LIVEdigitally

Let’s face it, running companies is tough.  Really tough.  We all need a little help from time to time, whether this is our first startup or our tenth.  Unlike when I started my first company back in the mid-90′s, there’s free flowing advice all over the Internet.  But not all advice is appropriate for all companies, and that’s where industry knowledge, experience, and expertise matter, and I’d make the claim that there’s not a business leader on the planet who couldn’t use some form of mentor from time to time.

Personally, in my roles at Stage Two, 500Startups, the C100, and Founder Fuel, I’ve acted as a mentor for literally dozens of companies, both big and small.  I really enjoy the process of getting to know the team behind a new venture, learn about their goals, their ambition, and their vision.  It’s the latter that makes up a key starting point in any mentoring session – understanding vision. I feel most startups are clear on their business, their tech, their product, their market, but can rarely clearly articulate vision.  My #1 tip to all entrepreneurs (first time or tenth time) is to watchthis TEDtalk by Simon Sinek.  To mentors – think about your role, your process, your learnings over the years and figure out your own “must-do” items for the companies and teams you meet.

Whether formal or informally structured, I think another key thing entrepreneurs and mentors need to figure out is what they want to get out of the relationship.  Oftentimes I get brought into some strategy or brainstorming session, but nobody in the room has any goal or desired outcome.  The best way to get the most out of these structures is to know in advance what the targets are.  Then you can get right to work, dive into the product, the pitch deck, the business model, the marketing strategy, etc, and also have some form of expectation management.  This burden falls equally on the mentor to help guide the entrepreneurs as to what they *could* get out of the relationship.

It’s important to know one’s strengths.  I’m known for creating great product experiences, marketing strategy, etc, but also more specifically in the consumer technology field.  Sure, my experience and knowledge can lend itself to helping an enterprise company navigate some issue, but I’m sure I’d be better off finding that company someone with more pertinent advice.  There’s tons of smart people out there, so try to find the ones who have directly tangible experience to what it is you are doing.  And to the mentors, ditto – yes, you can probably help lots of companies, but you as well should try to focus your energy on the companies you are best suited for.

It’s just as important to know one’s resources.  I’m a father of young children and work at a startup.  I don’t have much time on my hands.  So when a company asks for my help, I’m typically pretty clear about my availability with them.  Everyone has constraints, so both to entrepreneurs and potential mentors – make sure these are well communicated.

Lastly, and probably most importantly: expect brutal honesty.  I open every new relationship by saying “I trust you have friends and family to tell you how amazing you are and how this startup will change the world.  That’s not my job.”  There’s a great blog post on “stop being so nice” here, and I agree with it all the way.  I’m not mentoring when I’m ignoring flaws in the business model, or go-to-market strategy.  I’m not being helpful when I say the app “has potential.”  It’s when I help dive into these issues, and keep asking the “why is that true?” or “and how exactly will you do that?” questions that I’m being a good mentor.

Now, be careful not to berate.  Startups have their boards to be on their ass about whatever mistakes they are making.  The mentor’s the coach, the “go give em hell, tiger” person – once the path is clear, that is.  I make sure to toe the line well between finding (and attempting to fix) problems before they happen, then help right the course when the problems do happen.  You never want to feel bad leaving a mentoring session, but as I said earlier, you aren’t the cheerleader either.

Finding and/or being a great mentor is a challenge.  But it’s one well-worth taking.

note: originally posted on the c100 blog

If this works, you should be seeing a picture of a jerk parking.

eStarling makes several WiFi connected digital photo frames, and I’ve been playing with their Impact V for a bit.  I’m impressed.

From the moment you open the box, eStarling does a pretty good job holding your hand and making use of the frame pretty simple.  You have all the usual options for displaying pictures that past digital frames have lead us to expect, including memory card slots that accommodate a couple different card types (SD, MS, MMC.)  But what’s way more interesting to me is the wireless and social mechanisms for displaying pictures.

When you pull the device out of the box, a greeting card immediately invites you to plug in the frame and connect it to your wifi connection (beware: this frame is much cooler if you have a wifi network.)  Once you’re connected, the frame prompts you to visit their website and activate your account.  Once you do you will get an email address dedicated to your frame, and you (or your friends and family) can email pictures to your frame.  You can also log into your account on their website to upload pictures from your computer to your eStarling account – these will then appear on your frame (it took my pictures about 15 minutes to show up.)  One of the neatest features is the social component – you can link your frame to a variety of social websites and services, including Facebook, Flickr, Phtobucket, Picassa, Twitter (not sure about this one), YouTube and more.   In addition to these services, you can also subscribe to RSS feeds – popular ones like National Geographic or even a user-designated feed.  You can also post small videos to play on your frame if you so choose.

I did have some issues with some of the social services.  For instance, I linked my Flickr account to my eStarling frame.  It was a pretty simple, one-click connection which presumably links up eStarling’s service with Flickrs API.  Two issues presented themselves though:

1. After clicking through the Flickr to link up the accounts, instead of a “Success, awesome job, well done!” screen, I was presented with a page full of gibberish.  There was no message to tell me whether I had successfully linked the account.  I didn’t know for sure until photos started appearing on the frame.

2. When those photos did appear, they weren’t mine.  They were photos of friends mine, people to whom I am linked on Flickr.  But none of my own photos made it into the frame.  Now, I like my friends and all, but I don’t need their photos on my frame.  Whether it’s going to sit in my home, or in my parent’s home, I want my own pictures on my frame.

Ultimately I was forced to use the “custom RSS” feature and take my Flickr account’s own RSS feed and manually link that with my frame.  Even after doing that, only my most recent set (about 20 pictures or so) showed up on the frame.  I don’t really know how to pull specific sets or additional photos from Flickr into the frame.

The frame has an eight inch display (800×600 pixels) and the clarity is pretty darn sharp. (Any blurring in the images in this post is due to the photographer, not the frame.)  It’s a touch screen interface, and there are light-up touch screen buttons along the right side.  You must use the touch screen in order to connect to the wireless network, but almost everything else can be accomplished through eStarling’s web portal.   The touch buttons let you skip through photos, or jump back to menus to select specifc photos, or access settings for the frame.  But I found the touch buttons a little finicky to use – fortunately the included remote also allows you to control action on the frame.

Lastly, there’s packaging.  In the unboxing I discovered very little wasteful or non-recyclable material.  There was one small piece of closed-cell foam for padding, and a foam sleeve for the frame.  Everything else was cardboard, including the majority of the boxe’s padding.  5 gold stars for being conscious of the environment.

Overall I was impressed with the frame.  The picture clarity, the simple setup, and the social components were all fantastic.  I love that it’s wifi, and I dig the fact that I can update the photos remotely, up to and including if the frame is in another state (or country.)  However, I do think the web interface and tools need a little refinement.  They are feature-rich but lacking in the fine points of usability.  Some improvements could include better feedback to user actions (letting you know if you succeeded in linking an account), and better fine-tuning of services (to include / exclude friends’ photos, etc.)  They don’t need more options, they just need to refine and improve the ones they’ve got.

eStarling Wireless Digital Photo Frame on 12seconds.tv

Daniel Lim at Slashgear also wrote a nice review of this frame.  If I were forced to give this frame a numeric rating, something which I am loathe to do, I would give it an 8 out of 10. They did a good job.  I just hope they keep improving the little sucker, especially the web interface and options.

This post is also available on 1TO10REVIEWS.

Disclaimer: We know, love and work with the people from 12seconds.  Impartiality is severely dented, if not discarded outright.

Today 12seconds.tv did a few cool things:

1. They’ve re-designed their website – cool new look and feel, with a strong focus on video consumption
2. They’ve concluded their invite-only Alpha phase and opened up in a public Beta where anyone can register and use the site
3. They’ve had their iPhone application approved and launched in the iTunes App Store (for $0.99)

I’m happy for their progress from Alpha to Beta, and I think the re-design looks great.  But I’m most excited about the iPhone app.  You all know (both of you) that I’m an iPhone user, and one of my few frustrations with the device has always been the lack of a video recorder.  Apple steadfastly refuses to release one, and there’s no third-party video recording application available (unless you choose to jailbreak your phone). This annoys me.

12seconds did not manage to sneak a video recorder through Apple’s QA team.  But they did create about the best possible workaround.  App users will take 3 photos (or choose 3 from their picture library), record twelve seconds of audio, and then post their creation to their 12seconds account (unregistered folks can create an account on the fly, in their phone.)  Somewhere in the cloud, the pics and audio are combined and then spit out as a twelve second video slideshow.  Users can email a link to their video directly from their phone  Each video has it’s own unique URL on 12seconds.tv, and can be emailed, embedded (as HTML) or downloaded onto your hard drive.  Here’s a demo video on how to use the app.

iphone app for 12seconds.tv from Sol Lipman on Vimeo.

One thing I really like about this app is the story telling aspect.  The series of pictures with audio narration really give you that James Earl Jones feeling of comfort.  Also, if you flub the audio and need to re-record, you can do so as many times as you like.  With traditional video, if you blow it, it’s blown.  The moment has passed. Here’s one video I recorded with a trial version of the app.

Cold Cuts – Chinese Food Style on 12seconds.tv

The app is a first draft.  It works, and it’s intuitive, but there are some features I’d like to see added, including wanting better flexibility in choosing photos and saving drafts.  But on the whole I think the app is very usable.  There’s just room to improve.

Kudos to the 12seconds team on a great launch and a cool app.  This is the best solution to the video-recording conundrum that Apple’s created that I’ve seen yet.

Related Posts:

MG Siegler at VentureBeat

Greg Kumparak at MobileCrunch

Rodney Rumford at FaceReviews

This post is also published on 1TO10REVIEWS.

I haven’t blogged in almost a month and I definitely feel a little guilty about it.

It’s not as if there’s no technology news to discuss. And I have a small pile of gadgets I’ve recently tried out (quick highlights: SuperTalent 8GB USB Pico drive is awesome, orbitsound T12 seems pretty impressive so far, Targus Grove combo backpack/messenger bag is my new favorite, i want a new macbook air, my maxtor shared storage plus NAS just crapped out, NHL 09 for xbox 360 is amazing, and my vaio is acting up again – no joke). So I can’t say I have nothing to talk about.

I’ve come to realize that the reading about and discussing both the elections and the financial situation are consuming the time I used to use for blogging. Unlike my “pro blogger” friends, I only have a small amount of time I can dedicate to it each day, and I’m spending that time researching other things right now. Not to mention the fact that hockey’s back in full swing (Go Habs!).

For the few of you who follow me on FriendFeed, you’ve probably seen much of my thoughts on both politics and the economic climate. I’ll take a moment to address both briefly here:

Regarding the economy, my opinion is that it is far too soon to make any kind of judgment call regarding “another Great Depression”. Granted I’m an optimist, but I have yet to see a single financial expert who’s actually been correct through this entire mess, so I see no reason to begin trusting any of them – regardless of their position. I encourage you to read multiple articles on the various topics, and do some reading on other historical “panics” prior to stocking up on canned soup in your bomb shelter.

Regarding politics (yes, I know this isn’t the place you come to read politics, so if you don’t want to hear any politics, just skip this paragraph, it’s that easy), I’ll take a moment to endorse Obama for President. In 2000, I thought McCain was an excellent candidate and got sabotaged by Bush’s extreme negativism and Leninesque attacks. Today I believe McCain has changed, and is no longer the visionary leader I once respected (selecting Palin, distracting the campaign with a focus on “possible terrorist connections” and other shenanigans – elegantly summarized here). While I can’t say Obama’s perfect either, I believe this country will be better off with an idealistic visionary as leader than with more of the same style of “leading” we’ve seen in recent years. Note: if you would like to debate politics with me, please use FriendFeed, Twitter, email, or some other interactive tool for it. Thanks.

I think my blogging will remain fairly erratic in the next few weeks, until at least one of the above topics is settled (though depending on outcome, a sudden relocation to Canada may be necessary).

As your reward for getting all the way through this post, please enjoy the following video:

1. Thou Shalt Avoidest Using the Term Social Media, Except When Specifically Discussing Social Media
2. Thou Shalt Not Use Thine Blog or Twitter Purely to Show Off About all the Cool People Thou Know, nor the Secrets Thou Art Entrusted With
3. Thou Shalt Not Use Twitter in Conjunction With a Service Which Updates Itself Automatically and Frequently
4. Thou Shalt Not Complain When Thine Family Professes Ignorance of the Contents of Thine Blog
5. Thou Shalt Not Put Embarrassing Photos of Thine Self on Thine Facebook Page, for They Shalt Be Easily Found in the Future
6. Thou Shalt Not Be a Bad Commentor, Nor Shalt Thou Be a Sycophantic Fool
7. Thou Shalt Not Exclaim With False Surprise at Quantity of Thine Followers
8. Thou Shalt Not Assume That all Humans use FriendFeed
9. Thou Shalt Not Poke, Bite, Nor Throweth Sheep, Yet Thou Mayest Be a Pirate
10. Thou Shalt Not Forward Urban Myths. Ever
11. Thou Shalt Not Create Video Podcasts of Thineself With a Duration Countable in Minutes
12. Thou Shalt Not Befriend all People Thou Hast Ever Encountered, No Matter How Briefly
13. Thou Shalt Not Describe New Startups as the Blank of Blank, Nor the Killer of Blank, Nor the Social Blank, nor the Blank 2.0
14. Thou Shalt Not Spend Thine Day Reading Blogs, Leaving Comments, Writing Tweets, Updating Facebook Statuses, and then Complain About Thine Busy Schedule
15. Thou Shalt Not Assume That All Content Received in Email or Read on Web Pages is Factually Accurate
16. Thou Shalt Not Asketh a Question on Twitter When a Simple Google Search Wouldst Suffice
17. Thou Shalt Not Confuse Transparency With Invasion of Privacy
18. Thou Shalt Not Transform Bloggers’ Names Into Verbs, Such as Scoble-ized or Louis Gray-ed
19. Thou Shalt Enjoy Thine Internet Fame (if Bestowed), for it is Surely Fleeting
20. Thou Must Never, Ever, Whine About the Sacred TechMeme. It is All-Seeing and All-Powerful and Must Not Be Questioned

I’ve spent a good part of the last 6 hours chuckling following the “Little Known Facts” meme about Sarah Palin. It appears to have started by a Twitter user named Michael Turk who Tweeted:

Little known fact: Sarah Palin used to wrestle kodiak bears in Alaskan bare knuckles fight clubs.

Since then, over 1000 (1092 at the time of writing) other entries have appeared. In fact, 60 more were written while I write this blog post.

Some are LOL funny. Some are not. But it’s just made my day, and if you want to read more, enjoy them here (including mine). There’s even palinfacts.com already in place with some highlights.

Thank you Internet (and especially Michael Turk), for making today an especially fun one.

Language is a state-based system. By that I mean the language in use by a culture tends to reflect the current needs of society, and shifts along with those needs. Much like our appendix, spleen, and tailbone, words also trail, so they may still be in use long after their need is over. This is natural, okay, and good. In our interesting “information era” society and culture are shifting faster and moving in many different directions. Walk down the streets of a city like San Francisco or New York, and it only takes a few blocks feet to realize that you live in an extremely complex and multicultural world.

Now I’m personally of the opinion that the pace of high-tech development and new products are far ahead of society’s ability to adapt and cope. The concept of the “generation gap” where a generation’s exposure to media and technology created difficulty in relating to the next generation is no longer a 20- or even 10-year cycle, but is at no more than 5 years (and dropping). Those “kids today” are exposed to technologies that I am scantly aware of, and it’s shaping a big part of the way our society is evolving.

We are currently in the midst of a transformation, caused in a large part by the evolution of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, etc. These networks are clearly here to stay, and will evolve on their own to introduce new features and services as well as adapt to the changing needs of their users. In the mean-time, I’m noticing that a few very common words are losing their meaning, specifically due to their various implementations online (warning: much sarcasm and cynical writing follows, don’t take it too seriously if you are easily offended)…

There you have it, words being killed by the Internet. Please note this list should be current for the next few weeks, but will then require revision.

$4 gas (in the northeast, anyway), bank collapses, sluggish economic growth, pundits predicting recessions, bear markets, $140 oil, $900 gold, rampant foreclosures, and a plummeting dollar!

Oh my.

But for those of you quaking at the specter of Depression, or waiting in line at a California bank to retrieve your hard-earned cash (where you are reading this post on your 3G-enabled mobile device, natch), or those who are convinced that their money is surely safer in a mason jar under the mattress than an FDIC-insured institution, let me offer these comforting statistics:

• On Friday and Monday (“work” days, high 80s and sunny in New York), people waited up to ten hours in line to buy a $300 cell phone.
• On Saturday and Sunday (89 degrees and sunny in New York), people waited up to ten hours in line to buy a $300 cell phone.
• As of 9 PM Monday night, there was not a single $300 cell phone (for which people waited up to ten hours in line) in the entire state of New Jersey. An intrepid reporter found that there were 21 states where one would have to suffer the indignity of not even being PERMITTED to wait up to ten hours in line to buy a $300 cell phone, because there were none to be had.

Don’t read this as an indictment of the people who stood in line. I’ll happily admit I know these wait times because, in my desperate need to 3G-ify myself, I made no fewer than five calls to various Apple stores over the weekend, even stopping by one on the way to the beach on Sunday to see whether their line was less than ten hours – it was, at a mere four, but they had capped the line because lucky Mr. Minute 240 represented the last phone they had in stock.

Folks, there is nothing to worry about. Our gadget-driven economy has never been stronger. As long as we fanboys can find both the scratch and the time, including taking a day off from work(!), to queue up by the sweaty thousands for a shot at the latest shiny bauble (OK, mobile communications device with blazing fast ^TM internet access, location-awareness, and a shiny, shiny interface), we can find a way to ensure tha the American economy remains a juggernaut. Jeremy posited that Apple is really the only company that can do hype right, but I don’t think he’s taken it far enough. Buttressed by Jobs-obsessed tech acolytes like you and me, the company has the ability to single-handledly (multi-touchedly?) drive the consumer engine of this great nation until our worries of collapsing mortgage giants and $100 fill-ups are things that we tell to our kids via a Sling application running on the latest 5G Apple iBrain.

But first things first: can someone give me a ride to the Apple store? I’m kinda short on gas money these days.

Hands Free Safe Drivers – Watch more free videos

Have a great and SAFE holiday weekend!

Ah, I love a good rant. I especially love one that targets industries that move along at ridiculously sluggish paces when it comes to technology adoption. Dave McClure has apparently been spending a wee bit too much time with lawyers lately, and goes on without pulling punches lamenting their holding on to a “lots of paperwork” approach to getting things done. Here’s a highlight to whet your appetite :

Over the past 3-4 months, i’ve made a few small investments in several startups and become an advisor to a few others. The amount of paper, email, & faxes i have exchanged to get these deals done is F’ING MIND-BOGGLING. Aren’t we in the 21st century? Don’t we all use the web & online transactions for everything? Aren’t you supposed to be ADVISORS to startups that make lives simpler & use the INTARWEB to get rid of all the paper, delay, & complexity we HATE LIKE THE PLAGUE?!? Or did you all grow up with Ted Stevens or something?

Now go read the rest, it’s excellent.