Full Transcript:

Benjamin Higginbotham: Benjamin Higginbotham with technologyevangelist.com. We are here with Aaron Landry to discuss “The End of an Era”. You actually purchased a Hiptop back in 2002 and then 2003 started into do mobile blogging with it, after a thousand blog posts, you retiring the Hiptop.

Aaron Landry: Yes, that’s true.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Now, what happened there?

Aaron Landry: Well, I will start from the beginning. Back in 2002 my dream device would be something that had connectivity to Internet and not like this bogus via SMS or anything like that and I just wanted email, I wanted instant messaging and light web browsing and this was like the dream device, this was the only other thing that was even close to it at that time as Blackberry.

Blackberry have very similar functionality, but was a little bit more cranky required like a corporate backend and just wasn’t a fit for me or wasn’t fit for the company I worked for, when these came out, it was actually my boss that pointed to me initially before they came out, without even, I just looked at it and (thought) I'll try the keyword and if it is OK then I am buying it, it was exactly what I did when went to a T-mobile store and buy one right when they came out.

I originally started “blogging” like , I guess in 2000 not long after Blogger.com launched and it's just kind of funny to think about Blogger's history too, I mean it literally was a system where you put your data or your blog on their service and you give them your FTP information and then they publish the static pages on your site, just funny side not to see how for that we have come, but the site that I had was just like lot of people’s first blogs or first online journal sort of speak and it was kind of a bunch of crap and all this was what I feel about, and this is what I think something, it is kind of hard to know at first that, well what’s good to publish – what’s not good to publish - what’s interesting to viewers…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Finding your voice…

Aaron Landry: Right, exactly and so I just trashed it, I just realized that blogging was just worthlesst to me and I know it is just a pointless venture 2002 and it was just not good for anything and then once I got this Hiptop, not long after I found Hiptop Nation which was run by somebody who has had Hiptop from the beginning as well and there was just other people posting and at that time it was 90/120 pixel images.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Slowdown there…Woah…

Aaron Landry: But, the kicker was is that they were posting it directly from their device and taking it from their device, ofcourse it was a bar of soap and the camera attached to it on the side, and it wasn’t even a built in camera, but to be able to have a system where you can take a picture and then email to something and have it automatically be published on webpage was just a coolest thing in 2002 and so it was a group moblog so to speak and that time it was like, it was kind of revolutionary in a way, it is like one of the first ones out there . I mean you can date back there was some guy in Finland that did it before, but really this was one of the first ones that kind of actually took off and was being used.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Kind of tipping point of mobile blogging there that point where it was actually started to a snow ball …

Aaron Landry: Right, exactly and infact the guy who started that site, he was invited and talked at the first moblogging conference in Japan later that year. It was really exciting to just see like these little snippets of these random people’s lives and it just kind of mix my own random things in there as well. It wasn’t like lot of blogs where people writing about themselves, writing about politics, writing about the news or doing their own analysis things, these are just little snips or snap shots in my life and what at first became or what it first was these random people, you start to get to know them in kind of a unique way. I mean you can read somebody’s blog or you can look at, now you can look at people’s Flickr.com account, you look at some of those and kind of get to know somebody in the certain way, but it was very unique at the time back in like late 2002, early 2003 seeing this conglomeration of all these little 90/120 little snippets of people’s lives.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, you are a group of people and you all got these device in common, you got your Hiptop and you got your camera out also you got the built-in after a little bit of time and you are on mobile blogging or moblogging, whichever term that you want to use…

Aaron Landry: Yeah, we hate them all .

Benjamin Higginbotham: Exactly, you all love this device, let’s fast-forward a little bit to you posted a thousand different posts on your website, you guys gotten together, you have done all the stuff and now you retire the device?

Aaron Landry: Right, it is kind of a mix between two things, well it is about three things actually. Like, all of these people that I have been moblogging with for the most part we met almost all of each other. It is actually kind of bizarre in a way and it is just like the communities that have been in moblogging together just like we all kind of know each other to the point where lot of us are friends, lot of us flied different time zones to see each other all the time and so that part is kind of like OK we have these established relationships, that’s not like we are publishing in to a bunch of people that we don’t know.

The second thing is about the device. At 2002 the device was just as revolutionary thing and it was just like the reason that all of us kind of bought into it was that this is the cutting edge, I mean this is the new thing that I want to be doing, it just like that I want to have this kind of connectivity, I want to be able to be constantly on the Internet 24x7, it is like I want to be able that if someone what’s to instant message me, they should be able to do so at anytime of the day and I should be able to reply them with the QWERTY keyboard and have it be instant be able to multi-task with other things at the same time and…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Totally agree!

Aaron Landry: And at the same time have to be a social device where you don’t have to stick your head in it for a while to turn on instant messenger or something, where it is just something that just works in multitask properly and that’s why we bought into it and it was revolutionary then, but it is not revolutionary now. It is just that so many other devices that do so many more things now and the goal of the device isn’t necessarily for the people that want the cutting edge technology it is more geared towards the masses now and the kind of functionality that they are adding into it and the kind of things that they are doing with the device are more geared to sell more devices, which is great for them, but for the smaller group of people that want the cutting edge stuff and then we got to move on.

The third piece of why I am cutting back is I need a break. I have been connected to the Internet for like four years where anybody that needs to get a hold on me or anytime I need to go to webpage to get an answer, anytime that you're at a bar and somebody arguing with your friend and just like OK I will Google it right now and then your friends become dependent and your co-workers become dependent on the fact that you always available and it is just like , OK I sent Aaron an email half hour ago and he has not got back to me, what’s the deal? Like he must be really busy.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I know exactly what you mean, absolutely. So that brings us to this, you have a Nokia phone right now…

Aaron Landry: My backup phone, yeah.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Your backup phone, I mean it could have been any device?

Aaron Landry: Right.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Are you planning to get Internet connected again? Are you waiting for a bigger revolutionary device to come out?

Aaron Landry: Well yes, I look at a lot of devices that are out there, it is like I am always especially towards the last couple of years and not seeing all the stuff I would have liked in the Hiptop. I really was looking at lot of Blackberry’s, Treo’s, lot of Windows Mobile based devices and anytime something new comes out there is news or if somebody else sounds like “I want to see this phone”, and when “can I borrow this”, I just couldn’t find, I mean I found lot of stuff that had more features, but not the ease of use and not that just a quick fast ability to just have it not be the central focus of something. I don’t want to dig through a whole bunch of menus to get to a point that where I can figure out the address of a place I just want people touch-touch, click-click whatever. When Steve Jobs announced the Apple iPhone, I was kind of like “finally, this is like, this has these things that I want” I mean it is like these are the things I have been wanting in the mobile device. Granted it, not on speed…

Benjamin Higginbotham: It is not an EDGE network.

Aaron Landry: Right, it is not on the fastest network, it is on a closed architecture, who knows what apps will and won’t be available for it, the price point is high, but it has got the features that I want and so it is I am already sold on it, it is the promise, I mean it is not, I mean that is even on release date formalized about it, but it is June sometime, right, but for what I want, it is like this looks like it is going to be a fit for me, even though I am going to have friends I can be like well, I can download this faster and it is like I can view this kind of media and…

Benjamin Higginbotham: What is your Holy Grail device I mean no holds barred, just what is it, what exactly do you want to see?

Aaron Landry: Oh man! My Holy Grail device…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah.

Aaron Landry: First of all would be small and then secondly it has to got to have a QWERTY keyboard.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Tactile or touch screen like the iPhone. Yeah, see that’s my problem too, I don’t know if I am going to like the iPhone right. You can’t feel it like you said, your source of conversations…

Aaron Landry: Yeah, I am so used to being able to not have to look at the device and be able to just kind of know where the keys are and be able to use it that still be able to hold the conversation or still be able to drive which of course I don’t recommend to anybody.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So you want a small, you want a keyboard , probably tactile, based on what you have been saying.

Aaron Landry: Probably tactile.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah.

Aaron Landry: If there is a Holy Grail device it is going to put my iPod and my Camera and my Phone and my Internet messenger in to one thing.

Benjamin Higginbotham: But you are going to want a really high quality camera too, you don’t just want a camera, you wanted a super camera?

Aaron Landry: See that’s what right, it is almost impossible, I mean just because with the kind of hard drives and the way that flash memory works, it is not down to the size yet where you can have 80 gigs easily on a phone. That’s just not there yet, it is the same thing with the camera, it is like with the form factor and the way that a nice lens, needs to be setup, it is not going to happen on a small device.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, in the mean time you probably look to the iPhone, now you will kind of go to the store do the same thing you did with your Hiptop kind of walk in there, be like this stuff is what I want to do, I buy right now and then just grab the phone and love it for a while and hope that Apple stays up-to-date and add features that you want, because no phone and no device is perfect, they have to make compromises.

Aaron Landry: Absolutely.

Benjamin Higginbotham: You can either have this big bulky thing with everything in it or you can have this tiny thing with nothing in it and that’s just the way it is going to be. So you move to the iPhone then you will be Internet connected again and I assume you will continue doing your moblogging with the iPhone or you just kind of, let that fade away or what’s your plan there?

Aaron Landry: Yeah, I am not sure. As per my side, as per moblogging it is like once I get Internet connectivity again it is like I am probably not going to do it, I mean moblogging, atleast for me it was like to have like a, to be able to take a picture of something and to immediately publish it on the Internet that was really cool for me for about six months and then I just kept doing it. That is this kind of what my site has been, but I don’t know if I am going to do that anymore, it is just like I am looking for something else to do, something new to do, I am not really sure with that is yet …

Benjamin Higginbotham: Would you take in the next level and do video on the device or that just kind of…

Aaron Landry: That’s what, you have hit on something that I wanted with the latest version of Hiptop 2 , it is just like have this have video, it is like I want to workout some kind of script where I could be mobile vlogging, which is scary…

Benjamin Higginbotham: That’s a horrible-horrible term.

Aaron Landry: or movlogging. That would be awesome to be and then to have somebody to able to subscribe to you and the people to be updated, like I could be somewhere and take a video and post it and have end up being on somebody’s iPod or at somebody’s computer almost immediately and for let’s say a theoretical group of like 20 other people that do that from across the country or across the world doing that too, I mean that’s a really cool and interesting experiment right there.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Aaron has been fun, it is been lot of great information and that we will be watching your blog kind of see where it goes from here, see where you go even if you do not stay in the moblogging area, I know you will be on the leading edge some part of social something somewhere that’s just seems to be who you are and what you do and it is lot fun to watch and you really do seem to pioneer this area of the Internet. So, it is been lot of fun. Thanks.

Aaron Landry: It is been a pleasure, cheers.