NASA photo analyst says Bush wore a device during the first debate

Dr. Robert M. Nelson, senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, analyzed pictures of George W. Bush from the first presidential debate much like he would analyze photographs from Mars or Titan to determine surface features. After enhancement Nelson is confident Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate “consistent with the appearance of an electronic device worn in that manner.”

In fact, it’s how we measure the depths of the craters on the moon or on Mars. We look at the angle of the light and the length of shadow they leave. In this case, that’s clearly a crater that’s under the horizontal line — it’s clearly a rim of a bulge protruding upward, one due to forces pushing it up from beneath.

Technorati open house

Tonight was the Technorati open house at their new offices near SBC Park. The event was catered and drew a large crowd. You can check out pictures from the event. There were many new Technorati employees I had not seen before, including Jason DeFillipo, who is currently working as a contractor for Technorati’s new search functions.

That’s right, Technorati is not just phrase search any more. They have new boolean features and will show search results from not just the last week. The new features should be announced any day now. It will be interesting to see how their servers handle the new load.

Feedster Hacks

Steven M. Cohen just launched Feedster Hacks to track tools and tricks using Feedster. It looks like the hacks site is hosted by Feedster although the site description makes it seem like a fan site with approval.

Feedster Hacks running off a copy of Movable Type 3.1b given out in August. The current version of Movable Type is 3.121. Join the Six Apart Professional Network for a free five author license.

Obviously not playing favorites with weblog platforms, Feedster uses the following software throughout its weblogs.

There may be more that I am missing. The Feedster Terms of Service is a TypePad entry! It seems to make more sense to consolidate all of these Feedster weblogs into one platform for better maintenance. WordPress installations are as cheap as $4!

Update: Scott Johnson of Feedster responds. Given the business relationship with Six Apart I still think Feedster should upgrade their install to the latest version and I will even help them get setup correctly if they are interested.

Morgan Stanley Syndication report

I just finished reading the Morgan Stanley report on news syndication from analysts Mary Meeker and Brian Pitz. The report focuses a lot on Yahoo!’s moves into supporting RSS throughout the site, and what Yahoo!’s move to syndication means for publishers. Overall a good paper with busness arguements from a business-oriented source. Some interesting snippets from the 15-page report:

While Google’s search engine and advertising tools set the pace for new ways of searching information, we believe that Yahoo! may be setting the pace for new ways of serving information.

Bold statement, but no other major player has embraced the technology. No mention of Yahoo!’s Korea weblogging tool interestingly enough.

[W]hile desktop applications like NetNewsWire and NewsGator provide powerful tools for organizing and reading RSS feeds, a universally available platform such as My Yahoo! provides for greater portability from computer to computer or from computer to other devices, without the need to deal with locally saved profiles. There will more likely be a market for both, but for syndicated content to overcome a “techie” stigma and reach the mainstream, it will most likely do so via the Web. Moreover, RSS technology may not necessarily be the future standard for syndication; simply, we feel that RSS has become shorthand for syndication, in the same way that MP3 was shorthand for digital audio for the longest time.

I do not agree with the first statement. Desktop aggregators are working on sychronization between computers as well as Web-based services. NewsGator, one of the companies mentioned, is a good example of a company that plays in both worlds. Safari RSS is a desktop tool that will overcome the “techie stigma.” I like the acknowledgement of RSS as “shorthand for syndication” and not a reference to an ecosystem that can only exist with RSS as the only syndication standard.

In our model, Yahoo! potentially serves as an “agnostic” Associated Press, collecting freelance pieces from the Web, and distributes a portion of revenue generated by advertising in each one of its syndicated papers, meaning each of those personal syndicated feeds that users set up. It is not unlike Google’s AdSense for Content platform, but in this case the entire service is done within the confines of a single site.

Wow. Seems like a big undertaking and definitely something that is on FeedBurner‘s radar but I never thought of Yahoo! getting into the game through Overture. Tie your feeds to your Yahoo! ID and you have a system ready to go. I still think the best way to add feeds to a feed reader is through alternate link parsing. I do not want to play favorites by adding a button for users to add the feed to My Yahoo!, NewsGator, FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, etc. I have defined where the feeds can be found and technology can step in to connect the two together.

How To Run Your Own Software Business presentation

Oliver Breidenbach, Steve Dekorte, Steve Gehrman, Will Shipley, Brent Simmons, and Dan Wood participated in a panel discussion about how to run your own software business. Below is my summary. I also have audio of the entire session (44.1 MB MP3, 1:36:48) except for mentions of Omnigroup lawsuits that were removed at the request of Will Shipley.

Time to market varied for different software vendors. It took Dan 6 months to develop Watson. It took Brent 10 months to develop NetNewsWire including learning Cocoa. It took Oliver 3 weeks to develop his first product and receive his first payment.

The panel agreed that software with a demo period worked well as a way to introduce their product to new users. Brent likes having a free version of his software with stripped down features; he views it as a good marketing tool for the paid version and people might not have the money to pay for the full featured application. Shrinkwrapped software for a retail environment is currently a backwards industry in the United States that does not favor independent publishers. There are some companies called aggregators that represent many smaller developers to large distributors, but you pay a heavy price.

Pricing will always be wrong if you listen to the feedback. Although you think it is stupid to charge $19.95 for something, it does have a psychological advantage over a price of $20. $19.95 was seen as a minimum “serious” cost.

Know the core values of your application and stick to them when faced with feature requests. You do not have to be everything to everyone, nor should you be.

Lots of talk about legal issues from users or other companies as well as licensing issues and the crackers that crack them. Some funny stories but overall they did not seem essential to creating a software business. Dan mentioned that a lost registration key is his biggest support problem for Watson.

The preferred method of payment is PayPal. Quick and easy for buyers already setup in the system and the software business receives an e-mail for each sale. Japan was mentioned as a key market and you should at least develop an English and Japanese version of your software.

The session ended with each panelist answering what they wish someone had told them before they got into their software business. Dan wishes he had pushed his lawyers to include a clause that would allow him to take back Watson if Sun does not do anything with the software over a certain period of time. Other panelists had no idea the amount of long hours spent on their new endeavors. Don’t always listen to your customers. “Just because you bought my software does not make you an expert.” -Will Shipley

Mac OS X Innovators

Delicious Library

Delicious Library received first place in the Mac OS X Innovators contest announced today. I have seen the software for months, but I got to play around with the software in-person today, and hear about the product’s features from William Jon Shipley and Mike Matas.

I have been waiting for this type of software for a long time. I am the type of user to update things I own in my Amazon account, rate them, and even leave a small description if anyone is interested in my collection. Now I will have the same information on a local store, using the same graphics and information available on Amazon.

Delicious Library lets you catalog your books, movies, music and video games. It is fully integrated with Amazon, right down to one-click ordering and selling your used items. It is also integrated with IMDB for more information on artists, writers, and directors. You can track items you lend out to friends and keep track of all items in iCal if you would like to set a due date. It will cost $40 and it will be out on November 8. Delicious Monster not only makes money off each piece of software sold, they also pick up affiliate fees for all your Amazon activity generated through the application.

One month out of the six months of development was spent on the bar code scanner software that works with iSight (FireWire video) recognition as well as wired and Bluetooth barcode scanners.

There is no support for tracking your iTunes albums in the music catalog and you cannot share your library as HTML but Will mentioned those are the two most requested features for a future release.

If you ever have to let users play with your product it is always nice to have a 30-inch Apple Cinema Display hooked up to a dual-processor G5.

I will probably buy the software the day it comes out and tinker with it to track my collections.

Sam Levin on messaging and branding

Sam Levin just gave a presentation titled “Messaging & Branding; After the Product is Developed, What’s Next?” at the O’Reilly Mac OS X conference in Santa Clara. Below are quick notes from the session. I also recorded the session (21.1 MB MP3, 46:28).

There are many Apple resources for developers and partners to tap into.

Marketing 101:

  • 20-25% of your total budget should be devoted to marketing.
  • Data sheet. Example on Sam’s iDisk.
  • Press releases, targeting good press channels.
  • Editorial/reviews/awards. Put review directly into Web site and product literature. Sam has an Excel workbook of contacts for Mac product reviews.
  • Viral marketing through online affinity groups such as specialty news sites and user groups.
  • Cross marketing opportunities. License, co-market, channel bundling.

Delphi XM MiFi satellite radio

Delphi XM MiFi

Delphi announced XM MiFi, the first portable XM satellite radio. It will be out in December and cost $350. Five hours of batter, five hours of audio storage, six-line LCD, sports score ticker, clock, and alarm.

$350 is steep, especially compared to the $125 I paid for my Roady2. The bundled accessory kit included with the MiFi is pretty extensive. The home and car kits usually cost $40 each, the remote control is a $20 accessory, and case and clip cost about $20 as well.