Category Archives: Tech

NYTimes and Financial Times

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I love reading good quality news and reports online. I haven't bought a newspaper in a long time and even on the Vlerick campus – where the Herald Tribune, Wall St. Journal and the Financial Times are available for free – I rarely touched them. On the other hand I pay for FT.com and read it religiously. For a long time newspapers did not get how people consume content online. But that is changing quickly. 2 cases in point:

1. The New York Times – Skimmer version – http://www.nytimes.com/skimmer/ - for the Desktop

This app is perfect for skimming through the news quickly. The basic view has a very clear and perfectly readable layout with high quality text. The user interface is very easy to use and straightforward. I love it.

2. The Financial TImes web app for Mobile http://app.ft.com

The Financial Times decided – in light of the new rules set by Apple for publishers – to use a web app to deliver content to mobile devices. The app is simple to use, syncs all current edition articles for offline viewing and is easy to navigate. A pleasure to use on the iPhone.

So my point? If you are a newspaper you better have a great reading experience online – desktop, tablet and mobile. If you do – I and many others are willing to pay premium.

Google+

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On wednesday Google did what many expected for quite some time – they launched a Facebook competitor.

In the beginning the web was about static content. While that was fine as long as the web was small, people started to have increasingly issues finding things efficiently. First search engines popped up and companies like Yahoo or Ask emerged as the first ones to try and help the user. But the company that brought order to the chaos was not Microsoft (sorry for the Borg joke) but a new up and coming company – Google. They brought about the first real consumer web. Information accessible within seconds all over the world. 

But this freedom to find anything and create content in seconds led to another issue. With the web proliferating everywhere we find ourselves today overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available. Now when searching for specific things you still get thousands and thousands of results. How is a normal consumer supposed to wrap his head around this. Add to this demand based content and search spam and you get a massive problem. 

But it turns out this problem can be solved by a basic idea – curation. We realize today we need our friends, colleagues and experts to curate information on the internet for us. Each of us can contribute to curating the web so that when searching for specifics we find what we need by asking them. Hence social and the success of Twitter and Facebook.

Google cannot index Facebook (well only public stuff) and so they needed a way to capture the connections and relationships between users and get that into the algorithm. Google+ is an ambitious project to revolutionize Google's index and in turn improve search. With Circles people will not only make their relationships with others available to Google – they will also handover the nature of those relationships. A clear pattern will show itself in time – who are my friends, who are colleagues, who are the people I respect and follow, who follows me and so forth. These can be used to sort shared links, +1 items and more.

While I do not think Google+ is yet ready – there are clear omissions in the first iteration – Facebook should watch very carefully. The simple and beautiful UI, definitely inspired by some of the stuff Apple does, interesting relationship management tools and Hangouts  are compelling features at least for me.

I will be watching Google+ carefully, now I just need my social graph to join. Google has 700 million users to catch up to.

The Document of the future

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Today I handed in the report for the In-Company Project module of the Vlerick MBA I am currently attending. It has 75 pages and is full of high quality content – obviously. While the project was a lot of fun and we did a lot of great work, I found that the written form of the report is not best suited to contain all the information we wanted to convey through our work. This got me thinking – if I were to choose the form in which I would hand in the results of my consulting work – what would it be?

The document form has been around for quite a while and I believe it is the most popular form of expressing thoughts – cumulatively. The nations  of old used it to write their laws on or to capture stories for next generations. Today the document is the most important object in the modern office. Whether it is in marketing, strategy, IT or any other function – the daily life at work spins around documents. With the advent of the personal computer – the document reached its climax. Anyone anywhere can write one and share it with anyone else. That advantage of the form is clear – it is the simplest to write, print and hand out to other people. Well it was the simplest until recently. While the paper document has had its run, I believe it is on the verge of beginning to decline. The rise of a new era of computing is going to make the document form of information obsolete and while it may not happen over night – it will happen.

So what is the new form? The tablet computer will become the main form of computing over the next few years. It is simple, intuitive and allows for a variety of interfaces towards information. The new form of sharing information and writing reports will be the App. The market for Apps has grown since the launch of the Apple App Store exponentially and has been supported by the launch of even more App stores all over the high tech industry. Whether it is the Android Market, the Amazon stores – apps are becoming a medium on their own. But why would they replace the document? Well first of all the document format is based on the form of paper. That form is obsolete – we can see that already in the print industry. The app enables one to create a great user interface for data and to take into account the nature of the information we are trying to convey. That maybe an interactive chart, a video, a specific user interface and also written text. This allows the user to construct a very specific experience for the target audience that is not limited to pages  and pages of text – it may be a presentation, a spreadsheet and written text all together mixed and presented in a custom way. 

But the app is not new. We have applications as long as we had the personal computer, so why now? Most people even today print emails and documents they receive – supposedly it is more convenient for them to consume information in that way and so why should they change? The document has a standard format – Mircosoft's Word or Adobe's PDF and that makes it attractive for interoperability. But with the advances of both XML and touchscreen devices I believe the App has matured. Developing for today's tablets is much easier than it was for the first PC's and the touch interface allows one to interact with presented information in a much more intimate way. Just as the PC has made the document the center of information sharing – so will the tablet computer allow the app to become the mainstream form of sharing information. 

Why hasn't it happened yet? The tablet is rather new – the iPad is 18 month old and the Apple App Store is 4 years old. There is no common standard – Apple has its own Apps, Google as well and so it is difficult to breakthrough the hegemony of the Doc, PPT and XLS. And while the App has matured – not so for the tools for creating them. Developing an App is still something developer conferences are focusing on and hasn't yet become mainstream. But I believe the new form will come – the closest thing I see to this is the web. My hotel reservation is no longer an A4 paper but an online app where I booked, my bank account statements are an app where I can browse and interact with the information in a useful way and printed maps – sorry dead to me. But the user interface of the web, even with all the amazing things Google, Apple, Microsoft and others have done with modern AJAX web apps – the native experience is still the best. Whether the web app of the native app will become the standard – I do not know – but both ways work for me.

Apple WWDC’11

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Steve Jobs took the stage at WWDC 2011 in San Francisco to talk about news in regards to Apple's software ecosystem. Supported by other top Apple execs like Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall Apple announced new features in Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and the new cloud initiative – iCloud. Obviously the keynote has been covered heavily all around the web but I recommend watching it as Apple already posted the HQ video on their webpage. 

Mac OS X Lion

The desktop operating system is a mature animal. Both Windows and Mac OS X have been around for a while and although both have been updated semi-regularly it is difficult to come up with innovative new features for desktop computers that change the way we use them. I believe that Apple understands this  and has connected this development with the rise of mobile. As such the convergence of devices towards mobile is a trend they directly implemented into the new Mac OS X Lion. Whether it is the automatic saving, state saving, Launchpad, Mac App Store and others – all these features point towards the Mac learning from iOS. Even the OS will be upgraded without needing a physical medium. Add all the touch gestures and you can see where this is going. While Jobs says we are in the post PC era – he seems to be preparing the Mac for survival among fast, easy to use and handy mobile devices. iCloud, to which I will get in a minute, completes the picture. 

iOS5

Apple has targeted a number of issues that were held against iOS with the features of 5. Of the top of my mind – the clear number one issue was the notification system. All Android users will recognize the UI as a "copy" of the one they are used to. Whatever you may think about Apple copying Android – the system works very well and I am looking forward to have it. The second interesting feature that caught my eye was the deep Twitter integration. One would assume that Apple would choose Facebook for integration of identity but it seems they went for Twitter and that is good as far as I am concerned. It will allow normal people to get a feel for Twitter. In the end it is a major win for Twitter more than for Apple. Another important announcement was the one about cutting the cord. One of the biggest gripes people had with iOS devices was the necessity of syncing with iTunes. Now the iPhone or iPad no longer need to sync with anything, everything is handled by the iCloud. Then there was iMessage. Have you ever had a Blackberry and then switched to something else? The one thing you probably missed the most was the Blackberry Messenger. While there are many messaging apps around for smartphones, even cross platform ones, BBM was always the best of the best. And now the last thing that gave RIM a competitive advantage is gone. It is no accident that Jobs announced 200 million of iOS devices sold and iMessage on the same day. He conveyed a message – we have critical mass to have our own messaging system. As far as I can tell it is executed with the usual Apple perfection and works very well. If I were a RIM shareholder, I would be scared. There were other interesting thing – Newsstand, Reminders, new Camera app and others but these were the ones that interested me. 

iCloud

iCloud is Apple's very serious all-in entry into the cloud game. Yes, many will say that Apple already had their entry with MobileMe that ended up in a very mediocre experience. Even Jobs dropped a joke or two on Apple's account in connection with the MobileMe fiasco. But make no mistake, Apple is very serious about iCloud and has called it their latest important insight.  It is their view on how a normal person should use the cloud infrastructure. The fundamental difference between Apple's approach to the internet infrastructure services and the approaches of the likes of Google or Dropbox is that Apple does not want the user to ever see the cloud. A user of an Apple product should never have to drag and drop files to the iCloud or dedicate a file structure for syncing – they never used the sync word once. Neither does Apple want the user to interact with the cloud via a browser. Apple's approach is based on powerful native apps that can take full advantage of iCloud services. As Apple controls the device hardware, software and now the cloud services one would expect the experience to be perfect. iCloud will push documents, photos, music, calendar information, etc… potentially anything between devices without the user having to do anything. As Jobs put it – "It just works". As far as iTunes in the cloud and iTunes Match are concerned – I cannot judge. As both will not be available in Europe anytime soon I will reserve judgement for now. But let's just say that Apple found a way to monetize pirated music and even got the Recording industry onboard to give it a shot. 

In the end all announcements from today show what Apple's vision of the future of computing looks like. It is an integrated world where no device is the master information holder. The digital hub is in the cloud, stored safely in Apple's data centers. Users interact with their information via full native apps on any compatible device and get the best integrated experience. iCloud is just a name for the additional cloud feature that Apple provides for free. Whether this approach will be more compelling than the browser approach of Chrome OS or other approaches  - I do not know. But these announcements are a clear land grab in many areas and show what a massive and successful company Apple really is today.

How Google got what they wanted, or why I wouldn’t write Nokia off just yet

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“In the beginning there was the mobile phone and all was good. People were able to call each other and eventually text. But then they realized that a device like the mobile phone could be so much more. While many incumbents tried to create a smarter, easier to use mobile phone that anyone could use, they failed. And so came the iPhone and all was good. It had fulfilled the promise of smart and easy to use and the people cheered. The incumbents still did not realize that their time was coming to an end. They became envious of the iPhone and the control Apple had over it and so Android came into being. As the iPhone got a first real competitor, one that offered choice, the people cheered and all was good. But…”

Android came on to the scene as the answer to the iPhone from a number of companies – Google and incumbent mobile phone manufacturers – the members of the Open Handset Alliance. See, the fundamental issue the incumbents were facing was not that of the iPhone’s hardware. No, the issue was that Apple created a mobile software experience that was unmatched by anything anyone had on a roadmap. Nobody had an answer to that at the time.

Along came Google with Android and offered Utopia – a free open mobile phone OS with similar capabilities as the iPhone that the incumbents and carriers could mold to their liking – that was at least the promise. Google’s motivation was clear – while it had agreements with Apple on providing map and search technology for the iPhone and hence getting revenue from mobile search of every iPhone user, they knew that Apple wanted to maintain complete control over the iPhone and could dump Google’s offering at any point. This type of tight control scared Google as it would lose the fastest growing internet platform at the time – the smartphone. So Google bought Android and started its own software platform. But Google never designed or manufactured phones and as such needed support from those who knew how to do it. The word open was meant to lure as many manufacturers to the Android platform as possible as Google wanted to grow market share as fast as possible.

What the incumbents that went into bed with Google did not realize is that Google does not care about their profits. They only care about getting as many Android phones into as many consumer hands as possible. While the manufacturers earn their money by selling phones, Google earns it from the use of the very same phones. And as suddenly all manufacturers are selling phones with the same software on it – the only remaining differentiator is price. And so with more and more manufacturers joining the fray the average selling prices of Android phones fell off a cliff. And that is precisely what Google wanted – competition on price. This allows consumers to get Android phones almost for free and again increases Android’s platform share compared to iOS. More users on Google’s platform – more revenue for Google. That this puts a lot of pressure on the ASPs and profit margins of the manufacturers – hey that is competition. Many tech pundits are asking when we will see the first smartphone for free or the first laptop for free – well we already do. Google got exactly what they wanted.

When you now consider Nokia’s decision not to go to the Android platform in light of this context – it starts to make a lot of sense. I believe that the new Nokia CEO Stephen Elop saw what would happen to Nokia if it were to become one of the many in the race to the bottom. He stared into the abyss and said no. He looked into what Nokia had at the time and saw a second abyss – nothing in the internal pipeline was ready to ship and would be outdated by the time it came to the market. And so Elop phoned up his previous boss Steve Ballmer and made him a proposition that made Ballmer probably smile. He told him – “Listen up Steve, we will go to bed with you and Windows Phone 7. We will build the best WP7 phones you can imagine and we will deliver competitive devices that will match iPhone or Android devices. We will be your flagship reference design. But for that we want money and more access to and say in what WP7 will be. We want to be your number one and we will get everything you have first before anyone else.” I believe Ballmer smiled and just asked where he could sign.

And so in the end the story of Nokia is not over. They made the very move that most people think will kill them to survive as something else than just another Android manufacturer. They wanted to remain a player and made a deal to stay different. Now they hope to build premium phones with great software that will compete with the best Android phones and the iPhone. Whether they will be able to make it – I don’t know. Their latest press release and earnings warning suggest they are running out of time.