Negative Approach

Twitter largely reminds me of when people started to register their own names for domains, turning the Internet into a giant customized license plate. It's somewhere between self-expression and mental onanism.

I use it to track several news sites but following other "people" often makes me feel weird. Most of the content seems like therapy for those who don't spend enough time with others. From a technology perspective, I find it really interesting and useful to an extent. But is this online stream of consciousness a marketing tool?

There are some great users like the guys from RedMonk (monkchips, cote, sogrady), who have gotten so used to Twittering everything that it's like having them in the room. And their content is interesting and funny. It's a great branding tool for them and theoretically should be for others as well.

Personally, I use Twitter (daveofdoom) to entertain my other idiot friends, and I forced our marketing team (mulejockey) to do it too as an experiment. It's definitely not a replacement for a blog even if you can communicate anything with just 140 characters.

Over on Mashable, Andy Beal outlines "5 Twitter Tactics for Building a Stellar Brand":

1. Start conversations with notable peers
2. Share valuable industry news
3. Build your blog audience
4. Stay connected at conferences and trade shows
5. Monitor your Twitter reputation

Conversation or crap? You decide.

GoGrid has gotten a lot more interesting over the last few months, going from what we had previously called Utility Computing to more of a full-on Cloud approach.

GoGrid delivers true "Control in the Cloud" by combining many of the familiar features of dedicated server or managed hosting with the flexibility and scalability of cloud server hosting

GoGrid REST API

(Credit: GoGrid)

At the core of REST (representational state transfer) is the concept of resources which are assigned a global identifier (a URI) allowing said resources to be utilized through standard interfaces. The poor man's (non-geek) explanation is that REST lets you interact with almost anything through HTTP.

It's pretty interesting to see the smaller, bleeding edge vendors figure this stuff out before the BigCo's. This should put some pressure on those who still seem to be missing the Cloud blimp.

Via TechcrunchIT

Boy Genius Report just published a detailed comparison of the Blackberry Bold vs. iPhone 3G.

The short version:

It really comes down to what you need more in a phone. While the Bold certainly has improved media and other consumer features, it really is a business device at the end of the day. The iPhone 3G is a consumer device that happens to play nice with a lot of corporations, and we honestly think you won't find many people dropping their BlackBerrys for an iPhone. They'll carry both as long as they can afford it.

With zero fanfare Google quietly slipped new features into their Docs suite. It's like CSI Silicon Valley when you use their tools.

Google Docs save as PPT

(Credit: Google Docs)

The new templates are not the most beautiful, but just having them available will make Google Apps a lot more appealing for non-techie business users. Beyond templates, users can now upload, preview and share PDFs, save files as PPT, drag and drop cells and use new chart types.

Despite the many hiccups I've had with Google Apps, the products are definitely getting better. And as MS Office continues to bloat and get weirder (that ribbon thing is cuckoo) the alternatives are closer to meeting broad needs.

Let us all dare to dream that anything from Google will ever graduate beyond Beta.

Via Lifehacker

While we all discuss the new iPhone endlessly, AllThingsD has a nice set of tips for Blackberry users (of which I am one.)

Odds are that sophisticated users already know the keyboard shortcuts, but I had never heard of this trick to see the event log.

One way to impress a technophile on a date is by pulling up a BlackBerry's Event Log. To do this, go to the Home screen and hold down ALT while typing "LGLG." This retrieves a long list of numerous confusing codes representing the functions that were performed on your device. The Menu screen in the Event Log gives users the option to clear this log, freeing up some BlackBerry memory, while an Options screen lets people set the log up to record only certain kinds of activities.

SAP has announced that it plans to transition all customers to its new Enterprise Support offering starting January 1st, 2009. There's nothing like being stuck on a giant system like SAP with no choice but to pay whatever ransom they ask for.

This reminds me of the time that Hoboken, NJ parking garage didn't want to pay for a 20% license increase and all the cars got trapped.

According to the press release, SAP will incrementally raise support costs up to 22% by 2012: "For example, subject to specific contractual limitations, a typical customer paying 17 percent of maintenance base for SAP Standard Support in 2008 will pay a rate of 18.3 percent of maintenance base for SAP Enterprise Support in 2009."

While this feels like sneaky attempt to raise prices (see previous post on Oracle) at least they are not raising license fees. There is value in support, though the increased cost doesn't exactly explain what you get for the additional cash.

Via Irregular Enterprise (ZDNet)

This is the second massive SAP mishap this year. First was Waste Management's lawsuit for $100 million, and now Levi's couldn't ship product for an entire week.

Gavin at The Reg caught this story last week but I just saw it on The Guardian. Where's the link, Guardian?

From guardian.co.uk

After a sales and profitability comeback in 2007, the jeans maker was confident going into a tough 2008 that, despite a global slowdown, progress would continue.

But what Levi's was unprepared for was the fact that the company's IT operation could not get its multiyear, multimillion dollar investment in SAP's business software to work optimally.

The situation became so bad that early in the second quarter, the system was shut down completely for a week. On a conference call a few days ago to announce a 98 percent drop in second-quarter profitability, CEO John Anderson said the computer disaster was a "substantial" factor in a 19 percent decline in U.S. sales and the subsequent profit meltdown.

Wow, nothing gets people worked up like talking about Apple vs. anything. For the record, I use a BlackBerry Curve on Verizon and have been BlackBerry loyal for about three years. I just think the iPhone is very compelling in comparison to nearly everything else.

So what will compete with iPhone? The readers speak:

• Samsung i900
• HTC Diamond and the real iPhone killer HTC Touch Pro *coming soon*
• The Sony Xperia *coming soon*
• Why a new entrant? RIM's BlackBerry Curve already holds its own quite well against even the iPhone 3G. The Bold will wipe the floor with it.
• Nothing will challenge the iPhone until Windows Mobile 7 is released. Even then, it might not be enough. There may not be any serious challenge to the iPhone until Windows Mobile 8 in 2010.
• First, Blackberry HAS NO NEED for an "iPhone killer." Second, the Thunder project PREDATES the iPhone. GET THE FACTS STRAIGHT. It's APPLE fighting the uphill battle, not RIM. Argue all you want, it can't change the facts.

I just wrote a piece about how we use Amazon S3 to manage the downloads of Mule Enterprise. Putting a mule on a cloud: one man's battle with Amazon S3 is now up on El Reg.

We had been managing and maintaining multiple archives on multiple servers. After a while, a server crash, a disk blowout, lack of memory or some other fiasco kept reminding us why we hate computers.

This brings us to reason one for liking S3: you can stop buying and maintaining tons of machines - at least for file serving over the internet.

As Apple announced that it sold over 1 million of the new iPhones already (despite the activation debacle), pictures of the new Blackberry "Thunder" have surfaced and so far it looks embarassingly weak.

Admittedly, this isn't the final version and you'll never win me over with Comic Sans, but this just goes to show you how much farther along the iPhone is to anything else in the mobile universe.

This begs a few questions:
1. What device will challenge the iPhone?
Considering Apple already has large market share and the walled/open garden of applications it will be a tough slog for a new entrant.

2. If the functionality of a smartphone outweighs voice abilities is it a good choice?
I've mentioned in the past that AT&T doesn't work particularly well at my house, and that Verizon has come through for me a number of times, but at this point the iPhone is so superior to every other device I wonder if I should just bite the bullet and deal with the occasionally weak coverage.

I feel like maybe its time to give it another shot, but then I remember that just a few years ago the RAZR (which was plagued by bad battery life and running hot) was the hip thing to have.

Crackberry.com via Gizmodo