Yahoo Might Become Yah Who?

I once made a really good investment in a stock. I bought Yahoo (YHOO) on the day it launched its IPO way back in the 90's. I had been following the company sensing they had something new and unique to offer. In those days one could have referred to the world wide web as the wild west web where you pretty much had to know the URL or specific name of a web site to access information.

The internet was very young and provided a wonderful conduit for information. It was the information super highway but you needed maps to get anywhere. Services like Prodigy and Compuserve (which my millennial friends will have only read about in history books) organized content into specific categories of information and offered functional areas like news, financial data and discussion boards. You could 'search' for information by keyword but you would only find what these services included in their catalogs. It was like going to the supermarket where products are grouped into aisles so you know where to find cereal or laundry detergent. But you would only find products the store had in stock.

Yahoo had a different model. While they also provided a landing page with news, sports, stock prices and other content, they took on the seemingly impossible task of scanning the entire internet and building an index which allowed you to find any web site that might be relevant to your search. Their technique involved "crawling" all of the web sites, taking note of the content on each page and following every link on each page to find other pages and other sites. Their process was designed to be continuous and never ending.

Anyone who could achieve some level of organization around this monstrous mass of information would surely be successful, provide immense value to its customers and therefore be rewarded in some way.

Although I almost missed getting in, my buy order went through on the afternoon of the first day of trading. I was delighted to have gotten in on the ground floor. My optimism waned a bit when the stock price dropped and I realized I bought in at the high for the day which was more like the fifth floor. I was in the basement and underwater for almost a year before the company gained traction and suddenly the stock price soared. The rest as they say is history.

Yesterday the news broke that Carol Bartz, Yahoo's CEO, was fired and the Board put a for sale sign on the front lawn. Yahoo, a true pioneer and front runner in the search game for many years succumbed to the superior search capabilities of Google and was squeezed out by the evolution of social networks and mobile computing. My good friend Mike Voellinger wrote a brilliant analysis of the situation and suggested the steps necessary for their recovery.

With all due respect, Mike, I am glad I sold most of my shares years ago. I think it t is going to be cold and damp down in the basement this time and frankly, I am not sure they will ever get out.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

It's Not the Music, It's the Social Interaction

A few weeks back I wrote a brief review of Spotify after playing with it for a short while. Since then I have had the opportunity to leverage more of its unique and useful features. As a result, I now have a slightly different, much higher opinion of this service..

Almost every day people who are in my circles on Google Plus, friends on Facebook or people I follow on Twitter share a song or a full playlist of songs. Simply clicking through enables me to obtain and listen to the music they have selected.

Now I have been a Slacker fan for a long time and, since it is similar, would probably like Pandora as well. These free services allow you to define a "channel" by selecting a particular artist, song or style of music to play. It will then continue on its own to select more songs of a similar genre for you. You can flag your favorites or skip songs you don't like, continuously adding to the data used to discern your preferences and improve the accuracy of its picks. It's a pretty good system.

As you may recall from my first article, Spotify is essentially a giant free jukebox in the sky. You put in a specific song or artist and it will show you all of the available versions. You can play it or add it to a play list. You can create as many play lists as you want, AND you can share them through all the popular networks.

This is where Spotify suddenly became more interesting. At first, I simply launched Spotify and chose a couple of songs. For instance, I recently attended a Mostly Mozart festival concert at Avery Fisher Hall. A few days before the performance I used Spotify to select some of the individual pieces on the program. It was extremely simple to locate recordings, choose a version and listen to it.

Unlike Slacker, though, this was active participation. With Slacker, it was set it and forget it. Once I defined a channel I could turn it on and go about my business while it made all the selections.

Then I started to notice my "friends" posting their Spotify choices and the situation changed. Every so often I would click through and found I would really enjoy the song or list of songs someone else had put together. Obviously, this is the heart of social networking. People who are my "friends" are often going to have similar tastes in music. Even if they don't, their choices will reflect their preferences and will be interesting to explore. The combination of the randomness of these suggested song collections and the social dynamic creates an attractive social experience.

When you are throwing a party, you can tune into a particular radio station to play music that might suit everyone, or you can allow your friends to take turns plugging their iPods into your sound system and create a truly unique and dynamic party experience. It is this kind of interactivity that sets Spotify apart from the other services.

I haven't had Slacker opened in a while. Perhaps you have a couple of songs or play lists you would like to tweet to me?

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

Apple Truly is Easy as Pie

I have been using computers and Windows based software for a very long time. Like many of you, I have wrestled with the never ending stream of updates, upgrades and support issues. It is not uncommon to blow an entire afternoon adding some new hardware component, installing a new application or just cleaning things up so my home computer will run a little better.

People often ask me, what does the average Joe do when they don't have someone with experience like me to help guide them through the complexities that are inherent in these machines. Lord help the poor soul who is infected with a virus or encounters the infamous blue screen of death, and they have little to no technical knowledge. Staying on the line with "support" can be a costly and trying experience.

Despite all its shortcomings, Windows is still the platform of choice for business and as such we are forced to deal with it. Sure, we can tolerate the handful of marketing folks with their iMacs and Mac Books. We put up with the software developers who insist on using Linux. But at the end of the day, Windows is the most prevalent desktop system in the business world and that is why most of us use it in the office and at home. It has certainly improved over the years, however it is not simple and still far from trouble free.

I bought a new car this weekend. It is a BMW. The car has more electronics, computer chips and data storage than I have in all the appliances and computers in my house combined. BMW have integrated their automobile  operating systems with Apple's iPhone operating system, IOS. Being a technology professional, this was particularly exciting to me.

As you may know from earlier columns I carry an HTC EVO smart phone running the Android OS. The car is equipped with blue tooth which allows any phone, including mine, to "pair" with the car and be operated from controls on the steering wheel. My address book is uploaded and I can place hands-free calls through the system. It was easy and worked flawlessly,

But you must have an iPhone4 to take full advantage of the integration. I had an old iPod Touch and so I decided I would try to use it.

All of the software for Apple devices comes from iTunes. Step one, install iTunes on my computer. It downloaded and installed without incident. But it then scoured my computer and loaded all of my music into the library, converting, compressing and cataloging along the way.

When I plug the iPod into the USB port, iTunes recognized it and suggested I needed to update the software. No surprise as the device is quite old, yet, it was still fully supported. Moreover, when I clicked okay, iTunes delivered to the device all the necessary software, loaded it, rebooted it and completed the update without missing a step or losing one song. iTunes then synchronized the newly constructed library with the contents of the iPod. All this occurred as I sat patiently and watched the progress bar.

This is how software and device support should be, I thought. So the next time someone asks what they should do when their Windows machine acts up and they are not technically inclined, I think I'm going to suggest they go Apple.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

Hanging Out Can Make You a Star

One of the more interesting and unique features of Google Plus is Hangouts. Hangouts give you the ability at any time to start a video chat and invite up to ten of your Google Plus friends to join. In these Hangout sessions you hear everyone when they speak, see each participant in a small strip of thumbnail size video along the bottom of the window and see one person at a time in the large, main window. A few weeks back one of my friends invited me to join a Hangout with Sarah Hill, news anchorwoman at KOMU TV, the NBC affiliate in Columbia Missouri.

Sarah has been pioneering the use of Google Plus Hangouts inviting people to virtually join her in the studio and interact with her and her colleagues during the live broadcast of the evening news. You can have up to ten people at a time in a Hangout and most nights it fills up pretty fast. While some of the people are local, several of the regular crew are from cities around the nation and around the world. They include Chicago, Boston, New York and Paris among others.

In Hangouts Sarah has conducted interviews on current events, capturing the comments and interactions on video and editing these into portions of her featured news stories. Often at the end of the broadcast Sarah will share the Hangout with her viewers via a live feed, having us wave or "green boxing" one participant. Hangout is self directed which means it will switch video you see in the main screen to the participant who is speaking. But if you click on the thumbnail of any one person's video a green box appears around it and that video is locked in no matter who is speaking. This feature let's Sarah choose one person to highlight on air.

The use of Hangouts has already been adopted by a few other networks, most recently by CNN to discuss sports with fans.  It is certain to spread further.

The technology was so well received at KOMU, the station will begin to produce a new afternoon show called U_News @ 4 with a Google Plus Hangout providing on-air guests.

All of this has been particularly exciting for me as I have now appeared in a couple of news stories, frequently participate in the studio couch Hangout during broadcasts and will be one of the first guest / co-hosts of the new show.

Being an early adopter in Google Plus has allowed me to observe first hand how this new social network has evolved, improved and fostered new and exciting  innovations. It has provided the opportunity to "hang out" and interact with people I might otherwise have never met, and now it has lead to participation in groundbreaking new approaches to television journalism.

I hope everyone tunes in to watch the show via the live feed on Monday September 12 at 4PM Central for the inaugural broadcast of U_News @ 4.  We'll be making broadcast journalism history.

Okay, Ms. Hill, I am ready for my close-up.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

Restaurants Will Never Be The Same

A few weeks back I wrote a column called Your Table is Ready. It was a brief story about what happened to me while adding my name to the waiting list for a table at a local restaurant. It was a completely new and interesting experience, never having encountered a cell phone and text message based restaurant system before. I was very impressed and fascinated with what has been happening in the restaurant industry through the introduction of mobile technology.

At the end of that piece I mentioned another restaurant experience I had in New York City. At lunch our little group decided to enhance our dining experience with a glass of wine. The waiter handed over an iPad which contained the restaurant's wine list. I imagined that more restaurants would begin using the iPad, other tablets or perhaps even your smart phone in the same way, holding not only the wine list or specials but their entire menu. There were a couple of news stories this week which confirmed my suspicions.

The first story was on De Santos in the West Village of New York City. This may lay claim to being the first restaurant in New York City to hand out an iPad in lieu of a menu. You place your own order and it is transmitted to the kitchen including any special instructions you might include. Please put the dressing on the side and leave out the bleu cheese. When you are done you can pay the check using Square (an add-on device that allows you to swipe your credit card.) The iPad application is connected to the restaurant register and payment system.

Another news story discussed the growth in use of custom ruggedized tablets that were introduced by e La Carte earlier this year. They are starting to appear in many restaurants in Boston and the San Francisco area. Again, these "Presto" tablets allow patrons to review the entire menu, place their own orders and, with built in credit card reader, pay the tab.

Perhaps my favorite new development was the announcement of  The Melt, a food chain opened by the founder of the Flip video device, Jonathan Kaplan. While a fast food restaurant specializing in grilled cheese sandwiches is hardly earth shattering news, there is a double twist. Not only does The Melt take food orders from a wireless device but they go a step further and allow you to order from your smart phone. With their app, you don't have to go to the store and use an iPad or special wireless device. You just use your own smart phone. Then, your phone displays your order in the form of a QR code (see Internet from the Great Beyond) which is read by a device in the store. Two minutes later you pick up your order and you are on your way.

Mobile devices like tablets and smart phones combined with ubiquitous wireless connectivity are introducing change to the food services industry faster than you can imagine the next innovation. There are probably another dozen or more stories just like these journaling the evolution of this industry. How long before they begin to tie into the social networks like Yelp for real time reviews and Foursquare for instant location updates.

I suppose after we digest this, we can think about what other industry might be next.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC