Twitter will close down all versions of TweetDeck, reasons claimed to be Adobe Air going out of fashion and that TweetDeck is not updated to the latest Twitter API. Sounds like bad excuses to me, considering TweetDeck is a rather simple application, so it would be easy to rewrite it in Java (making it platform independent) and to update it API-wise. I need to do the latter now and then for Twitizer, BabbleBox etc, and that’s no rocket science. Surely Twitter employees could do that in a shorter time than me. They designed the API!

A year or so ago Twitter acquired or banned some other clients, mainly mobile ones.

Some might consider this trend bad, and Twitter’s terms seemingly indicate that third party clients are not wanted, but in my opinion it rather leaves the field open for apps that e.g. can spot interesting news based on user preferences, using AI, natural language processing etc, or draw conclusions from fire hose analysis about trends, and guess ahead on elections etc, and for that matter very user-friendly mobile apps.

Twitter is seemingly against evolution of its service. It took several years to add support for pictures and ads, and overall not much seems to happen overall, which is also positive for third party.

For the time being the Twitter API is completely open, yet with volume restrictions and such, so it’s still an opportunity for would-be entrepreneurs to exploit the massive reference and opinion database Twitter is.

Interesting trend spotting of the mobile market:
http://www.businessinsider.com/2013–the-year-ahead-in-mobile-slide-deck-2013-12?op=1

Opinions:

Even when Android clearly dominates in volume, iOS apps (and especially games) continue to generate considerably more revenue. That’s the space to be for app developers, also because there are way fewer devices to support, hence easier to secure compatibility. Drawback: The approval process (that is still non-existent at Google Play) slows things down, and might even lead to no-go. Also: If you are aiming for other markets than mobile, e.g. automotive, Android is a much better choice, but then we are talking primarily B2B. I expect most in-car navigation/multimedia systems to be based on Android.

Also interesting is that there are still new companies getting into the very cluttered mobile advertising space, indicating we are still in the abundant (or thought to be abundant) gold digging phase. Still an opportunity for a startup and still possible to stand out? I believe it’s possible to innovate in terms of achieving better reach and better targeting (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! sit on tons of user information (we users are gullible); possible to piggy-back on that information for third-party?). Make use of the fact that mobiles are location-aware.

Mobile payments or anything else that generates direct revenue counts. Few will win by taking the chance of getting acquired just because of many users (and users only). Hard cash is what matters. Tablets are excellent for e-commerce and even fewer will buy products in shops, where e.g. most multimedia and home electronics shops will go belly-up. Anything that can be in digital form, will be sold in digital form, and the margins are too thin on electronics to sell in shops. Even when it comes to Apple products, considering the unhealthy revenue split between Apple and distributors. TV advertising might paradoxically make more sense (at least for a while) due to the quick-and-easy purchase through “always in the lap” tablets while watching TV shows.

Den publicerades första gången i november, men har nyligen uppdaterats med ny information.

CliqTags gör det enkelt att förmedla information till mobilanvändare

Just got a RaspBerry Pi Mod B. The B indicates it’s got 512 MB RAM and 2 USB ports. It’s ridiculously low-priced considering its feature-set, and that it’s a complete PC on a board.

The business card (normal-sized) shows how small this board is:

The SD Card houses Debian Linux.

I also got a casing that fits the board, but nothing else:

I will initially try to get a GUI running on Debian and use it as a media player, but my goal is really to run Android on it, to maximize the availability of applications and to realize a low-end PC for touch-display applications.

To accomodate an interface board a larger casing is needed. Such are available.

The critical administration section of CliqTags has been redesigned in terms of look and function.

Major changes have been made in the usage flow and the handling of sites vs pages, to make CliqTags into more of a “normal” CMS, with mobile enhancements.

Site emulation, access methods etc are now central to the site, and when editing pages you only see information relevant to the page type selected, making the user interface much simpler.

That way we hope that use becomes more intuitive overall.

This new design is planned for launch on Monday (11/12). More info then.

Teknopol is a state-funded Swedish company that offers free assistance to startups. Each month they set up Power Hour meetings where startups can present their ideas to a panel of Teknopol partners that consists of individuals from larger companies in the region.

The response was positive overall, but we also got a few things back that we need to think about in our further sales and offering work. In any case a worthwhile experience and a small step to get visibility in the industry.

CliqTags på Teknopol Power Hour | CliqTags

We now have a collaboration with Swedish Lokaltidningen (“The Local Magazine”) about selling CliqTags sites as a complement to their ads, that way providing additional content behind and beyond the ads. Examples are demo videos, detailed offering information, coupons, contests, queries etc.

The same concept will be offered to other magazines as well.

Further information is available in Swedish at CliqTags.

CliqTags i Lokaltidningen iLund | CliqTags

RaveGlow is on the surface a rather simple and to-the-point app that shows color patterns on the display, to be used when you want to grab the attention of others. Whether they find it enjoyable or not depends on the situation and the people.

What makes RaveGlow a bit complex on the inside, but also easy to expand, is that it deploys a dual wave generation system with square, triangle, sine, ramp/saw and random waves affecting hue, saturation and brightness (HSB), and at any frequency, with a resolution of 10 milliseconds. Each pattern or script is stored as data, so there’s no special code per pattern. It’s actually based on code I developed for Netduino that was easily ported (C# is really “Java+”, but Microsoft would of course not officially admit to that): The power of abstraction.

Features considered for the future:

• More (and more complex) wave generation and patterns. I’m considering modulation of waves in terms of frequency and amplitude, like all audio synthesizers do.
• A scrolling user-definable text message in any color.
• Audio recorded via the microphone acting as a color modulator.
• Replicate color patterns that other phones (or other things) show by using the camera in preview mode.

Possibly via in-app billing.

We’ll see…

Yet another flashlight app, with a twist: It also sports a stroboscope and a morse code flasher. Free (with ads) at Google Play.

And so Apple won the patent suit against Samsung, and more is likely to come.

Jury: Samsung should pay Apple more than $1 billion

I wonder though:

• Can really pure designs be patented? Aren’t patents supposed to describe solutions to real problems? That’s the stance we have in Sweden.
• Will Xerox PARC and others now sue Apple for all they’ve “borrowed”?
• Clearly this is eventually a war against Android, and not just Samsung. Google needs to prepare itself for that. If Apple wins, we have the same situation as with Microsoft earlier, and IBM even earlier. Such monopolies never last forever, as eventually Apple will be behind the curve and disruptive solutions from others will take them completely off guard, but that can take years.
• The only positive if Android would somehow (and unlikely) be defeated, is that Nokia can make a comeback, if they survive that long, with or without Microsoft in the mix. Considering Microsoft intends to provide its own Windows 8 based gadgets, I wonder where Nokia fits into that.
• Regarding Samsung selling more smartphones than Apple: That’s completely irrelevant. The only thing that really matters is profit, and Apple has much more of that, both because of the much higher margins on the phones and because of the after market created by content sales.
• Interestingly Samsung is at the same time a (the?) major provider of components to Apple, so it’s a weird game they are playing.