Monthly Archives: June 2008

Get your own Drop Box

Uncategorized June 29, 2008 Leave a comment

More and more people are starting to talk about one little startup: DropBox. Just as an example, in June the German Netzwertig gave it rave reviews and made many people ask for an invite. One of the shortest praises came from Simon Waldman:

Online storage that just works, they say…and you know what, they’re right. Beg to get on their beta list.

I have to admit, that it is one of the few applications that are still running on my Macbook all the time. Simon does have some very good additional tips in that post, like Evernote and extra small Moleskins, but more on that later. Now on DropBox. I already wrote about it here and have now been playing with it for some time. So long actually that I was still in the beta group that got a 10GB storage box :)

The application is remarkably easy to use and running seemlessly in the background, simply telling you whether it is in sync with your ownline storage or not. It also has versioning and a restore feature. I just restored a folder with 68 images because I am going to friends today and might want to check out those pics there. I have to admit that I ma not yet sure how they pay for all of this because it means you have unlimited storage when you are clever. e.g. upload 1GB movie, delete, upload another, delete, restore the old one, … you will never go above 1GB but have endless movies in there. Of course they can limit the time of the backups but still. It is a wonderful feature though and makes the entire system a lot more interesting.

Above that they have some special folders, like Photos, which will give you a gallery for all folders below that. Upload fotos in there and very easily share via a hidden folder similar to how Picasa does it. Not sure if I am totally happy with that but hey, it’s survivable and it’s your choice if you want to share fotos like that. I really do presume though that a large part of the people out there will start using DropBox to keep their PCs in Sync, and with more people using it, DropBox should install the option to find out who else is on DropBox through an address book sync, allowing me to easily share stuff with people already on there.

The bad side is just that you will otherwise need to invite somebody, who will have to install the app, and that makes it cumbersome. But if you are already using it for yourself for some time, … then it gets interesting. This is where DropBox is moving. I am using it for a long time now, and if you want an invite, I have a few left.

Google Gears attacking the Operating System

Web 2.0, Web Development June 29, 2008 Comments: 2

This is really as far as it goes. Google Gears, or now Gears, as it de-branded, makes your browser in conjunction with a web site, into an offline application, or simply an application with local components. Because it started out by simply giving your offline access to GMail or Google Reader, and now the folks behind WordPress have announced that WordPress 2.6 will have Gears integrated to speed up the Admin Interface. Matt actually adds a few points here, among others linking to the Performance Page on the Yahoo! Developer Network saying that something like 85% of the performance is in the frontend, meaning it is felt performance. This brings him on to Google Gears and how local servers will make CDNs obsolete.
While I do believe that there is a lot of power in Google Gears, I am not seeing yet where they will make CDNs obsolete. There is lots of stuff I do not cache or cannot cache in the browser. Above that, I know of at least one person that will scream up when you mention something like Google Gears or AIR. The thing is that these are systems that give Web Apps very deep access into your system and we just don’t have the mindset yet to really secure web applications. A simple link sent to you, might result in something loading in some un-secure AIR or Gears app and destroy your computer. This is a risk we have to deal with somehow, but I am pretty sure that is on the mind of the Google engineers and the others that are working on Gears.
I do fully believe Matt though that the line between servers and application is shifting in that you will less and less worry about your server infrastructure. I had a longer talk about this with the CEO from Globalways, who are running a Xen virtualisation Platform.
But back to Gears, Techcrunch has a lot more interesting points, e.g. that Gears was implemented by MySpace for their messsaging.

Today Gears supports a whole host of new features, some that it has in common with the other next generation web API efforts from Microsoft and Adobe while others are a result of their own innovation. Function calls available to developers include background processes (no more hourglass), client-side image manipulation, location-awareness, better file uploading and a local database inside the browser.

It’s really getting interesting here in that you might want to give your users the option to simply download Gears and use it and suddenly can write a lot more powerful web applications, with less servers. Looking forward to trying out the new WordPress to see how it works with Gears.

Nokia getting serious with Open Source Symbian

Wireless June 24, 2008 Comments: 2

What a day. First Nokia bought Plazes (Congrats!) and now they offer to buy the remaining 52% of Symbian and have launched the Symbian Foundation, which will drive the open sourcing of Symbian over the next 2 years. Of course the Symbian Foundation has wide adoption, same as the Open Handset Alliance around Android, but we might want to dig a bit deeper to see if this is a lost cause by Nokia as Google will simply win with Android, or not.

First to start of with one thing. Nokia sells as many phones in a few days as Apple has sold iPhones in total. So there is a bit of a market power there. Of course, Apple might be able to scale down, and Android might be nice, but there is power behind the Symbian Foundation, real power.

Another question is who is now building mobile phones. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Lg, Ericsson, Motorola … all members of Symbian and many of them missing from Google’s Alliance. One also has to say that these companies have real relations to carriers and real experience to get phones through testing with the FCC and others.

Also, Google lists China Mobile as part of the Open Handset Alliance, but they seem to have problems getting chinese working on Android, and Chinese does work on Symbian obviously, and with Open Sourcing the platform, there are no longer any real licensing fees and China Mobile might have an easier access route with Symbian to get their own Smartphones.

So yes, Nokia needs to build up their developer relations work to get some serious buzz around new apps for Symbian, but this is something that can be done because it is a really good base. I still want an iPhone but I will keep my N95 and I will likely get a Nokia phone again in the future. It’s just that I want back to T-Mobile anyway (reception at Base sucks some times) and the iPhone is nice indeed. It has the buzz factor at the moment. Android is too far away. And possibly Nokia will have some really compelling items out at the end of the year. And hey, just imagine them adding Plazes to a few of their phones. Give it a month and there will be more Plazes installations on phones than iPhones out there. So long Loopt. Nice to have met you.

Clearing the Backlog of Stuff to Read

Life in General June 15, 2008 Leave a comment

It has happened again, my “To Blog” bookmark folder has reached a size that is too big, so I need to clear some of it out, at least the smaller bits.
twittearth is a wonderful tool to leave running on your desktop and it seems an OS X screensaver is coming. By then I hope to hear about it again, because it would be a cool screensaver to use.
Want to have the photo application that will appear on MobileMe from Apple for yourself? Check out SproutCore, which is what it was based on it seems. I have to admit I still like Flickr, and the second part Funambol, could be the syncing part and push email service. I did try it shortly and I am not sold, as I am not fully sold on MobileMe. I like GMail because it is different and with IMAP I am close to push email. Contacts are synced with the Mac and then Phone and always with me, and calendar items are synced with Google Calender, … I am not sure what else I need.
Tried out Fluid already? Really nice. Create a browser for Gmail and one for Twitter, … and so on. When one crashes the rest stay up. :) you can also create a menu extra out of the browser. So if you create one for m.twitter.com and make it a menu extra you have your own little twitter app. Very cool.
There is a very good discussion on the future of social media right here. I do fully believe in the openness part, and it is actually the only way all the social part will really work, or at least the business models, but that means that execution counts and that is something that the big guys are really scared about. They also want a bit part of the pie and not a small part of a bigger pie, which is stupid and not how the internet works. But who am I to tell them.
Is Etsy the next eBay? Really old, and no, I don’t think so, but it is interesting to think about and there are some valid points. Congrats of course to DaWanda in germany for having picked the space and gone through hard times to get there.
The really important part in the above article though is this:

We may be witnessing the historical high water mark of giant companies in developed economies. In 1955, Fortune 500 companies generated 1/3 of GDP in America. In 2000 that had risen to 2/3. If you prefer %, from 33% to 66%. Hidden in those numbers are the countless family farms that could not withstand the onslaught of Agribusiness and the Mom & Pop shops that closed when Wall Mart came to town.
Imagine a world where the Fortune 500 share of GDP went back to 1/3 and small businesses got back the 1/3 they lost in the last 50 years.

THIS is something I truely believe in. The devide will get bigger. The Fortune 500 will get bigger and there will be a lot more smaller ones and the middle will thin out. There is still something called economies of scale but they changed a bit. This article on Re-Localization is another one that rocks. This is exactly the space we are attacking with Ormigo in that stuff if becoming more local, services are becoming more important, the the local/service/self-employed/SMBs need a system to really use online efficiently. We are learning a great deal through our customers and users each and every day, which makes this market very rewarding, as complex as it is.
Google has some new APIs for Translation. Just check out this bit for a bookmarklet. :) Check out the new Google Translate. Also Kayak is starting with some interesting APIs to their services.
To finish this off, check out “No Internet. Anywhere.” from Southpark.

Kyte.tv will rule them all

Business, Wireless June 15, 2008 Comments: 3

Scoble posts about Kyte.tv on Techcrunch and how Kyte.tv will kill Qik and others in the live video streaming arena. I have been testing the new Kyte.tv S60 app on my Nokia N95 for some time, and it is very powerful.  I am not yet sure if I want all those features within on applications but it does lend itself to not only quickly sending a video onto kyte.tv but rather as a full channel management application, something Robert needs for his work. I am watching Kyte closely, as one of the video start-ups to watch.
Their winning items are the good channel systems with a feedback loop (they had video responses way before seesmic was here if I remember correctly) and their mobile focus, because that is where this video stuff is going. Yes, it is taking longer than anticipated, but you will mostly post video from your phone, simply because there are now already more phone cameras than digital cameras out there and there are way less video cameras than digital cameras and all mobile phone cameras are moving to be able to record video.
The only thing we need are mobile phone internet flatrates and I hope that the carriers are seeing in the iPhone that a flatrate helps. I don’t believe the increased usage comes form the iPhone only, but for a large part from not having to think about being online or not. When you have to think in terms of MB used or something, you do start to think and you use stuff less.
Anyway, I do believe Kyte.tv will rule them all and will be one of the big video players to watch in the next 10 years. They have the backing, they have the right focus, and they are developing the right tools. They are just a service that provides a service. They are not focussing on becoming a destination, because the destination is always the player, and the TV of the future is distributed and re-aggregated. There will not be one controlling system.

Yahoo has given up to Google

Advertising June 13, 2008 Leave a comment

As sad as it is, Yahoo! has given up and Google is now running ads within Yahoo!. Check Michael’s post here entitled Massive Destruction of Shareholder Value for some good thoughts and links. The thing is that this is actually bad for almost everyone. For example, Google is monetizing better than others because they have more inventory, and more advertisers and more inventory advertisers invent. advert. i.a. …. As Steve Balmer said, the Flywheel is just bigger. So the advertisers are paying more to buy ads within Google. So now for a search result within Yahoo! for the term “Insurance” you can either buy it cheap on Yahoo! or expensive on Google and in the end, it will be the same click, with Yahoo! probably opting to choosing the expensive one.
Of course, Yahoo! will make more money in the short term, but in the long term that money will move to Google, and their Flywheel will get a size that is just too big to replace. We are almost there, but I still believe there are options to build something truely open that leverages the power of the internet. With the deal being non-exclusive, and Yahoo! being able to mix and match as they choose, the deal is a bit more open but the internet can go bigger than that. There is a nice thing that Eric Schmidt said:
If there were an issue, it’s perfectly possible that you can do commercial deals that look like outsourcing deals which are not exclusive and where industry structures allow everybody to win. If you look in the automobile industry and lots and lots of industries like that, you have suppliers who supply other people. So if there were a deal, it would be based on those sorts of principles.
The thing is that the example just does not hold under analysis. I know somebody working in the part-supplier industry, and yes, by now some car manufacturers are actually buying from different providers just so there will still be 3 different ones at least. That alone would be like Yahoo! buying from Google and X and Y to make sure competition remains high. They don’t, but help create a monopoly, something that automobile industry would make sure to not have happen. But there is another difference. This is more like Mercedes outsourcing the sales of their cars to a 3rd party. Above that, these cars cannot be stored, but fall of a cliff and die if not sold when created, and with each car your sell (not produce) you gain a bit of knowledge how to sell better. Your short term goal is to let the best seller sell your cars, but your long term goal would be to become the best seller of your cars. Otherwise, sooner or later in that model you become the parts provider where the seller knows your exact cost structure and will make sure you produce content the cheapest possible. Because if you can’t sell your cars yourselves, you depend on Google to do it for you … or ads in this respect.
Of course we can presume that giving it all to Google will result in highest prices and best system for all, but that’s just not have this economic model of ours works. Believe me, I do believe in Google’s performance marketing model and actually believe even CPM ads should be performance based, but that’s another subject. The problem is this moves us more into a monopoly and somebody needs to start thinking strategy please, and long term, because short term strategy will default to Google at this point, or to someobdy else that will ultimately be there to market your site for you.
Google actually has something to say about all of this. Of course this is a not a merger, which is a good thing, but if it results in Google becoming the sole provider of search advertising, then emm… who cares. Google says this does not remove a player from the field, but this is untrue if the investors and management in Yahoo! are thinking short term, because then they do not have an incentive to keep improving and innovating in search advertising (and content advertising which is really what Google is moving to next, all performance based). Yes, Yahoo! can do similar arrangements with others, but who would those others be? If Yahoo! is not doing all of this to make more money, then I am lost, and there is nobody else that would allow Yahoo! to make more money, because there is nobody yet who has applied performance based advertising to an entire property, even though Yahoo! is close to that. But as said, there are no others. And yes, this does not let Google raise prices for advertisers, … but as detailed above, again, who cares.
So this is a lot more dangerous then some make it out to be. We need a real strategy, we need some bold steps, we need a Linux of Advertising actually.

Location Based Services on the iPhone

Computers, Wireless June 11, 2008 Comments: 3

Location based services, or LPS, is something that all people rave about with the iPhone. A good article comes from Mashable under the title “And, The Really Big Think About The New iPhone Is“. In it they say that I will finally bring to us the wonders of location based services, citing Loopt as one example. There is one comment though that puts it into perspective.

I conducted a large user research project for Vodafone in the UK and Italy [...] The near universal reaction was negative. This was primarily due to privacy concerns [...]

This is not to be argued away really. It is one of the reasons I have a problem with stuff like Plazes. I just don’t want people to necessarily know where I am now. “In London at a Meeting” will tell everyone “Go rob Oliver.” because you know what, my address is easy enough to come by. Even showing it to your friends gives it the risk to getting out. e.g. Polar Rose, which I really like and see lots of potential in, has a Firefox extension that allows you to tag people in images. The problem was that you could do that in Flickr, in pictures ment for you, and Polar Rose would then grab the exact image, which is not under privacy control as only the HTML/PHP files are, not the JPEGs themselves. This is just one example of where it could go wrong. They either already fixed it or are on their way to fix it by seeing if they can see the page that the image was found on for example.

This is just one example though why the privcay concerns are valid. Above that, you will never have one system where everybody is in. I will not find all my friends via it, and with my real life friends probably very few. For the geeks among them a twitter message is enough to get a meeting ;)

So there it goes on the record. I don’t believe in automated LBS that publish my whereabouts. I do believe 100% in e.g. doing a search and factoring in locality, or similar things. I am doing something for the local/services market anyway.

Why we love the iPhone

Business, Wireless June 10, 2008 Leave a comment

That is really the question. I presume T-Mobile in Germany will launch their prices soon. I would presume the 8GB version going for 49, 99, 149, 199 EURs and the 16GB for 149, 199, 249, 299 EURs dependent on contract, which is actually already the case for the 8GB version. And don’t come with me with the idea that his Steveness said that they will all go for $199, $299 max, because the 8GB would be cheaper, and the 16GB too, just being more expensive with other contract. I am actually wondering if Apple did not let T-Mobile in Germany try out the rebate system to see what would happen, and at 99 EURs the 8GB version probably sold very well. (Update: might be wrong. see here for UK prices which start with free. My 2nd Assumption, subtract 100 EURs from all my above prices.)
Anyway, back to the subject why we love the iPhone. I love Michael’s post “I am a Member of the Cult of iPhone” where he said some very valid things. I actually presume the Apple brand managers want to kiss his feet. First quote:

Apple is about elegance, design, and potential, and we love them for it.

Especially the potential is an important term here. But on to and another one:

I love the iPhone for the same reason I love technology in general, and loved Disneyland as a child – it drives my imagination and makes me wonder what kind of magic to expect next. Also, it just works.

This instantly made Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pop into my head, a theory about how people are motivated. It splits down our needs in different levels, and I’ll try to look at them from the perspective of a phone. Remember that the first level has to be fulfilled for the second to have any effect.

  1. Physical Needs: (e.g. working conditions, housing, wage, …) The phone has to work. There choosing a good carrier helped because you have superior voice quality here at T-Mobile for example.
  2. Safety: (security in job, health insurance, …) We want it to work in a year still and don’t want to think that we made the wrong choice. Apple made sure they are seen as in the forefront of technology. And remember this is all touchy feely, because it might lack a video camera mode but most people don’t use that yet.
  3. Social: (sports, parties, open communications, …) They made the device into something to talk about. It’s so flashy that you want to carry it around and show it to your friends.
  4. Esteem: (Regular positive feedback, prestigious job titles, …) I feel good about myself, because there is nothing better out there, and it just freaking works, and fast at that.
  5. Self-actualisation: (challenging, encouraging, can structure own work) This is actually what is coming with the next version, iPhone 2.0. It allows you to tailor your phone.

Now the thing is that Nokia understood that self-actualisation bit from the getgo, and physical needs and security where covered at all time. The problem is that the world changed and now security includes “can I watch videos on it” or “can I surf the web with it” and the iPhone just feels more like it can do that. On top of that Apple is the clear Master at the Social and Esteem part of it all. Nokia is now crumbling because they are missing the middle. I am still holding on to my shares tightly because they move huge volumes and will continue to do so, but for the digerati, a fully well shaped motivational pyramid is important and I want mine to be nicely shaped too.
update 2: See here for some verey good comments. The features as such are not revolutionary. Yes, the Nokia N95 that I have in my pocket can do more than the iPhone can. The problem is that many aren’t there as a need but as something to brag about and that is not something that you can do with the N95.

iPhone 2.0 – Specs, Price, more

Business June 3, 2008 Comments: 4

The rumors are going wild, and I can understand. The latest is coming from Cult of Mac and I’d like to add a few points.
The iPhone sells here in Germany for 99 EURs. Yes. 99 EURs. It’s the small version and only with the big contract (89 EURs a month, 2 years fixed) but that’s the price. The new phone will surely have 3G, which means UMTS and as it is a new phone it will have HSDPA, which is like improved UMTS. There are already rumors of speeds of 40 mbits/s and this is actually nothing tooo special either. It’s called HSDP+ and the standard just gets to that speed. Of course there are not many if any phone out yet with that chip, but more importantly, there is no single network I know of that supports those speeds yet. I seriously doubt that AT&T will have a full HSDP+ upgrade, but we will see what happens there.
GPS is probably just something you put in there because you can, batteries always get better so that should have better performance too. With memory becoming cheaper that will increase too. Ok, understood.
Now to the price. I doubt the price will change but a large problem is that in the US you can just buy the iPhone and then still “need” a contract with AT&T. Giving a big subsidy here is something that will most likely get AT&T a lot bigger of a share of the full iPhones out there because not so many will be jail-braked. Here in Germany we already have subsidies and it might be that they are pushing those higher, meaning that also the big iPhone will get some subsidies. Currently only the small one has them, probably because it doesn’t sell so well. With the new one coming out, and contracts being around 90 EURs a month, I see no problem with T-Mobile giving a 300-500 EUR extra. Might be that the 200 pounds/eurs/dollars is for a small version though. The networks know the value of an iPhone user now, so they will do their best to get them.
So all the rumors seem likely I have to say. I just wish they fully open it up and let you use the phone in any network.

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