The interview is largely about how I got hired by Seesmic, and Loic (the Seesmic CEO) commented to me and in Twitter it was a great interview, and a good example of how to get hired. So thank you Loic, and thank you Sean.
Sheila Dee, Evo Terra’s wife, contacted me the other day and talked me into speaking at the upcoming Podcamp Arizona in November. Here is my page :)
We agreed my two topics will be “How I Use Social Media to Make Real Money” and “Is video conversation going to thrive, or fade away?” So I guess I’ll be speaking twice, once each day.
I keep forgetting to post this, but as you can see, I have finally done it. And I stuck the landing.
So this is me when I visited San Francisco and Loic (founder and CEO of Seesmic) interviewed me for the now defunct Seesmic Du Jour. Matt Galligan from SocialThing is in the first part, then I come on at about 2:20. Please ignore my gum chewing.
I originally wrote this to post on blog.seesmic.com, but it was pointed out to me that the mobile client cannot be pushed on the corporate blog. So I’m putting it here. I’m getting questions from people about purchasing an N95 and once there, how to set up the Seesmic client. So this is not Seesmic official, but it’s a little informative post from me. (also, there is a comment I make about Loic, and it’s full intention is to just be funny. Nothing negative about Loic) Here goes…
I’ve recently purchased a Nokia N95, primarily for the purposes of Seesmicing on the move. I don’t Seesmic as much as I would like to since I haven’t yet found a webcam that is compatible with Flash for my Linux laptop. When I suggested on Twitter that I need to buy a webcam that works, Loic helpfully suggested that a Mac comes with one preinstalled, however he failed to point out the price difference between a webcam and the Macbook. I looked it up, the price difference is significant. As I have pointed out previously, I have been using my digital camera to do all my Seesmicing, a daunting process after a while.
So I bought this phone. The first thing I did was check out the new mobile Seesmic application at m.seesmic.com. It’s in an even more alpha stage than the pre-Alpha Seesmic web app, but I can Seesmic on the move, and straight to Seesmic. In all honestly, one of the things I have enjoyed pre-N95 is Seesmicing on the move with my digital camera in video mode, but now the rest of the steps are cut out. Easy peasy.
If you have the N95, and you haven’t tried the mobile Seesmic app, you are so 2007. So in the interest of sharing knowledge, I’m going to lay down some info about what I have done because I’m getting asked that question regularly on teh interwebs. Keep in mind I am in the U.S. and I have little idea about how they do these things in Europe and other parts of the world. If you do, please leave a comment :)
First thing I did was go get an AT&T account. I’ve been a Verizon customer for too many 2 year contracts, so I have just decided to bite the bullet and pay the fee to drop them. (I could go on about how they canceled my EVDO card because I used my unlimited connection too much, or every time I make a change, it starts my 2 years over, or their phones are lame, and on and on, but I won’t) I wanted to get the account first in the off chance they wouldn’t let me after I paid for my phone. They let me have my account.
A point about why AT&T. They are currently the only provider in North America with 3G for data. You want 3G. T-mobile promised 3G, but they don’t have it yet, and it is said that it will be a different band than what the N95 supports. So sign up for AT&T, and get the unlimited data plan. My plan, unlimited Data, Txt, & Email (meh, I use gmail) with 900 minutes of talk a month, is US$94. It was pointed out to me that AT&T has a video plan as well for phones that stream video. But since the N95 uses the data plan, it doesn’t use the video specific plan. However, the AT&T clerk pointed out that AT&T may one day take a dim view of all that bandwidth for video being used without paying for a video plan. FYI.
I purchased the phone. First I purchased it through TigerDirect from a link I found somewhere on Mahalo. That’s also a long story in that they refused to send it to my mailing address so I canceled the order and they still charged me 4 days later and I had to spend hours on the phone resolving that. So I ended up ultimately purchasing my phone at Amazon. But the actual supplier for the phone is DavaVision. The reason I make this point is that I can’t find the phone on Amazon right now, it says it is not available.
BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT WHICH N95 YOU GET. There a several on Amazon that are labeled as the N95-3 (which is the North American Version) but are in fact N95s and N95-2, both of which are the European versions, the dash 2 being 8Gb version. The N95-3 currently doesn’t come in red, plum or anything else other than black. Don’t be deceived. I paid US$610 for my phone, if you are paying only US$300 or US$400, is it probably not the N95-3. Now the N95-4 is coming out soon, and that will be the 8Gb North American version, but personally, I don’t see the point. It won’t have a microSD slot like the dash 3, and the 12Gb microSD card was just released, and the 16Gb microSD card was just announced. Stick with the microSD card IMHO.
Now I’m rockin’ and rollin’ on my N95-3 on the AT&T unlimited data plan. This really is a superior phone that I’ve been amazed with constantly. The video quality is amazing, even through a live connection on the data network and not wifi (which of course it has also, and is also awesome)
If you have any questions, please comment on this post or email me at vaught@seesmic.com. I’m here to help :)
Anyone know of a way to do this automatically. Ideally, I would love it when I blogged over there, it put an entry in this blog saying to go check out that blog. Initially I was going to post in both places, but that splits up the conversation if one starts in the comments.
I came across this post from LoicLeMeur.com from October 24th, 2007. (And just for my own point of reference, I met Loic on October 30th, 6 days later, at Jeff Pulver’s party at the Roxy in Boston. Sadly that was my last night in town since I flew out the next morning)
Anyway, the post has the first two seesmix posted. Which if you are not aware what a seesmix is, it is a collection of seesmic posts in a 24 hour period, or the weekend. All edited masterfully by Giselle Kennedy btw. Always entertaining, it is is a fantastic idea, and a daily digest of videos I look forward to every day.
So if you are new to Seesmic, or an old pro, these are fun to watch, and these two are the first two. (and if you are new to Seesmic, or Seesmix anyway, they improved quickly, so skip ahead a few if you don’t particularly enjoy those two originals) More to be found on the under the user, Seesmix, on youtube.
Trying something new… I’m posting a Seesmic post below, but I’m also transcribing it for the search engines.
Sup everyone, I was just sitting here flipping through some of the channels at Justin.tv. It really struck me, how many people are playing music through the web. I know it has been going on, it has been going on youtube for the longest time, people remixing videos, remixing content. There’s.. whatever the big company is that is suing Google right now. I can’t think of what it is… starts with a V. (hint: Viacom) Earlier this weekend, I was stinging along with a Johnny Cash song here on seesmic. Anyway, it really struck me that there is just no way to pull all this back in. It’s just going to continue and continue, you can’t pull it back. And I think in reality, for the companies that sell this and hold the copyrights to it, you don’t want to pull it back. I’ve gotten a lot of comments about Johnny Cash and people that like Johnny Cash. I love the remixes, I love the videos people make on youtube. I think they add a lot of value to that song or to that video clip or whatever they are doing with it. Just some thoughts. Thought I’d share. See you kids later. Been great talking with you. Bye Bye
Ok, so not the way I would write it out if I didn’t speak it first but, meh.
Also a follow up as of the writing of this video, thanks banannie:
Stupidly simple video. Think Twitter video. Doesn’t have to be hight quality. Doesn’t have to be highly produced. Doesn’t have to be highly creative. So what’s left? Well, to the best I can figure it… community. We are all just community, a group of folks that are connecting. Seesmic probably would never have happened without twitter and the community there. So transfer that community to a new platform, a much more personal platform, and you have seesmic.
Seesmic considers itself pre-apha, and therefore leaves a lot to be desired, but I’m sure they are working on.
Well, I figure if I’m making this stuff, I might as well get the most bang for my buck. So here is a sample of seesmic. Prepare for the silly:
An update? Indeed! I’m sitting here in Starbucks, finally got my blog fixed (minus theme) this morning. I have so much to talk about, most of it legal, so I can’t talk about that :-)
So I’ll just outline what else is new:
I’m in Phoenix for a while, possibly a long long while,
I’m looking for work, telecommuting or in Phoenix area, see this post for my resume,
In a nutshell, I’m looking for Project Management, New Media expert, or PHP development. If you read my resume and see have something where you think I would fit well, let me know, I’m always ready to expand my horizons, seesmic.com, interesting things going on there,
Just attended Podcamp Boston, and Podcamp Arizona
Attended the first two days of Video on the Net,
Met way too many friends to mention here, but I’m sure they will be mentioned in posts to come,
I need an iPhone, and a mac laptop,
I’m back on Ubuntu on my laptop, windows crashed hard and can’t get to stupid Dell partition to reinstall Windows. Ubuntu is awesome, I love it, just a few applications I can’t replace and need windows for. Can you say “multiple desktops”? mmmmmmmm
I guess I just need to plug in my twitter feed. I keep that more up to date then the blog. I know I’m forgetting things… such is life. Let’s keep in touch :-)
