Superphonedom: Can You Achieve Mobile Nirvana?

It seems like only yesterday I wrote a post about the telcos being deer in the iPhones headlights — here’s an update: most of the mobile ecosystem now finds itself on that highway …with the superphone bearing down on them at 100 miles an hour.

So wtf is a superphone, I hear you ask?

The operative word is platform. The creative potential of this next generation of hardware is defined by the ecosystem that each respective Superphone vendor’s platform will enable.

When features like touchscreens, browsers, location-sensing technologies and hardware acceleration are programmatically exposed through elegant developer tools, a device is two-thirds of the way to superphonedom. Lastly, add an end-to-end international storefront, and a new medium is born.

So says John SanGiovanni, co-founder at Zumobi. In fact, as a guest poster on GigaOm, he has come up with a list of must have’s for a superphone:

A superphone must have:

Hardware

• Display with at least 320 pixels on the short axis
• 3G connectivity or greater (plus additional radios as appropriate…Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.)
• Location-sensing technology (GPS, high-resolution signal-strength-based location, or equivalent)
• Hardware-accelerated graphics subsystem

Platform

• Integrated web browser that supports current desktop development standards
• Published native developer SDK that allows programmatic access to the specialized hardware/software features listed above.

Distribution

• Integrated process for certification and searchable catalog distribution of 3rd-party applications.

No surprises, but the iPhone is the current superphone mobile nirvana. On the eve of the launch of the first Android-enabled phone, we are all eagerly awaiting to see if nirvana is attainable by anyone other than Apple, anytime soon…

Streaming The Real-Time Web

The MIT/Stanford Venture Lab hosted a fun session this week on Lifestreaming: The Real-Time Web. MC’d by Kara Swisher, who acknowledged to a somewhat flustered Jeff Clavier that she specializes in cheap shots, the session included Bret Taylor, a Friendfeed co-founder, and Loic Le Meur, Seesmic’s CEO.

The key question for me around the shift to the real-time web is how sites cater to different user tastes — some folks like drinking from the fire hydrant, getting a constant flow of information and responding to the trends, while others like to have the information archived (think of the way posts are represented on a blog) and they access it at their convenience.

I expect we will see a lot of innovation at this coal face to allow for the spectrum of usage.

Kara covers the event and includes some video – here.

The End of Wall Street? Nah, It’s Just Flushing Away Its Detritus

I love Andy Kessler’s writing and highly recommend his book, The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (And Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor.

His no bullshit style shines through in his take on the current Wall Street situation:

So now Wall Street consolidates. Should you care? Not even for an instant. I spent 20+ years on Wall Street, competing against scores and scores of firms, always wondering what they all really did. E.F. Hutton. Shearson, Drexel. Heck, I even worked for PaineWebber in my early days (daze?) on the Street. All gone. And nobody misses them.

The true money-makers all find jobs elsewhere. The worker bees in the middle tier see disruption, but are eventually absorbed into the reconstructed Wall Street. The bottom tier goes to work at Foot Locker.

So no crocodile tears for Lehman or Bear Stearns or anyone else. It’s just a name on the door. Wall Street will soon (hurry up, dammit!) rid themselves of the mad-cow-infested subprime loans and won’t dabble in mortgages ever again or in five years, whichever comes first.

Silicon Valley And The CreditCrunch: Hambrecht Says No Worries

Om Malik has a great session with Bill Hambrecht, tech investment banker extraordinaire, in which they discuss what the current financial fall out means for Silicon Valley and the tech industry.

I was expecting to find him deeply worried; instead he was amazingly optimistic and, most importantly, wholly confident in the Silicon Valley way of life. Disruption will always prevail, he said, despite the current crisis, the rise of China and any of our backward government policies.

“I don’t think it will  have much of an impact on Silicon Valley as an operating entity,” he remarked when I asked him how the current crisis would affect Silicon Valley. “What is going to be interesting is what happens to the underwriting/IPO market.” In other words, fewer underwriters will be focus on tech companies — unless they’re really big, he said. In other words, it’s just like old times, like back when he started H&Q.

You can watch the full interview below:

Web 2.0 Summit: Mindmelding The World Through The Web

I was fortunate enough to attend the first Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco two years ago and got a lot out of the event. I’m very excited by this year’s event, since it has a much grander vision of bringing together a wider sampling of people who are focused on improving the world via the web or web-style innovation.

In an excellent interview that explores the thinking behind the theme for the summit, John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly discuss how the fabric of the Web 2.0 ecosystem is being enriched by a wider focus amongst industry pundits.

I see this as a very healthy and important trend that can lift our collective gaze and avoid industry myopia. I also see it as a fantastic opportunity to apply the Web 2.0 innovation style of rapid iteration to a whole range of previously intractable global issues.

Let me give you an example: we currently live in nationalistic silos imposed by governments delimited by geographical boundaries, yet we operate globally. This is a completely impractical anachronism. By applying Web 2.0 thinking, I am sure we can arrive at a solution that breaks down these artificial barriers. Why can I not have one global passport linked to my DNA or simcard, or both. Why do I need a social security number in the United States and a new driver’s licence for every state in the nation?

I look forward to continuing the conversation to game change the world through Web 2.0 thinking.