Weekly output: Auto Hop ad skipping, video walls,

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This week ends with three pieces I’ve written sitting in three different editors’ queues. That will teach me to file close to on time. (Note to editors, readers, fellow writers and the deadline gods: just kidding!)

5/22/2012: Ad Hoc Reactions to ‘Auto Hop’ Ad Skipping, CEA Digital Dialogue

A day or two after Dish Network announced its Auto Hop automatic commercial-skipping feature, a thought popped into my head: Would fans of this clever use of computer-driven automation of a common human practice also approve of using software to send them a speeding ticket? With two other examples of technology making a generally accepted activity somehow ethically troublesome, I had this week’s CEA post.

Two days later, the debate over this ad-skipping option reached the inevitable Send In The Lawyers phase when Fox Broadcasting sued Dish and Dish sued Fox, ABC, CBS and NBC.

5/24/2012: Tile Your Wall With Video Screens, Discovery News

I usually don’t write about rigged demos, but the wall-sized video display I saw at the Cable Show in Boston raised enough interesting possibilities–both in terms of screen technology and how to use it–that I thought it worth a writeup. (Especially after I realized a parallel between this demo and giant telescopes.) I wasn’t the only one impressed; see, for example, this writeup by Zatz Not Funny’s Mari Silbey.

5/27/2012: The sad lifespan of a laptop battery, USA Today

A reader’s query about his aging Dell laptop gave me a chance to revisit a topic I covered two years ago in my old Help File column for the Post–but back then, I didn’t think to note how the battery-lifespan issue is so much worse on smartphones. The column closes with a tip about avoiding Lord of the Flies-esque unpleasantness when only one outlet is left open at an airport gate that you read here first.

A cord cutter visits the Cable Show

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I spent the first half of this week at a place I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome–the Cable Show, the annual convention put on by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. After my wife and I canceled our Dish Network TV service back in October of 2009 and realized we could live without pay TV, I’ve repeatedly suggested that other TV subscribers weigh that option.

ImageFortunately, no bouncer tossed me out of the convention center in Boston (disclosure: one reason I attended was the chance to stay with my brother and catch up with his family), and I learned a few things about the market I’ve been avoiding since 2009.

(Yes, even though one of my clients is cable giant Discovery Communications. The irony is duly noted.)

One was that there is an enormous amount of stuff to watch on TV if you’re willing to pay for it–as JetBlue reminded on my way to and from Boston. Another was that the cable industry has recognized that the cable box is not exactly everybody’s  favorite gadget and is working to streamline its interface and reduce its power consumption. (My wrap-up of that awaits an editor’s attention; my photos of the show are up.)

But I also got a reminder that in some fundamental ways, the cable industry thinks it’s doing fine–NCTA president Michael Powell said in his opening keynote that “this industry has never been content to rest on aging business models”–and doesn’t need a fundamental change of course.

I don’t recall hearing the words “à la carte” spoken at any point, nor did I run into any serious discussions about the lesser step of offering subscribers a wider choice of channel bundles. “AllVid”–a nebulous proposal by the Federal Communications Commission for a unified standard for subscription-TV reception that might open the market for tuning and reception hardware–only came up when I asked an FCC staffer about it after a panel on regulatory issues had failed to mention the topic.

And you can continue to forget about paying for real-time online access to shows without the conventional cable subscription required by such Web-viewing options as HBO Go. The industry sees that and other cable-subscription-first “TV Everywhere” offerings as customer-retention moves, not ways to draw in new viewers.

And as for cord-cutting–a topic that drew me to Boston a year ago, when I led a panel about the topic at Free Press’s media-reform conference–the cable industry doesn’t seem to think it’s a serious issue. Chief executives and lower-ranking staffers all repeated that it’s not losing any viewers it would want to keep. For example, during Tuesday’s opening session, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said a predicted wave of cord cutting “didn’t happen” except for “economically challenged customers… many of who didn’t even have boadband at home.”

I thought about standing up, waving my hand and shouting “dude, I’m right here!” But I did not.

I might have also said then that my brother and his wife cut the cord last summer (while retaining a Comcast Internet connection). After day one of the show, I went home to my brother’s house and watched a few episodes of NBC’s Community on his paid-for Hulu Plus subscription. After day two, we caught an episode of HBO’s Game Of Thrones that he obtained… somehow.

T+366 days

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One year ago today, I was standing on a scruffy lawn in Florida, bleary-eyed from having slept an hour in the last 20–and feeling none of the fatigue accumulated from that sleep debt and compounded over an afternoon, evening and night of travel.

I don’t think there has been a day since May 16, 2011 when I haven’t thought about the mind-expanding experience of seeing a space shuttle launch for the first time.

First the waiting–welling up in the predawn hours from a kid’s Christmas Eve anticipation to the electricity in the stands at a baseball game before a walk-off home run for your team. The “oh my God, we’re really going to do this” moment at about T-15 seconds. Then the visceral jolt of seeing Endeavour’s rockets split the sky open with a sustained, brilliant flash of light, throwing that improbable machine into the clouds–and hearing and feeling the crackling avalanche of sound rush right up and over us.

The birth of our daughter was about as exciting–also experienced on near-zero sleep!–but I can’t think of much else that compares. Except for seeing the final shuttle launch with a press pass in July. (If you can get away with doing a once-in-a-lifetime thing twice without taking somebody else’s spot, do it; after taking the canonical launch photo on my first try, I could soak everything in the second time.)

Witnessing this controlled explosion didn’t last long, but I think if you ask any of the NASA Tweetup attendees who returned to the Kennedy Space Center for the launch after the scrub two weeks earlier, they’d all say it was one of the greatest moments of their lives. And that it taught something about endeavoring through adversity–or, at least, about the importance of avoiding short circuits in a Load Controller Assembly box.

I’ve retold this story dozens of times to friends and strangers, and I’m still trying to get the language right. Maybe I’m overthinking it. When I saw the Daily Show’s John Oliver do his comedy routine in March, he needed far fewer words than this post to convey his reaction to seeing the launch of Atlantis from the same KSC lawn: “Holy fucking shit!”

Questions I ask (or should ask) of startups

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I spent two hours and change on Saturday taking the testimony of D.C.-area tech startups in three-minute increments. The experience–part of an all-day networking event put on by the D.C.-area tech-community site Foster.ly–was a lot more interesting than that sentence makes it sound.

(The Washington City Paper’s Lydia DePillis, another Foster.ly media attendee, wrote about eight of the more promising startups she talked to.)

Then on Tuesday, I saw another batch of local startups offer their pitches at a Northern Virginia Technology Council event. I’ve done the same thing at multiple gatherings around D.C. and in the Bay Area. As a small businessman myself, I find the whole routine getting more interesting–despite my general allergy to business-plan PowerPoints.

One customary formula for coverage of a startup starts with who invested in it and for how much. I find that boring. There’s so much money sloshing around–sometimes dumped on particular startups in absurd allocations–that I don’t think this provides enough insight on the virtues of a new tech company. Instead, here are the questions I’d rather ask:

What’s the problem you’re trying to solve? What’s the inefficiency, informational asymmetry  or overall inelegance you want to smooth out?

Most people have this answer memorized, but you have to start with it anyway. (In case anybody’s curious, the problem I’m trying to solve with my own work is the surplus of hasty tech journalism reported without benefit of historical insight or simple skepticism and then written with an excessive attention to specifications, momentum or buzz.)

Who else has that goal? Who else–in particular, which large, incumbent firms–might decide they need to join in the fun?

You have to be able to find the competitor and the possible competitor.

How do you make money?

So rude to ask, I know. Bonus points if a company has multiple revenue possibilities in mind. But if you have enough investors lined up to pave your runway a few years into the future, I will cut some slack on this. (A figure-it-out-later strategy seems to have worked fine for Instagram.)

What things beyond your control need to happen before you can make money? Who has a finger on a kill switch for your company?

If your idea depends on massive network effects, you’ve got a steep hill to ascend. I hope your business proposition also works with a small amount of customers… and that it isn’t dependent on a blessing by the App Store, Hollywood, giant telecom firms or corporate IT departments.

Then there’s the question I often forget about, even after being reminded of its importance at a SXSW panel discussion this spring:

If you go bust, what happens to your users’ data?

What questions would you ask?

Weekly output: CTIA (x2), Gmail alternatives, dormant addresses

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It’s weird to see so few stories on the list this week–and to see them confined to three days. That’s what a few days out of town can do.

5/11/2012: Tales From The No-iPhone Zone, Discovery News

My travel involved the CTIA Wireless 2012 trade show in New Orleans; the convention turned out to be an Android-heavy gathering, thanks to the absence of Apple and the near-absence of Research In Motion and Microsoft. This slideshow highlights the more interesting things I saw there–from waterproofing phone innards to an Android LTE phone that may not have terrible battery life.

(Yes, because the slideshow is done in Flash, you couldn’t read it on many of the devices I tried at CTIA. My editors know my thoughts about Adobe’s format.)

5/11/2012: The Shape Of Wireless To Come, CEA Digital Dialogue

I also wrote about CTIA for CEA. (Write about one trade association’s conference for another trade association? Sure, why not?) Here, I draw out four themes from the show and get into more technical details than Discovery’s slideshow format allowed.

5/13/2012: It’s not crazy to pay for an email account, USA Today

A while back, a friend said he wanted to get out of Yahoo Mail but had too many issues with Google’s record on privacy to want to sign up for Gmail. This allowed me to revisit the what-Webmail-service-is-best question and suggest a couple of non-free alternatives to Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail. I also advise against leaving an old address dormant, as opposed to closed or auto-forwaring to an account you check.

Attribution is accuracy

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One of the less exciting but even less avoidable parts of my work as a journalist and a citizen of the Web is proper attribution. You can’t count on a tweet, a Facebook update or a blog post accurately identifying whoever first posted the fact, witticism, image or video in question; you have to keep clicking “via” and “source” links until you reach the headwaters of the story and can credit the author by name.

This is both good manners and part of telling the truth. Passing off somebody else’s work as your own is wrong, and passing off somebody else’s work as a third party’s isn’t much better–especially if that third party did a quick copy-and-paste job.

But everybody’s busy, especially in most newsrooms, and it’s easy to link to whoever brought something to your attention and leave it at that. I also often see sites reserve their attribution for a short, vague link that may not even be in the body of a story.

I had a reminder of this risk earlier this week. My review of the car2go service for Discovery featured a number I hadn’t seen before: the $578,000 this car-sharing service paid the District of Columbia to obtain free on-street parking for its Smart Fortwo vehicles.

(This did not require any great reporting. I only thought to inquire about that as I was finishing the post; after an amazingly efficient PR interaction, a program manager with D.C.’s Department of Transportation e-mailed the figure.)

John Hendel, who writes the TBDOnFoot blog for (what’s left of) the local-news site TBD, saw that and added more details about car2go’s deal with DDOT in a post that linked to mine. And then the Washington Post’s Mike DeBonis wrote a summary of the situation that credited Hendel for digging up the $578k number. Oops.

Things ended fine–I e-mailed DeBonis about it, he updated the post more prominently than I would have, we’re all good. But now I’m worrying if I myself have forgotten to credit somebody for a good quote or interesting factoid in any recent posts. If that somebody is you, please let me know.