Kids these days. With their sleek iPod ghetto blasters, their social networks, their iTunes. In my day we downloaded our music illegally! For free! None of this Ping business!
The future for Ping, as it is now, is not so bright. Given the power of the iOS ecosystem, a score of 25 is not good. It's not bad, but with Apple behind it, that's a middling score, at best. I expect a series of improvements -- and extensions into other forms of social media -- over the next several months.
Submitted by Smartphone Mom on 3 September, 2010 - 21:19
Just a reminder to all you moms. If you're like our family, your children may very well have their own iTunes account. Ours do, which we fund through iTunes cards or email gift receipts. You can also have parental controls.
However, so far, I've not seen anything on the new Apple iTunes 'Ping' service that helps put parents in front of their children. When your children go onto iTunes now, they are presented with the option of activating Ping -- and "following" friends, musicians, rock bands, celebrities and anyone else. However, your children can very easily select the button that lets others follow them: their name, their location (!) and their purchases. Their entire profile!
Only after I clicked on the Ping button did I realize just how much information our children could be turning over to strangers, every single day! Make sure your children don't give strangers all this information.
Please understand. I do not write this as a fanboy. I have no connection to Apple (except for those who read my blog). I think Nokia is great, love several Blackberry smartphones. True, I think the design of most Android smartphones look like they came out of Chrysler, or some older Soviet bloc nation, but there can be no denying Android's appeal.
But, fuck me, the iPod Touch is simply awesome. Truly, truly magical and revolutionary. And as much as I praise Steve Jobs and Apple for how they leverage the power of the iPod Touch in the larger smartphone wars, for this post I am going to fully ignore that.
Just pause and look at this thing. It looks beautiful. It's thinner than half a deck of cards. It is a mini-computer. It can play music, great. Play movies, that look great. Includes WiFi functionality and FaceTime -- yes, the best personal videochat service available. It can hold 1,000s of songs. The smallest model has 8gigs of storage. My first computer -- with a hard drive -- was 40megabytes. The Internet in your hand.
Yet the iPod Touch costs $229. In the developed world, nearly everyone, and that's over 500 million people, can afford this! Which means that in 5 years, at least 2 billion, probably more, can afford it. Plus, it has hundreds of thousands of apps, games galore, aids for school, productivity and more. It's even within striking distance of disintermediating managed wireless carriers. It weighs less than 4 ounces (100 grams). It can record in HD! The screen has a 960 x 640 resolution. There's a gyroscope and accelerometer built in.
iPod Touch is a thing of beauty yet which possesses near-zen levels of power and functionality.
The smartphone, the smartphone wars, are destroying everything. Every market, every business, our very notions of space and time. This cannot be stopped. Let's take a moment, however, to honor this creation; one of the most beautiful in the history of computing.
Half this site's readers are from the US. What that means for this week is that they will be enjoying the last long weekend of summer, the last holiday until (as the Candians call it) American Thanksgiving.
So I better do my best to make sure this week's Phonies are out before we all pack into our cars, are easily digestible, since we're going to be grilling a tremendous amount of cow over the next 3 days, and go down as cold and smooth as a weak but beloved American pilsner.
Let's get started! But first, let me pour myself a cold one.
Big Bang award
iPod Touch
The entry point to the iOS ecosystem for children, teens, grandparents. The training ground for iTunes, Ping, FaceTime and the App Store. The first online payments platform for millions. The linchpin in Apple's strategy to take a cut of all paid content -- yes, all of it: books, games, software/apps, tv, movies, music, ads.
One more thing. This week, the iPod Touch got much better. Sleeker, lighter, more functional. While others continue to fight it out in the bloody smartphone wars, Apple, like the United States in 1940 is generating more wealth, enough for a sustained battle with even the toughest enemies.
Woolly Mammoth award
Blackberry
New numbers from Quantcast show that mobile web browsing via Android devices is growing, rapidly, while on iOS it is slightly declining. As any tech blogger excepting me will tell you this is proof that OMG APPLE IS REPEATING THE SAME *MISTAKE* BY NOT LICENSING ITS OPERATING SYSTEM.
Actually, no. For many reasons; all of which I have said already. The iPhone/iOS is optimized for many activities. The mobile web is just one, and not even the main one. Not so with the Android. However, rather than re-hash that iPhone vs Android nonsense, we should instead look at the numbers for the Blackberry. They are not moving. In the smartphone wars, stagnation = death. The Blackberry is optmized for corporate email. Corporate email is becoming less important every day. We demand real-time, social, hyperlocal; of which email is none of these. The poor mobile web browsing numbers posted by Blackberry is simply not good news. I love Blackberry. The global smartphone market is growing. However, if they don't do a radically better job of supporting accessing the mobile web and social media, they will perish.
Dinosaur Crossing award
Jobs
It's Labor Day weekend in America! So, where are all the jobs? Sure, we're in a Great Recession. Problem is, at the same time, demographics and technology are working against you. I use contractors from around the world. The ones I use in the United States could, in fact, be located elsewhere. Our most advanced personal devices, the smartphones, are made in China, by Taiwanese companies, with Korean branding. Time and space are being altered. Anyone can get anything from anybody anywhere anytime. What makes you -- or the United States -- so special?
You want to do something this holiday weekend? That you'll remember. That will be patriotic? Start a business.
(If she's gonna be that dull, she better sex it up a bit.)
Gray Powell award
Samsung
Samsung announced the launch of its Samsung Galaxy Tab, a 7-inch tablet computer that runs on Android. No, you didn't hear of it because anyone who would have cared was paying attention to Apple this week. No, Android isn't optimized for a 7-inch display. No, there aren't really any tablet-optimized apps in the Android Marketplace. Yes, if there were, you wouldn't be able to search and find them, anyway.
And one more thing...
The entire go-to-market strategy of the Tab is wrong. It is focused on the iPad, which has the benefit of the iOS ecosystem, iTunes, App Store and the money-printing Apple retail outlets. Meanwhile, millions of crap Windows-based netbooks and notebooks are out there, easy pickings for someone with a bomb to drop. In this case, Samsung has badly missed the target. I expect this will setback Android tablet sales a good 6-12 months, further aiding the iPad.
Magical & Revolutionary award
Virgins
Honestly, who doesn't love virgins? Even the word, virgin, sounds so soft, so delicate.
Oh, sorry. It's not 'virgins' it's Virgin. As in the Virgin MiFi 2200. A device about the size of the brand new Apple TV, available for $149 from Virgin Mobile. It uses the Sprint 3G (not 4G) network and lets you create a relatively secure WiFi hotspot that can support up to 5 devices at once! Yes, America, there is a Santa Claus, and he's bringing you no-contract WiFi for your car, camper, picnic; nearly anywhere.
I ordered mine last weekend and was told they were out of stock. Tried again yesterday, with much success. It is to arrive on Tuesday. While other carriers gouge us with $60 per month required every month for 2 years, the MiFi 2200 is only $40 a month. There is no contract. You can purchase your plan, or not, at any time.
The only downside? Somehow, Google is trying to push this signal to the back of the line!
In my TECHNOLOGY RANKINGS, Groupon scores a stellar '30'. That pretty much assures long-term success (at least during this decade of the smartphone wars).
Not that Groupon needs my affirmation. The company hit the sweet spot of business model meets instant tipping point of technology and need and desire and capability. So much so that probably the biggest effort facing Groupon now is building thesmelves fast enough to hold off all the counterfeiters.
Forbes profiles the company that is leveraging the real-time social mobile web as well as just about anybody:
Unlike so many dot-com rockets, Groupon is a real business. Occupying 85,000 square feet inside a rehabbed eight-story former Montgomery Ward warehouse in Chicago's River North neighborhood, the company is on track to pass $500 million in revenue this year, according to a report Morgan Stanley ( MS - news - people ) put together to win some underwriting business. No technology stalwart--including Ebay, Amazon.com ( AMZN - news - people ), Yahoo ( YHOO - news - people ), AOL and Google--grew that big that fast. At just 17 months old this April Groupon boasted a $1.35 billion valuation when it raised $135 million, the biggest chunk of it from Digital Sky Technologies, the curious Moscow investment fund behind Facebook and Zynga. (Mason will not disclose his stake, which he says is less than 50%.) The only company to reach a $1 billion valuation faster was YouTube (now part of Google), founded in 2005 and still waiting to turn its first profit. Groupon broke into the black just seven months after inception.
*Note: I'm considering abandoning my Technology Rankings and just basing the future success of a technology company based on whether or not some unnamed Russian oligarch is an early major investor. Opulence? I has it.
My children watch ESPN. I don't because near as I can tell, there are no actual sports. Just news reports on criminals. Still, I thought this number was pretty telling: half of the users of ESPN's mobile services do not use any ESPN PC-based services.
Half of the users of the sports network’s SMS alerts, mobile Web site and applications are unique to the mobile medium.
“About half of people who use our mobile products don’t use our PC products—the mobile device could be their only Internet connection or their primary Internet-connected device,” said John Zehr, senior vice president and general manager of ESPN Mobile, Bristol, CT. “Mobile is not cannibalistic—it’s an amplifier.
“Fans migrate toward best available screen, and while we’re still seeing the majority of consumption on TV, our mobile audience is growing at an astounding rate,” he said. “In 2008 for the first time, and again last year, our mobile traffic actually exceeded our PC traffic on weekends.
“On college football Saturday and NFL Sunday we get more traffic on our mobile Web site than our wired Web site, and now there’s no going back—if you deliver a good experience, people will consume the content on their mobile device when they’re out and about.”
Submitted by brian s hall on 3 September, 2010 - 09:50
I wanted to let readers know that I have also begun posting technology reviews and news at DeviceMag. Check out their site!
Here at DeviceMAG we take technology very serious, no matter if it’s a small gadget or a new device on the market. With a passion for everything that gets geeks high we’re here to feed you with the latest news.
A team of experienced tech writers that have been doing it for over four years now, got together to put DeviceMag.com up and to make sure, among others, it’s going to be one of the first things you need when you wake up, at the office or maybe late before bed.
Submitted by brian s hall on 3 September, 2010 - 09:13
Yes, I hate email. Yes, I use Gmail. Yes, I am loving their new Priority Inbox feature. So far, it works well. I confess, I am ruthless in assigning priority status. Very few make the grade.
Only problem to date is that this isn't available when I check my gmail on my iPhone. This makes for a disconnect. I scan the emails on my smartphone and it looks different than on my laptop. Google needs to make this work across all our devices.
Late last year, I used my TECHNOLOGY RANKINGS algorithm to score Twitter. This was when the general population was first beginning to really embrace Twitter and the tech bloggers were convinced it was a fad.
In my rankings, however, Twitter scored very well. With the exception of MONETIZATION of content, the service had done quite well. Since then, they have become more HYPERLOCAL and more MOBILE. Not surprisingly, they are one of my highest rated technologies.
Yesterday, their founder gave some numbers and once again, the rankings algorithm proved dead on correct. Just saying...
Twitter CEO Evan Williams just announced that his service has 145 million registered accounts and almost 300,000 apps using its API.
Total mobile users has jumped 62 percent since mid-April, and, remarkably, 16 percent of all new users to Twitter start on mobile now, as opposed to the five percent before we launched our first Twitter-branded mobile client. As we had hoped in April, these clients are bringing more people into Twitter, and, even better, they are attracting and retaining active users. Indeed, 46 percent of active users make mobile a regular part of their Twitter experience.
The Smartphone Wars presents stories and commentary on the economic, cultural and personal impacts of smartphones, location-aware services, hyperglobal connectivity and the real-time social mobile web.
Together, these are altering human sense of place and time and have set in motion a rapid global redistribution of wealth, power, jobs, opportunity, access and everything everywhere forever. A Great Leveling. Our job is to ensure your safe passage through the smartphone wars.
Brian S Hall is a long-time writer, marketer and independent web analyst with over 15 years experience in the software and communications industries. He is a principal in Rawcow Group, providing innovative marketing to values-based businesses.
My goal for this site is to provide the absolute best writing on the personal, political, communal and financial impacts of the global spread of smartphones and the real-time social mobile web.
For media inquiries, writing, consulting or speaking you may reach him at info@brianshall.com or call him at 408-64-SMART.
My book on using fantasy sports to teach children about math, business, management and leadership. Favorably reviewed in the Wall Street Journal. Available on Kindle and hardcover.
