Monthly Archives: June 2014

Yo! This is really really dumb!

Perception is a powerful thing.  When something isn’t popular, like Path anywhere outside of Indonesia, people have a lot of opinions on why it’s a lousy product.  When something seems to be a hit, like the Yo app, people have a lot of opinions on why it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

It’s all done on the altar of success.  Traction is the only truth that matters, and people will do whatever mental gymnastics is required to work their way backwards to explain that success (or lack thereof).  Our tech culture prides itself on being smart, but it is still one where outcome rules logic.

I already wrote about Yo, an app so unsubstantial that Apple didn’t even want to publish it to their store.  Yo didn’t make some kind of technological or usability breakthrough — it is successful because it’s so stupid in its simplicity that people find it a hoot to download and talk about.

Remember those “wassup” Budweiser ads that got everybody going wassuuuuup?

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Protip for Microsoft: physical keyboards don’t need autocorrect

Windows 8 is smart enough to know when a user is typing from a physical keyboard or an on-screen one, so why oh why can’t the OS turn off auto-correct for physical keyboards while keeping auto-correct on for the on-screen one?

Auto-correct makes sense for the on-screen keyboard.  Without it, touch typing is frustrating.

But for most decent typists, you don’t need auto-correct with a physical keyboard.  Plus, I  prefer the freedom of typing words that aren’t entirely kosher, like fark or kekeke or lol.  No auto-correct also comes in handy when typing in a different language.

Currently, on Windows 8 for Modern side programs, auto-correct is either on or off for both keyboard types and that doesn’t make much sense.  For hybrid devices to transition smoothly from tablet to laptop and vice versa, auto-correct should also automatically turn on or off.

Google hey-ho! We came away impressed

Lots of really good stuff at Google’s I/O conference.  I’m sure we’ll be delving into Android L and other announcements in more detail in the coming days, but today I’m shooting from the hip and unpacking what caught my attention.

If you haven’t watched it already, see the gargantuan 3 hour keynote here:

My most immediate reaction is “Wow.”  Google is killing it.  Android extends its lead over iOS and Microsoft is way behind in the rear view mirror.

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Bought a new 50-inch LED TV, then wanted to gouge my eyes out

Nine months after the 3-year warranty expired, my 46-inch Samsung LED TV died.  I paid $2,200 for it and it was Samsung’s flagship TV at the time.  The picture quality was great but the TV suffered many problems: the panel was replaced three times, it had major backlight bleeding (who cares about deep blacks when there’s clouding?) and the optical audio port was busted.

It was an expensive TV and lasted less than four years.  It made me wonder whether instead of purchasing a $2,200 flagship TV every four years, I should just spend $1,000 on a mid-level TV every two.  With the way technology advances, the mid-level experience two years from now might be better than the flagship experience today.  I’d save money and average out to comparable viewing quality.

And so I purchased a Sharp Aquos 50LE450M online for an astonishingly cheap $720.  Yes, you read that correctly, a 50-inch, 1080P LED TV for $720 from a respected Japanese brand.  It was also only released in 2013.  I couldn’t find any reviews of it as the TV appears to be specially made for developing markets.  Sibling Sharp TVs with similar model numbers did have middling reviews, which by definition I was prepared to accept.  Plus, this is from Sharp so it can’t be that bad right?

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Facebook’s Slingshot will fail because few will understand its purpose

I’ve been using Facebook’s new app, Slingshot, intensely since it launched last week.  It was initially thought of as a Snapchat competitor and the successor to Poke – which I argued could have beaten Snapchat – but it’s actually quite different.

It’s hard to describe Slingshot and that’s the biggest problem.  It’s difficult to understand its purpose, and few will invest the time needed to do so.  Even after much thought, it’s still not clear why one should use Slingshot over other apps.

Get_Facebook_Slingshot_small

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Yo! This is dumb!

I’ve resisted writing about Yo because, well, it’s a dumb app and I didn’t want to give it more PR than it already got.  You can use the app to send a Yo message to a friend.  Aaaaand…that’s it.  The app took one developer 8 hours to make.

Even Apple thought the app was stupid.  According to this excellent Business Insider’s article:

Yo launched quietly on April Fools Day, but Apple rejected its App Store application. Yo lacked substance, Apple argued. The pair fought back and defended Yo’s simplicity. Eventually, Yo was published.

And yet, today, over 500,000 people are using Yo.  The app reached #4 on the US iTunes app store and raised $1.2 million in funding.  Supposedly, they could have raised a lot more money if they wanted to.  Argh!  And what’s worse — Yo has even spawned copycats.

The tech industry can be a bit of a joke sometimes.

Yo is a marketing gimmick that people latch on to because using something really dumb can be really funny, and for many that’s real value.  I get that.

Yo isn’t even the first to hit humanity’s ironic goldmine.  Make it Rain and yes, Flappy Bird are two other examples.

As an industry outsider I’d find this app’s success hilarious.  Not so much as an insider, working hard to get our own app noticed.

Yahoo Weather enters storm with only design as a defence

There was a great story on re/code about how Apple’s iOS8 has replaced Yahoo’s weather app with one from the Weather Channel.  This is an embarrassing loss for the purple icon.

The real value of Yahoo Weather isn’t in its fancy design; it’s in its data and distribution.  Neither of which belonged to Yahoo.  The data for weather was provided by — you guessed it — the Weather Channel, who unsurprisingly supplied better data for its own app.

Apple provided the bulk of the distribution.  Marissa Mayer wants “daily habits” to be the cornerstone of Yahoo’s strategy, but in this case iPhone users didn’t have a daily habit of using Yahoo Weather; their daily habit is to use whatever weather app Apple provided.  Discovery remains the biggest challenge of the apps business and Yahoo Weather is no exception to it.

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