Now that AT&T has joined the Android revolution, the first question new Android users will ask is what Android apps should I download? Luckily we've created a simple guide to get you started:

First we'll start with the operating system version of the Motorola Backflip at launch, which is version 1.5 the latest and greatest to date is 2.1 (with majority of users on 1.6). This may affect your ability to download some apps as they are compatible with higher versions of the OS. Why is the OS version so out of date? Motoblur Motorola tricked out the software for social networking ease however they have not released Motoblur on the latest and greatest Android OS. Don't fret an update is coming soon.

Now that we're over the OS hump, we'll recommend some of the best Android apps for your Motorola Backflip many for free!

ASTRO File Manager

Browse and Search files on your SD Card and phone with Astro File Manager.

Advanced Task Killer

Close individual or all apps and background services with Advanced Task Killer.

Meridian Player

Meridian Player for Music & Videos.

Dolphin Browser

Dolphin Browser allows you to browse the web using Tabs and create shortcuts using Gestures.

Handcent SMS

Handcent SMS offers text messaging like on iPhone, get T9 text capabilities and text signatures.

Shazam

Shazam... simply awesome! Get any song by simply letting your phone listen to it!

i Music Tao

i Music & i Music Tao allows you to download free MP3s.

Pandora Radio

Stream music for free with Pandora Internet Radio.

Gmote

Turn your AT&T Backflip into a media remote with Gmote and even control your computer via phone!

ShopSavvy

Scan bar codes of products in stores to find best pricing nearby or online with ShopSavvy.

Google Shopper for Android

Photo scan products to get pricing and details with Google's Shopper

Aloqa Always Be A Local

Aloqa location-based app finds places nearby you versus you searching for it.

Abduction!

Abduction! Is an additive game using your phone's accelerometer.

Robo Defense

Robo Defense is a classic tower defense game for Android phones.

Mystique. Chapter 2: The Child

Check out parts 1, 2, and 3 of the Mystique 3D horror puzzle game series.

Wixel

Like words games? Try Wuzzle for hours of fun!

Jewellust

Kill time with addictive Jewellust game

Solitaire

You can't forget a classic time-killer like Solitaire.

What the Doodle!?

Guess what others are drawing while they guess your drawing all online with What The Doodle!?

BlackJack Pro

Satisfy your Vegas crave with Blackjack Pro!

If you download all these apps you might run out of space on your Backflip! Do check these apps out and tell us what you think in the comments.

Editor's note: This a guest post written by Joff Redfern. Redfern is the co-founder of FlattenMe.com, a site for creating personalized storybooks. He was formerly a vice president of product at Yahoo, where he managed Yahoo Buzz and Toolbar.

Amazon Kindle: The Road Ahead

I'm a recent Kindle fan boy. I like the instant access to earth-friendly books, the paper-like display and the way it fits in my hand like a paperback. I've also deeply admired the crispness of the Kindle visionany book, any language, in minutes. But with Apple's iPad announcement the playing field on which the Kindle competes shifts and the disruptive technology itself gets disrupted.

If I were running the Kindle I would answer this question today: Are we innovating the publishing or the entertainment industry? Is the Kindle just for my reading entertainment or is it for watching, listening, gaming, browsing, sharing photos, and communicating with friends & family too? Ultimately the answer is shaped by consumer preference, competitors and time measured in years.

As a product guy this is a really intriguing question to try to unravelwhich path should Amazon choose? Over time this is what may push the Kindle into being more than just a reader . . .

For the same price, more is better

Will consumers prefer a multi-purpose entertainment tablet over a single-purpose reading device as their prices converge? This is a religious question; sides will be drawn. I look to the evolution of my own personal technology habits for the answer.

When I wanted to manage my contacts I started with a paper-based Address Book, upgraded to a Digital Rolodex, upgraded to a Palm V, upgraded to a Blackberry, then upgraded to an iPhone. Fundamentally I was trying to solve how I manage and communicate with my contacts. With each upgrade I got more functionality yet the price point for each device was not radically different.

If consumers can eventually get an entertainment tablet that also has the core features of a great reader (screen, content catalog, ease of purchasing) at under $200 they'll want more.

Prices drop. Over time, price won't be a factor in the purchase decision.

Today, Kindle enjoys a price advantage over the iPad. It is nearly half the price, starting at $260 versus $500 for the iPad, although the cheapest Kindle DX with an equivalent 9.7 inch screen is $489. That is pretty close already. What happens when the price of iPad-like devices trend down to a point of consumer indifference?

Moore's Law and business model innovation will drive the iPad-like devices to sub-$200 pricing. Unrealistic? The retail price of the iPhone 8GB dropped ~83% in 3 years from $599 to $99.

Also keep in mind that entertainment tablets are using different math from the Kindle. The device pricing will be subsidized by multiple revenue streamsdownloads of books, music, movies, games, apps, advertising, and more. Today I can get a cell phone device for free, will my iPad be free some day?

Competitors are playing a platform war. Is Kindle?

Apple, Google and Microsoft have massive investments in their respective mobile platforms. In particular, Apple is king of the mobile mountain. As Jobs declared today, Apple is now the largest mobile device company in the world.

This Apple sizzle has drawn 100,000+ developers and publishers to its iPhone (and now iPad) ecosystem. These apps are already available to entertain us in all sorts of ways on the iPad beyond what Apple exec Scott Forstall showed today.

Amazon knows this. Last week they announced a developer API is coming. So the question remains how robust is the API and will the developer community bite, or is it game over?

What would you do if you ran the Kindle?

What would a world be like without the idea of heaven? How would people behave? What would they live for?

Of course, it is not as if the world that we live in, where the notion of an afterlife or some form of continuing existence is prevalent, is all that great. No, there are lots of wars and disagreements in contemporary life. But perhaps we are able to escape a sense of desperation in the belief that modern medicine, prudent behavior, and the possibility of an afterlife will allow us to continue our existence for a while at least, and perhaps permanently.

The ancient, pre-literate Greeks of Homer's day could not so easily apply the balm of eternal life to their troubled psyches. They had no notion of a heaven of the type that Christians believe in, no sense of reincarnation such as the Hindus expect, no Muslim vision of paradise, no anticipation of a reunion with relatives and friends who had predeceased them. Instead, death led to a trip to Hades, the underworld, where existence was a pale and not very attractive shadow of earthly life, not something to be eagerly awaited. So if we want to know how men live when the notion of heaven doesn't exist, we might well look to these people.

Remember too, that the life of the pre-literate Greeks (the Greek alphabet is thought to have come into existence somewhere around 800 B.C.) was painfully short. Even at the turn of the last century, around 1900, the average American lived only about 50 years. The brevity of life was certainly known to the ancient Greeks.

Greek literature and philosophy point to two driving concepts that motivated men. (And I speak of men, because women were extraordinarily disadvantaged in that period, seen as having almost no function or status other than for sex, companionship, rearing children, and domestic handicrafts). Honor and glory were what men sought. Honor tended to come in the form of goods, precious metal, slaves, concubines, and the like; in other words, mostly material things or things that could be counted or displayed or used. Sort of like today, perhaps you are saying to yourself. In our world, honor is conferred by status and very similar material thingsthe size of your house, the amount of money in your bank account, a trophy spouse, the car or cars you drive, a gorgeous vacation home, etc.

Glory (the Greek word kleos) is another matter. What might glory have consisted of in a world without heaven? It took the form of a reputation or fame that continued beyond death. And, since there was no written word, you and your accomplishments had to be sufficiently great to generate discussion, song, and story once you were gone. This was usually achieved by being a great hero or warrior. In war, then, one could hope to grasp both of these things: the honor that came with sacking cities and accumulating wealth, slaves, and sexual partners; and the glory of having the fearlessness, strength, and tenacity to carry out that accumulation via battle; sufficiently so that people would (sometimes literally) sing your praises after you were dead.

As I mentioned, today's world doesn't strike me as much different from yesterday's on the point of achieving honor, although we are a little more discreet about our sexual conquests and have largely risen above keeping slaves. On the subject of glory, however, we seem to do everything we can to avoid death, which in the ancient Greek world was the only path to glory; a path that required both risking one's own death on the battle field and inflicting it on others in the same place. So, whether you believe in heaven or not, it would seem that the idea of heaven has had some civilizing effect. There are, after all, more ways of getting to heaven in our cosmology than killing people, despite what some terrorist/martyrs might tell us.

To me, even apart from the question of a civilizing effect of a particular religious concept, is the human need to conquer death as revealed in the heritage that the pre-literate Greeks have bequeathed us and, of course, in our own religious behavior. Both the ancient Greeks and most of us seem to hope that when we breathe our last, we are not finished forever. It is not a new idea, even if our solutions to the dilemma of mortality are (in part) different from those of our ancestors.

Unless, of course, you are such a brave soul that you have dispensed with the idea that you will live on in any form much beyond the time of your earthly demise: not in words or writings, not in great buildings that bear your name, not in photos or videos, not in businesses that survive you, not in the students you have taught, not in your artistic creations or inventions, not in making the world a better place for those that succeed you; not in the biological output of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who continue your genetic line.

Clearly, it is pretty hard to give up the idea of glory, some sort of posteritythe hope for an afterlifeisn't it?

(Footnote: this essay was prompted by rereading The Iliad and The Odyssey for the first time in many years, and by listening to The Iliad of Homer by Professor Elizabeth Vandiver of the University of Maryland. This course and many others are offered by The Teaching Company. Professor Vandiver is a wonderful lecturer and I have relied heavily on her discussion of honor and glory in the pre-literate Greek world in this essay. I can strongly recommend courses sold by The Teaching Company. I should say, however, that I am in no way affiliated with that organization or benefit from any purchases from them that you might make; I'm simply a satisfied customer).

Are you the sum of your thoughts? It's a hard question to answer, right? I'm trying to sort this out and would like your help.

The dissonance between the physical and ethereal nature of disembodied communication like the internet is a minefield for human interaction. Primarily because we rely heavily on physical cues and environmental variables to base our levels of connection with a person. We rely on their actions, not just words.

My assertion is that social networks exacerbate this inability to fully understand the people we are linked with in these networks due to experiencing their random thoughts.

Sure it is interesting to read what someone is doing throughout their day, but the only value is what the reader places on that thought to make it a reality in their own mind. Maybe that is the nature of connection?

What I am really trying to understand is that if a person can create real bonds simply through sharing their thoughts in social media?

I've personally been at what turned into social media for over 7 years. I've become many things to many people based on the types of content that I was producing. Much of that content was dependent on what I was interested in or experiencing at that time. Like this piece.

The sum of interactions in social media are related to those fleeting thoughts. When shared repeatedly with networks of people a notion of who that individual is are created. This give us the ability to create baselines for who we think a person is. A baseline for example being, they're nice or they are a jerk.

Again, we are only dealing with thoughts to create these notions. They are assumptions as to the true nature of a person that most have yet to meet. I would posit that what happens in social media and across social networks is the connecting of thoughts. If you like someone, you like their thoughts. If you dislike someone, you dislike their thoughts. Any judgments are based on these and most likely very little on physical actions. So, if you met them in the real world you would need to attempt to ascertain all over again who that individual in front of you is.

Maybe we're connecting thoughts first and then people with social media?

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• Is Social Media Worth Your Time? (blogs.harvardbusiness.org)
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• My twitter Ethics (socialmediatoday.com)
• When authenticity isn't a choice (smartblogs.com)

Social Media: Connecting Thoughts Not People is a post from: TechStartups.com

It has taken me four days to finally coalesce my thoughts, emotions and the culinary happening that was the Audience Conference. Not to mention, time needed to forget about the hosts two-tone wing tips. Those shoes had enough pizazz for ten people . . . or one Loren Feldman.

I have to be honest, I didn't know what to expect with this conference. Feldman's persona is larger than life and often, from my perspective, sardonic to a fault. The Audience Conference, however, proved to me that the great ones are often misunderstood.

For anyone that I tried to explain this to in the past four days and failed miserably at, this is the most accurate and cohesive recollection that I can put together.

Like a mad scientist, Loren, with the help of his wife, Anton Mannering and a crew of others put together the most exciting event that I have attended in the last three years. It was closer to a Gnomedex than a podcamp and closer to performance art than theater.

To put together an event like this you need to be a strong character, like a front man in a band. You have to be ready to lead and put your stamp on the thing. When the first speakers hit the stage, after Loren reiterated the no laptop, no tweeting and no phone rule, it was evident that this was Loren's event his vision of doing it right. Speakers themselves had no slides or electronic accouterments to distract them (or keep on track) they were left to their own mental and physical faculties to sink or swim alone on stage. Most of them swam.

Being part of the audience and listening to speakers talk about audience created this weird duality between their experiences and the one in which we were participating. Thus, began the experiment the performance art. Orchestrated by Feldman and the cadre speakers, they one after another delivered a similar experience the audience present in the Hudson Theater.

I enjoyed what the speakers had to say and I know many of them personally. But there was one that stole the show for me, Jason Calacanis. Someone like Loren that has a strong online reputation which often precedes him in public. Jason came out, sat on the edge of the stage and delivered an open and honest account of how he gained his audience. Both those that admire his work and the haters. He talked candidly about building businesses and what he feels it takes to be an entrepreneur.

On haters you have failed them in some way
On entrepreneurs you have to have perseverance

These quotes might be empty out of context but in the one that Calacanis created by engaging the audience in the way he did it was like Joplin hitting the high notes. She got them, but they were warbly and honest. Whether you like them or not is a matter of taste and you can't knock the perseverance to perform them to an audience.

Once the event wrapped, the master of ceremonies was on the floor next to me. I took this as an opportunity to flub an otherwise awesome event by telling Loren that the conference had changed my opinion of him. It had, but that wasn't the most eloquent way to the thank the artist that had just played us, the audience, like puppets.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Audience Conference New York 2009 #audienceconf is a post from: TechStartups.com

The adage, You get what you pay for, is true in almost every situation that would apply it to except the current state of open software. It is better than it has ever been and it is ready to help your business do the same.

Who is to thank for this? You are. That is if you are sharing your ideas online in the form of comments, blog posts or making media. Really. It is your ideas for combined with those of designers and developers that are pushing open source software development in new directions that better meet your business needs. By taking part in the conversation you are participating in the remix culture.

For years the remix culture was focused on art and music. It was based on the idea that prior art could be made better with with an individual's own spin applied to it. Software is not really any different. I would argue that the remix culture's largest impact, currently, is on software development and its ability to perpetuate itself . From this comes open source software that drives traditional software makers like Microsoft to make their products better.

So the next time you are listening to The Gray Album just think about how your endorsement for this art form is having an impact on your business in ways that help your bottom line.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Post from: TechStartups.com

In case you haven't noticed or cared, traditional agencies, the PR and Marketing types, have been contracting for the last few years. This year has been especially difficult for them with the rise of Social Media agencies. These upstarts are winning business and receiving opportunities that aren't even being pitched to their larger counterparts. This can be fixed . . . but there isn't much time.

What is a Social Media agency?

For those unaware of what a Social Media agency is it is an agency stocked with hardscrabble internet veterans and young talent steeped in the traditions of the tubes. I kid the youngsters, but they are, at this point truly digital natives. They grew up on the internet, were texting years before smart phone popularity and have been enculturated digital simply by being born. Often these agencies are small and their leadership, the aforementioned veterans, participated in the bubble of 2000 and have found a new source of revenue social media.

It didn't have to be this way

Traditional agencies should have seen this coming. This was a trend that they started over the last few years as their clients wanted to experiment with the precursors to social media, blogging and podcasting. During this time they would often offer small budgets to independent producers or find an overworked employee inhouse that knew something about the technologies. The deliverables were forced and atrocious (think astroturfing), poor strategy (if any) for syndication/consumption and zero metrics to show a client return on investment.

What was really happening was the large agencies were incubating social media agencies in the very earliest of stages. Even the social media agencies didn't know what they were yet. What they did know was that what they were producing wasn't working for the end client. And if this new stream of money was to continue coming in they would have to educate their handlers at the traditional agencies and develop their own tools to show ROI.

While budgets for blogging and podcasting began to dwindle, traditional agencies looked at them as passing trends. What they were missing is that the people they had been funding were now off creating tools like FiltrBox, Radian6 and putting their business strategies in place to harness the power of social media. They were going to fill the gap.

Not only have the new companies and agencies filled the gap, they are now taking away opportunities from traditional agencies. All the while, traditional agencies continue to lose money and talent. Much of that talent loss is due to layoffs. Agencies haven't figured out how to begin winning RFP's back and are letting the very people they need the most go. And when they go, they're shuffling off to boutiques and social media agencies to restart their careers with a fresh memory of the bureaucracy that didn't recognize their talent.

Saving themselves

Agencies have to stop thinking that they need more business development. They need solutions.

No amount of biz dev is going to save you when you have nothing to sell. It might work one time. But the client will realize it when they ask what they measurements for ROI are. No more biz dev or placement talk.

What kind of solutions do agencies need? The kind that evolve out of a strategy for engagement. The kind that evolve from a desire to meet the new requirements to participate in social media like listening. They need tools that show competency in measuring the strategy and tactics of a digital campaign.

The key to their continued existence is to prove they are needed. By creating solutions inhouse like monitoring software and metrics analysis hey will be able to monitor new trends and hopefully find themselves riding high for the next wave of competitors.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Post from: TechStartups.com

Neale S. Godfrey, author of the book Money Doesn't Grow On Trees, writes: "Kids don't get it if you don't talk about." Mr. Godfrey is talking to people like me, and if I don't start listening, I'm going to have a big problem on my hands. My four year old daughter is a born shopper. And, as the Co-Founder of a company fighting everyday to bring sensible saving back into the public consciousness after decades of absence, I often worry that I enable her in the very habits I'm encouraging SmartyPig customers to break.

Like most couples these days, my wife, Sara, and I have been engaging in serious discussions regarding money. How we spend money. How we save money. How we use credit. We are pretty normal in that these conversations, while productive, aren't all that much fun. That said, we force ourselves to sit down and talk about money and we are pretty diligent about maintaining healthy attitudes about spending and saving. But when it comes to how we use money with regard to our daughter, all common sense flies out the window.

Our daughter has a piggy bank. And while it's our pocket change that goes into it, she understands the value of what we put in it and that she is rewarded when it fills up. We also require that she perform simple tasks around the house for which, when a series of days are filled in as "complete," she gets a reward. If she plays her cards right, does as she's told, and is patient, she usually ends up with a "treat" every few weeks or so. Problem is she never stops wanting or asking for the most trivial things, and we end up like this episode of Dr. Phil - indulging her whims, rather than being responsible parents who model fiscal fitness.

I tell my wife, "It has to stop." Then I tell her again the next time and the next. But I'm just as guilty as she is. From my perspective, these little treats are almost immediately disregarded and considered "junk." If I sound frustrated, it's because I am. Our unplanned spending on small gifts for our daughter has gotten totally out of control. But it's easier to just go with it than to say no. Who doesn't want a smile and the baby blues? But what are we doing to her as a result? What kind of habits are we teaching her? Every other aspect of her life is meticulously dissected. We are completely focused on turning this healthy, intelligent, productive kid into a healthy, intelligent, productive adult. Why can't we be the same when it comes to teaching her about money?

A recent issue of Better Homes & Gardens offered us three easy tips to begin the process of taking control:

1. Don't Forget Who's In Charge - Marketing machine or not - and good God if there isn't a Disney princess on everything! - You can say "no."
2. Talk About Spending Decisions - Don't lie and say, "I can't afford it." Explain priorities - even to four-year-olds.
3. Hand Some Over - Give your kids the power. Let them make the transaction. Let them see the difference between need and want.

So, can Sara and I do this? Do we need a chart that we make an "X" on every day we don't wimp out and take the easy road? From time to time, I'm going to let you know how it's going. And, of course, time will tell. We at SmartyPig are spending a lot of time these days discussing money and children and families. And while I pride myself on being a good listener, this is one conversation I'd really like to begin truly contributing to.

And I'd like you all to contribute as well. I'd love any tips you might have or anecdotes about your successes or failures in teaching your kids smart savings habits, just send them here jgaskell(at)smartypig(dot)com. We may even feature your ideas or stories on our blog. Thanks!

I spend a lot of time thinking about how companies can use social media tools to enhance their communications efforts.

• Some involve a new take on traditional outbound or inbound marketing.
• Some are conversational, building relationships rather than selling.
• Some focus on customer service and solving pain points for people.

It occurs to me that to some extent, the effectiveness of two of the options above may depend on the state of your existing brand.

Caveat: This is by no means the only factor involved in this decision, which is why companies need to approach social media from a strategic perspective (with full consideration of multiple factors) rather than a tactical one.

If your brand is healthy and people generally think positive things about your organization, well-targeted communications along interruption and destination-based lines may be well received. However, if your brand has little equity and people are distrustful, it may be that you have more to gain from other social media approaches than healthy brands.

Why?

Because the bar is set low.

Wooden corporations can benefit greatly from allowing some personality within their online activities. As I often say, people don't want relationships with brands; they want them with people. (Note: I'm not talking about slick artwork and design; I'm talking about real people.)

Similarly, if your brand is on thin ice, online customer service improvements can be received with open arms. Peoples' expectations are so low that just solving problems (essentially, taking them from a negative to a neutral state with the product/service) can have positive effects on your brand. Companies like Dell and Comcast bave benefited greatly from this approach.

As I noted recently, it's when times are tough that you can differentiate your company.

What do you think? Do you think companies have more to gain from social media when their brand is suffering?

(Image: Shutterstock)

Sponsor

The application aggregates live streaming and recorded radio broadcasts from across the US, displays their current and planned content schedules and now offers a search function that stretches across all those different types of content: live streams, podcasts and text show descriptions. It's a free app and the the organization that makes it hosts almost nothing on its own servers. The end result is a remarkable user experience that ought to be an inspiration for old media of every kind. It isn't perfect, but it's getting better fast.

The app was made by a non-profit organization called Public Radio Exchange (PRX). PRX was founded and is run by Jake Shapiro, a man who used to be an associate director at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Shapiro used to produce an NPR radio show with Christopher Lyndon and before that he was one of the first tinkerers with web distribution of music for his band Two Ton Shoe.

Two Ton Shoe didn't find a lot of success in the United States, but thanks to the long tail of the web Shapiro says they somehow found a big fan base in Korea. The band toured there and Korean bands have covered some of their songs. "I'm a Korean rock star," Shapiro says, "and I believe there's a 'Korea' out there for everybody."

About a year ago Shapiro says he called around all the major players in public radio and argued that they had a unique opportunity in the iPhone platform if they could collaborate and create a really strong offering. An organization called American Public Media decided to contribute the work they had done so far on their own iPhone app to Shapiro's project and NPR and Public Radio International agreed to lend their support to what would become the Public Radio Tuner, today renamed the Public Radio Player.

Funding Local Radio on the iPhone

Public Radio Player could facilitate that long tail experience for obscure local public radio content by making it far more available on the iPhone. But PaidContent's Rafat Ali worries that by freeing radio listeners all the more from their local radio station, the Player could sever the loyalty and fund raising connections that keep public radio alive.

To that concern Shapiro has two interesting responses. First, he says that survey data shows most users prefer listening to their local stations on the app, along with a variety of favorites from elsewhere.

Even more interesting is the project's collaboration with Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Doc Searls. Searls is at Harvard's Berkman Center now, developing a framework for what's being called Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) - a customer-based response to the business paradigm of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The VRM project and Shapiro's PRX are developing ways for Public Radio Player users to track what they listen to on the player and make financial contributions to the radio stations they've consumed from the most.

Shapiro says that part of the project faces a major roadblock from Apple. Though Apple introduced in-application payments last month, the feature is only available to paid apps (Public Radio Player is free) and charitable contributions through the iPhone are strictly prohibited. They can't even be talked about, Shapiro says, because Apple doesn't want to deal with the possibility of charity scams, there's tax complications, the platform's standard 30% fee for payments isn't tenable in a non-profit context and Apple has no financial incentive to solve this sticky complex of problems.

For now the app is funded by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That funding is up for renewal this summer. Shapiro says that a second round of funding would be used to create "showcase apps that would break new ground and create new technology." He says the company is particularly interested in technologies that represent a hybrid of digital and broadcast. "With radio," he says, "there is still a tremendous amount of reach that you don't want to give up on when you move into the digital space."

Fixing the App

That hybrid paradigm is very well represented by the new version of the Public Radio Player. The previous version, called Public Radio Tuner, was one of the most popular free apps in the iPhone store but it didn't really work that well. Radio streams got dropped a lot. That's no longer a big problem with version 2.0.

The new version of the app tackles the problem of dropped streams by making the buffering settings much more sophisticated. Remember, the App doesn't host any of the audio, it just points to the live streams or podcasts stored on public radio stations' own servers. Project manager Matt MacDonald says the app now determines what kind of bandwidth the receiving phone has, then buffers the inbound stream accordingly before serving it up to listeners. The end result is a radically more usable radio app on wifi, 3G or Edge connections.

It's still not perfect; this like every app is at the mercy of AT&T's wireless network, but dropped streams appear to be much, much less frequent than they used to be. The interface sometimes hangs when loading menus, but Shapiro says that with the new release today bug fixes are a top priority and though crash reports are appearing infrequently, they are being closely watched. "Just shake the phone," he jokes. "Then it will work better."

More Than One Kind of Content

The new app brings a whole lot more radio to your iPhone. In addition to pointing to hundreds of radio streams, PRX has co-ordinated a number of different sources to pull show schedules down to be stored locally on your phone. "Scheduling data has been a big effort," Shapiro says. "It never existed in one place and is still a moving target."

A company called Public Interactive (recently acquired by NPR from Public Radio International) has a metadata tool that originally captured music playlists but now publishes radio show schedules as well. NPR and many radio stations also display schedules on their own websites. PRX aggregates all that data, stores it on your phone, syncs it with the radio stream links and then checks for changes each time you launch the Public Radio Player app.

Having the particular show that's playing displayed along with a station name makes a very big difference in the user experience.

The 2.0 version of the app also includes support for "on demand" or podcast listening. Hundreds of podcasts are navigable by featured shows, category or alphabetically. Podcasts are integrated into some of the show schedules as well. When listening to a streaming station, you can view the rest of the day's schedule and see what other shows will be broadcast later. Then you can choose to listen to previous recorded editions of those shows. It's a pretty seamless experience.

Search is No Small Matter

The new search functionality integrates all of the above, letting you search for keywords or topics and finding both recorded and currently live shows that match your search. MacDonald says the company used an open source program called ThinkingSphynx on the back end, worked closely with the NPR API team and is still working on teaching local radio stations about the importance of standards-based content titling. Listening to streams and podcasts on iTunes or an iPod may not have been so difficult with incomplete file names, but show a radio station how broken its content looks in a dynamic iPhone directory and the message comes through loud and clear.

There have been other efforts to index all the public radio streams online; Public Radio Fan is the most notable and is more international, but is less sophisticated and is based on the desktop and browser. (After listening to some international broadcasts via Public Radio Fan it's hard not to be a little disappointed with even Public Radio Player's extensive but exclusively US menu.)

As a media technology, Public Radio Player offers a unique blend of content aggregation, focus on both real time and recorded content and extensive data integration on the back end. All on the iPhone. Its design and performance continue to improve. It's a very impressive offering in terms of content delivery; if it can find a way to use the new platform it's on to transcend the public radio paradigm of on-air pledge drives, that would really be remarkable, wouldn't it?

Jake Shapiro says that offering Public Radio Player on other platforms, including a web interface, is a logical next step. You can follow the project's progress on the Public Radio Player blog and download the application here.

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The Interview and PDF

The interview is about 20 minutes, a good listen. If you want to do justice to this subject, read the PDF first as background, and then listen to the MP3. For the super-busy skimmer, we attempt to distill the essence below.

Download the MP3.

The Return on Asset Bombshell

This is what caught our attention in the email -- and is the reason we wanted to do this interview:

"U.S. companies' return-on-assets (ROA) have progressively dropped 75 percent from their 1965 levels despite rising labor productivity."

That is dramatic. If you had to select a single measure by which to judge the value delivered by a CEO, board, or management team, it would be return on assets. To quote from the Wikipedia entry:

"The return on assets (ROA) percentage shows how profitable a company's assets are in generating revenue. This number tells you what the company can do with what it has, i.e. how many dollars of earnings they derive from each dollar of assets they control."

And here is the bit that matters:

"Return on assets is an indicator of how profitable a company is before leverage."

If you want to understand the financial meltdown that happened at the end of 2008, just think leverage, i.e. debt. Companies juiced up their earnings using leverage. They have been doing this more and more in the last 30 years.

What happens when you take that away? You get the return on asset bombshell that the Shift Index reveals. It is like taking steroids away from an athlete and then saying, "Now, how fast can you run 100 meters?"

Only a US and BigCo Problem?

The massive ROA drop was measured across all public companies in the US since 1965.

It would be very interesting to see the results for Europe and Asia. Would they be different? Has anyone run those numbers?

Public companies tend to be large. We were interested in knowing whether this was simply a BigCo problem. Here at ReadWriteWeb, we report on startups and small companies. Our assumption for some time has been that an historic shift in power is taking place from BigCo to SmallCo, which can be explained by Coase's Theorem.

Now that we've seen huge companies, household names such as Lehman and GM, crumble before our eyes, thinking that BigCos are in serious trouble is no longer a radical idea. And as nature and economies abhor a vacuum, this must create opportunities for others. The question is whether this shift will be simply from some BigCos to others, as they out-compete each other, or a more fundamental shift from BigCos to SmallCos.

We asked John Hagel about this, and he told us his view that the shift in power to smaller companies, even to free-agent individuals, is a short-term trend and that bigger companies will return to dominance once they figure out how to operate in this new environment. He told us that BigCos face a great challenge in part because:

"They grew up and became successful in a different environment, where scalable efficiency was the way to generate and sustain economic value."

He goes on to explain that money follows talent and that large companies are having a hard time articulating to the most talented and creative individuals why they would be able to grow and prosper more within large institutions than as free agents or in small ventures. He believes that large companies will be able to make that transition. Clearly, given his role with Deloitte, which provides management consulting to large companies, he has to take that view. But he has also voted with his feet on this issue, by even joining a large company like Deloitte in the first place, when he was already a successful free-agent author and consultant.

His fundamental message is that BigCos need to offer a rationale other than just scalable efficiency. This is consistent with Coase's Theorem. His view is that this rationale will be "scalable learning." Scalable learning sounds like it could become an over-used buzzword, but when you listen to him describe how companies build networks of partnerships that learn from each other, it comes alive.

It certainly will resonate with anyone who has worked at a startup.

The question is whether BigCos can learn to work like agile startups again. In other words, is it possible to teach elephants to dance?

How Can Enterprise 2.0 Vendors Articulate Their Value in This Context?

I asked John if he saw a day when more CTOs and CIOs would become CEOs, because really understanding systems and technology has become so essential for leaders. He was skeptical. In fact, John views the risk-averse nature of most CIOs as a big stumbling block.

John pointed out that most companies have "only skimmed the surface" of opportunities to use social media to build richer knowledge networks that cross the firewall and connect with partners and customers. Indeed, he talked about the problem of how "most CIOs are tending to become extremely risk-averse." He pointed out that CIO turn-over is increasing, and that the reason CIOs get fired is often because of some big operational blow-up. So, they avoid anything that puts current operations at risk. In doing so, they may be creating even bigger issues, as large companies miss opportunities to leverage social media to create new value.

John's advice to Enterprise 2.0 vendors is to become a lot better at articulating how their technology can build value and competitive advantage at scale. That is obviously easier said than done. But doing it is essential. The CIO will be motivated to look at operational risks only if the CEO tells him or her that the risks of ignoring them are greater.

The Interview and PDF

Download the MP3 and PDF.

Think about the most high-profile proponents of social media. The people you think of likely have large followings and significant engagement with their work. Now, ask yourself does that mean they have built a community around themselves ? Or are they just talented self-promoters who know how to build fans?

The answer seems obvious, right? I mean, we rail against overt self-promoters and embrace community builders or do we?

Wikipedia looks to the definition of true community as defined by Scott Peck, as the process of deep respect and true listening for the needs of the other people in this community.

Community is an easy word to throw around. It's easy to say that because people comment on your site, or re-tweet your Twitter posts, that you have a community. However, if those people aren't truly engaged with you (and vice versa), is it really a community?

Does a community have to be a two-way dialogue?

I can think of some A-listers' who have reached out to me privately to head-off a discussion, but when I responded to their intervention and attempted to engage in a friendly discussion, I received no response. That suggests to me that those people haven't built a community there's no true listening and there's no deep respect. They've used social media tools in a traditional marketing-based fashion to build numbers, but have little connection to those people.

To make the conversation even more interesting, we could also debate which gets better results for businesses? From my perspective, a following can get you short-term benefits but a community is more likely to be successful in the long run.

Some of the people who, I think have been successful in creating a community for themselves, their product or their initiatives include Joe Thornley, through meetups like Third Tuesday Toronto, Chris Brogran and the folks at Radian6.

Part of the problem, as I'm sure people like Brogan can attest, is scaling. As volume goes up, the amount of attention you can pay to each community member goes down. When that happens, you can start to approach that line of promotion/community-building again. I suspect the difference comes down to the bonds you've created to and within your community does it pull together and support others in the community, or does it always look to the figurehead. In other words, is it a true community or is it a group of followers with a leader?

I'm curious to hear what community managers like Amber Naslund, Erin Bury, Melanie Baker, Keith Burtis and David Spinks have to say on this. Is there a line, and where is it, between self-promotion and building a community, and how do you deal with the volume issue?

How about you? How would you separate people who have built a community from people who just have a large audience, and which approach do you think makes sense for businesses?

For those not familiar with what was going on, basically the streaming rates for Internet radio were in danger of being raised to levels that would have made it very hard for companies like Pandora to stay afloat. But a resolution has been reached between webcasters, artists, and record labels, Pandora CTO Tom Conrad tells us.

Pandora is finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates, Conrad says.

The key part of the resolution involves SoundExchange agreeing to a 40-50% reduction in the per-song-per-listener rates. In exchange, Pandora is giving up a 25% share of its U.S. revenue. This agreement runs through 2015.

But Pandora also had to give up a little more. Because the rates agreed upon are still quite a bit higher than other forms of radio, the service is going to have to put limits in place for users of its free version. Apparently, this will only affect 10% of the user base, as it's basically just anyone who uses Pandora over 40 hours per month. If a user hits that wall, it will only cost them $0.99 to go unlimited for the remainder of the month. Seems fair.

Users of Pandora One, the pay version of the service, will continue to have unlimited listening.

I asked Conrad if this 25% kickback will effect Pandora's stated goal to be profitable by next year. It's a great outcome. Expensive, but I think we can still be profitable next year. These are workable rates, he says.

Find the rest of the details in the email below.

Many people played a role in getting here. Pandora listeners provided support in extraordinary numbers in Congress, and a group of reasonable and constructive voices on the label and artist side of the table at SoundExchange helped forge a middle ground that, while perhaps not meeting all of our aspirations, still represents a thoughtful and reasoned outcome under the circumstances.

The deal we've crafted is an industry-wide solution for all pure play Internet webcasters. The core of the compromise is that SoundExchange has granted a 40-50% reduction in the per-song-per-listener minimum rates in exchange for us giving them a 25% share of our US revenue. The deal extends through 2015 and has special carve outs for the so-called Small Webcasters.

While we feel this is a substantive victory, the revised royalties are quite high still much higher than any other form of radio. As a consequence, we will have to make an adjustment that will affect about 10% of our users who are our heaviest listeners. Specifically, we are going to begin limiting listening to 40 hours per month on the free version of Pandora. In any given month, a listener who hits this limit can then opt for unlimited listening for the remainder of that month for just $0.99. In essence, we're asking our heaviest users to put a dollar (well, almost a dollar) in the tip jar in any month in which they listen over 40 hours. We hope this is relatively painless and affordablethe same price as a single song download. Alternatively, they can upgrade to
Pandora One, our premium version which offers unlimited monthly listening in addition to its other benefits.

Q2 was our best quarter to date and dramatically exceeded our plan both in terms of user growth and revenue. Mobile adoption continues to be very strong with uptake on the BlackBerry looking like it will meet or exceed iPhone levels. Still, the unresolved licensing issues have hung over us like a dark cloud for two years. It's a great feeling to have the road cleared of that obstacle.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

1. No Silos.

2. Listening.

3. Inbound Marketing.

*drops mic*

Media analyst Clay Shirky has some interesting thoughts on the steady stream of photos, Twitter posts and videos coming out of post-election Iran:

I'm always a little reticent to draw lessons from things still unfolding, but it seems pretty clear that this is it. The big one. This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media

I've been thinking a lot about the Chicago demonstrations of 1968 where they chanted the whole world is watching.

Really, that wasn't true then. But this time it's true and people throughout the world are not only listening but responding. They're engaging with individual participants, they're passing on their messages to their friends, and they're even providing detailed instructions to enable web proxies allowing Internet access that the authorities can't immediately censor. That kind of participation is reallly extraordinary.

Shirky goes on to suggest that microblogging service Twitter has made the most impact on the events in Iran and their coverage:

One thing that Evan (Williams) and Biz (Stone) did absolutely right is that they made Twitter so simple and so open that it's easier to integrate and harder to control than any other tool. At the time, I'm sure it wasn't conceived as anything other than a smart engineering choice. But it's had global consequences.

Twitter is shareable and open and participatory in a way that Facebook's model prevents. So far, despite a massive effort, the authorities have found no way to shut it down, and now there are literally thousands of people aorund the world who've made it their business to help keep it open.

While Twitter has been huge in the last few days, YouTube videos, like the one embedded above, and the images coming through sites like Flickr are incredibly important, too, because they let you see the scale of what's happening.

Iran's military is warning online media of a crackdown over coverage of the country's election crisis. The country is trying to block access to social media sites, and said that Iranian Web sites and bloggers must remove any materials that create tension or face legal action.

At this point, though, it looks like the only way to cut off the flow of citizen media in and out of Iran is to eliminate access to the Internet itself.

See Shirky's full comments at the TED site.

Tonight I managed to get out for my first decent run since racing in the Cabot Trail Relay a few weeks ago. While out pounding the trails for what felt like forever, I was able to catch up on some of my podcast listening. I highly recommend you check out two of the episodes I listened to, from two of my favourite podcasters.

TVO Search Engine

If you're not a regular listener, you may not know that Jesse Brown's excellent podcast recently moved homes - from CBC (their loss) to TVO (their gain). Michael Geist has done a wonderful job recently of drawing attention to plagiarism and bias in a report by the Conference Board of Canada claiming that Canada is a hot-spot for internet piracy (the report has now been recalled by the organization). In his second Search Engine episode in his new TVO home, Jesse interviews Anne Golden, CEO of the Conference Board. It's awkward, it's uncomfortable, and it's fantastic journalism from someone that doesn't let people get away with a template messaged response to questions. Make sure you check it out.

CBC Spark

Nora Young's Spark podcast has long been a favourite of mine. While it has a similar tech focus to other podcasts to which I subscribe, Spark tends to cover stories I might otherwise overlook. In Spark episode 80, Nora interviews Andrea Reimer from Vancouver City Council about Vancouver's plan to open up municipal data (in the same manner also announced by David Miller for the City of Toronto at this year's Mesh Conference). I found the interview immensely refreshing. Coming from a government background, I know that there's often a fear within government of what people will do with information. This often leads to the minimum information necessary being shared with the public. Reimer's take, in contrast to that:

we shouldn't, as policy makers, fear the public knowing what we know when we're making decisions, and in fact by knowing it perhaps we could inform ourselves better maybe they'll think of new creative or throw in more information that we didn't have

I found myself nodding and smiling throughout the interview. Well worth a listen, for a refreshing take on how governments can go about sharing information with the people who are funding its collection. What other podcast episodes have caught your eye (or ear) recently?

Solid Host, NL v. NameCheap, Inc., 2:08-cv-05414-MMM-E (C.D. Cal. May 19, 2009)

Facts

This case involves an alleged domain name theft. Solid Host is a web host and initial owner of the domain name solidhost.com, which it registered through eNom in 2004. Solid Host claims that in 2008, a security breach at eNom allowed an unknown interloper (Doe) to steal the domain name and move the registration to NameCheap. Doe also acquired NameCheap's "WhoisGuard" service, a domain name proxy service that masked Doe's contact information in the Whois database. Solid Host contacted Doe and sought the domain name; Doe asked for $12,000, and Solid Host took a pass. Instead, Solid Host demanded that NameCheap hand back the domain name and identify Doe, but Doe claimed that he had bought the domain name legitimately. NameCheap, apparently feeling like the cheese in a sandwich, demurred to Solid Host's requests. Solid Host then got a TRO ordering NameCheap to transfer the name and reveal Doe's identity, both of which occurred. For unclear reasons, Solid Host hasn't amended the complaint to name the Doe, but it is proceeding against NameCheap on various claims, including an Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) claim.

The Opinion

Who is the Registrant?

My understanding of domain name proxy services is that the service acts as the legal registrant, thus supplying its contact information, but it registers the domain name for the benefit of its customer, making the customer the beneficial registrant. An analogy: a bank may take legal title of a property as part of securing a loan on the property, but the borrower retains beneficial title to the property.

So, for purposes of the ACPA, is the proxy service the registrant of the domain name? ICANN's agreement with registrars seemingly contemplates this characterization in Section 3.7.7.3 of its Registrar Agreement, which says A Registered Name Holder licensing use of a Registered Name according to this provision shall accept liability for harm caused by wrongful use of the Registered Name, unless it promptly discloses the identity of the licensee to a party providing the Registered Name Holder reasonable evidence of actionable harm. However, it's not clear to me that a proxy service licenses the domain name, especially if you accept my lender-borrower analogy above. Alternatively, if the proxy service is the agent of the customer, the licensing analogy also breaks down.

Whether the proxy service is the registrant matters a great deal to the legal outcome, and unfortunately, the court's analysis of this important question was cursory, muddled, and possibly internally inconsistent.

In this case, the court's inquiry is made more difficult by the fact that NameCheap acted as both the registrar and the proxy service provider. As a registrar, an ACPA claim against NameCheap should be squarely preempted by the domain name registry/registrar safe harbor enacted as part of the ACPA (15 U.S.C. 1114(2)(D)). For example, 1114(2)(D)(iii) says:

A domain name registrar, a domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority shall not be liable for damages under this section for the registration or maintenance of a domain name for another absent a showing of bad faith intent to profit from such registration or maintenance of the domain name

(This provision only moots damages, not an injunction, but since Solid Host has the domain name back in its possession, damages seem like the only remaining issue).

The court concludes that NameCheap is not eligible for the domain name registrar safe harbor because NameCheap is the domain name registrant. It says, "NameCheap is, by virtue of the anonymity service it provides, the registrant of a domain name that allegedly infringes Sold [sic] Host's trademark." Thus, NameCheap is ineligible for the registrar safe harbor, which applies only when the registrar acts as a registrar.

But, having rejected the domain name registrar safe harbor because NameCheap was the domain name registrant, the court then inconsistently says that NameCheap is not the registrant for purposes of the prima facie ACPA claim. Instead, for ACPA purposes the court treats Doe as the registrant, leaving NameCheap exposed to a possible secondary ACPA liability claim. (The court acknowledges that NameCheap would defeat a direct ACPA claim because NameCheap did not have any bad faith intent to profit from the domain name. Offering the proxy service wasn't enough to qualify as a bad faith intent to profit).

Wait a minutehow can NameCheap simultaneously be both the registrant (no safe harbor) but not the registrant (thus, subjected to a secondary claim)? The court does not acknowledge or explain this apparent inconsistency.

Contributory Cybersquatting

Courts have rarely discussed a contributory ACPA claim. The only one cited by the court was a 2001 case (the Ford Motors vs. Greatdomains.com case) and I can't think of any others. Perhaps this isn't surprising because (1) as the Greatdomains.com case indicated, a contributory ACPA claim is available "in only exceptional circumstances," and (2) registrars are the most likely targets of a contributory ACPA claim, and the domain name registrar safe harbor effectively eliminates their contributory ACPA liability.

Adopting the analysis in the Greatdomains.com case, this court equates contributory ACPA liabilty with the Ninth Circuit's 1999 Lockheed standard for online contributory trademark infringement (as opposed to ACPA liability), which requires that "a plaintiff must prove that the defendant had knowledge and [d]irect control and monitoring of the instrumentality used by the third party to infringe the plaintiff's mark.'"

So how did NameCheap have the requisite control over Doe's instrumentalities? Good question. The court tosses out this gem: NameCheap was "the cyber-landlord of the internet real estate stolen by Doe." WHAT??? The court continues:

NameCheap's anonymity service was central to Doe's cybersquatting scheme. If NameCheap had returned the domain name to Solid Host, Doe's illegal activity would have ceased.

The second sentence is true with respect to NameCheap, but it is also true of every registrar for every domain name they register--and we know from the 1999 Lockheed case that registrars lack control over the instrumentalities of their registrants. So the proxy service seems to make a legal difference, but how does the proxy service evidence NameCheap's greater control over the registrant's instrumentalities? I think something is amiss here.

To complete the prima facie contributory ACPA claim, in addition to control, Solid Host must show that NameCheap has the requisite knowledge of Doe's ACPA violation. The court sets a high scienter bar--mere notice from an aggrieved party isn't enough--but the court conclusorily says that the complaint alleged enough knowledge to survive the motion to dismiss.

Why This is a Troubling Ruling

As I trust is clear, I think the court's analysis is questionable at best. I'm also troubled about the normative implications. Most obviously, this case could portend the deminse of domain name proxy services. Read literally, every proxy service is exposed to potential contributory ACPA liability for every domain name it services. I can't imagine proxy service providers will be excited about that liability exposure, and some may choose to exit the business.

If proxy services evaporate, domain name registrants will have a tougher time maintaining their privacy. This could affect at least two groups. First, businesses seeking to register domain names for unlaunched new brands often want to procure the new brand's domain names without publicly announcing their intentions through the Whois database. (Of course, some businesses register such domain name through agents or shell companies, but at a much greater expense than a proxy service). Second, gripers, whistleblowers, critics and others may want to use proxy services to make it harder for their targets to unmask their identities. This ruling jeopardizes the potential privacy options available to both groups.

I'm also troubled by this ruling's narrow reading of the domain name registrar safe harbors. There haven't been many cases interpreting those safe harbors, and this case might influence other courts to read them narrowly.

A Mini-Trend of Lawsuits Against Registrars

I've noticed a small but troubling increase in lawsuits against domain name registrars in the past few months. In addition to this case, see the Vulcan Golf v. Google lawsuit (which named some registrars as defendants), OnlineNIC cases, Philbrick v. eNom and uBid v. GoDaddy. Personally, I believe this litigation trend mirrors the expansion of new and legally untested non-registration services offered by registrars. I explored this issue with Elliot Noss of Tucows in the most recent installment of TWiL (worth listening to, IMO). Discussing the uBid lawsuit, Elliott explained how registrars monetize dropped domain names before being returned to the available pool of unregistered domain names. The delay is putatively for the benefit of customers who mistakenly let a registration lapse; but this also has the happy (?) by-product of letting registrars create new ad inventory that they are monetizing.

In the past, a lot of the legal attention regarding domain names has focused on trademark owners vs. registrants. From my perspective, those lawsuits are becoming pass. The real litigation growth industry appears to be trademark owner vs. registrar lawsuits over new registrar service offerings that trademark owners don't like. Rulings like this one, with a broad reading of contributory ACPA liability and a narrow reading of the domain name registrar safe harbor, raise the specter that registrars may find more legal trouble than they anticipated.

(Here's an even larger version if you'd like.)

In the spirit of one of the above, here's the podcasts I currently subscribe to - and occasionally listen too! ;>

TUAWFirst Look: Geocaching 2.0 for iPhone 3G originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

While I'm 90% confident the comp is where I want it to be as far as user interface and information architecture, part of my work as a social analyst is to experiment with the different tools out there, so I'm going to use CROWDspring to outsource creation of my header. The designers will keep the logo, and will be given the dimensions to use for the header, more news on that soon (Update: here's the details). This is a controversial topic, as I've written about why it's here to stay, and I'll be in one of the main stages at SXSW to debate it.

I'd like to get your feedback on this second iteration of the comp, I take your feedback seriously. Even if you see someone who's said something similar to you, please chime in the comments, as I put weight on frequency of mentions.

Remember, it's not just me that has to use this site, it's as much a community resource, so I do value your feedback.

Click to see larger version

Oh yeah, I'll work with my buddy Brian Solis who will take a new profile pictures, just haven't had the time. Update: If you're interesting in designing my banner, see the rules here on CROWDspring.

Leave your feedback below, myself and Mitch from StudioNashVegas are listening.

Ever wonder about the business of being on the radio or on TV? Leo Laporte is one guy who has done it all. On the way to this interview we were listening to him in the car on KGO Radio. He was one of the key people who started ZDTV/TechTV, which now is mostly gone. People who work with him have become household names. He is the king of tech talk and in this interview Leo tells us all about what the bleeding edge of creating media is like today. We talk a bunch about how media is changing now that everyone can create media and there no longer are gatekeepers you need to talk into distributing your videos or audio shows.

Part I. 18 minutes.
Part II. 17 minutes.

It's obviously not a good thing. But what was surprising is that within 45 minutes, the other people on the team adopted the bad apple behavior. They started acting like the bad apple. Turns out it's contagious.

This got me thinking about team dynamics, and the criteria we use when we build teams, interview people for a job, etc. When it comes to looking at the personality traits, and how well a person can fit within a team, it occurs to me that it's crucial to avoid someone with those bad apple traits, because it will spread to the rest of the team.

Thinking back to teams that I've been on, I know this is true. I've seen it happen. And I'm really grateful that the team I'm on now at work, Intel Software Network, doesn't have any Bad Apples to bring us down. I've marveled at how great the team dynamic is in this group since I joined almost two years ago, but only now do I realize that the lack of Bad Apples is one of the (probably big) reasons.

So keep Bad Apples away from your teams! It's hard to make a person change behavior, and if you can avoid it, it's probably better to not get into that situation in the first place.

Interestingly, the researcher on This American Life said they discovered an antidote to Bad Apple behavior - someone who exhibits strong leadership by asking a LOT of questions, of everybody. In fact, that person in the study was the child of a career diplomat. So if you do get stuck with a Bad Apple on your team, there may still be hope.

McDonough, who proudly boasts he's not even registered to use Twitter, describes Twitter for Cal Law readers as the mutant stepchild of text messages and blogging.

You get the 140-character limit and cr8tv abbreviations of text messaging genetically spliced to the sheer inanity of most personal blogs, meaning that at any moment of the day, any of the dozen or hundreds of Twitter-ers (twits?) you follow will tell you things like, Leaving work to watch Series.' I'm sleepy.' Traffic sux.' I want a ham sandwich.' Puppies!'

From the likes of the responses from lawyers and legal professionals, this is a classic 'Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.'

From the Director of Media Relations at an AmLaw 200 law firm:

I do use Twitter in several ways. 1) listening. I listen or follow the coversations of others around subjects or topics relative to my attorneys' practice areas. Trademarks, Bio-pharma, lawsuits, etc. I then engage in online discussions through Twitter with those having those discussions. 2) I build relationships with key media people and outlets. Many of both are on Twitter. Our firm pays for a media relations service, which is one tool that keeps me up to date on reporters and media opportunities. Twitter is simply another tool that I use alongside the many other tools we have.

From a solo practitioner in the Midwest:

...I don't think... Twitter clogs my inbox with time-wasting clutter. In fact, I use and love Twitter, and it has helped me forge very important connections.

There is no inbox to clog, just a Twitter homepage to check on every now and then.

There are, however, a lot of people posting time-wasting clutter on Twitter. I do not subscribe to those people's feeds.

From a West Coast solo practitioner doing sophisticated IP work:

I was fairly skeptical, but I think it's a good place to be exposed to people and connect with people or ideas that you are drawn to. The majority of people are forward thinking in some respect. There are a ton of journalists, entrepreneurs, and CEOs, etc. I don't know that Quinn Emanuel is going to bag bet the company litigation solely by being on twitter, but lawyers from that firm (and any other firm) will be exposed to people and ideas on twitter and probably make connections. Those connections will likely lead to business down the road.

From an East Coast bankruptcy lawyer:

Absolutely agree with previous comments - Twitter expands your reach, and the people who hear your voice. Cut through the clutter and learn how to use social media effectively, and you will end up with a significantly larger circle of influence.

I've met a number of high-profile fellow consumer lawyers, interact with former and current clients, and have learned a fair amount from the people I follow.

Like any other tool, you need to learn how to use it wisely. Same goes for instant messaging, email, Facebook, blogging, and the like.

Remember when "they" said blogging was a waste of time and energy, and that blogs were useful only for the idle ramblings of teenage angst?

From a Midwest business lawyer:

Geographic search capability and the ability to witness local business development are two of the primary benefits of twitter. I completely disagree with the apparent (and very false) perception that twitter is full of teeny-boppers. Entrepreneurs and growing companies hopped on twitter to share and learn, not to gossip and fritter away time - Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin get it and they represent the more visible end of the spectrum? Twitter = one more tool for the attorney devoted to growing a modern firm through modern tools to help modern clients; to think otherwise is reminiscent of "the internet is a fad" thinking.

...[P]eople on twitter are looking for lawyers who "get them." As I said, many are professionals and business owners. It just makes sense to use twitter if folks of that stripe are your target market (which is the case for me).

Lots of lawyers thought email and websites were counter-productive. And before that most all lawyers agreed that phones would never be used by lawyers in productive ways.

You can practice without Twitter. We've done it for decades. The question is why would an innovative lawyer looking to enhance his or her reputation and grow their business want to practice without Twitter today?

Every blogger can bloviate and tell you what he or she sees happening. But I'm noticing a trend among bloggers. Very few listen. I read hundreds of bloggers on a regular basis, along with many thousands who are brought into my view via TechMeme and my hundreds of Google Reader friends.

How many actually are actively seeking out the opinions of others and trying to bring those to their readers. I can tell you how many: almost none.

How many have a Google Reader Shared Items feed like the one I have done for years? A few. Louis Gray is amongst the ones I read often and regularly, but despite a few exceptions here and there very few of the top bloggers do that.

How many aggregate thousands of people's tweets, blogs, photos, videos together and go through and tell you which ones are best like I've done every day on FriendFeed since I joined in February? A few do, hello Louis Gray again, but not enough of the top bloggers.

So, if we're really in an economic crisis (we are, despite the stock market going up 600 points so far today) how can bloggers really be knowledgeable if they don't read other people's blogs and prove that over and over and over again by using these tools to demonstrate what they are reading?

Why do I think that's so important? Well, for balance, for one thing. You saw some people thought I was too negative last week. But if you had looked at EVERYTHING I was putting into this system and reading and writing and doing videos on you would have seen a much more balanced and nuanced view of the world.

I assume my audience is smart and wants to see the world through many viewpoints. I hope you are reading these feeds because there are some damn cool things going through the system and these are my ways of highlighting them and making us all smarter in this time.

Also note that I overlink to people who disagree with me. Why do I do that? Because in these times it's too easy to buy into your own press releases and start believing you have all the answers. In these times it's even MORE important to consider the other side, whether we're talking about the economy or politics.

But maybe I'm alone in that view, it sure seems not many bloggers are willing to show you what inputs they are reading and what's informing their judgment.

Witness his reaction to last night's VP debate, courtesy of his blog:

So she was understandably nervous, and you could tell that by her rapid speech, faster than what we've heard before from her. Listening to her voice, you could also sense when she felt she'd survived the deep waters of improvisation and was climbing onto the shore of talking points. When she was on familiar ground, she perked up, winked at the audience two of three times, and settled with relief into the folksiness that reminds me strangely of the characters in Fargo.

Palin is best in that persona. You want to smile with her and wink back. But who did she resemble more? Marge Gunderson, whose peppy pleasantries masked a remorseless policewoman's logic? Or Jerry Lundegaard, who knew he didn't have the car on his lot, but smiled when he said, M'am, I been cooperatin' with ya here. Palin was persuasive. But I felt a brightness that was not always convincing.

I wrote this to my email list on Saturday the 27th of 2008. Two days before the single largest drop in the history of the stock market.

Now, I promised myself I was retired from blogging to focus on my email newsletter, but I'm getting pounded with so many requests for this essay that I'm giving up and posting it here. This does not mean my retirement from blogging is off, this means I'm posting this so I don't have to respond to hundreds of emails asking for a copy. If you want future missives like this signup for Jason's List: Jason's List signup.

For background, the goal of this post was not to spread fear, but rather inspire folks at startup companies to get focused and to save as many as possible from hitting the wall. Myself? We'll I funded Mahalo for the long-term and while the market down turn isn't good for anyone, we're largely immune from it because we are building on a five year plan that we're only 18 months into.

Doesn't mean I'm not hyper focused, I am. I'm just not panicking. Great entrepreneurs build value and market-share in down markets. They go to work seven days a week and the breakout when other folks check out.

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Monday, September 27th, 5:15PM PST.
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(The) Startup Depression

Since stock market gyrations and the elections seem to be making
everyone rightfully nauseous and depressed, I thought I would take
this email to discuss the biggest ramifications of these challenging
times: depression.

It's my believe that the economic downturn will be much worse than it
is today, and that 50-80% of the venture-backed startups currently
operating will shut down or go on life-support (i.e. 3-4 folks working
on them) within the next 18 months.

Make a list of every Web 2.0 startup to raise an A or B round and
cross 80% of them off the list, because they will not make it to their
next round of funding or profitability.

Now, I could be totally wrong. No one can guess or time the markets
perfectly. However, planning for the worst is a virtuous idea, so I
encourage you to read on.

Everyone I talk to is feeling confused, paralyzed and anxiousmany
are in full-blown depression. People are scared, and they should be.
This could be the start of a very difficult time for our country and
the rest of the world.

In this email, we'll focus on the entrepreneurial and startup
depression and economic downturns/depressionsand how you can deal
with them.

Some background to get us started

Few things in the world are as exhilarating as starting a new company.
Metaphors abound, and we've all heard them: starting a company is like
having a baby, falling in love, and running a marathon. Few folks,
however, want to continue the metaphor when things go bad at a
startup. If they did, we would be having discussions about running a
startup being like divorcing your spouse, collapsing from exhaustion
in the 20th mile of the marathon, orGod forbidlosing a child.

Metaphors swing both ways.

Anxiety and depression from a failed, or failing, startup can be
intenseeven debilitating. When outside factors such as markets or
buildings collapsing are added to the mix, I've seen great
entrepreneurs just fold.

Now, I've never folded, and I don't say that as some badge of courage.
No, sometimes it's really, really stupid to keep fighting. Most
consider it especially stupid to fight when you know you're going to
lose. I don't.

The result of never folding is that I've had my ass kicked pretty bad.
Multiple times.

Depending on your DNA, getting your ass kicked is either complete
torture or deviantly rewarding. Truth be told, I like getting my ass
kicked because it makes me angry, motivated and focused. If I look
back on the couple of moments of success I've been lucky enough to
have in my life, they all seem to come after a good ass-kicking.

The darkest hour isin factright before the dawn.

Brief Disclaimer

I'd be lying if I said I understood the complexities of depression or
depressions. I'm not a psychologist nor am I an economist. I've never
suffered from clinical depression and I didn't live through the last
depression. However, I do have a BA in Psychology, have read many
books about the psychology of happiness, and I've felt the sting of
the last huge correction (2000-2002).

Consider these one (hu)man's notes on entrepreneurial depression and
anxiety. They are worth the price you've paid for them, but I hope
they are helpful to youespecially if you're suffering right now. If
you are suffering from depression or anxiety, go see a professional.

Really, it's the best thing to do. Feel free to print this out and
bring it with you and ask your newfound therapist what they think of
my observations and advice. Then email me back what they said I'm
curious where my thoughts rank.

Kurnit's Three Reasons Why Companies Fail

Scott Kurnit of the Mining Company (aka About.com) told me there are
three reasons why a business will fail: it's a bad idea, bad execution
or outside factors. If you examine your business with these three
filters right now, you can baseline where you're at: one, two or three
strikes.

His theory correlates well with the attribution theory in psychology.
The theory concerns itself with how an individual attributes the
things that happen to them (or others). For example, if you were
pulled over by a cop for speeding, you can attribute that to number of
factors, both internal and external.

Some folks might internalize the event and curse themselves for being
reckless: I should have known better! Others might blame an external
source, such as the cop or the bankrupt city they work for: Gosh darn
Los Angeles cops! They're just trying to balance the budget by
harassing us!

Kurnit's theory, as told to me, mentions two internal factors (bad
idea and execution) and one external (outside factors). When faced
with massive market uncertainty, like we are today, it's a virtuous
idea to assess each of these factors.

Right now, every single one of us has HUGE outside factors we must
consider. The market collapse is going to make the next couple of
years impossible and frustrating for many entrepreneurs. Even the
great companies - like Google, Microsoft and Apple - are going to hit
hard times.

One of the most important philosophical minds of our time summed it up
best: I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the
bat, and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't
my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself? Yogi
Berra.

Viktor Frankl's Search for Meaning

John Brockman, my dear friend and agent (if I ever get around to
writing a book), handed me one of the most important books of my life:
Authentic Happiness by Marty Seligman. That book led me to the most
important book of my life: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor
Frankl.

Frankl was a psychologist and Holocaust survivor.

He studied how people react to horrible circumstances that are beyond
their control. He studied why some people give up and others carry on.
While few of us can understand the level of suffering of people during
the Holocaust, Nanking or the Killing Fields, Frankl put his theories
forward so that we could carry them into our daily lives.

Logotherapy was what Frankl called his theories, and their major
tenants are that we choose how to find meaning in our circumstances
and that our experiences all have meaning.

My interpretation of Frankl is that you actually get to choose how you
feel about your circumstances.

The Worst Year of my life

It's still hard for me to talk about it seven years laterand I'm not
going to talk about it in too much detail right now. In the early
months of 2001, I watched my first business, Silicon Alley Reporter,
crash from 70 employees to 12. The $20m offer I'd received to buy the
business was a distant memory, as was the $11.6m in revenue we had in
2000.

Money was evaporating from the bank account, dotcoms were going bust
and wethe dotcom kidswent from visionaries to charlatans
overnight. I went from hosting multi-million dollar conferences, doing
Charlie Rose guest spots and being featured in a 6,000 word article in
the New Yorker to not being able to meet payroll.

Many folks said I was lucky with Silicon Alley Reporter, while others
said I was fraud who had finally been found out. I was broke, no one
cared about my work, and my life really sucked.

and that was just the start.

Then, the stock market crashed and the accounting scandals set in.
Enron, Adelpia, Worldcom, and Arthur Andersen made the fallout from
the dotcom bust look like nothing.

and that was still just the start.

While lying in bed listening to the radio, I heard that a private
pilot in a small plane had accidentally crashed into the World Trade
Center. Then, I watched the second one hit. Then, I watched them come
down.

To say things went from bad to worse would be a gross understatement.
As I started in disbelief with my fellow New Yorkers, I wondered where
my brother, a NYC Firefighter, was. Then it hit me: he was probably
dead.

Due to a simple twist of fate, he wasn't deadbut many of his friends
were. It was at that time I really took a deep look inside and found
meaning in what happened that day and what happened to me when my
first business collapsed.

In my mind, I was being tested. Horrible things happen in life and I
was faced with several at the same time. From that point forward, my
goal was to not only get back to the level I was at when I was at the
top of my game, but to exceed it.

My goal was to be truly happy every day doing what I loved: running a
startup company. A year later, we started Weblogs, Inc., and 18 months
after that, we sold it. The darkest hour became the dawn, and it was
glorious.

If you're failing right now, and if you're suffering, you need to take
Kurnit's test. You need to access where you're at and you need to
fight on. You can give up, sure, but the truth is that when you give
up, you have to live with that fact for the rest of your life. For me,
living with having given up in tough times is a much worse fate than
certain failure.

If you fail, then by definition you have tried. But if you give up,
you didn't.

Step One: How are you executing

It's fairly easy to tell how well you're executing, so let's tackle
that up front. First, take a look at your plan and see where you are
in executing against it. Are you ahead, behind or on schedule? Second,
you can have everyone in your organization rank your product and its
various features on a scale of one to ten. Third, you have an outsider
rank your product and features.

If you're executing at an seven or eight or above, then you know
you're doing well, but could be doing a little bit better. If you're
executing under a seven, your problems could be execution-based. You
just may not be delivering the goods. If you were a restaurant, the
analogy would be that you've got the right ingredients and product,
but you're just not preparing them well. This means you need to focus
on making the product better.

Another way to get a handle on how you're executing is to take your
product and put it up against your two top competitors and do the
one-to-ten rating process. Rate yourself and your competitors on the
top 10 features of all three offerings. How many are you winning? If
you're winning more than three, you're ahead of the game. If you're
three or behind, then you're average or losing.

Execution is the easiest thing to fix, and you can do it one of two
ways: get the people in your organization to perform at a higher
level, or get higher-level folks into your organization.

It really is that simple: folks can either step up or step out.

Step Two: How good is your idea

Determining if you have the right idea is a little more complicated
since most great businesses do not finish where they start. Google
started as a search engine but bought Applied Semantics in order to
create their real business: text-based advertising.

Microsoft started by building programming software (Altair Basic), but
went on to make it's business in operating systems, Microsoft Office
and servers.

If you're idea is wrong, it really doesn't matter. What matters is if
the original ideas allows you to evolve into your big idea.

In order to evolve, you must think like Darwin. Ask yourself: have you
adapted to your market? Have your customers asked you for something
different than you're currently providing? Have you given it to them?
After you give them what they want, can you anticipate what they'll
ask for next? Are those items following a theme?

At Silicon Alley Reporter, we started with a magazine and people loved
it. However, they wanted to get more frequent updates and asked us to
make it weekly. We reflected on this ask and came back with
something they didn't even know they wanted: the Silicon Alley Daily
email newsletter. 40,000 folks subscribed to it in the first year and
it was a much more usable product than the magazine or the requested
weekly print newsletter that we passed on doing.

The market will tell you what it wants. You just have to really
listen. Clearly, there was a market for the DEMO conference since it's
being going on for years. However, they never listened to the ask of
the market: let the companies be selected based on merit, not their
ability to pay almost $20,000. Yes, I know it's a self-serving
example, but those are the best ones.

When Mike Arrington and I founded the TechCrunch50 event, we didn't
think it would grow to be 2-3x as large as DEMO after only one
yearbut it did. The market had MASSIVE pent up demand for a
merit-based show and we tapped it. We evolved DEMO's business model,
not our own.

Now, I'm left asking myself, if I was trying to evolve TechCrunch50,
what would I do?

Another example from personal experience with start up evolution has
been with Mahalo. When we started, we were just doing hand-curated
links. The pages had very little actual content on them. In our user
lab, folks told us they loved the links, but they kept asking for more
content.

We studied the situation and realized that we could evolve and help
our customers more by writing more content on each page. To do this,
we studied what were the 10-15 things people wanted to know when they
did a searchthen we put them on the page. Doing this drove our
traffic from 300k monthly users last year to 4.6m uniques in August (a
record month).

Bottom line: Your first idea is rarely your best.

The first step in a journey is never the best either! Most folks hit
their stride two hours into the marathon. Don't be afraid to nuke your
first idea and run with your secondor third, forth or fifth.

Evolution is the revolution.

Step Three: Outside Factors

Outside factors are the toughest to deal with because, by definition,
they are outside of your control. Despite our deepest wishes, we can't
reverse the housing bubble, put the Towers back up or reverse the
accounting scandals.

All we can do is deal with outside factors, and knowing how to deal
with them is critical.

When the market is in the middle of correcting, as I believe it is
currently doing, people tend to underestimate everything including:

a) how bad it will be
b) how quickly it will get worse
c) how long it will take to recover

Chances are the market will get worse and that will happen sooner
rather than later. Watching folks on CNBC last month talking about a
two or three quarters of down market was just sad. It takes just as
long to clean up a mess as it does to make ittypically longer.

The housing mess took two or three years to develop (2004-2006). It
will take three years to unravel (2008-2010) from what I can see.
We're gonna be dealing with a bad market for at least two years.

10 Specific things you can do

Since the outside market is out of your control, the best you can do
is focus your energy inward. Here are some things you can do after
you've assessed where you company is at.

1. Execute better: This is fairly simple, as I describe above. Rank
yourself and your performance and improve it.

2. Grow the talent you have: When the market is down, it's a great
time to get your team educated and to the next level. Invest in
training and education of your top people, because they are the ones
who will lead your company through this mess.

3. Firing the average people: Again, it's totally politically
incorrect, but I highly recommend firing anyone who is good or
average. Startups are an Olympic sport and every slot on your team is
critical. You wouldn't put a good swimmer in a relay, would you?
Don't have one in your startup. Fire the good and replace them with
the great.

4. Cut spending every where you can: Recurring costs like
connectivity, phones, rent and insurance are things that you can
easily cut. Go to each of your providers and ask for 20% relief
immediately or you're leaving. Most, not all, will give it to you.

5. Find a revenue stream and ride it: If you don't have a revenue
stream right now, you'd better find one on Monday. Seriously, by the
end of the day. Once you find this revenue stream, ride it. Put at
least 25% of your effort into bringing in revenue.

6. Focus on your profitable clients: If you have revenue, start
focusing on which clients are most profitable. Take them to lunch and
figure out how you can over-service them and sell them another product
(or more of your current product). You're gonna want to protect these
accounts because the folks reading Point Five are going to be calling
them!

7. Make your top ten 10% better: Look at the top ten aspects of your
business and come up with a plan to make each 10% better in the next
30 days. Ask everyone in your company to make suggestions for the 10%
better program and execute on the ones that will provide the most bang
for the buck. Sometimes, there are things you can do today that will
make something 10% better for freeyou just haven't brainstormed
enough.

8. Hold an optional off-site breakfast meeting on a Sunday and see who
shows up: If folks don't show up for you to grow/save the company on a
Sunday for a two hour breakfast, they probably aren't going to step up
when the sh#$%t really hits the fan. You need to know who the real
killers on your team are and you need to get close with them now.
Again, it's fine to have 9-5ers on your teamif you're the Post
Office. You can't have them at a startup company. Note: if you reading
this and saying I'm anti-family, save it. Folks don't have to work at
startups and some of the hardest working folks I've met have families
and figure out how to balance things.

9. Build marketshare: One of the best things to do in the down market
is build marketshare. Look for competitors that are going out of
business and buy them or just steal their clients and talent (i.e.
pick them up).

10. Raise money: I know I said above most folks won't be able to raise
money in the down market, but that's not because the money isn't out
thereclearly it is. The issue is that the big money out there
doesn't want to fund small ideas that are in the death spiral. Build a
plan based on revenue and taking market share and folks will consider
funding you.

What ideas do you have for winning in a down market?

How do you stay inspired in bad times?

Send me your response and if you would like it quoted in a follow up
email, attributed or not.

all the best

Jason

In my teens I had already decided that I was an artist. Not that I wanted to be one, that I already was one. In my head I was one. I think to succeed you've got to be slightly mad. It's not just a matter of deciding what you want to be, you have to believe you already are that thing, it's just that nobody else has noticed yet.

I think this is excellent advice that I've inadvertently been following my whole life. No one asked me to be a radio talk show host, or a podcaster, or a conference organizer. For that matter, when I went to graduate school in computer science I had never actually taken a computer science course in my life but in my mind I was the thing and I made it happen. Decide what you want to be, decide you are that thing and manipulate reality until it is true.

I've been using Google's GrandCentral since well, before it was Google's GrandCentral. My day job is based in Virginia and with GrandCentral, I could have a 703 area code phone number that didn't tie me to my home office all day. However, over the last few months I've been frustrated by the service's limitations and glacial progress.

While there are many virtual PBX options for SMBs and Enterprise, most are priced way out of an individual's reach. They also tend to include features like toll-free numbers, multiple extensions and incoming/outgoing calls charged by the minute. I'm not looking for an answering system for my businessI'm a web worker looking for a better way to manage my personal and professional communications.

Where can you go when you've outgrown GrandCentral (or never got a chance to try it in the first place) but you're not ready to spend a lot on features you don't need? PhoneFusion One. I've been using the $9.95/month service for the last few weeks in a free trial account, and I'm quite impressed with it. Enough to give up GrandCentral completely? Yes, I think so.

For the purposes of this review, I'm going to focus on PhoneFusion One's standard plan at $9.95 per month. The company also offers a Premium plan which provides everything in the standard plan plus VOIP outgoing call features. With the standard plan, outgoing calls made through the PhoneFusion system are billed at 3.5 cents per minute. This is still preferable to similar services such as RingCentral which charge for both incoming and outgoing minutes.

Don't let the dated graphics on PhoneFusion's website deter you. The company is in the process of updating the site's look and feel.

Like with GrandCentral, you tell PhoneFusion which phones should ring on an incoming phone call. You can transfer calls and screen to voicemail. That's where the similarity to GrandCentral ends, as PhoneFusion gives you far more control over exactly what happens when that call comes in, for both you and the caller.

When someone dials a GrandCentral phone number, they hear what they think is a standard phone ring while GrandCentral is trying to find you at the numbers you specify. With PhoneFusion, the call is immediately answered by the system with an audible greeting that you can record. In addition, you decide whether your want your callers screened (who may I say is calling?), and you can upload your own music for your callers to listen to while they wait for the system to call your numbers and find you. While GrandCentral does allow you to customize what callers hear, they no longer allow you to upload music from your own library.

Every possible option is configurable on the PhoneFusion website. You decide whether you want your phone numbers to ring one-at-a-time or all at the same time. You decide how long you want the system to wait for you to answer, and how long it should wait for you to accept the call. You set the specific hours you want phones to be accessible (as opposed to GrandCentral's blanket business hours option).

You can configure what happens if the system gets your home voicemail, and whether calls should be auto-accepted. It takes some tweaking to get the timings right, being mindful that you will have someone sitting on hold. After some back and forth I finally have it set where the caller doesn't have to wait a total of more than 45 seconds, while still giving me enough time to answer the phone before I lose the caller to voicemail. I've also configured it so my cell phone auto accepts calls so I don't have to worry about scrambling for the keypad while on the go.

Like with GrandCentral, an email and/or SMS message is sent when a voicemail is received. With PhoneFusion, you can be notified of hang-ups, too, in case a caller didn't have the patience to wait for your destination phones to ring.

Your PhoneFusion number is also your fax number. No need for a separate eFax account. Yes, I knowfaxing is so old school. But when that secretary is holding a piece of paper and you need a copy of it, Can you scan that and send it to me as a PDF attachment or upload it to a file sharing service and email me the link? likely won't get what you need over Can you fax that to me? If a fax tone is detected on an incoming call, you receive the fax as a PDF attachment. Earlier in the week, I had a conversation with someone who said they were sending me a fax. We hung up and seconds later the fax was in my inbox. Much faster routing than with eFax. Unfortunately, the only way to send a fax through PhoneFusion is with a PC-only print driver.

An interesting PhoneFusion feature that I haven't had a chance to try yet is MeetMe conferencing. Rather than using a separate service such as FreeConference, you can easily schedule a conference call for up to 5 participants from within the control panel.

After the call is set up, you receive an email containing access information you can forward to participants. The participants call your PhoneFusion number and then press 9 and enter the access code you provide them.

PhoneFusion does not have an internal contact list. So unlike GrandCentral, you can't have different greetings for different callers or groups of callers. Considering how difficult it was to keep the GrandCentral contact list up-to-date, I do not miss this much.

The company also offers VoiceMail Plus, which allows you to manage all your voicemail messages from multiple sources (home, cell, etc.) into one visual voicemail interface. We took a brief look at this service a few months ago. Unfortunately, Apple/AT&T won't allow iPhones to participate so I was unable to test this feature. It currently works with Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices.

My favorite thing about PhoneFusion is how easy it is to manage and work with your account when you're not at your desktop. GrandCentral has a passable mobile website with minimal ability to change settings. Deal breaker for me: there is no way of listening to an already-played GrandCentral message from an iPhone.

When you call your own GrandCentral number from your cell phone, you can only listen to new messages and change greetings. When you call your PhoneFusion number from your cell phone and hit * (skipping the password prompt if you're calling from a number you've configured to be a preferred phone number), you can do so much more. Yes, you can listen to old messages. You can also manage your destination phones.

Let's say you're working from a temporary office or you're visiting friends and don't have access to a computer. Just dial your PhoneFusion number and add a new destination. Or disable an existing destination. You can review faxes, set up conference calls, you name itall by phone. Very very handy. You can even call your PhoneFusion number, hit *, then 9 (for an outside line), and enter the phone number you want to call when prompted (remember, this is charged per minute on the cheaper plan). No need for a dedicated dialer application. It's that easy.

The base price of $9.95/month is attractive, yet there are a number of a la carte options that can add up, beyond the 3.5 cents per minute per outgoing call. Want to remove the PhoneFusion.com branding callers hear immediately when they call? That's another $10/month. Additional storage, automatic phone recordings and other such features are also additional services.

In addition to unlimited VOIP calling, the $29.95 plan includes a softphone and the ability to use VOIP adapters. If you're looking to have your PhoneFusion number be your only incoming and outgoing phone number, it's the way to go. Otherwise, you can easily stick to the cheaper plan and not miss out on much. Support has been excellent, and the service has been rock solid.

Conclusion

PhoneFusion One is a nice blend of powerful features companies pay hundreds of dollars per month to get, and simple, consumer-friendly options for the mobile individual. If the only price you're willing to consider is free, then stick with GrandCentral and hope that Google gets its act together. If you're ready to get what you pay for, then PhoneFusion One seems to be well worth it.

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Users Make UGC, But Few Marketers Monitor It

A Jupiter Research report on this subject analyzes the risks of negative buzz. The report is entitled "When Good Social Marketing Goes Bad," but it should be noted that most people use the term "social marketing" to apply to campaigns that mean to bring about social change. The Jupiter report, however, uses the term more casually to mean any marketing campaign that relies on user-generated content of a viral nature.

What they discovered was that although marketers have been quick to embrace this new trend - 35% allow for user-generated content (UGC) on their own web site and 21% have a profile on a social network - they have not been as quick to monitor and combat the negative buzz that some of their consumers will create.

In fact, only 29% of marketers using these techniques are monitoring the online discussions about their products on an ongoing basis and a shocking 17% don't monitor online discussions at all. Also, despite the availability of professional "buzz monitoring" services like Nielsen BuzzMetrics or MotiveQuest, only 8% of marketers used these services in 2007.

Who's Talking Trash?

The Jupiter report was also able to build a profile of the typical creator of negative user-generated content. This person is usually a heavy user of social networks, predominantly male (60% are male) and into technology (40% are influential in this area and 23% are considered "early adopters"). They are also a potential valuable audience for marketers as 49% tend to act as brand advocates - which means they tend to be vocal influencers who spread the word online.

How to Fight the Negative Buzz

Before trying to combat the negative buzz, the first thought needs to be whether or not it's worth the effort. Often, marketers will attempt to offer these negative UGC creators special treatment or invite them to be beta testers in order to keep the feedback private and productive. However, these tactics are not always practical and they don't always work, either.

A marketer must be aware of how far and fast their company will go to fix a legitimate complaint and also how likely the complainer is to adjust their response. Keeping in mind that research shows that only 12% of online adults think UGC like those posted on social networks or message boards is "trustworthy," going to great lengths to quiet the naysayers is not always worth the effort.

Of course, sometimes it is worth the effort, which is why the most important thing for a marketer to determine is whether or not the negative content is created by someone who just wants to take a cheap shot at the company, or whether it actually offers genuine insight into a product or service's failure. If so, then addressing those persons that created the negative UGC makes sense. Then, it can actually be helpful to engage those people openly in the public forum to show the company is listening to valid complaints and responding. That is a difficult choice to make for a company, as it only takes one loud negative voice to affect an influence on the larger group of the company's customers. However, when done well, this type of response can be a benefit to all.

Conclusion

Lately we've seen a lot of companies attempting to combat negative online buzz in new ways - Comcast has been monitoring blogs and social networks for mentions of their company, Digg is now holding online townhalls, and many other companies are offering customer service via Twitter. We've also seen the potential volatile situation that can occur when one disgruntled customer's voice can attract the attention of the whole crowd, as in the situation with Ariel Waldman's complaint against Twitter. Even she admits on her blog that she never meant "...to bring a mob with pitchforks to Twitter's door," yet that is the power of even one complaint.

An old adage in advertising and marketing is that "a satisfied customer will, on average, tell five people, but a dissatisfied customer will tell everyone they know." For a company to be successful, especially now when the tools for communication are being intentionally placed in the customers' hands, it is more important than ever to know how to analyze, monitor, and respond to negative online buzz.

Despite being the one company that, more than any other, raised awareness of podcasting and gave the music industry a kick up the ass with iTunes, Apple is dismissive of social software. The company discourages employee blogging. It sued some of its biggest fans. It shut down online forum posts when people complained about problems with its Leopard operating system.

Jay Moonah mentioned Apple on his (excellent) Media Driving podcast the other day, wondering why brands like Apple and Seth Godin don't get attacked for not joining the conversation.

So why doesn't Apple feel the need to engage with other customers? How come it hasn't descended into Dell hell (and had to dig itself out) yet?

Because it doesn't need to. Apple has an army of fans that does the job way better than the company ever could.

Apple focuses on creating a fantastic user experience. Whether it's the iPod, the Mac or the iPhone, Apple's strength of design gives an experience that people love.

Sure, they would probably benefit from engaging with customers, listening to what they're saying and responding like Dell, GM or Comcast. Let's face it, though, like it or not those companies don't have the rabid following that Apple does. They need to reach out to convince people.

Apple's fans do it for them. When your brand is this strong, why take a risk using untried tactics?

Not everyone agrees with me on this. There are plenty of people that wonder if Apple really wants the crazed few defending its reputation and who think the company really needs to engage.

What do you think?

Today was a rough day for me, emotionally. I guess it all has to do with how much of my life I choose to put on the web - a lot. There's very little that I don't share with the people I'm connected with on the web, via this blog, Twitter, or whatever. But it came back to bite me today, and I'm smarting. I guess it's just an unpleasant result of putting my life online.

Earlier today, I was in a meeting where some people from the marketing group were presenting on what they're doing in the world of social media. Anyone who knows me knows that this is a sensitive topic, because I believe very strongly that there's a right and a wrong way to use social tools for marketing. There were lots of buzzwords flying around in the meeting, and of course, I couldn't resist making some snarky comments on Twitter. Some of the other people in the meeting are on Twitter, too, and we started a little bit of backchannel banter on the topic.

The conversation then moved into the comments of a post on Michael Brito's blog (Michael works in the marketing department at Intel), and continued in a pretty heated fashion for the rest of the day (Michel turned off comments on that post a few minutes ago). You can go read the thread yourself, to see what was said.

Now, i can't speak to how anyone else in the thread was feeling, or what they were thinking, so the rest of this post is going to be about my thoughts and feelings. I don't want to put words into anyone else's mouth.

I started out frustrated, and finding it hard to make sense of what I was trying to say. I had a very strong feeling and idea I was trying to communicate (about the right vs. wrong way of marketing, having a human voice, and other crap you can go read about). I felt strongly so I spoke strongly, and at first, it didn't work at all. It seemed that everything I said only make people defensive, raised hackles, and provoked retaliation - comments about how I should look in a mirror, etc.

But, as is usually the case during a debate on a complex and emotionally charged topic, after a while, through thinking about it and talking it out, I felt like I settled on a way to clearly and calmly communicate the point I was trying to make the whole time:

I'm giving you feedback and criticism. I'm not trying to attack you personally, but I'm trying to make a point. I can understand you feeling defensive. I'm saying things that make you uncomfortable. But the reason I'm saying them is not to attack you. I promise.

I've been doing this social media stuff since before it was even called that. Years and years. I know how to connect with people and build community. I know how to use those skills in marketing - to build an audience, share information, etc. I know what I'm doing. One of the reasons I'm getting so frustrated is that I wish I'd get a little respect for the things that I know and have done. I'm not the new kid on the block here.

I just noticed something - your voice became human in these comments. You're talking like yourself. You're letting your feelings show through. We're having a conversation.

I know it's hard to preserve that human voice when you go to write a blog post. I struggle with that, too. I always ask myself how can I write this so that it doesn't sound like a press release, or something written by the marketing committee. I don't always succeed. I probably succeed less often than I think I do.

But I try, because I really, truly, fundamentally believe that I should sound like a human when I write. Because I know that if I don't, it's a lot less likely that people are going to want to have a conversation with me. And the reason I write, on my blog, on Twitter, for ISN, or wherever else, is to have those real conversations. To make those real connections with other people. It's what I live for. I believe it's the RIGHT way to market to people - connecting with them with respect, humility, and in my very own human voice.

Another reason I get so frustrated with how Intel and other companies are using/abusing/exploiting social media is that they use the same old command and control techniques, and treat it just like it's another channel or medium for them to deliver their message into my brain.

It's an antagonistic view. The terminology is military, brutal, warlike. Tactics, strategy, campaigns. I am NOT a target. I resent being targeted. I am a human being. Connect with me. Converse with me. I'm telling you how you (collectively) can do that. And I get pissed off when I'm ignored, and still treated like a target or just another set of eyeballs.

Conversations matter because they build relationships. Links between people. And as you build more and more of those links, you start getting something really, really cool and powerful and worthwhile - community. To me, that's the golden ring.

But it's possible to do things that hurt those connections, and thus hurt the community. Talk down to people. Target them. Treat them like nothing more than recipients for the message you want them to get. Don't listen to them.

And on a more subtle level, you can do things that don't necessarily hurt the connections and the community, but don't do anything to build them, either. Things like being boring or uninteresting. Not providing any human surface area for people to connect to.

In my opinion, that middle ground is the most dangerous place to be. It's where we (and I'm definitely including myself) get complacent, lazy, and (yes, I'm going to say it), arrogant.

I'm sorry this whole thing spiraled into whatever it was. It's not fair of me to judge you as a person based solely on what you write on your blog, and I apologize for any offense that was given.

I'd like to get to know you better - to connect with you in a meaningful way. But I'm frustrated because I can't find much human surface area to attach to. It's all business and marketing. So I guess what I've been trying to say, and ask for, is for you to provide me (and others) a little more of your human voice, so we can build a better connection.

Does any of that make sense? Or am I really just crazy, and talking nonsense? I feel that way sometimes

I felt calmer after posting that. I felt like I had gotten to the bottom of the argument I was trying to make, and had found a way to say it that hopefully wouldn't be too prickly and raise too many hackles. I was, honestly, feeling like I had accomplished something in the midst of the arguing and debate.

I really felt like I was exposing myself, emotionally, when I wrote that. I was sharing my true feelings, without varnish, without buffer. I've found in the past that putting myself out there like that was scary, but worth it, because if I didn't, I'd be a hypocrite, telling other people to be human and share their real, human voice if I wasn't willing to do it myself. And people are usually respectful, and tend to open up themselves after I've done so.

But this time, it backfired on me, and I got hurt.

In the comments that followed, a coworker that I consider a friend, someone who gets it (and who I don't even want to name here, for fear of appearing like I'm trying to lash back at her or something, which I'm not) had this to say:

Josh, have you ever considered the reason you lack respect is your voice? You come across as condescending when you discuss how you inventedI meandiscovered social media before anyone else. Yes, there must always be a pioneer. And thank you for your efforts in that arena. But noone will take you seriously when you continue to tout your position as social media guru (even if you don't use the words) and talk (or throw around labels like arrogant) at people instead of with people. That's what makes this dialogue so ironic. You're doing exactly what you claim to abhor.

(Here comes the mushy part where I talk about my feelings - you've been warned!)

It really hurt to read that. I felt almost like I had been physically smacked upside the head. I felt that way partly because it was unexpected - coming from someone I consider a friend, and partly because it made me start thinking maybe she's right - maybe I'm arrogant and condescending and no one has ever bothered to tell me before. No one had ever said something like this to me before. No one had ever stated or implied that I act like I invented social media at Intel. The thought never occurred to me, and I've never tried to be like that. But what if she was right?

I posted a response, talking about Intel's dog eat dog Focal review culture, and how if I didn't take credit for things I had done, no one else was going to give me that credit. But that's not what I was really thinking about

Now, I mentioned earlier that there are very few personal details of my life that I don't share on the web. My life is pretty much an open book. But one thing I've never really talked about online is how I've always struggled with my sense of self worth. Or rather, than I have a very persistent, severe tendency to get down on myself, to start thinking that I'm not doing anything right, and feeling like I'm not worth anything. Yes, I've sought professional help. I feel like I generally keep these feelings under control, but they're always there, under the surface, and I don't know what it was about today - the passionate nature of the people involved, or my own strong feelings on the topic, but once I read those words, I couldn't think of anything else.

Usually, when I get like this, I just withdraw from my online life - I stop blogging, leave Twitter alone, and find something to do to get through the rough spot. It would be easier if I drank, or had some other mind altering vice (Ben and Jerry's doesn't count, does it?). I've been embarrassed to talk about my feelings. I figured there's got to be SOMETHING I keep to myself, and don't share with the world. And yet, here I am, writing this blog post. Consider it Self Therapy by Blogging.

So I need to ask you a question. Besides all of my own self-loathing issues, I need to be sure of something. I need to know if there's something I can do better, to make some real change come out of all this. So I need you to tell me if you think I'm arrogant, condescending, take credit for things I didn't do, or otherwise behave like a jerk.

I want to know so I can stop doing it, and correct any wrongs that I've done. Not because I'm feeling sorry for myself, and I want you all to pile on. And not because I'm feeling sorry for myself, and I'm fishing for complements and pats-on-the-back to make myself feel better.

I honestly want to know, so I can become a better person. You are my friends, and I value you what you think. if I had spinach in my teeth, I'd want you to tell me. Same thing here.

Leave a comment, or drop me an email (jabancroft@gmail.com) if you'd rather talk in private. Thanks for listening to me talk about my feelings!