Ingram, on the other hand, is a Microsoft Exchange shop, so after dragging my feet for awhile, I’ve finally moved to Microsoft Entourage on my MacBook and use Exchange on my iPhone 3G for intracompany communications.  Although I’d forgotten the sense of security that you get when you use a software email application, I find that I am missing all my cloud applications - especially Gmail.

The big change is speed. Exchange and Microsoft Office have far more features, and are more compatible with the millions of docs out there, but you have to wait. for. everything!

People have written on this topic before, usually concluding that it's not the idea, it's the execution, or the team, and so on -- seems to me to be a bit pointless. If we really knew the proper proportions of idea, execution and team for success we wouldn't use our current pachinko machine model. I would assume, however, all other things being equal, that starting with a good idea is better than starting with a bad one.

In the spirit of Paul Graham's post, here's a good idea that's been on my mind for awhile:

Why not have a simple geo-location service that matched where you're going with people in cars that will be going your direction soon?  Twitter that you want to go cross-town and in seconds you get a half dozen dynamically updated commuters that are going your way. Combine this with point-by-point gps instructions from point A to B, the commuter you select gets routing information that allows them to stop at an intersection and honk to let you know your ride is here. The service consists of three parts: (1) where you're going (and where you are via GPS) (2) a back end database that can figure out from all the real-time information who matches up (3) let you choose from the options - maybe based on the kind of car, their reputation/reliability, etc. Not too hard - in fact either Twitter or FriendFeed could be a big hunk of this business.

If geolocation and routing allowed people with cars to pick up people with minimum inconvenience, and if enough people with iPhone 3G-type phones could get streamed updated directions, and if there was a simple way to establish reputation, this could change how people commute and travel in cities, saving a tremendous amount of energy.

Fred Wilson wrote a post back in June titled Am I Bored With "Web 2.0"? where he confessed that he was envious of friends that were investing in areas that "would make a difference to our children". Here's a Web 2.0 business that would make a big difference to our children if it took off.

Call it Flitter, or maybe Flitter.me! 

PS. If you run with this, let me know if you need an advisor :-)

Got the new iPhone 3G, and I upgraded my older iPhone to the new 2.0 firmware, which allows you to get iPhone applications from iTunes. I've been having a great time with the new iPhone (although things were definitely funky for much of Friday - launching MobileMe, the new iPhone 2.0 Firmware and the Apple 3G at the same time would be a stretch for any company).

I'll blog about what I've found with the new iPhone sometime later after I've had a chance to play with it some more, but I'm really happy to finally have an eBook platform for the iPhone - so I thought I'd do a quick walkthrough of the new eReader software that you can get for free in the iTunes app store. [Disclosure, I work for Ingram Digital, and we do support eReader software as part of our ebook distribution solution].

Downloading the eReader software from iTunes just took a few seconds on the 3G (still less then a minute on the older iPhone). Launching the app is also very fast, only a few seconds.

Having said all that, I want to let everyone know that Ingram Digital, our partners for the last two years, has acquired the iofy platform and the iofy development team! More to come about this, but we're all excited about the opportunity to grow our platform with Ingram's people and resources.

I just finished a round of meetings with publishers, and although the hard data won't be out for a few weeks, it would appear that a lot of people agree with me. Kindle titles are doing quite well, in spite of the fact that Amazon has had trouble keeping the ebook reader in stock.

Unlike the polished Apple iPhone, the Kindle is a work in progress for Amazon, but the ease in browsing and purchasing content (no surprise from Amazon), and a "good enough" reading experience should enable Amazon to become a substantial ebook reseller. Amazon will continue to iterate the Kindle design: this first Kindle is close in kinship to the first Apple iPod, which also got mixed reviews.

My most serious reservation about the Kindle relates to the supply chain that Amazon has created to feed it. Unlike the iPod, which supported MP3 music files from the start, the Kindle doesn't support standard ebook formats like epub, so the Kindle experience is a closed garden experience, at least for now.

A side note: it's surprising how much power the Kindle uses on standby. If I don't turn it off, it shuts down in a day or so, even though e-ink displays aren't supposed to use power if the pages aren't being turned. We worked with PVI, the e-ink display manufacturer, on several display prototypes, and those prototypes lasted a lot longer.

About that time, I came upon Fred Wilson's post on the future of media:

1 - Microchunk it - Reduce the content to its simplest form. Thanks Umair.
2 - Free it - Put it out there without walls around it or strings on it. Thanks Stewart.
3 - Syndicate it - Let anyone take it and run with it.  Thanks Dave.
4 - Monetize it - Put the monetization and tracking systems into the microchunk. Thanks Feedburner.

Fred's vision of how media should be was clean and refreshing, and it was what we wanted to do. We wanted to make spoken audio content an intelligently chunked, non-proprietary, syndicatable, monetizable citizen of the net.

Three years later, we are finally completing a solid platform; where we can enable people to enjoy spoken audio in a way that goes with the grain of the Internet (courtesy Paul Graham). We've gotten validation from publishers, resellers and distributors: now we need to show consumers a good time.

I'm looking forward to talking to people about this at the PLA in two weeks. See you soon!

The iPhone is the first device I've used that did a "good enough" job as a phone, email reader, browser (the best mobile web browsing I've used -- in spite of the limited EDGE connectivity from ATT) that I don't take more than one device on the road. Although the pseudo GPS capability is quite poor, I find myself tolerating this and leaving my nuvi 650 at home rather than take two devices.

As you can imagine, I've pushed hard to make sure that iofy audiobooks are compatible with the iPhone and Apple iTouch as well as the standard iPods. People were pretty happy when we rolled out software to support the iPhone and iTouch a few weeks ago.

As iofy is a digital media platform developer as well as a device designer, I'm keenly interested in Apple's plans.  Today's NYT has an intriguing article by John Markoff where he opines on the future direction of Apple media devices:

On Wednesday, at a financial conference, Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook, confirmed that the iTouch was a platform, not a single product. That would indicate that there is something like a Safari Pad in the offing — a Wi-Fi connected device that would be a scaled-up digital media reader.

I think Markoff is right, but that the focus will be on an iTunes Pad, not a Safari Pad. Apple's story on the video side is just gearing up; a six or seven inch iTouch would drive sales of movies and tv shows -- and maybe tell an ebook story as well.

Item: You should check out Chris Anderson's post on his new "FREE" meme at Wired.  It's entertaining reading and has a lot of implications for digital media (and could have the legs of his last meme). I think that the characteristics of your digital offering defines the business model, not vice versa, but "FREE" is a great new investigation of digital goods.

Item: "Apple's iTunes will likely whip past Wal-Mart Stores to become the largest U.S. music retailer sometime this year." See the CNET post.