Product Review | Kinkast Mobile Video Sharing
June 7, 2011 by admin · Leave a Comment
Disclosure: I’m an advisor to KinKast.
It seems of late that mobile video is going (or has gone) mainstream. Distribution of smart phones, higher quality video cameras embedded in those phones and the social phenomena of sharing appears to have hit an inflection point or has reached critical mass. In the wake of this, a plethora of video sharing apps have hit the scene: Viddy, Vlix, Socialcam and KinKast.
Most of the recent video apps seem to be imitating the success that Instagram has had with still pictures – allowing people to share their videos broadly with others (friends and strangers alike).
KinKast | 5 Questions for Raul Mujica
January 6, 2011 by admin · 2 Comments
Raul Mujica is CEO of KinKast, a recently launched startup looking to “take social engagement to the next level by making it effortless, impulsive and visceral”. Raul is a former colleague of mine at Netscape and AOL. He has been building products and brands at leading companies and start-ups for more than 17 years, including Untangle, Elance, AOL, Netscape, and Hewlett Packard. Raul holds a B.S. in Finance from Georgetown University and an MBA from New York University (but I don’t hold either of those things against him). He lives in Los Altos, CA and is an avid skier, digital photographer and coach of his sons’ sports teams.
1. What is KinKast?
KinKast is the fastest and easiest way to privately share video. On the iPhone you can record a moment and share it with two taps. There’s no waiting or size limits. (Or, upload video from any camera to the website.) Your friends will receive an email with links to a private website and they won’t have to create an account. Our goal is to make video sharing easy, fast and safer.
What I Learned at 140 | The Twitter Conference (part 3 of 8)
May 27, 2009 by admin · 2 Comments
Don’t Take the Drive to Manic Feature Explosion.
140 | The Twitter Conference (#140tc) held a session on day one titled “What Makes a Good Twitter App.” It could have been titled “Don’t Take the Drive to Manic Feature Explosion.”
Dom Sogalla (@dom) helped create Twitter and runs @iPhoneDevCamp. This is where software developers come together and build an iPhone application over a weekend. The lessons he learned there apply to developing Twitter applications:- Simplicity – do one thing very well
- Clear focus on specific type of user
- Craftsmanship
- Open source
Next panelist was Loren Brichter (@bits), founder and developer of much-beloved iPhone app Tweetie (which reminds me to finally try it out). He was asked why did Tweetie become so successful. His initial response: ”I don’t really know.” After some probing, he offered up the following:
- Luck
- Quality
- Marketing
- Listening to user feedback
This last point let to a rich discussion (debate?) as to the role that user feedback should play in defining a product roadmap and feature requests. This is something I’ve witnessed at many a product company – often times, companies and product teams can’t strike the right balance. This panel advised that user feature requests must be balaced with need for overall simplicity / usability. Here here!
- The Power of Presence. Insights from Alex Payne, Twitter API Lead.
- I am a Twitter God(ess) and So Can You! The View From Twitter Stardom with @ijustine, @missrogue and @davepeck.
- Don’t Take the Drive to Manic Feature Explosion. What Makes a Good Twitter App.
- Twitter business start-ups are combination socialist and radical markets. Twitter Strategies: Real-World Success Stories.
- WTF, No Twitter TV!? Direction from Anamitra Banerji, Twitter Product Management.
- Even with a simple hash tag, there is a learning curve. Soren MacBeth, Co-Founder / CEO of StockTwits.
- You can’t own social media. You can only interact with it. Corporate Use of Twitter by @JetBlue.
- Twitter will transform conferences & events. Surprising takeaways from an in-person Twitter conference experience.
Election Prediction: Obama Wins (364)
November 4, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment
Obama/Biden 364
McCain/Palin 174
As of 8:30am PDT, my prediction is that Barack Obama will win the election this evening to make U.S. Presidential history.
I have been following the ups and downs of both candidates in the polls for months via Slate’s 
Poll Tracker ‘08 application on my iPhone. Rather than looking at polls that calculate popularity of the candidates on a national level, Poll Tracker takes the latest poll in each state and makes a estimate of electoral college votes. This, in the end, is how the President is elected after all.
Each state and their electoral college votes are placed into one of three categories: safe, lean and tossup.
Here’s how the numbers breakdown and how I ended up with the prediction that Obama will win:
- Obama has 273 electoral college votes that are considered “safe” and another 18 (Virginia and Nevada) that are “leaning” his way. This totals 291. Only 270 are needed to win.
- Conversely McCain has 129 “safe” votes and “12″ lean (Arizona and South Dakota); giving him 142 votes.
- 105 electoral college votes are considered “tossups”
Of the 105 “tossup” states, using the latest poll numbers in each state, I predict the following:
- Obama wins: Ohio, North Carolina, Florida and Missouri (adding an additional 73 electoral college votes to Obama)
- McCain wins: North Dakota, Montana, Georgia and Indiana (adding an additional 32 electoral college votes to McCain)
So if the “tossup” states fall as predicted above the final election tally will be:
- Obama/Biden 364
- McCain/Palin 174
Obama will win handily. Let the voting begin and (all) votes be counted!
Look Important With FakeCalls
November 3, 2008 by @smokejumper · Leave a Comment
I first traveled to Brazil some 13 years ago on a business study trip. At that time the Brazilian cellular industry was taking off. We observed a couple of the interesting dynamics that contrasted the Brazilian experience with that of North America. One was that people were bypassing landlines altogether, rather investing in a cellular phone as their only and exclusive phone number. Two, for people who couldn’t afford an actual cellular phone, they could purchase a “virtual” number which provided them a phone number and voice mail. The voice mail could be accessed via a pay phone and presumably any message could be returned via this manner as well. In effect, this represented a low-cost, virtual answering service. (I don’t expect this type of service exists much anymore).
