HellaFrank

A teacher in high school once told me that often times I’ll see things come in threes. I’m not sure how much I’ve noticed this phenomenon since then, but last week it was in full effect.

The topic that came up each time was a green startup called Project Better Place. First I had dinner with a friend who was interning there this summer and told me all about it. The next day a ringer on LaunchSquad’s softball team brought up the company over dinner at the lovely Frankie’s Bohemian Cafe. Third, the next day I stumbled upon and article about Project Better Place on Earth2Tech.

Project Better Place has a very grand vision: “We see an oil-free future and a healthier, safer planet.” They want to accomplish this by bringing electric vehicles to the public and building the infrastructure to make it  easy and sustainable. While the vision is a big one, it also seems to have a good chance for success.

The CEO, Shai Agassi, was once up for CEO of SAP, the fifth largest software company in the world. He left to start Project Better Place. The company has also gotten some serious funding ($200 million to start, for their work in Israel) and buy-in from auto manufacturers including Nissan, Renault and potentially Daimler.

This is definitely one of the most intriguing green companies to watch. It will be a long road, but so far the company seems to be well on the right track. Gavin Newsom wants the San Francisco Bay Area to be the first U.S. region to participate in Project Better Place, which seems appropriate.

The prospect of electric cars has always seemed ideal, but ultimately, not realistic. But technology and companies like Project Better Place and Tesla Motors are finally working to making widespread electric car use possible. Definitely rooting for these guys, and looking forward to following how things progress. Sounds like Denmark is next…

Also posted on LaunchSquad’s Exclamation Blog

At one point, the idea of free municipal wireless Internet across the country seemed like the new frontier for Internet access. Everyone would have access and people would no longer be tied down to accessing from certain locations. Philadelphia was one of the first to blanket their city with Internet, but that project, just like those of San Francisco and many other cities and towns ended when Earthlink unexpectedly shut down it’s municipal wireless organization. Big and powerful telecoms like Verizon weren’t happy about these plans either and undoubtedly affected the success of them as well. From a really great article in Slate:

Verizon spent more than $3 million to lobby the [Pennsylvania] state government to pass a bill preventing cities and townships in Pennsylvania from offering broadband or wireless services unless the phone company has refused to do so. More than a dozen states have similar statutes on the books that make it difficult for government to get into the wireless broadband business. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed a law in June that prevents municipalities from offering broadband if there are competing private services. Nevada bans most cities and counties from offering telecommunications services. Texas flatly prohibits it.

Fast forward a couple of years and a company called Meraki is now breathing life back into municipal wireless. How? By taking an open-source, community powered approach that bypasses telecoms and the government. Meraki sells and gives away their tiny piece of hardware, called a repeater, that allows anyone within a one-block radius to receive a 1-megabit wireless signal — three times faster than anything Earthlink promised. Eventually these repeaters will be networked across all of San Francisco, creating a seamless and open wireless network. The best part? It’s individuals powering the network with hardware provided by an independent company — the government and big telecoms can do nothing about it, though San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and the board of supervisors fully support it anyway (and seem to be taking credit for it too).

It’s a great example of how the power of the masses is far stronger than any telecom or government agency. Meraki has created a simple piece of technology, yet with widespread usage, it becomes so much more than that. For example, the company is starting by offering free repeaters for low-income housing developments in San Francisco so people who struggle to afford Internet can have it in their homes.

And don’t feel bad for Meraki, while they are probably not making much money right now, providing such a core service, much like Google does with search, opens up endless possibilities for business development in the future.

Open-source, community and the power of the crowd is not just the future of the Internet, it’s the future of Internet access.

Steve Jobs is kind of a modern day Pablo Escobar for technology. Employing a huge workforce to work undercover on secretive projects, then smuggle the product to be sold to serious addicts at high prices. Everyone knows he’s doing it but no one can infiltrate or take him down.

But, despite all of this secrecy, these days we pretty much know the big announcements we’re going to hear at Steve Jobs’ keynotes before they hapen. It’s always nice to hear the confirmations, but it’s the little things, the unexpected news, that gets me excited.

This time around, for me, it wasn’t even a product from Apple, but from MLB.com who historically likes to tempt baseball fans with awesome sounding products that end up sucking because of poor technology (i.e. Windows Media Player) or lack of ridiculous amounts of bandwidth.

But at the Apple keynote, they announced MLB At Bat, an iPhone application that not only lets you track baseball games live with detailed updates, but delivers video to your iPhone of the game’s highlights minutes after they happen.

What did you say? Derrek Lee just went yard in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Cardinals? Let’s have a look-see.

And even though MLB.com does not have a great history with providing good video, this year’s overhaul of Gameday (see my earlier post) gives me hope that this will actually work. Dan Frommer at Silicon Alley Insider is right-on when he says that video on mobile phones needs to be delivers in “snacks” not huge meals. Let’s be honest, not many people want to watch full feature programming on a tiny screen, especially something as slow as baseball. So MLB At Bat is definitely taking the right approach.

So yes, thank you Steve for the new and improved iPhone, I’ll be purchasing one soon, but thank you even more MLB.com for ensuring I will never miss a Cubs highlight on this year’s epic road to the World Series.

Last week was the first ever Internet Week in New York (and maybe anywhere?). Everyday had a slew of events from EconAds to the Applied Cryptography and Network Security Conference. It was a celebration of the Internet for the New York tech community in a sort of open-source, create-your-own-events format.

This event made it clear that New York is serious about becoming the “global technology hub” that mayor Bloomberg suggests. In fact, in a press conference to kick off Internet Week, Bloomberg announced NYC Seed, a $2 million fund for early stage technology companies. Granted, that’s not a lot of money, especially with the cost of operating a business in New York, but it’s a start and companies also receive advice and guidance from the fund’s members as they build their company. Any buy-in from the city is a good thing, and if that $2 million goes to good use, NYC Seed would definitely see a re-up in the near future.

Taking a seed-funding approach is appropriate for the state of the New York tech industry since many of the companies based here seem to be in much earlier stages than their counterparts on the West Coast. Also, I’d imagine that quite a few talented developers and less-experienced entrepreneurs may not have the relationships with wealthy individuals and VCs to raise a first round of funding they need to get their businesses off the ground. NYC Seed should give them easier and less relationship-based access to that kind of money and knowledge.

Overall it was a great week of events, and even culminated in an Internet Week “old media vs. new media” feud that made it onto Page Six! I guess Amy Winehouse took the week off.

Also posted on LaunchSquad’s Exclamation Blog

Everyday we hear stories about the failing economy, whether we’re in a recession and the fallout of some bad decisions by big financial institutions. For many aspects of the economy, people have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen — mortgages will continue to be tough to come by for many people, some more bankers will probably lose their jobs, and Nintendo Wiis will continue to be impossible to get… Well, not sure that last one has anything to do with the economy.

But one aspect of the economy that’s near and dear to me is venture backed technology companies and how they will be affected. Many people have strong opinions and there is really no consensus on what will happen. On several occasions recently I have been asked by people outside the tech industry how the economy has affected, or will affect, the companies I work with and the VCs that fund them. My answer to them is that I really don’t know, and in my never-ending search for the answer to that question, no one else really seems to either.

Back in August, a prominent venture capitalist in San Francisco, Keith Benjamin received some attention from a blogpost he wrote about why the credit crisis would help venture capital. The New York Times and Silicon Valley blog VentureBeat also reported on his theory that venture capital is not based on credit and debt, therefore, investors will be more willing to invest in tech IPOs. There’s one theory.

But, the numbers show that those IPOs have not been plentiful the past few months. Hmmm?

More recently (and by recently, I mean, this week) another article in The New York times paints a dramatic picture of the slowdown in Silicon Valley. Silicon Alley Insider, a New York technology blog, agrees (but then again, they’ll never pass up an opportunity to prove superiority over our West coast counterparts).

On the flip side, here in New York, Union Square Ventures recently announced the closing of their most recent investment fund, apparently without much difficulty. Yesterday Reuters reported that New York is “fertile ground” for technology startups, and VC and tech/finance blogger Paul Kedrosky agrees, at least for financial tech startups. So now you’re telling me things are different based on location? It’s starting to get murky…

Probably the most convincing and level-headed post I’ve read on the topic comes from Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures. Yes, he is a VC and it’s in his interest for people to remain bullish on tech startups and the economic viability of the web, but he makes some good points and concludes that now’s the time for companies to build their business models for the long haul. There’s venture capital money out there waiting to be invested (see above, USV just got $156 million), but the returns may not come right away. So, companies need to build real, sustainable business models since Google won’t snatch them up anytime soon and they’re damn sure not going public… A real, profitable company, what a concept!

In the end, there really doesn’t seem to be an answer everyone can agree on. Overall, it seems that whether the effects of the downturn are negative or positive depends on your role in the tech community. For an entrepreneur, it may be harder to get money and convince VCs that his company can make it in this economy. Bad for them. For VCs, they’ll have to strategize on which types of companies can make it right now and advise accordingly once they’ve funded those companies. Not bad or good, just different. End-users of these technologies? It seems like we/they are put in a position of power. Products need to be made for end-users now, not for Google or Yahoo!, and consumers may ultimately decide whether a company is successful or not. With so many early acquisitions the past few years, widespread consumer adoption and revenue haven’t necessarily been the benchmarks of success for startups.

So, I guess we just need to sit back and watch it all unfold, and the next time someone asks you how the economic downturn is affecting tech, tell them to get comfortable cause the answer may take a while.

Update: Interesting post on Silicon Alley Insider today about computer science graduates not having any problem finding jobs. Seems like engineers are always in high demand though — a company is nothing without its product, and developers bring those to life.

MLB.com, you have officially dealt a blow to my productivity this baseball season, and I thank you for that.

For those of you not familiar with Gameday, it’s a play-by-play and pitch-by-pitch interface to follow baseball games. Included are a bunch of different stats and information about the game, and it’s always been my go-to place for game updates. My colleague and former sports reporter Corey Lewis tells me that the plays and pitches are updated manually by a person at every major league baseball game… I thought there would be robots or monkeys involved, but I guess not.

This year, Gameday received a huge overhaul and was improved drastically over last year. First, it’s in your main browser window and doesn’t require the opening of a separate new applet… Good start. Second, and my favorite, is the addition of video to the Gameday interface for the highlights — home runs, great defensive plays, etc. About 20-30 minutes after the play happened, a little play-button shows up next to the item in the play-by-play, you click it and it immediately shows you the highlight video without leaving Gameday. Pretty sweet.

Let’s just say if you don’t see too many play-buttons for your team, they’re probably not doing too well.

On the flip side, I also use Yahoo’s StatTracker to track — here goes — live fantasy baseball stats for my Yahoo league which includes a similar service to Gameday. We PAY for this service. For the past three years I’ve played fantasy baseball, not one change has been made to this boring and slow interface.

Seems to be a bit of a trend with Yahoo. I hear about new services they launch and companies they buy, but the never seem to innovate on their existing offerings or generate much mainstream usership for many of them. Aside from Yahoo Mail, Fantasy sports and Flickr, I can’t say there are a ton of Yahoo services that I use. Getting bought by Microsoft should help solve that lack of forward thinking and innovation…. Errr, maybe not.

I missed you guys. Seriously, I did.

Today was the first real day of regular season major league baseball and whether the Cubs won or lost, opening day has always been a pretty exciting and hopeful day for me. Why? Well, this time of year the Cubs generally aren’t out of the playoffs yet, this year it’s a sign that warm weather is almost upon us (in my younger years, it meant school was coming to an end… Definitely no warm weather in San Francisco though), and somewhere in the April/May timeframe you can start a golf round at 4:00pm and still get 18 holes in.

So I figured that today would be most appropriate to officially announce that HellaFrank is back and excited to bring you some new and improved regular programming.

The initial idea behind HellaFrank was to document my move out to New York. It was fun and from what readers told me, entertaining to at least three of you (not including my parents, of course!).

Now, I’m shifting the focus to things I like writing about and feel are topics with which I have some level of expertise and passion. I love sports, but so do 100,000 other bloggers. I like technology, but so do a million other bloggers. I also love New York and plenty of people write about this amazing city on a regular basis.

What I’m getting at is HellaFrank will sit at the center of all three of these passions of mine. HellaFrank is the intersection of sports, technology and New York life… I will write about each of these topics and the convergence of them when possible. I’m excited to get rolling again and I hope that all of you will continue to read and comment and tell your friends!

So, what do you need to do to stay up to date on HellaFrank? Tattoo it on your arm, bookmark this page or subscribe to the RSS feed (the big red button on the right), but whatever you do, visit early and visit often — you won’t want to miss a post………