Gillmor Gang Live – Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Dan Farber, and Steve Gillmor. Recording live today at 8pm Pacific time.
Tag Archives: Gillmor Gang
Gillmor Gang: Back in the USSR
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — view the world through PRISM glasses. We, or me, couldn’t help wondering what part of surpised we are at the idea we’re being monitored and scraped within an inch of our metadata. It’s hard to tell whether we’re worried about losing our individual freedoms, or having to do the hard work of balancing the tradeoffs in a dangerous world of drones and the streams that feed them.
Still, the stakes couldn’t be higher as we sell our digital identities for the price of free access to the flow of information. And what about the cost of our freedom to share the music that defined the creative revolution of the 60′s and the video revolution of Mad Men and Netflix? From Richie Havens on the stage at Woodstock to Obama’s politics of the personal, we can’t afford to sit back and ignore the costs, and the value, of swimming in the social waters. Ben Franklin may not have anticipated Twitter, but Paul Revere did. Honey, disconnect the phone.
@stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @kevinmarks, @kteare
Produced and directed by Tina CHase Gillmor @tinagillmor
Gillmor Gang: Wake Up Call
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — recorded early on a Thursday morning, flush with Apple CEO Tim Cook’s read-between-the-lines performance at D11. Cook took some 80 minutes to say very little, or so say the pundits and Wall Street spinners. But the Gang found plenty to decrypt, including thoughts on Apple TV, wearable computing, value versus volume, and just about everything Steve Jobs used to do minus the famous reality distortion field.
But as the lack of smoke cleared, what was left over suggested a robust fall and a steady drumbeat of evolution from Apple to match Google’s flashier but Webier approach. Lost in the shuffle was Microsoft’s X-Box announcements, leaving the strong impression of the two leaders pulling away from the pack. But it was fun to watch @scobleizer wake up over the course of the show, as we realized, like Cook, how much we love the art of surprise.
@stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks, @kteare
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
Gillmor Gang: Parlor Games & Metaphones
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — neatly sidestepped the Yahoo Tumblr acquisition and segued into the wonderful world of messaging. As Facebook Home settles into a cot at the homeless shelter, Google is revving up for an all-out assault on the service suite. Google Glass is just the tip of the iceberg; below the waterline, the search giant is sucking image, location, traffic, and advertising data in realtime.
It may seem like the Gang is tilting over into Google love, but scratch the surface (no pun intended) and you’ll find just as much Apple love lurking beneath. The consensus is not so much a two-horse race as a widening duopoly that makes it very hard for Yahoo or Microsoft or Amazon or any new player to break the hold these two giants maintain. Of course, that’s what they said about Microsoft, which in reality was the duopoly of Windows and Office.
@stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @kteare, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
Gillmor Gang: Windows Too Late
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — broke from the gate and never let up in a barnburner of a show about the post-Jobs era. Will Google assume the mantle of leadership from an aging Apple, or is this just an evolutionary step along the stream of innovation triggered by the iPhone/iPad?
There’s plenty of data on both sides of this coin. Certainly Google Glass has triggered a lot of the same atmospherics that accompanied Apple’s storming of the Microsoft barricades. Every day we see the wreckage of the PC era float past us as our thoughts shift from Windows to Web to apps. Mobile has won the war for our hearts and minds. As Adam said to Eve: Stand back, we don’t know how big this is going to get.
@stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks, @kteare
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
Gillmor Gang: Glass Onion
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — well, we talked Google Glass. @scobleizer has certainly made the case for the life-altering shower-taking scenarios, but what the Gang got into was what happens next. Do we wait for the actual launch early next year, or is the die already cast with this alpha rollout? One thing for sure: there’s plenty to unravel in this second Glass hour in a row.
What lurks beneath the actual hardware and the choices Google has made in terms of enhanced reality – no, and an atomization of some key aspects of the phone – yes, is the stark choice the search company must make in playing open with Android. @scobleizer reports switching about 30% of his notifications and alerts from iOS to Android, understandable as the Glass interface is the first point of contact for audio chimes and call announcements but not the visual. Glass is in reality more of an audio device with some visual renderings and recorders.
But will the price point Scoble suggests they need to meet — $200 — really be reachable to them unless they can get mass data to subsidize some significant portion of the hardware? More likely, they will open the hardware to iOS much like they just did with Google Now (part of the Search app) and make their stand with turn by turn against Siri. Both Google and Apple will face an increasingly sophisticated customer base that can see just how far voice and facial recognition can really go without mass data from across what used to be called the Web.
In a way, Glass is Google’s response to the iPad Mini, which has rolled up an enormous part of the existing tablet market by cannibalizing its big tablet and adding a large percentage of the 7-inch minis. At several Gartner conferences this week, the number of Minis was reminiscent of what happened when the iPad first broke through on planes. In one fell swoop, Apple captured the lion’s share of the unique gestures made possible by the Mini form factor, which makes it easy to do 90% of both enterprise and social computing in conjunction with the phone. Glass does the same thing for Android, creating a pool of unique gestures that can be expanded upon with advanced services that connect Glasses together.
The common wisdom is that Google doesn’t get social, but Glass is an opportunity for them to get out front with the phone, just as Apple has with the Mini. If Google doesn’t interoperate with the Mini, it will provide an opening for Apple and the nextgen iPhone. More importantly, Glass has to reach the broad market as Search, Gmail, Apps, and Maps have done to feed the data monster it sells off as realtime advertising. Apple’s common wisdom Achilles Heel, not getting the Web and massive Cloud scale, means they will continue to open their platform to Google to maintain market while exploiting their lead in media integration. They lose data they can’t yet handle, but maintain their hold on developer and media revenue and buy much needed time.
@stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @kteare, @kevinmarks
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
Gillmor Gang: Watertown
The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, Dan Farber, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — note the intersection of social and mainstream medias as the events in Boston unfolded in real time. What has been framed as a competition became something more, as Twitter streams, scanner apps, and local news streams meshed with CNN et al.
Inspired curation by @dannysullivan produced an authoritative feed of credible crowdsourced updates. Tweeters at the scene produced wry commentary on reporter exaggeration, eventually encouraging a hybrid blend of real time speed and news judgement. Our thoughts remain with the brave and resilient people of Watertown, Cambridge, and Boston.
@stevegillmor, @dbfarber, @dannysullivan, @kevinmarks, @jtaschek
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
Gillmor Gang: Kaleidoscope Eyes
The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — picture themselves in a boat on a river, as the first wave of Google Glass hits the network, aka Scoble’s forehead. @scobleizer promises to never take off this thing, and even the hyperbole doesn’t refute the central notion. As was evidenced over the last few days in Boston, the whole world is not only watching but feeding the realtime stream. Social meets mainstream.
As Google Glass goes into alpha, Apple’s stock collapse seems to indicate a changing of the guard. But our bet (I don’t think I’m alone in this) reflects not only the volatility of who’s on first but the value of a real horse race in floating all boats. More likely we’ll see a back and forth motion as Apple, Google, Twitter, and Facebook surge ahead and then are overtaken. The winners — that would be us.
@stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor