While other carriers gear up for the upcoming iPhone 5, T-Mobile today introduced a trifecta of 4G products poised to take advantage of the carrier’s 20 Mbps-plus network speeds. Two smartphones, the Android Gingerbread-running HTC Amaze 4G and the Samsung Galaxy S II, along with a hotspot, the Sonic 4G Mobile HotSpot, were introduced at the Mobilize 2011 conference.
Mobilize 2011 is nearly sold out. Don’t miss your chance to attend. Register today.
Here are four sessions you can’t afford to miss if you want insight into the next 12–18 months of mobile innovation:
• “4G arrives: a carrier’s perspective on the evolving mobile ecosystem” Mobilize is thrilled to welcome back T-Mobile CMO and EVP Cole Brodman. The last time he spoke, his picture was everywhere holding up the first Motorola Android phone. In this chat, Brodman will discuss the exciting potential of high bandwidth for consumer mobile devices.
• “Mobile payments 2012: Will this be the year?” The buzz around mobile payments is at an all-time high. But will the industry follow through this time? We assemble some of mobile payments’ most influential thinkers to answer some tough questions and outline the road map for the next 18 months.
• “Why So-Lo-Mo will finally unleash m-commerce” Mobile commerce is being reshaped by three trends: social, location and mobile. The trifecta provides opportunities advertisers and merchants can’t ignore. We examine how leading brands and retailers are adapting to these trends and what new m-commerce opportunities are arising.
• “The secrets of high-engagement apps” To succeed in mobile, you need total engagement. So what makes a high-engagement app? In this panel, some of the leaders behind the biggest apps out there shed light on what works for them.
Check out the full lineup of speakers and sessions.
Mobilize 2011 is sure to sell out, so register today.
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We’ve seen a trifecta of failures and/or screwups over the past couple of weeks, from three of the world’s technology giants: Apple was shown to be keeping a log of the location of millions of iPhone users, Sony’s PlayStation platform was hacked and millions of customer accounts were compromised, and Amazon’s (a amzn) cloud-hosting service EC2 went down for hundreds of companies. The reasons for these screwups were different, but the reaction from the companies involved was remarkably similar: a conspicuous lack of timely response. Like many others, these tech giants don’t seem to have realized that crisis response is real-time now too.
Apple, of course, is notoriously close-mouthed about this kind of thing, as was seen in the “Antennagate” affair last year, when Apple stonewalled on the issue of its new iPhone 4 antennas and flaws in the unit’s design. And the initial response from Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs in that case was also classic: he reportedly said “Don’t hold it that way.” In this case, there was virtually no response from the company whatsoever to the location-data issue for days, until — again, in classic Jobs style — a statement was made to a single news outlet effectively saying the issue was overblown and/or the result of a few bugs, and that everyone should just calm down (my colleague Bobbie Johnson disagrees). Oh, and a response took so long because it’s really complicated stuff.
Given its past behavior, it’s possible that Apple is beyond help in this area. The company’s approach seems to be that people will unfailingly line up to buy its products regardless of how it handles such PR gaffes, so it may be a lost cause. But Amazon and Sony arguably have a lot more to lose.
Sony in particular — a former technology leader — has not been doing well on a number of fronts for years now, as Apple has taken over virtually every market segment that the technology company used to own. Not only that, but the company is already infamous in computer security circles for its last major fiasco in 2005, the “Sony rootkit” affair, in which users had a virus-like software program installed on their computers without their knowledge if they played a CD. So you might think that the company would try hard to get out in front of the most recent issue — which venture investor and technology analyst Paul Kedrosky described as “among the worst such debacles in modern financial/technical history” — as quickly as possible. Oh, but it’s really complicated too.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
Amazon is not nearly as desperate as Sony, but the company has still pinned a lot of its hopes for the future on the success of its cloud-hosting and cloud-based services business, and seeing hundreds of major companies and websites fail — and lose critical data — is a huge issue. And yet, while Amazon eventually did release something that was much closer to an actual apology than anything Sony or Apple came out with, the company still avoided discussing the issue for what seemed like an eternity in Internet time. One Internet analyst said that Amazon’s “anemic public response” was a major flaw, and that arguably wasn’t the only one.
This isn’t an issue just for Apple, Sony and Amazon — it’s something that companies of all kinds are still struggling to deal with. The reality is that social media such as Twitter and Facebook have increased the ability of customers and users to speak out about such issues, and decreased the amount of time that companies have to deal with them. And that means the old approach of taking days to hold “war room” meetings and come up with elaborate PR plans just doesn’t work any more.
Those things still have to be done, but they have to be done a lot faster, and while they are being done someone has to respond, even just to say “We are sorry, we are looking into the problem” (and if you don’t know when to respond, try this flowchart the U.S. Army came up with for responding to blogs). You don’t just get to reap the benefits of real-time when you are a technology company: you also get to see the other side of that double-edged sword when you screw up. And it cuts just as deep.
Thumbnail photo courtesy of Flickr user Hans Gerwitz
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width="610" height="343" />2009 is suddenly a holiday of racers. If you don’t believe that, consider the trifecta that dropped–or will drop–shortly: Need For Speed: Shift, Dirt 2, and Microsoft’s holiday tentpole Forza Motorsport 3. All of them promise realistic physics, blazing speeds, and tons of customization, but NFS: Shift and Dirt 2 are multiplatform, while Forza Motorsport 3 is an Xbox 360 first-party exclusive. For my money, though, I’ll take Forza 3. After playing all three, the newest Forza has, surprisingly, won me over–not with realism, but with fun.
I say surprisingly because “simulation racers” generally lie in a calcified place among the hearts of the mainstream gamers: the hundreds of factory-immaculate car models and pitch-perfect world racing circuits, along with the endless class licenses and intricate engine tune-ups, can turn most gamers off completely. Right here in the CNET offices, I told a colleague I was playing Forza 3, and that I actually enjoyed it. “Really?” he asked, somewhat disbelieving. It’s assumed that Gran Turismo and Forza will be inaccessible to those who don’t appreciate racers, just like Madden often erects a wall between NFL fans and gamers and the rest of the world.
I am a casual racer, and Forza 3 sucked me in.
Its first success was employing a calm British man to talk to me. Much like LittleBigPlanet, a gentle voice of authority (although in this case, not Stephen Fry) welcomed me, showed me the basic ropes, and told me everything was going to be all right. Rather than worry about detailed car controls and under-the-hood tinkering, a simple press of a few A and B buttons got me right into a season-long circuit of races. The voice tutorials gently tailed off naturally, until I had the ropes completely. Suddenly I realized that I had been playing for several hours, and was itching to complete just one more race challenge to unlock more credits. That’s when I realized that, fundamentally, Forza 3 is a success.
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