How many iPhone apps do I really need? Not many…

January 28, 2010

Here are the iPhone apps that I use on a regular basis.  There aren’t many, actually.  I really need to clean out my iPhone (I counted over 160 apps and I’ve already deleted many).  Email, Phone, SMS, iPod, Camera, and contacts = 90% of actual use.   In no particular order:

  • NYTimes
  • Facebook (I primarily use Facebook this way)
  • MSNBC.com (more for the news notices versus the actual app)
  • Sportacular (real time sports scores)
  • Pandora (I wish iPhone had longer battery life)
  • Shazam (I don’t use it that often, but it’s simply amazing)
  • Wall Street Journal 
  • TechCrunch
  • LinkedIn
  • Urbanspoon (don’t use that often, but it’s still a favorite)
  • Foursquare and Gowalla (more testing because they are getting so much attention)
  • TweetDeck
  • Light (must have)

This reminds me of the Facebook app craze in many ways.  Too many apps.  Not many are actually useful.  The vast majority are used only once. 

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It’s good to be the Mayor

January 25, 2010

Honestly, I’m still not sure that I get Foursquare, but I’ll take the free coffee.

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Space Station Escape Pod

January 24, 2010

Looks like it’s built by Fisher Price.  The project was never completed.  The pod is designed to carry up to seven people back to Earth.

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I hate when that happens

January 15, 2010

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The (deserved) Facebook privacy policy pile-on continues

January 6, 2010

Pretty interesting way for a rogue marketer to harvest a fairly deep level of personal information from Facebook made possible because of the new privacy settings. Does anybody care? I hope so.

From Wired.com:

[A] marketer could take a list of 1,000 e-mail addresses, either legally or illegally collected — and upload those through a dummy account — which then lets the user see all the profiles created using those addresses. Given Facebook’s ubiquity and most people’s reliance on a single e-mail address, the harvest could be quite rich.Using a simple scraping tool, a marketer could then turn a list of e-mail addresses into a rich, full-fledged set of marketing profiles, with names, pictures, ages, locations, interests, photos, wall posts, affiliations and names of your friends, depending on how users have their profiles set. Run a few algorithms on that data and you can start to make inferences about race, income, sexual orientation and interests.

While that information isn’t available for all users, Facebook changed its privacy settings in early December so that certain information can’t be made private, including one’s name, current city, profile picture, gender, networks and friend list (the latter can be somewhat hidden from public view) (emphasis added).

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Proof that connections matter a whole lot

January 5, 2010

However, I love this.

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If I could reinvent TV in my image

January 5, 2010

Here is what I want from TV programmers/distributors:

I mainly watch sports, news and movies.

For movies at home, I have pretty much have moved to Netflix (great service!).   The streaming side of Netflix needs a wider range of content.   Hopefully, that will evolve.

For news, I’ve pretty much moved to podcasts on iTunes (e.g., Meet the Press, NBC Nightly News, Nightly Business Report).  I pretty much only watch live news at the gym or when an event is in progress (e.g., an election).

Sports is what keeps me locked in as a cable customer.  There really isn’t an option for live sports streaming that includes local teams on the Internet. For example, NBA.com blocks local Portland Trailblazers games.  The Trailblazers are, thus far, streaming a limited number of games.  I remain a Comcast customer primarily for sports.

I would like to cancel cable and move to Internet only.  It’s easy enough to stream shows from my computer to the big screen (perhaps I will move to another solution like Apple TV).  I would like to sign up for a monthly subscription with iTunes for unlimited, commercial free, access to TV shows (news and entertainment).  I would also like a streaming solution that allows me to watch live sports without limitation.  I would gladly pay for that too.

I’m not holding my breath :)

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New JanRain office in progress

January 4, 2010

OK, not the most scenic shot.  Nice new space for them.  Congrats on the move.

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Potential Antitrust Issues with TV Everywhere

January 4, 2010

A collection of public interest groups have complained to federal regulators that the cable industry’s "TV Everywhere" plans violate antitrust law. See article in the Washington Post here. In essence, the TV Everywhere approach forces an Internet TV bundle. The programming is only available to subscribers of traditional cable. Ultimately, a settlement allowing consumers to purchase an Internet only programming bundle (i.e., drop the cable requirement) would be very interesting. I think that it’s fair to say that the cable providers will fight the unbundled approach given the need to protect the legacy business.

I want my Internet TV.

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RockYou Lawsuit – Storing Personal Information Can Be Dangerous

January 4, 2010

Application developer RockYou has been sued in Federal Court because of a security breach resulting in exposure of millions of email addresses and other personal information. The plaintiff is seeking class action status. Interestingly, the legal theory is based on a recklessness standard. Lawsuits like this present another good reason for publishers to outsourse functions like user login to providers such as JanRain, Facebook Connect, etc. Staying ahead of hackers is a never ending process. Storing such information can be dangerous. More from the article in MediaPost:

An Indiana resident has sued application developer RockYou for an alleged security breach that exposed 32 million users’ email addresses and passwords and social networking log-ins.

“While some security threats are unavoidable in a rapidly developing technological environment, RockYou recklessly and knowingly failed to take even the most basic steps to protect its users’ [personally
identifiable information],” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit, brought on behalf of Evansville’s Alan Claridge, alleges that until Dec. 5, RockYou stored users’ information without “hashing, salting or any other common and reasonable method of data protection.”

Claridge is seeking class-action status. The complaint, filed Monday in federal district court in the northern district of California by the law firm KamberEdelson, alleges that RockYou broke its contract with users, was negligent, and also violated various California laws.

Full article from MediaPost

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