Chuqui and the iPhone.

I can’t count how many times I got asked today, so I’ll say it here.

No, I am not buying an iPhone tomorrow.

It’s not that I don’t like it — I think it’s a world-changing device in a number of ways, and I’ve been waiting for it for a while. It’s that I see no reason to dive into the crowds and hype when what I currently have works fine, and I long ago gave up trying to play on the bleeding edge for Lent.

But trust me, when it’s time to upgrade my phone, my next phone will almost definitely be an iPhone.

And I’m watching all of the usual suspects say all of the usual (in many cases silly or stupid) things on both sides of the hype fence. The sheer anti-hype reaction, to me, tells me this is going to be a huge success, because it seems once again it’s almost becoming trendy to be “anti iPhone” among some of the geek-literati crowds.

Very amusing… Apple doesn’t even have to run arond trying to create hype. It generates the seed kernel, and the rest happens almost by magic. Imagine if Yahoo could do that… (grin)

Moving into the offseason

well, it’s now the off-season. Time for all of us hockey geeks to take a breather, relax, and wait for something interesting to happen.

Not. they may not be playing, but it sure isn’t quiet or boring right now, is it?

Anyway, I’m starting to firm up my off-season plans. With any luck at all, here’s what you’ll see at Two for Elbowing during the offseason:

First — as previously threatened, I’m going to start my series of articles on what’s wrong with hockey. And also what’s right, because there’s a bunch of both. I won’t pretend to have all of the answers (or even all of the questions), but I do think what I have planned will be interesting and make folks think. And since (if you don’t read my personal blog) I’m leaving StrongMail friday, until I get a new job one of the things i plan on working on is my writing portfolio — and this is one big piece of that. So hopefully, you’ll find it worth reading.

Second — a project I’ve wanted to do for a long while: get my various collections online; Laurie and I own about 60 jerseys, almost a hundred pucks and probably a similar number of pins, we have about 450 volumes in our book collections (including all volumes of Trail of the Stanley Cup), and Laurie’s collection god knows how many program books, and I’ve been wanting to put some of the more historic highlights online for a while, whether it’s classic images of Peter Puck or our personal friend, Big Head Referee.

Maybe even some “can you name this poor schmuck” based on their program pictures. Wait until you see the one we found of Wayne Thomas — if I can find it again…

So hopefully hockey off-season will be anything but boring around this place…

News – Sharks Issue Qualifying Offers To Seven Players – San Jose Sharks

News – Sharks Issue Qualifying Offers To Seven Players – San Jose Sharks:

San Jose Sharks Executive Vice President and General Manager Doug Wilson announced today that the club has extended qualifying offers to the following Group II restricted free agents

No great surprises here. Well, maybe one: I’m a little surprised that Rob Davison hasn’t fallen off the depth chart. he (like Doug Murray) are gritty and willing defenseman with physical edges, but rather slow of foot. Davison seems to be at best a 6th or 7th deefenseman. I wonder if this means that Doug Murray is going to drop off the roster? I’m not really sure the Sharks need/want both, because they’re variations of the same player.

KRT Wire | 06/26/2007 | Bid to study restoration of Hetch Hetchy Valley dies

KRT Wire | 06/26/2007 | Bid to study restoration of Hetch Hetchy Valley dies:

The House of Representatives on Tuesday drove a stake through President Bush’s proposal to study draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, the storied place some thought could once again rival Yosemite Valley.

But in truth, the idea was dead on arrival several months ago.

In a multibillion-dollar Interior Department funding bill, lawmakers pointedly declined to include money needed to study the Hetch Hetchy proposal. Bush had sought $7 million to begin studying the idea of draining the reservoir and restoring the once-famous valley in Yosemite National Park.

Forget it, lawmakers said.

“This highly controversial proposal, with a potential cost of as much as $10 billion, was not well justified in the budget materials,” the House Appropriations Committee noted.

I’m happy to hear this, although I wish I could say it was done for the right reasons.

To me, this isn’t about whether or not the idea is a valid one, but a simple fact: the national parks are currently in a serious financial bind with woefully underfunded budgets and severe deferred maintenance issues. The hetch hetchy plan (if one could give it enough substance to call it a plan) is a long-term, high-risk, spend-decades-in-court-at-best idea that’s going to waste money on lawyers and bureaucrats that are better spent on fixing up parks and hiring rangers to watch over them.

I just can’t justify spending this money on someone’s fantasy dream when the reality is places like Yosemite and Glacier and Mt. Ranier and Olympic National Park all have severe needs for these dollars to fix up what already exists and is in use by people on a daily basis (or would be, if it wasn’t closed due to storm damage, lack of maintenance or no rangers to patrol).

Maybe someday. This isn’t a piece of land we need to buy to save from developers. this is a piece of land that was developed decades ago that maybe someday we CAN recover, but right now, our focus ought to be on taking care of what we already have that needs our attention.

This idea, frankly, isn’t about restoring hetch hetchy. It’s about keeping lawyers employed for the years it’d take for this to trudge through the courts and the various sides duke it out. And that’s a bad use of funds…

News – Sharks Get 1st, 2nd and 4th From Toronto For Toskala And Bell – San Jose Sharks

News – Sharks Get 1st, 2nd and 4th From Toronto For Toskala And Bell – San Jose Sharks:

The San Jose Sharks have acquired a conditional first round pick (San Jose’s option for 2007 or 2008), a second round pick in 2007 and a fourth round pick in 2009 from the Toronto Maple Leafs, in exchange for netminder Vesa Toskala and forward Mark Bell.

Running up to this a few days late, but what the heck.

From the Sharks point of view, I like this deal. It clears salary cap, it gets Toskala a chance at being a starter, and it clears the logjam at goalie. It ALSO removes Mark Bell from the picture — he simply had one of those years everyone wants to forget, and now he gets a fresh start elsewhere. I couldn’t see him coming back and being accepted by the fans, so this makes that a non-issue.

For the Leafs? it brings into question the Raycroft deal — you don’t like to deal for starting goalies two years in a row. I think they overpaid, unless Bell really returns to form. If he does — then this is a pretty fair deal. But to me, that’s a fairly big if.

Advantage sharks.

News – Jr. Shark Drafted To NHL – San Jose Sharks

News – Jr. Shark Drafted To NHL – San Jose Sharks:

Corbin McPherson, who was born in San Jose in 1988, today became the first player to come through the San Jose Jr. Sharks program at Logitech Ice at San Jose to be drafted by a National Hockey League team.

A small, but noteworthy step in the development of hockey in Northern california. Well done!

Mark’s Daily Apple » Blog Archive » Wine Prevents Cavities

Mark’s Daily Apple » Blog Archive » Wine Prevents Cavities:

A new study out today confirms the antibacterial power of both red and white wine. Apparently, researchers have proven that wine destroys the bacteria responsible for cavities and throat infections. Interestingly, it’s not the alcohol that kills the germs, but rather acids in the wine.

now this is the kind of news I like to hear…

This is not your practice blog: Rod Beck (1968-2007)

This is not your practice blog: Rod Beck (1968-2007):

Rod Beck was a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox, and San Diego Padres. He was my favorite Giant when he played here; he might be my favorite Giant of all time. Rod died this past weekend at age 38.

What a shock. Shooter was always a favorite with the Giants, and later the Cubs. I remember the playoffs where it was clear his arm was shot, and he continued to go out there and since he couldn’t outpitch — well — me, he did it by outhinking the batter.

He was an Everyman — at one point living in an RV in the parking lot of a ballpark while working his way back to the majors.

And now he’s gone.

Rest in peace, Shooter.

Obesity Cuts Risk of Dying After Heart Attack – Yahoo! News

Obesity Cuts Risk of Dying After Heart Attack – Yahoo! News:

“Once a heart attack has occurred and been optimally treated, obese patients switch to a more favorable prognosis compared to normal-weight patients,”

Here’s one that at first glance might make you go Hmm…..

If you are overweight and have a heart attack, you’re more likely to get over it than if you’re normal weight.

Hmm….

But reality is in the details here. This isn’t a hint you should go have another Big Mac.

First, heavier heart attack patients tend to be younger; they’re having them at an earlier age. And those patients also tend to be under treatment for other things already — using ace inhibitors, beta blockers and statins, to name the most common drugs.

All of which may well affect survivability and recovery, much as they found a baby asprin a day did.

To me, if you read behind the headline, that the typical overweight patient is younger is the most telling stat. It’s not so much that the weight is driving the body to failure SOONER — but for a reason unknown right now, if it does fail, it can heal more easily than later in life.

That, of course, probably surprises nobody who’s hit middle age. Nothing heals as fast for me today as it idd when I was 25, whether it’s a twisted ankle or the results of my argument with a rose bush while attempting to prune it. So this doesn’t suprise me, either. But I don’t take it as a reason to stay overweight, not in any rational universe.

Safari on Windows? Hell freezes over again…

Had a discussion on this at work this week.. I figured I’d pull some of what I wrote out and post it here…

(someone else)

I remember when Apple came out with iTunes for Windows….headline on apple.com was “Hell has frozen over” (I think that Steve Jobs may have said something previously about “hell freezing over” before Apple produces any windows products — Chuq maybe you have some visibility there?)

Anyway, I think it’s ironically cool that they are now getting into the windows browser market

(me)

Actually, steve DID use the “hell has frozen over” phrase, which pissed off some conservative school board in Virginia who threatened to pull all their contracts, so it died a quick death… Almost as much fun as Bob Dylan suing Apple for using him in the “Think Different” ads (if you have a Dylan Think Different poster, it’s worth money; so is the Dalai Lama, which got pulled when the Chinese Government had a cow)

Apple stopped trying to “beat” Microsoft long ago. Now, the strategy is clearly to overlay it in ways that allow Apple to control the important parts – putting iTunes on Windows lets them sell a zillion iPods (Steve mentioned something to the effect of 1 million iTunes downloads a DAY today; also, with Boot Camp (apple’s version), Parallels and VMWare, we can now run windows on Apple hardware (and I do, it works pretty well), so Apple’s now selling lots of hardware to folks who want having Mac OS around, but NEED windows and don’t want twelve computers around… And Apple hardware is a good margin business. Finding ways to “win” without going head to head in a battle you’ll lose by changing the rules of the game.

Increasingly it’s the browser that matters in a user’s interface, not the underlying OS, so if Apple and put Safari on windows, they can more or less take over control of the user’s experience from Microsoft, on a Microsoft OS.

On top of that, he announced they’re opening up iPhone to developers – and that they’re doing it with Web applications and web programming; i.e., if you write it for safari, it’ll work on your mac, your iPhone, and now, your windows box. So Safari is going to be the core of supporting iPhone on windows, I think, the way iTunes is the core of supporting iPod on Windows – meaning having a windows box is going to be no reason NOT to buy an iPhone.

Neat strategy, IMHO, if I’ve read the plan properly.

Chuqui 3.0: my first thoughts on today’s WWDC keynotes

Chuqui 3.0: my first thoughts on today’s WWDC keynotes:

As to the details; I found it to be a good, interesting keynote, one that lived up to what Apple promised, but (of course), not the hype and the rumors and all of that crap.

Well, WWDC is done. I wasn’t there (no surprise), but what I’m hearing is that most people are going home mostly happy.

Thinking about the keynote, and reading the feedback and complaints, I tend to fall a bit further into the middle than I did in my initial post.

As to leopard: well, hell: gimme. I want. I’m impressed. The keynote on Leopard wasn’t a jaw-to-the-floor keynote, but Leopard itself seems to be a great move forward. Part of the problem with the WWDC keynote is expectations — not just from the rumor and hype mills, but if you think back to when Steve first announced Leopard, he amde a fairly big deal about stuff that he wasn’t going to talk about until later. Well, it’s now later, and, well, those missing huge things are the finder improvements, especially stacks. Not exactly trivial improvements, but, well, Steve’s initial enthusiasm set an expectation that wasn’t met, at least for me. Makes me wonder if something didn’t make the cut or wasn’t ready, and so got held back. I wouldn’t be surprised.

Well, something OTHER than ZFS, which it’s pretty clear to me got whacked from the keynote by the leak. you could even see the spin going during the week, from “ZFS? Never heard of it. Not here. not now, not ever” to “well, yeah, it is in the release, and we are going to use it, but it’s no big deal”. So ZFS got punished for the leak, but really, only by being left out of the keynote. Ask ATI about how it felt — this isn’t the first time a leak caused something to be made a non-entity for a while…

ZFS, however, is only on temporary suspension, not shipped off to Siberia. It’s a neat technology, so I expect Apple will put it on parole and put it back to work.

Now, on the iPhone. I sympathize with those that want more; I also sympathize with Apple on taking this one with some patience. Let’s not forget that the iPhone hasn’t shipped, and is already more “open” to develoeprs than the iPod is to date.

there are some significant issues here. One is simple: has Apple had the time to build SDK’s and developer tools and docs? given they admit to having delayed Leopard to get the iPhone out the door, it seems to me they’ve been a bit busy. Add to that Apple’s tendency towards intra-group secrecy, and they likely didn’t have a team in place to build developer tools (for public consumption, at least) prior to announce — to minimize risk of leaks. It takes time and energy, and both ahve been very limited here. I’m actually surprised they got the Safari stuff ready for prime time this quickly.

Beyond that, the more you open up the device, they harder it gets to innovate the device down the road. Lots of folks are screaming they want for iPhone what they have for their Treo — but most people agree PalmOS is seriously long in the tooth and way behind in technology (and I, as a former Palm devotee, voted with my wallet in that election in January). You have to be careful making things too open or too hackable until the device is well understood and somewhat mature, or Apple runs the risk of making it impossible to take the device where it wants to go, unless it wants to screw over its developers (again). Kind of a no-win situation for Apple, and I think it’s made the conservative choice. it’s always easier to make something more open, very hard to make it less.

On the other side of that equation is Danger and their hiptops. Early on, T-mobile kept the device completely closed — and to some degree, lost much of the potential market to palm, in the name of protecting its walled gardens and network. Not a good choice, IMHO. Had lots of potential and could have been a big winner early on, and wasn’t.

What Apple has to find — in a completely unknown market and environment with an untried and unproven device — is a middle ground that allows Apple to innovate and developers to build for it, while not screwing over either side. So I’ll side with Apple here, tell you all to be patient, and see what happens.

To me, the whole idea of serious app-level development for the iPhone is NEXT YEAR’s WWDC, not this one. I’ll trust Apple on this one, at least for now.

Me, I can’t wait to get my hands on Leopard. ’nuff said.

Two for Elbowing: Keenan in Calgary

Two for Elbowing: Keenan in Calgary:

According to press reports, Sutter took Playfair out behind the barn, and Keenan is now the head coach in Calgary.

Bad news: Calgary, CBC, TSN, and the rest are going to have to put up with Keenan’s foibles for the next 18 months (his approximate shelf-life these days).

Good News: For players and fans not in Calgary–hey, we don’t have to worry about Keenan showing up as a mid-season replacement.

Question–is Keenan the answer to the question that the Flames management is asking? Or should be asking?

It’s good to see Laurie blogging again…

Now, I’m not remotely a big fan of Mike Keenan. I think in the right situations he can be a good coach for a short period of time, and I think he’s proven that when he’s given GM style capabilities in defining players and rosters, he’s more or less a disaster (and having said that, some of his more notable ‘disasters’, such as the trade for Pronger in St. Louis, and to be honest, a number of his shakeups in Vancouver, did in fact help the team in the long-run, but at the cost of fan support and player committment. And some of his deals, such as dumping Cujo for Fuhr — well, not so).

But if there was ever a situation created for Keenan to return to the NHL, this is it. the Flames need a push over the edge before it gets blown up and rebuilt, and that means the next two years, tops. Keenan is, ultimately, a coach that knows how to take a team and turn the knob to 11 — and get a year or two out of it before it rebels and he gets fired. With Darryl Sutter as GM, I don’t think for a second we have ot worry about Keenan bullying his GM into player moves that will hurt the team. Unless, of course, the GM agrees with it.

I don’t think this will be a fun time for Iginla, Phaneuff, or Kriprusoff. Those are the three guys you can expect Keenan to lean on. But I expect Iginla to thrive, and push back on Keenan to protect the players. The other two will probably come out of this better players, but miserable…

But this may be exactly what the Flames need. And in 2-3 years, what’s left of the Flames may have a Cup whe they need to rebuild But they’re likely going to have to rebuild one way or the other, anyway.

News – Construction Underway At HP Pavilion – San Jose Sharks

News – Construction Underway At HP Pavilion – San Jose Sharks:

At the beginning of June, construction kicked off inside HP Pavilion. The extreme interior makeover, including 16.5 million dollars worth of enhancements, will boast new LED signage displays throughout the seating area of the Pavilion, a new state-of-the-art center scoreboard and a superior sound and video system to support high definition. The makeover will be taking place in and around several shows slated for HP Pavilion this summer, and over the course ten week process, sjsharks.com will profile the progress of the construction through pictures and video.

All I can say is — great to hear. This was something Greg Jamison and I talked about when I interviewed him before the lockout, and it’s good to see it happening.

The sound system has always been funky in the arena; what makes it a loud arena makes the acoustics — challenging. the video is long overdue for an upgrade, and I can’t complain about the other changes. Should make for a much more interesting environment next season.

San Jose Mercury News – Sharks’ Carle, Vlasic honored

San Jose Mercury News – Sharks’ Carle, Vlasic honored:

Sharks defensemen Marc-Edouard Vlasic and Matt Carle were named to the NHL’s 2006-07 all-rookie team Thursday, marking just the second time teammates took both blue-line spots

By Ken Levine: If THE SOPRANOS were on a major network

By Ken Levine: If THE SOPRANOS were on a major network:

So if you’re still pissed at David Chase for the way he really ended the series just think of the alternative.

I admit this up front: I saw one (count them, one — it involved the race horse) episode of the Sopranos. I felt it was exceptionally well written, exceptionally well acted. I never had any motivation to watch it again, so I’m far from an expert on the series.

But what I’ve seen written about Sopranos over the years has made two things clear: it was a series that played long and hard with ambiguity in various forms, starting with the baseline ambiguity of a mob boss trying to maintain a “normal” family life as if he sold insurance (which, well, he kinda did; sorta). And it was a series that not only wasn’t afraid to ignore convention, it reveled in breaking conventions of drama and story telling.

So, here we have the final episode, and what is it? It’s an ending that breaks dramatic convention by refusing to give a clear end point to the story (while not being set up for the sequel or the spin-off), and it leaves you with ambiguous answers on what happened and how everyone turned out.

Gee, a series that everyone thought was great for ambiguity and not doing it the way everyone else did, and they ended the series with ambiguity and didn’t do it the way everyone else did (as Ken Levine so wonderfully pointed out) — and their fans are pissed at them for it.

Count me amused. Did anyone really expect anything else? I guess so. But is that the fault of the Sopranos?

FOX Sports on MSN – NHL – Ten ways to fix the NHL

FOX Sports on MSN – NHL – Ten ways to fix the NHL:

Ten ways to fix the NHL

Al Strachan

Step one: stop listening to Al Strachan.

Step two: there is no need for step 2.

(hat tip: kukla)

Yosemite Blog » Blog Archive » Late Night Rockfall Rattles Curry Village

Yosemite Blog » Blog Archive » Late Night Rockfall Rattles Curry Village:

“A small rockfall occurred at 2:53 am on Saturday, June 9 behind Curry Village. The release point for the rockfall was ~550 meters (1800 feet) above the Valley floor, at the top of Staircase Falls. A rock about 20 cubic meters in size (60 tons) fell down the path of Staircase Falls, sweeping additional debris down with it.

It’s easy to think of these things as simply entropy in action, until you realize you were there just a few weeks ago, and you know where this happened…

A not-so-quiet (to those there) reminder that Yosemite Valley isn’t tamed, merely occupied.

my first thoughts on today’s WWDC keynotes

Weird, trivial thought: when Steve gave his keynote at Macworld, it seemed — weird — to not be in the middle of the hype and chaos. The quiet of not being at Apple, of not being involved, felt funny more than anything else.

Today, with the WWDC announcements and keynotes — I actually missed the hype and chaos. I guess I’m just someone who’s going to bleed six colors long after nobody remembers why those colors matter…

As to the details; I found it to be a good, interesting keynote, one that lived up to what Apple promised, but (of course), not the hype and the rumors and all of that crap. Stock fell 3% after, but before folks bitch about the rumor sites driving down the stock, remember that those same rumors tend to drive UP the stock before, and I’ll bet the stock gains more ahead of this kind of thing than it loses when it “disappoints”.

FWIW, it didn’t disappoint me, not a bit, but then, I have a few years of practice at guessing where the rumor hype is, well, hype instead of substance. it was clear the “leak” in germany was a farce, mostly made up, I’d guess, to see how many sites they could embarass for swallowing such a load of obvious crap hook, line and sinker. And, FWIW, far too many sites and pundits that should have known better did; why sites like that get ANY linklove at all these days, I don’t know. hint to the rumor sites: point to them AFTER they prove themselves right, not before. Your reputation will thank you.

More after I have a chance to look at the keynote stream and read some of the analysis — but I am also working on some stuff for our upcoming webinar in London, and so it’s back to Photoshop for me for another evening, or at least parts of it.

Sharks Season Tickets redux: It’s the whole package, people!

Chuq mentioned a couple of days back that this was the first year that we were both seriously looking at downgrading our tickets to a cheaper section. Yes, this was likely the first year it was seriously discussed, rather than the usual:

"Ticket invoice arrived"

(sound of opening envelope and digging out invoice goes here)

"(sudden exhale) whew!"

"Do we want to look at moving out of the club seats?"

"Nah, I like where we’re sitting"

Repeat over the past umpteen years, and you get the idea.

A couple of things happened this past year. Because I was hospitalized and then spent a lot of time getting over multiple surgeries, I didn’t go to nearly as many games as I did in previous years. I’d have to say that the last time I missed as many games, I was busily working on my MBA and working full-time, and that was a *long* time ago. But when you don’t show up as often, you don’t get into the "well, it’s always like this". And when you’re moving slower than usual, you tend to notice amenities that aren’t up to the level they should be.

And that’s where we get to the crux of the matter. The Sharks have been running their arena as if they expect to win the Stanley Cup. A noble cause, and I’d certainly like to see Stanley come to town before I leave, but hey–there’s a problem with this. Only one team wins the Stanley Cup, and let’s face it, even the team with the best betting line at the beginning of the season still tends to have the odds against them.  But, hey–if you win the Cup, people come for the hockey, and they won’t notice there’s some fraying around the edges. And if someone says the whole package isn’t worth it (we’ll get back to this in a minute), then there’s plenty more where they came from, right?

Right?

Um, no, there aren’t. Because like all the other teams who aren’t Anaheim this year, you didn’t win the Stanley Cup. You didn’t even get out of the first round. And Ganesh help ya, not only did you not get out of the second round, but the freaking Warriors appear to be on an upswing.  There’s not that many people who are willing to pay the price and show up, and you’re not delivering the expected product, and you have competition from up the Bay.

Reminder: you are ultimately in the entertainment business, and people will vote with their dollars. If you don’t offer the package, people don’t come back. And if you aren’t offering the Stanley Cup, then you have to make it up elsewhere. You don’t get the free ride on Stanley until *after* you’ve won it.

And the package includes the environs. And that means the arena is clean. Do you have any idea what the reaction is, when someone has been down for the count for six weeks, to totter back into their allegedly high-end seat, and finds that the floors are sticky from the last event? I do, because I had that happen last season. Or to realize some time around January that there’s no intention to clean the glass from the layers and layers of smears and cruft that’s building up over the season? Yeah, you cleaned the glass in the post-season for the national telecasts.  And then you let the cruft build up again until I’m guessing that the camera operators complained, and you cleaned them again.

Here’s the hint–that you did finally clean them indicates that they can be cleaned.  That you have to be prodded indicates you’re not going to clean them unless you’re forced to.

Drinks w/o lids–yes, that’s your vendor. So, who’s in charge of making sure they don’t chronically short-order supplies? Food that arrives lukewarm–not good.  Hot food shows up hot, cold food shows up cold.  That’s *health* standards, people.

And spend a few bucks on the plumbing in the women’s washroom in the club section behind 127. The eternally running toilet (interrupted by random geysers–if the thing went off with any more regularity, we could have the Park Service come in and run it) has been doing its act for over ten years now. Isn’t that a bit much?

Clean the arena. That means it gets cleaned-up even if there was a concert the previous night.  Even if there was a giant food-fight competition the previous night. If you want to have 300+ light-dates a year, then you need to plan for it. We both can do the math–having extra people in to clean so the floors don’t try to trap my shoes in primordial goo isn’t that expensive.

I’m going to stop this here–the non-hygiene (and it is hygiene folks–we’re talking about clean and safe, not exciting and entertaining) stuff gets handled in a bit.

But what it comes down to is this–running the arena as if you expect the Sharks will win the Stanley Cup every year will lead you to grief. Running the arena as if you expect the Sharks to stink on ice, well that’s the way to make sure you have happy customers. And happy customers return, even when the team is less than stellar.

Treo 755p « Kevin Burton’s NEW FeedBlog

Treo 755p « Kevin Burton’s NEW FeedBlog:

Palm is doomed. They deserve it though. They haven’t really innovated in 3-5 years. Good riddance.

Yeah, pretty much. After a few years of carrying a Treo, both laurie and I upgraded to the Samsung blackjack, which I really like.

No, it’s not an iPhone. I expect my next phone will be an iPhone, or something similar. To me, the iPhone is game changing, whether or not Apple “wins” the contest here like it did iPod.

Why? It’s a strong move away from “phone” protocols and walled gardens. Instead, it seems to be the first phone to really buy into the concept of being a mobile internet appliance, and that has huge implications.

Cingular/ATT seems to “get” this, and understands that the days of selling locked-in services is going to be fading away, much as CDs are. They were willing to make that leap, and if they guessed right, it’ll be a huge competitive advantage. Over the next few years, you’ll see phones moving towards the “always on” — G3 or EVDO, and later Wifi and WLAN — model. One of the things I love about the Blackjack is it doesn’t have some funky-ass “email” client, it has IMAP, Gmail and Outlook. You can IM with it (but I don’t). It has a decent browser.

I was having this discussion with some folks this week, in a “we have to make sure we keep an eye on how things are moving” type discussion — that it’s not about email, it’s about communication; at the same time, though, I see the iPhone as being a major stake in the heart of SMS. If you have an internet connection and an IM client, do you really need SMS? If you have email on demand, a real browser (not a WAP browser) and IM, do you really need SMS and WAP?

Not so much. So if I were thinking about a startup, I wouldn’t be looking at monetizing SMS. What I’d be thinking about is how to take some of the things people are doing to monetize SMS today, and think about how to build services to monetize them on IM as robots or services, as people start making that shift.

the iPhone, whether it succeeds wildly or merely adequately, is going to change the game, change it away from selling “value added” services and lots of metered add-ons to a contract with a data connection and phone minutes. And the phone companies that see this and move their offerings to match will win, and the ones that fight to maintain their per-messaging charges and protect their existing business models will — well, will join the people who tried to prevent the end of the CD-era. or the vinyl era, for that matter.

I’ve been thinking a lot of the concept of When Trains Fly and what that means to the industry (and those of us in it). It really, to a good degree, sums up the success of Steve Jobs and Apple since his return. Apple — Sculley, Spindler and Amelios — tried to go head to head with Microsoft and Dell, and they got bitchslapped into almost bankruptcy. Jobs is smart enough to know that when you can’t win the game the rules are written that you have to change the rules, and he’s smart enough to know how to do the rewrite. He did with the iMac, making style a sales item in a product known for geek words and beige. He did it with the iPod by making it easy enough for my father to use, if he wanted to, and by convincing music people to stop hiding behind the moat and embrace the new reality (and THAT is an even bigger success than the iPod itself, if you at all understand the complexity and challenge that entails). And now, it looks like he’s going to do it for phones, too.