Loopt = Creepy?

Loopt, I don’t know how to feel about you.  At first, I thought you were very creepy.  Thoughts of dirty old men, Looping unsuspecting tweeners with iphones into mall dates kept dashing through my mind.

Then I asked some friends about the new app and to my surprise a few had it.

I remember when online dating was uncouth and creepy. Now it seems to be almost commonplace.  So maybe Loopt just has to get past the awkward beginning stages to where it is more commonly accepted.  Young adults are going to go through some fun/uncomfortable moments when undesirable suitors ask to be loopt in, then follow their loop-friend, only to be blocked seconds later.

But i digress,  the big question I ask again is, why is this app special?  As Techcrunch themselves say, there is no reason facebook and myspace shouldn’t be doing this.  And once they do, don’t you think they will be able to do everything that Loopt does and better?  With much larger user pools to draw from.

At best, Loopt is a training ground, to show Facebook and Myspace what to avoid and what to perhaps copy.  As creepy as I may think it is, the GPS feature of iphones is too useful and cool to not do this.

All in all, the idea may have staying power, but it remains to be seen if any of these programs like Loopt, Moximity and Where can actually give us a product that isn’t easily duplicated and improved upon by the big guys.

Big Brother is watching you.

What Obama means for ‘green tech’

With a landslide victory, I starting thinking about what exactly is it about our President Elect that people are so drawn to…. his economic policy? His approach to foreign affairs?

I decided that for me it is the sense that he will cut out some of the inefficiencies that seem to plague our government. Yes, we need serious economic reform but I am also very concerned about the state of our environment and what the environmental landscape will look like 30 years from now.  Tackling both of these issues at once, it exactly what Obama’s energy plan seems to aims to achieve.

According to CNET, “Obama’s energy plan, detailed fully earlier this year, is ambitious. It calls for a $150 billion investment in clean technologies over 10 years, aggressive targets for greenhouse emission reductions, and programs to promote energy efficiency, low-carbon biofuels, and renewable energies.”

Investments in clean technology, if handled appropriately, could also help a struggling economy and bring down the highest unemployment rate we’ve had in 14 years.  Instead of trying to figure out ANOTHER spin on the already mastered social network (honestly, I don’t think we have room for one more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites,) entrepreneurs should focus their efforts on clean technologies, knowing that $150 billion will be thrown that direction over the next 10 years.

There is so much room for advancement in that field and I am surprised more people have not jumped in already.

There are the obvious sectors of renewable energy and hybrid transportation, but there are more ways to take advantage of this mandatory $150 billion investment.  Monitoring is going to be hard for companies to comply with the mandates that will be forced upon them over the next 10 years.  Technology that can track how ‘green’ a company is, its carbon footprint, etc. could see a lot of growth.

Some of my personal favorites that I have come across:

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/carbonflow

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/cleanloop

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/greenroad-technologies

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/3-phases-renewables

Twitter?

I don’t get it.  Why would I waste my time looking to see what small things in life are happening to people?  If it was important, wouldn’t they call/email/text me?  On the other end of the spectrum, who is writing these twitter posts?  Why devote time to a program revolving around single sentence statements?

The website states three examples of why I should use twitter:

1. Eating soup? Research shows that moms want to know.
2. Running late to a meeting? Your co–workers might find that useful.
3. Partying? Your friends may want to join you.

However, text messaging is more direct and universal for each case.

1 – My mom has a phone and is rarely on a computer;
2 – My co-workers have computers and phones, I don’t have a smartphone so taking the time to twitter would increase my tardiness;
3 – The majority of my friends have cellphones but won’t have or ever get twitter. so why not just send one mass text message for parties?

My friends all have phones, so I can call/text them without the need for twitter. (Also, you can now try sending text messages through your gmail account; so google, as it is to most companies, is a serious threat to any sort of traction twitter may have gained)

While bored at work, I look at people’s away messages on G-mail, Facebook, and AIM.  If these three applications somehow fell apart and no longer existed, then I could see a need for Twitter.

What really surprises me is the amount of hype and funding they get.

Series C – 15 Million?  Why? How does this site plan on making money?  What useful service do they provide that facebook and gmail don’t already provide for me?  And what is stopping facebook or gmail from providing it?

After this financial crisis, I bet the venture capital firms wish they could have a do-over.

Go Vote!!!!

I am so tired of all of these people with their Vote statuses on gmail, and their “make sure you go and vote” messages on facebook etc.  Why do these people feel the need to tell me to vote?  Why should I listen to this cyberfriend who has never mentioned politics until the day before an election?  I mean, maybe if the person one day in the middle of the year had a status up telling me to check out some judges ruling on a certain case and to remember not to vote for them in november I would listen to that person.  But I have yet to come across any away message telling me about the direction of our city’s spending and policies outside a week of a voting period.  If I’m going to vote, I’ll do with my own motivations, I don’t need to be ordered so by your newfound online political activist personality.  And anyways, I’m an absentee ballot and did this all last week……