A 30 minute news program based around social media, from Al Jazeera English. The producers outline each edition’s overriding narrative, but that in turn is formed by monitoring social media sources like Twitter and Facebook 24/7. During the show Twitter feeds will be read out, and skype calls will be made to news sources.
Al Jazeera, yet again, showing that they “get it”, and are streets ahead of any other news outlet on the planet.
This serves two strategic purposes for Google. First, it advances a codec that’s de facto controlled by Google at the expense of a codec that is a legitimate open standard controlled by a multi-vendor governance process managed by reputable international standards bodies. (“Open source” != “open standard”.) And second, it will slow the transition to HTML5 and away from Flash by creating more confusion about which codec to use for HTML5 video, which benefits Google by hurting Apple (since Apple doesn’t want to support Flash), but also sucks for users.
It is, in other words, a thoroughly nasty bit of work. It’s not quite as bad as selling consumers down the river to Verizon on ‘net neutrality, but it’s close. And if Google is actually successful in making WebM, not H.264, the standard codec for web video, they’re literally going to render hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tablets, smartphones, set-top boxes, etc. with H.264 hardware support obsolete.
“But wait!”, the OSS fans are saying. “Isn’t Google really standing up for freedom and justice, because H.264 requires evil patent licensing?”
No. Expert opinion [multimedia.cx] is that WebM infringes on numerous patents in the H.264 pool, and will need a licensing pool of its own to be set up, just like Microsoft’s VC-1 did. So the patents are a wash. This is Google manipulating the market entirely for selfish advantage here, and it’s all the worse because they’re pretending otherwise. And it’s going to be really frustrating watching people fall for it.
If Google had just said they wanted to increase pressure on the internet to get their video codec more uptake they wouldn’t be getting so much flak over this!
John’s Phone is the world’s most basic cell phone. John’s Phone allows you to make and receive calls anywhere in the world: no frills and no unnecessary features such as a camera, text messaging and an endless number of ringtones. John’s Phone keeps things simple.
John’s Phone was designed by John Doe Amsterdam, making the cell phone a unique piece of Dutch design.
Comes in 5 colours. And is Quad band! John’s Phone also has an address behind a flap in the back of the actual device… with a pen. Yes, the address book is made out of tree!
The back of each John’s Phone features a flap with an address book behind it. The left of the flap contains an opening with a small pen: these two unique accessories allow you to update your address file at any time, even when your phone is switched off.
Would make a perfect Christmas gift for the Mum, Dad, Auntie or Uncle who still refuses to get a mobile.
This is the side view of the 2010 MacBook Air 11.6-inch model. It’s the first time we have seen Apple use a screen that is separate from the backlight. The MBA screen is in layers – which will make repairs very interesting.
Today we are announcing the project release of MeeGo 1.1. It provides a solid baseline for device vendors and developers to start creating software for various device categories on Intel Atom* and ARMv7 architectures.
My initial reaction to the look and feel of the user interface in the *little credit card sized mockup at the top of the page is that I love it.
The 1.1 Core OS provides a complete set of enabling technologies for mobile computing. The MeeGo stack contains Linux Kernel 2.6.35, X.org server 1.9.0, Web Runtime, Qt 4.7, and Qt Mobility 1.0.2, supporting the contacts, location, messaging, multimedia, and sensor and service frameworks. It also includes a number of leading edge components, such as the oFono telephony stack, the ConnMan connection manager, the Tracker data indexer, the Telepathy real-time communications framework, the Buteo sync framework, and many more.
* It’s been pointed out to me that the “little credit card sized mockup” is actually for an in car navigation unit. But we’d still love to see it on a phone.
“Why were you in China?” asked the passport control officer, a woman with the appearance and disposition of a prison matron.
“None of your business,” I said.
Her eyes widened in disbelief.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“I’m not going to be interrogated as a pre-condition of re-entering my own country,” I said.
Had the exact same thing happen to me when I returned to the UK from a 3 year stint in Japan. My gut reaction was exactly the same. I was insensed to be questioned about my activities. I was after-all on my home country’s doorstep with a valid passport and no criminal record.
I was also asked why I had been away for so long, and what exactly I had been up to. None of these questions were reasonable unless the officers seriously considered that I was guilty of some crime. At which point I should be detained and a proper legal process should be started.
I told them to mind their own business. And explained that I would not be answering their questions.
Luckily it only took a few stern exchanges between myself and two customs officers to have them back down. But this was a few years ago now. I wonder how it would play out today?
I have also got into trouble when visiting Hawaii, for keeping my sunglasses on when speaking to US customs officials there. When they asked me to remove them I said I would do so when they removed theirs, and explained it was culturally insenstive to people from the UK to be spoken to by people with sunglasses on. That didn’t go down so well.
Well argued, and backed up by some sound analysis of the figures. If you are thinking of getting into this racket, read it all. It’s worth your time.
For those that want the short version :
..it is bad news. And then it gets worse..
Half of all developers will earn less than $682 per year.
The development of the typical app cost $35,000 and the median paid app earns $682 dollars per year after Apple took its cut. You see where this is going.. We get to break even on our App Development costs in… 51 years.
True Indies can skirt a lot of those costs, by keeping teams small, and working in their spare time on iPhone apps. But if you value your time realistically then that’s how much you could be earning in the same period you sink into this work – for free.
The only way to fight this very valid analysis of the real prospects for 99% of App Store developers, is as follows :
Plan your projects from start to finish.
Aim for high quality, original, low complexity titles.
Promote the hell out of what you are doing, but only once you have produced the best possible product you can.
Play Test. That applies to utility apps as well as games.
Pray.
And even then, praying is probably the best weapon in your arsenal. In other words, only get into this game with your eyes wide open, and from a financial position where you are not relying on a big pay day at the end. Oh, and you must love what you are doing. Otherwise you must be mad!
So, most paid iPhone apps are games and some games can have ‘huge’ success, eh? Like the afore mentioned Angry Bird, the best-selling iPhone paid game app of all time with 4 million downloads at 99 cents ie earning 4 million (before Apple’s cut) and the previous champion, Bewelled 2, which had 3 million paid game downloads. You think that justifies your mission? That these numbers are ‘impressive’ for a mobile phone game? Sure. But I have some friends over there at Artificial Life here in Hong Kong, whose main business is in mobile, but not in making games for phones (they do TV-interactivity as their main business). They had a clever little game a few years ago, you might have heard of it, won many awards, called ‘V-Girl’ the virtual girl friend on the phone, in the form of an avatar. Like an adult age ‘tamagotchi’. These guys are not EA or any major game developer and this was not their main focus. They celebrated their 4 million paid download milestone - back in 2008. 4 million is nothing in the real world of mobile paid data services and apps. Nothing.
Games, the first market that most of us want to get into. Well, I can say from personal experience the apps I have made any money on have not been games. Much as I love writing them. Games are probably the riskiest prospect, especically if you want to produce anything more complex and enjoyable than Zit Popping type time sinks. The average iPhone user is not looking for an epic game. You have no audience if you like making quality games.
Not yet.
Utility apps are where your best chance of making a business are. And there whilst your competition is certainly less numerous, it is on average producing apps of far higher quality than most game makers.
So, your choices are :
Take on the masses in the game market, and get lost in the noise, even if your game is great.
Or take on a smaller group of developers who by and large are producing apps of much higher quality.
What about free apps, with advertising, or in-app purchases?
The free apps hysteria is totally a repeat of the previous tech bubble, the dot-com bust of year 2000-2001.
Yep.
[The App Store] is currently in hype mode, it is a bubble where most developers will not recoup their costs, and in the case of paid apps, will for the vast majority, never reach desired usage levels, and for free apps, will never achieve reasonable reach.
On the flip side. Stick with it if you can afford to. The marketplace will mature, and you will learn from your mistakes. They may be expensive mistakes though.
Another option is to look as a slightly more quality conscious demographic in the iPad market, perhaps.
Jonny Evans mashes up some Mac and iPhone rumours. Some of it is worth a read, just as food for thought. In it he touches on rumours of iPhone OS integration into Mac OS X, and multi-touch iMacs.
Look to the now long-in-the-tooth MacBook Air. The thinnest Mac ever, imagine if it had a 13-inch MultiTouch screen. Imagine if it was an iPad form factor, with a virtual keyboard and an invisible trackpad.
Didn’t he just describe the iPad there?
Imagine it ran a full version of Mac OS X, while also enabling use of iPhone apps in that mooted Dashboard-like emulation layer. This truly would be the thinnest, lightest and most sophisticated Mac around.
Ultimately OS X will run on many more flavours of silicon. This is clear to most people watching Apple evolve its device, OS and development tool ecosystem. Even if it’s not obvious to you from that, you should be able to look at what the iPhone does today, and what computers did yesterday and make a connection.
You should also be able to see that ‘Touch’ is going to become more ubiquitous with our day to day computing experience in the future. (If only our fingers were not so greasy and dirty.)
Interestingly though, Jonny almost touches on something that I have heard – as a rumour :
