Sharing Short URLS to an Audience

I went to an event some weeks ago and at the end of it there was an advert for additional content and instructions on how to download the mobile applications for different mobile platforms.  The links were shared with short urls like the popular bitly, tinyurl etc  and that was when I realized that sharing short url on a screen is a bad idea. While they work excellent for sharing links within Twitter or Face book by cleaning the look of the URLs and reducing the character count, they don't work well visually.

Short urls generated by services such as bitly are case sensitive but a lot of us are used to typing in our web addresses directly without ever using the shift button on the keypad or not caring any less because we all believe writing it all in small letters or capital or mixed does not make a difference. Well in the world of short urls. Type case makes a difference. 

I believe the best method to share a link to your mobile applications, website or any resource on a screen is to get your webmaster to do a re-direct from your website to the links you want to share.  For example, he/she can do a redirect from "www.oursite.com/apps " to your mobile application. This will be easier to do and less prone to errors than using a short URL.   

Another easy way will be to give an email address where your audience can send a mail to get the link. They may only need to send a blank email. This method even allows you to still use a short URL.

One option I like is for them to send an SMS with a keyword to a phone number Of a SIM placed on a SMS gateway or server solution. The system can detect the keyword they sent and send back a link to their phone numbers. This method not only allows the use of short URLs and will seem easier as most people feel closer to SMS on their mobile device than E-mail.  This is actually my favourite of the options in this article even though it sounds a little bit techy. ( OK, full disclosure after spending a while developing a solution like this, it has to be my favourite)

Any of these methods though will reduce the potential problem of displaying a short URL on a screen which will be hard to type onto the mobile phone browser or will create an impression of the site been available if the wrong case of characters is typed in.

The general idea in the world we live in today where there is every possibility to want to share links at the end of an event is to look for a method that will ensure the accuracy of the links you need to send.

You can follow my thoughts on Twitter @folarinoye

The iPad Vs the Kindle

With the launch of the Kindle HD 8.9 inch a lot of writers and bloggers immediately started to write all sorts of reviews and I have to say most were either hurried or not really well thought out. Basically, most did not give a fighting chance to the Kindle HD. True, the Kindle HD 8.9 might not be the better piece of hardware but at least it should be given a fair analysis.

I thought I had to write my own view until I read the article by David Gewirtz @davidgewirtz goo.gl/fb/uzaky   . I still think it is the most objective comparison I have read so far.  I will recommend it again and again.

But just to add, while we can’t rule out the advantage of the cheaper cost of the Kindle I did compare the screens of the two devices and found an interesting fact. I don’t think that the 8.9 inch screen size chosen by Amazon is a coincidence. While I am sure that its part of the trick Amazon is using to help in driving down its cost apart from using it as a differentiator.  I also found out that the 8.9 inch 16 by 9 screen has the same width as the height of the iPad while held in portrait mode or its width when held in landscape view.

This means that when the Kindle is held in landscape orientation to watch movies, and the iPad is also held in landscape, the size of a 16 by 9 HD movie will be the same. The difference will be the black borders the iPad will have at the top and bottom will not be visible on the Kindle or will be reduced.  This also means that using the Kindle HD in landscape (it is designed to be used this way anyway) will make the width of your content identical with that of the iPad.

So while it is easy to brush aside the size of the Kindle DX screen as smaller it actually works better for movies and may offer no considerable dis-advantage for other kinds of content you use the Kindle HD for . For one thing if you read a lot of pdfs or web browsing like I do all you will do will be more scrolling. The pdfs and the webpages will be the same width on either tablet.
So while the 9.7 inch iPad is the standard for now the Kindle HD 8.9 just might not be really far behind technically.

iPad and Kindle DX 8.9 Screen size comparisons - Landscape

iPad and Kindle DX 8.9 Screen size comparisons - Portraits to Landscape

Before Amazon Releases its Tablet

In the past few weeks a lot of rumours, claims and suggestions have been made about the upcoming Amazon tablet.  Everyone has shared what they think Amazon should or would do. Well over a year ago, I wrote a piece on my blog on why I believe Amazon should do an Android tablet, so I welcome this news with a lot of anticipation too. But with all of the rumours and suggestions I guess I should throw in my two cents too.

Everyone believes that it will be cheaper than the ipad. This has to be the case. It looks like this is really hard to do for other tablet manufacturers. The main reason for this is the cost of materials and manufacture for the other tablets is higher than that of the iPad, just check isupply.com.  The truth is most of the other tablets aspiring to beat the iPad have better hardware than the iPad and this increases their cost of production. If Amazon can take a loss and sell its hardware cheaper, well that might be a start. We all remember how the reduction of the cost of the HP TouchPad started a mad rush for it. But I have a question here: If anybody can sell a tablet at a loss and afford to make money from the buying of content it is Apple after selling millions of iPads. So why has the price of the ipad not been reduced by Apple?

There are rumours that it will be a 7 inch screen size. I think this will be a bad idea. It will only make the Amazon tablet look like a cheap attempt to compete with the iPad. Amazon already have 7 inch Kindles so I feel it makes sense to start with a large screen device first and maybe launch a smaller device later. I believe that part of the magic of the ipad is its size. It makes it easier to identify the iPad. It makes it easy to consume all kinds of media. It means you will do less zooming. Books and PDFs just look like the real thing. It’s a winning size.  Anything else will just be like, just there. If you don’t agree with me show me a 7 inch tablet selling like hot cake.

The Amazon tablet will have to be a visual wonder design wise, size wise. Or else it will be criticized so badly people won’t even want to try it out. Think about it:  part of the excitement about the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the fact that it’s the first of the Android tablets that is lighter than the iPad while throwing in some excellent hardware. No wonder Apple wants to kill it in the courts.  Then on the other side think of the Motorola Xoom while not necessarily a poor tablet, the poor design is shooting it in its foot.

And finally it should be more open. A micro SD card slot will not be a bad idea. Something that will allow getting media from the tablet out and getting stuff unto the tablet. Or at least it should show up as a storage device when connected to a computer, allowing access to its storage space. It should be able to access the Android Market, buy things from Amazon.com and be totally free so if a user never wants to browse Amazon.com there will be no issues.

Follow up to "Amazon and the Kindle"

This has to be the follow up to my last post. Two days after I published the post I found out that Barnes and Noble just released a New Nook. And it is a coloured touch screen android device. Exactly what I believe that Amazon should do even though I wondered in my previous post if it was not too late for such a product because of the crazy explosion of cheap, Chinese – made, android - based touch screen tablets.
The most interesting thing about the Nook Color though is the fact that Barnes and Noble deviated from using an Electronic ink display and instead opted for a 7 inch coloured LCD touch screen. At $249 and with wifi, the prize sounds right, but I have to wonder if this is not an attempt to get a colored ebook reader out before Amazon. Leaving e-ink to LCD means that the battery now empties out in a few hours instead of weeks, but it also means that this device can play video, making it into a kind of cheap iPad. Or should I say a device that tries to be an iPad and an ebook reader at the same time. Barnes and Noble is already talking about releasing an SDK.
This device also means that Barnes and Noble joins the list of manufacturers of ebook readers deviating from e-ink to coloured LCD along with the Sharper Image Literati Reader, Pandigital Novel, Entourage Edge, Cruz Reader and Augen’s the book.
With PC Magazine calling it the first excellent color ebook reader, this is certainly a one-up for Barnes and Noble. The question now is: What will Amazon answer with and how soon? Suddenly their devices are starting to look outdated.

The truth is while I think that the best way to read text only content such as novels might be a monochrome e-ink display with weeks of battery, lots of people out there will like to read comics, magazines and pdf in full color and will not mind if the battery of their device has to be charged daily. An app store and an ability to do more than just read is also a plus. Ultimately creating a device that will not be eclipsed by the competition is paramount. And I think it is time for Amazon to show what they have got next.

Amazon and the Kindle

In an earlier post (Dream Hardware Department), I opinioned that a good way forward for Amazon and its Kindles might be to do a touch screen Android powered version of the Kindle. This was before Amazon released its range of Kindle 3s: The Graphite range with improved E-ink screen, better contrast all in a smaller package.

Now I wonder if it might not be a little too late for that. This is because I have noticed an explosion of Chinese made, touch screen, Android powered devices which cost cheaper than the Kindle DX and cost at about the same range as the Kindle 3G. The most interesting part of this story is the fact that everywhere you turn, you see adverts of these devices on the web. And since they run Android, you can install the Kindle for Android on them and have a coloured reading device, which can also serve as a medium for other type of media consumption such as video and audio.

True this might be bulkier than the Kindle and the power consumption might not compete at a mere 5 – 7 hours to the Kindle’s weeks of battery, but when you are busy reading you tend to forget what ever limitations of your device and be immersed in the content. The mere fact that it can view colored content will make it suitable for comics and magazines giving it a huge edge on the Kindle. Touch screen functionality also gives them a kind of iPad coolness even if most of them are single touch and not multi-touch.

While I have yet to see any of these numerous devices with a sim card slot, this will make them even more powerful freeing them from the proximity limitations of wifi. And for a price as cheap as they come, (even though I wonder how they can be soo cheap, is this because of poor build or as a result of tons of possible patent infringement made in the production of these devices) they are winners any day.

For the end users I dare say it will continue to makes less sense to buy a Kindle when you have other devices offering better at cheaper rates. For Amazon though it looks like they will win no matter what. If they sell Kindles, its all good. If not, then I am sure they are happy as long as we all have Kindle apps on whatever devices we carry and we continue to buy books from the Amazon store.

Apple Versus Android

Lately I have been thinking about the possible future of tablet computing and not because I want to be a “teleprophet” but because I can’t help thinking that the current scenarios could just be history kinda repeating itself.
Apple created the home computer market with the release of Apple II in 1977 years ahead of the IBM computer. The IBM PC which was released in 1981 drove other personal computer architectures to extinction in the 80s excerpt for Apple. This off course started a shift in the computer market with the birth of the IBM clones which meant that by the 90s the IBM computer was far more popular than Apple and the top computer computers were all manufacturing the IBM clone, using Intel processors and running on Microsoft operating systems. This meant that the IBM computers could be cheaper than the Apple computers (there were more options to choose from).
Apple always claimed the superiority of its hardware but even Apple finally switched to the Intel processor in 2006 which for me was a surprise because Apple had released Power Mac G5 computers in 2003 claiming the advantage of 64 bit processors and at the time of the switch only AMD had desktop 64 bit processors ready. It was probably cheaper to go Intel than AMD.
Apple lost most of its market share in the personal computer market in the 1990s fighting against IBM clones running Microsoft operating systems. I can’t help but imagine that we are on course for something similar here. I think the only difference is that, this time around while PC vendors had to pay for the Microsoft operating systems, Apples’ competition is an open source OS, making it cheaper to get. Android will also develop faster, because of its open source nature. It is not managed nor controlled by a monopoly like Microsoft!
Maybe this is the reason that Apple iPhone is already been outsold by Android based phones. While Apple will continue to be cool and continue to make unique products and have the advantage of being first to create an App store and thus have more applications on the store, the increased sale of Android phones and devices will also be the increased creation of more Android based applications. Developers will start to recognize that it makes sense to also develop Android versions of their applications. With time the Android Marketplace potentially will grow beyond that of the Apple App store. Or will it? Only time will tell. But the future may just be Android.

Dream Hardware Department

With the explosions we have seen in the eBook reader and tablet scene and the explosion in the sales of the Apple iPad (3 Million in less than 90 days), I have been thinking with the many eBook readers and tablets being announced this year why not have a Microsoft tablet. Unfortunately Microsoft got the concept of the tablet wrong and has now pulled the plug on its Courier tablet. But let’s face it, with the release of the iPad Microsoft now has a chance to copy Apple like it has done in the past. To get into the eBook reader space why not makes a 9.7 inch Zune player! And then make it able to install light Windows applications. Imagine if I could install my VLC player or Win amp on the Zune and have other Windows applications. Then imagine this along with an app store!

On the other hand the Amazon Kindle is just way behind in terms of the current offerings and looses hands down when compared with the iPad excerpt off course with the fact that it has access to more books. I think the way forward for the Kindle will be to produce a colored touch screen version and license the Android operating system. I think this will empower the kindle; it will get an app store, an operating system that developers can develop for and media capabilities all in one sweep. This will at least give it a fighting chance against the iPad.

But then does Amazon want to compete? Amazon wants to sell books and Amazon just needs to have its Kindle app on Apple devices, on Android devices and the Blackberry OS and it will still sell books at maybe a cheaper rate then developing a hand held device. But I feel a company smart enough to develop a good enough tablet like the iPad and use the Android OS might be in place to reap the benefits similar to OEM manufacturers who make hardware and license the Windows operating system. Dell is already doing this with its Streak tablet and ICD with the Vega. Let’s face it: Android is here to stay. Statistics released in May shows Android phones outselling Apple phones in US for the first time (http://www.networkworld.com). So using Android might also be the start of a huge eco-system of Android powered devices that just might end up overcoming Apple and its devices. And competition in this space might just be good for the consumer ultimately.