Cool cell phone apps coming soon

October 25, 2005 By

I’m sitting with Chris Dury, VP of marketing of ScanR. Really cool cell phone service. You take a picture of a whiteboard and it processes and and uploads and forwards the image. But a lot better cleaned up than if you were only moderately skilled with Photoshop. Same for business cards. The service runs on Windows Server 2003, they run on any phone, and have specialized apps for Windows Mobile phones. Coming soon, they are planning their coming out party for the CES show in Las Vegas in January.

They are thinking of other kinds of things you can do with cell phone cameras, too and talk about some of their ideas on their blog.

Filed Under: entrepreneurs, Microsoft Office, Photo sharing, sms, Web

Zvents: interesting events and calendar site

October 25, 2005 By

I’m sitting here with the Zvents team. In a house on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley. I love the smell of startups!

They have an interesting site that lets you find things to do. Right now it only works for the San Francisco Bay Area. They also have an interesting Web-based calendar where you can even keep track of your family and friends.

There’s so much to say. Run a lot by tags. Good search engine. Found things like air shows, wine crushing. More later, I’m late for my next meeting. Can they solve that? Heheh.

Filed Under: Blog Tips, entrepreneurs, Marc Canter, Web

Visit to Monster Cable

October 24, 2005 By

Every once in a while I get an invite to talk to a company I wouldn’t otherwise have visited. Everytime I do this I learn a ton. Today was no exception. The company I visited today? Monster Cable.

See, they have a problem.

If you search Google or MSN for “Home Theater” you don’t find any manufacturers. Here’s that query on MSN. On Google. On Yahoo.

What do you see instead? Magazines, forums and blogs. They are realizing they better learn about the blogging world.

Even worse. Go to Technorati. Search on “Monster Cable.” There are more than 2,000 posts. You should have seen their eyes when they realized the world was talking about them and their products and they weren’t even watching. They are now. :-)

Does this matter? They have 1,000 employees working away in Brisbane, CA, near Silicon Valley. What would happen if their sales went up or down by 10%?

And they do have a big opportunity staring them in the face: HDTV. Everyone who buys a new HDTV is going to need new cables.

Now, who are the most authoritative people about the home theater market? Well, let’s talk about Chris Greene. He’s an associate product category manager there. But he has owned his own laser disk store, and worked at Silicon Valley’s top home theater store (Century Stereo). He knows more about the home theater market than anyone else I know.

I’d love to read a blog by him, or other Monster employees. These guys live and breathe home theaters. They know all the big players in the industry. The latest trends (Chris was telling me about new remote controls coming soon that’ll let you control not just your AV system, but your entire house).

And they certainly know about cables and other audio/video accessories.

Share that expertise with us, and we’ll link and link often. Imagine what a link on Engadget is worth? It’s those links that’ll get them on the search result pages for “home theater.” And what’s that worth? Well, look at all the ads on that page and you’ll get your answer.

Filed Under: Blog Tips, entrepreneurs, NASDAQ, Second Life

Kevin Burton trades early access to beta for server cash

October 22, 2005 By

Kevin Burton is one of those entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley that isn’t yet rich. He’s starting a new company and needs a little bit of cash for more servers. So, he came up with a new idea: give early access to his beta to people who donate $20 to buy some servers. Hey, Kevin, would you go with Microsoft servers if I got you a bigger donation? He picked up a few bucks last night.

Filed Under: entrepreneurs, IBM

Fun evening last night, geek dinner coming Monday night

October 22, 2005 By

I think it’s funny all the anti-Web 2.0 stuff that’s been happening around blogs lately. Meanwhile hundreds of people show up to TechCrunch’s BBQ to talk about the future of the Web. I showed up at about 11 p.m. and it was still rocking and rolling and demos were going on. Yeah, there’s a lot of hype. But, I keep seeing stuff I want to use, too. So, is there hype? Yes. But there’s a TON of new ideas coming out of the valley lately.

One other thing? This crowd isn’t using very much Microsoft stuff. More Microsofties would do well to hang out, and figure out, what this group of entrepreneurs needs. I saw some ideas that could turn into very big businesses, if executed well (stuff that hasn’t yet been shown in public).

Anyway, Dave Winer is throwing me a geek dinner on Monday night. Details to come, but it’ll be in Berkeley. You can RSVP here. Of course you’re invited. You don’t even need to be a geek, but it certainly helps.

Filed Under: Blog Tips, entrepreneurs, Geeks, Web

Don Dodge gets an editorial into News.com

October 20, 2005 By

Coworker Don Dodge got an editorial into News.com. That’s cool. It’s titled: Napster’s learning curve and is a takeoff of his earlier blog entries. His blog is most interesting, since he’s been an executive at several tech companies.

Filed Under: Blog Tips, entrepreneurs, IBM
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