From Istanbul To Sand Hill Road

GM falls to 53 year low

Adversely affected by oil prices, a bad economy, the right to bear arms and Toyota, GM stock has fallen to its 53 year low.

Fifty three year low.

Here is the irony.  If you bought the stock 53 years ago, it is pretty amazing that you could still be holding it, the company is still standing, but unfortunately, you would have made no money.

Update:  This of course does not account for all the dividends you would have received in the 53 years, and it doesn't account what you would have if you put the same money in T-bills.  Probably you'd made a good sum on dividends, but far less if you put your money on riskless securities.

Pixar, Wall-E, Cars & Ratatouille.

Pixar is a silicon valley institution, much like Intel, Cisco, Apple, Google, Yahoo and Facebook.  They don't share the daily business news and highlights as their brethren but they are just as impactful to their environment.  I've written many time about how Toy Story has changed an industry, but Pixar has given us so much more than good animation.  They've given us stories so powerful, that they move both adults and children.

Pixar is on a roll as well.  The two best movies they made happened to be their last two: Cars and Ratatouille.  Again, it hasn't been the animation that made those movies, but the power of the stories behind them.  My question today is, can Wall-E top them both?  That is one high bar of expectations.  We will find out in two days.

Remember Cars.  A perfect boy movie I went with my son.  The story builds up, builds up, and at its climax, when Lightning McQueen slams on the breaks in the end so he does NOT finish the race, you don't know at first why he is doing it, but as you find out he's sacrificing victory to save his friend, you realize quickly that the skid marks he left on road are not nearly as deep as the marks he's left burning right across your heart.  It is hard not to cry, father and son.  That's one helluva way to end a movie.  Dreamworks, are you listening?

Just when that is hard to top, they come up with Ratatouille.  Again, a wonderful storyline that slowly builds to the climax where Anton Ego, played masterfully by Peter O'Toole takes a bite of the Ratatouille, and is transformed instantly to his childhood.  He is consumed by the memory and he drops his pen to the floor.  By the time the pen hits the floor, the audience is barely returning from THEIR childhood.  I kid you not, every time I watch the movie, and every time Anton Ego tastes the food, I can taste my mothers home cooked meatballs, pasta with white cheese on top, and a green salad with chives, tomatoes and lots of lemon.  It is truly a moment that "rocks me to my core".

I am wondering, just wondering, can Wall-E even get close to those two highly powerful moments.  If they do, I will be grateful again, that the silicon valley miracle known as Pixar, happened at a time when I could enjoy it with my children.

The title of this post rhymes by the way.  That's deliberate.

Evolution of Virtual Worlds

Every now and then you run into a very insightful piece of user generated product review that captures both the intentions of the creator and the emotions of the user.  Recently, I ran across just such a review on one of vSide's user forums (disclaimer: vSide is a Velocity portfolio company).  It is also a good view into the history of virtual worlds.

It is quite well-written but it is a bit long, but like me, if you are interested in virtual worlds you will enjoy it.

The entire post is linked here, including the comments which are just as interesting.

Or you can continue to read below.

Thank you SurferJane for the post.

--

"I've always found myself searching for virtual worlds to be apart of. The first virtual world I've ever been on wayyyy back when was The Palace.



It may look like a big window of crap right now, but back then that was the most awesome place to chat! Age group of 12-19 maybe, with avatars and clothes that you could draw and create yourself with your paint program and import into the game for you to wear, and for anyone to pick up if you choose to drop it.

What made the palace so fun was the ease of customization and complete control of the user to make the community their own.When you talk, a chat bubble comes from your head, along with a separate chat box as well showing all of what was said in the entire chat room.

Another thing that made this Chat interesting was The Palace - Server. You could create your own chat server with your own chat rooms, backgrounds, and even have some rooms locked. As long as you kept your server program running, anyone could come to your virtual world. Some people ran hotels where you could have your own actual room that was password protected, with furniture images you could import, and stuff like that. And this was such a simple thing that even me at the time, a 12 year old, could set one up. You could even your own music to play when you enter in certain rooms.

So what makes this chat client good?
Community control to make their own worlds
Community control to create their own looks and clothes
Community even created their own events like model competitions, family's w/ doll house backgrounds, salons, clubs, resturaunts, etc...

on the Palace server, any image could be used as your background settings
Attractive avatars. I could find a good example of the chat screenshot, but those avatar dolls are mostly what everyone used.
Everything was free because it was all user created. Everyone shared avatars and clothes if they wanted.

What made it sucky?
Well at the time, nothing. Technology was so behind back then, I was actually playing that on dial-up. But it most certainly wasn't in 3D, and at the time I didn't' expect any chat program to be that advanced so The Palace chat was a very addicting place to be and was actually pretty safe.

And this is the direction I hope that vSide is going towards

---

Now that virtual chats have evolved into the 3D worlds and have gotten more "real", of course not all of these attributes that The Palace had can be added, because these people need to make money. But have some of these Virtual World creators forgotten that it is the community that REALLY creates the world, and not so much the creators?

Before I got into an actual 3D world, I played on a 3D pixelized world called Habbo Hotel. You've all probably heard of it. That's when I was introduced to the whole fake currency thing. I thought it absurd to have to pay for graphic images to only be represented in a virtual world.



But what made this such an big leap from The Palace was the interactivity between User and Program.
You could go to a restaurant's in Habbo Hotel, tell the person at the counter you want a burger, and a burger would appear in your hand a few moments later! Now THAT was neat. Unlike The Palace where by you'd probably just draw a burger and tell your avatar to wear it.

On Habbo hotel is also where I was introduced to the whole "Apartment" thing. You could choose your apartment layout, walls, floors, but wait a minute... i have no furniture! Of course they start you off with a few points to get some, but there is no way you can gain your own points with out buying some T.T

Well that sux. No way to express creativity with out a CC. My parents would have never given me money to put towards a game. So I got bored with that quickly.

Pros of Habbo Hotel:
Resturaunt things were cool how you can order food
Pool area/diving board where you can perforom tricks and receive ratings
Can have your own place
Community hosted events like falling furni

Cons of Habbo Hotel:
Avatar limitation... looked like legos
No real way to earn points
Graphics were okay, but nothing to special... definitely a step down from the Palace because the creators controlled the look.

So after habbo hotel, of course imitations followed, like coke music.

Now THAT was fun because you could actually earn points by buying their virtual soda and looking under the virtual cap...

---

Okay so fast forward away from that stuff and onto the REAL 3D stuff. I've tried just about... hmm ALL of them.

Mooove Online


UH... need I say more? This sucked big time. But at least you started off with your own virtual partment with fabric, ceilings, and floors you could import yourself. That meaning any image you can find you could put on your walls, you could even hang pictures of yourself in these rooms too.

So what turned me off about this chat? Well, the age group were well in their 30's and 40's for one, graphics were crap, movements/animations were crap, it's like Second Life on steroids.

Active Worlds

A bigger pile of crap with ishtier graphics. I couldn't understand how to use it, the age group was probably wayy older than I was. And it just didn't please me at all. I'm pretty sure both this and Moove Online had a currency thing too, but I never went too deep into the game to find out.

Fast Forward to the pretty looking stuff.

IMVU

Okay, now when I crash landed on IMVU I really liked what I saw. The graphics were cartoony, yet 3D, fairly attractive and could be user created. The currency system works as follows:

You can either buy IMVU credits, or earn them by selling clothes, furniture, animations, etc at your store, winning the jackpot, or by doing basic chat.

What I loved about IMVU was that no two people would ever look alike because there are just SOOO much stuff you can buy to customize yourself. Literally thousands upon thousands to buy.

But uh... wait a minute.. why am I glued to this effin chair. Yea... IMVU is strictly instant messenger and not a walk around chat. Well that sucks doesn't it. You can only move as far as your furniture goes, and can only do special actions where there are special spots or furniture enabling you to do so. Well that sux.

Pros:
Community created avatars, clothes, furnitures, scenes
Community created events
Community created actions
No-two avatars look alike (unless you really want them too)
Good currency system, you can buy and sell credits as you wish and make a profit
Animated Interaction with other avatars

Cons:
Not a walk around chat
Limited to scenes, furnitures, actions based upon what you can afford
Not really virtual worlds, just virtual settings.

Before I hit IMVU, i actually touched on There.com

Now I have to admit, when I first downloaded There.com I thought my search was over. This chat world had everything.

Pros:
MANY Games to play with your vFriends
Hoverboards, buggies, Hoverboats, paint ball guns, card games....
Dancing introduced
You can have a pet
You can easily interact with other avatars in a sychronized manner. (hugs, kissing, hi 5's)
The radio plays in certain places
Voice chat (the avatars mouth moves and synchs to what is being said)

Cons:
Currency system is bleh....no real way to earn points unless by attending events and if someone chooses to award you points having done so.
Graphics are okay... but a bit blocky
Your avatar gets ugly noobish clothes unless you have money to buy new ones
You can't use Voice chat unless you buy premium membership for 10 dollars.
You can't afford a home unless your rich

I'm not going to touch on VMTV because they use the same software as There.com

Second Life

We've ALL heard of THIS game.

I mean cmon, you can have sex, have a pet, own a house, furnish it, run your own stores, quit your real day job, and earn money on your fake one, drive cars, get married, fly, and did I mention theres sex? So why does it suck?

Well a game like this appeals only to certain age group. You know... 30-60 something year olds who are actually REALLY sick of their first lives. Bad marriages, stressful jobs. A place where they can get away and be who ever they wanna be. But not everyone has the money these adults do to have a "second life" and that's what makes it difficult.

Pros:
All of those listed above
Community created avatars I think....
Community created... Community, buildings, stores, clubs, restaurants, you name it
I THINK you can earn money by working for someone at a store or something and can convert Linden Dollars to real dollars

To be quite honest, it's one of the main reasons Second Life gets so much attention is because like The Palace, the Community creates the world.

Cons:
Age group, not suited for those of a much younger age
Graphics are absolute bullocks as well as actions
I THINK you can earn money by working for someone

---

I'm going to pause for a second and make not of something about the evolution of virtual worlds from this point on. I always knew that the next step to virtual worlds was the streaming aspect WAY before Kaneva popped out. Being able to play videos from a 3D TV, and music from a 3D stereo, and hang real pictures from a 3D frame. That is what makes Kaneva intersting, but it doesn't neccesarily make Kaneva good.

---

Kaneva


Pros:
Community controlled media
Customizable apartments, uploadable pictures into apartments as well as uploadable carpets, walls, textures.

Cons:
Graphics are horrid
Places are empty
Not much to do
Not many actions
I THINK the only way to get money is to buy it

---

Okay So I'm not going to be bias kiss-ass in this post and say that vSide is the best virtual world, because that wouldn't necessarily be true. But vSide is still a work in progress that has GREAT potential to be. There are many things that vSide still lacks, yet there are many things that vSide has that gives them advantage over other virtual worlds.

Pros:
Avatars are attractive, and yes that matters. Figures are realistic as well as the actions and dances they perform
Community created/hosted events
Currency system, you're able to gain points by being active in the world and doing trivia
Music environment wherever you go
Customizable affordable apartments with streaming media
Shopping experience is in the virtual world rather than in a browser

Cons:
Horrible lag in congregated areas
Everyone looks similar
Creator controlled world
Not much to do besides party and host parties
No avatar-to-avatar animated interaction

---

So why am I saying all of this if vSide isn't the best?

Because I know that vSide is still in beta giving them the opportunity to be the best based on what WE say.

I know that I, as a Virtual World user, the things that make virtual worlds become so popular is....



I think that vSide has one of the best, but I don't mean so in game. Because vSide is still fairly small, a good percent of you all know each other or have met at least once. Which makes vSide kind of feel like a high school and not so much a big world because it's really not.

The creators control the environment, the avatars, and the actions. And of course the reason being is that vSide appeals to a certain age group unlike Second Life, so it has to be more controlled.

So what can vSide add to improve community while still retaining control? I know some of these are being worked on or have been suggested, but I wanted to point out some of the important ones.

Community Side
Giving users ability of avatar creation (clothes, hair, make up, accesories, etc....) - This will also give users a way to earn vPoints as well as make a name for themselves w/in the community.(by selling some of the hottest clothing)
User2User games - Giving us something to do besides party. Card games, arcade games, Boat Races,
User2User interaction - I've suggested this before at office hours, like the kissing couch, but w/ out having there to be a couch there... Hugs, Kisses, Hi 5's, Cuddle, Piggy Back rides, Holding Hands, Slow dancing,

Voice Chat - Like there.com and VMTV. Mouth moving to the sound of your voice would be pretty cool.
Apartment Security - Password locked housing, shared access. (giving someone else the ability to move your stuff around)
Pictures, Music in Apts - I think this is being worked on, but it would be cool if we could play our own music from our vStereo.

User Interface
I actually really like the user interface right now. It's easy to understand and navigate.

vSide Developer Tool
Now... I know that IMVU and There has this... But a program like this would only be for the sole purpose of creating clothes and stuff for the avatars. As well as possibly being able to make our own hair styles, make up for our faces, etc... Imagine if this is implemented, that Salon idea someone suggested would really shine!

---

So this is just my... ELABORATE analysis of virtual worlds as a whole and vSide. You don't have to read this all if you don't want to, but if you happen to read it, let me know what you think."

My favorite part of the post is the brutally honest description of 2nd Life....

Never Quit...Never Give Up...Rise To The Challenge

http://en.euro2008.uefa.com/tournament/matches/match=300699/report=rp.html

That's Nihat, AFTER he scored the equalizer.

What a day to remember.  What a father's day surprise.

My kids were jumping on the chairs at Old Pro in Palo Alto, and I let them scream all the way home :-)

The iPhone App Store

Apple continued to amaze the world as they took one more chunk out of the carriers' business.

The App Store takes 30% revenue cut from app developers and controls all apps that run on an iPhone.

Does this not surprise all of you? 

This is one big move to capture ALL the revenue wireless carriers used to be able to capture for either putting your app on their deck, or collecting from you through premium sms.  This was supposed to be their growth in the future.

First they Apple took a cut of carrier data revenues, now they are taking ALL application revenues.  I don't know how many times I wrote about the carriers taking their pound of flesh from poor app developers, now Apple is doing the same.

I find it amazing that they have the cojones to pull something off this material.

What Apple is doing is simply telling wireless carriers that the Apple design and brand is far far more important than the carriers wireless network.  And they are soo right.

Microsoft didn't have it this good.  Did Microsoft ever charge all software vendors 30% revenue cut for the honor of running on windows?  Well, Apple is doing just that.

Got to love Apple's strategy.  Some companies become a monopoly and charge more.  Apple charges more and then tries to become a monopoly.  They succeeded in the iPod, now the iPhone is coming and who knows maybe the Macintosh is on its way to become the dominant personal computer.  Maybe the whole Windows thing was a temporary anomaly that lasted 20 years and is now fading away.

My hat's off to Steve Jobs, again and again and again.

Social Games vs. Multiplayer Games, The Litmus Test

There have been a lot of good blog posts about social games, especially what differs social games from multiplayer games.  I've been thinking about this for a while and a recent story told by a friend of mine has made me think of a simple litmus test that separates the two.

This friend of mine told me that he has a fake profile on facebook so that he can play poker without his employees knowing that he is playing poker.  All was good, but when he started winning nobody knew about it.  He had no leaderboard because the fake profile had no friends.  He didn't know where he ranked, even if he did, more importantly his friends didn't know.  This was so troublesome that he said he went back to playing in his real profile.  He needed that social context, the in your face, "I am beating you" feeling.  The social context was a necessary part of the enjoyment.  His anonymous profile just didn't have that.

So that's the litmus test.  Try a game in an anonymous profile (or imagine it).  If it works for you just the same you have a multiplayer game, if it doesn't it is a social game.

A Great Award Given To A Great Project: Kuyucuk

A great biodiversity project around the Kuyucuk lake in northern Turkey has won a prestigious award.  The project's leader, Dr. Çağan Şekercioğlu, who I have mentioned before here, here and here, received the Whitley Gold award and the funding for the project that comes with it.  The 161 species of birds which live on the lake now have a good chance to be seen by our kids and their kids and their kids.  Congratulations Çağan! 

Here is the press release.

Princess gives top nature award to Turkish birdlife conservationist

LONDON, UK: 21 MAY 2008 - HRH The Princess Royal (Princess Anne) tonight presented one of the world’s top prizes for grassroots nature conservation – the Whitley Gold Award - to Dr Çağan Şekercioğlu of Turkey for his efforts to safeguard a bird-rich wetland in an area made famous by Orhan Pamuk’s novel, Snow.

The 32-year-old Kars-based anthropologist and biologist - who turned down a job on Wall Street to work in conservation - became Turkey’s first ever Whitley Gold Award winner during a ceremony held at the Royal Geographical Society, London, by The Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN) – the UK-based charity which administers the annual international awards programme and which this year celebrates its15th anniversary.

His prizes included a Whitley Award of £30,000 (US$60,000 approx), donated by the William Brake Charitable Trust, another £30,000 (US$60,000 approx) as a Whitley Gold Award winner, long-term support and the opportunity to seek further WFN funding, currently worth more than £0.4m a year (US$0.8m).

A similar prize went to Rodrigo Hucke-Gaete of Chile after, for the first time in WFN’s history, the judges decided that both projects merited Whitley Gold Award status.

The award to Dr Şekercioğlu recognised his work around Kuyucuk Lake, in the harsh, mile-high, Kars province of north-eastern Turkey, that provides the setting for Snow, the best-selling novel by Nobel Laureate, Orhun Pamuk. The lake is a haven for birds, supporting up to 30,000 from over 160 species. It is also a vital for local people who rely on it to raise the livestock, crops and fuel that help them to survive minus 50 degrees C winters. It was with the needs of all lake users in mind that Dr Şekercioğlu began the Kars-Igdir Biodiversity Project. Using an approach new in Turkey, he and a local NGO are helping local people to see how good stewardship will raise their incomes, safeguard the lake and its species, and make the area attractive to bird-watchers and eco-tourists. Progress is already evident and the community is also backing efforts to win greater protection for the region.

For more details about this project and/or those of the other finalists, please see the Notes to Editors, overleaf.

Speaking before the results were announced, the fund’s founder, Edward Whitley, said: “The aim of the Whitley Awards is to find and support the environmental leaders who are helping to build a future where nature and people co-exist in a way that benefits both.  Once again, this year’s finalists have risen to the challenge. They have impressed and heartened us by telling us their conservation success stories, and by demonstrating what can be achieved when vision, passion, intelligence and determination are brought to bear.  In Çağan Şekercioğlu, Turkey has a real asset – a Harvard and Stanford graduate who turned down a Wall Street career to be an inspired conservation leader and someone we are privileged to be able to fund.”

The awards ceremony was co-hosted by BBC broadcaster Martha Kearney and held in front of a 350-strong audience that included Sir David Attenborough, a Turkish embassy representative, leading scientists, and celebrity conservation supporters.

In all, HRH The Princess Royal gave out prizes worth £350,000 (US$700,000). Others award winners came from Bangladesh, Borneo, Brazil, China, Guatemala, Haiti, India, and Peru.

Edward Whitley added: “As well as providing our winners with a substantial financial prize, we also strive to support them in wider ways – for instance, by offering them opportunities to seek further funding in future years and by uniting them with other donors and conservation organisations. They also become part of the Whitley Fund for Nature’s network of past finalists which, after 15 years, now takes in over 100 dynamic environmentalists in more than 50 countries, making it an invaluable source of experience, ideas and best practice.”

The Whitley Awards are sponsored and supported by a range of corporations and individuals including WWF-UK, Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, and HSBC.  To find out more about the Whitley Fund for Nature and past Whitley Award recipients, please see: www.whitleyaward.org

It's About Time We Saw...

...exactly how the food we eat gets made.

Yes, as a human being and consumer, I demand that anybody who sells me food, provide me with a video as to how it is made.  I would like a law to be passed that ensures this.  I would like this done now.

Here is what I suggest: anybody who sells food in a supermarket or restaurant has to maintain a web page that shows a video as to how that food was processed and prepared.  Period. 

I want to know how a breast of chicken gets made, I want to know how a Powerbar gets made, and I sure as heck want to know how Hormel makes that awful stuff that I don't eat (but a lot of people do).

If you could go to a web site, click on the product you bought and saw a two minute video showing how it was made, I claim it would do wonders to educate people about what they eat.  It would be far far better than a nutrition information chart, and could perhaps solve the obesity problem in this country.

Why now?  Two words:  The Internet.

15 years ago, if you demanded to know how food is processed, you could call and ask and, at best, somebody would invite you down to god knows where to see it.  It would be a short phone call. There was neither a cheap way for the food company to make the video nor an even cheaper way to distribute it.

The Internet has made it easy to create, publish, find and view such content.  If a guy with a camera can instantly become a TV channel and a newspaper, well, it is about time video brought transparency to how our food gets made.

One $1000 camera would give all the quality you need in creating the content.  Thanks to all the tools we have, it is trivial to upload, format, and publish the video.  It is even easier to search and find it.  It can be done cheaply, in can be done easily, and it would be a gigantic value add to the people. 

Think of the effect of this kind of transparency.  People could discuss the videos, comment on them.  Experts can help people understand what's going on. 

We live in the digital media era where consumers are empowered to express their point of view.  We comment on news articles, we review restaurants, we publish newspapers, and we carry on conversations with thousands of people.  How can we accept not to know how our food is prepared?

It is about time we find a way to discuss the very system that provides us with the most important service of them all; nutrition.

I want the content out there, I want to see exactly what I am feeding my children and where it is coming from.

I don't want to watch an old Sesame Street video as to how a bottle is filled.  I want to see exactly how the chicken I eat is packaged, I want people to see how their string cheese is made, I want mothers to see how the Lunchables they stuff in their children's lunch boxes are made.

The point of this post is that there is no longer any excuse for us NOT to ask for this. The infrastructure is there to provide it and do it cost effectively.

If you want to be able to view how and where your food comes from, then put a comment on this post.  Let's get so many comments on this post that eventually, the lawmakers have to listen.  We have the power.

The Design Era Of Technology

A few months ago, during TED, Yves Behar, the designer of the OLPC and the Jawbone headset, was talking about "design driven engineering".  The talk made me think how much more important the role of design has become relative to engineering in consumer electronics.  He gave an example from the design of the jawbone, where designers controlled the size of the product and as they changed the size, engineering had to go back and re-layout the PCB (Printed Circuit Board, a.k.a the green thing on which chips are).  Designers were telling engineers where to put their circuits.  That is very very different from how things used to be done.

In my old days at U.S. Robotics, products sold in the same stores that sell the Jawbone were designed very differently.  No designer had the power to touch the printed circuit board layout.  Engineers defined the product (we had bad marketing guys, but the modems were flying off the shelves anyway so who cared) and they decided on what features a modem should have.  Once features are determined hardware engineers figured out what chips and components to use, drew a schematic and gave it to the PCB guy, which was almost always a fat white guy who worked alone.   A few weeks later, out came the PCB layout, which was the biggest determinant as to what the product looked like.  The size of the board, thickness were all features that determined the cost, so people who were accountable for the cost of the product made decision on the board. 

What was forgotten is that the size of the PCB determines the size and shape of the end product that some industrial designer would have to design around.  That person had no say whatsoever as to what size the product should be.  Even marketing people were scared, because the answer could be "can't be changed, too expensive, too hard or even impossible".  So design was done AFTER engineers were done with the product.

Yves Behar (whose father is Turkish), says they do the design BEFORE engineers get to put their circuits in.  That is a big change.  Finally the designers can ask critical questions like "who will use this?" and "what is their context?" at a point in time in product development that can actually have an impact on the end result.  That is design driven engineering.

So far this may not be all that new, but I wonder, why now?  Could it be that all of a sudden society has got more "taste" and care for design.  Surely not.  What has happened that caused this shift and what more could be coming our way. I see three key factors that gave power to design and took it from engineering.

1) Moore's Law:  There is enough processing power in small enough components that "getting it to work" is no longer the biggest problem.  Chips have gotten smaller and better, and people have learned over the last 10-15 years how to do it.  Just look at how small and powerful handsets have become.  If the iPhone can run the same big OS that runs in desktops, we are "there" in terms of technology being able to deliver the features we want.  Therefore, differentiation is less on making it work, and more on making it useful.  Enter design.

2) Wireless connectivity:  This is mainly WiFi and Bluetooth and Edge/3G.  A lot of devices we want, now come in portable forms.  Moore's Law has helped in that immensely, but so has connectivity.  Take the Jawbone.  If it had to have a cable instead of using Bluetooth, the options you have in the design of it is limited.  Wires are clumsy, so are power supplies, they shadow what design can do.  With connectivity, you don't need those things, and it opens up chance for good design to kick in.

3) Successful examples of winning designs.  This is the most important reason why the "Design Era of Technology" is starting and the "Functionality Era of Technology" is over.  The two examples I've written about over and over and over again in this blog is the Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPhone.  They are proof that good design sells in a big way and is "impactful".  Sony paid $1B to IBM to design the new processor for the Playstation 3.  The rules of the game until the Wii was that better graphics, faster games was the path to success.  Then comes Nintendo with a simpler machine, simpler technology but smarter and well designed technology and now you have a device that four generations of people can play and use.  The iPhone is no different.  Think of the billions invested by handset companies to build better more functional phones, think of the billions invested by VC's to reformat the Internet content to the phone.  Apple comes and better designs the device and UI an boom the rules are changed.  There are other good examples from the Internet as well, where a good designed UI has made the difference between one site winning over another (that's a whole other blog post).

In the end, I think we are squarely in the "Design Era of Technology"  D-schools will become more prominent over the years, and the designer will be one of the first hires in any company (true in the Internet). The next question becomes, "where else can design take over?" and that's left to the reader to ponder.  For a hint, look at Yves Behar's "seven axioms".

Thank you, Steve Venuto, for giving me the idea to write about this.

Android...Applications and Handsets are Coming

One of my 2008 predictions was that the Google backed Android open handset platform would be well received in the industry.  I gave a lot of reasons why.  A lot of industry experts have taken the other side of the bet.  But that is the less insightful and easier side of the bet, since many standards fail and the few who make it take years to get there, just look at how long Bluetooth took to get there.  But there are signs that Android is alive and kicking.  Here are two data points:

According to Google, 1788 apps from 70 countries have been submitted to the Google Android Challenge.  This is a healthy number given it's been less than a year since the challenge began.  It will certainly grow as phones really make it to the market.  Which brings us to the next point.

According to this VentureWire article, pieces quoted below, T-Mobile already has a prototype and plan to ship Android phones in 2008. 

"At the Wireless Innovations 2008 conference in Redwood City, Calif., sponsored by Dow Jones & Co., publisher of VentureWire, Joe Sims, vice president and general manager of T-Mobile's broadband and new business division, said he had already seen prototypes of the company's Android-based phone, which are scheduled to ship in this year's final quarter.

"I'm impressed," he said. "We will have more than one product...[The move to an open platform] will be innovation across the board, not just one device."

T-Mobile, like other carriers, was leery of Google at first, because the open platform that the search giant was pushing seemed radical and untested, Sims said. T-Mobile is now a part of Google's Open Handset Alliance, as is chipmaker Qualcomm Inc."

If indeed a consumer buys an Android phone in the next two years, let alone one, Android would be a success. 

All this is the side effect of the nuclear bomb that fell on the Wireless industry last year, called the iPhone.  It opened everybody's eyes as to what is possible.

A Social Network the Size of the U.S.

I qutoe Tim Leberecher from his blog post about QQ.com

"Let's take QQ.com as an example, the leading Chinese online social network. The site is reported to have more than 300 million active accounts. That is eight times the member base of Facebook--and it's the same size as the U.S. population.

What's also remarkable (and different from the Western social networks) is QQ's monetization. Facebook posted revenue of $150 million for 2007 (and according to Plus8star a loss of $50 million); MySpace.com (purchased by News Corp. for $560 million) is projected to generate $750 million in revenue this year; and Bebo (purchased by AOL for $850 million) had revenue of just $20 million in 2007. While QQ reported revenue of $523 million and an astonishing operating profit of $224 million in 2007. The revenue distribution is unusual, too: 60 percent of the revenue came from services like games, an additional 21 percent from mobile services like ringtones, and only 13 percent from online advertising."

Most of us who focus on the US can easily miss this scale and more importantly, miss that advertising is not necessarily the only way to monetize.  There are a number of other international social networking sites that do very well monetizing with value added services. 

Life In Cold Blood...Finally

Today, I received the DVD of David Attenborough's Life In Cold Blood, a phenomenal birthday gift no dobut.  Thank you!  It is one of those DVD's that you know will be a masterpiece before you even watch it.  I've been waiting for it for more than two years.

I did watch the first part of episode one, and it only takes 5-10 minutes into it you realize that, even if you never watched Sir David, you are listening to a master storyteller, and he hits you with one hell of a scene.  Now, some readers may remember that this blog has a fascination with evolutionarily more primitive animals eating more sophisticated ones.  I've featured an octopus eating a shark, a centipede eating a bat for example (one is a video).  Life in Cold Blood gives us another one and I have a feeling it's not going to be the only one.

David Attenborough shows in the first episode of Life in Cold Blood, a python eating a deer, a baby one but a deer nonetheless.  The python swallows it whole head first.  It is such a big digestive process that the snakes liver doubles in size in two days and its heart grows 40%.  It's entire body shows a vast increase in biochemical activity until the deer is fully digested.  Amazing.  After that, the snake doesn't have to eat for months, maybe a year.  That's the benefit of being cold blooded.  Warm blooded animals spend 80% of their energy on generating heat.

So there you go, have a deer for lunch, and don't eat anything for a year.  That's the diet I should be on.

Get this DVD here, and thank me for it later.

2nd Annual Labor vs. Capital Kickball

We just played the 2nd annual Labor vs. Capital games, where VC's go against entrepreneurs.

Last year the VC's lost to the entrepreneurs in dodgeball.

This year the tables had turned.

With convincing wins on the kickball field, (and one inning that had 11 runs) Capital has now evened the score against Labor.

Thanks everybody for coming and David, Hunter and Noah for organizing.

See you next year!

Philippines 2008 - Top Ten Photos

As promised, here are the ten of the best photos we took in the Philippines.  They were taken on various parts of the islands of Palawan, Mindanao and Luzon.  Look at the low resolution picture on the blog, but be sure to click on the image for the high-resolution picture.  All these photos took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to take, and all photo credits go to Cagan Sekercioglu, who proved over and over again that he is as good a photographer as he is a biologist.

1. Philippine Frogmouth:  We saw this bird off the trail path, in the middle of the jungle at night.  This is an endemic to the Philippines.  It's not an owl, it is in a family of its own.  Open the high-res version and zoom into the eyes.

2. Palawan Peacock Pheasant:  Saw this beautiful bird on the island of Palawan.  It's a pheasant with the tail of a peacock, another endemic to the Philippines.

3. Indigo Banded Kingfisher:  Seen on a creek during our last days in Luzon.

4. Yellow Breasted Fruit Dove:  Seen on the eastern part of Mindanao.

5. Philippine Serpent Eagle:  Seen circling over our heads in Mindanao, near a logging consession.

6. Scale Crested Malkoha:  Another endemic to the Philippines, seen on Mt. Makiling in Luzon.

7. Pink Bellied Imperial Pigeon:  Ever seen a pigeon like that?  Seen in Mindanao.

8. Apo Myna:  Another endemic, found on the hills of Mt. Kitanglad in Mindanao.

9. Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher:  Seen in our first day on Palawan.

10. Grass Owl:  Majestic bird, seen on Mindanao at the wetlands around an abandoned airport.

All picture credits Cagan Sekercioglu

The Tale Of Two Endemic Cultures

One thing I didn't mention in my previous post is that endemic species in the rainforest are especially resistant to introduced species, which are species brought to an island by people.  Often times, introduced species, like the brown tree snake in Guam and cats on Mauritius, wreak havoc on endemic species and drive them to extinction.  This is harder to do in a tropical rainforest.  Like I said earlier the rainforest ecosystem is especailly severe, yet the environment (climate...) is relatively stable so animals living in the rainforest have evolved to be exceptionally suited to it, making it harder for introduced species to survive. That is why the Philippines is still one of the most biodiverse areas of the world despite a lot of forest destruction.  The endemic birds have a strong culture of their own.

However, the success of the endemic bird species have not been replicated by the people of the Philippines.  While the endemic birds have kept whats unique to them alive, the people of the Philippines, sadly, have not in general.  The endemic island cultures have been mostly wiped out by introduced cultural elements, in the form or McDonald's, KFC, Pepsi, you name it.  These introduced cultural "species" or memes have driven indigenous Philippine culture nearly to extinction.  The island's history gives us a hint on that.

SInce Magellan, who was killed here in the 16th century, the island was first in Spanish control, then American, then Japanese, and then largely American again.  Add to that, crooks like the Marcos family that have nothing but taken from the island, and a population that the island can't sustain (in every house in every village we saw 5-6 kids), and what you have left isn't much.  It has become a land where you just can't find the endemic, unique culture anymore.  It is easier to find the Celestial Monarch bird, than it is to find something truly unique to the Philippines.

It seems like American marketing campaigns that are past their time in the US, go to the Philippines to find new life (who sees Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar in the US anymore?  They are in the Philippines).  Their famous Jeepneys are a proof of the same phenomenon.  This was the sad part of the trip, and it doesn't end there.

The end is the destruction of the rainforest.  The introduced human culture now, in turn, is wiping out the forest and eliminating the endemic animal culture that's done a much better job remaining true to itself than the people.  Unfortunately, if you cut all the trees a bird eats on that bird goes extinct.  Some birds are so rare now, that it takes an expert like Tim Fisher to find them.  So at the end of the day, the one thing that's stayed unique to the Philippines is being wiped out by the on thing that's not stayed unique to the Philippines. 

The next post will have our top 10 photos of birds.

The Philippine Birding Trip 2008

When my ornithologist friend Cagan Sekercioglu asked me to join him and our expert local guide Tim Fisher, on a birding trip to the Philippines, he told me that the Philippine rainforests were among the most biodiverse and unfortunately among the most destroyed.  The trip would take us through a number of islands with the hope of seeing and photographing a lot of the birds of the Philippines. The thought of seeing a new country, and doing it in a non-traditional way appealed to me and I took the trip. It turned out to be one of the most interesting trips I ever took. What made it interesting was how we did it, where we did it and the emergent mindset the two created.

First, the 'how we did it'.  It was my first time birdwatching, and I was lucky to be with two experts.  I always thought of birdwatching as a leisurely sport for which the minimum age to start was over 50.  I was wrong, very very wrong.  It is an intense sport, and gets more so if you are with experts.  If you are competitive about it (my friend is in the world top 100) it requires a lot of strategy.  There are two big variables and one consttraint.  The variables are the total number of birds you want to see, and the number of rare birds you want to see.  The constraint is the time you have in each region.  If you focus on the rare birds, you have to spend a lot of time in specific places.  You may or may not see them but then you miss many common ones, but if you focus only on common ones you may miss that one elusive bird that may just go extinct before you get around to do the trip again.  They all count toward your overall global bird score.  In either case you have to study the birds, read previous trip reports and create the optimum path that takes you through the right elevation and right kinds of habitats.

Our strategy was to spend a lot of time in the rainforest to get all the birds, especially endemics and/or species threatened with extinction.  After all, the number of birds you see and photograph is directly proportional to the time you spend on the field.  That is why almost every day we woke up sharp at 3:00 am, had breakfast at 3:30, went on the field at 4:00 so that after a 2 hour hike (often up a mountain) in the dark, we would be ready to see the crepuscular birds just as the sun is rising.  If you are even 30 minutes late you could miss whole categories of animals.  We had lunch on the field and returned every day around 5-6 pm giving us some time after dinner to do night birding for owls.  Almost every day we went to bed before 9pm. 

Getting the rare birds is tricky.  There are 600+ birds in the Philippines, of which nearly 200 are endemic, which means that they are ONLY found in the Philippines.  You want to focus entirely on those, others can be seen elsewhere.  The problem with endemics is that they are endemic, you can't see them elsewhere.  If you miss that one rare endemic bird that lives on the top of Mt. Kitanglad, guess where you have to go again to see it?  And there is no guarantee you'll see it each time so focus is razor sharp when searching for these birds, and everybody is silent.  Some of these waits took us more than 5 hours.  You have a lot of time to think when you are waiting to hear the call of a bird for five hours on a mountain.

It was during one of these long waits that I realized that birdwatching is much like venture capital .  You look at a vast landscape, whether it is a dense jungle with figs and mahogany, or a wetland with Mangroves, and most of the time the landscape is barren.  It seems like there is nothing to see, or everything you see is something you've seen before.  But then, in the distance among a flock of common birds, you see something unique like a Scale-crested Malkoha camouflaged among a bunch of similar trees.  That's the company you want to invest in.  You focus right away to make sure the bird you are seeing is the real one, you look for identifying characteristics; that's what diligence is.  Once you are sure you get close with your camera and binoculars and take the picture.  There is your investment.  Often times the bird flies away or hides before you get a shot, so you have to sometimes be patient to find the investment or run fast to chase it down, this means getting off the trail path and into the wilderness where you can easily get lost.  Yes, you have to get out of your comfort zone sometimes to find the best investments.  Most importantly, good birds don't show up in a linear way, just like good investments, and you always always have to keep your eyes open.  Luckily for entrepreneurs, VC's often do more than just take a picture but I digress.

A little bit about the rainforest, which is the "where we did it" part.  We all know documentaries about rainforests where we are shown vividly colorful animals displaying all sorts of dazzling behaviors.  Well those documentaries take years to make, and most of the time when you look at a rainforest, especially a lowland tropical one like the one in the island of Palawan, you see nothing but dense, dense flora.  What amazed me beyond anything else is the speed at which plants rot and decay in the forest.  Life is so active that nothing stays on the ground for long.  With the help of constant rain and fungus like I've never seen anywhere, dead plants decay fast.  It's not when they are dead that they start decaying either.  As soon as a new leaf forms, there are 3-4 different fungi on them eating it alive and 2-3 different animals doing the same.  To survive in the forest, natural selection forces you to reproduce fast, develop fast, and spread fast.  Otherwise you are eaten.  Ants and termites are everywhere (including in your socks) and when they bite, they draw blood.  Interestingly this dense activity of life is what gives endemic species an advantage, it's hard for introduced species to make their way in.    You don't have a lot of time to wonder around and take breaks when you are walking in a lowland tropical rainforest, which brings me to my final point about the emergent effect of both birdwatching in a dense rainforest.

Simplify your life!  That's what it boils down to.  Places we stayed often did not have electricity (that simplifies things a lot, though we had to carry ice on horses to enjoy a cold beer), they have little or no cell phone coverage.  The forest is so dense that focusing on the path and the birds is all what you have energy for.  The result for me was a vast simplification of my life for two weeks.  Eat, walk, find birds, sleep.  That's it.  With such simplification comes focus.  Pictures of the birds you are looking for are clear in your head, what you are doing, and why you are doing it is crystal clear.  We slept in very modest housing, on a sponge bed 10cm thick, but nobody cared.  The result of all this clarity is that it is addictive.  You start thinking that the mountain life is your normal life and that all this civilization is temporary.  Maybe it appeals to a primal need, which is hunting of course.  Whatever it is, I highly recommend that you do such a trip, even do it looking for birds, but do it in a harsh environment that forces you to focus and simplify.  You will love the feeling.

As for our trip result, we observed 255 species of bird of which 122 were endemic, a Philippine record for the 13 days we had, according to our guide who'se been the premier birder in the philippines for the last 30 years.

Off To The Philippines

Starting tomorrow I am going on a trip to the Philippine rainforest, in search of rare birds and animals.  I will be joining a few biologist and we will travel to a bunch of remote islands, taking long hikes up and down mountains.  One trip to a part of the rain forest requires us to meet with the village elders and attend a ceremony to ask permission to go on their lands. Very intriguing indeed.

It's the kind of trip I've wanted to do all my life, and the stars aligned for this Month.  I've watched David Attenborough all my life and now is my tiny chance to make my own documentary :-)  Readers of this blog know what a role model he's been to me, see here and here.

The rain forests of the Philippines a have some of the largest biodiversity on our planet, but they are unfortunately among the most damaged.  I will give you guys a first hand account of it.

Stay tuned on this blog and on facebook to see pictures and stories of our trip. 

The Wii Fit...end of Yoga, Pilates

At the Game Developer's Conference 2008, by far the most inspiring product I saw was the Wii Fit; both the software and the fantastic sensory hardware that comes with it.

It's a pad with a bunch of weight and possibly motion sensors that can pinpoint where and how you stand.  It is accompanied by 40 games that are aimed to make you exercise your core body.  There is a unique game for almost every muscle group, and it even makes you do the yoga moves and figures out how accurately you do it based on what it senses on the pad.  It's nothing short of brilliant.

Games get harder as you go.  The pad also measures your progress, your weight and how well you've trained your core.  There is a skiing game that makes you move your knees left and right, there is a balance game that exercises your glutes, a ski jumping game that makes you do squats and it even makes you do pushups.  This may be the solution to the obesity problem in the US.

The game went out on sale in Japan in December 2007 and since it has sold 1.1 million copies in Japan.  It hits the US stores May 19th.  It is an absolute must have.

When good hardware is combined with good software something great happens.  Both the Wii and the iPhone are the two best examples of it.  They remind me of the following Alan Kay quote:

"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware."

P.S. Google gets this quote too by the way...their data centers are their hardware, and it's a lot more impressive than both the Wii and the iPhone.

Locke, Hume and Berkeley at The Game Developer's Conference

I walked the exhibit floor at the GDC looking for the answer to one question and one question only; "Is there a user interface better than that of the Wii?"  I was looking for new kinds of sensors, new kinds of sensory input devices that can enable gameplay never imagined before.  I was the colonial empiricist at the exhibit floor looking to understand the world through the senses.  I saw a bunch of disappointments, but one spectacular and inspiring innovation.

The Playstation 3 booth was not the place to see that innovation, though the booth itself was hard not to see. I asked somebody from Sony whether they were coming out with a Wii like controller and nobody knew of any such effort.  That was disappointing, but maybe it is an admission of defeat for them if they do.  Then I saw a young guy demonstrating a game on the playstation.  I approached and asked him without looking at his badge: "Do  you know if Sony is going to come up with a Wii-like controller?"  The answer I got was decisive: "I have no fu..ing clue, but if they did it would be awesome duuude!"  Then when I asked him if he knew anybody who knew the answer he said "I have no idea dude, I am just here to demo this game."  Maybe Sony should listen to its developers, but I left that booth with no luck.

Then I ran into a booth that was selling the Novint Falcon (shown here).It's supposed to be a new kind of joystick with force feedback that is supposed to make your gameplay a better experience.  I tried it and the impact is marginal.  It's also a big device and where will you really fit it.  Also, you have to hold a tiny little ball (in front of the much bigger machine in the picture) to move your character and fire your gun.  It's a tiny little ball because if it was bigger, it would be harder to give it the force feedback.  Smart thinking?  Not!  When you play a first person shoot-em-up you want to feel you are carrying a big friggin gun, not a wimpy little ball in your hand. It was a niche product at best, and not what I was looking for.

Then I visited Neurosky's booth.  They make a headgear that analyzes your brain waves to turn it into sensory input to a game (see below).  The headset is below.  I knew of their competitor Emotiv, which has a different device.  It was surprising enough to see that not only had somebody come up with a "thought controlled joystick" but there were actually two companies doing it.  You got to love innovation.

There was something really cool about their demo.  You put on the headgear walk around in a virtual world and if you focus and concentrate long enough you can move objects. Much like using The Force.  Very cleverly, they put an X-Wing fighter in the water that is very heavy and you really need to focus to move the X-Wing out of the swamp.  I said: "That's pretty cool, I'll give it a shot and try."  Then suddenly the lady with the headset looked at me with her eyes opening wider and slowly said: "Try not.  Do or do not.  There is no try." 

Jokes aside, it will be a long, long time before these devices replace joysticks.  Can new games be developed for it?  Possibly, but that value proposition won't come clear unless the makes of the devices write a few decent games.  Still not the innovation I was looking for.

Then there was Zcam, whose tagline is "You are the Interface".  They use a 3D camera that captures not only the colors but depth (it sends out a signal and measures how fast it comes back).  So it can detect your head, fingers, arms, but more importantly whether it is moving towards the screen and back.  Therefore you can just use your hand and body motions as an input, no need to hold any device.  I can see that working well in many cases, but is it such a bad problem to hold something. Don't I want to hold something like a racket when I play tennis?  Must I use my hand?  Holding something is easy, pressing buttons is harder, and what about that case when you really want to press a button.  That's a pretty simple thing we can assume that people know how to do, again that's not a problem worth eliminating.  While the technology was impressive this device also didn't do it for me.

It wasn't the Playstation 3 (not the Xbox either by the way), it wasn't the force feedback device, it wasn't the thought controlling headset, and it wasn't the Zcam.  So what was it?  What was this remarkable new user interface that stole the show?  You have to read the next post to find out.

Subprime Mess for Dummies

A must read powerpoint that sums up what's going on with the subprime mortgage loans.

Download sub_pime_presentation1.ppt

Enjoy!