Tony Gwynn is sure a nice guy. I had the good fortune to be able to play in his annual tournament (this year at Morgan Run) and he was a fantastic host. The fun in playing a celeberity pro-am event is that you and the celebrities are both doing something that you are both bad at. Well, I can't say Tony's not a good golfer, but you know what I mean. Our foresome was actually joined by Brad Ausmus who was a great guy. Very enjoyable outing. Don't ask how we scored.

The entertainment people have wrapped themselves up in such a knot with digital content. They are all so afraid. They all want to stream everything instead of downloading it. They don’t understand that the internet was not fundamentally created to be a broadcast medium, and, the cost of large hard drive’s is dropping faster than dotcom stock. The new Archos MP3 (and the iPod) have 5-6 GB hard drives and cost a couple hundred $$. These guys want to stream EVERYTHING since napster let the genie out of the bottle. Too late. I’m still stuck on the idea that the only content worth streaming is Live content, and short live content at that. Now, on the other hand, I do like the XM Radio idea. That was made for broadcast. I find at home I ONLY listen to musicchoice (digital cable radio) and that’s been true for 3 years, and in my car I only listen to my 12-cd player. I accidentally left the cd-holder out when I had my car detailed this weekend and was stunned to have to listen to the radio on the way home. I don’t know about NY, but in SD it is really awful.

M-Commerce - the mobile version of e-commerce is, well, behind "analysts projections". But who isn't? I remember somebody meeting with me way back in 1999 telling me I was crazy for not promoting the concept of m-commerce "by 2002...since $50Billiion dollars in commerce is expected then". Huh? I've purchased a book from Amazon with my SprintPCS phone while I was working out at 24Hour Fitness. (In fact, I've done most of my WAP browsing inbetween sets on the various weight machines...but I digress). The theory is that most transactions will be small, less than $20. Well, that makes sense. Exxon's Speedpass does that when gas prices are low. You can also buy some of the healthy food they sell inside with your pass too. Downloading of music, purchases from vending machines, etc., all of these will require micro-payments, and there's the problem. US banks make lots of money from credit cards, and the transaction cost is so high that there's not much profit left for purchases of this size. Europe has SmartCards, but alas we don't here yet. In Europe they have GemPlus Companies like QPass and Jalda (they work with Ericsson) are making inroads that will help. With WTLS, PKI, and other forms of security fears will be assuaged. I hope to live to see the day when all I need is my phone!

wow - long time no post...The Future: Cogent Communications, a provider of metro-area internet access, offers 100-Mbps connections for a fixed price of $1000/month. To provide comparable speeds, traditional carriers, with their outdated equipment, would have to equip customers with either a fixed OC-3 line (155 Mbsp) or two DS3 lines (45 Mbps ea), which would cost anywhere between $75,000 -$150,000/month. In short, why pay for costly channelized connectivity when you are not getting the value from it? Another company in this space is Yipes.

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." - Albert Einstein. That was the opening of an exploration of one of my favorite topics: personalization strategies. There is so much information that I would love the stores and on-line businesses that I do business with to utilize to improve the interaction and personalization for me. Amazon does a so-so job, Microsoft does much better, but the possibilities are so much greater. For mobile devices, where input is either difficult (tiny keypad) or problematic (voice recognition circa 2001) the ability to have a continually updated profile would help so much. Privacy rights advocates could be assured of identity separation via a key-type process.

So, with wireless you can get a message AT ANY TIME, ANYWHERE. That's the promise anyway, but we know that's not really true. You cannot, for example, get an email in the shower. I used to think you could not get an email while jogging either. But you can! A friend sent me a notice for a watch that has an email interface. Naturally, it's one-way (the battery would not last too long if it was two way!), but with Yahoo! web alerts that's pretty good. I was thinking, as I was jogging down a local trail in the morning, that I needed to know that the jobless rate had gone up during the last quarter. I'm lucky to have run over to Sears and purchased one of these fine timepieces for $100. The accuracy is incredible since it is essentially network time. When you go to another time zone, the watch automatically detects that and changes for you. And, you can re-route the email address, as I did, so that you can get email at an easy-to-remember address.

so there I was driving to work thinking of how convient this all should be. I've got this nifty garmin street pilot on my dashboard. This has my location, and a nice little map showing where I'm going and what's around me. . To get the map you need to purchase additional data from Garmin and download it to your computer, then transfer the portion you want to the device. Not much of a recurring revenue stream for Garmin since this should work as-is for the next 10 years (depending on the speed of roads). It works really well though It only needs to have a voice recognition interface and a traffic update to be really useful.

Myths and legends are so pervasive. I was talking to somebody yesterday that told me that the contractor that was installing his new home theatre explained that it would not sound good until the monster speaker wire "burned in". Now, I assume that this fellow was implying that the impeadance of the cable would change over time, presumably getting lower, so that the power transfer to the speaker would be more efficient. I'm skeptical. While I'm an electrical engineer, I'll admit I'm not an expert on the time varying affect of modest current spikes on low impeadance cable. However, I cannot fathom a disceranble, audible difference occuring over time due to speaker wire "burnning in". I'm faced all the time with myths put forth as if they are "facts". One of my favorites is what I've seen is the warning at gas stations about using your cell phone. Oh, I'm sure that a long, long time ago in a land far, far away (typically India) somebody said that they heard of somebody who had what looked like a cell phone, that was dropped, and a spark came out, that could have caused an explosion. Please. I've seen people smoking while they are filling their tank! Now, I'm supposed to not have a phone call while I'm filling my tank?? This is absurd.

Key Metrics to wireless carriers - why can't everybody learn these simple things? Carriers get hammered daily in the press, in the industry...well..it seems like everywhere. "We can't get further becuase of the carriers"..."It's the slowness of the carriers that's holding back the industry", or even the comments made by Walter Mossberg in his column. However, when wireless internet companies come calling, it's as if they have no idea about the business of the wireless carrier at all. Here's a public service announcment to these groups - read and learn. The key metrics are: ARPU, Additions, CPGA and Churn. Let's start with churn first. Churn is the percentage of total subscribers that deactivated service expressed on a monthly basis. Typical numbers range from 2-4%. Higher numbers for new networks/markets and vice/versa. Churn is going up universally as more and more competitors enter the market and as the subscriber base extends into the lowest income segments. CPGA stands for "cost per gross addition" and is a measure of how much it costs to add a subscriber. These costs include handset subsidy, marketing and sales. Like some other stats, different carriers include different sales and marketing expenses making comparisons difficult. Generally this ranges from $250-$500. ARPU stands for Average Revenue per User, expressed as a monthly figure. This figure is typcially in the $35 - $75 range. It may include data revenue, it may include equipment revenue - but typically it does not. Finally, "Additions" is the number of new subs. "Net Additions" are typically listed (as opposed to Gross Adds) and takes de-activation into account. Analysts have strong opinions of what each carrier should have each quarter, and when those targets are missed....look out.

Working at home with sick children - another reason for broadband connectivity.

There are weddings and then, there are weddings. This one was great: food, people...and aoided the rain by a few hours! After months with no rain no less. But everybody seemed to be having a fantastic time. Great to visit with such fine friends.

CDG Americas congress is going on in San Diego. After an interview in the morning, I had an opportunity to see speeches by George Gilder and Irwin Jacobs followed by an executive panel with Paul Jacobs, Sue Swenson, Perry Laforge, Tom Wheeler, Tom Schugrue. Alan Salmasi was supposed to go, but could not attend.. Later in the day there was a great talk with Seybold's partner, Barney Dewy. Barney has great insight into the wireless industry and had some great questions for us. Later, there was a short speech to the company - they waived when I took their picture! tomorrow will be more of the same, starting with a panel on location focused and rich media.