You only really appreciate something if you've experienced the other side. Mets fans that have had to suffer through Shea over the years have experienced nothing other than the other side. Now the promise of Citi Field awaits. People that have toured it rave about it- read this great description. Can't wait to get there. Play ball.
Add Citigroup's TARP allocation to the cash they had as of 5 months ago and you get $96 billion. Today, Citigroup is worth less than $6 billion. Citigroup's TARP allocation alone was 9 times as much as the entire company is being valued at today.
One reason why Amazon is one of the best businesses on the planet - they focus on their customers and don't let internal cannibalization concerns derail good product/user decisions.
Amazon proved it again today -releasing a free iPhone-as-Kindle type application, enabling users to read content purchased on the web or their Kindle on their iPhone or iPod Touch. The program even keeps track of a readers' latest page read across both a Kindle and iPhone.
The House passed the almost $800 billion stimulus bill. The Senate will likely soon follow suit.
Take away the money going back to you, pretending that it will be equally distributed to all households (although it won't be), and the money going to the government budget comes out to over $5000 per household.
The government is not stimulating us. We are stimulating the government. This is a spending bill.
We are hoping that our $5000 contribution helps create jobs and fund worthwhile initiatives that ultimately create more jobs, although much of it is already earmarked to fill holes (deficits) in state government and federal program budgets.
If this passes, we've given over $5000 to the government and over $10,000 to Wall Street and Detroit. That's $15,000 per household in the past few months. We know the results so far of our first contribution. Let's hope this one works better.
How much cash has been "lost" from our pockets during this recession compared to how much the government wants to put back in? Is there a good way to figure out what the total size of each part of the stimulus package should be? I don't know a good way to do it, and haven't seen a good analysis, so here's a back of the envelope:
Money out of citizen pockets:
We lost 2.6 million jobs during 2008 and median net income is around $30,000. That's about $80 billion out of our pockets if on average the unemployed stay(ed) unemployed for one year. Let's say standard unemployment returns $20 billion, leaving us down $60 billion in lost salary. We'll ignore assets that are not or should not be liquid working capital for most people for this analysis - property values, stock market, etc.
Money in stimulus plan:
On the other side, using an analysis the Senate bill from a few days ago (see AP analysis in right column, although the bill has been cut to about $830 billion tonight), Obama's plan puts in about $900 billion. Grouping it into three general categories:
Conclusion:
I'm very uncomfortable with this back of the envelope calculation:
Granted this is not completely fair nor comprehensive - the Obama stimulus plan needs to consider both money that has already left as well as money that is projected to leave (for example, you could argue that if there is no stimulus then average unemployment will be longer than 12 months, unemployment rates will increase, etc.), and a goal of the plan is to stimulate growth that is not captured in the above numbers.
Maybe if I believed government could effectively create sustainable economic growth, or even saw some creativity in the plan, then I'd look at it differently. But to my tired eyes right now this is just more of the same.
Brooks,
I'm sitting in a chair beside you while you are sleeping peacefully with your mom. Katie is doing well as she recovers from the c-section and can't wait to get you home and play with you. Ben and Bailey are thrilled that you have arrived, and you will no doubt be besieged by their dinosaurs and dolls as soon as we can get you home.
You arrived yesterday, 1/15/2009, at 7:50am. You were 21 inches long and weighed in at 8.5 pounds. You have a lot of dark hair and your eyes are a cobalt blue. You had your fingers in your mouth within minutes of the delivery, and were sucking loud enough that it was audible across the room.
I'll add a few photos or video clips to this post when I have more time and a better Internet connection (now updated with photo).
One critical driver of instant messaging usage is that IM is always on. Many IM clients also now support voice (VoIP). But we still don't have always-on voice (click and instantly start talking).
It might sound weird - that there would be a big difference between dialing digits and waiting a few rings, as opposed to an always connected voice channel. But simplicity, speed and predictability can't be underrated. If pervasive IP connections had come before POTS, would we even have the ring-based system at all? At most, you'd set your status/presence. Some people wouldn't even do that - they'd always be in always on voice mode.
How much usage would there be for PC-based (including mobile PCs), always on voice? Well we already know Nextel carved out quite a niche with the mobile equivalent - their always on, push to talk service. There are similar push to talk applications on the web too, but generally isolated ones that are hosted by a company like an airline that you may speak to a few times per year. If each of your IM contacts showed a quiet type status or presence (IM only), or a ready to talk type status (causing the always on voice channel to setup), how often would you go voice instead of IM?
Of course, the always-on voice application would be integrated with other applications. What if Facebook or LinkedIn had always-on voice? What if the Powerpoint presentation that you are reviewing had always-on voice, using the same data channel used for the always-on voice, to send the slide you have a question on over to your colleague? What if GULP and other communications-technology based franchises had always on voice? Would you order more pizza by calling Pizza Hut, or from your always on GULP contact from your IM window? Etc.
As broadband connections continue to become pervasive (and mobile), we'll start to see always-on voice.
I know this post will be dated for some of you, but it may be of interest for people like me that generally only get a new cell phone every two years when eligible for new customer pricing.
I recently made the transition from a (Windows Mobile powered) Treo to a Blackberry Bold 9000 (pictured). I only considered Blackberry options - the iPhone and Android-based mobiles were unfortunately out of contention because only Blackberries are supported by my IT group for enterprise mail. Initial impressions:
What's to love about the Blackberry Bold?
What will I miss about the Treo?
On deck for future Bold testing:
Why not the Blackberry Storm?
Conclusions
Overall, I'd say the Blackberry Bold is amongst the best available phones mobile computers. I've jealously played with friends iPhones, and they do rock, but the Bold email may still give it the edge if email is your primary use case, even if you are lucky enough to have the choice. The impact of the iPhone on mobile device based application development however should help all mobile computers, including Blackberries, in the long-term.
I love the openness of the Android-based mobile computers, and if GMail and Google-based office products are your primary work tools, then it could be the best choice for you, and ultimately I'm sure enterprises will support Android like they do Blackberry. In fact, my prediction is that in two years I'll go with an Android-based mobile computer, as I'm optimistic on how fast Android will progress over the next couple years. But I'm very happy with my Blackberry Bold after a week or so.
About a week ago, Israel started an air offensive against Hamas. Today, Israel sent in the ground troops. Hamas has been using the Gaza strip land given to them by Israel to launch missiles into Israel, missiles that have been increasingly fired deeper into Israel. Israel justifiably could have launched this counter-offensive multiple times over the past years. So why now? And why to this extent (ground troops in an enormous step up from the air offensive).
Of course, Israeli military intelligence, amongst the best in the world, can't be discounted. If they know of factors that are causing this counter-offensive, then we probably won't know of them for a long time, if ever. And surely there are multiple factors involved. However, I think Barack Obama's upcoming swearing into office is a likely strong factor.
Obama's positions on the Middle East are hard to gauge. His experience in these types of situations is nill. Bush has supported Israel and there's certainly no reason to think he'd change his stance with a couple weeks to go in his final term. Obama is an x factor, an unknown variable, and will soon take the helm of Israel's most important ally. I don't think Israel wanted to take the chance, arguably can't afford to take the chance, that Obama's support will be anything less than the 100% support that Israel needs.
We don't buy Pizza Hut often, but Ben won a personal pan for a reading accomplishment at school, so last week we got a pie for the rest of us while picking up Ben's pizza. It was an unpleasant reminder that Pizza Hut pizza is really bad.
There is a great local pizza place a few blocks away, Il Colosseo. But, due to the disparity between the Pizza Hut franchise and Il Colosseo single store brand recognition and marketing, including the "free" pizzas that students like Ben win,.the Pizza Hut dominates the off the highway business and does better business overall.
There are great local restaurants like Il Colosseo everywhere, but there are also low-quality local restaurants that create risk in trying an unknown local restaurant. Combined with the presence of the national franchises, it makes it tough for a local restaurant to get non-local business, and the locals lose out on some local business as well due to the advantages that the national franchises can parlay into cost savings, promotions, store location, marketing, etc.
But this is going to change. A new wave of "franchises" will emerge, overlaying local businesses with a communications software layer that enables the local businesses to remain local, yet take advantage of the new communications and user interaction paradigm. Although we don't think of them as franchises, Amazon and eBay do this to some degree for their merchants. As broadband Internet access becomes pervasive and mobile, this new franchise model will continually expand.
Consider a hypothetical next-gen pizza franchise - Go United Local Pizza, GULP. GULP provides the communications technology platform for each GULP "franchise", and helps provide brand recognition and marketing.
Pizza lovers will text in orders to the same GULP short-code, in any city they are in. A simple website will take care of web initiated orders. User profile and location information will enable many orders to be placed without the user needing to specify exactly what he wants or where he is. Metadata from the processes will build reports that will help each local pizza store manage their business. Order fulfillment and user satisfaction data will help close the loop and enrich the metadata. IVRs or distributed call center operators could even take care of phone calls, though they will be a decreasing part of the order stream. Some GULP restaurants will get to the point where they will open a drive-thru pizza pickup.
The website will be very simple - the magic will be in the data and interfaces - APIs will enable others to build more feature-rich applications around the data to continually enrich the user experience, e.g. iPhone, Android, Zagat, Amazon, Twitter, Wii, Google, Garmin and Facebook applications. Even advertising applications and apps from some of the innovative local stores themselves. These apps will also result in more useful data, and help enable local GULP stores benefit from the type of nationwide marketing that traditional franchises benefit from today.
GULP marketing can also include processes that don't result in an army of clone stores and menus, but does give the customer coming off the highway confidence in the product. For example, GULP certifies the Il Colosseos of the world - they get GULP branding on the store window and a sticker on the pizza box. Intel inside type branding. You will know that GULP certified pizza will be better than Pizza Hut pizza. Just like you don't really buy the local McDonald's at a random exit off the highway - you buy the McDonald's franchise - the franchise marketing and overall execution gives you confidence in the local, unknown McDonald's store.
New organizations or individuals may be able to leverage the GULP technology and marketing layer to become GULP pizza, bagel or ice cream shops when they previously couldn't put together a viable business plan - for example, schools, community groups, businesses in other sectors, churches or individuals that couldn't afford the traditional franchise model for example.
Just like many applications have become increasingly horizontally layered - with each layer doing its part exceptionally well and interfacing with adjacent layers and applications that do their thing extremely well - the franchises of the future will be layered - and the communications technology layer will enable the next wave of franchises - one that will help local businesses finally take advantage of today's networked world.
Was feeling old and like I could be losing my grip on new technology (gasp) earlier tonight after Ben, my eight-year old son, crushed me in too many Godzilla games to count on his new Wii. I was all over the buttons while he was deftly waving his controller and nunchuck through the air like he was conducting an orchestra.
However, just rebounded to unexpectedly grab a Blackberry Bold online for a couple hundred dollars cheaper than any of the retail stores around me are offering it for. Then again Ben would have gone iPhone.
But I'll take the small victory and see if I can't Google some Godzilla tips and teach the boy a thing or two tomorrow. Yeah, right. Maybe I can get Pac-Man on my Bold and convince Ben to take me on there.
Naturally, the details, or lack thereof, match the detailed turnaround plans that we've seen from Ford, GM and Chrysler, but the late Friday news that we've become accustomed to hearing lately did indeed break tonight and the Big Three will get billions of dollars.
I never predict anything correctly, but even I got this one right last night when I asked the heads of the Big Three to tell us which Friday the bailout news would be announced on.
I was very much against the bank bailout as well, but could understand that the complex spider web between our economy and the banks that I don't fully understand was perhaps enough reason to move forwards. But this one? Wow? Who is next in line? Certainly nobody is buying flat screens from Circuit City now that they went bankrupt (disregard the long lines last weekend; they were just hanging out). Can't they come up with a plan in a couple of weeks to justify a few billion dollars?
Meanwhile, Obama has been virtually silent, as he was for most of the bank bailout (McCain too); didn't like it then (for either candidate), especially don't like it now.
But, hey, it is Friday, some of the earlier holiday parties are in swing tonight, and other people are just getting home from shopping, high school football playoff games or Friday night dinner out. We'll forget about it by Monday.
My discussion with the heads of GM, Ford and Chrysler (collectively referred to as Big 3):
Me: I'm a bit slow, please help me get this straight: you want $34 billion (up $9 billion from your request just two weeks ago) so that you can continue to manufacture cars that people have voted (with their wallets) as inferior?
Big 3: No, we'll start making cars that you'll want to buy, and produce them more cost effectively than we produce the current ones that you don't want to buy. We've very quickly learned from our mistakes as we've watched how Congress has rewarded our friends on Wall Street from learning from their mistakes.
Me: So, for the past decade, when you've needed to learn from your mistakes and turn things around in order to survive, you've failed. Now, during a recession, you have a plan to turn things around if we give you $34 billion?
Big 3: Yes, we spent a lot of time on this plan over the past two weeks after we were requested to create it. We even started driving our own cars, rather than flying private jets. After all, this is about the blue collar workers.
Me: The blue collar taxpayers that will pay for the $34 billion in one way or another, and then buy your brand new cars with loans that they can't afford from the banks that we just gave a trillion dollars to?
Big 3: The blue collar taxpayers (other than the ones downsized, but let's not get into details) get secure jobs working for great companies and terrific cars. And, they will indirectly own us, as we envision the government gaining equity in our companies. Win, win, win for the taxpayers.
Me: Sounds terrific. On which Friday afternoon will the government announce the bailout?
Yes, I'm a skeptic, the ultimate skeptic according to my wife, but it is not shocking how much news came out in the last week or so of businesses suddenly having very public problems securing loans, and polls saying that public opinion was turning with the news. And of course the bailout gets done on a Friday, just like most of the single bank bailouts over the past months. Meanwhile, the crux of the bailout is unchanged.
So now the free market knows that Paulson has hundreds of billions to spend, a mandate to spend it, dubious controls and oversight, and accountability and visibility that will be as transparent as the CDOs that helped get us here. The free market will exploit that like it exploits any known information, only at a trillion-dollar type of magnitude. Some people and companies will make a killing; I hope some of it circulates back into the market.
I don't even want to think about how creative the accounting will get for any of this, no doubt to be carefully overseen by the groups heavily involved in the buying and selling. Meanwhile, since the crisis has now been "solved", the failures that got us here will not be under the amount of fire that they should be.
And now I just saw that a Fed-backed Citigroup deal to buy Wachovia assets is potentially in conflict with a Wells Fargo deal to buy Wachovia. Hmmm, I guess the federal regulators will sort it out.
Meanwhile, Obama, McCain, Biden and Palin are all unwilling to discuss how the bailout will change their economic plans, yet were all pushing the bailout; maybe the one unanimous position that the four of them share.
Since the bailout has passed, I hope it was the right move. Certainly seems like there was data somewhere that convinced an awful lot of people that understand the economy much better than I do. But it sure doesn't sit well right now. But, hey, it is Friday, we'll forget about it by Monday, right?
Bush, Paulson, etc. are telling us how critical and time-sensitive it is for Congress to pass bailout legislation, yet I don't see fundamental changes being made to the legislation to make it more palatable.
Obama, McCain and most members of Congress echo that we have to get it done now sentiment. But I don't see significant change. Nor strong demands for specific changes from Obama or McCain.
Given the urgency, shouldn't we expect more change to the legislation than hollow sounding promises for oversight and executive compensation and some pork added for special interests?
I've read the reports and even caught some of Congress questioning Paulson and Bernanke on TV today, but it still doesn't add up to me. It seems Paulson and Bernanke are saying:
Taken individually, I could deal with many of the above statements. Sometimes you have to act without all the facts, and sometimes you have to play big or not play at all. But taken collectively? Just opens millions of questions. Maybe a trillion.
Paulson and Bernanke aren't dumb. Their experts and advisers aren't dumb. Maybe those questions shouldn't be answered or can't be answered. But that's scary, very scary. We do know Paulson, Bernanke and Bush, the three primary drivers of the act-now-or-the- world-economy-blows-up mandate, will likely not be in office come January. So maybe we can hope that their concerns for their legacies are a variable influencing their actions. Sounds odd but the alternatives are worse.
How great would it have been if the candidates hosted and moderated round-table type discussions with leading economists on the bailout plan, so we could assess how they lead the meeting, if they ask good questions and follow-up questions and how they deal with experts in a field that they are not experts in...the type of interactions are critical to a Presidency, and focused on a critical, real-time issue that we all want to better understand.
Of course, that would never happen. But neither Presidential candidate taking a strong stand on the bailout, and barely even scratching the surface, even days after the basics were announced? Is that still too much to ask? Maybe, but I'm disappointed.
On 9/11 I like to think of what makes America great. Today it was the election. The most hotly contested election that I've seen - the far left and the far right of course, but much of the middle seems invigorated as well. I think because the combination of the two tickets is the strongest one we've had in a long time, and of course because this is a critical election due to our economy and international concerns.
But the discussion is just that - passionate, angry, sometimes ridiculous, even hostile - but it is discussion - Yankees vs. Red Sox or Auburn vs. Alabama. It is democracy working the way democracy should. Not to be taken for granted, especially on a day like 9/11.
Go to the Yahoo! sports home page and you'll see "Reebok" imprinted all over the screen as the page loads. Refresh the page and you'll see it again. After the page loads, a Reebok banner ad is displayed on top. First time I've seen such a campaign. Could also make sense on mobiles which generally have long page load times if the ad was very light (tried the Yahoo site on my mobile but it is not mobile optimized). It would be interesting to see how such an ad is priced/valued - tons of low duration impressions added to the "permanent" ad. Maybe because it is the first time I saw it but it did make me look for the permanent Reebok ad after the page loaded because I was curious to see if the campaign was integrated into the permanent page as well.
I somewhat tongue in cheek speculated on Apple's next move into the living room, but MC Siegler takes it a step further on Venture Beat, speculating about how Apple could leverage the App Store across their products.
Interesting thoughts from Siegler - can't agree with all of them, but I think the theme is spot on. Apple has changed the game for the user experience of finding and downloading applications to use on our mobile phones. Really they started the game - previously the user experience was really only easy and attractive enough for the very early adopters.
So can Apple leverage the App Store elsewhere? Siegler lists the iPod and MacBook Touch (a rumored product somewhere in between an iPhone and a MacBook in terms of size and capability) amongst others. Some companies might be worried about cannibalization across product lines in that type of scenario, but I think Apple is way to smart to have those concerns.
What Apple would be potentially doing however is extending the App Store from an area of mobile computing where they are not dominant today (phones) to an area where they are dominant (iPod) and to an area where there is no dominant entity today (truly mobile notebooks). Powerful stuff.
That's my daughter, Bailey, eating her peanut butter sandwich in her own way. She's the most stubborn child I've known, and, yes, she does get some it from me. Although I'll stubbornly insist that mine is determination, and that there's a difference.
Bailey never ate a spoonful of baby food; didn't like the consistency. Rarely eats anything that is not salty or sweet without a fight. But a few days ago she ate two rock-hard, sour, immature baby peaches. Cleaned them to the pits. Why? Because she wasn't allowed to - we had told Bailey all summer that she had to wait until the peaches matured before picking them and eating them.
So when Bailey finally got an opportunity to attain her goal, she traded the awful taste for the satisfaction of doing what she wanted to do. She was stubborn enough to make the trade-off. And note she didn't compromise. Didn't take one bite and then chuck it. No, she was determined to meet her original goal. Even did it twice because she's that stubborn.
In our startup, we haven't always been stubborn enough. Too often we were not willing to make all the trade offs necessary to make in order to accomplish a more important goal. Nothing comes without painful trade offs, at least nothing of value.
So if you feel like your startup is not making painful decisions, then you probably are not being aggressive enough. And compromise isn't usually the answer either.
I wouldn't recommend eating the second peach - startups are better off learning from a mistake then stubbornly not admitting it was a mistake. But if a startup is taking the best path towards a critical goal then there will be some rock hard, painfully sour peaches to swallow along the path.
Related startup lesson posts:
About seven hours, the longest ever since LocalReplay started on S3 (about 15 months). Amazon started offering a 99.9% uptime (measured monthly) last October, so, for LocalReplay anyways, Amazon has been good to their SLA in 8/10 months. The only other significant outage was about four hours in February.
In February, I remember the critics jumped immediately...the, see, we told you that you can't trust your infrastructure to a third party provider school of thought. I'm sure there will be plenty of that chatter again.
My experience is fairly limited - about eight years of internally managed IT systems at ITXC, Teleglobe, VSNL and Tata, and the past 18 months at LocalReplay on the Amazon infrastructure (EC2 and S3). But I think Amazon S3 is the ideal choice for almost any startup, and many companies of any type.
99.0% to 99.9% is going to be acceptable for most startups in particular. Maybe you can do better on your own. Maybe. But with the scalability, extensibility and cost? Not likely.
And if more reliability is needed than S3 can still be part of the solution - essentially a LUN on a SAN. In fact, our user experience was exactly that in the first S3 outage - we simply pointed to copies of the images on other servers so our users were not exposed to the outage, other than for old images. We didn't do as well this time unfortunately, but it could have been done, and the parts that are not automated could be automated - we simply failed to do it.
Sure it would be nice if S3 added in that type of redundancy and failover for us. And I bet they will eventually. But if I had to do it over again for LocalReplay, we'd go right back to S3, and there are not many 18-month old decisions that we'd do the same exact way given what we know today.
I was watching my kids play last weekend and realized they don't walk. Why walk if you can get there faster? It is almost instinct to them and reminded me about another lesson I've learned while launching LocalReplay.
Startup lesson: Run. Always. Just keep your eyes open.
I've found a similar to be true for startups. I've thought about it in the past for larger companies too, but it is more pronounced for startups. Running meaning the full extent of commitment: prioritization, time, resources, absolute speed, process, etc.
There is usually some rationale that is along the lines of: let's proceed conservatively so that if we are wrong then we haven't wasted too much time. But I've learned that more times than not you don't know the right destination until you're halfway to the wrong one. And even then you still don't know the answer for sure, but I bet you'll find it quicker if you keep running, as long as you keep your eyes open while you run.
This applies to prioritization as well: the minute any individual has more than one priority than he's not running full speed towards either of them.
Day-to-day reality means you can't be completely true to this or any other single process. Unless you are a child that will happily run from one place to another, seemingly with no rhyme or reason, yet with all the logic in the world from another perspective.
Previous related posts:
Nine straight wins after tonight's shutout of the Rockies puts the Mets in a virtual tie with the Phillies for first place in the NL East heading into the All-Star break. Don't know if the Mets have turned it around - six of the wins came at Shea at the expense of weak teams on long road trips - but all of a sudden the Mets are right back in it.
If they have turned it around, then last Monday's game vs the Phillies will be looked back on as a turning point. It was game four of the series in Philly, with the Mets winning two of the first three. Big game - huge difference between a split and continuation of the .500 type baseball the Mets played for most of the first half, and taking three out of four against the hated Phils.
I pulled up the box score at 10-2 Mets in the sixth inning. Wow, pleasant surprise. Checked again at 10-7 in the eighth. Ut oh. Mets blow this game after that huge lead and they are in big trouble. IMs started flying as others also realized what was going on. Box score F5 rate increases.
Wagner in for the ninth to try to protect the three run lead. Would we get the lights out Wagner of the start of the year or the Benitez impersonations that we've been seeing lately? Wags puts two on with nobody out. Oh no. Gets slugger Howard for the all important first out. Now Pat Burrell, Mets murderer. Can easily see him going yard and tying the game. Wagner gets him. Huge out. But then the next hitter plates both runs. 10-9. Ut oh. Wagner gets the next hitter, leaving the tying run on base. Phew. Not pretty. But a W is a W and one vs the Phils to take 3/4 in Philly is a real nice W.
Sure enough the Mets go on to sweep the Giants and Rockies, giving hope to a season that has looked bleak for much of the first half.
Many of us are grumbling about the locked down mobile platform (Apple OS X), the limitations of the development environment (Objective C/Cocoa), the exclusivity of the store (App Store/iTunes) and the one-carrier restriction (AT&T in the US). But none of that matters much. Millions will happily download cool applications on their mobile phones for the first time and become attached to an Apple-powered mobile platform. Again.
Apple will dominate the mobile applications industry by convincing most people that iPhone and the iPhone App Store represents the path of least resistance for enjoying mobile applications.
It doesn't hurt that millions already happily buy from iTunes, see the iPhone as the coolest phone out there and will be subject to Apple's amazing marketing.
But the key is ease of use. Just like with many websites today: simple is all powerful in a world of infinite attention seekers competing for finite attention.
We've seen this movie before. Apple combined the hardware/software (iPod MP3 player) and the application (iTunes music store) to revolutionize the music industry. Other MP3 players were cheaper, smaller and had more capacity. Music was cheaper with more selection and less restrictions elsewhere. But Apple convinced everyone that the iPod/iTunes user experience was the easiest and coolest, and for many people it was and still is.
The mobile application developers
It doesn't matter that iPhones will be a small percentage of the overall market. It is very possible that 80% of iPhone users will eventually buy from the App Store. Or at least it is plausible enough that many app developers will bet on that. Meanwhile maybe 10% of the users on other handsets will regularly download web applications, and maybe 10% of those people will purchase the apps...and they'll be choosing from millions of apps spread across the infinite Internet, not a finite set that Apple puts a few seconds away from the user. And (unlike a native web app) you can use the Apple SDK to potentially leverage iPhone hardware resources, GPS, camera, speakers, services, etc. It all adds up to a very attractive package to mobile application developers, whether they need to start from scratch with Cocoa or not.
Web (browser-accessed) applications?
I had previously thought that the web browser itself would dominate mobile applications for the foreseeable future. Symbian, Android, OS X, LiMo etc. would fight a long war. The browser as essentially the least common denominator on every handset and platform would clean up in the meantime, despite limitations in accessing the handset itself. It would be the de facto platform for mobile apps.
I've crashed Windows Mobile and Palm-based devices countless times. And encountered other issues with Flash and Javascript that prevented me from even beginning to use the app. Mobile web apps are still difficult. Now there's an easy option. An option from a company that already owns tens of millions of users and has the marketing brilliance to capture tens of millions more. And it is cool. The iPhone App Store changes the game.
The mobile application future
Ok, so Apple won, game over. Of course not. The iPhone platform is still (natively) locked. The development environment not ideal. The AT&T restriction. A relatively low number of iPhones sold. Etc. But those factors will change and Apple will be multiplying users. So others better move, move quickly and move aggressively. Ultimately, I still feel a more open solution will "win", although of course it may just be Apple opening up over time.
How about a combination of Amazon, Symbian and Nokia? User gets to an Amazon managed mobile app with one keystroke from his Symbian-based Nokia Z-series phone and instantly purchases and downloads his mobile app using his Amazon account.
Make it extremely easy for any Cocoa application to be ported. Court application developers, especially in location-based apps and gaming. Give Amazon users some free credits for other Amazon purchases. And above all make 200% sure that the user experience is as good or better than the iPhone experience and that the perceived user experience is even better than that. Not likely to happen but fun to think about.
The Apple future
Music - mission accomplished. Mobile - mission soon to be accomplished. Next? Appletainment. Enough mixing and matching between DVRs, TVs, external hard drives, wireless devices, gaming platforms, music solutions, DVD players, on-demand/online/offline video/music options, Slingboxes, etc. All your entertainment available anywhere and made simple.
At some point I said I'd blog lessons learned launching LocalReplay. Have not been doing it, but am trying to change that going forwards. Will not blog in any particular order; just as they come up in day-to-day operations.
Startup lesson: Design is king.
Sites like MySpace are always given as examples from the design-is-not-as-important-as-functionality-and-features camp. I was mostly in that camp before starting LocalReplay. But now I realize that MySpace and friends grew up in a different environment. And history's lessons don't always apply to the present.
Now attention is the most scarce commodity. Web noise grows exponentially but we still only have 24-hours per day. As a user flies around the Web and Google deposits him on a random page in the middle of your site, what factors determine if he takes that all-important second click? If he has to think for a few seconds, then he's hitting the back button.
Gravity in today's world of attention scarcity pulls users towards their perceived path of least resistance, and design is often the most important factor in their perception. Even for repeat visitors and registered users, design is so interwoven with user experience that it is critical in meeting or not meeting their needs.
Apparently the elite class of top level domain names, .com, .org, .edu, etc. will soon have a lot of company as Icann will allow companies and brands to use their own names.
Individuals will be able to register a domain based on their own name, for example, as long as they can show a "business plan and technical capacity".
Talk about a wide open definition that will have millions (billions?) of dollars of instant impact. Need to think about this on my upcoming flight.
Ben warmed up for our flight last night on his rope swing, and tonight we'll be on our way to NY for our annual summer trip to visit family and friends. We'll also try to say hello to the T-Rex at the Museum of Natural History or at Toys R Us, and watch the Mets sweep the Yanks. Probably the last trip for just us as Ben's younger sister Bailey claims she's now old enough to go too, and managed to drag her suitcase out from under my bed to prove it.
