by Brendon J. Wilson

Pandora: Good Enough for Miserly Bastards

I had a chance to meet Tom Conrad from Pandora last week at the dinner after Blog Business Summit, and then again at Bar Camp. Pandora’s service basically allows you to generate a personal set of “stations” based on a favorite song or artist – their backend does the rest!

Now, hear me as I speak with the authority that only a miserly cheap bastard can muster: this is actually something I would pay for.

Like any self-respecting music aficionado, I have a pretty big collection of music. But that amount of music has an unfortunate side effect – the more music you have, the less you actually listen to new music. Pandora solves this, feeding you a constant stream of only the good stuff. I’ve been listening to it the last three evenings, and it’s been a “set and forget” experience. Wow.

The part that’s really interesting about this service is that it’s a big of a legal hack – because of the way webcasting royalties work it costs Pandora almost nothing to provide the music itself (the cost is really in the bandwidth and the tech to provide accurate recommendations). The service, currently in invitation-only “preview”, is expected to be in the “couple bucks a month” price range. Totally acceptable.

The one thing I would like to see Pandora do with its technology is extend it to the music I already own. Why? Well, because of the aforementioned webcasting hack, there are certain restrictions on what Pandora can offer. It can’t, for example, just serve you the exact song you want – music on demand is verboten (which makes sense, given that webcasting rules are meant to be analogous to the rules for radio). Also, when streaming music to your machine, you can’t see what song is next, or play the previous song. A bit annoying. But imagine if you could had a Pandora plugin for iTunes that allowed you to autocreate playlists of stuff you owned that were similar/matched. You do this yourself currently, but what if Pandora could do it for you, and allow you to effectively take their service with you? Imagine how much music you currently own that you don’t listen to, simply because you inevitably end up playing the same stuff again and again.

Bottom line: Pandora is awesome – check it out. Uh, I mean, check it out when there’s a public beta. If you’re interested in additional details about Pandora, you might also want to check out this review at TechCrunch.

in Entertainment / Technology 0 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

BarCamp, JavaScript+SVG

I spent the majority of this weekend at BarCamp (after a great concert on Friday night), hanging out with the geek elite. Great time had by all.

I hadn’t been planning on going or presenting, but a conversation with Scott Beale (of Laughing Squid) convinced me to go and present a little side project I’ve had hidden on my hard drive for too long. The project is an SVG/JavaScript-based application that allows a user to generate fretboard diagrams of scale patterns for stringed instruments. I’ll write more about this in the future, but for the moment you can check out the notes from the session on the BarCamp Wiki.

in Personal / Technology 0 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Anti-Karaoke

On occasion I pretend to be a guitarist. Honing my solo improvisational skills is a difficult task, especially given that half the time I’m practicing on my own without the benefit of a band to provide the backing track. Practicing scales or jamming over top of CDs is one approach, but there’s only so much you can do. Sometimes I use Transcribe! to loop sections of CDs without lead guitar, but that can get really repetitive and limit the usefulness of the exercise.

Recently, it occurred to me that what I really want is the equivalent of karaoke tracks, but for guitar. Imagine if you could buy electronic versions of a song with one of the instruments removed from the track. Guitarists could mute the guitar track; drummers could mute the drum track; bass players could mute the bass track. Musicians could go to a web site, pick which instrument they wanted removed from the master recording, and purchase and download the result in GarageBand format.

Sounds like a nice way for the record industry to pick up another bunch of cash from its massive back catalog. Add in performance rights and high-end versions of the tracks that allow the performer to tweak the mix themselves to create a “professional” version for working solo musicians. Of course, longer term, I expect artists will shortcut this whole process and release their source tracks for free directly to the public as a way of encouraging remixes (just like Trent Reznor did with his recent album).

Take it one step further, and you could totally transform the idea of karaoke clubs. Instead of just having karaoke where people get up and sing, you could have karaoke nights where individual musicians could play without needing to assemble a whole band.

in Entertainment / Technology 3 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Canadians Get “Straight” To The Point

It’s being reported today that two straight Canadian guys are going to get married just to prove a point about gay marriage. And avoid paying some taxes.

Cue the Apocalyse in five…four…three…two…

Doubtless, the neo-conservative segments of the American political spectrum find themselves in a moral dilemma. I can hear their internal monologue already: which would make God happier – achieving eternal salvation, or a lower tax bracket?

Tough one…especially if you believe God is a Republican. (Which, for some reason, reminds me of line from a Tragically Hip song: “Don’t tell me how the Universe is altered, when you find our how He gets paid”)

But where there’s controversy, there’s opportunity. If you’re like me, you spent a fair chunk of your university years living with members of the same sex (called “room-mates”). All those wasted tax-savings! If only they’d had same-sex marriage in my college years – a quick prenuptial agreement and a civil marriage to Kevin (call me crazy, but John, Jesse and Sean weren’t my type) and we could have kept all of our meager internship earnings for ourselves. Hell, had we taken legal guardianship of Kevin’s brother, Jamie, we could have even scored some stone-cold sacrilicious Child Tax Credit dollars!

I think I just identified the solution to the Student Debt Crisis – get married to your roommates and reap the tax savings until you’re debt-free. Some enterprising young lawyer out there is already whipping up a boilerplate prenuptial contract for this purpose and about to make a killing.

Of course, this only works if you’re smart enough to get a pre-nuptial agreement in place before you move into your off-campus pad with your buddies. If you don’t, one has to wonder whether the concept of common-law marriage might rear its ugly head just as graduation rolls around. After all, after living together for over three short years in Canada, me and my room-mates might technically be considered married under common law (or to have achieved common-law status, as it’s called in Canada). If you thought a graduation party hangover sucked, try paying alimony to your four, same-sex, bigamist college room-mates on top of Canada Student Loan Payments.

Of course, this move will only pave the way for the true concern of the neo-conservatives – that, for some reason, people might want to use the same-sex laws to forge (or perhaps graze) a path to allow them to marry farm animals. Why, I can’t imagine – plentiful farm subsidies, perhaps?

(And on a somewhat unrelated note, please welcome my almost-but-not-quite bigamist same-sex college room-mate, Kevin Cheng, to Silicon Valley. He started at Yahoo! this week.)

in Opinion / Politics 7 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

BlogHer Thoughts

Last Saturday, I spent the day with Ashley at BlogHer, a conference focused on women and blogging. An interesting conference, especially given that I was one of the relatively few men in the audience – at least Niall Kennedy and Jeff Clavier were there for moral support.

A couple observations from the conference:

  • Women can be way more supportive than guys: The opening session featured high spirits, of the “you go, girl!” variety. While Bloggercon was a positive crowd, it was far more subdued in the expression of its spirit than BlogHer.
  • Women can be way crueler than men: I was alerted to a previously unknown genre in the blogging world – the mommy blog. Apparently there are mixed feelings towards them, though I’m not really sure why. But I sensed much tension, and overheard a number of snide comments muttered in both directions. Hmm.
  • Women are gravely concerned about how their online persona will be interpreted in the real world: During the business blogging session, a number of women voiced their belief that women had to be careful with their personal blogs. The concern? That by putting parts of their personal life online (for example: pictures and stories about their kids), potential employers or clients would they were more concerned about their personal life than their professional life. Sadly, I’d have to agree that it’s probably true.

There was a lot of concern about rankings expressed in the opening sessions – specifically Technorati‘s listing of top 100 popular blogs (Niall took a couple for the team Dave – give ’em a day off!). More interesting was Mary Hodder‘s idea to have the attendees band together to define a less two-dimensional ranking system would allow a reader more easily find blogs they like. Part of me believes this might be an unsolvable problem, as what people really want is a way to have a computer to know what they want – I believe there are limits to how well this can work. On the other hand, I think there are some tools, such as Rojo that make it about as easy as possible to find blogs and posts you might be interested in reading.

The final note I wanted to share with the attendees of BlogHer occurred to me during the “Funding” session dedicated to providing women with information on funding an online business. A lot of the concern in the room was about how to attract the interest of angels (“I’ve got a job, kids; who’s going to fund me? Where are the female-focused angels?”) and I think it really detracted from driving home the point that women have unique skills that will allow them to spot and exploit market opportunities. For one, women control the majority of the consumer spending in North America – and who better to know what women want and sell to that market than female entrepreneurs? For another, women look at things in a completely different way (just ask Guy Kawasaki – he explicitly recommends entrepreneurs ask women for advice when creating new products).

If you build it, they will come!

in Technology 2 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Engineering Role-Models on TV

I just finished Thomas Friedman’s excellent The World is Flat (kudos to Evan for the tip). Friedman identifies ten forces that “flattened” the world as we know it, enabling digital work to flow to wherever it can be performed most efficiently. Friedman provides thoughtful analysis of the forces that are opening the doors to global competition and their positive and negative consequences. As part of this exploration, Friedman also identifies the areas that will predict America’s fate in this new global landscape. One particular shortcoming identified by Friedman is the shortfall of American students’ interest in engineering and science degrees.

While reading about the reasons for and ramifications of this shortfall, a question occurred to me: where are the engineering role models? More specifically, where are the TV shows glamorizing engineering and science on TV?

Sure, television shows such as CSI and Numb3rs perhaps provide some leadership in this area, but only in the context of fighting crime. In fact, nearly all TV shows focus on crime-centric or emergency-centric depictions of professions – think about: emergency room dramas, crime investigation dramas, and court-room dramas. Despite the portrayal of these roles on TV, does anyone realize just how boring most of these roles are in reality? Ask an MD how much his life resembles ER – very little, he or she would respond. A GP spends a lot of their time looking at kids with colds and fevers, and filling out paper. Whoopee. What about a forensic specialist – how much does their day resemble that of the characters of CSI? Again, very little. Just look at the work done recently at a pig farm as part of the Pickton investigation – digging through tons of dirt to find the smallest scraps of evidence. Hardly as thrilling as what you’d see on TV.

And yet, reality be damned, shows like CSI have had an affect, dramatically increasing the number of people choosing to enter the field of forensics.

So why not more shows with engineering bent?

Maybe the answer is that it’s hard to depict in a dramatic fashion – watching a guy hunched over a debugger step through code is a horrible way to fill a half-hour of Thursday prime time. The problem of depicting engineering and science as exciting reminds me of the problem Michael Moore encountered in “Bowling for Columbine” when asking the producer of “Cops” why he couldn’t do a show on white-collar crime. The response was simply that the producer didn’t know how to shoot that kind of show – there was no drama.

Maybe it’s time for a remake of MacGyver?

in Opinion / Technology 0 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

The Dirt Round

Wow. Haven’t blogged in a while. Maybe because I’ve been busy working on a couple different product launches at PGP. Sigh.

That said, it’s never too busy to go for a drink at Eleanor and Mike‘s for one of their signature geek parties (met both of them last year at the “vendorcon” after Bloggercon III last year). And it was there, in the presence of MJK and Alex, that I came up with a new vehicle for early-stage startup financing. It’s called dirt round financing.

Anyone familiar with early-stage (or “round”) financing should be able to easily reel off any number of terms related to financing (for example: seed stage, angel funding). As a startup progresses, so does the terminology it uses to describe who it swindled, er, pitched in order to gain its most recent round of financing: Series A, B, C, mezzanine, bridge, etc. But the new round of financing I came up with halfway through a truly combustible martini (thanks Mike!) is to these rounds what Star Wars III is to Star Wars IV: the nasty prequel required to kick off the main show.

Here’s how it works: unlike seeking seed-stage financing, at which point your only asset as an entrepreneur is the “sweat equity” you’ve built up working on prototype or somesuch, in dirt round financing your only asset is the set of vicious half-truths, little-known skeletons (their closets removed) , and other undesirables lurking in your potential investors’ pasts. Sure, it’s blackmail. But more importantly, it’s blackmail with a catchy name. Rule number one as an entrepreneur: never forget that’s it’s all about marketing.

Even though it’s being used to describe an underhanded method of enabling an entrepreneur to quit their current gig and work on a new startup for six months without skipping a meal, it’s kind of poetic. I mean, first comes the dirt round, the round of financing that lays the foundation for the seed round that comes later and ultimately gets the new venture to take root and eventually blossom. Or whither, depending on the circumstances and the inability of the entrepreneur to raise another dirt round and restart the, uh, “cycle of life”, shall we say?

Of course, upon realizing the power of this new form of financing (just think – no one will ever ask for seat on the board in the dirt round!), I immediately realized that I must make sure to include MJK in any future entrepreneurial endeavor. After all, with all the people she’s been smooching, she’s got to have some good compost to form the basis of a dirt round of funding. <grin>

in Business / Personal / Technology 2 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Blogs = Political Advertising?

And now, for something completely different: political lunacy from BC (British Columbia! It appears that Elections BC has decided that blogs are advertising:

“Under the Election Act, it will fall within the definition of election advertising, and we would ask them to register,” says Jennifer Miller of Elections B.C.

Wow. Looks like election authorities haven’t learned anything from the last time we went down this road.

in Politics / Technology 4 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

Explain Yourself, Mr. Wilson

About a month ago, I expressed a bit of annoyance at 106 Miles’ definition of “entrepreneurial engineers” as it related to restricting attendance to the 106 Miles events. As my current title is “Product Manager” at PGP, my engineering background was apparently null and void.

Well, the squeaky wheel gets the speaker spot. I’ll be speaking at the next event on May 18th, along with Jeremy Zawodny and one as-yet-unnamed individual. The topic? “The Dark Side: why engineers become PMs, marketers, and salespeople.”

Search your feelings, young hacker…you know it to be true: you will join the Dark Side!

(Oh, and thanks to Troutgirl for the opportunity!)

in Business / Personal / Technology 0 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

BC Bleeding Talent

Argh. I know this might be more salt in the wound for BC after my last couple of posts on this topic (which, incidentally, got picked up by Heath Row over at Fast Company), but I have to point to this information about Flickr.

Maybe I’m late to the party, but I only recently came to realize (via Niall) that the Flickr crew has moved en masse to the Bay Area. This is the problem I’m talking about – BC is bleeding talent. Here are some talented entrepreneurs that cut their teeth at home and abroad, built something up of value in Vancouver, and then moved on once they got bought. It’s not that I blame the Flickr team – they built a successful venture, and their buyer probably needed them down here – but it’s like the BC tech environment is made of helium. Succeed and leave. Rinse, lather, repeat.

What’s worse: I’m convinced most people in BC have never even heard of Flickr. Now, understandably, it’s a pretty niche product. But it’s got a pretty cult-like following, and when someone like Yahoo! buys a company that’s only about a year old for a rumored $30 million in a place the size of Vancouver, I’d expect people to sit up and take notice.

Sigh.

in Business / Opinion / Technology 5 comments