Uncool Mobility

Zune phone rumours again

Sounds like another mis-reading of Microsoft's stated intent to layer web services directly into WM OS, but who knows maybe there really is another partner killing move coming from Microsoft mobile.

Microsoft's Zune To Evolve Into New "Pink" Smart Phone? - Tech Check with Jim Goldman - CNBC.com.

Bloomberg: Downturn may force web 2.0 startups to generate revenue!

Shocking story in Bloomberg today, as web 2.0 media darlings are looking at being forced into...money making.

Prime example: "Twitter may charge companies for access to its users so it doesn't have to ask venture capitalists for more cash, said Williams, the company's chief executive officer."

Bloomberg.com: Technology.

Google phone launch temporarily knocks out T-Mobile website

You would think Apple's highly publicized failures along these lines would have had T-Mobile prepared for this...

nice catch from MoCoNews
T-Mobile USA Customers Lock Up Web Site Following G1 Event

CTIA Wireless wrapup from San Francisco

I spent last week in San Francisco at CTIA Wireless. The biggest takeaways I had were:

Apple dominated the show. The extent to which the iPhone has shaken up both service and device aspects of the industry was widely evident as the not-present Apple was constantly mentioned.

Business as usual for RIM. RIM had formal product announcements and booth appearances for the new flip phone and Bold, both of which have been extensively picked over in blogs. RIM also announced content partnerships in the form of specific applications to be natively built BB with MySpace, Ticketmaster, and a streaming audio startup called "Slacker" which I'd never heard of. Microsoft will also have Live search bundled on the RIM OS. As other service providers focus on creating a platform (and specifically an appstore) RIM seems determined to keep with a one-by-one approach of selecting partners to co-develop applications. Will this scale as a model?

Search is rapidly being co-opted into the same structure as web-based search.  I had thought mobile search would see different UIs, different ontologies/taxonomies driving definitions, and a new vertical within internet search but clearly that will not happen. The need to drive growth rates in ad spending has stomped all the smaller players as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft invest to extend reach to mobile. Search is also becoming a trojan horse to package and/or pull related applications (such as Google apps or Windows Live Hotmail) onto devices.

Operators continue to struggle with "open" and by resisting concepts of openness for so long are now deeply in the hole trying to launch app stores. Verizon and ATT in particular are scrambling to catch up on this front but will not be able to move quickly enough to overcome iTunes + AppStore, the Android app store, and RIM's selected partnering model. Waiting in the wings: Microsoft Mesh.

Yahoo had the only significant new play. Blueprint and its integration into the new OneConnect is an interesting system that will dig into in a future post. Is it too late for Yahoo as a company despite innovative new products and services?

File Storage and Viewing Apps for iPhone

Apple iPhone Downloads: Three Great File Storage and Viewing Apps - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership.

Review of three remote access applications for iPhone. It's interesting to me that this product area continues to be the source of new applications even though existing ones have been around for years without spurring uptake.

A product looking for a use case or an unsolved need not met by current generation solutions?

Firefox gets Zuned

Chrome Strong Against Firefox And Safari, IE Untouched - The Channel Wire - IT Channel News And Views by CRN and VARBusiness.

Article citing early claims that Chrome will indeed take share from partners rather than the market share leader, IE.

10 Worst Web glitches of 2008 (so far) | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone - CNET

Link: 10 Worst Web glitches of 2008 (so far) | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone - CNET.

This roundup is a fun list and a good recap of the downsides of cloud computing. Note that two of the top 10 were infrastructure outages, and two of the consumer solutions listed (Apple and Netflix) are having more problems as this was posted.

Movable Type, Wordpress becoming social platforms | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone - CNET

Link: Movable Type, Wordpress becoming social platforms | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone - CNET.

This is very cool--blogging and social networking continue to merge with some excellent tools being provided by Movable Type and Wordpress. The extension of tools and feature sets back and forth from social networking sites to blogging sites will render the distinctions meaningless, with the important differentiator being the type of content shared (written word, short text posts, video, images, links, etc.)

PC World - Google Apps Hit by Prolonged Gmail Access Problem

Link: PC World - Google Apps Hit by Prolonged Gmail Access Problem.

After the heavy publicity of the many problems Apple's MobileMe ran into it should be noted that cloud-based services are still frequently plagued by outages--from Amazon to Google this past month has shown why client-based apps are likely to prevail in mobile computing for some time.

Apple admits new MobileMe problem

Link: Apple admits new MobileMe problem.

What a disaster MobileMe has turned in to. Apple has announced a new problem, while still struggling to resolve existing sync problems.

I've yet to get my iPhone and PC to sync thru MobileMe and don't believe that Apple has resolved most of the "1%" of users who can't sync email, nor that this group is truly only 1%. It's amazing that Apple could first launch such a bug-ridden service, follow that up by not handholding users, and then continue having problems--and not communicating beyond one lame post--for another week.