Josh Dilworth

Perceptions of Google Buzz Over Time Disclosure: Viralheat is a...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:40:00 -0600

Disclosure: Viralheat is a client.

Stealthy Knowmore Loads Up On Talent To Silence The Social Noise Problem

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:36:23 -0600

Stealthy Knowmore Loads Up On Talent To Silence The Social Noise Problem:

Really excited to start showing knowmore to the world. Human-centric design works — it’s not about a tech breakthrough in search of a problem — it’s using tech to solve real needs and pain points.

I love Julian’s take on this — “Do you think that Dean Kamen set out to make a transportation for mall cops?”

The Segway is the great example of a breakthrough that is still looking for a problem to solve…

Disclosure: Knowmore is a client.

The Birth of the Virtual Assistant

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:55:11 -0600

The Birth of the Virtual Assistant:

Siri’s launch is close at hand…

In the near future, anyone who lives a connected lifestyle will be able to delegate their everyday tasks to intelligent virtual assistants that will coordinate, execute and simplify users’ lives.

We will look back on these days and ask ourselves how we ever got by without our trusted assistants, the same way my kids ask in amazement about how we ever got things done before laptops and the Internet.

Disclosure: Siri is a client.

How Conceptual Metaphors are Stunting Web Innovation

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:52:00 -0600

From a guest post last week by Venkatesh Rao:

Consider these terms: page, scroll, file, folder, trash can, bookmark, inbox, email, desktop, library, archive and index. They are all part of the document metaphor, a superset of the “desktop” metaphor. Some elements, such as scroll, desktop and library pre-date the printing press, but all are based on some sort of “marks on paper-like material” reference.

It’s an important point — the tyranny of conceptual metaphors (and in particular, Gutenberg’s shadow) can be quite limiting.

Disclosure: Xerox is a client.

Via Mashable. Disclosure: Viralheat is a client. Disclosure #2:...

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:44:00 -0600

Via Mashable.

Disclosure: Viralheat is a client.

Disclosure #2: Bj Heinley is a badass.

Data and Business -- Mash post, Part Deux

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:31:00 -0600

Data and Business -- Mash post, Part Deux:

Here is the second in the series, which ran today. Feedback is very much appreciated if you have the time to give it.

The gist:

“Our collective data is the byproduct and the artifact of digital life and web living. It is increasingly rich and it is precisely the inner logic according to which we make decisions to buy and sell, act and react. We have, consciously or unconsciously, made data the bonfire, the totem, and the town square.”

I also made a trail of articles that should be useful if you’re interested in exploring these concepts further.

Marketing in 2010: It's All About the Data

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 14:39:47 -0600

Marketing in 2010: It's All About the Data:

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain

That about says it all, hehe.

From my guest post in Mashable today:

In 2010 the very best marketers, PR professionals, and social media consultants will put data at the center of everything they do. For anyone unfamiliar with these concepts, just as with social media, data marketing may seem opaque or intimidating at the beginning. The only way you ever learn is by jumping in headfirst — become a data nerd, because data nerds are changing the world.

Congrats to ChallengePost

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:58:25 -0600

Anyone who knows me also know that I love stuff like this.

Major congrats to our client ChallangePost, which has helped the city of New York bring to fruition an immensely successful open government data program and app-building challenge.

Both the City and the people of New York benefit greatly, and similar programs around the country have been likewise successful. I hope that this is a trend that continues — I can’t think of a better way to foster civic engagement.

And Austin, where the heck are you on all this?

I love this pic of my father.

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:38:00 -0600

I love this pic of my father.

My boilerplate SXSWi hotel recommendations

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:13:00 -0600

‘Tis the season, and it seems that everyone wakes up on 12/1 and realizes that they’re about to get screwed on SXSWi hotels. Which they are, hehe.

First —SXSW isn’t lying to you about the housing desk — it really is great and it really does work. I’d mostly recommend calling them first.

That said, everyone wants “inside intel” of which, in truth, there is very little, but alas! Nearest to the convention center are the downtown versions of:

Hilton ($$$)
- http://www1.hilton.com/en_US/hi/hotel/AUSCVHH-Hilton-Austin-Texas/index.do
Hampton Inn ($$)
- http://hamptoninn.hilton.com/en/hp/hotel/index.jhtml?ctyhocn=AUSDTHX
Mariott ($$)
- http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/auscd-courtyard-austin-downtown-convention-center/

All three are roughly equivalent.

Also in the neighborhood but within walking distance are: LaQuinta ($$), Radisson ($$), Omni ($$$), Four Seasons ($$$$), Intercontinental ($$$$) and the Driskill ($$$$). I’m probably missing a few too.

For some hip + authentic Austin fare (each a $5-7 cab ride away), I’d recommend….

Our good friend BJ’s VerdeCamp ($$):
http://www.verdecamp.com

And the Hotel San Jose ($$):
http://www.sanjosehotel.com/

And the Austin Motel ($$):
http://austinmotel.com/

And the Kimber Modern ($$$):
http://www.kimbermodern.com/

And if you’re looking for something a little more tucked away and neighborhood-y ($10-12 cab ride):

Adams House ($$):
http://www.theadamshouse.com/

Mansion at Judge’s Hill ($$):
http://www.mansionatjudgeshill.com/

And if you have too much money on your hands and want to feel like a rockstar:
http://www.hotelstcecilia.com/

One last recommendation would be UT’s Executive Education Center — it’s on campus, close to downtown, and of excellent quality. Only downside is that it is a little corporate.

Finally, the new W is under construction and they originally claimed that they’d be operational by this week, but they’re not even close and will be lucky if they’re ready by SXSWi. But, it’s conceivably an option…

No matter what, rates are inflated during SXSWi — so be prepared and book as soon as possible — it will get very hard to find a room in 2010.

Hope this helps!

PS — $$ estimates are graded on a curve — ALL hotels during SXSWi are more than any human can afford.

PPS — At least half of the aforementioned venues are likely sold out by the time you read this. Hence why the housing desk is a good first call.

Austinites — what am I missing?

Video

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:19:20 -0600

Photo

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:24:12 -0600

Video

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:10:20 -0600

SXSWi Accelerator Deadline Approaching + Free Application for 5 Lucky Startups....

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:51:00 -0600

I am honored to be part of the incredible Advisory Board for the second annual SXSWi Accelerator. I’m also happy to report that the 2010 event is shaping up most excellently. The application deadline however, is 12/4 and quickly approaching.

SXSWi is as zeitgest-y as it gets — the event literally helps define the “spirt of the age and our society” etymologically speaking. Wheras so many other conferences and events are merely transactional, for one week in Austin the best and brightest convene to celebrate everything that is great about the Web — the vibe is one part geek summer camp, and one part New Year’s Eve.

The opportunity to present and/or launch new technologies at SXSWi is special — it is an audience of peers, of alpha geeks, superusers to-be, of risk-tolerant enthusiasts, trend-setters, cognoscenti and digerati.

The application for the Accelerator runs $150 — and I’ll happily pay the fee for 5 startups — just send me a note explaining why you deserve the money.

And regardless of the entry fee, please consider applying. It’s going to be an outstanding event.

Photo

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:46:37 -0600

Datastreaming, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Stare at Pretty Charts and Graphs Instead

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:26:00 -0600

UPDATE: The WSJ just wrote a very nice in-depth piece on this trend.

NOTE: this post also ended up serving as the conceptual basis for two guest pieces for Mashable, above.

We’ve had heart rate monitors for some time now. We have scales in the bathroom, speedometers (and more recently fuel efficiency measures) in the car, and all manner of timesheets in the workplace. Every day, we gather vast amounts of data about ourselves, and vast amounts of data are gathered for us (and about us). We are in many respects surrounded by gauges and dashboards, tachometers and GPS devices, calorie counters and performance metrics.

More generally, the fields of bio-science, nanotechnology and medical devices have long chronicled the goings-on of our daily lives in the most literal sense, and recent advances have extended these capabilities by an order of magnitude. Homo Erectus may have invented the hammer, but his Alexandrian progeny stumbled upon the astrolabe in 400 AD, and the rest is, so to speak, history. Well, and somewhere along the line that one message went from UCLA to SRI and Doug Englebart did the crazy demo with the wooden block on wheels.

We are in most every way an extremely “measured” society.

Tim Ferris is becoming superhuman by calculatedly measuring and extending his body’s capabilities beyond what is considered normal, much less possible. Companies like 23andMe (despite their recent woes) have come a long way in helping reveal what our DNA may or may not have in store for us, and startups like Fitbit (one of the most promising new endeavors in recent memory) are merging gadgeteering with health data with Web technology to create a new kind of personal data stream.

Incredibly, this is only the beginning. As streams on the Web, both personal and private, proliferate — “datastreaming” — the act of gathering, visualizing, analyzing and publishing personal and private data of any and all kinds — will become a predominant paradigm on the Web — it’s the natural extension of where we are and where we have been headed since the beginning. Whereas lifestreaming by turns consolidates and propagates activity across media with a wavelike pulse (filter and spread, filter and spread, wash, rinse, and repeat), datastreaming captures and extrapolates the actual, measurable, and ultimately more impactful output of that activity — and as such comprises the byproducts and artifacts of digital life and Web living.

Today’s announcement of the Google data dashboard underwhelmed some, but outliers like Factual, WolframAlpha, InfoChimps, Freebase and others prove that painting our world in data is potentially a rather valuable endeavor. Marketing at the data level is only around the corner given how programmable the Web has become. And new kinds of task-oriented apps capitalize on these vast repositories by coupling them with breakthough smarts and UI/UX advances to produce what in some ways feels like alien software sent back to us from 20 years in the future (to quote the good Mr. Flip).

Startups (and academic projects) including Daytum, FlowingData, Mycrocosom, Youtego and Personas all point towards this burgeoning trend. Now, some have been accused of peddling a particularly addictive strain of oversharing, but it’s an unfair critique — Twitter originally asked “what are you doing?” and thusly put the mirror up to society — what are we doing, in fact? Inquiring minds and bots want to know.

As Mike Arrington put it in the comments to this TechCrunch guest post by my friend Kovas Boguta: “I have no idea what it means, but it sure is pretty.” One thing’s for sure — we’re naturally curious and preternaturally drawn to infoporn — see also exhibits B, C and D (there are of course many others).

Is it good or bad? Is datastreaming healthy behavior that produces meaningful insights about ourselves, or is the Web our new vanity desk? I can’t say that I especially care. What’s far more interesting is the once and future generation of Numerati, to use Steve Baker’s term, for whom data mining and data journalism and data-driven application development are logical extensions of an experience of the world that has for longer than we usually acknowledge made data the bonfire, the totem, and the town square.

Photo

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:50:09 -0500

SXSWi 2009 Schwag Analysis

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:33:00 -0500

From Cote:

As I joke with whurley in this very video, it takes me about 9 months to get the (now) annual SXSW Schwag Review video up. As you may recall from last year’s video, I’m joined by Austin tech scenesters Josh Dilworth and Lauren Sell on a quest to size-up the schwag scene at SXSW.

This year the schwag starts out looking poor, but picks up at the end to be pretty enjoyable.

Thanks to everyone who gave us their schwag analysis.

This video is always so fun to make.

How well do you know the top tech press?

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:52:00 -0500

Using our client Smart.fm’s platform, we have created this quiz, which tests facial recognition of top technology press.

Whether you’re a bootstrapped startup or PR pro, knowing these faces can make a world of difference heading into the Fall conference season (TC50, DEMO, Under the Radar, Web 2.0 Expo and Summit, Supernova, etc.)

Three cool things to note – first, the application is called Brainspeed and it is a quizzing application designed to test how much information you know about a given subject. Smart.fm also has a learning mode application called iKnow. If you want to study the top technology press, you can launch iKnow by clicking here.

Second, lists (or, lessons) in Smart.fm are collaborative, so anyone can add content. Our list is by no means comprehensive, and we hope that you’ll help us make it better over time. You can access the list itself here.

Third, right now the system only supports a:b relationships, where each photo matches to a single name. With the next generation of Smart.fm that is launching later this Fall, it will be possible to create richer lists and quizzes, such that we will take the facial recognition foundation, and fold in questions about beats, hometowns, previous employers, etc., so that the system can test knowledge from many different angles at once.

For any of you among us who are especially ambitious, we also want to create a “top technology influencers” list that would include advisors, VC’s, speakers, authors, startup gurus, etc. It dawns on me as I write this that if this list of ours takes off in popularity, the top technology press might encounter an unusually high number of autograph seekers, as it were. If that happens, we’ll have to resort to creating a “Most Annoying PR People Who Must Be Avoided At All Costs” list. Ha!

Please let us know what you think.

P.S. Check out the Facebook application that we released earlier this week, which tests you on how well you know your friends.

Disclosure: Smart.fm is a client.

SXSWi panels, please vote!

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:05:55 -0500

For those of you who haven’t already been checking out the SXSW 2010 panelpicker (which includes Film and Music selections for the first time, alongside Interactive), here is an abridged list of some of my favorites, which I’ll add to over time.

Disclosure: Smart.fm, 80legs, Swingly, Siri and Twine are clients.

Some of the trends we’re seeing across this year’s submissions include:

Big data. And, what people are doing to get it, manage it, scale it, and do really, really cool things with it. In my mind, the bigger the better. Check out this great video with Roger Magoulas of O’Reilly on why big data is important.
Arrival of the Semantic Web. Linked data is becoming a reality, and lots of pople are interested in what’s next. There are a lot of great semweb panels this year. Check out an even more comprehensive list over on Juan Sequada’s blog.
AI and assistants. A shout out here to Siri and what they are doing to make our lives less hectic, but overall automation and the meaningful delegation of tasks (and task-orientation generally) comprise a major theme this year across a variety of panels.
Entrepreneurial topics. Bootstrapping, VC hacks, tips and tricks, lessons learned, community building, etc. — important topics that form the backbone of SXSWi. But whereas last year thjere were about a dozen panels at SXSWi that had to do with surviving and thriving in the downturn, this 2010 crop of submissions has a decidedly more altruistic and cooperative bent.
Advanced geekery. There seems to be a (IMHO much-needed) return to more technical and meaty topics, IP-level innovation, under-the-hood tinkering, etc. This theme is in concert with what we’re seeing overall as Web 2.0 concepts reach maturity — a subsequent return to fundamentals and infrastructure.
The future of learning and education. This is the year that learning and education really break loose, and I fully expect that between now and March we’ll see technological innovation start to meaningfully reshape how we think about learning and learning effectively. It’s also worth noting that the recession has sent scores of people back to school — those fresh eyes and new visions are going to be a big part of the story.

Please, vote for what you want to be heard at SXSWi 2010. It’s a unique opportunity and a big part of what continues to make SXSWi special.