Best of 2009: Music January 13, 2010
Posted by David Card in Digital Home & Personal Tech, Media.Tags: top ten
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It may not be in time for Christmas, but here’s my “best of” list. You’ve been warned.
I didn’t make as many new discoveries this year as last, but for some reason, I bought a lot more. Probably had something to do with getting a new Mac with more disk space, and even more to do with Amazon’s $5 album sales.
I bought about 65 albums (and only a few singles), for prices ranging between $1.99 and $11 or $12. My mix was about 40% new versus back catalog – same as last year - and only 15% physical versus digital. My total spending and digital changeover rates are way above that of the normal American. Count me among the 15% or so of US adults that Jupiter calls “aficionados” – heavy spenders ($300) and active in digital music activities. And now, in no particular order:
Best Albums of 2009
- Girls “Album” – Eclectic alternative hit-machine
- The Decemberists “Hazards of Love” – Prog-rock concept album
- Wilco “Wilco” – A little mellow but very catchy
- Phoenix “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix” – French hipster pop
- Tegan and Sara “Sainthood” – Canadian post-feminist pop
- Ben Harper “White Lies for Dark Times” – (Mostly) rockin’ blues
- U2 “No Line on the Horizon” – Not a bad comeback for the nth time
- Dead Weather “Horehound” – Indie super-group
- Muse “The Resistance” – Picking up the mantle of…Queen?
- Japandroids “Post-Nothing” – Fierce
I almost squeezed in We Were Promised Jetpacks’ “These Four Walls” – how could you not love that name? – but they’re a little too much like Frightened Rabbit wannabes OD-ing on U2. Chuck Prophet’s “Let Freedom Ring” is also a great rootsy effort. And dear god, I am turning indie, aren’t I?
Devices and Platforms: Special-Purpose vs. General-Purpose January 8, 2010
Posted by David Card in Digital Home & Personal Tech, Media.Tags: Amazon, Apple, devices, gadgets
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Two articles in the Journal today – both CES summings up, on e-books and on Internet TVs – along with that looming product announcement from Cupertino, got me thinking about the pros and cons of general-purpose versus special-purpose devices and platforms. When you’re evaluating the evolution of things like PCs vs. netbooks vs. tablets vs. e-books vs. game consoles vs. TV sets vs. smartphones – you’re all doing that, right? – don’t forget a few planks for your frameworks:
- General-purpose doesn’t always beat special. See consoles vs. PCs for gaming
- “Open” doesn’t always beat closed-loop. Ditto, and TV set-tops and phones, so far
- GP advantages: flexibility, leveraging existing bases of apps or other ecosystem elements
- Special-purpose advantages: optimization
Let’s dwell on that special-purpose device optimization angle for a few bullets:
- User interface/experience: a Tivo is a better video program guide than a PC, but it’s pretty lousy for managing your music collection. And look how well Windows works on phones
- Cost: some things are better off without the Wintel tax, and hardware and software licensing and costs can aim for optimal tradeoffs
- Form-factor: some things need to fit in your pocket; and do you really need an 11″ color screen to read a book?
Does this mean I think e-books will beat tablets or smartphones? Not necessarily. I’ve been a Kindle user for over 18 months, and I’m a huge fan. I occasionally use my iPhone to read Kindle books, but will never default that way. But I doubt $250 e-books are ever going to be mainstream consumer products. And as James McQuivey tweeted earlier, there’s still a lot of innovation coming.
Likewise, Michael Gartenberg correctly tweeted that we should all remember that e-books aren’t just about devices, but their surrounding ecosystems. Regular readers will remember the old “platform” definition.
JupiterResearch defines a “platform” as a set of core technologies and services that other applications and services, from other companies, can use. These core technologies often include application-programming interfaces, file formats, user interface elements, and, these days, syndicated Web services. Google extends the notion of platform to include revenue streams or business models – for example, paid search and keyword-based contextual advertising – that partners can plug into. Platforms spawn economic ecosystems and feedback loops, and are solidified by habitual usage. Successful ecosystems must offer value to all links: user, partner, and platform provider. Paid search epitomizes that kind of win/win/win situation.
Here’s a behind-the-paywall link to an oldie but goodie on Google’s platform approach back in the day. And Barry Parr applied the concept to understanding online media networks.
What do you think? Am I all wet on the value of specialization?
A Prodigal Returns February 4, 2009
Posted by David Card in Digital Home & Personal Tech, Media, Microsoft.add a comment
Ah, good, Michael’s back. (Added to blogroll.) Michael Gartenberg and I worked together at Jupiter Research. He’s a smart consumer tech analyst; we would argue productively over whether Microsoft should buy Yahoo, etc.
I’ll quote his three laws:
1. You can sell 50,000 of anything.
2. If Gartenberg sees a product at a demo and doesn’t offer his credit card for purchase immediately, the product is doomed.
3. Even if Gartenberg does offer his credit card, the product may well still be doomed as Gartenberg is part of the 50,000 that will buy anything.
Who Says Middle America Hasn’t Joined the 21st Century? December 16, 2007
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You can buy e-book readers from kiosks in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. And iPods, too, even with all that Sony branding.
Who Needs Another Browser…Oh, I Get It June 11, 2007
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Ah, the irony of one of the world’s greatest phat-client software companies telling developers that server-side apps are the way to go. Of course, that makes tremendous sense when you’re talking about apps for phones.
More important, Apple, like any good platform company, is trying to create developer lock-in a virtuous-circle ecosystem for the iPhone. Make no mistake, that’s why Safari is being ported to Windows. If you want to run on the iPhone, build to Safari. And we’ll get you an instant user base, not that Safari has that many users (even Jobs only claims 5 percent share). ‘Cause we’re sure not letting you actually run on our device, or get distribution for some core technologies and services, not like Yahoo and Google get.
As a Safari user at home, I can assure you that I get better AJAX, Javascript, whatever you want to call Web 2.0, app support on Firefox running on my Mac than I do on Safari. Web apps that suffer on the current version of Safari include, umm, Yahoo Mail and Gmail, just for instance. Not that I’m saying anything. (But oh, does Safari boot fast and render fonts prettily…) But perhaps that app support will improve, since the iPhone is today’s hot device. It’s all very virtuous, you see.
Colleague Michael Gartenberg connects all the dots, and suggests Safari will become part of the iTunes distribution (just like QuickTime). iTunes, now that’s a platform with some users. The NY Times’ John Markoff, seemingly alone among MSM, makes the Safari-iPhone-developer connection explicit, though he buries his lede.
Here’s Hoping Some Rumors Are True June 11, 2007
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If only. Gee, maybe this will fix the fact that Gmail hasn’t been POP-ing my mail to Apple Mail for, oh, about the last 3 months. I mean, come on, that — and practically unlimited storage — is the only reason I use Gmail….
Colleague Michael Gartenberg is holding down the frontline.
What Every 15-Year-Old Wants in His Bedroom May 30, 2007
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Not what I’d call “social,” but still…
- Genevieve Bell, an Intel senior researcher and anthropologist who studies how different cultures view technology, says many designers haven’t caught up to the way PCs are increasingly used for entertainment and networking. “People are inherently quite social,” she says. “The challenge is, how do we make designs that echo that.”
Oh well, Microsoft’s making tables. UPDATED And colleague Michael Gartenberg calls it magic…
More Clubs I Don’t Think I Want to Be a Member of May 7, 2007
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But would they mock you or merely nod knowingly at Kim’s Video? It might vary by clerk.
And this is certainly no sillier than the Times not guffawing at the idea of a softball team with an MVNO.
Some Answers? May 2, 2007
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I know Michael’s being provocative. But maybe I can provoke some debate too.
Isn’t it pretty simple?
- A Television is the biggest screen in your house. It’s for entertainment.
- A Personal Computer is a thing with a keyboard that’s optimized to be a programmable, general-purpose device, but primarily to run Office and access the interweb. (And btw, adding the online is the only thing that’s ever changed.)
- A Telephone is a thing that’s optimized to make and receive voice calls. (Yeah, now it’s portable.)
Which of these is most likely to adopt a few functions of the others? I’d bet phone, since it’s the mobile one.
Which ones will “converge”? Well, each of them — or, really, none of them — but they’ll each still be optimized for the primary function.
I’m pretty sure Michael agrees with that, though he’s been changing his tune on multifunction devices since he got seduced by the iPhone. Yeah, that mobile “phone” you can’t even use can barely use one-handed.
Unidirectional Technology Adoption? April 13, 2007
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We’ve just posted a report on teen technology adoption that showed a fascinating pattern. Our surveys show that older teens adopt new technologies first, but younger teens quickly follow.
What’s intriguing about this is that the reverse pattern does not hold for adults. Young adults, ages 18-24, are the heaviest users of new technologies and Internet communications media — they’re even earlier adopters than teens. But in most cases, that usage gap doesn’t really close for older adults, even though the younger ones eventually age into the older categories.
Of course, generational changes really do take a generation — 20 years or so — to play out. But the rapid dispersal of adoption appears to be one-way.
