Author Archives: Joel Kehle

Polaroid no longer does Polaroids

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Is this bumming anyone else out?

Polaroid no longer does Polaroids: ”

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Well doesn’t OutKast look silly now. The brand synonymous with instant film is killing off the Polaroid film format and attempting to reinvent the brand so it ‘lives on for the next 30 to 40 years.’ In the short term that means closing factories in Massachusetts, Mexico and the Netherlands, cutting 450 jobs, and breaking the hearts of hipster-photographers the world over. Obviously the concept of Polaroids was never going to be much more than a niche in the age of digital photos, and the Polaroid / Zink Digital Instant Mobile Photo Printer is filling the instant development void left behind, but it’s still sad to see a format with so much history and fond memories die, especially since Polaroid spends the majority of its time these days slapping its de-valued logo onto rubbish commodity electronics.

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(Via Engadget.)

Finnish Patient Gets New Jaw from His Own Stem Cells

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OK – People who know me know that I am obsessed with medical advances. This has nothing to do with what I do for a living. It’s just a hobby of sorts. If I find medical news that I think is exceptionally cool, I will post it on my blog.

Finnish Patient Gets New Jaw from His Own Stem Cells: “An anonymous reader writes with news out of Finland, where a patient’s upper jaw was replaced with bone cultivated from stem cells and grown inside the patient himself. We discussed other advances in stem cell research a few months ago. Quoting:
‘In this case they identified and pulled out cells called mesenchymal stem cells — immature cells than can give rise to bone, muscle or blood vessels. When they had enough cells to work with, they attached them to a scaffold made out of a calcium phosphate biomaterial and then put it inside the patient’s abdomen to grow for nine months. The cells turned into a variety of tissues and even produced blood vessels, the researchers said.’

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(Via Slashdot.)

When Is The Release?

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When Is The Release?: “

A company I have a small investment in has been struggling to get the most recent version of their software shipped. A few weeks ago I ran into the CEO who grabbed me and said ‘we are almost ready to go live.’ I looked at him and said ‘when is the release.’ His answer was ‘Friday.’

I gave him a Bronx cheer and said ‘when on Friday?’ He looked at me like I was an alien. I clarified – do you mean ’12:01am on Friday, 4:59pm on Friday, or 11:59pm on Friday.’ I then clarified some more: ‘and I mean in Mountain time.’ We agreed that 11:59pm on Friday was a good time (which they missed, but they got it out a few days later.)

At my first company (Feld Technologies), our client base got to the point where we were often doing multiple releases of different software on a weekly basis (we were a custom software company but used a very traditional software engineering approach to our projects.) For a long time, we used dates to mark releases (e.g. ‘Friday.’) After way too many 11:59pm releases (where our clients definitely were not sticking around the office to wait for us) and missed Fedex deadlines (this was back when you had to Fedex the disks to the clients in another state because modems were too slow to transmit the files), we learned that a release has both a date and a time. We also learned that the external release is – at the minimum – date + 1 of the ‘internal release’ especially on systems with live data. We also learned that the only appropriate days of the week for a release are Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. I’ll let you guess as to why this is.

As I work with new startups and first time entrepreneurs, I see people learning this lesson over and over again. I think it’s just going to be part of the endless education of new software entrepreneurs that you never really learn until you are in the real world.

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(Via Feld Thoughts.)

Rock On!

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I spent hours yesterday playing Rock Band with a group of friends. What an amazing experience. I wrote about it on Fanista here. At the risk of repeating myself, I was struck by how the behavior that the game encourages is the antithesis of most game experiences. In my limited time playing games, I have found that the most popular variety is the first person shooter. It’s a solitary experience where the goal is to kill things with guns. Sure there are pretty graphics, fancy explosions and scary monsters but most games seem to boil down to killing things with guns. Enter Rock Band. In this game, you and a group of friends get to start a band and live the dream by working hard to become a rock star. I had a room of five people – three guys and two gals, musicians and non-musicians in there 20s or 40s all playing this game together… for hours. I really don’t think I have experienced anything like this before. It was so social, challenging, rewarding, exhausting and we didn’t kill anything.

Hats off to Eran Egozy and Alex Rigopulos – the co-founders of Harmonix. And to Brad Feld, my fraternity brother who had the good sense to help them raise money back in the 90s. (Eran is also in my Fraternity but did not live in the house at the same time.)

They have created an game that lets non-musicians experience what it is like to be musician and live in the world of rock. Well done!

Pimpin’ my blog redux

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So I’ve updated my blog again. I have

  • Upgraded to WordPress 2.2.1

  • Switched to the K2 theme

  • Added Google AdSense and a Twitter feed.

    • To upgrade wordpress, I had to delete my old version on Dreamhost and do a reinstall. Apologies to anyone whose comments got dropped in the process (sorry Paula.)

    To accommodate Adsense I wanted a three column layout so I went with a theme called K2. I also took advantage of a widget that displays my latest twitter posts.

    What’s interesting is that in the case of both K2 and the twitter widget, I have set up mechanisms to be notified about changes to the K2 code. K2 has a blog that I now subscribe to. The twitter widget updates go out via twitter (of course) so now I have a new twitter friend.

    Mom’s Got a New Blog

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    My mom has started a new blog titled ‘Writings from the “Holler” with no name’. Though I am biased, she is surely one of the best bloggers alive today. Seriously, I enjoyed her latest entry ‘mixed blood identity and agency’. The piece explores reasons for testing one’s limits and mankind’s reaction’s to those who push the limits. If you want a bit of inspiration for your day, go read the article.

    Mom – Welcome to the blogroll!

    Listen to PodCast From Your Phone

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    Finally something useful to do in LA Traffic!!!

    (from TechCrunch Article – http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/12/listen-to-podcasts-on-any-phone/

    Reposted without permission)

    Podlinez

    Podlinez is a dead simple service that launched a few days ago. Go to the site and search for a podcast. If it’s already there, you can look up a dedicated phone number for that podcast. If the podcast is not included, anyone can add it and a dedicated phone line is associated with the podcast. To listen to the most recent episode of TalkCrunch, for example, just dial +1 (831) 480-3920 and listen. I assume the company will ad advertising to the site and to recordings at some point to generate revenue.

    Fonpods

    Fonpods, which is currently a TechCrunch sponsor, launched at DEMO in September 2006. It is similar to Podlinez, but has a single phone number for accessing all podcasts, +1 (712) 432-3030. Users can call that phone number (no registration required) and listen to pre-selected content in a number of categories. Registered users can also subscribe to podcasts and access that specific content if they call in from a phone that they’ve registered with the service. Fonpods also has detailed information about each podcast (TalkCrunch information page is here, for example). These podcasts can be added to a user listening list with a single click.

    Even though Podlinez and Fonpods are similar services, they are both useful for different things. Podlinez, with it’s dedicated phone number for each podcast, is a good way to “subscribe” to a single podcast and listen whenever new episodes are released. It requires no registration and has zero setup time. Just call the number and listen. Fonpods requires registration and basic setup to subscribe to favorite podcasts, but is a good solution for people who listen to a wide variety of podcasts and want access from a phone.