Mociology

Livin' on the Edge...

The American College of Emergency Physicians warns that walking and texting may lead to serious injuries, to which we reply: Dude…wait, what? Of course it does, but we thought they should be a little more thorough and list a few more activities that could prove to be dangerous to do while walking…alas, we know Doctors are busy, so we took the liberty to list a few of our own. Whether or not you choose to believe our “professional” opinion is up to you.

Other Activities that May Lead to Serious Injuries if Done While Walking:

1. Reading a really, really good book.
2. Trying to pick all of the onions out of your “animal style” Double Double from In-n-Out Burger.
3. Thinking about what’s happening with the US economy right now.
4. Driving.
5. Looking on your electric bill for how many cents per Kilowatt-Hour you pay.
6. Any kind of math.
7. Changing the batteries in your invisible ghetto blaster.
8. Wondering at what point in your life bacon turned you back onto eating meat, straying from your vegetarian ways.
9. Funneling 2 cans of any adult beverage.
10. Trying to explain to your mom that Michael Moore already did a documentary on how damaging the medical and pharmaceutical industries are to Americans.

We’re not going to try and stop you from any of the above activities, but if you must participate in them while walking, please wear a helmet.

Be careful out there.

The first phone to be released on Google’s Android platform was introduced on Tuesday.  Made by HTC, maker of the Touch, which runs the Windows Mobile OS, the G1 is much acclaimed as the new “iPhone killer.”

Let me spoil the ending for you: there’s not going to be an iPhone killer.  People who buy Apple products love them.  The get around the flaws and the shortcomings because, honestly, the devices are simple, sleek, and do what you need.  Hopefully though, with the increased competition of Android in the market, there will be better phones.

HTC and others are going to have to deliver the full package with their phone.  They cannot just assume Android developers will create killer applications that make the phone better.  They have provide a great interface to getting these apps on the phone and integrate that with a way to manage data on the phone.

Have you ever tried to get an MP3 onto a BlackBerry?  Or sync 5 different podcasts every day?  It’s not a trivial task, but it needs to be.  To do this on an iPhone, you plug it in, and click sync in iTunes.  Apple did a brilliant job of integrating the iPhone with iTunes, so you can manage all your media and apps in one place.  Hopefully the mobile phone market will benefit from the increased competition, and we’ll actually get some decent phones.  Competition is good, especially if it spurs innovation.

The point to remember is that these are no longer phones that run apps.  They’re computers with embedded phones, and they need to be treated as such.  That’s the direction the market is heading, and it’s going to present an interesting battle of controlled development platforms (iPhone) vs. open source (Android, and now Nokia’s Symbian).  I reminds me of Windows vs. Linux, but if the open-sourced phones can be user friendly, they stand a chance to become the ‘droids we’re looking for.

Answers.com has written off their multi-million dollar acquisition of Brainboost Technology, makers of the Brainboost Answer Engine.  Why?  Because their WikiAnswers site, which provides user-generated answers, is growing faster.  I’m not surprised, considering how difficult a problem it is to get a computer to understand searches.  If only computers worked like sci-fi T.V. shows… “iPhone: get me sales stats from yesterday.”  I tried it.  It didn’t work.

The point is that humans, for a long while still, will be better at answering our questions.  And when it comes to work, who’s got the time to write a program to look for the data you’re going to want to search for sometime in the future?  But we do have colleagues who can help us, and help us they will.

When I explain Mosio’s QnA to people, the first question I get is usually “why do people answer?”  And the reason is it’s a give-and-take.  If you answer for others, they’ll answer for you.  The more you help, the more you can ask of others.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look.

More on this soon …

Noel, Gabe and the Law

CTIA was a few weeks ago and we dropped by to say hello to some friends and colleagues that we knew would be there.  After all, it was right down the street!

The variety of wireless technologies and solutions was extensive although we noted that many of them were so specific that it would be hard for them to get significant adoption.  Either way, it’s exciting to see the buzz created by the rise of mobile as a “way to do business.”

Our initial thoughts were that there wasn’t a booth with a really cool marketing idea, branding play, or even viral giveaway that had everyone talking.

Maybe that’s something that we will have to remedy at future events.  :)  We did however have the chance to talk shop with a member of the Dark Side’s Entourage.

I often hear two phrases from an increasing number of friends and associates:

1) I hate talking on the phone.
2) I text way more than I talk.

I’ve even started to hear more voicemails state “to get in touch with me faster, please send me a text.” Not too surprisingly, Nielsen Mobile announced yesterday that on average, Americans send more text messages (357 per month) with their phones than make phone calls (204 per month).

The report also stated that teens ages 13-17 on average, send and receive about 1,742 text messages a month, nearly 2.5 every hour.

With all the hype about the iPhone, sales reports from early this year show RIM’s Blackberry wireless devices still selling well.  These numbers are only from the second quarter, and the new iPhone 3G launched in July, so the third quarter numbers should be very interesting when they come out.

The report by the Associated Press states Apple’s share of the U.S. smartphone market dropped from 19.2% in the first quarter to 7.4% in the second quarter of 2008, as people waited for the new version of the iPhone.  Blackberry sales increased from 44.5% to 53.6% of sales in the same period.  Palm, the maker of the Treo and the Centro, saw their share fall from 13.4% to 10.8%.

The numbers are sure to pick up again for Apple in Q3, but limited distribution and long lines may hurt their overall rise.  I’m curious to see whether the iPhone cuts into RIM’s market share, or if they cut out some of the others, such as Palm, Nokia, and HTC.

More numbers when they come out…

An interesting piece about Senator Herb Kohl expressing interest to find out why text message costs are rising. The obvious reason is that the carriers are trying to push consumers to all you can eat messaging and data plans, which makes me wish there were similar options in the oil industry.