Notwithstanding anything else in this Agreement, Device Data may not be provided or disclosed to a third-party without Apple’s prior written consent. Accordingly, the use of third-party software in Your Application to collect and send Device Data to a third-party for processing or analysis is expressly prohibited.

On a mobile phone, targeted advertising is important (making the ads more relevant to the user). If the information is not being passed on, third-party advertisers cannot target the ads. This does not mean developers cannot make money. The worse case scenario is that they use iAds to generate income. iAds is Apple’s upcoming mobile ad network. Apple is allowing companies to embed interactive ads within their applications and will be charging 40% of the revenue for the privilege (yes, that is a high percentage). I wonder how their core audience will enjoy interactive ads in their applications when many use ad blockers in their browsers while surfing the internet. An interesting question: will ad blockers, on an Apple mobile device, be approved? Most likely not. The point is, there are options for developers to make money by either selling their applications or using iAds if ad companies will not be able to survive on Apple devices. There is no reason to go on rants or freak out if you are an application developer. If you are an ad company focusing on mobile devices, well, there is cause for concern but perhaps this is a sign to focus efforts in another direction.

Google wants to buy AdMobs, a company focusing on mobile advertising for multiple mobile devices. As I said earlier, I believe Apple is trying to hinder the growth of other mobile devices or at least keep their lead in mobile devices. Ironically, AdMobs works on Apple devices. With the new change, this could potentially hinder Google from profiting from Apple (if Google succeeds in purchasing AdMobs).

Let’s delve a bit deeper for a minute. I’ll use myself as an example. Right now, I’m playing We Rule on my iPhone (only application I use actually). It’s a cute little game and I would have paid for it if it were not free. When you play the game you have to create an account on the Plus+ network. You can manage your games, your profile, etc. Currently, if I move to another device, I cannot play We Rule on my new phone. Imagine a cross-platform world where, if I see a cool new phone, I decide to switch phones. If the company developing We Rule made the game cross-platform, I could install it on my new device, not lose any of the data (because their Plus+ network could store it). As a consumer, I’m happy. The developer’s of We Rule would be happy because they retained me as a player and they (theoretically) would not lose anything because a cross-platform ad company like AdMobs would continue to show me ads in the game. Or, if I purchased the game in cross-platform world, I could re-activate it on my new device. This makes it more like the computer experience consumers are used to. Not good for Apple because it makes it easier for their customers (who are not hard-core fans) to leave. Of course, this goes for all mobile device companies but with Apple having a lead and the iPhone being their best-selling device, they are current the ones with the most to lose.

The advertising change also hinders upcoming mobile ad companies from thriving. Currently, Apple’s mobile devices are the money makers so of course mobile ad companies would love to thrive on their devices. Fortunately for them, developers are slowly embracing other devices but one cannot fault them for wanting to develop where there is the most financial gain.

It will be interesting to see how Apple’s decisions play out over the upcoming months and how the competition (and users) responds to their decisions.

**Disclaimer: I have an iPhone but I am not a heavy application user. I’m a gamer and I tend to play games on the PC or consoles (I do own a Mac). Personally, I’d prefer to buy the application than go the free route, receiving targeted advertising. This change, or any of the changes Apple is making lately, really does not impact me very much.**

Jobs is once again pitting Apple’s complete product design mastery against the rest of the industry, except this time he thinks he will prevail. Whether it is his repeated moves to keep Adobe’s Flash off the iPhone or his growing rift with Google over Android, Jobs is making the iPhone and iPad a relatively closed system that Apple can control. All apps need to be approved by Apple, the ads shown on the apps will also start to go through Apple, and no matter how hard Adobe tries to open up the iPhone to its Flash developers Apple will keep blocking all its efforts.

You can do anything that you wanna do…

Let me be clear…it’s Apple’s system and they can make it closed if they want to. This approach did not work with Microsoft, so I would think they would have the same outcome if they become too big. However, Jobs is in a unique position. He is leading a company and might not be around to clean up the mess if it does not work long-term.

The odd and perplexing thing about this: most people prefer diversity. For example, most people would prefer to have multiple ways to earn income. How many people have multiple cars? Multiple gaming platforms? Do you eat and drink the same thing everyday? Using this thought trend, why would developers want to invest in only one platform when the “real” money (as in being bought out) comes with having multiple platform applications? True, you will have applications like Tweetie being purchased by Twitter but what are the odds of a company purchasing something like We Rule unless friends can play across multiple mobile phones? Can they be purchased? Sure they can, but they’d be more valuable if they created cross-platform games. Currently developers are flocking to the iPhone because their applications sell the best.

That is why I think this has more to do with Android than Adobe per se. Android phones are eating away at iPhone’s market share. As the phones get better, the more threat competing phones become. Flash is coming to Android phones, giving developers more options to create apps and a more web like experience for Android users. Perhaps Adobe is getting slammed by Apple because Apple’s competition is embracing Flash. Adobe does not make the bulk of their revenue from Flash development.

On the flip side, Apple’s biggest selling product is the iPhone. It could potentially hurt Apple long-term that Adobe makes products that aid developers in making applications for multiple platforms. Right now most of the applications on the iPhone are iPhone (iPad or iTouch) only unless. This will keep many people on Apple’s technology because they have become attached to the applications. The minute the door opens for easy cross-platform development, Apple’s market share drops.

Steve Jobs shut the door.

In the end…

Going against the grain of human nature is not wise. Hopefully their target audience will remain faithful to give Apple the foundation it needs to survive. Unfortunately, what goes up must come down. Rarely do companies stay at the top for long. AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, even Google has competition as far as traffic (Facebook). Developers do not embrace programming for Macs and that trend might continue with Apple’s mobile devices. In the beginning there weren’t alternatives for developers. Now there are. It is understandable why Apple is doing this: they are appealing to their target audience, who does not mind lagging technology. Think about how long it took for copy/paste to make it to the iPhone. The recently released iPad does not have a camera, but the competition coming out shortly does. Companies should only concern themselves with creating quality products for their target audience. Apple is doing exactly that.

Unfortunately, while Apple is locking down their devices the competition is opening theirs up. If their competition combine forces, they are strong enough to block Apple from being able to keep their market share.

Why Microsoft isn’t “scared”

Chrome OS and Microsoft target very different audiences (regarding computing). True, Microsoft was able to capture a large portion of the low-end internet user audience by default but Microsoft’s true target is businesses and those who need connectivity with their business offerings. The Chrome OS, as advertised, is for the light internet user. When I say light, I am not describing time. They use email, they connect to social sites, they browse the web, etc.

What about the millions of people who make videos, put them on their computers, use video editing software to edit them, then upload them – retaining a copy on their computer? What about pictures you take with your phone or digital camera? Most people store them on a computer. How many people blog and keep a copy of databases on their computer in case of disk failure?

And let’s not forget the people who play video games. Console gaming is fun but there are some games that do not play well on a console. Considering the number of good games coming to the PC, Microsoft does not have to worry about web-only computers. They have other concerns they should focus on.

So, what will happen?

Usually people purchase computers based on what they want to do with them and the price of the computer. The cost of computers dropped to the point almost anyone can afford one. The real question: if you have two computers, one doing significantly more than the other for slightly more money, which would you pick? The Chrome OS is perfect for kids, for example, but eventually most kids will want to do more with their computer than browse the web and check email.

But more important, the wise person does not keep everything online. The lazy person won’t think about the implications of everything being stored online until it is too late. A person serious about their online data has multiple backups, perhaps online and on their hard drive for the blog, email, videos, pictures, etc. If the data is important then it should be treated as such. How many horror stories does one have to read about someone losing everything because taking precautions to ensure it does not happen to you as well?

There is a clear market for this type of computer. I will most likely pick up one for travel if the price is right. It is a security precaution to travel with a computer that doesn’t have important data on it. It also seems like a good computer for beginners. There is a niche for Chrome OS…

That does not mean that those who purchase a Chrome OS computer won’t have a PC, Mac or another computer with an OS that does more. There isn’t much difference between the Chrome OS computer description and smart phones, is there?

Written by: Tyme White | Follow Tyme on Twitter | Be Friends on Facebook

Everyone who thinks it’s so funny to say “BUY A MAC!” when I ask for PC advice, my faves are a tribute to you! http://twitter.com/jsmooth995/favorites

If you go to his Twitter favorites it is about people complaining about their Macs. o_O As a PC owner it gets old seeing Mac people look down on PC users. People should pick a computer based on their needs, not as a status symbol. I personally use a PC because:

• I like to build computers, tweak it etc.

• I have many more options for software (since I beta test a lot of software) for the PC vs. Mac.

For example, I might dabble and play War Hammer to test out their PvP and they don’t make it for Macs. Have I thought about purchasing a Mac since I will be video editing? Yes. Do I also realize that would be an expensive investment to use for one thing? Yes. Am I satisfied with how Apple handles security issues (not that I am with Microsoft but at least they do on a scheduled regular basis provide updates)? No. Microsoft has their security issues but so does Apple. A 12 year old found a security issue in iPhone:

This was in iPhone version 2.1 (5F136), the currently shipping version. Since I have no access to beta of non-released firmwares I can’t test to see if it has been fixed since then. For those who care, this is bug 6267416. I don’t have much hope for it being fixed soon, because my security bug 5368148 from July of 2007 is still marked as open, and still unfixed in 10.5.5.

Anything that circumvents security access is a security flaw. I’m sure there is a logical explanation for why there is a security issue (or any issue) open since July 2007. I’d love to know how many bugs/security issues there are and how long they’ve been open.

This behavior doesn’t only happen with Apple products. I see weekly someone dissing another person for not using WordPress. Someone asks a legitimate question about Text Pattern and the response: use WordPress. Someone mentions they are having issues with MovableType but would like to do X and the response: use WordPress.

I think people should think about answering the damn question. How is it helpful, if someone is looking for help or advice, to recommend they abandon what they like and use something else…without answering the question? How would you like it if you took your car in to get a diagnostic and the mechanic said, “Buy a Honda” instead of helping you with your specific problem? Or you go to the doctor and instead of examining all your options he suggests removing the body organ? You bring someone of a different race to meet your parents. Their response: You should have brought an X girl/boy.

Yeah.it.is.just.as.messed.up.telling.a.PC.user.to.buy.a.Mac.

Competition is good and it’s wonderful that as consumer we have a choice to use a PC, a Mac or use both. Linux, et al offer more options. It’s good that people are using different products. Variety is good.

And if you give a recommendation, please answer their question. They’ll appreciate it.

lie
–noun
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.

I started with a definition to make sure we are on the same page. Note the definition: deliberate intent to deceive. If the statement is deliberate the person is making a conscious choice to lie, to try to deceive the person(s) they are interacting with. In my experience, lies come to the surface because keeping up the facade of the lie is too much trouble.

Of course sometimes the lie is told to bide time and that’s the lie I’m talking about today. The whopper that Microsoft told to delay their employees from knowing Valentine had one foot out the door when Vista was complete.

The contract called for him to start on September 11. Valentine surely told his bosses of this fact. And yet Microsoft did not announce his departure until September 5, less than a week before he started.

So why would Microsoft lie about Valentine’s employment status? In July and August, Microsoft’s programmers were on a death march to complete Windows Vista.

What was the lie? That Valentine was taking a new job within the company after shipping Vista. Unfortunately, the contract with Amazon was signed in June, the lie was told in August. Microsoft lying isn’t that big of a deal, almost expected some would say. Let’s not forget that Valentine went along with the lie. He looked his team in the face every day with the knowledge he was jumping ship. This is not one lie, it’s a string of lies maintained for months. I would imagine quite a few people were in on this lie. He worked for Microsoft for 19 years, seven of those on Windows. The lie shows how fragile things were for his team during that time, if they were unable to handle the truth. He was paid handsomely for his deceit:

The deal called for him to get a $1.7 million signing bonus, a $150,000 salary, another $500,000 bonus, and 400,000 shares of Amazon.com (now worth almost $30 million).

Makes one wonder how much he was making at Microsoft. That’s a lot of money and I bet you’re saying you’d figure it out for that kind of money, right? Well, if he could lie to people for months what stops him from doing the same thing to Amazon? Valentine wasn’t in the strongest position transferring because Vista has always been plagued with problems, even in beta.

That’s my point: a liar doesn’t make exceptions. Eventually a liar will lie to anyone to benefit his/herself. It’s only a matter of time.

I’m glad the truth finally came to light. I thought it was kind of odd that Valentine was being re-assigned at that time. It didn’t feel right….because it wasn’t. I suppose this would make a good Quofda question: in the same situation would you lie to everyone?

Our goal is to become the matching and recommendation technology of the internet. Our focus is on leveraging machine learning techniques to improve consumer and business user experiences with large corpora of data. We live in a world of too much information and we’re trying to create the solution.

Wait, to sit on a throne they would have had to successfully release Persai and have fame. Lemme rephrase that…Sure is easy talking shit when you haven’t done a damn thing yourself yet.

I honestly can’t fathom what they are developing that Google couldn’t drop kick in 30 days or less. Simply because Google is sitting on all that information already. And Microsoft. And Yahoo. And Amazon…wow, this could be a long list. No reason not to try though, more power too them. I’m sure they’ve thought this all out and Persai will be damn near perfect once it is released. As much shit as they talk on Uncov it has to be. Ted had some words to say about Guy Kawasaki, of Truemors fame(?), having tips on a successful startup. Check it:

Just got done reading Kawasaki taking shots at what seemed to be uncov in Entrepreneur magazine. Some quotes: “the blogosphere trashed Trumors, but that’s good for us” and “some blogger kid who needs to move out of mom’s house and start dating”. I just LOLd the trash talk but what I don’t get is this incohert advice he’s spewing. Tips on building a successful startup: “hire a coder from the midwest” WTF?

See, Persai has to be on point. If not, that would make the them worse that Kawasaki. Let’s face it Kawasaki had his fame and is slowly fading (IMO) but he had success and many people still respect him. The Persai guys would be failing right out the gate, but they’d have their professional freedom and that’s all that matters, right [kyleshank.com link no longer active]?

I’m starting a company for the professional freedom and not much else (trust me we’re riding ourselves into the ground). I want to build great products and dream up solutions. Money would be nice but it takes a back seat to professional happiness.

Guys talking smack about Web 2.0 companies. Persai is in production but once launched will (hopefully) change how people use and manage content. They are in the Bay Area. It’s taking forever to be released. Boring blog. Fits the Web 2.0 profile so well they started backing away from the term.

Good luck. You’re gonna need it.

There is a problem: what do you do if you want to monetize your site and advertising companies you use rely on third party statistics that are not accurate? Alexa is known for being inaccurate (more to forecast trends than actual stats). What does a blogger/writer do if Alexa is showing inaccurate stats and the advertising company you use relies on Alexa and other third party services? Good question.

Since I use Text Link Ads on this site I decided to ask Patrick Gavin, President of Text Link Ads, how the company deals with issues like this. Seriously, I manage my site and the more information I have the better I can do it.

Tyme: Alexa obviously has accuracy issues – all of them do. Anything with a toolbar can be gamed. Technorati has their issues too. For example, if a site has a high number of inbound links because the blogger requested people to write a review of their site, which many feel is another way of “gaming” the system. Does TLA and Review me have other methods in place to ensure that sites are judged fairly? If so, can you share a little bit about how sites are judged/priced?

Patrick: We agree Alexa is not a perfect solution for gauging a website’s traffic. A perfect example is a blog devoted to Apple users whose user base will be heavy FireFox users not using the Alexa toolbar. Because of this the Alexa ranking for this blog will be disproportionately high compared to say a blog about Microsoft. We understand this so Alexa ranking is not the only criteria we use when pricing our publisher’s websites for our products.

We use a combination of: The website’s theme, location of the ads, number of ads to be sold, Alexa ranking, Technorati rank, and a measure of the website’s link popularity. We have an algorithm that prices our inventory based on these many criteria. The results are never perfect but by taking in six data points it can help even out some of the disparities that happen with Alexa data alone.

Six different data points – that makes me feel better but I can see where more metrics will have to be used to better screen sites initially because those things can be gamed. Getting your site accepted might be a challenge but honestly, it should be. If you’ve already been accepted, how do you make sure your site is getting the best advertising deals?

Text-Link Ads [linkbuildingblog.com no longer active] has a blog with a wealth of information on how to optimize your site and increase traffic. Subscribe to the feed. After going through the blog, do the one thing most people don’t do. Take some responsibility in the monetization of your site and work with the advertising company to get the most out of it. That’s the main point of this entry. Most people slap code on the sidebar and then complain on how it doesn’t perform. Or worse, move the ads around for a month and because there isn’t instant change become frustrated. I see my relationship with TLA like a partnership and I expect them to do their part and I have a responsibility as well. I actually have to manage my site and work with them for optimal success. If you are using a company that you can’t interact with, well…why would you do that?

I had a question, I asked, I received an answer. When I start optimizing this site I will (after looking over the blog) most likely have some more. I know one thing, I’m not going to throw code up blindly and pray it works.

“I want to apologize for the dereliction of duty to our company’s number-one platform, the PC, in terms of gaming,” he told a crowd still recovering from the previous evening’s award ceremony. “We’ve been a little distracted for the past few years,” he said, referring to the company’s drive to release the Xbox 360. “Mea culpa, we’ve been busy.”

This isn’t anything new. Microsoft is always dropping the ball on something. Sorry apologies aren’t working for me but I am glad they remembered they created a platform that should have games on it.

I miss the days when there were so many games I had to save up to get them all. Or there just wasn’t enough time in the day to play them all. Unfortunately their change of heart has to do with righting a wrong. It’s about money…PC games and Vista. Here’s an example:

As with the next-generation gaming consoles, Vista will have parental controls for gaming built in. Unlike most current parental control methods, the system doesn’t block games based on their overall rating; rather, it will allow parents to disallow play based on specific game content descriptors, like “blood and gore” or “strong sexual content.” Parents will also be able to regulate how much time their children can play games, with an Outlook-like schedule that lets them restrict gaming to certain hours of the day.

Microsoft needs people to buy Vista. What better way to appeal to the parents than addressing the safety of children?

Ok, maybe I’m being cynical but I’m sick of Microsoft talking about what they are going to do. Do it.

I don’t know if CoolTechZone made this up or was given false information but the point is false information was posted to the web. This is a growing trend and unfortunately bloggers are having a good time with it. Bloggers are purposely making up stuff and posting it as a joke. And we wonder why journalists don’t take bloggers seriously?

I noticed another trend…snarky blogs. I know, I have a lot of nerve talking because I can rip something or someone apart but I always try to do it respectfully. I try to be open-minded and fair. I admit when I am wrong. I’m not perfect but I do try hard to find a balance between having fun with blogging, keeping it real, no ass-kissing and attempting to be accurate. I am always mindful of the fact that people read what I write and I am fortunate that I have readers that trust me. That trust didn’t happen overnight, I had to work for it. I would never purposely do anything to jeopardize that. Like stupid meaningless posts that might suck people into believing it because they trust me.

Of course there are bloggers that don’t care about trust. They don’t think about the after affects of what they’ve written…until it’s too late.