It wasn’t easy and sometimes the sound would go in and out depending on how I would hold it so we returned that Wireless Sony mic system and is time we have a Hisonic 4 Channel VHF Wireless microphone system. This system allows us to each have our own microphone signals which allows us to adjust the volume individually for each person.

Every thing seemed to be working fine before we started filming, but there were some initial hurdles. The mic system had 4 individual line outputs and 1 mixed out. At first we tried using a splitter on the mixed output so that we could send one to the our camera (Kodak zi8) and the other one would just go to a headphone so that our camera/sound/producer Matt Brechbuler could listen in. However, when we split the output it seemed that somehow the output itself was cut in half and we could barely hear anything. So we had to forego the splitter and Matt just had to hope that the sound would come in correctly.

After our continued sound checks, we assumed it was ok, although our only form of testing the sound was to preview it through the dinky speakers on the Kodak camera. For some reason Jessie sounds just fine but we sounded slightly lower than him but not enough to think it was the microphones when in fact it was. Additionally on top of that problem, the camera was running low on battery power and we were unaware of it. As the power continued to drain, it was actually affection the sound input. We started recording anyhow and then just as we were starting on the 3rd topic, the camera turned off. So we had to take a break to check the recharge the camera. The problem with that camera was that we always assumed that the camera could be charged through built-in USB connector however as it turns out that port recharges really slowly so we had to start looking for the wall adapter and finally found it and that actually recharged the camera at half the speed.

That unexpected interruption made us lose track of what we were saying so it took a few minutes to figure out just were we left off and resume. We finally finished the taping and everything was great but when we looked back at the recording, that’s when we found out that the sound was messed up. It’s too bad since many of our comments and interactions were genuine and on the fly but I’m sure we’ll do just fine again next time.

So in light of these problems, we’ve bought some new items to help us with better production for our next taping. After testing the Hisonic system to see if it was mic system or the camera it turned out that the system had on bad channel that could have been affecting the other channels. Luckily Hisonic’s HQ was only a half hour away so I went to their offices where their technician Kelly personally confirmed that the receiver was broken and then tested another system before giving it to me as a replacement. Secondly we also got a 10 channel Behringer mixer so that we don’t run into issues in different channels and Matt can also listen to our audio though his headphones. Also another new addition to our show will be the awesome new green screen that we’ve added. This will let us show videos in the background while we are discussing topics. It’s probable going to be just like The Totally Rad show on Revision 3 but we’ll be discussing Baduku topics instead.

Hopefully it all turns out well so we will be filming next week on Wednesday and if all goes well you should see something up on itunes by Friday.

Some users have argued that Microsoft’s OS is just fail for tablet computer while others have gone as far as saying that people in general don’t want tablets and that Microsoft is honing in on this direction. I have to completely disagree and I’d have to just point at the relatively successful sales of Apples iPad as validation that there is a market for tablets. I think that there has been and continues to be a market for tablets and until now it has been pretty much an elusive dragon that no one was able to match reality and expectations. I think the difference really is that iPad set it’s expectations very clearly, even with the lack of multitasking support it said to the world this device is for casual computing needs, browsing, entertainment and communication.

The problem with previous tables, such as motion computing M100, HP TC-1000, AT&T EO communicator, or the plethora of other convertible tablets from Toshiba and others were all trying to be more computers than portable. People don’t want laptops with a touch screen, they want an improved mobile computing experience and that’s what the ipad offers. This isn’t to say I don’t want hard core computing to do stuff like design and programming. I think the future will offer some form of modular computing that offers computing on demand. Something where when you get home you plug your tablet into a dock that adds parallel processing, better graphics and functionality to the device.

That’s what MS is doing, they realized that they need to exceed the expectations of consumers by identifying iPads short coming and clear a product in production a year before iPad can’t account for all the problems iPad will face in the upcoming months. That is the time for MS to not just regurgitate but improve.

Episode 1 – Apple iPad Pre-Launch, People who camp out for new products, Kate Gosselin on Dancing with the Stars season 10, Chatroulette, 24 Hour Fitness

It reminded me of the absolute power that Al Reis’s  22 Immutable Laws of Marketing or Branding had over the way I approached marketing and branding. There were countless times in brand strategy meeting when people would reference a quote from that book as if it were the unquestionable final word.

For example, every time a client suggested a developing a new product completely outside the realm of their expertise, some one would toss out a Reis quote like “The law of elasticity” arguing that brand doesn’t have the elasticity to have the market accept this new product so Don’t Do It! However, after a decade of branding, not only have I come to realize that not only shouldn’t we be so dogmatic about branding, relying only on one perspective, but some real world case studies have come to completely defy some of these so call “immutable” laws, clearly some things are and must be mutable. As we see now brands like Google have expanded into multiple realms of products such as mobile phones which clearly defy the law of elasticity.

That being said the “immutable law” are really more like “common safe suggestions” but if you want to be really successful you may have to make some command decisions based on the situation at hand. Fried and Heinemeier’s Rework kind of has this feel where I think people are going to take it so literally that become their own personal dogma. Not to say that some ideas are brilliant, I just don’t think it is the be-all end-all solution to take any and every business from basement to billions.

This kind of complete commitment to the dogma was even more evident when I watch Jason Calacanis’ interview with David Heinemeier on the This Week in Startups Web Show [Baduku Review]. The two seemed to butt heads over so many issues, for example the topic of defining the perfect employees. Calacanis was a strong believer in employees who burn the midnight oil, site examples of the work environments at Apple and his own company, Maholo. However, Heinemeier who referenced the Rework school of thought, argued that employees who burn the midnight oil are a sign of inefficient employees.

I don’t want to be be burning the midnight oil all the time, but I do, because I have to. I do it because it’s an investment in today so that I might have to do it many years from now in the future. Burning the midnight oil I think is fine if people feel they are getting what they deserve for it. This is one of many reasons why I don’t work at a 9 to 5 job, because I want the option of working 5 – 10 if it means I can get to a better place faster.

What is the upward mobility of working as a filing clerk at a mortgage firm as opposed to a job where you define your own position and goals and you work hard to make it viable. This is a statement I’ve made time and time again to young adults entering the work place, create demand for a position and fill it.

I recount to them the story of my experience at Linksys. When I first started there I began as a Technical Support Representative, answering phones. One of the duties of a Tech Support Rep was to spend 1 hour a day testing out RMA product to see if it worked, mostly NICs (Network Interface Cards). It was a process where I had to boot up the card on 4 different operating systems, Windows, Windows NT, Linux and Novell. The 9 – 5ers would do their part, spend that 1 hour doing as they were told and testing cards individually on each different machine.

I saw an inefficiency here and thought why, can’t we automate this and create a batch operation that tested these three card one after another on the same system without having unplug the card and move it. With a bit of tinkering late at night at the office after everyone had left, I was able to create this automated RMA system so now instead of 1 NIC being processed very 5 minutes it was 4 card being processed in 3 minutes.

To make a long story short, the President of Linksys at the time, Victor Tsao, saw what I had did and from that created a new position that allowed me to train all support staff on how to use my new process and Victor then asked me to seek out other inefficiencies. That lead to my implementation of screenshots into the users guides of every product, not only a Linksys first but competitors would soon follow the same lead. All in all i kept creating new positions until I was Product Manager in less than 1 year. The thing to remember here is that burning the midnight oil is a great opportunity that some people want and crave and we should always make that opportunity available to them along with the appropriate reward and recognition.

There was certainly plenty of banter about the company size, particularly the number of people it takes to make a company successful. The Rework school of thought favors small teams, and Heinemeier argued that he thinks a successful multi-million dollar company could be eternally successful with as little as one person, however, Calacanis disagreed and stated that perhaps he didn’t understand the sheer complexity of scalability that companies like twitter face, which demand more people and rapid expansion. Perhaps Heinemeier most shocking comment was that he believed that he could run Twitter with half the people. I personally feel that keeping a company small for as long as you can is a good thing but the operative word really is “as long as you can”. At some point you have to start looking for other people to delegate your work to so that you can start concentrating on more important things. I personally don’t think Zappos could be a billion dollar company if Tony Hsieh had to fulfill every order on his own by hand. It all comes down to momentum. Business that utilize the Rework school of thought don’t really have growth momentum, they have organized methodical growth blocks, while other companies who are growing disproportionately, ie more and more demand but not as much income growth have a momentum that they just can’t stop, or if they do stop it could very well mean the end of their business.

I think over all they both made valid points. It’s the same reason why when I handed a copy of Rework to my friend,  I pretty much warned him the same thing. I said, “When you read this you need to keep in mind that you shouldn’t take everything as fact or as the only way of doing things, even though the tone make you feel like you should. Just remember that 37 Signals is a company of only a few employees spread across an entire nation, and they have a product that they can sell with a subscription to a small niche group of people.” The take away here is that some idea and concept seem to make great valid points but we shouldn’t take them as law. It really all depends on the situation at hand and whether the concept seems viable to this particular scenario.

In this undated publicity image released by Fox, "American Idol" judges, from left, Simon Cowell, Ellen DeGeneres, Kara DioGuardi and Randy Jackson are shown. Texan Lacey Brown was the first contestant eliminated from season 9 of the show March 16, 2010. (AP Photo/Fox)

So last week, Baduku.com conducted a short study titled “How Accurate Are Social Networks For Predicting American Idol Voting Results?” which gathered total fan count from major social networks to see if total fan count was a reliable predictor for contestant ranking from voting. This would in turn allow us to predict which contestants were more likely to be eliminated if fan count was directly correlated to votes. Based on the first week’s results, it turned out that it was loosely correlated but far from perfect and hardly accurate.

While we had hoped to collect an entire season’s data to see if there truly was a relationship and additional if the relationship became more robust as the season progressed. However, American Idol has decided to cancel all individual contestant pages. Some assumptions are that American Idol felt the social networks interfered with the suspense of voting. If they had looked at our results from last weeks statistics, they would have seen that it’s not all that accurate and doesn’t necessarily make voting behavior so predictable.

This week was no exception. We collected data from all the major social networks, Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, and Baduku, of total fan base from each respective official American Idol contestant fan page and once again ranked and order them. I the chart below you’ll see we’ve grouped results by source (social network) and listed it from two 2 men and women each and bottom 2 men and women each. The data reveals that both Twitter and Baduku accurately predicted 2 out of the 20 that were eliminated in their guess of who would be in the bottom 4. Facebook and Myspace, on the other hand, were only able to accurately predict 1 out of 20 of the eliminated contestants. While this is compelling information, both Facebook and Baduku were inaccurate in predicting the top 4 because both had included eliminated contestant John Park in their top 4 contestants.

Total Fan Count for American Idol Contestants as of March 1st, 2010