Adobe folds

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Adobe is not going to war with Apple and will abandon its code translation tools. Hence no avalanche of Flash developers suddenly being able to target iPhone/iPad. Funny, I thought Apple updating its terms would lead to an uprising that would ultimately lead to mobs breaking the walls of their walled garden.

Microsoft couldn’t even ship a  media player with Windows without getting slapped with an anti-monopoly fine from the EU commission but Apple can apparently do whatever they want even though they are the undisputed leader in their smartphone niche.

But perhaps Adobe’s defensive statement “the iPhone isn’t the only game in town” isn’t just about sour grapes. It really isn’t. When a close friend and a devoted iPhone addict recently admitted that my Droid (Milestone in the EU) felt markedly faster in every way, I saw that as a turn of the tide. Developers won’t be voluntarily submitting to Jobs’ despotic rule when they have an alternative that is no longer “just” viable but actually superior in some ways.

Is Google Buzz Catching On?

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At launch time I used to have 2-3 updates daily in my Buzz. These days, without extending my follow list, I get maybe 25. Sitting there, a real-time component in a decidedly asynchronous Gmail.

Making assumptions based on anecdotal evidence is rarely a good idea. Still, Buzz could be seen as a moderate success – simply thanks to its distribution model.

With a 100+ million users monthly, you can push a lot of mediocre stuff and still get a log of usage.

Long term, though, I don’t see how Google could take it up a league to compete with Twitter. Not unless they take if off Gmail.

It lives inside Gmail so that it gets traction as a result. But an inbox is the last place where I’d want to check for updates. E-mail is broken; it’s either sporadic (for the lucky ones) or overwhelming (the rest of us).

You are scared of inbox because it usually means bad news (or more work – but that’s bad news, too). If you weren’t, there wouldn’t be GDD methods such as Inbox Zero. Whereas real-time messaging is where you go for information and fun, something you’ve unlearned to expect from e-mail.

Taken off Gmail, Buzz could be a technological rival to Twitter but I think that ship has sailed. Unless they can come up with a new model for real-time messaging,  I think Buzz catching up is largely due to its distribution strength and not a sign of an adoption based on new, unique value.

Google catching the tablet frenzy

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Does Google’s purported entry into the tablet market make it a viable market?

With the iPad being widely perceived as a trying to reverse the decline of the print media – making it essentially a book reader with net access – I side with the pundits who concluded that it’s too big to be useful as a  carry-on device and too constrained to serve as an all-purpose computer.

Whatever deals Apple can strike with publishers, though, Google can get better ones. On Google Books, you can already search over 7 million titles. And Google’s settlement with the Association of American Publishers can open doors to many millions more.

Thus if Google delivers its own tablet/book reader, we are likely to get not a selection of high-brow subscription options but potentially a Book Market with an unlimited catalog and very interesting pricing.

This being an utter speculation of course, I still think Google is far better equipped to create this market. Kindle was the first step but it’s just a book reader, making its $259 price tag seem big. iPad is sexier but Apple doesn’t have as much clout with publishers as Google does. Google just might get this right.

When it’s not time to share

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… then it’s not time to get a new phone.

It dawned on me, with the unveiling of Microsoft’s Kin One and Two, that if I can’t be bothered with a stream of Facebook updates, I cannot justify buying a new phone.

This image from a review on Engadget tells it all:

I mean, if I don’t have these gals on my Facebook and Myspace and Twitter, I am not cool enough to get this phone, right? So I wonder:

  • What this phone would look like if I turned the social functionality OFF.
  • What it could do for me if my important friends were not on Facebook.
  • How I could connect to friends who aren’t on approved social networks

This is not a critique of the Microsoft phone. There’s nothing wrong with it per se.

My beef is: on the web, I can choose to ignore Facebook and still be social when I want to. The phones, connected as they have become, force me to go through channels.

I don’t have my friends on Facebook; I have my friends and some of them happen to be there. For those who aren’t and who are, for instance, “just” blogging, well tough: I probably won’t have them on my homescreen holding an ice-cream cone and smiling like they just won the lottery.

For phones to become 1st class citizens of the Web, they need to be aware of it. Facebook is not the whole internet.

Chrome OS will succeed – in your bathroom

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You may wonder what world do the pundits live in – it’s not the same one occupied by you and me:

[W]hat about my son who is in high school. By the time Chrome OS comes along in big numbers he’ll be in college. Why take a $1,000 computer to class? Couldn’t he do everything he needs to do on a low-cost computer that’s lightweight, replaceable, uses low power, and just uses the web? Absolutely!

I suppose if he pursued a degree in feminist studies, yeah, maybe a Google OS (read: online apps exclusively) could carry him towards it. Last time I heard, Mathematica wasn’t on the Web.

Scoble says that Google OS is NOT about killing Microsoft. He predicts a new range of utility computers you’ll put in the kitchen and the bathroom. But would you take that kind of device to college? Other than amuse you in the dorm bathroom?

Google wants to eliminate the need for desktop OS, or at least make it irrelevant. They can’t sell ads through desktop apps. But since Microsoft’s dominance on PCs isn’t any less absolute than it was 10 years ago, Google has to invent its own market to compete outside the browser.

Bathroom PCs: why not; for $50 or less, I’d take a couple. There, Google OS may have already won since there’s nobody else competing there. Displacing Windows on college students laptops? I don’t think so.

The OS Opportunity – Long Gone

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Every now and then we hear the Web is the new OS. But is it big enough, fast enough, smart enough?

To the extent that you can make do with a MacBook, Google Docs, and Twitter while sipping late in a hip geeky cafe, yes, your Use Cases are covered. Their list is still growing.

Assuming for the sake of the argument that the Web will indeed render the Operating System irrelevant, why talking the PC manufacturers into ditching Microsoft and building their own shit?

Extrapolating the (questionable so far) success of the cute little darling Litl, which is a utility gadget for browsing the web while shaving (screenshot #3 at the homepage), the writer at Daring Fireball says:

If a small startup can build the Litl, why couldn’t a big company like Dell or Sony? People today still love HP calculators made 30 or even 40 years ago. Has HP made anything this decade that anyone will remember fondly even five years from now? Inkjet printers?

If Palm can create WebOS for pocket-sized computers — replete with an email client, calendaring app, web browser, and SDK — why couldn’t these companies make something equivalent for full-size computers?

Indeed, the very same companies who grew big in the PC ecosystem precisely because it is an ecosystem built on ONE platform – Windows – should now abandon it and create their own, each of them?

That reminds be of the bizarre decision of Samsung to develop their own smartphone OS, Bada, and put it side-to-side with their Android offering. That Google pulled it off with Android is only a testament to the messy state of mobile operating systems, not a challenge to do the same on PCs.

It boils down to this:

  1. Either PC OS is irrelevant and Web will overtake everything, rendering billions of dollars invested in creating a brand new OS a wasted investment, or
  2. The desktop still matters, in which case good luck creating the partner infrastructure Microsoft has been building for the past 25 years or so.

Either way you are screwed. The OS wars are being re-fought on mobiles but there is no undoing the past quarter century of PC history.

The importance of being earnest

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You can’t screw around and expect to make it BIG TIME.

What I’ve seen today at the WebExpo 2009 was just that: a somewhat serious attempt at delivering a talk, or a pitch, with hope that it’ll stick. And I liked all of them; after all, I wanted to learn from what they had to say. The trouble is, anybody can be “kind-of” successful after giving it some effort, but: if you’re about to make any effort at all, why don’t you give it your best? How about knocking some socks off?

Easier said than done, I readily admit.

What prompted me to blog this was the talk by Peldi about his story of bootstrapping a ‘successful’ microISV. I put successful in quotes because Peldi is, of course, a mini-Microsoft in his own right; a wildly successful entrepreneur that we can’t really take any advice from without being misled. However, what was worth following and imitating and what could truly benefit every one of the hopefuls in the room was this: his passion and seriousness.

You could miss the seriousness because he was so funny but it was there. No screwing around; focus. Determination.

We in the tech business are easily distracted by the latest fad and acronym but clearly what counts isn’t just technical savvy but putting all things required to make it work together. Values, learning, passion, skills, you name, you’ve got to have it – and want to be good in it. It takes some serious work and concentration.

Passion glues it together. Not just wanting to ‘make it’ but actually wanting to do something great. Something valuable.

Bottom line for me was, testing and trying it out makes no sense. Dive in and do all you can; that’s what’s going to make the difference. A useful lesson indeed.

The elusive Twitter business plan

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Could it be true? Twitter is working on a paid plan, say some. Almost hard to believe, given the overall consensus that Twitter is never going to make a dime.

You know how it is with consensus, though – as soon as people reach it, someone proves them wrong.

Given the questionable (based on mixed reviews) direction Facebook has taken, should we expect “premium treatment” to be given by Twitter to its paying subscribers? Such as the ability to “tweet” into your stream based on your profile, interests, and activity so far? So far we can only speculate.

One thing is certain: there is already a lot of commercial activity going on Twitter; I get followed by at least 2-3 consultants every day. Twitter has to introduce some kind of system into the game or else I’m afraid its service will become another stinking ad channel where 99% of all content is pure, unadulterated crap.

Facebook: more relevant than TV, still a long way to go

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I like Harley-Davidson motorbikes. I do not own one but like to look at them. With Facebook now integrating people and businesses into one content stream, I do hear a lot from Harley – being a “fan” of their page.

Specifically, I got plenty of post taken at SXSW where HD was present.

Harley-Davidson staff at SXSW

Harley-Davidson staff at SXSW

One could make the argument that since I pre-qualified as a person interested in Harley-Davidson bikes, their posts – not primarily commercial in nature – will be relevant to me. And to the extent that I care about this particular brand a lot more than, say, Ariel or Tide, they are. Harley can communicate with me in a way that is certainly more personalized than a random TV ad.

Why, then, do I have to fight the impulse to click the “X” mark above a post they made to get rid of it, anyway? And by doing so, banishing them from my newsfeed forthwith?

Their posts are not quite-relevant to me because I am not buying a bike NOW. They are not actionable. That is true for many updates coming from the people I know, but these are my friends; I let them in. Harley-Davidson is not my friend.

Advertising is most relevant when it’s part of the conversation going on in my head right now. And so for these messages to speak to me, they would have to come to me based on my action, an impulse that I would send, something along the lines, “it’s warm outside, sun is shining, pity I don’t have a bike”. THEN a post by Harley-Davidson would make a very good sense indeed.

Again: I would drive the conversation. I would decide what is relevant, where and when.

The direction Facebook has taken is certainly a good one, compared to the old ways of advertising. Hopefully the next step will involve taking the user’s initiative and intent into account, and responding in a way that is focused on what the person is thinking or doing at the time.

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