randomosity

It’s that time of the year when we are bombarded with these, and like all of us I am trying to develop the appropriate strategies for winnowing out the chaff. The list of Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without is one that kept my interest. Michael Arrington has compiled an intriguing list of service-based companies that you may or may not have tried before. Some such as blue dot are providing a new spin on existing services, in this case the social bookmarking model of del.icio.us.
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Ok. I’ll admit I am rater late to the podcasting thing. I remember when they started showing up in as spoken word commentaries to download to your iPod and of course I had to try them out. They were still rather unformed and experimental and more importantly for me, I didn’t find myself with the time to dedicate to listening to a rant. I wasn’t moving around that much, so didn’t have the longer stretch in the car where these may have worked out. I tried a couple, but didn’t find any that really tickled my fancy, so gradually stopped looking for them. Then Scotty forced me to watch a Video Podcast a year and a half ago and I have started to find podcasts that do warrant a few minutes time. Moreover, they also generate some anticipation between releases. There are the zany ones (TikiBar TV), the informative ones (MoBuzz, GeekBrief) and the Crossovers (zeFrank, RocketBoom), or even the specialty ones (Wine Library TV, Food Guru). I am now subscribing and watching or listening to about twenty shows on a regular basis. For me these have really replaced TV. They are immediately accessible, frequently fresher than cable and certainly much more raw - not profane, often just less refined and thus seemingly more personal. There’s something to these. We can make the obviosu parallels to the printing press and pampphleting, or to renegade radio stations, but these are seemingly more powerful. Today, of all days, ime Magazine has picked its most important inventions of the year and YouTube is at the top of the list. Its there because there has been a shift in the ability of the obscure to rise to prominence and reac an amazingly universal audience.

All I know is that I am enjoying the entertainment and information charge that I can tune into whenever I have a spare moment.

The iPod remains a pervasive example of a viral epidemic adoption. When did it hit the tipping point? I’ve still got my 1G pod although the battery gave up the ghost a long time ago. It certainly wasn’t in 2001. The unit was a luxury item and rather expensive. I think I paid close to $800 for mine in that first month after introduction. A couple iPod’s later, the fascination still remains, but my attitude has moved more towards the utilitarian value. I picked up a Shuffle for use as a USB key with extras. It continues to perform exemplary. As nice as the stainless steel back is from the 1G, the Shuffle makes much more sense and doesn’t mar when treated roughly. It’s there when you need it and holds a charge for ages. My Nano, bought after Apple intro’d the 2G Nano for a song, is the dock that holds my little Nike jogging device. Now, that is a cool use. So I have paid Apple my share to support the trend.

This article from wired is a brief narrative outlining the process at Apple that led to its release in 2001. I recall being aware as many were that the software on the pod was licensed from PortalPlayer, however, this shares some of the other ways in which Apple was able to get a product to market quickly. It wasn’t the first MP3 player, but it certainly was the best. My little 64Mb Sony pencil player (I can’t remember the product name) had the utilitarian value of the Shuffle in 2000. As the author notes, Apple identified as need, a market full of products that demonstrated limited innovation - and offered Apple an opportunity to reach a whole new sector. They did this very well. Licensing where necessary, subjecting the product to an effective refinement strategy and combining it crucially with a desktop software. Has anyone tried the crap Sony stuff. DRM is the debate, but Sony tends to rub your face in it, where Apple has hidden most of it and framed the reminder of its presence in tongue-in-cheek cheekiness - ‘Remember, Don’t Steal Music’.

I don’t normally click thru for adverts and the like, but after wtching an episode of zeFrank today the producer sof the movie The Last Kiss had cleverly bought some space. Why did I click? Well, lately zeFrank’s been pretty entertaining and I figured why not support the site. I am glad I did. The site for the movie is quite a nice piece of flash. Nicely open page, lots of white space and a very smooth and, in my mind, thoughtful navigation widget. Small popup from the bottom tied to the movie’s theme, but very user-centric. Works for me. Try it yourself. The incentive was to hear the soundtrack and it happens to strike me as appealing and is running as a loop in the background as I write this. All in all I was struck by the value of this click thru and similarly by the path from a podCast I subscribe to to this movie which presumably has some thought given to demographic tastes in just such a clickthru.