MobileCrunch |  |
- RIM Apologizes With Free Apps & Technical Support For Three Days Of Downtime
- Samsung Tries To Stop iPhone 4S Sales In Japan And Australia
- Why So Siri-ous?
- Reduce Friction, Increase Happiness
| RIM Apologizes With Free Apps & Technical Support For Three Days Of Downtime Posted: 17 Oct 2011 05:11 AM PDT  Research In Motion is on a quest for goodwill after last week’s massive outage that left BlackBerry users without service for three days. The company just took to the wires and announced that over a $100 worth of premium apps will eventually be free for a limited time and enterprise users will also net one month of free technical support. RIM hopes SIM 3, Bejeweled, N.O.V.A. and many more will help calm the nerves those BlackBerry users thinking of jumping ship. "We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience," said RIM’s co-CEO Mike Lazaridis in a released statement. "We have apologized to our customers and we will work tirelessly to restore their confidence. We are taking immediate and aggressive steps to help prevent something like this from happening again." Enterprise users get a little more compensation in the form of free technical support. If the user already pays for the technical support, one month will be tacked onto the end of subscription. Other enterprise users will be offered a one month trial of RIM’s BlackBerry Technical Support Service – Enhanced Support. The apps will be free start to appear in the BlackBerry App World starting on Wednesday, October 19th and will be available for download until December 31, 2011. More will be released over the next four weeks. The initial selection includes: • SIMS 3 – Electronic Arts RIM took a major hit with the latest service interruption and it’s really impossible to tell if free apps will prevent BlackBerry users from defecting to other mobile platforms. Carriers worldwide are compensating BlackBerry users with cash and other offers and it’s not clear if RIM is backing some of those payouts. Users smell blood. Prepare yourself, the class action lawsuits are coming. Research In Motion (RIM) is a Canadian designer, manufacturer and marketer of wireless devices and solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. The company is best known as the developer of the BlackBerry smart phone. RIM technology also enables a broad array of third party developers and manufacturers to enhance their products and services with wireless connectivity to data. RIM was founded in 1984. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company has offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.
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| Samsung Tries To Stop iPhone 4S Sales In Japan And Australia Posted: 17 Oct 2011 02:16 AM PDT  News from the never-ending patent war between Apple and Samsung: the Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Samsung filed for preliminary injunctions in the Tokyo District Court and in the New South Wales Registry, Australia. This time, the goal is to block sales of the iPhone 4S, which launched in both countries last Friday. According to the report, Samsung also tries to stop sales of the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 in Japan. The company says that Apple – you guessed it – infringes on its technology patents (earlier this month, Samsung made a similar move in Italy and France). Samsung earlier stated it will be more aggressive towards Apple going forward. It’s not the first time Japan and Australia are in the spotlight of the Apple-Samsung dispute: in Japan, Apple sued Samsung over iPhone and iPad patents just last month. In Australia, Samsung offered a deal to Apple regarding the Galaxy Tab sales ban last month. Last Friday, the Korean company pulled a publicity stunt to counter the iPhone 4S sales start in the country.
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| Posted: 16 Oct 2011 03:22 PM PDT  Looking over the web and especially the blogosphere over the past couple of days, it seems there is only one thing everyone wants to talk about: Siri. With the iPhone 4S now in millions of peoples’ hands, as expected, it’s clearly the stand-out feature of the device. But wait. Voice technology has been around for a long time. Or, as one TechCrunch commenter succinctly put it on Erick’s video demo post of Siri: “4 year old software, 8 year old technology.” This recalls one of my favorite aspects of tech blogging. You write about something, then everyone and their mother rushes out to yell something along the lines of “OLD!”. Or, even better, competitors trip over themselves to yell “FIRST!”. So if the stuff Siri is doing is old, and if others did do it FIRST, then why is everyone so damn excited about the feature? There are a few reasons. But the simplest answer is one that has played out time and time again over the past several years: Apple did it right. No, Apple is not the first to implement voice technology. Nor are they the first to do it on a phone. In fact, Siri isn’t even Apple’s first foray into voice controls. But their first attempt on the iPhone, quite frankly, sucked. It’s no surprise that no one used it. As for Siri, it’s a company that Apple acquired — they were actually doing some of the same things as a stand-alone third-party app previously. Credit Apple for having the vision and foresight to realize that their previous voice control offering wasn’t competitive, and that system-level integration of Siri into iOS could be magical. What about Google? It’s true that they’ve been far ahead of Apple in the voice control space for years now. I recall being at an event that Google held in August 2010 in which they showed off some new voice functionality for Android. As I wrote at the time, “Google Unveils Awesomely Fast And Accurate Voice Actions For Android“. And that was true. At the time. But Google failed on a few fronts with this functionality. First of all, while on paper and in staged demos Google’s technology looks great, they failed to make it compelling enough to entice everyday users to use it. They had a pre-defined set of instructions as to what you could say to get the system to work, and they were pretty rigid. By comparison, Apple placed an emphasis on natural language usage with Siri. There are a number of ways to say something to trigger a certain action. You don’t have to remember a set of commands. Put another way, Google’s voice search and Siri may look comparable on paper. But in reality, one is something best used by a robot, the other is something best used by a human. And robots don’t buy phones — at least not yet. In the bigger picture, this is something that Apple seems to understand time and time again that their rivals do not. Technology is an ever-important part of everyones’ lives, but the only way to make it truly accessible to the vast majority of users is to humanize it. That’s Siri. Google, Microsoft, etc — they all fail miserably at doing this. I’m sure in a few weeks, we’re going to see Google come out and say, “wait, but look, we can do all of the stuff Siri can do too!” They’ll tweak their voice recognition to pick up more human phrases, etc. But it won’t matter. They already lost the mindshare battle. Yes, Android had better voice controls first, but if you ask anyone on the street right now which is the phone with the awesome voice controls, they’ll tell you it’s the iPhone. The funny thing is that while Apple are normally brilliant marketers in this regard, they’re actually holding back on Siri right now. Why? Because they consider the product to still be in “beta”. And while every Google product starts in beta, it’s not a tag Apple takes lightly. Talking with them leading up to the launch, they clearly feel that Siri as it stands right now, while a great first step, is nowhere near where they want it to be. It may take six months to get there. It may take a year. But when Apple does get it to where they feel it’s ready, I bet we’ll see a massive marketing push. And we may even see it come to other devices at that point. Earlier today, Search Engine Land did a nice side-by-side comparison of Siri versus Google voice actions. Again, on paper, they’re similar, but in reality, they’re far apart right now. But the more interesting aspect of the piece to me was when author Greg Sterling goes against the this-will-kill-Google early reactions and notes that Siri should lead to even more Google searches. I totally agree. For now. But again, this is a beta product. Does anyone really think Apple isn’t going to work quickly to integrate it with other data partners? Imagine it tied to Quora. Imagine it tied to Twitter (and how is it not already?!). Imagine it tied to Foursquare. Imagine it tied to… Facebook. If and when that happens, Google will have a very legitimate reason to be concerned. Right now, Google is a middle man between us and information. And we love Google for it. There’s simply too much information out there for anyone to find by themselves. There needs to be a middle man. We need Google. Apple has been hinting for a while that mobile applications could change this game. But apps are just a new, perhaps more accesible wrapper of information. There still needs to be a search mechanism powering the discovery of information — that’s why everyone keeps insisting that Apple will eventually get into the search engine business. Well they have. But not in the way that everyone was thinking. Siri is their entry point. Again, it’s a small step right now, but it has the potential to be massive. (Perhaps the more pressing question: is Apple okay relying heavily on a third party, Nuance, for what may become a core component of their stack?) And that’s another fundamental reason why people are so excited by Siri where they aren’t by Google voice search. Google voice search, like basically every Google product, is ultimately a way to drive more Google searches. It’s just a new layer. Even if people don’t fully understand that, they sense that it doesn’t point to something totally new. Siri does point to something totally new. With it, Apple wants to change the information search and creation paradigm. It’s an evolution powered by mobile and a new, more powerful input: voice. This is a vision that has been 24 years in the making at Apple. The video below first re-surfaced around the launch of the iPad. “Apple envisioned their tablet 20+ years ago!,” everyone yelled. But at the time, everyone overlooked the arguably more powerful aspect: natural language voice interaction. Apple was quietly working on that too. And now it’s here. Heralding the future. Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod (offered with... Siri is a personal assistant iPhone app. The application uses natural language processing to answer questions and make recommendations. The iPhone app is the first public product of the company, which is focused on artificial intelligence applications.
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| Reduce Friction, Increase Happiness Posted: 16 Oct 2011 09:00 AM PDT  Editor’s Note: Brenden Mulligan is an entrepreneur who created Onesheet, ArtistData, MorningPics, and PhotoPile. He’s an mentor for 500 Startups, Advise.me and several startups. You can find him on Twitter at @bmull and blogging at Starting Up. There has been a reoccurring theme on my mind recently as I’ve advised startups on areas of focus. It revolves around the goal of reducing friction. Reduced friction in a product leads to less user frustration, high conversion, and overall user happiness. I’d like to use a few examples to illustrate what I mean. Taxis / Uber Let’s start with Uber, the startup that lets you order a black car from your mobile phone in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Chicago, and a growing list of cities. Because I know the team, I’ve been following this startup since they launched. I actually took an Uber car to celebrate selling my first startup during one of their first weeks in beta. When I first heard about the service, I focused on the luxury aspect of traveling in a black town car with a private driver. Who wouldn’t? It’s in their tagline (“Everyone’s Private Driver”) and it sounds awesome. But after my first Uber experience, I found out that while nice, the luxury component is strangely unimportant compared to their much bigger function of reducing the friction of getting a ride somewhere. Let me elaborate. Friction points are italicized. Here is generally what you need to do to get a cab:
Here is the Uber experience:
Uber has reduced all the friction. What was a tedious process before is a seamless, pleasurable interaction. The most important thing Uber provides its users is that frictionless experience. The fact that it’s a black car means it’s generally an aesthetically nicer experience (and with SF Taxis, that can make a big difference), but that’s a small detail compared to the other benefits of using the service. Zipcar / Getaround A lot of people are familiar with Zipcar. It’s pretty simple. There are a bunch of Zipcar-owned cars around the city that members can rent on an hourly basis. All reservations are done through their website. Getaround is a new startup taking on Zipcar by altering the model. Instead of Getaround purchasing a lot of inventory (cars), they built a marketplace for car-owners to list their own vehicles for other people to rent. I love the idea, and so do thousands of car owners looking to make money from their unused cars. The company won best startup at TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC and since then has been well funded. I have used the service frequently. I love what they’re doing and think they’re going to build a great company. However, they face a serious challenge. Zipcar owns its inventory, so they have more control of the friction in the experience:
There isn’t really a lot of friction there. Now let’s look at that experience with Getaround:
Wow. That’s a lot more friction. Again, I love Getaround, and their team is more aware of these issues than anyone. I’m 100% confident that as they go, they’ll iron this stuff out, just as Zipcar ironed out all the challenges they faced at the beginning. The friction issues Getaround faces are a result of the fact that Zipcar bought cars, while Getaround buys bandwidth. This initial disadvantage will make the company much more nimble and scalable long term. I think the key to reducing friction quickly is to incentivizing the car owners to reduce the friction points. Give owners the option to guarantee their schedule, so cars can be booked immediately. Push them to install the CarKit, (the device that lets the renter locate and unlock the car from their smartphone). Then, when owners do these things, Getaround should give them a bigger percentage of the rental fee or prioritize those cars in search results. These owner will get more rentals and make more money. Over time, as users choose these cars, other owners will need to add these options to compete in the marketplace, and friction starts to disappear. Airbnb / Kayak Even successful startups still work every day on reducing friction. Let’s quickly compare Kayak and Airbnb. Kayak:
Airbnb:
A lot of times, finding an Airbnb accommodation is a bigger hassle than a booking hotel. But they’ve managed to build a $1 billion company, and continually works to make the process seamless and frictionless. And it’s getting better and better. So what does all this mean? Friction is important to consider when creating a product. If your users feel friction using or signing up for your service, you have a problem. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but you should do everything in your power to remove as much friction as possible. And you should pay attention to this constantly as your product and service grow. When you examine your product, where are the friction points? Are you letting users sign up with Twitter/Facebook, or do they need to register separately? Are you opening popups to get their attention instead of letting them continue on the site? Are you requiring information you don’t need? Reduce friction, increase happiness. Excerpt image courtesy of Ian Hampton Person: Brenden Mulligan Companies: ArtistData, Sonicbids, Untappd, Mission Labs, MorningPics, Onesheet Brenden Mulligan is a San Francisco based entrepreneur who founded ArtistData, an industry leading marketing platform that helps over 40,000 musicians syndicate content across web presences. ArtistData was acquired by Sonicbids in 2010. Currently, Brenden is working on a variety of projects, including MorningPics, PhotoPile, and several other upcoming products. He advises startups through 500Startups, ExcelerateLabs, and individually. He blogs at StartingUp.me, and can be found on twitter @bmull. His love of travel has taken him through Southeast Asia and through... Uber.com is a free do-it-yourself publishing platform. Users can make their own websites, get statistics, create slideshows and more. Zipcar is a membership-based car-sharing company that provides automobile rentals to its members, billable on an hourly or daily basis. Members are able to view vehicle availability and reserve a self-service car via the internet, iPhone app, or telephone, in increments as short as one hour and pay only for time they reserve. Zipcar vehicles report their positions to a control center using in-car technology. Zipcar was founded in 2000 by Cambridge, Massachusetts. On October 31, 2007 Zipcar merged... Getaround provides a peer-to-peer carsharing marketplace that enables car owners to rent their cars - from Priuses to Teslas - to a community of trusted drivers by hour, day, or week using just their smartphones. Car owners invest huge amounts of time and money into an asset they barely use. The average car is idle 92% of the time, while potential drivers walk past block after block of underutilized cars. We are here to connect the dots… to help people... Founded in August 2008 and based in San Francisco, California, Airbnb is a community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique spaces around the world online or from an iPhone device. Whether the available space is a castle for a night, a sailboat for a week, or an apartment for a month, Airbnb is the easiest way for people to showcase these distinctive spaces to an audience of millions. By facilitating bookings and financial transactions, Airbnb makes... Kayak is a travel search engine. It indexes hundreds of global travel sites to help you find the right flight, hotel, rental car or cruise line. Once you’ve found the way you want to travel, Kayak allows you to choose from which site you want to make your purchases. The company was formed in January 2004 by co-founders of leading online travel agencies, Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia. The company co-founders include Steve Hafner (CEO) a co-founder of Orbitz,...
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