This guy writes a lot of great stuff. I surfed over to his
site after reading a couple good messages [1] of his on the
decentralization list, and found this excellent article:
http://www.shirky.com/writings/communication_stupid.html
> Its Communication, Stupid
>
> To hear the makers of internet-enabled phones tell it, content is
> going to be king again, because mobile phone subscribers are
> clamoring for expensive new ways of getting headline news. The
> feature list for wireless devices reads like a re-hash of every
> 'content provider' press release of the last five years: Travel
> Updates. Stock quotes. Health tips. And of course all of this
> great content is supposed to lead to a rise in M-Commerce, a
> re-hash of E-Commerce. Many wireless analysts have bought this
> line, and are annointing future winners already, based on their
> perceived ability to deliver cutting edge content like sports
> scores (now _there's_ a brainstorm). The telcos obviously haven't
> asked what their customers want in a wireless device, and when
> they finally do ask, they are going to be in for a rude shock,
> because most of their customers aren't desperate for packaged
> content, no matter how 'dynamic' it is. It seems strange to point
> this out to the Nokia's and Sprint's of the world, but the thing
> users want to do with a communications device is communicate, and
> communicate with each other, not with Proctor and Gamble or the
> NBA. Stranger still, the killer wireless app is already out
> there, and its driving the adoption of a wireless device which
> isn't just another mobile phone+WAP browser combo. The killer app
> is email, and the device in question is a pager on steroids
> called the Blackberry, manufactured by RIM (Research in Motion).
I think I've heard of Blackberry before, but don't remember looking
at it closely.
Hmm... apparently Blackberry/RIM was covered in some detail on
FoRK back in June [2], but I hadn't read it yet.
Wow, RIM is from Waterloo, Canada, and currently has an $8.3B USD
market cap. I wonder how I failed to notice this company earlier.
It would've made a great investment if you managed to stick with it
through the massive drop last summer.
http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=rimm&d=b
According to my HTTP archive, I read about it in this article on
Nov 22 1999:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-1461392.html
and according to my IRC log I read about it again in this one on
Apr 11 2000:
http://yahoo.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-1679580.html
My memory sure does suck. Fortunately I have all these archives
to back me up :)
Anyway, here are their main web sites:
http://www.rim.net/
http://www.blackberry.net/
It seems to cost around $400-$500 USD to purchase a device, then
$40 USD/mo. for "always on" service... kind of expensive, but
probably well worth it if you would get a lot of use out of it.
Unfortunately it seems to use some kind of proprietary syncing
system instead of doing IMAP or something similarly useful.
The one thing that sucks about working from home is that I have
no need for fun toys like this any more, since I have no more
commutes wasting my time. ;)
back to Shirky's article:
> Building a usable wireless device is complicated, and the
> Blackberry gets a lot of things right -- it gets around the form
> factor problem of ideal size by offering both a pager-sized
> version and a PDA-sized version; it provides a surprisingly
> usable thumb-sized keyboard to speed text input; and it offers
> always-on connection at flat-rate prices. But the thing that
> really has gadget-loving CEOs addicted to it is access to the
> only thing really worth paying for: their own email. No matter
> what the press releases say, mobile internet access is about
> staying in touch, and travelling executives have a much greater
> need to stay in touch with colleagues and family than with CNN or
> ESPN. RIM has gotten it right where the current vendors of
> wireless devices have it wrong, by realizing that email is the
> core interactive service and everything else is an add-on, not
> the other way around.
>
> Despite email's status as the net's most useful application, it
> has a long history of being underestimated. In the earliest days
> of DARPANET, email was an afterthought, and caught its designers
> by surprise when it quickly became the most popular service on
> the nascent net. Fast forward to the early 90's, when Prodigy set
> about raising the price of its email services in order to get
> people to stop wasting time talking to each other so they could
> start shopping, and got caught by surprise when many users
> defected to AOL. And just this June eMarketer.com expressed some
> puzzlement at the results of a Pricewaterhousecoopers survey,
> which found that teens were going online primarily to talk to one
> another via email, not to shop. (Have these people never been to
> a mall?) The surprise here is that phone companies would make
> the same mistake, since phones were invented to let people
> communicate. How could the telcos have spent so many billions of
> dollars creating wireless services which underplay the
> communications capabilities of the phone?
>
> There are several answers to that question, but they can all be
> rolled into one phrase: media envy. Phone companies are trying to
> create devices which will let them treat people as captive media
> subscribers, rather than as mere customers. Email is damaging to
> this attempt in several ways: The email protocol can't be owned.
> It is difficult to insert ads without being instrusive. It allows
> absolute interoperability between customers and non-customers.
> Worst of all, telcos can't charge sponsors for access to their
> user base if those users are more interested in their email than
> headline news. The phone companies hope to use their ability to
> charge by the byte or minute to recreate the 'pay for content'
> model which has failed so miserably on the wired net, and they
> don't want to run into any Prodigy-style problems of users
> preferring email to for-fee content on the way, especially as
> serious email use requires the kind of keyboard and screen its
> difficult to fit into a phone. Vendors of mobile phones are
> committed to text-based content rather than text-based
> communication in large part because that's what its easy to make
> a phone do.
>
> The Nokia's and Sprint's of the world made a strategic
> miscalculation by hyping the current generation of WAP phones as
> 'wireless internet', Users understand that the most important
> feature of the internet is email, and it is a pipe dream to
> believe that users will care more about receiving packaged
> content than news from home. As with the development of the wired
> internet, communications will lead the growth of content and
> commerce in the wireless space, not follow it. The RIM devices
> are by no means perfect, but unlike WAP phones they create in
> their users the kind of rapt attention usually reserved for
> Gameboy addicts, by giving them something of real value. Ignore
> the wireless analysts who don't get that wireless devices are
> primarily communications tools. Bet against any service that
> assumes users are eager to pay to find out what the weather is
> like in Sausalito. Bet on any service that makes wireless email
> easier to use, because whoever makes email easier will earn their
> users undying loyalty, and everything else will follow from that.
yeah!
footnotes:
[1]
http://www.egroups.com/message/decentralization/590
http://www.egroups.com/message/decentralization/595
which includes this line:
As they say at the Media Lab "Anything you can do, I can do meta."
-- Clay Shirky
mid:
[email protected]
http://www.egroups.com/message/decentralization/595
(media lab!? Cool quote except for that part.)
[2] good FoRKposts on Blackberry/RIM:
http://www.xent.com/april00/1403.html
http://www.xent.com/april00/1407.html
http://www.xent.com/april00/1424.html
http://www.xent.com/april00/1431.html
(each of these are well worth reading if you haven't
already seen them on FoRK.)
--
Gerald Oskoboiny <
[email protected]>
http://impressive.net/people/gerald/