Another VC recently told me his firm recently had passed on opportunities to invest in some new tech blogs that were proposing a business model he described as “hush money.” Potential investors were being offered “most favored nation” status for themselves and their portfolio companies if they put money into the site.

The personal mudslinging aside, he’s absolutely right – there’s a pretty distasteful situation emerging.

I enjoy reading Parislemon, but it seems every other post is a plug or a smear these days.

And, in general, the whole silicon valley VC industry seems massively corrupt.

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I’m not using many of the pre-installed options beyond Flashlight and Tweet – instead I’m using the app to achieve a minimalistic home screen, with shortcuts to my most commonly used Settings and a shortcut to the BBC News mobile website which I far prefer to their app but can’t abide their non-Retina Display pixellated touch icon!

52 Tiger has a compilation of iOS Settings URLs. The ones I’m using:

• Airplane Mode On – prefs:root=AIRPLANE_MODE

• Wallpaper – prefs:root=Wallpaper

The URL for my App Store link is as follows:

• http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewGenre?id=36&mt=8

I think a good measure of an app’s value is the space it buys you either on the home screen or the device itself – on that basis Launch Center has saved me 3 icon spaces on my home screen (App Store, Settings, and BBC News bookmark icon) and taken the place of a dedicated flashlight (i.e. torch!) app (for the record, I previously used Lighty).

I wish there were URL schemes for Apple’s iOS Clock and Calculator apps, but sadly not. I haven’t yet found a use for Launch Center’s scheduling feature.

If you come across any interesting use cases for Launch Center, let me know!

PS – I’m pretty proud of the minimalism I’ve achieved on my iPhone so will endeavour to publish screenshots at some point!

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• When you activate iMessage it registers a “token” with Apple using MSISDN, UDID (device ID) and Apple ID which is how the device knows the recipient is registered for iMessage on iOS5 and can show the “Delivered” status, etc.
• The device / user ID token has a “polling period” of a month (unless iMessage is toggled & reset in Settings) meaning that if a registered user removed their SIM (i.e. Phone number) from an iPhone, that iPhone could continue to receive iMessages for them via its wifi data connection.

This explains my (admittedly unlikely) scenario of iMessages being delivered to multiple devices but also proves my point that sending to and from the Apple ID email address is a safer solution to the phone number.

This is the first million dollar Kickstarter project. The previous record on Kickstarter was held by the TikTok & LunaTik watch kits which generated $942,578 (admittedly a higher percentage over a smaller goal).

The product itself looks excellent – machined matte aluminium as Apple would (should!) design – the deal-breaker for me is the ability to use it with a bumper. I bought the basic version ($59 then $90) to use on the bedside table.

Tim O’Reilly (founder of O’Reilly Media) tweeted yesterday:

Seems to me that Kickstarter is the most important tech company since Facebook. Maybe more important in the long run.

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Q. Who are the chain’s competitors?
A. Our number one competitor is ourselves and our way of thinking, which is informed by decades of experience. It’s not another store; it’s not another format like the Internet. Our competition is ourselves and our best friend is our imagination.

Q. Who are you targeting?
A. We are going after all Americans. We would like to be the store for everyone.

Please.

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Firstly, a look at the Dixons share price during Browett’s time as CEO:

Source: Dixons Retail PLC on the London Stock Exchange

Financial Press

BBC News: Currys owner Dixons sees losses increase to £25.3m (Nov 2011)

“In what remains a challenging environment, the pace and impact of improvements in our operating model is driving outperformance versus our competitors and market share gains.”

Financial Times: Dixons must focus on survival as courting comes to nothing (Aug 2011) [Paywall alert!]

The Telegraph: Website glitches cost Dixons £15m in lost sales (Jan 11)

A problem with its technology platform meant that its websites crashed for prolonged periods on December 26, 27, and 28, some of its busiest trading days of the year.

Macworld: Dixons UK refused credit insurance (Nov 2008)

Credit insurance firm Atradius has stopped covering risk on stock sold to consumer electronics retail giant Dixons plc … The withdrawal means vendors that insure through Atradius, among them Korean giant Samsung, have no guarantees that outstanding debt with the retailer will be met.

Customer Service

In Apple’s press release, Tim Cook says, “Our retail stores are all about customer service, and John shares that commitment like no one else we’ve met”.

The BBC’s Watchdog consumer affairs programme on Dixons’ customer service offering:

Knowhow: Do they know how to give good customer service? (Oct 2011)

Since the launch of KNOWHOW in March, Watchdog has had over 100 complaints. Customers have complained of lengthy delays for repairs, items being returned damaged or with parts missing, items being returned faulty and items being lost altogether.

Perception

This is not an impressive hire for Apple if you know anything Dixons – a big box company that is notorious for bad advice & service, rip-off cables & extended warranties.

Their financial performance is obviously against a backdrop of tough times for (almost) everyone in the sector, but I can’t envisage Browett being either a visionary or a safe pair of hands for Apple Retail.

Apple today announced that John Browett will join the company as senior vice president of Retail, reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook. Browett comes to Apple from European technology retailer Dixons Retail, where he has been CEO since 2007.

“Our retail stores are all about customer service, and John shares that commitment like no one else we’ve met,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.

Has anyone from Apple ever been to a Dixons, Currys or PC World store?!

Keep in mind that Best Buy was a breath of fresh air for UK tech retail.

I would love to see the commentary if this was the CEO of Best Buy.

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The majority of people I message often are using iPhones so there’s a clear benefit to the reduced cost of texts alongside more IM-like conversations.

Two people I converse with most often live abroad – in America and Norway – so iMessage (and apps like Textie before it) facilitates conversations that would be far less streamlined (email) or prohibitively expensive (text) in any other way.

But my experience of iMessage is far from perfect.

As I write this I have an undelivered outgoing message to a friend who doesn’t have an iPhone. It’s been sitting in the conversation for an hour – in blue, without the “delivered” status underneath.

It won’t be delivered as an iMessage as he doesn’t have an iPhone – I assume at some point it will be delivered as a text message, but if there is a way to override this and force messages to send as text, I don’t know it.

Yesterday I had an iMessage conversation with my brother-in-law (who has an iPhone) and at least two messages were “Sent as Text Message” for no apparent reason – I was in an office, on wifi, all day.

This isn’t a major issue beyond the cost of a couple of text messages, but it is when an iMessage is “Sent as Text Message” to a contact abroad – this has happened to me before when sending a picture to my (other) brother-in-law in America. The cost of an MMS message abroad is not insignificant – and no warnings.

Another scenario: I’m heading to Norway in a few weeks to stay with friends and we plan to go snowboarding for a couple of days. On paper, iMessage is the perfect solution for us to keep in touch – but data roaming is not (especially with a company phone on a personal trip).

Presumably if my data is off the iPhone will default to sending text messages – but what about receiving messages? Presumably my friends’ iPhones will recognise that my number is registered for iMessage which will bypass text messaging and the messages will sit on the server until I’m back on a data connection?

This is the problem – iMessage assumes perfect connectivity which is far from the case even on a train in your home country for example, let alone travelling.

The most serious iMessage issue I’ve experienced…

For about a week at the end of last year, every iMessage I received was being CC’d to my boss’s wife’s iPhone and, later, vice versa.

Just imagine the potential implications, let alone the embarrassment and the inevitable panic over what might have been said.

When an iMessage arrived incorrectly, you could also then see the entire conversation before it. Scary stuff.

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A bit of background which illustrates the complexity of the situation which, in turn, probably precludes this from being a common occurance…

I work for a small business where we have 3 phones (me, my boss, and his wife) on an O2 business account. The rates per handset are low and we all share a central pool of minutes and texts.

His wife upgraded from a 3GS to a 4 and, therefore, required a new micro SIM which she requested from O2. O2 issued the new SIM and transferred the wrong number (mine) to it. Not realising, she got the new phone with iOS 5 and set up her iMessage account which was then tied to my phone number, but also with her email address attached. Meanwhile my phone cut off which highlighted the problem which was quickly resolved.

But for a few days afterwards she received iMessages sent to me (alongside me receiving them) and I received messages sent to her (her contacts replied to messages she had sent from my phone number). I understand that there would inevitably be a lag-time in contact details updating on Apple’s servers.

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As a result, I make a point of using the Apple ID email address as the contact for iMessage wherever possible – this avoids the message defaulting to text message if you don’t want it to (e.g. International) and also separates iMessage from phone numbers which can change.

(You can also set your iMessage “Caller ID” to send from your email address instead of your phone number: Settings / Messages / Receive At / Caller ID)

iMessage is an amazing service that I wouldn’t be without, but when it occasionally goes wrong, it can be incredibly frustrating.

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Ensemble cast including Bill Nighy, James McAvoy, Kelly Macdonald (Boardwalk Empire), John Simm and Phillip Glenister (Life On Mars).

The 2009 movie remake with Russell Crowe & Ben Affleck was well-reviewed (RT: 84%) and wasn’t bad.

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