Unsolicited Advice for Life, Work, Work/Life and Lifework
Life is flux, but one thing I keep returning to is the Word.
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iPhone
Project 365: Day 1
Something I snapped at Melbourne's Vic Gallery and now use as my phone wallpaper.
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Fake Steve Jobs Schools AT&T on How to Run Their Business
Randall, baby. we’ve got a hit on our hands. We’ve got the smartphone equivalent of Meet the Beatles. It’s not like that album was the first rock album ever. It’s not like nobody ever made a band with some guitars and drums before. But it was radical. It was new. They took old forms and made them new. Same with us. We didn’t invent the smartphone or the PDA or the music player or the Web browser. We just made them better. We made them new. We changed the fucking world, Randall.
via fakesteve.net
Fake, foul-mouthed and full of good advice.
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iPhone-to-iPhone chat for free anywhere in the world (it's not Ping!)
The dream: Free SMS-like chat with your iPhone peeps.
The fulfilment: 1. Get WhatsApp. 2. Watch WhatsApp automatically find other WhatsApp users in yourContacts. 2.1. (Make sure your contacts' phone numbers are present.) 3. Click on your WhatsApp-enabled friends' names to instant-message
them for free! This beats Ping! because: 1. It's free. Ping! isn't, though the Lite version is (but it's ad-
supported).
2. You don't have to create and publicise another username. WhatsApp
uses your phone number.
3. Autodiscovery is the killer feature. You don't have to publish that
you're on WhatsApp. Any user with your number will find out
automatically. Go get WhatsApp from the App Store now! Go, go! (Especially if you're
an iPhone-toting friend of mine!)
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iDon't feel inspired by the Droid teaser TVC #iPhone #antiPhone
The Motorola Droid teaser. The tired "stack up our features against Apple's features and you'll see that we give you more bang for your buck" argument. Meh. Do you think that works? Do you think people buy Apple products because they're more bangy for bucky?
- People buy Apple because Apple inspires. That's the top of the line.
- And their stuff are awesome. That's the bottom line.
- Price comes somewhere in the middle.
Not to say Droid won't be great. It might. I'm expecting great things from Android.
tvc Critique
btw, did you notice how the music is light and happy a la Apple when they're stating all the "iDon't" statements? And then, when they cut to the distressed Droid titles, the soundtrack takes on an ominous Megatron-is-creeping-up-on-you tone. Attack ads tend to "advertise your fears" even more than regular "buy me - I'm cheaper and better" ads. Don't you think?
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What do I mean by #iPhone and #antiPhone?
What do I mean when I tweet about the iPhone and the "antiPhone"?
Al Ries, marketing guru, noted that mature markets tend to be dominated by 2 giants, with miscellaneous smaller players. Think Coke/Pepsi. McDonald's/KFC. Windows/Mac.
The phone market is going to be iPhone/antiPhone. Not that someone's actually going to market a phone under that name. What I mean is that a challenger will emerge, that will be to iPhone in the phone market, what Mac is to Windows, in the consumer computing market. (And it looks like Android's going to be it.)
iPhone, antiPhone, plus miscellaneous others
BlackBerry had a surprisingly good run of the market, but they don't iterate fast enough, in my opinion. It seems like they're trying to out-BlackBerry the iPhone - doing what they've always done, but better. It's just a matter of time, if they don't adapt.
I remember the CEO of RIM mocking the iPhone's onscreen keyboard, saying that BlackBerry would "never" release a phone without a physical keyboard, because it was "proven" that consumers want a physical keyboard. And then, after the iPhone was released, they came out with a BlackBerry - you guessed it - without a physical keyboard.
I doubt that's what BlackBerry users want, anyway. And the fact that form factor was never reiterated would seem to bear out my hunch. But it was significant, in that it seems to indicate that RIM doesn't really know where to go next. "Email anytime, anywhere" is no longer a compelling reason to get a BB - not when others are doing it comparatively well. iPhone owns the mobile internet. Android owns mobile open source. BB used to own mobile email.
It's going to be an interesting near future.
Filed under //
Android
antiPhone
BlackBerry
futurism
iPhone
marketing
mobile computing
mobile phones
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iPhone Ping! means another username to publicise. Mine's alphalim. What's yours?
So, here's an app that behaves just like SMS, except:
1. It only works between iPhones that have the app installed.
2. It works over the net, so it's free if you're on Wi-Fi.
3. There is no 3.
You Ping! people using their Ping! usernames. Mine is alphalim.
Ping!
Pong.
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I love this Dropbox blog post announcing the arrival of the iPhone app!
From http://blog.getdropbox.com/?p=102
Keep a 2 GB folder automatically synced on all your computers - Mac, Windows and now, iPhone too! (Get more than 2 GB when you shell out the clams.)
Filed under //
app
blogging
cloud computing
Dropbox
iPhone
Mac
recommendation
software
Windows
writing
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6 reasons why I bought an iPhone 3G (and why you might want to)
Imge by Fr3d.org via Flickr
1. It's the internet in my hand.
2. It's a writing tool.
4. 8 GB is enough, really. I used to live with a 1 GB iPod shuffle. You don't need your whole library with you all the time, if your mothership computer is near. 5. It's all my stuff in the palm of my hand. Contacts, to-dos, calendar, notes... Everything my trusty Visor Edge and, before it, Palm III used to be, but more.
5.1. btw, the Palms were some of the most confusingly named products
ever. "Do you have a palm?" "Could you please pass me my palm?" "I
just bought a palm tree and it's great!" Note to marketers: The ear
can't hear capitalisation.
6. Like most of Apple's stuff, it just works. It works so well you don't have to work it; you just work your work (and play your play).
6.1. Before anyone yells "fanboy", let me remind all marketers and
artists to be mindful: it's not easy to create things people love.
There are too many products and services that people just tolerate.
Many things are just a preference. When people fall in love, that's
news. That demands respect and study.
6.1.1. And it's not always high ticket, elitist stuff. If only it were
that simple. I fell in love, for example, with my wife's subcompact
Kancil. I fell in love with the first generation iPod shuffle. I
didn't expect either to happen.
6.1.2. But it happens, just as love between two unlikely people happens. And it's a mystery marketers and artists would be wise to
pursue.
pursue.
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