Tech Tuesday - The App Habit

Recently, many of my coworkers have begun to purchase Android devices.  While several of them expressed initial interest in the iPhone, the prospect of signing a 2 year contract with AT&T was enough of a deterrent to seek out other options.  Most end up choosing the cost-conscious Sprint option, or devices on the widely praised as reliable Verizon network.

Generally speaking, these individuals seem to be satisfied with their phone purchases.  However, I was surprised to find out the reluctance that nearly all of them expressed towards buying apps.  While some had purchased one or two apps at a cost of $1 to $5, most had never paid for an app on their device, despite owning the phone for several months.

As an iPhone owner, this aversion towards purchasing third party software struck me as odd.  Since buying my iPhone 3G back in 2008, I never felt a hesitancy in springing a dollar or two on an app.  In fact, I visit the App Store on a regular basis to see if any useful apps are in the Top 25 charts.

These observations led me to the next logical questions: exactly how many apps have I purchased over the past 2 years, and at what cost?  Well, I spent about half an hour cross-referencing my iTunes library with my Gmail e-mail receipts of App Store purchases, and found out the answers.

From October 2008 to September 2010, I paid for 51 iPhone apps at a cost of $185.  This averages out to just shy of $3.63 per app.  The most I've paid is $14.99 (for the MLB At Bat 2010 app), while most were $0.99.  For as frequently as I use my iPhone, these figures don't give me any buyer's remorse.

While my observations on app buying habits are clearly anecdotal, I think they probably raise a valid question:  why are iPhone owners seemingly so much more willing to pay for third party software on their devices relative to those who own Android devices?

Kevin Fox proposes that it's a deficiency in the Android Marketplace implementation of a store model.  There's probably a lot of truth in that.  If the buying experience isn't pleasurable, what incentive does a software consumer have to go out and actively seek new applications?

I didn't buy a lot of third-party software for my computers over the past 15 years.  The biggest reason was that software was expensive.  Paying $500 for Microsoft Office is a tougher pill to swallow as a college student than paying $3 for a Google Voice application.

The keys in cultivating a successful (and large) marketplace for applications are keeping prices low and making the buying experience pleasurable.  I seriously doubt I would've dropped almost $200 in iPhone apps over the past two years unless both elements were present.

Tech Tuesday - Who Not To Be On Twitter

Click Here For Larger Image

While this is presented in the context of a comic strip, I think there are some valuable take-aways as you look to establish your personal brand on Twitter.  Although I'm sure I've been guilty of a few of these tendencies over 2,500 tweets during the past 3 years, it's worth thinking about whether what you're saying on Twitter really adds any value to the conversation.

To be sure, not everything you post on Twitter has to have intrinsic news-worthiness.  Part of the beauty of the service is that it adds a human element to users that sometimes may be abstracted.  But as you grow your follower base, keep in mind that you have an audience and think about why these users began to follow you in the first place.

If you're interested in some of the academic underpinnings, check out this study from Rutgers published earlier this year.  It draws a distinction between "meformers" who talk about themselves, and "informers" who share information.  One isn't necessarily better than the other, but informers tend to have a much larger and engaged audience than meformers.

Tech Tuesday - iOS 4.1 Walkthroughs From 9to5Mac & The iPhone Blog

For those interested in the nuts & bolts details of this week's pending release of iOS 4.1, 9to5Mac & The iPhone Blog both have excellent walkthroughs of the new OS.

http://www.9to5mac.com/24521/complete-ios-4-1-walkthrough

http://www.tipb.com/2010/09/06/ios-41-walkthrough/

I think I'll get the most use out of the HDR photography feature & HD YouTube uploads (which previously required a third-party app like Pixelpipe). However, I think the release of Game Center (Apple's social gaming network) will likely have the largest impact to the majority of iOS users.

Tech Tuesday - Concept Of Work In The Future

I ran across this interesting study from Gartner over the weekend discussing how the idea of work and a workplace will evolve over the next 10 years.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1416513

The entire article is definitely worthy of reading, but for the time-constrained, here are the 10 trends it proposes we will experience:

1.  De-routinization of Work
2.  Work Swarms
3.  Weak Links
4.  Working With the Collective
5.  Work Sketch-Ups
6.  Spontaneous Work
7.  Simulation and Experimentation
8.  Pattern Sensitivity
9.  Hyperconnected
10.  My Place

There's also a nice, condensed analysis of Gartner's list on ebiz:

http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/connectedweb/2010/08/get_ready_for_chaos_at_work_wa.php

Tech Tuesday - How I Use My iPad

I bought my iPad on launch day this past Easter weekend, only a couple of hours after finishing the Crescent City Classic 10K in New Orleans.  Standing in line at the Best Buy still sweaty from the run (and a little fuzzy from the free Abita Amber that flowed post-race), I wasn't entirely sure how the iPad would fit into my computing lifestyle.  Now that I've been using it for 4 months, let me describe the five areas where I find it most useful.

Couch

When I've talked to friends & family about the iPad since it was announced, I described it as the perfect couch computer.  With long battery life, an instant-on capability like a phone, and its light-weight form factor, I don't mind holding it in my lap for a long time.  I can't say the same about my MacBook Pro, which gets painfully hot on the lap.  When I'm on the couch, I'm interested in casual computing, which means light-weight browsing of articles and social networks.  As such, I mostly use Reeder for reading my Google Reader feeds, and Flipboard for browsing Facebook & Twitter.

Car

My wife, Ashley, & I make a lot of road trips between Houston & New Orleans, to the tune of about once a month.  A week after I bought the iPad, I also purchased a Sprint Overdrive which sucks in a 4G/3G signal from Sprint's WiMAX & EvDO networks and spits out a Wi-Fi cloud within a 30 foot radius of the device.  This means I can connect our phones, laptops, and yes, iPad to Wi-Fi as we're cruising down I-10 at 70MPH.  Ashley & I usually split the drive in half between Texas & Louisiana, so one of us gets to surf the web on the iPad for 3 hours and then we switch.  Mobile Safari, Reeder, Flipboard, iBooks, and Kindle tend to be the most frequently used apps when we're in the car.

Office

As I wrote about last month, Penultimate tends to be the iPad app I use most frequently at the office.  Aside from it, I've found that I'm listening to more podcasts on my iPad than on my iPod or iPhone, so the iPod app on the iPad gets used frequently.  Recently, my company also switched over to using Cisco's WebEx conference calling/screen sharing solution, so I'm now regularly using the WebEx iPad app for meetings.

Plane

While we've only taken two round trip flights since I bought the iPad (one to Paris & one to Denver), it's proven to be the focal point during our air travels.  I picked up a Belkin RockStar headphone splitter to provide audio to Ashley & my brother during flights, and then encoded my movies with HandBrake for iPad compatibility.  When we weren't watching Paris-themed movies or The Shining, I usually played Pinball HD by myself or Game Table Checkers against Ashley.

Vacation

Bringing the iPad on vacation is perhaps the coolest use-case I've encountered yet.  While staying at our apartment in Paris, the iPad turned out to be the computer of choice for my family, being used for directions on Google Maps, checking e-mail, and sharing our digital photos from the day with each other every night.  Using the iPad Camera Connection Kit, we copied over the images from my digital camera to the iPad each evening, and then passed around the tablet in the living room so everyone could see our pictures on a large screen.

After vacationing in Colorado last weekend, I discovered that Ashley & I each had about 300 photographs taken between our iPhone 4s.  Conveniently, you can connect your iPhone directly to the iPad via the Camera Connection Kit, and copy over the photos from the iPhones to iPad.  This meant that I could compile all the photos from our point-and-shoot Canon PowerShot SD970IS and our two iPhone 4s directly on the iPad so we could view the images from three cameras all on one device.

Conclusion

The iPad isn't going to replace my desktop, laptop, or iPhone anytime soon.  My desktop has terabytes of storage, my MacBook Pro is beastly in terms of processing power & RAM, and my iPhone can't be beat in terms of portability or quick bursts of computing.  But for a gadget geek who loves being connected, the iPad definitely fills a gap where a big screen, portable device is likely to be used for an extended period of time.

Tech Tuesday - Google Reader As Window To The World

Google Reader is a web-based RSS reader.  For the uninitiated, RSS feeds allow websites to pipe their content to dedicated software (RSS readers) so that users can have content from all of their favorite websites in a single location.  This means instead of going to my frequently visited websites one-by-one each morning, I simply launch Google Reader and view all the blog postings in a multi-paned browser window.

While I love most of Google's products, Reader may perhaps be my favorite.  It's like my own personal newspaper, and the first thing I head towards in the morning.  I can access it on my iPhone, my iPad, my MacBook Pro, or on a computer in an Internet cafe.  Beginning in the middle of 2007, this became my primary method of consuming information.  It made the information I care about always quickly available.

Since that time, I've amassed a decent collection of feed subscriptions.  If you're interested in what I'm currently following, or would like to jump start your own Google Reader account, you can easily view & subscribe via my bundles linked below.

Apple News
Daily Comics
Gadgets
Google News
Houston
Lifestyle
Music
New Orleans
Technology
Videogames
Web 2.0

Tech Tuesday: Google & Verizon Policy Proposal On Net Neutrality

Mashable has a good overview (linked below) of the proposed policy that Verizon & Google unveiled yesterday.  Essentially, the two companies want to demonstrate to the FCC that the industry can self-regulate when it comes to net neutrality.  This would prevent Internet companies (both content providers & ISPs) from being subject to actual law when it comes to how network traffic is managed and prioritized.

Interestingly, Verizon & Google chose to distinguish between wired internet access & wireless internet access.  They want provisions in place that would allow wireless data traffic to be managed more strictly by network operators (the cellular companies), thereby negating many of the benefits consumers would receive under true net neutrality.

Previously, Google had been quite vocal in its support for net neutrality in its purest form.  This most recent development reflects a more moderate stance from Google, and has been interpreted by some in the tech media to be a concession to Verizon for their high profile support of Google's Android OS on Verizon devices.

This article is a quick read for those of you interested in public policy.  You'll undoubtedly hear more about the topic over the next 24 months in the buildup to the 2012 elections.

http://mashable.com/2010/08/09/google-verizon-policy-proposal/