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Instagram is the new, hot start-up everyone is talking about nowadays.
Today, the blogosphere is abuzz because of its exponential increase of users (maybe more than a million now) and for other reasons.
Why is everyone talking about it?
First of all, Instagram may be the first international, social mobile experience.
You might ask me about Foursquare. Well, I’ll tell you that, unfortunately, Foursquare isn’t great. I can’t understand why so many people are talking about it and can’t find what is its utility. Foursquare seems to be mainly used by Americans and not by many Europeans (I live in Paris). And I also think that there is a problem with geolocation applications in general. Anyway, a recent Pew Study everyone was talking about the other day explains that only 4% of adults are “checking-in”.
Let’s be honest; I’m on Facebook, I don’t mind about rigorous privacy and my problem with geolocation isn’t about that. I agree that geolocation might be the future but there’s a disease striking the valley. Everyone is building a geolocation service: Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook and the stranger one? SCVNGR. Dude, recheck your start-up’s name. Stop this madness.
Places will be a moderate success. Facebook did not “educate” us on geolocation, their communication for this feature was disastrous and I feel like nobody’s using it—if they implement innovative features and thoroughly teach people how to use it, it may become mainstream. I’m not inducing that people are stupid nor that Facebook users are stupid. How we can measure the success of Places really depends on how Facebook defines success for Places. Must everybody who owns a smartphone use Places? However, it may be too soon to tell.
Let’s come back to Instagram.
Instagram will succeed for a few but vital reasons. I think that although Foursquare has the lead, Instagram will quickly come back.
- The first of Instagram’s advantages is that it appeals to another sense and stimulates it. I’m not going to dig deep into psychology’s role, but I think that the fact that we see actual photos of our friends is more interesting that seeing that he (or she) checked-in at the mall. It may need another social layer but my hopes are becoming reality. They are building a feature that could allow you to follow a friend, comment on photos and have a profile.
- Instagram has a very simple goal. Photo sharing. Sharing photos is way more explicit than checking-in to someplace because you might get a discount and a virtual badge. What do you do after checking-in? With Instagram, you share your enhanced (through filters) photos with your friends. Showing-off plays a huge part in this success. I understood Instagram’s goal directly. I’m still figuring out why Foursquare will ever be useful.
- Instagram is beautiful. This is undeniable. The quality of the application is incredible and the filters are just great.
- Finally Instagram has a wider range than any other application on the iPhone. Potentially everybody already took a photo with the iPhone and any Facebook user probably has shared a photo. Anyone would be up and going with Instagram in no time. People would already have photos in their Photos app and would upload a photo very easily. It’d be fun and entertaining.
But is Instagram useful? Foursquare may give you the opportunity to find deals at local businesses. But Instagram doesn’t have to be useful in the sense of productivity or matters of money. It just has to be entertaining in order to be successful. Ever heard of Zynga?
Now, how could they be successful?
In the first place, they have to open up a little. I mean they have to create profiles, allow more control over the web. Add more filters, stay beautiful.
Yet there will be a time when they will also have to find how to be profitable—but as we all know, becoming profitable means to kill the cool factor and that, ladies and gentlemen, would be a shame.
RockMelt is a browser customization based on Chromium, the project behind Google Chrome. It has its own application. But do we really need a social browser?
Why did they create RockMelt?
With RockMelt, we’ve re-thought the user experience because a browser and should be about more than simply navigating Web pages. Today, the browser connects to your world. Why not build your world right into your browser?
Yes, indeed, this is a great idea. You should be able to do things you do on your browser much more efficiently. Sharing a link to Facebook and Twitter would be quicker with RockMelt. But do you really need it?
Are you really active on three different social networks? Do you tweet every two seconds and update your Facebook status every minute? If sharing a link, updating a status and upload a photo is what you do all day long, you might like RockMelt.
However, I think that RockMelt may find a path towards a mild success. The UI work is appreciable but putting too much options just blurs the simplicity of the browser. RockMelt will appeal to social media freaks but not to a regular Web surfer. And frankly, I’d rather have a minimalistic browsing experience than a rich—yet cluttered one.
Blekko has launched Sunday and people are wrongly wondering whether it is a Google killer.
This summer, I wrote a tiny article stating an important fact (concerning Blekko). It does not want to kill Google. It does not want to compete with Google, it is trying to improve search.
Henry Blodget, from SAI thinks it is doomed. It may be but his arguments are false.
1. For the most part, search isn’t broken.
Blekko is not meant to fix it.
2. When search IS broken, the problem is usually not Demand Media content. It’s because the question you’re asking generally isn’t well-suited to being answered by algorithmic search.
Man or Ash? People ask what they feel is the most intuitive query. Yes, they adapt their questions to algorithms but anyway, this argument is wrong.
3. Normal people haven’t the faintest idea what “slashtags” are or why they would ever want to use them.
Normal people want to ask Google: where is my grandson? If change is innovative, people will adapt.
Now, what does doomed mean? Doomed like Cuil?
Yes, if it is easy to learn. How does it work?
The screen is divided into four quadrants with an X. You begin at the center. Moving into each quadrant selects one of eight characters. A clockwise or counterclockwise movement cuts that character list in half. Then, one, two, three, or four “clicks” through each sector selects the first, second, third, or fourth character. In practice, each gesture amounts to a partial circle.
Since it seems that Apple wasn’t clear enough while unveiling the MacBook air and explaining its purposes, if you feel curious today, here’s a batch of interesting reads to clearly understand its raison d’être.
Gizmodo thinks (and rightfully so) that the new MacBook Air is the death of the MacBook Pro.
No, I’m not trying to attract visitors by saying this (it’s not my headline) but I think that in the future, there will be a clear separation between portable Macs. We will have portable workstations and light notebooks. The 13-inch MacBook Pro will be radically changed and the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pros will become the aforementioned workstations.
Marco Arment has another vision.
And if you want to know everything about these notebooks, just follow AppleInsider’s exhaustive review.
There is something they have to understand rather quickly.
Attention to detail is essential. I am deeply sorry, but I have to make the connection with Apple. It seems that Apple has no problem in designing things; what they produce is widely as being at the edge of industrial design. And what they produce is bought by millions. Although Apple is growing, day after day, this attention to detail continues to be one of the brand’s signature.
Samsung does not know how to design stuff. Let’s not talk about how they name their products—before the Galaxy S, they named the Player: SGH-F480—and talk about the way they design their products.
This is the Samsung Player. It was released in June 2008. One year after the iPhone. Why am I talking about this?
Let’s it rotate it and place the iPhone 3G next to it.
Ok. Now, let’s view their invitation to their November event.
What’s with the stocks? This is such a flawed invitation I can’t even talk about it.
Finally. Great looking phone, great looking OS. It only needs developers. So please guys, develop for Web OS.
Apple announced a new MacBook Air, a new version of Mac OS X and iLife ’11. But they also announced a new philosophy.
Their hardware vision of the future is the MacBook Air they made. Flash storage, (lighter, safer) high-resolution display, important graphics processor and so forth. My first impression is that it is great, but I don’t like the MacBook Air. They aren’t powerful. Steve, we didn’t ask for an iPad with an actual keyboard, we asked for a multitasking-capable machine. We’ll see. I don’t think that the next MacBook Pros are going to go through the flash memory treatment, but it’s just an early opinion.
Their software vision of the future is iOS. iOS meets OS X. Multi-touch gestures, on the trackpad and the Mouse—which has finally become useful. As you probably think, the Mac App Store is a broken promise. It’s not because Steve said that there won’t be a Mac App Store that only allows approved apps. So, the Mac App Store (MAS) will probably be a great experience and more certainly a place where you can buy quality software for relatively low prices.
The real thing is the trackpad. The future is there. Both hardware and software use it and this is where everything will happen.
This is funny. The Economist has published an interesting chart showing iPad’s retail price throughout the world. Just like the Big Mac index. With Apples.
It everything works as they say, this would be one great, great innovation.
Three days ago, Motorola unveiled the Droid Pro. And why is this important?
Finally, Android surpassed Apple in the U.S.
I strongly believe that we can foresee what will happen between the iPhone and Android. Android will definitely surpass the iPhone and the iPhone will become the Mac of smartphones but it will still have its intrinsic shininess—with advantages related to this position.
Now, Motorola takes the first step in the right, new direction, attack RIM. And apparently, they did well.
