50,000 people were at the Great Lawn to watch and seeing all the old tour t-shirts, Bon Jovi tatoos and hearing stories about concerts people had been to reminded me how this guy was THE MAN back in the day. He is still a pretty big deal, especially among the Jersey crowd, but it seems like his music is now mostly played in bars, sung along to by drunk 20-somethings that were probably a little to young to have really been engaged during his hey-day… Myself included. But his music has transcended decades and as was apparent yesterday, he still has a massive fan base and can easily fill 35 acres of park with fans (see photo above!).

Made me think I should have taken all of my childhood guitar lessons a little more seriously and been a rockstar. Now I’ll just have to wonder what it’s like to see women with a heart with a sword through it tatooed on their back with your name above it… Umm, yeah, I saw about 5 of those.

From my phone’s camera (regular camera’s were not allowed!)…

But it’s the software and the iPhone App Store that’s now really making the iPhone special. Any developer can now offer applications, after an approval process, for iPhone users to add to their phones. The actual iPhone itself and its large, beautiful touchscreen serve as the vehicle to deliver the app functionality to the user.

While making the internet connection speed faster with 3G helps, the software is what’s really empowering the iPhone now. Most handset makers are creating new ways to hide keyboards and slide different parts of the phone various ways to make them more usable and fun, but it’s software that can have the most impact on usability.

Think of something you wish your phone did that it currently doesn’t. Hardware issue or software? Software right? If the answer is hardware for some reason, I’d like to hear what the issue is in the comments.

With software essentially defining the  functionality of the iPhone, and all phones for that matter, I guess you could say that developers are the artists, with the iPhone as their canvas. Umm, a really really nice canvas… With a monthly fee……

Also posted on LaunchSquad’s Exclamation Blog

The topic that came up each time was a green startup called Project Better Place. First I had dinner with a friend who was interning there this summer and told me all about it. The next day a ringer on LaunchSquad’s softball team brought up the company over dinner at the lovely Frankie’s Bohemian Cafe. Third, the next day I stumbled upon and article about Project Better Place on Earth2Tech.

Project Better Place has a very grand vision: “We see an oil-free future and a healthier, safer planet.” They want to accomplish this by bringing electric vehicles to the public and building the infrastructure to make it  easy and sustainable. While the vision is a big one, it also seems to have a good chance for success.

The CEO, Shai Agassi, was once up for CEO of SAP, the fifth largest software company in the world. He left to start Project Better Place. The company has also gotten some serious funding ($200 million to start, for their work in Israel) and buy-in from auto manufacturers including Nissan, Renault and potentially Daimler.

This is definitely one of the most intriguing green companies to watch. It will be a long road, but so far the company seems to be well on the right track. Gavin Newsom wants the San Francisco Bay Area to be the first U.S. region to participate in Project Better Place, which seems appropriate.

The prospect of electric cars has always seemed ideal, but ultimately, not realistic. But technology and companies like Project Better Place and Tesla Motors are finally working to making widespread electric car use possible. Definitely rooting for these guys, and looking forward to following how things progress. Sounds like Denmark is next…

Also posted on LaunchSquad’s Exclamation Blog

The Yankees stink right now, they’ve had some key injuries this year and now star pitcher Chien Ming Wang is out for ten weeks because he hurt himself running the bases, something AL pitchers rarely do, during interleague play. So what does Hank Steinbrenner do? He blames interleague play, the national league, and the fact that major league baseball still uses a rule “from the 1800s.” As told to the Associated Press:

“My only message is simple. The National League needs to join the 21st century,” Steinbrenner said in Tampa, Fla. “They need to grow up and join the 21st century.

“Am I (mad) about it? Yes,” Steinbrenner added. “I’ve got my pitchers running the bases, and one of them gets hurt. He’s going to be out. I don’t like that, and it’s about time they address it. That was a rule from the 1800s.”

Wang is an elite professional athlete, a baseball player, and if he’s capable of making contact with a 90 mile per hour fastball (and throwing a ball that fast), then I hope he knows how to run correctly — apparently not. I see teams of 40-year-old obese smokers in Central Park playing softball on a weekly basis that can run the bases better than that.

And what’s this stuff about the 1800s? As far as I know, the DH wasn’t instituted until 1973. Maybe the rule was created in the 1800s, but then again, so was that rule about three strikes and you’re out. Maybe we should get rid of that one too Hank, then you’re players may actually have a chance to get a hit every now and then?

Alright, I’m done… HellaFrank promises to be in a better mood next time!

Verizon spent more than $3 million to lobby the [Pennsylvania] state government to pass a bill preventing cities and townships in Pennsylvania from offering broadband or wireless services unless the phone company has refused to do so. More than a dozen states have similar statutes on the books that make it difficult for government to get into the wireless broadband business. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed a law in June that prevents municipalities from offering broadband if there are competing private services. Nevada bans most cities and counties from offering telecommunications services. Texas flatly prohibits it.

Fast forward a couple of years and a company called Meraki is now breathing life back into municipal wireless. How? By taking an open-source, community powered approach that bypasses telecoms and the government. Meraki sells and gives away their tiny piece of hardware, called a repeater, that allows anyone within a one-block radius to receive a 1-megabit wireless signal — three times faster than anything Earthlink promised. Eventually these repeaters will be networked across all of San Francisco, creating a seamless and open wireless network. The best part? It’s individuals powering the network with hardware provided by an independent company — the government and big telecoms can do nothing about it, though San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and the board of supervisors fully support it anyway (and seem to be taking credit for it too).

It’s a great example of how the power of the masses is far stronger than any telecom or government agency. Meraki has created a simple piece of technology, yet with widespread usage, it becomes so much more than that. For example, the company is starting by offering free repeaters for low-income housing developments in San Francisco so people who struggle to afford Internet can have it in their homes.

And don’t feel bad for Meraki, while they are probably not making much money right now, providing such a core service, much like Google does with search, opens up endless possibilities for business development in the future.

Open-source, community and the power of the crowd is not just the future of the Internet, it’s the future of Internet access.

But, despite all of this secrecy, these days we pretty much know the big announcements we’re going to hear at Steve Jobs’ keynotes before they hapen. It’s always nice to hear the confirmations, but it’s the little things, the unexpected news, that gets me excited.

This time around, for me, it wasn’t even a product from Apple, but from MLB.com who historically likes to tempt baseball fans with awesome sounding products that end up sucking because of poor technology (i.e. Windows Media Player) or lack of ridiculous amounts of bandwidth.

But at the Apple keynote, they announced MLB At Bat, an iPhone application that not only lets you track baseball games live with detailed updates, but delivers video to your iPhone of the game’s highlights minutes after they happen.

What did you say? Derrek Lee just went yard in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Cardinals? Let’s have a look-see.

And even though MLB.com does not have a great history with providing good video, this year’s overhaul of Gameday (see my earlier post) gives me hope that this will actually work. Dan Frommer at Silicon Alley Insider is right-on when he says that video on mobile phones needs to be delivers in “snacks” not huge meals. Let’s be honest, not many people want to watch full feature programming on a tiny screen, especially something as slow as baseball. So MLB At Bat is definitely taking the right approach.

So yes, thank you Steve for the new and improved iPhone, I’ll be purchasing one soon, but thank you even more MLB.com for ensuring I will never miss a Cubs highlight on this year’s epic road to the World Series.

This event made it clear that New York is serious about becoming the “global technology hub” that mayor Bloomberg suggests. In fact, in a press conference to kick off Internet Week, Bloomberg announced NYC Seed, a $2 million fund for early stage technology companies. Granted, that’s not a lot of money, especially with the cost of operating a business in New York, but it’s a start and companies also receive advice and guidance from the fund’s members as they build their company. Any buy-in from the city is a good thing, and if that $2 million goes to good use, NYC Seed would definitely see a re-up in the near future.

Taking a seed-funding approach is appropriate for the state of the New York tech industry since many of the companies based here seem to be in much earlier stages than their counterparts on the West Coast. Also, I’d imagine that quite a few talented developers and less-experienced entrepreneurs may not have the relationships with wealthy individuals and VCs to raise a first round of funding they need to get their businesses off the ground. NYC Seed should give them easier and less relationship-based access to that kind of money and knowledge.

Overall it was a great week of events, and even culminated in an Internet Week “old media vs. new media” feud that made it onto Page Six! I guess Amy Winehouse took the week off.

Also posted on LaunchSquad’s Exclamation Blog

I’ve changed HellaFrank to a self-hosted Wordpress blog that I can have far more control (like the lovely new design and the the Google ads to your right that I know you’ll all be clicking on!). I’m excited, have some good posts in the pipe and apologize in advance for the many posts I will be writing about Nintendo Wii — I just got one and am smitten by it. Ok, no, I’m not sorry about the Wii posts, I just happen to be in love with a video game console, that’s it.

But one aspect of the economy that’s near and dear to me is venture backed technology companies and how they will be affected. Many people have strong opinions and there is really no consensus on what will happen. On several occasions recently I have been asked by people outside the tech industry how the economy has affected, or will affect, the companies I work with and the VCs that fund them. My answer to them is that I really don’t know, and in my never-ending search for the answer to that question, no one else really seems to either.

Back in August, a prominent venture capitalist in San Francisco, Keith Benjamin received some attention from a blogpost he wrote about why the credit crisis would help venture capital. The New York Times and Silicon Valley blog VentureBeat also reported on his theory that venture capital is not based on credit and debt, therefore, investors will be more willing to invest in tech IPOs. There’s one theory.

But, the numbers show that those IPOs have not been plentiful the past few months. Hmmm?

More recently (and by recently, I mean, this week) another article in The New York times paints a dramatic picture of the slowdown in Silicon Valley. Silicon Alley Insider, a New York technology blog, agrees (but then again, they’ll never pass up an opportunity to prove superiority over our West coast counterparts).

On the flip side, here in New York, Union Square Ventures recently announced the closing of their most recent investment fund, apparently without much difficulty. Yesterday Reuters reported that New York is “fertile ground” for technology startups, and VC and tech/finance blogger Paul Kedrosky agrees, at least for financial tech startups. So now you’re telling me things are different based on location? It’s starting to get murky…

Probably the most convincing and level-headed post I’ve read on the topic comes from Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures. Yes, he is a VC and it’s in his interest for people to remain bullish on tech startups and the economic viability of the web, but he makes some good points and concludes that now’s the time for companies to build their business models for the long haul. There’s venture capital money out there waiting to be invested (see above, USV just got $156 million), but the returns may not come right away. So, companies need to build real, sustainable business models since Google won’t snatch them up anytime soon and they’re damn sure not going public… A real, profitable company, what a concept!

In the end, there really doesn’t seem to be an answer everyone can agree on. Overall, it seems that whether the effects of the downturn are negative or positive depends on your role in the tech community. For an entrepreneur, it may be harder to get money and convince VCs that his company can make it in this economy. Bad for them. For VCs, they’ll have to strategize on which types of companies can make it right now and advise accordingly once they’ve funded those companies. Not bad or good, just different. End-users of these technologies? It seems like we/they are put in a position of power. Products need to be made for end-users now, not for Google or Yahoo!, and consumers may ultimately decide whether a company is successful or not. With so many early acquisitions the past few years, widespread consumer adoption and revenue haven’t necessarily been the benchmarks of success for startups.

So, I guess we just need to sit back and watch it all unfold, and the next time someone asks you how the economic downturn is affecting tech, tell them to get comfortable cause the answer may take a while.

Update: Interesting post on Silicon Alley Insider today about computer science graduates not having any problem finding jobs. Seems like engineers are always in high demand though — a company is nothing without its product, and developers bring those to life.