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Wednesday
03Feb2010

Chrome OS is not more multitasking than the iPad

Posted on DateWednesday, February 3, 2010 at 8:52 tagged , , , , , in

I am starting to wonder if people have no clue or if I am just clueless and I seriously do not want to believe that. The thing is that everybody is complaining that Apple's iPad is not doing multitasking. Fine by me. Most things do not really need multitasking though and if the modal screens for push messages is improved you can stay online in your skype account or do other things. Sure it would be nice to be able to move a video to a small screen and continue browsing the web, but we will survive.

What drives me nuts though is people starting to speculate that Chrome OS will kill the iPad because it has multitasking or doesn't have flash? What?

First the multitasking. Yes, Android does multitasking, but Chrome OS is a browser and you can do multiple tabs, but that is not multitasking and something the iPad can do just fine. So this is really a non-point. Chrome OS is first still in development and second focussed on all being in a browser and hence not multitasking as such.

As for flash, yes some sites will not run but Youtube is already working as they are making special iPhone versions of videos and many others will try to incorporate HTML5. Just check out the SublimeVideo Player to see what is possible. Amazing stuff.

Oh and one thing for everyone: Not everyone has to or will buy an iPad and it is not the end-all device and not built as such. I actually chose a Mac because I wanted it to work after hacking around in servers and linux and windows boxes for ages. The iPad is just taking it one step further. Talk to people who have an iPhone. Most of them stopped hacking them because it is fine as it is or you move to e.g. Android. And Android is multitasking.

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Wednesday
30Dec2009

Blippy just Rocks!

Posted on DateWednesday, December 30, 2009 at 21:32 tagged , , , in ,

Boy do I love Blippy! Seldom has there been a service where I am so pissed that internationalization is hard. The thing is the only account I have that works with the service is my Amazon.com Kindle account. Even iTunes doesn't work as it is the German one. If you are unfamiliar with Blippy read this intro on Techcrunch as well as the follow up where Blippy announces tracking $1 million in transactions only one day after opening their doors. People are already talking about Blippy being the next Twitter, which is really mostly to mean that the Twitter idea is starting to be so big that it can be split up into more tiny niches, with Blippy being one.

Many people will wonder why Blippy is so good or why anyone would share all this information about themselves and I suggest, just read the stream by Leo Laporte or Matt Cutts or Jason Calacanis (who recently purchased a Canon 7d by the way) or Philip Kaplan one of the founders.

For all their credit card stuff they are using Yodlee as do most of the other things out there that interact with US bank accounts. Sadly I do not know of any such service in Germany at this time. Might be somebody that should do this but I am unsure about the German privacy laws.

To finish it off here is a video interview with Pud (Philip Kaplan). He also founded Fucked Company and Adbrite by the way. With Adbrite being so well copied all over Germany I see now reason why this will not happen soon here in Germany for Blippy, expect we don't have Yodlee.

Actually I hope somebody will start a Yodlee in Germany and give the account access to Blippy so we keep it integrated!

Update: and just now they twittered about international support for iTunes. Germany was missing but added minutes after me telling them. Congratulations! So blippy went international in 2009! cool :)

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Wednesday
02Dec2009

What Google Chrome OS really means

Posted on DateWednesday, December 2, 2009 at 21:28 tagged , , in

All focus is currently on Google Chrome OS and what it will mean for our beloved NetBooks. I somehow have the feeling people are not thinking far enough because our geeky NetBooks are totally irrelevant.

Google does stuff with very much focus, a lot more focus than often is visible on first sight. You can actually always think back to a) making all content available and b) more people online means more ads to display.

And there are a lot of different implementations of Google Chrome OS that will further those goals. First of all you can obviously tell people to attach their digital cameras and pictures and videos are automatically uploaded to Youtube and Picasa, but that is the braindead move.

Remember that they are building very clear hardware specifications allowing them to say that the system is rock solid if the specs are used. The important part here is x86 or ARM and solid state drives. In summary, that means a good CPU that can also render diverse video streams in high quality as well as a totally silent drive that is cheap in small sizes and only holds the OS. The OS itself will be rock solid as there is really nothing much installed.

This as such is the perfect implementation for TVs! Just imagine having your TV and being able to turn on Chrome OS to read your mail, look at youtube, search the web, automatically upload your photos, and so on. That in a silent system that boots as quickly as your TV turns on, or almost. It doesn't need to be running at all time then which saves energy and Google is suddenly in all living rooms. Hell the OS is free or even better than free with Google paying the TV company for ads served to the user. The TVs have network interfaces already anyway.

The other thing is that there are LARGE groups of people in developing countries that might not have the money for a full blown PC and Google could potentially make this thing very cheap and possibly even free together with a data provider. They would get millions of new users that are available to their advertisers that are probably really begging for more users to advertise to in these countries.

I am really looking forward to seeing where they are going with this. Because I will keep my Mac, no questions there, but in my TV ... sure ... in my car ... of course. Imaging this being the one laptop per Child system. Things get interesting when thinking further than normal Netbooks.

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Sunday
29Nov2009

Foursquare will fail

Posted on DateSunday, November 29, 2009 at 13:02 in

At least in terms of becoming the next Twitter. Sorry to say that. I know people are starting to rave about Twitter but the first really good post came from Jason Kincaid on Techcrunch: Watch out Foursquare, Facebook is Poised To Dominate Geo.

So let me try to explain why I think it will fail, at least in terms of the hype around it at the moment, and there are many points.

A) People will not publish where they are at any time. There is just too much of a security worry. This will remain true and is actually a very wise thing to think about.

B) We already had something very similar with Plazes, it was just missing the game, and as Jason said, the fun of Games dies down.

It's actually very important to take a look at Plazes and their history because they too had many of the then in-the-know Angels onboard, and the entire tech/web2.0 gang was on Plazes. It was a fun system to use and you saw who was where and how close and things like that. But it never grew mainstream and it will be interesting to see if Foursquare manages to do that.

C) I am actually using Foursquare a bit now and I have to say I am still missing the point. I started using it in a travel week and hence am now a newbie in Cologne where I live, in Hamburg and in London. Why the hell did I need to switch cities? I was in a different city but this kind of feels insulting. I AM NO LONGER A NEWBIE ;) Above that I actually didn't know what to do with it. I checked in and then what? In the last few hours somebody I know was somewhere in London. Hmm... so what?

Why is there no "Who is Near?" or "Near places of your friends?" or similar things. Sure it is still very rough and their slow growth on a city per city basis might have been a good idea. But still, I am not sure why I would rave about it and I normally rave way too fast.

D) Location is not a central thing in our lives! We do need an OS for our Computers (Microsoft) or Search for Stuff (Google) or Connect with Friends and Family (Facebook) or Feel connected with OUR community (Twitter, the new worlds IRC Channel ;)). I am not really sure where Foursquare fits into this. If I want to meet friends I will talk to them. Weird stuff, called Phone. ;)

Don't understand me wrong, I do believe Foursquare is fun and nice and things but it is not going to be the next Twitter.

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Sunday
29Nov2009

These little fees add up

Posted on DateSunday, November 29, 2009 at 12:27 in

We are all getting used to the idea of freemium but I am wondering if this will not implode because things are starting to add up. I really noticed when recently thinking (again) about how to restructure my services.

What is it for me:

  1. $25 per year - Remember the Milk: I am definitely keeping this one as it is really cheap and a great deal especially with iPhone Integration through ToDo.
  2. $59 per year - Vimeo: the service just rocks, period. I love how the videos end up and through the pro service I can really limit where videos are allowed to appear and keep my family videos sharable and save.
  3. $12.60 a month - Squarespace: I just wanted to ditch servers and this is probably the first one that might have to go once I find a better solution but I didn't yet. Squarespace is really nice and if they finally get their social integration done I am starting to be really happy. It is the most expensive point though and I could just go with Wordpress.com and the biggest problem would be that my tags are shared with all wordpress people. Ah well.
  4. Stopped - Flickr: I just stopped my premium Flickr subscription as I am sharing most pictures with Family on Squarespace and that is good enough. I might actually still need that somehow.
  5. $99 per year - Dropbox: I am actually not paying yet as I have a 10GB account due to an early beta membership (u 900 ;)) but this will surely stick.
  6. €5.95 per month - Xing: For my networking in Germany still a wonderful thing.
  7. $49.95 per year - Plaxo Premium: I want my addressbook safe and I would actually love Xing to do this but they don't. Still really not happy in this field.
  8. all the forgotten stuff: There are probably things I have forgotten as they end up coming on the bill once a year.

In the end, there will be more services like this and this is really starting to annoy me. It's all cheap enough to not think enough but it is adding up. All the "small fees" currently end up to be over 200 USD, more if I ever get the Dropbox Account.

So what subscriptions do you have? :)

Update: I am wondering if I should not just move to Wordpress.com, upload videos there, and so on. Anyone using Wordpress for Videos?

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