Year: 2010

Thoughts on GPS…

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

Having had mobile GPS units for some years – coupled with experience using both an iPhone and a Nexus One – I thought I would chime in on a few thoughts I have been banging around. First off – mobile phones won’t replace real GPS units anytime soon for those who seriously get off the beaten track a bit. Not so much explorers per say but people who might be in foreign countries and need to try their best not to get lost. For this type of cruising around, especially on a motorcycle, stand alone or purpose GPS units have no equal.

First off let’s state that smart phones with maps are awesome – no doubt about it. For pre-planning, walking around a city or for searching for things, GPS units suck at this, I find my iPhone a critical mobile asset. My Google phone was cool as well but so far I tend to get more mileage out of my iPhone since my life is not played out in the Google cloud which makes an Android based phone less appealing. The convergence of wireless with maps – plus the ability to make calls is great and I am sure will get better. However strapping a phone to the handle bars of my bike while I explore Southeast Asia will never happen. Simple as that.

Given this though I am surprised the Garmins of the world, my chosen GPS company, don’t realize that convergence, ease of use and adaptability are key. So here is what I wish Garmin would do to make my exploring even better.

This is not listed by importance but just some thoughts:

  • Add Wi-Fi. How hard can it be? I don’t need the phone, I don’t need email but browsing might be handy in a pinch since exploring the maps on a GPS device is not easy. What I want the Wi-Fi for though is to be able to download new functionality, update the maps, buy new regions and maybe someday use the power of the Internet to enhance the experience. The idea that I have to hook up to a PC to update my maps totally bites.
  • Make browsing maps easier and make searching easier. Typos, hard to spell street names and the way regions work makes it hard to locate something you are trying to find. Simple universal search box would be cool.
  • Make saving trips with waypoints, not just destinations, much easier. If the Wi-Fi was there allow me to back up my device to the cloud.
  • Make it easy for me to get from point A to point A but highlight cool things along the way, plot a course to them but keep me heading to point B. It is all math right? Point is I need to get to where I am going but the device could do better at helping me to enjoy the ride and see things I did not know where there. The attractions function works but only when you stop and you can’t control the radius. Works but could be much better.
  • Allow me to ping the web somehow to finds things that are around me – I think tomtom does some of this but clearly much more could be done to use the Internet to find interesting things created by users. This could dovetail with users sharing routes – I would even pay for this.
  • If I had the Wi-Fi, browsing, and some way of sucking things in – let me grab a route and plot it on the GPS since the direction capabilities on purpose built devices are top notch.

These are some ideas that would allow guys like Garmin to prosper even in the face of smartphone competition!

Android versus iPhone

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I won’t get into the nuances of Android OS versus iOS since this is not meant to be a technical dissertation. I remember an old buddy of mine constantly arguing with another buddy about PC versus Windoze. He used to say – everyone drives a Toyota does that mean I have to? I want to drive a Porsche – they make me feel good, they look cooler and they are expensive so less people have them. Status – does mean something to some people but not so much in a pretentious way but in a – well I work hard and I want to have what I want – what I can afford. Is it a crime? During this time Apple looked to be over and chumps like Michael Dell were saying Apple should close up and return money to shareholders. I think Apple could buy like 10 Dells now – not machines but the company.

So here we are again with the age old debates of the digerati telling you, the consumer, what you should buy. I carried a Nexus for like 6 months. It was okay. Nothing amazing really but then again I am not a big Google guy and the Android phones only excel if you are married to Google. My activesync hooks would die about every 4 weeks and I would lose email and contacts since the configs does not sync to the cloud – only the data does. I don’t use gMail and a lot of the other services only seem really relevant to the US.  Sure it was a smart phone and it killed my BB in every way but the battery life was deplorable and I honestly mostly used it a wi-fi hotspot. Which is a cool thing – I wish my iPhone did that.

I decided to get an iPhone 4, I have never had an iPhone, and I well – I can’t get enough of it. Better syncing, better battery, better camera and lots of wicked apps. Better app store and it syncs like a charm to iTunes. Yes – all of us know iTunes is the Trojan horse and I accepted that fate when I bought my first iPod 5gb – cause well it worked.

So now I am back to using my device to enhance my life more – rather than caring about openness, freedom and all the shit that honestly means very little to overall user experience. I reminds me back when I had to convince my friends that paying more for my Mac was worth every penny – yes Windoze was cheaper but overall it was more expensive cause it wasted too much of my precious time. I think the same with my iPhone. Maybe Android is more open, cheaper and so on – so? A Yamaha is cheaper than a BMW motorcycle – but ask me which one I would rather ride? A BMW. Any day of the week.

My point is – people buy what makes them feel good and what enhances their life. Android will appeal to some people but it won’t appeal to me. Is that such a big deal?

As usual DF sums it up well:

The differences between the iOS App Store and Android Market are a microcosm of the differences between Apple and Google. Apple is a retailer, a purveyor of well-crafted goods that people will line up to purchase. Google is an advertising company that builds popular services that command large audiences.

There’s a difference in culture — from the platform creators, from the developers writing software for the two platforms, and from what the users of these devices expect. For iOS, it’s about emotional appeal — art, design, the ineffable.

Peace.

Gillmor speaks…

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Usually I get bashed for bashing facebook…

But the rise of the walled-garden, the exportation of one closed social graph and the new “email” – leave me concerned for the future of the internet. Maybe I am paranoid or just getting too old but I just don’t see this as progress – no matter how technical superior the platform may be.

Now someone else, on good authority, says it much better than I could:

We should all be uncomfortable about moving more and more of our cyber-activities into the embrace of a single company — and I don’t care if it’s Google (one reason I rarely use Gmail) or Facebook or anyone else. Facebook has federated its “Like” button all over the Internet, so it’s not trying to entirely capture your browsing and communications, but in the process it’s turning its service into a glue — replete with extremely granular data about what you do online — that should make everyone cautious about putting so much power into a single enterprise’s control. Easy to use, which Facebook certainly is, does not equate with good for you in the end.

enter : http://www.joindiaspora.com/

My 7 minutes…

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

Gotta take it while u can. Today Koprol was on TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/09/southeast-asia-one-thing-yahoo-has-done-well-tctv/

Awesome.

Thanks Sarah!

If you want to see more about SparxUp – go here: http://www.sparxup.com/

More on Indonesia scene: http://dailysocial.net/

My slides from SparxUp: http://www.slideshare.net/dreampipe/sparxup

Podcast on Asia : http://thisweekinasia.net/2010/11/this-week-in-asia-episode-74-the-indonesia-internet-juggernaut/

long live Koprol!

Indo Indo Indo!

~ michael_msft ~ 2 Comments

Been a crazy couple of days and a few more busy ones to go.

Been at the Sparxup event which has been awesome. Just check out Sarah Lacy over at TechCrunch for all the latest coverage.

I presented during the morning session and if you are interested my deck can be found here.

Monday we have a minty launch event and a blogger meet up at night at Loewy. All great stuff.

The volcano action has been a bummer and I hope it clears up soon and the area returns to normal. Lots of people are in a bad sort over this and I feel for them.

I always get asked about Indonesia, since I spend a lot of time here, and people wonder what the biggest issue might be for Indo’s long term success. I have one word for you but as always a picture is worth a thousand words:

traffic

I have been coming here for about 10 years and regularly for the last 18 months or so and the traffic is getting worse and worse.

It is not uncommon to waste an hour or more getting from one part of town to another. Even on the weekends now the traffic is getting bad – for sure the whole snarl has to be a drain on business.

It will take years to fix it but there is not even any signs of anyone doing anything about it. Everyone cuts corners. There are carpool lanes but you can rent someone along the way to make it look like you have a carpool. There are bus lanes with cars in them. There are pillars that were once erected for tollways or overpasses but they were never completed. There is no work being done on a subway or an above ground train.

Jakarta will suffer if something is not done soon but I fear the government will not be able to tackle it and corruption will force more failed attempts. I think immediately they should instigate some sort of central congestion based pricing cause we all know money will be the only way to impede the issue even a slight bit.

I love Indonesia but the traffic is starting to grind on me the wrong way.

more soon!

Oh Singapore!

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Lots of talk of Singapore these days. Been here over a year and the buzz keeps growing but the bark is still louder than the bite.

I first wrote about Sing here – Musings on Singapore… Most of what I said there still applies I think.

Sure – the economy is cooking and sing dollar is almost as nutty as the Baht but I would have way more confidence in the Sing dollar long term.

When it comes to the startup scene though I think there is a chance things change but so far it is tough to tell. I think Sarah Lacy is also picking up on some this with her article here:

There’s also another problem: One employer has optimized the system to find and make lucrative offers to the smartest kids in the system– that’s right, the Government. People who could have made the country’s top entrepreneurs instead make comfortable salaries trying to craft policy to encourage people to be entrepreneurs.

That comment is so telling and I also feel like you see a lot of zombie like easy startups but it is early days and Sarah also says she thinks people should to pay attention to Singapore. I agree but I tend to think the real action will be regional but possibly based out of Singapore.

Of course throw in some web celeb spotting at the Butter Factory to help the hype machine continue unabated.

Will be speaking here next and then over to Indo to speak at SparxUp.

cya

Much to do!

~ michael_msft ~ 4 Comments

Just wrapped up another TWIA – check this video!

We should have another one this week with some special guests from Indonesia!

This week in Indo and then off to Bkk for Barcamp. This is one of the biggest in the region!

After Barcamp back to Singers and then maybe KL, Indo and possibly China.

So much going on but still having fun.

cya at barcamp!

ps. just back from India – more on that later. Some photos here.

This is how the Asian Companies are Expanding…

~ michael_msft ~ 3 Comments

After the Tech Venture conference I did an interview with a sing based newspaper – should hit soon – the interview was talking about the rise of Asia. More and more people talk about this since the US is in trouble, Europe is in the doldrums and Asia is kicking along. The question is asked when will something from Asia be as popular or move markets like products/sites/inventions from the US.

I can’t speak for all genres but when it comes to consumer internet products/sites I can speak pretty assuredly since this is my space. Not many things from Asia are used by folks outside their own region. Take Agoda, started in Asia and becoming a world-wide product but is part of Priceline. Alibaba and its auction/buyers site is starting to make it WW since it is for global buyers/sellers but it is not really a consumer thing.

There are examples of Asian companies, Indonesia’s Koprol, getting bought by Yahoo! with ambitions to grow their product past the shores of Indonesia. Recent article about that here.

Still though you don’t many stand alone consumer web plays being born from Asia and getting global love. So one of my theories has been that the Asian money will just start buying their way to global domination. In Japan that is exactly what is happening with the DeNa deal. There Plus+ platform play also looks pretty interesting as well.

So stay tuned – Asia is starting to come your way – whether you happen to be in Asia or not.