Google movie-search provides fast and simple results, winks at Fandango/Moviefone
I don’t know how new this is, but someone turned me onto Google Movies over the weekend, at www.google.com/movies oddly enough, and it’s awesome!! They give you all the key information you need to make a movie decision and they deliver it much more quickly than Fandango, Moviefone, Rotten Tomatoes or any of the other competitors in this space. The presentation is ultra-simple very similar to the way Google presents search results. They also provide simple user reviews with a universal rating system, a link to trailers hosted by Apple and a link to IMDb for more information on the film. Best of all, it actually remembers your zip code so the next time you login, it presents all the theaters in your area automatically, something that should be simple, but seemed difficult for the others to accomplish. Also, it shows every theater nearby versus just the ones with whom they’ve partnered (in the case of the others). Sometimes the best innovations are the simplest. In this case, it seems to me that Google has snickered at the competitors in this space and the millions they’ve invested by providing a simpler and more convenient solution. It’s true that they don’t provide ticket purchasing, but I’ll still use this page for my default movie listings.
Steve Jobs unveils iPhone at MacWorld today
Steve Jobs and Apple unveiled the iPhone today at their MacWorld conference in San Francisco. I find it funny that Apple chooses to schedule MacWorld at the exact same time as CES (the largest consumer electronics conference) in Vegas, as if to say, "we don’t fit in with you other commoners….we deserve our own show." For better or worse, they’re right. Engadget covered Jobs’ keynote speech in almost real-time complete with play-by-play commentary and color. I’m still inspired by Jobs’ ability to design the most cutting-edge projects and effectively market them in a fun and exciting way. The pomp and circumstance with which he presents something new is phenomenal. Eric Schmidt and Jerry Yang on stage with him for the presentation? If you don’t believe in Apple, surely you believe in Google or Yahoo. There are few leaders as gifted as Steve Jobs and as long as he is at the helm of Apple, expect great things.
Accepted new job - Manager of Business Development at Answers.com
I accepted a new job this past week as Manager of Business
Development at Answers.com - NASDAQ: ANSW. Naturally, I wanted to give my attorneys time
to negotiate the agreement and report to training camp before I blogged it,
thus making it officially official 
I first met with Answers.com more than a
month ago. Apparently, I didn’t
sufficiently woo them to get the job initially. When they called me back to schedule a second series of meetings the
week before last, I took a slightly hungrier approach. Towards the end of my upbeat meeting with
Jeff Cutler, Chief Revenue Officer, I pointedly asked him, “so what do I have
to do to convince you I’m the right guy for this job?” I think this question sealed it for me. Sometimes it pays to be forthcoming and
direct.
expected, and there were times I considered shifting focus all together, but I
remained resilient and ending up at a place like Answers in this role with this
team makes it all worthwhile. At
Answers.com, we are creating the definitive reference tool on the web. We already have more than 3.3 million topics
licensed from respected sources such as Roget’s, Columbia University,
McGraw Hill, Thomson Gale, AMG, Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica in
addition to our own proprietary content. The information is cleverly presented based on relevance so a search for
Boeing
787 will first show results from Wikipedia, which is the best source for
information on the new airplane. Similarly, a search on Thomas
Jefferson will show information from Who2 and American Heritage first. Our traffic ranks us in the top 200 of all
internet properties; very impressive for a company less than two years old. Answers.com also has developed several nifty technologies
of their own, including one-click
answers, which enables a user to Alt-Click any word or phrase in any
document on the screen and pull up a call-out window providing informative
explanations and research. This is a
magnificent tool for virtually anyone who reads content on their computers and
particularly helpful for those professionals working with terms and definitions
in addition to any students or other learning-focused individuals. One-click can be downloaded here (or here for Mac
users) and I encourage everyone to do so. It’s a true value-added feature.
I’m thoroughly excited to start working with them. With company headquarters in Jerusalem, it also looks like I’ll have the
opportunity to do some work abroad. The
ability to travel to Israel for work certainly wasn’t one of the criteria used in my job search, but it’s an extra nice perk. Expect great things from
Answers.com in the near future.
Maybe the best eBay purchase ever - Double H cowboy work boots
These boots arrived this week. I’ve been stocking up on inexpensive fun gear for Burning Man, but when I unwrapped these babies, I realized they may fit into another category all together. Anyone who has purchased new boots knows that breaking them in can be a bitch - excuse my russian. These guys are broken in beautifully, but even more important, they fit my foot perfectly. They are literally molded to the shape of my foot. I wonder if the previous owner has a hairy chest too. Best of all, they cost me $20 with shipping. These boots, nicely broken in, are worth far more to me than the $180 for which they sell new. This is just another example of the power of the Internet and why eBay is my favorite second favorite technology company.
New forms of communication also come at expense
It occurred to me this week, and not for the first time, that all the new mediums of communication enabled by advancements in technology come at a certain expense. Emailing, text messaging, and IMing all provide quick and easy ways to reach people, send a message or get a quick answer to a question, and they have the potential to grossly boost workplace productivity. On the flip-side, however, as we become more comfortable communicating through these new mediums and, at the same time, more habitual in our behavior, they can easily begin to replace the phone call or lunch meeting as they require a far smaller investment of time. In my own experience, feeling as comfortable writing as I do speaking (if not moreso), I have fallen into the trap of sending an email to express myself on important matters, when a phone call or face-to-face discussion would have been more appropriate. None of the new "non-human" methods of communication can convey tone, feeling or personal affect the way a voice or facial expression can. As we embrace new technologies and all the benefits they offer, its important to remember the positive qualities of human interaction that only hearing someone’s voice or seeing their face can achieve.
Marketers getting creative, sneaky republicans stirring negative PR
Republican groups have been doing some pretty sneaky (and admittedly creative) stuff to influence the opinions of young voters in America. This isn’t surprising since it was largely their creativity and willingness to play dirty that got W elected in 2004. Ironically, it was the WSJ who uncovered this news last week in an Aug 3 article. Someone uploaded a video to YouTube entitled "Al Gore’s Penguin Army" mocking his film - "An Inconvenient Truth". The 2-min video is neither creative nor intelligent in its message - though I’m still amazed someone can get away with implying global warming is anything less than a harsh reality. What is creative is the method of distribution - uploaded to YouTube and distributed for free to millions of users, mostly in the highly sought after 14-26 demographic. The video has been viewed just under 400,000 times in the past week, so as a marketing ploy, its been pretty damn effective. Thanks to a few curious journalists, it was uncovered that the video had been uploaded from computers at DCI Group , a conservative PR and lobbying firm in DC who counts Exxon among its clients. When questioned about it, DCI would not comment.
In a related story this week, the WSJ reported that marketers are using mySpace to do social marketing by allowing users to make "friends" with movie characters, and other relevant pop culture icons. The article alluded to Ricky Bobby’s mySpace page, a fictional page made to look like one owned by Will Ferrell’s character in the new film "Talladega Nights."
The message here is simple. Marketers of all types who want to influence opinions are embracing Web2.0 technology offerings with a vengeance and taking advantage of opportunities they enable. Social networking technologies enable groups and individuals to interact with a level of ease and accessibility previously unknown. Organizations who want to communicate a message or idea can, for the first time, reach out directly to groups of their constituents. Groups that fail to embrace these new offerings will fall behind, and possibly precipitously so. Its not surprising that media and entertainment groups have been some of the earliest adopters. I am surprised, though, and impressed with conservative groups’ adoption rates. For the sake of our country, I hope Democrats heed these signs and jump on board the bus before its too late.
Google customizable homepages
Google began offering customizable homepages recently and I think
they are fantastic. They’ve essentially taken what Yahoo did with
myYahoo and improved upon it. You can see snapshot views of your
google calendars, gmail, weather, news photos, popular videos and
hundreds of feeds from popular sources. There are also a bunch of
widgets that you can choose to appear on your homepage such as to-do
list, weather and driving directions. You can move modules simply by
dragging and dropping. I’ve posted a screenshot below, but you can get
your own at - http://www.google.com/ig .
Gizmo Project picks up steam
Gizmo Project, AFVOIPO (another f#c*’n VOIP offering),
seems to be picking up steam as documented yesterday by Mashall Kirkpatrick in a
TechCrunch posting. The main differentiator between Gizmo and Skype
is opensource code which enables a bunch of features Skype doesn’t offer.
Fair enough, but is there really any end to VOIP offerings that one-up each
other? Are there any barriers to entry in this market? VOIP calling
seems pretty clearly to be moving free, which will eliminate any price
differentiation for these new entrants. What competitive advantages will be
left? Not to mention that I’ve been a
Vonage customer for two years, and can attest that VOIP is only as good as the
carrier lines it runs on. I switched
from Time Warner to Covad in an effort to improve performance and the difference
was negligible.
Kevin Ryan - NYC Entrepreneur
Met with Kevin Ryan, of DoubleClick fame, recently. He
is back in the game launching three, yes you read correctly, three startups simultaneously.
ShopWiki has
already received some press in the NYC Tech community, but his others are
flying more under the radar. Panther
Express is a content delivery network (CDN) similar to Akamai, except
offering the service at a considerable discount. Kevin is also in the
process of launching Music Nation which is a classic long tail business model,
providing distribution (over internet TV) for the gazillions of talented of musicians that get
rejected by American Idol. Smart. We need more entrepreneurs like
Kevin in the NYC Tech community.
Great Wired article on music biz
Chris Anderson wrote a very informative article in this month’s Wired that explains the evolution of the modern music industry. The Wired article is well organized and a great tutorial for anyone interested in understanding the dynamics that are shaping this industry at a unique point in its evolution.