The Services at a glance

• Vodafone People – Social Network integration, auto sync, the most innovative address book out there.
• My Web – Think customisable Vodafone live with a few extra bells and whistle
• App Store – Mainly web browser based apps that enable them to work on any OS, great news for developers but it remains to be seen what sort of apps will be on offer.
• Music – A couple of different offerings from DRM free downloads to subscription based services. 
• Navigation – Think Satnav merged with Facebook. The ablitity to see where people are which brings its own benefits.

The services link into each other very well and more functionality will no doubt be added as time goes by.

Further insights into the individual services will follow in the next few days.

The handsets

Vodafone announced that there will be two dedicated handsets with far more to follow also pointing out that the new services are compatible on a large number of handsets.

The SamsungH1 is the higher spec’ed of the two phones with the M1 being aimed towards the lower price points with a reduced feature list.

Samsung M1

•  3.2″ TFT touch screen 400×200 resolution
• 3 mega pixel camera with auto focus
• A-GPS, wifi, bluetooth
• HSDPA 3.6 Mbps
• 1gb memory with memory card slot

A solid spec list for the lesser of the two handsets. Pricing this handset right will be very important as it will be in direct competition with the HTCMagic and other Samsung handsets that are all proving very popular.

Sansung H1

• 3.5″ AMOLED Touch Screen 800×400 resolution
• 5 mega pixel camera with auto focus, flash and 8 x digital zoom
• A-GPS, wifi, bluetooth
• HSDPA 7.2Mbps
• 16gb memory with memory card slot

For a handset that is being marketed at the high end the Vodafone 360 Samsung H1 device doesnt really excite even though Vodafone has been working with Samsung for the last year or so. Given that the Sony Ericsson Satio has a 12.1 mega pixel camera, the NokiaN97 has 32gb on board this H1 device struggles to turn me on but the hardware isnt supposed to. Think about the Iphone, its not the hardware that excites its the usability and the fact it works that presses peoples buttons.

These two phones have been built with the Vodafone 360 services in mind. Having seen demo’s of the phones in action Vodafone and Samsung seem to have nailed the usability with dedicated buttons for key features that give quick access to the things that matter.

The services look great but it remains to be seen whether my three concerns will remain:

1. The benefit of Vodafone 360, especially Vodafone People relies on you and your friends using it. There’s no point you having all the capabilities in the world to connect with your friends when they dont use the services and therefore cant connect back.
2. Vodafone 360 provides a suite of services that give the user all they need which is great but it seems a bit ‘all or nothing’ with users activities being boxed in and contained to Vodafone’s chosen services etc. Yes Apple do this to some extent but Apple services were up and running way before the iphone came along.
3. Seeing Vodafone People in action, I fear that the navigation albeit innovative, will confuse comes across cluttered. If I want to ring someone I can do it in one or two taps on my HTC magic, it remains to be seen whether the funky interface allows the same.

Vodafone Live was ground breaking and put Vodafone well out in front. Vodafone 360 looks very good but has alot of competition and it remains to be seen whether people will hand in their HTC Magic, Iphone or Blackberrys in order to trade up to the Samsung H1. Vodafone has been clever in that the services will not only work on the Samsung devices but many current handsets so customers will not need to change. Useful given that many people are on 24 month contracts with the Iphone 3Gs. Secondly you dont even need to be a Vodafone customer to use it. Genius but its complicated to work out how Vodafone will get revenue from O2 customers for example. Oh and will Apple, Google and Blackberry allow the app in their stores.

Vodafone announced in the press yesterday (a day before telling their staff, unless you read work emails on the weekend that is) that it was about to undertake a big re-branding exercise. Now before you get excited that Vodafone was about to do something big like change its colour or its logo, its not, its changing its tag line. Supposedly this will come with a new, more exciting, more youthful advertising campaign to help Vodafone reposition itself.

The old tag line, ‘Make the most of now’ made alot of sense and people understood what it meant. If you were on a bus, train or just hanging around doing nothing, through use of Vodafones you could make your time more interesting and not waste it. The new tag line, that is predictably being described as far more than just a line that will appear on the end Vodafone’s adverts is a little less meaningful.

‘Power to you’ my first impressions were that it sounded like something a civil rights activist would say during speech to rally their protesters. It sounds fluffy and although you know what Vodafone are getting at, ‘Power to you’ just doesnt fit. It feels like salesman speak and with big announcements planned this week (24th Sept) Vodafone will have to go some to prevent it sounding like the company is flogging some dodgy old motor or the company will be flogging a dead horse.

Vodafone have just launched a service called Real Time Top 40 which the company describes as “This is the first-ever interactive real-time top 40 chart for music lovers.” But thats not really the case is it? More on that later.

The chart allows people to say who they are currently listening to by tweeting #RealTimeTop40 . All the tweets are then compiled in a chart within minutes to give an current view on the charts.

Its nothing complicated but pretty clever especially when you consider the site then links the user to the Vodafone Music store where they can buy the tracks and albums that are in the chart.  ChaChing!!£££

The problem is this is only for people who use twitter and for me thats a little shortsighted for a company that is all about connected living. Think of all the ways to communicate there’s the old fashioned text, the slightly more modern email but what about other social sites? Surely they can be involved? Facebookhas some great API’s that have recently been improved and are dying to be exploited.

Twitter is a way of communicating, Facebook is how people connect and share more than just links and photos so Im surprised this new service from Vodafone hasnt gone a little further.

Good start but more to do.

I own a 4th Generation Ipod Nano which was a Christmas present so is only 9 months old. The other day it started playing up, the buttons stopped working and then the screen went mental showing streaks and two large blobs with nothing of any use displayed.

I popped online and looked into what I could do about it. As the Ipod is only 9 months old I knew it was still under warranty and so wanted to send it to Apple to get it fixed. The process for doing so was very straight forward and I received a UPS back and protective packaging and arranged for UPS to pick up the device. Apple informed me they had received it and would get their engineers to look at it. A good experience so far but then it went downhill when I received the following email from Apple.

“Dear Christopher,

Thank you for choosing AppleCare Service.

Your IPOD NANO (4TH GENERATION) has been inspected by Apple technicians, who have determined that it has been subjected to accidental damage or misuse, which is not covered by the warranty or an Apple service contract. Therefore your product is being returned to you unrepaired. You should expect to receive it within two business days along with a letter that gives details of this assessment. ”

Before I continue I must state that I have not knowingly misused the Ipod and I am  not aware of anytime when the Ipod has been damaged by accident other than once months ago which had no impact on the ipod functioning. Given this, I took serious offense at being told that I am either lying and have knowingly broken the Ipod and want to get Apple to fix it for free

I understand that alot of people probably try to get their Ipods fixed when they have knowingly damaged it but I havent and feel Apple should have a friendlier more customer focused approach to product repairs. If they’d have said that it would cost me a reduced fee of say £30 to fix the item I would probably have paid it but instead I get an ipod back that doesnt work. What’s the point in that? It seems I have no options other than buying a new Ipod.

If they are sending me a letter documenting their findings then why cant they put this information in the email so I know why they are sending the Ipod back. The email strikes me as non negotiable which given my above statement about not knowing of any point recently where the Ipod has been misused or damaged, I feel shockingly treated.

Now Im now Apple evangelist but I do like their work, however this whole experience has made me question whether I will buy another of their products. Ipods arent cheap, in fact they are more expensive than other MP3 players out there. I expected my Nano to last me a good number of years. My pervious Mp3 player, a Sony NW-HD5 lasted years and still works. It was only replaced by my Nano because I wanted something smaller.

Google have announced that they are building an os that will seriously compete with windows. It is expected that Google Chrome as it is being dubbed will be a lighter faster more secure open source OS built around web capabilities.

It is possible beta code will be made available as soon as later this year will a full release early 2010.

Given the cost of rolling out fast (2mbps) broadband to all including those in rural areas the Digital Britain Report (DBR) recommends that there should be a monthly levy on everyone with a landline, of 50p to go some way towards paying for it. Ok so that’s only £6 a year but I dont see the Government offering assistance to mobile networks to ensure the country has total 3G coverage instead they raised £20bn from the sale of licenses and the regulators are constantly looking for ways to take money off the mobile operators. Anyone would think BT is still nationalised.

Bring it on says Craigslist. Stupid Politicians

Why cant politicians just do their job. Work for the man on the street representing us and not follow their own agendas of personal gain?

In the UK politicians are facing a bararge of attacks relating to their complete inability to run a tight ship when it comes to expenses claiming for things the rest of us cant afford.

In the past we’ve seen politicians jump on the latest fad in an attempt to gain votes and in business we often see smaller companies pick fights in order to gain press coverage, Virgin are good at that. In South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster is probably wishing he hadnt opened followed suit. He threatened legal action against the Execs of Craigslist if they didnt remove some offensive adverts on their site.

There were other sites run in the state that show more ‘offensive’ adverts than Craigslist but as one of the sites is backed by Microsoft, they ahve been left well alone. So its with a big smile on my face that I right that Craigslist filed a law suit against the politician using the Craigslist blog.

This is great news. I hope other politicians learn from this.

 Alot or at least it seems that way. Tech Crunch reported that Facebook is looking to get funding using a value of $2bn. Lets just dwell on that point. $2bn for what? A company that has not turned profit yet? $2bn for the potential to make money from the reported 200m users??

 Having that many users is a great achievement but no revenue streams have been found that are strong enough to bring Facebook back into the black. According to Tech Crunch Facebook is burning $20m a month in cash so that $2bn Valuation must be based on the the brand and its potential. $2bn for a name, thats a little excessive.

 Five years on, not one cent in profit and over $500m in investment. The future may not be that rosy unless Facebook can find how to monetize their offering. There are a number of different approaches Facebook could take from a self driven advertising based model, advertising tie ups with someone like Google, charge for the service or become a platform and let others use the service to sell applications or products and take a small percentage. The jury is out but the clock is ticking. A company can only survive so long burning $20m a month.