Chicago is all about bicycles. From casual riders along Lake Michigan to people taking their bikes to work every day to everyone in between, there are bikes all over the streets and trails in the Windy City. This intensity has been raised in the past few months since the Divvy bike sharing program has started.

Take a look at this picture and see if you can see – or not see – what I don’t see. This gave me my idea. With additional inspiration from a recent safety video contest that Divvy ran, as well as the upcoming Chicago Ideas Week, I’d like to share and detail my idea for the Divvy program.

First What is Divvy?

Divvy is a service owned by the City of Chicago and run by a commercial third-party company that offers similar services in other cities. The idea of bike sharing is for taking short bike trips around the city, where you rent a bike from one bike station location, as pictured above, and return it to another. The keyword is “short” as you have 30 minutes to go from one bike station to another. You can pay US$7 per day to use a bike for unlimited 30 minute trips, or you can also buy an annual pass to use the service daily.

The bikes themselves are also custom designed, 1-speed bikes with lights powered by pedaling and more rugged than a standard personal bike. The front wheel locks to the station until it is rented. The seat is adjustable and there is a front rack for carrying items. All bikes have fenders covering both tires to keep you drier in the rain, and are light blue, matching the color in the Chicago flag (with the exception of the one red bike).

Divvy Bikes Are (Almost) Everywhere

Since their rollout, barely a block goes by without the sight of a Divvy bike in motion. Though the intended market for the service is city residents, tourists have been renting them as well. The tourist element may not have been anticipated as there have always been options to rent bikes, carriers and even get helmets from the rental shop. For as bike friendly as Chicago is, bikes are often playing a dangerous game with cars for the same street real estate throughout the city. Where marked bike lanes and even some with dividers exist, they are not everywhere, and many say not as much as are needed.

As you may have guessed by now, there is one thing missing from the Divvy bike program – bike helmets.

Divvy just rents bikes, it is up to the rider to get their own helmet, as is stated in the user agreement on their Web site. However, there are not many retail locations in the city where you can buy helmets. With the launch of a social media video safety campaign the lack of a helmet offering represents a huge missed opportunity.

What Would Have Been My Entry In The Divvy Safety Contest

This would have been my submission for the Divvy safety video contest, a 6-second video I created with Vine. Had I gotten to this earlier, I would have submitted it, but alas I missed the deadline. It’s embedded below, or follow this link to view my Divvy bike helmet video on Vine’s Web site.

Some Realities Of Helmets

Before I get into details on the offering of helmets, a little setup first. There is no law in Chicago or Illinois mandating the wearing of bike helmets, and I am not advocating one. Personally when I ride a bike, I always wear a helmet, especially as I once flipped my bike and I was glad I was wearing one! As one who believes in helmets, coupled with the Divvy user agreement stating you should wear one, there is an economic opportunity being missed by not offering them, not to mention the potential safety issues with tourists who may not know where they are going meandering the streets of Chicago.

If you look at the above photo and video again, you will see the Divvy bike stations are designed to dispense bikes, and not helmets, which poses its first challenge. Another challenge comes with the various sizes of helmets needed, as a helmet should fit snug on your head to be effective. Finally, if you are going to reuse a helmet it should be disinfected (think bowling shoes!) or each person would get a new, unused helmet.

Challenges as they may be, I see a couple of approaches to handling – or plain out selling – helmets, both in the short term and long term for the Divvy program.

People-Powered Sales

You don’t have to go far in Chicago without someone trying to sell you something. From the legitimate sales of newspapers and the Streetwise magazine (which I had a previous idea on, but I digress) to people hawking water, self-made CDs or pure panhandling. Why not have people sell helmets direct to riders as select Divvy stations?

The setup for selling helmets can be simple – wheeled duffle bags full of varying sized helmets, mobile devices with Square-like credit card swiping done by a person wearing a Divvy shirt. If sales of helmets are brisk, inventory can be replenished by the already on-the-road Divvy vans which are restocking bikes at certain stations.

Innovation For The Long Term

You may have seen vending machines selling electronics or other items at airports, train stations and even rest stops on highways. There is even an “ATM” in Chicago that vends cupcakes!

Why not a vending machine selling helmets, integrated into each Divvy bike station?

As Divvy bikes and the stations were engineered for their use, so would the bike helmets and the vending machine. I envision a unique helmet designed so a large quantity of them can be stored in a vending machine. The helmets may also be designed to be adjustable so that fewer sizes are needed? I don’t know the answer to how this would work, but I bet there is an engineer who could figure it out. The vending machine itself would be designed to not take up much space and integrate with the current purchasing function of the station.

Beyond The Helmet

As the typical cost of buying a helmet is more than the cost of a daily rental of a Divvy bike, marketing and sponsorship opportunities could decrease the cost of helmets. Would Nike or Groupon or PNC Bank pay money to put their logo on what is in essence a traveling billboard around the streets of Chicago?

And while they’re at it, where are the ads on the bikes themselves? It would certainly contribute to what is in essence a taxpayer-funded program.

Take My Idea Please!

Though Divvy is still a few months old, it has great popularity and exposure. My idea isn’t the only one out there for the service – this story is on an app created by a Chicago resident for logging miles, but was taken down as it violated the Divvy terms of service. Of course if Divvy made available – or even sold – data or the capacity to access it via an API, then there could be even more innovation and potential revenue.

As I myself am in no position or have the time to act on this idea, go ahead and take it and run with it. All I ask in return is a pat on the back and maybe the first helmet off the assembly line.

I also welcome your feedback – and ideas – in the comments of this post.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Business • Strategize • Technology • (1) Comments • Permalink

When going through a junk box of stuff recently I found the above-pictured cassette tape. After pondering what was on it for a bit, I realized what it was.

It is my Boston radio commercial debut, dating back to the mid 1990’s.

The commercial is for Fleet Bank, and it was aired during radio broadcasts of the Boston Red Sox, throughout the Boston area as well as in other parts of New England. Thanks to a couple of friends I converted the audio to a YouTube video and you can watch the embedded video below, or listen to it directly from this link to YouTube.

So why was I in a radio commercial for a bank for my baseball team?

And Now For The Rest Of The Story

It was a summer night in Boston and I was going to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. Prior to the game, as I would do for most games, I would have a pint or two of fresh-brewed beer at Boston Beer Works, a brewpub across from the ballpark. This night – and I forget the exact date or even the year – I recalled seeing some people with a digital audio tape recorder and a microphone. Being the former college DJ that I am (was?) I approached them and asked them what they were doing. They explained they were with an ad agency recording stories from fans for a series of radio commercials for the Sox for Fleet Bank, and then they asked me if I had a story. The story you heard in the commercial is what I told them, with a little editing I am sure.

After I recorded the story a couple of times for them, they asked me to sign a form with my name and address, indicating if they wanted to use it they would contact me. They gave me $10 for my time, and went on to talk to other people, as I went to the game. Several weeks went by, and one day I got a voicemail message from the ad agency, Arnold Fortuna Lane, saying they wanted to use my story and needed me to sign paperwork.

What? Me, on the radio? Cool! I called and confirmed my information, and they sent me a non-union talent contract to sign. They said in a few weeks the spots would run on the air and I would even get paid. What? Me get paid for being on the radio? Cool!

The next thing I knew, people were calling to tell me they heard me in the radio spot. I then made a point of listening to entire games on the radio, and there I was, telling people this story. My Mom, who was an avid listener of Red Sox games on the radio, would call me to tell me each time she heard me. Another friend said her Mom almost drove off the road when she heard me. The ad did not run every game, and as it aired later in the season it stopped its run in October. For my voice talent and my story, I got paid US$150.00 - surely not enough to retire on, but a nice bonus nonetheless. They also sent me the copy of the commercial on cassette tape.

That Was Then And This Is Now

I recall it was the mid 90’s as Fleet Bank had just bought another bank in Boston, Shawmut, and was making a big radio campaign with an end-goal of customer retention. Fleet later merged with BankBoston which was later acquired by Bank of America. The ad agency is now known as Arnold Communication. Unfortunately for me the phone did not ring seeking my golden voice endorsing other products, but I went on to a career in the Internet that has led to this recording being unearthed and released for all to hear once again. The Red Sox made some changes since then as well.

Special thanks to 2 distinguished gentlemen who helped me get this cassette to the Web. My good friend and DJ extraordinaire Eric Patel transferred the cassette audio to MP3 format, and veteran Chicago filmmaker and historian Floyd Webb took the audio and made it into a video.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Announcements • Diversions • Social Media • Thrive • (2) Comments • Permalink

Nine months ago I did something that, looking back now, was both a brilliant and educational moment in my life.

No, not “that!” Instead, I quit Facebook.

What did you say Mike, quit “the” social network” Yes, I did. I had thought about it for a while, and when I heard of other smart people I know also getting out of the closed ecosystem like my good friends Jen Hanen and CT Moore, I decided it was time for me to stop the madness myself.

And you read that correctly – I had been thinking about quitting Facebook for a while. Why? The reasons below are many. Blended together, they got me to cancel once and for all.

Nothing Personal

Quitting Facebook had nothing to do with any specific person, people or event. I did not do it in retaliation to anyone for any specific act. Rather, my decision was based on trends around how and what people communicate, actions that were moving in a direction by just about everyone who was using Facebook that I was connected with (and others who were friends of friends) that I did not like. I also count myself in with that grouping of people.

Even though I had amassed quite a large group of “friends” over the years, the quality of communications was not there, only the mass quantity of it. The fact I disconnected from them on Facebook doesn’t mean that I don’t like them, it was the pool we were all swimming in that I didn’t want to be in.

Too Much Information All The Time

Social media is all about sharing. But when everyone is sharing as much as they are, all the time, it can get overwhelming. I was getting drawn into Facebook and was spending too much time separating the wheat from the shaft to find relevant or useful information or engage in somewhat meaningful conversation. A visit to Facebook.com or the app on my mobile device was a time suck, as I was compelled to keep scrolling through until I found something of interest, even though many times I didn’t.

What I was sorting through was another matter altogether. They say that kids say the darnest things, well adults on Facebook are even worse. Just when I thought I had seen and read it all, I would read more and more detail that one wouldn’t normally post to the world, let along share in a whisper. Yet there it is, posted for all to see on Facebook.

One Hot UX Mess

To make matters worse, when Facebook went to the 2-column format, it became far too much for me. It was completely unusable, and compound that with the aforementioned volume of content and it makes for something I found very difficult to read and enjoy. Why subject myself to a (user) experience I did not like? I don’t visit some Web sites because of design and functionality flaws, so why should Facebook be any different.

One thing positive I will say about Facebook is the powerful engine behind that user experience. How often do you get a real error on Facebook? Years ago I attended a local conference and some developers from Facebook were there talking about the architecture of the site, and afterwards I had the opportunity to talk with them one-on-one. I was extremely impressed with their background, experience and the technology behind the site. How it was presented, at least to me, did not live up to what was powering it.

Living McLuhan’s Words

To me, Facebook lived to the letter of the words of Marshall McLuhan in that “the medium is the message.” I had written about this a couple of years ago in a post here on the Hot Iron titled Streaming Awareness By how I lamented about missing the birth of friends’ kids that were only announced over social media, and I never saw the original post. Needless to say, it continued. There were more I missed, though each time I did bring it to the parents’ attention my dismay – once it even compelled someone to send old-fashioned birth announcements by postal mail!

This changing of how we communicate feels almost like a cheapening of the interaction between people. Miss a small couple of word post on someone’s wall and you could miss out on seeing someone visiting town, and then the person who posted those few words thinks you are ignoring them. Yes, that happened to me once. Now I am not saying we all need to grab our quill pens, ink reservoirs and parchment paper and write long letters. Any tool of communication can be used wisely or poorly. Where changing your relationship status to “single” can inform the world of a divorce or major break-up, there are certainly classier, more tasteful ways to do so.

There was at least one time when Facebook put in a chance to only display the posts of people you recently communicated with. Huh? Yes, so if I was communicating a lot with 20 people, I would predominantly see the posts from them, and anyone else I may not see at all. When I heard about this I was shocked and undid the setting, and low and behold I was hearing from everybody, as I should be. It’s one thing if I make such a setting change, but I certainly don’t want someone telling me what I read and do not read.

And Now A Word From Our Investors

I will certainly not say that I predicted the snooping and tapping of electronic messaging on networks and social media sites by the US government. When I read the article in Time magazine when Mark Zuckerberg was named Person of the year in 2010, there is a direct mention about US FBI Director Robert Mueller walking in on the interview -. Why was the FBI Director at Facebook headquarters? I’ll leave it at that – read the article for yourself.

Nobody Seemed To Notice

Over the last 9 months, I have only heard from 3 people who said they tried to reach me on Facebook but could not find me. There were some that I told about my decision, and I certainly mentioned it more than once on Twitter. I had changed my Facebook picture and banner to the image at the top of this post, but once thing I did not do was inform people through Facebook that I was going to quit. Why? More so out of curiosity if anyone would realize I was no longer in their “stream” of consciousness. This experiment in social media was correct, but sad in its own right.

Don’t Call Me Anti-Social (Media)

Though I am not on Facebook, I am not shying away from social media. I am on Twitter @thehotiron, and this blog is my primary channel for longer form writing, longer than 140 characters anyway.

I have been drawn to Twitter because of its simplicity and binary nature – what I put out there is out there, and what I send as a direct message, which I use infrequently, is not. I find it easy to have conversations with individuals and on occasion with groups, though I don’t often participate in Twitter chats which are commonly driven by a unique hashtag. I also find it easy to pickup on a conversation and continue it later with the medium. My Twitter client of choice is HootSuite on the PC, though I am using the Twitter.com Web interface more and more as it has evolved tremendously. Twitter for me is like the water cooler or barstool in the local pub.

Blogging is something I enjoy and don’t do nearly as much as I used to and not as much as I would like to. In one regard it is an outlet for the things in my head, and in another it is a way to share and start a conversation. Where my tweets tend to be forgotten over time, my blog posts are still out there, and older ones still draw comments (even real, legit ones too!) and are shared by others. The Hot Iron is like a fireside chat or sitting down with a scotch and cigar among friends.

Looking Ahead And Always Evaluating

Facebook is not the only game in town. If you quit Facebook it should not be the end of your social media activity or identity. I have written before here at The Hot Iron about managing your online presence and I will continue to do so. But at the end of the day, what you do online should be only a part of who you are. So whether you call, tweet or write longhand, you are greater than the tools you use to communicate.

Your comments, as always, are welcome and encouraged!

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Blogging • Social Media • Technology • Thrive • (4) Comments • Permalink

It’s a question that comes up several times a year, and people have been asking me it for decades now. As many times as I have answered it, I have yet to write it down. Why I haven’t I don’t know for sure, but there’s no time like the present.

What is the question? Why do I sign my email messages as I do, with “mp/m”? And here’s a warning, it is a little retro-geeky!

When It Began

I have used this signature for my emails dating back to when I was a kid. Then, the messages I was sending were over dial-in bulletin board systems (I have included a link to its definition if you don’t know what one is!). I would typically sign my messages with my initials, “MPM.” But why do I sign it now in lowercase, and what’s up with the slash between the P and the M? Here comes the geek part!

There was a single user operating system for microcomputers popular in the 1980’s called CP/M. It had a multi-user version called MP/M. When I learned of this I was intrigued – it was the same as my initials! I thought of signing my messages with “MP/M” but didn’t want any confusion with the operating system name, so I made the letters lower-case, thus “mp/m” was born as my signature.

Dial-in bulletin board systems were replaced by dial-in services like CompuServe and AOL. Those were replaced by Internet email. Yet through the decades, my signature remained the same.

That’s my story and I am sticking to it.

Go ahead – comment away on this, you won’t hurt my feelings!

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Announcements • Blogging • Social Media • Strategize • Technology • (4) Comments • Permalink

When I think back to all of the "smart" devices I have owned, going back almost 15 years with my original Palm Pilot, they always came with a cradle – a stand / holder that served multiple purposes from presenting the device to charging it.

With today’s smart devices, they do not come with any form of cradle from the manufacturer, and any cradles I have seen are more for charging them rather than their presentation or protection on your desk. I find this odd, especially with the escalating cost of these devices. However, there is an alternative that may bring the cradle back – the Wedge by Toddy Gear.

The Wedge is a pyramid-shaped bean bag-like item item with a lip for holding a mobile device into place as it rests on the shape. As a result of its flexible shape, you can place almost any device in it and at a comfortable viewing angle. The Wedge is made from the same material as cleaning cloths that Toddy Gear, a Chicago firm, creates for cleaning and polishing mobile devices, thus allowing you to do the same thing with the item you support the device with. As a result you have a highly functional and attractive item on your desk for holding your highly functional and attractive mobile device.

I have taken some pictures of the Wedge I have been using for the past several months along with my Nokia E7, my past device. Below is an embedded slideshow of the pictures of it on my Flickr account and you can also view the set of pictures by following this link.

As you can see, I can orient the device however I want. Though these pictures don’t show the power cord, I can also place the device however with it, or with headphones, and it holds it fine, especially as no cords actually go through the Wedge itself, just go out the sides of the device, so it is not in the way of them. The Wedge is also small and lightweight enough that I can throw it in my computer bag and take it with me to other places or even on vacation without taking up much room.

When device manufacturers today talk about "ecosystems" of mobile devices they often are referring to the device itself, its operating system, apps and maybe an accessory or two. There was a time when ecosystem included all of the main accessories you would use with a device. When I think back to even my Palm smartphones they came with a cradle for holding and charging the device and even charging a spare battery. Sure there were third-party or aftermarket accessories, but the main ones from the manufacturer were ones you would always want and get. The Toddy Gear Wedge is filling that gap for me, as well as the physical gap between my devices and my desk.

For full disclosure, I was given the Wedge by the brother of the founder of Toddy Gear, whose son used to go to school with my daughter! That being said, I was not asked to write this – the device itself compelled me to share my experience with this great item with my readers.

So what do you think? Do you own one? Do you want to own one? Is a flat surface enough for you? Share your thoughts in the comments of this post.

---

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

---

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email.

  

---

Mobile Technology • Technology • Thrive • (2) Comments • Permalink