Random Reflections....

"The greatest mistake we can make is to be continually fearing that we will make one." -- Elbert Hubbard

"If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?" -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"Simply, the thing that I am shall make me live." --William Shakespeare
(opposed to the thing that I do in my opinion)

"Freedom lies in being bold." --Robert Frost

Ah yes, and two of my favorites:

"Don't worry about what the world wants from you, worry about what makes you become more alive. Because what the world really needs are people who are more alive." --Lawrence Le Shan

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." -- Mike McNight.

I'll toast to both.

Museums & Podcasting

Check out the New York Times on the growth of audio tours and podcasting and their relevance to museums.

Museums are also using MP3 players and there's talk about putting audio guide material on the Internet so consumers can download interesting data to their portable players. With podcasting on the rise, museumgoers could and are starting to actually create their own guides and tours. Cool stuff.

Early MIT Days

This was too classic not to post. Scott Cutler pulled out an old MIT ID from ......... at D3 last week. Who can guess the year based on the hairstyle?

David Koch Missing in Canada

Long time industry friend Gary Bolles contacted me recently to help spread the word about his friend who is missing on a mountain in Canada. For those of you who know Gary, he's a great great person and deserves a bit of a viral word of mouth on this if you can help. (not to mention his friend who needs everyone's help to ensure his safe return). This should be the time and place where blogs can really show their strength and value-add.

Shel and Robert posted something on it and hopefully others will start. It's important to ensure the Canadian authorities don't give up the search for his friend David Koch, the associate publisher of DMReview.

Here's his message:
A friend of mine, David Koch, is missing on a mountain in Canada, and I'm looking for help to publicize his situation so the Canadian authorities don't give up looking.

Dave's the associate publisher on DMReview, a Thomson/SourceMedia publication. He drove from Seattle toward Vancouver on Wednesday, stopping in late afternoon to take a tram up a mountain he and his wife had visited years before. Apparently he missed the tram back, and attempted to hike down. He hasn't been heard from since.

A search effort was organized, but it's looking like the authorities in Canada are starting to give up.

Dave is a truly great person, and I simply can't imagine that he could be left on his own at this point. I'm looking for any contacts you can suggest in the national media - NYTimes, the wires, broadcast, etc. - who might be able to recommend a reporter who could help to publicize Dave's situation. If you have any ideas as to how we should go about the process, please email me or call me any time day or night.

Blogging in North Carolina

The LA Times writes about Greensboro North Carolina and its local newspaper the News & Record, with a daily circulation of not quite 100,000.

They have launched a new project called the "Town Square" project, which is all about celebrating the "region's proud colonial and democratic heritage." Apparently Greensboro has a healthy blogging culture, so bloggers will become an integral and important voice with the newspaper and community and bloggers may in fact be invited to editorial and budget meetings.

Blogs & Mainstream Media Event

There's a Blogs and Mainstream Media breakfast at the Techmart Building in Santa Clara on June 9th at 8:30 am. Dan Gillmor is speaking as is client Five Across' VP of Marketing David Aune.

The panel discussion will revolve around how blogs are having on mainstream media, corporations, and the consumer. Kara Swisher and Chris Nolan are also on the list.

A Recap of the Computer Bowl

Here's my last D3 entry, a few days late, but its too precious not to recap somewhere so we can hold onto the memory. Blogs are really great for holding onto memories in an organized way.

Last year, Walt and Kara came up with the Computer Bowl idea, which is basically a geek version of Jeopardy, where two teams go head-to-head answering tough questions on the technology industry stemming back to what I considered "dinosaur computer days." Jeffrey Tarter, we never did our Boston Dinosaur Technology event, did we? :-)

Team 1 who described themselves as the True Nerds, included industry veteran Stewart Alsop, Rob Glaser, Mary Meeker and Mitch Kapor. At the end of the game, I thought true nerds was an understatement for this group.

Team 2 included Mitchell Kertzman, Eric Schmidt, Bill Gates and Esther Dyson. I'm not sure how they got Gates to participate, particularly since he answered very few questions. Yet, he was a great sport, came across as a team player and more authentic than I've seen him publicly in awhile. They called themselves the Same Team, which I couldn't quite figure out, except that it may have been related to unity, cohesiveness, etc.

Not unlike last year, I was in stitches throughout the entire event, as I sat propped on the floor near the front row sadly unable to snap photos of the color, life and energy of the faces participating.

The rules: there were three standard rounds of questions with each round being 7 minutes in length. If the answer was not what was expected but close, it went to an examiner to determine whether it counted or not. The last round was the lightening round, where each team selected a champion to answer as many questions as they could in a two minute period.

Mitch Kapor and Bill Gates were the chosen two and while one answered, the other sat on a chair listening to disco music via a set of headphones.

Categories included the following:
--Lights, cameras, computers
--My computer and me
--Mind your business
--The way we were
--Crunching Code
--e-something

I didn't manage to capture all the questions but noted quite a few. Here we go:

The first one was a "photo question," which was the first mouse designed by Doug Engelbart. Mitch is the first one to get it correct.

What does the term midi stand for? Eric pipes in "music industry visual interface." Wrong. "Music instrument digital interface," Rob interjects.

What was the official name of the color of the original iMac? No one knew the answer to this one, at least not on stage. We learn that it was Bondi Blue - who knew?

What low cost PC retailer was purchased by Gateway? eMachines answers Rob Glaser.

What was the original name of WorldCom when it was founded in 1983? Walt had to respond to this one - it was LDDS.

What does MCI stand for? Microwave Communications Inc., Esther chimes in.

What famous icon called the birthplace of Silicon Valley is located at 367 Addison Avenue? H&P’s Garage, says Mitchell Kertzmann.

When did Excite at home file for bankruptcy protection? Mary says it was 2001.

This Company changed its name to Wordstar? MicroPro stays Mitch Kapor. (I actually knew that one. Am I that old that I actually not only remembered Wordstar but used it when I went to college in London in 19XX - never mind).

The term wiki is used to describe collaborative computing, derived from the Hawaiian meaning of what? “Quick” says Mitch Kapor.

Disney bought a search company and changed its name to? Mitch is fast, "It was InfoSeek and they changed their name to Go."

What Netscape executive served on the board of AOL? Gate gets this one - It was Jim Barksdale.

What is the name of the old media executive who recently gave a controversial speech, “I shouldn’t do as much as I should have, but…” Murdock says Mary quickly.

How many weblogs are being tracked by Technorati? 10 million says Mitchell Kertzman. No, 9.5 says the card but the audience confirms 10 million. Dave Sifry missed that one but was there for day 2 to hear the story.

What well known blog builds its directory as the log of wonderful things? Yup, it was Boing Boing for those who were easily able to guess that one.

Who is considered the father of the mini computer? Bill gets this one right and the audience claps.

What year was the first year Windows released? 1985 and Gates doesn’t push the buzzer on time. Bill says quietly under his breath,"it was actually 1986." Laughter from the audience.

What does GW stand for? Gee Whiz says Rob Reid. Wrong says Kara but Gates interjects and says, Rob's actually right." Good sport Bill. They give it to him.

Internet Capital Group had peak revenues of 43 million. Within 10%, what was the company’s peak capitalization? Answer 55 billion. No one knew.

Name the first widely available dram chip and the company that released it? 16k and Texas Instruments says Rob. Walt says it was the 1103. Egads, some of these questions are a bit much. I was likely living on a ship off the coast of Turkey back then. Hard to say but certainly not programming or launching products.

Who was the creator of computer architecture modeled on the Connection Machine? Danny Hillis says Mitch Kapor. I start to think - Mitch, egads, you can't possibly know the answer to this many questions, slow down buddy. But he does and continues to impress. Way to go Mitch. His other half joined him at D this year and I bet she was smiling ear-to-ear.

Ooooooh, another photo question. Who is this man and what company did he found? Gates gets this one - it was Watson who founded IBM.

What did HP initially call its first calculator the HP 35? Kara asks this question to the entire True Nerds team. No one knows; we learn that it was The Electronic Slide Rule. Egads, what a name. We need to start coming up with sexier names in the next decade.

They get another group question thrown their way, which they answer correctly. What web company notes in its about section that you can be serious without a suit? Yup, its Google.

Kara asks the Same Team what category they want for their "team question." Kertzman responds, “We’ll pick Bill’s emails." I've always loved his sense of humor. It's essential to have a witty sense of humor in this industry - how else do you think right brains and left brains communicate? :-)

They put head phones on Bill and as does so, Kara says “He’s the richest man in the world and he can’t dance.” Spot on girl. I've been on the same dance floor as Gates a couple of times, including an old Spencer Katt party and I have to agree. Bill, don't take it personally though - your other qualities and successes certainly make up for it. :-)

Hopefully they'll post photos of this entertaining event, which would add so much color to my summary.

iHollywood Forum: All Things Digital

iHollywood Forum is coming up in a few weeks in LA, which is focused on business opportunities using digital technologies that create, deliver and distribute content.

On June 7 and 8th, they will cover issues pertaining to broadband, gaming, digital, interactive and HDTV, music, film, video, DVD, cable networks, wireless and WiFi and new media. They seem to have an interesting line up of speakers this year, including RealNetworks, Creative Strategies, Motorola, MusicNow, EMI Music, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Yahoo Music, Variety, etc.

The Faces of D3

A conference is never a conference without the faces that make up the energy and dialogue.

A handful of memories from this year's D Conference earlier this week.

Website Marketing

Here's an interesting read in Heidi Cohen's ClickZ column on getting more money from paid content.

She talks about the need for online publishers to continually be testing new ways to improve marketing results. On site improvement, vendors must constantly test and analyze both offerings and merchandising to prove what improves a site.

Apparently, the A/B testing method is the most common one, but others include multivariate, eye-tracking, click path and ease-of-use.