Mavericks is supposed to kick off tomorrow here on the west coast. The annual surf event has been waiting for the right conditions and a pacific storm has been pushing a huge swell our way over the past couple days.
Speaking of swells, seems that two of the video streaming startups, Kyte and Ustream are getting ready for a big push with some new announcements and most likely some new years growth.
TechCrunch is posting that Ustream will be releasing a new iPhone application that will allow users to stream any Ustream channel direct to their devices. Michael gives the good idea of wathcing the inauguration via Ustream if you are out and about and can’t be near a television. If Ustream can get some serious content partnerships going it will make a nice solution somewhat putting them inline with place shifter Sling minus the hardware and DVR.
Speaking of content partnerships, Kyte has a HUGE one just being announced. Billboard is announcing that Kyte and UMG are partnering up to stream content over Kyte’s system. Universal alludes that its artists will be using Kyte to communicate in a more personal way with their fans showing behind the scenes clips they are recording. If Kyte has similar success to that of SayNow it should mean a chunk of new users to their site.
Maybe Kyte and SayNow can partner up, one providing the video and the latter providing the audio/sms.
(updated)
Seems even Qik has some news tonight. They are sponsoring an online show at Sundance with streaming various people peroforming tasks over a 24 hr period. It is being organized by Aston Kutcher.
Getting around to some CES posts finally after 4 days of non stop Vegas action. My first CES post will be about the Palm Pre which is probably number 1 or 2 on the list of exiciting things introduced at the show. Lets get to it.
First, let me say that I have two friends at Palm, one on the hardware team, one on the software, and they have been uber jazzed on the device and OS for the past 6 months. They are not the type of people to get over exicited about technology or “drink the kool-aid”, so I knew what they have been working on has to have been something worthwhile to the marketplace. After visiting the Palm meeting room on thursday for some experience with the device the results actually exceed my expectations.
I have been working with wireless technology since 1999 on the application side. I wouldn’t go as far as Scoble dramatics saying the Pre made me cry, lets just say it gave me goose bumps and made me happy I have been holding out for purchasing a new device even though I am not the biggest Sprint fan.
You could tell the Apple influence from Rubenstein with the invite only meeting room that was decked out and designed very nicely to provide a complete experience down to the wood panels they used on the base of the overhead projectors.
They had four demo stations set up with overhead projectors outputing to TV’s. I took some video and pictures of various pieces that stuck out most and are posting them here.
First up is a demo of the contact management/usage experience. The way they are trying to include social type functionality and represent a single contact with data points from various inputs (demo shows phone, outlook, facebook) is a nice touch:
The next piece that stuck out was the calendar. Following suit with the contacts management you can manage and view calendar items from various inputs (demo shows phone, outlook, google). The user experience is very well thought out. They know they provide a somewhat smaller screen so they created an “accordian view” for calendar space that is not occupied with any items:
In the final video you see some general user experience shots including the fantastic ribbon feature from the gesture feature. The addition of touch/gesture from the bar below the display is a great new introduction of usabitlity for the handset market:
Again, some follow up posts on things Palm needs to do to step it up on for their WebOS but while I am still on cloud 9 with the first experience let me touch on the things that stand out and what makes it dificult for all the other players:
First off I am not going to include Symbian, Windows or Linux Mobile, or any homegrown OS’s here.
WebOS
———-
This thing is redirkulous and is really the gem of this initial announcemt. What isn’t mentioned too much is most of the writeups around the web is that the entire user experience and everything you see IS web based from the menus to the “card view” to the applicaitons. This thing is a linux kernel and webkit, period. Everything you see is <divs> and all the snazy animations everyone is drooling over is a native javascript physics library…, which of course can be used by your apps.
I don’t mean to be mean, but between the idiots online and two gentlemen I experienced in the Palm meeting room who said Palm should have chosen Perl for their app creation people are off their rockers if they think developers won’t flock to this. The MAIN thing they need to worry about is getting the devices and OS in front of people. They still haven’t mentioned other devices that might come out in the first year OR if they will provide the OS to other CE manufacturers. If any sort of traction is gained thousands of apps will be created is the shortest timeframe compared to Apple and Android. Again.., sorry for calling people idiots, but anyone who compares programming Java or Objective C to html/js/css should not comment about anything engineering related ever again.
On the topic of html/js/css, lots of doubters out there saying the WebOS is going to fall short of providing developers what they need. I have some thoughts on this.., but remember, EVERYTHING you see on a WebOS screen is html/js/css. Palm is going to provide proprietary js hooks/events/callbacks for contact/calendar/location access. I have a post here wishing for the day that the core of a mobile OS would be available via javascript and it appears that day is here.
Form Factor
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The Apple fan boys can talk smack all they want but the iPhone, besides being fantastic, IS a large device. I long for the iPhone Nano.., anything that is about 20% smaller than the current device. Palm has solved this with the Pre by having a smaller device, full touch screen and the slide out key pad to satisfy the RIM fan boys.
Reasons why Apple should be worried:
1) Full touch screen and slide down keyboard. Apple wont go there. RIM, Android phones and Palm own this combo. You can say it doesnt matter but any device smaller than an iPhone makes all softkeys tough to work with, just look at the new LG devices.
2) Applications running in the background. Apple better get on this quick. Android and the rest do it. Becuase the WebOS is entirely browser based every app is esentially run as a tab or a page, thus allowing them to run a large number of apps concurrently while maintaining performance.
3) User Experience and design. For once Apple has been trumped by someone on these items. The the gesture feature and card experience, not to mention the Touchstone charger (it is awesome) are a step up. Even if Apple releases new updates to software and hardware before the Pre comes out that match this (and they wont), they will be branded as copiers.
4) SDK cannot compete except for 3D graphics and games. Some might argue, but I dont think this is too big a deal right now when it comes to “the masses”.
Reasons why Google should be worried:
1) Palm, like Apple currently owns the stack end to end making it impossible for others to fully compete. By owning the hardware and software the user experience can rise to a whole new level as evident with Microsoft announcing this week they are going to cut out a good amount Windows Mobile devices to limit the number of CE companies they have to work with.
2) The experience and smoothness is just plain better. I have used all three devices (Pre, iPhone, G1) and the G1 is by far the worst experience. The animations are pretty slow and the initial browser is shite. Android runs multiple apps at the same time but again a slight slowness/lagging in the experience blows.
3) Again, the SDK cannot compete given a solid deployment of WebOS units.
Ok.., enough Palm fan boy action for now. I have other posts to write before getting to the things I DONT like about the Pre and WebOS as well as stuff they better include in the SDK.
AdMob has the most momentum of any mobile ad provider. They are staying one step ahead of all players in the game, first with their free mobile analytics service, then with their iPhone services.
I also hear that they are working on getting their iPhone specific ad unit approved as an official industry unit.
AdMob is doing so well that Google is even using their network to hawk their services, peep these photos:
How much longer with AdMob remain an indie play?
I would like to see them go to the likes of Microsoft or AOL but with the Sequoia ties rest assured when it comes to buyout time Google will be at the front of the line.
During Yahoo!’s Hack Day event one of the sessions covered their mobile tools for developers and specifically Blueprint.
Blueprint was born out of Yahoo!’s OneConnect efforts. For those unfamiliar with OneConnect it is a fantastic mobile app that runs on many evices and has an open framework that third parties can piggy back on and install themselves as widgets on a users OneConnect setup. Some apps of note are last.fm, ebay, wikipedia, etc.
OneConnect is pretty good, but falls short for those developers that really want to own the user experience and not just sit in as a widget…., this is where Blueprint comes into play.
BluePrint is a huge mobile play for Yahoo! This is really where they set themselves apart in the mobile space from the rest of the big players. Where Microsoft and Google are playing mostly on OS side of things to get developers involved, Yahoo! wants to own the dev relationship across all handsets and OS’s.
BluePrint has two main components to it.., one that is pretty ready for primetime.., another that needs some more time to bake going into the end of the year.
The first part that is ready for primetime is the mobile website BluePrint server. Yahoo! has created a proxy server for rendering content and apps into mobile friendly sites. When a user requests a mobile page from you, your site passes all of the content and, buttons, menus, etc in the BluePrint XML markup to the Yahoo! proxy. The proxy then determines which handset is requesting and renders the page accordingly.
This is a pretty handy service for those devers out there whom do not want to get too into mobile development while still providing their users with a nicely designed and functioning mobile view into their property.
The second part of BluePrint.., that I am really excited about, but still needs some baking.., is their BluePrint platform for this client applications. Yahoo! is throwing their hat in the ring with the rest of the mobile platform translation libraries to provide a one stop shop for developers to write an app once, and run anywhere. They plan to support Java, .net, android, Symbian, and iPhone, as well as provide location based interfaces.
This is going to be fantastic for developers if Yahoo! delivers this close to how they presented it. I have my doubts on the iPhone side of things as I have talked to several diferent vendors that provide platforms for universl app development and they have all had no luck when talking to Apple about opening up the iPhone to them. We need someone of Yahoo!’s size to help tip the balance in our favor and make Apple see the light.
Downside to BluePrint.., no planned media support yet, but that might come down the road as many devers would love to gain acess to the camera and any stored media on the device.
More on this in the coming months as Yahoo! opens things up more
The impending news of the release date of the first Android based handset has writers a buzz. Come September 23rd we shall have the details on T-Mobile’s HTC Android based G1 device. The analysts clairvoyents are already projecting around 4% market share of all smartphones for Android sales in Q4.
Lets consider for a moment that the analysts nail nail it this time.., or even underestimate their figures lets look at what things will be like for mobile developers developing their solutions over the next 12 months.
First.., lets look at some of the OS variations that they will be dealing with:
Windows Mobile 6
Apple OSX Mobile
LIMO
Symbian
Palm OS
and now Android
Homegrown Proprietary (P2K, Sony Ericsson, etc)
Now mix in some languages/frameworks (J2ME, Cocoa/Objective C, C/C++/C#, etc)…, a dash of browsers (Opera, Mobile IE, Mobile Safari, Android/Chrome, S60, Mozilla, etc)…, the result.., you are left with a perfect reason for why excel is needed to manage dev/qa matrices.
For all the talk and hype regarding Android’s release and being open source and how great it is going to be for the marketplace.., no one seems to bring up the fact that developers are now going to have to add one or more rows/columns to those developement and QA matrices. Not to mention when various carriers make use of Android and its open source nature they will customize it to possibly gain competitive advantage over the other guys.
Google is throwing their hat into the ring with a free open source mobile OS b/c they want their search/maps/mail on the carriers decks…, not to fight for carrier and wireless ecosystem openess. They are doing nobody a favor except all the Google Fan Boys out there who want to create Open Social and App Engine solutions.
On the bright side we are approaching the era of Javascript, flash, silverlight, etc, on mobiles which will ease the pain of most developers. What we really need to get to is JS objects and handles for the core compenents of the handset that developers want easy access to:
GPS/Location info
Camera
Address Book
Once these are exposed via a flash and/or JS interface this is when mobile will really take off and become what it deserves to be.., the new sector where we will see some of the next big winners in the software space.
Two things to keep an eye on over the next 12 months besides all the iPhone and Android hype. One is Yahoo!’s OneConnect and Blueprint movements.., the other is what Palm is getting ready for primetime in ‘09.
FusionOne just closed a “Series A-1″ of funding…, f’in rediculous. These sacks better squeeze some value out of their asses for the $100+ million they have raised over the years.
I worked for Levient, a small wireless startup, before we were acquired by FusionOne. They acquired us at the same time as two other companies, tried to do a bunch o integration which did not work and whent through two large layoff periods.
I still have stock and would love to see them get me some value…, at least enough cashish for like an x-large combo from round table or something.
Mobile mobile mobile.., thats what a lot of people have been touting for quite some time. From mobile advertising, video streaming, downloads, games, and of course everyones favorite, the iphone and the device market.
In the next 12-18 months we will be seeing a good amount cool mobile devices from all manufacturers, as well as updates and new offerings from the folks at apple.
Nowdays everyone is buying laptops for their primary computers. The tablet pc market has yet to take off, but that might change with this mobile craze.
Intel being the king of the chip space is going to stand on the sidelines waiting for AMD to make moves like they did in the 64 bit and server space. Intel is working on a chipline for lowend devices…, $250 or less they say. The product line is dubbed Diamondville right now.., actual name TBD later. They say they plan on selling 10’s of millions of these new chips by 2011. They are calling the target market for these new chips “Netbooks”…, these will primarily be really small devices that are somewhere between smart phone and tablet.
This sounds pretty exciting to me to finally see a handfull of small/mobile type devices come out at reasonable price points. One of the biggest issues has been the high price tag. After we see some nice devices in the $300 or less range we will start to really see things take off.
Start putting your dream mobile device on your wish list to santa for xmas ‘09
