"Martha Stewart" Meets BubbleShare -- Cool Recipe on BubbleShare

This is a cool great use of BubbleShare -- a BubbleShared Recipe with Voice of Course! =)

kristyk.org » Blog Archive » That’s Posole!

Dogster made me their bitch...

They truly made a great presentation at IBD Networks Under the Radar event and won best presentation award in our category. These guys deserve it, and I give them kudos for everything they’ve done. I agree with the panelists, they are probably have one of the best, if not the best implementation of a social network around – and they are monetizing it very effectively.

I was having dinner today with Kevin from TailRank with a few other folks, and must give credit to Kevin for my blog title. Kevin is getting some great traction on the TailRank site, and should give memorandom a good run for their money. On the flip side, Gabe @ memorandom has done an amazing job with it... and really has come close to taking over as a daily read for me as a replacement for slashdot! If you haven't seen either one of those services yet, do so... I'm too tired to link them right now, maybe I will when i get back into a blogging mood. Got 12 meetings in the next 48 hours. This is going to be interesting. Must get my sub 6 hours of sleep. Now.

Side note: in our defense, what I didn't do a good job of articulating in our presentation, that I really should have put more emphasis on was.... damnit, people, we're not trying to get people to swtich from Flickr. We're not "a magnitude" or even close to that better than flickr. We're different!!! We're interested in first time photo sharing users... and providing the best damn digital photo sharing experience with the ability to help users tell their stories, with the simplist way possible. Just as Flickr will have a difficult time appealing to my mom (who does not blog, care for groups, tags, or other things), BubbleShare will have a difficult time providing the latest uber-geek features that Flickr have for teh blogspheare.

Okay, now that's off my chest. I can really sleep. =)

Valley vs. Toronto

Having spent a good chunk of time now in the valley this week, what’s funny to me is that the energy here reminds me of Toronto vs. the other way around. Whereas before during TorCamp, I felt the energy of the valley (when I spent a ton of time there between 2000-2002) in Toronto -- and reminded me a great deal of what it was like there during my time in the bay area... this time around, everything happening here feels like home.

Yes, the scale of things here are larger -- due to tech/capital density and other factors, but whats really interesting is that I often feel that there's just as much passion amongst the Toronto crowd as there is in the valley crowd here. However, the one thing I would challenge my local startup companions to do remains the same: Think Big(ger).

I got a chance to speak with quite a few former Canadian tech heads... it was amazing how many of us where down there, and how many I discover were from north of the border. One common thing I noticed about these folks was that they felt the same way about the Canadian startup attitude (thinking big, but only moderatly big) vs. the Valley attitude (don't think big, think BIGGEST)

So it got me thinking. Despite the technical talent that we have in Toronto, do we have a disproportion amount of tech-innovation and tech-wealth because of (a) economic factors (i.e. lack of capital, tax structure); (b) cultural factors (i.e. lack of ambitions or role models to inspire success); or (c) talent/experiential factors (i.e. lack of serial entrepreneurs, lack of mentors, lack of deep tech-marketing and tech-sales talent).

One more theory I have is perhaps its "(d)": we have a lack of graduate technical talent that are given sufficient resources. I'd argue that while we have a great deal of technical undergraduate talent coming form Waterloo and UofT, there's insufficient proportionate support for their graduate research programs as compared to say some of more well financed US based technical academic research labs.

Understanding Why Live Demos with Wifi Can Suck @ Under the Radar

So, this is going to be my first blog posting since my last 4 days in the valley. I can't remember the last time I did as many meetings as I have done in the past 4 days. In fact, I think I've done more meetings in the past 4 days than I have done in the past 4 months by quite a long shot.

Some investor pitches, some general biz dev, some media... its been an interesting week. It was a blast also because I got to hang out and learn from Alec all week as the "two Canadian startup guys in the valley." Also got to attend and present at the IBDNetwork's Under the Radar event, which was FANTASTIC... I only wish it ran longer, as there were a ton of people I wanted to talk to but didn't get a chance to.

What was REALLY interesting was how completely FUBAR I felt when for the 8 mins out of the entire day that I was on stage at IBDNetwork's Under the Radar event, that my system decides to no connect or cooperate with our servers. As I demo'ed our upload/login process, an error message popped up that I had NEVER seen before in my life. I tried again, on stage, and once again it gave me the same strange reply. While on stage, I thought perhaps that our TechCrunch article in the morning was messing with our servers, and we were overloaded -- but upon further inspection, that was unlikely the case. After talking to some fellow presenters, the only conclusion I could come to was the fact that the wireless connection was flakely.

What's REALLY frustrating about the whole ordeal was the fact that I had tested the entire process just miniutes prior to my demo. Of course, as always, its only when you do it LIVE in front of an audience that your tech chooses to fail. =)

Thankfully, I was able to somehow manage to log into the system again after a 3rd try, and was able recover due to some (IMHO) super cool tech and demos that we had just recently launched. Thanks to our fantastic development team, there were gimmers of genius in the demo, which really showed off our creativity and passion for our product -- dispite the technological hickup.

So whats the lesson learned? Get a wired net connection if you can. Wireless in a demo enviorment, esp. where you have dozens and dozens of users connected to a single AP can be pretty dangerous.

We're NOT BETTER than Flickr. We're JUST DIFFERENT. (AKA: Repost of Stuff I wrote on Scoble's Comment Box...)

Its 5:30AM, and I'm strangely still up, and hacking away... because : (1) for some reason i can't sleep, (2) i've still gotta finish packing for my trip to the bay area (btw, if anyone would like to connect, I'm thinking of setting up a small ad hoc geek dinner...), (3) i'm insane (as as a result also took the bait on one of the comments below). The good thing is that I get to sleep on the flight down to SFO. So I guess I'll make up for the sleep then. If i don't get to blog again, I look forward to seeing some of you at the IBD Network Under the Radar event!

Here's the comment thread form this kind posting from Robert Scoble's Blog:

1. this is a killer app. Bubbleshare is kewl..!!

   Comment by /pd — February 26, 2006 @ 11:47 am | Edit This

2. We’re not better than Flickr. I think Flickr rocks.

   We’re just different. I’d like to think we’re more like a “Flickr for Mums.” =)

   Comment by Albert Lai — February 26, 2006 @ 11:49 am | Edit This

3. If you want to see the Children’s album directly, just go here:
   http://bubbleshare.com/album/14622/photoframe

   Comment by Albert Lai — February 26, 2006 @ 12:01 pm | Edit This

4. but can’t you do the same with Microsoft Photo Story? Then you can upload it to blip.tv? Just playing devils advocate.

   Comment by Richard j Smith — February 26, 2006 @ 1:30 pm | Edit This

5. Microsoft Photo Story is super cool (IMHO: if you can look pass some of the interface issues). But its gone tons of great little features, and yes, its also free. =)

   But then again:
   (1) you’d have to download photo story
   (2) install it
   (3) run it, learn the UI, render the .WMV, and then
   (4) find a way to host it, and then
   (5) notify your friends of it somehow, after you’ve hosted it somewhere

   Vs. BubbleShare:
   (0) no registration required

   (1) upload photos directly from the front page (and add voice captions directly via the web)

   (2) forward the link we sent into your email box to friends (taking advantage of course, your email address book)

   BTW: we also support multi-file batch uploads via Flash8 uploading for FireFox and Mac users, and ActiveX with Windows

   Comment by Albert Lai — February 26, 2006 @ 2:06 pm | Edit This

6. Don’t forget though, that you can use rss enclosures and make it downloadable via a podcatcher and people can see it on their Pocket Pc or other portable device.

   Comment by Richard j Smith — February 26, 2006 @ 4:35 pm | Edit This

7. What’s so cool about that? A sound on a page? But that doesn’t make an app a killer app. IMHO it’s really just a bubble…

   Comment by BigMac — February 27, 2006 @ 12:58 am | Edit This

8. (yep, I’m too “passionate” for my own good i think…
   i’m taking gonna take the bait…

   BigMac:

   A laptop hard drive that stores and plays music, what’s so cool about that? (ipod)

   A website that allow you to buy music, what’s so cool about that? (itunes)

   A program that lets you use your computer like a telephone to talk to friends for free, whats so cool about that? (skype)

   Before the Ipod was the Nomad. Before iTunes there were napster/real/emusic, etc. Before Skype there was DialPad, etc. (I recognized there is a difference in tech between some of the examples)

   There’s no way I’m going to even PRETEND that BubbleShare is half as cool as those revolutionary technologies. But what I will say is that, what makes those innovations cool — and what makes BubbleShare, IMHO, “cool” — is..

   USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN (NOT JUST TECHNOLOGY)

   We didn’t set out to build BubbleShare to have the coolest technology around, and use every AJAX enabled special FX under the sun. It was about solving a problem. My mom and others like her had problems sharing photos with her family and friends. Existing solutions were confusing and frustrating for novices, with a variety of limitations due to a number of different reasons (business model, demographic/focus, etc.).

   BubbleShare is all about providing a great user experience for those that are frustrated or simply can’t fully grasp existing more complex solutions. First and foremost, we’re hoping that computer novices, a category that dominates the majority of the internet population, can use BubbleShare to create, personalize and share their stories & digital assets as transparently and easily as possible.

   FWIW, i dunno if we have a killer app (heck, I’d say we’re far from it… well, at least with what’s public today .. but I’m happy to know that everyday we have folks telling us how much happier they are with the BubbleShare user experience than anything else they’ve used before.

   Comment by Albert Lai — February 27, 2006 @ 2:36 am | Edit This

Some quick pix of Stowe's meet up in Toronto

CLICK on the PHOTO to see in LARGE!


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Sorry about the crappy treo650 camera quality. =( If someone at Palm wants to send me at 700, please feel free. ;) Or umm.. the Nokia N90 would be nice too. =)

Energy & Vibe of Toronto & Back from YAM (Yet Another Meetup) - with Stowe & Reply to Rick Segal about TechCrunch5

In response to a posting from Rick Segal, I made the following comment which I'll repost here:

Mark, Rick, All,

Sounds like a killer party, wish I could have made it.

But check this out:

WITHOUT free beer.

WITHOUT being techcrunched.

WITHOUT 10x the tech dev population.

WITHOUT 100x the tech venture capital.

WITHOUT naked men running around. (okay, that one is out of place ;)

That are all representative of the bay area and the killer techcrunch (that I regret missing out on).

We had ~100 people show up to the DemoCamp 3.0, when we (me and David Crow) started/hosted 1.0 at the BubbleLabs (makers of, of course, www.bubbleshare.com ;) in December as a spin off of David's TorCamp we had 30 people. At 2.0 in Feb, we had ~60.

(in response to:) Sand Hill Slave: Unlike 1999, us poor Canadian software startups that host these "parties,” we don't offer crap -- except good company (in the form of demos from passionate developers and entrepreneurs). What is like 1999 though, is that there are a lot of people that are coming out of the woodwork and taking risk in doing innovative things and neat things -- some for the money, some for the vision/fun, some for both. (I like to think that I fall into the last camp/category :)

I just came back from an ad hoc meetup, having drinks and dinner with Stowe who was visiting, with Michael O'Connor Clarke playing host at a local downtown pub. With just 2 days notice, we had something like 20+ people show up. It was great. The energy in Toronto is almost comparable to the valley during my days there in 2000. Mike A./Slave/Scoble/whomever: if you're looking for pure developer-energy/passion, not just money (because that is one spot where Canada is still greatly lacking--sufficient, true, venture capital), outside of the Bay Area... Toronto is doing pretty well relative to its very very small tech pool.

The community events that are popping up, the camps/parties/whatever, are a nice sign of good moral and passion – a great leading indicator, IMHO, of risk taking and innovation. This in turn, and I would expect, to lead to great economic growth for the region.

YouTube == Napster of the late 90s?

From Om:
It reminded me of my post from last month - Google, You Tube and Dark Side of Online Video. I had raised concerns about this then, and only this past week, I saw that NBC was issuing a cease and desist to You Tube over a SNL clip. You Tube (and Google) can hide behind DMCA to some extent, but in the end as one commenter on my previous post had said - this is no different than Napster. Listings (and hosting) of other people’s content can and will always get you in trouble.

My 2 cents:

If anyone figures out what the biz model of YouTube is beyond monetizing traffic resulting from sharing copy written video content, please let me know. ;)

While I think micro-content in video format, copyright or not, are going to stay around... no matter if YouTube or its siblings get shut down. The more interesting thing I think will be a content discovery and delivery service.

Just as the ORIGNAL Napster, and iTunes helped me discovery new content -- cheaply and effecitvely (and in iTunes, a real way of monetizing it). The really compelling thing to a user will be having a system that can help me identify what I'd be interested in (i.e think Tivo), and deliver it to me (i.e. fireant, ipod, etc.)

FounderCamp

So I've been to a bunch of founder/CEO type events.

One thing I've always felt that was lacking is something that was specific to the software startup industry... esp. in Toronto. Back in the day, when I was in the valley, there were always interesting events where I could bounce things off of software entreprenures. Heck, it seemed like all I had to do was show up at any random Starbucks in San Francisco, pick any random three people, and I could have an ad hoc advisory board meeting/focus group. ;)

But what occured to me today at DemoCamp 3.0 was that we could really use something like a cross between a CEO roundtable event that I'm a part of via ACETech (an organization of tech CEOs across Canada that was started out in BC - a little TOO big company/late-stage than I'd like), and the CEO Fusion Center (run by Cindy Gordon, a respected author and consultant in Toronto that runs a consulting pratice called Helix commerce -- CEO Fusion Center is not focused enough on software than I'd like).

Really, all I'd want to do is have a small meeting of like-minded early stage AND software focused founders/entreprenrues /executive-janitors that I could chat. In some cases, I could even see how I could lend some useful advice. More often than not, I think it would be a great way to vent and learn from others. Like I did today at my own little table the the after party at DemoCamp.

Heck, I'll kick it off and hosted it at my offices. I'll pick a date at a later time. There doesn't even need to be an agenda or anything. I've come to chat and get to know with some of one of the Nuvvo guys that are in a simlar stage to quite a few companies that I know, I've know Liela from Idee Inc. for a bit now, and Sutha from AmbientVector for quite sometime. There's some earlier stage guys as well, that have one to two people operations doing things for the first time that I'm sure would benefit somewhat from what we have to discuss and perhaps learn from some of our growing pains. But the idea is to keep the gathering light weight, free/low-cost, and open -- but still be exclusive enough so you don't have service providers showing up to try to pitch founders.

The focus of these "events" would be more about the BUSINESS of software, i.e. things like sales, strategy, financing, HR, etc.

Anyways, if anyone is interesting in helping out... or getting together at our offices for a pizza or something to chat and do an informal "FounderCamp" thing let me know.

As an side note, this is not meant as an altnerative to the idea of MoneyCamp, which is a pitching platform (and sorta a variation of HyperCamp) to get entreprenures and companies out in front of VCs (which I guess in itself is more of an alternative to something like the TAG -- Toronto Angel Group). But rather, its by software company founders, for software company founders.

I'll host something in March, I'll be up front, I'm not willing to do much work other than to provide a meeting spot and offer some drinks and/or food. This is meant to be superlight weight.

Just add a comment below if you are interested. If we get too many folks (I don't know what that number will be), we might have to cut it off or filter (and since its my party/experiment, and I'm footing the rent/drinks/snacks bill, I get to bias towards companies that are more like ours -- early stage, post-seed funding, product oriented, creative/innovative, etc.) ... I dunno, but feedback would be good.

DemoCamp 3.0

It past midnight, and I just got back from DemoCamp 3.0 after-party/dinner.

Actually, a big part of the night was spent in a car talking to David Crow for an hour in the freezing cold... hah! Why am I blogging past midnight? I dunno... just feeling the grove I guess.

When we first started DemoCamp 1.0, as a spin-off of TorCamp (which was of course a spin off of BarCamp, which is a sorta/kinda spinoff of FooCamp), we had 25-30 people show up and we have 4 fun demos.

DemoCamp 2.0 which happened within 2 months of 1.0, had something in the order of 60 people, now at 3.0 just within about a month of 2.0, we had upwards of what might have been 100 attendees!

The great thing about DemoCamp for me, is that its all volunteer run. David Crow has done a great job of getting things rolling, and keeping the grass roots "participants only"/community driven elements great.

Joey and Elliot at Tucows was kind enough to offered to host the event -- and was also quite surprised at the turn out it seems -- having had to change venues three times inside the office to accommodate so many people. If DemoCamp keeps growing, I'm not sure if we're going to find a viable venue. I also talked to someone and brainstormed about the idea of breaking things into two tracks. But then I thought, that would be a bit "heavy" and would start to resemble something more like TorCamp (2.0)

Anyways, its great to see so much vibrancy in the Toronto software developer community. Its been a long time since I've seen so many of us gather together. Having spent a good deal of time in the valley, I have noticed that there is still a real difference between what we see in Toronto/Canada and the Bay Area. The software developers in Toronto all seem to lack the level of marketing/market savyness that I see in valley based companies/ventures/projects.

I met and found a TON of interesting project in Toronto tonight, that I thought, if it were given just the slightest tweaks, and refinements -- and perhaps some strategic help and financing, they would be a magnitude more compelling as companies/ventures. I wonder if its a disconnect thing where the marketers aren't talking to the technology people, or if its because the developer folk in the Bay Area tend to be naturally trained or by osmosis, to be more market driven (vs. tech driven) and market savvy.

Maybe its just an illusion. Perhaps its just that the Bay Area has more critical mass, so there tends to be more success stories, or innovative market driven tech stories that come out from the area.

Anyhow, it was very refreshing to get this feeling of resurgence in new ideas and products that are coming on to the market. Perhaps the thing we need is to facilitate and help connect the more market savvy founders in the area to more tech savvy founders to help each other out. In fact, I think facilitated two transactions/introductions today that may have a positive impact for two different organizations just tonight. But perhaps we need more structures/focus events around this issue. I'll make another posting about a rough idea I've had in my next blog.