search for N

When I was much younger with all my brothers and sisters on the farm, I used to wonder why the humans at the farm gave so much attention and treats to the Great Grandfather aka Dudley. True, he had been the one to father us all, but did he really need the best corn, the sweetest melon seeds, the crunchiest lettuce?
In the same way, I have always wondered why cellphone companies give the phones with the best capability, the smartphones, to executives and ‘old’ folks. I can see the rationale, that they have the wallets to support the exorbitant packages that invariably one must be tied to to use the technological marvels, but it’s very short-sighted. Last week, I was speaking to a senior colleage when suddenly we got cut mid-conversation. When he called me back, he bragged, “Sorry, I haven’t got used to my new iPhone… all you have to do is look at this thing and it does something”. It was absolutely hilarious, he was bragging about his new status symbol, that he could not use!! This is the fundamental problem with the pricing model used by providers. In an environment where young people are more likely to manipulate, update, modify and download all manner of bling such devices are just not accessible.

The iPhone which has in the Apple way, created such a hype or in the words of a zealot – revolutionised the smartphone, has an application store with thousands of applications. Unfortunately Apple is not known to be cheap and in South Africa, providers of any apple product take advantage of that fact to make it even more expensive. This is a shame because there are so many applications for the phone. Apple gets most of the revenue though, so the providers have to get their cut and the poor consumer gets shafted. Apple fans don’t seem to mind as they’ve got this superior device. It’s not called the ‘Jesus phone’ for nothing.

Blackberrys are traditionally boring smartphones with one killer application – email. This is the only phone that justified the “sell to executive types” angle. But it is also reacting to the iPhone by trying to be more appealing to consumers. It has an application store of its own but are those executive types going to be downloading all of those funky applications? Would it not make sense to sell a cheaper version and allow real geeks to play with it?

Nokia, for me, is a bit of a Toyota of mobiles. It does it all in a safe, reliable, functional way but doesn’t really excite. They have surprised me with their recent campaign to promote their newest and greatest ‘N’ phone, the N97. The global campaign is called surprisingly enough,  ‘Search for N’. They have enlisted the help of some of the technological glitterati of the SA blogosphere. The idea seems to be a spin of the old treasure hunt, only the ‘map’ is the blog and communication can be using email or even twitter. 5 Clues are leaked out and the first person to send the right answer wins one of these beauties. It’s pretty ingenious, maybe Nokia are more funky then I give them credit for.

Android. I know, it’s not a phone, it’s a platform. I had high hopes for this Google innovation but when MTN decided to match Vodacom and bring their own ‘exclusive’ bling toy to SA, I thought they would realise that this toy runs on Linux, has a platform that is mostly open source and a growing hacker community itching to get their hands on it. Unfortunately, it’s turned into a status toy and the HTC Dream has again been aimed at the executive market.

The phone that excites me is the Palm Pre. This phone is due for release in the States early next month. It promises to be the phone that hits the sweet spot between executive phone and consumer toy. It also seems to be designed from the ground-up to handle the requirements of a mobile environment. Unfortunately, all this info is based on a presentation, and there are none out in the wild. I’m not sure who’s going to bring it to SA but I have the dreaded feeling it’s going to be priced out of reach for those local enthusiasts with a geek edge.

My point, is that these phones could be subsidised at cheaper rates to encourage more people to access these phones. They could be marketed at younger people like students and the newly employed. I’m sure that their use of the phone to access data, would more than make up for the subsidy of the phones. Cell phone companies are of course reluctant to become data pipes but their revenue models lean too much to the other extreme.

These are my views on the different smartphones in South Africa. Click on the poll and share which smartphone you like the most.

wolfram alpha and vodafone(com)

After my hardly-debauched weekend two things caught my attention today, the release of the much anticipated Wolfram|Alpha search engine and the listing of Vodacom on the JSE (Johannesburg Stock Exchange). I was so eager to jot some notes on this but Mondays are focus-on-work days.

Firstly in the bloggerati over-hype style, I was tempted to call this post- “Wolfram Google killer released.” I’m sure there are many similarly named posts at this very moment and of course those really in the know bloggers have already covered this topic and it’s terribly old hat. To those, far from the bleeding edge, Wolfram|Alpha is a search engine that in their own words has long-term plans “to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone”.  Very ambitious. It’s the brain child of that gifted mathematician Stephen Wolfram, who has already blessed us with the very popular Mathematica programme. In simplified terms, this search engine uses specially collected information and algorithms that spew out information such as weather, gross domestic product of a country and similar facts. It’s pretty amazing when it works but the fact that all this information must be verified first means that there are big gaps in what they have been able to collect and not very much that would be local to South Africa.

Which in a very convoluted way brings me to my other bit of news. The Vodacom/Vodafone saga with Cosatu over the weekend. I’m still not sure how Cosatu (Congress of South African Trade Unions) managed to convince ICASA (the communications sector regulator of South Africa) to suddenly spring into action and block the sale of Vodacom shares. I mean no one has got ICASA to do very much  of this kind of concern-for-the-citizen behaviour throughtout its history. Anyway, Cosatu ended up with pie on its face and a very expensive lawyers bill as they lost the case with costs. Was all this the first test of how much power Cosatu will be afforded in a Zuma government? I’m curious to see if and how government will respond. With all this excitement, I thought I would play with my new toy and quickly typed in a search for “Vodacom”. Wolfram Alpha hasn’t yet learnt of this company and suggested Viacom. When I put in “Vodafone”, it did spew out a rather impressive list of financial information. Maybe the flexing of Cosatu will have shone a very bright light on this newly listed media darling and soon Wolfram will recognise what I’m talking about.

I couldn’t resist. My ego got the better of me so I also quickly tried “Bantam”. How insulted I was, it told me amongst other things that the word was a noun for “any of various small breeds of fowl”. Small!? It may be remarkable as the beginning of a new way of processing the intelligence in the web, but with such responses it still has a way to go before understanding the nuances of the real world.