Toluu

Charles Hudson's Weblog

This is my personal website for posting my views on the world of technology and gadgets.

My Search for the Best iPhone 3G Music HeadsetToday

I am a heavy iPhone user and I can’t get the factory issued iPhone earbuds to stay in my ear. I’ve spent the last few weeks trying out different headsets to figure out which ones might work better for me. I commute using public transportation at least 5 days a week, so the ideal headphones for me have the following attributes:

-Must cost less than $200
-Must have a good snug, in-ear fit
-Preferably offer a microphone option to answer calls without having to pull out the Jawbone

I did a lot of digging online and chose two headsets to compare - the Etymotic hf2 and the Shure Se210. Below are some basic thoughts on what I liked and didn’t like about each headset based on my experiences.

Etymotic hf2
I really liked these headphones. They are not cheap - with tax they are almost $200. They have amazing sound quality and a frighteningly good sound seal. I’ve used them on several form of Bay Area public transportation (BART, Caltrain, Muni) and while walking around in fairly noisy, busy urban environments and you barely hear anything other than your music.

I am not an audiophile, so it took awhile for me to understand the difference between sound isolation and noise cancellation. The Etymotic headset does a fantastic job of sound isolation (you hear your music in very clear form without much ambient distortion - you will still hear honking cars, announcements on PA systems, and other sounds) and noise cancellation (the cone of

Short Blurb - The Trinity of Cheap and Social Web UtilitiesYesterday

Quick blog post as I continue to process a lot of things I thought about while I was away on vacation. These two things are unrelated but I have been thinking about them both quite a bit:

I have seen a lot of products in the social media space that bill themselves as utilities of some sort. I interact with a lot of utilities in the real world (power company, Comcast, etc) and they all have the same basic business model - an access fee and some form of consumption pricing. Why should utilities on the web be any different?

I played with two really cool netbook computers over the break and now I really want one. I think we are on the verge of seeing the “holy trinity of cheap” netbooks, cheap wireless access, and cheap (or free) software working together harmoniously a lot quicker than expected. I think this trinity of cheap is going to radically accelerate a lot of the trends we’ve been seeing, namely the mass adoption of web-based software.

Thoughts on Free Powered Business Models and Why Time Beats FeaturesYesterday

I spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to offer products that are free or basically free to users on the web. I try not to get religious about free - there’s nothing inherently right or wrong about choosing a business model that incorporates a free component so long as you understand what you’re getting yourself into and have a plan for how to make up the revenue somewhere.

With so many social media companies rushing to discover and implement a business model that will work for their service and community, I think the discussion of free sometimes gets convoluted. I think there are some really important distinctions between a model that incorporates a perpetually free version with a premium upgrade and a model where there is one (or few) offerings that users can fully enjoy for some period of time before having to make the pay vs not pay decision.

I want to make the case for more companies tinkering around with the “free trial” approach as opposed to the model focused on a neutered version of the paid product being offered for free with the hope of eventual upgrades.

I can think of two sensible ways to offer a free web product whose ultimate aim is not to be ad-supported:

1. Perpetually Free with a Paid Upgrade Option - Under this model, you build a product that has a perpetually free version that is a degraded version of the paid product. The onus is on the company to properly delineate the free and paid offering such that th

Why Social Nets are Shying Away from PaymentsJanuary 2

I was reading Justin Smith’s good post on Faecbook’s delayed payment system and I thought I’d share a slightly longer version of what I left in the comments on his blog:

I do think most of the major social networks have looked at payments and decided it’s a tricky business for them to tackle for the following reasons:

Payments generally don’t work as a side business - It’s pretty hard to run payments as a side business. Most people who have tried to do it have met with some real challenges. There is a lot of management overhead, regulatory requirements, and domain-specific knowledge required to run a payments business. Most companies don’t have the expertise to be good at what they’re doing as their core business and bootstrap an in-house payments initiative at the same time.

Facebook Connect can and should reduce friction for developers looking to accept payments- I do think there’s potential for Facebook Connect to reduce the friction associated with taking payments on social networks by allowing user to use their social network IDs to authenticate themselves when using payment mechanisms. I expect that most of the major monetization engines on social networks today (incentivized offers, micropayments, PayPal, PayByCash, etc.) are all looking at whether Facebook Connect can lead to a more seamless pa

Update - I’m Now an Advisor at ZongDecember 31 2008

I’m really excited to announce that I’m now an Advisor for Echovox, the company behind the very popular mobile payments service called Zong. I’m really looking forward to working with David Marcus and the rest of the team on their growth strategy.

I think mobile payments are a really big deal for virtual goods companies and I’ll have more to say on payments in general in a subsequent post.