Moonwatcher

Weird Video Tearing on MacBook Pro

I'm seeing some weird video "tearing" on my MacBook Pro with increasing frequency. Anyone else hve this problem? Is this Apple's way of prepping me to buy whatever is coming out in September? Mmmmm... new computer.

Gmail's SSL Cert Expired? Doh!

I hate it when that happens.

Your friend saves $5. You make $5. No Limits. Boom!

Now if you refer a friend to Spanning Sync, they'll save $5 on their purchase and you'll make $5. And there are no limits on how much you can make, so if you refer 100 people you make $500. Or if you refer 1,000 people you make $5,000. But even if you refer only one, you still make $5.

read more | digg story

Fareed Zakaria Interviews Barack Obama

Last night at dinner a friend mentioned that Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and author of The Post-American World, had conducted an extensive interview with Barack Obama on CNN. I had missed it, but luckily it's on YouTube:

Google: 99.9% of People Know Nothing Useful

From the post Knol is open to everyone on the Google Blog:

millions of people know useful things and billions more could benefit from that knowledge

And here I thought that everyone knew useful things.

Blogging from my iPhone

I'm trying out the TypePad iPhone app, which could be mighty handy for the occasional remote post, especially with it's built-in photo support. Speaking of, let's try that out now...

The Platform Problem, Part XXVII

In April I wrote a post titled The Platform Problem: Same as It Ever Was in which I described the "fundamental tension between any application platform provider and the developers that build applications for that platform". In it, I concluded:

Clearly, the trick to keeping any platform ecosystem healthy is to selectively incorporate such third-party developments into the platform itself instead of running roughshod over them. Mastering this process is critically important for any burgeoning platform provider.

Today Private Equity Hub has a post titled VCs to Facebook: You're Blowing It For the Rest of Us that builds on the "platform problem" theme, and suggests that Facebook may be failing to master the process I described. From the post:

VCs, along with plenty of software developers, are calling bullshite on Facebook. The reason? Its Monday unveiling of users' redesigned profiles, a redesign that happens to render superfluous one of Facebook's most popular third-party applications, the "Top Friends" tool from the San Francisco startup Slide. (Kudos to Valleywag for noticing the issue immediately.)

The redesign doesn't necessarily signal that Facebook will now go after every hugely popular outside application by replicating it in-house, but it does seem to suggest that Facebook will do what it damn well pleases, and that has investors concerned. "If Facebook wants to be a platform, it needs to behave as a platform company," says Salil Deshpande of Bay Partners, who heads up AppFactory and who additionally believes that Facebook hasn't treated its developers right by allocating enough for resources for development or support. (A visit to Facebook developer forums paints the same picture.)

Jason Pressman, a partner at Shasta Ventures on Sand Hill Road, is also a little irked by Facebook's decision to essentially create its own "Top Friends" application. Though Pressman says that Shasta hasn't backed any companies that are narrowly focused on Facebook, he concedes that at least two startups in its portfolio, Flock, which makes a Web browser, and casual-games maker PopJax, rely heavily on Facebook for their distribution.

Diplomatically, Press tries to see the whole picture when I first bring up this week's hullabaloo. "I think Facebook is a great company, and I don't think that it's being nefarious or trying to screw anyone," he says. "I think it's realizing that, hold on, we need to better monetize" what's happening on Facebook %u2014 which, incidentally, has grown from 24 million users in May 2007 to more than 80 million today.

All the same, there's no getting around recent developments, says Pressman. "Facebook just underscored the risk you have of being disintermediated from its platform. It reminded people that it can build apps that look really similar and it can relegate developers' applications to second position. And I think that's going to have a meaningful impact on how the venture investor community views Facebook applications and applications built generally for social networks."

Facebook has to realize that ecosystems must be cultivated, not strip-mined.

Uh Oh

I just got to my office with a Starbucks Coffee Traveler, which holds 96oz (12 cups) of coffee. I have a lunch appointment in 90 minutes. That means I need to drink just over an ounce of coffee per minute for the next hour and a half, more if I factor in travel time. It's going to be a jittery lunch...

PayPal Customer Support Has Poor Voice Call Quality. So What?

I just spent about 20 minutes on the phone with PayPal customer support and the call quality was really poor—I assume they're using IP phone service to save money and be able to route their calls anywhere. (I spoke with one rep in India and one in the US.) Which made me wonder if it's worth it to mildly irritate your customer, especially when you know they're already having a problem since they're calling customer support, to save some money.

Since I'm a blogger, I should at this point get on my soapbox about how it's the little things that matter, that no expense should be spared when interacting with customers, and how clearly I'm the center of the universe. But that would be ridiculous.

The main reason I use PayPal is because of their Internet DNA: there's simply no easier way to accept payments online, and since just about everything they do has an API, I can automate 99.99% of my interactions with them as a company. Beyond that, their fees are low, they have no problem dealing with brand new business clients with no credit history (which, at one point not long ago, we were), and I have confidence in their fraud protection and security.

So does the low quality of their phone system irritate me when I call? Sure. But does it really matter? No.

iPhone as the Truly Universal Remote

If you haven't tried AppleTV with the new Remote application for iPhone (and iPod touch) stop what you're doing and go check it out. The combination is revolutionary. Which gets me to thinking...

AppleTV was OK but not great until the Remote app came out. Now it's flat-out awesome.

The AppleTV is a great core component—it plays music, video, and photos over HDMI to my home theater system, and includes WiFi for downloading new content. But the included remote control is weak—it's too small and not very responsive. Luckily, the AppleTV 2.1 software enables WiFi control.

The iPhone, aside from being an iPod, a phone, and an Internet device, is a frickin' awesome remote. It has a big, beautiful, 3D-accelerated touch screen and built-in WiFi. And, importantly, I almost always have mine in my pocket. It's the perfect complement to the headless AppleTV. (Sure, you can wade through the on-TV menus, but if you have more than a dozen or so videos, you're going to wish you hadn't.)

A friend of mine asked me a while ago about developing an iPhone app to control his Kaleidascape system (essentially a hard drive-based movie and music for really rich people) and the rest of his home-automation gear. But why stop there? There are innumerable systems around my house with horrific interfaces: heating and air conditioning, lawn sprinkler system, security system, not to mention every device that already has its own junky remote. Why not control them all with the device I already carry with me? But I digress.

Even if you wanted to stick with only A/V equipment like TV's, DVD players, DVR's, cable set-top boxes, and receivers, the iPhone, along with a WiFi-enabled IR emitter, could in one fell swoop disrupt the entire Universal Remote business.

The iPhone's threat to RIM's BlackBerry business is making headlines these days. But Logitech's $123M universal remote business, which the company expects to be its fastest-growing retail category in 2009, could make an even easier (albeit smaller) target.

The solution would require not only a custom iPhone app but also some hardware that could talk to hundreds of different manufacturer's devices. It's the kind of messy problem that Apple usually stays away from. Sounds like an excellent idea for a startup.

Update: It's happening. Cool!