Tag Archives: google

Why Apple doesn’t need Live Search

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It has become obvious in the last several years that Apple is, first and foremost, a device manufacturer, and their flirtation with software (OS X, iLife, Logic, etc.) is borne as an extension of their inventive nature. In other words, Apple doesn’t necessarily want to be a software company, but they need to be.  It just so happens that they’re probably the best software company in the world (in recent years anyway).

So how is it that you come to be the best at something that isn’t your core business, just so you core business can flourish?   Well, you avoid the pattern exhibited by Microsoft–cut into as many markets as possible while clutching onto second-rate products (Live Search) and outmoded business models (XBox Live).  Ultimately this will mean that Apple’s failures over the years–their poor product offerings like .Mac–were things that they wisely dumped instead of clinging stubbornly onto like Redmond always seems to do.

Apple recognizes that–when THEY put out a crap service like .Mac–they have to cut their losses. Hence no more .Mac.  Ultimately, the same will be true of Mobile Me, when Google and its ilk replace every feature of Mobile Me with something better. And then, Apple will likely dump Mobile Me rather than try to compete in an area where they aren’t wanted and can’t do better.

This is why Apple won’t embrace Live Search. If they’re willing to cut their own failed initiatives and recognize that somebody else can do something better (Google Sync, anyone?), then why in the world would they embrace Live Search.

Snow Leopard or not, I don’t expect a Microsoft/Apple search alliance.

Slate, others: Please stop humping the Cloud

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Seriously, there’s an irrational exuberance in the online apps space that beginning to sound like a droning din.  Slate, for example, is espousing qualities to net-based apps that probably aren’t as big a deal as they sound, going so far as to declare Outlook dead because Google Mail now supports Gears:

Now that Gmail has bested the Outlooks of the world, it’s a good time to assess the state of desktop software. There are some things that work better on your computer (your music app, your photo editor, your spreadsheets), and there are some that work better online (everything else).

Everything else is better online?  You mean like iMovie, or podcast production, or something secretive, or multitrack recording?   See, cloud humpers like this guy from Slate only look at software from the vantage point of office productivity–and EVEN THERE, the rationale of the Cloud’s superiority is overstated. The Cloud offers no tightly-integrated, productivity-boosting desktop environment, after all. Drag and drop? Nope. Personalized formats and preferences?  Not so much. And what about CONTROL?

Over the last few years, we’ve seen many programs shifting from the first category to the second—now you can get spreadsheets and photo editors online, though they’re still not as good as programs hosted on your computer. But e-mail has crossed the line completely. Hosted services like Gmail are now the most powerful and convenient way to grapple with a daily onslaught of mail. If you’re still tied to a desktop app—whether Outlook, the Mac’s Mail program, or anything else that sees your local hard drive, rather than a Web server, as its brain—then you’re doing it wrong.

Oh, really?   Never mind the fact that most people who choose Outlook or Entourage do so because of the benefits of Microsoft Exchange.  Not to mention the fact that it simply may not be a good idea  for Google to be the “world’s hard drive”.   Limited contigous storage is one drawback of the Google Apps / Cloud approach.  So is privacy.

Please, talk about the net-based apps with all of their qualities, pro and con, instead of all this mindless babble about how Google killed Outlook…   Come on people, think critically!

TruPhone now Android-compatble

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Truphone announced its Truphone Anywhere application for Android mobile handsets, including the recently released G1 phone. The application is available now as a download on the Android Market in the U.K. and the U.S.

To coincide with T-Mobile’s announcement earlier this week of the availability of the G1 mobile phone in March 2009, a German version of Truphone Anywhere for Android is available and will be the first native language multi-communications application in the Android Market in Germany and Austria when it launches at CeBIT 2009.

As well as being able to make low-cost international voice calls, Truphone customers can also easily instant-message their friends across a variety of networks including MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk and Twitter from within one Android application. Customers can also call friends anywhere in the world on Google Talk for the price of a local call, and similarly will soon will be able to instant-message and call their friends on Skype.

Truphone is also available on the Apple iPhone, the Apple iPod touch, Blackberry and Nokia devices.

Microsoft aggressive with Windows 7 push, openly admits defeat on Vista

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Put the last nail in the Vista coffin.  Windows 7 is on the fast track.  At least that’s what I glean from Ballmer’s CES talk yesterday.  The bottom line? You’ll be able to download the beta of Windows 7 starting tomorrow by clicking this link.

The wording of the announcement is tantamount to admitting defeat on Vista:

Over the past few years, you’ve asked us to make some changes to Windows. We listened closely. Now it’s time to share an early look at how we’ve used your feedback. Windows 7 is faster, more reliable, and makes it easier to do what you want.

We sent out our company newsletter today. Katie, my CRM manager, wrote a piece about Windows 7.  I don’t know why this release has so much buzz. Maybe it’s because Microsoft has returned to sane version numbering.  Or maybe it’s because they’ve kind of become the underdog, what with Google and Apple trundling all over what’s left of their Windows XP ego.

In any event, I’m actually looking forward to Windows 7 beta tomorrow. See you in the download queue.

Amiga should do iPhone apps

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At long last, Jay Miner‘s once-mindblowing Amiga platform has devolved over the decades into a company that creates simple games for mobile phones and handhelds.  With Google capitalizing on the current Amiga ownership’s vision of making an OS that runs on everything (ie. Android), Amiga should recognize that it’s too late to play the platform game and whole-heartedly embrace a market with fewer risks, and fewer rewards: iPhone apps.  I would definitely play an Amiga-style game like Shadow of the Beast on my iPhone, and without unlocking, to boot.  Does anybody at Cloanto have a UAE build ready for the iPhone?  I know you can do it with a jailbroken iPhone, but there’s a decent business opportunity to sell Amiga games to the iPhone masses. The toughest part–pick the right game to convert.

Playstation Home: Promising but not different, yet

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I finally got around to keying in the beta test activation code for Home, Sony’s new virtual world system for the Playstation 3. The initial download was around 80 GB, and Home requires an additional 3 GB allocation on the PS3′s hard disk.

Right off the bat, the similarities in mechanics to Second Life are greater than the differences.  Of course, Sony’s graphics are superior, with the virtual world having less jaggies and pixelation than Second Life.  As far as I can tell, you can’t create or craft virtual items in Home the way you can in Second Life, but that could change as this is merely a beta.  Item creation inevitably leads to virtual perversion, so time will tell.  Remember that Second Life “rape” case?

My girlfriend hooked up a USB keyboard, which worked as expected. The chat interface, without a keyboard, is the same on-screen keyboard seen in many PS3 titles, and is too frustrating to bother with.  If chat is your thing, a USB keyboard (we borrowed one from our iMac) is a must.

We created two characters to try out. One that looks like me-skinny, pale and white–and one that looks like her–skinny, pale, white, and cute.  It is remarkably easier to get your avatar to look more like your real-life self that it is with, say, a Mii on Nintendo’s Mii Channel.  Of course, Miis are supposed to be caricatures, and I don’t suspect Nintendo has a Wii social network up their sleeves.

Walking into Home’s first main area, a town square, the female avatar was immediately inundated with chat requests and “really close” dancing by the other (male) beta testers. There were hundreds of male avatars running around, but I only counted three females including my girlfriend.  So, not exactly chick-friendly.  I’m guessing that the PS3 and XBox have far fewer female users than the Wii, since the dominant offerings for the Sony and Microsoft systems are shooters, Madden, and racing games.

There are some neat things in Home, despite its freshman appearance.  Though the stores in Home’s virtual shopping mall were “unavailable”, there was a giant-screen in the town square running a game trailer for Far Cry 2–a shooter, imagine that.  Also, there is a rather cool bowling alley where you can play arcade games that look like old-school standup machines. Pool tables (like the one shown at right) and bowling lanes provide real value-add gaming experiences, so that’s cool.   A poker room would be even cooler, but Sony apparently hasn’t licensed a fast-enough hand evaluator to get poker running in the beta.

Some of the participants were chatting about a version of Home for the PSP, but it boggles the mind. Why anybody would walk around a virtual world on a 3-inch screen when they can just walk around the real world is beyond me.  In a way, the same argument exists for the full-on PS3 version of Home. I guess it’s the same issue I’ve had with all these virtual world chat / emote / fantasy environments like World of Warcraft and Second Life. Perhaps that’s why Google canned their virtual world project. Somebody at Google must’ve had the bright idea — hey, what’s so bad about wandering around the REAL world, anyway?

It seems that there are a lot of unfinished ideas in Home: entrypoints into other games, participant contests, and so on.  The things that do work (which surprised me) are buddy call (where you can call buddies from your list like a telephone), open-area voice chat, and the virtual games.  Everything else more or less reminds be of stuff we’ve already seen a thousand times, whether it be Sims Online or the Mii Channel. Here’s hoping Sony can crack this nut.  They’ve made it useable.  Now it’s time to make it USEFUL.

A way to improve Google AdSense

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One of the things I find silly about Google AdSense is that it often inappropriately matches keywords, resulting in advertisements that either explicitly bad for your web site, embarrassing, or perhaps just silly. I’ll give you a few examples.  I remember a few years ago when a buddy wrote a post blasting Microsoft Exchange, religiously decrying Exchange as a bad product–and naturally Microsoft Exchange was the keyword hit for AdSense, and his story ended up getting coupled with ads for Microsoft Exchange integrators.

Another example — I was reading an online novel, a blog novel.  On the sidebar was an AdSense block, and my eyes gravitated towards the AdSense before I finished reading the first chapter.  The advertisement was for a woodburning fireplace. OK, I thought, there’s got to be a fireplace somewhere in this chapter.  Sure enough, I got the end of the chapter, and there was a brief scene with a fireplace.

It dawned on me that the author’s click-through rate on this chapter is probably quite low, since woodburning fireplaces may not appeal to his readers as much as, say, BOOKS.  And being that it was a fantasy novel, perhaps his click-throughs would’ve been better with ads for fantasy artwork, figurings, or some such.

Google would do well to improve AdSense by allowing webmasters to indicate which keywords correspond to the products or services they’d like to see advertised on their sites.