Category Archives: Mobile

The “Mikey” Mobile Adoption Test

First published July 14, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

The time to get serious about mobile is here. I say that not based on any analyst’s report, industry intelligence or pronouncement from any of the companies who have billions riding on it, but rather due to the “Mikey” test.

What, you ask, is the “Mikey” test? I thought you’d never ask.

My friend Mikey (and, yes, he lets me call him that and yet we’re still friends) is a building contractor. Recently, he oversaw the renovations on our home. We were a little concerned by the fact that in the middle of renovations, during a critical period when kitchen cabinets would be installed, old walls would be ripped down, new ones put up and our bathroom floor would be retiled, we would be 3,000 miles away on the most remote land mass in the world, Hawaii.

“It’s all good!” said Mikey (he says that a lot, which is another reason why we’re friends), “I’ll keep you up to date with this!” From his pocket, Mikey pulled out a brand-new iPhone. “I’ll just take pictures and send them to you!”

I was shocked. Mikey and I have a lot of things in common: love of family, appreciation for a good hand-crafted beer, dedication to a job well done, becoming reluctantly middle-aged — but technology is not on the list. His wife, Rosie, does his emailing for him. He was the last guy I expected to get an iPhone, let alone use it to send pictures via email. But sure enough, each day we’d get an update from Mikey, complete with fresh pictures of the progress.

But my biggest shock was still to come. When we returned, Mikey asked us to go to the Lennox website and print off the installation instructions for our gas fireplace insert. As I dropped by after work to drop off the print-outs, Mikey cornered me and said, “Tell me, if I had an iPad, could I look up this type of stuff online?” I would have been less surprised if the neighbor’s cat made me a martini. Mikey is a smart guy, but an early tech adopter he’s not.

For those of us in the biz, the benefits of mobile are obvious. We’ve been crowing about mobile being a game-changer for almost a decade now, but those messages never seemed to move beyond our little circle. But some time in the last year, something fundamental switched. During that time, the Mikeys of the world have suddenly become aware of how mobile might be applicable to them.

Just this past week I did a workshop for a company that makes sandpaper. Mikey is a customer of theirs. Keeping in mind the Mikey test, I decided to check and see what percentage of search queries for their key terms came from mobile devices. Obviously Mikey isn’t the only one who got himself an iPhone. Over 20% of searches for sandpaper and other terms came from mobile devices. And that percentage has more than doubled in the past year. These are numbers you have to pay attention to.

Why is the Mikey test important? There are a number of reasons why this marks a sea change in digital marketing. First of all, Mikey is only interested in mobile because it lets him do things that are important in his job. This isn’t about checking restaurant reviews, looking up show times or updating your Facebook status; this is about getting the job done. That sets a pretty stringent bar for user experience, one that most industrial marketers haven’t even considered. They’re still struggling to make their website a place that doesn’t cause mass user suicide.

Secondly, If Mikey is looking at mobile, we’ve already moved into the steepest part of the adoption curve. That means things are going to move very quickly. Moving quickly is not something that industrial marketers are very comfortable with. If we’re already at 20%, with a doubling in the past year, expect next year to be at 40 or 50%. That is a pace of change that is going to leave a lot of marketers behind.

It’s time to think seriously about mobile — but don’t do it because I told you to.

Do it because Mikey likes it.

Different Platforms, Different Ads

First published June 9, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

There’s little argument that mobile’s time has come. According to Google, mobile searches make up anywhere from 5% to 12% of the total query volume for many popular keywords. And for many categories (like searches for local businesses) the percentage is much higher. That officially qualifies as “something to consider” in most marketing strategies. For many marketers, though, the addition of mobile is a simple check box addition in planning a search campaign. In Google’s quest to make life simple for marketers, we’re missing some fundamental aspects of marketing to mobile prospects. Okay, we’re missing one fundamental aspect:  it’s different. Really different.

Last week, I talked about how my behaviors vary across multiple devices. But it’s not just me. It’s everyone. And those differences in behavior will continue to diverge as experiences become more customized. The mobile use case will look significantly different than the tablet use case. Desktops and smart entertainment devices will be completely different beasts. We’ll use them in different ways, with different intents, and in different contexts. We’d better make sure our marketing messages are different too.

Let’s go back to the Jacquelyn Krones research from Microsoft, which I talked about in the last column. If we divide search activity into three buckets: missions, excavations and explorations, we can also see that three different approaches to search ads should go along with those divergent intents.

Excavation search sessions, which still live primarily on the desktop, are all about information gathering. Success ads for these types of searches should offer rich access to relevant content. Learn to recognize the keywords in your campaigns that indicate excavation queries. They are typically more general in nature, and are often aligned with events that require extensive research: major purchases, planning vacations, researching life-altering events like health concerns, moving to a new community, starting college or planning a wedding. In our quest to squeeze conversions off a landing page, we often not only pare down content, but also on-page navigation pointing to more content. For an excavation-type search, this is exactly the wrong approach. Here, the John Caples approach to copy writing might be just the ticket: long, information rich content that allows the user to “create knowledge.”

Missions, especially on mobile devices, are just that. You get in and you get out, hopefully with something useful — that lets you do something else. Successful ads in this environment should do the same thing: take you one (or several) steps closer to a successful completion of the mission. Ad messaging should offer the promise of successful mission completion, and the post-click destination should deliver on that promise. Clean, hassle-free and exquisitely simple to use are the marching orders of mobile advertising.

Perhaps the most interesting search use case is that on a tablet device. I’ve chatted with Yahoo’s relatively new VP of search, Shashi Seth, about this. He believes tablets might open the door for the visually rich, interactive ads that brand marketers love. And Krones research seems to indicate that this might indeed be the case. Tablets are ideal for exploration searches, which tend to be meandering voyages through the online landscape with less specific agendas. The delight of serendipity is one big component in an expedition search. And it’s this that marks a significant departure for most search marketers.

Every search marketer learns the hard way that it’s incredibly difficult to lure search users away from the task they have in mind. When we do our keyword analysis, we’re usually disappointed to find that the list of highly relevant words is much smaller than we thought. So, we extend our campaign into keywords that, while not directly relevant, are at least adjacent to the user’s anticipated intent. If they’re looking for a jigsaw, we might try running an ad for free children’s furniture plans. Or, if they’re looking for a new car, we might try running an ad that reminds them that they can save 15% on their car insurance just by clicking on our ad.

We’ve all been here. In the mind of the marketer, it makes sense to buy these keywords. After all, the two worlds are not so far apart. A new owner of a jig saw might indeed be interested in building a set of bunk beds. And the new car owner will need car insurance. The problem is, neither of those things are relevant “in the moment,” and “in the moment” rules in most search interactions. So, after a few months of trying, we reluctantly remove these keywords from our campaign, or drop the bid price so low they’re buried 3 pages of results deep.

But perhaps tablet users are different. I’m certain the search experience on a tablet will soon look significantly different than it does on a PC. I would expect it to be more tactile and interactive – less rigidly ordered. And, in that environment, given the looser constraints of an expedition-type search, we might be more willing to explore a visually rich distraction. Shashi Seth thinks so. Krones’ research seems to also point in this direction. For this search marketer, that’s reason enough to test the hypothesis. Or, I will test it, as soon as Google, Yahoo and Bing make that possible.

The Segmentation of My Slime Trail

First published June 2, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

My connected life is starting to drop into distinct buckets. Now that I have my choice of connecting through my smartphone (an iPhone), my tablet (an iPad), my work computer (a MacBook) and my home computer (a Windows box), not to mention the new Smart TVs we bought (Samsungs), I’m starting to see my digital footprints (or my digital slime trail, to use Esther Dyson’s term) diverge. And the nature of the divergence is interesting.

Take Netflix, for example. It’s finally come to Canada, although with a depressingly small number of movies to choose from. My Netflix account stretches across all my devices, but the things I watch on my iPad are quite a bit different than my choices on an iPhone. And there is yet another profile for the things I choose on my MacBook (mainly when I travel). On the iPad, it’s typically an episode of “Arrested Development,” “Fawlty Towers” or, if I have a little more time, “Mad Men,” (and yes, I realize those three choices create an interesting psychological profile of myself) that offers some respite when the women of my household commandeer all available TV sets. On the new Samsung, it’s usually a movie intended for viewing by myself and at least one other member of my family.

Kindle offers a similar divergence of reading patterns — again, one application that’s spread across multiple devices. And, like my movie watching, my reading habits vary significantly depending on what I’m doing the reading on. I almost never read on my laptop, but it’s my preferred platform for research and annotation. My favorite reading device is my iPad, but it’s primarily used at home. I only take it on the road for extended trips. My fall-back is the iPhone, which gets called into duty when I have time to kill when traveling or in between my kid’s volleyball games.

Jacquelyn Krones, from Microsoft, did a fascinating research project where she looked at search habits across multiple devices. She found that our searches could be grouped into three different categories: missions, excavations and explorations.

Mission is the typical task-based single interaction where we need to get something done. The nature of the mission can be significantly different on a mobile device, where the mission is usually related to our physical location. In this case, geo-location and alternative methods of input (i.e. taking a picture, recording a sound or scanning a bar code) can make completing the mission easier, because the outputs are more useful and relevant in the user’s current context. This is why app-based search is rapidly becoming the norm on mobile devices. Missions on the desktop tend to be more about seeking specific information when then allows us to complete a task beyond the scope of our search interaction.

Excavations are research projects that can extend over several sessions and are typically tied to an event of high interest to the user. Health issues, weddings, major travel, home purchases and choosing a college are a few examples. The desktop is the hands-down winner for this type of search engagement. It provides an environment where information can be consolidated and digested through the help of other applications. Krones calls this “making knowledge,” implying a longer and deeper commitment on the part of the user.

Finally, we have exploration. Explorations are more serendipitous in nature,  with  users setting some fairly broad and flexible boundaries for their online interactions. While excavation can become a part of exploration, the behaviors are usually distinct. Exploration tends to be a little more fluid and open to suggestion, with the user being open to persuasion, while excavation is more about assembling information to support an intent that is already decided upon. Tablets seem to be emerging as a strong contender in the exploration category. The relaxed nature of typical interaction with an iPad, for example, supports the open agenda of exploration.

What this means, of course, is that the trail I leave behind on my mobile device starts to look significantly different than the trail on my laptop or tablet. Each fits a different use case, as they start to become tools with distinct capabilities, over and above the fact that they’re all connected to the Internet.

New Circles of Intimacy: Presenting in the Social Sphere

First published May 12, 2011 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

The recent Search Insider Summit provided me with a real-world example of how our world is connecting in new ways.

First, let me set the stage. In the conference room on Captiva Island, we had the actual attendees, usually averaging between 85 and 120 people. But the typical one-way exchange of information in most presentations was made a little less asymmetrical thanks to Twitter. The folks at MediaPost put a screen next to the stage where there was a live stream of Tweets with the #mpsis hashtag, giving us a real-time social commentary on what was happening at the front of the room. The vast majority of tweets came from people in the room (and the vast majority of these came from Rob Griffin – @telerob – who gained notoriety as the Joan Rivers of the summit for his acerbic commentary).

The addition of real-time tweet monitoring is fairly common at conferences now, but feedback seems to be mixed. I think speakers are fairly unanimous in detesting it (it can be incredibly distracting). That said, Craig Danuloff threw caution to the wind and pulled off the somewhat magical feat of presenting in person at the same time as he was tweeting tidbits from his presentation, with the help of an accomplice. But what about the audience? Does a social critique help or hinder a listener’s ability to get the most from the message being presented?

To answer that question, I did a little digging into the psychology of cheering and heckling and their impact on the dynamics of an audience. It’s the closest analogy I could think of.

Both ends of the audience participation spectrum, cheering and jeering, come from the same psychological need: to be part of something bigger than our selves. We cheer in recognition of talent, certainly, but just as often, we cheer because we want to be identified with what’s happening up on stage. It’s a “me too” type of emotional response. And these types of participatory experiences tend to go in waves. Cheering is contagious. So, it would seem, are laudatory tweets, based on the degree of retweeting I saw at the conference. It’s a digital way of saying, “I wish I had said that!”

Positive tweets raise the stature of the speaker in the eyes of the audience. The crowd is swayed to align with and respect the speaker’s opinion. The burden of social proof weighs heavily on us, as we’re not really built to go against the flow.

Heckling has a little different foundation, but it also comes from a need for control over the crowd. And it typically comes from a type A personality who is used to being the center of attention and is not comfortable relinquishing that control to another, even when that person has the stage. Heckling is intended to discredit the message of the presenter. It’s the human equivalent to two rams butting heads (and yes, hecklers are more often male) and the audience is asked to make a choice: do they side with the presenter or the challenger? If the challenger wins, the presenter goes down in flames.

This real-time exercise in social dynamics introduced an additional dimension of interest to the Search Insider conference stage. You could see some presenters being lifted in the audience’s opinion on a wave of positive tweets. But the occasional negative tweet introduced uncertainty.

The other dimension that was of interest was how the real-time social interaction took the conference beyond the walls of the South Seas Resort conference center. There were a handful of virtual attendees that appeared to follow the entire conference through the live video feed (including David Szetela, who did have to get off his porch to present on day one) and contributed their thoughts via Twitter. Then there were the inevitable nuggets that went viral. The winner in this category seems to go to Gian Fulgoni from comScore (@gfulgoni) who dropped this retweeted tidbit: LOL. Overheard at SIS: “A Starbucks barista gets more training than the average entry level ad agency employee”

Ode to an iPad

First published October 21, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I really had no idea how much I’d love my iPad. I have to say that it’s now my preferred connection to the online world. Somehow, whether by design or coincidence, Apple has tapped into something primal and intuitive in myself. Judging from other iPad owners I’ve talked to, I suspect I’m not alone. There is a magical thing happening between me and this sleek little device. And whatever it is, it’s important, even prescient. This, I suspect, is our future sitting in our laps.

What’s the Big Deal?

I’ve spent a good part of my life pondering various technology interfaces. Based on this, I really didn’t think the iPad was that big a deal. The reason I got one was because I needed an ebook reader and I felt that the iPad offered me more functionality than a Kindle. But other than the inevitable coolness (or, at least, perceived coolness) that comes with any Apple device, I didn’t see what all the buzz was about. After all, it was just a big iPhone… without the phone. I still had to deal with an all-too-touchy digital keyboard and a rather anemic processor.

But then I got my hands on one. And something rather strange happened. I suspect that Apple may have found the perfect form factor. When you combine the larger screen with multitouch technology, it completely changes how I interacted with my device. It wasn’t something I could have predicted. But everything I did on the iPad just seemed more natural, more enjoyable, more — dare I say it — sensual. This was one sexy little piece of technology.

Love of the Limbic Kind

What happened? There is no new technology here. We’re even using an obsolete OS, for heaven’s sake. There may be no rational reasoning — but I’ll tell you, my irrational mind has fallen in love. Then again, perhaps it has nothing to do with ration. Maybe Apple is just making interactions with technology more primitive, in a good way.

Keyboards are stupid in pretty much every way imaginable. I’ve dedicated several hours of my life to understanding the QWERTY layout so I’m a reasonably proficient touch typist, but the layout still makes no sense — and yes, I’m aware of the history of it vs. the Dvorak keyboard.. The mouse was a step in the right direction, but there was still some rewiring of our brains required to understand that the cursor was really our proxy for our hand movements.  I find track pads a rather poor compromise.

But, to be able to grab something right in front of our eyes and manipulate it, ah — that is touching something hardwired deep in our limbic brain.  To flick, to stroke, to pinch — that is what it means to be human. Up ’til now, our user experiences have had to be jammed in the arbitrary constraints of outdated and illogical interfaces. But the iPad, perhaps more than any other device before it, is letting us be human again. And the experience is intoxicating.

The Human Part of HCI

I felt something of the same rush when I first picked up the iPhone, but the extra real estate of the iPad delivers a compounding effect on the level of the user experience. Perhaps you think I’m making a big deal out of nothing, but I suspect that the very humanness of the iPad’s interface could be a game-changer. I’m not the first to say so. This was much of the buzz I discounted when the iPad first came out. But now I’ve had the chance to see what might be behind the game-changing aspects of this device. And ironically, it’s nothing to do with new technology. In fact, it’s wrapping existing technology in a package that nailed the “human” part of the human-computer-interaction equation.

The question that comes to mind is, how might this change the nature of our online experiences? If our entire online history has been built on the paradigm of a keyboard/mouse/monitor interaction, how might that change with a multitouch, interactive screen? And that’s not even including geographically savvy devices, cameras or voice commands. That’s a substantially different paradigm, which will inevitably lead to a substantially different experience. Imagine, interacting with a virtual world where you can picture your surroundings, know where you are, touch the things you’re interacting with and express your intent verbally.  Finally, technology will start to catch up with what it means to be a human.

The Jill Hotchkiss Inflection Point

First published July 29, 2010 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Technology has reached a critical point in the adoption curve. My wife, who is imminently practical and intolerant of anything that smacks of gadgetry, is becoming intrigued by my iPhone. I can’t overstate the importance of this in terms of watershed moments. Steve Jobs, if you can get my wife to buy into your vision, you have crossed the chasm.

There’s something important to note here in attitudes towards technology that we digerati, gathered together on the leading edge of the bell curve, often forget. Technology only becomes important to most people when it lets them do something they care about. For my wife, my gleeful demonstrations of the wonder that is Shazam gained nothing but a prolonged rolling of the eyes. Twitter clients and Facebook apps? Puh-leeze! Redlaser elicited a brief spark of interest, but this quickly passed when she saw the steps she had to take to do any virtual shopping. Even the wonders of the cosmos, conveniently mapped by pUniverse, did not pass the Jill acid test. As long as my app inventory didn’t improve her life in any appreciable way, she remained resolutely unimpressed.

But lately, there have been cracks in the wall of technology defense she has carefully constructed since marrying me. A nifty little app called Mousewait was the first chink. Knowing the wait times in the ride lines on a recent trip to Disneyland was something she cared about. Suddenly, she was asking me to take out the iPhone and check to see how many minutes we’d have to wait at Splash Mountain. Yelp helped us find a reasonable family restaurant in San Diego. And Taxi Magic allowed us to quickly hail a cab in San Francisco.

But the moment I knew the defenses were ready to crumble was when she recently turned to me and said: “So, you can do all that stuff on an iPhone? What other things can you do?”

Aahhh… the door was open, but only a crack. If I’ve learned one thing in 21 years of marriage, I’ve learned to tread slowly when these opportunities present themselves. I had to carefully craft my response. Too much enthusiasm shown at this point could be fatal…

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“On the iPhone… what could you do with it?”

“What could I do with it, or what could you do with it?

“Me… let’s say.”

And here we come to the crux of the matter. I’m extremely tolerant of technology. I’ll struggle my way through an interface and put up with crappy design simply so I can emerge victorious on the top of the early adopter heap, holding my iPhone proudly aloft. At the first inkling of frustration, my wife will turf the thing into the nearest trashcan. If you functionality is what you’re looking for, app designers have to provide the shortest possible path from A to B.

If you really want to scale the opportunity that lies at the Jill Hotchkiss inflection point, what you have to do is start providing seamless functionality for app to app. The new iPhone OS is edging down this path by supporting multitasking, but there is still a long way to go before you’ll make my wife truly happy. And that, believe me, is a goal worthy of pursuit.

The iPhone and Apple’s Lessons Learned

Never let it be said that Steve Jobs isn’t a pretty smart dude. With the iPhone, Jobs took a massive lesson delivered to him at the hands of Bill Gates and delivered back to Microsoft a complete coup d’etat.

Step back a little over 25 years. The first Mac is introduced to Apple’s board of directors. What it represented was the most advanced personal computer in the world. It felt better. It looked better. It performed better. There was just one problem. You couldn’t find any software to use on it. It was Guy Kawasaki’s job to convince software developers to develop programs for the Mac. That was a tough sell, because Mac’s market share was meager compared to the huge slice owned by clunky MS-DOS boxes. WYSIWYG bought Mac loyalty amongst the graphic design and education communities, but Apple couldn’t never overcome the Microsoft juggernaut and remained relegated to the side lines. Eventually Windows brought most of the advantages of Mac to the PC world, although in an arguably significantly watered down version.

Fast forward to 2007. The first iPhone is introduced to the world. What it represented was the most advanced mobile device in the world. It felt better. It looked better. It performed better. And this time, Jobs eliminated the problem that sunk the early Mac. He insured that there was tons of things you could do on it. Apple was so successful in encouraging development of iPhone Apps that today they have just nudged over the 100,000 mark, according to 148apps.biz. In June of 2009, when Apple announced they were at the 50,000 mark (that’s 50,000 new apps in just 5 months!), VP Phil Schiller showed a bar chart with the number of available apps dwarfing the competition, including Google (just under 5000), Nokia (just over a 1000), Blackberry (also just over a 1000) and Palm (a meager 18). Ironically, Windows Mobile didn’t even get included on the graph, showing how they have completely missed the boat in the mobile space.

So, what are the lessons learned for Jobs?

  • It doesn’t matter how cool your hardware is. All that matters is what you can do on it.
  • Don’t rely on “build it and they will develop”. Prime the app development pump so you come out of the gate with a clear advantage
  • Turn development into a democracy. Establish an app development ecosystem (in all fairness to Apple, this is possible today where as in 1984, software development relied on a handful of companies)
  • Don’t worry that the vast majority of iPhone apps gather dust. It’s the perception of choice that’s important. How many Windows programs have you ever used?
  • The competitive advantages of hardware will only work for so long. The competition will catch up, and may even pass you. But the sheer bulk of functionality offered by being the runaway leader in available software is a much more difficult thing to overcome.

This time around, Apple has done everything right with the iPhone. in fact, the biggest challenge they have now is being a victim of their own success. They’ve created an Innovator’s Dilemma for themselves. Because they have become the de facto standard for mobile, they have to consider things like backwards compatibility and offering innovation without alienating their existing users. Still, that’s not a bad problem to have!

Apple Should Build a Search Engine

As I mentioned..got my iPhone late last week. What’s amazed me most is the attention to detail in the user experience. Every little thing has been thought through and integrated into the experience. As opposed to Windows Mobile..where every little thing seems to be developed seperately and then the whole ungainly mess is bound together with chewing gum and scotch tape. Can’t speak to the other mobile OS’s..but the iPhone amazes me.

There’s a philosophy here that seems to be recurring. You can throw brute force innovation at a problem, trying to overwhelm it by a sheer show of power. Or, you can create innovation around the needs of the user, making sure your solutions contribute to an amazing user experience. Microsoft seems to be in the first camp (where much of the ad hoc innovation ends up being dropped, just because it can’t be integrated in a useful manner) and Apple is in the second camp. You’ll see this in other industries. I’m thinking GM and Toyota’s approach to the driver experience.  I don’t think anyone on the planet has more respect for the user than Apple.

This is the thinking that’s desperately needed in Search. Google comes the closest, but even they don’t have the Zen-like holistic user experience that Apple seems to bring. It would be amazing to see these two colloborate on next generation search..with Google’s immense respect for relevant information, defined by the user, and Apple’s ability to weave it into a seamless and amazing experience.

Wireless in Waikiki

First published April 3, 2008 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Having just dragged my butt off a beach in Hawaii, my mind has not fully settled itself back in the search groove. But I did come to a realization in between snorkeling (highly recommended) and hiking the Na Pali coast in Kauai (even more highly recommended). Mobile is going to change our lives in amazing ways.

I’ve visited this topic  before, but this time, in addition to my beautiful wife and two charming daughter, I traveled with a new companion, a brand new HTC TyTN II with an unlimited data plan. While this may sound “ho-hum” to you Americans, unlimited data is an impossible dream here in Canada. Our mobile providers are still holding us hostage for daring to check emails while on the road. It’s a sad state of affairs for an otherwise civilized country.

All Wired Up And No Place To Go

The combination of 3G speeds, a relatively powerful device and the elimination of worry about a roaming data bill spinning upwards faster than gas prices proved to be a heady and intoxicating combination for me. Unfortunately, I found that although (metaphorically) I was all dressed up, there were still precious few places to go. A couple of times I found myself saying, “surely there must be a WAP site for that” only to find myself trying to negotiate non-mobile-friendly interfaces in a horribly glitchy browser. While the potential was so intoxicating, the reality fell far short.

This was a topic I touched on briefly in my opening remarks at the last Search Insider Summit. Mobile is the place where discontinuous innovation is most likely. There must have been a dozen times over the last two weeks where I said, “it would be so great if someone could…” and completed the sentence with something that seemed so obvious to me yet apparently was unavailable at this time.

So Much Potential, So Little Functionality

Now, much as I’d like to say that it’s my incredible vision that brought all these great possibilities to light, I suspect these are not undiscovered ideas. I’m sure that many companies are sitting on them, just waiting for the right convergence of device horsepower, input and output performance enhancements, bandwidth and standardization to roll these mobile killer apps out. Once some of the current bottlenecks are solved, or at least relaxed, I believe there will be a rush of mobile innovation that’s been sitting on a shelf, biding its time.

Here’s just one example. While on Kauai, I started dreaming of actually owning property there. I indulge in this little fantasy (the huge gap between my income and Kauai property prices unquestionably defines this as a fantasy) ever year. So I did a little searching on Zillow.com just to see how out of reach my dreams were. Now, on the laptop, Zillow is a rich information resource for real estate shoppers. But when you go mobile, its functionality is limited to texting an address to Zillow, and it sending back the current market price of the property as a return text message. While intriguing, this falls far short of Zillow’s total online experience. How amazing would it be to drive through neighborhoods, GPS-enabled PDA or smartphone in hand, and have maps instantly updated with available properties and details. You can almost hear the words coming out of my mouth: “It would be so great if…” Well, you get the idea.

Google: A Map In The Right Direction

I used Google Maps on the mobile a lot while I was away, and I have to admit, I’m pretty impressed with the functionality that has been squeezed into this little app. But we’re barely scratching the surface of what’s possible. Using it to look for a good Mexican restaurant while hiding out from a downpour in Waikiki was an experience that would have driven a lesser man to tears. It’s not really Google’s fault, it’s the lack of online, mobile-friendly presence on the part of almost every business on the planet. Yes, I’ve heard all the market rationalizations about early adoption, critical mass of markets, bandwidth required to mobilize local advertisers…yadda, yadda, yadda. But dammit, the potential is just so tantalizing!

So, my expectations of mobile nirvana fell a little flat, but you’ll be happy to hear I made a full recovery after intensive and repeated beach and Mai Tai therapy.

Mahalo!

Android and Pondering the Future from Portugal

AlgarveSagresThis afternoon, I saw what was, at one point, probably the most exciting and terrifying place in the world. Sagres is the southwest corner of Portugal. From this point, sailing west, you leave the Mediterranean and enter the vast expanse of the Atlantic. Beyond Sagres was no man’s land. Everything safe and familiar was behind you. New worlds of discovery and vast expanses of the unknown lay beyond. It was a powerful personal experience. Sitting on a rock overlooking the cliffs, looking at nothing but water, you discover something primal in yourself.

It was also metaphorical. We’re on the cusp of our own voyage. In our world, there’s a lot of unknown that lies ahead. For anyone that has pondered where we’re at, and what it might mean for us in the future, the possibilities are as exciting and frightening as they must have once appeared from the vantage point of Sagres.

It was somewhat fitting that the day I visited Sagres was the same day that Sergey Brin announced Google’s support of Android developers, to the tune of $10 million. No one doubts the potential of mobile. We all know that ubiquitous computing and access to the Internet will change everything. It will put the world in our hands.

And Google’s move into the space is interesting to think about as well. They’re betting on the power of community and open source to be the best way to reduce the friction so prevalent in the mobile space. Lack of standards, in fighting between telcos, convoluted politics between hardware manufacturers and service providers: Google is saying to hell with it, opening the door and letting things fall where they may. It’s a greenfield ripe for exploring, so the more the merrier! If our bets pay off (and in the grand scheme of things, $10 million is less than a pittance) there’s more than enough potential here for everyone. Forget control, let’s just get the ball rolling.

So, not to get all metaphorical on you, but if you compare it to the exploration of the new world, with many of those voyages rounding the point of Sagres, you’ll find a lot of similarity. Unlimited potential, a lot of unknowns, great odds that somebody’s going to get rich and, if you really think about it, scary as hell. But then, that could just be the Madeira talking.