Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2010 > April > 13 > Entry
What’s going on (besides the iPad)
About once a week, I post a “Linkdown” entry with links to some of the things you should be checking out or reading online.
Today, I’ll do it a little bit differently: links, yes, but with a little more explanation as to why some of these things are on my mind.
Ready? Let’s do this.
Twitter ads: They’re on my mind, but way back in the corner and in danger of falling off. Truth is, I cared about Twitter’s ad platform a lot more when I thought they were going to be announcing it at South by Southwest Interactive. That didn’t happen. Instead of jumping in this week, Twitter is instead launching “Promoted Tweets,” which feels like a tentative step toward making money, almost as if the company is allergic to cash and is checking to see if its allergy meds are working.
After the underwhelming keynote at SXSW, I’m having a lot of doubts about Twitter, not as a platform, but as a business. I’m beginning to wonder if a lot of the company’s success might have been by accident, and fueled by the many app developers who are now feeling a little betrayed by Twitter’s recent moves.
More importantly, does the market really have room for another major smartphone player behind the iPhone, Android phones, BlackBerry and the struggling Palm platform? Windows Phone to me feels like it’s not going to be a mature enough platform for casual/social smartphone owners and not “Windows” enough for business customers who have been faithful Windows Mobile customers.
New Macbook Pros: I’ve had my eye on the 13” MacBook Pro for a while, and the hardware updates are nice, but except for a little more memory and a bigger hard drive for the same price, the 13-inch model seems to have been largely left alone while its 15” and 17” cousins got major Intel processor and nVidia graphic card updates. I’m inclined to wait a while (for what? Not sure.) as a new laptop is not high on my priority list.
“Opera” browser approved for iPhone: Good news, but to me less an indication that Apple is opening up the App Store platform than an indication that Opera was going to make a stink if its app was rejected and Apple wanted to avoid some drama. Seems like Steve Jobs would rather save his energy for head games with Google and Adobe.
“God of War 3”: Thinking about this game a lot because I’m having a hard time finding time to play it. I waited so long for this one to come out and I long to join Kratos on his quest for revenge. Tonight, perhaps, Kratos. Perhaps.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Applications, Austin, Internet, Phones, SXSW 2010, Shopping
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