In an earlier podcast with the Frag Dolls, we covered Belkin’s new game controller, and this time, Belkin’s Robert Naugle shows some of the other gadgets they’re releasing; like the Podcast Studio, which takes advantage of the iPod Voice Memo feature, and gives you stereo mics gain control, pro mic inputs and more, the N1 Vision, a smart router with sensible readouts and computerless setup, a Network USB Hub, and Flywire, their wireless HD transmitter. Check out these gag-a-widget-thing-a-mabobbs, announced at CES 2008 in Las Vegas.

Tags: belkin, ces 2008, gadget, ipod, CES, Robert Naugle, Voice Memo, Frag Dolls, BlogHaus, N1 Vision, Flywire

This small device simply plugs into any Intel or PowerPC based Mac with a USB port (USB 2 is highly recommended). All of the heavy processing normally done by your computer is offloaded onto the Turbo.264 encoder, resulting in much faster encoding and freeing up your Mac for other tasks.

The older and slower your Mac, the more significant the speed increase will be with this device. We found the Turbo.264 encoded video up to 20 times faster on a G4, but even on higher end Intel based Macs, encoding times were drastically improved with the Turbo.264.

The Elgato Turbo.264 goes for about $90 on Amazon.com, making it a very inexpensive way to bring new life to an old Mac as a video encoding workstation.

The new software for the Turbo.264 couldn’t be any easier to use. As with the earlier software, it allows for batch processing, but more importantly, it provides support for custom data rates and other settings. It also includes simple selections for encoding video optimized for the Apple TV, iPhone, iPods, or the recently announced iPod Touch, iPod Classic and iPod Nano (also known as the iPod Nano Fatty.

While the included software is easy to use, the Turbo.264 comes with plug-ins for QuickTime that allow it to work with any application that uses QuickTime for export. This includes Final Cut Express, Final Cut Pro, iMovie (including both HD and ‘08) and third party video apps such as Roxio Popcorn.

For an alternative to the Turbo.264 from Elgato, consider the VideoExpress from Miglia. The Miglia compares very well in terms of hardware and performance, but we find the software for the Turbo.264 to be much better due to the ability to easily customize the settings.

[9/12/2007 - update…]See also:
More Quick and Easy Methods for Video on Your iPhone, Apple TV or New iPod

Tags: Ripping DVD, Turbo.264, video encoder, Elgato Systems, Macintosh, Apple, Intel, PowerPC, USB, Apple TV, iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch, iPod Classic, iPod Nano, iPod Nano Fatty, QuickTime, Final Cut Express, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Roxio Popcorn, VideoExpress, Miglia

Also, Kevin spews his Mac-cult inspired thoughts on Steve Jobs delivering the keynote at CES 2009

See the Flickr photo set for this podcast.

Tags: Jason Lopez, Kevin Edwards, CES 2008, CES 2009, Consumer Electronics Show, Apple, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, CES, MacWorld, Steve Jobs, Keynote

Tags: CES, John Shearer, Powercast, wireless, CESBlogHaus, BlogHaus

Paul Travers, CEO of Vuzix, talks with Brad Baldwin from the show floor of 2008 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) about the products and the awards they have received.

Specs for the Techie:
- Virtual 62” screen viewed from 9-feet
- Advanced Video Frame Buffers, allowing for up to four 62 inch virtual screens
- iWear 3D Enabled for automatic 2D/3D control as well as field sequential 3D video files
- Twin high-resolution 640×480 (920,000 pixels) LCD displays
- Flicker free 3D video support for most field sequential 3D video files
- 32-degree field of view
- 24-bit true color (16 million colors)
- 60 Hz progressive scan update rate
- Removable, integrated speakers
- AccuTilt viewer with 15 degrees of angle
- Console Video Splitter with NTSC, Component & HDMI video in and out.

Tags: CES, BlogHaus, Display, iWear, Paul Travers, Vuzix, Wearables

Tags: Symantec, Building Confidence in Enterprise Security, Andre Gold, ING, Samir Kapuria, IT Compliance, IT Risk Management, Apple, iPod

Here’s an interview with two of INPUT’s public safety analysts and a look at their report, which is an indictment of our nation’s commitment to fixing one of the biggest homeland security gaps identified on 9/11.

Tags: Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, public safety, INPUT, interoperability, first responder communication

To get a better understanding of the service, Larry spoke with Starbucks CEO and founder Howard Schultz who participated in Apple’s announcement.

Tags: iPhone price cuts, Apple and Starbucks, iTunes at Starbucks, Howard Schultz

Larry Magid talks about the controversy and interviews Apple VP Phil Schiller about the pricing on the day of the original announcement. It was before the firestorm and Jobs’ “apology.”

Tags: Steve Jobs, iPhone, Phil Schiller

Tags: iPod, Medis Technologies, Michelle Rush, Larry Magid

Included are products from:
Griffin Technology
DLO
Incase
SpeckProducts
Case-mate
RadTech
SendStation
Belkin

Shot and edited by Patrick Haynes

Tags: iPhone accessories, iPod accessories, iPhone, Griffin Technology, DLO, Incase, SpeckProducts, Case-mate, RadTech, SendStation, Belkin

Roz’s rowing vessel is fully self-sustained. During this two-plus months adventure, a total of 6 sonar panels and a wind turbine will provide power for her desalination system, her communications system, computer system and various miscellaneous systems including her iPod and on board soundsystem. We have added a few more gadgets: data loggers that will show us how much energy Roz’s system is generating each day. The Roz Savage page on Smart Energy publishes this data and predicts future generation based on the weather forecast.

I talked to Roz prior to her departure about her ambitions and day-to-day life on the vessel.

Tags: Roz Savage

Tags: GTO, DeLorean, Greg Wallace

In this keynote preview, Rio Pesino and Kevin Edwards discuss what’s likely to occur: iPod sales figures, iPhone sales estimates, Macintosh market share increases, and a Apple TV status update.

Leopard (OS X 10.5) will likely be demonstrated in greater detail, and we hope will feature ZFS in addition to previously announced features.

Also in this podcast is a round up of rumors and speculation about Apple opening up the iPhone to developers and possibly a huge initiative for developers for Apple gamming.

Speaking of developers, developers, developers… how much stage time will Microsoft’s new head of Mac development (MacBU), Craig Eisler, get to show Office 2008 if .Mac will be including all kinds of competitive Google apps?

For more updates from the rumor mill as well as other sites expecting to provide text and photo updates, check out: AppleInsider, Mac Rumors, Think Secret, MacDailyNews, and Mac Observer.

Tags: Apple, WWDC, Steve Jobs, Keynote, iPod, iPhone, Macintosh, Apple TV, Leopard, ZFS, developers, Craig Eisler, Office 2008, AppleInsider, Mac Rumors, Think Secret, MacDailyNews, Mac Observer

Tags: Roxio, Crunch, Vito Salvaggio, House of Shields

Tags: John Yoon, Bill Harper, Control4

(more…)

Tags: NETGEAR, Digital Entertainer HD, Jamison Ching

This podcast is brought to you by Rocky Mountain Voices.

(more…)

Tags: Control4, Ed Ryan, Jeff Thomas, Brad Baldwin

This podcast is brought to you by Rocky Mountain Voices.

Transcript:

Host: Brad Baldwin – Rocky Mountain Voices
Guest: Kim Anthony Parker – iPort
Guest: Kip Meacham - Card Access
Guest: Gina Lutkus – Somfy
Guest: Key Digital Systems - Speaker
Guest: Thomas Pickral - Home Automation Incorporated
Guest: Dave Froerer – VisionArt
Guest: David Richard – Eaton Home Heartbeat
Guest: Wade Smith – WellSpring Wireless
Guest: Abbas – DSC
Guest: Terry Hoffmann – Johnson Controls
Guest: Nick Finamore – Ember Corporation

Dave Froerer – VisionArt
Hello, my name is Dave Froerer with VisionArt. VisionArt is a system that we manufacture to conceal plasma TVs and flat panel, any flat panel TV that’s mounted either inside the wall like this one is, or can also be mounted - surface mounted on the outside of the wall. We have about 300 pieces of art and about 40 frames. You can also do custom art; you can also do custom frames. So, these are clay prints and it is rolling up and down, so the whole frame doesn’t move. So, you have a beautiful piece of art and instead of watching the TV — and then when you want to watch TV, you hit the ‘TV On’ on your Control4 remote of course and the art rolls up into the top of the frame. We make every single one of them one at a time for every plasma TV and flat panel on the market. So you tell us what TV you have, and we make it for that exact TV dimensions. We also have a cooling system - if you put it inside the wall so that you don’t have to worry about burning up the TV or the LCD. We have about 300 pieces of art; so we have books like this that are available or everything is on our website, it is visionartgalleries.com. There’s also a link on the Control4 site on the vendor partner area back to our website. So you can view all the frames on our site and all the art. You can also click the frame and it will go around the art for you. You can go to another section of our website and you can play with the wall color after you’ve pictured art and your frames.

Kip Meacham - Card Access
Hi my name is Kip Meacham. I’m the Vice President of marketing for Card Access. We are an ecosystems partner with Control4 and have actually produced some of the first products designed specifically for the Control4 Home Automation Platform. For example, this device introduced in November is our in home wireless contact switch. It allows you to interface multiple contacts including an integrated magnetic contact and two external contacts of the installers choosing into a single wireless device. It will also measure temperature internally and externally and when powered by DC power, will act as a ZigBee repeater in the ZigBee mesh. We’re announcing at this show, a wireless contact relay allowing us, as you’ll note on this little functional fountain, our ability to turn that fountain on and off wirelessly, again using the Control4 Home Automation Platform. What Card Access has done, is building a variety of wireless products, our expertise being in developing high performance Wi-Fi and other wireless technology radios; and we are integrating that wisdom into the products that we’re delivering to the marketplace.

Gina Lutkus – Somfy
Hi, how you doing? My name is Gina Lutkus from Somfy Systems. Somfy systems is a manufacturer of tubular motors for window treatments. As you can see here we have teamed up with Control4 and we have a device called RTS 2 R232 and how that works is, whether we are using a battery operated shade, a low voltage or hard wired motor, we are able to tie it into a Control4 system. You can see on the Control4 system, this is the main screen, we type in — we have it on the blind shade, we want to bring the blinds up, we touch the upper end, the blinds go up and the light goes off. That’s one scenario that you can have in your house. You can also bring the shades down as well; the shade comes down, the light goes on. It’s another option or scenario that you could have in your house. Like I said before, if somebody offers a battery operated low voltage and hard wired systems, our radio brand name is called RTS which stands for Radio Technology Somfy. So the device that we would use to connect to the Control4 system is XN2 or R232 to RTS device to be able to control that making you control upto 16 different channels, whether you want individual window treatments or group of window treatments.

Kim Anthony Parker – iPort
Hi, my name is Kim Anthony Parker. I’m the Director of Product Development for iPort and today we’re showing integration of iPod to the Control4 system; and the thing that we love about Control4 is their ability to distribute this content that’s on your iPod throughout your entire house; and the thing about iPort is, we’ve allowed iPod to now make that information available to you over RS232. So, with that being said, now you can, with Control4, take your system remote control or your mini touch screen or your TV GUI or your 10-inch touch panel or all those products that Control4 offers now, and we go to music - we select music, we then select iPort as our source and we’ve set it up. So now you can see - you can browse the music just like you would on the iPod. So we want to go, select an Artist, we select Artist and then we select an artist and then we go and play the song or the album and hit select and now we’re playing the song that we’ve selected. So, now this would be something that would be distributed through the entire house or played just in a local room. The nice thing about it is it also plays your Apple protected iTunes downloaded songs so that you are not having to worry about if a customer says, “Ay, how come my iTune songs aren’t playing?” This does all that because it actually doesn’t analogue audio output. So, simplicity, easy to program, it’s a module that’s already built with your composer software. You just drag that module over into the home - your project file and then make your connections; your RS-232 connection and your audio connection and you’re off and rolling.

Key Digital Systems - Speaker
Brad, thank you for the opportunity to present my product line to you. A brief history of the company before we talk about the line and how it works with Control4. Our company is founded by Mike Tsinberg, with 39 HDTV patents. He is the number one patent holder in the industry and he is the founder of HDTV broadcast technology and DVD encoding technology. Our product line is composed of switchers, distribution amps, Matrix Switchers, video processors as well as video transcoders. One of our most exciting products is the HDMI2×4 Distribution Amp and Switcher, which basically gives you the flexibility of having both audio and video control - meaning, in the marketplace today, a lot of custom installers have problems with video resolutions not sinking up in HDMI as well as audio not sinking up because of the nature of the HDMI handshake. If there is ever a miscommunication that takes place, or the video resolutions aren’t set up properly or the audio resolutions aren’t set up properly, what you have is a miscommunication and an improper HDMI system; Key Digital addresses that - as well as Control4 being a tremendous partner to us, we have all the drivers available and we work with Control4 to have seamless integration with our products in their control system, and we thank them for the opportunity for being at the show with them.

Thomas Pickral - Home Automation Incorporated
We are HAI - Home Automation Incorporated, my name is Thomas Pickral, I am Manager of Business Development and what we’re showing here today is integration between HAI’s family of whole house automation systems and Control4’s Home Theatre Controller. What HAI specializes in is Lighting Control, Temperature Control, security in whole house audio, and what we are doing is, integrating that into control4’s Home Theater Control so you’ve got the ability to manipulate these things through your television or through a Control4 touch screen. So, HAI products like ‘security systems’ or ‘thermostats’ can be controlled through the interface on your television using the Control4 remote. So if you wanted to — while you’re watching TV, control the temperature on the thermostat, would have the ability to come in here for instance, you can down the temperature down to 72 degrees and it will update our current thermostat. You can do the same with ‘Security’ for instance. So if we wanted to go head and arm our security systems, we’d have the ability to do that - again, just right through the television. Now in addition to the interface provided by the Home Theatre Controller from Control4, HAI is also providing the ability to access these things through the telephone or through the web. So you’ve got the ability to log on and control all these devices - the telephone, by simply picking up the phone inside the house or from outside of the house by calling in or through the internet. So, we’ve got a product called Snap-Link which is this whole USB key and what Snap-Link does is, stores all the information for your house and you could plug it into any PC in the world and log on and control all these different devices. We’re also showing it here on this Samsung Ultra Mobile PC just as a demonstration, this is an off-the-shelf item we bought from BestBuy and it’ll allow you to again, come in here and control different devices like thermostats, adjust settings in here if we want to, or lighting control, and it will even let you view IP cameras.

David Richard – Eaton Home Heartbeat
Dave Richards, with Eaton Home Heartbeat Products and we are here in the Control4 booth, showing off our brand new product called Home Heartbeat. The product is very unique in that it is a home awareness type product using this ZigBee technology. We use a simple base station like what you see here, the base station reports to a home key, and then we have any number of various sensors like a water shut off sensor, a front door back door open and close sensor. We have range extenders, power sensors, all types of sensors that can be placed throughout the home and it is truly wireless. So there’s no new wires, and the great thing about the product is that all of these sensors report back to this base station and will give the home owner an alert of the status of that device. So, if a front door is open and it’s not supposed to be, an alarm goes back to this base station, reports to the key fob, where that alarm shows up on the key fob - and not only on the key fob but it also calls your cell phone or gives you an email report of the alarm. What’s also great about this is that — I’m kind of getting lost, but anyway let’s keep going. What’s nice about this is that because we do use the Zigbee technology, we’re allowed to communicate to the Control4 products like what we’re showing here. A simple open and close of a front door can now be reported back through the Control4 system where you can have a light turn on, you can also control ramp rate of how that light comes on based upon the open and close. The same thing can be utilized with a water sensor, if the water sensor detects water, it also can report back to the Control4 system, where then we can choose to turn the water actually off by utilizing our Home Heartbeat automatic shut-off valve or we can choose to do other types of functions through the Control4 system such as bring lights on or give you a blink because there is an alert going on. So the system reports utilizing alerts; you can receive an alert both through the home key while you are at home; it will vibrate or light up and give you an alert through the home key. You can also get alerts through your cell phone, and you can also get an alert through email, and we also introduced a brand new product here at CES, which is our Web portal. So, now you gain full control over the system, so I can see what’s happened in the past week, what’s happened in the past day, and also the alerts report back to the Web portal.

Wade Smith – WellSpring Wireless
I’m Wade Smith, I’m the CEO of WellSpring Wireless, and we make a broad line of sub-metering products that use ZigBee radios, and Control4 is kind enough to bring us in to talk about how we interoperate with their system, and we have here two example products, one is the utility meter - water meter in this case that’s tied to an automatic meter reading system with a two-way radio - ZigBee radio, and shut-off valve that’s battery operated so that the valve can change position in order to sense leaks and to curtail water use if the water bill isn’t paid or if there’s water found down the floor that prevent a catastrophic flood, also to sense small leaks that might lead to mould growth. So, we have another product here which is used in sub-metering of apartments and multi-family condominiums, co-ops, that sort of thing; simply - functionally the same as the utility product but with a smaller meter - 8 gallons per minute, same 2-way radio, in this case a (Inaudible) separate battery; and both of these products essentially function identically, but work at different ends of the marketplace. You can get more information on our Website which is wellspringwireless.com. So, I want to add my special thanks to the folks at Control4 who were kind enough to invite us into their booth to have us be one of the many companies that demonstrates how ZigBee makes our systems able to communicate with each other and operate together.

Abbas - DSC
Hi, my name is Abbas (ph) and here I am representing DSC. DSC is a leading Intrusion security provider that actually designs, manufactures and provides and sells Intrusion security control panels; and what we’re doing here, we are demonstrating the integration between a Control4 system and a DSC power series platform. DSC realizes — recognizes that this is where the market is going to go; it’s going to go into the point where everything is integrated. We are going to have a single point of control, where you control all the different components in the house from your — from the comfort of the home owner’s sofa. So what you see here, you have the DSC system with the new product that we’ve introduced, which is called IT-100. The IT-100, it’s a bridging module between the DSC control panel and the Control4; it’s a serial interface that enables Control4 to basically perform and control the DSC control panels. And some other functionalities — this is a demo screen of what the interface GUI looks like, and basically all you have you to do is, by moving your bunch - you’re armed with code — and by pressing on the remote control itself, you can enter the code, and that code will basically arm the system; and you could do it — just as easily, you can disarm the system by going to “Disarm with Code”, and you can enter the code in here. By entering there okay, you basically disarm the system. So, this system — this demonstration demonstrates the easy integration between the Control4 and the DSC Intrusion Security System via the IT-100.

Terry Hoffmann – Johnson Controls
Hi, I’m Terry Hoffmann and I’m Director of Building Automation Systems, Marketing for Johnson Controls. We are very glad to be here at the Control4 partner pavilion today, and we are demonstrating to people how Johnson Controls takes the Control4 technology and expands it to be used by people in the light commercial marketplace. The Control4 system, as we deliver it, is called Touch4 and it has some attributes that are slightly different than the residential systems that we all know. This slide summarizes those; it gives us low cost automation for residential and commercial systems, but focused eyes (ph) on the commercial; control and scheduling of lighting, audio, comfort, access, shades and blinds, monitoring, alarming of temperature, humidity, occupancy, and interface with the security system - all of those things that you might find in a normal Control4 system. We have added a BACnet interface through this system, so that we can do commercial temperature control, and in general some of the features like password, and scheduling and especially the alarming have significantly been enhanced for that real commercial building network that people are looking to expand the control system into. So, thanks a lot for stopping by.

Nick Finamore – Ember Corporation
Hi, my name is Nick Finamore, I’m with Ember Corporation. We are a proud member of the partner pavilion today here at Contol4’s booth at CES. Quite excited to be here; we’re the only chip vendor, we provide chips and software that actually to Control4’s devices as well as the many of the other members of the partner pavilion that you see here today. We provide chip and software technology that allow these devices to talk to one another, and for Control4’s system to be able to control and use, sense and monitoring information from those devices. What’s really exciting about what Control4 is doing is, they’re integrating multiple systems; people are providing lighting systems, providing security systems, media control and other devices and our chips can go into all of those devices, so that they can be managed and controlled with Control4’s system. What you’ll be seeing in the future is more devices, more manufacturers, who’re going be building devices with our chips and software in them that will allow them to be integrated with Control4’s system. So we are quite excited to be here with Control4, who have got many other customers that are building devices that will be integrated with Control4’s systems in the future. So, you can count a long list of manufacturers down the road that will be on our technology and using Control4’s systems.

Brad Baldwin – Rocky Mountain Voices
This has been a Rocky Mountain Voices Podcast. Visit is on the Internet at www.rockymountainvoices.com

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Control4, CES, Rocky Mountain Voices

Related Stories: IntelDigitalLife, IntelMobility

Transcript:
Host: Michael Johnson - PodTech
Guest: David Marsiglia - Intel
Guest: Merlin Kister – Intel

Michael Johnson - PodTech
I’m Michael Jones and we’re here at the Intel booth at CES International. And we’re with David Marsiglia from Intel. Hey Dave it’s great to have you here.

David Marsiglia - Intel
Hey, thank you very much.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
Tell us a little bit about what we are looking up behind us. Talk about recording Web video and using — really utilizing the power of the Core 3 Duo processor?

David Marsiglia – Intel
Exactly. Yeah this is one of the many demos that we’re actually showing here today, that really utilizes our — not only our Core 2 Duo processor, but really incapsulates, it incapsulates our whole Intel Centrino Duo mobile technology as a whole. When you see these videos they are great to see, but that’s really all you can do is, just view them online. What you can’t do, is download them, because these are streaming videos. Until now that is. We’ve actually worked with a company called (Inaudible) which actually optimize to really excel on a Core 2 Duo Processor, part of our Centrino Duo platform.

So, what this software enables you to do, this is the user interface that we have here, which really is built upon the Firefox browsers, and then they’ve actually incorporated their own engine and filling system in it as well. What you do is, utilizing their software you can go on YouTube, Google videos, or really anywhere that has unprotected streaming video, you can actually simply click record button and start recording, not only the video, but that entire page and for you to view off line and really take your videos with you on the go. So, you could be on an airplane and watch all those favorite videos here that you have recorded and just watch them anytime you want.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
We’re here with Merlin Kister of Intel. Merlin, tell me a little bit about what we’re looking at?

Merlin Kister - Intel
Well this is the newest technology coming this year is the ability to communicate between your PC and your TV set, to be able to enjoy all of the content, your movies, your music, photos and even some new services that are accessed and available on your PC on big-screen TVs. The Core 2 Duo makes the small form factors possible. We give you a high performance processor that’s very energy efficient, allows you to view that stream that content over to connect to electronic devices like this brand new Sharp TV.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
I know that we have talked before, like digital life or the (Inaudible) club and there’s a lot of fascinating things here. This has really taken things through the whole newsstand.

Merlin Kister – Intel
Exactly, exactly. We’re seeing this convergence has with other technologies; so no longer will you have islands of content. So, consumers will be able to access - don’t have to worry about, “Well is that music file or is that located on my PC, or is it on my iPod?” Now, with these new types of electronics they can communicate with each other, consumers can get access to really their favorite media on the device and screen up their choice.

Michael Johnson — PodTech
Merlin Kister from Intel thanks for showing me this great stuff. I’m not quite there with my TV set yet.

Merlin Kister - Intel
Well it’s a great one to upgrade to.

Michael Johnson - PodTech
I know that it’s coming so, thanks for showing us.

Merlin Kister - Intel
Thank you.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Michael Johnson, Intel, Core2Duo, Core2Extreme, Core2Quad, digital life, YouTube, wireless networking, social media, mobility, IntelDigitalLife, IntelMobility

Transcript:
Host: John Furrier - PodTech
Guest: Bill Watkins - Seagate

John Furrier - PodTech
We are here with Bill Watkins, the CEO of Seagate for the quarterly earnings. Congratulations, I guess some big numbers. Tell us a little bit some of the things that went on, came off CES, great launch there, new consumer brand. Last quarter numbers were different, we talked about that. Tell us, what happened this quarter?

Bill Watkins – Seagate
Well, again I think it really was an outstanding quarter and outstanding in all levels of the company. As we looked at the quarter, I think from our introduction of new products, yield improvement in cost savings, the ending or finishing up, if you will, of the Maxtor integration on that merger that got completed. I think that in certain parts of desktop market pricing was a little bit better than we thought, but net-net it was just across the board, company wide people executing little a bit better than planned. So, we end up beating the guy in this place - that’s for sure.

John Furrier - PodTech
So, you beat the guys. Let’s talk numbers. What were the numbers?

Bill Watkins – Seagate
Well, we came in $3 billion of revenue, which is the first time…

John Furrier - PodTech
Huge.

Bill Watkins – Seagate
For the first time, we’ve ever done $3 billion as a storage company and again you think about that stuff. That’s probably 30-40% on an annual basis up. So, again very, very great attraction of the products as you saw on CES, where the new products come out the consumer retailed it almost 200 million in the retail, 180 and 190 retails. So, again I think it was across the Board, it was just a great quarter. We obviously had in the gaming section a big quarter in gaming for the Christmas rush. So, again it was three billion of revenue.

John Furrier - PodTech
So, the Maxtor thing is complete.

Bill Watkins – Seagate
Yeah, we’ve really finished the whole integration of Maxtor. We currently have approximately 200,000 drivers left to sell, but all the manufacturing is done, all the restructuring, the layouts are pretty much finished and what will remain will trick out this quarter.

John Furrier - PodTech
So, we were at Seagate booth at CES we had the Bloghaus, with all the bloggers, which is great, a lot of fun, but those all the new products were out there. Talk about the new stuff that’s coming out.

Bill Watkins – Seagate
Well, again I think what’s excited about being Seagate and being as a part of any storage company today, is this onslaught of video applications content we moved around and what we saw at CES, was Seagate’s newest product rollout, is really to take advantage of all this content being moved electronically around. So, we opened up with the whole new backup that drives that. That not only backup, your data allows you to accessing your world, it allows you to synchronizing with all your devices, so immediately if you backup of song, video, it goes to your devices, whether it’s a video iPod et cetera, or whatever. It allows you access those backup data.

We also launched a whole group of products that are mobile products, which give you same functionality, but allow you to take it into your hand and go and so you can download onto one of your mobile external devices all your settings, your PC, your favorite IP sections, et cetera, take that with you and go. Wherever you’ve got a keyboard and screen, you’ve got an instant computer, with all your personal settings. So, again it’s all about giving you mobility, giving you security, giving you ways of backing up and accessing that data and then synchronizing that data through all these multiple devices that you use.

John Furrier - PodTech
The consumer finds it sexier too. I mean, they were really nice designed products. At the Bloghaus, everyone was talking about it the lights and it looks cool. Talk about like the new products that are coming. Any new cooler drives…

Bill Watkins – Seagate
Well, again we think — we’re going to see a whole list of products. We started with a launch — I think we’re going to talk about — we’ve new external drives that are going to be wireless that allow you access these handheld devices phones, our storage capabilities allow you to back and load more data in a handheld device. We’re going to have a whole new rollout of our Maxtor brand coming out, that is really based on reliability and backup, but again we’re going to launch some new products. We’ve gone to kind of new concept here, where we’re bringing in a frog designed it actually did the same, we’re bringing in people who we think have expertise in consumer designs and they’re helping us design.

At Seagate, we’re very focused on the technology and we much more looking at industrial applications, so again sort of creative ideas and things like that. We’ve reached out to those people that do a great job and Frog (Inaudible) has done some stuff for us, but again it’s really bringing in a whole new sort of coolness to hard drives. Again, like I said this before John, we’ve always been kind of like in Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain. No one knew about us and it didn’t matter, we weren’t cool.

Today, we’re not brought in then forefront, you see them out there, they’re utilized, they’re enabling you to move this content without storage device you cannot move this content electronically. So, it’s really changed, the face of company is changed, where we going as direction and is really made this (Inaudible) exciting place to be.

John Furrier - PodTech
They’re all just fundamental, almost like a microprocessor was in original PC, you had to have it and now people are embedding in their lives. Just quick back on the revenue, three billion that’s huge number. You said storage company has never done that before. You blew away earnings; talk about the outlook from a numbers perspective, also Maxtor is fully integrated perhaps just coming out at CES we’re seeing that. What’s the outlook for next quarter and the quarter after?

Bill Watkins - Seagate
Well can — we are doing something kind of usual, usually coming off in December quarter, our business is somewhat cyclical and ideally at Christmas — there is so much storage bought for Christmas whether it is in gaming, DVR, set-top boxes et cetera, PCs, notebooks. And so, historically you tend to have a 10% down quarter coming off of December in the March quarter. We had actually given a forecast for the March quarter very different than that, what we are saying is revenue will be flat at three billion. We’ll improve gross margins and earnings will be in the $0.55 or $0.60 range, which would be a tremendous again, over and proven again.

So, the reason for this is, that the Maxtor products are behind us and so this would be the first quarter where we actually 100% manufacturing, if you will, the Seagate product lines. We’ve got new 1.8 inch drives that now we’ve announced and now launching, we are in fact qualifying, we’ll start to see revenue and earnings this quarter from those programs.

We have a very new two-and-a-half inch 10,000 RPM, and 15,000 RPM, which in fact is the fastest drive in the world for the enterprise market that we are getting tremendous acceptance on so. Again, we are announcing really, actually we’re saying, “We’ve got a whole revenue of three billion in our March quarter,” which is probably 10-15% above what historically would be. And we are going to grow earnings to that $0.55 to $0.60 range. Again, in a down quarter, but again a lot of the things in work that the teams have been doing are really show down and show up.

John Furrier - PodTech
That’s great. Actually storage is growing like crazy in everyone’s life, you guys have great traction. Talk about the leadership from Seagate, in terms of in the marketplace, obviously have the technology leadership, talk about that and then talk about how you guys are going to be competing in the consumer area?

Bill Watkins - Seagate
Well, again as we think about, what’s critical to us at Seagate, it’s has really taken this technology leadership and transferring that into product leadership and in cost leadership. We think that — I think historically a lot of companies tried to be a technology leader, they tried to be a product leader or tried to be a cost leader. What we think is critical for our business, is really fitting all three things take your technology, but, it’s not enough, just to not to be a technology, you’ve got to turn into product leadership, and it’s just not enough to just be the product leader, you’ve got to have cost leadership there.

So, we think with our vertical integration strategies, our tremendous investments and how we platform those investments that allows us to really access technology, and bring it to market to cheaper than anybody else, just this tremendous advantage. And again that’s how — I think right now, over the t third of every drive in the world, the Seagate drive, and we obviously intend to improve on it.

John Furrier - PodTech
Tell, about the Seagate brand, changing — you mentioned some the changes, leadership is obviously there, how do you want people to know the Seagate brand in the market?

Bill Watkins - Seagate
Well, I think — obviously we think about it from a consumer application and again I think to some extent it’s a same principle to OEM or Dell. You want to trust us, I mean as we think about — it’s one thing to put your data on a hard drive or your spreadsheet and that implies a certain amount of confidence or liability et cetera, but when you put your pictures, your files, your music, your video, your home pictures, I mean these are priceless things, and I think what’s important for us, that not only we developed the products and the services for you, we have to deliver a product from a reliability that you trust us, you are trusting us or myself, well trusting is the most important things in life.

So, as we start looking at consumer branding, we are going after that sort of attitude that and making maybe real life how important is that back it up, put it on reliable person or reliable company that’s going to value that and take care of that data, to that data is not $5 or $10 or $9.99 that’s you and your life and your most important things.

John Furrier - PodTech
How about the macro market conditions out there for your growth and leadership out there, what are the key things that you think about?

Bill Watkins - Seagate
Well again, as we think about it, we think is about getting content electronic distributed. And again we — anytime we move a song, a video or anything electronically, it creates an ecosystem that you need to have a storage at the enterprise level, where that content is held, and it’s delivered to your home. You need a storage device at your home to receive it, and then you move it your hand where you’re going to need a storage device, and then normally you’re going to move it to your car. And then everywhere along that cycle you need to back it up.

So, just the idea, or the behavior of moving content electronically, create six are seven drives or storage systems force. Sometimes, it’s going to be a flash in the hand, but again most that is going to be a hard drive, and so we get the benefit. More content is moved, whether it’s through the Internet, through your PCs et cetera. It created tremendous ecosystem, where we get to play it all every areas of those markets.

John Furrier - PodTech
We are here with Bill Watkins, the CEO of Seagate. Sum up for me the quarter that you just did and then the next quarter coming forward in your words.

Bill Watkins - Seagate
Well, again I think it’s very easy, to kind of excited about a quarter or whatever, I think that what — if I was to look at this, this quarter, next quarter, what you see is the opportunity. And it’s not of whatever we satisfied with $0.58 in March, or satisfy the fact we hit three billion. It’s the opportunity set is out there. And if we execute as a company, we can be in a dominating position in this industry. We can’t be a very large storage company; point-billion, those type of numbers are not impossible for us. The opportunity sets out there, we need to continue our execution.

John Furrier - PodTech
Storage of the center of the universe and people’s lives, great opportunity, you’ve blown away the number three billion in a quarter, blown away estimates, lot of leaderships, congratulations and thanks for the Podcast.

Bill Watkins - Seagate
Yeah, still more to come. Thanks.

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Tags: John Furrier, Seagate, Bill Watkins, Maxtor

Navin Chaddha joined the board of Bangalore-based Tejas Networks, an optical networking company. Navin is a serial investor and entrepreneur who founded VXtreme, which was later acquired by Microsoft and eventually became Windows Media.

Adventity, a KPO and BPO firm, received $20 million in funding.

The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners. With this funding, Pramod Haque will join the board of Adventity. Norwest Venture Partners and Pramod Haque have also made investments in Persistent Systems, Yatra, and Sulekha.

The race to acquire Hutch Essar, India’s fourth largest mobile operator, continues.

Bangalore-based Subex Azure Ltd has acquired Canadian company Syndesis for $164.5 million. Syndesis is a telecom operation support software company.

Mobile Bollywood is a new initiative started by Hungama Mobile, Roamware, and GSM Association headed by noted film director Sanjay Gupta.

Hutch recently signed a deal with the Walt Disney Internet Group.

And, how much does an iPod cost in India? Take a guess. You might be surprised.

Tags: Mayfield Funds, Navin Chaddha, Tejas Networks, entrepreneur, Microsoft, Adventity, Pramod Haque, Hutch Essar, Sanjay Gupta

Transcript:
Host: Paul Lancour - PodTech
Guest: Tim Chou – Author and Entrepreneur

Tim Chou - Author and Entrepreneur
The idea that they are software companies! You could argue, if we were sitting here 10-20 years from now, we maybe looking around going, you had what?

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Welcome to Connecting with Revolutionary Minds. Conversations with IT and business leaders from WebEx. In this series of Podcast you’ll hear from IT and business pioneers working on the leading edge of the On Demand Business. I’m Paul Lancour and for this Podcast, Tim Chou, author of the book ‘The End of Software’ stopped by the PodTech studios for a wide ranging discussion about On Demand software and the future of computing among other things. I started by asking Tim to give us a little of his background.

Tim Chou - Author and Entrepreneur
I’ve been in the software business for over 20 years. I’ve worked at companies like Tandem and little ventures called Reasoning and most recently, I was President of Oracle’s On Demand Business for the past five or six years.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
And now you’ve written a book about ‘The End of Software’ having spent your entire career working with the software industry, what are you talking about?

Tim Chou - Author and Entrepreneur
Yeah, why would you do that, right? You know I think the title is probably appropriate because I think for the first time there has been an economic shift in the software business. I think that has clearly been a transformative effect in the hardware business, the example I always use is that, well, Intel once upon a time was a little baby hardware company, no one cared much about. Today, right now, since every market process — every processor in every server is an Intel processor, how did that happen, right? Well, that revolution was a revolution of economics, simply, right? They were able to take cost and take it down, down, down; function up, up, up and by virtue of staying on that relentless path in essence re-evolve the entire industry.

This movement to quote software as a service or software On Demand is no different, it’s fundamentally an economic shift, right. We are changing the fundamental economics of the software business, which is why the old traditional software world will end, has ended, and a new one will emerge.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
But in the same way that the chip evolution was market-driven, this is not necessarily anybody’s grand-design, this is a market-driven change. This is as technology advances and as users change what they ask for from technology, the market is following that. Is that a fair parallel with the chip industry?

Tim Chou - Author and Entrepreneur
I think it’s a fair parallel to refer to the fact or the idea, that in essence by giving people more technology and lower and lower price point, more and more people can take advantage of it. That certainly has happened with hardware technology. But I think in the software world — here is a simple example, I think most people will grasp, I always say, well a lot of people know what eBay does, right? eBay, let’s put it back now 15 years ago, prior to the Internet, could you have found a couple of programmers to write auctioning software? I said, well yeah, I mean it wasn’t that hard, they would have written C++ or something. Okay cool. Next step, how are we going to get our auctioning software to everybody? Oh, I have a really great idea, let’s put it in the Sunday paper, right.

Okay, we’ll put it in the Sunday paper. What happens on Monday morning? My bet is, the phone is going to start ringing, and the questions going to be asked, well shoot! You know my Windows 95 machine used to work and I downloaded your software and you know still it doesn’t work and my Shockwave dll is broken or blah…blah…blah… right? Oh, hey no problem, we’re software guys, we know how to deal with this, we’ll hire a support organization, they’ll answer the phones, they’ll sort this all out, right? Okay cool. Let’s keep going forward. It’s a year later, my great product manager shows up, Lisa, and she says, I guess, really cool idea, the Buy-It-Now function, let’s get it out to everybody.

Figure out how do we do that? No, well, Sunday paper! Right, all right we are back in the Sunday paper. Monday morning, my bet is, the phones ring again, it’s my Windows 2000 XP configuration with my Linux Box doesn’t work anymore and — no problem we’ll hire more support guys, we’ll move some of them to India, no big deal.

Okay that’s a software business we’ve all been good at this, right. My conjecture is that, that business eBay could never have existed because the cost of an auction would have been thousands of dollars to compensate for the cost structure of what I just described. So, the ability for eBay to be delivered as a service to auction software in the story to deliver as a service is fundamentally, I’ll say, at least ten times cheaper than it would have been done in the old fashion way. In the technology business, anytime you change the economics by an order of magnitude, you change the industry and we’re already seeing that.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
So, this evolution has been going on for a while and I know it’s a kitschy title to talk about the end of software, but is it in fact that strong of a shift to something — this is an evolution that’s been going on, but it is something happening right now that — I mean software is still involved in this and there are plenty of programmers, you’re going to still have work to do, but it’s — I guess the question I’m asking is, is there a tipping point that we’ve reached rather than just the gradual evolution? Is there a — as they say, a paradigm shift it’s going on right now?

Tim Chou - Author and Entrepreneur
Well, I think the paradigm shift is going on, has been going on, you could make a conjecture that every major software company that has gone public in the past ten years, whether that’s WebEx or eBay or Amazon etcetera, which I all count as software companies have all been software as a service. We’re already shifted out of the world of the old fashion traditional software. I think what you’re saying right now is that the traditional world in essence has moved into a model of consolidation and in essence atrophy, it’s just sitting there, most people will say, well enterprise software, business software is dead, and it is in so many different ways: it’s atrophy, it’s over. What we’re sitting in the middle of is a transition that’s already happened on the consumer side by the way, we just used eBay, Google, Amazon, any of these guys, it’s already happened on the consumer side.

What the real shift is now is it’s happening on the business side and new companies are being created whether it’s like Concur and Enviance etcetera all building up in this model. I think that shift has happened. We actually — in my opinion, we have shifted into phase one of this already, meaning we have an operationally more efficient model. It is manufacturing wise more efficient. That’s not the end of the story. When you look at and let’s just use Salesforce as an example; that is really operationally more efficient than Seibel. It is cheaper to deploy, to manage etcetera, etcetera absolutely, right. Intellium right now etcetera.

The next step of this evolution is really when I’ll say; you begin to integrate data and software together. So, let me paint you a spectrum here. You got Siebel in the traditional world, Salesforce in version one, phase one of this new world of software as a service and Amazon in phase two, because most people, when I look — well, is Amazon a software company? They all look you like, ‘No’ well, wait a minute. If you go to Amazon right now, okay I know they have some loading docks with some books in it and what not, but you look at the core of what it is, it’s a software company.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
But from a user’s point of view they don’t think about it in terms of software it’s a bookstore.

Tim Chou - Author and Entrepreneur
Amen! and I think that’s because what happened is these two worlds have connected, meaning the world of data, meaning when you look at Amazon, you’re not like going oh let me enter in the user ID, the VIN number etcetera, etcetera, you look there was the book, right and I want to go by the book or I want to read about the book. The software in essence has disappeared, this is where I think we’re now transitioning to the world where in the hardware world, silicon is a very important constituent or part of building hardware, very important, but who the hell cares about it? I think that’s where we are headed to. I mean software is a very important, but who the hell cares about it? It will completely disappear. The idea that there are software companies, you could argue, if we were sitting here 10-20 years from now, we maybe looking around going, you had what? It’s like, oh I know there are silicon companies but who the hell are they?

Paul Lancour - PodTech
Well, is this — I think this happens with a lot of technology and in the early stages, the early adopters or people who are more technically adept, but ultimately as computers become more and more flexible and more and more ubiquitous, the average person doesn’t care about computers anymore than they care about how the television signal gets into their house. So, I know what they want to watch and so it becomes user–driven, I think that’s what we’re just talking about anyway but it becomes a user-driven rather than a technology-driven medium.

Tim Chou - Author and Entrepreneur
I think user-driven in a very importantly different way, let me give you an example, I was helping a company out about a year-and-a-half ago who was in the — it’s called the Incentive Management business. So, it’s like managing what Salesforce compensations are like, it’s traditional software company, right.

So, the CEOs like, what should I do and I’m going to just move to software as a service, get out of the traditional world, move to software as a service. Okay great, six months ago I’m talking to him and he said, “Hey you know, we made the transition, you know we’re now software as a service,” I said, “That’s cool.” He said, “What’s next?” and I said, “Well, what’s next is that as I said the data and the applications come together, these are indistinguishable from each other” and he goes, “Well, that’s really weird, because you know what question I get asked now the most is what Salesforce compensation plan works the best? What Salesforce compensation plans work the best?” He is not — as a traditional software company, he would never been ask that question.

All you’ve been asked for is, I need this feature to be able to give my sales guys a 10% kicker in the last quarter of the month or some such thing. He is not being asked a very important question. You think about the value of the answer of that question; it’s gargantuan, but it’s only possible because the software and the information have now become one and I think that is exactly — we have been building capability to store information for years.

Now, it’s really the defragmentation of information and of people that is a huge step forward and we only need to look at Google as a simple example of this. That is what it is. It in essence is saying, I’m wanting to defragment information and give you knowledge, there is a shit load of software — once again most people don’t think that Google is a software company. Go down to Mountain View and walk around; I’ll tell you most of those guys are programmers.

Paul Lancour - PodTech
So, are we running into a problem here where you’re going to go to somebody who’s designing software and say to them what’s the best compensation plan for my Salesforce? Are you asking the right question to the wrong person or do these companies need to evolve in such a way that they can think differently?

Tim Chou – Author and Entrepreneur
Companies are going to have to evolve. I think new generations of companies are being created as we speak, where it’s about knowledge and information much more than it is about a hunk of software, much more than it has to do with processing of financial transaction. The history of computing is, it came from basically being a large calculator to basically being a giant spreadsheet that keeps a nice record of how many dollars I spent. We’re way, way beyond that, and the world we’re headed into is not a world of spreadsheets and what not; it’s a world of information, knowledge and whole new ways to work.

I think one of the things that people have not spent much time on at the enterprise world is relationship of what is going on in multiplayer gaming. Multiplayer gaming is another fascinating example, what the hell is that, it’s software, it’s a software company. Nobody would call World of Warcraft a software company by conventional standards. But what is it there, but an immense amount of software wrapped with an immense amount of content and information. But the paradigms that are being established within those worlds to allow — one of the ways I describe – oh no, your listeners may not know much about World of Warcraft but for those who do, my abstraction of World of Warcraft is quite simple. It’s an environment in which a group of people from around the world who do not know each other, come together to achieve something and go away.

I’ll tell you if you ask every manager of every — in anything, software or hardware, trucks, I don’t care and ask them what their number one challenge is in the modern world; it is precisely that how do I get group of people together from around the world, to cooperate and achieve something and go away, and it is happening inside these virtual worlds.

If we start to learn there’re so many aspects of what is happening in the — what I would call the Consumer Internet that can be brought into morphed, extracted from, that world I’ve moved into the world of business that have game changing so over years but have huge shifts and we are at the very, very, very, very, very beginning of this, and software as a service phase one, which is the one that we are in right now, I think is going to give way to the next step where information and data come together where verticality is important, right. Where if I can defragment information and people, I change the way business is done.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Can you be more specific about this? I can understand what a bunch of kids in their basement playing endless hours of World of Warcraft is like, how will that apply to the business worlds directly?

Tim Chou - Author and Entrepreneur
Let me talk about the problem or the challenge or the opportunity of the idea of defragmentation of information and people. Let me put in the context of venture that’s been worked on out right now called Open Water. In Open Water one of the things that working on is, really the problem today. Let’s start where problem is, how much it costs service software on the planet? A servicing and managing software and I’ll put PCs, servers, big IBM mainframes in the background. The number is about $80,000 a second, spent by corporations around the world, managing existing systems in about — at this point in time in the world-wide economy is $2 trillion. Now, $2 trillion is being spent fundamentally on one thing — this is going to sound really stupid but it is really on one thing and it’s really on the ability to find a piece of information or a person and that is it.

I’ll give you some simple statistics. This is actually a study that was done at Oracle about two years ago on the number of service and support transactions coming into the systems. There was about a 100 million transactions that came in one year. Now, most people think that out of those 100 million transactions, that a lot of have to do with bug fixes or software. The truth of the matter is, the number was less than 1/10 of 1%.

Now, think about what I actually said, that’s out of 100 million request for information coming into Oracle. Now, there is tons of questions and request for information coming in inside Citibank or inside a Unocal or whatever. Probably in order of magnitude beyond that. So, we’re talking about a billion of these. If you did that statistic, it is less than 1/100th to 1/1000th of a percent. So, what the hell is all this stuff? It’s basically trying to figure out how to attach an optical cable to my iPod, try to figure out how to make my WebEx session run faster. So, they’re trying to figure out information, but it’s hugely-fragmented, it lives in 100s of different places. It’s not that the information is not known; it’s that it lives in 100s of places in 100s of people’s brains.

So, at the end of the day, we already know the power of defragmentation and I’ll make it even simpler than World of Warcraft. Look at Google, all that Google has done has fundamentally made it so that I can defragment an interesting amount of public information, in some useful way in a very wi