Archive for Observations and Ramblings
May 15, 2012 at 9:41 am · Filed under Observations and Ramblings and tagged: facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, profit, shareholder value
I read this article on Facebook recently. There were a few things that really resonated with me. First. Mark Zuckerberg goes against the grain and does things differently. He gets criticized for this, but honestly I think that he is right and the majority are wrong. Just look at what is happening with Wall St, and the inability to do the right thing in terms of regulation of risk.
One quote I agreed with: ”Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services,” wrote Zuckerberg in his letter to prospective shareholders. “And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.” I think that Mark is right here, and we should re-think corporate objectives. Maximizing shareholder value should not be the only metric.
One guy who criticizes Mark seems to shoot himself in the foot: “Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, Zuckerberg’s attitude and attire symbolizes “a level of aloofness to stakeholders. He seems very customer focused and very employee focused. I am not sure he cares about anyone else… If he’s going to go public, he has to answer to shareholders,” Pachter says. “That’s why Google hired Eric Schmidt. That’s why Steve Jobs was ultimately forced out of Apple.” Hey Michael – Steve Jobs getting forced out of Apple was the wrong move!… you are using that as a positive point. And it isn’t. huh? Taking care of customers and employees means shareholders will be fine. Shareholder and profits are by products of well run companies who care about their employees and customers.
October 14, 2011 at 3:55 pm · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, Tigerspike Innovation Lab, Work Related Stuff and tagged: QR codes
I have been saying it for a while, and so it is good to see that someone else is coming to the same conclusion that I have. There is a good post here about “why QR Codes are failing”.
The short answer is that a) no one knows what it is, and b) even if they do, they don’t know what to do with it anymore.
The article misses an opportunity to say that QR codes have ‘failed’, and sounds like there is a chance that they won’t fail, but fail they will. Mobile technology has gone beyond QR codes now, there are much easier ways to engage.
I will go out on a limb and say this “anyone who spends money on QR codes is wasting their money”. Unfortunately many agencies will continue to do it.
October 4, 2011 at 7:12 pm · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, The Future, Work Related Stuff and tagged: ios5, iphone4s
As you know at TigerSpike we work on multi-platform technology and so we get a good insight into where our customers are spending their money around the world. Admittedly our key markets of Europe, USA, and Asia are iPhone heavy, but we are seeing more and more interest (and budgets going to) Android. So what does Apple do to stay ahead (and they are still very much ahead in my opinion, and will remain there for at least 2 years.
So iOs 5 is being released mid October along with the iPhone4S and I thought that I would go through the key new features that I think will really change things. They are listed below.
Everything gets faster
The key thing about the iPhone4S is the new A5 chip. Basically this will make things go alot faster. 2x faster download times for apps, 7x faster graphics, 2x faster CPU (everything gets processed twice as fast), dual core means things can run at the same time quickly.
Artificial intelligence assistant
This is a persona called Siri who theoretically understands what you are saying and then helps. She reads your texts to you, finds restaurants, answers questions, takes dictation, sets alarm times, creates appointments etc.
I haven’t ever seen voice activation work well. So my expectations for this are low. But this could be something that appeals to an older demographic, which is one of the fastest growing segments of iPhone users. Colby at the office (and my youth focus group) says that he will ‘feel like a douche bag talking into his phone’, and asks ‘can you get pissed off with her when she messes things up!’.
Colby and my opinion is that this will go the same way as the Microsoft paperclip (i.e. fail)
Cool built in apps
Apple are generally very good at building apps. We work with their developers on some of ours from time to time, and they are all very good. I remember the first app that I played with was Poker that they built, and it was way better than any others.
Find a friend is built into the phone, which means that you can find friends with iPhones nearby (if they have opted to show it, which I suspect they all will – the media is far more worried about privacy than people are).
In my opinion this won’t affect FourSquare as FourSquare is more about the gaming components and find a friend is more about the utility of finding someone you know nearby, but you never know.
The Cards app that we pitched to a few postal companies around the world, is being build by Apple. This will let you create and send cards. You can also send the physical card and have it sent to an address. In my opinion this is something that will really take off. Not a bad money maker for Apple (sending cards costs $2.99 each!), and a potential life raft for the US postal service who are suffering at the moment.
Twitter is built in which will be a big boost to twitter, not that they needed it, they have been doing very well recently.
Newsstand will house magazines and newspapers all delivered in a similar way with new issues being downloaded automatically and reducing the need for separate apps for each publication. This is a good opportunity for publishers as it standardizes the format and therefore reduces cost.
for high end publications that we work with who have their own app, there is also a good opportunity as the differentiation will be more stark between high end and the standardized newsstand titles.
Camera
The Camera is now 8megapixels. Personally I think that anything above 2megapisels is a total waste, but the point is that they have improved many aspects of the camera and video (white balance, face detection etc.), and so the iPhone (and all camera phones) will continue to eat away at the low end of traditional camera businesses.
Also you can connect wirelessly to a projector and project in high definition.
CDMA and GSM
These will both be available in the new iPhone5 which is great news for people like me who are on Verizon and travel outside the USA. I can now use the same phone rather than having a new handset and sim, which did annoy me. All phones should have both CDMA and GSM inside in my opinion.
Monitisation
One of the stats that I found interesting was the game infinity blade making US$20m in revenue for Epic Games. It proves what we have been saying for a while, which is that iOs is a serious money maker for not just games companies but everyone who is willing to invest the time and money to produce something great.
Wireless Synchronization
One of our VPs Matt Turnbull’s wife lost her phone and with it, all her photos since the last time she plugged in and synchronized. Doing it wirelessly will help this. Although I can’t help thinking that it will annoy me somehow by taking time continually synronizing itself
Conclusion
On the whole there are alot of cool stuff and good efficiencies in there, but nothing mind-blowing. I was hoping for a new device, which I am sure will be next, so I’ll hold off on buying one until it comes out.
August 11, 2011 at 8:47 pm · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, The Future and tagged: android, apple
I have long believed that something was up with democracy. I had the feeling that it just didn’t work, and the recent stalemate in Washington certainly supports my argument. At the moment the Republicans and Democrats are trying their hardest to fill a ‘super committee’ on debt reduction with their least flexible candidates. Republicans put forward candidates for whom any kind of tax increase is out of the question, and Democrats put forward candidates for whom certain spending cuts are out of the question. huh? isn’t it supposed to be a committee designed to come to a compromise? why fill it with the people least willing to. Democracy has created a situation where we don’t get the best outcome. Too many voices all saying different things.
There is a link between Apple and Google. Google is an open democracy with many companies and developers collectively adding to the Android platform. Apple’s iOs is a closed system, dictated to a large extent by Apple. I get frustrated when I hear people saying ‘Android is growing faster than iOs’. It isn’t. It reminds me of the J2ME days where you have to make many versions of applications for phones (see there was a work angle). Android’s openness is not doing it any favors.
Anyway I’ll stop now and refer to this article, which sums it up pretty nicely.
March 10, 2011 at 4:50 pm · Filed under Observations and Ramblings and tagged: email apps
I have two apps that I use to find chords and lyrics so that I can play new songs to my baby Lucia in the morning. One is ‘Tabs’ from ‘ultimateguitar.com’ and the other is ‘TabsCrds”. I never use Tabs (in fact I just deleted it) because when I open it I am asked to enter a user name and password.
Many clients ask this too. “can we get their email address”. Why? apps is personal. The mobile is a personal media device. When I go into TabsCrds and search for a song and save it under ‘my Tabs’ they ARE mine. I don’t need to log in to get to them. As far as whoever built the app is concerned, that app IS me.
If they want to send me more interesting stuff to buy they can send me a push notification into the app and ask me. They don’t need my email. If later I post something to facebook or twitter from within the app then they know my name and a bunch of other information. But don’t ask me for it.
Unique IDs are changing. Facebook is much more personal than email and doesn’t change whereas email addresses often do. Apps themselves are unique too so why get email. When clients say that they ‘want to collect email addresses’ because of some KPI they have to ‘collect more email addresses’ I often ask why?
With the Economist iPad that we produced, it makes sense to be able to identify them because if you have a subscription you get the iPad version for free. But unless there is a benefit like that you don’t need their email. You already know who they are because they have the app. All you need to do is track their behavior so that if you can add some more value to them (i.e. sell them something they will like), Behavior is the key piece of information, not their email address.
August 31, 2010 at 3:16 am · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, The Future, Tigerspike Innovation Lab, Work Related Stuff and tagged: android, apple
Back in the old days (2004) we used to make games in J2ME. We found that we had to make about 15 different versions of the game because each different handset had their own way of dealing with Java. Nokia was the king back then (and still is in many markets), but even for Nokia we had 2 or 3 builds to get the game working across series 30, 60, etc… Multiply that by Motorola, Sony Ericsson, LG, and Samsung (these were the days before HTC and the other new guys) and you have an issue.
So Android was supposed to bring a solution to this with a common platform across many devices. Sadly this didn’t happen in practice as well as it did in theory. Firstly, because updating the operating system happens slower for Android – there are big blocks of people (over 25%) with Android 1.5, 1.6, and 2.1. Secondly, there are subtle differences that exist from handset to handset. In the end, while we are in a better position than we were in 2004, there is still a long way to go.
In this respect Apple is better because. a) they standardise better (to be fair its easier, because they have one device), and b) people update to the later versions much faster than Android, so making things backwards compatible is something that isn’t as relevant.
So if you are building an app, expect Android to cost more than Apple. Finding good Android developers is also harder than good iPhone ones.
What about cross platform solutions?
There are companies that claim that they have a ‘build once, port to many platforms model’. We do this to an extent, but there is still alot of tinkering. I have looked under the hood of many of those other companies (all the ones that pitch us), and their ‘clever tech that the VCs like’ never does what they preach. The closest ones I have seen dumb down the experience which means that the app suffers.
So if you are building a solution for multi-platforms, you can ‘build once’ in terms of usability (to an extent), design, and the guts behind the app (like APIs that you create), but getting the best out of each platform requires per platform builds for the front ends. There is no easy way (yet) from my experience.
April 1, 2010 at 9:49 pm · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, Tigerspike Innovation Lab, Work Related Stuff and tagged: iphone, iPod, mobile web
Imagine a community with 50 bicycles and 1,000 cars in it (i.e. 5% bicycles). It is logical to put up a billboard next to the community highway rather than next to the community cycle path right?
Maybe not.
Usage
What if each cyclist uses the cycle path 20 times per day, and each car only uses the road once a week. Over the year the cycle path billboard gets 365,000 views, and the road billboard only gets 52,000 views.
Usability
Now imagine that the billboard on the road is so high that only cars that are convertible can read it, and only 50% of cars are convertible. Now you only have 26,000 views.
The mistake that so many people make – usually agencies I have to say – is that they say “well only 7% of people have iPhones: we don’t want to only reach 7% we want to reach the other 93% as well”.
The problem is you can’t reach those people. The other 97% are only using their phones for calls and SMS; not for browsing the web. So there is no point trying to reach them. You can’t. They are like people who have cars but never drive them, so they will never see your billboard.
50% of all traffic is from smart phones, and more than half of that is from iPhone and iPod*, so if you have scarce marketing dollars and no mobile strategy yet, just do the following (in this order):
- Build an iPhone app
- Promote the iPhone app (via other iPhone apps)
- Build a mobile site optimised for high end devices. Forget about the low end ones
- Promote the mobile site (via mobile media)
- Build an Android app (save money by using the same functional specifications and designs as you did for the iPhone app)
- Promote the Android app
- Tie it all together with messaging.
And if you were really thinking ahead you would gather all the interactions and learn about the behavior of the people interacting, and then work out how to do things better and better.
[*Bear in mind that this is the case for the USA and UK, India and Indonesia (which are the number 2 and 4 in terms of total mobile browsing) are dominated by Nokia (and when I say dominated, I mean the top 10 handsets in each of those markets are Nokia]
March 23, 2010 at 8:24 pm · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, Tigerspike Innovation Lab, Work Related Stuff and tagged: iPad, iphone, kindle
Everyone has been talking about “convergence” for such a long time that it isn’t sexy anymore.
Our original company tag line: ‘creative solutions for converging technologies‘ was changed 4 years ago to ‘Creative. Cutting edge’, but we could have probably kept the old tagline because it is only now that we are truly seeing convergence. And the single biggest catalyst for convergence will be the iPad, and it will happen in the year of the Tiger (i.e. 2010 plus a little bit extra!).
If successful, the iPad will be the catalyst for a tipping point in convergence. And the iPad will be successful. The key reasons for this are outlined in this article.
The Size-Convenience Paradox
The Size-Convenience Paradox is that “The biggest mobile device screens are too small. The smallest notebook screens are too big” (and too heavy to carry around in handbags).
The one thing I am told about my 13″ Vaio is ‘oh the keyboard is small’ but actually it isn’t. Each key only needs to be the size of a finger tip, and the only reason that keyboards are the size they are on laptops is because the screen was modelled on the size of a TV screen and the keyboard just filled up the space below it. But even small keyboards are one of the key reasons that notebooks have to be so big. They need screens and keyboards.
But think for a moment. What do you need keyboards for? We don’t spend large amounts of time typing anymore. Generation Y and below communicate differently, and the times when we sit down and type are the times when we are in front of our PCs at home or at work. It takes a knowledge of new and changing behaviour to get things right.
The Size-Convenience Paradox is a paradox because people want bigger screens because content is easier to consume (as there is more space for it), and it is also what we are used to as the web has traditionally been viewed though a PC sized screen. The problem is that carrying a PC sized screen in your handbag is annoying.
The iPad, and maybe Sony’s new line of really small laptops have got it right, but of these the iPad will succeed because it is designed from the mobile device up not the laptop down, and the simplicity that results will win it for Apple.
Technology is not exciting
The most common mistake that everyone makes is thinking about technology. WAP is not exciting. Applications ‘running apps in the background’ are not exciting. Flash 10 is not exciting… Actually scratch that (before our CTO rings me up and starts getting angry!). These things are exciting, but not to the vast majority of people, the unheard majority of people who buy devices and consume media.
What will be successful is what this unheard majority want. Not what the techies want. And that has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with design and usability.
You will see the techy commentators bashing the iPad, but they have missed the point. They are comparing it to the iPhone or laptop. But the iPad is neither. It is a new device. The converged device.
But speed is
One piece of technology that is important is speed (for the vast majority the key here is taking away the annoyance of waiting). The iPad is fast in terms of processing, but more importantly the trend is for wireless networks to get much faster. I know it doesn’t seem like that on the west and east coasts of the USA, but elsewhere in the world, and increasingly in the USA, the carriers are investing in technologies like LTE / WIMAX / 4G (whatever the technology is, the main point is that it will deliver faster than 3G speeds).
What this means is that the iPad and similar devices will be used for face to face communications. Video calls will finally happen, (driven by companies like Skype). I don’t think that 2010 is the year that video calls become available to the masses, but as I said earlier, it is the year of the tipping point, and by the time the mass market has the device, the carriers will have fast enough networks to handle video. This will all happen in 2 years, so look forward to 2012 for mass market video calls.
Value & Design
Cost is a pretty big factor, but the key factor is value. I value my iPhone. I didn’t really value my Nokia N95. The main reason for this is not that the iPhone was expensive but because of the device design. Handset manufacturers are catching on and the design guys are (finally) winning out over the engineers, but its only recently that manufacturers like HTC are starting to follow suit and creating devices that look (and more importantly feel) valuable – Google’s Nexus 1 is a good example.
The most successful phone ever was the Motorola V3 because it was thin metallic and felt good in your hand and pocket. And it came in pink. The funny thing is that only now are companies realising that making pink (and other coloured) laptops will do more for sales than any amount of on board RAM. I still scratch my head about why it has taken so long to realise this –I think that it is because the people creating these things are engineers rather than designers.
I do really value my Vaio, but it cost just over US$2,000. The iPad is about half the cost or less, and although the cost of notebooks is coming down, I don’t see it ever really competing on price, mainly because they don’t have a nice ready-made ongoing revenue stream model like Apple do, so the laptops will never be able to beat the iPad on cost.
Ease of Payment
One of the key things that Apple has that is very important is an easy way to make money both for themselves and for developers. This is not the case for other app stores (with the possible exception of Android), and will ensure that all the content comes to their platform first. Adding books and video in a way that people want to consume them (the iPod screen is still just too small for long video, but the iPad isn’t) will mean more revenue for everyone (publishers and Apple). The behaviour here will be a book / magazine like veneer which is read in the same way as the traditional media, with cool social media type stuff built into the background.
Apples 30% cut is still way too much. Reducing it to between 5% and 10% is an opportunity for Apple to become the de-facto payment for retailers and content providers who won’t accept 30% and will bypass Apple’s payment solution. We have seen many of our clients do this, so maybe there is a 2 tiered structure there somewhere. Apple’s big head start here was because of iTunes and the millions of people who already use it to pay for music, so the billing relationship is there.
The guys to blame here are the mobile carriers, why they didn’t learn from DoCoMo (who take a much smaller percentage of the cost of content) is beyond me and indicative of old company thinking. Sadly Apple, although improved on the 40% to 60% that the carriers take, are still taking too much. Amazon (with Kindle) are even bigger culprits, and although they are pioneers, they will be one of the losers in the convergence playground.
Conclusion
The iPad is the convergent device. Not a laptop, and not an iPhone or iPod. It is a new device that everyone will have that will eventually replace both. It is also the catalyst that will be the tipping point for other convergent devices. It is the perfect solution to the Size-Convenience paradox. Designed and priced well will mean that it will sell well, and it may take more than the year of the Tiger to get it into everyone’s hands, but it will happen.
Other companies will follow Apple’s lead, as we have seen with the iPhone and until we integrate our brains with organic computing, the converged device will be the standard communication device for the short to medium term future. This will really happen in 2011 and 2012, but companies will need to give it some serious thought now if they plan to take full advantage.
Opportunities for…
- Publishers, who have an opportunity to replicate their traditional revenue models
- Skype / other video calling companies for whom the iPad is a perfect interface
- Airlines / trains, who will see the number of people using these devices in-flight increase significantly, and should be able to provide services bundled in with connectivity
- Any wireless providers – who will see a lot more demand especially before the next generation of wireless networks are fully up and running
- Location based services companies / social networks as more people access while on the move, and with the larger screen will be able to do more
- Mums and dads who want to keep their kids happy in the back of the car, and therefore educational companies who provide content that mums and dads will let their kids interact with.
Threats to…
- Kindle / Nook / any other reader will suffer in the same way that other MP3 players did when the iPod came out
- Laptop manufacturers, especially those playing in the small laptop space. They will struggle to compete on both price and quality / design of device
- Wireless carriers whose networks will start to really strain under the weight of the increased traffic
- I don’t see a threat to Apple themselves as I don’t think that the iPad will cannibalise iPod touch or iPhone sales
- Flash or anyone else who Apple doesn’t integrate with the device
- Pulp and paper companies as having a nice reader will finally start to replace the printed version
January 19, 2010 at 9:46 pm · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, Work Related Stuff and tagged: iphone
Ok so the predictions I made back in June 09 have come true (if the stories about the iSlate are to be believed). Still no iPod nano phone, but I still think they should create one.
I still believe that Apple have the best usability and the edge on the competition. If you want to have a look at some of our work, search under TimeOut London in the app store. Quite a nice app and it made me realise that there is actually some pretty cool stuff to do in Elephant & Castle (my old house).
Some other iPhone stats:
- 133,000 apps in the store
- 56m users (34m iPhone, the rest iPod touch)
- $250m in revenue… each month
- More info here: http://tinyurl.com/yhar8mh
October 8, 2009 at 9:20 pm · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, Work Related Stuff and tagged: mint
I saw this video by the guy who started Mint.com, which I use and think is excellent. What I love about Mint is that it is simple, it does what you want it to, but no more, and it looks pretty and just works well…
The speech is quite good too if you are interested in starting up a company like he did. see it here: http://vimeo.com/6960507
What I found quite interesting is the VC / money raising opportunities in the USA. We just didn’t have that in Australia when we first started out, which is good and bad. Good because we still own and control the whole company, but bad because we did have, and still do have some personal hardship.
Aaron Patzer talks about how he had to ‘barely survive’ on US$30k a year in SF. I know that Olly, Dean and I would have loved $30k a year in the first year (or two!); as it was we each went almost $30k in credit card debt (Thanks KPMG for giving me a good enough rating to sustain that amount!).
Haha thats sounding like a ‘you never had it as hard as me’ story!… but I do tip my hat to Aaron, who built and sold Mint for $170m within 3 years! half the time we have been around, which is very impressive considering he did nothing new or innovative. Just executed really well with really good usability!
Part of me wishes he had continued and taken on the big guys and beaten them. I reckon he could have!
