The Gifts of the Digital Age – Remember 9/11


Today’s article will be short. It reflects upon one of the most powerful testaments to the age of digital technology. Because of the advances in digital technology, we are able to keep alive the memories of those who lost loved ones on this day, ten years ago – and even more, to broadcast those memories to our nation and to our world. They do not remain locked in a vault somewhere, for eternity, they are instead broadcast to the far corners of the universe through social media.

http://storycorps.org/listen/stories/category/september-11/

For the past five years, StoryCorps and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum have worked to record at least one story to honor each life lost on September 11, 2001, ten years ago today. To date, families and friends have memorialized nearly 600 individual victims of the attacks through the StoryCorps interview process. When the 9/11 Memorial opened this morning, excerpts from 10 of these StoryCorps interviews will be featured at the site.

The gifts of digital technology go one step further. Gratefully, the 9/11 Memorial Guide is available through a new iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone app, which visitors to the Memorial will download before visiting the site. This app will allow visitors to search the names arrangement of the Memorial and present select StoryCorps interviews, which help illustrate the enormity of the loss on 9/11 through the personal remembrances of families who lost loved ones on that day. The app will feature StoryCorps stories from each of the nine groups of victims memorialized at the site:  WorldTradeCenter(North), WorldTradeCenter(South), the Pentagon, Flight 93, Flight 77, Flight 175, Flight 11.

May the memories of those lost be preserved and shared.

http://storycorps.org/listen/stories/category/september-11/


7″ Media Tablets Like Kindle Fire…”Dead On Arrival”?

UPDATED with Amazon Kindle “Fire” references.

A few weeks ago, TechCrunch reported that Amazon’s 7″ Kindle tablet was “very real” and would ship for the 2011 holidays.  (UPDATED: Now rumored to be called “Kindle Fire“.  ) Almost a year before that, Wired’s Brian Chen reported that on an earnings call, Jobs said, “the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA — dead on arrival.” So the stage is set for an interesting war of beliefs and concepts this holiday shopping season.  In one corner, the world’s most trafficked internet retail stores and Kindle inventor, Amazon, and in the other, Apple, the most valuable company on the planet and inventor of the iPad.  Will the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet be treated in the marketplace with very little respect or will it shock everyone like the original Kindle?  It really comes down to the basics of the consumer value proposition.

Many Variables at Play

With a considered technology purchase, consumers actually do a bit of research before they buy.  It can be as simple as asking a geek friend for advice, doing a Google search for reviews, or as complex as side-by-side feature analysis, but in the end, it’s still research.  Consumers looking at buying a 7″ or 10″ tablet will look at variables like perceived price, value, content, brand, size, display, and weight.  More meaningful, though, is how they apply those variables to what they believe they want to do with their tablet and the location they will do it.

For the sake of this analysis, I will use the iPad 2 as representative of the 10″ tablet and the combination of a Nook Color and the rumored Amazon Kindle “Fire” tablet as the 7” designate.  I will also assume that each tablet has access to the same books, magazines, movies, videos, music and games.  The only “iffy” one may be games given the iPad’s tremendous lead today.

IMAGE_1000003527

Potential Advantages with a 7″ $249 Tablet (Amazon Kindle “Fire” Tablet)

  • 20-30% lighter and even smaller means easier to carry and hold for almost every usage model.  Anecdotally, I have heard that women prefer the 7″ tablet because they are easier to carry.
  • Half the $499 price of the cheapest iPad 2. Not only is the tablet less expensive, but I will guess that every accessory will be less expensive, too.
  • Free subscription to Amazon Prime, which means free access to Amazon Instant Video Service.  Again, this is rumor, not confirmed.
  • Most of the same books, magazines, videos, movies, web content as the 10″, $499 tablet.
  • Simpler, as in fewer choices for apps and content providers, yet plays the same content. There is one button only.
  • Standard micro USB power and data cable.  These are everywhere in the house, your cars, and at the local convenience store.  You can also charge from your PC, unlike an iPad 2.
  • More durable, given plastic and rubber design.  I don’t care when someone drops my Nook on the carpet.  I shriek when someone drops my iPad 2.

Potential Advantages with a 10″ $499 (iPad 2)

  • Twice the viewable image area of everything you see, like pictures, videos, books, newspapers, and web pages.
  • Battery life, although tough to predict.  Apple claims up to 10 hours for web, video, and music while Barnes & Noble claims 8 hours for reading.
  • Use more complex applications and basic activities are more responsive, given dual core processor and better graphics subsystem.  Think better looking games, richer video and photos, and more complex web pages.
  • Watch videos and listen to music from the tablet to an HDTV, PC, Mac or other AirPlay compliant device.  Maybe the Kindle will have some sort of DLNA capabilities, but from what I’ve seen on Android tablets today, it won’t hold a candle to the iPad AirPlay.
  • Take pictures and home movies.  While I scoffed at this at first with the iPad 2’s low res camera, I find myself taking pictures and videos with it.  It’s just so convenient to take it and show it to someone immediately.  Maybe I will stop doing this when iCloud immediately uploads my pictures and videos, but we will see.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are potential benefits in a less expensive, smaller and lighter 7” media tablet like the Kindle “Fire” as there are in a fuller-featured, twice as expensive, 10” media tablet. I believe that if the Amazon Fire tablet ships this as rumored above and with Amazon Video on Demand, it will sell extremely well. That is, given competition stays still, which it rarely does. So does this mean Steve Jobs was wrong? No, because when he made that statement a year ago, 7” tablets were priced right on top of the iPad 2 with a lot less content and a much degraded experience. A lot has changed since then and a lot will change in the future. And I am sure of that.

VizLingo – The Newest Gadget for Gen Z

Yes, the tech revolution has produced an endless stream of new gizmos, gadgets and tools. Some of these are vital to our day-to-day existence, like email, and some are simply a fun and entertaining distraction (Angry Birds anyone?)…

Not long ago, entrepreneurs Todd Younggren and Azeo Fables created hatched the idea to use the latest revolution in tech, mobile, to create a new way to communicate, and VizLingo was born.  Simply put,VizLingo is a messaging tool that translates your words into video. The UI is exactly what the new generation of users demands, fun and easy! Just type, see and send. The user simply types any message into VizLingo to see each word of their message illustrated by a 1-2 second video clip. Streamed together (with subtitles at the bottom for the less creative), it’s a visual puzzle that can be sent anywhere – directly to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, mobile phones and email addresses.

If you’re thinking “I don’t get it” – that’s actually a good thing.  It’s one of those subtle mechanisms that has to be experienced, like poetry for instance.  VizLingo is definitely a sort of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” medium – a new form of visual poetry, if you will. It’s not only who it plays TO, but also what the “writer” puts into their work. My favorite part of  VizLingo is that, soon, the creator can customize their own Lingo by uploading video clips right from a mobile phone or digital camera. It’s fun and easy, and in the hands of a user who has the time to be super creative, it could definitely go big and go viral.

VizLingo’s Global Lingo is communal, created by and for the VizLingo community, boasting tens of thousands of user-generated clips shared from all over the world. And in today’s world of “new normal” social marketing,  VizLingo could be a BIG deal.  In fact, I think Ford and the Hershey Chocolate company and Virgin Airlines, etc., should engage their younger clientele and create a promotion where anyone using their products in a VizLingo video and pushing it out to their own friends and fans, wins a [fill in the blank] … Virgin Airlines round trip to Tahiti, perhaps?

In the immortal words of one of my favorite ads, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” And if VizLingo finds the creative joint ventures that FourSquare embarked on when everyone first stood there saying, “I don’t get it,” well, we may end up wishing we did.

 

Future TV, touch it, look into it, wave at it.

The choices for user interaction are multiplying rapidly

With IFA wrapped up and IBC coming, all the new TV related products as well as new TVs are in the press.
S3D screens, with and without glasses have been with us a while. Large screen displays that allow interaction with gesture have been available as expensive custom devices for election night and sports TV announcers. The console suppliers introduced lower cost gesture capabilities to TV screens, and most recently TV suppliers are offering touch screens.

New gesture remote control devices will show up later this year, and there are even a couple of voice-activated devices.
LG’s Pentouch TV shown at IFA is a good example. It comes with a pair of Touch Pens that can be used simultaneously on the screen. So users can sit really close to a big screen TV and draw pictures, or slect icons.

Stephen Gater, consumer electronics marketing director LG UK, commented, “We’re all used to touch screens being available on our phones and even tablets now, but LG is one of the first to be offering this technology on large TV screens.”
The LG TV also offer S3D capability with active shutter glasses.

What do we think?
The TV of the future and that future will be here by the holiday season of 2012, will be amazing. Competing with each other as well as tablets, phones and even AIO PCs, the TV set manufactures are scrambling to be innovative and differentiated. How we interact with the TV and communicate via will dramatically change in the next few years. Wirelessly and seamlessly connected to every other device we use, our mobile phone and tablets will be remote controls and second screens.

The TV will be picture frame when not showing Judge Judy, and we’ll push, wave at, talk to, and wipe our TVs, as well as watch them in 2D and S3D. TV—you ain’t seen nothing like it.

Why Apple Should Build a TV

While I don’t believe it, to many, it appears that Apple has already won the smartphone and tablet wars, so the next logical conclusion is “what’s next”. Many articles about the Apple in the TV business rumors (not to be confused with the “hobbyistApple TV) focus on what a lousy business TVs are or questioning if Apple could add enough incremental value given cable and content companies have the power position. These are good and pragmatic reasons, but then again when has Apple been pragmatic? I see nothing pragmatic about expensive MP3 players at 2X the price of others, paid music downloads or app stores 10 years ago. I personally would like to see Apple enter the TV market.

appletv

TVs and STBs Have Big Issues

Let’s face it, TVs aren’t very easy to use, especially when they are connected to a set top box (STB). Most of us tech-heads forget just how literate we all are with technology. Just ask a less tech-literate person to change inputs on the TV to go from the set top box to the DVD player. Many times they have “Channel 3” written down somewhere so they remember. Ever lost that remote? Sure you have and it really pissed you off. How about a set top box from a cable company? Mine takes almost a second to change the channel. And why do I keep running out of storage when I have TBs of secured storage in other parts of my house? I know what you are thinking… too complex, too many companies involved with too many conflicting agendas. Well, I’ve heard that same short-term thinking before with digital music.

uglyremote

Big Problems Need a Fearless Company like Apple

Apple has a solid track record in fixing those issues that have plagued users for years. Apple has significantly moved the industry in:

  • Simple digital content downloads
  • Application purchasing and updating
  • UI simplicity
  • Computer boot time, wake from sleep time
  • Reliability and dependability

So Apple fixes huge issues and TVs and STBs have big issues. It sounds like the perfect match.

A Bold Assumption on Content and the Distributors

My assumption is that Apple will find a business model the content providers will find advantageous or tempting enough to cross the cable and satellite companies. If not, then you would expect them to declare war and do everything in their power to circumvent this by investing in the “pipe” or content companies themselves. This market is too huge and too big an opportunity for the most valuable company on the planet to pass up. I know, this sounds impossible, but when Napster arrived on the scene, how plausible did iTunes sound? How plausible did downloadable movies sound with bit-torrent around?

So why should Apple make a TV? Because there is so much they could improve and people will pay a hefty premium to have a superior experience in a few different areas.

Finding Content via Advanced HCI

Controlling a device with 1,000s of “channels” makes absolutely no sense with a physical remote like we have today with up and down buttons and even numbers. This would be like instead of having Google web search as we have today, we were stuck with Yahoo directories and no search. Directories made sense until the options exploded, like we have today with content.

Apple is one of a few companies who could master controlling the TV’s content via voice primarily, then secondarily air gestures for finer grain controls. First, the TV needs to be smart enough to determine who in the room has “control” and who doesn’t. It’s the future problem of today’s “who has the remote” issue. Then it needs to separate between background noises and real people if you are to have the best voice control. After you have found what you want to watch, you can fine-tune with the flick of a finger. This takes technologies even more advanced than the Kinect to pull this off, including the right sensors and parallel compute power delivered by OpenCLTM frameworks.

Apple Device Integration

If Apple developed a TV, they could conceivably guarantee that the iPhone, iPad, Time Capsule and Macs could seamlessly share content between each other. We have seen from the issues with Android and webOS on getting Netflix and Hulu+ that content providers are more apt to license when there are more closed systems.

As I am watching my NFL Football game, I want perfect, real-time sync of stats on my iPad, and want to be able to carry the game from the media room with me on my iPhone into the kitchen. I’d like overflow content storage to go to my Mac, PC, or Time Capsule. Finally, I would also expect to see sharing of basic sensors like cameras, microphones, gyroscopes, proximity sensors, and accelerometers to extend and facilitate security, monitoring, and gaming applications.

Apple Basics

I would want some of the basic positive characteristics I get in my iPhone and iPad in my iTV. I would expect it to be very responsive, reliable, and with a sense of awesome style. My set top box or my TV is neither of these. I would know that every differentiating feature would work well or it wouldn’t be included. I would also expect some key 10’ UI apps as well.

Conclusion

I believe Apple can and will be able to arrive at a business model with content providers and cable/satellite companies. Either that or it will get very ugly for everyone. The most valuable company in the world with a huge pile of cash, no debt and a historic track record of pioneering breakthrough content deals can do this, or if forced to will go around it. Apple has been a company that fixes those nagging problems, and the TV and STB have a lot of them. Our basic method of finding content is broken. STBs crash and are slow and don’t work with other devices in the home. I’d like to see Apple fix these issues. How about you?

H-P’s Apotheker: We Want to Split H-P Into Two Companies

H-P CEO Leo Apotheker has a very different set of talking points this week than he did last week in a hastily called teleconference after a trading halt which announced the halt to WebOS investments and the spinoff of the $38 billion Personal Systems Division (PSD). Analysts and Wall Street immediately started picking likely buyers of H-P’s PC product line.

But Monday’s interview with the Wall Street Journal tells a different story with a decidedly different outcome for shareholders. Quoting Apotheker:

What we’re really doing is creating two companies: One focused on the enterprise, and one which will be a highly-effective, end-user device business. It will be much more than PCs.

These businesses are ticking at different speeds, need to have different structures, and make different investment decisions. The device business [is] a fast moving consumer business. If you want to compete in this business you have to be much faster than a conglomerate can move in most circumstances.

The other side of H-P, the enterprise side, that’s where we acquired Autonomy. We have some great ideas for how we can scale that business.

Our default option is to see if we can spin this business off to our shareholders. That’s not the only option that we’re looking at. The board and management have been working on this for quite some time. If we really want to take the necessary steps, you have to involve a lot of people and once you inform a lot of people you need to inform the market.

We said it would take anywhere from 12 to 18 months to complete the spin, and it’s obvious that the decision will happen much sooner. The board will want to make the best decision for shareholders and our current hypothesis is that is by spinning the business to shareholders.

This different story — or Friday’s story told better — is a lot less suicidal than throwing PSD off the bus to the highest rapacious bidder. Motorola did this last year, spinning the personal devices company off from radios and public sector. So there certainly is precedent.

But what do we make of “one which will be a highly-effective, end-user device business. It will be much more than PCs?” My reading is everything consumer including phones, PCs, and printers. If Leo really wants to focus on medium and large enterprises, he’ll throw in transactional servers, storage, and maybe even the entire small-medium business (SMB) organization.

If the spinoff to shareholders looks like my sketch above, it’s not a bad strategy. Makes H-P kinda look like Samsung, which makes smartphones and oil tankers through highly decentralized business units.

Here are the concerns H-P shareholders face in considering a deal, once announced:

  • It’s all about execution. Slamming together PCs and printers does not ensure success. And even enterprise company sales reps sell PCs, or used to. The devil is in the details.
  • The independent, entrepreneurial culture does not exist at H-P. Where does the PC Newco innovation DNA come from?
  • By over-spending in a $10 billion bid for Autonomy, H-P has only $3 billion in cash. Where does PC Newco get the billions it will need for R&D and cash flow? Underfunded, the effort will quickly disintegrate.
  • Did the premature and botched announcement of the spinoff last Friday freeze PSD staffers like deer in headlights? Will the human capital disappear before PC Newco really gets started? Didn’t $5 billion in Palm WebOS investment get vaporized?
  • Can any big PC company — with the glaring exception of Apple — do much better than 6% margins in a fast-churn product rat race?
  • How will consumers react to PC Newco branding (let alone products)? When IBM spun off PCs to Lenovo, the valued ThinkPad brand went to Lenovo. take away the H-P name and logo, and the products won’t sell as readily. And Pavilion as a brand does not come close to the value of ThinkPad.

We’ll leave how the rest of the PC ecosystem might react to the PC spinoff to another day.

via H-P CEO Apotheker Defends Strategy – WSJ.com.

 

BAPco SYSmark 2012: Dropping the Llano Shoe

No wonder AMD was upset enough over BAPco’s SYSmark 2012 benchmark to drop out of the non-profit benchmarking organization in June with much sturm und drang.

My testing of the AMD Fusion high-end “Llano” processor, the A8-3850 APU, shows an overall rating on SYSmark 2012 of 91. Except for the 3D component of the benchmark, the Intel “Sandy Bridge” Pentium 840 scores higher in individual components — and higher overall — with a score of 98, according to the official SYSmark 2012 web site.

The SYSmark 2012 reference platform scores 100. That puts the high-end Llano desktop performance at 90% of a 2010 Intel “Clarkdale” first-generation Core i3-540, a low-end mainstream processor.

Moreover, the Intel “Sandy Bridge” Core i3-2120 dual-core processor with integrated graphics costs within a dollar of the “Llano” A8-3850 but delivers a 36 point higher score – noticeably snappier performance, in my actual use experience (see chart below).

I also tested AMD’s Phenom II 1100T, a top-end AMD six-core processor with an ATI Radeon HD 4290 graphics card, against an Intel “Sandy Bridge” second generation Core i5-2500 with integrated graphics. The Core i5-2500 is the superior processor on this benchmark; the much-maligned Intel internal graphics barely loses to the ATI 4920 external graphics card in the 3D component, while delivering a 44 point overall advantage. The results are shown below in Chart 1.

Chart 1: Selected BAPco SYSmark 2012 Scores

Processor Overall Office Media Analysis 3D Web Sys Mgt
Intel i5-2500 166 144 162 191 181 168 153
Intel i3-2120 127 123 125 146 125 121 122
AMD Phenom II 1100T 122 109 116 122 183 108 110
Intel Pentium 840 98 100 102 106 87 90 107
AMD A8-3850 91 91 84 96 121 73 88
Intel Pentium G620T 79 81 81 88 70 71 86

Source: Peter S. Kastner andBusiness Applications Performance Corporation

Is SYSmark 2012 Relevant?
SYSmark 2012 is relevant because it allows evaluators to test specific PC configurations against actual, commonly used business applications.

AMD says “AMD will only endorse benchmarks based on real-world computing models and software applications, and which provide useful and relevant information. AMD believes benchmarks should be constructed to provide unbiased results and be transparent to customers making decisions based on those results.” Let’s look at what SYSmark does and how it does it.

Serious readers will study the SYSmark 2012 Overview published at the BAPco web site. This benchmark version is built on 20 years of collaborative experience by BAPco in modeling business work loads into application scenarios and corresponding benchmarks through a 26-phase process that takes years to complete. The last version was SYSmark2007 under Windows Vista. SYSmark is real-world in that it incorporates widely used applications such as Office, AutoCAD, Acrobat, Flash, Photoshop and Internet Explorer under Windows 7 in component scenarios.

SYSmark is widely used around the globe in business and public tenders to select PCs without bias towards vendor and processor manufacturer. SYSmark is the only generally accepted benchmark for general business computers since it uses actual application code in the tests, not synthetic models.

The benchmark is intensive, reflecting workload snapshots of what power users actually do, rather than light-duty office workers. There are six scenario components to SYSmark 2012, each of which counts equally in the final rating:

Office Productivity: The Office Productivity scenario models productivity usage including word processing, spreadsheet data manipulation, email creation/management and web browsing.

Media Creation: The Media Creation scenario models using digital photos and digital video to create, preview, and render a video advertisement for a fictional business.

Web Development: The Web Development scenario models the creation of a website for a fictional company.

Data/Financial Analysis: The Data/Financial Analysis scenario creates financial models to review, evaluate and forecast business expenses. In addition, the performance and viability of financial investments is analyzed using past and projected performance data.

3D Modeling: The 3D Modeling scenario focuses on creating, rendering, and previewing 3D objects and/or environments suitable for use in still imagery. The creation of 3D architectural models/landscapes and rendering of 2D images and video of models are also included.

System Management: The System Management scenario models the creation of data backup sets and the compression, and decompression of various file types. Updates to installed software are also performed.

For each of the six components, BAPco develops a workflow scenario. Only then are applications chosen to do the work. BAPco licenses the actual application source code and assembles it into application fragments together with its workflow measurement framework. The data/financial analysis component, for example, runs a large Microsoft Excel spreadsheet model.

What I don’t like is the “2012” moniker. This SYSmark version is built on business application components as of 2010. By naming it SYSmark 2012, BAPco implies the benchmark is forward looking, when it actually looks back to 2010 application versions. The labeling should be 2010. In spite of the labeling, SYSmark 2012 is unique as a cross-platform benchmark for stressing business desktops using real-world applications in job-related scenarios.

Analysis and Conclusions
The SYSmark 2012 reference-point PC is a Core i3-540 and has a 100 point score. When I used this processor with Windows 7 last year as my “daily-driver PC” for a month, I was underwhelmed by its overall feel. Subjective comment, yes, but my point is that the reference machine is no speed demon.

The new AMD “Llano” A8-3850, a quad-core processor with integrated graphics, is adequate for light-weight office duties as measured by BAPco SYSmark 2012. The top-of-the-line AMD Phenom II 1100T with a discrete graphics card is better suited for mainstream task-specific business computing than the “Llano” processors.

Intel’s low-end dual-core “Sandy Bridge” Pentium 620 and 840 bracket the “Llano” A8-3850 in processor performance, while lagging in graphics-intensive 3D benchmark components.

Intel’s entry-level Core i3-2120 with integrated graphics handily beats the top-of-the-line Phenom II 1100T with a discrete graphics card in all but graphics-intensive 3D benchmarks, making it an attractive price-performer. The high-end Core i5-2500 tops the top-of-the line Phenom II 1100T with a 44 point overall advantage, despite using integrated graphics.

SYSmark’s results do not plow new performance ground. An Internet search will quickly turn up numerous reviews that conclude, using a different set of benchmarks, that the “Llano” line is weak as a processing engine and pretty good at graphics, especially 3D consumer games. Yet consumer games are not typically not high on the business PC evaluation checklist.

Many of the SYSmark 2012 applications use graphics-processor acceleration, when available, including Adobe Photoshop, Flash, Premier Pro CS5, Autodesk 3ds Max and AutoCAD, and Microsoft Excel. SYSmark 2012 convinces me that today’s integrated graphics are plenty good enough for business PCs shy of dedicated workstations. But a strong processor is still necessary for good overall performance.

Business desktops ought to be replaced every three to four years. However, the reality is many businesses keep desktops for five or more years, and many have instituted a “replace it when it breaks” cycle. Productivity studies show that knowledge workers deserve the higher end of today’s performance curve in a new PC so as not to be completely obsolete — and less productive — before the machine is replaced.

No single benchmark should be the sole criteria for selecting a computer, and SYSmark 2012 is no exception. However, I disagree with AMD that SYSmark is no longer worthy of consideration, and by other analysts that SYSmark is dead because AMD walked away from BAPco.

The bottom line for PC evaluators is simple: if you believe that the extensive work by the BAPco consortium across two decades stands up to scientific and peer scrutiny, then the SYSmark results discussed above show AMD at a serious performance disadvantage. If you don’t think SYSmark is a relevant benchmark for business PCs, then neither AMD nor I have a viable substitute.

The next shoe to drop is AMD’s high-end “Bulldozer” processor, expected in the next 60 days.

 

Big Brother has Landed, and his name is Foursquare

It’s hard to know just how big social media is going to get – and even harder to remember that there was once a world without an internet. We’ve all just accepted this “new normal” in our day-to-day lives – along with digital music, eBooks, iPads and a long list of other tech advances that were barely even imagined a mere thirty years ago.  (Some of which I actually had the privilege to work on at their inception – like Music at Apple.)

In my recent interview with the CEO of BookBaby and CDBaby, Brian Felsen, Brian shared that 80% of people under the age of 30 have never even bought a CD.  (To hear that interview, go to http://bit.ly/BrianFelsen).

So where does this go next? It’s more than viral and mobile, in my humble opinion, Social is very quickly becoming Big Brother. Take Foursquare, the king of Geolocated Social Media platforms.  Foursquare made its debut in 2009, popularizing the idea of “checking in,” or using a cell phone application to tell friends that you are at a particular restaurant, bar or park. It’s definitely a cool idea – so cool that Facebook and Google developed their own geolocated check in apps. Everyone wondered if the web giants would squash Foursquare like a bug, but so far Foursquare is definitely more than holding its ground, with over 10 million registered users.

Dennis Crowley, the chief executive and one of the founders of Foursquare, attributed its continued momentum to its singular focus on location. “When people think about Facebook, they think about it as a place to send their friends messages or post updates, not necessarily as a place to check in,” he said. “We’re associated with one thing, location, and that really helps.”

Most recently, Foursquare teamed up with Groupon.  Groupon is actually Foursquare’s sixth and latest daily deals partner, but by no means their last.  Along with Groupon deals, app users also will be able to see deals offered by Foursquare’s five other partners: BuyWithMe, Zozi, Gilt City, Living Social and AT&T Interactive.

In June, they also created an alliance with finance giant, American Express to offer discounts to cardholders when they check in on their cell phone at certain shops and restaurants. (Although Foursquare will not be receiving any revenue from the American Express deal, it says the promotion will help legitimize the company’s approach and will help attract other, more lucrative partnerships.)

How does all of this affect the consumer?  It means real-time, by-location deals will be created through users’ apps.  A simpler explanation:  You’ll soon walk by a Gap and get a Gap deal sent to your device, simply because geolocated Foursquare knows where you are.  Yes, Big Brother is here and we have invited him into our lives, kimono wide open and location checked in.

 

Why non- iPad Tablets Aren’t Selling Well is Fundamental

So why aren’t non-iPad tablets selling as well as the iPad? I read a very interesting article Wednesday from James Kendrick at ZDNet. His contention is that one of the biggest issues is competing with Apple’s “consistent marketing experience”. I agree that’s a big issue, but I think there’s an even more basic core issue here and it starts with consumer risk, the considered purchase process, the influencers and the product experience.

Tablets are a Risky and “Considered” Consumer Purchase

Consumers, regardless of demographics and psychographics, share some common behaviors. When they are posed with a risky, considered purchase, they are looking for reasons to reject products and not look past their warts. And tablets are a risky, considered purchase. For a time, tablets started at $499, well above the starting prices of a notebook, desktop, or smartphone. Tablets don’t run programs or content like the PC that consumers are familiar with. And they are very fragile when compared to other devices.

Consumers Research to Mitigate Risk

As I said above, when posed with an expensive, risky purchase, it is “considered”, meaning they will research it or find a brand which “buffers” the risk. By researching it, I don’t mean doing a master’s thesis. I mean doing a few web searches, going to a recommended tech site, asking a few “geek” friends and tossing a few questions out on Twitter or Facebook. What consumers heard back were some positive and some negative things about non-iPads. Even more importantly though, is that very few if any negatives ever came back from their iPad research. Worst thing you might hear back about the iPad is that it doesn’t run Flash, it doesn’t have SD memory upgrade, and it’s expensive.

So was it some conspiracy that the negative things were being said or were they just the facts of what actually shipped at launch? The fact is, the clear majority of non-iPad tablets at their launch suffered from many issues as it related to the iPad, which established the bar of a successful tablet.

Tablets Lacked Convenient, Paid Content at Launch

Many media tablets launched without a whole lot of media:

  • Lack of video services like Netflix, Hulu, movie rental, or movie purchase capabilities
  • Lack of music services like Pandora, Spotify, or music purchase capabilities
  • Lack of book services like Kindle or BN Reader

This issue is being slowly solved, but the damage had been done at launch.

clip_image002

Tablets Lacked Stability and Responsiveness at Launch

Many tablets launched with multiple application crashes, hangs and were intermittently unresponsive. When apps would become unresponsive, the users would get a message asking them what they want to do, similar to the way Windows alerts the user. The iPad 2 launch experience was responsive and stable. Yes, the iPad 2 does still experience some app crashes, but it’s less frequent and when it does, it just closes the app.

clip_image004

This issue has been solved for all non-iPad tablets with OS updates, but again, the damage was done at launch.

Tablets Lacked Premier Applications at Launch

I don’t believe consumers are fanatical about the 100’s of thousands of apps that should be on a tablet. I do believe that they want to have the most popular applications that they care about, though. Most non-iPad tablets launched without premier apps, like premier news, sports, and social media apps. One tablet even shipped without a built-in email and calendar client and research shows that email is the #1 tablet application. Android tablets shipped at launch without a Twitter app.

Only Android 3.2 tablets have addressed this issue so far, but again, the perceptual damage was done.

Tablets Shipped at Launch with Hardware Challenges

Not only were there software issues at launch, but hardware as well. Tablets shipped with inoperable SD card slots and USB ports that didn’t work properly. Even competing with the physical iPad 2 design was a challenge. Some tablets were nearly twice as thick as the iPad, used plastic design versus aluminum, and one tablet even shipped with a case that blocked major ports like power, USB and HDMI.

Some of these issues have been addressed, but the damage was done.

Should Everyone Else Just Quit?

With all of these issues at launch and challenging sales so far, should everyone except Apple just quit and concede to Apple? Absolutely not! This is the first inning in a nine inning game, and the game hasn’t been lost. In short order, every tablet will be thin and light enough and power efficient enough until it’s inconsequential. Most apps will move to web apps virtually eliminating the app barrier, and everyone will have the right paid content. Apple obviously won’t stand still and I agree with Ben Bajarin when he says, “success will only come to those who want to compete with the iPad by thinking fresh and taking bold and innovative risks.” I have had the honor to work for companies who slayed goliath and I have been slayed myself, so I have seen both sides. It takes courage and conviction and I believe the tech industry can and will do that.

Pat Moorhead is Corporate Vice President and Corporate Marketing Fellow and a Member of the Office of Strategy at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

See Pat’s bio here or past blogs here.

Follow @PatrickMoorhead on Twitter and on Google+.

An Intimate Discussion with Brenden Mulligan, CEO of OneSheet, the One Stop Solution for Artists

A few weeks ago, I was very fortunate to interview Brenden Mulligan, the CEO of OneSheet. For those of you who don’t know, OneSheet is a completely free website which allows musicians to connect their existing social networks and services, creating a basic and graphically exciting site that includes music, videos, photos, concert dates, social streams, mailing list signups and online stores.  Although it literally JUST moved out of beta, Onesheet already has more than 10,000 recording artists signed up, including major label artists like ParamoreMat Kearny and Owl City.

OneSheet has the added feature of working with many of the most-used musician’s online services, including Tunes, Beatport, Topspin, Bandcamp, YouTube, Tumblr, Songkick, FanBridge and SoundCloud.  It’s also compatible with ArtistData, a popular syndication tool for musicians to post information across the web, which was also started by founder Brenden Mulligan.

Brenden Mulligan:  For a long time now, artists have been asked to create profiles on all of these different services, and one problem I felt was there was that there wasn’t necessarily an easy way to weave these together.  What I wanted to do was make it incredibly easy for an artist to create a maintenance free web presence, something that would take them only a few minutes to do and be totally affordable.

OneSheet isn’t only a one-stop-shop solution for artists, it’s also been very collaborative. Founder Brenden Mulligan has made many adjustments based on the feedback of artists.  For instance, users can remove the Onesheet header, customize the navigation bar and rename concerts to tour, live, appearances, events or shows, etc. Most importantly, Onesheets can be assigned a custom domain name, which is a great asset in today’s world of uber branding.

Brenden Mulligan plans to add a premium paid service will add additional features and customization. “Mobile optimization is another feature we may charge for. What kind of artists use Onesheet and how they use it, will drive what we do next.”

To hear my entire interview with entrepreneur and CEO, Brenden Mulligan, go to http://bit.ly/BrendenMulligan

 

Android is Finally Ready for the Tablet Market

Over the last few weeks, Android for Tablets (aka Honeycomb) 3.2 started rolling out to tablets like the Asus Transformer and the Motorola Xoom. While the announcement of Android 3.1 was met with great fanfare at Google I/O 2011, Android 3.2 didn’t receive a lot of attention as it started actually rolling out to systems. Ironically, I believe that with the rollout of Android 3.2, the operating system is finally ready for tablet prime-time.

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Background

Android 3.X, aka “Honeycomb”, is Google’s operating system for tablets. It was first shown at CES 2011 and the first product it rolled out on was the Motorola Xoom. After its launch, the firestorm ensued and Honeycomb was viewed as having significant issues:

  • Sluggish performance even while having superior hardware specs.
  • Lack of stability and reliability as evidenced through repeated application crashes.
  • Lack of apps. Even as of July 1, 2011, NY Times David Pogue reported that at the most, 232 apps were optimized for Honeycomb. The iPad had 90,000 optimized apps. To make matters worse, Android phone apps ran in a tiny window.
  • Lack of external SD card support. Just do a few Google searches on “SD card” and “Xoom” and you will know what I am talking about.
  • Limited USB connectivity. Keyboards, mice, digital cameras, card readers either didn’t work at all or were very inconsistent.

Needless to say, this didn’t exactly equate to a very good experience, as I have personally experienced on three separate 10” Android Honeycomb tablets.

Improved Performance, Stability and Reliability

Between Android 3.0 and 3.2, my Honeycomb experience is like night and day. Single-tasking responsiveness is close to the iPad 2, although the iPad 2 is still faster. Honeycomb does outperform iPad 2 on multitasking though.

When I use a tablet, I use it as a primary device. I load around 20-30 apps, and I do set up the background tasks and widgets as they are differentiated features versus the iPad. Where I previously experienced between 10-20 application crashes a day, with Android 3.2, I may get one a day. This is a huge breakthrough. And yes, I do get application crashes on the iPad 2. iPad 2 crashes are less pronounced and “hidden” as the app just dies and you are taken to the home screen. In Android, a dialogue box pops up on the screen and you are given the choice to wait, kill, or report the crash.

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Improved Application Support

Android 3.2 added the capability for users to better tap into the library of approximately 300-400K applications. Applications come in three forms that are somewhat transparent to the user:

  1. Tablet optimized apps: Resolution, layout, fonts, content are optimized for the tablet.
  2. Stretched phone apps: Phone applications are stretched to tablet dimensions keeping phone layout, fonts, and content. In some apps this is automatic; in others it requires the user to toggle a menu icon in the apps bar.
  3. Zoomed phone apps: Fixed-size phone applications are zoomed in like the iPad phone apps. In some apps this is automatic; in others it requires the user to toggle a menu icon in the apps bar.

If a user runs across a a manually scaled-app, they are given the option to stretch or zoom. Many of the apps, though, were automatic and stretched properly into place.

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Here is how some of the top Android phone apps look on Android Honeycomb 3.2 tablet.

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As you can see, some of the phone apps look really good and others could be improved. The net-net is that Android Honeycomb tablet buyers just got 300K-400K more apps to run on their tablets.

Conclusion

Like the first Android phone OS, the Android tablet OS has quickly undergone a massive overhaul and improvement in a mere 6 months. The most recent improvements in Android Honeycomb 3.2 were virtually unnoticed by many in the press, but ironically, the update improved the experience to the point that Android is finally ready for prime-time.

So does a massively improved experience guarantee success? Of course not. Android still has to deal with its IP challenges, fragmentation, spotty paid video services, and some “me-too” hardware designs, BUT, if you don’t first have a responsive, reliable experience with lots of apps, you have nothing. And Android finally has that for tablets.

Have your say in the comments section below.


Has the Economic Downturn Ended Mobile Advertising Before it Began?

Is Mobile Advertising Over Before it Began? One or Two Standouts Still in the Game

Unlike social media marketing, social advertising seems to be taking a big hit from the never-ending recession we find ourselves in as a nation.  I say this because it seems that the newest golden egg in advertising, Mobile, had hit a new low before it ever reached any kind of high. And if you look deeper, what it’s really indicative of is click based marketing overall.  It’s been interesting to watch mobile marketing come to life.  I worked in this space with Virgin Mobile several years ago; and at that point it was more of an evangelism exercise trying to educate major brands and media companies about what this was all about. Now it’s an evangelism to get them to stay the course and build an audience.

How does this all play out in the new digital age, if audiences and ROI aren’t born overnight? With 56% of Fortune 500 marketers dissatisfied with or simply not using click-based mobile advertising, it’s possible that only a few strong companies will be able to ride the wave, approach smaller marketing businesses, provide a good service at the right price, and hang in there until the economy turns.

One of the few standouts who seem to be weathering the storm and getting it right is Augme Technologies. Augme has created what they call the “AD LIFE™ Ad Network” to help marketers engage with their best consumers. Basically, by using sophisticated targeting options, Augme reaches 100+ million unique visitors (and 9+ billion impressions) each month. It’s the targeting that makes this unique and successful, with options that range from region to behavior to platform and device, as well as a huge array of demographic combinations.

If you follow the old-adage that the best customer is one you already have, then the mobile marketing industry should first be able to count on repeat business from established clients before creating a trajectory of higher profits.  In this case, it doesn’t look like that will happen, not at the present time anyway. But having an example of a company that’s navigating these new waters successfully does give some hope.

With Smartphones taking over the mobile industry at a phenomenal rate, the mobile advertising world should look like a wide open field of opportunity, but right now, the numbers just don’t support this.  A recent survey showed that although 93% of marketers would move further into mobile ad spending – 43% of that group cites a low return on investment as a block to continuing with the platform.

Another statistic worth mentioning is that the most effective mobile ad campaigns were email based, where consumers had signed up and chosen to participate. Just a note, this is something that social media marketers have known for over a decade. 

“Signup ads are native to mobile advertising,” said Zephrin Lasker, CEO and co-founder, Pontiflex, one of the largest players in the mobile ad field. “People have a new sense of control and meaningful experiences with brands.”

 

In the end, this forum also demands a new level of creativity, collaboration and UE, user experience.  If Angry Birds can become a phrase and experience that 78% of mobile phone users know and have participated with, then Angry Birds who drink Dr. Pepper makes perfect sense.

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For more information on Social Media Marketing, especially in how it affects the Music Industry, grab a copy of my new eBook: “Taking the Crowd to the Cloud – Social Media for the Music Industry.”

The music industry has turned into a very complicated space, and marketing was NEVER easy to begin with.  Written by industry insider, Kelli Richards, “Taking the Crowd to the Cloud – Social Media for the Music Industry raises the bar and demystifies social media marketing, helping musicians, agents and anyone in our industry to THRIVE – it empowers and transforms the marketing mindset.  Featuring TEN top social networks for musicians, this eBook maximizes your social media to build (and keep) your audience. It holds the key to eMail Marketing, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and several hot secrets in Social Media. (It even covers how to port your MySpace contents to Facebook Music.) For $37 this is easily the million dollar choice.

 


Tech + Media – The Honeymoon Between GoogleTV and Logitech Ends, but the Marriage Continues

The marriage of tech and media is definitely a rocky one at times, and Web TV is no exception.  Despite all promises, like all relationships things are always evolving between tech and media – and sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. The latest tech / media couple in trouble appears to be Logitech and Google.  With the rocky start to Google TV (the biggest player in Web TV so far), Logitech is also hung up in every way possible. Why?  They supply the tech end of Google TV with the Revue Google TV set-top box.

Google TV is a pretty cool product – and quite possibly the future of ALL television – or at least a glimpse of it, providing access to live TV, on-demand programming, recorded shows, pay TV, online video clips and, of course, the web.

Will Web TV replace regular TV any time soon? Probably not.  But don’t count Google (or Logitech) out of the running.  Someone’s going to nab the real estate on Web TV, and for their part, Logitech is willing to continue the union.  In fact, they’re lowering the price to make the hardware accessible to almost anybody.

Losing the market share before one is really created is obviously not an outcome that Logitech will go for. In fact Logitech’s Chairman, Guerrino De Luca, was quoted this week as saying:  “There was a significant gap between our price and the value perceived by the consumer.”

Market share is the moral of the story for both the data and the technology side of the equation right now.  Any day now Google TV should be accessible by Android, and with 130 million users, that is a big deal. For now, Logitech has chosen to bite the revenue bullet and get more customers.  That means a lower price in order to boost the real estate for Google.

It’s hard to imagine Apple or Sony supporting the music industry by lowering the price of hardware to encourage market participation, but if this is an indication of what might work, then Blu-Ray may actually still stand a chance.

 

 

Tablet Price Promotions to Boost Demand

Staples is the latest retailer in the tablet market to offer a price promotion on tablets. The company is offering a coupon for $100 off tablet purchases (excluding the HP TouchPad) through July 30.

The coupon is the latest price move by a tablet player to spur demand. Tablet brands have recently been lowering prices to boost demand as the US market enters the high volume back-to-school season. Motorola dropped $100 off its Xoom, from $599 to $499, earlier this month. Acer cut $100 off its Iconia A500, from $499 to $399, this past week in Best Buy circulars. Toshiba launched its Thrive at $429 for the 8GB version. Apple’s iPad starts at $499 and had initially set the bar for what tablet pricing should be. However, brands are having trouble reaching levels similar to the iPad’s success with their devices.

Brands and retailers have been gradually catering to the emerging device category through differentiated floor space, dedicated business units, and specific sales strategies. Staples is the first major retailer to offer a price promotion on tablets. Price cuts tend to be viewed as a last resort. Still, many are aiming for significant adoption, viewing iPad sales as the basis for their expectations. Apple reported sales of 9.2 million units in Q2, up over 180% Y/Y. Other brands are nowhere near experiencing iPad-like success.

These price moves may boost demand in the short term, although I doubt it will be to the level they’re expecting, but long term, it devalues the category and threatens the margin levels that they are hoping to achieve. This is especially risky at the start of a category because it sets the consumer’s expectation of what a product should cost. It also makes it difficult to raise that price expectation in the future. We saw that with mini-notes (or netbooks) and the impact on notebook average sales prices.

To a certain extent, the brands and retailers have their hands tied because Apple is having so much success with their tablet. There is an impression that if you can’t reach that level, then you’re messing it up. The reality is: the brands and retailers competing with Apple are playing from behind, and in their desperation, they might be digging themselves into a deeper hole. One could argue that the brands and retailers are responding to what the market is willing to pay for their tablets. That might be easier to accept if the devices in the market were fully mature and not experiencing glitches; however, it is giving the impression that these products aren’t completely finished.

Click here to read more from the Display Search Blog

Mac OS X Lion and the Future of Computing

By now, you’ve probably all heard or read about Apple’s new desktop operating system, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, or just “Lion” for short. While I believe it is a really good operating system today, what I am most interested in is what it means for tomorrow. I’d like to share with you my thoughts on what I believe OSX Lion tells us about our computing future.

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Device Modularity

Device modularity is essentially when one device, when docked or connected to another one, becomes something even better or more functional. It’s a world where a phone becomes a tablet; a tablet becomes a notebook and even a phone or tablet becomes a desktop. I’ve touched upon modularity with a few previous blogs covering the Motorola Atrix Lapdock and Multimedia Dock, the BlackBerry PlayBook and even the Motorola Xoom.

One of the inhibitors to good modularity is modality in UI. Or in other words, the smartphone, tablet, desktop, and laptop act like you would expect in the context you want. When you plug the phone into the dock to make it a laptop, it acts like a laptop, not a phone.

Lion has unified many of the UI elements and HCI (Human Computer Interface) between the iPhone, iPad, MacBook and the iMac:

· Gestures: Lion unifies gestures, or begins to, between the four platforms. Familiar gestures from iOS like pinch to zoom, tap to zoom, and swipe to navigate are just a few of the multi-platform gestures that are shared between phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop.

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· Launchpad: Does this look familiar? This isn’t an iPad or iPhone; it’s Launchpad in Lion on a Mac Air laptop. Launchpad is a place for apps and folders of apps just like you see on the iPhone and iPad.

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· Full screen apps: This isn’t exactly revolutionary if you’ve used Windows 7, but full screen apps does just that; allows apps to be maximized to the whole screen, just like iOS apps look with no windows. Then, a user can even “three finger swipe” between apps, similar to iOS 5.

So by unifying user interface and basic HCI, Lion has removed a major hurdle for the future, modular designs.

Air Gestures

We’ve all seen Microsoft Kinect in action in the living room and some of us have even seen “home-brew” tests using the Kinect SDK for the PC. Imagine more advanced, future computer “vision” on a much closer scale, or “near-field” basis, removing some of the actual physical peripherals. This could use very common and inexpensive cameras, possibly stereoscopic, with interconnects like CSI-3 and a heavy compute engine building a 3D model of the hand.

· “Magic Hand”: Consider removing the mouse and trackpad and replacing with a camera to use your own hand to do the gestures. Maybe even remove the keyboard and replace it with a projected virtual keyboard. The camera, like Kinect, tracks exactly what your hand is doing.

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· Consistent Gestures: As described above, by having consistent gestures between all devices, the computer would be very focused on a specific set of near-field air gestures, not different ones by platform, increasing the chance of success.

With Lion unifying gestures today tied with future improvements with compute power and lower power with architectures like Fusion System Architecture, higher speed camera interconnects like CSI-3, a future without the physical mouse and trackpad becomes a distinct reality. Removing the physical keyboard is more of a stretch, but with pico projection a robust investment area, who knows? Also, with the success of keyboards on iOS and Android tablets, users are becoming conditioned to be satisfied with virtual, non-haptic keyboards.

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Peer-to-Peer Communication

Peer-to-peer communications occur when one device directly interacts with another without the need for a LAN or WAN. The trend with services and the internet has led to the belief that peer-to-peer was dead. Not so with Lion, as it actually dialed it up a notch.

· Airdrop: Airdrop enables two Lion-based Macs to safely send files directly between each other without the need for an intermediate LAN or WAN. It automatically creates an ad-hoc WiFi-WiFi connection.

I find this very interesting given Apple’s forecast of a “post-PC” world. With very innovative features like HP’s “touch-to-share” and enabling communications like WiFi Direct and BlueTooth 4/5, peer-to-peer comms could be making a comeback. I’d guess that we will be seeing even more of this in CE devices. Who would have thought in this “everything in the cloud” world? J

Conclusion

OSX Lion is a really good operating system for users today and also gives us some indications of interesting things to come in the computing future. I believe that Lion tells us a lot about the future of device modularity, our ability to ditch the mouse, trackpad, and maybe even the keyboard. Lion also guides to a world that increases the likelihood of even more devices talking directly to each other without the cloud middleman. It’s a future I can get excited about. How about you?

Pat Moorhead is Corporate Vice President and Corporate Marketing Fellow and a Member of the Office of Strategy at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

See Pat’s bio here or past blogs here.

Follow @PatrickMoorhead on Twitter and on Google+.

How the App Store Money Flows

Rosen Sharma is a guest contributor to Tech.pinions and the President and CEO of BlueStacks.

A good friend of mine recently remarked, “Apple App Store and Android App Store are completely different business models”. I casually asked, “Really? How come?”

The answer was rather interesting. When you buy something from the Apple Store the bill comes from Apple. If you order something from Android App Store the line item in the bill is from the App Developer and not from Google.


Continue reading How the App Store Money Flows

Social Media Wars – How Wide Do We Open the Kimono? Google+, Facebook, Etc.


 

By now, you may have heard the name Michael Lee Johnson.  He’s a young web developer who recently tried to promote his presence on Google+ by taking out a Facebook Ad.  What’s wrong with that?  According to Facebook’s terms of service, only everything.  And while I don’t agree with Facebook, simply because of my personal and professional stand on Friction vs. Fiction, they are, of course, simply protecting their market share.

It is very easy to see why they don’t want to do battle with megalith Google over anything more than ad sales. One has to wonder, however, where the users come into play.  Although diligently trying to evolve every single day, there’s absolutely NO guarantee that Facebook will not become the MySpace of tomorrow.  (Meaning that they become a great neighborhood that nobody lives in or even visits any more – sort of the Three-Mile Island of Social Networks.)

This isn’t the only example of what I might call “random” censorship either.  Meetup.com is notorious for ripping down local Meetup Groups that don’t fit their user terms (which change at will if you’re of a certain political slant).  The bottom line is that social networks are NOT democracies.  They are autocracies, and your participation is permitted and censored, at will, by the owner of the club.  Simply building walls and creating friction will not protect them.

So where does this leave Google+ ???  Growing. By leaps and bounds in my estimation.  Why?  Because it addresses all of the issues Facebook created – over exposure, brand and personal comingling, general insanity and finally, the issue of demographic. (And right now, it’s a hotbed for techies.)

As I addressed in my recent Social Media eBook, the problem with ANY network is that you can only reach THAT network’s users.  So while you can break demographics out further, you can only operate within the umbrella of users actually ON Facebook, for example.  Who are THEY?  Mostly, on Facebook at least, they’re people with free time.  Yes, I have a ton of “friends” on my Facebook Page, and I value them!  But I think Google+ and it’s Circles concept will provide a segregation which will eliminate having multiple Pages, Profiles, Groups, etc., etc. that ALL have to be updated.

Another service worth watching which addresses this, on the opposite side of the spectrum (the personal side), is Proust.com.  Proust is a social network designed to connect MORE intimately than Facebook (as if that were possible), by connecting close family members and allowing them to commemorate events and share life stories.  With the boom in genealogy that’s been created by the digital revolution, this is an idea that just might take off.

Final thoughts:  We have seen some extreme reverberations to the social media age (which is a subset in itself of the digital age).  Facebook overtaking MySpace (almost to annihilation) is only one example. There will be a backlash to the autocracy though, you can guarantee it.  Because the internet may be a place of freedom – but social networks are NOT.  A good example of this backlash is hacker group Anonymous. Even THEY are starting a social network (called “the Revolution”).  Their platform?  No censorship.  This might seem to lean toward the shadow side of things we might all like to avoid … but in reality, is it the Michael Lee Johnson’s of the world and a simple Google+ banner ad that we protect?  A question well worth consideration, at least.

Chromebooks: What Netbooks Should Have Been All Along

When netbooks were first launched in late 2008, they were billed as clamshell devices meant to access the internet. About a decade earlier, these devices were also referred to as internet appliances. These netbooks were much less expensive than notebooks at the time, partly because of their limited functionality and partly because of their sleek size (eliminating components such as optical drives). The concept of these devices quickly devolved as consumers focused on price. Brands seized the growing demand opportunity and slapped together miniature notebooks using what they had at the time: notebook components.

What the industry was left with was inexpensive small notebooks, not internet access devices, but “net” books. Many research firms, including DisplaySearch, took to calling netbooks “mini-notes” because they were recognized as miniature notebooks. Research firms took a lot of heat from PC brands, component makers, and others who were worried that if these inexpensive mini-notes were thought of as notebooks, they would lead to lower average selling prices of notebooks. That is what ended up happening. Now the mini-note category is shrinking as brands move away from the modest margins of mini-notes to tablet PCs, while the need and opportunity for devices specialized for internet access remains.

Enter the Chromebook, a clamshell device whose main objective is to access the internet, with some versions coming in at mini-note prices; a case in point is the Acer AC700-1099, selling for $349. Some have said that Chromebooks will be doomed from the start because of the impression that they need a mobile broadband connection to be of any use. I’d say that’s a marketing error that needs to be corrected: Chromebooks can use WiFi to connect to the internet and can be useful anywhere there is a hot spot. The goal is convenience, not productivity. For consumers looking for an instant-on device with a long battery life and sleek design, just for connecting to the web for email and accessing digital media, Chromebooks will be of interest.

Chromebooks have recently started selling, so it’s too early to judge the market’s reaction. However, informal indications seem to point to some traction. As of this writing, the Acer Chromebook was ranked sixth on Amazon.com’s bestsellers list for laptops, and the more expensive Samsung Series 5 in silver with WiFi and 3G versions in white were also in the top 20.

Click here to read more analysis from Richard on the DisplaySearch blog.

Apple – Building a Brand, Leaving a Legacy

There’s this thing in life that most of us have experienced. It’s a sort of metaphysical passing of one’s self. Those moments when you pass a place you know and can almost see your younger self (or maybe your older self), standing right there in a different time. For me, Cupertino has always held those doorways and windows. Like most of the kids who grew up in Cupertino, I used to make extra money picking apricots in the orchards.

Obviously, fruit has remained a big theme for Cupertino. Of course, I’m speaking tongue in cheek – as most of the world knows, Steve Jobs built Apple’s headquarters here (it’s his hometown too; one of many things we share in common). So, once lush with orchards and wineries, Cupertino is now one of the geek capitals of the world. I say that with pride and humor, because I am definitely one of them, standing on the thin line between artistry and technology. In fact, I worked at Apple for many years, and I’m proud to say that I launched the focus on music and led strategic Music and Entertainment initiatives during my 10 years there.

So I am one of the truly lucky ones, with strong roots both in the Cupertino of old – and the Cupertino of now. The roots of now, the Apple tree, are firmly incontrovertibly implanted in Steve Jobs. As stock prices have shown, Jobs is absolutely the trunk of Apple and inseparable from where investors put the worth of the company.

And here’s the real crux of what I want to say in this piece: Seeing Steve Jobs battle through the fight of his life to restore Apple to greatness – a graceful, courageous and obviously successful battle – doesn’t hold a candle to seeing him fight for his life now. But what he’s creating, despite (or because of) that illness is mind blowing. Naysayers can address the iCloud any way they want, but what we all know is that it’s pretty damned likely to be successful. Apple is ending the war on clouds and lockers and legitimizing what the consumer wants, whether the music industry agrees or not.

It is the new digital age, and like it or not we’re not going to stop access. We’re not even going to control access. Steve Jobs has literally put all his apples into one basket in agreement. Why does it matter? It matters because, like Bob Lefsetz said recently, Apple is EASY. The huge base of consumers out there trust that if they get an iPad or iPod or iTunes … whatever, it will work. Apple has not only galvanized a brand, but it has built a huge, vocal community of brand advocates. No amount of advertising money could have busted the iPad out of the gate the way the users themselves did.

The second part of a brand is always fulfilling the promise you set forth (this is straight from branding queen Libby Gill’s rulebook). And, quite simply, Apple delivers on their promise day in and day out. They listen to their constituency and they build a better mousetrap, make better stuff, and address issues like the cloud – maybe a little later than the creative disruptors, but without a doubt, they’re putting their weight (and their money) where their mouth is.

Which brings me to the issue of legacy: Apple is a big deal – not just to the world, that’s obvious – but here, in Cupertino (my hometown). Legacy is a lot like a brand, in its truest form, it delivers on a promise made. The new Steve Jobs’ Cupertino Apple Campus Mothership is absolutely part of that promise. One day after the WWDC conference, Jobs put forth his new campus proposal to the Cupertino City Counsel, ripe with more than apples. Steve Jobs has designated acres and acres of his campus for apricot orchards – honoring the tradition of the Valley; that’s roots. And it’s deeper than I can convey.

I could go on and on about Apple’s commitment to its future and to the ever growing employee base (I was part of that once, and I retain a strong, golden thread to those people and the work they do), but the commitment from Steve Jobs is bigger than even that. I think I should come clean here and say that obviously I admire Steve Jobs. I don’t agree with him all the time, obviously – or with Apple for that matter. But I’ve seen him renovate more than a company or a product line. I’ve seen him refresh the people around him. I’ve watched him galvanize thousands of employees to get laser focused on success and build something meaningful. I’ve witnessed the grace, elegance, and simplicity with which the products have sparked a revolutionary embrace among consumers. I’ve watched his address at Stanford’s graduation a dozen times and brought that message into my own life – which brings me back to that metaphysical doorway I mentioned earlier. To that glimpse of one’s self coming and going.

You see, we’re all creating a legacy all the time. We are ALL in the process of going, like it or not.
A brand, well that’s for now. But a legacy… what we build that will outlast us, that’s huge. There are 3,700 trees in what will be the new Apple campus as of today. According to initial specs, Apple hopes to have 6,000 trees when the mothership is built. In fact, Steve Jobs hired experts from Stanford to consult on indigenous trees to make this come to “fruition” (sorry, I couldn’t resist). To me, no matter what my life has become – working with industry leaders and entrepreneurs, innovators and influencers, celebrities and musicians, I often look through one of those doorways and see myself picking fuzzy apricots from the tress here in Cupertino. I remember where I come from and, like Steve Jobs, that my legacy has to be bigger than my brand.

And just my humble opinion, whatever those trees are, whatever fruit they bear, in my book they’re all Apple trees.

The Revenge of Pen Computing?

I’ll admit, when I heard about HTC adding pen capability to its tablet, I rolled my eyes and wrote it off. Then I watched HTC’s promotional video on the HTC Flyer and read comments from respected journalists and analysts and knew then I needed to try it out for myself. You see, I have been involved with pen-computing for 20 years, and I have the scars to prove it. Will the HTC Flyer usher in a new generation of mainstream, pen-based tablet usage models?

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Cycle of Mainstream Pen-Computing

Over the last 20 years, the industry expectations of mainstream pen-computing have risen and fallen like a scary roller coaster at Six Flags Texas. Don’t confuse this with successful vertical pen-computing in medical, transportation, construction, military, and retail industries.

The mainstream pen cycle has historically gone like this:

  1. Pen-computing is knighted the “next big thing”
  2. The entire high-tech value chain including semi’s, ISVs, ODM, OEM, and distribution invests heavily
  3. Products get shown at CES, PC Expo, and Comdex
  4. Products emerge with very few pen-centric applications
  5. Product sales-in to channels meet minimum expectations
  6. Product sales-out of channels fail to meet expectations and get blown-out at rock bottom prices
  7. The industry retreats, folds its tents, and chases another shiny new thing
  8. In five years, go to step 1 and repeat.

This cycle has repeated itself many times, over and over again.

HTC Flyer Overview

The HTC Flyer, even without its pen capability, is the best 7” tablet I have used and that says a lot, given my affection for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.

It’s very peppy and I attribute a lot to HTC’s decision to go with a single core 1.5 GHz CPU versus a lower frequency dual core CPU. That makes sense now because of the infancy of the OS and its application multithreading. Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) is VERY stable, light-years more stable than Android 3.X (Honeycomb). The 5MP camera is the best I have used with the exception of the iPhone 4.

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HTC Flyer Pen Features

The HTC Flyer is impressive even without pen input, but what about the specific pen features? Essentially, if you see anything on the screen, you can annotate on it. Also, HTC pre-installs a multimedia notes program as well.

· Annotations: If you are viewing anything on the HTC Flyer, click the pen to the screen and it takes a screen shot. This included web sites, applications, and even photos.

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· Notes Program: HTC preinstalls the “Notes” app, a program that can take notes with the pen, text, voice, videos, and even attach files. I believe this is a re-skinned Evernote app with the added pen-inputs as it syncs with Evernote. As you can see on the far-right, it doesn’t improve my handwriting at all.

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· Multiple Pen Types: I could choose from multiple pen types, colors, and sizes, all by tapping the pen to an icon in the lower right hand corner of the Flyer. As you can see on the far-right, it doesn’t improve my handwriting either.

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User Interface Modality

With pen-computing, the user has three modes: pen, touch, and virtual keyboard to do most of their input. I found it difficult to go back and forth between pen and finger, but found a way to do both without having to place the pen down.

Future of Mainstream Pen Input

The pen capabilities of the HTC Flyer are the best I have ever experienced on any mainstream computing device BUT I do not see pen input using a specific pen getting popular outside specific vertical industries. Why? The modality between switching between finger and pen will be an issue for many people. There are solutions, though.

The Problem

If a pen is an impediment to pen computing, what would allow for precise input without the pen? The iPhone only partially solved it with the “finger”. Finger input has two major problems:

· The palm: No other body parts can touch the display, like a palm. Try drawing on any iOS device with your palm resting on the display. Come on… try it.

· Fat finger: On a 7” display, unless you have fingers as skinny as a pencil, they are too imprecise.

Technologies That Can Solve This

· Object recognition: If the tablet can recognize that an object that it “sees” as a pointing device is getting closer and touches the tablet, any object, finger, feather, or ball point pen cap could be the “pen.” Object recognition combines an input sensor and software that identifies what the object is. PixelSenseTM from Microsoft is just one example. Objects could also theoretically be captured and recognized accurately with stereoscopic cameras. Below is a picture I took at CES 2011 of PixelSense object capture in action. This is an image of what the pixels in Microsoft Surface® 2 are seeing.

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· Improved touch algorithms: Object recognition is a difficult task but doesn’t solve everything. You identify what something is, but you then need a decision engine that triggers a response. Improved touch algorithms can determine what to do with the finger and ignore the palm of your hand. Or, if it’s a larger display and a painting program, it knows what to do with the palm and the finger simultaneously.

Conclusion

Pen-computing has undergone a roller coaster of ups and downs and has only been successful in vertical industries and specific usage models. Could the HTC Flyer usher in a new revolution of mainstream, pen-based computing devices and consumer usage models? Well, I don’t believe so, and not because the HTC Flyer isn’t an awesome tablet, as it’s the best 7” tablet available right now. The biggest impediment to pen computing is the pen itself, and until the right technologies enable any finger or object to “be the pen”, the usage models won’t take off. The good news is that technologies like object recognition, improved flat panel sensors and algorithms are on their way.

Microsoft’s “Can’t Lose” Mobile Strategy

 

Microsoft has been trying to recapture momentum in mobile after ceding the early market leadership it had 5-6 years ago due to its lack of adequate investment and resultant inability to stay competitive. And its renewed focus and execution over the past 1-2 years is indeed enabling it to make progress. But behind the scenes Microsoft has a strategy to become a driving force in the market and will likely produce more profits than many of the handset manufactures. And this is regardless of whether Windows Phone is successful.

Microsoft makes no mobile hardware, and licenses its OS software to several handset manufacturers (e.g., HTC, HP, Samsung). Its latest version of Windows Phone 7 (Mango) is refreshingly competitive and shows a lot of promise. And its distribution partnership with Nokia could propel it into a leadership position (although we remain skeptical that it will happen as quickly as some predict). Many observers focus on Microsoft’s attempt to gain ground on the competition by increasing its anemic smartphone OS market share. But the number of smartphones now being sold with windows mobile or the newer Windows Phone 7 is pretty small (various estimates are less than 5% of the market). Even at an estimated $10-$15 license fee per phone, the stakes are pretty small for a company the size of Microsoft.

But licensing the OS should actually be Microsoft’s back-up position. Frankly, there is far more money to be made other places. First, Microsoft is now putting a squeeze on all of the Android handset makers by enforcing its patent portfolio and claiming all such manufactures must license Microsoft IP to prevent infringement. And the handset makers are coming on board. Deals have been struck with HTC to start, and negotiations continue with others (e.g., Samsung). It is quite likely that Microsoft will be able to extract licensing fees (eventually) from all the manufacturers. And at $5 per handset produced, that is a staggering sum.

Adding to this revenue stream is yet another lucrative deal for Microsoft. Virtually every smartphone made (including Apple and Google Android, but with the exception of BlackBerry) licenses ActiveSync as the way to both connect to email (via Exchange) and to control the device (e.g., kill, provision). Microsoft controls 80%-85% of the enterprise email market. Without ActiveSync capability, the devices are unable to work in the business world, and what high end smartphone maker wants to be excluded from the corporate world? So licensing fees of $3-$5 per smartphone device for ActiveSync licenses has huge potential.

So what does this mean for Microsoft’s revenue streams?
Currently, all versions of Microsoft powered phones sell about 12M units per year (based on smartphone sales of approximately 400M worldwide estimated in 2011*, and 3% market share for Microsoft). That amounts to $180M best case (at $15 per device). There will be an estimated 140M Android phones (based on 35% market share) and 80M iPhones (based on 20% market share) sold this year worldwide. That amounts to $660M – $1.1B for ActiveSync licensing. And it’s likely that Microsoft will get many (if not all) of the Android vendors to pay royalties, so that’s another potential $700M (at $5 per device). This is not guaranteed, given it has not yet signed licenses with many of the vendors and some vendors in emerging markets may not care if they are infringing. But even if Microsoft only generates half of this amount, it’s a substantial sum. The OS revenues look paltry by comparison to potential IP revenues. And IP doesn’t require the substantial investment in updates and improvements that the OS does, making it even more lucrative.

Further, the smartphone market is likely to at least double over the next 3 years when we expect Microsoft to capture 15% of the smartphone market (primarily with Nokia). So 15% of an 800M device smartphone market = 120M devices and at $15 per device for licensing the OS = $1.8B in revenue. But the number of devices to be sold on Android = 45% of the total or 360M and on Apple = 15% or 120M. And at $8-$10 license fee per Android device and $3-$5 per Apple device, that’s $3.2B – $4.2B in revenue.

And moreover, even though Bing is currently way behind Google search in market share, it is now the favored platform for phone manufacturers distancing themselves from Google’s dominance. We expect Bing to capture 25% of mobile search in 3 years. This represents a huge revenue opportunity for Microsoft, although it’s hard to quantify at this point.

Bottom Line:
Microsoft can generate a lot of revenue from its deal with Nokia. But even if it doesn’t, the number of licensees of its IP will guarantee Microsoft a sizeable chunk of the mobile revenue stream. And that doesn’t even include the potential for revenues generated by cloud-based and Bing centered services. So Microsoft stands to gain handsomely from mobile, whether it succeeds with its own OS or not. It really can’t lose.

*Market Statistics and Projections (compiled and adapted from various estimates):

  • Current Smartphones shipped worldwide 1Q 11 = 100M units. Estimated 400M total units in 2011.
    Approx Shares: Android = 35%, Apple = 20%, RIM = 15%, Symbian (Primarily Nokia) = 25%, Windows Mobile = 3%, Other = 2%
  • Future Smartphone estimates for 2014 = 800M units
    Shares: Android = 45%, Apple = 15%, RIM = 15%, Windows Phone (Primarily Nokia) = 15%, Other = 10%
  • Why Convertible PCs Are About To Become Very Popular

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    Convertible computers are those that can serve as a standalone media tablet and, when attached to a keyboard, can serve as a notebook. I believe that in 2013, these will be immensely popular. This is aggressive for many reasons, primarily because a convertible PC has never been widely successful. I’d like to share a few reasons why I believe this will be true.

     

     

    Opposing Logic

    First, I’d like to share with you the reasons people have told me convertible PCs won’t be successful.

    • “Never worked before”: Convertible PCs have been around for a while now and have sold into targeted vertical markets like healthcare, education and sales, but haven’t sold to wide-spread audiences in mass volumes.
    • “Can’t be all things to all people”: This line of logic says that a device cannot be a good tablet and a good clamshell notebook. This makes sense at face value, especially when you look at examples like Heelys. They don’t make great shoes or a decent pair of roller skates you would take to the roller skating rink. Other examples are why all cars aren’t convertibles and all jackets don’t have zip-off sleeves.
    • “Too chunky and heavy”: People point to designs with non-detachable displays that are, in fact, thicker compared to a thin a light notebook.
    • “Too expensive”: This line of logic says that you will need to pay a major premium to have this functionality.

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    So those are the reason people have given me for why convertible tablets won’t be successful. Now let’s turn to why I think they will.

    Purchase Justification

    Everyone who buys something that’s a considered purchase has some justification, emotional or data-driven. Sometimes reality equals testing, sometimes it doesn’t. When I researched consumer PCs in the mid-90’s, consumers said they bought them for “children’s education” but they were used for that only in single digit percentages.

    I believe consumers and IT will justify convertibles for similar reasons. They will say:

    • “I/my company’s users want a tablet because they are cool, but I need a notebook, but I don’t want both.”
    • “I/my company’s users want a tablet and need a notebook, but I/we cannot afford both.”

    Buyers will justify the purpose in this way and buy a convertible.

    Future Mechanical Designs

    How thick and bulky does a convertible PC in the future really need to be? Consider the thickness of a few modern devices:

    • Mac Air: 17 mm at its thickest point on an 11.6” display design
    • iPad 1: 13.4 mm
    • Asus Transformer: 12.98 mm thick, without keyboard
    • iPad 2: 8.8 mm at its thickest point
    • Apple Wireless Keyboard: ~5 mm thick

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    I am not a mechanical designer, but it certainly seems possible to have:

    • tablet (10mm) +
    • keyboard (5mm) +
    • torsion control and connector adder (3mm)
    • ~18mm total thickness

    So conceivably someone could design a convertible that mechanically makes a nice tablet and notebook when connected to the keyboard.

    Future Operating Systems, Applications and Multi-Modality

    Over the next few years, operating systems and application environments will undergo dramatic changes and will most likely impact the uptake of convertibles. Let’s take a look at a few signposts:

    • Windows 8: At D9, I personally witnessed the new OS incorporating elements of tablet and notebook in the same platform. Yes, the multi-modality created some discussion and controversy, but it is coming.
    • Android: My Asus Transformer, albeit having Honeycomb OS challenges, delivers a decent tablet and clamshell experience today. It can only get better from there, right? Judging from some of the news to come out at Google I/O in May, Ice Cream Sandwich will incorporate elements of tablets and clamshells. Imagine a single .apk for phone, tablet, and clamshell device.
    • Apple: If OS/X and iOS share a common kernel, is it impossible to imagine unification on a convertible device? I certainly noticed many common UI elements between Lion and iOS 5, did you? Check out Lion’s Full-Screen Apps, Launchpad, Preview, and Multi-Touch Gestures.  This looks familiar to any iPad user.

    Improved GPU Capability

    Today on my Asus Transformer, when I toggle between tablet mode and clamshell mode, I get the same exact UI. But I could do a lot more, especially when I have a mouse attached. The mouse is a precision HCI device providing the ability to control more data and information.

    Here is the interaction I really want:

    • Clamshell mode (tablet + keyboard): Fonts, bars, and buttons get smaller and more appropriate for a precision UI environment.
    • Tablet mode: Fonts, bars, scale larger for an imprecise, finger-driven UI environment

    This would not only take awesome programming, but improved GPUs for tablets, which we know is on its way from AMD and others.

    Additionally, we cannot forget about the emerging OpenCL standard supported by AMD, ARM, Intel and Nvidia which will leverage the GPU to drive compute cycles which are today executed on the CPU. With future GPUs better leveraging OpenCL and their corresponding apps, this will enable a much better experience on convertibles.

    Conclusion

    Convertible PCs have been around for years, but never took off in big volumes across mass markets because they didn’t deliver on the promise of making a good tablet and a good clamshell. Between now and 2013, enhancements in design, operating environments, improvement in GPU capability combined with buyer’s purchase justification will make convertibles extremely popular.

     


    Follow @PatrickMoorhead on Twitter and on Google+.

    10 Days With the HP TouchPad Tablet

     
    As I have described in previous posts on my AMD blog, part of my job entails forecasting future usage models for consumers and businesses. One of the various techniques I use is living with today’s technology and then extrapolating forward. I look at all sorts of hardware and software, and lately I’ve been looking at a lot of mobility devices, specifically tablets. One of the latest products I checked out was the HP TouchPad tablet. I lived with the HP TouchPad for the last 10 days and I wanted to share with you my thoughts. I won’t be extrapolating out five years, but I am intrigued about many aspects of the HP TouchPad.

    HP TouchPad Advantages

    · Setup: I have an HP Veer phone that I had previously setup and the HP TouchPad automatically imported ALL of my accounts. That included Exchange, Box, Dropbox, Facebook, Gmail, LinkedIn, Skype, Yahoo, and even MobileMe. I entered their passwords, and I was connected to everything. This is superior to Android in that it connects non-Google accounts and superior to iOS in that it automatically connects non-Apple accounts. THIS is the way every tablet should be.

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    · Real Multitasking: This has been an advantage with Palm products since the inception of the Pre with “cards”. When I mean real multitasking, I mean a way to see what is actually running simultaneously and the ability to quickly switch and/or kill apps and functions. The only thing even close is the BlackBerry PlayBook.

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    · Synergy: Managing all of the different best-in-breed services is typically very difficult with a tech device. Synergy gathers all of those services and contacts in one place to present an integrated view of an app or a contact. My contact in the HP TouchPad, for example, has 10 linked profiles, consistent with my services. One contact, not ten. Here are some specifics on accounts supported by HP Synergy.

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    · Notifications: There are two types of notifications, lock-screen and in the activity center in the upper right hand corner of the screen. These are superior to the iOS 4.x notifications in every way and really pull on Palm’s experience and legacy.

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    · Exhibition Mode: This mode adds utility to the HP TouchPad when it’s charging and/or sleeping. Instead of seeing a blank screen or some silly screensaver, you see a clock, your calendar, key photos and even a very-well designed Facebook page.

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    · TouchStone Inductive Charging: This is a feature I am surprised others haven’t tried to replicate because it’s just so awesome. The inductive charging feature allowed me to charge my HP TouchPad by setting it on the charger, without having to plug anything in. On other tablets, I continually plug in the unit incorrectly (iPad) or it’s hard to plug in (HTC Flyer).

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    · Printing: I have personally used over 15 tablets with all the add-ons for printing and the TouchPad was the first one that “just worked”. I have yet to print correctly or easily from any iOS 4.X or Honeycomb device.

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    · Connecting to Corporate IT: This was the easiest tablets I have connected to my corporate Exchange and wireless LAN. Literally, all I needed was to enter my email address and password and I was connected to Exchange. Its ActiveSync support is superior in every way. On the corporate LAN, all I needed was to email my security token to myself, import it, log-in, and I was on the corporate wireless LAN. The HP TouchPad was the first browser to actually work correctly with our web front-end for SAP.

    What I’d Like to See in Future HP TouchPads or Software Releases

    · More Apps: Some of my favorite apps are missing that I literally cannot be without. I need apps like EverNote, SugarSync, Kindle (coming), Google Plus, and HootSuite.

    · More Pep: Even though the HP TouchPad has some of the highest-specification components like a dual core 1.2 GHz CPU, it didn’t feel like it. It lagged in many areas compared to the iPad 2 and even the BlackBerry PlayBook.

    · Browser File Access: Without a specific app, I’d like to be able to upload files through the browser. For example, even if I didn’t have a Google Plus app, I’d like to upload photos via the browser. This requires file system access to do. The BlackBerry PlayBook did this very well and in many ways, compensated for the lack of apps.

    · Video Services: There is a placeholder app for the HP MovieStore, but I’d also like to see Netflix and Hulu. Hulu runs in the browser, but it’s also very laggy. If Hulu ran more quickly in the browser, I wouldn’t need an app.

    · Video Out: I like to display videos and photos on my HDTV. I cannot do this with the TouchPad, but I can with the iPad, PlayBook, and virtually every Android Honeycomb tablet.

    · Video Chat: I tried to use the Skype-based video conferencing but I got no video and crackly audio. The BlackBerry PlayBook and the iPad 2 do video conferencing near flawlessly.

    · Synced Bookmarks: I spend, like many, a lot of time on the web, and not just on a tablet. I access the web from multiple phones, tablets, and PCs. I’d like, at a minimum, an Xmarks app.

    · Mouse: The HP Wireless Keyboard is great, but only solves half the produ

    ctivity interface challenge. Reaching across the keyboard or doing “fine-grain” editing is just sub-optimal without a mouse. Android Honeycomb has the best mouse support today, closely followed by the PlayBook.

    Conclusion

    There is a lot to love about the HP TouchPad and it offers many things that make it stand out amongst the iPad, BlackBerry PlayBook, and Android tablets. Unfortunately, one of those attributes is a low number of applications and some lagginess in certain usage models. HP is a company I have had the fortunate honor to work for (Compaq) and work with for almost 20 years and when they commit to do something, they do it. I expect the issues to be cleared up and when they are, I believe more people will be focusing on its great attributes.

    Feel free to give me a piece of your mind. Comments section is below.

     

    See Pat’s full bio here or past AMD blogs here.

    Follow @PatrickMoorhead on Twitter and on Google+.

    Ten Key Points for a Successful Company Blog

    Bob Maples is a contributor to Tech.pinions, his opinions are his own. He is is the CEO and founder of Maples Communications, a full-service public relations, social media and hybrid-marketing communications agency for companies who need to put more eyes on their brand for sales leads, increased brand and product awareness, better customer relationships and brand loyalty. A few clients include Toshiba America Information Systems, Fujitsu Computer Systems, Texas Instruments, Acer, Hitachi, eMachines, Networks in Motion, and Cisco, to mention a few. The agency has won more than 100 awards for work executed on behalf of its clients, including seven coveted Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) National Silver Anvil Awards recognizing Maples Communications as one of the best PR and social media agencies in the country.

    Can you, your company or your president be considered thought leaders in the digital era without a blog? You can’t be taken seriously by business audiences unless you have a blog in the mix. A blog is your delivery mechanism to share your insights consistently. And, while it is certainly possible to do business without a blog, having one is the key ingredient for establishing and sustaining your expertise and knowledge on specific topics.

    But launching and running a company blog is not easy. It’s not as simple as writing posts on a regular basis because a blog has to provide value on a regular basis. Blogs are the fabric of online communication, serving as outright thought leadership vehicles and behind-the-scenes content management systems. They require a time commitment, serious thought and far more than merely regurgitating the latest stats or trends about their industries – your readers want your opinion and analysis.

    So what are the key points in a successful company blog? Here are a few of mine:

    1. 1. Relevant content that provides insight, perspective and information. At its core, a company blog has to deliver its readers relevant information they can use to increase their knowledge, learn new things or receive insight that makes a difference.
      2. It needs to be well written. A blog with spelling and grammatical errors reflects badly on the person writing it and their company. Also, blog posts need to have a good flow and provide an engaging narrative that makes it easy to read. This is particularly important given many people scan content online as opposed to reading it. This is why a good headline is so important to capture someone’s attention.
      3. Posts have to happen on a regular basis. It could be one, two or five posts per week. Whatever your editorial plan, it needs to be consistent to establish expectations within the company and among the blog’s readers. The worst thing a company can do is post four or five times a week for a few weeks, and then once a week or not at all afterward. When the audience doesn’t know what to expect, they start to drift away.
      4. Respond to industry issues, competitive stories and customer concerns. Customer service and public relations have never been more important; a bad story can spread around the web’s social network at the speed of light. Your blog becomes a responsive outlet to explain your side of any story and douse the fires of negative activity or accentuate the positive.
      5. It can’t operate as a standalone entity. A blog needs to be supported and nurtured within a company. It needs to be actively promoted within communications, marketing and sales collateral, business cards, letterhead and e-mail signatures.
      6. The blog and its content should also be promoted on social media services such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and e-mail notification to targeted customers, influencers, media and other friends of the company. A blog needs to be seen as an integral part of a company’s brand and identity as opposed to be left alone to its own devices.
      7. Search engine-optimizing your content is important in bringing in search visitors as well as direct traffic. The more linkable your blog and website, the better your search results will be. Very often traditional websites are difficult to link to and not easy for search engines to index. This can be due to the blog or website’s structure, the software it’s built with, or its overly complex URLs. Blogs are almost always superior in this respect.
      8. A company blog needs to be integrated into the blogosphere and the blogging community. The people writing a blog need to be reading and commenting on other blogs. You can’t write a blog in isolation otherwise there are no connections with the “outside” world.
      9. It needs to look good and have a user-friendly design. As much as a company will spend time and money to create a good Web site, its blog also needs to be functionally and attractive. It is a public marketing vehicle that reflects a company’s brand, culture and approach to business.
      10. A good blog should follow best practices by including things such as an RSS feed (both through RSS reader and via e-mail), information about the writers, the ability to leave comments, links to social media services, and links to other company resources.
  • Finally, I’m a big believer that ideas flourish when you’re out and about talking to customers, industry gurus and other people about their ideas, interests, thoughts and business endeavors. As much as you can get many ideas from reading online, socializing is a great way to stimulate the mind and idea generation. Many of mine come from the traditional newspapers like the Wall Street Journal or USA Today.

    These are my thoughts to a successful company blog. What are some of the other things that make a good company blog should feature?

    Why AMD’s decision to pull the plug on their support for BapCo’s SYSmark benchmark matters

    For many years, the PC industry created products that were pretty straight forward and relied on a central CPU to drive almost all of its computational functions. But since there was a great deal of competition among microprocessor vendors as well as PC makers to try and differentiate their products, the need arose for a set of benchmarks to deliver a consistent view of how these products performed.

    So, BapCo’s SYSMark benchmark testing program emerged as one of the more important benchmarking programs that evolved in the 1990’s to serve this purpose. But as we headed into a this decade, PC’s were being asked to do a lot more then basic word processing, spreadsheets and relatively simple multimedia computing. In fact, PC applications began to demand more graphics based functionality in even mainstream applications which included desktop PC games, processing of various media formats and new ways to integrate imaging into everyday applications.

    Given all of these new changes in processing demands and the addition of a GPU into the performance equation, the need for new benchmarks that recognizes this new age of computing is needed. This is at the heart of why AMD has backed away from supporting BapCO’s SYSmark program. SYSmark was based on older computing performance models and a company like AMD, who was a major supporter of this benchmark in the past and BapCo could not agree on updated testing criteria.

    Of course, there is a lot more to this entire subject and AMD’s CMO, Nigel Dessau has posted AMD’s perspective on this issue that I include below. And I have asked fellow analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group, a well know authority on performance based computing, to weigh in on why this matters. First up is Nigel’s blog post, reprinted by permission, also read Rob Enderle’s analysis here..

    Voting for Openness-By Nigel Dessau

    AMD has a long history of supporting open standards; if you have any doubt just look at our support for OpenCL. And this support extends to active involvement with open industry consortia that likewise promote open standards. The beauty of open standards is that they are just that – open. Open to analysis, open to improvement and open to criticism.

    AMD has for some time been a member of BAPCo, an industry organization that promotes, among other things, a benchmark known as SYSmark. In the past year or so AMD, with openness and transparency, has tried to explain why we believe this benchmark is misleading with respect to today’s commonplace applications − about a year ago I published a blog designed to explore this. If you work for a company that believes in transparency and integrity – and I do – then you have to take a stand and speak up when something is wrong.

    BAPCo’s response to this blog was a threat to expel AMD from the consortium.
    The heart of our complaint is this: the SYSmark benchmark is not only comprised of unrepresentative workloads (workloads that ignore the importance of heterogeneous computing and, frankly, favor our competitor’s designs), but it actually generates misleading results that can lead to very poor purchasing decisions, causing governments worldwide to historically overspend somewhere in the area of approximately $8B!

    Now you’re starting to see why this is relevant to you (presuming you’re a taxpayer).

    Good Intentions, Bad Results

    AMD decided to do what we believed was the right thing for the industry and our customers, so we continued to work within BAPCo to try to get the next-generation benchmark, SYSmark12 (“SM2012”), right. Our hope was to effect change so that it would be open, transparent and processor-neutral. We got workloads included that represent the things you and I actually do in a day (instead of 35,000 line spreadsheets!).

    But the question remained: what weighting would BAPCo ultimately give to the real-world workloads − since it is this weighting that defines the actual benchmark scores.

    Unfortunately, our good intentions were met with an outcome that we believe does a disservice to the industry and our customers. We weren’t able to effect positive change within BAPCo, and the resulting benchmark continues to distort workload performance and offers even less transparency to end users. Once again, BAPCo chose to ignore the opportunity to promote openness and transparency.

      1. While SM2012 is marketed as rating performance using 18 applications and 390 measurements, the reality is that only 7 applications and less than 10 percent of the total measurements dominate the overall score. So a small class of operations across the entire benchmark influences the overall score.
      2. In fact, a relatively large proportion of the SM2012 score is based on system performance rated during optical character recognition (OCR) and file compression activities − things an average user will rarely if ever do.
      3. And SM2012 doesn’t represent the evolution of computer processing and how that evolution is influencing average users’ experience. SM2012 focuses only on the serial processing performance of the CPU, and virtually ignores the parallel processing performance of the GPU. In particular, SM2012 scores do not take into account GPU-accelerated applications that are widely used in today’s business environments.

    There are more things that AMD objects to in SM2012, like the excessive wall clock time consumed by its installation and execution. But this explanation will hopefully help you understand why, ultimately, we couldn’t look in the other direction.
    Moving Forward…to Openness

    So how can AMD stay in BAPCo? Simply put, we can’t. We have resigned from BAPCo and asked that our name and logo be removed from marketing materials promoting SM2012.

    Now I hear some of you asking, “Isn’t this really just about the long-running antagonism between AMD and your competitor?”
    No, it’s not.

      1. It’s about fairness. Fairness to consumers and business users, to governments and other organizations that make purchasing decisions based on benchmarks, and, in the case of SYSmark, needlessly overspend because of it.
      2. It’s about relevance. Because do you want to buy a system based on an outdated approach to measuring performance? Don’t you want your system’s performance measured against relevant measures like HTML5 or GPU acceleration? And shouldn’t a benchmark that measures PC performance be relevant to other devices that are likely in your life (if you’re reading this blog I think it’s safe to presume you use an array of devices – I do). Benchmarks should measure the way people engage with their devices today – not stick to a formula more appropriate for the last millennium.
      3. And it’s about openness. Because you, and IT purchasing managers, should know what a benchmark represents and what the score really means to how the device will be used. That’s being set free.

    And this is why we are exploring the options to encourage an alternative consortium, one that will deliver unbiased, representative benchmarks and promote more transparency for our industry. We are committed to working with likeminded companies that want to give consumers and business users an accurate, honest measure of what they can expect from their PCs and mobile devices. And what if ultimately we don’t “win” on these new benchmarks? Well, if the work is done with openness and transparency and results in a useful benchmark, we will make our case and let the market decide.
    That’s all we have been asking for from BAPCo
    .
    My hope is you, and the market, will vote for openness.

    Nigel Dessau is Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer for AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.