Apple iPhone Aftermath, Bad Labeling?

I wasn't as accurate on my predictions yesterday as I would have liked but Thats part of the fun when trying to guess what Apple is up to. I did get some things right including my conclusion that people would be disappointed if the new iPhone just turned out to be a rehashed iPhone 4. The ironic thing is that this iPhone is arguably as different from the previous generation as any other has been with the possible exception of the original iPhone 4 when compared to the 3GS. This illustrates the importance of getting every detail right when launching a product, including the naming.

Apple apparently doubled the RAM from 512 meg to 1 gig(I'm seeing conflicting reports on this), significantly upgraded the rear camera, upgraded the CPU and graphics and integrated both CDMA and GSM into one phone with HSPA+ thrown into the mix for those on GSM networks that support it. Would anyone have blinked if they had called this the iPhone 5? I certainly wouldn't have.

Part of the problem is the amount of time this phone took. We waited an extra four months for this. People were expecting something awe inspiring. Calling it the 4S may have been a misguided attempt to manage expectations?

The other issue here was of course the absence of Steve Jobs. This was Apples first chance to shine with Jobs not on stage. Put simply, they didn't  there were some bright spots.

Siri is a nice piece of technology. More importantly to Apple's long term bottom line though it is also going to make them a part of the "conversation" people have with their phones. Currently a big chunk of that conversation takes place with Google or Facebook. With Siri Apple has displaced Google for many tasks and will likely displace them further as this technology rolls out to more devices and becomes more refined. There is speculation that Google has similar functionality in the works at its easy to see why they would. This is the way many people have dreamed of interacting with their phones for awhile now.

Another thing that impressed me was "Find my Friends". Not so much the technology itself, which has been done before; but instead the fact that APple actually thought to give people the ability to turn it on with an expiration day/time. If you're on a family trip to Disneyland then you might be willing to turn on that tracking just for the convenience of being able to keep track of where everyone in your group is but that doesn't mean you want your personal space invaded that much normally. It's that kind of design decision and attention to detail that separates Apple from their competition.

While there was a disappointment in the short term I don't think it will linger much. This does put additional pressure on them though for the next big announcement. Apple's growth over the past several years has been nothing short of phenomenal and maintaining anything close to that pace is unrealistic. With Jobs role being deemphasized Apples current management is likely going to get a lot of blame for any slow down even though it may be part of the normal growth cycles that companies go through. Steve Jobs is going to be a hard act to follow not only because he is brilliant but also because of when he stepped aside. I don't envy Tim Cook one bit. He's in an almost impossible to win situation.

Image via CrunchBase

Related Articles:

• iPhone Assistant called a "world-changing event" by Siri co-founder (tuaw.com)

Twitter Is The New CNN

Image via CrunchBaseThe recent Reno air race tragedy was my first experience with what I’ll refer to as the modern way of getting news. I saw the first indication/notification on Facebook by way of a second hand account a very short time after the accident occurred. My first instinct was to go to Google’s news site and do a search. Nothing. It was only later that I thought to go to Twitter and type #reno in the search box. When I did that I instantly got links and observations on what was then a rapidly developing news story. That was when I finally realized that the world on news has changed fundamentally.

That isn’t a new concept for a lot of people. I tend to be a bit slow adapting to new sources of information though. I’m not sure why but it’s a phenomena I’ve observed in myself before.

One thing that occurred to me is that the days of shaping and controlling news stories are going to be over soon unless governments somehow gain control of social media services. That’s going to be a tough thing to do though. The Genie is out of the bottle and I’m not sure it can be put back in. Keep in mind that the original version of Twitter was written in a very short period of time and wouldn’t be difficult to duplicate. This isn’t going to stop some governments from trying of course. China has their “Great Firewall” for instance but even that is of limited effectiveness to sophisticated users. It’s really a speed bump/warning system for people who don’t want to risk getting in trouble with the powers that be.

This isn’t to say that the news that comes through social media isn’t biased. We all see the world through our own personal filters. Those filters color everything and it’s foolish to think otherwise. There are also situations where people have conscious agendas that they are trying to further by way of the reports they make.

The great thing about social media though is that you have the potential to get multiple often raw accounts as well as pictures and video of the actual event. You still have to deal with your own filters but it’s much closer to being a first hand experience than has been possible in the past.

Overall I think this is a good thing though personally I can do without the graphic and often grizzly images that can go along with this new reality.

This whole phenomena leaves traditional news outlets in an uncomfortable position. On the one hand they are vulnerable to new entities that can quickly aggregate and interpret data that they find via Twitter and other social network sources while on the other they are constrained by both their employees understanding of the news and the general publics expectations of what it means to see a story on CNN, NBC, Etc. It's not clear to me that the same skills are needed in both cases.


Disruptive technologies are always hard for established industries and companies to deal with. Print media has been living with this reality for a decade plus. It seems to me that the disruption may just be spreading to other forms of traditional media. The signs are less obvious for now but we may be seeing them over the next couple of years.

Imagine an Internet only news site that depended primarily on social media to break stories. Imagine that they have contacts with reporters all over the world who can quickly get to the site of emerging stories. A smart phone and data plan plus a little skill is all anyone needs these days to be an in the field reporter.

You could have multiple channels/topics with regular updates for very little cost. Would the quality be as good as the majors? No, but from a commercial perspective does it really need to be? And if the costs are low enough you can service a lot of smaller demographics with news of interest and still make money. Time some of the standard social networking tools to the site and you would make the news immersive and collaborative. Google already has many of the pieces they'd need to pull this off.

Semi Random Nick Knacks

It's been a few days since my previous entry which is as long as I've gone without making a post in months. It isn't writers block, I can think of many things to talk about but finding time has been even more difficult than normal.

In no particular order here are some brief "drive by" comments on recent news items.

Google has apparently bought 1K plus more patents from IBM. Google started the current patent war woefully under armed and has been playing catch up over the last several months. Patents aren't granted quickly so to remedy their shortcoming they've been paying a premium to build their arsenal. They are likely to make additional purchases over the next several months. Google still has a lot of cash and it's not hard to figure out what their most pressing need is. They can keep up with anyone on the innovation front but that means nothing if they and their partners get sued into oblivion. Lesson learned, being disdainful of software patents may be hip and intellectually correct but sadly it's very bad for your business.

Facebook continues to add features at a rapid pace. Clearly they are emulating rather than innovating. They've had a history of confusing and annoying their customers and have continued to grow so the risk of making changes is probably low. There is a chance they'll probably lose a few people but they were having that problem anyway with Google+. On a positive note, I got an email from Facebook a few days back saying they would be sending me less email and explaining why. This was a very positive change for them and pleasant to experience. They are still prone to making changes with zero notice that have significant impacts on how people use the service but sending out that email was hopefully a sign of things to come. I can hope anyway.

On the jobs front, I don't see existing companies adding a lot of jobs. There are structural reasons for this. They are making record profits right now selling their goods and service to parts of the world were the economy is much better than in the US. When they are creating jobs those jobs are overseas. It also means that most of the profits are staying overseas as well. Net impact here, minimal other than an undervalued stock market. New jobs have been and will continue to be generated by new companies. Any jobs stimulus bill that wants to have a real impact is going to have to focus primarily on creating new companies.

Microsoft released the first Windows 8 preview. I really like what I'm reading in regards to the direction their heading and did take the time to download the preview. Unfortunately it doesn't run on a VMWare player so I'm SOL for now. There are reports that it runs on Oracle's Virtual Box and the full VMWare Workstation. I don't own either so that doesn't help. It does feel like an oversight on Microsoft's part not to run on  the free VMWare player. Few people are going to be willing/able to install the preview on a dedicated piece of hardware. This isn't a fatal flaw but it is a small bump in the road. It is easy to get a thirty day trial of VMWare workstation but that is more work than I'm willing to devote to this for now.

Time to get ready for work and deal with a few other things. Happy Thursday everyone.

Image via Wikipedia

Related Articles:

• Google Assimilates 1,023 IBM Patents to Protect Android (phonescoop.com)
• installing windows 8 developer preview on vmware workstation (eddszc.wordpress.com)

Early September Venture Update

It seem like the iPad loves to eat my best prose, generally with an assist from some Google product, in the latest case that product would be the new iOS blogger app that I wrote about in my last entry. This is yet another reason I'll very likely be going with an Android tablet when I'm ready to replace the iPad 2. I don't really want to reward Google for their recently lousy iOS support but I'm heavily invested in Google's tools and at the end of the day I just need to be able to reliably get stuff done.

Speaking of Google tools, I have a scheduled Google calendar event that reminds me to talk about the part time venture I've mentioned here before. It's a way of holding my feet to the fire to keep making progress but my need/desire to keep most of the details under wrap for now makes it difficult to say anything interesting or meaningful. If I don't at least make the attempt though I improve my odds of dropping the ball. It's much easier to lose focus on something when you aren't publicly on the hook for it.

I did have a significant setback recently when I realized that a lot of the data I'd collected was bogus due to a bug in my code. The section of code where the problem occurred was actually taken verbatim from some example code presented in the documentation for an API I'm using. I suspect the code in question may have been deprecated recently and I did find one source on line that seemed to indicate that was the case but I haven't been able to conclusively confirm this or come up with a work around yet. In the meantime I've changed my sampling methodology and fixed the data I'd already gathered so that it no longer includes the bogus information. Quality is more important than quantity but it was a frustrating experience.

I'm still working on getting up to speed on a number of different technologies and this is the price one can end up paying when that is the case. The Internet is a highly dynamic environment and its difficult enough to keep up with the things you know. A related problem is that the finish line is constantly receding from you when you're learning something new and it's not unusual for online documentation and resources to be grossly out of date. This is a big part of the reason why skilled developers make so much money.

I've been doing some preliminary research on what kind of cloud/hosting services are available in case this thing works/takes off. Amazon, Google and many others all have products in this general area and evaluating what technologies make the most sense for me to pursue has been fun but a bit of a distraction. I have decided to go with Google's data storage solution for now. Seventeen cents a gig per month seemed like a reasonable price to me. There may be cheaper options out there but I'm confident that Google's going to be around for the forseable future. There are additional charges if I ever want to retrieve that data but I'm fine with that. I have local backups so the Google option is just insurance. I do need to automate the process of sending backups to Google but that likely won't happen for awhile. It's not that painful to do manually for now.

Image via Wikipedia

iOS Blogger App/Google Hates The iPad?

I'm typing the first draft of this on the newly released iOS blogger app. My enthusiasm over not having to try to interact with the new Blogger via the iPad's Safari browser is severely tempered by the fact that there is no HD/iPad support and it doesn't support landscape mode. I can almost forgive the first, it isn't that big a deal for an app like this but the inability to deal with landscape mode is pretty much inexcusable in my opinion. Google's iOS G+ app has the same problem.

One other complaint is that the blogger app won't let me type without the onscreen keyboard being visible and taking up about 40% of the screen. On the plus side, I can hide it but then I don't get to type when I do that. There are nice physical keyboard/Bluetooth cases for the iPhone so this is a frustrating limitation even if I just consider it an iPhone app.

The application is free, so I probably shouldn't complain to much but its increasingly clear that Google isn't at all interested in supporting the iPad or the iPhone more than minimally. It's easy enough to understand the competitive reasons for Google to take this approach but as a consumer of their services I don't like it.

One other complaint, the iPad sometimes gets confused and exits back to the lock screen when using a Bluetooth keyboard. When this happens you've lost all the text you've entered as the Blogger app doesn't save unless you tell it to and doesn't deal gracefully with being interrupted in that way. End result, I lost a bunch of text to another entry that I really liked. It's very annoying when you're in a groove to have that happen. No matter how hard I try, the rewrite never seems as good.

So my quest to find a decent and reliable way of writing blogger posts continues.

Hopefully there will be a quick update to this initial flawed attempt.

Image via CrunchBase

Some Monday Morning Thoughts

It struck me again recently when I was reading the latest rumors about the iPhone 5 that Apple gets a lot of credit for being innovative when in fact most of the features you'll find in their products are anything but. There are exceptions of course like the Retina display but that is not the norm. In particular my phone is a year plus old at this point and has an 8 megapixel camera. Rumors are the iPhone 5 will match those specs. It seems likely that the iPhone 5 won't support LTE either. Where Apple wins is in their ability to integrate and create positive user experiences. As much as I love my Motorola Droid X, it does get annoying that I have to pull the battery periodically to hard power cycle it because it has gotten flaky. I have had to power cycle my iPad a few times but it's a fairly rare event.

Sprint employees have been asked to say "No comment" when asked by customers, family and friends about the possibility of the iPhone 5 coming to their network. This strikes me as a semi clever way of getting free advertising. Whether it actually means the iPhone 5 will be available on Sprint is difficult to judge. If it it is we'll see additional pressure on Android in the US. Apple's exclusive deal with AT&T in the beginning gave Google an opportunity to establish a foothold they might not have had otherwise so it makes sense from Apple's perspective to continue to "spread the love".

Dell is apparently the latest company to decide to get into the services side of cloud computing. Given their track record in other areas I'm not very optimistic about their chances. Other companies have been in this space for a lot longer and playing catch up at this point doesn't seem like a winning strategy even if they can execute and I have my doubts that they can.

I recently made my first virtual million on Empire Avenue. This was a cool accomplishment and one I'm kind of proud of. It took a fair amount of effort and a bit of thinking to get their and I've recently hit on a strategy that is giving me very good growth. I don't generally spend a lot of time on games these days but Empire Avenue has turned out to be a good investment in that I've made some great contacts and really stepped up my game on the BLOG and social network interaction front. It's nice to have some motivation to engage and an outlet that both encourages that engagement and gives me tools to help judge my effectiveness.

Speaking of social network engagement, my Klout score has been taking a bit of a hit recently and I'm not entirely sure why. I'm going to guess algorithm changes that aren't favorable to my model of engagement. I'm not going to worry too much about it but it's always disconcerting when a score goes down and I'm not quite sure why.

Image via Wikipedia

Related Articles:

• Report: iPhone 5 getting metal back, screen staying small (gigaom.com)
• WSJ: Sprint will sell the iPhone 5 in mid-October (tuaw.com)

Google/Motorola Mobility/Synergy?

The first thing that jumped to mind when I heard about Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility was the thought that I talked a lot about Apple and Intel in my last column but if you read between the lines I was also talking about Google and more specifically Android.

Apple has been waging what looks like an increasingly aggressive litigation/patent campaign against Android  as has Microsoft. I talked a lot in that column about how legal scuffles can become an unproductive distraction for technology companies but I neglected to mention the fact that your competition is eventually going to have to react if they want to stay in the game. Google has already claimed in the press that this purchase was motivated by what they view as anti-competitive practices by Microsoft and Apple.

There has been some cynicism expressed in the press over positive press releases by  Google's partners and soon to be competitors in regards to the Motorola purchase. What those cynics fail to take into account is that given recent trends Android was in danger of being taxed out of existence via licensing fee demands that partners and Google were ill prepared to defend against. Having Google as a competitor probably isn't something their happy about but Google now has even more skin in the game and an arsenal of their own patents to use in defense and negotiations. It's legitimate for Google's current channel partners to fear that preferential treatment will be given to Motorola which will create an advantage that allows them to grab the bulk of the highest margin Android sales but that is a remote and manageable scenario. Android's steadily increasing litigation and licensing "tax" burden was already eating their margins. Google may become a frenemy but that is still an improvement on the current situation.

I've also read claims that this is a precursor to Google making Android a closed platform and going it alone. That is a really absurd claim for the following reasons. First, Motorola and Android wouldn't stand a chance if they took on Apple mono a mono. Android's excellent market penetration is a result of being available on a wide range of platforms that no single company could possibly create or support by themselves. Second, that model is already in place at companies like Nokia and RIM and how well are they doing right now? Why would Google want to replicate a clearly failing business model when they already have a winner?

It is possible however that this purchase will cause companies to take another look at Microsoft's current and future mobile offerings so they can hedge their bets. Microsoft's close relationship with Nokia is however very similar to how Google is proposing to operate with Motorola so it's difficult for me to understand why this would be an improvement, particularly given the minimal market penetration of Microsoft's Windows phone 7.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Microsoft will buy Nokia within a year. Consolidation and increased vertical integration are clear trends in the mobile space and Microsoft/Nokia are already on their way down this path.

RIM is going to need a major turn around in the next six months if they want to continue to go it alone and be anything but a niche player.

I'm trying to think of a polite word to use as an adjective to describe Standard & Poor's downgrade of Google but failing. Seriously, their logic is absurd. Will this deal guarantee that litigation against Android stops? Of course not but patent litigation is much easier to defend against when you are armed as well.  Prior to this acquisition Google was poorly situated to deal with legal challenges and had been losing ground steadily. Now they will be operating from a much stronger position.

There are no guarantees in business or life, but standing around and doing nothing in the face of challenges to a rapidly growing portion of your business is almost never a good idea. Another complaint S&P have is that this will impact Google's short term growth. Well yeah, when you spend $12 billion on something that does have a short term hit on your ability to take advantage of other opportunities. Particularly when you're going to have to wait around for the better part of a year for the deal to be completely consummated. It's not like Google is cash poor though and CEO Larry Page has made it clear that they play for the long term. That pisses off analysts who only care about a very finite horizon.

S&P's analysis in this matter is flawed at best. Every purchase is a risk and this one is no exception but Google is taking credible action to defend against a risk to both an emerging and established portion of their business as well as reacting to trends within the mobile computing/phone space.

Getting shut out of the mobile space would have meant getting shut out of the search engine space. The social networking paradigm shift is reducing but not eliminating the importance of search and Google couldn't afford to risk having that revenue stream cut off. S&P's Google downgrade feels more like an attempt to garner press than an honest and well informed assessment.

There is a risk that Microsoft or some other company will make a larger offer for Motorola Mobility. Apple is unlikely to do so since they probably couldn't get governmental approval for such a deal. Microsoft would be pissing off their channel partners but might view it as a worthwhile risk. I don't think they'll go this route but it's not outside the realm of possibility.

Image via Wikipedia

Related Articles:

• Why Google had to have Motorola Mobility | Dan Gillmor (guardian.co.uk)
• Is Microsoft's next move buying Nokia or RIM? Nah... (zdnet.com)
• Apple pressured; may eye Nokia, RIM patents (canada.com)
• Will Microsoft Top Google's Bid For Motorola Mobility? (forbes.com)
• Musing on the Prospects of a Microsoft Counterbid for Motorola (dealbook.nytimes.com)

Google Plus(+)/Integration (Short Take)

Image via Wikipedia

The next few days are going to be very busy for me so I'm going to see if I can limit myself to short topics on my BLOG entries. I'm a write-a-holic though so we'll see how well that goes. I seem to have settled into near daily postings. There is enough going on in the world of business and technology that this isn't that hard to do, though I do like to have something unique to say. News outlets are a dime a dozen, if I don't have something to add then what's the point?

My topic for today is Google+'s integration with the Google toolbar that is present in GMail, Google Ready, Google Docs, etc. This integration means that so long as I'm using almost anything Google I know when something new. There are exceptions. Google's soon to be re-branded blogger service for instance totally lacks G+ integration so far as I can tell.

The really nice thing about this integration is that the notification widget is clickable. When you click you get a list of the topics that have been updated recently. You can then click on those topics and see at least part of the conversation for instance. You can even type a quick reply without ever having to open the G+ site.

Facebook has a lot of advantages in this fight. One leg up that Google has is their ability to integrate G+ into their suite of offerings. They've tried this before, notably with Buzz and had minimal success. Early indications are that they've learned from those experiences as the G+ integration feels much more natural and useful to me.

One other observation about G+. Almost all of my more tech obsessed friends have either made the shift or are anxious to do so. The less tech obsessed ones seem fairly indifferent. This could be a serious sign of trouble for Google or it could just be the typical early/mid/late adopter dynamic in action.

Related Articles:

• Google To Retire Blogger / Picasa Brands in Google+ Push (thetechscoop.net)
• Google Releases New Docs for Mobile Interface (searchenginejournal.com)
• Google Plus Looks Good But Needs An Application Platform (regulargeek.com)

G+/Facebook/Circles/Lists

The Google+ feature that is arguably getting the most coverage right now is Circles. Circles allow users to organize their friends into different groupings. You could have Circles for Friends, Family, Work, etc. You then have the choice of what Circles you include any time you post. Those of us who are fond of our privacy like Circles a lot. Those who are fond of Facebook seem to make one of a couple of different arguments. Either they insist that people don't want to be bothered with organizing their friends or they point out that Facebook has had Circles in the form of lists for a while now.

I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself when I say that yes, I do want to be able to easily sort people into different groupings. This is as much for their benefit as it is for mine. If I'm going to make a trip up to Oregon do the 75% of people on my Facebook friends list who do not live up there really need to know? With Circles they don't have to. So long as I take a few minutes to create a circle of my Oregon based friends I can simply and easily send out a message that only they see. Everyone wins.

I'm an input junkie. I'm in front of a computer an average of around fourteen hours a day between work and recreation. I'm constantly reading, chatting, writing, etc. In short I can take a lot of incoming bandwidth without too much trouble. Even I have my limits though. Anything that encourages others to filter what they share is good so far as I'm concerned. So, in addition to enhancing privacy, Circles also encourage people not to waste the time of others. These are both good things.

In regards to Facebook and Lists, I recall fairly clearly that lists were added begrudgingly. They were never easy to use and have gotten buried deeper in the Facebook UI as time has gone on. It seems clear based on this that Facebook is a bit lukewarm on the concept of giving us tools to protect our privacy and minimize the amount of spam that we send to people in our social circles. (no pun intended)

Featuring Circles prominently may just end up being the make or break feature of G+. It's certainly Google's strongest differentiator right now and while the current implementation is fairly powerful it still needs some refinement. A stronger tie to Google contacts and the ability to choose a default circle are two suggestions I've seen that I'd like to see Google put in place.

If Google starts to gain significant momentum we'll likely see Facebook do a quick UI makeover that brings into the light of day. Or, Facebook could continue trying to trash the whole concept. I think there is a good chance that is the route they'll take, at least for awhile.

I wonder if the people at Facebook are wishing they'd completed their IPO already. I sense the very real possibility that billions of dollars are rapidly evaporating with each passing day.

Image via Wikipedia

Related Articles:

• Can Facebook and G+ Coexist? (emkey1.blogspot.com)
• Facebook engineers copy Google+ with 'Circle Hack' app (digitaltrends.com)
• What do Google execs know about Google+ privacy that you don't? (zdnet.com)
• Confused About Google+? You Already Know How to Use It (theatlantic.com)
• Google Plus Feature Request: Automatic Circles (readwriteweb.com)
• Privacy Experts Praise Google+ Rollout So Far (pcworld.com)
• With one simple metaphor, Google+ beats Facebook (pravdam.com)

RIM/Microsoft (Short Take)

Blackberry maker Research In Motion continues to make moves designed to reverse their recent setbacks and move the company in a positive direction; the most recent being an announcement that they'll be switching from Google to Microsoft's Bing as the default search engine on their phones and devices.

Based on my reading it seems clear that Microsoft is paying a hefty sum of money for this change. Clearly Microsoft is working hard to build a presence in the mobile space. Their partnership with Nokia was apparently just the opening salvo of a new offensive. With the Nokia deal they get the potential for substantial exposure and market penetration of their windows phone 7 operating system. Their RIM deal doesn't go that far but it does give them first dibs on a substantial additional chunk of the mobile search space going forward.

This deal seems to make good business sense from RIM's perspective. They get cash which is never a bad thing and likely other benefits as well.

Microsoft now has the potential to make substantial inroads into Google's search engine dominance. Given the probable continued growth in this space I don't believe Google will see much of an impact revenue wise in the short to midterm. That could change a couple of years out if things work out the way that Microsoft is no doubt hoping.

On a side note, it always kind of amuses me when industry pundits try to pick a winner in these scenarios. Both companies win assuming both sides are competent and I see no reason to assume otherwise in this case. The point of a partnership isn't to cheat your partner, it's to gain an advantage in the marketplace that will be mutually beneficial. The loser in this deal is very likely going to be Google.

Image via Wikipedia

Related Articles

• Microsoft, BlackBerry Team Up to Battle Google Search (wired.com)
• RIM taps Microsoft Bing for phone and tablet search (go.theregister.com)

Google By The Borders

In my last post I speculated a bit about what Google might be doing with all that data they are gathering from Android phones.  Earlier this evening Rea and I were heading to Borders books to purchase the book that the movie Secretariat is based on.  Borders sends us coupons regularly in email and as we were getting close to the store I decided to search for the coupon in my GMail app so I'd have it handy.  Before I'd typed a single character the helpful search feature had put up three options.  I don't recall the other two, but one of them was Borders.  I touched that option and within seconds I had located the latest coupon in my saved mail.

On the one hand I loved the convenience and speed of the experience.  On the other, it was a little spooky.  Was it just a coincidence or did Google make a quick guess where we were going based on where we were and our previous destinations in that area?

Artificial Intelligence has been around as a field since at least the 1960's.  I have a set of books I bought used in a box somewhere.  They are from the early 70's and outline the state of the art and history of the field up until that time. It's interesting to contemplate the hubris of those early pioneers.  They thought that translating between human languages would be trivial.  Even today relatively simple translations between English & Spanish are imperfect and as the two languages being translated diverge errors tend to become more common and occasionally very amusing.  What Google has now isn't really AI but there are times when it sure seems that way.  Essentially Google's tools are very good at tracking and understanding context and making associations.  This isn't intelligence per say but it can sure look that way at times.

My mother was born before the first electronic computer was built.  I've sometimes wondered what it is like to have lived through that much change.  If I live another couple of decades I strongly suspect I'll get to see more change than she has over the course of her life.  I find that thought both a little scary and very exciting.

Image via Wikipedia

Google/NVidia/Word of Mouth

(Google)

One of the things I really like about my Droid X phone is the navigation app. It's essentially eliminated the need for me to worry about having a navigation system in any car I buy or rent. I'm highly prone to making wrong turns, so having an electronic genie available at all times that can instruct me in minute detail on what to do is excellent. On thing that occurred to me earlier this week as I was driving home from a meeting about thirty miles from my home is that Google is getting all sorts of interesting information by providing that App. They can get a pretty good real time perspective on how slowly traffic is moving on a particular freeway. Over time they can get an idea of traffic flow on surface streets and where stop signs and traffic lights are. As Android based phones become more common they are going to have more and more data points to look at. I wonder what all those clever people at Google are planning on doing with this information? One thing they could do is reroute in real time based on traffic flows. That information is already available for most freeways and some major roads, at least hear in the SF Bay area, but coverage seems to be a lot less common for surface streets. You wouldn't even need to be in the navigation application. All it would take is the GPS being enabled. Even without the GPS they can make a pretty good guess based on cell tower triangulation and the maps of wireless hot spots that they've built.

Google started out with a fairly simple idea, to help organize the worlds information. Even a fairly simple idea can lead in an amazing number of directions.

(NVidia)
The big news on the the NVidia front recently has been their decision to directly sell finished boards.  Historically NVidia has sold GPU's to partners who have then created boards that were in turn sold to customers.  It's nearly always the case that being closer to the final sale means higher margins, but undermining your partners in this way can be  a very bad thing as they tend to take such changes in the way the world works very negatively.  Several years ago NVidia acquired the assets of a competitor called 3Dfx for song after 3Dfx essentially did the same thing, thus alienating their partners and accelerating their demise.

So, is this an act of desperation or a change in business strategy with potential risks and rewards?  I've seen both theories advocated by various technology pundits.  I'm honestly not sure which side is right.  Having signed up Best Buy to sell their cards certainly wasn't a bad move.


(Word of Mouth)
Recently my wife and I have been shopping for an alarm company.   Some friends of ours have a more immediate need and have thus been a bit more aggressive in pursuing a solution.  We've been sharing information during the search and one thing that struck me is how common this is and how positive or negative information about a particular company is magnified.  Our friend got a big time hard sell and bad attitude from one of the major national players in this space.  Instantly I removed that company from our list of prospects.  Another company that I heard about while having lunch with some coworkers faired much better when our friend contacted them by being professional and customer focused.  Rather than trying to sell our friend as much equipment as they could they made suggestions on how to get the best possible coverage without spending too much up front.  It's probably not a surprise that this second company is currently the odds on favorite to get both our friends business and ours.

Word of mouth is hard to measure, but it is likely a significant factor, particularly in situations where a company is trying to acquire new customers.  It's kind of amazing to me how many businesses drop the ball in this area.  Bad interactions multiply.  Customer facing employees are extremely important to the long term health of any enterprise.  This concept is often ignored by companies that are looking for a short term improvement in their bottom line by outsourcing.  I suspect that most of us have had sub par experiences as a result of such efforts.

Really though, outsourcing isn't the problem here.  The problem is the fact that some companies don't seem to value the contribution that customer facing portions of their business provide to their bottom line.  Bad customer experiences can come just as easily from employees who are some combination of badly trained, badly treated or badly paid.

In general it seems to me that companies don't always have a very good idea of where value is created.

Image via Wikipedia