The biggest problem is your battery.  Once you run Skype, it will keep running, and sucking up your battery.  Instead of 5-6 hours of usage on my 3G S, with Skype in the background, I was getting more like 2-3 hours.  As Stuart notes, the only way to stop it is manually from the iOS 4 multitasking (double-click) feature.

Skype should have a way to turn on/off multitasking from within the app itself. And as Stuart notes, when it is running in the background, you get barraged with notifications for everything and you have no controls over those notifications, short of quitting the Skype app from the multitasking bar.

The short of it is, if you start the Skype app, you probably want to double-click to kill it so it doesn’t kill your iPhone’s battery.

First, I’ve heard a lot of people say recently, statements along the lines of “2GB is more data than I’ll ever use.” There was a time when one megabyte (MB, not GB) was a lot of memory, a HUGE amount. There was a time when a 1.5Mbps T1 line was enough for an entire city. And it wasn’t that long ago. Things change.

And bandwidth doesn’t change in a steady, linear way – bandwidth needs tend to change in a dramatic stair-step way, when new ideas get popular. One example was the browser, circa 1991. The iPhone itself is a perfect example of this. Within a matter of weeks of the first iPhone’s release, AT&T suddenly found that people were using about 15 times more data. And they’ve been struggling to catch up ever since.

The iPad may have been the last straw for AT&T. Shortly after the 3G iPad hit the street, AT&T rescinded their promise from a few months prior to provide unlimited 3G access for $30 a month.

Now, on the one hand, there are few services where we pay on an unlimited, all-you-can-eat model, so perhaps, one could argue this is inevitable. On the other hand, an affordable unlimited data plan played a significant role in the success of iPhone and the resulting watershed change in what people expect and how people use their mobile devices. The metered plans AT&T is offering are not completely ridiculous in terms of price, say compared to the rates mobile phone carriers were charging for data prior to iPhone, but the metering alone, at any price, still has a major impact on users… and on the ecosystem.

With an unlimited plan, nobody looks at the bill. Nobody checks usage. Nobody thinks twice before clicking ‘Go’. For AT&T, that may be exactly the opposite of what they want (or think they want) – but for the industry and the ecosystem at large, it’s a good thing – a very good thing.  In the end, as part of that ecosystem, it’s good for AT&T too.  Come on. Where would AT&T be without the iPhone?  And beyond just the iPhone, AT&T is benefiting from the entire wave it has spawned, including Android and every other so-called iPhone-killer now available, and all those to follow.

The average monthly charge for all these “annoying” customers using these new phones is way higher than before, when people just had a voice plan and minimum texting. By moving to these metered rates, AT&T is potentially slowing the kinds of innovations that gave us the web, and the iPhone – innovations that AT&T themselves has benefited immensely from, to the tune of billions of dollars.

Beyond the affect on end-users, an even bigger factor is the effect on developers. As important as any technical aspect of iPhone’s success was a business factor – the thing that caused a major change in the landscape was universal unlimited data being bundled with the phone. Before iPhone (and still true in many cases with other carriers/phones), developers were dealing with an unknown when it came to what data plan a given customer might have, or even if a data plan was available to them at all. This severely stifled the ecosystem. With iPhone, developers knew every single customer had an unlimited data plan – and the result is hundreds of thousands of apps and millions of customized iPhone-specific web sites.

So, while many people suggest that AT&T is serving itself well by reverting to metered data plans, in the big picture, AT&T is hurting themselves as much as anyone. When people say things like “2GB is more data than I’ll ever use” this is unconsciously framed within a context of the apps that exist today. It precludes the “next new thing” and assumes a static picture of future cell phone use. Developers have to think twice about building apps that could push users over that limit, meaning such apps won’t be introduced, and we all get stuck in a 2010 world.

Thanks AT&T, for shooting yourself in the foot, and hitting us on the ricochet.

One could say this is a problem for the future, but I know people personally that are ready for the computerless, iPad-only world today – they can do everything they want to do on their iPad.  In fact, that’s exactly what they do. The laptop or desktop gathers dust, until they need to sync something or perform an update to the iPad.  In practice, these folks usually also have an iPhone or iPod for which they also must use the “real computer” to sync.

The only app they run on the computer is iTunes. Yet they still must suffer all the babysitting and housekeeping that goes with keeping a full Mac or PC functioning: patches, drivers, viruses, malware, system updates etc. – all just to run iTunes. Their $1,000 PC has become nothing more than a “syncing station.”

This is also a show-stopper for recommending the iPad as a replacement for a wearing-out PC – even for someone who is  a perfect candidate for it.  If they have to buy a new PC , and “maintain” it, with all the support and admin hassles that go with that, even if only in order to setup, sync, and update the iPad, then iPad is essentially a non starter as a “replacement” option.

Perhaps the most important thing to consider when buying an iPad is the USB cable. It must be connected to a PC to get iPad going and to sync/update. In the name of truth in advertising, Apple’s marketing should show the iPad connected by wire to a PC because that’s the reality a buyer is faced with.

Apple, this is not a problem for some distant future. That future is here already. Please tell me when I can suggest the iPad to these users so they can get off the Windows/Mac Admin treadmill.

However, a lot of it was blind adoration of anything Google, in part at least, driven by hatred of Apple. From the outside, it looked a lot more like Apple envy and general jealousy. As I dared to criticize anything Google did or anything about the Android platform, I was quickly characterized as an Apple-lover and Google-hater. What I was saying didn’t matter anymore at that point.

There are lot of things I don’t like about Apple, their policies, etc. The iPhone platform SDK is also extremely limited in some really important ways, such as no third-party app integration with SMS, voice signaling, the voice channel, etc. – but that is all a post for another day. My point here is that when I’m criticizing Google or Android, it doesn’t automatically suggests that I love all things Apple. Nor does it suggest that I’m an Android-hater.

I’m critical of Google and Android because I want it to be better – I want it to be as good as, or better than, iPhone. The Android apologists will tell you it already is, but that is just their Apple hatred speaking – they would buy anything and overlook any limitation, as long as it’s not Apple. The fact is, the Andorid user-experience is lacking, from a regular “person on the street’s” perspective. Tech geeks will overlook a lot of things that mainstream users will not accept.

The first problem is that there isn’t a consistent “Andorid user-experience” at all. Every device and carrier offer their own variation. Again, geeks argue that this is a good thing, and admittedly, it does have some benefits – but in trying to build an ecosystem and a brand, it is a recipe for disaster. If you have used one iPhone, you know them all. Likewise, iPhone developers only have to be concerned with a small matrix of variations in the hardware, screen-size, etc. With Android, the problem is exponentially more challenging.  This is one reason why Android apps often look terrible on different Android based phones – or don’t work at all.

And then there’s the app quality and consistency issue. Apple certainly lets through some pretty bad apps onto the app store, but for the most part, their draconian UI guidelines result in apps that people can figure out and use right away. A random sampling of 10 apps on Android vs. 10 apps on iPhone will make this point quite effectively. Android apps are all over the place in terms of UI and quality. In short, with some very impressive exceptions, Android apps suck.

Android is not a brand yet. Is it a “droid”?  Is it an HTC? Is it a Gphone? What the hell is it? It doesn’t help that one Android phone doesn’t look very much like another, externally or in the UI. Nobody knows it’s Android.  In fact, it’s not clear to me what brand Google wants to promote here.

So in short, Google has a branding problem, a distribution problem, and an ecosystem problem. I want them to resolve these problems because I want them to keep putting pressure on Apple. But don’t tell me they’re good enough already. And don’t tell me I can’t criticize Google while still wanting them to succeed. They have lots of room to improve and they need to know it and not assume people will accept an inferior product based on their ideals alone.

SuperTweet.net Access Credentials

For example, to send a tweet, use the http://api.supertweet.net/1/statuses/update.format such as:

curl -u user:password -d "status=playing with cURL and the SuperTweet.net API" http://api.supertweet.net/1/statuses/update.xml

The password shown in the example above is never your real Twitter password, but a separate password you set up just for use with the SuperTweet.net API – As with Twitter OAuth, you can revoke, change, or disable that password without any impact to your real Twitter password or Twitter account.  Also, you can deauthorize the SuperTweet.net API application itself on Twitter.com if you think it’s being bad, again, without affecting your real Twitter password or other Twitter applications.

Learn more: http://www.supertweet.net/

Here you go.

First, I don’t have one myself yet, but I have had a chance to play on friends’ iPads. Second, while I don’t consider myself an Apple apologist, some of my friends accuse me of being so. And, finally, before you think I’m an iPad hater, I want to preface this whole thing with the fact that I do believe that iPad represents a step into the future and while I might not be ready to pay $600 for one today, I expect to have a device like this in my household sometime in the not too distant future.

A few jabs… look away if you can’t stand anything negative about iPad

Upon finally getting my hands on a real iPad to play with for the first time, my first reaction was disappointment in the display quality.  I had been pumped up to expect pictures, video and web sites to be “gorgeous” and “stunning”, but for me it was more meh.  Perhaps my expectations were just too high. Some examples:

Video. Maybe it’s just me, but I thought the video in particular was okay,  but not stellar or HDTV beautiful. It looked to me like typical medium-rez PC video, pixelated, blurry, and laced with digital artifacts – granted, on a bright and glossy screen.

Games. I was also not that impressed with games.  iPad doesn’t compare to a $300 $159 Xbox and $150 HDTV. My son is a gamer and he wasn’t impressed at all either.

Web pages. The browsing experience is fast with a nice UI generally. But, as others have noted, the typography could be better.

So how does it change the world?

In what could be characterized as “flame-bait”, Daniel Eran Dilger names 19 things iPad will kill including: Kindle, Netbook PCs, PSP, DS, Flash, Silverlight, MS Office, Windows Media Center, set-top boxes, TiVo, Chrome OS, and Android. While I take issue with some of the history and reasoning in Dilger’s post, I generally agree with the conclusions. That’s a lot of carnage.

But that’s already been said.  Probably every idea regarding iPad has already been said somewhere out there in the Internets, but here are a few ideas I haven’t seen yet.

Does it spell the end of open-computing?

There are a lot of fears that iPad marks the beginning of the end for computers as we know them. That is, the kind of computers that let us download and buy software from wherever we want. I think this is partially true. I don’t think “real computers” go away, but iPad (and its future offspring) certainly change the role of real computers. It won’t happen overnight, but they will be shifting into a niche role, for high-end verticals. For one thing, you still need a “real computer” to develop the software that runs on the closed systems like iPad.  These old-school type machines will still be used for other high-end applications, like professional photo work, video etc.  They won’t go away completely, but over time, “real computers” become less mainstream and most people get all they need from “closed” machines like iPad.

I think there will be room for hybrids, computers that can act like iPads, and iPads than can act like computers. Consider an iPad-pro that is essentially a jailbroken iPad. I think iPad will (or should) become an App on Macs (essentially an end-user version of the iPad emulator we have in Xcode) – sort of analogous to how Front Row makes AppleTV an App on Macs – oh yeah, and Macs will have multi-touch touchscreens.

Does it replace the laptop?

Here’s my take. Yes, for most people… but not entirely.  Or, in other words, maybe my answer is really “well, sorta.”  You see, I think the laptop and the iPad will converge, into a spectrum of machines ranging from, on the low-end, closed devices that look like the iPad of today and, on the high-end, devices that look a bit more like a laptop of today, or more like the tablet-PC type machines.  But these higher-end machines will be more niche, less mainstream.

The iPad type device will be the core device and there will be a range from more phone-like ones, smaller and more portable, to larger, more “coffee-table” ones.

You’ll drop this semi-portable iPad type device on your desk and it will sync up to your bigger HD monitor and physical keyboard (for those that want the old school type PC) and will act mostly like a PC as we know it today.  You’ll do all the stuff people do, web surfing, documents, presentations, music, video, greeting cards (yes it will sync to a printer too) and of course email, chat (and blogging) etc.  For most people, this is all they’ll ever need and the iPad becomes their laptop, desktop, mobile, coffee table, and multimedia home entertainment device. Done.

In a desktop mode, the iPad may physically also serve as the equivalent of the mouse, or i.e. one of the input devices of this “docking station” computer-like setup.  There may even be docking stations that look like a laptop as we know them today. Some peripherals will connect physically. Most will connect wirelessly (finally, Bill Joy’s Jini dream comes to life).

This future is a docking station, cloud-computing, traditional computing hybrid model.  Some data and apps are in the could. Some are local, or cached in a hybrid cloud model. Some computing tasks happen on the iPad “core” device. Others occur within separate CPUs in the linked up and networked peripherals (this already happens today, with routers, network storage, our TVs, Bluray players, etc).

At the low-end (and the largest mainstream segment) it’s a closed world, where people get Apps from approved app stores and that’s fine with them.  For a price, on the high-end there will be more “open” platforms, all the way up to the top of the stack, the platforms used to develop the code for the “closed” platforms.  There will be some layers in between: iPads that are more “open”  as well as traditional-style computers that are more “closed” and some hybrids in between.

So, in the end, I don’t think iPad spells doom and gloom or the end of software innovation. Things are going to change. There will be winners and there will be losers. But I think there will be opportunity throughout the value chain with wealth spread around in a long-tail manner. Yes, the vast majority mainstream users will be on “closed” platforms (by today’s definition) but that may be a good thing, in some ways – and the iPad is certainly not really “closed” compared to, say, a cable TV set-top box. People can still get third-party apps, and (probably) users will still be able to use web apps without Apple approval.

Final thoughts, Immediate uses for iPad

On the coffee-table. For me, the first use is as a living room device, a coffee-table browser basically. This is particularly true of this first generation of iPad that doesn’t have cellular data, so it will only work in Wifi hotspots, making it somewhat less useful as a mobile device. I think before long, we are just going to expect to find an iPad on the coffee table.

Laptop substitute. There’s also the “almost laptop” role.  I’ve tried countless devices over the years for this purpose (including the Sharp Zaurus and Nokia N800) and I’ve always come back to a real laptop. For everything I can’t do on my iPhone, I pretty much need a real laptop, particularly if it involves connecting to external hardware, like flashdrives, printers or VGA/DVI video projectors. For me, the iPad in its current form may not be adequate, sitting in limbo between the iPhone and a real laptop, but there may be some times when it would work for me as a substitute for a laptop. I think for a lot of people, including journalist Larry Magid, the iPad serves this role just fine already, in its current form.

Demos. I think the iPad will be the new hand-held interactive brochure. I don’t do a lot of this kind of activity myself, but I think these will be all over trade-show floors, showrooms, etc.

Contrary to the views of many, I don’t think the iPad, or at least not this first version, will be that huge of an eBook reader… yet. I think it will get there, but I think initially people will use it, especially the first wifi-only iPads, in the above roles more than as an eBook reader.  Nor do I think it will be a big game machine – people will play games on it for sure, and eventually it surpasses PSP, DS etc. – but in the near term, partially due to cost, pure gamers will stick with other platforms/devices.

Any bets on how soon before I get an iPad?  When are you getting yours?

This has, of course, created quite a stir in the Twitter development community, with accusations that Twitter is “eating their young” and pushing third-party developers out of the market.

These recent events have really brought home for developers the risk that when building on top of someone else’s platform, they could decide to compete with you head-on. Of course we’ve seen this many times in the past, most notably with Microsoft, but also with Google, Cisco, and many others. Those seeking funding for Twitter mashups often struggle with this push-back from potential investors. Perhaps now, that will become even worse and it will be even harder to get funding for a Twitter-based product or service.

That’s not good news for Twitter. While their platform is popular, with a claimed 50,000 developers, it’s still relatively small, compared to Facebook with 500,000 or Apple’s 185,000 apps in the app store. Furthermore, both Facebook and Apple’s App Store have spawned lucrative breakouts like Zynga, Tapulous and PopCap, while Twitter’s ecosystem has yet to produce a similar hit in terms of revenue, to say nothing of profit. Even among the most popular Twitter apps with lots of users, there are plenty of companies burning cash, but few producing any.

So, is it time to drop the “twit” or “tweet” from your brand name and become less intricately linked and integrated with Twitter and the Twitter platform? Or is this a perfect time to show loyalty to Twitter in the hope that they reward you for that loyalty? To Twit, or not to Twit. That, is the question.  What do you think?

Unfortunately I don’t have the actual device myself yet, because they have temporarily sold out. But I got some time to speak with Chris who provided a lot of info.  When I get some time with my hands on a real Navigator myself, I’ll post a follow-up review.

Basically, the Navigator starts off as a plug-and-play (no drivers needed) mouse. Then, Glide.TV provides software for a soft (on-screen) keyboard and a customized browser specifically designed for the living room experience. The software works on Mac and PC (and even Linux, I’m told). Chris gave me a demo and let me try using the navigator myself. I was able to use it effectively right away.

At home, I have a Mac Mini permanently installed as part of my living room TV entertainment setup. I still have “old school” TV but increasingly, we’re watching Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, and other online content from the couch – and a traditional mouse and keyboard are just not the best living room input devices. The Glide.TV Navigator lets you operate PC or Mac-based TV with one hand, the way we’re used to, without a bulky keyboard in our lap or having to hunch over the coffee table to use the mouse.

Overall, it looks really impressive and I can’t wait to get one for my home setup.

By Doug Mohney, on February 8th, 2010

After two years as Ooma’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Rich “The Dude” Buchanan is departing the company for another project.

Makes one wonder who is left there.

I understand the company has raised about $61 million and have obtained approx. 100K customers (for which they must provide phone service for life). No one outside the company knows how much of that money they have left – rumors suggest they have burned though over $50 million, but know knows.  Hard to say when they’ll next need more money or how hard it will be to get more or how close they are to positive cash-flow (if it costs them $600 to get a customer that pays them $300 and brings liability of lifetime service, not sure that line ever crosses into the black). I was pretty amazed to see them raise as much as they have over the past few years, and especially last summer when money was really tight.

But man, $50 million, if that number is close to reality – Wow.

Apparently some of the early investors took it in the shorts – the most recent round of financing was based on a reported $30 million valuation (note that amount is less than they have raised).

BTW, by most accounts, Ooma has very happy customers in general and their voice quality is generally regarded as being very good among VoIP services.  It might be one of those deals where the customers “love them to death” kind of like WebVan.

March 15, 2010

Facebook reached an important milestone for the week ending March 13, 2010 and surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website for the week. Facebook.com recently reached the #1 ranking on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th. The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame. Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week.

I have some thoughts on this. Perhaps this will all be “well duh” but here goes anyway.

First, this has been positioned as an “either / or” kind of thing. I don’t think Google, or at least the search paradigm in general, if not Google specifically, is going anywhere. It will be here for a long time to come – it’s simply too powerful. It’s incredible how different our lives are in 2010 compared to before such powerful search engines existed. But I’ll come back to that.

I would characterize this as a strong indication that we are heading along the path toward David Gelernter’s “lifestreaming” described in the mid-1990s: “…a time-ordered stream of documents that functions as a diary of your electronic life…”

Instead of going out and getting the information, the information comes to us.  Facebook isn’t a complete transition to this lifestreaming model, but it’s closer.  And Google, even with Wave and Buzz, certainly isn’t very effective at it (at least not yet).

Facebook is not the end of this road. It’s simply a step along the way. More and more, the tools and services we use are going to have to provide filtering and notification, bringing us the information we want, where it comes to us seamlessly, instead of us actively tracking it down.