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Facebook Messenger for iPhone: Watch Your Back, Skype
Imagine the convenience and reach of your Facebook friends list, combined with the VoIP goodness of Skype. That’s what a new iPhone app called Facebook Messenger aims to provide. It gives you access to Facebook chat on your iPhone, but also lets you call any of your online contacts for a VOIP chat.

Facebook Messenger ($2.99), created by Crisp App, works between iPhone and iPod touch devices, and between your iOS device and the web. Aside from providing a mighty tempting target for accusations of trademark infringement, the app lets users VoIP call online Facebook users on both mobile and web-based clients. On an iPhone or iPod touch, they receive an incoming call screen with the option to accept or deny, or a push notification if the app isn’t open. On the web, your chat target will receive a link asking them to accept your call, which will transfer them to a web page for handling the call. The recipient can take part in the call so long as they have a computer with a microphone and speakers.

I tried out the app calling between iPhones and to the desktop. Both had roughly the same voice quality, which was quite good. The only issue was that both the other caller and I experienced significant delay between when we spoke, and when the other caller heard what we said. There was also an echo effect, so you could hear what you’d just said repeated faintly after you said it. Also, in both cases, the time between initiating a call and the call showing up on the other user’s device or machine was considerable. If you aren’t patient, you might think someone isn’t answering, when in fact they haven’t yet been notified of your call.

Why then, should Skype be concerned about Facebook Messenger? Because despite early hiccups, the concept behind the app is killer. Facebook is already probably the de facto way a lot of people communicate, with a much broader reach than Twitter, and it’s becoming even more of a communication hub thanks to its recent messaging system upgrade. If Facebook Messenger can beef up its architecture to provide a smoother, quicker VoIP experience, it could leverage Facebook’s network to leapfrog to the front of the competition, especially if it can somehow integrate video in future iterations. Unless, that is, Facebook decides this is too good an idea and decides to bake the feature into its site and app itself.
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Facebook Messenger Web Interface

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Apple's Message to Publishers: Content Is King
This week Apple, caused a storm by announcing their new iOS App Store terms and conditions for publishers. In a nutshell: Long-awaited in-app subscriptions are here, and the service brings with it the usual 70/30 revenue split common to Apple’s other content channels, like music and apps.

So why the controversy? Apple prohibits publishers from offering more attractive (read: cheaper) subscription deals to customers outside the walls of the iOS App Store. Whatever publishers offer outside the App Store must be matched (or bettered) inside the App Store. Oh and just one more thing; Apple will not hand over to publishers the personal details of customers making in-app purchases/subscriptions without the permission of those customers. This last point is great news for consumer privacy, but another nail in the coffin for publishers accustomed to using said data in valuable advertising deals.

If you’ve ever subscribed to a magazine or newspaper you know how it works: A subscription card often asks for far more than just your name, address and credit card number. Those mini questionnaires publishers require of their subscribers supply them with a huge variety of valuable information they can use when selling space to advertisers. In fact, advertisers now demand it; after all, they want to be sure they’re placing their ads strategically — and therefore, spending their money wisely.

It matters not one jot if a publication acquires a few thousand subscribers through the App Store; without the typically-concomitant subscriber data, advertisers will be less inclined to buy space in any iOS publication.

How Did We Get Here?

Much publishing today is less concerned with quality than it is with quantity. The more copies there are of a magazine in circulation — or clicks on a web page — the more eyeballs see accompanying ads. In a world where, more than ever before, readers have more choice of content, but less time to engage with it, for many publishers, the key to generating appreciable revenue lies not in value, but in volume.

And I’m not talking small-time publishers here; in early February, Business Insider revealed AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s guide to his network’s editors, titled “The AOL Way”, in which the editorial priorities of the company are laid-bare; on a page directing editors in how to decide what topics should be covered, “Editorial Integrity” (in other words, editorial quality) is ranked last, after “Traffic Potential,” “Revenue/Profit” and “Turnaround Time.”

Changing the Game

Online publishing’s focus on advertising, sponsorship and syndication is problematic, for viewers and for Apple as a company that wants to provide worthwhile content for users of its platforms. Great quality content, in this model, is of little use to publishers, despite the fact that it happens to be precisely the thing readers actually want.

Apple, I think, has noticed this problem, and is now taking positive steps to solve it. Apple wants to ensure that publishing on the iPad is never anything less than top quality, where the paramount priorities of publishers lie always in ensuring the quality of their content.

Hard Work for Big Returns

You see, with the rules as they stand today, the only way publishers can be successful in the App Store is by concentrating on producing the very best content. And that won’t happen because they place “Editorial Integrity” in first place on a PowerPoint slide. Publishers will have to commit themselves to produce nothing less than the very best content in the industry. It will take a lot of investment, a lot of insanely hard work and, for some publishers, a serious restructuring of their editorial staff and policies. None of that is easy or cheap, and, for publishers used to and dependent upon advertising revenue, it must seem a ludicrous proposition.

Apple has established a sales and distribution platform that emphasizes content sales and subscriptions over advertising, but if the company really wants to help publishers embrace the “content is king” philosophy, I think they need to do much more to assist in content creation and promotion. However, it begins with giving publishers with something that is still sorely-missing; top-flight iOS publishing tools made available — for free — to all publishers and authors everywhere. iOS is a publishing platform bursting with potential. Apple needs to give content creators an easy — and powerful — set of tools for leveraging it. Its iAd Producer application for the Mac might be a good place to start.

In the end, I believe most publishers genuinely respect their readers and care about the quality of their content; and I suspect they would happily unshackle themselves from their reliance on advertising revenue if only subscriptions and sales revenues could take its place. Apple has provided a tantalizing new path for publishers to tread, provided they don’t just throw their hands up and walk away citing Apple’s greed as a way to take the easy way out.

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Cross-Platform Syncing Solutions for Your iOS, Mac, & PC Devices
For me the revolution started with the iPhone, and once the iPad was fully integrated into my workflow, the dictator had been completely deposed: the hard drive was no longer king. Now syncing solutions keep my digital life in step regardless of my local storage situation.

Let me guide you through a number of solutions that allow you to sync data, contacts, calendar, and notes between your iOS and Mac devices.

Data Syncing

iDisk: Apple’s MobileMe is the only all-in-one solution I’ll be mentioning. However, data syncing via iDisk is the service’s biggest flaw. Frankly, it’s too slow for quick syncs. Even uploading one file can result in a several minutes’ worth of sync-time. Uploading a ton of data can be intolerable. I’ve also run into a ton of sync errors, where my local and remote iDisks get so far out of sync, I end up needing to start from scratch, forcing me to figure out on my own what didn’t get synced to Apple’s servers. That said, for small amounts od data the iOS app is a great way to share content while you’re out and about. Also, the iOS iWork suite natively connects to iDisk for file management.

Dropbox: Dropbox is the gold standard for data syncing. It just works. The basic account gives you 2 GB of storage, which is probably fine for most people. They do offer 50 and 100 GB solutions as well. The sync is near-instaneous, and Dropbox also allows you to restore deleted files via the web. I really can’t remember ever having have an issue with Dropbox. You can use DropDAV to allow WebDAV access to your Dropbox account so it will work with iWork on iOS devices. Dropbox also has an API available, so text editing apps like Elements and PlainText can access your Dropbox directly.

SugarSync: This service the potential to be a nice alternative to Dropbox. For starters, its free model gives you 5 GB versus Dropbox’s 2 GB. For $99 you can get 60 GB of storage while Dropbox only gives you 50 GB for the same amount. But there is no WebDAV support, even via a 3rd-party tool, which may not be an issue if you’re unsure or unwilling to use WebDAV access anyway. However, the big difference is in how you determine what folders sync. On Dropbox, everything in your Dropbox folder is synced automatically; SugarSync requires you to use a desktop program to determine what folders sync. Overall, I found SugarSync’s interface a little cumbersome.

How I do it: I use both iDisk and Dropbox. Rapidly changing files (work, writing, business, school, etc.) are stored on Dropbox and I use DropDAV to make sure I can access the files using iWork on my mobile devices if I need to (for most of my text needs, I use Elements). Dropbox gives me the sync reliability I need, along with a rudimentary backup solution. Large or infrequently changed files (e-books and the like) are stored on iDisk. This gives me mobile access to the files, and I don’t have to deal with an overly-complicated sync system.

Contacts and Calendars

Frankly, syncing contacts and calendars is one of the easiest things to do. Address Book and Mail in OS X both natively sync with MobileMe, Google and Yahoo and when you add your accounts to your iOS device you can choose to sync both contacts and calendars. You can also add your Yahoo and Google calendars as sync calendars in iCal on the Mac.

How I do it: I’m a MobileMe subscriber, so I use that. It may not be free, but it keeps things simple.

Notes

For me, there are two different types of notes. I’ll make a note about something I need to get at the store, or a quick thought in passing, or the name of a book I see in a bookstore. Then there are more formal notes: the type you make during a meeting or class. Especially on iOS, there are almost as many note apps as there are flatulence simulators, so I’m going to focus on a few of my favorites.

Apple’s Notes: All iOS devices ship with the Notes app, which you can use to sync notes with any email account you have on the device. Notes is a nice little app for the basic things, but not great when it comes to long notes. While often derided, I actually like it quite a bit, especially since the notes sync happens during mail fetches. However, if you don’t use the Mail.app on OS X, it’s limited in its appeal, because while the notes will show up in Gmail, for instance, you can’t edit them.

SimpleNote: This aptly-named app has a nice, clean interface. It doesn’t natively sync with a dedicated desktop notes software (you edit notes on the web), but on their download page the app’s developers do list some programs and web extensions that do support the service.

Evernote: This is the big boy of note-taking apps. It’s great for collecting mass quantities of research notes, clipped web pages, graphics, the unabridged version of The Stand and that rusty kitchen sink in the basement. I don’t find it all useful for quick notes, and I don’t think that’s its focus. It is also a great collaborative tool letting you share notebooks.

How I do it: I use Notes for the minor, short notes and Evernote for all my project and class notes. PDFs from school get imported to a dedicated Evernote notebook for that class. The shopping list I’ve been handed goes into Notes.

The Future

Apple needs to get its act together for mobile syncing. The Wall Street Journal reports Apple is beefing up MobileMe, complete with the introduction of the oft-rumored wireless iTunes sync. One of the things keeping the iPad from being a true, untethered mobile solution is a better cloud system from the mothership, so let’s hope these latest reports prove true.

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Obama to Silicon Valley: A Side of Innovation Please?
Steve Jobs and several other tech industry leaders, including Google’s Eric Schmidt and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, met last night with President Obama at the home of venture capitalist John Doerr outside of San Francisco. Subjects of discussion at the meeting included technological innovation and private sector job growth.

The official word on what was discussed at the meeting came from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney immediately following the event:

The President believes that American companies like these have been leading by investing in the creativity and ingenuity of the American people, creating cutting-edge new technologies and promoting new ways to communicate. The President specifically discussed his proposals to invest in research and development and expand incentives for companies to grow and hire, along with his goal of doubling exports over five years to support millions of American jobs. The group also discussed the importance of new investments in education and the new White House initiative Startup America, a partnership with the private sector aimed at supporting new startups and small businesses.

No doubt Obama approached this particular group to seek guidance regarding growth and expansion because of the unique abilities demonstrated by Apple, Google and others to continue to grow and operate profitably even during the peak of the recent recession. Apple’s Mac lineup of computers, for instance, outpaced industry growth for the past 19 quarters according to a report released yesterday.

Obama also seems keen to mimic the entrepreneurial spirit that has led to Silicon Valley’s role as an incubator of innovation and economic success. That the meeting took place at Doerr’s house indicates Obama is keen to learn from the startup economy (something made plain with the Startup America initiative), as well as from large, established tech firms.

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Apple Subscriptions Draw Attention From U.S. Regulators
Apple’s new in-app subscription policy has drawn the attention of U.S. regulatory bodies, just as many suspected. Both the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are reportedly examining the new App Store rules with the aim of determining whether they violate antitrust laws.

According to Bloomberg, the investigations are, for now, preliminary and exploratory, with the aim of determining whether a formal inquiry is merited at this time. News of the investigations comes via two people familiar with the matter, who declined to be named because at this stage, the investigation is confidential.

The full details of Apple’s subscription plan were unveiled on Feb. 15. According to the deal, content providers who offer access to content within an app that can be purchased from an external website or other location, must offer the ability to purchase the same content from within the app, too, at the same price. That includes both one-time purchases and recurring subscriptions. Revenue from the sale of content and subscriptions from within the app will be split 70/30 between Apple and the content provider. Any apps that offer an in-app link to an external store from which the content may also be purchased will be rejected by Apple.

The Wall Street Journal provides some interesting perspective on the likelihood that these preliminary investigations by the DOJ and FTC will result in a full-blown inquiry. On the one hand, it suggests that there are definitely reasons to be suspicious of Apple’s actions:

“My inclination is to be suspect” about Apple’s new service, said Shubha Ghosh, an antitrust professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Two key questions in Mr. Ghosh’s mind: Whether Apple owns enough of a dominant position in the market to keep competitors out, and whether it is exerting “anticompetitive pressures on price.”

At the same time, there’s a question of which market will be investigated. Apple might be susceptible to investigation with regard to the tablet market, where it still holds an overwhelming share, but if the company can convince regulators that in-app subscriptions are part of the greater overall digital and print media markets, then as it stands, it would be impossible for anyone to say they have a dominant overall share, except possibly when it comes to digital music (a DOJ investigation is ongoing regarding Apple’s iTunes music store business practices). However, MacRumors points out that according to experts, “government officials may be unable to tag Apple’s commission rates as anticompetitive given a lack of benchmark standards in the market and an unwillingness to interfere in complex pricing decisions.”

Apple, no doubt, considered this before introducing the new feature, and will do its best to convince lawmakers that as it stands, there’s no cause for investigation since it doesn’t control a majority of the market at issue. My guess? We won’t see any definitive action or change in the way Apple does business resulting from this investigation for a long time to come. For now, the numbers are on the company’s side when it comes to books, magazines, newspapers and even movies, depending on how broadly you define each category.

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Apple Revenue Grab May Rock the Boat, Not Capsize It
There’s a lot of chatter out there that Apple’s new subscription plans could endanger its relationship with app developers and content providers, and might even incur unwanted legal attention. Apple may be in for a bumpy ride as it moves to implement the new system, but don’t think it’s anywhere close to capsizing.

Some of the response so far from content providers has been clearly-stated opposition to Apple’s plans. Rhapsody, for example, suggested that it might pursue legal action, pending an inquiry into the viability of such action. The reason? It simply isn’t tenable for Rhapsody to pay Apple its 30 percent cut, after other expenses:

An Apple-imposed arrangement that requires us to pay 30 per cent of our revenue to Apple, in addition to content fees that we pay to the music labels, publishers and artists, is economically untenable. The bottom line is: we would not be able to offer our service through the iTunes store if subjected to Apple’s 30 per cent monthly fee vs a typical 2.5 percent credit card fee.

Note, however, that Rhapsody’s response wasn’t to remove its iOS applications in protest. In fact, it signalled its intention to continue to offer its service uninterrupted on the platform in its current form until it was no longer able to do so. Other parties in a similar situation as Rhapsody, including Amazon, which distributes books (incurring additional content fees to publishers) and Netflix (which has to license all of its videos from studios) have notably silent on the issue thus far.

Silent, too, are publishers, which are the parties referred to specifically in Apple’s new subscription pricing plans. News Corp. is obviously on board and happy to accept Apple’s terms for the time being, since in-app subscriptions were first introduced in its iPad newspaper app, The Daily. Popular Science, Elle and Nylon followed suit shortly after Apple’s announcement yesterday with in-app subscriptions of their own. While that isn’t exactly an overwhelming tide of support, it’s far from an outright negative response.

The truth is that publishers and distributors are watching and waiting, because they can’t afford to do otherwise. Rhapsody can’t afford to acquiesce to Apple’s new demands, but it equally can’t afford to abandon the platform. Others like Amazon are probably in the same boat, working behind the scenes with Apple to see if compromise is possible and waiting to see where the chips will fall. But hoping for a compromise or a retreat by Apple might ultimately prove fruitless. Analyst Mark Little from technology research firm Ovum sums up quite well why Apple might even be willing to risk the loss of these partners in the end:

[I]t is unlikely the new subscription model will upset iPhone owners and aspirers enough to switch to Android; interestingly the new model could also helps clear the 'idecks' of competition, and the loss of the likes of Rhapsody and the Kindle Store can be easily replaced by Apple services such as iTunes or iBook and exclusives such as 'The Daily.'

Apple launched the iPhone platform without app content partners, and it still has content libraries of its own in place through iTunes and iBooks, as well as the largest library of apps available to a mobile platform, and at least some publishing partners willing to accept its revenue-sharing terms in search of broader audiences. And what choice do those publishers really have? Magazines and print publications turned to the iPad in the first place because of dwindling print sales. Android looks to possibly provide safe harbor for those media companies with its new micropayment system, but in the end, weren’t those companies looking to iOS to shore up reader and viewership numbers, not the other way around?

Record companies and film and television studios found (and likely continue to find) Apple’s terms onerous and unfair. Yet both ultimately accepted that in terms of digital distribution (more and more the distribution method of choice for consumers), Apple was really a distributor they couldn’t live without. This latest ultimatum to publishers isn’t an unprecedented tipping point; it’s the next natural step in Apple’s evolution as a distribution channel. As for antitrust concerns, that’s also nothing new for Apple, and the company has proven well-able to answer such questions in the past without significantly altering the way it does business.

In the end, Apple’s new subscription rules might slightly alter the composition of the App Store, but it won’t change its reach or influence on the mobile market. A 30-percent cut may be too much for some to swallow, but for the thousands of companies that wouldn’t have a revenue model to begin with without the App Store, it’ll still be the best deal in town.

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