Last week there were several sources citing an acquisition of Apple about Lala. Some said Lala was worth $17M, some said as much as $80M. This isn’t clear yet, however what I’d like to blog about is not the value of Lala, but the reason of the acquisition…

To give a brief summary, Lala is actually an online music service which, ‘web-songs’ (that can be streamed) can be purchased for $0.10, and $0.89 for downloads. The service scans your drive and lets you listen all of the mp3s you own for streaming. Basically, all of the ‘magic’ happens at ‘the cloud’ and the need for downloading the songs disappears.

everybody knows, Apple prefers the old-school (offline) method. The mp3s must be downloaded to listen and sync with iPods or iPhones. The songs are listed in iTunes between $0.69 and $1.29, and streaming is not available… But the paradigm shift from downloading the songs to streaming them is really fast, and there are a lot of services out there, especially for mobile platforms. (spotify, last.fm…)

So, it is clear that Apple and Lala have different business models. So why did Apple buy Lala?

Apple might want (to)…
…expand the offline model to online world
…sync the iPod library without physical (cable) connection
…stream the purchased song without downloading it on iPhone
…easy access to playlists or web-playlists
…shared / social playlists among friends
…more advaned ‘genius’ feature
…cheapen the cost of songs

It is not clear if, when and how Apple will change its business model in iTunes, but this acquisition is clearly a strong sign for a step to an online world. Considering the MobileMe services, and the ‘$1 billion server farm project’ news a couple of months ago, a change in iTunes business model seems much more likely to happen soon…

Surprize us Apple!

Why Facebook nofitications are dumb? More than one person comments on a link/photo/status and each of their notifications are displayed seperately… So when I view my notifications, I see something like this:

But I know that most of these “likes” or comments are for the same item. If I click each of these notifications, then I re-open the same item a couple of times. But the reality is just like this one:

So if more than one person liked/commented on an item, why show them seperately Facebook? It should be just like this image I modified on…

I want to find out which of my links/posts/statuses are commented or liked in a more smart way. Now they all seem like dumped into my notifications page… This is clearly not the best way to do it…

It is going bigger and bigger everyday… Apple’s AppStore is growing like a snowball…

On March 17th iPhone OS 3.0 was announced, developers are coding for it now. It looks like new iPhone is on the way. Lots of accessories will be available starting this june.

It seems like everything is going really well for Apple and AppStore.

When do you think is it gonna peak? Or will it?

Bloggers know this dilemma: I come up with a nice idea for my blog and I add it to my “to blog” list. But I cannot blog it beacuse I had something more important to blog, to do or else… After a few days I realize that the idea that I was ready to blog seems like it is not that much good or relevant anymore…

I missed it! I missed the moment! That blog post was meant to be blogged at that minute, at that hour or at that day… If I reconsider it,  I’ll think it is no more a good idea to blog it now, and then I’ll dump it.

Failure… Not all of them, but that post would probably be a failure if I blog it. Beacause I had failed to blog it at the right moment…

So? I should blog anywhere, anytime…

Since April 2008 I own an iPhone 2G and I am verry happy with it. I love installing apps, free or not. But like everyone else, I also encounter a problem which decreases the usability of iPhone. The problem occurs if you install too many apps from AppStore.

Currently iPhone springboard only allows 9 pages which means ((9 x 16) + 4) 148 apps at most (4 dock icons). This is an important limit because there are more than 15.000 apps in AppStore and it has not even peaked yet!

But my problem is not the amount of the apps, 5 or 6 pages seem OK for me (just now). However, organizing those apps is a total nightmare! I can only pick one icon at a time and if I need to move it accross 4-5 pages all of the other pages’ orientation gets messed up. It takes too much time to organize all of the pages and some time later you get bored and leave them alone…

I think having an interface in iTunes to help users to reorganize their springboard should not be a tough job. Hopefully Apple will implement such feature and make iPhone users even more happier…

Last week Facebook released an updated version of its iPhone App. (Release date is wrong, I don’t know why…)

Facebook says: “This update improves stability and fixes a number of bugs, including:” (see screenshot below)

However after a week I can say that the Facebook App is still as buggy as before. It freezes, stops refreshing, do not download some photos, crashes etc…

Hope they can release another update soon to fix these issues… By the way, thanks to developers they at least fixed the wrong timestamps issue.

For the ones who are obsessed with Inbox Zero, here is a great feature from Gmail Labs: Send & Archive. Basically it adds another button which sends the message and then archives the conversation.

You need to enable it under Labs section in Gmail settings and then you are ready to go!

I really loved that feature because I recently realized that once I send a message, I immediately archive it. Doing this every time manually was a nightmare for me.

Thanks Gmail, once again…! ;)

Life will be like this in the future, but what about mobile technologies? What could be the use of mobile phones -or more accurately- mobile devices?

In today’s world, not only for voice communication or text messaging, mobile phones are also used for internet access and many other useful applications. They are small tools for us to reach out to the internet and make use of it as best as they can. Most importantly, they even started to replace our laptops, which are also a common replacement for desktop PCs for most of us.

There are a lot of reasons why mobile devices are becoming a replacement for their predecessors. Here are my reasons for that:

• They are small, easy to carry around, and better than ultra-portable, they are mobile!
• They are very personal. You don’t usually give away your mobile phone to anyone even for a couple of minutes. It is yours!
• There is a billing platform embedded into it. So you will not need a credit card in the future to buy a cup of coffee in Starbucks.
• It knows you! There is also an identification system in it which can authenticate you.
• It knows where you are! If you need a pharmacy, it can narrow down the search to 5 km radius for you.
• It has broadband internet, you can even have Mbits/s! So you are not stuck with good old GPRS.
• It knows you better than you do! Since you live your life with it, anytime & anywhere, whom you talk, connect or share with, what you like, what you don’t like, what do you pay for etc… There is a huge amount of accumulation of information for a better mobile and social experience.

Let me follow some of the headings from Ian Sands’ post and make my comments.

How will individuals use IT in 2012?
Ian mentions about an easy use of a workflow in 2012. Well, in Turkcell, people are already using such services. Many of the workflow decisions can also be made through our mobile phones. People do not need to open their mailboxes, click the link in it and pass through login screens… Just click it and it is done!

What will business look like in 2020?
I cannot agree more with Ian, since there will be a blend of personal and business lives, people will make use of it for their own productivity. I believe Googleplex is one of the best examples for that. Business and personal lives of people working at Google are not really separated, but they are happy because they have all of their needs met. They usually don’t need to go back to their homes for relaxing or resting, they do it at Googleplex! And once they are ready to get back to work, they can instantly get productive again in a couple of minutes. So Googleplex is neither a workplace nor a home, it is both…

What about the public sector in 2020?
There will be less and less time but more and more information. Hence, education will be mobile. Not only students, but also lots of people will use m-learning, to be more productive, more efficient. Obviously there will be classrooms to some extent but the low cost and time efficiency of m-learning will drive the industry.

How will IT be used in healthcare?
Ian says: “At present, the best healthcare tends to be in cities. But imagine a scenario where a patient could ask questions of an expert hundreds of miles away via a large display in their living room.” As demoed in CeBIT Eurasia 2008, Turkcell has that kind of system to spread better healthcare services to the rural areas of Turkey, where the healthcare services are not good, or not present. But there is a crucial point: not only a large screen just for communication, via Turkcell’s solution with its valuable partners, people are also able to send their electrocardiogram or blood pressure to the doctors even thousands of kilometers away in a couple of seconds.

How will IT be used in banking?
Did you know you can withdraw money from an ATM with your mobile phone? Did you know you don’t need any coins to buy a coke from a vending machine? Did you know you can pay your credit card bill with your mobile phone? These are all real and live applications on Turkcell network. You can withdraw money from an ATM via Turkcell MobilImza (Mobile Signature), buy a coke from a vending machine via Turkcell MobilOdeme (Mobile Payment) and pay your credit card bill or transfer money to your mom using only your mobile phone!

How will IT be used in manufacturing or agriculture?
I mentioned about how workflow can be used to increase productivity in business life above. There are also a couple of great examples of such systems in manufacturing and agriculture. As a telemetry solution, Seramatik, think of monitoring a greenhouse from your mobile phone. If the temperature of the greenhouse increases, you can start ventilation or greenhouse fogging remotely with a single click. If there is a critical condition, wouldn’t it be nice to be notified with an SMS message or an emergency call from your greenhouse?

How will IT be used in nature?
Another great example is about the forests. Unfortunately, Turkey continues lose its green cover every year due to forest fires. Once a fire starts in a forest, it takes a lot of time to detect and take a preemptive action against it while it is still a small fire. However, with Kodalfa’s telemetry solution, monitoring several parameters such as temperature and moisture, forest fires can be detected earlier and save forests as well as reducing costs to extinguish a huge fire.

To wrap it up, there are a lot of mobile solutions in every aspect of our lives and most of them can be realized with today’s technology. And this is only the beginning of the mobile evolution. As the mobile devices get smarter and powerful, the solutions will be a lot more, helpful and life-enriching for us. Having said that; I believe Turkcell, as a technology company, is on the right track with its vision: “To ease and enrich the lives of our customers with communication and technology solutions.”

It is always very inspirational to share ideas with likeminded people. As we were discussing with my friends Selim, Refik and Elif; we came to a really interesting point: What will life be like in the future?

Obviously we were looking at it from an IT perspective, but especially from a mobile perspective. Here is a projection by Ian Sands, director of envisioning at Microsoft Office Labs. This projection is a lot similar to what we thought, but we have our differences.

To begin with, there will not be a separate business life or personal life in the future. Business life will penetrate into our personal lives even more, or vice versa, as we experience the birth of it today with our mobile phones (Blackberry, PDA, iPhone etc…). As a result of this the borders of these two worlds will fade out. So the life will be a nice blend of the business life and personal life.

How this will affect the working conditions? Consider 50 years ago, people had been working for a company nearly for their whole life. However in today’s world people need a change, seek for a better job or start their companies (it is much easier to launch a startup today!) So it came to the point which people work for at least 5-6 different companies throughout their lives. So what about the future? Why would I work for only one company? Why would only one company benefit from my experience?

Having said that, in the future a person can work for company A for Monday to Wednesday, be a consultant for company B on Thursdays and so on… Moreover, there will be no weekdays or weekends, since there is no workdays or holidays. There will only be hours you live and, you will decide when and how to work or not to work. At home or office? Wait, will there be an office in the future, or home? Depending on what you would like to do, anywhere in the world can be your office or home because you will have all the basic means necessary for anything you want to do. It will be like all people working as freelancers.

Hypothetically, all of the people will have a brand of their own. What this means is that I as a person will not be a telecommunications engineer anymore, I will be “Goktug Gedik“, as my company name, working for myself and/or serving other companies.

Sounds like a chaos, right? This is the point where technology fills the gap. Today’s technology, communication tools are not sophisticated enough to handle this kind of life. A visual phone will never replace a real face-to-face meeting. However, there will be new tools, new technology to replace that. The change has already begun with the social services like Facebook or Twitter. Not only in personal lives, but also for enterprises social communication services have also been quite popular, just like the Yammer, which is like an enterprise version of Twitter.

There will be new tools and services for people to communicate, share and interact in such world without being in a chaos. It is hard to predict those tools, but there is one thing for sure about them: People will choose which tools are good and helpful, and which are not. They will be shaped with the change in our lifestyles, just like natural selection.

I needed a new homepage for my website. Instead of a generic old fashioned homepage, I wanted something that reflects me and my life. “Tags” came to my mind, so here it is!

Here is my new homepage, made up with tags, pointing to my blogs, my profiles on social websites, my education and business life and some important keywords from my life…