Napster effectively eliminated optical media by making people realize that the digital format was the only long-term, effective, space-saving way of having music that was portable.

Sure there were MP3s before Napster, and yes, some people had decent libraries of music that they carried around on their portable MP3 players. But Napster made it mainstream by making it easy for anyone to find any music they wanted and download it.

It was illegal and rightly so. There was no way to monetize the music underground economy and intellectual property belongs to someone. So Napster got sued. A lot.

Someone along the way suggested that perhaps a more amenable for Napster to provide digital media to fans and give the record labels a reach around at the same time was the unlimited music for $9.99/mo. Napster balked saying no one would pay that kind of subscription fee.

The lawsuits became so much that the music service had to shut its doors. In an attempt to resurrect themselves just a year or two later, they finally adopted the music subscription model but it was too little too late.

Other music subscriptions came along such as Rhapsody but never gained any kind of real market share. Rhapsody is still open and charges a monthly fee but it just never gained the traction needed.

Spotify Arrives!

In 2008, a new music service, Spotify, launched in Europe. The model was of the subscription type where consumers could pay a monthly fee for the ability to stream any music in their catalog.

The service gained huge popularity in Europe while consumers in the United States clamored for access. Month after month, year after year, the rumors surfaced that Spotify was preparing their U.S. launch and it never came… until last week.

In the meantime, consumers have been inundated with cloud-based web apps. They use Gmail from the web, Facebook for interactions with friends and family, Twitter for persistent real-time communication. Consumers have lost their desire to want to own their own data, and as such, the droning drumbeat of Spotify in Europe as a music subscription service is now arriving in the U.S. past the tipping point of data ownership needs.

That’s a long way of saying – people don’t care if they own their music anymore if they’ve got everything they need in a music service that doesn’t provide ownership.

The Case for Physical and Owned Digital Media

Through the years, I’ve always been a proponent of having my music in a digital format as opposed to a streaming service. I’d rather buy the album on iTunes or Amazon MP3 and know I have it than just stream it from somewhere.

I’ve wanted to play music on demand and not have to rely on a faux-radio service like Pandora to get it done. I like Pandora. I pay for Pandora. But I can’t listen to the songs I want to on demand as part of their licensing agreement with the labels.

I like having dick-measuring competitions about how big my music library is. The bigger it is, the better I am. I must be a more serious music lover. Or so I’ve felt.

With the ownership model, I could take my music everywhere. Hell, even cars have iPod jacks in them so that 50GB library can be taken on the road. I could go for a run and listen to an assortment of playlists for just such an occasion or I could have my library with me for when I need to drum up an impromptu karaoke song and can’t remember how the song starts.

I thought.

In fact, I thought until last week when Spotify launched in the United States. Now… I don’t care about my digital music library. Every argument for it has been shattered into a million small (yet suitably sharp and jagged and “hope you’re wearing sandals so you don’t cut your feet”) pieces.

Spotify is the Music Messiah

At one point, I thought it was important to take my music with me wherever I go. I still do. Spotify has apps for every major mobile device (and if you don’t have a mobile strategy in anything, you lose) and they all tightly integrate with the web service and related desktop apps for both Windows and Mac. Everything is synced. And you can listen to music offline!

At some point I was very concerned about how big my music library was. I feared a catastrophic data loss that would wipe out my years of music collection, purchasing and playlist assembly. Of course, there were backups but that took forever over a network or to an external hard drive.

Spotify solves this by integrating with all your DRM-free music on iTunes or other music player, importing them, making them available in the cloud or offline. It also eliminates the need to have music library. Who needs a music library when every major label is signed on to provide their catalog to the service. I have the entire music world as my music library. My dick, by definition, is therefore bigger.

But the real killer in Spotify is the ingenious social aspect. Sure, you can have a lot of music. Sure, you can have playlists. Sure, you can have subscription models. Sure, you can have mobile availability.

Spotify put the biggest teenage-era “I love you” method in digital format by allowing the mix tape to be replaced by playlists… that are sharable with someone, some service or the world.

Queue up your Bieber-esque bee-bop feel good technosailor dance-esque songlists… the mix tape has gone digital!

It’s the End of the World as We Know It… And I Feel Fine

Spotify will undoubtedly continue to evolve. Launching in the United States gives them a much larger audience to tap into for feedback and expectations. I would like to see the social integration tighter and more obvious, but all in good time.

Rarely does a game changer come along. A lot of people think they have the game changing app… but it never happens. This is, in fact, the revolution that we’ve been waiting for. I no longer even think about my iTunes library, Amazon MP3 purchasing or other digital media. Everything I need is right there in my dick-sized music library.

Photo by Cerebro Humano

Late in 2008, after the rest of the economy crashed and burned due to the housing crisis, the tech sector seemed to be fairly resilient. Maybe it’s the nature of the industry… less money at stake, generally, in tech VC deals than other industries. For instance, Biotech.

That all went out the window when Valley-based VC behemoth, Sequoia Capital, gathered a now-infamous meeting of all its portfolio companies and gave them what can only be described as a “the sky is falling” lecture.

In that lecture (that presentation is shown below), they advised their companies to buckle their seatbelts, lay off employees, and get rid of non-essential expenditures. They said it would be a dangerous ride ahead and that only the companies that had enough forward-thinking prowess to survive, would do so.

The presentation opened with an ominous title slide with the words: “RIP Good Times”. The presentation instructed CEOs to look for M&A deals as quickly as possible, raise new cash now (i.e. late 2008) if they were looking to raise a new round, and have at least a year of cash in the bank.

Pretty ballsy move that, frankly, spelled the beginning of the tech sector decline. If Sequoia was instructing their companies in this way, then something must be severe, thought many other VCs who followed suit with their respective companies.

In some ways, Sequoia was correct. It would be a long road to recovery. In other sectors of the economy, the recovery is ongoing or is just beginning.

The tech sector is not that way, however. In the past year, we’ve seen huge investments in 2010. Twitter raised $200M+ on a $3.7B valuation. Zynga, the social gaming company, raised $147M on an estimated $5B valuation. Tumblr raised $30M.

The bubble has been gaining full steam. And then there was yesterday.

Yesterday, you might ask? Yes… yesterday. Yesterday it was announced that Sequoia Capital led a $41M Series A round (Yes, you heard that right… Series A!) for new mobile social photo sharing company, Color.

I’ll let you read about what Color is because, though it’s a bright, shiny object that is interesting in some ways, it’s not, to me, a $41M play.

Sequoia seems to be taking the approach that many smart VCs these days, including Mark Suster from GRP Partners, said last week when describing investment strategy relating to teams and not products.

Whatever you’re working on now, the half-life of innovation is so rapid now that your product will soon be out-of-date. Your existence is irrelevant unless you continue rapid innovation. Your ability to keep up is dependent on having a great team of differing skills. Individuals don’t build great companies, teams do.

And while I fully agree with Mark, I do have to question Sequoia making a $41M play less than three years after they virtually single-handedly drove the nail into the coffin of the tech sector. To me, it seems Sequoia made an opportunistic opportunity to drive the market rates down on valuations, to eventually make a big play like this at lower valuations (Disclaimer: I don’t actually know the terms of the Color deal). With a lower valuation, they can throw more cash and own the lion share of the available stock ownership. You know… waiting for a slam dunk, as it were. Mission Accomplished!

However, it’s notable that the Color team is truly a notable team. The former Chief Scientist at LinkedIn. The guy who sold Lala to Apple in 2009. Five other notable experienced entrepreneurs and successful startup people.

I’m sure Sequoia knows what it’s doing. It’s certainly interesting to watch investors defend them. There’s just very practical questions about how the company that started the tech recession could come out guns blazing on this one.

Most of us use iPhones, Android devices or Blackberries. Maybe a few odd people have a Palm Pré. We are mobile. We do email, stay in contact with friends and lovers via text message, Twitter, Facebook, and get driving directions via Google Maps. We find restaurants, bars, shopping and bus stops – all from our mobile devices. We play games, leverage the “nose down in the phone” as a “get away from me” messaging tool.

We use our phones for everything, don’t we?

Relatedly, I don’t even like to watch TV in real time. My shows are consumed via the web, and have sometimes been viewed on my phone.

Gone are the days of the traditional approach to media and findability. In an information now era, it’s important to have ambient findability… the ability to discover exactly what I want, at exactly the right time and on the right device. This is not a new concept either. Peter Morville wrote about it in his book Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become (O’Reilly, 2005). He defines ambient findability as:

• The quality of being locatable or navigable.
• The degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate.
• The degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval.

This morning, I commented about how I wish the Black Keys, one of my new favorite bands, were coming to Austin. Of course, my omnipresent Twitter following were sure to inform me that the Keys were just at ACL Festival and had done off-ACL shows.

I would have known that had I Googled, but I didn’t.

Here’s the problem: With ambient findability, I should not have to proactively find out when my favorite bands are in town. This information should be delivered to me via text, email, or other notification. I should not have to remember to pick up the Austin Chronicle to find out where these shows may or may not be.

In a different world, if I’m walking around in downtown Baltimore, for instance, it would be awesome if I recieved some sort of notification when I’m in proximity of something that may be of interest to me. Foursquare recently announced some new initiatives that notify a user when they are in proximity of something on their to-do list. This is an excellent step in the direction of ambient findability.

These are the premises of findability that need to be included in every consumer-facing product and startup. It is the next generation of the web.

Photo Credit: Paul Veugen

Because this post is so utterly important and I firmly believe it and expect you to as well, I’m going to channel Dave in this post. If you’re offended by language, leave now.

Why? Because mobile is the most important thing going on in technology today and you all are sitting around talking about social media. That’s right, I said it.

You are talking about social media and the Old Spice campaign like it’s something awesome. You’re circle-jerking each other by promoting products and bullshit companies simply because your friend you drank with at Affiliate Summit is doing the social media. You’re holding it wrong!

Do you even know what their business strategies are? Do they have anything worth talking about besides their marketing campaign. They are just using Twitter and you’re praising them for their ingenuity because “they get it”.

Fuck. That. Shit.

They have no fucking idea that most of their customers have a phone and a significant percentage of those phones are smart phones. They are completely ignoring mobile and you’re enabling that bullshit by focusing on their conversations and engagement.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Here’s the reality. The next generation of the web isn’t bullshit REAL-TIME anything. We’re overloaded on real-time. Real-time is what causes your friends to look at their phones the entire night while you’re trying to socialize with them. What you need to be thinking is the RIGHT-TIME web. What do you need to know right now based on your interests and focus? Can that be delivered via the most ubiquitous device on the planet – the cell phone?

Instead, you’re worried about making sure your colleagues have their dicks sucked by the public.

Fuck. That. Shit.

The order of operations for the next-gen web is a simple formula. The RIGHT data to the RIGHT person at the RIGHT time on the RIGHT device. Data first, Device LAST.

But you don’t get it. You’re talking about iPhone apps. You think the iPhone, the iPad, and the Android will save us. You don’t realize that mobile constitutes more than those devices. You’re running companies that specialize only on a single device and app. Yea, I’m looking at you, Gowalla.

You’ve missed the damn boat.

You think that the next-gen web is about conversations. Hello? That started in 2004 when Facebook was invented and became mainstream in 2006 when Facebook opened up and Twitter launched.

The train has left the station.

You think the next-gen web is all about the here and now. Do you not under stand the word “next”? You don’t think proactively. You repeat talking points.

Fuck. That. Shit.

We wouldn’t be having to get people together in a crisis and figure out how to mobilize relief workers if the “right-now” web was operational and people weren’t narrow-mindedly thinking about how an iPhone app can help Haitians when most of the population of Haiti can’t afford an iPhone, and probably have old Nokia T9 phones capable of only SMS, if they own a phone at all.

You’re not thinking about mobile. You’re not thinking about semantic data and how it operates in a mobile form-factor.

And because of that, you’re missing the boat.

Photo by ilamont.com

A year later, Apple announced their second generation phone, the iPhone 3G. With it, they opened up the ecosystem even more by allowing developers to build third party apps that could run on the iPhone. 50 million apps later, it is still the best thing about the iPhone.

Apple made some mistakes during this process, as it would naturally be assumed they would as a relative newbie to the phone manufacturing world. They took too long to open up the device to third party apps and when they did, they employed draconian and inconsistent rules that were undocumented, uncommunicated and, generally frustrating to companies building apps for the iPhone.

When their third generation phone, the iPhone 3GS emerged, there were some improvements (such as cut and paste, video and voice control), but the more frustrating aspects of the device remained unchanged. The iPhone still doesn’t provide a flash for its camera. It still doesn’t support Flash. It still can’t be tethered as was promised (at least in the United States under AT&T).

Worse, the inherent failure of the iPhone (undoubtedly expected to be it’s greatest appeal) is the restriction of the operating system to a single Apple device. I get why. But now let’s flip the card.

Google today announced the Nexus One, a new Android-powered phone that, in the words of Good Morning Silicon Valley, is “a worthy iPhone competitor“. Actually, that’s a tame phrase. Let me give you a piece of this article titled, “Google vs. Apple: There Will be Blood”:

No single device is going to “œkill” the iPhone, and that’s not really Google’s intent anyway, iPhone users being the heavy Web traffickers that they are. But Google does have a strong interest in fostering enough competition to keep Apple from dominating the mobile market, which is why it chose the strategy it did “” providing a strong and improving platform that could support multiple manufacturers offering multiple models to multiple demographic segments across multiple carriers. Google doesn’t need to tear down the iPhone; it just needs to make sure there are plenty of attractive alternatives for smartphone shoppers who for various reasons don’t feel compelled to join the Apple-AT&T axis. As an Android flagship, unlocked but initially aligned with T-Mobile, the Nexus One fits as part of that plan.

And now it might be time to note that Google is winning this battle. Besides last years flop G1 launch with T-Mobile (I’ll be honest, the thing was a brick and ran on a very early version of Android so not surprised it really didn’t go anywhere), Verizon Wireless has just launched the Droid by Motorola and the Droid Eris by HTC. They are promising three Android phones in 2010. T-Mobile is now launching with the Nexus One and Verizon Wireless should get it this spring.

AT&T will not get an Android phone as long as they have an exclusive relationship with Apple.

The road to victory is very clear and Google has the advantage. Despite Android being open source, it’s patron saint is Google. Therefore, Google has distribution interest. The more Android phones that can be sold and made – of multiple varieties – on multiple carriers – possibly including Netbooks, the more they control the market. The more Apple fails to radicalize their roadmap with the iPhone, the more they lose the market.

Let’s go back a few years. The great browser wars of the 1990s were dwindling down as NEtscape was acquired by AOL then turned into a bastard half-breed of itself. Firefox, under leadership of the Mozilla Foundation, was blazing new paths in the browser market. Microsoft had largely cooled its heels standardizing around Internet Explorer 6. No further browsers were expected to be made. The battle had been fought, the war had been won. Microsoft ruled supreme.

That was what they thought. Meanwhile, Firefox kept making progress gradually stealing market share here or there like a rogue flitting through shadows snatching purses and wallets.

This opened the door to other browsers – Opera, Safari, eventually Google Chrome – to enter the marketplace. Microsoft realized they had sat on their heels too long and finally began building Internet Explorer 7. Internet Explorer 8 would soon follow. Internet Explorer 9 is around the corner. All of the sudden, when competition increased, Microsoft ran heavy and ran hard to keep up.

This is where Apple is going.

In about 6 months, if history teaches us anything, Apple will launch their 4th generation iPhone. Conventional wisdom suggests that the fat days of Apple and AT&T operating in lockstep are over. Conventional business wisdom suggests that the iPhone must radically alter the playing field with this release to stay competitive in the market. While the iPhone still has market share, so did IE6. While Apple sits back and does incremental enhancements and call them major releases, the scrappy Android will take market share if given the opportunity.

What are your thoughts on this extremely interesting business environment?

* Photo by ColorblindPICASSO

A swath of new smartphones have just hit the market and, though I don’t claim to be a gadget or phone blogger (Really, you need to go read Boy Genius and Gizmodo for a far more geeky and informative analysis of all the various devices that hit the market), I do know that I’m a businessman and entrepreneur. I know that, from my perspective, there are key principles and requirements in any phone.

In order for a businessperson or entrepreneur to invest in a phone (again, from my perspective), there needs to be a few key things.

1. Email – Clearly the killer app forever now, any phone must support email. As part of this, there needs to be a wireless sync/push feature.
2. Productivity – Any smartphone needs to be able to open files from major vendors – Word, Excel, PDFs, Images, etc.
3. Competent mobile browser – As mobile professionals, we need the web more than the average home user. We need access to sites that are not inherently broken because they appear on the mobile device.
4. Reliable network – This is not a plug for Verizon because several U.S. and international carriers can be considered “reliable”. Whatever the network that the phone is on, it needs to be reliable.
5. Third Party Applications – How easy is it to add apps that you need to your phone? Are there quality apps available or not?
6. Copy and Paste – One of those “Duh” features that is essential.

You may notice some notable omissions from this list that emphasize the angle of business utility. For instance, cameras, WiFi and GPS are all nice but unnecessary for business. Touch screens, such as the one that comes with the iPhone or BlackBerry Storm are also nice additions, but not required for business utility.

In my mind, there are three phones on the market that are worth considering for business use. I have my preference on which one is best, but businesses all have to decide what their needs are and, if they are practical, choose among one of these three devices.

Apple iPhone 3G S

The third generation iPhone just hit the market on June 19th. It boasts all of the features of the iPhone 3G plus a quicker OS and a better camera. Most of the new features of the iPhone are available via an OS 3.0 upgrade available for free for older iPhone owners. With the new iPhone, you can tether your iPhone for broadband access on your laptop (except AT&T customers in the US), and an all important Remote Wipe capability that will allow network administrators to remove sensitive data in case the phone is lost or stolen. Cost: $199 with new two year contract from AT&T (US)

Pros

• Huge number of third party apps including many business apps via the iTunes App Store
• Remote Wipe
• Intuitive touch screen
• WiFi or 3G connectivity

Cons

• AT&T as the carrier in the United States has been hugely unreliable delivering even basic services like voice mail
• Exorbitant data plan fees
• Large glass screen lends itself to breakage
• Insecure Microsoft Exchange integration
• Inability to multi-task applications

Palm Pre

Palm used to be the dominant manufacturer of handheld devices. With the rising popularity of BlackBerrys and iPhones, Palm has slipped tremendously. They recently, however, came to market with a very sleek phone that has an open development structure with their WebOS. Unlike the iPhone, the Pre does a very good job of multitasking and with it’s touch screen, switching between open applications is a smooth process. Also unlike the iPhone, the Pre provides a physical keyboard that, while somewhat awkward to use, should appease users who like the tactile feel of actual keys. Cost: $199 with new two year contract from Sprint.

Pros

• Small form factor
• Sprint has a very good data network
• Bright HVGA screen (touch screen)
• Email and integration with Microsoft Exchange
• WiFi or 3G connectivity
• Classic Konami Nintendo game Contra code to unlock developer mode. Geek Props.

Cons

• Screen is much smaller than the iPhone
• Awkward slide out keyboard with tiny keys makes typing difficult
• Third party application availability is limited at this time
• No Remote Wipe, a security requirement that might prevent large scale adoption in enterprise

BlackBerry Tour 9630

For BlackBerry afficionados, the new BlackBerry Tour (available for both Sprint and Verizon Wireless) is a beautiful phone. It has the brilliant screen (if slightly smaller version) as the BlackBerry Bold from AT&T and the form factor and keyboard styling of the new BlackBerry Curve 8350i (from Sprint). It has all the Enterprise integration that BlackBerry has been known for including remote wipe and Exchange integration (via Blackberry Enterprise Server for Exchange). Cost: $199 with new two year contract on Sprint or Verizon Wireless

Pros

• Familiar usability for BlackBerry users
• OS 4.7, which includes a usable browser (departure from the norm)
• Multi-tasking applications

Cons

• No touch screen
• Awkward position of MicroUSB slot makes it difficult for right handed users to use the device while it is plugged in
• Still no competent native Mac support, though this is supposedly coming soon.

At the end of the day, each organization needs to determine what is best for them. iPhones are fantastic devices for custom applications and is being used in the military, enterprise and government alike. They are not the most secure devices though and, for now, require AT&T in the U.S. The Palm Pre offers a significant value for businesses, but lacks Enterprise features such as remote wipe. It is also the first generation model of this phone. The BlackBerry is the most utilitarian phone and remains popular for businesses but its lack of a touch screen, the likes of which Apple has made us expect and long for, makes it “meh” for some users.

Whatever works for you.

Geez. You’d think it was a not new club. Well, to some, it is. Many attendants were prospectors with apps in their back pocket . . . and the prospect of generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in download revenue for an iPhone app is just too exciting to pass up. Forget Facebook and MySpace apps. This is real cheese.

Cheese indeed. Everyone knows the story of iFart, and no doubt many were there Monday night to hear Ken Burge (president of InfoMedia, creator of said gaseous phenom) tell his story. Download revenue to date: $490,000. Yet Burge’s electronic alter-ego (he attended from Colorado via Skype) actually let some, er, wind out of the sails: “œThe days of throwing something into the AppStore and getting traction””if they ever existed””are over.” Even with iFart, he acknowledged, they shilled for Mashable and TechCrunch. “œPlan your costs based on a 50/50 mix of development and marketing.”

Ouch. Them windows of opportunity just seem to get smaller and smaller, don’t they? And what with development costs running a minimum of $10k to $20k per native app (according to panel moderator Viq Hussain, recently of Intridea, now launching his own media marketing effort at Kongruent), mobile launches start to get a little daunting. Panelist Isaac Mosquera of PointAbout, a DC firm that mobilizes sites, said it’s going to be a lot more, “œbecause your first version is probably not going to be successful.” Multiple platforms, too. And don’t forget the server component. As Burge pointed out, you not only going to want to know who downloaded the app, but analyze and capitalize on all that valuable data.

Okay””enough of that negativism . . . let’s put on the pink glasses.

According to another dcMOMO panelist, Jason Siegel of Qorvis Communications (they built WashPost’s popular Going Out Guide for the iPhone””get it, it’s free), revenue from mobile platforms is destined to explode. “œMobile ad revenue will grow 36% to $200M in 2009, and by 2011 it will double to $400M.” Okay, peanuts compared to the billions in TV and online . . . but that’s a helluva ramp. Siegel is psyched because he’s seeing first-hand the movement of traditional advertising to the third screen””Qorvis is currently developing apps for, among others, AAMCO (the transmission folks).

Beep, beep . . . ring a bell? If it doesn’t, then you’re likely among the Millenials, who only register a 10% to 20% recall rate on the brand””vs. 90% for Boomers. Which is why all the panelists admonished “œChoose your platform . . . wisely.” Blackberry, not iPhone, might be the place to start. (To some, the iPhone is still not a business phone.)

Still, it’s hard not to get excited about the potential for mobile apps. First of all, the platform is . . . mobile. You got it with you, right? So geolocation has a lot of buzz. Qorvis has partnered with PointAbout to do the kind of cool stuff you’d expect from a computer that knows where you are. “œStep right into this Mall, son””and I’ll give you half off your second entrée at your favorite restaurant.” (And we know which is your favorite). Personal couponing, Siegel called it. Sweet. (Still, he creeped folks out a bit talking up Bluecasting“”drive by, and your [mandatory] Bluetooth headset chirps “œC’mon in, Ray . . . $10 off on an oil change for your Lexus today!”

Shades of Minority Report. Good afternoon, Mr. Takagawa . . .

Anyway, the future is bright through these glasses. Panelist Samuli Hanninen, the Director and Head of Ovi Product Marketing at Nokia (hey, it was the Finnish embassy, who’d you expect””Motorola?) got the geeks worked up a bit with visions of phones (sorry, mobile devices) supporting web runtime, and yes””Flash. “œWe currently have 300 million phones in the market that support Flash,” he noted, “œand we’re working closely with Adobe to do more.” (Stick that in your pipe, Steve.)

The iPhone AppStore has generated in the range of $100M in revenue, according to InfoMedia’s Ken Burge. (Lightspeed Ventures’ Jeremy Liew has an interesting take on Apple’s take here.) Not huge, but then it’s really a driver of hardware sales.

Burge and others expect Android to eventually eclipse the iPhone (Google was to be represented on the panel, but got waylaid in travel).

All in all, a great evening, upbeat discussion””and extremely well moderated by Hussain.

Here are some salient bullets, in my view. (For another view, see the Top 10 Tweets)

• Stretch your dev dollars by developing in-house, and incentivize your stars by offering a revenue share.””KB
• Cloud computing will play more and more into the architecture, taking over processing and storage once bandwidth (4G?) is sufficient, rendering mobile devices little more than thin clients.
• Make sure your mobile app has “˜share’ functionality””help spread it, duh.
• Try to figure out ways to be paid when your audience makes use of your content, as in couponing. “œBake revenue into your content.”””JS
• Stay focused on the business model.””KB
• Make sure you have the right people on your team. “œGreat thinkers, yes . . . but also flexible, and with a sense of humor.”””KB
• Context is key. “œRemember to keep it personal.”””SH
• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. “œCreate several apps””if one takes off, your others can feed off its success.”””KB
• Be ever mindful of privacy issues. “œIt has to be good for the consumer.”””SH
• And stick with it. “Stay stubborn.”"”SH

Not motivated enough? Check out Entrepreneur magazine’s roundup of iPhone moneymakers.

Objectively speaking, the first generation of the internet was based around a premise of “Read only”. It, of course, was not termed that, but the technology did not exist to support anything else. People used the internet to read the news, find weather forecasts and catch up on sports scores. Blogs didn’t exist. Facebook and Twitter were but thoughts in their founders minds, and likely thoughts that did not even exist yet. Who knew that a time would come when the most interactive thing on the web would not be shopping and ecommerce?

Somewhere in the middle of this decade, the web took on a more interactive approach. Tim O’Reilly began calling it Web 2.0 to note the clear cut difference between a “read only” web and a “read/write” web. Social networks and blogs gave users of the internet a chance to participate in the creation of it, by generating content. Eventually, content generation transformed from the written word to video, podcasts and microcontent.

On the cusp of a next generation to the web, there is a movement toward meta-data, that is granular information to help discoverability on the web. APIs allow developers to take content from, say, YouTube or Twitter, and repurpose that into something usable in other forms by humans, applications and mobile devices. It is, in essence, a “read/write/execute” version of the web and we are already beginning to see this.

Ari Herzog, a longtime reader of this blog as well as a longtime opponent of mine, wrote a post declaring Europe’s Government 2.0ish aspect of their EU site a win over the United States. See his post for his rationale.

He certainly makes a good point with his premise after the jump:

If I must, you can see information in multiple columns”“and the data makes sense. It’s logically organized, providing intuitive links for wherever you might need to go for further environmental information in any of the EU member nations. Whereas the US list is, well, a list. How boring!

The problem, of course, is that the battle of websites is a tired one and caters to a “Read only” view of the web. That users engage content on the website only (this is true at this point) and that they will continue to do so in the future. That the future of the government-oriented portion of the web, also known as “Government 2.0″ to denote a next-gen approach to internet media and government participation, is a “Read Only” approach.

This argument is short-sighted and, while I agree that a usable and UI-focused approach to a government website is important, it does not address the larger hurdles faced in the government community. It does not consider that, as an example, the NOAA might want to allow constituents to engage their data in a mobile or iPhone app. Or that DefenseLINK, the official website of the Defense Department, might want to make their official data accessible to all other DoD websites via RSS or other API method.

The next generation of the web, and the government participation on the web, is not about pixels and content presentation for humans using Internet Explorer! That is certainly an aspect, but will not translate to anything that could be billed as Government 2.0. The assumption, the premise, and therefore the jumping off point in terms of thinking, should be consistently “How do we provide the most data to our constituents?” (where constituents might be internal or machine/computer/webapp, and not even be the U.S. Citizen).

Peter Corbett wrote a post here several months ago talking about the building of apps to meet the needs of government and their constituency. He alluded to his Apps for Democracy project which opened up vast amounts of District [of Columbia] data for developers to build real life solutions to. Sunlight Foundation has a similar project called Apps for America. Without a doubt, every developer who built an app as part of those project, considered the web beyond the browser. That… is what is the keystone of Government 2.0 will be.

An understanding of, at minimum, the “Read/Write” web is necessary. Better yet, having a firm grasp and understanding of the “Read/Write/Execute” web, where data discoverability is ubiquitous via microformats (read and subscribe to Chris Messina and the fine work of the DiSo Project for more ubiquity/discoverability/findability work on the web) and mobile devices.

Of course, this would also mean that the technology community would get off their asses and actually innovate, but I digress.

The concept is really simple. A traveler is headed to Austin, Texas (as I will be for SXSW Interactive in a few weeks). He books his flight on Southwest airlines and gets an email confirmation with ticket reservation, itinerary, etc. Sight unseen, he forwards this email to plans@tripit.com and moves on to reserving his rental car and hotel.

On the backend, TripIt recieves the forwarded confirmation email and knows exactly how to read it into their master database. The email can even be forwarded from an unregistered email address which you can claim later.

The beautiful next step is the organizing of all this information. TripIt sorts your travel plans out into “Trips” and will give you everything in chronological order. This traveler going to SXSW, for instance, has a chronological listing that shows his departing flight, his rental car pickup, his hotel information and his return flight. As a bonus, Tripit gives him a Google Map of the area you’re staying on.

Now, I don’t like just plugging services for the sake of plugging services. You can go to Mashable if you want to be filled with nonsense. However, TripIt actually is a useful web product, but more than that, it’s a useful mobile product. If you have a smartphone (Blackberry, Treo, iPhone, etc) then TripIt becomes infinitely more useful.

For mobile users, you can access all of your itineraries by browsing to m.tripit.com, something that has become the defacto reference point for all of my travelling and checking in. It literally, if you’re a smartphone user, eliminates the need for a stack of trifolded paper printouts from 6 different reservations.

If you really want to own your travel itinerary and you own an iPhone, consider buying the “TravelTracker – with Tripit” iPhone app. While everything about TripIt is completely free, this app costs $19.99.

Captured with Safari 3 Simulating the iPhone

Fortunately, now you can read this site on most mobile web browsers including the iPhone (with iPhone bling!), Opera Mini, Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile as well as Blackberry and generic mobile browsers. This thanks to a WordPress plugin called MobilePress. I highly recommend it as a must have for every blogger who wants or needs their blog accessible to mobile users (they are becoming fairly common place).

The only hitch seems to be on the Blackberry browser (<=OS 4.5). You must disable javascript support in your Blackberry Browser configuration. Failing to do this will cause most sites that load javascript/AJAX libraries to spin unendingly and eat up your device memory. The only way to solve this is to pop the battery.

It’s all great, except Apple still has a minority market share in mobile devices. By mobile device, I am referring to smart phones: iPhone, Treo, Blackberry, etc.

In DC, we have a running joke about the iPhone. In DC the preference for a smartphone is a Blackberry. When I get on the Metro, I look around and everyone is fiddling on their Blackberries.

It’s a matter of utility and practicality.

In San Francisco, no one goes without an iPhone, but in DC iPhones are far more scarce.

Yet, mobile application development seems to trend toward iPhones. While iPhone rich applications are great for the “bling” factor, they represent a small minority of customers in the global market that actually can utilize these interfaces.

In my opinion, developers can work within the limitations imposed by RIM to provide rich Blackberry equivalents to their apps. The Facebook App for Blackberry is a shining example of great Blackberry app that has been developed within the context of the RIM framework.

It can be done. It should be done.

I was pitched an iPhone app by a PR guy yesterday and when I scolded him for having an iPhone app and not a Blackberry app as well, he corrected me and gave me access to their prior-released Blackberry version. After fiddling around with it for 30 mins, I realized it just doesn’t work. Why are companies putting out half-assed products?

The Blackberry Storm is coming out, by all accounts, in the next 2-3 weeks and I’ll be one getting it as soon as it comes out. Why? Because Blackberry users know our product sucks. But, we need it. It’s utility. It’s functional. It’s the hub of our digital lives. The Storm will theoretically change that and that is great.

In the meantime, mobile app developers have to recognize the market share and not take an elitist perspective that they can somehow push users to the sexier platform. Because in DC, purchasers don’t care about sexiness. They care about utility. I imagine this city is not alone in that regard.

Up until recently, the best you could do was go submit your review to sites like Yelp – if you remembered when you got home. Thummit, a Launchbox Digital incubation company based in Washington, D.C. hopes to solve that and similar problems for you using your cell phone.

The idea is simple, and builds on the successes of other mobile companies like Twitter: You send a text message to a designated number with your thumbs up, thumbs down, so-so markup and the service stores that review.

In a demo given to a small group of bloggers in their hip office space in the middle of Chinatown, co-founder Sean Greene outlined use cases where Google local results for pizza in Dupont Circle yields chain blasé such as Pizza Hut and California Pizza Kitchen while Thummit yields much more acceptable results for a foodie in Dupont: Pizza Paradiso, Alberto’s and Anna Maria’s Italian Restaurant.

The service is not open to the public as of yet and there is still a lot of work to be done. The service has been seeded by review content (fair use) from sources like Zagat and other restaurant review sites so new users will not feel like the community is dead.

Socially, the service assumes that as a user, you will get your most use out of it if you have trusted connections of friends and contacts who provide great reviews and might be inline with your own tastes. By cultivating that community and social network aspect, they hope to provide tailor-made results to you based on your preferences and trusted social connections.

Text messaging is the cornerstone, but even that remains to be fleshed out completely.

The usefulness of this service is, of course, the immediacy of mobile and content. I may not be inspired to write something on Yelp when I get home, but I am now and by God, I have a phone! This also takes the web technology aspect of reviews to a new level, further marginalizing the one-way communications of your daily circular’s restaurant reviews.

Boulder, CO-based Brightkite stormed on the scene a few months back as a location based micro blogging network. Members could take photos from the cellphones, send short messages to be posted to the service, and follow their friends. Based on the concept of location, Brightkite users could “check in” to a location. I am currently checked in at “Woodlawn, Maryland”, a fairly generic location since I value my privacy in my home. However, people can check-in down to specific addresses, cafés, places of employment, etc.

Though my fascination with Brightkite as a mobile microcontent network has faded, their is one aspect to it that I find extremely valuable in the absence of GPS on my Blackberry and the lack of ownership of an iPhone 3G. That is their KML file.

I set about creating a plugin that would parse the KML file of the most recent Brightkite check in location. Thus, WP-Brightkite was born.

Notably, for those folks interested in the geotagging content, the Brightkite plugin will parse latitude and longitude of the most recent checkin and geotag feeds using the ICBM RSS namespace. For a little extra bling, I’ve provided a template tag which drops a little Google Map next to the subject line of posts with geotagging (see this post, for instance).

1. Upload the

   1	wp-brightkite/

   directory to

   1	/wp-content/plugins/

2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Fill out Brightkite user data on your profile page. Note: Standard WP permissions apply.
4. Use the

   1

   within your template to print a mini 10×10 map icon, clickable for Google Maps location.

There’s quite a bit more I want to do with this, but since I’ve been using it here on Technosailor.com for a few months, I wanted to get it into the wild and fix any bugs (thus the beta tag) before exploring more functionality.

Let me know what you think, and consider a donation.

Update: Please log a ticket here if you are having difficulties. You must login with your WordPress Support Forums username and password (here) to get new ticket creation options. The comment system I have here does not seem to be sending people notices of followups on support requests.

When logging a ticket, please tell me what version of PHP you are using and what version of WordPress you are using. Thanks.

FindWhere CEO Jaap Groot and my friend and DoC co-host Geoff Livingston have co-authored a white paper (they call it a manifesto) for mobile and location-based social networks outlining eight requirements for a successful mobile endeavor.

The true local, mobile and social breakthrough requires a completely converged product that will be so intuitive and robust that community members won’t have to wrestle with such a service. Instead, it will be so easy and fun, online community members will clamor to be a part of the craze. They will actively engage, and voluntarily spread the word about their experiences, in hopes that their friends will join them online. The winning service will be so compelling that it will be viral.

They go on to describe the eight factors:

1. Provide a base offering free of charge. Today’s social network user does not tolerate paid-for services.
2. Work on a wide selection of phones.
3. Offer an intelligent, simple user interface for accessing information.
4. Use GPS rather than force users to manually enter their location every time.
5. Integrate intelligently into existing social networks rather than further inundate people with a new one.
6. Allow users to share and use their location data in as many ways as possible.
7. Enable individuals to set various levels of privacy control for personal security.
8. Monetize in an intelligent, non-intrusive way

Some of these factors are implemented better than others and some are not technically possible with the mobile client and telcos the way they exist now. Things need to change within the four walls of the carriers.

As with all white papers, it is a call to action. A spotlight on gaps in the industry. One day, all of these items will be inherent in the social offerings but it could take 5-10 years to see that occur.

FindWhere, proveedor de servicios de ubicación y seguimiento via GPS, lanzó hoy la versión beta de su herramienta social de ubicación.

Livecontacts funciona en cualquier red celular GSM y eventualmente funcionará en teléfonos sin GPS. Según la compañía, pronto podrás incluir data de ubicación en tu mensajería de texto, juegos y redes sociales desde tu celular. El sistema de ubicación puede ser activado por el usuario según su preferencia.

La posibilidad de ubicar a tus amigos en tu celular (y que estos te ubiquen a ti) abre interesantes posibilidades (dodgeball ha intentado algo parecido), pero también nos obliga a pensar más a fondo en nuestra privacidad y hasta donde estamos dispuestos a cambiarla por comodidad.

Hasta ahora hemos estado dispuestos a compartir mucho de nuestra vida profesional y cotidiana via redes sociales como Twitter y Facebook con perfectos extraños que sólo conocemos por referencia (a veces de otros extraños). Aplicaciones como Livecontacts nos permitirán compartir nuestra ubicación física con nuestra red social… fomentando encuentros en el mundo físico. Se cierra de esta forma el círculo social, usando la internet para encontrarnos fuera de ella. Espero que esto sea para bien de los usuarios y nadie salga lastimado.

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