With all the hype/concern/backlash/misinformation-fueled legislation in the world around cookies and their use in the browser, I think it’s only a matter of time before analytics and ad tech are going to have to figure out a non-cookie dependent solution for measuring web usage and delivering relevant ads to interested consumers.

It’s really a value proposition problem.  The consumer doesn’t see the value of sharing data, and rather than showing them the value, corporations have essentially tried to figure out ways to collect the consumer’s data anyway, just without letting them know about it.

So here’s the straightforward and transparent plan:

1. Convince a group of consumers to maintain a profile with accurate demographic & behavioral information
2. Have the group create a list of things/categories they’re interested in seeing ads/offers for
3. Find a group of product makers who will divert some of their ridiculous marketing budgets into discounts
4. Play matchmaker between the interested consumers and the products being offered by product makers
5. Sell the product to the interested consumer at a discount

The consumer gets a great deal on the thing they already want/need.  The product maker sells the thing that they wanted to sell to an interested person and didn’t waste money telling 1M people at $10CPM that didn’t care about the thing they were selling.  An ongoing relationship is formed between the consumer and the product maker that provides value to both parties.

As long as the consumer remains interested in the category (as determined by their up to date profile), the product maker is free to continue to make offers to the consumer at the same discounted rate or normal pricing.  There would obviously be a pricing strategy – which I know nothing about – that would determine their ultimate offers to repeat customers.

Everyone makes informed decisions, no one is tricked, and no regulated/illegal cookies are involved in the mutually beneficial transaction.

Often times, I sit down in the evening and wonder what I should watch.  I have a Netflix subscription, I can buy stuff Video on Demand from Amazon or from Apple.  Of course there’s access to Hulu and none of those is good enough, you can try Vudu or Crackle.  Or maybe I just want to watch something that I already own.  But I want to watch something funny with George Clooney in it.  Or maybe I I’m in the mood for an action movie with Angelina Jolie or that guy that plays Captain America.  I want to watch it in HD and I want to stream it, because I’m not waiting for the disc in the mail.

Does Netflix have something I want?  Is it available for streaming?  Can’t find anything on Netflix (can anyone?), so let me go look at Apple.  Or Amazon.  Can I rent it?  Can I buy it?  Is it availble in HD?  Which one is cheaper?  By the time you’ve gone through all this, sometimes I’ve just decided it’s not worth the trouble.  So here’s the idea. A single site where I can punch in a title or an actor, and it will search all of these places for me.  I can filter the results down by streaming, by rent or buy, by HD quality, by price, by genre, by just about anything I want.

And then I can click a link and go buy/rent/stream whatever I decided on.

Today, I setup a couple of WordPress plugins for automatically posting blog links to Facebook and Twitter.

WP to Twitter

The first is WP to Twitter.  Instructions are pretty straightforward for creating a Twitter app for integration.  Small hitch was that after creating my Access Token I had to reload the page in order for the access tokens to actually show up.  Now whenever I create a new post, it will post a Tweet using my Twitter account with a link back to my post.  Bit.ly integration is supported, WP tags are converted to Twitter hashtags and there are a few other options as well.

Add Link to Facebook

The second plugin is Add Link to Facebook.  The name of this one is somewhat of a misnomer because it does way more than just add links.  It appears to integrate blog comments and Facebook comments as well as a host of other features.  For now, I’m only planning on using it to post links, but I will probably explore some of the other features later on.

Setup for this one was a bit more complicated.  The plugin page has a setup guide as well as an FAQ.  When attempting to authorize the application within the WP setup, I kept getting a redirect_uri error on setup end eventually ended up deleting the plugin, deleting the Facebook app I had created and starting from scratch a second time.  The second time through creating the Facebook app I caught a message that said the app had been created, but could take “several minutes” to replicate across their servers.

I decided to wait for awhile.  After 15 minutes or so, I was still receiving the error, so I went to play Legend of Zelda for awhile, and tried again an hour or so later.  This time, it went to Facebook and authorized just fine, and now I’m just playing with different settings.

This idea stems from a recent article I read about global warming in which Bob Lutz (big car guy formerly of GM, Chrysler, Ford, and BMW) insists that it’s a bunch of garbage and a scientist named Neil deGrasse Tyson tells him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

But Bob Lutz is not the only guy that insists it’s hokey, and Neil Tyson is not the only one saying it’s not.  From what I can tell, the argument largely falls upon party lines with conservatives saying it’s junk and liberals saying it’s not.  How are the moderates supposed to make up their minds?

So today’s idea is this: a site that covers all the major topics of controversy with opinions from both (all?) sides of the issue represented.  The rules are:

1. You have to use your real identity to participate
2. Recognized experts in the field can post opinion pieces to represent the different viewpoints on the issue (limited to 2 pages, so you really have to distill your content to the bare bones)
3. Constructive comments are allowed on all primary opinions to encourage dialog
4. Neutral moderators summarize the opinion pieces from the different sides
5. Participants can choose a side to support and only then can they vote on the best arguments & supporting facts for that side (you can’t downvote the opposition)
6. Issues are presented in a simple format with the summaries from all sides visible up front and you can dive into individual arguments from there

Those who have not yet formed their opinions now have a resource of information where they can go and read the best arguments from each side and make up their own minds.  It’s like a political kaleidoscope.  Single issue in focus and you can see all the different facets.  Maybe a diamond or gemstone would be a better analogy, but I really like this kaleidoscope picture.

But it is my opinion that this is a spectacular idea that simply failed in execution.  This is the future of computing.  One device to rule them all.  Imagine the following scenarios:

1. On the way to work, you slide your phone into your car dashboard to power your larger in-dash display.  Same connectivity, same apps, same device.  It just has a bigger screen, integrates with your car’s sound system, and charges while you’re at it.
2. You get home from work and slide your phone inside a tablet device so that is’ completely covered (like the old 3.5″ disks that were completely swallowed up by the drive).  Same connectivity, same apps + maybe more, same data, same device.  Just better because the tablet gives you a bigger screen, more memory & storage, and longer battery life.
3. You carry around a 11 inch Ultrabook because it’s spectacularly portable, lightweight and has pretty great battery life.  You love it, but it falls far short when you want more processing (work) or better graphics (play) or more screen real estate (anytime you’re not mobile).  Now just drop it in the dock which has a hard drive and an external CPU and GPU connected to an array of 1920×1200 monitors or better.  Same apps + more, same data + more, same device, just super-powered.

Take all these scenarios to the extreme and you take your phone and plug it into your tablet, your laptop, or your desktop dock and you have single device that meets all your needs for work, meets all your needs for play, bakes you cookies and tucks you in at night.  I don’t think the right solution is the same looking interface for all devices, you’d need each interface to be appropriate for it’s current use.  It needs to behave like a phone on it’s own and behave like a desktop when it’s docked with a GPU.

We’re slowly getting there.  We have a long way to go, but slowly moves are being made in the right direction.  If we can make it simpler to manage and hit the right price points, this stuff could take off in a big way.  Besides the Atrix lapdock, here are a few other ideas that I think are moving in the right direction.

• Ubuntu for Android: “When in your pocket the phone is the same as it always was: an Android device. But when the connected to a monitor (by way of a nifty looking dock) it launches into a fully fledged Ubuntu desktop running the Unity interface…Both OSes share the same kernel – so this isn’t a case of an ‘Ubuntu’ app running atop Android or vice versa. Both run at the same time on the same device.”
• Sony’s Vaio Z with External GPU: “Inside that dock, there’s an auxiliary graphics card which adds an AMD Radeon HD6650 GPU to the on-board Sandy Bridge processor. And it’s stunningly good.”

I imagine that Apple will be the first to pull this off in a big way.  The iPhone that slides into the iPad.  Or the iPad that turns into a Macbook Air (with real OS X) when you attach the keyboard.  Or the iPad or Macbook Air that slides into the the Thunderbolt display that happens to have a GPU (and real OS X) and suddenly you have a glorious 27″ 2560×1440 resolution iMac.

Microsoft has bigger challenges on the hardware front, but appears to be ahead on the software front as it’s already figuring out the interface switching that would have to happen when you move from tablet mode to desktop mode.

It’s the future and it needs to get here sooner =)

I am a cord cutter.  Despite this study which says that cord cutting isn’t happening, it is.  It may not be happening en masse (though I think the proper qualifier here is “yet”), but it is happening.  Though small, this number represents opportunity for content producers that has not been exploited.  It’s being left alone because of the fear it would jeopardizing their existing revenue streams.  I understand why it hasn’t happened, I’m just saying that as a consumer, I wish it would.

So here is my proposition, very clearly laid out for any and all takers.

There are only a few shows that I want to watch.  Some I get from Netflix & Hulu and some of it I do without.  I have a working (relatively) high speed internet connection.

ESPN & Microsoft, do a deal and give me access to your two channels worth of content on my XBox.  I’ll pay you $9.99/month for it.  Hey, I might even pay you $14.99/month.  That’s way more than either of you would make off me from Comcast if I was a subscriber and you were collecting a rev share.  I extend the same offer to Apple and Amazon.  Somebody help me out.

Right now you’re not making any money off me and I’m not enjoying sporting events streamed over the Internet to my TV in high def.  Right now we’re both losing.

So idea #2 is: A smooth process for migrating from Blogger to WordPress.

On the physical side, I already exercise fairly regularly, though I’ll need be more consistent.  Emotionally, I need to work on being more honest and on staying closer to people who lift me up and farther from people who drag me down.  On the spiritual side, I need to be better about prayer, meditation, gratitude, and forgiveness.  And on the mental side, I need to start thinking about ideas and writing them down.

My idea muscle has been atrophying for years, so I’m going to start small and try to come up with one idea a day.  Most of these ideas are going to be ideas for businesses or services that should exist or ways to improve existing ones.  Oh, and most of them will be bad.  If you think any of them are any good, let me know and let’s work together =)

Step 2: Drop on tile floor to shatter screen

Step 2a: Sweep up shards of glass off the floor

Step 3: Call AppleCare and find out that it’s not covered under warranty since it was broken through “negligence”.

Step 4: Decide that Apple’s out of warranty repair option ($300) is too expensive to fix a device that costs $500 brand new.

Step 5: Purchase 3rd party touch screen digitizer replacement

Step 6: Spend your Saturday afternoon with a heat gun and a tiny plastic crowbar to prying out thousands of tiny shards of glass.

Step 7: Plug in new replacement screen

Step 8: Test new replacement screen and find out that only 30% of the screen is responsive to touch

Step 9: Recognize that you’re beyond your area of expertise

Step 10: Decide that maybe the $300 repair option might be your best remaining option

Step 11: Call AppleCare again and find out that the $300 repair option actually includes a replacement if they can’t fix it, and that an Apple Store will actually just swap you straight across for a new one, even though you already tried to fix it yourself

Step 12: Decide that the AppleStore is too far away and opt for the UPS shipping option

Step 13: Ship it back to Apple

Step 14: Get an email from Apple that says they’ve determined that they won’t actually fix it or replace it after all (no word about the $300 that you spent for them to fix it)

Step 15: Have a long and frustrating conversation with AppleCare and find out that they won’t actually replace or repair anything unless every shard of the original glass is still in its original place

Step 16: Wait for your $500 lump of junk to come from Apple since they generously ship the unfixed iPad back to you

And that is how you turn your iPad2 into a $500 lump of junk.