So, I needed to say that I was travelling, but could not say where. The idea of entering a fake destination crossed my mind (Japan, Korea, Equator) but none of them appealed to me. That’s when I started looking for “Somewhere” using dopplr and google maps. The first few attempts did not lead to anything overly interesting. The next idea was instead of going somewhere I was going to go “nowhere”.

What a surprise to discover that Nowhere, OK, USA existed. Does it really? Google maps places it in the middle of the US. It seems like a lovely place. And wikipedia has a few other suggestions, including Norfolk, England.

As I’m getting ready to publish this post, I looked quickly over at the Dopplr blog and found today’s story quite appropriate:

What do the following words have in common?
mobile, page, nice, for, name, union, best, dollar, tours, split, accident, mile, list, central, deal, deposit, trip, this, back, carry, center, start, kilo, purchase, transfer, goes, plan, media, sale, downtown, fully, luck, normal, comfort, call, local

The Setup

Let’s first and foremost spend a few seconds explaining the setup. I’m not a blackberry server or exchange user but still consider myself a business-user with heavy use of both voice and emails, not so much a mobile Internet user yet. Therefore, the “Exchange for the rest of us” seemed very appealing and having access to a viable mobile Internet looked like the killer-app.

It is by leaving behind the blackberry that you really discover its strength.

After a week of both play and work I’m now completely torn. The iPhone is a great toy, an ok communicator, and definitely not a good work tool.

Pretty things first

I love the fact that my emails and contacts are pretty and that safari can actually display all websites - except of course flash components. Using Unfuddle and Campfire on the go was especially a bliss, something I had never been able to do efficiently.

Over-the-air sync of contacts and calendar is a clear improvement from my previous cable-sync. Unfortunately, I relied too much on it too early and found myself twice with a contact missing an updated phone number. That was because of some sort of crash of MobileMe.

That’s unfortunately where the good side of the hyper-hyped device ends.

Essential tools missing

I hate the fact that I can’t search my inboxes or that emails are not pushed (forwarding through MobileMe does not count, sorry!). The automatic fetch of data, which is really another way to say “pull” can only be done every 15 minutes at most, far from the 3 minutes increment the Blackberry Internet Service provides. Can you really have a viable conversation during a work day in 15 minute increments?

To get discussions going, I used SMS most of last week as a replacement to emails.

A few other things are seriously lacking for productivity. I find myself waiting a lot, for the keyboard, for an application, for a window, for the data… the iPhone is not very responsive to say the least. It’s even scary when you compare it with the blackberry navigation. To make matters worse, the lack of multitasking means there’s no way to consult a document or a web page at the same time as writing an email or a blog post. And I’m not talking about the absence of copy and pasting! I seriously can’t believe that it is a low priority on Apple’s list.

For play, not for work

I’ve tried to use the iPhone for work and I’m very disappointed. Although Apple was synonymous with reliability, it’s definitely over. I’ve been experiencing regular crashes with mail, safari, 3rd party apps, MobileMe, sync server. I now expect a crash when opening an application, saving a draft, taking a picture or writing an email. It has the aftertaste of Windows. Very frustrating.

Also, the battery is horrendous. I’ve been charging it twice a day with 3G disabled (but not wifi). But, to the contrary of some overheard criticism, the keyboard is not bad at all, and aside from accented character - for French, someone can type quite fast with a bit of training. Both with one or two hands.

Unfortunately, I gave the pearl to my wife and she doesn’t want to give it back. One thing’s for sure, if the Bold or Thunder has a greatly improved browser with the same reliability as the other blackberry devices, I will change back the first chance I get! Unless Apple quickly introduces push notifications, copy-paste and far better stability.

To recap

Pros
- great UI, design
- great mobile Internet experience
- good keyboard
- good selection of 3rd party apps
- easy and straightforward app store
- OTA contact and calendar sync

Cons
- very poor battery life
- very poor stability
- no email push and no email search
- no selection, copy/paste, ctrl-Z
- no multi-tasking
- no message count on the locked-screen
- no iPhone IM (I really miss the blackberry messenger)

• VIRTUAL WORLD - In the mist of Second Life’s 5th anniversary, and while SL new CEO expect the company to hit 70 000 simultaneous users online, Goole launched its own virtual world called Lively.
• VIRTUAL WORLD - For the first time in history teleportation between two virtual worlds happened. IBM and Linded Labs announced on Tuesday the 8th that an avatar traveled from Second Life Preview Grid to OpenSim. They made a video of the event.

• SEARCH - Did you know that Microsoft & Yahoo are going at it again? Microsoft has leagued itself with Carl Icahn, a major yahoo shareholder to making a new bid to buy over the search giant at (at least) one condition, that it removes its board before engaging into negotiation. The result was the same, it was rejected.
• SEARCH - Another quite important news is that Yahoo is opening up its search platform. Exactly has they announced during Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco back in April.
• SEARCH - In french this time and why France thinks the next google can be made here.

• MOBILE - Nokia made two acquisitions: Symbian the number one mobile OS - they wants to opensource it, and Plazes a location based social network.
• MOBILE - Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The iPhone 3G has been released (at least in the states and in a few other countries - including Canada) - and jailbreaked. The iTunes App Store has been officially launched too. There is now a ton of App reviews. Including an early list of Top Downloads.

• BLOGGING - As for the twitter front, it has been more and more difficult to use twitter in the last few weeks and I caught myself ignoring much of the noise there. I did try Idendi.ca (@laurent), the open-source copy of twitter. Pretty good copy if you tell me. Only thing missing is an integration with twhirl and a “find my friends” option.
• BLOGGING - Two bloggers announced they will stop publishing. Daniel Lyons, also known as Fake Steve Job and once mysterious writer behind The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs has posted his last entry on Wednesday. Jason Calacanis joined him announcing that he has quit blogging.

• ENTERPRISE 2.0 - In the mist of all the buzz around Enterprise 2.0, TechCrunch has launched TechCrunchIT targeted at covering the enterprise web.

On the contrary to SmugMug, Flickr’s fluid interface makes it easier to stream and distribute publicly a few, lower quality, pictures that I wouldn’t mind loosing. I do not expect from Flickr to be a reliable backup service for pictures.

The good news is that today, SmugMug founder’s Don MacAskill has reinforced its commitment to safegarding my digital negatives above and beyond what already existed. The extended service is called SmugVault and allows to easily store all negatives or assets around a picture. But most importantly, it is possible to upload the RAW files directly and pricing is based on your actual usage.

I gave up a long time ago on using hard drives or DVDs as backup. Instead I moved all my personal archive to a dedicated S3 account. With a slick new interface targeted at photographers, this messy solution won’t be necessary anymore.

Pricing is as follow and uses Amazon DevPay:

• Storage costs 22 cents per gigabyte per month. If you upload the contents of a 2 GB memory card, you’ll be out 44 cents/month for storage.
• There is a $1/month recurring charge.
• Data transfer in is 30 cents per gigabyte. Data transfer out is 51 cents per gigabyte.
• Monthly addition to your home electrical bill: Zero.

CenterNetworks mention that a few people say this solution may be expensive. If you look at the actual value of having a flexible archive in terms of size without making investment in hardware or the uncertainty that your backups will not be corrupted or lost, having an archive online is well worth it. Moreover, prices are bound to drop overtime. Gartner estimates (in a 2006 report) that disk storage cost decreases by 50 to 60% per year.

This week, founders will be converging to Paris for the French-American Conference of Entrepreneurs (appropriately shortened to FACE). These people may not all be current CEOs but they have one thing in common, each of them founded known company or technology. FACE is the first event of the Global Entrepneurship Week that will be held to instigate creativity, initiatives and innovation in cities across the world in November of this year.

Of the 55 speakers present from both technology and life sciences sector, there are two worth mentioning:

In 1982 Janet Baker co-founded Dragon Systems with her husband James. Dragon was a company based out of Newton, MA that made voice recognition systems accessible to all. The technology was issue from their research and the company grew to 400 people and became the leader even defeting IBM’s own attempts at addressing that market. The last few years were more difficult, Dragon was acquired by Lernout & Hauspie for about $500m in an all-share transaction, then L&H went under chapter 11,  then was bought over by ScanSoft, who then acquired Nuance (a small voice recognition startup from Montreal) and finally renamed itself Nuance Communications. I was lucky enough, about 10 years ago, to be a software engineer intern at Dragon. At the time, I was part of an international team, a small group of people working at preparing and adapting the technology for each of a dozen languages.

Will also be presenting is Reid Hoffman founder of LinkedIn. The largely successful social network that we all know. Reid Hoffman is now chairman, president and evangelist to the company and, in early 2007, left the CEO chair to Dan Nye. Just last week, LI realized a new round of financing of $53m indicative of a $1 billion valuation. Today, Reid is an adviser, investors and board member to many startup companies.

Other speakers will include Larry Sanger founder of Wikipedia, Craig Newmark founder of Craigslist, Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet founder of PriceMinister.com and Martin Eberhard founder of Tesla Motors.

As an entrepreneur, networking and thinking internationally is absolutely essential for imposing a global product, brand or technology. Being locally focused may work for some (PriceMinister), but most of us are reaching far beyond the traditional frontiers of our countries and the only limiting factor is how we have been taught to think.

• Firefox was launched and has set a world record with over 8 million downloads in a 24hour span. Download it here. But be carefull not all FF2 extensions work with this new release, yet.

• Yahoo’s executives seem to be jumping ship. How many? 114 since January 2007. They have lost quite a few in the last few days and since the failed attempt by Microsoft to buy the company, including Flickr and delicious founders. Click here for an actulized list.

• On the VC front,  LinkedIn is now valued is $1 billion as of this week - still shy of Facebook by a factor of 15, but still. They raised a new round of financing of $53 million. Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn will be in Paris for the French-American Conference of Entrepreneurs.

• Also, Amazon may be preparing a payment service to compete against PayPal (and Google’s own, not so sucessful CheckOut)

That day, the first shockwave happened when Steve announced that the price of the phone would be dropped to $199 for the entry-level model. Everyone rejoiced. The aftershock was felt quickly thereafter through a discreet and traditional press release by AT&T mentioning that the phone would be subsidized the same as all other handsets.

This meant one thing : AT&T would NOT be sending $20 per month per phone to Apple.

What struck me as closely related is that a few minutes before announcing the new iphone, Jobs introduced MobileMe, the rebirth of .Mac. And introduced it as a paying service for $99 per year. While a user won’t need MobileMe to make full use of the iPhone 3G, push emails, contact and picture sync come very handy especially now that Apple didn’t introduce wireless sync (as in wifi). Each customer wanting the full potential of the phone will most likely subscribe to the service. Is this a coincidence that the $120 per year Apple was getting from AT&T is replaced by about $100 per year directly from me?

Operator = 100% of monthly plan - minus the financial cost of subsidy
Apple = handset, MobileMe subscription, 30% of 3rd party software

MobileMe seems to be an integral part of making the iPhone 3G appear less expensive by removing the first barrier to entry. Complementing it with the 3rd-party software store guarantees another continuous stream of revenue. Very clever way to get more iPhones in the hands of the consumers while Apple and the operator increase their overall revenues.

Apple shifts the source of its revenue stream from the operators to our own pockets. Not surprising then that operators are more likely to list the iPhone as they don’t have to manage a new type of partnership. Subsidizing a handset has been part of the operator’s everyday practice for a very long time. The iPhone 3G, by actually launching in more countries (70) than initially planned (25), looks like they’re admitting they failed at imposing a new royalty mechanism to the operators worldwide.

Quote from AT&T press release “The new agreement between Apple and AT&T eliminates the revenue-sharing model under which AT&T shared a portion of monthly service revenue with Apple. Under the revised agreement, which is consistent with traditional equipment manufacturer-carrier arrangements, there is no revenue sharing and both iPhone 3G models will be offered at attractive prices to broaden the market potential and accelerate subscriber volumes.”

Related posts about the iPhone launch

• iPhone only available in stores
• AT&T press release about the availability of the iphone 3G
• Iphone 3G monthly plan will be more expensive
• MobileMe: .Mac’s iPhone-Friendly Replacement
• Steve Jobs WWCD 2008 keynote
• iPhone 2.0: will you be able to resist it at 199$
• Free iPhone 2.0 Software Available Early July
• iPhone 3G Pricing and Activation Details: $30 Unlimited Data, Activated In Store Only
• Apple no longer receiving monthly revenue from At&t
• AT&T: New 3G iPhone Will Whack Our Earnings, Margins (T, AAPL)
• I Am a Member of The Cult of iPhone
• iPhone 3G true cost is $1,237

3 and a half minute to introduce the iPhone

1. The release of the iPhone 3G second generation. People (including me) have been waiting for it, predicting its arrival day, its features and the ones lacking. Most were right on it. The new iPhone was announced monday, will be released in 22 countries on July 11th (July 17th for France) and will be on sale for 199$ (all across the world). Let’s say that I have some doubts on Apple’s interpretation of currency rates. Can you really imagine the iPhone at 129.50€? All your questions answered in the iPhone 3G FAQ by Gizmodo.



2. The second big news was that Yahoo stopped all talks with Microsoft and makes a deal with Google. Will outsource all paid search to Google. The market did not really appreciate the news and YHOO dropped from around $26 to under 22$. Microsoft deal around $33 is long gone. TechCrunch has an in depth analysis of some of the clauses of the deal. Very interesting read as it highlights loopholes in case of anti-trust inquiries or buy-out (by Microsoft).



3. Actually there was something else going on this week that was unfortunately a bit burried under the buzz. It’s Enterprise 2.0 Conference that was happening June 9-12 in Boston. As Josh Bernoff put it earlier this week in a post titled “The real business model for Web 2.0: corporate clients“, if you are starting a business, early-adopters are great to spread your ideas, but don’t listen - too much - as companies may be your real customers. Check David Spark’s extensive content produced during the show.

• [OUTAGE] Amazon.com (not the Web services) was down for nearly two ours on Friday. They should learn from Twitter how to communicate on outages.

• [IPHONE] It’s the last weekend before the alleged announce of the iPhone 3G. Will it be in stores the same day, same week, across the globe or just in the US? We will know for sure Monday with the opening of the WWDC. Follow live coverage by TechCrunch.

• [GOOGLE] Not sure of the public reaction after Google’s new favicon. Google is now requesting that we submit our  suggestions.

• [ENTREPRENEURSHIP] There was a Seedcamp in Paris this Friday, interestingly enough the insights from Mike Butcher from TechCrunch UK are fairly accurate in view of what I have been seeing for the last few months. Here are his notes on the event and the startup that were presenting.

• [BROWSER WAR] Also there is a lot of talks around the web on the expected market share of Firefox next week. Prediction is that Firefox will hit an global 20% share. This comes as we are getting closer to the release of FF3 while the Release Candidate 2 is available for download.

• [SPACE] A bit of space news, did you know you can follow Phoenix, the latest Mars rover, on twitter?

• [LAW] Horror in France, the word “emailing” has been trademarked and there is now no way to register the keyword on Adwords France. This has to stop!

Oh, and before you start the week with your business lunches and dinners. You should consider this new location for your next board meeting.

Looking quickly at the menu, I was amazed at the choices available. Today for lunch, do you feel like having a crunch mister, an omelette with grasses or better yet, nets of herrings?

Jokes aside, I tried to have a chat with the barman (the only guy serving) who told me he could not speak a word of English and says his menu is perfectly fine because it was translated by a professional! I did not laugh but instead felt quite sorry.

Menu page 1 & page 2. Sorry they are a bit fuzzy.

My best guess was that it has been translated online. So I pointed the browser to the nearest google translate page. It didn’t take long to realize that google was pretty good with food and dishes, translating most of them quite accurately.

The next stop was to go to Systran’s version. From their home page “SYSTRAN is the market leading provider of language translation software”. There they were, the results were amazing, with Omelette Jambon de Paris becoming Omelette boiled ham and Glace becoming Freeze. After a quick chat with a reseller of Systran’s boxed product, he told me that google translate used to be powered by systran server but was replaced a few month ago with their own translator engine, a definitely more sensible alternative.

The only thing these online tools should be used for is trying to understand quickly, and unreliably, the meaning of a text in a foreign language. I’m sure there is ways and areas where the translation must be near perfect, but still, nothing should be published without a human looking over it.