Sococo is a virtual office space for distributed teams, teleworkers and road-warriors that uses real-world metaphors to make them feel like they’re in the office. Andy gets face-to-face with CEO Chris Wheeler at CES 2012 Showstoppers.

As you can see from the screenshot above, Sococo creates a virtual world that is analogous to a workplace, with conference rooms, team rooms, personal offices, cubicles - I imagine there’s even a water cooler. Small avatars then represent colleagues and their activities, so if some of them are having an (online) meeting, they’ll be located in a conference room. If someone doesn’t want to be disturbed, they can close their office door, complete with sound effect!

Sococo has other collaboration tools, such as screen sharing, but even the simple office space representation makes people feel much more included and part of a team.

Interview by Andy McCaskey of SDR News and RV News Net.

What do compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), LCD screens, rechargeable batteries, solar cells and integrated circuit packaging all have in common? They’re all technologies that the USA can no longer produce within the country itself and must rely on companies in Asia, such as Taiwan and China to manufacturer. The technology has effectively been lost to the US, having migrated from West to East as part of major purchasing deals.

These deals might be considered as best business practice too. The way it often works is that a US-based company develops a technology and a product, but a small part is subcontracted out to foreign 3rd party. Say a little daughter board. Time passes and the 3rd party comes back to the US company and offers to build not only the daughter board, but also the motherboard, and more cheaply too. The deal happens, it’s a success and profits are up all round. Time passes and the 3rd party comes back and offers to build not only the motherboard but the whole product and more cheaply too. The deal happens, it’s a success and profits are up all round. It’s all good.

What happens next? The once 3rd party contractor goes to a US-based major distributor or retail chain and offers to make them an own-brand version of the product more cheaply than the market leader, now having access to all the technology required to make the product without any assistance. Surprised? Don’t be; this is what happened between Dell and ASUSTeK but it’s a pattern that has been repeated in many industries and continues to be repeated.

If you want to know more, Forbes are running a series of articles by Steve Denning, starting with Why Amazon Can’t Make a Kindle in the USA, on the loss of technological expertise from the USA. I think they’re an excellent read that explains much of the world today, even if you don’t necessarily see the loss of know-how from the US as a bad thing. It’s also worth browsing some of the comments to see other people’s thoughts on the articles, especially those from other countries.

Over the past year, Deloitte have publish a short series on digital leadership and are wrapping it up with the final edition “Innovating for a Digital Future“.  Each publication looks at the different challenges facing leaders in the digital era particularly in the technology, media and telecoms industries.

This last one examines the challenges around innovation and how it’s possible to be innovative particularly within large organisations that feature heavily in the technology and telecoms arenas. Doing the research for the publication, Deloitte found three unexpected paradoxes.

1. Innovation is a social sport. It is not the preserve of “lone geniuses” yet it requires lone geniuses working effectively with others to make it work.

2. Innovation is somewhat anarchic and organisation can impede it. Innovation rates substantially increase when there is a large population of people, yet large organisations do not appear to gain an innovation premium. The construct of the organisation itself is in many ways anti-innovation.

3. “Good” failure is critical to the innovation process. For innovation to flourish organisations need to embrace failure, yet not many chief execs would survive if they made failure a virtue.

The research further suggests that leaders need to work across four areas to develop organisations that can successfully innovate.

1. Strategy and vision
2. Environment and culture
3. Organisation and design of work
4. Leadership and talent

Each of these areas is explored over a couple of pages and there are case studies as well. If you’ve done a Degree or Masters in management, you’ll find much of it familiar but there’s the odd nugget in there. For instance, the question is posed, “Innovation should have real monetary value attached to it. How many executives in organisations received bonuses based on innovation metrics?”

Overall, worth spending 15 mins to run through the material and see if there’s anything of interest. Also might be quite a good primer if you are trying to get innovation off the ground in your organisation.

The previous editions, “New Shapes and Sizes” and “Leadership at All Levels“, are still available for download as .pdfs.

Once in a while, a book comes along that contains ground-breaking insights.  Such is the case with a book I’ve listened to over the past couple of days, the Audible audio book version of ‘The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires” by author Tim Wu.

“The Master Switch” is a compelling look into the history of major information industries such as the telegraph, the telephone, commercial broadcast radio, the commercial movie business, and commercial broadcast television. The book points out an identifiable, slowly-repeating cycle obviated by the fact that these industries were able to gain and hold monopoly status. Each in turn became quite adept at retarding disruptive technological innovations that threatened their respective business models.

Today we take an open Internet for granted, but these same and other forces are looking to take over control of the Internet and turn it into a closed, much more tightly-controlled system.

The book is extremely well written and well researched. The Audible audio book narrator Marc Vietor brings the book to life in a wonderful way.

Mr. Wu does a fantastic job of laying out the often-fascinating histories of companies such as Western Union, AT&T, NBC, etc. As consumers, we think we know these companies through their consumer advertising. The real history of these companies is often quite different and very eye opening.

If you enjoy stories about technology and business, you will almost certainly enjoy “The Master Switch” by Tim Wu.

RawVoice will introduce a media on demand service at the National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas April 9-14!

The media on demand service will allow content creators, independent film artists, bands, educators and all others who create content to sell their premium content online and through over-the-top (OTT) television. This will give consumers a centralized location to find premium content that is not available through traditional video-on-demand channels. RawVoice MyCast® system will allow consumers to organize and play back on demand all of their purchased media on almost any device at any time.

This service will be introduced through a new channel on the Roku initially, and on its own media portal. Clients will be able to sell their media on a subscription or single play basis. With Roku integration, single click purchases of media will offer the same convenience of standard video on demand service that consumers are accustomed to.

RawVoice will be demonstrating the new media on demand service at NAB, and will sign content creators on site. Those not attending NAB can contact RAwVoice on their website. RawVoice will be formally rolling out the service several weeks following the show.

Source Link: RawVoice

Disclaimer: I am the CEO of RawVoice the company behind this roll-out.

My Comments: We have really worked hard to create a platform that will be good for consumers to find premium content while at the same time making it easy for the content creators to manage, price and get paid for their premium content. Discovery is going to play a big roll in this roll out and our success. Most content creators do not have sufficient discoverability aka Google juice for people to actually find their content. Our new portal of which we are not announcing the name of the site yet will go a long way in helping people find premium offerings.

Todd Cochrane spoke to Narayan Shenoy GM of Wipro. Wipro specializes in R&D and business process innovation. They have been doing this type of work for over 20 years. They are the largest contract R&D organization in the world. They work in the area of product engineering requirements in several industries, from airplanes to TV and beyond. They can help a company from conception all the way through to the final product. As Todd and Mr. Shenoy discussed in the video the full process from the concept to getting a product to the store can take up to 18 months. Wipro also makes sure the product complies with the various countries laws and standards that the product is going to be sold in.

According to Mr. Shenoy what puts Wipro ahead of its competition that don’t only offer the solution, but also the technical know how to put the solution in to practice. They also have the ability to do product testing throughout the process at low-cost and work with local companies when necessary.   Wipro works closely with both academic and business associations, to keep up with the latest market trends and use this knowledge give their partners a competitive edge in their chosen markets.

Interview by Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central.

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Xmarks (formerly foxmarks) is a bookmark plugin that keeps all of your bookmarks synced up between computers, no matter which of the big 4 browsers you use. (Firefox, IE, Chrome and Safari)  They announced in this blog post, that they were shutting down “..in about 90 days”. A bunch of users (Thousands?) were left wondering what we would use after the shutdown. Quite a few comments for that post stated that the users would pay some sort of reasonable amount to keep the service open.

So, a couple of days later, they announced that they were thinking about changing their minds (see this post) The CEO of Xmarks says:

we’re revisiting the idea of Xmarks as a premium service. We’ve set up a Pledgebank page where you can sign up if you’re willing to pay at least $10 a year for Xmarks. No credit card is required, but please only pledge if you are genuinely willing and able to pay

Go to the Pledgebank page here:http://pledgebank.com/XmarksPremium if you are interested in keeping xmarks going.

I use xmarks to keep all the browsers on all of my computers synced up and it’s the only service that is this easy to use.

Chrome and Firefox now have their own sync services but they don’t work across other browsers like Xmarks does.

No one likes spending more money than they should. For a couple of years I have been using Survey Monkey to do a variety of surveys and my renewal time is upon me. I currently pay nearly $240.00 a year for the service. Sow  while I was looking around on GoDaddy tonight I ventured into their business solutions section and found that they have a service called GoDaddy Site Surveys that cost less than $3.00 a month. On the surface taking a quick look at it, I know I can replace Survey Monkey with Godaddy Site Surveys.

This sure beats the $240.00 I am paying survey monkey each year for the survey service. The deltas between the GoDaddy product and the Survey Monkey are not significant, and I will save over $200.00 a year if I throw in one of my GoDaddy Promo Codes I can bring the price down 10-20% more.

GoDaddy has a significant number of other Business Solutions as well which I have not investigated yet but plan on doing so.

• Search Engine Visibility – Drive traffic to your Web site and increase online visibility through search engine listings
• Go Daddy Contact Manager (CRM) – Boost repeat sales!
• Go Daddy Marketplace™ – Get your products in front of millions of Go Daddy customers – list them in Go Daddy Marketplace!
• Incorporation Services – Protect yourself and your business – Incorporate it!
• Hosted Exchange Email – Get corporate-class messaging at small-business prices.
• Express Email Marketing® – Bring shoppers back to your Web site with effective, high-quality, spam-free email campaigns.
• Quick Shopping Cart® – Create and launch a stand-alone store or add shopping cart to your existing Web site.

They have some bundles on these products as well which will save you even more.

Recently I heard Leo Laporte complain about all the additional products that GoDaddy offers. Having been a satisfied customer of GoDaddy now for 5 years, I honestly wish I would have looked at some of these additional services sooner, as I could have saved at least a $1000.00 on just survey services over the past 4 years. So while you may not be in the market for business services now, at least you know that they are their to help small business people get off the ground with a package of Business solutions that normally would be pretty expensive stand alone from all of the one trick ponies like Survey Monkey.

I can guarantee you, with this economy saving money is important. To save even more check out my GoDaddy Promo Codes.

Disclaimer: GoDaddy has been a sponsor of my show for 5 years, and while I have 7 servers with them and over 200 domain names I pay for all of those services out of my own pocket. GoDaddy has not paid for this blog post,  it was written on my observations while visiting their website. I will do a full review of the survey service in a future article after I have implemented it.

As all of you know I have been awaiting on the delivery of theTricaster TCXD850 to date we are still waiting on delivery. Newtek has not been real public on what is causing the delays beyond heavy demand. With record pre-orders it is apparent that Newtek is having significant trouble working off backlog,  as many of their dealers are still waiting on their initial demo units.

In an age of transparency no news is not necessarily good news and leads to speculation on why they are having so much trouble. They knew demand was going to be high, and should have been able to ramp up production prior to the delivery date. Hardware configuration has been locked in for months, as they have been demonstrating the unit since before NAB. Software updates are to be expected up to launch date, but updating hard drives should be a no brainer in that all the drives are externally available.

For many months the new Tricaster has been eagerly awaited by many production companies and small media productions like mine.  How much longer we have to wait is yet to be seen. My only hope is that Newtek start feeding more information to the dealers so at least we can resume our business planning. Having this much cash outlaid, with this long of a delivery period may be ok for big companies but it really hurts small companies like mine.

When it comes to web technology there are still some companies that are back in the 1980′s.  Okay, I know, there was no web in the 80′s, but there might as well be no web today for those certain companies.  I had the misfortune of dealing with two of them this evening.

It all began when I stopped to get gas at a Flying J on my way home from work.  It’s a station I frequent for two reasons -  low prices and proximity (a few miles away) to my house.  As always, after swiping my debit card at the pump, I was prompted to either swipe my Rewards Card or press Enter.  And, again as always, I thought “I really need to get a Rewards Card and get the discounted prices”.

The difference today was that, when I arrived home, I actually remembered and went to their web site to request a card.  And that is where this story takes a turn for the outdated.

After logging onto their website (and knowing what I do now I am surprised that either company in question even has one) I located the link for the Rewards Card.  A nice page explained the benefits which, based on my habits, would save about $0.20 per gallon on my costs.  However, there was no “Apply” link.  I tried several approaches to this problem without luck.  I searched the site and found a page that contained an “Apply” link, but, when I clicked it I receive an error.  I was using Firefox, so I opened IE and tried again, but got the same error.

Frustrated, I called Customer Service.  An nice rep informed me that they no longer did this because they had merged with Pilot and Pilot now handled it.  “So, I need to go to their site?”.  “Yes”.

So, they thought letting users get an error message when clicking on “Apply Now” was tantamount to letting them know that the service was no longer offered through Flying J?  And we could just ascertain, somehow, that they had merged with Pilot and that that Pilot now offered the service?!

Okay.  I went to Pilot’s website.  Here, though, I can find no link to apply, even with a site search.  So now I call Pilot customer service.  I am informed that they do not offer an online application, but that I can pick up an app at any Flying J or Pilot location.

Really?!  No way to apply online?  No link from one site to the other, after the merger, to let users know where to go?  Just let them get an error message instead?  I don’t think I have encountered this kind of online ineptitude since the 90′s.  To be fair, both offer great prices at the pump and both had very friendly customer service reps.  But maybe they could wake up to current technology and learn how the modern web works.  They need to find the last great innovation before the next one leapfrogs them again.

A few days ago I posted an article here entitled “Waxing Nostalgic” in which I reminisced about the original three Podcast & New Media Expos held at Ontario, California and how special they were.

Upon further examination, it’s suddenly become obvious to me what set these three conferences apart and what made them such a success from a social standpoint.

The thing that made the three Ontario podcast conferences unique was the fact that perfect strangers felt very comfortable striking up spontaneous conversations with each other. As a result of this comfort level, something rather remarkable happened. People talked a lot (these were podcasters, remember) and in many instances formed lasting friendships.

When the podcast conference was moved to Las Vegas, an entirely different mindset took over. In Las Vegas, strangers simply don’t feel comfortable approaching each other and striking up spontaneous conversations, even if they see that the other person is wearing a conference badge. The open, spontaneous conversation mindset generated at the Ontario Convention Center was perceived as perfectly normal in Ontario. However, being open and starting spontaneous conversations in Las Vegas would be perceived as weird and so therefore isn’t done.

This is a simple principle, yet it can have a profound effect on whether or not a given conference will be perceived as successful. I could see how conference planners could get caught up with other ideas surrounding where to hold a conference, but forget that the mindset generated in particular places is going to potentially produce very different behavior from the same people, which may or may not be detrimental. If the wrong behavior is produced by an incompatible mindset, it can spell disaster.

I believe the mindset generated by location also extends to and in part explains the old business axiom, “location, location, location” as being important to the success of a business.

Generate the right mindset in part with geography and surroundings to get people in a buying mood for particular types of products and services, and your business has a chance at being successful. Ignore this all-important mindset generation aspect of specific locations at your business’ peril.

A few years ago remember seeing all those “Joost” commercials pushing their Internet TV application? “Proper TV – Joost” the sophisticated-sounding British spokesman endlessly blurted out towards the end of the ad.

Of course, the initial Joost experiment ended badly. The Joost application stopped working December 19, 2008. Literally millions of dollars went down the drain.

I remember downloading and playing with the application and watching a few minutes of the various included streaming videos. I wasn’t impressed, and never opened the application again.

What went wrong? Why have Hulu and Netflix ascended to near household name status, and Joost flopped with the thud of a drunk elephant tripping over it’s own trunk?

There’s something the Joost folks, savvy as they were, failed to take into account. It’s a little something called choice. Joost failed for the same reason that broadcast, cable and satellite providers are losing viewers and subscribers. The “choice” offered by channel surfing revolves around searching for the least-boring junk content that is currently playing. It is choice, but not a very good one. People sitting in front of their Internet-connected computers watching the Joost application trying it’s best to replicate the conventional channel surfing TV experience lost out to the Internet itself. Joost – b-o-r-i-n-g, close it and move on to another website and find something more useful and/or exciting.

The lesson is choice. Enlightened, sophisticated content consumers will choose that content based on three primary criteria – Entertainment, Information, or Character – either any single one or a mixture. By the way, these are the same three filters you apply to your choice in selecting friends.

The failure of the initial Joost experiment was inevitable, and should serve as a warning for all content creators and marketers. Sitting in front of an Internet-connected screen and the conventional channel surfing model don’t mix well. The Internet will easily win the battle.

Get ready for a world where everything is on demand and à la carte. Traditional broadcasting is going to change whether it wants to or not. Marketing will be forced to change in profound ways. As a result, content-making will also go through a major metamorphosis.

Marketing and traditional broadcasting have long had an interesting relationship that has had a potentially detrimental effect on the quality and quantity of available content. Television in particular has long been known as “a vast wasteland.” If one thinks about how this lowest-common-denominator programming can exist, the realization emerges that anxious, aggressive television advertisers have often been willing to sponsor junk programming content to capture passive viewers. In the pre-Internet world of broadcast TV, people would surf channels in order to find what was often the least-boring programming. Also because of the hypnotic potential of this type of TV watching, many viewers were willing to sit in front of virtually any programming without really caring about what they were watching, using TV viewing itself as a sort of nightly drug. Marketing messages get programmed into viewer’s brains, but more importantly using this type of passive TV viewing as a drug has definite detrimental side effects to both the individual, the family unit, and society at large.

After a few months of agonizing, I recently cancelled my Dish Network account. I was already a Netflix customer and was watching more stuff from Netflix than I was from Dish Network, so it has been a remarkably easy transition.

There are differences. One of the differences is that I’m now forced to choose what I want to watch when I want to watch TV. Being forced to choose necessarily forces me to choose something I find personally interesting. The net effect is I’m making a conscious choice of my television influences. Of course, another difference is that streamed Netflix content has no ads.

Hulu.Com offers streaming content with ads, and recently started offering an inexpensive monthly premium streaming content option, which also has the added benefit of vastly expanding the list of devices they will stream to beyond the desktop/laptop computer to include media extenders and cell phones. Like Craig’s List cannibalized the local newspaper ad business, Hulu.Com and similar emerging streaming services are going to further cannibalize the now-breaking and broken broadcast TV model. I say this not to blame Hulu and other services as I believe this push for choice has been well underway for a long time and these emerging streaming services are simply accelerating it.

The ad-supported content will be forced to change because the programming must be appealing-enough to consumers to get them to choose the particular content. Non-ad supported content will continue to have a market but will be forced to appeal just the same to induce consumers to choose that content.

There was a recent article at Arstechnica.Com describing how The Times in the U.K. ended up cutting its web traffic in half by simply requiring registration so that viewers could read their articles. Prior to this, the articles on the site were freely available. The registration requirement is in anticipation of their future paywall plans.

I have to admit that I’m one of the people who left their site more than once when I clicked on a link and was presented with the registration requirement. I’ve done the same thing on other newspaper sites as well. Will people pay for online news?

At its essence, news is often glorified gossip.

There are plenty of successful paywall sites. Here are three sites that incorporate paywalls that I personally find worthwhile enough subscribe to: Netflix.Com,  Rushlimbaugh.Com and FHU.Com.

Netflix began life as a DVD rental service and most recently added a very popular streaming service as value-added subscriber benefit behind a paywall. The Netflix streaming service helped convince me to sign up and become a customer, as well as the availability of Blu-Ray discs. If Netflix had DVD’s only, I wouldn’t be a subscriber. Streaming and Blu-Ray make me willing to open my wallet.

Rushlimbaugh.Com puts the site’s massive and growing archive behind a paywall that includes access to the Rush Limbaugh podcast version of his radio show where they perform the courtesy of cutting out all of the network ads. Being able to receive the ad-free podcast of the daily Rush Limbaugh radio program is why I subscribe. I rarely sign into the site and go behind the paywall. I want the ad-free daily podcast, so I pay, even though I could get the program for free by listening on the radio.

FHU.Com also puts a massive and growing archive of radio programs, books and video behind a paywall. I want access to this material, and since it’s a charitable organization, I am willing to donate to gain access behind the paywall and support them.

I don’t envision myself ever paying for access to a newspaper website. I have never subscribed to a printed newspaper. I used to subscribe to a number of printed computer, stereo and photography magazines, but somehow that lost its appeal a number of years ago and I let the subscriptions run out.

For a paywall site to be successful, it must have something behind that wall that people want access to. They must offer something of value that revolves around the essence of what they do best.

Today the court handed down a big win for YouTube and a lot of other companies that have potentially infringing media on their websites. In two words the court agreed that YouTube has protection by “Safe Harbor” provisions as part of the DMCA. When you think about the thousands of videos being uploaded to not only YouTube, but the varies other sites around it is nearly impossible for any company to monitor all the uploads.

That is not to say that YouTube does not have to take videos down when informed by the copyright holders, only that YouTube is not financially liable for materials on their website that they are not aware of.

When you have millions of passionate people sharing moments from movies to music videos that they love that is a hard thing to stop. Copyright holders should be rejoicing that people love their content and learn that it will be nearly impossible to control where their media is distributed. While I believe people should be able share moments of material in accordance with fair use standards, I can sympathize with media creators frustrations when whole bodies of work are stolen.

Media creators do have to get a grip that times have changed  embrace what is occurring,  instead of sending DMCA takedown notices. It makes a lot more sense to work with YouTube and others media sites to monetize that shared content.

While I know Viacom will fight this all the way to top of the court system, my hope is that YouTube will prevail when the decision is appealed and we can claim a final victory on the safe harbor provisions.

“There are businesses that want to make sure they keep making money by having cures that fix the last one, but not the next one.”

The above quote is from Dr. Fred Cohen, President of the California Sciences Institute, and inventor of the first ever computer virus over 26 years ago. He was speaking specifically about how virus prevention software builders are working only towards having cures, but not really towards prevention. This got me to thinking. How many of the patches and upgrades we install are done as an eye for fixing an existing problem, rather than preventing future problems?

As geek-tech workers, a more-than-fair amount of our time is spent putting out fires. Malware infected machines, network cables that have gotten chewed by mice or a rolling desk chair, trying to find a replacement cable for that syncing device that has been lost. Imagine how much time we’d have back if we weren’t busy putting out fires, and instead were looking for ways to keep us from having fires to put out in the first place.

One of my biggest beefs these days is the variety of cables needed for all the devices we have. My iPod has one type of syncing cable, my electronic note-taking tablet another, and the camera a completely different one. Then there’s the very strange cable that belongs to my Sony Ericsson phone, and the very odd mini-cable that goes to my Kindle DX. When I traveled last week, there were five different cables in my laptop case to accommodate the multiple devices I was carrying. When I set up for my presentation, my laptop’s USB ports were completely full with all of these devices as I demonstrated syncing and updating onto these multiple devices from my laptop. It was a virtual spaghetti factory up there on the podium, and I could not just plug in one cable and rotate devices around, there was a different cable for each one. No wonder people are always losing cables.

Standardization of cables and chargers would go a long way toward preventing problems these types of problems. So does decent cable management (what does it look like under your desk right now?). And in the case of malware/viruses, why aren’t we, as geek-techs, demanding that programs prevent infection, rather than cure it? If Dr. Cohen is right, and I believe he is, we are actually setting ourselves up for more fire-fighting in the future. And while that does create some measure of job security for all of us, it sure would be nice to come to work and do actual planning and development, instead of dealing with crisis after crisis.

Are you willing to pay for the news. That is what Rupert Murdoch maybe betting on. Rupert Murdoch is the owner of a media empire which includes the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. Lately he has been talking about removing his news empire from Google Search and putting them behind a pay wall

Clearly for this to work it would depend on if people are willing to pay for their news. I found an article on Technologizer that said that 45% of people surveyed were willing to pay for news. When I saw this article red flags immediately went up in my head, based on what I had previously heard and read. I wanted to find out more about this survey. The original article came from the New York Times, upon reading the Times’ article I found that the survey was done by the Boston Consulting Group.

I went to their Web site, where there was a fuller explanation of the survey. People are willing to pay for the news, but only under narrow and specific circumstances. This is the key paragraph that the New York Times and Tech chose to ignore.

“• Unique, such as local news (67 percent overall are interested; 72 percent of U.S. respondents) or specialized coverage (63 percent overall are interested; 73 percent of U.S. respondents)

• Timely, such as a continual news alert service (54 percent overall are interested; 61 percent of U.S. respondents)

• Conveniently accessible on a device of choice.”

Consumer, however are not willing to pay for news that is freely available all over the Internet. The consumers that are most willing to pay for their news are those that are already paying for newspaper. I suspect that this is an older and increasingly smaller audience. Even if consumer are willing to pay for their subscription, they are not willing to pay enough to make up for the lost of advertisement that newspapers have been dealing with. A pay wall might slow the decline but it will not stop it. The only way that newspapers can survive is to adapt to the new world, the old model is no longer viable and to try to save it is doom to fail

Remember the early 90′s dialup internet? Back in those days, you were likely using a US Robotics modem. US Robotics was taken over by 3Com in 1997. Now, 12 years later, 3com itself is being bought up by Hewlett Packard (HP).

HP announced that they will pay $2.7 Billion in cash for 3com Corporation.

This will put HP in the Networking Hardware business. David Donatelli, H-P’s vice president in charge of the corporate-computer division, said 3Com has a better set of networking products for large corporate clients than H-P currently sells and a market share of more than 30% in the China networking market. With the deal, Mr. Donatelli said, “we get industry-leading products.”

“By acquiring 3Com, we are accelerating the execution of our Converged Infrastructure strategy and bringing disruptive change to the networking industry. By combining HP ProCurve offerings with 3Com’s extensive set of solutions, we will enable customers to build a next-generation network infrastructure that supports customer needs from the edge of the network to the heart of the data center.”
Read the press release from 3com here

SourceForge, Inc. announced on Wednesday that it has changed its name to Geeknet, Inc. to more accurately reflect the company’s business and the growing market it serves. The name change also supports the company’s intention to expand the reach of its online advertising services into new categories.

Sourceforge has always been a place to find open source applications and tools.

“Renaming the company Geeknet is the latest step in our rapid transformation,” said Scott L. Kauffman, President & CEO of Geeknet. “Our new name is a more accurate articulation of our business. With Geeknet as our calling card on Madison Avenue, we are now able to clearly define the audience we serve and more effectively capture the business opportunity that we are addressing.”

The Geeknet network, also includes  Slashdot, ThinkGeek and Ohloh, among others, and serves  more than 40 million geeks each month.

Geeknet has laucned it’s new website over at www.geek.net. Read the full announcement on geek.net

The sourceforge.net site will remain as it was.

I’ve downloaded a lot of great software from there over the years. It looks like they will be around for the long haul!

Rumors are circling that Apple is proposing an online TV media subscription model.  For just $30/month you could possibly have access to the archive of syndicated shows and the new shows as they come.  Later in the day I read of a favorite tutorial site, which shall remain nameless until I do a proper review, was bumping its fees to about $15/month.  Many of my favorite podcasts have donation links on their site for $2/month or so.  Please understand, I am a believer in paying for labor.  I am just beginning to wonder when this evolving online monthly subscription model will break.

Some people believe a service like Apple’s would get rid of the need for Cable or Dish and save some money. I don’t see that.  The streaming system is not ready for the high-def load and most people will keep the Cable and Dish for their instant viewing.  For those that jump into the online media, how many monthly payments do you want to sign up for?  I just can’t keep signing up for more monthly payments.  The inflation on monthly tech and media services is getting pretty high.

Cable and Dish consolidated traditional media into a monthly package.  What about online media?  It will forever and always be a mix of traditional and common man media.  How many packages can I pick up?  One traditional media package, ten small media packages, one cell phone media package. . .  A revolution in content delivery is underway and will continue to occur, I just wonder where and on what there will be a price tag.

Over the past 18 months as you know I have been investing time and dollars and working through the challenges of putting out a decent video product. Up to this point it has largely been an experiment to see what works, and what doesn’t. I am geographically challenged here in Hawaii in that when I record my shows a large percentage of my audience is sleeping, thus live video has had its limitations.

While on travel last month, I decided to start posting the full video recording of the show to Blip.Tv and YouTube when I am recording in Hawaii. I will be doing this for the foreseeable future. With the capitol investment in the Tricaster last year, it has allowed me a lot of flexibility in streaming and post processing.  While the time investment to do this is significant I feel over the long haul I will be better prepared for the shifting dynamics on how the world will be consuming content.

With that commitment I have decided to put some significant capitol expenditures to bring the video quality in line with the audio portion of the show. This will start with professional lighting and significant work to the studio to make it more camera friendly. Ultimately if my office/studio is simply not adaptable enough I am prepared to convert a portion of a 30×30 garage space I have to a new studio. The general contractor I had in yesterday laid out my options and we will be weighing the need to move forward on that.

Being I am a one man show, there is only so much I can do when I am live.  Now that my son and daughter are getting older they are going to be taking a more active role with the video production which will let me focus on the content, plus they will get some serious production experience which if this pans out will lead to something bigger as they decide what they are going to do in life.

The Audio portion of the show will remain the main primary focus as is it pays the bills, so don’t worry that is a successful formula that is not about to be touched. The video portion of the show will be an ongoing work in progress, and while the content of the video portion of the show will remain the same, we may experiment with removing certain elements from the video version that are in the Audio. The reasons are quite obvious, to date there are no one man video tech shows without outside interaction that have reached significant audience numbers that put 75 minutes of content on the net twice a week.

While I have an idea for a segmented show, the resources and time to produce that are not there yet. At some point I may tap the resources here in Hawaii and bring in some help.  But until then it will be a work in progress. As I improve the lighting and work on the video format I am sure you will provide me the feedback I need to make it work.

Todd..

In a Speech in Beijing, Tom Curley of The Associated Press and News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch said it is time for search engines and others to pay up. I have an idea why don’t the search engines remove all referenced to the Associated Press and their associated affiliates from their search results.

I’m serious just delete them and all historical links in their indexes. Drop all references to them in all parts of their websites. Then sit back for six months and see how they fare on their own. They cry of loosing traffic, well guess what they made their own bed and now they have to deal with it. They have failed to keep their business model fresh just like the music industry has. I have no sympathy for them whatsoever. [Google]

An article by Joshua Auerbach over at GIGAOM titled “New Media Demands a New Kind of Media Company” obviously attracted my attention. Even before the page loaded my brain was saying, I wonder what of new media company is he going to suggest. As you know I think I run a pretty special “New Kind of Media Company” as I was reading the article one specific sentence jumped out at me.

What caught my attentions was this:

“Content producers still seek privileged access to distribution”

This is so true, I am always hearing new media creators complaining that they are finding it very hard to break out, and that they need advice on how to get Apple to feature them on iTunes, (good luck with that as they never have featured my show either) or that they are looking for avenues to get their shows distributed wider. While the number of online venues are growing today, it is nearly impossible to break out on some of those major sites.

There is hope though, the key is teaming up with other media creators that are creating similar content. Affiliation with similar shows help the collective grow together. Sadly to many shows today want to go it alone, they think they don’t need to partner up with other shows.

Over the past five years I have learned one very important lesson, teaming up and providing a central location for similar content reaps vast rewards and is one of the reasons my team at RawVoice continue to partner up with topic leaders and develop and launch vertical sites that allow media creators to affiliate with similar shows and have access to world class tools that help them grow audience share and gain attention and exclusive distribution many seek.

While the article over at GIGAOM talks about the media conglomerates of the world the new media masterminds that I work with, feel that we are being that “New Kind of Media Company”.

About 16 months ago I was visiting family and the TV was left on an infomercial for some reason.  An infomercial about free the internet telephone MagicJack was airing.  They would walk into a business and give them a USB MagicJack for free and ask them to try it. Of course all of the reviews were great.  I turned the channel.  Just another commercial.

And then my sister who works abroad in India called me.  She told me that she was calling from India on a MagicJack with a US phone number.  For free.  We had done everything in talking with her in India.  Skype, calling cards, you name it.  Skype was shaky due to low bandwidth.  Normal phone lines often had a delay of two seconds.  That led to some humorous attempts at communication.  Our normal fallback was Yahoo messenger.  And then this MagicJack.  The call was crisper than the phone but with only a millisecond of delay.  The land-line phone would drop the call one out of every 4 or 5.  MagicJack has dropped maybe twice in thirty calls.  And the price?  $47 for the USB device and one year of long distance.  Wow.  Currently you can upgrade to 5 years for $60.  So I signed up for the free trial.  I am getting ready to work abroad myself so having a US number anywhere in the world would be great, and the ability for friends and business clients to call a US number would be invaluable.

Pros:

1. Sleek packaging with simple plug-n-play install.  I did have to unplug and re-plug it in one time before it installed properly.  The initial registration and number selection was very easy.
2. Initial calls from the US to the US were very clear and the people could not tell I was on a web phone. One of the ten calls seemed to have a slight delay and scratch to it.  I should note that I was using a slow DSL connection of less than 756kb down and 512kb up.
3. Call forwarding works great (Spoiler/Con: Must login to web interface to set the forwarding number. These options would be better placed in the desktop client).
4. Option to purchase international calling credits. Would allow you to forward to a foreign number cell phone.
5. Allows me to use any phone. I currently have a $15 cordless phone plugged in and it works great.  Simply plugged the standard phone cord into the usb jack and into the phone.  That simple.  Can use either the phone or computer interface to make the call.
6. Two voicemail options. Normal voicemail that picks up if the computer is unplugged or you do not answer (no ability to set the number of rings before pickup).  The second voicemail and message option picks up if you are on another call.
7. Email voicemail works well. Today I received two emails with an attached .wav file.  They stated the phone number who left the message, and how long the message was.  Worked flawlessly.

Cons:

1. Computer must be on for the phone to ring.
2. Phone interface on the computer has ads and could use an interface lift.
3. Contacts feature on the phone does not import from Outlook or Address Book that I can see.
4. Very limited website interface.  Poorly documented support section.
5. Poor reviews of their customer service seem to be plentiful.
6. Read complaints of dropped calls and or calls that do not ring through. Not enough people know of my number to have tested this.

Conclusion:

For me this appears to be a viable and very cheap option.  I have some reservation about the longevity and future development of the product.  Hopefully it moves beyond a shopping network and pitchman item.  For now it is going to keep me within my cell phone calling plan and help me transition to global traveling.  And I am so excited about the possibilities once Google Voice is out for public use!  I missed getting in on that by one day when Grand Central was purchased by Google.  Until then I am going to be a MagicJack user.

Seeking an experienced iTunes Application developer, for upcoming project. Developer must have excellent English skills and have a portfolio of previous iTunes applications that where largely developed independently. Must be able to follow a programing spec sheet and implement design elements provided. Developer must be willing to sign NDA and also agree to not re-sell code or re-purpose the code for another client in the same business space.

If you are interested contact Todd Cochrane @ geeknews@gmail.com

We are working like crazy to figure out what is going on but our DNS provider Nettica.com is down this afternoon and it looks to be a big issue. I am not sure how long Geek News Central will continue to resolve but we are working on getting a new DNS service setup.

Update: Their website finally came up and they announced that they are under a denial of service attack.

Ustream.TV in an attempt to improve the interface for listeners and those of use using the service have caused a large number of content creators to cry out in protest of some of the changes.

During my Live event last night, all of the listeners where complaining about the new chat interface. In fact I could not participate in chat at all last night as the chat auto scroll was broken. Plus as part of the change I can no longer chat from the Broadcast Console it forces me to a separate web-page. This is problematic as I have 20+ tabs open on every show making it impossible to follow the chat.

The biggest issue I have with the changes is that when I am not streaming it is impossible for someone to watch my previous show from my video page here at Geek News Central. In order for people to watch an archived show they get driven back to the Ustream.TV website versus being able to watch here at Geek News Central. Plus the videos they are presented are the oldest versions. Which is really stupid.

One of the worst things is that visitors to my site no longer can quickly watch my previous episode which will result in lower revenues for both me and ustream as they cannot show any more ads to my viewers.

Another big issue is that Ustream is now promoting other shows that I do not approve of in my player window, whether I am live of off line on Geek News Central. This is a big issue why would I want to promote shows that I do not endorse!

On the Ustream site on my once personalized show page they are promoting other shows as well, which is frustrating, because as I visited over 20 shows that Ustream.TV was promoting on my show page and non of those show pages were promoting my show in reverse. This is BAD BAD BAD BAD as these shows get free advertisements on my show page and I don’t get any return love.

Are Geeks coming to my site going to want to watch some an Owl Cam? How in the hell can that be a recommended show? 

It is obvious that they are working very hard to keep people contained within the Ustream.TV website but they have effectively destroyed my ability to build my live show on my own website. Because the player on my dedicated video page does nothing but drive people away from my site and onto Ustream.TV website.

The stakes could not be in higher now in North Carolina where communities are sick and tired of being sick and tired of paying ridiculous prices for Internet, TV Programming and Telephone services are in a battle to save a local broadband services from being shut down by Time Warner.

Several towns have formed private companies in North Carolina to roll out their own service packages. Not at all surprisingly they are offering some amazing data, television, and telephone services that Time Warner is not happy about.

Wilson, North Carolina asked Time Warner Cable for more bandwidth a lower prices. TWC was unwilling to do so, Wilson, NC invested 28 million dollars to roll there own.

A comparison of services from various providers. The local service, Greenlight, both provides the most affordable bundle option for its speed, and offers an unmatched 100 Mbps option. The success has cable providers trying to outlaw the service. (Source: IndyWeek)

What is ironic here is that every time I have examined a city or town doing this it is a big win for the residents. Even more amazing if you look at the chart. They offer a 100mps symmetrical connection for $300.00 a month.

Almost makes you want to pack up and move your business to the Wilson, NC area.

Here is the kicker Time Warner has used its lobbyist and strong arm tactics to get a bill introduced in the North Carolina legislature that would actually outlaw what the city of Wilson did.

There is a huge battle going in in this state and if you don’t think it could happen in yours you are sadly mistaken. If you are a resident of North Carolina you better pick up the phone today and support Save North Carolina Broadband

It appears that Time Warner is re-thinking it’s deployment of faster broadband offerings because consumers complained about the caps!

Ladies and Gentleman I am constraining myself from saying what I really want to say to Time Warner, because I am trying to keep this post in the G rating category.

So not only does it appear that Time Warner Cable was going to try and ram bandwidth caps down customers throats, they are now going to go and threaten it’s customers by saying no caps, no speed increases. I am telling you this is a great way to make your customers really love you.

Check out this statement”

“This week, TWC chief operating officer Landel Hobbs said at a conference in California that his company’s strategy will be to deploy DOCSIS 3.0 “surgically” in markets where it is most needed, but not in markets where the company is not finding support for its tiered broadband services.”

Well I have news for the folks at Time Warner Cable, you all are not going to be rolling out very much DOCSIS 3.0 anywhere in the country, because people are not going to stand for these bandwidth capping games.

The true problem goes back to our local public utility commissions. The high majority of us have no choices as TWC doesn’t have true competition. We don’t have it here in Hawaii, and the poor folks who were going to be the guinea pigs in 4 market areas were in areas that were to get BW Cap Trials did not either.

Time Warner is now starting to roll out metered bandwidth to markets across the United States with unreasonable bandwidth caps. In a move that will do nothing but stifle innovation and a move to kill online streaming service Time Warners actions alone will forever change the face of the Internet.

It was bad enough when Comcast rolled out 250gb metered bandwidth caps but at least the were semi reasonable in setting caps that guaranteed that users of their service would nor have to worry about exceeding there caps each month by renting a few online movies.

Time Warners 50gb cap per month is ridiculously low, and many will see huge charges on their bills when they exceed the maximum bandwidth allowed.

Just like the Music Industry, Time Warner is implementing metered bandwidth at at time when most Americans using there service have no other broadband offering.

Living in Hawaii the Time Warner Broadband service has not improved in the way of upload or download speed in over 10 years. They have failed to improve their infrastructure and now because of larger demand on there network have to place bandwidth restrictions on there service to maintain acceptable service levels.

If there were more broadband choices it would be easy to pick up the phone cancel service with Time Warner and order new service with another vendor. But because of actions of Public Utility Commissions most Americans have 1 choice in a service provider that offers a true broadband experience.

Time Warner should be simply ashamed of themselves and I encourage consumers to pick up the phone and complain to Time Warner directly, email the company and file complaints with your local public utilities commissions demanding more choices in the broadband networks.

Time Warner actions are simple. They want to cap bandwidth so that you are forced into consuming more of their base cable products to avoid busting ones bandwidth caps.

It is ridiculous to think that they were able to establish normal usage criteria by doing a test in Bealmont Texas. If they wanted to establish normal usage patterns they would have done so in a place like NYC, Austin, San Jose, Los Angles.