iPhone sales predictions

IFrogz, among others speculates if Apple will sell 10 million phones by the end of 2008. I like iFrogz, I like the cases and whatnot they do, though I’m currently using a Capsule from SwitchEasy which is excellent. If Apple is to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of this year they will have … Continue reading “iPhone sales predictions”

IFrogz, among others speculates if Apple will sell 10 million phones by the end of 2008. I like iFrogz, I like the cases and whatnot they do, though I’m currently using a Capsule from SwitchEasy which is excellent.

If Apple is to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of this year they will have to sell 200,000 more per quarter than they did over the hottest time of the year, the Christmas season. During that time last year Apple sold 2.3 million.

In the first six months the iPhone was on sale, it sold 4 million units. That was in 2 quarters in the US and less than 1 quarter in France, Germany and the UK. Steve Jobs aimed at 10 million iPhones out there by the end of 2008. A rather optimistic claim but one that everyone has jumped on.

If Apple only do 9, 200, 000 iPhone sales, will the entire affair be a flop. Do the math. The extra 200 000 units per quarter only adds up to an extra 800 000 phones in the remaining 4 quarters. If they only did 8 million iPhones by the end of 2008, would it be a flop? Of course not. Some heads may roll but the sky will not fall and the sun will still rise.

Some people speculate shaving $50 off the price of the phone would create an instant surge. Maybe, maybe not. I seriously doubt it. The issue most people have is the contract but, as we saw yesterday, O2 have just doubled their voice minutes allowance and increased the text allowance on the iPhone contracts they offer. I now have 1200 minutes and 500 texts and unlimited data which is more than I will ever use. People on the cheapest £35 tariff will now enjoy 600 minutes and 500 texts which is a huge improvement (from 200 and 200 respectively). This is where the innovation will come. With 1200 free minutes, I almost can’t be bothered wondering if Skype will appear on the iPhone unless I’m calling internationally (which is so infrequent I wouldn’t care anywway).

The iPhone is also just onto AT&T’s business tariffs and will be added to O2’s business tariff soon. This is excellently timed as the SDK is to be released in a few days and some early access developers (such as SAP) already have their client software ready to go.

So chill out on the numbers. It could be 9 million, it could explode to 20 million. We don’t know. What we do know is that a lot of the bloody things will be sold in the next 11 months.

OpenIsland tomorrow

OpenIsland is on tomorrow and will be another large collection of beardy-weirdies the way the FOSS Means Business conference in 2006 attracted them. There’s a couple more posts after that one which describe it in further detail. I want to go but I also have to work. There’s very little chance that $BIG_COMPANY is progressive … Continue reading “OpenIsland tomorrow”

OpenIsland is on tomorrow and will be another large collection of beardy-weirdies the way the FOSS Means Business conference in 2006 attracted them. There’s a couple more posts after that one which describe it in further detail.

I want to go but I also have to work. There’s very little chance that $BIG_COMPANY is progressive enough to entertain the idea of attending conferences on company time.

What’s missing on iPhone

A discussion on the NiMUG forums about the features missing on the iPhone sparked this post. Proper MMS support – to be honest I don’t miss this at all. Looking back on my previous tariffs I only ever sent about 1 picture a month (though my tariff allowed for 15) and I only received 1-2 … Continue reading “What’s missing on iPhone”

A discussion on the NiMUG forums about the features missing on the iPhone sparked this post.

  • Proper MMS support – to be honest I don’t miss this at all. Looking back on my previous tariffs I only ever sent about 1 picture a month (though my tariff allowed for 15) and I only received 1-2 a month. Since getting an iPhone in October, I’ve only received 2 MMS texts (which are accessed via O2’s web site). Is this worth getting upset over? I think not
  • Cut n Paste – this is much more serious. I really need some sort of text selection and cut feature to edit down the really long emails that come from the OSX-Nutters mailing list (the discussion on evolution of the mind was fascinating but almost impossible to reply to and provide proper editing. Apple is allegedly working on this but wondering about the implementation.
  • SMS forwarding – this doesn’t bother me at all. SMS Forwards tend to be jokes and I don’t really want to get involved in that. SMS Texts come from me and SMS Forwarding on my old phone didn’t include any attribution.
  • Contact Forwarding – Oh, man, this has bitten me two or three times this week. It’s really frustrating that I can’t send someone’s number or contact details via email or SMS without writing them down elsewhere and then re-entering them. Stupid Stupid Stupid.
  • Maps link Forwarding – again it seems obvious when a friend has asked you where something or somewhere is. i.e. I can use the location feature to find myself but I’d like to be able to email a link to Google Maps so someone else can find me. It should be part of the dropped pin feature or the slightly more obscure Maps bookmark feature.
  • Anything I’ve missed?

18/100 Just Jump Into Podcasting – Heres How

This is one that I’m going to be learning as I write. Technical The technical side of things is possibly the easiest to fix. Apple has a quick guide to Podcasting on their support site which covers a sample recipe for Podcasts and the bullet points in how to actually record sound and get it … Continue reading “18/100 Just Jump Into Podcasting – Heres How”

This is one that I’m going to be learning as I write.

Technical
The technical side of things is possibly the easiest to fix. Apple has a quick guide to Podcasting on their support site which covers a sample recipe for Podcasts and the bullet points in how to actually record sound and get it published via RSS. It’s a little high level but I guess this means that my mum would find it easier than me as I tend to overthink things.

Non-Technical
I’ve left the non-technical issues until last. This actually involves the content itself and is best covered by the Podcast Recipe on the link above.

Talking for 15-20 minutes is a tough job for a lot of people which is why you have to plan it. I’ve only ever been involved in one Podcast as a guest (The Spodcast (#28) and it wasn’t hard to fill the time – mainly because it was a conversation about interesting stuff that was timetabled and, at the end of the day, there were four people talking. 20 minutes of talk-time is a lot easier to fill when there’s four of you.

Accessibility Issues
Not to be sniffed at, there are real problems if you’re producing podcast content and that is simply accessibility. The first issue is obvious – anyone who is deaf or has a severe hearing impairment will probably not be able to access your content. In the US that’s possibly 2% of the population (link). If you include any kind of hearing impairment it rises to almost 14%. The solution here therefore is to offer a transcript which, as you can guess, is a poor substitute, but if your content ain’t rubbish then it shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Another problem related to accessibility is what is required to listen to your content. MP3 and AAC formats should be fine because one is a defacto standard and the other is an actual standard. Once you start making a political statement (like Ogg Vorbis) then you’ve just thrown away another chunk of listeners. This becomes even more problematic when a format is owned wholly by a company, like WMA, and is poorly supported on other platforms.

There’s also the problem of file size. A minute of conversation might take 512Kbytes, which is the same as about 500 pages of plain text (or seven and a half lines of text in Word 2008). Using plain text means you can feed it into a braille machine or a screen reader or magnify it to ungodly levels without much distortion. A 20 minute podcast is a much higher bandwidth and storage sink compared to the same amount of content as text.

My recommendations:

  1. Get a Mac – using GarageBand will just make your life easier. If you’re in love with Windows, then keep using it I guess but you’ll have to find your own killer podcasting app.
  2. Find a Friend – I don’t think Podcasting is a lone activity and some of the least interesting podcasts come from people who do it alone. Look at popular talk radio shows – Chris Moyles seems to have about 17 people stuffed into his booth.
  3. Do it regularly – Weekly is probably what people expect. Don’t disappoint them.
  4. Careful with Commercials – no-one likes commercials. Everyone wants to skip them but if you do accept sponsorship then make sure you don’t ram them in your listeners faces. Try to be objective about and don’t just think of the “free” money. It’s not going to score you a Mercedes or anything.

I don’t know how useful this was, taking podcasting advice from someone who’s never really done it. A lot of it is common sense. But I’m going to be starting topic 19 from Chris Brogan’s 100 blogging topics. If any of my readers (yeah, both of you) do a podcast, chuck the URL in the comments as I’m interested to listen.

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

Google, Dell to produce piss-poor smartphone.

: Both Google and Dell are collaborating on a handset, says a new claim by ad magazine MarketingWeek. Reportedly contacting “senior industry sources,” the publication believes that the two firms will announce a phone as soon as the Mobile World Congress show in mid-February.

Considering the DELL efforts before with the ill fated AXIM PDA running Microsoft software and the fact they had their market cut out from them by Microsoft with the “PlaysForSure” debacle, this would seem to be a sound strategic partnership. Google has yet to screw over any partners, it saves that experience for customers of companies it acquires.

Of course, it’s possible that these two industry giants could be teaming up to flood the market with another piss-poor smartphone

Social Capital

More for my own reference. Link: Wikipedia The first known use of the concept was by L. J. Hanifan, state supervisor of rural schools in West Virginia. Writing in 1916 to urge the importance of community involvement for successful schools, Hanifan invoked the idea of “social capital” to explain why. For Hanifan, social capital referred … Continue reading “Social Capital”

More for my own reference. Link: Wikipedia

The first known use of the concept was by L. J. Hanifan, state supervisor of rural schools in West Virginia. Writing in 1916 to urge the importance of community involvement for successful schools, Hanifan invoked the idea of “social capital” to explain why. For Hanifan, social capital referred to:

those tangible substances [that] count for most in the daily lives of people: namely good will, fellowship, sympathy, and social intercourse among the individuals and families who make up a social unit..

iPhone 2007. Windows Mobile 2009? Maybe?

Mitchell Ashley, Microsoft apologist for NetworkWorld tells us why he thinks the iPhone is doomed The iPhone is certain to fade into history as another cool Apple innovation, that others soon rushed competitive, like-products to market, blowing away any significant lead Apple might have. The iPod mp3 player is an industry Apple essentially created, the … Continue reading “iPhone 2007. Windows Mobile 2009? Maybe?”

Mitchell Ashley, Microsoft apologist for NetworkWorld tells us why he thinks the iPhone is doomed

The iPhone is certain to fade into history as another cool Apple innovation, that others soon rushed competitive, like-products to market, blowing away any significant lead Apple might have. The iPod mp3 player is an industry Apple essentially created, the iPhone isn’t. Too many major players are in the mobile phone market, who have and will bring iPhone-like products to market over the coming months and years. LG has already done so with the LG Voyager phone, and now Microsoft’s plans for Windows Mobile 7 OS have been leaked and described in considerable detail by InsideMicrosoft blogger Nathan Weinberg.

Does anyone remember what the market was like before Apple released the iPod in 2001? There were certainly lots of MP3 players on the market, some of them flash based and some of them with laptop hard drives in them. There wasn’t any decent way to buy music online and there was only really MusicMatch JukeBox for syncing your tunes that you did have (ripped using WinAMP or MacAMP).

To claim Apple invented the Mp3 player market is simply a lie. A massive straw man argument designed to help prop up the further argument that the iiPhone will fail because Apple did not create that market.

Apple has a 70%+ market share in MP3 players. Are we expecting them to take the same in the phone market? Of course not. They’re never going to release a £10 phone you can buy down in Tesco along with £10 of free minutes. The vast majority of the market are these low end handsets, so feature-free that I was surprised they still existed (until I bought one as an unlocked emergency handset a few months ago).

Apple did manage to snare 19% of the smartphone market in 6 months which is a much more interesting market – one where people will actually pay for the use of a technology device. Isolating that market aside from the most basic handsets begins to crystallise out Apple’s intended market: paying customers.

The article is fluff, tripe and full of FUD. It’s meant to make you hold out for the next big thing from Microsoft. Yes, it took Microsoft six months to copy key features of the iPhone and create mockups of what they plan to ship sometime in 2009. Yes, six months to invent photoshopped images. And you’ll have to wait over a year to use this stuff.

And of course, Apple will be standing still during this time…

NY Visit in Feb

Looks like I might be going to New York for the second half of February. Still pretty tentative and there’s probably a 50% chance it’ll all fall through. Did I ever tell you how much I hate flying? Usually a flight consists of 5 minutes of terror, 50 minutes of boredom and 5 minutes of … Continue reading “NY Visit in Feb”

Looks like I might be going to New York for the second half of February. Still pretty tentative and there’s probably a 50% chance it’ll all fall through.

Did I ever tell you how much I hate flying?

Usually a flight consists of 5 minutes of terror, 50 minutes of boredom and 5 minutes of terror. That’s pretty much all of my flying for the last five years – because it’s all been short haul trips to London or Paris.

I’ve been to the U.S. twice before, once to GA and the second time to NC.

Very different experiences – the first was family, Six Flags, Stone Mountain, The Fourth of July, fireworks, my utter infatuation with a very pretty girl and my heart being broken when she told me we could be “friends”. I hadn’t yet figured out that a 14 year old boy with freckles has a better chance of passing through the eye of a needle than scoring with a 17 year old girl who had a car. Go figure.

The second time was an invite from friends, a little love, a lot of heartbreak, missing my home terribly and a whole load of situations that I handled really badly. I met my first gay person and realised that I, and everyone I was friends with, had no idea what a gay person actually was. As I recall, he was funny, geeky and the first American I’d ever known to employ sarcasm and irony correctly. I hope he’s a professor somewhere. Teaching sarcasm or something. The only thing I sorta kept from those days was my friendship with Melody, one of the main reasons I went there. She’s incredibly patient, incredibly empathic, generous to the point of self-destruction and deserving of a Nobel prize based on the work she does. I was 20 and it was a long time ago. America is a very different place now.

Both times, of course, were punctuated by 5 minutes of terror, 7 hours of boredom and developing deep-vein thrombosis and 5 minutes of terror. The GA trip was even more special as we flew into Kennedy and then had to get a connecting flight to Atlanta. Joy!

I spent 8 weeks in GA and 6 weeks in NC. I’ll be spending 2 weeks in NY and if I’m honest I don’t want to go. I’m only into the new house, I don’t want to miss my kids for that amount of time. When I visit a new place I do go out and see the sights but hey I’ll just be yet another itinerant Irish tourist in New York. Nothing special about me.

But upwards and outwards. I just hope my iPods and laptops are up the challenge (battery-wise).

Anyone interested in meeting up should drop me a line. I know I’ll be busy but equally I know there are a lot of people in NY with whom I’ve had a fleeting acquaintance and it’d be good to meet up, chow down and help them realise that I really am as rude in real life as I am online but I don’t mean anything by it.

The plan is two weeks. That’s a lot of staring at hotel walls.

Henry Rollins at Vicar Street

Yesterday afternoon I visited the dentist. I hate the dentist. No, I don’t hate my dentist (she’s very pleasant), but I hate going because I fear it. But I broke a tooth in early January and I needed to get it sorted. Forty minutes later I’m walking out, feeling somewhat brutalised (at one point I … Continue reading “Henry Rollins at Vicar Street”

Yesterday afternoon I visited the dentist. I hate the dentist. No, I don’t hate my dentist (she’s very pleasant), but I hate going because I fear it. But I broke a tooth in early January and I needed to get it sorted. Forty minutes later I’m walking out, feeling somewhat brutalised (at one point I kicked out my foot in pain and made the “Nnnggggggggggggg” noise you make when someone gives you a stabbing pain in your skull and she said, “Did that hurt?”.

Quite.

Around five pm, I drove to Lisburn (Really. Would anyone miss Lisburn?), picked up my father and brother and drove to Dublin because we were going to see Henry Rollins for his Spoken Word 2008 Tour. He’s also in Belfast on 30th March and even though I’ve seen him this tour, he was that funny that I’d go see him again. Around the time the doors to the show opened, the anaesthetic wore off and I was reminded of the nasty pointy tools that had been poking in my mouth earlier with a dull ache that turned into a pounding headache by the time I got home after two in the morning.

Henry has excellent pacing. He tells heart-breaking stories intermingled with humour so you’re not immediately depressed by the subjects he talks about. This year he’ll tell you about his trips to Syria, Iran, Pakistan and Sweden. He’ll tell you enthusiastically about The Ruts and he’ll do his best to avoid talking about Dubya. (Indeed that section was the only bit of the gig I was unimpressed with. I know Dubya is an asshole. I’m tired and bored of hearing about it.)

Rollins’ enthusiasm for music is probably the best thing about his tours. Sure – there’s a lot this time round (I also saw him 2 years ago) where he’s constantly name dropping: David Lee Roth, huh, Dave Vanian and Captain Sensible, sure, Nick Cave and Jello Biafra, okay, Ozzy, right, UK Subs, uh-huh….and the list goes on. It’s okay Henry, we know you’re a happening guy and you’re in the thick of it during happening times and god knows you’re definitely one of the “Famous People I Admire”. The only thing I really took home from the name-dropping was that Van Halen have reformed with David Lee Roth and they’re on tour. Holy shit. If only it wasn’t US-only.

Rollins remains the only Rock Star who I’d not mind marrying my sister.

Character and Social Networking

I’m a firm believer in a society founded on a results-based economy. Now that may be a term used by financial whizzkids out there in the real world, but what I mean here is that in your interactions with people daily, you should be considering the end result – what you want to get out … Continue reading “Character and Social Networking”

I’m a firm believer in a society founded on a results-based economy. Now that may be a term used by financial whizzkids out there in the real world, but what I mean here is that in your interactions with people daily, you should be considering the end result – what you want to get out of it.

Now, that sounds terribly cynical in black and white and I must stress that I’m not advocating that we start categorising our friends and acquaintances on what we can get out of them because that would be a horrific application of the idea, but rather that we judge our own actions on the results that may occur. If I do this, what will happen?.

It’s this philosophy that gets you out of arguments by just apologising rather than scoring points. When I argue, I like to sulk for a little – just a few minutes of self-indulgence when all the witty and cutting remarks I didn’t say in the argument swim around my head. The result is the same – with these remarks I would have completely won that argument, but what would I have lost? Having won this argument, will I congratulate myself in my ivory tower, alone and proud?

Aldous Huxley, my flavour of the month, wrote:

And the prevailing philosophy of life would be a kind of Higher Utilitarianism, in which the Greatest Happiness principle would be secondary to the Final End principle–the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: “How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man’s Final End?”

Seeing as Social Networks are now the bubble rage, how do you apply a social results-based economy to social networking? We see a little of it in social networks at the moment with the granting of “friend” status though some, like Robert Scoble, have popularised the friend status to the point that it becomes worthless. How can you complain about a limit of 5000 friends? Get over yourself. LinkedIn does a little better but is such a narrow niche and the recommendation system becomes reciprocal. You’re more likely to recommend someone who has recommended you, but who takes that first step?

With the Identity Crisis looming (and yes, it’s a crap name for my theory but you try churning out good names. We need Tim O’Reilly to popularise it and make a book!), we have to consider the consolidation of our various online identities into one semantic entity so that “the system” knows who we are but only provides that information to those we permit, to those who have some relevance to us. I don’t relish the idea of OpenSocial being the panacea there because it’s an advertising engine and I don’t see any of our governments stepping in to create something that they, by default, cannot control and mis-use.

The Jabber model works for me. I have the passwords which link my various online identities into one Island (server, service, online shopping portal). Other people verify this online identity is “me”. They have tenuous virtual connections to me through these other services which may or may not include an entry on my “Island”, we just may be strangers in strange lands elsewhere.

This post has rambled on long enough but the gist is: making your choices carefully and not based on reaction is what separates us from the animals. Being able to build social networks beyond the immediate family (or the Dunbar number) is a quality unique to humans as a consequence of our technology. The actions we take identify us as a person – they give us character. Through this display of character, we may be able to make connections to other people and have other people make connections to us on a basis of recommendation.

It would be nice to know that the people I associate myself with online all display good character. But in truth, I have no way of knowing and some of the people you’d expect to be fine, upstanding citizens simply are not.