Ted's Take

The Blogging Site of Ted Leonsis

Archive for July 2nd, 2009

There are Times When a Cigar is Only a Cigar

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
I am doing some redesign to my blog. It will probably be down for a few days. There is nothing going on other than we are investing in some new technology and a facelift on the UI.
 
It is Fourth of July weekend so it is a good time to chill out; enjoy some time with family and friends; and the outdoors. :-) No posts from me for a few days.

New Harry Potter Film Opens This Month

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
With the new Harry Potter film opening this month, check out We Are Wizards.  SnagFilms now has this wonderful documentary film. It is about the fan base of the Harry Potter franchise. It is quirky and well done.
 
It is about an hour long so kick back and enjoy it for free this weekend. Share it with your kids too and other Harry Potter fans. Click here and enjoy!

Back to the Future on Voice

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Read this article on voice services at Google. Back to the future.

I envisioned, founded and launched - with the help of John Borthwick, founder of Betaworks - AOL By Phone. That was ten years ago. We acquired Quack; a voice recognition company, to help launch it.

The service still works. It combines email, voice mail-location based services; mapping and more onto your phone. You could browse the web via voice; have your email read to you; and even respond. It was fast and very accurate. You could ask for a phone number; a map and directions; a movie time; a sports team score; and then place a call. It leveraged our data in MapQuest and Moviefone and Digital Cities. It used presence from AIM and our technology and platform in email.

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Nice Words About Knuble Signing

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

Click here for a nice article about our signing of Mike Knuble.

In our war room under “Want to Sign”, Knuble is the first name on a list of five players so I guess our staff prepared well. He wanted to play here and “we got our man” so praise be and a job well done.

Onward to a continuous upgrade and improvement for our team all within our budget and within our strategy framework. Go Caps!