Groupon - is there a change to come?

Launched in November 2008, Groupon features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in more than 500 markets and 44 countries, and soon beyond. They have about 6,000 people working in Chicago headquarters, a growing office in Palo Alto, CA, account executives based in local markets across North America and regional offices in Europe, Latin America, Asia and throughout the world.

Groupons offers are mostly high discounted (50%) and Groupon gets a 50% share of revenue from vendors. Groupon is so successful because of the high discounts which they are able to offer because mostly their clients are local businesses or high priced products. However a few companies are complaining that Groupon does not bringing repeating customer to their business and they are losing money with Groupon offers.

Other coupon websites are more concentrated on big brands and these brands don't offer such high discount. You might get 2for1 offers for smaller grocery items or maybe a $4 off diapers.

The high discount and the target of local business gave Groupon an estimated revenue in 2010 of $860 Million. Groupon is only 2 years old and grew from 200 people to 6000 and it is named as the fastest growing Internet company in history.
The founder (Andrew Mason) started his career with thepoint.com which got funded by Eric Paul Lefkofsky. Thepoint.com is still online but almost no activities. Mason did build groupon during his time with thepoint and Lefkofsky stayed with Groupon as CFO till Jason Child joined Groupon as CFO.

Today was a small article that Rob Solomon is stepping down as President and COO. Solomon worked before Groupon at Sidestep.com as Founder and CEO which got acquired by KAYAK a travel search engine. Before he served as SVP Commerce & VP/GM Shopping at Yahoo.

Solomon is saying that Groupon grew too much and he can't keep up anymore with the size of the company. Why should he step back when the company is so successful? Should he not be excited to figure out to run it?

There can be only 3 reasons. Either he does not agree with the management at Groupon how they make business, which could mean that groupon does maybe make $680 Million in revenue but might be totally chaotic intern and hire too many people etc that Solomon does see not a great future for Groupon. Or he got so pissed of that Groupon did not accept the offer from google and therefore he did not get the money he was hoping for, which is again an indicator that he does not believe the company is as big and as successful as everybody is saying. He might know the real thing, which we don't know.
Or he does not fit in the formed management and the CEO and Investors want to have him go. To be a successful company it is important that in bad times or in extreme growth, the whole management will fight for the same goals.
If he is not a beloved COO and the staff did not like him neither then there is a good reason that he has to leave, which would give him at $200 Million for leaving the company before contract ends.

If he is leaving because of things he sees at Groupon and does not like, then the problem might be bigger. I am pretty sure if he leaves for this reason he has already a good new position lined up, and in this case he will certianly take some of his team with him (middle management) etc.

I see Groupon as a great idea, but i have my doubts in companies which are growing so fast. Growing revenue is always grew at, but growing from 200 to 6000 people in two years by offering basically the same service as before is suspicious. If groupon has a gross revenue of $860 Million and 600 employees than the revenue per employee is only $72K ($144K before ref share with their clients). As an example Apple and Google has an average revenue per employee of $1 Million. Yahoo a company which does not so well right now still has $500K per employee. The average for the top 100 NASDAQ is $500k much more than Groupon has. (Source J. Bryan Scott).

Maybe this is the reason Groupon posts on their own website they have only 1,500 employyes which would make their revenue much closer to the top companies. However many sources are saying their are at least 2000 people at Groupon which would bring their RPE to $212k or $425k depending how we want to see the numbers.

However my calculation are based on a Reuters article:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Groupon Inc's president and chief operating officer Rob Solomon is stepping down from his position at the Internet company in the coming months, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.


The Journal cited an interview with Solomon, who said he would remain special advisor to Groupon, the article said.

Solomon said that he decided to step down partly because "Groupon got really big," growing from 200 employees a year ago to some 6,000, the article said. Solomon said he reached his decision to leave in consultation with Groupon Chief Executive Officer Andrew Mason, the article said.

Facebook - retailers and brands, in or out!

Two years ago I got tons of emails from friends asking me to join facebook. It seemed almost that if you are not in facebook you are out.

With 500 million users worldwide and 120 million in the US it seems to be right.

Now another interesting move is happening. I did get over 10 emails from different companies asking me to join their facebook page in the last two weeks (just before the holiday season starts). Brands and retailers like Lufthansa, Bestbuy and Delta, almost all retailers I shop.

They are now understanding they can't ignore Facebook anymore. Facebook is the biggest portal in the world, not social network anymore it is really a social portal.
The big win for google.com back in time was that google was not a portal. Portals did not work out well and google had this great search engine.

Google is an amazing company and many people want to work for them (a company who had the grateful dead chef must be good).
But google was so concentrated on extending their service that they missed the social hub and the chance to build a social portal. To google's excuse, they are known as search engine and it is always hard to convince consumers that they can be more. Yes it seems to work with android, but only because businesses are driving the market penetration and not the consumers.
There are studies that consumers don't care to much of the OS of a phone, 60% of consumers even don't know what OS their smart phone has.

Facebook will soon for good surpass google as number one website, and brands and retailers do know it. They have to go into facebook even if they might not want. It is the best way reach out to majority of Internet users. And we will see another spike in new FB users sign ups because brands and retailers are doing more in facebook. Certain coupons, discounts and samples will be only available in Facebook.
Bestbuy, 1800flowers and Disney are already offering their products through facebook. We will see special deals only on Facebook to get users to sign up for Facebook brand pages. Pizzahut once offered 15% discount on pizza's ordered through iPhone to get as many usage of their iphone app, such things are coming into facebook.

Facebook is not only reaching 22% of the world population it has as well in America a 23% market share in display ads and in the UK even 30%





Facebook is as well number 1 in time spent in comparison to other social networks. We spend 6 minutes of each internet hour on facebook.






If we compare Facebook with google and time spent, then Facebook is the clear winner as well.






But the most important part is that the bounce rate. FB has much lower bounce rate. Which make sense, google is only a hub to other websites.

In FB the user stays there and even more when the brands and retailers are in FB. Then there is no need to go to any other website. The ultimate portal.







I predict within 12 months Facebook is number 1 and so strong that it is almost not possible to imagine how the life was without Facebook.

Dictionaries once extended their editions with "googled" as definition of search. Soon we will find something like "FBs" as a definition of social.

For brands or retailers not being in FB is missing a train to to success, however just being in FB or duplicating a brand page in FB is not the answer. The concept must be right.

FB will as well reduce the user base for Twitter and foursquare, since FB is offering service. If i need to bet money I would not bet on Twitter or foursquare.


- Posted using My iPad

Please don't forget to visit my blog http://justhiswords.blogspot.com or follow me on twitter schlotz69

Location:W Laurel St,Tampa,United States

Barcodes on TV is not the answer

From the comfort of their sofas, mobile-phone users can scan a bar code embedded in commercials on certain evening shows on Bravo and instantly obtain additional information about a product and a discount to buy it.

The 45-second commercials by the online fashion retailer Bluefly show snippets of its “Closet Confessions” interviews with designers and celebrities like Bethenny Frankel, who appeared on “The Real Housewives of New York City,” and the Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir.



When the cellphone is pointed at the on-screen bar code, the user is linked to a complete closet-baring episode, which can run as long as five minutes, and offered a $30 discount on a $150 purchase at bluefly.com, which sells designer and other branded clothing and accessories.

The idea is brave, but not convenient.
Depending on your distance to TV and the size of your TV you have to get close to the TV, hold your phone still and try to scan the barcode. Even if the image would be big enough for doing the scan without getting up, the scan is hard to do because of the bright TV backlight.

Shazam and SciFi have the better approach by using sound. Shazam is a famous application to record some music and then get the author, group and song name back (their DB has over 1 Billion songs). But since a few weeks Shazam is offering with SciFi the ability to record a few seconds of (as example) Eureka and as a result the user gets extra info back (see one of my older blogs).

It is much more convenient and easier to use. The consumer does not need to get up or hold the phone in a weird position to get results.

Barcodes are great and have their place in our life, like product packages or print media where no sound is available. But TV commercials should not depend on barcodes. Most phones don't have a barcode reader, the consumer has to download it the first time, same for shazam. But shazam has already over 75 million users and 20 million smart phone users, more than any barcode app has.

And then there is the problem that in the US is no standard for 2 dimensional barcodes (qr codes). Microsoft has their color codes, some have only two color codes and then there is a third version which is a combination of both.
In Europe and Japan QR codes are regulated to one standard.

We will see more integration of mobile and TV and maybe all devices and Advertisement will follow us from device to device utilizing sound not barcodes.



- Posted using My iPad

Location:W Laurel St,Tampa,United States

Total connect

Internet, wifi, augmented reality and social network is changing our life.
Computers, processors and memory get faster and cheaper. Combining all these things together with everyday electronic items like toaster, fitness tools or microwave gives us a new way of life.
Soon we will be able to decide which item should be connect to the world and which not.
Today we have already scales with wifi to collect and save our weight to our phones or computers and can send updates to Facebook or Twitter. This helps to get controlled through friends or trainers, In countries like US where friends can live hundreds of miles away.

Microwaves will soon have wifi with a scale and camera build in.
We put our food into the microwave. It will measure the weight send an image of the product to a DB and second later the microwave will set temperature and time to the perfect amount.

Toasters will burn funny images on our toasts, which we chose from an online image library.

Our cars will be connected to our smart phone not that we only can find the car on a big parking lot but as well to start and open the car and to see the car health. The car will post to our Facebook page when an oil change is needed and set an appointment with the car dealer knowing when we have time by looking in our calendar and social behavior.

Our fridge will have a touchscreen in the door which shows us an image from inside with information which item will soon be bad and what we should order because we run out of it. We can order everything through the internet using the touchscreen.

The ability is unlimited and in a few years, it will be not anymore the question what a smart phone can do but which utility we should replace because it can't connect with the world or our life.

The only negative part could be that companies would start to think how to monetize every day items.

I believe it will self regulate and not too much advertising but new ways to monetize which we don't know yet how.

The total connect future is big and interesting. It is right now a good time to follow these new waves and to be a part of it.

Companies which will help to make this total connect future secure and build on top of all a perfect privacy setting toll will be the biggest winners.

The technology is changing too fast that many companies can't keep up with proper rules and settings for privacy. It is normal that we first develop a product and then work on the privacy after first complains are coming in.


- Posted using My iPad

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States

Airwaves will change internet

This month, the F.C.C. is likely to approve what could be an even bigger expansion of the unlicensed airwaves, opening the door to supercharged Wi-Fi networks that will do away with the need to find a wireless hot spot and will provide the scaffolding for new applications that are not yet imagined.

To get today a descent internet connection outside from home or office is only possible over 3G or wifi. 3G is expensive and wifi costs many times money too when no free wifi is available. But the most disturbing part are the dead spots. How often do we run around with our notebook to find a good connection. Or we are driving through the country and there is nothing than beautiful land but no Internet.
Utilizing the unlicensed airwaves will change the landscape. They have bigger reach and can go through trees, thick walls etc. We all know this airwaves, it is what radio station basically used. Local digital TV are using airwaves too, but only a few frequencies. Around them are white noises and these are perfect for internet.
White noises are used today by wireless baby cameras, microphones and other wireless devices.
Opening the unlicensed airwaves will put cellphone carriers under pressure, we would not need them anymore, we could make calls over Internet from everywhere.
The idea is that devices will recognize airwaves signals and switch the connection when a better signal is available. Of course devices connected to the airwaves will be at the beginning more expensive because of the technology and complexity, but after a few years the prices should be not relevant anymore. I remember my first wifi router with two wireless cards from 3M in the year 1999 was $2000.
Today wireless cards are standard in each device and a routers are starting at $30.
Theatres are complaining this would interfere with their microphones, but I am sure the F.C.C will exclude the the wireless microphone frequencies.
Baby phones and other wireless devices will be revamped and use Internet connection.

Overall it is a great move, I believe it helps the consumer to save money in the long-term and helps people on country side to get much better internet connection. The only way right now is either slow dial up or internet over dish, but dish does very dependent on weather. Airwaves work always.
Opening airwaves will he the economy, a lot of start ups will jump on this and the beauty is that it will be much cheaper for them to do so. If F.C.C. Would have chosen an auction model like for UMTS (in Europe) then only the big players would be able to utilize airwaves and this would mean we consumer would need to pay a lot for the service.

Besides all excitement, it will take awhile till we can have this new type of Internet connection. It will be some work to figure out how to utilize it and how to make it secure. We can expect companies like Google and Microsoft to be in the mix from the beginning. They have working and supporting this since years.

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Location:W Laurel St,Tampa,United States

Sound is the new click and touch

The world is changing and smart phones are helping a lot to change the world.
More and more applications for the iPhone and Androids are using sound for interaction instead of touching or clicking on banners.

Last night I watched one of my favorite shows "Eureka". During the show an ad came up to tell the audience to start their Shazam application to get exclusive videos from the show.
Shazam is an app which listen usually to music and gives the user the name of the song and author back. It is a pretty nice app, for people like me, who never know any songs. It is easy to use, you start the app hold the phone in front of a speaker and hit the button. 10 seconds later the info is on the phone screen.
This time, with Eureka, it gave me much more info back and worked perfect.







Pretty amazing how advertising is combining TV and smart phones and using sound for this.

If would have to put in a code or scan an image on the TV it would have been too much work, but starting an app without leaving the bed is perfect.

This is not the first time that an app is using sound to tricker certain things on your phone. The first time i saw, was with the Best Buy movie mode app. The app will translate the hilarious minions talking, when you run this app in selected 3D cinemas. The translation is text only that other movie visitors don't get disturbed.

Sony has for their 51 blue ray video an app which will give the user specials when watching the movie.

And then there is kickbucks. An app to collect points in stores. You can either get points by scanning barcodes or through sound.
The idea is that certain stores have multiple speakers installed in different places of store. The app will collect points, whenever the user is close to one of the speakers. The person might go to the dressing room and gets 50 points. These points can be redeemed through the app at the offered stores.



The idea with sound is great because it has better proximity than GPS. GPS is only as good as 20 meters and not working well in buildings. With sound you can get better results.
The application works impressive well, however you can fake the system if you have two iPhones. One is using iAnalyzer to record and play sound and the the other is running kickbucks. However it only works if you are in or close to the store.
But I was able to collect 1200 points instead of only 50 points.

Bottom line is, that companies are understanding that there is much more possibilities than just clicking on a screen or typing with keyboard to interact with customer or target audience.

The next iPhone will have a RFID reader which opens much more for the world, especially for retail stores.

The Internet stores started to take consumers away from brick and mortar stores. Smart phones and their apps will take the consumer away from the Internet stores but bring them back again to the b&m stores.

Smart phones are helping to combine online and offline into one new type of shopping experience.


- Posted using My iPad

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States

Google beat

As mentioned in an earlier post, I believe the internet will go more and more away from text to more video driven content. The technology is ready and the speed is there too.
Google is starting to jump on this even if it is just a small step.
Google is offering now google beat which is a weekly video presented by Anne Espiritu. The video tells the user the top three searches over a week. Of course not searches which are rated as pornography.
Gabriel Stricker is saying "the point of these videos is to answer the question of what people are searching for."
The video is produced at google and will have production time.
However with the emerging ability to produce realistic computer animated graphics I can see in the future search results or these kind of videos produced on the flow.

Below is the first google beat video and more to come.


- Posted using My iPad

Location:NW Shore Blvd,Tampa,United States

Are browsers dying?

I don't think so, but we can see a landscape changing since the mobile market is growing so fast.
Already today users with smart mobile devices are spending 79 minutes in average online with their device (source admob). Internet usage overall (on PC) in the US is 13 hours a week (source cnet). Mobile usage is doubled in the last 12 months but internet usage went slightly down.
80% of mobile online usage is generated through applications and not internet browsers.
All this could indicate that in the near future most of the people will access the web through applications instead through websites.
But think it is just temporally. Mobile devices are new and all of them have different resolutions and functions. It is like when the internet started and it was hard to make nice websites for all computers because of different browsers, graphic cards and resolutions. But this changed pretty fast as the tools got better and we did rethink from print to new display method . I remember at the beginning of my career, nobody did want to build browser based applications for this and some other reasons. Today, almost every enterprise application is browser based.
But why are there over 300,000 mobile apps? And what is different to a Internet page?
The difference is not big actually, most of the apps are depending on Internet connection and are just websites optimized for the mobile device. All of these apps could be web pages and most will be in the future. I believe in 12-18 months we will see a trend of disappearing apps and moved the content back into browsers. Browser will have offline cache and the user won't need to have Internet access all the time.
Right now the app hype is high because it is easier to build custom optimized applications than trying to do it through browsers and the companies can charge a lot for apps (The first webpage I did build in 1994, I charged 10k, today I would not get more than $300 for the same simple page).
But to be realistic, most of the apps are nothing than short cuts for Internet pages which displays the content in a different way.
We can already put a short cut of a web page on the iPhone desktop and looks like an app. Click on the icon will open the website. It is just a matter of time till agencies will figure out to build cool "apps" within browser page.
And in a few years there will be no question anymore if user has Internet access or not. We are just connected, as we just make phone calls when we want.
Till then we will see a higher growth in mobile internet usage through applications and a decline of internet usage through browser and PC.

- Posted using My iPad

Location:W Laurel St,Tampa,United States

Perfect life for a geek

Before the iPad came out there were many speculations what the new Apple device will be. I did speculate too and said it will be a thin touch pad (slate) where you can slide your iPhone in to use. I thought this would be perfect. I have been wrong the iPad is better.
However an Israeli startup has made a modular mobile phone that can work on its own or slip into other electronic devices. But do we need it?
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/08/14/apple-manager-arrested/?source=yahoo_quote


Instead of the need to slide a device into another device, every device should have Internet connection without paying extra fees.

Here is my dream as a geek (I don't see me as a geek, but my friends).
Any camera, notebook, phone, touch pad etc has a build in 3G card or Wimax. Carriers like ATT and Verizon will have a new model. They will not charge multiple data plans. Just a one time fee for each device to set it up with your main account. It does not matter how many devices you have, you have one contract and one phone number.

A geek's day in 2013
During breakfast we tape a video of our son with our camera and send with the camera the video to Facebook.
When we arrive in the office, we put our smartphone into the docking station which is connected to two 21inch screens, mouse and keyboard. All apps are in the cloud and the smart phone serves as browser and file storage if necessary.
When we go to a meeting we take our iPad to take notes which are synced with the cloud. When we are back at the desk all things we did capture on the iPad are already on the phone.
On the way home we take the train and write our blog on the iPad.
The devices will be smart, that whenever 3G is weak it will switch to wifi, if both is not available all devices in proximity will build a private network, till one devices is found with enough Internet connection. Being not connected is almost not possible.
And nobody can hack into your devices because any transaction of a data package is encrypted with a code assigned to main account number. The only way to hack the data transfer would be direct on the account level which is guarded by the best security experts in the world.
When leaving the train, we take our car for the last mile home. As soon we start our car, the build in phone gets activated and all calls get routed to there.
We switched our GPS on which is projected to the windshield as annotated reality. We see the real street through the window with an overlay of information. An arrow in the middle of the screen as sign we have to go straight. With points of interests showing where we could have dinner.
Twitter and FB messages are running as audio through the Bose speaker system. We tweet a friend back by saying "tweet @Hans, the new car is awesome. I am here. Car position". The car computer translates "car position" into a link to google maps with a dot of my car position.
Finally at home, we have dinner and decided to go out for a beer. The only thing we take with us is our smart phone. House keys? No. The locks are connected to our phone with a security key. Wallet? No. The bar accepts phone payments. ID? No. The phone is your ID.
Having too much drinks, we decided to take the taxi. Arriving at home we type the tip amount onto our phone and shake it. The taxi is paid and a green light goes on at the driver seat as a sign that the payment worked.
At home we switch our lights on and off with our smart phone, the smart phone is the only remote for TV, radio, lights etc.
Browsing through channels we decided to watch a recorded movie which we did record remotely when we have been in the bar.
A few minutes in the movie we get a Facebook entry that there is a new cool device (shown on TV screen, with messages showing what our friends are watching).
We open on the TV the website of this cool device. It sounds promising, it is extremely social, can handle emotions and has better communication accessories than anything else. The storage memory seems to be almost endless. And everybody wants to have it. But the demand is so high that there is a big waiting list.
We believe this must be a hoax. They call it girl friend. They say it costs nothing but the invest of social interaction in a real life.

Note:
all devices And functions I talked in this blog are already more or less developed. Sone are still in testing some are on the market. It is just a matter to put them together.

Examples:
Dish network has an iPhone app which allows you to program your TVR
Verizon Fios shows tweeter and Facebook on your TV screen.
Annotated browser can be found on android and iPhone as download.
The US air force is using projected screens in their jet fighters
Schlage link logs can be monitored over the Internet.
Some European countries are allowing grocery shoppers to pay with their phone.



- Posted using My iPad

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States

Apple's numbers are strong and what comes next?

Apple Inc.'s quarterly profit surged 78%, as the company booked strong initial sales of its iPad tablet computer and the latest version of its smartphone, the iPhone 4.

The company also issued a strong forecast for the current quarter, allaying immediate concerns that the iPhone 4's high-profile antenna problems might slow Apple's sales. Apple's revenue in the quarter ended June 26 rose 61% to $15.7 billion.

Apple's quarterly profit jumped 78%, thanks to continued strong demand for its gadgets. It sold 3.3 million iPads and 8.4 million iPhones in the quarter. Sameer Bhatia and Rex Crum analyze the numbers with Simon Constable & Lauren Goode.

Full article here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703724104575379473713612064.html?ru=yahoo#mod=yahoo_hs

But more important than this info that Steve jobs and Tim Cook are saying that one more new product is coming this year.
Quote:.... "amazing new products still to come this year."

Another article which mentioned the same quote http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/technology/21apple.html?_r=2&partner=yahoofinance

I am right now taking bets. I already mentioned that Apple might reinvent their Apple TV, but maybe not.
Steve said that at the end of year will be more than 100 million devices running facetime. And we did hear that a lot of companies like Google are working on Internet TV boxes. As I posted earlier I believe Social TV could be the next thing.
if Apple is redoing their Apple TV with iOS 4 it will have a camera, but would it make sense, my Apple TV is in a cabinet, away from the the TV.
Maybe Apple is working on a TV with iOS 4 , build in camera and perfect 3D. We should not forget that Steve did own and founded Pixar. Plus he is still on the board of Disney. Perfect to develop cool TV experience (maybe new UI) and good connection to tons of movies. And Apple has already their cinema displays. My iMac has 27 inch which is pretty decent.
But TVs are different than phones or computers, Apple needs to have too many sizes to offer. You can't just have one or two versions.
I think Apple can, Apple will be able to sell to the public only three sizes of TV, from 32 inch to 52 inch.
But this again would be too easy. The TV market is pretty extreme busy with Sony, Samsung, LG, Panasonic etc.
My best bet is that the next big thing from Apple will be something like a new version of Apple TV and something like a TV. Something which exists since many years but is not really used in normal households, only seen in offices and home cinema rooms.
Apple will reinvent the screen projector. Something which does not need a special screen to get best quality. A projector running iOS 4 which can be in any ankle to the wall and still delivers a trapeze free picture.
Something which comes with a free wireless iSight camera which can be positioned anywhere we want and follows our eyes.
Ok i admit, having an extra camera is not really Apple worlds. They want to sell products, which you unwrap, plug into the wall and works.
If it is not a projector then it is maybe a TV, an all in one TV with build camera (why is there no TV with build camera anyway?) and the input device/remote is either your apple remote, your iPhone or iphone touch and of course your wireless apple bluetooth keyboard.
To round the whole idea up, the ipad will be able to stream movies which are bought through the new Apple real TV or projector.
I think whatever Apple will bring out, will be one device which does not need another device to work, no screen, no computer, no external camera.
BTW the projector or TV idea is not totally out of my mind. Samsung which got a big order from Apple to build the 9.7inch displays for the iPad, got another big order to build 5 million 42 inch LED displays, without telling who did place the order, it could be Apple.
On the other hand, Apple has 12 new granted patents which few of them could indicate importance for a new type of TV.

http://www.latestpatents.com/apple-patents-granted-on-20-july-2010/#more-9851

12 US patents granted on 20 July 2010 and assigned to Apple

1 D620,020 Graphical user interface for a display screen or portion thereof
2 D620,004 Electronic device
3 7,761,811 User interface for assisting in the installation of an asset
4 7,761,800 Unified interest layer for user interface
5 7,761,798 System and method for controlling the screen display appearance for a data processing system
6 7,761,488 File creation API
7 7,761,414 Asynchronous data synchronization amongst devices
8 7,761,118 Database programs for handheld devices
9 7,760,767 Wide area peer-to-peer synching in a decentralized environment
10 7,760,559 Integrated circuit with separate supply voltage for memory that is different from logic circuit supply voltage
11 7,760,528 Method and apparatus for providing high speed, low EMI switching circuits
12 7,760,187 Visual expander

1,5,7,10,11 and 12 can be useful for a very fast HD TV with 3D, where you might can plug in your iPad.

12 could indicate my dream since i have an iPhone. A 13inch screen and docking station for the iphone, where i plug my phone in and bang I have my personal computer with big screen and external keyboard. After the work day is over, I take the phone out of the docking station and go home.

Please let me your ideas know what device is coming next.

- Posted using My iPad

Location:4,United States

Apple ipad, Google goes without Windows and Skype has 3G enabled calls.

8 weeks of Ipad

It is now 2 months since I am using my ipad and I have to say I liked it so far.

The best part of the iPad is that I read more, not books, but newspapers like US Today, NYT editor choice, Financial Times and Popular Science. It is so much more convenient to read them online in a dedicated app then on the web or to buy the actual paper. However the big problem is that there is no such rule how the apps should work. All of them have different ways to get to the next page. Either swipe from left to right or vice versa, swipe from top to button or vice versa, tap once on column right or do whatever you want.

It would be nice that all publisher agreeing on one way. Some apps don’t allow to email an article (like FT), which is pretty annoying, because we want sometimes to inform other people about news we read.

Two things are the worst part in the ipad. Printing is not be default working tasks, there are some apps which can help you to print, but don’t include things like pages or keynote. Speaking of keynote, it is totally not cross platform compatible. It can read PowerPoint but can’t export or send PowerPoint, only pdf or keynote, this is a big drawback. I am using Windows in the office and develop sometimes on the road with the ipad keynote presentations; I can’t send them in a readable and changeable format to Windows.

The second not yet solved problem is that almost nobody (including Apple) is using the new input control as they could. Working with pages and keynote is slow and hard. Why not allowing multiple touch function to do certain things like drawing a new box, modifying pictures, and text? I have to go through some unnecessary menus. Here most of the developer can do much more with the ipad. Please think out of the box and allow certain functions through multiple finger use. Maybe tapping at the same time - top left and low right will create a box.

But otherwise the iPad is a cool product, so cool that a lot of vendors now building their own similar device, which hopefully we get down with netbooks, which I could never understand that they exist. If I want to have a notebook, then I would buy a real notebook, not a tiny screen with keyboard.

Google goes Windows less

This is one of the most interesting news I heard. An American company with over 10.000 employees will not have Windows anymore because Windows is not secure enough. If they want to use Windows the CEO has to approve.But more interesting is that user can choose between Linux and Mac OSX. Mac OSX? Are you serious, google is fighting with Apple on every front, but at the HQ they want to use Apple. I can’t understand, or I can? I think their new Chrome OS will either run on Apple computers or other Intel/AMD computers. So finally Google is trying to get their foot into Apple computers. I don’t think it has to do that designers like more Apple, because google is not really creative in usability or design. It always looks geeky. My guess is, that Chrome is coming soon and all google employees have to switch to Chrome or use Linux.

Latest iphone update from Skype does allow 3G calls

This is great, but what will this tell us? I strongly believe that ATT opened 3G internet calls and skype opened their app for 3G to get to the next step, which might be released on June 7th. Apple will announce their new iphone and we heard enough about the found prototype and its ability. With skype allowing 3G call it might be obvious that the new iPhone will have a front camera for video calling, why else should I use skype? Yeah for international calls, but then I would use other software, because most of the time I would call landlines and not other skype users. But with the hopefully upcoming front camera I can finally call again other skype users and don’t need to use my computer. Plus I don’t use my computer anymore on the road; I use my ipad which has no camera at all. I can’t wait till next iphone is coming out. I am pretty sure it will include I chat with a nice feature, but again, most of my friends don’t use AIM or ichat but skype. However with over 35 million iphone users, the  build in ichat app could bring us to a new level of communication (assumption that iphone will have ichat) and will have a front camera), which brings me to the point I made 18 months ago. I strongly believe the cell phone today will not exist in 3 years anymore or at least will be not number one calling device. Carrier will change. Companies or Verizon will not be a big player anymore as cell phone sellers and phone contracts. With Wifi, WiMax and and 3G, phones are not phone anymore they are small computer devices we use for making VOiP calls. Google will be provider number one, and ATT and Verizon will only exist if they change their model. But for sure most of our cell call will not use the classic calling structure anymore. All will go at the end over the internet.

Social TV – the answer it is (yes Yoda)

I am working on computers since 1982 almost every day. I had my first internet connection in the early 90es (I used in the 80es chats over acoustic coupler to connect to a kind of chat system). Since 1994 I am more or less in the online marketing. I tweet, I bing, I facebook, I wrote books. But I never ever wrote my own blog.

I never thought I need to, but too many people are telling me I should share my thoughts with others. Here we go, almost when blogging outside of a social network is not in anymore, I start. By the way you might think my English is weird. You are right, my origin is Germany and it took me 35 years till I decided to move to the states and to talk or write mostly in English. Please excuse any uncommon grammar or orthodox spelling.

Following the last couple of decades I learned that we all like to communicate, to express our self in any type of way, even if we have nothing to say. How often did we call 1minutes from home away our spouse to tell we are almost at home? How often did we look in the 80es on our beeper if somebody did left a message?

Now beepers are almost gone, and we are used to our cell phones, that we don’t do anymore useless “honey I am home” calls. Now we socialize through twitter or facebook. Do we really? I think we only like to tell everybody that we do things and we like to know gossip, we like to know who is doing what with whom.

However, we call it socialize, and I will call it socialize. But the big question is what is next?

Social TV – the answer it is (yes Yoda)

Sony, Google, Apple all big players are going to more interactive TVs. Years ago we tried it already but did not really work out. The idea was interactive advertisement on TV. It was too early. Internet speed too slow and consumer not used to such high tech things. Time changed. Now even 2 years old can handle ipad at ease (at least my son. He does not know how a TV works but can videos on my ipad).

With google developing cheap setup boxes and Panasonic or Sony having TV’s with internet connection Social TV is right in front of us.

In 2 to 3 years everybody is (when watching TV) looking who of their friends is watching the last episode of “Lost the reborn”, or sending during watching TV text to another friend that they should switch their channel to Food Network.

And it makes sense, don’t do we want to know what our buddies are doing?

ABC will announce they will within 12 months 25 Million followers for their Nightly news.

Nielsen is not needed anymore, because now advertisers and TV stations have live statistics. Omniture will be the biggest online TV statistic provider.
And even till then most of the big companies have figured out how to read internet statistic and how to utilize them they hire more metrics and statistic experts because nobody understands how to get the best TV statistic.

NBC will have a big lawsuit because they accidently collecting data from TVs which were mounted in bathrooms and would be unlawful data collection.

70% of divorce will claim that one reason of the divorce is too much female buddies in the social TV list.

But at the end we are all happy. We finally can see on our TV who is watching our favorite show and how many did like it.