Thom Allen Weblog

Ever wish while you were exercising you could be somewhere other than your living room, bedroom or gym? Starling Fitness has the answer. Laura Moncur, the creative brains behind Starling Fitness, has come up with a great way for you to exercise in one place but feel like you're in another. Laura actually takes you on a walk with her digital video camera. Shows you all the great sites and locations in a city, like Moab, Utah, or The Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas.

There are only a few locations at the moment but I know she has many more planned. The price is right, and these videos will help you take your mind off the mundane or boring surroundings.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Utah Geek Dinner for April

Hey everyone we are having the monthly Geek Dinner at Applebees in Draper this week, Thursday April 27th @ 6PM. All are welcome. Get the details here.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Utah Tech Spotlight featuring MediaPort

Today's meet-up of the Utah Tech Spotlight featured local company MediaPort. Held on the upper floor of the Bohemian, drinks food and fun were had by all. The featured company MediaPort provides a kiosk based digital media delivery system. You can purchase and download your media to any mobile device or your purchase can be saved on a CD. According to the presenter, sorry I can't remember his name, MediaPorts digital media costs about 38% less than what you can buy at Wal-Mart. I assumed he meant less than physical disks. It's hard to get much less than $0.88 per track.

As with any digital media discussion DRM was a topic discussed. It seems the DRM is delayed; meaning you can download the media to your device and immediately start using it, but once you sync to a PC the DRM is written to the local disk. Unfortunately they don't support any Apple products. Not their fault of course, but does eliminate 100 million portable music devices. If they could work out a deal with Apple they would have an exploding business.

Some of the people I recall seeing at the meet-up were Jason Alba, Matthew Reinbold, Steve Spencer, a few more from Twelve Horses, several from Media Port, a guy from a company called BounceBase.com, sounded interesting. I also met another young guy whose company is BlastHosting.

Here is a link to a few pics (sorry the quality sucks, next time I'm using the digital cam not the phone).

Thanks again to Steve Spencer of Twelve Horses for putting this together and the other sponsors, UTC and EO.

NASCAR to display Virginia Tech logo on cars

According to a post on Planet Blacksburg, NASCAR officials have been given permission to place a VT logo on its cars for the next three races at Phoenix, Talladega and Richmond. I think this is pretty cool.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Mowser = Mobile Browser

4 Comments so far. What's your opinion?

I don't want to jump on the Mowser.com band wagon just yet. I've only discovered the site and have been doing some spelunking with it. One of the reasons I am excited to see this project is because of Russell Beattie. I followed Russ for a long time as a blogger on Mobile technology. No else even came close. I was sad to see him go. But excited to see that he has finally gotten something going in the space he loves.

Quickly Mowser.com basically makes a website readable in a mobile browser. Gee, just the other day I was complaining that browsing websites with Mobile Internet Explorer on my MDA sucked. Well, this is supposed to be the solution to that problem. I'm browsing as I type this. From what I can tell it strips out your template CSS and graphics and uses a Mowser version. The documentation states that you can include a CSS file in your templates header that will be used instead of the Mowser default. That's pretty cool.

I tried laura.moncur.org, digitalthom.com, chrisbrogan.com and vergenewmedia.com. Everything worked fine. I really wanted to see how vergenewmedia.com responded since it has a lot of video embedded in blog posts. I clicked on a couple of the videos but none of them worked probably a limitation of my MDA.

All in all if you are looking to get content on your mobile via a web browser (no matter which one) Mowser is looking to have a lot of potential. I'll continue to follow up on this great technology.

ScreenCast Demo

Catch 22 Worst LOST Episode ever!

I'll say it. Many of you are thinking it. The April 18th, 2007 episode of LOST, Catch 22, was the worst episode I've watched. It was pointless, meaningless, had no substance, had no value, didn't move the story along, introduced a new character (I thought we were past that) and just didn't capture my attention. It was boring. And I hated it.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Will you accept mobile advertising?

Advertisers are ready, and once the storm gets rolling, that thing in your hand, cell phone/PDA/CrackBerry, will be the largest target audience since the advent of TV. Billions of users. Even those that don't have TV probably have a cell phone. Advertisers know this, and they are ready to start sending out en-mass.

My thought is this. If I get a few SMS ad messages, I can delete as easily as spam. But if it's something more than that, like an app the carrier installs on my phone, then I have a problem. Or lets say a 10 second ad before your call is connected, that would be so bad I would throw away my cell phone.

CrunchGear talked about GPS advertising. It sort of reminded me of a SciFi show I once saw (can't remember the name), that was playing ads on billboards based on who you were, even using your name in the ad, as the person walked down the street. It was a preview of things to come.

While I believe in a free market, I don't believe in advertisers having access to my mobile just because they can. I knew a guy once who was siphoning satellite with some DIY home brewed receiver. He was able to get all the channels free. He said as long as I have to watch pay channels with ads then I'll watch them for free. Not sure where he is with all that but I can understand his frustration. It's part of the reason I hate to read magazines.

Google adds Charts to Docs and Spreadsheets

I'm an avid user of Google's Docs and Spreadsheets application. There have been some limitations, like 100 rows when pasting, but that too has been fixed. One thing lacking in the Spreadsheet tool was graphs, but no more. I think Google will continue to add more features to this application. I still wish they would get their naming convetions straight.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Today In Sports History Podcast

Hey everyone, please take a few minutes and check out Mark's new podcast Today In Sports History. Good luck Mark.

My hack for no attachments in GMail

Because I can't send attachments via GMail, I decided to try MMS. On my phone I can send an attachment of 300K or less to an email address.

So, I send the pic to my GMail account, then I can forward or download the attachment on another computer. Sick and wrong, but it works.

GMail on a mobile sucks, sorta

It's like day 7 now of trying to use my mobile for all of my communication. Email is working ok, but I tried to use GMail via the web, and disappointingly there is no attachment feature. So how am I supposed to send an email with an attachment via the web interface? I can't.

So I hopped on over to Yahoo! Mobile and they have the same problem. No attachments from their mobile web interface. What's up with that? I'll have to do some more research on why you can't send attachments.

What is your dream role?

1 Comment so far. What's your opinion?

Chris Brogan is someone I discovered through Twitter; he's a hoot. If you haven't signed up with Twitter yet, it's fast and easy, and I highly recommend it. On occasion Chris sends out little quips like this:

chrisbrogan If you changed jobs today, what would your dream role be? Are you working towards making that shift?

This is a really good one. It got me thinking if I'm doing that. If things changed today would they be what I wanted? Thanks for asking Chris. What are your comments? Are you willing to share?

Saturday, April 14, 2007

The Jazz Show #24

Visit the website, jazz.thepodcastnetwork.com or stream it below.

[audio:http://jazz.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_thejazzshow_20070414_24.mp3]

iPod takes one for the team in Iraq

This is a very interesting story. A soldier stationed in Iraq found his iPod had taken a round. It could have easily been him. I found the story here. Please read it and the original story on duggmirror.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Does your website support mobile bowsers?

I complained all day that a majority of websites just didn't work with a mobile browser, and mine was one of them. So I found a great Wordpress plug-in from Alex King called Wordpress Mobile Edition. It's worth the buck Alex wants (including all his other great plug-ins). Now when you visit my blog with a mobile browser it's readable. Thanks Alex.

Browsing on a mobile device sucks

1 Comment so far. What's your opinion?

So far my biggest complaint about my mobile device is browsing the Internet. It sucks. Few if any sites detect a mobile browser but even more frustrating is that the mobile browser can't do it for me.

I'm using the default Windows Explorer hack for Windows Mobile 5. I'm going to download a few browsers and try them out. If you can suggest something please do.

Can I be all mobile?

I like my laptop. It has all the functionality I want. But its not something I can just push on and start working. And of course I realize the functionality is quite different, but I wonder how affective I can be if all my documents, files, contacts and calendars, and a phone on my T-Mobile MDA, using nothing else?

So that is my challenge. The only other device I will use is my video iPod.

Still pushing for Seth Godin in Utah

OK, so there are a number of people who have pledged their support to get Seth Godin to come to Utah. Thank you very much. But there is a lot of work that still needs to be done. We have to have serious momentum (i.e. pledges of support) by Monday or we may lose our projected date of May 24th for Seth's visit.

I've talked to many of you about Seth in the past. Some of you know who he is and others don't. Please take the time to learn a little more about Seth. He's one of the most incredible writers/speakers/marketers I've come across.

You may also think the cost of the engagement is a little steep. Normally I would agree; however Seth is throwing in 5 copies of his latest book with the purchase of a ticket.

I also recognize there are many who think this is a bad idea, that he's not worth the money or that it's a marketing ploy. Some of that may be true, but it doesn't diminish the value of seeing Seth live. You will now be able to share Seths knowledge with others. Giving away the copies of his books will be welcomed by everyone that receives one.

So please, you won't be disappointed. Get over to pledge your support. If you would like to know more, click here and read the message from Phil Burns. Thanks.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Pushing to get Seth Godin in Utah

There is a drive to get Seth Godin to come to Salt lake City, Utah. If you are in Salt Lake regardless of your business background you need to be there, Seth always has something exceptional to say. If you don't know who Seth Godin is, please visit his website and then get some of his books. One of my favorites is Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. He has great names for his books.

Phil Burns started the push, and there is a pledge page to show your support. We need 50 people to commit before he will come. We need you. Invite all your friends to pledge.

Final post on ConventionNext

Well this will wrap up my posts on ConventionNext. It was pretty neat. Great concept, great idea. It was a small window, would have been nice to have more time, but I'm sure in the future there will be.

I hope everyone takes some time to review the video of the show today. Get involved. Help Politic2.0 build an even better system in the future.

I'm sure there are lot more people invloved, but I really want to thank Phil Burns for brining this event to my attention and wish him and his company, TagJungle success.

Third post on ConventionNext

Ok, video feed back up, I'm sure I missed a lot. Trying to get reoriented with the live aspect of this thing. There are a lot more questions. People are starting to add comments outside of the Congressman. They are chatting with each other.

That brings me to a quick observation. Twitter seems to be facilitating some of the action. I've been tweeting with some at the live facility (a bad morning didn't allow me to make it), but someone is asking if Cannon even knows what Twitter is? His response is no. Anyway, Twitter could have given blow by blow accounts of what was taking place. It's an incredible opportunity. I'm sure as things heat up on the political front services like Twitter will start to take on a larger role.

Now my questions is being asked. The moderator thinks its a great question (so do I). Listening to the answer...

Wow, he didn't get my question, posting a follow-up. There are a lot of other questions regarding this same topic being asked at the live venue.

Basically Cannons answer was the laws need to be changed to reflect reality. So my follow up question was, "should the economy dictate when laws are broken?". His response was no. Again, he didn't mention his bill about immigrant workers. I found that funny.

What I took from his answer was we need to amend our laws to allow for immigrant workers. He then talked about fining those who are here illegally; but most don't make enough, and that wouldn't deter anyone. We deport them and they still come back.

Another person at the live venue asked why we are required to have a Social Security Card and a Driver License but immigrant workers aren't. At least that's what I think he asked. Cannons answer was the Social Security card is sort of a National ID program. He didn't really answer the question.

Moving on to another question; there are a lot in the queue now. There is a flurry of activity in the comments area. The web site seems to be handling the load ok, other than the video glitch everything seems to work great. On confusion I'm having is the use of comments. I see them, and I see where to enter comments, but it looks like everyone is using comments to have their own discussion. I would recommend a chat service or something like a forum. I don't know, thinking off the cuff here.

Second post on ConventionNext

1 Comment so far. What's your opinion?

After listening to a few of the questions, it's obvious the platform is going to be a success. There are some initial problems, like running around the room with a mic instead of having two so the people live can have their own.

I'm not a big Chris Cannon fan. I've never thought he has done a whole lot for the state of Utah. He answers like a politician though. I'm sure it can't be easy to throw yourself into a room of people taking shots at your policies and voting record.

Oh look, Pete Ashdown is in the room. Hey Pete! Pete ran against Senator Orin Hatch. It was a valiant effort. I voted for Pete. I voted for him because I think we need some new blood. I think Hatch has been in there long enough. I don't even know what Hatch does. He doesn't even have to work at his job any more.

The question at hand is Disabled American Veterans and the Walter Reed Army Hospital that was recently under fire for poor conditions. Cannon is accused of having a poor record when it comes to Military issues. He claims he doesn't and that you can hire anyone to give a poor performance review. He does have a point, but side steps the real question, what are you going to do about it?

Well, my video feed just tanked. I guess I'll end this post now and hope it comes back online soon.

First post on ConventionNext

Just getting started, logging into the website (conventionnext.politic20.com). There are a lot more questions now than there were at 11PM last night.

The really cool thing about this website and the questions that should be asked on the guest, in this case Congressman Chris Cannon from Utah's 3rd District, are ranked similar to Digg. So, a question is posted, everyone votes on it, and the ranking can go up showing the level of importance.

After looking at the questions, I can see there is a level of detail being asked for and I'm just not sure it will happen. With the amount of time available, it seems like we will only get superficial answers.

My question seems to be getting some good votes, hopefully the Congressman will have an opportunity to respond to it. Oh, the question, "how does giving illegal aliens be given a special exemption benefit our country?". It will be fun to see the response.

Ok, questions are starting, mines not first, but I'll end for now and follow up.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

My participation in ConventionNext

I have the opportunity to participate in a a first of its kind political event on Wednesday April 11th, 2007, called ConventionNext. You can read all the information about the event here.

I don't really know what to expect. I'm going in with my eyes open and will look at it as an opportunity to meet other bloggers who are interested in the political arena.

One of the actions of this gathering will be the real time blog posts by attendees on the topics being discussed. I will probably have an elevated number of posts tomorrow which may be politically centered. It will be the first time I have shown my political views in this forum.

This should be an interesting event and I appreciate the opportunity to participate. Thanks to Phil Burns and those at Politic2.0.

Monday, April 9, 2007

The benefits of networking; will you tell me again?

4 Comments so far. What's your opinion?

First let me start out by saying this is a little off topic for me, but I've wanted to write on it for a while. Personal networking. It's something I've used for years. Here is my take on personal networks, branding and all the you/me/we mantra that has been floating around.

I've been building my network of people and companies since 1988. Yes, I was building a network of people since before there was even a name for it. While I was in the service I found out that at times it was who you knew rather than who you were. I understood that if I wanted something I had to know the right people and they had to know me. So I started making note of the key players; what they liked, what they disliked, who could be trusted and who couldn't.

Once I got out of the military the technique stayed with me as I started to build may career. That network has served me well as I moved up the ladder in the technology field. But this is where the story becomes frustrating for me.

For all of you who are experts at social networking, what's the problem here? If you are steadfast in keeping your network up to date and in tune, why does this happen?

When I call you or we meet, and I casually ask for your business and you tell me it's not the right time or maybe down the road; to then find out you actually used a competitor when you needed to make a purchase, did you forget about me? Were you embarrassed? Did you think I would gouge you? Did you think I lacked the proper skills? The most common excuse is "oh yeah, I forgot!" It's even worse when it's a family member or close friend.

So how do we eliminate this problem? When someone thinks "I need to buy a home", or "I need to buy a car", or "I need to buy xxx", what has HAD to happen in order for the person in your network to pick up the phone and call YOU instead of someone else? Do we need tools, and if so what kinds? Do we need more face to face contact? Can it depend on your product or service? Can a network cultivated while engaged in one profession be used after engaging in a new profession?

I am conducing research with this post. I want to send a link out inviting several "players" to give me their answers. What are your thoughts? Have you truly had success networking? Here is a link to a post on JibberJobber about a similar subject. The comments of this post are pretty positive about networking. I don't want you to get the wrong idea, I think networking has huge advantages over not networking. But there are some fundamental problems in what is happening and I want to know what it is.

Here are a few sites that discuss this topic often; I hope they respond and share their thoughts.

JibberJobber

Matt's Idea Blog

Pamela Sim

Business Pundit

Let me hear what you have to say. Next up: Personal Branding.

The Dell Axim has seen its last day

Engadget is reporting that Dell has removed links for its Axim series PDA. I admit, I've owned two models, the x5 and x51v. Both were great. The x51v was a monster amongst its competitors. If the x51v would have had a smart phone I would never have given it up. So long Axim. What will the the AximSite do?

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

JibberJobber upgrade promotion

Hey guys, I forgot to post this on Monday, but better late than never. Jason Alba has a promotion on his site JibberJobber.com where you can get an upgrade to a lifetime Premium membership this week only. Please take some time to visit JibberJobber.com and take advantage of the great offer.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

See The Bourne Ultimatum trailer

I try not to judge movies that are based on books because I know how difficult the transition is, and I also know a movie is for a different audience. That said I'm a huge Bourne Identity fan. I'm excited to see a trailer for the 3rd and final installment of the series, The Bourne Ultimatum. Can't wait for August 3rd, 2007.

Microsoft now hiring English Majors

Looking at this little ad on MSN Messenger, I think Microsoft needs to consider hiring someone who knows English grammer.

Monday, April 2, 2007

Long Live DRM Free Media

I want it. I want DRM Free Media. Why? Probably not for the reason you may think. Its not because I want there to be wide spread pirating; that already happens. I want it because it will push media companies out of the plastic age and into the mobile age.

Here's the deal. Few people buy CDa anymore. The reduction in CD sales isn't all pirating. It also has to do with the fact you can buy just about any type of media, be it music or video, digitally and put it on your mobile media device. I mean come on, Verizon and Cingular have basically adopted a marketing plan that says "buy our cellular phone media device, download content from us, and you'll never be without it." Digital media, on the go, anywhere, anytime. You may not like that, but it's reality.

I'm not going to write something that says "if media companies stopped selling their products on disc, the world would be a better place." because it won't be. Why doesn't anyone care about VHS piracy? Because no one watches VHS anymore? Yet companies still produce movies on VHS. Why aren't major record labels trying to keep independents from distributing electronic versions of their albums DRM free instead of on disc?

There has to be a better way; and that way is to increase the actual value of music beyond the song. Here is a thought; HP practically gives away their color laser printers, but charges 3 times the printer cost for toner replacements. They know if you buy a printer, you will need to replace the toner, more often than the printer. How can labels, artists and fans take advantage of that business model? Here's another thought; maybe the song itself has become a commodity. Actors who are smart take a smaller upfront payment for making a moving in exchange for sales of licensed items. If they want more, provide more. I'm not saying this is the answer, but thinking in terms of beyond the song are what I think will push the media industry to the next evolution.

[updated: great article from Engadget here.]

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Album Art Used To Rock