Alec Saunders SquawkBox

At Mix 06 today, they released the new preview version of IE 7, and on the IE 7 weblog, they announced that they had made the same version available to the public.  I suppose I really ought to have paid attention to the disclaimers on the IE 7 website, but you know us geeks… who can resist a new toy? Besides, having been (at one point in my career) Microsoft’s product manager for IE (Version 1, and for a time Version 2), I really wanted to see what was new! So I went ahead and downloaded it. 

I have to give the folks at Microsoft full credit.  This version actually installed.  The last IE 7 beta I downloaded not only wouldn’t install properly, but it wouldn’t uninstall either.  Luckily I had Firefox on my PC at that time, so I could still browse.  For me, anyway, Firefox is still a very foreign experience.  It just doesn’t feel right.  Anwyay, a day or so layer, someone on the IE support forums suggested a Windows rollback, which worked.

So, IE 7 Beta 2 Preview did install.  And, after a reboot, I was able to bring it up.  Very slow loading.  But, lo and behold, there was the MSN page, inviting me to take a tour of the features.  So, I did.  And at that point things started to go wrong.  First, the pop-up blocker warned me that it was blocking a pop-up (the self-same tour of features), which left a great big ugly white square on the screen that didn’t redraw.  In fact, nothing worked.  So, I executed the three-finger salute, and checked task manager.  Ah hah!  Iexplorer.EXE consuming 99% of CPU resources.

I killed it, and tried again. I browsed a few sites, and while it was sluggish, it seemed to be working.   Perhaps it was just the tour that was the problem. 

Next, I browsed to the very popular saunderslog.com.  Hmmm… first thing I noticed was some minor differences in rendering from Version 6  to Version 7.  Nothing super bad, but I’ll be editing my CSS again.   Bummer.  Then I tried out a few of the buttons on the top of the browser.  Stuff like the RSS button and so on.  And that’s when things started to go bad again.  I got the subscription center open, but couldn’t close it.  The Yahoo toolbar kacked.  Tabbed browsing looked good, but wouldn’t render properly.

To make a long story short, I killed the browser again (it was starving my CPU, once more), and then hit the control panel and uninstalled it.  The good news — at least you can uninstall this one.

IE 7 Beta 2 Preview looks very promising, has a slick new UI, and lots of cool new features.  I can hardly wait for a working version. 

It’s crude looking, and I haven’t yet had a chance to try it, but GTalk Voice Services are here. Controlled by text commands in the GTalk Window, they provide free conference calling, free voice mail, and paid outbound calls to the PSTN.  Inbound service, via a DID, are in the works, according to the site.

Rob Hyndman has a pointer to Mark Cuban’s latest: Think the Internet Will Replace TV? Think Again.  Cuban’s post can be summarized as: Today’s broadband networks are too slow.  The insatiable appetite for on-demand rich media content will soon overwhelm them. Telco’s aren’t putting in upgraded networks quickly enough to meet that demand. Cuban also provides some facts and figures to back up that claim. In the comments, readers have a number of viewpoints, including the view that Mark has ignored cable, and that cable can provide the required speeds and feeds.

The problem is that cable is now grabbing share from the incumbent telecoms, and grabbing it at an alarming rate.  Their response has been to build out a video infrastructure — to take the cable companies on, head to head.  That is, as Cuban points out, a very expensive proposition.  More to the point, Cuban says "In fact, by their own best estimates, they’ll be able to reach no more than 40% or so of American households with fiber over the next seven years."  In seven years time, will this be even worth battling over?  Land line attrition in the US is running about 10,000 lines per day, right now.  In seven years, at that rate, over 25 million lines will be switched out — roughly 1/4 of all the households in the US will have given up at least one land line.  In all likelihood, those 25 million lines will be the 25 million most profitable lines too, as early adopters, young people, and consumer influencers abandon the traditional land line.

What if, instead, the incumbents focused on ways to make the customer more sticky to a broad range of services?  What if they offered cellular, land line, wifi, VoIP, and internet as a bundle, with a common user experience across all five?  What if I had one address book, one email name, one phone number for every communications technology?  

What if, instead of today’s broken networks, the incumbents focused on having the best unified communications experience possible?

Phil Wolff systematically dismantles David Greenfield’s The Six Gotchas of Skype for Business.   Greenfield’s fundamental mistake is in equating Skype with a replacement for the office phone system.  It’s not.  Phil is right, however — ignoring Skype, and systems like it, is a mistake.  Skype changes the communications landscape with new kinds of experiences that are not the same or possible on an existing office phone system. 

As an example, last Thursday I held a "video conference" with one of our investors.  I set up a webcam at one end of the boardroom table, and projected my PC image on the big screen behind it.  Add a pair of reasonable quality external PC speakers, and we were in business, as we all sat at the other end of the table, talked and watched the screen.  Could the experience have been better on a dedicated video conferencing system?  Sure.  But this was ad-hoc, required no additional equipment beyond what I already had, and cost me $0.

As Phil says — it’s not "Why?".  It’s just "How soon?".

Guy Kawasaki has some great advice in this piece titled The Art of the Board Meeting.  I am not sure a lot of early stage startups need a seven member board, but at least he has a rationale for why it’s needed.  Much of the advice boils down to simply previewing the meeting with each individual member appropriately.  It’s a classic tactic, and very effective.