Innovation City or Kickstarter is amazing....

I Love KickStarter

This week has been tremendous.  I find very little in the way of new software, hence the lack of writing for a while.  But a new website, actually one that is a few years old now, has caught my attention and raised my awareness about the ingenuity of people who continue to work in garages.  I have taken the time to join Kickstarter and support a few projects that have been offered.  The beauty of the site is that the crowd becomes the Angel Investor in a small company.  Usually the company has failed to attract the financing needed to go the extra yard.  To be honest, there are a lot of companies out there that are not ready for prime time.  Whether they are not ready or because they have an audience that is too narrow - so called niche players, the usual  Angel Investors - mainly from Silicon Valley - will not pay attention to them because the reward/risk ratio is too low.   This is where crowd sourcing comes in and where Kickstarter leads the way.


The way this works is that you invest as much as you can and if the investment hits one of the goals specified - which could be either a letter of thanks (usually a $1), a gift or the actual product itself - you receive a response from the inventor.  The one caveat is that the company has to make its goal otherwise no one gets anything.   And you, the investor lose no money.  Your credit card is not touched.  It's a relatively fool-proof way of garnering an investment and getting your company off the ground.


So, I became a crowd source Angel Investor in a Start up company, along with others.  It's really interesting to see, because the investing also applies for non techie stuff as well, such as movie makers, book and song writers who offer thanks in their credits.   You get to choose what you want to invest in.   Of course, there is some room for fraud, but a recent attempt at fraud was rooted out "by the crowd." Apparently, with crowd sourcing, the companies that are in tech at least have a track record of some type and people know and trust them from previous endeavors.  If something sounds fishy, there is a loud and cantankerous roar of disapproval in the comments section.  Remember, nothing gets paid to the seller/creator, until/unless the goal that was set from the onset of the offering is reached.


With that introduction, I want to tell you about a few products that I am absolutely crazy about:


1. The Pebble


First of all, I never thought that I would fall in love with something like this.  I hate watches.  I haven't worn one in over 10 years.  But this company appears to have made a watch that will deliver on the pr

omise of a changeable device that can make you keep your phone tucked away some where.


First of all, although The Pebble is a stand alone watch, its main functionality is its direct link to the iPhone (or Droid).  The functions can be programmed and the company is touting the ability for the watch to receive SMS messages via the phone.  Unfortunately, SMS messages are not allowed to be transferred to the watch from the iPhone, but will work with a Droid.  But I believe iMessages can.  So you can receive an SMS message, information on who is calling you, while being away from your phone.  There is no microphone, so the phone is basically using information gathered from itself and sending it via short distance by Bluetooth to the watch.


The downside is that the company will use Bluetooth 2.0 instead of 4.0.  Although the power consumption is lower with 4.0, the older Bluetooth will be used for the initial model, unless things change.  A full listing of things that the watch can do are listed below:

(SUPER UPDATE:    JUST ANNOUNCED TODAY,  PEBBLE WILL SHIP WITH BT 4.0, NOT 2.0.   AMAZING RESPONSE FROM THE COMPANY). 

CUSTOMIZE WITH APPS

Apps bring Pebble to life. We're building some amazing apps for Pebble. Cyclists can use Pebble as a bike computer, accessing the GPS on your smartphone to display speed, distance and pace data. Runners get a similar set of data displayed on their wrist. Use the music control app to play, pause or skip tracks on your phone with the touch of a button. If you're a golfer, feel free to bring Pebble onto the course. We're working with Freecaddie to create a great golf rangefinder app for Pebble that works on over 25,000 courses world-wide. Instead of using yourphone, view your current distance to the green right on your wrist. These apps will be the first, with more in the works!

CUSTOMIZE WITH WATCHFACES

Pebble can change instantly, thanks to its brilliant, outdoor-readable electronic-paper (e-paper) display. We've designed tons of watchfaces already, with more coming every day. Choose your favourite watchfaces using Pebble's iPhone or Android app. Then as the day progresses, effortlessly switch to the one that matches your mood, activity or outfit.

 

CUSTOMIZE WITH NOTIFICATIONS

If you need to stay on top of things, Pebble can help with vibrating notifications, messages and alerts. Dismiss a notification with a shake of your wrist. Don't worry, it's easy to disable all notifications.

• Incoming Caller ID
• Email (Gmail or any IMAP email account)
• Calendar Alerts
• Facebook Messages
• Twitter
• Weather Alerts
• Silent vibrating alarm and timer

Android users can also receive Text Messages (SMS) on their Pebble. Unfortunately iPhone does not expose this data. Have any suggestions for other notification types? Leave us a message in the comments!

CUSTOMIZE BY CODING

Want your watch to tell you when your next bus is leaving? Maybe you're jonesing to see your compile status or recent github commits.. Think push notifications, directly to your watch using the data connection on your phone. Want to check-in on your watch, or create an app that can monitor your sleep? Pebble can send data from the accelerometer and buttons back up to the internet.
Pebble can receive simple alerts and notifications from if this then that (ifttt.com) or our web-facing RESTful endpoint. More adventurous developers can use the Pebble SDK, with its Arduino-like abstractions and simple C structure, to gain full control of the watch. Multiple apps can run on Pebble, along side watchfaces and regular notifications.

• Load apps using Bluetooth 
• 144 x 168 pixel display black and white e-paper
• Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR
• 4 buttons
• Vibrating motor
• 3 axis accelerometer with gesture detection
• Distribute apps via Pebble watchapp store

Detailed SDK specs are available on our Pebble Dev Blog. 

2. The Slingshot


This was my second buy.  I think that I laughed this one off for a long time until I watched the video of the device.  The Slingshot is essentially an iPhone bracket that can be used to stabilize your videos as you take them.  I though that this was tacky, until I saw the other uses for the device.  These included various flexibility options to make the Slingshot bend in different shapes for difficult shots; disconnecting the handle portion of the device enabling the bracketed iphone to install upon a standard Tripod - That was the deal maker for me!


You have to see the video for this, particularly if you feel that this is a bit of a joke, as I did initially.  In addition, I could not believe the price --- $14, including shipping and handling.  I've seen worse, offering less for more!  I couldn't help but donate $14 to the project.  Charles Waugh, the founder of the company is quite a character as well.   I'll write a review on this when it arrives this summer.


 








Pop over to Kickstarter to see all of the fun:

The Slingshot http://kck.st/H7NbML
The Pebble http://kck.st/HumIV5

 

iGenapps MyApps - What not to do if you're a startup.

I have been interested for the past two days  in an app that has shown great promise.  My Apps is an app from a company called iGenApps available for the iPhone that promises to change the landscape of iPhone programming, by bringing self-made apps to the masses, without the need to learn cumbersome code.  The app is available for $1.99 at the app store and its 3rd iteration was brought into the light by a road show that took the web by storm this week.  At a demonstration at a conference, appropriately named DEMO.COM,  the company was able to show how easy it is to develop a rudimentary application on the iPhone and make it available as a web app for usage by anyone to whom you email the web address.   

I actually stopped dictating my charts after I saw the demo on thursday and proceeded to drop 2 hours into creating an app that I've been toiling over for my call group.  In the space of 20 minutes I was able to create the app that I had toiled over in Objective-C for months.  Granted the UI was relatively generic and standard, it was perfect for what I needed it for.  And 20 minutes would have been all that I needed to create, distribute and sing the praises of this app until something went terribly wrong!

I was unable to see a preview of my app.  I tried several times, but could never get the chance to see what my app actually looked like in the wild.  I tried different things, even having one of my partners sign up and recreating the app through their account. But to no avail, the app would get stuck in trying to do a preview.  I knew that I was not alone when a few other users started mentioning this on the comments section of the App store.  So I sent an email to the company, followed by a message to their Technical Support team (which the app stated to use) and then on Twitter.  Despite all three modes there was no response from the company.  Tweets on Twitter from other users were not useful, with a plethora of retweets supporting the view of how much of a game changer this app would become.  But it was obvious that none of the people tweeting had actually used the product.  There were no negative tweets except my own.  I assume that the company, an obvious startup, had become oblivious to the negative comments in the App store since they were on their road tour .

I would like to assume that there was oblivion and that the company was completely unaware, because the deafening silence was essentially disturbing.  I managed to see the wonderful reviews on the App store go from 5 stars for version 1.02 of their software to 1 star for the current version 1.03.  I obviously wished that I was privy to the earlier versions.   This is a problem for startups that I have seen on several occasions - How to communicate with your customers when things go wrong?  And quite honestly, I think that this is probably the worst thing that could have happened to iGenApps.  Imagine being the leaders of a company, performing an incredible demonstration, wowing the internet community, even stopping a physician in his tracks from dictating so that he could look at this sensational app, only to have a server go down.   With such worldwide attention, it would seem that even if there was a disaster on a server, the company would get ahead of this and mention it in a tweet or on their web site.  Apple does this!

As of this writing a few people have written that they have received word that there is a server issue at iGenapps and that it is directly affecting the Previews.  It is hoped that they will correct this by the end of this weekend.  But the real problem here is that we are finding this out through other users who are lucky enough to get an email.   This is not a good idea for a company that is poised to be a game changer.   Other companies are using Twitter or at the very least, releasing server updates on their website.  But this deafening silence is awful.

I personally see this company and its product as game changers.  I think that there will be more companies coming to the forefront who will do the same, if not better, but IGenapps needs to improve on its ability to communicate with its customers if it is to lead in this nascient category.

Thank You Palm - A Reprint from 2010

Feeling a little nostalgic today, I have decided to pay homage to a great company that put itself up for sale 2 years ago.  A company that started a revolution and literally became one of the first companies that changed the way in which I look at the world.  As I did in 2010, I will say it again, THANK YOU PALM. 

Sunday, April 11, 2010

T H A N K Y O U P A L M

Bloomberg is reporting that PALM has put itself up for sale. What a sad day this is if the rumors are true. I remember the early days of Palm and can reflect back on a time when this company really ruled the handheld market. What a difference a few years make. A misstep here, a faulty product launch there and a lagging Operating system brought this company down. Even with a sensational product like the PRE, the company did it all too late.

I shed a tear for this company. I personally tried, by starting this blog, to contribute to the Palm blogosphere and my requests for updates and additions were more out of love for the company that was and the company that I wanted it to be. Who can forget the day that they set their eyes on the Palm III ? It was a thing of beauty. Or the slider on the Palm V? I actually had two of them. That was innovation ! Palm really showed how to build a platform that was sustainable and profitable. Almost every physician that I knew had a Palm Pilot. It would go off in meetings. We would beam our cards, notes, addresses and files to each other. We would scribble our thoughts with various types of styli.

One day when I started a new job many years ago, I remember my partner suggesting that some salacious activity was going on between myself and an attractive looking drug rep. She had a Handspring (keep the puns to yourself, this is G-Rated :)), and she had all of the latest games and new software available. Not worrying about viruses at the time, I would always welcome the additions. She would beam these to me on her monthly visits. It turned out that her fiance was a developer, so I would get a lot of "free" programs and test them. My partner only heard "beaming" and other terms during the lunch breaks and always made sly comments. Well it wasn't too long before he joined the party. Not only that, but he became an advisor to Epocrates within two years. So much for salacious activity :).

Those were the early days. Along the way I met some wonderful people in the Palm hemisphere. A few developers and of course Sammy McLoughlin from PalmAddicts who remains steadfastly one of the staunchest supporters of Palm. He is also a very good guy. He was single handedly responsible for putting this blog on the charts. Again, it stemmed from my love affair with Palm. Apparently just about everyone on the Palmaddicts blog had the same love affair. This same affliction led to a meeting with Ryan Block and Peter Rojas during one of their whirlwind Engadget meetups. They offered great advice. All of this, because of PALM.

Of course my departure from Palm land happened in spirit in late 2006. I was becoming very much removed from the over promising and under delivering, not to mention the poor hardware that lacked innovation and kept on crashing - THE LIFEDRIVE. But on a day that I worked, but kept hitting F5 while surfing Engadget, I could not believe what happened next! If I was spirtitualy removed from Palm in late 2006, I was mentally divorced on that morning in January. Steve Jobs presented the iPhone and it appeared that this was the answer - a solid state device that was a PIM, small computer and a phone WITHOUT A STYLUS. I welcomed it, not only because it was brilliant, but because I thought it would put some fire into Palm. What happened next made the spiritual and mental break a complete physical one. It appeared that Palm was in panic mode! The rest of course is history.

But I prefer to remember the good times. The CASL Basic days, the NSBasic days along with programs like Smartlistogo and Handbase. Literally these small apps changed the way in which I lived. They served as organizing points and the Palm devices really stressed the things found in "The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People" by Steven Covey. Prioritization and historically recording facts; dumping the Franklin Covey address books and the never ending desk, wall and hand held calendars. Palm was it! I remember being in a small town and people crowding around me to look at my Palm V. I fondly remember in 1998 seeing the first Palm device at a dinner meeting when someone asked for my address. Yes, I needed that. It wasn't a want.

Now they will be no more! I am really going to miss this company. I will miss their once superior innovation skills. But really, despite the misses, I want to go on record to say THANK YOU PALM for all that you have given us. You changed the world. You were one of the true innovators, where many emulated/copied/plagiarized/

stole from you in the name of competition, you remained true to your calling - Innovation and simplicity.

Still waiting for THE Apple TV

Currently I have two Apple TV2's.  I picked up the "hockey puck" style device the first week it came out and considered it a work of wonder.  The idea of having no on board hard drive or "Mega Memory" didn't faze me.  Netflix adoption was the key and I was satisfied with the idea that on any given friday or saturday, sitting with my family, we could order a movie from Apple's large library of new releases or find a movie or show on Netflix.  Along the way, we suddenly noticed that we wanted to re watch some of our older movies and actually watch a few of the movies that were given to us for birthdays and holidays.  We rarely used a DVD player thus saving a copy of the movie on the computer was beneficial.  But it became cumbersome.  Add to that, the idea of converting formats for older films, the whole thing became burdensome.

With that in mind, I picked up a second ATV2 device with the intent of modifying it completely.  I looked around and considered Firecore, but decided that this would be better if I did the whole modification myself.  I was able to keep the installation nimble, using up very little memory and installed only the programs that I needed.  XBMC became the go to product.  With XBMC, there were issues that were eventually worked out, including the intermittent playback issues of movies encoded in Apple's .MV4, the defacto for the AppleTV.   However, I was able to watch other movies from my NAS server without problems.   More importantly, I did not need to have a computer on to stream movies to the Apple TV.  A simple NAS drive with AFP or SMB protocols did the trick.   Surprisingly, I was even able to play back 1080p MKV files without problems or hiccups.

Along the way, the family decided that it would be good for my psyche to pick up an old BOXEE device.  They got it on the cheap and I was a happy camper.  Something else to tinker with.  Although the software was not as refined as the Apple TV, I was impressed by its ability to stream anything and everything with impunity.   It was even able to Airshare and 1080p was the defacto setting.  Without a doubt, Boxee, with its 150+ apps was a winner and I found myself watching less and less of the Apple TV.  However, my wife and kids still loved the ATV hockey puck.  Whether it was the hacked version or the unadulterated one, they went back to Apple's simplicity - the one remote control with its minimalist buttons.  Everything about it was better for them.  And to be honest, the UI was just simple to use.

The New Apple TV Apps/Home Page

So imagine my dismay last night when I updated the ATV2 (vanilla device, not the hacked one) and saw what appeared to be a very close cousin of the Boxee UI. Additionally, imagine my dismay at the finding that one can only select two screen sizes - Standard and 720p.  The ATV2 has the A4 chip, the same chip found in the iPhone 4, which by the way can also handle 1080 p videos without a glitch.  The new ATV3 has the new A5 chip which is supposedly the reason why it can handle 1080p.  However, as many of the hackers have already proven, the A4 chip found on the current ATV2 can handle 1080 p without problems.  This begs the question - Why is 1080p only allowed in the new Apple TV and not the current model?

The Boxee Apps Page

Additionally, why is Apple skimping on the Apps?  Boxee has 150+ Apps, including the Wall Street Journal, Netflix and Vimeo which are found prominently on the ATV iOs 5.0 .  These incremental adjustments may be making way for what I believe is an inevitability.   I believe that this is an incremental upgrade in the grand scheme of things.  It is a move akin to the iPhone 3G to 3GS.   There is really nothing in the new Apple TV that would warrant a major purchase.  The hardware serial numbers or markers are probably preventing 1080p downloads from Apple's servers.   And this again must mean that Apple is planning on making the hockey puck obsolete within the next 12 months.  Obsolescence is always started and concluded by Apple and not by its competition.  If the reports are true, expect the next great release of hardware to be a real television or a totally revised Apple TV.

Still waiting for an Apple device that reads from a NAS drive without iTunes.

iPhonedoc.

It's Crazy Time Again....AppleTV and iPad.

It's that time of the year again folks.  The time when the blogs go crazy about Apple gadgets. It would appear that Apple has conquered the calendar to coincide with earnings reports.   March for the iPad, October for the iPhone and September for the iPod.  Of course all of this is subject to change, but it would appear that the company is on track to release several major updates on time.

What I would not be expecting is a new APPLE TV.  Let me expand on that.  I am expecting an APPLE TV device, akin to the Apple TV Hockey Puck device, but I am not expecting an actual television as some have postulated.  Unfortunately, since some (to coin a phrase from one of my twitter friends) eeeeejits will assume that a real AppleTV in the form of a television is coming out, this may do crazy things to the stock after next wednesday.

But short term aside, let me express my desire for the new AppleTV, something that I am a lot more interested in than the new iPad, which I really do not need right now:

1.  Expansion of Codecs.  I've said enough about this one.
2.  Some break away from iTunes dependence so that we can read files from a Nas Drive.
3.  1080 p.   The 720 p videos are very poor when compared to the Boxxee.
4.  More on board Ram.
5.  More video "apps."   I would love a Premier League package and more access to Indy films.
6.  Cheaper cloud storage.
7.  Access to other cloud servers.
8.  Some real time use for that USB slot.   Perhaps local file reads without iTunes, for movies?


As for the iPad, I will be interested to see if, apart from the incredible screen being reported, the company announces more amazing things for this device.   Stay tuned.....