B. Mann Consulting

Bryan Rieger came by the office yesterday and we caught up on where his new company, Yiibu is at. They just soft launched with an example of one of the first pieces of open microcontent that they're going to be working with. Their first microcontent stack is a guide to tropical fish, a wonderful nod to the original Mackerel Stack mentioned in Bryan's recent thank you post. It's been my pleasure to get to know both Bryan and Steph, and it's been amazing seeing the ideas they come up with.

What they're doing and thinking about is a new new thing, I believe. We're finally getting to the point where mobile devices can easily work with multimedia content, with new devices like the colour iPods and the Sony PSP turning out to be great platforms to carry around user-created content. The Creative Commons and the very concept of shareable content shouldn't be discounted either -- lessons like the Sony DRM debacle are only reinforcing that.

So, before I had a chance (it has been too long) to point to Bryan's update from Bangkok, he and Steph are coming back to Vancouver.

Can't say I'm disappointed that SE Asia didn't have enough allure for them -- I'm going to need more help in getting the "Innovation Commons" off the ground here in Vancouver. More on that later, I have to post a recent mobile experience to celebrate the return of these guys.

Well, it's been just over three months since we left Vancouver and it's just over a week until we're back. Definately not what we had planned. Sometimes life just takes you on the strangest journeys despite your best efforts to stray off the beaten path.

Anyway, long story short - Steph and I are returning to YVR September 24th to continue working on Yiibu. Three months ago we came to Asia with the idea of building a mobile content company (don't get me started), but then after a few weeks of continued research, countless conversations, more than a few argument