100k apps on Apple’s AppStore (and counting)

And that includes the more than 170 apps that produce rude noises, which just goes to show you that developers can write all sorts of, ahem, interesting code.

Have you driven a Ford lately?

The news this week that Ford is back in the black, and how they did so without becoming a ward of the US taxpayer, is impressive. Coincidentally, I took a look at two of the company’s latest cars to see what they are doing with installing technology there, and came away with mixed feelings. Yes, they are moving in the right direction, albeit clumsily. And while few people buy a car because of the installed computing features, they are becoming a bigger part of the usage equation as we spend more time commuting and working from our cars.

Ford has two very different computing programs underway, and sadly they are mutually exclusive by design. The latest effort is called Ford Work Solutions, and it is only available on its truck line. The system is based on having a touch screen Windows CE 6.5 inch display in the dash, running a wide variety of software programs including a suite of office apps (but not the real MS Office), LogMeIn, GPS, entertainment controls, and more. Yes, that LogMeIn. It comes with a wide variety of confusing options, including a Bluetooth keyboard, printer, and cellular broadband data modem for Internet connectivity. The ideal target buyer is a building contractor who needs to work from the job site, or a delivery service. You can create documents and print them out in the cab, do a remote control session back to your office to pick up some data, and surf the Web to answer customer queries. The touch screen is a bit clunky, because some of the controls are designed for fingers on the screen rather than on the keyboard, but by and large it seemed well thought out.

But I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was going back to the early days of WebTV, and using technology that was already obsolete before its time found its way into many current hotel rooms. Part of the challenge that car makers have is that by the time a computer is installed in the vehicle, it is out of date. Granted, this is a computer that you don’t have to worry too much about — Ford claims it will withstand brutal environmental conditions — but it still is a Windows CE based device that is closer to my Uverse TV settop box or my mobile phone than the PC that I am using to write this essay.

The in-dash PC comes with a few handy things, though. It has SD card and USB ports right there on the dash so you can import files or connect to external data sources. You can synch up your phone’s contacts and do voice command dialing. It has the GPS display and your audio system controls so you don’t have to hunt around for them. And there is an optional tool tracking software where you can stick RFID tags on your tools and instantly do a census before you leave a job site and make sure you got everything back in the truck before you leave. There is also a vehicle tracking and scheduling software called Crew Chief that one Chicago pizza delivery company is using to match demand with supply, as the trucks have their own baking ovens that can finish the pies and get them piping hot to their customers. That seems to offer the most promise, if you can figure out the options.

Ford has done a mediocre job of getting the word out about Work Solutions. They haven’t any press loaners to try anywhere in the country — I had to find one locally that was being used by one of their corporate dealer trainers.The company Web site has some information, but it doesn’t satisfy anyone who has moderate tech knowledge, and indeed asks more questions than it answers. They could do better and appeal to more IT-minded potential buyers, rather than the big and brawny Joe SixPack contractors. (Actually, the contractor that my interior designer wife currently uses has a pretty sophisticated Web site that tracks his job progress and tasks, but that is story for another essay.) Each truck has to be specially ordered with the computer factory installed, so you can’t just walk in off the lot and drive one home. They aren’t all that expensive as computer options go — the monthly fee for the cellular modem is probably the biggest obstacle just because people don’t normally think their car needs an additional monthly payment for communications. And there are a confusing array of options and add-ons, which is why the dealers need training here. The biggest issue  is that they aren’t available in their sedans. I shouldn’t have to buy a pickup truck, or even their sexy Transit Connects (which you see all over Europe and are just being imported here) to get a measly WinCE PC.

Why not just spend your money on a laptop with a cellular modem and call it a day? You can get a “real” PC with a bigger screen and put whatever apps on it you desire, and still have the connectivity back to your office or Internet access if you need it. The only trouble is that you either have to leave your laptop at risk inside your car or have to tote it around with you. If you are a contractor or a delivery person or someone else constantly on the go, it might make sense to go with the in-dash PC.

What about the other Ford tech package? This is the Sync software that they developed with Microsoft. It is designed for a character-mode display and isn’t a real computer in the sense of even a CE-based device. It can sync up with your cell phone, offer turn by turn navigation instructions (but not a visual display of the landscape), and automatically mute the radio when an incoming call is detected for your cell phone. This is available on most of the newer model cars, and Ford will throw in the navigation package free if you buy other options for Sync. Or so I was led to believe. Again, figuring out all these options is maddening, and why so many of us run screaming from our local car dealers.

Now, you should know that I have rather quirky car buying habits: I have only owned cars for about 25 years, roughtly half my life, and only bought one Big Three American car over that period (my current car was made in Canada and is actually offered by Ford, although I bought the Toyota version). I don’t drive it enough to consider the Work Solutions package even if it were available in a sedan.

While I give Ford credit for trying to add some interesting technology to their vehicles, they have a long way to go before many people will choose to use it. Yet it is noteworthy in that they are attempting to go after a part of the market that the other car makers have ignored: road warriors that want to get work done in their cars, and not just deliver fancy infotainment systems. Now if they could appeal to the nerds they might have a winner.

 

Regis discovers the Internet

My stepson told me about this morning’s program that features Regis learning about the Internet. A total scream from the clueless world. Yes, you can pack that little PC with all sorts of information from around the world. It is amazing.

 

 

Alfred Poor’s new video reviews

My long-time former PC Magazine colleague Al Poor has begun his own series of video reviews of consumer products on his YouTube channel here. You can find a new Epson photo printer, the Buffalo Terrastation, and other products. Like my WebInformant.tv series, they are sponsored by the vendor and are short, fact-packed five minute pieces.

Learning branding lessons from chess champions

Chess may be one of the ultimate strategy games, but marketeers can learn a lot from the game, and they don’t even have to know the moves of the pieces.

A few weeks ago we had the Women’s US Chess Championship matches here. They took place a few blocks away from my office at the St. Louis Chess Club, a dandy new spot in the ‘hood that also was the scene of the US Open earlier this year. As part of the festivities welcoming all the chess nerds was an event that I attended at my favorite local art museum, the Kemper on the Washington University campus, where the women chess champs were going to play roulette chess. It was a great evening, a combination of smart women and interesting ideas. What more could this geek want?

At the museum, I got to meet the current, three-time women’s champion, Anna Zatonskih and the woman who invented roulette chess, Jen Shahade. Both are babes, to say the least. This year’s tournament netted Zatonskih a cool $15 grand, the largest purse of a women’s tournament ever. Granted, this isn’t big money for other kinds of contests, but in the world of chess, it is a lot.

I am not a very good chess player, although I learned when I was much younger only to get routinely trounced by my younger brother, who continues to play and even doesn’t need a chess board to keep track of his moves.

While it certainly was fun to meet the women champions, I was more interested in seeing how Shahade has done such a great job branding herself online. Here are just a few links to get your juices flowing:

First off, she wrote a book entitled, Chess Bitch, about the current crop of women chess players. Apart from the brilliant title, it is a great idea for a book. In chess, many players refer to the all-powerful Queen with that moniker, something that I wasn’t aware of. (For those of you that don’t play, while the object of the game is to capture your opponent’s King, the Queen has the most allowed moves on the board.)

Second, she has all these wonderful ideas about how to invigorate chess by making it more like a sport or like poker, ideas that I have to say I find interesting (and play off my earlier column about making science a spectator sport here).

She even wrote a column for the New York Times a few years ago about it (now that is great branding just right there).

Third, she understands that sex sells, and apart from being a very attractive woman, she does things like play chess while spinning a hula hoop and against a naked (sadly) male opponent. These are two separate activities, but all in the interest of getting more attention to the game. She claims the naked chess is better for her to hone her concentration, as well as to ensure the opponent isn’t hiding any assistive electronic devices. Yeah, right. In any event, you can check out her video on her Web site here:
http://www.jennifershahade.com/

Finally, she does a lot of different events, both demonstrating unusual ways to play chess as well as getting inner-city girls excited about the game. Thus, she combines her passion with some solid volunteerism, which as you should know is a great way to spread the word on your brand.

So those of you that are looking for some new ideas, check out some of these links. The combination of video, catchy titles, and stimulating ideas is enough to give you your own ideas on how to brand and market yourself online. Even if you don’t play chess.

Forget the new Pepsi Amp Up iPhone App

There has been a lot of press in the past week or so about a new iPhone App from Pepsi and energy drink Amp, called the Pepsi Amp Up Before Your Score. I tried it out, in the interests of reporting, and can’t see what the fuss is all about. The use case is a single guy on the prowl at a bar, and you pick one of several icons of the woman that you are trying to hit on, to gain insightful conversational banter and nearby destinations. Yes, it is sexist. Yes, it is smarmy. Yes, it doesn’t work well on giving you real-time destination results — searching for nearby ice cream stores in my ‘hood came up with a Ben and Jerry’s franchise that hasn’t been there for years. Is it better than the 9,000 fart apps on the iPhone? Marginally.

Save yourself the trouble of downloading and wasting time with the app. Instead, try these responses to lousy pickup lines from the Car Talk guys here.

A happy ending: how two stolen laptops were recovered with Kaseya

Have you ever had your laptop stolen? I did several years ago, from the trunk of a locked car in a suburban shopping mall. But lately thieves are getting caught because of better software tools that are on the laptops, and this is a story about two laptops that were stolen several months ago. The thefts were independent events, with only one thing in common: both of them were managed by the same Sacramento VAR, Capital Computer Guys.

Greg Hemig, the operator and owner of the business, has been a Kaseya customer for years and tries to get all of his PC support clients to install the Kaseya agent on their machines. This agent can do a lot of different things, such as remotely control the machine, update drivers, and install a keylogger to keep track of what the user is doing. Most people use it for fairly benign purposes but Hemig figured out quickly after the laptops were stolen that he could use the software to track down where the machines were being used.

Which he did. He was able to gather all sorts of information from them once they connected to the Internet – “I was able to find out not just an IP address, which is what a typical anti-theft product like LoJack would provide, but an actual physical address, the names of the user’s girlfriend and family, how to access their bank accounts, and even turn on the microphone on the laptop and listen to what they were saying while they were typing.” Scary stuff, but within two weeks of contacting law enforcement, he was able to get back both machines to their original owners.

The hardest part about the whole process wasn’t collecting the information, but convincing the cops that he was legit and that they needed to act to retrieve the PCs. Both laptops didn’t travel very far from their original locations – one was only 20 miles away.

Hemig charges $30 a month per PC to support his customers, and has more than 600 PCs under management in this fashion. That is a nice piece of business, and something that more VARs should consider. “It makes me more competitive, and it was the same price that I used to charge for break/fix work, but now I can deliver a lot better service to my customers,” he says. “I think traditional tech support companies are going to disappear soon. Certainly, having Kaseya has changed my business completely. I almost wish my laptop would be stolen just to try to find it.” Kaseya may be new as an anti-theft device, but it made it a lot easier to recover the laptops. And the company is looking into providing other tools to help its VARs in similar circumstances.

Coworking, the next step up from Starbucks

This being the day after Labor Day I wanted to pass along an interesting concept called coworking. Most of you are familiar with the idea of a shared tenant services for small businesses that can’t afford their own office space but want to take advantage of a common collection of services such as fax machines, conference rooms, reception areas, and the like. But what if the $400 or so a month fee for these services is still out of the park for your nascent business owner? And what if working out of a coffee shop or other free Wifi place isn’t really professional enough? In between these use cases is where coworking comes in handy.

Coworking goes under various names, including the “Jelly” movement started by Amit Gupta. The idea is that people who want more than just a virtual water cooler of email, Tweeting and posting online can actually get out of the house and spend some time nearby other humans doing their work too. The goal is to create a community of like-minded people but from different walks of life, skill sets, and interests – just like your local Faceless Big Company Cubicle Warren. Bring your own laptop and cell phone, tie into a Wifi connection, and partake of the included coffee. The “rent” is reasonable – about $50 a month or even less, depending on how often you need to show up. Some facilities have more, such as multiple-line phones and conference rooms, and some have less. All are a step up from Starbucks, though.

There are lots of resources on coworking here and the Jelly main site also lists the locations in major cities, including one in St. Louis. So in the interests of research, I paid them a visit last week and was impressed by the concept. The coworking facility is in a residential neighborhood at the very southern end of the city, a few blocks from the Mississippi River. It is actually in a renovated home owned by Lisa Rokusek, complete with full kitchen and bathroom and guest bedroom. Lisa is a recruiter who lives nearby and first renovated the house as a guesthouse before she got into coworking. Now she is hooked on the concept and is developing a few other properties as well. She has about ten regular coworkers who come anywhere from several times a week to just a few times a month.

You would think that someone who recruits people for new jobs would want something more private, but Lisa was adamant that the idea works for her. She doesn’t need a full-time, 9-to-5 office because she is often out visiting clients at their offices. And when she really needs some privacy, she steps outside with her cell phone to make the call. “And it gives my coworkers a sense of openness, because they are seeing how the sausages are being made,” she told me.

Still, my work style wouldn’t tolerate such close quarters – at the St. Louis coworking site that I visited last week, it could easily house ten people in two small rooms. I like it nice and quiet and no one else around, because that is what I need to write and to interview people on the phone. But perhaps you are different, and crave the company and companionship. You might want to investigate coworking, and see if there is someone in your area that has such a setup, or even start your own house.

The battle of eReaders will be all about software

There is a lot of activity on the eBook front: Sony earlier announced that they would be moving towards supporting the open ePub eBook format on their eReaders, and they are expected to announce a new eReader that incorporates cellular data connectivity. Barnes and Noble announced this week that they are partnering with Irex Technologies and will come out with a new device later this year.

But with all the hoopla and promise, one thing missing from a lot of coverage is the software side of things. That is where the eBook eBattles will be fought and won.

eBooks are beginning to take hold for a lot of different reasons: finally there are enough titles available (although in a confusing array of formats and readers). Prices on the devices have come down and quality has gone up. Prices on the eBook titles themselves are at parity with the mass market paperbacks. The size and quality of the screens is approaching that of printed paper. Battery life is reasonable.

All of this may be well and good, but the real reason that eBooks are doing well is that the software is finally catching up with the hardware. Why so? Because you need a great combination of eReader software along with Web storefronts that offer the books for sale and allow people to shop and discover books that they want to download to their readers. Some of the people that design the Web stores that offer up the eBooks are getting some clue here. The best example is Amazon’s Kindle storefront. Why? Because first and foremost, they know how to sell books online. Inside of about 35 seconds, I can find and purchase an eBook, and in another 35 seconds, have it in my hot little hands and start reading. It is hard to beat that kind of delivery time.

Sony’s Web store, ebookstore.sony.com, comes in second, such as trying to find bargains. On both you can sort eBooks by price, but because Amazon offers so many free eBooks, it is hard to find current titles. Sony does a better job. Sadly, in order to buy an eBook from Sony, you need their desktop client software. B&N.com is just plain miserable.

My choice of eReader is to use the Kindle app that runs on the iPhone/iPod touch. I don’t have to carry another device around, and while the Kindle reader does drain my iPhone battery, I can deal with it. I also don’t read much beyond text: if I had a need for more graphics-rich documents, I would consider another reading device.

I have read about a dozen books from start to finish on my iPhone and found the experience to be more than satisfactory. Most of these are the sort of books that I would buy in airports and dispose of or donate almost immediately after reading. The iPhone Kindle app has a few things going for it: since I carry my phone everywhere, I am not without reading material to fill in those small time gaps during the day while I am waiting in an office for an appointment or so forth. At night, I can continue reading in bed without annoying my wife, since the screen is backlit. The page turning process is something you get used to, and the ease at which you can find a book and start reading within about a minute is great for those of us that require near-instant gratification. You can be well into the new best seller of your choice before anyone else had even time to get to the bookstore, let alone wait for the overnight Amazon shipment.

If you are in the market for an eReader and have an iPhone, it is a simple matter to download the free app, start browsing Amazon’s Kindle store, and stuff it full of eBooks. If you don’t have an iPhone, it almost makes economic sense to buy an iPod Touch and dedicate it to reading books: the cost is nearly the same as the Kindle hardware device. The downside is that you will need to be in WiFi range to download your books. On the iPhone, like the Kindle hardware, you can download over the cellular network.

If you have a Blackberry, Palm and some other PDA, then you have two choices: either the Barnes and Noble eReader or the Mobipocket eReader. Both are more cumbersome to use than the Kindle app, and require you to download books to your desktop first. I couldn’t really get the B&N app going, it seemed like it had too many moving parts.

Sony’s eReader currently lacks the communications but supports a lot of different book formats, including their own which they are phasing out by the end of the year in favor of ePub. And they have a growing culture of modders who have exposed the underlying Linux OS to do various things.

ePub-formatted books can be read on the iPhone with Stanza, but the process is also cumbersome and clunky, certainly nowhere near the experience of the Kindle. Google and others have digitized many public domain books in this format, but few of the current best sellers are in it. Amazon, by virtue of their market position, is in a better place here. They also understand how to develop Web software, something Sony — and B&N for that matter — still haven’t caught on to. The better the Web stores are, the more eBooks will be sold.

For eBooks to be truly eUniversal, Kindle needs to be able to read ePub formats, and be available on Blackberries and Palms and other larger-screen phones and PDAs. And all the various players – including Sony – need to eliminate the digital rights management that comes with your eBook, as has been reported with last month’s debacle over “1984.”

While nothing will ever replace the physical bookstore browsing experience, at least for me, I am glad to see this market continue to mature.

Your IP address isn’t personal information (new legal case)

Jim Molini, in his blog post Getting Personal with IP Addresses, mentions a ruling last month in US District Court that states that your IP address isn’t personal identifying information, along with several reasons why he thinks this is a Good Idea Who’s Time has Come.