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I just can’t come to terms with the latest official letter by Apple regarding the iPhone 4 antenna reception issue. 

Basically it says that the problem is merely related to how the indicated signal strength is calculated. So, according to Apple, there is no real antenna reception issue, at least not more than other phones have in similar situations. It is just a matter of how the signal strength was calculated.

This can mean one of two things:

a) There is indeed no antenna reception issue; the behavior of antenna reception does not differ significantly from that of other phones in similar situations.

In this case some sort of mass delusion has built up among iPhone 4 users, probably fueled by all the attention in the media. They were just seeing much fewer signalbars on their phones than the reception quality was in reality. No real problem.

This is of course a possibility we shouldn’t directly dismiss (although it is very tempting to do so). There is a post at Mashable where signal attenuations for different phones in a few handgrip situations are compared. One of the conclusions is that although for a tight hand grip (not really natural) iPhone 4 performs worse than an iPhone 3Gs and a HTC Nexus One, it’s not a deal breaker: ‘Although the signal drops, which users will notice by looking at the signal bars, in many situations it won’t result in degraded performance.’

b) There is a real antenna reception issue.

In this case Apple seems to be trying to ‘relax’ our perception of the problem by changing the signal strength indication with a new formula and ‘…also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.’

Both options are not really satisfying to me. Unfortunately, I think, in the end a little bit of both is true…

Mobile phone users will only adopt video telephony on a large scale if it is available for a large market share of phones. Although FaceTime, introduced by Apple, seems to make video telephony very appealing as an application (e.g. no set-up required, switching between front and back camera) this situation can only be reached if it is standardized through open standards. Now, the interesting thing is, Apple wants to make FaceTime open (see the presentation by Steve Jobs at the WWDC 2010), surprise!

Video telephony is a very old idea, no company really succeeded in the past to make it a successful innovation, used on a broad scale. So, if Apple succeeds in pushing the FaceTime application (what it can do) and technologies (& how) into open standards, they will have managed to make this longstanding ideal a reality.

I think they got the application right: an easy way for video telephony in multiple real-life situations. My question remains, will they succeed to push this into open standards? I will be watching this closely.

Today multiple sites reported a rumor about an Apple Multi-Touch Trackpad, see for instance Engadget, Wired News, and Mashable.

I was wondering: what if a) such a device would be a little bit bigger in the future (for instance the size of an Apple wireless keyboard) b) the track area could be backlit to reveal keyboard buttons c) would support multi-touch gestures.

I could imagine that when you type-touch on the keys you are using it as a keyboard but if you press/swipe-touch it (possibly with multiple fingers), it could recognize that you are not using it as a keyboard but as a trackpad to select, drag, scroll etc..

Now, that would be a great innovation in personal computing user interaction! Don’t you think?

... the ideas behind it will grow in the future for sure; we will find easy to use ways to communicate in new media forms, with ourselves as centres (just like our own voice) instead of social networks like Facebook. Maybe by then Diaspora won't even be the big player in distributed social networking, who knows, but I do believe we will be more in control, social networks will 'just' be the platforms to relay whatever we want to communicate.

You need to have a large application development community for web-on-TV to be successful; Google (Android) has it. An open platform will attract new developers, Google Android is open. Now, if also the API to the set-top box gives enough information/opportunity/freedom to innovate, to create web applications that are truly native to the context of TV use, this prediction can't miss. .... O, and I think my prediction of November 2009  will also still hold. ;)

People/companies do have choices: if you don't like Apple's platform, don't use it; pick another platform you do like, or, try to develop an (open) platform yourself.

Some good points are mentioned in the post by @upbeatnow.

Next to these points, involving others in growing your idea is one of the best ways to communicate them.

It's not the tech that matters, its the application. If Diaspora could create an easy way for users ‘weave’ their own distributed social network where they control their own social media data. It could change the way we organize ourselves on the web. There are some requirements to be met though: 

As indicated already, is it easy to understand, use and set-up? Not sure, but the fact that they have raised enough money of web users in less then two weeks tells me they have uncovered a strong user need. Maybe Diaspora won't be the winning system, but I predict someone will perfect this idea in the future so it can be used on a large scale. 

Is it extendable to new forms of content? They say they are creating a plug-in architecture.

Does it have inherent value? With this I mean if the application can be used without pulling in content that was created externally. It's hard to imagine they won't create a means for users to create content 'native' to the system.

About the technology : Opera Unite comes to mind, but with a focus on secure sharing of social media content.

Distributed social networking; own and control your social media streams. Sync it only with whom you chose and build your own social graph, just like in real life : http://j.mp/axynkl

Twitter wasn't envisioned to do the things we now see it could: As I said before Twitter can & must do better. They will have to innovate to stay ahead of new services popping-up in the future that take the Twitter concept to a next level; based on all the knowledge we now have on what we can do with a Twitter-like communication architecture.

Twitter has already built up a large following and will thus be hard to overpower, but they shouldn’t wait to find out what will happen in my opinion!

I’m writing this Three Tweets post because I’m already thinking for a while to write a longer post about this on web2society and got triggered (again J) by a post of @scobleizer, ‘Twitter’s traffic in trouble?’, in which he mentions multiple new feature ideas for Twitter that resonates with my thinking about this, especially when it relates to metadata.

 …to be continued! #cliffhanger