Yahoo has replaced Google as the default search provider throughout the phone. It's crazy: the home screen widget, the browser, everything's been programmed to use Yahoo.

It is not unusual for carriers to work deals for specific software on its handsets. They take money wherever they can get it. But this deal is sure to confuse the customer, as Android phones are commonly called Google phones by many. Let's face it, Google makes Android, and one of its strengths is the tight integration with the company's online services. And search is certainly one of Google's big services, but not on the AT&T Backflip.

This is the equivalent of a Windows PC hitting the market that has Internet Explorer removed and Safari as the only browser. Some customers might be happy by that but most would be confused. Then to make matter worse, imagine that Internet Explorer couldn't be installed by the user to get around this major change. That seems to be the case with the AT&T Backflip, as early testers are reporting the inability to get Google search working in any of the Android programs.

There has been enough complaining about fragmentation in the Android space, so I won't rehash that topic. But there is something so fundamentally wrong when an Android phone has Google search removed. And replaced by Yahoo search? I guess this makes the Backflip the Yahoo Phone.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req'd):

As Windows Mobile Stumbles, Which Smartphone OS Will Seize the Lead?

Yahoo has replaced Google as the default search provider throughout the phone. It's crazy: the home screen widget, the browser, everything's been programmed to use Yahoo.

It is not unusual for carriers to work deals for specific software on its handsets. They take money wherever they can get it. But this deal is sure to confuse the customer, as Android phones are commonly called Google phones by many. Let's face it, Google makes Android, and one of its strengths is the tight integration with the company's online services. And search is certainly one of Google's big services, but not on the AT&T Backflip.

This is the equivalent of a Windows PC hitting the market that has Internet Explorer removed and Safari as the only browser. Some customers might be happy by that but most would be confused. Then to make matter worse, imagine that Internet Explorer couldn't be installed by the user to get around this major change. That seems to be the case with the AT&T Backflip, as early testers are reporting the inability to get Google search working in any of the Android programs.

There has been enough complaining about fragmentation in the Android space, so I won't rehash that topic. But there is something so fundamentally wrong when an Android phone has Google search removed. And replaced by Yahoo search? I guess this makes the Backflip the Yahoo Phone.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req'd):

As Windows Mobile Stumbles, Which Smartphone OS Will Seize the Lead?

First, let me inventory the raw materials that got me thinking this way. Recently JC Hutchins posted that he had been dropped as an author by St. Martins Press and that they would not be publishing the 7th Son sequels. The post lives between a gut-check and a crisis of faith from one of the pioneering new media creator/ novelist hybrid guys. He also posted about monetary realities of writers pubishing via ebooks. Not that long before this, I had listened to JC's Hey Everybody interview with Pablo Defendini and Ami Greko from The New Sleekness blog. It's a really interesting discussion about the future of book publishing by industry professionals young enough in their careers to be less invested in the status quo and more willing to help a new future emerge. (Side note 1: I met Pablo and Ami at last year's Dragon*Con in the classic SF con fashion I wanted to meet them, saw them in a hotel bar, asked if I could sit with them, introduced myself and hung out for an hour. Try it, it works! ) Much in my thinking was informed over the last month by the Amazon/Macmillan ebook pricing wars of far too large a trail to link to anything. In that debate I did first run across Joe Konrath, his fiction and some of his posts with amazingly open and detailed statistics of what he sells and what he makes from digital publishing. (Side note 2: I bought, read and enjoyed his book Whiskey Sour as fallout from the debate).

There are many other bits of thought in the mix, such as my feelings about beginning my own novel during NaNoWriMo and thinking about hiring my friends at Sterling Editing to work on it and what I might choose to do with such a book when)it is finished. That's enough of a prelude, though. Time to hit it.

JC Hutchins struck a nerve when he basically waved the white flag on his current way of working.

Creating podcast fiction does does not generate direct revenue for me. Based on anecdotal and statistical data, very few people are willing to pay for general podcast content, much less podcast fiction. Since my goal is to make a living wage with my words, the current monetization models including in-show advertisements will not deliver this. Dedicating time and effort to my non-fiction podcast projects will deliver equally underwhelming monetary results.

It is also apparent to me that using the Free model to promote a tangible product, such as I did with 7th Son: Descent and Personal Effects: Dark Art, does not deliver sustainable sales results. I have friends some of whom are my best friends, the most talented people I've had the privilege to know and work with who have absolute faith in this model. I treasure their trailblazing efforts and enthusiasm. My faith, however, has been fundamentally rattled.

Put simply: The new media model viably supports only the most blessed and talented of authors. The time, effort and money I invest in entertaining you for free pulls my attention and talent away from projects that can generate revenue. While podcasting, podcast fiction, and most importantly your support and evangelism has positively impacted my life and career in ways I'll never be able to fully express, I cannot continue to release free audiofiction if I wish to make a living wage with my words.

This is pretty big stuff in the world of podcast fiction. Hutch was one of the pioneers of the form and his getting picked up by St. Martins was considered a watershed and a validation for the medium. So if he can't make it in this world, what does that say about all the other podcast novelists who are less engaged, have less of a fan base, less sheer horsepower? Does it mean this medium is screwed?

I am positing that Hutch had a terrible misfortune of timing, that he arose as a viable author at exactly the wrong moment in publishing history. As he started down his path it seemed like the end game was to get a book deal with a major publisher. For writers of the last 100 years, this was the reasonable career success path for authors, and practically the only one. In the last few years though a sea change has happened so rapidly and thoroughly to flip that Hutch got his boat capsized in the process and he will be far from the only one. As crazy as it may sound, for a certain kind of author at this point I think a major publishing contract may seem like winning the game but is in fact losing it.

The red flags I got from the JC Hutchins post started here:

Examining the lead up to, and release of, the novel, I cannot see how I could have promoted it any better than I did. I literally went broke promoting this book and Personal Effects: Dark Art (another novel that will not have a sequel; it also underperformed). I conceived numerous brand-new online marketing campaigns that dazzled you and others. I asked you to purchase the novel, and many of you did.

If JC is literally going broke promoting 7th Son and Personal Effects book, I think a reasonable question to ask is What is St. Martins Press' role in this? If JC is willing and able to put so much of his own time and money into the promotion of the books, what value is he getting from the big publisher that is worth giving away 90% of the sale of the book to them? 50 years ago, and 20 years ago and 2 years ago, this made sense. It was pretty much impossible to get a book published and into the hands of the world in any significant way especially in a way that a writer could make a full-time living without a major publisher contract, especially one paying advances at a level to be a livable wage. Nowadays, especially due to the markeplace enabled by the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader et al, that's a different equation.

Joe Konrath's post about the money he makes from the Kindle store shows a really clear pattern that he summarizes with:

My five Hyperion ebooks (the sixth one came out in July so no royalties yet) each earn an average of $803 per year on Kindle.

My four self-pubbed Kindle novels each earn an average of $3430 per year.

If I had the rights to all six of my Hyperion books, and sold them on Kindle for $1.99, I'd be making $20,580 per year off of them, total, rather than $4818 a year off of them, total.

So, in other words, because Hyperion has my ebook rights, I'm losing $15,762 per year.

For a writer with an engaged audience, like JA Konrath has and like JC Hutchins has, there may well be more money in their books self-published primarily through the Kindle and other ebook stores. An interesting bit from the Konrath numbers above, that's from making 35% of the sales price for his direct books. When it changes to 70%, he'll be making twice as much per book as he posted above for the self-published ones.

Let me say it again: for a writer who is engaged with their audience and reasonably prolific (because you need new books to keep this engine turning), we may be at the turning point where a better living is available through self-publishing than a big New York publisher book deal.

There are certainly authors that this model will not work for. During my preparation for last year's Podcasting for Working Writers panel at Dragon*Con I talked to both James Patrick Kelly and Kelley Eskridge on this topic and they both raised the point that for a number of old school writers, the idea of engaging at the level of podcasting and doing large parts of their own publicity is anathema. A reasonable chunk of authors don't want to get out in the limelight and picked this career specifically so they don't have to engage. They write their books, maybe do a few conventions a year, do some bookstore events and that's it. Back to the keyboard where the serious work happens. That's fair enough and those writers will always need a publisher to do the parts of this business that would make them unhappy to pursue.

I think of the classic big publisher and big record label model as basically serving the function of the bank or maybe as VC. The manufacturing and distribution of the creative work was too capital intensive for an individual so this company would lend that money to the process, make the books or records show up in the store, do some publicity and keep most of the money. They insulate the creator from the process and from the retailers and fans. What publicity efforts exist, the big media company acts as a semi-permeable membrane to let a little of the public through, but not a lot. Ultimately in this model, the relationship with the fans of the buying public is owned mostly by the retailer and the publisher or label, very little by the writer or musician. For the author that doesn't want to feed and water that relationship, that's perfect.

For the other kind of author, a JC Hutchins or Mur Lafferty or Scott Sigler, going with a major publisher outsources to a third party a relationship with their fans that these writers are really really good at maintaining. When Hutch is paying his own money to publicize his books and his his own direct line into his own fanbase, what can the big publishers do for him? They could give him large enough advances to keep his bills paid while future books are written, but obviously they aren't willing to do that because sales aren't high enough. JC's books earn money, but not enough money to keep him in that system. For me, the real question is Did St. Martins Press do 9 times the work than JC did to get the work promoted? If not, what did they do to deserve a 90/10 split?

Last November for NaNoWriMo I began a novel that I have literally been thinking about since 1991 when I was 23. While I came nowhere near finishing it that month and am nowhere near finished now, I have a goal to finish this novel in 2010. I've already been thinking about what happens when I finish the book. Do I try to find an agent and then try to have them place it with a major publisher? Since I don't have any plans beyond that one book and thus don't necessarily have a writing career in mind, how does that affect my decision making? At the moment I'm leaning towards not bothering to place the book with any publisher at all. I'll pay Nicola and Kelley at Sterling Editing to work with me to get it publishable and hire a book designer and/or artist to hone the final product and then publish it to the Kindle store, Smashwords, the Nook store and whatever else seems reasonable at the time. I'll probably release it via Podiobooks.com at the the same time, do my publicity via that and the other usual online suspects and let it ride. The key point to me is that the energy I could spend in placing my book at a big publisher could be spent selling the book to readers and I'll probably make more money that way in the long run. This isn't the way things worked for the 19th and 20th century and it may not be the way it works in the future, but March 2010 it is the way it looks to me now. The validation of having a major publisher decide I'm their sort of writer doesn't do anything for me. I don't need the book contract to pay my living, I'd end up doing mostly my own publicity anyway so what the hell does the publisher have to offer me anymore? Rather than have them put out a $15 Kindle book that I see a buck or two from and no one buys with a print version that is on and off the shelves in head-swimming time on a death march to the warehouse remainder store, I'd rather put out a $5.99 ebook version that I see $4 from each one and more people buy. I have a whole rant on how the true function of ebook platforms is to enable impulse buys, but this current post is already too long. That must come later.

When I interviewed Cory Doctorow in 2006, one of the things he said is that the generation coming of age now is the first one to arise without a stigma attached to self-publication. Since I've been paying attention to the world of science fiction and writers in general, a giant shift has happened. When I joined GEnie in 1992, the notion of self-publishing your work meant that it was unreadable tripe and the very thought of it was risible to any serious author. Nowadays, it might well be the most rational economic choice available. If you aren't already in the system and earning livable wages from advances on your books, and you are the sort of writer and person with that drive a JC Hutchins, a Scott Sigler, a Tee Morris, a Mur Lafferty, an Alec Longstreth, someone willing to do more than thrown the manuscript over the wall and wait for finished copies to return it might be time to take the reins yourself and just do this. The costs are low which means the cost of failing is low. The traditional publishers aren't paying that much anyway so the opportunity costs are low. Just do it. Lynne Abbey, CJ Cherryh and Jane Fancher did. The writers at Book View Cafe did. I will. Don't pin your hopes on a big publisher with economic drivers that are different than yours. Just do it yourself, work the people yourself and keep as much of the money as you can.

Tags: akismet, amazon, ebooks, jakonrath, jchutchins, kindle, macmillan, publishing, sterlingediting, stmartinspress

Now that AT&T has joined the Android revolution, the first question new Android users will ask is what Android apps should I download? Luckily we've created a simple guide to get you started:

First we'll start with the operating system version of the Motorola Backflip at launch, which is version 1.5 the latest and greatest to date is 2.1 (with majority of users on 1.6). This may affect your ability to download some apps as they are compatible with higher versions of the OS. Why is the OS version so out of date? Motoblur Motorola tricked out the software for social networking ease however they have not released Motoblur on the latest and greatest Android OS. Don't fret an update is coming soon.

Now that we're over the OS hump, we'll recommend some of the best Android apps for your Motorola Backflip many for free!

ASTRO File Manager

Browse and Search files on your SD Card and phone with Astro File Manager.

Advanced Task Killer

Close individual or all apps and background services with Advanced Task Killer.

Meridian Player

Meridian Player for Music & Videos.

Dolphin Browser

Dolphin Browser allows you to browse the web using Tabs and create shortcuts using Gestures.

Handcent SMS

Handcent SMS offers text messaging like on iPhone, get T9 text capabilities and text signatures.

Shazam

Shazam... simply awesome! Get any song by simply letting your phone listen to it!

i Music Tao

i Music & i Music Tao allows you to download free MP3s.

Pandora Radio

Stream music for free with Pandora Internet Radio.

Gmote

Turn your AT&T Backflip into a media remote with Gmote and even control your computer via phone!

ShopSavvy

Scan bar codes of products in stores to find best pricing nearby or online with ShopSavvy.

Google Shopper for Android

Photo scan products to get pricing and details with Google's Shopper

Aloqa Always Be A Local

Aloqa location-based app finds places nearby you versus you searching for it.

Abduction!

Abduction! Is an additive game using your phone's accelerometer.

Robo Defense

Robo Defense is a classic tower defense game for Android phones.

Mystique. Chapter 2: The Child

Check out parts 1, 2, and 3 of the Mystique 3D horror puzzle game series.

Wixel

Like words games? Try Wuzzle for hours of fun!

Jewellust

Kill time with addictive Jewellust game

Solitaire

You can't forget a classic time-killer like Solitaire.

What the Doodle!?

Guess what others are drawing while they guess your drawing all online with What The Doodle!?

BlackJack Pro

Satisfy your Vegas crave with Blackjack Pro!

If you download all these apps you might run out of space on your Backflip! Do check these apps out and tell us what you think in the comments.

Four months ago we asked you to vote in our Web Faceoff series for your preferred social network between the two current giants: Twitter versus Facebook. The results were pretty close, although Facebook edged out Twitter in a 48% to 40% victory. Now, there's a whole new game in town.

Google Buzz is now the new shiny, and represents Google's big push into social networking meets mobile social meets location services. We know it's still the early days for Buzz, but it seems like a good time to gauge the opinion of Mashable readers thus far.

Have you had a chance to spend some quality time with Buzz? Do you like the service? Are there parts about it you don't like? Does it draw you away from other social networks, or complement them? Let us know your vote for best social service in the poll below, and be sure to let us know why you picked your favored winner.

Tags: facebook, Google, google buzz, polls, social media, social networking, twitter, web faceoff

Continue reading Nokia N900 gets new firmware, new games coming too (video)

Nokia N900 gets new firmware, new games coming too (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 07:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

1. The Answers market is in a land grab mode
Unlike eBay, where there's a general market for goods and you get huge network effects from having a critical mass of buyers and sellers, StackOverflow is all about niches. People who are searching for how to make sql server not go slow? aren't likely to bleed over to how to make swedish meatballs?.

This means that you'll have to fight for every niche. Similar to how general forums would have to fight for every niche. Just because you have a forum site that's big for gamers, you won't have much of an edge attracting foodies.

Finally, it's not like this is a new idea with no other entrants. Look at Yahoo Answers for a site that's still up with a similar model and look at Google Answers for another that couldn't be turned into a worthwhile business and closed.

2. Stack Overflow is like Starbucks
It really isn't. Starbucks can use capital efficiently because they have big capital expenditures securing land, building out stores, and purchasing coffee machines. Where's the capital intensity part of starting another answers site? Adding another server? Coming up with a new design?

It doesn't seem like Stack Overflow can efficiently use big money for anything but advertising itself. Which is kinda funny when the whole business is about getting page views to sell for ad crumbs. It also rings very much like dot-com. Remember when all you had to do was get eyeballs? Oh, it's free? Who cares, let's make it up on volume!

3. Stack Overflow wants to get on Techcrunch
If you're listing the publicity of Stack Overflow raises $10M in Series A by Fancy Schmancy VC as the 3rd pro for taking money, you're bound to be in trouble. The Techcrunch post you're going to get from this is going to scroll off the front page in 4 hours and nobody who's actually going to use your service is going to care.

Do you think people looking for an answer to how do I get the three gold rings in zelda? is going to give a hoot who's money you're burning to provide that forum? Or even that the advertisers you're hoping to attract is going to look at anything else than CPM and demographics for a clue on whether to invest? No.

4. The investor will give you advice, connections, and introductions
They may, but most of the introductions your typical investor is going to give you is how to get you out in 3-5 years. You can find a lot of advice in many places. Rarely is the quality of the advice associated with having money involved of largely superior quality.

And if you end up building something of considerable value, then the connections and introductions will come all by themselves. You usually have to work to fight them off with a stick when things are going great. And getting an intro to Mr. Very Important Person before you have anything of material value is usually not going to give you much anyway.

5. Taking money means big exit or IPO
I'd argue the opposite. When you take money, your exit is bound to be smaller unless you're playing the Web 2.0 lottery game (where a few lucky contestants gets bought for sums completely uncorrelated to business fundamentals). Taking money means giving up equity, which means there'll be less left over if you happen to build something that's valuable enough for others to buy.

And I don't know if you've heard, but the IPO markets aren't all that interested in eyeball companies without the numbers to back them up any more. Doesn't matter how many letters of the alphabet you've used for series whatever funding before you got there.

If you can build a great, profitable business, you'll have all the options to sell or go IPO. Taking VC only complicates that.

6. Taking VC will make your company successful
This one is funny. So if you're not looking to take VC and play the Web 2.0 lottery or aim for an early exit, you're just in it for personal aggrandizement. If you take the money, you just want the best for your business. Spot the disconnect here.

Now even given all this, there's actually still an argument for why Joel should take the money. It'll probably lower the chances of Stack Overflow ultimately succeeding as a long-term sustainable business, but if he has eyed that he has a hot property right now, it'll be a good time to take some money off the table.

A fool and his money will soon be departed applies equally to venture capitalists as it does to everyone else. If Joel and co. can negotiate a deal with Sand Hill road to give them a nice payout as part of the deal, this might well be even better than trying to shop around Stack Overflow for a sale that it's probably premature for.

Much better to take a small slice of the proceeds from a if this just get 1% of the billion dollar advertising market than to take the slice from how much money did you make for the past 12 months? of a strictly look-at-the-books sale.

Go cherries, go!

Now picture our perspective leaving our own experiences, zooming out and up until we can see how all the different groups are interacting on a worldwide social network. That bird's-eye view could be both beautiful and horrible if the resolution was clear enough. That's what a Ramen-eating, ex-Apple engineer named Pete Warden is about to release to the public this week.

Sponsor

This Wednesday, Warden will make Friend, Fan page and name data from hundreds of millions of Facebook users available to the academic research community. It's a move that Facebook has to have seen coming, a move that many in the data-centric community have been calling on the company itself to do for years, and an event that's been complicated by Facebook's recent privacy policy changes, which have muddied the waters of right and wrong but rendered even more data available for outside analysis.

If what people call Web 2.0 was all about creating new technologies that made it easy for everyday people to publish their thoughts, social connections and activities, then the next stage of innovation online may be services like recommendations, self and group awareness, and other features made possible by software developers building on top of the huge mass of data that Web 2.0 made public. It's a very exciting future, and Warden is about to fire one of the earliest big shots in that direction.

Nerds in Space: Social Graph Analysis For Solving Large-Group Problems

Warden studied Computer Vision in college in the U.K., then got into game development. After moving to L.A., he spent six years building graphics drivers for the original Playstation and the XBox. Then he started his own independent business, where, thankfully, he open-sourced much of his work (something he's still doing today).

When he found out that starting his own business wasn't going to work with his immigration status, he was very fortunate to have also caught Apple's eye with the software he had been releasing to the public. Apple bought his company in order to bring him on board. The proceeds of that small sale are now sustaining his next project after going independent again.

After spending five years at Apple struggling to navigate the maze of people and connections and types of expertise in order to get the information he needed, Warden decided to go independent and build a company that solved exactly that kind of problem. "I can't think of a better big company to work for, but it was still a big company," he says. "It was hard to find the right people to talk to, whether for particular expertise or for contacts at external companies." And so Warden left Apple to build a company that would use social graph analysis to solve problems like that. He called the company Mailana, a play on "mail analysis" since he was initially focused on email social graph analysis.

We've written here a number of times about Mailana's tool that analyzes the social graph of any Twitter user. Enter the username of someone on Twitter and Mailana will show you which 20 other people the user has exchanged the largest number of reciprocal public @ replies with. Find someone interesting or important? Mailana's Twitter analyzer will tell you who they most regularly interact with. See, for example, The Inner Circles of 10 Geek Rockstars on Twitter.

Pulling Down the Facebook Social Graph

Now Warden is about to unveil a much larger project along the same vein. For the past six months he's been crawling public profile pages on Facebook. He now has more than 215 million of them indexed and updated about once a month. When he began he was using the Web crawling service 80legs, but over time he had to build his own crawling infrastructure.

When I talked to him this afternoon, he had already begun uploading 100 GB of user data onto his server to make it available for academic research starting on Wednesday. Warden says he's removed identifying profile URLs but kept names, locations, Fan page lists and partial Friends lists. All those fields of data are just waiting to be analyzed and cross referenced. That's one very rich resource.

Yesterday Warden posted some of his own initial observations from the data on his personal blog. Those included:

• In almost every state in the Southern U.S., God is number one most popular Fan page among Facebook users. Among people in the L.A., San Francisco and Nevada regions? "God hardly makes an appearance on the fan pages, but sports aren't that popular either," Warden writes. "Michael Jackson is a particular favorite, and San Francisco puts Barack Obama in the top spot." In the Oregon and Idaho region? Starbucks is number one.
• In the Mormon-influenced areas of Utah and Eastern Idaho, the most popular Fan pages are The Book of Mormon, Glen Beck and the vampire book Twilight, which was authored by a Mormon.
• The bulk of Warden's posted analysis yesterday was about location networks. People in the western U.S. tend to have Facebook friends all over the country; people in the southern U.S. tend to mostly be friends with people who have remained in the same area.

Taking a Deeper Look

These observations are interesting, but they are only the beginning of what's possible. Name, location, friends and interests are great data points to analyze. Warden has written a program that will estimate gender as well, based on names. All these data points can be cross-referenced with outside data, too. Members of Facebook's own staff did this kind of analysis when they compared user last names to U.S. Census data, which allowed them to estimate changes in Facebook's racial composition over time based on the likelihood of people with particular last names to report a particular racial backgrounds.

"I'm mostly thinking 'What do I try first?'," Warden says. "There's so many interesting ways to slice the data - especially as I'm starting to get changes over time. I'm also trying to map out political networks in aggregate; how polarized the fans of particular politicians are - so how likely a Sarah Palin fan is to have any friends who are fans of Obama, and how that varies with location too. One of my favorite results is that Texans are more likely to be fans of the Dallas Cowboys than God."

Warden says he hasn't talked to anyone from Facebook since he started crawling the site, but he did get an email from someone on the security team asking him to take down instructions he'd posted that exposed a security hole that made harvesting peoples' email addresses easy. So the company is paying attention. "I'd love to see them put me out of business by putting decent data out there," Warden says. He says his Amazon Web Services bill was over $5,000 last month.

Why is he indexing all this content and why is he going to hand it over to the academic world later this week? "I am fascinated by how we can build tools to understand our world and connect people based on all the data we're just littering the Internet with," Warden says.

"Nobody thinks about how much valuable information they're generating just by friending people and fanning pages. It's like we're constantly voting in a hundred different ways every day. And I'm a starry-eyed believer that we'll be able to change the world for the better using that neglected information. It's like an x-ray for the whole country - we can see all sorts of hidden details of who we're friends with, where we live, what we like."

For a great example of the kind of social impact that data analysis can make, Warden points to some of the fascinating ways that GIS data is illuminating the intersection of race and public services. Data has shed light on social injustices for decades, and measurable information about the interactions of hundreds of millions of people every day on Facebook offers opportunities to discover both good and bad news about the contemporary human condition.

Warden says he's not yet been able to interest any investors in his ideas for businesses based on this data, so his girlfriend Liz Baumann, a former insurance actuary, stepped in to help and is now running much of the crawling. He says he's now focused on "working on ways of presenting all this information in a form that answers questions for people willing to pay." His first experiment along those lines is the very interesting FanPageAnalytics.com.

What does Pete Warden hope for from this week's public release of all this Facebook data? "Hopefully I'll get to see a bunch of interesting [academic research] papers come out of it, worst case. And I'd like to be the guy people turn to when they need stuff like this."

Already well-respected among a fringe group of bleeding-edge geeks, we hope that Warden's work on social graph analysis will end up impacting a far larger number of people than may ever know his name.

I won't argue this to much but the Sony PSP is the original closed platform, shiny, black, movie watching, web surfing, game playing device.

It didn't have a camera when it was released or multi-tasking. The only way that the iPad has it beat is mulitouch . . . well, touch for that matter. Hell, both are even lacking a kick stand of any type that isn't an add on.

We had a first gen PSP kicking around the house until my son in a fury of play with MegaMan lost his grip and the screen shattered. It was like watching someone burn Washington's wig. Noooooooo!

But as I digress, there is something that brought these similarities to my attention today.

Sony has developed a program to live stream sporting events to attendees in the stadium for enhanced experiences via PSP.

Not only that, you can also get replays, statistics, player profiles and live results piped directly to the Sony PSP.

No one would deny that the live experience is the ultimate way to watch sport. What this new service offers is an even more immersive experience for fans, said Mark Grinyer, Head of Sports Business, Sony Professional about the new app.

The iPad does have the PSP beat in one area though if Apple of one of the developers were to hook this up using the iPad as a tray for game day beers. The PSP can slip into a pocket but the iPad can balance on the arm of your stadium chair and illuminate your beverage with the blur of color from a live playback. Fancy.

This product for the PSP is being tested at the Emirates Stadium in London. So I guess America will be up for grabs?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sony Turns PSP Into Instant Replay Device At UK Stadium [PSP] (kotaku.com)
• A Modest Proposal for Sony's PSP (technologizer.com)
• Sony PSP-3000 Sweet Limited Package (ubergizmo.com)
• Why Has No One Made a Great Gaming Phone? (games.slashdot.org)
• Sony Pleased As Punch With Apple's iPad [Apple] (kotaku.com)

Sony PSP, The Original iPad but Better is a post from: TechStartups.com

We're not going to see the iPad hit stores for another two months, but it is already changing the e-book game and forcing publishers and consumers to pick sides.

Last night, several blogs including Venturebeat and NYT's Bits Blog noticed something was amiss on the website of the world's largest retailer: Amazon suddenly stopped selling books from Macmillan, one of the world's largest book publishers.

Not every Macmillan book is gone, but popular ones such as The Gathering Storm are no longer sold by Amazon, either in physical or Kindle form. You can still find the Amazon pages for Macmillan's books you just can't order the actual books.

According to The New York Times, the reason the books were pulled was the iPad. Macmillan told Amazon that it wanted to change its pricing and compensation agreement, upping the price of some books from $9.99 to $15 and splitting sales 70/30, the same model Apple uses for the iPhone app store and its upcoming iBooks store. Amazon's apparent response was to flex its muscle and pull countless Macmillan books off the virtual shelves.

The Dynamics of the New E-book War

Ever since we got word of the iPad's existence, we've known that Amazon and Apple were on a collision course. Apple saw an opportunity to not only create a new category of device, but to get its hands into the publishing market. In the same way Apple has transformed music, the computing giant would reshape books and become the primary distributor of e-books worldwide.

Back in September, we wrote a lengthy piece explaining why we believed Apple's tablet would eat the Kindle's lunch, displacing Amazon's lordship over e-books. We argued that its multipurpose functionality, color screen, and sexier interface and look would put it over the top. Now that we know the iPad's starting price ($499), our opinion hasn't changed. While the Kindle will survive, its sales will likely never be the same.

Publishers like Macmillan apparently agree with us as well, otherwise it wouldn't so boldly demand price changes from Amazon. Before the iPad was revealed, Amazon was the only player in the game. You played by its rules or you could take a hike. Now with a viable alternative only months away, publishers can run to Apple, where they will have more freedom over its e-book prices.

Amazon's clearly worried, which is why it's launching an app store and used its earnings report to remind us that the Kindle is far from dead. But if publishers decide to abandon the Kindle, then Apple will have won the war by default.

That's why Amazon decided to use its biggest weapon, Amazon.com itself, against Macmillan to send a message to every publisher: If you don't play by its rules, then you can't be in its store. While a publisher can likely survive without the Kindle, the same cannot be said for Amazon.com. Publishers simply cannot afford to leave the world's largest online retailer.

The Kindle and the iPad offer different experiences. The Kindle's battery life and e-ink are strong selling points for the device as a reader, but the iPad offers so much more. Apple's banking on those extra features and its undeniable reach to turn the Kindle into an endangered species.

Publishers now have to either choose a side or walk the tightrope between the two companies. The end result will be a long, drawn-out war that will both help and hurt consumers. How it will end is anybody's guess.

Tags: amazon, apple, Apple iPad, Apple Tablet, ebooks, iBooks, ipad, Kindle, Macmillan, Tablet, trending

iPad - image courtesy of Apple Inc.

The world has waited quite awhile for Apple to finally release its tablet. The world wanted it so much that in a way it worked against Apple. People built up their expectations of the iPad so high that it was going to be tough for Apple to surpass it. Did they? The simple answer is no. The iPad falls short of the world's lofty expectations. Is it Apple's fault? Not totally.

The world wanted Apple to produce a breakthrough device so much that when Jason Calcanis, founder of Engadget fired of tweets saying that he had been a beta tester for Apple and started to rattle off specs that were too good to be true, people believed him (this writer included). Why not? He's been writing about the tech industry and is one of the more recognizable names in the blogosphere that it seemed plausible. I hindsight, the solar panels should have been a dead giveaway.

On to the iPad. At first glance it does indeed just look like a big iPod Touch. Is it revolutionary and magically as Apple said it is? It should be had the world not been exposed to the iPhone and iPod Touch prior to it. On its on it is still revolutionary. Here's why.

1. The size is a big factor Sure it may look like a big iPod Touch but the bigger form factor just opens up a lot more possibilities. I've been a long time user of the iPod Touch and iPhone. I have both the first generation of iPod Touch and iPhone and thus have a little bit of experience with the devices. They both are great mobile devices. For checking important emails, looking up stock and weather quotes, reading a short article on the internet that really can't wait both these devices are top notch. But for reading books, watching movies, etc. It's just ok. After awhile your head starts to spin because of the eye strain and makes you want to put it down. The iPhone and iPod Touch are great mobile devices that can be used for short periods.

On the areas that the iPod Touch and iPhone are lacking, I think this is where the iPad starts to shine. Its size makes for an excellent device to watch videos on. The screen is large enough for personal viewing that it doesn't become such a chore. Reading books should be easier too although I shall reserve judgment on that until I actually get to try it.

2. Keeping it Simple - I've heard about a lot of people saying that the iPad lacks multi-tasking, etc. but I believe that Apple's attitude of keeping the iPad simple is actually is a strength. We've been surrounded by a culture of multitasking that it's gotten to a point that it's become a hindrance rather than helpful. When we work on our computers, we often find ourselves doing email, chatting, reading web pages all at the same time. It's becoming confusing and our concentration is suffering. I'm not saying this is always bad but in some cases keeping focus on things is good.

I also believe that the target users for the iPad are really people who aren't that techie. Let me qualify this. I'm not saying these people don't like technology or are adverse to it. I'm saying these people are the ones that like technology that just works. That's why a lot of people play games on consoles. Sure they can play games on the PC but it takes so much work to do so. Consoles are simple. You place the game, you play. Simple. The iPad is pretty much simple as well. It won't take rocket science to figure it out.

3. Touch me - The touch interface feels natural. It's been around for awhile but Apple's iPhone/iPod Touch interface that has been adapted for the iPad is the most natural touch interface I've seen. It's not a PC interface that has been adapted for touch. It's actually designed with the touch interface in mind. Therefore it just feels natural. People who aren't tech oriented really don't have a hard time figuring it out. Case in point, my tech challenged mother didn't have a hard time learning her iPhone.

4. It's what inside that counts In this case, one of the biggest things about the iPad announcement is actually the processor. Apple now has it's own processor inside one of its devices. It actually looks pretty good. If the impressions of people that have had a chance to play with the iPad. This thing screams and isn't power hungry. If this chip finds it way to the iPhone, we'll have quite the smart phone on our hands.

The iPad was designed to fill a gap between the netbook and a smar tphone. Will it do that? I think to a certain extent it will. I envision people buying this to have them in their homes and have easy access to email, photos, videos. Sometimes you just want to share photos with a friend and not necessarily project it on the TV. The iPad is a good alternative.

I also see it as a good addition to people who have desktops but want something portable to bring around the house to check emails, watch videos from anywhere and yes that includes the bathroom. I don't think it will get hot enough to burn your crotch as a MacBook/MacBook Pro does.

Will it revolutionize the way the iPod has? It has the potential to do so but only time will tell. For a 1.0 product it's good. I'm sure as with the iPod and iPhone the succeeding versions will only be better.

Post from: EveryJoe

Apple iPad: Breakthrough or Breakdown?

We're not going to see the iPad hit stores for another two months, but it is already changing the ebook game and forcing publishers and consumers to pick sides.

Last night, several blogs including Venturebeat and NYT's Bits Blog noticed something was amiss on the website of the world's largest retailer: Amazon suddenly stopped selling books from Macmillan, one of the world's largest book publishers.

Not every Macmillan book is gone, but popular ones such as The Gathering Storm are no longer sold by Amazon, either in physical or Kindle form. You can still find the Amazon pages for Macmillan's books you just can't order the actual books.

According to the New York Times, the reason the books were pulled was the iPad. Macmillan told Amazon that it wanted to change its pricing and compensation agreement, upping the price of some books from $9.99 to $15 and splitting sales 70/30, the same model Apple uses for the iPhone app store and its upcoming iBooks store. Amazon's apparent response was to flex its muscle and pull countless Macmillan books off the virtual shelves.

The Dynamics of the New Ebook War

Ever since we got word of the iPad's existence, we've known that Amazon and Apple were on a collision course. Apple saw an opportunity to not only create a new category of device, but to get its hands into the publishing market. In the same way Apple has transformed music, the computing giant would reshape books and become the primary distributor of ebooks worldwide.

Back in September, we wrote a lengthy piece explaining why we believed Apple's tablet would eat the Kindle's lunch, displacing Amazon's lordship over ebooks. We argued that its multipurpose functionality, color screen, and sexier interface and look would put it over the top. Now that we know the iPad's starting price, ($499), our opinion hasn't changed. While the Kindle will survive, its sales will likely never be the same.

Publishers like Macmillan apparently agree with us as well, otherwise they wouldn't so boldly demand price changes from Amazon. Before the iPad was revealed, Amazon was the only player in the game. You played by its rules or you could take a hike. Now with a viable alternative only months away, publishers can run to Apple, where it will have more freedom over its ebook prices.

Amazon's clearly worried, which is why it's launching an app store and used its earnings report to remind us that the Kindle is far from dead. But if publishers decide to abandon the Kindle, then Apple will have won the war by default.

That's why Amazon decided to use its biggest weapon, Amazon.com itself, against Macmillan to send a message to every publisher: If you don't play by its rules, then you can't be in its store. While a publisher can likely survive without the Kindle, the same cannot be said for Amazon.com. Publishers simply cannot afford to leave the world's largest online retailer.

The Kindle and the iPad offer different experiences. The Kindle's battery life and e-ink are strong selling points for the device as a reader, but the iPad offers so much more. Apple's banking on those extra features and its undeniable reach to turn the Kindle into an endangered species.

Publishers now have to either choose a side or walk the tightrope between the two companies. The end result will be a long, drawn out war that will both help and hurt consumers. How it will end is anybody's guess.

Tags: amazon, apple, Apple iPad, Apple Tablet, ebooks, iBooks, ipad, Kindle, Macmillan, Tablet, trending

Editor's note: This a guest post written by Joff Redfern. Redfern is the co-founder of FlattenMe.com, a site for creating personalized storybooks. He was formerly a vice president of product at Yahoo, where he managed Yahoo Buzz and Toolbar.

Amazon Kindle: The Road Ahead

I'm a recent Kindle fan boy. I like the instant access to earth-friendly books, the paper-like display and the way it fits in my hand like a paperback. I've also deeply admired the crispness of the Kindle visionany book, any language, in minutes. But with Apple's iPad announcement the playing field on which the Kindle competes shifts and the disruptive technology itself gets disrupted.

If I were running the Kindle I would answer this question today: Are we innovating the publishing or the entertainment industry? Is the Kindle just for my reading entertainment or is it for watching, listening, gaming, browsing, sharing photos, and communicating with friends & family too? Ultimately the answer is shaped by consumer preference, competitors and time measured in years.

As a product guy this is a really intriguing question to try to unravelwhich path should Amazon choose? Over time this is what may push the Kindle into being more than just a reader . . .

For the same price, more is better

Will consumers prefer a multi-purpose entertainment tablet over a single-purpose reading device as their prices converge? This is a religious question; sides will be drawn. I look to the evolution of my own personal technology habits for the answer.

When I wanted to manage my contacts I started with a paper-based Address Book, upgraded to a Digital Rolodex, upgraded to a Palm V, upgraded to a Blackberry, then upgraded to an iPhone. Fundamentally I was trying to solve how I manage and communicate with my contacts. With each upgrade I got more functionality yet the price point for each device was not radically different.

If consumers can eventually get an entertainment tablet that also has the core features of a great reader (screen, content catalog, ease of purchasing) at under $200 they'll want more.

Prices drop. Over time, price won't be a factor in the purchase decision.

Today, Kindle enjoys a price advantage over the iPad. It is nearly half the price, starting at $260 versus $500 for the iPad, although the cheapest Kindle DX with an equivalent 9.7 inch screen is $489. That is pretty close already. What happens when the price of iPad-like devices trend down to a point of consumer indifference?

Moore's Law and business model innovation will drive the iPad-like devices to sub-$200 pricing. Unrealistic? The retail price of the iPhone 8GB dropped ~83% in 3 years from $599 to $99.

Also keep in mind that entertainment tablets are using different math from the Kindle. The device pricing will be subsidized by multiple revenue streamsdownloads of books, music, movies, games, apps, advertising, and more. Today I can get a cell phone device for free, will my iPad be free some day?

Competitors are playing a platform war. Is Kindle?

Apple, Google and Microsoft have massive investments in their respective mobile platforms. In particular, Apple is king of the mobile mountain. As Jobs declared today, Apple is now the largest mobile device company in the world.

This Apple sizzle has drawn 100,000+ developers and publishers to its iPhone (and now iPad) ecosystem. These apps are already available to entertain us in all sorts of ways on the iPad beyond what Apple exec Scott Forstall showed today.

Amazon knows this. Last week they announced a developer API is coming. So the question remains how robust is the API and will the developer community bite, or is it game over?

What would you do if you ran the Kindle?

Our little Apple Tablet scavenger hunt has come up mostly empty-handed. Steve Jobs is gonna drop some knowledge on us today, and we're as in the dark (mostly) as we were weeks ago. And you know what? One of the main things we've learned from this little exercise is that the people who are most interested in today's announcement are also the least interested to learn anything in advance.

Here was one of the most fascinating and downright poignant responses our contest elicited, from a reader in India:

I want to make a kind request to you please to call your scavenger hunt off.

We all know why we are so intensely trying to find out the littlest morsel of information about the Apple Tablet and are hardly interested in any other company's slate device - only because Apple will create history with such a device.

I want to emphasize on the fact that Apple puts a lot of effort to building keynotes, which, for many people like myself, are like blockbuster movies. We never had the fortune of being at a live one, so we try to make the best of it being streamed online. Like you remember at the 2007 iPhone keynote, every other moment there was surprise. People had never seen anything quite like it before. And all of it coming from Steve Jobs made it a historical day in technology.

It is my earnest request to you, please let Apple do it again. We all want to know what the Tablet is going to be like. Your bounty offer may (and probably will) instigate people who want to sell their souls. I'm not blaming you or criticizing you. We don't want a few details or pictures to leak out before the official announcement. There's just a few more days left till Jan 27. Please let Steve Jobs introduce it the Apple way. Pretty please. It will be a lot more fun !

Would this guy have clicked through if we had received a real picture? Most definitely. Has he probably clicked on all of the hundreds of mocked up photos and videos? Almost certainly. But the fact that those were fakes was all part of the fun. Sure it's all a bit cynical in its consumerist frenzy, but the Apple's big, heavy-handed reveals are also a good time a bit of mystery, of (imagined) corporate intrigue, of envisioning suddenly-available outer space future products that were previously just the stuff of science fiction classics like Freejack and Demolition Man. (Classics, I tell you!) Remember the iPhone? When ol' Jobsy carted that thing out a few years ago it sufficiently blew most of our brain bones, and wasn't that kind of fun. I mean, rather than knowing all its details ahead of time?

Like blockbuster movies! That's sort of sweet in an irredeemably nerdy way, isn't it? There is something about the grandeur and anticipation of one of these keynote magic shows. Yes it's all nasty and capitalistic and cold and inhuman, but a little bit of excitement never hurt anyone, especially in these penurious times, when a Cosmo centerfold has assumed the regency and rules us all from his throne made of the bones of the New York Yankees.

That doesn't mean every scrap of purported "truth" about Apple's mystery tablet can't drive tons of pageviews (I mean, uniques!). But the real kick of feverish Lost guessing and obsessive Tablet rumoring is the pure joy of speculation with gleeful abandon. Here's the root truth of it all: No one actually wants to be proven right, because then it would all be over and we'd just return to our lives, the answer never actually being as big as we'd hoped, nay, dreamed.

It's a childish thing this entity we call imagination just turned a bit hard and practical by adulthood. No longer do we imagine whole unknown worlds existing in wardrobes or cupboards, but we can be fascinated with the possibilities of that ABC show starring the dude from Party of Five and the potentiality that Penny's computerbook from Inspector Gadget might sort of be real. The minute those youthful fantasies are quelled and quieted by cold hard facts, well... the whole activity loses a bit of its sparkle.

It's the kind of thing the internet can ruin too often. Take another small pleasure: movie previews. Remember movie previews? Oftentimes they were the best part of the whole moviegoing experience. What fresh new hell awaited us come springtime? What joys would poet-scholar John Woo soon be foisting upon us? It was nice to see some new things, things you'd never heard of!, before settling into your seat and getting progressively more bored by your feature presentation. They made movies seem big, eventful, singular. If you wanted to see what was coming up, you had to go sit in the dark and wait for them to show you. But now! Now you've got internet web sites all over the highway that'll show you a teaser sneak trailer for a movie that won't be out until Armistice Day 2014. They've got previews for everything, those internet people. And it ruins all the fun.

Sure it's still sort of exciting when they pop up on the online, but it ruins some of the formality, it just spreads and bleeds the thing out so everyone can see it. Movie previews aren't as controlled and specific anymore. By the time they're up on the flickering screen there, I've already seen them three times over. It's boring, it's vaguely sad to have basically ended this tiny pleasure I enjoyed as a kid. I don't know why I do it to myself. And yet I do.

Though I suppose the whole ruined movie trailers thing isn't the same as a spoiler. A spoiler would be, like... someone telling me about Lost, I guess. Well, I haven't spent five sweaty years emotionally invested in just what the fuck the iTablet or iPad or whatever is all about, but it's still the same giddy joy of anticipation. In the end, what do we get out of either thing? Nothing, really. We're either $700 poorer or we're in six years of emotional debt to friends and family for being unbearably annoying about What Is In the Hatch. But screw it, we gotta take fun where we can get it and I appreciate it not being squashed.

So thank you Apple robot security guards for taking your whirring steel pincer claws and strangling that lab tech who was trying to smuggle an iNewspaper out of the office. That entrepreneurial fellow (he'd have been a hundred-thousandaire!) didn't die in vain. A not-so-well-kept secret is kept so for a few more hours, which will give me (and all of youuu) some dull sort of pleasure in an otherwise bleak and windswept wintry state of the union. Surprises are good almost always better than knowing even when it's about electronic products I don't understand and can't afford. Maybe even especially then.

Apple tablet is OLED + back has solar pad for recharging, but (the charger) really doesn't work quickly. More a gimmick. Verizon+att, wifi yes!

Apple Tablet has thumbpads on each side for mouse gestures, reads fingerprint for security. Up to 5 profiles by fingerprint for family.

Yes, there are 2cameras: one in front and one in back (or it may be one with some double lens) so you record yourself and in front of you.

I can tell u the battery life is great in ebook reading mode but not great when on wifi or playing games. 2-3hrs.

Yes, the apple tablet is running an iphone os flavor with ability to have multiple apps running at same time (ie pandora, browser).

The price will be $599, $699 and $799 depending on size and memory in apple tablet. Also, wireless keyboard + monitor connection for TV.

Also, the apple tablet is really amazing for newspapers. Video conferencing is super stable, but nothing new.

The best part of the apple tablet as beta user has been the built in HDTV tuner and pvr, and the chess game.

Yes, it's true I've been beta testing the Apple tablet for the past two weeks and it's amazing!

It's hard to say from the company's fourth quarter results. Verizon rolled out the Motorola-made handset the first Verizon model to run Google's Android smartphone operating system during the fourth quarter in an effort to counteract the impact of the Apple iPhone, currently offered exclusively by AT&T.

You'd think if the device produced a world-beating market reaction, Verizon wouldn't have been shy about trumpeting that success. Alas, no such bugle-tooting can be found in Verizon's release, leaving it to the balance sheet sleuths employed as Wall Street analysts to poke around for proof that Droid may have contributed positively.

On the company's conference call, CFO John Killian said that the Droid has been extremely well received. While Verizon subsidized the cost of the handset, bringing down gross margins in its wireless division, Killian said 26% of the company's annual-subscriber (retail) wireless customers held smartphones or multimedia devices.

This translated into 26.6% growth in data revenue, whereas overall wireless service revenue grew 5%.

Droid and other new phones most likely led the better-than-expected rise in post-paid that is, those who pay monthly bills and sign service contracts subscribers.

Verizon Wireless reported 1.1 million postpaid net adds, up from 900k last quarter, which means the Motorola Droid probably helped retain some high end customers, wrote Morgan Keegan analysts, adding but that was not a game changer' for the company.

The lingering question now is whether the Droid's fleeting moment in the sun has come and gone. The Google Nexus One made by Taiwan's HTC has garnered a lot of attention since it was unveiled earlier this month. But in talking with Journal reporters after its release, some analysts said the Nexus doesn't appear to have much functionality beyond other Android phones. There's not a whole lot of difference between Nexus One and the Droid, said Tero Kuittinen, a senior analyst at MKM Partners.

What do you think? Would you opt for the slightly older Droid over the Nexus One if the price was right? Let us know in the comments section below.

• Aldiko: outstanding e-book reader (better than Kindle on the iPhone in terms of feature set; obviously the book store is not quite as good, but the integration with free eBook download sites is a plus). Currently reading Makers by Cory Doctorow.
• Amazon: search the full Amazon catalog (can use barcodes or photos in addition to typing or speaking your query), track orders in my account.
• APNDroid: useful if you want to disable your phone's cellular data connection (useful if you're often on WiFi and want to turn off your EDGE or 3G data connection)
• AppReferer: builds a QR code (a 2D barcode) that makes recommending an app to another Android user in person a one-click affair.
• Battery Graph: shows a nice chart (exportable, even) of battery usage, which is helpful if you're trying to isolate when the battery started to drain.
• Coin Flip: silly app that lets me flip a coin. Use it mostly to settle disputes between the kids. :)
• Congress: built by Sunlight Labs, a phenomenal "pocket Congressional directory" that includes contact info, committee memberships, news, and YouTube vids of every Senator and Representative.
• DroidLive Lite: Streaming radio (via Shoutcast) from 1300 radio stations around the world.
• Facebook: news feed, photos and profile info for friends
• Fandango: Order movie tickets from movie theaters so I can bypass lines at the ticket counter.
• Finance: Google Finance app
• Flashlight: turns screen bright white to use in dark rooms
• Foursquare: app for playing Foursquare, also has a nice widget for my home screen
• Gmote: turns my Nexus One into a touchpad remote (when paired with a computer running the Gmote server software). Handy for giving presentations, or just doing something nerdy and cool.
• Google Goggles: search Google by taking pictures.
• Google Sky Map: the one app that consistently blows people away. Load it up, turn your camera toward the night sky and you'll get a real-time view of which stars, constellations and planets are above you. An awesome accompaniment to a telescope.
• Jewels: Bejeweled-like game.
• Layar: Augmented reality app that displays info on screen in realtime through your phone's camera.
• Locale: very sophisticated app for scripting events to happen based on certain triggers. (When I'm at home, disable the data connection and connect to my home wifi access point. At 11pm, turn off the sound and put the phone to sleep; at 6am turn the sound back up; when I'm at work, put the phone in vibrate mode; etc.)
• Metal detector: actually works.
• Movies (aka Flixster): Lots of info/trailers/reviews about new and upcoming movies, also integrates with Netflix for DVDs
• My Tracks: built by some Googlers, great app for keeping track of runs/bikes/ski runs you've done; captures altitude, distance, etc., then uploads to Google Maps My Maps.
• OpenTable: make restaurant reservations from the phone.
• Owner: adds my contact info to the unlock screen ("If found, please contact Rick Klau...")
• Pandora: streaming music channels.
• PapiJump: great little game using the phone's accelerometer.
• Pintail: monitors your phone's SMS messages for a message that says "locate" (plus a PIN); once received, activates the GPS and replies with the phone's location. Helpful if you've got a lost phone.
• Robo Defense: addicitve game.
• Scoreboard: Tracks scores of your favorite teams, with realtime updates and notifications as score changes.
• Seesmic: Great Twitter app.
• Shop Savvy: grab a barcode, find out who sells it and for how much.
• TiVo Remote: works with any TiVo HD unit over WiFi.
• TripIt: phenomenal itinerary manager for all travel info.
• Voice Recorder: does exactly what it says it does.
• Yelp: Local reviews.

This can be distilled down to a handful of features that are the foundation for an awesome phone. The iPhone, Droid, Pre and Imagio, to mention a few are great phones. But not a single one of them is awesome.

With the exception of the iPhone, if you pick up a phone today in any carrier store it will magically transport you back to the innovations of 2005 for mobile phones. If the device doesn't fall into that category it will surely fall into one of the other two: your nana's phone or an iPhone knockoff.

I would settle for an iPhone knockoff if it had additional features that would bring it toward the peak of awesomeness. They are either crippled by carrier software modifications or suffer from form factors that leave the user scratching their heads and hating the phone.

With all of that said, I wanted to take this opportunity to just say that I want an awesome phone. What means awesome to me may be not so awesome in your world. So be it. Below is what a phone in 2009 heading into 2010 needs in my book.

1. Connectivity 4g capable, 3g legacy, wifi, bluetooth, IR
2. Camera 8 MP min, flash, top side trigger, HD video
3. Keyboard onscreen, external QWERTY (centered on the device), bluetooth full-size keyboard
4. Software Android or Windows Mobile
5. Size 12.7 MM larger on all sides than the iPhone

There is not one device on the market with all more thank 3 of these 5 items available. As a user of many a smartphone it seems strange that a device with the capabilities hasn't been made yet. I would settle for an awesome camera that had 3g and keyboard capabilities but those don't exist either.

I want to see some awesome people! Where are the game changing products of 2009 and 2010? They seem to be missing in action.

What would you put into a phone to make it awesome, not just great?

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

I Want An Awesome Phone is a post from: TechStartups.com

This is your chance to be a Martian, and you don't even have to step away from your computer screen. NASA and Microsoft created the Be a Martian Web site to let anyone participate in research and help them sort through data.

I wanted to be a Martian Citizen, so I set up an account. The first question was quick and easy: How old are you? Then they asked me to create a Martian Identity. I entered the relevant information in green text. I claimed to be an Intrepid Explorer. And I chose a kangaroo avatar to represent me. And most importantly, I gave my Citizen Oath. I counted the number of craters on-screen by clicking my mouse on each one. The more I played, the more game points I earned. And the act of counting craters will help scientists figure out the age of certain regions on Mars. Was counting craters really as fun as the wildly, addicting game, Minesweeper?

There are multiple levels of engagement through virtual town hall discussions and videos that put Mars researchers in the limelight. But it's not all fun and games. You really do have a chance to help scientists improve the maps, which will help them see the surface changes better. Developers can win a prize if they can figure out how to distribute hundreds of thousands of Mars images online and in the classroom.

Is this my generation's virtual version of the moon landing? There are no strings attached with this visit. NASA gives you the option to just look around with their Anonymous Tourist Visa.

NASA and Microsoft Want You To Be a Martian! is a post from: TechStartups.com

The first panel up at Webby Connect today was to address branded comedy content and its production. My original intention was to have my wife attend since she's the funny one in our civil arrangement. I'm glad that I didn't!

I'm glad not because I could have learned what comedy gold is but that the panel literally had nothing to do with comedy. They spoke my language about distribution, production, creatives, agencies and building out campaigns for brands. This would have killed my wife and I in turn would have turned into her comedy gold in her next act.

On the panel were Jennifer Kavanagh from Oxygen Channel, Douglas Scott from Ogilvy and Steve Wax (@campfiresteve) from Campire. The moderator for this session was Gillian Reagan from The New York Observer. I will spare you the titles, but just know that these people are at the top of their game and industries.

Gillian asked the panel questions that had a comedy focus in them but they were taken by the panelists and shaped to match their experiences with production of branded content for clients. This isn't a bad thing, believe me. They were able to riff off of each other and share information about their processes.

Some of the most useful information about how to create these campaigns came from Douglas Scott. He broke Ogilvy's process down at a high level and touched on the life-cycle of that production and on through distribution. He highly recommended to have the brand involved in the creative process from the beginning of a project.

If you're a creative you can stop gnashing your teeth. He made sure to point out that working with the client before hand to understand the process and the iterative nature of developing content. The goal of this is to create a more authentic product that would make the brand not feel propped up or think that the content was poorly written due to too much or too little brand exposure.

Steve Wax addressed this issue after being asked about creative freedom and it brands get in the way. He simply stated that for a boutique agency like Campfire there isn't a real need to continually bend to a brand since they are project based. Unlike agencies which are tied to the brand as matter of record and have built massive budgets around multiple campaigns.

Later in the panel Douglass Scott addressed his experience with CMO's that are new to the digital and branded content space. Here's the take away from this three minute lesson:

• Teach them the language of the writing room scripts, dailies, etc.
• Show them examples of what has been successful
• Madison Avenue, Creatives and Hollywood are being driven together by economic realities and to continue high quality content production they need to work together

This was a jumping off point for the moderator to ask about mobile. Jennifer from Oxygen put this into perspective by giving out the percentage increase in mobile traffic over last year, up 500%. She reiterated that now is the time to begin figuring out how to produce for mobile to get the most out of it for brands.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/4

Webby Connect NYC Branded Content is a post from: TechStartups.com

Five years ago I wrote my first Content Management System from ground the ground up. After forty-five days of coding day and night I diagnosed myself with coder's elbow'. The main symptom being a sharp and agonizing pain in on the inner elbow the ulna meets the humerus.

It was in the middle of one of these painful episodes that I was working on the database and the trying to figure out how I was going to transfer that content to the display layer that my a-ha moment occurred. I wasn't building a content management system to circumvent the issues and limitations I was having with WordPress, I was creating a distribution tool.

Once I had the content in the database the display layer could be anything that I chose it to be. It could be sent anywhere that I choose. The greatest of all these bursting thoughts was that it could go places that I didn't even intend it to. The content would have a life of its own. No more was I restricted by developing a site architecture and held to the constructs of a storyboard with A to B to C or D back to A.

With my coder's elbow I went on another week long journey through RSS to make sure that the content would be in the right namespaces, that it could be personalized with unique URL elements, creating search and keyword feeds, developing feeds that could use Basic Auth to restrict usage and the holy grail of individual content metrics. Imagine throbbing pain in both of my elbows now as these feeds overtook my life.

What came from this platform was a CMS that I began licensing for professional development, blogging, podcasting and for real-time metrics (back in 2005). I literally began my first business with it and continued to use it and variants of it for startups and media companies like MTV.

One thing remained constant in all of these scenarios syndication. Along with that syndication came the monitoring and proof that the programs and companies were getting the most value from the digital projects they had entrusted to me.

I decided to write this post and explain my process after I found a series of posts by Daniel Jacobson (@daniel_jacobson) from NPR. He was one of the individuals responsible for developing their robust, media rich API. It's not an API that I have discussed here at Tech Startups because I don't use it for any projects. I did test it when it launched and found it to be a great way to traverse NPR's archives and deliver legacy content as if it were created that day. Daniel Jacobson gets it.

So to spare yourself a case coder's elbow that could ruin your tennis game, you should start with Daniel's COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere post. This will put you in the right frame of mind to follow with . . . wait I'll list them in order.

COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere
Content Modularity: More Than Just Data Normalization
Content Portability: Building an API is Not Enough

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The NPR Model Is Correct is a post from: TechStartups.com

Like you, I've been a member and user of PayPal's service for years. They were early to the game and grew accordingly with a product that made buying online drop dead easy. With an exit to eBay they were integrated into a powerful money minting machine.

They also joined a culture of apathy and disdain for those that help them line their pockets developers.

Like their acquirer, PayPal continued to build a mediocre developer community, foster it with partial code samples, limited information and limited support. Now in kindness to PayPal they did begin providing better support a few years ago and are pretty good when it comes to engaging developers on the message boards offering solutions a problem that has plagued eBay for years.

Visit any eBay developer board and you'll find replies that focus on posting in the wrong thread topic instead of offering a solution. It shows the developers that they aren't a priority.

I was looking forward to the release of the brand spanking new PayPal X Developer Network. Hoping that my previous experience wouldn't hold true and that there would be a renewed focus on the developers that are integrating the PayPal gateways and API's into their platforms. But they let me down.

The new developer community site is plagued with broken links, the same old code samples and forums that stopped loading threads on October 28. The intention is there but the execution is hit and miss.

I can forgive them this time, though. Because it appears that their intention is to focus fully on their API implementations and integrate the legacy products like IPN and PDT into a more standardized solution.

Which will help PayPal as it moves toward working with developers to create a wider range of solutions like mobile and in application micro-payments.

Something else of note with the new PayPal X Developer Network is the improved site IA. Thank you to the person(s) that restructured the information and worked with the UI person(s) to highlight what developers want most . . . documentation.

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PayPal X Developer Network Same as it Always Was is a post from: TechStartups.com

About the author: Matt is a software developer and author living in Chicago. He is the author of five programming books, most recently Drupal 6 Javascript and jQuery and an Open Source project called QueryPath for PHP that allows developers to easily build applications from XML data with jQuery like functionality.

Matt's personal blog is at TechnoSophos.com

I saw into the future. At 10:00 AM PDT on October 25th, in a conference room seating 16 people at the Googleplex in Santa Clara, I saw into the future of the web. And it was good.

What I saw was the demise of Web 2.0, a technology grown to capacity. And it is not Web 3.0 (whatever that is) that will take its place. No, tomorrow's web is about user interfaces.

The weekend of October 24th was the annual Google Summer of Code (GSOC) Mentor Summit at Google's headquarters. Ostensibly, this is the opportunity for all of the Open Source organizations who participated in GSOC to get together and perform a collective postmortem on the summer's successes and failures. But anytime such a menagerie of geeks is assembled under one roof, much more is bound to happen.

Unsurprisingly, many of the unconference's sessions were focused on the GSOC program itself. But a healthy dose of technology centered sessions made their way onto the schedule as well, and the hallway may very well have seen more code than the conference rooms.

Beyond the physical conference space, much was happening in the virtual sphere as well. As a gesture of thanks to the GSOC participants and mentors for a summer of work, Google gave everyone Wave accounts.

Wave's utility lies in numbers. Signing in without a friend is like throwing a party but inviting nobody. Bring a friend or two into the Wave, and it feels like hosting tea in a room with too much furniture. But once the numbers start to rise, Wave's strengths surface. It is a cocktail party that comes complete with a birds-eye view of all of the chit-chat. Conversations swirl around, splintering into smaller threads of conversation only to merge back into the main discussion later. Images, maps, polls, and an API for building extensions make Wave a promising tool except for one thing.

The user interface stinks.

Yes, Wave's merits surface only when many people are in a discussion. Unfortunately, that's also where the big shortcomings surface. As one conversation forks into many smaller discussions, the wave quickly becomes visually unmanageable. The Quickest Scrollwheel in the West will still have a hard time traversing the continuously growing vertical pane that wraps the conversation. The entire advantage gained by the birds eye view of the conversation is lost to clumsy scrolling.

But this failing is indicative of something greater. Once again, Google has achieved an engineering masterpiece. And for all technical purposes, Wave is a marvel. It certainly pushes AJAX and asynchronous web interaction to its very limits, and I have no doubt that the source code for the server component would make my head swim. But the user interface, for all its visual business, simply doesn't work. Wave is an attempt to cram the internals of a Hummer into the body of a circa 1996 Honda Civic.

This is where the Mentor Summit offered a revelation.

On the second day of the summit, the PyMT team hosted an hour-long session on multi-touch input. PyMT is a set of Python application bindings for various multi-touch libraries. Linux, Windows, and OS X all support multi-touch input technologies. Last week, Apple's new Magic Mouse made its debut featuring a multi-touch surface atop a traditional laser-based mouse. Dell offers a laptop with a multi-touch screen. Wacom offers a multi-touch tablet. Microsoft's Surface technology boasts table-sized multi-touch surfaces.

Multi-touch is arriving in a big way. But what's the hubub about? What's the big feature that suddenly makes these technologies attractive? It is the extension of point and click to touch, tap, pinch, swipe, expand, drag, rotate, throw. The simple mouse model that has driven graphical interaction for decades is mid-way through an extreme makeover. And with deflection- and pressure-sensing surfaces rapidly advancing, mice and fingers are just the tip of the input iceberg.

The PyMT team took an hour-long trip to Google's hands-on room and came back with an impressive demonstration. Beginning with some Lego pieces, a flat sheet of metal, and a PlayStation 3 camera, the pair of programmers from PyMT built a gaming surface and a couple of paddles. The camera tracked the motion of the paddles on the surface, transforming the physical paddles into virtual ones in a game of Pong projected onto the wall. In an hour!

When we can build new input devices with an Open Source library and $35 worth of corner-drug-store toys, a whole new universe of possibilities appears.

And that's where Wave returns to mind. As I walked out of the room with UX Design guru Steve Fisher, he turned to me an remarked, When I watch a demo like this, it makes me wonder What is the Web going to look like in a few years. Yeah, it makes me wonder, too.

Wave is a fantastic architecture. But the architectural gems are obscured behind yesterday's user interface limitations. In that way, Wave is a milestone that marks the death of Web 2.0. And it is more than that. It's a fingerpost pointing not to the technologies touted as Web 3.0, but toward a new mode of human-computer interaction. What is going to make tomorrow's web compelling? Not metadata. Not cleaner layout. Not even native support for videos. Better user interfaces. Interfaces tuned to convey information more effectively. Reactive interfaces. That's where tomorrow's success stories are waiting.

HTML 5 and RDFa are good and all, but the real sea-change is coming from your fingertips. All ten of them.

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The Demise of Web 2.0 is a post from: TechStartups.com

Did you pick the content of the RSS feeds that you are syndicating from your site right now? Or did you let your readers pick?

Within reason my guess would be that most of you answered, yes then no. I know on my sites, even this site, I would have answered the same.

The solution isn't to create more feeds. The best solution is for publishers to create no feeds at all. Let your readers make their own.

Here are a couple examples why this is a better method for content syndication than relying on your own editorial skills.

Example 1: How not to do it.

Don't get me wrong on this, CNET is offering nearly all of its content up for syndication. This is an excellent strategy to create value from older content. However, do readers really need the option of subscribing to 100 plus predefined RSS feeds? Simply, no.

Finding feeds for the topics you are interested in is difficult. The worst of it is that you can only access them individually, i.e. you want 10 of feeds, copy and paste them one by one into your feed reader. If you have more skills you might use a service that rolls all of them up into one feed for you. I would guess that about three people have done this. Sounds like a party to me.

Why overwhelm your readers with the CNET model? It is pretty intimidating for someone new to the RSS game. Shouldn't they be able to access your content in a way that makes it relevant to them?

Example 2: How to do RSS right.

What you see above is one of two flavors of how to let your readers pick what they receive in RSS feeds. It's a simple and easy to use text input that allows readers to enter keywords and phrases that they want in their feed. There's nothing fancy, easy access to old content in the straight-forward way that RSS is delivered; updates of the newest items first and set number items in the feed, usually twenty-five.

What the second screen shot shows is the magic of thinking differently about RSS feeds. This image demonstrates what happens when someone clicks on the advanced' link. The reader is then given control over every aspect of the RSS feed. They choose the content, when it is delivered, how much content, in what order (none of this newest stuff first mumbo jumbo great use for episodic content) and how many updates to get at a time.

Who is better to choose than the person doing the consuming? Syndication needs to be like Burger King where a customer can have it their way.

When this concept is applied to large volumes of content the value of it increases with each new article or podcast. Imagine if you could have this type of access at the NY Times or with your local paper. Even the obits from 30 years ago are now of value again. Value to the reader and value to the publisher as dynamic ad inventory.

The future of content syndication isn't in prescriptive channels created by publishers. The future is in the subjective choices of the consumer. They neither need or want every product that you have to offer.

We need to be smarter about our syndicated content via feeds and take into consideration how to make that user experience more satisfying. Whether it is by allowing users to pick topics or order of updates, something needs to change. Why? Because it is all about attention the premium of which is measured in subscribers, influence and the influence of those subscribers.

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Syndication With A Content Shopping Cart is a post from: TechStartups.com

Update: The CNN iPhone App is now in the app store. Download it here [iTunes link].
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A little over a month ago, we reviewed the NPR News iPhone App. We raved about its radio integration and personalization options, so much that we definitively declared that NPR's iPhone app blows other news apps out of the water.

We may have spoken too soon, because that declaration was before the CNN iPhone App.

The CNN iPhone App, which is now live in the app store [iTunes link], is nothing short of impressive. It combines breaking news with customization, the ability to save stories, streaming video whenever breaking news is in progress, and most intriguing of all, citizen journalism.

CNN's iPhone App: It's Impressive

The CNN iPhone app is divided into four key (but very different) components, combining for one seamless app experience. Here's what you can expect if you download the $1.99 app:

Headlines: It's the core of any news app being able to read breaking news. You can sift through news by recency and by category (crime, politics, health, etc). And since it's CNN, you can also share stories via Facebook Connect, Twitter, SMS, and email.

Oh, one more cool thing about headlines: if you turn your iPhone on the side, you can view stories like you can your iPod album covers. Flick through images to find the story that interests you. It's a uniquely visual way to consume news.

My CNN: The app is chock-full of personalization options. Our favorite is the ability to save stories you want to read later. You don't even need a connection to read saved stories, so you pick out the news you want and read it on the plane without a problem.

Another nifty feature: you can follow topics or stories that interest you and get alerts when there are updates to that story.

Video: Yeah, this app gets even better. It is CNN we're talking about, so you'd hope there would be some video. You can watch on-demand clips related to breaking news. However, we're huge fans of the live streaming video integration. Anytime there's a breaking event (Obama gives a speech, a major natural disaster, election night, etc.), live coverage from CNN Live becomes available. Hell, this is a feature that I'd purchase as a standalone app itself.

iReport: Out of all of the CNN iPhone App's features, this one may be the most game-changing. iReport is CNN's user-generated citizen journalism initiative, where everyday citizens can upload photos, videos, and stories about events happening near them. Some of it is even used on CNN's news coverage.

Guess what? The app lets you submit photos and videos you take with your iPhone to iReport and to CNN. Can you imagine how much citizen journalism this app will encourage?

To say we're impressed with this app is an understatement. CNN went all-out with features and functionality, but did it in a way that's simple and easy to use and consume. The app sets a new standard in functionality and even has the potential to change the news game with its iReport integration. It's the complete package.

Tags: cnn, iphone, iphone app, News

Ownership matters, because otherwise Blizzard and other software vendors can wipe away important consumer rights with legalese contained in license agreements. For example, in Section 117 of the Copyright Act, Congress gave owners of computer software the right to use their legitimately purchased software without having to rely on permissions in license agreements. Blizzard and other software vendors are arguing that customers are not owners, but mere licensees, in an effort to eliminate our rights under Section 117.

This "owner-versus-licensee" trick is not just an end-run on Section 117, it's inconsistent with the law in other areas--the courts and Congress have long rejected efforts by copyright and patent owners to impose all kinds of post-sale use restrictions on books, patented machines, and compact discs. Why should software be different? Just as with those other copyrighted works, if you bought the disc that the software comes on outright (as opposed to leasing it, for example), you should get the privileges of an owner (i.e., the right to resell and the right to make copies and adaptations as necessary to use software).

In short, Blizzard's legal arguments here are all about using copyright law to take away consumers' rights in the software they purchased.