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Population: One

And we'll throw in a mule

January 8, 2003
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Utterly elite. Amazon is now offering the Sidekick for fifty bucks after rebate. And, come to think of it, if you use Share the Love I bet you get the full 10% of $250, which would make it an additional twenty-five bucks off, assuming one of your friends takes advantage of the deal. Um. That would mean you’re getting a Sidekick for twenty-five bucks.

Twenty-five bucks. It’s a cell phone, an email station, a web browser, an AIM client, and a crappy camera. Plus all the essential organizer functions. But hell, even if you can’t share the love, it’s still just fifty bucks.

I cannot believe that this thing became commodity hardware so quickly.

Gathering of the tribes

January 7, 2003
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I’m at the Apple Store watching the Macworld Expo keynote broadcast. Lots of audience shots onscreen right now, so I got into the spirit of the thing and snapped two pics, visible at Hiptop Nation. I’ll update this if Jobs says anything interesting.

My, this is an excited crowd locally. Steve can’t hear you clapping, you know.

OK, an iPod jacket with controls on the sleeve is cool.

More integration between the iApps is pretty cool. Updates for all of ‘em, it sounds like… ah, except iTunes, which had hiden features in 3.0. iPhoto 2, with integration plus really slick retouch. Wow, very solid integration.

iMovie has chapters, heh. Better audio editing, good. New UI! About time. Integration with iTunes is slick. I wonder if that service is available to other apps? Pans over still photos, with iPhoto integration as a photo source.

iDVD 3, again with integration. Direct export from iMovie into iDVD. Chapters! 24 new themes. Hugely slick menu building.

The whole schmear is now named iLife, available 1/25, free with new Macs. All still free exceot iDVD, which comes as a bundle with everything else in the suite for $49.

New browser! Safari. Very fast, and yeah, they benchmarked it vs. Chimera. Integrated Google. Ew, brushed metal UI. He likes his bookmark implementation but it doesn’t seem so innovative. Still, it’s very fast and looks like a solid entry-level browser. Supports XHTML. It’s KHTML-based. Yeah, he’s putting all the improvements back into the community. Free beta download as of now.

Keynote — new presentation app. Steve’s been using it to do keynotes for a year. I guess we’re well into the screw Microsoft portion of the keynote. Yep, cause it imports Powerpoint. And exports. Nice. Cost is $99, available today.

New portable? Sort of, 17” Powerbook. Sexy! Thinner than the old model, too. 1440×900 display. Look up the specs on apple.com; it’s worth it. 802.11g! And a new Airport! Yeah! $199 for the new Airport. Insane.

One more thing… a new 12” Powerbook, which is the amallest notebook in the world. Cute.

More messages from the future

January 7, 2003
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Oliver Willis has AIM alerts going now. Slick. He mentions in email to me that he’s working on other messaging systems as well; I’d forgotten MSN Messenger as a player in cell phone messaging, but I shouldn’t, since Microsoft wants to be a player in the cell phone OS market.

I’m wondering if anyone’s going to pick up on this for the local elections in 2004. 2002 saw very little Internet action on the election front, even if you count Tara Sue Grubb’s weblog. I’ll be keeping an eye out for more proactive uses of the technology; looks like Tara Sue will as well.

And as long as I’m obsessing about this, I might as well pick up Smart Mobs.

State of the author

January 6, 2003
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By the by, I am sick as a dog and stoned out of my head on TheraFlu, so if I say anything really wacky today (or if I said anything really wacky yesterday) that’s why. I keep thinking I’m writing pithy witty paragraphs. I am very probably wrong.

Then again, maybe not

January 6, 2003
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Oliver Willis (blogging maniac) is already pushing the SMS thang, in his unofficial John Edwards weblog. Mind you, it’s one guy, but one guy can have a lot of leverage these days.

Looks like he’s using Upoc to do mass SMS messaging. I guess it’s a start, but he’s going to need to get email and AIM into the mix, too. The legendary Randomness observes, in response to my thoughts earlier today, that “there just isn’t the SMS culture in the States that there is in South Korea, Japan, or Europe.” Truth. But I think it’s gonna be email and AIM on mobile devices that makes it happen in the US.

We don’t have an SMS culture. We do have a serious instant messaging culture. We’re gonna see widespread AIM/email on cell phones before we see a lot of American kids using SMS. The free Nokia I got for signing up with T-Mobile (the 3390) came with AIM built in, so I think it’s hit the commodity point.

Anyhow, I signed up for his group, not so much because I’m an Edwards supporter but because I want to see how it gets used.

Really far outreach

January 5, 2003
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If South Korean elections can be swung by smart mobs, what’s that say about US politics? Mind you, the voter turnout was a mere 70%, which is the lowest ever for a South Korean presidental election. Conventional wisdom says that Roh Moo-hyun benefited from text messaging because it helped him get out the vote, but the low turnout seems to contraindicate that. Possibly the turnout would have been slimmer if not for the smart mobs? Hard to say.

Anyhow, here’s the prescription for whichever US party wants to use cell phones effectively. First, don’t telemarket. That’s intrusive. You want to use the communication channels in non-intrusive ways. Second, collect contact info. When you run a get out the vote rally, find out if your voters like SMS, AIM, or email for mobile communication, and get the info you need to send messages via the preferred method. Third, don’t overuse it. Election day, you betcha, send a message asking if they’ve voted yet (and when they reply, mark down the answer; it’s all automatable). Do it again before the polls close, for those who didn’t say “yeah, I voted.” Maybe a few messages here and there in the week before to keep buzz going.

Use messaging more heavily for the activists. Definitely use it on election day. If your poll monitors don’t have some way to take a picture and transmit it back to HQ instantly, you’re missing a big bet — you want to be able to get the word out as quickly as possible if something happens.

Betcha none of this happens by 2004.

Out and about

January 5, 2003
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I’m standing at a bus stop in Harvard Square, realizing that I’m better off posting via Web than by email. Whoops; maybe not, since I can’t set categories this way. Oooops. Ah well.

The first day review of the Hiptop: pretty good, it’ got a very thoughtful design. For example, the @ sign is unshifted, which makes a ton of sense since it’s used so much. There’s decent autocapitalization. The keylock automatically tturns off if you flip the screen open, cause you’ll never do that unless you want to use it.

The core interface is good enough for now. There are some warts; you can’t do an address book lookup while writing an email message, for example, which is dumb since you can store email addresses in the address book. On the other hand, you can launch email from within the address book. The only really annoying quirk is that the email client loses track of attachments if you save a draft message. oh, and it sorely needs cut and paste, or at least a way to delete text from an email message so you don’t wind up quoting the whole damn message each time.

The unit is nicely integrated with the T-Mobile web site. You can import Outlook or Palm address lists via the Web. Nice stuff there.

The physical unit is barely big enough for me to type on, but not big enough to be clumsy on my belt. The case that comes with it kind of sucks; I’m on the lookout for a better one.

Let’s see. Oh, yeah, the camera. Check out Hiptop Nation for an idea of the quality. It’s bad, but the concept is exciting. Realtime pcitures from the mass event of your choice, good or bad? Heady stuff.

Overall I rather like it so far. And everyone in my office wanted to play with it, which has to say something.

[Edit: interesting lack of line breaks. My fault (I set up my bookmark wrong), not the hiptop’s.]

Another one hops on

January 4, 2003
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Gephardt’s in, which is somehow deeply unexciting news. Ah, bah; it’s good to have a traditionally Democratic candidate in the field. In theory, I’d like to see candidates in both sets of primaries from all over the political maps. I must try and be less cynical.

Course, that means I’d rather see Bernie Sanders than Howard Dean as the candidate from Vermont.