Tech~Surf~Blog

More on Best Buy VC News: Geek Squad Founder Speaks

As a followup to my previous post about Best Buy planning to step up its corporate VC activity, I thought it would be good to get some additional perspective on this news. So, I sought out a couple of my contacts inside the company. I couldn't think of anyone better than Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad, which was acquired by Best Buy about five years ago. (He was out on vacation last week when the news broke.) Robert still heads the Geek Squad -- in an environment much different from his early days, but one he says he very much enjoys. And the business has expanded significantly. Robert's a great guy, an entrepreneur's entrepreneur. In fact, he was named the University of Minnesota's Entrepreneur of the Year in 2007, and I blogged about the event where that was announced (the Minnesota Cup Awards), and about Robert's excellent talk there.

I asked Robert two questions about the recent development at Best Buy:

Tech-Surf-Blog: What's your take on the news about the formation of "Best Buy Capital"?   

Robert Stephens: This is just the most recent example of a trend that other companies like Intel, Google, and Yahoo have championed.  I think it offers another choice for the entrepreneur.  I chose not to take VC money or other investors because I did not want to see The Geek Squad bought and sold by people just looking for a financial transaction.  The Geek Squad chose to acquire Best Buy because we really help each other in a permanent way.  We help differentiate Best Buy, and we are able to use their size and resources in our quest for World Domination.

With all of the new web technologies and speed of software development, there are some hardware and software products that might be a better fit through partnership with a Best Buy rather than a traditional VC path. Choice is always good.

Tech-Surf-Blog: What does the new Best Buy Capital say about the importance of startup innovation to the company?

Robert Stephens: Well, either you drive innovation inside your company, or it will get driven for you by external market forces.  This new arrangement gives all of us inside the company more choices in how we develop ideas.  Coming from a startup of one person to a 140,000-person strong global company, change never seems as fast as it used to.  I'm all for this if it helps us try more ideas. 

Best Buy is kind of like Madonna.  You may not like her music, but you have to respect the fact that she knows her business, and rarely do pop stars stay on top as long as she has.  It's the same in retail.  You must constantly re-invent yourself.  I don't think people realize how dynamic Best buy is.  It's why I chose them.

They were the first major retailer to pioneer the "grab and go".  First major retailer to develop the gift card.  First major retailer to go commission-free.  On and on.  Best Buy is also smart enough to know that they have to re-invent faster and faster.  You have a lot of choices on where you buy your stuff.  Sure, you might think, "I'll just buy everything online".  That's fine, but it's not that simple.  Some of those new flat screens have to be seen when choosing.  You buy laptops now based on "look and feel".  Did you ever think that Dell would allow themselves to be sold inside a Best Buy?  This means that there are always going to be choices on how you innovate. It also means that trying to predict the future in a linear fashion is futile.  The key to is try a lot of things and fail as fast as possible.

-------

For more on Robert, see this recent interview in Fortune Small Business: Geek Squad's Second Act.  And, for insight into the latest with the VC business, check out this article published last week in Wired: VCs Adjust to Facing More Competitors for Fewer Companies. In addition, I recapped recent VC industry developments in this post about a series of Forbes articles back in late January. Finally, I wrote a post a while back about the New Face of Venture Investing.

-------

I also got this reaction on the Best Buy Capital news from a source within Best Buy who would prefer to remain anonymous: "I'm not surprised. I think it's a natural outgrowth of Best Buy's internal environment of encouraging innovation through this kind of de facto process of allowing people to move ideas as long as they can prove their idea's worth along the way. Cultivating new ideas, iterating them, and learning fast is one of the things that Best Buy excels at, actually. So, it just makes sense they would take this outside the walls of the company to do it for direct profit."

Thanks to both contacts, and I hope their comments provide further perspective for you on this story.

(Postcsript: I mentioned the Minnesota Cup above. This is an annual competition for entrepreneurs throughout the state, and the organization just announced its 2008 program. Details are at www.MinnesotaCup.org.)

Bloggers Break 'Best Buy Capital' Story; Company Goes Mum

In yet another example of how blogging is changing the news business and the PR business, it's interesting to go back and look at what happened over the past 10 days or so with a story relating to Best Buy -- a company I know well, headquartered right here in suburban Minneapolis. This little tale is instructive to those involved in communications and journalism.

First of all, I think the underlying news story here is a positive one for Best Buy, and for its employees and shareholders. (Full disclosure: I like the company, I have friends there, and I did a little interim gig there myself back in 1999/2000. It is an amazing outfit.) But it's still interesting to watch big companies like this try to deal (or fail to deal) with the realities of new media.

Here's the story as it broke locally here in the Twin Cities yesterday (Friday), by our very good Business Journal: Best Buy builds VC unit to find next big things. (More disclosure: I was contacted early in the week by one of the writers of this story to provide reaction to the news, and was quoted in it.) But what's more interesting to me, even than the news itself, is the fact that it wasn't first discovered by a traditional media outlet: a blogger had actually broken this story the week before. If you're in the journalism or PR business and have any sense of the changes being wrought by new media, you of course know such occurrences are becoming more and more common.

The Fuse Is Lit
A consumer electronics blogger by the name of Lee Distad in Edmonton blogged this piece of news first on March 18 with this post: Best Buy Capital to Invest in Tech Innovations. He had more to say about it on a weekly recap he did the same day on another blog: Best Buy Opens Their Own Venture Fund. Soon, another blogger, who happens to be a VC (and also a Canuck) -- that being Paul Kedrosky of the blog Infectious Greed -- had picked up on Distad's breaking news and posted a link in his own post: Return of Corporate Venture Investors. (A little aside: what he fails to realize, and the others as well, is that Best Buy is not a new corporate venture investor; they've been at this game for many years. The new entity appears to signal simply an expansion or formalization of their practice of making minority investments in promising new companies from time to time that are strategic to their business.  The name Best Buy Capital just appears to perhaps be a new name for this entity -- though it should not be confused with an old entity called "Best Buy Capital LP," which the company formed in 1994 to raise expansion capital, as this old SEC filing details.)

Then (within minutes, I suspect), the blog TechConfidential (from TheDeal.com) was running a post with an even better headline -- With Best Buy Capital, corporate VC goes big box. (Disclosure: I have been invited to be a member of the TechConfidential blogger network, though I did not see their story on Best Buy till this week.) You can see in their post that they included, like good little bloggers, links to the earlier posters, dutifully paying them homage. TheDeal.com exists to serve investors, so you can be sure plenty of people who follow BBY stock got early wind of this story, actually well ahead of the general market. (Did it cause a blip in the share price?  Maybe not all by itself, but I see the stock did trade up that day.  Investors hunger for every little piece of news about the companies whose stocks they hold.)

Okay, so what's so interesting about a bunch of bloggers who sniff out a story for their relatively small audiences, which is then broken as a piece of hard news later in Best Buy's hometown by a large, traditional media weekly that reaches many tens of thousands more people? Nothing so much, since it's happening a lot these days. What's interesting to me is that, as Distad reports in his original post, not only could he not get any information or a comment from the company's PR people -- they didn't even seem to _know_ anything about this particular development within their company! And, as you can see, our local Business Journal was also unable to get a comment from a Best Buy source for their story, a full 11 days after the original blog post.

The Disconnect
If you haven't picked up yet from one of the links above, here's how the original blogger discovered the story...are you ready?  From a job posting. That's right, a little known but valuable source of news that smart people looking for insights about a particular company can often find -- right on the company's own web site! (Or on any of a number of other job boards.) This isn't news about what's happening now, mind you. It's better than that: it's about what's coming. Hiring plans definitely qualify as a bellweather of things to come.

So then, what does Best Buy do (ostensibly on a call from the PR people to the HR people) -- they take the job posting down! There, that will fix those pesky, nosey outsiders!  Now, those links in the above original blog posts go to a dead page. Not to worry, however -- it took me less than a minute to find the job description had been copied and posted to another job listing site here. That's the thing about the web: once something's out there, it's impossible to fully take it back. (This is the posting for a "Principal," whereas another job had been originally posted by Best Buy for the position of "Associate," which I did not search further for. A source of mine within Best Buy told me this week that three people would be hired for Best Buy Capital; I would guess that to be one Principal and two Associates.)

Now, it could be said that this was just a coincidence -- that the job postings were removed because the company had suddenly filled all three positions. Hardly likely, since the original posting appears to have only gone up on March 11. (And I know how long things take at Best Buy.) It seems much more likely the company was spooked by a blogger breaking a story that, for some strange reason, they did not want known. Or did not go through "normal channels." (Hint to Best Buy: the world is changing, and, like it or not...channels aren't normal anymore.)

But what I find the most interesting of all is that the HR people, through their job-posting system (they use the very common Taleo platform), are putting out news that they apparently don't realize. That is, no one seems to have explained this to them. I'm surmising they don't tell the PR people when they do post something like this -- witness the original blogger running into complete ignorance of the news when he called PR. By the same token, the PR people aren't trolling the postings regularly themselves, either, it would seem, to become aware of "news" the company may be putting out in ways other than the limited supply they dish out themselves. And limited it is. They, like most big companies of old (and so many overly regulated public firms, I suppose), seem to spend more time keeping the news in than letting it out.

Two things I would ask: (1) Shouldn't Best Buy (and other companies of their size) start figuring out how to deal with the notion of transparency in our new world of New Media?  And, (2) Doesn't it seem to you that somebody should get the HR people and the PR talking?

 

 

iPhone and Flash - Apple and Adobe at War?

Things are getting real interesting out there on the iPhone front, in so many ways. Here's a case in point: this fastest-ever growing mobile phone platform, as originally introduced last year, did not support Flash (and still doesn't), but it's clear that Adobe, the company behind Flash, would sure like to...uh...do something about that?

Perhaps you saw the news that broke last week related to this. Here are the two items I caught:
• iPhone Still Not Ready for Flash (from CMP's funky, new Contentinople site)
• Who Needs Flash on iPhone More, Adobe or Apple? (from the great blog "last100," part of the ReadWriteWeb network)

After reading these, I decided to ask a couple of my smart local buddies to do guest posts. First, my longtime designer friend "PXLated" -- who's an almost-as-longtime Apple and Adobe user and follower. Get this, he goes this far back with Adobe technology (I love this story): when he first called 'em for support, John Warnock took the call. [Yeah, for you trivia buffs, that was the founder.] I asked PXLated what the heck was going on, and if he could give me his take over the weekend. His comments follow:

Adobe's been pushing Apple to put Flash on the iPhone and is using the blogosphere to promote its cause ("we need Flash, we need Flash", blah, blah, blah). Adobe and their surrogates -- you know, the old interactive CD developers whose businesses went tits-up when the web took off -- try to play it that Flash is a web standard and, to have the full web on the iPhone, you need Flash.

First of all, it's not a standard. It might be ubiquitous, but it's not in any way, shape, or form a web standard. There are many things delivered over the Internet (the web, mail, etc), and Flash is interactive multimedia delivered over the internet. There happens to be a Flash plug-in that allows it to be played within a browser, but it's not "standard" web technology.

So, Apple has basically said no, the full version of Flash is too resource-intensive and power hungry, and even taxes desktop machines. Load up some Flash sites (or several) and it can bring your browser to a screeching halt and max your CPU usage. I've seen it written that it's even worse on Macs than on Windows, as Adobe has never optimized the Flash player for the Mac. Then there's "Flash Lite," a version that's on some phones. But, according to what I've read, and what Jobs has said, it is too lightweight, in that it won't render Flash sites as we know them -- only ads and simpler stuff like animations. And it won't even display stuff created in the latest version of Flash.

So, currently, there isn't a version of Flash that Apple will allow. The full version of Flash is too heavy, and Flash Lite is too light.  Bottom line, there is no version appropriate for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

The current brouhaha is that Apple came out with their iPhone SDK, and Adobe's current CEO said in a conference call last week that his firm would use that to develop Flash for the iPhone. The reality is they can't without deeper ties to the underlying operating system, or to the Safari browser. That isn't possible without Apple's help and approval.  It seems his engineers explained the facts of life to him, and a day later he corrected himself.

So, now Adobe is back to square one.

My guess is there's a lot of politics going on behind the scene, and some of it is historical:
1) Adobe raped Jobs in licensing fees for using display postscript at NEXT.
2) They tried to do that again at Apple for OSX, and Jobs said screw you and developed the whole display technology using PDF. He could do this because Adobe had opened the specs so PDF could become a standard. Open=no licensing fees... :-)
3) Adobe probably pissed Jobs off (as well as all Mac users) when they were one of the last software companies to release OSX versions of their programs, and used Carbon (a bridge) rather than Cocoa (the native method).
4) Adobe then again took forever to make their apps native for Intel, probably further straining their relationship with Jobs.

So, basically, I would guess there is no love lost with Jobs when it comes to Adobe. Hey, they screwed with him when he was down.

The problems for Adobe are many. First, all their big apps (including Photoshop and Illustrator) are mature, and there just isn't much they can add to them to make people upgrade. They locked themselves into a development box where they can't utilize all the great underlying OS features to create a nice upgrade, either. So, their only place for real growth is to ride the next wave in computing -- mobile -- but they can't if Flash isn't as ubiquitous on phones as it is desktops. So, there are a bunch of choke points and pressures.

The iPhone points to the future and is a grand success, but Apple prefers to use and promote web standards -- like Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), Javascript (Ajax), and the latest in the HTML specs -- rather than proprietary things like Flash.  Microsoft is introducing a Flash competitor called Silverlight. So, Adobe is desperate because they know the mobile phone/browsing market is many times bigger than the desktop market. If they can't get Flash to be as ubiquitous on mobile devices as it is on the desktop, the jig is up and they could miss out on the whole next generation of computing. And all those Flash developers will have to learn new skills.

It's desperation time for the whole bunch, hence the latest outcry.

Thanks, PXLated. This will indeed be very interesting to watch! [Note: I guess I won't go long on Adobe stock.]

Not being one to ever be satisfied, I then just had to ask yet another of our mutual smart friends for his opinion on the news. Steve Borsch has an excellent blog at Connecting the Dots, and also blogs with me occasionally at Minnov8. He's very savvy in the ways of Apple and Adobe, having worked for Apple for several years in sales in the '90s. And he's as plugged in to where things are headed in the new world of "the Internet as platform" as anyone I know. Here are his comments:

Any of us in the tech sector knows that shrink-wrapped software is dead; the personal computer will be less and less necessary going forward; and that multiple device types connected to the Internet -- with most of the processing being done "in the cloud" or at hosted facilities -- will be the way most of us get our news, information, entertainment, and social connections going forward.

As the Internet increasingly morphs into the "platform" for applications -- either Web, desktop, or the new category of rich internet applications (RIAs) -- runtime "containers" will be critical for any company hoping to be relevant, and Apple's name has come up as one of the most absent players in this space. Ironically, iTunes is often used as the best example of a rich internet application, since one can rip and manage music on the personal computer desktop; share it within the home; buy and download music, movies, and video "up in the cloud" along with cover art; and subscribe to free audio and video podcasts.

Adobe's AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is an RIA platform with incredible functionality and the capability to "collapse" many sorts of technologies into a "container" that runs in a Web browser or on a personal computer desktop. Microsoft's Silverlight takes a different approach (and many design tools exist for creating and deploying Silverlight "containers"), but the essence is the same: next generation hybrid applications that attempt to marry the best of the desktop with the best of what's delivered over the Internet from the cloud. In fact, buzz has it that Silverlight was a direct strategic response to the ubiquity of Flash (which is on something like 97% of all browsers), and that Microsoft’s abdicating the runtime of video, audio, and animation to Adobe was a very bad idea...especially if the company was interested in cloud computing (which it is now!).

My belief is that Apple isn't going to sit this one out, and the Flash controversy is all about positioning their approach (whenever it's revealed), since they have all the building blocks necessary: the most ubiquitous creative platform, called Macintosh; Quicktime (which I'd argue is the best video container); Safari on both Mac and Windows (built on the fast, completely Web-standard browser engine called "WebKit"); incredibly simple "clip" technologies like WebClip (a fast and easy way to clip a section of a web page, and it automagically turns into a widget); and the fastest growing mobile device (iPhone); and many, many rumors of upcoming device-types leveraging the critically acclaimed "touch" technology used in the iPhone interface.

Add to that Apple's famed ability to deliver easy-to-use interfaces to historically difficult processes and technologies. Probably my best example is the phenomenally good-looking movies and, most specifically, DVDs that can be created with iMovie and iDVD. Having grown up in the interactive space with videodisc and CD-ROM, I can tell you that creating and delivering a DVD is so laughingly simple that one of my non-technical friends (who can barely figure out the radio in his car) has delivered some of the best-looking DVDs I've ever watched.

My prediction is that Apple will be delivering different "touch" form-factors in the next six months (along with faster 3G iPhones), as well as touch modifications to their notebook platforms. As user-generated content continues to explode -- and demand accelerates for tools to create and deliver it -- Apple will be right there with what's needed to create and deliver at runtime.

There you have it, folks. What my smartest, tech-savviest friends say is behind all this Apple/Adobe posturing regarding Flash. In other words, there's a whole lot more than meets the eye.  And your intrepid reporters at Tech-Surf-Blog [wherever I can find them!] are out there for you, right in the middle of it all.

(For another take on Apple and its culture, check out this great cover story just published in Wired Magazine: Evil/Genius: How Apple Wins By Breaking All the Rules.)

Now, you need to tell me what *you* think about the future of Apple and the iPhone.  Don't be shy -- comment below and show your stuff...

ETech 08: Strangest Session Title Goes to..."How to Kick Ass"

Kathy Sierra was one of the speakers in the morning session of this second day of ETech. She's a perennial at this event, though missed last year. One of the few women in this largely man's world of developers (esp on stage), but she's very popular. Her thing is "creating passionate users," and who can't like that?  Her talk today was titled to arouse curiosity, I suppose. What it was about, as I Twittered during her talk, is that it's healthy to get involved in something that isn't the main thing you excel at. She cited a guy taking pix of her in the aisle with a big camera on a tripod, and how he was a leading open-source guy, but has become a kick-ass photographer. She said it's not about natural talent, but just the ability to put in time....and not about making money at something [oh, like maybe blogging, perhaps? :-) ].

Fast forward to the punchline: we finally got to what she was trying to tell all the hard-working, no-outside-life developers, hackers, and assorted geeks in the audience. It was to "get unplugged," get away from all the distractions ("partial attentions") we all have in our lives, and "focus on the things you care about." 

Ah, surfing...it won't be long now. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Steve Jobs: 'iFlubbed' - I Don't Think So!

So, have you heard about the term being applied to Uncle Steve's move last week regarding the iPhone? Yes, you could have guessed -- it's "iPology" :-) .... There's some interesting insight on this whole overblown thing on a great new blog called MarketingApple. This guy (also named Steve) I think really sets the record straight. An excerpt from that post:

Folks, you are living through what has to be the Golden Age of marketing and Steve Jobs is its king.  Enjoy the ride.

Then, a followup post yesterday on the same blog heralds the latest news that -- you got it -- one million iPhones have now been sold.

I was discussing this whole thing as it happened with my close colleagues -- all of us huge Apple users and supporters -- and I got a great summation from one of them over the weekend. He doesn't want me to use his name, but he's a very smart guy (serial entrepreneur), and I just have to share his recap and insights with you:

Jobs is the king of concept and design. It's easy to market the coolest phone ever and the best MP3 player ever, but good luck conceiving, designing, and developing them.

By cutting the iPhone prices, Jobs created a problem, then conceived and developed a solution. Typical Steve Jobs.

When the first rumors surfaced about Apple getting into the cell phone market, people laughed and predicted instant failure. Before the iPod, the Diamond Rio had more than 50% market share, and they were dropping the price quarterly to meet new competition. Apple came out with the iPod (with a hard drive) at 3-5 times the price of the average price of MP3 players at the time and couldn't make enough of them. Other MP3 players with hard drives came out shortly after at half the price, and those companies couldn't sell the ones they produced for the launch, while Apple couldn't make enough of theirs. Then, when you could buy flash MP3 players for $20, Apple released the Nano at $250 and the Shuffle at $150, and, again, they couldn't make enough of them.

Steve jumped on 2.5" and 1" hard drive technology for the iPod and, later, on multi-GB flash, when they were both expensive, new technologies, and Apple's volume alone drove the technology towards commodity pricing. Apple never dropped prices, they just come out with new models at the same prices with thinner designs and more storage.

They can't release iPhones the same way, even though their prices have fallen, because they are using so much flash. It costs them less to make the 8GB today than the 4GB four months ago. They could drop the price to gain wider market acceptance, so they did. Adding more storage and making the iPhone thinner won't be enough to release a new model. They need to bump up the speed, make the display as big as the case (40% larger), add faster broadband, and add a VoIP softphone. (Nokia has them and HP just released the new iPaq with more features and a VoIP softphone built in.) All the new cellular chips designs have WiFi embedded, so ALL new phones next year will have WiFi. The cellular carriers may block the SIP (the de-facto standard for VoIP, session initiation protocol) ports to disable VoIP, and there will be a new RTP (real time protocol) invented to transmit VoIP over any open port -- maybe that's what Steve is up to next? :-)

People just keep laughing every time Apple does the unexpected, but their concept and design is so good that they become the market leader. I can't wait for the iTV-LCD, the iDVR, the iCarStereo, and the iGameBox.

Now, does that nail the situation, or what? (And also raise some interesting new possibilites.) I told you I hang around with smart guys....

UPDATE: To correct a typo....sorry.

Apple Blows Through 100; Jobs Safe?

Well, the Wall Street Journal just reported Apple's latest blowout numbers:

"Boosted by demand for iPod players and Macintosh computers, Apple reported its profit soared 88% to $770 million and revenue reached $5.26 billion. The company shipped 10.5 million iPods, up 24% from a year ago. Mac shipments rose 36% to 1.5 million machines. 'The Mac is clearly gaining market share,' said CEO Steve Jobs. Separately, a group of Apple board members issued a statement defending Mr. Jobs from accusations tied to the company's stock-options backdating. The directors said they have 'complete confidence' in Mr. Jobs's 'integrity and his ability to lead Apple.' Apple shares jumped 10% to $102.55 in late trading."

Gee, I guess you could say the market likes it? And this after a page-one Journal story today suggesting Jobs knew more than previously reported about his company's options backdating. To hell with that, the market seems to be saying -- just keep giving us those good results.

Up 10% in one day? Amazing...

DEMO: More Laptop Battery Life Coming

Boston Power didn't give us much detail, but used the occasion of DEMO to introduce its new "Sonata" proprietary lithium-ion technology. The claim is that it's the only battery to actually match the lifespan of a notebook computer, solving "today's battery fade problem and delivering a 50% faster recharge time." And more is on the way, said the CEO and founder of the company, Dr. Christina Lampe-Onnerud (who, incidentally, went on stage at last night's jam session to sing!) "I've devoted my life to batteries," she said, "and we're committed to delivering a battery you can rely on." Do I hear a thunderous roar out there? John Wozniak of HP's PC division, who says his group "ships a ton of battery packs," gave an extremely complimentary introduction of this presenter, and said his firm is closely partnering with Boston Power. The firm raised an $8 million Series A round last year from Venrock and Gabriel Venture Partners. Once more, the promise for improving our road-warrior lives. Can't come fast enough for me!

DEMO: DARTdevices Makes Pigs Fly

Think ubiquitous interoperability across all your devices will happen only when pigs fly? Well, DARTdevices showed us just now that pigs can do that! We're talking intelligence that lets any device discover, access, and share apps with any other DART-enabled device. No installing software or drivers. This is a company with funding from Motorola Ventures that's all about virtualizing devices. Now to convince the device OEMs to adopt the technology, and our lives are bound to get simpler....

Some of the Great People I Met at BlogHaus and CES

As a final wrapup of my experience last week in networking of the face-to-face kind -- in and around the largest trade show in the country, CES -- I thought I'd do what I often do after these things: list the people I met. Most of the these were due to BlogHaus, which is the main reason I made the trip, and where I spent most of my time Sunday through Wednesday noon. I also attended an event called Storage Visions over the weekend, a press event called Showstoppers on Monday evening, and a party on Tuesday evening sponsored by Blog Business Summit. (See all my previous BlogHaus and CES posts. And my Flickr set, such as it is, you can find here. My friend Doc Searls' set is sooo much better, and I actually show up in one of his shots. Also see Thomas Hawk's great photo-documentary of the event on his very own photo-sharing site, Zooomr -- and I'd encourage you to sign up for the service.)

Anyway, back to all the people I met -- at least the ones I remember (apologies to those for whom I didn't get a card to remind me!):
• From PodTech:
- John Furrier
- Linda Furrier
- Robert Scoble
- Maryam Scoble
- Valerie Cunningham
- Jeremiah Owyang
- Chris Coulter

• From Seagate:
- Bill Watkins, CEO
- Julie Still
- Brian Ziel
- Woody Monroy

And these others, in no particular order:
- Gabe Rivera, Founder, Techmeme
- Andru Edwards, CEO, GearLive
- Lionel Menchaca, chief blogger, Dell
- Thomas Hawk, Founder, Zooomr
- James Courtney, Skype Journal
- David Berkowitz, 360i.com
- Nicholas Butterworth, Diversion Media & Travelistic
- Oluf Nissen, HP and GeekTieGuy.com
- Betsy Weber, evangelist, TechSmith
- Paul Loeffler, PR, Palm
- Mark Plungy, PR, Yahoo!
- Mike Terpin, CEO, Terpin Communications
- Jennifer Fader, Terpin Communications
- Teresa Valdez Klein, Blog Business Summit
- Sam Abadir, CEO, Broadclip
- Al Carlton, Coolest-Gadgets.com
- Sal Cangeloso, XYZcomputing.com
- Sarah Browne, TheDailyBee blog
- Sandira Calviac, TechAgnostic.com blog
- Rick Calvert, CEO, BlogWorldExpo.com
- Kristian Rauhala, CEO, H2Oaudio
- Dave Botherway, President, Melbourne PC User Group
- Susan Fitzpatrick, CEO, Dateline Media
- Ron Nissen, investor, Bluebox Devices (Melbourne)
- Robert Yearsley, CEO, Bluebox Devices
- Benno Rice, Chief Architect, Bluebox Devices
- Angus Robinson, CEO, AEEMA (Australia)
- Barbara Adams, Australian Trade Commission
- Annette Ahern, US Consulate, Melbourne

At the Storage Visions event:
- Lee Gomes, Wall Street Journal
- Mark Walker, Seagate
- John Freeman, Strategic Marketing Decisions
- Tom Coughlin, producer of the event
(whom I already knew)
- Jim Porter, Disk/Trend (ditto)

Others I also knew but ran into again:
- Doc Searls
- Buzz Bruggeman
- Keith Shaw, NetworkWorld and DEMO
- also met Jason Meserve of NetworkWorld

Whew! I met a lot of great people on this trip. And I look forward to staying in touch with them. I know I'll be seeing some again very soon at the DEMO '07 event -- for example, PodTech, the developers of the wonderful BlogHaus concept! What a super idea they had, and what a great client they have in Seagate who agreed to be lead sponsor. It was indeed a marketing and PR coup for them! Thanks again to both organizations.

Tags: CES, CES 2007, BlogHaus, PodTech, Seagate

CES Post 8: Whoa! Cisco Sues Apple

Well, I guess it's one more post from the airport. Cisco just sued Apple over the iPhone name, according to this Wall Street Journal alert that just hit my in-box here in the sports bar:

TECHNOLOGY ALERT from The Wall Street Journal -- Jan. 10, 2007 -- Cisco sued Apple for trademark infringement over the "iPhone" name Apple chose for its new cellphone, unveiled yesterday. Cisco obtained the iPhone trademark in 2000, and had been in talks with Apple over rights to the name.

"Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco's iPhone name," said Mark Chandler, Cisco's general counsel. "There is no doubt that Apple's new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission."

I was just talking about this situation with some guys last night at the Blog Business Summit party. I said Podtech had reported a source told them Apple had reached some sort of licensing agreement with Cisco for the name. Guess they were wrong!

I said I still didn't understand why Cisco did a PR announcement of their iPhone line a few weeks ago, if they were in fact negotiating with Apple to let them have the name. One guy I was talking with last night said the December announcement was obviously them posturing to pressure Apple in paying more for the name -- that is, to actually raise a higher awareness of the name being associated with Cisco, in an attempt to hold up Apple for more bucks. I said back in late December that I thought it was a really lame, kind of rushed-looking marketing intro. But, at that moment last night, I thought that guy might be onto something. He said they probably reached some 11th-hour agreement with Jobs since then for Apple to buy the rights to the name. But then I still wondered how Cisco would retract, or correct, that recent introduction of their iPhone product line...

Alas, this guy's conjecture was wrong, too! The parties obviously didn't reach any agreement at all. And it just amazes me that His Royal Steveness would have the cajones to go on stage yesterday and tout this name as his own! But, then, I guess I shouldn't be. He's basically just saying, "Screw you guys, then -- sue me." Obviously, he knows the market wants Apple to have this name, feels it's theirs, and somehow this overwhelming force will overcome all.

This will get interesting, for sure. Unfortunately, we may never know how much he pays Cisco to give up the name. But I am definitely NOT betting against Jobs prevailing here.

Tags: BlogHaus, PodTech, CES, CES 2007, Apple, Steve Jobs, Cisco, iPhone