Monthly Archives: May 2008

Is There an Apple Bias in the Media?

There was an interesting discussion today on Hacker News, generated by a post by Matt Maroon, simply titled, ‘Vista is Good.’

He certainly has an interesting lede:

As Apple fanboyism has spread throughout the tech publications, so too has Vista-bashing. In short order it went from being the Windows operating system that even Mac users were digging to the biggest mistake Microsoft ever made. The major media outlets who in tech, as with a lot of niches, take their cues from the blogs these days, have slowly followed suit, though they’ve been much more guarded about calling it a disaster.

Considering that most of the hackers (or at least those who comment) use OSX, Ubuntu, or some other variation of Mac or Linux-based OS, it’s not surprising that the general reaction was so hostile.

Partially because so many are drinking a bit too much haterade, but Matt brings up an interesting point that some consider “trolling”:

I am of the opinion that much of the tech media is held in thrall by Steve Jobs and is abandoning their job of fair and balanced reporting because they want to have early access to new iPhones and iPods. (In fairness, I blame Jobs as much for having that policy as I do for them abiding by it.)

Is there a bias favoring Apple in the Media?

Absolutely, positively, yes, in both the tech blogosphere and the mainstream media.

While covering tech for my school’s newspaper, I had an interesting conversation with my editors. I had asked them if I could cover CES, and they blankly stared at me asking “is it local — how does it affect our students.”

I tried to explain to them that it’s the biggest electronics show on the entire continent, and they gently rebutted me for its lack of local relevance.

The very next week, I get a breathless call from my editor, advising that I follow the MacWorld expo keynote by who else, but Steve Jobs. The next day, as soon as Jobs unveiled the MacBook air I was immediately buzzed by my editors, frantically asking that I round up a few student quotes and get into the office pronto to start hacking an article together on the earth-shattering news.

CES? No go. Not local enough.

Macbook Air released? Top priority. Also not local.Macbook Air

What was the difference? Why my editors, of course, are Mac Fangirls. They simply love and adore Mac. One of the pair got an iPhone for Christmas and was as attached to it as Gollum was to the ring.

But, you say, ‘it’s just one college newspaper — how does that demonstrate an apple bias in the media?’

For the weeks following the Macbook Air release, I could hardly go to the NYT website without seeing three or four articles PER DAY about Steve Jobs, Macbook Air, Apple, or all of the above. It was, in a word, digusting.

Even with all the ridiculous amounts of hype and coverage, I doubt a random person on the street would have any idea what a Macbook Air is.

‘A Macbook what?,’ they’d say.

But of course, an $1800 laptop isn’t targeted at the average person, because the average person is not stupid enough to pay nearly two thousand dollars for a product with the functionality more aptly valued at $500. So even with all the fawning coverage (and not as much advertising as, say, the iPhone) the Macbook Air is still, to the vast majority of Americans, an unknown quantity.

When I was at the O’Reilly Money:Tech conference in New York, I was more likely to see a blogger or journalist with an XO than a Windows-powered computer. Most all, of course, were sporting the glowing apple.

To my knowledge, not one of my VentureBeat cohorts owns anything but a Mac. I’m not positive about Matt Marshall, but Eric, MG, and Anthony seem to be hard-core Mac users.
Young, Hip, Intelligent. Using a Mac in a cafe.

How, then, can you ever expect an unbiased article when referring to Microsoft or Apple’s products or OS’s?

You can’t and you shouldn’t. (which, imho, is why I think each biased article should be preceded by a disclosure, unless, of course, if you’re reading TC which is thankfully openly biased.)

The media at large are enthralled with Macs and all things Apple — a major media outlet like the NewYork Times, a tech blog like Techcrunch or VentureBeat, or even a college newspaper.

Mac seems to represent not only the hip and elite, but smart, intelligent, and free-spirited — all superlatives we as writers love to associate ourselves with, even if only by brand.

Or, as Stuff White People Like puts it:

On the surface, you would ask yourself, how is that white people love a multi-billion dollar company with manufacturing plants in China, mass production, and that contributes to global pollution through the manufacture of consumer electronic devices?

Simple answer: Apple products tell the world you are creative and unique. They are an exclusive product line only used by every white college student, designer, writer, English teacher, and hipster on the planet.

The issue at hand is not MSFT OS vs MAC OS or Linux OS, the issue is the unfair bias towards Apple in the media.

There are certainly worse bias’ to have, and from someone who has an iPhone, I’m not an Apple-hater by any means, but as a writer, I must be perfectly honest … the bias is not only prevalent, but annoying and a bit irresponsible.

But hey, whoever said the media is fair?

What? 53,651 Early adopters traction DNE main stream adoption?

A very insightful post by Dare Obasanjo (a fellow Nigerian).

In his post, reminiscent of the book that he cites, Crossing the Chasm, he lays out a few points why targeting and solving problems for the early adopter crowd does not ensure success, nor mainstream adoption.

First, let’s define the audiences.

Early Adopters are risk takers who actually like to try new things.

Pragmatists might be willing to use new technology, if it’s the only way to get their problem solved.

Conservatives dislike new technology and try to avoid it.

Laggards pride themselves on the fact that they are the last to try anything new.

This drawing reflects the fact that there is no smooth or logical transition between the Early Adopters and the Pragmatists. In between the Early Adopters and the Pragmatists there is a chasm. To successfully sell your product to the Pragmatists, you must “cross the chasm

Some technology trends that haven’t reached mainstream adoption:

*Blog Search: A few years ago, blog search engines were all the rage. You had people like Marc Cuban talking up IceRocket and Robert Scoble harranguing Web search companies to build dedicated blog search engines. Since then the products in that space have either given up the ghost (e.g. PubSub, Feedster), turned out to be irrelevant (e.g. Technorati, IceRocket) or were sidelined (e.g. Google Blog Search, Yahoo! Blog Search). The problem with this product category is that except for journalists, marketers and ego surfing A-list bloggers there aren’t many people who need a specialized feature set around searching blogs.

Social bookmarking: Although del.icio.us popularized a number of “Web 2.0″ trends such as tagging, REST APIs and adding social features to a previously individual task, it has never really taken off as a mainstream product. According to the former VC behind the service it seems to have peaked at 2 million unique visitors last year and is now seeing about half that number of unique users. Compare that to Yahoo! bookmarks which was seeing 20 million active users a year and a half ago.

RSS Readers: I’ve lost track of all of the this is the year RSS goes mainstream articles I’ve read over the past few years. Although RSS has turned out to be a key technology which powers a number of interesting functionality behind the scenes (e.g. podcasting) actually subscribing and reading news feeds in an RSS reader has not become a mainstream activity of Web users. When you think about it, it is kind of obvious. The problem an RSS reader solves is “I read so many blogs and news sites on daily basis, I need a tool to help me keep them all straight”. How many people who aren’t enthusiastic early adopters (i) have this problem and (ii) think they need a tool to deal with it?

Here’s an excerpt reminiscent of what I wrote in my post, Blogger v. Reality: Crossing the Chasm:

1. Just because you wish something to be true, does not make it so.

If you think I’m referring to the great twitter debate, it’s probably because I am. (Don’t know what Twitter is?)

However the one overriding theme is that all of these recent entrants is that they solve problems that everyone [or at least a large section of the populace] has. Everyone likes to communicate with their social circle. Everyone likes watching funny videos and looking at couple pics. Everyone wants to find information about topics they interested in or find out what’s going on around them. Everybody wants to get laid.

If you are a Web 2.0 company in today’s Web you really need to ask yourselves, “Are we solving a problem that everybody has or are we building a product for Robert Scoble?”

That also reminds me of a famed Josh Kopelman quote:

Too many companies are targeting an audience (Techcrunch circa May 2006) of 53,651.

Startup Community: The Chicken or the Egg?

(This is completely unrelated to Kara Swisher’s Chicken or Egg post today.)

A few days ago, I wrote a post that generated a bit of very insightful, relevant discussion to this ongoing push towards innovation, community, and entrpreneurship within IST and the greater Penn State area.

I’d like to talk about what has been accomplished.

1. Several Penn State companies have launched within the past few years and are on their way to being successful.

2. In the last year, the formal entrepreneurial community has had a big boost via Lion Launch Pad, Blue Lion Networks, Invention 2 Venture, Ideablob, Ideapitch, and a few news-worthy events for Penn State co-founded teams.

3. In the past few months, the informal entrepreneurial community has had a big boost via blogs like IST Building, Matt Maisel, PSU startups, and get-togethers, like the one we had at the Indian Pavilion. With ideas like one Varun has been tossing around about informal TED gatherings to watch and discuss the videos, I’m sure this will only grow in the next months.

4. Next year will kick off with not one, but two, major startup events for the community.

5. A major VC firm is opening up an office in State College.

(Just kidding on no. 5)

No doubt about it, for a ship this big, no matter how hard you tug on the sails, it takes a long time to get it moving in a different direction, but I believe the steps are being made.

It’s important, however, that we not point to the small successes as proof Penn State is headed in the right direction. I often find, the more you lean on past successes, the more complacent you get, thinking that you’ve done enough already, when that is rarely and hardly the case.

That said, one interesting discussion point is the Chicken vs. Egg debate.

Does the chicken — (this case a Venture Capital firm/ major business plan competiton, and in general, an entrepreneurial platform that can support and help create sustainable businesses)– come first, or is it the egg? (Egg being a successful company that launches).

There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal, of which I’d like to share snippets before I provide my own thoughts.

The title, interestingly enough, is “Facebook Ignites Entrepreneurial Spirit at Harvard” and here are some excerpts:

Egg:

Mr. Adler is just one of the Harvard students who have caught start-up fever since Facebook, founded when Mr. Zuckerberg was at Harvard in 2004, exploded in popularity. Other recent Harvard-born start-ups include Internet companies Kirkland North Inc., Drop.io Inc. and Labmeeting Inc. And Facebook has become a model for these start-ups on many fronts, from the look of company Web sites to their corporate strategies.

“I would not hesitate for a second to say Facebook’s a motivator,” says Paul Bottino, director of Harvard’s Technology & Entrepreneurship Center. “Facebook creates would-be Facebooks.” He says a start-up contest this year attracted 55 entries, up from 10 to 18 for past contests.

It takes time …

And the idea of a college start-up culture isn’t new to Silicon Valley. Stanford University leased land to Hewlett-Packard Co., started by Stanford alums, as far back as the 1950s. Today, Stanford President John Hennessy is a board member at Cisco Systems Inc. and Google Inc., two companies that began as projects at Stanford. Yahoo also began as a Stanford project.

Harvard, though, has long had a relatively sleepy start-up culture and has shunned a cozy relationship between academics and industry. “Harvard is very noticeably behind,” says Paul Graham, a partner at Y Combinator, a Cambridge, Mass., and Mountain View, Calif., company that invests in start-ups, including Scribd and Kirkland North.

Chicken:

Now, Harvard is taking steps to get ahead. In 2000, the university loosened a rule prohibiting students from running companies from dorm rooms, but it still required that start-ups notify the university of their existence and “gain approval.” Last year, it discarded the notification-and-approval rule, although some restrictions still exist.

In the past eight years, Harvard has introduced more classes, clubs and contests for entrepreneurs. Mr. Bottino says those decisions weren’t directly related to Facebook, but he acknowledges that Facebook’s success has given Harvard students a more-entrepreneurial bent.

I personally believe the process runs in parallel; that is, it’s not a case of the Chicken or the egg, but rather a bit of both.

The push to entrepreneurship happens, from within the student community, graduate community, faculty community, and general region community meanwhile the entrepreneurs themselves, like Boxtr founder and PSU student Rory Spangler, continue to build successful companies.

Without a doubt, a college-focused world-wide product like Facebook would increase interest at Penn State, but I argue 10 successful smaller-scale companies would have the same impact, if not the same use.

All that said, and I must say I am not particularly concerned for selfish reasons whether or not PSU engenders a successful enterpreneurship jumping pad — I plan on turning the company I recently co-founded into a successful, sustainable business, whether or not a single Penn State company ever forms.

That being said, I believe firmly in an equal playing field (although I realize the world is not a fair place); I believe every person, and most definitely every Penn State student, should have the opportunity to pursue their dreams, and more importantly be encouraged to reach those dreams and have a platform to do so.

For those particular ones with the entrepreneurship bent, let’s hope we can all keep building a community that will see that platform be built.

You Could Hear a Pin Drop

If any of you know me personally, you probably know my feelings for the army run pretty deep. While I don’t necessarily agree with the implicit reasoning of most of the material below, the last statement should blow you away, and at least give you a deeper understanding for why I have so much respect for Armed Forces.

A friend at the Air Force academy, whose two parents are both Lt.Cols in the Army, forwarded me this from an email her dad sent:

When in England at a large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of ‘empire building’ by George Bush. He answered by saying, ‘Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.

You could have heard a pin drop.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then there was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break one of the French engineers came back into the room saying ‘Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?’ A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: ‘Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck.. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have? ‘

You could have heard a pin drop.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, ‘whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English.’ He then asked, ‘Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?’ Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied ‘Maybe it’s because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn’t have to speak German?’

You could have heard a pin drop.

AND THIS STORY FITS RIGHT IN WITH THE ABOVE…

A group of Americans, retired teachers, recently went to France on a tour. Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane.. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on. ‘You have been to France before, monsieur?’ the customs officer asked sarcastically. Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously. ‘Then you should know enough to have your passport ready.’ The American said, ‘The last time I was here, I didn’t have to show it.’ ‘Impossible. Americans always have to show your passports on arrival in France!’ The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained. ‘Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in ‘44 to help liberate this country, I couldn’t find any Frenchmen to show it to.’

You could have heard a pin drop

What Is A Veteran?

A “Veteran” — whether active duty, discharged, retired, or reserve — is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to “The United States of America,” for an amount of “up to, and including his life.” That is honor, and there are excessively many people in this country today, who no longer understand that fact.

Full Disclosure

Let’s start with a Wikipedia definition.

Phrase: Full Disclosure

[In] Journalism, full disclosure refers to disclosing the interests of the writer which may bear on the subject being written about, for example, if the writer has worked with an interview subject in the past.

There is nothing that bothers me more than bloggers, journalists and writers who don’t do full disclosures. Even at VentureBeat, disclosures are inserted at the bottom of the article.

That’s why I was pretty excited to see Fred Wilson’s post: “Three Reasons to use Disqus”:


First, I’d like to be perfectly clear that our firm, Union Square Ventures, is an investor in Disqus. So I am clearly biased about what I am about to say. Second, I’d like to point out that the reason we made the investment is largely based on my experience as a Disqus user for the past 10 months and the result it has had on my blog/community. Sometimes seeing is believing and it certainly was in this case.

So, with that disclosure out of the way, here are three reasons I think every blogger, certainly every serious blogger, should consider switching to Disqus.

What’s the point of a full disclosure if its at the end of the article/blog post? The reader will read an entire article not knowing that the writer has any reason NOT to be objective.

Then at the end of the article WHAM!

“This post was actually anything but objective, I have a million reasons to be biased about this, but the main reason is because I am an (investor, advisor, user, lover, etc.).”

I wrote an article for the Collegian on the MacBook Air and Steve Jobs’ Keynote. My editors had me ready to go hours before the announcement, hungrily awaiting the Chief Fanboy’s words. No sooner did the Macbook Air show up on the screen than I got a call from my editor telling me to track down some students and get some responses.

Why?

They were Mac fan(girls) of course.

I felt that the article should have led: “Full Disclosure: I wrote this article not because of the momentous announcement of the MacBook Air (because it wasn’t), but because my editors happen to love Apple — one of them got an iPhone for Christmas and can’t live without it.”

I’m sure I’ve written posts on here that don’t need Full Disclosures.

Why?

Because on a personal blog it’s EXPECTED to be unobjective. It’s inherently subjective to my personal thoughts, opinions, feelings, and sometimes irrational judgments voiced in text.

But for a media outlet, be it print, digital, or TV media, all biased writers should start out with the simple “Full Disclosure” at the beginning of an article where they are unduly biased.

If you love Facebook for example (I dunno, maybe your best friends work there), when you write an article about Facebook, you should write why you’re biased, so that readers know to enjoy your article with a grain of salt, knowing you’d defend Facebook to the death.

If you’re an investor, advisor, competitor, or have any reason to be unduly biased outside the bounds of a normal person, you should probably state that in the beginning. If not, don’t pretend to have objective reporting and writing.

I look at Techcrunch, and would never assume that any of the writing is objective. Most of the writers have very strong feelings about the material they’re covering. That’s fine because it’s the general attitude of the entire publication, but imagine reading an article in the NYT by an Obama supporter who is trashing Clinton, or a Clinton supporter who is writing about Rev. Wright controversy.

Shouldn’t they disclose to the readers that they’re in no way objective (not many are, after all) and that you should know they have strong opinions against John Doe candidate.

(Disclosure: This blog is written by a passionate writer, who is objective about very few subjects posted on here.)

Greatest Ad Campaign ever: Impossible is Nothing

This is my favorite commercial of all time:

“Some people listen to themselves rather than listening to what others say.These people don’t come along very often, but when they do, they remind us, that once you set out on a path, even though critics may doubt you, its ok to believe, that there is no can’t, won’t, or impossible. They remind us, that it’s OK to believe, impossible … is nothing.”

And the ad campaign version:

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.

One day, I hope to bring original people, not just stars and famous athletes, and let them tell their impossible story.

Xobni pimped by the New York Times

(This is a post I originally wrote for IST Building)

It’s not every day a Penn State co-founded start-up is mentioned by Bill Gates. Now, that same company, Xobni (zob-nee) founded by PSU ‘03 Electrical Engineering (and Schreyers) alumnus Matt Brezina, whose email capabilities Gates called “the future of social networking”, is featured in one of the top publications in the United States — the New York Times.

Xobni is featured in today’s New York Times as the service finally opens up to public beta use. With 50,000 users and 140,000 more on the waiting list, it seems plausible that the fledgling company that just turned down Microsoft’s acquisition offer (this wasn’t as high profile as the Yahoo bid, of course) will see some significant traction.

This, a follow-up to fellow Y Combinator alumnus Weebly(self-described as web page creation that ‘doesn’t suck’), which was ranked in Time’s 50 best websites of 2007, and this may be the (good) writing on the wall, forecasting the future direction of Penn State start-ups.

So what is Xobni?

From a previous article:

Xobni’s goal is to not only revolutionize its users inboxes, but also organize personal information, Brezina said.

“Our goal is to organize information around relationships. We want to be the Google of personal information,” he said.

His company’s first product, Xobni Insight, is a Microsoft Outlook plug-in that extracts information from the emails stored in Outlook. With the information, Xobni’s toolbar automatically creates profiles of each email user, displaying a person’s relationship, attachments sent, a history of emails sent between the two parties, as well as a time graph showing at what time of day the most quantity of emails was sent.

While Xobni is focused for now on email organization for Outlook, it wants to be able to aggregate information from different webmail clients such as Gmail, Yahoo, and others. Brezina said it also wants to bring in instant messaging, and aggregate information from social networks.

Brezina gave the example of a friend who remembers a story another friend related about a ski resort in Vermont. A user will be able to search Xobni’s database for “Stow,” the name of the ski resort, and instantly find all the related threads , conversations, and media traded with friends.

Venturebeat’s Editor-in-Chief (my boss) Matt Marshall gives a bit more insight on Xobni’s future plans:

Notably, Xobni is also working with third party developers to let them build applications with Xobni. By allowing third party integration for its APIs, Xobni becomes a trojan horse for those third parties to access Outlook integration through a plugin. Microsoft Outlook doesn’t offer a friendly set of APIs for people to plug into Outlook, and so Xobni hopes to become the place developers come to for such access. Salesforce is a good example. If you’re emailing someone, Xobni could show you — through an integration with Salesforce — how many sales calls you’ve made to the person, and how many dollars in computer sales you’ve made to them. Xobni will announce such partnerships over the coming weeks.

VP of engineering Gabor Cselle, such a geek (respectfully I say this) that he wrote his thesis on organizing email, has a much more technical analysis of the email nightmare Xobni seeks to solve:

Experts say that there are two types of email users: Cleaners and Keepers. Cleaners receive only a few emails a day, and they meticulously file each email into a specific folder. Keepers, on the other hand, receive copious amounts of email, and although they may start out with a good organizational system, it is quickly abandoned. We designed Xobni for the Keepers — the everyday people who need a product that will help navigate their flooded inbox.

The average Xobni user deals with a whopping 30,000 stored emails and communicate with some 1,900 people. For many, this means sifting through several hundred messages every day. It’s only going to get worse: the Radicati Group estimates that by 2009, people will spend up to 41% of their workday dealing with emails. We are experiencing bona fide email overload, and the challenge for us “power users” is to find a way to process and organize large volumes of information over a short period of time.

If you’ve read my blog, you’ve probably seen countless post after post hailing Xobni as King — but then again I’m biased. Matt graduated from State High, and I knew his sister years before I knew him or his email-revolutionizing company. That being said, he’s a pretty cool guy to know, regardless of whether or not he ever started Xobni.

Many PSU students don’t even use Outlook, but Xobni has plans to integrate not just with other webmail clients such as Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail, but also services such as Facebook (which has a horrible UI to search/store messages), LinkedIn and Salesforce.

Liz Kisenwhether, Director of the Entrepreneurship Minor here at Penn State, has brought Matt in to speak with various classes and meet with students as part of the Spring 2008 Bishoff Entrepreneur in Residence program. Although I’m not sure when he’ll be back next (as a State College native I’m sure this will be quite frequently), I highly advise any students interested in technology start-ups to speak with Matt as he gives some pretty insightful feedback on everything from refining your vision, to investment pitching.

News like this would be probably pretty standard for a Berkeley, Stanford, or MIT alumnus (which coincidentally, is where Matt’s co-founder Adam Smith graduated from) — so this shows Penn State has a ton of work to become a major player in Technology start-ups, but this University is clearly on the right path. (Although I wonder how many more start-ups could come out of this place if they didn’t horde Intellectual Property like Gollum and the ring)

Congratulations to Matt and co. for the exciting news — it’s currently the 5th most popular technology post on the NYT (unfortunate if it is overshadowed by the Microsoft-Yahoo battle, which (temporarily) ended on Saturday) , certainly in part to the support they get from the Y Combinator community.