My next phone

Yesterday afternoon I went to Best Buy, there was a lot of cool stuff there. I like visiting it every so often to drool over the latest gear. Cell phones were disappointing though. I was hoping to see the Motorola Razor, but they didn’t have one. Guess you can only get it from Rogers here in Canada.




I’ve heard that you can sync your outlook via USB on a Razor. I think this is because it runs on Windows Mobile (Here’s a bunch of smart phones that run windows mobile.) I think my next phone will have to have this, seems perfect – all the info I want (no email but that’s ok). The Treo 600 is pretty nice, but I think it’s a little big for an everyday phone. I do like the new Blackberry 7100, although I haven’t seen one in person yet so it’s hard to say how big it is.




I wonder if you could sync your outlook calendar to your phone via a web service. Something like Plaxo connected to your phone. Having a USB sync is alright, having it sync automatically would be way better. I use Plaxo and couldn't find anything about this.

If anyone knows of a service that can sync your phone contacts and calendar via the web let me know.

Where is the Internet headed?

I mentioned in my previous posts about some thoughts I’ve been having around information becoming more important than the destination and where the Internet is headed in general. Well, here it is – let me know what you think.

So where is the Internet headed? Over the last year or so we’ve seen a number of things change. With the coming years things will (obviously) continue to change and evolve. Here’s my take on what the next wave of how we access news and information is going to be:

First we had web sites, check news on each one, time consuming and a hassle to go out and browse web sites – different navs – different structures – takes time to find what you are looking for. Because it’s a hassle to find new sites, you end up only going to the same sites over and over again.

Then we had email newsletters, which looked to be better, but with spam and the amount of email we get they now seem less effective + its a hassle to have to go to each site to sign-up and manage your subscriptions and you always risk the site sharing your email which equals more spam.

Now, with RSS you can get real time headlines from blogs and news sites. You just access the information that you’re looking for, no more navigating to different web sites or having to manage different email subscriptions.

With RSS readers you can set up multiple feeds from different sites and remain completely anonymous. You are not subscribing (in the traditional sense) to a list, just accessing the feed in real time. As content is posted it shows up instantly. You can also set up filters within your reader so that only relevant content is displayed.

Some RSS Readers now have notification options – when content arrives that meets specific filter criteria you can be notified by email, txt, whatever (check out Bloglines Windows Notifer). Today readers are mostly stand-alone apps (Top RSS readers) however RSS is quickly becoming a standard (MS and Apple have stated that their next operating systems will have built-in RSS readers). With this kind of support it seems obvious that RSS will soon be a standard method for distributing content in all channels and applications (desktop, portals, outlook, etc.).

The problem with this model at the moment though is that you still have to manually find and sort these blogs, although services like Technorati, Feedster and Fagan Finder are making it easier to find what you are looking for. The next evolution will be to apply an automated search concept to these services. A learning search that knows your preferences and what you are interested in. Some settings you make yourself and others are suggested because they meet your criteria. No longer will you have to search out RSS feeds, the system will always be searching and will uses your filters to “pick up” information that is relevant to you. The Blog Portal/RSS Search space is quickly becoming very competitive, companies like Technorati, FeedDemon, Bloglines, Syndic8, Del.icio.us, Blogdex, etc all provide an impressive array of services that relate to blogs and RSS. It’s just a matter of time until this competition leads to automated, personal content delivery. It just makes sense.

Now think about hand held devices and wireless broadband.

Devices are merging: cellphones, cameras, pda, media player and universal wi-fi access (Check out urlgreyhot for updates on cool device stuff). Now imaging the concept of RSS and real-time information down to you hand, at broadband speeds. You are tapped into the information flow of the world. Content, blogs, video, pics, mp3s, you name it. Your filters sift through the data and pick out the information that is relevant to you. (btw, you can already download RSS feeds to your PDA)

Now think about it the other way. In your hand you have a device that records everything, a picture, a video, a message, etc. Imagine being able to record and post into the data stream knowing that people that share your interests will see it instantly. How will this change the way that we obtain news and information? Something happens ½ way around the world, and it is instantly delivered to me? This content includes not just what the newsmakers and marketers of the world want me to see, but the daily occurrences of life itself: an inspirational thought, an innovative idea, a scientific breakthrough, a funny video. This will be a level of sharing and connection that we have never seen before. Imagine what is possible when ideas can be shared across the world in an instant and in an automated and personal fashion, the exponential growth of knowledge will be incredible.

There are people that would say, “people won’t want to share”, but they are simply wrong, we do want to share. We want to share, we want to learn, we want to connect. When the Internet first came along people said it was making us more isolated from each other. But now take a look at a site like Flickr (you can see my photos here). Millions of people posting personal photos, sharing them with the world, talking about them, connecting with each other. Amazing.

The Internet and technology in general is simply a mirror of humanity – it is what we want it to be, it just takes a little bit of time and trial and error to get there.

I don't know about you, but I sure think this is an exciting time to be alive.

Search Engines and SEO

Been thinking about how Google (and other search engines) function and the importance they place on links and anchor tags. Does this strategy really provide more relevant content to me? It did initially, but now with so many SEO professionals out there the relevancy of search results seems to be going to those companies that know how to manipulate the results the best.

To illustrate how results can be manipulated - do a search for "miserable failure" on Google. You will see that the first result here is George W. Bush's biorgaphy. This has been accompllished through a technique known as Google bombing - a high number of sites place links to Bush's bio using the words "miserable failure" as the link - this creates a high page ranking for Bush's bio when the term "miserable failure" is searched for.

If you think back to search engines in the mid/late 90s you can probably remember them not being that useful. As more and more people understood how to manipulate the results, the search engines themselves became less and less effective of finding anything useful (because marketers had taken over).

Could SEO and organic search marketing be the downfall of today's search engine? Probably not, seeing as the resources Google has to improve it's technology, but an interesting thought none the less.

Google presence

I was just reading story about Google Hacking. It's crazy the amount of information that is available online these days. Recently I've been thinking alot about RSS (great post on Ventureblog about RSS) and how it's changing the nature of the Internet, (I'll post more about this thought soon) this article helped me see that the thoughts I've been having could be quite true. Here's a quote from the article:

"The most practical thing I can tell people is to be fully aware of what their Google presence is. Companies and even individuals should be aware of what they look like through Google," he said.

Google presence? I've done a lot of work with SEO and search marketing, but I've never thought of it as maintaining a presence. Very interesting.

PS - if you're interested, find out why Google is going to rule the world.

An End to Chaos

My name is Darrell Heaps. I am 32 years old. I run a company called Weave Communications. Been doing this for just over 3 years now. Previous to this company I led a start-up web development company called NKaos Interactive Media. It was part of the Internet bubble and all things that it represented (except getting rich). It was an amazing experience that went from 3 of us using school computers at night to 25 people and 2M in sales, to almost bankrupt, then layoffs and finally a merger and trying to stay alive. The last couple of years have been tough, but things are changing. That leaves to where I am today, on the verge of another cycle, another opportunity that represents the dream from the early days.

I’ve decided to start writing this so that I can keep a record of the professional life I am living. My intent is to write about experiences and ideas from the past and today. I truly think there was an incredible amount of vision in the early days of the Internet, before the realities of what was achievable came into play. Even today, with all the advancements being made, we haven’t even scratched the surface.

I read recently read a post titled "That 1994 feeling" . It was about RSS and it's similarity to the impact of HTML. As I read through it I couldn't help think that I can feel it. We are entering into another renaissance period. The Internet is changing the world, it’s just taking slightly longer than we had thought. Instead of taking 5 years, it’s going to take 10. What is the world going to look like 5 years from now – in 2010? That’s an interesting number to look at isn’t, seems futuristic. Think about how much the world has changed from 1990 to 2000 and the Internet only gained steam in the late 90’s. Yes it’s true, I believe there is a great deal of change and opportunity in how the Internet and technology are going to make our lives better and I’m really glad to be a part of it.

But for now, I’d like to go back to the beginning, before all of this happened.

It was spring 1994, I had completed my 2nd year at York University, taking a dual degree in computer science and business administration. It was late spring and I was looking for a summer job. My dad ran a company that provided travel information services and this guy had come in selling Internet access. My dad thought it would be a good idea for me to see if I could get a job with them. So I called, got an interview and got the job after the first meeting. The company was called Altcom Internet Marketing.

It was a small company that started out doing fax broadcasting, then branched into Internet dial-up and websites. I was hired to sell websites and figure out how to build them. I worked with another guy (who’s name I can’t remember) that I think did some scripting and ran the dial up side of the business. A guy named Micheal Scriven ran it, he was in his mid to late 30’s and had a lot of things on his mind other than running the company. There was also an outside investor that I never talked to.

It was an interesting time. 1994 was when the first version Netscape came out. It was like a revelation. I remember seeing web pages display with really simple graphics and a grey only background. I was in awe. In previous years you never saw anything like that, the Internet was a text only world; BBS had some graphics but nothing like this. I thought, wow this will be just like video one day, this is going to be huge. That day I started to learn how everything worked. I found stuff online about HTML, printed out a ton of stuff and bought a book on the way home. It was a Friday and by Monday, I was good to go. Although I had a lot to learn – I began cold calling and trying to sell web sites.

Exciting as it was, I don’t have to tell you the hell that cold calling is. Anyone who had done this knows what I mean. It’s uncomfortable and when you don’t know what you are doing it’s even worse. So needless to say I wasn’t very good at calling people and trying to sell them on the “Web”. Some people had heard about the Internet and email, and some even the web. But a business having a web site – huh?

Eventually some of the existing dial-up customers wanted a site so I went about building them, graphics and all. I wish I had a copy of what they were because they would be funny to see now. Anyway it didn’t take long for me to figure out that I was the one selling and then building the sites, while the guy running the place was no where to be seen – hmm. As I said, it didn’t take long. By the time school was back in session (Sept) I had started a company with two brothers, Ian and Bryce Hough and we called it NKaos Interactive Media.