iPhone SE - welcome back!

My iPhone 6 took a swim a couple of weeks ago. A short swim in the sea with a waterproof bag that wasn't. I reverted to my Android spare (a 1st generation Moto G), which was sufficient but slow. I contemplated a faster Android. The thing is, as the article here shows, they all have massive screens. As I've said before they are a poor compromise for me: too small to be a proper reading/viewing device (so I have a paperback-sized iPad mini), and too large to be a handy phone.

I remember thinking, on the recent launch of the iPhone SE, that it was a smart move. The iPhone 5 was the nicest phone I have ever used: comfortable to hold, with hand clasped right around it, and easy to use, with thumb capable of touching all 4 corners of the 4" screen without spraining or dislocating. The SE is an update: all the newest chips and sensors in the old body, and 25% cheaper than an equivalent iPhone 6. Best of both worlds, in principle, but faced with the real prospect of replacing my phone, would I actually buy it?

The latest Android phones have overtaken Apple's renowned user experience, at least in terms of sheer features. There are gadgets and slidey expandable bits, and it's all quite intuitive in Material Design: the subtle shading guides you on what can be pressed and slid. App design is a bit more haphazard, but that's the price of freedom from Apple app store stringencies (and their 30% tax). Very impressive but maybe a bit over-complicated, I thought, as I read the reviews from my iPad.

Then there's the Android phone hardware. You get a lot of bang for your buck, these days. Widescreen TV resolutions on small inches of screen, zillion megapixel cameras, SD card expansions, fast charging USB 3 ports, octo-core processors with gigahertz of speed. There's a lot of variety, a lot of power consumption and big batteries behind those big screens... just to run as smoothly as an iPhone. Perhaps that's the real reason the screens are so big: a selling point to offset the bigger battery needed to power all those cores?

I was in Atlanta on a biz trip, so thought I'd pop into an Apple store to try an iPhone SE. Failing that, I'd pop over to Best Buy and try some Androids.

Picking up the SE surprised me with the emotional connection it evoked. It felt like a favourite pair of shoes or jeans. Comforting and familiar. Super snappy to use too, unlike my old iPhone 4, which has slowed with age.

I've had it a week now and am thoroughly delighted. Except for one thing: having used my Pebble watch with the Android I now see how restrictive Apple is with their API for non-Apple watches. Guys, it doesn't make me want to buy an Apple watch, it just hobbles an otherwise perfect phone. Easy fix. Now to order that waterproof case...

iPad as PC replacement. Really?

With the release of the iPad Pro 9.7", Apple are finally trying to convince us that the iPad can replace our laptops. Is this because of some great leap in features or functionality? Or are they responding to an increasingly convincing threat from Microsoft's Surface range?

Apple Watch: cracks showing?

From this story and similar it's easy to interpret that the honeymoon period of the new product category is over. Apple cynics proven right? Or markets just being fickle? A bit of both.

I'm an Apple sceptic: love their stuff, but not the reality distortion and unnecessary product lock-ins that often accompany it. Overall, they are a healthy part of the technosphere, which is not easy for a behemoth.

Something is clearly wrong with their Apple Watch sales. So they are below expectations, but why not publish them anyway? Apple's profit margins are normally huge on anything they sell, so even if the volumes are lower than expected, it's not like they'll have failed financially, is it? I think the absence of information, in this case, could work against them not just in the markets, as it has already shown, but in consumer confidence. In this internet age, consumers like to to make informed decisions, so any perception of withheld information fuels lack of confidence, and, arguably, is just as easy to exploit by a canny competitor.

But they had to do it. For Apple not to have a watch in this still-embryonic but burgeoning wearables market could have been perceived by the markets as leaving money on the table. And this first offering is pretty decent: all the buttery smooth and shiny user experience features are there. It's just not essential or different enough from the iPhone. I doubt anyone in late 19th or early 20th century had a pocket watch and a wrist watch.

This is the first step on a product journey, a marker. Remember, the first iPhone didn't even have copy & paste. But then Apple defined the category and were so far ahead of the competition they could take their time perfecting the product. This time, the category is already quite crowded and despite their behemoth status they didn't own it. Do they have the agility to evolve faster than rivals?

If you compare the pace of innovation in iOS versus Android, you'll see that since about 2013 Android has outpaced Apple. Android in 2015 is a lot better than Android in 2012, whereas iOS is a bit better. This isn't about which OS is better, but about which OS is improving the fastest.

But Apple is a hardware company. And I think the reasons the Apple Watch is not a giant success are hardware-based, from the basic: battery life; to the sublime Dick Tracy fantasy: a camera. These limitations are understandable to geeks: the science simply isn't there yet. But the average Apple consumer thinks it's all magic anyway, so will expect Apple to crack these things in version 2 or 3. Can they? I can't think when they've ever had this much competitive pressure in hardware. This should get interesting.

Algorithmic Big Brother

There's a lot of FUD about internet companies harvesting personal data.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a privacy advocate: you should have the right to be as private as you like, and whatever data that is held about you by a third party should be disclosed to you, and accessible on request.

But let's not put the tin hats on every time we hear that Tech Firm X is harvesting your data. I'm sure they are, but ask yourself why. Google and Facebook aren't interested in my secrets. They are interested in

1. Selling my profile info to advertisers
2. Providing me a better service so that I keep coming back and they can satisfy (1).

You'll agree that point 2 is innocent/benign enough. If you have a fundamental problem with entities selling info to advertisers then stop buying things and stop using 'free' services. If you're not the paying customer, you're the product. Get used to it.

The issue, and where the media like to blur and sensationalise, is the definition of 'my profile info'. What info are they collating & selling, and what are they doing with it? This is where things get shady. The quick answer these firms all give, when asked, is a variant of point 2 above: that the data is used to offer better-targeted advertising and services to you the cust- consumer.

Right, but what data, exactly? And how are you packaging it up to the advertisers to whom you're selling it? The answer, in most cases, is that they are not selling the information like a secret service dossier - a big brown file on you. They are simply categorising you. The advertisers then say what categories they want to target, which could be broad (all females between 18 and 30) or very specific (chess players and sci fi fans in New York city under the age of 24). These firms then ensure you get hit by those adverts that match your category. They then track which ones you click and which you don't, and that gets reported back to the advertisers. In fact, in the case of social networks, these firms track every unsecured page that you browse and refine your categorisations accordingly.

Point is, the advertisers don't get the specific info about you. They get aggregated category data. Heineken don't know which beer I drink unless I tell them (by 'liking' or '+ing' a page of theirs); they just know that I'm in several of their key categories.

The categorising tech firms are as interested in me as a lawnmower is in grass. They don't have time/resources to compile a dossier on you or me. They have algorithms that profile us automatically and constantly, but primarily in order to meet the 2 commercial imperatives above.

So if you're worried about Google or Facebook or Apple prying into your private life, only the algorithms are watching.

Government agencies?  Different story: why would they be harvesting your data? Again, it's mostly algorithms, but there's no commercial imperative. So it's definitely personal and potentially nefarious. 

CIO: caretaker or gamechanger?

I saw this article ("The era of IT-as-a-roadblock must come to an end right now", TechRepublic) and thought it worth sharing, as it reflects something bothering me for years about the role of IT in businesses.

I've led IT teams and departments, and, as a CTO selling software and services to clients, meet IT heads quite often. Some of them running IT for well known brand companies. You can tell a lot about a company by its attitude to IT. Even the job title of the head of IT is still varied and indicative: VP ICT, or Head of IS, or CIO, or more recently Head of Digital. Some are on the board/exec team, some report to the CFO or COO.

Then there's the small talk: get any team in the company in a room together for a day (as we often do at my consulting firm) and see whether a) an IT topic comes up, and b) it's a negative comment. I'd give a 75% chance of both.

Traditionally, I'd put this down to the struggle of IT: what other department of a company has to deal with the turmoil of its industry effectively reinventing itself every 3-5 years? Take Finance: the CFO is probably the best accountant in the firm - certainly the most experienced. General Ledgers don't really evolve and GAAPs evolve as carefully as prudent accountants and auditors would allow. The CIO, on the other hand, has probably never used the technologies they are responsible for. Sure, they'll likely know the principles and implications, but they are fully dependent on the knowledge and skills of younger staff in deploying and maintaining new technologies. Furthermore, nobody outside of IT could keep up: why must I trade in my Blackberry for an iPhone? Why so many passwords? In this context, it's little wonder that IT departments would often be as fretful, self-absorbed and moody as a teenager. They effectively were teenagers.

Then it all changed with the arrival of mobile apps and app stores. How many training courses have you been on to learn a mobile app? Me neither. Suddenly everyone was configuring their own personal computing device in their own way. And demanding the same ease of use for other software. That contact management software at work started to feel really clunky.

Developers, be they desktop, web or app software, suddenly had to focus carefully on user experience (UX). If they didn't, the results were there for all to see: poor app reviews and few downloads.

The IT department was now having to contend with consumer devices and apps on the corporate network because the users found them more useful, were going to use them anyway, and, well, it's all technology, innit? Would they step out from their server rooms and support desks and embrace the mobiles, the apps, the clouds? Or would they bridle at the users' initiative, and chafe with disdain at the cloud? 

The results so far appear mixed. There are certainly many IT departments showing fear, usually in the form of disdain for technology initiatives coming from users, security concerns, or "hidden" costs. They've finally got what they always wanted: an engaged audience. We're finally over the hump and now technology illiteracy is not cool, nor even quaint. If you don't have a smart phone, or know how to use one, you're a dinosaur. The world has realised IT is about the information, not the technology (thank you Apple!). Unfortunately, many IT departments haven't yet. 

It's Pebble Time: taking on the mighty Apple Watch

The best personal tech should be invisible. Not literally, that would be unhelpful. But it should fit into your life seamlessly, without significant adjustment to your life, unless it augments it. Smart phones are a brilliant example: you already had a mobile phone, but here's one with more sensors and downloadable apps. Super productivity or super distraction? Your choice, but either way you're ostensibly happier.

Henry Graves Supercomplication Pocket Watch

Remember pocket watches? No, I never wore one either, but I imagine they were the mobile phones of their day. Before them, you had to find or hear a clock somewhere, usually a church or a school or a station. Suddenly you had the power of time in your hand. 

Then, in 1968 Patek Phillipe made, arguably, the first wrist watch. It was intended as jewellery for ladies, who often didn't have pockets for a watch. As the technology improved and became more rugged, soldiers adopted them. The pocket watch didn't fade away, it just added features, culminating in the Henry Graves Supercomplication, made by Patek Phillipe in 1933 and still the most expensive watch in the world ($24m at last auction in November 2014).

Point is, the problem of conveniently telling the time was, effectively, solved with the wrist watch. But it has barely evolved since. Despite watchmakers' enduring ability to sell absurdly overpriced lumps of metal because they'd work on the moon, or at 10,000ft underwater, these lumps are functionally redundant, for the most part. Like handkerchiefs. Most millennials don't wear a watch because they have a smart phone with network/atomic accuracy.

So if you're selling a smart watch you're either trying to persuade a youngster to wear something useful on their wrist, or persuade an older person to replace their expensive birthday present for something more useful and equally elegant.

Smart watch?

The original Pebble was a great concept in 2013: a watch that listens to your phone (both Android and iOS!) and lasts a week. Biggest Kickstarter project ever at the time. And they delivered what they promised. Now, I'm a big watch fan, have about eight at any given time, but it didn't attract me because the screen was black and white only and the case was too big. It looked like a 90s Nintendo Gameboy for your wrist. Without the retro fun.

The original Pebble. Neat but ugly.

But earlier this year Pebble ran another Kickstarter campaign to build the Time: promising colour screen and slim form factor yet still the 5 day battery life. All the other smart watch makers are targeting looks and features, but these guys are sticking with their formula and refining it. Many people scoffed at the paltry 64 colours and lack of touchscreen, but those of us with some electronics knowledge realise that full colour touchscreens burn battery life, and what's the point of a watch you have to plug in every day? Might as well just use your phone. At $189 it's $100 cheaper than a Casio Pathfinder or Citizen Ecodrive. So why on earth not? I backed it.

Pebble Time!

It's very light - feels lighter than the strap - and pretty slim. The strap is smooth and soft, with a little stretch to it. One of the best I've worn in terms of chafing, which is no small thing for my hairy wrists. After 10 mins wearing it I pretty much forgot it was there, so big tick in the 'invisible' box.

Screen

Classic elegance... with weather

While the screen is a decent size, there's still a lot of real estate not used. No doubt Pebble sought to maximise screen size within technical constraints, but what about solar panels in the frame or that outer bezel? Even though a Pebble consumes about 5x the power of a solar watch, like a Pathfinder, solar top-up could still potentially increase battery life by 20%.

Outdoors... with stats

The screen is a bit dim in some light, needing a shake of the wrist to activate the backlight. Not a big issue (I know many lump of metal wearers who have their straps so loose they have to wiggle their wrists to haul the watch into view anyway), but there's currently no control of the backlight timer, so it may fade too quickly causing you to have to shake again. Frustrating, but easily rectified (please, Pebble!). Thankfully, there are loads of watchfaces, and many have colour configuration options, so it's easy to find one that is hi-viz.

Notifications

It's a similar story for notifications: I can't control them as well as I'd like in two ways: first, being able to mute some apps. You can do it on the phone, but why not on the watch too? Secondly, there's just one buzz signal. I've seen pebble apps that offer multiple buzz combinations, and it would be great to make better use of these in notifications. I don't know if the Time buzz motor supports variable strengths, but that would be great too.

Buttons & gestures

The buttons are excellent, and the motion sensor is really well tuned to different movements, which some apps, like the OutDoorWatch app (above), use to great effect. Move your arm laterally, like throwing a frisbee, toggles the bottom section of the screen to switch displays between, say, a barometer graph and a compass. Shake your wrist side to side once slowly and the middle section changes. With the combination of buttons and wrist shakes I don't miss a touch screen.

Battery

Battery life is as advertised: 4-8 days depending on use. 4 days if you're mucking about with it all the time, and using watchfaces that update the weather every 20 mins.

Microphone

The watch has a mic for voice control, but it's not well supported yet. This could be a brilliant addition to a beautifully simplistic watch, allowing you to literally call up all those voice-enhanced features of your smart phone from your wrist: voice memos, Siri or Google Now etc.

Apps

As you look through the Pebble App store you get the sense that developers are either waiting for the crowd's reaction, or being passively discouraged by the incumbent app store owners. Not only did Apple delay release of the Pebble Time app on the iOS AppStore (they relented after a social media campaign), but they have made some of the API functionality of iPhones exclusive to the Apple Watch, shutting out Pebble from offering some more enhanced features in the iOS version. No such apparent limitations on the Android version, so the Android version of the Pebble app has better app features available than the iOS version. Let's hope Apple play fair and open it up. There's plenty of room in this fledgling market, and no need for Kickstarter-backed David vs biggest market-cap in the world Goliath.

The trouble is that this sort of friction makes third party developers jittery. So while some of the main app contenders, like Evernote and RunKeeper have Pebble apps, some of their competitors, like Strava and OneNote don't.

In addition to their C-based development environment, Pebble have released a Javascript framework intended to attract non-hardcore developers to lash their mobile app APIs to a simple Pebble app. I haven't tried it, but the fact that I'm tempted says a lot for this little device. 

Smart Straps?

As you see from the picture above of the back of the Pebble, the strap has quick-release pins for so-called smart straps. These are add-ons that offer more hardware features, like more sensors or batteries, or both. This could be a killer feature, if you think about it. Some ideas here.

Conclusion

The Pebble Time is light and almost invisible, and has fitted into my life seamlessly: I'm not scurrying around to find charging points, nor am I stroking it every five minutes like a cat with ball of wool. The subtlety of wrist-based notifications is not to be under-estimated: a quick glance at your wrist is significantly less effort than hauling that buzzing widescreen out of your pocket only to find that you've received a spam text. The apps that I do have are also just right for the wrist: running app, music app, misfit app, authenticator app, travel app - those activities that you don't want to be digging out your phone for. 

So there's all that subtlety and convenience that Apple Watch reviewers have been raving about. Except this watch costs half an Apple. 

There's another Apple-beating convenience too: the biggest convenience factor in every watch since Patek Phillipe's in 1868: battery life. The only Apple watch reviews I've seen that have reported battery life to be 'fine' are by techies who probably already plug in five devices a day. Let's see if real consumers are just as glowing about one day of battery life after the novelty has worn off. I don't doubt that it's a beautiful piece of kit, but is it useful enough to warrant daily charging? Unless it replaces your phone completely, like the wrist watch did the pocket watch, it never will be.

My only concern with the Pebble Time is that its potential never gets fulfilled; that it gets crushed by less functional but more glamorous and wealthy competitors. In these days of social media and crowdsourcing they don't need much clout to hold their own and gather support, but they need to do it fast.

Show us some smart straps, get that damn mic working, sort out the notification buzzes and we could have a winner here!

Information Mobility

The ebb and flow of technological innovation is always most visible through the divergence and convergence of solutions to a particular set of use cases. Solutions diverge as innovation flourishes in new area where there are no standards and few rules. A plethora of options appears, then conventions are established. These gradually harden into standards, as dominant players emerge, and innovation ebbs. Or, more commonly in technology, flows into the next use case: ecommerce was the innovation ground until Amazon and eBay perfected it and the innovation moved to mobile.

In information technology the innovation use case, right now, is consumer connectivity. Social networks are the most direct symptom of this craving need. But it's clear that the need is broader than our friends' news feeds. 'Information mobility' is probably the most accurate label I can think of to describe the current innovation battleground.

The cloud and big data are simply grist for the mill: essential ingredients to staking a claim in the information mobility market and harvesting results. Example: it seems every app on my phone wants to see my contacts list. Why? Because it's effectively a prospects list for them. That's why every consumer-oriented company on the planet wants you to download their app: they want your rolodex. And we let them have it - cheaply. For the sake of crushing electronic candy.

Mobile devices are starting to converge on standards. You can still get a touchscreen for any size from 3" to 12", but the newest phones are congregating around 5"-6" and tablets 8"-10". With this convergence, the walls between vendor software ecosystems are increasingly being tested because people want their information anywhere. They want information mobility. If they cannot use your service from any device they may choose, why should they pay for it?

OS no-OS

Every once in a while an article appears saying something like "the OS is irrelevant because everything is on the Web now".

Yet, why can't I use my iApp on my android? Or on my mac, for that matter?

The current stress point in software is the OS. Apps are proof that the Web, while being a wondrously sticky medium, has a long way to go in democratising devices. If I want to build an app to be used across all devices I must build it for browser use. Or I must build 6 concurrent versions of it (3 desktop OSes, and 3 mobile OSes), which is not cheap, and depending on the app, not effective use of resources. In practice I'll pick the 2 most popular, usually Windows + either Android or iOS and extend when the revenue or funding kicks in. 

But why can't the browser do it all? Surely if the browser was the OS, we wouldn't need apps? Well, HP actually tried it with Web OS. As with so many of HP's recent innovations, it was a brilliant concept poorly executed. The devices were under-powered, and the marketing was crap. The HP Veer is still, physically, one of the nicest phones I've ever held.

And now we have chrome and chromebooks able to run Android apps.  Presumably Apple will follow, with OSX able to run IOS apps. But what about Apple TV too? It would need a better input device, like Kinect. Talking of Kinect, Microsoft, ironically, are probably the closest to seamlessness between their devices, with Windows, Windows Mobile and Xbox software all being sold in the one marketplace. Shame their user interface and many of their apps are so inconsistent. 

The thing is, apps are the best way to lock users into your platform. And for hardware makers, like Apple, the platform is everything. It is not in their interest for you to be able to run everything on the Web. It is in Google's interest: a cynic's view of Android is that it is a Google knowledge capture and advert delivery system. It's also in Microsoft's interest: they are laggards in both cloud and mobile, but gaining fast by slipstreaming the leaders. Google and Microsoft are software businesses, and even Microsoft have proven themselves bold in building apps for other OSes. They know that the proprietary app phenomenon is temporary: one day everything will run through your browser, on any device.

Tech trends, with double insights

This is a good article. It's a summary and opinion on the latest Gartner Tech predictions.

I agree with most of the opinions. Gartner makes its money on research, and, as such, is prone to exaggerate some preferred predictions - possibly in the hope that the very act of proffering them will lead to them occurring. Given their influence, it's not unreasonable, but it is a bias. So it's always healthy to view such research through the lens of a few opinions.

I agree with most of Chris Taylor's opinions, with some caveats of my own. It will be fun to review this post in a year's time...

Mobile device diversity & management: I'm with Chris on this. Enablement always trumps caution in technology, for better or worse. Technologists are always more interested in whether they can do something, rather than whether they should, and especially in software (that's why it's 'soft', right?). So ubiquity will work by 2018. The only constraint to it will be vendor lock-ins, not policies or standards.

Mobile apps & applications: I think Javascript is coming to the enterprise, so more enterprise apps will become web-based (or, more specifically, more desktop software companies will be able to build desktop-equivalent apps for browser). However, mobile-native apps will continue in the consumer space because there are a lot of vested skills in iOS and Android out there, and because companies like the vanity of having an app.

Internet of everything: it's seeping out, rather than exploding as many enthusiasts predicted it would. All it needs is one killer app, though, and it could rapidly come into its own. I imagine that app to be something like a cheap, SD card-sized Raspberry Pi, with sensors, micro USB connectivity (2, one for power, one for device(s) and really simplistic, user-friendly dev software.

Hybrid cloud and IT as service broker: I'm mostly with Chris on this. The issue with cloud is not security (that's a perception to address, though), it is integration. But, living in a developing country, I would not be as dismissive of the connectivity and jurisdictional issues.

Cloud/client architecture: this is just the same as the old client/server arguments. It ebbs and flows in roughly 5-10 year cycles: it's all about the client, then all about the server etc. I see no reason for that to change just because those servers are moving to the cloud.

Era of personal cloud: Agree, but I prefer to see it in more simplistic terms. As Marc Andreesen once wrote (in the WSJ, I think): software is eating the world. As more of our media is encapsulated in software (be it music, documents, patient records, news feeds, address books, hotel bookings etc.) the amorphous, invisible nature of software is taking hold in a very personal way.

Software defined anything: see above. Same thing, just the developer side of it.

Web-scale IT: see above. Same thing, just the enterprise side of it.

Smart machines: bit ambitious of Gartner to make predictions to 2020 (that's a century in IT terms!), but I agree with the gist that there will be some inflection point ahead based on smart machines, when we'll look back on Siri and Google Now as quaint pre-cursors to the main event.

3D printing: not convinced that this is any more than a cottage industry enabler. It's like printing: nearly everyone has a printer in their office and in their home, but we only really use them for office and home stuff.  If we want business cards or brochures we still go to the professionals. Same with 3D printing: the key inhibitors will always be cost of materials and mass customisation (why print my own trainers, when Nike can build me a custom pair for $120?). So the main benefit may be contextual: it stimulates the customisation efforts of mass producers.

Chris' own list is good for 2014, I think. That's the near-term direction things are heading.

Windows 8 verdict: daft UI

Here's the summary. Don't expect stats & benchmarks, just well-reasoned rhetoric.

The battle for the living room

This article (ReadWriteWeb) makes a good case for the next big consumer electronics battleground being in the living room.

It mentions, but doesn't really expand on, the key success criteria too: content, intelligence and user experience. Two of these are radically from traditional media. User experience is generational: older generations are used to being served content, to 'tuning in' to a broadcast. Whereas kids these days are very selective, and fickle about their content - they have to be because there's so much of it. So how to find the middle ground? That will be the critical challenge, and I suspect Apple will crack it first because that's what they excel at.

Intelligence on the web is massive, literally: every click or tap you make is tracked by something, somewhere. At the very least, it's the site you are on, more likely it is tracked by Facebook (if you browser is aware of your Facebook account), Google (ditto) and a few of the common advertising cookie trackers. Attach that to your TV and movie watching habits and that's a considerable portion of peoples' lives fully mapped. But data capture is only half the story. To engage and monetize you have to use the data intelligently. That's where Google have the advantage.

Content (which the article mainly focuses on) is the same issue as traditional media: it is still king, but cheaper to produce than ever. Sure, good stuff is still expensive, but that's about production, not distribution.

There's one other aspect that the article does not mention, but that I think will be vital: social.  Sharing content is a big thing already, but there's still some friction when you do it. Imagine a monetized version where you get a micropayment whenever you successfully share a piece of content (like, say, a movie trailer). There's also the participation aspect of social: gaming. Currently, there are very few multi-platform online games: an Xbox player cannot play with a Playstation player online. On some games they can play against PC players, but for quick reaction games the PC players have the advantage of a richer, more responsive interface (a mouse has a greater more accurate range of movement, plus a keyboard has more programmable combinations than a gamepad). This limitation is tolerable because consoles are primarily about games, with media playing being a bonus feature. In the future living room, audiences will not tolerate being restricted to sharing only with others on the same platform.

China hacking

While watching this video ( http://bloomberg.com/share/video/mB_vR3VcTA$pjOWVcVRO7w source: Bloomberg) it struck me as ironic that China's supposed control over it's people could work so badly against it, at least from a diplomatic perspective.

The telling stat is that 40% of the worlds hacks emanate from China, but only 10% from the US. Yet nobody accuses "the US" of hacking because state-sponsored naughty behavior is not what the US is about, right? Whereas when a hack comes from China it is heavily implied that it is state-sponsored. 

Maybe they just have script kiddies and organized crime too? There are 1.2 billion Chinese, so they could have hacking clubs larger than formal cybercrime entities in the West. Certainly, the organized crime is bigger. Also, given China's regime, those hackers would have to be pretty adept at covering their tracks, so you'd imagine that they'd figure out how to point the blame at the regime's institutions. Especially as it would suit the west's ideology to blame the Chinese state rather than a bunch of very good hackers who happen to be from China.

Maybe it is state-funded Chinese hacking, and they are probing ways to disrupt western economies and defense industries. While I can appreciate the latter, I don't think they'd need to resort to hacking to disrupt western economies. So who has been hacking Wall Street firms? Organized criminals seems a better bet to me.

Biometric security

Nearly 7 years ago all 23 chromosome pairs of the human genome were mapped, after over 10 years effort and billions of dollars spent.

Now, you can get your DNA mapped for about $5000-$10,000 and that's expected to drop to $1000 soon. And the data amounts to about 8.5GB - small enough to store on your phone. This is amazing science and bodes well for disease cures and longevity, but what about security and identity?

Right now, if I handed a thumbdrive to you with my personal genomic sequence on it, there's not much you could do with it, except take it to some clever people to find out what diseases I'm genetically prone to. But what about in the future? Science fiction writers like to rave about DNA fingerprinting: locks only unlocked by your DNA, or guns imprinted with your DNA so that only you can fire them. Crimes solved because the perp's DNA was found at the scene.

Now, what if you could use my DNA to grow a replica of my hand, my blood, my eye etc.- enough to trick the lock, or the gun, or the forensics team? How would I then prove I was me?

The worrying thing about DNA for identity is that you can't just reset it, like a password. It IS you. That 8.5GB dataset is your recipe. Maybe the boffins have thought of that, or maybe not? From a security access perspective it's no big deal: we've had multi-factor security for years, whereby access requires something you have (eg. a card), and something you know (eg. a PIN). But if someone takes your card, you can cancel it. If someone takes your DNA, what can you do?

Apple over-hyped

Having just seen the Apple event liveblog today (thanks @arstechnica), I'm actually disappointed.  I shouldn't be, but I am.

Is it because there was no iPhone 5, just an updated iPhone 4S, with some upgrade bits inside? Not really.

• It doesn't have 4G support, just lots of +ve spin about new twin antennae that make it 'faster than most 4G phones claim' - so Apple are reduced to fighting claims with claims now?  I thought they left that to lawsuits.
• It has a new camera, which is x% better than the old one - which was perfectly adequate.  Let's face it, we're never going to be doing portraits or feature films on phones, so who really cares?

Is it because iOS 5 just copies a bunch of stuff from Android (notifications, universal messaging, twitter built-in)? Not really.

• It still doesn't have Android's killer feature: the universal 'share' button.  Imagine the built-in Twitter, but not just for Twitter, for any app that you allow.  So you want to share that document/pic/webpage to your blog? Fine. To Evernote? Sure. To another NFC device? No prob, if your phone can do it.
• It still doesn't have WebOS's brilliant way of handling multi-tasking, with card decks and swipes.
• iCloud is just doing what Android already does with Google (email, calendar, contacts) and Amazon (books, music, vids); it's probably more seamless, but taking 5 years to untether your iPhone from your PC/mac is rather more self-serving than customer-centric.

No, what bothers me is the same level of hyperbole, the same reality distortion, but without the innovation sparkle that used to justify the swagger.  I get the sense that Apple have reached an innovation plateau, like every successful company does, and rather than consolidating, toning down the hyperbole and just modestly pushing out these modest updates, they continue to shout about being the all-time most successful and revolutionary company of all time.

The Apple fan community doesn't help matters, as they all want the scoop on the next 'revolutionary' product, but I rather suspect that the next truly 'revolutionary' product is a few years away.

Apple, you're good: be comfortable with that. Tone it down and delight people with your modesty: don't let your words outstrip your actions.

Facebook's intrinsic value

At nearly 800 million users Facebook is a phenomenon, although not because of the aforementioned number.  Facebook's tech celebrity ancestors, Microsoft Windows and Google, have many more users.  [Microsoft even got (gets!) to charge each user a fee, which remains beyond Facebook's capability!] The reason for Facebook's hefty valuation is, basically its position as a media channel.  While more people use Google, they typically land, search, and head off to the intended destination, maybe clicking an ad or two on the way.  With Facebook, people loiter, like teenagers at a bus stop.  Average Google session: 20 seconds; average Facebook session: 20 minutes.  That's sixty times more advertising potential.  That may justify a high valuation to investors, but what about the intrinsic value of Facebook?

Well, let's take a look at the Caribbean context.  Most internet technology doesn't reach the Caribbean, either because the commercial aspects don't work (I can see it, but I can't buy it!) or because they are surplus to requirements (I don't needs Google Streetview because I know most of my island).  Yet Facebook has been a quiet phenomenon here, at least in Barbados.  Why?

First, there's the technical: there are no transactional complexities (buying, selling etc.) and Facebook comes included on most mobile devices, which is still by far the most common access platform to the internet in the region.

But there's also the cultural: social networks have always been extremely important to Caribbean societies.  The Caribbean (as in CARICOM states) is a micro diaspora, a plethora of small towns: 15 million people, scattered across 500,000 square kilometres and 20 states (that's less than 5% the size of Europe in half the number of countries).  Communities are close-knit, yet inter-island living is also very common (for work, for school, to visit relatives, for vacation and sporting events).  Such conditions are an ideal structure for an online social network.

There are also the social habits: Caribbean folk are gregarious, be it at church, beach, sports event or rum shop, we bump into the same people quite often and are usually slightly wary of strangers,  unless they are tourists, in which case we'll be polite and chatty because they typically have no long-term value in our social networks.  Our social networks are also important for commerce: most folks know that the way to get best service/price is to know someone in the company, who can do you a deal.  Even if the deal is just a standard deal, the common perception is that it's always better if you know someone on the inside.  If I'm buying a car, the first question I ask is "who do I know in car dealerships?".  Social networks matter here.

But does Facebook matter?  Sure, it's popular.  But is it adding value?

I'm not sure it is, at least not in the way that an investor might hope.  I've been using Facebook since about 2006, when I lived in Bermuda and it was a great way to keep in touch with family & friends in UK and in the Bermuda diaspora (Bermuda is a big expat crossroads because strict work permits mean the expat workforce turnover is quite high).  But my way of using Facebook has changed in recent months.

Most of us only use Facebook for the newsroll: that perpetually scrolling screen of updates from friends and groups we subscribe to.  I started using Twitter, and the interface is very similar, scrolling through people's updates (tweets), except in Twitter you 'follow' people's updates - they don't have to accept you as a friend first.  So you can follow your favorite celebrity or publication or acquaintance or friend without having them potentially knowing all about you, your friends, your photos etc.  So I wanted a way to splice the two together into a single newsroll, as well as send an update to both at the same time  (or toggle to just one for those private, friend-only thoughts). Enter Tweetdeck.  Just what I wanted: it supports multiple Twitter accounts, allows you to comment on and 'like' people's updates, including photos, and it includes Google Buzz too.  Perfect.  It's owned by Twitter, too.

Now, I no longer use Facebook.  Oh, I subscribe to it, and I update it - still very much an active member of the social network.  But the adverts?  The apps? All these 'value-added' services? Nah.  I just have a screen full of updates, grey for Twitter, blue for Facebook and red for Buzz.  And that's it.
Consumer 1, Producer/Investor 0.

But for how long?