Apple TV 3.0

By Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks
The Apple TV has been around for a little over two years. For the newcomers, a brief introduction: it connects to your existing TV with an HDMI cable and lets you play movies, television programs available through the iTunes store, music from your iTunes library and display photos. It connects wirelessly to your home computer and automatically syncs to your iTunes library so you can “play your music on the best speakers in the house”. Now featuring HD capability, Apple TV 3.0 is better than ever with a more streamlined interface and support for Internet Radio through iTunes.

Unfortunately, it seems Apple is still treating the Apple TV 3.0 as the “hobby” Steve Job called it in 2008. For example, youtube, Hulu, vimeo, netflix and MLB.tv are still unavailable.

The Apple TV in 3.0 is an innocuous white box that plugs in to your TV with an HDMI cable, syncs to your home computer’s iTunes library and lets you play your digital media through the TV. It is also a virtual storefront for the iTunes media store; you can buy television programs the day after they air as well as HD movies, music and download podcasts. This seems to be the primary emphasis Apple is putting on the 2.5 year old hardware. It’s a slick way to play your digital media through your home entertainment system but brings nothing new to the table beyond that.

As for the interface, software version 3.0 addresses a few complaints users had. For instance, 3.0 now puts the main menu at 7 columns wide (music, movies, tv, podcasts, photos, Internet and settings) instead of two. It moves the user’s media to the top of each column, instead of putting the focus on the iTune’s store. This feels a little less sales oriented and a little more user focused, which is nice after you’ve spent a couple hundred dollars on a white box with an HDMI cable. It also supports Genius mixes, iTunes Extras and in a limited capacity, iTunes LP along with Itunes Radio.

Genius mixes will be familiar to iTunes users. You choose a song representative of the music you want in a playlist, press the “Genius” button on screen and voila! 25 tracks of music in that same vein. iTunes extras also make an appearance in Apple TV 3.0 – these are the fun DVD Extras you never used to get when you downloaded a movie through the iTunes store. This helps Apple keep an edge over disc purchases. iTunes LP, though, is another story on the Apple TV, even in version 3.0. Designed to bring back the visual fun of a record with album art lyrics and liner notes, iTunes LP includes concert footage, photos and more. It’s the equivalent of iTunes extras for music – bonus materials that provide some incentive to buy the media instead of downloading it with bit torrent. Unfortunately, the 3.0 interface is a bit clunky with LP. For instance, each new song requires you to go back to the LP interface. Also, recent LP purchases will be incompatible with TV 3.0 while Apple codes and distributes a patch – demonstrating a lack of attention to the product.

It is this uncharacteristic lack of attention that will make users wonder just where Apple is going with the Apple TV. Steve Job’s explanation was that it isn’t a very commercial piece of hardware – as in, you buy it and then it’s over. Additional support yields no additional revenue, unless it entices fence-sitters to go ahead and buy the unit. Sales of the basic hardware can only last so long before tapering off, though – and thus the problem. For Apple to make this worth their while, they will need to figure out ways to make the Apple TV generate additional revenue beyond its ability to connect to the iTunes store – after all, you can already do that on your home computer. Till then the Apple TV will probably keep receiving updates like 3.0: nice but nothing to write home about.

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Google Navigator

By Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Google has released what promises to be fierce competition to older, more established devices in their Google Maps Navigation cellular app. Designed to work on their Android platform, the app connects through your cell network to deliver real time navigation, similar to a number of apps on the iPhone. The difference, though, is in the details.

With Google Navigation, your phone gets a lot more forgiving. For instance, you could type in “nearest Pete’s Coffee house” and Google will figure out that you meant “Peet’s Coffee & Tea”, then locate the nearest one and start giving turn by turn directions in real time. You could also type “Coffee Shop” and wind up at the nearest coffee shop known to Google. With Google Navigator search and interpretive technology, you can search by business name, address, place or just a type of business – like a coffee shop or towing company.

Another trick feature is the voice-response search. Since locations like “Guggenheim Museum” can be difficult, or even lethal, to type while driving, Google devised a better way: just ask your phone to navigate you to the Guggenheim. Pronunciation may still be an issue, but once you get that worked out the phone interprets your speech and searches for it–automatically bringing up the best result and navigating you to it. Since it is connected to the Internet through Google, you can even ask things like “Navigate to the Kandinsky exhibit” – even if you don’t know where that is exactly. Incidentally, the Kandinsky exhibit is at the Guggenheim, where you were already headed.

It also includes real time traffic data along your route in three colors, green yellow or red. With the push of a button, the application will find you an alternate route to avoid heavy traffic.

The app incorporates some of the signature features from Google Earth and Maps, like a satellite view and layered displays of ATMs, Banks, Restaurants, Gas Stations and Parking. The ability to see actual overhead photographic information of your route without altering the route display is a nice advantage for drivers over the TomTom or Garmin units. With available Google Streetview, you can read the actual signs you’ll be seeing in the next few miles and see what it all looks like at ground level.

Google is offering this application at the cost of your data package, that is to say, no additional cost.

Despite its advantages, Google Maps Navigation has limitations. While Internet connectivity and “smart” features like voice command, step by step directions and instant access to Google Streetview may seem to make Google Navigator far superior to traditional car based GPS navigation, it is unlikely that we will see Garmin and TomTom close up shop in the next few weeks. First of all, it will only work when you have a solid data connection. While the Verizon network is solid, it still won’t work everywhere. If you are touring Colorado on US 550, Google Navigator could leave you lost, while the GPS based Garmin will get you where you need to go.

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The Magic Mouse

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks
While Disney’s Mickey Mouse promises unconditional love and timeless family-friendly entertainment, Apple’s Magic Mouse combines the Holy Trinity of high end mouse technology: wireless connection, laser tracking and best of all, Apple’s Multi-Touch technology. First it was the iPhone, then the iTouch and now the Magic Mouse that respond to your every touch. It also connects through Bluetooth to any Mac so equipped from up to thirty-three feet away and its laser tracking is more sensitive than ever. The Magic Mouse has the signature sleek Apple design, with no moving parts at all. All mouse functions can be custom mapped with the driver software and it runs on two (included) AA batteries – but only if you have a Mac.

Multi-touch technology helped make the iPhone a hot seller. It was only a matter of time until such a versatile and accurate interface tool was ported to the desktop user. Now that we have the Magic Mouse, that clock stopped ticking. It can be mapped for single or double clicking, left or right and for either hand. Brushing a finger along its surface, left right up or down, scrolls up to a full 360 on the page. If you hold down “control” on the keyboard, the same motion used for scrolling becomes zoom in and zoom out. If you use two fingers to swipe across the mouse, it will advance through photos or web pages in Safari. Apple claims that the mouse can tell if you simply have large fingers or resting your hand on it as well.

Fairly standard on a modern mouse, laser tracking is still a nice “feature” for those of us that grew up with 5.25” floppies. Apple’s newest version is, according to their site, is more accurate than ever and works across a range of surfaces from your immaculate home computing table, to mine: covered with sandwich crumbs and slightly sticky from spilled coffee. It also knows when it is being picked up and immediately enters power-save mode, so you can bring your mouse with you to work in the cafe without inadvertently draining your battery.

The drawbacks seem relatively minor. First, it uses AA batteries. In some mice, these might last only a couple days if left “on” continuously. While Apple’s automatic “sleep” mode will save battery life, the fact remains that you might have to scavenge AAs from the remote, while your significant other looks on with dismay. With rechargeable AAs this might be less of an issue, assuming the Magic Mouse works on the slightly decreased voltage. Second, it’s only compatible with Mac computers. If you own a Mac, this is fine and, in fact, a bonus. It will undoubtedly feed your ego to watch PC owners click mice with moving parts. For those of us with PCs – well, Apple’s little darling here isn’t much use. Third, and this is an admitted reach, it uses Bluetooth. If wifi 2.0 does what’s prophesied and overturns Bluetooth, you may one day replace your mouse when you get a new laptop–as if we didn’t anyway.

Despite these few drawbacks, it looks like Apple has produced another winner. While it may not revolutionize the way you use your computer, it will certainly enhance efficiency. It’s also quite an attractive piece of hardware: no wheels, buttons, balls or switches – this thing just looks cool. Free with every new Mac or $69 separately, the Magic Mouse is likely to become part of almost every Mac owner’s desktop.

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Soonr:Collaboration in the Cloud

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks
Google Docs is a great, simple office suite in the cloud. It works perfectly for a lot of people and small businesses. I’m even using it right now. But if you, or your business, need to use more powerful programs, yet want the easy accessibility, convenience and ease of collaboration that Google Docs provides, then Soonr is a good option.

Soonr isn’t new. It was founded in 2005 as a service that enabled standard mobile phones to use the applications on computers in an optimized way, but since then it seems to have evolved into a complete productivity tool.

You install the Soonr app on your desktop and mobile phone and select which files you want to sync with Soonr’s servers in the cloud. From then on, all those files are automatically updated and synced as you edit them. Just like with Google Docs, you can grant others access to documents and they can edit as well. Teams can collaborate on “Projects” containing multiple documents all organized under the same umbrella. Users can also comment on documents without editing–a nice layer between read only and edit. From the Soonr dashboard you can see all the recent edits and comments and who made them. From your mobile phone you can email or fax (that’s right you heard me, fax) documents out through eFax. With an iPhone you can even print a document from any networked printer.

The mobile interface for viewing documents is apparently very intuitive and fast, because it only requests from the cloud the portion of the document you need at any given time. Soonr supports over 800 mobile devices. We don’t offer handset editing ourselves, but coupled with QuickOffice it’s possible. We’ve integrated with QuickOffice to offer QuickAccess.net. Often times handset editing is a limitation of the handset/os , not the software.

I should clarify that Soonr isn’t an office suite, it just supports such a variety of document types (it even supports .mov files) that you can choose which office suite to use, and it is all continually updated, organized and safe in the cloud.

Soonr isn’t free. If you want acess for more than two users or more than 2Gb of storage you have to pay bit. To get at least five users and 40Gb of storage, you will pay $19.95 a month. I don’t know how the cost scale goes up from there, but it is probably reasonable. So if you work collaboratively are mobile and are tired of fiddling around with the frankly clunky version

AppCentral: Hubb for Enterprise Mobile Apps

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Mobile applications have redefined the way we think about our smartphones. Nearly every day you can read about a great new iPhone app in the consumer tech press and the iPhone is just one platform. Blackberry and Android apps tend to get slightly less attention, but the cumulative interest in mobile apps is nothing short of an obsession for the tech media. But considering the amount of work that is done on mobile phones and the importance of the mobile web to so many workers and companies, where all the apps for them? Until now, enterprise has largely been left out of the app revolution. AppCentral, a venture of Ondeego, hopes to change that.

According to AppCentral, there are three primary reasons the enterprise market has lagged behind the consumer market in mobile app adoption: it is not easy to find apps for business amongst the thousands of consumer apps in app markets; Mobile apps can be difficult to manage for IT professionals and sometimes even dangerous to company data; and third party developers currently don’t have the right tools to make “enterprise-ready” apps or a good marketplace to sell them.

AppCentral says it tackles these challenges with it’s three part ecosystem. It addresses the needs of end users by providing an easy to use web-based portal for employees to find and download the mobile business applications they need. It helps IT professionals by allowing them to easily enable and disable applications as well as handle the data of each application. Additionally, AppCentral’s patent pending “Securitization” technology creates a “security wrapper” around apps enabling remote management. But how AppCentral claims to help developers is what may make it a real game-changer in the mobile applications space. The technology is platform agnostic, so it gives developers valuable tools to efficiently create and market their apps to a wide audience. The securitization layer is also added automatically, so no additional work is required from the developer.

AppCentral just launched a private beta in early October, so its claims have yet to be tested. However they have definitely identified a pain-point in the marketplace and the concept is different from anything else currently available. Being platform agnostic also gives them a leg up on any similar marketplace that might be created by Google, Microsoft or Apple. Although, at the moment AppCentral cannot support development for the iPhone because of “legal reasons.” However, if technology is as easy to use Ondeego says, AppCentral will tap into the largest, most lucrative, yet currently least accessible mobile application market.

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More Small Business Promotion Ideas

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Run a user generated content contest in which the winner wins a trip to Hawaii
Show people where the sweet stuff is and they will come to it in swarms and they will tell all their swarming friends and they will talk talk talk about it. What is the sweet stuff? Anything really fun, anything worth fantasizing about, anything worth taking a risk for, or taking time out of their busy day for. If you can cause people to associate your, product, website or company with anything fun and exciting it will get attention. Remember the “Island Caretaker” job offered by the Queensland Tourism Board? It generated so much attention that the ensuing traffic shut down the site’s servers multiple times; tens of thousands of video applications were received and dozens of high profile articles were written.

Host an UNconference

We’ve all been conferences that were too expensive, long and predictable. So the next time there is a big industry conference in your city, rent out a small room near the conference and hold an UNconference. The idea is that the attendees will come up with topics and then discuss and present on the topics right there. You can focus on a specific problem in your field, or leave it more open. Do: invite as many people in your field as possible, invite the press, encourage collaboration, provide snacks, print up fun t-shirts. Don’t: charge admission.

Make a viral video

Hire a good video artist/director. Make it funny. Make it short. Be upfront about who you are and what you are promoting. Make sure it is tagged well and easy to find. Involver has a variety of social media video promotion tools for a large range of budgets.

Hold a Raffle

This isn’t a way to get money, but rather to get information about your target or encourage them to engage with a product. It is similar to the user generated content contest, but instead of creating content users interact with a site, fill out a survey or use a product. This idea works great when you have a new feature to promote as it points users straight towards engagement. The Dubai Government used a raffle to promote use of its new eGovernment portal to conduct payments and credit card companies and Discover Card is currently running a sweepstakes for users that switch to paperless statements. Both promotions encourage users to interact in new way with services they are use.

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Promotion Ideas for Small Businesses

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Here are some ideas for promotion that cost under or around $10,000.

Host an event

Host an event around the launch of a new, or improved, product or service. It doesn’t have to be a big event. Rent out a bar, or a good sized room in a bar. Get a DJ or maybe a band. Invite some clients, business partners and any local press that cover your field of business. Make sure everyone the press might want to interview is there. Demo your product or give a presentation about your service. Print up take away materials for guests and press.

Sponsor a Podcast

This is a great way to hone in on niche markets inexpensively. Contact podcasters directly for details. Want examples of businesses sponsoring podcasts? This Week in Tech has a variety of sponsors, but it’s most common are Audible.com and Gotomypc.com; The Savage Love podcast is sponsored by Adam & Eve.

Run a Retweet Promotion

The most well known recent example is Moonfruit, a website hosting company, gave away ten MacBooks in ten days to random twitter users who included #moonfruit in their tweets. The prizes are what gets this kind of promotion going, but if the retweet itself is as unobtrusive and you can encourage a little creativity, the contest can create some interesting content of it’s own. These contests are easy to set up and oversee, so you can put nearly all of your investment into prizes.

Spend the money on a Google Adwords Campaign

Google Adwords is the best, easiest,do-it-yourself advertising tool in the world. You decide exactly how much to spend, what keywords to choose, and what targeting to use. It’s an essential tool to reach local audiences and is infinitely scalable. When used with a bit of know-how, Google Adwords offers some of the best ROI in advertising for both big and small businesses. If you aren’t sure where to begin, Google makes it easy.

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Google Voice Comes Out of Beta

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Recently, Google took its unified voice service, Google Voice, out of Beta and into invite. The service is likely be available to anyone in the US in a few weeks. Google Voice allows you to have one number ring on multiple devices, so you can have one number, at home, at work and on the go for life. The convenience Google Voice offers users has some analysts believing Google Voice could relegate mobile service providers to the much feared “dumb pipes.”

Google voice works by giving you a number that becomes your new “universal” number. When someone calls your universal number, the call will be routed to your pre-selected devices. If you move or change mobile carriers, just change your Google Voice settings and the number will follow you. Likewise, when you want to make a call, you use the local Google Voice access number which then routes your call through the Google cloud to its end receiver. An app will make this process seamless on most smartphones.

Beyond a universal number, Google Voice has a myriad of other impressive features : You can set calls from specific numbers to ring on certain devices or go straight to voicemail; you can have a number ring on one device at one time of day and another at a different time of or day; your voicemails can be automatically transcribed and sent to you via email and text; you can personalize greetings and ringtones to individual callers; you can store and send your text messages online; you can call anywhere in the US for free, record calls, make conference calls….the list goes on. And more is in development. What’s most impressive? It is all free.

As per usual with Google, the service will be ad supported. The company has filed patent on a software that serves ads based on location to callers when they are on hold or before the receiver picks up a call.

Will Google Voice soon turn mobile carriers to be “dumb pipes”? In my view, the “dumb pipes” term is more hyperbolic than descriptive of the challenges mobile service providers face. Phone companies will always want to charge for as many services as they can. While customers, increasingly, want to use their cell phones as just another Internet portal. But that doesn’t mean that every time innovation creates a better way for users to better manage their mobile communications, that mobile providers lose their value. There will always be tension to do more on phones for less, that’s just economics. Phone companies will just have to continually re-bundle their data packages to keep up with innovation.

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The Rhetoric of Behavioral Targeting

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

In March, I wrote a piece about Google’s behavioral ad targeting and possible legislative action in the works to insure customers understood Google’s (and other advertiser’s) privacy policy. There is still not a bill on the table, but congressional hearings were held in mid-June and Rick Boucher (D-Va.) has been vocal about his plans to draft a bill. Although, Boucher insists: “My overall purpose is not to interfere with the legitimate practice of people who are doing targeted advertising. My goal is to try to create a greater sense of confidence on the part of consumers.”

The definition of what exactlyA qualifies as behavioral targeting varies across the industry. Some companies that claim to offer behavioral targeting, really only offer vague demographic information. Also it is unclear if retargeting (ads based on a users visit to an advertisers site) is considered behavioral targeting by legislators.

Opponents to regulation of behavioral targeting argue that it could “cripple” the online advertising business. I think this is a bit hyperbolic. It might be true if retargeting is outlawed, which is unlikely because it requires the collection of only one piece of information. True behavioral targeting requires following a user across several sites, and represents a relatively small but growing percentage of ads. Advertisers selling high price-point items like cars or travel packages use behavioral targeting the most. For the majority of advertisers, it is still unclear if behavioral targeting is worth the premium. Perhaps as the technology improves, it will become more of an advertising mainstay.

Having said that, the the cost of online advertising inventory was plummeting before the crash, and with cutbacks in ad budgets, even a small change in the industry could impact a lot of businesses. The businesses most scared of this legislation are ad networks. Google has its own ad network, as does Yahoo. They sell billions of dollars worth of “remnant” publisher ad space. Ad networks, rather than the advertisers or publisers, do the actual behavioral targeting in most campaigns. Limiting behavioral targeting would definitely cause them to rethink the way they do business.

However there is another, quiet trend in the industry that may one day replace ad networks as they are now. Advertisers and agencies know that ad networks function as a middleman between them and publishers and they would like to have more direct access to remnant inventory. Ad exchanges give advertisers direct access to impression by impression inventory for purchase through auction. Right now, ad exchanges are still an emerging platform, but if they gain popularity, they would decrease the relevancy of ad networks. That doesn’t mean behavioral targeting would go away, but it may become less attractive to advertisers if they can target remnant impressions more precisely.

In conclusion, congress and the FTC continue to debate regulation of behavioral targeting while the online advertising industry attempts to standardize a definition and develop practices to polices itself. Though true behavioral targeting currently represents a relatively small percentage of impressions, regulating would adversely effect some advertisers, agencies and especially ad networks. However, behavioral targeting is only one set of innovations emerging in online advertising and other technologies may make it less desirable.

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Long Term Challenges Ahead for Broadband Technologies

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

As consumer demand for broadband Internet has grown exponentially, a few different technologies have risen up to meet the need. Each of these technologies has their own unique set of advantages and challenges. Consequently, there is no all-encompassing solution for the future of broadband.

Let’s examine each of the current technologies:

VDSL2–Very High Speed Digital Subscriber Line 2. The newest and most advanced standard of DSL broadband over-the-wire communications. This standard supports wide-scale “Triple Play” services such as voice, video, data, high definition television (HDTV) and interactive gaming. It uses existing copper phone wires to make the connection. The supporters of this technology are AT&T with its U-verse offering and Qwest.

Advantages: Because it uses existing copper telephone wires as the back bone of the infrastructure, there less to build out than the other technologies.

Challenges: In terms of reliability, VDSL2 is sometimes more haphazard than to DOCSYS and FiOS, in part because it relies on older infrastructure. Also, VDSL2 speeds degrade over long distances.

In order to make the system faster, AT&T has created a hybrid of fiber optics and copper wires for it’s U-verse offering. The company uses a fiber optic cable connection to a city, then copper wires within a city. However, this hybrid system relies on huge cabinet-like hubs to be installed underground in each city. AT&T has had to battle officials over taxes in many cities for permition to install these hubs. Stalled negotiations have limited deployment.

FiOS–Fiber optic communications network and technology designed for bundled communication services including Internet telephone and television. Fiber optics are the newest technology and infrastructure, offering the highest potential speeds with the least amount of loss.

Challenges: When FiOS enters any new territory, the entire infrastructure needs to be built out from scratch.

Verizon is the only company currently building out its own all fiber optic network (FiOS). In more densely populated areas, the company must install cables under often-decaying city structures and negotiate with apartment building owners individually, making implementation very slow in old cities.

DOCSIS 3–the latest in Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. DOCSIS is a standard that allows high speed data transfer over existing cable television system.

Advantages: DOCSIS uses existing cable infrastructure, so there is not nearly as much to build out as FiOS. This system also has less speed loss over distance than VDSL2.

Disadvantages: Ultimately, DOCSIS is inferior to FiOS for speed potential. Currently, FiOS does not need to operate near capacity to be competitive. As the market demands higher speeds, DOCSIS may not compete with FiOS. Also, despite having much of the existing infrastructure, there are still growing pains associated with this DOCSIS. Providers like Comcast and Cox have been unable to keep up with demand, slowing installations and causing services outages in some areas.

The challenges in implementing these technologies are likely to continue for years. Ironically, densely populated old cities and very remote sparsely populate areas simialr cost to benefit challenge for installation. The future is likely to be patchwork of all three technologies depending on different installation challenges in each area. Cities may need to depend on VDSL and DOCSIS for several years, while newer suburban developments in some states will have FiOS. Very remote areas may rely on broadband built out to a local tower which would then connect to users wirelessly Eventually, Verizon may be able build out FiOS in most areas and ultimately it may be the clear winner if very high speed becomes the deciding factor in consumer choice. But price is also a consideration and the market may never widely demand speeds that only FiOS can provide. Within several years, it is even possible mobile broadband advancements could make it a competitor to all of these over-the-wire technologies, causing further disruption to the marketplace.