Three Insight

Happy Birthday Steve! How has PR changed with Social Media? PR is now transparent and two way. Gatekeepers are gone. Embargoes are antiques. Dave was asked by HP to Tweet about a product - by an agency. PR companies are now facilitating a closer tie between brand and consumer through influences, less with press outlets. We want feedback. Please? Thanks to Blue Microphones: http://bluemic.com

Business in the 21st Century. Mobile OS wars: iPhone, Android, Windows Phone Series 7. Tablet UI vs. iPad. Wired's touch enabled magazine. Paid magazine apps, books, and media. Is cable really necessary? As always, thanks to Blue Microphones! http://bluemic.com

Dave's first thought? Yawn. What's the big differentiator? It's just another place to manage. Doyle doesn't want his communications world in a single window. Michael will follow it to see what happens.AT&T has an unflattering article in Business Week. Pundits say bloggers don't matter, but when the story reaches Business Week, it matters. Does the story in general matter to someone that really wants an exclusive phone (iPhone)?Google is doing gigabit internet in select cities. The infrastructure for the rest of the internet needs to be capable of delivering content at that speed. Netflix buffers on 50Mbps connections, why? Dave thinks the government should implement the infrastructure.Thanks to Blue Rhino, and more importantly Blue Microphones ( http://bluemic.com ).

The Non-Disclosure Agreement. Metzger deals with startups - and a lot of them ask for signed NDAs. It makes doing business extremely difficult - they may have a client in the same business. The chances of Metzger taking an idea are zero. Michael says he launched Callisto.fm at Podcamp Boulder 2009 as an idea. A developer stepped up and offered to build it. If there were an NDA, that wouldn't have happened. What would happen to someone that stole that idea? The community is too small. That won't happen in San Francisco, people are more likely to steal idea due to the size of the space. Investors like teams, not ideas in general. Two companies Boulder Open Coffee Club asked for NDAs before they'd share ideas. No one did it. Startups face difficulty - do they share excitement with open betas, or do they keep it locked down until the last minute to fanfare? All agree that the former is better. CNET was recently in trouble for bypassing a press embargo with a hacked code. They were prepared to pan the idea, but en

For Doyle, the jury is out. He's interested in what the infrastructure and ecosystem will look like. Michael: The device is not for pros, but instead for consumers, literally his mother. She asked about it with no prompting from Michael. iPad runs all iPhone apps, including Skype. Dave: Completely blown away by the device and wants one now. Other handset makers were trying to stuff a desktop OS into a handheld. Subnotebook/netbooks are gone with 18 months as a category. iPhone OS 4 is rumored to support multitasking. What does iPad mean for Hulu and suchlike services. Screen dimensions aren't HD dimensions (16:9). Publishers are giddy about the device. It'll be a great guide "book." What will the Kindle app look like? How well will it work? Dave is a futurist at heart. iPad has attachments (SD card, USB). Who is the target market for this? Will the attachment keyboard suck? It has Bluetooth. Doyle thinks he might divide mobile and desktop operations again (iPad for mobile/email, and iMac for the desktop). Wil

John loves motorcycles. Some big announcement is coming on the 27th, but it's not just for iWork 10. There are no Microsoft rumor sites. Why? Will Apple introduce iSlate? iPhone OS 4? Will the iPhone have controls on the back? It'd make butt calling easier anyway. Will iWork be touch-enabled? What's the point? Doyle really appreciated the sharing options introduced in iWork 09. Metzger uses both iWork and Office for compatibility. iWork's licensing is great - the family packs are cheap. John can't use Pages - continues to use Word. Formatting problems create issues for a PR firm, so reliability is king. OpenOffice and Google Docs have their own issues. Google Docs allows uploads for any kind of file (G-Drive). MobileMe is sorely neglected - it's a crown jewel, but Apple seems to ignore it. The iSlate would be a second machine for Dave - it'd be nice to be able to use it as a second display. Doyle thinks it'll have to be more than a color Kindle. Will it be a giant iPhone without cell service? Dave finally fix

First show of the new year. China and Google are no longer friends. CES banter, Doyle and Dave were there. 125,000 people, 3000 vendor exhibits. The show felt better. Doyle went for the parties. EBooks were big. 3DTV was big. Home electricity monitoring systems were big. Monitoring electricity usage causes drops in usage. Electricity bills were high in Colorado! There are still many standards and even iPhone apps for real-time reporting. 3DTV: Way too early - the dorky first gen. Not just glasses, but *their* glasses. Polarized vs. Non-polarized? Sports might be big, ESPN will have a 3D channel. 2010 predictions. Michael: A big fat year for Apple. iSlate will be a game changer. A leaked rumor names a genre (iSlate). Does Apple count replacement iPhone units against sales? If so, there were like 9 phones sold. Doyle says his Kindle is horrible for anything other than reading words. Dave - transition from keyboards to no keyboards. The convertible tablet PC was cool. Multi-touch gestures were hot at CES. Doyle'

Three InSight, Episode 6. Google's URL Shortener. Do we really have to talk about Google? Yes. URL shorteners have good/bad side. Curious about monetization. Bit.ly Pro now exists because of Google's service. Bit.ly offers the best tracking. Google wants to be able to index shortened URLs, and this is a great way to enable it. Shorteners are becoming a risky proposition, don't click stuff if you don't know the source. Hackers are preying on our trust with shorteners. Will goo.gl links show up in Google Analytics? Analytics and Adsense are paired nicely. Metzger Associates is using Bit.ly in press releases - intentionally. These days the URL/domain isn't so important because everything is being shortened. Big scary URLs are now simple. Dave uses the public library to reserve books and uses Google search to get there so he doesn't have to remember the actual URL. No singing for the holidays in the podcast, that's a promise.Google's Nexus One - which came first, Nexus One or Nexus Six? Duh :) Palm is coming back

Chrome OS is getting closer. The hunt for your mom's desktop? The bigger story is that 5 years ago your OS was Windows or Mac OS. Today there's a huge variety in operating systems. Chrome aims to appeal to the light user. Android is an OS that works on a phone, but might appear in tablets sooner rather than later. Will Doyle move to Android? No he's tied to the Apple ecosystem. If you're new to smart phones, it's a good option, but nowhere near as polished as iPhone. It's like Mac OS X vs Linux. They're mostly the same, but the experience belongs to Apple. Someone from Microsoft said they took some ideas from OS X. OS feature borrowing makes the industry better. Google's trajectory has been to be the OS, with a network front end with the ability to move to another computer without hassle. Most Google apps have offline support, so an internet connection is required.Facebook worms show up every now and then and people send emails asking you not to click on links. URL shorteners lead us to trust. Learn to look b

Admob purchased by Google. First spotting of Admob by Doyle was in the Wall Street Journal iPhone app. Dave is using Admob in his iPhone app. Google is doing right by acquiring for innovation. Microsoft built an empire on that practice, it works for a while. Writely is Google Docs. Writely from Colorado? Mobile is becoming more important in everything we do. It's critical to marketers.The DROID is a best of class device on Verizon. T-Mobile has the G2, and Sprint the Pre. The DROID is not an iPhone, but the iPhone needs the competition to be a better device. It sold over 100,000 units on the first weekend. It'll at least put pressure on AT&T. There are now options. Ari Newman switched to the DROID and has loved it so far. Competition creates a market. If you don't have competition then you don't have a market. Pressure begets innovation. Jason Mendelson says (at #BOCC ) that he doesn't want to invest in a new piece of fruit. He wants to see competitors in the space. Turn by turn is great on DROID, not availab

Thanks to Best Western in Kwanah, Texas for lending Michael their business center for a half an hour.Verizon DROID commercial launches focused on the flaws in the iPhone. For all of the things iPhone doesn't do, DROID does. The ad starts out like an Apple ad, but deteriorates in a scifi like coolness. Will it live up to Verizon's claims? We both like the approach, but you probably have to be a geek to get it. The "There's a map for that" ads are better. It's more about the network than the device in most cases. The worst part of the iPhone is AT&T in the US. Any network provider would have suffered the same network fate. Beware Verizon should you get the iPhone. DROID and Pre are similar in focusing on what the iPhone doesn't do, and should be focusing on what their benefits are. Where's the Pre now? How many Twitter apps? 30? Michael has half of them installed.Dave recounts his Blogworld Expo experience. It was a great event, they did a great job. It's about hanging in the hallways and after parties. Critici

FTC Regulations - a whole lot of buzz out nothing? Is it to target the late night advertisers that promise results with no accountability? Is it punishing everyone for the sake of a few? Will it raise the reputation of the blogosphere? Are these regulations targeted at bloggers that aren't accustomed to traditional print regulations?Macworld and PC World don't disclose the sources? Were the products paid for out of pocket or provided by the manufacturer? Dave reviews products that he's paid for harder than those provided for review. Doyle recounts his days at Maxtor where they expected the review units back due to publication policy, but wished they hadn't had to deal with the returns. They end up losing money on the units. In Australia, several review units were shipped with no expectation of return.Ultimately these regulations will have no affect. Though the precedent in cases is that they'll go after the larger fish, first.Windows 7. Launch parties around? Microsoft is sending kits with the Ultimate versio