Think Forward

Product (Red) and Tech Companies

For those folks paying attention, Apple can not keep the Product (Red) iPod in stock. Similiar companies like The Gap are having stock issues for Product (Red) clothes. I would like to formally encourage all technology companies who make hardware to consider developing a Product (Red) offering. This could be a laptop, or a cell phone like Motorolla, a portable entertainment device, anything that finds it's way to consumers hands. I also strongly encourage you to strategically think about what your company's unique Product (Red) offering could be. Please do not take a laptop and paint it red. Think about how your offering can be uniquely different then someone else in your space.

We in the technology industry need to align ourselves with global efforts to make the world a better place. We develop technologies that we hope to make people's lives better. So for those folks who do not have access to the technologies we develop we need to engage in efforts that can better lives as a whole. Prodcut (Red) offerings are a great start but there is so much more we can do.

Is MySpace trying to get people to leave?

Over the past few month’s my experience on myspace.com has become more and more frustrating. 6-8 Month’s ago I was actively on MySpace.com for a few hours at a time each day. I was talking to friends and meeting new people and it was great. Now however the experience is slow. I am filtering through more spam messages then actually communicating with friends. I absolutely love the fact that they make me put my password in every time I come back to my profile page thus forcing me to input it and subjecting me to useless ads while I do it. I have since moved to Facebook.com and the experience is night and day. My conclusion is that MySpace wants people to leave because it is making decisions on the platform and experience that is causing people to do so.

PS3 First Impressions

I received my PS3 hot of the press Monday morning. Unfortunately I was in LA Monday but proceeded to set it up as soon as I could on Tuesday. The out of the box experience was going well until I realized they don't provide either the HDMI cable or component cables necessary to experience the PS3 in Hi-Def. Something I found a little odd, here people will be spending $599 and they don't get all they need to use it in Hi-Def, HMMM.

Other then that the setup process was pretty clean. My only real complaint is no where in any instruction set does it say you first need to plug it in using the provided AV cables to then set the video output to HDMI or component. Sony in my press kit gave me an HDMI cable so I used it. I learned the lesson about the AV cables the hard way because I started off by plugging the HDMI into my TV and got no signal until I used the AV cables to set the output to HDMI.

After that was done the first thing I did was pop in the provided Taladega Nights that comes with every PS3 in Blue Ray. This is pretty sweet because Taladega Nights doesn't even release to DVD until next month. Perhaps this is a sign that Sony Studios may offer some cool things to PS3 owners where they can get titles before they go to DVD. One can only hope.

After enjoying Blue Ray for a while I popped in Resistance Fall of Man. Quite impressive graphics and game play. This weekend I will be putting the XBOX 360 and PS3 to side by side comparisons for graphics. So stay tuned for that.

Overall I have had an impressive experience. The PS3 is almost silent and puts off EXTREMELY less heat and noise then the 360. PS3 is clearly superior in heat and noise. Over the next few days I will be putting the online and community features through the ringer.

Can facebook become the new MySpace?

I have been using MySpace since it's peak and have begun as of late to use Facebook as well. I am hearing of loads of teenagers and young adults slowing down their MySpace usage and going over to Facebook. I can see many reason's why mainly being that from a usability standpoint Facebook is 10 times better then MySpace. If you simply want to interact with friends and more importantly keep sub-groups and networks of people seperate Facebook is a fantastic application.

So the question is can Facebook become the new MySpace. I would argue yes but a few things might stand in the way. Where Facebook accells in usability and organization it does not allow you to completely personallize your page to reflect your personality graphically or musically. MySpace also accels in the music aspect of it's offering which was why it was created in the first place. I can see why Facebook is used more by the young adult crowd who as they get older care more about friend association then personaliation to express themselves.

Since Facebook has now opened its services up to everyone, before you had to be part of a college or corporation, I believe we will see a lot of people begin to start using facebook more. The chances that a former MySpacer will start to spend less time on MySpace and more on Facebook really depends if the MySpacer is tired of spam bulletins, useless friend requests, bad and forced marketing messages and more time filtering through crap then interacting with friends. I believe the now Corporate influence of MySpace will spell its demise to users who will find a fresh and very efficient Facebook the new MySpace.