Damn that iPhone battery

In Vermont farmers say that if you let cows loose in a giant field filled with grass, they roam immediately to the edge, stretching their necks for more, causing their tails to get tangled up in electric fences.

Reminds us of the iPhone. Consumers always have to rush to the edge of technology, demanding more, and so technology often stretches and fails. The new iPhone 3G model is faster than the 2007 version, but alas sucks energy MUCH faster from the poor battery. Apple didn't include a removable battery, which would have allowed you to swap in fresh batteries but harmed the sexy interface. (That probably would have hurt sales of iPhone upgrades next year, too.)

So Apple, having seeded 2009's product obsolescence, has posted 13 tips on how to extend the battery life by basically turning off all the things you bought the new iPhone for: stop using the zippy 3G connection; avoid checking email frequently; don't use GPS. Heck, dim that gorgeous display.

Uh-huh.

Apple pushed too far too fast, and consumers are daft if they buy a sexy piece of glass with speedy wireless only to turn off that feature. The most frustrating thing is despite these obvious flaws, we're tempted to buy the Apple gizmo -- because our Darwinian evolutionary genes demand that we gather pelts and nuts and shiny glass objects to prepare for the next Ice Age.

So here's a free tip: Turn off the iPhone's power, too. Then you can show off the shiny toy for hours without harming the battery.

Tip via Steve Rubel. Photo: Nathan Borror.

Philips' electronic tattoos

The body as an LED screen. Could happen.

Philips has launched a series of "design probes" that explore the merger of electronics and human form. Tattoos that grow or disappear based on touch. Jewelry that adheres to women's chests. Dresses filled with mood-shifting lights.

Unfortunately this video of teens embracing doesn’t show off the possibilities. Instead, Philips could have revealed how human-embedded electronics might revolutionize communication. Bank passcodes that light up (ink up?) when requested. User IDs for government access. Hand currency that shows current account balances. Mobile video screens that glow on your forearm. Health care monitors that ink up when blood pressure rises. Nikeplus mileage counters as you run.

But sexy young people unclothed? Well, the future might have that, too.

Found by Orange Element and Garret Ohm.

Will you still need me, will you still read me, when I'm 64?

A new PWC report shows a growing generational divide in how consumers use media. Digital and mobile distribution of "Entertainment and Media," or E&M, is expected to double from 5% of all communications in 2007 to 11% in 2012. However, this growth is driven mainly by young people. Consumers over age 50 are expected to sustain traditional media formats such as TV and radio.

A few other intriguing findings:

- Young people under age 25 account for 31% of total global population.
- However, the "youth share" is highest in many emerging markets. The under 25 set accounts for 43% of the population in Brazil and 50% in India.
- Thus digital and mobile formats may accelerate most quickly in emerging markets.
- In the U.S., the population appears headed for a split: Aging boomers who prefer traditional media are growing at 13%, but rapid growth in the under 25 crowd, especially among Hispanics and other non-Caucasians, will accelerate digital growth.

All of which creates a little cognitive dissonance in media planning. The over 50 crowd has the highest net worth and incomes. The under 25 crowd makes the most impulse purchases. Digital gets all the news, but traditional media is the path to the most money.

Your future media plan will need to address this generational divide.

Photo: Lara Jade

FCC to wireless: Keep your clothes on

It seems the FCC may give away a chunk of the electromagnetic spectrum on the condition that the winner (a) give away free wireless internet access and (b) block pornography. It sounds, at first glance, like a good deal. But who defines pornography?

The internet has blurred the lines between what is worthy of communications and what is smut, and part of its diabolical beauty is there is no one setting rules. Sure, there is awful stuff online. But if you search for breast health, researching a mammogram that will save your life, will that get blocked too? What if you want stock art that involves the human figure? What if you email an off-color joke to a friend?

Interesting quandary. We love the idea of free mobile internet everywhere, but don't like the idea of someone predicting what we adults should and should not see. Aren't the days of gatekeepers over?

(Photo: Rogiro)

Teen intimacy across space

Maybe love leads technology.

As we watch mobile internet devices sweep into the United States, their adoption is led by teens, young adults, Hispanics and blacks. 60% of young adults age 18-29 use text messaging vs. only 14% of their parents. We've pondered why some groups adopt handset devices so quickly. Is it simply default, that teens and some minorities may not have access to PCs in offices so use cell phones instead? Or is there something deeper for demos outside the mainstream that makes mobile devices attractive?

Danah Boyd writes that young Palestinian women often receive cell phones from boyfriends so they can have private communications, in a society where such talk may be taboo. The girls hide the phones under clothing and charge them late at night, when parents can't see the power cords. For teens, the mobile phone is a key device for negotiating intimate relations throughout the world, she writes.

So maybe it isn't bandwidth, the gadget, or the interface. Maybe humans, especially those forming or protecting their identities, hunger to connect privately in a very public world.

Photo/self-portrait by imanifest. Pew studies on mobile technology trends here.

Beware of GVI: Google Visual Inventory problem

The more we think about the Google Visual Inventory problem, the more we realize it threatens all internet advertisers. It's simple. As consumers shift to mobile devices, interface screens get smaller -- leaving less visible room for ads. Google, and other advertisers, run out of visual inventory.

Ad inventory is the bread-and-butter of making money online; it is why it takes you three clicks, through three screens, to find local weather information at weather.com. More visible real estate = more ad space to sell = more revenue, so sites like weather.com have an incentive to push each user through large, multiple screens of data. Today Google crams nine or more ads from search results on a PC screen. Alas, only one ad will fit on most mobile phones. As millions of consumers adopt mobile internet in the next few years, Google and advertisers will have a hard time finding shelf space.

(Now, if Google were really worried, they'd probably want to start designing a new cell phone interface ... oh, never mind.)

The GVI challenge is one of several cracks under advertisers' feet. The second serious challenge is that online users migrating to social media are no longer paying attention to ads, since they are focused on engaging socially with friends. Sure, Slide may reach 140+ million users with widgets each month, but if you write us with the names of three ads you recall seeing while using SuperPoke or FunWall, we'll send you a prize. And now Danah Boyd notes a third scary trend for online marketers: not only are social media users ignoring ads, users are beginning to lock unwanted messages out. In a recent speech Danah

... basically told this room full of marketers desperate to get on teens' friends lists, that those teens think that's creepy and invasive. Why? Because it's THEIR Space -- even if it's public (which most teen profiles aren't anymore). She had a great analogy of teens telling their parents, "It's MY ROOM." And the parents telling teens "It's MY HOUSE." Just as teens put "keep out" signs on their bedroom doors, teens have created "structural walls" to keep everyone but their friends out on social networking sites. (Tx Anastasia Goodstein, for the report.)

Ouch. Less ad space. Less-attentive audience. Consumers doing something other than listening, and consumers more than willing to block out your peripheral pitch. GVI is more than a physical screen problem; it's a metaphor for the new mindset of the MySpace generation who are crowding out ad messages with their own portals to private communications. Egad, marketers -- suddenly logos on cotton T-shirts are looking fine.

If communication is a revolution, why are we still typing?

Isn't technology great? We can all now type memos at each other, using QWERTY keyboards invented back in 1874 by Sholes & Glidden, and attach photos, invented in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, or even email presentations with drawings, invented in caves in the Upper Paleolithic era in 40,000 B.C. ... um, a pattern is forming.

Why is introverted communication -- in which we compose thoughts in silence on email or blogs or Twitter or PowerPoint, and then fire away to recipients when ready -- now so popular? Maybe Carl Jung had it right. He suggested that the spectrum of introversion and extroversion is the core dimension of human personality. Studies have found that introverts tend to do better in academics and have more blood flow in the frontal lobes of their brains, the areas for planning and processing (take that, high school football team!). However, studies also show the extroverts are happier, seeming to have more blood flow in the groovier parts of the brain -- anterior cingulate gyrus, temporal lobes, and posterior thalamus, yeah baby -- that are involved in emotional and sensory delights. Such as putting lampshades on your head at parties.

Here's what we think. (A) Introverts spend time alone, are drawn to studying and technology, so are likely early adopters of technology toys, but (B) extroversion fills the human need to connect, and we all long to move a little further down the cool-kid-with-keg-in-high-school party train. Typing fills the void, and it's chased by colorful gadgets. Humans loved memos, then faxes, then email, then blogging, and now Twitter and Facebook, because we can be private and social at the same time. We protect our inner introversion and indulge in extroverted exultation.

All of which explains why your new smartphone has a QWERTY keypad.

Tufte, the iPhone, and the shrinking space for advertisers

A new video by information display guru Edward Tufte offers a fascinating look at how Apple got mobile interface right by putting information on one plane, instead of nested menus, and how Apple often got it wrong by not adding enough detail. We always were frustrated by the limited weather info.

Tufte hints that putting information on one level is ideal, vs. the horrible deep call-center-type-push-one-then-two navigation mazes on most cell phones. As mobile screens become hi-resolution, it will be easier to lay it all on one plane. The challenge will then be how advertisers will fit into the small space -- in other words, if finding what you want becomes easier, there are fewer "inventory options" for advertisers to intercept you as you search around different pages.

For a good example, go to accuweather.com or weather.com and try to find your local five-day forecast. You typically have to navigate to at least three pages to get the information. It could be easier, but we suspect weather sites structure multiple layers of information deliberately to have more real estate to sell banner ads. If it takes three clicks, and if each page has room for 12 ads, then a web site can sell 36 impressions for a single search. The future of small screens and flat information will tighten the inventory.

Tx Andy, who writes a nice paean on Tufte.

Walt Mossberg and the future of video: Beauty or the beast?

We love Walt. But watching the WSJ guru on camera makes us wonder: Why is so much web video still so bad? It looks like Walt forgot to clean his office before this take.

We wonder if the emergence of video -- yes, real democratized video input will soon be here, with every cell phone inputting images to the web once the U.S. finally gets high-speed mobile figured out like Europe -- will threaten old-school writers who, while brilliant, don't have the anchorman smile of standard TV production. Or maybe viewers will lighten up and learn to enjoy a more gritty world where content, and not beauty, drives communication images.

Wanna bet?

Next fad to die: Cell phone surveys

Marketing Sherpa gives us a brilliant guide to launching mobile surveys, with one glaring exception. They don't work. About 87% of U.S. consumers have cell phones with some form of internet connectivity, but only 17% of us actually know how to use it. Therein lies the problem -- if only 1 in 6 people know how to respond, your mobile survey instrument will have huge built-in bias.

There may be a few instances where targeting only people who can work crappy Motorola or Samsung mobile web interfaces would give you legitimate research results; for example, "are you a person who can answer a survey on crappy Motorola or Samsung mobile web interfaces?" Anyone who hits yes probably is.

Sherpa raves that mobile surveys can be 90% completed within 60 minutes and that mobile research is one of the few forms that does not have rising costs and diminishing returns. Right on. We remember when spam was cool, too.

What was Amazon smoking?

Look, we're usually strategic and analytical and all that, but just LOOK at Amazon's piece of junk. Really. What was Jeff Bezos thinking? Amazon's new Kindle book-reader mutation is a great case study in how mobile devices require the integration of software and hardware design, and how if you don't put the two together, you blow it. Consumers are getting sophisticated: We're used to Razrs and Coopers and iPhones and, yes, even Vista. We want our technology in shimmering glass, not gray button-bricks. Can't wait to curl up Sunday morning in bed with this lump of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. Please.

Why teens text: Because PCs don't fit in their pockets

Brandflakes gives us a great post that teens are using instant messaging more than email. Follows Slate's analysis of why. We think there's one missing conclusion: Teens use instant messaging more than adults simply because cell phones make it possible.

In other words, don't big-brain the nuances of email communication vs. texting to death. It's not about the channel preference; it's about the user environment. Email requires access to a keyboard and computer, and those are usually found in home offices or work places that teens don't frequent. Texting requires a cell phone, which most teens have. If you didn't have a job with an office and spent most of your day in classrooms, soccer stadiums and malls, you'd be texting more than emailing, too.

We bet email will come back as teens age, and as input devices like the iPhone make emailing from mobile phones easier. This trend of teens using instant messaging is sort of like the trend of teens drinking beer by railroad tracks. It's not the railroad they like; it's just a really convenient way of doing something interactive without getting permission from mom and dad.

What 15-year-olds draw during art class

It's been six months since high school student Andrew Kim posted this brilliant sketch of a new cell phone design, ingeniously combining a touchscreen input and horizontal screen output. It conjures a laptop in your pocket, without all those cheesy little plastic round buttons. There was lots of chatter on blogs that this teen would be snapped up by Nokia or Samsung. Won't somebody produce this thing?

Google cuts the cord

Unlike the cell-phone-in-your-fridge discussion from yesterday, Google gets it right by launching AdSense for cell phone users in 13 countries Monday. The program targets web site owners who want to run PPC ads on their web sites in a mobile format. As U.S. consumers finally learn how to use the internet access on their cell phones, Google ads will begin taking up three lines, or about one quarter of the cell screen. Hmm. Getting your PPC rankings in the top 3 may become more important soon, since mobile formats will have fewer pay per click slots.

Move follows Google's announcement that it may bid $4.6 billion for wireless airwaves in January. Seems Apple is eying the wireless bid, too.

Advertisers, watch the wireless space, and begin testing it now. The internet is becoming unplugged. Of course, adoption trends will depend on how well U.S. consumers can search for pizza driving on the way home typing on a tiny keypad looking at a tiny screen without getting a ticket or wrecking the car ...