Dropbox and personal data

More and more, recently, I’ve been noticing web services that use Dropbox for storing user data.  For example,1Password, OneName and Diaro. With all the talk about user control of data, data liberation, privacy, etc — I actually feel like this is is a super nice approach, at least for some use cases. I am more comfortable using Diaro as my journal because they don’t keep the data, I do (sort of — really Dropbox does, but it’s my dropbox acct and I can take it/delete it whenever I want).  I think that may have actually been my deciding factor in choosing Diaro. In this particular case, using Dropbox has the added (I’d say necessary) feature of syncing across devices so any apps that store user data there can see it anywhere and not have to worry about managing it. It’s also interesting to note that this wasn’t really the #1 use case (afaik) for Dropbox.  But it does seem to be a natural (albeit relatively fringe) additional use case.  And I wonder if we will see an increasing number of apps (maybe health?) take this route, and marketing it to privacy/control conscious users.

#dropbox#products-services

Uber and Safer Cities

For some reason I have always liked talking to taxi drivers about their business.  Maybe it’s because my dad was a NYC taxi driver back in the 70s, or maybe it’s because driving a taxi is such a classic immigrant path to building a life here.  And it’s certainly because of the amount of tech and business model innovation in the transportation space.  

Last night I took an Uber home from the airport, and was talking to the driver about his experience with it.  He loves Uber — in the past 2 years, he switched from being a Boston city cab driver to being an Uber driver — and in the process traded $4000 / month in cab lease fees (what you pay a garage as a base rate to drive the cab — regardless of how much you earn) for a $700 / month car payment and $400 / month in insurance.  And he gets to have a vastly improved quality of work (managing his own business & time, driving in a nicer car, etc).

Of course there are tradeoffs — if the Uber business slows down, he’s still on the hook for that car payment.  And it’s possible that the number of Uber drivers will continue to increase (unconstrained by medallion restrictions, which in NYC cap taxis at 13,000), increasing competition and bringing down his margins.

But overall, he said that Uber changed his life (for the better).  Not everyone feels this way, but it’s one story.

Anyway, the most interesting thing he said was not about the business, but the impact on neighborhoods.  He said that Uber has radically increased the taxi / car service business in the city’s tough neighborhoods.  This comes across as sounding counter-intuitive since most tech-driven transportation platforms (like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar — but especially Uber) are derided as “For Yuppies By Yuppies”.  But the reason makes perfect sense: with Uber, you know your passenger.

So whereas a traditional taxi would hesitate to pick up fares in tough parts of town, because you never know who’s going to get in, Uber drivers can do this with much more confidence, since there is personal identity (and therefore accountability) built into the system.

This makes perfect sense in theory, and I’d be really interested to explore data that could test this out.  Especially as NYC gears up to offer mobile payments in traditional taxis.

This is a perfect example of Regulation 2.0 — using real-time / mobile accessible data to build trust and safety into a networked system.  And it points out the limitations of “1.0” regulation schemes (in this case taxi licensing), that don’t have access to such data and can hence only solve for part of the problem (in this case, protecting passengers from bad drivers).  And it’s a really great example of some of the unexpected benefits of allowing new, networked models to emerge.

#cities#products-services

Chromecast: First Impressions

When we got home from vacation last night, my new Chromecast was sitting waiting for me.  I’ve been really psyched to try it out.

The out-of-the-box experience was clear and simple.  My favorite thing about Chromecast is how small it is — it’s barely there; just a tiny little add-on to web-enable your TV.

The installation and setup were smooth, with one major exception: the first time through, my setup failed, citing a mysterious UPnP error, and a vaguely worded message to “check my router settings”.  Being a geeky person, I (a) knew that that meant going to 192.168.1.1 to get to the router config, (b) was able to remember / figure out the username and password for my router and (c) hunted around for the Universal Plug and Play settings until I found what looked like the right one.  My guess is that all of the above would be a deal breaker for 99.5% of consumers.

Once I got through that, I played around a bit with mirroring my computer screen to the TV (just like you can do with Airplay), and playing some web videos on the TV (including this video from the awesome Smarter Every Day series, showing an AK-47 firing underwater at 27,000 frames per second, to illustrate the physics of it — the explanation of the pressure forces about 2 minutes in is stellar).

I’m excited about this — I’m pretty sure this is not **the** answer to bringing the internet to TVs, but it’s a nice step on the road.  A few things come to mind as tough problems:

 * getting past having to switch “inputs” on the TV. This is another super clunky step that I’m sure loses a ton of people (and certainly just makes this content feel “farther away” and just out of reach of my regular routine.  It would be awesome if TVs provided an API to let apps / devices control the input.  I have no idea how that works but I’m almost certain it’s not possible now.

 * being able to queue content I see on the web to my TV for viewing later.  That was my favorite feature of the old Boxee.

 * the config steps (as mentioned above).  Also: in my case, relying on my broadband / TV provider, Verizon, actually allowing me to access and change those settings.  This kind of thing is disruptive to traditional TV and I could easily imagine combo broadband / tv providers clamping down to protect the legacy TV business.

Relatedly: I hung out with a friend last week who is a writer / producer at The Onion, and asked him how many of their video views came from people watching on TVs (vs computers or mobile devices).  He had no idea and it sounds like it’s not something they track, or even think about very much.  I guess it makes sense, given how early this all is, and given the relative clunkiness of the web / tv integrations thus far.  But man, it seems clear to me that this is where we’re headed, and I think & hope it’ll be good for independent content outlets like the Onion and others.

#chromecast#products-services

FlightCar - a Beachhead for Car Sharing

Despite the extent to which I talk and think about car sharing and other newly possible. web-enabled modes of transportation, the truth is I still don’t use too many of them on a regular basis.  Need to work on that.

It seems as though I need to travel to SF to get the urge to get around town in new ways.  A few months ago, I tried out Scoot’s new battery-powered short-term scooter rental service, which was really fun (and will get much better as battery life improves).

This week, I tried a new one: FlightCar.  FlightCar is a peer-to-peer car sharing service, not unlike RelayRides, Getaround, or Buzzcar.  The twist is that it’s all based around airport trips.  Here’s the idea:

Every day, thousands of people drive to their local airport and park their car in long term parking before they head out of town.  At the exact same time, thousands of people are arriving at that same airport — and guess what, lots of them need cars. Add a little web-based matchmaking, booking, and logistics, and there you go. 

What I like about this approach is that it builds on behavior that people are doing anyway — dropping off and picking up cars at airports.  It’s not a huge stretch to go from there to peer-to-peer renting, especially if the whole experience is really seamless.  There is something about that arrangement that helps overcome the awkwardness that is a factor in lots of peer-to-peer businesses.  Maybe airports is the perfect beachhead for entering the peer-to-peer car sharing business (or maybe not; we’ll see…).

My experience with FlightCar was pretty good.  The online booking was really easy, just like renting a normal car, but with the added bonus of getting to pick out the exact car you’ll be driving (I chose a 1999 Audi A4 with a stick-shift — not a car you’re often likely to rent; my second choice was a mazda miata).

A FlightCar valet met me at the baggage claim (after a bit of wrangling since I was 2 hours early and we were waiting in the wrong place) - I dropped the valet and signed the paperwork, and then Brad, Albert and I set out on our way.

I gotta say, I actually liked it a lot — just like you feel more like a local when you stay in an Airbnb apartment, there is something different about driving a “real” car when you’re traveling.  In this case, it’s a car I’ve always liked, and I don’t get a chance to drive stick that often, so it was definitely more fun than my typical rental.

FlightCar is still working out the kinks in the service, there are a few rough edges in the pick up / drop off experience that they’ re still working out, in this case the car wasn’t washed and was out of gas when I picked it up.  The former will continue to improve I’m sure, and the latter was likely a function of my showing up early.

I feel like with all of these peer-to-peer services, there’s an initial hump you need to get over before you can participate at all.  Something to get you past the “whoa that’s kind of weird” moment that many people have as their first reaction.  Like Airbnb did with their “crash the inauguration” website around the 2009 inauguration.

In this case, I thought FlightCar did a good job of doing that for me.

#products-services#tech-design-internet

WebFWD: Accelerating a Better Internet

I’ve always loved Mozilla's mission and tactics - using awesome consumer products as the lever to make the web a better place to be. That’s why I’m happy to join their WebFWD accelerator program as a scout.  That just means that I’m one of many folks who are on the lookout for products and companies that would be a good fit for the WebFWD program. WebFWD is a slightly different kind of accelerator — it’s not a full-court-press in-person bootcamp, and it doesn’t take an equity stake for participation.  The idea is to give promising projects that advance the mozilla mission that extra boost they need to become real (or even more real). WebFWD recently graduated its second class, and has just welcomed its third.  You can see the whole list of projects and companies in the WebFWD family here. Here’s to the continued development of products and businesses that promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web.

#products-services#tech-design-internet

Superheroes in the Snowpocalypse

Yesterday Uber made me feel like a superhero.

It was about 10 degrees in Boston, and I was on the T on my way into Cambridge.  And as we pulled in to Kenmore station the conductor notified us that all Green Line trains would be going out of service.  So my train — and every train before us and after us — dumped all of its passengers out into the freezing cold to find another way to get wherever they were going.

There were a few shuttle buses, but they barely made a dent in moving the crowd.  Every single taxi was full.  After a few minutes, there were easily over a thousand people huddling outside in the freezing cold trying to figure out what to do.

I reached into my pocked and tried Hailo, but all taxis in the area were booked.  Uber gave the same response — but on my second try I was able to snag an Uber car.  So: five minutes later, I got a phone call and a black Lincoln pulled up next to me. I offered to share it w/ the group of people directly next to me, but no one was going my way.  So I hopped in and was whisked away from an overcrowded frozen nightmare in a warm, comfortable car.

Totally made me feel like a superhero.   

But not necessarily in a “save the world” way — more of a “wow I have a superpower” way.

When I got to the Media Lab and told the story to Nate his (correct) reaction was: “well, a black car swooping in to rescue a white man is kind of the definition of privilege.  Wouldn’t it be more amazing if there were a way for everyone to take advantage of the network of transportation options swirling around?”  

Of course this is correct — while I was able to snag a ride out of the ether, there was still a huge market mismatch: thousands of people standing around looking for transportation, and hundreds of cars driving by with empty seats.  Yet no way to connect them.

Ride sharing is not a new idea — there is no shortage of startups working on the idea — SideCar & Lyft for car rides, Weeelz for taxi rides, etc. — but it is something that is culturally and technically difficult to implement.  Lyft got its start (I think) on college campuses, where sharing rides to events is a much more natural phenomenon.   

In times of crisis we are more likely to stray from our normal behavior and try new things.  NYC famously mandated taxi sharing for all trips into Manhattan during the 2003 blackout and again after Superstorm Sandy.  Nate and I got to discussing if there wasn’t an opportunity to use yesterday’s class of crisis — a medium-sized but somewhat predictable one — as another “thin edge of the wedge" to make ride-sharing more of a mainstream networked activity.

For instance, I’d gladly sign up to be part of the “boston transportation crisis network” — as a driver or a passenger, and basically pre-volunteer to give rides to people when this kind of thing happens again.  I would like to know the number of times per year when the green line breaks down at Kenmore on very cold days — I bet it’s a lot.  So there would be a decent chance of predicting it and then giving folks in the network a little bit of advanced warning.

If you think about it, weird anomaly events are perfect for launching new, behavior-changing activities.  It was during the inauguration of 2009 that Airbnb got its start — by giving people a chance to “crash the inauguration" by participating in peer-to-peer apartment renting.  At the time, it was *way* outside the mainstream to do something like that.  But the craziness of the event made it fine, and now it’s a regular thing to do all over the world and Airbnb is a billion dollar business.

My other favorite behavior-changing anomaly is snow.  My favorite place in the world is NYC in a snowstorm.  Everything changes.  Instead of walking on the sidewalk and keeping to yourself, you walk in the middle of the street and talk to your neighbors as well as strangers.  During the Washington DC Snowpocalype of 2010, there was a lot of peer-to-peer shoveling happening.

I wasn’t in NYC after Sandy, but I have to assume that there were similar kinds of networked behavior that were positive but would have been hard to imagine under normal circumstances.

Maybe the idea is that people become more open to networked / peer-to-peer solutions when our infrastructure fails us — because they have to be.

If you think about it that way — it’s a pretty profound idea.  Not to be pessimistic, but in our current environment, many of our institutions are failing.  And we will have to become comfortable with other ways of solving our big problems.  Health, education, energy, transportation, etc.

So maybe there’s a launch lesson in here for folks building peer network businesses that rely on cultural change that’s difficult to achieve under normal circumstances.  Think about the traditional infrastructure you’re replacing — and think about the moments or events when they are most apt to fail, giving people the most natural incentive to change their behavior in ways they wouldn’t otherwise.   

And give people a chance to become superheroes.

#products-services#strategery#tech-design-internet

My Public Folders on Google Reader

image

I love Google Reader. I’ve used it for a long long time now to keep tabs on things.  I suppose it’s an old school method at this point, but I think it’s just great. The screengrab above is one of my home screens on my galaxy s3.  I have moved to a widgets-only mobile desktop, which has become one of my favorite things about the switch from iPhone to Android. Perhaps my favorite part is the way you can “set it and forget it”. When I come across an interesting blog, I save it to one of my reader folder, and then at some point later I get the happy surprise of finding a post from that blog in my feed. Just the other day I figured out how to make reader feeds public.  So here are the ones that I use the most:

  • Geek Crush - I’ve been adding to this list for years, and it now has ~100 smart tech folk in it: hackers, thinkers, founders, VCs, etc.

  • Net Policy - started earlier this year and now following ~50 people and orgs in the tech policy space.  Pretty great source of news and commentary if you’re into that sort of thing.

  • Peer Economy - this one is brand new and far from complete, but I’m working on it. 15 or so blogs following the peer economy space.  What’s that, you ask?  Here’s a hackpad overview and a list of companies - both very early.  

Enjoy!

#personal#products-services

Making the Switch to Android

A few things happened recently, which are causing an unexpected and totally interesting change in my digital life. 1) On the last day of our vacation, Theo dropped our iPad on a brick patio, smashing it to bits. 2) I realized that I could save over $100/mo by consolidating my wireless accounts, and moving our phones from AT&T to Verizon. So, I did two things, that are separate but related. Instead of buying another $500 iPad, I got a $199 Nexus 7. And, in the process of switching to Verizon, I traded in my iPhone 4 for an Android-powered Galaxy S III. I've been an Apple user for a long long time -- my first computer was an Apple IIe; Apple was standard fare throughout high school and college, (with the exception of a few years) my entire professional career has been Apple-based, and I've been an iPhone and iPad user.  Despite all of this, I don't consider myself an "apple fan boy". I am absolutely devoted to Apple desktop and laptop products -- my daily computer is an 11" Macbook Air and I can't imagine that changing anytime soon -- the size, fit, finish, and smoothness of the OS are unmatched IMO.  And Mac OS is still a reasonably open platform (compared to iOS). But I've been itching to get off of iOS, and I'm super excited to have Android in my life now.  While I appreciate that same fit & finish in iOS, I have been feeling suffocated by Apple's ultra-tight control over the platform.  Even just using both Android devices for half a day (I got them both yesterday), I feel liberated.  Specifically: I love the way each Android build can be customized.  I know this creates some problems. But the fact that my Nexus 7 (meant for reading) and my Galaxy S III (a phone) present a different experience on top of the same OS is very cool.  While there's no question that the variety in core paradigms (where the buttons are, what they do, how you swipe to log in, etc.) is confusing as a whole (especially to newer or less savvy users), it just makes me happy to be part of a platform where it's possible to experiment and try new things. I like how configurable the Android desktop is.  I'm a geek and like configuring things, so am in the minority globally, but already I feel like my phone fits my life much better than it did before (mainly due to the customizable widgets). Sharing.  Man.  Sharing on iOS has been such a bummer -- not being able to, say, share to Tumblr from a web page.  I love the extensible, built-in sharing tools on Android. Defaults.  Similarly -- now Chrome is my default browser.  Android lets me choose.  Maybe I'll want to use a different browser at some point in the future; who knows; but I'll get to decide. Over all, I'd say Android feels more like a mobile version of MacOS, than a knock-off of iOS.  And I like it that way.

#android#ios#products-services

Why Sliderocket Could Be So Awesome, and Why It Isn't

I wrote the other day about wanting a better way to share slide presentations.  I think there is a huge opportunity here, and I don't think anyone has nailed it yet. I consider this to be an open letter to Sliderocket, which is so close to capturing this opportunity but has (in my humble opinion) made a few key mistakes that will prevent it from succeeding. First, the opportunity: every day, all around the world, people give presentations (keynote powerpoint, etc), in meetings, at conferences, and lots of other gatherings.  There are a LOT of ideas communicated this way on a daily basis.  So many.  The sum total of the knowledge included in the world's daily powerpoint output is really really big (regardless of your beliefs on power corrupting and powerpoint corrupting absolutely). This output is typically received in a few ways:

  • by the people in the room, who get it in real time

  • by others, via some sort of sharing, like when:

    • the slides themselves are posted to a site like Slideshare,

    • a video of the talk is posted online (for instance, here are all the great talks from this year's Personal Democracy Forum).

This is a decent start, but it's way limiting.  It's probably a safe guess that something like 10% of all presentations given on a daily basis are archived in a useful online format.  And the online formats available now aren't actually all that useful. BUT - given where we are now with technology and the social web, there's an opportunity to fill this gap.   My ideal tool would look like this: 1) Awesome, in-browser editing.  In-browser editing is critical - when you're creating your content in-situ (see Fred's good post on this idea here), you can then share, edit, re-share, embed, etc., straight from there.  The editing experience should feel great, just like Keynote does, and should ideally be implemented in HTML5, giving it a native in-browser feel (just like the beautiful Moqups). 2) Super easy audio recording.  If I'm making a deck for a talk I'm giving somewhere, I'll gladly spend the extra time to do a run-through of audio recording for the online version (as I did with my talk at last week's awesome summit). 3) A handful (don't need a ton) of addons that are native to the web -- analytics, interactivity, embedding, etc. 4) Social - so you can get feedback, collaborate, connect with others, etc. 5) Interoperable - exports to keynote, powerpoint, pdf, youtube, etc. But what about Slideshare?, you might ask.  Slideshare was the pioneer in the get-your-powerpoints-online space, but their approach is not web-native or in-situ.  They have lots and lots of content, but it's basically crippled without voiceovers (and to a lesser extent, interactivity).  They took a stab at it with slidecasts, but it was pretty half-hearted, and it's just plain cumbersome to do (record your own timed MP3 and upload). What about Prezi? Prezi is nice and can create some really beautiful things.  I loved Sascha Meinrath's prezi from PdF.  Prezi could be great -- downsides I see are that it's a radical paradigm shift with a steep learning curve (not that big a deal), and it still doesn't support audio as far as I can tell (correct me if I'm wrong).  But we're getting warmer. What about Sliderocket?   There is a reason why I'm calling out Sliderocket in the title of this post.  It's because they are SO CLOSE, yet SO FAR AWAY.  The vision for the Sliderocket product is wonderful, hitting most of what I outlined above, but the execution sorely misses the mark.  Twice now, I've put real effort into switching from Keynote to Sliderocket -- against my own reservations about some of the issues I'll list out below -- and each time I gave up, before switching back again because it's exactly what I want.  But in the end, after saying all of the below privately to their customer support team, I just got too frustrated and gave up. First, the good:

  • Online editor that decently approximates the keynote/powerpoint experience (with a few key downsides which I'll get to in a sec)

  • All kinds of interactivity built in -- surveys, popups, comments, etc.

  • Collaboration: both on the editing side (for teams) and the public side (comments etc)

  • Live embeds with analytics -- see who's watching, how long they're looking at each slide, etc.  Awesome and amazing.

  • Easy sound recording.

So, you might say: wait a minute, they've done absolutely everything you've asked for!  And you're right, they have.  It's so awesome.  Yes.  Except: at every single turn, and whenever they have an opportunity, they make choose to make your life harder, not easier, and they make you hate the service, not love it. For example:

  • Crappy flash UI -- they've built out tons of features, but all using a really clunky flash UI that feels neither like the browser nor like the desktop.  It's worse than the web, AND it's worse than the desktop.  It just doesn't feel good to use -- it's just a little to slow, just a little too unresponsive.   And things tend to break (like this).If that were the extent of it, I could handle it -- and I'd be a sliderocket convert, despite having to get used to a UI that's not as great as it could be.  The real kicker, though, is that sliderocket focuses all their attention on a) locking you in and b) goosing you up to their pro plan.   And they do it in the most frustrating and manipulative way.  For example:

  • Every features seems like a feature, until you try to use it.  Then you get an in-your-face upgrade pitch:

Like accessing analytics: Or even exporting: Really? I can't export to any format without a pro account?  The first time I saw this, it was a total dealbreaker.  Then, I ultimately came back, because I wanted in-situ, interactive, collaborative, social, in-brower slides.  Even the idea that my slides would forever be locked inside the sliderocket platform unless I upgraded didn't permanently dissuade me (the first time) -- the potential for what's here is just so great. And, even if you agree with strategy of pushing all users into the pro account as quickly as possible (I don't), the way to do it is NOT to piss them off at every turn when they're trying to get something done.  The way to do it is to make them love your product as it is, and then really really want that shiny thing that would make it SO MUCH BETTER but that you're not crippled without. So, if I were in the drivers seat at Sliderocket, I'd see this huge opportunity and I'd fix it as soon as possible.  Because their engagement numbers can't be that good right now -- they can't expect to win over die-hard powerpoint or keynote users with their current lock-in strategy, and they can't expect to win over web geeks with their crappy flash UI (on top of that same lock-in strategy), If I were in charge of Sliderocket, I'd say: We have the opportunity to become the platform for communicating ideas.  Like TED or TEDx, but for online slides.  That means focusing on getting as many people as possible to love our platform as possible, and to build an amazing community of communicators around it.  Specifically, that means:

  • Drop the hard sell for the pro account.  Instead make the free account awesome and fun, and then get creative about other native monetization strategies.  For example, look at what visual.ly is doing.

  • Re-build the UX without all the flash.  See Moqups. Or if you still love flash, be more like myBalsamiq (which uses flash for the editor, but wraps it in a very nice HTML experience)

  • Make portability -- import and export -- a key selling point.  You don't need to lock people in -- they will want to use your native features because they are so awesome (embedding, interactivity, audio, etc.). That will always be first choice.  But they'll need to be able to dump to PDF, PPT, or Keynote at times too.  And a proprietary player isn't enough.

I realize that I'm being preachy here.  It's only because I think that there is such a need and an opportunity here, and you're so close.

#balsamiq#moqups#prezi#products-services#sliderocket

Is _____ for you?

I get way too much spam in my inbox, even just counting things I've signed up for myself.  Most of it I delete, but today's email from CoTweet stood out, and is worth mentioning. A while back I signed up for CoTweet, just to check it out -- nutshell: CoTweet lets you collaboratively monitor and manage multiple Twitter accounts -- but after my initial exploration I didn't go back to it.  There may have been a reason, there may not have been. So, CoTweet, noticing my cold start, sent me an email, as any customer-aware and responsive web service should:

Subject: Is CoTweet for you? Hi Nick, We've noticed that no one has logged in to the @nickgrossman Twitter account through CoTweet lately. CoTweet is not for everyone. It's designed for teams who are managing the front-line of the real-time web for their organizations. .... No other tool allows you to engage customers one-on-one like CoTweet does. ....

They seem to have struck a nice balance between being self-promoting ("No other tool allows..."), while being self-aware and honest ("CoTweet is not for everyone").  In particular, I found the ordering of the argument to be effective.  Here was my thought process:

Cotweet: "We've noticed that no one has logged in..." Me: "Yeah, yeah, I'm busy" (reaches to delete) CoTweet: "CoTweet is not for everyone" Me: "Ah nice, they're not trying to just straight up sell me.  I appreciate that" CoTweet: "It's designed for teams who are managing the front-line of the real-time web for their organizations" Me: "Oh wait, that's me"  (clicks sign in link)

So, thinking about my own work, there are two takeaways here:  1) make sure you follow up on cold starts (lord knows we don't do enough of this with some of our projects), and 2) when you do, phrase it in a way that's disarming, honest, and helpful. (looking forward to the email I get after I don't use it for another 3 weeks)

#cotweet#personal#products-services#strategery