We’ve been following Verizon’s continued delays in introducing their XV6800 smart phone, and berated them for missing the opportunity to leverage iPhone enthusiasm and outright hype into their own Windows Mobile 6 offering (see XV6800: Verizon Misses Opportunity.). Sure, the iPhone would have been a big seller either way, but lots of users aren’t going to leave the Windows environment and/or their preferred carrier. The XV6800, while not nearly as sleek as Apple’s iPhone, offers plenty of functionality by combining a slide-out QUERTY keyboard with Windows Mobile 6 and the broadband coverage of the Verizon network. Not only did Verizon miss the iPhone opportunity, it looks like their possible October 15 release date may come more than a month after AT&T introduces their new Tilt model, previously known as the HTC Kaiser. Both the Verizon X-6800 and the AT&T Tilt are made by HTC, and they are somewhat similar in form factor and function.
Every company is interested in online community and Web 2.0 functionality today, and retail giant Sears is no exception. After seeing a post by Bill Green at Make the Logo Bigger about the retailer’s first effort in this area, I can only conclude that Sears outsourced their community development to their corporate legal team. Signing up for the My SHC Community requires agreeing to an ultra-lengthy privacy policy that Green concluded didn’t offer much privacy. In addition, instead of the standard few words and a checkbox that the user clicks to sign his life away, I noticed that this signup for had even more aggressive language:
The good news is that companies, even big ones, are waking up to the power of online communities, and that they are taking steps like starting their own communities for discussion, ratings, reviews, and social networking as well as participating at other sites. The bad news is that sometimes they get carried away. The latest corporate goof was by Comcast, who apparently hired an inept PR firm to get their message out by impersonating sports fans. The site administrator at SpartanTailgate.com did some basic IP sleuthing and outed the miscreants in a post titled Wake up Martin Waymire Advocacy Communications! (Comcast hired site posing as BT fan). Oops… not very subtle. (Via Consumerist – Comcast Caught Astroturfing About “Big Ten” Channel and FanHouse.) Unfortunately, Comcast is hardly the only firm doing this.
Since the early days of Internet-based communities and chat rooms, individuals found that they could invent new online personas for themselves. Unencumbered by real-world details like physical appearance, social status, and their back balance, they could “be” themselves and interact with others doing the same thing. In most cases, the online relationships that developed were simply friendships, sometimes involving harmless flirtation; occasionally, more serious romantic relationships developed, leading to a sort of online addiction and eventual in-person meetings and affairs. In the early days of the Internet, the press frequently ran stories about a spouse who left home to be with someone met in a chat room. Eventually, the novelty of these stories wore off (I’m sure in the early days of telephone service someone ran a story, “Man uses telephone to meet secretly with lover”), and they disappeared. Now, Alexandra Alter of the Wall Street Journal has written an interesting story that illustrates the new form of online infidelity, and which raises the bigger question of how “real” online communities like Second Life can be. In Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?, Alter chronicles a fascinating example of an online relationship that seems at least as real as the physical-world relationships of the participants.
As a blogger, have you ever wished that you had journalistic immunity? So that when the feds knocked on your door to find out where you got the unreleased product photos or the tip about your congressman’s freezer full of cash you could just say “no”? Well, the House Judiciary committee has a potential solution. They have approved language that would shield “professional” bloggers in the same way that print and broadcast media journalists are protected:
We’ve seen a lot of interest and commentary here about the long-delayed release of the Verizon XV6800, and now it appears that a release this month is likely. A leaked copy of the Verizon Product Roadmap was linked from a post at Brighthand by Ed Handley, Verizon Getting New High-End Windows Mobile Smartphone This Month?. This shows a mid-August release for business customers. The minimal specs for the phone in the image show that it is, “Upgradeable to EVDO Rev A.” and offers both embedded WiFi and Windows Mobile 6.
The tech world is buzzing with rumors about a Google phone. The Wall Street Journal ran an article today, quoted at SearchEngineLand, that provides some details of the development process. Apparently, Google is taking a two-pronged approach: developing their own handset, but at the same time opening up the specifications to allow other manufacturers to offer compatible phones. And, unlike Apple’s iPhone, the Google Phone (GPhone?) should be available from multiple wireless companies.
Conventional wisdom is that web-based applications are the Next Big Thing. Current apps like Salesforce.com’s CRM show that critical business data and processes can be outsourced to third parties and be accessed via a Web browser. Email providers like Hotmail, Google’s Gmail, and Yahoo Mail have proven to be effective alternatives to personal email software running locally. And well-run online apps offer many advantages compared to a local PC – universal accessibility of the app and personal data, managed backups, redundant hardware, etc. Presumably, it’s just a matter of time before the PC becomes little more than a dumb terminal used mainly to open browser windows, right? Not so fast, says Sascha Segan of PC Magazine in The Trouble with Web Apps.