WrkInProgress

Sinofsky has a couple more marathons of achievements to run before he can be compared to Jobs.

Just going by the keynote, while he is a much better presenter than Ballmer or even Gates, he just doesn't have the same flair, panache, "whatever" that Jobs has.

It doesn't load automatically for me.

Win 7 using Chrome 13

Gizmodo mentions that this device isn't intended to run Windows 8 but is actually a Windows 7 Slate device that is being used as a prototype.

Have you used IE9 Mobile ?

The initial version of (pre Mango) of mobile internet explorer was pretty poor (though I wouldn't call it unusable) but the Mango update comes with IE9 and it is quite good.

Edit: Still can't set any other browser as default however.

Pro: The Share "widget"'s options are hidden, so I don't have to see 45 options next to each headline.

Cons: The logo just doesn't seem right. Not a fan of the new header.

1.) Very nicely designed site. Not sure about the beach theme (what's the connection) ?

2.) Chrome downloads a .wav file for the customer chat widget you have embedded. This happens every time I come back to the landing page. You should look into that. I'm on Windows 7 running Chrome 12.0.7

3.) I know you're in BETA, but one of my pet peeves are services like this, where you have no idea of what the pricing structure is going to be. It might just be me, but I'd much rather you have outline some basic pricing info and have to change it when you launch, then have nothing at all.

4.) Would love to have seen a few full page screenshots.

Best of luck.

Living in Toronto, I bought a pair of gloves (can't recall the name right now) that were "touchscreen friendly". They were something like $20 bucks and they look good IMO (look like average grey wool gloves).

I also make use of a pair of headphones with a control dongle to answer/reject/end calls and/or increase volume.

I think this is a standard feature of most modern touchscreen smartphones and not some "design brilliance" relegated to only Apple devices.

I currently have to carry two phones, one is an Android device and the other is a Windows Phone 7 device, they both implement the proximity sensor and it works the same way as the iphone.

IIRC correctly HTC (back in the days of Windows Mobile 5) already employed this feature in their "slate" phones before the original iPhone was released. They then improved it by adding some rather unique features, like being able to flip the phone over (i.e. laying screen side up on a table) to silence/reject an incoming call.

I'm not a prolific enough Twitter user, so I didn't expect the recommendations to be right for my name (they weren't close).

I tried using the names of some friends who do tweet/follow/are followed a lot but the site doesn't seem to be working at this time.

It's a neat concept/idea. Would love to hear a little bit of the background behind it.

From the blog post "Disclaimer: I still haven't tried Hangout, not enough people in my circles yet."

I don't think Google Hangout will have the same use case as most Skype video calls/chats (which are a one to one communication, or at least I would assume).

I think if anything (and this may be OT), companies like Path and the numerous group messaging apps should be the ones concerned with Circles and Huddle respectively.

They had the 900 million dollar advertising deal with Google at one point.

It's possible but not probable.

Myspace at it's peak simply did not have even close to the reach and influence that facebook has currently.

So Stickybits is in the dead pool I assume.

Thanks for the info.

This might be off-topic, but the guys who created turntable.fm, they are also the co-founders of Stickybits.

So what's going on ? Are they running both companies or ?

Still a bit jarring/jerky when it comes to specific transitions but it's fantastic work for a Beta, and they've come a long way in a short time.

Looking forward to hopefully Android 3.0 support.

Thank you.

The challenges you outlined definitely put an idea like this in a "sink or swim" scenario.

;) We're working on it (and it seems like others are too).

The amount of resistance from small business owners even for a free product can be staggering.

I think "gluten free".

For the record, my startup to be, looks to be tackling the same "problem" as you are with Forkly (great name btw). That is, personalized food and drink recommendations.

Although based on what little I've seen of your product, we might be taking two different approaches to it.

Best of luck to ya!

No ideas original, I guess.

I'm working on something very similar (although it's part of a larger product) with a a couple of co-founders.

Hoping to launch this October.

I agree. It appears that turn by turn navigation (via Bing Maps) is also coming in the Mango update and if so, it would be a really big differentiator (only Android has it thus far) for their platform. Not a peep during their event.

-- John Gruber recently critiqued the Windows 8 preview video that was uploaded to youtube.

It looked like a high school project. I doubt Apple would ever preview their OS with such a poorly produced video.

Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I

It would be really nice if they have a notification tray (or rather a summary area). That would make it the best notification system on any current platform. Right now, once you swipe the notifications away, there's no single place to go and view those notifications. I can't recall if it still keeps a small reminder icon on the bottom.

Ideally, swipe left to dismiss, swipe right to dismiss for now (still listed in the notification "tray").

That is a great feature (automatically choosing the protocol).

I believe Windows Phone's latest update (Mango) will also use something like this but it will automatically jump between Windows Live Messenge, SMS, and Facebook Chat.

WebOS was the first to have just a "Messages" app (I believe it worked with SMS, AIM, ICQ and GChat/GTalk) that allowed you to have a conversation between a person over different protocols/services, but it was not automatic. Not sure if this has been changed for WebOS 3.0

BBM is not a 3rd party app, it is a core part of the Blackberry OS.

So long as iMessage remains iOS only, I don't see it severely eroding SMS usage.

Just sticking to restaurants, how many of those restaurants are potential customers for the groupon product as it exists today, let alone repeat customers?

Off the top of my head, I'd say the top 10-15% of restaurants would have no interest in trying Groupon because it cheapens their brand. Then account for chains who don't really need Groupon's reach to offer such promotions (or rather will find it more cost effective to do something like this themselves).

As for the rest of the restaurants, once the novelty of groupon wears off, how often will they come back to give the general public 50% (actually close to 75% off, because Groupon takes half the cut) off meals ?

The Groupon Now idea is a bit more interesting but I think it's something that's going to be best captured by a less physical method of scaling (i.e. not emplying 4000 sales people)

Disclaimer: I'm currently working for a startup in the restaurant space though it does not have any element(s) of a daily deals/groupon clone.

I'm not sure what you mean, sorry.

What I was trying to say was that I don't think having 12 models is going to make things confusing for consumers or be detrimental to sales.

HTC/Samsung/Motorola releases a lot of Android phones in a given year and it hasn't hurt their sales.

Edit: It must be noted that it isn't likely that any single market will have a dozen Nokia models available to the public.

Has having numerous models from a variety of manufacturers really hurt Android in terms of sales ?

How many do they need ?

They have the two largest smartphone manufacturers outside of Apple and RIM, in HTC and Samsung.

Among the large manufacturers, all they are missing is Sony Ericsson and Motorola. And I believe only Motorola has hinted that they are Android only.

And Nokia is still larger (not for long) than #2 and #3 in terms of worldwide sales.

I think what 'teyc' meant was that Android is the only platform that offers free turn by turn navigation among the major platforms.

Nokia has provided this recently with their version of Ovi Maps as well (not sure if it's free on all S60 devices). So it is possible that the Ovi Maps & Bing Maps integration may include bringing the free turn by turn navigation to Windows Phone 7.