AOL Launches Stand-Alone Lifestream
AOL unveiled its social aggregator and publisher, Lifestream, as part of its instant messenger platform last Fall. Now they’re launching a stand-alone site at lifestream.aol.com. After it appears they’ve failed with Bebo, this social venture may have a chance of success, in the opinion of TechCrunch at least—they’re saying, “This is what Google Buzz should have been.”
Like most social aggregators, Lifestream gathers content from several social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, Delicious, Digg, Flickr, YouTube. Lifestream uses existing friend lists on those social networks, so users don’t have to recompile their friend lists. Users can also cancel updates from entire networks, users or users on networks (i.e. ignore your friend’s Twitter stream but keep following his Facebook). It’s also integrated with Facebook Connect, so there’s no separate login, and users can publish back to social networks from the platform.
Lifestream also has a network of its own, and plans integration with Google Buzz in the future. TechCrunch doesn’t mention whether the service automatically hides duplicate messages—for example, your friends who have their Twitter statuses automatically publish to Facebook, too.
And then there’s the mobile platform: the website is compatible with mobiles, but Lifestream also has AIR, iPhone and Android apps. The mobile apps auto-note location, and you can use them to post pictures.
TechCrunch concludes:
The Lifestream product is simple, intuitive and really, really useful. Frankly it’s what Google Buzz should have been – both an independent social network on its own, but very deep integration into all of the other social networks you are likely to use daily. It’s nice to see actual innovation coming out of Aol.
In a time of more and more fragmentation, I think many people are looking for a product like this. If Lifestream is really as easy and seamless as TechCrunch says, and if it can gain acceptance, it could be the product AOL needs to turn its social fortunes around.
What do you think? Will you give it a shot?
Chomp: An Apps Search Engine Or “Yelp For The App Store”
Chomp could be described as a search engine for iPhone apps (and eventually other apps stores). It’s a two-month old iPhone app and more recently a website, which resembles Twitter, whose objective is to enable people to more easily discover and review iPhone apps.
The proliferation of 160,000 iPhone apps has created the well-documented problem of [...]
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US Regulators May Be Gearing Up For Google-AdMob Challenge
Beyond the iPhone one could convincingly argue that the best thing to happen to mobile advertising in the past year was Google’s announced acquisition of AdMob. It got everyone’s attention — especially the $750 million (stock) price tag.
It also single-handedly boosted the profile of all of AdMob’s competitors. As an almost direct response Apple, which [...]
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comScore: Android Shows Strength As Mobile Web Usage Grows
Metrics firm comScore released some new quarterly mobile data that shows strong growth for Android handsets in the US and an increase in mobile web usage:
RIM showed modest growth while the iPhone’s growth, according to these figures, flattened. Meanwhile WinMo and Palm lost ground.
Of course with the advent of Windows Mobile 7 and the fact [...]
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Now Use Written Gestures to Search Android Phone
It’s getting closer to the moment of truth for me and this kind of “news” gets me a little closer to making the move on going with an Android device. I know the days are numbered for my BlackBerry. That’s a foregone conclusion. I guess I am the customer that is being most fought over between Apple and any Android device (hence Google for all intents and purposes). I want out of my Blackberry Storm sooner than later but I am still debating whether to wait out the contract to go with an iPhone (it’s a year away) or commit to an Android device ….. now.
Google today introduced the ability to search on an Android device using 2.0 or higher using written gestures. Pretty slick. The Google Mobile Blog tells some more.
As mobile phones become increasingly powerful and can store more data, we’ve introduced new methods of search to get you to your content faster, such as search suggestions or search by voice. But sometimes, typing to get to the right search suggestion takes too long, and you may be in a quiet environment where speaking a query is inappropriate. Today we’re pleased to announce Gesture Search, a new Google Labs application for Android-powered devices running Android 2.0 or above in the US. Gesture Search lets you quickly find a contact, an installed application, a bookmark or a music track from hundreds or thousands of items, by simply drawing alphabet gestures on the touch screen.
This ability alone is not enough to make me switch but the speed with which Google is progressing with functionality and specific Google centric changes is making many pay close attention. Add to that the Apple v. HTC (indirectly Google) alleged patent infringement case and it look like the Android is going to be a real competitor and Apple knows it.
I am not taking sides in the Apple v Google war because I use both of them to do much of my work. I am, however, trying to figure out how I can get the most out of each because there are benefits to both. Right now, though, I need Google more than I need Apple so maybe this isn’t such a tough decision after all.
While I am at a crossroads of sorts as a mobile user where are you with regard to marketing in this space? Do marketers need to take sides or do they truly need to ride the fence and look to appease both groups? Or am I completely wrong in assuming that the Android market will ever challenge the iPhone dominance?
How do you see this?
Apple and Microsoft Teaming Up?
Once up on a time, it seemed that Google and Apple were natural partners, as inseparable as . . . well, two boards of directors with the same guy on them. And then last August, Google CEO Eric Schmidt left the Apple board, citing “core business conflicts.” Those conflicts have become more apparent over the intervening six months as Google has unveiled a smartphone/superphone set to compete against the iPhone.
And Apple may be set to fight back. Last month, they were apparently thinking about making Bing the default search engine on the iPhone, and now people are speculating that Apple is contemplating Bing for the iPad. You know what they say about the enemy of my enemy, but . . . isn’t this going a bit far?
Naturally, with a month until the iPad’s launch, nothing is set in stone—at least not to public knowledge. This speculation comes from Global Equities Research based on usability evidence about Bing, including the fact that instead of Google’s inverted triangle heat map, Bing has a rectangular heat map. Bing also uses layouts including several panes that are well-suited to rectangular screen.
Rectangular? Layout? Remind you of anyone? (The iPad. Also has a rectangular screen. But then, so does my computer and I still use Google.)
If this happens, the move may help Bing a little, but I doubt it’ll hurt Google in the long run—and since it has nothing to do with the Nexus One, it’s hard to imagine it’s going to hurt the competition in that arena.
What do you think? Will Apple really team up with Microsoft to spite Google, and if so, is it because of Bing’s usability results?
Continuing Its Anti-Apple Crusade, Google Buys reMail
Who says you can’t go home again? Just ask Gabor Cselle, the founder of the successful iPhone application reMail. Cselle started as an engineering intern at Google way back in ’04 (I’m trying to make it sound like a long time ago) but since moved on and in the process founded reMail. Now, Google has come along and said that the door remains open and they would like him back.
Sounds nice right? Well, on many levels it is but the interesting part of this play is what Google is doing with the iPhone app that many people love. They are pulling it out of Apple’s app store. As for the app moving forward? Let’s let Gabor tell that story.
You might be wondering what will happen with reMail’s product. Google and reMail have decided to discontinue reMail’s iPhone application, and we have removed it from the App Store. reMail is an application on your phone. If you already have reMail, it will continue to work. We’ll even provide support for you until the end of March, and we’ve enabled all paid reMail features for you: You can activate these by clicking “Restore Purchases” inside the app. reMail downloads email directly from your email provider to your phone, and your personal information, passwords, and email are never sent to or stored on our servers.
So, Google scores twice on the same shot. They get back the talent they once had for their Gmail product and they take a shot at Apple as well. Well struck. That is of course unless you are reMail app user. A comment from “Mr” on the Cselle’s post may echo how others feel about this move.
This is great news for you and Google. See, Google is pretty hellbent on destroying the experience as much as possible on the iPhone and that is why they bought your company, so they can remove your app, and possibly incorporate it into the Droid phones.
I loved reMail. Now I wish I had never bought it.
Needless to say, the war between Google and Apple is only going to become more and more heated. Battle lines between the companies are moving from dotted to solid lines and the user base in the mobile community will need to chose sides sooner than later.
What side are you on and who do you think is the big winner in the end? Will this corporate clash benefit the people who pay for services or will they just be pawns in a much bigger game of chess?
Apps Are in the AIR
The battle rages on as to who may one day be the dominant player in the mobile world. Apple has jumped out to the early lead for sure with the iPhone, its App store and the mystique that is around the company and its products. But this is not a sprint by any means. This looks to be a marathon and the competition may make this closer than anyone may have thought just a few short years ago.
How’s this going to happen? Well, while I have no crystal ball I think that the announcement set for today at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Spain will play a part in making this a much tighter race. TechCrunch reports
The bane of all mobile app developers is the need to rewrite the same app over and over again for different devices: the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm Pre, Nokia, Windows Mobile. Adobe is positioning its Flash platform (which includes the Flash player, AIR, developer tools, and media servers) as the write-once, deploy-anywhere solution for both the mobile Web and apps. Today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, it will announce plans to bring Adobe AIR to mobile devices, starting with Android and Blackberry phones.
Apple fan boys will dismiss this as just another attempt to make the Android and BlackBerry devices seem cool but they really aren’t because, hey, they aren’t Apple. I suspect there will always be that element and there may be enough differences in the phones for that mentality to hold up with a large enough percentage of the market to be valid. What is getting more interesting is that as Android devices in particular become more “iPhone-like” (relax, I didn’t say as cool as the iPhone so relax, your cool quotient is still in tact) the one major advantage that Google holds over Apple is all the other services they provide to individuals, SMB’s and, more an more, the enterprise.
What if Google truly decides to make their offerings just plain work better on Android devices? It could get to the point where efficiency, productivity and effectiveness outweigh the cool factor of the iPhone. I am not saying this is inevitable but it sure is a possibility. Google has shown that it will roll out features for Google Maps that are only available on Android devices. If they take this even further and if Buzz becomes something other than an industry novelty Apple will have to take notice.
Flash and the iPhone have not been friends to this point and Steve Jobs is convinced that HTML5 is the next wave. He may be right but for now, Flash is making the news. Jobs is quoted in Wired from his now infamous rant against Google as saying the following about Adobe.
About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.
Adobe, of course, while flattered by the attention thinks differently.
Of course, the face-off with Apple continues over Flash on the iPhone, even though last December, 7 million iPhone users attempted to download the Flash player from adobe.com through their mobile browsers, up from 3 million requests in July, 2009. Apple might eventually have to cave if Flash becomes a standard feature of all other smartphones. Adobe execs cite numbers by Strategy Analytics which estimate more than half of all smartphones will support Flash by 2012.
So Internet marketers take notice. The move to mobile is coming at a fast and furious pace. Some of the activities that have been “traditional” including search engine optimization (seo) may have a different spot in the pecking order of priorities. While it’s too early to tell for sure there is definitely something in the AIR.
Apple Will Take Google’s Money But Still Thinks They Are BS
There have apparently been some rumors (yes, there are rumor mongers in the Internet space which is SO hard to believe) that have been talking about Apple entering the search game with their own search engine. This whole game of Google v. Apple has lately been fueled by the rumor mill and comments like those made by Steve Jobs in giving his take on the “Do No Evil” mantra of Google. While that makes for some juicy headlines and speculation it is apparently not true about Apple’s attempt at search.
The Business Insider tells us the reasons why that rumor is not true.
The rumor that Apple is building its own search engine “isn’t credible,” according to a source familiar with Apple’s operations.
Our source tells us “there’s too many options” for search on the market, so there’s no reason for Apple to build its own search engine.
Another reason Apple might not want to build its own search engine: It’s getting over $100 million a year from Google in its revenue share deal, according to our source.
Now, $100 million in Apple’s case is not a huge sum of money. Of course, having that come in the door rather than putting valuable resources of time and talent on building its own engine is the better way to go. One thing that was not mentioned in the article is how long this deal is in place. This is an important piece of any business interactions between Google and Apple because as the days pass the fact that they don’t like each other is becoming very obvious. Of course, being head-to-head competitors for control of the Internet as we know it can make this happen.
There is mounting evidence that how these two giants interact is changing and may be less and less of a reality moving forward.
Our source tells us when Apple first introduced the iPhone, it hammered out its deal for Google Maps in two weeks. When Apple prepared to launch the iPhone 3G with GPS a year later, it was a six-month process “full of acrimony” to get the maps deal finished.
Google wanted access to all sorts of data from the maps, but Apple didn’t want to give it up, according to this person.
If you would like to see Business Insider’s take on the Apple side of the coin then visit their piece called 11 Apple Execs Hellbent On Destroying Google. It’s fun to think that people are rubbing their hands together furiously in Mountain View and Cupertino laughing their best “Buhahahahahaha” laughs as they plot each other’s demise. Gotta love the Internet.
Google’s Smartphone Gains Should Create Some Buzz
All the online world is buzzing about the introduction of Google’s Buzz yesterday. The competitor (or death knell) to FriendFeed has everyone wondering just how much of the social media market can Google ‘control’ by playing the intermediary. Considering how far reaching their other services are I think it looks more and more like Google could end up in the driver’s seat after all of this.
Another prong of their attack on Facebook, Twitter, Apple and the online world in general relates to the move into smartphones / mobile devices which are becoming a critical component of the social web. As more and more chances pop up to tell everyone about everything, those who feel the need will want to do this at any time so being able to use these services ‘on the go’ is critical. Google’s Android movement is now looking to be more and more important as the likelihood for Google apps to best work on, you guessed it, a Google device makes good business sense.
According to comScore and ars technica Android devices are making their move but still have a ways to go to catch up to RIM (BlackBerry) and Apple’s iPhone. My guess is that by the end of this year this chart may look considerably different in favor of Google’s plan.
Oh, by the way, a note to Palm and Microsoft. That object in your rear-view mirror that is getting bigger very fast is going to catch you so move over and start planning another route.
I have written here about my iPhone dilemma. I am a Verizon customer in the middle of a contract with a BlackBerry Storm. I am squeamish on AT&T issues but realize that greater adoption of Android devices could make Verizon’s network act like its competitor’s. While I am close to making a change on the phone (sorry BB, game over) I am more and more convinced that the Android device is the better choice. It’s not nearly as sexy as an iPhone, but considering the importance of Google to my daily existence it will be much more practical. Google has already exhibited its willingness to roll search related features out to Android devices only and my guess is that it will be a trend in the future.
We have heard from other readers about their choices in the smartphone market. In the past it has been the ‘wow factor’ that has driven many moves. If Google continues to do the things it has been doing it may be just as important to consider the ‘now factor’ which is less about being entertained and more about being efficient and effective right now.
Any thoughts on the matter?
