Sorry, but I just don’t get the hype behind 3D TV’s! I’m with Steve Hodson and many others on this one.
Sony, Samsung, Panasonic and virtually every other TV manufacturer are rushing to bring them into your local BestBuy, while the media is gushing over their impending arrival…perhaps due to the euphoria “Avatar” induced in them!
Let’s look at the issues;
With the exception of a few Blu-Ray movies that ‘may’ come out sometime later this year (and will require a special Blu-Ray player), there is no 3D programming for you to watch.
Who is going to wear the ugly and uncomfortable shutter glasses every time you watch TV – especially those of us among the 64% of the US adult population who wear glasses (according to the Vision Council of America)
To that you need to add a Blu-Ray player to show the aforementioned 2 movies ($249 – check), HD 3D Receiver ($599 – check)
So, having spent over $5,000 on all the shiny new gadgets, you get to sit in your living room wearing two pairs of glasses, pumping Advil down your throat to stave off the headaches, watching the 2 movies you bought, for the 20th time! Good luck with that!
Its comforting to see that there is still some common decency left despite the seemingly total transparency that social media facilitates.
Yesterday the pilot and passengers of a small aircraft were killed when their plane hit some power lines and crashed into a Palo Alto daycare (fortunately it was empty) – so far, not a big story. But the pilot and passengers happened to be Tesla employees, and of course the conclusion most people would jump to is that it must have been senior execs at the hot EV start-up, i.e. big story (at least in the melting pot of Silicon Valley).
But despite the fact that the names of those who died was quickly discovered by a number of blogs and reporters, not a single one Tweeted them until almost 24 hours later! Its common decency to give the authorities time to inform the next of kin, and I am increasingly wondering whether common decency and social media mix; it seems, at least so far, that they do.
G’day. In early November I am heading to Melbourne, Australia for week to work with a start-up there I am advising. If anyone knows of other interesting start-ups I should check out while down-under please let me know in the comments or email me at warrickt [at] gmail dot com.
For a little over a year I have been at Zuberance, initially as an Advisor to guide and support the company through its first venture round, and later as VP Business Operations, where I managed pretty much every aspect of scaling a company from 2 employees and 1 customer to what it is today; several Fortune 1000 customers, around 20 employees/contractors, new offices and a new exec team.
Its been a fun journey but despite the ongoing economic gloom, I have decided to strike out and beat a different path. As a I write this I am sitting at home, working on a very cool new start-up that won’t change the world, but will make it a little more fun.
Thanks to everyone at Zuberance – I have made some new friends, learnt a lot and gained the confidence to do what I am doing now!
We recently bought and installed a Hills Supafold clothes line on the side of our house. It has ample room for two washes, and given the weather here in N. California it’s at most an hour before we have lovely dry, fresh-scented clothes. All for almost $0. Which leads me to the point of this post….around 36 people live in Califonia in approx 12m households and yet very few of those have washing lines. My exhaustive research, which entailed asking a sales clerk in Bath and Beyond how many packets of pegs they sold each week, leads me to conclude that virtually no one has clothes lines (BTW just finding a store that sells pegs is a challenge!).
What with the rising cost of utilities and increasing awareness of our carbon footprint its deplorable that more people haven’t ditched their costly clothes dryers. I reckon a clothes dryer costs around $2 in electricity per load – which means that we only have to do around 120 loads before we are saving money – or about 14 months in our 4 person household! The ROI is far better than pretty much any other attempt to lower utility bills. Maybe the govt should have a program to encourage folks to help the planet rather than one to help them buy new cars which only harm it.
I’m not at the TechCrunch50 conference going on this week here in San Francisco but have kept abreast of the companies pitching their business via the TC site and others. Two companies launched yesterday that made me wince; Story Something and Toybots.
Story Something allows parents to create customized bedtime stories featuring their kids names, pets, favorite places, etc. and have them delivered to their iPhone. Toybots is a platform fpr connecting toys to the web so that parents can get the toy to tell a story (for example). One of the presenters (can’t remember which) pointed out that parents spend only around 5 minutes reading to their kids each day…and so how do either of these help us become better parents exactly?
Story Something allows parents to use their iPhone as a proxy parent whilst Toybots mean you can now get a damn Woozee to do the talking for you (which looks like a scary version of Yoda). Mr. and Mrs. Couch Potato, who are already glaring examples of absentee/disinterested/dysfunctional parenting now have another way to be even less effective – great.
You know those coupon flyers you find inside your daily newspaper – you still get a daily newspaper don’t you!? Well chance are they are courtesy of Valassis. But, much like the paper itself, you won’t be seeing them for much longer as Valassis announced today that they are abandoning newspaper distribution in favor of the postal service in three of their markets. From the article: “The move represents the acknowledgement that newspaper circulation is on the decline and advertising clients want to continue to reach as many people they can in markets with shrinking newspaper coverage.”
This is significant as it’s a strong indicator that many newspaper are in the final throes of the ‘vicious cycle of decline’ to a slow and painful death! One of the main reasons newspapers are reducing their frequency and only maintaining print editions a few days a week is that they can still make money by distributing coupons and circulars. Further, readers value those coupons – readers buy ads, not news.
You can see where this going…..the more papers shrink, the more value they lose and the more value they lose the more they shrink.
Coupons and circulars are media that ‘use’ newspapers to achieve distribution. When they can be distributed online, for free, then the distribution business will slowly fade away……de dum de dum.
Cheltenham and Gloucester, a UK building society (credit union), just announced 1,600 layoffs; meanwhile the London Tube strike continues, following the breakdown of talks over the reinstatement of 2 (TWO) workers.
Are the two sides living on different planets? In the UK it appears that the entire burden of job losses has been shouldered by the private sector, whilst public sector jobs keep growing….last year they increased 50,000 every QUARTER!
Meanwhile, over 1/2 of UK firms have imposed a pay freeze ( or plan to do so), whilst public salaries enjoy healthy increases.
And what of pensions….with the recent tax changes its pretty much impossible for anyone in the private sector to accumulate as good a pension as someone in the public sector AUTOMATICALLY acquires.
Can this imbalance continue before the suits rebel! In the US the liberal government is just getting started, but whose nest will they feather along the way?
Ever wonder why traffic jams seem to just happen for no apparent reason? This video from research in Japan shows how, despite traffic traveling at a constant speed on a test track, a traffic jam shockwave forms….fascinating.
Posted by warrickt 
For a little over a year I have been at 
You know those coupon flyers you find inside your daily newspaper – you still get a daily newspaper don’t you!? Well chance are they are courtesy of Valassis. But, much like the paper itself, you won’t be seeing them for much longer as Valassis 
