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Jorge Escobar

Google’s Whitespace Bid is Where Nexus is Going

by Jorge Escobar on January 6, 2010

Yesterday I saw the realtime video feed (thanks to @scobleizer) of the unveiling of Google’s new phone, the Nexus One. The phone looks great, with some really cool features and confirming that Google is really lining all its guns towards the mobile space.

But the announcement wasn’t revolutionary in any level. It’s a great new phone that’s powered by any cellular network. You can buy it straight from Google with no string attached. Ho-hum.

Before the announcement, my friend @joeles thought that the phone would finally break the dependence on mobile voice plans, working off of data plans exclusively using Google Voice (@mona was talking about the same thing on this blog post and got really good responses on FriendFeed).

I believe on the long run this is still the case, but it won’t be running on top of Wifi or data plans. I think Google will be utilizing the “whitespace” frequencies that were freed from TV signals to enable data communication on the Nexus or any upcoming Google phones.

The big question mark as usual is the business relationships that could potentially be broken by this shift. T-Mobile could have enforced some sort of contract with Google to stop this from happening. I don’t think that would be Google’s way of doing things, but you can never know. The fact that Google is selling the phone directly is a good indication that they are not going to be tied up with any carrier.

The mobile disruption did not happen just yet. But knowing Google, you can bet it’s on its way.

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FriendFeed’s Lifecycle: A Story of the Modern Startup

December 9, 2009

Today I noticed Compete.com had come out with November stats. My blog had a spectacular month (and if you read it, you know why), but my intentions were other: to see how FriendFeed fared in a key month after its Facebook announcement has died down.

The graph doesn’t look good for FriendFeed, which has lost an additional 20% of its audience.

The question we, as FriendFeed fanatics ask ourselves is why? Why is a product that is so unique been left for dead all of a sudden.

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Why I Hate Traffic Spikes

November 30, 2009

There is a rush when you see a post that gets a lot of attention. I remember Hutch Carpenter experiencing something similar when he had his “Cisco Fatty” post.

But after the moment passes and you look back, there’s a bunch of negative things that slowly emerge from the experience. I will share with you some of the ones I have thought of.

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Chrome OS: Is It Really An Operating System?

November 19, 2009

As I read report after report on Google’s Chrome OS, I have to say I feel a little let down. But most importantly, I’m a little hesitant to call it a real Operating System.

According to the official post:

[Google Chrome OS is] an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web.

Don’t we all spend most of our time nowadays on the web? What is not to love?

The problem is the rest of the time when we are not on the web.

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Microsoft Azure is The New Outlook

November 17, 2009

I just received an email invitation to try out a new application. I get a lot of those these days, but this one was different.

It was from Microsoft.

It picked my interest. A Web Platform Installer? Microsoft doing PHP?

I went to the URL provided and I was blown away with the concept behind this application. Basically Windows has introduced point-and-click cloud computing for the masses and it’s doing it in a way that resembles the iPhone application directory but for web applications.

I hate to say it but it’s brilliant.

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Web Platforms, Not Web Portals

November 17, 2009

In talking to different startups in the past weeks, it’s very clear to me that businesses haven’t grasped yet how the Internet has shifted from the destination paradigm to the platform paradigm.

In a post titled “The Web in Danger”, Anil Dash compiles and adds to the thoughts of Tim O’Reilly, Doc Searls and Chris Messina about how the web is in danger of losing its essence: the destination URL.

So far people have thought of websites by the URLs they enter on their browsers to consume its services. But today, they are thinking of businesses as omnipresent services. They want to be able to do everything they normally do on the URL, using their iPhone or on Facebook or on their Chrome OS powered netbook.

They want to fire up your application using an icon; not enter an address on a URL window.

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AWS Import Tip: Don’t Do It On Windows

November 16, 2009

I just spent the last ten days trying to do an import on Amazon S3 using their Import/Export service. Basically Import/Export allows you to send a drive to Amazon via snail mail and they will hook the drive to their system and import the data locally. It’s much faster than trying to upload the first [...]

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Twitter Retweet: A ‘Like’ Function in Steroids

November 11, 2009
Thumbnail image for Twitter Retweet: A ‘Like’ Function in Steroids

One of the pillars of Social Tools is discovery. You have built a network of like-minded (or influential) people around you, you start striking conversations with them and you start getting the feel of belonging.

But of course, your network is 10 times bigger and more interesting, because of the second and third levels of people’s connections.

“Like” is one of the killer features of FriendFeed. It allowed me to discover new people’s content and I made really close connections to dozens of them. Facebook eventually copied the functionality, even though is not as useful in context as FriendFeed’s.

Since the beginning of Twitter, people found a way to hack the system, by introducing the ‘@’ sign to address users and putting ‘RT’ in front to give attribution of an interesting piece of content.

It took a while, but Twitter has finally given us a way to standardize the process and support it from within its data model. And it’s still called the same: Retweet.

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Ding-Dong, SEO and PageRank Are Dead

October 30, 2009
Thumbnail image for Ding-Dong, SEO and PageRank Are Dead

Even as users still question whether real-time is hoopla or really transforming, I think the future is clear: real-time’s most impact will be on search.

And Google is showing up signs of distress.

First they tried to buy Twitter. That was the best move they could’ve tried. Unfortunately its founders were not impressed and really believed in their company. Reportedly they said they wouldn’t sell for a billion dollars.

Google could just scoff and carry on, right? Wrong. They need real-time because that’s where search is moving.

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Have Fun and A Community Will Follow

October 29, 2009
Thumbnail image for Have Fun and A Community Will Follow

When you are trying to create a community around your brand (personal or corporate) there is an important consideration that you need to have in mind.

And that is your “fun factor”.

I’m not sure if it is something we are programmed to detect (like those tales of pheromones and the cavemen and stuff) but I think people like to hang around happy individuals or fun brands.

If you are writing content, uninspired or because you’re doing a chore, or meeting numbers, or increasing followers, people will smell your fakeness from a mile.

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