Me against the music

I have an iPod I rarely use since getting an iPhone. I used to carry two devices with me always, an iPod always playing, a phone I sometimes answered when I felt like it. Now I’m not given a choice - in more ways than one.

Aside from the music stopping if the phone rings, that iPod, all 80 gigs of it, had more music on it than I could ever really hope to listen to. But it also meant not having to make any choices about what I carried with me - not just because of its size but also because I could put music on it from any device. iPhones however don’t have that luxury - they commit you to one computer and one computer only. And in a modern age where access is increasingly key, that seems like a bizarre move to make.

Amazon have understood this notion of access and in a surprise move have beaten both Apple and Google to a music library offering that provides that access wherever you are. Apple have long been rumoured to be working on such a thing, while Google’s music offering hasn’t yet made it to vapor-ware status, but that can’t be far off.

Amazon of course have one final hurdle to jump - plans from mobile carriers that make streaming music constantly from the cloud an affordable reality. They’re unlikely to do that without handsets of their own, the idea of which has the tech press buzzing.

In closing the loop on the consumer journey, Amazon could be making an end-run around Google. “Thanks very much for the technology, but we understand the consumer.” The Seattle-based retail giant has so far failed to make a dent in Apple’s stranglehold on digital music sales. In delivering this service, they’ve finally arrived with a proposition Apple have no clear competitor to.

Not yet anyway.

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Foursquare 3.0 and thank God for Instagram

So a new version of Foursquare’s app for iPhone and Android dropped today, some interesting features along with it, which plenty of other people will cover.

What I’ve been thinking a lot about over the past few days is Instagram, and how it has driven me to continue checking in when Foursquare was actually the last thing on my mind.

Instagram gives me a relatively hassle-free way to create some interesting content and share it so easily it kinda blows my mind sometimes. And then it pushes this content into the networks I care about publishing to, most of the time Foursquare and Tumblr.

I’ve been saying for a number of years now the successful products and services will be the ones that continue to lower the barrier to self-expression. Foursquare didn’t do that very well, but other people have picked up the slack and automated a lot of the content-creation for the service. Ultimately a bunch of photos and no guides to city life won’t make Foursquare a better platform, but the photos will add some crucial colour and life.

All this happens via Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs. Developers create APIs in the hope that other developers will use what they’ve made and build on top of it. Instagram built on top of Foursquare’s API, and we’re now starting to see others building on top of Instagram’s API. That will drive further adoption of Instagram, which will in turn drive greater use of Foursquare…you see where I’m going with this.

In an ecosystem, the biggest opportunity is building as close to the center as possible. I wouldn’t say Foursquare are in the very center, but I don’t think, in their category anyway, they’re far from it. As people build increasingly popular services on layers who themselves have built on Foursquare, they stand to reap tremendous rewards.

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Random musings on “feeds”

The rise - or rather the lack thereof - of RSS as a viable and widely-adopted web technology remains a mystery to many. Even those beyond comfortable with the web like Fred Wilson haven’t managed to get into it, leaning instead on bookmarks in their browsers to get around - or increasingly, links from Twitter and Facebook.

I was a hardcore devotee however of the RSS feed, in my Google Reader every day. I would subscribe and subscribe and subscribe to various blogs and sites and consume content based on what I was in the mood for - tech news, furniture design, web comics, whatever. And this was the case day in, day out for years, until I started using Tumblr.

What Tumblr brought along was an already curated feed of items form a range of different interests. Some might be art or fashion, others musings from VCs. In other words, the content was the same as my Google Reader.

What it removed however was the need for me to choose, and replaced that choice with the opportunity to be surprised (dare I say delighted) by what I came across.

Feeds like this are becoming increasingly important in the consumption of content, Twitter and Facebook are both (on the whole I’d argue), less curated forms of my Tumblr feed.

RSS has been given a second life for me in the form of iPhone app Reeder. It allows me to see everything I subscribe to just as a single stream, and I dip into content as it pleases me, saving longer-form pieces for later consumption via Instapaper - a simple read-it-later service I can access anywhere with an internet-connection. This has saved me from the hell that was multiple-tabs in my browser, usually 20 and counting.

Just prior to Christmas a new app burst onto the scene - Instagram. This brings Hipstamatic-style photography with an in-built social network - but more on that later. Consuming content via Instagram is a matter of opening up the application and seeing what photos my friends have posted to their feeds. Sure the content is entirely more personal, and therefore even more highly curated. But with the mass of activity that my Facebook news feed has become (most of it unwanted), there’s something to be said for the simplicity Instagram has brought to the table.

…I’m thinking along the lines of these services and the role brands can potentially play - but that’s for another post. Feel free to chime in with thoughts of your own!

That’s not the shape of my heart

Interesting video the magic that is The David Report turned me onto, looking at and thinking about the future of magazines. I am somewhat of a junkie for the form and don’t doubt it will continue (in some fashion).

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

This has me thinking also about devices as a whole, and particularly the arms race that is on in the mobile space.

Everyone is excited to have Google’s skin in the game with Android, and are touting them as the challenger that can actually take on Apple and their much-loved iPhone. The problem facing Google and its partners is not developer support, of which there is plenty, but control over the hardware environment.

See an iPhone developer makes an app once, and releases it. They don’t need to deal with different specifications regarding screensizes, peripherals, keyboards, cameras, what have you. An Android developer has all of that, plus chipsets from Intel, Nvidia and others. The increased overhead in supporting multiple platforms will, I believe, lead us to a place where apps exist on one Android device and not another, leading to negative user-experiences which will directed partially towards the manufacturer, but more so towards Google. Contrast that with the iPhone, which while it has well-documented flaws, is a consistent experience for every person that owns one.

I’m in the camp of people who think Android is the platform that will challenge the iPhone for dominance of the market, Google to need to invest more in the hardware for this to become a race; right now they’re just running warm-up laps. Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Someday soon this will all be someone else’s dream

I was watching Steve Ballmer’s keynote at CES last night, thinking to myself “This sort of address has its days numbered.” My penchant for drama would have me state we’re witnessing an empire in decline, but I don’t really think that would arrive as news to anyone.


I have a few good close friends who work at Microsoft, and it’s a source of endless debate. At the heart of the issue for me is the lack of clear, single-minded purpose, of intent to do anything other than compete. See “compete” isn’t a strategy, it’s aimless and has you swinging in the direction of anyone who looks like they might do what you do, instead of focussing on the way forward, staring blatantly and openly back infront of you.

A good portion of the talk was spent showing off what other people are going to do with Microsoft’s platform, but devices designed in different ways isn’t really a sexy story. The compelling work, and in my opinion the jewel in Microsoft’s crown (in the same way the Playstation became everything Sony lived for) is the Xbox 360. It is, to my mind, the only space where they are clearly innovating and driving their own path forward, backing it up with an impressive lineup of content. In Xbox they really appear as masters of their own destiny; everywhere else they seem callous, and forever peering over their shoulders at what someone else might be doing.

I highlight Xbox and specifically avoid their much-hyped Project Natal. A tech demo in very controlled environments does not a product make, and having spent a previous life making games for consoles, if the software isn’t there to drive the thing when it launches, it simply won’t matter. There’s also an issue of adoption; I haven’t seen recent figures but traditionally the percentage that even owns a second controller is well below 50%; recent success with music-based games requiring plastic guitars and microphones has surely begun changing that behaviour, though thaty category as a whole is starting to wane.

As for other categories, the less said the better. Microsoft needs a new vision, and it being the media centre of the family home is as good a move as any. Your friend and mine Vik twittered this during the keynote:
Agreed Win7 is a popular & well built OS. But as netbooks become more prevalent, is this what customers will want on their machines?

There’s an increasingly rapid transition going on to web services and away from non-core applications. A friend who came to visit me in Toronto recently only traveled with his iPhone, saying it negated the need for him to have a laptop with him at all. If we entertain the notion for a moment that that is the start of a larger trend, lauding last year’s operating system starts to look less like a success story, and more like a fossil somehow reanimated.

For a brief and fleeting moment I suspect.
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Give me a reason

I find Nokia a fascinating company. Relegated to a bargain basement offering in North America, outside of that continent their phones are sought after. Perhaps not the way an iPhone is, but then Blackberry doesn’t have the cache on my island that it seems to have here in Canada either (helped in no small way by being RIM’s backyard).

Never the less, the launch of their Netbook is an interesting move. Most curious to me is the inclusion of a SIM card slot, which reverses the trend of phones with computer-like functionality and brings us a laptop with the portability accessibility of a mobile phone. It feels gimmicky, though Nokia’s Tero Ojanpera is on the cover of this month’s Fast Company, stating:

We will quickly be the world’s biggest entertainment network.

Big words from a hardware and software company. I have no crystal ball into Nokia’s future, but I can’t imagine the plan is anything as mundane as content exclusive to Nokia proucts in some capacity. We’re moving ever faster to a ubiquitously networked world of transportable identity, one that will be less and less beholden to business models (see the music industry for reference) and more beholden to consumer habits.

The other thing I’m thinking is they’re trying to boost developer support for their Symbian platform…actually the more I think about it, the more this seems to be a play that has nothing to do with the cloud, and everything to do with the device you have in your pocket. What I can’t wrap my head around is why anyone would look at the whole sale destruction of the music industry and still exist in a world where a device and content are somehow interminably linked.

I’m all ears if someone has a different take on this.
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Context of text in the next generation

I read two unrelated posts this morning which both said the same thing; the generation of children who aren’t yet teenagers have an interesting relationship with and approach to communication.

The first was from Fred Wilson who was after a new phone for his daughter to replace a broken iPhone. Funnily enough, she didn’t want it replaced with an iPhone, 2007’s must have toy.

She wants the new crimson red Blackberry Curve.

Fortunately, it looks like I can get an unlocked one on eBay for between $100 and $200.

I wonder what this says? I realize it’s a sample size of one, but I’ve heard that a bunch of her friends have also given up their iPhones in search of a better texting device which seems to be the one feature they value most.

The second was from Simon Chen who said exactly the same thing:
Ask a teenager to give up their mobile phone and see what happens. Actually, I bet if you told any kid today that the new rule of the house is their phones would be restricted to voice calls only (and that the text or SMS function would be disabled), there would be a global revolt. Parents would be locked in cars and basements and all manner of threats would be shouted from every rooftop.

Kids don’t talk on phones anymore. They grunt. But the little f@#ckers can text. Man, can they text.

I am loathe to carry out a conversation via text, I flat out refuse and don’t respond, or else I call if it is really important*. But I’ve seen this behaviour in my younger cousins, and being somewhat pedantic about grammar and punctuation, have certainly seen it carried out in the way sentences are constructed - or rather abbreviated into forms that begin to border on unrecognisable.

With this in mind, I’ve begun thinking aloud (and with no real clarity yet) about what this means for the way the next generation will communicate, particularly how they will expected to be communicated to and how this will impact their interactions with the rest of the world.

For example, is it reasonable to expect “correct” grammar to be taught if it ceases to apply to their daily lives the way it does to mine? Will an essay in SMS or l33t speak be admissable in new communications courses once they at university? More applicable to me, how does that change the nature of text in ads? How do you affect the tone of a piece if not just punctuation but vowels themselves cease to play a part? Srlsy?

I’d dismiss the above as nonsense, except I already see my own generation with hard and fast mind sets on certain things nobody had to teach us, we just knew. The notion of respecting someone because of their title never even entered our minds; what do I take for granted that the next batch won’t bat an eyelid at?

The changing nature of communication is something I find endlessly interesting, even if there are no easy answers.

—

*Things that are important:

  1. A guitar I simply must have

  2. The girl I’m seeing accidentally meeting the girl I’m seeing

  3. Confusion over which bar we will begin the evening’s festivities in

  4. A Springsteen tour being announced

  5. More as I think of them…