Attention Apple - I've Been Waiting in iPhone Dev Center for Weeks!

We are fast at work designing an InGameNow iPhone Application that will deliver real-time sports scores and banter to your phone... and we're now finalizing the product - but we've been we can't launch until we hear back from Apple. We've been stuck in Apple's Developer Center blackhole for nearly three weeks.

We are waiting to be accepted as developers - not even to have our application reviewed and approved! I am amazed that this process takes weeks... I understand the need for quality control - particularly for paid applications. And I imagine that that Apple is overwhelmed at the moment.... but:

- We are providing a free application - And haven't even had our *account* accepted

Any hints in how to accelerate this process?! I'm getting quite frustrated!

Widgetbox's Network Breaks 60,000,000 Monthly Uniques

About two weeks, Widgetbox unveiled a new look and navigation. At that time, we launched hubs for partners and advertisers with a promo-graphic touting the network's 56,000,000 monthly uniques - a number we are quite proud of.

… Now, just two weeks later, we are proud to announce a new number: 60,000,000 (or 60.6 to be exact!). Just a few days have passed and the network has grown significantly. We use Quantcast (another one of my favorite companies) to verify our metrics and data.

Would You Update Your LinkedIn Status? I Sense Status Overkill...

When I installed the LinkedIn iPhone App last night, the first thing that struck me was the focus on the "LinkedIn Status"... and how almost every status update in my network read:

"... Is testing the LinkedIn App"

Is that useful? And when are there so many status feeds and updates that the general concept of 'status' becomes meaningless? I'd argue it's already happened. I sense that Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed are having trouble figuring out how to play together vs. compete together.

How will LinkedIn now play in the status world? I imagine they'll find out pretty quickly that it will be tough to gather enough status alerts to make their network feeds useful. LinkedIn is not the community (or mindset) that has people actively updating their lives. It is, however, a community that wants to alert their networks of other things: job openings, business questions / needs, etc. I would argue that these are not statuses though... and I would argue a step further that alerts like "... is testing the LinkedIn App" actually degrades the LinkedIn experience - which compared to the other status-based networks, is typically very clean and focused.

New Linked In iPhone App could be the Killer App... But Not Yet

I've written before that there are many great iPhone Apps... but nothing that is truly game-changing (yet).

I've also written about how the iPhone's contact management system needs serious improvement.

So when yesterday's LinkedIn App hit the iPhone - I got excited because it was a chance to merge your business contacts with your phone... and it's close, but not perfect. The app gives you full access to your LinkedIn directory and even gives you the ability to call contacts directly from the application. Search is easy and smooth - whether it's within your contacts or across the larger network. And you can build and manage your network from within the application.

But where the application fails to impress me: you cannot save contacts to your phone.

The ability to download vcards from LinkedIn.com is the feature that I find most useful and the reason I most log in to LinkedIn. I am not sure whether it's because the iPhone doesn't enable it or LinkedIn has made a conscious decision (realizing it would reduce the application's stickiness)... but merging contacts between the iPhone and LinkedIn immediately improves the phone's contact system and motivates me to actively grow and manage my LinkedIn network.

Until then... it's useful for a now-and-again search query.

beRecruited Gets a Major Site Redesign

Today is an important day for beRecruited as we unveiled a major site redesign. The redesign news comes on the heels of beRecruited’s record-growth announcement last month. beRecruited now has approximately 265,000 registered users with athlete from more than 16,000 U.S. high schools and more than 70,000 different high school teams from across the country. More than 100,000 high school athletes have registered with beRecruited in 2008 and the site has generated more than 3.8 million connections between high school athletes and college coaches.

I specifically remember 'designing' (a term I use lightly) the first versions of beRecruited and our logos while in my dorm room at Duke University. Here was the homepage graphic is early 2001 when beRecruited only served swimming and diving communities - today, we represent 18 NCAA sports and nearly 300,000 users:

The below ad is from 2001 - today, beRecruited has over 11,000 registered NCAA Coaches:

I am very proud of beRecruited's evolution and it's maturation since the very early days!

Netflix's Product is Bloated & Outdated... Attention iPhone App Gallery

Much has been made of Netflix's current outage and what it means for their product and business (apparently 1.8-3.6M in daily revenue). And if you aren't aware of Netflix's outage, check either Techmeme (it's covered their homepage) or login to receive this message:

IMPORTANT: Your DVD Shipments Have Likely Been Delayed

But the outage got me thinking about Netflix's greater problem: their product hasn't evolved materially and, in my opinion, it's become bloated and impossible-to-navigate.

Now when I talk about Netflix's product, I am referring to their web experience. The actual product that you receive - the DVDs and Blu Rays - come reliably, remarkably quickly, and 9/10 times they play perfectly... But the Netflix.com experience is as critical as you need to be able to find movies before you ask them to be delivered. Put another way, people expect the movies to arrive on-time and play perfectly; but people want to enjoy the next 90-120 minutes with entertaining, well-recommended movies.

Which leads me to my problem with Netflix - finding good movies and navigating recommendations has become a burdensome, unproductive experience. This is ironic because I specifically remember having discussions in 2003 about Netflix and Amazon being head-and-shoulders above the web in finding experiences and social navigation.

... But what worked in 2003 doesn't work today - despite the product being nearly identical. The trouble is that browsing loses its effectiveness as a core search experience when the inventory gets too large ... or in Netflix's case - overwhelmingly large. There are only so many ways to sort browses:

- Newest - Most Popular - By Genre - Recommendations - Etc

But each of these fail for various reasons:

- Newest: every week, 100s of movies go to DVD and 95% of them are not interesting to me. Browsing through this is impossible.

- Most Popular: The #1 movie for over a year on Netflix is "Crash" ... great movie, but how can it be the top movie week in and week out?! Because being atop Netflix's stale "Most Popular" list is self-fulfilling and only mainstream movies can reach #1 because it requires Netflix to have huge inventory of that movie.

- By Genre: This solves 5% of the issue but still leaves me way too overwhelmed (even in small categories like Blu Ray) and frankly having to choose between Action and Thrillers is overwhelming enough.

- : Recommendations are useful, but typically when deciding between products. For instance, if looking for bluetooth headset on Amazon, I use the ratings to compare / contrast. Using Amazon's ratings to start and finish my picking process is again overwhelming. Furthermore, the recommendations have left me with three outcomes:

1. A bunch of mainstream movies and generic picks. Sure - I loved 'Rambo'. Now my top picks are Rambo 1-4. Insightful. 2. For the non-obvious recommendations, more often than not they are movies that I end up really disliking. 3. A few movies that I indeed want to see - but are clearly always highly-recommended and result in a 'queue' backlog. I waited on the Wire Season 1 for two months before getting a shipment... and it took me wiping out my entire queue to force them to send it to me.

In one sentence here is my problem with Netflix:

Every time I login, I wonder what I am supposed to do next... and that is never a good sign for a product or site experience.

I think this is highly relevant for the iPhone App Gallery which is already becoming unmanageable to navigate. Outside of Featured and Top 25 lists, it is brutally difficult to find Apps that are interesting or useful. And that's only with a couple thousand applications. What happens when this hits 25,000? Hopefully it won't become another Netflix or eBay-like finding struggle.

Here is Netflix's Top 100... which is identical to what it was 6 months ago. Is this what you are paying for? Stale, previously popular titles?

Google Analytics New Front Door... Is Broken.

Google Analytics seems to have launched a rebranded, new front door. And it seems not to be working.

Clicking on the new "Access Analytics" button starts a several second process that results in a redirection error. Clicking on the "News" section links off to the Google Analytics Blog... which also doesn't work and results in an error: "The connection has timed out. The server at analytics.blogspot.com is taking too long to respond."

For a free product, downtime can (and should) be expected - but this going on 30 minutes now (at least). Maybe I should add to my list of 20 ways to fix Google Analytics?

Google's new homepage:

... and what happens when you try to login:

Update According to TechCrunch, GMail also is experiencing an outage... so this could very well be related and bigger than just Analytics.

Improving the iPhone's Contact Management Product

While at dinner two nights ago, the four of us around the table started talking about our new iPhones... which we had all traded in blackberries for. After some apps were showed off and the general 'cool factor' wore off - we talked about how painful it is to sort through the contact album... which really is the root of how the iPhone operates as a phone.

At the most extreme end, Vinny (of Synthasite) showed how it takes 20 seconds to load his contact list (which has 4,500 entries). Now that's absurd on a few levels... but even my album of 500 contacts takes 5-10 seconds to load. That's inexcusable and really makes it really tough to navigate as a phone.

Here's what I'd like to see:

- First, I want the ability to add contacts to the deck... just as you can clip webpages and add them as icons. I would then create a homescreen of the top 20 people I call. This seems relatively easy to do and I am amazed it's not currently offered. The Blackberry offers hot-keys for assigned / auto-calling.

- Second, I'd like to break the contact list into groups that are independent of one another so that the entire contact list doesn't have to load with each usage... after all, that's where the pain comes from.

- Third, I want universal search. I want to be able to find people by first AND last name. And I want the search function to load independently of the contact album and be the first function to load. The current search function requires you to navigate to the top of the album and then search... big pain.

- Fourth, I want to be able to place calls / add a contact from the SMS menu without scrolling to the top of the chat history. It is bizarre that contacts and interactions are treated uniquely throughout email, phone, SMS, etc.

Fantasy Football 2.0 Via My Blog - You In?

I've written a fair amount about sports and the web... and some of my most active feedback / commenting has come through those posts. So I'd like to try something: organizing a fantasy football league through this blog and its readers. The rules will be relatively straight forward

- Standard draft. Live in San Francisco for any of the techies who live here. Those not in the Bay Area can conference in. - 10-12 teams depending on interest / feedback - Each team / manager (or more likely his / her company) will be profiled on this blog - League will be managed through ESPN Fantasy League - but with some banter and recapping on the blog - Must start 1 quarterback, 2 running backs, 2 receivers, 1 tight end, 1 kicker, 1 defense and 1 offensive flex player each week

Thoughts? Who's in? Either email me or leave a comment. I'm looking for 10-12 people / teams!!