Anuj Agrawal

My Posts on TechCocktail

 

 

 

When I first started this blog, it was a great place for me to throw out my perspectives on mobile and the tech world in general. But then I realized, it would be great if this site had an audience who could actually read this stuff.  So I went out and started contributing to TechCocktail, a popular tech blog based in the DC area.  TechCocktail is one of the most comprehensive outlets about startups and entrepreneurship across the country.  My posts tend to have a bend on the product choices and strategy of the companies that I write about, both startup and Fortune 500.  Below is a running list of my contributions to the blog:

11/22/2011 - App Review: Unleashing Your "Creativity"
10/6/2011 - The Apple iPhone Strategy: We've Seen This Before (picked up by Techmeme)
9/15/2011 - 9 Startups Created at Startup Weekend Delaware
9/1/2011 - ZipTip's Mobile Payment App Acknowledges Great Service
8/26/2011 - Jumio Update: Targeting Bloggers
8/12/2011 - 3 Ways to Survivie App Fatigue
8/4/2011 - Jumio: Processing Credit Cards Through Webcams
7/19/2011 - Goshi: The Location-Based Marketplace
7/5/2011 - MoviePass Launch Fizzles Out
6/24/2011 - "Shazam"ing Interactive Content on TVs
6/9/2011 - Food for Thought: Analyzing the Pizza Industry for Startup Ideas
5/27/2011 - Apple: Eating Their Own Dogfood
5/19/2011 - The Chicken and Egg of 3DTVs
5/5/2011 - Is the Battle for the Living Room Becoming Over-Rated?
4/21/2011 - Kindle Library: Driving Mass Market Customer Adoption
4/14/2011 - Newspaper Digital Paywalls: A Test of Consumer Loyalty
4/7/2011 - Mobile Payment Apps: A Starbucks Case Study
3/25/2011 - Keeping the Madness In Your Pocket With Live Mobile Streaming

"Checking In" On Location-Based Marketing

So wouldn't it be cool if you could walk by a Starbucks and get a mobile coupon?  Haha, just kidding.  If you've been in the mobile space for a while, you know that has been the promise of location-based applications for nearly a decade.  While mobile coupons are starting to appear, they aren't quite making the splash that has been promised since data started being delivered to the phone.  But leave it to social networking to get things cranking around location-based services that are actually compelling, consumer friendly, and have real potential to be a serious marketing tool for businesses.  

With social networking becoming mainstream over the last few years, location-based services are gathering the most traction through social networking tools like Foursquare, Gowalla, and MyTown.  My early experiences with these services provide a sneak peek into how they have the potential to transform the loyalty program landscape.  Before, other than standard reward cards almost every establishment offers, McDonald's Monopoly game was one of the more inventive and fun loyalty programs.  But with restaurants beginning to offer discounts, no wait times, and even free vacations (Moby Dick's in the DC area had this running recently) for their Foursquare "Mayor", people are again incented to visit establishments to gather badges and mayorships to show off to their friends.  I must say I myself have been caught up in this when I see an establishment offering up freebies to frequent, um, checker-inners.  

iPhone 4: Thoughts On The New Video Features

I will save the general iPhone 4 reviews to the thousands of other outlets covering the device (although I am pretty impressed with the elegant feeling hardware and updated iOS4 functionality.  The updated iPhone 4 form factor reminds me a bit of the XM SkyFi3 from a few years ago, but with a much more premium and sleeker feel to it).  For this post, I wanted to point out a couple thoughts as it relates to the video functionality within the new device:

1. FaceTime - wow, what a compelling app, but its use will be severely limited out of the gate.  Actually, there are 2 points to bring up on this, which indicate it will still require time to realize the full utility of FaceTime.

• Wi-Fi Only - Jobs mentioned that they have some work to do with the "carriers".  That's carriers with an "s".  So did he mean U.S. carriers?  Is Verizon or another provider in the mix and determining the features of the current handset, or was he referring to the many international carriers who sell the iPhone around the world?  With AT&T's recently revised data plans, AT&T shouldn't have had a problem with this appliciation being used over its network, thus its interesting that other carriers have forced Apple to make this feature Wi-Fi only.  Of course, this severely limits the places where someone can use this.  I'll pretty much only be using this feature when I'm at home (or maybe while I'm hitting lunch at a Panera, etc.), where I could already use Skype on my computer.

Kindle In Retail - Finally, But Is Amazon's Choice Off-Target?

With iPad stealing all of Kindle’s well deserved thunder, let’s not forget that it is still the top selling SKU on Amazon.  However, it is clear the quickly evolving e-reader market has forced Amazon to tweak its selling philosophy for the Kindle.  I had always found it hard to believe that consumers would be willing to shell out $300+ (its price for most of its lifetime) for a device that not only is a brand new product category in the industry, but also one that consumers could not demo prior to purchase!  

I get that Amazon isn’t in the business of promoting retail sales, but if they are…were…serious about consumer electronics, they had to have retail distribution, even if only very limited.  While I am happy to finally see them go the retail route, I do find the choice of Target to be somewhat surprising.  When you think of the upscale brand image associated with the Kindle, it seems to clash with it being sold exclusively through Target, no?  My guess is that the primary outlet for this, Best Buy, had already nailed down its e-reader partners for the time being, including their recently announced deal to sell the Nook.  

Shopflick: Personalizing Online Selling

There is a new service out called Shopflick, that allows online sellers to augment their item with a video ad.  After poking around the site, I find it to be a fresh and entertaining way to engage buyers in the online shopping experience.  Many of us have either bought or sold things on eBay and see the same stock product description and image that everyone else posting the same item has used.  Now, video will be able to provide much more differentiated information on the product and allow a stronger connection to be formed between the buyer and seller.

Shopflick: Get Mini Smart Cars yourself!
See more of ShopflickTV Features on Shopflick!

The Line Between Gaming and Music Companies Is Starting to Blur

It didn't take long for the recently merged Activision and Blizzard Entertainment to make some interesting strategic moves.  They recently announced a plan to launch a new digital music store to compete with iTunes.  Wait, aren't these two companies in the gaming business? 

As we have seen, many of the recent blockbuster game titles have been music-focused.  Rock Band and Dance Dance Revolution have been major hits over the past couple of years.  Activision Blizzard's Guitar Hero is the hottest selling game over the past year and has shown to dramatically affect sales of songs included in the game. For example, the chart below (or in the extended post) shows the impact that the GH3 launch had on digital sales of songs in the game (chart courtesy of Ars Technica).  Not only did song sales make a dramatic leap, that leap continued to grow and sales remained high even weeks after the launch of the game.

Nokia: Expanded Services Portfolio Is Starting To Come Together

With all the noise Apple is making around the 3G iPhone,  Nokia has been making tremendous waves recently that should leave the company in an interesting position to maintain its relevance and spot as a major player in the mobile market.  One of its primary new initiatives is Ovi, geared at providing new Internet based services to mobile devices.  They have also been on an acquisition spree to strategically expand the range of its businesses. It will be interesting to see how Nokia is able to integrate these various components into a cohesive customer experience.  Here is a quick rundown of some their major announcements over the past year: 

1. Comes With Music

For starters, they will soon be releasing their "Comes with Music" initiative, a subscription music service that will waive the fee for the first year with purchase of a new Nokia music handset that supports the service.   The big attraction is that for the first year, a customer can download as many tracks as they want and store them on their PC even after their subscription expires.  There is a hot debate on the "catch" to this.  There must be some sort of DRM that limits the amount of songs you can download, otherwise everyone can go out and buy a huge hard drive and go nuts.  In any event, Nokia can now have a stronger hold on the customer experience by selling the hardware and supporting it with music content. 

Dash Express: Still A Few Turns From Its Destination

I recently came across a new GPS device from Dash called the Dash Express.  It is marketed as the first ever Internet connected GPS device. Given that it uses both Wi-Fi and GPRS, users are almost guaranteed to always have access to the Internet and can use the embedded applications such as local Yahoo! search for movie times and restaurants, real-time gas prices, and over-the-air map updates.  The last one is great for convenience so that you don't have to connect your device to a PC to get your updates.  The other interesting feature is Send2Car, where you can send an address from your PC to the device over-the-air.

But the most intriguing use of the Internet capability is the Dash Driver Network, which uses real-time information from Dash Express users to update traffic conditions.   This supplements the historical traffic data and sensors that Dash uses to provide an additional layer of precision to its traffic results. 

The Top 5 Most Influential Products of the Last Decade

I went to Best Buy last weekend even though I didn't need to get anything specific (do you really need a reason to go and play with gadgets?).  Even though I was disappointed that there doesn't seem to be a gadget these days calling my name to "BUY ME" (hopefully this will change as holiday season rolls around), I left with a real appreciation of where the digital media industry has come. 

As I thought about how I took the current products on the market for granted (HDTVs, snazzy cell phones, and digital cameras), it made me appreciate how far technology has come in the past decade.  The last decade has seen some amazing breakthroughs in consumer products that have changed the landscape of the industry and what users have come to expect in their products.  Here is my list of the top 5 products and services of the last decade  that have had a lasting impact on the market:

TiVo (March 1999)    

Our short little friend has had quite an impact on how we watch TV.  Now, our entire TV experience is effectively an On-Demand experience, letting us watch "time-shifted" content whenever it's convenient.  Of course, the impact its had on the ad industry is well-documented.  It still remains to be seen how the advertisers will deal with this.  I've started to notice ads created with the characters from the show I'm watching, making me think my show is resuming.  Sneaky, but ultimately, they'll need something better than this to get me to see ads again.   

Napster (June 1999)

They may not have been the first peer-to-peer network, but Napster is the brand name that everyone remembers that really turned the music industry upside down.  The music industry is still trying to figure out how to grow profits in a world of highly available pirated music.  Even though the original version of Napster is long gone, many others such as BitTorrent have taken its place. A recent report from Sandvine just came out showing that 44% of North American traffic is peer-to-peer file sharing.   It's safe to say the original Napster has left its mark on the content acquisition world.

Is Internet TV On TVs Starting to See the Light?

These days, you can't open a digital media newsletter without reading about a newly launched Internet site trying to figure out how to finally take serious timeshare away from the TV. Usually these are me-too type sites but having finally spent some time on Hulu (the JV between News Corp and NBC Universal), I can finally see the "convergence" (sorry, I am tired of the word too, but it fits so well) of Internet and TV. Anyone who has gone to Hulu will be pulled in by the vast amount of TV and movie content in a very user friendly design that makes it very difficult to pull yourself away from the site. This is what a true On-Demand service needs to look like on the TV set.

The Comcast On-Demand service I have is adequate, but with so many categories and different types of content, a user can tend to get lost looking for content. Also, the depth of the content offering is pretty thin, at least when it comes to network TV programming. Now there is no doubt that this is not purely Comcast's fault since it takes two to tango and it's up to the networks to distribute their programming. But if broadcast networks are driving the Hulu model, we should be able to get the same level of content on our cable systems. Surely cable companies must be recognizing that a good chunk of their ad and subscription businesses are in jeopardy as more people view Internet content vs. the broadcast programming they are distributing.