Starbucks Finally Realizies That Free WiFi Is The Way To Go

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

Way back in 2003, we explained why fee-based WiFi almost certainly did not make sense for coffee shops like Starbucks. A year later, we had a discussion on how the program could be a lot more successful if it went free. But, for years, Starbucks insisted that the paid WiFi was a success. Except, if you watched, it gradually got more and more "like free." And that's because few people were actually using the paid version. And, now, finally, after all of these years, Starbucks is finally going to completely free WiFi. It's finally admitting that WiFi was always a complementary service to get more people to buy its high margin goods -- rather than a product itself.

Filed Under: free, wifi
Companies: starbucks

More People Recognizing That Media iPad Adaptations Feel Like CD-ROM Media

from the don't-recreate-paper dept

Earlier this year, we pointed to an excellent Danny O'Brien blog post comparing the media's mad dash for the iPad as a "savior" to the media's similar mad-dash to CD-ROMs as a savior. I'm reminded of that after Tom Teshima pointed us to Michael Gartenberg's review of Wired's well-hyped iPad app, where he, too, notes the similarities to CD-ROMness:

In the mid 90s, a friend of mine was involved in a project to recreate magazines like Time on CD-ROM for the multimedia PCs of the era. The results were pretty cool, but the CD-ROM versions of the publications hardly replaced their print counterparts. Content has since moved from optical disk to the web, and now the allure of tablet devices has created a market for specific newspaper and magazine apps -- the number one paid app for iPad is a digital version of Wired, which sold about 1,000 copies an hour the first day it was launched. While it's a much better effort than some of the other efforts, more than anything Wired for iPad shows the weaknesses of media apps and demonstrates how the tablet remains a still-imperfect medium to deliver this type of content.

Wired's efforts, like the CD-ROM efforts of the past, by has some cool features. A video clip of Toy Story 3 graces the cover and there are various interactive features, but more than anything else, it feels like a scanned in copy of the paper mag. Although navigation is better than most iPad magazines, it's still never clear when a screen should be scrolled down or just swiped horizontally.

Gartenberg notes that the iPad version is, in some ways, a worst of both worlds. It's not like the website, which is easily shared or emailed or discussed with others. Most of that functionality is effectively missing, which is really quite limiting for folks who are used to sharing the news as a part of experiencing it. Second, it doesn't allow physical notations or markup the way an actual paper magazine does -- or, again, the ability to easily share the magazine with others. You could share your iPad, but that's not quite the same thing...

He then goes on to point out the ridiculous economics. We've already seen other media publications come out with crazy pricing, but Wired unfortunately followed suit, and it makes little sense given the economics involved (which, Gartenberg points out is ironic, given editor-in-chief Chris Anderson's last book on "Free" in business models:

Even worse, the price point is hard to swallow. Charging the full cover price for a digital magazine makes no sense when I can subscribe to the paper edition of Wired for a year at a much lower cost per issue -- especially given that there's no paper, ink, shipping or distribution charges. Given the lack of flexibility, I'd assume there would at least be some incentive to get me to make the digital purchase, and even more so in light of the fact that the bulk of the content is already available online at Wired's website for free. It's ironic that Editor-in-chief Chris Anderson famously wrote a book called "Free" -- the Wired iPad app is the perfect case to try out some of those business models.

Of course, the obvious retort is the damn thing sold like hot cakes when it was released. The real question, though is how sustainable will that really be in the long term? As more people realize how much they're paying, they may wonder why. And I'm still confused as to why publications like Wired hype up all these special features for the iPad... but don't offer the same functionality on the web -- which they easily could.

Filed Under: apps, cd-roms, ipads

After 46 Years Of Unfulfilled Hype And Promises, Is Video Calling Finally Ready?

from the and-here-we-go-again dept

With the recent launch of the HTC Evo and (more importantly) the announcement of the iPhone 4 -- both of which include front-facing cameras and video calling software -- lots of people are now asking (yet again) if video calling is finally going to catch on. Of course, everyone points to same things: it's been a long time since AT&T introduced the first video phone, back in 1964. Six years ago, on the 40th anniversary of AT&T's intro of the phone, I wrote a column that was skeptical of the 2004 hype around video calling. You may (or may not) recall that when various UK mobile operators were all rolling out their 3G networks, video calling was a big selling point. And, as I noted in that column, the only people who seemed to be using it, were guys calling up women to expose themselves (see? ChatRoulette users exposing themselves is nothing new...).

And, of course, lots of folks are pointing out all of the standard reasons why video calling has never taken off: people don't want to have to "look good" just to use the phone. They don't want to have to even think about it. Slashdot points us to a typical story about how people in the UK won't adopt it -- and that's no surprise. As I noted in that column six years ago, it was all the rage (from operators) in the UK, and almost no one used it. So the UK has already gone through this whole video calling craze.

Now, as someone who's been skeptical of video calls for ages, I'll admit that I'm still skeptical of this go around. But... I may finally be hedging those bets, and admitting that I can see some uses for video calling. I just don't think it's what most people think they'd use it for. I still don't see any real market for your everyday video calling, adding video functionality to the calls people make on a daily basis. There's just so little benefit, and enough potential downside that I just don't see people doing it. But I can see some interesting other uses, including opening up new possibilities. For example: tech support. I can't count the number of times I've had to call my home broadband provider to complain about downtime -- and the conversation almost always involves "what are the lights on the modem doing" or "where is this cable plugged into" or whatever. I could definitely see value in just being able to show them what's going on. Same thing with calls to doctors. Your kid has a rash? Why not do a video call with a nurse to see if you really need to bring him into the doctor? And, of course, as more and more people have discovered with webcams, you have a whole new world of communicating via video (it's becoming more important for families, for example) -- and people will use video phones to set up more mobile video services for broadcasting themselves live to larger audiences (rather than just one to one).

Beyond the standard "vanity" and "looks" reasons why video calling never took off, there was really an infrastructure problem. You had a serious "empty room" problem. No one would buy a video phone if no one else had one. But what's happening now is that smartphones are becoming advanced enough that people are happily buying them for a whole variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the video calling. And, because of that, the infrastructure to do more regular video calls is actually becoming more widespread. With ubiquitous built-in video for phones, I can actually see more people starting to use it. I still don't think most people will use it on everyday calls. In fact, I still don't think it will really be that big of a feature in terms of usage. But I'm not yet convinced that it will totally crash and burn this time around. Could it be... after 46 years.. that some element of video calling's time has come?

Filed Under: video calling