LIVEdigitally

Every now and then I like to think about how I could remove different technologies from my life. The sad truth of the matter is most are here to stay, from my cell phone to my flat panel to my digital camera. It just seems like in every category I investigate, the technology makes life easier/better in some way. My digital camera and high definition TV are unquestionably better than older, analog versions. My cell phone certainly lets me keep in touch with my family easier, and also makes work communications better. But what about the laptop?

My laptop (currently a MacBook, formerly a Sony Vaio SZ-VGN460N, until I realized how terrible it was) comes home at night, and travels with me to work in the morning. It’s likely carried along to 80% or so of my meetings, and also travels with me when I go see friends or family. It comes on 100% of business trips. So the $25K question (which these days should be more like the $100K question if you count inflation) is: how could I get rid of it?

First, I’d need a computer at home and at work. The work one would need some type of remote desktop technology. I’d probably need to use gmail or another Web-based email service, although I’ve already adopted Google Calendar so that’s not a big deal. I use Google Docs from time to time, but I don’t believe they are sufficient for the more powerful spreadsheet or presentation forms, and would be concerned there. That said, about 90% of my workday is spent doing email/phone calls/meetings, the rest is working on some form of a document. I think I’d get by without a significant drop in productivity.

However, I’d need some solution for the meetings I go to, and I’d be hesitant to rely on toting a USB key for all documents I might need. I’d also be a little concerned about the appearance of professionalism, but maybe I’d just start wearing a tie or something to get around that. After all, not everyone in technology has to look like a schlub all the time, right?

My flight time would definitely show a drop in productivity, but to be honest, I typically watch reruns of Arrested Development while in air, with a smattering of email sending and inbox clearing between episodes. I’d definitely read more (without a Kindle) on these trips.

As for the personal time, I think it’s safe to say a little less laptop wouldn’t hurt. Yeah, I wouldn’t be able to look something up on IMDB the second I finish the movie anymore, but that’s not the worst thing, eh? If my wife ever gets around to reading my blog again I’m sure she’d be agreeing too (right, hon?).

If I had to give up some major piece of technology in my life, I know that the cell phone and digital camera would both remain. I think just about everything else becomes pretty optional. But since I don’t have to, I think the MacBook lives on in this house. Well, that is until I replace it with a better one this year sometime, because after all, that’s technology.

The more people I talk to, the more I am amazed at the lack of backups people do.  The most common method I’ve heard about is people burning CDs or DVDs on a very erratic/irregular basis.  If this is your personal method, let me take a moment to shout at you:

YOUR COMPUTER’S HARD DRIVE WILL DIE OVER TIME.

THE CDS AND DVDS YOU BURN WILL DIE OVER TIME.

YOU NEED MULTIPLE BACKUPS.

Sorry bout the yelling, but I felt an intervention was in order.  Why?  Well, first I like to think I’m looking out for my fellow man/woman.  Second, I know full well that all my non-techie friends and family, upon the moment where their 7-year-old computer finally kicks the bucket, are gonna call me and ask how they get their beloved pictures back.  Psst - you can’t.

Here’s my personal backup strategy, it’s easy to follow and doesn’t require a massive amount of effort:

1. I own a portable HDD (Seagate Freeagent), a NAS (Maxtor Shared Storage plus - probably replacing soon), and a Drobo. I also have an Infrant ReadyNAS at my office.  This is, in a word, massively excessive.  But not by much.  I recommend TWO different external storage solutions, and I further recommend buying them several months apart.  Hard drives die over time, and if you get two drives simultaneously, you increase the risk that they will die in tandem.
2. I have a monthly calendar appointment (first Sundays) to do a backup.  During this backup I copy everything from my Documents folder into the various drives.  Personally I do not worry about having numerous archives, so I can do all my work in a simple drag and drop.  If you do need multiple versions of things, I recommend picking up some backup software (no specific recommendations on that from me though).
3. Photos are an exception.  I backup photos the moment I’m done downloading them from my digital camera.  I’d rather lose a month of documents than a month of photos.  I also am a Flickr “pro” user, which gives me unlimited online backup at full resolution, and I do a Flickr upload within a day of downloading photos also.

I hope this inspires a few of you to get your act together with a backup solution.  Unfortunately, it probably doesn’t, as it seems to be one of those things that people ignore until it’s too late and they’ve lose data.

To put in other terms.  No backup == FAIL.

Back when I decided my Sony Vaio was slightly less useful than the OLPC I have (and not nearly as plastic-y), I “experimented” by buying a MacBook. I bought the bottom of the line model for $1099. A few weeks later I upgraded the RAM for another $99. First lesson: don’t buy the bottom of the line model, the one slightly above it is a significantly better deal.

Now I’m short on hard drive space (it comes with an 80GB unit), albeit some of it would free up if I deleted seasons 1-3 of Arrested Development from the disk. Some find it easy to upgrade the drive, I am a little nervous about that. I’d like to move to Leopard and get Boot Camp running too, but really don’t want any down time, nor do I feel investing another $129 in this computer makes sense.

I could just buy a MacBook Pro and probably be happy with it. The problem is I foresee one or two MB revisions from Apple in the next 60-120 days (they’ve done it before people!). The MBPro is ripe for a quick rev, like adding the gesturelike functionality from the Air (UPDATE: I told you so). I have to say, this was my only real MacWorld disappointment, I was really hoping for a thinner/lighter MBPro.

After a week’s consideration, I’ve decided the Air is not the right laptop for me. It’s slightly less powerful than the regular MB, and the ubersexiness of it isn’t enough. I’m too cheap frugal to buy it for vanity reasons alone at $1799. By the way, I would not be surprised to see a new Air (or two or three) with a wider price range soon. I’ll quickly predict that within 120 days the current one drops to $1599, they swap up to a 160GB drive in the $1799 one, and bump the processor speed for a $2199ish one.

So anyone have any triggers to help break me out of my paralysis? Splurge on the Pro today, or proceed with continued caution?

I’ve seen lots of Top 10 lists on the subject, and I’ve decided to try a different format for my own prognostications. Instead of by rank, I’ll do a list by industry.  Also, I have way more than 10 predictions to make.

TV Technology

• Every major cable company will increase it’s rates by more than 3%. Nobody will complain, and our government will (again) fail to protect us from them.
• A resolution above 1080p starts appearing in demos and labs, I’d predict a bump up into the 4000 vertical lines space.
• Bluray and HD-DVD continue to duke it out while consumers continue to not care.
• One of Hulu, Joost, etc get integrated into the Xbox 360 and/or PS3.
• Google launches “Android for Set-Top Boxes” but gains little traction in the foreseeable future.
• Anyone who is not a telephone company that tries to launch an IP-streaming set top device has a very rough year.
• Despite near-constant predictions of their demise, TiVo makes it through another year, possibly getting acquired (by DirecTV, Comcast, Netflix, Blockbuster, or someone out of the blue like Amazon or eBay).

Portable Devices That Are Not Cell Phones

• Zune 3.0 launches. It’s very very good. Further, iPod’s market share dips, although they still have an increase in overall unit sales (in other words: the pie gets bigger faster than their sales do). That said, a new iPod is even more betterer than all previous versions, making everyone who recently bought a prior generation a wee bit annoyed, but gosh that Steve Jobs is so charming they just don’t care. After all, that’s technology!
• At least two major camera vendors introduce integrated wifi cameras, but no more than one uses an open service, the rest have some proprietary, closed, annoying-to-use system. Ideally one of them buys Eye-fi.
• Digital picture frames continue to grow in market share, but still don’t “tip” into the mainstream.
• More companies introduce e-book readers despite general malaise in the category. Kindle II is launched with mild improvements.

Enterprise Services

• I have no clue, I don’t follow the space. Hello, this is a consumer tech blog!

Computers

• Apple’s new laptops will include an ultramobile, a tablet, and a “desktop replacement” OR a “gaming model” (they may combine the first two). Enhancements will include a card reader, 3G access as a built-in option, and new gestures. Market share continues to climb.
• Microsoft continues to spin about how amazing Vista is. Michael Gartenberg’s observations are probably the most poignant as to why it isn’t.
• Asus or Dell acquires or merges with one of HP, Acer, Toshiba, or other “meh” PC maker.
• Sony continues to make subpar Vaio laptops. And for the last time (I think) in 2007: don’t buy the Sony Vaio VGN-SZ4xx series laptops, they are just plain terrible. I’ve now had the chance to voice my discontent directly to the Vaio PR team (at Ruder Finn) who have yet to write me back on the topic.
• Nobody makes my awesome dual-screen laptop concept, thus leaving me the opportunity to make zillions one day.

Social Networking

• Facebook continues to get backlash from the media and tech community, meanwhile its user base continues to skyrocket. Further, they hire another 1000 people, yet only make modest improvements to the site itself. I’d add a 33% chance that they “pull a Netscape” and go after the desktop or the browser or some other place they really don’t belong.
• Randomly pick some names from the huge list of other social networking sites and some of them merge.
• Adults who didn’t grow up with social networking services experience burnout of being bitten by zombies after a few months, and many stop checking in four times per day. Those who went to school during the Facebook era continue to complain about all the old fogies (like me) polluting their sacred resting ground. They also continue to put radically inappropriate pictures of themselves online, blissfully unaware of the interviewing process.

Mobile Tech

• A few Android-powered phones ship, but not as many as the tech community would like to see. Again showing why the Razr can utterly dominate the market despite a closed architecture and terrible user interface.
• Apple launches the iPhone 3G, the iPhone nano, and the iPhonePro. Ok, I’m not 100% sure on the third, but I am betting on the first two. Also, one of these new phones comes unlocked OR on a carrier other than AT&T.
• Some major lawsuit occurs between a carrier and either a cable company or a broadcaster, all about mobile video rights. All parties involved appear as nothing but greedy to outsiders.
• Something new comes out in the phone space that’s more astounding than the iPhone. It’s possibly: uber-small, has a radically better battery life, does something funky like synchs with the Wii, or works with all US carriers.

Gaming

• With lots of stealth, a new console comes to market. It might only be a moderate shift from a prior model, or possibly be a whole new entrant.
• Rock Band 2 and 3, and Guitar Heros 4, 5, 6, and “Eddie Van Halen” editions come out, however nobody licenses the Harmonix engine to make “Jazz Trio”.
• Someone comes up with a really impressively new concept for the Wii. Good odds, however, that they wrap it inside a crappy game.
• More really amazing HD gaming occurs, continuing to drive HD adoption faster than the meager channels the cable companies try to placate us with, despite the fact that they raise prices again. Did I already say that?

Web Services/Misc

• A wide swath of “Web 2.0″ companies will go dark, primarily out of an inability to either figure out a business model for their product, or an inability to successfully market their service outside of the Bay Area.  They will quickly be forgotten and replaced by new ones with even goofier sounding names like Froobooloo.com.
• No major Wimax deployments occur.
• The digital transition date looms, starts creating a lot of media hype a la Year2000 mania.
• RFID continues to be a fun topic for the media, but all that happens is Walmart continues to make small vendors spend loads of money for the privelege of selling there.
• Bloggers fret about not being recognized as “press”, yet continue to spend too much time/energy gossiping about other bloggers, an activity the general public remains disinterested in and doesn’t give extra respect/credibility for.  This circular logic is baffling, I know.
• We lose even more rights to big media, because few Americans are willing to take even the tiniest steps to do anything about it.  PLEASE PROVE ME WRONG (start here)!
• I still don’t Twitter.

See you in 366 days to see how I scored!

Warning: semi-preachy post. Do not read if in the mood for fluffy banter about some new Web service or gizmo.

We live in a very interesting time. Technology is enabling so many things in so many ways it is truly impossible to keep up with it all. There are more ways than ever for us to spend our money on things that are supposed to make us happy, in the virtual world or the physical one. Yet countless studies have shown that when measured, the impact on one’s happiness from buying things (cars, TVs, gadgets, etc) is extremely short-lived. Volunteering, on the other hand, is considered one of the top activities we can do to directly contribute to our happiness.

Today I was proud to see 25 Bay Area (and 1 from LA!) people show up at the San Francisco Food Bank to spend a few hours of their time volunteering. We organized two shifts, one at 9am, another at 12:30pm, and at each shift performed various activities to help the Food Bank with their food supply. The Food Bank is heavily dependent on volunteers, so this was a great way for us to get involved with an organization that has a direct impact on the community around us. I have pictures online here (more on Facebook), and Robert Scoble took some videos: quick one with me, and an interview with George from the Food Bank (parts one and two).

The morning shift was responsible for sorting recently deposited food from Safeway and individuals. We rummaged through 44,000 pounds (not a typo) of cans, bottles, boxes, and jars of food. All the food donated from Safeway was there because something was ‘wrong’ with it (dents, ripped box tops, etc). It was a bit of an odd feeling knowing I was handling items I’d never consider purchasing, yet would end up in homes where it is desperately needed. Thankfully recent policy changes allow Safeway to donate this food, as in prior years it all ended up in the landfills.

The afternoon group was packing up boxes of food that end up in homes where the only monthly income is social security. The average check is $1005, and the individual is not permitted to earn any money from pensions, 401k’s, or other programs, so they are clearly in serious need of help. For those who don’t think $1000/month is too bad, please bear in mind that in San Francisco, a 2 bedroom apartment easily rents for $2000+ per month. The group’s pace of sorting apple juice, dried milk, canned pork, and other rations into a box was assessed after 10 minutes, and a target for the day was set (as opposed to the morning shift of sorting utter chaos), which was met. Go team!

At a personal level, I’ve felt wonderful all day. Considering 25 people gave 3 hours of their days today (Mehrshad actually stayed through two full shifts), that means my real contribution was to generate 75 hours of volunteering. If you’ve ever doubted your ability to make a difference, think about how easy it can be. Now imagine each of these people put forth the same effort next year, and manage to bring along a couple of friends each. And so on, and so on. If you don’t know me well enough that you think I am bragging here, please know I’m not - I’m just genuinely excited to have the satisfaction of feeling I can make a difference. It’s all too easy for us to shrug our arms and put our heads in the sand. My head’s well out, and I’m excited about it.

I’ve gone ahead and registered GeeksDoingGood.com (and GeeksDoGood and GeeksGivingBack). I’d like to use it as a place to coordinate future events. Further, I’m hoping it becomes a collective communal effort. I figure if nothing else I can start a blog there, and maybe do a little (shudder) Twittering. Okay, probably not Twittering, but definitely a cool Wordpress theme…If you have any interest in helping out in any way, please get in touch.

Lastly, I’d like to thank Andrew Kippen for organizing with the Food Bank, and I don’t have the full list of attendees just yet, but the ones I’m sure of by name include (in no particular order): Flickr’s Maya Baratz, Wired’s Megan McCarthy, eHomeUpgrade’s Alexander Grundner, Robert Scoble, The Point’s Jeremy Pepper, my mom (hi mom!), AdBrite’s Joel Sacks, Ilana Gauss, Josh Einhorn, Macrovision’s Ben Tan, Josh Lazar, Mark Trammell, Jason Toney, Mehrshad Mansouri (x2), Patrick Scoble, Phonescoop’s Eric Lin, Engadget’s Ryan Block, Mahalo’s Veronica Belmont, Bryan Whalen, and E-storm’s Daniel Riveong. I apologize for those I’ve left out, but I don’t have your info nearby, I’ll update this post when I get it. But thanks, thanks, thanks!

I guess the morals of today’s story are:

1. Yes, one person can effect change.
2. Sony’s Vaio VGN-SZ series laptops still suck (although I just upgraded mine to run XP, maybe that’ll de-paperweight it).
3. There are lots of needy people out there and it’s easy to help, we just have to make the time to do the helping.
4. We can all just sit on our collective butts and complain about the sorry state of affairs in our world, or we can try to make a difference. It’s a lot easier than I thought, and I plan to do a lot more of it in 2008. I hope someday you’ll join me… Imagine.

This year I’ve seen a lot of geeks doing a lot of fun things. I’ve organized my geek dinners (which I will try to revive in ‘08). There were myriads of unconferences and (blank)camps and meetups. Startups had launch parties, summer bbqs, holiday parties, and no-real-reason parties. There were photowalks galore. I think this is awesome. But for the past few months I’ve been really thinking about how much more the tech community could be doing beyond our technology contributions.

I’ve donated to DonorsChoose this year, bought an OLPC, and gave to numerous of my friends’ good causes. My consulting firm is committed to taking on pro-bono projects for non-profit companies. I’m also putting aside a percentage of all gross revenue to give to charities. I feel that this is a good first step for me personally, one that I’d like to build on in the years to come.

After our morning at the SF Food Bank with Bug Labs last month, we decided we wanted to try to rally up the tech community to do something similar. So here we go, its time for Geeks Doing Good (I even own the domain - if this works, we’re going to try to make it a recurring event)! We have reserved two slots of 3 hours each, one at 9am, the other at 12:30pm, helping at the SF Food Bank. As volunteering goes, it’s a fairly “easy” event. You won’t get really dirty or smelly (well, no more so than you normally might), and you won’t really have to interact with anyone that might be unnerving.

Please consider taking just 3 hours out of your holiday season to help those in need. The stats on impoverished people in San Francisco are unbelievable, and I think we all need the occasional reality check from our generally cushy lives (yes, odds are pretty good that if you read my blog you lead a fairly cushy life - nothing wrong with that at all). If you can’t make it, how about donating even a few dollars instead (although my goal is really a full house, the money helps too)?

Let’s make this a success, and turn it into a recurring one, shall we? Also, if you want to help us out with planning other events, please email me or leave a comment here!

To The Honorable Nancy Pelosi,

This morning I read about Chairman Conyers’ proposed PRO IP act, and as others in the technology industry have, I lowered my head sadly. While I only recently became an American citizen, it seems quite clear to me that this is yet another sad sign of how our government continues to lose its way. Instead of taking the clear, high road and working to protect the needs of its citizens, the government is instead taking the low road and protecting the needs of big business. I call this the low road as it is the only one paved with the campaign contribution dollars represented by big media.

While there are some good intentions described in the external “spin” of the bill, it seems clear that it is nothing more than a vehicle to enable the 5 major media companies to further harass and persecute Americans. This is an unfortunate trend that Congress seems to follow, and I write this letter to implore you to try to get deeply involved, learn about, and ultimately break.

Historically, Congress never used to side with major media companies. Throughout the 20th century, our leaders addressed new issues based on the wants and needs of the American people. Lawsuits have emerged over virtually every technology innovation as it pertained to media and content, from vinyl through compact disk. In virtually every case, Congress always put the pressure on the traditional companies to learn how to grow and change based on new technologies. That is, however, until the emergence of the broadband Internet and the MP3 music compression format.

For some reason, still not clear to me, these two technologies together caused the government to effectively switch teams. Instead of protecting the wants and needs of the many by forcing big media firms to evolve and adapt to the new technologies, the laws sprung up to protect these companies and allow them to live in the older world. PRO IP is yet another example of such laws.

It is bad enough that we have so few major media companies. It is bad enough that they can exert financial pressure to dominate the movie theaters and the airwaves. It is bad enough that they control the enormous quantities of media we as Americans consume. One could argue oligopolies, but that is a big enough topic on its own, and frankly, individual creativity combined with the distribution power of the Internet is finally allowing people to slowly retake control of the media they consume.

Historically it is this effort, individual creativity, that our government has helped protect and thrive. Not the demands of the rich and famous. It is in fact ironic that the major media companies of today were built on the shoulders of enabling laws, not crippling laws.

Now truth be told, I am no legal expert, nor am I an expert in copyright. But I am pretty good at common sense. Common sense tells me that the maximum penalty for transmitting an MP3 file should not be over 1000-fold the maximum penalty of shoplifting a CD from a store. Common sense tells me that if over 80 MILLION people are transmitting files to each other, there is something wrong with our system that makes such an activity illegal.

To be pointedly clear, I very much believe that record labels, TV studios, networks, producers, actors, writers, and everyone else involved in media production deserves their fair share, or even more than their fair share. I do not believe that these peoples’ livelihoods should be infringed simply because the American public is doing a lot of free downloading. What I do believe, on the other hand, is that when faced with new business challenges that technology innovation has spurred, these companies should be forced to meet these challenges head-on. They should not be sheltered and coddled by Congress, with their proverbial heads in proverbial ostrich holes.

I highly recommend that you take this issue up personally. I further recommend that you and your staff become familiar with the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, a gentleman who understands these topics with much greater depth and clarity than I ever will. My government is elected to protect its citizens and our rights, not to protect big business. There will always be big business, and as the multi-hundred-billion-dollar Google has proven, there will always be new big business. Congress is not protecting newspapers as they are faced with massive business challenges due to technology. The same should be true in big media.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Toeman, concerned American

To my readers, you are welcome to copy any portion of the above content in an attempt to reach out to your elected officers. Click here to write to your representative.

I write this blog mostly out of a personal passion for consumer technology products.  I have decided not to try to monetize it, as I feel the cost/benefit of advertising just isn’t worth it to me.  Instead I have a place where I can write about tech and review the occasional gadget.

The problem is, I have two primary conflicts:

1. Clients.   As my clients are in the same domain, I often find entire categories of technology I can’t really blog about comfortably.  Further, even when I am comfortable with the separation, I’m concerned about a possible perception of bias.
2. Time. Writing good reviews is time-consuming.  It’s easy to phone them in and write up simple little gloss-overs, but anything in-depth that’s actually useful takes a long time.  And I don’t have it.

So here’s the deal:  I get offered tons of gadgets and technologies for review, and turn down most of them.  If you are interested in writing reviews, and can commit some time to it on a reliable basis, please get in touch.  There’s no fortune, and not much fame, but it can be a lot of fun!

While I am still extremely annoyed at everything that is Vista (especially the worst laptop on the market, Sony’s Vaio VGN-SZ460N or VGN-SZ470N, neither of which should you even consider buying), I am impressed at his taking a stand against outrageous executive pay.  From the Times Online:

Mr Ellison, worth an estimated $26 billion, earned about $74 million from Oracle last year.

Mr Ballmer was not awarded stock options and his pay and bonus totalled $980,000

I really don’t understand how executive pay has gotten so ridiculously out of hand, but if people follow no examples from Redmond other than this one, it’s well worth it.   You certainly can argue capitalism and this is all fair, but I think that’s simply fighting common sense.  But since when has that prevailed?

Beyond all the travel tales, tradeshows, product launches and whatnot was Sling Media’s most important asset: it’s people. Some of the people I worked with while at Sling were some of the best I’ve ever worked with in my career. As I observed in my post on the acquisition, I believe the talent is a huge asset that Echostar gets in the deal.

It’s extremely challenging to put together an all-star team. I’m not exactly sure how it was pulled off, but virtually every player in the Sling lineup was extremely well suited for their role. Some with 20 years experience, others with 2. For some it was a major learning curve, for others it was like riding a bicycle. Not to say it was all perfect, there were certainly hiccups along the way, but by and large it was a pretty impressive cast of characters.

I could probably write another 10 pages worth of individual stories and escapades. I’ll attempt brevity:

• Driving to San Diego with Blake and Jason (luckily I passed on the drive to Vegas - there’s only so much Carl’s Jr a man can eat).
• Gregg Wilkes educating me on the right beverage to drink when out with the sales guy (answer: vodka soda)
• Stogies on the balcony with Rich (truthfully there are dozens of great times I had with Mr. B., but the times at the tiki bar were some of my favorites)
• Handing off IR programming responsibilities to Brian M (sorry!)
• Lunches with Judy
• Time spent in the dungeon annex with Teresa, Jeff C, and Chris B. Do the phones work there yet?
• Mutual venting with Dee
• Tami putting together CES so efficiently that all I had to do was show up (a personal first in 8 years of going)
• Sharon, who I got about 3 weeks of time with, and Dave, who accepted, then rejected, then accepted the gig, after I left.
• Handing off SlingPlayer Mobile to Vicky (sorry!)
• Indian buffet with Raghu, Alex, Bhupen, and John. Many more joined after, but they never made it to Sneha.
• Little Mattie Whitlock, who wasn’t an employee, but still had to put up with my antics.
• About 100 stories with Brian J, especially trying to find a cab in NYC at 5:30pm in the rain on a Friday outside of Javitz (we walked about 2 miles until we found one); and trying to figure out why our waitress couldn’t calculate 60% of a bill without freaking out. But especially for our unique style of walking tradeshow floors.
• and countless others - Slingers, please do leave comments if I’ve left something out that you remember fondly…

Thanks again for the memories everybody. If you need me, I’ll be at the colo.

I have one final post for the SlingMemories series, but I decided to switcharoo the order. I left Sling Media in October 2006, and unlike all my ex-girlfriends, we managed to break up and remain on good terms. This was really important to me, as I felt (don’t laugh) pretty emotionally tied to the company. Even today when I talk to clients and talk about “how we did it back at Sling” I still use the word “we” not “them”.

At CES 2007 I was reunited with the crew as I lingered at the bigger, better booth Rich and Tami had put together. I sat a row away from the team when Blake was on stage during the CBS keynote to announce Clip+Sling. I saw their impressive partner pavilion. And I had my chance to hold the Emmy the Slingbox won. That too was a great moment - how often does a tech/product/marketing geek like me get to be part of something that wins an Emmy?

Over the course of 2007 I’ve watched (and often blogged) Sling’s news (here’s my highlight of the year). I still check on the display of the units when I walk into a Best Buy. I IM with someone from the team every few days, and love seeing them pop up on TechMeme when news comes a-flying. Actually, as I read this, one could almost accuse me of being a stalker.

There are many ways to look back on the ventures we’ve participated in; the products we’ve built. Most of the people I talk to seem to reminisce with negativity, either toward “the management” or to the product/service/company itself. After all, it’s easy to do this, as odds are fairly decent the relationship came to an end at a low note. Heck, we all remember the past either rosier or darker than it once was.

For me, watching Sling in 2007 was generally with pride. I wondered if they’d pull off Clip+Sling. I remained curious about the SlingCatcher. Were there doubts? Yup, I don’t deny. But Sling remained true to the first description I gave my friends when I joined the company: it’s going to be like a rocket ship. I don’t know if it’ll burst into flames on the launchpad, go massively off-course, or make it into orbit, but no matter what it’d gonna be a heck of a lotta fun to watch. I certainly wasn’t wrong about that!

I flew approximately 185,000 miles between January and October 2006. That included 5 trips to Europe, 4 trips to Asia, 2 to Canada, and a few hauls back and forth across the States. The purposes of my trips varied, but were all centered around a few recurring themes: go train the CSRs for a new international support center; go speak at an international launch; or go participate in a tradeshow or press/media event.

Launching the Slingbox in Canada was exciting for me personally, as I am from Montreal. For the first time in my life, a product I built was being brought to my home country, and I could tangibly show my family what the heck I do for a living. My parents, inlaws, and other relatives all followed the well-publicized Canadian launch which took place in Toronto. While I enjoyed presenting to the attendees at the event, again my highlight memory was walking into a FutureShop (a Best Buy competitor in Canada. it is owned by… Best Buy) with my Dad and seeing the Slingbox on store shelves. Despite the employee insisting that the product didn’t actually exist, that is…

The UK launch of the PAL Slingbox involved two different trips, the first was to Amsterdam to train the customer service and support department. It was a good trip, especially considering the location the knowledgeable CSRs there, as it turned out the team had previously supported either media products, networking products, or both. This makes a huge difference; believe it or not there are both good and bad ways to handle even the simplest situations, such as verifying cables are plugged in correctly. The things that seem the most obvious in life typically are anything but that.

The other trip was the actual media launch. The highlight of this story has nothing (well, little) to do with Sling whatsoever, so diehards may want to skip ahead. We were setting up the demos in the bar/club we were using for the event, and they had a few Sky+HD boxes with plasma displays hooked up. Their AV guy informed me they were one of the first HDTV deployments in the UK (HDTV only really launched there weeks after we left) and was showing off the picture quality to me. When I told him it seemed “off” he looked like I had kicked his dog. I asked if he was using HDMI, he said he was. I grabbed the remotes, went through all the settings. All seemed fine. I turned it all off and on again, still crappy looking picture (which, as you recall, they all thought looked great). Finally I went to check the connections myself and found that while he was using HDMI, he had also left a coaxial connector in place, and that was the active input! When I switched inputs to the HDMI, I think he was ready to lick the screen. As I handed back the remote I said “now THAT’s high definition TV.” Looks like a lot of people need some help with HD…

Another good time in Europe was 4 days in Barcelona with Gregg Wilkes, Sling’s outstanding VP of Sales (I think he might know every single CE retailer internationally!), for the RetailVision tradeshow. RV is a “real” industry event in that the only attendees are those who are absolutely part of the CE-retail food chain. Manufacturers, vendors, distributors, etailers, retailers, and channel support people. That’s it. Virtually no press, no consumers. Since the first time Sling Media showed up at a RetailVision the company won an award there, all the way up until the previous year’s RetailVision Europe when, due to too many overlapping events, nobody from the Sales or Marketing departments could attend, though two quite capable senior execs went in their stead. They came home empty handed. Gregg and I talked quite the smack-talk about it, so we had a lot riding on our demonstrations that session. Let me say this: I’d never, ever want to play poker against European retailers. No expressions, no reactions, no smiles, no guffaws. Even as they named us as a nominee, we had absolutely no insight as to whether or not we’d won until the end. When we did. Huzzah. Unfortunately I missed my flight home the next morning and spent about 18 hours in airports. But at least it was spent trophy in hand.

Over the course of the year I also did two 2-day trips to Taiwan, a few days in Japan, less than 48 hours in Sweden (plus the 41 hours of travel), and 2.5 days in Hong Kong. To some people this sounds amazing; to others dreadful. Japan was great, because for one, I love Japan (especially here and here), and also I was able to carve the trip out around a weekend and my wife joined me there (where she learned about the most important things: Shabu Shabu and Ippudo Ramen).

I did get to go to many interesting places last year, but would love a bit more time to actually see them. So it was both amazing and dreadful.  I certainly don’t miss the 16-hours flying to Sweden followed by 3.5 hours in a train for less than 2 days’ worth of meetings only to turn around and do it all over again.  But I did meet some great people in all these cities and countries, and will keep a lot of those relationships alive for years to come.  Plus the miles don’t hurt.