Tesla Motors changes the conversation… you go, Tesla!

Take me with you.

Environmentally responsible, brilliantly styled, painfully quick. I’m all in. Who’s with me???
BTW, I’m taking donations now…

Tesla Motors website.

A device evolution: Darwinian adaptation of the boombox… and a few thoughts on what’s fit

Do you recognize the modern day personal audio system? At their most familiar, it looks an awful lot like a 2.1 PC speaker system and a funny looking docking port. Or some brick with a funny looking docking port on top. What’s the story?

For table-top or bookshelf audio, and boomboxing, the landscape has clearly changed in the last few years. If you have any doubt, go stroll through the most crowded isles at Best Buy, Costco, Target, Wal-Mart, and even some of the more visible display cases at home A/V dealers in your area like Myer Emco (DC-Metro), Tweeter (Northeast), Magnolia (West Coast), Hawthorne(Seattle). You’ll see a few of the likely suspects from Bose, iHome, Altec Lansing, and Apple which have done the lions share in reshaping how we’re to think about rendering our audio at home.

The speaker-dock market, as I’ll refer to it, is exploding. Naturally, we have Apple’s iPod to thank for this. I dunno how many people realise it, but portable audio players, themselves, have become the de facto portable audio storage medium. I dunno if people associate their iPod with the Sony Walkman or with the cassette tape? With the Discman or the CD?

Media formats have determined the shape of personal audio systems for years — vinyl record turn-tables, cassette decks and Walkmans, laserdisc players, CD players & discman, MD players, … and so now naturally, with music being stored on harddrives and flashdrives, right before our eyes, we are witnessing “device-evolution.” It’s pretty cool if you think about it. Device form factors are adapting to a disruption in media formats. Home audio rendering devices have to pull source material from a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and interfaces as portable audio player makers build on-the-go devices that are so smart and handy, they beg to be used at home as well.

The success of these device markets rely on network affects. In the past, standards (like CD, VHS, 8-track) helped de-risk the proposition for makers of rendering devices. Of course, the market-share leader, Apple, has benefitted from the a positive network effect. Mostly to date, speaker manufacturers have only dared to enter the market with speaker-docks aimed at the iPod. Apple promotes a decent interface spec, and leaves the rest of the enticement being their enormous installed base of iPods they’ve been busy creating year after year.

But now, this will change. Consumers who aren’t shackled to the iPod ecosystem as of yet, can increasingly see speaker-dock options available for their “esoteric” players.

Creative’s take on $300-500 speaker dock was announced recently. See the Engadget article that gives a brief intro to the X-Fi Z600 and a couple lower-end counterparts, one, the TravelSound Zen V that is specifically for the Zen V player.

Altec just launched the first speaker dock for the Zune (pictured above). VAF also chipped in to the game with the Octavio 1, a system I am personally dying to hear.

Some of these speaker-docks do a decent job punching out audio to fill one or two rooms. If you’re willing to spend a couple hundred bucks, minimum.

My bone picking…

I am still troubled by one key issue with all these products. How can I efficiently navigate my music, add to playlists, control playback, and view the displays on these players while they are sitting up on their speakers half way across the room??? This is a huge user interface lapse in my opinion. There are remotes out there for some of these systems, but they have limited playlist selection capabilities. They merely allow you to control audio playback that is already occuring. Already, I have grown accustomed to the GUI of my iPod, why can’t I use it at home just like I do when I am on-the-go?

The current solution just doesn’t quite do it for me. I think there should be a better way, which is why I’ve held off an any personal commitments to current speaker-dock offerings. Aesthetics be damned, my Yamaha 600W Receiver, and 50 ft miniplug-to-RCA extension cord will work just fine for now.

For whenever I am inspired

This confirms that I can blog from my BlackBerry.

Is there nothing I can’t do with me Pearl?

I’m a fan of gapingvoid

If you haven’t read Hugh MacLeod, you are missing out. His cartoons are cutting, and often times brilliant. There is a pulse he feels that resonates strongly with this author.

His articles How to Be Creative and the Hughtrain, are must reads for anyone in marketing or involved in an entrepreneurial venture. They are worth reading if you seek an intelligent laugh too.

He’s been getting quite some nods recently, and his blog gapingvoid is as popular as ever.

His thoughts on viral marketing are crisp, and his focus on authenticity and transparency are inspiring. Relavent ideas for the times.

My two cents on Zune

At the risk of piling on to an overcrowded topic, I think it’s worth noting that the Zune guys pulled off a major coup. I don’t think anyone could have reasonably expected Softy to come out with a device that dethroned the iPod, but the fact that they have now officially changed the conversation is what matters.

As people nitpick the device, the UI, the early depth of music selection, I think they largely miss the point. Until today, you couldn’t find an alternative to the iPod in terms of a vertically integrated experience. It was always also-rans (SanDisk, iRiver, Rio, Creative), which built nice product, but were burdened somewhat by cumbersome Playsforsure technology, and bulky and quirky on-line services. These also-rans were forced to differentiate-by-design, which is a losing battle when your market leader is, for better or worse, the de facto leader in ergonomics and industrial design. Even Sony, who one might think… ok let’s not go there.

What Zune did was offer a complete experience for end-users, and added a wireless interface which has amazing option value to both consumers and Microsoft. They didn’t try to battle iPod on design, in fact I think they were skillfully unassuming, and picked a design that is at the very least, non-threatening, and non-polarizing. Keeping the focus on the new features, and the promise of a total solution. Preliminary evidence that Zune was successful was the study published by ABI research that shows even iPod users consider the Zune a viable alternative. How much switching materializes remains to be seen, but if Softy wanted to change the conversation (all one can reasonably expect) in the portable jukebox market, I think the bottom line is, mission accomplished.

I am not waiting in line to pick up my Zune, but rest assured, when the time comes to invigorate my gadget repertoire, the Zune will be on the short list.

Next few months will be interesting…

I’ve got ants in my pants, so the saying goes.  I am anxious to talk about all the cool things that are happening in our labs.  I can say with some certainty that there will be some cool products that most people will be able to afford, that will solve some of the annoying little problems many of us have, and many others didn’t even realize they could fix.  I think what will set our enabled products apart is that they will actually deliver an experience that matters to the consumer.  They will make sense, and they will be elegant.  These products will connect you with soul, with loved ones, and trigger emotions.  And if the products succeed, you won’t even realize what level of sophistication it took by our engineers to deliver sucha no-brainer usage scenario.

Our company’s public launch is likely to be shrouded in a bit of geek speak.  We are working to alleviate that, both for our direct customers, and for those seeking our technology out, among the noise that exists in mass retail today.

I wish I could say more at this point.  But I simply can’t.

We will be at the consumer electronics show and revealing our wares to key folks behind closed doors.  About a month or two after that, you should hear more.  You’ll hear lots more.

Shanghai Maglev

One of the more surreal things I’ve experienced. This puppy connects Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport with downtown’s Longyang Road Station, and in seven minutes transports you over 30 km. It tops out at 431 km/h (267 mph), which this video I took proves.  Yes, that is normal speed.  I know of no other system that lets you experience this kind of speed, on the ground.  You could approach it with something like a Bugatti Veyron or F1 car, but for $6???  No way.

It’s a little unnerving when you realize you are basically in a missile, and free to walk around without being locked down in a five-point racing harness.

For a more in depth article, check out  Wikipedia.

Is blogging habitual?

For me?  Not sure.  I’ve dabbled with blogs now for over three years.  My first blog used Blogger in the Summer of 2003.  I used it mainly as a travelogue to share my intership experiences with my family and friends, and to geek out while documenting my impression of living abroad in a interesting place, Brazil.

Then about a year later, I helped outfit my dad with a blog to satisfy his writer’s itch.  A gift he had, and made a living from, but since entering retirement, needed an outlet, an audience, and his Typepad blog proved just the thing.  For two great years he wrote quillnews, and boy was he terrific.  It inspired me to help him tweak and adopt the latest layout tricks of the trade, as well as establish a professional looking site that developed a loyal readership, and created a few homerun articles that to this day still appear high on the Google search results.  His punditry was balanced with a good natured edge and savvy that ended up being a unique and welcome voice to many readers.  My father passed away earlier this year, but a big part of his legacy was his written works.  I continue to host quillnews, and one day may decide to contribute to it.

For now, I will press forward on WordPress.  Again to satiate my inner geek, but also to see what I can make of this newfangled blogging apparatus.  So I hop out of the navigator seat, and back into the pilot’s roost.  Perhaps some years gone by and some challenges that stretch out before me will inpire my blogging effort to be less geek and get to chic.

What’s in a name?

Never has there been a more interesting challenge than creating a new brand identity when what lays in front of you is a greenfield opportunity. The cynicism in consumer electronics markets has never been more palpible.

Where are the technology brands that promise something, and then at once deliver that which is promised? That is the key though ain’t it? Experience matters, names follow. Google and Skype, possibly the two most successful brands in recent years. What about Bluetooth? Successful? Or perhaps a case of name it first — experience to follow? Certainly recognizable, but does the average consumer have any idea what it does? If you think so, ask your mom, or to be more fair to the target demographic, a friend who works in a non-technical field. Does he/she know?

About two months ago, my mom said to me, when faced with something she did not remember, “can’t you just Google it, and figure it out?” To which I replied, “WHAT? Do you even know what it means to ‘Google it’?” To which of course she replied, “No, but it seems like that’s what people are doing now.” Wonderful. Brand as verb. Brilliant.
But I digress… so the company I am working with is involved with new technology. Fun technology. It begs a name. Our customers are asking us for a name. Something to hang on their wares to let their consumers know they are using our fun technology, and so their customers should in turn, have fun with it. It should speak to quality, reliability, and ease of use. So what name do we choose? That is the current conversation. A fun one.

The cynics may wonder, does it matter anymore? Can it matter anymore?

I think so. Can’t wait. Stay tuned…