Tired words: Content
Where did this one come from?
Content – This word just seems insufficient and ambiguous (it can be a noun or adjective). It’s so clinical and sterile. Ok, so it’s in the same category as ‘media’, but ‘media’ is a word I happen to like, is attached to nice things,and is soft and round. Kontent is not really a Kingly word, isn’t a word that is used in any regular context outside of some industry-speak, and isn’t really something that lends itself to writing, such as these not so smooth phrases: ‘download content to phone’ (yes, quite happy) or ‘manage your contents’ (my bowels?) or ‘user generated content’ (sounds like a disease). I think it’s just our own laziness, to lump so much into this word.
You can review all my previous ‘Tired Words’ here on this page.
Wax on. Wax off.
Wax on. Wax off.
Originally uploaded by schickr.
Interesting
22/01/2007
Originally uploaded by schickr.
Infoworld reports: India nearly doubles mobile phone use in 2006
Sure makes me drool.
And whose devices do you think they are picking up the most, and with what functionalities? Nokia. Nokia Nseries, too. Quite interesting.
India added close to 74 million new mobile telephone subscribers last year, making it one of the most attractive markets for mobile telephone operators and wireless equipment vendors.
The number of wireless subscribers grew 97 percent from 75.94 million at the end of December 2005 to 149.5 million subscribers at the end of December last year, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in Delhi.
Tommi’s 2D Barcode Manifesto and ensuing intense discussion
I read this manifesto (link below) around the time it came out, but I totally missed the amazing discussion that came after. Indeed, at least two people pointed me to this discussion, it was so gripping.
Looking at the participants, it reads like a who’s who of the mobile 2Dcode world [hat tip to Paola]:
- WINKsite’s David Harper (whom I know)
- Kaywa’s Roger Fischer (CEO) and Jérôme Chevillat (whom I know)
- Semapedia’s Stan Wiechers
- Blogger Marc Fonteijn
- Shotcode’s Dennis Hattema
- Jukka Eklund
- even Scott Shaffer (whom I know), the real Vanilla Gorilla in this space, blessed the discussion with his presence 🙂
Way to go Tommi (whom I know, as well)!
Link: Tommi’s S60 applications blog
Anyway, here’s my 10-point manifesto about 2D barcodes, mimicking Guy Kawasaki’s famous presentation style. I wanted to publish this post on the day that the app becomes available, but I’ll be on vacation during 13-26 December. I hope the app becomes available during this time.
If I may summarize a bit one key thread in the discussion, since this is how I came to revisit this post: Dave and Roger were debating how one processes the URL shot from the code. Both companies make it easy for users to create websites and then generate 2D codes that contain the mobile site URL. I’ve written about this before.
The difference was that Dave, of WINKsite, believes that the reader needs to go straight to the URL without any intermediary, either a redirector or any sort of transcoder. Roger, of Kaywa, in contrast, has created a reader that first sends the phone browser to one of their sites after which the user selects to open the site (obviously, I’m not too clear on the concept). But, what is clear is that the user goes through an intermediary step via Kaywa. I think this intermediary step is a potential focal point for leveraging some business.
Which is better, I cannot say, since there are plusses and minuses to both, and one’s predilection balances a bit on where one is extracting the value, if I may put it that way. I say let the markets decide.
And I hope to revisit this fascinating topic soon, even though I’m just a spectator. 😛