2007 January

iPhone: Any Publicity is Good Publicity?

January 14, 2007 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

Apple has hit a nerve with the iPhone. Not only several billion dollars in additional market cap happened within hours of the announcement as the stock leapt in value, but the meme trackers (Techmeme, Megite, Tailrank) exploded with blog conversations about this device as did the mainstream press. I haven’t seen this level of conversation on these trackers ever before which is both interesting and potentially troubling to Apple…but maybe worth the publicity?

The conversation has shifted….dramatically….and the device has only been in the hands of laughingly few people! The concern is over the closed nature of the device itself (only Apple will approve which apps are loaded on the iPhone), the demands to take down a faux iPhone user interface skin for Windows Mobile and Palm, the iPhone trademark issue (Cisco allegedly has one) and whether it’s actually worth $500.

All of this just makes me chuckle. Even if Apple used all of its cash on hand (more than $9B as of 9/30/06) they couldn’t buy this kind of publicity! Long masters of event marketing, Steve Jobs has often been held up as a model for how to launch products (BusinessWeek, April 2006).

In my view, ONE sentence in that BusinessWeek article above is what EVERYONE is missing: “Steve Jobs does not sell bits of metal; he sells an experience.” THAT is the whole point to everything discussed above: the closed nature to the iPhone; the demands to take down the interface; the trademark issue. It’s all about the experience.

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Filed Under: Blogosphere, Gadgets & Hacks, Innovation, Technology

Mobile, RIA’s and Web 2.0

January 12, 2007 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

Bumped into a prominent Palo Alto venture capitalist awhile back and — after we’d caught up and had a nice chat — I asked, "So where is your firm focusing investments? What’s hot?" Without skipping a beat he said, "mobile."

This week has been quite busy so I’ve been out of my office more than usual and thus pretty mobile. I’ve really been leaning on my Palm Treo 700p for email, telephony and web browsing (but I did watch Jobs’ Macworld keynote Tuesday evening on streaming on my laptop and was stunned by the iPhone). That made me think of several things simultaneously:

1) No question that having an amazingly robust computer and multimedia device in our pocket or purse will be life changing

2) 2007 is going to be the year that Rich Internet Applications (RIA’s) accelerate. RIA’s will put phenomenal power in the hands of the creative class to deliver well designed applications that live in or out of a Web browser

3) I have no idea how I’m going to take advantage of all the Web 2.0 applications I’m using since NONE OF THEM are mobile enabled.

While watching Jobs tap-tap on the iPhone to zoom into The New York Times looked phenomenal, it’s still not a replacement for truly mobile enabled data access.

The W3C mobile initiative sums it up best, "While becoming increasingly popular, mobile Web access today still suffers from interoperability and usability problems. W3Câ€™s Mobile Web Initiative (W3C MWI) addresses these issues through a concerted effort of key players in the mobile production chain, including authoring tool vendors, content providers, handset manufacturers, browser vendors and mobile operators."

Cool iPhone’s or not…the current Web isn’t very mobile accessible and I shudder to think what’s next with the acceleration in Web 2.0 applications and the coming evolution in RIA’s. Most of the application creators I deal with and the tools vendors I’ve been following don’t pay much attention to mobile.

Filed Under: Web 2.0

iPhone: Changing the paradigm of connection

January 9, 2007 By Steve Borsch 1 Comment

There are dozens of thoughts swirling through my head after Jobs’ keynote at Macworld, but there is one that is uppermost in my mind and, perhaps, is a slightly different perspective than others about the amazing package Apple has delivered with the iPhone.

The accelerating human-to-human connection that a global internet and mobile telephony provides is astounding. But when you think about the implications of the world’s knowledge AT YOUR FINGERTIPS with extremely powerful handheld devices it gets even more interesting, lifechanging, and truly an enormous catalyst to drive interactions online.

Not that smartphones haven’t existed before…it’s that they’ve been "just OK" since they’re replete with compromises. I love my Treo 700p and think it’s cool…but the operating system and applications on it (I use the PalmOS version) feels like the old, shaky, MacOS 9 instead of the robust, unix-based Mac OS X operating system (which the iPhone is based upon). The Windows Mobile version of the Treo is worse since Windows Mobile feels like Window98 stuffed into a phone and has a PC-centric user interface.

The iPhone is a reinvention of the concept of a portable, rich, elegant, comprehensive communications device for your hip or purse and if the keynote or Apple web site animations are any indicator, this is going to be one phenomenal device. Are there tradeoffs and compromises? Probably…but sitting on my desk right now is the first generation iPod which looks laughingly clunky right now even though it was launched in October of 2001. My…how things have changed with the iPod devices in that short time. We can expect the same with this class of device from Apple and others.

Now think about the trends in social software; in Web applications; in video, audio and animations; in education. How cool is it that you could easily and seamlessly interact with them all from wherever you happen to be at the moment?

I can only imagine the possibilities of searching Google and having location-based advertising show up. Or being able to grab a picture and moblog on the spot. Or working on some machine and quickly looking up the manual online (I do so now but go to my computer, find the PDF, print the page and take it with me). Learning (education and training) is the category that promises to be changed the most since why bother to memorize tons of information and data when you can just look it up? Having the world’s information at your fingertips will have profound implications and I’m already experiencing many of them today via my Treo and the fast Verizon EV-DO network.

I have one year left on my Verizon contract with my Treo 700p but will undoubtedly buy one of these anyway and sign up for Cingular. Wow.

Filed Under: Blogosphere, Gadgets & Hacks, Innovation, Open Media, Podcasting, Vlogging, Web 2.0

Value 2.0: Your Value in a Box?

January 5, 2007 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

Wikinomics just arrived and I’ve leapt into reading this new book by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams — and am already 25% of the way through it. It’s a very good book for those needing context about the accelerating change occurring with an increasingly connected globe and the disruption, changes — and exciting opportunities — being enabled by the Internet and the emergent culture of participation.

I’ve been thinking deeply about — and searching for thought leaders discussing — the non-monetary, non-barter value exchange accelerating globally (or what Tapscott calls “non-market production”). Wikipedia, open source software and even cooperative non-profit efforts are manifestations of the phenomena. Mass collaboration fostered by a globally connected consciousness is certain to exponentially increase it and is at the core of Tapscott/Williams argument.

Though 1/4th of the way through it, Wikinomics has already crystallized my thinking on one, key point imperative to all of us if we intend to be a marketable commodity in a globally connected world: how can we put our value in a box? How can that value be encapsulated so it can “plug in” to strategies, projects, and efforts where mass collaboration is required? How can others trust that the value is real?

I’ve written before about extreme specialization and clearly mass collaboration will allow each of us to more narrowly focus our personal value propositions and deliver our value if a way emerges to offer our value into a marketplace and plug-n-play it into a larger effort. Step #1 is identity management, but my thinking is expanding:

What if there was an agreed upon microformat or profile (LinkedIn has the closest thing to what I’m describing) that would telegraph to others our capabilities, experience, strengths, knowledge and, especially, our availability to be hired?

Who would be the trusted authority to certify that our stated value representation was authentic? Or would it be as simple as a reputation system and a trusted authority would be unnecessary? (e.g., eBay’s seller feedback/rating). (In my view, reputation is where LinkedIn falls down since most “recommendations” are from friends or close colleagues and are thus tinged with too much positive and is more evident of the effort someone has put into LinkedIn and harnessed others to recommend them).

Or perhaps it could be as simple as participating in a value marketplace. “This work is worth $X” and “you need reputation Y to bid on it” so teams would be self-assembled and willing, available participants could come together to mass collaborate and receive monetary value in return equal to their effort and merit.