Stage Two's blog

I wanted to call this a tweetup, but if I’m blogging it I think that breaks the rules? Just kidding. Anyhow, a bunch of us mobile/gadget/convergence folks wanted to get together, chat about how the world just changed (or didn’t), and also talk in advance of Mobile World Congress (aka 3GSM).  We’ve teamed up with Lisa Whelan, from SocializeMobilize, to gather fun people and the great people at Jillian’s (at the Metreon, spitting distance from the event. literally) put aside a little space for us.

No RSVP needed, but all the details are available here.  Looking forward to seeing you there.

I’ll buy a drink for the first person to show up WITH whatever new thing got announced at the event. :)  Yes, multiple winners if there are multiple things.

BTW – you can visit my personal blog to see recent thoughts I’ve shared on the supposed tablet.

No client updates, no social media marketing thoughts, nothing but a brief plea to send some help to those in need in Haiti.  Our friend Andru Edwards at gearlive.com has put together a great gift-matching program, and we’re supporting it.  The Red Cross has created an SMS-based donation plan, and we along with a few other groups and individuals will gift match to a certain dollar amount.  Details:

Starting now, if you send an SMS donation to either the Red Cross (by texting the word HAITI to 90999) or to YELE (by texting the word YELE to 501501) Gear Live will match it, up to $500. In addition, we have a bunch of our friends joining in as well:

• David Geller of Eyejot and WhatCounts will match up to $2500
• Leslie Camacho, President of EllisLab (which makes the fantastic ExpressionEngine CMS) will personally match up to $600
• Nate True of Tap Tap Revenge and iPhone hacking fame will match up to $500
• Jeremy, Adam, and the team at Stage Two will match up to $500
• Dave Taylor, the man behind AskDaveTaylor.com, will match up to $250
• Don McAllister of Screencasts Online will match up to $250
• Robert Scoble, the face behind Building43, will match up to $200
• Local Gear Live fan Shauna Causey will match up to $100
• Parnassus Ventures, the folks behind 140: The Twitter Conference, will match up to $100
• Jason Neudecker, a Gear Live Twitter follower, will match up to $100
• TechieDiva.com will match up to $50

In total, so far, that’s $4500 $5400 $5650 in pledged matching donations! For each donation you make, each entity above will match it, until their limit is reached. In other words, with our current eight eleven twelve contributors, your $10 donation will actually be matched six nine eleven twelve times, resulting in a $70 $100 $120 $130 payment. So, what do you need to do? This is the easy part. Just scroll down and leave us a comment letting us know that you made a donation, and whether it was a $5 or $10 contribution. If you do it multiple times, let us know that too. Even better, if you want to be on our list as a person or company that will match donations, let us know!

I just read a piece which claims that over 300,000 people are now homeless.  And this is a poor country with very little quality infrastructure – in other words, it’s not going to just “get better” without some serious help.

Huge kudos to the Red Cross, Andru Edwards, and the millions of people who will inevitably help.

As one side note, and not to distract from this, we at Stage Two have decided we’ll be making a monthly stop at the SF Food Bank.  If you feel moved to help the ONE in FIVE residents of San Francisco that live at or below the poverty line, please get in touch and you can join us!

The Pogoplug launched at CES last year, so coming back this year with the second generation and a bunch of new features was a celebration. We saw some old friends, met some new ones and had a lot of Showstoppers style fun.

This year, CES was all about the connected home: gadgets and appliances that communicate to each other and the pull information off the web. The Pogoplug, already being a master of connectivity, expanded it’s range to the PS3 and XBox. Now you can view photos, share files and stream music and movies through your Pogoplug –all without putting down your game controller.

The company also announced its first retail partnerships: you can now find the Pogoplug through TigerDirect.com on shelves at Fry’s electronics–just look for the pink box.

VUDU is at the Consumer Electronics Show today (as are most of the staff of Stage Two btw.)  They have a few amazing pieces of news to share today, and have issued not just one, but two press releases to announce that news to the world.  The brief synopsis of that news, in three parts, is as follows:

1. Expansion with existing partners – many new HDTVs and Blu-ray players (BDPs) with VUDU on them will ship in 2010 from exisiting partners LG Electronics, Mitsubishi and VIZIO.
2. New partners: Samsung, SANYO, Sharp and Toshiba will all ship products in 2010 with VUDU services embedded, both HDTVs and BDPs.
3. Launching VUDU Apps: The VUDU Apps platform delivers a wide range of Internet services and applications to HDTVs and BDPs.  These services include streaming video, music on demand, photo browsing, social networking and more.  More than 100 applications are available on VUDU Apps, including Pandora, Picasa, Flickr, Dailymotion and leading news providers, such as The New York Times and The Associated Press.

The VUDU blog post goes into additional detail.  VUDU is announcing this from Las Vegas, as some of their CE partners also announce the relationship as well via press release or press conference (or both.)

CES is always a noisy time of year to try and announce something important and expect to get significant news coverage.  But VUDU has managed to transmit some signal despite the noise, and a few outlets have already covered the news.  The full list is below, and we’ll update as we see coverage come in.

• Gizmodo
• NYT
• NewTeeVee
• Engadget
• LA Times
• CE Pro
• IGN
• PC Magazine
• Electronic House

VUDU Apps