Hollywood had its best year ever in 2009. It made more money than ever before, yet piracy is killing the business?It wasn’t too long ago that Hollywood went on a massive campaign stating that piracy is killing the movie business and they HAD to raise prices. Well if we judge by the numbers we can plainly see their pants are on fire.Further more, Hollywood and Apple (iTunes) seem to be redundantly charging us for things we have already purchased.

What else helped to pad pockets? 3D movies are clearly Hollywood’s latest anti-piracy tactic. Avatar really raked it in as many of you may know. The fact that they are charging $10-$15-$20-$27 for the various movie “experiences” clearly helped that bottom line as well.

So if you were driven away from the $5 Bootleg DVDs at the flea market, at least don’t walk away out of guilt or sympathy for the industry. In fact, do a little math and find out how much Hollywood’s lie cost you. How many movies did you see last year 12? 15? 20? at $10.50 (minimum) a piece that is  $120-$200.   $30-$50 of that is the price you paid for that lie(based on $7.50 admission of yesteryear). That seems to be worth a few guilt ridden $5 DVD purchases. Take those numbers and multiply them by the hundreds of millions of people and account for those who saw a movie multiple times on the big screen (Avatar 3x for me) and you’ve got yourself a little more than spare change.

These numbers don’t include DVD purchases which would further justify your frugality when it comes to shopping the media market.  Capitalism is cut-throat. Why should we bail out the industry for  the hoax of a loss from what amounts to competition to the consumer? So if guilt or shame are no longer factors  when it comes to entertainment purchases, save for the law (cough) that hasn’t been so nice when it comes to fair use anyway (end cough)  the question comes down to simple economics. Do I want to buy a $5 DVD or pay $10-$25 plus who knows what for all the digital versions for a movie experience?   So- I’ll wait til I find the movie I wish to see on display- in some market place for $5.

I certainly won’t feel guilty about the cut-throat media market place or legitimately- backing up and porting purchases to mobile devices.

Read more at Crunch Gear.

What is Phonebooth Free? from Bandwidth.com on Vimeo.

Info: Phonebooth is a VOIP phone service like Google Voice but with a feature set ideal for growing businesses . Phonebooth has similar features to Google Voice: visual voicemail, redundant data centers, call routing and a slick interface. Phonebooth pushes the solution a few steps ahead of Google by offering HD voice qaulity, conference calling and an auto-attendant “Press 1 to annoy your customer” menus.

Price: Phonebooth offered a free service (no longer available) and has a pro plan that costs $20 per month per user

UPDATE- THERE ARE NO MORE FREE ACCOUNTS AVAILABLE- I Repeat NO FREE ACCOUNTS- If you’d like an invite to Google Voice instead email me: nicholas@heroikmedia.com

My Thoughts on Phonebooth Pro

I think for a growing company, Phonebooth would be a great tool. They take out a lot of competition and cost with their simplicity and consumers love simplicity when it comes to technology. (Insert Fisher-Price to Mac reference- on 2nd thought Win 7 is pretty user friendly and awesome as well.)

The redundant data centers that ensure continuity for the if and when the power goes out scenario is definitely a valuable feature. But knowing me, I’d try and pay for 2-3 accounts and be curious if I could route certain calls to a Google voice number that would call everyone in an entire department; like the support team, marketing team, etc.

So the product is neat for developing businesses but this particular video is a better ad for Google Voice. If you are a freelancer or just starting up (you know, the target audience of this video) why would you consider this pay service over the free and lovable Google Voice? Do you need a phone tree system? Especially if all options IE sales, marketing, support, take you to the same guy?

More importantly, myself and every person I know including all of my clients has a strong dislike/hatred for those auto attendant robot menus.
So making it easier to torture your customers might not be the best thing.

You’d pay how much to annoy your customers? I understand using this service for business continuity and organization to accommodate growth and would recommend it for its simplicity alone but choosing an auto-attendant voice menu to portray yourself as a “grown-up” business would eventually hurt your business. Trust me, your customers will find out that you don’t have 100 people working for you and when they discover they’ve been duped into the infinite loop and time vacuum of auto-attendants, they’ll go elsewhere.
I think the cover this usage scenario in the “how to appear to be a business douche bag manual.

This video doesn’t do Phonebooth justice beyond generating consumer commentary On 2nd thought: [marketing note- Kudos to the video creators- Note to self-Create a hip stick figure cartoon video that doesn’t quite fit your target audience and get the crowd to point the finger at where your product /service would really shine. Let the users state the obvious and they’ll think they’re doing the world a service and recommend your business and help it find the proper audience.

The redundant data centers ensure continuity for if and when the power goes out is a definite plus. But knowing me, I’d try and pay for 2-3 accounts and be curious if I could route certain calls to a Google voice number that would call everyone on the support team, marketing team, etc.

After watching a few of the videos for Microsoft’s Courier Project, I wanted to share my thoughts and my joy.

1. The Natural & Intuitive Design of the Courier Concept

This is the closest I’ve seen to a paper replacement that actually adds features (maybe minus 3d origami-although I’m sure there will be an app for that-Sketch-up Origami Edition?). To the Apple fanboys who say Microsoft stopped innovating I give you the Courier project and Windows Phone 7. I mention user interface so as not to be confused with an application interface that we are still dealing with now. User interface design implies catering to the users and what we have now seems to be more app centric and disposable. We are now witnessing the epic battle between design mindsets of interface design. It comes down to that which is designed to be used versus designed to be bought, clicked, consumed and thrown away. Courier seems like child’s play. Whether you’re 4 or 40, you’ll find it fun and interesting.

2. Zoom in-Zoom out. Digital Medium = Infinite Space

This video reminds us all that the digital medium has infinite space even on a small page. Microsoft’s projects/concepts that have yet to make it to market share something in common. They all rely on treating the digital medium, not as a page, but an infinite space and plane. You can zoom in and manipulate elements in different scales. A user can write in different sizes and arrange elements on the page anyway they choose. They can zoom out and back and transform the hand-held page into a white board.

3. Digital Demonstration of the Infinite Potential and Power of the Blank Page

Courier looks like an orgy of WordPress, Evernote and Picasa with Photoshop watching from the doorway. This is geek porn on its finest. Wait. Porn is geek porn- this is more like what geeks would do when they weren’t playing WoW or watching porn. This opens up the mobile market to a slew of new opportunities. Walking around with a connected, wireless device, smaller than a clip board, that can jot down anything our arms can generate is an amazing thing.

4. The Value of Tactility:The Stylus is Mightier

Hand-writing, what an interesting concept. First of all, we now have pretty decent transcription software to translate the gobbledy-gook that passes for handwriting these days. Second, working in a medium wherein you can differentiate yourself by the way that you mark in your everyday environment is a skill that has been left for dead. In the past, this has been left almost exclusively to the graphic arts. Courier creates value on the digital medium where so many devices, applications and interfaces have failed. Using a stylus as an input device seems like a natural evolution of computing but in previous attempts we lacked the mobile chip horsepower. Palm OS I’m talking about you. Thanks to innovations from Apple, ARM, TI, Intel, Nvidia, Asus and perhaps most importantly the invention of the netbook, we have some serious power for our mobile platforms that can accommodate the creative and written output generated by our hands and wrists. Interacting with a stylus allows our brains to associate and relate the power of pen and paper to the screen and our brains assign more value.

5. Customization-Making Mobile Computing Personal

The Journals are perhaps the most interesting detail about Courier. They are beautiful and take on the form and shape of actual Moleskines and other custom forms. Never before have we seen a mobile platform offer personal organization to this degree. We are visual creatures. We shouldn’t have to purchase 20 apps to make a scrapbook/journal. Yet on the iPhone and iPad- that’s exactly what they expect us to do. Courier allows you to make the creation and the experience unique and share it with others. It allows you to easily create finished products. I could easily imagine writers and artists selling their journals just as we do books. Compared to the iPhone that allows us to have a custom image when we are locked out of our phone, Microsoft gives us something we hold so dear: personal space. This truly is the return of PERSONAL Computing.

5. 2 Screens to Rule Them All

Courier will bring the productivity of dual screens to the mobile market by allowing us to browse on one, clip, create and share our stuff on the other. The folks at Microsoft Research conducted some of the studies the revealed a 9-50 percent increase in productivity when we add a second monitor. They have applied that knowledge to Courier. We are very visual creatures, we like to see things spread out across desks and although there are many good notebook/clipbook applications out there, Courier is more visual, tactile and intuitive.

Reality Check

I don’t expect Courier to make it into a finished product, at least not in this incarnation. It’s like a sexy concept car; too cool to ever make it to the road. We’ll likely end up with a watered down version but the video illustrates something about the power of innovation in design and concept and its ability to inspire.

Why This Matters

The interface illustrated in these short videos will fuel the minds of entrepreneurs and start-ups for years to come. The resulting tools and services unlike 90% of what came out of the app store revolution will be useful to consumers and businesses alike. These are the types of innovations we need to shift our entire culture and economy from blind consumerism (because we can’t afford it anymore) to raw creative output and actual work (so we can get back to blind consumerism). Courier is based on allowing the user to create- journals, drawings, reports, summaries, as well as to interact, play, touch in a more psychologically tactile way the digital environments we take for granted.

Our Past

It’s important to note the road that brought us here. Before Android and Win Phone 7, Apple has lead the way in mobile interface design. They brought us wonderful interactive elements and interface at the cost of our identities and pocket books. Apple’s success lead it away from it’s users and into the dark arts- creating in my opinion trends that are dangerous to consumers and the economy as a whole. They used intuitive design not to empower their interface but to get the user addicted to the marketplace. The interface became about the marketplace, subscriptions and how many different ways they could get users to pay for something they already purchased. The iPad is the perfect example of Apple’s true focus being on the market of the nickel and dime not providing an irreplaceable user experience. Luckily for us, Android entered the scene and Microsoft has been working on a few projects that really get me excited.

Other Thoughts

Microsoft needs to promote the X-Box team and consider muzzling Balmer – he is a scary, loud blow-hard and I’m saying that as a Windows 7 fan. He seems to be out of touch with the consumer market- maybe he’s better with corporate types but Apple didn’t gain market share by catering to large corporations. In the evolution of personal computing, we brought home what we had at work, now we expect more and there is a reversal. I believe the future of business computing will be defined by what we bring to work from our homes. The dominant platform/device for tomorrow’s businesses will more closely resemble what we find in today’s living rooms, purses and pockets.

Users are impressed by Apple’s  shiny design and interface of its devices. They become familiar with interface accepts storefront condition as norm and before the user knows they have surrendered their freedom and control for a censored, limited, media device.

Let us take a look at what brought Apple to this new strategy. To understand where we are going we must first look back at what brought us here.

History Lesson: How Apple got rich

Macbook- Air, Pro, uni-body, all wonderful devices with a hefty price tag. These accompanied with an extremely intuitive operating system were designed to provide the best user experience. These were designed so that the user could enjoy doing whatever they want simply because of the beauty and simplicity of the interface. Apple just wanted their users to enjoy computing by giving them a great platform, combination of hardware and software to do it.

The evolution of human design- Apple is really good at knowing what you want in an interface but more interested in what you do.  Their first target- music.

iPod &  iTunes-They created a great product with great  hardware and a beautiful design, but this time, they wanted more from their following. They wanted to profit from other people’s work, musicians, artists and you many times over. They created a market place, locked the hardware and used the software to force everyone into using it. No one woke up and said” I want to give up all the various website marketplaces to purchase all my tunes through Apple”. It only requires a rudimentary understanding of economics to know that decreasing supply/options will increase prices and decrease consumer control.

However, we all loved the hardware. It was simple, elegant and worked really well. It Featured a closed device, proprietary formats, restricted hardware use, restricted software use, repeated purchases of previously purchased content in order to be used in other places or on other devices.

iTunes made it difficult to manage music outside of iTunes. They made it more difficult to move legitimately owned music and claimed it was to prevent piracy. The reality is that Apple wanted everyone who listens to music to use their hardware with their store. Due to public pressure and lawsuit filings Apple eventually caved and removed DRM from their music. This of course was after several years of record sales and profits for Apple.

How Apple got rich-er: The iPhone & App Store

Same old story but a new target; smart-phones.  Much to the dismay of the fan-boys the iPhone isn’t in a category of its own. It is in fact, a smart-phone. There have been many before it. There are many competing with it. There are a few that arguably even do a better job than it. Apple presented the iPhone and App Store to go with it. They once again used closed devices, proprietary formats, and hid them behind the platform of great design, hardware and software. They locked their users into to making  app store purchases the norm and an everyday habit- whether free or paid. They took an extra step with the iPhone App store agenda by trying to eliminate competition from web applications by making sure their device did not support Flash. Flash, at the time, was the primary format used to build web apps.

These extra steps are clearly anti-competitive and unlike their computers, the design of the devices is now infringing on the lives of users rather than focusing on empowering them.

How Apple plans to get even richer-iPad &  iBooks

iPad- a 10 inch tablet computer with the iPhone Operating system. The new marketplace target? Books and Print media. The iPad presents media in an Apple proprietary format, a closed device, larger screen to expand on building behaviors with users to subscribe to their model.

The iPod and iPhone came out without real competition. Microsoft was treated like a drug-dealer to many users; we all hated their stuff but were addicted to it. They entered the market with the Zune, and later Zune HD, great design/hardware but no street cred of giving the users what they want. Apple’s street cred seems to have suffered too as it gets called out for pursuing a corporate agenda that betrays its users. And after umpteen generations of the iPod and iPhone, each less revolutionary than the first, I believe consumers might look beyond the hardware, shiny design and question how these devices will empower their lives rather than limit them. The iPad might be a tough sell in this economy.

Steve Jobs & Apple recently unveiled the iPad, essentially, a big iPod touch. But the big revelation was not the device or the innovative hardware used to make it so efficient. They real shocker was that Apple came out and said that they believe the future of computing is in “closed devices”.

What is a closed device? One that you wouldn’t want. Imagine having an exotic car that comes with a driver. It is very high performance and looks amazing, however, the driver will only drive to destinations approved by the car company at speeds approved by the car company. This is Apple’s approach. You don’t even get to drive the car or choose where you’re going.

They restrict what you can do and how you can use the device. All actions must be approved by the state Apple.
As the owner of these devices, you have no control and are limited to applications approved by the state Apple.

Why is this important/rant worthy?

Unlike the iPhone this new device,  is meant to compete closely to full-fledged computers, attempting to be more than a Kindle but less than a Netbook. The Netbooks and other tablet computers out there, have full fledged operating systems where the user has control /freedom over many decisions, the look, the pictures, how things are arranged, the applications installed, etc. All of the subtle tiny detailed decisions that make up our digital lifestyle. This iPad device is Apple’s first step to transition their subscription model of closed computing. In the new model, Apple will choose which apps are made available and how you may interact in the space. Microsoft is often fingered for evil restrictive practices but their past shenanigans are eclipsed by what Apple is trying to do.

What You Can Do Now!

1. Say to your Apple comrades “No thanks. I’m an adult and I prefer freedom to take charge of my life, digital lifestyle or other.” Don’t buy the iPad at the very least.

2. Support open platforms and devices that keep you in control. Share your support! Get on Facebook become a fan of the EFF, WordPress non-profit, digital liquidity, Savetheinternet.org and other freedom loving, open source supporting, user centric causes.

3. Buy Android  devices instead. No offense to BlackBerry or other competitors but Android/Chrome/Google OS are the only true competition for Apple. It has the same capability to transition from mobile device to computer without limiting its users’ freedoms.

4. Protect your freedom. Hack your Apple devices.

The only option to take control is to hack/jailbreak the device. And Apple makes the jail-breakers out to be criminals. Fighting to preserve personal freedom shouldn’t be illegal. These devices and Apple’s new approach to the consumers illustrate the clear and immediate need for us to take a look at the infrastructure of computing and the web and our freedom.

5. Read -How the iPhone Interface Creates Perilous Trends For Consumers and Developers.