Thanks to the iPhone, Fon finds its sweet spot in
Japan

post from Apple on 12 July 2012 09:03:06 PM. © Apple

Fon may have launched in Madrid, but lately the company has taken on a very Japanese flavor. According to the company, which pioneered the concept of a global community Wi-Fi network, 1 million, or a full one-sixth, of its global access points now reside in Japan.

It owes a big part of its success there to operator partner Softbank Mobile, one of Japan?s largest carriers with 25 million subscribers. Softbank gives every customer who buys a smartphone or tablet a Wi-Fi router, which Fon calls a Fonera, and automatically configures all of its devices to access Fon?s network. Considering Softbank is the only carrier in Japan to sell the iPhone, you can imagine how considerable that traffic is. Fon was originally launched to connect laptops, but today in Japan 80 percent of its traffic comes from either the iPhone or iPad.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, Fon was born in 2006 with the aim of building the world?s first global community Wi-Fi network. Fon members, or Foneros, buy a Wi-Fi access point or router that hosts both a private network for the user?s home or office and a public network. Members get free and automatic access to all other Fon access points, and Fon sells access to non-members via subscriptions or day passes.

Fon was a pretty revolutionary idea when it launched, and consequently it attracted some impressive investors ? Google, Skype and Sequoia Capital all invested in the beginning, and later Skype co-founder Nikas Zennström?s Atomico and British Telecom signed up for a piece of the action. Fon didn?t exactly take off for the clouds though. Its business model depended on selling hardware to customers, which made viral growth difficult. It competes against the likes of Linksys and NetGear on store shelves. While it offers a community network those two companies don?t, the value of that network depends on reaching a critical mass of members, which it failed to achieve.

In May, Fon announced it had 6 million access points in 100 countries, which may sound like an awful lot. But to put that in perspective, in April, French telco Iliad launched a community Wi-Fi network with 4 million access points with a mere flip of a switch ? that?s in a single country. When you’re talking on a global scale, 6 million access points is paltry. The biggest complaint I have heard from Fon users is they can never find a Fonera to connect to.

There are signs, though, that Fon?s fortunes are changing, in large part due to the smartphone explosion and carriers? new willingness to use Wi-Fi to relieve their congested mobile broadband networks. Nowhere is that more evident than in Japan. According to Fon, Softbank has cut its 3G mobile data traffic in half during peak hours by offloading that traffic onto Fon routers.

Fon’s network density in Tokyo neighborhoods

Since Softbank has every interest in making Fon?s network as big as possible, it distributes Fon’s routers to all of its customers for free, which solves the critical mass problem. In the U.K., BT has uploaded software into its home routers that turn them into “soft” Foneras.

Those carrier deals are starting to drive a growth spurt for the company. Fon says it?s adding 1 million members every three to four months. The typical smartphone user redirects 500 MB to 1 GB — depending on the country — over Fon?s networks and connects on average once very 36 hours. Those are some mighty tempting figures to an operator looking for ways to conserve 3G and 4G capacity.

Japan is by far Fon?s most successful market, but Fon could easily repeat that success in other countries if it finds the right partner. My bet is that Fon is eyeing France, which is embroiled in a vicious price war sparked by Iliad?s Free. All of France?s big three are looking to Wi-Fi as a means of combating Free?s ultra-cheap voice and data plans. Bouygues recently signed a deal with Devicescape to gain access to its virtual hotspot network. Orange is leaning on its public Wi-Fi hotspots. And, of course, SFR has contracted with Fon.

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The Real History of the @reply on Twitter

post from Daring Fireball on 12 July 2012 08:02:52 PM. © Daring Fireball

Nice bit of Twitter history from Garrett Murray. It’s quite interesting how many Twitter conventions sprang from users, not Twitter itself.

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Digg Still Exists

post from Daring Fireball on 12 July 2012 08:02:52 PM. © Daring Fireball

Joseph Walker and Spencer E. Ante, reporting for the WSJ:

Digg Inc., a social-media pioneer once valued at more than $160million, is selling for the deeply discounted price of about$500,000, three people familiar with the matter said. [?]
Digg confirmed Thursday it sold its brand, website and technologyto Betaworks. The price is a pittance for a company that raised$45 million from prominent investors including Facebook investorGreylock Partners, LinkedIn Inc. founder Reid Hoffman,and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

The good news is, that’s like $1000 per active user.

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Microsoft: In Our View, Apple Has It Wrong!

post from Daring Fireball on 12 July 2012 05:02:59 PM. © Daring Fireball

Tom Warren, writing for The Verge:

Microsoft’s chief operating officer, Kevin Turner, took to thestage at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference earlier todayto stir up the crowd and discuss Apple’s idea of a post-PC era.“Apple makes great hardware,” admitted Turner, “the reality is inthe OS we see things differently.” Turner went on to discuss thecompany’s upcoming Mountain Lion operating system and some mixedpress reaction to the future of OS X. “We believe that Apple hasit wrong,” says turner. “They’ve talked about it being the post-PCera, they talk about the tablet and PC being different, thereality in our world is that we think that’s completelyincorrect.”
Turner then went on to describe this new era as a “PC+” period,one that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates predicted back in 1999.“We actually believe Windows 8 is the new era for the PC plus,”says Turner. “We believe with a single push of a button you canmove seamlessly in and out of both worlds. We believe you can havetouch, a pen, a mouse, and a keyboard.”

Apple’s post-PC vision isn’t about input devices — mice, keyboards, pens, whatever. It’s about exposed complexity. Tim Carmody argues in a follow-up at The Verge that Apple’s “post-PC” and Microsoft’s “PC-plus” aren’t that far apart. I think that remains to be seen. With the iPad, Apple has eliminated large amounts of complexity. With Windows 8, it remains to be seen whether Microsoft has eliminated complexity, or merely hidden it behind a Metro veneer.

I think the Steve Jobs quote Microsoft should be focused upon far predates this post-PC stuff. Go back to 1997:

“We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsofthas to lose,” Jobs said. “We have to embrace the notion that forApple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. If others aregoing to help us, that’s great. Because we need all the help wecan get. [?] The era of setting this up as a competition betweenApple and Microsoft is over.”

Swap “Apple” and “Microsoft” and that’s the advice Microsoft needs today.

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Poll Results: Connecting digital asset management
to other systems using an API

post from Manage This on 12 July 2012 04:04:11 PM. © Manage This

[...]

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anagement-to-other-systems-using-an-api.php

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Amazon Same-Day Delivery

post from Daring Fireball on 12 July 2012 04:04:05 PM. © Daring Fireball

Great piece by Farhad Manjoo for Slate:

It?s hard to overstate how thoroughly this move will shake up theretail industry. Same-day delivery has long been the holy grail ofInternet retailers, something that dozens of startups have triedand failed to accomplish. (Remember Kozmo.com?) But Amazon isinvesting billions to make next-day delivery standard, andsame-day delivery an option for lots of customers. If it can pullthat off, the company will permanently alter how we shop. To putit more bluntly: Physical retailers will be hosed.

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Data-centric travel app Jetpac takes off with
$2.4M from Khosla, former Yahoo execs

post from Apple on 12 July 2012 03:02:51 PM. © Apple

On Thursday the team behind Jetpac plans to announce it has raised a $2.4 million Series A round of funding for its iPad app, which lets you use your friends’ travel photos to search for vacation destinations. With this funding the app, which initially launched in the iOS App Store April, is now backed by Khosla Ventures, Yahoo founder Jerry Yang and Morado Venture Partners.

Jetpac is basically a really beautiful way of looking at your friends’ awesome travel photos. By linking your Facebook account with the iPad app, you can see your friends’ snapshots sorted either by friend or by place. The company says it’s already indexed 750 million photos from Facebook. With the app’s new “atlas” feature you can browse your friends’ photos by where they were taken and Jetpac users can then mark places they’ve been, places they’ve loved and places they want to go to.

The founding team includes experienced iOS app makers and one former Apple engineer, Pete Warden, and with his data expertise the company has created Jetpac’s secret sauce — the app doesn’t suck in all of your friends’ travel photos, but instead uses an algorithm to detect the best 10 percent.

The team wants Jetpac to be an app with more features than just browsing pretty photos — it’s meant to be a less frustrating tool for travel search than simply googling or using a travel search engine. It’s betting that flipping through Facebook photos, something we all probably do, can easily double as either planning an upcoming trip or discovering new places you’d love to visit someday.

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AppleSource Software Releases TimeNet Law 2.8

AppleSource Software has announced TimeNet Law 2.8, an update to their case management, time tracking, billing and accounting solution for attorneys using Mac. TimeNet Law was developed specifically for law firms, private investigators, and others who need total control over clients, matters, slips, payments, trust/escrow/retainer funds with automatic payment application, statements, reports, accounting, and more.

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http://prmac.com/release-id-45218.htm

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iCreditRate 1.0.7 for iOS - Mobile Loan
Calculator

Indie developer Konstantin Novik has introduced a new version of iCreditRate, the mobile loan calculator. This program allows you to estimate a real cost of the loan based on the effective annual percentage rate. The new version includes some interface improvements and new loan type - Retail Loan. The application can plot a debt chart for Generic Loans and Retail Loans. It is designed for loans with fixed-size payments.

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Excuses for a shrinking PC market, and 4 other
Apple stories to read today

With so many people writing about Apple, finding the best stories and reports isn’t easy. Here’s our daily pick of stories about the company from around the Web that you shouldn’t miss:

Asymco does its own projections of the state of the PC market and wonders why lately there always an excuse for slipping PC sales: “There always seems to be a wrinkle, a quirk, or an exceptional circumstance that is to blame.”
An op-ed in the New York Times explains Apple’s recently reported practice of not selling products to some Iranian-Americans. The piece, written by the head of the Iranian American National Council, outlines how U.S. trade sanctions on Iran effectively encourage businesses like Apple to practice racial profiling in order to follow the law.
It turns out iPad-only newspapers aren’t great business after all. The New York Observer hears that News Corp.’s The Daily has lost $30 million and “will be reassessed after the November 6 election.”
Aereo avoided an injunction on its TV service yesterday, and today Fortune explains how this temporary ruling could actually have an effect on any future Apple TV-related content plans.
Up in Sun Valley, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes speculates about how a new Apple TV could work with cable partners to the New York Times.

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