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Gowalla vs. FourSquare vs. Latitude

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Gowalla FourSquare, and Google Latitude are all Geolocational applications intended to provide your whereabouts to your friends while out participating with life events. Restaurants, sports, shopping or any other activity outside of your home. And while interesting, they bring into question this, if you went to these places, would you want to have your followers join you there? I’m fully aware that the participation in these application ‘games’ are part advertising of the location you are at, and sometimes benefits the user. But it does so by utilizing your active participation, bandwidth, and costs in a new kind of distributed broadcast medium.

If you can truly state that you would love to have your friends meet you at these venues, then this is all very well. The every concept of the RobMeNow.com site makes this a questionable practice. But it also assumes you have Friends 🙂 . ( I personally can’t speak to the matter, as I have none) who care. And it could be helpful to broadcast the quality of the product at site of your adventure, should it prove valuable.

The ever nature of the applications forces me to look for native app for my Nokia N900, even as I question the need for them. That’s good hype! Anyone want to jump in and add any comments?

Apple’s iPad, misses the mark.

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Since I didn’t bother to comment on what is now a fan frenzy event and the flurry of rumors preceding it, the Apple iPad has now appeared, and I will comment, Meh! Everything that the pad does, I can do with the Nokia N900, for less money, and I can carry mine anywhere. I even have a real, though small keyboard. Mind you I like the new screen, it’s nicely sized, but I have a MacBook with a bigger better screen. Is there really a gap to fill, sure sort of, and this can fill it, maybe, but will it be the next big ‘thing’ NO!

UPDATE: The spec indicates only 720p Video playback, and that’s probably due to the performance of the Apple CPU, putting it into Intel Atom processor range as far a horsepower goes.

Nokia N900 to be locked to Vodafone network.

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It looks like all the previous vendors (eXpansys, Amazon UK and other suppliers) of the Unlocked Nokia N900 have been consistently denied product to sell by Nokia. Now the word is, that the N900 will be exclusively the product of The Carphone Warehouse (with a Vodafone ontract) and Vodafone UK.

This means only one thing, there will be NO SIM Unlocked Nokia N900’s. They will all be locked to Vodafone SIMs and further OTA updates will be to Vodafone specifications. With the advent of Vodafone 360 they will be more and more tied to this service. You really can reach no other conclusion, so much for Nokia’s commitment to Open Source and Open Source developers.

Internet Freedom of Speech

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I’m always suspicious when a company US games company sues British blogger. What is the point of elevating an obscure blogger to Internet prominence? All this law suit is doing is broadcasting the bloggers opinion further, and if the blogger’s opinions are ‘untrue’ this just makes any damages to the company worse rather than to defend their ‘reputation’.

I think they are operating under the old saw that states ‘there is no such thing as bad PR’ , or they have bribed the courts in Australia, or they are seeking a clever way to declare bankruptcy.

In any case they are seeking to destroy Internet freedom of opinion, by using the more restrictive Libel laws from another country to censor this Blogger. Why not use the Iranian courts, then they could have sought to have the Blogger put to death, or something. I’m sure the Irish Blasphemy Laws could have been used. 🙂

The Nokia N900 is a Fake

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From the email this morning…


We regret to inform you that the following items have been delayed as we are still awaiting stock from our suppliers :

“Nokia N900 Mobile Computer with Maemo 5 Software”
Estimated arrival date: December 17 2009

One of Amazon’s aims is to provide a convenient and efficient service; in this case, we have fallen short. Please accept our sincere apologies.

I order this on the

2nd of Oct 2009

and this is the third delay. Could Nokia get the release of this phone more wrong? No! they have nothing to release, it’s a fake, vaporware! There are stories out there of Nokia shipping empty boxes to keep up the illusion. I’t no wonder that the boxes themselves look so cheap, they are cheap mockups.

Time to look for another REAL smartphone.

UPDATE: It REALLY is a fake I just received this email from Amazon on Sunday the 13th;

We regret to inform you that your order will take longer to fulfill than originally estimated. Our supplier has notified us that there is a delay obtaining stock for the following items you ordered on October 02 2009.

And the Amazon web page now states that the ‘Product’ is “Currently unavailable.
We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock”

More Nokia N900 Slippage, Shit!

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I’m saddened and disappointed to report that Amazon has reported another Nokia N900 shipping delay.

“Nokia N900 Mobile Computer with Maemo 5 Software”
Estimated arrival date: December 03 2009 – December 09 2009

That places the Nokia N900 dangerously close to a Vaporware classification. And moves the Nokia release date to the very end of November, rather than the early or middle of the month as was hoped. This is a bad move, one that put’s it’s release AFTER the Motorola Droid and all the other Android handsets. It makes the Nokia an Also Ran handset Maker, a Me Too! in a marketplace soon to have a large number of failed and marginalized handsets.

Vaporware label only requires 3 delays.

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I’m hoping that the Nokia N900 doesn’t become Vaporware as it has now delayed, or at lease allowed the perceived ship date to slip twice now, from October 2009, to End of October to now ‘November’. If there is a third slippage, it begins to make the N900 the subject of Vaporware rumors, and that kind of talk is death to a new product.

Smartphones, thick as Flies!

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Well if anything, you can’t say there there are too few choices in the Smartphone arena. Joining in the iPhone , Rim, Palm Pre , Windows Mobile firefight, there are now Maemo and LiMo. The later two (Maemo and LoMo) are entering the market just as there is an Android explosion of new phones. And while the Android phones are very tempting my requirements still point me at the Nokia N900, and I think that unless the Vodafone M1/H1 360 doesn’t get traction early, LiMo will be an early dropout.

NOTE: as predicted Vodafone 360 – An Absolute Failure?

The YES! vote.

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One thing, If the Yes vote is supposed to be the right (as in correct, AND good) Vote. Why is so much money being spent to Buy the Yes Vote!

Shouldn’t the Yes be self evident? And don’t say that it’s because there is a ‘No!’ campaign on, that must be countered. Opposition occurred second.

Selling your self

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I’ve been engaged in a discussion on facebook on a subject proposed by Bernard Goldbach. The subject has shifted a bit into what ‘marketing’ is. Or more so perhaps to what discussions in a public forum are. It’s also the basis of why the Delphi Method and my Idea Forecasting project are so important. But the only way I can illustrate this is like a 3 year old would do, with the ‘Why’ drill down to find the basic question. So here is my attempt;

Why do you blog, or post on any public forum?

To participate in the dusscussion.

(good, nobel thought. ed)

Why?

Well I think it’s a good disscusion.

Why?

Well I think I have some thoughts on the idea which I wish to contribute.

Why?

Well I think my Ideas are good.

Why?

Well I’ve had these experiences which have taught me a lot, and I think everyone should hear them.

Why?

Well I think everyone should know them, they can learn from them as well.

Why?

because they are important

Why?

because they are great ideas.

Why?

etc ad nauseam …

They are personal, you deem them valuable, and wish to give (read sell, promote, peddle) them to others.

The Delphi Method is a way to remove the ‘Personal‘ the Ego from the the Idea. The idea, and the discussion is on the merits of the Idea, and the comments, not on the personality, or the need of the individual to promote that Idea.

Twitter Marketing

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I’ve been browsing the Twitterverse for anyone discussing ‘Ideas’ or Forecasting and I’ve started following them using the @ideaforecasting twitter account. I’m hoping to stimulate some interest, or at least some hits on the ideaforecasting.com site. We’ll see. My expectations are high, but I’m not deluding myself, there may be no reaction. I believe that it may be true that any marketing solely dependent on Twitter, will fail. I’ll followup on this by blogging this over time.

Free Beer, not a good advertising campaign

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In the area of advertising, outside of posting nude pictures of celebrities and offering Free Beer I’m out of my league. When I talked about my new projects to the Open Coffee Cork gang, I got what I thought was pleasant interest. But outside of the amusing use of my @querynetTwitterBot asking about jaegerbombs, no one else bothered to visit my projects.

I have been seeking any feedback on Idea Forecasting, Query-The.net (@querynet) and fleetingthoght.com (@fleetthoughts) but if I can’t get a reaction from a more or less friendly crowd, it’s unlikely to get much of a reception from anyone else.

SEO and the Robot Races

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If you have been paying attention to this site and my attempts to join the ranks of the super wealthy.
I created a DIY Server which sets under my desk at home, connected to a modest DSL line with crappy uplink speeds. It currently hosts five (5) domains, but is essentially unadvertised on the internet and yet I still get visited by up to 10 Robots repeatedly every day (see below) in the form of GoogleBot, Yahoo Slurp, MSN, MSN-Mobile, Baidu and other miscellaneous Curl and Java skimmers.

So what is it that a SEO specialist do, that won’t happen completely natural just by putting any domain up on the internet?

Creating ANY content, or rather interesting content will draw down the bots onto you site, the job of SEO is easy, content creation is the hard part. Let me know what you think.


robot_bots

Is Apple Paranoid?

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Paranoia is the only explanation for Apple Claiming iPhone Jailbreaking Could Crash Cellphone Towers. What is it with them, does AT&T have their thumb up their Apples? It more and more vindicates my decision to not buy into the Apple iPhone/iPod touch ecosystem. Android and Palm Pre are going to kick Apple’s AT&T! I guess that it’s true, Apple want’s to be the next Microsoft!