Doing Words

When “seamless” seams fray, somehow it hurts more

// June 18th, 2008 // 0 Comments // Mobile, software

iTunes and iPhone: don’t know what this means but know i don’t need it right now

Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy

I don’t know what this error message means when I sync my iPhone with my contacts and addressbook on my Mac, but know i don’t need it right now.

I especially don’t need to go fishing through Apple discussion forums and enthusiast groups, trying to separate wild guesses from knowledgeable advice, trying several different things until one thing works.

And I especially don’t need to accidentally delete, duplicate or triplicate all my events and contacts as a side-effect of trying to fix the problem.

Oh, woe is me! But an unsynced iPhone is like a Motorolla Razr with a nicer interface – it cannot remain so for long.

Way too many timezone settings in my life

// January 23rd, 2008 // 0 Comments // Mobile, platform

Way too many timezone settings in my life
Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy.

Praise Jobs I have an iPhone now so I have one fewer gadget in my bag when travelling, but still, I’m sick of changing timezones on different devices and applications.

I live a moderately-wired life: my wife and I share iCal calendars, I refer to my schedule on my iPhone and Mac during the day, and I work at bluepulse.com where we use Google Calendar to manage office schedules.

Is it too much to ask OpenID and the online identity industry to include ‘current time zone’ in the data they store on my behalf? I foresee a future in which we need only tell one device or service that they’ve changed timezone, and all their devices and services are updated.

Meanwhile, I just need to forget to change timezones on one device or service and events start appearing at the wrong times in one or more places. If I don’t notice, and then sync the devices again, it’s way too easy to end up with two copies of each event, and then it takes a lot of searching and deleting – event-by-event – to bring things back to an even keel.

Imagine telling bluepulse or <twitter that you’re now on Pacific Time and knowing that your phone, calendar app and web service will be updated automagically. It’s not utopia, but it’s in the same timezone.

Ringles don’t make me tingle

// September 12th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Mobile, Music, strategy

ARIA’s latest figures show a 47% decline in CD single sales year-on-year.

The only really shocking thing: that so many Australian consumers are still paying through the nose for the physical music product when the identical track is available online for about a third of the price.

Anyway, there’s nothing to wring your hands about (unless you own a CD pressing business) because sales of online digital single tracks increased by 64% in the same period, and at $8.38m in sales revenue is a little more than twice the value of physical single sales. Plenty healthy. Factor in the higher margins at almost every step in online versus physical production, distribution and delivery, and it’s a healthy business to be in, as long as you’re big enough to have a roster of successful artists and at the same time small enough to be able to keep up with the pace and true direction of change.

By “true direction” I mean where the industry is actually going, versus where some believe it can be steered. The former is entirely in the hands of the consumer, influenced by the content offerings available to them, how that content is priced and to what device it is delivered. The latter almost entirely the exclusive domain of large music labels and the industry bodies that serve them.

Evidence of a failure to keep up with the true direction of change: talk of prolonging the life of CD singles by including “ringles” – ringtone versions of the single – on the CD, along with software that will make it “easy” to transfer the ringtone version of the track to a mobile phone.

Please, don’t let’s pretend for a moment that this might have the slightest chance of widespread consumer adoption! Consider the “Sony rootkit” fiascos, and what might need to be installed on the consumer’s PC in order to deliver a ringle from CD drive to handset. Better find a way to provide technical support for Windows ’98, 2000, XP, Vista, OS X and Linux installation issues for product that retails for $5. Don’t even start about what tiny percentage of mobile consumers ever successfully connect their handset to their PC, or want to do so for any reason.

Is it even possible to deliver a software application within the constraints of CD single data storage limits that might have a chance of being compatible with the diverse community of mobile handset operating systems, ringtone file types and carrier locks out there in the marketplace? I don’t like the word “impossible” – it always seems to get me in trouble – but let’s just say I’d be flabbergasted.

The only sensible way to deliver ringtones to mobile handsets is online, and for the majority of mobile consumers, the carrier – not the label, not the handset manufacturer – owns that pipe. No CD single “ringle” is going to influence that in the slightest. Labels: work with the carriers… or maybe acquire them. Carriers are to the future of music what radio broadcasters have been in the past, plus the entire retail supply chain. Getting out of that headlock they have on you is going to take more than a “ringle” or two.

Ringles don’t make me tingle

// September 11th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Mobile, Music, strategy

ARIA’s latest figures show a 47% decline in CD single sales year-on-year.

The only really shocking thing: that so many Australian consumers are still paying through the nose for the physical music product when the identical track is available online for about a third of the price.

Anyway, there’s nothing to wring your hands about (unless you own a CD pressing business) because sales of online digital single tracks increased by 64% in the same period, and at $8.38m in sales revenue is a little more than twice the value of physical single sales. Plenty healthy. Factor in the higher margins at almost every step in online versus physical production, distribution and delivery, and it’s a healthy business to be in, as long as you’re big enough to have a roster of successful artists and at the same time small enough to be able to keep up with the pace and true direction of change.

By “true direction” I mean where the industry is actually going, versus where some believe it can be steered. The former is entirely in the hands of the consumer, influenced by the content offerings available to them, how that content is priced and to what device it is delivered. The latter almost entirely the exclusive domain of large music labels and the industry bodies that serve them.

Evidence of a failure to keep up with the true direction of change: talk of prolonging the life of CD singles by including “ringles” – ringtone versions of the single – on the CD, along with software that will make it “easy” to transfer the ringtone version of the track to a mobile phone.

Please, don’t let’s pretend for a moment that this might have the slightest chance of widespread consumer adoption! Consider the “Sony rootkit” fiascos, and what might need to be installed on the consumer’s PC in order to deliver a ringle from CD drive to handset. Better find a way to provide technical support for Windows ’98, 2000, XP, Vista, OS X and Linux installation issues for product that retails for $5. Don’t even start about what tiny percentage of mobile consumers ever successfully connect their handset to their PC, or want to do so for any reason.

Is it even possible to deliver a software application within the constraints of CD single data storage limits that might have a chance of being compatible with the diverse community of mobile handset operating systems, ringtone file types and carrier locks out there in the marketplace? I don’t like the word “impossible” – it always seems to get me in trouble – but let’s just say I’d be flabbergasted.

The only sensible way to deliver ringtones to mobile handsets is online, and for the majority of mobile consumers, the carrier – not the label, not the handset manufacturer – owns that pipe. No CD single “ringle” is going to influence that in the slightest. Labels: work with the carriers… or maybe acquire them. Carriers are to the future of music what radio broadcasters have been in the past, plus the entire retail supply chain. Getting out of that headlock they have on you is going to take more than a “ringle” or two.

3′s X-Series: I’m underwhelmed…

// March 28th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Mobile, strategy

I know that one day, the competitive forces of economics will make one network operator break from the pack and decide to offer an open, all-you-can-eat, internet and voice plan. They’ll decide it’s better to lose the margins on distinguishing between data and voice than to lose the customer. “OK!” They’ll cry. “Choose whatever browser and apps you want on your phone, just like you do on your computer. Just download and upload your data through our pipes!”

When I read that 3 had launched its X-Series offering here in Australia, I thought maybe that day had arrived. But no, I must wait a little longer. Instead, 3′s X-Series is more of the same mobile superhighway robbery, only this time they’re claiming it’s ‘just like an ISP plan’. Don’t be fooled; it’s nothing of the sort.

Fairfax quotes 3 boss Nigel Dews on this: “It is very similar to broadband pricing consumers know at home today, but in many cases will be much better value.” Bollocks. The Australian X-Series offering would be “like an ISP plan” if your ISP restricted you to one of only four PC models, made its most generous plan $20 per Gb of data, limited the internet sites and software you could use, and then limited your use of that software, capping it to a certain number of minutes per month.

Initially excited to see Skype was one of the apps bundled with the handset, my enthusiasm faded when it became clear that only Skype-to-Skype calls are supported. No Skype-to-PSTN calls. Worse, even your use of Skype-to-Skype is capped, starting at 1,000 minutes per month on the cheapest plan and then 5c a minute thereafter.

Because X-Series plans are in addition to your voice minutes plan, you could quite easily find yourself paying a 5c a minute premium on your usual voice call rate to talk to Skype with someone on their PC using a device designed to place calls more easily and more quickly to their telephone! How attractive is that?

Your use of the other bundled apps and web services (Orb, a file-sharing app, Google search, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger and eBay) is also capped, with a 10c per Mb charge over your cap. Yes, that’s cheaper than other Australian mobile networks. But are the kind of users savvy enough to want a mobile internet plan going to want a walled-garden of apps and web services? Do they need on-deck links to eBay and Google, or will they find that just a tad patronising? Most I know have these services bookmarked in Opera Mobile.

There is an uninspiring range of only four handsets available, omitting SonyEricsson, and surprisingly, not one of the phones supports all of the features and apps offered in X-Series plans. It’s a question of ‘which features can I live without?’ when you come to choose your handset rather than ‘which phone do I most like?’

Finally, the X-Series offering in Australia is considerably worse value than X-Series in other markets. Perhaps 3′s reliance on Telstra to deliver some of the network is to blame, but X-Series is less expensive in Asia and the UK, and their plans are uncapped.

3′s X-Series: I’m underwhelmed…

// March 27th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Mobile, strategy

I know that one day, the competitive forces of economics will make one network operator break from the pack and decide to offer an open, all-you-can-eat, internet and voice plan. They’ll decide it’s better to lose the margins on distinguishing between data and voice than to lose the customer. “OK!” They’ll cry. “Choose whatever browser and apps you want on your phone, just like you do on your computer. Just download and upload your data through our pipes!”

When I read that 3 had launched its X-Series offering here in Australia, I thought maybe that day had arrived. But no, I must wait a little longer. Instead, 3′s X-Series is more of the same mobile superhighway robbery, only this time they’re claiming it’s ‘just like an ISP plan’. Don’t be fooled; it’s nothing of the sort.

Fairfax quotes 3 boss Nigel Dews on this: “It is very similar to broadband pricing consumers know at home today, but in many cases will be much better value.” Bollocks. The Australian X-Series offering would be “like an ISP plan” if your ISP restricted you to one of only four PC models, made its most generous plan $20 per Gb of data, limited the internet sites and software you could use, and then limited your use of that software, capping it to a certain number of minutes per month.

Initially excited to see Skype was one of the apps bundled with the handset, my enthusiasm faded when it became clear that only Skype-to-Skype calls are supported. No Skype-to-PSTN calls. Worse, even your use of Skype-to-Skype is capped, starting at 1,000 minutes per month on the cheapest plan and then 5c a minute thereafter.

Because X-Series plans are in addition to your voice minutes plan, you could quite easily find yourself paying a 5c a minute premium on your usual voice call rate to talk to Skype with someone on their PC using a device designed to place calls more easily and more quickly to their telephone! How attractive is that?

Your use of the other bundled apps and web services (Orb, a file-sharing app, Google search, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger and eBay) is also capped, with a 10c per Mb charge over your cap. Yes, that’s cheaper than other Australian mobile networks. But are the kind of users savvy enough to want a mobile internet plan going to want a walled-garden of apps and web services? Do they need on-deck links to eBay and Google, or will they find that just a tad patronising? Most I know have these services bookmarked in Opera Mobile.

There is an uninspiring range of only four handsets available, omitting SonyEricsson, and surprisingly, not one of the phones supports all of the features and apps offered in X-Series plans. It’s a question of ‘which features can I live without?’ when you come to choose your handset rather than ‘which phone do I most like?’

Finally, the X-Series offering in Australia is considerably worse value than X-Series in other markets. Perhaps 3′s reliance on Telstra to deliver some of the network is to blame, but X-Series is less expensive in Asia and the UK, and their plans are uncapped.

Calling it an iPhone sells it short – it’s a new class of device

// January 10th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Mobile

Good lordy, why does the ground-breaking news always seem to break while I’m away on vacation? Am I taking too many vacations? This time I’m on a ski holiday in Canada when Apple unveils the iPhone, and after skimming the specs and early news reaction, I’m left with the impression that calling it an “iPhone” sells the device way short of its actual capacity. It’s only an “iPhone” in the sense that a laptop is an “iTypewriter.”



For this is not just the “iPod with mobile phone capabilities” device we were all hoping for – it’s something much more powerful and more flexible than anybody (outside the product team and the dealmakers) expected. It’s capable of so much more than just being a phone that I don’t really know how to describe it in 50 words or less, except to say that this device delivers a huge blow (Oliver calls it a “mortal blow“) to other manufacturers in the portable entertainment and handheld computing market, whatever it should be called. In terms of capability and integration it appears to be so far ahead of all the other devices in those categories that it’s as if Steve Jobs travelled back in time from 2020 to announce it today.



It’s got so many cool features, and so many bloggers are going to cover those, and I really need to get off my laptop and go skiing this afternoon. So I won’t cover the obvious stuff. But here’s the shortlist of elements that really caught my eye this morning:

• It runs OS X, which means a unix kernel, and a secure, dependable, stable environment, and great efficiency when it comes to battery life and processor power, if Apple’s laptops are any indication. Remains to be seen how much, if any, the widget versions of the calendar, addressbook, photo etc vary from their desktop equivalents.
  
  
• Could it (or a future version) also run small OS X apps that are not widgets? There’s no information on the chipset and RAM capacity, even in the tech specs. Someone like Endgadget will no doubt break those details in the next few days. Could you run Parallels Desktop on it and run Windows Mobile on that? No reason to do so except to demonstrate to people why the iPhone is so superior to a Windows Mobile gadget. But there are many other apps that would be helpful, particularly instant messenger and VOIP apps (since the iPhone has quad-band GSM and EDGE and WiFi.)
• The phone features integrated tools from Yahoo! and Google, including search and maps. But there’s no mention of an instant messaging client from Yahoo!, Google or Apple, and no mention of VOIP. Is that a concession to Cingular, which has the exclusive rights to sell the device initially, and future carrier deals? Because I don’t see how that’s going to prevent people from running their own VOIP app on the iPhone unless there are undisclosed barriers to doing that we have yet to discover in hands-on use.
• The device syncs with PCs and Macs, but there’s no mention of any cooperation with MSN on this device, and I can well imagine that the gulf between Apple and Microsoft will have deepened with the launch of this device. Microsoft has sunk a lot of cash into trying to build an early lead in mobile communications devices, and it looks to me like Apple has just leapfrogged Microsoft by five years of product maturity with its very first product in the segment.
• The two-finger touch screen user interface is truly ground-breaking, especially when tied to the accelerometer. I love the way you zoom in and out by drawing your thumb and forefinger together and apart. I also like the way the object onscreen ‘bounces’ when you try to drag it past the borders of the screen – nice silent way to indicate there’s nothing more hidden ‘below the fold’.
  
  
• Finally, and least importantly, does it come with an unscratchable crystal face like an expensive watch? Because this thing is all screen, and it’s a touch-screen too, so I’m going to get muffin residue all over it regularly, which I’ll want to wipe off with whatever is readily at hand – not with a fancy soft cloth. And I do NOT want to buy a third-party clear acrylic shell for this thing of beauty like I had to do with my iPod Nano.
  
  

initially in the US only this July

Calling it an iPhone sells it short – it’s a new class of device

// January 9th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Mobile

Good lordy, why does the ground-breaking news always seem to break while I’m away on vacation? Am I taking too many vacations? This time I’m on a ski holiday in Canada when Apple unveils the iPhone, and after skimming the specs and early news reaction, I’m left with the impression that calling it an “iPhone” sells the device way short of its actual capacity. It’s only an “iPhone” in the sense that a laptop is an “iTypewriter.”



For this is not just the “iPod with mobile phone capabilities” device we were all hoping for – it’s something much more powerful and more flexible than anybody (outside the product team and the dealmakers) expected. It’s capable of so much more than just being a phone that I don’t really know how to describe it in 50 words or less, except to say that this device delivers a huge blow (Oliver calls it a “mortal blow“) to other manufacturers in the portable entertainment and handheld computing market, whatever it should be called. In terms of capability and integration it appears to be so far ahead of all the other devices in those categories that it’s as if Steve Jobs travelled back in time from 2020 to announce it today.



It’s got so many cool features, and so many bloggers are going to cover those, and I really need to get off my laptop and go skiing this afternoon. So I won’t cover the obvious stuff. But here’s the shortlist of elements that really caught my eye this morning:

• It runs OS X, which means a unix kernel, and a secure, dependable, stable environment, and great efficiency when it comes to battery life and processor power, if Apple’s laptops are any indication. Remains to be seen how much, if any, the widget versions of the calendar, addressbook, photo etc vary from their desktop equivalents.
  
  
• Could it (or a future version) also run small OS X apps that are not widgets? There’s no information on the chipset and RAM capacity, even in the tech specs. Someone like Endgadget will no doubt break those details in the next few days. Could you run Parallels Desktop on it and run Windows Mobile on that? No reason to do so except to demonstrate to people why the iPhone is so superior to a Windows Mobile gadget. But there are many other apps that would be helpful, particularly instant messenger and VOIP apps (since the iPhone has quad-band GSM and EDGE and WiFi.)
• The phone features integrated tools from Yahoo! and Google, including search and maps. But there’s no mention of an instant messaging client from Yahoo!, Google or Apple, and no mention of VOIP. Is that a concession to Cingular, which has the exclusive rights to sell the device initially, and future carrier deals? Because I don’t see how that’s going to prevent people from running their own VOIP app on the iPhone unless there are undisclosed barriers to doing that we have yet to discover in hands-on use.
• The device syncs with PCs and Macs, but there’s no mention of any cooperation with MSN on this device, and I can well imagine that the gulf between Apple and Microsoft will have deepened with the launch of this device. Microsoft has sunk a lot of cash into trying to build an early lead in mobile communications devices, and it looks to me like Apple has just leapfrogged Microsoft by five years of product maturity with its very first product in the segment.
• The two-finger touch screen user interface is truly ground-breaking, especially when tied to the accelerometer. I love the way you zoom in and out by drawing your thumb and forefinger together and apart. I also like the way the object onscreen ‘bounces’ when you try to drag it past the borders of the screen – nice silent way to indicate there’s nothing more hidden ‘below the fold’.
  
  
• Finally, and least importantly, does it come with an unscratchable crystal face like an expensive watch? Because this thing is all screen, and it’s a touch-screen too, so I’m going to get muffin residue all over it regularly, which I’ll want to wipe off with whatever is readily at hand – not with a fancy soft cloth. And I do NOT want to buy a third-party clear acrylic shell for this thing of beauty like I had to do with my iPod Nano.
  
  

initially in the US only this July

Meanwhile, Bluepulse 2.0 goes off!

// December 5th, 2006 // 0 Comments // Mobile, Startup

Wow, serves me right for going to the gym this morning without checking my email first. When I went to bed last night Oliver at Mobilecrunch hadn’t yet run with the news of the Bluepulse 2.0 launch and everything was quiet. Then Oliver ran his news item, with a headline including “…may be the ultimate mobile media platform”, it got mentioned on Techcrunch by Natali and with that dynamic duo of power-packed blogging exposure, everything pretty much went nuts.

Thanks for your long-standing faith in the platform and your support of the team at Bluepulse, Oliver, you rock!

Digg dug us, Technorati rated us, and by the time I was done staving off the beer gut for another day, lots of people were downloading bluepulse to their phones.

And then, when even more people started trying to download it, we hit overload. Think: servers making grinding noises, green lights on panels turning amber and then orange, a wisp of steam escaping from a rattling waste pipe, the smell of hot metal and burning cable ties… I’m exaggerating, of course – these days when machinery gets overloaded, it’s disappointingly quiet. In reality, the only action to be seen is Ben and the dev boys flipping from terminal to terminal, shaking fists in the air, slapping foreheads against monitors, and begging for more capacity.

It’s not like we didn’t anticipate significantly more demand than usual – we added many times more capacity than we’d had prior to the 2.0 launch. But it was not enough. Everybody wants to try Bluepulse!

The scramble is on now to add additional capacity, and already things are starting to smooth out a little. If you’ve experienced delays getting through to http://get.bluepulse.com in the last 12 hours, please go back and try again, as you should be able to reach it now.

If you’re still having trouble, here’s one possible cause: when you go to type the URL into your mobile browser, before you type in “get.bluepulse.com” make sure you delete any “www.” that your browser has automatically inserted at the beginning of the URL. There’s no “www.get.bluepulse.com” only a “http://get.bluepulse.com”. Delete the “www.” and you should be fine.

The next challenge: shipping Ben and about half the office over to the San Francisco bay area at the end of this week to begin setting up our US operations. In the midst of our biggest-ever product launch. Just before Christmas. All we’re now missing from the Top 10 Stress-Inducing Events is a divorce, a health crisis, an alien invasion and a continent-cracking earthquake.

(Actually, about the health crisis, there was the Bluepulse Christmas party we held last Friday night at Zachary’s, home of the Bluepulse-themed ‘pulsator‘. Who knew absinthe shots were that toxic? You’re supposed to dilute it one-in-five? You’re supposed to sip it through a sugary spoon? That explains why my head still hurts. I hope the Bay Area is ready for Bluepulse…)

Technorati Tags: bluepulse mobile widget technorati techcrunch mobilecrunch

Meanwhile, Bluepulse 2.0 goes off!

// December 5th, 2006 // 0 Comments // Mobile, Startup

Wow, serves me right for going to the gym this morning without checking my email first. When I went to bed last night Oliver at Mobilecrunch hadn’t yet run with the news of the Bluepulse 2.0 launch and everything was quiet. Then Oliver ran his news item, with a headline including “…may be the ultimate mobile media platform”, it got mentioned on Techcrunch by Natali and with that dynamic duo of power-packed blogging exposure, everything pretty much went nuts.

Thanks for your long-standing faith in the platform and your support of the team at Bluepulse, Oliver, you rock!

Digg dug us, Technorati rated us, and by the time I was done staving off the beer gut for another day, lots of people were downloading bluepulse to their phones.

And then, when even more people started trying to download it, we hit overload. Think: servers making grinding noises, green lights on panels turning amber and then orange, a wisp of steam escaping from a rattling waste pipe, the smell of hot metal and burning cable ties… I’m exaggerating, of course – these days when machinery gets overloaded, it’s disappointingly quiet. In reality, the only action to be seen is Ben and the dev boys flipping from terminal to terminal, shaking fists in the air, slapping foreheads against monitors, and begging for more capacity.

It’s not like we didn’t anticipate significantly more demand than usual – we added many times more capacity than we’d had prior to the 2.0 launch. But it was not enough. Everybody wants to try Bluepulse!

The scramble is on now to add additional capacity, and already things are starting to smooth out a little. If you’ve experienced delays getting through to http://get.bluepulse.com in the last 12 hours, please go back and try again, as you should be able to reach it now.

If you’re still having trouble, here’s one possible cause: when you go to type the URL into your mobile browser, before you type in “get.bluepulse.com” make sure you delete any “www.” that your browser has automatically inserted at the beginning of the URL. There’s no “www.get.bluepulse.com” only a “http://get.bluepulse.com”. Delete the “www.” and you should be fine.

The next challenge: shipping Ben and about half the office over to the San Francisco bay area at the end of this week to begin setting up our US operations. In the midst of our biggest-ever product launch. Just before Christmas. All we’re now missing from the Top 10 Stress-Inducing Events is a divorce, a health crisis, an alien invasion and a continent-cracking earthquake.

(Actually, about the health crisis, there was the Bluepulse Christmas party we held last Friday night at Zachary’s, home of the Bluepulse-themed ‘pulsator‘. Who knew absinthe shots were that toxic? You’re supposed to dilute it one-in-five? You’re supposed to sip it through a sugary spoon? That explains why my head still hurts. I hope the Bay Area is ready for Bluepulse…)

Technorati Tags: bluepulse mobile widget technorati techcrunch mobilecrunch