Physical Media is Dead (Again)
Apparently, people really like to declare physical media as a dead medium. While I can understand, more people are moving towards streaming Netflix and finding ways to download their media, I still feel (as I said in February of last year) that physical media is not going anywhere any time soon.
If you read this article from CrunchGear, you’ll see that the article and the people commenting that “physical media is dead” and pointing to the fact that they “stream from netflix” or “use bit torrent” to watch their movies. And while this is most definitely the case, that geeks are streaming/downloading movies more than buying them, the rest of the non-geek population is not. We as geeks live in our own little world and regularly forget that the rest of the world doesn’t think like us. They also do not (for the most part) act like us either. Which means, when they want to watch a movie they either buy it from the store, rent it from Blockbuster or Netflix, or watch it on Pay-Per-View off their cable/satellite boxes. Watching on Pay-Per-View is about the closest to streaming a movie onto their television that the average consumer gets.
The average consumer of audio/video mediums prefer having the physical media. That’s just how it is. Now, in reference to this and the article’s attack that people aren’t buying Blu-Rays I say if that was true, the Blu-Ray section at my local best buy wouldn’t take up an entire front and back of a very long store shelve. Also, people aren’t buying Blu-Rays because they cost more than DVDs and in case you forgot, we’re in a recession and that means that people are watching their spending. If they can get a movie for 12-15 dollars on DVD or spend 25-30 on a Blu-Ray, chances are they’re going to buy the DVD over the Blu-Ray. And since the report in the article mentions that people are buying fewer DVDs, in this particular recession it looks like that most people are opting against both movie mediums. We’re in a recession, so people buying less is no great shock, but lets keep it in mind when we’re looking at the purchasing of a non-necessity okay?
Just to reiterate, physical media is not dead. It is also not dying like we geeks think it should. The average consumer is buying fewer DVDs and skipping Blu-Ray because we’re in a recession. Before you count physical media as having bit the big one, consider all the pieces.
Trying to Use FriendFeed More
I’ve made a concious decision lately. I’m going to use FriendFeed more. What is FriendFeed? Lets see if I can explain this. You have a blog right? Flickr account? Delicious? Digg? You get the idea. You write to your blog actively, upload photos to Flickr regularly, and bookmark sites to delicious daily. When you create an account at FriendFeed, you tell it about all of these sites and accounts. You can even add things like your Amazon Wishlist, YouTube account, Google Reader shared articles, and many more. You tell FriendFeed about all these sites, accounts, and things so that it will aggregate it all into a single place. Your friends on FriendFeed can then subscribe to your FriendFeed account and see updates as they happen. Twitter posts show up as you post on Twitter, new blog posts are aggregated, and new photos from Flickr are displayed. With me so far?
FriendFeed’s been around for a nice little while. You might have even heard someone mention it. It’s a little like Twitter in that people will at first, have a hard time understanding it. But it is a nice and interesting way crowd source news.
And that’s where FriendFeed’s shining gem lies. As people get on the service and begin marking “Like” on different articles and share various findings from the web you can find a lot of interesting articles on a lot of topics. Everything from information on the latest Iran election riots to iPhone news.
With all this in mind, using FriendFeed takes some getting used to. It’s different than Twitter. And it requires a lot more than just casual observence. You have to read the articles and “Like” things and comment on items as well. You have to be involved. While I don’t have the time to focus on it full time like some people do, it is a nice way to see what’s going on. If you utilize it’s Groups feature you can really segregate your news by subject. But it still works best when you follow people that talk about the things you’re interested in. That is where you will derive the most value out of the service.
I’m hoping that over time I can really come to understand the full power of FriendFeed and find a way to integrate it into my daily online routine. This is going to take time though.
Why I Uninstalled TweetDeck From My iPhone
Last night after trying to use it for an entire day, I uninstalled TweetDeck from my iPhone. The app, in case you haven’t used it yet, is gorgeous. It is incredibly simple to use while retaining much of the power that can be found in the desktop version of TweetDeck, most specifically tabs. But it had it’s share of problems.
While the application looks fantastic, it’s buggy as all heck. I had random crashes when trying to add users to a tab I had just created while viewing their profile. It would randomly crash when loading a tweet or a user. But also, it didn’t handle refreshes in a way that made sense. I would see new tweets when I had the app open, but if I closed the app and loaded it up a few minutes later after doing something else, those tweets I saw when I was in TweetDeck would be gone when I came back and sometimes would not be shown after the app refreshed the tab. Missing tweets don’t work well in a twitter app. Finally, the lack of a landscape keyboard option is almost a deal breaker for me. With how much I tweet from my iPhone I need a landscape keyboard option, since I type faster and with more accuracy that way.
I’m sure I could have gotten over the missing tweets thing, it might even have been user error, but the random crashes really made the app unusable. Combined with the lack of landscape keyboards and you’ve really got an app I just can’t use. So for now, I’m sticking with Tweetie. There’s a reason that it’s one of the top iPhone Twitter apps even though it cost 3 bucks to purchase. It’s a solid app and easy to use.
Did you install TweetDeck to your iPhone? What do you think? Are you having similar experiences to mine or are yours completely different?
It’s the Apps Store(s), Stupid
Over the past few weeks I have had the pleasure of playing with various smart phones. I own an iPhone myself, my wife owns a BlackBerry Pearl 8110 (GPS version), and her cousin owns a Google G1 (Android device). As I mess around with the various devices and tried their application stores, I realized something. That something was this: The application stores are the real stars of the show.
Allow me to explain myself. You see, I’m a long time geek. When I get a cool new device I make it my goal to trick it out with third party applications that help me to get through my day. On my early smartphones, this was mostly games. As I’ve grown and moved into more professional realms, the games still get installed but I also look at other productivity increasing applications that help me do my job. The thing is, that in order to install these third party applications (and games) you had to know where to go and download/purchase them. If you weren’t geek saavy, you couldn’t do this, more specifically you didn’t know where to look to find the applications. I have installed cool applications on many a persons phone over the years only to have them go “Wow, that is so cool” and they ask if there are other programs out there. The answer was always “yes” but it was followed by long winded instructions on where to go to download the apps and having to instruct them to call/email me if they had problems.
Apple really helped change all that with their iPhone App Store. Now smartphone users (many first timers) had a single place they could go to browse, purchase, and install applications on to their devices. No longer did you have to be overly geeky to install cool applications on your phone. No more reading hundreds of forum posts, how to articles, and countless hours spent searching for applications to install. All you have to do is click the “App Store” icon on your screen.
I’ve long said that “Apps sell a device” but if people don’t know how to install those apps, it causes problems. A user (someone non-geek) needs to be able to find, download, and install the applications on to their phone(s) without hassle. Apple’s App Store did this. So Apple didn’t just change the game on the smartphone genere, they changed the rules for third party applications as well. Single click install is about as simple as it gets.
So what about they Android Market (G1 App Store) and the BlackBerry App Marketplace? While they don’t look as good as Apple’s App Store, they are pretty darn close. But they nail the general concept pretty well. The main point is to give everyone a place where they can go to search for, download, and install applications on to their devices with as few clicks as possible. Both of these other stores do this. Now, my wife, who is decidedly non-geek can go search for an application and have it installed on her app fairly quickly. This not only gives her a sense of freedom from me having to do things like this for her, but it frees me from having to worry about her installing a bad app. It could still happen, but the overall chances of it happening are greatly reduced.
While the applications one can install on a device will always help sell a device, a user needs to be able to install those applications without a geeks assistance. With the invention of these app stores, we’re pretty much there.
iPhones, News, & USA Today
So, it looks like that USA Today is having second thoughts on making their iPhone app free. Read the article here
The article even mentions that USA Today might go to charging for the app along with a digital subscription cost. As a regular user of the USA Today iPhone app, I can say that for them to go this route is a horrible idea.
For starters, most major news can be had for free, and from a variety of locations too. If USA Today began charging for their iPhone app, I would immediately remove it from my iPhone and begin looking for a replacement news application. Secondly, USA Today has one ofthe finest news applications on the iPhone so it would be a great loss to the free app community in the App Store. And finally, USA Today got the whole thing right. Their app allows one to easily share via email, Facebook, or even Twitter. They fully integrated into the social media space with their iPhone app. At the moment, no one else has figured this out quite like USA Today has.
I think that this is a nice exampe of the printed newspaper medium trying to hold on to the current revenue model rather than finding another way to monetize. I can get most of the same news available in USA Today for free online so I really can’t justify paying them for digital delivery.
Everybody Hates AT&T
It is no secret that those in the online geek community have a large disdain for AT&T Wireless service. This has only grown with AT&T’s exclusive rights to the iPhone, probably the best thing to come to geeks since the very idea of a smartphone.
Being someone who is all three; a geek, iPhone owner, and AT&T Wireless subscriber, I have to ask: Why is there so much hate for AT&T. And I’m not really focusing on the whole iPhone 3GS pricing. I get the arguments there (both for and against). But I’m more focused on peoples hatred for AT&T Wireless’ service.
A Little History
Let me start by saying, I live in the Houston, Texas area and others people’s mileage may vary. I’ve used just about every current cell provider on the market today. The only exception is T-Mobile, because they’ve never had good service where I’ve lived. I was on Verizon when they bought out GTE mobile down here in Texas, and at the time I lived in Simonton, TX (about 30 miles West of Houston and 10 miles South of I-10). The service bit. You were lucky to get a single at all and keep a conversation online for longer than 15 minutes at a time.
I then switched to Sprint, mainly because most of my friends at the time had the service. Even convinced a few people to swith to Sprint. This was when Sprint wireless was known as Sprint PCS and its service was actually decent in most major cities and off major freeways. Over the 5 years I was on Sprint, the service in the Houston area degraded more each year. To a point where I would be in the middle of town, on a major road and lose a call multiple times. Also, calls had a tendency to not come through to my phone at all.
In 2003-ish (maybe even 2004) I switched to Cingular Wireless (knowing that they were going to buy AT&T Wireless in the next few months). I originally wanted to go with AT&T due to fact that a touring musician (someone who had just spent a good year touring the country) told me that the only person who always had a signal was the guy who had AT&T service. But when AT&T asked for a rather large deposit, I opted for Cingular (post AT&T purchase news).
The Verdict
Instantly I knew I had gone with a service that was going to make me happy. I could make a call from my home in Simonton with zero issues. This encouraged my parents (on Verizon at the time) to switch to AT&T. My father, who was traveling all over the southeast region of Texas for his job had signal where ever he went, making him reachable.
The end result was the entire family switching to AT&T.
So Why the Hate?
So I have to wonder, why is there so much hate for AT&T’s service? In my personal experience (and those that I have convinced to switch to AT&T) I couldn’t be happier. I can make and send phone calls, get internet service on my phones, and my phone works out in the country (where my parents still live). I have been all over the state of Texas and have had little to no issues when it comes to connectivity with AT&T Wireless.
One thing I’ve noticed when people complain about their AT&T service is that they never turn their phones off (even for a few seconds). Doing this each day ensures that your phone has the latest tower information (this confirmed by multiple AT&T support reps at various levels). When you’re phone turns on, that’s when it gets tower information, if you don’t do this regularly, you’re reception will begin to tank.
I understand that a lot of the issues with service have to do with region. Some areas a different provider is going to have better service. But from my experience, AT&T Wireless has been some of the best wireless service I’ve ever had. Especially when it comes to the whole “more bars in more places” thing. I have pretty consistant service wherever I’ve taken my AT&T phone.