I posted the link because I'd guess the international readership of HN know about Branson/Virgin from the airline and music operations - which are clearly successful - whereas his domestic UK initiatives have a rather more mixed track record, but probably aren't as well known.
If the originally posted piece had been about Bill Gates giving advice to entrepreneurs, referring back to his billion-dollar successes with DOS, Windows and Office, then everyone here would be able to put that in context against the likes of MS Bob, Kin, antitrust investigations, etc. I'm not so sure that as many people will have endured the dubious pleasures of Virgin Rail.
Note that this is a page about GAE for business, so I wouldn't be surprised if SQL databases require a billable account similar to the Blobstore - don't think anything has been explicitly stated one way or another as yet though.
I'll have to take your word for it re. the Android version of Angry Birds, as it fails to run properly on my Android phone, due to the fragmentation problems that Android advocates say are overblown.
As for iAds, the you're right, I haven't seen any yet, but is there any data yet to indicate that they're more effective/lucrative/gamechanging than the likes of AdMob?
I think it's calmed down a bit recently, but a few months ago, it seemed that a lot of the ads from UK retailers for Android phones heavily pushed the fact that there "x0,000 FREE applications" available. That's liable to create a culture where end-users begin to expect to get everything for free, which doesn't strike me as an appealing prospect for developers.
Contrast this to the Apple world, where for all the bitching about arbitrary approval rules, the App Store provides a means by which users can easily and happily pay for your product. This ease of monetization is the main reason, I suspect, why newspaper/magazine publishers have rushed headlong to embrace the iPad, as compared to websites, it's a lot more obvious how they might be able to extract value for their efforts.
Just look at how Angry Birds costs a dollar on the App Store, but is (currently) free on Android Marketplace. I don't know if the Android version has ads, or if Rovio plan to charge for it in future, but I'd imagine it's going to be a while before it becomes as lucrative for them as the iOS version.
> Apple plays a great value game. That they are considered some sort of BMW of electronics is laughable. They are the Toyota of electronics: Great products, but if you really think they're exclusive...
In some markets such as the UK, BMW models such as the 3-series outsell all the comparable vehicles from 'mainstream' manufacturers (e.g. Ford Mondeo, Vauxhall/Opel [GM] Insignia, Toyota Avensis, Honda Accord), so comparing Apple and BMW as examples of false exclusivity isn't necessarily that far off the mark.
> But Apple don't seem intent on capturing the mass market.
Absolutely - they're clearly more interested in profitability and not having to kow-tow to partners than market share. And who can blame them - would you rather be Porsche or General Motors?
Market share is massively over-rated as a metric - someone in the circulation dept of a major newspaper group once told me that when companies start talking about market share, they're usually trying to hide the real story, such as lack of or decline in customers/revenues/profits. Obviously smartphones are a completely different industry, but there are multiple ways to measure business performance, and the ones which are most loudly trumpeted aren't necessarily the most important ones.
Android won't become the dominant platform if for no other reasons than:
(a) The carriers won't let any platform become dominant, as the owner of that platform would then be able to dictate terms. The original Apple/AT&T iPhone deal was probably a one-off that only happened because (i) Apple had a markedly superior product to anyone else at the time, and (ii) AT&T wanted to increase their market share. [Happy to be corrected on that latter point - I'm not in the USA, and I'm only going off what I've read online.] The failure for Apple & Verizon to come to any sort of similar agreement is more likely to be down to Verizon not wanting to give ground, than technical issues like CDMA. The carriers actively encourage alternative platforms as a means of playing divide-and-conquer against the manufacturers - look at how AT&T is the US launch partner for Windows Mobile 7 rather than one of the other carriers; AT&T clearly don't want to be (or be seen as) locked hand-in-hand with the iPhone.
(b) Google won't want Android to be dominant either, as this would bring political threats in terms of antitrust and the risk of being broken up. It's far better for Android to "just" be market-leading or profitable, as this wouldn't attract such negative attention. And of course, if Google services also appear on other platforms such as iOS, then they're not completely losing out.
Now, if you have a browser which supports both HTML5 video and Flash, it's arguable which a player should default to. However, at the moment there seems to be an assumption on many sites that:
- "desktop" browser => has Flash
- mobile browser => doesn't have Flash
which gets pretty annoying for those of us who prefer not to install Flash.
Sorry, wrong link - the URL used for the iframe embed version (which I guess is what you'd use to include the video on a regular webpage, rather than the link I previously posted) is http://www.youtube.com/embed/--pSWLEVGhY
On regular Safari pretending to be an iPad, this plays the video in Flash player; on a real iPad it comes up with the "install Flash" message.
If you view source on that embed link, near the bottom you'll find a JavaScript array called FORMAT_MAP, which is empty. On a video which is available in HTML5 formats, this would have multiple members, containing the URLs etc for the video in different formats/quality.
I've not done any exhaustive testing, but beware that some YouTube videos won't play in Mobile Safari, even though they play fine on the standalone iPad YT app. Instead you get the "You need to upgrade your Adobe Flash Player to watch this video" warning.
I suspect it's there in large part as a psychological "trick" to make the £2 charge for a week seem good value in comparison, and thus - in theory - make people be more inclined to sign up for that.
The Times iPad app is currently free - I think it has been for a while - so it may be that people are downloading it for the 30 day trial, with no intention of continuing when the charge kicks in, so possibly it's not going to be a big revenue generator in terms of subs or advertising.
It may be that these free iPad downloads aren't included in the figure of 105k "sales" - I can't tell from any of the coverage I've seen.
Even using such a browser (Minefield 4.0b7), I get results that are best described as mixed on my machines when I view the presentation:
- MacBook running WinXP Pro via BootCamp - works fine
- Dell Inspiron 1110 running Win7 Home Premium - falls back to HTML version (gfx is Intel GMA 4500MHD, which claims to support OpenGL)
- Fedora 11 machine with nVidia drivers - works, but I get <10fps (CPU is Atom 330, gfx card is a PCI 8400GS)
- Fedora 12 machine with nouveau driver (gfx card is an ancient FX5200) - crashes browser
I'm sure I'm an atypical case, but are there any published stats on what proportion of machines out there should run WebGL if they have a capable browser?
Maybe attitudes have genuinely changed at MS in the ~3 years since IE8 came out?