The recent turmoil in the middle east has thrown an interesting angle on a new and developing PR play. An organization called GIYUS.ORG has launched a community mobilization client called “Megaphone” which notifies interested members of specific articles relevant to the situation in the Middle East. It then mobilizes them to action in the way of voting (e.g. - if there is an onsite CNN survey etc.) or writing talk backs.After a quick instillation process the client’s ‘toaster’ (the thingy that pops up and down the system trey icon) started notifying me of every related article in the war between Israel and the Hezbollah and urged me to act. As a user I can also participate and report interesting articles to the community, ones I think GIYUS should publish an alert for. They also offer an RSS feed which saves the need to download the Megaphone. This is a thoughtful feature for someone like me, who after a few days of ‘enjoying’ the toaster pop-ups, prefers to receive the notices in my delivery mechanism of choice (Netvibes…love it).

I think Megaphone is a great utility for interest groups who want to mobilize their members to action. Since launching only a week ago, GIYUS has grown approximately 10,000 users. A respectable number by all standards. Like many other 2.0 apps and services Megaphone does not present a quantum leap in technology but similar to del.icio.us and its likes ,it has managed to focus on a specific user (or group in this case) use case and provide flawless mechanism / tools to the job.

Theoretically, Megaphone’s mobilization could have been done only with the RSS feed but that doesn’t seem to be enough. The ingredients that mobilize a group to action comprise of the dedicated website, the reporting tool, the downloadable app and possibly most importantly, the positive psychological ‘involved feeling’ of being part of a community.
This is a strong enough motivation to download a unique news feeder. Yes – I like Netvibes very much but currently I have 94 unread feeds. I treat Netvibes as my news homepage. For that ONE cause I care about, I think Megaphone is a much better conscious appeaser.

I see some similarities between the birth of Megaphone and YouTube. Both were born out of the senseless chain (A.K.A - FW: FW: FW) emails. Where’s there is a need, there’s a solution…
P.R 2.0 is here to stay and Megaphone have set a high standard. I wonder what other services will be born out of the FW: FW: FW: trend…hold on….I’m on to something…back soon

      

The new Google Talk, released over the weekend, makes GTalk the best desktop communication software. At least in my opinion.

I always liked GTalk for the clean look, but the wide userbase did not quite agree with me, granting Google a lame 1% market share. I wouldn’t be deterred by the low adoption so far, as Google are racking up the right ingredients necessary to create a sustainable advantage over MSN, Yahoo and Skype.

File transfer and voicemail are commodity IM features, granted. What makes the difference is the brilliant integration with Gmail. You don’t really have to think. It’s all there.

Unified Messaging a curse? Google are realizing it. And properly. Gmail is the ultimate message store - almost unlimited in size, friendly, versatile. GTalk complements it perfectly with messaging and voice. This is not something Skype can compete with (they don’t have a powerful storage option) and not something MSN can compete with (they have the assets but not in such a clean and integrated way).

The only viable competitor I see to Google in the long run is Yahoo. GTalk needs to show some traction first though. With the recent improvements I bet it’s on the right way there.

      

I attended a great dinner party on Friday, one of those corrupt occasions where the question is not how much you eat beyond what you planned to, but how guilty you feel after. I usually try to clean my conscience by hitting the treadmill extra early on the next day and that’s exactly what I did on Saturday. As I was picking up my speed I heard a familiar song - Groove Jet, by Spiller featuring Sophie Ellis Bextor, a former model which turned to vocals and gained some popularity at the time. If the name doesn’t ring a bell the melody most probably will. A fun, catchy, tune but one I like a lot. The Deja-Vu felt more significant though, almost like a prophecy.

I moved to San Francisco in 2000 at the height of my clubbing days. Bill Clinton was still President and Israel was negotiating peace on and off with Syria and the Palestinians. The NASDAQ composite index hung between 4,000 and 5,000 points and life looked promising to the young dot commer. I spent the first few months searching for descent clubs in San Francisco that could replace the Tel Aviv spots I loved so much, but with not a lot of luck. Unfortunately (for me at least), the good club scene in San Francisco turned out to be almost exclusively gay. The options for heterosexual guys were nothing to email home about. I managed to find one great club though, called the Endup. The Endup attracts the true hard core clubbers - those who live to club. It offers different themes and line-ups in row to form a 3 day non-stop party that begins on Friday night and ends on Sunday evening. The “cherry” of the weekend is called “Church Sunday”, a Sunday morning crazy after-hours event that starts at 6AM and that runs through Sunday afternoon. Church Sunday showcases the hardest and wackiest crowd, and that’s where I found myself one Sunday morning with a good fellow clubber that came to visit me all the way from Tel Aviv.

I remember the unique vibe felt when I entered the club. I was hammered, a result of a long night out, but that was nothing compared to what I saw inside. It was a great atmosphere, very liberated and not offensive or overpowering. Great music, happy, mixed, crowd. One of those situations where you know you’re in a circus but you don’t really mind. At a certain point I got tired and found myself a standing spot next to the bar, right between an aging transgender and two plastered college kids. I purchased a beer (one great advantage of morning parties in California where alcohol is banned between 2AM and 6AM) and let my head rest for a second.

The second turned to minutes and I drifted into my own thoughts. I felt well, but a strange feeling was beginning to creep up on me. I noticed the DJ has started playing a catchy, well mixed, song.  I tried concentrating on figuring out the song title (Kazaa was very popular then) but could only pick up the chorus line which went like “If this ain’t love why does it feel so good?”. And then it struck me. The feeling that is.

I knew it was over. Not the song but the clubbing days. Like Cinderella at midnight. It was still happening around me but the excitement was gone. The music was all of a sudden just music and no longer a journey. The crowd was just a bunch of wackos and no longer a new and refreshing social phenomenon. My head was pounding. I wanted to go home, wash the night off and catch a long night (or morning) sleep. I denied for a while but to no avail. My clubbing days were over.

As the familiar line echoed through my ears this week it triggered that feeling again. This time the angle was different. This time it wasn’t about clubbing. It felt like the new Internet bonanza is now passing it’s peek. As if the virgin, innocent, raw excitement is no longer there. Not like there are no bullets left in the magazine, or like we’re heading for a huge fall like in 2000. Just that sour feeling of a party that has passed it’s peek. Too many cool apps are filled with garbage, too many new apps are just wannabes. Too much new stuff is simply mediocre and boring. It’s getting harder to find the new YouTube anymore among the flood of “me too” social networks. People start realizing that it’s not about the fun only but about the money. Everybody starts realizing there is simply too much stuff out there and that some elimination needs to start taking place. I hear it from my friends, read it on fellow bloggers posts and feel it myself. Good realization? maybe. Fun? Absolutely not.

2000 was a one off. The NASDAQ crashed and I stopped going to clubs. Sophie Ellis Bextor released a few mediocre hit singles and faded out, winding up as an esoteric gay icon. George Bush was elected and the whole world went more conservative. I don’t think we are at that situation now, on the contrary. As a matter of fact I think Internet services are about to quantum leap. For consumers but more importantly for professionals. The market there is just being created.

I do think, however, that the innocent free apps, those that only aim to make the world a nicer place but end up spamming attention are about to sing their swan song. The market is getting so saturated with mediocre nonsense. Clean up time is approaching. Social networks - beware! Video sharing services - watch your steps! Bookmarking applications - find a shelter! Or maybe it’s just my feeling.

The second verse of the song can conclude my feeling and this post. it goes like this:

Think of tomorrow, we beg, steal or borrow

To make all we can in the sun

While we are moving, the music is soothing

Troubles we all have begun

      

Lately I feel I have more social networks then friends. As a matter of fact, I know more social networks then people. Spooky? Scary!

A social network for meeting business colleagues…Wait…. 3!
A social network for bookmarking websites… Wait… 5!
A social network for sharing media….Wait…15!
A social network for sharing social networks….You get the point.

It seems like every trivial detail in life makes a good enough reason for not only one, but a few competitive social networks. The pseudo-differentiators are ridiculous (”my social network is available offline on your PDA”….who cares???). There are simply far too many social networks out there. We tend to dismiss that with hope for natural selection, but I am growing weary of the very concept. My attention span for chasing and maintaining social networks is very narrow. I have no desire to re-live the IM no interopability nightmare (”Oh you’re on Yahoo? too bad, I’m on AIM”). Thanks, I’m skipping this round.

The abundance of so many networks is a problem by itself. For a social network to be successful it needs to be socially known, something we are all familiar with. Maybe not MySpace but I’d set the minimum bar at del.icio.us.

Do less web based social networking folks. Get out more and meet real friends!

      

My dad sent me a great excerpt from Freakonomics. In case you are not familiar, Freakonomics is a publishing site which explores “the hidden side of everyhting” through economic eyes. The authors are Steven D. Levitt, the Alvin H. Baum Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago and Stephen J. Dubner, an award-winning author and journalist who lives in New York City. Through the site, they offer their insights on modern day issues using a spicy, smart and unusual economic angle. Their language is daily and fluent and you do not need to be an economics major to get the points. And there are points indeed.

In What the Bagel Man Saw, Dubner and Levitt discuss the very interesting journey of Paul F., an economist-slash-analyst with a taste for bagels that got sick of his cubicle life and turned his hobby to a full time job. His economic background has propelled him and his business to great success. More importantly, from our point of view, it has provided him with the tools to benchmark human behavior and specifically honesty (his system was based on trust) against objective parameters such as weather, corporate size, morale, salary rates etc. In addition to the objective study that is presented through this journey, Levitt and Dubner convey subtle cynicism and irony with respect to “commonly known truths” and the way they easily fluctuate and re-rationalize themselves in light of facts. The result is a unique economic study, social observation, philosophical discussion and simply an interesting story - all in one.

The site itself is a Jewel I wish I have discovered before. The book is on sale and the articles and writers blog are of course open. I warmly recommend.

      

In one of the famous “Seinfeld” episodes, Elaine coined the term “Sponge Worthy.” In it, Elaine runs around New York seeking THE SPONGE, her favorite birth control method. She ends up finding one single case at some distant pharmacy. Conservation minded, she has to now stretch the supply by setting standards for “sponge worthiness” of her boyfriends, scrutinizing their bathroom and asking them to pass other tests before finally conceding sex.

When I read Michael’s post about “Who R U” I was reminded of the infamous standard. Why? Because Michael tends to take on an apologetic tone when it comes to covering projects which don’t fall under the classic business model / exit / social network conversion, or as he put it”:

This isn’t a technology showcase, nor does it have a complicated business idea. But like certain other sites we’ve profiled, just because a new web service isn’t necessarily on a liquidity event trajectory doesn’t mean it isn’t worth taking a look at

In the past year, TechCrunch has become the de-facto Reuters of the web 2.0 world. The way I see it, Michael’s focus/ mission is to bring news / headlines / report innovation etc. and he does so diligently. My take is that while cracking out three, four posts a day, there is no need to apologize about a specific post being less ‘worthy’ then others. If its news, its worthy. Can you imagine the NY TIMES editor apologizing that today’s headline is not as good as yesterday’s? Of course not – everybody faces this dilemma when dealing with publishing in the ‘news world” and therefore people have grown to understand the context.

There is one difference though, driven by the way blogs are built, there is no big headline, small headline or cover story picture. From a visual perspective they all seem pretty much the same, which might invoke the need to elaborate (i.e – “this story is not as ‘sponge worthy” as the next). Yet I still hold the opinion that this is really not necessary. A clear description of the service and a mention about the lack of business model is enough, no need to apologize.

My suggestion to Michael is that if he does want to convey some type of disclaimer it should be approached from a different angle and not the apologetic one. Give posts 3 Stars or 3 M’s (for Michaels ) or better yet, SW (for sponge worthiness ) for approval or high expectation and One Star / M / SW for a regular story. In this way it will be like the NY TIMES movie / book review everyone rushes to read the morning after the release.

If you want to talk Sponge Worthiness….make a system out of it

      

I raised some eyebrows when I stated online presentation creation and sharing will never leave the desktop. Here’s the thing though, I never said that. What I did say (and still do) is that POWERPOINT is a desktop application which belongs on the desktop, and there’s a huge difference.

I have used Zoho, Thumbstacks and now Empressr (which is very impressive, by the way), and there is a common problem to all. They all have too much Microsoft Powerpoint in their blood and too little top down web vision. Out of all three, it seems like the Empressr folks have gotton closest with nice use of flash and with a unique presentation building sequence. Zoho and Thumbstacks are clearly Microsoft Powerpoint captive as they concentrate on web-mimicking the experience PPT offers. All score low in extended vision, though, which is why I want to present all three with a challenge.

My point is simple. Powerpoint is more then just an application. It has not only pioneered modern presentation technology but also presentation style and flow, business surrounding practices and graphical paradigms. This model does not fit the web though. It is too heavy as it requires a lot of computer resources. It is not geared towards sharing - PPT file sizes are too large and sharing comments is not really a usable option. It does not take advantage of portable web technologies - Flash, Podcasting, Ajax. It ignores web concepts such as social networks, photo sharing and video casting. On top of it all, it is based on a concept Microsoft came up with somewhere in the 90s and that has simply aged.

Web based presentations require a totally different mindset. From scratch. Creation should be very easy and dynamic. Presentation sequence needs to be more interactive and less sequential (dynamic, flash based menus?). Modern web technologies such as Video and Voice Podcasting need to be included. Sharing should not be limited to sending an email pointing to a web repository. It needs to include collaborative commenting and change tracking, perhaps even version management. “View offline” should replace “Import and Export”. The whole concept should be different because the whole ecosystem and mindset is different. 

So here is a challenge folks. You have a great opportunity. You managed to put together money, teams, resources and philosophies behind the need for online presentations. Can we all graduate the Microsoft school already? I will continue using Powepoint when I need to high graphics and sequential presentations. But this is not where my need for presentations ends - can I trust you to not miss the boat?

      

So it’s been a month by now since the beginning of our experiment and it’s time to share some interim conclusions. The adrenalin rush is now pretty much over and it’s time to deal with the real issues, so here is the current situation summary.

1. I still use Gmail as my online email. I am not going back to Outlook Express, even though it does complicate my life here and there. The advantages of staying online outweigh the disadvantages, at least to my taste.

2. I use Google Spreadsheets, but I started using Excel again. I use Google Spreadsheets for my expense reports, simple tables and check lists, but when it comes to heavy duty formatting, I need something rich and robust.

3. I stopped using Word completely! I use Zoho Writer for writing documents (while waiting for my Writely account to finally be enabled)

4. I tried using online Powerpoint from Zoho, Thumbstack and now Empresser (review by Techcrunch). In one word - No!. Powerpoint is a desktop application and as long as presentation style remains what it is, that’s what I am using.

5. I tried Microsoft Office 2007. It sucks! I mean it doesn’t suck in the traditional Microsoft way, but it seems like you need to be a Photoshop expert in order to use it. Word is a total overkill, Excel is pretty much the same, Powerpoint has gotten much better. All are significantly more complicated.

6. I was fortunate to have my attention pointed to somewhat niche apps like gOFFICE. Their online publishing tools combined with their PDF ripper offer something I haven’t seen in desktop apps. A clear long tail opportunity.

At the bottom line so far, Web 2.0 is getting there but still has a long way to go before I can port my professional life to the web. The quantum leap, if you ask me, is waiting for the paradigm shift that hasn’t occured yet in terms of usage patterns, not technology. There is no point in porting desktop apps to the web without transforming the usage habit to a fitting one. Powerpoint, for example, is not a web app. A flash, light wait, interactive presentation service can be a great success on the other hand.

      

The new Google Jet story has prompted Tali Aben to write an excellent post about what drives entrepreneurs. I strongly recommend reading the post itself so I won’t summarize it, but she does ponder between her two “personas” when it comes to commenting about the situation. Her VC side enjoys the bullish effect of the eye-poking Jet while her personal view is more critical.

I’ll be more explicit - the whole thing is simply disghusting. I don’t find fighting over a king size 767 bed cool, fun or inspiring. I certainly hope most VCs, not to mention entrepreneurs, won’t as well. As a matter of fact, we may look back at this story as the first bad omen that signaled the fall. When greed and decadence become THE key, when you get high on your own supply, that’s when empires start their fall. It happened to Rome and it could happen to Google.

      

Summer is here, Mundial is over, time to take a quick comic break. A few issues Web 2.0 doesn’t solve, for a change. Enjoy.

Sea-Spam:

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(more…)

      

Congratulations Italy on winning the most mediocre mundial ever. Mediocre teams, mediocre games, mediocre goals, mediocre legends. Shining above the rest or making the least amount of mistakes? Hard to say. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that there is a team more deserving then Italy, but something about it was ugly. It made me, at least, wonder about what it takes to win these days. In the meantime, salute the 2006 world champs.

Are we at the age of praising mediocrity? It takes a lot less time and most people don’t notice until it’s too late anyway. When we echo each other’s “get out there fast and imperfect” mantra, what exactly are we after?

Human culture used to admire perfection. Especially with Arts or Craftsmanship. It’s that basic instinct that took as to next level each time. THAT made us admire Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Mozart. These days we train ourselves to go against this very instinct very often, trading excellence for timing and presence, classy for contemporary, art for pop.

So here is a funny reminder of what imperfection can yield. Symbolically, this example also comes from Italy. Then again, fine style covers up in retrospect. Let’s hope the current tolerance towards “ok quality” isn’t tilting our building.

      

While PaulGraham.com netted over 8 million page views in 2005, I only learned about his work recently. His site has been at the top of my reading list since. His writing is fantastic and his company, Y Combinator can be an interesting direction for web 2.0 innovators looking for smart, early stage, funding.

For those who are not familiar with Paul Graham, here is website’s bio section:

“Paul Graham is an essayist, programmer, and programming language designer. In 1995 he developed with Robert Morris the first web-based application, Viaweb, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. In 2002 he described a simple Bayesian spam filter that inspired most current filters. He’s currently working on a new programming language called Arc, a new book on startups, and is one of the partners in Y Combinator.”

Paul Graham is an interesting animal. His writing blends non conformism with academic practices. Technical knowledge with common sense. All handled with impressive analytical and presenting skills. His ability to diffuse and then present complicated and detailed situations in such simple manner is what makes his writing unique.

The interesting twist is with the fact Paul Graham writes essays, not posts. He doesn’t publish that often, the essays are not always short, but I have yet to read one that fell short of inspiring. I simply identify with the spirit they carry. I recommend starting with Why Startups Condense in America, Good and Bad Procrastination and The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn, but any place you choose to start is fine. Enjoy.

      

Desktop SMS was the flavor of the month for a brief period in 2002. it’s back! Or is it?

Marshal Kirkpatrick of TechCrunch writes about the new feature from txtDrop - a web based, Myspace plugin, which offers sending SMS to a MySpace user free of charge. Oliver Starr adds more depth in MobileCrunch. There seems to be an inflation of Web based SMS services flying around. Unfortunately I find most of these services very mediocre. Some of these services may score well within a niche, but I personally think Web<-->SMS services must have the following “traits” in order to hit the minimum benchmark required for massive breakthrough:

1. Complete, 2 way, Web to Mobile and back conversations.

2. International, Operator Agnostic delivery (enough with the “limited to US and Canada” disclaimer).

3. Intelligent Routing between Web and Mobile - messages that need to reach the web should reach the web. Messages that need to reach the mobile should reach the mobile. Smart companies will figure out when and how to route each message.

4. Spam and Privacy Protection - At any cost, user data should not be exposed (definitely not “sold”).

5. Reliability - currently, most web based SMS services do not guarantee delivery. In many case, the messages are indeed not delivered. When the service is free most providers tend to excuse themselves. the users don’t.

6. Price - Messages need to be free to the extent possible. When not free, billing should be through an existing billing relationship (phone bill, Paypal, definitely not pulling out the credit card again).

7. Media - web content is rich. Text messages are textual. Routing Media from the web to the mobile could turn out to be a key differentiator. Available technology is still a little raw, but it’s getting there.

(The last one may not be mandatory, but the rest definitely are).

      

Todd Bruninks asked me to pay attention to gOFFICE, an online office suite which offers Word Processing, Desktop Publishing, Spreadsheets and Presentations (coming soon). Sure, I thought, wondering a bit about the growing inflation of web based office suites. But gOFFICE offers something different, and I like their approach.

As a mission statement, gOFFICE is focused on offering people the ability to create high quality output. They offer dozens of letters, fonts, styles, desktop publishing practices, stationary, etc. Since most people get ugly when they try to get creative (including me), gOFFICE offer a lot of samples and advice you can start with, harness your creativity and route it in a stylish direction.

Their choice of output is a primary reason for why their offering stands out. Documents are saved as PDFs. I tried it and it worked like a charm. You can also choose to transform the document to HTML format, but the original file will still be saved as PDF. This makes gOFFICE the perfect choice for writing formal letters, invitations, business cards, brochures, etc. - A space not well covered by the other online word processors, at least not the ones I am aware of.

When it comes to corporate culture, the folks at gOFFICE are real people that speak real English. They don’t over wrap their goods with marketing bla bla and they don’t overcomplicate things technically. On the other hand, they do provide “dos” and “do nots” in a language an everyday user can understand. For example, to the question “What can I do with gOFFICE?” they respond with:

Got it at first attempt and also learned something new! Thank you!

It’s not that gOFFICE is free of problems. Their user experience is not flawless. They document editting flow is not always straight forward and it takes you time to learn what you can and cannot do with the product. The website is also not perfectly knotted. I got lost a few times trying to navigate to a specific page I was at before. But that’s relatively minor. The major problem I see is with the fact gOFFICE may have stepped into the “Must copy MS Office” trap. Their Spreadsheet application is not impressive to say the least. As a matter of fact, it’s not useful. I don’t really understand why they chose to offer it as it only dilutes their unique value. Their online presentation application is not available yet. I definitely hope it won’t just be another slow and limited version of Powerpoint.

Come to think of it, if the folks at gOFFICE are able to apply their word processing philosophy onto online presentations, they may actually come up with something unique and cool. I will definitely come back and check it out and I encourage you to do that as well.

gOFFICE are San Francisco based. According to the website, they are a bootstrapped, 15 employee operation. Their service is currently free and in the future they look to generate revenue from advertizing.

      

Finding a name is a great challenge for a new company, as we ll know. Web 2.0 introduced another challenge – finding an actual value propostion.

Thankfully, both problems are now solved, with Web Two Point Oh!, the instant name and business proposition generator! And it works too! I ran it 3 times and got 3 great ideas:

1. Seckoent - social invites via api mashups

2. Delooroll - community search engine via microformats

3. Infechnono - tag-based dating via instant messaging

Count me in if you launch any and stike gold! Enjoy!

      

When an old clock strikes twelve, all three handles (hour, minute, second) are aligned in perfect symmetrical formation. My father calls this a symbol of perfection. A single moment in time in which several vectors of the same machine, acting individually and paced separately, all come to harmony. During that one second there is simple, undisputable perfection.

But when the minute handle gets stuck in the “quarter to” spot (A.K.A 11:45) then the clock is broken and that ‘perfect’ moment can not be achieved. To describe all those imperfect moments -, machines, human behaviors – my dad coined the term “it’s a quarter to twelve”.

We like to use this metaphor often, it’s a kind of ‘polite curse’. Instead of saying this f@#$ is not working you just say…”arrrr its quarter to twelve”. A “quarter to twelve” is not to be used sparingly. We reserve it to cases where everything is perfect but a single thing that must have fallen off, making the complete picture tainted.

Let me share a classic quarter to twelve with you - I am a proud owner of a Sony Ericson w800i. I love it. I think it is one of the few fusion phones around. A real phone, a real MP3 Player, a radio, a camera…all bundled into one good looking, lightweight machine…great, if not that single “quarter to twelve”.

In order to function as an MP3 player / radio, the w800i comes with custom earphones. At first they seemed awesome. They snuggle in your ear, convey the full range of sounds, have a quick answer button - no more, no less. Basically all an earphones needs. The problem then? the ear covers are detachable.

In some freak design accident, Sony Ericson decided that the comfy earphones need detachable rubber covers in order to function. I’ll say it again, If the rubber comes off – the ear piece can NOT stay within the ear (unless you are a vampire– see picture below). With the classic earphones, when those thin spongy covers fall off, it doesn’t make any difference – they are still ‘plug and play’. But in the case of the “royal” Sony Ericson earphones, if the rubber falls the earphone are rendered totally disabled.

Now I gather this stupidity didn’t go unnoticed all the way through Sony/Ericson design house. When I got the phone it came with extra FOUR pieces. Someone must have noticed this design flaw and decided to mitigate stupidity with WASTE. After the first piece fell off I was pissed but quickly resorted to the pack and replaced it. From then on, I knew the Gods of “quarter to twelve” are on my ass. Its only been a month since then and I have managed to go through the pack and finish all the replacements.

This short story embodies all the characteristics of “quarter to twelve”…it could have been perfect only….now I am left with beautifully designed phone, great MP3 player, great radio….with no way to listen to it 

So what’s your quarter to twelve?