Max Engel: a Blog

Mobile First Publishing” Is This the Future? - on...

Fri, 24 May 2013 11:21:17 -0700

Mobile First Publishing” Is This the Future? - on Livestream.com

Here is the panel I participated in from Internet Week NY.

On the Yahoo! Acquisition of Tumblr

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:24:16 -0700

I’m always wary of an acquisition where the new parent insists that they’re going to let the acquired company remain separate and autonomous. It seems to indicate that the purchase was a defensive maneuver.

While certainly an understandable position to be in, I do wonder the long-term strategy for integrating Tumblr into Yahoo!. There are certainly opportunities around native advertising and providing reach for the network and a preferred means of content creation. However, I hope this ends better than the Flickr story.

Honestly, the last time Yahoo! bought a social platform for self expression it was Geocities, and we all know how that ended…

Pandora's Biggest Weakness, Potential Opportunity

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:58:00 -0700

teamsidewinder:

From a discovery standpoint, Pandora is built upon the concept of reinforcing existing taste and presenting a variation on a theme. In practice, this means that a listener is exposed to music they’ll like, but not necessarily new music. Pandora could add a means by which it scans a users music library to determine existing artists already in their collection. Then, truly “new” discovery could occur, and a listener could stumble across new bands and purchase new music.

Additionally, Pandora is inherently a passive music experience, and so there is little engagement with the product outside of the minimal amount of interaction necessary when listening to a station. While they’ve dabbled with social elements through the website, it would be interesting for them to focus on other threads of music discovery. For example, Bandsintown lets me link my taste profile to Pandora to help me explore local concerts. I think Pandora should more deeply explore ways to bridge offline and online music experiences.

Finally, Pandora should explore the ways in which they could act as an intermediary platform to connect labels and artists with listeners. For example, Pandora is sitting on a trove of valuable analytics that get generated as a byproduct of user interaction. This data could be immensely valuable if packaged correctly, and the music industry would be willing to pay for access to a service that would help them better understand their consumers. Similarly, there has been a great deal of activity in the direct-to-consumer music marketing space, and Pandora could also explore how they could offer better services in this area to allow a band to better engage with their fans.

Read More

I’m participating in a virtual roundtable series on sidewinder.fm about Pandora. Here is my response to the first question.

3 Trends Shaping the Future of Product Development

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:23:00 -0800

3 Trends Shaping the Future of Product Development:

Here is a guest post I wrote for sidewinder.fm about the major trends shaping the development of web products in 2013.

corgiaddict: Corgi going through the snow: YAY SNOW…. wait… TOO...

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 16:08:03 -0800

corgiaddict:

Corgi going through the snow: YAY SNOW…. wait… TOO MUCH SNOW, BACK IT UP! BACK IT UP!

So my parents’ dog, Plum, is totally internet famous now :-)

8BitKid: Why I Backed the GameStick Console

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 13:14:00 -0800

8BitKid: Why I Backed the GameStick Console:

8bitkid:

I just backed the GameStick, a new Kickstarter project to create an Android-based console out of a device that can be housed in the controller (which works over Bluetooth) and is perfect for portable gaming.

While I’m a big fan and backer of OUYA, I think that it is important to…

Here a post I wrote on my other blog about why I’m supporting the new GameStick console on Kickstarter.

Here is the audio from a panel I moderated last month: SF...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:48:00 -0800

Here is the audio from a panel I moderated last month:

SF MusicTech Summit XI on October 9, 2012 in San Francisco, CA
www.sfmusictech.com

PANEL DISCUSSION: “Building Great Products”

MODERATOR: Max Engel, Spin / Buzzmedia

SPEAKERS:

Michael Cerda, VEVO
Josh Builder, The Orchard
Sam Valenti, Ghostly International & drip.fm
Donnie Dinch, WillCall

Speaking at the SF MusicTech Summit

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:01:00 -0700

I’ll be moderating a panel on “Building Great Products” at this event tomorrow. You can find the schedule here.

My Latest Move

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 07:17:33 -0700

Short version: I’ve left the BBC and am now working for Buzzmedia where I’m leading up product development for SPIN Magazine. If you want the long version dotted with personal anecdotes and rambling thoughts and theories, read on.

Long version: Growing up, I had a wall in my bedroom where I mounted all of the ticket stubs from every show I ever went to. It was a sun-faded story of the development of my music taste, and when my parents moved out of that house, we had the wall removed to save that bit of personal history.

Music is something that is both deeply personal and highly exhibitionist. I remember the joy of making mixtapes each summer before I went away to camp, working to craft the perfect expressions of my individual taste to share with and show off to my friends. However, I also remember the first time I was angry to find out that someone I knew was into a hidden gem of a band that I liked, because I felt that they had violated my sense of identity. This is the complex duality of music: it is both the secret embrace we listen to when hidden in our rooms and the self-empowered declaration of identity we blare from our cars.

I was lucky enough to grow up during a time when music was irreversably transformed. My own museum of audio technology is littered with cassettes (including the Pocket Rocker), CD’s, vinyl, minidiscs, and a bevy of MP3 players. I remember finding music on Hotline, FTP’s, Napster, and the barrage of P2P services that bursted during my college years.

Now, as someone who has found myself working in technology, I’m always looking for ways to blend my passions with my occupations. Most recently it brought me to the BBC, where I was lucky enough to work with an amazing team of people building games for shows I love, properties like Doctor Who and Top Gear. However, an opportunity recently came up that I couldn’t pass over.

I’ve joined Buzzmedia to handle product development for the recently-acquired SPIN Magazine, and it is a real honor to work with a brand I’ve admired for a long time. While the music industry is certainly experiencing an unprecedented amount of volatility, the opportunity to work with such a storied publication and be a part of the process of reshaping the discussion, discovery, and consumption of music was something I couldn’t let pass me by.

So yet again, here I am writing another entry explaining my next career move. I certainly have made a lot of job switches over the past six years, and I think I’ve found an industry that is moving as fast as I like to.

I’ve been loving my Nike+ FuelBand, which has really...

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:24:03 -0700

I’ve been loving my Nike+ FuelBand, which has really helped me become more active and make some positive changes to be more a less sedentary Angelino. My friend, Teddy Blanks, told about these ads by Casey Neistat for the FuelBand, which are all worth watching.

I’ve been waiting years for this type of shared data plan,...

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 12:18:34 -0700

I’ve been waiting years for this type of shared data plan, and is yet one more reason I’ll be switching to Verizon when my AT&T contract expires. This is going to save me a fair bit each month, and make it far easier for me to build my mobile device arsenal. You can get more info here.

Here’s a clever ad from Virgin I got in their email...

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 06:49:44 -0700

Here’s a clever ad from Virgin I got in their email newsletter. Clearly they know how much their hipster Oregon-bound customers love Portlandia.

chilly: Facebook's Cognitive Dissonance with Sharing

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 06:51:00 -0700

chilly: Facebook's Cognitive Dissonance with Sharing:

Good post comparing implicit versus explicit sharing. I’d argue that this in combination with the shift from sharing personally-created content to discovered content has led to my increasing disinterest in Facebook.

Sweep the Sleaze | Information Architects

Thu, 31 May 2012 13:25:00 -0700

Sweep the Sleaze | Information Architects:

I’m guilty of putting social sharing buttons on Brickd.

For Tech Start-Ups, New York Has Increasing Allure - NYTimes.com

Tue, 29 May 2012 10:21:00 -0700

For Tech Start-Ups, New York Has Increasing Allure - NYTimes.com:

I just got back from a trip to NYC, and while I was there I caught up with some friends in the startup scene. It certainly seems to be the most exciting city to do what I do, more than both LA and SF. I have always been turned off by the myopia of SF and have real concerns that LA has a dearth of engineering talent.

Binary Nights is having an amazing sale on the Mac App Store of...

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:43:00 -0700

Binary Nights is having an amazing sale on the Mac App Store of their excellent file manager/remote file client, ForkLift2, for only 99 cents. Considering that the app usually goes for $29.99, it is definitely worth picking up while on sale. You can find it here.

This seems like welcome innovation in the conference calling...

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:52:01 -0700

This seems like welcome innovation in the conference calling space. You can sign-up for the beta here: uberconference.com/zPsq5LdX

Panic Blog » Announcing Coda 2. And introducing Diet Coda.

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:29:00 -0700

Panic Blog » Announcing Coda 2. And introducing Diet Coda.:

Best news I’ve gotten all day. If you haven’t checked out Coda for your web-editing and coding needs, you’re really missing out.

This is a visualization of the plethora of Android devices...

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:17:00 -0700

This is a visualization of the plethora of Android devices available. This level of device fragmentation is why developing for Android continues to scare me and why testing for reliability on all of these different pieces of hardware is an unwieldy and unmanageable problem. However, my bigger fears come from the bevy of OS versions in the market.

I’m incredibly impressed by the new Rdio design, and think...

Tue, 15 May 2012 09:43:33 -0700

I’m incredibly impressed by the new Rdio design, and think it is far more usable, intuitive, and elegant than Spotify. While the redesign was introduced at SXSW, it just went live for all users.

I don’t currently use any streaming music service, since my collection is a bit too obscure to get full coverage (Rdio only gets ~60%). However, if I was to take the plunge, I’d definitely go with Rdio.