Steve Borsch

Feedback. Friends. Fun. The Power of Gamification

May 16, 2012 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

Serendipity this morning brought me to an article, How to Give a Great Keynote by Gabe Zichermann. Even though I intended to see how he presents to an audience himself, as I began watching the video at the bottom of the article I was stunned and delighted to have my horizons raised about great ways to think about the possible gamification of the world.

Gabe was presenting at The Next Web 2012 conference held in April in Amsterdam. But what he talked about in this presentation was gaming, game theory and ways in which his audience could think about the accelerating shift in task/achievement/reward and how profound gaming is in making that happen.

I’ve written in the past about gaming here and follow people like this guy, a Northwestern University professor named Dr. Tae, who has publicly wondered Can Skateboarding Save Our Schools?, and I’m sold. Now I am wondering how long it will take before people understand how to create work, tasks, and achievement all wrapped up in to what Zichermann says is essentially the magic three: Feedback. Friends. Fun.

Watch the video and you’ll see what I mean:

Filed Under: Gaming

Sony vs Comcast’s 250GB “Cap”

May 4, 2012 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

When major global companies like Sony decide that Comcast’s 250GB ‘cap‘ on data downloading makes entering a streaming video business not worthwhile, then you know things are coming to a head. From Ars Technica, “Sony: Internet video service on hold due to Comcast data cap“:

An executive from Sony said Monday that concerns about Comcast’s discriminatory data cap are giving the firm second thoughts about launching an Internet video service that would compete with cable and satellite TV services. In March, Comcast announced that video streamed to the Xbox from Comcast’s own video service would be exempted from the cable giant’s 250 GB monthly bandwidth cap.

Oops…we've gone over the 250GB 'cap' for the last 3 months! (Click for larger view)

I am growing SO weary of the obvious control Comcast is leveraging in order to protect their own cable TV franchise. Here are posts I’ve written about this in the past, pointing out how Comcast is a monopoly and how the 250GB ‘cap’ is there to ensure Comcast can deliver their video services and keep out competition. Any other explanation I’ve heard from Comcast or others to the contrary is a load of crap.

As you can see from the Comcast Customer Central image to your right, my household has exceeded the Comcast 250GB cap three months in a row. Are we going to get shut down like this guy? Maybe (especially after this post). The kicker is that Comcast has always classified households like ours as “excessive use“.

I do spend a lot of money with Comcast every month: home TV; home internet; the quite fast business class 50/10 DOCSIS 3 service in my own firm. I also evangelize Comcast’s business class service to others and also run a Minnesota tech site called Minnov8 that would certainly serve as one helluva bully pulpit should I get cut off.

Fortunately I’m certain we’re atypical in our data use in our area. Comcast states on that excessive use page that, “We contact customers who have repeatedly exceeded the threshold in geographic areas where those excessive users are, or could, negatively impact the experience of other customers in their area.” It’s unlikely we’re causing issues for anyone within our network subnet so hopefully we’re safe.

How can we possibly consume so much data? We’ve got a lot of tech that consumes data with smartphones, tablets, laptops, and devices (e.g., AppleTVs, a TiVo box and a Sony Playstation) which stream Netflix. Since we’re avid users of on-demand streaming — and have always found Comcast’s on-demand streaming and access to it a joke — we use what our family considers best-of-breed services.

With Sony, Netflix and possibly Apple (rumors about them shipping a TV) lining up to battle with Comcast over equal access to the network, I’m really hoping Comcast gets forced to be network neutral. Otherwise we’ll all be relegated to their less-than-good services. Or, as the old joke from the 1990s went about the former monopoly Microsoft vs. Apple, “If it hadn’t been for the Macintosh user interface being invented, we’d all still be using a command line MS-DOS.“

Filed Under: Internet, Media Shift

Social Apps, By Default, Are Hijacking Facebook

May 3, 2012 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

After noticing that my friends in Facebook were posting EVERY song they listened to, EVERY video they watched and EVERY link they decided to share I was just about ready to delete my account due to all the “noise” of these lifestream sorts of postings.

Increasingly social apps like Socialcam, Spotify, Google Play and most others have set, as a default if you connect your Facebook or Twitter accounts, to go ahead and auto-post EVERYTHING the app does to your Facebook news feed! The result is a steady stream of stuff I don’t care to read or to see from an accelerating number of friends and family who are starting to use these social apps.

Socialcam's Facebook settings (click for larger view)

This morning my sister commented under a rant I did within Facebook (imploring people to go in to app settings and to please disable auto-posting to Facebook) and she pointed out she was seeing EVERYTHING posted from my Socialcam app.

Sigh.

So I went in to Socialcam’s settings on Facebook and discovered that these were set by default:

+ Add your Facebook friends’ videos to your feed
+ Publish my Socialcam actions (Follow, Like and Comment) to Facebook
+ Publish videos I watch to Facebook.

Seriously? I kicked myself for not having taken more time when installing Socialcam — which I’d done some time ago but then deleted in favor of using another app called Klip but reinstalled it when so many of my friends started using it — and didn’t spend any time deciding what I’d allow the app to do and not do.

My bad.

The bummer is that this sort of “auto connecting” to Facebook is “EVERYONE’s bad” and newbies (or the masses who, for the most part, are not tech-savvy or aware) will quickly make Facebook more of a cluttered and horrible user experience as these “social apps” are adopted by them in droves.

Though these default setups by social apps are undoubtedly making it easier for an app to go viral — it’s exactly what Instagram did and look at what happened to them — the result is that more and more people are becoming really agitated about this practice (like me) and will either have to go in to each app settings to find ways to turn the damn things off, or they’ll just delete the app…

…or slow their use of Facebook or delete their account altogether.

Filed Under: Social Media

Over 70 Million People is Definitely a Market Opportunity

April 12, 2012 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

The hopeful image of active, fit and healthy seniors is, at best, a myth.

My sisters and I are helping our 86 year old father “age in place” as best he can by staying in his home. With even cursory analysis, it’s pretty clear there won’t be anywhere near enough capital to build assistive living or nursing home facilities to accomodate the huge pending influx of aging baby boomers, over 70 million of whom started retiring in January of 2011 and will do so through 2029.

When you add to that the real possibility that these oldster’s life expectancy is expected to rise as well, and it certainly appears we have an impending crisis on our hands. As you’ll see below, I argue that the enormity of this population of aging boomers represents quite a market opportunity for technological, community, societal and financial support solutions to alleviate that crisis and make money to boot! [Read more...]

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness, Technology

Grandma Even Chuckles at Toddler Farts

April 1, 2012 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

Comedians around the world have formed a group called, “Seriously geeks? Your April Fools jokes are unbelievably lame!” Though the acronym “SGYAFJAUL” is a bit long and difficult to pronounce, the comedians intended to make their point in the most ludicrous way possible with the formation of this worldwide organization.

“Though sometimes elaborate and painstakingly crafted, 99% of the April Fools jokes on tech/geek sites and blogs are simply not funny. Even my grandma wouldn’t crack a smile, and she’ll even let out a chuckle when my toddler farts,” explained internationally renowned comedian and SGYAFJAUL spokesman, Dward Farquard.

Dward Farquard

From Google’s “Gmail Tap” spoof (one that clearly cost some dough to produce the associated video) to Techcrunch’s “Google’s Sergey Brin To Retire: “I’m Really Into Blues Guitar” (one of several unfunny posts at Techcrunch on this April Fools day) the geeks are making Farquard’s point.

“Year after year I hope for some post that would cause the corners of my mouth—anyone’s mouth—to turn upwards just a tiny bit with amusement,” said Farquard with some disgust, “But not ONE comedian I know has even cracked a smile with April Fools jokes online in years.”

Farquard continued, “My comedian bretheren and I, when we connected on a global Google Hangout last week for SGYAFJAUL, were all shuddering at the thought of yet another April Fools day and lame attempts at humor. Our only consolation? That we certainly will NEVER be out of a job and thank God every one of us in SGYAFJAUL is far funnier while sleeping than geeks are awake.”

Asked what he’d be doing on a Sunday April Fools day instead of catching up with all the latest tech news, Farquard looked at this reporter with a “Doh!” look and said, “Grandma’s coming over and we’ll listen to my toddler farting.“

Filed Under: Current Affairs

New iPad & Verizon LTE

March 26, 2012 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

On the day the new iPad was released, mine arrived at the office via Fedex and I set it up immediately. Eagerly anticipating the new retina display, camera and a faster processor as a big upgrade from my 64GB original iPad, I was surprised to find myself equally as delighted with the Verizon LTE connection as I was with the iPad itself!

As someone who is very active in tech coverage within Minnesota at a site I run with three others called Minnov8, I am constantly challenged to get logged on to event or public Wifi in order to liveblog or tweet during events. Too often all the Wifi slots are used up by other attendees, the “press” Wifi is overloaded, and filing stories or delivering social media content is incredibly frustrating.

Whether it is being at some event at the Minneapolis Convention Center for the Minnesota High Tech Association Spring Conference, the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association annual event at the Minneapolis Hilton, or even interviewing some startup or technology leader during any given week at their offices, having a connection I can count on is an imperative.

Fortunately the Verizon LTE connection has been both reliable and fast since I set up my new account on the iPad on March 16th. So fast that the following Monday I challenged my buddy and his new iPad with AT&T “4G” to a test while we were in a restaurant for breakfast. In the exact same location he achieved just over 1mbps download with his AT&T’s so-called 4G HSDPA and my download speed was 10 TIMES THAT at just over 10mbps. Wow. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Web/Tech

YOU Might Already be a Victim of a Cramming Scam

March 25, 2012 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

The New York Times had this article in the “Money” section yesterday about mobile text messaging scams. It’s likely you won’t pay attention to this scam until YOU are a victim, but you might already be one so read on.

Sick with the flu one weekend this past January I’d gone to bed early on a Sunday night only to be awakened by two back-to-back text messages arriving on my iPhone at about 2am. Having been in the internet/web industry since its beginning in the mid-1990s, I instantly recognized the potential for charges from this scammer so I sat up, grabbed my iPad, and started poking around to see if either the message identifier (the “318-50″ in the screengrab below) or the toll-free 866-861-1606 number was an active scam.

I was stunned to learn it is a scam and even ignoring the message meant my account would be charged $9.99 PER MONTH!

Based upon the sheer volume of complaints I found during my searching online shows that this scam is rampant, apparently is seeing little-to-no preemptive action on the part of the wireless carriers, and many, many mobile users are being charged monthly fees. This fraud is commonly known as cramming.

I am writing this post for the express purpose of bringing this issue to your attention. If *I* can get scammed (and I am VERY cautious, careful and savvy about online scams and still don’t know how my number was discovered) I can only guess how pervasive this is and that it appears the carriers are likely complicit in perpetuating these cramming scams since they apparently receive 30% of all subscription fees collected..

What is this scam and what can you do? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Gadgets & Hacks, Technology

My Valentine

February 14, 2012 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

I am officially the “luckiest guy in the world” that this woman agreed to marry me and be my partner in life. She bore our children, has put up with my idiosyncracies, and been incredibly supportive of me no matter what. Her seeking nature has opened up my mind in ways I never expected.

This is my favorite photo from our wedding, standing outside Westminster Presbyterian in downtown Minneapolis moments after we got hitched (is the pressure-release evident? Was to us!).

My pal, Pete Gisselbeck, not only drove our “limo” (his Dad’s Lincoln Town Car) but he was an accomplished amateur photographer and grabbed lots of keeper shots that night…like this one. He also took a bunch of pictures, made a little photo album, and placed hilarious (but sometimes derogatory and nasty) captions underneath them. Therefore I couldn’t show them to my tiny, petite and darlingly straight-laced Grandma afterwards!

Happy Valentine’s Day Michelle Lamb.

Filed Under: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

The Bedtime Nooz

January 30, 2012 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

For anyone outside of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis & St. Paul Minnesota, the name of the anchor of WCCO-TV, Dave Moore, and the “Bedtime Nooz” has no meaning. Add to that people born after 1960 or so either missed it or were too young to stay up late on a Saturday night. My Mom would go to bed about 10pm, even on the weekends. My Dad would stay up so my older sister and I would stay awake and watch the Bedtime Nooz with Dave Moore. Our Dad would make a pizza about midnight which always seemed like some sort of shared secret treat.

WCCO-TV was the leader in the Twin Cities market and Dave Moore was a very serious, accomplished and trusted news anchor. This was in the day when the evening TV news — both national and local — were must-watch TV and just about everyone did. As such, someone like Dave Moore had quite a stature in the Twin Cities so having him perform such a loose, goofy and humorous rendition of TV news was amazing and a magnet for all ages.

Here is a special which WCCO’s heir to the Dave Moore throne, the now retired Don Shelby, hosts and is a fun look at the Bedtime Nooz. Worth a watch if you’re old enough and even if you never saw it: