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On iPhone, toys, the enterprise and of course, Windows 8

Flashback 5 years ago. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, the original model, which had no 3G support and cost more than any other mobile phone. At that time, Nokia dominated the market, with almost 40% market share, and Samsung was gaining ground on Motorola, both owning around 15% of the industry sales. Funny, how things change in so little time, but what's even funnier, is how the competition reacted to the iPhone. Some of you may remember how Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, laughed at the iPhone, saying that it's pretty much an expensive toy that would never penetrate the enterprise. History proved him wrong, and we can only guess if this was one of the most bitter predictions he ever made.

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written 8:34 CET on chronolog
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Tweet my Foursquare check-in, and I'll change your relationship status

Why? Because changing your relationship status on Facebook is so last year. Because all the cool kids are on Twitter and Foursquare. Because you want to discover all the possible ways of saying something. Because you like to play. Because a tagged picture just doesn't cut it anymore. Because you like to speak ambiguously. Because you want to leave people in the dark. Because you want them to read between the lines. Because you don't intend to make it a big deal, but would still like to tell the world. Because that's simply the newest way of doing it. Tweet my Foursquare check-in, and I'll change your relationship status.

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written 18:05 CET on chronolog
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Is it even possible to create original content in this age?

I've been blogging for more than three years now. And I love doing it, hell, I think my blog is pretty fucking awesome. But there's a problem I've been noticing lately. Every single piece of content I write has probably been written hundred times before. By mainstream media, by authors, by bloggers, by you. There's no way around it, and it bugs me to infinity. Take this specific post for instance, I won't even google it, but I can guess plenty of others writers have faced these thoughts and wrote about them from their own viewpoints. The irony of the situation is fantastic.

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written 12:52 CET on chronolog
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Do you think we are slowly reaching the end (of science)?

This was great week for science. The scientists from CERN Large Hadron Collider finally proved with great probability that the Higgs boson particle exists. Not that any of us mortals truly understand what it means for the future of mankind, but it's supposed to be quite significant, so I won't argue with that. Science has come a long way, and while we take into account a few other interesting and revolutionary fields, such as Artificial Intelligence, Biotechnolooy, Nuclear Fission, Stem Cells, Genetics, etc., we must also consider the timeframe in which these discoveries did or will take place, in relation to the history of our planet and humanity.

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written 10:59 CET on chronolog
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The final destination, part 1: technologies and concepts enterprise IT will have to adopt

In the past years, we've witnessed a very important transformation: the consumerization of information technologies. Billions of connected users living their life online, overwhelmed by millions of information systems that have been tailored to suit their every need and desire. Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon came a long way with their products and infrastructure, but the enterprise isn't losing any time. Learning from the new paradigms and adopting new funky technologies, that have traditionally been developed in corporate laboratories. Can the Fab 4 also predict where enterprise IT is headed? And what will it become?

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written 19:38 CET on chronolog
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What's hot on the web - Part 7: The greatest metameme ever?

By now you've probably already noticed Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" is a pretty amazing song. It's actually one of the most played songs ever on YouTube (currently on 17th place with around 260 million plays), and already has plenty of great remixes and variations. One of the covers that is really worth mentioning is the performance by Walk Off The Earth, where five people play this song on one guitar.

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written 21:49 CET on chronolog
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What Apple's headphones can teach us about user experience design

I've always been fascinated by things that simply work. By the details that convince, by the experience that fulfills expectations. Enter the case of Apple's headphones. They may be just an accessory that supports something else, but this little gadget is a brilliant example of how ux design should be approached. I'm not saying other vendors don't make equivalent or even better headphones (don't know, so please comment!), but Apple has proved many times that they really know what they are doing, reinventing stuff as they go along. Bottom line: as weird as it may seem, when your are designing user experience, you should think about Apple's headphones. They are one of the most perfect examples of how to do it right.

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written 13:25 CET on chronolog
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Putting 'people who look at you' to your Facebook profile would be the smartest thing to do

Are you one of those people who are wondering how Facebook decides which friends they put on your profile? I admit I am, both out of programmer's curiosity and of course, there have been rumors that those individuals are the ones who look at your profile. While LinkedIn offers this "who looks at your profile" insight to its (premium) users, Facebook is still very mysterious about it, denying this is how this particular algorithm works. But there is a simple reason I don't believe them: if I would be Facebook, I would design it exactly like this.

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written 11:50 CET on chronolog
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Why I don't believe in these crazy technology company valuations

The debate about the potential second technology bubble is all over the media. One of the first milestones that will determine the outcome of this story happened on friday, when Facebook went public. As opposed to other (smaller) web IPOs of the past years (LinkedIn, Groupon, Zynga, Yandex), the price on the first day stayed on the same level. This was to be expected, since Facebook received the valuation of 100 billion dollars. To put that in perspective, that's around half of Google's value, and about the same value as Amazon has. But Facebook makes 10 times less revenue than Google does, and its revenue growth is slowing down. Was Facebook valued too high? It seems so, and some analysts are already saying that most of the stocks were bought by institutional investors to keep the share price above 38$.

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written 9:14 CET on chronolog
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Queensday in Amsterdam, the greatest party in the universe

In my life, I've visited many parties, events and festivals. But nothing quite beats Queensday, the holiday celebrating the (previous) Queen of Netherlands' birthday. Every April 30th, festivities are taking place throughout the country, but the greatest gathering happens in Amsterdam, where around 700.000 people take over the city. Amsterdam is one of the coolest and most easy-going cities in Europe, worth visiting by itself, but if you want to see something like you haven't seen before, you should do yourself a favor and visit the Koninginnedag.

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written 18:35 CET on chronolog
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Security questions are the dumbest thing the internet has ever invented

At one point of the evolution of the World Wide Web, somebody came up with this fantastic idea. This person must have thought that the problem of securing your online identity was just solved in a very elegant form: security questions, which only the person who owns the account is able to answer. But there's a problem. Even if security questions worked at one point in time (which I also doubt), they simply don't work anymore, so you might as well lose them. Luckily, most services already did that, and Facebook tried to innovate this feature with "recognizing friends" alternative, but I somehow still manage to find them. And fail using them.

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written 21:05 CET on chronolog
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The Silicon Valley tour, part 8: Lessons learned, time to reevaluate

It's been about month since I've returned from Silicon Valley, so I've had plenty of time to think about what happened there. This time I went out of curiosity, hoping to get the idea of how things work in the global center of technology. The next time I will be there for real business, approaching the situation more systematically. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are a great place to visit for profiles such as myself, so there surely will be a next time, when a wiser version of me will be able to do some serious shit. And I'll be wiser also because I've learned my lessons this time.

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written 19:01 CET on chronolog
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Volkswagen. Das Auto. Simply brilliant.

You know when car manufacturers try to market their products with meaningful slogans? "Today. Tomorrow. Toyota.", "Seat. Auto emoción.", "Ford. Build for the road ahead.", "Citroën. Créative technologie.", "Volvo. For life.", "Audi. Keeping ahead through technology.", "Škoda. Simply clever.", "Porsche. There is no substitute.", "Mercedes. The best or nothing.", "Hyundai. New thinking. New possibilities.", "Cadillac. Creating a higher standard." and similar? I'm sure you do.

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written 14:57 CET on chronolog
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The future (of software) is in platforms

I don't know if you've had the chance to read What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. You should, it's a very powerful book, even though it's been written a few years ago. Things have changed a bit since then, when Google was on top of it's game, but that doesn't mean the ideas presented in the book aren't more actual than ever. One of the chapters that made the biggest impact on me was the one about platforms and distributed systems. Google managed to conquer the world of Web 1.0 by being decentralized, allowing others to embed YouTube videos, Google Maps and Ads anywhere on the Web. This orientation provided the fuel for Google's further development and growth. Today, this way of thinking is not a competitive advantage anymore, it's becoming a necessity. As you will see, current online market leaders of various industries are not those who provide the service, they're the ones who provide the platform.

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written 17:26 CET on chronolog
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The Silicon Valley tour, part 7: A few exciting new business models that actually work

Visiting Silicon Valley enabled me too peek into the future a bit. Finding out about new technology trends, meeting disruptive new software startups and seeing fascinating new business models that are proven to work. There are even more futuristic products / services than the ones mentioned in this post, but these are the ones that made the biggest impression on me. And they all share similar competitive advantages: using smartphones and other mobile devices, canceling middlemen and supporting cashless commerce.

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written 18:28 CET on chronolog
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