Google’s mobile strategy
Rumor: newspaper-sized Kindle to launch this week?
Is this the week that Amazon will launch its much anticipated newspaper and magazine sized Kindle? The New York Times is speculating yes. That would push up the date two quarters (from the Q4 09 announcement Amazon itself made). The question, though, is will it be enough to save newspapers hit by the double whammy of the recession and the migration to free content via the Web.
Amazon, News Corp, Hearst, and Plastic Logic, are all working on tabloid-sized e-reading devices with anticipation being high that Amazon’s current Kindle model of charging readers for newspaper subscriptions could be applied to the other devices to help beef up sagging bottom lines. Newspapers selling on the current Kindle, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and USA Today, would be the first to benefit from larger format devices.
The Times charges $13.00 a month for access; The Journal is $9.99. Updates are daily via the Kindle’s cellular connection.
We’ve written about the Kindle several already. In one piece, we suggested that even if The New York Times bought every one of its subscribers a Kindle, by killing its print run, it would come out ahead by some $346 million. We also reported that the Times could be earning as much as $1.6 million from Kindle sales.
There are shortcomings in the current display technology – as good as e-Ink is for reading books, it may prove to be unsuccessful for newspapers. E-Ink currently is black and white only and can’t display videos, one of the mainstays of the online press.
That gives Apple, which is also rumored to be launching a large-screen iPod as early as this summer, a serious leg up with its full color touch screen display. That also could be the dedicated e-reading device’s downfall: the iPod Touch has a full-fledged browser which would continue newspapers’ current conundrum of not being able to charge for content via a proprietary delivery system.
Yes, an LCD screen is harder on the eyes than an e-Ink one, but an all-in-one device that plays iTunes and surfs the Web may be too much to resist.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos remained upbeat about Amazon’s ability to compete with Apple. When asked in February whether he thought the Kindle could help print media, he replied that he thought there were “genuine opportunities.”
CraigSearch makes searching Craigslist from the iPhone easy
Want to search Craigslist from your iPhone or iPod Touch? Now you can. PheedYou, Inc. has launched an iPhone app called CraigSearch. The interface is as straightforward as Craigslist as shown in the picture above. New features to come include the ability to save a search and receive alert notifications.
The program has been popular with 20,000 downloads from the Apple App Store in its first 12 days. The program is free.
Craigslist has in the past been wary of unauthorized services that grab listings from the site. It remains to be seen if CraigSearch will run into trouble.
If you’re looking for the new mobile tool, don’t go to CraigSearch.com – that belongs to an executive search firm specializing in the grocery industry. Instead, visit PheedYou.com.
Egypt bans GPS on iPhone
Maps on mobile phones are becoming an essential part of next generation cellular devices. They’re an important way for everyone from local pizza joints to Realtors to get the word out about their offerings. Apple’s new 3G iPhone has made GPS a key selling point.
Just don’t try it in Egypt. The Cairo government has demanded that Apple disable the phone’s global-positioning system, arguing that GPS could allow terrorists to target military and other sensitive facilities.
Apple has apparently complied, according to The New York Times.
It’s not the first time Egypt has shut down new technology in order to keep better control over its citizens. A movement for political reform that used Facebook to organize protests over the spring was shut down and many of its organizers were jailed. Bloggers who present contrarian point of view have been jailed.
The mapping controversy is perhaps a tempest in a teapot. Google Maps is already available in the country and can pinpoint the same sensitive locations.
YouTube to make buying music easier
When Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion two years ago, many industry analysts were left scratching their heads. YouTube was king of the hill for user-created videos but how would Google make money from the site? This week, Google may have taken baby steps towards addressing that concern.
Music videos on the site will now sport an icon to buy that song from either Apple’s iTunes or Amazon.com. The idea is that if you like a song, you don’t need to leave YouTube to buy it.
Google is counting on new forms of advertising to help it make up for a slower growth of its core text ads business.
The new YouTube program is starting off with a limited number of partners: Only EMI and Universal are participating. The recently released video game Spore from Electronic Arts is also available. YouTube plans to expand the program beyond iTunes and Amazon and to include other merchandise like concert tickets, a Google spokesman said.
Music labels will also be able to put “buy” links next to user-uploaded videos whose images or soundtrack match what the labels are offering. The matching process is via YouTube’s Content ID system which was originally created to help content owners find unauthorized material on the site. The pendulum now seems to have swung the other way with labels embracing user content incorporating their work.
The new YouTube service is long overdue, even Google execs admitted. Earlier this year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said it had taken longer than expected to find the right advertising models for YouTube. “You Tube is a huge end-user success and we are awaiting the monetization that goes with that, and we believe it will come,” Schmidt said.
More on the YouTube blog
100 million iPhone apps downloaded so far
While there are no classified advertising applications yet for Apple’s iPhone, that can’t be far away. Users have downloaded from Apple – via the iTunes App Store – over 100 million apps to date. Assuming Apple continues at the rate of 70 million downloads in August alone, that translates into as many as 1 billion app downloads by the end of the store’s first year of availability in 2009.
By contrast, iTunes song downloads didn’t hit the 1 billion mark until its second year.
More than 12 million iPhones have been purchased. I don’t have one yet, but nearly every techie I meet at a networking event does. It’s not just for geeks, either. My 17 year old son picked one up over the summer and loves it. I may not be able to withstand the Apple hype machine for much longer 
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