technically speaking

Maybe one of the biggest announcements of the week surround Facebook Places becoming a reality. Facebook held a live, streaming event to announce they were getting into the location check-in game. Rather then take on the two biggest social location services Facebook is actually working with Foursquare and Gowalla. They will soon have an API for other location services to use as well. Almost instantaneously there were people referencing FB as Stalker’s Paradise.  Clearly with Places as an auto-opt-in service it could be yet another privacy concern.  If you want to block your friends from being able to “place” you Bill Cammack entertainingly walks you through the steps.  If you have the Facebook app for iPhone or use touch.facebook.com you can start using Places now.

Even before iOS4 came out and crippled my iPhone 3G, I’ve been leaning towards switching over to Android. Before I make the switch I’m bringing my 3G back to life by reverting it back to iOS3, here’s how. If you want an idea of what it’s like to switch, my buddy Arpit, wrote about his first month with Android covering some of the differences between the two platforms both as a user and a developer. A concern of many developers is if Android is a viable market place, Aaron La gives details on his experience with his Advanced Task Manager app. At $10,000 a month in supplemental income I’d say he’s doing pretty good.

Verizon has been having a good few weeks. More rumors about the iPhone coming out for the Verizon network, though I wouldn’t run to far with that one just yet. They did announce their new HD guide for FiOS subscribers. I don’t have FiOS but I’m glad to see one of the biggies pushing those Motorola boxes into the 21st century.  The current set top box that powers America’s TVs features technology that’s nearly a decade old.

They also boasted about there upcoming iPad app that’s will work as a second screen as part of their TV Everywhere.  They also talked about updating their VOD experience.  Comcast and Time Warner are also working on iPad apps.  Comcast showed their prototype  earlier this Spring at the Cable show and Time Warner shows theirs in this YouTube clip. If you’re not up to speed on TV Everywhere check out GigaOm’s Everything You Need to Know About TV Everywhere.

Though not everything has gone as Verizon would like.  Their new “rule the air” campaign is targeting women with the chance for equality, through Verizon of course. See the commercial and a great rant from TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis.

In the most recent issue of Wired, they proclaimed that the web is dead. So of course the retorts started to follow, Boing Boing uses Wired’s own numbers to show that the Web is alive, well and growing nearly exponentially.  Then again they said Print was dead, Rock was dead…Technologizer has a collection of the death of everything.

To end here’s a beautiful time-lapse video of the Perseid Meteor Showeras seen from Joshua Tree National Park and taken by Henry Jun Wah Lee .

Late last week there was an article via the NY Times asking “Could a deal between Verizon and Google destroy any chance for Net Neutrality”.  Instead, Google and Verizon called for a press conference on Monday to explain what they’ve been working on. Based on Google’s (and Verizon) blog with their post titled “A joint policy proposal for an open Internet” they spell out that it’s quiet the contrary. Later in the week Google then countered the many concerns about Google selling out or undermining the system.  The NY Times continues to question the proposal and “Who gets priority on the web?” What it all really means is yet to be seen but makes me wonder if this is a dig at Comcast and their win against net neutrality earlier this year.

Google is also getting some heat from Oracle as well.  This time it’s their Android platform that is getting the heat, more precisisly Google’s version of Java that runs it. Daniel Eran Dilger takes Google to town in his long but engaging article “How Oracle might kill Google’s Android and software patents all at once.” Charles Nutter gives a different point of view in his “My Thoughts on Oracle v Google.”

Apple also had some patent fun this week when they published an exact copy of FutureTap’s Where To app inside one of their patents.  Where To has been around since the first generation of iPhone. Apple and FutureTap have worked things out, mostly just a failure to credit rather then a stealing of ideas.

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With App Inventor, Google has put the power into the people’s hands. One no longer needs to learn a complicated computer language in order to turn their idea into something real. This is a polar opposite to the approach Apple has taken with their most recent terms of service (v3.3.1), which made for many headlines on how they cut Flash from being a potential development platforms for the iPhone. Will App Inventor empower the masses or as Job’s stated (regarding flash based apps) flood the market with substandard applications?

More then likely there will be a hundreds of quickly put together dumb and/or kitschy apps. Ideally this is where Darwin’s laws of survival will come into play filtering out the deluge of iFart type applications. On the flip side, there will also be some quality apps that may not have seen the light of day if it weren’t for the reduced skill set needed to create them. In general, I see App Inventor being used by designers and developers to quickly prototype an idea before having it developed via traditional methods.

Regardless of how App Inventor is ultimately used, it’s the democratization of technology that is the game changer.

Links:
Google App Inventor

With section 3.3.1 of the iPhone SDK terms of service agreement Apple has once again ruffled the feathers of those that support them. 3.3.1 mandates that no intermediary language can be used in the creation of iPhone/iPad applications. Steve Job’s suggests that this to maintain quality control, but technically that’s what the App Store review process is for. Personally I think “quality control” is just a cover up for marketing insecurities. My buddy Arpit captures this point with a touch of humor

“He really should go and look at the crap apps that currently flood the apple app store, so much so that Apple has started to remove apps with “limited functionality” and “objectionable content”. But hey, iFart is still one of the top sellers but at least it was done in Objective C. “.

Since the release of 3.3.1, the bloggosphere has been flooded with people’s opinions and there is no need to reiterate these points. One of the best reads on the subject comes from The Tao Effect, as it covers both Steve’s responses and makes some solid points on the subject. And others are reminded of the 80’s when Apple (under Steve Jobs) followed a similar path with the desktop market only to watch the market be completely overtaken by windows/intel based computers. TechCrunch waxes more deeply on this subject. One thing I haven’t seen referenced yet is the history of the game consoles and how closed/”locked-in” system worked or better failed to work.

If you look at the gaming console market you can see how “locked-in” versus cross-platform support plays a bigger role in the success of the console then the hardware or even market dominance. When Microsoft entered the market Sony’s PS2 and Nintendo were the dominant players. And Microsoft had zero clout in the gaming world, especially against Nintendo, Sega and PlayStation. But what Microsoft did have was a way game developers could code the game once and get it on both the new XBox console as well as millions of PC. Fast forward to today and XBox is now the platform of choice to gamers the world over despite the PS3’s better graphics and hardware. Why?

Because it’s the games that draw the users just like it’s the apps that make the iPhone what it is. Sure the iPhone revolutionized smart-phones and is the current market leader, still there are more non-iPhone smart-phones everyday. With Android being offered free to phone manufacturers it’s sure to increase market share despite anything Apple does. As developers start realizing they can reach a larger audience (make more money) by developing cross-phone applications the iPhone will start to feel the pain Sony felt with the PS3.

As a customer I want to get the most for my money, currently that’s an iPhone, but when my contract is up and I’m looking at the next few years will the iPhone continue to offer me the best deal? Based on moves like section 3.3.1 the iPhone’s future just got a little dimmer.