The bankruptcy notice, filed Friday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Jose, Calif., is intended to let Sonicblue continue operations long enough to sell its main subsidiaries. The company plans to complete those sales by April and then to open the bidding for its remaining assets.

"In the end, we and our financial advisers have concluded that the best outcome for our creditors and our employees is to sell our businesses to better-heeled owners," Gregory Ballard, Sonicblue's CEO, said in a statement.

So far, Sonicblue has signed nonbinding letters of intent with Japanese consumer electronics companies D&M Holdings and Marantz Japan to sell its ReplayTV and Rio subsidiaries for $40 million. The company also has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its GoVideo business to Opta Systems for $12.5 million.

Sonicblue has retained Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin Capital as its financial adviser and Pillsbury Winthrop as its legal counsel.

The bankruptcy filing caps an unsuccessful attempt by Sonicblue to find potential buyers or investors to reduce its debt. The company has been fighting a lawsuit by the entertainment industry over technology in its ReplayTV device that lets people skip commercials.

Sonicblue recently settled a patent suit with TiVo, its digital recording device rival.

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Related News
• Hidden ad-skipping feature found in TiVo January 15, 2003
• No escape: Gadgets bring tech everywhere January 9, 2003
• Sonicblue turned on to Universal remote October 23, 2002
• Maxtor drives Sonicblue's ReplayTV October 22, 2002
• Sonicblue pins hopes on holiday pricing October 21, 2002
• Get this story's "Big Picture"

comment [] 117 1:17:10 PM G!.

Want to take a moment and organize/explore this list. - Interesting stuff here.

Site List - Social Networking

My continuing review of social networking tools and software has lead me to many sites each with slightly different functionality twists. This collection listed today is in no particular order merely a summary to explore. My key interest is in the functionalities and how they are impacting on consumer experiences and benefits. Too many of these use copycat functionalities and are not addressing consumer issues. For broad use... they must be kept simple.

Community of Practice / CoP collaboration approaches include
Tomoye who was just noted in Fast Company and has a great set of clients.
Communispace has effectively built customer communities and has a model for creating online panels of 300. Caucus like Webcrossing are pretty traditional threaded discussions. Metalayer by contrast is something new offering what I've termed before as a smart wiki concept. Like what I've seen of Tomoye it includes improved profiling tools. None of these provide the claims that Linkify does for working on documentation simultaneously.

However all of the above involve people that know each other or get to know each other through a forum, discussion or business exchange. Depending on the forum and the moderation "trust" will be defined by the users.

By contrast NetDeva has developed an interesting Trust exchange concept While Xpertweb in perhaps a similar stage of development is developing seller based reputation. Both these programsrequire broad adoption if they are to be broadly successful. However they both have great potential amongst professional networks.

Which brings me to these emerging social network / directories. I've written about Ryze extensively, however it is by no means standalone. Many of these evolved out of observations from dating sites (Match, HotorNot, eCrush to name three that have different functionalities). Netplaya is new, created as a Burning Man demo is an effective design-knock-off that explores some new areas. It's relatively easy to navigate and could fit well with a number of corporate applications. Friendster is targeted more at social networks using friends to find your soulmate. Friendster is interesting just after the orginal sign-on process. At that point you have created a page and yet have no friends. Until you get other friends to join, it's impossible to expand your network. This provides a perceived higher level of "trust" and security (say compared to Ryze) and yet limits the thrills of joining and exploring a new community.

Buddynetwork like Ryze and Ecademy they look to be developing a F2F face to face program. There are also entries in the "Adult" area, which have typical traffic incentives for affiliates attached. True Peers is also stuck in beta, lacks either photos and makes a play for "contacts". The simpler sites have been more effective. Fotolog is worth looking at. Too bad it is not an "album" part of Ryze or the equivalent. Still then the majority really would want personal and business networking options.

Fotolog is using Meetup to assist with its events calendar. Meetup is like SMS text messaging without the phone.

Finally none of these programs really integrate with my PIM personal information manager. Two in development are Spaces and Chandler. If either of these manages to integrate with the social networking tools and peer shared directory solutions then the world may become more interesting. I may finally get personal knowledge managment myway. That's a prize worth pursuing.

comment [] 116 12:48:28 PM G!.

Thank you for your beautiful blog and your interesting posts!  You are an inspiration!

=============================

Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do is in turns fascinating and sinister. This book is a must for any designer working in the technology field. B.J. Fogg is clearly a upright fellow, yet the techniques he offers to persuade desired behavior are so clearly articulated that it is easy to see how they will be used for unethical ends.

Stanford professor Fogg lists many positive uses for these techniques, such as educating teens about domestic violence, or teaching diabetics to monitor their blood sugar levels, or getting RSI sufferers to stretch-- yet it's no effort to image the dark side. A later chapter on ethics does just that, showing his student's experiments in designing unethical tools, such a Pokémon game that coaxes personal information out of children and persuades them to bug their parents for toys.

That said, ignorance is not an option. We need to understand these methods, as designers and as users. I had never seen Amazon' Gold Box as more than a very silly bit of foolishness.. now I understand it for the highly crafted and effective sales tool it is.

Even if persuasion turns you off, you need this book for chapter 7, on web credibility. Check out the website for a taste. Design and information architecture are critical pieces in the struggle to differentiate a site from the vast number of personal sites and imitators sites... an increasingly difficult task for users.

When you finish this book, the hackles on your neck will rise, you'll feel lightly slimey-- but you will be a better designer and a smarter consumer.

comment [] 115 11:01:43 AM G!.

Key concept here is that Blogger would help Google's user's track where they've been...

But you can already do that (with some modest effort).  For example I've got RadioExpress.  It's a great little add-on for Radio users where you just click a link and it opens a blog entry box with a built in link to the page you were viewing.  If you want to caputure it and take notes then do it.

I'm using it right now!  Kudo's to Mike Krus!

comment [] 114 10:49:35 AM G!.

comment [] 113 10:38:26 AM G!.

Blatantly ripped from Jon's Radio - Thanks Jon, you remind me that This American Life is one of the more fascinating insights into the reality of human existence - not just the facade of human existance.  It should be called "American's Secret Lives."

Ripping this article, it is an interesting quetions, and I agree - when I listen to This American Life, I'm always challenged by the fascinating content.  Last time I was able to hear it, one of the topics was about a father who had secretly taped his son's telephone calls.  Result, learning about and being able to disrupt his son's secret drug life!  Final outcome was that the son and father reached a new level of honesty... We'll see if it lasts.

I'd probably chose invisibility - flying is over-rated.  Information is Power.  Invisibility would allow for information gathering and better decision-making.  It might create and end-game of arriving at that new level of honesty as in the Father-Son situation above.

Is this pointing to some core theme?  People's secret lives.  Secret information.  Desire to know other people's secrets - for personal gain at first (fun sex etc), but later you might move beyond that to a place of reality of people that you didn't know before.  Often the implication is that this would empower a better world.  Is this the story-line from 100's of movies?  Kubrik's Eye's Wide Shut?  Or Matrix? Or Groundhog Day?

Even Superman who can fly has a secret life, and his other superpowers enable invisible-like activity: X-ray vision, super-hearing, etc.  With these he has super-information gathering abilty!  This is really what we want - our own secret spy agency gathering information for us that we would not have access to!

I'm sure there are counter examples, people who learn what they do not want to know and the enchantment is broken.  Learning about affairs, and lying, and all the other sins.  If the story stops there - at the point of disenchantment, you never reach the deeper magic.  These are tragedies.  People learn something, or are exposed and then commit suicide, or run away/disappear, or go on some killing spree!

Yes it is a dangerous game to play with the magic of invisibility.  It's power to reveal truths, no matter how unpleasant, is always scary.  The question is - since this seems to be some sort of life paradigm, how do you make the transition from disillusionment and depression to new enchantment and new life?

================================

Choose your superpower

In his latest newsletter, David Weinberger asks if there is a right to anonymity in cyberspace. Let's forget about the Internet for the moment. In one of my favorite episodes of This American Life, entitled Superpowers, interviewer John Hodgman asks people this fascinating question: If you could have the power to fly, or to be invisible, which would you choose?

The decision-making process, Hodgman says, has five stages:

Hodgman: Subject A begins as they all do, with stage one: gut reaction.

Subject A: Initially I would think, perhaps, invisibility...

Hodgman: Next comes stage two, practical consideration.

Subject A: You can walk around at work, turn invisible, listen to what they say about you, you have the power to spy on your exes, and that would all be enlightening, and fun, and in fact a little bit perverted...

Hodgman: You hear that doubt in his voice? That's the beginning of stage three, philosophical reconsideration.

Subject A: I believe it would immediately turn into a life of complete depression, you wouldn't be able to share with anyone, I know there would be problems.

Hodgman: Stage four, self-recrimination.

Subject A: Invisibility leads you, leads me as an invisible person, down a dark path...

Hodgman: Finally, stage five, acceptance.

Subject A: Yeah, I'd have to go with flight.

Another interviewee concludes:

I think a lot of people will tell you they'll choose flight, and I think they're lying. I think they'll say that in order to sound mythic and heroic, because the better angels of our nature would tell us that we should strive for flight. But I think if everybody were being perfectly honest, they'd tell you the truth, which is that they all want to be invisible so that they can shoplift, go to movies for free, go to exotic places without paying for airline tickets, and watch celebrities have sex.

In cyberspace we really can have both superpowers. Nothing compels us to choose between them, but I think we will. Although our wings have been clipped slightly by firewalls and NATs, our power of flight -- the ability to go anywhere, instantly -- remains essentially intact. The Internet was designed to enable us to fly. It wasn't designed to help us hide. We just happened to get that for free, in the beginning, because it was way easier to punt on identity.

Privacy, yes, to the fullest extent possible. Invisibility, no. I don't want to live in a world where "our every click is tracked, our every purchase becomes a datum to be turned against us." But neither do I want to become a cloaked and anonymous skulker in order to avoid that. We shouldn't have to make that choice.

Update: Patrick Logan writes:

I think in normal American society (where normal to me means the society I've been a part of for the past 42 years) I would also choose the ability to fly.

But what if I were living in a more tyrannical society? Like Iraq? I certainly would choose to disappear for any number of reasons.

Excellent point.

comment [] 112 10:31:59 AM G!.

Need to send this to some people I know.  Just logging it here 'til I get online (email that is)

I thought I knew Victoria's secret. I always figured Victoria's secret was that she was a guy. According to What is Victoria's Secret? the answer is bulimia. [Radio Free Blogistan]

comment [] 111 9:57:35 AM G!.