First, Skype. I feel like the last guy getting on the Skype train. The last hold out. Listen. It’s not worth it. The holding out part, I mean. Skype is pretty fantastic!

We just had a baby, yadda, yadda. My Mom was in town for a few weeks to help us get settled. Having her go home was a big, big change in our little guy’s life. But check this out. Two days later, Evan got to see and hear his Grandma again. Even better, he also got to see and hear his Nanna; and his cousins Kali and Kaitlyn got to see and hear Evan for the first time.

You can only say so much about the video phone concept, and I was still on the fence until we actually tried it. I’m sold. It is intoxicating.

Second is Netflix, again. I’m an old school Netflx subscriber. I left for a while, but came back for lots of reasons. I was bummed for a while that the Watch Instantly feature wasn’t available for Macs for a long time, but they finally came around.

So, last Tuesday I got a surprise Netflix disc in the mail. When put in my Wii, I get to watch all this stuff instantly on my TV. All this content right there to browse and watch. I’m a Dish Network subscriber and have a few minor complaints. The On-Demand stuff is slow; the broadband connection has never worked right with multiple customer service calls. In general we’re happy, but the Netflix/Wii system worked flawlessly within 5 minutes of the disc being taken out of the mailbox.

The timing of these is great, what with the baby leading to us continuing our homebody trend for a bit longer.

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I’ve found myself opening my Blackberry RSS reader at red traffic lights. I’ve had my lovely wife pull the Blackberry from my hands during dinner with friends. I’ve found myself watching TV while being logged onto Facebook, clicking through emails on my Blackberry and talking on the phone.

Frankly, I’ve hit a wall. It’s OK to be connected, but I have made the decision to not live my life connected moment to moment. Two things led to this decision.

1. A few years ago I was on a whale watching boat ride. Camera in hand, and hearing the oohs and ahhs of other passengers, I would swing around trying to capture the jumping whale on a memory stick. I was not very successful. And I didn’t get to actually see many of the whales because I was too busy staring at the LCD screen of my camera. Finally, I gave up on the camera and just started watching nature.
2. More recently I went to a marketing automation seminar a couple of weeks ago. Participants were encouraged to tweet the event in real time… during presentations. This seemed like a good idea, but I noticed that in order to tweet I needed to stop paying attention to the speaker. And then to follow the Twitter event feed, I was staring at my Blackberry, not paying much attention to the event itself. And to top that, most of the tweets were simple regurgitations of some of the key points of the person currently speaking.

I’m done. It’s over. I check my email when I have a second. I’ll tweet when something comes up (usually when I’m traveling).

As a marketer, I’ve been curious how these hyper-connected tools will be monetized. There is more to think about here. I’ve had my toe dipped in this water from a business perspective for a couple of years, but still, I’ve got to marinate a bit more on this.

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Anyway, I didn’t really want one. I guess I think I don’t have any time or something. Whenever I don’t think I have any time (for Wii, or exercise, or dog walking…) all I need to do is cut out a little TV time and I’m good. Not that I watch an insane amount of TV, but I certainly get my fair share.

So, we got one and it is frickin’ awesome. The remote and the nunchuck, the sensor bar… We don’t have any other games but for the Wii Sports one that comes with the unit, and now Barb and I are on our way to professional rank, playing doubles tennis. We try not to yell at each other when we miss a shot, and we totally celebrate when we make a great return.

It is virtually impossible to not get into the game, because you’re so physically involved. I heard this saying once, that if you want to find the fastest, easiest way to finish a task, get the laziest person you know to do it. They will find a way to accomplish it without breaking a sweat.

Well, there might be someone out there who can play the Wii sitting down, but not me. I have to be standing up. I’m full on swinging: backhands, lobs, overhead slams. In the boxing game, there is no other option but to actually look like your fighting for your life. By the end of a fight, I am literally sweating.

Other comments:

• The remotes are awesome. You use them to throw darts, pitch baseballs, swing at pitches, hit tennis balls, bowl balls. I’m really amazed at the response I get with this. Throwing sidearm in baseball. Throwing upper cuts in boxing. Awesome.
• Somebody on the packaging team went to the Apple University of packaging. Both the product and the package are clean, white, and shiny. This extends to the packaging for other accessories like extra controllers and games. There is no denying the (positive) impact of Apple on retail packaging.
• I’m looking forward to the upcoming yoga ‘game’ set for release Q1 of next year.
• My friend Joe is going to a Wii party this weekend. I totally have to get into that.
• You get to create a Mii (pronounced ‘me’) that becomes the digital version of you for Wii games. If you take you remote over to a friend’s house to geek out, your Mii automatically follows. The Mii can look like you or not. You can even make it look like a cat or a martian. And if you create multiple Miis, they start showing up in the background of other games. They might be bowling in the lane next to you, sitting in the stands at the tennis match.
• It has Internet connectivity, but I think it by way of a USB plugin that connects to the wireless network in my house. I don’t know a whole lot about this, yet, but I will get this going, so Simon and I can play Madden from our respective living rooms.

I didn’t know I wanted a Wii, but I am psyched that I have it. I only wish I had a way to publish my Mii.

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I typically dig the songs from iPod commercials. Except for maybe that Eminem one. And I thought the new iPod Touch commercial followed along nicely with picking something catchy and safe. So, I clicked over to Google to see who the song was by.

What I found surprised me.

Sometime in September, an 18-year-old kid named Nick Haley put together his own iPod Touch commercial using video footage from Apple.com. He found a song he thought was perfect (it is), from Cansei de Ser Sexy named Music is my Hot, Hot Sex. He posted his project on YouTube.

Rather than send this kid a cease and desist letter, Apple emailed him to say they wanted it for their own. They re-cut it, got permission from the band and now you are seeing it five times a day.

His original cut commercial is a little rougher and doesn’t include the Foo Fighters. Check out the final cut.

Here’s what I love about this. This student has an awesome story that will get him laid for a couple of years. But also, this little known Brazilian band, CSS, now has their song featured on national TV, and is currently number 30 on the iTunes top 100 list. I think it is great that an English student has the power to help break an obscure band.

This is all, of course, hinging on whether or not this story is real. I hate being so cynical.

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We subscribe to Dish Network. We’ve had a PVR for a couple of years. And the thing I was waiting for was an affordable upgrade that would allow us to get a PVR with HD. The time came: the PVR-622 The deal was essentially for a free upgrade; of course after an understandably complex rebate involving multiple forms, copies of bills and a strange 60-day process.

The unit is great. We can record two things at once or watch one thing and record another. As much as we are huge PVR fans, this is a first in our PVR experience. It’s awesome to have this capability.

And we are finally taking advantage of the Vizio in all of its HD glory. We got it just in time for the start of the football season, and the picture is so incredible. My primary question is why the heck is FOX not broadcasting their games in HD? It is great. I don’t think I could watch Grey’s Anatomy in SD again!

But! Here’s the catch: the HD service itself.

The HD service is sketchy at best. Really, really sketchy. There are a dozen or so HD channels offered from Dish Network. These are things like Monster, HDNET and HDNMV. And then there are HD versions for channels like A&E, TNT and TBS. The consistency of reception of these channels is crap! I mean like total crap. It is out, like, 50 percent of the time. I try to record or watch the Sopranos on A&E and it’s no dice. When reception goes out, you see a screen that tells you the system is trying to acquire satellite signal, then another screen telling you service is unavailable.

Fortunately, we have really good reception for the local affiliate channels of NBC et al. I’m not sure what I would have done if I had lost reception during a tense fantasy football battle. I’m not sure if my neighbor watches football, but I would have certainly found out.

So, when it is working it is sweet. The only thing that is keeping me from throwing the Dish receiver out the window is it is a sweet unit (it’s not the PVR’s fault…) and because we’re not really paying for the HD service yet. The rebates take care of that. But after a six-month period I will see a 33 percent increase to my bill.

I call to complain and the friendly customer service people schedule a service call. The service guy comes out to my house and tells me I am getting the expected reception, and then I hear some bunk about Dish trying to get by with one satellite for all of the US, and the West coast is on the very edge of the range. I call to complain again, and the friendly customer service people schedule a service call.

I’ve not reached the point where the sketchy service on the special HD channels outweighs how totally awesome it is to watch HD Football and The Office on the HD PVR. We’ll see how this develops over the next couple of months.

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Anyway, that’s not what I want to talk about. I started using the Nike+ iPod Nano system during the Spring this year and it is totally and completely AWESOME. I’m tracking my mileage, my pace. Figuring out the songs I run the best to. It is great.

If you don’t know, the system works like this. You need:

• iPod Nano
• Computer with iTunes installed
• Nike+ kit – Includes a transmitter that goes in your shoe and a receiver that plugs into your iPod
• Compatible Running Shoes – Nikes let you stick the transmitter in the shoe, while some company is making a little case that’ll attach to any shoe.

Plug everything in and use your iPod to plan your run. Go for time, distance, calories, whatever. When you finish, go take a shower, then plug your Nano into your computer. A sweet new tab will show up in the iTunes iPod window. As if this isn’t magical enough, here’s where it really gets good. You can automatically have your run data uploaded to Nikeplus.com to keep track of your runs. Name them. Look at your pace from mile to mile. It even has some kind of strange social angles you can take advantage of.

But the thing I discovered today is this great feature of being able to post my five most recent runs on this very blog! Go check out my About page. It is really sweet.

Now there are a ton more features to this whole system that I’m skipping, because I want your experience to be as surprising and fulfilling as mine. It’s fun, it’s easy and it makes me want to run more. Nice.

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But this new technology requires a new physical network. And not just of fiber optics spread across the globe, but fiber stretched to every individual house, a.k.a. “Fiber-To-The-Home”. Construction of these networks will likely to represent the largest communications infrastructure upgrade in decades and Alpha Technologies is set to play a significant role.

But how much difference can a fiber network make? Consider that downloading a 5-megabyte MP3 with dial-up access – the original Internet technology – can take 10 minutes. DSL may take 30 seconds. Cable is pretty fast at 10 seconds. But, fiber? One second. That’s it. Snap your fingers.

And it’s not just for data. Opting for fiber service means you’ll not only get access to incredibly high-speed Internet access, but recently announced TV and telephone service. All of it… now…

An optical fiber network can reach millions of homes and everyone one of those home requires a power conversion and back-up system. That’s where Alpha comes in. Unlike cable networks, you only need power solutions at the front and the end, not the middle. And because of these power solution needs, customers include telephone companies and cable providers, and municipalities, property developers and even homeowners impatient for someone else to bring the technology around.

The use of dial-up Internet connections is waning. It is nearly impossible – well, maybe just unbearable – to try browsing the Internet with anything other than a high-speed connection. And with more and more people interested in seeing what a broadband connection has to offer, today’s technologies are being tested. As more people leave behind the painfully slow download speeds of a dial-up connection, some may be disappointed in the crowded realm of other broadband technologies.

Coax cable is reaching the upper limits of its data capacity. And telephone companies are doing everything possible to squeeze as much bandwidth as possible from their existing copper-based networks, much of which is at or near end of life.

And while those networks are being tested, many rural and remote communities have been left behind by the broadband train altogether. In order to get broadband access, many have been limited to satellite Internet technology, which is spotty at best. Pressed by community and business leaders many municipalities have taken control of their destiny and have followed the lead of cities like Bristol, Virginia, the first municipal utility to offer voice, video and data over a fiber-to-the-home network. Taking on the cost of bringing high speed data access to your town is not cheap, so most are looking toward the most forward-looking option available: Fiber. Today the number of municipalities currently fielding or planning FTTh networks is in the hundreds.

Over the last 24-months Alpha Technologies has been working on a full complement of telecommunications-grade primary and standby power solutions for home and business, as well as headend power solutions like AC Uninterruptible Power Supplies, inverters, rectifiers, batteries and large generator sets.

It’s units like these that help make bringing fiber to the home a reality. After all, high-speed on the information superhighway is no good if there’s no exit ramp to your house.

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Anyway, now I’m compelled to write about one more ad campaign. Actually, I guess it’s just a commercial. Fortunately, I won’t be subject to this one much longer, because it’s for the Christmas season.

Let me give a little background. There was a lot of hype this last summer about the affect the Internet was having on entertainment and other mass media. I only mention the anti-hype from Snakes on a Plane for one. The world didn’t collapse because a movie had more attention before its release than after. Let’s not assume if the SOAP producers had successfully renamed the movie Pacific Flight whatever, it would have had any more or less success. I’m thinking even though the movie didn’t perform as some in the press thought it might, it did better overall than it would have without the Internet attention. And in hindsight, I’m kind of amused by the mass media hype that was generated by the Internet Hype. There’s some irony in there I think.

Anyway, the offender I’m choosing to complain about today is a huge beer company (HBC) that I will not mention, mainly because they don’t need it, but also because they don’t deserve it for this particular action (think: great taste, less filling…). For a commercial this Christmas, this HBC grabbed an idea for a commercial directly from a web video of last year: this insane shot of Christmas lights set to music, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, I believe. This web video came out sometime around Thanksgiving 2005, which makes me think it was actually filmed the year before. It got featured on RocketBoom, and various other Vlogs.

So, this year there are lots of copies on YouTube. Some are decent and they’re done by self-funded web monkeys, but one copy is well-funded and professionally shot and choreographed. Come on HBC!! How much did you pay an ad company to copy this web video? And here’s the big question: was it worth it since the original is so much better than your expensive rip-off? I can only guess someone went on vacation, because the man-law commercials are great…

Frankly, this is the worst of modern advertising. If you’re looking for a reason that the Internet is going to ultimately kill TV advertising and entertainment, this is it. To survive, traditional forms of media need to be more creative. Not less. If you really want to show how cool you are by attaching your brand to a web meme, play the actual video from the web.

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I see a kind of zero-sum game going on with supply and demand. For example, organic foods are selling like crazy. From food-coops, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and other upscale grocery stores. The demand is so great suppliers are having trouble keeping up. But with a national population in the US of 300 million and a world population of more than 6.5 billion, I would guess there is a point at which it is impossible for everyone to buy organic foods. This of course unless we lower the standards of what is considered organic. There are only so many farms and dairies and they are close to only so many metropolises. At some point growth hormones and insecticides and other “impurities” are going to need to be introduced to make sure there is enough affordable, and hopefully healthy, food for all income levels.

So it goes: Apple has gone mainstream. Rather, Apple has made it to mainstream with the iPod and now the Apple-haters are coming out. The worst are the former Mac-heads who no longer like Apple because it isn’t rebellious enough… it’s not their little secret anymore… it’s not the source of their quasi-intellectual status from which they get to look down on the rest of the population as lemmings and suckers and surrenderers to the hegemonic downfall of our Orwellian society.

Apple is known for being more expensive than the other guys. Sometimes double or triple. And with that comes the expectation of double or triple the quality and performance. And with the iBook, the iPod, the MacBook and the growing demand from the growing base of Mac-heads, Apple moved production to Asia. Like just about any other company with the business-skills to know they can lower labor costs. With this kind of production move, there are going to be problems. And a typical Mac-head is more technologically skilled than your average citizen. So if they have a problem, they are more likely to have an outlet to share their disgruntled ravings. The Internet forum/blosphere/media echo chamber starts and you hear about it a lot more. But for the 60 Million iPods that have been sold (frankly, most of them being Nanos) there are startlingly few problems.

But change is painful. With growth and popularity, Apple needed to extend their operations in order to meet demand. The bigger issue now is how Apple deals with product problems. The secretive nature with which they develop and release products (which I LOVE by the way) may not be the best to deal with customer service issues, but at least it limits official Apple communications to the truth. Every organization makes occasional missteps, but Apple works to resolve negative issues. Sometimes it is done quietly and sometimes it’s done with a new product release.

So don’t condemn Apple or Steve Jobs because they are mainstream. Apple still makes great products, has fun stores and provides a computer experience to satisfy the technically skilled and the technophobe alike.

They didn’t go mainstream. Mainstream came to them.

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. Since Green Day makes really good music, has sold millions of records and consistently sells out any arena, coliseum or stadium, they officially suck.

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