Venture ← A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way

When you are 10x behind in mobile apps, your tools probably ought to be 10x better

Apr

2012

As part of “my Windows Phone trial”:http://theludwigs.com/2012/04/switching-to-the-nokia-lumia-900-for-a-while/, I am going to dig into the developer tools. I’ve written a little throwaway iOS app, and i’ve written one with “Parse”:https://parse.com/ (super easy!). So I’d like to understand the experience of writing a Windows Phone app. “App Hub”:http://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/getting_started seems to be the starting place. Like a lot ...

Check out Motif Investing and help me win an iPad

Apr

2012

I love Motif and if “you check it out I could win an iPad”:http://motif.extole.com/a/clk/2JwBDQ. OK I will probably have to give the iPad back as we are investors but still I do love Motif, it is worth looking at if you do any investing whatsoever — a much more natural way to invest.

Skeptical about voice control

Apr

2012

There was a “Sunday NYT article on voice recognition”:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/technology/nuance-communications-wants-a-world-of-voice-recognition.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=dragon%20tv&st=cse and how we are all going to control our TVs and other devices with voice. Building on the Siri wave, there is a popular belief that voice will become a significant or even dominant way we interact with devices and services. I’m a big believer in ...

Great visit to Tier3 this week

Mar

2012

I had the chance to meet “Jared Wray”:http://www.jaredwray.com/ at “Tier3″:http://tier3.com/ (one of our portfolio investments) on Friday and I was incredibly energized by the meeting. Jared is a star and Tier3 has a huge future. I’m not generally an enterprise IT guy. I’ve worn an IT hat at times, but always for small businesses or ...

Made my first contribution to a Kickstarter project, the Zooka

Feb

2012

Seems like a nice speaker — “the Zooka”:http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1733547063/zooka-bluetooth-speaker-for-your-ipad?ref=email — (though they probably have a trademark issue to resolve) and I’m glad to support a Northwest project. It is also exciting to see the diversity of projects up on Kickstarter, and nice to see that people are willing to pay for value and creativity. After 15 ...

MSFT and the decline of the PC hardware ecosystem

Feb

2012

In the late 80s, IBM attempted to reassert control over the PC hardware platform with the introduction of the PS/2 and its proprietary “MicroChannel”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Channel_architecture architecture. The cloners fought back, customers voted with their feet, the PS/2 initiative failed, and the era of open PC hardware continued and flourished. This was hugely beneficial for MSFT as ...

Ignition news roundup — Symplified, Whiptail

Jan

2012

First off, we are surving the 2012 Snowpocalypse. Office traffic is light but folks are here. On the business front, it was “announced that we led a round”:http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/18/ignition-leads-20m-round-in-cloud-security-and-identity-company-symplified/ in “Symplified”:http://www.symplified.com/. Great company building some pretty essential tools to manage employee identity and engagement across the web, can’t imagine how companies manage their voice and presence ...

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t note Bluestacks CES award and Splunk filing today

Jan

2012

Also of note today is “Bluestacks’”:http://bluestacks.com/ winning the CES best software award, and “Splunk’s filing”:http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-12/splunk-files-for-125-million-software-initial-public-offering.html. Congrats to both teams on their progress.

Korrio’s work on sports and head injuries is a good step

Jan

2012

One of the companies in our portfolio, “Korrio”:https://korrio.com/, is bringing out tools to allow “parents to monitor the brain health of their child athletes”:http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2012/01/startup-korrios-focus-on-head-injuries.html. This is a great step, I wish this had been around when we had young student athletes in the family. You don’t have to dig around very much to see the ...

No time to blog, so here’s a link roundup

Jan

2012

* “Cutting the Cord on Cable”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550304577138841278154700.html. Wish I could get there but live HD sports still keeps me stuck to cable/satellite provider. I’ve tried the streaming options and they are weak — poor selection of games/sources (I need ESPN/ABC channels + BTN + Fox Sports channels + upcoming Pac12 network), lots of stutter, not HD ...

Feels like the Seattle economy is on the cusp of an expansion

Nov

2011

I had a great week last week that left me feeling incredibly optimistic about the Seattle economy. First, Techstars Seattle Demo Day. What a super event, “lots of coverage of it”:http://www.geekwire.com/2011/favorite-pitches-techstars-demo-day-red. Great young companies, enthusiasm, great pitches, good progress in fundraising. Big audience with great energy. Super job by @andysack and everyone involved, a model ...

The web interface for my house is woefully inadequate.

Oct

2011

So “Nest”:www.nest.com is the newest shiny toy for the tech industry and media to get all excited about, a ton of coverage this week — for a thermostat. Obviously some of the ardor will fade — how long can anyone stay excited about a thermostat? But I do think there is a theme here which ...

I’ve never used a QR code in my life and can’t imagine why I would.

Oct

2011

“Daring Fireball”:http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/10/21/qr-codes points to a “pretty thorough takedown of QR codes”:http://www.imediaconnection.com/article_full.aspx?id=30267 as used in print ads. The original design goal — Toyota invented these to track parts — makes sense, but jamming these into consumer media is just strange. * Users can already type in your URL or a sentence, or speak into Siri, or ...

Photostream is cute, but what I really want is Aperture/iPhoto in the cloud

Oct

2011

So “I don’t really get iCloud storage yet”:http://theludwigs.com/2011/10/im-struggling-to-understand-why-i-would-ever-use-icloud-storage/, and “Photostream doesn’t really accomodate all my DSLR pictures well”:http://theludwigs.com/2011/10/icloud-photostream-and-dslrs-dont-seem-to-be-a-great-fit/. So rather than just whine about what I don’t have, what do I really want? First — I have a 203G (gigabyte) Aperture library today, that is where my primary photo storage is. Digging into this a ...

I’m struggling to understand why I would ever use iCloud storage.

Oct

2011

I’m struggling to understand why I would ever use iCloud storage. After a couple days of tinkering, I have two sets of data in iCloud — device backups, and Pages/Keynote docs. * I really don’t get the value of device backups. My apps are all recoverable from the iTunes store. I use primarily apps like ...

Thinking about gameday cell network performance

Oct

2011

When I sit in Ohio Stadium for a football game, my fancy smartphone is a useless piece of metal and plastic. Some developers have tried to come up with apps to improve the gameday experience, but these apps miss the point. With 105,000 fans in the stadium, another huge set of ticketless fans milling around ...

Lava is an awesome product name, I want one now.

Oct

2011

Seriously, who would not want a “Lava heater”:http://www.coolhunting.com/design/lava-heaters.php? I am ready to order one today. Contrast with the “Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch”, Samsung’s latest phone. How stupid a name is this? Do they seriously think this will have lasting impact in the market? What will they call an upgraded version some day? ...

Ifttt.com and platform reminiscing

Sep

2011

I’m playing around with ifttt.com and it is intriguing. I remember an earlier effort, yubnub, that I always found compelling. A general script interface to all my Internet data and services so that I can do interesting things across sites seems good. I remember the evolution of Lotus Notes. A super general collab platform that ...

Apple is the new Honda

Sep

2011

Nice writeup of “Apple’s manufacturing/supply advantage vs the PC OEMs”:http://daringfireball.net/2011/09/new_apple_advantage. Reminds me very much of the way Honda and Toyota crushed the American car manufacturers in the 70′s and 80′s — GM in particular had overly complex product lines, cars with a gajillion options. Honda came in with a simple model, no options, and great ...

New Sony Reader, same old busted strategy

Aug

2011

“Sony has a new e-reader out”:http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/31/sonys-latest-kindle-killer-is-worlds-lightest-ereader/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 and it seems to be very nice hardware, I’d love to buy one. Let me check out their reader store and see what their book inventory looks like these days: Oh. And this kind of sums up Sony’s strategy. Nicely designed premium hardware, but off in their own software ...