Chip Griffin: Pardon the Disruption

The Gadgets, Gizmos, and Services I Currently Love

Hey, it's the holidays.  Some of you may be wondering what to get for others ... or what treats to give yourself. So here's an incomplete list of some of the gadgets, gizmos, services, and other things that I am currently finding worthwhile. Some are for fun, others are for business.  All are subject to my own personal preferences, so take them for what they are.

Sonos
This is the device that makes me happiest at home right now.  It ain't cheap, but it lets me stream music throughout my house.  I can listen to subscription tracks from Rhapsody wherever I want, whenever I want.  It's great when my wife and I are talking about a song from the past to be able to instantly call it up and play it.  And the Sonos folks have been working hard to continue to improve their product through free software updates that let you search for songs more easily.  In addition, it integrates with one of my new favorite services, Pandora.

Pandora
Hands down, Pandora has opened my eyes to more music than I ever would have ventured to try before.  Now that I can use it on my Sonos, I find it to be very valuable.  When I had to listen to it on the web using my computer, I was less enthused.  But listening to music on stereo speakers throughout my house sold me.  I have created a variety of stations for the different types of music I enjoy, and it does a pretty good job of delivering some variety to my listening habits.

iPhone
OK, so I admit I was wrong when I first dissed the iPhone.  The Edge network hasn't been unusable, though it is slower than EVDO (but for what I use my phone for I rarely notice).  I figured out how to type on it pretty quickly.  And the navigation features are pretty cool.  It even got me back to using iTunes for my portable music because it is nice to carry just one device, and I was simply fed up with DRM issues surrounding portable subscription music (which I would still prefer if someone can get it done right).

Garmin Nuvi 660
I hadn't used a GPS device until a couple of months ago when I broke down and got the Nuvi 660.  Another gadget that isn't cheap, but it is has already paid for itself, in my mind at least.  Now, anyone who knows me understands that I hate to drive and -- truth be told -- I'm probably not the best behind the wheel.  So when I do venture out on my own I want to get where I'm going fast without getting lost.  This little guy took me through upstate NH, VT, and NY and didn't miss a beat.  In fact, when I decided to make a side trip on the way back from the conference I was attending, it really came in handy.  I was headed to Cooperstown to check out the Baseball Hall of Fame, but a traffic jam that the Nuvi detected threatened to add an hour to my trip and it was already getting late (and the only thing I hate more than driving is driving in the dark).  Without my even having to intervene, it re-routed me around the traffic on some scenic side roads and got me to Cooperstown only about 15 minutes later than I had originally anticipated. 

MXL MicMate
I do a fair amount of audio recording for podcasts (my own and others) and frequently find myself on the road.  I used to record into my Zoom H4 (which I like for truly portable recording) and then transfer to my laptop. But now I can eliminate a step by recording directly to my Mac using the MicMate which connects a professional microphone (I use the Shure SM-58) through the USB port.  It's about the size of a dry erase marker and does its job very nicely.  Very portable and useful.  Fair warning: for some reason it does seem to draw attention from our good friends at TSA.  It must look like something else on the X-ray screen.

Sony Reader
To heck with all those folks who don't like book readers.  I love mine and wouldn't dream of giving it up.  At least not unless I decide to try out the Amazon Kindle.

Slingbox
Now that I use the iPhone I can't watch the Slingbox on my cell phone anymore, but I still can on my computer.  I actually find that I use it a lot at home so that I can watch a game on my laptop while sitting with my wife who is watching some TV show or movie.

Rackspace
Everyone who knows me has heard me rave about Rackspace as a hosting provider.  These guys have been taking care of all of my businesses since 2000.  I started with one small server, and now have more than I can count along with all sorts of bells and whistles (and a team of people on my end that deal with Rackspace, so I rarely have the pleasure myself).  You will notice a theme here as I tell you they aren't the cheapest solution, but they are worth it.  Yes, the servers and uptime are fantastic, but the service is what keeps me coming back over and over again.  Like any service provider, we encounter bumps in the road (in fact, we just had a rocky couple of weeks trying to get an upgrade done) but ultimately Rackspace comes through every time -- often in entertaining ways.  When the head of my tech team once told a "Racker" (as they call themselves) that he figured if he asked for a ham sandwich that they would come through, he got a ham sandwich delivered to him the next day (along with enough for his co-workers).  Just recently, he was frustrated at the speed of a response from one of their technicians, so he asked the account manager to "stand on his desk until he gets you the info."  Lo and behold, he was greeted with an emailed photo of the account manager standing on that individual's desk. 

ServerBeach
OK, I admit it.  I cheat on Rackspace once in a while.  Very rarely, actually, but sometimes when I want to play with something for personal use or something more R&D oriented that is far from mission critical, I use ServerBeach.  These guys are great at setting up quick, cheap servers.  I have no experience using them for higher-end stuff, but at the low end they do exactly what they promise for relatively cheap prices.  (And for non-mission-critical stuff I find the cost savings over Rackspace to be worth it, though many of these projects "graduate" to Rackspace if they succeed.) I rationalize this disloyalty to Rackspace by the fact that ServerBeach itself was started by Richard Yoo, a co-founder of Rackspace.

TypePad
It's where I host most of my blogs, and I have even used it to launch a new company.  Now I plan to explore MovableType because I have been so pleased with TypePad but am starting to hit the limits of what I can do with their hosted solution.  It isn't perfect, but I recommend TypePad over Wordpress to most business professionals who aren't inclined to do heavy-duty tinkering.

Skype
I didn't used to be a big fan of Skype.  I found it to be of spotty quality, but I went back to it recently and have found it to be a tremendous resource for recording phone interviews for publishing online.  I use SkypeOut and have had no significant quality issues.  I still don't use Skype as heavily as some of my colleagues, but it is useful to me in the way I employ it.

GrandCentral
In the past, I have chased after the promise of a single phone number to reach me anywhere.  I tried some services a few years ago that worked a little, but most of them required sequential attempts at different numbers and weren't very transparent to the caller.  Finally, GrandCentral packaged everything up nicely so there is one phone number to reach me anywhere, anytime.  Since I have about 8 different phone numbers and it is virtually impossible for anyone (myslef included) to predict where I will be easiest to reach at any given time, this single number capability is a great communications tool for me.  Can't imagine ever going without it, which is why I am glad Google bought this company up, something that guarantee its stability.

LuckyOliver
I love including photos and artwork with blog posts and articles I publish online, but most existing services are too hard to understand the licensing arrangements -- or the licenses themselves are too expensive -- or the photos are of poor quality.  Then one of the guys who works for me told me about LuckyOliver.  I'm glad he did.  It typically costs about $1 per photo to be able to add it to a blog or online article.  It's a great deal to add some sex appeal to the text.

Google Reader
It's free so you can't give it away, but this service is now my longest-running RSS reader that I have used. Typically I change all the time, but ever since Google Gears allowed me to read my feeds offline when I'm on an airplane, I have ditched everything else and rely exclusively on Google Reader -- and I have no desire to change anymore.

Gmail
I don't read my email online with Gmail, but I do forward much of my mail here because it has an awesome spam filter.  I still download into a desktop program to read it because I still am not crazy about the Gmail interface, but I couldn't live without its powerful -- and accurate -- spam filtering.

Zoom H4
I already mentioned this this earlier in this post, but I do like the Zoom H4 for portable recording of interviews.  It accepts professional XLR inputs so I can use my Shure SM-58 microphone with it and does a nice job of recording.  It looks a bit like a taser, but thus far TSA seems more interested in my MicMate when I pass through security...

Verizon Wireless EVDO Card
When I'm on the road (which is often), not having to worry about finding wireless networks at airports, hotels, conferences, and the like is a great relief.  My EVDO card gets me a solid Internet connection from almost anywhere, and I don't get nickle-and-dimed by every new location I visit.

MacBook Pro
Yup, I'm a convert.  I went away from Macs for some 16 years, but recently returned to the fold.  In the past few weeks, I have even weened myself off of Parallels, which I had been using to run many Windows apps as I eased into the transition.  Now I'm all Mac baby (though I keep Parallels installed for when I find something I just can't get to work otherwise).  Now, if only I could find a Mac blog editor as good as Windows Live Writer, I'd be a truly happy camper.

Belkin Retractable Cable Travel Pack
Did I mention I travel a lot?  And that I carry a ton of gadgets with me?  I used to have a horrendous tangle of cables I would carry until I found this handy tool at Staples one day.  It's a nice, compact, complete set of cables that gives me almost everything I need when I'm on the road.  It would be nice to have a firewire cable for my video cameras, but I can live without it because this kit offers everything else I need.  I'm completely lost without it.  In fact, on a recent trip to Manhattan I went out and bought another because I thought I had lost it and couldn't connect one of my devices to my laptop.  When I got home, I realized it was just so small that it had fallen to the bottom of one of my briefcase pockets and I just didn't see it.

Sony Camcorders
Yes, this is vague, but I have several and have had good experiences with all of them.  I have a prosumer version that I use for high-end interviews and it does a great job.  It has an external mic and XLR jacks, as well as the ability to record to tape or hard disk.  Very expensive, but worthwhile for business use.  At the same time, I have an older, cheaper, lower-end consumer version that doesn't do HD or record to hard disk, but it is much more portable and affordable.

Canon Cameras
My favorite is the EOS 3D.  It is a high-end digital SLR and for much of what I do it is overkill.  But it handles action photography much better than its cheaper siblings (like the Digital Rebel).  And with young children, waiting for a second or two between shots can be the difference between getting a great photo and getting nothing.  I'm not nearly the photo expert that many of my new media colleagues are (like Josh Hallett and David Parmet), so maybe their love of Nikons should steer you in that direction instead.  But I'm a happy Canon man and have been for years.  I even have a little Canon digital that I keep in my briefcase at all times for quick conference photos and other similar uses.

I'm sure I may think of other things later, but what are your favorite gadgets, gizmos, toys, and tools?  What should I ask for this holiday season?  What should I give to others?

Disruptive Dialogue: Jeff Taylor on How to Use LinkedIn Effectively

Most of us have signed up for LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network, and many of us use it occasionally, but we haven't really figured out how to get the most of it.  So I asked a longtime friend and former colleague, Jeff Taylor, to share his advice.  Jeff, a Senior Vice President at Fleishman-Hillard Government Relations in Washington, DC, has had more success with the service than anyone else I know.

(Listen to the 11 minute interview.)

“In the early going I had no luck whatsoever,” Jeff Taylor told me of his experience with LinkedIn, likening it to his golf awakening.  “For many years I didn’t play golf very well, then one day I hit the ball straight and I hit it 280 yards.”

And one day he received a lead from his LinkedIn connections that ended up netting his employer at the time, a law firm, a $500,000 account.  He quickly became a believer.

Whereas many of us use LinkedIn rather passively, Jeff has jumped in with both feet.  He says he currently has more than 4200 connections.  He advises people looking to get the most of the service to use things like LinkedIn Answers to build better relationships with your network.  By answering other people’s questions, you show expertise and generosity.  By posing questions, you can gather valuable intelligence.

Early on, Jeff found that he needed to spend a lot of time cultivating connections, but now he is in maintenance mode and gets an estimated 20-30 connection requests each day.

Jeff notes that there are two schools of thought on how to build your network.  Some (like me) choose to connect only with people who they actually know.  Others (like Jeff) are much less discriminating in an effort to build a larger network for potential business use.

In addition to the passive results he gets, Jeff also uses LinkedIn proactively to find contacts at companies he is trying to pitch. He has even been able to rekindle old friendships in the process.

(Listen to the 11 minute interview.)

The Real Problem with Information Isn’t Overload or Underload

Paul Kedrosky raised an interesting question at the Defrag Conference in Denver yesterday.  He led a panel discussion that kept circling back to the notion of information overload, but Paul suggested that the 200+ people in the room likely represent edge cases who frequently overwhelmed by the amount of information that they have to process, whereas most people may well suffer from information underload.

Much of the discussion centered on what tools to use to better cope with information overload.  Chris Shipley, executive producer of the popular DEMO conference, said she copes by simply ignoring the flood of email and other information when she doesn’t have time to deal with it.

This all got me thinking a bit about this topic in a way that I probably hadn’t before.  Here’s where my thought process arrived:

You Never Miss Information You Need to Know

That’s absurd you say. I say it isn’t.  If you actually have a real “need to know,” then you will get the information. Think about it: the only time you are upset about “missing” some piece of data is after you learn that the information existed. Somehow that information will eventually make its way to you.

The Real Challenge is Getting Information at the Right Time

This is the aha! moment for me.  Figuring out how to get the right information at the right time is really the challenge we are facing here.  Knowing that Tom Brady won’t be able to play next weekend is something that will help your fantasy team if you find out now.  If you learn it next Monday, it’s too late to act effectively on that knowledge.  Similarly, if somehow you had gained that knowledge a year ago, it would be extraneous data for many months before it could actually be acted upon.

Ideally, you want to focus and limit your information intake to deliver each tidbit or bombshell at just the right time so you are not forced to harbor surplus facts for long periods of time or end up finding out what you need to know only when it is too late.

Focusing the Funnel is Hard

Salespeople talk all the time about “feeding the funnel” – meaning getting sales leads in place to help close more sales.  As the sales process moves forward, more and more leads fall off the board, hence the funnel shape of the activity.

It’s the same thing that happens with information.  You start out with the understanding that there are millions of words written or spoken every day.  That information can be classified in several different ways:

Of course the vast majority of information generated each day falls into that final category of data that will never be of use to you.  Ideally, you want to get the first category ASAP and find a way to make sure that the “future useful” information gets filed properly to be brought back for you to see when it is actually ripe for acting upon.

So What Can You Do About It?

So what’s the problem here?  Is it a tools problem that we need to address through greater innovation?  Is it a behavioral problem that we need to address through our own decision-making?  Or should we all just use the Chris Shipley “duck and cover” approach?

Like most problems, the answer isn’t black and white and really involves a bit of each to be solved.  Here’s my quick take on it:

• It’s Not a Tools Problem.  There are tremendous tools already available to help you process and distill information.  Everything from email programs to fancy web applications can help you move through large volumes of information more rapidly than we were ever able to in the past.
• We Think We Need to Know More than We Do, So Spend Time Thinking About What You Actually Need. Paul Kedrosky talked about how we all don’t know a bunch of important pieces of data.  He polled the audience at Defrag to find out who knew the current U.S.-Canada exchange rate, how many people are being evacuated due to potential dam failure in China, and what the price of oil was yesterday and what caused it to spike.  But most of us don’t really need to know those things.
• Find Good Information Curators. Chris Brogan has talked a lot about this concept and he’s absolutely right.  There are plenty of really smart people aggregating interesting information, especially from the online world.  Some of these are pay services, but many are free.  If you’re an executive, you may well have staff that does a lot of reading. Don’t reinvent the wheel here.  Let your staff, friends, or smart strangers curate your information for you.
• Go On an Information Diet. Try the Chris Shipley approach for a few days or even a week.  Ignore most of what’s in your email inbox.  Toss out every piece of mail except bills or anything else that is obviously critical.  Stop reading blogs and web sites.   Chances are that when you do, you will find you are missing far less than you thought.  After you have gone through this “information detox” figure out what you were really missing and slowly add it back to your diet. 
• Schedule Routine Information Check-Ups. At least twice a year, you should review your information needs.  Combine an information diet with an assessment of what information you feel you might be lacking.  Going through this exercise every six months will help you avoid continuing to gather information simply because you always have. 
• Track What Works for You. To make these semi-annual checkups more effective, it would be good to have hard data.  Keep a notebook or a computer file where you note big achievements that you reached because of information you had or challenges you had to endure because you didn’t.  Flag emails or blog posts using whatever software to use to note any indispensable pieces of information you got that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.  At your six month checkup, figure out the sources of information that contribute most frequently and make sure that you stay on top of those in a timely fashion.  Conversely, if you find you are reading or doing something that never leads anywhere, STOP!

So, does this provoke any ideas on your part?  I hope so.  If so, please share them with me.  This is an interesting problem to define and solve.

Privacy Nuts Hurt Us All

Privacy matters.  We all should be able to keep things private when done in the privacy of our own homes.  But when you go out on the public Internet, no absolute right to privacy exists.  Nor should it.  Tracking your clickstream, using cookies to measure visitor behavior and perhaps target ads, building databases of activity, intentions, recommendations, or anything else should all be considered kosher behavior.

Those who would advocate a Do Not Track list, rights to access all data in a vendor's possession, severe restrictions on the use of clickstream data, or other "protections" in the name of "privacy" do more harm than good. 

Why shouldn't we want better targeted ads?  Is it not better to see an ad for something we might be interested in than something random?

Why shouldn't we want better targeted pitches from vendors?  Why wouldn't you want to know about a good deal on a book, movie, or other product you might actually want to purchase?

Why shouldn't a web site owner improve the product based on click behavior?  Isn't it a great idea for web sites to be more effective?

Frankly, I'm getting tired about the mantra that "I own my data and I want to control it."  Baloney. If you created it and gave it willingly to some third party, they have a right to do what they will with it, unless they promise you otherwise. If you don't like it, don't give them content either explicitly or by surfing to their site.

Do consumers matter?  You bet.  Should vendors care about what consumers want?  You bet.  Will vendors that listen to their customers do better -- all other things being equal -- than those who don't?  Probably.  But there's a difference between companies voluntarily -- and I mean truly of their own volition -- doing things and forcing them to do so through legislative, regulatory, or quasi-regulatory means.

Doc Searls spoke this afternoon at the Defrag conference and took companies to task for a number of things, including why the same consumer review can't be used for Amazon, NetFlix, and other sites.  The answer?  You can, but what's the incentive to the vendors to make it easy?  A key part of the secret sauce at Amazon and NetFlix are their recommendation engines.  We must not forget that these companies need to operate on a for-profit basis, not merely for the benefit of consumers.  If you don't like it, do as Esther Dyson suggested at Defrag: go to one of their competitors, get them to adopt what you want, and make it so successful that the big boys need to take it on to maintain a competitive edge.

What about health care data?  Doc argued that we should own our health care data and providers should have to make it easy for us to make it portable and controllable by us.  Is it mostly a good idea, yes.  As someone with a treatable medical condition, I would love to have the data more easily available to the various physicians I have seen over the years. But am I under any delusion that I own that data?  No way.  The doctors themselves created the data.  Yes, it is about me, but I didn't create it.  If I did, I could very easily have copied it before handing it over.  That's my recourse.

Doc Searls asked what it would be like if it was a two way street where consumer and vendor both benefit.  He suggested that since he doesn't like to hear ads when he calls tech support, he could enter into an arrangement where he would pay 50 cents per call to avoid the ad.  And that's a fine idea.  At least it recognizes that there is no absolute right to avoid ads. Of course, in the Q&A session after his talk, he backtracked and said he was just trying to be provocative by saying it.

For the successful future of the Internet, we must learn to tame our privacy hangups.  We all have them.  Ultimately, the more that vendors, publishers, advertisers, and others know, the better the experience can be for all of us. 

Don't Overcomplicate Things

I love innovation.  I love playing with new services and gadgets.  But the only ones I stick with tend to be the ones that are actually useful. Unfortunately, in listening to entrepreneurs at the Defrag conference (and through repeated observation elsewhere), I am startled by how many companies and products seem to be solutions in search of a problem.

In fact, one of the speakers stumbled upon this point, perhaps without realizing it, when he talked about how his company uses email lists very effectively for collaboration among employees, fostering discussion, debate, and sometimes consensus. Yet there are countless vendors here and elsewhere peddling all sorts of feature-laden collaboration tools.  Wikis, social networks, and more are all creeping into the entreprise with the promise of being more effective than "traditional" communications tools.

But I really wonder whether or not email might not be a better solution in most cases.  Getting users to adopt RSS or forcing them to visit an intranet site doesn't seem like a viable concept for most companies.  I have no doubt that there is a place for this sort of technology, but I think that some of the efforts that my fellow tech enthusiasts are making could prove to be counterproductive.  Slower, more managed growth of these tools in ways in which they are actually useful will have greater long-term benefits to the enterprise and to the entrepreneurs, at a slight short-term expense to startups looking to grow quickly to impress investors.

Exponential growth in advance of a flameout should never be considered more valuable than steady, sustainable growth.  Let's not overcomplicate things in search of that short-term buzz; think of the benefits to the user.  Somtimes the old way may still be the best way.

A Use I Never Thought of Before

Listening to fellow entrepreneurs speak at the Defrag conference in Denver today, I realized that a lot of my brethren were uttering a phrase I often find escaping my own lips.  "My customers are using my product in ways I never thought of before."

It struck me, not because my pure brilliance is being stolen by others in the world of startups, but because it's an important point to underscore.  Successful products will almost always be used in ways that the original inventor didn't consider.  Innovation has a great track record in this regard.  Consider all of the innovations created for the space program -- from Tang to Teflon -- that have found their way into the hands of consumers for uses beyond what the scientists behind them had likely planned.

But it also should serve as a reminder to all entrepreneurs and innovators that once you release something into the wild, it will follow a path to be determined by the market and customers, not necessarily the one you had intended.  Being a successful startup demands that you prepare for and embrace the flexibility needed to follow the flow.