Author: gordon

OK, maybe Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field is wearing off a bit and I might feel differently in a week when I get my iPad 2, but after playing with my Motorola Xoom a lot more tonight and seeing just what “no apps” looks like, I got something to say to developers:

You should build for Android. Before you build for iPad.

Here’s why.

1. The bar on Android for getting noticed is VERY VERY VERY LOW! I mean it’s so low that I feel that I could write an app and get noticed tonight. Even a crappy app. Even one that does nothing but make fart noises. While on iPad you better have an Angry Birds or Foursquare or Instagram killer just to have a prayer of getting Techcrunch to pay attention to you. Hint: your app isn’t yet as good as Angry Birds, Foursquare, or Instagram, so stay away from Apple.

2. Yobongo is learning tonight the hard way that crowds = death if you aren’t ready. Yobongo released today on iPhones to a decent helping of hype. Yet the reactions I’ve seen from people on Twitter aren’t very happy. Why not? Because it wasn’t perfect. It only released in three cities and the community hasn’t had a chance yet to figure it out. If it were released on Android first, there are far fewer users, but they could have slowly onboarded people (most of whom would be tech industry insiders, since that’s pretty much the only people who have Android tablets so far) and they could have worked out the kinks, then released a few months later on iOS.

3. It’s tougher to monetize on Android, which forces a scrappier corporate culture. There aren’t 200 million credit card accounts sitting there, so you gotta be smarter, scrapier, and more inventive to get revenues in. This helps you build a better company. Plus, when you REALLY need to show revenues, like right before you raise your series B, you turn on the iPad apps then. Investors are happy. You’re happy. You gassed up at the right time!

4. You can build stuff that you can’t on Apple. Like Fossil, who will ship new “connected watches,” pictured above (they work with Android phones), this year. Those aren’t possible on Apple’s system.

5. Android’s OS is tougher to build on. In my experience it’s buggier than iOS. Apps crash more, and have features that don’t work. Again, the bar is very low on Android. On iOS the bar is MUCH higher. Plus, if the Android Tablet world follows the phone one, there will be more fragmentation, so you’ve got to build testing and distribution systems that are gonna be more prepared for weird stuff than if you build for Apple. That’ll make you more agile eventually and you gotta bet that Apple will eventually be forced to change its app infrastructure quite a bit in the future to respond to competitive pressures.

6. You can help define Google’s marketing and maybe even win a spot on the Google jet. Google hasn’t yet figured out how it will sell its tablet OS. Apple has. So, if you create a killer app on Android, you’ll probably get invited in to work with the Google teams on future OS’s and you’ll probably get invited to demo on stage at Google IO. The chances of you creating the next Flipboard on iOS? Give me a break.

7. You have access to APIs and features Apple lacks, which will help you make an industry-defining app. Let’s say you want to compete with Flipboard or AngryBirds or one of those hot iPad apps? How would you do it? Well, PC World has a list of some of the things, like notifications and widgets, that Android has but iOS doesn’t. Use those and if you get on Oprah your app will look more finished than your Apple-only competition.

8. Building a “smooth” app on Android is harder. When I played with the iPad 2 yesterday I noticed something. Dragging and dropping felt smoother on the iPad than on my Motorola Xoom. That shouldn’t be if you just looked at the specs like Gizmodo did. More on that next weekend when I get my iPad 2 and am able to really compare it to my Xoom. But, there’s something here. If it’s harder to build a “smooth” app on the Android, that means you’ve gotta find some coding tricks that might help you make a freaking awesome iPad app later. After all, remember all those great Russian coders who came here after learning to code on crappier machines than existed in the West? Yeah, I do.

9. When you demo your app people will ask how you got an iPad 3. I’ve been showing around the Xoom and people notice it’s not an iPad, and are intrigued with it. That’s 70% of your marketing challenge right there. Getting them to pay attention to you so you can tell your story. Imagine you show up at SXSW in a week with an iPad. No one will pay attention. Show up with a Xoom and your app on it? Everyone will. Why? They want to believe that Scoble’s wrong and that there’s actually apps on that thing!

10. There’s a ready group of fandroids, as I learned yesterday. These people believe in the OS, Google, and the future of Android and will push you to every influencer or journalist out there. Yeah, with iOS you’ll get on Oprah if you build the next Flipboard, but, again, do you really have a shot at doing that? With 65,000 apps to compete with? No, not really. But you do have a real shot of getting every fandroid to wear your Tshirt and leave comments in every Techcrunch post or Scoble blog about tablets until they review you.

11. Fred Wilson and Fortune will think you are a genius!

12. You can iterate faster on Android. On iPad you need to wait four to ??? days for Apple to approve your app. On Android your apps get added to the marketplace much faster, usually in hours.

Since I’m gonna be an unabashed Apple fan for the forseeable future, I want Apple to have some real competition so that they feel like they will lose their empire at any moment. It’s GOOD for Apple fans to help ensure real competition exists. Otherwise we’ll never see any real advancements from Apple and we’ll never have any future choices about hardware or OS’s to try.

So, world’s developers, I’m calling on you to develop killer apps for Android and ignore all the idiots like me who are pointing out that there won’t be any users this year for your apps. That really won’t matter. Anyway, I expect Google has a strategy for getting apps and we’ll hear more about that soon.

So, smartass Scoble, why not build for Windows tablets? Or HP’s TouchPad? Or RIM’s Playbook?

After talking to a bunch of developers and others the past few days, including some Sand Hill Road VCs, it’s clear that Android is going to take the #2 spot pretty firmly. Why? Because Android phones already have plenty of apps, and that will position Android tablets in most people’s minds as the best alternative to the iPad. HP has distribution, yes, thanks to its position as #1 computer maker, so it’ll take #3 slot. I just don’t think it’s the strongest app platform to compete with iPad. RIM seems like it’s really struggling to figure out how to take the #4 slot and, anyway, it seems like it’s going with some sort of Android app compatibility strategy anyway.

So, since I want Apple to have strong competition, I’ll urge you to build Android apps.

Who’s in?

–>

Snapshot: Texas Education Agency State Resources

Individual State Profile Report

• Texas State Profile Round 3 (FY 04) – pdf report
• Texas State Profile Round 4 (FY 05) – web report
• Texas State Profile Round 5 (FY 06) – pdf report
• Texas State Profile Round 6 (FY 07) – pdf report
• Texas State Profile Round 7 (FY 08) – pdf report
• Texas State Profile Round 8 (FY 09) – pdf report

Featured State Projects

• Texas Education Agency – Education Technology
• Texas Education Agency – Title II Part D
• Texas Model to Prepare Teachers to Integrate Ed Tech

Ed-Tech Team

If you are a SETDA member and are signed in, click on the names below to see the profiles of these members. To sign-in, go to my SETDA.

Anita Givens Associate Commissioner, Standards and Programs 1701 North Congress Austin, TX, 78701, USA Business: (512) 463-9087 Business Fax: (512) 475-3667

Tammy Brite Distance Learning Specialist 1701 North Congress Austin, TX, 78701, USA Business: (512) 463-9594 Business Fax: (512) 463-9090

John Cecil Distance Learning Specialist 1701 North Congress Austin, TX, 78701, USA Business: (512) 463-9603 Business Fax: (512) 463-9090

Kathy Ferguson Director of Digital Learning Resources 1701 North Congress Austin, TX, 78701, USA Business: (512) 463-9613 Business Fax: (512) 463-9090

Kelly Griffin Director of Special Projects 1701 North Congress Austin, TX, 78701, USA Business: (512) 475-3255 Business Fax: (512) 463-9090

Karen Kahan Director, Educational Technology 1701 North Congress Austin, TX, 78701, USA Business: (512) 463-9064 Business Fax: (512) 463-9090

Biography: Karen Kahan is the Educational Technology Director at the Texas Education Agency (TEA). Areas within the Educational Technology Unit include: Technology Literacy and Integration; Distance Learning; Special Projects; Educational Technology Planning; Digital Learning Resources; Educational Technology Grant Programs; and E-Rate. Prior to becoming the Educational Technology Director, she was the Technology Applications Curriculum Director at TEA for 12 years and, prior to that, she served in other capacities in educational technology at TEA where she has worked for 19 years. Karen taught mathematics at the middle school level before joining TEA. Currently, she serves on the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) Board of Directors and serves as Board Secretary. She has been involved with SETDA since it first began in 2001.

Richard LaGow Special Projects Coordinator Austin, TX, USA Business: (512) 475-4270 Business Fax: (512) 463-9090

Nancy Little Technology Planning and Evaluation 1701 North Congress Austin, TX, 78701, USA Business: (512) 463-9400 Business Fax: (512) 463-9090

John Lopez Managing Director, Instructional Materials and Educational Technology 1701 North Congress Austin, TX, 78701, USA Business: (512) 463-9400 Business Fax: (512) 463-9090

Kate Loughrey Director of Distance Learning 1701 North Congress Austin, TX, 78701, USA Business Fax: (512) 463-9090 Business: (512) 936-2265

Katie Oster Special Projects Coordinator 1701 North Congress Austin, TX, 78701, USA Business: (512) 475-0102 Business Fax: (512) 463-9090

Tammy Torres Educational Technology Specialist 1701 North Congress Austin, TX, 78701, USA Business: (512) 475-3598 Business Fax: (512) 463-9090

Terry Wyatt Special Projects Coordinator 1701 North Congress Austin, TX, 78701, USA Business: (512) 463-4278 Business Fax: (512) 463-9090

Last October, Johan Bollen and Huina Mao, professors of informatics and computing at Indiana University-Bloomington, caused a stir in the business world when they said Twitter could be used to predict the Dow Jones.

Paul Hawtin, a 28-year-old hedge fund manager, liked the idea so much that he’s now dedicating an entire hedge fund to it.

The original paper, entitled “Twitter mood predicts the stock market,” investigated whether “collective mood states derived from large-scale Twitter feeds” like OpinionFinder and Google-Profile of Mood States correlated with the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. What they found was that their algorithm not only paralleled market changes, it predicted them, with startling 87.6 percent accuracy.

Derwent Capital Markets, a London-based hedge fund set to open for public investment on April 1, has pooled together $40 million to obtain exclusive rights to the Twitter predictor, according to the Indiana Daily Student. Bringing on Bollen and Mao as personal consults, they plan to create a trading model based on the findings.

Hawtin, co-owner of new hedge fund, ran with the idea after seeing the findings reported on television. “The only risk for us is if Twitter falls away,” Hawtin told Bloomberg. “But we believe that it can only get bigger and better.”

It’s not surprising Professor Bollen decided to join the upstart hedge fund. He’s been itching to test his algorithm in the marketplace since the paper’s publication, telling Wired in October that it was time to “put some of our money where our mouths are, and try to do this in real time.”

Bollen, however, wouldn’t call his research groundbreaking. “[P]eople have been using [methods like] this,” Bollen told the Indiana Daily Student, citing extensive use of blog and news analysis for similar purposes. “It could… be that we were the only fools that published their results.”

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Bollen’s correct that he isn’t the first behavioral economist to research unexpected Wall Street correlations. In 2004, Massey University Professor Ben Jacobsen and Erasmus University Rotterdam Professor Wessel Marquering published a paper entitled “Is it the Weather?” refuting a then-popular notion that temperature or Seasonal Affective Disorder affected the outcome of the stock market.

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Dan Frommer Email W: 646-484-6438 C: 917-279-4246 Subscribe to his RSS feed Twitter feed Dan Frommer is Senior Staff Writer at Business Insider. He writes about Apple and other big players in the technology industry, with a special focus on mobile tech. Recent Posts Here’s How Amazon Could Quietly Become A Huge Tablet Player 5 Things Apple Could Use Its Massive New Datacenter For RIM BlackBerry PlayBook Will Cost The Same As Apple iPad 2

I finally got some hands-on time with Apple’s iPad 2 this past weekend during a visit to the local Apple Store.

It’s very nice. Much nicer than the iPad 1. It feels significantly lighter and slimmer. The smart cover is very cool. And Apple’s obsessive attention to detail is apparent, including a new, quieter, easier-to-double-tap home button.

Anyone who buys the iPad 2 should love it — and tens of millions will probably buy it. And if money is no object, and you already have an iPad 1, you can’t go wrong with the upgrade, once Apple gets more in stock. (I joked with the Apple Store guy, “I’ll take two!” Not funny, I guess.)

But based on what I’ve experienced so far, I’m not buying an iPad 2, and will hold out for an iPad 3. I think most iPad owners will do the same. (Although I know some who are upgrading to use FaceTime, and obviously a lot of developer-types are upgrading for “work” purposes.)

Why am I telling my gadget lust to back off? Because while the iPad 2 is noticeably quicker, it doesn’t seem all that different than the iPad 1 I already have, and I don’t even use that very much.

Most importantly, feature-wise, it has the same screen as the first iPad. I’ve decided that I’m holding out for an iPad with a “retina” display like the one on my iPhone 4, which still blows my mind almost a year later. That upgrade would be worth the price. Heck, I’d probably even pay twice as much for it. Reading, photos, the web, and games would be much cooler.

But the iPad 2 screen just isn’t enough of a step up to justify the upgrade cost after just a year owning the iPad 1. (Also, I recently bought a new MacBook Air, which has been getting a lot more use than my iPad.)

Here’s what could change my mind and get me to buy an iPad 2 after all.

If software developers — Apple or third-parties — make a few earth-shattering apps that take advantage of the iPad 2’s significant graphics chip upgrade.

This could be a game, some sort of “augmented reality” app, or something else. It would have to be so awesome that it’d be worth the cost of upgrading just to use it. I am personally skeptical that it will happen, but I’d love to see it.

Otherwise, I’ll see you in the iPad 3 line.

Don’t miss: The Truth About The iPad, Day 300: I Barely Use It Anymore

What started as a quick status update network is now a primary social network with hundreds of millions of users. Let’s have a look at what this network has changed.

1. Customer Engagement – It’s now much easier and way more public. Help desks have been aided by Twitter immensely. Great examples include Best Buy’s Twelpforce & Comcast Cares.

2. Forced Listening – Companies now need to have a few eyes on Twitter in case buzz turns bad, like copying someone else’s design.

3. Marketing Paradigms – Twitter helped bring marketing and customer service closer because the need for dialogue with customers.

4. Word of Mouth – Though the reasons people talk about brands hasn’t changed, Twitter has made billions of these conversations public. Now conversation volume and sentiment are valued KPIs.

Read more about what Twitter has changed at Simply Business.

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