OK, so the hysteria has somewhat calmed down. The reviewers are indeed mostly raving, but I can’t help being puzzled. The iPhone is supposed to change the industry, yet it uses yesterday’s technology.

1. EDGE is a different name for horrible browsing experience. The only equivalent I can think of is a scooter engine trying to pull a Rolls Royce.

2. Side-loading only? you mean I need to connect my phone to the PC again? wasn’t it all about mobility?

3. Camera without zooming? Are we back in 2003 and nobody told me?

Hats off the Apple and Jobs. Their marketing strategy belongs in the MBA hall of fame. I am sure the iPhone will be a great phone, eventually. Right now it’s a good looking iPod that gets you stuck with one mobile operator for 2 years.

      

The Vision I share with the folks at SharpCast got me blogging in the first place. Delivering fusion – web services and convergence – in a user centric way is where my heart is. Too bad SharpCast doesn’t really deliver on it’s own promise. At least not yet.

I’ve been following SharpCast for a while. They have managed to put together attractive investments - over $16.5 Million - before launching their first alpha application. Very impressive. I was also impressed with Gibu Thomas, their CEO, and his interesting and refreshing view on data synching and common languages. Share and access your data from anywhere at any time –without resorting to “file exchanges” – couldn’t agree with that more.

I was obviously intrigued when I read about their app going public this morning at TechCrunch. I immediately went to their site and downloaded the application. SharpCast chose to go “the client way” – a downloadable Windows client instead of a web based approach. A debatable approach? Maybe. Do we expect much out of 12 Megabytes of downloaded software? Absolutely.

The application itself is very mature technically, definitely for a first run, but not very intuitive. While the interface is simple, clean and even slick, it takes time to found your way to creating a new album and to sharing it. It currently offers two use cases – sharing of photos and of contacts. The contacts sharing option is not really ready yet (no contact collection and filtering, for example, which makes it kind of useless). The photo sharing feature looks like the intended killer penetration use case. It does look nice – classier then Picasa and much better then MSN, but still a bit too much of a “me too”. I opened my first album, imported a few photos and looked to access with my mobile. And here I found the real problem.

I searched and searched and could not find a hint on how to “share with my mobile”. anywhere! After 15 minutes I gave up and backtracked to the online help (I’m a man, I have to try the hell out first). Then it struck me! I must have a mobile client! And SharpCast offers one for – get this – Palm and Windows Mobile only!

Wait a minute! You just created all that noise, raised all that money, got me to download and install 12 Megabytes of software on my aging and moaning laptop…and you leave me hanging with a useless application? As a matter of fact, you offer a mobile solution for the fraction of mobile users that for some reason purchased a Palm or Window Mobile phone? How Not user centric is that?? This ain’t convergence!

So here goes guys – I own a RAZR! None of my friends or family member, or anyone I would like to share photos with, owns a Windows Mobile or a Palm! Check out SoonR – they offer WAP based sharing which WORKs on my phone. Maybe it doesn’t take $16M to build it, maybe it’s not that classy looking, maybe it has shortcomings, but it WORKS. I understand the approach behind a higher end application, but come on! Build a Java client or grant WAP access. Just give me something I can actually USE!

To me that’s a killer right there. I do have other reservations, though. Photo sharing and contact synching are too exhausted and saturated use cases. I wont even start counting the companies I know that offer similar services. It really takes a fresh approach to make it worth it. The client is too heavy and is available only for windows right now. I couldn’t tell if SharpCast is ready to deal with data transcoding – from media files to work documents – a key barrier before going mass market. Right now SharpCast is a niche service for traveling professionals and their applicative message is a bit overused. I’m not sure this is what they have in mind, but that’s where they are right now.

Now I have a lot of respect to the SharpCast fellas. This is also why I expect more. They clearly know how to build a company and how to develop a product, which is why I’ll come back for the next version. At my next visit I hope I’ll see they will have gotten the user centric and marketing angles right too.

      

MySpace launched its Instant Messenger 2 days ago (MySpaceIM, download here) and marked yet another milestone in the recent resurrection of the IM market. If 3 years ago we were facing a stagnant, confused, walled gardened menu of 3 independent IM clients (AIM/ICQ, MSN, Y!), we now have 3 additional ones to choose from – MySpace, Google and Skype. Out of the latest additions, MySpace stands out as the farthest from the boat. I can imagine the so called rational process behind the decision to go with IM, after all the MySpace contact list is indeed a very valuable, unique, communication prone buddy list. But that’s where it ends. My hunch is that this time ego-trip and erroneous judgment prevailed over simple common sense. (more…)

      

From a purely technological perspective I guess the answer is simple and short – YES. Then again that’s not our point. We are here to represent users and discuss fundamental issues of the web’s evolution beyond the PC.

The recent post in Techcrunch regarding Google’s new calendar (A.K.A CL2) got me thinking (I Techrunch - therefore I think) about how the folks at Google plan to mobilize their ever increasing plethora of services.

Now a confession, I am three connections away (based on my linkedin network) from being close to any Google insider (boo-hoo) so my review is based on what I know as a regular user. Out of all existing services the one that interests me the most is Gmail Wireless. This is a perfect example of what “can be done” vs. “should be done” when a communication service goes mobile

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I’m sure some of you readers are looking at the title of this post and thinking “Huh? What’s with this? What do these things have to do with one another? It only makes sense that this comes from a guy called Spock”. But there’s a point here, and a story, so bear with me.

Something bothered me while reading Gil’s post about the boat-on-wheels. It took me a few minutes to understand what’s wrong, but finally it hit me:

A boat-on-wheels isn’t that bad of an idea.. (more…)