I recently an article on TechCrunch talking about a young company called PhoneTag.com that converts voice mails into text so that you can read your voice mail messages instead of having to step out of the room to listen to them. This feature would be great for business professionals who are constantly getting calls and messages while in meetings and office scenarios, not to mention that most of us can read much faster than they can listen.

I also found out that the service supports GrandCentral, which I am a big fan of, so I went to the site to try it out. I discovered to my dismay that the service is not free, as I’ve come to love and frankly expect of all great internet based applications (which extends to my phone as well). So, rather than fork over $29.95 a month, I decided to write the company at info@phonetag.com to let them know they should offer it to free. I didn’t really expect a response, or a free service, but I have trouble not letting people know that their business is doomed if I think they have an easy change available.

I got a response from James Siminoff, Founder of PhoneTag.com. I am reprinting the email correspondence below. Please note where James says that he wouldn’t want to be a part of companies that ‘make a lot more money’ than he does. Why not?? He didn’t get into the guns he’s sticking to or the reasons for doing so, but I suspect foul play.

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My Original Email:
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I use Grand Central and was interested in using your product with my voicemails, until I saw that it cost money. I just wanted to write and suggest you figure out a way to monetize differently and not charge for your service.

Someone will offer this for free soon if they don’t already and building the network seems like the most important thing to me.

Just my two cents,

Dan Graham
Managing Director
BuildASign.com

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James Siminoff’s Reply
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Dan,

Thanks but in the end someone has to charge money for a service… We strongly believe in building a profitable business from the start and that is why we have launched our business with a subscription based model.

I have seen a lot of people make a lot more money than I have doing businesses that use alternative funding sources to provide free products, I personally would just not want to be part of any of them.

Thanks for taking the time to send the comment,

Jamie

James Siminoff, Founder
PhoneTag

I’m sure we’ve all gotten 100 emails from the Prince of the Sudan or the Sultan of Cambodia or the Duke of Zaire — most of which don’t exist and all of which are email scams. They send very long “most honorable” requests for assistance transferring money or some such. Now this email con has come to Austin and has mutated into a much more believable and dangerous form.

Most everyone knows not to reply to these emails and many people think “Who would be dumb enough to send someone like that money??” What most people don’t know is that the scam is quite clever because they King of Morocco actual sends YOU money, not the other way around.

A version of this scam showed up in Austin and nearly took a Masters student for $2,000 as reported by KEYE. The scam works as follows: The con artist tells you they need help moving money or they offer to pay you up front of a service. They write you a check or send you money that shows up in your bank account. You (the sucker) check your bank and sure enough…there’s $10,000 dollars in there that they sent!! Sweet! You just got a nice chunk of change! Let’s say that your bank balance is now $15,000 ($5,000 of your money and $10,000 newly transferred dollars). The next email or communication will say “Oops, I made a mistake and only mean to send $5,000 to you, the other $5,000 was for someone else (or for my son or for this other account in America.) Can you please send $5,000 of the money I sent to you to Account #X?” You’ve already got the $10,000, so what do you have to lose…right? Well, you transfer the $5,000 to account X taking your balance down to $10,000. A couple days later, the original money transfer/check that the con artist sent bounces. The bank pulls the $10,000 from the bounced check out of your account and you are left with …. ? NOTHING! Well done.

I’ve heard a lot of people misrepresent this scam, so I thought it would be worth walking through and the recent article puts a new twist on it. A much better twist in my opinion, in the form of a local tutoring fee. This seems much more likely to con someone than the Prime Minister of Ethiopa.

An article was recently published at readwriteweb.com that brought to mind the changing face of the web and information. Currently, in our Web 2.0 world, we have interactive websites that are built on user content and social contribution, but as we move into Web 3.0, content will be driven by semantics algorithms that are built to filter through Yottabytes of information to create worthwhile content for readers.

In the age of Twitter, blogging, and other social media, the instant availability and breadth of information will not be a problem — the problem will be (and is already) that there is too available information and too much of it. How do you know what to read, how often to read it or what to do with it? The answer is, filters.

Take my previous article where I used the example of 9/11 and said that “Better and better filters will be producing news for our eyes . . .” In the event of another tragedy like 9/11, thousands of people all over the world will be talking about it as it’s occurring, but most of that ‘chatter’ will not be useful to those wondering what is going on. As an example, the most common chat/twitter/post might just repeat information that is already known, or may be asking questions “Do you know what’s going on with the twin towers?” So how do we get “news” from this mess of noise coming across the internet? Filters.

Web 3.0 will be the semantic web and we will rely on algorithms and software to make connections and inferences based on content as to what is related, what is important and what stories and information are connected based on language, geography and profile data on users. In the case of 9/11, semantic filters will be watching for geographically similar excited utterances sharing keywords within a period of time. Once ‘event clusters’ are identified, more advance filtering will take place to try and piece together a picture of what is going on and deliver that information to those who are interested or to other computer programs who are doing meta-filtering (filtering further information that has already been filtered).

A truly semantic web will be able to act as our journalist, filtering through amazing amounts of information, prioritizing, categorizing and grouping them into the kinds of stories and information we want to see, all before the first phone rings at the news station.

KEYE TV reported today that the East Austin Liberal Arts and Sciences Academy High School had started their very own Quidditch league. Class mates assume the well known positions of Beater, Keeper, Seeker and yes, even Snitch.

One word: Ridiculous! I wouldn’t have believed it at all except I saw a similar match taking place on ESPN yesterday. Other than the videos of guys and girls holding volleyballs quaffles and running around with brooms between their legs, the Snitch takes the cake. The Snitch is dressed in tight, and oddly revealing, shiny clothes and has what appears to be a sock with a tennis ball in it hanging out the backside of their shorts. The Snitch then runs around the playing area trying to keep the Seeker from pulling the tennis ball out of their pants.

Watch the video, and then I’d recommend going to Youtube to see this recent phenomenon in action across the country.

I’ve been saying it to friends and colleagues for quite some time, but it’s always nice when a story comes out to reiterate my view. This article was just released around Twitter and how it is impacting the reporting of news. The first mainstream news to pick up the earthquake that was twittered about was an entire HOUR behind. That may not be long by today’s standards, but in a world of instant gratification and instant information, an entire HOUR is a lifetime.

Imagine how different the news would be today, or five years from now, surrounding the events of 9/11. We’d have tweets and blogs and photos and video from all of the planes, from inside the twin towers and from streets, apartments and other vantage points. Everyone would be expressing their fear, outrage and opinions in real time, accompanied by video and photos. Maybe the second, third or fourth plane would have been spared or at the least followed the same fate as the grounded plane in Pennsylvania, if the information access had been more readily available.

Better and better filters will be producing news for our eyes, and better and better delivery systems will be transmitting that data to the people who need it most; be it an evacuation or a plane hijacking.

News is one of the many many middlemen that the current generation will be the last to regard as important. The next generation will see the death of the middleman. With complete information and the abandonment of reliance on information providers, many common positions will go the way of the dodo.

News as we know it, real estate agents, financial advisors/planners, medical diagnosticians, tv cable providers, internet providers and anyone else who makes their living off being a conduit for information will soon be dinosaurs in a world of instant access, free service and community driven behavior. Privacy abandonment, personalization and free service will predominate in the years after 2010, when the next generation will refuse to wait for information and reject information that isn’t completely pertinent to their desires.

The Statesman had an article today regarding a recent audit done by management consulting firm MGT of America. The firm, among other things, recommended the discontinuation of crime fighting copter ‘Air 1.’ Apparently flying a helicopter around is expensive.

Now I’m not going to bore you, or myself, with all the facts and figures, but I think we can all agree that there is simply no cost too high for the protection of our city and our citizens. According to the article, Air 1 responded to over 1,000 calls last year and had about 550 flights.

Sure the Austin Police Department underestimated the cost of each flight hour by a factor of 7 and 1/2 ($1000 vs $7500 actual), and sure the police officers themselves have named the helicopter ‘Air None’ because it never seems to be available when they need it. But just think how much cooler the police department is with a helicopter patrolling the skies.

I think that they just need to run the math again and they’ll realize that ‘Air None’ is a result of too few helicopters and that the inefficient use of fuel costs is due to lack of coordination in the air (Austin is a large city for just one helicopter). What we really need is about 12 more and the creation of a new Air Fleet Unit out there fighting for continued justice on the streets.

Common auditors, we all know that sometimes the best way to save a buck is to just buy 12 helicopters

Scott Roberts, the owner and land owner of the Salk Lick BBQ, will be revamping the land around the landmark bbq joint and creating spas, $1 million dollar homes, lodges, vineyards and more. His goal is to turn the Austin’s beloved brisket and sausage locale into an uppity closed-gate community of millionaires called ‘Driftwood’. He is, however, leaving the restaurant open so that the new rich inhabitants can make fun of all the country bbq folk and college students mix nicely with the existing customer base.

Frankly, I have to agree. The times that I’ve been to the Salt Lick, I’ve always thought the area needed a bit more class… all that sauce and beer…tsk tsk

Update: Apparently my commentary isn’t enough =) — here are some articles that also talk about this news:

Austin American Statesman
Austin Business Journal
Austin360

So maybe it’s not for free, but it is definitely exciting to see ABIA expanding their routes. Of particular note are San Fransisco, Cancun and Orlando (because that’s where Disney World is — not to mention the Internal Sign Association Expo every other year.

The Austin airport really lacks the level of customs stations that I’ve learned to love at Houston, so I’ll be curious to see how they handle the increased volume. See more in this Statesman Article.

There is apparently a website that was developed by Online Pictionary. Groups of people join and watch someone interactively draw a series of pictures while they to guess what is being drawn. The things to draw are displayed on the screen to the drawer and the fun begins. You do need a critical mass of people for the game to work, and often when you go to the site the room will be empty. The site is also SEO defunct, but with a few changes I’m sure it would rank highly in Google and would get plenty of traffic to keep the games ongoing.

Ryan also has a blog for the XSketch program where he updates players on new software development features.

Very cool.

In these days of Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Flickr, and Mobile Phones, social media marketing is all the rage. I love reading about clever ideas companies and groups use to promote themselves through social media. Radiohead recently held a remixing contest for one of its songs “Nude” (Wired). The contest elicited 2,300 entries or so, and helped propel Nude into the Billboard Hot 100 for Radiohead (the first song in 12 years to make it there).

The reason, however, that this type of social media is so effective is that Radiohead is already so well known (Steve Colbert did something similar with his Green Screen Challenge). As more and more people engage in social media marketing, the PR effect will wear off and we will be looking for better and better filters to keep it away from our daily lives just like we rely on the fast forward on our DVRs to keep away TV ads.