reDesign

The announced Microsoft bid for Yahoo! means a lot of different things for lots of people. An emboldened competitor for Google. A stronger ad network for advertisers. Heightened acquisition hopes for AOL. Better benefits for Yahoo! employees. (Microsoft has the best benefits I’ve seen in the industry.)

But what does it mean for every day consumers? The biggest impact is likely to be in the mobile space. Microsoft’s ownership of the Windows Mobile OS and Yahoo’s large audience and mobile applications could revolutionize the industry.

As revolutionary as the iPhone is, it’s not a true network device. Apple did a terrific job integrating four devices – phone, Internet tablet, media player and camera – into one.

Even as our lives get more and more digitally connected, the cell phone remains a remote island of information. Someone needs to build a device that integrates the Internet seamlessly.

Some of the things I’d like to see:

• A network address book. You no longer have to use the 10-key keypad or a sync cable to keep your address book up-to-date. In fact, you don’t have to update it all – as your contacts move, those changes are automatically reflected. The address book would incorporate network presence so that you don’t call people when they’re in the middle of something.
• A network calendar.
• Integrated photo applications. I’ve been looking for a way to view pictures from my friends on flickr through my mobile phone or iPod Touch. The best efforts have been clunky. When I take pictures, they’re seamlessly integrated with my flickr account, without the hacks that are currently required. (Sprint has done a nice implementation of this kind of integration with Picture Mail, but their Web application is awful and little used.) The pictures could also be used for picture Caller ID.
• Richer data push to the phone. It amazes me that we’re still stuck sending 160 character text messages to each other. A network-integrated phone would allow for a better experience. Want to invite someone to dinner? Send them a message which appears complete with photo, address, review and link to driving directions.
• Web access to text messages and integration with IM. When you’re at your desk, text messages come in on your IM client. Leave and they get routed to your cell phone. All of your texts are available in your mail app. The carriers are an obstacle to making this happen (text messaging is highly lucrative), but a combined Microsoft-Yahoo might be able to pull it off.
• Network control of your phone. Phone stolen? No problem, send a bullet to erase all of the data. Forgot where you left your phone? See a map of where it is.
• Local search integration. Found a business that you like? Add it your network address book for quick and easy access. Click to rate right from your cell phone.
• Location-aware presence. The option to publish location to other networks, including IM networks. More on that later.

Some variations of a few of these features, like the network address book and calendar, exist in enterprise-focused devices. Yahoo! Go is an excellent consumer application that includes features such as a flickr viewer, but without integration into the OS isn’t as great as it should be.

Microsoft’s ownership of the phone OS, deep integration of Yahoo! Go and their combined consumer audiences could be combined to create a phone that out Apples Apple.

See also:

• iPhone as your social network
• Remote control for your cell phone

ObDisclaimer: These are my personal views and do not reflect the views of my employer.

In a first for the U.S. pizza market, Papa John’s is now letting you order your carbs by text message.

This won’t work for last-minute cravings. You have to create an online account at papajohns.com and pre-configure the pies that you might want someday. Just in case your pizza tastes vary from time to time, you can configure up to four favorite orders.

It sounds like way more work than it’s worth. But that’s what I think of their online ordering system and yet an astonishing 20% of Papa John’s orders come from the Web site. I’ve used it a few times, but it’s generally easier to pick up the phone.

An added bonus (for Papa John’s) on SMS orders: you pay full menu price instead of getting their latest specials. With specials frequently knocking 40-50% off an order, that could be a lot of dough.

I travel frequently and have friends scattered throughout the country. I usually do a bad job of keeping track of who is where, who has moved, etc.

Last week I was in Boston. As I headed out to dinner, I updated my Facebook status:

Later that night, I got a Facebook message from a friend I haven’t seen since high school. He lives in Cambridge and wanted to get together.

Unfortunately, the message arrived after I had gotten back to my hotel.

This almost-connection was facilitated by Facebook’s social graph and status updates. Next time I’m in Boston, I know to look Chike up. Twitter, Jaiku (acquired by Google) and Pownce can be used in the same way. But none of them know geography; they require that someone look at the message and determine that Cambridge is nearby. A friend who lives in Los Angeles is just as likely to see that message as someone in Cambridge.

There are a number of companies trying to turn that missed connection into an actual connection. Among them are Loopt, uLocate and Whrrl. Google purchased a pioneer in the field — Dodgeball — but hasn’t done much with it. (Dodgeball’s founders very publicly left Google, complaining that they couldn’t get engineering resources.)

Although the details vary based on site, you can publish your location from the Web or a cell phone. You can also see where your friends are on a map. I could have checked a map before I headed to Cambridge to see which of my friends were nearby. Some services will even alert you when a friend is nearby.

More on: location-based services, maps

Disclosure: I have a consulting relationship with uLocate.

My friend Jason ran in the Marine Corps Marathon yesterday. The marathon, like many races, uses a chip on runners’ shoes to track times.

The Marine Corps Marathon also offered runner alerts: you could sign up before the race to get alerts when your runner hit the 5-, 10-, 13.1-, 15-, 19-, 22- and 26.2-mile marks. A chip reader would scan your runner and then send a text message or email. It makes it easier to position yourself to find your runner in the crowd, just camp out a mile or so ahead of the checkpoint and the system would let you know when to keep your eyes peeled.

That’s the theory, anyway. In reality, the system failed miserably. We got an alert when Jason crossed the 5-mile mark. More than 90 minutes later, we were still waiting for the 10-mile alert. Did Jason get hurt? Did we miss him? I called a friend to check the Web site. Same data. We looked up another friend and the system showed that she’d crossed the 15-mile mark. Uh oh.

We continued to wait and eventually saw him just before the 16-mile mark. Still no alerts past the original.

The alerts eventually showed up. After the race, the system blasted numerous duplicate messages: 96 Jason alerts to one phone.

The race announcer said more than 200,000 people had signed up to receive alerts. Multiply that by 96 and that’s a lot of text messaging revenue.

washingtonpost.com made good use of simpler technology. Runners can watch three hours of video of the finish line. Now if they’d start geotagging their photos, you could create cool maps like this.

More on: geotagging, newspapers

Location-based services have been hampered by the balkanization of carrier networks and a focus on mobile-only implementations. LocPoke, a new Facebook application, is a promising alternative.

I’ve written before about WHERE, a location service platform that has offered GPS-based location status updates for Twitter using a downloadable application. The application is available for Sprint and Alltel phones for a monthly fee.

WHERE’s LocPoke, allows you to show a map of your location on your Facebook profile. This application addresses many of the key barriers to adoption of the Where platform: it works on any network, it works on any phone, it doesn’t require a download and it’s free (except for SMS charges).  Just text your location to the SMS shortcode WHERE (94373) to update your location. The location can be set as a street address, ZIP code, city or neighborhood.

You can also text a phone number to identify your location. If you’re having dinner at Azie, you can text “dinner@4155380918” and the map will show the name and address of Azie. This method is too cumbersome to get wide adoption, but it points to a future where we’ll be sending actionable data instead of freeform text.

Friends can also prompt you to update your location. A friend clicking on the “LocPoke” button triggers an SMS prompting you to update your location. This capability can be limited to friends that you select. I’d like to see the option to click on the location to get driving directions.

The Social Map feature allows you to see where your friends are. It’s of limited use until LocPoke takes off.

Sprint has released an enhanced version of its search that allows users to tap into their phone’s location when doing searches. The search feature is powered by Microsoft’s Live Search.

The first time user experience isn’t exactly intuitive. When doing a search off Sprint’s portal, one of the layers that comes back is “Local” clicking again to “Go Local” then asks whether you want to enter a location or “Find Me.” Selecting “Find Me” renders a release authorizing Sprint to give your location to Microsoft. The results that come back after all this (my query term was “Target”) still show ringtones and screen savers above the local results.

Search results aren’t sorted in any discernible order. Usually in local search, results are sorted by distance from the starting point or alphabetically. These are neither.

The authorization to use “Find Me” can be stored for a session, day, 30 days or unlimited, making return visits easier.

A link labeled “Get Precise GPS Location” offers users of select phones the option to download a Java applet. Instead of typing out what you’re looking for, you can speak the name of the business or the category.

Although category names (restaurants, bars, Mexican restaurants, movie theaters) worked fine, business names did not. Of the dozen or so names I tried, only “Cheesecake Factory,” “Target” and “Dominos” returned the results I was expecting. These terms are so common that many data providers treat them as categories.

It seems that the browser-based search uses triangulation from the towers to calculate location, whereas the application uses GPS from your handset.

Despite its flaws, it’s still a significant move. This is the first time I know of that a U.S. carrier has offered location-enabled search for free.

Update: The Java application also can tap into the phone’s address book. If you find a business and want to share it, just pick a name from the phone’s address book and send.

More on: GPS, wireless data

Recommended reading:

• Sprint press release
• Sprint And Microsoft Extend Mobile Partnership, Offer New Services (Search Engine Land, includes screenshots of Java app)

The iPhone has quickly become the ultimate communication device for many. With a few tweaks, it could easily become the ultimate navigation device.

Creative Commons image by stevegarfield.

Imagine:

• You get into your car and put the iPhone in you iCar dock. As you drive, music from the iPhone wafts through your car’s stereo system using either a hard wire or FM transmitter (built in to the dock). The track information displays on the iPhone screen.
• A friend calls. Her picture and number shows on the iPhone screen. The music fades and you’re connected to her over Bluetooth. She invites you to dinner. “Text me the address,” you say. Moments later, the iPhone receives the address and asks you if you want to go there.
• The iPhone shows you turn-by-turn directions on Google Maps. The music resumes.
• The Google Maps traffic data show an accident ahead. The iPhone alerts you and prompts you to re-route.
• As you near your destination, images from Google Street View appear to confirm that you’re in the right place.
• You arrive at your destination and find parking three blocks away. Snap the iPhone out of the dock and the driving directions automatically turn in to walking directions.
• After dinner, you take a picture with the iPhone and upload it to flickr. The location data is automatically added and it shows up on your flickr map.
• You forgot where you parked your car. No problem, the iPhone remembers and guides you back. (OK, this part won’t work if you parked in an underground garage — you’ll get back to the garage entrance, but then you’re on your own.)

Technology-wise, most of what’s needed for the above scenario is already in place. GPS is the key missing piece. You would also want HSPDA to speed up the map data. The connoisseur would want Bluetooth A2DP for the music.

How much will this cost? I’d expect the service to cost $0-$10 a month. Wireless carriers have typically charged about $10 a month for navigation service. Verizon and Sprint have started to bundle navigation services with their high-end data plans.

The incremental hardware cost for the GPS chip is negligible. Apple could tack on an extra $50 and make a killing. Add on early-adopter pricing of $100 for the iCar dock and the $150 is still cheaper than most standalone nav systems.

Portable navigation devices from companies like Garmin, Magellan and TomTom have become hot as prices have plummeted to around $250. I took a road trip last month and a significant percentage of cars had navigation screens hanging from their windshields.

It’s expected that PNDs will become a billion dollar market this year. A GPS-enabled iPhone could rapidly take share in that market.

See also:

• Top trends and predictions for satellite navigation

More on: Apple, Google, iPhone, satellite navigation

I had a chance earlier this week to try the new Facebook application for iPhone. The app, developed by Joe Hewitt, is a version of Facebook optimized for the iPhone. Many of the core features of Facebook are available on the iPhone, including your profile page, messages, pictures, status messages and your friend’s contact information.

It’s a very well done app that shows off the capabilities of the iPhone as well Facebook. (If you have an iPhone, go to http://iphone.facebook.com to try it out; you can also go to that URL in a Web browser to see the functionality.) A video demonstration is at the bottom of this post.

Currently all of this is done within the phone’s Safari browser; it’s not integrated into the phone’s contacts, pictures or other capabilities.

As much as I love my computer, my phone is where the most important “social networking” happens. The social network needs to be embedded deeply into the phone.

Here are some of the possibilities:

• Pick up a new phone and enter your account information. Your contacts are automatically populated, complete with pictures of your friends. No need to fiddle with re-entering all your data.
• Check the status of your friends before you make a call. If you see that your friend is on the phone, you can call later or send a text message. (Similar to presence on IM.)
• When a contact changes their phone number, the new information is automatically updated. You don’t have to worry about outdated phone numbers.
• Pull up a map of where your friends are when you’re trying to meet up.
• Take pictures and videos and upload them straight to your social network. (flickr, Facebook and others have developed workarounds that accomplish a limited form of this today.)
• Get reminded of events in your network without having to manually add them to another calendar. The reminder leads straight to maps and directions.

All of this is technically possible. The biggest challenges revolve around who “owns” the customer. In the U.S. market, this has historically been the wireless carriers. Some carriers deliberately make it hard to do things like move contacts because that raises the switching costs for customers. Most restrict access to key phone capabilities (such as the camera, GPS) to internal developers.

Doing something like this would mean breaking a lot of the traditional rules. But Apple has done that before.

More on: facebook, iphone

(Video from Rodney Rumford)

Recommended reading:

• Interview With Facebook’s Joe Hewitt, iPhone God (TechCrunch)

AOL today released its new beta of mobile search. Congratulations to rockstar developer Alan Tai and product manager Farhan Memon. Alan did much of the initial prototyping on his own time while we worked to get approval.

I pushed the strategy on this, so it would be inappropriate for me to review it. See Om’s blog for more details.

I’ve long believed that you need to design for the medium. Shovelware didn’t work when we were first trying to put content on the Web; it won’t work now. The old version of AOL’s mobile search took the same 10 Web results you would get on a Web browser and shrunk them down to fit a mobile screen. That didn’t work.

People are in a different state when they’re mobile. Most people aren’t going to do research for a term paper or browse real estate listings on their cell phones. (Not least because most of the sites won’t work well when shrunk down to fit a mobile device.) The new mobile search is designed around answering the questions that people are most likely asking when they’re out and about: What’s the weather like? What’s the phone number for the local pizza place? What time is the movie starting?

Then there are the issues of limited screen space and difficulty in entering data. Time to answer is especially critical in mobile. This product was designed to get people answers to common mobile queries as quickly as possible.

During weeks like this, I’m reminded that wireless and long distance networks that we take for granted aren’t designed for major emergencies. They’re engineered for average peak usage and can quickly become overloaded when tragedy strikes.

After this week’s 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, I found out about the status of some of my friends on Facebook:

Tools like Facebook, Twitter, IM and email can be great ways to communicate in emergencies. You can quickly let a lot of people know what’s going on. I found out about the the bridge collapse when a friend IMed me.

My friend Sree has some great advice on how to best use technology to prepare for emergencies. I would add one thing to Sree’s list: scan important documents and have them available online. I keep scans of the data page of my passport, contact lens prescription and other key information in my email account. You can also use an online file storage service.

Update: The Pioneer Press has story about Twin Cities residents using blogs, Flickr and Twitter to communicate during the crisis.