When it comes to blogging, Love is a better master than duty

Earlier I talked about the benefits of blogging and how blogging had specific business benefits when I launched them at Jupiter Research. There was no advertising on the blogs, the blogs themselves were the advertisement. What I didn’t discuss were the bloggers who’ve been successful who weren’t looking for monetary success when they started. They blogged because they had something to say about things that interested them and others found those thoughts interesting as well. Dave Winer probably wasn’t looking to make millions when he started sharing his DaveNet thoughts to a list of users on AppleLink or when he evolved that into scripting.com. But Dave’s not the only one. Kevin C. Tofel and James Kendrick are two of the most passionate folks I know about mobile technology. Last year they sold their site to GigaOm and now they both write about mobile tech full time. Dave Zatz turned his passion for digital technology into jobs with Slingmedia and Dash. I suspect his blog is one of the things that got people’s attention. Good friend Jeremy Toeman’s blog helped grow his consulting business at Stage Two. Of course, i’d be remiss not to mention Peter Rojas and Ryan Block’s success with Engadget. I could go on, feel free to let me know your examples as well. Bottom line? There’s far more ways to monetize a blog than with AdSesne.

Einstein reportedly coined the phrase “love is a better master than duty”. I suspect if Einstein were alive today he’d be reading some of these blogs. He’d probably be writing one too.

Blogs don’t make money. But people with blogs can

Dave Winer has a great post in response to Dan Lyon’s article in Newsweek. Dave’s 100% correct and of course he has the rewards to prove it. When I first started the (now defunct) analyst blogs at Jupiter Research I had some initial pushback at the time as to how it might affect our business. In the end, they helped promote the brand, exposed us to audiences that weren’t familiar with us and served as a great marketing tool for us to showcase insight and expertise.

Oh yes, they also brought in revenues as well.

My new role with Interpret

Yes, it’s true. I’ve started a new job with Interpret as VP of Strategy and Analysis. The data we have on the digital consumer is just amazing, I’ve never seen this level of breadth and depth, it’s going to be fun sharing this stuff with clients.

Here’s the full text of the press release.

Interpret LLC Names Michael Gartenberg Vice President of Strategy & Analysis

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 10 /PRNewswire/ — Interpret LLC, a leading media and technology research firm, is bolstering its new media measurement and insight capabilities by appointing veteran analyst Michael Gartenberg as Vice President of Strategy and Analysis. A noted technology strategist, author and speaker, Gartenberg specializes in research and analysis in personal technology. Gartenberg will report to Michael Dowling, Interpret’s CEO and Co-Founder.

In his new role, Gartenberg will further Interpret’s commitment to providing strategic new media analysis for clients. He will be responsible for strengthening and expanding Interpret’s custom and syndicated research products for consumer technology clients. He will also work closely with Interpret’s practice leaders in the video games, mobile, theatrical/home entertainment, digital media and advertising sectors to provide clients with incomparable cross-media analysis.

Dowling stated, “Michael is a tremendous asset to Interpret, bringing a unique voice and breadth of insight to help clients digest and optimize emergent consumer technology platforms. Michael also delivers a vast wealth of expertise, depth of industry knowledge and leadership to clients looking to understand how rapid adoption of consumer technologies is transforming their industries.”

“I am pleased to join the exceptionally talented team at Interpret and add my insight on the growth of digital media and personal technology as consumers further embrace digital lifestyles,” said Gartenberg.

Gartenberg is a frequent contributor to many news and media outlets providing broadcast commentary and print analysis. His blog on mobile devices can be found at gartenblog.net.

Prior to joining Interpret LLC, Gartenberg was Vice President and Research Director at Jupiter Research (now owned by Forrester Research) where he led coverage on emerging consumer technology platforms. Leveraging Jupiter Research’s expertise in these areas, he launched Jupiter’s PC & Console Games service, Wi-Fi Mobility service among others as well as Jupiter Research’s Analyst Weblogs. Before joining Jupiter Research, Gartenberg had the roles of Managing Director at Hudson Ventures, a Manhattan-based venture capital firm and Vice President and Research Area Director of Gartner Inc., leading the Personal and Distributed Technologies research area. At Gartner, his research focused on personal and mobile computing. He was also recognized at Gartner and throughout the technology industry as the leading watcher and analyst covering Microsoft Corp.

Michael holds both his B.A. and M.A. from Yeshiva University in New York.

About Interpret LLC

Interpret is a leading entertainment, media and technology measurement and market research firm that applies proprietary, cutting edge methodologies and extensive category knowledge to help companies plan, test, and measure their business strategies. As the first research firm to focus on evaluating and measuring the intersections of content, technology, advertising and consumer behavior, Interpret provides clients with premium quality insight across the media and entertainment landscape, including leaders in the home entertainment, video game, new media, mobile content, and theatrical industries. Interpret’s syndicated measurement products and custom market research services continue to address many of the challenges faced by marketers, programmers and technologists in the evolving digital age. Based in Los Angeles with offices worldwide, Interpret’s “on the ground” staff, strategic partnerships and strong vendor relationships in key territories give the company a global reach with services throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

What do you think of open source funding?

Mark Cuban offers his own version of a stimulus package he calls Open Source Funding. What do you think of this idea? Would you post a business plan for Mark to look at?

I will invest money in businesses presented here on this blog. No minimum, no maximum, but a very specific set of rules. Here they are:

1. It can be an existing business or a start up.
2. It can not be a business that generates any revenue from advertising. Why ? Because I want this to be a business where you sell something and get paid for it. Thats the only way to get and stay profitable in such a short period of time.
3. It MUST BE CASH FLOW BREAK EVEN within 60 days
4. It must be profitable within 90 days.
5. Funding will be on a monthly basis. If you dont make your numbers, the funding stops
6. You must demonstrate as part of your plan that you sell your product or service for more than what it costs you to produce, fully encumbered
7. Everyone must work. The organization is completely flat. There are no employees reporting to managers. There is the founder/owners and everyone else
8.  You must post your business plan here, or you can post it on slideshare.com , scribd.com or google docs, all completely public for anyone to see and/or download
9. I make no promises that if your business is profitable, that I will invest more money. Once you get the initial funding you are on your own
10. I will make no promises that I will be available to offer help. If I want to , I will. If not, I wont.
11. If you do get money, it goes into a bank that I specify, and I have the ability to watch the funds flow and the opportunity to require that I cosign any outflows.
12. In your business plan , make sure to specify how much equity I will receive or how I will get a return on my money.
13. No mult-level marketing programs (added 2/10/09 1pm)

Win 7 Starter should be a non-starter for vendors

Despite Microsoft’s claim that most consumers will only see two versions at Windows 7 at most, it seems that vendors aren’t playing along.

In a vote of confidence for Windows 7‘s suitability for use on netbook PCs, Hewlett-Packard Co. said it will likely offer at least three different editions of the upcoming operating system on future models of its Mini netbooks. That includes the Professional and Home Premium editions, which Microsoft Corp. last week said will be the two primary versions of Windows 7, and the low-end Starter edition, which will limit users to running three applications at a time.

This is a huge error, especially using Windows Starter in the US. Starter was designed as a low cost platform for emerging markets (where presumably no one wants to run more than three apps at a time). One big issue with Vista was different flavors of Windows, running on different hardware platforms, with different performance levels confused the market and often led to frustration (and a few lawsuits). It doesn’t appear that this is something MSFT will be able to control and they need to get ahead of this quickly. Aside from too many OS choices, there’s no way Starter is going to meet the needs of most users. I understand that Microsoft is trying to avoid the cannibalization of higher license priced license SKUs by devices like netbooks (which is what’s happening now with most netbbooks shipping with XP and not Vista) but this isn’t the proper approach to take. It’s time for MSFT to cut down the number of SKUs now and focus on delivering optimal experiences, even on low end hardware.

Does Amazon have the right to read books out loud?

One of the new features of the Kindle is the ability for it to use text to speech to read books out loud. The demo was impressive as a demo but given the flat, robotic speech I can’t imagine anyone actually ever using that feature. There’s a reason they hire actors with good voices to read audiobooks. What’s interesting is that the Author’s Guild is a little up in arms about this feature. From the Wall Street Journal

Some publishers and agents expressed concern over a new, experimental feature that reads text aloud with a computer-generated voice. “They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

Now, I know that if I buy a song, I don’t necessarily have the rights to use it as a ringtone (or do I?). I also know there’s been a lot of legal issues preventing places like iTunes from embedding lyrics to songs they distribute. But isn’t the ability for an end user to read or have the book read aloud something that’s an implied right? I’m not a lawyer (much to my parent’s chagrin) but it seems to me, this one’s a little silly. Perhaps the Author’s Guild didn’t quite understand what Amazon’s doing. Perhaps they’re concerned about a future where synthetic actors could replace audiobooks and they want to stake an early claim. Of course what makes this all the more amusing is Amazon owns Audible who’s probably the largest retailer of digital audiobooks. Let’s see where this one goes.

 

Update – The folks at Engadget ask a lawyer for an opinion. It appears there might be some merit in the claim. As I speculated, this might not be about the current state of the art but where things might be headed in a few years.

Will convergence trump best of breed devices for eBooks?

James Kendrick mentioned there was an update last night to the iPhone/iPod Touch version of eReader to version 2.0. Sure enough, there it was in the update apps section. Here’s a rundown of the new features from James.

• color themes (day and night time, I find this very useful reading for reading in the dark)
• Book cover art
• user defined book categories
• indicator to let you know what books are already on your device
• percentage read indicator in the bookshelf
• additional fonts
• margin options
• line spacing options
• larger tap targets for links
• auto-scroll  (I love this feature a lot)

There’s some pretty nice stuff in there, and I actually like the day/night themes depending on where and when I’m reading. The real question I’m pondering is the role of dedicated eBook readers like the Kindle relative to reading on devices such as the iPhone. No doubt, the Kindle is the better experience. The Kindle’s resolution is much closer to paper than the iPhone’s and a probably a good deal better than any screen you’re reading this on. On the other hand, devices have come a long ways since eReader used to be called Peanut Press and the device of choice to read was a Palm VX. eReader on the iPhone delivers a good deal of the Kindle experience. There’s a good selection of content (not great, but good and they’ve finally added Tom Clancy, of the last holdouts against eBooks). There’s the ability to download and purchase content directly, with no PC required. The screen’s not as high quality but there’s no annoying eInk page refresh and the small size of the device makes it much easier to hold and use one handed. In short, it’s not a perfect experience, but then neither is the Kindle.

I do believe there’s a market for dedicated devices. Cameras have not been displaced by music phones, media players have not been displaced by music phones and the Kindle will still serve a market of bibliophiles, especially those that travel a lot. The potential that apps like eReader have are to tap into the more casual market, allowing users to leverage the investment in screens they already have. That’s one reason why I think it’s important for Amazon to get the Kindle platform onto as many devices with screens as possible.

So what do you think? Is there a market for dedicated eBook readers or is this one area where convergence will trump best of breed functionality?

A camera carried is a camera that is used

Robert Scoble, who makes his living taking ubiquitous videos of people takes a look at three popular point and shoot video cameras and comes up with my choice as a favorite, the Flip Mino HD. Robert also makes an important point.

The Flip is the best because it is the best designed and smallest. It is — in talking with my friends — the most likely to end up in their pocket. A camera carried is a camera that is used and a camera that is used, even if it has slightly lower quality that some other camera, is one that’s better.

Robert’s point is true of every mobile device. The device you have with you is worth much more than the one you had to leave at home. There’s an upper limit to how many devices people will carry with them and there’s a huge divide between devices that are pocketable and ubiquitous and those that need to go in a bag with something else. It’s a critical distinction that I think is often lost on vendors.

Modu Lives

It’s been a long road to market for the folks at Modu but it looks like they’re making some progress with the news that they’re on track to ship the first phone later this year along with several “jackets” to add functionality. I spent some time on the phone yesterday with Dov Moran, the CEO and he has a pretty compelling stoy to tell, even with the delays that they’ve had to market. They’ve upped the specs on the phone along with a new UI since I last met with them nearly a year ago.

I still think the core concept is sound, it’s now a question of timing and pricing. If they can hit the market this spring with a first device and keep the price relatively low, there’s a good chance they can get the necessary traction to keep things moving and get to the point where they can introduce a v2 product.

Context remains the killer application for mobility so the ability to have a device that’s capable of morphing functionality based on where I am and what I’m doing is appealing, especially when the core functionality for telephony remains a constant. In fact, it’s exactly this type of modular design I’d love to see in higher function devices. I still prefer small, pocketable voice only devices on occasion. Other times i want the larger screen, keyboard and functionality of a smartphone. A device that can take on different attributes when needed would be fantastic and at the same time provide some interesting upgrade and aftermarket accessory options. This is still an interesting story to watch.