Category: Uncategorized

Regis McKenna thinks Apple’s 1984 ad is overrated

He has his reasons and if you know the follow up to 1984, which was called Lemmings, it rings even more true to his criticism and remarks about Apple being shunned by the enterprise market. Lemmings carried a much stronger message than 1984 and because of it, it fell flat. It was a disaster.

The article though, resonated with me not because of his criticism of the ad but for how Apple handled the iPhone 4 antenna issue. It never was bigger than most other problems with the phone but due to the media beat up, it felt worse. As it turned out, within 10 days the issue disappeared. Apple did redesign the antenna for the 4S but to me it had always felt like Apple was doing it more for the public relations effect than for strictly technical reasons.

Oh and it’s yet another claim over the inaccuracies of Walter Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs.

Regis McKenna thinks Apple’s 1984 ad is overrated

People are using the app, but they’re not checking in,” he told me. “I asked myself: did we break something? But in fact, it’s because people are using Foursquare to look for where their friends are, to find things, and as a recommendation service. It’s almost like it doesn’t occur to them to check in.

Dennis Crowley. Exactly what I was saying the other day:

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

LOL

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Twitter Moves To Monetize Mobile

parislemon:

Promoted Tweets — read: ads — are coming to the Twitter mobile client streams. I suspect the initial reaction will be: “Great! Another reason to use TweetBot!”

But I actually don’t view this as a negative thing. Twitter is a service that many of us use and love for hours on end every single day. It’s a great service. But like any great service, if it’s to stick around, it needs to make money. I don’t begrudge them trying to do that.

They’ve been experimenting with various ways to do this, and apparently the Promoted Suite of products is working well enough that they’re now expanding it to the mobile experiences. In fact, a Promoted Tweet was the most retweeted Tweet last year.

It’s interesting that Twitter only gets paid when a user takes an action (retweet, reply, etc) on these Tweets. In other words, they’re cost-per-action not cost-per-impression. Again, a good choice because it will naturally lead to higher quality Tweet Ads (or retweet-bait, I suppose). 

And hey, at least it’s not the DickBar.

Twitter Moves To Monetize Mobile

Official: Apple iPad 3 event slated for March 7th in San Francisco | The Verge

Yerba Buena, San Francicso, Wednesday, 10 am Pacific Time. No CNBC, it’s not going to be in New York.

Source: theverge.com

Windows Phone cannot maintain a Skype call in background

I downloaded Skype for Windows Phone as soon as I found out about the app. Although I don’t use Skype that much, it’s one of those apps that you just have to have on your phone. Funny that somehow Skype is beginning to be forgotten in this part of the world thanks to mobile text messaging apps like BlackBerry Messenger and WhatsApp. Skype is much more flexible and has a desktop interface, something that iMessage also has.

Anyway, the article on Ars Technica points out one flaw in Windows Phone’s app switching ability which is the lack of a persistent VoIP support. Apparently if you’re on a Skype call and you need to switch away to another application, say to look at a map or refer to an email, the call gets dropped.

This and the lack of USSD support are significant omissions from Windows Phone that needs to be remedied quickly. It is surprising that Microsoft had not included support from the beginning.

Windows Phone cannot maintain a Skype call in background

Samsung lied in its latest Galaxy Note video

Samsung Mobile USA put up a video this week showing several tasks that supposedly the iPhone can’t do but can be easily done on a big ass 5-inch Galaxy note with a stylus. A STYLUS! How 1994.

Of course, when Tap Magazine found out about it, they went to work on rebutting every point in the video by doing everything it said the iPhone can’t do, on an iPhone. Including shooting and editing the video.

Samsung lied in its latest Galaxy Note video

“Maybe you should get your mind out of your niche”

Just Dilbert.

“Maybe you should get your mind out of your niche”

US Air Force Special Ops canceled iPad purchase because of Good Reader app

The purchase of nearly 3000 iPads as flight bags by the US Air Force Special Operations Command was canceled because it specified the use of Good Reader, a popular document management app which happened to be developed in Russia. Naturally, security concerns were raised after this fact was discovered. After all, the military wouldn’t want to be associated with potential risks originating from foreign products used in their operations would they?

As ridiculous as it sounds, I wonder if they’ve never heard of Air Sharing. It’s much better designed although it’s a bit more expensive but at least it’s American.

PC World has more details with comments from Yuri Selukoff, the developer of the software, who feels understandably insulted.

US Air Force Special Ops canceled iPad purchase because of Good Reader app

Fluent gets me excited about email again. I’m an avid email user and despite what some people think about it, I think it’s still the best way to communicate without having to be tied to a common service or provider.

Unlike private messaging on Facebook, Twitter, or even Google+, email is open, interoperable across different providers, easy enough to use. As far as spam is concerned, Google has managed to deal with the majority of spam, hardly any of which ever made it into my inbox.

I can choose who to respond to, when, and how. Emails don’t interrupt the way phone calls do and the nature of it makes record keeping much easier. Having a thorough search feature built in to an email service like Gmail allows a faster way to find specific conversations without having to categorize or tag them. This is why email works for me.

Presentation of email hasn’t changed much since it was introduced which means it’s getting stale so if there’s somebody out there trying to figure out a better way to handle email, then by all means, let’s have a look and see what they have come up with. It may or may not end up better than the current way so why not give them a shot?