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How Fun, the Publishing industry looks like mimic the mistakes of Music and Movies

WSJ.com is reporting that both Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group are looking to delay the release of e-Books by 4 months following the release of a hardback.

“The right place for the e-book is after the hardcover but before the paperback,” said Carolyn Reidy, CEO of Simon & Schuster, which is owned by CBS Corp. “We believe some people will be disappointed. But with new [electronic] readers coming and sales booming, we need to do this now, before the installed base of e-book reading devices gets to a size where doing it would be impossible.”

How awesome – not! It amazes me how people in the content industries still regard the consumption of bits differently than other formats. Consumers don’t care. Charge a fair price for goods delivered and we’ll pay. Choose to play a different game and well … things work out differently don’t they. Let’s just ask our friends in the music and movie businesses.

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AT&T Mark the Spot app fails

AT&T Mark the Spot - fail

The AT&T Mark the Spot iPhone app which launched this week seems like a good idea until you actually use it. As I’ve discovered it fails to function in two key moments … When there is no data available regardless of gsm signal strength and again when you have no coverage.

As these two moments are the likely times when you’d like to share a location ping for the network to have fixed it seems impossble to share. I’m thinking this app is far more about the PR is earns than the problems likely to be resolved.

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BlackBerry Bold 9700 initial thoughts

I’ve been using the new BlackBerry 9700 for a bit over a week and it’s an impressive device. The last BB I used was a curve from about two years ago and it is immediately clear that the platform has matured to accommodate applications and multitasking.

In the past my experience aside from email and ota sync of exchange, was pretty negative. The curve was a very underwhelming device once you started to consider it a smartphone. Multitasking brought it to its knees and made anything in addition to email rather unpleasant.

The new Bold 9700 is a refreshing change. I really find the experience to be solid. The 9700 truly excels as a communicator which clearly remains the core blackberry sweet spot. The unified inbox is a very smart idea and let’s you focus a great deal of attention in a single streamlined place. Multiple email inboxes, gtalk chats, facebook notices (which open contextually in the app!) blackberry messenger chats and sms messages all in one place really rock. I still like to move between the various comms modes but staying connected cross channel in one place is awesome.

While the 9700 is my main work device I am still exploring apps and getting a rich feel for the platform and app ecosystem. I have yet to purchase any apps, but have spent a fair bit of time with BB App World. Its easy to see where it is heading and the initial roll out is admirable but there are quite a few issues … To name a few:

Even after sharing my imei and specific device on the web I still get apps that are not compatible. Fail.

App World is a bit tedious. Its nice that you can download multiple things but navigation requires too many steps. If you find an app online either from the desktop or mobile you often find a page that gives you a choice of downloading within app world or actually downloading app world itself. Why wasn’t the store even on my brand new flagship by default??

Back to the device itself…

The keyboard takes a bit of getting used to but once you have a feel its super to type on. I can type much faster than I ever did on either the Nokia E71 or E75. No contest really.

The speed at which you can process incoming messages as well as crank out what you need on the go is outstanding. Mobile productivity is way up compared to both Symbian and iPhone usage. Exchange integration is amazing with BES. I realize that’s quite a premium compared to the more standard consumer facing BIS but it truly is a robust solution. I know Nokia is trying to compete with this via Mail For Exchange but in the past few years I have experienced far too many halted syncs and errors to believe that’s really an appropriate enterprise solution. On the consumer side perhaps there is more tolerance but I’ve lost some faith after so many hiccups.

I’ve started to use BB Messenger with some teammates and see that really in the same way that Nextel offered Direct Connect (sans voice). It’s a solid choice for chatting in either one to one or groups on the go and is an sms beater (with threads!) If everyone is on the platform.

The browser has improved and is tolerable. At best it gives S60 a run for the money but has nothing on the webkit offerings from Android and iphone. For me it gets the job done as needed but it is not my goto browser. I do really like the use of keyboard shortcuts and how easy it is to initiate a new page or search. Tabs would be excellent and I am unsure why this was omitted …

Call quality, camera (with geotagging) and memory usage are all solid. It seems impossible to understand what apps are currently running vs recently run in the task switcher but as I have yet to run out of RAM this seems like a minor point.

I will probably have some additional points soon but thus far the current Blackberry system is quite solid and something I would definitely recommend.

Btw – I wrote this post on the 9700 while on the train home. Pandora was streaming nicely in the background the whole time.

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Team RadioShack jersey revealed

Team Radioshack

Pretty cool to see the Team RadioShack jersey revealed as the team gets ready for their offcial debut next month in Australia at the Tour Down Under.

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MityCross 350

Mitycross 350

This morning I took my first ride with the MityCross 350 LED bike light an came away generally impressed.  I’ve used two other lights, both from Blackburn but this simply outshines (ahem) the other units.

I do a lot of riding first thing in the morning, typically leaving around 5:30am and it’s dark.  Seeing the road and being seen by cars is a rather critical detail.  With the past lights, I was able to see though there clear limits to what the lights could cover and I’ve wanted to have something much brighter for a while.  There’s honestly no comparison to the other lights in general light output and range of the beam.  While small, the MityCross 350 really pumps out a very bright and wide beam of light.  I was able to see the road ahead as well as a good bit of the peripheral bit of the road in pre-sun darkness.

The best part of the MityCross was that oncoming traffic generally dimmed their high beams.  This is a huge plus as one of the more dangerous aspects of riding in the dark is being blinded by oncoming cars.  Now they see me coming clearly and tend to respect my presence as though I was a motor vehicle.

My usual morning loop is a bit over an hour (all I can do before heading to work sadly) and the sun starts to rise about mid-way through.  Once that happens, I tend to switch over to blinker mode which the MityCross also handles expertly.  The flasher is more like a strobe and again, enabled cars to easily see my approach from well off in the distance.

The main “issue” with the MityCross is that the battery is external and requires that you fasten it to your bike (or helmet) via a velcro strap.  I found that there was plenty of cable to manage, but it’s considerably less clean of an install over an all in one type of light.  The MityCross 350 runs about $200 at retail which is probably more than most people look to spend, but amazing is really just the starting point for bright bike lights.  I believe I’ll be satisfied with this light for a while and expect it to serve my riding needs for many miles.

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Is Blaze Mobile BS?

I signed up for Blaze Mobile over the summer and while I have received a number of emails from the company touting how wonderful they are, I have yet to receive my NFC sticker – the core product they offer.

When I questioned this I received the following:

We are sorry for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, our bank requires us to mail the stickers with a plastic prepaid card which are on back-order. As soon as they are in, we will mail both to you.

In the meantime, you can use 90% of the Blaze Wallet without the sticker including the following just to name a few:

  • You can get your account balance and receipts from over 8,000 financial institutions
  • You can load your reward cards for hotels, airlines, rental cards and get your point balances
  • You can purchase movie tickets
  • You can search for restaurants and other points of interest and get turn-by-turn directions
  • You can create expense reports (iPhone version only)

Last I checked, there’s nothing unique or beneficial about doing any of this stuff with Blaze.  I would not even consider Blaze the source for any of this activity … The only semi-interesting bit is the expense report though it’s highly unlikely that it would work with our corporate system and most importantly what would I be expensing without a way to pay??

I get that NFC payments are still largely considered new and mainly in tests outside of a few cases like retail and transit cases  – at least in NYC.  What I don’t like though is how a product is openly marketed as real and prevalent with little to no “customer” communication about where things really stand.  When I signed up there was no mention of a backlog on pre-paid cards … and come on really?  Is it that hard for whatever bank is backing this to issue a card?

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Sony seems out to prove online video can’t work

I’ve written about day and date previously and think it’s a compelling opportunity for media companies and of course the consumer. I seriously doubt though that offering a $25 24 hour rental is the way to succeed.

It is doubtful consumers will find the offer particularly attractive: At $24.95 for a 24-hour rental, it is more than many movies cost to buy on DVD. Still, the offer demonstrates how Sony, like its hardware rival Apple, has more incentive to promote Internet video than other media companies. via WSJ.com.

Sony is apparently offering this solely through their connected TVs which is totally ridiculous. No PS3? Oh right different department. Fail. I’m curious what percentage of consumers with a new connected set, actually have it configured and working for anything … It should be interesting to hear how Sony reports back on the results of this test.

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Switching iphones

This weekend I made a trip to the Apple store to finally deal with the terrible (worse than yours) battery life I have been experiencing with the 3GS. It did not take long for the Genius to confirm the battery was defective and I was soon on my way with a replacement device.

When I got home it was time to go through the restore process to hopefully be back where I was data-wise and hopefully things would be as they were. My experience was largely positive though a few notes.

1. The single connection through iTunes remains an amazingly strong point for Apple. The way a device backs up and restores is unparalled. Not perfect, but solid.

2. If you dont use iPhoto or Aperture for imaging you need to manually back up your pictures but the restore process does bring them back a well as all that data is stored together.

3. iTunes installed every app I had ever downloaded which was not what I wanted at all but it has been easier to remove things again than trying to hunt down apps again.

4. The application restration process sets up apps in alphabetical order which is seriosly annoying. I have more apps than can be displayed now and even using iTunes to slide things around, it will take a while and some patience to rebuild my prior setup.

5. I have 3 email accounts and both my work exchange account as well as my .me account needed to have their passwords entered to connect. My voicemail password also needed to be entered though that happened before I had a chance to sync and seemed more related to visual voicemail wanting to connect.

The process of restoring the iPhone, updating the software to the latest version and then resyncing all my media took a few hours. I only had to click ok a few times and spent most of the time cycling so I hardly noticed.

Replacing a device because you need to too is consderably less fun than when you choose to buy a new one. Even with the few hitches Ive menioned Apple is leading the customer experience in an area that is always frustrating.

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Who approves Sprint’s product shots? #fail

I’m not sure why I always notice stuff like this, but I find it so lame, I have to comment.

A while back Sprint was running a relatively smart ad about belt tightening and featured this ad which I snapped a pic of during my commute:

I am sure the creative director thought the belt needed to be horizontal...

Tonight was just browsing some RSS and see that once again Sprint has decided that regardless of how someone might actually be using the device being shown they will show it in a way that better suits someone’s creative eye:

Samsung Moment

Of course Sprint has bigger issues … like preventing tethering!

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A day late and a dollar short?

With all the noise yesterday about Android 2.0 and Google’s new free navigation service, this release just feels a bit … Meh.

Navigation market leader, Telmap, has used its unique navigation technology and NAVTEQ’s superior global map data, to bring a comprehensive mobile search, mapping and navigation solution for the iPhone, thus enabling mass adoption of mobile navigation. via Realwire

Since Nokia owns Navteq is does also immediately bring back my first thought on Ovi Maps…. How much longer can Nokia even consider charging for navigation services? nbsp;The PND category took a huge hit yesterday … Garmin alone lost 1.2 Billion off their market cap.

Once again the rules have changed. Will Nokia continue to play the same hand?


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Hoping Nokia Listens and Takes Action

Thanks to IntoMobile, I’ve discovered this video which captures so many excellent critical points about the N97 …

The N97 represents so many things that are just plain wrong with how Nokia typically brings a product to market.  Instead of waiting until the all pieces are in place they ship and expect that customers will be fine with a firmware update (or three) until the dust settles and you finally have the product you thought you bought in the first place.

What Nokia seems to have failed to recognize is that the market has shifted and consumer expectations are considerably greater thanks to the competitive spirit driven by the iPhone and quickly followed by Android, Blackberry and Palm.   You can’t keep pretending to get it right and then fix it later.  There are simply too many other products available that suit the needs of quite a few customer segments.  As you might notice from this helpful chart Apple is quickly working it’s way into the business set as well …

SAI chart_of_the day

Things have to change at Nokia and in a substantial way or sadly we’ll just continue to see the market share numbers drop … complacency is not the answer. As a long time loyal user and fan, I find it frustrating that so little has changed since the arrival of the iPhone – which is clearly the marker by which the shift in consumer understanding and usage changed considerably. It seems so clear to everyone, yet Nokia continues to do it all over and over again.

Don’t even get me started on services …

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Nokia Tries to Undo Blunders in U.S.

From The New York Times:

The world’s biggest cellphone maker has seen its share of the U.S. market slide to 7 percent from a peak of 35 percent, but it is now trying to turn around.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/technology/companies/19nokia.html

There is a lot of ground to make up here as anyone knows. Nokia has deep pockets and a solid range, but they just seem to be getting whacked on the high end … And so far have revealed very little to earn back this critical slice of market and importantly mindshare.

Posted via email from atmaspheric endeavors

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Nokia Booklet 3G – Coming Soon to the US for $299

IMG_1298

Today Nokia confirmed pricing on their upcoming netbook, the Nokia Booklet 3G. Initially, you’ll be able to scoop one up at Best Buy for a subsidized price of $299. There will also be an contract free option which will be offered for $599.

$600 bucks is a lot for a netbook, but the Booklet 3G brings quite a bit to the table. It’s clear that Nokia has really developed something considerably more premium than the typical $300 machine. The aluminum construction is very solid and feels quite like a micro macbook. I’m sure this feel as well as the actual design was no accident and think a lot of people are going to really like how this notebook looks. The 10″ display offers a 720p ready resolution which is higher than standard, but also not too high. I was unable to confirm what the HDMI port can drive on an external display, only that it’s higher than the standard screen. This will be great for users looking to dock at home, though I could see using this in full laptop mode all the time.

Of course the real appeal of the Booklet 3G is the always-on connectivity combined with an impressive 12 hours of battery life. During the press Q&A it was unclear whether this battery life was with or without wireless and clearly using the device intensely will impact things a fair bit. That said, I would be surprised if you did not see over 8 hours of battery usage which certainly classifies itself as an all day machine in my book. Windows 7 will be the standard OS which is excellent. In my own netbook tests, Windows 7 has been an excellent performer and I would expect the same for the Booklet as well. I would expect the home edition as the standard install …

Best Buy will be the exclusive retailer when the Booklet 3G becomes available in time for holiday shopping while AT&T will be the exclusive launch operator for those looking to buy with a plan. The standard $60/5G/mo plan will be standard, though AT&T alluded to some lower priced price options coming as well.

In general, the Nokia Booklet 3G looks like a very compelling mobile computer. I could definitely see using this as my work computer. For my daily tasks managing email, web and social streams it would be perfect and the addition of always on connectivity along with stellar battery performance make it a just about a slam dunk. I’m looking forward to getting a real test machine to confirm my assumptions, but am very excited by what Nokia has done here.