‘Tis the time for new year resolutions. And if I spot the trend correctly, snap tag campaigns are on most marketers’ lists for the next year. We talked about the the QR code and it’s challenges in the last post. Now, snap tags seem to have captured the imagination of the social media savvy marketers after QR code. It’d be presumptuous to say that snap tags will take over or challenge the budding QR code industry but it is an interesting alternative. Before I go on and extol virtues of the new sexy QR code called snap tags, let me mention that my very first attempt at engaging with a brand via a snap tag failed. I snapped a picture and texted it to the number mentioned and waited…and waited to see what I get back. And it was a good thing I didn’t hold my breath because nothing showed up! Again, for the exact same reasons that the QR code seems to be not catching up, I am predicting that execution is the key and if a campaign isn’t executed right, the snap tag may go the same way as the QR code.

Snap tags 101

I like to call snap tag a QR code that has graduated. If you’ve seen a logo with a circle around it, you’ve seen a snap tag. All you do, is take a photo of it with a mobile phone. Send the photo. Get back cool stuff. A lot of blue chip companies seem to have adopted the snap tags already. The cover of Glamour magazine recently sported a snap tag that will then take you to its Facebook page. A snap tag is more customizable, better looking and richer in information than a QR code. For the QR code, you need to have a scanner on your smartphone but with a snap tag just having a smartphone- with a camera, of course, will do the trick. All you do, is snap a picture of the tag and it’ll unlock or activate either a youtube video, a micro website or some exclusive web content.

Again, this will be just another way companies will try to engage with their smartphone weilding consumers. Right now, I see only the big companies doing the snap tag campaigns. wWhether it spreads to small businesses and its customers, remains to be seen.

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This post was prompted by our unsuccessful attempt to use QR code in place of paper tickets to watch Tom Cruise in MI4. Yours truly bought tickets on Fandango to check it out over the weekend. Now, since we are a highly mobile and social bunch, we prefer a bizarre looking digital code anyday over paper tickets or printouts. So we had a QR code on our phone which could be scanned by the doorkeeper in place of tickets. (If you haven’t seen these curious black and white patterns everywhere read this post first, to get up to speed) But as it turns out, the theatres still haven’t perfected the art of mobile scanning and we ended up missing the favorite part-the previews, while watching the doorkeeper struggle with the scan reader at the door. Thankfully, we were let in anyways and we did not miss the show because of the hiccup but this was a good reminder that social and mobile technologies are valuable only if everyone is on board!

Here’s the evidence

Evidence suggests that QR code-touted as a go-to engagement tool in the brave new mobile and social world, somehow has not caught on as predicted. If anyone loves mobile and social, it is the college students and here are the stats for QR code usage among college students- Archrival, a research group that focuses on youth marketing, surveyed 500 students at 24 colleges and universities across the United States. They found that although about 80% of students owned a smartphone and had previously seen a QR code, only about 20% were able to successfully scan the example QR code they were shown. Many smartpone users do not know that their phones (most of them) already have a scanner installed on their phone. I have tried scanning and then reading the content of QR codes but most of the times, it brings up junk. What I would love to see is something like an IKEA furniture equipment with a code that brings up a video of how to assemble the contents. That would be awesome!
A few problems that have hindered the trend are: broken links, not having a mobile website, not having the right content to reward the user’s effort. A majority of users have also complained about the time taken to read the code being too much. Wouldn’t it be easier to Google the term instead and get the information?

Moving on

Meanwhile, the world of marketing is already going crazy over the next bleeding edge tools-the snap tags-just a sexier version of the QR code. More about those in the next post!

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The season is merry and all tech companies seem to have shifted into a low gear as far as big bang product launches and IPOs. So In the spirit of the holiday season, we continue with our gift lists. There are, of course, tons of new gadgets that get introduced everyday but I have left out the purely “fun to have” ones like interactive t-shirts, nerdy gift wrap and guitar bag (a bag with strings that you can play on), and instead picked ones that I thought I could use and still feel “cool gadgety”. These are some I found which could be great gifts for gadget lovers.

Nest-The good looking thermostat:

I know what you’re thinking. How is a nerdy thermostat awesome and cool? Well, what if I told you it was designed by ex-Apple executive Tony Fadell who led the development of iPhones and iPods? Still not interested? Here’s why it’s special. It is, what its creators call, a learning thermostat. Primarily touted as an energy-saving device, it has the quintessential Apple good looks. An average person has to change the settings on his thermostat 4 times a day in addition to weekends and travel days. This thermostat will learn the patterns and program itself in a week. If you’ve left the house, it will turn itself off with the help of its motion sensors. ‘Nest’ uses its Wi-Fi connection to keep an eye on current weather conditions and forecasts so it can understand how the outside temperature affects your energy use. Great one for the Apple lover who also cares about the environment.

Touch screen gloves

If you read this post on bendable phones, you already know that we have to wait a while before we can get our gloved hands on those. They would be the ultimate winter phones but until then, why not get these touch screen gloves which will let us keep that existing phone we love so much? These gloves from “Agloves” are known to work just like bare hands on touchscreens. They are able to conduct bio electricity from hands which causes the screens to respond. A perfect gift for the iPhone lover who won’t be separated from her/his phone even when s/he is outside in the cold.

Powerbag- The bag that charges your phone

A laptop bag that can charge gadgets, this cool bag will come handy during travel. You have to charge this bag like any other gadget which adds one more device to your charging routine, but a fully charged bag will charge two smartphones. There are other solar powered bags on the market, but they look clunky as compared to the stylish design of this particular bag. Great for the business traveler.

Magic Wand- Programmable TV Remote

This is, essentially, a programmable remote that comes in the form of a magic wand-the ones we use in Hogwarts. For the true Harry Potter fan, what is $90 of muggle money if you can be a wizard for the time you use this remote? The wand can master 13 commands. A flick will change the channel, a swish will up the volume and so on. It is all worth it when you see the magic happening!

Livescribe Smartpen:

Think of it as a mini scanner, recorder pen. Believe it or not, most people still believe that the fastest and easiest way of note-taking is still the old-fashioned pen and paper. You can use this smartpen just like a normal pen on paper but the beauty is, those scribbled notes can then be easily transferred to the iPad or laptop in a digitized format. Perfect for students!

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While most of the tech websites are filled with gift ideas for loved ones, we thought we’d come up with a list of ‘great app gifts for yourself’. Apps are cheap, useful and they go a long way in making your phone your own. The kind of apps you have on your phone can tell a lot about the kind of person you are. So here is a rundown of apps picked for your type of interests.

iBeers Pro, iPhone, $3.99

For the beer lover

This app is more like a reference guide for the beer connoisseur. It will let you pick the right beer for you from a collection of 2700 beers of the world. When you are unsure which one to pick, sift through details like ingredients and user rating- a handy tool when you go to the next Oktoberfest. With a price tag of 3.99, it isn’t cheap (relative to a price tag of “free”) but worth it for a true beer lover.

Peak Finder, iPhone, Android and Nokia, $3.99

For the hiker, climber, adventurer

The peak finder will let the climber/hiker get a glimpse of the mountains on his phone. There is a functionality that lets the user update information on a regular basis. The beauty is that panoramic image rendering works offline. This app works in sync with GPS and it will be an excellent addition to an outdoor lovers’ smartphone. No more losing track on the next adventure.

Kobo eBooks, iPhone, Android, free

For the bibliophile

The great thing about Kobo ebooks that not only does it have a vast collection of free eBooks but it has a beautiful and easy to use interface. The app allows the user to set and view recommendations. It also tracks your reading habits to sync with recommendations. Along with other stalwart apps like Google books and Apple’s iBooks, this one will be sure to please a book lover.

Shopkick, iPhone, Android, Free

For the shopaholic

It is hard for me come up with a reason NOT to download this app. It rewards you merely for walking into a store. Once you’ve downloaded this app, you can start accumulating so-called ‘kickbucks’ by checking in at select retailers, including Macy’s, Target and Best Buy. Once you’ve racked up the kickbucks, you can trade them in for gift cards, movie tickets and other goodies.

Petminder, iPhone, free

For the dog lover

Having trouble remembering your dog’s playdates? Try Petminder.  This app helps keep track of everything you need to manage care of your dog. Never miss grooming and training sessions now that you get email reminders from this App.

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The death of Flash

In what could only be a confirmation that HTML 5 will be the future of mobile video, Adobe announced recently that it will stop developing Flash Player for browsers on mobile. The company has said that it will not completely halt the development of the software but it will continue to develop it for desktops. I remember talking to a friend of mine a couple years ago whose major gripe with Apple devices was that they don’t run Flash. But as it turns out, it is Flash who has to go not Apple who needs to adapt. In one particular blog written by an Adobe employee, he mentioned that Adobe has been a fan of HTML5 for a while. Rather than devote time and energy to working on a platform that 1) needed to be tweaked for different OSs and hardware configurations and 2) would never be as widely-used as they would like, Adobe decided that those resources would be better spent furthering HTML5 development.

As the age of Smartphones arrived, Adobe may have realized that Flash will never be a dominant player on mobile devices as it was on desktops. Flash missed this bus when Apple refused to load their iPods and iPads with Flash. The slow decline of this once popular program first to irrelevancy and then to its demise, is inextricably tied to its history with Apple. The blogosphere declared this as a posthumous victory for late Steve Jobs. Here’s the story:

Adobe and Apple

The year was 1985 and Apple and Adobe had together revolutionized desktop publishing. Steve Jobs firmly believed that he had helped Adobe find its place on the map when they were a small shop in the “garage”. After his ouster and then later his return to Apple in 1999, Jobs asked Adobe to start making its video editing software and other products for the new iMac and its new operating system but Adobe refused. This denial resulted in a bitter war between the two companies. Steve Jobs never allowed iPod and iPad to run Flash. He even banned apps that made use of a compiler created by Adobe that would enable compatibility with Apple’s iOS.  Steve Jobs’ opposition to Flash was, according to him, based on a number of technology flaws that he believed Flash had. He even wrote an open letter outlining all of these. But many believe that a lot of the points in his letter can be refuted and the simple reason that Flash never made it on Apple’s devices was the grudge that Jobs held against Adobe.

It is funny how demise of technologies can be contributed to failure of a company to innovate but also tied to very human elements like egos and grudges of the people involved.

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Why FB wants integration with OS

Last week, the Internet was abuzz with news of a new Facebook-HTC phone codenamed “Buffy”-yes, named after the vampire slayer which may launch in the next 12-18 months. This is Facebook’s second attempt at having its site integrated with the OS. The last one, the HTC Status, had an integrated Facebook button which made sharing super easy. But it failed miserably. It is not surprising that Facebook wants to integrate with an OS. Look at Apple and Twitter. When Twitter was integrated with iOS, the Twitter user base grew exponentially. Google also integrates Google+ with its OS.
But dear Facebook, you are no Apple or Google. You may be one of the “four horsemen” as dubbed by Larry Page- who, according to him, are going to change the world but for me you are an app on my phone. I have enough trouble keeping up with your privacy updates and lists. I am wary of publicizing everything I do to hundreds of people without being notified. Remember I signed up on Spotify and next thing I know my wall was updated with which song I am listening to? Yeah, I don’t want that. I want to hear songs for my own enjoyment and no I don’t really feel the need to tell everyone that I am hearing that song. I took some time figuring out how not to show that update on my wall. But I am sure that the “Buffy” will create numerous such situations for me and I don’t want to deal with it!

Cautionary tales

I am sure that there is a market for Buffies. There is a subset of FB users-the 10-12 updates a day kind who will enjoy the seamless sharing of their life on FB. But I think that subset is pretty small to warrant a new phone. People use their Smartphones for a 100 different tasks other than updating status on FB. There is cut-throat race between existing players to bring out innovative technologies and enriching ecosystems that support the device. With so many considerations for a consumer and so many worthy options to choose from, will they really go for a phone just because it is tightly integrated with FB? I don’t think so. I even heard a rumor of an IPO coming sometime in the near future. And I would like to point out that FB may be having millions of users and have access to a huge amount of data but that is not enough to pull off and sustain an IPO. I don’t see any serious monetizing channels that will justify and sustain an IPO.
The whole point of writing this is that I feel companies sometime tend to overestimate their value and that messes up their strategies for the future. It is better instead to focus on monetizing and improving existing business model and get it right. As an example, just check the latest share price for Groupon.

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If you are getting ready for Black Friday, this phone, unfortunately, couldn’t be on your list. That’s because the release date for this device in US is now confirmed to be in December. But it has already been launched in the UK and so we have sneak peek of the awesome new hardware from Samsung as well as the much hyped Ice Cream Sandwich OS that runs this phone.

The hardware

If you are one of the anti-Apple, pro-Android crowd, then you probable were waiting for this phone for a long time. The massive screen is 4.65-inch with 1280-by-720 resolution that is capable of 720p HD video playback. It’s funny that when mobile phones were just starting to get popular, we had these huge brick like bulky handsets which eventually gave way to smaller, sleeker versions. And now with the advent of smartphones, we are back to larger devices. To Samsung’s credit, this phone is super-thin and not bulky.
With a screen that big, this Android phone almost could be a tablet. The full HD screen is great for watching videos and the speakers are high-quality. The physical buttons are gone and the buttons are all on your screen. My eyebrows raised up when I realized it only comes with 16GB RAM and no expansion slot. Other features include 1.2GHz dual-core processor, a 5-megapixel camera with no shutter lag, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, 16GB of storage, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, NFC and a 1,750 mAh battery. I think Samsung should rethink using cheap plastic casing for its phones and switch to classic unibody design which feels much sleeker in hands.

Ice Cream Sandwich

What makes this phone special, is the OS. Google has fused the Honeycomb and Gingerbread operating systems to launch Ice Cream Sandwich which takes the Android OS a few leaps ahead. This OS brings a unified feel to every app, widget and graphic. The coolest feature is the face unlock technology. Still imperfect, this technology is not reliable because slight variations might throw it off. Like if you put on an extra cheerful face you will probably get an error. We have the pin and password backup for that. It also has the new Gmail app which many have reported is a delight to use. It also has voice search feature similar to other Android phones. This feature is no Siri, mind you, but gets the job done.
The verdict is that if it wasn’t the cool ICS, the phone would be just another Smartphone with a tad touch of class (think Samsung Galaxy SII). But it does have the all-Google mark on it and that’s what makes the phone cool.

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I recently worked with a Silicon Valley based entrepreneur who is launching his company in the collaborative consumption space. This project was my introduction to the world of collaborative consumption and the fertile field of ideas that emphasize access over ownership. We have spoken about Airbnb earlier in this blog and that is one of the early successful sharing economy ventures. There is now a growing number of startups based on the idea of sharing. It could be extra space, cars, things, time and bathrooms. Yes, that’s what I said-bathrooms!

Taskrabbit

We are all aware that there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done. Founded in 2008 in San Francisco, Taskrabbit is an online service that’ll let you hire help to make your daily lives easier. If you have time on your hands and a particular skill, you sign up as a helper on the site. The helpers are called “runners”. Runners are trustworthy, reliable people who have passed a background check and are rated by fellow users. People who have tasks that need to get done, will post their tasks on the site and make an offer of how much they are willing to pay. The jobs can be big and small. They include errands like-“Buy flowers and deliver them at my friends’ apartment in San Leandro” or “Assemble the bunk bed we just bought from IKEA”. If your area of specialty is the kitchen, as a task rabbit ‘runner’, you can take on projects like “Bake pineapple upside down cake before tonight”.
Task rabbit apparently took San Francisco by storm when it was launched and is slowly expanding to other cities. It got an initial funding of $5M and thereafter completed two successful rounds of funding. The company added an amazing IPhone app this year in July and hired Eric Grosse recently as its new CEO. (Task rabbit is not in PDX or San Diego yet, so stay tuned to their feed if you’re interested).

Cloo

After extra space, couches, garages it was only a matter of time before bathrooms entered the shared economy business. And to be honest, this one makes me think of all possible awkward situations that could come up when strangers use your bathroom. (Can’t help thinking of some potentially dangerous ones like hidden cameras etc. but I will let you think about those). I guess when you are in a crowded city and you can’t hold it in anymore, all you want, is a place to pee. From some of the details I have gathered so far, it is embedded with your social network and so the people on the list are your friends or your friends’ friends. Imagine meeting one such friend a few days after he or she has used your facilities. Will the conversation go like- “Hi I think I have met you before” “Yes, I used your bathroom once when I was in the city”.
Once you are over the cringe factor, it is easy to see that where there is a need, there is a market! And Cloo does just that- it addresses the universal need to pee.

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Wow! I didn’t think I’d be writing another post about Nokia so soon. I would have waited a few weeks and maybe had a post about Nokia Lumia’s progress report. But here we are! Within the last couple days, an awesome video of Nokia HumanForm concept phone hit the Internet and what I saw was pretty amazing not to share. After this post on bendy phones which are impressive enough, HumanForm from Nokia appears to be the next step. This too, is a kinetic device, meaning you can control the phone by bending it outwards and inwards. Nokia bills the HumanForm concept as “a visionary solution beyond touch screen and voice communication where technology becomes invisible and intuition takes over.” The coolest feature that I thought this phone had, was the tactile display. So if you were to take a picture of a furry animal, you’d be able to feel the texture of fur on your phone. The flexible display lets go of the touchscreen and makes your whole phone an interactive screen. Inside a soft plastic shell, there are hard segments containing circuit boards connected by ribbon cables. The multi-segment structure lets the device flex while still including some inflexible parts. Another exciting possibility is to have these phones charged by kinetic energy. If this becomes a reality, maybe one day, we will no longer have to deal with “batterygates”. .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ln9CRLISBU

Intuitive interaction

I see Siri as the very beginning of human and device interaction that is intuitive and not command-based. These phones will push that concept much further. These new Nokia concept phones will detect the mood of the caller as seen in the video. (I am not too excited about this feature though. I sometimes answer calls that I really don’t want to answer. Will my wariness show through? I need some clarity on this concept). These phones are probably not going to be seen in stores anytime soon. But since the technology exists, I feel, it is only a matter of time.

Bendable phones ready for the market?

In other news on mobile, Samsung announced that its flexible phones with AMOLED screens will hit the market as early as 2012. With its bestseller Galaxy SII, this company has been steadily rising against adversaries like Apple. Speaking of Apple, it is tantalizing to think what Apple designers and developers are doing about kinetic and flexible screen technologies. I am sure in the super-secret research labs in Cupertino maybe something is already brewing, touted to ‘change the world’ as Steve jobs would have said!

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What is Eric Schmidt’s top priority these days? To convince regulators that Google is not monopolistic. I wrote this post earlier about Google’s quest for world dominance and truly, I was not exaggerating when I said our online and offline lives will eventually be tangled in the web of Google. But at this point, Google is trying hard to prove that it has some real threats to its search business and among the newer ones, it is Apple’s Siri. Some bloggers went as far as to say that Siri could be a Google killer and Eric Schmitt wouldn’t immediately counter that-not at least when he is being questioned.

Why is Siri a threat?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTP31OTZxtU

The most important way that Siri changes search is it changes the front end of search. As opposed to Google’s austere yet sometimes fun single page search bar, for Siri, you just ask. Where Google gives you a dozen results you could pick and choose to read, Siri claims to intelligently narrow down the information you need. What Siri does, is it humanizes search. Also, inspite of its bouquet of businesses, Google still earns a large percentage of its revenue from advertising. What happens to that revenue stream if more and more users start using Siri? This is definitely something the Google execs have to worry about in the long term. I would also worry about businesses that are all about search optimization and adwords because they will need to seriously rework their strategy keeping in mind the new search technologies.

Here’s the real deal

Secretly, I don’t believe that Eric Schmidt really believes that Siri is a threat to Google. It definitely has changed the way people access information and it will change the search game in the long run, but for now, Google still owns two-thirds of the search engine market. And as we go forward Google will not be simply sitting on its hands about Siri. It will go all out and bring out its own Android-driven personal assistant. (Not far too behind, it was recently reported that Amazon has acquired Yap- a speech recognition company, presumably to further its efforts in the personal assistant space.)
Generally, top executives have a tendency to downplay the threat of competition. When Siri took the world by storm, Android CEO Andy Rubin said “People don’t want to talk to their mobile phones”. This statement came out as Android engineers were already working on their version of a personal assistant. If you have read this post on Siri, you’ll know that selling Siri to a wide range of demographic groups is hard. Apple is not an everyman’s company and this seriously limits the reach of Siri. On the other hand, if Google comes out with a “good enough” product that may not be as dashing as Siri but gets things done, it will do just fine. As it stands, it is way too early to predict rise of Siri or death of Google. Smartphone technologies are changing everyday and they come with their own complex sets of problems. As a consumer, I am happy to have a choice and as a blogger, I am excited to watch what happens.

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