Christine Lukasik

Microsoft TV

This weekend we'll be doing (among other things) the same thing that so many people on the MS Redmond campus seems to be doing - unplugging (well, decommissioning to another room) the Tivo and replacing it with a new Comcast/Microsoft Foundation TV HDTV DVR! The storage isn't great (15ish hours of HD), and I can't imagine that the UI will be nearly as fun/easy as the Tivo, but DUAL TUNERS, being able to lose the IR blast for channel changing and acutally recording HD content is certainly enough for us to give it a try. I'm sure we can work out how to add a larger hard drive later, somehow , and it's better than spending $1k on the Direct TV HD DVR.

We've paid for lifetime service for the Tivo, so we'll run it in another room for non HD content and stuff that only one of us wants to watch - which will come in super handy when they launch Tivo to go. I'll be able to drop episodes of Young and the Restless onto my Pocket PC (an HTC Blue Angel) to watch at the gym!!!!

Stay tuned and next week I'll let you know how it's going.

Now, if only we could get a new Mustang to try out like the Autoblog guy. Now that would be sweet.

Google Local

Ooooh, handy! Google Local, a new beta service from Google (there's also a cool, SMS based mobile version I can't wait to try). Same clean UI, easy searching for, say, a WiFi hotspot in Redmond. The results page shows you the list of results and a map with all of them labeled on it, AND allows you to zoom and pan on the map without reloading the page. Also includes address, phone number info as well as a link to web page, if appropriate. All they need to add is review/ratings information and it will totally replace the formerly awesome, much missed, and completely hobbled Citysearch.

Oh, indeed.

Well, goodness. This news about Jay Allen joining Six Apart as the Movable Type product manager is just about the best evidence that I've seen recently that indicates that the world is, in fact, still spinning properly and that the right things are happening in our little part of the universe. Congrats, Jay!!!

Jay is by his very nature a true evangelist and product champion - he'll do amazing things at Six Apart. I can say this with true authority because it was Jay's conviction and commitment to another product/company, RealNetworks, that brought about our original contact and, ultimately, our friendship. He was our most vocal investor, signing into the RNWK message board on Fool.com as FoolJay, and popping up all over the net making predictions, analyses, defenses and incredibly well thought out suggestions on a daily basis. He was so authoritative and spot-on that most of the message board participants thought he was a RN employee. Even RealNetworks employees thoguht he might be an insider, he seemed to know our business better than some employees, and he always seemed to be thinking forward to what we could be doing, even when we weren't. It was common in meetings for people to wonder "what FoolJay would think" about key decisions.

At that time, I was the Sr. Evangelist at Real, I was a big watcher of the Fool boards and a reader of Jay's posts. I needed launch partners for the launch of RealAudio 7 (I think) and I needed to have content encoded using out latest codecs, like, overnight. I needed friends, and I needed them fast. Just in case, even though I didn't know what kind of company Jay worked for, I included him on my initial 'reach out' contact list asking for content. Jay responded and got us great content in record time. His company, The Digs, was a big part of our launch, and as we worked together over the course of the next few months, Jay began to get the visibility he so richly deserved within Real, and a few friendships out of it, too.

I wish I could have convinced Jay to join Real, but as it turns out, he's so linked with that experience that I totally consider him to be a part of the incredible group of people I came to know during my 3 years there. I count many of them as some of the smartest, funniest, and best-est people I know on the planet, and even though working there was an extremely difficult experience, I miss working/laughing/travelling with them every day.

Thankfully, I live near most of them again.

Just a few:
Shelley
Celeste
Bob & Robin
Hugh & Derek (with the legendary Jerry Black in the background)
Jerry, Dave and Eddie
Elaine
Mark (Way too funny picture of Mark & I after a late-night swim in the ocean in Rio)
Jennifer, Joe and Flandreau
KristiLar
Lisa
Jason
Boyle
Banga

Posted By: Chris Lukasik

My .83 cents for today

So Dave (who works for Archie McPhees) is right that ideas are cheap and basically worthless unless you acutally implement them, but I'm full of them. They've gotta go somewhere.

I was at the gym yesterday in the suuuuper cool bat-cave like "Cardio theatre" room at my gym. I've heard of cardio theatre rooms before but this one is special (at least compared to the other ones I've been in) because it's DARK! It's brilliant, 'cause it's cooler, you can see the television screens better and the other people working out can't really see you - you're free to sweat and make exer-face in relative privacy! In this case it's even better, 'cause all the other people at my gym work at the same company as I do, and, well, some privacy is nice. Let's just leave it at that.

Anyway, maybe it's because it was dark and almost casino like in there, but I thought of the most excellent fitness system. A combination of the Sport Brain & a casino loyalty card thing that you can swipe on each machine you go to! To catch you up, the Sport Brain was this awesome little digital pedometer that you wore all day, then cradled at night so it could upload your step/mileage info to a web site that you could access and manage/track your distance, etc. I bought one about 5 minutes before they went out of business.
You know what I mean by the casino loyalty cards, right? The little magnetic stripe cards that casinos hand out so you can insert them into the slot machines so the casino can track your usage and you can get the equivalent of frequent flyer points?

Ok, so now, imagine that every piece of gym equipment everywhere (including maybe places like golf courses, batting cages, swimming pools, etc.) had a card swiper and a wireless uplink (suspend cost issues for now). While you work out, you carry your little card on a rubber springy key cord or a zip badge holder or whatever (acutally better yet, it would be a tiny RFID chip built into your watch, shoes or something, but anyway). When you get on the treadmill, you swipe your card, and when you complete your workout the treadmill wirelessly uploads your info to your workout repository. Then you go over and do your weight routine, swiping your card at each machine (or maybe a central place) - maybe the weight machines are also profile enabled so that they automatically adjust to your settings - including upping your weight or resistance based on your preset performance goals (with a manual override, of course). Maybe when you go to the cafe at the gym and get a smoothie you swipe your card and the calorie info is also uploaded.

Later, you log into your fitness portal and see where you stand against your goals. You learn that you're over-calories by an average of 100/day, maybe you learn that if you changed your cardio up by 10 minutes or 2 levels of intensity for the next week you could lose an extra 5 pounds. Perhaps you decide to accept that change, your profile is updated, and tomorrow when you get on the treadmill it automatically speeds up to enable you to meet your goals (again, with a manual override, of course).

Expensive? Yup. Cool? a-yup! Maybe Nike could develop the standard and build a tiny pocket for the RFID into their shoes. Then they could license the standard to exercize equipment manufacturers so that all the machines would support the system. The web interface would be a subscription service through - well, not sure it matters. AOL could offer it, Nike could offer it directly and really build a great, active digital community. Or Polar - yea, they should totally build this thing.

I would so totally use this. Maybe it would be best as a small pedometer-like device so that non-swipable activities like hiking and daily walking could be easily captured. It could still have the profile/settings info stored on it, or it could just hold the unique identifier and (where used) the machines could get it and query the web server for settings info.

Either way, I want it, and I put it out here in the hopes that someone will tell me that it already exists, or that someone smarter and richer than me will go create it then turn around and sell it to me.

Oh, and while we're at it, I want the exercise bikes & other machines that have video games built in and linked so that the harder you pedal the better you do at the game. Come on already! I understand there are whole gyms full of these in the UK.

Posted by: Chris Lukasik

So easily amused...

Much like Xylophone Kitten before it, Bananna Phone has been bringing me joy all morning. (turn your speakers on) Cellular! Modular! Interactive-odular!
I defy you not to be singing the tune for the rest of the day.

Link from MeFi

Paranoia..

Since I just found this to be quite helpful, thought I would share the link.
Microsoft's page on how to check to see if your Windows machine is infected with Mydoom.A or B and what to do if it is.

LG mobile phone w/OELD!

Wow - this is great! The first (to my knowledge, anyway) mobile device launched with ultra bright, ultra energy efficient Organic Electroluminescent Display (OELD) display, the LG G4050 It's not groundbreaking in terms of digitializing a display that to date has been paper and ink, like a newspaper or a billboard - but my hope is that a low-cost display technology in wide distribution will ultimately drive more widespread usage, for outdoor advertising and beyond.

I also think that great applications like the Gallery Player, mentioned here before, will also drive alternate display technology. The Gallery Player works and looks amazing on plasma screens, but with the current price point, those are out of reach for many consumers. Enter cheap, bright clear display technology - and soon every home has display-able "wallpaper", every billboard and piece of outdoor adversiting is digital (oh, the waste reduction!). yeah!

Plaxo & Mogu

Plaxo, the new web contact management system by one of the co-counders of Napster sounds like a step toward my dream centralized data store, an online spot to keep your contacts - automatically updated when your contacts (who also use Plaxo, of course) change their info. Currently it imports to Outlook & Outlook express - so I'm not going to get much use out of it, but I do like the concept. 'Course, all my contact stuff is already stored online in my Hiptop web backend, which feeds my actual device, so using Plaxo would require a dupe set of info for me.....until they start linking with other email software, or better yet, directly to the Hiptop data store. Now _that_ would be greeeat. Bottom line - really good idea - hopefully it will catch on to the point that they build bridges to lots more communications tools.

On a completely unrelated note, we were working on some early holiday shopping this week, and stumbled into our local Brookstone store...where we discovered Mogu!!!! (Now oddly rebranded by Brookstone as FÖM.) Compleltely dorky awful picture on that site aside, have you FELT THIS THING? I picked it up off the shelf just out of curiosity, and haven't put it down since. It's basically a giant stress ball, but also makes a great pillow, reading shelf, toss-in-the-air-with-glee toy, hat (seriously, you can sort of encase your head in it in a mushroom like fashion) and all around totally addictive sensation, both the fabric and the 'stuffing'. Being the geeks that we are, we immediately started poking around online for more Mogu scoop - it's Japanese, of course, and the company is "in the business of happiness", donates a portion of thier proceeds to UNICEF, has their own Mogu Village project that aids areas plagued by conflict and natural disasters, and they make all kinds of super cool Mogu stuff - even healing furniture..that table!!!! I'm trying to simplify, you know, buy less stuff and all that, but I can't resist this thing! I mean, after all, whoever touch its product, everybody feels fun & relaxation. (go to Brookstone, pick one up and you'll know what I mean). We're acutaly kind of considering a buying trip to Japan, since we've been talking about going on a ski/eating trip (Pot N Pot cheap, delish, fast curry in Tokyo) anyway. simplify? maybe next year.

Funny, supposedly helpful pictures

Oh, fun! The Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness

Comments are on...for this entry

Just after I made the previous post, I decided to install the blacklist anyway. So, comments are on for this post, and we'll see how it goes. It installed soooo easily - great job Jay! He thoughtfully included a feature to publish the blacklist, so watch for a list of the baddies, coming soon!