BBM: A Conspiracy Theory

So BlackBerry stated they would be launching BBM on Android and iOS this past weekend, the official announcement was made months ago. As the hype was built, here in the Asia Pacific region specifically, BBM was the topic of discussion for the first time in a long time, reminiscing back to its former glory.

So they began the roll out slowly, confusingly however they started rolling it for iOS first, whereas they had announced that it would be coming for Android first. A couple of days before the rollout, the apk was leaked. Many people installed it but couldn’t get set up and connected, which changed this past weekend. Before it even launched on the Play Store, the apk was installed and activated on numerous devices, the number floating around is 1.1 million however it is not clear whether that was iOS and Android or just android. As time went on and people were clamoring away, posting their new PIN’s on any and every form of social media, BlackBerry dropped a bomb. They said they would be halting the roll out for the foreseeable future and would also be deactivating the accounts of those who signed up through the leaked apk.

Now here’s where my conspiracy theory comes into play. Take BlackBerry, a company that’s failing, dying. Soon enough they won’t even exist in the consumer world. Their former fame and glory now a shadow in the distance, fading away. Sunk-ed so low that they’re offering their only selling point to their competitors, for free. The picture that comes to your mind is of a BlackBerry, one that has not been picked and left to dry, withering on the vine, frail and wishing for death. But here’s where the twist comes in, the metaphorical rebirth. What if it was BlackBerry themselves who leaked the apk? It would make more sense would it not? A one last hurrah! Think about it, people were already forgetting about blackberry and preparing to throw their old blackberries away the minute they migrated over to BBM on their other, more loved platforms. So the minute BBM was on the Play Store and App Store all over the world that would be the last nail in the ill fated companies coffin. So they leaked the apk, gave people a small taste of what they wanted and got the world hungry and in a split second, took it away from them. Its a classic mind game and a good one at that. It’s been 3 days and my timeline is still cluttered with people asking what happened about bbm, how do you get bbm, etc. That’s the most anyone’s spoken about the company in a while. Now, people want it, they want it bad. Giving BlackBerry back a little control of the market they once dominated.

Now with this in no way am I saying “blackberry is back”, they’re still going to die soon and there’s no stopping that. This has merely prolonged the consumers acknowledgment of their existence. It is unclear what can become of this now, whether that was it and they just did it to do it and go out with a very minute bang, more of a pop! you could say. Or, did they do it so they could test the market and see how many people were actually interested in BBM, so that they could probably spin it off into a separate entity or even monetize it. What they do with it is up to them, all we can do is sit back and watch.

Android Phones: Overpowered or Compromised?

Take a good look at the android phones that are around today. Have you noticed that some of them tout so many features yet always have something very lackluster about them? I mean look at the so called ‘Flagship’ phones out there now, the Samsung Galaxy S4 has brilliant performance and a superb camera, in exchange of that they chose to neglect build quality and make it out of plastic, bad plastic. Now look at the Lumia 1020, the tank of a phone overcompensates widely in the camera department but the lack of app support in windows phone renders the phone to be in what I can only call exasperating. 

Now let’s take a look at the mid-range devices. The underdogs in my opinion. My favourite of which, the HTC One Mini. It has a great build quality, a good enough display and a mediocre camera. I know it is the same camera as the One but it’s not, it lacks OIS (optical image stabilization) which actually makes a huge deal. Had they ditched the HTC One and the HTC One mini and made just one phone in between with no real compromise or over compensation, it would have been the perfect phone for me. 

 

You may be thinking, what exactly am I talking about. Well here it is, why must manufacturers over-compensate so much on one aspect of the device that they have to skimp out on the other. Why must we have the highest end specs and power but still skimp out on build quality. Why must smaller phones lack the necessary features to making it a useable device. Why can’t we have just ONE product that doesn’t go overboard on any aspect and doesn’t skimp out on any as well? That would be the phone to get. 

Think about it. One of the hardest decisions you have to make when picking up a phone is to go High End Vs. Cheap Price, more simply it becomes Overpowered Vs. Underspecced. Is this a battle we have to face? I can honestly say I’ve had this fight for so long that I’m still stuck with my almost 2 Generation old Galaxy Nexus. There just hasn’t been a phone so far that sits perfectly in the middle of what I would call a perfect fit. I considered the HTC One Mini but the lack of OIS disappointed me, the Moto X seems promising but there aren’t any plans of it being made available internationally as yet and that AMOLED display is really putting me off. 

Maybe what I’ve said makes sense to you and you can relate to it. Maybe I’m just too hard to please. Either way, the decision regarding a new smartphone has to be made and each day the battle grows more infuriating, no thanks to the manufacturers and designers around the world. Oppo, let’s hope you’ve got something up your sleeve with the N1. 

 

Why Facebook could prove to be the most important company on the internet

Facebook has been undergoing major changes and has been announcing numerous new features over the past year or so. Starting with Graph Search down to a redesigned News Feed and Facebook Home, it’s easy to see facebook is trying to increase its presence on the web as well as on your mobile phone. Why though? Many reasons. The main reason of course is because facebook wants to be your go to tool for everything related to interaction. From finding people to communicating with people, facebook wants to be omnipresent in your life. There are many people who argue that with this strategy facebook is becoming a “SkyNet” like company. What they don’t seem to understand is that they’re not paying for the service, therefore they probably are the service. Some claim that there are privacy issues, while no doubt you do have less privacy but that’s the way the internet works now days. If you want total privacy get off the internet. Facebook has been trying its best to keep the privacy concerns at bay.

Another great thing about having everything facebook related is that it just becomes easier. You don’t have to keep switching from different platforms and different servers, everything you need will be pulling data from a single place. Besides the ease of use, facebook products have been getting better and better. I’m a huge fan of chat heads on android. Chat heads alone are the reason I use whatsapp less and facebook messenger more, I just wish that the android app gets stickers like the iOS counterpart did. I may not have tried facebook home but I know a few people who have it and love it! (p.s. facebook, I’m still waiting for home on my nexus. thanks.) Couple that with their new minimalistic approach and you have a strategy for success.

Don’t get me wrong though, I still sometimes wonder how people can spend their whole lives on facebook. They’re constantly logged in and posting status updates. And what annoys me the most is the constant clatter from the pages I liked as a stupid little kid in 2009 and the annoying game requests. Hopefully that gets fixed with the new newsfeed but I’ll never know until I try it. The new timeline on the other hand, is fantastic! Continuing from my previous statement, I use facebook roughly 1o minutes a week, a little more now that I’m on holiday and it’s not just me, facebook has been seeing a decline in users especially teenagers. In my opinion, this is why facebook has been hard at work to try and play a more important background role, not necessarily a direct role. Such as with messenger and instagram, where you’re not technically on facebook but you are still ON facebook.

I guess what I’m just trying to say is that if facebook continues in this direction and they succeed, they might prove to be the most important company on the internet.

Why is HTML5 gaining popularity in the mobile industry?

Many of you may know about HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), it’s the programming language that’s used to build websites. It basically provides a base for web design and integrates with other languages such as CSS, JavaScript, XML, Flash, Perl and many others to create the many websites you know and love. In that sense, HTML5 is the fifth revision of the HTML standard. The upgrade adds many features and improvements such as speed, animations and HD video playback among many others. So now you must be thinking, if it’s a web designing standard, why have you been hearing so much about it in the mobile industry? Well the answer is simple, one of the biggest advantages of HTML5 is that it allows you to create web apps (a combination of animations, vector graphics, video and other features with an ordinary html layout to allow apps to be created within browsers). Would you like an example, take a look at Facebook or twitter’s website from within your mobile’s browser, that is a web app. Web apps started gaining popularity when iOS had the feature to bookmark a page directly to your home screen, although those weren’t necessarily web apps, they paved the way for engineers to get interested in web apps. However a pivotal moment for web apps came in late 2011 and early 2012, Microsoft announced that applications built for the windows 8 and windows phone store could be based on HTML5. A little later on, RIM announced that blackberry 10 would feature full HTML 5 integration for app development and so the trend continued. Before too long Mozilla announced that Firefox OS would be entirely html 5 based and Canonical announced that Ubuntu and more recently Ubuntu Phone would feature web app integration directly into the operating system.

Now there are disadvantages to web apps and HTML 5, such as the fact that web apps are noticeably slower than native apps and lack the performance since they can’t take full advantage of the phone’s processing power. But from a developer’s standpoint, there are many reasons why developing an app in HTML5 can be a huge advantage. HTML is a relatively easy language to learn, I can tell you this from experience. Not much time or effort goes into learning HTML and most programmers out there probably started off learning HTML. So it’s already widely accepted. HTML is platform independent, it works on mostly all platforms under the sun, such as this means that developers can use the same code to develop apps for Ubuntu and Firefox OS. They don’t have to learn another language to make their app available on another platform. This is the main problem you see today, this is the reason many of your favourite iOS apps don’t come to android and vice versa, it’s because they’re platform dependant. So by using HTML5, it’s less of a hassle for developers to create apps for different platforms. By being able to develop easily for all the different platforms, developers can reach a much wider target audience and user base, as more people will have access to their application. The higher the user base, the higher the market share and market growth and the higher the market share the higher the scope for profits. That settles the reason people sell their apps in the first place, to make profits! Even if it’s a free app, they use advertisements to generate revenue. There’s a popular saying in the Silicon Valley, “If you’re not paying for the service, you probably are the service”. HTML 5 can also prove to be an advantage in the long run and for consumer satisfaction because updates can be pushed out much easier and automatically, no need to wait for it to be authorized by the “App Store” and no need for users to go and manually download the update. Everything is done automatically.

There are many other minor advantages to using HTML 5 such as the easy access to data on other web pages, etc. however the main benefits have already been highlighted. So what do you think? Do you feel HTML 5 is the future of mobile app development or is it just a passing phase? Feel free to sound of in the comments below and till next time folks,

Stay Snazzy!

 

 

What I just realised about the POP Debacle

You guys remember POP right? The kickstarter funded portable charger that got canned by Apple, and then was mysteriously allowed back on the market? Well if you don’t we have a post for you on right here. So I was just sitting down the other day and thinking about this, when I realised, why was Apple so panicky about it? Well in my opinion, Apple found out about the project later than they had hoped, so they panicked. Why, you ask? Isn’t it obvious? They wanted to produce it! Think about it, a design language so close to Apple’s, along with the amount of people interested in it, Apple must be kicking themselves wondering why they didn’t come up with it in the first place!

Look at it in this perspective, the POP charger wouldn’t have even seen the light of day if Apple heard about it before hand, as they would have purchased everyone involved in the project, taken the pop charger, slapped an Apple sticker on it and broadened their product portfolio. Of course they would have changed something, such as maybe making the plugged in version of the POP aluminium based, or maybe even called it the iPOP. But alas, before any of that would or could happen, the project was funded on kickstarter, much to Apple’s dismay. Thus they panicked and thought that maybe if they got the product banned, perhaps by suing POP or something of the sort, they could get the product of the market and still get their hands on it. Sadly that didn’t work out, firstly because I’m not sure how that would’ve held up in court given that there are so many other third party 30pin cables and because of all the contributions they had gotten from numerous different donors would have been quite arduous to return. Worst of all, if Apple had decided to go forward with creating a similar product, the controversy surrounding that would have been tough even for the cupertino giants to evade.

Of course the real story could be completely different and this is just my opinion, but it would be interesting to see how this plays out and also come to think about it, which of Apple’s current products do you think were actually designed by someone else? Sound off in the comments below!

catch ya later folks

2012’s top tech might be obsoleted in 2013?

We all know that technology has been advancing at a rapid rate, so fast that the rate of new technology has more than quadrupled over the past couple of years. So fast that some technology tends to die out even a couple of months after it’s inception. So which of these many new technologies have I presumed to be doomed by next year? The portable charger of course!

A year ago, portable chargers were nothing, they were unheard of. Now, everywhere you turn, you’re bound to see a couple. Five in ten of the people in my school have them now; every restaurant, coffee shop, mall and even somewhere like the golf course I see people walking around with those bulky things hooked up to their phone. The main reason of this is, the hardware in smartphones is advancing rapidly, but the batteries aren’t. My blackberry 9360 couldn’t get more than 4 hours maximum on a single charge, thus making it essential for people to have portable chargers. In less than a year, portable chargers have become the norm, they’ve become the most rapidly growing technology that doesn’t classify as a daily driver. Therefore my question arises, what next?

Many people speculate that 2013 will be the year of the extreme batteries, with battery technology expected to advance and with new technologies predicted to be announced at CES in a couple of weeks, does that mean that all these companies that manufacture power packs are going to be going out of business? I’m not sure about that.

While I do believe that power packs are going to be redundant by the year 2013, there’s a large probability that the companies responsible for making portable chargers will be the same companies that invent some sort of technology that will dawn as the new age of batteries. However, what this means for the world of technology is that the market is fluctuating right now and that nothing can prove to be stable. What’s booming this year could just be ancient tech next year, which is why I feel that to jump into the tech industry at a time like this has a very high payout, along with an equally high risk.

What do you think will trend this year? Sound off in the comments below! Also, Check out LinkedGeek.com, a site I work for.

Why I think Facebook messenger has the potential to be a whatsapp killer.

If you haven’t heard, facebook recently launched a new feature within their messenger app for android that allows users to communicate with others by using just their mobile numbers, without the need of a facebook account, similar to other services such as whatsapp and viber. There are many other services similar to this that have tried to “kill” whatsapp but none of them have really succeeded. However, I believe there’s a couple of things that facebook has that can prove to be extremely useful.

1. Wide User Base

Let’s be honest? Who doesn’t have facebook? granted I only have 30% of my real life friends on my facebook friends list, but that’s because I’m very selective of the people I accept requests from. But think about it, with the amount of people already using facebook, you wouldn’t have to keep forcing people to download whatsapp and stuff, they would already have am account, thus making it hassle free. And not to mention it’ll make your contacts look more organized with their facebook display pictures and contact info, or maybe that’s just for those with digital OCD such as myself.

2. Desktop Chat

don’t you just hate it when you’re in a conversation with someone and your battery dies? how about if you need to message someone and your phone is not with you? With whatsapp there wasn’t anything you could do about it, but with facebook messenger you can continue that conversation from your desktop, tablet or anything else, since basically every device is a facebook device now days, even some shitty feature phones!

Well we’ve gone through the good, now on to the bad. It isn’t a secret that people aren’t really big fans of anything that has the name “facebook” in them now days, and that’s what I believe will cause less people to adapt the service. They could go ahead and just drop the facebook, making it just messenger, it’s a relatively small change but a psychological one at that. There are many other things they could do to get people onboard, I personally have been one to criticize facebook and what they do, but there’s something about this app that seems to be promising, guess we’ll just have to wait and watch.

Why living in different ecosystems suck.

Have you ever looked at someone who had a Mac, iPhone and iPad and just thought to yourself, damn that guys a fanboy. Well I used to think that way myself, but the truth is, it’s much easier when all your devices and services come from the same company. look at it this way, say I had an Android phone along an iPad and windows 8 laptop. I would have to buy an app on the windows 8 store and then pay again for that same application on the App Store and on Google Play. Where is if I was using a phone a tablet and a computer from the same company then I would only have to pay once to get the app on all my devices. In other disadvantages that some maps only work on iOS or some apps only work on Android which means if you had both then all your apps wouldn’t be able to work. Also if all your devices come from one company, then you get additional features that allows them to live in harmony such as apples iTunes and iCloud which allows you to back up and keep all devices, etc. In sync, same is the story with a Google account for android and a Microsoft account for windows. Let me give you a real world example, today I set up a Plex Media Server and wanted to download the Apps for my mobile devices. I had to pay $4.99 to get it on my phone, another $4.99 for my iPod and $2.99 to get it on the windows store for my laptop (the windows 8 metro app). Now if I had say a windows phone 8, a microsoft surface and my laptop, I would only have to pay once. That’s the drawback of living in separate ecosystems. Another problem I had is with App support, yes that counts. I recently started playing a game called letterpress, but it’s only on iOS. And I really like using this app called Younity, but it’s only available on iOS. This is why companies work hard to make sure all their products can live together in perfect unity by setting up an ecosystem, HP went on to call their ecosystem “Synergy”. Take Apple as an example, all their products from the iPod to the Mac even all the way to the Apple TV! They also make sure that if anyone has only one of their products, they’re gonna make sure you want all, by offering some features that can only be had if you own more than one of their products.

This is why you see people who own a lot of products from the same company, sometimes its brand loyalty and sometimes its just because it’s much easier and hassle free! Most companies have set up their Ecosystems very well, some of them choose to make hardware first and then tie it in with software such as Apple and RIM, and some companies started making software first then started producing hardware when they saw the scope such as Google, Amazon, etc. This is why many times you’ll see people saying they bought an iPad “because of the ecosystem”. Now of course ecosystems don’t only mean Hardware and Software, although that’s the majority of it. When used in a consumers point of view, the ecosystem also refers to how popular a product is and 3rd party reaction to it, for example iPhone’s and iPad’s have much more and much better cases than Android devices, strengthening their ecosystem. So all in all a strong Ecosystem is essential in making consumers feel more comfortable with their products and also have a heavy influence on consumer decisions.

Why I Love Skeuomorphism

Skeuomorphism is defined as

 “a design feature that is carried forth from the original version of a product in order to make people feel comfortable with the new device..”

Apple uses skeuomorphism throughout their products, Scott Forstall (Before he left Apple) strictly enforced the use of skeuomorphism when designing iOS. What this basically means is that he designed iOS to make it feel realistic. Such as the Wooden pattern in iBooks, the leather pattern in Reminders, the game table background in game center, the design of the calendar application and in many other instances throughout iOS. If many of you read my blog regularly you’d know that I love Android, a lot. Everything about it feels amazing, but if there’s one thing I preferred about iOS it was skeuomorphism. The design feature was brilliantly elegant and classy, and in my opinion really blended in with the name Apple has set up for themselves. The sexy-leather business people type of thing. That was subtly brought out in their products via skeuomorphism. It just gave users a sort of comfort when using that product, and assured them that it did feel like a classy, expensive device. It started of only on iOS but soon was implemented throughout Apple’s products such as in OSX Lion’s log in screen and even their online iCloud control panel.

 

Rumors suggest that with Scott Forstall’s departure, skeuomorphism is out the door. This deeply saddens me as it basically deletes everything that I wrote about in the previous paragraph. What’s worse than that is that rumors suggest iOS is going towards the more cartoony and toyish design, similar to that of the MIUI android ROM. That’s just majorly disappointing.  To me it’s clear that Skeuomorphism played a major part in Apple’s branding, but obviously many geeks don’t agree with me. All I’m saying is that people should think about it, won’t Apple lose its credibility as a high end company if they implement a cartoony OS?

Theory: How to make shows Last

Instead of my brain cells being active during school, I have the pleasure of my thoughts not being able to shut up at 2 in the morning when I’m trying to sleep. It’s not all bad though, I did come up with a theory about some of the shows I watch and would like to share it with you. I’m sure what I’m going to say is nothing new, but it’s just one of those things where I opened my eyes and noticed something I didn’t see before.

What sparked this thought was reading the tweet that stated Nikita and/or Hart of Dixie will be canceled. These are shows in their first/second seasons and already facing cancellation. Lots of shows do, but it hurts more when it’s a show you actually watch. It’s just been bugging me lately because I feel like it’s much harder for a show to reach four/five seasons and more. Once you’ve got four seasons, I’d say that’s really swell and you’ve made your mark. Excluding shows that focus on solving crimes (CSI, Criminal Minds, Bones, Psych) and half-an-hour comedies, the shows that have really been there from my childhood to now is Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, House, and One Tree Hill. Yes, 3 out of 4 shows mentioned are wrapping up this year, but I would just like to say that they didn’t get axed – they are all getting fitting goodbyes to tie up loose ends and give the fans something special because they have been around for so long.  My point being is that I think shows that last this long are becoming extinct. And it’s a bit sad. You could argue to why a show shouldn’t stay around for so long, but if the fans are willing to fight for a show then you really can’t say anything (made evident by Chuck which ended on its fifth season after fans fought to keep it going for as long as it could).

You could also say that content is way more important than length. And I agree with that completely. I’m just looking to see if shows nowadays can reach a legendary length like shows conceived years ago that are still going on now. This slight fascination for shows to go the distance is a combination of curiosity to see if it’s possible and just me wanting a kid to watch a show now and still watch the same show when they are teens.

A show starts on its first season with no way to know where it could go, only with an idea. Maybe this theory could give it a fighting chance to last longer:

“Focus on a place, not a plot”

A place: Seattle Grace Hospital, Wisteria Lane, Tree Hill, the Upper East Side

A plot: putting on a Broadway musical (Smash won’t last that long), taking down an evil organization like Division (it won’t last that long like the ones I’ve mentioned above, but CW PLEASE DO NOT CANCEL THIS SHOW TOO EARLY), seeking revenge against the people who destroyed your father’s life (Revenge is the best show ever, but again, won’t last long like I’m looking for a show to), 

Everybody out there: get a general sense of what you want your show to be about, remember DO NOT CREATE AN ENDGAME. Pick a place, put some people in it, and create some good drama.

All of this made evident by Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, One Tree Hill, and Gossip Girl. I don’t think these shows necessarily picked a place first, but as the show runs for years and years, isn’t that what you know the show to be? When shows were being conceived, there was an overview plot and it could be easily explained to anybody. Then as these shows get older and older, I am not going to explain every plotline to someone who asks. For Grey’s Anatomy I would simply say “it’s a show about a bunch of doctors in seattle grace hospital, from interns to residents and all the drama that surrounds them” and Wikipedia agrees with me on this.

In all of these shows, the drama revolves around the setting instead of the other way around. And along the way, viewers are able to identify specific places in the main setting that are imprinted onto their brains. It helps us visualize specific moments or scenes in the shows that will help create an overall positive impact. For instance, most fans of One Tree Hill will jump to the Rivercourt. Once you got the Rivercourt in your brain, all the memories come flooding in. They bring you back without having to think extremely hard about, its association at its best. What these places also do is create a map, and that makes you confident about Tree Hill; it makes you a part of it.

Mark Schwahn (One Tree Hill) and J.J. Abrams (Lost) are currently working together to bring us a new show called Shelter. “Shelter is set at historic New England summer resort Shelter Bay where the new and returning staff attend to the practical, emotional and often comical needs of the guests while navigating friendships, rivalries and romances of their own.” If i’m following the theory, this is a smart idea. They got a place, they got people, and they got drama. Perfect. Who really knows where this show will go, but I have faith in it, and it definitely does not hurt that Schwahn & Abrams are working together.

So there you have it! The setting is the big picture. And that picture will not crumple up and die, it will withstand time people.