“BB10 is not just a product, BB10 is a platform and the product that we will be launching later this year is the first iteration of this fantastic new platform, then we will build on this to create a portfolio and we need some time to do that.”
— RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, March 29, 2012
“They must look beyond their area of strength and comfort, into the unfamiliar territory of trying to become a software platform company.”
“I’ve never seen more pride at Microsoft. You walk through the campus, and you see people’s laptops that have ‘I’m a PC’ stickers on them. I walk in the company store, and there are these huge banners that say, ‘I’m a PC’ and shirts and ties and mugs. I think I made a difference. My God, that’s so cool!”
—Sean Siler, Microsoft employee and John Hodgman as PC look-a-like via Hey, PC, Who Taught You to Fight Back? | New York Times.
One senior record label insider said: “Ours will be a file that you click on, it opens and it would have a totally brand-new look, with a launch page and all the different options. When you click on it you’re not just going to get the ten tracks, you’re going to get the artwork, the video and mobile products.”
Record companies have a trick up their sleeve for downloads | Timesonline
Lots has been said about the recent (“small“) changes to Twitter that take friends @replies out of your twitter stream unless you are already friends with your friends’ friends (clear as mud? see here. People still think this has something to do with your “mentions” stream). These @replies are not completely hidden from you. You can see actively see these replies if you go directly to a friend’s twitter page or if you have their RSS feed, but if you “follow” them you no longer have the choice of seeing this correspondence. This correspondence, initially, gives you a one-sided look into other potential conversations and relationships and is an exciting part of the service. Twitter is essentially penalizing a person if you seek a fuller relationship. Since removing the option from the user, Twitter decided for us that this is mainly noise and backed this up by saying the engineers were having “technical problems” scaling with the growth of the service. That may be true, but why not turn this into a community challenge to fix (see Netflix Prize)? If you want the choice of seeing everything a friend you follow posts, you can’t use Twitter as it is presented to you in the most logical manner. You have to visit via a web page or use your feed reader, as well as your favourite app of choice.
I noticed a similar limiting behaviour with Flickr. If you grab an RSS feed of a person’s photostream, you get updated every time they post new photos. This is how I approach a stranger on the service without having to contact them. If I was brave enough to become a contact, you are given the choice of seeing 1 photo or 5 photos per upload update but not everything. It is then up to you to click on through and see if more photos had been uploaded as part of the process. See where this is going? It is another case of limiting the interaction of people that took the effort, and in this case money, to actually sign-up to a service. Is this another technical limitation? Or is Flickr deciding it is better way to present the information with limited choice. Either way, I would like the option to participate differently and increase the intimacy in world of social media.
Do you know any other examples of companies that are pinching the converted?
It just doesn’t matter anymore. There are now alternatives to the iPhone, which has been introduced everywhere else in the world. It’s no longer a novelty.
— Eamon Hoey from Toronto-based management consulting firm Hoey and Associates
Mac home users are constantly derided as some kind of “cult”, completely in thrall to Steve Jobs. But it’s Microsoft that has created an entire church, with priests, acolytes and altar boys (also known as “Access developers”).
Starting a blog solely to make money is like learning ventriloquism to meet girls.
Ok, well not exactly. I have accidently caught a few episodes here and there, but I don’t think I will ever really be able to forgive her for The Secret. I just want to apply some credit-where-credit-is-due because quite a few blogs have jumped on The Flip’s success and I just think it becomes less surprising when you realize that Oprah championed it last fall.
Camcorder Brings Zen to the Shoot | New York Times
The Flip takes 13% of the camcorder market by doing less | 37 Signals
The Surprisingly Thoughtful Design of a Cheap Camcorder | Boing Boing Gadgets
Unsurprisingly, Flip has 13% of Camcorder Mark | Mashable
Pogue on the Flip | Daring Fireball
Your suggestions for video hosts | Kung Fu Grippe
I tried to comment this fact on a couple blogs but none of my posts got approved. I should reiterate that I am not always a fan of the Oprah Effect. It has an ugly side as well. Take Josh Groban, for example. No really…take him.
As for my take on The Flip, I would love to test drive one but the video functions on my Canon Elph 750 and extremely simple and do the trick for me.
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” Palm chief executive Ed Colligan on November 16, 2006
“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” computer scientist Alan Kay
“The mobile phone world is littered with crap. The interfaces are tragic. The materials are cheap. The build quality is marginal. And of course the sound sucks…Apple can change this because that’s what Apple does. They can look at the crisis points of a typical experience and erase them one by one. Not by adding a lot of new things things, but by removing the crap and paying attention to the basics.” Jason Fried (Apple Phone: My prediction | Signal vs. Noise)
“I don’t know a single person that likes the phone they have. Everyone feels like a victim of both their phone plan and their phone hardware. Cellphones seem to be one of those things that barely works given all the drawbacks. The iPhone isn’t just a new gadget. It looks like something that will transform the way we think about cellphones.” Matt Howie (Apple is the New NASA | A Whole Lotta Nothing)