Connecting the dots ...
Windows Vista is now officially 2.0 compliant: it has rounded corners and the right colors. 
Btw, you can be 2.0 compliant, too: order your business cards here, like I did; rounded corners are a $20 upgrade. 
Joke apart, it’s really reassuring that the most important things are taken care of…
Update (10/31): Gee, am I glad I said it before TechCrunch 
Apparently Katie Couric is not the only one who can easily lose 20 pounds by some photo-processing wizardry. The magic is available to anyone, and it does not even require a conspiring press department, or even Photoshop knowledge.
The slimming goodness comes to you thanks to HP, the company that introduced a line of digital cameras that can slim anyone’s waistline.
The demo video on HP’s site is worth watching. (hat tip: Ho John Lee).
I see unlimited potential here: if you can slim, why not add, too, at the right places? We can all have a custom-tailored body. And to be PC and balanced, yes, guys could use some “enhancement” too… no, not *that* 
..Were talking about decent pics here…although reading this, who knows what the norm is anymore….
Well, since you brought it up, how about 9 inches? Isn’t that too big?
(Seeing the photo of The Swiss Army Giant Knife) I think we can agree that 9 inches are too big to be useful…
Back to the HP cameras, this is the kind of enhancement I had in mind, but without the steroids or hard work. Oh, and not in 12 weeks, but 12 seconds. 
Warning to journalists, writers and corporate Board members: if you received a camera as a gift from HP, have it *de-bugged*. According to leaks from usually well-informed sources, some units included HP’s experimental feature: the camera may listen in on your electronic communication and secretly report back to HP HQ. 
Update (827/07): According to this TechCrunch story, FotoFlexer now allows you to make body parts look larger or smaller
😉
Tags: digital+camera, digital+photography, slimming, slimming+camera, photoshop, hp, hewlett-packard, swiss+army+knife, hp+leak, corporate+board, boardroom+leaks+, humor
If you’re like me, you haven’t talked to a bank teller for years, in fact haven’t set foot inside a branch for a long time. Why should you? You do all your banking online. (?) But you probably wouldn’t think of your bank as *The* Software as a Service provider to run your entire small business…
That’s exactly what Fokus bank pulled off in Norway, in cooperation with 24SevenOffice and Bluegarden. The new, innovative bundle is probably the first of its kind in the World: single sign-on Web solution for your banking and all other business software needs. (hat tip: Espen Antonsen)
Let me reiterate: it’s not just online banking, but a full hosted business system. Given all the trouble I had just getting Quicken / Microsoft Money to work with several major US banks, I have a hard time imagining them come forward with such revolutionary offering. Key benefits to:
This is not the first innovative deal coming from 24SevenOffice: previously they teamed up with Telenor, a leading Scandinavian telco to create a 3G “Mobile Office“.
I’ve been following 24SevenOffice for quite a while (and have received occasional updates from Staale Risa, COO), largely due to my obsession with “Enterprise” functionality to small businesses. I can count on a single hand (two fingers?) the number of All-in-One SaaS providers with comparable breadth of functionality: CRM + ERP + Office .
My only wish is that the company entered the US market sooner. Recently they launched an International version, accessible to US customers, but frankly, that’s about the one thing coming from 24SevenOffice that I am unimpressed with. It removes the key value proposition of being a full-rounded, integrated solution ( a’la NetSuite but more) and positions the system as a lower-cost CRM competing head-on with SalesForce.com. Well, I have news for my European friends: this version does not compete with Salesforce, but with the dozens of other challengers. Personally, I think it’s a marketing blunder.
That said I know the company is working on porting their full system (think accounting, HR ..etc) to US requirements and a full blown US launch is in the works …. stay tuned.
Update (9/8): To access the full 24SevenOffice site, trick the system by selecting a European country, e.g. the UK. You still have to do some digging, a lot of logistic functions are hidden under Financials.
There’s also a neat demo here.
(Updated)
Vista beta testers mad about forced startup sound – reported Robert Scoble yesterday. What several testers observed was that the Windows startup sign can not be turned off. Naive me, this is how I tried to calm down the “mad users” in a comment:
“Oh, for God’s sake it can’t possibly be by design… It’s a beta, and with Microsoft’s so-called stable products being so buggy, what do you expect? Just be happy it doesn’t force an automatic reboot every 30 minutes
“
Yeah, right. Today the story continues, as Robert interviewed “Steve Ball, group program manager for the Windows Audio Video Excellence team (basically, the team that builds the stuff that plays audio and video in Windows).” Wow, thank God they have an entire team for that! But it gets better: they hired famous guitarist Robert Fripp for the job. Geez, just give me a machine that boots fast and doesn’t crash, I’ll get my music on my own! 
And here’s the best part from Steve Ball:
“This will be a non-customizable sound, and that’s been part of the plan for Windows Vista for many months, he said.
However, the plan might change and Steve Ball is reading all the feedback, both on blogs, and in the newsgroups for beta testers, and his team is considering all of this stuff and still has not made final decisions (although they’ve spent a lot of time already arguing this stuff out and are heading down a path of making this a non-customizable sound that can’t be turned off, just like the Xbox has today).“Why the hell would you want to do this in the first place?” he told me is a common question.”
Wow. If he really can’t think of a reason, how about this: has it ever occurred to anyone that some of us Microsoft-slaves might just wake up in the wee hours and want to work (i.e. turn on the computer) without waking up the family?
I am fuming… this is yet another case of product-focused thinking ignoring users. 
Update (8/24): Here’s another scenario, from a comment to Scoble’s blog:
“I really hope this isn’t true. If it is, we’ll never deploy Windows Vista in a clinical environment or care setting. We currently have Windows 2000 PCs running in very sensitive care environments that need constant reboots — if the system is forcing the startup sound to play, regardless of other settings, that could be very disruptive to a care environment without us have to take unnecessary steps to mitigate the noise. Microsoft, _think_ about your users not yourselves!”
Another commenter sums it up perfectly:
“Microsoft is still doing what Microsoft does best, telling their customers that Microsoft owns their computer and not them.”
Better yet, just watch this video.
Also read Silence is Golden by Michael Parekh.
Update (9/23): Microsoft listens, after all, says Scoble. They are making the sound optional.
Tags: Windows, Windows+Vista, Vista+Beta, Windows+Sound, Vista+Sound, Vista+Startup, Microsoft
Pranks seem to become the new trend in advertising. A few days ago I fell for the Alltel Spoof on Guy Kawasaki’s blog. (read more in the Wall Street Journal).
The viral video du jour is Agency.com’s prank, in which they broadcast their pitch process, including fake employment at their Client (prospect). Will it work? I don’t know. Steve Rubel dislikes it, other think it’s most effective… time will tell.
(Updated)
The Blog-ad to the right is from Guy Kawasaki’s blog. I don’t really understand why Guy runs it – in fact I wonder if he paid attention to what this really is. Don’t get me wrong, this is not an “anti-Guy” rant, what I dislike is Class Action Suits, and stupid advertising in general.
I don’t think I am alone thinking that class action lawsuit are controversial, to say the least. Sure, they provide a way to curtail companies “evil” behavior – but provide little to no benefit to individual “class members”. In fact it’s widely known that the only party benefiting from settlements are the lawyers. For everyone else involved it’s a lot of hoopla for nothing.
As for the particular case, I admit I don’t know Alltel and their “My Circle” program: for all I know they may truly be evil, but this class action suit solicitation provides a link to them anyway, potentially boosting their business – not very smart, if you ask me.
Another link reveals the lead plaintiff’s background: he spent his life representing us, the “little man” against “bad industries”. Here’s a typical case:
“In 1998 a crossed leg, revealing a slouchy, wrinkled sock, falsely identified me as an untrustworthy loafer to other members of an important real estate consortium, costing me my seat on the board. After suing the sock company for damages, new industry standards were put in place, ensuring that the same fate won’t happen to you..”
Hm… personally, I would not want to be in a board where I can lose membership due to wrinkled socks 🙂 Seriously, Guy, do you really want to promote this angry man’s next tirade?
Update: While typing this up, I’ve just received an email solicitation to join (start?) another class action lawsuit, against Panda Software for their spam. I politely declined. I found my own creative way to stop Panda’s spam, and it worked. Case closed. I’m not interested in spending my life fighting.
Update: (7/30). OK, I bought it.
It’s a spoof .. or viral ad, whatever you want to call it. There is no class action lawsuit, only the campaign bu Alltel. Thanks to Thatedeguy for being doubtful enough .. (see his comment below). I digged further and I think he is right.
Update #3 (7/30): Guy Kawasaki confirms it’s a spoof, an ad run by Alltel. I’m glad to see we’re on the same page as far as the “class action lawsuit” is concerned, i.e. he rejected it when he thought it was real. Thanks, for coming over to comment, Guy!
Dell is offering a free skin with the purchase of an Inspiron or XP notebook. Clearly targeting the back-to-school crowd they have University-themes, as well as a range of other designs, one of them being Flaming Hot.
Hm… considering the two recent accidents of exploding Dell laptops, is offering a Flaming Hot skin such a good idea?
So true. And so wrong 
(a real banner ad from YAHOO)
If I were GM, I’d fire the Agency though…
Update (7/23): Check out Rick Segal’s post on outright stupid advertising.
There is a somewhat lesser known feature in del.icio.us: you can send sites to your friends/colleagues…etc feed readers by using the for:username tag. I’ve been using it for a while, when I want to point to articles relevant to my friends’ businesses; it’s a real timesaver, I don’t have to wrap the URL in courtesies and make it an email.
But Steve Rubel is proposing something that smells SPAM to me:
“You could send the message to several people all at once, including all of the most prolific bookmarkers on the site.
Open letters are just one possibility here. What if PR pros used this methodology to pitch reporters and/or bloggers who frequent del.icio.us regularly? You could pitch 10 reporters at once in an open way. “
I normally like Steve’s ideas, but this is just wrong. Del.icio.us will be spammed, with or without Steve, but at least don’t welcome it…
Related posts:
Recently my friend, Chris Yeh organized a special SDForum event, “Your Second Best Idea“, where he brought together:
Chris’s concept was that after brief idea-presentations the participants would “bid” to team up with the idea owner based on their initial plans to execute and an equity offer to the owner. And if all runs well, perhaps a VC will jump in, too. I had some doubts on how far the process can go in one short event, but it was certainly an interesting experiment. We heard ideas, the crowd discussed them, but we never got to the point of entrepreneurs bidding for the ideas – which somewheat masked the underlying big question:
What’s the value of an idea? In a different context, as part of the NDA discussion I’ve previously stated tha ideas by themselves were not that valuable, it’s the entrepreneur behind the idea that makes or breaks the startup. Well, if that’s true, than how much equity is an idea presented in 5 minutes worth? And if that’s all the idea-owner had, hasn’t he/she just given it away for free?
While the inaugural session did not answer these questions, I’ve recently heard about Canada-based Cambrian House whose entire business model is based on Chris’s concept .. and more. Here’s how they explain it:
So the creative types submit an idea, the community votes (here’s the digg-effect), others will develop it, Cambrina House markets the product. All contributors to this “supply chain” will share the profit, according to a Royalty Point system. All projects start with 1500 Royalty Points, and submitting an idea is worth 75 out of the 1500, so if my math is correct, that’s a 5% equity for the raw idea – pretty high, if you ask me.
What noone can predict for now is whether those Royalty Points will ever get converted to real money, and at what rate.
Does Cambrian House have a sustainable business? I have no clue… and I suspect nor do the contributors, or even the Founders of Cambrian. In todays heated entrepreneurial environment apparently being radically different is good enough (and being a serial entrepreneur doesn’t hurt, either), so they landed $2.5M in funding from aptly named Adventure Capital in Alberta, Canada. This funding will go a long way, as they essentially outsourced everything, not paying contributors until profits roll in. I guess we can say their currency is hope:-)
The Cambrians certainly know how to create awareness: in 16 days of existence they had 100K site visitors, there daily reach per Alexa is in the top 100 in Canada. They are not afraid of unusual publicity stunts, although frankly Feeding Google was more about noise than being smart: followed by cameras, completely unannounced, they descended on the Google campus with 1000 pizzas at 3pm. Did you get that? Google, as in Google the company famous for it’s free gourmet food, at 3pm, as in just after luch, before dinner – no wonder they were soon escorted off campus. Cambrian guys, I have a free idea for you: next time set up camp with your 1000 pizzaz at Stanford, you’ll be heroes and won’t leave without 100’s of new ideas…and I don’t even want 75 points, just invite me for the pizza-fest.
Related posts:
Update (3/23/07): Read/WriteWeb just published an excellent overview of crowdsourcing.
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