Clearly, Steve Jobs is pissed. I would be, too. You pour thousands of hours collectively into a project like this and you want people to just use the damned thing, enjoy it, and have it change their lives on some level. That the media has churned up such a storm over this issue has got to be not-a-little-bit frustrating.

Apple’s media materials are always top notch, and what they produced highlighting the antenna design process at Apple, the tour of the inner sanctum of antenna design on campus, meet the standard. They included videos on apple.com and in the conference demonstrating the exact same signal loss on previous generation iPhones, along with phones from Nokia, Blackberry, HTC, and Samsung. Hold the phone in just the right way, signal drops. In fact, as Josh pointed out in the linked piece over at Apple Insider,

In June, Nokia’s official blog poked fun at the iPhone 4 “death grip” issue. The post included a variety of pictures showing a range of grips, encouraging consumers to feel free to hold their Nokia device any way they like without suffering any signal loss.

Users of the site then posted links to videos showing signal loss on several of Nokia’s handsets, as well as instructions from a Nokia manual warning users “to avoid touching the antenna area” and that “contact with antennas affects the communication quality.”

I waxed sarcastically on Twitter that Verizon’s cheeky attitude toward this antenna thing would bite them in the ass. I’m bummed the prediction isn’t wholly accurate in that I didn’t use Nokia as my case point. That would have made me far more prescient. At least someone looks foolish here. It’s never really smart to publish material dragging your competitors through the mud on untested, unconfirmed reports.

Which is why I’m on the fence about Apple doing just that in this case, dragging these other manufacturers into the ring with them on this issue.

As uncharacteristic as it is, I’m not sure they had another choice. This is a PR disaster. It’s a disaster specifically because it’s a nominally interesting story that has been spun out of Apple’s tight control, not because there is any more or less scandal to it. Their response strategy of choice is clearly to soften by deflection — get us all thinking about these other guys so we’re not so focused on the iPhone 4 soft spot.

Apple’s biggest issue in this mess is completely self-created, and it’s not that they created a phone that has a major antenna flaw (we know there’s a flaw, I’m just saying that’s not the biggest problem here). It’s that Steve Jobs stood on stage for the iPhone announcement and choose to point out that the antenna design is legendary, revolutionary, incredible, and then showed the world exactly where the antenna is. The fact that the world media has been so focused on the antenna is a problem of Apple’s own making. Given the tone and timbre of the press conference, it’s clear that Apple knows this. Their own duct tape solution is to give out the bumpers for free. It’s payola for those who bought the phone, love the phone, and want to keep the phone in spite of their problems with connectivity.

The other manufacturers have come out pissed. Rightfully so, but it sure is hard to defend indignation in the face of video evidence. Apple knows this. So does Nokia, RIM, Samsung. Best case result of Antennagate is that we all get the phone of our dreams because of a renewed focus on better, smarter, clearer antennas from all these manufacturers. At least we know from their responses so far that the intent may be there to do it, if only because Apple just made the target in Cupertino that much bigger.

In TechCrunch’s follow up, Arrington makes an ironically apt comparison. Job’s coming on stage to give all this data of the reality of the ecosystem, that 30-day returns at AT&T is about 1.7% — down from 6% for the iPhone 3GS, is akin to Facebook execs coming out to talk about how people really aren’t jumping off the service as a result of Facebook Privacygate 2009-10. But for all those affected — punditry, gadget hounds, privacy advocates, the works — those affected are not likely to change their opinions based on reported data from the company. People who feel betrayed by Facebook will not come back to the service as a result of a press conference. And folks like Arrington will continue to be as venomous as ever of the iPhone.

Anandtech has been leading the charge with data-driven coverage of this whole mess. After the iPhone iOS 4.0.1 update which mixed up all the bar data display across iPhones, they posted some terrific graphs which compare the dBm mapping to bars displayed to cover just what has changed on the phone and how it will help to convey more clearly what level of coverage you might be able to expect in a certain area.

So then, as long as Apple is trotting out the dog and pony show about their antenna labs, where was this data from them? If Anandtech is able to produce such terrific analysis as an external party, it seems only natural to have even greater expectations of Apple. Just because the Blackberry or Nokia drops two bars has no effective comparison to the iPhone dropping two bars without those dBm comparables — they’re just bars, tiny pixels that (as far as I understand it) have little relation to actual connectivity at all. On TWiT 255, Jerry Pournelle and Spencer Webb remind us that on digital phones, bars mean little; that a more effective indicator would be a lightbulb. If it’s on, you have signal. If it’s off, you don’t.

[UPDATE: Dammit. Gruber and Aaron Swartz beat me to this little bit of wisdom. I hate being late to the party.]

I got my iPhone 4 the day before it launched. I’ve dropped one call. I was talking to my dad, and driving through an area at the top of Sylvan Hill on highway 26 in Portland. With my iPhone 3Gs, I’d drop calls there every single day. With the iPhone 4, I’ve dropped only one, in spite of regular use in that area. Other than that, the phone has absolutely out-performed all my previous iPhones. I have a bumper, but I rarely use it. Yes, I’ll likely go get the refund Apple is offering for it, just cause, you know, 30 bucks.

Still, my impression here is not that Apple has perpetrated some kind of crime on consumers. I really do believe that Apple is learning as they go along based on data they’re collecting in real time. This is a monster of their own creation and is more a result of the death grip they have on their own communications, testing, and public relations policies than anything else. It’s a trade-off, and if you’re going to build policy around secrecy, this is the no-win scenario you have to be willing to confront. Kobayashi Maru, indeed.

Just a quick bit of commentary on this one that I found interesting. When I first stumbled on the tree image on iStockphoto, I was really moved. There’s something about the life that is communicated through such a stark bifurcation of the tree that hit home for me. Seems only a little trite to apply such a cool image to a tradeshow postcard, but it works.

In any case, we got our first bit of direct feedback on the card from a recipient on the mailing list. The list is made up of college and university business officers — predictably, I guess — and this particular respondent’s title is “Vice President for Business & Finance/Treasurer” for a major east coast university. The line that struck me from his response:

The half-dead tree is a rather graphic thought-provoking device and illustrative.

The original of the image has the tree dying from left to right. I flipped it because I thought the metaphor worked better simulating growth rather than death over a simulated left-right timeline. I wanted folks who looked at it to see that transformation, that growth.

There’s this concept that never fails to flip me. When creating a piece, you want your reader to either feel the pain, or see the hope. In this case, we were shooting for hope. The response illustrates that we may have hit the pain more squarely.

Last week, Adobe released version 10.1 of their Flash player plugin for both the Mac and Windows operating systems, which included a large number of security fixes. Much to the frustration of visually impaired users, the installer application, which had previously been accessible, was rendered inaccessible with screen readers on both operating systems. This, of course, means that many visually impaired users are stuck using an older version of the plugin, along with all its known vulnerabilities.

I can’t pretend to know what’s going on with Adobe that they’re so tied to this installer monkey business. The accessibility issue above is just one symptom of larger trouble that serves to confuse those of us who — admittedly — think maybe-too-deeply about this stuff. Nonetheless, this is puzzling.

When you download an installer from Adobe, you get this fancy, flashy wrapper that comes up, and then calls the real installer which is buried in the thing you just downloaded. That hidden, real installer is everything you need to install the software on your Mac. Everything else is just cruft.

Think of it this way. The buried installer is the bar of soap you will use to wash yourself. The primary Adobe installer is the sock in which you will place the bar of soap so that you may more effectively beat yourself with it.

Ad spending is up. You Facebook people have a real monetary value and you know what? You ain’t worth much. You spend a lot of time online and you’re a candidate for gambling AND gaming addiction from Virgin. iPhones sell by the boatload, and risk sinking it. This week on the show, Greg Schneider CEO and co-founder of 3BL Media joins us to talk the new calculus of media distribution in a social media economy.

Even the rumor of a CDMA phone in 2010 is going to piss people off. Q4 isn’t that far away, and with all the fervor over iPhone 4 sales this week — and all those freshly-minted 2-year AT&T contracts — that there’s even a remote chance for a Verizon CDMA iPhone on the heels of launch will spark that good, old fashioned spirit of entitlement all over again. Get ready to let yourselves feel all wonky and let down by the man, people.

Still, this is a bit of old news. Apple’s put an awful lot of weight behind GSM and to go to Verizon with essentially a custom phone seems oddly uncharacteristic of their behavior in the market.

There’s that, plus DigiTimes’ loose relationship with accuracy, too.

Pegatron will also start shipping a CDMA version of the iPhone 4 to Apple in the fourth quarter and is currently using its plants in Shanghai, China to produce the products, the sources noted.

“… It’s also brought to you by this book. ‘Success’. If you want to have any success, you should read it. … Looks like a good one.”

There’s just nothing that’s not funny about Uncle Scrubby.
]]> http://www.fifthandmain.com/2010/06/the-legendary-tales-of-old-uncle-scrubby/feed/ 0 http://www.fifthandmain.com/2010/06/the-legendary-tales-of-old-uncle-scrubby/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/fifthandmain/~3/MsZEq59859Y/ http://www.fifthandmain.com/2010/06/taking-control-podcast-ep-8-getting-control-of-paper-clutter/#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:00:00 +0000 Pete http://www.fifthandmain.com/?p=1809 Taking Control Podcast Ep 8: Getting Control of Paper Clutter | Take Control Organizing

Getting control of the paper in your life can help you get control of so much more. This week on the show, Nikki Kinzer and Pete Wright talk about how you can put the systems in place in your own home to put paper in its place and get back on top of your own process!

Academic planning often adopts the business approach to strategic planning. The results are predictable: clear, measurable outcomes; tight, pithy vision statement; focused strategy targeting a clear and “directable” organizational culture. But these assumptions don’t fit the higher education planning environment, with many parallel lines of activity, complex vision, and an environment that is often far more self-directed. This week on the show, we bring you part two of our conversation with John Eldert, Vice President of Administration at Berklee College of Music as he joins Howard Teibel to discuss their work on adapting the business approach to strategic planning for higher education.

Running a successful garage sale can be a lot of work! But it can be a rewarding and profitable way to kick-start your summer organizing by clearing out the cruft in the way of your new lifestyle. This week on the show, Nikki Kinzer and Pete Wright talk about how you can plan the perfect garage sale — from set-up, cleaning, pricing, and payment — and launch your summer organizing right!

Academic planning often adopts the business approach to strategic planning. The results are predictable: clear, measurable outcomes; tight, pithy vision statement; focused strategy targeting a clear and “directable” organizational culture. But these assumptions don’t fit the higher education planning environment, with many parallel lines of activity, complex vision, and an environment that is often far more self-directed. This week on the show, we bring you part one of our conversation with John Eldert, Vice President of Administration at Berklee College of Music as he joins Howard Teibel to discuss their work on adapting the business approach to strategic planning for higher education.

We underestimate what it means to collaborate. The result is often a catalog of missed opportunities for improving function across the organization, which comes at the expense of systems training and technology solutions for simple problems. This week, Howard Teibel joins Pete Wright with a few suggestions for team cross-training — ensuring that teams are aligned across departments and functions, and that process, not just systems, are tested all along the line.

Whether it was a lifelong talent, a desire to be your own boss, or a great idea at 2 a.m. that kick-started your business, there’s a Search Story about your journey just waiting to be told. And with just five minutes, a keyboard and a mouse, you can create a video of your own!

They do a handy bit of lobbying in the email announcing the Search Story Creator:

In 2009, Google generated $54B in economic activity in the United States – one business at a time. See how Google helped small businesses in your state at www.google.com/economicimpact.

In looking at the Oregon economic impact, I see that “Google generated $512 million of economic activity for 29,000 Oregon businesses, website publishers and non-profits in 2009.” Even better, the map linked me to this profile, highlighting Clive Coffee in Portland through a Google Doc whitepaper. This is a terrific use of absolutely free tools to get your stories out there into the broader web. From a data-enabled Google Map to a PDF in Google Docs, this company has done more to integrate small business communication tools for the masses for free than any other I can think of. If you’re not taking advantage of all the ways you can tell your story in this space, find someone who can help you do it.

It serves as a funny reminder, if you stand back a bit, that so much of the story of our existence on the web is inextricably linked to Google’s presentation of that story. Yes, it’s a wide open web. But if your place in the wide open web doesn’t exist in the Google sphere, you’re not really taking part in the discussion, are you?

Think about that. In the meantime, here’s my search story. Took me about three minutes.

Speaking up for the first time since f8 on the privacy mess.

Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark.

Wow. Tough to say you really care about user privacy when you’re handing really private data over to advertisers. As an advertiser? I don’t even want this kind of information.

The Journal found that Facebook went farther than most in sharing identifiable data, by sending the username of the person clicking the ad as well as the username of the profile they were viewing at the time. This news could hardly come at a worse time for Facebook, a company that currently faces a privacy backlash potent enough to make the cover of Time Magazine this month.

Why yes, it is a Flash game in which you try to beat your raft-mate and eat him before he eats you. Thank you for asking.

Takes stones to be divisive and funny with such a marvelously patronizing tone. NSFW. Thanks Amy Lambert for the tip.

“

Commit your ideas to paper before you worry about committing them to code. Get your idea out of your head so you can see it from a different perspective. And just as importantly, share it with others.

I loved the show. I loved all of it. But this certainly rang true for me. The part that got so frustrating was watching the team try and try to write Sylar’s character in a compelling way, and go completely off the rails every other week. There was just no thread.

“If you end up creating bad guys cooler than your good guys, let them ride. Don’t make them into heroes. Zachary Quinto’s Sylar is an excellent example of this formula gone wrong. If you start off a show with your primary madman chopping off the heads of cheerleaders, it’s exceedingly hard to flip him into a savior of mankind, even if he is the show’s most magnetic personality.

Absolutely stunning images from Sean Stiegemeier of Iceland volcano action. Watch on Vimeo for HD goodness.

Pretty much sums up how I feel about meetings in general. Nice visual reminder, this.

Sometimes, what a person says is magnified 1,000 times by who says it. This is one of those times. Danah is a smart person. This is worth reading.

What I find most fascinating in all of the discussions of transparency is the lack of transparency by Facebook itself. Sure, it would be nice to see executives use the same privacy settings that they determine are the acceptable defaults. And it would be nice to know what they’re saying when they’re meeting.

At it’s core this is a question of the changing tide of our cultural evolution. Jarvis once again nails it here:

* As I suggested here, it should study 16th century history about the origins of the public and private and understand that it is playing with bigger, more powerful and profound forces than even it knows. I just wrote in my next book that we are undergoing a similar shift in how society organizes itself with similar tools. Mark Zuckerberg says that he is enabling big change in society. I say examine that belief.

Yes, there is great, deep value in history. We’ve been through this transition before. We are innately social creatures. But that hard-wiring is difficult to scale cleanly. Moving from tribes of connections to villages to cities to distributed networks causes strain on the system. It’s true, we’re probably moving away from some of our plainer collective sense of privacy, but that doesn’t mean we individually walk away from our right to chose how we make that journey.

This is fantastic. Note — two of the most important privacy options in Facebook are not actually available on the Facebook User Profile Privacy Settings page. How would someone just *know* that?

And, say what you will about Facebook transparency, there’s just no excuse for a privacy statement to be longer than the Constitution (minus amendments).

This is a message from the immediate future for small to medium-sized businesses, too. Big companies are recognizing the power of their own sites and the agility they have in creating content they control, and they’re spending money accordingly. The same can be true for smaller players.

“Technology is enabling companies to communicate in ever more sophisticated ways directly with their customers, while social networks like Facebook and Twitter offer ways for users to multiply the effect of corporate messages.

Chuck Richard, lead analyst at information advisory and research firm Outsell, says companies now spend more than half their online marketing budgets on their own sites. ‘It’s been 50 percent or more for the last three years,’ he says.”

It is … pretty much … what it is. My fav is the Imperial Walker.

Great article in Reuters today on Ellison’s involvement in the restructuring at Sun. He pokes fun at Schwartz’ blogging addiction, which is a treat to read. But more importantly, this bit on sales strategy:

“More infuriating, says Ellison, is that Sun routinely sold equipment at a loss because it was more focused on boosting revenue than generating profits.

The sales staff was compensated based on deal size, not profit. So the commission on a $1 million sale that generated $500,000 in profit was the same as one that cost the company $100,000, he said. ‘The sales force could care less if they sold things that lost money because the commission was the same in either case,’ he said. Ellison added that Sun also lost money when it resold high-end storage equipment from Hitachi Ltd, storage software from Symantec Corp and consulting services from other companies. Oracle is ending those deals.”

This, right here, is why companies like Apple are succeeding right now. They care first and foremost about profitability per unit. Market share means nothing if you’re not making enough to keep the lights on.

I quite like the new logo, but while it seems a departure for Seattle’s Best, it seems like more of an alignment with Starbuck’s (Best’s parent). I’m not sure that’s a wholly good thing.

In other news, the agency responsible — Creature — has a hyper-flashed-out site, which keeps forcing me to Adobe to download some new plug-ing after I’ve already downloaded it. So, I can’t see their fancy site. Which is aggravating, if you’re me.

Tennessee is number 1? That’s crazy-talk. At least a little interesting that the most corrupt states in the Union are south, deep south, and more south until you get to Nevada at #7. And congrats to New York and New Jersey for being right at the top of the bell curve.

Spoiler: Really want to escape corruption? Head to New Hampshire.

Here’s a quick link to the gallery of states in order of corruption.

The first time I played Portal, I did it in two sittings. I think my children had to eat or something, but their tiny collective voice was about all that could break my concentration from this game. With the exception of the Bard’s Tale series, to which I also lost much of my life as a youth, Portal is the most engaging game I’ve played on any platform.

Steam for Mac is finally out, and Portal is available for free for a few more days. Go download and get this fascinating puzzler. You have to play through it before Portal 2 hits the shelves.

Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative | Epicenter | Wired.com

Is there a substantive alternative to Facebook on the horizon? Google? Anyone? Hullo?

So in December, with the help of newly hired Beltway privacy experts, it reneged on its privacy promises and made much of your profile information public by default. That includes the city that you live in, your name, your photo, the names of your friends and the causes you’ve signed onto.

This spring Facebook took that even further. All the items you list as things you like must become public and linked to public profile pages. If you don’t want them linked and made public, then you don’t get them — though Facebook nicely hangs onto them in its database in order to let advertisers target you.

This Week in Google – ep 41 offered a terrific discussion on the nature of trust. I’ve made fun of Jeff Jarvis in the past, mostly because of the paranoid hand-wringing that always seems to emanate from his general direction, but the world needs more people who think deeply about these issues — guys just like Jeff. In this case, his point is that while Google started out as a company vested in publishing your public information to the world at large, then transformed into a company offering more services targeted at maintaining your private life and connections, Facebook started out as a company dedicated to helping you connect with a private network, and has, over the years, moved the other direction. The result is a certain cognitive dissonance that people-who-think-deeply-about-such-things can’t quite assimilate.

Those of us who choose to live our lives in public are stuck between a rock and a hard place. I, for one, would love to find an alternative to Facebook with simpler controls. The sometimes unfortunate nature of networks is this: you have to go where the people are if you want to do more than shout at an empty room.

A few months ago, I wrote a post about how to get more out of Facebook. My intent, at the time, was to write a series on configuring the application to protect your privacy, reduce Facebook apps annoyance, and allow you to connect with the people that are important in your life. I got one post into the series and got swept away by events. When I finally got back to it this week, I started digging into the terms and options after the last round of Facebook updates and have come to a frustrating realization: I think the original intent of my series is now impossible to deliver.

First, take a look at this visualization by Matt McKeon demonstrating the change in Facebook default privacy settings over time. If you have some time, peruse the comments, which have a few interesting points:

One thing which is almost as interesting is how much the effectiveness of the “most restrictive” non-default has also gone down in a similar pattern. Not only have the (enormously powerful) defaults become super-permissive, but facebook has reduced the ability of concerned parties, or really the small subset willing to keep constantly twiddling their privacy settings, to keep their private data private.

and…

There is this bizarre meme running through the press that, somehow, Facebook has a MONOPOLY on publishing personal information, and that we are all pawns in some sort of vicious commercial game, but that somehow we can’t STOP being on Facebook.

On the first point: given the convoluted nature of the latest privacy options panel, I’d be interested in data on the size of that subset since April 1, 2010.

On the second point: What Facebook has isn’t a monopoly. Monopolistic practices don’t enter in to this discussion. What’s disturbing is that Facebook has collected a massive amount of data on each of us, and has a documented history of changing the way they present that data — and to whom they present it — with each evolution of policy. The implication is that data I gave to Facebook under terms I once agreed to, is now offered publicly under terms I no longer agree to (or potentially understand), with limited clear method for user intervention.

If you’re more of a reader, check out this piece on BusinessInsider. In it, there’s a great review of salient language from the Facebook Privacy Policy as it was at each update from 2005 to present. The most interesting line is this from the update in April, 2010:

If you are uncomfortable with the connection being publicly available, you should consider removing (or not making) the connection.

I’d sure be interested in someone more lawyerly than I am to translate that bit, cause here’s how I read it: If you don’t like it, don’t use it.

Come to think of it, pretty damned good advice, that.

Not sure this should be a surprise, but Facebook sniffs email content exchanged on the built-in messaging platform, then censors that content. I haven’t tested this.

As outlined in the post, it’s not unusual for content to be deconstructed algorithmically, it’s done all the time. And email shouldn’t be considered private by any stretch. But the fact that Facebook is then censoring that data wholesale amps up the discussion about Facebook falling out of favor with some.

Wired.com ran a test using a torrent file linked on the Pirate Bay to confirm:

Wired.com confirmed Facebook is blocking private messages by sending a link to a Pirate Bay torrent feed of a book in the public domain. Such content is freely available to everyone, as all copyrights have expired. Nevertheless, the message bounced twice, returning the following failure notice: “This Message Contains Blocked Content. Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users.” (Facebook’s link-censoring system is may be just tilting at windmills, however, because removing a single vowel from the domain name lets the URL go through.)

In the case of Wired.com’s test, there were only two Facebook users who should have been aware of the content — Wired.com editor John C. Abell and his message’s intended recipient, who was sitting five feet from him — and neither had the slightest objection to it whatsoever.

The whole post is worth reading.

Yes. Ironing Man. I’ve watched it four times. It’s not good, although, at the same time, it’s absolutely brilliant. Go figure, right? Off to number five…

Here’s the latest framework from Julius Genachowski. I’ve only just skimmed it, but so far some interesting comments re the Comcast decision which so horrendously knee-capped the FCC.

One, the Commission could continue relying on Title I “ancillary” authority, and try to anchor actions like reforming universal service and preserving an open Internet by indirectly drawing on provisions in Title II of the Communications Act (e.g., sections 201, 202, and 254) that give the Commission direct authority over entities providing “telecommunications services.”

Two, the Commission could fully “reclassify” Internet communications as a “telecommunications service,” restoring the FCC’s direct authority over broadband communications networks but also imposing on providers of broadband access services dozens of new regulatory requirements.

I have serious reservations about both of these approaches.

From the sound of it, no one is happy about the FCC’s latest direction, least of which is the FCC. Worth reading if you have even a remote interest in access and fair practice in broadband.

Not the most glowing review Borders has posted to highlight their new Kindle/Nook-esque ereader. Inauspicious marketing launch.

…Kobo is considerably cheaper than other eReaders. The design aims to make eReading more accessible to book lovers. – The Wall Street Journal

Terrible news for freedom of information for the public. As much as we may find some content distasteful, filtering in public libraries kickstarts a dangerous trend that impacts those who use their library as their only access to the internet.

Bray is so centered on this issue. I need to dial down my own rhetoric on the subject. He says clearly what takes me far too many words to describe vis my feelings on Flash.

What’s not to like, then? Well, the user experience, which in my experience is fourth-rate for anything but games; No “Back” button, feaugh. And of the course the fact that it remains essentially proprietary.

So, I use a Flash-blocker every day, and I am not a friend of Flash inside Google, but none of my arguments have anything to do with being part of the Web, or not.

I don’t remember when I started using Evernote, but I think it still had a “Beta” badge attached to it at the time. Since then, it’s become the hub for every single bit and byte of random life data that I’ve accumulated. From client passwords to saved web pages to account information to software serial numbers to meeting notes to recipes to photos to books to movies to snarky things I’ll probably tweet later to things to get my wife when she’s mad at me to things to get my kids to you name it… it’s probably in my Evernote.

So, you can imagine just how it makes me reflect soberly on how much I love being involved with the naked marketers when people like Evernote VP of marketing Andrew Sinkov agrees to join us to come share his wit and wisdom. I’ll tell you, in case you can’t actually imagine it: it is awesome.

Andrew, and the Evernote team, are part of a gentle sway in the marketing business that started some 10 years ago. As I piece these little nuggets of data together, the only thing I can think of to describe this sway is the feeling you get when you’re at the very top of the Sears Tower in a stiff wind: you’re moving, or you’re pretty sure something is moving around you, and you’re suddenly no longer convinced that life, the universe, and everything are safe just then. We talk about that sway on the show this week, and wrap it up in what Andrew actually does day-t0-day as chief marketer for Evernote. In spite of some Skype shakiness, I think it’s a good interview, and I recommend you listen to it if you’re into this movement of Engagement Marketing that’s bubbling up from the start-up nation around us.

This was a really fun interview to do. First, Brian is wicked smart. And let’s be honest: You have to be wicked smart to work for a company that acts as both service provider for, and competitor to, the most popular handset in history. The guy is sandwiched between two incredibly buzzy developer networks and is charged with making less buzzy platforms interesting to same, and thereby to users. It’s a rock/hardplace scenario, and when you listen to him talk about it, you sort of can’t help but both pity him for the placement, and envy him for the wonderful challenge every day. It’s a hardcore marketer’s dream job.

We really, really try to hold our tongues this week. We tend to ramble on a bit at the mouth when it comes to news — me, mostly, I know — but it’s just so hard to keep my wits about me when we start talking tech. So head over and take a listen to the show. And if you like it, leave a review or drop us a nice note on iTunes. That’s really helpful, the iTunes thing, as it helps other people discover the show.

Finally, I know this post is WAY late since we’re recording another episode tomorrow, but our next guest gave us a terrific review that I just can’t wait to shout from the rooftops:

I’m psyched to participate. I’ve been steadily working my way through your back-catalog. TNM has officially displaced a couple of crappy food podcasts that I’d been listening to.

Did you catch that? We’re better than a couple of crappy food podcasts! And this from a guy who hasn’t even been on the show yet! If this isn’t the perfect segue for a “Dumb and Dumber” moment, I don’t know what is.

As long-time Network Creators, you no doubt already see the value of Ning. We intend to focus our efforts 100% on meeting your needs and building the features you’ve requested. The phasing out of free services won’t happen until July, and we’ll be providing those who can’t join us with a clear migration path at that time.

Well. It’s good to know that now, after years in service, they’re going to start meeting our needs.

All snark aside, I think this is probably a good move for the company as the reality of the Free Market Culture sets in and more and more organizations realize it’s time to, you know, make some money. Ning has been a terrific tool for many of my clients, but once you hit the ceiling on functionality, you’re locked up. API access is coming, apparently, which is good for developers, and more flexibility in custom designs, too.

Which is all great. But I just got off the phone with the owner of a terrific Ning network looking to move the site and all his members to a new platform in the wake of all the changes and the deteriorating service over the last year. And he is already a paying customer.

I hope they can pull it together and that the new premium model isn’t a day late, dollar short.

Cause migrating networks is a massive pain.

Yes, I’m exactly the sort of person who reposts links to things like “The Zombie Table.” You shouldn’t even have to ask.

Behold, the Zombie tested and victim approved Safe Bedside Table. Getting rushed by flesheaters? No problem! The Safe Bedside Table has a removable leg that acts as a club and a top that doubles as a shield for self-defense.

With all the hoopla around video codecs, both open and closed source, here’s a bit of reporting covering MPEG LA terms around what is poised to be the next great standard on the net, h.264. Why does this matter? Because of patents, someone has to pay when I produce a video for a client which is later sold. And there are always patents. This story certainly goes a long way to ease my own concerns over royalty payments to patent holders, particularly the last part, emphasis mine:

“Realistically, it’s unlikely that a consumer who unwittingly plays a video clip from an unlicensed source is going to be pursued by MPEG-LA or by patent owners. The legal framework for patent damages is different than it is in the copyright area, so you’re not likely to see lawsuits against ordinary consumers, like some of the highly publicized suits filed by the RIAA [Recording Industry of America] in the United States,” Homiller said.

Another way where professionals can get off the hook for payments is if the video is broadcast for free over the Internet. Earlier this year, MPEG LA extended through 2015 a provision that means streaming H.264 video over the Net requires no royalty payments as long as anyone can see the video without paying.

Yup, predictable. From Engadget:

It seems, however, that things just didn’t manage to take shape, and word was handed down very recently that the incubation period had reached its conclusion — sans product — and resources would be directed elsewhere.

As a final note, I still love my currently-available-in-stores iPad.

I think this is the first thing I’ve posted about the lost iPhone. I was going to swear that I would make this the last thing I’d post on the lost iPhone too, but as the story goes on, it’s getting almost too interesting not to share. In the mean time, this is too good not to pass on.

This about hits my assumption that sticking with the independent route hits the sweet spot. More important is keeping a balanced portfolio and avoiding exclusives. Other artists out there seeing the same?

(thanks @CurtSiffert)

From Jobs missive on Flash today:

Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Of course, Adobe is going to make a great product for authoring in HTML5 and so on, because a great-big-non-trivial-part-of-the-business exists to do that. But by saying this out loud, Jobs just guaranteed that Adobe will be resentful the whole time.

Reason #1,248 that Ze Frank is a classy guy.

No, no it’s not the most disgusting thing you could eat today, but it’s still tremendously disgusting. Insofar as it’s a reach to find anything surprising here, I suppose I’m chewing on the point that the Big Mac is, in fact, less disgusting than the Double-Down.

Predictable, given the audience of Wired.com. Doubly predictable given how great browsing is on iPad with your fingers.

Absolute dead-simple staple of my work. Transmit 3 is absolutely unparalleled. I pulled the trigger on Transmit 4 before I’d even launched it.

It’s been over two weeks that the iPad has been on the market in the US. I’m writing this post on the iPad, in fact, in a moving car on the way to Canyonville, Oregon for a lovely weekend at the casino with the wife and family. Cause, nothing says ‘vacation’ like the Seven Feathers for a family that doesn’t gamble or drink much.

As a strange aside, take a look at the Seven Feathers on Google maps; there is a crazy proximity to the cemetery right at the edge of the parking lot. I’m not much into the occult, but I saw Poltergeist.

I have read what I have to imagine now amounts to all of the iPad reviews. I’ve read the early ones calling the iPad a silly also-ran in a soon to be saturated market. I’ve read the reviews calling the thing an oversized iPod touch. I’ve read the ones calling it a game-changer, a magical tool that will change the way we live, raise our children, tame lions, and ride bikes. As much as I’ve been longing to get a few words out on the device, I didn’t feel like I would be able to add much to the discussion without actually — you know — using it for a while. So, here we are. Two weeks in and I think, now, I have something to say.

The Hardware

I’m on the record as being a fanboy for Apple stuff. I’ve tried to shake that, but once I did the commercial, I really cemented the door closed on that whole objectivity thing. Whatever. The truth is that the unboxing experience for Apple hardware is next to godliness. You may be able to tell right now where the rest of this is going.

Apart from the Spartan and practical packaging, the device itself exudes something of a halo when you pull the lid from the box. That may be from the incredible shine of the perfect screen. Don’t worry. That shine is soiled mere seconds later, just after you lay a single finger upon it, when the smudge magnet is activated. If you’re looking to maintain that perfect shine, you’ll be wiping it with a soft cloth three minutes for every one minute that you are actually computing with it.

Its heavier than you expect at 1.5 pounds. I’m a former kindle user and the one of the things that was decidedly not annoying about the kindle hardware experience was the weight of the device. I got used the featherweight feel of the thing. Compare to the kindle, the iPad is a cinderblock.

What comes with that weight, though, is a distinct feeling of significance. This device is made solid, battle-ready. The block aluminum housing is smooth, baby’s bottom smooth. And, much like a baby, you wouldn’t want to hold this thing up high and wave it around a bunch, as it might just slip right through your fingers. This, I have to imagine, is a welcomed coincidence for third party case makers.

The thing is, the weight and texture of this thing feels damned good to hold. After about a half hour of constant use, I found myself unable to let it go, unnaturally stroking the back of it with my fingertips as I tap away with the other hand. This combination of large screen, texture, weight, and temperature is simply heaven for tactile people like me. And, after the first day or so of getting used to the weight, muscle memory has kicked in and it’s no longer a surprise just how heavy it is when I pick it up.

Speaking of things that are unnatural, this screen is amazing. As has been widely reported, those that have touched iPad tend to be converts, and I found the same true for me. There’s no give to it — the large capacitive glass is solid as stone and wildly responsive to each touch, far more so than the iPhone, in my experience so far. I’ve owned three iPhones so far, and each of them has had some sort of manufacturing weirdness at the point where the glass meets the body. Not so with the iPad; the seam is level, smooth and tight all the way around the face of the device.

Battery life is a stunner. I consider myself a heavy user, and I’ve been working hard to test the limits of this thing, and now, after two days of normal use, including writing several long documents (this entire series included) I’m only just now at 40%. Movies. TV. Podcasts. Office work. Through it all, it doesn’t get hot, and it powers right on through.

It’s a joy to touch, so be it. But that’s not the real story of iPad. The real story of ipad is in the things that you can do with it.

The Software

I carry (carried) a Moleskine notebook with me everywhere. I prefer the middle size, with the grid rule paper. I use it for notes and sketches at meetings, free-writing, brainstorming and mapping, and for letting my kids bathe the thing in stickers.

When I first saw iPad, long before actually touching iPad, I knew I wanted to use it to replace my Moleskine notebook.

Out of the box, that’s impossible. Which is a shame, since the form factor to me makes it such a natural content creation device. The Apple-included apps really are rejiggered iPhone and iPod touch apps. They look great on the big screen of iPad, but the don’t really add much new to the experience that changes the way you’re going to use a computer forever when it comes to creating. In fact, in some cases, they went ahead and screwed — or royally screwed — the way you expect things to work.

Things that are interesting

No doubt, Safari on iPad is a killer app. Browsing with your fingers is every bit the intimate experience that you never knew you wanted to have with the internet. You can think of that any way you need to. The thing is, it’s just plum different, and this different is good. I find what I’m looking for faster on the iPad than my laptop, and thanks I think to the flat form factor, I’m more engaged in the research on it. The modal nature of the iPhone OS is such that I find myself more focused and attentive to whatever it is I’m looking for online.

Mail is a treat. With Mail, this thing has actually made me more productive when I’m working on my laptop; I leave my email closed on the computer, and pick up my iPad to check mail when I head to lunch or coffee. I’ll talk about the keyboard in more detail later, but suffice it to say that my typing speed on this thing is such that I can get through even longer responses quickly and with no pain. The user experience eye candy in mail actually adds to the mail experience, supporting user input rather than just showing it off. In landscape mode, seeing all your mail in the left column, message in the right, is perfect for quick filing. But in portrait mode, the message column disappears and you’re brought into just one message at a time. It’s funny, what happens next: you feel like you’re reading each message on paper. It’s the experience you get when you used to print those super important emails so you’d have them for reference later, or just wanted to make sure someone else noted that you knew an email was important enough to print and pose on the corner of your desk, all politicky and full of snark.

Maps. Huge. Maps on the iPad is the app that you’re going to use out of the box to show your friends just how cool the iPad is. Pinching and zooming in the maps app is as close to the Minority Report experience as you can get on the device. It’s totally intuitive, an extension of your brain, and thoroughly exercises the full definition of the Google imagery. In street view, on this big iPad screen, you can almost make out my license plate numbers. It’s that good.

Things that are not as great as we were led to believe

There is a lot right with the iPad. This is stuff that is just not right enough that I don’t find myself giving it much thought.

• Calendar. Contacts. Notes. Functionally uninspired. None of these apps bring anything new to the table, and in fact regress not a little bit. Now, they look more like paper, but they don’t bring me the feel of paper, or the ability to interact with the elements on the page like paper. In notes, for example, why can’t I type something, then draw something on the page right next to the note? Do Apple engineers ever draw?
• Photos. It’s ok. If you have nice photos, you can really show off the device. If you don’t, you’ll have plenty of fun swiping and pinching your way through your images, but otherwise, the photos app didn’t add much over the iPhone version of the same.
• Camera. Oh. Wait. There’s no damned camera. As a photographer, I wish this thing had a camera, what with all the really wonderful apps for working with images that exist on is platform. The omission of a camera adds steps to the photo process that are just troublesome enough that I don’t find myself actually using photos much on this thing.

Things that are screwed, royally screwed, or buggered

Some things on the iPad, just a few of them, have to be keeping some engineers up all night.

Handling files. Hands down the most un-Apple design I have ever experienced. It’s truly as if some engineer sat down and deliberately designed a system for handling files that would cause user pain, frustration, and confusion. It’s a fundamental step backwards that comes as a weird by-product of the Finder-free modal interface.

Here’s the current situation, for those who haven’t seen it. And to get the real feeling for it all, you have to put yourselves in this mental space: with Pages for word processing, Keynote for presentations, Numbers for spreadsheets, each one an able tool for office documents, you feel like you are being encouraged by Apple to use this thing as an Actual Computer. That’s the scenario. One you should be comfortable with because, you know, you’ve been encouraged to work with office-type apps for the better part of three decades.

So you plug in the iPad, install the appropriate apps and think to yourself, “Ok, so now I want to work on this thing, this document thing. How do I ever communicate with the iPad that I want to get this document thing into it?”

(I honestly don’t think they got around to asking that question during iPad development. There is simply no way that people who are that smart, who turn out such incredible products and software, could come up with the following boat anchor.)

Open iTunes. Sync iPad. Click on iPad in the devices list in iTunes. Click on apps tab. Scroll down to obscurely hidden document well, which includes a list of apps that are currently installed on the iPad which can handle documents. Pages will be listed here. Click on Pages, then click the add button, or find your document and drag it into the document well. The iPad will sync instantly. So, I guess, there’s that.

Now, it’s bad enough that there are so many steps involved here. What’s worse is this: when you add a document to the iPad, you’re creating a version of it. Yes, your original will still exist on your computer. So if you go work on it on your iPad, then put it back on your computer, you have to make sure you delete and replace that original file with the new version. Lest we forget that we live in an era when the great innovations include Google Docs, Dropbox, Box.net, and so many other cloud based collaboration tools. That this tool and the associated apps omit the ability to sync, work, and save in the cloud is more than just annoying. Even Apple’s own iWork.com service creates a new version, though you can tell it really wants to be able to do so much more. Thankfully, many of the above services are working hard to fill in this obvious short-coming.

And on that last point, we get to the real promise of the iPad, something Apple has been curating and cultivating and conditioning all of us to accept: the third party apps.

The Apps

The first application that I paid for and used on my iPad was iMockups. It’s a rapid wire-framing tool used to sketch out website designs very quickly and send them off to clients. When I saw the demo video, three days prior to actually owning the iPad, I knew this one would be in my arsenal. I do too many of these things each week not to see if this would be that first great thing on the new device.

Within two minutes, I’d sent my first wireframe to a client for review. Two minutes.

I do a lot of things pretty fast on the computer. I like to think I have a pretty good connection to it and can turn out good work on deadline, more often than not. But this was a different experience — pinching, squeezing and drawing my way to a wireframe provided a whole new way to engage with what I was doing. It was a fast, almost direct connection between what was in my head and what I wanted on the screen.

It’s a bizarre experience, to be sure. And not every app delivers on this promise of direct connection to your cerebral cortex.

For example, I mentioned earlier that I was looking to recreate the experience I have with my Moleskine notebook. I wanted a simple application that would allow me to draw and type, ideally some sort of handwriting capture (not recognition, mind you, just capture) and a quick way to take those notes and pipe them back onto my Mac for processing and archive.

You would think that I was asking for a cure for cancer. And, actually, the results are about the same for both: there is great promise, but no option that really nails the problem on all fronts, and in the end are disappointing.

I’ve tried a dozen or so of the journaling applications in the App Store now and the closest I’ve found is Ghostwriter for iPad. It has drawing, and within a few taps, handwriting capture. It offers multiple notebooks to keep content organized. The handwriting capture is off-the-charts clever; when you activate a pen tool, a large magnifier pops up in which you write with the tip of your finger, which is copied at a more reasonable size where your cursor sits on the page. It also crashes a lot. A lot, a lot. And it typically crashes just after you’ve written a full page of notes, at which point, you want nothing more than to take an iPad in the face, which would be far less pain than the pain of losing all that work. Or at least, that was my experience.

Ghostwriter is a great example of an app that is testing the bounds of what the iPad interaction mechanic is capable of. And for that, some early bugginess is certainly forgivable — that the developer had this app in the store on opening day without having tested it on an actual functioning iPad is laudable. All the day-one developers deserve great respect for turning out generally terrific software without a lot of time and tools needed to do so properly.

Not all apps have been so buggy on day one. Another hole to fill for me early on was Google Reader. While Google did an admirable job updating the mobile interface for Gmail for large screen mobile devices like the iPad, they haven’t gotten around to updating the Google Reader web interface. While I use Google Reader on the web when I’m on my Mac, the iPad called for an app.

I tried Early Edition first. Very clever interface, but slow slow slow in as a version one, and no sync with Reader, though word from the developer is that Reader sync is coming very soon. For now, no dice.

Next was FeeddlerRSS. Syncs with Google Reader, but the way it spawns in-app browser windows made navigation tough for me to wrap my head around. It is a solid app, to be sure, just not for me.

I finally landed on NetNewsWire. At $9.99, it was the most expensive of the lot, but worth every penny. Excellent sync with Reader, no crashes, and an intuitive interface that had me browsing, staring and sharing stories in no time. It’s a simple app that brings fantastic utility to reading RSS feeds, and having them on the iPad rejuvenates the whole concept of RSS as a tool for anyone who needs to engage in a lot of content quickly.

And such is the nature of the app ecosystem right now. Name a tool you’d like to use, and there will be three apps that fit the bill. One of them that nails it, and two others that just don’t. Unfortunately, App Store pricing is a bit of a wild west. Rather than the quick race to the basement that we’re seeing in the iPhone side of the house, iPad apps are more expensive, so the cost of casual exploration starts to smart after not too long.

We’re already seeing the surge of the next wave of iPad apps hitting the store that illustrates the pace of evolution taking place now that developers have devices to use, test, and play with. So far, it’s promising, since without the apps, this device has no future.

And that really is the bottom line. The future of the iPad is in the hands of the developers, and Apple knows it. After using the device for a while, you get the feeling that Apple’s apps are proofs of concept for what is possible, tip-toeing along the line that separates cleverness from utility, waiting for developers to unleash the real innovation. The iPad is not a device. It’s a platform. It’s a platform with enormous promise, but it’s still a platform.

The Verdict

No way. I was taught better than that. No, I think everyone should have a shot with this thing, to be sure. And now, just a few weeks in, I think I can safely say that it’s right for me — that it’s finding its place in my gear ecosystem, and that is helping me be more productive, more quickly. But there is clearly a lot to learn, a lot to create out there. My only message in this first post is a two-parter. For those who don’t like Apple, don’t want this product to succeed because you think the iPhone has gone too far, whatever: you people need to wait for the Courier. It’ll be perfect for you. If it ships.

For everyone else: I don’t know how this will turn out yet, but Apple has changed the world again. They’ve done it because with iPad they’ve gotten the right people at the right companies thinking. They’ve done it because they’ve inspired a new horserace around glass. They’ve done it because in the last three years they’ve conditioned us to a new world of tapping, and in doing so have changed the way you will compute for the next 100 years.

They’ve done it because for the first time in 25 years, Apple has mainstreamed a technology that fundamentally changes the physicality of our interaction with data. Your next computer might still have a keyboard, but it’ll seem antiquated next to what you can do by simply reaching out and giving it a little tap.