TJ Crawford’s Abstract Ideas

Extreme Makeover Home Edition visited Stagecoach a little town about an hour from Reno last week. They were there building a house for a Harley riding minster (Pastor Steve) and his family who donate to various charities through their Harley affiliations.  and his family. They started doing fund raisers through their motorcycle rides and ultimately turned their small 2 car garage into a youth center. Read more about them here NevadaExtremeHome.com

The company I work for (Twelve Horses) and more importantly one of our Biz Dev guys Dean McBeth decided to donate some time of his own and help spread the word by spending long cold hours at the site taking pictures and pushing the social medias, much like this blog post. Thanks Dean, a great cause and benefit for the local community.

You can see the rest of my photos from the last night of the build here.

I am working on a project for the Las Vegas Monorail that has been one of the most fun, and rewarding, in my career.

We started working with the LVMC in late 2006, with a website redesign and a very basic purchase of tickets online. The delivery was all off line via snail mail however. Our contacts were new to the Monorail as they had just undergone a corporate purge from the top down. They had inherited a project that a 3rd party had been working on to bring mobile barcodes to the Monorail for their tickets. To make a really long story short the 3rd party was not equipped to implement such a project and ended up burning up a year and a half of time trying. We had been helping them with the integration to the LVMC’s current online purchase process and had formed a great relationship with the company that licensed the barcode technology to the 3rd party in the first place (Swiftpass UK). Swiftpass revoked their license due to non-performance and myself/Twelve Horses picked up where they left off.

In the meantime while all of this was going on we had been listening to the LVMC and their website needs as well as some of their pain regarding sales, specifically corporate sales. They had formed a corporate sales team and were going to be approaching all of the large trade shows and conventions as well as the hotel properties asking them to offer LVMC tickets. After talking to them a little while about how they planned on accomplishing, and more importantly supporting and scaling this it was evident the TH team could help. Since we had developed the purchasing front end, integrated with the credit card processor and with Swiftpass for the barcodes we were uniquely positioned to develop a ticketing platform that could transact tickets based on the varied targets the LVMC was pursuing.

Our platform uses a re-branded interface for the companies that did not have the time, effort or expertise to do a full scale implementation. This was the same process the LVMC used to transact tickets however we allowed for text and graphics to be completely changed and branded for whomever the partner was. Additionally for the large and sophisticated partners we developed an API interface allowing them to integrate LVMC ticket sales right into their established shopping cart, folio or purchasing engine.

Currently this system is powering the ticket sales for the likes of CES, ASTA and all the major trade shows that come to Vegas. In April we will be launching the next major phase to this and delivering a 2D Barcode directly to the purchasers mobile phone. they can then use that phone at a special eTicket kiosk to print their LVMC Ticket.

In the time we lost other industries have introduced mobile based tickets such as the Pirates baseball stadium, Continental Airlines and a Ski Resort in Bend, Oregon. unfortunately it will not be the first to market implementation we had hoped for however it will be the first to integrate with a Magnetic Stripe ticket so often used by Transit Authorities.

 We continue to build upon the features and extend the systems capabilities. We are in the planning phases to provide the hardware & desktop applications for extend the system to their customer service booths. Additionally an integrate with their other systems so we can aggregate their revenues from their other system (Scheidt & Bachmann) and give the LVMC real-time tracking & reporting of their revenues.

Cool & fun stuff.

So thank you to Twelve Horses for the Chrome bag and iPod Touch. I had been wanting one because my iPod Video’s battery was about shot and I couldn’t use the iPhone we got earlier in the year because I’m on Sprint and the Windows Mobile platform for work. Below I have written some pro’s and cons based on more of the nuances rather than the glaringly obvious.

Pros

Connectedness is fast through 802.11 b/g network. I have a home network running on N and it makes the download seem really fast. A couple of reasons for this is that from a mobile devise everyone is used to slower speeds because manufacturers put slower more efficient chips in to save on battery life. Second I am used to my Sprint phones connection that is 115k. I can’t go anywhere and use my iPod but with the proliferation of free WiFi I think I can cope.

Multiple clocks can be configured and displayed on the same screen. This may seem trivial but it’s nice for my business needs. I have a clock for London where we are collaborating on a large project with SwiftPass UK, Indianapolis where I have extended family, Houston where my sister and parents live and San Fransisco only because Reno is not in the list.

An iTunes Store functionality is on here as well. With faster connection speeds they have been able to provide the purchase and download of songs directly from the iPod (something that should be on the AppleTV). There is now video support of any kind but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Music Videos become available. When you connect your iPod back up to your computer it adds a palylist under the STORE named "Purchased on TJ’s iPod". It then copies over to your normal iTunes library but also stays available within this playlist. 

The browsing experience is probably the best feature. On the iPhone the slow connection makes it agonizing at times and my Windows Smartphone is so watered down. With the Touch it’s fast and very full featured. Support for viewing Flash content is not there but javascript and light weight features are.

1. Google mobile operating system will start a landslide of development and force a shift in the carriers business model/monopoly.
2. A war of mobile browsers, and more importantly the philosophy of a full vs. reduced experience will rage on without a clear cut winner.
3. WiMAX will start showing up and speeeeed is goooooooood.
4. Apple will start releasing HiDef content, on iTunes, from the TV and Movie Studios.
5. A Republican will NOT be elected to office.
6. California will experience a 9.4 magnitude earthquake and will slip into the ocean leaving Nevada with ocean front property. Not really in 2008 but it will happen at some point
7. Flex apps and their versatility will come to light and the developer community will flock to it.
8. Martin G. will grow hair….. NOT 
9. Delivery of 2D barcodes to your mobile phone will start popping up everywhere as a substitute for traditional printed tickets. Currently there are a few baseball stadiums, Continental Airlines and soon to be Las Vegas Monorail (Courtesy of Twelve Horses and Swiftpass UK)

Now I know I am not the average Twitter user but I just have to talk about my experiences with my Twitter followings and what I call "Status" posts. There are people out there (You know who you are) that think any menial Twitter about your lunch, pet interactions or hygienic activities is important. I say lets push the tech to be meaningful and contribute to others in a better way. My choice (which is not the only or right one) is to take a page from the Reverend Run and write some more inspirational snippets, sales tips and other knowledge that I hope is meaningful and enriches people.

From a colleague of mine, @mwolfy "Twitter is for bashing friends". I know the entertainment value is there and I definitely do my share of status posting, but lets interject it with some knowledge too. You can take a look at what I am referring to and how I choose to use Twitter within my sidebar or by going to my Twitter Page.

So we are doing some pretty cool sites as of late and one of them is for Twelve Horses friend Mark Wayman. You can see his current site here but it will be redesigned in January.

We went to the new Cabela’s just outside Reno yesterday and my word, what a giant outdoor store. The place was packed with people and equipment. I kept imagining being the only one in there the night before and how small you would feel. The fist tank and stuffed animal exhibits (American Mountains & African Plains) were put together wonderfully. Amy was amazed at the size of a Tuna that was mounted on the wall (Blue 450 lbs and a Yellow Fin at 385 lbs).

I got a pair of Rocky hiking boots that were the most comfortable I have ever had.

Cool place.