Michael Koby

The Free Software Foundation, yesterday posted an article about the NBC/Microsoft hiccup involving broadcast flags (article).  There are a couple of things wrong with this article but the main point I want to focus on is the fact that they go to great lengths to make Microsoft the bad guy in this little fiasco.

This is my first video with my new Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000, hopefully the quality is a little better than my previous video entries.

This week on the Power of Information, Derek, Steven, and I discuss Digg getting suggestions, Microsoft giving Yahoo a time limit, how to get the best seat on an airplane, and the latest iPhone SDK and 2.0 Betas.  We also look at javascript Mario and TinyWarz.  All this and more on this week’s Power of Information.

You can download this week’s episode here (mp3). You can hear Power of Information Sundays on KCAA 1050AM in Loma Linda, California at 5pm Pacific Time. You can also download Power of Information in podcast form from our website at http://www.powerofinformation.net. The Power of Information is part of the America First Radio Network.

Special thanks to AngelsEye Inc. for donating the bandwidth to Power of Information. AngelsEye Inc. specializes in corporate branding and promotional marketing, created to help companies of all sizes promote their own business and events. Be sure to visit AngelsEye Inc’s website today. Also, thanks to the band Anberlin for supplying music for our program. You can find out more about Anberlin and their music at http://www.myspace.com/anberlin.

Last week the website, MacDaily News, posted an article entitled, RIM’s BlackBerry 9000 Shows How Little They’ve Learned from Apple’s iPhone and proves that in a world where anyone can have an opinion, an uneducated opinion can really do a lot of harm.

You see the fact of the matter is, the iPhone is cool.  Everyone knows it and a lot of companies (like LG in particular) are working to catch up with the cool factor that has been generated by the iPhone.  The problem is, there is more to a phone than the cool factor.  There is adoption, there is the question of market, and there will always be the question of who’s next.  MacDaily News is incredibly quick to point out how lame the new BlackBerry 9000 is and how much it doesn’t improve on the existing product.  Fair enough, there is not a ton of innovation between the BlackBerry 8800 to the 9000 to warrant a jaw drop.  Also, they really focus on the saying things like:

"…but has not of the multi-touch goodness of the iPhone" and "It’s the same old, same old in an iPhone-inspired wrapper"

Maybe it is just me but I do not see this "iPhone-inspired wrapper" they speak of.  In fact I see something that is more in line with RIM’s previous offers than with the iPhone.  But RIM has a different market focus than Apple when it comes to mobile devices.

Research In Motion’s market?  The enterprise first and foremost.  Don’t believe, then just look at the fact that in almost every new BlackBerry release, it goes to the business side of provider first and the consumer side second.  The iPhone’s market?  Consumers and most specifically a younger generation of consumers at that.  Ask any older person what they want in a phone and more often than not you will hear, "I want to be able to make phone calls.  Taking a picture would be cool, but its not a requirement" and this is not Apple’s market.  The older generation could care less about the flashy interface of a device when it comes to actual use.  Sure they might say "wow that’s nifty" or have their eyes grow wide in awe of something new, but overall they don’t need it to live their daily lives.

So if Apple’s market is not the older generation (the large percentage of which controls/makes decisions in the enterprise world), Apple is not going to be selling to those folks.  Enterprise people want a phone that works and does what they need it to do.  The BlackBerry devices do that.  They work and they do it on an existing infrastructure that IT departments have spent years laying down.  The iPhone is not going to replace RIM in the enterprise anytime soon.  Enterprise folk are not looking to RIM to come out with an iPhone killer.  In fact most of them could care less as many of them are still on previous generation BlackBerry phones like the 8700.

Secondly, a touch screen is not everything.  In fact, every person that I know that has a touch screen device says the same thing with they pick up my Curve and use the trackball, "oooh, I like the trackball." or "wow this is a nice phone" so apparently a touch screen isn’t everything.  Multi-touch is a cool innovation and Apple should be commended for it as it really changes the way people interact with their phones and other devices.  But multi-touch is not going to completely replace existing navigation technologies.

Last but not least, MacDaily News needs to get a serious clue and stop drinking the Apple kool-aid.  I mean yes, Apple came out with some really cool stuff when it unleashed the iPhone on the masses but seriously, I have never read an article with so much fan-boyism in it.  Read up on technology, work in an enterprise IT, or something before you go off on things you apparently do not understand.  Nokia is not going anywhere, they allow interchangeable SIM cards, they offer some pretty nifty smartphone devices (not to mention they developed some of the first smart devices), and they’ve been on the 3G bandwagon for about as long as anyone can remember.  Microsoft is not going anywhere either.  They have market share and they continue to improve their mobile OS with each iteration.  I do not know how long LG will last, but as long as people need cheap devices, we’ll see a lot of them.  Seriously, the people at MacDaily News need to come out of the Apple induced haze and read up on other technologies because it’s articles like the one I linked to that really prove that some people really just have no idea what they are talking about.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced a new strategy in relation to “openness” and made basic proclamations with regards to interoperability. The press release entitled, “Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability” really just served as a general plan of what Microsoft intends to do with making themselves interoperate better with other projects, specifically in the open source arena.

Microsoft officially flip-flops more than Kerry on the 2004 campaign trail. In the past 3 years Microsoft has made at least 2 other claims to be more open while at the same time threatening open source companies and users with intellectual property lawsuits. This seems contradictory to me, maybe because it is a contradiction in the fullest sense of the word. How can you want openness and interoperability but threaten to sue those that want to connect to you and your products? It just doesn’t make sense.

Now, this time around they have some form of game plan and they publicly state that they will allow non-commercial use of Microsoft patents, while commercial use of these patents will need to acquire a license at low-royalty rate. They mention that they will be releasing documentation on every programming interface for all their high volume products so that people can develop around these technologies. I wonder if this means that we will see better communication on Samba based technologies (Samba is an open-source technology that allows non-windows machines to communicate with Windows file shares). I also wonder if there will be more communication with the Mono project so that there is better integration between .Net and Mono. I would love to see Mono become more complete as a result of this. Somehow though, I doubt that this will occur.

Like I said before, Microsoft continually changes their position on being “open” and this time, I believe, will be no different. I think that we will see another flip to this flop in six to eight months time. While I applaud the general idea behind this initiative, I just don’t see it being fully fruitful. We will just have to wait and see if this time Microsoft actually bears fruit with this round of openness.