February 2012
5 posts
6 tags
Everyone's a Critic: Unpacking Rotten Tomatoes'...
Everyone has had this experience: you’re trying to decide what movie to watch, so you see what Rotten Tomatoes has to say. What you find fairly often, however, is confusing: This Means War receives a 25% rating from critics and a 72% rating from audiences, while 8 Mile nets a 76% rating from critics and a 54% user rating. What is a moviegoer to think? That critics take themselves too...
7 tags
Super PAC Donations: Where is the Money Going?
Super PACs have been all over the news since the Citizens United decision in January of 2010. They’ve been an even hotter topic recently because of last week’s disclosure deadline and the President’s “friendlier posture” toward Super PACs that hit the newswire today. There’s plenty of analysis of the disclosure data (all donations >=$200) out there already...
6 tags
The Amazing Shrinking Student to Teacher Ratio |...
After hearing about R for years, I decided to go out and give it a try. And, with a solution in search of a problem, I set out to find some interesting data to use. After spending a few minutes on data.gov, I ended up on the National Center for Education Statistics website, and chose the following dataset: “Public and private elementary and secondary teachers, enrollment, and pupil/teacher...
6 tags
Super Bowl Prediction Roundup
Update: Justin Verlander got the score of the Super Bowl exactly right.
Seems like everyone’s willing to make a Super Bowl prediction. In fact, even a camel, gorilla, rhinoceros, and ostrich are getting in on the action. After spending a few minutes browsing Google News, I was able to put together a list of 120 different predictions that includes celebrities, pundits, and high school...
8 tags
Is the Super Bowl Less Exciting than the Regular...
Short answer to a long title: yes! The Super Bowl is, on average, less exciting than a regular season game, although that partially depends on how you define “interesting” or “exciting.”
By my count, Sunday’s Super Bowl XLVI will be the 10,413th NFL game played in the Super Bowl era, which started in 1967. Actually, it’s not by my count — it’s...
January 2012
5 posts
5 tags
Where Do Publicly Traded Companies Live?
Two things that fascinate me are geography and finance. So, for the next few posts, I’m going to look at where publicly-traded companies are headquartered. More specifically, I’m going to try to discover if headquartering a company in a given state actually helps that state’s economy as a whole. This question struck me after reading about Illinois’ battle to keep...
7 tags
Cuisine Concentration in New York City
To cap off a recent series of posts on New York restaurants (see What’s the Safest Food in New York City? and Heatmap of Restaurants in New York City), I put together heatmaps of restaurant density by cuisine type.
Only one comment before we get started: I have no idea how the DOHMH categorizes restaurants. There are, for example, categories for Chinese, Japanese, Chinese/Japanese, and Asian....
6 tags
What's the Safest Food in New York City?
In my last post, I used NYC OpenData’s Restaurant Inspection Results to generate a heatmap of restaurant density in New York City. While there are more heatmaps to come, I thought I’d tackle a slightly different question for today’s post: what’s the safest cuisine in New York City? Hint: it’s not this.
First, let’s get a few basics out of the way. There are...
5 tags
Heatmap of Restaurants in New York City
Two things I like are data and food. The two rarely mix, unless you do something stupid like create a heatmap of restaurant density in New York City. Which is exactly what I did. Without further ado, here it is:
Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan
Upper Manhattan
Downtown Manhattan
If you find this chart tasty, then try calling back for reservations over the next few days. The raw data set from...
4 tags
Fun With New York City Birth Names
Mayor Bloomberg and New York City have made a lot of city agencies’ data available to the public through NYC Open Data. The city has even launched a competition called BigApps with prizes of up to $10,000 for app developers. Submissions for the current round, 3.0, are due January 25th, so if you want in, you’d better get started.
I was playing around with the site when two sets of...
December 2011
5 posts
New Year's Resolution
Beat writer’s block.
4 tags
Teach Yourself Microsoft Excel →
For the Excel 101 and 201 classes I teach through Skillshare, I put together a tutorial spreadsheet. This tutorial is, insofar as possible, designed to help students teach themselves outside of the classroom. This might be useful to others, so I’m posting it publicly here.
If you have suggestions about how to make the tutorial more effective, don’t hesitate to contact me.
2 tags
The Half-Life of an Introduction
Being part of the tech scene generally — and doing business development specifically — means that you meet a lot of people. You are also introduced to a lot of people, and introduce others to a lot of people. One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that some people (surprisingly) don’t respect the half-life of an introduction.
What exactly do I mean by “half-life”?...
7 tags
00110111: An Introduction to Programming →
I just posted this pilot class on Skillshare. If you’re interested in taking it, please ‘watch’ it. And don’t hesitate to spread the word!
5 tags
Smart TV Weekly Digest [12/2/2011]
The Smart TV Weekly Digest is a curated collection of the week’s best articles about smart TVs and the future of content.
Will Microsoft Motion-Sensing TVs Go Head-to-Head With Apple ‘iTV’? Microsoft is working on deals to license Kinect to TV makers Sony and Vizio, The Daily reported, noting that such technology could allow couch surfers to control their TVs with motion and voice....
November 2011
4 posts
6 tags
Smart TV Weekly Digest [11/28/2011]
The Smart TV Weekly Digest is a curated collection of the week’s best articles about smart TVs and the future of content.
Why TV sites and apps should turn into second screens But with the tremendous potential of the second-screen — both for engaging viewers and opening up a tremendous new revenue stream through interactive advertising — I’ll argue that now is the time to make the second screen...
5 tags
Smart TV Weekly Digest [11/18/2011]
The Smart TV Weekly Digest is a curated collection of the week’s best articles about smart TVs and the future of content.
Samsung exec warns cable about ‘rumblings of virtual MSOs’ “You are also starting to see rumblings of virtual MSOs as well,” Anderson said. He pointed to YouTube’s decision to invest more than $100 million to develop 100 original programming...
5 tags
Smart TV Weekly Digest [11/11/2011]
The Smart TV Weekly Digest is a curated collection of the week’s best articles about smart TVs and the future of content.
Companion TV app Umami to hit app store Tuesday “Social TV startup Umami raised $1.66 million in August to launch a TV app for linear programming that would be cheaper than a network creating their own app, leveraging a “publishing platform.” The app will be available for iPad...
3 tags
Cold-calling for Dummies
Cold-calling is not that hard. Making an actual sale is hard. But cold-calling? It sucks, but it’s just not rocket science. This will be old news for seasoned sales vets, but here’s a simple five-step formula rookies can follow to reach a decisionmaker at any company:
First, try to figure out the title(s) of the relevant decisionmakers at your target. At smaller companies, that title will...
October 2011
10 posts
6 tags
Smart TV Weekly Digest [10/28/2011]
The Smart TV Weekly Digest is a curated collection of the week’s best articles about smart TVs and the future of content.
Apple’s smart TV to feature ‘unmatched aesthetics,’ could be game-changer for gaming “Reports have suggested for more than a year that Apple is working on a smart TV product, and those reports were firmed up last week when an excerpt from Steve Jobs’s biography revealed that...
4 tags
5 tags
New York Startup / Tech Blogs
I am a loyal reader of several New York City tech and startup blogs. Generally, though, I’ve surfaced these gems over time — through Twitter, cross-blog links, or elsewhere. So, for others interested in similar resources, here is a running list of some of the best, along with a link to a representative post:
Mark Birch, Strong Opinions. Mark is a “is an early stage technology...
7 tags
Smart TV Weekly Digest [10/21/2011]
The Smart TV Weekly Digest is a curated collection of the week’s best articles about smart TVs and the future of content.
New solutions for the new era of TV interfaces “As I discuss in a new report at GigaOM Pro (subscription required), a new user interface for the video viewing experience is becoming inevitable. Just about every company in the video entertainment ecosystem has a stake in such a...
6 tags
Smart TV Weekly Digest [10/14/2011]
The Smart TV Weekly Digest is a curated collection of the week’s best articles about smart TVs and the future of content.
Makers of Mixd.tv app believe social is overrated “Mixd.tv emphasizes traditional branded channels instead of Twitter and Facebook. “We don’t really believe that this is what people are crying out for,” the company’s COO Sonny Dawn-Hiscox told me with regards to...
7 tags
Survey: familiarity with smart TV buzzwords
Smart TV. Social TV. Connected TV. All phrases that, for those of us in the smart TV space, we hear every day. But how familiar is the rest of the world with these buzzwords? Not very.
We asked more than 1,000 random respondents to rate their familiarity with five different phrases on a scale from “Very Unfamiliar” to “Extremely Familiar.” The phrases in question were...
6 tags
Smart TV Weekly Digest [10/7/2011]
The Smart TV Weekly Digest is a curated collection of the week’s best articles about smart TVs and the future of content.
Don’t like an ad on Hulu? Now you can choose another “Hulu has long advocated user choice as the best way to target more-personalized and relevant ads. The site launched with its Ad Selector format, which allows users to pick the type of ad they want to see before it...
7 tags
Skillshare Class: Excel 201 for Startups →
I’m teaching my first Skillshare class on Tuesday, October 25th. The class is geared toward people in the startup community who have a basic familiarity with Excel, but want to learn some simple and powerful techniques for working faster and getting more done. Here is the class description:
Everyone uses Excel. And, odds are that you spend 3x as much time as you need to in order to get...
September 2011
9 posts
6 tags
Smart TV Weekly Digest [9/30/2011]
The Smart TV Weekly Digest is a curated collection of the week’s best articles about smart TVs and the future of content.
Beating out HBO, Netflix cuts streaming movie deal with DreamWorks “In scoring the deal, Netflix managed to beat out HBO, marking the first time Netflix’s web streaming has beat out a major pay TV producer in securing a distribution deal with a major film maker.”
Buckle up:...
8 tags
Survey: how women and men approach smart TV...
Did you know that women are 50% more likely than men to be “very” or “extremely” excited about social media integration in smart TV apps? I sure didn’t.
As promised in a previous post about the survey that Transmitive ran across 1,000 random adults, I’m going to continue to highlight some of the more interesting conclusions from our data. If you’re...
5 tags
Smart TV Weekly Digest [9/23/2011]
The Smart TV Weekly Digest is a curated collection of the week’s best articles about smart TVs and the future of content.
Netflix’s DVD Spin-Off Plan Further Infuriates Customers “Netflix is spinning off its DVD-by-mail business into a new brand called Qwikster and running it separately from the streaming business, which will continue to be called Netflix. Qwikster, which will be run by...
8 tags
Survey: what do consumers think of their remotes?
At Transmitive, we think about the remote control a lot. We have a lot of ideas about how best to reinvent—and, in fact, eliminate—the physical remote control. But how do we know that we have the right ideas? Simple: we talk to people about it.
Over the next several weeks, we’ll be publishing some of the more interesting data from our random survey of over 700 adults. The survey...
Have an opinion about remote controls? Take our... →
3 tags
Smart TV Weekly Digest [9/16/2011]
The Smart TV Weekly Digest is a curated collection of the week’s best articles about smart TVs and the future of content.
Samsung wants to own your first, second, and third screens “The latest version of the Free the TV Challenge is focused on apps developed to bridge the divide between the TV and mobile phones, tablets and PCs. By doing so, Samsung hopes to tap into consumers’...
Pitching VCs: what you should and shouldn’t do.
At “Are You Serious?,” hosted by The Hatchery, four start-ups give a five-minute pitch to a panel of four VCs. The pitch is followed by five minutes of blunt Q&A from the panel, then some even more blunt closing thoughts from each panelist. The event is extremely entertaining and, if you’re interested in practicing or observing what it’s like to pitch VCs, you should jump on the next...
3 tags
Four Simple Rules for a Great Cold Email
Writing a great cold email is tricky. But there a few simple rules that everyone should live by. Here, in the words of others, are four of the most important ones:
1. Establish rapport How to Use Email Cold Call to Get in Front of a Prospect Every Time
No one likes to receive unsolicited emails therefore the first thing you should do is break the ice. Try to build some form of rapport, even ...
6 tags
Question Wording for Surveys: What Could Go...
Surveying customers is an outstanding way to get feedback. Doing it effectively, though, is as much a science as it is an art. We at Transmitive are launching a massive survey to understand the habits and preferences of our prospective customers, so my next series of posts will discuss survey design and execution. To kick things off, it’s worth reviewing a few things that can go awry. The...
August 2011
6 posts
5 tags
The History and Future of Remote Control
“You have to know the past”, said Carl Sagan, “to understand the present.” We at Transmitive are building a better remote control. So, with Mr. Sagan’s sage advice in mind, here is a brief history of the remote control accompanied by my color commentator Mike Meyer, in italics,
1950: Zenith debuted the “Lazy Bones”, the world’s first remote control, which was physically connected to the TV by a...
4 tags
Defining Your Value Proposition | “What does it do...
It’s hard to get the attention of your sales targets. Very hard. Anyone who has tried to sell something knows this. So, as David Tisch might say, “Don’t suck at it.” Here’s how I approach the challenge of clearly defining why someone should buy stuff from you.
Put yourself in your buyer’s shoes. This is the fundamental challenge in figuring out how to sell something. To make matters more...
5 tags
A Modest Proposal for Warren Buffett
I have a modest proposal for Warren Buffett. After his New York Times Op-Ed became the talk of the town over the weekend, I got into a pretty vigorous debate with a few folks I know. “If he thinks it’s unfair that his secretary pays lower taxes than he does”, they posited, “then he should just pay the difference to the U.S. Government and leave the rest of us alone.” While I don’t necessarily...
Transmitive Homepage →
Our new Transmitive landing page is up at transmitive.com. Let us know what you think! Also, we are looking for folks interested in being a beta tester. If you love TV and hate remotes, you are the perfect candidate; you can sign up through the new landing page.
7 tags
Demystifying iOS and Android Market Share Figures
If you’re anything like me, you skim a lot of tech news throughout the day. At least once a day, seemingly, there’s another article about smartphone market share coming from TechCrunch, Silicon Alley Insider, and others.
What’s confusing about these articles is that they tend to cite the same underlying press releases from various research firms. To make matters worse, the press...
9 tags
Know your audience | recruiting a developer, part...
Since blogging about Transmitive’s search for a Lead Developer / CTO a few weeks back, we are finally winding down our search. We have three “final round” candidates and, sure enough, two of them arrived to us through proactive outreach, while one of them found us on Craigslist.
At risk of being a one-trick pony, I wanted to write up a post with some more lessons learned. Many...
July 2011
2 posts
4 tags
Gamification is the new thing? I’ve been at it for...
Gamification is a pretty hot topic these days. Mashable, for example, recently ran an article titled Gamification: How Competition Is Reinventing Business, Marketing & Everyday Life. This Google Trend chart for “gamification” tells the whole story: Here’s the thing: I’ve been gamifying everything I do for my entire life. Granted, there hasn’t been a social aspect to it, but the...
10 tags
Recruiting a Developer in New York City
Welcome to the “We’re Building Something Big” blog. The purpose of this blog is to document the ups and downs of building a start-up from the ground up for two reasons: (1) selfishly, to (hopefully) build a little buzz about our company, and (2) unselfishly, to share some lessons learned with others in the startup community. To summarize, I do Business Development for Transmitive. Transmitive is...