Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
Jon Medved interviewed on recent Israeli exits
Great interview with Jonathan Medved, on Bloomberg TV in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress (MWC), about Israeli companies and the many large exits recently, both acquisitions (shown in the graphic above) and the recent IPO of Wix. Last time I saw Jonathan Medved was actually in Barcelona at an earlier MWC when he was CEO of Vringo. Now he's running the very interesting OurCrowd crowdfunding firm, where accredited investors can invest a minimum of $10,000 into startups (a VC for the masses - or at least the accredited masses). Take a look: http://youtu.be/E1qae-vSoCc or view it on Bloomberg's web site.
Technology is a word that describes something that doesn’t work yet.
What happens when you try to video mountain biking using your phone?
http://youtu.be/jRDOzMYIXGo This is just a fun post of some video I filmed last week while mountain biking in my hometown of Modi'in. This trail is on a hill behind a major highway. There are a few things I'd like to point out about the video. I filmed it using an iPhone 4S mounted very securely to my bike using a machined aluminum Rokform bike mount that screws into the steering tube. The mount and the phone do not move at all. The blurry parts and wavy video that makes it look like I'm on an acid trip must have something to do with the CMOS sensor in the camera. A GoPro this is not. I don't know how current iPhones perform with extreme video situations like this, but I hope they're better. The stabilization correction is done using software called Elasty. It normally would remove the black edges, making the video rectangular as it was originally (losing some of the edges), but I think the rotating box is more dramatic and gives you a better sense of what the stabilization software is doing. Youtube added the extra black space on the left and right sides of the video, I guess…
If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.
What the heck are stickers? A half billion dollar and growing business…
Viber Sticker Store
http://youtu.be/o5LKXDwpqPE I've noticed something when talking to friends about messaging. If they're not from Asia (yes, technically I live in Asia, but Israel is not Asian in that sense) they don't get what stickers are all about. Why would they really? In the United States, and I believe Europe as well, stickers are more or less irrelevant. I would venture to guess that most Americans think stickers are just fancy emoticons. Facebook added stickers to it's messenger app, but although it's called the 'Sticker Store' it appears they're all free. Perhaps this is a first step towards commercialization in the future, but I think if you get something for free you don't really appreciate it, and in this case it probably means most Facebook users ignore this feature. It's also, as I mentioned, viewed as just bigger emoticon. Viber, which just sold a couple of days ago for $900M to the Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten, implemented a sticker store as its first monetization strategy, followed by connecting calls to the traditional phone network. Stickers, in fact, are available on all the major messaging platforms with the solitary exception of WhatsApp. See the nice chart from Mark Watts-Jones on the 10 ways…
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Lots going on in the mobile messaging space
It's an interesting time to be in the mobile messaging space. I discussed the history of Internet and mobile messaging less than two weeks ago in my post The history of messaging, and where it’s going, but even in just the past few days, lots of things are shifting in the space. Just yesterday Skype (a division of Microsoft) announced that they are enhancing the chat functionality of their apps, enabling them to sync properly between apps on different platforms. Clearly, this is an attempt to take the fight to the mobile-first messaging companies that started with text, but started moving into Skype's audio and video call space. Skype has had text messaging for a long time, but if you looked at your messages on your computer, they would not show up as read on your phone, or visa versa. This is what Skype is fixing. A few days ago it was rumored that an un-named Asian messaging company was looking to buy Viber for up to $400M. Speculation was rife, with obviously names like WeChat, Kakao, and LINE being bandied about. The head of Viber, CEO Talmon Marco, denied it outright. Well, he was not lying. Viber was not…
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
More than I wanted to know about Twitter
While I've used Twitter since 2007, I was generally a fairly passive user. One account I used was mainly automated postings from another blog of mine, and the account I'm now using was largely dormant. My original account I just used to follow people and read their tweets. Recently, I've decided to build up @trauring as my tech-focused account, and I've been trying to learn the intricacies of the world of Twitter. As part of that I've been trying to watch who follows me, and in general I want to determine what I do that causes more people to follow me. When I post an article on this site or tweet a tweet, what topics result in more followers? It's a bit narcissistic perhaps, but I look at it as a temporary experiment and challenge. Eventually I'll get the hang of things and leave well enough alone. It was thus with some amusement that I've been watching some of the accounts that have been following me. I say accounts, not people, because clearly some of these accounts are not real people. Today I noticed two new followers, Reita and Jed. What was so unusual about Reita and Jed? Here's what…
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
The history of messaging, and where it’s going
There are in my view four main phases in the history of online and mobile messaging. The first phase included e-mail and to some extent real-time messaging (in the form of chat rooms), but was strictly within walled gardens. You could only communicate with others using the same proprietary service provider (America Online, Compuserve, Delphi, etc.). The second phase was the beginning of interconnected systems and the Internet. E-mail no longer stayed on a single server, but could go between companies. Real-time messaging, switched from chats that people had to join, to curated lists of friends, the buddy list, which dictated who you could chat with and allowed people to know when you were available for chat. To chat with someone you needed to know their username (or be able to find it in a directory). In some implementations, such as MSN Messenger, the other user had to approve you being able to see if they were online, but in others like AIM, you could see who was online as long as you knew their username (assuming they had not blocked you). The third phase was the emergence of text messaging on cell phones. This includes SMS, which spread initially…
UX Note: Apple needs to get in sync
Apple IIe (Wikimedia Commons)
Apple IIe (Wikimedia Commons) The first computer I used was an Apple II in a computer lab in my elementary school. My first computer was an Apple IIe. I am forever thankful to my father who convinced me that replacing it with a Mac SE was the smarter move than getting the Apple IIgs. Except for a few companies that had me working on Windows machines, and some development on Linux boxes, I've been using Macs ever since. I've been on the iPhone since the first one in 2007. I love Apple and most of their products (the Mac Portable should never have come out, and the Pippin...let's not go there). I love that their products 'just work' and are consistent in design (due to their 'Human Interface Guidelines'). That's why it pains me when they don't work. Some things should work better, and just don't (and don't get fixed). In particular, I've found that Apple has a problem keeping things in sync with their iTunes/iCloud services. Let me just preface this with saying technically there are no iTunes accounts and iCloud accounts, there are really just Apple IDs that are associated with iTunes or iCloud. I understand this, but…
The only thing worse than starting something and failing…is not starting something.
The first public introduction of the Macintosh was in Boston
In 1984, Apple famously announced the Macintosh on January 22 in the iconic Ridley Scott directed '1984' commercial during the Superbowl. Not well known is that the ad was actually shown a few months earlier to a group of computer dealers behind closed doors. The ad announced the imminent launch of the Mac on January 24th, 1984.The Mac was indeed introduced on the 24th, at the Apple Annual Shareholder's Meeting, and was to become available publicly hours later. Video of the shareholder's meeting was found on a Betamax tape in 2004, and released online in 2005. For a bit of history behind what happens in that video, see Andy Hertzfeld's great description on his folklore.org site called The Times They Are A-Changin'. The initial introduction was to Apple's shareholders who went to Cupertino, CA, and was not open to the public. The first public introduction of the Macintosh was actually six days later, across the country in Boston, MA. It took place at a meeting of the Boston Computer Society (BCS). BCS was run by a 20-year old college student, Jonathan Rotenberg, who had founded the society in 1977 at the age of 13. At its peak, it was the largest…