Over 16,545,546 people are on fubar.
What are you waiting for?
AT&T is the exclusive iPhone carrier for the United States, which means you can expect every AT&T store in the country to overflow with customers at 6:00 PM local time on June 29. Demand is expected to be so high that AT&T stores reportedly will close shop for about two hours before the 6:00 PM launch, installing iPhone displays and roped queues to handle the anticipated lines. But earnings simply from retailing the iPhone won?t be AT&T?s biggest boon from its Apple partnership. Anyone wishing to be an iPhone-owner has to sign a two-year AT&T service contract, which means the telco could steal millions of customers from rivals like Verizon, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile.
AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson said today that about 40 percent of people who showed an early interest in the iPhone are not AT&T wireless customers ? a strong indication the ?ultimate digital device? will help the company pull customers away from rivals. If Steve Jobs is proved correct in his forecast of 10 million handsets sold worldwide by the end of next year, that could mean an additional 3 million customers for AT&T.
But it?s not clear sailing for AT&T or Apple. The iPhone will operate on AT&T?s EDGE network, one generation behind the latest data networks, which means Web pages will take longer to download on the iPhone than other devices operating operating on competitors? third-generation networks. And there?s plenty of direct competition among super-smart handsets ? Dan Frommer at Forbes put together a thorough list of nine iPhone alternatives, and points out that every major cellular company is poised to offer a direct iPhone competitor:
Don?t write eulogies for the other cellular companies yet. The iPhone is a threat to the wireless industry, but it?s also helped convince millions that spending $500 or more on a cellphone, and another $40 per month for a wireless data plan, is completely within reason. Each competing carrier and handset company has juiced up its product line, marketing one or more new, high-end smart phones that mix phone calls, the Internet and multimedia capabilities like music and video players.
One point remains firmly in place, however: the iPhone is definitely the sexiest phone of the lot. But it?s still in the air whether that chic styling and all the media hype can overcome a slower network, unfamiliar interface, and nine competing products. Stay tuned.
(Image of AT&T at Apple iPhone Presentation by Kainita)
By Andrew Hines
Apple iPhone
(Credit: CNET)With all of the hoopla surrounding the iPhone, we have all forgotten about the most important development of today's release: a new way to activate a cell phone. You can have your iPhone. I'll take the home activation and enjoy it for much longer than you will enjoy your new phone.
For years I have been buying new cell phones from Verizon Wireless. And in each of those years, I've been forced to waste the better part of a Saturday afternoon on activating the new phone I had been coveting for a few months. Here's the scenario: go online and find the phone you want when your contract is up. Once you pick out your new companion for the next two years, drive over to your carrier's nearest and wait for one of the sales representatives to ask you why you're there in the first place. Once you tell them you want a phone, go look around at all of the cellies they have laying around while they confirm that you are eligible for the low-cost offer. OK, so now that your sales representative has come back, tell them which phone you want and begin the agonizing process of switching your number to the phone and signing documents. One hour later, you are finally on your way home with a new cell phone while looking down the barrel at hours more of inputting contacts. Sounds great, huh?
With the release of the iPhone, this process will be entirely averted. Here's the new scenario: walk in and tell the sales representative you want an iPhone. They hand you the box and you pay the bill. See ya later! In just a few short minutes you will have your new phone and a half hour at best is wasted. Now that is what I call a revolution.
I'm not too concerned about how well the keyboard works on the iPhone or if the EDGE service is slow enough that I can't even load up my favorite websites. Instead, I'm most interested in seeing how simple it will be for consumers to take their phones home, log on to iTunes and activate the iPhone. If it works as well as I think it will, we may be on the cusp of an entirely new way of buying phones. If activating a phone can be done at home and all of the credit checks and account setup can be done with a few clicks of the mouse, when will the need for the brick and mortar middleman finally cease? Let's hope it's soon.
Once again, Apple may succeed in revolutionizing an industry that is in significant need of development. The current state of phone purchases are abysmal at best, and to be able to bring an iPod-like model to the cell phone industry could change the way we all get things done. Apple and AT&T were smart to let this activation process become a reality; a similar process works for the iPod, why wouldn't it work for the iPhone?
The mainstream press and many readers are focusing on the wrong topic. While the iPhone is the vehicle that could revolutionize cell phones, the new way of activating a cell phone plan will revolutionize the entire industry. iPhone innovation will come and go, but the ability to save time by activating your cell phone at home will undoubtedly leave an indelible mark on the entire cell phone industry.
Don Reisinger is a freelance technology journalist. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home.
Source: CNET News.com - Business Tech
SKY'S THE LIMIT
Well, the "Social Network Platform" fatigue I talked about a few days ago, is starting to set in, this time for some of the developers. Which developers? Why, the ones who eagerly rushed in to build applications (aka apps or widgets), for the newly open for business Facebook F8 platform.
And as Marc Andreessen points out today, it's only five weeks after the launch of that much-vaunted platform, and the Facebook backlash is starting.
Here's exhibit A, as an anonymous developer in the Valleywag post describes it:
"I work for a startup in the Valley and have nothing natural against Facebook at all - in fact my team and I have spent every hour of every day for the past four weeks developing our Facebook app because we thought it was a great opportunity for exposure. Our dreams were inflated by how viral the initial set of applications were, despite their weak design.
However, over the past week we've begun to realize that the whole thing has been much more hype than reality, and has thrown the entire startup world for a loop. The numbers speak for themselves. There are a total of 1,131 apps. Of the last 500 to be approved, only 5 have over 100,000 members, and none have over 200,000."
What's happened of course is that on June 26th, Facebook throttled back the number of friends a FB user 
can virally invite (or spam, depending on one's point of view), from 500 a day to 10 a day (see chart from this Venturebeat post).
As Fred Wilson notes, this means that the handful few developers who won the first week viral distribution lottery, were an exception rather than the rule.
But then, platform developers historically never did promise distribution to application developers.
Application developers for Microsoft's DOS and Windows platforms, or Apple's Mac platform, always had to work hard to get retail, mail-order, or online distribution for their applications, INDEPENDENT of the platform vendor.
The Facebook platform PLUS distribution opportunity was a unique one.
But as I mentioned in the original post, it isn't going to be unique for long:
"...given the attention the strategy change has gotten in the geek and mainstream media, every incumbent social network, portal, media company, and web company that's had any aspect of social networking in it's model, is re-vamping it's strategy to both emulate and counter Facebook's strategy."
And today, Facebook's bigger competitor, MySpace, owned by News Corp, threw it's hat into the application platform ring, as highlighted in this article in the FT:
"MySpace is likely to change its technology strategy to allow other online companies to ?plug? their web services directly into its social networking site, according to Chris DeWolfe, one of its founders."
And everyone of them initially will try and create as high a walled garden around it's emerging platform as possible. This reminds me a bit of the old AOL walled garden online service of old, as I pointed out in a post a couple of weeks ago.
A post at Kottke.org puts this deja vu in this context today:
"It's called the internet and it's more compelling than AOL was in 1994 and Facebook in 2007. Eventually, someone will come along and turn Facebook inside-out, so that instead of custom applications running on a platform in a walled garden, applications run on the internet, out in the open, and people can tie their social network into it if they want, with privacy controls, access levels, and alter-egos galore."
But it's a while before we get to that Nirvana.
Before we get there, dozens of companies will fight tooth and nail to maintain some sort of walled-garden control over their "social network platform". And there are a lot of social networking companies who'll try this globally.
Look at this list by Valleywag to see how many contenders there are for this throne amongst social networks alone. You can see there are quite a few social networks popular around the world today, that'll all want to try their hand at this "platform" thing.
And it's not limited to social networks.
The platform wars on the PC, won by Microsoft a couple of decades ago, are being fought all over again on the "open" internet, and in the world of "mobile computers", which offer the promise of billions of people around the world who're rapidly getting some type of a cell phone.
Apple throws it's hat into the ring today with the iPhone, and is trying to build as many advantages into it's platform for itself as possible, as Nik Cubrilovic points out in a detailed post.
Dave Winer took a pretty good stab trying to define a "platform" as it pertains to software services, back in 1995. Here's how he described what is a critical element of any aspiring platform:
"A platform must have potential, or open space. I call this blue sky."
Given the range of entities that are going to try and build platforms in the coming months, I'd say we're in for a lot of blue skies.
So a word to advice to both developers and users of all these budding platforms, PACE YOURSELVES.
This is going to be a long marathon, not a sprint.
No sense in getting fatigued early.
And if you're an aspiring platform, "socially networked", or otherwise, get ready to rumble, "face first", as the poster suggests.
 | Enter your search terms Submit search form |
| Enter your search terms Submit search form |
The line for the iPhone stretches over to Powell Street, one of the routes taken by San Francisco's iconic cable cars.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)It's officially happy hour in San Francisco, and as busy commuters make their way home through the Stockton Street area, hundreds are lined up for Apple's iPhone.
The line at the Apple store has now moved around the block and over onto Powell Street, while the lines at the AT&T stores are building as well. There are hundreds in line at the Apple store, while there are about 50 people in line at the AT&T store at Fremont and Market, with about 75 in line at the store a few blocks away at Third and Market.
They're in a celebratory mood at the AT&T store on Third and Market. One gentleman, an intern at a local financial services company he preferred not to name, was standing in line at the request of his bosses. He said the experience had been a lot of fun, especially because he was adjacent to another gentleman who had managed to acquire a number of adult beverages for the front of the line.
Local gadfly Frank Chu is trying to warn iPhone waiters about the control exerted on our lives by the now-800 galaxies.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)
Back over at the Apple store, local psuedo-celebrities such as Frank Chu basked in the crowds, who were getting antsy as 6 p.m. loomed. No one knows exactly how many iPhones Apple will have available, which concerns some at the back of the line who have been waiting for hours.
Still, everyone was peaceful as they lined up in front of the blackened windows of the Apple store. It doesn't appear that CEO Steve Jobs made an appearance at the Fifth Avenue store, but Apple is planning to let reporters inside the San Francisco store to witness the action, so perhaps there's something planned. Stay tuned.
Source: CNET News.com - Business Tech
George Ou stirred up a lot of controversy over on ZDNet recently when he said something I've been thinking for years: who cares, in these days of cheap storage, if an application has "too many" features? You can read his opinion at http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=479.
So-called "feature bloat" may have been a legitimate issue when a few hundred megabytes of disk space cost several hundred dollars. Today I can buy a 750 gigabyte hard drive for $250 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150014+103530113+1035320984&name=750GB). If Office 2007 Pro requires 2 GB of disk space (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/ha101668651033.aspx#5), so what?
Some folks said George's grocery store analogy wasn't valid; I disagree. Those who say they aren't having to pay for all the stuff in the grocery store don't understand how business works. Built into the price of those items that are bought frequently is overhead for the ones that sell less well or have lower margins, as well as the cost of housing all those items you never use.
For years and years and years, I went to the grocery store and never once bought Ambesol (toothache medicine). I could have called that whole section of the store "bloatware" -- but then one day I got a toothache and I was glad it was there. I didn't have to trek off to a different store to find it while I was in pain. Same way with some of the Office features. I might never use them -- until one day when I have a special case and I suddenly need that feature, and when I do, it'll probably be when I'm up against a deadline and it's really nice to have it right there and not have to go download/pay for a separate program to do what I need to do.
Bottom line: software customers don't realize how well off they are. If you pay for commercial software like Office, you get a lot for your money. If you don't want to pay, there are free options out there, like Open Office, that work pretty well. If you don't use all the programs, there are a number of editions to choose from that have fewer apps. If all you use are Word and Outlook, just buy those programs individually instead of the entire Office package. If you don't want all the features, you can do a custom installation and reduce what gets installed.
But when you talk about software "bloat," don't compare just the file sizes of today's programs with the file sizes of those fifteen years ago. Also compare the relative percentage of space today's program takes on a $300 hard disk, vs. the percentage that program of fifteen years ago took up on a hard disk that cost $300 back then. I think you'd find that today's programs, which give you so many more features and options and so much more functionality, aren't really bloated at all.
deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com
"Never enter a battle of wits unarmed."
