Archive for July, 2009
Google enters the netbook OS ring
Google announces development for open source Chrome OS for netbooks
That sound you hear is Microsoft and its third party support sweating (even just a little). The dominance of the market share is splintering further. Let’s see: Google is #1 in search, RIM’s Blackberry OS is probably #1 in mobile OS, with iPhone, Google Android and Palm Pre’s WebOS getting good reviews and growing fast, Microsoft IE is the #1 web browser, but continuously losing market share, and Windows is still #1 desktop/laptop OS (this is based on what I’ve read and seen and is not 100% fact, but I’d put money on this being REAL close). I hear more and more positive things about Linux, with netbooks getting more prominent as low-cost portable computer solutions.
Apple notebook sales are growing stronger than other manufacturers’ (in a lousy economy, too) and their marketing forced Microsoft to respond, and do so awkwardly. They’ve had to spend a lot of money to overcome Vista’s faults, such as the annoying security messages, initial driver problems, and most importantly, Microsoft’s business model that allowed third party hardware pre-installed with Vista without the specs to optimally run it. First they had Bill Gates hang out with Jerry Seinfeld to our amusement. Lately they’ve been marketing as the low-cost provider, sending people into a Best Buy with cash for a notebook, but leaving out the hidden extra costs involved, like a need for an annual anti-virus software license, the more expensive Windows 7 upgrade (when compared to the price of Snow Leopard for a Mac buyer/Leopard OSX owner) and the stark difference in brand consumer satisfaction. My earlier blog post was about the weird decision to use gross imagery to market IE8, in a desperate attempt for attention.
Google has the money and brand power to further split the market that Microsoft and Linux are sharing. This next decade will be very different from the 90s. VERY different.
Internet leading our next step in evolution?
You have to love the open-minded, scientific genius. Stephen Hawking things we’re in a new evolutionary step.
The Internet is certainly an enormous leap over print publishing with its speed and participant access to join the cultural collective consciousness, but so far, it’s been a sociological evolution. The speed at which knowledge is shared has evolved beyond even the first incarnation of the Internet. CD-ROM killed the print encyclopedia and Wikipedia replaced Encarta. E-mail was limited to who you directed the knowledge to be shared because you needed their e-mail address, just like you needed a mailing address for print letters. Chat rooms were limited to a specific time and group, not much difference from a conference call. The newer social web, with server-based storage of those interactions, which doesn’t require a specific time-frame (made possible by server storage and some nifty JavaScript work) or specific address (just search for them on Facebook). The more people expect others to be on Facebook, the more people will join. It is far more efficient for a participant’s time, like DVR-ing an on-going, digitally public conversation.
The social web is happening just as the mobile web is transferring from “business class” to “coach”. A brilliant scientist can write from anywhere to potentially everyone. It’s stored somewhere, for all to see, and they can instantly share it with everyone they know, who can then share it with the next group level out, and the knowledge spreads super fast. Unfortunately, the same power is given to an idiot who can’t string a sentence together in the comments section of a website.
A mobile web device is a world-wide communicator. Combined with a social web site, it’s a powerful tool and is not limited to some silly fad for celebrities or for moms to post baby pictures. It’s being used for potential social change. I love that the State Department specifically requested that Twitter delay shutting down for maintenance because it was a great subversive tool to embrace the public outcry in Iran and undermine Ahmadinejad’s re-election. The Internet used as a foreign policy weapon without the bad PR of a loss of American blood and money.
But again, that’s all sociological change. Evolution would require some change to our biological existence.
Will we achieve eugenics altering technology before, after or concurrently with cybernetic enhancements? Either way, Hawking brings up a good point: we’ll have evolved on our own terms. It sounds very cool: less hereditary diseases, on-board knowledge at any second, but it’s also very scary:
Resistance is futile
I need to watch this again.
What happens to our species when we direct our own evolution?
I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
You stay classy, Microsoft
Microsoft is using an ad online featuring a woman projectile vomiting from seeing something in her significant other’s browsing history to market Internet Explorer 8. They’re promoting the new private browsing feature, hosted by TV’s former Superman, Dean Cain. Yep, it’s real. I wish I was kidding: http://mashable.com/2009/07/01/ie-vomiting/
Another example of Microsoft’s horrendously awful marketing lately. Apple uses Justin Long and John Hodgman. Fun and clever. Microsoft uses bullshit laptop buyers in a Best Buy going for cheap instead of quality, and now, projectile vomiting.
Ironically, it’s how I feel when writing CSS bug fixes for IE6.
What will we see from them to market Windows 7? Someone with a stomach virus and diarrhea thanks to a lesser operating system? I can’t wait.
