Liz Everette

Neo, you’ve been replaced. Even worse, your replacement is not human. It’s far better.

As I had previously griped about in my post on convergence, or rather, Intel’s decision not to expand beyond UMPCs, I want an all in one, completely converged device. Today Steve Jobs delivered on that and went above and beyond what I had even hoped for at this point in time.

The specs aren’t what I’m focused on so much though– a big screen is nice, their new multi-touch feature is certainly cool (and far less hateful than texting out emails), and it runs OSX of all freakin’ things.

But here’s what I’m focused on:

1. 2MP camera– so that I can share my life as it happens, in decent detail and not waste people’s time and money by MMSing them pictures they can’t see– they’ll get them by email.

2. WiFi!!! I can save on my daytime minutes by calling people from WiFi hotspots via Skype– or at least that’s what I’m hoping that I can do with it. I’m not totally certain, but it seems worth a shot. Even if I can’t do that, I can at least play games online all day without having a really expensive data plan.

3. The content is going to rock. How do I know this? It’s already out there, waiting for me on my iPod. All I’ll have to do is move some of it over. Beyond that, it’s WiFi enabled, and the web is full of things to keep you occupied.

To sum it up: my DS is going to be a dust collector, unless the household obsession with Konami runs strong into the summer, in which case I’ll never get to hold the remote again. My RAZR is headed to the spot where my NEC 515 now sits– great phone paperweight land. And my iPod? Well, that’s probably still coming with me, since it’s a 30GB that’s almost full. It’s great for car trips and long days at work, but it won’t be with me everyday without fail.

June can’t come soon enough!

Apple

Cingular’s video sharing service won’t launch until later this year, but they will be demo-ing it at CES. I know that this has value to some people– the press release example of distant relatives seeing their new grandchild is certainly moving– but then there are the rest of us whose parents don’t much care to see yet another cute thing that their grandpuppy did. Yes, I said grandpuppy.

I think that this is ultimately a niche service, or else a service that will be used for those extraordinary events, as mentioned above. A couple of thoughts though: bullying by text message has become pervasive in the U.K., and although I haven’t seen statistics for the U.S., I can imagine it being similarly bad. I’m curious as to how children will adopt this mechanism to be even meaner. And then of course, the obvious: can the porn industry leverage this service to gain momentum on mobile?

Nielsen SoundScan released data today on the past years music purchase information. Not surprising: rap and hip hop ringtones held seven of the top ten spots on the realtones chart and six out of ten spots on the polyphonic chart. Surprising? The Super Mario Bros. theme was number one on the polyphonic chart, and by a good margin.

The digital track sales chart was something different altogether though: country superstars Rascal Flatts were the most downloaded artist based on track sales, and the alternative-punk genre dominated barely with four of the top ten slots.

The bottom line is this: realtone purchases are made by the young and devoid of taste, digital music is purchased by lots of people devoid of taste.

Business Wire

Um, yeah. I really don’t know why Forrester Research had to study this, but apparently, they did. I probably wouldn’t have spent the money and instead just hollered across the house at various family members.

Seriously though: 79% of consumers find the idea of ads on their mobile annoying and 97% percent don’t trust ads by texting. How can you blame them? I don’t have a massive data plan– I use my RAZR to check hockey scores, home email, and occasionally a white pages lookup. That’s it. I use Opera Mini for all of these functions– it won’t download images, and when consulting nhl.com, that is a very good thing. The browser built into my phone is painfully slow and I’m not a big fan of my carrier’s WAP deck layout or content. Banner ads from Verizon or Sprint (neither of which are my carrier) certainly wouldn’t induce me to continue to use my built-in browser.

If anyone saw Morgan Webb in “Morgan’s Minute” on G4 last night (sometime between 8 and 9) she made the point for me: if you’re going to sell something to me, you’d better give me something in return. We have come to expect that: an advertisement has to have a decent return on investment for the consumer or it’s not worth our precious time to pay attention.

I have a feeling that this will play out within the realm of Xero Mobile, a new MVNO will be launching this year. Their hook is that talk time will be subsidized by watching various ads on the phone. If I’m not paying for data services for the honor of this, it might be a viable consideration. Then again, it depends on how cool the phone is.

Advertising Age

So take me back to Cingular
No, you can’t go back to Cingular
Been a long time gone, Cingular
Why did Cingular get the works?
That’s nobody’s business but the Feds
(Apologies to They Might Be Giants)

AT&T sent out a press release last week stating that its acquisition of BellSouth has been completed. The deal will also consolidate ownership and management of Cingular Wireless and yellowpages.com.

Their plans are to start the rebranding process for both BellSouth and Cingular ASAP. If you’re interested in the management details, and such, feel free to read them here.

All that I’ve been able to ascertain from their literature is that this is a wonderful event that will allow consumers the chance to gain lots of next-gen tools and functionalities. Early 2007 is the only timeframe that I have seen thus far.