Two Convenient Moves to Save the World

I found two things that you can do to help the planet AND yourself.

1. I eat a ton of peanut butter sandwiches, but I never knew they saved the world. I was called a HERO by the friend that sent me this link – www.pbjcampaign.org

2. These Come From Trees Stickers… Save Trees. But they also come from trees?? Do the math, 1 sticker saves 100 lbs. of paper a year.

The Answer to My Prayers

It has finally happened. I have somehow stumbled upon quite possibly the best product ever, The Women in Waders 2007 Calendar. Finally, something for that hard-to-shop-for gentleman (or lady) that loves women AND fishing.

Now the important thing to notice on this link is that there is a buy one get one free deal going on. I AM TOTALLY SERIOUS when I say that if you buy this calendar YOU MUST send me the free one. Sure, I have already bought 4, but this is what my friends and relatives will be getting for Christmas and their birthdays until I run out.

I beg, take this post seriously.  Please buy this calendar and send me the free one.

Comment or email me for my address.

I Don’t Know Why This is my Favorite Commercial?

but it is.

Will I buy Old Spice? No

scanR Review

So let me say again that I love the idea of scanR. At this time though, it can’t work.

I took pictures with three cameras and the best result that I got was about 75% accuracy of information. I think that once camera phones have better resolution this company will really have a product worth talking about(and word will spread fast).

I don’t have time to write a more in depth review, but if you have questions about the service, please email me or leave a comment.

Fighting Free

I would say that an emerging rule of the Internet is that someone is always willing to give it away for free.  That is what your business is up against.

There are many examples.  Music may be the most obvious illustration, but a look at the fights between the TV networks and youtube shows that the trend is continuing.  Digging deeper, you can even see in the post below that the Internet itself is getting “free-er”.  Every fact in the universe is just a click away and so is communication across the planet.

If you look hard and smart enough, I bet you can find the free version of almost anything.

The question that you really should be asking yourself is ‘Why will someone pay for mine (whatever that may be) instead of just getting a free version?’

We used to be an industrial economy that had a value on physical assets that produced goods.  Over time we became an information economy where data became the most valuable asset.  I think we are quickly moving into a relationship economy.  Information is getting more free everywhere you look.  What is getting more valuable is the relationship and the trust to believe this information.  Call it branding, call it permission, just do it quickly.

The Free WiFi Future

I think there are maybe 1000 in the United States that don’t want free and ubiquitous WiFi networks.  These people own ISP’s and airports, they make their money by charging for Internet access.

For the rest of us, we are going to be pretty happy to hear that our city, state or even the whole country is WiFi-ed.  I have heard of a few cities beginning this initiative, but I think we  may have just found the silver bullet for ubiquitous WiFi, the WiFi Liberator.

This device is a bottom up solution for this project.  Basically this device retransmits any wireless signal that your computer is receiving.  If you happen to be paying for the Internet, say at a coffee shop, the Liberator free’s the signal up.  Anyone accessing off of your (re)signal will not have to pay.

I’m sure the devices will need to get stronger with a better range to have any real impact, but I think its a good start.

James Bond and Mobile 2.0

If this interests you at all, check out my other site.

The plot goes something like this…

Its 1974 and 007 is at a party being thrown by an international currency trader who also dabbles in weapons exchanges with the USSR.  Eye patches are being donned, beautiful campaigns are imbibed by beautiful women and James Bond is in a dark study on the second floor taking pictures with his bow tie.  The pictures are of blue prints for a nuclear reactor scheduled to be built in what one day we’ll call Armenia.

Bond will eventually be lured in by an evil temptress whom he meets at this party.   After a perfectly timed and executed seduction she will turn 007 over to the evil arms dealer that she was working for all along.  Bond will escape a certain death, kill the evil villain, foil the construction of the nuclear reactor AND get the girl to change her ways and desire him for the rest of her life.  And all this was initiated by the first photographs taken at the party.

Now comes the unbelievable part.  Are we really to assume that M, Q or 007 himself was analyzing the blueprints for the reactor in JPEG format, or worse yet, actual paper prints??  I just don’t buy it – there are too many holes in that idea.  So how did the techies at MI6 get those pictures in to searchable PDFs?

  The answer is most likely scanR.  Apparently this company has been around for a while, but their technology is just now available for personal use on your cell phone.  That’s right, this service which is free (for now) allows you to take a picture of any paper documents or whiteboard and it will convert them to a PDF file.  More than that, you can take a picture of a business card and scanR will digitize and email you the contact information.

For the next week I will be using scanR as much as possible and I will report back how well it works.

Initial Impressions (before any use)

Awesome: This is a great idea.  It will save me hours, days or even years (depending how many currency traders/arms dealers I meet).  The business card application seems perfect for, well, anyone that gives or receives business cards.  And I’ll finally find out what a whiteboard is.

Sucks: I need a 2 mpxl camera for the business card function!  The Motorola Q is only 1.3!!  I still have 2 years on my contract!!!  Like it really matters once the iPhone comes out.  Either way, I don’t blame you scanR (yet) I blame Motorola.

Talk to you soon.

Criteria

So if you read the post below, you will see that a new focus here is to discover, try and review Mobile 2.0 companies (What does this mean?).  I just wanted to take a second to talk about how I plan on evaluating these companies.

1.  Does the product work?  Yes I know we are all in Beta.  I’ll try more than once, but sooner or later it has to do something.

(who took this picture?)

2.  Do I have a problem that this product solves?  This seems like a legitimate question right?

3.  Coolness factor.  To me, this could be what the whole thing is about, people will show their friends and contact list Cool.

4.  Is this product unique?  How?  At this early stage in the industry a lot of companies are going after  the same functions, but there are a few people doing some things all by themselves.

5.  Will this be around in 5 years?  Sooner or later the investors are going to want their money to return.  Can this company get funded?  Can this company (product) make money?

6.  What would David Cross think of this idea?  His honest unbiased opinion.

Mobile 2.0 is Arriving

For some strange reason America has always been a laggard in the Mobile/Cellular arena.  Sure, everyone you have ever met now has a cell phone, but text messaging really just caught on here after being popular for years in countries like Japan and the UK.

It turns out that we have been behind Europe and Asia in other Mobile technologies also.

What people call Mobile 2.0 (and I like to call MoCo20) is a collection of 3rd party start ups that facilitate mobile communities, mobile content and new applications for mobile phones.  This post will really do a better job of describing what the term actually means.   2007 is the year that these Mobile 2.0 companies become popular in the US.

This blog is jumping in with two feet.  A major focus from this day forward is to profile the MoCo’s, use their service and then review them.  In addition I have built a Squidoo Lens about MoCo20’s.  This webpage lists a lot of the companies making headway, (you can suggest more) links to some very smart people and best of all, this lens lets you vote for and rank the services that you use.

So click to this page and check out some of the companies that I will be profiling.  Most of them are just starting off so their services are totally free.  These are the Napsters, Myspaces and YouTubes of tomorrow which you can check out today.

If this interests you at all please subscribe to this blog and leave a comment, join the discussion.  You’ll be hearing from me soon.