Archive for: January, 2008

Blog Comments: Are they the new spam?

Jan 11 2008 Published by Ben Chong under The Daily Geek

If you maintain a blog, you may notice that most, if not all, reader comments have absolutely nothing to do with your blog.

These “comments”, my friends, is spam a la Web 2.0!

As ISPs and email clients get smarter about detecting and filtering email spam, spammers have found new ways of reaching their audience. So if you enable reader comments in your blogs, you can expect to be inundated with all kinds of strange stuff.

I maintain another blog at the UC Berkeley EWMBAA website. In the hope of creating a community, the website maintainers did not disable reader comments. The result is that I am spammed by “New Comment Posted To” emails, asking me to approve the comments. Right now, I just route these emails to the trash.

The next step in blog software is probably going to be automatic spam detection and deletion. I smell a start-up opportunity here…

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Intervals at the gym

Jan 11 2008 Published by Ben Chong under The Bowlegged Runner

I went back to the gym this morning for intervals.

If there is one thing useful about treadmills, it is interval training.

You can set the precise speed and distance you want to run both for the speed and the recovery parts.

I arrived there after 8am. It was crowded. Almost as bad as last Sunday morning. I had to wait a couple of minutes before a treadmill was free. Next time, I’ll go a little earlier.

As usual, the gym was warm and humid. But the nice thing about intervals (at least mine) is the short time needed. At the end of 40 minutes, I was done and out.

I ended up signing up online for a one year pre-paid membership. We’ll see how that goes.

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Apple and the iPod

Jan 09 2008 Published by Ben Chong under Business, Marketing, Product, The Daily Geek

I use a Macbook for both my personal and professional computing needs. I also happen to own an iPod Shuffle (for treadmill running) and a 5th generation harddisk-based iPod.

So am I an Apple fanboy? Well, maybe not.

But I am always interested in talking about what I see is Apple’s stranglehold on the portable music/media player market. At least in the US.

I am in Las Vegas this week doing booth duty at the Consumer Electronics Show. This morning, I shared a cab with a young lady who worked on PR for iRiver.

For the uninitiated, iRiver used to be a HUGE player in the MP3 player market. I used to own one myself in the day. They’re a Korean-based company and apparently has a new CEO who is trying again to make the company count in the US market.

So, can iRiver be successful?

I am not sure.

Here is why:

Apple has an end to end solution for consumers. They not only sell pretty nifty and cool-looking players. They also provide the content and a very seamless way of moving that content to the players.

No other MP3/media player company has that. Microsoft has been trying hard. The Zunes is yet another attempt at providing that end-to-end solution.

But let’s look at it this way: if you have already spent a couple of hundred bucks on purchases from the iTunes store, are you going to switch to another player which cannot play any of that content? Probably not, unless your taste in music has dramatically changed.

So Apple has, in effect, locked their customers in by making it costly to switch over to competitors’ products.

The other challenge is the number of accessories that are available for the iPods. Everywhere you go at CES, you see cases, speakers, chargers, cables for the iPods.

Look at Pinnacle for example. They have this really cool product that grabs video, digitizes the video and pushes that out to your iPod. All without needing a PC. The gadget automatically detects the iPod and formats the video to fit the small iPod screen. It’s still really something for the hardcore geek. But the fact that iPod compability is part of the feature set adds to the impression(in the consumer’s eyes) that an iPod is the one to get if you want compatibility with really interesting third party products.

So yeah, companies like iRiver, Creative Labs and Sandisk are trying hard to get some of that market share from Apple. But the iTunes lock-in and the shear volume of really interesting third-party products for the iPod just make switching away from an iPod so much more difficult.

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Running at the Gym: 24 Hour Fitness

Jan 06 2008 Published by Ben Chong under The Bowlegged Runner

The weather has not been friendly, so I got a 7-day free trial at the local 24-Hour Fitness Gym.

This morning, I packed my towels, drinks and iPod Shuffle and did my long run at the gym. Ironically, it did not rain at all. But that’s my luck. My goal was to try a long run at the gym to see if it could be a viable alternative to screaming at the uncooperative weather.

It was an okay gym. Not as fancy as the one at the Sheraton Taipei, but definitely not as run down as the Fitness USA in Milpitas (which I had visited previously).

The treadmills were at the back of a hall and there were a lot of people on them, even at 8am on a Sunday morning. Fortunately, I managed to grab a machine.

The treadmill itself was okay. Nothing spectacular. I hated the fact that it had a timer which limited you to just 60 minutes after which the treadmill would do a warm-down routine whether you liked it or not. Since I was going to run 14 miles, that meant that I was going to have to restart a couple of times.

The other problem was the ventilation: it was pretty warm and humid. Entertainment was in the form of music over the PA system and two TV screens. You had to have an FM radio to listen to the TV. Perhaps the gym should do a promotional deal with Creative’s music players. They at least have a built-in FM radio (unlike the iPods).

I had not run for two weeks because of the ski trip, and then because of the subsequent cold. So by the end of the first hour on the treadmill, I was a little beat. But I still managed to do about 2 hours and 15 minutes at a slower than desired pace. Maybe 12 miles in all. Nothing spectacular. Hopefully, I’ll do better next week.

I wore my Asics Kayanos this time and didn’t have the ITB pain that plagued me at Sawyer Camp. But running on a treadmill still posed it own problems: I had soreness on the plantar fascia (running tends to make laymen sound like medical interns…).

At the end of the day, the $2000 question is whether I should sign up as a member of the gym.

I think I need a coin… or an ROI calculator.

The gym is probably only going be useful when the weather interferes with my training plan. So it is probably not worthwhile throwing too much money into a membership. Maybe I should just spring for a low-cost 90-day or 1-year trial membership. These are really only good for first-time members as they are not renewable (at least not at the introductory rates). But after one year, who knows what will happen? Maybe I’ll damage myself beyond repair at Big Sur…

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