Nike Plus Sportband

Nike introduced the Nike+ SportBand this week. It's a little USB device that stows away on a wrist strap and records the data from your Nike shoes. Later you plug it into your computer to upload stats to Nike. It includes the in-shoe transponder and it's only sixty bucks. Don't have Nikes? Ziptie the transponder to your existing shoes and use "calibration" mode to teach it how they "feel."

Some marketing genius got their wings for the up-sell possibilities, but I can't wait to see what the alternate reality gaming people think up!

Suppose you want to walk X miles per week as part of your commute ... but you never know when the bus will appear *while* you're walking to the next stop, making you wait for the next-next bus.

Now I'll bet your phone has rudimentary GPS and *some* internet capability. So you punch up www.mightaswellwalk.com and it looks up the next bus' arrival time, distance to the next stop, divides by your average morning/afternoon pace and tells you "might as well walk!" (And if you're whey under your weekly goal it could nag you, "better walk!")

This could get really interesting!

Danger Assimilated

Microsoft just bought Danger.

MySQL Assimilated

Sun just bought MySQL.

Various, Inc. Assimilated

Penthouse Media Group has reportedly acquired Various Inc. Various runs a handful of "dating" sites including Adult Friend Finder and its anti-particle Big Church.

Jaiku Assimilated

Google just bought Jaiku.

dodgeball.com

This is a really interesting proof-of-concept. People don't seem to be grooving on the idea of leaving a GPS signal running on their phones all the time, but they do seem to be willing to say "hey I'm going to such-and-such bar right now" and have it automagically SMS'd to all their friends.

However, I'm told that after Google acquired the company, they started to just strip it for parts, and the whole staff of Dodgeball quit on a Friday the 13th in disgust.

I wonder what it's gonna take to get location based phone stuff to be accepted by people. There's gotta be some killer app that'd get folks to feel safe using it.

myspace.com

Oh my god MySpace was a cesspool and *then* FOX bought it. Are they all smoking crack over there? I really think they meant well when they said "gosh with a ton of marketing and branding folks we could really make this into a monster!" They just didn't realize it's the kind of monster that waits under your bed to grab any ankle that sets foot near the floor.