Our plan for JPG Magazine
January 4, 2009
In a phrase, “Getting back to basics” will be our mantra for JPG Magazine should we be successful in our bid to take over as caretaker of the JPG community. As a subscriber, user and contributor to JPG over the years I was shocked when I heard the managers of JPG decided to shut the magazine down. Surely there was a way to save the magazine and, more importantly, the JPG community. It took me 20 minutes to decide that I would pick up the JPG torch and ensure that JPG would not die, but instead flourish. On Friday I made a written offer to JPG’s shareholders to acquire the magazine and the publishing company.
By Friday afternoon I had found two other groups similarly interested in joining forces to save JPG using our collective experience, time, resources and capital. The key was to close quickly, over the weekend if possible and by Monday at the latest. After talking to Mitchell Fox Friday afternoon it would seem our simple plan to save JPG was going to get more complex. Mitchell suggested he wanted to delay closing to see if he could get a better deal. Instead of thinking about what was best for the community I immediately suggested that our offer was only good until close of business on Monday. I was excited about the prospect of saving JPG and I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to someone else. On top of that I will be giving the keynote on Wednesday in Holland at an open source conference on Android - pretty hard to close a deal when you are on stage or on an international flight.
Over the weekend I realized it wasn’t important that whether or not I was the one who would save JPG; it was clear JPG would be saved. Preserving the community, preserving the vision; that was what was important. Don’t get me wrong, I still hope that Mitchell and his team agree that we would make the best caretaker for JPG, but I realize that there might be someone better positioned to save the community.
I received more than 900 (yess nine hundred) emails from JPG readers, contributors and subscribers - almost all appreciative and positive about our plan to save JPG. Some of the messages were two or three pages long - detailing how much JPG means to them. After sifting through the emails I am even more convinced JPG MUST survive. To get an idea of the sort of emails I have received just check out the savejpg.com website.
To conclude, I think there is a place for JPG in the publishing world, but I think JPG needs to be small, nimble and efficient. JPGs unorthodox model, its srcappy bootstrap startup roots - planted originally by Derek and Heather will be our future, not our past. Trying to turn JPG into traditional news-stand magazine isn’t the answer. Step one will be to allow the community to elect a small board of trustees to oversee the direction and management of both the community and the magazine. Their mandate will be to help JPG ‘get back to basics - to what makes JPG special’.
If you are interested in helping please email me at amuse@m-ven.com. If you want to encourage JPG’s shareholders to accept our offer email Ron Palmeri at ron@minorventures.com. At the end of the day, it would seem that regardless of whether or not we are successful, JPG will survive (hopefully they don’t sell it to SmugMug as Mike Arrington suggested).
Last chance to vote for ShopSavvy!
January 4, 2009
Today is your last chance to help ShopSavvy win a Crunchie for Best Mobile App of 2008. How about it? One more vote? Visit: http://tinyurl.com/savvyvote.
Merry Christmas!
December 24, 2008
Spend time with your families, play with your kids and be thankful. Here are a few Christmas quotes I lifed from About:
W. T. Ellis
It is Christmas in the heart that puts Christmas in the air.
Alexander Smith
Christmas is the day that holds all time together.
Richard Roberts, Contemporary Christ
It is not even the beginning of Christmas unless it is Christmas in the heart.
W. J. Cameron
Christmas is the gentlest, loveliest festival of the revolving year — and yet, for all that, when it speaks, its voice has strong authority.
Ray Stannard Baker
I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day. We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year. As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year. And thus I drift along into the holidays, let them overtake me unexpectedly, waking up some fine morning and suddenly saying to myself: ‘Why this is Christmas Day!
Frank McKibben
This is Christmas: not the tinsel, not the giving and receiving, not even the carols. But the humble heart that receives anew the wondrous gift — the Christ.
Charles Dickens
I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday — the longer, the better — from the great boarding school where we are forever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest.
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
Robert Lynd
Were I a philosopher, I should write a philosophy of toys, showing that nothing else in life need to be taken seriously, and that Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.
Joan Winmill Brown
Christmas! The very word brings joy to our hearts. No matter how we may dread the rush, the long Christmas lists for gifts and cards to be bought and given, when Christmas Day comes there is still the same warm feeling we had as children, the same warmth that enfolds our hearts and our homes.
Charles Dickens
Time was with most of us, when Christmas Day, encircling all our limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and everyone round the Christmas fire, and make the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete.
Carol Nelson
Christmas is a time when you get homesick — even when you’re home.
Augusta E. Rundel
Christmas… that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance — a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.
Help us launch ShopSavvy in the EU!
December 6, 2008
You may have noticed that I haven’t been writing much over the last few months. There have been a million reasons why, but perhaps the most exciting reason is that we have been busy launching ShopSavvy in the US and UK. Things have been going well, so well in fact that we are gearing up for our EU launch (Germany, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic and Holland). I have hired contractors in each market to help with the translation and localization, but I need more help identifying local and online retailers in each country (especially Austria, Poland, Czech Republic and Holland).
We need your help (i.e. if you live in the EU, have a unique understanding of the retail landscape or work for an online or local retailer located in the EU). Helping us out is VERY simple. Just add the retailer to this form:
http://spur.wufoo.com/forms/eu-retailers-to-include-in-shopsavvy/
To the guy who stole my laptop. . .
October 28, 2008
. . . you ruined my day. Someone walked into our coworking space in the INFOMART and walked out with my laptop - right in front of everyone. The good news is that Time Machine saved my data, the bad news is that my robber has it too.
Android and ShopSavvy EVERYWHERE!
October 16, 2008
I woke up this morning around 6AM to find hundreds of stories posted about T-Mobile’s new G1 and our ShopSavvy application for Android. Wow! Coverage around the web and the world including stories in The New York Post, USA Today, eWeek, AdAge, Gadgetell, The Boston Globe, VentureBeat, SlashGear, Dallas Morning News and hundreds of others. Walt Mossberg from the Wall Street Journal simply suggests, “Google Answers the iPhone“. Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch concludes, “The Android is going to be a runaway success once it goes on sale October 22. (Already, 1.5 million are rumored to be pre-sold).”
We have been really lucky to have participated in the launch of the Android platform as well as being included by T-Mobile in their US and international launches of the G1. More than 273 reporters have written stories about ShopSavvy, Big in Japan and our team. It has been an amazing experience. Later this month we will being our European launch in the UK, concluding in early 2009 with access to T-Mobile’s entire 100 million customers throughout the EU.
Additional Coverage of T-Mobile’s G1:
LA Times: How iView the G1: An iPhone owner’s take on the Google phone
Gizmodo: T-Mobile G1 Google Android Phone Review
GigaOm: The Google Phone Review: What I Love & Hate About T-Mobile G-1
New York Times: A Look at Google’s First Phone
Engadget: T-Mobile G1 review
Whitebox Startup Update: Everything takes longer!
September 25, 2008
With most startups (except for ShopSavvy) everything takes longer than you expect. That is certainly true for our Whitebox (electronic contract and finance system for auto dealers) business. Basically a month after launch and our system accepted its first finance contrac last nightt! We had assumed we would have processed our first contract weeks ago. The rollout is going well, with more than 16 dealers in the system.
My Jesus Phone Died and Didn’t Come Back. . .
September 20, 2008
My iPhone is dead, less that two months after I bought it - I am now waiting on the resurrection. I have been a fan of Apple for years. I bought the first generation iPhone on the first day and attended the first iPhone Developers Camp in San Francisco later that week. The iPhone was by far the best phone I had ever owned. When the 3G iPhone was released it took me a month to actually get one in my hands. By the time I did I was less than pleased; I wrote my review of the 3G on August 13th. It is now September 20th and my iPhone is no longer working.
For some reason, starting this morning, my iPhone thinks I have the headphones plugged in and has disabled the handset speaker. Fortunately I was in the mall when my phone stopped working. With Ethan and Erin in tow I went to the Apple store and consulted a Genius. He suggested that I had water damage. I explained that my phone had worked fine when I was at the toy store, but stopped working by the time we were in Nordstroms and that we hadn’t visited a pool between the two stops. He was insistant indicating that there was an indicator in the phone that was like a pregnancy test and my iPhone was pregnant. I joked that my iPhone really was the ‘Jesus Phone’ since I was certain it never got wet. I tried to explain I was going to be in Manhattan next week and really needed a working phone before I left on Monday. They indicated that my phone had water damage and could not be replaced.
Realizing I had a limited amount of time in the mall (Erin is 8 months old and can only last so long) I walked over to the AT&T store and asked them if I could just BUY another iPhone. They would sell me one for almost $500, but they would not allow me to purchase one at the subsidized price. I tried to explain how silly this was. Anyone walking in off the street could buy the same phone for $200, but me a longtime customer with 5 active iPhones on my account would have to pay the non-contract price of almost $500? They suggested I talk to Apple since it had been more than 30 days since I bought the phone. I explained that Apple had determined that my iPhone had been damaged by water.
So I left the mall pissed. I will end up buying the phone for $500 tomorrow because I don’t have a better option (despite the fact that Apple is going to refresh their phone in a few months). I am considering buying it with my AMEX and reversing the charges letting Apple deal with the hassle of trying to get their money from them (at least as much hassle as I have had).
UPDATE: Bradley Joyce read my post and suggested that this is a known problem (i.e. he had it) and there is an article suggesting a fix here. I FOLLOWED THE INSTRUCTIONS AND NOW MY PHONE WORKS! How come I get better help from readers of my blog than I do at the Apple store? My only question, ‘is my phone still water damaged?’
Can’t find a VC? Join the club. . .
September 4, 2008
Charlie Odonnell wrote a post about how New York City needed ‘another early stage VC, or two or three’. Reading the post it reminded me of several posts I had written on the same topic over the years. I decided to see if I could simply use ‘replace all’ to change NYC to Dallas. With a few minor edits I did so and posted the post on my blog. I also shot Charlie an email asking for permission to use his post. Surprisingly he wasn’t cool with it and I took it down a couple of hours after posting it. So if you were wondering where it went, now you know. The point I was making, however, is completely valid. Cities around the country need more active and engaged early stage investors. Anyway, sorry Charlie, it won’t happen again…
Update: To be 100% clear. Charlie responded to my belated request for permission by saying “I get what you were going for here…” and then he gave me advice about how to tweak it for coolness, “Personally, I think it should start off with “Hey, Charlie (link) wrote this post about NYC, but a lot of it applies here.. .in fact… if you switch out Dallas for NYC, it’s exactly the same” or something like that….” He did NOT demand I take it down, just tweak it. Anyway, the point of the post was sort of lost in the ‘method’ I chose and instead of trying to make it work I moved on and deleted it. When about 25 people sent me emails about the post (really do you care that much) I posted this explaination. Since then some people took it the wrong way - I was making a point in a way that didn’t work very well. Lesson learned, hopefully no harm done…
Big in Japan’s GoCart Release
September 3, 2008
Scott Baradell and the team at Ideagrove is doing the PR work for Big in Japan these days and I noticed that they had a press release out today about GoCart. Check it out here on MarketWatch.
Google’s Android Market Annouced!
August 28, 2008
On the heels our Big in Japan’s release of GoCart fot the Google’s Android phone, Eric Chu has announced the details of Android Market, “an open content distribution system that will help end users find, purchase, download and install various types of content on their Android-powered devices. The concept is simple: leverage Google’s expertise in infrastructure, search and relevance to connect users with content created by developers like you.”
The market will initially support free applications on the first Android handsets and soon after that paid applications will be possible. This is great news. Eric explained, “We chose the term “market” rather than “store” because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available. Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it. We also intend to provide developers with a useful dashboard and analytics to help drive their business and ultimately improve their offerings.”
Made for Hollywood: Ben Mezrich
August 25, 2008
Lots of you ask, “What are you reading these days?” Yesterday I managed to finish Rigged, by Ben Mezrich. Ben has been a favorite ’summer’ author of mine for quite some time. He wrote ‘Bringing Down the House’ also called ‘Busting Vegas: The MIT Whiz Kid Who Brought the Casinos to Their Knees’ in 2005. The book was turned into a movie called 21. Around the same time as ‘Busting Vegas or Breaking Vegas (as it was known in paperback) was released he wrote ‘Ugly Americans: A True Story of High Stakes, Dirty Deals and One Man’s $500 Million Gamble.’ His books are interesting on a number of levels. First, they don’t take much attention to read (i.e. you don’t have to concentrate very hard to enjoy them). Second, they are ALWAYS ‘high concept’ involving youth, money and risk - BUT you get a payoff in that you learn something. Ben’s latest book is called ‘Rigged: The True Story of an Ivy League Kid Who Changed the World of Oil, from Wall Street to Dubai‘.
Rigged was a fun little book from start to finish. Ben’s description of the New York Merchantile Exchange was facinating. Amazon explains it better than I would, “After conquering the hallowed halls of Harvard Business School, he enters the testosterone-laced warrens of the Merc Exchange, the asylumlike oil exchange located in lower Manhattan. A place where billions of dollars trade hands every week, the Merc is like a casino on crack, where former garbagemen become millionaires overnight and where fistfights break out on the trading floor. This ordinary kid has traded Brooklyn for the gold-lined hotel palaces of Dubai. He keeps company on the decks of private yachts in Monte Carlo—teeming with half-naked girls flown in by Saudi sheiks—and makes deals in the dangerous back alleys of Beijing. But the Merc is just a starting place. Taken under the wing of another young gun and partnering with a mysterious young Muslim, the kid embarks on a dangerous adventure to revolutionize the oil trading industry—and, along with it, the world. Rigged is the explicit, exclusive, true story behind the headlines that dominate the world stage.”
Fun, light reading that will surely find its way onto a theater screen near you next summer!
Careerbuilder, wonderfully exasperating!
August 19, 2008
Yesterday our operations manager suggested I post three openings we had on Careerbuilder. Instead of turning over the task to our in house recruiter I decided to post the jobs myself. Three 30 day job postings were over $1,000! Anyway, I completed the forms and entered my AMEX information into the site. I received an email indicating that the jobs would be posted in a couple of hours. Around 8PM I received this email:
From: “CareerBuilder Site Integrity” <CSI@careerbuilder.com>
Date: August 18, 2008 3:22:00 PM CDT
To: “Alexander Muse”
Subject: CareerBuilder Order RejectionThank you for choosing CareerBuilder.com. We apologize for any inconvenience; however, we need more information in order to complete our verification process for Order Number: CT-1233356 . Please contact our Trust & Site Security Team at 1-800-891-8880, Monday through Friday, between the hours of 8 AM to 7 PM EST; Saturday and Sunday, between the hours of 4 PM to 6 PM EST. We welcome the opportunity to speak with you directly so that we may gather the necessary information. CareerBuilder’s Site Integrity and Compliance Team. This is an automated message. Please do not respond to this email address.
I called the number and was advised that EVERY order over $1,000 is rejected and the customer is sent the same standard email requiring a call to their 800 number. Really? Why bother taking orders online over $1000? Why not tell me that I need to call to verify my order IMMEDIATELY? Why waste a full day? The funny part was that the person I talked to NEVER actually verified my identity, instead he only asked if I was aware the charge was over $1,000. I told him I was and that was the end of the call - he accepted the order. My advice to Careerbuilder:
- Since you don’t sell anything physical (i.e. a TV) there isn’t much risk in taking the order. If AMEX declines the charge you simply take down the posting. There is no additional cost to taking the order.
- If you must phone verify orders over $1,000, offer to do it at time of purchase or at least generate an outbound call. Do NOT require the customer to call an 800 number with long hold times the day after you take an order. It is just rude.
- Also, don’t have your operators say, “How can I provide you wonderful service today?” It is a stupid thing to say and falls on very cynical ears.
Why DISD is failing our kids. . .
August 17, 2008
Failing your kids anyway, I wouldn’t send my kids to DISD if you paid me and I live in the district. DISDs new grading policy is plain crazy:
- Homework grades should be given only when the grades will “raise a student’s average, not lower it.
- Teachers must accept overdue assignments, and their principal will decide whether students are to be penalized for missing deadlines.
- Students who flunk tests can retake the exam and keep the higher grade.
- Teachers cannot give a zero on an assignment unless they call parents and make “efforts to assist students in completing the work.”
- High school teachers who fail more than 20 percent of their students will need to develop a professional improvement plan and will be monitored by their principals. For middle school the rate is 15 percent; for elementary it’s 10 percent.
Lots of folks agree including Ms. Floyd from the Dallas Morning News and Tim Rogers from D. Tim’s explains, “My favorite directive is this one: homework grades should be given only when the grades will “raise a student’s average, not lower it.” Hinojosa says, “Our mission is not to fail kids.” The district’s stance is that students who get bad grades fall behind, lose hope of catching up, and simply give up. The district’s solution, in short: don’t give students bad grades. This is worse than absurd.”
I have written about DISD before, noting that the district only graduates 44% of students who attend. I assume that if they stop flunking kids they assume their graduation rates will increase. Great stuff guys!
My 3G iPhone Review (EDGE RULES)
August 13, 2008
When the first iPhone was released I got my hands on one two hours after it went on sale. This time it took me two weeks to finally get on my hands on the 3G. It wasn’t for lack of effort, but the mandatory in-store signup slowed the process to a crawl meaning that there were still lines last week at my local Apple store (I haven’t been this week, but Best Buy is going to start selling them). Now that I have had my 3G iPhone for a couple of weeks I thought it was time to offer my thoughts.
First, the speed is quite a bit faster. Side-by-side comparison with my father’s EDGE iPhone saw at least a 25% speed increase. We were never able to witness the 100% (i.e. double) speed increase Apple claimed. I suspect this is due totally to AT&Ts network here in Dallas. The problem is that the speed increase is only available in 3G areas - my house, church and work are not covered that well by 3G (i.e. all are within the Dallas city limits). When I try to connect to websites and applications the connections are often impossible to make without switching back to EDGE. So in theory the 25% speed increase is certainly not worth the limited coverage one will experience in a top ten US city.
Second, the phone consistantly drops. I can’t take calls at my desk when 3G is enabled. I can’t take calls downstairs in the cafeteria when 3G is enabled. My wife, who got the 3G at the same time, has experienced more and more dropped calls - something she did not experience with EDGE. When I drive on the tollway I will drop a call at least three times (once around Lemmon, another time around Mockingbird and then again around Lovers Lane). This was not the case with EDGE.
Third, the battery is always empty. I have BOSE charging stations (i.e. that connect to our stereo system) throughout the house. Over the past year I have made it a habit to place my phone in the charging station in whatever room I happen to occupy. This meant that the phone was a) always in the same place (I lose things) and b) always charged. Guess what, the new 3G iPhone is incompatible with the BOSE charging station. Are you kidding me? What changed? Why doesn’t that work?
Finally, in the end the 3G iPhone has been a huge disappointment for me. It cost me a few hundred bucks, $10/month more than my old iPhone and has LOTS of problems. But I found a solution. In the Settings/General menu you can turn off 3G and go back to EDGE. I did this yesterday and my iPhone worked like my old one - like a champ. WTF? So I have my old iPhone back for a few hundred dollars more. My advice, buy the new 3G iPhone ONLY if you don’t have the old iPhone (the new iPhone with EDGE enabled is an awesome phone - the best I have ever owned). Dump your Nokia or Ericsson POS and get in the game.
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