Phones of Summer

Sounds a little like my favourite Don Henley song. Introducing the three contenders that will slug it out for attention over the next few months:

First, weighing in at a slim 135g, the great, great, great (etc.) grand child of the original PDA, with the hopes (for staving off bankruptcy) of an entire company resting on its shoulders, is the Palm Pre.



With an interface straight out of Cupertino, and a keyboard that would be at home in Waterloo (Ontario), the Pre is Palm's attempt at a comeback the likes of which we have not seen since Return of The Jedi. I don't see this as being of much interest to switchers, but for new Smartphone customers, this certainly looks like it could be an attractive proposition.

And in another corner somewhere, the pride of Scandinavia, representing a company that has often resembled a deer in headlights since the release of the iPhone, weighing in at a plump 150g and sporting the obligatory touch screen, it's the Nokia N97.



I fear though that the above advert will be a far more satisfying experience than the actual handset. This phone looks clunky, and if the interface is similar to recent form, no-one I suspect will be moved to tears by its elegance. Nokia are still the biggest handset company in the world, but their designs of late (and not just in the Smartphone market) have been prosaic, and in the battle for hearts and minds, they have slipped well behind Apple and RIM.

And finally, from Cupertino, the big dog of the pack, soon to appear in its third incarnation, with what are rumoured to be minimal changes in form factor, and possibly supporting 3.75G, please welcome (in July), the iPhone mkIII. There are no pictures or videos at this time, and it will not even officially exist until next month when it will (probably) be announced at the WWDC (which in line with the theme of this article, sounds conveniently like a wrestling tournament, but is fact the World Wide Developers Conference). I am looking for turn by turn GPS (along with something to stick it to my car windscreen), a better screen and HD video out. Like last years 3G set, this will be more an evolution than a revolution.

And so there we have it; the comeback kid, the rank outsider and the establishment favourite. You will you be backing?

A Tweet too Far

It’s Groundhog Day again, and this time there’s not a gopher like creature in sight. In the late 90’s money was thrown at 'upcoming' tech companies, and we know where that ended up. And in a way, it was not long before the concept of making large investments without a plan was again resurrected. You could almost overlook Google’s purchase of YouTube, but it was a fine example of buy first, think later. The Web was starting to become an interesting, interactive place, YouTube was a hot commodity, and Google just went with the flow. But at the time of the acquisition Google cannot have envisaged they were making a purchase simply in order to provide the general public with a forum for sharing short, comical videos involving animals, children and other potentially (un)hilarious props. The fact that YouTube currently does not have any real income stream cannot be something that Google is satisfied with. Though there were (and still are) certainly opportunities to turn YouTube into a real business, the Googlers don’t appear to have had the ambition (or perhaps time?) to pursue those opportunities with any great vigour. And now websites such as Hulu appear to be outflanking Google with regards to one of those opportunities, by becoming the principal site for legally watching TV on the Internet. Hulu is only available in America, and it is a long way from being a success (and is carrying the liability of being at the whim of TV companies and execs, who like their music industry counterparts, on the whole just do not get it), but they are at least making a concerted effort to tap into a thus far untapped income stream.

MySpace is another example; News Corp was lauded shortly after the purchase, but people eventually moved on, and the price that was paid for a business with no revenue stream suddenly looks to be unreasonable. What makes any of these companies such as MySpace or Facebook especially valuable is the buzz around them; none of them are making any proper amounts of money, none of them really know how they are going to do it. It is a psychological phenomenon; once the next exciting thing comes along, the herd moves on; the most recent example is Facebook. Had Mark Zuckerberg (owner) cashed in his chips six to nine months ago, he would have received an astronomical valuation (not to say that the current estimates of $4-6 billion are paltry, but they were even more ludicrous last year). And now Facebook is a company that provides a free service essentially allowing friends to stay in touch, with very little excitement factor, because inexplicably, everyone has moved onto Twitter over the last few months. And this brings me back to why it is Groundhog Day (sans gopher).

Technology pundits are falling over themselves to egg Google on to put down $1 billion and buy Twitter. This valuation is based simply on the fact that this is a suitably large number. The rationale is that Google does not have any real time search capability; and should the purchase not work out, then oh well, it was just a billion (and Google has plenty more of those). This is patently absurd logic, and if Google really is as clever as we all appear to think they are, they will have seen where a lot of the big acquisitions have gone these last few years (destination nowhere). In fact as I was sipping my coffee this morning, I read yet another article on Google/Twitter, where the CEO of Google was quoted as suggesting that they do not have to buy every company they want to work with. To me that makes a lot more sense, and indicates that perhaps the rush for tech M&A without a plan may finally be subject to the forces of reason and common sense.

Wolfram Alpha First Impressions

As Public Enemy so succinctly put it (now many years ago), 'don't believe the hype'. This is particularly apt for the 'computational knowledge engine', Wolfram Alpha, that went live today. Wolfram Alpha, sounds like the name for a space station from the Star Trek Universe (a good start to its life). Touted for the last few days/weeks as a potential competitor to Google (which it is not), even a 'Google Killer' (which it is really not), my first impression is that this is a work in progress, that has the potential to develop into something useful. It is less Google and more Ask Jeeves on steroids (for those who remember or even still use the esoteric search butler). One of the first things that occurred to me as I was typing a query was that I don't really access information like this anymore, by actually going to the website; I tend to use either the search box toolbar on my browser or the Dashboard widgets that come with OS X - I was pleased to see that both are available in the downloads section of the site.

I tried a few simple searches: the name of my hometown (returned the population, a map and the local time), 'the number of people in England' (which it seems to have got wrong, equating England with the UK and returning a figure of 60.8 million - sorry, Scotland, ROI and Wales), 'normal range of WBC' (I am a doctor so this is the kind of thing that unfortunately first pops into my head - the engine answered correctly), and 'the square root of 20736' (which everyone, including Wolfram Alpha knows is 144).

I am going to download the widget and try and play around with it in the coming weeks. Initial impressions are that this is not likely to become my first port of call for information any time soon.

To and Fro

I thought this was a pretty effective ad; it was admittedly completely inaccurate, but then that's not the point.



And this was the response (check and mate I believe).