I’ll publish another post when the units arrive… Who knew buying a thermostat could be this much fun?!

On Thursday, October 20th, 2009 SXSW Festival winners, Rob Oshima, Skot Leach, and Ryan Leach will be signing their (soon to be) best selling crowd-sourced Lost Zombies book “Dead Inside: Do Not Enter: Notes from the Zombie Apocalypse” at Books Inc. in Alameda, California:

What: Lost Zombies Book Signing

When: Thursday, October 20th at 7pm

Where: Books Inc., 1344 Park Street, Alameda, CA

If you’re a social media enthusiast or a zombie movie fan, this is a must attend event.

Lost Zombies is a social network for Zombie movie enthusiasts, and winner of the “People’s Choice” and “Community” Awards at SXSW in 2009.  Members of the Lost Zombies social network contribute letters, artwork, video clips, etc. that follow the spine of a story line presented by the Lost Zombies team on Lostzombies.com. The Lost Zombies curators have stitched that content into a creative scrapbook published by Chronicle Books called “Dead Inside: Do Not Enter: Notes from the Zombie Apocalypse”.  The LZ team is editing the clips its receives from Lost Zombies’ community members into a full length feature film.

Apparently – MFZAR…. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

1. “Avoid channel conflict” There have been several examples over the years of mobile companies struggling to make/maintain meaningful partnerships because they’re playing both sides of mobile – hardware and software. As GigaOM points out, Nokia had difficulty getting other OEMs to adopt Symbian because it had a head start on developing hardware for it. Google may have the same issue now that it’s acquired Motorola Mobility.  I talked about this one a lot in the above mentioned post.
2. “Work in six-year cycles”  Historically, OS popularity has run in semi-predictable cycles, with old OSes making way for new ones every six years.
3. “Start Fresh when necessary” iOS was revolutionary because Apple started it from scratch. These days it’s difficult for a company to build its own OS from scratch without getting sued, but adding too many band-aids onto an OS can make it unstable or unusable.  As I like to say, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but you can’t dunk a pig in a vat of red lip gloss and make it look a ruby.”
4. “Offer Useful Updates” I agree, when you can’t start fresh, adding incremental changes can often satiate users until a “fresh start” emerges.
5. “Make the UX job number one”  This is a tough one for many companies – particularly because time to market and COGs often come first for management.  Making a great UX involves doing a ton of user testing and thoughtful design isn’t always quick.
6. “Offer something for IT and something for users” GigaOM points out that selling a phone that device managers love is a sure fire way of ensuring that it is sold, but since the introduction of the iPhone, this seems to be less important
7. “Keep a dev team small”  There’s something to be said for limiting the number of people who can have input into a device that seems to help OS providers make better product. As GigaOm’s report points out: “IOS’ was under 100. Android was a small project inside Google, and BlackBerry was small in the late ’90s. The team that made the Windows Phone 7 OS was a small team spun out of Zune. Jon Rubinstein left Apple and put together a small group that built webOS.”
8. “Create Ecosystems, not just phones” This is a critical lesson, and companies seem to learn it the hard way over and over again. Palm for example, had one of the strongest developer communities around, but they lost it because they couldn’t offer developers strong way to monetize and distribute content, which made room for Apple, Google, and others.  Likewise, many developers these days discount the value of carriers, but as GigaOm points out, “Many will guffaw at the above inclusion of carriers, saying they are an impediment, not an essential part of the ecosystem. That would be naive. Carriers are essential, not because of their role as bit pipes but because of their powerful role in choosing and subsidizing the handsets that actually make it to retail.”
9. “Keep a strong hand at the helm”  This one reminds me of #7.  When there are too many cooks in the kitchen, nothing turns out well.  Benevolent dictatorship is often effective…”Open” solutions and standards bodies-based decisions often get bogged down in either too many possibilities without a definitive decision and/or too much red tape.  There are countless examples of organizations haven’t done well because no one “owns” the decision.  Sometimes, what a company needs is for someone confident to take the reins and make tough decisions… Look for examples of how this has worked well at Apple and not so well with Java, LIMO, HP, etc.
10. “Consider how many devices to offer”  More isn’t necessarily better. Trying to cater to every market segment is a horrible idea. Instead, consider Apple’s approach of having one prominent product in the market at a time, and make it a great one.
11. “Lawyer Up” This report highlights one of the biggest issues in the mobile industry today – the war on patents.  As I mentioned in my recent post, “These days, it’s difficult if not impossible to build your own mobile OS from scratch, given the litigious landscape around smartphone IP.  Google acknowledged that a big reason why it is acquiring Motorola Mobility is to bolster its patent portfolio and therefore position in the market. “

In addition to talking about the future, the introduction includes a brief history of mobile by OS and OEM provider – well worth reading, particularly if you’re new to the mobile industry. GigaOm Pro users can download the report here.

Mozca is the leading mPayments platform and #1 processor of virtual goods payments on mobile in Latin America. Mozca powers mobile payments for a ton of social app developers who want to monetize their users in a new way. About 80% of people in Latin America don’t have credit cards, but most have mobile phones. This means that American social games companies that try to charge Latin American users by credit card alone, don’t convert very well.  Mozca converts many times better than credit cards for that reason.  You can check out a video on Mozca and the opportunity to monetize users in Latin America here.

Zeewe is a cross-platform mobile app store based on the open web standards of HTML5.  Zeewe is a great place to discover and share cross-platform mobile apps for smartphones and tablets. Any mobile user with an HTML5-enabled browser can visit: http://go.zeewe.com and start using free apps in seconds, without registration or credit cards. Using Zeewe is easy:

• Visit Zeewe from an iOS or Android device, and discover tons of free apps.
• Click on an app that sounds interesting and see ratings and comments from other users.
• Download apps in seconds.
• Share apps with friends, and invite them to play games with you.

Zeewe showcases a ton of great HTML5 apps that will work seamlessly across iOS or Android.   Zeewe’s “FriendZee” feature provides push notifications and social discovery through Facebook and Twitter, so users can easily see which apps their friends are using and try them out.  Zeewe launched in late December, 2010 and just achieved 1.5 million users worldwide, with most users in the US, UK, Mexico, China, and Brazil.

When I bought the Atrix 4G, the AT&T store salesman and his manager weren’t sure if I needed a tethering plan to use the laptop dock…  As an early smartphone user, I’ve been on AT&T’s “all you can eat” data plan for years.  Switching to AT&T’s 4GB tethering data plan from my unlimited plan would mean paying an additional $10/month and getting less data.

While the AT&T sales team couldn’t promise me that I’d be able to successfully tether the Atrix and Laptop Dock together without paying for the additional plan, they encouraged me to try… Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks it’s ridiculous to pay $10 surcharge every month for using the Atrix Laptop Dock, which cannot even be turned on without being plugged into the Atrix, which already has a plan.

When I got home and first connected the Atrix to the Laptop Dock, I received a notification saying that I needed an AT&T tethering plan or a wi-fi connection for Firefox to work on Webtop, and I thought I might have to sign up for the data plan after all.  After a little online digging, I found a couple of forums that recommended I root my new phone to enable free tethering. That didn’t seem like a great option, given the potential longer term uncertainty of jailbreaking my phone.  So, I kept looking, and voila… Today, I found a video that showed me how to set up a free AT&T wireless Hot Spot on my Atrix 4G in less than 5 minutes, without rooting my phone. It’s incredibly easy:

The tablet market is evolving quickly, and 2011 is sure to bring even more great options.  A good example of the tablet evolution can be seen in the comparison between the Apple iPad and the RIM PlayBook. There are a lot of factors to consider when buying a tablet:

Browser: PlayBook wins.  As you’ll see below, PlayBook supports open browser technologies like HTML5, and the pages render much faster than those on the iPad.  Additionally, PlayBook supports Flash, which makes interacting with web pages more engaging than the iPad.

Browser capability isn’t the only comparison consumers should consider when purchasing a tablet.  There’s also  price, size, processing power, battery life, camera, and available applications.

Price: iPad and PlayBook are comparable…

• iPad’s wi-fi only version is available for $499, and prices go up from there, based on memory and wireless capabilities.
• RIM says the PlayBook will be priced at under $500, so pricing should be competitive with the iPad.

Size & display: It’s a matter of personal choice.  At 7 inches wide, .4 inches thick, and .9lbs, the PlayBook is more portable than the iPad, which is 9.7 inches wide, .5inches thick, and ~1.5lbs.  However there’s something to be said for having a bigger screen for usability, if not portability. It’s easier to read and interact with a bigger surface.  However, neither device is great for reading in broad daylight. If you’re looking for a device that will make reading books easier by the pool, you’re still better off with a Kindle or a NOOK.

Processing Power: The Playbook wins

• The PlayBook has a dual core 1GHz processor, which is better than the iPad has a single core 1GHz processor.
  • iPad’s processor: 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip
  • PlayBook’s processor: The ARM Cortex A9, is more advanced than Apple’s A4

Battery Life: To be determined… Since the PlayBook isn’t out yet, and we don’t know which graphics chipsets the PlayBook will use, it’s difficult to say how many hours it will last. However, I suspect the architecture on the A9 processor for the PlayBook and it’s smaller screen size may mean better battery life for the PlayBook.

Camera: The PlayBook wins

• iPad doesn’t have a camera. The PlayBook has two.
• PlayBook’s front-facing camera is 3 megapixels, useful for video conferencing
• PlayBook’s rear-facing camera is a whopping 5 megapixels, capable of shooting 1080p HD video.

Apps: The iPad wins

• It’s difficult to beat Apple’s App Store and the traction Apple has with developers.  So far, RIM hasn’t done it, though there are some good apps on Blackberry App World, what kind of apps developers come up with for PlayBook remains to be seen.

As you can see, there are a lot of factors to consider when buying a tablet.   Is now the right time to buy, or are you better off waiting?  If you’re looking for a fun gadget that will impress your friends and family, you’ll probably enjoy owning either the iPad or the PlayBook when it comes out.  If you’re looking (like I am) for a longer-term, light weight alternative to your Mac or PC, you may want to wait more time to see how the tablet market evolves out before dropping $500+ for a new device.

The Points of Control map is a fun idea- particularly for arm-chair corporate development and business development types.  It’s the kind of thing that could suck hours of a social media and mobile geek’s free time.  The latest feature on the map is “acquisition mode,” which lets users suggest and rate the potential of web and mobile acquisitions.  So far the conversations are limited, but I can see it taking off as more companies are added to the map.

As I looked at the landscape, I noticed a few things that are missing… For starters, Photobucket (my current consulting client) should be on the map in:

• Plains of Content
• Land of Search
• Cliffs of Media Access
• Subcontinent of Advertising
• Location Basin
• Union of Social Networks

Here’s why:

Plains of Content and Land of Search

Photobucket is the largest independent photo sharing site on the web, with more than twice as many photos as Flickr and nearly 26,683,225 monthly unique visitors – that’s more than Flickr, Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, and Snapfish (as seen in the chart from Compete.com, below).

As far as I’m aware, it is the largest repository of clean, findable images on the web (outside of search engines), and it is one of the most significant single sources of images for search engines like Google and Bing.  Photobucket Corp has:

• 100+ million total registered users
• 26.5 million total uniques/mo, US*
• 7.8 billion digital assets uploaded
• 4.3 million images and videos uploaded daily
• 3.2 billion images and videos served daily

Cliffs of Media Access and Union of Social Networks

Photobucket was once part of Fox Interactive Media (NewsCorp) (same company that owns MySpace, etc.), but it now an independent company (merging with Ontela in December 2009).  Photobucket Corp owns three media sites (as seen in the below Compete.com graph):

• Photobucket.com, which as seen in the chart above has the most monthly visitors
• TinyPic.com, which, though not plotted on the above chart, has X monthly unique visitors – more than Shutterfly, Snapfish and Kodakgallery.com
• Twitgoo, which, is a media sharing service for Twitter, not unlike TwitPic and YFrog.  It was recently incorporated into the “New Twitter” (i.e. the re-vamped Twitter.com site)

Photobucket.com is more than just a massive image repository for clean, findable images and video, it also hosts and serves billions of images to millions of websites all over the web it is at the intersection of the “Union of Social Media”.  Photobucket enables users to keep their photos and videos in one place and easily syndicate that media content to their favorite social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.  One of the most interesting piece of I.P. that Photobucket owns is a patented, zero-click uploader that allows users to automatically back up their photos from a mobile device to any site requiring authentication.  This brings me to mobile…

The Photobucket service is also available in the form of a mobile app for iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, and mobile internet. It is  pre-loaded and/or natively integrated with a variety of mobile phones including all phones with Motorola’s MOTOTBLUR service,  T-Mobile’s new G2 (2nd generation Android device), and many more devices.  Photobucket is integrated beyond just mobile phones and is include with many consumer electronics products including the Sony Dash, many of Sony’s TVs, Sony Cameras, many HP printers, and more.

Cliffs of Media Access and Subcontinent of Advertising

Photobucket generates revenue in two primary ways – advertising and subscriptions.  Users can sign up for a free Photobucket.com account in exchange for seeing advertisements (typically branded campaigns from big advertisers) and get 500MB of media storage a month, or they can pay $24.95 a year (or $39.90 for two years) for a Photobucket Pro Subscription, which offers unlimited storage and bandwidth to users.  Photobucket has its own, dedicated as sales team, and its advertisers include major brands doing homepage and other branded advertising campaigns.

Aside from Photobucket, I propose two additional areas and corresponding companies be added to the map including:

• Facial Detection and Recognition:  Apple (which recently acquired Polar Rose, Face.com (one of my former clients), Viewdle, etc.: Watch this space… It’s going to be huge.  For example… I think it’s really interesting that Facebook, for example doesn’t prohibit 3rd party developers like those above from identifying people and photos and storing maps of their faces so that those faces can be recognized on other sites/areas of the web.
• Interactive, Connected TV: From GoogleTV to Samsung Apps, major players in the world of consumer electronics are making a play for an internect connected living room.  As I’ve said in a previous post, I think TV apps could just be the next big thing in convergence.

What do you think of the Points of Control Map, and what would you like to see added?

I’ve not gotten my hands on it yet, but based on the videos I’ve seen, it looks slick.  Size-wise, it’s not the smallest phone out there: 4.4” x 2.4” x 0.57” (closed), 5.8” x 2.4” x 0.57” (open), but it seems to pack a punch.  It’s got the new Blackberry 6 OS, which has better support for touch screen and track pad plus integrated support for BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™), Facebook®, Twitter™, MySpace™ and various IM apps. If the videos are to be believed, it looks more responsive than RIM’s previous touch screen attempts.

It has a 3.2″ 360 x 480 capacitive touch screen display, 5.0MP camera with flash, auto focus, image stabilization and geo-tagging, 512MB Flash memory, 4GB on‐board memory, microSD/SDHC memory card slot (4GB card included, cards up to 32GB supported), Built‐in GPS and Wi‐Fi (802.11 b/g/n). It has Tri-band HSDPA (3G) and quad-band EDGE support for the option of voice service in more than 220 countries, data service in more than 195 countries and 3G connectivity in more than 125 countries, including Japan and South Korea.  It also has a removable, rechargeable 1300 mAhr battery that provides approximately 5.8 hours of talk time on 3G networks or 30 hours of audio playback or 6 hours of video playback.
The form factor seems to be an attempt to appease users that want both the quick accessibility of a touch screen device with the ease of use of a QWERTY keyboard. Speaking from my own experience using the Motorla CLIQ, Motorola Backflip and the Palm Pre Plus, I’m not a huge fan of slider or flip keyboards. They tend to make the device bigger – more clunky, and less graceful during multi-tasking (because you’ve got to fiddle with the keyboard). I’m probably in the minority, but I’d prefer to have either a smaller screen with a more readily accessible keyboard that I can use both one and two-handed (like standard BlackBerries) or no hard keyboard with a very receptive touch screen. That said, I’ve not played with the Torch yet… I may be happily surprised.

Mike Lazaridis, president and co-ceo, Research In Motion called the BlackBerry Torch 9800 “one of the most significant launches in RIM’s history.” He went on to say, “With a new user interface, new browser and new handset design, the highly anticipated BlackBerry Torch and BlackBerry 6 deliver integrated and uncompromising capabilities for consumers and business professionals that preserve the industry-leading strengths of the BlackBerry platform while adding exciting new dimensions.”

U.S. customers will be able to purchase the BlackBerry Torch on August 12 from AT&T company owned retail stores, online at www.att.com/blackberrytorch, and at Best Buy, Wal-Mart and RadioShack stores. It will be available for $199.99 with 2-year service agreement on a qualifying rate plan and data plan required.

You can see videos, pictures, and more about the BlackBerry Torch 9800 here on AT&T’s site.  Check out the video below for more on the BlackBerry 6 OS:

By way of background, I love music. I’ve got more music than my iPod can handle, and I would have hard wired my house years with speakers years ago if doing so hadn’t been cost-prohibitive and against my love of all things wireless.  I’d been hearing about Sonos for years, but the early versions seemed a little too complicated, and I assumed connecting multiple rooms would be beyond my budget.  So, instead of buying the early Sonos, I went for the do-it-yourself option… I bought some wireless speakers and jerryrigged them to my living room speaker system.  The sound quality from the wireless speakers left something to be desired, and I could only control my music from one room.  Sigh.

Several years have passed since then, and I continued to put up with woefully inadequate sound until, a journalist friend suggested I try the Sonos S5.  A few weeks later, I was loaned an evaluation unit, and now I’m dreading having to give it back… It provides phenomenal sound quality and musical choice (streaming music from iTunes, internet, SIRIUS, Pandora, Rhapsody, Napster, and more), and it is incredibly easy to set-up.

The sound is amazing quality.  Each wireless speaker is actually a 5-driver speaker system, individually powered by 5 dedicated digital amplifiers with 2 tweeters, 2 mid-range drivers and 1 subwoofer. To set it up, all you need to do is plug in a Sonos ZonePlayer or ZoneBridge into your wireless router (in my case, Airport Extreme), plug the wireless speakers into power in the rooms where you want them, press a button on each wireless speaker, and voila, there’s crystal clear quality syncrhononized sound throughout your house.  And, as an added bonus, you can control the S5 through your iPhone or iPod Touch by installing a free app.  Sonos doesn’t make an app for Android (yet?), but there is a 3rd party app you can download for free (haven’t tried it myself yet, but it gets decent reviews).

The only downside as far as I can tell is that the two room system isn’t cheap, but then again you get what you pay for, and the S5 is amazing.  You can purchase an S5 for $399 for each room in your house and a Zone Bridge for $99 to connect to your wireless router.  Or, you can buy a two room bundle with a controller (which you don’t need if you’ve got an iPhone or iPod) from $999.

Today, I started a new consulting project with a mobile app discovery start-up called, Chomp, Inc.  I’m excited to be working with a team of smart, motivated, and fun people.  I’ll be leading mobile business development for Chomp – evaluating opportunities for growth.  I’d love to tell you about but can’t.  Here’s what I can tell you…

If you’re not familiar with Chomp, it’s a recommendation engine for mobile apps, which makes it easy to discover new apps you’ll love. Chomp is currently available for free on iPhone here. Chomp uses a proprietary algorithm to recommend apps based on your sentiment about other apps you’ve reviewed.  The more you “chomp” on apps, the better Chomp gets at recommending new applications to you.  To date, Chomp has had more than 1 million iPhone app reviews.  You can follow me on Chomp and see my app recommendations here.  You can see screen shots of Chomp’s iPhone app here:

In March, Chomp launched a developer program called “Chomp Connect,” which lets mobile app developers prompt their users to review their app on Chomp—all within one click, without leaving their app.  In contrast, Apple only prompts users to review an app on iTunes when they delete that app from their iPhone, which often creates a negative review bias on the iTunes app store.  With Chomp Connect, developers are able to leverage Chomp’s engaged community of users, who are more likely to review apps regardless of whether they love or hate them.  This reduces negative bias, making app reviews on Chomp more balanced and realistic.  With Chomp Connect, Developers can:

• Automatically prompt users to review an app after it launches a specific number of times, OR let users choose when they’d like to review the app.
  
• Drive positive reviews of their app from Chomp’s engaged users, rather than risking that the only people to review their app are those that delete it.
  
• Boost downloads of their app… The more reviews an app gets on Chomp, the more exposure it gets in the activity feed, which improves app discoverability.
  

As an Apple Affiliate, Chomp helps users discover the long tail of apps that are not in the Top 25 slots on the App Store, which benefits users and boosts app downloads and sales for Apple.  Chomp makes money by taking a percentage of the sale of every app its users discover through Chomp and purchase on the iTunes App store.

I’ve tweeted about Chomp before, and their history to-date has been well chronicled by TechCrunch, which describes it as “sort of like a Yelp for iPhone apps:“

• Chomp Closes In On 300,000 Users, Launches App Review Site And Chomp Connect (March 9, 2010)
• Chomp Now Live And Ready To Bite Into iPhone App Recommendations (January 11, 2010)
• Chomp Reveals Itself To Be A Yelp For iPhone Apps (January 6, 2010)
• Chomp Eats Up Some Seed Funding. Next, Will Bite Into The Mobile Space. (Nov 6, 2009)
• Chomp’s profile on CrunchBase
  

Since its public launch in January, 11 2010, Chomp has accumulated more than 300,000 users.  You can keep up-to-date with the latest information about Chomp:

• Follow Chomp on Twitter.
• Fan Chomp on Facebook.
• Read the Chomp Technology Blog.