When I think of Yelp, the first word that comes to mind is – reviews.  When I think of Foursquare, the word is “check-in” (a close second is “badges”).  The reality is that Yelp is a reference tool primarily which a rich set of reviews posted by aficionados (usually after they are back from a meal).  This specifically applies to the *mobile* version of Yelp (which is important to discern).  Foursquare on the other hand is a narcissistic tool to broadcast the cool places you are visiting (and earning badges in the process).  I personally have yet to use Foursquare as a discovery tool (and Yelp as a check-in app due to the feature missing on the Android version).

The implication of the keyword stigma is that the check-in feature on Yelp had little impact on Foursquare’s growth trajectory.  The feature isn’t being used because it just doesn’t make sense the same way that it does for Foursquare.

Incidentally, I’m currently reading The Narcissism Epidemic which discusses our evolving narcissistic society in “the age of entitlement” and it seems that this theme is bound to have an impact on which of these companies “wins” in the near future.

The recent release of the “pinch-and-zoom” functionality to be released as an OTA update serves as a clue as to why it really does make sense for Google to launch a phone.

Google is really banking on public perception of Android for it to be successful.  With the heterogeneous mixture of Android versions out in the wild, this perception is bound to vary.  What Android is depends on what version you’ve seen and on which handset.  Why are there so many versions to begin with and why couldn’t the handset manufacturers just post OTA Updates when Google releases new versions?  Apart from the maintenance and development of fairly sophisticated skins that sit on top like Blur for Motorola and SenseUI for HTC, it really comes down to varying philosophical/political standpoints by each of the carriers (and perhaps just general slowness on part of the handset manufacturers). 

Motorola might generally be fearful of Apple laying down the law with pinch-and-zoom patents and therefore sit tight on this feature – in fact, this is probably why it doesn’t exist on the Droid while is available as a built-in feature of the Droid Eris manufactured by HTC.   Interesting to note is that this device runs Android 1.5 (a relatively ancient version of the OS) but features pinch-zoom functionality across the Browser and Gallery apps.  This is probably due to a lax stance by HTC on pinch-zoom; read: they don’t really give two shits about Apple’s possible litigation.

These varying stances are exactly why Google feels it necessary to jump into the handset action to lay down a vision for what they think ought to be the optimal version of Android out their in the wild getting OTA Updates in timely matters without think red tape getting in their way.  

When what you’re building turns into a phenomenon accidentally – you really can’t take too much credit for it’s evolution and must consider yourself more an agent of change.  That’s exactly what the Twitter team is (or was) up until now.  In fact, I’d go out on a limb and say that now that the Twitter folks are riding this bronco of a company, they hardly know what to do with it in it’s current fashion.

Jack Dorsey lends much of his fame to his reign at Twitter – but past success means very little in the valley and many entrepreneurs spend the rest of their lives trying to outdo their first startup which came across as “beginner’s luck”.  Square is a lofty idea and only someone with super grandiose position in the tech world who could generate buzz could launch an idea into the buzz stratosphere.  If not someone then a massive company with dollars to spend on development and marketing and with a stronghold position in an existing market.  I’m talking about Verifone and PAYware.

We’ll have to see who wins in the end (or exactly what winning means) but I suspect that it will take much more than Techcrunch and Mashable articles to get Square adopted by retailers far and wide.  I’ve been surprised before though…

Youtube feels too exposed and the idea of Youtube watermarked on personal video just seems strange.  Google Video gives only 1GB of space which is hardly enough for video content.   I’m willing to pay and so I settle for Motionbox at http://www.motionbox.com with unlimited space for about $40 per year (caveat: only 5000 views of your video are included annually).

Uploading video isn’t too difficult through the Motionbox website or with their Uploader tool but what *is* missing is a good pre-upload conversion tool that takes a video with any video or audio codec and converts into the perfect average streamable format before uploading to the server.  This means that I have to use a conversion tool like Handbrake or Windows Expression Encoder and then upload a new format of the same video.  Considering that video sizes are heading to 100MB per minute of captured content, this is extremely important.  Motionbox, you listening?

Android is being tested on all sorts of devices due to its openness and MP3 players should be no exception.  What *should* happen is for Sony, Creative or Sansa to adopt the platform for their MP3/media players.  The value proposition for devices that can do so much more than play music and videos is obvious I would think.  A quick Google search (while writing this post) turns up this article and so I put my foot in my mouth and simply pray instead.

It’s kind of ridiculous that the companies themselves are getting pinned down while their partners in crime (Orbitz, Priceline.com, Buy.com, 1-800 Flowers, Continental Airlines, Fandango, and Classmates.com) seem to be going scott free.

Why is this unfair?  Because the data that customers provide during their purchase on the partner site gets shared with 1-click (sometimes even before the purchase is made thus cannibalizing a sale on their own site).  Surely the partners knew what was happening here and could have avoided the confusion on part of the user at the tail end of a purchase – or just eliminate the offer altogether.  I’ve purchased on many of the partner sites mentioned and its nothing short of amazing what these companies are willing to do to make a quick dollar on abandoned shopping carts.  Buy.com puts the loyalty program offer before the transaction is complete and has a small gray button labeled “no thanks, please complete my offer” with the loyalty button placed more prominently.

What’s my point?  Seemingly “white hat” companies (1-800-Flowers, Continental Airlines and Buy.com) are massively involved in the circulation of these scams and should share the blame and guilt.  More importantly, if the companies themselves are attacked for having the loyalty programs, so should the distribution channels through which they thrive.

What needs to happen is for PayPal to introduce payment interfaces that are friendly to Webkit browsers (at the very least) – considering iPhone’s dominance and the growing number of Android handsets – both released and expected.

eBay made PayPal the payment solution of choice in peer-to-peer commerce and it’s safe to say that the majority of internet and mobile users have a PayPal account.   The problem is (or was) that PayPal couldn’t be used realistically as a payment provider on mobile devices because the user would be redirected to PayPal.com to make their final transaction.

I suspect that the Open API will be flexible enough that deep integration of PayPal in a mobile app session will now be possible.  In fact, I’m tempted to try  building something like this on my own with the reason being that Android developers are a little bit confused about whether it really is a tall order or not to expect users to buy an app with a Google Checkout – I hardly think so having rarely used my Google Checkout account unless it were the only option available to purchase with.

A deep PayPal integration (either opening a web view inside the app that utilizes the new Open API) should only help with paid app conversion on the Android platform and open the ability for the equivalent of in-app purchase feature that exists in the Apple iPhone SDK.

Windows 7 on the other hand, wakes up pretty quickly (although still not as fast as Mac OS X).  Apart from this, Windows 7 is extremely refreshing.  It’s snappy and the Aero interface does not feel expensive to use.  Instead it feels like it really does belong. 

I think the other refreshing aspect is the newfound intuitive feeling of the Taskbar.  Definitely borrowing elements from the Mac OS X dock as many would tell you, the Taskbar just feels fluid now with quick viewing of open windows and the ability to move around icons as you please.  Very basic features I know but they mean a lot in terms of productivity. 

Overall, I can see myself flipping between Windows 7 and Mac fairly regularly now.  My work now requires the use of Windows due to the Silverlight products we’re playing with (specifically DRM) and it shall be a pleasure to do so.  I will still have to migrate back to my Macbook to do any real development after getting addicted to Coda (probably the most awesome development IDE out there).  If there were a clone for Windows, I’d feel compelled to switch back to Windows without much hesitation.  Many would argue that IDEs like Eclipse or Aptana would be fine (or recommend one of 3 dozen other IDEs).  I’ve used them all and know quite well that Coda trumps them all.

One however that I’ve been playing with (out of desperation when I’m on Windows) is a IDE called WeBuilder 2010 and it has the ability to code on the server over SSH.

The article discusses what this means if Bloomberg were to run for President – especially how it impacts the possibilities of another Republican or Democrat President.  My take?  Anyone would be better than Bush!  I’m particularly disenchanted with American politics right now – the last 8 years have proven one thing in my opinion: American is one very resilient country and can take a beating and still survive.

I’ve lived outside American for over 3 years and I hear constant criticism of America’s foreign policy and the Man Behind The Plan (read: George Bush).   I believe that a new player (whether a Democrat, Republican, or independent candidate) will do absolutely fine.  I’ll be fine too.

While on Facebook, I noticed a few things that I think are reasons why it is so wildly successful:

[1] Things are so intuitive – from how to add a friend to how to search for them; things just make sense.

[2] The thing feels so polished – yet so “hacked together”.  They are using PHP and they don’t care about hiding it (like a whole bunch of other sites that feel some kind of envy from the Ruby-on-Rails crowd that they have to keep the extension from showing in browser URLs).  They don’t mind having simple querystring’ed URLs to fetch data because it just works.

[3] Things feel so open – yet so closed.  If you’re friends with somebody on Facebook, you get a magnifying glass into their profile.  However, if you don’t know them – you’ve got to earn your way in.  That makes the experience much more intimate than voyeuristic (which is what Myspace is all about).

Okay so that’s just 3 things above but I believe they are worth mentioning – so many sites out there OVER-engineer products and services when, at the end of the day, it all doesn’t matter!  Case in point: Myspace works so well because it’s so stupid and simple.  Who knew people would learn HTML to snazzy up their profile pages?  Myspace themselves didn’t after admitting the HTML “feature” was an accident.