Here we go again: Ed Bott points out how outrageous it is for Apple to install so-called “updates” to the iPhone Configuration Utility on a Windows computer that does not have this software installed, in fact one that has never had an iPhone or iPod connected to.

He is right, this is obviously not an update, but installing new, and in his case obviously unnecessarily software.   It’s also not the first time, I described my  similar experience early last year. Back then I also wrote:

Apple fans are a religious cult who came in hordes to defend Holy Apple. (before you chastise me, just look at how often I point to Apple as a better choice, without becoming blindly faithful)

And boy, did I prove right on that …

Read more here.

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Well, SAP Executives, for starters .. just ask Vinnie Mirchandani or Larry Dignan. SAP Execs and key customers were quite dismissive of the iPhone as a business communication platform.  But like I’ve said before discussing Oracle’s SaaS offering, it’s not what they say … it’s where they put their money. smile_wink

Granted, the SAP – Sybase partnership just being announced at these very moments (webcast) isn’t all about the iPhone: it’s about making the SAP Business Suite 7 available on iPhone, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry.  Still, it’s nice to see they chose the “right phone” for the video. smile_wink (hat tip: Jeff Nolan)

(Cross-posted from CloudAve. To stay abreast of news, analysis and just plain opinion on Cloud Computing, SaaS, Business grab the CloudAve Feed here.)

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Disgusting

Startups February 13th, 2009

This fart-fight is just … disgusting.

And here’s what I really think of this monkey-business.

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Global warming. The U.S. losing its edge in science and technology. A growing income gap. And what are the best and the brightest working on?

-asked Tim O’Reilly, Father-of-all-things-Web-2.0 at the  Web 2.0 Expo in September.

Do you see a problem here?  You have to ask yourself, are we working on the right things?

Some of the negative examples he cited were the Facebook application Superpoke and the popular iPhone app "iBeer," which simulates chugging a pint of beer. Has anything changed since O’Reilly’s alert?  Let’s see:

The most popular of 50+ (!) fart applications, iFart Mobile generated $10,000 a day at 99c per download until it got written up just before Christmas, then it exploded, bringing in $27,249 on Christmas Day.  Dou think it’s jus a crazy name for a useful program?  Nope: all it does is to make farting noises.smile_speedy

Tapping into the Apple phone craze, accidental entrepreneurs rake in millions by creating popular applications.

-says the Washington Post in an aptly named article: The iPhone’s Golden Touch.   At least Smule, the showcased company does not make fart noises: they have applications like virtual lighter, a virtual firecracker, a voice changer, a virtual  wind instrument. They are on track to make $1 million this year, a buck a piece.

If this is not crazy, I don’t know what is… Brian Greenstone, who has been writing (real) games for Apple computers for 21 years agrees:

It’s crazy. It’s like lottery money. In the last four and a half months we’ve made as much money off the retail sales of iPhone apps as we’ve made with retail sales of all of the apps that we’ve made in the past 21 years — combined.

Spending 99c a time does not feel like a big decision – yet it all feels like a gigantic waste. An it will get written up as showcases of entrepreneurship. 

I would like to amend the definition of entrepreneurship to include the creation of something useful (yes, I know, I’ve just opened a Pandora’s box, but …). Let’s differentiate opportunity seekers (nothing wrong with that) from Entrepreneurs.  I’d like to stand on a soap box and yell: People, wake up!  Don’t you have anything better to do?

But my voice isn’t loud enough.  I thought Tim O’Reilly’s was … shall we heed his call to do something worthy?  Make it a New Year’s Resolution for 2009?

(Cross-posted from CloudAve)

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The 2004 thriller Cellular features three stars: Kim Basinger, Chris Evans, and a Nokia 6660 video-phone. The kidnapped school-teacher played by Kim Basinger pieces together a broken phone and reaches a random dude, Ryan (Chris Evans) on cell-phone – this call literally becomes her lifeline.

Ryan effortlessly uses his Nokia miracle-phone in the middle of a wild race in his (stolen) Porsche, even produces the video evidence that will put the bad guys away at the Happy End.

But are Nokia phones really so easy to use in real life?   Read on to find out…

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iPhone, the Secret Weapon

Humor November 18th, 2008

Those damn cell-phones…  we’ve long known they tend to fry our brains, then we learned they can also fry our more private parts, down south.  (My most scientific dissertation on the subject made it to TED, presented by Yossi Vardi.)

Now we find out some models, especially the iPhone are secret spy weapons: they take snapshot of your most private body parts and email the compromising photos all automatically, without manual intervention.  (No, I’m not drunk, it’s all here.)

So beware, fellow male victims: don’t carry this thing in your front pocket, anywhere close to the family jewels. smile_eyeroll

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Yes, you read it right: the first announcement of Zoho Mail’s general availability, with Google Gears-based offline support did not come from Zoho, but from the Google Gears team, which released this video discussing Zoho’a use of Google Gears, synchronization, the Marketplace and  a lot more a bit prematurely:

Somewhat used to it (see TechCrunch Releases New Zoho Service: Invoice) the Zoho folks decided to play along and released their own announcement.

This announcement somewhat symbolizes the interesting dynamics between Zoho and Google: competitors, yet collaborators.   ReadWriteWeb is probably right:

But also Google probably sees Zoho less as a competitor at this point (even though Zoho does compete directly against Google Apps) and more as an evangelist for its technology – such as Google Gears.

First of all what’s in today’s announcement:

  • Zoho Mail has been in private beta for over a year now. As much as we like to switch to native collaboration using web-based tools, email is still where most productivity workers spend 80+% of their time.  Mail is the glue that brings it all together – so it’s important for Zoho to step out of background testing mode and make Mail publicly available. It’s also an integral part of the Zoho Business Suite.
  • Features: It’s an email service (everyone gets a user@zoho.com email account) and an email program that can consolidate several other email accounts, Outlook-style.  It combines old and new: supports hierarchical folders a’la Outlook as well as Gmail-style labels, chronological view as well as the threaded conversation views made popular by Gmail.
  • Access anywhere, any time: Offline access is provided via Google Gears (for now Firefox and IE only), and it’s also available on the iPhone.
  • Integrated Chat – this is another “glue” application within the Zoho Suite, and several other features listed here.

So with all that, why am I unhappy?  I’m a die-hard Gmail fan, mostly for its productivity boosting features:

  • Conversation threads
  • Labels
  • Search

Zoho Mail handles the latter two well, but I am not too happy with the way conversation threading works.  My business conversations last weeks, include dozens of emails, and on a traditional mail system the threads are basically a pain to put together before responding to someone.  Gmail handles it automagically, and as a side-effect, it presents a lot more information on it’s list screen – since the dozen individual emails are now compressed into one line.

But we all have different usage patterns. When debating the importance of threads, I looked at other Zoho Mail users whose conversations are typically one-off, so they won’t value threading feature at all.  In fact not everyone needs productivity.  Not everyone wants to go through a paradigm change.

AOL, YAHOO, Hotmail are the absolute web-mail market leaders,and they should do whatever it takes to keep their customers.  Their mainstream users are corporate employees who use Outlook in the Office, whether they like it or not is irrelevant, they are used to it. When they go home, they may not email a lot. Some will check their emails daily, once a week, or less. They want a personal email that resembles to what they already know.  For them familiarity is more important than productivity.

As much as I hate to admit it,  I am NOT the mainstream Zoho customer.  I am probably more a part of the TechCrunch 53,651 (even though it’s 1M now) than the mainstream customer base Zoho targets.   And if it wasn’t clear before, the current crisis brought home the message loud and clear: only businesses with real revenues survive.  Which probably means that for all my yelling and screaming, Zoho is quite right coming out with an email system that meets the needs of businesses who actually pay for it.  After all, this is what enables them to offer all the other apps I like for free.  And I like free. smile_wink

(Disclosure: I’ve been a long-time Advisor to Zoho and they are exclusive sponsor of my main gig, CloudAve. This article has been cross-posted there.)

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AT&Tease

Business, Humor July 18th, 2008

Again

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The privilege to give their money to Apple and AT$T:

And the hope to get their money out of collapsed Indymac: (no. it’s not *that* Mac)

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PC World, Gizmodo, 9 to 5 Mac, Mobility Site , jkOnTheRun and probably a bunch of others happily report that while the iPhone 3g battery life can’t be compared to the first-gen one, it’s still better than any other 3G phones on the market today.

This is a worthless comparison without adding the important fact that other phones have replaceable batteries.  C’mon, spare batteries are so slim, you can easily carry one, and use your phone without any interruption  – except on the iPhone: when it’s gone, in about 5 hours, you’re dead.

Zemanta Pixie

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