Streaming Netflix in the car

Fred Wilson posted today on the evolving model of using you mobile as your "primary"  device, and this is the model his family uses for audio.

In fact, in my family we've been using this model for video for quite some time.   Our Acura MDX has a DVD player and a screen for the kids to watch on their commute, and although for many years we primarily used the DVD player, more and more, we are now just plugging in an iPhone or iPad into the AUX jacks and playing video that way.

The key is this cable from Apple:

In fact, we've actually been using this to stream Netflix into the car as well.  It works pretty well.  Luckily I have a grandfathered unlimited AT&T data plan.

This same cable I carry with me when I travel as well.   It plugs into most hotel TVs and provides a great way to use your mobile as your "primary."

Note to gadget manufacturers: rules for designing chargers

Is anyone else getting tired of carrying 3 or 4 chargers around with them?   I'm not an electrical engineer and I guess I'm not really talking about laptops here, but if you are a manufacturer creating a phone, tablet, or some other similarly sized gadget, I'd love to know why you would choose anything but Micro USB as your charging interface.  I understand that some batteries are bigger than others.  I understand that some batteries mothers are bigger than other batteries mothers....but surely this is a solvable problem.

Okay, if you are Apple, you have a bazillion other accessories that are already out there in consumers' hands that use your special iPhone connector pinout...and we all have an iPhone and probably an iPad charger...and ahem, why are those different?  So that's okay.

If you are Sony, I will let it slide that you chose Mini USB before Micro USB was popular or existed and so the PS3 accessories and PSP (kinda) will charge with Mini USB.   And I have a Mini to Micro USB adaptor.  It's small enough to not be a bother.

If you aren't Sony or Apple, please make your device charge by Micro USB so I don't have to carry yet another charger.  It's okay if it charges slower than a second dedicated power source, but just make it charge through Micro USB.

Android tablet manufacturers I am looking at you.

iPad and iPhone version of The Economist free for paper subscribers

The Economist is one of three paper magazines I still read.  The other two are soccer magazines.   I haven't tried this out yet, but I just received this in my inbox.   I'm curious to try it out and see if will reduce the number of paper publications I read to two.  And as a subscriber I love the model that it's included in my subscription.

Dear S Olechowski

I am delighted to announce the global launch of The Economiston iPhone®, iPad™ and iPod touch®.

From today, the full print edition will be available to download for reading on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch by 9pm London time (4pm New York time) each Thursday.

We have reformatted the newspaper to make the most of these devices while retaining the familiar feel of The Economist, with all the articles, charts, maps and images from each week's print edition.

All articles are fully cached for reading even when you don't have an internet connection. And we have included our audio edition so you can listen to every article, read by professional newscasters, with easy switching between reading and listening.

Full access to The Economist via the apps is included with your current subscription. 

To get The Economist on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, simply download our free app for your device, then log in using your Economist online e-mail address and password. 

Yours sincerely

Oscar Grut Managing director, digital editions

Another way the iPad is killing the newspapers

Truth be told, way before I worked as a digital vampire, I never really liked paper newspapers all that much.   They were big, bulky, and dirty.  The ink rubbing off on my hands made me never want to touch the stuff. Figuring out the perfect fold so that you could actually read the paper while upright, fuggetaboutit.

Growing up, the rest of my family was into reading the newspaper though, and especially the Sunday Chicago Tribune.  I don't know many people in the Chicago area who didn't group up getting the huge Sunday Tribune, in many cases on Saturday night.  However, the only part of the paper I ever really read was what we called "the Coupons", and in Chicago, that's pronounced "Q-pons."

I guess what I really liked was not the coupons themselves, but what I now know as the "Sunday Circulars" - that is, really just the ads, mostly from electronics stores like Best Buy where you could see what was coming out on "Tune-in Tuesday" and the other odd electronics that you could only see here way before Engadget existed.  I guess that's what stuck with me the most from the newspaper era.

Really, the only ones I look at these days are from Target (and still Best Buy).  I still make weekly trips to Target to get the week's family supplies.

So when I saw Target's new iPad app appear in the App Store yesterday, I was intrigued.  After loading it up, I could see what it was: an iPad version of the Sunday Circular.   Yes, I had downloaded an ad from the App Store.

At first, I felt slightly let down, but after playing with it for 5 seconds I quickly changed my mind.  This app is cool.  And useful.

It just looks like a circular ad

First, it automatically uses your location to find the nearest store to you.  From there you can not only look at the ad itself but search for anything Target carries, and it will tell you if the item is in stock there.

There's also the shopping list.  This isn't a static image like I first thought.  You can actually drag and drop any item from what you are looking at to the shopping list below.   In the screen shot below, the Assassin's Creed game is mid drag and drop.

Dragging and dropping Asssassin's Creed to the list.

Finally, when you are done, you have a shopping list, that you can email, most likely to your phone so you can go to the store and work through your list.

Your list, go ahead and mail it.

So that's pretty interesting to me - that Target got to me with their brand, I downloaded an app that is really an ad (or is it an ad that is really an app?) and the sure end result of this is that I will probably buy more from Target.   

The next step here of course, is for them to start promoting this app in other iPad apps through display ads inside of those apps.  It will be difficult for Target to track purchases from running these campaigns, but I think the number of downloads will act as a pretty good conversion indicator.

I think we've just seen the tip of the iceberg on driving transactions from tablet devices.  There's a lot of interesting thinking going on here, and this is just one example of how innovation is happening specific to these devices.

At any rate, Best Buy has an app for this too, that works with the iPhone and iPad, but isn't quite as flashy - so I guess between these two, I'm officially done with paper newspapers.   Rest in peace.

Sometimes you just gotta spread a viral video

If you are going to launch a singing career in K-pop or J-pop, I guess YouTube and 4 iPhones is a good a way as any.  The amount of time people spend on publishing on YouTube is really incredible.

Apple iPhone 4 Bumper refund - Automatic!

Wow, that was way easier than I thought.  I actually bought a bumper for my iPhone 4 at the same time I bought the phone, and Apple just refunded it.  I was expecting to have to dig up a receipt somewhere and enter an order number to get a refund.  Gotta like when a company exceeds expectations.

Dear Apple Customer,

Apple recently announced that iPhone 4 customers who purchased an iPhone 4 Bumper are eligible for a full refund.

As of today, we have automatically processed your refund.

Thank you for choosing Apple.

Sincerely,
Apple Online Store Support

QR Codes Redux

I've always liked QR Codes.   I think I wrote about them four years ago when I first went to Japan, as I saw them on pretty much every print publication instead of www.internetsite.com.   That's because QR Code reader applications were already on most mobile phones in Japan.  If on the train, you'd snap a picture of the QR code for www.internetsite.com and you were browsing there on your Docomo browser within seconds.  It's no secret that typing on a phone sucks, but has gotten better with iPhones and Blackberries and their ilk - however, typing Japanese with 3 different alphabets was even worse, which is probably why this was popular there so early.

These are just starting to catch on today in North America.  There's a QR Code on the back of all of the Nexus One gift phones we were given as our holiday bonus at Google (goes to http://www.android.com/holidays):

I'm still surprised these aren't used more but it all comes down to having useful applications that process QR Codes.  They aren't in-built on our phones yet or the apps yet, but you can get a free standalone QR Code reader pretty easily from the App Store on the iPhone or Marketplace on Android.

Currently I'm using i-nigma on the iPhone and Barcode Scanner on Android, but I'm gonna start inspecting QR codes a lot more whenever I see them to see how people are using them.

QR Codes are one of those things you will have never noticed before but will start to see all over now that I've mentioned it.

the obligatory iPhone post: winners and losers

Yes, here is the obligatory iPhone post. To get this out of the way - It's great, I love it. It is truly evolutionary in that now phones are walking on two legs, and truly revolutionary in that you can forget everything you used to know about mobile phones, and wait for everyone to start riffing off Apple's designs yet again. Apple and AT&T are the big winners. But who is the big loser? Nokia, that's who.

Nokia has been trying for years to nail down usability on a mobile phone, and Apple on their first release blows everything Nokia has ever done out of the water.

First, network connections aside, the iPhone UI is the fastest, most responsive OS I have ever seen on a phone. As recently as a month ago, I bought a Nokia N75 with the latest version of S60 on it, and it's horrible. Horribly slow. The kind of responsiveness where every keypress is met with "did that take?" followed by a second keypress that now takes you to the wrong place. Granted, S60 has a few different goals, such as allowing the user to install third party apps (not to be discounted) but how can they put out such a bad user experience to the mass market?

Second, the usability of the iPhone itself is beyond compare. This feels like a finished product. Safari has crashed a couple of times, but it's usually been when browsing some site that I know even on the PC has ill-behaved JavaScript . Again, a recent model S60 phone is barely usable to make a phone call. Try finding where to turn Bluetooth on and off. Let's see, is that in Connections , Tools, or Settings? I keep forgetting. Seems like a Connection to me, but it's not there. I'm sure there's a way to add a shortcut. Anyway, iPhone is a version 1.

Third, this is the device you walk around the house with using wi-fi, not the Nokia N800. I have had wi-fi on a lot of phones before (like the Nokia E61), but I have rarely ever used it. The drain on the battery just was never worth the speed, especially when I'm sticking to mobile optimized sites. Nokia has been pushing those linux based tablets for quite some time to fill this niche of full featured browsing away from the PC, but the iPhone does nicely and it fits right into your pocket.

Now, I don't want to be too harsh on Nokia; they've sold a few phones. However, they got leapfrogged, plain and simple. Apple took a look at everything that was wrong with Nokia (and Motorola and Sony Ericsson) phones and fixed it by starting from scratch. That's awesome, and just what the doctor ordered.

If this is version 1, I can't wait for version 2.