Took this shot on my trusty iPhone at the SF Moma last week during a break from the Web 2.0 Summit.  If one Ryan is good, an infinite number of Ryans must be better…

Technorati Tags: iPhone, SFMoma, Web2Summit

Well, not really, but today’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg, were each honored for their independent discoveries of Giant Magnetoresistance, or GMR in 1988. The stunning growth in storage density in magnetic media was enabled in large part by the introduction of hard drives heads that employed GMR, and most hard drives on the market today are GMR-based. For many years, the growth in magnetic data storage density matched the growth in transistors-on-a-chip density (aka Moore’s Law), roughly a 36% compound annual growth rate.

But then in the mid-1990’s magnetic storage density growth rates accelerated to a whopping 80%-100% annual growth rate, trouncing the semiconductor industry’s achievements. Much of this is a result of disk drive manufacturers commercializing read/write technology that took advantage of the GMR effect, with the first GMR-based read head introduced into the market around 1997. In many ways, the quantum mechanical effect of GMR observed in the thin-film structures of alternating ferromagnetic and non-magnetic metal layers, only a nanometer or two thick, represent an early real-world application of nanotechnology, well before the term had even been popularized.

Thanks in part to the pioneering work of these two men, the exponential growth rates we’ve all come to expect from computing hardware continue unabated. Let’s put this in concrete terms: I bought the first 5GB iPod when it was introduced to the market in October 2001. Less than six years later in September 2007, Apple introduced the 160GB iPod Classic, a 32x capacity increase over the original, a doubling in density every 14 months. Take that Gordon!

Technorati Tags: GMR, Hard Drives, Moore’s Law, Nanotechnology, Nobel, Storage

At the Postini/Google closing dinner last Wednesday night, Postini investor David Cowan gave a toast. In Limerick. Here it is in all its glory. Thanks for the laughs, David!

Technorati Tags: Google, Postini, Limerick, Toast

Today, EchoStar announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Sling Media for $380m in cash. Sling is a Mobius VC portfolio company where I’ve had the pleasure of serving on the board for three very exciting years. I first met Blake Krikorian, Sling’s CEO and co-founder shortly after he presented at the May 2004 D: All Things Digital conference. After spending some time with Blake and hearing his vision for the Slingbox and a new kind of consumer electronics company focused on the digital media consumer, I was hooked. We issued Sling Media a term sheet to lead their Series A round. Shortly thereafter, David Chao of DCM came in as a co-lead on the round and

we consummated our investment in October 2004.

Being a gadget junkie, I had spent several years at Mobius looking at dozens of companies that could be referred to as “digital home” companies, but hadn’t made an investment in any of them. Most of the companies had one more more fatal flaws that fell into three categories.

Category one was encountered by hardware plays. Most companies I saw had designed a hardware product that was basically a PC architecture crammed into a set-top box, yet had to sell at a consumer electronics price-point of $299 or less, meaning razor-thin margins (at best) or negative margins, forcing the company to find alternative revenue streams to make profit. I call this the “TiVo problem”.

The second category of problem was encountered by companies that understood the first category problem and decided they needed to sell middleware to the existing CE and set-top-box companies so they could enjoy a nice high-margin software OEM revenue stream, and provide the CE companies with fancy new capabilities like the ability to network a DVD player or stream music and photos from a PC to devices connected to the user’s TV or stereo system. All well and good, except for the fact that these companies would inevitably discover that they would get far less money per unit shipped than they expected, or that their customers would take far longer (often years longer) than they had planned to push the startup’s fancy “digital media networking glue” software out into the field in their devices.

Imagine you’re a startup trying to sell your snazzy middleware to big CE players like Sony, Philips, JVC, Akai, etc, or to set-top-box vendors like Motorola or Scientific Atlanta. Either your customer is going to grind you down to sub $1/unit royalty or they themselves will be dependent upon telcos, cable companies and satellite broadcasters for final approval and deployment of the box the new software is embedded. A startup could (and many did) easily die on the vine waiting years for dollar one of revenue or come to find their revenue stream way less compelling than they had hoped, no matter how compelling the software they managed to create was.

Problem number three was the copyright/fair-use minefield any new media technology must tread carefully through. Any product that manipulates digital audio and video faces the spectre of possible litigation from major media companies and copyright owners who do not always, shall we say, embrace innovative new technologies for delivering and consuming content with open arms.

So why did Sling rise above the noise for me? Besides having an instant personal connection with Blake and his two other co-founders, his brother Jason and CTO Bhupen Shah, I got excited about Sling because they understood all three of these issues and dealt with them up front. First, Sling enjoys comfortable (and positive) margins with each Slingbox sold because the “secret sauce” lies in the software within the Slingbox and the client, and the Slingbox itself is elegantly designed and minimalist device from a hardware perspective — it is basically a plastic box with a few connectors and a DSP chip inside it, giving Sling an enviably inexpensive bill-of-materials.

Sling addressed the second problem (unknown time to unknown magnitude of revenue) by going straight to the consumer via retail with their software (which happens to be packaged in a cheap plastic box), so that they could prove consumer demand for place-shifting. After demand was proven, Sling would have opportunities for OEM/royalty-type revenue streams (which has indeed come to pass).

Finally, Blake & Co knew that the idea of place-shifting might be unsettling to some, so they worked diligently from day one to spend time with broadcast networks, studios and other members of the media ecosystem to help them understand how the Slingbox and all their products had been architected to respect the rights of content owners.

Admittedly, I also loved the fact that place-shifting was a delightfully out-of-the-box way of looking at the digital home landscape. Every company I encountered other than Sling was focused on getting media off a user’s PC and onto their TV or stereo. The Slingbox did the opposite: it was about getting your TV on to your PC or mobile device. And the Slingbox worked with whatever your existing TV/home entertainment infrastructure might be. A product that would add value to all your existing devices and would “just work”. And the last thing that hooked me was the fact that Sling had code-named their secret-sauce dynamic video-stream-optimization technology “Lebowski”, after that most -excellent Jeff Bridges movie. The tech has since been renamed SlingStream, but it was fun while it lasted…

After the Sling Series A closed in October 2004, it was off to the races. They went from a demo prototype to a finished piece of hardware on the shelves at thousands of stores (mainly BestBuy and CompUSA at launch) in less than nine months, launching the product on June 30th, 2005. Much of the credit for this amazing achievement goes to Bhupen Shah, Sling co-founder and CTO, who managed a transoceanic team between San Mateo and Bangalore that churned out hardware, software and firmware in record time.

The Slingbox garnered dozens of awards, great reviews, great word-of-mouth among early adopters and became one of the best consumer electronics product launches ever, selling 100,000 Slingboxes in the first six months of the product’s availability. That was followed up by a monster $47m Series B round in January 2006 led by EchoStar, Goldman Sachs and Liberty Media. And Sling marched on in 2006 by continuing to tell Slingboxes like hotcakes while launching support for the SlingPlayer software on multiple platforms including Windows Mobile, Mac OS, Symbian and Palm. Sling also managed to turn out three new second-gen Slingboxes in time for the 2006 holiday season and launch internationally throughout Asia, Europe and South America. I’m sweating just typing up this condensed history.

The success of Slingbox, which continues to outsell other place-shifting products by an order of magnitude, is a result of the company’s maniacal focus on product quality and user experience. A great product that “just worked” out of the box coupled with great customer support and Sling employees’ (from the CEO on down) active engagement in their user community led to great press and word-of-mouth buzz, too many awards to count, rapid user adoption and great brand awareness and identity.

Moving in to 2007, Sling continued to accelerate their Slingbox sales and began expanding their product line and feature set. At CES 2007 in January Sling pre-announced the upcoming SlingCatcher, in essence a hardware version of the SlingPlayer software, allowing users to connect to a Slingbox and watch it on another TV, not just a laptop or cell-phone screen. Blake Krikorian joined CBS’ Les Moonves in his keynote speech and demo’d the upcoming Clip+Sling functionality that will allow users to clip and share snippets of programming they are watching on via their Slingboxes. CBS was the first network to come on board and announce their support for Clip+Sling. This, coupled with the announcement a month earlier that Jason Hirschorn, former Chief Digital Officer at MTV Networks had joined Sling as President of Sling’s newly formed Entertainment Group, gave a preview of Sling’s founding ambitions to to move well beyond simply being a vendor of digital media hardware.

Today marks another step in fulfilling Sling Media’s grand ambitions. As Sling prepared to raise another equity round, they were approached by EchoStar about a more serious strategic transaction. After a long series of conversations, it became clear to Blake, Jason and Bhupen at Sling that becoming part of EchoStar would afford Sling resources, distribution and market muscle throughout the media landscape that they simply wouldn’t have as an independent entity and allow them to reach (and extend) their vision for Sling Media even more quickly. Congratulations to Blake, Jason, Bhupen and everyone at Sling Media, and contratulations to EchoStar on a very insightful purchase!

Technorati Tags: CES, Convergence, Customer Support, Digital, DISH, EchoStar, Gadgets, Sling Media, Slingbox, Video

Yesterday, Joe Zawinul passed away at his home in Vienna, Austria. Joe Zawinul played keys/organ and shares composition credits with the great Miles Davis on two of my all-time favorite (and groundbreaking) jazz-fusion albums, In a Silent Way (iTunes) and Bitches Brew (iTunes). These two albums are incredible to experience and are worthy of a dark and otherwise silent room, a fantastic stereo system and one’s undivided attention.

What blows me away about these two albums are some of the players who appear on them, though this is true of all the musicians Miles Davis was able to attract throughout his career. Joe Zawinul, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea (that’s just the keyboardists so far!), Wayne Shorter, Dave Holland, Tony Williams and one of my favorite guitar players, the virtuosic John McLaughlin.

Prior to his session dates with Miles Davis, Zawinul played in Maynard Ferguson’s band, for Dinah Washington and then with Cannonball Adderly for nine years. Zawinul went on to co-found the seminal 70’s fusion band Weather Report (remember the song Birdland?) with fellow Miles alum and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Not a bad run, to say the least. Farewell, Mr. Zawinul, and thanks for the music.

Technorati Tags: Fusion, Jazz, Joe Zawinul, Miles Davis, Music

Hats off to my friend Jud for passing this video along to me over enchiladas and margaritas at the Rio last week. It is an image manipulation technique for resizing images by removing less relevant visual data, instead of by cropping or shrinking/expanding. Hard to explain, so watch it. If a picture is worth 1k words, a video must be worth 1k pictures…

Girl by the whirlpool

Lookin’ for a new fool

Don’t follow leaders

Watch the parkin’ meters

-Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues

So in the past couple weeks, I’ve noticed something strange.  The parking meters throughout downtown Boulder are disappearing and being replaced with new Swedish-built solar-powered parking pay stations located on each block.  Happily, these pay stations accept credit cards, pre-pay cards (not yet, but soon) and coins.  Sadly, they do not accept the old meter-keys that worked so well with the old meters.  Now I’ve got ~$50 trapped on one of those keys, and no way (so far) to exchange them, though Boulder Parking Services assures me that the ability to exchange them for a pre-pay card is coming soon.  And now there are blocks full of decapitated parking meter posts all over the city.  Presumably those will be removed at some point.

In theory, the change to this "platform" has multiple benefits:  each pay station replaces a block worth of meters, reducing Boulder’s maintenance costs since one pay station replaces 10+ meters.  The pay stations communicate wirelessly to a central office, providing the city with parking statistics and alerts when a station malfunctions.  For the parker, one has the benefit of more payment options and a driver can re-park elsewhere in the city and get the benefit of remaining unused time paid at the pay station.  The (small) downside is having to walk down the block to the nearest pay station and return to one’s car to place the parking ticket on the dashboard.  But in fitness-obsessed Boulder, I’m sure this is viewed more as a benefit.  I just wish there were more payment options and the machines accepted the old meter keys, or, even better, payment via cell-phone/SMS…

Technorati Tags: Boulder, Parking, Parking Meters

The fine folks at Speakeasy Ales & Lagers are celebrating their tenth anniversary and are having a shindig to celebrate.  Since I’m in Boulder this weekend, I won’t be able to make the party, but wanted to encourage folks in the Bay Area to attend.  Speakeasy was the first angel investment I ever made, and I celebrated my 30th birthday at the brewery, so Forest and the rest of the crew over at Speakeasy have a special place in my heart.  Go try their new White Lightening Wheat Beer and my all-time-favorite IPA, Big Daddy.  They’ve been steadily expanding their distribution throughout the country over the years and I’m looking forward to a reliable supply of their fine brews popping up in Boulder in the near future.  Congrats to Forest and the rest of the Speakeasy crew on ten great years of beer in San Francisco!

Technorati Tags: Beer, Speakeasy

I thought I’d add a few more thoughts to round out my previous review of the iPhone. First, noting Sam’s comments about Apple wanting to go to market with broad coverage worldwide, I’ll agree that the GSM choice made sense, especially given availability of 3G GSM across the pond, though my American provincialism still requires me to complain and pine for EVDO here in the USA — even if Verizon refused to do a deal with Apple in the first place, as is rumored.

And I’ve discovered two more things to complain about. I’ve noticed audio distortion/clipping during music playback when the EQ is set to boost the bass response, which is not something I’ve observed in any of the other iPods I’ve owned. Second, for some reason, my iPhone seems to cause more speakerphone/polycom buzz than any other smartphone. My last phone was a T-Mobile Dash and before that a Sidekick, and they caused the buzz if they were within about two feet of my Cisco phone. My iPhone causes buzzing as far away as five feet from the phone.

Has anyone else had audio distortion issues or noticed a greater level of RF interference coming from their iPhone vs. other phones?

Technorati Tags: Apple, Audio, iPhone

As David Cowan has noted, complete with an audio sample, we’ve all heard that annoying buzz on our conference room Polycoms caused by interference from nearby cell phones and PDAs (to be fair, the problem happens on my Cisco IP phone too), and as phone-in attendees, we’ve all had to ask the people actually in the room with the Polycom to move their Blackberries and other smartphones away from the Polycom in a (sometimes futile) effort to squelch the buzzing.

Akustica co-founder and CTO Ken Gabriel tells me that this buzzing comes in through the input/mic channel. And this is because most microphones in the world are analog devices that are subject to RF and EM interference, whose design has gone largely unchanged since they were invented in the late 19th century. Since last year, Akustica has been shipping the world’s only single-chip digital microphone in volume to many of the major PC laptop manufacturers. Because these digital mics output a digital signal, they are not subject to this interference. Drop an Akustica digital mic in a Polycom and the buzzing would go away. Time for Cisco and Polycom to update their speakerphone designs to accommodate digital output microphones in their mic channels…

As a side note, I tried to come up with a catchy name for the polycom buzz phenomenon, but failed. Polybuzz doesn’t quite work for me. Any suggestions?

Technorati Tags: Akustica, Analog, Audio, Blackberry, Buzz, Digital, Polycom