On March 6th, KPCB announced the creation of a $100 million dollar fund, aptly named iFund which is aimed at funding the development of applications for the iPhone. KPCB is the also the firm that funded Google, which coincidentally launched the Android project several months ago with the goal of creating an open platform so that developers could create applications for the mobile phone. The race...
I recently posted about the impending rise of the niche social network. This has already begun and does not get much press due the shear number of MySpace and Facebook users. The Data Portability Project (DPP) is a collection of businesses that are working to create standards that allow users to update their profile, media, etc in one location (Twitter, Facebook, etc) and have that information...
CNN is one of the resources that I keep open during the day and today I saw a new icon next to some of the latest news stories; highlighted below. I clicked on the icon and apparently CNN now sells t-shirts featuring news headlines. I selected the Sinkhole gulps entire lane of highway and the next screen came up. I really like this idea and think of it as kind of an extension of reality as...
A couple of months ago, Hayden Sutherland of Ideal Interface contacted me in regards to the potential of the corporate social graph; a concept we had come up separately and had been thinking about. After several emails, Hayden presented me with some questions to get my opinion on the details surrounding the corporate social graph. He posted the Q&A on his site and I wanted to share them on...
For many years marketers have been developing strategies and tactics that focused on distribution. The goal of television, radio and print was to get as many eyeballs and “earballs” on the material. Overtime this created a generation of the promotionally challenged; people that don’t see or hear advertising. It’s something we don’t even think about. We simply block...
I wanted to briefly talk about a few technologies & trends that I’m excited about. Voice-to-text: I have mentioned SpinVox several times in recent posts and believe that this technology, will change how the mobile Internet is utilized. (I have requested the free SpinVox trial and am waiting to be “approved” and will post about the service once I have the software set-up.) I...
For those of you keeping score, my first four posts focused on the kinds of relationships businesses can have with their clients online. These relationships in my mind went from the as shallow as possible to as deep as possible. We started with the concept of findability and the fact that the Internet is a purely on demand medium and then went on to recommendation which is arguably one of the...
When I surf the Internet, I search using Google or Ask’s images tab. I have found that by looking at the “raw materials” that make up a site, I can get a better sense of the site’s quality. The other thing that is brought to light by this is the fact that I don’t like to read on the Internet unless I have come to a destination deep in the site. I talk about...
I was talking with a friend of mine about the MacBook Air and how amazing it is. We collectively wondered how thin a laptop could get before we, as tactile people, could not deal with it. (This is one of the reasons I prefer the Helio Ocean over the iPhone.) I have also been thinking of the mobile phone as the second screen for the internet and how we as marketers are going to get around the...