blackberry check-in with 2-D barcode.

everyday celebrity
Originally uploaded by benbarren

Now this would be cool - Check in with your Blackberry although I'm wondering if my Blackberry 8800 supports 2-D barcode technology ? via Blackberry Cool : "The customer enters information such as their name, departure city and their Aeroplan number, booking reference or credit card number and then enters their mobile number to receive the pass if their device supports 2-D barcode technology."

"The amount of paper, email, & faxes i have exchanged to get these deals done is FKING MIND-BOGGLING."

sunday 5pm
Originally uploaded by benbarren

While watching Ch7's hideous coverage of the Brownlow (the bruce-schwartz-ricky trifecta with demetriou on voice over is awful) I've been reading Dave McClure's hilarious and accurate post on why when you raise money, you need to give some to the lawyers so they can afford the triplicate copies of documentation you need to circulate. Google docs anyone ? There must be some way to sign documents in a "binding" way electronically ? Well hopefully at least in the future...

Master of 500 Hats : "Over the past 3-4 months, i've made a few small investments in several startups and become an advisor to a few others. The amount of paper, email, & faxes i have exchanged to get these deals done is FUCKING MIND-BOGGLING. Jesus Christ people... aren't we in the 21st century? Don't we all use the web & online transactions for everything? Aren't you supposed to be ADVISORS to startups that make lives simpler & use the INTARWEB to get rid of all the paper, delay, & complexity we HATE LIKE THE PLAGUE?!? Or did you all grow up with Ted Stevens or something?"

"..today they called to let us know that they had raised another $30m..."

saturday 10am
Originally uploaded by benbarren

Wow, real estate innovator Zillow has topped up its funding with another $30m, bringing total to $87M. Talking of Real Estate 2.0 it would be nice if even 1/10th of this was spent locally doing some innovative things in the space (well not counting MyHome which is has your typical classifieds featureset : but including Streetadvisor who are doing some kewl ancillary things, even if they dont have real estate listings per se)

With all this activity going on in the 2.0 finance space (mint, wesabe etc) I wonder when such approaches will be taken in other verticals. Will Zillow become the hunted as even more focused players helping the home buyer arise, or maybe they have enough money to build and buy ?

Om a few days ago on Zillow : "Well, today they called to let us know that they had raised another $30 million, bringing the total to $87 million."

"Hello Adam, this is Carl Williams buddy....give us a call..."

White Delight
Originally uploaded by modelux.com

So I'd tweetr-bloggd that I read Big Shots : the Chilling inside story of Carl Williams and the Gangland Wars, while in Sydney under a fortnight ago. The author Adam Shand emailed me and said Thanks. I said let's rope in The Cam and do a podcast. So we did. It was a blast.

The blog.pod.videosphere needs the Adams of this world : The skill of a seasoned pro, wordsmith, passion for "the issues" of the day; That in mainstream media get their flavour sucked out and vanilla-ised. It's the difference between meat at a quality butcher versus that crap they serve at the supermarket. (whose suppliers get drawn into the podcast at one point)

Adam's a great storyteller first and foremost. I was most interested in (his) story behind the story. The whole first person participant vs third party observer. And whether he crossed the line while hanging out with the Williams + Carlton Crews. Decide for yourself. Get your own local Sopranos and Listen here on TPN.

Anyone Lost Their Teeth Johnnie07 ?

apres meth
Originally uploaded by benbarren

Either these teeth on Edithvale beach an hour ago were left by a concerned citizen for the "natural owner" or there is another postmodern performance artist who has placed these chumpers next to a bin which is usually full of summer beach rubbish or used for fires over winter. If these are your teeth, get down there quickly to reclaim.

Not that google really know where Edithvale is, from their blog : "It might not be widely known to our friends in the northern hemisphere, but a federal election is due to take place in Australia before the end of the year. Nothing captures the public's attention or stirs emotion quite like an election, however, many of our citizens do not have easy access to electorate information. A recent launch in Sydney of a Google Australian election website helps to remedy this by providing Australian voters with an intimate look at the parties, candidates and election issues."
Gotta get one of these Obama US colour themed Kevin07 Tshirts too, $27 shipped ! Howard could not look more gone. Who says "I quit, but I'll wait a few years to handitover, even though I've said that before, and woops, childoverboard, weapons of mass destruction. Let me stay in the Lodge. Those damn Chaser boys. Now where did u put my teeth Kevin07 it's not funny."

"The ability to garner real CPMs, to sell ads directly, to provide innovative advertiser solutions, all depends on having tens of millions of uniques"

rehab smoke
Originally uploaded by benbarren

I was telling Duncan Riley, that coming from an online advertising background, when setting up the business I'd believed you'd need to be able to sell alot of ads on your website to pay the bills. Hence we wanted to run a blended enterprise/consumer business. (I'm aiming to have alot more time and resources to spend on the consumer side in coming months)

The quote below about needing user/advertiser scale (well the non-acquisition part) from the BuzzTracker founder (just sold to Yahoo), I totally agree with. The problem downunder is even more pronounced with no local blogads-premium type solution. It's either hire a $100K-$200k salesperson or the ultra-low cpm adsense. OK it's Saturday morning here, caffeine time. On the flipside you have blue chip advertisers who want to reach influencers etc. It's like a high school social. Caffeine.

Participate Media : "The decision to sell the business and move to Yahoo! was relatively simple. As anyone playing in the online space understands, online media is all about scale. The ability to garner real CPMs, the ability to sell ads directly, the ability to provide innovative solutions to advertisers, all dependson having tens of millions of unique visitors."

Kite Surfers are Out Today.

friday 430pm
Originally uploaded by benbarren

I've been driving around in blackberryopia finishing off the weeks monster do list (i've achieved as much as i can he tells himself), but the kite surfers are carving it up outside my window.

On a MediaConnect Hunter vs Hunted Valley Vibe

Updated podcasts below : So I spent Saturday in Sydney hoping I'd snag some catchups but ended up reading The Bulletin's Adam Shand's Big Shots book : The inside story of Carl Williams and the gangland wars.

While it was naturally pulpy it rose one level above this by detailing Adam's own almost crossing of the line by making friends with The Williams, and he almost got beaten up at a gangland funeral when Carl wasnt there.

So knocking off the 403 pages made me think when the last book I read to completion was and I have an awful feeling it was before I started my business at the start of 2005. Call it RSS-OCD.

So just as my alarm clock went 6am saturday, so too Sunday was another 6am'er to get to the MediaConnect conference in The Hunter Valley. Ive been surrounded by a beautiful golf course with no clubs. MyFlickr of event here.

I've spoken on two sessions, one being with duncan riley on the Is PR dead meme, how does it reinvent itself; what do we do with press release to breathe some life in it. And th ol'chestnut, should I have a blog? Yes, madame.


Yesterday morning I was on a session called Living Online, with fellow panellists being the new GM of Bebo in ANZ (another sign that social media will be arriving at the ad agencies soon) as well as Head of Community for ebay and Ross Mr Web Two Point Oh Dawson.

There's been talk of social revolutions, blogs being malicious and "not good", 1 gig a sex interwebs, video glasses in the bath, a roman grego with sedgway racing comps, and lots of vendors talking product attributes and vendors. The staff here at Crowne Plaza have been very nice + golf course looks schweet.

So I'm off to do a podcast with Duncan Riley who I've been sharing a 2BR-2BATHrm villa (actually very new + luxed out) and then Ill listen to Mr Entrepreneur of the Year Messrs Cannon Brookes on Enterprise 2.0. Then there will be an 8 hour window to get home via Jetstar and Newcastle Airport to Tullamarine.

I work on the webs is whats theys says :D
My laptop has been dead so Ive been making do with the blackberry.

- Podcast of the Press Release is Dead session I did with Duncan Riley which he recorded.

- (Better Quality) 1 hr Podcast Duncan Riley did of us talking Aussie 2.0 shop for his TPN On The Pod, Podcast.

Nice work Dunc, definitely some ideas here I'm keen to followup on via our Hunter Valley Villa Sessions, there is no doubt the best thing about conferences is meeting people face-face and spending time with those u've known virtually for (almost) years now !

"So, the API which has easily 10 times more traffic than the website, has been really very important to us."

wednesday 830am
Originally uploaded by benbarren

The Twitter (and Facebook) API's really make you think about product development. RRW podcast with Biz Stone from Twitter, quoted saying : "The API has been arguably the most important, or maybe even inarguably, the most important thing we’ve done with Twitter. It has allowed us, first of all, to keep the service very simple and create a simple API so that developers can build on top of our infrastructure and come up with ideas that are way better than our ideas, and build things like Twitterrific, which is just a beautiful elegant way to use Twitter that we wouldn’t have been able to get to, being a very small team. So, the API which has easily 10 times more traffic than the website, has been really very important to us."

Also check out Scobleshow interview (150m daily user views a day WOW! thats rockyou..) with RockYou Facebook developers.

Wiki Full or Free, Goog Give me Jotspot Back.

fathersday 2pm
Originally uploaded by benbarren

So, coz we're agile, and all 2.0 downunder, we like a bit of wiki as much as the next index carder. But the annoyance of the wiki market (since google acquired jotspot which we'd been using and put it into deep google apps.goffice r+d) is the cheap/free products dont work (literally, or u need to be a programmer to use) and u get no customer service, aagh why cant I login.

Or you have to pay a not insubstantial amount : hundreds of dollars a month : and it still doesn't fully satisfy; The way it deals with wireframes, images and attachments, and rules based with what clients can access are starters. Also what was great on jotspot was how you could send emails to a specific page you had created, and these emails would append the page. Jotspot was a deep app that got the little things right. It had a great hiring and CRM app for example so u could manage new new recruits and customer leads.

Scary to think it's in the googleplex and the last year may have been spent making it a finetuned 700hp goffice, or at least a functioning wiki that is free/bundle with google premium apps. (we already pay the $50 a year to google which beats the $200 a month alot of wikis want these days)

So for once, I really cant wait for Google (to rerelease) a product, Jotspot, or Google Wiki as they're going to call it. If they've also been doing front end feature extension as well as back end integration, combined into its gmail/.cal/.doc/.xls offerings : It really will be pretty schweet. It was already a totally kickass product. Hope it's all mobile blackberry compliant.

Google System : "Another Google acquisition, JotSpot, could also be integrated into Google Docs. JotSpot's help center is already hosted at google.com, the same as JotSpot's discussion board. In January, JotSpot launched "the last JotSpot version produced before the migration [to Google's infrastructure] occurs", while in July, Dave Girouard announced that JotSpot will be a part of Google Apps. After all, if Google launched Docs & Spreadsheets at the Office 2.0 Conference, it makes sense to showcase its evolution there.Labels: "

"Finding information is much more important to most people than horoscopes, stock quotes or a whole range of other things.."

the zodiac
Originally uploaded by benbarren

Full.txt of that pre-IPO Google founder Playboy interview : "BRIN: Ironically, toward the end of the 1990s most of the portals started as search engines. Yahoo was the exception, but Excite, Infoseek, HotBot and Lycos began as search engines. They diversified and didn’t take searching as seriously as they should have. Searching was viewed as just another service, one of 100 different services. With 100 services, they assumed they would be 100 times as successful. But they learned that not all services are created equal. Finding information is much more important to most people than horoscopes, stock quotes or a whole range of other things—which all have merit, but searching is substantially more important."

I Look Right Today Out My Window.

saturday 554pm
Originally uploaded by benbarren

This is what I see. A bird, at sunset. Photo taken looking right out my window at 555pm today. (Saturday 'ere)

I Look Left Yesterday Out My Window.

friday 245pm
Originally uploaded by benbarren

This is what I see. Someone surfing Aspendale beach like it's Gunnammatta, gotta say I was tempted to jump in. Photo taken looking left out my window at 245pm Friday.

JobsThis, MyHouse That, PimpDis.

M5engineM3
Originally uploaded by benbarren

I'm having alot of uni flashbacks at moment, being in a mashed head reflective mode from sheer hours and hp applied to a growing business while I wait for the increasingly hard to get resource to start, and allow me to go back to being a "business bullshitter" as I often introduce myself. Another term I've been questioned on using in meetings is "Classifieds".

Those taking a punt on next gen verticals never want to think of operating in the classifieds space, even if their business model is taking a share of the old oft'referred to 'rivers of gold' of classified advertising : retail and private car, property and employment advertisements.

So this 2nd year marketing uni class, was around the definitional difference between "industry" and "market" - industry the prof said deals with supply, the market with demand. Looking at supply and demand in the classifieds space is fascinating as there are 3 levels :

1. Entrenched Offline (often paper) eg Fairfax, News (in aust) Player looking to fight huge reader and advertiser deceleration through online intiatives which themselves are fighting the Entrenched Online players. A small few are avoiding either cost cutting, or fast following online integrated newsroom, and trying to disrupt themselves. (well Rupert is anyway eg Free WSJ .com+ Fox Business Channel + Fox Interactive = Better Newspaper Business)

2. Entrenched Online classified players eg (in aust) Seek, Carsales, Realestate.com.au : Market leading online classified players that have gone public and/or have large/controlling stakes by major media. Being attacked by offline players and newbie startups. ie The New Hunted.

3. 2.0 Hunters - new players looking to take share from the online leaders who due to size and legacy technology have some flanks which can be attacked. In Australia, with seek being the local equivalent of google when it comes to the listed stock market, there is a rash of new employment Co's - many of which havent really evolved the employer or job seeker solution, preferring to concentrate on their radio sponsorships. Meta job search AU players incl recruit.net and the newly minted jseeker.com.au. Then there are the new "we're really cheap/free place your jobs here" such as jobsjobsjobs, jobslive... and a host of others..

Spending alot of working week in this space, I didn't mean to write that much, but check Washingtonpost on this trend and how its playing out in the US : "Online traffic to classified sites, meanwhile, has grown 23 percent, to more than 46 million unique visitors in July, up from about 37 million a year earlier, according to the market research firm ComScore in Reston. Traffic has declined on some sites, among them Yahoo Classifieds, where it fell by 13 percent. But it has grown on some newer sites such as MySpace, where classified listings have jumped 33 percent since their August 2006 debut."

Recruiting.com yesterday on the attempt to replicate Simplyhired and Indeed.com locally which has always been fraught with danger due to oligopoly holding of classifieds ads and ability to simply block meta-search players with robot.txt protocol : "Job Seeker Pty Ltd today announces the availability of their Australia job search engine at JSeeker.com.au. While vertical search engines are quite popular in the States, JSeeker.com.au is one of the few players in Australia market."

And to add one more flavour, here's Yahoo's new original Facebook inspired but remixed stealthy Kickstart offering via Cnet: "Yahoo is looking to change the game with their new social job network, Kickstart. They are currently conducting research surveys among college students to find out what they think of this new service. Yahoo asks this question to the participants, "Wish you had an 'in' to find the job of your dreams?" Kickstart is all about finding that "in."