John Bresee » google

iPad and eCommerce- Finally a cash register for the individual

John Bresee — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:03:18 +0000

“(the iPad is) not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it” — Pogue In one sentence this anonymous scribe captured the essence of the iPad. It’s a consumer oriented cash generator with almost every form of payment waiting for you to join. We may well get out of this recession because Steve Jobs willed it to be.

One analyst just raised his 2010 sales number for the iPad to 8-10 million. Which is a ridiculous amount when you consider the category doesn’t exist yet. Which is silly for me to mention it’s not like the analysts spotted the housing crash, the dot com crash or any of the other eighty three recorded fiscal bubbles…but still, they are analysts and presumably they have more wisdom in their domain than I, so I listen.

But what I am guessing and feeling is that the iPad is going to revolutionize in a different way. The notion of personal browsing. That ecommerce+ will be at your fingertips and it will be incredibly powerful. This is not a browser who’s history you have to wipe to keep corporate from reading it, but instead your own that you carry with you…history of all messages, commerce browsing, blogging, writing, photography. The iPad will be the window into your own lives and others.

Ecommerce only represents 6% of total commerce in the US…but it’s the fast growing segment and will be for years to come. It is expected to grow 2% a year for the foreseeable future and that is without mobile factored in. The iPad will do an interesting thing in that it will help migrate those who have been resistant to ecommerce by way of a more friendly environment where commerce will, perhaps feel less threatening. So it will increasingly steal from the physical side of commerce. For the cognoscenti ecommerce will grow faster due to a deeper wallet share. Suddenly commerce that never would have happened over the web will be possible, be it the hot dog vendor or bike parts for a kick ass bike/community/commerce app. Those who comfortably spend on the web now will see their spending accelerate as the software grows to meet capabilities in the new hardware.

And in that way the iPad will work to combine the aspects of commerce that are already appealing with those of geo-tagging, nearest physical product, best price within five miles, and much more to move a large percentage of wallet share to the web. So ecommerce will grow, again at a much faster rate than it has. And it will grow in new, unexpected places that get the distinct advantages of this format. For instance in-game digital product sales might well grow at an astonishing rate.

And Android will follow along with their impossible to beat “Better Than Free” model and slowly and they will own the lower pricepoints. Yet this is a market that is already proven, the $275 netbook is very desirable. Add in a touch screen and phenomenal OS and it will be a dream browser. The Tablet is here to stay. And so is the app. A web page is nonspecific brochureware for the dying 2000s and an app is the perfect hyper-focused one purpose tool for which this generation was born to use.

High price-points will be Apple‘s as there is something luxurious in software and hardware designed together. But Android’s breadth of connectivity to massive data sets creates opportunities that I don’t have the brain power to imagine. Apple and Google do something that no other companies do, they create moments when the current and future exist at once. It’s this strange feeling, as if for a moment, we get a moment of living in the future just by way of a new product release. What a cool capability.

Tablets will not have to war for its share of computing. It will instead be the third form of computing and within 36 months the primary mode for ecommerce.We won’t stop using our laptops and desktops and we can’t give up our mobile phones.” The world never converges, it only diverges into more ways that we can stay in touch, buy, say hello, record our thoughts, support our existence.

I’m Sorry Web Freshmen: Facebook is STILL not Email

John Bresee — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:56:59 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Every since AOL spammed the planet with discs, et al. there has been an never-ending strata of web users who just can’t seem to get the simplest aspects of the web. I’m not sure if people have stopped explaining it to them or if these things are real stumpers. I’ll try to clarify. It’s not that I have extra knowledge, I failed algebra four times in college. There are plenty of simple things that I just can’t get the hang of, like shoe-laces and brussel sprouts.

For the web stragglers, here are a few simple things:

1. Facebook‘s message queue is not email. Really. It can forward to email for some. But for many of us Facebook is kind of losing it’s appeal. So I never check the message queue. Yet my siblings write away as if my email address has in some way changed. It’s just another private message system, no better than the one at Ebay.com. Worse actually, Mom doesn’t write me at Ebay and the get teary-eyed when I don’t respond.

2. The navigation bar and Google‘s search input are separate things. Really. You can type a company’s domain (company name) in the navigation bar and press enter, and skip the step of typing it into the Google search field and then clicking their number one paid result. Save the world some money and save you time.

3. Etsy is the new Ebay. Sorry Ebay. You had it all for so long and we all miss you.

4. Never reveal anything on Facebook or a blog that you wouldn’t happily chat about with your manager or someone who you may have to interview with someday. In fact, don’t say anything to anyone that you wouldn’t like to share on TMZ or some such thing.

5. Give Your Child a Pseudonym: He or she deserves an ability to make mistakes and have them photographed or videoed and yet not connected with their real name for the rest of their life. We all did things when we were younger that we wouldn’t want to have on Facebook now…at least I did.

6. Internet is to the mobile internet as silent film is to TV.

7. www is dead. Long live direct navigation. When you are typing www before an address your just trying to be old school. and away from specialization was just wrong. And I wish I could fix it immediately.

Facebook Again to Test Privacy Boundaries (fstutzman.com)
Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, MSN Reigned Over Internet in Jan 2010 (techie-buzz.com)
Email Addresses Briefly Made Public on Facebook [Privacy] (lifehacker.com)
The State of the Internet Operating System (radar.oreilly.com)
Now You Can Update Your Facebook Status via Yahoo Mail (mashable.com)
Apple App Store app launches on Facebook (tuaw.com)

39 Google’s New (well it was when I wrote this) UI Shows Only 39 Characters On Screen

John Bresee — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:11:53 +0000

Thanks for checking out my stuff. I hope it's not crushingly dull. I mean if you love the internet and radically changing business models and the many laughable errors that are teh nature of trying to run a business then you might enjoy a post now and again.

Cool, Google’s new UI only shows 39 characters on the screen, including logo, TM and spaces. And I probably counted that wrong. Until you roll your mouse and then the regular UI reappears all Harry Potter and the Invisible Map style. Credit Veruus for pointing it out. Related posts:iPad and eCommerce- Finally a cash register [...]

I'm so sorry if right now you're in a worse frame of mind after having suffered through my muddled thoughts, questionable grammar and imaginative spelling. Thanks.

iPad and eCommerce- Finally a cash register for the individual

iPhone = AOL and Android = Netscape 1.0

John Bresee — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:58:37 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

The iPhone is the most beautiful design and business exercise I’ve ever seen. I am happily humbled by Apple for their vision and incredible operational excellence. They saw and created a future of which I hadn’t even dreamed. The iPhone set me free.

And yet…so did Compuserve in its day. Compuserve and the Mosaic browser let me run about the web as fast as my 14.4k modem would allow, from one Star Trek fan site to another. And it became both my vocation and avocation. The iPhone, ten years after I first started working on the mobile web finally delivered on the promise of the richness of the web combined with dynamic community and localization. Thank you Apple.

When we take our first timid steps in a new technology we seek safety, familiarity and comfort; and the iPhone delivers. It lets us safely download apps that have been approved and search around the well lit corners of the nice part of Internet town…but it’s a bit like a cruise ship. You can’t ever really get in trouble. It’s kinda fun for a while, but the captain never invites you up to steer it or do donuts with the thing. And eventually you want to see the whole ocean.

And the Droid…well, it’s like Netscape 1.0. It crashes more than I did in high school, which is to say, a lot. And it lets you get the full unfettered internet, location and community access. Want to download an app that steals your private data…go ahead. Want to download an app that instantly violates federal wiretapping statutes…it’s one click. Seeking something really unsavory, it exists or is in development right now. I don’t even dare to imagine the things that are to come.

The world of Adult entertainment has often been the north star of the internet, showing us where web business is going. Take a look at the origins of most video streaming software or even internet traffic tracking companies.

And trust me, the iPhone’s bevy of bikini girl apps is really not going to satisfy the seemingly insatiable cultural appetite for prurient content. And in that part of the world the Droid wins hands down. The porn world has gotten a seat back in the game.

In the 90s Yahoo failed when it couldn’t keep up with the endless requests for sites to be added to its directory. It was excruciating to wait and see if your site would get accepted and practically business death if you weren’t. And Yahoo was unblinking as they ignored every request for information on how or whether you would get in. Even when they started charging $300 to get guaranteed placement it still didn’t really satisfy a webmasters desire for instant inclusion. Which is why DMOZ came about and eventually things like Wikipedia. The community does a better job policing massive amounts of content then a small group of censors with unclear by-rules.

And the four week wait for a developer to see if their efforts to fly in the Apple world just isn’t going to work. In the Web3.0 world we are being trained to expect real time in absolutely everything.

Android delivers the vicious one-two punch of instant inclusion and boundless content. And that is too mighty for Apple to beat. In the late 90s we ran as fast as we could from AOL into the arms of Earthlink and Comcast so that we could get the full web and not the pre-chewed variety. In 24 months or less the iPhone will be the choice of fussy Meerschaum pipe smoking ascot wearing professors and the rest of the world will be carrying Android 4.o phones that allow us full unfettered access to the world of content and applications.

It seems likely that a wikipedia of applications will come to fruition with a community of trusted testers and a standards body run by the community will come about. And when we see that BBB of mobile web, we will find trust. Until then, buyer beware.

But it’s going to be a cool winding road getting there…filled with missteps, crashes and eventually government intervention.

And Google will become a bevy of little Googlets, split up by the privacy fear mongers. This is the coolest movie I’ve ever not seen and I can’t wait.

First Malicious iPhone Worm In the Wild (it.slashdot.org)
Verizon Puts The iPhone Down In Favor Of Android (ubergizmo.com)
Wireless 2.0: Vicious to Virtuous? (xconomy.com)
iPhone and Android Are Taking Over the (Mobile) Internet [Smartphones] (gizmodo.com)
Android goes for the iPhone weak spot-Porn Apps

For the Droid a Walk is Equal to a Grand Slam

John Bresee — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:31:02 +0000

: Cover of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

What I hadn’t realized when I got the Droid is that market economics don’t apply. You don’t have a customer in the Verizon store comparing the heft of the iPhone and the Droid and saying, “hey, nice, if worse comes to worse I could cudgel a would be attacker to death with this five pounds O’Droid.

What I mean is that people are so fooled by their wireless contracts or about the disinformation about network superiority or inferiority that they aren’t doing true comparison shopping. I picture Tina Turner, again from Mad Max saying to people at Verizon stores, “You know the story, Bust the Deal, Face the Wheel!” And those people, white as ghosts from fear and from being relentless geeks with 80 plus hours a week of laptop tans, subsuming their will and instead of walking out the door and going and buying an easily superior product in the iPhone, instead saying, “what do you have that’s iPhone-ish?” I mean we all saw how Clark Griswold ended up with the coveted Family Truckster.

And that I get. After two years of pent up geek demand as they steadfastly didn’t give in to apple the Verizon faithful are going to line up long and deep and keep the factories Wii busy for ages to come. And we will have an actual two horse race for a little while.

And so my believe is that la familia, mi cosa nostra…etc. have a super hit on their hands. The mafia like entities Verizon and Motorola coming together to craft a blood oath under a waxingg moon with the naive Google is laughably funny. If you’re Google. See the old men from Schaumberg will do okay but somehow Verizon got tricked into being a dumb pipe again. Ouch.

If you read the best article on the wireless landscape in years, by Bill Gurley, he espouses a notion of Less Than Free and it’s powerful. When you look at the Droid you see Google taggers hammered the place. You can’t take a morning constitutional without the Droid scouring google for words like loamy or brown. Google is so deeply integrated into the Droid that they have uncorked the largeest champagne bottle of clicks, searches and paid clicks since Bill Gross first invented this little idea at a company known as GoTo.com.

Well played Google. Y’seee Verizon and Motorola…they can dance this dance again with anyone they like. There are lots of hardward vendors. And Verizon your right to dip your toe in the click stream was the play…but you didn’t make it. You made like the record companies not knowing that Apple was using you to sell iPods and create an ecosystem. And now Google has played the telcos in order to lift the cap off of their market cap. Double in 24-36 months. Nice work Sergey, Nice Larry.

Lets see how well you play the trust busters when the game next changes. B-Gates is still ahead of you there.

Pardon me while I take a big “Droid”

John Bresee — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:38:32 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Wow. When Goliath finally decides to step up and kill David you expect some fireworks. I mean Motorola isn’t exactly new at cell phones. They practically invented the Bat phone and those huge things that Crocket and Tubbs lugged around on ‘Vice. So when Google and Verizon and Motorola teamed up for the wireless Malachi Crunch I expected something really cool. Unfortunately the first go round with it suggests that it kinda sucks.

I remember my two year-old son was able to operate my iPhone and unlock it on his own. He was quickly navigating through the interface without any help. I was able to make the iPhone work without resorting to a manual. I was annoyed by the touch screen typing but I got used to it in a few weeks. Already I’m jonesing for my touch screen QWERTY. The Droid is confusing and awkward and lacks, well, UI. As the CTO at my company often says, “soft is hard”. And boy the User Interface just plain stumps someone with my room temperature IQ.

The hardware is okay. The flash on the camera is nice and the speaker is better. There’s a nice use of vibration/haptics in the interface that I like. And it’s got a nice heft to it so when I finally get annoyed enough it’ll go clear through the window as opposed to bouncing off as the iPhone might.

I will say it’s better. The iPhone has forced the rest of the world to raise the level of their game. But all you Verizonites who can’t seem to understand that it’s only about $100 to break your contract will be happier on the Droid than on the DOS like Blackberry. But it’s no iPhone. The droid is the Corvette of phones…which is nice if you’re into that kind of thing.

The game isn’t over.

The Twilight of Microsoft…

John Bresee — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 06:54:35 +0000

(Full disclosure: I’m long goog and aapl).

Two billion downloads. You can’ t really say that enough. It’s hard to appreciate the magnitude. Most of my life growing up I watched the Mcdonald’s sign change from 10 Million Hamburgers Sold to 100 million and finally a billion. Then one day they gave up and just said, billions of hamburgers sold…but that took me from the 70s to the 90s. And yet Apple served up two billion iPhone apps in less than a year. It can’t be overstated, this is the fastest consumer growth the world has ever seen. It’s amazing.