The Mac has prospered because of quality. Both in terms of Apple themselves and 3rd-parties. The iPhone is at a dangerous point right now. It’s on the verge of becoming commoditized and so is the 3rd-party software on it. And the VCs are right there behind this and will probably drive it if the market lets them.
via LKM’s stuff
ActiveWin notes that Microsoft’s shareholders are finally beginning to catch on to something I’ve been saying for years: Steve Ballmer is out of ideas. I further contend that he probably never had any to begin with.
Interesting blog written anonymously by a Starbucks barista in “a big city.” Dig the tagline:
Making your latte, working with the motto “just say yes,” dealing with the hobos, the clueless, the regulars, and amazing(ly dumb) customers. I’m your starbucks barista.
Good wit, and interesting insight into what goes on in front and behind the register. I got trained at Starbucks for a month around 2003, before I had to quit for a multimedia job that I couldn’t pass up. That certainly doesn’t qualify me to know much about the Starbucks culture, but even I recognize some of the strangeness written about here.
147xxxx has been added to Google Reader and my Tumblr follow list.
As seen on this TwitPic page. Funny.
It’s an advertisement for BeenUp2, what looks to be a new microblogging service that lets users post pictures and videos from camera phones “while your friends and family chit-chat about it live!” Looks kinda interesting, but I’m already buried up to my eyebrows in both social networks, microblogging services, and socialmicrobloggingservicenetworks for now.
Wow, the reviews aren’t treating Samsung’s iPhone-non-killing “Instinct” too well, so here’s a new tactic from Sprint: pay people to put the Instinct in a “home movie” on YouTube. Notice that the language doesn’t specify “your” Instinct; just someone’s Instinct. Any Instinct you can find.
Funny how iPhone owners appear more than happy to put their phone in YouTube home movies, spoofs, testimonials, and otherwise “zomg iPhone!” spots for free.
Jacqui Cheng, one of my editors, on an NBC exec speaking about qualms with iTunes Store distribution:
That’s right: NBC would like to dump its contents back onto iTunes, ask you for at least $2 (or more) per episode, and then have Apple place extremely tight restrictions on if and how it can be played on an iPod or iPhone. Without the ability to take it with you offline—like, say, when you’re riding the train to work, or flying across the country—there isn’t a lot of difference between buying a show on iTunes and watching it for free on Hulu. And perhaps that’s the point.
Considering that we can finally take video content off our computers conveniently (and securely, for better and worse) with great gadgets like the iPhone and Apple TV, part of me thinks Jacqui’s headline could simply have been “NBC exec: ‘I am high as a kite.’”
Macworld says AT&T has begun taking over Starbucks WiFi hotspots from T-Mobile. Straight out the gate, AT&T is already doing a bunch of interesting things with the service:
For those who aren’t in AT&T’s thrall already, you can get up to two hours of consecutive free access every day by putting value on a Starbucks stored-value card, and either using it or adding funds to its balance at least every 30 days.
Smart way to add another benefit to those recently refreshed Starbucks Cards.
I’ve been a T-Mobile Hotspot customer for years as I’ve always needed a place to do work and school stuff away from home, and I’ve always thought T-Mobile’s overall handling of the service was pretty pathetic. Never any real promotions, and never a change from the ridiculous prices of $30/month with a one-year contract, $20/month if you’re a T-Mobile wireless customer or Starbucks employee, or a whopping $40 month-to-month.
If you need more than two daily hours, service is $20 a month (I believe without a contract) for non-AT&T broadband customers, or free if you have at least 1.5MB DSL/broadband service as a home customer.
Great move all around. Two hours is a generous offering for the casual user, and $20/month is definitely reasonable for people like me who spend a little more time than the normal customer actually sitting down in a Starbucks to do work.
I, for one, welcome our new Starbucks AT&T hotspot overlords.
No, not the credit cards. I mean the “Starbucks Card,” the equivalent of a gift card that you can “register at the website” and auto-deposit a daily, weekly, or monthly allowance onto.
There’s been no real benefit to these cards since Starbucks began offering them (aside from the gift card aspect and interesting designs, of course). Dumping an allowance onto the card didn’t really do anything but let Starbucks make interest off your money.
But in a Westminster, CO Starbucks today I saw a small flier that introduces some new benefits to registering and using these cards. Specifically:
Finally, some nice perks to using these card. We buy enough beans to make the free tall drink worth it, and free refills mean I can afford to spend a little more time working away from the house.
Now, Starbucks, let’s talk about those calculatedly painful-after-45-minutes hard wood chairs.
Virgin Media’s CEO Neil Berkett says the company is already in talks to with content providers about paying to get their content delivered faster. Jackass:
Feeding into the debate between internet service providers and the BBC over iPlayer, Berkett even warned that public service broadcasters who choose not to pay for faster access to Virgin’s subscriber base would end up in “bus lanes”, effectively having their content delivered to consumers at a lower speed.
Who cares about safety when there’s revenue to be had?
Time and time again studies have shown that if cities really wanted to make traffic crossings safer there’s a very simple way to do so: increase the length of the yellow light and make sure there’s a pause before the cross traffic light turns green (this is done in some places, but not in many others). Tragically, it looks like some cities are doing the opposite!… six US cities have been caught decreasing the length of the yellow light below the legal limits in an effort to catch more drivers running red lights and increasing revenue.
Downright highway robbery. I sure hope people get fired over this.
Linkblog
2 days ago 