*michael parekh on IT*

ON APPLE'S MOBILEME MESS

BUMPS IN THE ROAD

Well, the critical reviews are coming in on Apple's MobileMe, the next version of it's long inadequate .Mac service (aka dotMac), and they're almost all negative.  Here's Walt Mossberg's review if you missed it, and here's the one by David Pogue. This PC Magazine review does a good job on the ins and outs of the service.

Think Pogue hits it on the head with this observation:

"Maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea for Apple to launch four enormously complex initiatives — the iPhone 3G, the App Store, the iPhone 2.0 software update and MobileMe — all on the same day."

And then ends ups the ante with this observation on Apple's inadequate reaction to a problem that potentially affects over 2 million subscribers:

"But the real problem is how Apple is responding. For a company that’s so brilliant at marketing, it seems to have absolutely no clue about crisis management..."

It’s amazing that Apple doesn’t recognize this situation. This is an airplane that’s stuck on the runway for hours with no food or working bathroom.

And the pilot doesn’t come on the P.A. system to tell the customers what the problem is, what’s being done to fix it, how much longer they might be stuck, and how he empathizes with their plight. Instead, he comes on once every three hours to repeat the same thing: “We apologize for the inconvenience.”

MobileMess, indeed."

Can't praise all things Apple, every day.

ON THE JOYS OF MUSIC ONLINE

REPEAT

As usual, Bob Lefsetz nails it about the state and fate of the music business, and the video business over time, as it relates to online:

"I'm not saying music SHOULD be free, just that it is. 
Record label saber-rattling has only resulted in driving music acquisition further underground, to the point where it's impossible to eradicate the free consumption of tunes.  Are you going to eliminate AIM transfers? RapidShare? 
How about outlawing P2P?  Well, now movies are being distributed legitimately via P2P, so that's no solution... 
The ONLY hope is to create a solution so enticing that people would rather pay than steal.  It's possible, after all, bottled water is being sold by the truckload even though water is essentially free from the tap and discarded empty bottles are anything but green.  But the public has been convinced they need their Fiji.  And the purveyor has even managed to mount a PR campaign saying THEY ARE green."

He and others have been making this point for a long time, but sometimes it just bears repeating.

Bob goes one better and describes the new way music geeks, and many ordinary mortals find joy in managing music got online:

"Turns out you can now buy a compilation on iTunes.  But I wasn't looking for it.  I haven't played my Fat Mattress album for nigh on forty years.  But today I saw it listed in this blog and I remembered, I had to download it.
Along with Thunderclap Newman's "Hollywood Dream", Ry Cooder's debut, a couple of Spirit albums...  Shit I didn't need, most of which I own on vinyl, but stuff that was worth adding to my digital collection.
And it used to be that you spent all afternoon alphabetizing your albums.  Now, it's aligning your iTunes library.  Are the titles correct?  I need to eliminate duplicates.  Let me check the timings... This is record collector fun.
And after deleting the 56k versions of Al Kooper's "You Never Know Who Your Friends Are" for their new, shiny 192k replacements, I started working on the Fat Mattress album.  There was one track that I absolutely loved...  What was it?  "Mr. Moonshine"?

And ends with this punchline:

"Music, when done right, cannot be described."

Amen, Brother.

ON THE BLACKBERRY/iPHONE BATTLE

TRENCH WARFARE

Maybe it's the fickle gadget junkie in me, or maybe it's just me being jaded about my 3G iPhone after my problems with it the last few days.  But when I saw this picture of the coming new Blackberry Bold from RIMM in "bedside mode", my gadget gaze has now shifted to getting one on first opportunity (not that I haven't been focused on the upcoming Blackberry models). 

The picture is part of a post on Blackberry's recent annual shareholders meeting, by Jim Courtney of Skype Journal.  This application, though simple, is as cool as anything I've seen on the new iPhone.

Here's another tidbit from that post that I found interesting, especially for those with extensive music collections in iTunes:

"Blackberry's new Media Sync creates a direct connection between your iTunes music collection and the Blackberry. (and will also be made available to all Blackberry devices with a media card - Pearl, Curve, 88xx - through both a firmware and desktop software upgrade)."

For a long time now, I've carried both a Blackberry and an iPhone, with the former being my primary business phone and email device, and the latter being my primary web browsing and media device.

Being a primary device, I find that I still use my Blackberry more than the iPhone to take pictures, given that it has a better camera with flash, something even the new 3G iPhone still lacks.  But I have NO music on my Blackberry, something I turn to the iPhone for on a long flight.

There are many users like me, who compartmentalize their professional and personal lives in a similar fashion, and use separate devices for each life.  Or as Jim Courtney puts it in starker terms:

"The iPhone is left with two markets: younger generation consumers who want an expensive toy and Mac aficionados who can use the iPhone as an extension of their Mac experience."

Both RIMM and Apple have long-realized this and are increasingly beefing up their products and services, so that RIMM has more media, personal fun oriented features, and Apple has more business and professionally oriented features like "push" wireless syncing.

But it looks like for the next 12 to 18 months anyway, it's going to be a bit of a stalemate.  And both sides will have interesting enough features to keep their core users hooked on their upcoming offerings.  But neither will just yet have enough to make broad and deep inroads into the other camp's core functionality.

In the meantime, many of us gadget geeks will have to continue to carry around both devices.

ON SOFTWARE BUGS AND THE 3G iPHONE

BUMPY ROAD

(Updated below)

All things are not rosy with my new 3G iPhone, as I've expressed in some posts on Twitter already.  Having eagerly anticipated the App Store now available with the iPhone 2.0 software on new and existing iPhones and iTouch iPods, I'd downloaded and installed over 60 third-paid and free applications (aka Apps), onto the new device in the last week (image source).

And I've paid a price in device instability ever since.  My brand new 3G iPhone has crashed and hung up on the boot screen, about five times now.  Each time it happened while I was playing or trying to wirelessly update an application installed on the device. 

Each time, after turning off the device and turning it on, I faced the famous shiny Apple screen, with no further response from the device.  I even took it in to the Genius Bar at the Apple store on the first crash, and they couldn't revive the device other than a full reset.

That involves taking the device back to the factory installed settings, wiping out all the customized settings and newly installed applications.  A full restore takes about two hours, even though all the applications and iTunes content are stored locally on my iMac.  It's just a slow, slow process.

Well, I've had to go through five of these now, and have just finished and customizing the iPhone with all my favorite settings, bookmarks, mail accounts, and applications for the sixth time.  And I'm planning to be much more careful in how I use the third party Apps, and how I go about updating them wirelessly (NOT).

Now, this post is not to complain about Apple, the new iPhone or the App Store.  It's just to highlight one user's experience with brand new, version 1.0 software, whether it's on a device or in the cloud. 

MacWorld makes this point particularly well in a recent article:

"With the release of the updated iPhone software, Apple flung open the doors of its new App Store. On its first day, the App store was populated with more than 500 programs, and that number is growing rapidly.

Think about that: 500 programs, all of them at version 1.0. On a device that had never before supported software written outside of Apple. It’s exciting, seeing the birth of a brand new software ecosystem. But it’s also scary. If people were worried about the first-generation iPhone hardware and software (many vowed they wouldn’t buy an iPhone until the second version arrived, for fear of buying a buggy 1.0 product), how should they feel about more than 500 programs on a brand-new platform, all at version 1.0?"

They go on to make the broader point of how the unique circumstances around the 3G iPhone introduction complicated the normal quality-testing process for third-party App developers:

"Unfortunately, there was no way for iPhone programmers to beta-test their products before the App Store launched. The software used to create iPhone programs was a secret. And only a select group of programmers were able to run their programs on real hardware, rather than in a Mac-based simulator. Developers in countries without iPhones could only test their programs on the iPod touch.

Even worse, Apple’s cloak of secrecy around the iPhone software programming tools prevented programmers from sharing tricks they had picked up during their work. The programming community, especially on the Mac, is remarkably collegial—programmers post blog entries detailing things they’ve learned all the time, and the quality of all the programs in the Mac ecosystem benefit as a result. Without blogging and Google searches, the only way iPhone programmers could share what they’d learned was through the old, inefficient medium of one-on-one conversations."

So, the reality is that early buyers of Apps on the Apple store on the new iPhone 2.0 software, are in for some continued instability.  It doesn't mean we have to like it, but at least we may be prepared to grin and bear it...for now.  It's Apple after all.

Update:  After experiencing a 7th crash and hang yesterday, I decided to do a full restore of the iPhone WITH all the Applications, but WITHOUT turning on syncing with MobileMe, the upgraded version of Apple's old .Mac (aka dotMac) service.  I especially didn't turn on the wireless, over-the-air "push" upgrading of my contacts, calendar, and email data via MobileMe, to see if this would stop the crashes.

It's been 12 hours since that restore, and so far so good.  The iPhone seems fairly stable, and am able to run any of the 65 or so Apps without any problems.  I still haven't tried to wirelessly update any of the Apps.  For now, will hold off any wireless data syncing and/or updates.  At least until the next firmware release from Apple.

ON THE NEW BLACKBERRY LINE-UP

WHAT'S NEXT?

Now that many of us gadget junkies have gotten our 3G iPhone fix, the next big wait is for the two major releases from RIMM, the makers of Blackberries. 

First up is the Blackberry Bold (one with the keyboard on the left, due out on U.S. carriers like AT&T) and the Blackberry Thunder (full touch screen a la iPhone, expected only on Verizon initially). 

Gadget site BoyGenius has been on a tear of late on both these phones, with a full hands-on review of the Bold just a couple of days ago, and they seem to have the scoop on when these two Blackberries might be expected:

"We’ve been told that the Bold might have been pushed back yet again. What’s the whispered launch month now? September for a lot of carriers. That’s not to say it couldn’t launch sooner on a couple carriers, but that’s what we were told.
It looks like there are still some problems with the radio code that have to do with network roaming, searching, etc...
Now, what about the BlackBerry Thunder?...Here are the most confirmed Thunder dates: a huge marketing push in the U.S. starting in September, and device release in mid-October on Verizon. We said November because we were betting on a couple week delay which, knowing RIM, certainly wouldn’t be out of the question."

Of course, no word yet on the "Pearl" version of the Bold, which would be a slimmer profile with the much smaller keyboard.  And the "Javelin" Blackberry, which would be the "Curve" version of the Bold, isn't expected until 2009 as Engadget reported last month.  Later this year could also see the release of the "Kickstart" Blackberry, which is expected to be a clamshell version of the Pearl version of the Bold.  Confused? Don't be...it's just a lot of Blackberries.

In any case, we're talking about waiting until Fall at the earliest for our new Blackberry fix. 

ON SOME COOL, LESSER KNOWN iPHONE APPS

NEEDLES IN HAYSTACKS

Well, I've had a couple of days now to play with the new iPhone 3G and the flood of third-party applications now available for it in the Apple App Store, both free and for a fee. 

And the good news is that there are some pretty cool applications, especially games that take advantage of the iPhone various features and sensors.  Look no further than the leading paid application that shows up at the top of the App Store list, Monkey Ball from Sega, as a good example.  Apps like Monkey Ball have been long anticipated by users, given the opportunity they had to show-case themselves at Steve Jobs' 3G iPhone Keynote a while ago.  There are already good reviews of some of the best applications by folks like Walt Mossberg, David Pogue and others.

Having downloaded over 60 free and paid applications and them for a bit, I thought I'd highlight five, lesser heralded applications that merit a closer look, at least from my point of view.  In no particular order, let me start with:

1.  vSnax Videos by Rhythm NewMedia, is a free App that offers bite-sized aggregation of entertainment videos.  Although videos have long been available on the iPhone and iTouch through the YouTube application bundled by Apple on the home screen, vSnax's approach is more proactive in that it serves up a series of short videos in various categories that a mainstream consumer may find of interest.  It's an approach I think most purveyors of videos on the web will adopt over time, given that consumers are already close to a point of being overwhelmed by the choice of stuff to watch, and the effort required to find the good stuff.

2."The Battle for Waterloo" by Touchtomes is a fascinating little game for $3.99, especially for those geeks who have fond memories of the classic text-based early computer games of Zork fame by Infocom, over two decades ago.  We've made some progress from text here, where the story and game play are advanced by beautiful illustrations of that famous battle.  Here's a flavor of the game from Touchtomes:

"“Battle of Waterloo”
It is 1815; Napoleon has escaped captivity, become Emperor of France, and has raised an enormous army of 125,000 men. With it, he plans to conquer all of Europe.

You are the youngest officer in the British Army, serving under the Duke of Wellington. You have just returned from a dangerous scouting mission near the French and Belgian border. “Sir,” you inform Wellington, “Yesterday I saw French troops invading!”

Pretty cool stuff, that sometimes reminds you that you don't need the latest tech features to provide a cool gaming experience.

3. OneTap Movies by Avantar is another application, available for $1.99, that's a good example of a new class of services that make it easier to quickly get lots of information on a subject, widely available on the web, in a convenient and graphically pleasing manner.  In this case, the App does the following:

"OneTap Movies recognizes where you are and displays the nearest movie theaters, along with the movies that are being played, as well as the showtimes, critic ratings, basic info, posters, etc. All with a single tap of your finger. You can also watch the trailers or simply enjoy your time searching for details of any movie with a link to the International Movie Data Base (IMDB)."

Again, nothing one can't do with the excellent 3G browsing already possible on the new iPhone, but very convenient to get it all with "one tap" as it were.

4. Trism by Demiforce is a cool $4.99 App for those who already love classic games like Tetris and Bejeweled. 

Trism stands for triangular prisms, which you move around and match by color to progress in the game.  The game has a lot of polish and is fun to play using the iPhone touch interface.

There are various types of challenges available, so the game doesn't get old too fast.  The developers have managed to cram in a good tutorial which is so far unusual for a lot of iPhone applications.

5.  OmniFocus for iPhone is by the Omni Group, a developer well known for a number of great productivity applications on Apple's Mac platform.  With a price point of $19.99, this is not an inexpensive iPhone App, but does provide pretty useful on-the-go productivity enhancing features.  Here's how their site describes the application:

"OmniFocus for the iPhone brings task management to your fingertips. Keep track of actions by project, place, person, or date. Bring up a shopping list, agenda items to discuss at work, tasks for home, and any other lists you need.

Using your location, OmniFocus can create a custom list of actions to complete nearby. Buying groceries? OmniFocus can show you the closest grocery store and create an instant shopping list.

Capture tasks anywhere, anytime with OmniFocus: you can enter text, take a picture, or even make a quick voice recording."

There's a fair bit of power under the hood, especially if used with a beta version OmniFocus for the Mac, a separately sold desktop application, which will soon officially support the iPhone version of the App.

This list of five cool, lesser-known Apps is by no means comprehensive, and the above is but a tiny sampling of the good stuff that's available in rapidly growing piles of haystacks.  To be continued.

ON IMPROVING THE Wii

SHARPENED SENSES

OK, so now that the iPhone 3G debut Tsunami has passed, what can we geeks look forward to next? Well, the gaming industry confab E3 is at hand, and there should be a spate of fun product announcements this week.  An example would this cool item from Engadget on Nintendo's plan to sharpen the motion sensitivity of it's world-beating Wii platform controllers:

"While we saw it hinted at in patents, Nintendo is springing quite the doozy on us at E3 in the form of its new Wii MotionPlus add-on. Perhaps in a preemptive strike against supposed Wiimote competition from the likes of Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo is beefing up its motion support with this add-on, which is supposed to proved "an unmatched level of precision and immersion," with sensors to supplement the accelerometer and sensor bar to provide 1:1 motion -- as in, I move my arm this much, my character moves his arm that much. So far that's all we know about the unit, Nintendo will be detailing more at its E3 media briefing tomorrow."

Kind of like Wii remote 3G, only without the 2-year service contract with AT&T.

ON THE NEW AMERICAN SUV?

ALMOST THERE

The new Mini Cooper Clubman gets a nod from the Wall Street Journal for it's gas-sipping qualities, and it even looks like a mini-SUV:

"...the new 2008 Mini Cooper Clubman has the potential to be just the thing for this $4-per-gallon summer, thanks to an EPA combined rating of 32 miles per gallon.
And I'll do that one better: Without even trying I got an average of 36 miles per gallon during roughly 500 miles of test driving.
When I slowed down to 55-65 miles per hour, over a 100-mile freeway stretch, the Clubman even managed to return 48 miles per gallon.
That's better-than-hybrid fuel economy. And no, this car is not a hybrid."

It's a mini-SUV in appearance only though, as the review goes on to add:

"The car is still too small to accommodate even a three-person family on a weekend trip. A regular-sized cooler takes up nearly the entire cargo area, and with a kid or two in the back there's just no room to safely pack your gear."

Oh well, maybe a mini-SUV for the mini-American family in these maxi-stress times.

ON CHECKTHROUGH LAPTOP BAGS

HIT OR MISS

Fellow travelers, it may be time to get excited about the prospects of a special laptop bag that would not require the laptop to be removed at an airport TSA screening.

Engadget has a post with a picture of the pre-production bag from Skooba, and it isn't as bad as one might fear:

"Okay, third time's the charm -- here it is, a pre-production picture of the Skooba Checkthrough TSA-approved bag, direct from Skooba's CEO, Michael Hess. Michael got in touch with after our last post to say that the Checkthrough will indeed be a multi-pocketed bag and have several unique and patented features, including a specal 3-1-1 liquids compartment and a see-through window for rapid ID of contents.

There's also a number of minor changes coming to the design, but no matter what, you should be able to get through security without having to take your laptop out of your bag."

It's not at all clear how a TSA screener will know that this is an approved bag that won't require removing the laptop.  I can easily see it being a hit-and-miss Russian roulette proposition every time one goes through a screening.  "Will they or won't they?" stress will be the name of the game.  So it may make the bag an iffy proposition, at least for early adopters.

No word on when the bag may be available, but if you're impatient, you may want to go with the Skooba Skreener for now, which features an X-Ray image of stuff in a typical bag, as a design touch. 

And NO, it's NOT a Checkthrough TSA bag.  Also, you'd better hope the TSA folks have a sense of humor.

Now if they'd only make Checkthrough designed TSA-approved shoes...

ON DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION

LOOK MA, NO HANDS

Today California joins a host of states that make it illegal to drive while using a cell phone in one's hand.  While the logic of the move seems reasonable, as we've seen state after state pass this law, there is growing evidence that cell phone use while driving, regardless of whether held to one's ear, or with a head-set/speaker-phone arrangement, can be equally distracting and dangerous. 

The LA Times notes:

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says the new law will reduce accidents. "Getting people's hands off their phones and onto their steering wheels will save lives and make California's roads safer," he said earlier this month.
That, however, is not what the research finds. Scientists say that when mixing cellphones and driving, the number of hands available for the tasks is not the limiting factor.
Instead, it's a driver's attention and processing capacity. These are often stretched beyond safe limits when someone juggles the complex tasks of negotiating traffic and conversing with another remotely."

The article goes on to quote some studies that provide some evidence of this phenomena.  A 2005 study for example, found that:

"Compared with drivers exceeding the legal blood alcohol limit, users of cellphones -- hand-held or hands-free -- reacted 18% more slowly to braking by the car in front and were more likely to get in a rear-end collision.
What's more, the talkers seemed to compensate for their slowed response time by falling farther behind the car in front -- a pattern likely to slow traffic and exacerbate congestion."

It'll be difficult for politicians and regulators to ban both hand-held AND hands-free cell phone use while driving. 

What'll likely need to happen  over time is that cars will get additional technology that assist the drivers while they're driving, whether they're distracted or not.  This CNN piece from last year, gives some examples:

"The next generation of environment-sensing cars will use more than just radar and infrared sensors to watch for signs of trouble. Video cameras will look for stoplights that have turned red and for children who are running toward the road. Distance-sensing lasers will check for vehicles in the driver's blind spot and the passing lane.These sensors won't do anything that a vigilant driver can't already do, but what if they could? What if your car could sense road conditions and traffic problems that are out of your sight? That's coming too.

The next giant leap in sensing will be radio networking that enables cars to exchange information.

"Communication [between cars] will be like an additional sensor," says Ralf Herrtwich, director of vehicle IT research at DaimlerChrysler.

Car-to-car communication will ensure that your automobile is impeccably informed about road conditions ahead. And this extra "sensor" will have almost unlimited range, because information can be instantaneously relayed from one vehicle to the next, to the next, and so on."

It'll be a while until these types of technologies are mainstream realities, but they're no longer in the realm of science fiction. 

The ideal technology of course would be self-driving cars, with or without the robot driver as in the classic 1990 Schwarzenegger sci-fi movie Total Recall.

Until then let's all be really careful while driving and using cell phones, hands-free or not.

ON THE RECORD DRIVING

GOTCHA!

Given how the underlying technologies have all been going mainstream, it was only a matter of time before we saw a product like this, as Gizmodo explains:

"There are few things in this world that are more infuriating than getting into a car accident—but one of those things would definitely be getting into an accident where the blame is being disputed.

For the innocent party, a Roadscan Drive Recorder could be indispensable. The device mounts easily on your windshield or rearview mirror, and will continuously record graphical 3D-G accelerations data.

If you happen to get into an accident, it will save the digital video starting 14 seconds before the incident and 6 seconds after—so you would be armed with all of the data you need to dispute a ticket. Or totally incriminate yourself."

Double-edged sword is right, but could be worth it for most drivers at $299 per device.

ON INNOVATIONS IN MICRO-BLOGGING

A NEW TAKE

For all of the folks who're ardent users of "micro-blogging" services like Twitter, Pownce and others, there's a start-up that tries to do the same thing with a little bit of user interface innovation.  PC Magazine reviews this new service called Plurk, and has this to say:

"Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it can also be a darn good way to compete—especially when the imitator improves on the original. That's the approach taken by Plurk, a new microblogging rival to Twitter..."
"But while plenty of Twitter wannabees, such as Jaiku, dot the webscape, some offer little that's original beyond a slicker interface. Plurk's interface is certainly better, but the site also rethinks the genre somewhat and incorporates clever features.

   

		SLIDESHOW (7)
		Slideshow | All Shots

The site's primary innovation is the horizontal timeline it uses to display entries. That approach makes a lot of sense to me—it's a far more natural way to view sequential events than the vertical-scrolling method Twitter and its clones use."

The slideshow goes through some of the UI innovations, and they'll make more sense if you're already a user of these types of services.

The feature that strikes me as the most unique, is one which gives users credit, or "karma" for simply doing various things on the service:

"In the Plurk universe, your actions produce karma, but unlike its metaphysical counterpart, this one is quantifiable: Specifically, it ranges from starter (0 to 20) to Plurk Nirvana at from 81 to 100, and is recalculated every day. High karma brings a reward far beyond enlightenment, though: permission to use extra emoticons. Your karma level is based on your frequency of posting, the richness of your profile, and how many friends you invite."

It's kind of a frequent flier program for the online service, and an idea borrowed from world of computer and online games.  We'll see if it gains traction in the world of online social media.
I'm in the process of trying out the new service myself, and will see if the innovations make a material difference to using a service like this. 

Of course the critical factor driving the success of failure of a social service are the number of people using it.  And while Plurk offers ways to find Plurk members amongst your network of online friends on AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Twitter and other services, there's obviously not that many folks who've started to use Plurk yet.  So it may be some time before "Plurking" becomes familiar, even amongst geeks.

ON VIDEO VIEWERS TO GO

PUBLIC PEEPS

Here's the latest and greatest way to watch video on the go with generally assured privacy.  Engadget reports:

"Surely you remember Veronica Belmont posing with the MyVu Crystal / Shades at CES earlier this year?

Yeah, the former unit is finally available to order for the three people in attendance who care, and better still, a recent review by PC World asserts that this thing actually isn't a half bad travel companion. Imagery was said to be "crystal-clear" (har) and battery life was more than reasonable, but look, even the reviewer admitted that he "wouldn't be caught walking down the street" with 'em on. Purchase accordingly.

• Read "

Not sure they've got it quite right, do you? At least in terms of wearing these things in public.

ON VISUAL VOICEMAIL FOR EVERYONE

FEED ME

Visual Voice mail, one of the flashier features of the original iPhone, is apparently coming to a Blackberry near you, as Boy Genius Reports:

"If you haven’t yet heard of Fusion Voicemail Plus by PhoneFusion, prepare to be impressed. In a nutshell, Fusion Voicemail Plus centralizes all of your voicemail boxes and presents your voicemail messages visually on your mobile handset.
Instead of receiving voicemails in separate boxes for your mobile number, home number, VoIP number, office number, etc everything goes to your PhoneFusion One voicemail box. The messages are then displayed visually on your handset a la iPhone. Each entry displays caller info and incoming number along with your number corresponding to the relevant phone service (so you know if the caller dialed your mobile number or home number for example). And did we mention that the service is completely free?"

All of this sounds good, but will have to see how it works in practice.  The last couple of years have seen a handful of startups provide voice mail transcription services.  I've been an avid user of Simulscribe, now known as PhoneTag, which is a subscription based voice-mail service, I'd still recommend.

The notion of having multiple voice mail boxes feed into a consolidated email feed though is appealing.  Will have to keep an eye on this new service by PhoneFusion.

ON JUDGING BITS AND ATOMS

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

This Reuters article highlights how difficult it is being a shopper of analog goods in terms of trying to discern quality from where things are made:

"These days, many fashionistas are still confused over what is real, what is fake, and whether a product's country of origin says anything about its quality.

Even a "made in Italy" label no longer guarantees that a bag or a pair of shoes was hand crafted by artisans in a Tuscan workshop.

Instead, the bag could have been stitched together by illegal workers in clandestine Italian factories, and the shoes assembled from plastic soles and leather shipped in from China."

The piece goes on to describe how the perception of quality differs depending on not just where a product is made, but where a buyer is coming from:

"Asian shoppers are particularly origin-conscious as French and Italian luxury goods are important status symbols in the newly affluent region. And the opinions of Asian shoppers are beginning to matter more and more as growth in more mature markets slows down.

"In Asia, in a certain segment, you can't offer a product made in China or made in Asia," said Patrizio di Marco, president and chief executive of Bottega Veneta, on the sidelines of a luxury goods conference in Tokyo."

What's funny is how perceptions are blurring in the realm of digital goods as well.  The example that comes to mind are the area codes for phone numbers, be they old-fashion land-lines, cellular lines, or internet phone (VOIP) lines. 

In a world where almost everyone has a cell phone, and the geographical location of the phone no longer matters, the area code on the phone still does.

My 917 cell phone number from New York, which is my primary number, almost always causes a double take in stores and restaurants around the country.

It's one of the reasons why vendors of internet phone numbers like Vonage, Skype, Yahoo! et al, do a thriving business in offering the area codes of your choice.  With these numbers you can be "local" to all the people that matter to you whether it's business or personal.  You can be all things to all people, for a small fee per year.

My wife was extremely chuffed last year, when she won the area code lottery while activating her new iPhone with AT&T, and getting a 212 number for a CELL-PHONE.  I of course felt gypped a few minutes later by the same phone company with my prosaic 646 assignation for my new iPhone.

It's reminiscent of the famous Seinfeld episode, "The Maid", where the status of a New Yorker was, and is still judged by whether the seven digit phone number is preceded by a 212.

I guess geography does matter, regardless of whether it's bits or atoms.  And it will for some time to come, regardless of how much technology blurs our land lives.

ON CRUISING TO A RECORD

FLOATING FAT

My wife and I went on our first cruise ever with my in-laws and grandparents earlier this year and enjoyed the on-board experience more than we expected.  Prior to that, we'd always thought Cruise-ships were not quite our speed. 

But we've come to realize that for traveling with extended family from both sides, it's not a bad experience at all.  Not to mention that it can be a better value traveling to places like Europe at current exchange and fuel rates.

So I've come to pay more attention to developments in the cruise-ship world, and this Gizmodo post caught my eye today:

"Royal Caribbean's new boat is big. Really big. The "Project Genesis" cruise liner, currently being constructed, will be 43% larger than the Queen Mary II, currently the world's largest ship. 1,180 feet long and weighing 220,000 tons, it'll be able to carry more people from New Jersey down to the Caribbean than any ship before it.

5,400 people, to be exact. The ship is so large that it has a "Central Park" the size of a football field in the middle, its own gigantic amphitheatre, and seven different "neighborhoods" that people will stay on. This thing is larger than an aircraft carrier, people."

It's expected to launch next year, with a twin due in 2010.  Will have to check it out, especially if it has ship-wide wireless Wifi internet access.

ON A SMALL STEP FORWARD FOR U.S. BROADBAND

SPOT OF SUN-LIGHT

Broadband consumers in the U.S., have had a spate of bad news, both on the wired and wireless fronts in the past year.  If you haven't been keeping track, let me count some of the ways:

1. Our world rank in the provision of broadband relative to the price paid, has slipped to the mid-teens in recent years.
2. The wired and wireless broadband providers are experimenting with putting caps on the amount of bandwidth consumed by their customers at given price points.  In fact, most of the wireless broadband providers like Verizon, AT&T, Sprint et al, have already started to put on caps to their "unlimited" data plans.
3. The wired broadband providers have been implementing technologies in their networks to throttle down high-bandwidth applications like P2P (peer-to-peer) video services.
4. The broadband providers continue to aggressively use their hefty lobbying capabilities with Beltway regulators on the network neutrality front.
5. On the wireless front, efforts to provide municipal Wifi services across the country have been scaled back for a wide variety of reasons.
6. Also on the wireless front, the widespread deployment of next generation Wimax wireless technologies by providers like Sprint, have also seen setbacks.
7. Recent signs that carriers like Verizon, which won the recent wireless spectrum auction, maybe backing away from some of the open access conditions of those auctions.

So it was good to see a minor bit of good news on the wired broadband front today, from none other than Verizon on it's FIOS fiber broadband roll-out across the country.  Here's an excerpt from DSLReports:

Verizon...has now expanded their 50Mbps/20Mbps FiOS tier into their entire footprint.
The company will also be expanding their symmetrical 20Mbps tier, previously only available in some States, to all of their users starting next week. The push is likely a pre-emptive strike against cable competitors like Comcast, who've only just begun deploying faster DOCSIS 3.0 speeds.
The 50/20 Mbps service will be available in New York and Virginia for $89.95, and in other States for $139.95 a month with an annual service plan. The 20/20 Mbps FiOS tier is available in all FiOS markets for $64.99 a month with an annual service plan (press release here, forum discussion here)."

It's not cheap, but it's increased competition for the cable broadband providers, and that's a good thing.  Verizon's FIOS service has been a multi-billion investment initiative that has been the one small bright spot in the rolling out of relatively affordable, true broadband services in the U.S. 

Not clear from the initial reports if FIOS has any bandwidth caps associated with the various pricing tiers.

We need a lot more  competition from a host of other providers, but this is a small step in the right direction.

ON A NEW TURN FOR CAR DOORS

NOW YOU SEE IT...

My good friend Vik Mehta pointed me to this upcoming innovation in car doors, of all things.  As he put it, just watch the 3-minute video:

There was a time when every little boy (and some big boys and girls) thought cars with gull-wing doors were the cat's meow. But I think this approach is way cooler.

Don't know when one might get a car with this door configuration, but make it available in a plug-in hybrid, and you've got a real green-tech keeper. (Thanks Vik).

ON GOOGLE UNPLUGGING BROWSER SYNC

SAY IT AIN'T SO

Must say that like many other geeks and early adopters, I was surprised and very disappointed to learn from Lifehacker, that Google is suspending support and development of it's popular Google Browser Sync extension software for the next version of the Firefox 3 browser to be launched next Tuesday.  Lifehacker posted a reply to a user query from the Google team responsible for the product:

"Thanks for trying out Google Browser Sync and for all of your feedback. It was a tough call, but we decided to phase out support for Browser Sync. Since the team has moved on to other projects that are keeping them busy, we don't have time to update the extension to work with Firefox 3 or to continue to maintain it.

For those of you who want to continue to use Firefox 2, we'll maintain support for old versions of Google Browser Sync through 2008. After that, we can recommend a few other products that scratch a similar itch. We hope that one of them works for you:

Mozilla Weave [labs.mozilla.com] from Mozilla Labs—Offers bookmark and history synchronization across computers.

Google Toolbar for Firefox [toolbar.google.com]—Store your bookmarks online and access them from any computer online.

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer [addons.mozilla.org]—Synchronizes your bookmarks across all computers where it is installed.

Regards,
The Google Team"

Like many Firefox users, I find Google Browser Sync to be the single-most useful extension I use on Firefox, since it allows automatic syncing of not just bookmarks, but my passwords, usage history, and browser states across several computers, both Windows and Macs.  It's been a "Thriller" product for me since day one, despite occasional problems as the product evolved within Google.

If this news is true, I'm going to forgo using FireFox 3.0 into 2009, even though it's supposed to be a much faster and more stable browser.  I know there are other potential alternatives for this functionality, including the Fennec initiative by Firefox developer Mozilla, but I prefer getting this service from Google than anyone else.

It's especially puzzling that Google think this software is not critical to continue to support given that it's long-term strategic mission is to get hundreds of millions of users around the world comfortable doing their computing off the cloud, less tethered to specific computers and devices.

In fact, Google Browser Sync seems to be the perfect customer facing device to propagate the work it's doing with Google Gears, which is a set of emerging Google technologies allowing tons of Google and third-party applications to run on multiple computers even when the user do not have an internet connection. Nik Cubrilovic has a great post today on TechCrunch describing where that effort is at Google to date.

If anything, Google should be expanding it's investment in Browser Sync, and making every effort to make the technology less geeky and more appealing and obvious in it's benefits to mainstream users.

All this is especially ironic given that competitors like Yahoo! are pulling out all the stops to become the daily "starting point" on the internet for hundreds of millions of users around the world. 

Google already is the starting point with it's Search application, and services like Browser Sync were starting to act as the glue bringing the disparate computers together for every user, starting to do things on the internet every day.  And they didn't even think of it is a starting point.  User habits were changing to just expect that their computing environment would be the same as they flit from machine to machine, all using Google services.  What other Google product or service could be more important to invest in than that?

Other companies like Apple are also hoping to be glue together the browsing experience for it's users across both Macs and Windows, and into it's iPhone and iPod Touch hand-held devices, using it's Safari browser as the conduit.

Microsoft is also working on similar strategies on the multiple incarnations of it's Live platform initiatives.

But these solutions are vertically focused on a given company's hardware and software.  Google is uniquely positioned to be a cross-platform, and potentially cross-browser provider of this unifying functionality.  Technically, the task is not a trivial one, given that it requires tying together many standard and non-standard, proprietary and non-proprietary technologies to make a seamless user experience possible across computers and hand-helds.  Again, this seems to be totally aligned with Google's long-term strategic focus.

I like many geeks, am hoping that Google re-considers it's strategy with Google Browser Sync.  Here's hoping that Google has a strategy to continue to bring Browser Sync like functionality to future browsers and platforms to the masses, even if it's with a whole different name and approach.

ON THE 3G iPHONE HOOPLA TO COME

HERE WE GO AGAIN

Mark July 11, 2008 on your calendar, if you're an Apple iPhone fan.  That's the date the new 3G iPhone, will be available in the U.S. and over 20 other countries.  See these stories on Techmeme for all the discussions, or see this Engadget report for a summary on what's what:

"Thinner edges, full plastic back, flush headphone jack, and the iPhone 2.0 firmware -- Apple's taking a lot of the criticisms to heart from the first time around.
Obviously 3G is at the forefront, but they're also making sure it's available all over internationally, works with enterprises, runs 3rd party apps... and does it all for cheaper. Apple claims its 3G speeds trounce the competition, with pageloads 36% faster than the N95 and Treo 750 -- and of course it completely trounces the old EDGE data.
Battery life isn't getting put out to pasture though, with 300 hours of standby, 8-10 hours of 2G talk, 5 hours of 3G talk, 7 hours of video and 24 hours of audio. GPS is also a go...
"Apple hopes to launch in 70 countries this year. 8GB is available for $199, 16GB for $299 -- and the 16GB comes in white. Both pricepoints require a contract. Apple will be hitting the 22 biggest markets, including the US, on July 11th."

The mainstream and online media will likely again report on long lines at Apple and AT&T stores in the U.S., with folks waiting to be amongst the first to get their hands on one.

For those interested in the financial implications for Apple and AT&T in all this, Saul Hansell (NYTimes) has a good summary in this blog post:

"The biggest news from Apple is what Steve Jobs didn’t say: It has completely changed the basis of its deals with AT&T and other wireless carriers.

According to a press release from AT&T, the carrier will no longer give a portion of monthly usage fees to Apple. Instead carriers will pay Apple a subsidy for each phone sold, in order to bring the price from $399 down to $199 for the 8 Gigabyte model. The company did not specify the amount of the subsidy. Subsidies of $200 to $300 are common in the industry.

What is more, consumers will now pay $30 a month for unlimited data service from AT&T, compared to $20 under the plan introduced last year. So even though the phone will now cost $200, consumers will be out more cash at the end of a two-year contract compared to the previous deal."

Benefit for Apple in all this, you ask?:

"It also should help insulate Apple from the cost of people who buy iPhones and unlock them to use on carriers that don’t pay Apple the monthly fee. Now Apple will get its money, say $500, up front and it no longer has to police what people do with them."

All this of course does not include the 30% revenue share Apple will take on selling third-party iPhone applications via it's App store, accessible from 62 countries.  Also of note is the rejuvenated .Mac service, now re-named MobileMe.  And of course since the iPhone and iPod businesses ties into a host of Mac-based services, there presumably will be synergies across most of Apple's main product lines.

But to really get a sense of what's really special going on with the new iPhone platform, one needs to watch the whole Keynote presentation.  It'll take about an hour and 45 minutes, but for anyone interested in things Apple, it's worth it.

I was particularly impressed with the third-party application presentations...not just the applications, but the actual presentations themselves were done really well by the various parties.  Not boring at all, as it would seem at first blush.

Pretty cool stuff overall.

The Mac/iPhone/MobileMe platforms have the potential to be where Microsoft and a few others really should have been able to go with all their assets and capabilities, and maybe still will...but Apple has a bit of a head-start.

In the meantime, July 11, 2008, is the new June 29, 2007.  And the zaniness won't be limited to just  the U.S. this time.

ON VISUALIZING CONCEPTS

SEEING IS BELIEVING
It's not everyday I find myself nodding in agreement with a Gizmodo post, but this one is a no-brainer. Here's the post in question:

"These concept virtual goggles don't take into account any, you know, technology that actually exists, but I don't really care...
They're certainly cooler than any other glasses display that I've ever seen.
Let's make these a reality, engineers, shall we? Click the photo for a bigger, more detailed version. [Blutsbrueder Design via PSFK]"

It's not very easy re-thinking goggles with built-in microphones.  This one does seem pretty elegant and practical at the same time.  At the very least it should be in the next Star Trek movie. 

Or maybe Quantum of Solace, the next James Bond movie being released later this year.  The picture above could easily be a still from the next Daniel Craig Bond saga.

ON A BETTER DEAL FOR AUTHORS

HAPPY ENDINGS

Forbes takes a crack trying to imagine how the book industry could be changed by the internet, casting Amazon as the potential savior of the humble author.  This is an exercise long imagined by many internet and media observers, and the "what ifs" have been going on for almost two decades.  Forbes begins to set up the argument as follows:

"Archaic beyond belief, it's an industry that treats its most important asset--the author--badly. Can this go on?

The book market in the United States is worth about $32 billion a year; the rest of the world, an additional $36 billion. Who makes the money? Not the author.

Retailers take almost 50%. The agent takes 15% to 20%. The publisher gets squeezed--it's cause for huge celebration if they make 20%.

"On a book that costs $24.95, the author gets at most $1 to $1.50," says Eileen Gittins, chief executive of Blurb, an online print-on-demand publisher of photography books."

The article then goes on to posit how Amazon could change things in the author's favor:

"Amazon is poised to revolutionize the book printing business through vertical integration. Let’s look at the numbers. Assuming that Amazon already pockets 50% of the retail price of a book, it could directly engage with authors and cut out the middlemen: the agent and the publisher. That would free up 30% to 40% of the pie, which can easily be split between Amazon and the author.

Let’s say, in the new world, Amazon becomes the retailer, marketer, publisher and agent combined and takes 65% of the revenues, offering 35% to the author--we end up with a much better, fairer world."

The piece doesn't offer any particular reason why this should happen now and why it hasn't happened already given that Amazon has been a big player in book retailing for over a decade now.  Neither does it mention new channels of possible distribution via Amazon like it's fledgling Kindle electronic book reader.

But more to the point, there's no reason why the split to the author needs to stop at 35% via online distribution.

In a separate but related example, Apple is about to unleash an online distribution store for software applications via it's iTunes store for the new and improved 3G iPhone to be related in a few weeks.  The split in that case for third-party application developers would be 70/30, with the developer keeping 70% and Apple keeping the smaller 30%.

And of course the same potential has been long anticipated in the music business, where the artist today makes a much smaller piece of the revenue pie and online distribution has for now merely expanded their ability to make more selling not the music but concert tours and related goods off-line.

The authors/creators/artists in all these industries are waiting for the split to get much better in their favor.  And it's been a long wait for all for some online nirvana.

ON REAL SUPER-HERO FLYING

FINALLY

Every boy from 2 from to a 100 (and a bit more), is going to like this story titled "Rocket man flies on jet-powered wings", as told by MSNBC:

"Former fighter pilot Yves Rossy, 48, accelerated to 186 miles an hour May 14, 2008, over the Swiss Alps during his first public flight while strapped to his self-made, jet-powered wings."

The piece goes into the actual experience (and has a video to boot):

"Steering only with his body, Rossy dived, turned and soared again, flying what appeared to be effortless loops from one side of the Rhone valley to the other. At times he rose 2,600 feet  before descending again with a trail of special-effects smoke in his wake.

"It's like a second skin," he later told reporters. "If I turn to the left, I fly left. If I nudge to the right, I go right."

And Rossy's next challenge:

"He said he is ready now for a bigger challenge: crossing the English Channel later this year. The stunt, which will be shown on live television, will test his flying machine to the limit. Rossy said he plans to practice the 22-mile trip by flying between two hot-air balloons."

Forget joy-rides into outer-space for folks willing to pay the freight.  This is the ride most of us boys (and I suspect quite a few girls), would happily sign up for, as and when available for mere mortals.

ON THE LONG-RUNNING BLACKBERRY/iPHONE RACE

THE FIGHT GOES ON

Research in Motion (RIMM) is up almost $10 today on the news of it's answer to Apple's iPhone, the Blackberry Bold (formerly known as the Blackberry 9000).  To be available later this summer on AT&T first and then all the major carriers, the new Blackberry borrows quite a few design cues from last year's iPhone, as this Ars Technica post illustrates and describes:

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that RIM has taken a few design tips from the iPhone this time around. The Bold's all-black enclosure with a chrome border, combined with the high-contrast screen make it indeed a very, er, bold-looking new BlackBerry. Physically, the resemblance is striking.

Of course, the iPhone currently lacks many of the features that the Bold has—namely 3G capabilities, integrated GPS, Bluetooth that actually works with something besides a Bluetooth headset, video recording capabilities, and camera zoom.

However, many of these features are expected to be announced soon at WWDC for the next-gen iPhone. At the very least, a 3G iPhone is all but guaranteed, and GPS is widely-rumored to be included. And, of course, the iPhone already offers desktop-style web browsing in addition to a giant multi-touch screen that the Bold doesn't have."

The piece goes onto list Blackberry's unique advantage vs. the iPhone:

"On its own, however, the Bold is still a very attractive option for those in business who are married to things like the BlackBerry's handling of corporate e-mail and the non-touchscreen keyboard that many BlackBerry enthusiasts still love.

On the flip side, Apple said at its SDK Roadmap event in February that the iPhone 2.0 software will introduce "real" Exchange support, push e-mail, and other enterprise features that it currently lacks, possibly bringing it up to speed with the BlackBerry in that regard."

One has the killer physical keyboard and industrial-strength email capabilities.  The other the killer touch-screen with the "real internet", and a universe of software applications to come.

It looks like I'll be upgrading to BOTH the Blackberry Bold and the new 3G iPhone and continue to carry both around for a while longer. 

No clear-cut winner yet.  It's Experience vs. Hope all over again.

Looks like this race between the two devices will run at least  as long as the Clinton-Obama contest before we have a clear winner.

ON A BIG CHANGE AT COLUMBUS CIRCLE

EXTREME MAKEOVER

There is no doubt that Columbus Circle in New York, around 59th Street and Broadway on the West side, has seen architectural change and substantial improvements over the last half a decade, both with the arrival of the Time Warner Center complex and the re-design of Columbus Circle itself.

One element that has however remained a fixture, is the infamous and controversial Edward Durell building on the south corner of Columbus Circle, which most visitors know has the "Lollipop" building.  It often puzzled outside viewers with it's sheer exterior white walls where windows ought to have been, so as to allow enjoyment of the presumably spectacular Central Park views from that unique geographical vantage point.

Well, the building is finally getting a long debated and anticipated re-do, and the