I spent much of the past week at the excellent Defrag Conference. I honestly don’t know another conference where you’ll find meaningful discussion of traveling to space, solving big data problems and why rooms in Vegas have mirrors on the ceiling (Esther Dyson, Jeff Jonas and Jeff Ma respectively).

The conference is attended by some very smart and influential people (present company excluded), from senior execs to talented developers, press and VCs.

Defrag is organized by the talented Eric Norlin and his equally talented wife Kim. Eric gets startups and every year I’ve attended Defrag (3 now) he does one thing that I think is great: he gives a startup a shot at the brass ring.

How to connect with people at a conference when you don’t know them but have common interests is a poorly solved problem. This year, Eric gave Zerista a shot at solving it.

And boy, did they suck. There’s a big suck and then a bunch of smaller quibbly sucks that you could argue may just be me. But the big one is a doozy.

I arrived in Denver on Tuesday night (November 16th) and got an email asking me to sign up for Zerista:

So I signed up and started creating my profile. When I tried to add a photo, the system belched. I tried a few more times and got nowhere. I’m running a Mac and Chrome browser. Its not exactly an unusual combination but I have seen problems on some sites, so I fired up Firefox. Different error message but the same end result: no ability to upload a photo. On a scale of 1 to 10, being able to have an easy way to recognize someone you’ve never met (like a photo) ranks at least a 12, so I was keen to solve this.

Investigative hat on, I took a look at the Zerista site and they mention that “Zerista Pro is a Mobile and Desktop Event Planner that turns your event into an interactive mobile experience for all stakeholders”.

Aha! Perhaps I can use their mobile app.

Err no. Neither my Nexus One nor my Galaxy tablet can see anything other than a hobbled mobile UI that doesn’t let you edit information at all.

But it’s not as though attendees at Defrag would have smartphones and want to edit things from them

<sigh>

But then another idea hits me. This is a startup. This conference is a big deal for them. They are probably all working 24/7. Yes, it’s 11pm at night (Colorado time) but why not send an email to their support team! I’d never bother with a mainstream product because we all know how that works out, but good startups (and Eric knows what those look like) are all over customer support.

So I did. Short and simple as you see below. I used to run a Customer Support department, so I tried to provide at least a minimum amount of useful information and a clear subject.

After sending that, I went to bed. Defrag started at 8am on the 17th and I was on East Coast time, so I was up early.

I checked my email, but there was no response. Not even an autoresponder saying “We got your email”.

Hmm.

The 17th came and went. I checked the mobile app a few times, but it seemed no one was really using it and the vast majority of attendees didn’t have a completed profile or profile picture. The 18th came and went too. Defrag is only a two day conference, so by 5pm or so on the 18th it was over.

Still no email.

I got up early on Friday, 11/19, to take my flight home. Still no email.

Caught up with my email late last night when I finally got home.

Still nothing.

This morning (Saturday) I got up late to see not one but two emails:

Uhhh, what? I already registered. I logged in several times during the conference. Why are you sending me this now? As I look at this more closely, it seems Redmine is perhaps their support ticket system, so this is perhaps a login for problem tracking, not my account login?

Way to go, clarity.

This email was followed by an even more splendid one:

So yes, I got a message that simply regurgitated the email I had sent 3+ days earlier. You’ll also see the heartwarming “NON BILLABLE” notice in the subject line.

Now I already had the impression that they didn’t give a shit about my business, but at least now I know it’s because I’ve been identified as some kind of freeloader by their system.

You’ll also see that it shows the issue as “New”, which after 3+ days I would argue with, and the priority as “Normal”. Since the conference ended two days ago, I’d recommend they change that to “Low”, or “Ooops”, or “My Bad”.

Seriously? WTF! I couldn’t help but respond, since no-one else seems to be updating my case:

Let me be clear: this is in no way a criticism of Eric. This is 100% a criticism of Zerista and their management team.

If you can’t handle simple tasks like responding to urgent support emails, you don’t deserve anyone’s business, let alone mine.

Categories: All Business, Rants 'n' Raves
3611 Comment »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/11/20/hi-my-name-is-zerista-and-id-like-to-blow-a-golden-opportunity/%22Hi%2C+My+Name+is+Zerista+and+I%27d+like+to+blow+a+golden+opportunity%222010-11-20+13%3A26%3A51NickN

I’ve been ambivalent about the iPad since it launched, but finally had to buy one for a project I’m working on.

A few days in, I’ve actually changed my mind somewhat. I still don’t love the device, but the things that bother me aren’t entirely the things I expected.

As everyone else on the planet has already said, it is a spectacular device for browsing media. The screen is great and a good size for photos or video. The lack of buttons and other clutter makes it very easy to use and both my kids like it. As a Netflix fan, I’ve found it to be a decent way to watch a movie and so far it’s the first Apple device I’ve owned in a long time that doesn’t seem to have any wi-fi issues.

It has sold me on both the potential of tablets and their advantages. In many ways it feels like a true cloud device.

But like I said, there are some problems.

I’ll skip all the stuff about SD card support etc. It’s a problem and who knows if Apple will fix it or not.

But there are some other issues too.

A big issue for me is that I’m perpetually in fear of dropping the thing and it feels as though it wouldn’t survive a 2’ drop to the floor. When you have a device that gets warm enough to make your hands sweat, I’m just not sure I want such a smooth finish on all sides.

The iPad is also damn uncomfortable to hold for an extended period of time. For some reason, I am inclined to hold it in portrait mode like a traditional book. My wife does the same thing. But you simply can’t do that for very long unless you have wrists of steel. The iPad is heavy for its size and it doesn’t let you forget that.

Steve Jobs recently blasted 7” tablets as useless, but I’m not convinced. The smaller size and lower weight may just be the perfect combination.

I’m also surprised at how lame many of the iPad apps are. Most of the apps that are labelled as “optimized for iPad” are simply badly scaled, not redesigned. The “2X” button that scales apps automatically also makes most things pretty ugly. The Facebook app looks atrocious — so much so that I went back to the web interface. Given how many iPads have sold and the higher price iPad apps command, I find it odd that developers aren’t doing better at this.

But I think my biggest overall gripe is the dependency on the iTunes desktop app. For some reason, I don’t mind it so much on the iPhone. But on the iPad, iTunes is rapidly becoming the overbearing parental figure that follows you around and has to get in the way of everything you want to do “for your own good”. The iPad feels like a real computing device, not a phone (even though that line is completely blurred), and the dependency on iTunes and a connection to a desktop/laptop is incredibly frustrating.

At times, the iPad feels like a true cloud device, but iTunes kills that baby-sized dream before it can crawl. You switch it on for the first time and have to connect to iTunes on your desktop. You take new pictures, you have to connect to iTunes on your desktop. You want new music, connect to iTunes on your desktop (unless you want to buy all your CD’s again). You want to back everything up, grab your cable… And iTunes itself just feels clunkier each time I use it. When I’m searching for apps, I don’t want to see music or video results. And vice versa. The iTunes app feels like a bunch of pieces that are poorly slopped together, and given Apple’s dedication to the user experience, I am quite sure they could do better.

The App Store app on the phone isn’t much better. It drives me nuts that when I choose something for download, I am automatically kicked out of the app store and returned to the iPad/iPhone’s home page. I was busy buying things — why did you kick me out?

There are lots of reasons why Apple are fighting the cloud, but I suspect the main one is their perception of control. If you don’t think they are fighting it, just take a look and see what the default Apple advice is for synchronizing your Google Contacts. Guess what? They recommend you sync via iTunes. That way, any time you update your contacts, you have to run home and sync two devices — your desktop iTunes machine and then your iPad. But if you head on over to Google, you’ll find that you can actually sync Google Contacts and Google Calendars without so much as looking at a USB cable. For calendars, you can use CalendarDAV or MS Exchange, and Contacts will sync quite happily with the MS Exchange option too. Now I can update or add a contact on my Android phone and the iPad address book app will be updated within minutes. No iTunes required. Same goes for my calendar.

I love the way Apple can sometimes step back and re-imagine how things should be. When they are right, they are brilliant. But iTunes is a sickly dog that needs to be put down. Or at least genetically mutated into some kind of never-before-seen leash-free über-canine that can rule the world. If they don’t make that leap, sooner or later they will get left behind.

Categories: Rants 'n' Raves
353No Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/10/24/we-pad-you-pad-not-sure-i-like-the-ipad/We+Pad%2C+You+Pad%2C+Not+Sure+I+like+the+iPad...2010-10-24+14%3A43%3A30NickN

I’ve spent the past few hours playing with a Sony Google TV box (the standalone Blu-ray box, not the integrated TV).

To cut right to it, my first impressions are pretty favorable but with some big caveats.

I chose the Sony box over the Logitech because with two young kids in the house, the idea of a full and dainty looking keyboard as the remote just struck me as a bad idea. I really could care less about the Blu-Ray player part (sorry Sony) but I’m not in the market for a new TV.

So let’s begin at the beginning…

Getting Started
Setup was easy. The hardest part was navigating the insane cablenest that lives behind my TV, but other than that it was straightforward. One of the things I really like about Google TV is that it is designed to complement the cable box you already have, not replace it. This is a critical differentiator between Google TV and Apple TV in my opinion, and it allows some interesting functionality. More on that in a moment.

Connect the HDMI out from your cable box to the input on the Sony box. Connect the HDMI out from the Sony box to your TV. Plug in the IR blaster (so the Google TV box can control the cable box) and connect the power. Then you’re off and away. I went through the usual collection of steps to get things set up — optimize the display size, set up the wi-fi connection etc. Then the box told me there was a software update and began automatically downloading it. Several minutes and a reboot later, I was back at the setup screen.

Unfortunately, the update wiped everything I had set up so far, so I had to repeat all the steps I’d already completed. Doh.

There were a few more steps, such as adding my zip code and cable provider, at which point Google TV downloaded the list of available channels automatically.

And then it was batteries in the remote and up, up and away.

The Remote
When I first saw the remote for the Sony, like many other folks I thought it was nutty. It looked cumbersome, clunky and poorly conceived. In reality, it’s really not bad. The device is the same width as a playstation controller, so it fits in the hand quite well. The left hand side has an up/down/left/right/select control that works well for navigating menus etc. The top right has a touchpad kind of thing surrounded by some control keys (activate the Google TV box, picture in picture, menu and go back). Below all that is a qwerty keyboard that’s not at all bad to type with. Overall it’s pretty solid and I think it will survive some toddler chewing, dropping and general abuse. Given it’s relatively small size, it is much better suited to my living room than a full keyboard like the one that comes with the Logitech Revue.

Using The Box
Getting in to using the box itself, it’s quite interesting. The magic of the passthrough HDMI becomes obvious pretty quickly. When you’re exploring menus etc, you can still see the live TV feed in the background (the menus are transparent). When you’re in an application like Twitter or the browser, it’s full screen by default. I have an HDTV, but it’s a few years old and nothing special. However, Text/graphics rendering is good and very readable on every web site/app I’ve tried.

There’s also a picture-in-picture mode, so you can see live TV in a small window while you’re browsing the web etc.

The search is nifty too. Any time you search for something, the box automatically searches the live TV guide and the internet for matching items. Very slick. So for example, searching for “House” brings up a cable show called “House Training” that airs on Saturday, “House” the TV series and “Full House” the tv series, as well as a “search the web” option that would broaden the search. So yes, it really is integrated and it searches the channel guide for your collection of cable channels, as well as everywhere else.

Choosing “House” the series takes you to Hulu-like screen where you can see episodes that are downloadable, purchasable or upcoming on regular TV. Picking the TV option pops up a dialog box to set a DVR recording or switch immediately to the right channel.

It’s hard to convey how well done this is. It is very, very smooth. With some caveats (see below).

Design-wise, I’m ambivalent about the Sony box. It’s like a clunky game console with odd aesthetics, neither one thing (cool and small like Apple TV) or another (odd but interesting like the Boxee box). It’s not a standard form factor and it’s shiny white, so it sticks out like an oddly sized sore thumb. I’m sure part of the form factor is due to the blu-ray drive, but as I said at the beginning, that wasn’t something I was looking for.

The Applications
The box comes with some default apps, but frankly they are a mixed bag. I’m holding my criticisms until the end, but some of the apps are dogs. Yes, I’m looking at you, Netflix. The box comes with a Netflix app, but you can only watch items you’ve already added to your “Watch Instantly” queue. Thanks to the built in Chrome browser, I can do that from the TV too, but it’s a lame workaround for a crummy app. I’m a big fan of Netflix, but they blew it with this one.

The CNBC Real-time app is a great indicator of where this is headed. You get a very nice live video feed with additional data and the ability to play archived clips all within a single app. It looks polished and actually seems useful.

The gallery app is identical to the Android gallery since Android 2.1. Not a surprise since that’s what the Google TV box is running. It works and works well.

Pandora also works well as far as I can see — it was easy to set up and just does its thing.

The other app I’ve played with extensively is the Chrome browser. Again, it’s well done, seems stable and just plain works. It also supports Flash out of the box, so you really can browse the web without any big holes in the experience. HD YouTube clips look great — I can finally watch Annoying Orange on the big screen. All of the sites I’ve visited so far have looked good. There are a couple of minor caveats, but see below for the details there.

There’s also a Twitter client. It’s nothing special, but it works just fine.

And Now For The Bad Stuff

You quickly find some missing pieces and rough edges, but most of them will be easy fixes that I expect to see roll out quickly.

Here are some of the biggies…

The price. This is an expensive box and the current selection of apps don’t justify the price. Obviously I’m paying an early-adopter premium, but the price needs to be well under $200 for this to make sense for most people. The price and the functionality will doubtless change quickly.

Some of the shinier features that were part of the hype are still missing. You can’t install apps, there’s no marketplace access (coming in 2011) and the connectivity to Android phones isn’t available yet. This should all be resolved soon, but I’m ready now!

The setup had a few bumps — it was pretty annoying to have gone so far through setup only to have to repeat everything from scratch after the update. I understand why, but it was a poor start.

The whole keypad/remote is a near miss. They’ve obviously worked hard to combine elements of a desktop keyboard with a typical Android phone virtual keyboard, but there are some real holes.

For example, there’s no kind of predictive text if you’re typing and that gets very old very quickly. Not sure why this was omitted when it’s part of Android and would really help.

Selecting text is messy. You can’t really do it with the mouse/touchpad control as there’s no way to select and drag (you are either selecting or dragging and can’t do both). You can hold down the shift key and use the left hand control to select text, and Ctrl-C will copy whatever is highlighted. However, this would all be much easier with a trackball similar to the one seen on the Nexus One and the select/copy/paste mechanism that is already part of Android. Again, this seems like an obvious omission that would help smooth the experience if it had been left in.

My other keypad gripe is that the Shift key doesn’t latch. What I mean by that is that you have to hold the shift key while you press the letter you want capitalized. This is the norm for a desktop/laptop, but on almost any mobile device ever, you press shift, let go, and the shift key will stay selected until you press the letter you want. It really would be far easier if they’d gone down this path. As it is, holding shift and pressing a key just reminds you how small the keyboard is, and it feels fiddly.

My last complaints in this area are more of a text entry issue than a keypad issue. When you enter a password on most Android devices (and others too), you see the character you typed for a second before it becomes an asterisk. That is _really_ helpful in making sure you typed in the right password. And finally, the software does not automatically capitalize the first character you type, which is also an unnecessary pain.

There are also some inconsistencies and shortcomings in the UI and its functionality. For example, if you happen to use a DISH networks DVR, you can integrate everything right down to the Google TV box knowing what shows you have recorded and including them when you search. It sounds slick. But if you have a DVR that’s not a DISH device, you get nothing. The picture in picture button is also funky. Seems you can only go from live TV to picture in picture — if you are in a Google TV app the button does nothing. I would really like to be browsing the web and then pull up live TV in a window, but right now you can’t do that. You have to switch to live TV, select picture in picture, then fire up the browser. It’s just clunky and rather ruins an otherwise brilliant feature.

As I mentioned, the apps are a very mixed bag. Netflix is by far the worst and I hope they fix it soon. One of the bright spots is the Chrome browser, but there’s no menu bar. This gives the impression that there’s no way to actually type in a URL — you are stuck with searching and clicking the results. After more fiddling around, it turned out that pressing the search button on the remote brings up the URL box, so you can actually just type in any address you choose. However, it’s pretty hidden.

In Conclusion
I think Google TV compares well with other set top box offerings, especially for a v1.0 product. You can clearly see the potential in the direction they are taking and I buy that it is the way of the future. There are some annoying rough edges, but all in all it is quite smooth and parts of it are simply remarkable.

However, Google TV cannot reach its full potential until they let the developers do their thing. This box needs apps, experimentation and an army of people with crazy ideas messing around with it. The sooner Google makes that possible, the better their chances of success will be.

Categories: Rants 'n' Raves
3525 Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/10/21/great-googley-moogley-fun-with-google-tv/Great+Googley+Moogley%3A+Fun+with+Google+TV2010-10-22+03%3A59%3A31NickN

Okay, so that’s a link-baitingly, fanboy-angering title.

Caveats first.

I own a _lot_ of Apple gear — iPhone, iMac, MacBookPro and lots of software — but I definitely have a love/hate relationship with them.

And by fall, I don’t mean collapse and disappear in to the ether.

But I do mean fall from their arguably market leading position, especially in mobile.

So hands up who remembers 1994? More specifically, who remembers the great Intel debacle of 1994?

Let me recap. Back then, like now, Intel owned most of the market. They shipped a shiny new Pentium chip that had a division error. Now to be fair, the error was very small and would only tangibly affect a tiny number of customers, but Intel committed two cardinal sins.

1. They already knew about the error from internal testing but decided to ship the bad chip anyway.
2. When the matter was brought to their attention, they offered to replace a bad Pentium chip only after they had determined you used the chip in an application in which it would cause a problem.

Guess what? Customers didn’t like this very much. Intel’s stock price dropped, IBM halted shipments on systems with the faulty CPU and a media circus ensued.

[You can read a blow by blow summary of the whole thing here]

Compare and contrast this with the Apple iPhone 4 grip of death problem.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the brand new iPhone has a bit of a flaw. If you hold it with your left hand and your hand touches certain parts of the bezel, the signal/reception drops to zero. Gizmodo had some of the first coverage.

For a phone that has a history of poor call reception (thanks in no small part to AT&T), this is a big deal.

Except Steve Jobs disagrees. In one of his many famous replies to a random customer, he quite literally said “It’s not a big deal”. In subsequent emails he simply said “Just avoid holding it in that way”. Seriously??? Read more at Engadget.

What’s more, the official Apple response that followed is a combination of “buy a case for the phone” and “don’t hold it that way”.

What blows my mind is that among the Mac faithful, they are getting away with this.

Now compare this to the Intel case I mentioned earlier. Both products have fundamental flaws that impact basic operation, but there are work arounds so you could argue the flaws aren’t critical. Both companies deny the issue and then confirm it while telling you to suck it up, but the outcomes were quite different…

Intel got slammed. They lost millions in market cap. They spent more millions trying to clean up the mess and had a PR debacle that lasted for years.

Apple got made fun of by non-fanboys, the world shrugged and everyone went on with their business.

Why does Apple get treated so differently? Because the are still perceived as a fringe player. They’re not seen as the market leader. Apple isn’t “The Man”, but Intel definitely was.

The cool kid always gets cut a lot of slack — they’re cool, they earned it. There’s a price to being cool, and sometimes that price is a great looking but not fully functional product.

When “The Man” ships a crummy product, they are ripping you off. They are the epitome of corporate greed squeezing you for every dollar. Never mind Intel, Microsoft Vista, anyone?

But here’s the thing. Like a rebellious college student now twenty years into a career and climbing the corporate ladder, Apple are becoming “The Man” whether they like it or not.

They own the Smartphone market in the US. They own 70% of the downloadable music market. I don’t even know how much of the music player market they own, and they are now one of the biggest single manufacturers of desktops/laptops.

That’s a long way from being a computer supplier with 2-3% of the total market.

Don’t get me wrong, Apple are still cool, but choosing Apple is no more of a niche play than a Soccer Mom choosing to buy a Minivan.

At some point, Apple reaches a tipping point where they cross over from niche to mainstream. I would argue that they’ve already done that, but the market perception has yet to catch up.

And when they are mainstream, they become “The Man”. And when “The Man” ships a broken product, people get pissed off.

Apple don’t know how to play that game. Their approach doesn’t work if they’re not the cool kid. Everything the company stands for, and most of its history, is built on the cool-kid-slack factor, and when that goes away, what will they do?

So yeah, when the world realizes that Apple is, in fact, The Man, I believe the Apple will fall. And who knows what will come next.

Watch this space and let time prove me wrong

Categories: Rants 'n' Raves
3464 Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/06/26/why-the-apple-will-fall/Why+The+Apple+Will+Fall...2010-06-26+20%3A05%3A35NickN

Back in 1997 or so I had a magical tech experience. I had a desktop PC running MS Office, an HP Jornada running Windows CE and the ever-so-under-appreciated Rex Organizer card.

For those of you that don’t remember such things, the Jornada was about the size of a Netbook and ran an early version of Windows Mobile. The Rex was the size of a chunky credit card (a PCMCIA card for the old folks that remember such things), one side of which was taken up with a low-res black and white LCD display and four buttons. It was a simple, reliable, more or less read only electronic organizer that ran for 6+ months on a watch battery.

What was magical about all this was that all three components would talk to each other flawlessly. I could sync my Outlook calendar, contacts and inbox with the Jornada before leaving on a trip. The Jornada would run for 12 hours on a single charge, weighed less than 2lbs, and had Office CE and a modem built in — I could get real work done while on the road. Better still, if I didn’t want to carry the Jornada, the Rex card would pop right in to the Jornada’s PCMCIA slot and sync contacts, calendar and tasks with the Jornada.

Net result: effective road warrior status. At a time when my colleagues were lugging around 15lb laptops and developing shoulder problems, I was jaunting around with a ~1lb netbook, a mobile phone and a Rex card that fit in my pocket.

It all just worked. And it was fabulous.

A few years later, I tried numerous PDA’s and some mobile phones that could sync to Outlook, but nothing ever came close to the Desktop/Jornada/Rex combo in overall reliability and ease of use.

Why bring all this up now? I’m starting to see the light… again.

This weekend, I took the plunge and force-updated my Nexus One to Android 2.2.

Updating OS’s on a mobile phone is usually a scary endeavor not for the technically faint of heart. In this case, I downloaded a file, renamed it, hit a few buttons and was done. Less than 10 minutes all in. Impressive.

Amazing Thing #1: Everything just works. Nothing is broken, no sloppy loose ends and lots of hidden new goodies that kick ass. I believe that is the first time I have ever upgraded an OS without a hitch, on any platform.

Amazing Thing #2: Almost everything is noticeably faster, in some cases shockingly so.

Amazing Thing #3: Built in tethering via USB and Wi-Fi. Next time I’m in an airport, I just click a button and instantly become my own little hotspot. The laptop connects to the phone, the phone connects to the net. No more airport/hotel wi-fi fees!

Amazing Thing #4: Flash support that really works (even though it’s still in beta). With normal browsing to flash-enabled sites, I see none of the issues Mr. Jobs swears will kill your iPhone (not that I really believe that cr*p anyway, we all know the flash-hate stems from the potential to undermine the absolute control of iTunes in terms of what you run on your iPhone/iPad/iAppleSlave).

Okay. So I still haven’t mentioned the cloud and I’ve already typed a lot. So it’s cloud time.

Android devices are pretty cloudy and connected. If you use Gmail, they automatically sync with all your contacts, email, calendar etc and it works very well. I have issues with Google Contacts (it’s by far the most lame product they have right now), so I store my contacts in Outlook and push them to Google when they need to be updated. But that works for me.

It also easily connects to Facebook and Twitter and matches up all the contacts. So yes, I see your goofy Facebook profile picture when you call…

If I do a (google) search on my Android phone, it will automatically search the phone, contacts, notes, the web etc in one go (bite me again, iPhone).

I can even store all my settings in the cloud and restore them to a new device if mine gets lost.

But now with Android 2.2, Google are really starting to show how this cloud stuff should really work. A couple of weeks ago, I finally ditched Firefox for GMail and switched to Chrome. With a couple of extensions, I get rock solid performance and many of the features of a desktop mail client with some nifty extra stuff to boot.

For example, I just installed ChrometoPhone. It’s a two part app that uses the new “Cloud to Device” messaging that’s built in to Android 2.2. The messaging stuff allows instructions to be sent directly to a phone without the phone being connected to any kind of desktop/laptop.

In the case of ChrometoPhone, there’s a Chrome browser extension and a small Android app. Once both are installed you’re in the land of magic. Browse to any page on your desktop, click the ChrometoPhone icon and that page will automatically open on your phone. Better still, if you’re looking up an address in Google Maps on the web, just click the icon and that will automatically open the Maps app on your phone, with the address you just looked up.

Running out to a meeting and need the directions? Now it’s easy. And it’s smart.

There’s no real reason why Apple or Microsoft couldn’t have done this. Both companies own a desktop browser (and an OS), both own Mobile OS’s and have similar or stronger control over the phone hardware running that OS. But the fact of the matter is, neither of them have done this. iPhone is about to be on OS 4 and Microsoft on Phone 7. Android is on 2.2 and is arguably more sophisticated/flexible than either.

Fundamentally, I think the key difference is that Google is wired differently. For all their “Think Different” approach, Apple was born in the same era as Microsoft and clings to many of the same ideals. Google grew up in the cloud and it’s starting to show.

I’m no rabid Google fanboy by any means, but they are seriously starting to win me over. I’ll be curious to see what the newly announced Google TV can deliver. If the cloud, desktop and mobile devices can all integrate with it in the way I’m starting to see, technology may actually get fun again.

Welcome back 1997! I’ve missed you!

P.s. If you’re running Android 2.2, you can download ChrometoPhone here:
http://code.google.com/p/chrometophone/

If you get a Server Error when you try and run it, see comment #2 here for a very easy solution:
http://code.google.com/p/chrometophone/issues/detail?id=9

Enjoy!

Categories: Rants 'n' Raves
3453 Comments »http://blog.nicholasnapp.com/2010/05/23/nailing-the-cloud-and-convergence/Nailing+the+Cloud+and+Convergence2010-05-23+23%3A55%3A45NickN