Number 2!

Word on the street is that iTunes is now number 2 in terms of nationwide music sales.

Best Buy is now in the rear view mirror and only Walmart exists in front of Apple.

Who would have thought?!?!

Happy dance

Over the new year I moved both companies into a new building, officially ending my 13 years of building ownership. I was looking forward to just a tenant for 5 years and not being bothered by issues with the building, etc.

The past week our heat has been either lacking or out of control (should have worn shorts to work yesterday) and this morning I found out that the unit on the roof has died and they need to bring in a whole new one.

Sure is nice that 1) its not my problem and 2) its NOT coming out of my pocket to fix it. ;-)

Cue music....

Can you see it?

I've been spending time working with three startups lately, and in particular spent this afternoon with one of them today working on their business model. These guys built a neat widget, and are working to build a product/business model around it. We made a ton of progress today, but things took an interesting turn when I asked them about the business pitch contest that they're enrolled in later this week.

Like most entrepreneurs head down in their business, they missed it. Sure we have revenue lines, direct and channel sales, etc., but that's not the importance of the pitch for the contest. I asked them what business they are really in, and all I got were blank stares and musings about blah blah blah.

When I expounded on the value of their business to the end user and what their pitch should be made as, it was if a light bulb was turned on inside their heads. The best part - I didn't tell them anything they didn't already know. I just regurgitated their value prop back to them - one that they themselves had already made earlier in the meeting. They were so wrapped up in the strategy that they couldn't see the forest through the trees.

I like these guys. They're tenacious, quick learners and already have some skin in the game. All attributes I like to see.

Will they succeed? That depends on how they execute. But isn't that true about any business? ;-)

What would you rather have? Money or smarts?

I was reading TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog) and there's this article about how Apple has a cool $18 billion in the bank. The kicker was the comment on how Apple spends 3% of their sales on R&D while Microsoft spends 14%.

Given that, do you think that more spending on Microsoft's part will make them as innovative (and cool) as Apple? Or should they spend less?

Money doesn't guarantee innovation, coolness or success. Anyone can spend money and swing blindly at their target and hit it sometimes.

In marketing, R&D or even HR, are you just spending money, or being smart?

So, in answer to the title question, I'll take smarts. After all, its just on loan from God. ;-)

Latency

CNN and others are reporting that the Japanese have launched a satellite that is aimed at providing high speed internet service. While the pundits are abuzz with the idea, I think its lame. I don't care how much technology the Japanese (or anyone else for that matter) will stick in the bird, its gonna suck for internet service. Why? One word.

Latency.

See, a satellite like this has to orbit the Earth in geosynchronous orbit in order to keep above a stationary point on the planet. This orbit is at 22,500 miles and that's the problem. No matter what sort of gizmos you cram into the satellite, there's one thing you can't change.

The speed of light.

For you do to do a simple web search, you type in "www.google.com". The first thing your computer does it go lookup the name you typed into to see what IP address you are actually trying to reach. So, the request for the lookup has to go from your computer, up to the satellite, and down to the Earth station for the DNS query. Then the answer needs to go back up to the satellite and down to your PC. You just blew roughly 1/4 of a second doing that request. But it will take longer than that.

Now your computer has to do the actual request to the IP address of CNN.com to ask for the actual web page. Up and down, and then up and down back to you. Now that you have the html, your browser now will ask for the individual elements of the page, you know - images, imbedded flash, etc. More up and down, more waiting.

So, aside from the numbers, why am I so down on satellite internet access? I used to use it for access at the house. I live pretty far outside of town, and it took a while for us to get DSL service out here so for about 2 years I had satellite service and I gotta say, for typical browsing, dialup is faster. If you want to pull down large files, once you get the data flowing, its not that bad. But overall experience really sucks.

I think this satellite will be a nice backup in case a landline goes down, etc. but for general user access? Its DOA.

Seems that I'm not alone on this. Tom thinks along the same lines.

The gift of reading

Growing up, I was a bookworm. So much so that in middle school they tried to restrict my access to the library and somehow keep me from consuming 3+ books per day. Serious!

While I don't read as much as I used to, I still have quite an appetite for books. As much as I'm a 'get out there and do it' kinda of guy, give me a good book and I'll curl up in a chair and loose myself for hours in the pages of well written prose.

When I'm traveling and finish a book, I try to find someone who will take the book. Else I just leave it on the plane in hopes that the next person in my seat will pick it up and enjoy it. I vividly remember reading Dan Brown's, Da Vinci Code on a flight from Minneapolis to San Francisco. I literally finished it as we touched down and the nice older couple next to me asked how I was enjoying the book. They were quite startled to hear that I had actually read the whole thing on the flight and were even more surprised when I handed over the just purchased hardcover book to them. They gladly accepted the book and on my next flight, someone gave me a book. Its fun how this happens!

Tonight I had the pleasure of using my Google Adwords gift card from DonorsChoose.org to find a teacher's request in my area, and in her case, finish off 100% of the needed funds to give her students the books they need for their class. The gift card didn't cover the whole amount needed, so I put the rest on my credit card.

I hope those kids really have a good time learning with those books. Its not important how those books came into their hands, its important that they have them.

Take some time. Check out DonorsChoose.org. I bet you can find a worthy classroom you can help out.

UPDATE - I got a nice email from the teacher this morning thanking me and she's very excited about getting the new books into her program. ;-)

The best they can do?

This AP video report of the Navy blasting the broken spy satellite has some funny animations in it. They represent the satellite as a giant radio dish circling the earth!

Please. That's the best the AP can come up with??! The Daily Show has better video animations than this.

Oh well, worth nothing in this video is the clip of the actual hit on the satellite which is pretty cool.

Give it back to the Government

Reports are this morning that an Air Force B-2 Spirit bomber has gone down on Guam, but the two pilots (from the 509th bomb wing) had safely ejected from the striken $1.2 billion dollar aircraft.

When pilots eject, they joke that they're "Giving the plane back to the government." And in this case, its an expensive give back.

UPDATE - Looks like the USAF grounded all the B2's until they know the cause of the accident. At $1.2 billion a copy, thats a pretty safe decision.

Got a paperclip?

Fans of McGyver will be excited that CBS has put the entire first season's worth of Mac's exploits online free for the viewing. The ads that run aren't annoying, and IMHO, I think are a pretty decent model for the TV executive problem of, "What can we do with all those old shows?"

CBS also has put up Star Trek (all three seasons), Twilight Zone (two seasons), Hawaii 5-0, and Melrose Place.

Also worth noting is that Mythbusters recently did a McGyver special.

So, sit back, grab some munchies and have a Mac marathon!

What the hell is this?

I have an old (and I mean OLD) email account that gets some Russian spam (actually, it gets ONLY Russian spam) and this morning there was one that just made me laugh.

No, I don't read Russian, but the picture was priceless. I could only think, "What the hell is this spam for??"

Any ideas?

The sky is falling

Tonight the Navy is going to attempt to blast an errant spy satellite from the sky with a missile shot from an Aegis cruiser (CG-70 Lake Erie) stationed in the north Pacific. From the initial reports it looks like they're gonna pull the 40lbs. warhead from the vehicle and just go for a kinetic skin kill, which should be no problem for the Standard missile (a SM-3, block 1B) being used for this intercept. The initial guidance is done via updates from the Aegis's AN/SPY-1B four megawatt phased array radar and the close in final guidance is handled by the SM-3's onboard infrared seeker. The issue that could mess with the intercept is the satellite's thermal signature - its not exactly the type of target that the SM-3 seeker is looking for and even though its not a ballistic missile, its orbital velocity has it moving almost 1/3rd FASTER than the typical inbound target the missile was designed to hit.

The Lake Erie (CG-70) has been the main testbed for the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system and is uniquely capable of the mission that it has been tasked for.

I've been a longtime fan of the Aegis platform and its cool to see the system in action.



The Shuttle Atlantis landed this morning - I'll be those guys are pleased to be on the ground while the Navy goes for the shot. ;-)



Also on tap for tonight is the last full lunar eclipse of the decade (for North America) and its gonna be a really good one. Here's more info on it.

So, get out your lawn chairs, bundle up and enjoy the show! (no, you are NOT going to see anything related to the satellite shoot down, but still....)

Infinite loop

I've got home DSL service through CenturyTel. Its a simple 1.5MB/sec DSL service and I went to their website to see if they offer faster services in my area. I'm close to the local DSLAM so distance won't kill my speed.

Their website has some decent flash animations on it but it has a fatal flaw that put me into an infinite loop no matter how I searched for availability of ANY type of DSL service for my area. The logic on the website says that before I can even see what's available, I need to upgrade my current line to have their voice service on it. Their assumption is that 1) I'm a current customer and 2) that I'm logged into their website as a customer. Once you are in the loop, they have a persistent cookie that will always return a "service not available" no matter what you do on the website.

Being that I own a company in the website creation/design/maintenance business, I'm simply appalled that a website can exist out there with such simple logic problems in its functionality.

I can't imagine its doing much good for their business either.

When is the last time you used your own website like a customer would? How about a new customer? What if the visitor to your website didn't know any of the terminology or industry lingo thats so obvious to you? Have you checked you input fields to see how they handle bad data or malicious attempts to submit SQL queries?

(yes, there's irony in the photo...what is it?)

Hire the best talent

This has been a mantra of mine since I started in business in 1991.

1) hire the best talent

2) give them the best tools

3) get out of their way!

Seth has a great post this morning about HR and thinking more about it as talent management. I agree whole heartedly.

How do you view your employees? Are they lumber or talent?

Missing ingredients

Nothing sucks more than when you're making something in the kitchen and you are missing a key ingredient required for your meal. Sure you can sometimes substitute, but I'm talking about those key things that either make or break the meal.

With the iPhone/Touch - there are a few key missing ingredients that I believe Apple needs to get in order to make those two (and other 'like' platforms) really take off beyond the early adopters.

1) Cut and Paste. The way around it - this is crucial for day to day use. There have been a fair number of suggestions/mock ups, etc. to illustrate ways to do this without a keyboard or stylus. But at the end of the day, this is the one single feature that I crave on the iPhone/Touch. UPDATE - Engadget just posted a review of Apple's recent patent which looks like it will address multi-touch cut and paste, etc.

2) iChat. The common assumption is that we'll see this shortly, but why wasn't it included so far? There's nothing technically keeping it off the platform so one might think that there's an issue with IM being native on the platform such that AT&T would have it in their agreement with Apple to keep it off in order to push SMS traffic (ie. $$$). This doesn't make sense as even though people have IM at their fingertips, SMS still thrives. But this is AT&T we're talking about here.

3) Flash integration. Sure there's a YouTube app (I'm still waiting for someone to hack it to work with any flash video website) but why not flash into the browser?

4) Microphone/Speaker (iPod Touch). hmmmm, iChat, Skype or simply watching videos without headphones on.

5) Better mail synchronization. I'm kinda a broken record on this. ;-)

6) File synchronization. While I want some photos/music/etc. on the platform, it would be nice to easily keep some files synched as well. There's a really cool hack out there to control your Mac from your iPhone/Touch and I think we'll see that app mature with the SDK.

7) interface lock (touch). Not being able to lock it is a pain in the ass. Period.

8) Front facing camera. It would be insanely cool to be able to video iChat on the touch.

9) Better browser support. Safari is pretty decent, but it needs to be better.

10) Quicktime video support for imbedded websites/streaming/downloads.

11) For pure iPod usefulness, not having external volume controls on the Touch hurts.

Of course the direction I'm going with all of this is obvious. There are things that can (and will) be done with the system software, apps and third party apps. But a new hardware platform is also required for some of these items.

And we all know where that's leading...

Why I love the iPod Touch

Fred Wilson posted about a month ago why he doesn't like the iPod Touch.

This is my post as to why I LOVE the iPod Touch.

First of all, I need to say that as an iPod, I hate the Touch. Yes, as an IPOD, I think the Touch really blows for the most part. (I'll post about this part later)

I think they should have called it the MacPad or MacTouch or MacPad Touch. Just anything without the "iPod" in it because its really a handheld Mac, not an iPod. Its no more an iPod than an iPhone is an iPod. Sure it can play music, but thats not what makes it special.

Around the house, I find myself grabbing the Touch and checking the web, weather, etc. instead of going and getting my MacBook Pro. I'll just slide it in my back pocket and have it handy for things like that.

The only thing I wish it had was iChat integration. Not video iChat, but just text iChat. My other family members are all up on it and it would really be nice to access that from the Touch.

If I didn't have the software update, I wouldn't use the Touch hardly at all. But Mail and Maps make it useful. I don't care for weather since the web has better weather with actual weather data. Stocks - ditto on using the web instead. Notes? Yeah, whatever. If you have a Touch, I'd pay the $20 just to get email, maps and be able to customize the home screen and add those handy little web bookmarks to the home screen(s).

Does the 8GB size bother me? No. I already work with iPods that are smaller than my library and I don't listen to my library - I work off of my extensive playlist collections so no problems there.

One thing that surprised me was that I'm watching movies and TV shows on it more than on my MacBook Pro. This might be a result of an unconscious effort to integrate it into my life more, but time will tell if this is true.

One thing is certain - as soon as there's a 3G iPhone ... I'm jumping back in on that platform. The SDK has me all jazzed up as well in anticipation.

I've said it before and I'm even more strongly behind it than ever that these handhelds (and the soon to be released one(s) ) are the most exciting platform change coming for computers/entertainment.

Just stop thinking about them as iPods! ;-)

Two issues, not one

"What do you think about Border security? You know - what do you think of kicking out the illegal aliens?" She asked when she walked in the door from her 6am morning spin class.

"Wait a second, those are two different issues!" I replied.

"No they're not." She retorted.

See, this is the problem. They ARE two different issues. Lets go back shall we...

Back in 9/11/01, the world changed for us Americans. Suddenly border security was a real, in-your-face issue and we needed to do something about it.

However, then the politicians started twisting the issue because of 1) money from companies who rely on immigrants and 2) votes from illegals. As a result, they turned this into an illegal immigrant issue and not a border security issue and its been all uphill from there. Doh!

Anyway, I strongly feel we need border security. We needed it years ago. Period.

As for what to do with the illegals? Right now I honestly don't care. It's already illegal to do what they're doing, so what else can be done besides putting money and resources behind enforcement? Sure you can make it an issue, but its really not. We've got bigger fish to fry before we deal with that.

As for the radio ad that spurred the conversation - that was an ad for McCain. Why is he even running that ad when he's already got the nomination locked up? Its purely to try to recapture the base by putting him into a position that the conservative voters like. Only one problem with that - Conservatives mostly hate him. He can flip flop all he wants and its still not going to change (our) opinion of him.

Heads up!

When the storm started, it was freezing rain that turned to snow after a few hours. As a result, we've got a heck of a covering of ice on everything and as you can see, the icicles are dangling. I almost killed myself on the walkway when I came in from snowkiting and I was still in my ski boots. ;-)

Prelude

Simply a beautiful day. No way around it. Sure we could have used more wind for snowkiting, but I can't complain.

Tomorrow the forecasters are calling for 6-12 inches of snow, blizzard conditions and even some snow thunder.

New EVDO card

Finally got around to getting a replacement EVDO card for my laptop. I opted for the USB card from Novatel (Sprint) for a few reasons.

1) Its USB so I can share it with MacBook's in the office that don't have express card slots. This is super handy at trade shows since my MacBook Pro is the only laptop we travel with that has that kind of slot.

2) Being USB, I can use a short extended cable to mount the actual card on the back of my display which is way better than having it sticking out of the side of a laptop for obvious reasons.

3) They actually have Mac software for this card! The previous card needed to be set up on a Windows based machine before I could use it on my Mac. Not so with this one. Sweet!

4) The Novatel card has built in GPS! Way cool. This card also has a mini SD reader which is kinda cool. I don't use mini SD cards (yet), but its nice that it has multi functions.

Its nice to have an EVDO card again. I just got back from a quick trip and it was super annoying to have to go hunt down WIFI - and it pained me to actually PAY for WIFI at the hotel I was at for two nights.

UPDATE - A few readers asked, and yes, I took the insurance option this time. Doh! ;-)

Deep freeze

Last Sunday when we were out snowkiting, I was shooting video with my beloved Sanyo Xacti and within a few minutes of being out of doors I began to notice the effects of the -10 degree temps on the equipment.

First, the LCD display started to ghost. I expected this as I also see sluggish response rates from the display on my Treo in the morning when its been sitting in the truck overnight. But this was severe ghosting almost to the point where the display was useless. Responding almost 2-3 seconds slower, it was impossible to use it for aiming the camera within 5 minutes.

The second, and most crippling effect was on the batteries. The cold reduced the power ability of the batteries from about an hour to roughly 10 minutes. I had to put the batteries deep in my coat against my skin to get them back to producing power, put them in the camera, shoot some video and then repeat the process. Luckily I brought out two batteries so I could do this little round robin and get some decent video.

Of course the video was fine since it was recording straight to SD card - another reason why I'm moving away from tapes. There's no way a tape based machine would have worked. There's a reason Porta Brace makes cold weather housings with heaters!

The last effect was on me. I kept having to take off at least one glove to do the battery swap and in no time my hand was in the first stages of frostbite. Note to self - wear a tight fitting glove on my right hand next time under my bulky glove/mitt that will give me some protection but still enable dexterity. ;-)

Can't touch this

I recently got an iPod Touch - not that I needed another iPod, I wanted to mess around with it as a platform sans the cellular network connection that the iPhone has. With the forthcoming SDK (hold the jokes) from Apple, there's a lot of promise with these handheld computers, but you already knew I think that.

I had blogged about Navizon's locator back when I had my iPhone, and I was impressed with how well it worked. The first thing I did with the Touch when I got it was check out Google Maps ability to locate. Since its only a Touch, all it can work with is 802.11 networks and I have to admit I wasn't thinking it would do very well...

It freakin' nailed it. (see pic) I was actually amazed. Heck, I think I even smiled. ;-)

(that sure sucks for Navizon. Oh well.)

The more I play with it, the more I miss my iPhone. Yeah, I'll admit it. I miss it. Such a elegant device. That said, I don't miss AT&T's crappy slow data network and Mail is still a stinking mess....

...still, when the 3G iPhone comes out - I'm planning to jump on board and ditch the Treo.

I sure hope they figure out how to get cut and paste to work by then....

Almost missed it!

Late this afternoon I was out with the boys snowkiting - actually they were kiting and I was trying to snag some good footage for everyone's egos. ;-)

Darn cold with -2 degree temps and wind chills around -25, but still a ton of fun. As the sun started to set, the light got real nice and then it hit me, the sun was setting just past the point! I've blogged about this before, and this is kind of a milestone as the sun heads out over the water more and more every day.

Nice win for a local company

This morning it is reported that Madison based Sway, best known for its flagship Web tool product, Shoutlet, has been acquired for $30 million. Sway is a privately held company with around $2 million in revenues and employees 13 people.

Its great to see a Wisconsin based company makes moves in the internet space (dare I say Web 2.0 space?) and the 15x multiple is something to note as well. Nice job!

I guess lightning does strike outside of Silicon Valley. ;-)

Monkey see, monkey do

Sure, YouTube cashed out big when Google bought them. Since then, has anyone paid anything for a video sharing site? There's gotta be 200+ YouTube wannabes out there, and all of them are dying on the vine. Revver was thought to be the next YouTube, but CNET reports today that they're on the auction block for $300k-$500k + the assumption of their $1M pile of debt. The picture here is a grab from the bottom of Revver's website. I think its a monkey. After all, monkey see, monkey do. And that's all that Revver did. Copy YouTube. They not only copied, but the business model ended up being the same even though they claimed/planned otherwise.

So, what happened? Nothing. Both YouTube and Revver are doing the same thing - NOT MAKING MONEY.

The problem is that a generic video sharing site that doesn't appeal to anyone makes ad dollars difficult to come by. Sure you can sell on shear volume of impressions, but the real money is in placing advertisers in front of their primary markets. Look at Revver's website - nothing but Google ads. If the network was valuable, you'd be able to see your own ad inventory. But alas, this isn't the case when you have scattered content that's across the board.

Google said they missed their last quarter numbers because social networks aren't monetizing very well. Go figure. I ,for one, am not surprised in the least.

This also relates to Facebook - to which I've blogged about before. Sure they got a $15B valuation, but what's the REAL numbers behind it? Anyone care to guess? Try $150M in ad sales last year. Seems that problems around monetizing social networks isn't isolated to just Google.

Sure the network is huge, but the costs are too. Facebook plans to spend $200M in 2008 just on infrastructure upgrades (ie. servers). The cost to revenue ratio is a little out of whack. The cost of scale isn't working for them. Google has that nailed better than anyone, but they can't build a social network to save their asses. They'll have to buy one. (BTW - an acquisition should be announced soon)

[UPDATE : Don't get me wrong - I don't think YouTube and Facebook (sorry, I should also include Myspace) are doomed. Because they are the big dogs and have proper investments behind them, they'll do just fine. Even if it takes time to work out the monetization issues, they've got the money in the bank to get over the bridge to the promised land. I'm really critical of the wannabe's : Its difficult to breathe when the big guys are eating up all the oxygen in the room.]

So, where is all of this leading? It's leading to the simple fact that being everything to everyone doesn't pay very well (unless you make it BIG). The revenue stream comes from finding a niche/vertical and living in it. This way you can implicitly know your audience and plug in ads that not only pay well, but more importantly, are effective. The advertisers keep coming back and the long tail gives and gives.

Enter stage left - Howcast. Just the sort of thing I'm talking about.

That path will lead to solid revenues, albeit with a smaller user base. (smaller, but still good numbers) But in the end, small fast and profitable beats the heck out of a fire sale any day.

Anyone want a banana?

Sunsets aren't just for summer

Just south of us, parts of Wisconsin are getting more than 15 inches of snow. We didn't get anything, but we did get a heck of a sunset as a consolation prize. ;-)

Carnage

I really do take good care of my laptop(s).

Really, I do.

Still, things happen. Zippers get left open. Laptops fall off their perch and gravity always rules the day.



The machines still work fine (needed to replace a hard in one of them), but that Sprint EVDO card is toast. The next one I'll get will be USB so I can use it on other machines.


One thing that doesn't show well in photos is that both MacBook Pro's are slightly bent from being in my backpack against the curve of my back.

Thank god these machines are made from aluminum and not plastic.

No comment

Hillary and McCain are problematic

John McCain and Hillary are problematic for voters and their respective parties in how they'll influence voter turnout just for being on the ticket.

McCain isn't a a republican. Sure he runs on the right, but he legislates on the left. If he's the nominee, you can bet conservatives and core republicans would rather NOT vote for him than just get in a vote against the democratic nominee. Thats just how conservatives are - if they don't like their candidate, then they'll not vote for him. (and the media and left wingers know this - thats why McCain gets all the media coverage ... hard to vote for the other guy(s) when you don't know anything about him). And he's a democrat strategists dream in terms of the skeletons in his closet and his legislation record. Its almost gonna be too easy for them to blast his campaign.. Child's play if you ask me. Its just what the Dems would love to be facing regardless of who's on their ticket since he's soooo beatable. (I think any definition to RINO should reference McCain directly)

Hillary on the other hand will spur opposition voter turnout almost regardless of who's on the R ticket. If they thought they had a platform with ABB (Anyone but Bush), the ABH vote might be actually stronger and they have to watch out for that. The corruption and issues with her and Bill are gonna be a major pain to deal with as well. She's all over the board on her replies to questions and she's eager to give everything to everyone in her quest for power. And you can bet that those video and audio soundbites will be back to haunt her.

In my opinion, Obama is the better choice for the Dems, and Romney is best for the Republicans at this point.

Just ran into a friend of mine (he's a staunch Conservative) and he made a good point when I bought up this post. McCain and Hillary are politically equal. Given the choice, he'd vote for her so the Dems are to blame for anything that happens. His theory is that either or, its the same.

And they want to run all the team websites?

Eli and the Giants do the unthinkable - and the Pat's history setting season is shattered in the final seconds of the Super Bowl.

NFL.com's Super Bowl game page? Yeah, well they think the North v. South game is more important than this little upset in Phoenix and give you those video highlights and photo gallery. Whoooooops! (click on the image)

And this from the guys who want to take over running all of the NFL team's websites. Great.

No, you really did ask for porn in your inbox

I'm still amazed at how people report spam that's not spam. I'm not talking the tough to decipher spams, I'm talking about obvious email newsletters that they've subscribed to, and now that they no longer want to receive the newsletter, they just report it as spam instead of unsubscribing.

For emails from places like Amazon, CircuitCity, its kinda weird. You bought things from them and their unsubscribe links are simple one click functions. Real quick and painless. But the ones I laugh at are the porn spams - yeah dude, you bought something from them and now you aren't happy with the disgusting crap they're putting in your inbox?

Either unsubscribe or get used to it. Sure, its nasty, but since its a valid email newsletter, we're not gonna mark it as spam. Sorry bud.

Project Codename : Kermie

It isn't easy being green...

The launch date is approaching! Stay tuned!

I'm going tapeless in 2008

I thought I'd love my Canon HV20 that I got before Christmas. It works great, but amazingly I've never sat down, hooked up the firewire and pulled any video off of it. Why not? Because its a pain in the butt.

Instead, I just use my Sanyo Xacti or Canon SD750 instead. When I'm ready to import the video, I don't need to sit through the painstakingly slow import process. I just plug in the camera and iPhoto imports the data at, well, data speeds. Not tape play speeds.

At CES, Canon announced a new family of handheld HD video cameras that have built in 16GB storage and a SD slot for more. (HV20 pictured here) SD cards are now 32GB and 64GB cards are just around the corner. I'm all over these cams. They're well priced, no tape mechanism to break, wear down and chew on battery life and with recording direct to memory, importing is quick. Oh, and you'll never accidentally record over existing footage either. (If you've ever done that before with your tape camera - raise your hand. Ok, you can put them down now) I knew I wanted one, but when I got to fondle one at MacWorld, I fell in love. I pushed $1000 of tightly rolled $100 bills at the booth dude, but to no avail. I'll have to wait like everyone else.

So, I'm gonna get the new Canon HF10 as soon as its available.

Anyone want a never used, brand new HV20 HD video camera? I'll even toss in some extra tapes. ;-)