I used to write a fair amount of music for television commercials.  It was interesting to have a glimpse into the workings of the advertising industry for a few years, even from the ‘gun-for-hire’ sidelines - for example, I was once called back in to do some minor revisions on a previously approved music track for an aerosol carpet deodorizer because of last-minute changes required by legal at the ad agency.

In this particular commercial, the product’s effectiveness was illustrated by an ‘odor-smelling wand’ prop waved over 2 pieces of carpet recently sat upon by the family dog - one carpet treated with our deodorizer, one with theirs.  After the post production was complete, though, it was discovered that the number of (fake) beeps coming from the prop didn’t accurately match the (real) numbers coming from the underlying focus group testing - so the spot had to be reedited with the correct  ratio of fake beeps  - hence my (and the voice-over talent’s) call-back.

Such is the attention paid to potential litigation arising from directly comparative advertising…

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Received my cell phone email bill the other day.  I never go over my voice/text limits and I have an unlimited data plan - so unless I’m traveling, my cell phone charges tend to be very consistent.  I couldn’t help but notice, though, that this bill was $10 higher than usual.  While I’m no fan of AT&T’s network quality (more on that here), I’ve found them to be pretty on top of things, billing-wise - so I was a little surprised.

Off to their website I went, looking for whatever annoying new fee, tax, or disputed charge that was surely there waiting for me - with that familiar old feeling of cell-phone-company-fear-and-loathing already coming on, I logged on to my account….

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Here in the west, innovation and individual expression is such an ingrained ideal that it’s sometimes easy to take it for granted. Not so in Asia, where the imitation of (and often, let’s face it, the improvement upon) successful products is the sincerest form of flattery.

This is especially true when it comes to popular culture and technology.  Twitter has been so phenomenally successful that it’s now arguably equal parts both - so it’s worth taking a look at a few of the Asian clones out there.

The first thing one notices is that most of the knockoffs use the same shade of turquoise blue and the same style of font used in the original.  Again, to western eyes, the choice to copy the graphic design so closely might seem somewhat shameless, almost to the point of adding insult to injury - yet it’s just another example of the Asian mindset.

Intellectual property and copyright issues notwithstanding, the lack of ego that makes these near-exact replicas of Twitter possible is somewhat refreshing - and  sites like digu (below) demonstrate that they’re certainly keeping up with us over there - this Chinese Twitter clone features a Google Maps-powered mashup that pops up real-time geo-located balloons of posts as they occur - just like similar western sites such as twittervision.

It’s an increasingly interesting dynamic, this difference between the East and the West.

It’ll be interesting to see what digu does for an interface in the event Google does in fact pull out of the country….

…maybe not.   But we’re going to write one anyway - because we feel there are still at least two interesting things left to say about the new Apple device unveiled last Wednesday:

Point #1. Technically, the new Apple new iPad device was disappointing on several levels (still no Flash support, still no multitasking, still no video partnerships, still no AT&T alternative).  But while the storm of negative Twitter reaction had already begun while while Steve Jobs was still on the stage, it was not until the next day that the negative reaction was reflected in the stock price.  Take a look at the chart to your left - the iPad event started at 2:00 Eastern Standard Time and was accompanied by a clear immediate spike in Apple’s share price, due as much to the sheer momentum of pre-event buzz as to superficial (”isn’t Apple the coolest?”) mainstream media coverage of the event itself.  Despite an army of bloggers and tweeters continuing to bash the iPad for its disappointing feature set throughout the day, the price remained elevated - in fact, it was not until the market open on the next day (Thursday January 28th) that the stock suddenly pulled back, ending up lower than it was pre-announcement (with knowledge of the twitter traffic, shorting Apple at about 4:00 that afternoon would have been a good move).

To me, this lag time between the (misguided) initial spike and the next day’s eventual retreat represents the disconnect that still exists between the technorati and investor classes.  That there was such a disconnect even in this case was surprising, though - because Twitter coverage of the event was fueled by an unprecedented number of tech websites serving live video streams of the event (surely a record for a product launch).  Potentially, it’s one powerful symbiotic relationship: the reach of internet video combined with the immediacy of Twitter- yet still, it took a day for the widespread disappointment in the iPad to register in Apple’s share price.

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There’s been a good amount of buzz surrounding web services for a some time now.  Built upon the same HTTP protocol we humans use every day when updating our Facebook profiles or Netflix queues, essentially web services involve requests for XML files made programmatically by applications.

Historically, the SOAP protocol has been used to implement the majority of web services.  Since web (HTTP) traffic flows freely through most firewalls on port 80, these services are relatively easy to deploy in terms of networking.  Implementation and maintenance, though?  Not so much.  This is because for each and every SOAP web service, the methods (the ‘verbs’ the service provider offers) have had to have been individually implemented and then fully described to the client machine ahead of time.  In some cases, this level of flexibility is useful and well worth the extra overhead - however, for many (if not most) web services, writing these methods each and every time represents a significant amount of ‘wheel reinventing’ and additional development time.

Luckily, it turns out that often the plumbing already built into the underlying HTTP protocol also contains all the method (verb) functionality needed for many web services as well.

And thus we come to the concept of RESTful web service design.

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“Three screens and a cloud.”

That’s how both Chief Software Ray Ozzie and CEO Steve Ballmer repeatedly described the future of computing in general over this past year.

Inside Microsoft’s crystal ball, traditional desktop computing is decreasing as applications move up into the internet, and a new generation of lightweight ‘screens’ (thin clients, mobile devices, and network-enabled televisions) become the three prevailing client-side hardware models.

It’s a good little slogan - and about as unambiguous an endorsement of the conventional wisdom on the bright future of cloud computing as one could imagine.

Microsoft has had its share of advertising/PR issues over the last few years (think Jerry Seinfeld as a symbol of forward-thinking 21st century coolness, or the Windows 7 launch party infomercial).  It would be a shame if similar promotional missteps end up preventing the Microsoft Azure initiative from garnering the media buzz it deserves, though, because the company is every bit as dedicated to the cloud as the above quote would suggest – and they’re putting their money where Ray’s and Steve’s mouths are.

Consider the Chicago data center (pictured at left), part of the massive global build-out of the Azure infrastructure that occurred over the past year.  Completed this past June, the facility occupies 700,000 sq. ft. - the size of 12 US football fields.  To populate a data center this size, 40 ft. shipping containers are packed full of servers and installed as power-efficient and easier-cooling modules (note to the firm handling Microsoft’s PR: that would make some pretty servicable B-roll news segment footage).

Sadly, though, the remarkable physical build-out of Azure has been one of the more overlooked stories of 2009, and as the service is poised to go live for the enterprise tomorrow on New Years Day, there remains relatively little coverage in the general or trade media.

So what is Azure?

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A few weeks ago, we wrote that while a recent panel discussion of the iPhone NPR app was focused on the ability to access any NPR station despite its over-the-air local broadcast range constraints (geographic independence), the primary value proposition of the NPR app is the ability to access any program despite its scheduled air time constraints (temporal independence).  Put another way, this app represents the ‘tivo-ization’ of NPR.

In fact, the intrinsic ability to time-shift content is arguably the primary value proposition of any internet media platform.

Some recent coverage of Apple’s forthcoming Apple TV subscription model misses this point entirely, though…

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“What we are seeing in the U.S. today in terms of smartphone penetration, 3G data, nobody else is seeing in the rest of the planet,” said Ralph de la Vega of AT&T during a conference call the other day.

“The amount of growth and data that we are seeing in wireless data is unprecedented,” he added.

As the long-standing negative buzz on AT&T’s network has peaked over the past few weeks (due in part to a recent Consumer Reports article and an aggressive advertising campaign from Verizon), AT&T has shifted from the somewhat defiant and dismissive stance taken earlier this year (when such reports were characterized as “anecdotal feedback” and “sweeping generalizations”) to a more plaintive tone - as demonstrated above.

Whether or not it’s good long-term policy for any company to publicly complain about how difficult it is for them to provide the service they’re being paid to provide is open for discussion - particularly when that company’s current windfall success is almost entirely dependent upon a soon-to-expire exclusive partnership with another company (i.e. Apple).

In any event, while the technical challenges AT&T faces may be very real, I would be more receptive to the recent “data networks are hard” excuses coming out of the company if it were able to a better job of getting even voice coverage up to par in the NYC area - above is a screen shot from my iPhone, taken from my home office.  My apartment (the blue dot) is located within 2 miles of downtown Manhattan - not exactly the middle of nowhere.  Yet, I get almost zero bars - and an unusable voice connection.

In AT&T’s defense, the company has recently launched an iPhone app to allow users to send the company location-specific reports of poor service (of course, in cases of no coverage you’d have to put the iPhone on an available wireless network for the app to function).

So that’s what I’ve done - I’ve installed the app, sent in my report, and am waiting  to see if my voice (let alone data) service improves.

In the meantime, while at my desk at home, it would appear I own an expensive  iTouch.

We’ve written about DNS before - how important it is, how remarkably well it works, how often it’s attacked, and how taken for granted it is by the general public.

As such, last week’s announcement that Google is getting into the DNS business is worth paying some attention to (historically, DNS has been provided for at the Internet Service Provider level, but there’s no intrinsically technical requirement to do so).

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The keynote event at the Future of Television East conference here in New York a few weeks ago was a conversation with Paula Kerger, President & CEO of PBS.  During the discussion, the subject of the iPhone NPR app came up as a model of  what digital distribution of PBS content could someday look like.

Although the tremendously successful  BBC iPlayer might have been a more apt example, I was happy nonetheless to hear one of my favorite iPhone apps getting some recognition.

Of course, the ability of internet radio to provide access to any station regardless of the geographical limitations of its over-the-air broadcast range were touted -  Kerger, as it happens, enjoys listening to Maine public radio (where she has a summer home) while traveling.  However, what was left unsaid about the NPR iPhone app was what I feel is its most notable feature:  the “Programs” section, a comprehensive implementation of all available on-demand streams organized by program rather than station.  Not only that, but news shows such as “All Things Considered” are broken down by individual segments, so one can actually browse within the show (of course, for a more passive experience you can still play all segments sequentially via a playlist).

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