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Puma Phone hands-on

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Puma Phone hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iPad Is Like Holding The Future. But Only Because I Graduated From iPhone School.

When the iPhone first launched in 2007 I was sure I wasn’t going to buy one. Then I played with one. 15 minutes later I was $600 poorer. It was arguably the best tech purchase I’ve ever made. After the Apple event today, I got a chance to play with the new iPad for quite a bit of time. My takeaway? The thing is beautiful and fast. Really fast. If you’ll excuse my hyperbole, it felt like I was holding the future. But is it a must-have? That’s a complicated question.

The quick and dirty answer is: for many people, right now, no. Unlike the iPhone, which filled an already well-established need (cellular telephone usage), there is no existing need the iPad fills. That is, unless you’re an iPhone or iPod touch user. If that’s the case, the iPad does fill a couple of needs — it’s the best way to use apps, and more importantly, the best way to browse the web in a style that is likely your preferred method: by touching it.

That’s the key that Apple only hinted at today. When it launches, the iPad’s initial target audience is iPhone and iPod touch users. Why? Because they are already very comfortable with the way you need to interact with this device. The moment I picked up the iPad today I knew exactly what to do with it. It was second-nature. It was the iPhone, only larger — and that felt good. Meanwhile, I watched some other people who said they didn’t use an iPhone regularly interact with the iPad for the first time and it was not nearly as seamless.

Towards the end of his keynote, Steve Jobs alluded to this idea when he said that the 75 million iPhones and iPod touches that have already shipped ensure that those users will already know how to use the iPad. During the hands-on demos, two different Apple employees said basically the same thing. “If you have an iPhone, you already know how to use this,” one said.

There has been much talk leading up to the iPad’s debut as to what its exact purpose would be. A lot of the buzz was that it would be a killer new way to consume print media. Apple did play that up a bit today, but not as much as you may have expected. They did devote a good amount of time to the new iBooks app and store, but if you think anyone is going to buy this thing just to be an e-reader, you’re mistaken.

In fact, a lot of the Kindle/iPad comparisons now just seem a bit odd. Comparing the iPad to the Kindle now sort of seems like comparing a computer to a typewriter. Having scrolled through a few books on the iPad today, there’s still definitely an argument to be made that the Kindle has an advantage in the one thing it does (thanks to e-ink). But the key point is that it only does the one thing (and those Kindle apps won’t help that much because the device is way too slow) — as many of us have long suspected, it’s going to be relegated to a feature of a device that does more. And that’s exactly what Apple is doing with the iPad (which we correctly translated Jobs as saying back in September when everyone else seemed to think he said he would never do anything with eBooks).

And more functionality is important because it gives Apple more ways to lure new users into this style of computing. But again, the first of those are going to be iPhone and iPod touch users because they will be the most comfortable with using the device. And as that user base keeps expanding, so too will the base of those that are interested in the iPad — many just don’t know it yet.

The thing is, as a heavy iPhone user, I immediately recognize the iPad’s appeal. If it can perform anywhere close to the promised 10 hour battery life, I’ll likely ditch carrying around a laptop most of the time and simply take an iPad with the keyboard accessory. The thing is that snappy — and, at a pound and a half and a half-inch thick, the weight and size savings will be substantial. Oh, and at $30-a-month for unlimited data (yes, sadly through AT&T), I can ditch my $60-a-month laptop 3G card.

Does it have Flash? No. But while that used to be an issue for me when the iPhone first launched, I never think about it anymore. All of YouTube is available through the YouTube app, and I’d bet that sooner or later we’ll see a Hulu app as well. So what am I really missing with Flash? Browser crashes, eaten CPU cycles, and some Facebook games? Good riddance.

What it comes down to for me is that when I don’t need to do something that’s typing-intensive (like writing), I’d much prefer to use my hands to move around applications and browse the web. The iPhone has taught me that. Meanwhile, the rapid movement of data to the cloud has taught me that I have next to no need for most desktop applications anymore. In other words, I’m perfectly primed for this device.

Most people won’t yet, but as long as Apple has its base that will buy and use the iPad, they have plenty of time for either themselves or third-party developers to create the killer uses that make the iPad a must-have product for a broader range of people. We already saw that happen with the App Store and the iPhone/iPod touch. And at $499 (for the low-end version), there will be no shortage of people willing to splurge on the device just to see what all the fuss is about. They’ll get hooked too.

The iPhone and the iPod touch have in a way served as training wheels for us to use this new type of device, the iPad. To a lesser extent, so have Apple’s multi-touch trackpads and the new multi-touch Magic Mouse. All of these devices are pointing towards what Apple obviously believes is the future of computing: touch. That is more clear now than ever before — the iPad is their biggest step yet.

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The start-up chronicles: Experiments with Twitter

(Editor’s Note: The Start-up Chronicles is a weekly feature giving an inside view of the trials of a bootstrapped start-up – The Cost Savings Guy. CEO and founder Bruce Judson is also the author of “Go It Alone!: The Secret to Building A Successful Business on Your Own” and a senior faculty fellow at the Yale School of Management.)

As a direct marketer, I am a strong believer in experiments – even when I expect them to fail.

The ideal test is small, involving limited time or resources, and providing an indication of whether I should invest further time and energy.  It is, in some ways, an iterative process, where each piece of learning leads me to effectively increase my commitment to a specific strategy – or lets me know that my time is better spent elsewhere. Ultimately, there’s no substitute for first-hand experience.

I bring this up because I’ve started using Twitter lately. This is a service that never appealed to me.  It always seemed it was primarily a way to monitor what others are saying about your company online. And while that’s valuable, it’s possible to monitor this activity without participating in the service itself.

In connection with the rollout of The Cost Savings Guy, I did not believe that Twitter would prove to be a significant source of valuable traffic. But, not knowing this definitively, I decided to set-up an account and make a small effort (15 minutes a day) to build a following and join the conversation.

As part of this test, I also read several articles and skimmed one book by self-described Twitter gurus. Ultimately, I found most of this advice to be valueless or simply wrong.

My initial reaction was that Twitter was not a place for conversation, but the world’s largest souk, with millions of people proclaiming their wares. I decided to push forward, though (certain that this would simply confirm my initial lack of interest.)

I started identifying people with interests in small business and entrepreneurship, following them, and offering my own Tweets. I also attempted to engage in several conversations. My results were, as expected, uninspiring.

A few weeks later, we started developing our next phase of The Cost Savings Guy, which will involve implementing some innovative ideas geared toward creating a paperless office. (Note, the design of this effort reflects the learning described in earlier columns on inertia and sales hurdles).

This effort led me to think about Twitter again.  I wondered if I could use the service to start building an audience that would be receptive to what we were planning.  In this second round of tests I started identifying people with an “eco” or “green” interest. At the same time, I moved from random “Tweets” to a clearly defined series: 100 services that save money and help the planet. Each day I added a new service to the list and each Tweet had the same format which began “#(insert number) of 100 services that save money and help the planet.”

After a few days, this more focused effort starting to lead to encouraging results. My followers count started to increase by 10 percent or more per day. So, while my total is still relatively small (about 450 followers as I type this) it was at 400 or so yesterday and 360 the day before that.

More significantly, an average of 14 people clicked on my messages when I had roughly 350 followers.  There was some re-tweeting of one of the messages, but I still view this as effectively a 4 percent click-through rate in relation to my number of followers. And as we all know, a 4 percent click-through rate on anything is a real success – and this is a free medium.

These highly preliminary results – even though the numbers are very small, may be meaningless, and I don’t know enough about the value of these visitors – lead me to a few initial conclusions:

First, my mantra that it’s worth testing initiatives you are certain will not work, provided you can do it with very limited resources, remains worth keeping. There may be something valuable here.

Second, both the evidence and logic suggest that the more targeted your interest group, the more likely you are to engage with the right Twitter audience.

Third (and probably most significantly), my numbered list strategy seemed to be a valuable means of demonstrating authority and expertise that allowed me to engage Twitter users. I had something of real value to these users, and communicated it appropriately.

Per my experiment strategy, it’s clear that these results warrant a jump in my efforts in the Twitter arena. Here are the next questions:  If I grow this group of followers, or groups of followers with other interests, will these same results hold and improve? And will this growth come easily? My models from other media (which may or may not apply to Twitter) suggest that with 10,000 targeted followers, an optimized effort, and minimal Tweeting, I should generate 500-1000 click-throughs a day.

In addition, the marketing value of the vocal Twitter audience could also be high.  If users coming from Twitter have a good experience, will they Tweet about it? This needs to be tested as well.

I’ve said before that what really matters is actual experience. Today, I believe even more strongly in this guiding principle.

Previous Start-up Chronicle columns:

• Learning to listen to unpleasant truths
• Newton was right: Inertia matters
• Who is invested in your success?
• Deadly sins that destroy Web sales – Part 1

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TUAW TV Live: Watch it this afternoon (12/23) at 5 PM ET

Filed under: Video, Odds and ends, Podcasting

In our continuing quest to bring you the latest Apple info and let you be part of the fun, the TUAW mad scientists are going to perform an experiment this afternoon.

TUAW TV Live is a live broadcast that will be starting at 5 PM ET today. Your host, Steve Sande, is going to bring you the day’s Apple news, maybe show you some cool apps, and take your input and feedback via live chat. The show is scheduled for about an hour, and we’ll post a embedded viewer here on TUAW about 15 minutes before the start of the show.

If you’re interested in chatting live with Steve, just click on the viewer in our link this afternoon to be taken to Ustream, where you can sign in to chat or give Steve some discussion ideas. Come back to TUAW at about 5 PM ET (2 PM PT) and join the fun!

TUAWTUAW TV Live: Watch it this afternoon (12/23) at 5 PM ET originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Want To Try Out Google Chrome OS For Yourself? Here’s How.

The public debut of Google Chrome OS today has the press abuzz over the potential of the new web-based operating system. And now that it’s open sourced, you have the chance to try it out for yourself. Unfortunately, most people aren’t ready to undertake the daunting task of actually taking Google’s recently open-sourced code and turning that into a bootable computer. So we’ve put together a step-by-step guide to doing this, for free, in around 15 minutes (depending on how long it takes to download the OS itself). No, this won’t get your computer booting Chrome OS natively (and frankly, you probably wouldn’t want to yet anyway). But it will get it up and running in a virtual machine using the free software VirtualBox, which is available for Macs, PCs, and Linux.

First, a few caveats: we didn’t create the Chrome OS build ourselves — it was downloaded from BitTorrent. In theory it could possibly have been tweaked by some malicious hacker to steal your Google account information (this is unlikely, but who knows). There’s an easy fix if you’re worried though: just go make a throwaway Gmail account, and use that to play around with the OS. Also note that because this is running in a virtual machine, you’re probably not going to be seeing great performance (like that 7 second boot time). But it’s more than good enough to get a feel for the OS for yourself.

First, you need to get an image of Chrome OS. You can do that using this torrent. You can also try out the build that GDGT has uploaded, which worked fine in our test as well. If you get the torrent version, you’ll see it’s in a .BZ2 format. You’ll need to extract it. Macs should be able to do this automatically, but for Windows you may need a tool like Win Rar.

Once that’s done, download a version of VirtualBox for whatever OS you’re running on here and install it. After registering (or declining to) you’ll be met with a screen like this. Click the button that says “New” in the upper left hand corner. We’re going to be making a new virtual machine.:

You’ll enter a wizard like this. Hit next.

Go ahead and title the OS whatever you’d like. For the operating system, choose Linux, with Ubuntu as the version (other setups could potentially work, but this is the only one we’ve gotten working).

Choose how much memory to allocate to this virtual machine. This will be dependent on how much memory you have in your computer. The more, the better, but if you choose too much your real computer will become unstable/very slow.

Here’s the tricky part (fortunately it isn’t very tricky). You don’t want to create a new hard disk, instead, you want to use an existing hard disk. Don’t choose one from the drop down menu either — you’re going to want to hit the folder icon just to the right of that to enter the ‘virtual media manager’.

Hit the ‘Add’ button.

Now you have to find the Chrome OS image you downloaded earlier. This is probably on your desktop or in your downloads folder. Once you’ve found it, hit ‘Open’.

Hit ‘Select’ once you reach this window.

Almost there. Make sure ‘use existing hard disk’ is checked. Hit next.

Hit ‘Finish’

You’re done! Hit Start. Hopefully the screen will go black, but only for a little while (this could be anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute or so, depending on how fast your computer is).

Once you’re in, you’ll see a splash screen for ‘Chromium’ (which is what Google calls dev builds of Chrome). To login, you’ll need to enter a valid Google Account ID. Your standard Gmail account should work, but as we said before, this build of ChromeOS came from bittorrent, so you may want to use a throw away account like we did in the screenshots below (you can make one here).

You’re in. Now time to explore. To be honest, everything looks quite similar to Google’s Chrome browser, but there are a few key differences. Note the battery life indicator and options menu in the far upper right. Also try playing around with the ‘New Window’ functions — you’ll find that it’s difficult (if not impossible) to navigate between multiple windows. And be wary of the Bookmarks manager. As far as I can tell, there’s no easy way to get out of it — you’ll have to manually create a new bookmark, which will kick you back into the browser mode once you click it. Oh, and good luck finding the ’shut down’ button, because we sure can’t.

You probably won’t need it, but the shared user password for this install (which you’d need for functions like sudo) is ‘chromeos’ according to the torrent’s listing on ThePirateBay.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

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Manhasset Long Island Apple store opens

Filed under: Video, Other Events, Apple

It was freezing this morning as the Manhasset Long Island, NY Apple store opened for business. Employees wearing T-Shirts (they weren’t allowed to wear coats), ran up and down the waiting line of hundreds of people both pumping up the crowd and trying to stay warm. The enthusiasm was contagious as orange shirted people shouted out that the store would be open in 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, and then the doors opened to seemingly dozens of Apple workers handing out T-shirts and applauding loudly as each new group of 20 people or so were let in the huge glass doors.

The first 1,000 people were handed black T-shirts that said ‘Manhasset’ on the front and ‘Designed by Apple in California’ on the back.

The store is free standing and much larger than the one at the Walt Whitman Mall, my usual Apple store. The front and back of the store are glass walls and there is plenty of open space. Hopefully this store will take some of the burden off of the other Long Island stores which are usually crowded and have multi-day waits to get an appointment at the Genius Bar.

If you’re in the area, check it out at 1900 Northern Blvd, Manhasset, NY.

TUAWManhasset Long Island Apple store opens originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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To Those About To Demo: How to Deal With Your 15 Minutes of Fame

For the fortunate startups selected to present at any of several large tech conferences this summer and fall, the experience is fraught with excitement, opportunity, and pitfalls in equal measure.

Here’s a round up of words from the wise, including veteran investor Mark Suster on surviving the hype cycle, analyst Sean Power on navigating traffic spikes, entrepreneur Jason Calacanis on how to demo, and our thoughts on the benefits and drawbacks of launching a company or product at a conference.

Sponsor

The Analyst

First of all, be prepared for a high tide of website visitors. “This is an unprecedented influx of attention,” writes Power in a recent blog post. “It may be the single biggest traffic spike you’ll ever experience. Thousands of visitors will drive by your site, stay for a minute, and leave – never to return. After the bump, you’ll feel a tremendous rush of adrenaline, then deep, soul-sucking disillusionment as your traffic dwindles back to its former levels.”

So, how to capitalize on the opportunity and make sure those visitors return? Gather lots of data, track and measure users’ behavior down to the twitch of a mouse, solicit user feedback, and – most importantly – make sure your servers can handle the traffic.

The Entrepreneur

We also saw a string of blog posts from Calacanis on how to demo, how to run a trade show booth, and other handy conference tips. “After doing 2,500 minutes of demos (40 hours) this year and many more last year… I’ve learned a lot about what makes for a great demo and what makes for a horrible demo,” he wrote in this post. “Since demoing your idea is a key to your success as an entrepreneur, I thought I would share everything I know in a few simple bullet points.”

Simply put, Calacanis advises startups to show the product quickly, get the presentation over with in 5 minutes or less, leave audiences wanting more, talk about accomplishments rather than roadmaps, understand the competition, give short answers, and never-but-never use PowerPoint. In part two of his tutorial, he gets into greater detail, such as handling technical issues and choosing the best method for “the setup,” or the first 30 seconds of a presentation.

See that? That’s a tech startup conference spotlight, and it’s coming right at you. Image courtesy of Twiistup founder Mike Macadaan.

The Journalist

As far as media coverage is concerned, launching during a major tech event can be dicey business. Written last year, these words from former RWW blogger Josh Catone still ring true: “Out of necessity, many of the reviews we wrote of the startups launching at those events were half-assed – we were more concerned with covering as much as possible as we were with writing quality critiques of the startups launching. And that wasn’t really our fault: There were just too many startups coming down the pipeline at once.”

He continued to note that search traffic and Techmeme placement for two specific conferences were on a downward trend, and concluded, “Neither seem like they’ll be any better at acquiring users than any other time you could pick to launch (and might be worse, given the increased levels of startup noise during the events).”

On the not-so-off chance that your startup does not become the buzzed-up darling of this year’s tech conference, you must inevitably resort to getting press the old-fashioned way: by emailing your friendly tech blogger/reporter types.

The Investor

Finally, we come to this insightful post from Suster. “Today I want to talk about Kool Aid. Yours. Don’t drink it. I know you’re thinking that you have your head on straight but I promise you the experience of finding yourself in this maelstrom will leave any first time entrepreneur spinning. Fame and adoration corrupts first timers. And if you’re not careful you might start to believe your own hype.”

Suster continues to spin his own tale from the trenches when he launched his first company. The story is replete with funding from Goldman Sachs, press from Time and the Wall Street Journal, and champagne with Bernard Arnault. The trouble was, Suster had sipped his own Kool-Aid. The company had raised too much money, hired too many people, had too many air-castle-construction discussions, and wasted time while reading their own press. His expert advice makes the post worth reading for any startup about to get major attention from press and investors.

And of course, to all those startups about to demo, we salute you.

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Bit.ly Scores a Shorter, Better URL

URL shortener and social media analytics service Bit.ly just announced the availability of a new domain for shortening URLs, J.mp. J.mp offers all the same features Bit.ly does, but we believe it has two advantages.

Not only is it shorter, the new name is more literally communicative of what the service does. Click on it and you will J.mp [jump] to a new link. It’s nice and literal like the old classic tinyURL, though most people don’t know what URLs are. J.mp is so friendly it makes Bit.ly look like a way to catch a bit-delivered virus. J.mp might be the best URL shortener name yet. How do those Bit.ly guys do it?

Sponsor

J.mp was first discovered by Dan Frommer at Business Insider hours before the official announcement and the announcement was retweeted by super news-hunter Atul Arora in under 3 minutes after it went live. Now we’ve given it just a few moments’ thought and posted this account less than 15 minutes after the news was official – the Bit.ly blog displays the age of its posts in minutes.

Such is the nature of the super-fast, perhaps Real Time, social web that Bit.ly is a big part of.

You can visit J.mp and get all the same bookmarklets and tools for the new URL that you’ve got for Bit.ly (the “sidebar” tool is excellent). We expect that leading Twitter clients like Tweetdeck and Seesmic will likely add J.mp support soon. We wonder if Twitter.com will stop transforming long links into Bit.ly links automatically (a deal that was announced this Spring) and will use J.mp instead.

There are a number of efforts in the market to create community-owned URL shorteners, with features serving developers first before the interests of private owners. Most notable among them so far is Tr.im. It would be a shame if enthusiasm for such projects was lost over one fewer letter being taken up by J.mp. That said, this new URL J.mp will likely be just the latest development from a company that’s building itself into a strong market leader.

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