Mobilizing Youth

Facebook app usage flat

Some interesting stats just out about flat Facebook app usage. My longterm hypothesis is that app usage will decline considerably due to the walled garden effect, unless Facebook does something fairly radical to their platform design.

"The number of published apps continues to grow steadily (to over 32K) but total usage remains flat. Besides the fact that the top 10% of apps account for 98% of total usage, aspiring Facebook app developers should know that only about 6% of apps average at least 500 active users per day"

From O'Rielly blog.

Apple Monopoly is No Good

(slightly off topic): In early June, I finally broke down and decided to join the masses at the San Francisco coffee shops with their brightly glowing uber-sleek Apple laptops. I've never been happy with the Win operating systems, but sometime after college (circa 1995), I was persuaded to switch to it (from Mac) b/c all of the software I needed to run only ran on Win.

But the tides are changing. All of the cool kids are back on Mac. And to boot, it now runs all Win software.

Having run very low on cash over the last year, due to writing the book for very little $$, I decided to lease. So I made an inquiry to PowerMax and also to Apple directly. I never heard anything back from Apple. A few days later, PowerMax connected me to an Apple leasing specialist.

I filled out more paperwork. I sent them copies of my IRS Form Schedule C for the past 2 years. I sent about 5 followup emails. Over 30 days later, I still have no shiny new Mac. I still have not been approved (although my credit rating is near 800). They cannot find my Schedule C!!

I'm turning to trusty Craigslist instead. Very frustrating. Is it b/c Apple is the only company that sells the Mac that this service is so poor?

As a point of comparison, I also applied for a lease to Dell (for a new monitor). I was approved for up to $5000 immediately online.

Apple's products may be beautiful, but their sales system is sub-par.

Facebook & MySpace have same traffic

Just came across this news tidbit - FB and MySpace have an equal number of unique visitors (115m). although MS continues to lead FB in the U.S. (72m vs. 36m).

http://b-side.com.sg/blog/2008/06/facebook_no_longer_the_second.html

Mobility Project

This just came across my email-reader. It's one of the best ideas I've heard in a long time. Kind of like the Processing for mobile apps... in fact, I wonder if it could be fit into the processing framework? I just bought the Make Controller, which has a few plug and play apps for it - and is easily extensible via Flash and Processing, Java, C, etc... Strikes me that controlling the phone from a set of premade apps that plug into eachother like a puzzle pieces with configurable parameters is much the same. Great work Ken.

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Hi all

Over the past six months or so I have been talking with about a dozen high-profile mobile companies, IT companies and mobile specialists to gauge interest in a new project, one which builds on the work of Nathan Eagle in East Africa (see http://web.mit.edu/eprom for details). I have also been speaking with a major US Foundation, who have expressed interest in funding the initial scoping phase of the project.

The challenge was this. How do we empower individuals in developing countries to develop and build their own mobile applications? EPROM has already been teaching computer science graduates in a number of East African universities, but how can we scale this initiative, allowing universities in other parts of the developing world to do the same? And with software development largely taking place on desktop computers, how can we empower users to build applications on the phones themselves? And if we could, what would a mobile-based programming environment look like?

Within the next couple of months or so, “mobility” hopes to start exploring these questions. The potential is huge if we can find appropriate, sustainable solutions.

There is a holding website in place, which describes the thinking behind the project, at http://mobility.kiwanja.net. This will be replaced by a collaborative Wiki once the project commences.

Anyone with skills and experience in mobile applications development, mobile education or software tools development are all welcome to get in touch.

Feel free to share this news with your own networks and lists. I will begin posting names and details of the founding partners once the project starts to move forward. Please join us.

Many thanks.

Ken Banks
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New name for Volunteer Now!

I'm considering a new name for Volunteer Now... because it seems that people instantly (and logically) compare the idea/application to what they know of existing volunteerism. It becomes a mental process of fitting the application into the volunteer ecosystem, which seems to limit, more than help. Because while "doing good in your spare time" seems initially like a form of volunteering, perhaps it's something new - or at least, different. Perhaps shifting the model around the individual, rather than to the entity being helped, makes it something unique. Maybe it's more like a neighborly good deed. Looking at it in this way also opens it up to helping an individual, in addition to an organization. Whereas calling it a 'volunteer' activity instantly leads people to think that organizations are helped, exclusively.

My best name this far is: SpareTimeMachine

What do you think?