Spill Kit Broom Shovel

Spotify, Soundcloud, and TED Talks

When I run I usually listen to some music on Spotify. Then there are always some new unreleased songs so I switch to Soundcloud for a few of those. Then if it’s a long run and I am getting bored I switch to the TED app and listen to some TED talks.

So I cannot help but wonder why Spotify doesn’t allow artists to upload unreleased tracks directly, like Soundcloud so I can eliminate that step. And then why doesn’t TED distribute their talks through Spotify also? They let users download the talks, why not put them in Spotify and let me add the audio to my playlists?

It’s all about me and making my runs easier! Now make it happen.

Baby Steps

Today I wrote an email in gmail and said “see attached”. Yet I had not attached a file to the email. When I hit send google alerted me to the fact that there was nothing attached.

This seems simple but this is really the first time that I have seen a mainstream tech product start to introduce some simple artificial intelligence into its products. 

I personally thought this was pretty slick, but I am more intrigued by what is to come. The technology is obviously there to help me be smarter and more productive but companies have been reluctant to deploy in the mainstream. 

Excited for what’s to come with this.

Executors vs. idea generators

Some people are great at generating ideas and some people are great at executing on ideas. Rare is the person that can do both.

I was given yet another example of this today with a business interaction that I had. Very smart people drop the ball when you must crossover from an idea to actually following the correct and logical steps to take a plan from idea to finished product. 

I would like to think that I have both of these traits, but who am I to judge. It just never ceases to amaze me when I see poor executors who are very smart and successful people at higher level tasks.

Kids and technology

I got my kid an iPod touch for Christmas. She is 6.

I received many complaints from her grandparents (and mom) that this was too early for this. Why should she be tethered to a device at a young age?  blah blah blah

Since she has received this she has watched about 20 minutes cumulatively of video on the device (which was my worst fear). And she has solved literally almost 100 sudoku puzzles. Played countless letterpress (word match games). Practiced spelling by writing me Kiks and emails. Had many facetime conversations with her grandmother 6 hours away.

Those are all good things in my book.

The reason I fought (with her mom) to get her this is that I want her to understand technology. The younger the better. I don’t want her to play games. I want her to slowly understand all of the things that technology can do for you in this world. It’s a way of thinking that I want to germinate in her brain. It can only help with the way things are headed.

Personally I have seen how the only bright spot in our economy at the moment is the tech sector and the earlier she gets into that mindset the better it will be for her in the long term.

Marketing permission

The idea of paying to avoid being marketed to has taken hold strongly in the app economy: free version has ads, pay version does not.

This is an idea that should retrofit itself into non-tech environments, in my opinion. A few examples…..

Why do I have to have the dealer’s name on the back of my car?

Why must I go through 20 previews when I paid for the movie and/or the DVD?

When I pay Comcast for cable why do I have to watch ads when I trying to browse on demand?

If I were involved strategy at companies that follow these types of practices - jamming ads down paying consumer’s throats - I would be questioning whether this fits in today’s information overload, time constrained society.

Messaging delivery

I am a father of young children. My main fear is not being around to raise my kids. If something happens to me they will be financially fine. But what about all the life lessons that I want to teach them? That is what worries me most.

Lets do a little thought experiment to solve that problem with technology.

What if Facebook implemented a feature where you could draft a message to another user today and have it delivered based on a trigger at some point in the future. For example, what if I wrote a post to my daughter with my thoughts and advice on marriage and have it trigger when her relationship status changes to ‘married’. Theoretically I could pen that post today and it might not get delivered for 20 years which could potentially be 15 years after I get in a fatal car accident. Enough with the morbidity, you get the point.

For me, that kind of functionality is a game changer and one that can be applied in many many different circumstances. While medical technology will never allow us to live forever (thank God) it might be able to allow us to communicate in thoughtful useful ways after we are gone.

If I were a social network I would be thinking about this use case hard. It would certainly create a stickiness for me that would deter network jumping (while still alive, of course).