Click here to see what I think of the San Diego Padres. This message was created using BigAssMessage.com. This site should find a permanent home on your bookmarks bar for sure.
A Vital Online Application
March 15th, 2010Smartphone Market Share
March 15th, 2010Comscore has the latest SmartPhone market share numbers:
| RIM (Blackberry) | 43.0% |
| Apple | 25.1% |
| Microsoft | 15.7% |
| 7.1% | |
| Palm | 5.7% |
Google shows the biggest gain over the previous quarter with a 4.3% increase while Microsoft lost 4%. So the good news all belongs to Google which has made significant headway in the smartphone market with its Android operating system.
Microsoft continues to struggle and is betting the farm on its launch of Windows Mobile 7. One major problem for Microsoft is that Mobile 7 cannot run apps built for older versions of Windows Mobile. This is because Microsoft essentially rewrote the platform from the ground up.
Application availability is one of Apple’s strongest selling points. For fifth-place Palm it is one of their weakest.
Expect Google Android to continue its march forward. The interesting question will be whether they can slow Apple’s momentum among new adopters.
Bing Gaining on Google
March 10th, 2010Experian Hitwise has some new numbers on search engine utilization for February:
| 70.95% | |
| Yahoo | 14.57% |
| Bing | 9.7% |
| Ask.com | 2.84% |
That’s a 4% increase for Bing which seems to be slowly gaining ground on the 400-pound gorilla Google. Microsoft and Yahoo recently announced a deal whereby Yahoo would utilize Bing as its search engine underneath the covers. So, in effect, we could view the Yahoo/Bing numbers together eventually.
It’s hard to see how Microsoft will ever be able to dethrone Google in search but they are making some inroads. The growing popularity of Android devices will make it more difficult for them however. Microsoft will need to keep innovating and look for some small acquisition opportunities in the search technology space.
Privacy in the Age of Social Networking
February 25th, 2010
Mike Elgan at ComputerWorld has an excellent story about how social networking sites can expose personal information and compromise your privacy in ways you might not have ever considered. This is an area that I am personally becoming more focused upon since my experience with Google Buzz.
One area that I’ve tried to tighten down on is my gmail account. For years, I have been used to hitting the “Archive” button rather than the “Delete” button when I’m through with an email. I had over 10,000 emails in my “All Mail” folder. Many of these were messages from financial institutions like banks and credit card companies. I realized that if someone managed to hack my gmail account they would easily be able to figure where I had bank and credit card accounts.
There’s not an easy way to dump your entire “All Mail” folder either since that folder also includes emails that you have labeled to place into a specific folder in order to keep around. The only solution I found was to delete everything and then go to the “Trash” folder and search for my labeled messages, move those back to my Inbox and then archive them from there. There might be an easy way to do this but I couldn’t figure it out.
Now, I’m following the practice of explicitly hitting the “Delete” button on every email that I decide I no longer want to keep around. I’m also taking pains to unsubscribe from each of these accounts so they don’t keep sending me emails that I didn’t ask for in the first place. I’ve also cleaned up my Google Docs to make sure nothing in there would be of any value to online criminals.
Yes, it’s true. We have no privacy anymore. But we can do things to make it harder for the crooks.
Buzzkill on the Social Networking Highway
February 17th, 2010
By now you’ve probably heard about the furor around the launch of Buzz, Google’s answer to Facebook and Twitter. Buzz basically leverages your Gmail contacts to launch you into their own social network. The problem with Buzz is that Gmail users weren’t given a choice whether to opt out of Buzz and they suddenly found all of their most frequent email contacts exposed to the outside world.
If, for example, you were using Gmail to correspond with both your wife and an ex-girlfriend this could obviously create some dicey problems for you. There could be a wide variety of situations where you might not want certain friends to know that you’re corresponding with certain other people. Google, apparently oblivious to the privacy concerns that would be raised, plunged forward with their ambitious launch and have been struggling with damage control ever since. Privacy advocates have been understandably howling in rage.
Personally, I haven’t found social networking via Facebook and Twitter to be all that compelling. I can see how kids would love it as a way to keep in touch with friends, but as an adult I am not all that eager to be constantly sharing personal information with a large group of people. And sometimes I don’t really care to get the same sort of gory details that others are sharing about their lives. Consequently, I fairly quickly figured out how to drop out of Buzz which I saw as yet another social network I’m not truly crazy about.
All of this has caused me to question the wisdom of placing so much of my personal information in Google’s hands to begin with. I have been an avid user of Google Docs for sometime. What guarantees do I have that Google won’t dream up some kind of social document tool that would suddenly expose the contents of my documents to the outside world? It may sound far-fetched but is it really?
Most Popular Handheld Games
February 4th, 2010Mplayit has an interesting graphic showing the most popular games for the iPhone, Android devices, and Blackberry. I find it amazing that Tetris, a game invented all the way back in 1984, is #1 for the iPhone arcade games. In general, I find the whole game genre a bit mystifying. I played backgammon on line for a while but I uninstalled that after I realized I was wasting too much time on it. I find it amazing that people have so much time to play so many games.
GNU Image Manipulation Program
February 4th, 2010
The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is a free software raster graphics editing tool. It supports photo editing, image manipulation and freeform drawing. Ars Technica has an article on upcoming user interface improvements that the GIMP developers are working on. I’m planning to download a copy and check it out once I get my home machine rebuilt with Windows 7.
The Winners and Losers of 2010 – Handhelds and Tablets
January 6th, 2010Yes, I realize that we are already several days into 2010, but thanks to a monster flu I have been out of action for some time now. Today, I’m finally getting a chance to put down my thoughts and predictions about what the year 2010 will bring. So here is the first installment of a series of posts focusing on the forecast for specific market segments in the coming year.
Handhelds
Google Nexus One
The worst kept secret in the world from last year was the much-rumored Google phone. The Nexus One has finally arrived and Google is touting it as the greatest thing since, well, the Apple iPhone (Click here for a very cool Nexus One demo). Why Google has chosen to move away from its long-held practice of avoiding hardware development has a lot of us wondering. I’m sure it has Google’s partners who have developed Android-based phones (like Motorola) wondering as well. Why should they continue to pour money and resources into their Android phones if their software supplier (Google) is now going to be a direct competitor? Consider how many device manufacturers would jump at the chance to build phones running iPhone OS and competing directly with the iPhone itself? Not too many I suspect.
Ultimately, I suspect the Nexus One will do little to alter Apple’s growing dominance in handheld devices. It’s too little, too late, and there are way more iPhone apps than Android apps out there. In addition, Apple still holds the edge in sex appeal.
2010 will hopefully be the year when Verizon subscribers can (finally) choose an iPhone. This will depend on whether Verizon and Apple can come to terms and introduce a CDMA-equipped iPhone that works on Verizon’s network. This would be a big development for many of us (like myself) who would like to have an iPhone but are put off by AT&T’s spotty coverage. I mean, this is 2010 for goodness sake. Isn’t it embarrassing for AT&T that “Are you there?” is the most common phrase that is transmitted (or dropped) across their network?
For all of the other mobile phone manufacturers the competitive landscape has just become much more difficult. Companies like Nokia, Samsung and Motorola will struggle to differentiate themselves in a market segment increasingly dominated by Apple and Google. This could also be the year that Palm finally goes under overwhelmed by the Apple wave.
Winners: Apple, Verizon
Losers: Google, Nokia, Motorola, Palm, AT&T
Tablets
So-called “tablet” computing devices are likely to be a major new growth segment in 2010. These devices are shaped like a slate and typically include touchscreen interfaces and may or may not include a stylus or other writing device. Tablets are intended to be simpler and easier to use than full-featured notebook computers. In my opinion, there is a serious market need for a device with a bigger screen and more functionality than a handheld that is also less expensive and easier to manage than a notebook computer. Some are saying 2010 will be the “year of the tablet”. I think they could be onto something.
Given that, the company to watch in this segment is, of course, Apple. Rumors have been flying that Apple will soon announce a tablet computing device dubbed the iSlate. This will be a multi-media touch-screen device with e-reader functionality. Reportedly, iPhone apps can be adapted to run on the iSlate without too much effort. This is critical because it means that the iSlate will have a wide array of applications available right out of the gate.
Microsoft Courier
Microsoft is also expected to soon announce Microsoft Courier. This is a booklet device with two screens that allows you to draw and write with a stylus or your fingers. While Microsoft was an early pioneer in tablet computing they have never been able to turn it into a big money-maker. My opinion is that Courier will be too cumbersome to be useful and I have never been a big fan of pen computing. Computers should free us from the use of pens and paper, not duplicate them. I will concede that there are some applications where a drawing device is essential; it just isn’t required for the large majority of us.
Not to be outdone by its rivals, Google is also rumored to be putting the final touches on a tablet device. This device will run Google’s Chrome OS which I discussed here and here. The Google tablet would (of course) have touchscreen capabilities, e-reader software and should do a bang-up job with multimedia presentation. Chrome OS will also be easy for consumers to manage since it’s going to keep all of your data and applications in the cloud (where they belong) rather than keep them on your local device. This operating system will also be crucial to the success of the upcoming Google netbook.
One of the most surprising success stories of the last few years has been the explosive popularity of Amazon’s e-reader device, the Kindle. Amazon rapidly gobbled up this market segment while everyone else was sleeping. With Apple and Google now pushing their way into this space it’s likely going to get a lot more difficult for Amazon to maintain its dominance. Book and magazine reading is rapidly going to become an expected feature in tablet computers. The question then becomes whether Amazon will transform the Kindle into a full-fledged tablet computing device in order to keep pace. That undoubtedly will not be easy.
Winners: Apple, Google
Losers: Microsoft, Amazon
Has the Google Phone finally arrived?
December 15th, 2009
HTC phone with Android
Rumor has it that Google employees are currently testing an all-Google cell phone that will be rolled out soon. Apparently, this device will be made available to the public without a contract that binds the user to a specific service carrier like AT&T or Verizon.
This would represent a big change in the way things are done here in the US, but is more like how things work in Europe. Currently, if you want a specific brand of cellphone (iPhone for example) you may not be able to use it with your current carrier. The way most people purchase cell phones is by signing up for a multi-year contract with a carrier who then subsidizes the purchase of the cell phone itself for you by knocking a few hundred dollars off of the factory price. A Google phone that is released to the general public would upend that model.
It would also put the Apple iPhone squarely into Google’s crosshairs. Unlike most cell phones, the iPhone is a seamless combination of hardware and software designed by the same company. A Google phone would be similar in this respect. The benefits for the consumer is generally a better all-around user experience.
People who make cell phone hardware however may not be too happy since Google will be cutting them out of a piece of the action. Will they still be as eager to build cell phones that run Google’s Android operating system? Maybe not.
The carriers may not be too thrilled either since they rely on their handset offerings to differentiate themselves from one another. If all handsets eventually work with every carrier then they will have to compete solely in other areas like quality of service and coverage.
A Google phone, like Chrome OS, fits nicely into their overall strategy for world domination. Google wants to remove the barriers (i.e., Microsoft and Apple software and hardware) between you and their online services. What better way to do that than by giving you a Google phone to go with your Google netbook. Can a Google desktop be too far behind? Undoubtedly. You heard it here first.
IPv6 Coming Soon to a Network Near You
December 9th, 2009
IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) has been the most widely used Internet Layer protocol since the inception of the Internet. This protocol uses 32-bit addresses to identify computing devices in a network. With 32-bits to use that means you can have 232, or 4,294,967,296 distinct addresses.
4.3 billion addresses in a world with 6.7 billion people doesn’t seem like nearly enough since everyone will eventually have their own desktop, netbook and handheld devices all of which will require an IP address. Consequently, the end result is that we will eventually run out of IPv4 addresses and civilization will grind to a halt.
Well, not exactly. The obvious solution to the IPv4 addressing scheme is to simply make the addresses larger. That’s where IPv6 comes in. IPv6 uses 128 bits for an address, 4 times as many bits as IPv4. Thanks to combinatorial math, however, it will make possible a substantially larger amount of addresses. To be exact 2128, or 3.4028236692093846346337460743177e+38 addresses in total.
BGPMon.net has a map showing IPv6 adoption worldwide. The U.S. is a laggard at only 3% while Japan is at 17% and Germany at 13% (Strangely enough, Cuba is the country with the highest adoption rate at 75%. BGPMon shows Jersey at 100% but I really don’t think Jersey is a country).
There are varying estimates for when IPv4 address exhaustion will occur, but the consensus is that this will happen sometime in 2010 to 2012. That doesn’t mean your IPv4 machine will stop working of course; it just means that if your company wants additional IPv4 addresses it won’t be able to get them. Many network devices and computers are already IPv6-capable but many are not. The transition will be interesting to watch. I plan to watch this more closely and I will share my findings here.