Steve Jobs Was Confirmed To Be At meeting With The President; Meeting About The Future (2012 To Be Precise)

Reuters has confirmed that Steve Jobs was indeed present at the dinner with the President of the United States in San Francisco tonight.

That is fantastic news. And I hope President Obama was able to have a serious conversation about America's technological lead and innovative energy. Earlier, I write that I hope some sort of discussion about green technology took place.

And it is interesting that Reuters dedicated a whole piece on Steve Jobs and nothing on the actual content of the night's discussion.

But as I read the post, I came to realized that this maybe nothing more than to provide the President political cover with those who believe he has lost the support of America's businesses. That this meeting is more about the President's future and 2012 than America's future.

I cannot understand what meaningful contribution the CEOs of Twitter and Netflix has to offer on maintaining America's technological edge and learning.

Nor can I fathom what Facebook's Zuckerberg can possibly offer the president on any number of issues that ail our economy, energy policies, or K-12 education. Seriously, what does violating privacy time after time have to do with innovation at all?

More likely, the presence of the heads of these social and media companies was merely to serve as a reminder to a segment of the electorate that the President Obama had dinner with the guys who designed a way to efficiently mail them their DVDs and offer a way for them to share their lives with anyone who will read about it.

But who knows. Maybe Zuckerberg was there for the political gravy and President Obama did get some serious advices from the likes of Jobs, Schmidt (Google), Chambers (Cisco), Ellison (Oracle), and Levinson (Genentech) that will help him to get America back to innovating and working over the next couple of years and beyond.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod touch

Game Center: Social Network For More Than Gamers

It isn't unusual for Apple to change names of a product. And Game Center, being billed as a social gaming network, can grow beyond gaming and Apple is likely to change the name as it becomes a full fledged social network.


That's what it is going to become over time. A full network but likely much with more to offer than anything we have in existence today. You want a couple of examples? Look at what Apple has done to the mobile market. And also look at what it plans to do with iAd in advertising.

One of the reasons I started thinking about this is because I've made a couple of long distance friends while playing Chess With Friends and Words With Friends. Even with such a rudimentary set of social interactions, I come back to it again and again.

It is absolutely rare such happens now but as more developers integrate Game Center into their gaming apps, developers will discover that it is not only gaming apps that can benefit from a social network. And users will find it more useful than to keep track of high scores or tracking achievements.

Don't be surprised if Apple eventually integrate a friend list as part of the evolution of Game Center.

For those of us who are familiar with MobileMe, it would make sense for Apple to integrate Game Center into its online services. There was word that Apple will making some of the MobileMe services free for all who wants to use it.

Furthermore, I fully expect Apple to provide the option for its iTunes customers to be become MobileMe users. And by default, Game Center users as well. In one stroke, it will have more than one hundred and fifty million members just like that.

MobileMe integration will be key. Imagine being able to create a list for friends and a separate list for gaming buddies. This will afford users greater privacy. And let's not forget why Apple is doing all this. iAd will help Apple and developers make money.

Of course, all this is conjecture on my part but this is the likely course of development going forward.

Game Center is going to be huge. You just watch. It will be the backbone of anything iOS, OS X, iDevices, iTunes, and Macs going forward. And depending on how you see it, this Apple social network will have Steve Jobs as the wizard.

Note: I am sure it didn't escape Apple and Steve Jobs' attention that Facebook CEO Zuckerberg dissed the iPhone 4 on his own Facebook page. So here's message for you, Zuckerberg: Apple might look like it's got its hands full with Google. But trust me, it can fight more than one war at a time.


-- Post From My iPad

App Store Dynamics - Not Quite An Apology From Yahoo, FB 3.0 Countdown

Yesterday, Yahoo went ahead to call out Apple on their Yahoo Messenger approval.  The lack off.  Well, it turned out that Yahoo was trying to jump on the bandwagon to bad-mouth Apple's dismal app approval process without doing it own homework first.

Reported on CNet News, Yahoo posted a blog titled "And so we wait...on Apple".  The CNet post titled to max out the effort of the Yahoo blog, Ms. Sarah Bacon of Yahoo called out Apple for the "somewhat unpredictable process". 

Well, Bacon, it's gonna get a lot more predictable for you and Yahoo from now on.  First, Yahoo needs to do something about this. Yahoo had pulled out their update to Yahoo Messenger to add more update and Bacon was left out of the loop.  It's funny because you'd figure that someone on her team might know a thing or two about what's going on.

No wonder Yahoo has been in such a dismal shape compared to Google and has to look to Microsoft for search helps.  

Two weeks ago, Yahoo submitted their app for approval only to pull it and resubmit it a week ago.  Ms. Bacon, it's only been a week.  

Anyway, something more positive.  Facebook 3.0!  You know.  Facebook, what Yahoo should have morph into.  Facebook, what Yahoo tried and failed to duplicate and become.  Anyway, that's what I'm waiting for and I think it's one of the most anticipated update.

I'll be honest about social apps.  I'm indifferent to them at best.  I'm simply don't care for them or the games that are played on there.  Having said that, Facebook's app is well thought-out and serves as a model for other app developers (ahem, Yahoo) build upon.  

Alright, I also use the Yahoo! app and it works very well.  But Facebook is leagues better in terms of usefulness for all things Facebook.  Here's a video I found on TC.

Links: Techcrunch, CNet News, Yahoo Blog (for some reason, folks don't apologize any longer)