The iPhone and the world of computers

I’m an iPhone users and i love it.  It has transformed my mobile phone usage and dare i say, my life.  With the internet at my fingertips, i no longer go more than 10 seconds without knowing the answer to a question.   I have come to realize that the world of computers and the internet will always be with me, following me around and enriching my life.  It also makes me realize that my relationship with my computer is going to change.  Because i can Google, email, YouTube, Facebook, and check sports scores from my cell – my desire to have my computer near me is dwindling.

The new iPhone 3GS makes me think about the landscape of the computers out there.  If you don’t know it, there’s a new type of machine that’s becoming popular called The Netbook.  It’s a $200-400 machine that is quite small and sometimes comes attached to a wireless contract so it can be connected at all times.  In this regard, it is very similar to a cell phone purchase except in a bigger form factor. (click here to check out HP’s 200 dollar machine)

When i think about the machines out there, i think of this continuum:

One thing that is interesting is how Apple is has high priced machines in their Macbook Pro’s and Air devices and “lowend” machines in their iPhone.  Whatever market you’re at, Apple will have the slickest machine.  Microsoft, on the other hand, has less slick highend machines, and netbooks on the lowend.  Personally, i like Apple’s direction more but it’d be even better if they had a tablet or smaller sized laptop that was an iPhone/laptop hybrid for $400. I think the regular PC starts to disappear and all sales are Netbook sales.  Why would anyone pay $1000 when they can get a decently powerful machine for $200?

What will be great is the day day when all i have is my cell phone and i just plug it into monitors and keyboards when i want to work at a desk.  My iPhone cradle gets a lot more functional and my need for a second machine disappears.

Mobile World Congress wrapup

I spent the week at MWC in Barcelona this past week.  I made my way to a bunch of booths and companies.  It was a huge show.

Here are some thoughts:

• Phone Operating Systems
  • There were many new phones released at the show.  LG announced 50 phones, Samsung had 22 more, Sony/Ericcson announced a new suite of walkman phones, and even Acer announced new phones.  Which each new announcement, you saw that they are all using Windows Mobile.  Windows mobile is EVERYWHERE.  Regardless what you think about it, you can’t deny its traction in the marketplace.  It seems again that Apple will be the better device but Windows will be on more.
  • Windows Mobile is not a good OS for the phone.  It’s bloated and has way too many menus but there aren’t alot of options.  For this reason, i’m hopeful for Android.  Even the new 6.5 still uses 8-bit graphics.
  • There were barely any Android phones at the show and almost no coverage about it – if it’s the new phone of the future, you wouldn’t know it by this show. It seems that very few handset manufacturers are planning on using it. I was surprised
  • Nobody wanted to say it, but the iPhone still kicks the crap out of almost every phone at the show.  Only Blackberry is close. Nokia is getting there too.
• Microsoft - I went to their booth to check out Live, Windows Mobile 6.5 and My Phone:
  • Microsoft Live – i aksked their expert to give me the demo and explain to me why i should care.  He showed me MSN messenger, Hotmail, their photo tool and i kept asking, “why should i care?” and he could never give me an answer.  There is nothing special here.  I think this suite is a good metaphor for the company itself.  Internet 1.0
  • Windows 6.5 – It is an improvement over 6.1 but it’s still worse than iPhone. They tried hard to make it like the iPhone but worked just as hard to make it not exactly like it.   Instead of a grid of applications, it’s a honeycomb layout.  My big disappointment is that 6.5 isn’t released until mid 2009.  That’s exactly 2 years after the iPhone launch and it’s still inferior.  I don’t think they’ll ever get it together.
  • The App Store – i was equally excited about this but the big problem is that this isn’t even scheduled to be ready untl late 2009.  They didn’t even have screenshots of it.  Even the MS rep joked that it was typical Microsoft vaporware.
  • My Phone – this is the one thing that i liked from Miscrosoft. It sends all your information from your phone up to the cloud.  You can access it online (numbers, calendar, messages).  You can even search your text messages online.  That’s cool. Of course it’s not tied into Live (see above) because that would make too much sense.
• Yahoo!
  • they have an app for Blackberry and iPhone.   The app has a “Pulse” which can connect to other social networks and list your friends’ status and activity.  Very much like Plaxo Pulse – even the same name (although nobody in the Yahoo booth had heard of Plaxo).   it’s pretty cool but nothing revolutionary.
  • Remember the days when Yahoo was competing with Google? They are now so far behind that it’s not even funny – especially on mobile. Google has an mobile OS, location-aware apps, Maps on every device, and mobile sites for mail, docs, and tasks.  Yahoo! on the other hand has a huge booth to announce that they now have an application that displays news, mail and RSS feeds.  I’m not impressed.
• Some other companies i saw:
  • ARM – this is a British company that makes processors.  They compete with Intel but on small devices like cell phones and mp3 players.  Among their typical devices, they also looking to get the chips into laptops.  Not as a replacement processor but as an addition.  The idea is that if you are only going to be surfing the web, you can switch to the ARM processor and get around 19 hours of power.  Whoa
  • Omnifone – this is a Rhapsody type service specifically for mobile phones. They have worldwide liceses from the labels and is working on all Sony/Ericcson phones.  They claim to have a US service at the end of ‘09.  I was also amazed how uninformed they were about Rhapsody.
  • TruPhone – a great skype-like app.  It’s an app that that lets you make international calls from your  phone over the internet to get low rates.  It’s a good integration in that if you call someone’s TruPhone app, it rings your regular phone and if both people have the app, it’s completely free.  It’s like Skype but made specifically for phones rather than desktops.
  • Samsung.  They have a Blue Earth phone which is a very cool environment friendly phone.  It has solar panels on its back and is made out of recyleable materials.  I was excited to see it but was pretty disappointed to find that it was only a prototype and they haven’t actually made any of these phones.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Mobile World Congress: What If the iPhone Didn’t Exist? (technologizer.com)
• App stores abound at Mobile World Congress (reviews.cnet.com)
• Going mobile in Barcelona (bbc.co.uk)
• Yahoo rolls up mobile products into single service (news.cnet.com)
• Microsoft readies smartphone assault on Apple (cnn.com)

Recording Life

I just read a great article by Clive Thompson called “Head for Detail” about Gordon Bell’s latest experieement.  Please just read the first 2 paragraphs.  It’s about Gordon and how he is recording everything he’s doing (video, audio, emails, web, everything).  He’s been doing it for the past 14 years and is able to bring up almost eveyrthing.  Clive writes about Bell, saying:

He[Bell] had a tiny bug-eyed camera around his neck, and a small audio recorder at his elbow. As we chatted about various topics–Australian jazz musicians, his futuristic cell phone, the Seattle area’s gorgeous weather–Bell’s gear quietly logged my every gesture and all my blathering small talk, snapping a picture every 60 seconds. Back at his office, his computer had carefully archived every document related to me: all the email I’d sent him, copies of my articles he’d read, pages he’d surfed on my blog.

This really resonated with me as i am already trying to record my life. I have photos up on Flickr, i have my ideas going to my blog, i have my mundane thoughts going to Twitter, my videos going to YouTube, and my friend interactions recorded on Facebook.  I’m already on the web but just in the totality that Bell is.  Storage is getting cheaper and cheaper it’s gone from $233,000 for a gigabyte in 1980 to less than $1 today.  Soon there will be enough storage in your cell phone for your entire life to be stored.  I do this because i want to remember. I want my memories to be accesible all the time and reading the article made me realize how inefficent i’ve been in capturing them.

I really like articles like this becaues they make you think about where the world is going and wonder how human interactions and functions will change.  It touches on how humans will change when we no longer have to remember stuff.  I already don’t remember phone numbers beceuase of your cell phone. What if you don’t have to remember people’s names and interactions and you free you mind to be more creative.  Just imagine – that’s what i’m doing now….

Related articles:

• In Defense of Friendships Formed With People We Meet Online
• 2009: Products I Can’t Live Without
• If You Liked This, Sure to Love That (Clive Thompson/New York Times)

New Microsoft Services

Image via CrunchBase

I’ve been pretty anti-microsoft for a while because it seems that they always miss the boat.  However, they do have LOTS of cash (40+ billion) and a huge development force.  Becauase of this i was surprised they didn’t get more press for the news they spit out last week.  Four big things appeared out of last week’s Professional Developer Conference (PDC):

1. They announced Azure, a set of cloud services that competes with Amazon’s S3.  Another big player will really solidify the category.
2. They showed off Windows 7 which is getting high good hype from the blogosphere.
3. They showed off new Web-based versions of Microsoft Office that were really nice.  They are really late here but if they can get up to parity with Zoho they could dominate
4. They also released new Mac and Mobile versions of Mesh and further explained how that’ll enable new kinds of Internet-connected apps to be built.

All in all it was a HUGE week for Microsoft. I just don’t know why nobody noticed.  It is because we’re all Mac fanboys and want them to fail (I know i do)?  What do you think?

Related articles:

• every video of the PDC is here if you’re interested.
• Microsoft extends services via web
• SlideRocket AIR Presentation Application Moves into Public Beta
• Microsoft to Take Office to the Web (Now With Editing!)

Analysis of Chrome

A few weeks ago Google release a product called Chrome which is their own web browser. Only it is really so much more. At first it doesn’t look like much – and it isn’t, just yet. However it’s the direction Chrome is going and the intent behind the release that matters. Google doesn’t want a competitor to IE or Firefox, they want a new OS – a web OS that competes and beats Microsoft Windows.

Chris Messina who worked both a Mozilla and Flock – both browser companies – has a great post about how Chrome came to be and what it means (post is here). Chrome is the future of browsers. It’s one that embraces web applications and has Gears, an engine that enhances the internal code of apps to make them more powerful and quick.

On interesting piece of the post is pointing out WHO is working on Chrome. He paints Google as cohesive team of folks in the pennisula who are laser focused on delivering a next generation browser:

Google is a well-oiled, well-heeled machine. The Webkit team, as a rhizomatic offshoot from Apple, has a similar development pedigree and has consistently produced a high quality — now cross-platform — open source project, nary engaging in polemics or politics. They let the results speak for themselves. They keep their eyes on the ball.

Ultimately this has everything to do with people; with leadership, execution and vision.

When Mozilla lost Ben Goodger I think the damage went deeper than was known or understood. Then Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt went over to Facebook, where they’re probably in the bowels of the organization, doing stuff with FBML and the like, bringing Parakeet into existence (they’ve recently been joined by Mike Schroepfer, previously VP of Engineering at Mozilla). Brad Neuberg joined Google to take Dojo Offline forward in the Gears project (along with efforts from Dylan Schiemann and Alex Russell). And the list goes on.

A few more points he expands in the original and subsequent post:

• One unique feature of Chrome is that it auto-updates without any notifications (with obvious security issues). Chris writes: “if you’ve read the fine-print closely, you already know that this means that Chrome will be a self-updating, self-healing browser….. by using Chrome, you agree to allow Google to update the browser. That’s it: end of story. You want to turn it off? Disconnect from the web… in the process, rendering Chrome nothing more than, well, chrome (pun intended).”
• Another interesting point of note is that Google evolved the UI of the browser and “went ahead and combined the search box and the location field in Chrome and is now pushing the location bar as the starting place, as well as where to do your searching” This is interesting as it was a logical trend that no browser has yet picked up on

AOL mail crushes Gmail

Not in terms of functionality or ease of use but check this out:

Yahoo dominates e-mail with 88.4 million users in the United States in August, according to comScore. That is far more than Microsoft’s Windows Live Hotmail at 45.2 million and AOL at 44.8 million, not to mention Gmail at 26.0 million.

When you look at how much time people spend reading their e-mail, Yahoo mail users spend the most time (286 minutes a month), Gmail users the least (82 minutes), with AOL and Microsoft in the middle (229 and 204 minutes, respectively).

Wow. As a Gmail-lover, i would have never thought that was the case. You read the whole article here.

Google’s Shot Across the Bow

It’s been a while since there’s been a major power play by someone in Silicon Valley.  A big “take over the world” type of action.  I think Google’s latest Chrome is that – reminiscent of the old days of Netscape, Sun and others who were all trying to take over the world.  

Fred Wilson does a good job of describing how their 3 latest projects: Chrome, Android, and Cloud/Gears are positioning them to be the OS of the future.  Saying: 

 

 

They are building a modern browser, Chrome, that resembles an operating system as much as a browser.  It’s not that Google wants to build a better version of Internet Explorer or Firefox. They want to build a better environment for running web apps.

They are building a mobile operating system, Android, that is also designed for running web apps in a mobile environment. I think in time, Google’s Android will be to the iPhone what Windows was to the Mac. The iPhone laid out many of the killer mobile device innovations, but its a closed device, a closed carrier relationship, and even a closed application store. Android will take all of those good ideas and put them on every device, with every carrier, and in partnership with every app developer. 

Google is all about the cloud. They have developed all of their apps in what goes for the cloud these days. They’ve build a great cloud computing platform in App Engine. 

These three things ensure that Google will be a major player.  With other launches of OpenSocial and such don’t display the raw power of Google but here it is.  I love it and believe they will be the biggest and most powerful company standing – over facebook, Microsoft and others – when the dust settles. 

Twitter the most pure social network

Some social network thoughts…..

I’ve been using Twitter more and more lately and i have to say that i’m really enjoying it.  I love the simplicity and ease of use.  The fact that they limit the characters, is only text and is just a list of your friends thoughts makes it always interesting.  Of course, Facebook used to be like that for me too.  I’m not sure if it will ever catch on for the masses.  The fact that only a subsection of my friends use it makes it more useful for me so i don’t get too many updates.  I’m not sure if it’s fun enough for everyone just yet.  I do think the mobile aspect of it could tip it over the edge. I wasn’t that into Twitter until i started doing it on my iPhone and then it became a must-have app.  I still don’t see much difference between the AIM away-message, the facebook status message and Twitter other than the mobile/cell-ness of Twitter and the simplicity.

More and more i think facebook will develop into a utility instead of a place of expression.  I think it will be like the yellow pages – where is a tool people use to look up people, find out about friends of friends and find phone numbers, emails, etc.  It’s a social address and people directory. It’s a tool

MySpace continues to be about self-expression and i think that’s a good differentiator as they could never beat facebook at their game.  However, i do believe self-expression can be done even better.  Something like Uber or Virb or something could be better – if it had more of Tumblr-type experience int it.  We did some focus groups the other day and everyone used both Facebook and MySpace.  They liked Myspace b/c it really represented them – it was a good badge but they hated the sketchiness about it.  “Too many old weird guys” they said.  They had facebook b/c everyone had it and it was easy to connect but it didn’t seem like it was fun to them.  It was interesting.

What are your thoughts

Nathan Myhrvold – Pretty Badass

I just watched this video about Nathan who is quite an incredible guy who spends 18 minutes describing what he does. It’s a lot of very scientific stuff like:

• Archeology – digitizing Easter Island statues and the pyramids
• Inventing new nuclear reactors – which are more efficient and better than the current designs
• Inventing meta-reactors which are really real invisibility cloaks
• Bio-medical research – is studying the eyes
• Building radio-telescopes and funding the SETI project. If you want the movie Contact, he describes that all the characters are based on real-life folks. He’s the creepy rich guy
• Cooking – took a sabatical from Microsoft to study cooking in France and occasionally works at a Seattle restaurant
• BBQ – he won the world championship BBQ prize
• Paleontology – he’s discovered a T-Rex in a badlands

It’s just a video about him and how he loves to do a million things. As he says, the talk is “a mile wide and an inch deep.” But that’s how he operates. One thing that stands out is that he seems to be one of the bigger badasses alive. I’m happy that people like them are out there and trying to discover the past mysteries of the world and invent new ones. Pretty interesting stuff…

iPhone will take down Blackberry eventually

I had a Blackberry Pearl and loved it.  I was planning to keep it – until i saw a friend’s iPhone.  It was just so frackin’ slick that i couldn’t stay away.  Does Blackberry do email better?  Yes.  Does Blackberry have some better/smaller sizes that are better for a cell phone?  Yes, definitely.  But is it as cool or fun to use an iPhone?  Not even close.

However, i always hear about people going back to their Blackberry’s b/c of the email capability.  I can understand that.  I don’t use my iPhone email for work everyday and it is harder to type.  But the other advantages heavily outweigh this one feature.

I then read this blog post by Tim O’Reilly about “Why the iPhone Will Beat the Blackberry.”  He write that Blackberry users are cell phone power users and:

power users are a minority, and while they point the way to the future, they tend to be disappointed when the rest of the market catches up with an inferior product that has a lower barrier to new users. So, my prediction: the Blackberry will become more like the iPhone, or the iPhone and its imitators will eventually eat its lunch, relegating it to a niche player. The iPhone is now the communications device to beat. 

I couldn’t agree more.  The iPhone is only getting better going at email and the Blackberry will never come close to the iPhone in slickness of features – including the iPod.   It’s only a matter of time before Blackberry goes down.

I heard a rumor that Microsoft was going to purchase Blackberry.  I don’t hear it anymore, but i think that’d be a great move for both companies.