The Manual (How to Be #1 the Easy Way)

Dissecting what it takes to cross the chasm in mobile, startups, music and design.

Instagram’s Mobile-First Design is Worth $1 Billion (or $250 million for each step for sharing removed)

If you want to add another useless metric to what Instagram is worth, they removed 3-4 steps to sharing photos on Facebook or Twitter. That’s at least $250 million per step removed for uploading photos!

But read between the lines: by creating a mobile-first social network and community where people connected through actually sharing photos and experiences by using their phones, Instagram created a better, faster-growing photo sharing experience that connected you to your friends and to people who share the same emotions as you.

-Boris

Connected

The Well.ca team launched their virtual store in Union Station and it brought up a lot of interesting conversations about the future of shopping, and whether it would work. Canadians are pretty conservative when it comes to electronic behaviour (we still prefer paper bills).

You are reminded of how fast we can try to influence each other in this connected world of ours, but also of the time it takes to change the behaviour in different cultures. The Tesco Korea virtual store is used by commuters waiting for their trains and in a place where QR codes are much more commonly used.

 

Google Accounts finally has a iOS-Friendly Login Page (Sometimes)

While Google’s made some interesting progress on giving all their products a visual refresh, logging in is still maddeningly inconsistent. Finally I see an iOS friendly version sometimes now on my iPhone:

And I don’t even see this every time I am told to sign in. Sometimes it still looks like this:

Side pet peeve: G+ also logs me out all the time on the iOS app, and I see the latter login screen. Google Accounts are complicated, but if you want to get social right, let’s get logging in right.

On Native and Web Apps in Mobile

Reposted from the Xtreme Labs blog.

At Xtreme Labs, we’ve developed and built some very exciting apps and we have seen the evolution of the web-enabled mobile application since the birth of the App Store. Here’s some of our thoughts on the state of native and web apps in mobile.

What Users Really Want: Web-Enabled Applications That Work

Native apps and web apps have much in common in their usefulness to a smartphone owner. The most interesting apps require access to the web, access to a user’s location and their social graph. These apps have only become possible in the recent years, due to the convergence of smartphones as: the personal computer, the hub through which sharing occurs on social networks [1] and the beacon through which we can locate ourselves in the world. For a certain class of applications, it is now possible to provide a good experience and access to the core features that users need through web applications. It is exciting to see the myriad of boundary-pushing news sites and web apps from companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Google [2]. However, there are whole classes of apps that require a native strategy to work if they require access to frameworks for features that are unavailable otherwise. Google+ on iOS through Safari is a wonderful experience, but it still doesn’t allow you to post photos. Still, the web app and the native app both deliver on a core experience that users are looking for, despite the feature gap that exists sometimes. [3]

The Native Experience

The experience that has turned apps into the selling point of smartphones comes from immersive design that transforms your device into a swiss army knife of wonders— this is the promise of apps. It’s the ability to create those magical experiences where your phone can help you find your favourite restaurant, act as your multitrack recording studio, or serve as your pocket game device all at the same time. All of this is made possible through great development platforms and tools that gives developers access to innovative hardware features and software frameworks. That’s what makes it possible to do anything from music software to game development. Developers often lament that these APIs are only on Native frameworks. [4]

HTML5 vs. Native Development: Platforms and Skill Sets Required, Distribution and Monetization Strategies

Platforms and Skill Sets

The breadth of languages and frameworks that mobile application developers need to create apps is staggering and the skills required are vastly different. This is especially true on native development, where in order to create an application on multiple platforms, a company could require developers with knowledge and experience on many different languages and development methods. As a result, maintaining codebases for multiple platforms is a challenge that small companies often do not want to tackle due to the need to maintain a lean engineering team. However, it is still nascent stage for mobile web development tools, despite the proliferation of great web frameworks. [5]

Distribution and Monetization

The App Store just announced the download of 15 billion apps. While the growth of Android is amazing at over 500,000 activations per day, its adoption of Android market is less impressive [6]. Regardless, this amount of growth and adoption from smartphone users has created an ecosystem where developers can monetize their applications very effectively. A platform’s app store provides a distribution channel that reaches the entire userbase and developers are given a myriad of new ways to acquire users and monetize. A greater concern is when owners of the platform copies your feature set and integrates it as part of the core operating system. Instapaper, a reading app that has been very popular on iOS, has been successful enough for Marco Arment to build an amazing experience around it, but even he is rethinking his strategy long-term despite his optimism from Apple creating a very similar feature integrated into Safari [7]. Certain platforms, like iOS, can have lengthy submission processes for applications, which can stall deployment and time-to-market. [8]

Future Trends

Native apps are still where the strongest experiences are, but hybrid applications are helping to bridge the gap between strong device integration and rapid iteration. The App Store on iOS uses web views embedded inside a native application, but provides a native experience for downloading and updating applications on iOS [9]. It is common to see a multi-pronged approach where a service has a website, mobile web app, and an native app to provide deeper experiences at each layer [10]. Beyond looking at a single app, the next wave of amazing mobile apps could be connected and enabled to create an integrated experience that avoids the silo effect that exists right now. Fred Wilson opines for in his blog post on The Always Logged In Experience. [11]

Footnotes

  1. Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Facebook users are sharing 4 billion things a day. ↩
  2. Check out the web app made by Financial Times. It attempts to provide an app experience through the web browser. The Facebook, Twitter and Google+ mobile web apps all attempt to provide an app experience. ↩
  3. Which is why Google is still releasing an iOS app, they need to let iOS users post photos and get push notifications like on Android. ↩
  4. Joe Hewitt, of Facebook and Firebug-fame, is spending and dedicating his energies to bringing new tools to development in the era of mobile apps. Even he makes the analogy to trying to “squeeze blood out of the HTML stone” while Apple, Google, Microsoft and RIM all are in an arms race to bring new tools and frameworks that ease development on their native platforms. ↩
  5. This ACM article written by the guys at Nitobi is an interesting read on the gaps between native and web platforms. There are a host of great web frameworks that ease the development of web apps and integration to existing web services, but this is still hard. The good thing is that we’re trending towards a period of consolidation of platforms, as the market is beginning to mature. ↩
  6. Here’s Apple’s PR release on topping 15 billion app downloads, Andy Rubin on Android daily activations. While some developers like Rovio have figured out how to monetize through ads without driving revenue from app payments in Android Market, issues with fragmentation and payments is still being worked out. ↩
  7. Marco Arment discusses this in a much more elegant way than I could. ↩
  8. To be fair to Apple, there is a much better set of documentation and more visibility into the submission process these days. ↩
  9. The line between web apps, hybrid apps and native apps are getting more and more blurred as companies like Apple are deploying web approaches where it makes the most sense, and native approaches where it gets better experiences. ↩
  10. Tim Bray’s article on “Web” vs. “Native” and his breakdown of TripIt is a great read for this. ↩
  11. StartupNorth prudently points out Kik’s announcement in relation to Fred Wilson’s article on mobile “glue”. ↩

What Tablet Manufacturers Think You Want Their Tablets To Do From The Videos They Make

Watch these videos and decide for yourself what leaves an impression on you.

Apple / iPad

“The future of computing…” “Now we can watch a newspaper… see a phone call”, focuses on the apps. You also see the device being used in real settings.

Verizon / Android Tablets / Samsung

Advertising a feature list (4G, etc.) in one, and someone trying to play an online game while standing in the Tron Legacy set in the other. People using tablets while walking outdoors.

Sidenote: I realize Verizon doesn’t manufacture tablets.

HP TouchPad

Russell Brand is funny and is actually using the device.

BlackBerry Playbook

Someone pulls a Playbook out of their pocket, and watches videos while walking. Sells multitasking even though all the tablets run multiple apps in some shape or form.

I can’t remember the last time I walked around using my iPad or Xoom or Playbook, but I do love watching videos. But again, there is the Padfone:

The videos say more than I could, but would love to see what’s else has been created.

-Boris

Passion is Practical (My talk at TEDxYouth@Toronto)

In November last year I had the privilege to speak to some really cool high school kids from all over Toronto on Youth Day at TEDxYouth@Toronto. I wanted to tell them that it was okay if they liked things that didn’t seem sensical or practical—given my teenage years were spent divided between my love of punk rock and computers. Eventually, when I learned to embrace both, I was led down some of the interesting paths in my life, but I resisted that for the longest time. So clearly, this was something that I wish I was told when I was younger (or even better: build a time machine and go tell my teenage self this). I figure that I’d put this here now that it’s up on YouTube.

And I also left this as a message at the event:

“You will be told that following your dreams is impractical and impossible and that finding your passion is unimportant. But now, more than ever, you need to find your passion and follow your dreams because it is the most important step to take in your life. Focus on this. It is crucial because we as a society are reliant on your unique passions to solve the great problems of our time through discipline, energy and creative thinking. Our most innovative work arises from the empathy and experience of things we truly care about.”

P.S. lots and lots of love to everyone involved… and of course, the youth that made it there — showing up is half the battle.

P.P.S. talk is now on ted.com

Spam on my mind… #TheFutureOfTheInternet

Was reading an article about Twitter and spam in the Guardian the other day and it made me think how much energy is wasted on fighting spam on the internet.

Spam degrades the signal quality on what connects all of us on the net, and is a battle that all the big companies have to fight. Zittrain talks about how the increase of spam, viruses and attacks were one of the indicators that could curb the generativity of the internet. It’s interesting that spam can affect the price of the penny stocks that they tout. 

It’s hard to visualize the spam volume in my email since I use Gmail, and my email is a generic one that may end up on a lot of random lists. But my spam folder hovers at around 600-1000 messages at all times. Try to visualize 100 trillion emails and think about this: 89% of the 100+ trillion emails sent in 2010 were spam.

Even on Facebook, even with platform spam down 95% in 2010, just now I still had a friend that posted a spam story on my wall through a 3rd-party app (the good thing is that it is easy to revoke these permissions).

Mmm… spam.

Partying, Partying WOOOOO - The KLF is alive and well (thanks to Rebecca Black and Ark Music Factory)

Since this blog was started in honour of The KLF and The Manual, I really have to say that it makes me secretly happy that a song went viral for being stupid and bad. And everyone that listens to it has to point out why it’s bad (even though in terms of pop music, it’s not that bad — just ridiculous… see the rap cameo after the bridge).

From The Manual on the “Chorus and Title”:

Do not attempt writing chorus lyrics that deal in regret, jealousy, hatred or any other negative emotions. These require a vocal performer of great depth to put it over well: the epic Euro balladeers or the kings of Country, the great soul men or the crown prince of hate - Johnny Rotten. You should stick to nonsense, pleasure, good times, “I wanna dance all night long, love you forever, or at least until the morning comes”, but nothing too sensual; that too requires too much performance talent. Just remember there is a difference between bland cliche and cliche and only you can tell the difference in the context of the song you are constructing.

So make sure you find a title that can be used as the opening line in your chorus and that the chorus is no longer than eight bars.

Her Lyrics:

Friday, Friday, Gettin’ down on Friday,

Everybody’s looking forward to the weekend

Partying, Partying WOOOOOOOO

Partying, Partying WOOOOOOOO

Fun Fun Fun Fun - looking forward to the weekend. 

It’s genius.