Geek Beat By Cali Lewis

One of my favorite Internet celebs has a new show on Revision 3. Cali Lewis of geekbrief fame is now on the Revision 3 network with a new video show called GeekBeat.TV, you'll get the same Cali and plenty of product reviews ala Geek Brief. I'm embedding the show here using the sites self updating embed code, so you can simply bookmark this post if you choose. Check it out here or on Rev3 @ http://revision3.com/greekbeattv

The Starbucks Lean Startup - A How To

Starbucks has taken some of the financial pain out of buying a latte and surfing the web in their stores by offering up free Wi-Fi to customers in Canada and the US. "Enjoy great coffee and the Internet at your fingertips." says the companies website. 


Om Malik, is adding to the mix by letting us all in on his little secrets about lean startups and maximizing your business startup experience at Starbucks expense:

• Almost always favor a single location. It makes it easier for your contacts to drop in for meetings.
• Learn the names of most of the baristas and also take time to have a conversation with them. It helps build a human connection.
• Make the baristas involved in your venture – share your news and make them feel part of your struggle.
• Make sure you buy coffee or something at least three times a day.
• Tip generously – up to $10 a day will ensure that folks at the store don’t view you as a freeloader and a pest.
• Don’t spread out your stuff and take up too much space at the store.
• Invest in great noise-cancelling headphones (to counter the loud background music).
• Keep your mobile phones on vibrate and leave the store for conversations.
• Make sure that the number of people attending a meeting is fewer than four so that you can all circle around a single table.

Think I need a latte.

The Facebook Movie Trailer - The Social Network

In case you were unaware, there is a movie coming out this fall that chronicles the raise of Mark Zuckerberg and his little website Facebook. "The Social Network" has a number of A list Hollywood actors and apparently has Zuck a little pissed. Recently the trailer was released on the site 500millionfriends.com

Foursquare Raises $20,000,000 Round B Financing

The one and a half year old location-based social sensation Foursquare has just secured a $20 million Series B investment led by VCs Andreessen Horowitz, with Union Square Ventures and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures also participating. According to Business Insider:

• Foursquare can finally start working on its product again after moving a lot of resources to building out its infrastructure, which was crumbling after its huge growth.

• Foursquare can finally start hiring again because it's moving into bigger offices. Before, it couldn't physically put more people in the room.

• For the forseeable future, Foursquare will continue to be one main app -- not a bunch of apps for different purposes.

The deal values the company at $95 million pre-financing.

We have several players in our office and the competition is really heating up... Congrats Foursquare! We look forward to seeing more great stuff now that you've got the money behind you.

Monkey-Pirate-Robot-Ninja-Zombie

There's a new game in town and you'll probably all flock to it like Farmville on a work PC. Introducing, via boingboing, Monkey-Pirate-Robot-Ninja-Zombie! It's a new variation on an old game, except with sound effects, and it goes something like this:

Monkey
* Monkey fools Ninja
* Monkey unplugs Robot
Suggested noise: ee-ee-eek!

Robot
* Robot chokes Ninja
* Robot crushes Zombie
Suggested noise: ex-ter-min-ate!

Pirate
* Pirate drowns Robot
* Pirate skewers Monkey
Suggested noise: arrrrr!

Ninja
* Ninja karate chops Pirate
* Ninja decapitates Zombie
Suggested noise: keeee-ah!

Zombie
* Zombie eats Pirate
* Zombie savages Monkey
Suggested noise: braaaaaaaaaainsss!

Now call me a traditionalist but I still prefer rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock, although the sound effects are kinda cool!

Doodle Jump - 5 Million Downloads And Still Jumping

What started as an attempt to make a little extra money by two Croatian born brothers has turned into an iPhone sensation with a reported 5 million downloads to date. Doodle Jump is a $0.99 download from the iTunes App store and  Igor and Marko Pusenjak believe their little game is the first to reach the 5,000,000 download mark. The brothers have quit their day jobs and now dedicate all of their time to iPhone - iPad development through their company  Lima Sky.

“I remember a moment of frustration when we were selling only 20 or 30 copies a day,” he said, “then we made it into the top 25 apps and we’ve been there for almost a year now.” Growth of sales is also aided by their fans who post videos showing off their skills and via a number of Facebook groups dedicated to the game and it's fans.

Well done Igor and Marko! Great success story.


Credit: NY Times Bits Blog

Really Mr. Jobs? REALLY???

I'm sure you've heard the joke that goes something like this:

Patient: Doc, it really hurts when I do this. Can you help me?

Doctor: Don't do that!

Steve Jobs and the Apple minions seem to be taking that approach to customer complaints about the new iPhone 4 and it's signal reception issues. When the iPhone 4 was announced, Mr. Jobs described the integrated antenna as "really cool engineering", but it seems that customers are experiencing severe signal degradation when they hold the phone... yup, you read that right! It seems as though the phone works great if it's not in your hand but if you hold it, particularly in the lower left-hand corner the signal reception drops significantly. I find it really inexcusable to tell a customer who has just paid several hundreds of dollars for your product, and is likely to spend much more over the next several years through their contract and the purchase of apps, that their only option to remedy the issue is to "not hold your phone that way" or to drop more money on a case to insulate the phone from your hand. I also find it interesting that a company known for it's design and quality would not have noticed this through testing. Not a stellar start to the release of this one! Add to it the fact that pre-orders where a total mess and that white iPhone 4's are more difficult to manufacture?

See this BBC article or do a simple google search for more info.

Did Facebook Under Report Android And Twitter Stats?

TechCrunch has noticed that either there has been skyrocketing growth of android and Twitter clients hitting Facebook or some of the numbers previously reported were grossly under reported. FarmVille apparently has 63.9 million monthly active users (MAU) and Texas HoldEm Poker 28.5 million, but until recently android was reported at 67 MAU and Twitter just around 400,000. I guess that makes me an extremely early adopter... 1 of 67 isn't bad, even 1 of 400,000 is admirable. Right?

The numbers however, have suddenly taken a huge spike after what looks like a rather static baseline. Must be a mistake...

The number correction comes just ahead of  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sharing some thoughts with Inside Facebook about Twitter. In his discussion, he admitted he now views Twitter as a “very nice, simple service.”  

ThinkGeek Cease and Desist Drama Over Unicorn Meat

It should come as a surprise to nobody that my favorite online store is ThinkGeek, I've got a few geek points burning a hole in my pocket right now. The monkeys at ThinkGeek have a great sense of humor and an incredible line of products, there is something for everyone on your gift giving list. 

ThinkGeek has however managed to raise the ire of the National Pork Board (NPB) with it's promotion of Canned Unicorn Meat with the slogan "Unicorn - The New White Meat". It seems as though the NPB does not take kindly to the parody used in the slogan and has issued a cease and desist letter. 

In their usual good spirited nature, ThinkGeek has responded with the following:

We'd like to publicly apologize to the NPB for the confusion over unicorn and pork--and for their awkward extended pause on the phone after we had explained our unicorn meat doesn't actually exist. From our press release [PDF]:

"It was never our intention to cause a national crisis and misguide American citizens regarding the differences between the pig and the unicorn," said Scott Kauffman, President and CEO of Geeknet. "In fact, ThinkGeek's canned unicorn meat is sparkly, a bit red, and not approved by any government entity."

We'd also like to extend a special discount to everyone we offended with our portrayal of Unicorn Meat as "the new white meat." For a limited time, take $10 off any order of $40 or more by using the code PORKBOARD at checkout, good until 6/30/2010 at 11:59PM ET.

Thanks, National Pork Board, for giving us yet another reason to keep the April Fool's Day tradition alive. We'll always wonder if our Canned Unicorn Meat played some small, magical part in your rethinking of your brand.

Good on ya ThinkGeek! While you've not offended me with your good humor, I might just drop by and pretend that you did :)

Scottish Hospital To Use Robotic Workers

The new £300m Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert, Stirlingshire will open in August with a small army of robots wandering dedicated hallways and looking after many of the non medical duties involved in running a hospital. According to hospital chairman Ian Mullen "Members of staff will use a hand-held PDA to call up the robot to move meal trays, or linen, or whatever. The robot will come up in the service lift by itself, pick up the item and go back into the lift." The robots will be able to detect obstructions and send signals to doors to open or close them once they've passed through the threshold.

"Traditionally clean and dirty tasks are carried out by the same person," infection control nurse Lesley Shepherd told the BBC. "Here, you'll have the robots that do dirty tasks, so they may take dirty linen or clinical waste away, and you'll have robots that do clean tasks, such as bringing meals and clean linen to patients. They have separate lifts so there's no way they can cross, which is great." 

More detail including video at BBC News.