Code, Camera, Action

Back at the office Tuesday after a long holiday break. So lots of questions for me, and a busy day. Good to be back.

It was also the day that Google announced a new mobile phone, the Nexus. Early reviews all say it’s fabulous, as good as the iPhone in many ways. It’s got a much better screen, they say, but correspondingly worse battery life.

Not to be outdone, Apple has been leaking details of their next big thing – a tablet of some sort, to be announced late this month. There’s been lots of speculation about that on the blogs, of course. We can’t figure out what earth-shattering feature might differentiate an Apple tablet from previous, ho-hum tablets. Consensus is that it’s got to be different or Steve Jobs wouldn’t do it. Different and useful. More than “surfing the internet on the can” – which the iPhone and MacBook handle quite well, thank you.

If anybody can, I am sure that Steve Jobs and company will figure out what a tablet is good for – or at least how to wow us enough that we’ll want one, too.

But, wow, that it has come to this. Three years ago, the iPhone turned the cell phone handset business upside down. Now that the competition has caught up, Apple is moving on to something completely different – presumably an entirely new product line. They’ll still be printing money with iPhones.

And we have come to expect that the Steve Jobs won’t do something that’s not revolutionary.

Back to that Google phone. The hardware looks fine, an iPhone knock-off almost as minimalist as Apple’s wares. On the Nexus, the iPhone’s one-button-to-rule-them-all gives way to four buttons and a roller-ball nose.

(See Amit’s post on the back button vs home button design philosophies for the benefits of multiple buttons.)

Based on a brief hands-on with a Droid, I have no doubt that it will handle Gmail and Google apps much better than any phone on earth.

Oh but that home screen – it’s ugly as the Nexus’s name. Google’s marketing shows a wallpaper gray boxes that the reviews say ripple to follow your fingertip on the screen. The reviewers say it’s cool, but in still images make the gray cubes look ckunky.

And yet, in three short years the competition has gone from pushbutton phones (remember Motorola’s Razr) to two iPhone-quality choices – one an Android clone that’s better than the iPhone in significant ways.

And it sounds like Apple plans to respond with something completely different.

Tech products are becoming differentiated as much by aesthetics as features. It’s not about making products that secure a market position (though Apple’s app store policies use some of those old-fashioned tricks, too). It’s about fast teams. Teams that can get things done and drive products to market.

The Google and Apple competition is so interesting because of the firms’ different approaches to innovation. Google’s approach is driven by data, drawn from testing of thousands of users, in hundreds of iterations. Apple’s designs seem to come full-born from the head of Steve Jobs.

Exciting times we live in – and a great time to be shopping for a phone.

Loading mentions Retweet

There are roughly 20 times more people playing FarmVille these days than there are actual farms in the U.S.

via businessweek.com

Loading mentions Retweet

Behind the land rush to apps is a belief that they may be some of the cleverest advertising devised. They are, after all, advertisements that people voluntarily choose to watch and share with friends. Some are even consulted in store aisles when customers decide what to buy. “Apps have a huge advantage,” said Carl Howe, a mobile market analyst for the Yankee Group. “You had to take a step to get it; you are already half sold.”

When people open an app, they give it full attention.

via nytimes.com

Loading mentions Retweet

Great recipes (zillions of them) -- and in-app advertising done right.

Back in the web 1.0 days, Conde Nast put all of the recipes from Gourmet and its other food magazines online at http://epicurious.com. The recipes were searchable and over time Epicurious added ratings and other community features.

It's been a fabulous resource for cooks. They are great recipes, and there are lots of them -- including the 1955 recipe for steak au poivre that keeps me from going vegetarian.

Epicurious has now come to the iPhone with the free "Epicurious recipies and shopping list" app http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=312101965&mt=8 .

That whole recipe database is now searchable from your iPhone. And, yes, it will make a grocery list from the recipes you pick.

• search the entire Epicurious recipe database -- from the phone 
• see how other Epicurious users have rated the recipes 
• save favorite recipes 
• generate a shopping list from the recipes you pick 
• check off items as you buy them 
• price: free 

But how do they pay for that? The app is ad-supported, but in the least-intrusive way I've seen in an app. Here's how it works --

A search tells you how many results were found (see the second screenshot below). If you click to see the results, the app then splashes an ad while it retrieves the recipes (third screenshot). The experience feels perfectly natural. "Oh," I thought, "I'm waiting anyway, may as well view an ad."

Woah! This is completely different than, say, the New York Times approach -- where the splash ad get between you and content you may not want anyway.

What's the difference? With Epicurious, I've seen enough to know I want to go on, so an ad is okay with me. Search confirms my intent.

The Times, though is a browsing operation. From a headline I don't often know if the story will be what I want -- or worth sitting through an ad.

For me, the result of the experience is annoyance or, for Epicurious, gratitiude.

Can you afford to annoy your users?

         

Loading mentions Retweet

Michael Arrington at Techcrunch claims this is patently false, and that the Google Voice app simply reads phone numbers from the iPhone's address book, in the approved Apple way. Either way, Apple's rejection of the GV app only gives Google an advantage.

Loading mentions Retweet

Call me a news snob.  I subscribe to The Economist.  I read The Guardian's RSS feed.  I don't have a TV (well, not one that can receive a signal anymore).  On the road, I tend to tiptoe around the USA Todays that lurk outside my hotel room door.

But yesterday, thanks to TUAW's glowing review, I installed USA Today's iPhone app.  Wow.

USA Today is trying to solve a different problem than the NY Times and Wall Street Journal apps.  Take a look at the screenshots to see what I mean.  Here's what each app offers:

USA Today

• Weather.  Current temp and conditions on every screen.  Pick your location
• Sports scores one click away on the main menu by your thumb
• Share stories by email, of course.  Or by SMS.  Or Facebook.  Or by whatever Twitter client you've installed
• Also share the app -- use email or Twitter to send your friends a link to the app
• Get support by email

New York Times

• The contents of the paper, arranged by section
• Photojournalism
• Most emailed stories
• Crashes every other time I use it (though it will restart; and yes, I have the latest version that was supposed to fix the crashing problems)

• The contents of the paper, arranged by section
• Free.  WSJ.com on the web is not
• Additional video top stories audio podcast
• Barrons and All Things D content

Comparing these lists, it seems the Times and the Journal are both busy being Newspapers of Record -- even on the phone.  Now don't get me wrong, it's fantastic to get the entirety of the Times or the Journal on the phone, for free.  

But this user just wants to know what's going on.  For quick hits of mainstream news, the USA Today works better for me.

On the phone, anyway, USA Today is much better than the newsprint I slink past in the hotel hallway.

         

Loading mentions Retweet