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I've moved this blog to my main consulting and executive coaching website:  www.curtisguilbot.com

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Thanks, everyone!

The future is in the Air

Google and Apple have similar ideas about the future: web-based, or "cloud computing."

For Google, that means applications (apps) in the cloud, and a hardware-agnostic infrastructure, emphasizing utility over aesthetics.

For Apple, it means constant connectivity, though less emphasis on working in the cloud. Rather, Apple is hoping that you'll always have an Internet connection, so that you can instantly, impulsively buy things from the iTunes Store (iTS) and the new Mac App Store (MAS).

Apps on the MAS are cheaper that similar versions sold in boxes and DVDs, and Apple allows you to pick and choose the apps, the same way that iTunes lets you choose your own singles instead of buying the whole album on CD. For example, if you don't want to spend $80 to buy the entire iLife '11 suite, you can purchase only GarageBand for $14.99 via the Mac App store, and download it straight to your computer.

Six years ago, Apple cornered the market on flash RAM by striking long-term deals with two key suppliers.  It looked like another Jobs vanity move at the time, as investors wondered, "C'mon! How many iPods can you possibly sell?" About 40 million. Since then, Apple has released flash-based iPods, iPhones, and iPads, and... the MacBook Air, a flash-based laptop.  Guess Jobs had a vision, after all.

There is no DVD or CD drive on a MacBook Air computer, just as there is no external storage (SD card slots) on iPhone, iPods, or iPads.  To get apps onto one of these devices, you must buy them from the iTunes Store. While you can currently install software from a disc onto a MacBook Air, it's a pain, requiring another Mac computer, or an external USB DVD drive, and who has one of those laying around?  Why would Apple make it so hard?  Because it's the future.

Jobs is clearly positioning Apple to be the leader in streaming software, such as the kind available on the Mac App Store.  Successful software makers' biggest problem has always been not piracy, but license abuse.  Customers buy one disc, then install it on several computers, usually in violation of the "one computer per disc" license (though some companies do allow multiple installs).

What better way to enforce the "one install per computer" rule than by making disc installation impossible?  That, dear readers, is where Apple is going. And you can be sure other computer makers will try to follow, as soon as they can figure out how.  My guess is that Google or Amazon, both of whom already have online software stores, will come to the rescue, offering their infrastructure and brand names to desperate hardware makers, in exchange for some hefty revenue splits, and possibly some Google or Amazon-branded hardware deals, much like the Amazon Kindle or Google's Nexus phones allowed them to compete (a little) against Apple's hardware domination.

Apple has already succeeded in this controlled installation model with it's iPhone/iPad/iPod line, by limiting software installation to what you can find on the iTunes Store (unless you Jailbreak the device, in which case there are more options).

So while the future is in the clouds, Steve Jobs sees it as a way to sell more hardware.  Google sees it as a way to sell more advertising.  Both could sell their infrastructure and storage services nicely.  Where does that leave HP, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, and even Microsoft?  Up in the air.

Google obsoletes Amazon with Google eBook store

A year ago, I wrote that Google was maneuvering for a scrap with Amazon.  Today, they dropped the hammer.

Google announced it's own book store, with the stated aim of "buy anywhere, read anywhere."  The books are delivered as proprietary-formatted DRM eBooks, or as PDF or ePUB files. Reader software is available for Web browsers, Apple's iPhones/iPads/iPods, Android devices, and the Sony e-reader and the Nook, Barnes & Noble's answer to Amazon's Kindle.

As an avid reader (and e-reader), this comes as both good news and bad news.  The good news is that more competition drives innovation, ubiquity, and value to consumers up, while driving marginal prices down. The bad news is that it means more Format Wars- multiple book titles for multiple reader clients on multiple devices, some probably incompatible with each other.  I think this latter is short-term pain, though; may the best technology win!

But even more interesting to me is the strategic chess game being played by Google, which has now pitted itself squarely against Microsoft, Apple, and now, Amazon, three of the biggest players in the tech industry.  Google competes against Steve Balmer's Microsoft in the areas of search (Google vs. Bing), office productivity software (MS-Office vs. Google Docs), email (Hotmail vs. Gmail), and various other, less important offerings.

Google competes against Apple in the areas of mobile operating systems and devices (Apple's iOS vs. Android), and personalized "cloud computing" (Apple's MobileMe vs. Gmail/G-Calendar/G-Contacts/G-Docs/Picassa).  Google also launched a warning shot over the Facebook bow with it's much-maligned Google Buzz, now rumored to be morphing into something called Google Me.

And now Amazon is in the crosshairs.  Of all the above offerings, this one makes the most sense. The reason is simple:  Google excels at disintermediation. Google's entire purpose is to bypass the gatekeepers (AOL and CompuServe, anyone?), and put consumers directly in touch with what they are searching for.  Why go to Amazon to search for books, when you can just type the title into Google, and get both organic search results and a place to buy it?

Well... not so fast.  Amazon's real value lies more in it's community than it's shopping cart.  Most of us go to Amazon because we expect to read reviews from other consumers, which can help us make a buy/pass decision.  While there are some abuses, such as authors writing shill reviews for their own titles, for the most part, the community reviews work extraordinarily well, both for books and other products that Amazon sells (usually as a middle man).  So the question is:  can Google co-opt the reviews aspect by building a solid community of it's own?

Maybe. Google tried this with the less-than-successful Google Buzz offering, which limps along, but barely. If they can, expect Amazon to shift it's strategic focus to building out it's cloud computing Web Services like S3 and Jungle Disk, but even there, it's rushing headlong into Google's fortified beachhead.

On the other hand, Amazon owns the online retail mindshare for most shoppers. E-Bay has made a dent for adventurous bargain-seekers, but that's a different market. As Facebook demonstrated to Google, it takes more than a free service to win over consumers.  So, if Google does steal Amazon's thunder, it won't happen overnight. It will take a few years to build the community reviews and product base to critical mass; but with Google's massive infrastructure and hardware channel sales partners, it could happen.

The prime innovators continue to be Google and Apple, which each have similar, but strongly differentiated strengths. Apple, with it's elegant hardware, slick user interfaces, and "walled gardens," is the premium price brand. Google, with it's mostly free-but-functional aesthetic and advertising-driven model, is the cheap and frugal choice.  Each have stakes in the other's camp, though.  Google offers premium services for small business and enterprise customers, and those wishing to buy extra storage, while Apple launched iAd, an interactive mobile ad service, similar to Google's AdMob.  For my money, Google and Apple are the ones to watch.

So, it took a year, but looks like we had it right here at Easy Tech Zealot.  Oh, and notice who we're not talking about?

Best Buy fired this man?!

I'm sorry, but this is hilarious, Apple zealot though I am.  Best Buy, apparently, disagrees, since they fired the video's creator, a BB employee.  See if you can figure out why (I can't).



I think the Stephen Hawking voice emulator deserves a Webby. Or at least a Golden Globe.

Digital pen of my dreams

I.R.I.S.' new digital pen looks promising. Writes on regular paper, transmits to a small bluetooth receiver with flash memory and USB port for later connection to your computer, captures data on the screen (when connected) in what looks to be real-time. AND it has Mac drivers! W00t!

I can't wait for one of my early-adopter friends to buy one of these, and tell me if it works!  (Dr. Kai, I'm looking at you!)

Facebook and mobile phone Quiz scams

Image courtesy of Techcrunch

Before anyone sends another virtual drink/flower/gift/gerbil on Facebook, please read this article from Techcrunch. Ditto with mobile phone quizzes.  You may suddenly find yourself tapped for $25 per month bill for the rest of your life!  Or until you cancel your cell phone plan.  Either way, it's beyond annoying.

I decline all invitations to play games on Facebook, accept or send any gifts, take any quizzes, or basically, do anything other than blog and post pictures and video. It's not because I don't appreciate your gifts of electrons, my friends.  It's because the fine print of ALL of those applications- it's right there when you confirm it's okay to install the app- says "You give the publisher of this application permission to ravage your public and private contacts, contacts you've linked to on other applications (such as your Gmail or Yahoo address books), and any information you've posted on Facebook, and do whatever they want with it."  Basically.

In other words, so that I can send you an electronic beer, I give you permission to spam me, sell my email address to other spammers, and do the same for every single person in my address book.   All of this for a beer with no buzz included.  Ah, the price of friendship has grown cheap, indeed, in the Internet era.

For example, Farmville, which is very popular on Facebook, requires you to consent to this statement when you "Allow" the game access to your account:

Allowing FarmVille access will let it pull your profile information, photos, your friends' info, and other content that it requires to work.

If you click through a few times, to the games' privacy page,

Due to our contractual obligations with these third parties and the need to share information to deliver and support the Service, we cannot provide you with the opportunity to opt-out of sharing information (whether Personally Identifiable Information or other information) with these third parties.

An electron beer could end up costing you $240 per year.  Good reason to stay sober.

Microsoft on iTunes: "We were smoked"

This is an interesting peak behind the curtain at The Great Oz (Microsoft, circa 2003). Founder Bill Gates and product manager Jim Allchin admitted that Apple caught them unawares- again- and wondered how and why the record companies would let something like that happen.

Even more telling, Gates urges his team to "move quick to both match and do stuff better" than Apple in the music space. Seven years later? The Zune. And Zune Marketplace. Actually, the Zune is a good device, and TZM has certain advantages over iTunes, including a subscription model, for those who prefer it, albeit an expensive one. Yet the Zune has a tiny fraction of a market completely dominated by Apple, in a role-reversal of the desktop OS market, where MS is the 800 lb. gorilla.

It is good that Gates and company recognized a problem. Not so good that, after 7 years, they are nowhere near a leadership position in that market.

This is an apocryphal story akin to Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), who, in 1977 declared “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” MS has sleepwalked through much of the last 2o years, relying on it's massive installed user base and gobs of cash instead of innovation and superb execution. In the lightning-paced world of technology, it may be their undoing.


Full text of the disclosed emails follows here, courtesy of Techcrunch:

Apple tablet? Oui

L'interview politique de Jean-Pierre Elkabbach
by Europe1fr

MocoNews reports that French mobile network Orange France's Deputy CEO Stephane Richard confirmed the existence and imminent release of the Apple iSlate.

At 6:15 in the video, you can hear the following exchange, in French. Nothing out of context; this is the context.

Jean Pierre Elkabbach: According to Le Point, your partner Apple will launch a Tablet...

Stéphane Richard: Yes.

Jean Pierre Elkabbach: ...with a webcam...

Stéphane Richard: Yes.

Jean Pierre Elkabbach: ...would Orange users benefit from this?

Stéphane Richard: Sure! They are going to benefit from the web cam, certainly we will be able to, in effect, transmit images in real time. We are going to modernize, in essence, the video phone that we knew a few years ago... the size of the resolution, and the quality of the resolution will be better, and it will be available to all in France.

Start saving your pennies!

Nexus One Launches

Steve, this is your loyal Apple customer base. Um, don't panic or anything, but, you might want to take a look at the new Google Phone. It's, um... well, like... wow. You, you might want to check it out. I'm just saying.

Wow.

What MS has been up to

The Courier is Microsoft's entry into tablet computing, albeit with a twist. It's not a tablet, it's a booklet. A hinged, double-screened notebook computer with a combination touchscreen and pen stylus user interface. It looks sexy as hell, and this demonstration video illustrates how it will likely work.

I love this! I've been ragging on Microsoft pretty hard for the last couple of years, and with good reason, frankly. But this is great news for consumers, and maybe, along with the advent of the new Windows 7 operating system, and the Bing search engine, could keep Microsoft relevant, even if they are lagging seriously behind in the smartphone arena.

What's more, it could keep Apple, Google, and Amazon on their toes. It does seem like MS is targeting a very different user need with the Courier. I think most people are expecting the new Apple iSlate to compete more with the Amazon Kindle, and it's own iPod Touch, than with HP and Dell's tablet offerings.

I can't wait for Christmas 2010!

Apple iSlate vs. Amazon Kindle: eBook Steel Cage Match!?

The Apple rumor mill is now projecting that all the activity around an overgrown iPhone-like device will not be an Apple "netbook", or tablet computer, but rather an eBook reader, set to compete with the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook. Supposedly called the iSlate (yeesh...), the Apple reader will have a separate part of the App store dedicated to eBooks for the device.

This makes a lot of sense, in the wake of certain publishers who have released their book publications as iPhone apps, rather than as PDFs, Kindle Books (.azw format), or .mobi (MobiPocket format). The advantage of this for Apple is that it leverages their current iPhone/iTunes Store momentum and infrastructure, while maintaining ease-of-use for customers. It does, however, mean more VHS/Betamax format wars for consumers.

Right now, it looks like Mobipocket and other formats, used by open-book readers like Sony, the Nook, Philips', and others, are fighting an uphill battle, at least in the U.S. The Big 3 in the electronic publishing industry are PDF, MobiPocket, Kindle Books. But even though an iPhone app is not really a file format, is is a method of delivery, which is ultimately what the file formats allow. Amazon and the iTunes Store offer convenience of delivery, sync, and portability, while PDFs offer print options and ubiquity due to a 15-year head start. Since Amazon purchased Stanza, buying books from the Fictionwise book store has become more disjointed and harder to do. IPhone app-books, in contrast, are becoming easier and easier to download. Another advantage for iTS users is that they can purchase their audiobooks from the same place, to the same devices. Amazon's Kindle does "read" certain books to you, but reviews of the auto-reader are mixed.

No doubt Android (Google's smartphone OS) will be incorporating app-books into it's store soon, if it has not already. That, together with Google's recent eBook moves and it's ginormous search-engine audience, could be the beginning of a slow death of Amazon's initial raison d'etre. I foresee an Apple vs. Google fight to the death in most consumer information markets, including eBooks.

Good thing Amazon has leveraged it's cloud computing and fulfillment infrastructure into separate businesses. Wonder what Microsoft is up to?

Austin shares it's Smarts

Austin has teamed with German auto maker Daimler-Chrysler to debut a new type of "company car" for city workers. The program will use the company's very popular, and very eco-friendly SmartforTwo cars, which are itty-bitty little things, and go for, like days, on mere lighter fluid. Or something like that. Workers get to walk up to any car that's parked, swipe a card, get in and drive off. Kind of like cops do with their cruisers.

It's not quite the Singapore solution of charging people (a lot of) extra money to drive into the city instead of using public transport, but since we don't have a tremendous amount of public transport anywhere in Texas, this is a pretty clever second.

I love that Austin is at the forefront of international innovation. It really is a forward-thinking and fun place to live. Of course, there is a downside.

Sign documents on the go from your iPhone

Zosh iPhone application video demo from Joshua Kerr on Vimeo.

Zosh has just released an iPhone app that allows you to sign PDF documents. From your iPhone. And date them.

I'm sure there will be privacy concerns, which the company should address through a well-crafted and well-implemented user service agreement. But this really is technology that is long overdue, and is the implementation of e-signature technology that we've been expecting since the year 2000, when President Clinton signed that act into law.

Goodbye, fax machines. And good riddance! (J2, and fax makers everywhere, are you paying attention?)

Google Nav kicks payware apps in the nads

Google just announced a FREE beta version of a turn-by-turn mobile GPS navigation app, with voice and text input. Right now, it's just for Android OS 2.0; iPhoners will have to wait. (Incidentally, this is another reason that, contrary to my earlier post, Android phones will gain momentum, ugly though they may be.)

Attention Garmin, Tom-Tom, and AT&T Nav: "My name is Google Montoya. Prepare to die."

GMusic? Nooks and crannies

It sounds like the name of a new rapper, but Gmusic (Google Audio?) is the next service to bring legitimacy to Android, and another nail in Amazon's coffin. Searching for music by

Along with this one.

Google (almost) launches eBook store

Um, as I was saying...

In 2010, Google will put the hurt on Amazon's book-selling business with Google Editions. Amazon should still do okay (for a while) as an online department store and cloud storage provider, though. Borders.com and BN.com are DOA.

Talk about blowing a lead... yeeesh.

Fix for duplicate iPhone 3.0 Calendar contacts

After updating to iPhone OS 3.0, I noticed several duplicated Calendar events and Contacts. I found this fix, which works like a champ.

Note: choose "Delete from my iPhone" when you delete the MobileMe account. This will wipe out your contacts and calendar until you re-establish the MM link, but it's the only way to bounce all the dupes on your phone at once.

Zeo Sleep Thingy

I don't know what this is, exactly, but I'm pretty sure that I need one.

Whoops!

From the You Mean to Tell Me... department, MS deals another blow to their fans, just after releasing cool new mobile and desktop operating systems.

I swear to God, if it was not for the fact that Microsoft is walking around with $60 billion cash in it's pocket, I'd say this was dead company walking.

iPhone or Android? Place your bets!

Apple just bought Placebase, the private label mapping company behind Policy Maps. This is yet another indication that Apple and Google, once united against Microsoft, have begun to creep apart.

As a small team of fledgling iPhone app developers, this leads me to wonder whether to bet on Apple's iPhone or Google's Android as the main platform for our wares. Google is ultra-capitalized, but Apple knows hardware, and the company has been around almost as long as Microsoft. While the iPhone owns the smart-phone mindshare now, Google is making steady, quiet inroads, just as it has always done- with search, with advertising, with Gmail, with Google Maps, with Google Docs, and more. It's hard to bet against either one.

The futurist in me wants to bet on Google. But the iPhone is just so damn sexy! How can anyone resist it? *sigh...* I'm going with Apple, for now.

Any takers?