Category: iPad

Waiting for the next Internet Browser Revolution

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When we log onto our computer these days there is pretty much only one place we want to go,where we want to be, on the internet.  When we are in the internet there is really only one application that matters, our browser.  After years of being an Internet Explorer only kind of guy I decided it was time to branch out. At my current place of employment I have loaded all 4 browsers on my Dell Laptop and I even bought an iPhone. As I have played around with them it strikes me that not any one (Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Chrome) really “wows” me in any meaningful way.  But a few interesting habits have come to light.  On my laptop I spend most of my time in Firefox and Chrome, not sure why but it just seems to be comfortable to me.  In the world of mobility I am pretty much forced via my iPhone to be a Safari user and it does what I need so I am not upset, I frankly could care less..

I could go through a review of each browser but at the end of the day that would be, in my view, a pointless effort.  There are enough reviews out there and I cannot really add any value by doing one. Each has certain things that are nice and each claims to load pages faster.  The latter being something I could not verify from an end-user perspective.  they all seem about the same to me.  Chrome and Firefox have sites where you can get plug-ins for the browser, but so far the one’s I have seen are in the “geek world”.  Nothing very sexy or appealing about them, I may be proved wrong, but I am just saying..

Right now the browser has become the application of choice for nearly everything we do with a computer.  For the average home users it’s where we stay connected with friends, get our email, real-time news updates, do online shopping, and now we are starting to use if for word processing and online spreadsheets.  In corporate America  every internal corporate application is browser-based.  With the browser being so ubiquitous in our day-to-day lives it raises the question of what next?  What more can it do?  I think there are several areas that we will see these changes take place,

One of the hot topics is video.  By some estimates in 3-5 years 90% of internet traffic will be video, both on demand and streaming live events.  It;s not that far-fetched, when you look at popular content coming YouTube and Netflix it seems rather obvious.  The ability to have the entertainment when we want and how we want is pretty compelling and been sort of holy grail for years.  Of course it’s not quite that easy.  One of the big discussion in technology and what seems to be certain is the standard to play video will move to the browser based on the next specification for HTML; HTML5.  Today most video content is Adobe Flash based.  People in the industry make a big deal about open (HTML5) versus closed (Flash).  It’s a nice debate but at the end of the day what is ever the easiest for the average consumer will win out, because Joe average does not give a rip about versus open or closed and they should not have to.  In my opinion the biggest impact this will have is how we interact with our television or don’t interact.

Another change being driven primarily by Google is the browser as platform.  To the non-techies what this means in short is when I create an application I do not need to write it so that it run son Windows, but to the “cloud’ to use a popular current term.  In concrete terms in may mean you will by a personal computer that runs Chrome as the operating system.  Or maybe to quote Marc Andreeson, “Windows will just be a buggy set of device drivers”.  This is happening and is very real.  Over 75% of applications that are developed today are web-based applications.  Can  it be constrained to one browser?  Probably not, we will not see a Windows domination in the browser.  History is against that happening, but those that do not try will become history.

Finally the tablet  growth is driving significant changes in browser market share.  With an Android you are obviously getting Chrome as the browser of choice.  Likewise with a iPad you will be using Safari.  My view is with either and with not any huge difference between browsers there is not going to be a huge incentive to move to another browser.  The tablet to me is really about freedom to be where you want and freedom from your keyboard and desk.  I mean the last point in the physical sense.  If I can make my workplace where I am the most comfortable if that fits into my daily personal life, that is what freedom from technology is.  The point is with technology as much as it has liberated us it has constrained us and we get caught up in work and though we think we are being more productive, we are working longer and are less fulfilled in life.

In the end we may be blessed with a truly competitive browser environment where each iteration provides something very compelling.  With the growth in video content that possibility exists.  Mobility will take us to life scenarios yet to be imagined.  There will be downsides.  In Paul Theroux’s travel book through Africa “Dark Star Safari”  he started by saying he wanted to take a journey where there is no email, no cell phones he just wanted to be disconnected.  With the great promise of the future, the ability to browse wherever and whenever that desire will be very hard to achieve.  But the browser will be central to all those dreams and horrors for better or for worse.

Good Night and Good Luck,

Hans Henrik Hoffmann February 13, 2011

The Next Revolution has already occurred

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It was interesting reading on CNet recently that Goldman Sachs was pessimistic about Microsoft’s 2011 (This article is not about Microsoft – so please read on). This was on top of a report the day before of 54 million Tablets sold this year, 37 million were iPads, the rest were based on Google’s Android OS.  As we entered the New Year we began with the preeminent trade show, the Consumer Electronics Show.  This show has grown in strength each year as people line up to see what type of technology gizmo will change the landscape of consumer behavior and of our day-to-day lives.  Analyst line up to see what the next big innovation will be and what new breakthroughs it will drive.    Reading about all this made me stop and think about the future, and as is usual I first started thinking about the past.  I will admit I am a product of the dotcom era, where everyone’s ideas were big and going to be revolutionary.  At the time everybody got caught up in it.  When it ended it was a let down on the future, it was not just not just a market bubble it was an emotional bubble.  It’s legacy is we are all waiting for the next internet tidal wave to hit us.

Information has always brought about change, but in today’s world it moves a lot faster than it used.  If you think back to the Cold War one of the defining moments was the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago”.  The book that depicted the lives of the Soviet people in the prison camps during the Stalinist regime.  To get that book printed it had to get out of the Soviet Union.   It had to be hidden in homes and far away from the Soviet KGB.  Copies had to be made and there were no computers with floppy discs or CD’s/DVD’s. It required the support of high level politicians in the United States to facilitate the process (we all know how fast they move…).  The book finally got to the west in 1968, but would not be published until 1073.  It was a long, slow, and very winding road to get there.  Those days, luckily, are far behind us.

Fast forward to today and we see the world is changing before our very eyes and  technology is driving that change..  Nearly two years ago when a wave of violence and protest spread through Iran we saw “tweets” posted via Twitter regularly.  Videos came online as protesters took to the streets and captured video with small digital cameras and mobile phones and it came near real-time to the public online.  Many of the most gruesome videos from these protester came at us from the cable news networks, as the cable news companies scoured the web for the latest content.   Not their camera men but just ordinary people in the streets like you and I.  Now we fast forward to today and we recently saw this same act play out successfully in Tunisia.  Even now as I write protests have set the world (and the markets!) on fire in Egypt as violence has spread through mystical cities like Alexandria and Cairo.  Everyone in the media waiting for the next relevant “tweet” or video.  Despite the efforts of the Egyptian government to shut down the internet the information steadily flows outside its birders, coming from the Egyptian citizens.  The big key to this is not the PC, but the rise of mobility and the mobile  internet.  Former President George W Bush in his book, “Decision Point” took a long-term view of  history that the invasion and liberation of Iraq in 50 years would be the turning point in the middle east spreading democracy throughout the region.  My view is that road was already starting, but id did not require war to get there.  Technology is the major unifier as information flows freely across borders, no matter how autocratic the regime.  Democracy and opportunity is on its way as a world order, thanks to the mobile internet.

The idea of mobility and access to immediate information is transforming our lives, both in the big ways like Egypt and Tunisia as well as a small way, like paying our cell phone bill from a mobile phone while on vacation in Yellowstone Park.  If you think back in history these changes have all been about personal freedom.  Look at what the automobile did to the human experience.  The sheer idea that a person could go drive 300 miles by themselves  in six hours was unheard of, now it is fairly common as kids drive off to college.  But the automobile led to so many things in the course of the next 100 years, from the roadside Motel to the shopping mall.  Today we are looking for freedom from our keyboard and monitor (Bill Gate’s just vomited).  The mobile internet will lead to similar change and economic opportunity like the automobile.  There will be those companies and those individuals who recognize the opportunity and will drive changes in society beyond anything previously imagined.  Then there will be those who maybe saw it and did not understand it or missed out entirely on the change in front of them.   It is one of those times where in 10-15 years we will all look back at those that failed and say “How could they not see it?”.  A few companies come to mind today that are embracing the mobile change, and in some cases defining it.  The obvious ones are Facebook, Google, Apple and Twitter. Mobility is the single biggest transformation in society since the birth of the automobile and will continue to grow and change society throughout the 21st century.  Like the automobile it will lead to new modes of life that we have yet to discover.  Those companies that embrace mobility as an overarching strategy versus a line of business offering will be poised for greater success, while those that drag their feet will be irrelevant.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann February 8, 2011

The iPad Juggernaut …..

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I guess it was bound to happen.  It is something I have seen many times before.  It is annoying, frustrating, and in some corners just plain pathetic.  Addressing the competitive threat by any means necessary.  even when it is obviously desperate.  It’s these type of corporate responses that drive me nuts. Recently Microsoft (my old company) has come under a lot of pressure to come up with a Tablet strategy.  I should add Microsoft has had for years a Tablet.  It was one of Bill Gates’ pet projects,  They just need a strategy that works.   The Microsoft response is a iPad battle card to help Microsoft partners and its field sales force sell Windows 7 slates in the enterprise, while combating the threat from the iPad.

Let me go back a bit in time and just say I have seen these battle cards before.  It was pretty standard practice at Microsoft across all battle lines and often they were very helpful.  However after the successful debut of the Apple iPhone I received in my mail box a little envelope that contained my Windows Phone 6 versus the Apple iPhone battle card (I am serious…I am not making this up).  What were some of the advantages of Windows Phone 6?  It had mobile Office, Sharepoint Support, better Exchange Synch etc..If you read the link earlier you will by now realize that whomever the marketing manager is who put the Apple iPad battle card together has mastered the art of copy and paste.

Do not get me wrong for a minute, I do not envy the marketing Manager who had the responsibility of taking this on.  It is one of those things that when nothing is happening on the product side you still have to generate some sort of response, the worst thing is to be quiet. And to their credit they created some really nice slide ware. I will be however surprised to see if any of my former mates in the Microsoft field sales force ever have the guts to present this to a customer or even regurgitate it over drinks or dinner with a client.

The slide, though intended for partners, demonstrates the focus on the enterprise and the disengagement in general from the consumer market place.  I should also add this did not come out of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division.  If it had it would have a far greater emphasis on the general market.  The Windows Division is outside all of that its own $20 billion juggernaut.  We call that power.    The slides do highlight the success the iPad is having in the enterprise space as more and more users want access to their corporate networks from their iPad.  It’s the reverse of what happened with Windows , which first took off in the business world before penetrating the home.  But times have changed and with new devices hitting the market at an ever-increasing pace and a much more affordable price big sea changes in the enterprise often come from the outside in versus the inside out.  People want to be cool even when they are in he office.  Even if they are an accountant.

Finally the biggest issue I hear these days is people at the Big M are tired of following and not leading (the exception being the xBox team with Kinect).  They want to be out in front of the industry.  But if you read my last blog on Facebook I highlighted how similar they were to Microsoft, when it was a younger company.  Now it’s not like people at Microsoft are really old, no far worse, they are middle-aged.  They have kids, they live through their kids, they have divorces, they are joining AA, they buy expensive sports cars, they try really hard physical activities that they used to be able to do, they buy iPads…I think you are getting the picture.

In the mean time the Tablet market keeps chugging along as highlighted in Apples recent earnings announcement.  There are other entrants that are also gaining momentum, like Android (we should seem new slide ware shortly).  I admit I was skeptical when the iPad came out.  I felt like it was just a giant OS, but there is a beauty in having the same core code between your phone and your tablet.  The applications are easy to write for both.  The iPad seems to be gaining momentum as it creates a scenario where a more powerful device can be useful and mobile.  There are a lot of scenario where having a monitor is useful and even desired, but with so much time spent on the web there are a lot of scenarios where it does not, just look at all the useful features of the latest Facebook mobile apps.  How many people out there are just checking into their favorite Starbuck’s? I need no mouse or keyboard for that I just need my finger.  The only way to compete with iPad is to get ahead of it, but once a boulder starts to slide down a mountain it i s hard to stop.

Good Night and Good Luck!

Hans Henrik Hoffmann January 25th, 2011

Generating “Buzz”

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With the Consumer Electronic Show just having been completed I think it is a good time to talk about one of those things that every technology provider strives for which is to generate a certain amount of “buzz” around a future product.  It is so very important to the success of any new product that people begin  to talk about it before the product is released.  Certainly out of this years show there was a lot of noise generated around Google’s Android platform, with companies making a big push to showcase upcoming releases of both phones and tablets.  Companies like Verizon, Samsung and Motorola did a lot to push the new releases of Android based tablets, pinning future success on the release of the product.

There are some good historical examples.  The “buzz” generated around Microsoft Windows 95 or the “buzz” created around the Apple iPhone.  In each case you had people lined up at midnight to get the product.  This is great stuff, but there is another type of “buzz” that gets created underneath all that and that is creating the excitement in the developer community.  The people who make the cool apps for the Apple app store or Google store.   Without developers extending and creating a market place an application can have a very short life span

My last role at Microsoft there was a commitment that everyone had to sign up about creating “buzz” in the development community for Microsoft Developer tools .  To clarify for those with no Microsoft background every employee signs up for a “commitment”, which is a goal that will be either fulfilled or not fulfilled come review time at the end of the Microsoft fiscal year.  This determines salary increase, bonus and promotion.  Anybody reading this probably has the same question is what the hell does “generating buzz”  mean?  Being developer land, my first thought was “good luck…with that”.  How are less than 100 people out in the field going to generate excitement around Microsoft Developer technologies, especially when there are so many dependencies? 

To be fair to create buzz goes beyond assigning a few people it really takes a commitment beyond a few individuals, to multiple organizations to external partners.  One of the keys to Apple’s iPhone success was not just the whisper campaign they were generating.  They also had a behemoth like AT&T behind them and they were fully bought in, up to their neck.  Not like the dipping their toes into the water effort they did with the Windows Phone 7 launch.

Another key success factor is just having a product, because it is the end game , it is where you are trying to take the consumer.  When the product launched there is a certain level of satisfaction in having got there.  Sometimes tech companies are guilty of trying to generate excitement without really telling the end customer what to be excited about.  Usually it is to try to get people excited about the company.  Coming from my background at Microsoft the last years seemed to be spent trying to recapture the glory of yester year.

Having a certain level of “buzz” is the difference between having momentum and not having momentum.  When you have the ear of the consumer and the press then a new phenomena sets in, which is “what is next?”  In todays world Apple certainly has tha momentum.  They have the iPod, iPhone, MacBooks,i Pad, Apple Store…they really are in the zone right now here they are setting the industry direction.  Google now is starting to get beyond just being a search company with first Android and next Chrome. Facebook maybe has more momentum than anybody as under their CEO Mark Zuckerburg, they have that “it’s a young mans game” syndrome going.  Similar to what Bill Gate’s had back in the 80’s and 90’s.  It’s the difference between rolling the boulder up the hill or down the hill.

Finally with regards to CES and why it has become what it has. A big reason is that technology is pervasive in everybody’s lives today.  It is not restricted to the “nerd” or “geek” or “hobbyist”.  We all have technology in some capacity of our lives.  It is our cell phones, flat screen TV’s, Tivo, game console’s, Roomba’s, etc.. The Consumer Electronics Show is about showing off how technology is going to further enhance our day-to-day lives in the near future.  Any company participating better not be showing off what is already available.  Attendees want to see the coming years Christmas purchase, not what they already have.  They want the participating companies to wow them.  In short they want some “buzz”.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann January 10th, 2011

Video, Video, Video

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It has become clear that we are entering an age of ubiquitous video content. we want our content everywhere, anywhere, we want it now, and we want in entertaining.  If you think about where we have come from on the internet it is a natural evolution.  We started with rather static content which was just a fancy word document with pictures.  Then we started incorporating basic display ads, followed by more lively content that eventually led us to YouTube.  Now that same YouTube content is available everywhere – I could be on Facebook, iPad, iPhone you name it, it will be shared and made available.  Now we are entering the Netflix era. We are no longer viewing just uploaded content but live streaming of content.  To be clear this has not been new this year, we have been doing it for a while we view our news outlets online, like MSNBC.

Going back in time I remember 10 years ago I tried to view a live concert from New York at my office in Redmond.  It was Madonna doing some party in New York.  I tried and it was awful.  It was hard to connect and when it did, it streamed for a few seconds before it cut out.  It was a very frustrating experience and I am not even a Madonna fan.   Around th e same time iw as working with a ISP in Green Bay, WI doing a test with voice over IP (VOIP) with streaming video.  Again an awful experience and I realized to do any quality video you basically had to own your own studio. But that was 10 years ago and how far we have come.

Today we get video through a number of sources and in different formats.  With the release of the iPhone 4 we now have the ability to do voice and video phone calls.  The idea of a mobile device, be it an Android, iPhone or iPad without an available Netflix application is a non starter for the device that does not have it.  Netflix is becoming the prime example of making high-end video content (movies, television shows etc..) available  whenever you want it and now it ois going global.  The market believes as well as at last glance Netflix (NFLX ) is trading at over $196 – to think that a year ago it was under a $100.

There are issues that are starting to come to the forefront.  When the internet first came of age we had a number of companies laying a lot of fiber in the ground.  Most of it was not used.  It just sat there idle.  We referred to it as dark fiber.  However that was because what we were sending over the net was small files and video was not really that big at the time.  Today we actually are sending large files (not entirely true as streaming technologies take video files and break them down into small chunks..but as a whole the file is large).  We are also streaming live content so you start to see a web with constant and massive traffic flows.

With the rise of mobility and content on the go we are now entering the last great phase and the holy grail of device interaction: the television.  In recent years television has  undergone, popular, but what I view as small steps as we transition to something far greater.  many people have either a LCD or Plasma flat screen TV.  A Tivo device connected for recording.  A lot of road warriors had sling boxes enabling them to view there local Seattle programs while in Orlando, As has been mentioned we can stream movies via Netflix or the xFinity services from Comcast.  Our televisions are becoming more interactive.  The game consoles we connect to our TV are becoming media hubs, the best example being the XBox.  With what they can do with Wii or Kinect they will become home fitness devices. There has been a recent slew of new products around TV.  Both Google and Apple have announced appliances for the television.  Microsoft has been trying to tackle this game for nearly 20 years.  It’s an exciting time.

There will be challenges moving forward.  Mainly from the incumbant service providers either cable companies like Comcast, Cablevision, Cox Communications or the traditional telco’s AT&T and Verizon.  They have one asset cherished above all…the last mile.  That is literally the cable or phone line that runs from the curb into your house.  It’s how we get access to the internet through DSL or Cable Modem.  It’s how all those great services mentioned earlier are delivered into our home.  It is the holy grail. When companies devise plans to sidestep them they fight back.  In the market place, but more importantly on Capital Hill.  They are in the offices of your congressperson or Senator.  They bring in their heavy hitters to do the work:  Lobbyists and executives.  I witnessed this first hand on a trip to DC as a bus was loaded and paraded around the hill, clearly labeled “Comcast Executives”.  They were not there for consumer benefit, though they would say they are.

If one thing is certain, the future will come.  There will be those who try to stop it.  However with the advancements made in wireless bandwidth with 4G and then 5g coming down the road in the next 5-7 years things will start to change very quickly.  We are now seeing satellite services propping up again.  The last mile will die and we will be temporarily free.  We will get our content and human interaction wherever we want it when we want it.  It’s a very exciting time in the industry as things only dreamed of 15 years ago are now on the verge of becoming reality.  Just think on some Saturday morning on my 40″ LCD I will be able to view all my favorite soccer games with my 3 boys in my pajamas at once while having my morning coffee, now for me that will be heaven.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann November 30, 2010