5 Reasons to Listen to Pandora – Guest Post

This article discusses some great reasons to choose the Pandora music streaming service.

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Five Forms of Social Media Through History – Guest Post

Social Media has been with humanity all through history. This article examines a few notable examples.

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RedBox – Another Pretender to the Netflix Throne

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

Big news leaked out this week from all of the usual tech luminaries. (TechCrunch, CNET, SlashGear, ReadWriteWeb) See the news here.

RedBox is Planning a Video Streaming Service to Compete with Netflix.

Is this it for Netflix? Is this the threat that will finally topple their video empire? Have the finally met their match?

Probably not.

I have been a Netflix customer and evangelist for over six years now. Forgive me if i don’t get all excited when I hear about yet another entrant into the “We’ll just take all of Netflix’s customers” game. It all seems so easy; just throw up a store, run a few commercials, and start counting all of their (Netflix) money. Not so fast.

You probably don’t need some boring history lesson here, but since I actually do have a degree in history – why not?

Just A Little Bit of History Repeating

Where have I heard this whole story before?

Netflix would never be able to stand up to move rental giant BlockBuster, right? (They’re Chapter 11 now. Their DVD-by-mail service lost so much money that they just gave it away to Walmart.)

Wow, that must have been a tough adversary. Netflix could never withstand the might retail giant Walmart, right? Remember when they were going to just steamroll poor, little Netflix? They had their own DVD-by-mail service to go along with the wreckage that they got from Blockbuster. Kaput!

Oh crap, here come the content owners (Fox, NBC, and ABC) with their own “NetFlix Killer” in Hulu.

Now there’s just no way that Netflix could never withstand the undisputed king of ECommerce - Amazon. Surely they can figure out how to just steal away all of Netflix’s customers and money right? Yeah, exactly.

So I guess that this vending machine company is the “Real Netflix Killer” that’s going to jump in there and show those clowns how it’s done.

Since late 2008 Netflix’s stock (NFLX) is up over 1,200%.

Let me spell that out for your. ONE THOUSAND, TWO HUNDRED PER CENT!

Take a look at that Stock chart at the top of the page and see how the rest of the companies mentioned here have fared over that period.

Pardon me while I call that Etrade baby and ask him how to place a Buy Order for some Netflix stock.

What Do You Think?

Does RedBox stand a chance against Netflix? Will they finally be the one to knock them off their video high horse? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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Why is the Cable Company Still Drilling Holes in My Walls?

Where is my Wireless Television Router?

Another Aggravating Conundrum

Did you ever buy a wireless router? You plug it into the wall and your cable modem and you’re done. Computer in the living room – no wires, no problem. Computer in all three bedrooms – no wires, no problem. Connect your video game console to the web – no wires, no problem.

Strange, because wifi, let alone game consoles, has only been around for a very short time. Compare that to Television. People have been beaming video through hundreds of miles of air for SEVEN DECADES. It’s a pretty simple thing, a transmitter beams the information out and a receiver captures the information and displays it on a screen.

Why then do I have to take a full day off from work and sit in my house while some goon drills holes through my new oak floors, freshly painted walls and staples an ugly white cable along my baseboards? All this to get a video signal from the hole in my baseball wall to my TVs a mere 10 to 20 feet away.

Where is the wireless TV router that works as well as my internet router? There should be a simple device that sits in one room of my house and connects to the cable coming in from the street. Then, I just get a wireless cable box that gets attached to each set in my house. That’s it, nothing else. No more coaxial cable running through my living room. No more 5 hour installations, no more holes drilled into my damn house. Is that too much to ask. Now, if I want to move the TV from one side of the living room to the other, I don’t need to call a contractor.

Is that too much to ask?

What are Your Thoughts?

I would love to hear what you think about this perplexing hassle. Does anybody have any ideas or solutions?

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Book Review – Rework (from 37 Signals)

This is a review of Rework, the book by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, founders of 37 Signals. Rework covers ways to run a lean, effective business.

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