Tag Archives: startups

Weekly output: old phone plans, sports and VR, Vint Cerf, prepaid and MVNO wireless, Collision pitches, crowd wisdom, Apple earnings, “A Beautiful Planet,” VR visions, Charter and data caps

Posted on by
Reply

This week took me to New Orleans for the first time since 2012, courtesy of the Collision conference that ran from Monday through Thursday there. As I was signing up for a press pass to cover this production of the team behind the Web Summit conference I covered in Dublin last year, some of the organizers suggested I could moderate a panel or conduct an onstage interview; I followed up on that, they offered me a panel, and then a week before the show they asked if I could handle another.

The results: a great trip, a great conference, and a reason to go to New Orleans around this time in 2017.

4/25/2016: Oldies aren’t goodies when it comes to phone plans, USA Today

I used this column to answer a round of reader questions about an earlier column, and in the process subjected myself to dangerous levels of math.

Collision wristbands4/26/2016: Putting VR first, Collision

This conversation about using virtual reality to depict sports–featuring Derek Belch, founder of the VR-training firm STRIVR and PGA Tour senior content director Sloane Kelley–was the late addition to my schedule. I had about a second of complete panic as I began speaking and heard people saying “we can’t hear you,” but then I realized I probably hadn’t broken the head-mounted microphone and should instead try positioning it closer to my mouth. After that anxiety-inducing start, seeing this appreciate tweet from one of the organizers kind of made my morning.

4/26/2016: Internet pioneer Vint Cerf: We need to make room on the Net for all the machines, Yahoo Tech

The idea for that photo popped into my head about halfway through Cerf’s talk Saturday at Smithsonian magazine’s “The Future Is Here” festival, and then I had to write a post to go with it. I’m pretty sure this represented my first coverage of IPv6 since 2011.

4/26/2016: Best Prepaid and Alternative Phone Plans, The Wirecutter

The first update to this guide since November heralds an end to Republic Wireless’s ban on tethering and T-Mobile’s speed limits. It should have also noted Boost’s addition of family plans, but I left a stray phrase in that we had to fix two days later.

4/26/2016: Pitch judging, Collision

I helped judge one round of Collision’s startup competition. We heard from execs at a semiconductor supplier, a place-finding app, a video-production-management service, a chat app, an air-quality-monitoring service, and a restaurant-management app.

Collision schedule listing4/27/2016: Crowd wisdom and peer-based markets, Collision

This panel not only featured Declara CEO Ramona Pierson, Moovit CMO Alex Mackenzie Torres, and Getaround founder Jessica Scorpio, it also included a cute little dog, thanks to Scorpio bringing hers onstage. About a third of the way through, I realized I was in whatever zone panel moderators can get into–I was thinking a few questions ahead, I had no worries about having too little or too much time left, I was avoiding “uhs” and “ums,” and I had no anxiety at all. That’s a great feeling to have.

4/27/2016: iPhone Sales Fall, Ending Apple’s Record Growth, Voice of America

I did a quick interview from the Collision media lounge about Apple’s first “bad” quarterly earnings in 13 years. Speaking of that location: Collision’s press-room chow wasn’t quite as awesome as at Web Summit, but it was still vastly better than at almost every other conference I’ve attended.

4/28/2016: ‘A Beautiful Planet’: friendly space station, muddled message, Yahoo Tech

I attended a screening of this IMAX documentary at the National Air & Space Museum the Friday before, then wrote the review on the flight to New Orleans. Watching the movie’s depiction of life on the International Space Station represented a flashback to attending NASA Tweetups five years ago in more ways than one: I ran into NASA’s Stephanie Schierholz, the space agency’s social-media manager back then, at the screening.

4/29/2016: Virtual reality: Feeling our way into an uncertain future, Yahoo Tech

I enjoyed coming up with the lede for this, and playing around with Leap Motion’s hands-included VR was a treat too.

5/1/2016: Charter to drop data caps, but other companies, but other companies still use them, USA Today

We updated this post a few hours after it went up with a couple of lines about overage fees at AT&T and Comcast that should have been in my copy from the start, plus a tweaked headline.

Updated 5/2 to add last weekend’s USAT column, which I didn’t even realize I’d overlooked until I was invoicing for April’s work. And updated again that afternoon to add a link to the updated Wirecutter guide. It appears that I could use more sleep. 

Advertisement

How I went to an event at the White House and didn’t file anything

Posted on by
1

As you might have seen on Twitter, I was at the White House Tuesday for the Obama administration’s first Demo Day. (Yes, I should have added #humblebrag to some of those tweets.) This event was both a diversity-boosting exercise for the president and a chance for the 32 startups in the spotlight, many not founded by the usual crop of twenty-something white dudes, to get some wider exposure.

White House Demo Day Obama entranceMy Yahoo colleague Alyssa Bereznak was already set to write about the diversity angle–it’s a real problem for the industry, as you can see in the testimony from some of these female and minority founders in her story. I had RSVPed after her but figured I could file something profiling some of the more interesting startups.

But then after 35 minutes spent standing the East Room of the White House and watching live video of President Obama talk to various startups in an adjacent room, then hearing Obama’s speech (key line: “the next Steve Jobs might be named Stephanie or Esteban”) and singing “Happy Birthday” to the president (it being his 54th birthday), we were all ushered out past the startups and back to the press room. Oops.

I did manage to get back in, courtesy of Alyssa and I running into a press contact we knew, but by then some of these companies had packed up their exhibits. I wound up only talking to five of them, just three of which were on my own list of exhibitors to check out, before I was again ushered out. That was less reporting time than I expected–nothing compared to last summer’s Maker Faire at the White House— and did not yield enough material for a story.

Am I bothered by that? Not really. Some of the people I did meet will be worth talking to later on, I was only out $4 and change in Metro fare, and confusing friends by wearing a suit for work was its own reward.

Weekly output: community broadband, worst Windows, talking to startups, Google apps on Gogo WiFi

Posted on by
1

Another weekend in which I did not get as much down time as I’d hoped, courtesy of some additional work coming my way. So goes freelance life sometimes… although I remember the same thing happening, without any extra income, when I was a full-time employee.

1/20/2015: Obama’s Community-Broadband Plan: 4 Ways to Understand His State of the Union Pitch, Yahoo Tech

When we posted this story, we all thought municipal broadband would get at least as much of a mention in the State of the Union address as space exploration. Then that didn’t happen. Oops.

1/21/2015: The Worst Version of Windows Is…, Yahoo Tech

Sometimes, I struggle with columns. Not this time: I wrote the whole thing in basically one take, and I had fun doing it.

1/23/2015-1/24/2015: Media Match, Collaborate

I spent about 45 minutes Friday and Saturday hearing a parade of startup founders take three minutes to explain their idea, answer my questions and ask some of their own. As in prior years when I’ve participated in this part of the D.C.-area “entrepreneurship community” Fosterly’s conferences, I came away reminded of how impressive it can be to watch somebody excel at in-person sales, and how often that doesn’t happen.

USAT column on free Google apps on Gogo1/25/2015: Use Google apps over Gogo Wi-Fi for free, USA Today

I got the idea for this on a flight last October, but I held off on writing it up until I’d had enough conversations with enough people at Gogo to be reasonably confident that publicizing this loophole wouldn’t ruin it for everybody. The tip at the end of this avgeek-oriented column about using an Android phone’s GPS on a plane should be familiar to those of you who followed my microblogging experiment at Sulia. But since that startup’s shutdown last October wiped those posts off the Web, I’ve felt no guilt about recycling the ideas behind them.

Weekly output: startups and privacy, iPhoto passwords

Posted on by
Reply

I’m thankful for readers who look for my work, and for clients who pay well and on time. You?

11/25/2014: Is the Uber Problem Changing How Startups Treat Privacy? Not Much., Yahoo Tech

Halfway through the Demo conference two weeks ago, I worried that I wouldn’t have anything to write about. Then I remembered that the founders of most new startups actually say what they think, unlike their more seasoned, better-media-trained counterparts at older tech companies.

USAT iPhoto-passwords post11/30/2014: Warning: iPhoto won’t know if you change a password in OS X, USA Today

I feel a tiny bit dumb for writing this more than two years after getting religion about two-step verification. In my defense, I almost never use iPhoto’s shortcut to e-mail photos from that app, so it fell to my wife to run into and ask me about a password-management glitch in that soon-to-be-retired app that Apple probably won’t fix.

Weekly output: Nokia Lumia 520, Pierre Omidyar and news, Demo (x2), MyTechHelp, @MicrosoftHelps and user groups

Posted on by
1

In an alternate universe, the two posts I filed from the Demo conference in Santa Clara would have been replaced by one or more from the Online News Association’s annual conference in Atlanta. If only the two events had not been scheduled right on top of each other…

Nokia Lumia 520 review10/16/2013: Nokia Lumia 520 (AT&T), PCMag.com

I first checked out this phone at Mobile World Congress in February and thought the world could use more budget-priced smartphones. The $99.99 price does entail some compromises–like no front camera, and no flash on the back camera–but as a starter smartphone it seems fine.

10/17/2013: So Nice To See People With Money Regard Journalism As Not Doomed, Disruptive Competition Project

I wrote a quick reaction to the news that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar plans to invest $250 million in a full-spectrum news startup, which I see as something materially different from the splashy funding rounds that a few more specialized news sites have  racked up lately.

10/18/2013: Heads-Up Helmet, Rolling Camera Are an Eyeful, Discovery News

My first report from the Demo conference focused on the more interesting, sci-fi-esque gadgets and apps introduced there. The post has received about 1,400 Facebook likes so far–and I don’t know why, since it didn’t pick up any at my Facebook page and didn’t get a mention at Discovery’s.

10/18/2013: DEMO Debuts Plumb Privacy Frontiers, Disruptive Competition Project

Here, I looked at the privacy propositions of several apps and services launched at Demo, most of which will probably get labeled by some, fairly or not, as “creepy.” Look for an update to this post correcting a mistake I made: contrary to what People+’s demo suggested, this Google Glass app does not do facial recognition.

10/20/2013: Tip: Be cautious when calling ‘tech support’, USA Today

I got an e-mail from a longtime Post reader reporting a horrible tech-support experience at a company that had led him to believe he’d been talking to Apple. That sounded odd, but the story quickly checked out.

On Sulia, I posted several reports from Demo (for instance, Bounce Imaging’s Imperial interrogation droid camera- and sensor-stuffed ball, EmoVu’s emotion-detecting webcam system, HueTunes’ synesthetic software, and Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman’s onstage interview), reviewed my initial, glitchy experience with United’s inflight WiFi; correctly predicted that coverage of Facebook’s new privacy policy for teens would focus on its option of public posting instead of its increase in teens’ default privacy; and reported on my introduction to Windows 8.1 on my ThinkPad.

Weekly output: text-message backup, travel tech, startups and patents, Bluetooth mice, rechargeable batteries

Posted on by
1

This week ended better than it began, journalistically speaking.

5/28/2013: How do I back up text messages?, USA Today

Notice the long, parenthetical paragraph starting with “Update”? That’s what you have to write when you leave significant, relevant info out of a story. Here, it was my failure to note that iOS and Windows Phone include text-message backup options that, while they don’t let you view old SMSes away from your phone, do at least ensure you won’t lose them forever if your phone dies. I did not think to mention them because I’d elected to focus the piece on ways to get text messages off of a phone–but, alas, I never thought to revise the question to specify that use case.

Kojo Nnamdi Show travel tech5/28/2013: Travel Technology, The Kojo Nnamdi Show

I talked about the intersections of travel and technology–from inflight WiFi to apps that can help guide your journeys–with guest host Christina Bellantoni and iStrategy Labs chief marketing officer DJ Saul. This was excellent timing, as I’d spent most of the two prior weeks out of town. I do, however, regret missing a chance to rant yet again about the woeful state of the C/D concourse at Dulles.

5/31/2013: Ask A Startup About Patents. You Might Get An Interesting Answer., Disruptive Competition Project

I attended a pitch event for startups, Fortify Ventures’ Demo Day, and asked each of the five companies that presented there if they’d applied for any patents and what sort of exposure they thought they had to a patent-infringement lawsuit.

5/31/2013: Finicky Bluetooth mouse? Check your rechargeables, USA Today

Once again, a problem with my own computer yielded the material for a Q&A item, which in this case doubled as an opportunity to question my own and others’ enthusiasm for cable-free computing. The column throws in a tip about how it’s easier to recycle rechargeable batteries than you might think.

In addition to prototyping this weekend’s USAT column on Sulia, I criticized a dumb implementation of a smart calendaring feature in Gmail, voiced my exasperation at CVS’s addition to paper coupons, wondered about the weirdly limited free WiFi in the Smithsonian’s Kogod Courtyard, and (ahem) compared a couple of exercise-tracking apps in a way that missed a key detail about one of them.

Weekly output: “free WiFi” (x2), 1776, Facebook Graph Search, Facebook and Twitter apps

Posted on by
1

My former employer collided with my current work this week, courtesy of the Post’s front-page story Monday heralding the Federal Communications Commission’s proposal to open some broadband-friendly frequencies to unlicensed use. My former cubicle-mate Cecilia Kang’s piece phrased things much more expansively than that, especially before the jump, and then things got out of control as people spun the story as “free WiFi for everyone!”

(If you want to hate tech journalism, there’s your reason: Competing sites couldn’t spend 10 minutes reading the FCC filings to understand the story for themselves and instead rushed to post their own breathless interpretations of Kang’s piece. Worse yet, most of them haven’t bothered to correct the errant results of this game of telephone.)

2/4/2013: FCC Plan to Provide Free Wireless a Long “Complicated” Process, Voice of Russia American Edition

This AM station in D.C. (a friend works as a producer there) had me on Monday to talk about the Post’s story; I did what I could to explain that there is no actual FCC plan for free WiFi, just a framework that could, maybe, make it easier for some companies to offer no-charge wireless access in certain locations.

DisCo FCC no-free WiFi post2/5/2013: Free As In Unlicensed: Why The FCC Isn’t Giving Away Wireless Service To Anybody, Disruptive Competition Project

After spending much of Monday on the phone and in e-mail with various tech-policy types to make sure I hadn’t missed some fundamental shift in the FCC’s positions, I explained what the FCC actually is proposing and how it ties into a larger problem in telecom: the lack of competition in residential broadband.

2/8/2013: Older City ISO Hot Young Tech Startups, Disruptive Competition Project

On Wednesday, I attended an open-house event for a startup incubator, 1776, that’s scheduled to open its doors next month with backing from the District government. Under that clickbait headline (my fault!), I put this in the context of how other cities and regions have tried to make themselves into startup hubs but have neglected to follow California’s practice of making almost all noncompete clauses unenforceable. Ending an employer’s veto power over an employee’s next job makes it vastly easier for talent to chase interesting problems, and I’d like to see other states follow that example.

2/10/2013: Tip: Control Facebook exposure by friending folks you know, USA Today

I held off writing much about Facebook’s Graph Search until I sat down with Facebook’s product manager in the social network’s D.C. office to learn what this tool does and does not index–and how people’s selective disclosure can further skew its results. (Appropriately enough, this discussion about unsent signals happened on the one day I forgot to put on my wedding ring before leaving the house.) The column wraps up with a reminder to clean out old and unused Facebook and Twitter apps.

On Sulia, my week included a recap of my experience attending a screening at the Motion Picture Association of America’s offices, two gripes about dumb car-stereo design trends seen at the Washington Auto Show, a report about Facebook asking if I knew new friends offline, and a reader’s assessment of the Mohu and WallTenna TV antennas at a less reception-friendly location.

Questions I ask (or should ask) of startups

Posted on by
2

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?

Your vote on five review possibilities

Posted on by
10

When I started up this blog almost a year ago, one of my intended uses for it was collecting your input on the stories I should cover. But I’m sorry to say that I’ve neglected that possibility for far too long–even though it’s always dumb for a journalist to neglect the collective intelligence of his or her readers.

So here’s your overdue chance to play assignment editor: Read these summaries of PR pitches I’ve recently received and let me know which of the following products seem worth a review.

cassetr: Apps like Instagram, which makes photos taken with the iPhone’s 5-megapixel sensor look like the output of a Kodak Disc Camera, proved there’s a market for low-fi media. This upcoming iOS app does the same thing for music, adding realistic tape hiss to your 256 kbps iTunes Store downloads. In-app purchases will let you layer on other effects, including Dolby B, C or S noise reduction and the dreaded warble of a tape about to unspool.

Drive.DJ: This networked entertainment system ends in-car isolation by allowing drivers to pick music and video for passengers to enjoy on seat-mounted iPads. The vehicle’s built-in LTE receiver allows for enjoying streaming media from apps like Netflix and Pandora, posting Twitter and Facebook updates on the road and even placing Skype calls to other cars equipped with this system.

ATM Machine: If you’re tired of walking up to a cash machine and being annoyed at its low-resolution interface–or, worse yet, discovering that it’s out of money–this Android app may be change you can believe in. It combines a sophisticated geographic database and automated detection of the tell-tale beeps of an ATM keypad to check you in at each transaction and invite you to grade the experience–with results instantly posted online. (Its developers note that you can opt out of the auto-check-in feature by sending a letter via certified mail to their Cayman Islands offices.)

RTGtoGo: Smartphone battery life isn’t getting any better, external battery packs need frequent recharging too, and solar-cell modules require sunlight. This new power pack, developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, uses the same radioisotope thermoelectric generator technology that powers the Voyager space probes to provide constant electricity anywhere you go. Revolutionary carbon-fiber shielding makes the RTGtoGo compact and light enough to take in a carry-on (pending approval by the TSA, FAA, ICAO and IAEA).

GrocerWe: Finally, an end to the poignant “what do I get?” uncertainty that’s stopped many of us in the supermarket. This free, crowd-sourced grocery-list app–for iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7–lets Facebook friends and nearby GrocerWe users fill out your shopping list for you anytime you’re within 1/4 mile of a grocery. Its developers are also exploring monetization strategies that would let merchants push suggestions to users in their stores.

Continue reading →