Gary Killops

Goole recently had their Google I/O event to announce some major changes to Android and the addition of Google TV. The changes come at a time when Android is notably starting to catch Apple in U.S market share.

The problem for Google is that they played their hand before their biggest rival, Apple.

Apple every year at WWDC for the last three years has announced changes to the iPhone OS and iPhone hardware.

This year is the biggest year yet — with leaked information abound and actual photographs of the prototype iPhone 4G (as it is being called) coming from two different sources, a forum out of Vietnam most recently and Gizmodo who broke the story with the purchase of the new device.

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple has been more active on email recently and has given some small nuggets of information to some fans that have wrote to him in regards to the iPhone vs. Android debate.

Recently asked whether the WWDC this year would be worth the trip for developers (in regards to what Google announced) Steve Jobs replied only “You won’t be disappointed.”

Good enough for me.

Why? Because Apple has the history of coming through in the clutch when the pressure is on. For example, the iPad had so many negative comments about it before it was released. After people started to use it and experience it, it is estimated Apple is now selling 200,000 per week. Not including international sales.

Apple has already announced the software for iPhone 4.0, but the hardware is where it desperately needs an upgrade. Some of the features for iPhone 4.0 include:

• Multitasking, just by a simple double click of the home button you will bring a menu across the bottom, viola, multitasking.
• Apps can now send notifications without remote servers, just app to phone.
• App folders, organize applications by type, or alphabetically if you want, drag and drop into App folders for a more organized home screen.
• Mail App fixes, including but not limited to a unified email inbox for all of your emails.
• Bluetooth keyboard support.
• iAds, advertising platform (for some reason I think all of us users may hate that).

The newest iPhone will obviously get the new features, along with the 3GS and 4rd Generation iPod Touch. The iPhone 3G will get everything but multitasking and the iPhone 2G will get none of the features from iPhone 4.0.

Gary Killops

Twitter came out on Monday and had a very lengthy post on what Twitter thinks its’ enduring values should be and what they must focus on in the future to be successful.

The post is to mainly explain what Twitter envisions as its future for their website and for their users. The post is quite lengthy so we will summarize it here. Read the full article at the Twitter Blog .

Enduring Value

By enduring value, Twitter basically is saying that they will uphold the network and their products, such as the Twitter branded client for mobile devices such as BlackBerry, Apple, and Android devices. Twitter’s goal is to continue to support an open platform of information and maintain an API that can garner access to that API so that all clients can access it. The other areas they talk about are providing a consistent user experience (assumably over partner and API products as well), and a revenue model to sustain that open network.

Ecosystem Clarity

This is in response to the Chirp Developer Conference that Twitter held in April 2010. Developers are seeking clarity about what Twitter will be providing and maintaining.

Twitter maintains that their goal is to do the above values in the Enduring Values category.

I feel this is somewhat of a backlash against Twitter developing its own clients and products for other platforms. Developers who work hard to create these experiences then have Twitter come in and create a very similar product with the Twitter brand name on it, hurts their motivation to create and distribute applications and software that are built on Twitter’s API.

Fostering Innovation

Twitter is reemphasizing that Twitter does not own its user’s Tweets, and that the user’s in fact own their content that they publish to the site.

I feel that overall, this post was in response to the backlash at the Chirp Dev Conference and as well as a preemptive strike against Facebook and the problems they are having.

Twitter wants to make sure that users and developers know that Twitter is the more open of the two platforms, while supporting their users and developers to create innovative products and for users to continue to use the service.

Facebook over the last few weeks has had a hard time keeping tabs on their Public Relations problem over privacy concerns. Until this week, Facebook has kept quiet about the newest concerns over privacy that users are making quite a backlash over.

After being essentially forced to make a statement, before his baby imploded on itself, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO and Founder wrote an Op Ed in the Washington Post about “… answering privacy concerns with new settings.”

The statement from Zuckerberg couldn’t come at a more dire time, Facebook pushed the limits way to much with these privacy concerns by not making a proper statement fast enough.

Zuckerberg claims that “[Facebook] just missed the mark.” When it comes to privacy controls about what its users wanted. I am calling his bluff on this one, the concerns just finally got so out of control that Zuckerberg’s dream of owning the internet and its’ user’s content finally lost steam and his had to do damage control before losing all reputability in the industry and to his customers.

The problem Facebook had from the beginning is that the site started out as completely private and a closed ecosystem of interaction with only those people you wanted to interact with. Now, Facebook realizing the money to be made is in being open (ala Twitter) they are trying to change the overall premise of the company, something users who preferred privacy were not in favor of. Personally, I hate going onto CNN.com and seeing a story I posted from them onto my Facebook page. I never gave them permission to do that. When my data and interactions on the web now become private, I become concerned about what other information is going to those websites and advertisers.

Facebook is going to survive, no doubt, but the overall business plan and user experience when it comes to privacy needs to be cleaned up. They need to simplify, as Zuckerberg says, so that users can easily distinguish what is and is not public and use the site in the ways in which they wish to. Three settings could do it, with more in depth settings if “Advanced” users wished to. The settings I propose are “All Public”, “All Private”, and “Advanced.” Giving back freedom to the users in how their data is used is extremely important for Facebook in the long run.

Gary Killops

Google is making a bigger push into television than it every has before. Google announced at Google I/O that it will be making a television operating system that can be built into TVs, Blu-Ray players, and stand-alone boxes. The operating system is Android at its heart and will be open sourced in Summer 2011.

Google is pushing into an almost unknown territory for them, despite Google AdSense on TV, Google has never really made a hard push into the TV market, a market that has $70 billion worth of potential market for Google to take a share of. Their first attempt at TV advertisements was a bit of a failure, never really getting to much traction for the most part. Google TV will be a different story they hope.

Google is also trying to do what many have tried to do before it, Apple and Microsoft have all but failed completely in this market segment, Google is hoping that they can change the tech industries luck in the very competitive TV business.

Google TV will be partnering with a ton of huge names, Intel for the processors, Best Buy for the retail, Sony TVs and Blu-Rays, Logitech for set top boxes, and Adobe for Flash support.

Google TV will be available before the holiday season 2010.

The Google TV interface isn’t anything that we haven’t seen before from a set top box or even from a computer interfaces for internet access. It looks a lot like Xbox Media Center, Apple TV, and even the Roku interface.

Google has repeatedly declined to answer the question of “how much it will cost” but I feel that it should have a very competitive price point. I feel that this thing needs to be under the cost of the Apple TV which is around $300 depending on the model you choose.

If the device and software lives up to the demonstrations and information so far that is available and the performance is consistent across all platforms (Sony TVs, set top boxes, Blu-Ray players), I feel that it could be a really great platform.

I am sure google will be releasing more and more information about this product through the summer and ramp up in the Fall in promoting it, so it should be very interesting to see how this progresses until launch day.

Gary Killops

Google is continuing with it’s advancement of Android with the announcement last Thursday about the newest version, aptly named “Froyo” a short name for frozen yogurt (Google names Android after tasty treats).

The announcement is much more than a name change, Froyo is going to be bringing a ton of new features and a ton of bug and performance fixes which are going to make Android devices scream.

The biggest feature that was announced was overall speed improvement. Google is claiming Froyo is going to be faster on almost every level from boot time, application load time, and of course, browser speed.

Froyo is going to have the fastest mobile browser to date. Included in that browser will be Adobe Flash 10.1 support, sometime that has yet to make a solid impact on the smartphone category. Adobe really needs a win here for Flash, because if performance lacks on Froyo and Android, they can kiss other platforms goodbye as well.

Froyo is also going to include tethering by default, essentially putting the third party programs to do it out of business. Tethering will be both bluetooth, USB, and Wifi enabled according to most accounts (no confirmation yet from Google on a final changelog). You can expect most carriers in the U.S to disable this feature or charge a huge premium to use it.

Froyo will also feature over the air push app installation from your PC. You will be able to login to the App Market and browse it on your PC. From there, you can find applications you want to download and install and actually have them pushed to your phone automatically. Next time you pick up your phone the application will be installed on your device.

Applications will also now be able to be updated automatically, a frustration of mine with some apps being updated almost weekly, it is a pain to have to go through all of the menus to just get the latest version.

The launch box on Android 2.1 is also being slightly modified to include two buttons, one for the phone and one for the web browser. Sadly for me, the Droid has a horrid touch screen sensitivity, so I bet most Droid users will be frustrated by that fact.

There is going to be a ton of small bug fixes and changes in Froyo as well, including a new car dock interface that will add some different shortcuts, no more swipe to unlock (unless you want to) and you can now use a PIN instead, and small updates to Gmail and Calendar apps.

Gary Killops