I decided to wear Google Glass to Bay to Breakers, San Francisco’s annual “What kind of ridiculous and/or slutty costume can I wear?” race/celebration. This is part of my month-long experiment to wear Google Glass as often and as long as possible to see A) how people react, B) how my habits change and C) whether I will like them enough to keep wearing them.
Quick thoughts:
I took a lot more photos and videos while wearing Glass. It was just… so easy to do.
I got asked by at least 20 strangers to try on the Glass. Some thought I was assholes for not letting them try it on (I only let friends try it on).
It is distracting having a camera on your head, no matter what anybody says. Maybe it becomes less distracting over time, but I felt compelled to take pictures.
The device’s battery lasted through most of the day with heavy photo and video use. I was surprised. The battery is still underwhelming, but it’s not as bad as I first thought.
Quality is good enough, but clearly not consumer ready. Just check out the video above to see the quality.
I’m thrilled to announce that I’m joining CNET and CBS Interactive as a contributing columnist and commentator!
Ever since my departure from Mashable, I’ve posted my personal take on the big technology news of the day on BenParr.com. The response to my work has been overwhelming, and traffic to this blog has skyrocketed. Thank you all for reading, commenting and sharing.
But now I have a chance to make a much bigger impact with my writing. Starting this week, my commentary on technology, social media and startups will appear on CNET several times per week. I will not be doing any straight reporting — CNET has a talented team that already does an amazing job at that. Instead, I will be doing what I’ve been doing here on BenParr.com: breaking down the big issues and players in tech and explaining what it actually means for both the tech industry and society as a whole.
To do that, I will be writing a combination of thought pieces, analysis stories, response pieces and the occasional long-form column. My CNET column is called The Social Analyst, just like my column on Mashable. It’s going to have more bite than my old column, though. I intend to keep tech’s biggest names honest.
I decided to join forces with CNET/CBSi because CBS Interactive CEO Jim Lanzone and CNET General Manager Mark Larkin have an ambitious vision for the future.
CNET is huge: it is one of the 100 most visited websites in the world, but Mark and Jim are not content with resting on their laurels. I believe in their vision and their leadership, and I am thrilled to be working with them.
CNET isn’t my only gig, though. For the last few months, I’ve also been working behind-the-scenes on a startup, which we can’t wait to talk more about! My co-founder and I have a clear vision, as well as a duty to our investors, and we will move heaven and earth (and forgo sleep) to make sure our company succeeds.
My new role at CNET and CBSi is the best of both worlds. I get to reach millions of people with my thoughts on technology, but still retain the flexibility to be an entrepreneur, build amazing products and change the world.
Don’t take your eyes off of CNET. Big things are happening over there, and you won’t want to miss all the action. 2012 is going to be an amazing year.
Most people think that Apple has two operating systems — iOS and OS X — but the reality is that Apple is creating one OS right before our eyes, piece by piece.
Apple unveiled OS X Mountain Lion on Thursday, dropping the “Mac” label from the name in the process. It’s not a rebirth of Apple’s flagship computer OS, but instead transforms some of OS X’s most important apps into perfect counterparts to Apple’s most popular iOS apps.
iChat is no more. Instead, it is being replaced by Messages, which is interoperable with the Messages app on iPad and iOS. Reminders is being divorced from iCal, and iCal is becoming Calendar. Notes is become a standalone app from Mail. Game Center, Notification Center and iCloud are making their OS X debuts.
If that weren’t enough, OS X Mountain Lion is introducing Gatekeeper, which will, by default, limit the apps you can install to apps from the OS X store or verified Apple developers.
Oh, and one more thing: OS X Mountain Lion boasts complete integration with Twitter, just like iOS. Microsoft will need Facebook integration in Windows 8 more than ever if it’s going to catch up to Apple (remember, Microsoft is a Facebook investor).
These changes come on top of the additions Apple introduced with OS X Lion, which introduced Launchpad and the Mac App Store.
Apple is pushing iOS and OS X closer and closer together. In three years, you’re going to barely be able to tell the difference between the two, especially with OS X now employing a yearly development release cycle.
Apple wants you to have one seamless experience across all of its devices, whether it’s the iPad, iPhone, Macbook or the highly anticipated Apple television set. Everything you do on one device should simply “be there” on the other ones. That’s where iCloud comes into play. It is quickly becoming the cornerstone of Apple’s products, and its influence will only grow.
Here’s my prediction: in four years or less, Apple will not have two operating systems. It will have one unified OS with one brand and one development cycle.
You may think the two operating systems are too different to merge, but remember that iOS was derived from OS X. “The iPhone runs OS X” was even Apple’s official stance when the device was first unveiled.
Apple’s clearly merging iOS and OS X. The only question is how long it will take Apple to make it happen.
Almost everybody wants to have an assistant, even if people won’t freely admit it. Who doesn’t want an extra set of hands to help out with chores, scheduling, reminders, meetings, reservations, and the myriad of other tasks that we need to complete every single day?
Just a few years ago, the only way you could get yourself an assistant was to pay one a full-time salary. Very few people can afford the luxury having somebody help them with all of the tasks and information in their lives. But that has rapidly changed with new technology that makes it easier to outsource our lives.
This is what I call “Smart Assistant” technology, and I group it into three distinct buckets:
Technological Assistants: The best known of these is Apple’s Siri, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Evi, for example, is far better at searching for relevant information on-the-fly.
Virtual Assistants: Virtual assistants have been around for a while, but now they’re far more affordable thanks to services like Zirtual (which I use and love) and FancyHands. Rather than paying somebody $50K a year, you can pay $50 to $200 a month and get almost all the same benefits.
Task Outsourcing: I’m a huge fan of services like Taskrabbit and Zaarly, which lets you outsource chores like food delivery, IKEA furniture assembly, laundry and grocery shopping. The convenience is worth the price.
While each bucket is vastly different, they help accomplish the same things — they help people save time, and they help put people’s minds at ease.
We’re only at the beginning of this phenomenon though. I believe it’s especially true for technological assistants, which are in the best position to deal with (but have yet to solve) one of the biggest problems of the Internet age: cognitive and information overload.
Smart assistants are huge businesses. Five years from now, you’re going to wonder how you lived without them.
RIM announced on Sunday that its longtime co-CEOs are stepping down. It decided to make the announcement during the Giants-49ers game, which I’m sure they knew would dominate Twitter and the news media.
While the move was absolutely necessary if the company was to turn things around, its announcement gives me absolutely no confidence that its new CEO, former co-COO Thorsten Heins, can right the ship.
Here are a few quotes from the company’s press release that give me pause. All of the quotes are from Heins:
“Mike and Jim took a bold step 18 months ago when RIM purchased QNX to shepherd the transformation of the BlackBerry platform for the next decade. We are more confident than ever that was the right path. It is Mike and Jim’s continued unwillingness to sacrifice long-term value for short-term gain which has made RIM the great company that it is today.”
I can buy that buying QNX was a bold move, but RIM has failed to integrate QNX into its phones in any compelling way. Also, I’m calling bullshit on his statement that RIM’s freefall in the markets is simply because its former co-CEOs were “unwilling to sacrifice long-term value for short-term gain.” Under their leadership, the company has dropped from $50+ per share to less than $20 in the span of a year.
“We have a strong balance sheet with approximately $1.5 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter and negligible debt. We reported revenue of $5.2 billion in our last quarter, up 24% from the prior quarter, and a 35% year-to-year increase in the BlackBerry subscriber base, which is now over 75 million.”
RIM neglects to mention that revenue dropped by 5% from the previous year, where it earned $5.5 billion in Oct-Dec 2010. Profits dropped 71% due to poor sales of the BlackBerry Playbook.
“BlackBerry 7 has been well received. We are very excited about PlayBook 2.0 and BlackBerry 10. The reception of our products at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was encouraging.”
“RIM earned its reputation by focusing relentlessly on the customer and delivering unique mobile communications solutions. We intend to build on this heritage to expand BlackBerry’s leadership position.”
What leadership position? Apple and Google took that away from RIM years ago.
“As with any company that has grown as fast as we have, there have been inevitable growing pains. We have learned from those challenges and, I believe, we have and will become a stronger company as a result.”
Hopefully they have learned some tough lessons, but I’m still not convinced.
“Going forward, we will continue to focus both on short-term and long-term growth, strategic planning, a customer- and market-based product approach, and flawless execution. We are in the process of recruiting a new Chief Marketing Officer to work closely with our product and sales teams to deliver the most compelling products and services.”
Getting a new CMO is fine, but there isn’t a CMO on the planet that can successfully market a vastly inferior product in a market as competitive as smartphones.
Look, I know I’m being really, really hard on RIM, but they deserve it. They got their ass kicked by Apple and Google and they’ve been doing a terrible job of playing catch-up ever since. It failed to invest in apps, and as a result it just doesn’t have the developer ecosystem it needs to survive in today’s market.
There will be no Rocky-esque comeback for RIM. Instead, after a few more years of struggling and failing to regain relevance, the once-great technology giant will likely find itself in the hands of an acquirer like Amazon.
Shit hit the fan on Thursday; the U.S. government took down Megaupload, one of the largest file-sharing sites in the world. Here’s a quick recap of the key events in this crazy story:
Megaupload is one of top 100 most-visited websites on the web for years, mostly because it was an easy and relatively “safe” way to download and transfer pirated content. Yes, people hosted legal stuff there, but the vast majority of it was pirated.
On December 9, a bizarre video was released with A-listers seemingly endorsing Megaupload. P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West were among the stars featured.
Universal and the RIAA were NOT happy with this, so they asked YouTube to take it down due to copyright infringement,. They succeeded, though Megaupload continued to host the video (YouTube eventually brought it back as well). Megaupload essentially gave the music industry the middle finger.
Everything exploded yesterday, though. The FBI led a coordinated strike against Megaupload that involved 20 search warrants in eight countries. The result was the shutdown of Megaupload.com and the seizure of more than $50 million in assets.
Megaupload’s staff was also arrested and denied bail in New Zealand. This includes founder and majority owner Kim Schmitz — aka Kim Dotcom. Yes, that’s what he goes by.
Oh, and it was revealed that Swizz Beatz is the company’s acting CEO. Yes, the guy who’s married to Alicia Keys. This was likely an attempt by Kim Dotcom to reduce the heat on himself.
GigaOm has a fantastic summary of the indictment itself, if you want to learn more.
There was an important part of the Internet that didn’t like how this raid went down though: Anonymous. The shadowy hacker group launched its largest attack ever merely minutes after the raids became public. They attacked “the White House, the FBI, the Department of Justice, multiple record label sites, the MPAA, and RIAA, and the U.S. Copyright Office” all at once. Anonymous considered the destruction of Megaupload an act of war, and they responded with an all-out counterstrike.
If you think today is the worst of the retaliation, then you’re deluding yourself: Anonymous is nowhere near done. The IRC chatrooms where Anonymous plans its attacks are still active. I suspect that it will continue to lash out as more details of the Megaupload takedown come to light.
Questions remain: will Megaupload’s leaders be extradited to the U.S.? Where are pirates going to store files now? What is Anonymous’s next move?
The fireworks are just beginning, so find the nearest bunker, because yesterday was just the first of many battles in the Great Megaupload War of 2012.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Bryan Burke. FYI, nobody was harmed in this photo.
Instagram, Path and Color are three high-profile apps taking three different approaches to mobile social networking. Can all three co-exist?
You may think that these three apps have totally different purposes and do totally different things, but in reality they tackle the same problem: how do you better connect and share with your friends through mobile?
Instagram‘s thesis is simple: photo-sharing is the central component to the social and mobile experience. It is the undisputed king of photo-sharing apps, and it reached the top of the pile with a team of less than 10. Instagram has more than 15 million users.
Path, co-founded by Facebook legend Dave Morin (he co-invented Facebook Connect and the Facebook Platform), is about intimate social networking. It’s a “smart journal” that lets you share photos, videos, status updates and locations with up to 150 of your closest friends and family. You can even share when you wake up and when you fall asleep. Its initial launch was a dud, but its recent launch has been gaining traction.
Color, co-founded by Lala and Onebox co-founder Bill Nguyen, was once about mobile photo-sharing through dynamically-created “elastic networks” — essentially it shared photos with whoever was nearby. It didn’t gain traction though, so Color went to the drawing board and reemerged as an app that lets you “visit” your friends through short video streams. Unlike Path or Instagram, Color’s entire social graph is built on top of Facebook. The new version of Color hasn’t caught on like Path or Instagram have, but it’s early in the game.
Three Approaches to Mobile + Social
To be clear: Instagram, Path and Color focus on different things. Instagram focuses on photography, Path focuses on intimate social networks, and Color focuses on “visits” and enhancing the Facebook experience for mobile.
However, I think they are converging. I feel as if Path, Instagram and Color started out on different paths, but have merged to become competitors. All three apps allow me to share photos, not just with friends and followers, but with my Facebook friends (Path and Instagram also support Twitter, Foursquare and Tumblr). Path even added the photo filters that made Instagram into the powerhouse it is today.
If I share a photo on Path, am I also going to share it on Instagram or Color? If I record a video stream on Color, am I also going to put that on Path? For me, the answer is no. The overlap is just too much.
I suspect this phenomenon is just specific to me; who really has the patience to share stuff through three different apps?
Final Thoughts
The future of mobile social networking is up for grabs. Facebook may be the iPhone’s most popular app, but it essentially ports the Facebook experience to mobile (the app is also horrendously slow and painful to use — that’s an article for another day, though).
Instagram, Path and Color are experiments in the best way to utilize the unique capabilities of the phone to enhance social networking. The smartphone’s camera, GPS, accelerometer, touchscreen interface, notifications and persistence (it’s always in your pocket) makes it an ideal tool for sharing your world with friends.
Some point soon, though, the experimenting will end and a victor will emerge. I simply don’t believe there is enough room for all three apps, despite the different approaches they take to mobile social networking.
There are going to be a lot more pivots, challengers and forgotten apps by the time this battle is done.
What are your thoughts on the future of mobile social networking? Is there enough room for everybody? Let me know in the comments.
Google has launched three new features that personalize its search engine in a radical way. It’s the biggest change to Google’s search engine since Google Instant.
Google has fused Google Search with Google+ and Picasa to make results unique to the individualized. Clicking the person icon on the top right of the search page brings up these results.
Say you’re researching for a trip to Thailand. Normally Google will serve you relevant web pages about the area of Thailand you are researching. However, if you click the person icon (Google calls it the “Search plus your world” icon), it will start bringing up Google+ posts about Thailand from your network, related photos from your friends, and pages/profiles related to that query.
The changes also apply to searches for individuals. If I’m in your Circles, and you start typing my name, my profile will pop up. But the updated search engine will also pull up “prominent people on Google+”. This includes anybody who is a member of Google’s authorship program.
Essentially, Google has merged its search engine with Google+ and Picasa search. If you’re prominently using Google+, you’re going to show up more often in search results, and that is a very powerful thing.
Should Facebook Be Scared?
Google has decided that, if it is to beat Facebook, it needed to use its most powerful weapon: its search engine. We knew this was Google’s plan all along, but Google really went all-in on this one.
Will this take users away from Facebook though? I doubt it; there’s very little Google can do to beat Facebook’s entrenched network effect. Facebook is the repository and scrapbook for your entire life; Google+ simply isn’t as ubiquitous or useful. More people will sign up for Google+ and maybe even occasionally use it because they saw their friends appear in search results, but it won’t pry them away from Facebook.
What this does, though, is set up Google+ as the alternative to Facebook, should the social network eventually shoot itself in the foot. If Facebook stumbles badly, Google is in the prime position to seize on the opportunity and siphon away users.
Facebook’s real enemy isn’t Google; it’s Facebook. Google knows this, which is why the search giant is preparing for a massive user raid if and when Facebook slips up.
For the first time in years, I will not be attending CES. It’s a strange yet relaxing feeling not being part of the massive crowds that converge each January on Sin City.
The annual Consumer Electronics Show is the epicenter for the launch of new gee-wiz tech gadgets, TVs, phones, tablets and all sorts of weird crap that just makes you scratch your head.
More than 100,000 journalists, industry professionals and tech execs converge on Las Vegas, all trying to find a way to stand out from the noise. There is a constant rush of press conferences and parties to attend, which probably explains why some companies pay lots of money to try out celebrities for their booths.
Oh, and if you’re lucky, you leave the place with a bag filled with tablets and cameras.
I’ll admit, I miss being part of the action on the ground. Being at all the product launches is exhilarating, even if it does wreck your sleep schedule. Meeting with the CEOs of tech’s biggest companies is always interesting, even if you don’t get more than 20 minutes with them. And some of the booths are just epic.
But the truth is that I’m relieved not to be attending CES this year. The show is draining, especially if you’re a reporter or a person trying to round up reporters for your products.
The bigger problem I have with CES is this, though: it has become an echo chamber for companies positioning themselves as the Apple alternative. I felt this last year when I was covering the dozens of Android tablets jockeying for position against Apple’s iPad. The Motorola Xoom won that battle last year, thanks to Android Honeycomb, but CES did nothing to boost its weak sales.
Apple famously ignores CES, and for good reason. Apple is just as large as CES — perhaps larger — and that reality marginalizes all of the companies that exhibit at the show. This will become especially true when the iTV gets released this year.
(It’s real, by the way. Sony and the rest of the electronics industry ought to be shaking in their boots.)
This year I decided to skip CES (and Sundance) to work on the startup and take investor meetings. And while I intend to come back next year, I think it’s going to feel like a vastly different show, thanks to iTV and Microsoft’s departure.
