Google Makes Things Easy

Recently I read an article on Gizmodo about how Android is a "legal destruction of wealth." What the article is saying is that the business model (or lack thereof) that Android uses is going to wipe competitors off the map. What I don't understand is why the article makes this seem like such a bad thing. What Google is emphasizing with the Android platform is user choice and customization. Sure its free, but that is why it has gotten so popular. If you were a wireless carrier, wouldn't you rather have Google pay you to use Android rather than paying an arm and a leg to use something else?

Or just an arm.

The fact that Android presents a superior platform and is free is a double whammy to competitors. I like this business strategy. It forces other competitors to adapt, and the direction that they will have to adapt to is going to give me, the consumer, free software to use. If major software companies like Apple and Microsoft are going to want to keep up, they are going to have to follow in Google's footsteps here.


This reminds me of some notes that Dr. David Rodvold presented to me in his thoughts on Android's advantages. He uses Apple as an example of how they are repeating mistakes that set them back during Windows' rise to the top of the OS ladder. He recalls his programming experience with Macs back in the late 80's (I even used Courier font to make it look old school):

"I did software development on Macintosh before ever touching an "IBM compatible," circa 1987.  If you wrote Mac apps back in the day, you did it in C, using Mac Programmer's Workshop (MPW).  It was awful, and so buggy you pretty much had to memorize the first five volumes of Inside Macintosh for all the exceptions and workarounds.  At work I was assigned a task to write a program for a PC (DOS, not Windows).  The development system was stable, easy-to-use, and very well supported by MS.  I went into task as a Mac bigot, holding my nose as I got started.  I was so impressed with the development tools that I never went back to Mac. Simply put, Microsoft made my life easy. 

Not long after this, MS released Windows, which was completely inferior to Macintosh.  But Windows crushed Macintosh in terms of market share, and almost killed Apple in the process.  How can this be?  IMHO, a big part of it was that MS took care of the third-party developers, while Apple abused them.  All the best software came out on Windows, while Mac users had limited choices." 

Hmmm, sound familiar? Yep. Apple is using the same strategy in their battle against Android. You can program apps using any language you want as long as its Objective C (which is essentially inferior to C++) being programmed on a Mac. Oh and remember to pay $100 a year to keep the app in the "App Store™". Your App is then submitted to Apple's strict standards. With Android, feel free to program in Java, C, C++, or Python. Distribute via the new Amazon AppStore, Android Market, or just bundle that app in a file and put it on your webpage. This freedom is the weapon that Google has that competitors choose not to use. What Apple had going that made them so popular was their speed to the market. Just like in the late 1970's with the Apple 2, and at the turn of the millennium with the iPod, Apple has been the first one there. Apple was the first giant that introduced us to the concept that makes smartphones so great with the iPhone, but just like I said in the Blockbusted post, things change, and unless companies change too they will fall behind as customers get smart.

In short, Google makes things easy. People like easy things.

Birds and Gravity

Recently, I was browsing the iPad App store and something strange caught my eye. The four top games all involve launching some kind of bird into either other birds or green pig things. These games are ranked as follows (keep in mind that this is out of all apps): 1. Angry Birds Rio HD, 4. Angry Birds HD, 6. Chicken Balls HD, and 7. Angry Birds Seasons HD.

Why didn't I ever get into the bird launching business?

Sadly however, there are many who have yet to embrace the furious flyers. As I type this, my girlfriend says to me, "It's what everybody does instead of listening in Chapel. I think that it is mindless." And while chapel is definitely not the place for Birds (or Words with Friends, as I have been guilty of on occasion) there are others who share her opinion. Stephen Colbert once Tweeted (ironic, no?), "Everyone keeps telling me how fun Angry Birds is, but I've been insulting my parakeet all week and he just seems hurt."

However, I believe that Angry Birds is great. I am addicted to virtual bird abuse, as are millions others.

While I was away...

I know it has been a long time since my last post, but between midterms two weeks ago and spring break this week I really haven't had the chance. This week I spent some time skiing at Monarch, Colorado and enjoyed some of the most amazing views that I have ever seen.

The Collegiate Peaks.

While I was away, some interesting things have been going on in the tech world. The WiFi only Xoom is officially available for pre-order (available March 27) for $600, the same price that the similar, 32 GB iPad 2 goes for. While still on the tablet topic, I recently got a chance to play around with an Archos 70 running Android 2.2. It was very lightweight and would be a great alternative to one of the bigger tablets such as the the Xoom or iPad. At under $300 its a pretty good deal too.

Can you tell I like tablets?

Also, the Amazon Android app store is on its way with new and discounted apps on the way. What caught my eye was the new Angry Birds Rio game that is apparently only going to be available through the Amazon Android app store. It will be interesting to see how the Amazon app store will compare with the iTunes app store.

South America? Where Next!?

My NCAA Tournament bracket is all kinds of busted but I don't mind because of a cool new app I found. Watch the tournament live, for free, on your iPhone or iPad anywhere with the NCAA March Madness On Demand app. It even works using 3G, provided that the signal strength is good enough.

My poor bracket.

Lastly, the disaster in Japan caused by last Friday's earthquake and tsunami has devastated many people. The American Red Cross is a great place to donate to the disaster relief effort.

Blockbusted

Today, I went to a old school video rental store in Abilene. After grabbing a torch at the entrance, I made my way into the ruins. No, but seriously, video stores are a rarity in the modern world. Services like Netflix and the wonderful Redbox kiosks that just give me one more reason to go to McDonald's are usually the way to go. This old rental store made me think, "What ever happened to stores like Blockbuster? It seems like they disappeared overnight." Netflix and Redbox both provided services that Blockbuster couldn't. Redbox offers a select bunch of bigger titles that you would probably be able to find at a store like Blockbuster. Their ringer however is that each movie is only $1 per night. That means that I can go rent Inception and drop it off on my way to work the next day for next to free.

We need to go deeper!

Netflix on the other hand is an entirely different beast. Their two sided business plan has a mail-in option and an instant streaming option. The mail-in option (which includes unlimited instant streaming) allows users to get a huge selection of movies delivered to their door for a fixed monthly amount of $10. This compared to an outrageous $5 to rent a single movie at Blockbuster seems like a pretty good deal. They can do this because of their distribution centers that are located throughout the country in strategic locations. This allows massive amounts of movies to be stored under one roof and then distributed to your door in about a day.

Map of Netflix distribution centers.

The other option that Netflix provides is unlimited streaming only option. This is what I use and I LOVE IT! For $8 a month the user gets unlimited views of Netflix's instant streaming catalog and you get to watch them on up to six devices. This means that I get to watch my show here at college while my parents back home can watch something completely different all on the same account. Granted, the movies available to stream are somewhat limited, I don't really mind since they include a ton of great TV series too. Users can watch the streamed videos on almost anything. Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, Computer, Blu-Ray player, internet TVs and i(Phone/Pad/Touch) can all use Netflix instant streaming. This means that as long as you have an internet connection (note that Netflix does not work on 3G) you can watch The Office wherever you please.

Umm.....no.

A concept that Netflix fully takes advantage of is called the long tail. The idea behind the long tail is that users will be able to watch movies that they would not normally find stocked on the shelves of their neighborhood Blockbuster. For example, take movies like Crash and The Last King of Scotland, which consistently are a couple of the top ranked movies watched on the instant streaming plan. These films would never be hits at rental stores the focus is on stocking their limited space with hit movies that the majority of people would like. Since the concept of physical space is something that instant streaming can bypass, Netflix can afford to include movies that only a small crowd is interested in. This also works in Netflix's favor since less popular movies cost less to obtain the rights to use.

The Long Tail.

The main mistake that Blockbuster made is that they didn't advance with technology. When the internet became a viable distribution method, they didn't adapt. Blockbuster now has an instant streaming plan, but its too late. Netflix has climbed in Blockbuster's windows and snatched its customers up. And since Netflix has over 10 million more customers using a streaming plan that costs about the same as Blockbuster's its easy to see why Netflix is so profitable. So big business be warned: even if you are top dog in your market, competitors can always catch you by surprise if you don't innovate and adapt to the world around you. As for the rental store I visited today, it stays in business by being super-inexpensive. All old movies are $1 for five days and new ones are $3 (I think) and include a free old movie to rent too. I just thought I'd give Box Office Video a shout out since I really like the place.

Xoom for only $539?

Rumor on the internet has it that the 32 gig, wifi only version of the Motorola Xoom could be showing up for $539 at Sams Club. If this is true, it would stand to be even more of a competitor for the iPad 2. A 32 GB tablet (with a micro-sd slot for additional expansion) for around the same price as a 16 GB iPad is a big deal, especially when one of the iPad's focuses is low priced tablets. Many who would be purchasing the iPad 2 would have to consider switching costs (all those apps they already have and familiarity with the iPad interface) if they were to make the switch. On the other hand, this might be just the push that Motorola needed to convince on-the-fence shoppers to buy the Xoom.

Homeycomb?

A Match Made in Heaven: Tablets and Text

Lately, a lot of hype has been surrounding tablet computers and their future role in the wide world of computing. Although tablet computers have been around for many years, new products like Apple's soon to be released iPad 2 and Motorola's new Xoom are allowing tablets to become versatile tools. Products like Apple's iPad give a sense of user friendliness that is currently unrivaled in the tablet world, whereas the new Android 3.0 honeycomb OS allows users to create at a level similar to a laptop computer would.

Xoom and iPad 2 duking it out.

The portability of tablets allows users to carry them practically anywhere they travel and there is a wonderful principle that says that computing is only going to improve Moore and Moore. To me, one of the most intriguing things about tablets is their potential to significantly reduce printed text. Tablets are rapidly replacing books and newspaper, drawing publishers and news corporations into the digital world. Amazon's kindle, which has only been around for about three and a half years, already has over 800,000 books available to download directly to the device.

The latest version of the Kindle.

As far as tablet specific news publications go, The Daily, an iPad exclusive newspaper is incredibly popular, offering a newspaper style format integrated with video and interactive advertisements. It even has a daily crossword and Sudoku puzzles for readers to enjoy. However, one of the biggest draws of tablets to me is their role in the education field.

Screenshot from the March 3, 2011 edition of The Daily.

Last week at Abilene Christian University, the ACU Connected Summit was held with one of the main focuses being the future role that tablets will play in the education field. Two sessions that I attended stood out to me. The first was given by Dr. Mark Phillips, a management professor at ACU. In the fall 2010 semester, Dr. Phillips Introduction to Business class of twenty college freshmen took basic concepts found in most texts used for that course and created a free online text for future classes to use. This text (located at edge4.org) is being used in the spring 2011 intro class and will continue to be used and updated if it works well. This sort of innovation will allow devices like tablets to become a viable alternative to textbooks in the future.

Homepage for edge4.org

App developer Inkling has taken this concept a step further and has taken actual textbooks and created a version of them specifically for the iPad. In the microeconomics class that I am currently taking, we use one of these interactive Inkling texts and  if integrated properly, I feel that this may become the future of textbooks.

Screenshot from my Inkling Microeconomics book, The Microeconomy Today.

The atoms to bits concept of digitization is in full force here. Costs will be able to be reduced since no physical book is being used and students will not have to carry around multiple books wherever they go. All they would need is a tablet, and with prices falling (a 16 gig refurbished 1st generation iPad can be bought on apple.com for only $350) many tablets aren't much more expensive than textbooks. Books, notes, and class wide collaborative tools such as ResponseWare will be able to be included all in one device that weighs under two pounds. When Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak spoke at ACU for the Connected Summit, he also agreed that technology in the classroom was very important and even boldly predicted that within twenty years the majority of books would be digital. Although I believe that there will always be a place for printed books, I tend to agree, and with new technologies such as Google's book scanning process, which has already scanned over 12 million books, the future looks bright.