MLBAM–Baseball’s Tech Company

My last story for BusinessWeek is up today. I visited Major League Baseball Advanced Media in Chelsea, Manhattan and took a look at their operations. Their tech operation is quite impressive, they have a gang of developers working on software.

Also, their CEO Bob Bowman mentioned that the mobile web and mobile applications for all their promise have yet to deliver real revenue. And he seems skeptical that they ever will, in a way that Google or some other people think. He doesn’t discount its significance, he just says it is a long slow ramp towards economic nirvana.

Dear Apple, I Have 3G, Wait, It’s Edge, Oh Darn…I’ve Got No Service

Dear Apple, AT&T, whoever.

I am sitting at my desk at work. I had 3G service. Then it disappeared. I then had Edge. Then it disappeared. Then I had no service. Now I have phone service, but no ability to connect to the Internet. This is what I pay $90 each month for?

Your patches don’t work, your steadfast denial of the problems is troubling. Please fix this fast.

Sincerely,

Jay

P.S. BlackBerry, Nokia, HTC, Google, you have nothing to be worried about.

Android Equipped Phones In September Says A Blog

Is this what people are referring to when they condemn blogs in one sweeping brush?

The unofficial T-Mobile Blog, a blog by three mobile mavens focused on T-Mobile says there will be a September presale for an Android equipped HTC phone dubbed the G1. The presale price will be $150, and the full price will be $399.

How accurate is this information? I have no idea. I’m willing to give this blog the benefit of the doubt. If the blog is correct and there is a presale in September it is a coup for the blog and a big jump in its credibility. And with it, the credibility of the amorphous swell referred to as blogs. If it is wrong, it only further dents the idea that blogs are reputable sources of information becoming more and more like traditional journalistic enterprises.

Regardless of the blogging debate–which is still alive amongst many traditional media reporters and editors–I’m intrigued by Android. It seems like a haphazard operation, I’m excited to see the final product.

Shhhhhh! Don’t Tell Anyone The iPhone 3G Is Buggy!

Cnet has a long article on the problems with using the iPhone as a phone. AT&T customers are reporting more dropped calls with the iPhone 3G than with other AT&T 3G phones. One of the biggest problems is the phone’s switch between its EDGE network and its 3G network. The switch is supposed to be seamless, but often times results in dropped calls.

One poor customer, Ryan Shaw, quit his iPhone after having 36% of his calls dropped. Shaw, a sales pro from Ohio, switched back to Verizon and a BlackBerry. So much for the enterprise market, eh Apple?

Cnet ponders whether this is a software issue, a hardware issue or merely an anecdotal issue brought up by a few cranks. Apple refused to respond for the story. AT&T did some tap dancing, denying any problems.

Apple needs to respond because there are problems with the phone. And more reporters need to start talking about problems with the phone. It is buggy, it locks up, it crashes. If Microsoft released something like this, they’d be hammered. Wait. They did, it is called Vista.

Personally, I can attest to the dropped calls issue. I lost a call with a friend recently. He couldn’t hear me, though I could still hear him, the last thing he said before I got a “call failed” response was, “Your new iPhone is really great.”

The Russian-Georgian Conflict Shows Western Weakness

Today, the Financial Times has a video interview with one of its reporters summarising the conflict between Russia and Georgia that erupted on Friday. The interview creates a grim picture of the war between these nations and its implications for the rest of the world.

On Sunday, the Times printed a lenghty and informative recap of the events that led to this battle. This story is a great entry point to attempt to comprehend the complicated relations between the two nations. In brief (and with healthy generalizing), Russia despises Georgia for its pro-Western rhetoric. Likewise, Georgia hates Russia for the way it’s controlled Georgia for decades. Russia is fighting to defend South Ossetia, a break away nation, which was once a part of Georgia. South Ossetia to Georgia is like Cyprus to Greece, an independent nation with its own language and culture. Yet Georgia considers it a part of Georgia. Under flimsy pretenses, Russia invaded South Ossetia to remove Georgian forces. It has escalated its warfare, and seems intent upon attacking Georgia, too. Plus, there is a pipeline of oil that runs through South Ossetia.

Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, repeatedly says in the NYT piece, that he hopes Western nations will protect him when Russia comes knocking. Unfortunately, according to the FT, there isn’t much the West can do. Russia is a military super power, once again, and they control a huge amount of the world’s oil supply. The West’s hands are tied. The worst that will happen, is a souring of the relations between Russia and the rest of the world.

Will ABC Value Jay Leno At Over $200 Million?

The New York Post is reporting that it would cost ABC more than $200 million to start up a late night show with Jay Leno. They say converting a building in Los Angeles to use as a studio for his show, along with the attendant costs of construction would reach $175 million. Add in his annual $27 million salary and you’re in the deep red before the show even starts.

Complicating things further, Nightline is a growing “money-maker” for ABC. The Post cautions that the temporary drop in profit from hiring Leno could yield greater returns in the long term, which is part of the reason NBC is replacing Leno with Conan O’Brien in a year.

The Mobile Marketing Opportunity: Free Branded iPhone Apps

Apple now offers over a thousand applications in its App Store. Of that, about 90% cost less than $10, and about 20% are free. While 200 free applications is nothing to balk at, the number should be much greater. There are very few free, but branded applications offered through the App Store. Are marketers missing a big opportunity?

For years mobile advertising has been on the cusp of developing into a reliable marketing tool. Yet, nothing has materialized in a real, significant way. Rather than simply advertising on mobile applications, companies should pay developers to create simple, useful apps. Then put their logo on that application. iPint is one such example. I have a story for BusinessWeek today where I talk to the developers of iPint.

When flicking through the App Store I came upon the application iBeer. This rather popular application allows you to pretend you’ve got a beer in your phone. It costs $2.99. Three bucks for a novelty gag?On an intern’s salary, $3 for 30 seconds of entertainment makes no sense.

Luckily, Carling beer offers a free application that does the exact same thing and more. Their app, iPint, lets you guide a beer down a bar in to waiting hands. Using the accelerometer you steer the beer through an obstacle course that includes other beers, candles and potato chips. To slow down the beer there are Carling coasters on the bar. Once you get it into the hand, your prize is a watching the phone virtually fill with beer, which you can pretend to drink down, just like iBeer.

I want more applications like this.

For instance, I was looking for a decent spider solitaire game. The cheapest I could find was $3.99. The rest were $9.99. On principle alone, I’m not going to pay $10 for solitaire, a game I’ve grown accustomed to getting for free with my PC. Why wouldn’t a company like Burger King pay a small amount of money to a developer to make a solitaire application? They could put their logo in the background or on the top of the cards. And every time I sit on a bus or train playing my solitaire I start thinking about Burger King.

Some companies are working on developing free branded applications. Illusion Labs, the company behind iPint is developing two more games, and VML, a marketing company is developing four new applications on behalf of clients. While companies waited for the market to establish itself, they may have missed a chance.

When Smallware introduced a free solitaire application, it shot to the top of the downloaded list. Imagine if some corporation had been ahead of Smallware with a branded app? Not only would they get all the iPhone and iPod Touch users looking at their app, they’d get dolts like me writing about them.

It’s still early times for the App Store, but creating free simple apps directly sponsored by a single company seems to be a no-brainer.

T-Mobile Opens Up For Application Developers

T-Mobile USA will allow third party developers to design applications for its phones starting this fall according to Moconews.

Here’s the details: Developers will submit their applications online; the revenue-share agreement will be based on how much the application uses the network; and the applications will be presented to the user in order of popularity, not according to T-Mobile’s preferences. It’s all pretty straightforward, but the more interesting aspect is that this will apply to all the carrier’s platforms from upcoming Android to Java to Sidekick and Windows Mobile. And, when it comes to revenues, it will be almost as easy as Apple’s 30-70 split. T-Mobile will take a percentage of revenues based on bandwidth, so if it’s a streaming video application, it will take more. Still, one developer called the baseline “very generous.”

Let’s see how smooth T-Mobiles distribution system turns out. And let’s see if non-smartphone users want to download games too. And let’s also see how many people can port their apps from iPhone to T-Mobile. A new developers economy will be thriving by winter.

Do Cell Phones Cause Cancer? We Don’t Know.

New story at BusinessWeek: Why Cell Phone Health Concerns Persist After reading a story in the Times based on a Larry King Live show, I felt compelled to look at this question. While there has been a ton of research on the topic, it is still unclear whether or not cell phones cause cancer. Unfortunately, it appears as though we will simply have to wait and see. Time is the biggest barrier to knowledge.

The Bride, Groom & Ceremony

The happy couple. Plus some pics of the ceremony. Rick rode a horse to the place of the wedding while we danced around him, then his family and her family exchanged garlands.