Luke Janssen

Jumping off stuff

Archive for iphone

Magazine iPhone apps

September 10, 2009 at 4:26 pm · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, The Future and tagged: , ,

Magazines!… grow some balls and charge for your iPhone and Blackberry apps. I hear so much whining about ‘oh the BBC is stealing all my eyeballs‘ or ‘boo-hoo the advertising revenues are down‘, well here is your chance to make some subscription revenue and you are squandering it!

iPhone 3.0 can handle subscriptions….  nice ongoing subscription revenue. Even $1 a month would help. I read the telegraph every day on iPhone and I would gladly pay that, and people will gladly pay as long as that becomes the norm. But they won’ t pay if people like Business week are pulling their pants down and destroying the model early.

Business week bringing out a free iPhone app is the WRONG approach. You don’t give away business week for free at the newsstands do you? I hear alot of back pedaling by publishers lead my Murdoch who is now trying to charge for on-line content when it was free before. This is the right idea, but its like closing the gate (10 years) after the horse has bolted.

Now we have a new horse and are thinking of putting him in a pen with no gate again!… why?.  Magazines have a price, and also advertising revenues. Why change the business model just because the medium changes? Sure you don’t have printing costs, but you still have to pay journalists, who are being laid off faster than something very fast that I can’t think of right now.. And it doesn’t seem bad now, but believe me, we don’t want to wake up in 10 years to find out that we live in a world where journalists have been replaced by bedroom bloggers and Twitter!

So like I said – grow some balls, and charge for your valuable content (unless you think it isn’t valuable) AND get advertising revenue too – just like you do for the actual magazine. You never know you might actually make some money!… and as a bonus, you could save journalism too!

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Farmville

September 4, 2009 at 3:41 pm · Filed under Uncategorized and tagged: , ,

It used to be the ‘what cupcake flavor are you’ quizzes that pissed me off, but it was soon replaced with my Facebook wall being filled with the latest updates from people’s virtual farms. Brad has bought 10 more chickens!

Then I saw this article in the telegraph about it being the most popular Facebook app out there. There is a top 10 list (below) which is interesting. With that many daily users these apps get more attention than most media companies…

1. Farmville, 13.4 million daily users

2. Farm Town, 6.0 million daily users

3. Mafia Wars, 5.8 million daily users

4. Facebook for iPhone, 5.7 million daily users

5. Facebook for BlackBerry, 5.2 million daily users

6. Pet Society, 4.4 million daily users

7. Texas HoldEm Poker, 3.8 million daily users

8. Restaurant City, 3.7 million daily users

9. Facebook Mobile, 2.7 million daily users

10. YoVille, 2.6 million daily users

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Aussies punching above their weight

August 6, 2009 at 7:39 pm · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, Work Related Stuff and tagged: , ,

A while ago I was wondering which country had the highest number of iPhones per capita because I suspected it was Australaia. I was wrong it was the USA, but Australia was 2nd, so I was almost right.

iphone by country

Because of Australia’s mini population, they are not that far behind the USA for number of iPhones per capita.

I think that Australia is punching above its weight in many areas. Take a look at the Olympic medals per capita from the Beijing Oympics. Australia is really the most impressive in that list. Truly winning things rather than just having a small population (Australia has more than double the next most poulous country in that list)

gold per country

I think that because Australia is pretty far away and isolated,  they are overcompensating in areas like sports and innovation.

We have looked the usual suspects for cheap technical development teams all over the world – India, China, Canada, Eastern Europe, and to be honest, the best value development in the world is in Australia. Like they are in sports they are innovative, creative, smart, good attitude… etc… they aren’t as cheap as some of those other places, but for what you get they are the best value.

I would even say they are at least as good if not better than the best dev in the USA, but probably cost half as much.

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Mom n Pop vs “big business”

October 17, 2008 at 4:48 pm · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, Work Related Stuff and tagged: ,

I saw this article (read it here) about Hottix suing Beattie McGuinness Bungay (BMB). Apparently BMB asked Hottix to license their iBeer iPhone application, and Hottix said no, so they made their own iPint application and because it was free and the iBeer cost US$2.99, Hottix lost money.

So everyone who commented agreed with Hottix and were all “poor old Hottix, a mom n pop operation being raped by the big evil corporate”. But wait just a minute! I have to say I am on the side of BMB.

  • Firstly What IP? a pint emptying as the iPhone is tilted is hardly revolutionary IP! plus the iPint was different anyway.
  • Secondly, I find it disgraceful that iBeer is US$2.99. Hottix deserve something cheaper to come along because there is NO VALUE there. If IP means you can make stuff that is SHIT expensive, then sorry, but I don’t believe in IP.
  • Thirdly, why didn’t Hottix just license the iBeer application. Greedy Idiots!
  • Fourth, think of the consumers. I have the iPint application and it is fine. A little basic but ok. Certainly not worth $2.99. Not even worth $0.99. Why do people keep writing such shit iPhone apps and try to get people to pay for them. Take a look at Texas Hold ‘em by Apple. Now that is worth the money.
  • Fifth, logic is wrong. There is NO WAY I would have bought the iBeer OR iPint application if it cost anything, so there is very little cannibalisation there in my opinion. The only people who bought the iBeer did it because it was one of the earlier apps available and they were in a descovery phase. 
Shame on you Apple for taking iPint down. I would have told Hottix to get a life, suck it up and actually produce someting of real value, not cry when someone puts a realistic price on their gimicky overpriced crap!

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New York ad week

September 25, 2008 at 10:20 pm · Filed under Work Related Stuff and tagged: , , ,

I went to a conference as part of AdWeek which was pretty good. Google and Yahoo are really piling into the space and you know what? I think that they will win (to an extent). Good results are happening for advertisers on both compnys’ mobile portals. Likewise on the payments side of things. Visa, Mastercard, etc. will win the mobile payments war just becuase they are the big guys in the non mobile world.

Some key stats from the talk:

  • 43% of iphone users make US$100k+, 18% US$75-100k (i.e. iPhone users are rich. They are also trendsetters, so they are a good demographic to do stuff with)
  • Mobile usage is highest when you are at home in bed after work
  • Mobile compliments on line without cannibalising it
  • Mobile as a channel is working and is more lucrative than other channels
  • There are more 3G users in the USA than Europe
We haven’t got a google G1 phone in the office yet, but from what I can see its ok. I would wait until the next version, and I still think that the iPhone is a better physical design, and people don’t care about functionlity when they buy a phone – they care about the phone’s design. And if when you are reading this you say “hey! I care about the functioanality” it means you are a geek
And here is a cool cartoon that Johnny Makkar found for me that sums up the single most important reason why the iPhone isn’t doing better than it could do

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Convergence

September 5, 2008 at 4:39 am · Filed under TigerSpike Innovation Lab and tagged: , , ,

I am really liking the move to give away laptops with 3G cards that the carriers are doing at the moment. A few key thoughts of mine about convergence are:

  • PCs are getting smaller. And will continue to do so until it becomes annoying to type or look at them. I have an 11″ sony Vaio which I love (especially as I fly alot and so get to laugh at anyone trying to use a full sized laptop (I travel in Monkey Class – still can’t justify the cost, plus I am sure I am saving carbon from extinction or something). Anyway… laptops are getting smaller and therefore more mobile and therefore more in need of internet connection anywhere, which is why the bundling of the PC and 3G card is a good one, and a big growth area for the carriers in my opinion
  • I use my iPhone way more for data and email and other non voice services than voice (in fact I still use my Samsung for calls) I realise that I am using my computer less and less as a result. Just now I lined my iPhone screen up to my screen and my PC screen is only about 5 or 6 times bigger than my iPhone screen, soon it will be less than a third. Also when in monkey class, the movie plays on a screen thats only about twice as big as my iPhone
  • PCs are getting dumber. Soon PCs will become thin clients with all the processing done on the web, (accessed at ever increasing speeds by sim cards). Apps that I use that have moved on line are lead by Google, with Salesforce also having all the data and processing done on line and Basecamp which we used to use, a great collection of Apps from 37Signals (a company I have lots of respect for).

So Where will convergence stop?

Two things:

  1. The size of my pocket and whether my device feels uncomfortable in it will make a difference. Attention to jeans manufacturers – soon pockets for bigger devices will become useful. The iPhone (sorry to bang on) is big, but also slips nicely into a pocket as its edges are rounded. 
  2. Size of fingers / hands. I have thin girls fingers, so typing on my Vaio is not too difficult. But if you have fingers like my cousins (about 4 times the size of mine) then you are in trouble if you go too much smaller than the smallest Vaios or EPCs.

As I have said in previous posts, plugging devices into brains and projecting them will help this, but that is a little way off yet…

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My new iPhone

August 15, 2008 at 11:45 am · Filed under Observations and Ramblings, TigerSpike Innovation Lab and tagged: ,

I have just bought an iPhone (my own one, not one that the developers can play with), and I have to say I am very impressed. Having played with it for 10 minutes I can see how it is going to be such a useful device for me. The best things are (and excuse me if I haven’t found the rest yet, this is my first impression, which we all know is the most important thing – as my Oma used to say “I only need to see my first 5 cards in Bridge to know what I am going to bid!… which used to really piss my Opa off!)

So, main good first impressions are:

  • email is good, but I only have my personal gmail in there at the moment, I will have to wait for Johnny Makkar (our iPhone man in New York) to get to work and tell me how to set the rest of my iPhone sorted
  • downloaded (and paid for!!!) 3 Muse albums from iTunes (including one I already own on CD – yeah I know, but who cares, I like Muse so they can have my money). I was about to buy a Nano, but this has saved me from having to do that
  • set up world clock so I can tell the time at all our offices – Sydney, London and New York (believe me this will save me massive headaches, and I am watching it like a hawk so I know when Johnny is in)
  • Google maps – just a good app that I liked. I get lost alot
  • Carling’s iPint. Which is very cool. Simple. Good branding. It got so much good PR that I wish it was us who did it for one of our beer brands!

So those are my first impressions.

Luke

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