First Impressions of the iPad

The iPad is here!

There has been so much coverage on the tech blogs the past week focusing on just the core device that I wanted to do something a little bit different, and that's a video rundown of my favorite apps so far. Check them out, and let me know which apps have really captured your attention.

Watch this on Vimeo.

No 3G iPad? No Problem

Back in December, I wrote about the five things upcoming tablets need to succeed in the marketplace. Since then, Apple has announced the iPad and that it will be arriving in stores on April 3rd. While the device has received mixed response so far, I believe the only thing that the device was lacking from my wish list was data accessibility. 

Most of us already have an iPhone or another smartphone with a data plan that we pay for. Consumers shouldn't have to pay extra for an additional data plan on their tablet if they already have one. They should be able to access the internet through their current data plan from their smartphone via tethering on their iPad or other tablet device.

Apple is offering a 3G version of the iPad, though it likely won't ship until May and will set you back an additional $130 as well as a separate data plan from AT&T in the US. As I mentioned in my previous post, charging extra will likely deter consumers from taking this route. I knew there were apps out there that turned your phone into a mobile WiFi hotspot in the past on other platforms, so there had to be a way to share the 3G connection from your iPhone, right?

Well, now there's an app for that and it's called MyWi, and all it will cost you is $9.99 and a jailbreak.

MyWi

MyWi is an internet tethering app available on Rock, which is a black-market app store. You need to jailbreak your iPhone in order to access it. Once you have Rock installed, you'll notice that MyWi is showcased front and center on their app store for you to download. Disclaimer: Jailbreaking is technically illegal and in rare cases has bricked peoples' phones. There are plenty of resources out there to help you jailbreak depending on your device and OS version. If you're going to jailbreak, you're doing it at your own risk!

When you install MyWi, you are given a ten day free trial. After that, it is $9.99 for the full version. This is a great way to market the app, as it gives you an opportunity to take it for a spin first. Trust me, though, this is one you're going to want to pay for.

WiFi Tethering

When you turn on WiFi tethering, MyWi will create a WiFi hotspot for you automatically that pulls from your current 3G connection. You can encrypt the hotspot using WEP Security and require a WEP Key to keep unwanted leeches off of your network as well. 

I tested this from my Macbook Pro, and it was able to quickly discover and connect, and I was browsing the web from my 3G connection within seconds. I also tested from my wife's iPhone over wifi, as well as on the iPad simulator, to attempt to match the actual iPad device experience as closely as possible.

What's great about MyWi compared to it's competitors, is that it doesn't require you to create an ad-hoc WiFi network on the device you are connecting from, which you can do on Windows 7 or OSX, but you can't do on an iPad.

As you can see, MyWi shows a flashing blue indicator under your status bar while you are tethering, and you can see the data usage so that you know when it's working. It also embeds nicely into your dock screen, so you can use other apps while it runs in the background, or even put your iPhone to sleep to conserve battery. Because it runs in the background, though, you'll want to make sure you turn wifi tethering off when you're done, otherwise your battery life will decrease significantly.

Bluetooth and USB Tethering

MyWi also supports Bluetooth and USB tethering. Data transfer rates and battery usage will vary depending on which of these you choose, with USB being the most desirable option since you can charge your iPhone while you tether. I tested both of these with my Macbook Pro and they were equally as easy to setup and surf with. 

I attempted to tether from my wife's iPhone over Bluetooth, but it was unable to discover the device, so if you're planning on tethering using an iPad, it looks like over WiFi is your only option.

On some forum posts, users have expressed concern that they could potentially have their service disconnected due to too much data utilization, though the general consensus was that as long as you stay under 5GB a month, you'll be off the radar.

Five Things Upcoming Tablets Need to Nail

The mobile tablet market is emerging, and with the JooJoo hitting the market in early 2010, rumors have been flying about the Apple and Microsoft entering the space with their own ultraportable devices. We all know what happened to the UMPC, which failed to live up to the huge amount of hype it received in late 2005. What is going to make the tablet market any different?

Here are five things early tablets will need to have in order to live up to the hype and attract consumers.

User Experience

This is de-facto these days with any new device, and ever since the iPhone came about, consumers expect their devices to not just be beautiful to look at, but to create a feeling of enjoyment while using them. For a tablet to succeed, it needs to not just look awesome, but feel awesome to use as well.

Recently, Bonnier R&D created a conceptual user experience video of how we might use tablet devices to consume print and magazine media, something Apple has been rumored to be pursuing with a number of major outlets. This type of experience would attract consumers in a way that could provide a new distribution channel for dying old media.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Battery Life

One of the most attractive qualities of e-book readers like the Kindle and Nook is their phenomenal battery life. Having good battery life is a no-brainer, but we could be talking about a device with an OLED screen, WiFi, Bluetooth and perhaps other functionality such as a DVD drive, a camera, or RFID sensors. All of this could add up to a lot of battery loss. 

The iPhone already has terrible battery life compared to other smartphones, so if tablet manufacturers hope to dip into the e-book market share, the battery life is going to need to be much better than the iPhone's.

Developer Program

It can't be stated enough how the App Store's success has influenced the iPhone's marketability. The key selling points for a tablet device might not be enough to convince consumers at launch, but the possibilities available for developers could have an iPhone-like effect. There is a huge opportunity for gaming, electronic music, the medical industry and the emerging augmented reality industry to name a few.

Price

Tablets are going to fall into a tricky spot with pricing if they are going to compete with the already popular netbook market. It's reasonable to assume they will be more expensive than many smartphones, and potentially some netbooks, but if they stray much more expensive than the $500 - $600 range, consumers will be considering a lower-end laptop as an alternative.

Data Accessibility

WiFi access is a given for tablet devices, and that's a reasonable expectation for upcoming tablets. Mobile data is another story. Requiring consumers to purchase a separate 3G or 4G data plan for a tablet device could greatly deter sales. One opportunity that could really make tablets appealing would be the ability to tether your data connection with the connection on your smartphone. iPhone already supports this functionality in its native OS, there are also other options for tethering on Android and Windows Mobile.

What do you think? Are there any factors that are key in order for tablet devices to be successful?

twendz pro and the Innovation of Influence

Today is an exciting day.

It's really wild to think it really all started with some research I was doing one snowy day in late 2008 on automated sentiment analysis. I didn't even know that was the technical term for it back then, and there was no way I could have anticipated it would be considered one of the hottest tech trends of 2009. 

Not long later, I took my research and a prototype of the technology and started showing it to people at work. I hooked it up to the Twitter API and made a compelling UI demonstrating a stream, and how you could view how emotional perception for topics could change in real-time. twendz was born, and once we released it as a free product, people started using it every day to track the emotional reaction to their product, brand and searches that interested them.

Today it is used every day by people in Fortune 50 companies and Ivy League Universities. It is still considered amongst the best applications of it's kind by top publications like The New York Times, and high-profile blogs like WebWorker Daily and Mashable. It even has imitators. But as we know, competition drives innovation, so after launch I went back to work.

Inspired by concepts and conversations shared with coworkers, the emerging trends of the social media industry, and Waggener Edstrom's focus on the nature of influence (we have an internal innovation initiative which helped me get motivated), I began mining Twitter user data on a massive scale. Millions and millions of users.

I created a basic system. People were already leading in the space of understanding and measuring influence on a detailed level on Twitter. I wanted to be able to identify a magnitude of influence for as many people as possible on Twitter. Comparing and ranking important people instills doubt and dissent, creating a High-School psychological complex. There was more value in being able to view a conversation and see who were the most important people spreading a message. 

In order to do that, I knew I would need to be able to look at an entire conversation and tell you who was influential and who wasn't. Who are the most important people contributing, and are they sending a positive message or a negative one? I needed to know as close to everyone in a conversation as I could.

Once I had enough influencers to make this effective, my coworker Marc and I put our heads together and hashed out ideas to assess the impact of the message. We took inspiration from the work others were doing, and came up with many of our own ideas to create some sketches of what we considered a dream Twitter analytics tool.

Well, I went to work after that, spending my nights and weekends for a month until I spit out an alpha of what I was calling Project Seagull. Our team kept it very quiet internally, gradually refining it, getting feedback, until before we knew it we were teaming up with our Measurement team to refine our formulas, and our Marketing team to polish the app up and make a new product.

Before long, we got to today. Today WE are launching twendz pro, reinforcing our position as one of the leaders in full-scale Twitter analytics.

I'll spare you the, "What it does," because you can see that here. Or you can jump right in and take it for a spin yourself. 

I'm incredibly excited about this product, as it has been a ton of firsts for me, and I'm looking forward to working with our development team to continue to bring more world-class social media products in the months to come.

Windows 7 Makes Laptops Happy

Windows 7 drops tomorrow, and like a few others in the press, I am excited. Sure, I've been using it for a while now and can speak first-hand that as a laptop guy, this is a long awaited improvement. There are three key features that I'm especially excited about.

First, faster booting. This doesn't just mean booting from powered off, but coming out of Sleep and Hibernate. This is actually incredibly fast and makes zipping from one meeting to the next much easier than before. There was actually a point when I was on Vista where I was going to meetings with my laptop open so that I could avoid putting it to sleep. I'm happy to not be having this problem any longer.

Next is the consolidated UI. I'm one of those crazy power users that always has at least 15 windows open on my desktop at one time (you don't even want to see how messy my desktop is!), so having these consolidated into easy to reach icons saves me a lot of time from having to remember where I put that window.

Lastly -- and this is the big one -- is better management of resources for notebook battery life. Windows 7 is smart enough to power off things like your network card if you aren't using it to help you save battery life, and is more battery effecient than previous version of Windows. This is huge, since the netbook market is really starting to emerge and having an OS that is well-optimized for ultra-mobile devices is going to be key in gaining netbook sales.

I've been in the market for a new laptop, as my Dell Inspiron from 2006 is beginning to show signs of its age, and have been playing around with the Windows PC Scout which has a great configurator for new Windows 7 laptops. I'm not sure if I'm going to pony-up for that 19 incher, but I could definetely see a new netbook in my not-so-distant future.

Twitter Relevancy and the Fall of Censorship

As we all now know, the aftermath of the Iranian elections is upon us, resulting in violent clashes between protestors and police due to presumed fraudulent voting practices by the incumbent political party. Yesterday, Marshall Kirkpatrick from ReadWriteWeb wrote about the absence of CNN from the coverage, and the message has resonated, as CNN has since escalated the election riots to become their top story.

Selective coverage of major international events by mainstream American media outlets has long been thought to be influenced by the Federal Government, particularly in wartime. Conspiracy theories aside, this latest development validates the power and relevancy of Twitter as a major media platform, and that thousands of tiny voices can generate enough noise to influence the media, instead of the other way around.

Twitter's relevancy has become too large to be ignored, despite recent reports that there aren't as many voices on Twitter as originally believed. Media propaganda is dead, if it even still existed, as we know that our voice can still be heard. As long as you can tweet about something and still see your content show up on an application powered by Twitter Search, you know your speech is still free.

Despite it's ability to influence major channels, Twitter has also been providing more relevant, raw and uncensored coverage of the events than traditional sources. We are all able to see the real story, often through powerful images and video, that we wouldn't see through FCC regulated outlets, and we see all of it right as it happens.

If you aren't watching this, you're missing everything. And I don't just mean with the Iran Election story, but the story of how we perceive the world. Everything is changing right before our eyes, and we're all writing the story.

Mission Accomplished

Well, my blog went stale again. I apologize to the 100 people or so out there that read it. It's funny how my mindset becomes full-speed ahead for a project or idea, and I forget to stop and think about what might happen if things go well. Well, things certainly went well with the launch of twendz.

According to Compete, we increased traffic to our domain by 469% for the month of March. I'd imagine twendz had something to do with that.

In case you were wondering, the launch of twendz was quite a success. Frighteningly so. I was asked by our Marketing Manager for some figures to baseline against, basically metrics for us to set a goal to beat. I used Happytweets as a measuring stick, as I felt like that did pretty well in terms of how well it spread virally. I figured if we could beat the growth Happytweets has had, I would be pretty satisfied. What a joke.

Hold On Tight

You've heard of the Slashdot effect, right? The idea behind the saying is that if Slashdot picks you up on your homepage, your server is basically doomed based on the amount of traffic you receive. Another common analogy is when Fark.com picks up a story, you get "farked." As in, your web server is "farked." My buddy almost got kicked out of college because he had content on school servers that got farked.

Well, we didn't get the Slashdot effect, and we didn't get farked. We got CNETted. CNET gets just slightly more traffic than Slashdot and Fark. Here is a good visual representation of how these sites stack up together in terms of traffic. Last month, they were one of the top 100 websites in the world in terms of the amount of traffic they receive. Let's just say that after the CNET story broke on their homepage, we had to act very quickly to make sure we didn't get "farked" times 10.

We survived the traffic spree, and this spawned hundreds of other stories about my little pet project that started with a weekend stuck at home in a snowstorm. That next week, I flew to Vegas for the Microsoft's MIX09 Conference where they showed my demo video of twendz for their Showoff competition (see below).

Things have been incredibly busy and exciting since launch, not only since so many people are talking about Waggener Edstrom now (we were even on the local Portland news!), but since then there have been many opportunities to continue to grow the sentiment analysis technology, and package it in a way that is going to give our clients a competitive advantage in how they measure their brand.

Okay, So Now What?

I've received a ton of feedback about twendz. Most of it has been very positive, but there have been some opportunities to improve on what we've done (translation: I'm not perfect). I'm still dreaming up some crazy ideas and working on them in some ungodly hours of my days and weekends (with Jolt cola), but this time I'm listening more. I'm trying to read between the lines of what the users want, and what kinds of things people in my organization are saying. This is leading to taking more risks, and trying things that I'm not completely certain are going to be successful, so that's all I can really say for now. Hopefully I'll be able to continue to be innovative as well as have fun creating cool new things. I owe it to myself and my peers to keep trying.

twendz Helps Make Sense of the Conversation With Real Time Sentiment Analysis

Since last December, I've been exploring possibilities of ways to make sense out of massive amounts of data, particularly conversations in social media. What started as a personal side-project in creating an automated sentiment analysis algorithm using natural language processing, and my own secret sauce, grew into a fun service prototype called Happytweets.

Happytweets was interesting, and gained some momentum, but I realized that I needed to think bigger. I needed to create something with this technology I now had that solved a real business problem. So one weekend I did, and my employer took notice. Together, we have vastly improved my intial prototype by enhancing the user experience, improving and testing the heck out of my sentiment algorithm, and today we are releasing it together as a free service offering from Waggener Edstrom Worldwide.

It's called twendz, and it helps you generalize the conversation

twendz leverages the power of Twitter search to quickly make a generalization about a conversation using real-time, automated sentiment analysis. With twendz, you can search for any topic, product, brand -- even yourself, and immediately generalize the attitudes and feelings expressed in Twitter conversations for your query. This all happens in real-time, so as the conversations changes and evolves, so does twendz. There's only been one other company that has ever done something like this in real-time effectively, and after their acquisition by Twitter last year, they seem to have lost interest (see: it's broken).

Get a quick pulse on your product

The void left by Summize is filled in a whole new way with twendz, as twendz was designed as a Twitter monitoring tool with sentiment. It changes and evolves with the conversation, showing you the most frequently discussed subtopics for your query, and analyzes the sentiment for those. If what's happening now isn't valuable or relevant for what you searched for, you can view a brief history up to this point for an added perspective.

Monitor your personal brand on Twitter

In just a minute or two, you can discover how people feel about that new pepsi logo right now, and asess the impact based on how much it has been talked about lately. Or, if you want to dive deeper and see just the negative things people are saying about you (assuming you are talked about a lot, like say, Steve Jobs), then you can filter on just negative sentiment to draw attention to only the negative tweets you need to respond to.

Get real-time news that is relevant, or just have fun

twendz pre-populates the latest top Twitter trends in the header so it's easy to jump-in to what's popular now, but it works great for discovering different perspectives on hot current events. I often find myself monitoring fun topics for my own personal amusement. Do people really like bacon as much as it seems like? Now you can find out the answer.

If you have questions or comments about twendz, I encourage you to visit our page on Get Satisfaction where I respond to most questions and comments directly, but I'm also really interested in your direct feedback, as I'm constantly looking for ways to improve the twendz as an offering, as well as the sentiment algorithm.