Getting to know the Galaxy S II

Posted on November 19, 2011 at 7:19 am UK

I got a new smartphone a few days ago, a Samsung model, as my evolution from the HTC Desire, the phone I’ve had for the past eighteen months.

It’s not the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus that launched in the UK (and across Europe) on November 17, the Android phone I’d sort of decided upon when I heard it announced a month or so ago.

No, the phone I went with is the Samsung Galaxy S II you see pictured here. Also an Android phone, this was my original choice before I heard about the Nexus.

But after all the research and in the final furlong of decision-making, I discussed specs of both phones at length with the knowledgeable sales assistant at the Three store in west London, and we concluded that for what I was looking for, the S II was the better choice, and one that I’d be comfortable with having made over a two-year contract. Plus it was about ten percent cheaper on the contract deal I chose.

Both phones are richly specified, from fast dual-core processors to rich and vibrant colours on the large screens, to excellent cameras and high-definition video-recording capabilities, and plenty of internal memory storage space.

Given that the Nexus runs the very latest version 4.0 of the Android operating system known as Ice Cream Sandwich – which no other Android phone yet has – that offers some compelling new features, and the device has a bigger screen in higher resolution than the S II, you may wonder why would I not go for that one?

Three specific reasons:

The Galaxy S II has the ability to expand memory storage with a microSD card of up to 32Gb capacity. Add that to the device’s internal storage capacity of 16Gb and you have 48Gb at your disposal – plenty for all the apps, HD video, photos, music, etc, that you might wish to have on your phone. In contrast, the Nexus has no such expansion capability – you’re stuck with the internal storage only. In the UK, that’s just 16Gb (there is a version of the Nexus that offers 32Gb of internal storage, but it doesn’t look like that model’s coming to the UK). Now looking forward to no more low-space warnings when I try and install any app, an unwelcome feature of the HTC Desire with its low 576Mb of internal storage.
The S II has an 8-megapixel rear camera, compared to the Nexus’ 5-megapixel camera. On the front, the S II’s secondary camera is 2 megapixels while the Nexus offers one at 1.3 megapixels. Small practical differences, you might argue, yet they are significant if you take lots of photos as I do and want to use video-calling eg, with Skype (which I already tried: it’s terrific!).
The lure of the coolness of Ice Cream Sandwich isn’t especially compelling to me as Samsung has said that it’s coming to the S II soon as an upgrade to Android 2.3.4 aka Gingerbread that the device currently runs. If that means not for two or three months, I’m happy to wait.

In the meantime, I’m very pleased to have a Samsung Galaxy S II that I’m getting to know. I’m well impressed with its thinness and light weight, excellent build quality, very good battery life after a couple of days of playing with it extensively, and its robust yet highly responsive Gorilla Glass touch screen (clever tech from Corning Glass: just take a look at what they see glass doing in the future).

There’s also the practical aspects of using such a phone in a business setting. I’ve yet to install many of the apps I run on the HTC Desire but already email’s up and running with various email accounts, calendar, contacts, etc, nicely sync’d with Outlook and Google apps in the cloud using the nifty Kies air app that syncs your phone wirelessly: no USB cable connection needed. I have the phone on Three’s The One Plan which, among other things, offers unlimited data use and tethering. That’s a huge appeal for me.

Earlier this year, Three produced this neat video introducing the S II including a simple explanation of Kies air at about the 1:40 mark

(If you don’t see the video embedded above, watch it at YouTube.)

So lots to see and learn about the S II; I expect to post further thoughts here in this blog. If you have an S II, a Nexus, or any other comparable device, care to share your impressions?

Cyber security on the investor agenda

Posted on October 17, 2011 at 7:18 am UK

cyberattack US securities regulators have formally asked public companies for the first time to disclose cyber attacks against them, reports Reuters.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidelines on October 13 that sets out the kinds of information companies should disclose relating to cyber security risks and cyber incidents:

[...] Registrants should disclose the risk of cyber incidents if these issues are among the most significant factors that make an investment in the company speculative or risky. In determining whether risk factor disclosure is required, we expect registrants to evaluate their cybersecurity risks and take into account all available relevant information, including prior cyber incidents and the severity and frequency of those incidents. As part of this evaluation, registrants should consider the probability of cyber incidents occurring and the quantitative and qualitative magnitude of those risks, including the potential costs and other consequences resulting from misappropriation of assets or sensitive information, corruption of data or operational disruption. In evaluating whether risk factor disclosure should be provided, registrants should also consider the adequacy of preventative actions taken to reduce cybersecurity risks in the context of the industry in which they operate and risks to that security, including threatened attacks of which they are aware.

In its guidance document, the SEC says that reporting on cyber security risks and cyber incidents should be included in Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations (MD&A).

The SEC also makes clear that the guidance is just that, not a rule, regulation, or statement, although I can’t imagine many publicly-listed companies covered by SEC oversight not making any disclosure if warranted.

The SEC’s guidance is comprehensive in scope, enabling any company to clearly see what they need to do.

More in the Reuters report: SEC tells companies to disclose cyber attacks

The subject of cyber security is high on the political agenda, too. Next month, the London Conference on Cyberspace takes place with a stated aim of offering “a focused and inclusive dialogue to help guide the behaviour of all in cyberspace.” Speakers include senior representatives from governments, business and civil society.

In addition to the physical event in London on November 1 and 2, the conference embraces online communities where anyone can participate in debate and dialogue via the Twitter hashtag #LondonCyber.

Follow the conference on Twitter: @LondonCyber.

Rebooting Facebook

Posted on September 23, 2011 at 9:04 am UK

As more than 100,000 others did, I sat at a computer last evening to watch the live video stream of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg deliver his keynote speech at the start of f8, Facebook’s annual developer conference in San Francisco.

Over the course of almost an hour, Zuckerberg laid out his grand plan for the evolution of Facebook that intends to catapult the social networking site back into the mainstream of people’s online lives.

It’s the hotly-anticipated culmination of some radical changes to the service during the past week or so that have stimulated much commentary and opinion across the full emotional spectrum.

What Zuckerberg showed last night will undoubtedly do the same in the coming days.

So what is the rebooted Facebook? Zuckerberg showed four distinct areas of change in what the site will look like and what you can do there – a timeline that will be your new profile; a new way in how Facebook apps will behave and how you use them; integration of music, movies and more right into your social experience on Facebook; and evolving the concept of liking something into far more broader sharing of your activities (almost in the Twitter sense of ‘what are you doing right now?’)

Among the credible commentaries online already that attempt to explain all the new features, first reports by Mashable, Gizmodo and BBC Technology are worth reading.

It’s the timeline feature that has grabbed everyone’s attention right now. It’s quite a radical change in how you see your content in your Facebook account, and how you interact with it, presenting it to you in a continuous, well, timeline that can stretch as far back as when you were born, if there’s anything about you online that you’ve shared or your friends have. Note that such content will have always been in Facebook; now it’s more easily seen.

(Personally, I love the new timeline. As someone who hardly ever uses Facebook even though I’ve been there since April 2007, this feature may well reboot my own use of the social networking site.)

Everyone’s profiles will convert to this new format on September 29. If you want to experience it before then, TechCrunch explains how to make the conversion right now. I did that last night and the screenshot shows the result (which you can see in real time if you visit).

As with anything that changes the familiar, there’s plenty of user criticism already. Will it result in a mass exodus of disgruntled users, perhaps flocking to Google+? What will it do for business? How about music and movies – will the integration of services like Spotify and Netflix stimulate the music and movie market, perhaps at the expense of illegal file sharing? And what about Google+ and Twitter – where does rebooted Facebook leave them?

Terrific questions, among the ones that Shel Holtz and I plan to talk about in the next episode of our FIR podcast on Monday September 26. We’ll also discuss what you have to say about it, if you care to contribute a comment (if you’re an FIR listener, join us in the FIR Room on Friendfeed).

Finally, while watching Mark Zuckerberg last night, I sat with camera in hand taking snaps on what I was watching. Those 82 pics are in an album online (ironically, at Google+). I also made an Animoto video which I like doing – animated pics set to a music track which tells a story too. Take a look on YouTube and see what you think.

Facebook. Rebooted. Disruptive.

Related posts:

How do you define social CRM?

Posted on August 31, 2011 at 2:54 pm UK

It started with a tweet: news from IT industry analysts Gartner as reported by TechCrunch that the social customer relationship management (CRM) market is forecast to reach over $1 billion in revenue by year-end 2012, up from approximately $625 million in 2010. TechCrunch added that worldwide social CRM is projected to total $820 million in 2011.

Among first retweeters was brand strategist Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder on Twitter). His tweet was retweeted by analytics expert Chuck Hemann (@chuckhemann on Twitter) who doesn’t think much of the moniker "social CRM":

The issue is that I think CRM folks inherently get the need to collect social info without us putting the social in front of us

An exchange of tweets between Olivier, Chuck and I ensued culminating in a challenge to Olivier to come up with a clearer definition of "Social CRM" where Esteban Kolsky’s definition I posted about in May serves as a start point:

[Social] CRM is a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a technology, designed to improve human interaction in a business environment.

Olivier rose to the challenge in spades, with an intelligent post (and a great example of story-telling) in which he offers credible explanations of the differences between CRM – for which there is a clear definition – and Social CRM, and explains his thinking as he constructs his definition of "Social CRM."

Do read Olivier’s post for the detail and chronology. But to cut to the chase from my perspective, here is his definition:

[Social] CRM is a business function supported by a system and technologies whose aims are to improve a company’s ability to derive insights into customer needs and behaviors by connecting their transaction data with the lifestyle data they share online.

But wait: Olivier proposes this subtle variation on that definition:

[Social] CRM is a business function supported by a system and technologies whose aims are to improve a company’s ability to derive insights into customer needs and behaviors by adding to their transaction data the lifestyle data they share online.

The italicized text shows the difference in words between the two.

Do either or both of these definitions make it easier for you to understand what "Social CRM" is? Do you have an alternate definition, or some changes you’d suggest to Olivier? He doesn’t claim to have invented a concrete definition.

I like Olivier’s concluding comments:

[...] My other hope is that by 2013, the term SCRM becomes obsolete, and CRM has simply evolved into the richer ecosystem of data, insights and consumer interactions provided by the social web. In my mind, the sooner we stop qualifying everything in terms of “social” or not social (as if the two were still somehow separate from one another), the better things will work. For now though, the painful transition continues. Viva la revolución!

The Brand Builder | Social CRM: A definition

Skype’s impact eight years on

Posted on August 30, 2011 at 12:32 pm UK

Skype celebrated its eighth anniversary a couple of days ago, quietly and with little fanfare. The internet phone service has come a very long way in this relatively short time.

What started in 2003 as a program you installed on your computer that let you make phone calls over the internet (via something quite techie called VoIP), as well as text chat with other Skype users, has evolved into a sophisticated communication system embracing audio, video, mobile, group calling, texting, Facebook and more. It’s often hard to recognize the simple (by comparison) service I started using in 2004 to make phone calls cheaply.

Last May, Microsoft agreed to acquire Skype for $8.5 billion in cash; on completion of the deal, Skype will be incorporated as a division of Microsoft. Potentially, this could mean massive evolution: imagine what Skype technology married to Xbox and Kinect might let people do, for instance.

There’s little doubt that Skype has been the agent of change, the architect, the disrupter, for millions of individuals and organizations large and small and how they all communicate and connect with others more simply and easier today (it was definitely territory for early-adopters and enthusiasts in the early days) and at measurably lower cost.

Phil Wolff – an early Skype pioneer, editor of the independent Skype Journal and source of much knowledge about it – summarizes Skype’s history well:

[...] Skype disrupted international telephone companies, displacing billions of dollars of hard currency with free or very cheap services. Their success has them banned in some countries and declared "an enemy of the state" in others. Didn’t stop them from partnerships with mobile operators from Hong Kong to Italy.

Roughly half the Internet has tried Skype on a personal computer, a mobile phone, or in a device. Skype isn’t ubiquitous but its brand is. And Skype continues to grow.

I’ve written about Skype in this blog during these eight years, commenting on how it’s evolved. One over-riding thought is in my mind – if Skype hadn’t been invented, it’s very unlikely that Shel Holtz and I would have started the For Immediate Release podcast in January 2005, if at all.

Skype has been instrumental in enabling us to do the podcast. Once a week, every Monday (it was twice a week until early last year), Shel and I connect with each other on Skype – he in California, USA, me here in Europe – and chat for an hour. We record our conversation; that recording results in the "FIR Hobson and Holtz Report" podcast each week (try it!) which we’re still doing more than six years later.

In addition, we do interviews where Skype is the means with which we connect to our guests whether they’re on Skype too or via ‘normal’ phone lines, fixed or mobile.

So thank you, Skype, and happy birthday: you made our day, too.

And the future for Skype? Read Phil Wolff’s post for some insight into what might be.