Enrique Gutierrez

I’m not going to rail iPhone too much. First, it’s too easy to hammer the business model of Apple for what they do to their customers, it’s too easy to compare the iPhone to phones that feature things like 3G without having to brag about it because other companies actually understand the market they’re in and don’t have to get all excited when they conform to a standard…

What I will do is mention the new Nokia N96 campaign. A sleek martial arts marketing platform, great brand projection, and though its creative, it’s still mature enough to make it feel like, if you do buy the N96, you’re not buying into the teenager fad-campaigns such as those presented by Apple for their bricks.

The N96, which I may actually upgrade to, features:

• 16GB internal storage space
• MicroSDHC Slot for expanding the memory up to 32GB total*
• 5MP Carl Zeiss Optics camera
• Near-DVD quality video recording
• LiveTV with DVB-H technology
• Integrated A-GPS and Nokia Maps
• The usuals (unless you own an iPhone)
  • Removable LiIon Battery
  • Multi-media Messaging
  • Front facing 1.3MP camera (yes, 2 cameras)
  • A flash (5MP camera only)
  • Tactile number pad
  • 3D stereo speakers … on the handset
  • A plethora of awesome gadgets (That are largely compatible with Nokia products in general *cough*)
• Nokia PC Suite
  • Send SMS, MMS, Email via the handset from your bluetooth or STANDARD USB cable connection
  • Manage photos, videos, files from the Media Manager, File Manager
  • blah blah blah tons of awesome stuff etc etc

Needless to say, the king of cell phone innovation has been Nokia since the early 2000’s and what they’re doing today is still no exception. Pretend for a moment the iPhone didn’t have MultiTouch, what do you have? A PDA phone, lacking in features, with an extra large footprint, an Apple OS, clever marketing campaign that turns Apple fanboys into herded cattle when an upgrade or update comes out, and about as much awesome as the Air, which is really an overpriced Eee PC with lots of pretty.

Shiny appliances with great (young feeling) marketing ideas, lacking sophistication, maturity, and business sense. Go Apple, go!

*32GB total is dependent on ScanDisk actually releasing their 16GB microSD card already. I’m waiting patiently, but have the option to upgrade from my 8GB to a 16GB card w/o buying a new phone. Neat, huh?

FriendFeed, an awesome application with a simplified interface, is growing… FAST. Before I get into what’s what with FriendFeed, here’s some skinny on features and how it relates to other sites, offering similar services…

Commenting/threaded conversations for every post: This feature is strikingly similar to Pownce’s idea of allowing threaded conversations to posts… making these sites a little more like message boards than microblogs.

Aggregation of services: MyBlogLog aggregates services, and spews them out via a nice time line (check my Lifestream). This feeding a feed other feeds to feed the feed is a very common thing these days, SocialThing does it, Pownce kind of does it, Jaiku as well… MyBlogLog, a Yahoo! service, is the closest to FriendFeed.

Subscribing to Feeds of others: MyBlogLog… and pretty much every other site with members + RSS, but MyBlogLog specifically, as… it’s an aggregator.

Liking a post: Twitter, Pownce, Digg… shoot, everywhere’s got this.

What makes FriendFeed different?

Imaginary friends, taking stuff from wherever, compiling a single feed or a few feeds from it, and organizing what you read by creating “friends” for them. This is much like Google Reader, you know… adding stuff to your RSS feed reader? But you can have more than one… so this makes it a little more like FilterMyRSS, which actually I think it a slightly better way to handle this, because it’s just merely managing a custom URL/Feed that you can alter and add to whatever, and it can be de-noised at the same time.

So… What makes FriendFeed different?

Recommended friends (like Facebook)… Best of X (day/month/etc … like Redit). Well, what makes FriendFeed really different is the fact that I rattled off a sevens site names, and where I found features similar to FriendFeed’s… but obvioulsy these features are all on FriendFeed.

To make FriendFeed “King of the Mountain”, and just anihalate the competition, indirectly as it may be since they’re peace loving happy campers of the Internet, would be to add the following:

1. SMS/MMS Support
   That’s right, eliminate the need to use Twitter all together. They’re up only 80% of “The Time” anyway, so to hell with it. Bring on photo sharing support via cell as well, and you’ve got yourself an end-to-end elimination of Twitter, Twitxr, Twitpic, etc.
2. Related to #1: Allow for direct messages, and scheduled activity summaries to be sent via SMS and/or Email
3. Support geotagging
4. Create a FireFox plug-in for “Share this on FF”
   This will alleviate the need to use sites like Tumblr, Digg, Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia.com, Reddit… etc… etc
5. Related to #3, add a Stumble feature to the toolbar to show me random items that related to things I like.
6. Allow tagging of things I share
7. Start to grab the excerpt from blog-posts, via the RSS input
8. Give the option for some sort of customization through a dashboard similar to Tumblr.

That’ll about cover it… I mean, FriendFeed doesn’t really need AJAX awesome, or any other major infrastructure pieces, they have the best features from a good number of sites, and, interact with an even bigger number of them… so, to wipe Twitter off the map, and a few other sites that aren’t really needed… That’s the path of awesome. Unless I’m forgetting something…

Some background. I previously owned an HTC 8525 (Windows 6 [upgraded] smart phone), and moved to the raved about Nokia N95 (Symbian 60 ver 3 awesome). Ok… so I was poking around and came across this:

MEdia™ Net - from AT&T Wireless’ Q&A section (link):

Q. What is MEdia™ Net?
A. MEdia Net gives you access to all the cool things you can do with your wireless phone—email, Web sites, games, and more. It is wireless Internet access for your wireless device.

• Mail & Messaging: Check your Yahoo! Mail, MSN Hotmail and chat with friends with Yahoo! Messenger and Upoc.
• Sports: Get the latest scores from CBS SportsLine and ESPN.
• Ringtones, Games, and Graphics: Personalize your phone by downloading your favorites.
• News & Finance: Stay informed with round-the-clock headlines from CNN.
• Entertainment: Get local movie times and reviews, dining recommendations, and more.
• Weather & Travel: Check your forecast from The Weather Channel, get flight times, and traffic reports.

Neat! This MEdia™ Net shindig should allow me to do what I need on my N95 (and my PDA, but we’ll not get into that)… and the MEdia™ Max Unlimited feature looks like a good fit. As a result - I pick up the phone, and now have this featured added to my plan… and had the $39.99 (PDA Personal plan w/ 1500 txt message - no longer available) feature on my plan,as required by AT&T at the time for the PDA’s, removed.

Here’s a paraphrase of the conversation I had with the nice lady on the phone at AT&T Wireless:

Me - “Is there a bandwidth difference between the PDA plan and the MEdia™ Max (i didn’t say ‘tm’)?”
Nice Lady - “Not that I’m aware, I think it’s just if you have a PDA, you’ll be accessing your email and the Internet more frequently”
Me - “Oh, neat. So since my phone isn’t a PDA, I can get this MEdia™ Max Unlimited?”
Nice Lady - “Yep, would you like me to remove the PDA features from your plan?”

So, this confused me, as I told my friend Genevieve to do the same thing with her N95 about a week ago… and she got a guy telling her “The N95 is a smartphone, you’ll need to upgrade to the PDA data plan”… buh? (image right)

Ok… so the wheels started turning pretty quick in my head:

1. Does the iPhone qualify for the MEdia™ Max Unlimited Plan (yes - at least I think so)
2. Is the iPhone capable of email access? (yes, without MMS even… heh)
3. Is the N95 not a smart phone? (email, office, gps, camera, qik.com, web browser… hmm)
4. Why are Windows Mobile users getting charged $15 more a month?
5. Why does it seem that “some people” get the same features for $35 that others have to pay $50 for?
6. What the hell qualified a phone as smart? (answer)
7. Is AT&T aware of what a smartphone really is? Are their employees universally aware?

I’m going to figure that I just got lucky because I outright asked for the  MEdia™ Max Unlimited Plan and got someone who was completely unaware what the hell the N95 is, count my lucky stars and give this bit of advice to people that have … a “smartphone” that’s not an iPhone:

Call AT&T - ask for the  MEdia™ Max Unlimited Plan - if they say no, hang up and call back. Save yourself $180 a year.

Unless I’m completely missing something. Which … I just speed tested my phone after a reboot and I’m still getting 4.2 Mbps over their air… and uh… I’ll keep testing to see if there’s a downside here to paying less, anyway.

I was looking at the Mahalo Vlog Idol contest this morning, the finalist they have, and had some interesting thoughts revolving around what factors could go into finding the best winner for this thing… Granted I only started to check out Mahalo this morning as well, as to get a feel for what this site is all about… needless to say, it’s a great concept, and useful site. It’s no wonder they rock.

1. Personality - A good host will have a great real-life personality. This will remove the need to “train” an “actress” as a host. If someone has a horrible personality that will come through no matter how fake they are, unless they’re a well trained actress, in which case - you can get awesome results most of the time regardless - example: Nicole Kidman.
2. Appearance - On screen and off screen appearance is important when you’re the public face of awesome. Looks aren’t everything, but this is video-based media, in LA no less… Which means… Looks are almost everything. Therefore, model-type physical standards should apply (sort of): 5′9″ give or take a few inches, in-shape, well taken care of hair, clear skin, and nice teeth.
3. Communication - Does the person have the ability to listen, guide an interview, and work with whoever is on the camera with them? This is when a natural positive personality comes into play, having the ability to forget the camera is there, aside from addressing your audience, in order to hold awesome conversations will give you Barbara Walters results - minus her melodramatic bullshit and boring. As in, you’ll get natural conversation from people on camera as a result.
4. History - Is the person already established in the industry somehow? If so, how? Is this appearance socially acceptable? Chances are if the person was attached to some good causes, that’s a bonus. If the person is known for showing her boobies online, that’s a huge negative mark, regardless of how much we like boobies.

There’s one that may be “seen” as important, and really isn’t. Geek-credibility/Social network presence:

1. Subject matters - Anyone with the drive to learn can interview fellow geeks and nerds, all it takes is - review your subjects before hand, and maybe have a consultant handy for geek-coaching, and chances are if there’s too much knowledge about a topic - there will be too many assumptions given, making for bad content flow.
2. Out of the box thinking - I’ve seen time and time again when non-geeks ask some of the most awesome questions out of lack of insight. This creates great content, and drives geek people to get more into what they’re up to, keeping their assumptions at bay.
3. Broader viewer-base - If non-geeks can associate with the host, they’ll be more likely to watch. If the content is geek, geeks will watch too - the host just has to be savvy and intelligent. Hell she could be a Biologist for all we care, just make sure she’s not some bubbly idiot.
4. Social Arena - Some social interaction is a bonus, but awareness and willingness to partake is more better. Someone who isn’t branded online already would more easily be associated with Mahalo if they didn’t have a previously establish reader-base online… Granted having a blog isn’t all that bad, depending on what it is. The real magic begins when the new host can become an active blogger, create a fresh online presence, and really gets into the social scene after the new gig. This allows everyone to see the person grow online, and adds a new level of interest for those of you that like “reality” television.

It’s an interesting publicity stunt they’re pulling off though. Using Twitter, their site, and the social arena to perform an open casting call to fill some big shoes (Veronica Belmont). So hats off to them, and good luck in the decision process. I guess it’s down to the wire, and there are a handful of talented people left. I’m still looking over the contestants, and don’t really have a favorite… then again, I’m not much into these “Idol” type things.