Stardust Global Ventures

Today it was my pleasure to host Rick Calvert, CEO of Blog World and New Media Expo. I called Rick using Skype while he was attending another trade show. We had quite a conversation and I learned a lot about what it takes to create a successful tradeshow, but more importantly I learned just how passionate Rick is about blogging and why Blog World and New Media Expo began.

The 2009 BlogWorld & New Media Expo will take place at the Las Vegas Convention Center, beginning with the exclusive “Social Media Business Summit” conference on October 15th and continuing with the BlogWorld & New Media Expo and Conference October 16th-17th. This is first and only industry-wide tradeshow, conference, and media event dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of new media including: Blogging, Podcasting, Social Media, Oline Video, Music, TV, Radio, Gaming, Entertainment and Communities.

Ok, I’m a bit late with some richly deserved kudos to John Furrier, but I’m going to take it a step farther than my pal Andy Abramson did in this post. He said this:

TechCrunch, GigaOm, Paid Content and ZDNET, it may be time to look over your shoulder and worry who may be catching up to you.
[Read Andy's post]

I’ll take a stronger stand than Andy.

TechCrunch remains a strong source, but feels like it’s getting a bit long in the tooth and repetitive. How many days in a row am I going to read the same tired and boring news about how Owen Van Natta borked his job as CEO of Playlist. Sometimes it just feels like TechCrunch is in the axe grinding business, and it gets tiresome. Lots of power and potential, plenty of muscle, but the muscle feels like it’s turning to flab and frustration more and more for me personally. TechCrunch provides more value with the industry awards and promotion of startups these days. It’s the value they add.

GigaOm, run by another good friend, Om Malik, is another solid and reputable source. That said, I just don’t feel the fire in the belly I think it takes some days over at GigaOm. It feels like there’s been a shift toward safe territory sometimes in the reporting. The reporting is rock solid, and GigaOm is still growing. For my pal Om, there’s some new competition that’s going to keep his team on their toes. Knowing Om, he welcomes the challenge and we’ll see things step up there.

Paid Content? Ok, I’ve only been online since 1984. Who’s that. I confess I don’t even know. That either says that with all my involvement in the tech sector my head is thicker than bomb shelter walls (which I’m often told is the case), or they’re already fading into the sunset. My apologies for not having a clue who they are, but there you have it.

ZDNET. Ahh yes, the early and bright promise of traditional media making the transition into the brave new world. I know they’re out there somewhere. I also know the last thing I read on any ZDNET site was written by my departed friend Russell Shaw. Russell’s been gone for a while now, and I still miss his ascerbic style. That rising star of ZDNET is just another falling rock these days.

As Andy said, we share yet another friend, John Furrier. Not too long ago John quietly launched SiliconAngle.com. It’s a multi-author blog that aims at Technology Innovation and the Social Web. I’ve been reading it every day since the launch. John’s assembling a team of writers who are agressive, focused, and show that fire in the belly kind of drive that’s missing in so many places these days.

Knowing John, a bit of his history and depth in the sector, and his commitment to success, in my view, a new big dawg just walked into the park. The big dawgs are going to wreak some havoc in the playground.

Technorati Tags: John Furrier, SiliconAngle, technology innovation, social web, blogs

We’ve really been hyping our entry in the fabulous 48 Hours in Denmark competition the past few days. We think it’s important that you know why this matters to us.

Social media has changed the world. It’s reshaped the unified communications industry, as neither really exists without the other – they are intermingled. It’s redefining journalism. It’s setting a new bar for entertainment media.

Social media is not about the tools. It is first and foremost about engagement and interaction.

Engagement – Interaction – Reciprocity have become not just watchwords for success, but standards to live by. Social media is where that engagement happens. It’s where the rubber meets the road. Information, as such, is ruled by search engines and the manipulation of the glut of data flying down the Intertubes.

It doesn’t matter whether you use Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, YouTube, QIK, ustream.tv or any of the other cornucopia of social media services available. The power of each lies in sharing in real-time. Sharing our lifestream and engaging with others in real-time.

We share our lives in pictures, audio clips, blog posts, tweets, video and more. We do this because as people we are social. It’s why we live in cities. It’s why we form communities. Social media takes the power away from information and puts it where it belongs – in people. People are the power of the content because we create it each and every day. People connecting to other people, learning about other people, engaging with other people is the most powerful force on the planet.

48 Hours in Denmark is powerful because it presents two shining examples for this budding industry that demonstrate the power of social media. First, this contest provides an example of data being collected to understand how people use social media to share vacations. We used to share in 35mm pictures or slides and Super8 movies. That was then. This is now, and now requires Now Media. The company behind this will gain insights into how people share vacation information, a case study in a fishbowl.

Secondly, this context gives at least one industry, tourism, a business case for how social media can upsell to the rest of the world, a location, a venue, an event. Arguably, a second industry, air travel, will get some peripheral benefit as well. Businesses often struggle with how to embrace social media. They want to embrace it because they sense the power, but the traditional business cases don’t yet exists. This provides a framework for industries and markets to learn how to evaluate and test social media in their segment.

We have several friends also competing in #48hoursindk, including Phil Campbell, Ricky Cadden and Daniel Silvers. We both wish everyone in the competition well. And we recognize that we all win in this contest because social media, the craft we all practice, wins in the long run.

Our original entry for 48 Hours in Denmark is online, and we hope you’ll vote for us. But even more than that, we hope you will engage.

Technorati Tags: #48hoursindk, Denmark

A few months back I said Cisco will take a huge black eye in 2009. But they seem to have found their humanity and a bit of fun. If they keep this up, they might actually attract a whole new following.

Cisco ad “I Will Survive” 2009

Technorati Tags: Cisco, video

At last the real voting has begun.

Now we really need your votes. We don’t know when the voting closes, so please don’t wait. And please share this link with all your friends. The power of social media is what can help us win this great opportunity. Please go to 48 Hours in Denmarkhttp://48hoursindenmark.com/) and vote for us.

NOTE: There has been an odd problem with Internet Explorer. If you use IE, go to http://48hoursindenmark.com/vote/ie/ to vote.

Our original entry is here.

Technorati Tags: #48hoursindk, Denmark

Our friend Jeff Pulver has bee working feverishly to make this a reality. Here’s a taste:

Since announcing on March 23rd “The 140 Character Conference” (#140conf) taking place at New World Stages in New York City on June 16/17, we have been humbled by the people who have come forward to be a part of this event. We thank everyone who has either contacted me directly or posted their nomination for someone on twitter.

At the moment we are in the process of building the schedule and confirming the “cast of 140 characters” whose presence will help define this event. These cast members are flying in from around the world to be at the event. And while not all members of the cast will have formal speaking roles, many will and their presence will be felt at the event. The cast members joining us will be coming from as far as away as: Perth, Australia and Doha, Qatar as well as from across North America, Europe and the Middle East. This will be a gathering of people with a variety of backgrounds and the one thing everyone who will be there has in common is twitter.

We have no idea if we’ll be there or not at this point, but it’s a defining event the stream of NOW Media. Go check it out!

Technorati Tags: 140 Character Conference, #140conf, Jeff Pulver, social media, Twitter

I have to be upfront here, this started as a comment reply to a post and has ended up an open letter to Shelly Palmer. As most of us like reading letters, I decided to go ahead and share it with you.

I read and listen to MediaBytes by Shelly Palmer. Last weekend Shelly wrote a compelling post called, “What If Your Dream Job Doesn’t Exist Anymore?” It was so compelling I actually started to comment, something I don’t do often anywhere, but as I thought about what he was saying I realized I had a lot to say. Shelly probably wouldn’t appreciate a comment longer than his post so I decided instead to write my own post to better consider what I thought about his article.

What if your dream job doesn’t exist anymore?

Let’s think about this…If the old dream jobs don’t exist, maybe we need to carve our own dream space. In new media, or as Jeff Pulver calls it, NOW media, we each have the ability to create a new niche, a new role for those of us still early to the game. Maybe we won’t be as ‘rich’ as the old media ideals led us to believe we could be, but we can make a fantastic life, make our own way, and do things differently. In other words, we can impact our future.

Shelly said: ‘You can’t go from 34 year-old, female, third-string, foreign language, cable news reporter to NYC-based talk show host. In fact, you probably can’t get there at all. Not because of personal talent, but because the job doesn’t exist. There is no locally produced talk show that is looking to hire a host. That’s not how talk shows work.’
[note: the 34 yr. old woman is not me.]

I agree, Shelly, that’s not how OLD media works. But don’t tell me I don’t have the ability to do what I want, simply tell me how to create a different path. Who wants to go the way of a dinosaur about to be extinct anyway? Not I. Maybe instead of being so put off by someone who has a dream, you could have explained that in old media it’s not possible, and here’s how to do it today. You’re going to have to maybe alter the dream because old media is about to die. You had a real opportunity to help. It’s too bad you didn’t.

I can only imagine what Shelly would have told someone like me, a MIDDLE aged woman, who’s kind of average and doesn’t live anywhere close to a metro hub, if he heard what I’m about to say. But here it is, I interview people in technology showing the human side of them. I have done it with a lot of people and I LIKE it. Now, I want to exist in my own space, make a little money, and do what I LOVE which is talk to people in the biz who are paving new roads, creating new tools, doing cool things and show how they’re just like the rest of us. They have a dream.

So what’s my dream? It’s what I mentioned above. My dream is to do what I’m doing and make money doing it, something I don’t do today. Make money I mean.  But how can I do that? I don’t have a background in business, I don’t have a broadcast history either. I only know I happen to have a knack for providing other people enough comfort to talk about themselves and their passion without feeling a need to qualify it. I believe that matters. It matters for a variety of reasons and I’ll talk a little bit about that.

Why do we want to hear from the people who are making things happen?

I think there are many reasons why those at the top of the tech world are appealing to us. We like the tools they bring us, we like the visionary and their ability to create something where before there was nothing. We like the shiny and new ‘stuff’ that enters our world because someone was  smart enough to develop something, or teach us something – maybe shine a light on something we hadn’t yet considered. Those people are beyond smart and yet they offer hope to us. Those technology wizards come out of left field and all of a sudden the world changes. We want to be like that, or be close to that. We are enamored of it.

Still with me?

I am more than that. I dream about it. I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night thinking about technology. Seriously, I do. Now, I’m not arrogant enough to believe I’m ever going to invent something. I won’t. I am an intelligent enough woman who lives in parallel to a bunch of people changing the world. My friends and network do that. Really.

What I think I can do better than almost anyone I have known is create comfort. But how do I monetize that? I’m not sure. I think my best bet is to give people in need of a platform, the place to talk where they can feel a bit of that ease and know they are valued. That goes a long way to their opening up and presenting their best foot forward.

Something I have noticed, we all notice it, people tend to clam up when being interviewed. They tend to feel really uncomfortable with the spotlight shining on them. I simply provide a way for them to talk about things they love in a way that is non-threatening.

Alright, Shelly Palmer, teach me how to make it HERE, not THERE.

Don’t give up on success in media today. Don’t give up on those of us who don’t fit the ‘old’ media stereotype, or live in the old media world. I believe today, right now, I have a chance, something I did NOT have in your old media world, to do something spectacular and create my own niche. I don’t need a course in digital literacy. I need a course in how to do exactly what I want and support myself doing it. Who knows, maybe I’m writing the course as I do it. Before telling someone it’s not possible, look to the future a little bit by looking at the past. All sorts of things are possible today that 5 years ago were not. Step out of the mold and listen to me. Hear what I’m saying. Help me to make it possible, but if you can’t, don’t rain on my parade, or anyone else’s because hope is all some of us have right now.

Shelly, I admire you. I think you’ve really done a lot of things people find value in. You’ve made it, and have a life most people would view as inspiring. You’re doing something to help others today. You’ve thought hard about how to change over to the digital world and because of your history you have some special tools to help make the transition. Some skills do port over.

I would love to hear what you have to say about the value proposition of small being the new big, and whether you can see past old media enough to understand there truly is a place for small time success in new media. I believe it’s in the definition of success. And yes, I do know the woman who started this conversation was talking about being rich. Rich can mean so very many things. My rich is probably not at all what you view it as.

Technorati Tags: Shelly Palmer, MediaBytes, Sheryl Breuker, Hope, New Media, Now Media, Broadcasting

Update 4/27/09 – Entries to the contest closed. Now we really need your votes. We don’t know when the voting closes, so please don’t wait. Your comment is your vote, so go leave a comment in support of our entry! And please share this link with all your friends. The power of social media is what can help us win this great opportunity. Please go to 48 Hours in Denmarkhttp://48hoursindenmark.com/) and vote for us.

Our original entry is here.

A few days ago I posted Part 1 of these thoughts here. If you haven’t seen it already, it’s a good starting point to put things in context.Put simply, I put on my business development hat and asked myself the question “If I were deploying a strategy to monetize and extend Twitter, what would I go explore?”

If I had a hand in strategic partnerships at Twitter, here are a few more business areas and strategic alliances I’d explore. We’ll see if I give you five more solid ideas here.

Google Latitude & Twitter Integration – Clearly, in web space, Google is the 800 pound gorilla. Cisco and Microsoft are also big gorillas, but they’re in another cage. The single biggest problem with an 800 pound gorilla is they often come with a two ton ego. Google has plenty of them. The Google gang is in many ways like Gene Wilder and Richard Prior in Stir Crazy – walking through the halls, strutting their stuff – “That’s right. We bad!” Ok, so Google’s big and bad. They’re also flawed and crushable just like any monolith. They do a fabulous job of partial innovation. They’re great starters. Great thinkers. And great implementors…up to a point. What, you doubt me?

Jaiku, remember them? Lifestreaming of the highest order at its peak. Google bought it for the talent and let the technology, which was a precursor to FriendFeed with location awareness long ago, slip into the void. Jaiku is still alive, but it’s on life support at best. User provided life support because Google pretty much pulled the plug. (We could go on to Grand Central a la Google Voice, but that’s an acquisition integration faux pas we’ll save for another time.)

Wait a minute…location awareness. We’ve heard that term recently. Google did something in that area with something called Latitude not too long ago. Awesome potential. But let’s think about it. My location is great. Our networks can see where we are. We’ve actually used it and had friends call, text and otherwise message us. But how does Latitude integrate with Gmail? Gtalk? Oh, that’s right. It doesn’t. It provides a link to call or text. But my friends are international and I want to Twitter DM them, not send expensive SMS. (Aside: Is Google in the mix to drive up carrier SMS revenue, or providing a user service? It would be interesting to know the relationship between Google and the carriers.)

Twitter needs to kick in the front door on Building 43 at the Googleplex and get hustling on integration with Google Latitude. And both companies need to be open about it and talk up what they’re doing…maybe on Twitter. Twitter just picked up some talent from Google. Is that a portent of things to come, or cannablization? If these two aren’t already working together in secret (a bad idea), they need to get together in public. The leadership teams need to kiss and hold hands in public and send a message to the rest of the wannabe crowd that the competition is stepping up a notch…or ten.

Twitter Search – search.twitter.com is nice. Just nice. It’s user generated tagging. The tags are simply fuel for indexing a database to search more efficiently. Twitter lacks metadata of real power, at least today. Facebook has the real power of metadata with all the demographic and personal information we share. But Twitter makes ineffective use of the metadata it does have. The search engine and metadata surrounding traffic needs work, and that means partnerships.

First Twitter needs to expand the profile information users can provide so they can gather metadata that has dollar value behind it. What they have today has zero dollar value. Broaden scope. And do it this week. Every day lost is a day that every service with more valuable metadata gets farther ahead.

How do we do that in some new and creative way? Partner. Who of the big search engines should Twitter be paired up with, tied and the hip, perhaps even conjoined? Hmmm, well Google comes to mind.

‘Nuff said.

Buy Hollywood – Bear with me as we flesh this one out. It’s a bold move, but @ev and @biz need to be bolder.

This whole conversation about Twitter ideas got fueled a bit yesterday with some of my friends on
Twitter and through some things Sheryl was reading online. Here’s one thing I said yesterday -

Why should Twitter kowtow to the old world media when new media…now media is on the rise?

Oprah made a huge splash on Twitter last week. Why? For the cost of a good Harpo productions movie her team could deploy the same or better infrastructure as Twitter and launch a private Oprah.Net. Why not take it over first and offer it to stars as a service, providing cross platform integration with the public Twitter we know and love today.

Now take another celebrity who does get social media – Ellen. Why not go offer her Ellen.Net too. And why not leap to Kutch.er for Ashton and his million followers.

The next step is to provide linkage between the heirarchies. Users who only want to follow one can do so. Those who want to belong to all the nets, can do so. Post to one, several or all.

How hard is this technologically? Not very. As a technical exercise, that’s all it really is…an exercise. What seems to be missing is a champion to make things happen and the business cases to win the game. There’s nobody driving this particular effort that we Twitterholics can see. Twitter remains just a tool for the media stars. A tool that costs nothing. Not a freaking dime to use. Twitter is leaving money on the table.

Stop doing that!

While we’re thinking about it, Twitter is, as @shelisrael said, modeling clay, being shaped by the users. It’s time to embrace a new reality. Twitter isn’t Web 2.0 and never was. Web 2.0 was a bad dream. Twitter stands on the cusp of redefining the Information Age to be something else…the Interactive Age. That’s how the era we live in will be remembered. Twitter can define the Interactive Age, or leave that to someone else. I think we’re up to that challenge.

There’s eight or so, and I said I’d give you ten. I’ve decided to stop here. I don’t get paid for this, and I should. @ev … @biz … you don’t call. You don’t answer my tweets. I’m @kencamp. My number’s public. We really should talk. Some people are listening, and you’re missing out on the conversation.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, monetization, @ev, Evan Williams, @biz, Biz Stone, Information Age, Interactive Age

In this Incidental Interview I had a chat with David Siteman Garland. David is CEO of The Rise To The Top, which encompasses the hit new media show, The Rise To The Top, on ABC30 St. Louis, as well as Rise at Night and Rise Underground.

David is a fascinating man who has created a company and found his niche without a background in the media industry. He started with a passion and absolutely has made it work. I can only give you my opinion after quite a lengthy interview as well as other encounters, but David is the real deal. If you’re a young entrepreneur, or even a not so young entrepreneur, David is someone you should be paying attention to.

Something else to note, you can view David’s show on Sunday mornings on ABC30 or on his website, at 11am CDT immediately following George Stephanopoulos and Tues. and Thurs. nights at 1am immediately following Jimmy Kimmel. The Rise To The Top has also been picked up for the fall on Yahoo’s new Connected TV.

These are truly exciting times we live in where you don’t have to know exactly how to do something. More important than knowing how to do something is knowing who to turn to for advice. Our network is what ultimately matters. David Garland is a real example of that.

Download Now

Subscribe in iTunes

Technorati Tags: David Siteman Garland, podcast, Incidental Interviews, The Rise To The Top, Sheryl Breuker, entrepreneur, The Gabby Geek

Update 4/27/09 – Entries to the contest closed. Now we really need your votes. We don’t know when the voting closes, so please don’t wait. Your comment is your vote, so go leave a comment in support of our entry! And please share this link with all your friends. The power of social media is what can help us win this great opportunity. Please go to 48 Hours in Denmarkhttp://48hoursindenmark.com/) and vote for us.

Here’s our video entry. If we win, we will blog, Twitter, Twitpic/Tweetphoto, Facebook and QIK video (which will mirror on YouTube) in realtime. And we’ll record lots of podcast and video for our return when we get back. You’ll see GeekSpeakTV again as a video of the trip, and we’ll be searching for a series of Incidental Interviews and other podcasts along the way,

Update: Now the the flurry of entering is done, here are a couple of other things -

• We set QIK to go to our YouTube, so all our live video will show up in both places. QIK already tweets it when we stream.
• We’ll have one or both laptops along, so if we can, we will go live on our ustream.tv channel when we can from the hotel. Obviously, the trip will be a frenzy, but maybe we can do a day end wrap up each day and chat live via ustream. It’s also set up to spool over to our YouTube.
• We’ll do our best to arrange TweetUps with any and all Twitter people around there. And we’ll ask you to help promote it. We’ll do pics and video the best we can from the TweetUps and share them as well.

In short, we’ll take the First Couple in Technology (that’s US) and our hyperconnected life to Denmark and we’ll take the world along on our trip. We’ll take you every step of the way. The car, the plane, the airports. You’ll meet people we meet and see things that we see. Given that our relationship, both as social media evangelists and as a couple in love, is widely seen everywhere. How could we possibly not take all of our best friends….the networks we live (that’s YOU) in along for the trip. We take you everywhere anyway.

And, we’ll be trackable on Google Latitude as we travel around the world. Watch our progress as you follow our live tweets, pictures and video.

Please go to to http://48hoursindenmark.com/ and vote for us.

Also please help spread the word and get us more votes by sharing via the buttons below.

Have questions? Send us a tweet @SherylBreuker or @kencamp.

Technorati Tags: #48hoursindk, 48 Hours in Denmark, Sheryl Breuker, Ken Camp, GeekSpeakTV, Incidental Interviews, video, travel, mobility

For those of our listeners who encountered a problem with the iTunes feed for our podcasts, that problem has been fixed. iTunes was subscribing, but not successfully loading new podcasts. Now it does.

To ensure that you are in fact subscribed to the right feed, please open iTunes and unsuscribe and remove any old files you might have. Then click the link below to resubscribe. Once done there, everything should be fine going forward.

Subscribe in iTunes

Thanks for all the encouragement and support!

Sheryl & Ken

For those of us across the ‘Net who have been Twitterpated, the conversation around Twitter’s monetization is a regular topic of conversation. Whether it’s in blog posts, tweets or chatter at a conference, it’s a topic that comes up often. Twitter is the service we love, sometimes love so much we get agitated when it stumbles. There isn’t a service I can think of that’s proven more addictive or that we’ve so quickly come to depend on.

One measure of success is how much users depend on a service. By that measure, Twitter is a huge success, although sustaining the service remains a question we talk about in public debate constantly. Rather than continue to add fuel to that fire, which seems pointless, I put on my business development hat and asked myself the question “If I were deploying a strategy to monetize and extend Twitter, what would I go explore?”

If I had a hand in strategic partnerships at Twitter, here are some of the concepts I’d explore:

Telemetry – That’s a broad brush sector, but let me provide an example or two for consideration. Consider the utility services we use – gas, water and electric. As children, most of us remember the meter reader who came around each month with a clipboard taking manual readings from the various meters. In the utility industry, these are called “consumption reads.” They’re vital to utility providers for billing purposes.

That method of reading utility meters has been obsoleted by technology. First meters were equipped with small radio transmitters that could send meter readings to a person walking down the sidewalk. This innovation led to increased efficiency. Meter readers were able to gather many more readings in a day. But this advance quickly moved from a handheld data collection device to something mounted in a vehicle. The territory a person can cover driving led to another huge efficiency increase.

Both these methods are very common today, yet they’re being rapidly obsoleted by the ideas of both fixed and wireless networking. By placing data collectors on utility poles, buildings, and other infrastructure, now meter readings can easily be gathered in real-time, using network technologies, for homes in a half-mile or greater radius. Today, two-way functionality in utility meters is an area of keen interest for utility companies.

This technology today uses combined technologies. For example, from the meter to the pole-mounted collector something like 900Mhz unregulated spectrum may be used. The collector devices then might use GPRS or 3G to send some upstream IP information to a network aggregation point. This requires the integration of cellular modem technology into the collector.

Since we’re talking about embedded chipset technologies, why put the expensive data radio in the collector device. Why not embed a cellphone chipset and enable an SMS-only account with the carriers. The utility sector wields termendous power with the carriers, but sadly they do not know how to flex their muscles very well. Cost reduction in an emerging technology using Twitter technology to transmit information that is not so critical it requires more costly networking. It’s simply utility utilization monitoring in very-near real-time, (VNRT).

Many telemetry and flow metering applications use simple text messages over a serial interface. In the information age, we can easily replace the old wired serial link with an SMS stream of tweets.

Of course the utility won’t want to use the public Twitter for this information stream. All that’s needs is some partnering and selling.building a custom infrastructure to support it. Voila, a revenue stream for a corporate Twitter product let’s call it ConEdTwit for sake of example using a massive utility company.

Transportation (Rail) – Given the previous examples, let’s think for a moment about railroads and consider a variation on the theme. Amtrak operates on a number of lines. Each tied to rail switching systems. I’m not sure what technology they use today to confirm that the track is switched the right way when a train is approaching, but it seems to me that many of the rail accidents are linked back to a switching mishap.

Why not enable the switching technology with those cheap embedded mobile phone systems and likewise equip the trains? I wouldn’t recommend this as the primary technology due to the reliability factor of SMS, but as a backup or secondary system, and for providing a means to simply confirm railway switching, this sounds like a terribly cost effective solution.

Let’s call this one AmTwit for Amtrack. We might also take a moment to recognize that in the rail transportation sector, Amtrak is a tiny player. Think about rail shipping in the US, and the industry is far larger than Amtrak will ever be.

Voice Powered AutoTwit (Mashup time) – People like to talk. People like to tweet. Most states now require hands-free operation while driving. Services like OnStar by GM are growing in popularity. There’s a simple way to bring new value into the automotive sector, and we all know how they’re hurting to add value and stay in business.

Let’s begin with a visual (graphics are clickable links)

   +      +  

First, partner up with Pat Phelan over at Cubic Telecom and either collaborate or buy his TwitterFone solution that delivers a voice interface to Twitter. Now go meet with the Auto Alliance of manufacturers and work out how to embed Twitter in cars. The technology already exists with mobile phone integration and voice interaction with cars. Why say to my car “play radio” when I can say “tweet stuck behind accident on 101 southbound” instead?

The TwitterMobile module could easily become not just an option on new cars, but a nice aftermarket add-on to the automotive industry.

TweetHouse – We hear talk of smart buildings, and they’ve become popular in business parks for business users paying premium prices, but homes are getting much smarter.  More importantly is how our homes are connecting to the net. The video phone in our home will simply become and extension of the media room. Today flat panel TVs are the rage, and now they’re coming with Ethernet connections built in. Tomorrow’s big screen TV will simply be a media wall, but it’s becoming more than a television. In fact, it may not require television from the mainstream broadcast media at all.

The media wall of our future home will simply be a video panel that can be carved into however many virtual screens we desire. We’ll be able to watch a movie, ballgame, web news, email and hold a video call all at once in the comfort of our homes.

Our appliances will easily become network-connected devices that are far more intelligent than the Whirlpool our mothers had. Imagine your washing machine sending you a note that it had detected a problem with a bearing. What about your refrigerator letting you know the water filter needed to be replaced – or better still, letting you know it had placed the order for a new filter and scheduled the service appointment during a time it knew you would be home and placed it on your shared calendar.

So why not Twitterize the home to allow simple text communications and status updates from the phone. Single parents could get a simple Twitter direct message from home when the front door opens at 3:30, signaling the safe arrival of a child coming home from school. We could send a DM to the home AC to turn the air on before leaving work in the hot weather.

Leave home and not get back until unexpectedly late some evening? DM your house to turn the lights on.

The potential is limitless really. And the cost to implement the technology is cheaper and in wider use than we often recognize. Something to consider.

Vidtel Tweets – Just yesterday I did a podcast with Scott Wharton, the CEO at Vidtel. It left me thinking about some other viable options that extend service values through partnering. You can listen to the podcast and see reviews of Vidtel elsewhere here, but for the moment, let’s consider Twitter and Vidtel.

The visual above shows the Vidtel video telephone. It’s built by Grandstream, but holds the traditional telephone touchpad with a few extra feature keys. This phone already has a TCP/IP stack built in. It’s a VoIP phone that connects via Ethernet. How hard is it to bundle the guts in a slightly modified case to include a downsized QWERTY keyboard for text messaging. And it’s got a video screen already. How hard is it to put a simple Twitter client option onboard to see scrolling tweets in real-time on the video display. Simple enough to cut them off when a call comes in. A simple Twitter UI for this device is not a significant engineering feat. And I know more than couple of people who would love to make some money helping build it.

Why not a VidTweeterFone? There’s plenty of market. Not overly expensive or complicated to build.

In the second part of this, maybe we’ll start with Twitter integration with Google Latitude. We’ll see how the first five are received by Twitterati everywhere.

@ev … @biz … call me. We should talk. Really.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, monetization, telemetry, TwitterFone, Pat Phelan, smart homes, Vidtel, Scott Wharton, @ev, Evan Williams, @biz, Biz Stone

This morning I had the opportunity to spend some time chatting with Scott Wharton, CEO at Vidtel. Sheryl and I met Scott at an industry dinner in San Francisco a few months ago, and he extended the opportunity to test Vidtel’s new video phone service to us. We’ve been using it for a while now, and I’ll write more about that in a separate post. Suffice it to say, we’re huge fans.

Scott’s passion, enthusiasm and commitment to the vision at Vidtel is infectious. He brings a solid background to video telephony from his deep experience in communications.

If you’re looking for a video solution for someone who isn’t comfortable with PC-based telephony or video, take a look at Vidtel.

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Technorati Tags: Vidtel, Scott Wharton, video, Ken Camp, interview, podcast

We pay very close attention to a set of industry events and conferences that intersect with our interest and expertise. We keep links over on the right sidebar that change as events take place. While we do follow these events closely, and try to attend, we never make them all.

These are important events in our industry, and we want to make sure you know these four are coming up. Check them each out and see how they might apply to you.

The 140 Characters Conference