This is not meant to be a definitive review of iPhone Photo Apps. I’m not anywhere near qualified for that kind of analysis. But, I’ve downloaded quite a few, and here are a few I use pretty regularly to post photos up to my TumbleBlog at AndyBoyer.Tumblr.com.
Also, I’m going to assume you already have tried, or regularly use Instagram and Hipstamatic.
Photosynth
1) Photosynth: It’s not the easiest tool to use super effectively, and tends to be pretty buggy, but when it works it’s a pretty cool way to take a panoramic shot. Great for the top of moutnains, stadiums, or places where you just want to capture a 30,000 foot of your surroundings. The issue is that it is hard to line up the string of photos in a way that creates the perfect stitch. But, I’m sure with a little more diligence, you can pull it off better than I do. (Also, make sure you are standing next to someone who isn’t going to move around a lot and get their head in the shot.)
2) Diptic: Easy way to quickly stitch a few photos together into one “frame.” Do the edits right on your phone, and choose from about 10-20 layout options. Then, upload that picture to your Facebook pge or what not.
3) Comic Touch Lite: Fun little free version of an app that simply ads comic bubbles to the pic. Nothing revolutionary here, but super simple to use and fun at bbq’s and such.
4) Camera Plus: I like playing with this, and I think it provides slightly better photos. Not 100% sold though. (No example)
5) 100 Cameras in One: Basically it’s Hipstamiatic with a different style interface. Take pics, run them through a filter, see the result.
Things I’m playing with and haven’t decided upon yet. (ie, saving them for a future blog post.)
Now this may not seem like a fair post, since I go to more marketing events than the average person should. But for a community as creative as Seattle, I’m beginning to think the networking event space has become pretty tame and uninspired. Don’t get me wrong – the people are great, the venues are fun, and there are certainly more than enough to choose from. Shauna Causey’s Twestival is awesome, and so is Gigs4Good, but there’s room for more creativity. Here are a few things that strike me.
1) We need to train up a slew of talented moderators. It’s tough to admit this, but moderated panels are starting to become the death of a good event. 5 people on a panel is too many, and we don’t need to ask each person the same question. Let’s put together a diverse panel, let them talk about their expertise, and have moderators ask pointed questions. We should move away from round-table, generic subjects that the people in the crowd can just as well comment on.
2) We seem to use the same speakers over and over. I love that Seattle wants to promote its home grown stars. And I get that there aren’t 500 local celebs to choose from. But it does seem like we burn up the star power of these folks by putting them everywhere. There are only a few events like the Ignite series where we get to see a cavalcade of new speakers that don’t have much experience. And this is great, because it’s a safe environment where people get to work out the kinks in their presentation style, in front of audiences who are forgiving and encouraging. We need a few more places like this, where speakers can take the stage and gain the experience to hit bigger venues. Let’s break away from the usual 20-30.
3) We need diversity in the subjects. I think it’s time we go a little bit outside the echo chamber. Let’s talk to four Bay Area VC’s and find out why they think Seattle is a Tier 2 Startup city. Let’s invite oil companies and find out why the rest of the country doesn’t mirror our love for green tech. Let’s listen to politicians explain to liberal Seattle why people still vote Republican in other parts of the country. Basically, let’s bring in people that don’t already think like us. What do we have to lose?
4) Can we do something new? Sure, I like standing around and drinking a vodka soda at happy hour with colleagues. But I also like “doing things” in the few hours I have to spend on these events. I think NWEN does a nice job of mixing it up. You have some educational events, some pure networking events, and some that are a hybrid of both. But overall the whole scene needs more Trivia Quiz, Karaoke nights, ping pong tourneys, miniature golf outings. We need more places for startups to “launch” their companies in front of a crowd of 200, and networking orgs like SMC Seattle to partner more with volunteer orgs like Seattle Works. I think it would be way more fun to work at a food bank with my Seattle Marketing colleagues, than just belly up to a bar.
These are my quick thoughts on the matter. I’m not complaining at all, and I think we still have a wealth of interesting people to talk to at these events. But maybe, just maybe, we have some room for improvement.
From TechFlash.comI’ve always raved that some of the most dynamic, powerful, inspiring bosses that I’ve worked for during my years as a technology marketer have been women. I guess “growing up” in an environment like RealNetworks, where everyone was pretty dang smart, you just didn’t see much labeling of team members by gender.
However, it’s easy to look around the web sites of technology companies and notice there are far more pictures of men in the “Executive Team” pages. So, I was really interested to hear the perspective of Dawn LePore, the CEO and Chairman of Drugstore.com, at the recent TechFlash Women in Technology event.
3 thrings stuck with me from Dawn’s conversation.
The crowd was 30-40% men. I think these kinds of event are more powerful when both genders are in the room. We have lots ot learn from each other, so I was really excited so many men in the audience.
Dawn’s main advice was pertinent to both men and women. She spoke a lot about her career path, and it’s clear that she wasn’t promoted out of luck or chance. She made a real decision at some point in her career that she was going to be an executive. So instead of just executing upon the tasks given to her, she sought out mentors who get help get her to the next level. She understood that merely doing her current job well wasn’t going to get her keys to her own corner office. He was going to have to be trusted to to the job of the people abover her if she wanted promotion. I think too many people do their job well and expect to be moved up, rather than seeking out help on how they can attain the next level.
It was also clear that she had to make difficult family choices, but her and her family made them unapologetically and without regret. She made the conscious choice to forego a family until she had risen to the top level. Her husband made the choice to stay at home and be a house husband to help her attain her goals. These are hard choices, but when you are shooting for the stratosphere, hard choices need to be made.
One final thing resonated throughout the Q+A. Women from both large and small tech companies grabbed the microphone and asked Lepore how she adapted to a world where she was such the minority. I think it’s aninteresting point for men – and women – to keep top of mind. That even in organizations that handle workplace gender differences with the utmost care, there is still usually a disparity between the number of men and women in the halls. It’s something to keep in mind, that no matter how hard you try to level the field, there will still be a majority / minority dynamic at play.
Finally, I think Lepore glossed over something we all should at least think about a litlle. One reason there are fewer women in technology excecutive positions, is that fewer women are entering the technology workplace in the first place. We need to figure out why so many of our bright and talented women students aren’t considering careers in math and science. I would have liked to hear her talk more about this.
I’ve said it every May since 2007 – judging the Investment Round of the UW Business Plan Competition is one of my favorite days of the year. It’s exciting to absorb the energy and inspiration from all of these young entrepreneurs and idea generators. Sure, most of the 38 “companies” on display won’t ever go past this day, but everyone who takes part surely takes something they learned, something they discovered, or an idea they came up with into future companies.
Enough hyperbole – Let’s talk about what I saw.
Now, the problem for me every year is that there are always these awesome engineering and medical companies that I just don’t get. A UW med student will tell me something like, “When you combine this UW technology with this UW technology, you get a compound that completely eliminates both cancer and male pattern baldness, AND adds 4 inches to your vertical leap. We would just need 4 years and $50 million to make it work.” And since I don’t understand anything about biology, I would invest in them. Or, they’ll show me a prototype of a jet pack or invisibility cloak. The idea sounds cool and reasonable, and I say, “I want one of those.” Only later do I learn why the technology is impossible.
So this year – and I apologize to the science guys – but I really only visited the companies that I thought I would really understand well enough to ask hard questions of. And without commenting on who I through my investment “dollars” at, here are some of the ideas I liked and people I liked talking to.
1) Seattleite Magazine – I’ll mention them first, only because I met founder Jane Yuan a few months back and saw an early version of their business plan. There could be a market for this kind of online pub in Seattle. It’s a fun read, with lots of good pics of Seattle people and places.
2) Breadcrumb – The reverse of FourSquare, Breadcrumb notifies a person’s emergency contacts in the event that they DON’T check in when expected, dramatically improving search and rescue efforts for missing or injured people. Perfect for hikers, campers, mountain climbers, fisherman, etc… whose parents worry about them.
3) Online Pay Station – I really root for these guys. Think old school market meets unlimited product options. This is a company for African residents – enabling people without bank accounts or credit cards make online orders via companies like Amazon.com. They pay Online Pay Station (OPS) cash at an OPS Internet Cafe, OPS makes a bulk buy to save on shipping, receives the order, then warehouses the merchandise until the buyer picks it up.
4) PotaVida – Did you know that you can put dirty water in a plastic bottle, stick it in the sun, and then the sun will kill all the really nasty, dangerous organisms in the water in 6 hours or so? I didn’t. The problem is, you don’t *really* know when the water is clean. PotaVida makes a little LED based contraption that tells you when the water is safe. Go to a disaster relief location, put 100 bottles on a roof at once, but a PotaVida device on one of them, and suddenly you know when the water is safe to hand out.
5) Punchkeeper – Take all of the loyalty cards that you have to carry around, and put them in one app on your mobile phone. Snap a pic of a QR code to get credit. That simple.
6) Sky Fu – They call it “Self Defense for the Social Web.” I summarize it as Radian6 for small businesses who need to monitor Yelp, Trip Advisor and the like.
7) Pterofin – Designs and manufactures innovative wind energy devices for residential and commercial use. I don’t get why it works better than regular turbine, but they say it does, so why not beleive them.
8) TripBox – Makes travel planning easier. Cool demo. Hard to describe. Maybe Widget based travel planning.
9) Digital Menu – Almost makes too much sense to work. Rather than spending money printing out paper based menus every day, restaurants just go to this site, pick from the templates, update the menu, and Digital Menu turns it into a mobile or tablet based menu that can be shared online, across social channels, and that you can even view at the restaurant.
10) Soothie Suckers – Kids don’t want to take herbal medicine. So the solution – put it in a popsicle. That’s the theory here. For what it is worth, the popsicle tastes good.
There were a lot more great companies on display – 28 more in fact. But that would make the blog 100 pages long. Here’s the list of the companies that made the next round. But congrats to everyone who made it from the initial 100+ down to this final 38.
For all the heat Seattle gets for – well the lack of heat – one thing that often goes overlooked is the amount of stuff to do here. It’s really easy to fall into the trap of focusing on one activity. We have tons of great venues for watching college and professional sports. Too many music venues to count. A vibrant arts and theater community. And enough trails, likes and mountains for even the most adventurous explorer. But we also have this educational environment that has a tendency to put amazingly inspirational people on stage. Sometimes these events try to sneak by you, so you have to pay attention.
In fact, the other day I tried to run through a list of people I have either had the chance to listen to or actually talk with over the last few years. I’ve been in a crowd listening to Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Colin Powell, Steve Wozniak and Carol Bartz, and actually have been able to chat with or work for Howard Schultz, Jeff Bezos, Rob Glaser, Richard Tait, Maria Cantwell, Geoffrey Moore, and a host of technology whiz kids like Rich Barton, Nick and Adrian Hanauer, and TA McCann. I don’t know if you can do that everywhere in the country.
Last Friday, I added to my list, giving up my Marines tickets to spend a few hours listening to Paul Allen, who was being interviewed at Town Hall by Geekwire’s Todd Bishop.
I’m not going to lie. Part of me was hoping that Allen would stand up and say, “You know what. David Stern is a $%#&ing a$$. I don’t care how much he fines me. I could buy the whole league in cash if I wanted.”
Now of course that didn’t happen, and I didn’t expect it to. The irony is, I don’t think I can remember a specific thing from any of those speakers, and I doubt there’s anything from Allen’s talk that I’ll take to my grave. But there were some things about his attitude and ways he tackles problems that I’ll probably walk away with. Examples…
In two seperate questions from the audience, he was subtly being criticized for not solving the world’s energy prolem or the country’s education issues. He didn’t come out and say, “Oil Dependency and Teacher’s Unions” but he made it clear that there were external issues that made it impossible to solve these problems right now. He basically said that throwing blind money at these problems was a waste – and why waste money if the problem can’t be solved without major changes.
Allen also had a subtle shot at all the people who stopped his Seattle Commons project. Years ago I used this blog as a forum to blast everyone who brought the Seattle Commons to its knees because they didn’t want public funds to go to building a giant central park that might improve the real estate value of the land around it (which was owned by Allen.) Now, since Allen owned all the land that he was going to donate for the park anyway, when the people voted down the park, he had no choice but to build on it. So now we have the super cool South Lake Union business district that houses Amazon, MSFT and more. And ironically, he made a boat load more money on it than had it just been a big greenspace. It was interesting that he brought up that he was almost forced to make money on that real estate deal since Seattle wouldn’t accept his land for free.
There is some irony in the fact that so many people who attended Town Hall to see Allen, might be characterized as “anti-business.” Some were the kind of famous Seattleites who pay their mortgage from the money they made from Microsoft stock splitting 20 times, but also sent flame emails to politicians trying to stop the building of Qwest, Safeco or a new Key Arena.
I guess the moral of this meandering blog post is that you really need to pay attention in Seattle. There are Town Hall events like Paul Allen all the time, and the UW hosts a ton of similarly impressive luminaries. They may not change your life, but we all should try to collect info from smart people that don’t always think like we do. Different perspectives can be valuable, even if they dont change your mind.
The Northwest Entrepreneur Network hosted one of its signature events last Wednesday, the spring version of First Look Forum. (For those who want to know the whole format, check the appendix at the bottom of this post.) In a nutshell, it’s a several month process that brings 12 entrepreneurs who have never pitched their business before, together with 60-70 VC’s and Angels. Very cool format.
This year’s group of 12 finalists spanned the gamut from fusion to chocolate. My colleague Shelley Whelan already posted a nice follow-up on the NWEN blog. But Alissa Johnson from the Alliance of Angels had a clever idea for a blog post, and allowed me to steal it from her, since she is too busy at VCIC to put it together. Her idea – explain how if all of these companies became successful, how might one use all of them in a single day. So here goes, using me as the example.
As soon as I woke up, I’d log into the dashboard of FLF winner Guide Analytics. The company helps patients manage heart failure and avoid hospitalization through the continuous monitoring of edema. Patients wear a bracelet around their ankle, measuring ankle size and relaying that info via bluetooth and wireless devices to the main computer. Now I don’t have heart problems, but I’d be able to check on my aunt’s status, and make sure everything was ok. The system will tell us when she is in danger of a heart attack, and lets us get her to the doctor before it happens.
I’d get in my car and head to work. I’d stop for coffee first at a certain store, because I could get some valuable points to help me in the BodSix game I was currently engaged in. (This is still in development, so I can’t share too much here.) But soon I’d get into the office and say hi to the staff. One of my team members, a woman getting married soon, would be choosing bridesmaid dresses from Little Borrowed Dress. Her bridesmaids would be able to rent these silk dresses for $75, rather than spend $230 for some taffeta number they’d never wear again anyway. Our happy bride-to-be is also showing pictures of the bridesmaid dresses to her fiance, who lives in New York, on their private page at SnuggleCloud, a personal online space for couples.
We’d probably have a client coming in that day, and undoubtedly, there’d be some furniture issue in some hard to reach angle of the room. Thankfully, we’d have our new Flipout Screwdriver, which would enable us to fix it. Before the client got to our office, we would have downloaded the reports from ReadyPulse, a company that provides insight on what works best to grow your audience on Facebook and Twitter. Our client – a software company – is probably using AgileEVM, a product that helps with agile software developments.
We’ll want to take the client to lunch afterwards, so we’ll check UrbanQ a way for us to discover places and experiences we’ll like, from our mobile device. UrbanQ might recommend a nice waterfront restaurant, where we notice all the ships using Fusion Engines developed by Woodruff Scientific. These ships are actually sing sea water and the elements inside of it, to generate fuel through fusion. The restaurant is great. So I log into Meevine and ping my friends about it. Hopefully we’ll all be able to pick a date soon.
It was a long day. So when I get home, I open up a high-end chocolate bar I got from Chocolopolis, something that goes nicely with my Spanish Rioja, and that I’ll probably pick up more of for the dinner party I’m throwing later this week. I end the day reading a book about baseball history that had been turned into an iPad application by Appitude. I use this app because I get to do more than just read the book – I’m part of a virtual book club, chatting on my iPad while scrolling through the text and pictures. Some of my real life friends happen to be reading, and I’m connecting with other baseball history fans.
That’s how I’d be able to utilize all the businesses who made it to the finals of this First Look Forum. I encourage you to go check out the companies who already have products live, and signup to get ont he beta list for the others.
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Appendix: About First Look Forum
Over the course of several months, about 70 entrepreneurs, who have never pitched their business plan to an investor group, apply to FLF. Everyone who applies gets some business plan coaching from NWEN’s Exec Director, or someone from the investment community.
A screening committee then whittles those 70 plans down to 20. More coaching.
Those 20 get parsed to 12. Still more coaching.
Then the even itself. Each of the 12 gets 5 minutes in front of the most influential group of VC’s, Angels and investors in the Puget Sound. 5 finalists are chosen for 2 more minutes of pitching, and then a judging panel selects a winner.
If you read Mashable, you’ve seen this already. Even if you are not a tech geek, you might still think this is pretty cool. Time lapse photography from a passenger with a camera and a tripod, condensing his 11 hour flight down to 2 minutes.
Anyone who watched the NCAA Final on Monday – or more accurately tried to watch it – acknowledges that it was one of the worst performances in a championship game in recent memory.
Now, a few sports radio shows have lobbed theories that there was something wrong with the rims, whcih made the game unplayable. And just about any sports organization that has reason to fear NCAA retribution has flat out denied that could be a reason.
I think the problem could be bigger. There’s a reason we don’t see a lot of basketball games in 70,000 seat football stadiums. It’s a bad environment for hoops. And you get stuck using a temporary floor and temporary rims for your 3 most important games of the season.
This research is not complete, but here’s a first, albeit shallow, look at the last 10 NCAA Final games. All I’ve done is taken the Team Field Goal % for the Winning and Losing Teams, and compare them to how the teams shot during the year on average. Using FG%, and not Total Points, should take out some of the fluctuations that could arise from a shortage or abundance of foul calls during the game.
Quick math shows that Winning teams see their FG% drop from around 48.3% to 45.7% And the Losing teams drop from about 46.4% to 37.1%. So, if both teams see their FG% fall during the only games in which they play in 70,000 seat stadiums, maybe we have to assign a little fault to these temporary rims. And if we are going to assign some fault to the temporary rims, maybe it’s possible the guys who set up THESE temporary rims in Houston were a bunch of numbskulls. More data to come this weekend.
So here’s a post that has nothing to do with social media, marketing, the Sounders, Mariners, or pretty much anything I’ve ever written about.
It’s been a pretty nutty year so far, and somewhere just under the “Super High” part of the Priority List, I had this nagging item that never seemed to get dealt with. It simply said, “Get lip checked out.”
It had started a few months back, when I noticed a few splotches under my lower lip. After noticing it a little more, I had gone into the dermatologist to get some cream to make it go away. Now here we were in February or so, and the splotches weren’t any better. And when I finally got it checked out again, this time the dermatologist said, “It’s probably nothing, but it worries me a little, so why don’t you go upstairs to the surgeon and have them take care of it.”
So the consult with the surgeon was interesting. A seemingly nice, funny, likable guy told me that he wanted to carve into my face. Well his words were that he wanted to do a biopsy on the tissue to make sure nothing bad was going on. I really only heard, “Surgery” and “Biopsy.” He said he could do a simple “punch” something, but would feel more comfortable just using a scalpel and taking out all of the discoloration in a simple procedure.
Now I may be a giant sissy, but this was the first time I ever had to make any kind of crazy decision like this for my own body and I was a little freaked. Option 1: Do nothing, assume that the discoloration was a simple anomaly that wouldn’t spread, and just deal with it. Option 2: Take a tiny little sample, get a reasonably sound prognosis that the discoloration wasn’t a malignant tumor, and just deal with the spreading cells later. Option 3: Go under a knife, take out all the discoloration, and learn for sure that the discoloration was or wasn’t malignant.
I was a little grouchy and stressed for a few days last month while I weighed the pros and cons. Then I finally decided to just have the thing removed and tested. I made the appointment, and walked around with somewhat of an odd attitude for a few weeks. I was 95-99% sure that this was going to come out all right. But, I couldn’t help thinking that if there wasn’t a chance it was going to turn out poorly, no one would want me to go through the risk. I hate to be cheesy, but it puts a few things in perspective for you.
I’ve lived a pretty healthy life, so when my surgery day arrived last Monday, and I found myself sitting in the chair waiting for the guy to carve a piece out of my lip, I have to admit it was quite a new experience for me. It’s not a subject that comes up in conversation at the pub, so I had no idea what the proper amount of fear was supposed to be. So I pretty much had them stick the Novocain needle in, then I closed my eyes and listened while they went to work on my face.
45 minutes later, the cutting and stitching was done, and I was on my way home with a bottle of vicodin, a bunch of gauze bandages, and the promise of test results in a week.
And so for a week I tried to go on like nothing was different, except I was eating soft foods, trying harder than normal not to get hit in the head with a softball or soccer ball, and wondering why it takes 7 days for them to test a few little cells. For the record, the hardest part of spending a week with a scar on your face is trying not to alarm anyone when they ask you what happened.
And so today my little saga finally came to an end. The good news – tests all came back with “Malignancy result negative.” And of course in this case, negative is positive, because it means there is no tumor and any worry was for naught. The stitches came out, and I should have a normal looking lip again soon.
As my friend Ari said, “Yup, we’re starting to get to that age where weird shit happens.” He may not be Voltaire, but the philosophy is still sound. Thanks to everyone who provided the kind words of encouragement over the last month or so. My favorite lines – “Well as long as they are there, have them fix the rest of your face.” And, “See if they’ll throw in botox for free.”
The shots below were taken to record “Before Surgery,” “After Surgery,” “7 days of Recovery” and after the stitches were taken out.
Paul Owen from Owen Media published a nice piece today in Xconomy.com, asking if Social Media was a fad that is going away, or something really hear to say.
Paul’s piece had a range of comments from other social media firms in town, so I don’t want to repeat everything here. He did a nice job of grabbing insight from the agencies who specilaize in Community Management and outsourced Customer Support, while also getting input from more full service organizations.
Our viewpoint over at Social3i is you’ll only see more commerce through social channels, not less. There’s a giant blurring between “Wb” and “Social” now, so that they are really one in the same.
There’s another whole article on privacy to be written, but take that out of the mix and look at two companies that released product in the last week – Color and Zapd. Color has all the fanfare for the amazing (or outrageous) valuation. Zapd made less noise but comes from a guy who’s launched a lot of startups in his day, Kelly Smith. Both focus on instant content generation, and the packaging of such content.
Color takes the idea of friends, and flips it on its ear, turnign everyone in your proximity into co-authors with you. Zapd lets you take those random photos and turn them into a web page in 60 seconds, so you can share not just the photos, but the whole story, all in the time it takes to in line buying a beer.
Combine these philiosphies with the GroupOn and Living Social commerce infrastructure, and you can see (well we think you can see) where this is all going. Add in Facebook credits, more virtual currency, and One-Click purchase technology on the phone, and social becomes more than Facebook customer service posts and Tweeting back and forth at each other from the same party.
Anyway, check out Paul’s article, and if you think I said anything dumb, feel free to lay into me in the comments section.
Photosynth
