I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it is disappointing when a company starts behaving like an incumbent politician. There are those who firmly believe that incumbents are heavily influenced by campaign contributors and special interest groups; often forgetting the needs of the constituents who they are truly supposed to represent. Similarly, there are established companies that lose focus on the very customers who made them successful. With their drive to maximize revenue and profitability, instead they find that slowly over the years they start spending more and more of their time catering to their advertisers. This is sadly ironic, given that those advertisers are only interested in the eyeballs and wallets of those very customers. Lose the audience, lose the advertisers. Read full article…
I have always loved live entertainment events. Concerts, comedians, music festivals; you name it. But, I have noticed an interesting shift over the past couple of years. I no longer have the patience for large venues. With the increasing quality of home entertainment systems and faster broadband pipelines, the entertainment decision is becoming harder. Do you go out for an event and endure skyrocketing ticket prices, challenging commutes and parking, standing in line, and crowded venues? Or, do you simply stay home and watch an event in HD with surround sound on the comfort of your living room couch? Read full article…
I dropped in on Barefoot Coffee yesterday to enjoy one of their fabulous Cubanos and noticed they had remodeled. It still feels cozy there, but it lost a bit of its independent spirit. I’m going to miss their quirky chairs. But, they still pull a great espresso drink and they still create nice latte art. And that, with a number of other touches, make Barefoot one of those sanctuaries that you seek out when you want a great cup of coffee that doesn’t come from the faceless corporate chains. I have a similar experience in one of my favorite dark little coffee houses in NYC, Caffe Reggio (image in this post). The funny thing is, I will go considerably out of my way to visit these places, when I could simply grab a drink at a place like Starbucks. Easy enough, since there is one within every quarter-mile radius. Read full article…
See if you can find me. A “Where’s Waldo” experience
I have always been interested in trying noise-cancelling headphones when I fly. But, I prefer the portability and comfort of in-ear headphones. So, until recently, there weren’t many desirable options. Then I discovered the audio-technica ATH-ANC3 in-ear noise-cancelling headphones at my local Apple Store. 
From the audio-technica site:
Electronics in the control box create a noise-cancelling wave that is 180° out of phase with the ambient noise. This wave acts like a noise eraser: it cancels out the annoying sounds that surround you without diminishing the audio you want to hear. The result…a peaceful enclave to enjoy the music or movies of your choice.
Read full article…
After I missed a few critical email messages recently, I spent a good part of today simply trying to get my email inbox under control. Over the past decade, the “email problem” has slowly grown into an unmanageable beast. I looked at my work inbox today (this isn’t even counting my personal email accounts) and noticed I had over 18,000 emails in the Inbox alone, with over 3000 marked unread (and I file and filter even more than that). Ouch. Staying ahead of email, responding to one as several more come in, has become a Sisyphean task. Quite simply, email is failing us. The system hasn’t scaled with the volume and variety of communication we deal with today.
I’m obviously not alone in reaching this massive point of failure in the email system:
Read full article…
Well, we finally announced it. Yahoo Search is going way open very soon. We will be allowing publishers and site owners to provide us with additional information about their site. This will provide a next-generation search experience with results that can display some of the rich data that is today only available on the website after the user clicks through. For example, ratings and reviews, great photographs, useful site links, etc. The additional beauty is that users can control whether they want to see this additional info or not. Their choice. Read full article…
Yes, I’m an early adopter. That’s why I bought an Apple TV last year. And, I will admit that it has mostly just been an experimental toy until now. The biggest benefits? Being able to access my iTunes library of music and view my photos all from my living room entertainment system. My kids love going through all of our photos on the big screen HDTV. The YouTube videos were fun for a little while, but that faded quickly.
The 2.0 Upgrade
However, the latest 2.0 software upgrade finally made it a lot more interesting. Now I can instantly rent movies (including a number in high-definition with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound), buy TV shows, and browse Flickr photos on my widescreen HDTV (and I love Flickr)… Read full article…
Well, it looks like Sony’s Blu-Ray technology has won the high definition DVD format battle. Toshiba is dropping support for the HD DVD format. This is great news for consumers who will no longer have the confusion of the competing high-def formats. Well, except for those consumers who invested in HD DVD systems. Sorry! 
Read full article…
I have talked about the commoditization of the coffee business before. You can certainly get a good cup of coffee (or name your favorite coffee drink) at many of the coffee houses that sprang up over the past decade. So, when “quality” is no longer the differentiator that it once was, what is a coffee house owner to do? Well, as many industries are discovering, you start focusing on differentiating through the consumer experience.
Read full article…
