May 2009 Archives

Lars Rasmussen and his brother Jens, the creators of Google Maps, trotted out a first look at their latest development, Google Wave, at the I/O developer conference last week. The audience gave them a pass on a few mishaps, but overall the new application was quite impressive.  Wave introduces new concepts in communication by thinking of conversations as container objects where you can drag and drop people, threads, links, documents, images and even robots that enable the content to instantly appear on connected clients over the Internet. Wave is written entirely in the Google Web Toolkit (GWT "Gwit"). The developer codes in Java and the tool converts to HTML5 & Ajax automatically. For developers, Wave stores updates to UI state in the local XML of your gadget. Then Google transmits that state over the network where the other instance of your gadget updates in real-time. Google estimates only 5% of the code needs to be adapted for mobile device browsers; most of which involve just a layout change. Wave removes the structure found in email replies by creating a hub of conversation trees where users can chime in at any level, playback what they've missed and leave replies for others to see. There is even support for Twitter using Twave to merge wave posts to and from the popular micro-blogging platform. My main concern is the amount of network traffic generated by hundreds or thousands of users in a real-time, collaborative web application. Another open issue is federated identity; Google requires users to have an account to access any of their applications. OpenSocial gadgets will be supported natively in Wave and I expect to see more consolidation in the social web authentication space this year. No wonder Google was quiet about Twitter acquisition rumors, they've got bigger ideas.

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing is the #1 spectator sport in the United States holding 17 of the top 20 attended sporting events. Studies have shown an extraordinary awareness of corporate sponsors in the sport in terms of consumer accuracy and recall. According to a Madison University study, 51% of the fans agreed that, when they buy a NASCAR sponsors' product, they are contributing to the sport. And more importantly, 47% of fans agreed that they like a sponsor's brand more because it sponsors NASCAR. I think the same thing can happen with the iPhone. Mobile advertisers are writing inexpensive iPhone applications that attract more user interaction than static display ads do. According to Greystripe, users interact with an iPhone ad nearly 14% of the time versus an online banner ad that garners less than 1% interaction. That's an order of magnitude difference. With over 20 million iPhone users; the audience reach has achieved critical mass. AdMob claims over 78 billion global impressions served and the iPhone OS holds over 50% of that total. There is a cool NASCAR Live iPhone application available but I think there is a bigger opportunity. New event marketing sponsorships that bring in consumer experience with big dollar brands via their iPhone device could help fund development and mobile industry growth for the entire category.

Warren East, CEO of ARM Holdings says there will be over 10 ARM-based Netbooks on the market by year end. That puts a lot of pressure on Microsoft to port Windows to the ARM processor, or does it? Here's the dilemma. If Microsoft ports to the ARM, Intel could optimize x86 CPUs like Atom for Linux (and Android). Even though Microsoft has embedded versions of Windows for kiosks & cash registers, it's not clear to me the ARM processor could handle a scaled down version of Windows. Not to mention how it would perform against a lightweight Linux ARM implementation. Intel wins either way. Apple's not playing this game; they've segmented the processor platform of the Intel MacBooks from the iPhone. They will most likely develop their own MPU/GPU combo chip as I've discussed here before. Microsoft should stay the course and stick with Intel. 

The ingredient digital ink for Kindle, E Ink, is working with Plastic Logic to develop a reading tablet to display books, newspapers and magazines. Many content owners in the industry view Amazon's middle-man role as unfavorable in that they set the pricing and the layout of content for the Kindle. Since the early 2000's, firms producing the reflective layers of the nanostructured films of titanium dioxide that create the solid white background have come down the learning curve. This process improves reflectivity and contrast while eliminating the need for backlighting. Innovations in bistable voltage have optimized power management. Newer displays, for example, can operate on very low voltage that only charges when the image is updating. Amazon commercialized this type of technology in high volume with the Kindle. Publishers complain that the Kindle doesn't allow for advertising and it is a poor substitute for the feel of pages - they would. Warren Buffet said recently he would not buy any Newspaper publishing company "at any price" because of the business model erosion. I see potential consumer confusion with the proliferation of these devices, especially if the industry takes different directions from Amazon, Apple, Sony, Gannett, NY Times and other publishers struggling to re-invent themselves. 

I recently did a Google Search on my name to find out what comes up. The internet allows us to search out anything we can think of and I am often surprised what we discover along the way. I came across another Paul Lopez, who was an accomplished stunt flyer and held airshows across the country.