Can anyone recommend a good alternative to Sitemeter? They’ve been having “major internal system problems” since last week, and while we’re already using Google Analytics at RCRD LBL, I like the real-time stats offered by Sitemeter so had been using both up until this weekend.
I suppose it’s not a secret that we’re launching today, but I’m still pretty damn excited to be finally taking the wraps off of my latest site, RCRD LBL. We just went live a few moments ago, head on over!
The new Downtown offices are coming soon. RCRD LBL itself is coming a bit sooner.
P.S. – Yeah, we’ve let the building’s owners know that they misspelled “Digital”.
Well, now that it’s clear that we won’t be seeing any gPhones until sometime in the 2nd half of 2008, I have a difficult decision to make: what phone will I use for the next 8-12 months until the first Android-powered phones are available? (And that’s assuming that at least one of the first models to go on sale will be one I want to buy.) I’m beyond tired of my Treo 700p, but so far I haven’t found a phone that has quite the right mix of QWERTY keyboard, 3G connectivity, and support for Google’s Java-based Mobile Gmail client. Some of the new BlackBerrys come close, but I don’t love the UI so much, and while I’ve gotten Mobile Gmail working on Windows Mobile, the experience isn’t as seamless or well-integrated as it is on my Treo 700p. I might just keep waiting….
Loving Ubuntu 7.10, but haven’t been able to figure out how to get Bluetooth dial-up networking going on it. Any pointers?
Ryan and I sat in on the GigaOm Show a couple of weeks ago when I was out in SF for the TechCrunch 40. Makes me miss the old days of the Engadget podcast, which we put on hiatus this summer because of how difficult it had become to fit its production into our increasingly hectic schedules.
Almost forgot to mention to that I wrote a little something about the future of the music industry for the Freakonomics blog last week.
I have about a million other things I should be working on this weekend, but I finally fixed up all the links and formatting on the site. (I screwed everything up when I installed a new theme last month). Also added my Twitter feed to the sidebar, though I’ve been really ambivalent about how whether I really want to go there or not. Anyway, no promises — and to be honest, it’s hard to imagine anyone being too disappointed if I fail to keep up with it.
My post over at Engadget yesterday about that forthcoming live-action Robotech movie reminded me about just how much I’d love to replace the blue Alpha fighter I had when I was about 9 or 10 years old. Apparently they’re going for well over a hundred bucks on eBay now.
I figured that at best we’d get a few dozen comments on the site from similarly disgruntled users. Instead readers posted hundreds of comments, almost all agreeing with the letter, most venting a serious amount of frustration with how Palm seemed to have lost its way in recent years. Palm CEO Ed Colligan even posted a response on the Palm’s official blog, acknowledging that he’d read the letter and that it was being passed around to senior management. He said he didn’t agree with everything we’d written, and he didn’t say anything specific about what the company was doing to turn things around, but it was still nice to know that our letter had reached its intended audience. There was something satisfying in that even if Palm never adopts a single suggestion of ours.
Anyway, I thought that’d be about the end of the story, but last night Paul Loeffler from Palm emailed me with some stunning news: that the company was cancelling what had been the imminent launch of the Foleo, a new Linux-based ultralight laptop they were pitching as a Treo companion. Killing off the Foleo was one of the major suggestions we’d had in our letter, not because we thought the ideo of an ultralight, instant-on Linux-based laptop is in and of itself a terrible idea. We just thought that the market for one would be rather limited and that the Foleo was a distraction from Palm’s number one priority, which was to come up with something that could counter the iPhone and be as exciting and game-changing as the original Treo 600 was when it was introduced back in 2003.
A few people sent me congratulatory emails when they heard the news, as if somehow Engadget had been responsible for Palm deciding to hold off on the Foleo. Seems really unlikely to me, my guess is that this was something Palm had been considering for at least a few weeks. It was probably the generally negative reception that the Foleo garnered from exactly the kinds of early adopters they were targeting, combined with a growing realization that they were devoting scarce resources to creating a new platform that would almost by definition have limited appeal, made it the right decision to postpone the Foleo and reintroduce it at some later point as part of the new smartphone platform they’re (supposedly) introducing next year. This isn’t to say that there aren’t people who would have loved a Foleo — I actually like the idea owning an ultraportable web-centric device with a decent keyboard — it’s just that from a business perspective it seems hard to justify the investment necessary.
Without a doubt it was tough to come so close to launching the Foleo only to kill it, but it actually makes me optimistic about Palm’s prospects. It’s companies that refuse to make tough decisions that end up coming out with inferior products and (eventually) going out of business. I’d love to see them return to form and be a force to be reckoned with again. And that means that they better hurry up and get their next-gen smartphones out (and I’m not talking about the Centro). My Treo 700p is clunky and outmoded, and if Google comes out something decent I’m going to find it hard to resist jumping ship.
Joining the Producers Guild of America earlier this year paid off big time last night: Jill and I were able to attend the first US screening of Control, a movie I’ve literally been waiting years to see.
I’m officially back in NYC after about eight weeks of living out of a suitcase. I did a lot of things while I was gone, but apparently updating my blog wasn’t one of them. Over the past nine weeks I,
I’ve been meaning to post something here, but it’s been tough to know where to start. The past two weeks have probably been some of the most tumultuous of my entire life. Two weeks ago I was full of optimism and excitement over my new startup (RCRD LBL), my new role at Engadget (editorial director), and my upcoming trip to the West Coast to visit friends and family, do some wedding planning, and go to FOO Camp. Obviously things took a drastic turn for the worse, but I’m doing my best to deal with everything and just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has called or emailed with their support and condolences. It’s been amazing to hear from so many people, and it’s made getting through this a lot easier.
