Cerdafied...startups, people & the variety Hour

What's in your junk drawer?

I strive for a very clean office and work area.

This sometimes comes at the expense of what's commonly known as the junk drawer. Everybody has one, or something like it. Sometimes it's a garage, a filing cabinet, a glove compartment or beneath a bed. It's that one place you can stash misc. stuff, and get it when you need it.

It occurred to me today, while looking for stamps, that I should really clean it out. I found some great business cards, lots of coins, some gum, a lighter (?), USB cable, iPOD cable, glasses, monitor cleaner, scissors, markers, tape measure, leatherman, Business 2.0, the Jangl USA Today story, Jamba Juice gift card, some receipts, nails, and some stamps.

What's in your junk drawer?

I'll send the person with the most interesting contents a Jangl t-shirt. Big money baby.

Got a cold? Who was it?

You ever get a cold, and just go crazy pissed off and trying to figure out and pinpoint who gave it to you?

Smart Match: Content for your blog page

A friend of mine named Brent Harrison is doing some work for a company called Keep Media. He reached out and offered me a beta of their new service called Smart Match.

Here's how it works: If you have a website or a blog, they allow you to add "relevant and engaging content from leading publications". Visitors to your site get access to full length articles on topics you choose. It's free to join and easy to set-up.

I just gave it a whirl, as you can see to the right of this page.

Technorati Tags: Keep Media, Brent Harrison

I finally have a reason to watch the Grammy's this year.

It's been eons since I've given a crap about the Grammy's. I guess I've been on the alternative end of the music world for a while. I listen to some pretty hip stuff, it's just that none of it is winning Grammy's necessarily. Well this all changes on Feb 11, when The Police reunite to open the show. They must be one of my faves of all time. They are rumored to tour...if they do, I will probably see as many shows as possible. I've already warned my wife.

I remember when The Police were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a few years ago. Two of Sting's close friends and yoga teachers were staying with us. David Life and Sharon Gannon were here in town to teach some classes at my yoga school. I remember going out to the pool house to let them know dinner was ready. They were on the phone with Sting. He was in Cleveland for the induction, and so invited David and Sharon out to join him. They declined since they were in the middle of a tour (the big yoga teachers tour yoga schools doing workshops, kind of like musicians go town to town). Apparently Sting wasn't comfortable with the situation of the reuniting, so he wanted to some friends around to distract him.

It was a rockin' set in any case, as I'm sure Feb 11 will be.

Technorati Tags: Grammy's, The Police

Community Next

I'm happy to know that Jangl is participating in the Community Next event coming up Feb 10th at Stanford. Noah Kagan was kind enough to find room for us. I hear a lot of great people are both attending and participating. We'll have a 5 minute slot to talk-which I always love to have an opportunity for, but I think I'm mostly looking forward to the dinner the night before;)

If anyone reading wants to meet up there just Jangl Me @ mc.

Tim's Up

Fellow Janglr Tim Johnson has gotten his blog up. This guy's a real human, with a real soul and he gets real good stuff done as the Jangl corp comm guy, but also as a friend and consulare. He's a great and committed dad too. I've been working with Tim for years off and on, and finally had an opportunity to hire him. He's a real strong writer and has some mindful content to share. He's good with the video camera too.

Technorati Tags: Tim Johnson, Jangl

Happy with the way things are?

So...what are the implications of giving people more control over who calls them and when?

Once upon a time, we all just had physical addresses and phone numbers. In fact, if you looked up that phone number you'd find a physical address. It certainly wasn't obvious to most of us in those days, that we need electronic and mobile methods of reaching another. We were all happy with the way things were. That's because we didn't know any better. In fact, when some of our friends or family began to go electronic, we resisted. I think to some extent, some of us thought it might all go by the way of the cabbage patch doll. It seemed like a pain in the ass. It seemed like more work. It was slow. And it was kind of pricey. Again, we didn't necessarily know any better.

Here we are in 2007, we're all hooked. My parents, some of my neighbors and even some of you are thinking:

"I'm happy with the way things are."

"Why would we want more control over who calls and when?"

"OK, I get it for dating, but..."

The reality is, when given an ounce of control over our communications lives, we've eventually taken it by storm. Think call waiting, caller ID, answering machines, voice mail, buddy lists, and even the "Don't Answer" button on our phones. The first thing I do when someone calls me, is look at the caller ID. If I don't recognize it, I don't answer it.

If I used Jangl for all my calling (not just dating), I could answer it, see who it is, and decide what to do with it. (In a future Jangl world, my phone might even do all that for me). I could log in to see all my call activity, create white lists, black lists, green lists, etc. I could decide when I want to receive calls. Do I really want to be one of those jerk weed's that wants to be on the phone during family time, shopping, eating, etc?

No. I'm not that important - thank you.

Jangl will eventually be one of those things we all just do. It will give daters privacy and control yes. But it will also give the rest of us a deeper level of utility than we've ever experienced. Imagine Jangl as this accessory for your phone, that you can't live without. That's my purpose and my team's purpose at Jangl.

The implications of giving people more control over who calls them and when:

-Phone numbers will behave more like e-mail addresses.

-We just might encounter fewer people that today are too important for the rest of us.

-Oh, and hopefully people will find a new level of being happy with the way things are.

The Big Picture Part Deux

So yes...dating is an obvious place to use Jangl. What's the big picture?

Well, you might of heard of a technology called SIP. Many believe SIP is the next great protocol. Great, meaning something that impacts us all. Not just geeks. The first great protocol was TCP/IP. The second was HTTP. Big impact so far right? With HTTP we have the URL. With SIP we have the URI (unique resource indicator). This is your electronic address basically. Since most of us don't walk around carrying SIP addresses, or URIs, well....we aren't quite there yet. We DO carry around e-mail address, IM handles, phone numbers, and now Jangl names or IDs. Some of these things may be SIP enabled, without us even knowing or caring just yet.

These various silos of addressing will someday, if planned correctly, collapse into your SIP URI. Therefore, we might consider having a single address that is used for e-mail, IM, video, talking, texting, etc. We'll be able to control our inbound, outbound and presence status, i.e. who can contact us, how and when. We'll be able to do it all in multiple modes, i.e. web, phone, etc.

Ok, if you're tracking with me here...what Jangl is doing is reeling in bits and pieces of this future, into today's world, under today's circumstances, with today's behaviors. What Jangl has done in its opening act is begin to give people the ability to control who can call them and when. There's a web mode today which connects to the phone mode, but in coming weeks the phone mode piece will get even more utility. We certainly have no shortage of roadmap beyond today's offering. We will continue to build around it, in concentric circles.

There are lots of companies that share portions of this vision, but most are focused on cheap talking (Skpye, Jajah, Rebtel). Another group are focused on lifestyle (TalkPlus, GrandCentral, Jangl). It will be interesting to see how these mash up over time.

Next post: What are the implications of giving people more control of who calls them and when?

The Big Picture Part 1

Today was a milestone for us at Jangl. We booked our first revenues. This is a result of Match.com's "MatchTalk" (which we power) converting from a free offering to a paid-for offering. I'm very grateful for this and have a fantastic team that has been rowing with me on this for a long time.

Despite much of the excitement around this milestone, I found myself focused on MatchTalk 2.0, which is going to do even more. I can't talk about it now, but I will when I can. I'll just say I'm very excited about it.

We have other online personals sites that we'll be powering with similar services in the coming months. There are even some big social networking sites that are planning to integrate our services. That's all groovy, and I feel like our opening act is being received well in those channels.

Our other service offering is in beta, which we provide direct from our website. We're releasing a new widget soon, as well as getting rid of some of the sign up friction. Certain portions of our SMS offering are enabled, but more soon to come along with other goodies.

Speaking of goodies, I was eating a slice of Zachary's Pizza (spinach and mushroom), and another Janglr asked me about the big picture.

"Michael, everyone seems to recognize that we serve a great purpose for daters. Where do we go from here? What's the big picture look like?"

Someone told me my posts were getting long, so I'd better stop here and write about it next post;)

Technorati Tags: Jangl, Jangl Widget, VoIP

Roam if you want to...roam around the world.

My finance guy Pradeep is still pissed at my Vodafone bill from when I went to Etre a few months ago. It was a wake up call to me, how very expensive it still is to call internationally.

Looks like Pat Phelan has lift off with Roam4free, a solution that I'll be looking into for when I go to Europe next month! He's even got a contest for people that are willing to review his site.

Congrats Pat, I'll be placing my order soon!

Technorati Tags: roam4free, Pat Phelan