John Bresee

I’m way off the back on this but I had to to jot it down. UStream launched their iPhone app recently and it’s simply one of the coolest and scariest pieces of technology I’ve ever seen. The app turns your iPhone into a realtime broadcast device. Your camera films and transmits whatever lies in front of it.

You have to see it function to feel the impact and realize how our lives have changed forever with this one application. Lets say you get pulled over and are concerned about how you are going to be treated. Flip on the app, spin the phone to face the side window and broadcast in real time your experience. Officer Friendly is, unbenknownst to him on live TV.

When you visit their site it is astonishing to see what streams are currently live. Endless litters of puppies under heat lamps…and and audience of 25 people watching them sleep. And the watchers happily chat with each other.

The scary side is that, even though the technology for video phones has existed since the 60s, but most people don’t want to be seen most of the time. Broadcasting our lives is uncomfortable and yet  you no longer get to decide whether somebody’s iPhone UStream camera feed is catching you at any given time and broadcasting it to the world. Giving up your privacy is scary. Giving individuals the power to broadcast is amazing. The world will never be the same. Rictus.

Oh, and the application is beautiful and works seamlessly, shouting out to (I can’t say the sill word tweeples) twitter, broadcasting your location and allowing you to chat with your audience at the same time. Truly brilliant development.

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Ten years late mCommerce has arrived. Due to our convoluted quilt of 12 wireless technologies like the laughably bad TDMA (AT&Ts previous technology that could manage only eight calls per cell) we find ourselves arriving a decead after iMode revolutionized Japanese pop culture.

Apple’s iPhone strategy has been the most beautiful business ramp in the history of technology. The OS is, despite some minor flaws, excellent. A year ago it became the one material possession I would save with me if there was a fire (pardon the duh factor of grabbing a phone). In the past my laptop was my most vital possession and yet quickly my iPhone has supplanted. Yet convergence is just as far in the distance as it ever was. I use my laptop just as many hours a day…it’s just the the iPhone has eaten up all the space that comes between. Even a pause in conversation is enough to have me idly unlocking the phone, considering a spin through the app store.  Divergence is alive and well as it always has been.

Much of the business world is still grappling with what kind of opportunity the iPhone really represents. Often the thinking goes that mCommerce should be like the Tommy Hilfiger web model. I believe that is the wrong tack, taking traditional eCommerce and just shrinking it to a smaller form factor.

What needs to exist is the notion mobile is leading us to a new model for computing that I’ll call for the moment, Better than Web.

Better Than Web is, well, just like it sounds. eTailing always runs a few years behind the content revolution and generally  also just doesn’t do things as beautifully. There isn’t an ecommerce site in the world that has anything like Facebook’s beautiful UI and phenomenally layered business logic. I dream of an eTailer that hits even 70 percent of the Facebook mark.

And in the world of Apps the gap between the A players and the eTailers is larger. I have yet to se

e an etail example using GPS, shared browsing, haptic interface, audio, accelerometer and more. With GPS, turn by turn navigation and some simple work Walmart could have every one of their store’s guide you through a real map your current stadium like store. Add a list function and it could walk you to each product you need while offering you coupons on nearby or similar items. Average cart could climb and time in store could go down. Need a clerk. Hit the big panic button and scan the bar code and have an instant call back…from the call center in Mumbai.

And for us rare pureplays the world just gets rosier. Show only reviews from my state, current location, in the last fifteen minutes, from my friends, etc. No longer need a person in Naples Florida be greeted by puffy down coats on the homepage. We could actually personalize. If it’s a ski site like ours and we’re able to track vertical skied in one day then we would know much better what skis to recommend.

Simply put, in eTailing your retail App better not be a slimmed down dimmer retail store with itty pictures that works in conjunction with your web site. It instead needs to be the next generation or etailing offer much much more. The move to dynamic localized and personalized content just moved up a few years. Ebay is averaging $89.95 per download in revenue and we haven’t even hit the holidays. Mobile is the future of etailing, duh. And Better Than Web is the future of mobile.

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Aren’t you a little bit tired of the green’ocrisy. The shameless annoying hypocrisy of the greenies. I can say with some certainty that the cloying phrase, “social responsibility” has jumped the shark. Check out McDonalds.com’s post reminiscing about the spirit of Woodstock. Awesome.

Well thank God for a movement on the wane. Yes, lets save the planet; duh, we live here. It’s like putting put up banners that say, “save the living room!” It’s a given. We need to do it with every bit of energy we can get from a supersized #2 meal…which, in it’s day was two cheeseburgers, fries and a coke; back before the notion of supersizing.

The hemp wearers can quibble amongst themselves and they might disagree as they see their one career avenue going up in smoke, but the simple truth is that when McDonald’s co-opt’s the phrase “social responsibility” you can be certain that it’s days of hipness are over. Shane McConkey called it when he ended the life on the term Extreme Skiing. He did it when Taco Bell launched it’s “Extreme Value Meals”. He was right and Freeskiing was born. How about it Max?

Oh and if Vanity Fair and Madonna are asking the question then it’s far too late:

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