The BillDay.com discussion forums experiment mentioned here has failed.
They’ve only proven popular with spammers. As such, I have removed them.
If you’d like to discuss anything on my site, please leave a comment on my blog.
Yahoo! Pipes launched last night, opening up an interesting new Unix pipes-like capability for mixing, processing, and using feeds. According to Y!, Pipes allow one to “rewire the web” (their words) by combining, filtering, sorting, truncating, translating, geocoding, etc. user defined feeds. Click here to try out Pipes yourself.
(Note that as I type this the site is overwhelmed with traffic and returning the error message “Our Pipes are clogged! We’ve called the plumbers!”)
O’Reilly published an introduction and overview of the promise of pipes, followed by additional Radar posts providing a technical overview and short deconstruction of one of the example Y! pipes.
Tim O’Reilly started his introduction with high praise indeed:
Yahoo!’s new Pipes service is a milestone in the history of the internet
A lot of possibilities for consuming pipes.yahoo output come to mind. And I find the use of a visual metaphor for indicating user intent very interesting: It’s not new by any means, but nonetheless another informative example of how we can think about empowering users to orchestrate complex operations through simple indications.
It must be asked: Is Senator Ted Stevens a mad genius?
Replace “tubes” with “pipes” and you be the judge…
OK, OK, so he’s not Einstein Jr. But wouldn’t it have been great if Y! had named their new Pipes service “Yahoo! Tubes”?
I would love to see tubes.yahoo.com link to a humorous version of Pipes! 🙂
Imagine what we can do as we the people build off our systems, and vice versa, in the ever deepening and broadening echo chamber of the Web:
[Thanks to Chris Anderson of The Long Tail for bringing this video to my attention]
The 61st installment of the Carnival is out. Jan Kuczynski has posted number 61 on Wireless World Japan, complete with a Matsuri theme.
My “Two horse race, soon to be three” post on the mobile handset market made the cut. Thanks Jan!
Last July I wondered in writing about Q2 2006 NOK and MOT numbers:
Is mobile handset design and marketing now a two horse race?
As reported in this Chicago Tribune story on Q4 2006 results, the answer appears to be a big “Yes”. According to the Strategy Analytics numbers quoted by the Tribune:
- Nokia increased Q4 share to 35.2% worldwide, versus 34.1% Q4 2005
- Motorola rose to 21.9%, from 18.2% in the final quarter of 2005
- Samsung lost share, down to 10.7% from 11.1% in the same quarter last year
- Sony Ericsson is up to 8.7% from 6.6% last year
- Closing out the top five, LG Electronics sank to 5.7% share from 6.6% in Q4 2005
Although Sony Ericsson increased its share a bit year-over-year, it appears to be more at the expense of Samsung and LG than of Nokia or Motorola. And even with S.E.’s rise, Nokia and Motorola still managed to pull slightly further ahead of the pack.
I wonder how things will stack up at this time next year, after iPhone has had a few months on the market? For Steve to hit his target of 1% share by 2008, Apple wouldn’t need to take very much from the major players.
Getting to the next order of magnitude, however, will be quite a bit more challenging. 10% share would position Apple in the top three mobile makers, assuming they grab share more at the expense of Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and LG than Nokia or Motorola. And as you can see from this quarter’s numbers, 10% iPhone market share won’t be easy to come by. But given the key bit of my quote from mid-2006, that this is a race based upon “design and marketing”, I’d say Apple has a better chance than anyone else at getting there from here. Assuming they listen to feedback and understand the shape of the mobile market, of course.
Xen Mendelsohn has posted The Carnival of the Mobilists no. 59.
My “iPhone week one” was one of the posts picked up for carnival #59. Thanks Xen!
It appears that Cisco hasn’t given up on their iPhone lawsuit just yet.
Linksys iPhone ads are showing up on a number of Apple iPhone related sites and blog posts. The ad text reads:
iPhone by Linksys
Cordless Internet Telephone. Featuring mobile video and music.
http://www.linksys.com/cisco
Read any of my recent BillDay.com posts on Apple iPhone, for instance, and you’re likely to see a Cisco ad for the Linksys iPhone in the sidebar:
Click on the screenshot above to blow it up and read the circled ad text at the right.
Is Cisco trying to makes its case before a counter-suit?
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