Bill Watt’s Blog

So- Alice has to ask me to enable the Tivo preferences so she can record the Olympics. Huh? So I log in and apparently I have to change my privacy options to enable this. Apparently this is part of the “guru guide” tools.

On one hand I can see this from the business side… smart to use such a stunt event to encourage use of this feature. On the other I hate having to give up personal usage stats (even though I understand it allows for better targeting / recommendations). But ultimately I assume Tivo is logging everything and my privacy is a myth anyway.

Yesterday and most of this week were excellent examples of suckness but also plenty of good stuff happened and that the suckness was a good reminder that I have nothing but first world problems.

Case in point… yesterday was full of stress over an impending release and a bunch of dropped balls. Still… I was able to work from home, attended several conf calls, and still managed to squeeze in Korean BBQ for lunch where I burned myself on the pot while watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my shiny new iPhone. Rough life, right?

So, at one point I was looking for a little humor and a sense that I’m not alone in this big world of Product Management pain. What did I do? Why, I googled “day in the life of a product manager” and came across more than a few gems. Check out this post from “The Cranky Product Manager” and you’ll see the kind of mood I was in.

The nice thing was how the day ended. Release issues (the most important ones anyway) are nearly resolved with a light at the end of the tunnel and I was able to go to Gary Dillabough’s going away party at eBay and see many of my favorite old time eBay folks.

Note for Hima and Ramya- I think I’m actually a hugger after all. Never fear- your protected status is still in place.

It was quite comforting in a way I really really needed yesterday to see good folks and wish Gary well. Two notes to Gary…

1. Thanks for telling the FAIM acquisition story. Even thought it hurts on some grand spiritual level for me to think about how close we were to being a Web 1.0 success story with your parting the number of people that even remember FAIM dropped to about what I can count on two hands and the number of execs who know it dropped to 2. I’m sure in 6 months they’ll rebuild the large merchant strategy and not even realize what they’ve missed out on.
2. Keep me in mind in your future projects. I’d happily clean your pool.

So many people have written much longer and better posts than I have the will to do. Suffice it to say that I love the iPhone with the exception of the battery life and the keyboard being worse than what I had on the Blackberry.

Ok… just a quick note to let the world know how vindicated I feel! Alice is on her “sabbatical” and every day I come home or time I call she is in the middle of using the AppleTV, the Roku. the xBox 360 to watch HD DVD’s, or using her iPod touch at the gym. I’ll continue to be excited about this right up to the day when she’s playing Warcraft.

Reviews and observations later today

Oh boy… I love new toys and the iPhone ranks right up there on things I look forward to buying.

Why am I transitioning:

• I’ve had an iPod touch since they came out and I like the interface.
• The enhancements they’ve made (sync to corp email and 3g speed enhancement) make the timing feel about right.
• I’m going to get it setup so I can use it as a connection for my laptop to the internet so I can work while on the train or when I travel.

Why ditch the blackberry that I have loved for about 9 years?

• Interface hasn’t changed much and we’re in an innovation world
• Things like always connected email as the norm. Even as blackberry continues to be the best at that… there is so much more going on. I find myself looking up Twitter posts, going for directions, and all kinds of stuff that are easy on the web and annoying (yet possible) on hte blackberry.
• My job has changed from eBay and FairMarket where I was primary contact and needed to type long responses. At Current there is a team that handles the support and I just dabble with answering escalations. As I learn more I’ll do more but we don’t have much in the way of off hours support that I can be helpful in answering. (Alice likes the change where the pager is not going off at 2AM)
• AT&T was already charging me the same price to have a Blackberry so it will be a lateral cost move to get the iPhone.
• One last thing that was outside the control of RIM - my company has done a miserable job getting the blackberry to work with Exchange (frankly, all of our email functions blow) so working with the iPhone can’t be worse. Seriously.

I’ll let you know when I get it and if it improves my life. But mark my words… they better not come out with a 32GB model 1 month after I buy the 16GB model. Grrr.

Oh boy… oh boy… oh boy!

Diablo 3

OK… day 1 with the new toy is done and here is my review:

It rocks!

Setup was incredibly easy.  It really does take about 3 min to unpack and connect and another 3 min to enable including a firmware update. It is silent because it has no hard drive or fans or anything like that so I think Alice is going to love it too.

Now, when I first turned it on I was sitting at the end of the bed and was very close to the TV. It was a little rough given the 480 resolution and all the other things that are hooked up are at least 780 but generally 1080. I sat back, closed my eyes, reset my expectations, and when I opened my eyes it was all good. I am looking forward to the day they offer HD content but this will certainly do for now.

So- if you have a Netflix account with at least an $8 / month account then I will suggest that you consider spending the $99 and buying this toy. You won’t get all the movies ever but it is wonderful for those weekends when you want to watch something spur of the moment without all the crap from Comcast.

Apparently my Roku Netflix box arrives tomorrow… woo hoo! I really can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to playing with this thing.

It does make me wonder how the world thinks we’re moving to metered bandwidth. Everything is moving online. How will I know how much bandwidth everything consumes? What if I’ve moved my phone to VOIP? “Too bad” seems like a harsh answer.

I was listening to TWIT this week and Leo was going on and on about how the proposed pricing makes sense for now but will eventually bite us all in the ass. His reasoning was that the proposed caps are all well and good for what the normal person consumes and what the providers currently classify as “bandwidth hogs” but that in a short amount of time all of us will be consuming more. Natalie Del Conte (not on TWIT) pointed out that everything is connected now and none of those devices have a way to tell you when they’re connecting.

Plus- my biggest concern is that I want to get away from physical media. I want to (legally) download movies the day they come to the theater and store them on my multiple TB drives (I have but 1 TB drive now but in the dreamy future of later this year that will grow). I want these guys to encourage me to consume content in this manner and not try to stop it in the interest of their IPTV or Pay Per View schemes.

Let the content flow!

I like my Apple TV and the flaws have always been the kind where I thought, “Oh, this will get fixed in a patch.” Those patches have started happening. I downloaded my first HD movie and watched it today on the new TV. It looked really good, didn’t take too long to download (about an hour but it offered me the ability to start watching when it was at 3%. I chose to go on a Starbucks run instead.), and generally the whole experience was solid.

The problem is… I don’t want to pay $5 to rent an HD movie. This is why I have Netflix and have basically an all I can eat model. The convenience of downloading on the Apple TV or xbox is nice, the quality is equal to or better than standard DVD, and I get all the value these services bring me.

Here’s the rub… I also understand the value this brings the content producers. They know more about me when I purchase online, they have better cross-sell and up-sell options, they don’t have any of the packaging and much lower distribution costs but for some reason these content producers want me to keep paying the old prices. Why does it cost me the same to download a movie as it does to rent a physical DVD from a store? Their costs go way down, their control goes way up, and the value to the consumer doesn’t change accordingly.

I’d actually rather not watch than be squeezed into the old paradigm. I stopped going to the movies pretty close to when I got my big screen TV and now I have a 32″ 1080p TV in addition to the 55″ 1080i. I have multiple Tivo’s, an Apple TV, and xbox 360, pc’s, a slingbox and all kinds of other things that will let me get the content from the provider that does it right. The quality just keeps getting better with my home viewing experience so why would I spend $10 or more to have a social experience that I want to be a non-social experience?

Again, the content producers need to embrace their consumers. I won’t pirate content but I just won’t consume. There are a hundred ways they could be getting more of my business. They could start by giving me what I want in the format I want it and by not treating me as their enemy.

Dare to dream.