Commentary – Page 71

Google attempting to stem Android fragmentation

John Gruber writes: Google has been iterating quickly, but the problem is that carriers aren’t interested in any updates at all for phones they’ve already sold. The carriers have learned nothing from the iPhone, or, maybe they just don’t care about Android as a platform. They don’t care because they didn’t have to pay for … Continue reading “Google attempting to stem Android fragmentation”

John Gruber writes:

Google has been iterating quickly, but the problem is that carriers aren’t interested in any updates at all for phones they’ve already sold. The carriers have learned nothing from the iPhone, or, maybe they just don’t care about Android as a platform.

They don’t care because they didn’t have to pay for it. They’ve got low commitment to the platform, low loyalty to the OS vendor and now reckon they can switch between Symbian, Windows Mobile/Phone and Android at will (not to forget whatever hell Nokia is about to consign maemo to).

He continues:

So, in the end, OS version fragmentation may be less of a problem for Android users — two years from now. Current Android users, except for Nexus One owners, are shit out of luck. Hope you like Android 1.6 if that’s what your phone shipped with.

To be honest, this isn’t a tremendously big problem. Android has bigger fish to fry than satisfying a few early adopters, a large percentage of which either got the phone for free or went Android because it didn’t have an Apple on it.

The Co-Viewing Experience

About a year ago I was fortunate enough to meet with Ewan McIntosh while he was Digital Commissioner for Channel 4’s 4IP project. We waxed in the workshop about how many of us commonly pay attention to three screens at once – when we’re watching TV; we have our laptops and mobile phones beside us. … Continue reading “The Co-Viewing Experience”

4IP’s remit was daring for the time. The core message I got was “no TV”. This wasn’t about audiences, it was about interactive, it might work alongside something that was TV and it might result in TV, but it wasn’t about TV.

Today I see this (emphasis mine):

Magazines and newspapers aren’t the only media eying big benefits upon the iPad’s arrival: TV is poised to use the device in new ways, including creating interactive, social apps designed to be used while watching live programming.
…
MTV Networks, for example, is developing a “co-browsing app meant to be used while watching live TV,” said one executive familiar with MTV’s iPad plans. “This means the iPad could be the appendage that makes interactive TV a reality.”
…
“Fifty-nine percent of people are multitasking when watching TV — that’s something we’ve always known,” said Ms. Frank, referring to recent Nielsen data quantifying a longstanding observation. “This is the next evolution.”

Of course it is.

When I watch TV, I have my laptop open. I’m looking up things, referencing actors, events, checking for the locations mentioned. (Frankly, it’s a little bit tiring.) But most importantly this is content that could be sold or advertised upon – it could be monetised by the television station, provided by the content producer on a platform that offers the content alongside the regular programming.

For example, while I’m watching Wonders of the Solar System with the very smart and cheerful Professor Brian Cox. I’m chatting to friends about the content, I’m following the good Professor on Twitter and I’m thinking about stuff such as:

which ended up being answered by the Professor himself. Insanely cool.

TV shows are set to a timetable, we know ahead of time when they stop or start.And there’s more possibility for peripheral web sites to offer content which is synchronised with broadcast. This idea isn’t terribly new – Nico (who now works at UTV) wrote about it on his blog:

Whatever the future of TV, it is clear that online and social media are going to play an increasing part in how and where we consume broadcast media. Being part of a shared media experience, even if you are on your own, will be the shape of things to come.

There’s an opportunity for local television companies to build a much bigger proposition, to actually deliver on the “360” that is buzzword in television commissioning. It should be about the ‘web site’, it’s about the co-viewing experience.

Square is for tomorrow’s mobile workers

Square is a neat solution from one of the Twitter founders, Jack Dorsey. It’s a little dongle that plugs into the audio port and allows you to scan in credit cards and take payments. Anywhere. The launch site was some bohemian coffee shop somewhere in the Valley but the real value is the ability for … Continue reading “Square is for tomorrow’s mobile workers”

Square is a neat solution from one of the Twitter founders, Jack Dorsey. It’s a little dongle that plugs into the audio port and allows you to scan in credit cards and take payments. Anywhere.

The launch site was some bohemian coffee shop somewhere in the Valley but the real value is the ability for anyone providing a service or product to sell wherever they are.

Put it another way. There’s less need for this:

When you can take this:

It’s a very important distinction. The number of exhibitions and conferences I’ve been to where we come away with pockets full of business cards that we absolutely will follow up. Bollocks to that. Make the sale. They give you money, you give them money and get down to business. After all, it’s all about the business.

Local Brand, Global Vision

I would describe myself as probably more curmudgeonly than most especially when it comes to things on the Internets. Arlene is often able to discern if “someone is wrong on the Internet” due to the posture I assume, the faces I pull and the fury of my key tapping. It’s one of those things, there’s … Continue reading “Local Brand, Global Vision”

I would describe myself as probably more curmudgeonly than most especially when it comes to things on the Internets. Arlene is often able to discern if “someone is wrong on the Internet” due to the posture I assume, the faces I pull and the fury of my key tapping. It’s one of those things, there’s an immediacy to making sure there are wrongs righted. Sometimes it is better to withdraw and do something else. And I promise I’ll try to do that next time.

So, How do you brand something locally without it appearing provincial?

I hate URLs from local companies and organisations that have ‘ni’ in the title (it’s not restricted to the Internet either, I hate it when they put (NI) in the name of the limited company too. And no, hate is not a strong word.

But sadly while we seem to be surviving without the need for IPv6 so far (years after my mentor predicted the end of the IPv4 internet), we are fumbling towards a more final end – the end of the dictionary. Internet companies have been using nonsense names for a decade or more now but I loathe the ‘ni’ thing more than I dislike the ‘r’ thing in Flickr, Tumblr and others or the ‘n+1’ thing, like in Rummble or Dribble. It points to a cataclysm of Babelian (should that be Babylonian?) proportions. And don’t get me started on the www.xxxapp.com style names. Entire domains for ‘apps’ seems wrong and it can be abused. For example:

http://apps.ie was registered last year as a domain for all Irish iPhone developers and designers to represent their work. Sadly one company has gone ahead and branded themselves as ‘appsie’ after the fact and registered a whole slew of …..apps.ie URLs. When I brought this up, I was pretty much told to sling my hook. Suffice to say that’s one company off my Christmas card list.

So how do you brand something that’s new? And doesn’t actively step on the toes of wider initiatives to improve things for everyone?

In many cases is means choosing a URL that is almost entirely unlike your company name. In other cases it means adding a prefix such as “visit” or “weare” or “designby” to your company name or being extremely creative with your domain name extensions – witness the growth in popularity of ‘.io’, ‘.us’ and ‘.tv’. And there’s hundreds more options.

But right now I’m left with attempting to brand a local collaboration network which has local remit but global vision. And hoping to reduce the chance that someone will waltz in and hijack the name for their own purposes and undermine the network.

We got Youtube, Vimeo, CBS, iPlayer and TED. Woohoo!

Mike Cane pointed this out: Think about this – what are the big sites for online video? Youtube and Vimeo (both have H.264 in beta), CBS are trialling it and iPlayer is also there if you’re in the UK. Other than Youtube, Vimeo and iPlayer, I only watch TED videos and now that’s going H.264 … Continue reading “We got Youtube, Vimeo, CBS, iPlayer and TED. Woohoo!”

Mike Cane pointed this out:

Think about this – what are the big sites for online video?

Youtube and Vimeo (both have H.264 in beta), CBS are trialling it and iPlayer is also there if you’re in the UK. Other than Youtube, Vimeo and iPlayer, I only watch TED videos and now that’s going H.264 too.

After this it’s just Hulu for the Americans and what are you really left with? The ITV player? 4OD? Do we care?

I met with the BBC Trust several months ago and recommended that they look at H.264 across the board. I also recommended they push hard to beat their most fervent competitor (video piracy) and offer a better service than can be found on bittorrent. Bittorrent, to the BBC, is little more than a distribution channel they have no control over. It should be in their interest to provide a better service which will give people high quality video that they do have control over, that they can gain useful statistics of, that they can count eyeballs from.

I guessed it fell on deaf ears. Have to see what happens.

The iApp Pricing Dilemma

Around a hundred years ago in 1984, I owned a ZX Spectrum 16K (which my Dad had bought for Christmas in 1982). This tiny little computer cost £100 or so, hooked up to your TV and the games had to be loaded over a audio cable from a tape recorder. I remember my Christmas Day … Continue reading “The iApp Pricing Dilemma”

The games I bought were sold in two shops. Tandy on the Antrim Road in Lisburn and a video rental store. At the time the full price of a game was around £7.99. The rental store also rented the game for 99p for two nights. This was achievable to my 11 year old mind and I rented the game which caught my eye.

You see.

TRON had been released in 1982 and I was obsessed. (In hindsight I really should have stayed with the computers thing.) And a company called Personal Software Services in Coventry (England) has produced a game called Light Cycle.

Evidently Disney wasn’t paying attention to computer games in 1983. But anyway – this game which entranced me (before I knew what the gameplay looked like), was £7.99. (I know it says it was £5.95 retail on the web site but I tell you, it sold for £7.99 in pre-globalised, pre-internet Lisburn).

So, iApp prices.

I think everyone knows that 59p (99c) is too cheap for anything of value.

That said, the iPhone has proved quite the opposite (and it seems to be everlastingly sustainable) as we fill our home screens with games and utility apps that are, quite frankly, too cheap to be good, but so good you’d be stupid not to try them. I’ve got pages of apps and games which cost very little and yet I get hours and hours of use out of them.

We knew that iPad apps would cost more. Sure, you can run your existing iPhone apps on the iPad by stretching them up to fill the screen, but there’s a heap of new apps coming. Some of them are refreshes of existing iPhone apps with new content but some of them are new and exciting.

So iPad apps and games will cost more.

They’re not going to cost like PC games or console games – between thirty quid and fifty quid for a single game – but they’re also not going to trend towards 59p! As you can see below!

These images are from MacRumors:

Expect bigger prices from big names. We’re going to see some amazing content on this device. Just be prepared to pay for it.

The best iPad-is-wrong rebuttal ever

This is the iPad-is-wrong rebuttal that I wish I’d written. Adaptation I’m not so sure that a touchscreen MacBook is really what you want. It may be what you think you want. But now’s the time in this piece where I dig out the ol’ Henry Ford quote about what people think they want. “If … Continue reading “The best iPad-is-wrong rebuttal ever”

This is the iPad-is-wrong rebuttal that I wish I’d written.

Adaptation

I’m not so sure that a touchscreen MacBook is really what you want. It may be what you think you want. But now’s the time in this piece where I dig out the ol’ Henry Ford quote about what people think they want. “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.”
…
What we want from our technology, in its most elemental form, is to make our thoughts happen. Sure, it’s still very much sci-fi in 2010, but what every calculating machine and telephone and computer and phonograph and light bulb and hammer and every tool ever invented is about at its core is our desire, our evolutionary imperative to control our environment at our will. And we’re getting closer and closer to that happening.
…
With the introduction of the product’s name, I resisted and I resisted hard. I climbed on my self-publishing platform and I railed against the name. “Apple, you fucked up,” I declared, brandishing a little bullshit linguistics. And it’s not til now, 10 days later, that I realize that I’d readily fallen into the trap I’m usually conscientious in avoiding. In hindsight, my response was reactionary and mean-spirited. Now, 10 days out, when I see or hear or think the word “iPad”, I see the Apple tablet computer…
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This level of maturity of the hardware allows for unfathomable freedom in software.
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It’s a piece of glass. The software is the thing. Yes, it’s in a pretty case. Like all Apple products, the case is the Trojan horse.

Yes. Exactly.

Apple is not competing fairly…

For the last three years, the tech world has been agog with mobile, mobile, mobile. Apple with the release of the iPhone kicked a hole in the market and then occupied that hole. While many pundits point to Nokia shipping more smartphones and the upstart Android gaining market share, these pundits ignore the rampant fragmentation in both the Nokia- and pre-Nokia Symbian operating system market and the growing fragmentation in the Android market. Nokia needs to kill off the notion they are doing well in this market – there’s no great success in being the master of a dying market of consumers who don’t buy anything. Symbian was economically inactive in apps beforehand and it’s just floundering now. They need to set better standards – look to their N900 handheld as the future. And Google needs to focus on Android fragmentation as a priority – we’ve seen this on Linux before but the differences in hardware, software versions and carrier ‘additions’ is creating a mess of a single unified idea.

Sadly though for both of these companies, Apple is not competing fairly. While Nokia and Google among others scramble to regain mindshare in the smartphone market, Apple has surreptitiously started to hack out a niche for themselves in the portable gaming market. The console gaming market is wholly owned by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo but until recently the portable market was solely occupied by Nintendo and Sony. While Microsoft will be releasing a compelling product linked to their Windows Phone products, Apple has already carved a niche in the portable gaming market – see this report from Flurry.

You can see that Apple now commands more portable gaming market share than Sony (and anecdotal evidence suggests that games with other handhelds are just carrying their iPhones for the quick portable gaming fix).

And in two weeks, iPad will cause another bloodbath.

For Mac, read iPhone. For PC, read Android.

@kevin_noonan writes: History will repeat itself. The Mac was a revolutionary product but it lost the market. For Mac, read iPhone. For PC, read Android. I disagree. Of course. The Mac was born in fire. Incredibly competitive market and they accidentally gave the crown jewels to a company they trusted and shouldn’t have. They were … Continue reading “For Mac, read iPhone. For PC, read Android.”

@kevin_noonan writes:

History will repeat itself. The Mac was a revolutionary product but it lost the market. For Mac, read iPhone. For PC, read Android.

I disagree. Of course.

The Mac was born in fire. Incredibly competitive market and they accidentally gave the crown jewels to a company they trusted and shouldn’t have. They were competing against a superior marketing force relying on promises that would take a decade to be fulfilled. Worse still, Apple was disappearing up it’s own arse with overpriced equipment, luxurious margins and a strategy that resembled a sieve.
Apple is currently on a roll and that means even though I may personally disagree with many of their actions and policies, it’s very hard to tell them they’re doing something wrong. Let’s face it – the company is making more money than they have ever made. Ever. With a market cap of $207B, the company is worth more than Google ($174B), Cisco ($152B), Oracle ($130B), Nokia ($56B), DELL ($29B). The company is catching up with Microsoft ($262B).
Apple’s iPod hasn’t suffered the same fate despite some strong competition – such as open source formats, the ubiquitous “Plays For Sure” and now the advent of the Zune. To be honest, there’s not much truth in any part of the history where Apple really lost – and they’re taking measures to ensure a clean win this time. How many times do you have to re-invent an entire industry to get respect?
The iPhone and iPod touch have helped catapult Apple into ascendancy in both market as well as mindshare. They are identified by their closest competitors as the ones to beat. And it’s just got even more competitive – iPad adds to the mix here. And while Apple is enjoying the unification of their mobile platforms, Android is becoming even more fragmented. This isn’t how it went down with Mac/Windows. Windows united the industry, Android seems to be splintering it.

So, bollocks to it.

“Music: an aperitif for the maw of Digital”

In 2009, Infurious spent some of their hard-earned cash from the NBC Universal deal to send one of the team to SXSWi. So lurid were the tales of new technology, I resolved to get more of the Digital Circle to attend this conference. From Wikipedia: SXSW is one of the largest music festivals in the … Continue reading ““Music: an aperitif for the maw of Digital””

From Wikipedia:

SXSW is one of the largest music festivals in the United States, with more than 1,400 performers playing in more than 80 venues around downtown Austin over four days, in March. Though it is an industry-based event, SXSW Music links locally with events such as the annual Austin Music Awards show. SXSW is the highest revenue-producing special event for the Austin economy, with an estimated economic impact of at least $110 million in 2008.
In 1994, SXSW added film and interactive conferences. SXSW Film has become one of the world’s premiere film festivals, focusing on new directing talent. Similarly, SXSW Interactive has attracted a strong following among web creators and entrepreneurs. SXSW Interactive’s focus on emerging technology has earned the festival a reputation as a breeding ground for new ideas and creative technologies. Twitter launched at SXSW Interactive in 2007.
The music event has grown from 700 registrants in 1987 to nearly 12,000 registrants. SXSW Film and SXSW Interactive events attract approximately 11,000 registrants to Austin every March.

So, this year a small contingent from Northern Ireland headed off to Austin facilitated by InvestNI Trade and Export. You can see their timetable for future trade missions.

Bruce Sterling muses: ‘Is the digital world eating the music world?’ with some select quotes.

*Man, they don’t know the half of that… But on the other hand, we’re not halfway there yet. The music world was a kind of aperitif for the maw of digital.
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“There are definitely two different mindsets. Interactive people, all they do is go to panels with smartphones and laptops and music people are like, ‘let’s get to a club, get a beer and watch a rock band’.”
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“By midway through the festival the city’s hotel lobbies are abuzz with activity as the techies check out to leave and, sizing them up a little suspiciously, the music crowd arrive and check in….”

This comes mere days after I read FREE, by Wired’s Chris Anderson which demands reading (even just listening to the audiobook made me want the hardback).

The music industry wants paid for music whether you listen to it or not. Even if you buy a copy of a track from iTunes DRM-free and you want to shift that to another media, like put it on your iPod or record it onto a mix CD for the car (currently against UK law), the music industry would like you to pay more. So I pay a little to get one copy of a single performance of a well practised track and rightfully, this price should be decreasing. The effort put into the multiple copies is spread over the number of copies so with wider distribution, the unit price per song decreases. This sucks for bands which have poor distribution (i.e. little fame) and sucks even more for bands who aren’t very good.

The software industry would also like you, in general, to pay per copy but in the case of both open source and recent developments in mobile (i.e. the iPhone), the mass market has pushed the price of this commodity towards zero. Developers in the AppStore might complain the pricing of apps are too low but they have to realise that they contribute to that precedent and they put the value on their work. So software as a whole is decreasing in price – you can get better products for less money (consider Apple iWork versus Microsoft Office) and for the most part the market is very equitable

The reason I find it easier to pay for a digital copy of “Plants versus Zombies” than a copy of “Mountains” by Biffy Clyro is that bands have other methods of bringing in income. They can tour, they can sell merchandise, open supermarkets – they can become rock stars and get into the whole sex’n’drugs’n’rock’n’roll lifestyle. While this is the exception, it almost never happens for developers. The blood, sweat and tears which go into a good software product are, in my opinion, at least comparable to the effort put by musicians into recording a great song in a studio. Once done, the software developer puts the software on sale and can pray for sales. The developer will not tour, few will buy his merchandise. The exchange of small amounts of money for bits is pretty much his only income. The question of piracy therefore affects them differently – for the software developer, it undermines his only income, for the musician, piracy of the music track becomes marketing, a harbinger of the album, the T-shirt, the tour.

It is a shame that the most talked about experiments of music into the digital realm have all been either shams (Arctic Monkeys) or efforts by big bands with established fan bases (NIN, Radiohead). I’d love to hear more successes and failures of bands embracing digital and I’d love to see some software developers becoming rock stars.

End of the day, I want smart, creative people paid for their work.

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