THINK / Musings

Billy created a wonderful little ruler for the iphone. Its interesting, its dislocating and its beautiful done, lovely to see wood grain on a device.

A lot of chatter about the iphone — just read Dave Winer's piece — lots of conspiracy theories about how real the Job's demo was and people are starting to focus on the question of how closed the platform is.  Jobs has said that the platform will allow third party development but it will be "restricted" and managed — like ipod games.  Apple believes that in order to get a product into market — out of the box — end to end control of the hardware and software experience is the easiest and fastest way to deliver something that works to users.   This worked in the case of the ipod — it wasnt the first MP3 player to hit the market, it was just the first to work as seamlessly as it did, from the device to the pc.   There are smart phones of many flavors out there today — but they all require a lot of setup, maintenance etc.  The iphone is clearly going to be different — take a look at the Pogue's list of what is does and doesnt do.    

Last year I lived in Italy for six months and I made some notes about what an insanely mobile the country was — 57M people with 70M cell phones.   There are more mobile phones here than fixed lines, estimates are that 18% of the population have cut the cord (chk). Kids and couples walk around listening to cell phones playing music, like 30 years ago people would walk around listening to a radio.    Someone we know was chatted up by a waiter at a restaurant — for follow up, he offered her a SIM chip instead of offering his phone number.   SMS is everywhere and its far more conversational than in the US. The rates and pricing plans push people to SMS.    Wifi is fairly available and the cell co's are clearly nervous about voip / skype - 3 (Hutchison Whampoa) has an offer in market for $15 a month unlimited voip calling to over 25 countries from your handset.    And in Italy Apple has next to no presence (as of 06 they had no stores and next to no market share).  In Italy Apple has next to no presence (as of 06 they had no stores and next to no market share).

Over time the iPod functionality needs to merge into the phone.     Yet Apple has created a business model that is based on tethering hardware to software and reaping all of the margins on the hardware.    The result is that music that I have "bought" on iTunes isn't transportable to other non apple devices.   I really haven't bought it, its a rental agreement - with the a right to listen to that music on 5 apple pc's / devices.  Jobs knows that the ipod is close to its peak and its time to move the ball — the question in my mind is whether open and unlocked alternatives — palm, symbian, rim and even linux phones can out run Apple. 

The pressure points are in my mind (a) apple's dependency on the ipod and its related business mode — the iphone needs to have everything the high end ipod has (focus will be on music, video and phone — watch how they execute on core ipod features (eg: access to itunes store from the device (which today is not available), music and video sharing (also not available)) and then non ipod functionality.    The phone is a messaging device, music and ipod functionality needs to balanced against great messaging capabilities — voice and text (Phones outside of the US are used more for messaging that voice — calling them phones is a cultural artifact — they are messaging devices with voice as a secondary features)   (b) apple's tie to cingular (2 years), and the associated restrictions this brings with it (re: no voip, open wifi roaming, no HSDPA/3g, requirement for a 2 year contract, no unlocked alternative etc.)  (c) the tension between a closed end to end platform with controlled innovation vs. an open platform with distributed innovation and lastly (d) the execution of the hardware / device and the lack of a keyboard.  If this is mostly a media device Apple will miss the broader market. 

I have no doubt people will buy this product — it seems like a beautiful piece of hardware and simply postioned as the highest end ipod it will find a market –  just like the nano or video ipod.  But neither the nano or the video ipod defined a new category — they were devices in a long stream of innovation that started with the orginal ipod.   The iphone needs to define a whole new stream of innovation independent from the ipod.  And the business model will likely also have to evolve — in more developed markets (south korea the flip has occurred to a subsription model, $5 a month for all the music you want / can eat).     I am going to be watching the pressure points listed above to see whether similar to the ps3 vs. Wii the lowend offer some real alternatives, without all the restrictions that Apple's business model now imposes on it as the category leader - the mobile world needs to see some real innovation and what I saw last week suggests that not going to come from Apple. 

7 4 07
(things to watch in 07)

1. Google will feel the tension between search and browse and their associated business models. Google quick check-out will emerge as the companies key innovation beyond search and paid listings. Yahoo and Ebay will follow AOL and be rolled into the operating theatre — the problem isnt technology (panama etc.) its the business model tradeoff’s they have both made re: the tail.

2. Sector wise e-commerce will rise in importance as alternative currencies emerge as legitimate ways to transact. Its a different take on the subscription model but using ingame currencies to transact for other products (see qq coin). On the subject of virtual worlds, growth will continue at a pace, but second life will emerge as the one everyone could understand but few actually wanted to visit more than once.

3. Geographically, the rest of the world will come into focus as internet and media companies search for customers and growth and innovation. ROW will start to be a legitimate force of innovation rather than just a platform to duplicate US business models.

4. Connectivity wise, wireless broadband will finally become a force to be contend with

5. Policy wise: the Net Neutrality debate will recede as it becomes evident that while network providers need to have the ability to ability to manage bits, those who think they can manage or shape the transport layer to the bias one application or service over another will be proven wrong. The influence and relative progress of the ROW will help here. And while the focus is on policy — the internet policy debate will switch to US broadband adoption and relative speed/price of offerings in US vs. ROW.

6. In terms of protocols and the evolution of the web — web 2.0 given that it has moved from a useful definition to a undefined meme will recede in importance and the semantic web will begin to take shape, standards, api’s will be extended to form the basis for the next iteration of the internet

7. Hardware and device wise, Vista’s influence will be mostly in the enterprise, the Ipod starts looking tired, the Itv box becomes a big deal. Leopard will be a bigger deal than most expect. Xbox 360 will get squeezed from the bottom (Wiiiii!), PS3 will make its numbers, the product is pretty good, not as much fun as Wii but nonetheless good. And Linux phones should be on your radar, they are on mine.

I have spent a week getting a pots number to call forward to another number. I set it up on verizon.com, took 4 days to complete the order, once it was done the number no longer worked. I called and after 25 mins on hold I got to a very perky tech representative — he checked it out, said it was setup wrong through the system. He went and made some adjustments — I swear I heard wheels turning in the engine room — another 15 mins later we were done. With the caveat that I need to call again nxt week to set it to ring straight through (right now its on 4 rings and then it will forward, and only the business office can change that rule).

Vonage, grandcentral, skype, pick your voip — this take less than 3 mins. to update. Hmmm that sure is one smart network.

I am having fun with GPS tracking and posting to the web — tracked a run I went on tonight. Software from Charles Grillio’s (here is his site), he has been great in helping me customize the software for the device. Thank you.
Its a strange feeling to go out and then see where you have been tracked, minute by minute on the web.

To see tracking click here (note / opt for satellite image, I am still off the google grid, just).

Finally back in Italy after travel to London. Got a ppc phone with integrated GPS up and running (mio 701) — I am interested in what happens when mobile devices become location aware. Early days but its proving to be interesting. Found a program that lets me publish my location so you can see where I am on a google satellite map. You can see my location — when I publish it — at this site (username is Johnnyb11, try 01/05/2006 as monitor date and once it takes you to google maps opt for satellite, I was a little off the google grid). If anyone knows of other applications to publish location please email me. This one works fine but I would prefer to use SMS to publish location data, should be easier.

A couple of friends have asked about what technology we have setup here in Italy. A summary with commentary below.

Connectivity wise we are using ADSL. Cheap, fast european ADSL. We see speeds of 3-6Mbps with very few drop off’s and little maintence. Our provider is Telecom Italia, we have the Alice service. I would have liked to have tried Fastweb but outside of Milan Fastweb is essentially an ADSL reseller — the FTTH offering is in the Milan metro area. Price wise ADSL has several tiers — the lowest is approx. $25 (with promotions etc.) and the highest includes wifi router and voip and is around $38/mnth after promotions. These prices are in line with France, UK and Belgium. Interestingly upload speeds seem to be as much of a selling point as download speeds.  Finally, to share some of this bandwidth goodness I am testing a Fon access point — not a lot of data on it as yet, will post some commentary when I know more.

Telephony wise we have setup a mix of wireless and VoIP options. For calls within Italy we use our cell phones or the home pots line. For cell phones we are using our US phones with Italian prepaid SIM cards. SIM provider is TIM. Coverage is pretty good but not as good as I expected (europeans often complain about US cell service, saying it soo much better here). In buildings, particularly old Italian ones with thick walls, you have no service. Voice service is pricey - driving much of the the text/data usuage. Data usuage is very interesting. SMS is threaded in a manner that I havent seen in the US. And there are many features that on the SIM card that pre load on to the cell phone interface. Most of them are TIM promotional features — local information search for taxi service, or a voice based search/information service (both of which get loaded into your phone book). There are group chat services, some content and entertainment and also payment services. Payfor me lets you pay or SMS funds to another user — either by entering a phone number or by sending an SMS. The phones take full advantage of the simplicity of a text based interface — I have seen far fewer attempts to push usuage into a browser / graphical experience. Likely one reason why next generation/3g adoption has been slow. On the subject of 3g I havent yet tried the wireless VoIP offering from 3 Italia, will post when I do.

Fixed line VoIP wise we have both Vonage and Skype setup. I brought over our Vonage/Cisco ATA box and it was up and running on the network within minutes. It works fabulously well. Offers us a local (917) number for people calling from the US. Almost no issues with quality or drop off. Amusingly our vonage 917 number must have gotton scrapped recently we have started getting telemarketing calls — after 3 years of vonage usuage in the US with no telemarketing calls and now we are getting calls here in Italy from US vendors (consider that these calls are orginating from call centers outside the US, thinking that they are dialing a US resident, an instance of how strange telephony is becoming now that switching is decoupled from location). Most of our usage on vonage is back and forth to the US. Skype is great for calls elsewhere and multiparty conference calls. I got a Linksys cordless skype phone that works fabulously well. Full access to the address book etc. Drop off and quality of Skype calls is good but not great — big difference between quality of Vonage vs. Skype. Note Alice does offer VoIP as part of its ADSL package. As you might expect its not heavily promoted and the main selling point seems to be personal phone lines — it comes with 5 lines / phone numbers. I havent tried this service.

Video wise we arent watching much italian TV. We are using Sling and a couple of IP video services. Sling works surprisingly well. Its an amazing and strange experience to be sitting here in Italy navigating our Tivo box in NY. Its facinating the degree to which I associate interfaces with place — getting on the Tivo from here makes me feel physically like I am in NY — as I said before, its weird. Quality is fairly good, it works great for talking head stuff (jon stewart etc.), less good for drama but its pretty much only the Soprano’s that we watch drama wise. Note we dont watch much TV in the US, and we watch even less here. But I was surprised by how well Sling does work. The quality bottle neck is mostly because of the upload limit on our broadband connection in the US (the stream we recieve is on average 250-300k). That said if we wanted to watch sports, or any fast moving image — the sling experience wouldnt be great.

Outside of Sling I have tried pretty much all the movie download services. Performance is mixed but lack of quality films has been pretty consistent accross services. This is changing (given recent collapses of the DVD and online window) — and now the quality and price of the services are going to compete head on with p2/ bittorrent alternatives. Vongo / iTunes are the best US services I have found. Do note that most of these services are blocked to non US IP numbers so they only work when connected via a VPN. Italian IPTV is starting to blossom. There are services available via the PC and there are services available to the TV. The PC based service is mostly pay per view — there are prepaid card options that are blended with telephony offerings. The TV based service retails as a complete package for $60/mnth — this includes ADSL, telephony services and a basic TV line up. While I havent tried the service it doesnt seem as advanced as Illiad’s offering in France.

I am also watching a fair amount of short/chunky video from youtube, rocketboom and its kin, but thats a whole other subject.

The other day I was taking one of my children into Como. We came across some traffic, a police escort starting coming towards us in the opposite lane. I thought it must be a local dignitary or maybe the local soccer team — but after a while we figured out that the Olympic torch was coming our way. A young school aged girl was holding the torch. I took a snap with my motorola phone, not great quality but here it is.

This could become a rant about phones and how hard it is to move personal media off them, to save, share or publish but for now leaving this as a picture of a wonderful moment of happenstance.