It is reported that on September 24th, 2009 Premium Apps will be made available in the Palm “App Catalog” – this excites me to no end.    Of course this announcement comes amid controversy of Palm dumping Windows Mobile in favor of the Linux-based webOS platform – a strategy I whole-heartedly favor.  Linux can be very stable, I have servers that haven’t gone down in 2 years without a restart, so I see this as a good choice to go in a good direction.  At least Palm can focus on innovation and not have to deal with MS issues.

Could you imagine a Smart Phone you could use for 2 weeks straight without a restart???  Ahhh to dream!

Palm is also having some financial issues related to sales projections – I am a firm believer in build a product, make it work, stick it out and you will rise to the top of the food chain.  This takes patience and the willingness to stick by convictions.  I tend to avoid “analyzing” companies based on their “business model” alone since most of what we are shown of a given companies so called business model is built on conjecture and pretty powerpoint slides rather than on the stability of the product that they are selling – I don’t buy for the packaging, but it sure is nice to find a product that works as advertised TODAY (meaning I don’t have to wait for the next release to experience the promise of what I was sold).  Hey, and if the packaging makes me happy too, then SCORE for everyone!!  That is the company I will stand behind through thick and thin.

‘Wish more products were bought and sold based on stability, compatibility, ease of use, end user experience and a real humanitarian corporate culture.

Why didn’t I go with the iPhone when it first made the scene?

I simply did not  ”buy into the hype” – The fact that the iPhone can brag “thousands” of Apps is really good for them.  The fact of the matter is, the intuitiveness of my new Pre as compared to my “experiences” with the iPhone far out weight waiting for a few “Apps” that I don’t really need.  I need a stable device that facilitates real-time communication not eye-candy.  (Although, I have to tell you that my Pre is really, really a stunning gadget ...and it has a built in vanity mirror!! Oh, yes they did!!)

I did a lot of research on the iPhone prior to choosing the PalmPre – in fact, there are many reasons I did not chose an iPhone when it first came out and literally waited years for the Pre. I did not like the idea of a “visual” keyboard, I need to feel little buttons under my fingers to feel like I am writing something.  This is one of the reasons I didn’t get a Blackberry Storm, also no WiFi and it debuted on Verizon – and well, Verizon is the devil as I said in previous posts.

In addition to the iPhone’s unappealing visual keyboard, I did not feel comfortable going with AT&T – In NYC a lot of the cell towers that AT&T uses to support the iPhone are the same T-Mobile towers that had been dropping my calls for years.

Ok, so I have had a few days with my Pre and on SPRINT – I haven’t had any dropped calls, I get my emails, texts etc without fail, it hasn’t crashed and I can watch the live streaming on SPRINT TV!  I am going to set up an encoder and see how it does for live webcasts, since I am a webcast producer I should be able to tune in to a stream to make sure things are hunky dory.  At any rate, I will keep posting about my Pre and experience on SPRINT, I will be going out-of-town next week so this will be my first “roaming” experience.

By the way, the final plus that made me choose SPRINT was their AnyMobile AnyTime guarantee.

On a performance note, my Pre alerts me of new email before I receive it on my desktop with a 10Mbps connection.  Let’s see what happens when I head north for the week!

This was Nico reporting on her new Palm Pre, over&out!!

It was a wonderful frenzy of speculation and doubt when a simple leak on Twitter caused an entire industry to go up in arms about an acquisition that should/could/would never happen, here is why:

1.  Google does not need Brightcove

2. Google has enough exposure to entice Broadcasters and Media companies to use their “platform” to distribute video media online on their own, without just buying a company for their client roster

3. Google has enough resources to create their own CMS within their eco-system such that it wouldn’t make sense to buy something that is built on antiquated operating layers

4. Brightcove is not even in the same league as The Google – if I was Google I would go directly to a Tremor buy out and skip the middle man… just a thought.

Tremor

5. It would only make sense if Google were looking for a vehicle to unleash their own brand of a triple play offering, i.e. True marketing power will come from an entity that “owns” an individuals behaviors from ISP, Mobile and STB (Set Top Box or Cable TV, etc.) – I would add GPS but it is yet to be seen how deeply GPS usage will be opted in to for tracking on mobile devices.  It is apparent that the use of NetBooks and Smart Phones could take down the need for what we accept as our “in vehicle navigation”; However, I predict this will change and devices such as TomTom will be made obsolete by devices that are more mobile and able to multitask.

*Google has pieces of the requisite triple/quadruple play in their ecosystem – take Google voice/phone, google maps, youtube, insight (all their tracking and metrics) – so what is missing?  The STB, so it could make sense if there were a means by which one could inject live targeted ads into Video Broadcasts across STB’s with a micro-behavioral focus, but I don’t think that Google BUYING a CMS like Brightcove would be useful.

Sources tell me that there will be a new release of the Brightcove CMS that will include better turn-key metrics, a more resilient transcoding system and HD players, but I am not clear on if this is a total rebuild for a product that was originally developed to live in flat layers prior to cloud computing and db sharding… approaches to architecture that Google has excelled in from the get go!  The fact of the matter is, Google is in the perfect place to build the better CMS.

I use YouTube and despite a few limitations on video length and some traffic issues at various times of day (to be expected) – it works!

Last of all, we saw what happened when Yahoo! bought Maven Networks, there are many reasons why a company such as Yahoo! would have been better off hiring some developers and building their own CMS with a brilliant Architect at the helm, rather than make yet another half-assed acquisition of a product that barely served it’s purpose.

Between Maven and Brightcove CMS’ there is barely a difference in the backend – and I have seen both – personally monitored and tested – due diligence – and found them to be built on core technologies that are suspiciously similar and that yielded the same issues, weaknesses and overall clumsiness…

IMHO:  Google should not and would not BUY a CMS when they can build their own.  End of story.

Of course this was all rumor-mill to begin with, what this says to me though, Brightcove players (pun intended) are tired of working so hard to bubblegum and paper clip their product and want out.  Who else would start such a rumor, Google?  HA!  I think not…

Look, when Maven “players” were ready to move on, they were the first ones to whisper about who will acquire them.  Alas, I speak not out of ignorance but real, life experience.

What do you think?