Michael Berner

cinemagr.am

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:41:46 -0500

My first cinemagraph!(Taken with http://cinemagr.am)

Jawbone UP Review: One Week In

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:59:41 -0500

I knew I lucked out getting lumped into the Jawbone UP beta tester program meaning a free $100 bracelet. What I didn’t know is that after one week, free seems like just the right value I’d put on the band.

Here’s Why:

Pros

It’s a conversation starter

Cons

It’s not Bluetooth enabled. Removing the band to Sync is cumbersome and, while fairly quick, adds friction to viewing the results
The data is limited. No heart rate monitor. No GPS for RunKeeper esque workout tracking. Limited customization. And I won’t even touch the food tracking integration
The app UI is subpar at best. Not only is it confusing, but the data visualization and aggregation doesn’t tell much of a story or help provide actionable next steps

I live in NY, so it basically tells me what I already know; I walk a lot. Outside of that, I’m finding it tough to realize the value of the band. I’ll give it another week or two but for right now I’m not sold. Good thing it was free!

Trolltunga, Norway - I want to go to there

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:45:17 -0500

Trolltunga, Norway - I want to go to there

newsweek: Behold! What the Stop SOPA blackout managed to...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:34:03 -0500

newsweek:

Behold! What the Stop SOPA blackout managed to accomplish in 24 hours.

Ahh the power of community and data viz

This is Father Bob. He baptized, confirmed and/or married...

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:38:18 -0500

This is Father Bob. He baptized, confirmed and/or married everyone in our immediate and extended family.

He is a great man…

I'll Gladly Pay You $25 Now for a Dinner Reservation in 1Hr

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:57:01 -0500

It’s Friday night and I need a dinner reservation for my family. Lacking the foresight on such things, I am looking at 7:30pm for said reservation and coming up understandably empty handed unless 10:30pm is my ideal eating time.

This isn’t a unique situation. Reservations are made on a first come first serve bases across the board. Plan ahead and you’ll be golden. Don’t and you’re SOL.

But does it always need to be this way? Imagine if restaurants would hold a small portion of their table inventory for auction. People finding themselves in my situation could pay flat out or bid on tables/times based on anticipated demand.

Would I drop $25+ to avoid the preplanning and hassle and get me and my family into a good restaurant right now? Yes. Would other people? Well certainly not everyone but I’m sure there is a fraction of eaters who would appreciate this service even if it came with the cost.

Varying entry points to accomodate the consumer can benefit not only the dining guests but puts added cash into the coffers of the restaurants. Win Win

*Note, I only endorse this if on a fraction of tables and in certain circumstances. I would be crazy if I felt like paying for a reso all the time

As I do every million, lets celebrate Taz hitting 4MM views!...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:23:29 -0500

As I do every million, lets celebrate Taz hitting 4MM views! Thanks to the Aviaros del Caribe, Taz is the most watched sloth video in the world!

This is unbelievable

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:11:35 -0500

This is unbelievable

New York Tech Meetup did it again this past Wednesday with 9...

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 21:21:30 -0500

New York Tech Meetup did it again this past Wednesday with 9 demo’s of some amazing new startup’s coming out of Silicon Alley. While all 9 had were compelling in their own right, here are my top 3 coming out of this months demo’s:

1. Sonic Notify

I first heard of these guys after coming to our agency for a lunch and learn, and they hit it out of the park. Rarely do I see a new service that has so many practical applications across multiple facets of consumer industries. While their demo at NYTM didn’t do them justice, this is without a doubt a company to watch out for.

From sonicnotify.com

SonicNotify is a platform that enables media to be delivered to a smartphone or tablet based on presence. No technology to date has enabled media delivery based on a consumer standing in front of a shelf, television, or at a concert. The patent pending technology enables the communication of data in the ultra high-frequency inaudible range between any speaker and microphone. The decoding algorithm enables a common process for extracting data from audio using any microphone on any smartphone or tablet.

2. ObscuraCam (Witness & The Guardian Projet)

There is a noticeable difference in crowd reaction when someone demo’s a product that has humanitarian impact. ObscuraCam is a joint partnership between Witness (an international nonprofit set to empower human rights defenders with video/photo tools to fight injustice) and The Guardian Project (an open source programming company building products to protect unjust intrusion and monitoring in technology). A camera app that goes above and beyond the rest by providing advanced meta data inclusions/exclusions, facial recognition and blocking, integrated tagging and advanced security measures to provide human rights activists with a safe tool to monitor and track injustice. This is a step in the right direction for activists.

3. PunchUp

These guys make the list primarily because I just lost my Joe’s Coffee punch card after being one latte away from a free one. PunchUp takes the physical loyalty cards out of the equation by making this engagement digital, social, and reimbursable directly to your card of choice. Twenty bucks Foursquare is an iteration away from introducing these functions themselves, it’s a trend in loyalty I think we’ll see a lot more of in the near future.

Props to the other demo’s for their great products, as well, which you can check out here:

YouNow - http://younow.com – @younow
Deaftel - www.deaftel.com – @deaftel
Buyosphere - http://www.buyosphere.com – @buyosphere
Chat & - www.chatAND.com
Fluidinfo - http://fluidinfo.com – @fluidinfo
Memberly - http://member.ly – @memberly

If you’ve haven’t made it out for a nice yog today,...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:12:44 -0500

If you’ve haven’t made it out for a nice yog today, this insane single track mountain bike video will get your heart racing

Photo

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:38:33 -0500

If you have an hour and thirty minutes, I highly suggest you...

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:20:55 -0500

If you have an hour and thirty minutes, I highly suggest you check out Life in a Day by Ridley Scott, the groundbreaking YouTube video event:

From Life in a Day:

On July 24^th, 2010, thousands of people around the world uploaded videos of their day to YouTube to take part in Life in a Day, a historic cinematic experiment to create a documentary film about a single day on earth.

Oscar-winner director Kevin McDonald whittled down over 4500 hours of footage in a 90-minute film that wowed audiences at the Sundance, Berlin and SXSW Film Festivals earlier this year.

I will not read your email. This isn’t meant to be a broad...

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:21:16 -0500

I will not read your email. This isn’t meant to be a broad stroke statement but more for the daily deals, industry trades, news aggregators et all that send me 30 emails during the night.

When I wake up my email priorities are 1) Work 2) Family/Friends 3) Key Pubs that will be relevant to my day.

Newsletters like the above get instantly deleted to clear the way for the barrage of emails I’ll receive , unless they kill it with a catchy subject matter.

Hyper targeted open rates could fix this. Send me emails at different times of different days and stick with the highest open rate, but clearly they dont do this.

I’m sure I miss out on important items every now and then. But every newsletter sub isn’t the same and a more personalized attack could help grow your business.

""

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:57:10 -0500

“”

-
The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have shitloads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked

Love everything Louis CK did with this self promotion

Here’s some backstory on Louis CK’s plan for this: Comedians Sound Off On Louis CK’s Latest Funny Business

Louis CK with a sales report for his Live at the Beacon Theater show that he produced, directed and began selling for $5 off of his site this past weekend. (via futurejournalismproject)

The Future of Social May Be Different Than We Think

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:31:16 -0500

I was reading the interwebs this weekend and was diving into some posts on Fred Wilson’s AVC blog. He had posted an interesting presentation from George Colony – CEO of Forrester Research – from the Le Web conference in Paris, which I thought was an interesting, if not thought provoking, look into our “social” future.

Some key points coming from the talk:

Social Saturation: We are running out of hours for social usage and we are running out of people given the high saturation of users around the globe.
If you are building social platforms that require more time from users, you will likely not be successful (“nonsense” like Foursquare will go away. PS props to Fred for posting a clip knocking USV’s investment)
Next wave of social will be more efficient, faster, easier to use and have a higher value per time equation

While none of this is groundbreakingly new information and his hypothesis and debates can be argued (I think Foursquare will secure its niche once it perfects Radar), the idea that we are migrating to more efficient apps that achieve our social goals is spot on.

Path is a prime example of a social oriented app that is owning my usage by eliminating the clutter typically involved with opening a new app for each separate function I hope to achieve. This ease of use saves me time and most importantly, provides a more seamless user experience.

Social clutter is the bloat that that will take down the periphery but what will emerge is an ecosystem of apps that engage smarter, connect further and enhance deeper.

-@michaelberner

My travel list is long. As much as I knock off a country or two...

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:07:57 -0500

My travel list is long. As much as I knock off a country or two each year I can’t seem to make a dent. So for the time being I’ll keep throwing suggestions onto the pile.

I am putting diving with Great Whites at the top…

If Earth had a tourism board, this would be its promotional...

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:17:24 -0500

If Earth had a tourism board, this would be its promotional video

Congrats @allenburt and @epicthrills for the great shout...

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 14:54:29 -0500

Congrats @allenburt and @epicthrills for the great shout out!

whereisthecoool:

Epic Thrills

Gilt Groupe for Adrenaline Junkies

The authentic travel adventure is hard to find. With war famine and the ever-shrinking frontier it is difficult to explore the fringes of nature and society without running the risk of disappearing into it.

Entrepreneur and seasoned traveler Allen Burt recognized the lack of excitement being offered by most travel companies and founded Epic Thrills to fill this void. The invite only site offers weekly trips a little more rigorous than the typical Hawaii vacation.

“Currently, the internet is overrun with watered down, vanilla travel deals that don’t offer opportunities to travelers seeking real adventures. Epic Thrills is our attempt to inject the fire and adrenaline back into the online travel market.”

said Burt.

The hand-selected excursions offer Indianan Jones type experiences at a discounted price. Whether Kayaking through the Komodo Islands of Indonesia or kite boarding in the Dominican Republic there is nothing traditional about these voyages.

Catering to a adrenaline fueled audience, Epic Thrills is a promising new way to do travel. Avoid the wait and use this invitation link for immediate access and free membership to EpicThrills.com.

I’m in desperate need of a trip. Scratch that, an...

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:20:33 -0500

I’m in desperate need of a trip. Scratch that, an adventure

Steve Jobs Keeps on Insipring

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:07:00 -0500

“When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

- Steve Jobs