I spoke with Nokia’s Ira Frimere (Portfolio Manager for North America) and Joseph Gallo (Communications Specialist) about Nokia smartphones (what else?) in this podcast. ZDNet/NokiaExpert.com’s Matt Miller was scheduled to join us but was unable to because of technical issues.
Monthly Archives: April 2009
Video Farewell to the Sony PSP Universal Media Disk (UMD)
The Sony PSP UMD is apparently being abandoned with the release of the next generation PSP expected in June. Here’s my not-very-fond video farewell to an oddball storage format. Sony seems to specialize in odd storage formats, btw. Remember:
– Beta tape (actually excellent quality but overtaken by VHS)
– Mini-disc
– Memory Stick
And, perhaps Blu-Ray discs may join this group soon.
Flurry Marketing VP Sets the Record Straight About Their Study on Developer Platform Choices
I wanted to bubble up this response from Flurry Marketing VP Peter Farago since I was pretty hard on another blogger’s interpretation of a Flurry report.
Hi all,
I work for Flurry, and completely agree that this is not a randomly selected, statistically significant sample. It clearly suffers from self-selection bias. Also, it’s worth noting that Flurry never positioned this data as a scientific study, but rather simply rolling up and presenting the data we were seeing so others could consume it. However, we believe there are things that can be learned from the data.
Regarding not including Windows Mobile, Symbian (and Palm and BREW for anyone counting) in our roll-up, it’s simply because we don’t support those platforms. We shipped our analytics to support iPhone, Android, Blackberry and JavaME. We chose to hold off on the others due to the lack of demand from the developer community. We spoke with dozens of developers before we started building our service, and with many more since. To us, it seemed that the four platforms we covered matched what our customers wanted. We’d be happy to support other platforms, and it’s relatively easy for us to do, since the back end is built in a way that knocking out additional SDK’s for those is not a major issue. So we’re happy to do so, but just waiting for the right amount of demand (based on our POV of the market).
What we think this could show is where the development community is spending its time. They are putting a significant amount of resources toward the iPhone vs. other platforms. We get very, very few requests to support WinMo. We do get more for Symbian, but primarily from Europe (which makes sense), but not quite as much as we would have once expected. And JavaME apps do run on the Symbian platform, so where the developer is using the J2ME app for S60, we could run there.
Another issue I’d like to volunteer regarding the data is that with WinMo, Symbian, JavaME and Blackberry (two of which we cover) distribution of those applications primarily goes through the carrier channel. So if a developer wants to add an analytics solution to an existing app, she would have to go through the whole carrier submission and approval process all over again. Anyone who has dealt with carriers directly (I have my scars) knows this is challenging. Updating apps for iPhone and Android is very easy, relatively speaking. This could account for the proportions of support for iPhone and Android as well.
Peter Farago
VP Marketing
www.flurry.com
http://blog.flurry.com
http://twitter.com/FlurryMobile
Originally posted as a comment by Peter Farago on mediabistro.com: MobileContentToday using Disqus.
Windows 7 Beta 35 Second Boot on Asus Eee PC 1000HA Netbook
Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix took about 36 seconds to boot to the Ubuntu login screen on an Acer Aspire One netbook with 512MB RAM and a 8GB SSD. This time I recorded the boot time of Windows 7 Beta booting to the login screen on an Asus Eee PC 1000HA netbook with 1GB RAM and a 160GB hard drive. It took about 35 seconds.
Of course, Windows gets really busy after the login process with anti-spyware, anti-virus, and bunches of different app update background processes. So, it takes about another 30+ seconds to settle down.
Booting Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix Not Faster From a Hard Disk
My UNR Acer Aspire One boot time post over on MobileContentToday.com got a response from Chris. He tried it on a Acer Aspire One retrofitted with a 30GB hard drive. Unfortunately, it looks like the boot time is slow even switching from a Solid State Drive (what my Aspire One has) to an HD.
Hi Todd,
I’ve installed a 30Gb hard drive in my A110, so I installed 9.04 NBR last night and measured boot time to see if it was much faster. I measured from power on to when the desktop appears (auto login) and I got 65 seconds – with a further 5 for the wireless to connect. So that’s 70 total, then perhaps another 10 or more seconds to start Firefox – not great!The distro is definitely the best I have tried yet though, in terms of hardware support. The right-hand memory card reader doesn’t work properly but the left-hand one is fine.
Chris.
Originally posted as a comment by chrisdowey on mediabistro.com: MobileContentToday using Disqus.
Ubuntu Netbook Remix: Odd Google Calendar SSL Problem
Ran into a weird problem with Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix + Firefox 3 + Google Calendar. As you can see above, Google Calendar does not render if I use HTTPS (SSL for a secure connection) with the site. However, it renders fine if SSL encryption is NOT used (plain ol’ HTTP). I don’t see think on Firefox running on Fedora Linux, Windows XP/Vista/7, or Mac OS X when using HTTPS. Very odd…