of the road warrior and offers links to news for business travelers. And he expects a lot of company soon. "In a year or two we'll probably even have blogs focusing on vintage airport vending machines," he predicted.”

But I also agreed with Patrick Gray, whose take is that when you travel a lot, it is just hard to find the time!

Last year I was on the road over 300 days! I had a million things to write about, and was lucky to get out the posts I did. It was difficult to stay organized, get my work done, pitch ActiveWords, and keep motivated, let alone write meaningful blog posts during this period!

Reading this article again, made me think a lot about the idea that I had about creating a blogging tool that would allow me to have an outwardly facing pane along with an inwardly facing pane so that I could use my blog as a personal knowledge management tool.

Writing about business on the road only works if you have your contemporaneous notes in real time right there too!

 

Just like every one else in America....

I watched the first four hours of “24”…unfortunately I don’t have access to a Tivo, so I actually had to be in front of the TV to catch it all. The one funny thing I noticed was that the bad guys had a Toshiba tablet. ( Not sure which one, but amusing to see the use of a tablet in slate mode to play a key part in the drama.

I didn’t see that they had ActiveWords running on it.

Probably the reason why Jack Bauer got the best of them! But we have a lot of hours to go…my money’s on Jack!

Buzz Marketers Score Venture Dollars...

There was an interesting article in Friday’s WSJ about Buzz Marketing and Venture Capital…Unfortunately subscription is required to read it.  The thesis behind the article is that Venture capital firms are pumping money into firms that create “buzz…”

IDG and General Catalyst Partners have ostensibly invested $14 million into BzzAgent, a Boston word-of-mouth specialist.

“The investment reflects intensifying interest among venture-capital firms in word-of-mouth marketing, which spreads word of a product the old-fashioned way -- by getting people to talk to others about the product.”

Another great quote..

"You can reach hundreds of thousands of people by tapping just one," says David Verklin, chief executive of Aegis Group's Carat Americas unit. "This business is going to be the next big battleground."

But the funny part of the article is that there is no mention of the words “blog”or “podcast”, perhaps companies have to pay an expert to help you understand how these ideas work!

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

 

Death of Distance part Six...?

Earlier today I spoke for about an hour with a good friend in London. We did so over Skype. He’s a senior executive of a multi-national corporation and recently was promoted from Hong Kong to London.

He told me that most of his teleconferences these days are done on Skype. His take, was that it was free and it worked! (And he’s not a geek!) When publicly traded companies figure this out, what does the future hold for the telecom business? Dark days I am sure, or alternatively, they will try to find some way to impose some kind of gate charge or tax on content as it flows across their networks!

Naked Conversations arrives....

My pals Robert Scoble and Shel Israel are the proud parents of a brand new book! Their excellent book on blogging, i.e. Naked Conversations, arrived today, and is now shipping from Amazon. I am sure that it will arrive at your friendly local Borders or Barnes & Noble shortly.

The guys gave me a copy last week at CES. I was thrilled, not only to get a copy, but to have had a very small part in making it happen.

As the legend is told, the idea for Robert to write a book came from Andy Ruff. Andy is one of the finest young men I have ever known as well as one of the brightest. How I got to know Andy is too long a story for this post, but I truly value Andy’s friendship, intellect and ability. One day Andy and I were doing something in Mt. View, and Andy said that Robert should write a book. I instantly recognized that this was a great idea, but knew also how busy Robert was at Microsoft, and how writing a book like “Naked Conversations” would both be a lot of work, and work that needed to be done quickly.

I also knew that Shel was an excellent writer. So I arranged a dinner with Andy, Robert and Shel. We were all sitting in a little restaurant in Palo Alto, everyone had a glass of wine, and I said to everyone, “Andy’s got a great idea….” and handed the microphone to Andy, and the rest as they say is history.

The book is really excellent, even down to things like the cover art and the type font.

Congratulations guys, I hope you sell a million copies! 

Loading the Bus...

I have come to view airplanes as the busses of my youth. Any one that says different is either hopelessly romantic about flying or occasionally having an experience other than a semi-miserable bus ride in the sky.  

Earlier this week, USAToday…ran an article on how airlines are handling the “loading of the bus problem”, aptly titled “Airlines change how they herd us aboard…”.The most interesting system from my perspective seems to be United’s. They load from the windows in, so that if you have a window seat, you get on first. That way people don’t have to climb over others. But the author quotes one expert who notes that Southwest’s system of allowing people to board without seat assignments is very efficient. Not sure if I like the idea of no seat assignment, particularly when I work to get an exit row seat, but most of the flights I have had on Southwest have been better than average.

A final comment really caught my attention, ( and one that I totally agree with!) as one frequent flyer said that reducing the amount of carry-on baggage would be the best way to speed the process!

After all the flights I have taken, I have concluded that two things should happen to make flying better:

• Nothing other than a back pack/brief case or purse should be allowed as carry on baggage. In doing so all baggage would be treated better, and everyone would get on and off quicker. Too many times I have been forced to help people muscle their bags up into the overheads, or watch fly attendants work to cram bags into too little overhead space.
• Just one major airline now in bankruptcy should be liquidated, planes sold, jobs eliminated, and jobs lost.

My friends have suggested that by advocating such a plan, i.e. eliminating a major airline, I would cost myself money, i.e. less capacity, fewer seats, hence higher prices.

But think about the the impact on airline customer service, i.e. there is nothing like a little fear, the fear of losing one’s job that causes us all to work harder and treat people better. Because whatever they are doing today makes one long for the good old days when paying customers on airlines were treated like real human beings.

Getting great ink in the Sentinel-Star!

My pal Josh Hallet got a great write up today in the Orlando Sentinel. Back in the old days, it was the Sentinel in the morning and the Star in the afternoon. But TV killed afternoon papers, and so the editions merged, and the Orlando Sentinel dominated the newspaper market in Orlando, FL 32801 for most of my professional life in Orlando.

I had the good fortune to normally be treated well by the Sentinel.

The Sentinel is a good looking paper! I have a number of friends who write for it, and write well for it.

In today’s edition, there is an excellent write up about Josh!

The more interesting part is that the Sentinel has invited Josh to help them figure out social software. I wish him well, as there seems to be a very big gap in what is going on in blogs, wikis and podcasts as compared to traditional newspapers. I wish Josh well, I hope the Sentinel listens to him, and I hope the community benefits from his ideas, and energy.

 

17 outlets and no empty plugs!

So…here I am in Las Vegas at CES with Scoble and Doc! (Shades of Hunter S. Thompson)..The three of us are in a lovely room, 24 stories above the chaos. Scoble drew the short straw and took the roll-away which has yet to be delivered!

I was the last one here, and just checked! There are 17 outlets in our room, and all are filled with chargers. This may be the first time I have ever had to hot-bed a device to get something charged!

I have a bag full of early schwag, some very cool stuff, and extended notes from BillG’s keynote, which I will reduce to blogdom in the morning!