Colin Charles Agenda

Just read a good CNBC article titled Bloggers: Asia’s Next Generation of Product Endorsers. Some highlights from Nielsen’s 2nd quarter Global Consumer Report:

• Over 60% of Asian consumers (compared to 43% globally) use social media – including social networking sites and blogs to help them make purchase decisions
• 6% of Asian consumers identified “influential bloggers” as one of their top 3 trusted sources when making a purchasing decision (compared to only 1% of North Americans and 2% of Europeans)
• In China, lots of new foreign brands are flooding the market, and customers have not formed brand loyalty yet, so influence helps
• Nuffnang’s company revenue grew nearly 250% this year, netting them about SGD$10 million, according to co-founder Cheo Ming Sheng
• Blogs popular with advertisers (on Nuffnang at least): women’s blog, focusing on families, with food and tech blogs coming in at a close second

“When you write an advertorial (online), there (must be) full disclosure that it’s an advertorial,” says Cheo. “It’s the same as an advertorial in a magazine or newspaper.”

Right on Cheo Ming Sheng. Good work Nuffnang. Bloggers, be clear, make sure you disclose clearly what an Advertorial is (newspapers and magazines clearly mark ADVERTORIALs). This will ensure that readers and the audience trust you (and trusting you grows trust in the advertising network too). And you do not mislead the audience (after all, with great power comes great responsibility).

Contrast this to the Nuffnang attitude two years ago (see: The Real Story behind Maxis Broadband). I sincerely believe that Nuffnang is having a coming of age and are realising that non-disclosure (see: Advertising & PR, Bloggers & Integrity: Making Money, While Being Honest which was a very popular talk at BarCampKL April 2009), click fraud, etc. is bad. I also believe that this is a natural progression as more and more people understand blogs, social media, and the social nature of the Internet. Largely in part due to traditional agencies playing an active role in this space. Oh, and let’s not forget metrics.

So kudos to you Nuffnang. May you set a good example for the rest of your competitors in this space. And all the best in expanding to new markets!

This was a story I told quite regularly at OSCON earlier this year and I thought I would share it with everyone here.

I have over the years mentioned that some things in the Linux world poise it to be “the year of the Linux desktop”. Many people say these things, in fact others in the Linux world tend to tell you not to mention it as it might jinx the movement. Well, this year, 2010 is almost coming to an end, so I doubt I would be jinxing anything.

Who cares if it is the year of the Linux desktop? If the mantra was to spread opensource, I think Google has done a bang up job of getting the word out that Android is opensource. I know some people reading that line will cringe and tell me that MeeGo is more opensource, Android is not opensource, etc.

I landed in SFO as usual and I told the immigration officer that I was headed to Portland for OSCON. He wanted to know what OSCON was, and I told him it was a conference where opensource people gathered. He asked me flat out: “You mean, opensource like Android?” I instantly smiled and we got on to talking about Android, mobile phones and he told me how he enjoyed his Android device and he thought that all of us in this “opensource movement” were doing a great thing for his phone. He did make use of the Android Marketplace and he did get quite a few apps from it (free though, he admitted).

I then boarded my connecting to PDX, arriving past midnight, I hit the sack. Breakfast was to be at Burgerville right before the Community Leadership Summit. The waitress asked me if I was in town for some kind of family reunion, and I told her that I was in town for OSCON. She inquired what OSCON was since she had not heard of it and this was the weekend before all the geeks descended upon her. I told her it was a gathering for opensource people, and felt a sense of deja vu when she retorted: “Opensource like Android?” By golly, she had purchased an Android phone, went into depths about the applications, told me more about how she used the Android Marketplace, how she purchased a few apps, but preferred free ones, and so on.

I was making conversation about opensource (and Android devices in particular) with an immigration officer and a waitress, all under twelve hours of me landing in the United States. Its 2010, and even if Linux isn’t king on the desktop, its king on people’s most personal device, their mobile phone. Its what they carry in their pockets, and it’s doing more and more for them as the technology iterates. And this revolution is powered by Linux.

I was in Bangkok recently, and met an Android user who just wanted to know the basics of getting stuff working on his Android. Simple things like tethering, making it into a WiFi hotspot, and more were questions he had.

I whipped my Nexus One out and told him it all just worked. It’s running Android 2.2. He was impressed. He thought he was also running Android 2.2, until I checked. It was some HTC make that he had purchased recently (circa mid-to-late-2009), and it was running Android 1.6 (if I remember correctly). The fact that I cannot remember is in itself a problem for Android device manufacturers – there are so many out there, and while its great to have choice, it sure as heck complicates things. But that’s a matter for another post.

I told him to get the software upgraded. He had gone back to his place, tried it out, and it didn’t work, since there was no update available. Lucky for him, HTC happened to be a sponsor for BarCamp Bangkok 4. So he went up to their booth to ask, and they told him flat out, there was no Android 2.2 available for his phone. He would have to buy one, and there seemed to be a THB1,000 discount.

This was a phone that is no older than a year. Its similar to my Nexus One in age. It is not operator locked, there is no contract, yet with these Android phones, you are at the mercy of your manufacturer to release a software update to your phone. What is their incentive, considering they are rolling out new hardware on such a regular basis?

I look at Apple, and see iOS4. Support for it goes back all the way to the iPhone 3G (released in 2008). So it does not work on the original iPhone released in 2007, and multitasking only works on the iPhone 3GS (2009) and the new iPhone 4 (2010). But it seems like Apple is giving it a good three year release cycle of support so far.

Android has about a six-month release cycle for the operating system. Device manufacturers are probably releasing new hardware around that time-frame. While people are raving about statistics that over 70% of Android devices out there are running some form of Android 2.x (either 2.1: 40.8% or 2.2: 36.2%), it still leaves about 30% not getting a lot of functionality. Heck, functionality that only 36% of Android users get, the others want! Again I ask: what is a manufacturer’s incentive to release software updates, considering they are rolling out new hardware on such a regular basis?

There is no consistent user-experience across the board. What works on my clean install Android device, is very different to what others who have software carriers mucking with the software, as well as the handset manufacturers. They’re not getting the “pure” Android experience, and they are unable to share experiences with others.

Gingerbread, aka Android 2.3 is just around the corner. It will (likely) work on my Google-issue HTC Nexus One. It will not work on all those other beautiful devices out there, until their manufacturers say they should.

I was rather thrilled this past week to note that the team at MoSync have released 2.4-pre-beta, with support for not only Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7, but also Apple Mac OS X 10.6. Goodbye Windows virtual machine, and hello native Mac app.

Check out the release notes, and you’ll also see some very interesting tid-bits. The largest request that I seem to hear from users is that they would like to target the iOS platforms. Apple iOS devices seem ubiquitous these days, and MoSync is now filling the gap. The highlights:

• support for iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) – read hints to help develop iOS applications (you want to read this, especially if you’re doing some development on Windows; you will need XCode and a Mac to run it)
• Android 2.2 support – read hints to help develop Android applications
• ARM recompiler for Symbian 3rd and 5th edition devices
• Bluetooth client/server library

There’s also improved documentation, with example applications. Check out btServer (makes use of the Bluetooth features) and MapDemo (good example with various map sources).

While there are no binaries for Linux users, there is a guide on how to build MoSync using Ubuntu. I’ve not tried it recently, and the guide is a bit dated, but I expect it to work without too many issues.

I learned about Unsubscribe.com, from Fred Wilson’s recent post about how he works towards achieving Inbox Zero. I don’t use GMail as my main client, preferring to currently use Apple Mail after I ditched Thunderbird earlier this year. However, most of my email accounts are now based on GMail, thanks to the wonders of Google Apps for Domains.

Unsubscribe is exactly what I’ve been after. I get subscribed to a lot of mailing lists and instead of marking things as spam (sometimes in my MUA, sometimes on GMail), I’d rather just get off the mailing list so it does not clog up Google’s servers. Another problem is that my oldest email account is now fifteen years old, so it tends to get clogged up with quite a lot of crap.

Signing up was easy. Installing the plugin for Firefox was also easy. Hitting the limit of five email unsubscribes per month was dead easy! I had to quickly grab my credit card and get the limit lifted (if only they offered Paypal as an option).

I ended up using it in a mixed-mode environment. I tried to use it in the browser for some of my various Google Apps for Domains accounts. It worked a charm. Then I moved back to my MUA, and started forwarding emails to mail@unsubscribe.com. That too, worked a charm. One click (and one forward) unsubscribe is just too easy.

Considering I have too many email accounts and not all of them have GMail access, I had to write their support line a quick email. Within a few hours, they fixed my problem – they whitelisted all my email addresses, and if I need more, they’ll gladly whitelist more. They also told me that they’re working on an interface to allow users to add their own email addresses.

Service within a few hours. Absolutely love it. Can smell that they are a great startup to watch. Well worth the USD$19/year fee.

Update: In the 2 days that I’ve been using it, on day 1 I got off 78 mailing lists, and on day 2 another 51.

Nokia World 2010 is happening today, and I got to watch snippets of the keynote via their live stream. I saw the demo from Anssi Vanjoki where he played a video, in full HD on all their screens. He was especially proud it did not happen via a computer in the back – it was live via the Nokia N8. It comes with a HDMI port. Note that many laptops don’t even come with a HDMI out (yet). So this is revolutionary right?

So I quickly asked on Twitter: Do you really watch movies out of your smartphone? If you do, isn’t the use case on it, rather than output to a TV?

I got some interesting answers, and lots of points to discuss. First, how I might use my smartphone to watch a movie:

• Watching movies on my phone is something I envision doing when I commute. If I’m on a train or in a crowded LRT/MRT, I might whip out my phone and watch a movie. I might do this on a plane too, but the moment I get to a place with a TV its quite unlikely that I’d be interested in watching anything on my mobile phone.
• I should not forget about video podcasts – I subscribe to quite a lot of them, but I tend not to watch it on my mobile phones. I presume my usage might increase if I carried an iPhone (because my podcatcher of choice is iTunes), but the moment I could whip out my laptop or iPad, thats probably where I’d watch the video. Plus quality is an issue – HDMI out is great and all, but if the content is lacking (as most video podcasts are – you want to ensure you get quicker downloads), it’s not going to look pretty on a TV.
• I might want to watch videos I create on my mobile device. This is where it might shine – watching user generated content on the big screen. To be fair, the Nokia N8 includes a very basic video editor, and this might be where HDMI out might make sense.

Now, for the rather interesting answers.

Matt Armitage tells me that he watches movies and TV on his smartphone while he is at the gym. He usually does it via a video cable to the treadmill monitor. Furthermore he tells me that some treadmill monitors allow you to plug it in via an AV lead in, and others give you an iPod adapter (compatible with all iOS devices) and you can now use the touch screen interface on the treadmill. Advanced!

Carolyn Chan tells me that she watches Futurama on her iPhone. But when pressed if she would watch it on TV via her smartphone, she says no, largely because getting movies on the phone is already a painful experience, and poor battery life is not going to help the cause.

Asrial Baker and I had a rather interesting conversation. He watches full length movies on his smartphone, with proper earphones/headsets. Asrial does this on his long commutes, and he notes that others do it on buses and trains too. Asrial’s daily commute is probably over one hour but less than two hours, one way, everyday. He can get quite a bit done while he’s on the train. He goes further to tell me that its useful when you are at a hotel, and the hotel TV is not that entertaining, its best to have the N8 + HDMI out to enjoy your movies.

Now, I never thought of this use case. When I’m at a hotel, I’m usually beat from the day and I rarely have time to watch television, let alone a feature length film. But I do spend a lot of time at hotels, and recently during my vacation, I stayed in six hotels over 3+ weeks. I am writing this while in a hotel room.

Not all hotels have a HDMI input. Asrial says every hotel he’s been to had one. Thinking back, during those six visits, only 50% of the hotels had flat screen TVs. The rest were all CRT based, and would not have had any HDMI inputs. The one I’m in now, has 3 HDMI ports, but you’ve got to get to it via the TV. No chance of plugging your phone in to get it charged (otherwise, you’d have a flat battery in no time).

What you see above was taken in the Four Points by Sheraton in Kuching, Malaysia. That’s two power sockets, a 5 volt USB charger, computer VGA in, HDMI in, iPod in, and regular AV in. In recent times, I can only remember one other hotel that does this: Intercontinental Bangkok. What is common in hotels though is an iPod dock. This commonly connects to the TV as well, so you can enjoy music & videos from your iOS device.

David Lian tells me that the idea behind this is: everyone carries their personal content/media wherever they go. Of course, now which manufacturer/hotel ends up “getting it“?

On an airplane, for example a Singapore Airlines Airbus A380, you will get a USB port, an Ethernet port, and a video AV in port. No HDMI.

In conclusion, do you watch movies on your smartphone? How will you use HDMI out?