No one in the technology space has truly figured out the living room. So says Steve Jobs, as paraphrased by Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer today. Job’s remark came from the Apple earnings call yesterday evening, as part of an admission that Apple itself falls into that “no one” category, too.

The reason why this tough nut hasn’t been cracked is revealed during the rest of the statement, though. Here it is, in its entirety, courtesy of SAI:

I think the whole category is still a hobby right now. I don’t think anybody has succeeded at it and actually the experimentation has slowed down. A lot of the early companies that were trying things have faded away, so I’d have to say that given the economic conditions, given the venture capital outlooks and stuff, I continue to believe it will be a hobby in 2009.

What Jobs fails to realize is that there is significant demand for an engaging livingroom experience which includes digital content. The major telcos and cable companies are currently engaged in a battle for who controls the livingroom experienced, with the telcos attempting to deploy broadband fiber capable of delivering the cable experience, with cable companies trying to horn in on the digital broadband markets while maintaining their position as the dominant provider of livingroom video entertainment.

In their efforts to compete, though, no one’s apparently had the brainstorm that price is a factor for many consumers. While FiOS and Cable bills continue to trend higher when the full entertainment packages are considered.

Meanwhile, literally millions of hours of content for every special interest and niche is created on the Internet on a daily basis (of course of varying quality levels), and only a handful of the devices in most people’s living rooms are equipped to view this content. Given that the economy is supposedly in some sort of tailspin at the moment, you’d think that device manufacturers might see this market as something more than a “hobby” market and more of a real opportunity.

This is the primary reason why Apple hasn’t been able to come up with something that the majority of video consumers would want to put next to their set. Not only are the pricepoints far too high on the devices they do create for these purposes, but they seem to have completely ignored all the variety of ways people use their television for home entertainment.

Apple isn’t alone in this, though they are the most prominent example of how it’s been completely ignored.  Not to beat a dead horse, but one of the most common usages for the TV set is as a baby-sitter of sorts, something I’ve always called the “veg-factor.”

To illustrate the veg-factor, think about the type of media consumption you do in the morning, while you’re getting the kids ready for school, or fixing breakfast in the morning while you’re getting ready for work. Morning show format news-ish programs are designed for this low-engagement, veg-factor consumption. They’re, in large part, designed to be background noise that delivers some entertainment and utility to your morning.

Likewise, in the evening, you come home from work, you switch on the TV and catch the local news or a Seinfeld re-run, and leave the TV on through Wheel of Fortune or whatever reality program du jour is on this season. Most people won’t even touch the remote until prime-time starts. That’s the veg-factor in action.

Think about it. Would you sit on this website right here and watch a game show where people try to guess, for instance, what a Web 2.0 company does just by interpreting it’s vowel-less company name for a full thirty minutes? No, you’d probably turn it off in less than three minutes. But millions of Americans tune in every day so they can have what basically amounts to a made-for-TV version of scrabble play while they eat their dinner.

As of the time of this writing, very few online video website and almost no PVR or media center PC systems really function with this in mind.  The selection of PVR devices that play well with Internet content is pretty low to start with, but when you take that narrow selection and add the criteria that it must have playlists, you’re left with almost nothing to choose from.

Until they start performing in this manner, Internet content won’t ever make the leap to the livingroom in a way that replaces cable or cable-like video delivery. Until companies like Apple stop regarding Internet content creation as a hobby market, they’ll never be able to think in the terms required to pose a serious threat.

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A rumor purporting that Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack, published on CNN’s citizen journalism site iReport, briefly sent shares of Apple in a freefall this morning. While Apple quickly moved to quell the rumor, telling Silicon Alley Insider that the news was simply “not true,” in light of the recent concerns over Steve Jobs’ health, the news was enough to spark a rapid sell-off of the company’s stock.

While it will remain to be seen whether or not this was a deliberate attempt to manipulate Apple stock and make money on the part of the citizen journalist who posted the news, it should be noted that Internet rumors concerning the stock market have existed long before we started calling anonymous Web posters “citizen journalists.” During the dotcom boom in the late 90s, stocks routinely made aggressive moves based on comments made in chat rooms and on online message boards, known as “pump and dump” scams.

In any event, today’s case is a bit different because iReport carries the branding of CNN, a respected mainstream media organization. As such, the rumor seemed more credible, and investors obviously made the decision to sell Apple stock based on it. Nonetheless, I think this is mainly a special circumstance – concerns about Jobs’ health have been in the news for months, and any indication that it is moving in one direction or the other has had implications for Apple’s shares.

Further, the premise of iReport is that the best news makes it on-air to CNN (presumably after being verified by professional journalists) – that didn’t seem to happen here. News about public companies is obviously a delicate subject, but I would hardly call this blunder the beginning of the end for citizen journalism. Media companies are learning as they go – citizen journalism for the moment is simply a compliment to the traditional tenants of reporting – and so long as the credibility of the parent organization isn’t compromised, there really isn’t much to worry about.

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If you’re at all a fan of simple, minimalist publishing services like Tumblr, Streem or Posterous, the last one being a relatively new launch, Placefav is something you may well enjoy. Its utility is very specific, mind you. Can’t quite toss out anything you’d like for the wide world of friends and strangers to see. Information posted to Placefav is restricted to particular locations you’re fond of. Just as its name suggests. But that’s the fun of it. To serve one purpose and do it well.

Aesthetically, Placefav is something that follows in lockstep behind the likes of Flickr, Delicious, and countless other sparsely-laid, Helvetica-crazy Web designs. Except this one carries the see-no-mess mantra further than most. It’s like some kind of secret zen room in Ikea. The maxim of less is more, taken to the nth degree.

Function-wise, it’s something of a toss-up. If you’re looking for a utility such as this, to catalog your favorite dots on the map, it’s very nifty. On the other hand, its focus might not appeal to you. You get a bunch of blank spaces - a total of 12 spots per person, it seems - and you plot out some choice positions. An example could be your childhood home, say, or that place you go virtually every day for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Maybe some memory that you grow ever more nostalgic for. Whatever highlights you deem important, really. And after you’ve designated an address, you and anyone who visits your page can then take a look at some photos culled from another service called Panoramio. If you wish, you can upload images you yourself have produced. Also, users and visitors can click a link to Google Maps to visually pinpoint that favorite locale.

Yes, it’s true, Placefav is rather “Googley” in that sense. Panoramio, for the unaware, is a Google property. It recently received some accolades for a feature called “look around,” even. But these ties give Placefav some partial uniformity so far as its connections to the outside go. Of course, it would be quite nice if its creator, Kyle Bragger, would convenience users further by enabling expandable and collapsible maps, much like he’s done with the photography side of the operation. But overall, Placefav hardly lacks for elegance. Take a look at Kyle’s sample page. I think you’ll agree that it does the trick. And sign-up is a cinch.

Source:Mashable!

There are a variety of time tracking tools available today. The first type are the ones targeted at businesses and professionals for tracking amount of time spent on a particular project so they can bill their clients accordingly. The second variety are for net junkies with a need to track time spent on a particular activity online, say emailing, blogging, micro-blogging, reading RSS feeds, browsing, or just plain social networking. We searched the Web for the second variety and present below six very helpful tools to track your time spent online that are free and simple to use.

Which one is your favorite? Do you use any other time tracking tools? Let us know in the comments.

8aWeek

8aWeek is a neat Firefox toolbar that tracks your online browsing habits. If you feel that your social media participation is becoming excessive and want to restrict yourself, you can get this toolbar, see which sites you spend most of your time on, and set the restriction timings for each. You can also use the toolbar to save sites that you can check out later. This time tracking tool does the work automatically so you don’t need to add tasks manually. That spells a lot of convenience.

Wakoopa

Wakoopa is a desktop application that tracks the time you spend using various applications like your browser, RSS reader, email client, games, and more. It also doubles up as a social networking site. Setting up Wakoopa is hassle free and once installed, it runs quietly on your system tray and collects information automatically.

You have an online profile page where you can view your tracked activitiy records, upload your pictures, add contacts and form teams, and write reviews.  There are various widgets you can take advantage of such as ‘My top 10 software’ badge, ‘My recently used software’ badge, a Facebook application, etc. You can also view the most used software by Waakoopa users and check out other users’ stats. Wakoopa also displays interesting items such as ‘Software you might like,’ ‘People like you,’ ‘Reviews of your software,’ and ‘New versions of your software’ on your dashboard that you might find useful. When you go to a particular software’s individual page, you can see the software manufacturer’s details, versions, download url, usage stats by Waakoopa users, popularity chart, and reviews.

Rescue Time

Rescue Time is another feature loaded desktop application for Windows, Mac, and Linux that tracks your activities. What differentiate this from Waakoopa is that it helps you track not only applications but websites as well. You can set the number of hours you want to spend in a day on a particular site and Rescue Time will alert you on your email, RSS reader, or by SMS when you run out of time. You can create groups and compare your online stats with other users. There are Rescue Time widgets for blogs, iGoogle, and Netvibes. You can also create a white-list of sites that you want Rescue Time to pay attention to.

TimeTracker

TimeTracker is a simple Firefox addon that tracks the time you spend online browsing by running quietly on your Firefox status bar. You can see the time tracked by the day, since installation, or since your last reset. There are idle timeout, filter, and pause features as well. This addon basically shows your online browser time and doesn’t go beyond that, meaning you cannot track time spent on an individual site. However, for those seeking something simple, it might just be fine.

MeeTimer

MeeTimer is another cool Firefox addon like TimeTracker, but it also shows how much time you have spent on each individual website, in addition to showing your overall time spent online. You can also place site urls into various groups and configure MeeTimer to show you a warning message when you visit a particular group or site.

Online Stopwatch

Online Stopwatch is basically a neat tool that provides a timer and a stopwatch. The stopwatch creates an alarm bell after the countdown finishes. You can use Online Stopwatch on its site or as a Google gadget, Live.com gadget, or a Vista sidebar gadget. While it is as simple as any online timer can get and comes without any usage trends, the beauty is that you can use it in any manner you want, like setting a timer for your online browsing or monitoring how long it takes to draft a blog post.

[Image credit: Michel Filion (attribution)]

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Source:Mashable!

Although it’s probably the worst mistake you can make as a journalist, it periodically happens to big media publications. Earlier today, Bloomberg sent a 17-page obituary of Steve Jobs over the wire, quickly retracting it with the following message: “An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m. New York time today. The item was never meant for publication and has been retracted.”

There’s nothing much to be said about the gaffe itself: it’s awful but it happens. However, knowing that Steve Jobs has been battling pancreatic cancer for some time, one has to wonder if the obituary was a complete mistake or was it perhaps based on some facts about Apple’s CEO? Gawker read the whole thing (you can, too, it’s over there), and they claim that it’s just a generalized text about Jobs’ life and achievements, containing no specifics about deterioration of his health, which is good news. We’ll all probably know more if Apple comes forward with an official statement.

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There are a number of golf-focused websites that can help you connect with a broad network of players, write blogs, meet up for games, find local courses and generally live the life of the green as much as you wish. We presented you with a selection of such destinations earlier this year, in fact. Well, here comes another. It’s called GolfGrouper. It’s very basically drawn, and even a bit rough in places. But it’s new, and just beginning to build its network of users. Some adjustments are surely in order.

Granted, the front page is indeed generic-looking. It could certainly lose its promotional image, if nothing else. The graphic hinders the establishment of a much simpler layout. But if this doesn’t trouble you too much, and you’re just looking for a nearby course, want post yourself available as a golf partner, or put together a quick notice of a local tournament, the site may have some use to you.

The best course of action to take at GolfGrouper is just as its name describes. You can establish a local circle of users on the site, and the intended network effect can then carry some potential. A one-at-a-time build-up of users, without any grounding in content, is likely to make the service a laggard. This is place built solely for matching golfers. No lingering. No wasting time. Just find what information you’re after, and and play the links.

Of course, convincing friends to become members is the hardest part, so the site really ends up being a bit hit-or-miss in that respect. But given the right concentration of attention in places, it could become valuable to certain sets of players quite quickly. Also, the service is open to a global user base. Things of this sort are known to fall flat in some locations while taking off in others.

Source:Mashable!

Alright, so maybe Apple thought MobileMe would fare only a little better in grabbing $99-worth of attention from prospective registrants for its cloud-based application package than its relatively morose-feeing .Mac selection of services. (MobileMe is the replacement to .Mac.) Who’s to say. Whatever the case, the company most certainly failed to estimate the level of interest it received the day the program, along with the iPhone 3G, had its launch. Now Apple is atoning for the miscalculations and the mismanagement. How so? First came the 30-day account extension. And as of Friday, it appears Apple is publishing a status page expected to show updates “every other day.” The updates are written by a so-far-unnamed individual, and have purportedly been mandated by Steve Jobs.

Says Apple in its debut post, a particularly regretful loss was 10% of messages received through MobileMe between July 16 and July 18, a week after the product had been released. Problems over mail are said to have affected 1% of members. All in all, it will be several days before “restoration of full access for all…accounts” is completed.

As with efforts by the likes of Amazon and Twitter and others to more closely chronicle the goings on of server-side activity, this move by Apple is no doubt appropriate. Yet what is unusual about the establishment of an official blog of this sort is its rather open, mea culpa-like dimension. The company is generally notorious for its secrecy, an aspect of management that recently drew increased concerns about the CEO’s health circa his previous two public appearances. The only prior moment when Apple itself took action to assuage vocal public rumblings was when it released credits to consumers who had purchased first-generation iPhone handsets within the first two months of its launch, after it decreased the price of those devices by $200.

It’s hard to say whether this establishes a benchmark of what to expect from Apple in the future concerning various technical hiccups. Given recent communications by the company at large and by its chief executive, one might presume a trend is forming. But old habits die hard. What worked before to large extent will almost definitely remain the norm. The company’s customer service has often been touted by consumers and the press as one of particular effectiveness. Only at extremes - the MobileMe debacle certainly fits the profile - should one expect Apple to keep the public so abreast of internal goings on. A support page has also been published on the matter.

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“Extraordinary. Incredible. Tremendous. Amazing. Unprecedented. Extraordinary (again). Great. Revolutionary. Great. Extraordinary (yes, again). Unbelievable.” All these words Steve Jobs used to describe the ultra-thin MacBook Air during yesterday’s Macworld keynote. And all without any apparent regard to how that makes laptops which aren’t so thin as the MacBook Air feel. Instead, it takes this brave video from YouTube auteur Kevin Nalts to expose the truth.

Source:Valleywag

Oracle has acquired BEA for $8.5 billion. Sun has acquired MySQL for $1 billion. These events are not coincidence. Oracle, which already makes a database, wants to add BEA’s software on top of that database. Sun, which makes application servers and other software which connects to databases, wants to slip MySQL in underneath that layer. It all adds up to what geeks and software salesmen call a “stack,” or a complete package of interconnecting programs.

The irony is that BEA rose to prominence on the notion that its application server would make things simpler for database buyers. Buy any database you’d like, and BEA’s application server would connect to it. Likewise, MySQL grew as a cheaper, open-source alternative to databases from IBM and Oracle.

A database here, an application server there, a bit of open-source software on top of that all sounds nice in theory. It proved in practice to be a headache for the influential tech buyers at large corporations. One salesperson calling on them, one phone number to dial when things went wrong, it turns out, is what they really wanted.

The consolidation was inevitable, if perhaps a bit sad. The goal of the stack game is to make sure that your software is the layer on top — the one that matters to programmers, the one applications are designed for. BEA and MySQL both had grand ambitions in that regard. Those are now coming to an end. Sun and Oracle will no doubt make grand statements about how compatible their software is, how well their children play with others. Ignore those. The history of IT tells us those promises are false.

Source:Valleywag

Remember the comparisons between Amazon’s Kindle and the iPod? Don’t try them on Apple CEO Steve Jobs. The Kindle was a bad idea, Jobs told the New York Times after yesterday’s Macworld keynote. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.” Mmhmm, Mr. Jobs. And whose fault is that?

“Extraordinary. Incredible. Tremendous. Amazing. Unprecedented. Extraordinary (again). Great. Revolutionary. Great. Extraordinary (yes, again). Unbelievable.” All these words Steve Jobs used to describe the ultra-thin MacBook Air during yesterday’s Macworld keynote. And all without any apparent regard to how that makes laptops which aren’t so thin as the MacBook Air feel. Instead, it takes this brave video from YouTube auteur Kevin Nalts to expose the truth.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg may be getting all the money and media attention lately, but News Corp.’s MySpace still dominates when it comes to traffic. The site commands more than 70 percent of visits to social networks, according to this latest chart from Hitwise. Still, its share declined 8 percent in the last year. Which might explain why News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch was rumored to be poking around runner-up social network Bebo recently. Oh, and by the looks of things, maybe Barry Diller should have acquired MyYearbook for IAC back when he reportedly expressed interest.

Source:Valleywag

Google’s mobile operating system Android is a bad idea, Apple CEO Steve Jobs told the New York Times after yesterday’s keynote at Macworld. “Having created a phone, it’s a lot harder than it looks,” he said. Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt should be happy with the apps they’ve created for the iPhone. “I actually think Google has achieved their goal without Android, and I now think Android hurts them more than it helps them. It’s just going to divide them and people who want to be their partners.”

But Jobs is always rough on the competition. In the same interview with the Times, he ripped MacBook Air competitors for needing too many rubber footpads glued to their bottoms. Still, with prognostications like these, Jobs might want to be wary of not sounding like another CEO Steve.

Back before the iPhone launched Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had this to say about the new device’s prospects:

There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent of them than I would to have 2 percent or 3 percent, which is what Apple might get.

Of course the truth is that Jobs is on much better footing doubting Android. Unlike the iPhone, it really is a bad idea. So why didn’t Jobs shoot Schmidt a warning SMS last summer? We know the Google CEO and Apple board member is on his iPhone’s short list. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)

Source:Valleywag

Like our 100-word versions? You’ll love this 60-second version of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s 90-minute keynote yesterday at Macworld, courtesy of Mahalo Daily.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg may be getting all the money and media attention lately, but News Corp.’s MySpace still dominates when it comes to traffic. The site commands more than 70 percent of visits to social networks, according to this latest chart from Hitwise. Still, its share declined 8 percent in the last year. Which might explain why News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch was rumored to be poking around runner-up social network Bebo recently. Oh, and by the looks of things, maybe Barry Diller should have acquired MyYearbook for IAC back when he reportedly expressed interest.

Source:Valleywag

Google’s mobile operating system Android is a bad idea, Apple CEO Steve Jobs told the New York Times after yesterday’s keynote at Macworld. “Having created a phone, it’s a lot harder than it looks,” he said. Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt should be happy with the apps they’ve created for the iPhone. “I actually think Google has achieved their goal without Android, and I now think Android hurts them more than it helps them. It’s just going to divide them and people who want to be their partners.”

But Jobs is always rough on the competition. In the same interview with the Times, he ripped MacBook Air competitors for needing too many rubber footpads glued to their bottoms. Still, with prognostications like these, Jobs might want to be wary of not sounding like another CEO Steve.

Back before the iPhone launched Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had this to say about the new device’s prospects:

There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent of them than I would to have 2 percent or 3 percent, which is what Apple might get.

Of course the truth is that Jobs is on much better footing doubting Android. Unlike the iPhone, it really is a bad idea. So why didn’t Jobs shoot Schmidt a warning SMS last summer? We know the Google CEO and Apple board member is on his iPhone’s short list. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)