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Howdy from Austin. I’m going to be using today’s space for larger thoughts than can fit in Twitter (140 characters cramps my style. Though some would argue it could use some cramping), along with links. But for more up to the minute updates, check my Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/johnbrian. Previous updates on days 0 and 1 here. -John Brian

• 12:14: I haven’t had a chance yet to catalogue some of the cool stuff we saw on the trade show floor. Here’s a sampling, based on what I’m taking out of my bag:

1. Utterz.com, in addition to being proof that yes, every web 2.0 domain name has been taken, allows you to blog remotely using a combination of voice, video, pictures and text. I actually saw the demo at the Google party on Saturday first, but wanted to get more info before posting. It’s free and ad-free at the moment, and they indicated that when they do go ad-supported, they’ll have an enterprise version for NPOs that don’t want to share branding. Could be cool at conferences or for companies that spend a lot of time on the road where it’s tough to blog.
2. Izea.com has a pay per post blogging program. While I’m still not convinced that it’s not conceptually a bad PR move, it does provide some opportunities for quick SEO. They also indicated that they now require disclosure, to the level specified by the client, which reassured me a little.
3. Mapquest was located right across from arch-rival Google, and had some interesting things to say. Their API is free and unlimited, and allows programmers to work in a variety of languages. Mapquest really pioneered online maps, and while most of their work seems to be in static maps, they’ve since expanded as a serious competitor to Google and Yahoo.
4. Zappos also had a pretty significant presence - I was a little confused, since they don’t really do any B2B, but I guess they’ve been having a big presence for years. They were also there to recruit talent.

• 11:33: Almost everyone here at the interactive festival seems to be with a company of some sort - very few independent contractors here. Is that because of the cost or some other factor? I’d also be interested to hear how big a delegation came from some of the giants in the field - I’ve met folks from Apple (one of whom stood in line next to me earlier tonight, defending flaws in the iPod/iPhone before finally revealing that he was an Apple developer) and Google (who indicated that their grants/.org folks weren’t here - maybe they’ll be at NTC?) - wonder how big a delegation these folks sent.

This post is getting long so I’m updating it to add a fold - check below for more from Day 2.

• 5:04: The Austin convention center is great. Clean, modern, plenty of space. But the layout is just strange - some escalators/elevators go only to floor 3, some to floor 4, and I think the whole place is missing its floor 2. Also, it’s not a circle, so there are some long walks.
• 3:13: Back with my notebook again, wanted to share a couple more observations about the conference:

1. The mac : PC ratio has been about as inverted from standard as the iPhone : regular smartphone ratio. Part of that might be that it’s all notebooks, where Apple can compete better than with desktops. That said, I’m kind of feeling like it’s the inverse of their "1984" ad - am I throwing my hammer through the screen by using a PC?
2. The conference SMS system is buggy at best - while I appreciate the updates on panels that have moved, I don’t appreciate that the disclaimer at the bottom of every message, mentioning that charges may apply, makes the message too long to fit in 160 characters and gets split into two, doubling the charges that may apply.
3. The trade show was interesting, though I will say that having guitar hero and rock band at your booth has become passe, given that I saw about three of each. That is, unless you’re Microsoft and have the world champion guitar hero playing against all takers - that was pretty cool.
4. Also with regard to the trade show, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to combine film and interactive. There were a lot of booths I scanned until I realized that there was nothing there that had anything I could relate to (I’m thinking in particular a company that does film archiving - we talked for a few minutes until I finally understood that he wasn’t talking data storage, they literally have a big underground vault full of films.

• 2:47: The Mark Zuckerberg keynote has been interesting. He’s acknowledged the problems of Beacon and the challenges of applications with a lot of candor. I’ll also say that he’s pretty humble and unassuming for someone my age who’s worth $15 million. This is his crowd, though - every designer and developer out there sees him as an example of the success that they aspire to. Also, the interviewer is lobbing him softballs - they seem to have done more than a few of these before together.  [posted by ipod, updated to add link and spellcheck]
• 10:06: One more try at wordpress from my iPod. I’m in the session on mobile enabled revenue generation - sparse attendance, probably a function of being the first session post dst and about six good panels this am. I’ll admit that I was shocked when one panelist mentioned that SMS use among mobile phones was < 40%. Thinking about it, this is probably a skewed number from the vast number of cell phones sitting in grandmothers’ glove compartments (from the sample of my family, I can say that this accounts for two phones, 0% of which have ever sent an SMS). I’d be interested to find out the percentage of active users. [posted by ipod]
• 9:04: I’m going to make a commitment to get some pics today. So I’ll be updating the thread with that later, assuming I brought my camera’s xfer cable. Lotta folks wandering around the conference with serious DSLRs, but I’m trying to carry a light load and avoid too many trips back to the hotel.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 9:36 am and is filed under Events, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.