Web/Tech

It has been a very busy quarter!  I used to say that people could tell how busy I was by how badly I needed a haircut, but now I guess my blog is a better indicator.  I have quite a few topics that I will write about over upcoming holiday, including:

• My one piece of advice for entrepreneurs (I’m not sure what it is yet, but a reader asked the question and I’m determined to answer it soon!)
• Time management for entrepreneurs.  What to do when there is too much to do.  My friend and co-founder Jim Fudge used to say "get used to it" and that isn’t bad advice, but there is more that can be done to make the endless emails, phone calls and meeting requests more manageable.
• New technology that is really interesting – the new Video iPod, personal SANs, EVDO
• My new speech-enabled crank-style wall phone.  (Thanks Ben!)
• How web services is (and isn’t) changing everything.  For an example of how it IS, check out Amazon.com’s latest brainstorm – the Mechanical Turk.  This has huge potential and implications for the world economy I think.  I can’t wait to explore this a little more.  In case you missed it, Amazon.com replaced AT&T on the S&P 500 index Friday.  The world is changing.

That’s it for now.  My break is over and I need to get back to work!

Terry

Matt Hines from CNET News.com reports as published on ZDNet that people who mistype google.com are being redirected to another site full of "Trojan Horse Threats, spyware and backdoors."  I won’t repeat the link here, but it is a variation on the spelling of google that anyone might make when they are typing fast.  Be careful, there are bad guys out there.

By strange coincidence another email arrived in my inbox today from Greg Richardson at Cheetah International (they do computer aided transcription – cool stuff).  Greg pointed out that you have to be careful typing www.terrygold.com too.  I get called Jerry a lot, so I’m not surprised that sometimes people wind up at jerrygold.com, but I was very surprised to see who my counterpart in the Netherlands is.  I don’t read Dutch, so I don’t know exactly what he does but his logo sure beats mine!  I wonder if his fans ever get to my site by mistake and wonder why he’s talking about entrepreneurship and speech recognition?

I subscribe to an email newsletter from the CTIA (the wireless association) and they had this blurb about the early cell phones.

Motorola’s Brick Phone Lead the Market
In 1984, Motorola lead the way with its Motorola DynaTAC 8000X "Brick Phone", which weighed 2 pounds, offered only one half hour of talktime and sold for $3,995. Developed by Rudy Krolopp, later dubbed the father of the wireless phone by Motorola’s Chief Executive Officer, the phone was the first of its kind. The design took nearly 10 years and a total of $100 million in development costs before its official unveiling. (Source: Associated Press)

I remember the first time I saw a person using a cell phone in public and it was also the first time I saw someone using a cell phone at a restaurant.  It was one of the brick phones so it looked like they were talking on a walkie-talkie from World War II.  I remember thinking "how important can it be that they take that call?"  When I got closer I realized it was Colorado’s Governor Roy Romer.

Also in today’s newsletter from the CTIA they talked about whether or not cell phones would become big competitors to the iPod.  They also quote Jim Wicks, Motorola’s chief wireless phone designer who said that in the past 10 years, wireless devices have changed from communications tools to consumer electronics devices and in some cases to an object of self expression.

I suppose that’s true, but I still just want to be able to get through my call without having to say, "Can you hear me now?" or "I can’t hear you, I’ll call you back."  My wife just wants me to remember to lock my keypad so that I’ll quit making random speed-dial calls to her accidentally.

I think I’ve invented something – comments please!  I was playing with PodCasting earlier this week.  PodCasting is RSS with an attachment, in this case an mp3 file.  Rather than read the blogs, you can, if you get everything set up just right, automatically download recorded blogs in the author’s own voice directly to your iPod or MP3 player.  If blogging is personal printing press, PodCasting is personal radio broadcasting with TiVo.

Engadget has a tutorial on how to create a podcast.  It assumes the reader has a Mac and that they are willing to use three or four different pieces of software, a sound card, microphone, etc., to make a PodCast.  It’s not rocket science, but it is far from easy.  (No offense Engadget, it’s a great tutorial; I’m just thinking there could be an alternative that would be easier with only some sacrifice in sound quality.)

What I’ve come up with is what I’ll call "TelePodcasting".  The idea is really, really simple.  To create a PodCast, rather than sitting down in a studio, you simply call in your TelePodcast post using any telephone.  This is the very first ever recorded TelePodcast.  If you clicked on the previous link, you should have heard me talking – if not, maybe your speakers aren’t turned on?  The script wasn’t very well thought out and I could have spoken clearer, but if I had redone it, then it wouldn’t still be the Very First Ever recorded TelePodcast, would it?

The point of PodCasting is not really to listen to the recording directly, but to take the RSS feeds and use them to automatically grab the audio and download them to your iPod or MP3 player.  If you are ready to try that, than this RSS feed should do the trick.

If you haven’t encountered PodCasting before, you might be wondering "what’s the point?"  Lots of people prefer audio to visual, which is why Books on Tape and Audible are popular.  But there are a lot more uses.  How about politicians delivering their speeches in their own voice to your inbox?  Or State of the Company addresses, or Sales Team Updates – all delivered from any telephone and distributed automatically and instantly.  PodCasting  seems to be growing as fast as blogging and surely a lot of the people would like to have an easier way to update their sites.

I’m not ready to go into how this works exactly, but it is easy to make a post.  You dial a phone number from any telephone, you’re prompted to record your message and then magically it appears on the blog. 

I think there is something to this.  I’m not sure if it is a potential product for my company, Gold Systems, or a neat idea or a dumb idea.  What do you think?