Jul 17, 2007 | blog
Shel Israel makes the point that blogging is normalizing, and I think he’s right on the mark here. The discussion among several bloggers is that blogging is “cooling off”, or becoming less popular. It may be true, but Shell posits the idea that there are additional social media tools and services that people are migrating to.
The social media webscape has changed in the last two years, not so much because people are becoming less enamored of blogging, but because of additional outlets. Micro-blogging services like Twitter (and Jaiku, Pownce, and Hictu) are making huge changes in the conversation. Social networking sites like the now-booming Facebook, or LinkedIn are bringing new ways to connect, network, and share in the conversation.
He points out that we all enjoy talking about the latest thing, whether its blogging, Facebook, iPhone or Harry Potter. Its what’s new that takes up a large part of the popular conversation and media attention. Many of us still use landline telephones even though we also have mobile phones. The analog clock is still popular even though digital clocks are abundant and easier to read at a glance. We still read newspapers despite radio, television, and the Internet.
Blogging is another medium that, at this point, is maturing. It’s entering that next stage, past fad, where it grows up a bit. Starts getting more respected, more widespread. The determined professional bloggers are what will emerge in the next months and years – many have been with it since the beginning, a decade ago.
As new technologies and ideas of new ways to communicate are developed, the conversation is naturally going to jump onto these platforms. Some will thrive, others will bust, but one thing is for sure. The conversation will continue.
Via: Global Neighbourhoods – Blogging. Not passe, just normalizing
Jul 3, 2007 | blog
A not-so-interesting complaint relating to the iPhone and AT&T’s EDGE data service. Yes, EDGE is slow for modern browsing tasks. AT&T has 3G and HSDPA networks available in many urban areas that Apple could have taken advantage of, relying on EDGE as a good fall-back in most rural areas. To be honest, most rural areas will actually only have GPRS!
While the analysis of an under-powered wireless infrastructure is true, not just the government is to blame as they try to in this article. The carriers and device manufacturers should also be taken to task on this. Too much emphasis is placed on who has the fastest network, and not enough on making that fast network ubiquitous.
The dirty little secret that consumers need to keep in mind is that the U.S. is a huge country and we expect service in nearly all corners of the map. Take a look at Europe and each country is not much bigger than the state of Wisconsin, or Colorado or California. If that’s all the real estate that you have to worry about, you can get coverage fairly easy. We’ve got a lot more country that has a few dozen people per square mile and that is hard for many carriers to justify putting up expensive cell towers.
At any rate, consumers should start getting more vocal about the price and performance of wireless networks. Popular opinion is the greatest power in the marketplace, regardless of what the carriers, device manufactures, and government regulatory committees believe.
Let ’em all know what you want!
Via: PC World – Frontline: iPhone Shows Need for New Wireless Network
Technorati tags: Mobile Phone Carriers, FCC, 3g, AT&T, EDGE, HSDPA, GPRS
May 24, 2007 | blog
T-Mobile has finally released an upgrade to their popular MDA called the ‘Wing’. I’ve been a happy T-Mobile MDA owner for well over a year and am trying to decide whether to upgrade to the Wing or wait for the next version.
The Wing is a nice upgrade, revamped keyboard with larger keys, Bluetooth 2.0, 2 Megapixel camera, and Windows Mobile 6. What isn’t updated is the RAM/ROM, which really isn’t a problem, and the processor which runs at 200MHz. The MDA has the same speed processor in it an can at times be really slow. The other item that many, including myself, are missing is the 3G portion. Yes, Tmo only has EDGE right now, and will use a different 3G frequency when they do roll UMTS and HSDPA later this year.
Technorati tags: T-Mobile MDA, T-Mobile Wing, UMTS, HSDPA, EDGE, 3G
Mar 20, 2007 | blog
Now this has little to do about being an email client, which is something I think will disappear in the coming years, but really about a big development in communications tools for productivity workers. Yes Microsoft is at it again, playing its hand at convergence, and positioning itself to again enter and then dominate a market.
While the established incumbents (Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Siemens, etc…) have little to fear in the short term from Microsoft. The long term, on the other hand, is where Microsoft traditionally kicks ass. The advantage that the current situation presents for the existing vendors is that they have Microsoft’s playbook to learn from and adapt to, long before Microsoft’s product matures and penetrates the market to the point where they are no longer relevant. To do this, Microsoft has to have missed important features in the product, has stability problems out of the gate, does not scale well, and so on. Further, current vendors also need to take their existing products and cut costs, trim the need for hardwired phones, promote the utility of softphones, and demonstrate QoS on their system over Microsoft’s.
If the current vendors don’t change and adapt to the Microsoft “threat”, they’ll follow the same trend as other software and service markets Microsoft has entered. Microsoft dominates a market because it brings “good enough” functionality to large numbers of customers, at very competitive pricing.
No matter what, this is an important move by Microsoft, and will bring the competition to the IP Telephony market that it has long been missing. Innovation by all parties should follow with better products at better price points. The integration of VoIP (along with IM and Web Conferencing) into the Office System family products will bring another level of productivity and efficiency to productivity workers.
Via: ars technica – New Office Communications Server 2007—most important communications tool since Outlook?
Technorati tags: Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, VoIP, IP Telephony
Feb 22, 2007 | blog
According to the logon screen for my hosted GMail services, Google now has support for BlackBerry devices. If this supports push email from the GMail account it’ll be pretty cool.
Can’t wait for Google to come out with something like this for Windows Mobile. With Windows Mobile 6 supporting push email from Windows Live and Yahoo, it shouldn’t be too long for Google to come up with a push method for GMail. (I Hope).
