Anyone who’s not on an iPhone might be Apple-green with envy over the amazing choice of apps available for download at the iPhone App Store versus the apps at Blackberry’s App World. There are far more iPhone apps, they tend to be less expensive, and they don’t run on Blackberrys. Is this inevitable, when apps are written for different operating systems because they have to be written in different languages? Is this a continuing, deliberate fragmentation of the market to create the appearance of separate solitudes between Microsoft and Apple operating systems and the devices that run on them (i.e. Blackberry and iPhone, respectively)? Maybe both, but what else is new? Well, crowd-sourcing efforts by developers to get their apps on both platforms with the least amount of effort, by creating more elegant code that shares the logical design of the app across both platforms.

What this means for the longer term is that as more and more software development kits (SDKs) in Objective-C (iPhone) and Java (Blackberry) get into the hands of grassroots developers hoping to make money selling their apps online, there is going to be a push toward cross-platform programming. As pointed out by developer Teabot on Stackoverflow.com, the core application code can be written so that it appears very similar on either platform, with API wrappers around the edges of the code that can be re-usable.

To achieve the same look and feel on each platform would require very different ‘physical components’ according to developer Grouchal on Stackoverflow.com, but Teabot goes on to claim that you should be able to share the logical design of your application if you carefully separate it into highly decoupled layers. This is still a big win because the logical application design probably accounts for a large part of your development effort, according to him.

This type of chatter shows it’s inevitable that the division of the apps market across operating system platforms will become eased, as grassroots developers become more inventive in finding ways to bridge the language barrier.

This is seriously cool, especially if users have better control over sound outputs (e.g. using guitar, bass, beats, synth, or samples). Guitar Hero, move over.

Cell phone symphony

As autumn approaches minds turn to harvests, turkey and reasons to give thanks, so I’ve asked my assistant, Tanaz Irani to gather us a bunch of ideas…! On how to monetize social networks.

Social Networking & the Power of Millions of Clicks by Tanaz Irani (Spec. Hon. B.A, Pol.Sci.)

The fundamentally fluid, non-centered and non-linearly controlled nature of the Internet, and the hundreds of social networking sites on it such as Linkedin, Facebook and MySpace, lends itself to a re-thinking of how ideas can be promoted, virally – and how value can be derived not only in the end result but also in the process. The innumerable array of site applications and groups are examples of how these sites are more than a simple digital diary, photo album, or IM program.

On the server side, with partnership programs these sites can earn revenue per click volume, while redirecting traffic towards sponsored pages. Via strategically targeted ads, applications, or user-generated groups, these sites are able to summons up traffic for everything from breast cancer awareness to local condominium projects. A college can generate interest and awareness using social networking sites popular with the student body to promote, image, or brand their institution. These are the online places where students/audience are, so they must be there too – not to control, but to send out a message, or reach out to prospective members of the group.

Another key element to the intricacies of these types of sites is the notion of advocacy or simply giving someone a voice. For example, recent copyright advocacy had tens of thousands (more than 40,000) individuals joining Facebook groups (click here for source) to speak out! At these numbers you can get effective media coverage and lend legitimacy to a campaign or proposal.

The “I am rich” iPhone app is an interesting counter example (Click here for article). Online protests like “I bet I can find 1 million people who dislike George Bush” show what potential these technologies hold for politics.

On the marketing side, it’s about leveraging metrics. The “I am rich” application boils down to some genius who figured he would tap into a highly specialized, but unrealized market segment, and it paid off. The breast cancer group on Facebook reaches hundreds of thousands of people each day, and they’ve found a way to generate enough revenue to offer free services to women. The breast cancer group members are invited to click to a specially directed site, and then click on partner websites (win/win/ hyper marketing). These partner sites (i.e. shopping sites, vacation sites) pay pennies per click, but it adds up and they then offer free mammograms to women in the U.S. based on the $$ they generate. So it is €˜win€™ for the companies, €˜win€™ for the women, and €˜win€™ for the breast cancer advocacy group. But it€™s also hyper because it depends on millions of clicks, each done individually.Š

Moses Avalon has written a short but well-reasoned defence of copyright entitled “Da Vinci On a Necktie.” Speaking about the “RIAA/ISP war” over music and how it should be delivered and consumed, Avalon sees copyright in terms of preventing the loss to our culture of the power and magic of music. It’s not yet posted on his website – so far as I can see, but likely you can get it by subscribing to his newsletter. It’s worth checking out. Avalon notes,

“[a]s the [music] medium moves more and more into a ubiquitous “liquid” form, existing everywhere, but less noticed, it moves into opposition to the way music has existed in our lives: as a listening experience, unique to itself and apart from other day-to-day functions. In the liquid future, music will be everywhere almost all the time, but we will not notice it much.”

Avalon asks everyone else who cares enough to listen,

“are the real enemies of music’s future the record companies who are trying to retard this “progress,” so that their product does not end up being the free toy at the bottom of a cereal box?”

One of the promises of the Internet is the ability to speak directly to people, thousands or millions at a time, and for them to speak right back. With that in mind, Nine Inch Nails join the growing wave of established recording artists who see record companies as irrelevant. No longer stuck in a conventional record deal, NIN recently have released a 36 track instrumental album called Ghosts, available in various configurations over the Internet, from totally free downloads of nine (of course) sample tracks, to paid downloads of the entire album, to totally expensive box sets fulfilled offline. This is not a promotion. This is a business model. And it doesn’t stop there. Wrapping the project in a Creative Commons license, NIN are inviting fans to collaborate in the creative process and virally promote the music by submitting video interpretations of the music for a YouTube film festival. Here is a sample (by dust062):

Cool. This is what the audience is contributing. What does a record company do exactly? Well, it provides marketing and distribution. Typically that takes the form of radio promotion, video production for television, and getting CD’s and other physical products manufactured and shipped into stores. The record company of course oversees things online as well, but usually more as a gatekeeper than as an authentic force that’s driving sales. Record companies largely are not taste makers any more.

As more and more buzz is created and consumed online, and more and more people want their music loaded onto their iPods and mobile phones, and more and more social networking sites like MySpace give the ability of anyone to post music and videos online and maintain a fan base, this makes record companies irrelevant.

Failover shortcomings seem to be the Achilles heel in the efforts of Research in Motion Ltd. to win the battle with Apple Inc. over whether the BlackBerry or the iPhone will be the smart phone of choice as business and personal applications converge in the mobile device market.

Failover is the capability to switch over automatically to redundant or standby servers or networks when failure hits without warning. Ideally this happens so seamlessly that users are not affected and don’t even notice. Networks with failover capability have their servers running in high-availability clusters located in different geographic locations. The concept of server farms has been used for years by powerhouse computing platforms like Google, where literally thousands of servers are spread all over the world on separate grids. This speeds up the delivery of search results as users access Google worldwide via the most efficient telecommunications backbone (i.e. the closest, fattest pipe). It also makes Google much less likely ever to go down unexpectedly.

RIM has experienced several system-wide failures over the last couple of years. The most recent occurred just a few weeks ago. While no doubt RIM has plenty of failover capabilities within its data centre at Waterloo, Ontario, the problem is that it only has one data centre. With a slew of patent infringement problems hitting RIM from the United States, at one point it might have seemed wise to keep its servers out of the U.S. But aiming at the North American market, it could still expand its platform into clusters running on separate grids inside Canada.

This issue needs to be addressed by RIM more and more urgently as it expands its user base beyond a core of CrackBerry business users into the area that Apple previously has dominated with its iPod, being music and pop culture. To be the platform of choice for the masses, RIM must listen closely to what they are saying and what they are being told. Entertainment wars tend to be decided by public opinion, represented by a huge number of small voices over the Internet on blogs and social networks, which together can be overwhelming forces of change.

Coming out of the iPhone corner of the ring, with a lot of credibility in the area of consumer technology, Steve Jobs of Apple recently has gone on the attack and his comments seem valid. As reported by the Globe & Mail today,

“Every e-mail message that’s sent to a RIM device or from a RIM device goes through a NOC [Network Operations Centre] up in Canada,” Mr. Jobs said, according to a report by Bloomberg news service. “That provides a single point of failure, but also provides a very interesting security situation.”

RIM’s response, reported in the same article, seems muted, refusing to acknowledge Apple by name when asked. Full disclosure – I own and use a BlackBerry – and I think it’s got great potential to expand into an all-purpose mobile communications and content-delivery device. However, as RIM lines up content providers in talks about partnering for its network, RIM needs to bear in mind the strong culture of exclusivity in the entertainment world. Everyone likes to line up with a winner. A winner needs to anticipate the market. The market is the people. They are passionate and opinionated and don’t like the idea of their entertainment being unavailable, unexpectedly, ever.