Isaac Garcia's Blog

I Hate Macs (I'm Not Alone!)

I man after my own heart.  I real man of taste in my opinion. Recall my Mac rant here.
(By the way, we had to take my wife's iMac back to the shop again this week.  They replaced the logic board (AGAIN) and its still crashing. So much for the Mac Geniuses.)

Charlie Brooker from The Guardian wrote "I Hate Macs", a beautiful treatise outlining the pretention and (poor workmanship) of Mac Machines. 

My favorite line from the article:

About the Mac/PC Ad Campaign
"...it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality."

(via The Guardian)

Audiophiles can't tell the difference between Monster Cables and coat hangers

This is great.  Engadget writes:  "Audiophiles can't tell the difference between Monster Cables and coat hangers."

They are also selling " half a meter of oxygen-free, triple-wrapped double-insulated Sonically Shielded AmpliSized Egyptian Llama cables."

Reunion.com's Clever Google Ad

I got a kick out of this Reunion.com Ad that appeared in my Gmail Sponsored Link:

What does it say when your marketing & advertising strategy has nothing to do with your product?  When the goal is to "just get the user to click on our ad, no matter what."

It doesn't matter if the user thought they were clicking on an email message for them.....

Investors Seek to Takeover CNET Networks

One of my business alma maters is on the chopping block - so the New York Times is reporting.

CNET acquired my company in 2002.  At the time, the tech world was in an economic slump and CNET was struggling to remain relevant.  Shelby Bonnie fought back the negative media with "big ads" and tried to convince Wall Street that CNET was the leader in online display advertising.

Five years later the company's stock is, essentially, the same as it was in 2003 (after a short dip down into ~$1.00).  The company was vulnerable to a hostile takeover then - and appears to continue to be vulnerable today.

It is a shame to see such a powerful brand like CNET waiver and falter like it has.  The best thing for CNET, in my opinion, would be to chop it up and resell it in pieces.  Neil, the current CEO, has taken some steps in this direction (CNET recently sold off Webshots) but hasn't been aggressive enough.  I know from personal experience with Neil that "lack of "aggressiveness" is not a characteristic of Neil - and that he must be held back by "the CNET machine" that prevents any single person from ripping the company apart.  "Not aggressive" is NOT how I would ever describe Neil Ashe.

I'd like to see something good come from this for CNET and many of my (overpaid) friends that still work there.

Read the entire article here.

Optimism 2008 Essay - Isaac Wins A Sonos

I wrote a short essay outlining what I was most optimistic  about for the coming year (2008).

I submitted by essay to Gigaom's Blog and won a Sonos Multizone Digital Music System!

Read my winning essay here.

The Future Is Now

I love examples of imagined technology becoming real (and useful).  If you remember the 3D tools that Tom Cruise used to search and sort data in the 2002 sci-fi film Minority Report then you are gonna love this.

Alarm:clock is reporting that a gesture recognition company (www.oblong.net) just received $8.8mm dollars in funding from Foundry Group.

The typical setup uses a set of cameras and matching hardware that can track 3D positions. With the help of gloves, the system infers the user's hand and finger positions and orientations. These are finally parsed by Oblong's proprietary gesture recognition engine where they are interpreted.

This is really happening.

How will this change the way we search and find information?  How will this effect the way we collaborate and share information with other people?  Could technology such as this trump the seemingly unstoppable Google?

Top Ten Lies of Web 2.0

This is just beautiful.

1. We learned our lesson last time. And we're going to cash out before this bubble pops.
2. This is not a bubble. Hot parties, overheated PR pitches, and five or six dozen social networking sites are just healthy indicators of a new boom.
3. It's all about community and sharing. But we told our venture capitalists that our exit strategy will make them rich. (Corollary: But you have to know someone to get into our conference/party.)
4. Online advertising will pay for everything. As if click fraud is any kind of a threat.
5. These sites are so easy, my mother could use them. And they're so geeky, she has no interest in even trying.

Read the rest here....

(thanks Dan Frost for making my day)

Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail Usage Numbers

For those of you concerned that Google is taking over the world please take note of the email usage/adoption numbers for Gmail compared to Yahoo Mail and Microsoft's Hotmail:

Yahoo Mail -         77 Million
MSFT Hotmail -     46 Million
Gmail -                     10 Million

Source:  comScore Networks via Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2006

Ms Dewey - And The Adolescent Male Mind

I'm kind of 'behind the times' with a lot of things. 

But today, I caught up with a new search engine called Ms. Dewey (its a flash-based promotional search engine by Microsoft).

Ms. Dewey is proof positive that I still have a very adolescent male mind. 

I've had so much fun with this site.  What can I say, she's a sexy, sassy - flirtatious female on the internet.......and its not porn.  I've enjoyed it so much I'm beginning to think that I've fallen prey to someone's market-research and that I fall right into the intended demographic.

Have fun typing in search entries.  When you get bored, Digg has some suggestions.

Microsoft is the New Evil (again)

I was thinking about starting a new business conjugating verbs on the internet; but then I came across this...

Microsoft Wants a Patent for Conjugating Verbs - Source Techdirt

You can read the text of the Patent here.