Vitamin B:   

   Vitamin L:   

      Vitamin N:   

         Vitamin S:   

            Vitamin Z:   

I NEED A FAVOR! Please help bring Xeko back from the brink of extinction!

I am part of the Xeko project that JUST LAUNCHED (w00t!) on Kickstarter! Xeko is a paper-based collectible/tradable card game that was created a number of years ago, was launched, and, sadly, failed. We are bringing the game “back from the brink of extinction” by moving it ONLINE.

Our goals with this Kickstarter effort are to leverage the crowdfunding community to:

• find and build a passionate pre-release user base for the game – from alpha testers to beta testers and beyond;
• learn from our backer community what they want from THEIR game that we haven’t thought of yet; and finally
• get the funding we need so we can get the game made and released!

Crowdfunding only works if, well, the ‘crowd’ ‘funds’ (Q.E.D.!). So I’m asking for your support. You can do any and/or all of the following things to be helpful:

1. Tell your friends about the Kickstarter campaign! The more the merrier! The words ‘crowdfunding’ and ‘bashful’ don’t work together well .
2. Support the Kickstarter campaign! You can back Xeko with as little as one single dollar to show your love!
3. Tell your friends!!!! Yes, it’s in there twice – it’s THAT important!
4. Follow Xeko on Facebook, Twitter, and beyond – details below.

Here’s where you can find Xeko online to help in your SHARING efforts (please help!):

• Xeko Kickstarter campaign
• Xeko on Facebook
• Xeko on Twitter
• Xeko on Google+
• Oomba on Facebook and Twitter

THANK YOU!!!!!

I have to tell you that I’m exceptionally jazzed with this! It’s a great outcome for play140. Oomba is doing some amazing things. With this merger, I get to do what I love re: play140 and get back to some compelling, old roots of mine that I love just as much!

Unfortunately, Oomba is not quite yet ready for the public. You can visit the Oomba teaser site and play with the collectible Oomba spinning tops! But for now, that’s all that’s really out there about what we’re up to. Or at least, that’s all I can say without subsequently killing you.

play140′s technology and games are being merged into Oomba. Our beloved T.A.G. The Acronym Game keeps pushing forward happily and funly (yeah, I know that’s not a word, sue me). The extensive technology we’ve built around bridging text-based game platforms (Twitter, SMS, Facebook, etc.) is going to play some important roles in Oomba’s future. Oomba is attacking a > $10B market and we aim to kill it!

I have joined Oomba as President & COO via the acquisition. Of course my official title will remain “Chief Troublemaker”. How could it not?  I even have my own Oomba top collectible, as illustrated below – complete with bass guitar, pipe, nomex suit, and quite a bit more gray hair than seems reasonable

Wish me, and us, luck!

It turns out that ‘daffodil’ is a common language name for the plant genus Narcissus. Linguists believe that the ‘daffodil’ sobriquet derived from the Dutch – but they’re apparently not 100% certain how it came about! The jonquil is a specific type of daffy: Narcissus jonquilla. Some folks refer to all daffies as jonquils, but that’s technically incorrect, as jonquils are just one species witin the genus Narcissus.

Additionally, it turns out that Narcissus jonquilla is one of the two species of Narcissus primarily used in perfumery – alongside Narcissus poeticus. So when you see a scent that includes daffodil or narcissus, it may contain the odor of our friendly, spring jonquil.

Ya learn sumthin’ new every day!

Even the curmudgeons in the crowd (like YT) have to hand it to them re: the iPad 3 display. It truly does look like a thing of immense and impressive beauty. I doff my cap in well-earned respect. However, the thing is, there are plenty of devices that have launched over the past years that have pixel densities similar to (and greater than) the iPad 3. Check out this (incomplete) list on Wikipedia, for example. What Apple is doing with the iPad 3 retina display isn’t about pixel density – it’s about pushing the manufacturers to get larger total-usable-square-inch yields out of their glass. It’s one thing to produce 333 ppi (LG LU1400) on a 16:9 2.8″ diagonal screen that totals less than 3.5 square inches of glass. With the iPad 3 you’re now talking about that sort of level of zero-defect glass totaling nearly 42 square inches! That’s 12X (TWELVE TIMES!) larger – more than an order of magnitude! What’s impressive here is NOT the general pixel density. What’s impressive is that the supplier(s) can produce this glass at this ppi at these sizes repeatably, reliably, and (presumably) profitably. As one twitterer put it about these Apple events: it’s “fun to see what Samsung will be shipping in six months”. If supplier X can manufacture 264 ppi at 42 sq.in. as of 01/01/12, then everybody will have access to that (and better) in a matter of months.

The A5X appears to be impressive. But the Tegra 4 is already in early test runs and will probably smoke the A5X. Moore’s Law happens. Never mind the chips that N other manufacturers are working on to outperform the A5X and the Tegra 4 and so on. Apple leans on multiple global experts to innovate on displays, but Apple is assuming a huge risk in keeping its processors in-house. The competitive market is more likely to innovate faster than  Apple can internally over time. I guess they’ve “picked their poison”, perhaps?

The camera update was grossly overdue. The camera in the iPads 1 and 2 was a joke when each were respectively released. It’d be interesting to learn though why they went with this 5MP solution instead of an 8 or 10. My guess is that the camera in my HTC Amaze will out-shoot the iPad 3′s camera. And I can slot SD cards in and out when I need more space to store more pictures!

And, of course, the iPad 3 still won’t run Flash . Sigh. Dear Apple: please feel free to keep your religious beliefs out of my technology needs.

What I wanted to see was a retina display, an A5X, an SD card slot, Flash support, and an 8MP or better camera. LTE is irrelevant – I’ve been and will continue to tether my WiFi tablets to my phone(s). I came this close to buying an ASUS Transformer Prime tablet a couple months ago, but balked as they sort out some radio problems et. al. My guess is that during the summer my iPad 2 will be replaced by an Android tablet and the boss or kids will get the hand-me-down.

The Apple TV updates were purely incremental and grossly overdue to keep up with the Jones’s ($70 for an XD, delivered). The new Apple TV sell well though, since a lot of the uber-geek Apple fanbois wouldn’t buy at 720p and have been waiting patiently. Too bad Apple’s software apparently isn’t keeping up – maybe it’ll bump to iOS next cycle?

There’s always the next keynote…

I’ve had the same WordPress theme on my blog since it started oh so many years ago. Hope you like the new theme.

Lots going on in Shawn-land. Lots of plans for the blog this year. Fingers crossed!

Xoxo

For me, Murfie rocks for four reasons:

First, when I buy a CD on Murfie, I actually own it. I own the plastic disc. It’s mine. They hold onto it for me and will ship it to me if I want. I buy and love CDs because I get all the “first-sale doctrine” legal rights I want with my music – rights that I assure you you want, and that you do NOT get with iTunes et. al. Here’s a great ZDnet article on the difference between online music and CD music legalities.

Second, it’s a marketplace. I can ship them the CDs in my collection that I think I might want to trade or sell (or, hell, ALL my discs!). They inventory them and rip them and when someone searches for something I have, it shows up and they can buy it or offer a trade for it. Ditto the discs I buy directly on Murfie (new or used). I used to be an avid user of Swap.com for my CDs – but no more.

Third, I’m a cheapskate. I own > 1,000 CDs and probably half of them were purchased used or were trades. Tonight I purchased five used discs on Murfie for a total of $16.00 ripped to FLAC and delivered to my hard drive. That averages to $3.20 per album. At iTunes pricing of $1.29 per song, that’s like buying 2.5 songs from the album except that you get ALL the songs on the album and the rights to listen to it wherever you like and trade it and sell it! To-date I have purchased a total of 26 discs on Murfie – averaging down to $4.69 each ripped and delivered. But 5 of those 26 were new discs, which seem to be priced between $8 and $12. If you remove those 5 new discs, you get down to an average of $3.29 per each of 21 CDs, ripped and delivered and owned. This is a no-brainer if you ask “cheap me!”

Fourth, rationally or irrationally, I’m an audio quality nut, and I “jst sy NO 2 lssy music.” Murfie lets me pick how I want my CDs ripped. I choose lossless FLAC, but they also offer MP3 (256 kbps ABR) and AAC. You may not care about this, of course, but it’s always nice to know there are options.

Why am I bothering YOU about this? Well, since Murfie is a market, it behaves along the lines of Metcalfe’s Law: the value of the network is proportional to the square of the number of users. The more people using Murfie, the more buyers and sellers and CDs in the system! That’s a good thing for me as a user, so I’m happy to pimp them out!

So go check out Murfie, sign up, and get Murfying!!!!

NB: I do not have any financial interest in Murfie – though that may change as they close up their A round. I’m simply a very very very happy, addicted customer. I LOVE YOU MURFIE!!!!!

It’s admittedly a roughshod cut of the data, but here’s the quick output:

The first set of numbers are for the complete 100 companies in the list. The second set are for the 48 of the companies that are technology firms (my analysis*). Green numbers are above the mean for the category and red numbers are below the mean.

I am neither drawing conclusions nor making any value judgements on the output (yet). Just sayin’…

Enjoy!

* These are software companies and computer hardware companies. The medical company that sells systems that read doctor’s notes is included. The medical company that makes artificial hearts is not included. If you don’t like my division, do your own analysis

What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

- Carl Sagan