Indeed: > Design is about making decisions, and Microsoft could not decide. ARM or Intel? Who should be on stage? Soft or hard keys on the keyboard cover? They went with “all of the above”. From http://daringfireball.net/2012/06/surface_between_rock_and_hardware_place
Good insight from Jean-Louis Gassée:
As consumers shift their use of Facebook from PCs to smartphones, investors worry about lower mobile advertising revenues. Is this a temporary situation that will be remedied when usage patterns settle, or do investors have a right to be concerned? Must the advertising industry learn to adapt to a permanently leaner income stream from smartphones?From http://www.mondaynote.com/2012/06/10/mobile-advertising-the-20b-opportunity-mirage/
I do not completely share his pessimism about location-based advertising though. Looking at how I use my smartphone, I can attest that there are plenty of consumption intents waiting to be seized:
- Looking at a product review while on location in a shop
- Checking out a product or service after talking about it with a friend
- Finding a cool bar or restaurant nearby on a Friday night
The key is to achieve this in an unobtrusive way. I don't mind ads on Google when they match my intent and help me accomplish what I had in mind. This opportunity still exist when using a mobile device.
JLG asks "Do we want barkers on our devices?", but this is not a fully valid metaphor. Barkers have no access to information from our network of friends or personal preferences. Services such as Foursquare or Facebook do. I'm convinced we'll see innovation in this area that makes better use of the capabilities offered by smartphones, potentially reinventing advertising in the process.
Taken at Beaubourg 59
Interesting article. In the end, it makes the case for tighter fiscal and economic integration of Europe and the Eurozone in particular. I hope we'll see Germany adopt this view and push it in the coming months.
Investors Chronicle - Europe's problem, Germany's choice
http://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/2012/06/01/comment/chris-dillow/europe-s-problem-germany-s-choice-unMKa7caMrTwS3zvIITh6J/article.html
Is everybody misdiagnosing the euro area’s crisis? Jorg Bibow of the Levy Economics Institute in New York thinks so. He says the region’s problem is not sovereign debt at all, but rather an internal balance of payments crisis.
Great article about the prospects of Windows 8 from Michael Mace, the guy who successfully predicted RIM's recent woes:
Read it at http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.ca/2012/05/fear-and-loathing-and-windows-8.html (it's a bit long, but it's definitely worth it).
Why you should care. The rollout of Windows 8 has very important implications for not just Microsoft but everyone in the tech industry. In normal times, most people are unwilling to reconsider the basic decisions they have made about operating system and applications. They've spent a huge amount of time learning how to use the system, and the last thing they want to do is start learning all over again. That's why the market share of a standard like Windows is so stable over time. But when a platform makes a major transition, people are forced to stop and reconsider their purchase. They're going to have to learn something new anyway, so for a brief moment they are open to possibly switching to something else. The more relearning people have to do, the more willing they are to switch. Rapid changes in OS and app market share usually happen during transitions like this.
Windows 8 is a revolutionary transition in Windows, easily the biggest change since the move from DOS to Windows in the early 1990s.