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The Genius of Droid’s Geeky Marketing

Mike Abundo — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:33:49 +0000

For weeks, I’ve been hearing Apple fanboys pan Verizon’s Motorola Droid ads as too geeky and unappealing for the mass market. I’ve been hearing fanboys claim that nongeeks can’t understand “open development”, that they’d be scared off by images of stealth bombers. Then I read an essay by Paul Graham about the abuses of the iPhone app store, and I suddenly realize the genius of Verizon’s nongeek-alienating marketing strategy.

At least we know now what it would take to break Apple’s lock. You’d have to get iPhones out of programmers’ hands. If programmers used some other device for mobile web access, they’d start to develop apps for that instead.

How could you make a device programmers liked better than the iPhone? It’s unlikely you could make something better designed. Apple leaves no room there. So this alternative device probably couldn’t win on general appeal. It would have to win by virtue of some appeal it had to programmers specifically.

The value of today’s smartphones is as much in the applications as it is in the hardware. By very specifically targeting geeks and apparently alienating normal people for now, Verizon is building developer and influencer loyalty. More developers using the phone means more cool apps for the phone; more influencers using the phone means more viral buzz about the phone. More than the iPhone’s shiny mass marketing, those two factors will slowly but surely lead to greater market share.

It’s a strategy almost as stealthy as the stealth bombers in the second Droid ad. As history shows us, wherever the geeks go, normal people eventually follow.

So go ahead, Apple fanboys. Call Android phones “too geeky”. Such anti-intellectual complacency will hasten the iPhone’s developer exodus and eventual downfall.

Google Chrome OS Demo

Mike Abundo — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:46:04 +0000

Google’s recent demo of Chrome OS answered several important questions about how a browser-only OS would operate. One of those questions is how it would handle removable storage. As you can see when the demo unit is attached to a digital camera, using a Web browser as a file browser works pretty well. That should come as no surprise, since Windows has integrated Internet Explorer with its own file manager for the last twelve years.

While it’s fun to see a Microsoft Web app opening a file in Chrome OS, it’s rather telling that the demo game is Flash chess. This demo apparently came a bit too early for the launch of hardcore cloud gaming service OnLive. Let’s hope Web apps and games mature into far more impressive fodder for Chrome OS once it’s released next year.

How Google Chrome OS Will Handle Web Security

Arnold Zafra — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:07:08 +0000

Before you get drown into the waves of news items explaining what Google Chrome is and what it is not, let’s not forget one of its most important feature which might make it click among Internet security geeks, like us.

The Official Google Blog explains why Chrome OS is very a secured OS by saying that since all apps that you will use will be living within the Chrome browser, Google has made sure that security was given utmost priority.

So, unlike traditional OS, Chrome OS will contain each app within a security sandbox to make it harder for malware and viruses to get in. In addition, the Chrome OS is a self-fixing system, meaning it will automatically reboot and fixes itself once compromised.

For more details on how Google Chrome OS will treat security issue, watch the short video featuring Google’s Security Engineer Will Drewry.

What Chrome OS Will Look Like

Mike Abundo — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:03:44 +0000

Google Chrome OS is designed to run nothing but Web apps, so a lot of OS UI concepts will have to be remapped. Your applications become browser tabs, your browser windows become multiple desktops, and your widgets become overlay panels.

Yes, it feels a little weird. With cloud computing services getting more and more robust, we may have to get used to these browser-based UI concepts by the time Chrome OS becomes available next year.

Google Chrome OS Unveiled

Mike Abundo — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:38:52 +0000

Google gets extreme in its push to get users to the cloud with Google Chrome OS. It’s essentially a browser running on a very slim Linux build — so slim, in fact, that you can’t run any native apps on it. Instead, Google is counting on the HTML 5’s enhanced ability to access client machine resources.

The idea of having absolutely no desktop applications may come as a total shocker to some, but it does bring distinct benefits: Chrome OS takes only seven seconds to boot up, and the only security issues you have to worry about are all Web-based. Chrome OS is expected to hit the streets in late 2010, exclusively as an OEM bundle on SSD netbooks. For those of us who don’t like exclusive OEM bundles, the project will also be open-sourced as Chromium OS.

Considering that Web apps still have a long way to go before they completely replace every single desktop app, the one-year wait for Chrome OS should give the rest of the Web time to catch up with Google’s thin-client vision.

Google Adds Auto-Caption Feature in YouTube

Arnold Zafra — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:08:53 +0000

Video captions are useful not only for the hearing impaired and the deaf but also for video owners as well as it improves search findability of videos and machine translation. The thing is adding caption to videos before uploading them can be a pretty dauting task. The YouTube folks know this, and so they just rolled out two useful features – automatic caption or auto-caps and auto-timing.

Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice for automatically generating video captions. The captions are no where near perfection but since this is a new feature, it is bound to improve in time – hopefully.

Auto-caps is currently visible only on some of YouTube’s partner channels including – UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke,UCTV, Columbia, PBS, National Geographic, Demand Media, UNSW and most Google &YouTube channels.

Auto-timing on the other hand, which is now available to English language videos on YouTube lets you add automatic captions manually. What’s good about this feature is that it makes the task of adding captions to videos easier. All you need to do is to create a text file with all the words in the video and YouTube will use Google’s ASR tecnology to identify which part the video the words were spoken – then create the appropriate captions.

Digg Founder and CEO Discuss Future Digg Features

Mike Abundo — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:50:59 +0000

Before Facebook started counting shares and Twitter started counting retweets, Digg pretty much invented social news. Sensing more mainstream services encroaching upon its turf, the geeky pioneer is not content to rest on its laurels. At a Web 2.0 Expo keynote today, Digg founder Kevin Rose and CEO Jay Adelson discussed new and future Digg features.

Listen up for juicy tidbits on how to market your new media startup.

(Via Neal Rodriguez.)

Just in Time for Christmas, Nokia N900 Goes On Sale for $649

Arnold Zafra — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:16:04 +0000

Nokia has officially made available another one of its so called flagship, highly pocketable mobile computer – the N900. Actually when it was announced recently, I had a hard time distinguising it from the rest of the mobile computing devices that are available today.

But anyway, it’s out in the flesh. Just waiting for all of you Americans looking for your next gadget purchase. Or if you haven’t found that perfect gift for your love ones, the N900 could be it.The Nokia N900 is a Maemo-powered mobile device, meaning it’s on a Linux platform. And it’s got 32GB of storage, multiple connectivity options to check your email, websites, social networks while viewing spectacular images or listening to your favorite music.

In short, the Nokia N900 is an all-around device, now that’s comforting.

Some more goodies that you should expect from the Nokia N900 include – a 3.5-inch touchscreen display, full QWERTY keyboard, third-party apps support, 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and dual LED flash. Oh yes, it supports Nokia’s Ovi services obviously.

Via

Hulu Dives into Music Videos, Kicks Off with Norah Jones

Arnold Zafra — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:57:00 +0000

Hulu, that streaming video site available only in the U.S. and which is consistently gaining some steam since its launch has teamed up with Norah Jones. This will bring Ms. Jones videos of songs from her latest album – the Fall available to all U.S. Hulu users.

Hulu, which is currently running the postscript of their interview with Nora Jones has also put up a page dedicated to the singer.Hulu’s Norah Jones’ page features music videos and concert footages from the Fall. It also houses all of Norah Jones’ previous releases from her albums including Not Too Late, Feels Like Home, and Come Away with Me.

If you’re a big Norah Jones’ fun, you may want to check out the Hulu page. And have fun listening and watching to Norah Jones’ songs.

Social Media ROI

Mike Abundo — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:13:41 +0000

Still not convinced of social media’s return on investment? Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics, shows us how social media has paid off for business big and small, from JetBlue to Burger King to Ford Motors.

Their crappy Seinfeld ads aside, Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter & Bogusky said it best: “You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media… The old media paradigm was PAY to play. Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to PLAY to play.”