iPhone — Page 4

Minnov8 Gang 69: “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!”

March 6, 2010 By Steve Borsch

Opportunity and growth is all around us and glimmers of it are appearing in the web, mobile and other tech spaces. But are you willing to take the risks, explore and deal with all the obstacles in the way of you seeking riches?

In the movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Humphrey Bogart’s character Dobbs, and two other gringos, embark in to Mexico to find gold in the Sierra Madres, an area in great flux and riddled with banditos, but policed by the Federales. In one of the signature lines in the movie the banditos, trying to convince Dobbs and his cronies that they’re Federales, say, “Badges? We ain’t got no badges! We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!” (usually misquoted as “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!“). There are several moral and philosophical questions in the movie and Dobbs dies, the banditos are killed by the Federales, the gold is lost and thus the analogy might as clear as mud: chasing opportunities won’t be easy but they’re out there; barriers and obstacles (and bandits) stand in your way; but we thought exploring opportunistic thoughts in this podcast was worthwhile.

Special Guest: For part of the podcast, Meg Canada joins us to talk about libraries, the iPad and more. Meg is a senior librarian for Web Services and Training at Hennepin County Library and currently coordinates public training and social media efforts for the library. She volunteers helping with the Unsummit, recently presented at MinneWebCon, and is a regular contributor to Social Media Breakfast.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: “Santa Maria” by Will Kriski from Music Alley, purveyor of podsafe tunes.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 56:44 — 32.9MB)

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Discussed during the show:

+ Past Events: CloudCampMSP (see Minnov8’s coverage here); IgniteMPLS; Social Media Breakfast;

+ Upcoming Events: Mobile March; MIMA; DEMO; SxSWi; MinneWebCon

+ Mobile: MixMobi; WordPress mobile plugins (Mobile Edition; WPTouch); Square (mobile commerce)

+ Devices: Apple iPad; Microsoft Courier; Dell Slate

+ Other: Google pagerank to require speedier websites?; Hacker News.

Minnesota Startup Launches ‘Spark Radio’ iPhone App

February 27, 2010 By Graeme Thickins

Is it possible to design a radio app that delivers the ultimate radio experience, complete with visually stunning graphics and social media capabilities, too? Minneapolis’ own Handcast Media Labs LLC thought so, set out to prove it, and just launched the result on the iTunes App Store a couple of days ago. It’s called Spark Radio (press release), and works on the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s available for $5.99 at this link at the App Store.

I grabbed it the day it came out and have used it multiple times since, in a variety of situations — at home, on a road trip, even in a foreign country (Iowa) — and I must say I’m impressed. Right now, I’m listening to a great station that’s all Grateful Dead all the time, which I discovered via the app. It’s called RadioIO Dead, and “Big Boss Man” has been my favorite track so far. I’m on wifi in my motel room at the moment, and the sound is perfect — and I’m not even using an external speaker. On the way down here to Des Moines, I used the app via my iPhone on AT&T’s 3G network (note: I was in the passenger seat!) to tune in multiple stations, including WSL in Chicago, and the sound was way better than any station I could tune in on the car radio.

Spark Radio not only gives you tons of station choices and social media features designed to make radio listening more interactive, but it also features visually stunning animations. Far out, huh? Its robust, visual radio tuner uses the guide from a company called RadioTime.com to give you access to more than 10,000 terrestrial and Internet-only radio stations worldwide. Handcast says it’s adding new stations to Spark Radio daily, and will support more than 30,000 stations by April. You can listen to precisely what you want to at any given time — music, talk radio, sports events, public radio, or special programming from around the world. Its elegant interface lets you search for stations or programs by keyword, location, or the station URL, and you can browse programming by genre or location. (I’m still looking for two of my fav genres: rockabilly and surf.) A GPS component lets you find local stations in any given city based on current GPS coordinates.

I took the opportunity to dial up the founder of Handcast Media Labs, Terry Anderson, whom I’d met in 2008, to ask if he’d be up for an interview. That follows. … [Read More…]

Minnesota Apple Watchers React to Steve Jobs’ Rant

January 31, 2010 By Graeme Thickins

So, if you haven’t seen the news Wired broke late Saturday (updated Sunday afternoon) about Steve Jobs going off on Google and Adobe at the Apple all-employee meeting, here it is: Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit,’ Adobe Is Lazy: Apple’s Steve Jobs.

Here’s an excerpt:

“After a big public announcement of the sort Apple had this week for the iPad, CEO Steve Jobs often takes time in the day or two afterwards to have a Town Hall at One Infinite Loop, making himself available for questions from employees bold enough to stand up and take one right between the eyes.

This time, the big topics included Google and Adobe — no surprises there… And the absence of Adobe Flash support on the iPhone for three years and counting, and now on the iPad, is either celebrated by users as a poke in the eye of one of the web’s most dextrous tools, or the most over-rated and overused crutch for decent design.

Jobs, characteristically, did not mince words as he spoke to the assembled, according to a person who was there who could not be named because this person is not authorized by Apple to speak with the press.

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.”

I decided to ask three local observers with a special perspective on Apple for their reaction. Two of them are former Apple employees, the other a 26-year user of both Apple and Adobe technologies. … [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 65: Talking the Apple iPad

January 30, 2010 By Steve Borsch

Thursday’s Apple iPad launch was the most hotly anticipated technology launch event in years. To say there was enthusiasm for the device amongst many is obvious, but the disappointment felt by technologists and geeks is palpable. We explore the iPad — it’s good points and bad — with Julio Ojeda Zapata, the St. Paul Pioneer Press (TwinCities.com) technology reporter who was at the event and had hands-on use of the device and he was live tweeting and posting photos which you can see on this page (http://minnov8.com/tablet/).

As you probably already know, Julio writes a Tech Test Drive column about gadgets, apps and social media (among other things). He is the author of Twitter Means Business, one of the first books about Twitter. He is also a sometime co-host of the Minnov8 Gang podcast (and will join us this Saturday to discuss this Apple event in more detail) and focuses his commentary on tech trends. See his Posterous geekstream. Contact him by e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music: Duane Andrews and the tune is “Mr. Butler”.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:03:17 — 36.7MB)

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Discussed during the show notes:

+ Like to see the iPad Nano?
+ Mary Meeker’s Web 2.0 Summit presentation (PDF) & we referred to slide #38
+ Video of Walt Mossberg at the iPad launch, a portion of which he’s talking with Steve Jobs
+ Bill Heyman of Minnesota-based Codemorphic (mobile app developers) post on the iPad
+ Steve Borsch’s article on MinnPost about the iPad & his Apple A4 chip post and another post on Apple opening up VoIP
+ Leo Laporte head of TWiT and tech journalist Natali Del Conte
+ Stanza was acquired in 2009 by Amazon & The Wall Street Journal’s take on Apple vs. Amazon
+ Hitler’s response to the iPad

Your Customers are Watching You

January 4, 2010 By Steve Borsch

While many internet and web technology sites and blogs have published their 2010 predictions (including Minnov8), this post serves as a warning and a wake-up call to Minnesota companies that the power you once held — not just in communication, marketing and public relations surrounding your products, services and company — but that power is quickly shifting to your customers in new ways that you need to understand and strategically prepare for or suffer the consequences beginning now.

The acceleration in mobile internet use — and the devices exploding in number to access it — is enabling the masses to understand what you’re doing as an organization, comment to one another on your activities but (and perhaps most disturbingly to those of you with previously publicly unavailable or difficult to obtain data) it is enabling customers to examine your products, your company’s record on the environment, your labor practices (onshore and offshore) and much more.

How can your customers do that? … [Read More…]

A Demo-licious Evening at Mobile Twin Cities

November 18, 2009 By Phil Wilson

mobiletwincities The relatively new mobile group Mobile Twin Cities, self described as “a group of technology enthusiasts…meeting to discuss trends and software on all mobile platforms.”gathered last night at the Refactr offices in Minneapolis. This group founded and organized by local developer Justin Grammens of Recursive Awesome (Full disclosure; Justin and I are also partners at Localtone Systems) hosted a night of mobile platform demos which was dubbed “Demo-licious”. Judging by the larger than normal crowd, that included developers, designers, marketers and mobile enthusiasts it was a great success. The mantra that Justin continues to chant “No programming experience needed! Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm, Symbian and Windows Mobile enthusiasts are all welcome.” seems to be working.

The evening was chocked full of demos of apps and projects that leaves little doubt that mobile development in the Twin Cities is more than warm, if not downright HOT! I would like to have seen more apps that reach more phones and platforms than just iPhone and Android, but the evening didn’t disappoint in highlighting some useful or potentially useful tools.

Following Breon Nagy’s demo of the latest Android device, the Motorola Droid (which I finally got to play with…nice phone, slide out keyboard ain’t great.), from the evening’s sponsor Verizon. Here’s the run down of demos...

MixMobi-Lisa Foote and developer Kelly Heikkila presented this DIY mobile couponing application. You can see a complete Minnov8 walk-through in our earlier post about MixMobi.

Sudden Deals-Julian Reytel walked the group through this SMS based discount service. Based on geographical location a user can be alerted about special discounts from participating businesses. It’s currently limited to restaurant and bar businesses. I would suggest there is much more potential opportunity awaiting Sudden Deals beyond these two verticals. Perhaps malls, shopping areas or even shopping circulars offer a more diverse number of consumers.

3D Light Racer-Robert Green the group’s gamer extraordinaire and owner of Battery Powered Games (fun t-shirt as well) showed off just one of his latest game apps. Think Tron for you Android device. I heard many hushed comments behind me about how addictive this game is…. [Read More…]

Minnov8 Gang Podcast 48: Pushbuttons & Voice

August 22, 2009 By Steve Borsch

pushbutton This Week’s Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Phil Wilson and Julio Ojeda Zapata (Tim Elliott and Graeme Thickins are off today). Music by Chuck Willis from Music Alley, purveyor of podsafe tunes.

The Podcast

Podcast: Download (Duration: 53:14 — 30.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Discussed during the show notes:

+ Topics:

– The Pushbutton Web ( http://dashes.com/anil/2009/07/the-pushbutton-web-realtime-becomes-real.html ). Is this just a way for people to throw stuff up against the wall and see what sticks, or a fundamentally new way of inputting content that will be useful?

The “PBWeb” is really all about the shift in tools (like what I talked about at my SMBMSP preso at Deluxe) and how we can use them to deliver our content in a “publish once, distribute everywhere” model. Posterous.com, PixelPipe.com and plugins for WordPress like tWPter (http://www.bochgoch.com/page/plugin/wp_twptter/) and then the announcement by Typepad that they’re enabling microblogging (http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/the-best-of-both-worlds-microblogging-on-typepad.html) means that everyone is recognizing the need for us to publish short bursts in a microblogging way

(My SMBMSP talk)

– Themes are appearing like the Prologue Theme, P2. Prologue is a WordPress theme that turns your WordPress blog into a Twitter-like tool for organizing groups or whatever: http://p2demo.wordpress.com/

– Upcoming Microsoft retail stores. Is this smart, or is the company not capable of original ideas?: http://microsoftjobsblog.com/blog/microsoft-retail-stores-we-re-hiring/

photos: http://gizmodo.com/5322328/leak-inside-the-microsoft-store-with-wall+sized-screens-and-the-answers-bar/gallery/

– Twitter location-based tweeting. A good thing or a bad thing? http://blog.twitter.com/2009/08/location-location-location.html

– WHAT IS WITH THE SUDDEN UPTICK IN TWITTER, SKYPE AND EMAIL PORN JUST THIS WEEK!?! Not only have I been getting inundated with stuff, so have many others whom I follow.

– MIMA Summit; Pranah; SMBMSP next week at the State Fair

Google Insight & Google Trends & Alerts

+ The Pushbutton Web, a concept article by Anil Dash about a “publish once, distribute everywhere” model:

Steve Borsch talked about this at his SMBMSP #16 preso at Deluxe)
Services: Posterous, PixelPipe
WordPress plugins & themes like tWPter — along with hemes appearing like P2 that turns your WordPress blog into a Twitter-like tool
Announcement by Typepad that they’re enabling microblogging
PubSubHubBub at Google
Google Insights, Trends & Alerts

+ Upcoming Microsoft retail stores and that they’re hiring for them. Also, the Gizmodo ‘leak’ of a presentation/plan done for Microsoft on the store concept

+ Google Voice, Apple & AT&T controversy with the Federal Communications Commission asking for clarification on Apple disallowing Google Voice in the iPhone App Store. Apple’s, Google’s and AT&T’s respective responses.

+ MIMA Summit; and the Social Media Breakfast (SMBMSP) next week at the State Fair.

Minnov8 Gang 41: What if George had an iPhone?

July 3, 2009 By Steve Borsch

george On this week’s show — done one day before our usual Saturday recording due to the 4th of July — we talk about the Social Media Breakfast event and a host of other interesting tech topics.