Misc.

February 21, 2005

I've got a Cold and I can't load Outlook...my apologies if you sent me emails in the past few days...EOM

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February 17, 2005

Announcing our first sponsors and....Nick Aster, media tech architect extraordinaire joins SVW!

We are very excited to announce our first two Founding Sponsors! We’ll reveal their names in proper introductions over the next few days. They are large companies yet they quickly spotted and “got” what we are trying to create (without any pitching from us). They understand the importance of what it means to be thought leaders in their markets, and in exploring how to leverage the innovative communications technologies that blogging and blogging-like technologies can provide. They have been among our earliest and staunchest supporters. I will introduce each one of these companies in separate entries over the next few days.

Also, we are very happy to announce that Nick Aster is now part of the team, and will be putting together our “Geek Squad” of media tech gurus.

Nick is a huge IT talent, he set up the publishing infrastructures for Nick Denton’s Gawker Media publishing empire in NYC, launching high traffic sites such as Gawker, Wonkette, and many others.

There are extremely few people that have the many-year veteran experience that Nick has already accumulated in this young field of using blogging software and related technologies, in commercial publishing applications. Nick also worked at Moreover.com the pioneering online news aggregator. (And he lives but a ten minute walk away from SVW HQ in SF!)

Nick will be helping us improve the site, launch new “watch” sections/sites, and other media tech ventures we have in the works. Nick will also be assembling a side business, the “Geek Squad” that will be part of a consulting group that will work with other companies/publishers—offering them a range of services. And also developing some in-house tools and other media tech software.

And hopefully, (as with Candida Kutz, our hard working Geek Goddess) we will be able to occasionally drag him away from toiling at the server farm and get him to write a word or two for our readers.

| comments 0 | tagged Misc.

January 31, 2005

A plea to the blogosphere from a lady in distress....please find DHL's headquarters!

by Tom Foremski for SiliconValleyWatcher.com
(My loyal readers have a mission to fulfill this morning. The first one with the answer wins a special prize and global recognition!)

It is very early in the morning Monday and the phone rings. A young woman's v. british voice says, hi, i'm samantha, am i waking you up? no, not at all, i'm a blogger i keep strange hours. could you help me? you are my last hope i cannot find the address or the phone number of DHL's global headquarters(!)

what do you mean in this day and age of the internet you cannot find DHL's corporate headquarters? i said this is a company that stakes it's reputation on delivering packages to a specific point in space and time yet it can't find itself?

i've tried searching everywhere and even their regional offices don't know the number. i found your article about DHL which was quite good by the way and figured you might know.

i said that wasn't my story it was jochen's but i'm sure my super intelligent geek readers would rise to this challenge especially since silicon valley is known for its ability to tackle some of the world's toughest problems. i can publish the request for help anytime i want, i said. you can? she said sounding very impressed (note to other bloggers). i can publish anytime i want because i'm a blogger.

what's a blogger she said?

i said ideas travel to the east coast in six months and take 12 months to reach where you are sitting. anyway it’s a long story.

dear readers please demonstrate the power of blogging and the blogoshpere and find and publish the address and phone number of DHL's global headquarters in our comments section. samantha promises to write back.

| comments 3 | tagged Misc.

December 08, 2004

The story so far

by Doug Millison for SiliconValleyWatcher.com

Pardon me for tooting our own horn here, but after a few short weeks of publication, Silicon Valley Watcher is a hit - and we'd like to invite you to help us in the effort to make it the location on the Web for insight into the world's leading site for technology business innovation. After all, nobody knows Silicon Valley the way you do.

Hundreds of people - interesting, involved, busy, like you in other words - now visit Silicon Valley Watcher every day (and the number is increasing) and we'd like to give you all more of what you're learning to enjoy here.

We know that you know about business deals in the works, new projects, personnel moves, new products and services in the pipeline, research breakthroughs, future trends. If you have a success story to share, please do - and if you've got a cautionary tale, that's valuable, too.

We'll keep it confidential and anonymous if that's necessary.

If you'd like to make your editorial contribution public, that's fine, too. We'll give you a byline or otherwise give you credit for what you pass along.

Maybe you've got information or subject-matter expertise that you'd like to share, but you don't consider yourself a writer. We'll assign a writer or editor to work with you to create an article, column, interview, or case study.

Adding comments to specific articles is a good way to participate, too. These articles are offered as a springboard for further discussion. We're developing ways to spotlight comments and discussions as they develop, too.

It's a citizen journalist world all of a sudden here on the Web, so let's join forces, tell our stories and share insight and information that we can all use to make our Silicon Valley days more profitable . . .and more enjoyable.

Please don't hesitate to contact me by email if you've got an idea for an article or a suggestion to make Silicon Valley Watcher better.

Thanks,
Doug Millison
Managing Editor, Silicon Valley Watcher
doug at siliconvalleywatcher dot com
cd1900

| comments 0 | tagged Media Watch | Misc.

October 09, 2004

Update on Craigslist--the movie

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to the premiere of the documentary of “24 hours on Craigs list,” I had to take care of some family stuff.(No--I was not at the B'man decompression event in the Mission, where a lot of geeks had gathered Sunday evening.)

If anyone saw the Craig's List documentary, could they send in a review? I'll publish the best ones...

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September 28, 2004

Hold your Geek Beacon high--or how to flag a cab in SF part 2

Thanks for the emails and comments on my recent entry about using a Treo and its bright screen to flag a taxi down. I asked for suggestions on what to call it, to see if we could create a successful meme around it, especially since many cell phones now have bright color screens. So far, my favorite is...

...Pace’s suggestion, “the Geek Beacon.”

But, more suggestions are welcome. And hopefully we can have some fun with this and link it to San Francisco/Silicon Valley.

I just don’t want to be in New York next month and see people hailing cabs with the Geek Beacon, and calling it the “Manhattan Salute” or something, and claiming it for their own. Or, in Washington, they’ll start claiming that they invented the “Freedom Light” when hailing a cab.

No, the Geek Beacon demonstrates that indeed, we reside at the heart of all innovative thinking about everything. Yes, New York might be the center of all cultural things (yawn), and San Francisco and Silicon Valley are but a quaint fishing village next to a large business park--to the citizens of Gotham. But, they will not own the Geek Beacon. That stays here. Along with the San Francisco treat.
Join me, and hold your Geek Beacon high (especially at night.)

| comments 0 | tagged Misc.

September 24, 2004

Bits and Bites: A Friday collection...

Ellisa Feinstein sent this in--very funny. A word of warning to my fellow journalists, please do not try this at home...or at the office.

Ellisa writes: "PR people are always given advice on how to work with the media. Here's a link for journalists on "How to Handle PR People." Enjoy ;)".....
http://www.honk.co.uk/fleetstreet/prfaq.htm

And there is more...William Hambricht, Steve Jobs, and is a Silicon Valley Starbucks a good place to place to recruit a startup team?

Is there a CFO in the house?

"The great thing about Silicon Valley is that I can pull together a startup team so quickly. This place has all the talent you need, and it is often right under your nose," said Nand Mulchandani, CEO of Determina, when I met him the other day at an SRI International event.

I started wondering...would it be possible to stride into a Silicon Valley Starbucks and recruit an entire management team? I bet you could get at least two thirds of the team, maybe the rest at the laundromat.

Anybody want to try it? Let me know....it could be a fun.

William Hambricht, the man behind the Google IPO auction, was on Charlie Rose a few weeks back. I Tivo'd it but didn't watch it until recently.

He made a killer point and it went something like this:
"You've always known that half your advertising dollars are wasted, but, you never knew which half. Google figured it out, with its pay for performance advertising."

This is exactly why I believe print advertising will decline further. It's taken several years, but ad agencies now know how to track online ad performance, and more importantly, they can produce solid ROI numbere, plus they get lots of ancillary customer data to explore.

Print advertising can't offer that kind of value; you can only estimate an ROI, and there is usually little in customer data produced.

There are many dead men walking out there, still waiting for print advertising to come back...

Stonestown mall gets an Apple Store.
You have to hand it to Apple. Its Apple stores are hot. About one in seven of Apple's revenue dollars come through its stores--and they are very profitable.

The Apple Store in downtown San Francisco is a superb example of how to control and create a high quality consumer brand experience. If HP and Dell and others want a lesson in brand support and brand experience, they should walk into that store. As Roger McNamee, our local whizz kid uberinvestor gushed earlier this year, "I've never walked into a store where I wanted to buy everything in it."

I think I had that experiecnce when I was a kid...and I know my 10 year old daughter has tried to convince me to buy entire store contents. But why stop at the store, Roger could easily buy the mall..

With the SF Apple store, there is a shocking juxtaposition to contend with. Just across the street from the minimalist design of the Apple Store building is, gasp, The Virgin Megastore! Five floors of CD's, DVD's and books.

Megastore...how touchingly 1980s...mom and dad are browsing for CDs while the kids are at the Apple Store, checking out a DJ workshop on mixing audio tracks.

Here we have two companies with rock star CEOs, two lifestyle-focused companies. Which one is tired? Has Sir Richard spent too much time in his ballon, in the rarefied atmosphere of our blue planet?

SVW Scoop: Did you know that Steve Jobs designed the upstairs theater in the Apple store? He personally selected the chairs himself (by the way, a very stylish choice Steve, nice one.)

Steve Jobs is rumored to be up for the top job at Disney, and I know that Steve would run that business with great gusto. I can see him now, overseeing the installation of the sprinklers outside ABC’s headquarters. I'm not saying Steve has a reputation as a micro-manager, he's just very detailed oriented.

And there's nothing wrong with that. You certainly won’t hear Apple Computer or Pixar investors complaining. Over the past few years they have done very well thank you, under Jobs.

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