We don’t look at our fishes

posted by Dave Allen, Leave a Comment

Fish: A Tap essay. This is a short but heartfelt manifesto about the difference between liking something on the internet and loving something on the internet.

I really wish I’d thought of this #. It is so wonderful in so many ways. A transformative media app that asks very little of us, that almost guarantees that one would use it many times (and that is its point, or Robin Sloan’s point..) Get the iPhone App here, now #. You will not be disappointed.

Remember this from now on

posted by Dave Allen, 2 Comments

Mobile first, web second #

Via Chris Dixon #

One of the major trends in tech startups what Fred Wilson calls “Mobile first, web second.” Instagram is a great example of mobile first. They barely had a website – it was all about the mobile app.

The excitement over mobile-first apps is justified. Smartphones have unleashed a wave of creativity, resulting in entirely new categories of applications. But to me an even more exciting trend is what people have been calling (for lack of a better phrase) ”offline first, mobile enabled” apps.

For example, Foursquare is primarily about improving your offline experiences (meeting friends and finding new places to go). And it couldn’t exist without smartphones (ok, Dodgeball existed on feature phones but had a fraction of the utility). Similarly, Uber couldn’t exist without smartphones. The Uber apps (one for drivers and one for customers), while essential, are all about enabling for the car service. Square is about making payments more convenient and giving small businesses better analytics. The mobile app is just an enabler.

It seems natural that the first wave of mobile apps would be about improving core smartphone apps (e.g. photo apps) or porting apps from other devices (e.g. games). And there is probably a lot of interesting innovation remaining there. But the really massive opportunity is dreaming up new ways that the little computers loaded with sensors that we carry around with us everywhere can improve our real-world experiences.

Data bloat and your mobile wireless plan

posted by Dave Allen, Leave a Comment

It’s interesting that this article in today’s New York Times: A Ballooning Megabyte Budget # focuses on mobile wireless data plans and how easily it is for people to break their carrier’s data plan barrier, yet doesn’t mention the new iPad and its Retina display. At 2048 by 1536 pixels, that beautiful looking content on its screen comes at a price – storage. An iPad with mobile wireless connection has a data plan too and it’s not only streaming Netflix movies that may break your plan’s limits.

Still, the article does a fair job of alerting mobile users to the perils of data bloat as most people remain uninformed about how to measure data size as they use their devices. See below:

But what, exactly, is a megabyte?

If a sampling of pedestrians on the streets of Brooklyn is any guide, most people have only a vague idea. One said a megabyte was “the amount of something we have to use the Internet,” adding, “We should have three or four.”

Miranda Popkey, 24, was closer: “It’s a measure of how much information you store. If there are too many of them, I can’t send my e-mail attachment.”

A megabyte is, in this context, 1,000 kilobytes — or about the size of a photo taken with a decent digital camera, or roughly one minute of a song, or a decent stack of e-mail.

Therein lies the problem: Counting things like minutes and text messages is fairly easy, but there is no intuitive or natural way to gauge data use.

And even the “experts” get tripped up:

Even the most sophisticated of mobile customers can be tripped up — people like Paul DeBeasi, a research vice president at Gartner specializing in wireless technology. He said that he once streamed a Netflix movie to his iPad and was charged extra for exceeding his data plan limit.

Mr. DeBeasi did the math and found that watching two hours of a standard-definition Netflix video consumes two gigabytes — or 2,000 megabytes — of data.

“Even if you’re just watching a standard-definition movie and you’re only watching five movies in a month, it’s costing you $100 just to watch those five movies,” he said. Mr. DeBeasi suggested using Wi-Fi networks whenever possible, as this does not run up your carrier’s data meter.