Daniel Lyons's Blog, page 9

An update on Glancee, a friend-finding app

A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece for Newsweek about Highlight and Glancee, two apps that combine GPS data with your Facebook profile so that you can find people who are physically nearby you and see who they are, what you have in common, and so on. Both apps were gearing up for SXSW, and Highlight was getting lots of hype from people who believed it would be the big "hit" of SXSW this year. That didn't happen.

But I touched base with Andrea Vaccari, CEO of Glancee, and he sent me an update about how Glancee did at SXSW, as follows:

* We passed 25K+ users and 50K+ messages, 8K people signed up at SXSW.

* 12K people used the app at SXSW, mostly 25-35 years old, 25% women.

* The iPhone seems to be much more popular than Android among the SXSWi crowd with an overwhelming 70/30 ratio.

* While some people installed the app as early as 6am, most people found out about Glancee during lunch break.

* The top 5 countries by number of downloads were: USA, Italy, UK, Japan, Germany.

* The average user browsed about 8 profiles, for a total of 100K profiles viewed.

* 2,200 people exchanged 10k messages, meaning 20% users actively engaged in conversations.

* Female users were more engaged in conversations than males but this is probably due to the fact that they were contacted more.

* 1,800 people started a new conversation, 18% women, so in proportion women were as much active starting conversations as guys.

* Top connectors started over 30 conversations and exchanged over 200 messages each.

Month of Microsoft: Only 6% of Windows users bother with Media Center

An old friend wrote in to ask the following regarding my "Month of Microsoft" project:

Hey I'm a little late to your series but I am really curious — did the Xbox folks even mention Media Center? It's IMHO the best Microsoft product ever; but I am afraid it is geting mothballed in favor of Xbox live video (and soon tv). Of course, this being MS, their plans are inscrutable, which sucks if you've spent money on building a multi-room system around it. Anyway. Just curious.

In fact nobody at Microsoft mentioned Media Center during my visit, but we were covering a lot of ground in a short amount of time, so I didn't make much of it. I did follow up with one of my contacts there who says that Media Center will indeed be a part of Windows 8, though it's unclear at this point exactly what it will look like and so on. He also pointed me to this blog post by Windows boss Steven Sinofsky who says Microsoft remains committed to Media Center, even though hardly anyone actually uses it. Money quote:

Our opt-in usage telemetry shows that in July, Windows Media Center was launched by 6% of Windows 7 users globally with the heaviest usage in Russia, Mexico, and Brazil (frequency and time). However, most people are just looking around; only one quarter (25% of 6%) of these people used it for more than 10 minutes per session (individual averages), and in 59% of Media Center sessions (by these 6% of users) we see almost no activity (less than a minute or two of usage). TV was the most common scenario we observed, and not surprisingly, traditional media (DVD and CD) are less common (and declining over time) than streaming and file-based content. By comparison, Media Player (66% of Windows users in July) and IE (88%) are popular rendering engines for all types of media content, including an increased volume of "premium" and streaming content. This is another place we're reminded of the tremendous diversity of Windows activity.

So only 1.5% of Windows users run Media Center for more than 10 minutes at a time. And of the 6% who do anything at all with Media Center, most use it for less than 1-2 minutes. Wow.

Dear friend who wrote in: I would start thinking about building your multi-room system around something else.

Good article on tech addiction

James Temple of the San Francisco Chronicle says he's an addict and describes the symptoms that will be familiar to most of us, I'm afraid. Basically it's an inability to let go, and it is only getting worse in the age of smartphones. I'm not as intense a user as a lot of people. In fact I often feel guilty because I don't keep up with every new app and social site as quickly as I should. I constantly feel as if I'm falling behind. And the truth is there is no way to not fall behind. There's so much stuff coming out every week, just a firehose of new sites and apps. Even if you only use Facebook and Twitter you're getting blasted with way too much information.

Anyway, I'm by no means an early adopter, and I don't spend 24 hours a day online, and even at this level of engagement I worry that I'm too distracted by online life. I have this terrible fear that my kids are going to remember me as some guy who lived in their house when they were growing up and was always staring down at a smartphone, checking email or reading Gawker. (I also see how deeply attached my kids have become to Angry Birds and Temple Run on our iPhones and iPad, and it terrifies me.)

So I've been trying to force myself to be at least partially unplugged. On weekends I put away the smartphones and try not to use them. Same thing in the evening. No checking email at dinnertime. After dinner I help the kids with their homework. (I have 6-year-old twins.) In the morning, after dropping the kids at school, I take the dog for a walk in the forest near our house. I don't bring a phone. The first thing you notice is the silence. It feels like you've escaped from a world of constant noise — the digital dust storm. Suddenly there's nothing. It's bliss.

I feel ridiculous singing the praises of the analog world. One shouldn't need to do this. I'm embarrassed to have been so far gone that the "real world" feels to me like a lost place that I'm now rediscovering. But there it is.

Last week we took the kids to Utah for a ski trip. They're good little skiers, but this was their first time seeing big mountains and I wanted to be with them, completely, for all of it. We booked a lodge at Alta that does not have TV. I made a point of not bringing a laptop. We brought some smartphones and an iPad for the plane ride. But when we got to the lodge I put the smartphones and the iPad in a drawer and never took them out. I carried a little flip phone just so I could be reached for phone calls. We skied. We swam. We ate great meals and had long conversations with some fascinating new people: a track coach from Georgetown, two physicists from New Jersey, a paparazzo from Maui. No one pulled out an iPhone at dinner. It was great. And I missed nothing.

So, sure, things like Pinterest, Highlight, Glancee, Foursquare, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Quora, Trippy, Words with Friends, Draw Something, and on and on and on — yes, these are all fascinating and wonderful and even useful things, and I'm sure there is some sense of accomplishment that comes from mastering them, using them, getting absorbed in them. But they are all, in some sense and to some degree, nothing more than a distraction.

Neil Young said recently that Steve Jobs used to come home from work and listen to vinyl records. I don't know if that's true, but I'd like to believe it. Neil Young was making a point about analog music sounding better than digital, but the other point, and the one I want to believe about Steve Jobs, is that when you sit down and listen to records, you tend not to do anything else. You sit down, and you listen.

I never do that anymore. Hardly any of us do. But that's how life was in the analog age. You didn't multitask. You didn't hammer away on your phone, texting and emailing and checking in and updating your status. You sat down, and you did one thing. You listened. (Sure, maybe you used the sides of a double album to sift seeds from buds while you were listening, but that wasn't exactly multitasking.) I like to think that Steve Jobs liked to just put away his iPhone and sit down and listen. I also like to think that when Steve Jobs went on his long walks, he didn't bring his phone. Or if he did bring it, he wasn't walking around staring at it. I like to believe that Steve Jobs, of all people, understood the virtue of being unplugged, and the value of being in a quiet place, free from digital distractions.

Save the Rich

I just found this on YouTube. It reminded me of when I worked at Forbes. Enjoy.

Burn in hell, Mike Daisey

That's the gist of a piece I just put up on the Daily Beast this morning, arguing that the biggest victims of Daisey's fraud might end up being the Chinese workers he claims to care so much about. In the end he exploited those workers for his own gain. I was away on a ski trip when the news broke. I wasn't surprised. I met Daisey last fall, saw his show and did a panel with him. He told me that everything in his show was true. You can read the whole thing here.

Month of Microsoft: Intrigue on the Bing marketing team

Who knew my month of using Microsoft products would bring a bit of a mystery with it? But that seems to be the case as just now Microsoft announced it had fired two members of the Bing marketing team "for violation of company policies related to mismanagement of company assets and vendor procurement." As Business Insider points out, these dismissals come on the heels of another strange departure from the Bing team. A few weeks ago a Bing marketing person left for YouTube, and a Borg spokesman made a point of telling reporters that Microsoft had parted ways with her for reasons that had nothing to do with YouTube.

Are the two events related? What on earth is going on over there? If anyone has any info, send it along.

Also, FWIW, I'm back at work after a week on vacation. Using the Lenovo W520 laptop, hooked to a big monitor. Spending the day on IE and Bing, but still relying on Google Docs and Google Calendar more than I'd hoped to. Finding it hard to wean myself off them, but that will be the goal for this week. No great epiphanies to report. Everything is working fine. Over and out.

If laptops existed in the ancient world …

The folks who run the Dell corporate blog just put up an interesting thought experiment: What could you have done with a laptop in prehistoric times? In ancient Greece? The Renaissance? It's worth a look.

Month of Microsoft: Good grief I miss Swype so much

As part of this "Month of Microsoft" project I've been using two Windows Phone devices, a Nokia Lumia 800 (in this color) and an HTC Titan. Both awesome phones. One problem: they can't run Swype, goddammit! Swype, FYI, is this amazing keyboard software that lets you type words just by dragging your finger over the letters in the word. You can learn about it here. I started using it when I got a Motorola Droid Razr Maxx a few months ago. (And by the way, I lurve the Razr Maxx and highly recommend it.) Swype takes maybe a day to get used to and then you're hooked. I mean it's can't-live-without kind of stuff, the most addictive thing I've come across in ages. And — here's the bad news — it only runs on Android.

Swype got acquired by Nuance a few months ago and now they're merging the gesture stuff with Nuance's voice technology. I checked in with Nuance and should get a briefing on this next week. Nuance is located here in Boston, so maybe I'll visit in person instead of doing interviews over the phone. I'd prefer that, because when I meet the guy who invented Swype I want to hug him and never let go.

Also, I want to know: When can you get this stuff running on other platforms? I'm sure the people at Microsoft have looked at this technology. For all I know they're already working on some kind of deal. Fingers crossed.

Month of Microsoft: The Arc Touch Mouse

I'm on Day Two of the "Month of Microsoft" and things are rocking along. The Lenovo W520 is now hooked to a 28-inch monitor that I had hanging around at the office, and I'm using a Bluetooth keyboard and Arc Touch mouse from Microsoft. On that last bit: I don't usually get worked up about mice, and in fact on my iMacs I usually just used the plain old wired mouse that connects to the keyboard. But the Arc Touch is really nice. It's a flexible slab of plastic that can lie flat or curve its back into a mouse shape. When you press it flat, it turns itself off. Hunch the back and it turns itself on. A lot of the people I met at Microsoft on Wednesday were carrying these with them to use with their laptops. And the designers there are pretty proud of it. It's going to be put on display at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. You can see a video interview with one of the designers here. Who knew Microsoft had a product that wins accolades for great design? Not me. Well played, Borgbrains. Your sleek new mouse is making my work day a tiny bit nicer, and for this I thank you.

I just spent an amazing day at Microsoft

I'm writing this in a cafe in Bellevue, Wash., after a long day of briefings at Microsoft. As of right now, I'm starting to think the "Month of Microsoft" might turn out okay. I met with people who work on Windows, Windows Phone, Office, Hotmail, SkyDrive, Internet Explorer, Bing, Xbox and hardware. It was a blitz of information and really eye-opening for someone who hasn't used Windows and other Microsoft products for years. The most amazing part for me was a demo of Windows 8, which isn't out yet but might see the light of day later this year. In short, it looks amazing. I saw it running on a custom tablet that Microsoft gave out to developers a few months ago. I also saw it on a prototype Lenovo laptop that I am already lusting after. I have always loved Lenovo laptops. They're built like tanks. Not a lot of wow factor in their styling, but just incredible build quality. You feel like a grown-up when you're using one. This new prototype has the same amazing build quality but also is really stylish. I'm also hoping Microsoft can send me something with Windows 8 loaded on it so that I can spend time with it.

Anyway: many thanks to the people who took time to give me tutorials. Tonight I'll be on a redeye back to Boston, and tomorrow the "Month of Microsoft" begins. First up will be moving the Xbox from the play room in the basement to our living room. Next, buy a Zune pass and an Xbox Live Gold membership. Then: unbox the Lenovo W520 that arrived today. Set up Gmail to forward to Hotmail. Get Newsweek mail set up on all these devices. Progress reports to come.