Archive for the 'Microsoft' Category

Future TV’s made by Apple

Published on September 18, 2011 in Advertising, Apple, Cloud, Google, Microsoft, Online Ads, PlayStation, Sony, Technology and Xbox. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Apple is going to release the most amazing device that is going to be another platform for everyone to listen to music, a place for you to use apps and play video games, and a place for you to watch movies and any other channel on TV. This device is of course going to be tied to their online store for easy purchasing of all those soft items.

This device is going to be an LED TV. It’s going to be revolutionary in scope. You can play video games using a iPhone or iTouch as a remote control and similar to function as a Wii remote .

Apple has the operating system already. They have expertise in manufacturing computer devices, video boards, and computer monitors. In fact, apple sells full computers that basically only look like monitors or in some respects a TV. What’s the difference between a monitor and a TV? A TV has a tuner. So Apple will put in a HD digital tuner; increasing the cost very little.

The television industry… pretty much undermines innovation in the sector,” Jobs said at the All Things Digital Conference in July 2010. “The only way this is going to change is if you start from scratch, tear up the box, redesign, and get it to the consumer in a way that they want to buy it.”

Innovation in televisions will come in the form of technology convergence by really making the TV the entertainment hub. It has to be all things to all people. It has to be able to not only connect to the Internet and watch channels similar to the Roku device, but it should have the ability to install apps like an iPhone or Android.  It will also allow you to connect a laptop or tablet so that the TV becomes an extension of the device, in an easy and fashionable way.

So, why doesn’t the Xbox or Sony PlayStation allow channels and apps to be installed easily? I would say bad vision which leads to poor business decisions. There are limited apps on the PlayStation and Xbox in their online stores; otherwise apps are installed with an OS update. The game console companies haven’t learned their lesson.  But I’m happy because now we will see some serious innovation and competition in this space. However, Apple does not have to compete directly with Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox since these devices have been focused as a gamer device with the aspirations of being something more someday. Apple’s LED TV will be something more with the added benefit of also being a gaming platform.  We learn again from Apple that making a platform for developers to create apps and make money will help increase sales.

Lets also point out that the average American watches 5 hours of TV a day and plays on the Internet a couple hours a day.  If Apple makes the TV the entertainment hub to combine these activities, then they have a winning combination.

Now lets review what’s happening in the cable and TV industry. We see the same thing year after year. I have a cable bill for over $100/month, I have Netflix for $16/month, I have an internet bill for $40, I have a video game console (where Xbox customers also have to pay for their yearly membership). How do you decrease costs?  Today, you can purchase a Roku device; for which I have high hopes. Roku has a great vision with games and channels on their device. And it’s great for those who want to cut the cord and not have Cable or Satellite TV. But this company lacks the developer support that apple already has with the iOS. Apple should buy Roku and integrate their technology and vision into the existing Apple TV product.  Otherwise it’s an acquisition target for another competitor.  Apple is in the position to allow any developer to create channel apps and also sell or rent any content by streaming the video; similar to Netflix or Amazon Video services. There’s still the issue with limited original content and sports channels.  The new model is cheaper services, paying for only the content/channels you want to watch and better integrated devices.

There has been some innovation from traditional TV manufacturers. 3D and widgets have been introduced but they haven’t been very popular. Then there’s the incremental improvement in TV size and image quality. I see incremental improvements without much vision in the form of wireless connectivity and apps from some vendors. HP tried this with yahoo widgets without much success. Google is trying to sell a Sony Google TV device; which is another console to buy. Google has vision but doesn’t have the right expertise in manufacturing of monitors. But the vision is there. Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility demonstrates that Google is interested in the TV hardware devices Motorola manufactures, but again it’s just another brick to plug into the TV. This might work and allow Google to integrate the Android OS which is a similar platform as the future Apple TV. Or at least I hope it does.

Apple also thinks it can do 3D better.  In 2010, Apple won a patent for a revolutionary new 3D screen system that would not require glasses and could be viewed by multiple people at the same time. The patent went so far as to slam current 3D systems, noting that most people dislike goggles and dismissing current non-glasses systems as “essentially unworkable for projecting a 3D image….”

Why else would Apple want to sell TV’s since it’s something most people already have and it’s a device most people want to own for at least 10 years? Well, because it’s another device to make money selling apps, music and of course commercials or ads.

Apple stands to make huge revenue selling more apps and music however Ad revenue is another billion plus dollar revenue stream for Apple. And ads can be better, if that were even possible.  If Apple knows who you are based on your account and from other social media information AND they know what kind of music and television you watch, then they can push personalized ads and commercials. Commercials for the kids, parents or whoever else is using the TV. This is an incredible platform for not only innovating and changing industries but making huge money. Also, as far as I can tell, Google has been stealing Apple’s interfaces and functionality in the form of Andriod smartphones and Android tablets. Apple TV and Apple iAd platform will finally allow Apple to rip off Google’s advertising functionality.

So let’s sum up what will happen. A new Apple LED  TV with the iOS operating system will let people use apps purchased from the Apple store, music and video that streams from Apple’s cloud service (so you don’t have to have a large hard drive anymore).  An Apple LED TV will full yintegrate one single piece of hardware without additional unnecessary cords to external gaming or cable TV consoles. And Apple iAds platform will allow anyone to finally publish advertisements for the television, apps, and anywhere else Apple products take us.

Cloud Storage needs

Published on September 13, 2011 in Cloud, Dropbox, EMC, entrepreneur, Google, Microsoft, SharePoint, Storage and Virtualization. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Did you know that your computer needs are exactly like everyone else’s? You want unlimited storage that is available, backed up continuously for restore and accessible anywhere and from any device. So, where do I get this? Well, you will have to understand that is where we are headed but there are some hurdles to get there.

First there’s a company that’s afraid to provide this commodity service to it’s customers because they WILL be called a monopoly again. Not only that, they don’t quite realize they are a cloud services company.  And we have our traditional enterprise software companies who don’t realize they are in the “storage” business, instead they define themselves in a smaller category of “enterprise backup and restore”.  But there are some who have played in this space without real commitment like EMC, who like to focus their energy on the more lucrative enterprise market.

Which means smaller companies like Dropbox, Box.net, Sugar Sync, Bitcasa, Spot Documents and SpiderOak are providing “cloud storage” to millions of regular users. I’ve read the number of users these companies are servicing have approached 25 million users.

An amazing thing is happening. There is a convergence of events driving the development of new online storage companies.  These events include the availability of low cost enterprise storage, new cloud infrastructure companies (providing storage) are in business, much more data is being created by people on multiple devices, which is enabling many of these cloud storage organizations to achieve major economies of scale and greater control of growing data volumes, not to mention PC hard drives are being made with low quality standards which drive more customers to cloud based storage. New virtualization technologies, both proprietary and open source, are also deeply involved helping drive these new service and businesses.

So now we see entrepreneurs creating companies that act as a “middle man” by building an interface to a cloud infrastructure and selling the services, supporting users and building applications to connect to the cloud storage solution. From what I can tell, Amazon is the driving factor here. And Amazon is doing an amazing job. Their storage services are priced low, provide high levels of availability, allow for a great management interface, API’s and are innovating like no one else. Their stock price is rising for a reason and it’s justified. Amazon recently introduced Cloud Drive, an online file storage service where everyone gets 5 GB of free storage space to store all kinds of files in the cloud. You can purchase additional storage space at the cost of $1 per GB. However, if you are to upload non-music files to Cloud Drive – like your documents, pictures, DRM protected music, or even complete file folders – you’ll have to use your web browser. That’s obviously not a very convenient option especially when you wish to upload multiple files from various desktop folders. There’s a free utility called Gladinet Starter that will map your Cloud Drive account as a local drive so you can access your online files and folders from within Windows Explorer itself. But Amazon is still not a complete solution for all platforms. They want to be a player but like EMC they want to continue selling their existing products to the other players.

EMC could have provided these services and they are especially at fault since they are in the “storage business”. They own Mozy that does online backup and restore. And this is a great service but so limited at this point. You can connect to the  Mozy over the web and “restore” the document. But that’s the issue. Stop calling it restore. They own all the pieces such as enterprise disks, security and virtualization in the form of VMWare products. They need to take a deep hard look at these small contenders and also Amazon and compete with them. My guess is that Amazon is using Tier 1 and Tier 2 storage which includes EMC products and they can’t get in the business of competing with their customers so then they just sell the hard drives and back-end services. I’m not sure I agree with this as a long term approach but in the short term they have a responsibility to their stockholders. Those are the business choices companies make. And that’s why sometimes they go out of business when the market changes.

Microsoft is also guilty in that they could have provided these services a while back. Now as far as Microsoft is concerned, they could also buy storage solutions from an enterprise storage vendor, build a virtual storage infrastructure and leverage their virtualization technology for most of these core services, if they wanted. They have skydrive, not to be confused by live drive, and Microsoft doesn’t do much more than provide a web interface. Their customers have to go through the trouble of installing windows live essentials and their live mesh software that syncs photos and documents. How about add this to their OS as a native feature? Oh, monopoly…forgot.  This is the same company that sold a product called SharePoint Portal server 2001 that extended windows by allowing a user to map a drive or create a drive letter to connect to SharePoint. Which means they had a product that allows users to seamlessly store documents on a company’s web storage  server(in the company “cloud”). Microsoft has the vision and capability to extend their SkyDrive functionality by building the services, the web interface and the mobile apps for iPhone and Android if they wanted. We could have had a folder like drop box creates that connects directly to the cloud or even a “My Cloud Documents”; or even a disk drive to hide the fact that the data wasn’t on the computer. They are seriously missing this. I worry that Microsoft’s decline will come within the next 5 years and it will be swift and painful.

Google wants to build their Chrome PC where everything is in the cloud. So, your storage is in Google docs, your applications are on Google or at some other online company and you no longer need anything on your PC other than a Google Chrome web browser. It’s an interesting idea but a reach.

For now I just want unlimited storage that is available, secure, backed up continuously for restore and accessible anywhere and from any device.  Oh, did I mention I wanted this to be so simple to use that it just works and the cloud drive/folder shows up on my computer/device natively like any other folder or disk drive.

How do you kill Microsoft?

Published on September 3, 2011 in Apple, Google, iPhone, Microsoft, Technology and user experience. 0 Comments

How do you kill Microsoft? Improve the end user experience. Microsoft has bright engineers and business people. They have been extremely good at consistently making satisfactory products and in some cases stellar products for their time (and then over charging companies.) Yes, competition has been stifled which has resulted in innovation being hampered in some areas. But it has also allowed for companies to standardize and work on improving their own end user experience. Administrators can integrate technologies and come up with some amazing solutions which have resulted in allowing these corporations to bring more and better services to its customers. It has allowed all companies who have adopted these technologies and practices to remain competitive and increase the barriers to entry in their respective markets. Microsoft has been great at slowly improving the user experience but their focus has been on the corporate technology manager and administrator.  But I want more and better. And better means they need to regain their original frame of mind where they knew it was about making the user experience, regardless of who that user is, amazing. Make the buying experience better for the consumer and CIO. Make the implementation and administration experience better for the technology manager and administrator. Make the development experience better for the developer. Make the technology available and free for the student, open source engineer and business start-up with a special limited license. Make the product fun, fast and error free for the user.

Steve Ballmer once said at a conference to employees that Microsoft technologies have to be like toasters where they just work and it’s easy enough for his mother to use it. Ok, but make the products not only as stable as a toaster but so great I want to butter my bread all the time.

What Apple and Google has demonstrated to the world was that it can be done better. And that improving the user experience regardless of their technical skill is the key to killing any reigning champ.  I once remember a Lotus Notes developer telling me that the only reason everyone was adopting Microsoft Exchange Server was that it was so colorful and easy to use. Regardless of the feature strengths the product had over the competition, she was right. The product was designed for an amazing user experience over any other product on the market.

Here’s another story… A month after the Apple iPhone was released, I was in Redmond having a conversation with a number of the Exchange and Windows mobile product developers and managers. I spoke to one of the developers who said he quit the mobile team out of frustration and moved into the Exchange team. He said not only was he bored with the mobile development work he was doing but frustrated that there was no drive to change the UI or user experience within the team. And he wanted to join a winning team. A group formed around us listening to our conversation. I explained that I loved the iPhone and was trying to get the product adopted in my company as the standard mobile phone for communication and collaboration. The Microsoft employees, ever faithful and oblivious, told me the iPhone would never be widely adopted by corporations given security concerns. I disagreed. The security issues can be resolved and Apple also licenses the Microsoft ActiveSync technology, but the user experience is so far superior that end users will mobilize and bring this technology into the company, just as customers had done in Microsoft’s early history.

To command line, or not command line, that is the question: Whether it be nobler in the GUI…Well, give them both is obviously the answer but give them BETTER is the key.

What Now? IM futures

Published on August 23, 2011 in Google, IM, Instant Messenger, Microsoft, Technology and Yahoo. 0 Comments

As a follow up to my last post on “Why Now…” I would like to explore some of my thoughts on what’s in store for us, what’s happening now and the market forces behind instant messaging.  I posted my last article in 2006 and haven’t published any new articles since. My intention was to post many articles as a way to learn how to build a blog site on Linux  and integrate it with the various web-services and advertising providers. I’ve learned a lot and I have received over 40,000 comments based on my two postings. A good portion was spam however the majority was well received comments. I’ll write my next article about advertising on the web; as it also relates to IM futures.  But let’s go ahead and explore the topic of what the future might be like all due to usage trends and capitalistic forces.

As noted in my previous article, integration of the instant messaging infrastructures has been very slow moving. Why so slow? Well, adoption has been slow along with integrating everyone’s infrastructures.  It’s difficult to coordinate between corporations to set up federation or federate with major IM vendors like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc. For example, if two companies want to “talk” to each other, someone in their management hierarchy has to approve money to be spent and the infrastructure has to be purchased and maintained. Then the infrastructure has to be integrated with a partner company which means the other company has to also approve spending time or money or both to federate. If the company wants to federate with Yahoo and Hotmail, Microsoft charges licensing fees.  Now major IM providers can justify that they need to sell services to maintain infrastructure and for continued development efforts, but this model is clearly in need of being revamped. And for those that say there are also clearinghouses available to ease the integration, I would explain that the costs are high unless you have deep pockets and make money from IM’ing.

Google opens up their IM platform and for good reason. At some point, there will be the option to push advertisements to the sender or recipient based on the context of the conversation. Microsoft tried to just simply place advertisements into the client which has been widely criticized as obtrusive and unsightly. Facebook and Google has been much more successful at integrating their IM clients into their social networks. For Google, the user can log into their Gmail account and for Facebook into their page, all the while reading advertisements posted to their web application as they use the integrated IM client. This has been a more successful model. The next evolution would be to see advertisements stream to their social network based on the context of their conversation and geographic location data, not just the content of their email or randomness. However you see how more relevant ads are being targeted to an intended audience. And the model is, give people the services they need to collaborate and we will appear to provide this free of charge; all the while sending them advertisements to read and click on.

Now we see another IM player, Facebook. Do they intend to integrate with the other IM providers. Well, I noticed you see Skype integration when you install the client but then this would be a client side solution and would not fall under the fully integrated category. Facebook is the new AOL. They want to own all the content and provide all the services to keep you on their site so that you will click on advertisements. Facebook even integrates with Skype services. This is a step in the right direction but the real goal is full integration for text, video and voice across any network or client. This is important because everyone should be able to communicate and share in the advertising revenue. Facebook’s valuation is so high because they are more closed and share less, thus keeping most of the revenue.

Why should everyone share in advertising revenue? Is that just the most naive thing? Well, advertisers such as Google reward content providers by allowing them to place ads on their site and give them some of the click revenue. If a monopoly somehow develops then that social site has all the content and they dictate the rules. Facebook is dominating and probably won’t change unless there’s a strong competitor. Google is the only one I can see that can build the right platform. Yahoo no longer has the platform or the resources and will soon be sold off while Microsoft still wants to sell outlook and communicator for you to install on your windows PC. Microsoft is in the wrong game. If Google allowed everyone to collect revenue from their Google+ postings then the game might change.  What’s really the difference between a blogger who creates content and get’s click revenue from it and a person who posts content and brings in thousands of readers? Popularity can and does pay the bills provided you understand the game and the rules.

Though it’s true that Facebook opens up their platform to application integration such as Twitter and other companies. But the content is still hosted at Facebook and with respect to instant messaging, they have a closed system. So, where is the innovation coming from?

Well, I say instant messaging tech innovations will be more widely utilized and available from social networks. This means Microsoft, who develops mostly for corporations will not innovate as fast as social networks. The fact is adoption of IM as a business communication medium is driven primarily by individual employees using consumer software at work, rather than by formal mandate or provisioning by corporate information technology departments. IM is still not considered strategic at most corporations unless you work at a brokerage firm where trading occurs over IM. Though surprisingly many of this trading communication is happening over major IM service providers.

According to the Pew report: Teens and technology (2005), “email is something you use to talk to old people”. Also, according to the national school boards association report, “…social networking is increasingly used as a communications and collaboration tool of choice…” This means email as we know it today will change dramatically and IM’s in some form will increase in importance. Email is inefficient and time intensive. Organizing messages in folders is a waste.  Social network innovations and automatic categorizations such as Gmail will be the norm. IM integration will be seamless.  The new store and forward technology will be built into social networks that also integrates the current instant messaging, email, and micro-blogging functionality.

What else will social networks do? Well, now that smartphones are the norm and will continue to be, we will have made it possible for anyone to keep track of others along with viewing their presence information. Facebook has a mobile app that has instant messaging, presence and location awareness. Mobile carriers have satellites and cell towers to pinpoint the location of cellphones. Your social circles will not only know whether you’re online but where you are, physically, on a map. Are you aware mobile carriers are selling locator services?

You will be able to find your friends anytime. A map will plot the location of each of your targets. You will be able to see their shared information, and possibly get advertisements sent to you based on your location a la Groupon or some integrated future coupon feature from Facebook. The idea is that the technology will increase social interaction, collaboration and most notably REVENUE. And the simple consumer question becomes, do you chose the premium option with no advertisements or the “free” option with advertisements? I’m not even sure if there will be a choice and advertisements will be required. Do you have a choice to turn them off now in Facebook?

Imagine you have an text message or IM conversation with your friend and plan to meet. But something comes up and you don’t know if your friend will show up or you have decided to go somewhere else with a different crowd. You will have the ability to leave an IM note only if they show up. This would make a great treasure hunting game or game of hide and go seek but on a much larger scale. Am I getting warmer?

Most of this type of functionality might not appeal to the slow moving, risk adverse corporation. However there is a ton of value for consumers, which is why innovations will be more rapid and adopted through social networks. A large network adds value since their is very little value if you can’t communicate with your friend from any IM client or social network of your choosing. Now that there are standard protocols, let’s demand integration to drive adoption and innovations further. I also suggest demanding revenue if you create content of any type.

Why Now?? IM Interoperability

Published on July 15, 2006 in Google, IM, Instant Messenger, Microsoft, Technology and Yahoo. 0 Comments

There’s quite a lot of discussion lately about Microsoft and Yahoo getting their instant messaging clients to inter-operate in a way that is native to the code put forth by the vendors. As apposed to some sort of hack solution, such as what other IM clients do so that one client logs into multiple systems; attempting to eliminate the need for multiple clients.

Now, this news is extremely significant in that it marks a new trend and new beginning to communicating to a wider audience without worrying which network one of our contacts are using. All IM communities have been waiting patiently for this.

Let’s explore the “why now” question. In my mind, two significant events occurred within the instant messaging community all brought forth by one significant market force, Google. One of these significant events was their technology offering which ironically seemed overly simple and under-featured. The technology is called Google Talk beta. The other event was Google’s partnership with AOL. The partnership with AOL is significant in that AOL has a unique market position, in which the company has not developed to increase their revenue stream. Both AOL and financial analysts understand a partnership with the king of Internet advertising should bring some interesting long term results.

According to ComScore Media Metrix, nearly 70 million Americans use instant messaging applications every month and AOL controls more than 50% of the American chat market. Imagine having a conversation and a context aware advertisement streams across the window while you having a discussion. Imagine an unobtrusive advertisement like a hypertext link to a web site related to your conversation. Seems useful enough to me but this can bring in huge revenue. Google and AOL seem to make a good partnership. Google has the technology and the vision, while AOL has the market and is run by business folk with an long history of advertising expertise.

So, combining the IM communities of both Yahoo! and Microsoft gives the two tag team rivalries a similar sized market. Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google have expertise in both instant messaging and web advertising technologies so they can work together towards inter-operating between the two dissimilar clients that work over different back-end technologies which communicate using incompatible proprietary protocols.

Google on the other hand embraced open standards and opened their IM infrastructure to all third parties. Given Google’s openness, third party support, and partnership with AOL it was only a matter of time before the big three IM giants started to partner up. And it’s about time, thanks to Google and a desire for revenue growth.