Google+: Doing what Facebook does, better

This is my first blog post in a long while. I have learned not to promise that I will be better and try to post more often. Frankly, I would love to, but reality of busy work life does not allow me. After spending few weeks playing with Google+ here is why I think it will be successful; despite my original post on Google+ on my first day about its auto friend suggest feature

Facebook invented online sharing with controlled social circles and brilliantly used them to beat MySpace, Friendster and alikes; including Yonja, the most successful Turkish social network that my brother and I started. Early on, we thought everyone should either share everything with everyone, and if they had something more private to say, it should be done via private messaging/email. My brother always said, this is like being at a bar. You can see everyone, and if you'd like, you can rock up to them and talk. The online experience should reflect that.

However, Facebook proved that wrong. First they started reinventing social circles. People either had to be your online friend or in your network in order to see your posts, pictures, etc. Then they made sure that users can control what can be shared with which circles/groups of friends. And ultimately, to boost the traffic, they built the news feed of what is going around you.

Google+ put the social circles front and center, literally. The controls are right there and very clear. You know which friend is in which circle. You can very easily see the updates from each circle, and if you'd like you can update the chosen ones. On top of that, they also introduced the best of Twitter to it. One can follow another person's public posts without having to be friends.

Although almost all of these features exist in Facebook, they are hidden in different parts of the interface, and I'd say 80% of its users have no clue about them. I say it again Google+ put them front and center. I am very curios about the interface changes Facebook will introduce to level the field.

I am sure Google has many other plans cooking up: Google+ for businesses is a known one that is coming up; (speculation) most likely an API and application market, after all they already have app markets for apps for businesses, Chrome, Android, Google Analytics.

It will be a very interesting one to watch. Especially when Google already has very big engineering teams for each component: Chat, Picasa, Gmail, Search, Advertising, etc; and is executing brilliantly.
e

Android App Inventor is amazing!

Android App Inventor, is one of the most amazing tools I have used recently.

In about 10 minutes I built an application that shows you a random color and asks you what color it is. When you press the color it listens what you say, and based on the color you say it says correct or wrong. Again, although pretty basic functionality, it took me 10 minutes and zero, and I repeat, zero lines of code.

More amazing things about it, it runs in the browser. No IDEs needed. And as you make changes to the UI layout, you can view them in the phone's UI.

Rules building is very simple via its Java UI. (Apparently uses MIT's OpenBlocks)

It still misses some basic functionality around better formatting the screens and adding additional pages, downloading the source code to make additional changes, but I am sure they will soon be available.

Here are the simple rules on how the application should behave that I built using its very intuitive UI.




Here is the simple screen layout.



Unfortunately I still have not figured out how to publish these apps on the market yet. I am sure if I dig around more I can, and when I do, I will publish them :-)

Bottom line, this is amazing, and will revolutionize mobile phone application development.

Feedback Crowd

Today, we launched a crowd sourced feedback collection toolFeedback Crowd.
The concept is to create a large community aimed around improving the web we live and engage with, putting a selection of the web's top sites under inspection.

It would be great if you could be part of our pilot group to quickly assess our site and give us any feedback. Feel free to invite all your Facebook friends, put a link as your status, tweet us- the more the better!

Try it out at www.feedbackCrowd.com and suggestions to info@feedbackcrowd.com

Thanks
e

Educating children

I remember, when I was a kid, I learned reading and writing when I was 5, in first grade. That was the norm, the children were not expected to read and write until they went to the first grade.

However, these days, in order to get into pre-k (the competitive ones), at age 3 children need to know the letters, numbers and a number of different objects.

Therefore, with a friend of mine, we have started a new company, Five Pumpkins (http://m.fivepumpkins.com/). With Five Pumpkins, we aim to help children learn their ABCs and other essentials. Five Pumpkins builds apps on iPhone/iPad and Android for children to help learn. Although today, the devices are mostly targeted for parents, soon, we believe each child will have his/her own device.

Five Pumpkins applications can be found in both iTunes and Android Market. Just search for "fivepumpkins" or alternatively go to our mobile website http://m.fivepumpkins.com/. While you are there do not forget to signup for our email newsletters.

Alternatively, you can follow us on Twitter.com/fivepumpkins or on Facebook


Happy Learning.
e

An idea for a new game

Thinking about calling it cyber-labyrinth.

The idea is to get to a target site from another starting website by only using your mouse and clicking on the links that you see within your browser. The first person who gets to the target website's home page wins.

For example. All users start with CNN.com's home page in their browser and have to find their way to Techcrunch.com.

It can be a multi person game. No limit on how many people can play it at the same time.

Bonus: Think about doing exposing the sites in some sort of iframe page, and have random start and end point sites. Enough people join a session and the race begins. In the mean time while people are clicking away, you collect the data about which site is linked to another one without having to crawl the web. Do this enough times with enough users, you will have high level view of site links. Of course, long tail, low level pages' data will not be collected, but that can be another game.

iFad? Not for all.

I am sure Apple did some market research, and did not build a product on a hunch. It's been two days since Steve Jobs introduced iPad, and the more I think about it, the more I realize how it is the perfect product for my mother. She has a laptop computer to play some of her favorite games, send and receive emails, and every now and then surf the web. She clearly does not need a laptop with a full operating system to do them, and her life can be much simpler with a simpler OS and device.

For power users of a laptop like myself, between a capable phone (iPhone, Android Nexus One, or Droid) and a pretty portable and powerful laptop, there is no need for an iPad. It is a giant iPod touch.

As one of the killer features, I was expecting some sort of wireless VGA or HDMI. How cool would it be if one could turn the iPad into a giant remote control that has all the content you want. Imagine being at home and playing games, or watching things on your home TV without having to plug anything in or running cables across the room.

How about a camera? How cool would it be to make a video call with it? Possibly the next generations of the product will have it.

Just one side note about the presentation: Steve Jobs is a master presenter. He is very calm and amicable when presenting. However, when he was pitching iPad's price, I found him very sleazy. He sounded like a used car salesman when he posted a made up anchor price of $999 on the screen saying everybody thought it should be priced just under $1000. And then, as if it is a real break through, with some sound effects, he declared that they crushed the price down to $499. By the way, $499 gets you the toy version of this device which you will have to update in 1-2 years, because the battery won't hold much charge and more importantly, you will run out of space due to storage heavy application. A proper one will cost you around $700. As my negotiation professor would say: "where did that $999 come from, and how is it relevant?".

I am sure they will sell millions of iPads to their target audience: Not technology savvy people who want to be on the "interwebs"; aka Mom.

Taping everything

Lately, for some reason, I have been taping many things. I guess it is a side effect of always having my camera with me.
It first started with me taping the musicians of the NYC Subway, and starting my new blog about them, NYC Subway Musicians.

Today, after work, with a couple of friends from work, went to the driving range at Chelsea Piers. After a couple of swings I remembered that I had my camera with me. I thought, taping myself would be a great opportunity to observe my own swing and maybe to improve it. So here it is, a couple of swings that even impressed me :-) I guess I perform well when I know I have an audience.

Watch out Tiger Woods!