AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

If I own a business, and it would not matter any kind, that caters to services or interaction with customers on a daily basis, I would make it my mission to see to it that I cater the mobile warriors. It'll serve to make my life (and employees's lives), customers'' lives, and the services better over all. I started thinking about this as I sat here at a local car wash. Free WiFi is great. However, I think they can take the next step and over other mobile incentives. Being able to use Google Wallet would go a long way to help mobile payments and cut down on the need for a full service cashier. Use a service like Square also makes sense. Cut down on paperwork and offer receipts to be emailed or sent to a dedicated app for the business. Offer added services or incentives through something like iPhone's Passbook. All of these mobile options, and there are plenty over ways to use mobile to expand a business and outreach, could be a good different...

Those sickly colors of the iPhone 5C or whatever Apple's gonna call them are just downright ugly.  And this post stem from an online discussion with a friends in Asia.  And I think we need to have this discussion on a wider scale. Here and now.  The white is okay.  But the red, green, and blue (I've seen a  yellow one) just are doing it for me. They just make me wanna puke. And seriously, they are just not the colors that we are accustomed to seeing from Apple.  And if they are indeed the colors Apple has picked for the 5C, boy, Apple missed Steve Jobs more than I expected. Now, there's a part of me that hopes those colors are just fake leaks from pranksters looking for attention or even Apple themselves trying to show off its competitors and the media.  Imagine Tim Cook and company trying to get Samsung to follow them. And we have seem some of these colors from Nokia and I can tell you after seeing those in person, they are just not doing i...

This is only a preliminary thought on the news that Steve Balmer will be stepping down as CEO of Microsoft. He screwed up Surface bad and the board wants him gone.  He had number opportunities to compete against the iPhone and Android and he failed to deliver.  With Windows and the PC market in a critical condition and at an inflection point, Windows 8 was worse than Vista ever was.  And Windows Phone is gaining shares but only because Nokia is selling devices at a loss or break-even. I'm excited that Microsoft might bring in someone who will rejuvenate the company and put Apple and Google on notice.  A product guy who gets it.  Not another sales guy like Balmer.   However, I also wonder if it's too late for Microsoft.  Think Palm.  Dell.  HP.  And now more recently, think Blackberry.  Turning a company around isn't easy.  Having said that, Steve Jobs did.  When he took over at Apple, it was weeks from going bankrup...

Have you had a game where you woke up in the morning, and you're not sure if it's going to be a good day or not? I have one of those mornings today. I woke up at 5 AM. As my custom, I reach for my Nexus, and I opened up my RSS feed reader. It's a Friday. Nothing happens on Friday. Are so I thought. Still only 5 AM. I was greeted with two headlines that I thought was a joke. The first one was that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, will be resigning within 12 months. I mumbled to myself, "Nah, this is wrong. He's never going to go. Microsoft is life". However, it's got to be true. That's because I checked another source. Like Steve Ballmer or not, him leaving Microsoft is a good thing for us mobile warriors. The second headline, that's the one that had me thinking my Friday might be not a good one. The next Batman is none other than the man who ruined Daredevil and Tom Clancy's iconic American spymaster, Jack Ryan. Jack Ryan, who was played masterful...

I wonder if Apple could get away with charging more for the new gold hue, champagne, that will be joining the white and black for the new iPhone, iPhone 5S or 6 depending on who you talk to.   I'm guess specs and storage for specs and storage, Apple probably would get chastised for trying to cater and gouge users just because it can by pricing the gold iPhone higher.   However, there is one way Apple can avoid charging more for the gold version.  What it can do is offer the gold version at 32 and 64 GB - forcing the affluent or those who might want to appear rich to pay $100 or $200 more.  They would still get something out of it - bigger storage whether they need it or not.   And here's the thing, an extra 16 GB isn't going to cost Apple much and most of the $100 extra are just pure profit anyway.     And trust me, the rich will have no problem paying for it.  My guess is that most of them already shell out for the 32GB or more a...

Source: Business Insider Via Dave the Mobile Sage. I'll be honest with you.  I'll willing to shell out the full retail price for an iPhone only because I refuse to give carriers the satisfaction of overcharging me and then I take the phone and use the cheapest plan I can find.  And luckily, I save all year or two for one. Now, living in Southern California, I see a lot of rich folks.  But the new Chinese immigrants are especially affluent.  So, when I read how they're willing to shell out nearly $500 for a new iPhone Color, I was not at all surprised. In fact, there are many who speculated that a new color, champagne, for the iPhone 5S or iPhone 5 could be aimed squarely at the rich in Shanghai and other major cities that affluent lives. While the new iPhone Color could be a boom for Apple, I still don't think it'll be enough to allow Apple to gain significant sales there only because the gap between those who can afford to pay $500 for a phone is so wide ...

ZDNet has hits and misses with their posts, particularly about Apple.  In this post , I generally consider it a good post because, while I don't agree with most of it, it's a good analysis of why Apple would release a high end iPhone as well as a mid-range one with different colors. It's worth a read to get at what Apple is planning. For the most part, Apple doesn't play defense.  It play offense whether it releases a new revolutionary product and moves into a new market, improves on existing ones, or when it allow one of its products to cannibalize another as the iPad is doing to Macs - just as long as it is taking up PC share as well. Even with the iTunes ecosystem, Apple continues to add new contents while it works on improving its hobby, the Apple TV. The thing is you cannot take each product unto itself and focus on it.  You have to sit back and see the various pieces within Apple's mobile strategy and how to work to expand Apple's size of the mark...