Gen-Y's tech twist on engagement, weddings and parenthood

While Gen-Y is still getting married at much lower rates than previous generations, some millennials are finally beginning to grow up, entering the world of marital engagements, wedding planning, and parenthood. True to form, their choices reflect advancements that set them apart from Gen-Xers, who were the first to utilize technology to chronicle their love stories on websites like theknot.com, build wedding registries online, gift personalized CDs with digitally remastered music as wedding favors, show spliced video montages of the bride and groom's childhood at wedding receptions, and research honeymoons on websites like tripadvisor.com. As a card carrying member of generation X, I can proudly say we thought we were so cutting edge! Our kids were the first to be born with smartphones and tablets in their hands, and we posted their baby pictures on our social media pages and texted them to their grandparents. But time nor technology stands still, and Gen-Y has begun to put their own tech twist on engagements, weddings and baby plans. As a mental health treatment provider and consultant who works almost entirely with millennials in the San Francisco Bay Area, I have taken note of the following trends: Their romantic relationships have an online life of their own. As the saying goes, no one really knows what happens behind closed doors, but in the personal lives of millennials, we can certainly take a look at their online activity to see what they'd like us to believe about their relationship status and history. The internet has become their forum of choice for chronicling romantic highs and lows, functioning as a means to gain public support, air grievances, compete for attention, and display markers of success (not to mention deleting away failures.) From public playlists on Spotify, hashtags on Twitter and Instagram, Pinterest boards and Facebook's 'Relationship Status' updates, Gen-Y leaves little to the imagination when it comes to sharing their stories of romance. They crowd source their decisions when it comes to navigating relationships. Millennials are used to solving problems fast, arriving at optimal solutions with the least resistance possible. Millennials have been groomed to work in competency-based teams, and this concept is frequently used for managing their personal lives too. They prefer to avoid conflict, and are more comfortable than previous generations relying on others to help them make decisions. Jeff Snipes, CEO of Ninth House, a provider of online education, including optimizing team effectiveness, says a hierarchical, leader-oriented team was more appropriate for earlier generations: “Traditionally if you worked up the ranks for twenty years and all the employees were local then you could know all the functions of the workplace. Then you could lead by barking orders. But today everything moves too fast and the breadth of competency necessary to do something is too vast.” When faced with life-changing decisions about relationship commitment or endings, Gen-Y seeks the opinions of their team of friends, family and experts to help them navigate and solve problems. When problems are deemed too private to share, websites like popular sites like Whisper and Secret are put to use by millennials as a way to air their private thoughts, share their hidden behaviors and ask for advice completely anonymously, so there is no threat to their carefully constructed online image. Their engagement stories, weddings and honeymoons reflect their brilliance and investment in personal branding. While previous generations aimed to establish their worth and reputation through self-improvement, author Dan Schawbel of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success points out that Gen-Y has discovered that in the dawn of the internet, admiration and success comes from self-packaging through a carefully concocted personal brand. From the days of Myspace to Tumblr, millennials have grown up managing their self image like celebrity publicists. Gen-Y has turned self-portraits into a way of life- 'selfies' have become one of the internet's top forms of self-expression. Their overall online presence has been a way to uniquely distinguish themselves from everyone else, and they are highly invested in making their relationship milestones ideally memorable as part of their personal brand. Whether they capture and share these milestones via Snapchat's Our Story, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or personal blogs, millennials are sure to control how the world sees their love stories unfold through brand management. One San Francisco Bay area millennial shared with me she got engaged via FaceTime, since her long-distance boyfriend was living in abroad and couldn't wait to pop the question. To his credit, her (now fiance) also created an iMovie that he shared with her, depicting him staged in funny scenarios accompanied by a personalized musical score that specially captured their romantic history. They're comfortable resisting tradition, understanding that 'following the rules' doesn't necessarily bring 'happily ever after.' Author Paul Hudson of Elite Daily, The Voice of Generation Y observes that millennials are far less likely than past generations to buy into the notion that marriage is the gateway to a future of stability and happiness. Harry Benson, research director at the Marriage Foundation, describes the strong link between parental divorce and a reluctance to get married. “If your parents split up then most people are more likely to be quite skeptical about the value of marriage,” he explains. “So as there’s rising divorce rates, you can imagine how when the next generation appears, people will be more dubious about marriage.” Bobby Duffy, leading market researcher on generational analysis, says there are also far more financial pressures on millennials than previous generations. They have more educational debt in a less stable economic climate, and face an incredibly buoyant housing market. According to CNNMoney, twenty-somethings are transitioning into adult life at a more gradual pace, opting to cohabitate and co-parent without traditional marriage at a much higher rate than previous generations. They anticipate their babies' future in a world where technological identity matters. One website says it all: awesomebabyname.com, a new online tool that allows parents to choose a name for their child based on website domain availability. Yes people, this is happening. I heard it first a few months ago when a pregnant patient of mine found out she was having a girl, the first thing she and her cohabiting boyfriend/expecting father-to-be did was buy website domains and establish email accounts in her name. Of course, now there's an app for that! "It's important to give your children a fighting chance of having good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in the 21st century," says Finnbar Taylor, who created this website together with Karen X. Cheng. "We use search engines all day long to answer our questions and find things, including people. Imagine being called John Smith and trying to get a ranking on Google search. It's important to give your child a unique name so that people, like potential employers, will be able to find them easily in the future." Granted, millennials are still in their 20's, a time when it's still developmentally common to be preoccupied with self-image, and an idealized future that looks different than previous generations. The question is, as Gen-Y ages, which of these trends, if any, will change? Dr. Christina Villarreal is a clinical psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, CA. She produces web articles, televised and print/web interviews on current issues in mental health and tech culture. She offers consultation and strategy to start up founders and employees.

Irina Slutsky and Tracy Swedlow: vlogging pioneers

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YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Sclipo and Viddler

I had the pleasure of hanging out with two of my favorite "vloggers" Irina Slutsky and Tracy Swedlow, of Geek Entertainment Television and Interactive TV Today. The idea was really just to meet at a cool cafe called "Mission Pie" on 25th and Mission in San Francisco and share ideas as friends - we all know each other already; this wasn't our first time talking but it was my first time getting together with both of them at once. We talked about events, vloggers, t-shrts, boobs, and the Karate Kid.

I've long admired what both Irina and Tracy have done. I met Irina in 2006 at an event in San Francisco she helped produce called "Vloggercon" which was my first introduction to the community of video-bloggers.



But what is "video-blogging"?

Video blogging is the act and art of talking into a camcorder or video recording device to tell a story or share information, then taking that video and editing first and / or directly uploading it into a service like YouTube. Some take the resulting video on the service and embed it into a blog, but that doesn't mean one has to do that for the video-blog to be just that. It's just using video recording systems to talk out and show your ideas and observations rather than writing them down. It's that simple.

Video blogging really grew with the emergence of YouTube and Blip.tv before it. For a time, Blip.tv was the service of choice because its quality was far better than YouTube's and that perception remained active until 2008, when a newly-owned-by-Google YouTube started to upgrade its systems. Now, YouTube is the dominant video distribution system. With that, Irina has almost religiously stuck to Blip.tv (though that's about to change).

Irina's one of the pioneer vloggers - remember, YouTube was established in 2005 and Blip.tv in 2006 so vlogging is still new - along with Amanda Congdon and Andrew Baron who teamed up to created Rocketboom and reached stardom in 2006 only to have a breakup so nasty it became an Internet event, causing Rocketboom to zoom from 125,000 views per day to over a million a day. That fight for control between Amanda and Andrew forced companies like ABC to pay attention to vloggers. Meanwhile, in the same year, Irina was "acquired" by a new firm called PodTech, which made video content and drew corporate sponsors to pay to have their image associated with it. PodTech was the first company established to a degree around the content of vloggers.

Unfortunately, PodTech and Irina came to a parting of the ways I will not go into here, but Irina carried on with her work at Geek Entertainment Television. Meanwhile, Swedlow was doing more than just vlogging, she was paying attention to "Interactive Television", which is where the viewer "interacts" with what they're seeing. The best example being voting on television. Anytime you text a message to a number after watching, say, American Idol, you're "interacting" with the television.

Tracy started Interactive TV Today with her husband Richard Washborne in 1998, and rapidly gained a reputation for producing a cool, cutting edge event called "The TV of Tommorrow Show" held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and where she brings together products and personalities for a lively discussion on how televisions future is being shaped today. (You can also hear her show on Blog Talk Radio)

More gatherings soon

Irina, Tracy, and I got together to talk and plan, but I can't say what we're going to do as of this writing. It's not that we don't know; we do - I just can't share it yet. We're still trying to figure out how to include "constantly hugged goats!" (See the video.)

Stay tuned!

YouTube As-One Meetup in San Francisco

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On YouTube.com

A few months ago, a few vloggers (that's video-bloggers), most located in the SF Bay Area, and a few from other parts of the country came to meet in North Beach for the San Francisco YouTube As-One Meetup.

Now you're probably thinking "What's the heck is that." Well, the idea was started in 2007 by Cory Williams, AKA "Mr. Safety" who's current claim to fame is something called "The Mean Kitty Song" and who's knack for making viral videos has earned him celebrity status in the vloggerverse, if there is such a thing.

Ok. There is. The vloggerverse.

Anyway, the idea is for YouYube vloggers, or YouTubers, to get together at one place and get to know each other in a real-time physical environment. Mr. Safety organized the first one of these at Pier 39 in San Francisco and included then then major star of YouTube, Renetto, who flew out from Ohio to be a part of the event.



That gathering, helped along by YouTube's marketing staff, attracted about 200 people, 60 of them YouTubers, and was a ton of fun. There have been "As-One" meetups in New York, London, Australia and other cities I'm not aware of. (But frankly it hasn't really caught on as I thought it would for reasons I'll get into later in this post. ) The San Francisco As-One held in March was a new stab at re-establishing the trend of events like this. The organizers even made a cool video:



Personally, I really loved meeting all the vloggers and the wanna-be vloggers, but something's missing from the concept.

I think that something is a thing to do other than just standing around. The first As-One was really cool because the YouTubers that arrived really just re-started online conversations offine before the cameras, thus putting them online again. For example, Renetto's great at talking about race without bringing his emotions into it. He's a talker and an idea exchanger; that shines through in his videos. But a lot of that conversational activity that used to gain viewers has been replaced by fake sex tape videos, music videos, the Associated Press, and Oprah.

For Renetto, YouTube adding Oprah was the last straw. He helped start a new vlogger community of which I'm a part called Vloggerheads. There, the kind of conversations Renetto enjoyed on YouTube before it got big have been replicated on Vloggerheads. So now, the kind of community energy once there has gone to a degree and that's reflected in the As-One meetups.

What's the answer?

Well, having something to do is one. That could mean having the events at restaurants or bars which helps market those places. The As-One concept's also perfect for events, too (especially street fairs). In other words, when we YouTuber's come to As-One's the producers should have a plan for us. All that camcorder firepower's a waste just pointing them at each other.

So, if you're getting the view that I have a plan of my own, I do.

Something completely different.

Stay tuned.

Owen Thomas Lands At KNTV Digital From Valleywag; Starts May 26th

Owen Thomas, who introduced me to the great libations at what was once Moose's in North Beach during the Valleywag Friday happy hours of a few positive GDP growth cycles back, then left the helm of that Gawker-run tech gossip site, has landed on his feet at KNTV Digital, according to "Broadcasting & Cable".

Reportedly, Thomas will manage the NBC Bay Area website, nbcbayarea.com, but I'd guess absent the interesting, biting, and at times down right wild commentary that spared no one. 

Well, almost on one. He and the other Gawker staffers had this soft spot for Internet celebrity Julia Allison. But I digress.

 

Owen Thomas with Julia Allison Hanging On

The Friday meetups stopped well before Thomas depature, but knowing him I'm sure something close to what used to be will materialize. But I say "congratulations, Owen!" The next one's on me!

And on a personal note thanks for the tips!

YouTube Partner Program: What Is It?

 

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I'm often surprised by the number of people who don't catch on to the fact that for me making videos is much more than a hobby, it's a job I earn a living from. I recently created a video on the Star Trek movie that pointed to its depiction of the San Francisco skyline as unrealistic because of the size of the buildings relative to The City's culture of demanding "a human scale" of structures, and Star Trek's new generation of fanboys coupled with Internet trolls jumped all over me, saying "Get a life" and stop making videos, all the while contributing to the 43,000 times my creation was seen..and to my pocketbook.

That's because I'm a YouTube Partner or "YTP". The YouTube Partner's program was established in late 2007 as a way to For YouTube to share its advertising revenue with its most popular video producers like Renetto and Lisa Nova, as well as frequent contributors like me. At first, YouTube sent invitations to channel vloggers - I received mine on November of 2007 - then opened up the program to an application process. In other words, you too can become a YTP and here's how.

First, you have to make videos and upload them to YouTube on a regular basis. For me I have a schedule of a video a day and a subject mix of the topical, local, and political. Some people like Lisa Nova have shows within their channels like "The Affirmation Girl" that draw micro-audiences for that specific video playlist. What ever the case, do what is comfortable for you to start, but do something and do it often. And don't upload TV content because you don't own the rights to it; make something original.



I explain what video blogging is and how to do it above.

Second, you have to gain subscribers and that's the real meat of viewership and not an easy task at all. Michael Buckley of "What The Buck" has over 400,000 subscribers, Phil DeFranco has over 300,000 subcribers, where's Lisa Nova has 41,000, and I have just 3,000. It takes years and constant work - some people use PC-based YouTube subscriber software services - to get to those levels.

Third, make sure you have a blog to place your videos on. Blogs and websites are the main driver of video views other than subscriptions. The more visits your page gets, the more views your video will have.

Fourth, have an email list of people to send your videos to, or work them into your social networks, as I do. I'm on 41 different social networs, some that allow video embeding and I have a network of blogs, each with my video channel's latest creation in a special view box.

Once you've done all of that, and have reached a subscriber base of 300 people, apply for the program. It's connected to Google AdSense, the Google revenue sharing system, so the check you gain comes from them, but you only get paid when your monthly income reaches over $100. So you're wondering "How much can I make?"

Buckley is perhaps the most successful partner, bringing in a reported "six figure" income annually. I'm certain both De Franco and Lisa Nova are not far behind and I know Renetto's made a healthy living from YouTube but doesn't tell people about it, unlike Buckley. It's possible to clear $10,000 a month from YTP, and no, I'm not any where near that at all, so don't ask me for a loan!

So that's the YTP. Give it a try with the steps I listed and if you have more questions just ask. And if you want to know how to make a video, or how I do it. See the video above.

YouTube and Apple Almost One: QuickTime Sync With YouTube

 

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For whatever reason - proximity to each other in Silicon Valley, a mutual admiration for the culture of each firm, or more concretely Apple's constant drive to make its computers the best for video-bloggers - it seems Apple Computer and YouTube are all but one company.

Consider that according to Apple Insider, Apple now has built in support for YouTube across all of the latest versions of its main product lines: IPhone, Apple TV, iMovie, and now QuickTime. Soon, you will be able to directly upload your QuickTime-based video to YouTube right from the upcoming QuickTime X Player software (and part of the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system to be released this summer).

Why is this a big deal?

Consider what a video-blogger has to do as of this writing to upload a video. Let's take the one I installed today regarding ESPN and The Oakland Raiders. First, I used my Flip Video Camera to record my monologue, then took the camcorder and plugged it into my MacBook. That action opened the Flip Video software and I downloaded the clips I created. Then I opened iMovie6 (I'm not a fan of the current version of iMovie), edited and compressed the clips, and the result was a ".mov" file that I can open in QuickTime. Instead I used TubeMogul to upload the video to multiple sites including YouTube, Blip.tv, and Viddler.

(As a note, never use just one video-distribution site. You'll be sorry. More on why in a later installment.)

Now there are occasions where my video files are larger than 500 MB, making TubeMogul unusable. For those scenarios and this new provision I could just open QuickTime and do the uploading from there. What I love is Apple Computer has made creating video-blogs a nearly super simple task. And YouTube has altered its site such that its easier than ever to actually earn revenue from making videos and promoting ones channel. To digress for a moment, I can now embed a small version of my YouTube channel on a blog or website, like so:



But the bottom line is the constant advance of the mating of Apple and YouTube for the benefit of video-bloggers. Videoblogging is the next frontier of media but many people are still intimidated by it. Hopefully as these developments continue, more and more people will take up videoblogging in much the same way they blog today.

Promise Technology, RAID, Cloud Computing and UC Berkeley

 

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I happened on a number of blog posts about a company called "Promise Technology" and became more interested in these terms: "RAID" and "Cloud Computing" and because my grad school, Cal Berkeley is apparently at the center of the creation of this technology. Also, I think, particularly in the wake of the San Jose fiber-optic cable crime of yesterday, it's important to shed a light on the little-known areas of technology and how they impact us.

Promise Technology (according to its website) is "a global leader in the storage industry and as an innovator in RAID technology". OK, fine and dandy, but what's "RAID technology" and why is it important? First, when David Patterson, Garth Gibson and Randy Katz created RAID according to Wikepedia at Cal in 1987 and confirmed by Scientic Commons , it was called "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks" but some companies now call it "Redundant Array of Independent Disks". Ok, but why is it important?

It's important, and Cal Professor David Patterson's a Macher in this field. Patterson led the creation of RAID technology, increasing storage capacity dramatically and opening the door to the creation of the kind of web servers used today. But really it started as combining small disk drives into something called an "array" which is a way of arranging information so that each part can be gotten according to some specific code index -- in other words it's a way of "filing" information in a certain order then using that order to, say, make a calculation of something. We do this every day when we teach kids to count the number of items in a case, that number of items is an array of sorts. Programmers get computers to do that same act by writing arrays as in this case (ok, simple yes, but I want people to at least be exposed to these ideas.)

Thus, RAID is a storage technology that uses arrays and is widely used in the corporate world. Promise Technology is one of a number of companies that uses this Cal-created technology to store information or more to the point of what Promise does, is make hardware that "sees" an array of hard drives and stores, receives, and protects that data that's in them.

As an old Cal student and booster I hope you see this example of where our dollars public and private go at the university. At present, we need to change our spending priorties do that great California institutions like UC Berkeley get more money fro the State of California. California spends more money today on prisons than education; that wasn't the case when RAID technology was created. Cal's leadership and innovation in computer technology has helped transform the World around us for the better and caused the launch of a new industry and companies like Promise Technology.

Indeed, RAID served as a foundation for what we now call "Cloud Computing" which is using the Internet to, say, use a spreadsheet, rather than an old disk or CD that had a copy of, say, Microsoft Office and Excel on it. If you're thinking of Google Docs, you're on the right track.

So the next time you're poking around online and see some technical term you don't recognize, stop and research it rather than clicking by it. It will expand your understanding of the world and it may cause you to appreciate your public university more than you do.

Sara Lacy Returns Home: A Note On How A Good Relationship Should Be

I just read Sarah Lacy's post on how she misses her husband and that he's a great guy for being patient as she travels for her work, which is writing about all things -- all almost all things -- tech. It was heart-warming. It also reminded me of how one has to have a great relationship just to survive the demands of today's work world. Congradulations to two great people.

Promise Tech Sued By Carbonite : A Lesson In Data and Responsibility

Three days ago I decided to write a blog post that focused on an issue which at first glance would seem to have all the stuff of sleep-producing content.  It's a tech matter involving a company known as Carbonite , who's corporate mission is to provide "Unlimited online backup for one flat fee" according to its website, versus another firm Promise Technology.  The same website reads "How will you survive a computer disaster" and with a photo of a man that could very well be me, head bowed in his hand. 

Video version:




YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Crackle and Sclipo

In fact, a couple of months ago that was me.  My MacBook's hard drive crashed big time, and while I was away from my home and office.  Even though I was visiting my mother in suburban Atlanta, I was still without my second computer and even worse, I had to catch a flight in just five hours.  So, I found a place nearby that works with Apple products and the tech warned me to have my "stuff" backed up.   All of the "stuff" I needed was online in various places, so I was ok.  

But it never entered my mind to me to sue Apple Computer.   

Thus my interest in this lawsuit over a matter that happened over a year ago but with a lawsuit filed almost two weeks ago.  Here's what happened:  

According to The Boston Globe , Carbonite is suing Promise Technology and another company Interactive Digital Systems for allegedly faulty equipment and breach of warranty, respectively.  Carbonite was responsible for over 7,500 backups which it lost in 2007.   Promise Technology hardware was supposed to monitor customer data and preserve the information  Carbonite claims the products by Promise were "defective".

Promise stands by its hardware devices and says they're reliable.  

This story has hit the tech blogsphere like wildfire.  It was picked up by TechCrunch first, and that story became linkbait for a number of blog posts rendering fact and opinion, including mine, because I was interested in what the comment writers had to say, most of which was critical against Carbonite.  

See, what's hard for many to wrap their mind around is why Carbonite itself lacked a backup system, especially considering the number of customers they had?  Every time I've had a hard drive problem over the years, people have asked, "Did you backup your data?"  That's asked all the time; I can hear someone asking it now.  So, the story spread and so did the comments.  Eventually, even our San Francisco Focus Blog entry on this had comments.  But one of them really caught my attention.  

This one:

Hi Zennie, 

I would like to make sure that your readers understand two points with regard to Carbonite’s lawsuit against Promise Technologies as your headline is misleading to the facts of the case:

1) This event happened over a year ago. We do not say this to minimize the matter. But we do want to point out that this has not happened in a long time and is not an ongoing problem. 

2) The total number of Carbonite customers who were unable to retrieve their data was 54, not 7,500. We did take responsibility for the loss of data, which impacted the 54 customers. 

Here is what happened: The Promise servers that we were purchasing in 2006 and 2007 use RAID technology to spread data redundantly across 15 disk drives so that if any one disk drive fails, you don't lose any data. The RAID software that makes all this work is embedded as "firmware" in the storage servers. In this case, we believe that the firmware on the servers had bugs that caused the servers to crash. Carbonite automatically restarted all 7,500 backups and more than 99% of these were completely restored without incident. Statistically, about 2 out of every 1,000 consumer hard drives will crash every week, so 54 of these customers had their PCs crash before their re-started backups were complete. Since they weren’t completely backed up when their PCs crashed, these customers were unable to restore all of their files from Carbonite. Most of the 54 got some or most of their data back. We took full responsibility for what happened and I did my best to call each of these customers personally to apologize. 

As a result of our problems with the Promise servers, we switched to a popular Dell server that uses RAID6 – an improved RAID that allows for the loss of 3 of the 15 drives simultaneously before you lose any data. This configuration is in theory 36 million times more reliable than a single disk drive — the chances of 3 out of 15 drives failing at the same time are almost nil. 

So far, Promise has refused to accept responsibility for their equipment’s failures, so now we are suing them to get our money back. The Dell RAID servers have been flawless and we're extremely happy with them. 

Dave Friend, CEO

Carbonite, Inc.

Dave's friendly comment certainly gave this blog entry new weight, but something Mr. Friend wrote concerned me:

 The RAID software that makes all this work is embedded as "firmware" in the storage servers. In this case, we believe that the firmware on the servers had bugs that caused the servers to crash. Carbonite automatically restarted all 7,500 backups and more than 99% of these were completely restored without incident. 

"We believe that the firmware on the servers had bugs" is another way of claiming there's no real evidence to back that claim.  That's a real problem and I'm surprised Dave Friend just hauled off and wrote that.  In other words, there's no way Carbonite can actually prove Promise Technology's hardware was at fault.  They have their belief, but that's it.  That means there could have been a lot of actions that led to the loss of customer data, and even Carbonite's Friend admits that only 54 of 7,500 customers were adversely impacted by this data loss.

Let's go back to my Apple example.  If my Apple MacBook crashes, techs ask me if I use disk utility tools to properly maintain the hard drive.  They instruct me to use those tools both in the care and recovery of data and the hard drive. Thus the care of the hard drive is ultimately my responsibility.




This is also at SFGate.com

Promise Technology Inc Announces New ServicePlus On-Site Parts Replacement Program for US and Canada

First I take a stance on how backing up data is a personal responsibility and how Carbonite - a data protection company -- should take the rap for losing its customer's data, then I get comments on the San Francisco Blog about it, and from some high level folks, and now a press release?  Interesting.  It means our blogs matter in the tech world after all.  Here's the release I got on Promise Technology's news about an onsight parts replacement program:

Promise Announces New ServicePlus On-Site Parts Replacement Program for US and Canada

Industry leading support program expands to include on-site component swap offering

MILPITAS, Calif., April 1, 2009 – Promise Technology Inc., a leading supplier of sophisticated RAID storage solutions for enterprise and SMB customers, today announced general availability of the Promise ServicePlus parts replacement plan for their VTrak enterprise class RAID storage subsystems. The ServicePlus program is an available upgrade to Promise’s leading 3-Year limited advanced parts replacement warranty. The ServicePlus plan offers onsite parts replacement 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the existing VTrak warranty period.

The Promise ServicePlus Plan provides for the rapid response and installation of components that have been identified as being in a fault state. This program provides storage administrators with the peace of mind that their storage is protected 24x7 against component failure. Combined with Promise’s existing 24x7 technical phone support this program is able to significantly minimize downtime. Average response time for component replacement can be as little as four hours in most major metropolitan areas.

“The ServicePlus program builds upon our already best in class support program”, said Vijay Char, Vice President of QA and Support, Promise Technology.  “Continuing to add to our support offering is part of our commitment to providing our customers with the best available uptime and service.”

The Promise ServicePlus plan is available for VTrak E-Class RAID, J-Class expansion chassis and M-Class iSCSI models in the 3U/16-bay form factor. The program is valid for the entire 3 year VTrak standard warranty period.

Pricing and Availability
The Promise ServicePlus plan is immediately available in the U.S. and Canada. Please contact the Promise sales department for further information.

About Promise Technology, Inc.
With a long history of innovation, Promise Technology develops and manufactures sophisticated RAID solutions – offering a complete line of RAID controller cards and SAS/SATA RAID subsystems catering to enterprise, mid-range and entry-level data protection needs worldwide. Known as the originator of SATA/ATA RAID products, Promise’s comprehensive product base includes high available (HA) standalone RAID subsystems with standards-based management interfaces, SAS host-based (internal) RAID controllers for servers and NAS appliances for SOHO. Headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., Promise is ISO-9001:2000 and ISO-14001:2004 certified, and has offices and operations throughout Asia and Europe to support local business partners and customers. For more information, visit Promise Technology's website at http://www.promise.com/serviceplu

The Financial Times Launches Newssift

More at TC: “The Financial Times Group, which is owned by the British publisher Pearson, is not exactly the place you’d expect to find the latest search engine. But a startup deep within the bowels of the organization called FT Search is launching one at 8PM ET tonight called Newssift. It is a semantic search engine that sifts through business news, and it is not half bad, especially for bigger companies and broader topics.”

Diddit: A Social Network To-Do List For You

More at TechCrunch.com: “Diddit, a new site launching today to the public, is looking to help you check off all the things you’ve done with your life, and discover new things that you’d like to do. The site allows users to browse through thousands of activities in categories ranging from the bars you’ve visited to “Bizarre Retro Candies” you’ve eaten at one time or another. ”

-- I just joined, but I'm not sure what its value is -- perhaps as another form of networking?

Apple's Steve Jobs Still Plans to Return After June

More ar SFGate: “Apple Inc. co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs still expects to return from his medical leave at the end of June, according to an Apple director who responded to an investor at the company's annual shareholder meeting Wednesday.

The investor — who was the only one to press for details on Jobs' health — had asked when the board knew Jobs planned to step away from his daily duties. Apple director Arthur Levinson responded that since Jobs announced Jan. 14 that he needed to go on leave, "nothing has changed."”

-- Having just lost a relative to Pancreatic Cancer I wonder how Jobs is being treated? What is the procedure and of course, how much did it cost?

Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook's Benevolent Dictator

Mark Zuckerberg is Facebook's Benevolent Dictator who says the social network is 176 million or the sixth largest nation in the World. Electing to preserve member privacy was him being nice. Suppose he didn't do it?

Steve Jobs is Very Much Alive! Leave Him Alone!

More at MOBODOJO: “I’m periodically amazed at the lengths hackers will go to do something stupid. What they are doing now is hacking MacRumors live blog feed from the MacWorld keynote. The first comment indicated that Steve Jobs had died, which is untrue. ”

-- Yiah! What's the deal with hackers wishing that Steve Jobs was dead? This started with the infamous iReport video and has went from there. Maybe the best thing is for Jobs to walk around the floor of MacWorld just so they all leave him alone.

Or is that wishful thinking?

No Steve Jobs in 2009: Apple Announces Its Last Year at Macworld

Apple Announces Its Last Year at MacworldFrom Apple's website: “CUPERTINO, California—December 16, 2008—Apple® today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.”

-- This is definitely the end of an era. I can't imagine anyone getting up at 4 AM to hear Phillip Schiller speak in the morning. I can't help but wonder what the real story here is.

Robert Scoble On China's New Disruptive Manufacturing Techniques

I am a frequent reader of Robert Scoble's blog "Scobleizer" and it's seldom without a great tip or observation.  While Robert's political views may be more to the "slight-right" on mine, it's no matter for he always has his finger on the New Media and Tech pulse.  Moreover, he's always ready with great advise, as he gave in my TechCrunch party video, which is long, but worth another look if you have 41 minutes to spare:












In this case, it's Tech.


In his  blog , Scoble discusses the new developments in Manufacturing Tech, and the work of a man named Liam Casey, who's the founder of PCH.   To avoid stealing thunder from Scoble, I'll report that it means you can go to a website and special order a car or computer, rather than the "one-car-fits-all" approach we have today.


That's of no surprise to me.  It's a direction the industrialized World has been on path toward this kind of development every since Dr. McCoy put in a card and out came instant hot chicken soup in a bowl on the Enterprise, and that was in the '60s.


But what's interesting is the kind of businesses that Scoble says we should be in:

"Now, get over your fears, because there are tons of new jobs in this new world, too, you just need to see how this changes everything and then take advantage of the new opportunities. Where are the high value bits in this whole process?

Not the manufacturing.

The real value and profit is in two places: R&D and coming up with new businesses and new ideas. Take, for instance, the Chumby which was designed at a Tim O’Reilly Foocamp and who’s company still has less than a handful of people. Chumby is the new post disruptive business model. Want a job? This is how to do it. Hang out at Foocamp. Come up with an interesting business. Get funding. Go see PCH. Profit! Well, yes, there are a few details involved there.

Other jobs that’ll open up? Anything involved in building brands. Marketing, PR, blogging/Twittering/FriendFeeding, building web experiences, videos, going to conferences to show off new products to audiences, etc."

How Blogging Is Like An Election Campaign - A Set of Tips 1. You need a story

I saw what is an interesting take on Blogging and how it's like an election campaign, and since we just experienced and participated in one, I thought it was appropriate.  I found it at Problogger and it's by "Trish" of "Ideas for Women."

I disagree that a Blogger should take a break, not that Bloggers should not, but one has to make sure there's a constant churn of information -- posts -- daily.  I read somewhere -- I think here at Technorati -- that the most successful blogs had between four and 30 posts a day.  That's work. 

Here's an excerpt:

I followed this year’s U.S. presidential election pretty closely on T.V. and also volunteered for one of the candidates. Over I time I began to notice some parallels between running a successful campaign and a successful blog.

I don’t plan to ever run for president - but I would like to have a more successful blog. I would also like to share what I learned and hope that it will be helpful to other bloggers.



1. You need a story

Both of the presidential candidates and their running mates had a story. John McCain was a P.O.W., Sarah Palin, a hockey mom. Joe Biden was from Scranton, Pennsylvania and stuttered as kid. Barack Obama’s story is that he is the “son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas”.

The details of the stories don’t really matter. What matters is how they /framed/ their story - their story had to be everyone else’s story - a story people could relate to.

Twitter Is Overcapacity; No Tweets For A While

I just saw a webpage pop-up on Twitter that read "Twitter is overcapapacity. No tweets for a while" or words to that effect.


Wow, I never thought all of those little words could finally add up to over 1 billion tweets, which is the milestone that Twitter his this week, I read somewhere.


Time for a new server?

Using New Media At The DNC Convention - How Zennie62 Does It

This video presents the "production process" behind the planned use of New Media at the DNC Convention by Sports Business Simulations' SBS Media / Zennie Zeigeist blog.

New Media -- DNC Convention Broadcast

Objective: to quickly and cheaply bring text, audio, and visual information that generally tells a story to as many people as possible in as short amount of time as possible.

Instruments Hardware and Software

Hardware:

1. MacBook -- Has "iMovie" software built in that makes editing movies easy.
2. Sony Camcorder -- Used to make videos and feed to computer
3. iPhone -- used to take photos and also to make mobile blog posts which feed to Zennie's Zeitgeist remotely.

Software:

1. Blogger -- the online home of Zennies's Zeitgeist blog.
2. iMovie -- used to edit the videos uploaded from the camcorder
3. Google -- used to get information and articles on related subjects that then can be linked to in a blog post.
4. Twitter -- updates on Twitter post at the Zennie62 Twitter page, on the Zennie's Zeitgeist Blog, and on my Facebook page all at the same time.
5. Facebook -- Zennie's Facebook page has his blog posts from Zennie's Zeitgeist.
6. Widgets -- Zennie's Zeitgeist widgets are on other blogs in the SBS blog network, from the NFL Business Blog to Oakland Focus.
7. FriendFeed -- allows commentary on blog posts and videos that appear on Zennie62's FriendFeed page.
8. FeedBurner is the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) system used on Zennie's Zeitgeist for yet another way to distribute our blog news to people and as it appears on the blog, automatically.
9. YouTube -- the main home for Zennie62's videos, which are then embedded in the Zennie's Zeitgeist blog and also on Zennie's Facebook page and linked to on Twitter, which is also on Zennie's Facebook page.
10. iReport -- CNN's version of YouTube, where I will upload videos for daily use by CNN.
11. TubeMogul -- permits simultaneous upload of one videos to 15 different video distribution sites, from YouTube to Blip.tv, and Dailymotion, and others.