Where is Your iPhone Three?

I’d like to begin this post by saying I love Three (the mobile phone network).

I have always found their customer service to be excellent and their innovation in mobile products to be way ahead of Telstra, Vodafone and Optus.

I especially like their innovation in roaming bandwidth pricing. Did you know that when you roam to another country with a Three network, the prices are quite reasonable on their International 3 Like Home rates. Here’s my bill from a recent trip to the UK where I used the mobile web as usual - a very reasonable $8.10 for the trip.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Such is my loyalty to Three that I resisted buying an iPhone from Telstra (always lame), Vodafone (blacklisted by me after appalling customer service) and Optus (silly animal ads). Eventually I emailed customer. If I had been told that they would be able to give me an iPhone in 6 months I would have waited.

Instead I got this:

Hi,

It looks like your asking about the Apple Iphone.

At this point in time, we do not have any information on future handsets that may be sold on 3. A handset designed for a 3G network does not ensure it will be available on 3 Australia. Due to differing technical features and configuration details, third party devices may not be completely compatible with our network.

We suggest you check our website regularly for the most up to date information and prices. Any new handset launches will be listed here or in “The Australian” newspaper.

Until then, thanks for being a customer with 3 – we’ll continue to make sure we bring you the best value and the services that you need from us. Thanks again for getting in touch.

Regards
3 Care

So I went with the people that have the silly animal ads. You lost me (and my few hundred dollars a month bill) Three.

A Future for TV: The Collaborative Crowd?

At Ross Dawson’s Future of Media 08, Mark Pesce described a future for TV which I loved.

He described a way of filming sport in which the crowd collaborates on filming the event. I imagined hundreds of good quality, wireless devices in the crowd, sending the stream through an aggregator (possibly human, possibly not) that put the whole experience together into something that made sense.

The exciting thing was, the future was (crudely) already present. At that moment I was streaming the event live to 30 people who could not make it in person. I was also chatting with that group of people in the Tangler powered Chaser space that Pollenizer manages. I arrived at the event a bit late so I had a bad seat for the picture, but Stilgherrian was near the front and I was able to use uStream’s co-host feature to aggregate his stream with mine. So we had 2 cameras collaborating on the event. The future was present.

It was… salient.

Here is a recorded verison of my stream for the archive. Unfortunately it did not record the other stream.

Podcast: The Startup Economy in Australia

Last week, Mark Jones invited me to be a part of a great discussion about some of the difficulties startups can face in the Australian economy. Mark, Mike Zimmerman (Technology Venture Partners) and Domenic Carosa (former Destra CEO) and myself had a chat about the The Australian Innovator’s Dillema on The Scoop. Here it is.

Media for Future Generations

Saturday morning. Watching some short films and trailers on Vuze with my kids. After watching the trailer for BatMan: The Dark Knight:

Henry (Aged 6): Dad, I want to watch that one!
Dad: Well we need to go and watch that at the movies son.
Henry: Why can’t we just print one off?’

I’ll leave you to make your own predictions on how future generations will value and interact with media.

‘Undebate’ on the Future of Music Tonight!

Tonight on SBS at 7.30pm (in Australia), Insight is airing a great discussion on the future of music. I was part of the briefing for the show and I think it will be a good one.

This debate is often masked in propaganda (from both sides) and I hoping that tonight’s show will bring some perspective. Shall we have an ‘undebate’?

Join me here tonight at 7.30pm.

Here’s the press release.

INSIGHT: MiTunes
Tuesday June 3
7.30pm

On tonight’s Insight, Jenny Brockie mediates a fascinating debate about music downloading and how the music industry will survive the digital age.

With so much music free online, thousands of Australians are downloading their favourite tracks without handing over a cent. Some call it stealing, others call it file sharing. Whatever your moral stance, the music industry has changed forever. So how are songwriters and artists making a living?

Insight tackles the issue head on , bringing together musicians, songwriters and the teenagers who download their music without paying. The Audreys, Tim Levinson from the Herd, Mahalia Barnes and Jenny Morris come face to face with fans and explain the impact of downloading on their careers.

Two teenagers admit to having over 2,000 illegally downloaded songs in their computer library. To which hip hop artist Phrase replies,

“One day I would like to buy a house and have a wife and have a kid but that’s not possible if I keep just giving to you guys all the time. I can’t just keep giving you music” .

Mikey Green, from The Audreys adds;

“I guess they’re not making that connection with what they’ve done which is stealing because it’s just a click of a mouse button. When we were younger if we wanted to steal a record we would have to walk into a shop with a big trench coat, put the wax under your jacket and run very fast.”

But most artists are aware the Internet is a fantastic promotional tool and remain in two minds about the issue. Mahalia Barnes adds,

” It really works to the advantage of an artist as everyone said, by spreading your music and getting it out there.”

Stephen Peach, head of ARIA, goes head to head with the Internet Industry Association’s Peter Coroneos over whether or not Internet services should play a role in solving the piracy issue. Says Peach,

“There are probably a billion songs a year just in Australia that are illegally downloaded. People are stealing from artists and song writers as well as labels and retailers.”

Scot Morris, from APRA, joins the debate from Europe where developments have seen ISPs and the music industry come together.

And Kevin Bermeister, formerly with the infamous pirate network Kazaa, reveals his new plan aimed at redirecting Internet users from illegal to legal music sites.

No one who loves music can afford to miss this debate.

Insight host Jenny Brockie is available for interviews. Contact Ksana Natalenko on 02 9430 3784, 0413 563 629 or ksana.natalenko@sbs.com.au

Can Everyone in Your Startup Answer These Questions?

Last week, Amir Suissa of Linqia sent me the following questions (published with permission):

What is the core question that we use to project against, to determine if we develop a specific product/feature or not?

What is the user looking for?

If [insert] is our core, how does that manifest to the user?

What is your vision of the path going forward to deliver a coherent user experience on [product] in terms of product priorities, timing, resources allocation (internal/external)?

What is your vision for path to create [company] as a sustainable company, taking in to account financing, product, engineering, business model, time frame (window of opportunity/ investors cash to run the company till proof of concept and revenue generation)?

Can you answer these questions in the context of your company? It took me 2 days to get to my own answers for Linqia. I wonder if Jerry Yang can answer them?

What is the Right Mix in Your Product?

Ari Paparo has written an essential blog post for all start-up founders called Getting it Right. Avi was a founder of Blink.com, which was a social bookmarking site before De.licio.us that had 1.5 million users and $13 million… and yet failed.

The message: focus on people, not on technology.

Thanks for sharing the link Mike.

5 Forces of Media 2.0 and other Thoughts

Here is my deck from an APRA think-tank a couple of weeks ago. I’m thinking about this alot again after a post-Kazaa reboot.

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Hell’s Kitchen - Tips for Startup Growing Pains

ast week, Mick and me I spoke at Transaction 2.0 (part of CeBit). Mine was about some tips for surviving mid-stage startup growing pains.

Thanks to everyone that attended the talk in the room, and also via The Chaser, for encouraging me to swear alot and providing great feedback.

Here is the latest deck on slideshare:

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Hells Kitchen Notes on Slides.

Here is the uStream recording from The Chaser. Its a bit hard to hear so probably not a great deal of use. Hopefully CeBit will release something better because it looked like everything was filmed professionally.

I will blog each slide in more detail in the weeks to come because I think the message is important.

In the meantime, I have had a few requests for links to the tools I mentioned in the talk. When we formed Pollenizer, we invested immediately in Confluence and Jira from Atlassian. Because we made that decision we have collected all internal IP as we go in the Confluence Wiki and tracked tasks across all projects and (globally distributed) teams using Jira. It was some of the best money we have spent. Everyone has access to the information they need and there is never a question of who owns a certain task. More on this in a later post.

Mick was a total star with his Focus or Fail talk. He juggled AND managed to smash a glass in the audience as well as grabbing our interest with some important lessons he has learned working with startups.

On a final note, it was my great pleasure to meet Jason Calacanis and Tyler Crowley from Mahalo. Frankly Jason’s reputation had preceeded him and (like a true Australian) I had him marked as a bit full of himself. Instead, he came into Sydney like a whirlwind, inspired everyone (I actually think he did meet EVERYONE in the whole city) and left, leaving us whinging a little less and getting down to business as a community of awesome startups ready to take on the world. He encouraged us to just to get on with it!

My CeBit Presentation: Hell’s Kitchen

Next week, I am speaking at CeBit’s Transaction 2.0 Conference about some of the things I have learned working with start-ups. Here is the synopsis:

Hell’s Kitchen: Technology and Business in Start-ups

You’ve just binned your prototype, brought on a crew of five, had your first server melt down or hired a sales guy and he sold something you don’t have. Welcome to the hellish (and common) world of mid-stage-start-ups. Get ready to deal with it. Phil will present some delicious recipes from start-ups that have already burned in Hells Kitchen.

I’ve had some Twitter feedback that the ‘Hell’ theme could be a little strong. Perhaps. But it is hard in a start-up. Under the hype where we grapple to make money and keep our infant websites humming it can be… well… hell.

Here’s the presentation:

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