Superbowl 2000 Ad

9 years ago this weekend, surrounded by a massive winter storm, several thousand people made the trek to Fedex Field in Washington, DC to watch the Superbowl at a private party hosted by MicroStrategy

It also represented the unveiling of MicroStrategy's superbowl ad and the MicroStrategy pre-game show. Us, the Pets.com sock, lemurs... It came to be known as the dot-com super bowl. After searching for many year, I finally found that ad...A symbol to the "good-old days" of what could have been...of billions of dollars of "paper money" lost in a single day.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness" (Dickens)

People don't buy phones in bad economic times (duh)

Filed under "obvious" Techcrunch reported that (Gasp!) mobile phone sales are down. 

We have just surpassed 3 BILLION mobile subscribers, some countries have over 125% penetration (multiple phones per person) so yes there is a saturation issue. Add to that the replacement rate being affected by the economy (you don't go buy a new phone when you don't have a job) and the vocal statement by operators to reduce (ie make harder for you) the subsidized phones (marketing or customer retention expense for them, cheap way to get the latest gadget for you)..

Obama's speech

Amazing technology coverage of the inauguration between CNN and Facebook, Google Earth, Twitter etc.

Since I was most inspired by his speech, however, I wanted to share the word cloud of Obama's first inaugural speech and point you to the word clouds for Clinton, Bush, Reagan and Lincoln.

Japan mobile ads and Location Based Services

A great primer on the success of Mobile in Japan and opportunities in Location based ads from Cirius Technologies

Location-based Mobile Ad: A Lesson From Japan

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: lbs local)

Screenshots of Obama CNN livecast

Some screenshots I took from the Obama livecast with the Facebook integration. Unlike others, I had zero problems watching it from London on a home broadband connection.

History of the Internet in 10 min

Cute but super instructional 9 min video on the history of the internet...ARPAnet, TCP/IP and all that.


History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

15 seconds to get a social game on the blog

Awesome experience... 15 seconds flat for Heyzap to put a social game widget on this blog. Venturbeat had just covered them last week.

Apart from the cool idea of extending social games beyond social networks (and using ads to fund it) I was most impressed with the ease of use as a publisher. Sign in, define Blogger site, get code...automatically link to Blogger (Thank You!)and publish.

A nice rev share model would be welcome, but hey, in the meantime play some games and have some fun.

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Robin Williams on Obama

Absolutely hillarious... some love for GW Bush and some rara on B. H. Obama

Android rules...because of the apps

I have been meaning to write my thoughts on my 2 months with the G1 but today's post in Gizmodo helps to summarize my thoughts.

Android is an amazing platform in its first try (as compared to some of the hiccups with Windows Mobile in its first and second iteration) but it still has some issues (not least of which is the ability to only associate it with one Google account).

I do love the ability to customize my "desktop" and make the experience my own and I do love the openess of the platform.

There are, however, a few things I dislike ...

• Battery life: can't make it through 1/2 day with WiFi, email sync, MyLocation turned on. Miss the battery life of my BB.
• Contacts: I live by my contact database. I have 1700+ contacts. I have finally let go of Outlook and posted all of them to the Google cloud to enable sync with the G1. When I start the Contact application it takes 10 SECONDS for my contacts to load, then I have to open the keyboard, then it takes another 10 seconds, then I can finally search for a contact.
• There are a series of actions (lets say 5) that I do multiple times a day (call wife, sms wife, look up contact, turn off/on wifi, call boss). I don't want to click 3 times to do them.

The beauty of Android and its open platform is that each of my complaints below has been adressed by an independent developer and the application published to the Android Market.

• The battery life issue is still an issue but Locale lets me make rules such as (if not at office turn off wifi) and Power Manager help me take control.

• The contacts issue needs some serious fixing. I still think Windows Mobile is the best platform for a large contact database (Palm a close second) but in the meantime SpellDial allows me to quickly search for a contact without having to flip open the keyboard

• The repetitive action issue is addressed by AnyCut with which I create one click shortcuts for each of my actions and place them on my destop.

This is the power of an open platform.... to foster innovation by making it open source, and thus making the user happy rather than (as closed platforms like RIM and Apple) hoping/praying that their developers will get around to it someday.

Loving Android...because of the Apps!

My life in gadgets 1995-2004

As a way to get the year started right I figured I would do a recap of the last 14 years of my life ... in (memorable)mobile gadgets. Lets start with a some of the ones that come to mind between 1995 and 2004.

1996 Motorola Star Tac (TDMA) (courtesy of Mom)




1997 Palm Pilot (courtesy of 3COM/US Robotics)




1999 Neopoint (with WML 1.1 broswer!!) (before the company went under)



2000 Palm VIIx (with GPRS support... and ASK search preloaded)



2002 Compaq iPAQ with WiFi (Notice "Microsoft Mobile" branding)



2002 the first PocketPC with a mobile radio (called the 2020 by Orange in Europe)





2003 Motorola MPx200 (first Motorola Smartphone)



2004 MPx (never launched... the marketing campaign was going to be "Swings both ways").



2004 TMobile SDA Music the first "consumer-centric" Windows Mobile device (identical to the other HTC Smartphones launched...except for...wait for this... music control buttons! It was the first Smartphone I ever had that made it through a full day on a battery with heavy email use).



(need to go through my gadget box at home tonight to come up with some more...)