Archive | June, 2009
NPD: Twitterers Buy More Music
To all those dismissals of Twitter as a worthless Web site, the music industry might beg to differ.
A new study by The NPD Group found that Twitterers purchase 77 percent more digital music downloads than other Web users. Put another way by NPD analyst Russ Crupnik, “Twitter users are simply worth more to record labels and music retailers than those who are not using Twitter.”
Not that NPD’s research is all great news for the music industry: Only 23 percent of Web users bought a CD in the last three months, and 16 percent said they bought a digital download. At least there’s a silver lining in the habits of Twitter users, 33 percent of whom bought a CD and 34 percent purchased a music download.
Is there something in the atmosphere of the Twitterverse that beckons the sweet sound of music? Perhaps not; correlation doesn’t imply causation, of course, and NPD avoids suggesting that Twitter is breeds more music buyers.
What NPD does suggest is that Twitter is fertile, yet delicate, marketing ground for the music industry.
“There must be a careful balance struck between entertainment and direct conversation on one hand, and marketing on the other,” Crupnick said. “Used properly Twitter has the power to entertain — and to motivate music fans to purchase more new albums, downloads, merchandise, and concert tickets.”
It’s not clear how the music industry can get on the ground floor of such an operation. There are already plenty of options for sharing music through the service, and none of them are discussed in NPD’s press release.
If the music industry knew which external services were helping generate sales, maybe record labels could help those sites flourish. That’s a better strategy than suing everyone, at least.
Resolved: There Are No Such Things as Netbooks
23. June 2009
Research firm NPD has released a study that says that not every netbook buyer is a happy camper. For instance, 70 percent of the folks who set out to buy a netbook ended up very satisfied. But only 58 percent of those who initially planned to buy a more traditional notebook but instead chose a netbook wound up very satisfied. The study also shows that only 18-to-24 year olds think the netbooks they bought perform better than they’d expected.
The results aren’t surprising–netbooks are only the right computers for some people, and you’re more likely to be happy with one if it’s the type of PC you want than if you’re buying it because it’s cheaper than a larger, more powerful notebook. But I find it interesting that NPD–and most of the people in the industry who I’ve talked to about netbooks–talk about them as a different type of computer than a notebook. (NPD’s release on its study begins “Netbook, notebook – they sound the same.”)
I think that treating netbooks as something other than notebooks is part of the problem here–and that consumers who consider netbooks to be notebooks are closer to getting it right than manufacturers who insist they’re something different.
Netbooks have small screens; they have basic CPUs and graphics that aren’t well-suited to high-end tasks; thanks in part to Microsoft licensing rules, they have skimpy amounts of RAM. But that doesn’t make them something other than notebooks. It makes them…small, relatively basic notebooks. To treat them as a fundamentally different sort of device is akin to Ford insisting that a Focus isn’t a car because it’s smaller, less powerful, and less luxurious than a Lincoln Continental.
When I chat about netbooks with PC manufacturers, I still get the sense that they make them very nervous. They sure make Microsoft nervous, since it can’t make the profit it’s used to getting for Windows on a $300 computer. It’s pretty common for industry types to cheerfully talk about netbooks being a fad that’ll go away real soon now.
Me, I don’t think they’re going anywhere. I think they’ll get more powerful, and the division between a netbook and a more traditional notebook will blur more and more. (Netbooks, for instance, do away with optical drives to cut costs–but even pricey notebooks are doing the same thing to shed weight, and because optical drives are no longer essential equipment.)
I’d love to see the industry do with netbooks what it’s usually done with new PC form factors–which is to work aggressively to make them more powerful and appealing. (The 1GB RAM cap is ludicrous–my Asus Eee PC 1000HE was wimpy and unsatisfactory until I popped in a 2GB memory chip.) But I still get the sense that the prevailing attitude in the industry–even among some companies that sell tons of netbooks–is that they’re an aberration that oughta fade away rather than a significant part of the future of notebooks. Can we start making them better by at least acknowledging that they are, in fact, notebooks?
5Words for Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
23. June 2009
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MySpace seems to be shrinking.
Do netbooks confuse notebook buyers?
Flash for phones (except iPhones)
Share Your Moments With thisMoment
22. June 2009
GameSpot cofounder, former Yahoo executive, and old friend and colleague Vince Broady is launching a new site called thisMoment, and it’s going into public beta tonight. It’s an interesting site that’s part social network, part media sharing site, and part Facebook application, and I haven’t seen anything quite like it.
thisMoment is about sharing moments in time–events from your life that may have just happened, or happened a long time ago, or even be in the future. It lets you do so by uploading photos and videos, grabbing photos and videos you’ve posted elsewhere (such as on Flickr or YouTube), grabbing other people’s photos and videos, and introducing everything with your comments. You can specify the time when they took place, their location, and even how they made you feel. And you can make them public, share them only with friends, or even keep them to yourself.
iPhone Push Notifications Are Live–Finally!
22. June 2009
Much of what’s neat about iPhone OS 3. 0 is what it does to let third-party developers build more powerful applications. And the most long-awaited feature in that department by far is push notifications, which Apple announced a year ago as an alternative to multitasking for third-party apps. The first programs to support notifications are starting to hit the App Store today. They’re both IM clients–here’s TechCrunch’s MG Siegler on the new version of AIM (which is available in an ad-supported free version and a $2.99 adless one) and the Boy Genius Report’s eponymous founder on the multi-network BeeJive (which is $9.99).
Tiger Woods with Wii MotionPlus: Does it Work?
22. June 2009
Over the weekend, I finally had a chance to dig into Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 with the Wii MotionPlus, an accuracy-boosting dongle for the motion controller.
The game itself is a blast — there’s something inherently addicting about creating a likeness of yourself and molding it into a pro golfer — but for our purposes here, I’m more interested in the MotionPlus. The peripheral can detect pretty much exactly what you’re doing in real space and translate it into something on screen, but what really counts is how the game responds to that input, and it’s hard to find a metric with more subtleties than golf.
One thing’s certain: The game is staggeringly different with the added motion controls. Unplugging the dongle mid-game is a reminder of how awful the Wii’s controls were before, requiring little more than a slight arm flick to execute a full golf swing. The MotionPlus, by comparison, takes into account backswing, stroke speed and slight twists of the wrists.
On the game’s “Standard” difficulty setting, you can get away with plenty of non-traditional swings, including one-handed strokes and slapshots that channel Happy Gilmore. On this difficulty level, all that matters is how far your arms go back over your shoulder, stroke speed and how straight your wrists are aligned when “hitting the ball,” so to speak.
But crank the difficulty up to “Advanced” and the exploits become harder. It’s actually advantageous to swing like a real golfer on this setting, winding up without bending your elbows, then twisting the wrists slightly to bring the club all the way back. On the follow-through, hooks and slices become much more common.
Still, I’m not sure the Wii MotionPlus could teach someone how to swing properly, because there’s not enough feedback within the game. If you mess up, the game suggests that you try an easier setting, but it doesn’t explain in detail what’s wrong with the player’s swing. It’s impossible to tell whether a slice was caused by a twisted wrist or incorrect fundamentals.
If someone releases a proper golf trainer, we’ll know for sure how precise the MotionPlus can be. For now, I’m content to have fun.
What’s in a Name? Apple Removes a Space From “iPhone 3G S”
22. June 2009
I can’t believe I’m writing about this, but the iPhone 3G S is apparently getting a name change, three days after it showed up in stores. No, it’s not becoming the iPhone Pro or the iPhone Speedster or the iPhone Evolution. The Apple press release trumpeting the sale of a million units of the new phone calls it the iPhone 3GS–no space. And Apple seems to have gone back and tweaked the release from a couple of weeks ago announcing the phone’s imminent arrival, which originally called it the 3G S and now says it’s the 3GS.
Elsewhere on the Apple site, however, it’s still the 3G S–for now, anyhow:
Google: “We’re Still Cool.”
22. June 2009
Google has take a small step toward making it possible for computers to recognize landmarks in the physical world. Today, its researchers presented a paper at the Pattern Recognition (CVPR) conference in Miami, Florida that conceptualizes a technology to automatically tag locations within images.
It might not coincidental that Google is hyping its research not long after Microsoft launched its Bing “decision engine.” It needs to show that it is still the cool kid in the classroom.
A Google blog entry about the paper reads: “To be clear up front, this is a research paper, not a new Google product, but we still think it’s cool. For our demonstration, we begin with an unnamed, untagged picture of a landmark, enter its web address into the recognition engine, and poof — the computer identifies and names it: ‘Recognized Landmark: Acropolis, Athens, Greece.’ Thanks computer.”
When Bing earlier this month, the New York Post hysterically blustered about “fear gripping” Google, and co-founder Sergey Brin suposedly ordering “urgent upgrades” to its service. It is doubtful that fear is gripping Google, but Bing is snagging Google’s headlines.
Google’s research is just that– research. The company has not created any revolutionary process that is going to change the world anytime soon. What it’s doing is creating buzz, and it clearly wants to continue to be seen as the innovator of the search market.
Hey, Let’s Design the iPhone 3GS’s Successor!
22. June 2009
Now that the iPhone 3GS is out and many (but by no means all) of the rumors about it turned out to be spot on, it’s time to start wondering what the next iPhone will be like.
I’m assuming for the moment that Apple will stick to an annual schedule for major flagship iPhone revisions and we’ll therefore see the next big makeover around June of 2010–although as the phone increasingly becomes the company’s primary hardware product, I think we’re more likely to see new versions and various tweaks throughout the year, as we do with Macs today. And for no particular reason, I’m calling it by a name I know it won’t have: the iPhone 3GS2. (“The 2 is for second-generation.”)
Oh, and please don’t call these Apple predictions–this is…idle speculation. Nothing more.
5Words for Monday, June 22nd 2009
22. June 2009
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Are you using Firefox 3.5?
Your ringtone is a performance.
Two Engadgeteers review Nokia’s N97.
Kodachrome No More
22. June 2009
First they take away our Polaroid film, and now this: Kodak is discontinuing Kodachrome, the legendary film that was introduced in 1935. (Kindly insert your own Paul Simon reference here, please.) The company’s rationale is the obvious one: Pretty much everyone is shooting digital these days.
My impulse when presented with death-of-an-icon news of this sort is moral outrage, even when the product is (like Kodachrome) one I’ve never actually purchased myself. But interest in Kodachrome is so low that a photofinishing company in Kansas is apparently the last one left on the planet that processes the stuff. Photographers have indeed spoken.
With Kodachrome gone, the big bombshells to come will involve news like Kodak discontinuing film production altogether and companies such as Canon and Nikon going all-digital. And it’ll all happen. Wonder how long it’ll be until film is as utterly dead as, say, 8-track is today?
(Photo borrowed from JohnnyGunn)
HP Unveils a Web-Connected Printer
22. June 2009
HP likes it when people print. And print. And print. And I’m at an event where the company just unveiled (literally!) the PhotoSmart Premium with Touchsmart Web, a new $399 inkjet all-in-one printer. It’s got a large color touchscreen and connects directly to the Web via Wi-Fi–so you print out stuff without ever touching your PC or using a browser.
Here’s a fuzzy photo of HP printing honcho Vyemesh Joshi using the printer to browse coupons from Coupon.com and print one out–the UI looks fairly slick, like an iPhone embedded in the printer’s control panel:
So far, HP hasn’t talked too much about the technical details, but Web sites will apparently have to prepare content specifically for access via the printer–that’s not a full-blown browser that you get access to via the screen. The company has lined up a pretty impressive group of sites to endorse the printer and presumably support it: Google (with Google Maps), Coupons.com, Fandango, and Nickelodeon.
My impulse is always to be a tad skeptical of new technology products based on the assumption that there are large numbers of people out there who are itching not to use PCs. The demo is over and we’re watching a panel discussion; everybody on stage is explaining why printing is great, but they’re not saying just what’s so difficult about printing from a PC.) And $399 is potentially pricey these days for a home printer, although HP hasn’t mentioned what other features the printer has. (Joshi says the company thinks that $99 printers will have these Web features eventually.)
Actually, listening to the discussion, I think the pitch here isn’t so much that the printer eliminates the need to print from a PC–it’s that a Web-connected printer can start to reduce the need for stuff like millions of coupons being wastefully distributed via newspapers. (Sorry, newspaper publishers!) They’re talking about a day when most of the printed items in our lives might be printed on demand. That sort of makes sense, although it’s going to be a while before we get there and one printer is a very small step in that direction.
It’s an intriguing idea, anyhow, and potentially a useful one if the interface works well and lots of major companies support it. (The API is HP-only, not open; wouldn’t a standard usable by all printer makers be cooler and stand a great chance of success?)
During the on-stage demo, I wondered why HP only showed the Coupons.com app, and that one only briefly. I think I got my answer when the presentation ended and we were able to get hands-on experience with the printer. The Google Maps application was quite slow, and didn’t seem to be fully implemented; an HP representative told me that they’re still optimizing everything, so I wouldn’t judge the printer that will ship by its current state. (The Web features, incidentally, run on Linux and use a Webkit-based browser.)
The printer will ship in the Fall. Here it is:
And here’s a close-up of the screen–yes, it does look rather like a skinny iPhone attached to the front of a printer:
Ka Ching! Apple Sells a Million New iPhones–According to Steve Jobs
22. June 2009
If everyone who’s bought an iPhone 3G S so far had been lined up at one Apple Store, the line would have stretched…well, a really long way. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, known for his optimistic take on Apple, had initially predicted that Apple would sell a half-million units of the new iPhone on its opening long weekend. This morning, he said it had really sold 750,000. But then Apple released its own figure, and it was over one million 3 GS units sold. That would mean that the 3G S is a bigger hit so far than the Apple 3G was on its first weekend, when Apple said that it sold a million of ‘em.
The number is impressively large, especially considering that many reports from Apple Stores emphasized that the lines weren’t as crazy as they’d been last year. The company says that the phone is available in 21 countries, versus 22 that got the 3G instantly, so that doesn’t explain the high sales and (relatively) short lines. But you had to show up in person to buy an iPhone 3G, and the 3G S can be bought over the Web and received via mail, so apparently a lot of folks snagged the 3G S without ever leaving their homes.
One other tidbit from Apple’s press release on sales for the 3G S–it contains a quote from Steve Jobs:
“Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With over 50,000 applications available from Apple’s revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever.”
Anyone who’s ever been quoted in a press release knows that it’s not the world’s most demanding activity. (Oftentimes a draft arrives on your desk with a “quote” from you already there.) But I believe this is the first time that Steve Jobs has been referenced in an Apple release since his medical leave began in January. Perhaps it’s a hint that his late-June return to work is indeed happening.
Kindle DRM Follies
22. June 2009
Gear Diary has an illuminating, alarming post about the DRM for Amazon’s Kindle e-books:
“How do I find out how many times I can download any given book?” I asked. He replied, “I don’t think you can. That’s entirely up to the publisher and I don’t think we always know.”
I pressed — “You mean when you go to buy the book it doesn’t say ‘this book can be downloaded this number of times’ even though that limitation is there?” To which he replied, “No, I’m very sorry it doesn’t.”
For what it’s worth, I’ve read Kindle books on three Kindles and two iPhones to date, and have never run into any DRM snafus.
Finally, a Second Android Phone. And a Good One.
21. June 2009
It’s finally official: T-Mobile has announced it’ll ship the myTouch 3G in early August. It’s the phone that’s also known as the HTC Magic–the second phone based on Google’s Android OS, and the first one that looks to be an impressive handset rather than an intriguing proof of concept. (The G1, the first Android phone is pretty clunky from a hardware standpoint, with battery life that’s iffy at best.)
T-Mobile is playing up the idea that the myTouch will be more customizable than the iPhone, via skins, widgets, and other interface tweaks. I haven’t seen any of these features, but they sound like a logical enough to the question “So remind me again why I should buy this instead of an iPhone?” Which is a query which every non-Apple smartphone must answer explicitly or implicitly. Palm’s Pre does so in part through having a strikingly different form factor than the iPhone; the myTouch looks a bit like a chunkier iPhone (it has a removable battery) with a smaller screen and more buttons and a trackball.
Like TechCrunch’s M.G. Siegler, I’ve been playing with a phone that’s essentially identical to the myTouch from a hardware standpoint–the Google Ion, which Google distributed at its I/O developer conference last month. It’s a pleasing phone that looks good and fits well in the hand–one of HTC’s nicest industrial designs. I still think that Android is a promising platform that’s still in search of major unique benefits to consumers, but perhaps T-Mobile’s customization options will help. In any event, it’s good to see a second Android device come out, even though the OS will only live up to its potential once there are lots of Android phones.
The myTouch will sell for $199 with a two-year T-Mobile contract; that’s the same price as the Pre and the 16GB iPhone 3G S.
Here’s a quick photo of the iPhone 3G S and the Ion–the Ion is black, but the myTouch will come in black, white, or “Merlot.”
The Commodore 64 vs. the iPhone 3G S: The Ultimate Showdown
21. June 2009
Sad news: Apple has rejected a Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone. It’s not surprising, and arguably not an utter outrage given that the iPhone developer agreement expressly forbids emulators, and the C64 app’s creator knew that when he began work on his brainchild. I’m still unclear on how a Commodore 64 emulator–one fully licensed by the relevant copyright holders–hurts the iPhone, iPhone owners, or Apple, though. Especially since other iPhone apps that use emulation techniques and which sound less delightful have apparently snuck their way into the App Store. Thinking about all this got me to thinking about the fact that the Commodore 64 was considered to have a lot of RAM (64KB) at a surprisingly low price ($595) back in 1982. The iPhone 3G S has 4,000 times the RAM (256MB) for one-third the price (with an AT&T contract), and that’s not even taking into consideration the fact that it also has an additional 250,000 times as much memory (or 500,000, if you spring for the 32GB model) as the C64 in the form of its flash storage. Or that the starting price of $199 for an iPhone 3G S is really more like $90 in 1982 dollars. Did I mention that that the 3G S fits in your pocket? After the jump, what is almost certainly the most comprehensive comparison of the Commodore 64 and the iPhone 3G S that anyone has done to date. I’ll let you decide which one comes out on top. Continue reading this story…
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23. June 2009
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