Maroon Ventures Blog

I am all about utility.  Life gets chaotic if you don’t keep the clutter and noise under control.  I wanna have fun while I’m moving through my day, but when it comes right down to it I want to get things done.  With that in mind, I’ve become pretty selective in the widgets and utilities I use online.  They need to help me stay connected, bring me the news and information I’m seeking, or replace a task that I would otherwise be focused on finishing.  I don’t think that’s asking too much.  Do you?

The widget does have to help with all and every task.  In fact, the smallest gestures make the biggest impact.  Last night I logged into Facebook. I’d received a new friend invite from a colleague I worked with in the Bay Area.  And, there on my profile page were reminders of two friends celebrating birthdays this week – Mike and Teresa.  What a wonderful thing!  Facebook is meeting my first criteria for a useful utility- helping me stay connected. 

I sent Mike a birthday note this morning and stopped by Teresa’s office to wish her a Happy Birthday. Without the FB reminder, I would have missed that chance.  I reminded a girlfriend over lunch of the two birthdays and she quickly scrambled to load them on her calendar.  Not necessary! Find the right tool that helps you stay connected and let the tool do some of the heavy lifting for you. 

Its all about utility; life’s too chaotic not to have a little help.

Posted by Charity Huff

If you are looking to burn some hours this weekend and don’t have anything to do, head over to Microsoft’s Photosynth. Photosynth isn’t exactly new but if you haven’t seen it before, it is sure to elicit more than a few “hey, that’s cool’s”. Photosynth take a collection of random tourist photos of a given location and stitches them together over a 3D model to create a pretty interesting mosaic. You can essentially walk about the 3D model and view the location from that point (as a photo taken by a tourist at that location). They have several different locations including Piazza San Marco in Venice. 

Buzzkill of the Day: Only Vista and XP users need apply. Photosynth doesn’t work on the Mac OS.

Posted by Chris Tippie

Josh Bernhoff over at Forrester just released some interesting research around a recession’s impact online marketing buying habits. That is to say, they asked over 300 interactive marketers the following:

Assuming the economy is in a recession in the next six months, how would you change your investment in interactive marketing overall?

The results are pretty interesting. The most recession proof marketing channel was Social Networking followed closely by User Generated Content, Email Marketing, Blogging and everyone’s favorite, Search Engine Marketing. The most vulnerable to recession? Display Advertising. What does this mean for companies such as Yahoo! and the newspaper industry who have invested heavily in being a key player in the display advertising space? My take: not much.

The reason lies behind who Forrester asked.  They asked interactive marketers. My belief is that these are interactive marketers who are pushing predominantly online brands and products. Such brands and products lend themselves to non-traditional advertising channels with an emphasis on buzz and measurable conversion (hence SEM). If you put an “channel age” next to each of the channels in the survey, you’d probably find that the newest channels are on top while the oldest are at the bottom (with the exception of Email Marketing - hmmmmm). Simply put, these interactive marketers aren’t your usual display advertising purchasers anyhow. I argue that if you had asked 300+ car dealers the same question, the result would have been very different. 

That being said, we’re not out of the woods yet. The perception behind impression based display advertising persists - been there done that. Newer pricing models such as CPC and CPA need to be leveraged even to the most brick and mortar advertisers. Additionally, target target target! Educate your advertisers. Provide data. Try to measure ROI. That’s how you beat a recession - prove that it is working. 

Posted by Chris Tippie

Why are Mac converts so damn annoying? Have you noticed that? I was once a happy PC user content to never know of or much less use a Mac. However, I had all these Mac friends who would pester me about just how superior their machine was. It was annoying.  One day, due to a slight logistical problem (left the PC on the couch at the start of a 7 day road trip) I decided to go out and try a Mac. Hell, if after 7 days I hated the thing i’d either sell it or just take it back. Six months later, I am one of the most annoying Mac converts you’ll ever met. I freely admit that. I started thinking about this behavior and what I concluded is what we have here is a classic case of Plato’s Cave Allegory. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Chris Tippie

The Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget has a gleeful post today lauding the demise of the newspaper industry. Their loss, he argues, is interactive advertising’s gain.

“The $42 billion that was spent on print newspapers in 2007 isn’t going to vaporize–it’s just going to go somewhere else,” he writes.

Then he guesses the breakdown will look something like this:

Surviving newspapers, 25%, magazines, 0%, TV, 0%, Outdoor 5% and Digital 70%

But I wouldn’t count those dollars before they’re hatched, Henry. The Internet’s assault on newspaper ad revenue is as much about value destruction as it is about switching dollars. Think about Craig’s list, where advertising that used to cost money is now, for the most part, free. Think of the major job and auto boards, where ads now cost several hundred dollars instead of the several thousand that advertisers paid for newspaper reach. Maybe advertisers are finding new ways to spend those dollars on interactive campaigns. But I think they’re really just pocketing much of the difference.

Posted by Bob Benz

I can almost hear the Mac whore giggling with delight as I write this. I’ve switched to the Mac. It was time to get a new laptop, and I just couldn’t bear choosing between the aging Windows XP and the feable Windows Vista as an operating platform.

So I bought a MacBook Pro.

Overall, I love it. It has everything I wanted  in an operating system. But it isn’t the flawless experience many of the Mac faithful would lead you to believe.

My first problem set in when I tried to connect to my Linksys home network. I couldn’t. After poking around online, I found out I had to install several updates to the OS that came installed on the MacBook. Then I had to update the firmware on my Linksys, something that definitely isn’t for the tech timid. Even then, I couldn’t get on my home network from my porch, where I can watch blue herons swoop in on fish in Hidden Cove. All of my other computers, Mac and PC alike, can hook up on the porch. I tried totally different, open source firmware on the router that allows you to boost its power. That made it a little better, but it’s still pretty iffy. So I’m resigned to using my Verizon broadband wireless device until I can get to the genius bar to find out if my laptop is a 98-pound wireless weakling or if there’s some problem with its internal antenna.

Problem two arose when I went to pull my Outlook files into Entourage. Granted, this is more a Microsoft problem than an Apple issue, but it’s one of the main reasons I’d waited so long to go Mac. I live and die by Outlook. And I’d been told the new version of Entourage is much better. It is. And it isn’t.

Converting my .pst files to something Entourage was willing to handle took more surfing and tech tweaking. I finally found an application that did the conversion. It took several hours, but now I’m there.

And finally, I got a dose of platform challenges when a Powerpoint that I did on my PC pretty much blew up when I opened it with my Mac.

In the end, I’m still happy with my MacBook. I’m hoping the geniuses at the Apple Store will be able to fix my wireless range issue. But I also wanted to inject a little sobriety into my partners’ crapulous posts on the Way of the Mac.

Posted by Bob Benz

Jack Lail has a good post on Random Mumblings arguing that we’re in the “golden age of web news.”

Lail writes:

“It’s a deadly serious battle for audience and ad dollars.

“But it’s also fun, tremendous fun. The community will certainly win through more intense and competition-honed news coverage and some damn good local news Web sites.

Posted by Bob Benz

Just read a good article in the NYTimes on Apple’s encroachment into RIM’s hardcore business user domain. Mostly a synopsis of what has happened with a few salient data points on market share. What I find most interesting are the rumored retaliation devices from RIM as well as the “um, in other news…” spin on Google’s whole Android movement.

Oh ya, I still don’t own an iPhone.

Posted by Chris Tippie

Confirming something that everyone already knew or suspected: the 3G iPhone will have GPS and will be slightly thicker. Also, it sounds people are betting on a 3G release date of June 9th. Too bad my Verizon plan doesn’t expire until October. Hmmmm, must explore the penalties…..

Posted by Chris Tippie

I’m deeply worried about the economic woes the newspaper industry is facing. I’m even more worried about what will become of journalism amid this turbulence. As news moves online and the economic model turns upside down, will the capital J survive?

In the April issue of Wired magazine, a profile of the all-out war between geek blogs Engadget and Gizmodo shows there might be hope. (I’d link to it but couldn’t find it anywhere on Wired’s website. Hmm. That might be another post. On the magazine industry’s online woes …).

The article details the cutthroat battle between the two blogs to win audience and nab the best and fastest gadget scoops. As I was reading it, I quickly recognized several of the heated newspaper battles I’ve been involved in. The Birmingham Post-Herald (now defunct) vs. the Birmingham News. The Albuquerque Tribune (now defunct) vs. the Albuquerque Journal. And the Rocky Mountain News vs. the Denver Post (now in a joint operating agreement). The adrenaline and competition in those battles bred some great journalism. There also was excess and questionable practices. But I think in the end, the readers won for having two or more competitors vying for their attention

The Wired article details the race to dominate gadget punditry in all its excess and glory. And it made me believe that maybe the capital J will survive. The heated journalistic competition that once drove the great newspaper battles is just moving online with different rules and economic models. Does it make sense for bloggers to get paid based on the traffic the generate? Don’t know. But I’m sure we’ll find out as that model and others evolve. And I love the idea of two or more snarling online competitors dogging local public officials the way Gizmodo and Engadget’s bloggers dog the tech industry.

Perhaps the thing that gave me the most hope in the Wired article was this quote from Gizmodo’s Brian Lam

“Bloggers and trade journalists, so desperate for a seat at the table with big mainstream publications, have it completely backward: You don’t get more access by selling out for press credentials first chance you get, kowtowing to corporations and trade shows and playing nice; you earn your respect by fact-finding, reporting, having untouchable integrity, provocative coverage, and gaining readers through your reputation for those things.”

Amen. Bring it on …

Posted by Bob Benz