Waiting for the Billionth Download

Posted on by

Fascinating analysis of the emerging software market spawned by the iPhone.

Over the next week, the iTunes App Store is set to record its billionth download, an impressive milestone given that it launched less than a year ago. Granted the actual usage of most apps is spotty. To mark the event, I’m updating a few charts that I produced for previous posts.

Slightly over 35,000 apps have appeared in the U.S. app store. Over 31,000 were available in the last week alone, about 78% of which were PAID apps:

The charts are interesting. Lovely piece of research.

New apps currently running at 1,500 a week. This is an astonishing change in the market for software.

The rise and rise of the NetBook

Posted on by

In the midst of a pot-boiling piece by Randall Stross in the NYT is this evocative quote:

“In 1983, the Compaq Portable weighed 28 pounds, more than enough to set one’s shoulder throbbing halfway down an airport concourse; it cost $2,995 for one floppy-drive or $3,950 for two.”

Gosh, I remember the Compaq portable. Some of us have one arm longer than the other as a result of that dratted machine.

Later on, I had a much neater Compaq — the Compaq 3. It proved to be a terrific workhorse. And relatively portable for the time.

The future of online news: where are the business models?

Posted on by

Good, robust common sense from Jeff Jarvis.

At the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is make hard, unemotional business judgments. The question is not whether content should be free or whether readers should pay; “should” is an irrelevant verb. The question, very simply, is how more money can be made. What will the market support?

The other question, then, is how much journalism the market will pay for? What kind of journalism will it support? This doesn’t necessarily start with the current spending on current newsrooms. Part of the equation, especially in the other models, will be new efficiencies (e.g., do what you do best, link to the rest) and new opportunities to work in collaboration and in networks.

This is a good, hard-headed essay. And I couldn’t agree more about the need to ban the ‘should’ word from these conversations. Too many print journalists — and even some journalism professors — are locked into normative dead-ends. We need to move on. The question is: what will work in the new ecosystem?

The artist and the iPhone

Posted on by

Lovely FT.com piece about David Hockney.

He has drawn recent portraits with computer software, using a Wacom graphic tablet and tablet pen, producing inkjet prints that can be physically reworked by hand; these are the subject of next month’s London show Drawing Inside a Printing Machine. One depicting Celia’s granddaughters Lola, Tilly and Isabella – made while the girls watched a DVD on a baby-white chaise longue – has the snapshot spontaneity of a photograph but the fluid lines, a composition interrogating their relationship, and a nonchalant loveliness, characteristic of Hockney’s best portraits.

Tea is poured, and as Fitzherbert disappears briefly to walk Freddie, Hockney produces his newest tool, an iPhone. With a few deft strokes he draws the outline of a face with his finger, clicks a button to alter the thickness of the line, adds eyebrows, lips. Another button produces the peals of York Minster; then the thing becomes a mouth organ that Hockney pretends to play; next it emits sounds like a razor and he pretends to shave. “It’s better than a Blackberry, which is all about efficiency – for businessmen,” he says. “This has a sense of the absurd – so it’s true to life, for me.”

Worth reading in full if — like me — you enjoy Hockney’s work.

Thanks to Lorcan Dempsey for the link.

Amazon: power – and responsibility

Posted on by

This morning’s Observer column.

When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon, his single strategic goal was to “get big quick”. His hunch was that, in online retailing, size and scale would be the ultimate determinants of success. And his vision was never limited to books – they were the obvious starting point, because they are goods that people could buy without having to handle them. But Bezos had much more ambitious plans. He wanted to sell everything that could be sold online. He saw Amazon as potentially the Wal-Mart of the web.

Last week we saw two very different illustrations of how close he has come to achieving his goal…

Moderating RIPA (slightly)

Posted on by

When RIPA was being pushed through Parliament in 1999, some of us were very concerned at its apparent extensibility — especially (i) the scope it offered for its powers to be extended virtually without limit to any public authority in the UK, and (ii) its use for purposes other than detecting organised crime and terrorism. And lo! it came about — the Act has been used by Local Authorities to legitimise snooping in all kinds of areas, none of them connected with terrorism or organised crime.

The abuses have become so outrageous that now there’s to be a public consultation on the matter. here’s the text of the official announcement:

Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000: Consolidating orders and codes of practice

Passed in 2000, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (called RIPA), created a regulatory framework to govern the way public authorities handle and conduct covert investigations.

This consultation takes a look at all the public agencies, offices and councils that can use investigation techniques covered by RIPA, and asks the public to consider whether or not it’s appropriate for those people to be allowed to use those techniques.

In light of recent concerns, the government is particularly interested in how local authorities use RIPA to conduct investigations into local issues. Among other things, in order to ensure that RIPA powers are only used when they absolutely need to be, the government proposes to raise the rank of those in local authorities who are allowed to authorise use of RIPA techniques.

To respond to the consultation, reply by email to ripaconsultation@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

You can also reply by post to:

Tony Cooper
Home Office
Peel Building 5th Floor
2 Marsham Street
London SW1P 4DF