infoneer-pulse:

Skype is killing long distance, one minute at a time

The Internet is a great deflator, squeezing out the middlemen and lowering prices. The shifting fortunes of Wall Street brokers and travel agents are good examples. However, the Internet’s deflationary impact is on full display in the international long-distance market, where Skype has started to take away any and all growth from the phone companies.

Skype (now a division of Microsoft), which at its very basic level is a people-to-people connectivity service, has become everything the phone companies feared it for. The latest data from research

» via GigaOM

parislemon:

Hard to pick the most ridiculous element of these updated numbers.

Is it that just 0.6% of Android users have Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) two months after it launched?

Is it that of the remaining 99.4%, only 55% are upgraded to Gingerbread (2.3), which came out over a year ago?

Is it that over 30% are stuck on Froyo (2.2) which is 20 months old?

Is it that 8.5% (something like 10 million devices) are stuck on Eclair (2.1), which came out two years ago?

Is it that only 3.3% are using Honeycomb (3.0), which means that all those highly-touted tablets last year are clearly huge flops?

I can’t decide. You choose.

emergentfutures:

Paul Higgins: This is absolutely the right call. Research in Australia shows that hands free use is as bad as hand held and both equate to drunk driving in terms of risk

thedailyfeed:

In its most aggressive recommendation to date, the National Transportation Safety Board called for a complete ban on cell phone use while driving — even hands-free devices.

“We’re not here to win a popularity contest,” said [NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman]. “No email, no text, no update, no call is worth a human life.”

What do you think, Tumblr? Should cell phones be banned while driving? Will it actually stop people from talking on their phones behind the wheel?

shortformblog:

• growth Over the years, Mozilla’s open-source Firefox browser grew from nothing to provide a solid secondary option to Microsoft’s once-dominant Internet Explorer. It funded itself in large part from a multi-year deal it made with Google to make their search the default, allowing Mozilla to…

parislemon:

Jordan Crook reports that Sony COO Phil Molyneux unveiled Sony’s new retail strategy at a press conference this morning. Wait for it… Sony Stores! As Cook notes, the strategy is basically “follow Apple’s lead”.

But I’m confused, wasn’t this also their old retail strategy? It sure sounds like they’re basically doing the same things they were doing with the Sony Style stores but holding a press conference to say the strategy is new because it didn’t work the first time around.

The real problem — which I’m not sure either Sony or Microsoft really understand — is that simply building stores which look like Apple Stores isn’t enough. It’s the Apple products in them that make them successful.

Apple’s strategy with the stores worked because they knew they had the best products, they just had a hard time conveying that with the existing retail channels. The products quite literally sell themselves, they just needed the most efficient and effective way to get them in peoples’ hands.

At the same time, they realized there was a huge opportunity for competent human beings (who don’t work on commission) to usher users into this brave new world of computing everywhere.

It was the perfect one-two punch. That’s the Apple Store. 

But if you open a Apple-like store and your products just aren’t very good, guess what happens? The opposite of success. 

Think of it this way: if you opened the nicest looking store in the world that sold bags of shit, would it be successful?

Focus on the products first, not the stores. 

emergentfutures:

Tumblr Numbers: The Rapid Rise of Social Blogging [INFOGRAPHIC]

Paul Higgins: Apparently I am a Tumblr Addict

Full Story: Mashable

infoneer-pulse:

How did we misread the future so badly? Mind you, this Second Life hype didn’t involve distant, sci-fi predictions about the future. (“Someday we’ll all commute to the moon using unisex RocketCrocs!”) This was just five years ago. We were just months away from the iPhone.

After enduring a lifetime of mega-fads that flame out—the Apple Newton and PointCast and the Segway—why are we so quick to extrapolate a few data points into a Dramatic New Future? Well, here’s the frustrating part: Sometimes the Dramatic New Future arrives, exactly as promised. The mega-hyped Internet? Yep, worked out OK. Ditto Google and Facebook and iPods and iPhones.

This predictive crapshoot is rough on business leaders—your employees are going to bug you, every time, to greenlight the corporate blog. Or the storefront in Second Life. Or the special on Foursquare. Which efforts are worth it? How can you know, for sure, in advance?

» via Slate

futurejournalismproject:

Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors

Ben Mendleson, a masters student at the New School, created this 10-minute documentary on how Internet infrastructure actually works as part of his graduate thesis.

His primary focus, a Manhattan building that houses one of the world’s largest digital nodes.

The Atlantic has a Q&A with him for more.

thenextweb:

Google’s Think Insights (formerly in beta) is a one-stop shop for consumer trends, marketing insights and industry research. The site includes statistics, a research library including videos and infographics, planning tools, and a section for emerging digital trends. (via Google launches “Think Insights”- The Next Web)