4 reasons I’m excited about the SF AppShow
I’m extra excited about our next SF AppShow this Tuesday May 25. In addition to looking forward to seeing you all and taking the stage again, here are the top four things I’m excited about:
- Our amazing guest host is my friend Gina Smith. Before I’d met her in person, I used to watch her on Good Morning America and World News Tonight. She was ABC News first Tech Correspondent, and covered the web 1.0 boom for them. She’s also the author (with Steve Wozniak) of NYT bestseller iWOZ: From Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple and Had Fun Along the Way.
- Another friend is presenting: Mike Smithwick. He started writing Distant Suns for the Amiga in 1985, and I first met him during my days as an Amiga engineer. More than 25 years later and Distant Suns is still going strong, and he has new announcements to make Tuesday night. It was a great coincidence that he applied to the show without even realizing I was involved.
- The wraps are finally coming off the secret new project from best-selling author Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, Anathem) and my friend Jeremy Bornstein at Subutai Corporation.
- It’s cool that we have custom iPad bags from Rickshaw Bag Works, and that we have Intel as a sponsor, as well as SugarSync and Appency PR, and a lineup of other great media, presenters and guests.
Please grab a ticket and join us for cocktails and appetizers starting at 5:30pm!
What AT&T doesn’t want you to know about the iPhone
This fantastic video does a great job of expressing the unique advantages I enjoy through being on AT&T.
(I’ve also been meaning to update my review of the AT&T 3G Microcell… but I’m still waiting for another return call from AT&T tier 2 support. I’ve spent hours on the phone with AT&T over the past month.)
(via @scobleizer/@ChrisPirillo/@shadoestevens)
LeanScale and SFAppShow
I’m about to launch a new iPhone and web app, LeanScale at the next SF AppShow. Join us, it’s a great event, and look for more here soon.
LeanScale is the only tool that separates fat and lean for better health. Don’t watch your weight, watch your lean, with LeanScale. You get immediate, powerful feedback on what is happening with your body right now, even when you are making gradual changes (the best kind). If you’re interested in the private beta, please comment below.
iPad hype exceeded only by results
Imperative: dress well for iPad line. Dale Larson in line for launch at the San Francisco Apple Store. (photo by Andrew Mager)
As I suggested in a previous post (where I completely failed to guess the name of the iPad correctly), the results of iPad sales seem to be the only thing exceeding the hype around iPad.
According to Quantcast, iPad constituted 5% of all mobile web traffic consumption on launch day.
In fact, they’re selling so fast that Apple has been forced to delay the international launch of iPad (just six days after insisting the launch would not be delayed by US success).
It’s interesting to note how important new iPad apps are in driving iPad sales. Folks continue to underestimate apps. Read more
Invite (or, what’s the opposite of a Fail Whale?)
We asked our friend Yiying Lu to make for us the opposite of the Fail Whale for our wedding invitation.
She calls her new design “Win Penguins”
We combined the new and the old when we got engaged on Twitter. I asked Laura to marry me on bended knee with ring in one hand, iPhone in the other, in a room that included many friends as witness. In the same way, our invitations include Yiying’s new design and Laura hand-wrote the text of each one with a fountain pen. They were mailed last week.
Thanks, Yiying! (And thanks to our friend Bob Meyer of Galaxy Press for printing them.)
UPDATE
Our friends at Laughing Squid blogged about our wedding invite, then Mashable.com posted about it, as did Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop, and the Huffington Post, too.
First AT&T 3G MicroCell Review (tested at two homes in San Francisco)
AT&T 3G Microcell
Yesterday I read on Mobile Crunch that the AT&T 3G MicroCell went on sale. I ran out and bought the last available one from the AT&T Store nearest me. I’ve tested it in two San Francisco homes and can report on how it works for me.
The theory is great. I pay AT&T an extra $150 to fix service that I’m already paying more than $100 a month for. They give me a cute little orange and white box by CISCO that connects to my broadband internet and makes a micro cell site out of my house. Voila, a little bubble of reliable service in the wasteland that is trying to make iPhone voice calls in San Francisco.
Or so I hoped. Read more
iPhone hype and App hype exceeded by results: iTablet / iSlate to match it?
Along with all the hype before the first iPhone was released, I added my voice, noting that it would forever change the mobile phone business in important ways. I camped in line to be among the first to get one. There was enormous hype. Yet, in the two and a half years since, more change happened than most hype predicted.
When the iPhone app store was announced, I predicted that even the most optimistic scenarios projected by analysts were likely to fall short of the mark. It seems that apps have also changed more than even the hype suggested — they were off by even more than I’d thought.
So what will become of the Tablet that Apple announces this morning? Is it possible that the hype will be exceeded only by the results? Read more
Check your plan: new lower cell voice rates not automatic
You’ve probably seen the ads: both AT&T and Verizon have dropped their rates for unlimited voice plans to $69.99 per month. But if you aren’t already on an unlimited plan, you may be paying more for less until you take action.
For example, I was on an $89 voice plan that gave me 1350 minutes a month with rollover. AT&T was going to happily keep charging me $20 per month extra indefinitely. (I effectively had unlimited minutes already — with text and data becoming my dominant means of communication, I had accumulated tens of thousands of rollover minutes.)
$69.99 per month for unlimited voice -- but I had to go online to make the change
I went online to login and make the change to my account. In approximately 90 seconds total, I switched and am now paying $69.99 per month for unlimited voice.
So now my iPhone costs $120 per month ($30 data plan and $20 unlimited texting) before taxes and fees (and apps!). Read more
2010 Year of the App Phone (Android vs. iPhone vs. WebOS)
2008 and 2009 were all about the iPhone. Smartphones were obsolete, nothing else came close. That will be different this year. 2010 is the year of the App Phone.
Last week I looked at the version of a common app on Droid vs. iPhone. The iPhone still won hands down. (Not that a great app couldn’t be delivered on Android, but iPhone has been so much more successful that developers still prioritize it far above the others.) Why will that change this year?
iPhone has the lead in most areas as the most polished and intuitive device with the most apps. But Android and Palm are set to rapidly gain enough market share and maturity of their own to stand up as viable competition.
And they’re all being freed of carrier lock-in. Palm announced WebOS handsets for Verizon. AT&T announced that it will sell Android and WebOS. iPhone may be available on carriers other than AT&T as soon as June. Google has announced its Nexus One, and many more Android handsets are sure to come this year.
For me personally, this means a big change. I am, afterall, the guy who camped at the front of all three previous iPhone lines. Read more
It’s time to end TSA-sponsored terrorism in the air and on American soil!
In nearly three years on Twitter, rarely have I seen such widespread, rapid and uniform response to anything having to do with politics, security or terrorism. The complaints and jokes came on rapid fire this afternoon, filling my screen with everything TSA and terrorism. It was a slow Twitter day, but perhaps 10% of the tweets I saw over a few hours were on a single topic — that’s unprecedented.
After a failed terrorist attempt yesterday, the TSA has responded with the next escalation after their previous high-water mark of stupidity (no pun intended), the no-liquids rule. Now: no more electronics in flight, nothing in your lap, only one carry on, and no movement in the last hour of flight. Many of those I follow on Twitter are frequent travelers, most are highly intelligent. All who’ve commented seem pissed (and not just that they won’t be able to pee).
They know the real impact of what security expert Bruce Schneier calls Security Theater (if you don’t like that link to his blog, try this one to 60 Minutes, even if they haven’t read his latest reaction.
My first reaction was When I stop flying, it doesn’t mean the terrorists have won, it means the TSA has! Read more
About Dale
Entrepreneur and Advisor.
Founder, LeanScale.
Partner, SF AppStudio.I've been a software engineer, a rocket scientist, a CEO, an author, editor and publisher, a personal trainer (to movie stars, Olympic and professional athletes), and helped build a couple of mobile and Internet ad agencies.
Yeah, I was also the guy at the front of the iPhone line; all three times. iPad, too.
I write about startups, business, technology (especially mobile, social and web), and sometimes I review the gadgets I love to play with.
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