startups + marketing + nonsense
I don’t pay particular attention to Apple’s logos for WWDC, but this years really caught my eye.
I think the logo alone is why WWDC sold out in 2 hours, which is 6x faster than last year. The event sold out by 5:30 AM PST, which sucks for everyone on the west coast that hadn’t woke up yet and the event takes place in California.
The logo may have also possessed a man to offer to legally change his name for a ticket to the event.
An interesting article from Bloomberg has been circling the web the past couple of days. It was written in January 2007 after the original Apple iPhone was announced. Author Matthew Lynn thought Apple’s new phone would never be a concern for Nokia or Motorola and only fanboys would buy the device.
Hindsight is 20/20, but you still read articles that question the new iDevices as they are released. The updates are minor, not worth an upgrade and the same Apple fanboys will run out and buy it. The “fanboy” population has really exploded. Currently one in every three high school students own an iPhone. When I was in high school (15 years ago) no one used a Mac anything. You don’t sell 10s of millions of every version of devices to the “fanboy” crowd. At this point (and I can’t believe it has to be written) but Apple has gone main stream. Most of said articles do cover themselves saying that Apple will sell a “ton” of iPad/iPhone when launched. You don’t have to be on-board the Apple train but at least save yourself the trouble of looking ignorant.
Continue on to read the article in its entirety.
When I heard that Sparrow came out with an email client for the iPhone, I downloaded without hesitation. What? $2.99. That is nothing for the products that team has produced. Sparrow for OS X is great. After I downloaded the app I was confused, then sad.
What? No Push notifications? So I only know if I have new mail after I open the app. That is a waste of time. I want to look and see the number in the little red circle on the upper right hand corner of the app logo. If that number is higher, I’m all over it. If not, then I move on. Not having Push at launch is a big miss.
Next up, no POP support. Which means no work email for most of use that don’t use Google Apps for work. This isn’t completely bad (who wants to check work email on the go?) but I don’t want to use two apps for my email.
Sparrow (both PC and mobile) gets rave reviews for the UX. I think there was a miss on the iOS version. Essential there are 3 main screens. The first screen is a list of the mail accounts (much like the native iOS app, top image). The second screen is all the folders and labels for the chosen inbox (bottom image) and the last screen (not shown) is the list of emails. I don’t want to have to go through the middle page of folders and labels to get to my email. After I select an email account I want to see the email. Why the extra swipe?
Overall the app has potential and I assume at some point Sparrow will get Push and POP support, but until then, I’m going to stick with the native iOS mail app.
(Image credit: Sparrow)
SXSW 2012 was my second venture through one of the largest interactive conference in the US. I broke the conference down by the themes that occurred during the week below.
The Weather
The big story for the first 2 1/2 days was the crappy weather. Schedules were based on how intense the rain was between sessions or whenever you had to venture outside. The rain was coming down in buckets and many, including me, did not have the proper attire to swim from venue to venue. The rain was good for Austin and the state of Texas however. The region has had record droughts and a lake north of Austin is 40-feet below average.
Sessions
The interactive sessions were hit and miss as usual. You pick sessions based on the assumed content and the presenters. I skipped a few sessions with known presenters to view some based on content… swing and a miss. The big one I missed was Sean Parker (napster, facebook) interviewing Al Gore. Gore was a surprise to the session but I had a chance to go and skipped it. A surprise was Billy Corgan (smashing pumpkins) being interviewed about the state of the music industry from a business view. Corgan was rather raw and wanted to be challenged. Great interview and I walked in on it by accident.
Most sessions, good or bad, are always better once the Q & A segment starts. There are no subjects off the table and the answers from known web personalities can offer memorable quotes.
Twitter hashtags for the sessions were almost nonexistent after SXSW pushed it hard before the conference.
The Apps
Every year a new set of apps launch at SXSW. Twitter, Foursquare and GroupMe all had their big break there. The theme this year were apps that let you know when friends or potential friends are close by. The most notable of these apps was highlight (logo hurts my head). These apps were a combination of a bit freaky and lame. I am sure highlight and the like were downloaded countless times but I knew few who used it.
After continuously hearing about the new Tweetbot and how great it is I finally coughed up the $2.99 and never looked back. Tweetbot is WAY better than the native Twitter app and well worth the cost. The Twitter app was promptly deleted.
The app that changed my experience was the “winner” of yesteryear, GroupMe. I used it with my colleagues from GSW to organize the 10 of us that were down there. At times the app was a bit overwhelming when you have 70+ unread texts but it was a great app.
The Food
The food was great. It varied from bar food, steakhouses, tex-mex, vietnamese and of course barbecue.
The Trade Show
The SXSW trade show is often just a race to see how many free T-shirts I can grab before they run out. I acquired 16 shirts this year but loss to a GSW friend who got 27. I felt bad for the booths that either had only one person working it or nothing to give away. Little traffic saw those booths and the floor space is not cheap.
Final Thoughts
This being my second year at SXSW the event was a bit underwhelming, or better put, last year was overwhelming. I learned a ton again but got the gist on how it works and where to go last year. Overall it was a great experience and I hope to go again next year.
Shortly after joining 2Checkout I had my first mission, update the out-of-date site. The objective was to clean up the design and more importantly the navigation to give a clear path for the different audiences that visit the site.
Below is the before and after of the top level navigation on the site. The old navigation provided too many options and were pushing visitors to section of the site that weren’t very helpful.
The new navigation provides three options; Payment Processing (service features), Support, and a new section for the site, Resources.
The old site had a good amount of copy and needed images to break up the the sites heaviness. The new home (below) has a clear statement on what 2Checkout can do for you (or your business).
Next is a look the old and new versions of the Support section. The purpose of this area is to easily find answers to questions and contact information.
The last comparison is of the International Payments page that explains the countries and currencies that integrate with 2Checkout.
Overall the redesign has been a big jump from the past few iterations of the site and initial analytics and conversion data has been promising.
I still remember the first time I read a Paul Carr article on Techcrunch. Carr was just hired by Arrington and wrote a column on the weekends called NSFW, which were great to read but were soooo long (for a blog). Then Paul fell off my radar till the Techcrunch fallout where I started to follow him on twitter, then the stealth launch of NSFW, and now on PandoDaily. Paul’s no BS writing style makes his work fun to read and his tweets fun (below, after the review).
Carr’s second book, The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations, chronicles his life as a nomad, traveling around the US and Europe, living in hotels for less than the cost of his flat in London. Freelance writing was paying the bills and stories about his drunken adventures attracted readers. I broke the book down into quarters.
In my last post about eReaders vs paper books I was trying to decide if I wanted to stick with paper books or move to reading books on a device. The decision was to take the jump and get a Kindle Fire. It has now been a month with the Fire, and after hours of reading both blogs and books on the Fire, I can now review my venture into the eReader world.
The “Kindle” experience is much better on the Fire than the Kindle apps available on the iPhone and iPad. After using the Fire I have to believe that Amazon can make the Kindle apps more user friendly and easier on the eyes. But I understand that they don’t want to make the apps awesome, or why would you want to buy a Kindle when you can have a full featured version in an app on your iDevice?
I have not got around to write about Paul Carr‘s new startup New Gambit ,and the parent company Not Safe For Work Corporation, but I hope to in the coming week. They have just released a landing page to signup for the beta and it is expectantly NSFW….. screenshot below.
