The popular Consumerist blog listed 22 tips for getting the best deal out of Dell as leaked by a former employee.  Dell responded by sending a nasty legal threat.  The blogosphere responded negatively and Dell after spending the day thinking about their position said, “”Okay, we goofed. We shouldn’t have sent a notice.  To my earlier point, we appreciate the reminder from the community. Point taken.”

Clearly Dell is paying attention to its customers.  Ken Fisher noted that, ” The silliest thing about it all is that the 22 tips are by and large all well-known strategies for getting the best deal out of Dell. There’s nothing in the list that’s damaging to Dell or particularly revealing—at least, certainly no damaging than what could already be found on forums across the Internet.”  In any event, while it would have been smarter for Dell to have avoided the incident, they showed good judgment in their response.  WTG Dell…

This weekend we had a nonpartisan mayoral runoff election here in Dallas.  I supported Tom Leppert in the election and signed up at his website to have a yard sign placed in at my Greenville Avenue property.  Tom won the election, but I was pleased to find a short email in my inbox from Tom’s team thanking me for my vote.  Community efforts, like elections, are only possible through the efforts of community members, remember to thank them!

The Barcamp crew is getting together to create ‘iPhone Developers Camp‘ the week following the public release of the iPhone. Check out the wiki and get involved. If you would, Digg it for us here. The event (from the wiki):

iPhone Developers Camp is an upcoming gathering, inspired by BarCamp, SuperHappyDevHouse, and MacHack, to develop web-based applications and optimize web sites for iPhone. It is a non-commercial event, organized by volunteers, with attendance free to all. By the completion of the weekend event, a number of iPhone-ready web applications and web sites will be launched to the public. The event will be held in California, and out-of-town guests are welcome.

Attendees will include web designers, developers, testers, and iPhone owners, all working together over the weekend to improve the web experience for iPhone. Development projects will include both solo and team efforts. While some attendees will wish to work solo during the event, we encourage attendees to team up, based on expertise, to work in ad-hoc project development teams. All attendees should be prepared to work on a development project during the event. You do not need to own an iPhone to attend (although, a large number of iPhones at the event will make the development and testing process much easier).

Attendees will be able to:

• Create new web applications for iPhone.
• Optimize existing web applications for iPhone.
• Migrate Dashboard Widgets to web-based widgets for iPhone.
• Test and optimize web sites for iPhone.

The Big in Japan team let out a cheer today when Apple announced that we will get access to the iPhone via web applications.  Development for typical phones require complex SDK development, but Apple has decided to open the platform and allow firms like Big in Japan access the phone’s functions such as ‘making calls, sending emails while connecting to Google Maps.  It is not clear how the iPhone’s browser will expose the Domain Object Model to allow phone-specific functionality.  In a related move, Apple released Safari for Windows.  Presumably this will allow non-Mac developers to build applications for the iPhone without using an emulator.  Nice work Apple! [via]

It seems like a lifetime ago we shot the pilot for our television series called MotorSport Ranch.  The pilot aired on INHD and aired perhaps 100 times.  We shot the first season (13 hour long episodes) more than a year ago for air on Dish Network’s VOOM HD channel called RushHD (extreme sports channel for adrenaline junkies of adventure sports).The season premiere will, FINALLY, air tomorrow night on the RushHD channel on Dish at 9PM EST.  Don’t have Dish?  Me either (if you live in Dallas and want to host a watching party please let me know ~ I would host one but I have DirectTV).  We will be launching a YouTube version, but we are still sorting out the legalities of airing our own show (don’t get me started).

Ironically, the show got us into social media, ultimately causing us to create our social media company, Big in Japan.  I blogged extensively about producing the pilot in a blog called “How to create, produce and air your reality television idea.“  That blogging experience caused me to reinvent our own business as well as build a business around helping companies do the same thing.  In any event, MotorSport Ranch isn’t the Shield or Nip/Tuck, but it was fun project.  Who knows, maybe they will pick up a second season…

Oh and for those of you asking, “um, what is MotorSport Ranch?”

Synopsis:  At MotorSport Ranch, our members play neither golf nor tennis.  There is no pool.  We do not host Easter egg hunts.  Just fifteen minutes outside of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, free from conventional big city confines, this rustic Texas country club boasts a 1.7 mile road course, club house and private garages for members.  Our well-to-do members race supped-up exotic cars, open wheel formula racers and track ready motorcycles.  The Club Pro is a professional formula racer ready take your driving to the next level. 

This is not a Hollywood set!  MotorSport Ranch has been a fully operational country club for racing enthusiasts for the past six years, run by ranch-owner Jack Farr, his trusted ranch-hands and the Club Pro.  Our affluent members are doctors, dentists, lawyer, jewelers, oilmen, and land-barons.  All are serious car racing enthusiasts who periodically escape the real world to compete in their dream cars, which range from Ferraris to Dodge Vipers. 

MotorSport Ranch is the setting for our one-hour, reality show of the same name.  Its well-heeled members are the cast.  As in “The Apprentice” and “The Bachelor,” we begin the season with twenty of our ultra-competitive male and female racecar drivers.  Each have agreed to have their on- and off-track lives filmed in exchange for a chance to win a place on a professional racing team.  Ala “The Apprentice,” our Ranch-owner, his trusted ranch-hands and the Club Pro offer accolades, impart advice and eliminate competitors. 

Each week, we profile MotorSport Ranch competitors and showcase their coveted cars or motorcycles.  Viewers watch members train, socialize, and compete in on- and off-track competitions.  The final segment of the each episode, “The Show Down,” features remaining members in a two-part competition.  Part one is a sponsor-driven event; for example FedEx might provide trucks for each driver to race around the track or Jiffy Lube might provide the drivers with oil changing stations where each driver would have to change their own oil.  Part two is a highly competitive trial of speed.  The winner would receive the penultimate trophy, his moment in the spotlight and a full week of bragging rights.  Most importantly: he, alone, would receive the XM Radio (or other appropriate sponsor) immunity “idol” providing him immunity against the episode’s elimination round. 

On the season finale, one driver will prevail and be awarded The Title, hailed “MotorSport Ranch Champion!” and given a highly coveted spot on a professional racing team.  Tease: He (and perhaps others) will return next season.

Maybe it’s just me and my service provider (probably not), but in the last few weeks many of the Web services I’ve come to rely on are having downtime issues. It’s one thing to see a new service like Twitter go down (regularly. often.), but it’s another thing to see a solid, existing business like PayPal go down mid-day on a Friday. Or Flickr (run by Yahoo) running slower than cold molasses. Or….

One of the great things about the Web 2.0 "movement" is the ease with which a Web service idea can be realized. Have an idea? Have a concept and a tiny bit of coding skills? In a matter of days or weeks you can have an application launched!

As fantastic as this can be, I also wonder if we’re simply setting ourselves up for disappointment. I’m beginning to really like Twitter, yet the service infuriates me with it’s near constant scaling problems (which is more a product of intense interest than bad coding). For as many of my financial transactions that go through PayPal, I’ve come to expect that it’ll be up and running when I need it. Flickr is my go-to community these days, but I only have a few minutes a day to check in, so speed issues make me skip it all together.

Certainly we’re in a new era, and like any new era there are going to be issues. But perhaps the bigger question is whether these scaling issues we (or at least me)  are seeing are a sign of a tipping point passed or simply of a new acceptance of poor implementation. I’m inclined to believe the former.  You?

After watching the "Viral Garden Top 25 Marketing Blogs" list for some time now, I feel lucky to see that this very blog has made the list… and at #18! To see the company I’m in makes me a bit misty. Seriously, Creating Passionate Users, Logic+Emotion, Brand Autopsy… these folks are the real deal and I’m right there tagging along. Wow.

Big thanks to Mack for keeping this fun project going. Now I’m just going to sit back and let the fat endorsement checks roll in…

…wait, what? That’s now how it works? Ah crap.

In the category of, why didn’t I think of that, I wanted to give a shout out to Niall Kennedy’s newest site ‘StartupSearch’.  The site, sponsored by True Ventures (Big in Japan client), tracks ‘the web technology ecosystem commonly references as Web 2.0.’  What is it?  Niall explains the data-driven website tracks:

• web 2.0 Startups
• their products
• key employees
• investment firms
• investment partners
• success of products (i.e. using public metrics)

The site’s goal is to become ‘a research tool, a discovery engine, a fact-filled directory of our little Web startup world.’  They site is written using Python, Django and YUI.  Very cool Niall!

But what if your cool new Web 2.0 startup has too much cash? Instead of buying those aeron chairs, you can hire a killer CEO. You may have never heard of Joost (evidently the new way to watch TV – yawn), but they recently closed a huge $45MM round from Index Ventures and Sequoia. In a coup for the little company, according to Staci Kramer, they lured former Cisco exec Mike Volpi to join the team as CEO. Mike SVP-GM, at Cisco from 1994 to this year, was seen as the likely heir to CEO John Chambers. Om Malik suggest that Mike might have immediate impact in the organization. If the little company is going to show us ‘how TV will be watched from now on’ they need someone who can swim in the shark filled waters of Hollywood. Is Mike slick enough? I suspect so!

Today Google is hosting a developer day to show off Google Gears. This new open source browser plugin allows developers like us to build offline web applications using JavaScript APIs. Why is this so cool? Well, it turns out that it is hard to build applications that work offline and online across multiple browsers ~ Google Gears should make it easier.

Nick Gonzalez has reported that the first demo of Gears will be for Google Reader, but assures us more Google applications are soon to come. He explains,

Reader will add a green download button to the user interface. When you click the button, Reader will download the last 2,000 messages to your computer, preparing your computer to work offline or under a spotty internet connection. Downloading will take place in the background, using the asynchronous JavaScript API. While offline you can read these articles and carry out your usual sharing and tagging. When you get back online, just click the button and Reader will sync your offline activity with their server. Right now the syncing is initiated manually, but it’s easy to see that it will become more seamless as the program develops. Gears could conceivably solve the large data overhead problems of Google’s AJAX applications, pushing updates to your desktop instead of slowing down your browser.

The real news is that the company is releasing the tools using an open source license. It got our attention, and I suspect the attention of thousands of other developers. Smart, very smart. Read more at the BBC.