Ouriel Ohayon - LGiLab general manager

Apple introduced yesterday a new version of iTunes. iTunes 10. It is a better software and it is going social. But it's raising so many questions and observations in my mind

 

1. Ping is the first social network to exist only in a software (iTunes). Can a social network exist out of a browser? Can a social network exist in a place where most of the usage is about transaction and download? 
2. Popular social networks became popular because they were built as a platform, not only as a destination (think Facebook connect, Last.fm distributed graph, Flick widgets,..). Will Apple consider an API?
3. Every user has a Ping profile URL (here is mine) : Apple made them as friendly as iTunes songs URL. meaning unfriendly. Maybe they should use my friend loic's ping.fm shortener
4. Do people really care about the taste of people they don't know? Is music a strong vertical enough to build AGAIN your social graph? Isn't your "taste graph" just a sub graph of your existing "social graph".
5. A lot of people seem to indicate that apple made the right choices in terms of privacy settings. Actually i believe most people don't care
6. What's really missing in ITunes is a out-of-iTunes broadcasting mechanism. There is Share with Facebook/Twitter but it is painful. Apple has all the assets to create the very best sharing experience (think about cross app sharing for example). They did not do it. Because Apple's DNA is not social and is not about sharing.
7. I said it in the past, will say it again. iTunes "rebranding" to iTunes 10 is a missed opportunity to assess iTunes as the leading media store (video, podcast, games, apps, shows AND songs). They should have rebranded it iStore
8. Real names, connected to Ping will now be used in Reviews. Since your name is associated to a credit card, you'd better watch out to fake reviews :)
9. Lady Gaga who is #1 in Twitter follower is probably also #1 in Ping. I am afraid Ping will be good for mainstream music discovery only. Eg: Keith Jarrett is not even an artist to Follow...The problem of discovery is not about hits, it is about the long tail
10. Ping will come to other media (podcast, movies, apps). But not until it makes its way on music. Maybe.

Bonuses.

1. iTunes has not solved the biggest pain to discovery: the browsing, speed/experience and search. More than a social network they should have started there.
2. Example to point 11: iTunes search engine does not work holistically with Ping's user. You can't be searched in iTunes own search engine...
3. Ping's execution is awesome and simple: but it looks so much like Facebook feed that i wonder why Apple did not give more credit to that and even if Apple did not build Ping out of a missed opportunity with Facebook.
4. Some people seem to indicate the death of last.fm and spotify. I seriously doubt it. Those 2 services provide a way better discovery experience and are built as platforms, not just softwares.
5. Apple has nnot enabled notifications on ping. no way to know when you have a new friend following or a new artist feed mention. You need to actively go and discover it
6. I really want to thank Apple for making our life easier at Appsfire: social discovery is the key to apps, more than advertising. people start to understand that what we make, makes sense :)
7. you can't share your own library on Ping. A smart move would have been to prepopulate my profile with my existing library. Since everything is already there. you can only share what shows up in iTunes Store!

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Ouriel OHAYON has:
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Join me on FacebookI have started using appsfire.com, an application on Facebook,
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applications and more.Hi there, would love to share my favorite iPhone apps with you, would be great to discover yours too :)Thanks,
Ouriel
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Some paleolithic institutions like Banks are still using fax and refuse to adapt themself to the modern world using emails with their customers. The problem is that no one is really using a fax anymore. Even those multi function printer... Ouriel Ohayon

Some paleolithic institutions like Banks are still using fax and refuse to adapt themself to the modern world using emails with their customers.

The problem is that no one is really using a fax anymore. Even those multi function printer are a pain to use [printing, putting the doc in the tray, dialing,....]

So i started to look for services to send and receive fax for free in Israel. I called netvision. After 6 sales representative, they figured out they had such service but 1. it is ridiculously expensive 2. you need to use their Paleolithic own email system

I started to look on the web. you can find plenty of so called free email to fax service. But they are not free. And force you to buy a monthly subscription.

I really found 2 services for sending and receiving faxes from your computer (meaning sending files directly from your computer)

• FreeFax.co.il [make abstraction of the endless number of google ads] Works great TO SEND ONLY
• MyFax.co.il Works great to RECEIVE FAX on your email. they will provide a temporary fax number routing to your email [take the right blue option]

I used them both and they work great. and are really free. BUT...

There is no single service doing all of it (send + fax) in a clean way. Fax is a commodity, like Voice. I am sure there is space to build a killer free iphone app that will do all of that using a stupid fax server. Sending a fax is not more expensive at cost than a min of voice.

The first guy to do that, will end up #1 in the App Store. I guarantee

The more i visit apartments, and the more i understand how the real estate market works, the more i am confused. I don't understand how prices can be so high, and keep getting high: i am told there is no... Ouriel Ohayon

The more i visit apartments, and the more i understand how the real estate market works, the more i am confused.

• I don't understand how prices can be so high, and keep getting high: i am told there is no apartments to buy, but on the other side they are an endless number of new projects.
• I don't understand how a 4 bedroom, to be totally rebuilt, in the center of tel aviv, can be more expensive than a house with garden 50km from tel aviv.
• I don't understand how an average family with decent revenues can buy something those days, without having to eat pasta and humus 3 times a day for the rest of their life.
• I don't understand how banks are so bad at providing mortgage services (i could write a post on this) - banks are bad in general, but specially in this.
• I don't understand how most real estate agents are guiding their own business by not even calling you back when you are hot on a deal
• I don't understand why our government believe that by limiting the amount of money you can get from banks, they will stop prices from going up (since those who buy never need to borrow money)

For me all of those unanswered critical questions are the sign this is not the right time to buy. This market is just insane.

Is it stupid to think a real estate bubble is about to explode in Israel? Are prices too high? Should i wait? Should i go?

What do you say?

Amazing composition by one of the best pianist in the world. Extract from his second (maybe one of the best) album, Elegiac Cycle Could be a jazz tune, or classical music. Does not really matter. it is just awesome Ouriel Ohayon

Amazing composition by one of the best pianist in the world. Extract from his second (maybe one of the best) album, Elegiac Cycle

Could be a jazz tune, or classical music. Does not really matter. it is just awesome

Amazing composition by one of the best pianist in the world. Extract from his second (maybe one of the best) album, Elegiac Cycle Could be a jazz tune, or classical music. Does not really matter. it is just awesome Ouriel Ohayon

Amazing composition by one of the best pianist in the world. Extract from his second (maybe one of the best) album, Elegiac Cycle

Could be a jazz tune, or classical music. Does not really matter. it is just awesome

superb song by Gainsbourg. A french composer. a genius in it own right (some probably know the late version by Carla Bruni) Ouriel Ohayon

superb song by Gainsbourg. A french composer. a genius in it own right (some probably know the late version by Carla Bruni)

Last time i saw a killer trailer like this, it was for Seven, by David Fincher. The same one behind the social network. You bet i will watch this Ouriel Ohayon

Last time i saw a killer trailer like this, it was for Seven, by David Fincher. The same one behind the social network. 

You bet i will watch this

This video by Stefani Germanotta (her original name) is simply impressive. Far from the crap she's making today. There is no doubt she's highly talented. Too bad she did not go that way a bit longer! ! Ouriel Ohayon

This video by Stefani Germanotta (her original name) is simply impressive. Far from the crap she's making today. There is no doubt she's highly talented. Too bad she did not go that way a bit longer!

!

I arrived late in the run, but i discovered about a year ago Daring Fireball a hugely popular blog by John Gruber about, mainly Apple. It is brilliantly written and so well informed you wonder if the guy is not... Ouriel Ohayon

I arrived late in the run, but i discovered about a year ago Daring Fireball a hugely popular blog by John Gruber about, mainly Apple. It is brilliantly written and so well informed you wonder if the guy is not working in Steve Jobs' office. But after about a year of reading it i decided to stop. The reason? It is impossible to interact with its writer (which he explains here). 

At least from my modest point of view. And for me interacting means having the possibility to drop a comment and participate in a conversation, something i can do on all the great blogs i love to read (like avc.com )

The content, most of the time creates the desire to react and provokes the spark of a conversation but it is killed on the spot by not letting users comment on site. I don't know any better way to make a blog a conversational media. Otherwise this is just a good old tribune behind a (Daring) Firewall.

So i could deal with it right? Well no. I don't like to be provoked and not having the possibility to react. I am sure a lot of John's readers feel frustrated and probably used to this.

When i was writing TechCrunch France i was handling up to 100 comments per posts. I was reading every single one of them and most of the time answering them. Frankly the most interesting part of blogging is the interaction with the users in a close to live conversation in comments. I can understand some people prefer to kill the noise and don't have the time to deal with it (although there are ways to manage this efficiently if you have the right commenting system, like disqus or intensedebate with moderation and email interaction)

Anyways. No comments on a good blog is not a deal for me. This is why i am also stopping reading many newspapers.

The value is not in the information or the point of view but the conversation. And even in Chaos, i prefer a living organic publication rather than a singled-voice site

By now, over a 100 million people have downloaded 5 billions apps under the now called iOS, or operating system for mobile devices. Millions of people start to become familiar with the act of downloading an App.  An app is rarely final once you have downloaded it. It needs to be updated for new features or self adaptation to new the iOS specifications or is has to be updated because if pulls content or self refreshes out of the internet.

An app to be fully enjoyed needs to be updated and if it depends on a web service needs to be connected to the web in order to be updated, even to be enjoyed offline. 

iOS is not solving 2 pains that are specific to native apps: easy automatic updating, and automatic content syncing. 

Let me illustrate with examples

Automatic App Updating

You have downloaded say 40 apps. Apple updates its iOS or introduces a new device (say the iPad). Hundreds of developers update their app in order to be compliant. You open your App Store and you see 10 apps waiting for updates. Then every day you will meet this screen, with apps waiting for updates. Personally i hate wasting time with that. And i can be a lot of time once accumulated.

Apple should allow users to give permission to developers to auto-update apps without consent and run the updates automatically in the background when, say, the iPhone is not used more than an hour in a row. To make sure this does not hurt your bill, Apple could allow it to run only when you re on wifi > which is typically what happens when you are at home when sleeping at night.

I want to give Apple once this approval, and that's all. I can revoke it if i need to (i don't see any reason why i would, but let s assume you need to make yourself feel comfortable)

This means that users need to become aware an app has become updated. Apple could do that in a welcome screen in the App Store or by just sending an email when this is done (they do have our emails and they use it to send us the purchase receipt). But that would not be enough.

I think developers need to do something more (which is something i would recommend anyway to do already...)

> Tip to Developers: when you update an app, DO NOT rely on users reading the update pane with new features, instead on the opening push a message with the new features you re bringing. The app that does that best is GoodReader. Check it out. Really well done

Automatic App Content Syncing

You have an RSS reader, or a news app (Wired, ...) or ReadItLater/Instapaper, or even Dropbox or OneMail (for accessing Gmail offline). You need to access the content, but in order to enjoy it you need to first Open the App and wait for it to pull content from the web. This can take some serious time. Specially when you need to move offline for a few hours (in a plane) or want to save roaming fees (abroad). This means you need to specifically open every single app, wait for it to pull out content and repeat that, as many times as needed with each App.

Any iPhone owner who s travelling has met this pain. But if you think about it, even if you are not travelling, having to rely on syncing to get your app updated is a pain. We are more and more used to get content instantly from web services. Waiting to get content, is a pain.

This is why for news and RSS i prefer to surf Google Reader rather than any other killer RSS app (like Newsrack or Reeder) even if super Well done

What's missing? This has to be solved by Apple with a content sync service available to developers allowing them to trigger an Content app update on a regular basis, using simple rules: the app is updated more than X hours/days, it has to be on WIFI, and the iPhone has to be unused for more than X hours. Users in addition must have give specific approval in optin to the developers in order to run that operation. Then there need to be a simple notification tray in the app, indicating when it was last updated, and if a sync should be necessary or not.

The day this part of infrastructure is in place apps relying on content will get a major boost in usage.

Conclusion: Saving 5 billion seconds to the world (and counting)

On average an App update takes about 10 seconds (sometimes a lot more), let s assume that only 10% of the Apps downloaded get updated (because people care enough to run the update) - We're talking about saving 5 billion seconds to the world just for App updating. We re talking about a cumulated time of 82 000 years saved to users.

i have no way to measure how many time this would save for content App updating. But let s take Wired which is a 500MB+ app (of which 400MB of rich media ads...). Each edition takes in very very high speed about 1 or 2 min to download. There is around 100k users who downloaded this app >See how much time is saved? Repeat that by the number of App in your iPhone/iPad

Personally i know it would save me around 30 min each week. Roughly

Beyond those meaningless numbers iOS has the possibility to bring back, what is missing most from Apps, the instant access to content. No lag, No syncing. Getting closer to the Web and a little bit away from the CD-Rom era

Will Apple bring this? I am sure they will. Not sure when though. It took them 2 iterations of the OS to bring Copy Paste.

ps: i seriously doubt, based on what i know that the multi tasking that Apple is going to introduce will allow this kind of background operation. The App needs to get access to a better and specifically designed service for this to happen correctly. And it has to be created by Apple and not by one developer on a case by case

note: i put aside in this note, the necessity of wireless syncing which would be really nice for syncing the content of your PC/MAc with your iPhone. But this is a different matter which requires more technical consideration and background that i have.

By now, over a 100 million people have downloaded 5 billions apps under the now called iOS, or operating system for mobile devices. Millions of people start to become familiar with the act of downloading an App. An app is... Ouriel Ohayon