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Facebook, Play the Higher Ground

Posted on November 10, 2010 by jessestay

I was wrong.

On Twitter, Buzz, and on Scoble’s blog I was insisting there was a way to retrieve Email addresses via Facebook‘s API. That’s because I truly thought there was. In fact, I had this scathing blog post ready criticizing Google on playing games with Facebook (which I think is wrong and evil, too) when all Google had to do is embrace Facebook’s API, something Gmail has been reluctant to do for some reason. However, that aside, I’d like to put the Onus on Facebook this time. It’s time for Facebook to stick to their guns, fix their API, and make this stuff a little more open than before.

By open, I don’t mean take away any privacy controls. I don’t mean release any e-mail addresses or phone numbers that my friends are hiding from my view. I don’t mean releasing any e-mail addresses or phone numbers that my friends haven’t approved 3rd party apps from taking. I mean, respectful of privacy, let this data go! It’s time.

Here’s what Facebook needs to do:

First, they need a global privacy control for each user, that is opt-out only if they’ve already opted into their friends seeing their e-mail address. There should be a big message at the top when you log into Facebook giving users the option to opt out, with a user-friendly description telling what that means. (part of the problem is many users won’t even understand this, for which I sympathize with Facebook)

Second, they need one more extended permission apps must be granted by users that authenticate through Facebook: “friends_emails” – if you want to also enable friend phone numbers (which I also recommend), add “friends_phones”. This way, I, the user, get to decide and have to make the choice if I want that application to access my friends’, through the social contract I made with them, e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

Right now the only way to access e-mail address information is either through a special deal Facebook has with Yahoo, a special deal Facebook has with Microsoft, or the Facebook app on several mobile devices. There is no way for an average developer to access this stuff. It’s not in FQL. It’s not in the old REST API. It’s not in the new Graph API. Technically, if I have each and every one of my friends come in and log into my application I could get them to all give me permission to get their e-mail address, but that to me seems like a really flawed way to allow me to share their e-mail addresses. Facebook can do better than this – they’re much smarter than this. They can make this work for everyone if they try. Right now it just looks like you are hanging on for dear life to my data. Maybe that’s the case, but it isn’t right.

I hope Facebook can play the higher ground on this. I hope this is only a technical hurdle. Facebook did make it possible to export all your data, including e-mail addresses, earlier, so I see this as an ongoing trend and I hope this is on the radar (although my request to download my data failed for some reason). I see this as an opportunity where Facebook could be made out to be the good guy, and then afterwards no one would probably even notice the feature’s there.

Just do it.

You Don’t Own My Family History – I Do

Posted on October 16, 2010 by jessestay

I think I’ve rebuilt my Family Tree about 20 or 30 different times throughout my lifetime. The process usually starts with me entering in the names I know on sites like Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org or OneGreatFamily.com. I usually hit a stopping point where I can’t remember any more, then I start doing searches. I’ll usually start on FamilySearch.org and get everything I can. Then I’ll move over to Ancestry.com, getting a 7 day free trial so I can get the data I need (do I really need to pay to get my family’s information?), then I’ll try other sources, like the auto-matched data on OneGreatFamily.com. Then I’ll ask family members for the family trees they have, import that as much as I can (merging many duplicates in the process), and then hopefully have as complete a family tree as possible. I’ll feel proud of myself for completing it, move on to other things, then several years later, start over again because I forgot my accounts from before. Maybe I’m unique in this, but this is the story of my life. I just did it again tonight, in fact – this shouldn’t be the case for someone who has most of his genealogy already done for generations.

The internet is too silo’d when it comes to Genealogy and Family History! It is comprised of numerous, private databases of people all linked together as one, but each in its own separate database. The problem is one database will have some information while another will have other information, and they all want your money to get at the information you are missing, which, in reality, belongs to you and your family in the first place! Sure, they often provide an option to export your family history and import it into another service, but then you have just one more database, this one lying on your own computer, and any updates to the other databases never update the one that lies on your computer. Let’s face it – GEDCOM just creates more databases – it does not unify.

With my background in Social Networking I feel I have a place to say in this. Many Social Networks have had the same problems to get through. Facebook, for instance, stores your social graph (in this case your friends) in one database – sure, they provide an API to share those friends and let you store them in your own database and retrieve updates via a real-time interface, but the central repository is still on Facebook’s servers. They did just create the ability to export your data, but that presents the same problem as GEDCOM – it creates more databases. It does not solve the problem, but I know they have desires to get around this, hopefully eventually (and I truly believe they will).

Google seems to be doing this right, although it’s proving difficult to compete by doing so. They’ve established a set of standards, FOAF, XFN, and Google Profiles to link relationships on the web together via open means. Then any service that wants to (right now the company with the biggest capability to do this is, to no surprise, Google) can index these relationships by following the FOAF data and XFN links back to each individual, bringing in all kinds of meta data along the way. In this way the web is the database, not any single company. The problem is Google is the only one capable of indexing all this effectively at the moment, but at least they make it available to the public via their Social Graph API. It’s no surprise Facebook wants to remain private as they try to build their own index through people.

Family History needs to emulate the Google way. Currently there is no “Google” of the Family History world. Everyone’s private! It’s time Family History makes the web its database and not any one single source. In fact, there are already standards, such as XFN and FOAF that could make this possible. We just need to be attaching these to our data. This can very much be a reality if we work for it and make it priority.

I should be able to upload my records to Ancestry.com and any other service that wants to index that data should be able to pull that data from Ancestry and render it for me based on the relationships around the web they have indexed. The records should be stored on the web. The relationships should be stored on the web. The entire family tree should come from the web, not any single database or repository.

I understand there are hurdles to jump – it’s not an easy problem to tackle. There are privacy concerns to get around. There is competition to get over. There is technology that needs to be built.

I’m calling for a change in outlook though. It’s time we stop thinking about single organizations owning and storing our data for us. It’s time we start, instead, thinking about the user owning their data. Anything we store should belong to that user, and that user should be able to access that information on any service they visit on the web, and there should be absolutely no limits preventing that user from getting at that data. We need standards. We need organization. We need to unify. New players need to step up and make this a reality. (I’m talking to you Google and Facebook, or any entrepreneur that thinks they can do it)

How can we make this happen?

Disclaimer: These comments are my own opinions and do not represent the organization I work for in any way. I have worked for or with most of the organizations mentioned in this article, so I feel I have a say in this matter, but these are simply my opinions, and hope that we can start a conversation.

The Next "Facebook Platform" for the Modern Web, and Why Twitter’s Running the Wrong Way

Posted on September 16, 2010 by jessestay

I’ve talked previously about “the web with no login button”, a vision of the Building Block Web that follows the user where they go, knowing who they are and adapting as they move. With the advent of mobile, entire operating systems running on the browser, cloud-based personal information stores and APIs such as Kynetx to manage both user and application data for the user, we are so close to being where we want to be! There’s one hurdle we have to jump before we get there though, and I’m concerned Twitter just ran the wrong direction with their new UI. The hurdle we’ve got to get around is that of allowing a user’s social connections to also follow them wherever they go, uninhibited by any single corporation. Not a single big player seems willing to take this step yet, but when it happens, I guarantee you’ll see a revolution at the scale of when Facebook Platform launched in 2007. The first person to do it gets the opportunity to lead the pack, and hundreds of millions will follow.

I mentioned earlier on Twitter that something about Twitter’s new UI (which I’ve actually only seen screenshots and demos of since I’m not on their Press list) really bugged me but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Perhaps it was hearing Ev emphasize “yet” when talking about CoTweet-like functionality. Perhaps it was hearing Jason Goldman talk about improving their “following” interface to something that I think could potentially threaten some of what I’m doing with my business. Perhaps it’s the feature they just asked me to kill on SocialToo that I haven’t announced yet. Perhaps it’s their lack of a solid roadmap like Facebook has to warn developers of what’s ahead and who will be replaced next. As a developer, every step like this Twitter makes is certainly a threat to my business model and anyone else like me. It’s definitely a token to their closed nature. However I think it’s much bigger than that.

I think Alex Payne, of whom I just became a big fan after his recent post on his perceptions of the new UI (a must read), said it perfectly, “all communications media will inevitably be decentralized, and that all businesses who build walled gardens will eventually see them torn down.” Now, I don’t think all walled gardens will die – Ev William’s own original startup, Blogger.com, remained closed in a time where sites like LiveJournal and WordPress were going completely open source and it was still bought by Google. In those days, going open source and giving people the opportunity to own their own data stored on each blog was the equivalent of federating social connections would be today – instead of owning content people would now have the opportunity to own their own relationships and port those from site to site if they choose, or host the relationships themselves if they also choose (I’m kind of doing that at http://community.staynalive.com/jesse). Blogger obviously survived and is now one of the largest blogging platforms on the planet.

Twitter’s new UI, while I’m sure it will increase page views for them and bring them lots of money, is too late for Twitter to do any sort of innovation in this space. Facebook already did this, and they were called a “walled garden” as a result and are now trying to break out of this reputation as users were getting ready to revolt. Maybe that’s what Twitter wants, and I’m sure it will make them a lot of money. They may even gain a large segment of the masses. Businesses will still flock and so will the money. I’ve mentioned Twitter’s need to own the UI before, but I argue it’s now too late to be focusing on that.

Twitter could however, have an opportunity to create a new wild west – a new playing field if they choose, a new canvas. If they do so they need to focus not on the UI, but on the platform and decentralizing it significantly. Then new opportunities arise such as payments, new service models, search, ad platforms and more that can still make them profitable. The difference is they’re now spanning the entire web instead of their own walled garden.

I think Facebook started to make moves in this direction as they released Facebook Connect last year, and then Graph API this year along with no restrictions, redacted term limits on storage, and a push further and further away from building on their own UI. They introduced a new protocol in fact that enables websites to be indexed more properly and enables those websites to more easily bring Facebook connections into the experience. Facebook is moving from the walled garden approach out into the open web. Twitter, it seems, is moving in the complete opposite direction, which seems perplexing.

Even Facebook hasn’t hit the nail on the head yet – maybe they’ll make the first move at the next F8 conference. The next revolution of the web will be when one of these players that currently owns your Social Graph completely federates, creates a standard for others to follow, and then other companies are forced to follow as a result, forcing all the others to rush to find what they’re good at which wasn’t owning your data or social connections. Then at that point you will truly be allowed to bring your social connections with you wherever you go, allowing for a web with not only no login button, but one where your family and friends follow with you along the way. That’s a really powerful concept!

Kevin Marks (who led the OpenSocial platform at Google) mentioned the irony in a tweet earlier today of installing the open source social network Diaspora as we were discussing Twitter’s very centralized real time streaming API and federated environments. I think that Kevin may be part of the revolution and we just don’t know it yet. If none of these players make a move, it will be the next open source project like WordPress, or LiveJournal did in the early 00’s that will emerge from the dust, gain traction, and the landscape will naturally adapt. It has to happen – it’s going to happen, and the first big player to do it will lead the way. I’m excited to find out who makes that move and I’m already thinking of ways I can jump on that bandwagon as a developer.

Picture courtesy http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article571291.ece

Loud Noises Be Gone! Mute Posts by Source in Google Buzz

Posted on September 13, 2010 by jessestay

I’ve long said that in good social networks, it’s not how you give, but how you receive that makes the social network powerful. This is why I like Facebook – I can hide the types of applications I don’t ever want to see, or I can just hide individuals. I liked FriendFeed even better because they took it a step even further by allowing me to not just hide by source or application or just the user, but they allowed me to hide specific applications for only specific users. So, for instance, if I wanted to hide all the Twitter posts from Robert Scoble I could click a button, “hide entries like these”, configure it correctly, and now I would never see a Twitter post from Robert Scoble again, even though I might still see Twitter posts from others. Google just entered the scale of FriendFeed with the same level of granularity in what you want to receive.

In a post on Buzz, Rick Klau, the person over Google Profiles, formerly over Blogger, and originally one of the founders of Feedburner, posted, “Some of us would rather keep up with our friend’s Google Reader shared items in Google Reader or our co-worker’s Twitter posts in Twitter. So, by popular request, you can now mute Google Buzz posts by source for each person you follow.” So, in typical Google fashion, Google is using the “mute” functionality from Gmail and other areas to allow you to hide specific applications from specific individuals you don’t want to see.

According to Klau, to turn on the functionality:

“You can do this from two places:
1) Click the arrow in the corner of any post
2) Click a person’s name from the Buzz tab

If you ever want to unmute a source, just click the person’s name from the Buzz tab again and “unmute.”

So if you’re on Buzz or you want to try Buzz, you can safely turn on your Twitter feed or whatever feed you chose, and now it’s up to those receiving your feed on how noisy they want to be. Now MG Siegler doesn’t have to complain about how noisy my Twitter stream is any more. 😉

UPDATE: The post by Rick Klau was actually a re-share of a post by the Google Buzz Team here: http://www.google.com/buzz/googlebuzz/eaCpwkgqPiu/Mute-posts-by-source-Some-of-us-would-rather-keep

Apple is Creating a "Social Network" the Right Way

Posted on September 2, 2010 by jessestay

Today Apple did one of the most powerful things they have done since the launch of the iPod. Notice that I didn’t say “revolutionary”. There’s nothing new about it. Note that I didn’t say “innovative”. There’s nothing unique about it. Today Apple launched, quite simply, a “Social Network for Music”. What’s so powerful is that they’re not really trying to create a social network at all. Apple realizes the Social Graph is just a complement to something bigger. Instead, Apple focused on one of the biggest strengths they have – their music, and made it social. I think this is powerful, and here’s why:

I think Dave Winer got it right earlier today – this is only the beginning for Apple. You see, the secret to a successful anything on the web (not just “social”) is to focus on what you do best, and revolve around that. Google’s strength was search. Microsoft’s strength was the consumer OS that could be installed on almost any affordable PC, and has since become Exchange and Outlook and Enterprise apps. Oracle’s strength is the database. Facebook’s is the Social Graph. No one does these things better than these guys, and it has been their focus that has made them big. The moment they lose that focus is the moment they start to fizzle.

That’s why I question when I hear people saying “we’re creating another Social Network.” Or, “so and so is competing against Facebook” (even though I did say earlier today this is a threat to Facebook – I’ll explain that in a second). The minute I hear that I immediately tune out. The age of “Social Networks” is gone. Social has become ubiquitous, or at least it should be with all the tools available to us now. It’s time to focus on your core, and Apple has done that brilliantly with this new Ping launch. They will sell boat-loads of music from this because now rather than trying to find new music through search, people are going to be finding new music through the things their friends are interested in, an even more powerful factor in the purchasing process. That’s just the start.

As Dave Winer implied, this social experience will eventually expand across every service Apple operates. Apple is only building the Social Graph right now. You’ll build your list of friends to learn of their music, even import your Facebook friends in the process to help port that Social Graph over to Apple, and you’ll start to build conversations and spend time in iTunes in multiple environments. It won’t be long before you see Apple bringing your friends into the entire iTunes experience, showing Apps as well as music, along with, right next to Albums you want to purchase, other friends that have liked or purchased those Albums. Soon Apple will let you take those friends into Mobile Me to share photos with each other. They’ll let you take those friends into your contact lists on your iPhone. They’ll build it into the camera app on the iPhone and iPod devices. You’ll be able to see what your friends are watching on your AppleTV and you’ll be able to pull that entire experience into the operating system – both OS X and iOS. All of these elements will go into the Ping experience, and I bet that eventually branches out into the browser. Keep in mind these aren’t just anonymous friends – these are real-life connections. My Mom uses iTunes. I bet many of your Grandparents use iTunes. This is perhaps bigger than Facebook (According to Wired, iTunes in just 2005 had over 200 million users – anyone have a more recent number?).

Now, for the pinnacle event – the equivalent of Facebook’s F8: the Platform. You can count on it. Eventually Apple will integrate these connections into the SDK and you’ll now be able to bring over your Ping friends to the applications you use and the games you play. I think it’s no accident the ability to play against friends in the SDK was mentioned in today’s announcement. Now Ping’s Social Graph becomes a standard, something all apps will be fighting for, and they’ve all of the sudden hit the caliber of Facebook Platform. They’ll be able to port those connections to the web, and now Apple has just as powerful a search and recommendation algorithm as both Facebook, and perhaps more than Google currently.

Today’s move was inevitable, but genius on the part of Apple. I’m glad they didn’t try to build an entire Social Network out of the box. Start small, and gradually bring your users along for the ride as you expand that experience. I think perhaps that’s where Google went wrong – where’s my news feed in Picasa? Where can I see what things my friends are searching for and have opted me to see? How do I port my Facebook Social Graph over to those experiences? Google’s focusing too broadly – I think they realize that. I hope they don’t rush to a large social network, but rather start slowly and gradually bring it all together.

I’ve talked about building on your core – your core is key. Apple, quite literally, showed its core today as it stayed focused on one of the things they do best right now – Music. Everything else is just a complement, and that is totally evident in Ping. I think Apple just confirmed what we all knew up to this point – “Social” is now just a commodity.

How the Little Guy Can Get Published – an Autobiography

Posted on September 1, 2010 by jessestay

As I just wrote, we live in an era where having a voice is much easier than it used to be. Getting published is actually quite simple if you’re willing to work for it. In fact, I’m living proof. Just 3 years ago I was working a 9-5 job as my sole source of income as a programmer for a major health company, doing nothing but that. I was a nobody. No one knew me. In very short time I was approached by my 3 publishers, amassed thousands of readers on this blog, and many more on Twitter and Facebook, and built a reputation for myself. I truly believe this is something anyone can do. Here’s what I did (this is still tough to write, as I still don’t believe I’m anywhere near my potential – to me, I’m still a nobody):

I Started a Blog

I actually did this a long time before I wrote my first book with HappyAbout. I was trying to build an open source pseudo blogging/CMS platform, which actually powered this blog at one point. In a sense, the goal was to eventually create a social network, something we tried to do at a previous job I was at and never completed. This was before Facebook or Twitter or even Digg or anything like it. In a sense, it was the next dimension of a GeoCities, or FreeServers.com (where I worked on the founding team doing Support in 1999).

I noticed a few friends blogging at the time to share tricks they had used to fix coding problems, or ways they got their various computer problems working. I knew I had done a few things that I needed to write down for memory and others to benefit, so I started using the blog to share these things. Soon that turned into me just sharing thoughts to what was mostly a non-existent audience, but I didn’t care – I was doing it for myself mostly.

Then I really started subscribing to other bloggers, especially around Utah and elsewhere. I think Google Reader probably played a big role in this. I subscribed to Phil Windley, and Janet Meiners (NewspaperGrl), Jason Alba, Phil Burns, Thom Allen, and others. Utah actually had a bustling tech blogging scene back then (many of those I mention are still active bloggers and great blogs to follow). As these guys blogged, it inspired me to join their conversation and post my own thoughts on the topics they were writing about. I’d link to theirs, and others’ articles, and my links would appear in their trackbacks and they would notice.

I began to make a name for myself by just sharing what I knew, and writing about it. There is no better way to share knowledge and show others you have that knowledge than through a blog. This blog eventually grew and grew as I did this, eventually getting recognition by sites like TechMeme, featured on TechCrunch, mentions on Mashable, and many others (I keep a log of coverage for my record at http://www.delicious.com/jessestay/coverage). I say this not to brag, but to show you that by simply posting a blog, and sharing your knowledge, while at the same time truly participating in the conversation in the blogosphere (aka “the memes”), you’ll grow your blog as well and quickly gain a voice.

Now when I write, people listen – in some ways, it doesn’t matter if I have a publisher, and that gets more and more possible the more my audience grows.

I Became a Pioneer

It wasn’t until the launch of Facebook Platform at the very first F8 that I really started making a name for myself. I decided at that point my idea for a Social Network wasn’t needed any more because now I could just build niche ideas on top of Facebook. Facebook grew, and grew, and grew, and I was with them from day one, building apps for their platform. I saw this niche, and I saw the value in it, so I took it and ran. I became an expert in that niche and made it mine. Not just that, but I stuck to it. (Interesting note – I’ve actually been building on Facebook Platform longer than many Facebook employees have.) That eventually branched out and I took on Social Media and APIs in general, and now I’m even embracing much of the world of Marketing as we know it (even though I’m technically just a Developer by trade). I learned everything I could about this stuff, and actually applied it, creating application after application both on my own and for others to prove myself in this area. It was partly from this that SocialToo was born.

In many ways I was inventing an industry. I was with many others, but because I took it on early I was still one of the few “pioneers”. Becoming a Pioneer is so important. If everyone else is doing it, and you’re not the first, you’re not going to be recognized. You’ve got to pick a skill, perhaps find a new movement of many, and jump on that one. Even if you are one of many, if you’re one of the many firsts, you can now be taken seriously. I suggest taking it even further and finding a niche amongst those firsts (mine was the brand of “Social Media Developer” rather than just “Social Media Expert”) and embracing that.

How do you pick the right niche to be a “pioneer”? I think more than anything it has to feel right to you – make sure you have a clear vision of the future of that industry. For me I saw a new, social world where social was tightly integrated into every piece of the web. I saw a Building Block Web, where social pieces were tightly coupled together in an experience the user wasn’t even aware the social elements existed. I saw the power of bringing power to developers. I also followed bloggers, like Paul Allen and Robert Scoble, who really caught onto this vision (although I admit I met Scoble later in the game). Note that this niche also solved some of my own needs, which also contributed to my desire to learn more about it, and I discovered along the way how powerful this stuff actually was. Vision is key.

You’ve got to figure this out yourself, and perhaps that’s the hardest part. If I were you I’d be looking in the mobile space, and at what companies like Kynetx are doing, though. (and at a minimum, more than anything, consider and understand the concepts and visions these companies have) Read my article on the Future with no login button for my own personal vision, but you have to come up with your own.

I Promoted the Need, and Networked Like Crazy

Once I had discovered a need and tried to establish my skills surrounding that need, I began blogging about it. I realized this was a new market, and one that had the potential to be very powerful. It was one with very few blog posts on the topic, yet. I began to write posts making it known that I knew Facebook, and in particular Facebook development. I was actually at one point the number one search result on Google for “Facebook Developer” because of this. That wasn’t on accident.

I became one of the only people on LinkedIn with “Facebook Developer” in my title, and soon I began getting calls asking for help in this emerging industry. I made it easy for people to find me by publishing my e-mail address and even my phone number on my blog and working to make it as easy as possible for people to contact me on LinkedIn.

More than anything though, it was this blog that made a name for myself. Well, this, and following other bloggers through Google Reader at the time. I started to learn of local “Blogger Dinners” here in the Salt Lake City area where local bloggers were getting together to just meet and network. I decided to attend one or two, and it was there I met who would soon become my co-author on my first book, Jason Alba. Jason had previously written, “I’m on LinkedIn–Now What???” and I had followed him on his blog. I can’t remember exactly how (I think it was a Seth Godin talk, ironically), but he had heard I was the local “Facebook guy”, and was looking to do a book similar to his first on Facebook.

He had already established a relationship with his publisher through his first book, and approached me, asking me to help him with his second book, giving me half of his royalties in the process. We went forward with the book. At that point because I had established a reputation, and was already a published author, that lead to O’Reilly contacting me (through my good friend, Joseph Scott), and now I’m writing my third book with Wiley in a Dummies series.

Networking is so critical – it is truly who you know that matters. It has been through Social Media and networking that I met Jason and that lead to my first book. It was through meeting a need of Guy Kawasaki’s and Chris Pirillo’s that lead to creating the first script on SocialToo and I feel I can now call them good friends. It was through answering a FriendFeed post that I met Robert Scoble and I can now call him a good friend. That meeting lead to me meeting my great friend Louis Gray. We’re all normal people, and it’s social media that makes us normal. It’s through this technology – Twitter, Facebook, and especially blogs, that we’re able to connect with people we were never able to meet before. Embrace that!

I Believed in Myself!

More than anything, I think it was when I realized I could actually do this stuff, that I started to do it. There is something to be said for the law of attraction – be it faith, God-driven, or Universal laws, it’s real. When you truly believe you can accomplish something, it will happen. I grew up not believing this. I grew up thinking I’d never write a book. I grew up thinking I’d never start my own business. I grew up thinking I was a nobody.

It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse that this was possible that I started to think I was truly capable of anything. And it was when that happened that I started seeing incredible success as a result, and I’m still seeing that to this day. Anyone can accomplish what I’ve done – I’m the little guy. I’m a nobody, but I can be anybody I want to.

I hope this blog post doesn’t come off as a “I’m better than you” story to anyone – it was intended to be the exact opposite. You see, Social Media and the web as we know it today makes it possible for any of us to gain a voice. The Book Publisher, the Sports Conference, the Music Label, or even the VC or major Tech Blog are all much less relevant than they used to be. Your potential is greater than it ever has been, and while you can still use these tools as launching platforms, you get to own the process along the way. Anyone can do this, and I think we need to break away from “the man” at least a little bit to have full flexibility in doing so. This is why you see Seth Godin leaving his publishers. This is why you see BYU leaving its Conference. This is why you see many musicians leaving their labels.

The little guy is much more relevant than he used to be. Social Media is about empowering and bringing a voice to the individual. Embrace that. Accept it. You too can have a voice.

Google Reader is Behind the Times – Here is What They Can Do to Fix That

Posted on August 3, 2010 by jessestay

As anyone who knows me can attest, I’m a huge Google Reader user and fan. Despite users like Robert Scoble and others declaring RSS Readers dead, I still find utility from being able to finely adapt my reading experience by selecting what I want to subscribe to on the web. As a blogger, it’s one of my greatest weapons – in fact, sites don’t even have to have an RSS feed for me to track their changes. For instance, let’s say I want to track job announcements at a certain website to know when new features are coming based on the new jobs they’re hiring for. All I have to do is enter the jobs page into Google Reader and it will automatically tell me when it notices new changes on that Page. No coding necessary.

However, while I disagree that RSS is dead, I am worried that News Readers like Google Reader have neglected to stay up with modern news gathering trends. Perhaps they think remaining simple will win, but frankly, using just RSS and friends suggestions from RSS to find the news just doesn’t cut it any more. This is why you see Readers like FlipBoard and FLUD and Pulse making a big inroads on devices like the iPad. They’re ignoring Google Reader and going straight to social networks like Twitter and Facebook, where the news is likely to come from your close friends and family. I’m concerned Google Reader is taking so long to adapt towards this trend – here are some tips that I think would make it a much better, and more modern service:

Embrace the Dark Side

With the exception of Youtube, Google seems to have a real issue with this. They seem afraid to embrace their competitors, the sites that currently have the edge, and the sites that their users are most likely using. Let’s face it – currently the majority of web users are getting their news from their friends on sites like Facebook and Twitter. They’re not going from site to site, plugging in an RSS feed to Google Reader, and reading it that way. I’ve tried to show both my wife and my 10 year old daughter how to do this and they just don’t get it. Even more experienced users who used to be power users of Google Reader like Robert Scoble are moving in this direction.

There’s a minefield of explosive links out there in public on Twitter and Facebook. Slap a social graph on top of that and you now have extremely relevant links you could be harvesting, indexing, and extracting content for your users to read in full inside Google Reader. Google has an opportunity here to pull these users over to their interface and make it even easier for them to read the content their friends on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites are sharing. While RSS is certainly not dead, the Social Graph most definitely reigns supreme – embrace it. Use Facebook Graph API. Use Twitter’s API. Otherwise Google is going to get left in the dust by competitors that do. Users want this.

The Desktop is Not the Future

While Google Reader has built an amazing desktop and web experience, it’s time they move forward. We have gone beyond the typical, dynamic desktop browser being the interface to the web and have moved towards an app era that leverages the web to build custom experiences tailored for static screen sizes on various platforms. There’s the iPhone. There’s the iPad. There are various flavors of Android and Windows for Mobile Phones. Every other web developer building a company right now is building for these platforms. Google seems to be stuck in the web browser, something I argue is a mistake.

True, Google has a custom web experience for the iPad and iPhone, but quite frankly – that experience stinks. Look at the Reeder app for iPad and iPhone to contrast. It has a “move to the next unread item” button, for instance, that lets you easily surf through your unread news and skim it as you please. It has a simple interface for sharing, leaving notes, and even allows you to share to other social networks if you choose. They’ve built an amazing interface that focuses on mobile and tablets that wraps around the stale Google Reader web interface.

Now look at the non-RSS centric experiences like FlipBoard. Swipe your fingers and it flips pages similar to a magazine or book. The experience is magically formatted in a natural way that makes reading the news easy! Mobile devices were built for reading the news. They are the magazines and newspapers of the future. Google Reader should be the ones in control on this front or they’re going to get out-taken by their competitors.

Share! Share! Share!

Google Reader does a little of this. You can share to Twitter and Facebook and other sources, but quite honestly, the experience is lacking. This should be at the forefront of their experience – easy to see and obvious to the reader that this is what they want them to do. Right now to share to Facebook, for instance, I have to click on the “send to” link (or press shift-t), and for any site I want to share to Google makes me leave the site and go to each individual site to share. This experience should be much more integrated into the UI, controlled by keyboard gestures, without having to leave the site. Facebook Graph API and Social Plugins should be used. Twitter’s API or @anywhere should be used. The links should be in more prominent positions, easy for the reader to see. The “Send To” should be consolidated with the “share” link and terminology should all be centered around “sharing”.

The entire experience should be much more social.

Streamline the UI

Google Reader used to be top of the line when it came to great user experiences. They enabled keyboard shortcuts and a very simple UI that was easy to manage. Since then, they have added all sorts of bloat to the interface, slowing it down and making it harder to manage. To hide someone or add them to another group, for instance, it takes at least a minute for me to do anything surrounding that. Refreshing the page takes too long.

Google needs to start fresh and build the UI from the ground up, with these new focuses in mind, and focus on speed, simplicity, and cleanliness. The entire UI needs to be re-done and targeted towards the new features I’ve suggested here. It needs to be faster. No site should take longer than 4 seconds to load. It needs to have entirely different versions for mobile devices, and most of all it needs to be easier to use.

Be Sure Not to Neglect Your Strengths

In all this I am not suggesting Google Reader become FlipBoard. Google Reader needs to stick to its strengths – it needs to continue a strong focus on RSS, while bringing in all the other elements I mentioned. It needs to remain top in its game of strong UIs and easy to organize content reading. It needs to keep the focus on leaving notes and sharing with other Google Reader users.

I’m afraid Google has stopped innovating in this space. We’re seeing so with evidence of other strong readers emerging in the areas I have mentioned. Google has such strong potential to own this space if they chose. I really hope they take this advice constructively and try to adapt these things. If not, users, including myself, are going to be forced to bigger and better ways of consuming our news in a way that is more modern and convenient to the user.

In the meantime, you can follow all my Google Reader shares on my link blog at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/jessestay.

Breaking Down the Signal – The Android, iOS, and WebOS Comparison

Posted on July 18, 2010 by jessestay

There’s no shortage of criticism, complaint, or praise of the various mobile operating systems. The iPhone, Android, the Pre, or even Blackberry and Windows Mobile – no matter which phone you review you’re bound to find someone who either absolutely loves the device they own or completely hates those that do. I tried to make this known in my previous article on my preference towards iPhone, stating the features I liked about it and showing why, despite connectivity issues I thought it was the best phone I’ve tried. I thought it was worth stepping back even further though.

I realized very quickly after my previous article that nothing I said was going to sway those that had already made the Android choice, or the Pre/WebOS choice, to switch back to the iPhone. So I decided not to fight it – here I’m going to take some time showing you the different devices I’ve spent significant time with, what I liked about them, and what they lacked. Then I’ll let you make the choice on what phone works best for you. You might notice there aren’t many articles like this – that’s because they take a lot longer to write and involve a lot more research. This one is no exception.

The Experiment

I’ll admit, my experiment wasn’t the most scientific one could muster. But I will tell you I own 3 phones currently. The first, my work phone, a Palm Pre, which I’ve now owned since March. Secondly, is Apple’s iPhone 4, my main phone where I forward most of my calls now, and recently replaced an iPhone 3GS (my wife having previously owned the iPhone 3G). Lastly, I have the HTC Evo, a test phone I borrowed for a month or so from work so I could understand Android better. My hope was to try to play with the Android products my employer creates in order to design and build Social architecture and end-points into that experience (which is what I do for a living). I am also forwarding all my calls to that phone, through Google Voice. In addition to that, I have access to a Droid Incredible which gets passed around at work, as well as a Blackberry, which I admit I’ve never really touched (nor do I have much desire to play with – I’ll leave that for others to review).

So, the three phones I put to the test were the iPhone 4, the HTC Evo, and the Palm Pre. The minimum amount of time I’ve used any of them has been 2 weeks (the Evo, just barely newer than the iPhone 4). I have carried each for a significant amount of time, playing with them, answering calls, making calls, and trying to get to know the features. I’ve also been trying to get to know the development environments of each as I try to learn the advantages to each development environment. I think I’ve given each phone a fair amount of time to try to have a good understanding. So let’s go into the features, and I’ll let you be the judge:

Palm Pre

Hardware Features:

Let’s face it, the Palm Pre just feels good. When you hold it, it naturally feels good in your hand. Being one of the only mainstream Smartphone devices with a keyboard, I admit that’s an advantage, not a weakness. I have yet to find an on-screen keyboard that you can type on and know what keys you’re typing without looking at the phone. With the Pre, you can almost do that. The Pre, when you slide it open to reveal the keyboard (without, it just looks like a smooth eggshell), has a mirror that you can use to either look at yourself, or see yourself if you need to take a picture of yourself.

The Pre doesn’t have a front-facing camera, and the rear-facing camera is far from what the Evo or iPhone 4 can provide. The other failing part of the Pre is that due to its plastic casing it wears down after about a year or so. I have several friends all with Pres and each one of their phones after a year or so starts to show a lot of wear, and even issues when sliding the case open and shut. That’s part of the problem, the more moving parts you have.

The battery on the Pre is also pretty good. With little use, you should be able to get away with charging it only ever other day or so. Using it as a hotspot, you’ll have to charge it much more frequent. It definitely lasts much longer than my Evo.

As for signal, Sprint in general provides a pretty good signal. The building I work at has repeaters throughout so it’s a tough comparison, but at home I haven’t had many issues, and even taking to the Bay area I always treat it as my backup phone because I know I can always guarantee a signal there. The Pre is a pretty reliable phone, in terms of hardware.

The other thing I really like about the Pre is you can also purchase the charging stone that works with it. With that, you can simply place the phone on the stone and it charges, without any need for connecting wires. This saves countless charging cords and keeps its smooth look as you don’t have to open the little charger opening on the device.

The Operating System:

The Pre is hands-down the most beautiful operating system out there right now. Even Steve jobs gave note to it in their recent press conference. The Pre has just one button (other than the default volume controls and mute switch), which shows you all the programs open at once when you press it. However, it also has a gesture where if you swipe backwards, it always goes back to the previous screen you were on, and if you swipe forwards, it goes forward to the next screen. This works in applications as well.

Let’s not forget that the Pre and WebOS was the first operating system to support true multi-tasking on the phone. Even today its interface is the one that seems to make the most sense. At any time you just press the main button on the phone and all your open applications pop up as windows on the phone. If you want to go to one you just select it. Want to surf through the open applications? Just swipe left or right and you can see all the open “screens” for your applications. If you want to close any, just swipe the screen up and the application gets flung off the canvas, closed forever. It’s a very natural interface that anyone can get used to.

As for the rest of the operating system, well, it’s all based on Linux so it’s very open and very customizable. I have a friend who completely removed his default browser and other apps in the phones he gave to his kids so they couldn’t access the internet. It’s that open.

They’ve taken developers to heart, and even enabling “developer mode” on the phone is a matter of just typing in the Konami code (“upupdowndownleftrightleftrightbastart”) in the search bar. Doing so enables a whole host of features, enabling you to get access to a shell and the heart of the phone. There is also an entire “homebrew” community of applications not officially in Palm’s app store that you can easily install on your phone. My coworker even showed me how to view the source code on these applications – the entire experience is very open to the very core, something not quite the same as Android, also Linux-based.

With developer mode enabled you can also enable tethering on the phone. Searching for it reveals all sorts of articles on the subject, not requiring much effort. The great thing about it is neither Palm nor Sprint seem to object to the hack and openly encourage the homebrew apps such as tethering. The entire experience is, well, beautiful.

Applications:

As I mentioned, the entire application experience on the Pre is a very open experience. Palm makes the entire developer SDK free (normally $99 to closed-source apps) to developers willing to developers willing to make their code open source. Developers of such apps are then required to release their code to the community under open source terms they specified.

The application experience, while not quite as consistent as the iPhone’s (iOS), still makes fairly nice apps. With the surrounding OS, they still look beautiful – the OS makes everything on the phone look beautiful, so ugly or not, the application should not affect the overall experience.

The main problem I saw with applications on the Pre was the lack of them. While in general, I was able to find something for every need I had, the main vendors weren’t always producing my favorite apps for the phone. Things like TomTom, Sling, and others may not ever provide apps for the phone, so the high quality apps may never make it unless there is a viable amount of competition.

In addition, because the Pre no longer supports iTunes (previously they had found a hack to be able to make iTunes recognize the phone), there is no default music player for the device. Therefore if you’ve bought all your music on iTunes you’re out of luck syncing with it. It does work well with solutions like DoubleTwist, so there are alternatives, and I didn’t find the lack of iTunes support to be that big of a deal. It will be less of a deal if cloud-based apps like Spotify start supporting the OS. That said, the apps were my biggest turn off for the Pre.

Development Environment:

Pre had my favorite development environment of the 3. Since most native apps support plain HTML, CSS, and Javascript (that’s why it’s called “WebOS”), it’s dirt simple to learn how to develop on the device. You can use the HTML/CSS/Javascript model, or even port your C/C++ apps into the phone, making porting of heavy OpenGL apps to the phone from iPhone and other devices simple.

The SDK doesn’t have an incredibly powerful IDE experience like the iPhone’s InterfaceBuilder, but it is still sufficient, and since it’s just HTML and Javascript, not a very difficult thing to manage.

HTC Evo

Hardware Features:

The Evo is a machine. From its huge size to its heavy processor, it’s built to run things fast. Out of the box it comes with a 1GHz processor, an 8MP camera, 1.3 MP front-facing camera, an FM Radio, and more.

It’s much bigger than the other phones. I don’t know if it’s the size making it a psychological thing, but it feels much heavier, too. That’s probably one of the biggest downsides in my opinion. It’s a clunker.

The phone reception is pretty good, and boasts 4G speeds on Sprint’s 4G network if it’s available in your area. I was able to get up to about 5Mb/s on mine, and the web experience is very snappy. In fact the entire experience is very snappy due to the speed of the processor.

If anything, I’d say the hardware is the main reason to get this phone (minus the size), except for one thing: the battery. The battery life is horrible! It makes the phone unusable, and goes dead by noon each day when you enable 4G on the phone. When 4G is off, it only lasts until about 2pm each day before having to recharge (my measurement of battery life is by what time you have to recharge it after the time it is fully charged in the morning when I disconnect it from the charger in the morning). Unless you’re willing to carry a charger around with you, this phone will be very difficult to use.

The Operating System:

The Android operating system, like the Evo, is clunky. Everything is very boxy and not very smooth. When you scroll the UI is shaky. I get error messages from the operating system about applications crashing all the time. While the hardware may make up for it on the Evo, the operating system really ties down the potential of the hardware. I hear much of that will be changed in the Gingerbread version of Android, which I have yet to see. At the moment the user experience is far behind its two rivals I’m reviewing here.

The one thing I really like about the Android operating system is the tight integration with Google products. It works seamlessly with Gmail. It works seamlessly with Google Voice. Many of Google’s other products are all integrated tightly into the operating system.

In addition, Google includes deep integration into Facebook and Twitter and other social networks, right in the operating system. However I think you will find greater benefit from dedicated social clients like Seesmic or Tweetdeck or the Twitter app. I don’t think the Social Integration is enough to push one over the edge, at least not yet.

The Android OS, like WebOS, is very open. Being Linux based, you can do many things as a result, offering many customizations you can’t get from the iPhone. That said, whatever you do, you’re still tied to the flavor of Android your provider has given. I’m not sure if Sprint has blessed hacking the Evo or not, and how tightly they’ve locked it down. That’s all up to the phone manufacturer and the cell phone provider.

Applications:

Android has a very rich application environment. While there are still not near as many high quality apps as the iPhone, the number for Android is steadily increasing at a rate faster than the iPhone, and will probably exceed the number of applications the iPhone has at some point.

That said, the application experience on Android isn’t nearly consistent as the iPhone’s. Applications are bulky, crash often, and don’t have nearly as beautiful a UI as the iPhone. The approval process for Android’s store isn’t nearly as strict, so you’re likely, when searching in the app store to find a kid’s app right next to a porn-related application. You’re likely to find very amateur applications, and my bet is at some point the majority of applications built for Android (if that is not already the case) will mostly be those types of applications.

I find the Android’s application experience to be sub-par to that of iOS. That’s not to say it will always be that way – it’s just the way it is now.

Development Environment:

I really like the approach Google took with the Android application development environment. It’s a Java-based environment, something just about every programmer has had some experience with since they teach it in most schools as the beginner class. The development environment will be very familiar to most developers.

In addition, there aren’t near as many hurdles a developer will have to go through to get their application in the app store. It’s a relatively pain-free experience, and Google is making that even easier with their recent Scratch-like App Builder that anyone can use. It will be very simple.

Registration for the app store is $25 – there is no open source program like WebOS. However, the SDK is free for download to anyone, and the entire operating system source code is also made available online. It’s a very developer-friendly operating system. Perhaps that’s its greatest weakness, though.

Apple iPhone 4

Hardware Features:

The iPhone 4 is simple and sleek, plain and simple. Similar to the Pre (with the exception of the Open Source part), since Apple also controls the hardware, they have the added advantage of seamlessly integrating the entire hardware and software experience to work well with each other. It’s hard to not talk about the hardware without mentioning the software, and vice-versa.

The size of the iPhone is just perfect – it’s smaller than the iPhone 3Gs, not much lighter though. It fits in the palm of your hands just perfectly, and its glass exterior is very beautiful.

The phone comes with a 1.4MP front-facing camera, making it slightly better than Evo’s, and 5MP rear-facing camera. Despite the camera being lower resolution than the Evo’s 8MP camera, you won’t be able to notice. In my comparisons of the two side-by-side in various environments the iPhone 4 produced far superior photo and video quality than the Evo. The difference is very noticeable, and Apple seems to have really compensated the hardware with software.

In addition to the superior cameras, the Retina screen completes the experience, with absolutely the best phone picture I have ever seen. Using this phone will make you want to read books on it, just so you can see the pristine quality of the text and images on the phone. It’s absolutely fun to take pictures and video on the device because they look better than most other monitors and TVs I have in my home. It’s a beautiful device, through and through.

The phone has a similar processor speed to the Evo, however Apple made their own processor so I’m sure there are some advantages there. The operating system through and through is very snappy and smooth as a result, providing for a very seamless experience. The phone also comes with 16GB or 32GB of memory that isn’t limited to music or apps, which is different from most Android devices, which only allow you a limited amount of space for apps, leaving the rest for music and data.

The battery life on the iPhone 4 is amazing. It’s not quite at the level of the iPad, but still the best battery experience I’ve had on a phone so far. I can keep it running all day with normal use and not have to recharge it until the next day or even later. You will not be worrying near as much about recharging with this phone.

Then there’s the part that seems to get the most press – the connection. I noticed the connection problem. I was able to reproduce it (but I admit it would have taken me longer to notice all this had the media not been all over it). Very occasionally I see a dropped call which I didn’t see on the 3GS. That said, it just doesn’t bother me. The phone is still useable, even without the bumper. Adding the bumper seems to make most of the problems go away, and in fact, the black bumper almost makes the phone look a little better. Given the fact that Apple is giving these away free now, it seems like it’s almost a non-issue. That said there will be people in areas with even less connectivity that will have “the AT&T factor” – this will always be a factor so long as Apple is tied to AT&T and it’s one worthy of considering. If you normally have issues with AT&T and don’t want to deal with them, maybe this phone isn’t for you.

That said, I think the new antenna actually improves the internet speeds. When combined with the faster processor, the two seem to work very well together and provide a much faster web experience than the iPhone 3GS. It’s actually somewhat comparable to the Evo from what I can tell (that’s without detailed experiments).

The Operating System:

iOS is, well, iOS. It’s the Apple experience. It’s simple. There’s not much to it. You have one button and a bunch of icons to click on. That’s why people use Apple.

iOS 4 is a very smooth experience, only amplified by the iPhone 4’s beautiful Retina screen and faster processor. Multitasking, once you figure it out and as applications start to adapt it, makes things much easier. You open an app and it opens right to the place you left off. There is a bit of a learning curve in learning the multitasking features though. Once you learn to double-click that home button you’re in multi-tasking heaven.

Folders makes things much more organized, with fewer swipes if you have a lot of apps. The biggest issue with folders is figuring out how to add applications to new folders and create new folders (you do so by just swiping an application icon over to another icon or folder). Once you figure it out though, it “just makes sense.”

The new HD camera features are very slick. With the still camera you can now zoom and pan. Zooming reduces picture quality, and one won’t want to do it too often if you’re looking for high quality photos. However, I’ve found using some of the apps like Pano or auto-stitch with the new camera make for a very beautiful photo experience. HD video is amazing, and being able to auto-focus by clicking on anywhere in the picture while you are shooting video makes for a very professional-looking video that focuses and unfocuses just like a professional video camera. The video shoots at 30 fps, which is the same as my more professional Canon Rebel T2i camera.

Oh, then there’s FaceTime. Yes, there are apps on the Evo (and even the iPhone) with similar functionality, but the deep integration into the operating system makes all the difference. It’s almost too convenient to video call your friends, and I find myself reaching for that FaceTime button whenever I can and I know my friends have an iPhone 4. That’s also the biggest problem – knowing when your friends have an iPhone 4. Hopefully more devices start to integrate with this and it becomes more of an open protocol than it is currently.

The operating system for the iPhone 4, in conjunction with the hardware makes it simply beautiful – it’s something you must experience to gain the full benefit.

Applications:

Applications are Apple’s strength. The benefit Apple has is it gets to add hardware features that applications can take advantage of as part of the experience. With the iPhone 4 the photo applications are all going to be better, and I wouldn’t doubt there will be a slough of video editing apps that come out as a result. Already, you can purchase Apple’s iMovie app and shoot and edit your movies all on the iPhone.

The application experience on the iPhone is always going to be consistent. Apple reviews all applications thoroughly and ensures they all maintain a somewhat consistent look and feel that is consistent with the Apple brand image. They are all about their customer and they want that experience to reflect even through to the applications that are installed on the phone. If you have a bug that they notice, they won’t approve it. If you aren’t consistent with their standards, they won’t approve it. That’s simply the Apple way, and if you don’t agree, there’s always the web browser.

That said, some criticize the lack of being open as Apple’s weakness. Currently tethering costs money because of this weakness. It wasn’t even available before. The customer is stuck waiting for Apple to release new features and approve new types of applications as a result. This is frustrating for some. For me the peace of mind that the experience will remain consistent is comfort enough for me.

Development Environment:

The development environment is somewhat consistent with the application strengths and weaknesses. Because Apple wants to remain consistent, developers often get shut out. If Apple doesn’t like your app, they won’t approve it. Some developers aren’t even told why Apple doesn’t like it. Others are left hanging waiting for their apps to be approved. That said, the majority of applications, assuming they follow Apple’s terms and rules, will get approved.

My biggest beef with the development environment is Objective C – it makes me want to poke my eyes out. It’s a purely object-oriented language that deals with events and other weird language paradigms most modern-day developers aren’t going to be familiar with. Its InterfaceBuilder GUI IDE isn’t like visual tools such as Visual Basic. You have to create a prototype, then re-duplicate most of that prototype in code later. It’s a pain to deal with. There’s a huge learning curve. It’s one of my biggest hurdles towards developing for the iPhone. That said, once you learn it, you’re in high demand and you’re producing high quality, highly usable apps in a beautiful environment.

The Verdict

Looking at the 3 phones, comparing hardware, software, applications, and development environment, I have to choose the iPhone 4. It’s the best phone I’ve ever owned. Better than the other phones and barring a few weaknesses, everything just flows together and looks beautiful when you use it. It feels natural to my every day workflow. The Pre isn’t a strong enough device. The Evo is too bulky and cludgy and buggy. Not to mention the battery life making it practically unusable.

If I had only the choice of the Evo and the Pre, I would probably chose the Pre. The Pre’s UI and overall experience far trumps the Evo’s. The hardware isn’t quite as beefy as the Evo’s, but the software really makes up for it, and especially in recent OS updates, doesn’t have many speed issues you notice. It also feels nice in the hand and is easy to carry around. I like WebOS far better than I like Android.

If I absolutely had to choose Android, I don’t think I’d go with the Evo. We have an Incredible laying around the office that is much smaller in form factor and almost as fast. The battery lasts much, much longer than the Evo’s. My choice of Android devices, at least at the moment, would be the Droid Incredible. My iPhone’s battery still lasts longer, amongst the many other advantages it gives me.

So with all those details in mind, I hope you can see why I chose the iPhone 4. If I had to recommend one device, it would be the iPhone 4 – it has the best experience, the best hardware, the best software, and despite a few connectivity issues and hurdles into the App store which the end user barely sees, it is absolutely the best mobile device I’ve ever owned.

I want Android to prove me wrong though. I want HP/Palm to prove me wrong. Heck, I want Microsoft to prove me wrong. I hope they produce something better at some point – it could happen. However, at this point in time, put side-by-side, my overall recommendation would be the iPhone 4. If you’re a device manufacturer and think your device might be better, send it my way and I’ll do a review of it. At least now I’ve set the bar and hopefully someone can make something better. And hey, if you can do a better comparison with the phones you use, I’d like to see.

Disclosure: The iPhone was the only phone I paid for in this experiment.

The Virtuous Cycle of Choice and Momentum

Posted on July 11, 2010 by jessestay

Here we go again. We’ve been here before. History always repeats itself.

In the early days of the desktop computer, it was the Wild West. No computer was dominant because they all simply had not been around long enough. The movie, “The Pirates of Silicon Valley”, described this era well, and was a time of company after company innovating, stealing features from their competitors that they lacked, and then their competitors innovating and doing the same. It’s a virtuous cycle that continues to repeat itself even today, resulting in more competition and better technology as a result. As we move from platform to platform this cycle will continue, over and over again, and consumers will always end up, as a majority, choosing the most popular player that provides “choice”, without regard to any potential benefit the less popular player may give them when it comes to a more close environment at the benefit of a better experience.

Microsoft’s Platform: Choice, at the Sacrifice of Experience

As Microsoft began to gain a handle on the market, taking the software route and letting go of the hardware market, Apple, the other consumer desktop player was trying to control the hardware experience, and Microsoft’s business took off. Microsoft was unstoppable, momentum pushing them faster and faster to the point of almost Monopoly. It even got to the point where markets they never even considered competing in, such as the web browser, had no chance because Microsoft had control of the operating system where those markets ran.

Microsoft’s entire platform was about choice. You chose the hardware you ran. You chose the software you ran on it. Heck, the hardware was open enough you could also run other operating systems such as Linux on it. The Microsoft environment promoted this type of mentality, and, like it or not, perhaps was part of the cause and motivation towards the Free Software and Open Source Software movement that is so prevalent today.

Apple’s Platform: Closed, at the Advantage of Experience

During the entire time Microsoft was growing and booming into the company it is today, Apple maintained its consistency. It wasn’t going to give up the tightly-integrated hardware and software experience at the risk of losing the full experience Apple was known for. When you bought an Apple product, you knew the software on the product was going to work well with the hardware it was built on. The software was designed specifically for that hardware. In return the customer got an experience that made that customer the die-hard Apple fanboy you see today. They gained a loyal, devout following as a result, “The Cult of Mac”.

The Cycle Continues

So here we are today. It took an entirely new device to start the cycle over again – a music device, the iPod, which eventually turned into a phone and Apple was able to gain control of the music industry in the process through iTunes (which is, in essence, a cloud based product that downloads files to your computer). This gave them the advantage they needed to innovate and bring new customers in at a faster rate than ever before.

Soon competitors emerged. Palm released WebOS. Google released Android. Microsoft released the Zune and will soon be releasing Windows Phone 7. Now we are in an exactly similar battle we saw in the early desktop days, companies fighting on choice. Companies fighting to gain momentum. The companies who chose choice gaining the most momentum. The companies choosing to remain consistent losing that momentum, but maintaining a reliable reputation and great experience.

Are the Fanboys Learning?

There was a large group of people who chose the consistent, closed, better experience without ever having taste of the choice. This group of people are now tasting that as what used to be neutral ground, Google, has built Android and entered this battle themselves on the premise of choice. Now these users, who were users of both, are being forced to make a choice, and they’re experiencing something they’ve never experienced before: freedom.

I read fascinating posts like Louis Gray’s and his reasons for switching to Android, yet battling to leave Apple entirely, and I notice a struggle to leave that experience entirely. He knows the good taste of the experience Apple provides. At the same time he finally sees the choice the decoupling of software and hardware can provide. He’s finally seeing the advantages of an Operating System embraced by the masses. He’s not alone in this struggle.

The “Choosers” Finally Taste Experience

It goes the other way too though. There are many out there (such as Robert Scoble), myself included somewhat, that finally realized what a beautiful thing Apple was from the iPhone. We went with the masses over to the device and discovered what a beautiful thing having a nicely coupled experience could be. We were brought over to Macs and iBooks and MacBooks and iPads, and were brought to wonder what in the world we were missing in our world of “choice” before.

At the same time we’ve seen the “choice” world. We know what choice means, and we know it means more struggle. We know it means more configuration and more bugs and more problems with the OS not always working properly with the hardware it was installed on. We know not all the applications will have the same consistant experience we get with the Apple experience. We haven’t given it up, but we do know which one we like better.

We’re at an interesting crossroads right now. Right now I carry at all times in my pockets an iPhone 4 and an Android-based Evo. My wife runs a Pre, which I also carried on my person for quite awhile. While, as a developer and blogger, I choose all of them, I always fall back to one. I always fall back to the one that’s most convenient. I always fall back to the one where my applications will be most reliable. I always fall back to the one that works best with the overall experience of technology in my home and in my life. I fall back to the one whose batteries aren’t dead. No matter how hard I try, the Apple experience seems to keep winning me over.

I don’t care if any company has momentum. I’ve stopped caring about Choice. In the end it’s about efficiency. It’s about productivity. It’s about what makes me the best person I can be and what I can feel most comfortable using with the least amount of effort. It’s about “choosing” the best experience that I know will continue to be reliable over time, and has a reliable track record in doing so. For this user, at least so far, I will continue to fall back on experience.

Image courtesy http://appadvice.com/appnn/2009/10/microsofts-apple-impression/

When the Choice is Mobile, My Choice is "All of Them"

Posted on June 10, 2010 by jessestay

The web is a competitive landscape. It’s an environment with lots and lots of type-A personalities all competing to be the dominant players. It’s full of opinionated people, entrepreneurs, and bloggers, who all have their opinion on a subject. Everyone wants to be right. That’s why, when you see a landscape, such as mobile, where a single player such as Apple has such a passionate community that will fight tooth and nail for it, it’s a big target for critics, and those behind it will fight back. When a player such as Android comes along with a serious threat to the popular guy, people will do all they can to choose sides and either go with the popular guy, or pick the underdog. On the web, it seems it always has to be one or the other. However, I think you’ll find the true, perhaps more silent Geeks, will be the ones on the sidelines choosing “All of the above”.

I grew up in a home where we couldn’t afford a Mac. We had Apple IIs at school, and I had several distant relatives with Macs and I’d play thoroughly with those when I had the chance. In fact, a lot of my first programming experience, learning BASIC, was on those very Apple II machines I got to use in elementary school. At the same time I remember playing Commodore 64 at my friends’ homes and being fascinated with the different types of architectures and different styles of programming that went with those architectures. I was fascinated that some systems took cartridges, some took floppy disks, and others took tape to read (and eventually store) data. In those days it didn’t really matter what system I was on. It mattered that I was able to get the job done and learn from each. I was fascinated!

Later on in High School, I remember some of the classrooms having PCs, some having Macs, and all of them having varying different operating systems and computer architectures. I’d come home to an even cheaper system that I would then spend hours upon hours trying to read other peoples’ programs and try to understand what they were doing in languages such as Pascal, Assembly, BASIC, and even a little C++. The thing is, as a developer and passionate geek it didn’t really matter to me what system we were using. It mattered that I was learning new things and studying new architectures and figuring out how to code and what those architectures did.

I took that same mentality as I went to college. I sold computers at a Tandy-owned Computer City store (they later went out of business), and I remember always being jealous of the people that could afford the one or two Macs that we sold. They were so cool! They could read text aloud in a human-sounding voice, and had such a different look and feel that fascinated me! At the same time, I remember vivid conversations with co-workers about the release of IBM’s OS 2 Warp we were getting ready to sell, and how cool it was to finally have a 32-bit operating system on the market. We had similar discussions and envy about Windows 95, and I remember having fun beta testing it with a friend of mine (who now works for Microsoft, ironically). I remember how cool the SGI machines we sold were and how cool they were for rendering graphics and other high-end stuff.

Later on I discovered this thing called Linux. I remember wanting to know all I could about it. Finally, an operating system I could afford that let me tinker with its insides and see what it did underneath. I wasn’t this excited since the old 8080 kits you used to be able to build your own computers from! I remember learning how to compile the entire OS from scratch and the difficulties that entailed, yet at the same time how I could do so many cool things that I just couldn’t do on Windows. Later on I even remember tinkering around with the short-lived BeOS.

Finally, only about 5 or 6 years ago I finally bought my first Mac (an iBook). It was probably the first time I could actually afford one. It was a beautiful experience! It was one I will never forget. Everything, from the packaging, to the operating system, to the little fading light when it went to sleep had me hooked. It was the perfect desktop operating system for me at the time. I learned all about packaging, branding, and experience from that.

Today, you’ll find me using all kinds of different operating systems and technologies. Technology fascinates me! While you may find me using Mac on my desktop, and trying out my new iPad, you’ll also see me setting up Windows 7 for my kids and my family. You’ll see me tinkering with the parental controls and helping them understand this world called Windows. At the same time you’ll see me using Linux for my web servers, and at various companies I’ve worked for it made even more sense to use Windows for those servers. Some day I might even use Google on my desktop or even on a server. I will certainly try each and every one out, oodling at all the cool features and unique pieces of each. Let’s face it – new technology, no matter where it is, is pretty dang cool!

While I may carry an iPhone today, and I will probably buy the iPhone 4, I also own a Palm Pre. You can also find me carrying and trying various flavored devices of Android through work. I just asked Sprint for a demo unit of the Evo I could review for you guys. You may even catch me carrying a Blackberry device, or even Windows Mobile (which at one time was my favorite phone as a user). You may see me tethering my iPad off my Palm Pre, or using an Android tablet device with a jailbroken iPhone. The fact is, as a developer, a blogger, and an entrepreneur, but mostly a geek, I need to understand all of them. I need to learn how each operating system works. I need to know the basics of coding on each so I can make educated decisions.

I will never pick just one. I will never pick just 2. As a true geek, I have an obligation to try them all and enjoy the cool features of each. Will I disagree or be negative about specific components of each? Certainly, but as with any technology, I will always have elements of each I particularly like and really admire. I would be hurting myself, and those I write for (both from a blog and software standpoint) if I ever picked just one. Picking one would be the negative choice.

Next time you see a Geek, ask to see their phones – you will always know the true Geek as the one that pulls out each and every phone or embedded device they’re playing with at the moment. That’s the type of Geek I want to be.