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Facebook Takes The Fast Lane To Boring

TechCrunch

- 18 hours and 42 minutes ago

I agree with Sam Gustin when he says that yesterday’s Facebook Developer Conference in San Francisco was in the end a snoozer, but not because CEO Mark Zuckerberg failed on stage.

First of all, saying the event itself was sleep-inducing is just factually incorrect. Before and after the keynote they played music so loud that a deaf person would complain. I was alarmed and somewhat panicked by the noise, but certainly not sleepy. And on a more serious note, Zuckerberg himself was much more at ease and charismatic on stage than I’ve ever seen him previously. He’s no Steve Jobs yet, but he’s no slouch, either.

I left the event feeling fairly upbeat about Facebook. They sent a clear message to developers that they need to build compelling apps and learn to play nice. And they created a clear reward and punishment system to deal with both ends of the spectrum.

But I’ve learned that I need period of reflection after these super-shows before I can really digest what happened. And after reflecting, I’m feeling more than a little let down by Facebook’s product focus and ability to execute.

Snatching Mediocrity From The Jaws Of Victory

A year ago Facebook set the Internet on fire with the launch of Facebook Platform. Competitors rushed to respond, and since then Facebook has been on a tear.

Facebook has all the momentum as the worlds largest social network (if not the most valuable), and they’ve always been willing to launch bold and controversial new products that change the way people perceive the company (News Feeds, Platform, Beacon).

Everyone looks to them to see what comes next. When rumors surfaced in May that they were going to announce Facebook Connect, a way for third party sites to integrate their services with Facebook profile data, Google and MySpace rushed to announce their own versions of the product, with nearly identical features and, in the case of Google (Friend Connect), a suspiciously similar name.

But today they were not bold, and they did not act like thought leaders. There was no controversial but exciting new product experiment unleashed on a gushing audience. Instead, there were minor tweaks to a platform that needs a major overhaul.

Facebook Connect, the most exciting new product on the agenda, is still vaporware. A parade of partners came out on stage to talk about all the great things they’ll do when it eventually launches this Fall. Meanwhile, Google’s product is in working alpha, and MySpace has fully launched Data Availability.

The new three tier ranking system for apps, which we first wrote about in March, addresses the problem of black hat developers, but it may create more pain than it’s worth. Developers have long complained that Facebook plays favorites.

More disappointing is what Facebook didn’t announce today. No payments platform, even though developers are begging for a way to make money beyond pitifully-low (and falling) CPM ads.

Nor did Facebook address their now quaint and basically unusable messaging system, even though MySpace paved the way for them by implementing Gears nearly two months ago.

Facebook also didn’t take the opportunity today to make amends with Google and cross-integrate their products. Competition is fine, but users are best served with interoperable products. In effect, Facebook is continuing to tell their users exactly what they can and cannot do with their own data.

Finally, Facebook chastised developers who build slow applications, telling them that they need to speed things up and think about scaling. But user complaints about the slowness of Facebook in general are on the upswing. Perhaps its time for the company to listen to its own advice.

Suddenly Facebook is acting more like a company with lots to lose (and therefore defend) rather than a scrappy young underdog startup looking to shake things up, capture our imagination and change the world. It’s time for them to be audacious again, and take some risk. Otherwise, they risk becoming simply boring. And that’s the fast lane to mediocrity.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Walt Mossberg: Apple's "MobileMe" Is a Dog

Silicon Alley Insider

- 20 hours and 57 minutes ago

Picture 53.png A rare Apple pan from the gadget kingmaker. And a rare flop from the company that can do no wrong. Steve Jobs must be (should be?) demanding someone's head.

Walt:

[It} was a big deal when Apple announced a new service that, for $100 a year, would bring corporate-type synchronization of email, calendars and contacts to anyone. It was even better that Apple promised that the service, called MobileMe, would work on Windows computers as well as on the company's own Macintosh computers, iPhones and iPod Touch hand-helds. To top it off, Apple threw in 20 gigabytes of online storage, a suite of Web-based applications, the ability to synchronize browser bookmarks and an online photo gallery.

Unfortunately, after a week of intense testing of the service, I can't recommend it, at least not in its current state. It's a great idea, but, as of now, MobileMe has too many flaws to keep its promises.

I am not referring to the launch glitches that plagued MobileMe earlier this month, such as servers that couldn't keep up with the traffic and email outages that, for some users, persist as I write this. Those were bad, but they have eased considerably. Apple already has apologized for them and is giving customers an extra 30 days on their subscriptions to make up for the poor start. The problems I am citing are systemic.

The list of problems? Hard to know where to begin:

One big issue is that while changes made on the Web site or the iPhone are instantly pushed to the computers, changes made on computers are only synced every 15 minutes, at best. Apple has admitted that this is a problem, and says it is working on it.

But there's more. The Web site was sluggish, and occasionally calendar entries wouldn't load at all. Sometimes, you have to manually refresh the Web pages to see changes made on your devices. And when I tried to open my Web-based file-storage page directly from the MobileMe control panel on Windows, I got an error message on both Dells.

My MobileMe calendar, which originated on a Mac, didn't flow into the main Outlook calendar, but appeared as a separate calendar in Outlook, which was visible only by changing settings. My address-book groups on the Mac, which are simply distribution lists, didn't show up as distribution lists in Outlook, but as separate address books, and they also weren't immediately visible. Apple blames Outlook quirks for these issues, but in my view, it should have overcome them.

Other problems abounded...

Read the full diss here

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Videocámara con disco duro y Blu-Ray de Hitachi

Xataka

- 1 days and 1 hours ago

Si el formato Blu-Ray ha llegado para hacernos las cosas en teoría más sencillas con la alta definición, sería lógico pensar que este formato tuviera su oportunidad dentro del campo de las videocámaras de alta definición. Sin embargo las tarjetas de memoria y los disco duros o flash se imponen de manera abrumadora. Por una parte tenemos que la confianza en que los discos Blu-Ray se acaben imponiendo de forma tan rotunda como lo han hecho los DVD es poca. Y luego está la apariencia de las videocámaras que optan por este tipo de grabación: feas y toscas, como la que tenéis en la imagen de arriba. Nada que ver con las delgadas y estilosas videocámaras FullHD de tarjetas de memoria. La de arriba es la nueva DZ-BD10H de Hitachi.

Esta videocámara de alta definición usa también un disco duro como elemento de almacenamiento de la información de vídeo. En el caso de este modelo, disponemos de 30 GB de disco duro que complementan a la grabadora de discos Blu-Ray.

De la videocámara DZ-BD10H de Hitachi destacamos también su pantalla de 2.7 pulgadas, la salida HDMI que ya no falta en este tipo de gadgets e incluso le han añadido una ranura para tarjetas de memoria SDHC. ¿Por qué tantas opciones de almacenamiento para obtener una cámara tosca en apariencia?

El sensor de este modelo tiene una resolución de 7 megapíxeles, con zoom óptico de 10 aumentos. Como otros modelos, las posibilidades de calidad de grabación son varias, con una máxima calidad de vídeo de 1.920x1.080 a 15 Mbps, que es mucho.

Su precio estará en la barrera de los 1.000 euros, nada mal para llevar grabadora de Blu-Ray y poder ver el contenido de lo que grabamos directamente en el televisor.

Vía | Akihabaranews.

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Caravane UMP

Holux GPS tracker 007