Apple Floundering?

There was a mixed reaction yesterday at Apple's media day to the announcement of iPhone 4S. Every was expecting the iPhone 5, but it didn't happen. My initial thoughts were that Apple was forced to show something. Yes, there were some software improvements and Siri is cool, but was it really worth the effort of the PR push? I believe some analysts who wrote about production delays on the iPhone 5 called it correctly. There was no way they could launch the iPhone 5 in October or even November, but with the Kindle Fire announcement and the upcoming launch of Samsung's Nexus Prime and Android's Ice Cream Sandwich operating system Apple felt the pressure.

Android is still experiencing leaps in growth while Apple's market share of the mobile OS pie is stagnant. Bill Gurley called it correctly months ago that Android is an unstoppable freight train, and Apple feels it coming. Samsung alone approaches iPhone's sales numbers and I stated for a while now that by 2013 Android will takeover the seemingly unstoppable iPad in the tablet market. And this is not Tim Cook's fault. Whether it was Cook or Jobs, this was and is inevitable, which is why Apple had to start a patent battle that many consider dirty or counter to all that Silicon Valley stands for.

Visual Guide to Circles in Google+ by Ross Mayfield

Visual Guide to Circles in Google+ by @ross

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Google+ First Impressions: My Big Three Takeaways

My thoughts on Google's new social networking platform, Google+, is up over at VentureBeat:

"Google+ first impressions: My big three takeaways" VentureBeat

Also picked up by their syndication partner, The New York Times here.

Korean Seaweed at Google HQ

One of the common snacks at Google HQ... Korean seaweed. I can't remember when they started having it there, but it's been at least a year. Reverse cultural imperialism at its best: micropayments in online gaming, bottle service at clubs, and dried, salty seaweed.

Twitter Bashing, Is Ev Williams a Jerk?

Last week Twitter was getting a good amount of negative press:

"Trouble @Twitter" Fortune

"The Real History Of Twitter" Business Insider

"EXCLUSIVE: An Interview With Twitter's Forgotten Founder, Noah Glass" Business Insider

After reading these articles, Ev Williams comes off as a power-hungry, ego-maniac that is a bit shady. At a minimum a selfish jerk. You're left wondering if he did really screw over Blogger employees before Google acquired the company, and you're wondering why did he screw over Noah Glass? Also why didn't he and others give credit to Noah Glass? Sadly, he only does so after these articles placed him under the fire.

I've heard from people at Twitter that many like him, but wonder if that's simply a limited sample set or if he's selectively shady. Whatever the truth is, this is just a reminder that you have to be cautious when starting a company with others. Trust is essential and knowing their character is critical too. During the first sign of a fire or potential success, is your co-founder going to throw you under the bus or backstab you? Drink the water before you pour in the Kool-Aid mix.

Google's South Africa Incubator Project

Pretty cool. Christine thought of and initiated this project before leaving for the Android team, so it's good to see it come to fruition.

"Silicon South Africa: Google Launches Incubator For African Startups" TechCrunch

Another project Christine worked on in Nigeria: G-Nigeria Day2010

Staying with AT&T After Switching From the iPhone To Nexus S

Since I already commented on a couple blog posts at TechCrunch and All Things Digital on the new Verizon iPhone, I thought I should provide more detail here.

Two years ago, after switching from my Blackberry on Verizon Wireless to an iPhone on AT&T Wireless, I was dying to switch back to Verizon. It was a few months in and like many others I suffered from an infinite amount of dropped calls and missed calls that never showed up on my caller ID. Numerous stories where I would have full bars and my friend would have full bars on our iPhones and we still were dropped from our call. I bought a phone not a mobile device.

I would curse AT&T and assumed many things about their ineptitude. I also questioned how they built out their infrastructure. About six months ago, one of our daughters broke my iPhone, so I decided to change to a Galaxy S. I took out my iPhone SIM card and place it into the Galaxy S, so I continued using AT&T. A couple weeks later, she broke my Galaxy S so I switched to a Nexus One. This is where I realized that the dropped calls weren't solely AT&T fault. The dropped and missed calls came less frequently on my Nexus One.

Recently I upgraded to the Nexus S and one month in I haven't suffered from a dropped call so far. I was planning to switch from AT&T to Verizon within a couple weeks since my contract runs out, but now I decided to stay with AT&T. I don't have hard evidence, but logic would lead me to believe that it wasn't all AT&T's fault but something with the iPhone's design.

Since AT&T now sells Android models, they should really do a study on the number of dropped calls between the iPhone and a few of the Android models. They might be able to redeem much of their good will that they lost over the past few years with iPhone users.


Disclosure: My wife works on the Android team at Google. I have been a Apple user and fan since the days of the Apple IIe, many Aldus products and an early gamer on Apple computers. I love my MacBook Pro, iPod Touch and Time Capsule.

Toshiba Tablet Powered by Android

Looks like Toshiba did a pretty kickass job on their tablet. Great commercial too.

Groupon will become the Sarah Palin of tech, and other predictions for 2011

My 4th annual technology prediction piece is up over at VentureBeat. Check it out!

Groupon will become the Sarah Palin of tech, and other predictions for 2011

2011 will be a year of economic recovery and continued drama in Silicon Valley, marked by the hyped battles of Apple vs. Google, Google vs. Facebook, and Oracle vs. the rest of the enterprise world. Without further ado, here is the 4th annual edition of my technology predictions.

The Groupon Juggernaut Will Slow Down
Groupon is quickly becoming the Sarah Palin of the technology world. It has its haters (Forrester’s Sucharita Mulpuru), doubters (Flybridge Capital’s Jeff Bussgang) and fans (FM’s John Battelle) like the former vice presidential candidate. Everyone seems to have an opinion of Groupon, whether through their own personal experiences or spurred by a coffee talk at Coupa Café in Palo Alto. Being from Chicago, where the company is based, I wanted to be a fan, but I have strong doubts on the sustainability of its business model. It will remain successful, but will it be the next Amazon or “Google of e-commerce” as many people predict? I just don’t see it. Maybe its critical mass and huge funding rounds will sustain its market share for a couple years, but the competitive barriers of entry are too low, so I predict its revenue growth will begin to slow towards the end of 2011. A few years from now, this darling of the ecommerce space will be a fading memory... (full article)


This was also republished in The New York Times' Technology section here.

Peek at Honeycomb, Android 3.0

Very cool preview video below. And yes, Christine went to Las Vegas/CES for work (she's part of the Android team). I had to sacrifice and stay home with our girls, eat by myself, and have access to unlimited ESPN and Starcraft2... poor me. More from Andy Rubin and the Google Mobile Blog here.

Are Q&A startups a threat to Google?

My tech op-ed article posted this morning at Venturebeat, "Are Q&A startups a threat to Google?", and was reposted at the NYTimes site here. [Update] Also Techmeme-ed here, which is cool since it's my favorite news aggregator.

Most of my interview transcript with Ro Choy, CEO of Peerpong, and Charlie Cheever, Co-founder of Quora, was edited out, so below are some of their additional insights:

When did the light bulb for Quora go off for you?

Charlie Cheever: Over the last few years, there have been a bunch of services that have let people put more and more content onto the Internet -- Facebook and Flickr for photos, Twitter for link sharing, status updates, etc. -- but we didn't see any great way for people to share the knowledge that they accumulate over their lives, so we wanted to make a place for that. There were other things as well. For example, I like blogging but I didn't always know what people wanted me to write about. One thing we've tried to build Quora to provide is a good set of prompts from other people that you can respond to.

When you looked at this opportunity, what were the comparables? Yahoo! Answers, Google, or others?

Charlie Cheever: We thought about all those things but we’ve mostly been focused on making a product to fill a need we saw in the world. I do think there are a lot of things that people want to know that you can't find easily with a search engine because the information either isn't on the web yet, or isn't there in a form that you can easily consume. This is especially true with long tail content.

Ro Choy: Our focus and good corollary is Google. Google can effectively find content through use of pagerank. Can we do that for people? If you believe the vast amount of knowledge doesn’t exist online yet, then if you could ultimately categorize an index of content, publish it, and make it searchable…. If you could do this for 50 million, 100 million people, or half a billion people -- that was the Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

Lunsford Group Wireless Industry Snapshot 2010

I recently update an internal document for our firm that I made which serves as a wireless industry "cheat sheet," or quick reference guide. Nothing proprietary, so I thought I would share it with all of you.

Lunsford Group Wireless Industry Snapshot 2010

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@Google & YouTube present A Conversation with Conan O'Brien

"Conan O'Brien may have been "legally prohibited from being funny on television," but thanks to TBS he'll be back on the air very soon. Conan and Andy Richter stop by Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters for a morning of hilarity. This event took place on May 5, 2010."

"Why Didn't Existing Companies like Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo Succeed at Social Networking?"

I've been trying out Quora and Peerpong lately, so I decided to post some of my answers here. It's rapid response, which I typically don't like to do, but I've sucked it up and decided such thinking is foolish since I'm not a professional journalist. Anyway, my answer to the above question:

I would say additional factors are the lack of design and marketing influences in Google's product development process. Google's engineering driven culture is the reason for its success, but also a factor in its failure in some areas. I'm not saying Google should be design driven like Apple, but a little balance is good. I also heard some product managers complain how influence tilts towards the engineers.

And once you're behind in the market, spending on advertising is a good avenue to catch up (i.e. Microsoft's Bing) but this goes against Google's mantra of zero marketing spend. Only recently has Google started to spend significant amounts of ad/marketing money to compete in the enterprise space, but it could have done this with Orkut while trying to upgrade and improve it.

The amazing fact that is sometimes forgotten is that Orkut is a top 50 site worldwide, number one is Brazil and India, and essentially the business/name card for everyone in Brazil. This is done with zero marketing. Sort of a shame that Google didn't place more emphasis on developing and marketing Orkut early on while MySpace and Facebook were just starting out.

Android Team Party

Christine recently joined the Android team to do partnerships, so we attended the annual party this past weekend. It was cool and we brought our girls too. Later we dropped them off at home for bedtime and then came back for more food and drinks. Christine also got the balloon maker (for children) to create a Little Mermaid balloon for her.

Google TechTalk: Pyongyang University of Science & Technology

The TechTalk at Google that Christine hosted is up on YouTube.

Pyongyang University of Science & Technology: First International University in the Heart of North Korea

ABSTRACT (Q&A starts at 35:55)

Presented by Dr. David Kim, Vice President of Pyongyang University of Science & Technology in Pyongyang, DPRK, and the Vice President of Yanbian University of Science & Technology (YUST) in Yanji, Jilin Province, China.

The opening of Pyongyang University of Science & Technology (PUST) was once thought to be an impossible dream. However, the first phase of the campus is now finished and ready to accept students in April 2010. Dr. David Kim, who serves as the Vice President of PUST, will be joining us to raise awareness about this first international university in North Korea (where the teaching language will be English), discuss recruitment of international faculty and explore fund-raising opportunities.

SK Telecom's Google Android Promos

SK Telecom's promo for Google's Android platform in Korea. Little Androids in the subway.


Promo at Phoenix Park ski resort in Korea. Very cute.

Google TechTalk Tomorrow! The First International University in the Heart of North Korea

Christine organized a TechTalk at Google on very short notice. She usually needs a month or more, but I guess the administrators didn't know this. Here are a couple articles on this new university and the information below:

"The capitalist who loves North Korea
After making it as an entrepreneur in America, James Kim is fulfilling his dream of opening an university in North Korea that will offer, of all things, an MBA." Fortune

"Letter from North Korea --Ray of Hope?" The Huffington Post, Ben Rosen


Tech Talk: Pyongyang University of Science & Technology (PUST) -- First International University in the Heart of North Korea
Time: Thursday, February 11, 2010 12-1pm PST, lunch following
Location: Kiev Conference Room, b40
VC Dial In: 3-253-5512

Abstract:
The opening of Pyongyang University of Science & Technology (PUST) was once thought to be an impossible dream. However, the first phase of the campus is now finished and ready to accept students in April 2010. Dr. David Kim, who serves as the Vice President of PUST, will be joining us to raise awareness about this first international university in North Korea (where the teaching language will be English), discuss recruitment of international faculty and explore fund-raising opportunities. Dr. Kim will share his experience in North Korea and also China as well. We'll leave enough time for Q&A from the audience. VC dial in is also available. Lunch following, please email if you're interested in joining!

Please see their website for more info on how to get involved: http://www.pust.kr/


About Dr. David H. Kim:
Dr. David Kim is the Vice President of Pyongyang University of Science & Technology in Pyongyang, DPRK, and the Vice President of Yanbian University of Science & Technology (YUST) in Yanji, Jilin Province, China. He also teaches business management courses in the Department of Management Information Systems in the YUST Business School.

Prior to joining YUST, Dr. Kim worked as a Principal Project Manager at Pacific Gas & Electric Co. in San Francisco. He also worked for Engineering and Construction companies including Bechtel Power Corp. in San Francisco. He has more than 30 years of broad based experience in the areas of Project Management, Engineering, and Construction.

Dr. Kim received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from San Francisco Christian University, CA. He holds an MBA in General Management from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, CA and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, CA. He received BS in Mechanical Engineering from Seoul National University in Seoul, South Korea. He is a PMI certified Project Management Professional and a registered Professional Engineer in Mechanical Engineering.

Google Launches Real-Time Search... Toast is Burning

Not a big prediction since most people knew it was coming, but here's what I wrote in the comments of my tech op-ed at Mashable, "4 Emerging Trends of the Real-Time Web":

When Technorati, Feedster and others arrived on the scene. I loved their services, but believed that once Google paid attention to this space and developed their own blog search that Technorati and others would be toast. A few years later, Google quietly launched their blog search service and I made the switch within a year once their search results were better than Technorati’s.

So I'm doubtful of any big new companies in this space and expect only smaller exits of $10M-$30M for those trying to be a comprehensive search engine. That's why I think vertical categories have more potential. Of course, I could be wrong but will keep track of this space. Thanks!

In my initial draft, I was more negative and my third emerging trend, "Real-Time Search is Looking Up," was actually written as "Real-Time Search is Toast" since I was referring to the startups trying to be the next Google of real-time search. Unless you like butter and jam, I warned people to avoid this space that Google and other big dogs would eventually conquer. Since it was an op-ed, which was to be encouraging to entrepreneurs, I changed it to a more upbeat title.



Google's official announcement here.

4 Emerging Trends of the Real-Time Web

My op-ed on the real-time web is up at Mashable. HatTip to Adrian Chan, Dave S. and John S. for providing their insights on this piece. Check it out, comment and retweet if you can :)

4 Emerging Trends of the Real-Time Web

There is a lot of hype surrounding the real-time web, and much of the feeding frenzy reminds me of the RSS space four years ago — though there is a lot of potential, there is also a lot of noise. How do you navigate through it all and which developments should you be paying attention to? What are the emerging trends for companies and entrepreneurs to watch for? Here are four real-time web trends that I’m tracking.

Real-Time Collaboration is Ripening
Real-time will play a major role in the future of online collaboration. We’ve seen all the hype around the new Google Wave platform, as well as the growth of Twitter and Twitter-like communications (such as Facebook status). On the business side, SAP’s Gravity, a prototype of real-time collaborative business process modeling within Google Wave, is a good example. But I see this as the tip of the iceberg.

Companies that are more efficient have an advantage whether within their walls or with their customers. Imagine being able to make real-time changes with your colleague in another city and graphic designer at your local Kinko’s to finalize a presentation and print it hours before your meeting. Or working with your manufacturer in Nanjing, China on changes to your new BBQ grill design and seeing if it’s possible in real-time. Or game developers in Korea and Dallas story boarding a new video game concept in a new real-time game development application. There is massive potential for real-time collaboration across almost every discipline, and I believe there are an incredible amount of exciting possibilities here... (full post)