A number of times in the recent past I’ve read either in a blog post or on Buzz/Twitter or via an aggregation site like Digg, that this social site has failed or that social site is dead. Sure, from the point of view of the poster, that site has failed to perform – but I contend that it’s all the more likely the only real failure is that of expectation failure.

It seems to be that lately a site can only be a success if it reaches tens of millions of users, heck even Google pulled Wave because of the fact that it required more engineers per user than usual and it had not reached some magical user size. My hunch is that Google has gotten large enough of an organization that it now has the problem of team politics and it may have died due to a lack of internal power or will, because for sure it wasn’t a failure of technology that brought it down. (ok, sure, maybe a lack of UX vision – but that is solvable and the reason you have beta tests.)

This expectation failure is in both directions. We as users approach a site with a given level of anticipation and it’s a rare site that doesn’t do something that makes you sit back in your chair and go “ouch, wasn’t expecting that“. But now, with the continuous development cycle and the need for a certain churn in the media, a site doesn’t have three or four months to test out interfaces or feature sets – it is assumed it will deliver on those features now. And heaven help you if a Scoble or a Leo find your site before it’s ready and has it’s feature focus stable and ready, because nothing can prepare you for that ;)

So when your reading about how this site has failed (or heck, has EPIC FAILED) please do remember that for the most part we are all traveling in the same echo chamber that is the early adopter scene. That some folks are broadcasters, some are analysts and some are consumers and that a viable ecosystem needs all three to thrive. Within this ecosystem you will always find the struggle to maintain balance between the forces and often the “top of the food chain” folks will sometimes seem to be acting out of step with the others.

It is my contention, and what I have been badly striving to make as a point (just remember i’m a behind-the-scene dev type, not a words-smith) that often, in order for growth to happen, something needs to shake up the status quo – be it something new or one of the more mature/stable pieces to do something different so as to give a chance to one of the up-and-coming pieces. You can’t have growth without change.

I would also like to point out in my ecosystem analogy above I don’t mention the sites themselves and where they fit. That is because, to continue the analogy, the echo chamber is like that little bird (a Plover IIRC) that alligators allow to walk around their heads and in their mouths. The echo chamber and the social media industry are symbiotic and exist in the realm of, heck exist for the use of, us normal users – not the other way around.

I’m not a “pro” reviewer by anyone’s viewpoint, but I do use a number of Android devices and I use daily my N800 as a remote tablet so I was looking forward to getting a portable tablet running Android. I will be checking out pretty much all of the new tablets just to find a replacement for my N800 which is showing it’s age :(

Pros

• Android 2.1 Eclair pre-installed
• Nice USB cable selection in that it comes with a USB <-> USBmini cable but also a conversion cable in case your laptop/netbook only sports a USBmini connection
• The 800×480 screen is decent and looked great when viewing YouTube videos and Flickr photos
• Came with a protective case

Cons

• Keyboard almost useless without a stylus (or skinny people fingers)
• WiFi had issues connecting to some of my devices (like the Apple gear) but worked well with my Netgear AP
• Resistive screen sits above the display in a very visible manner and even after using it for an hour I couldn’t stop noticing it.
• Back of device got noticeable warm when charging and when using the WiFi
• The Android status bar shows the phone service level bars even with no phone hardware present
• Android Marketplace seems borked out of the box, i’m waiting to see if a patch will help

I’m finding that the device is going to be useful for folks who are using one or two Android apps on their phones while sitting at the couch. Because you can sync apps via sdcard or (as soon as they fix it) the Marketplace, you should be able to keep it as a non-phone copy of what your phone has :)

Overall the sticking points, IMO, are what you would expect for a very low cost device but at the same time it is a functional Android 2.1 device that is comfortable in your hands. Some of the glitches means that I wouldn’t get this if your not comfortable with sdcard swapping or the ADB toolset.

So if your looking for an iPad experiance at a clone price point, then your wasting your money and time. But if you want to test your Android apps on something other than a phone or if, like me, you have personal productivity tools that are just *screaming* for more screen space then it’s a win – even tho I know I will be replacing it in a year.

Update 1: I added a photo at the bottom of the Tablet and my Nexus One so you can get an impression of the size of the Tablet

Update 2: I’m actually syncing it to my normal gmail account so I can test the Google Apps and I saw this on the registration wizard:

Welcome to Android for Telechips TCC8900 Evaluation Board (US)

This makes me wonder what other “dev only” items are lurking behind the scenes!

Shot of the front:

Shot of the ports:

From Left to Right: power, on/off button, mini USB, earphone, microSD

Shot of the product info:

Shot of the back side:

The Tablet and my Nexus One:

I was chatting with fritzy just now and we were discussing the iPad and I suddenly had this AHA! moment.

Given that the iPad will have an optional keyboard and given that you can activate it using wifi and don’t need another Mac to day and given the fact that Apple has really enhanced MobileMe – you now have the ecosystem required to allow the iPad to exist in a home with no other computers.

Think about it – you can turn on your iPad, enter your Apple ID (or sign up for one) and then your online and in the cloud – MobileMe will handle the backup/sync requirements to any iPhone you may have and all you need is WiFi or 3G.

If you do have other computers, that’s just gravy for the experience.

Wow!

My Blackberry has been oddly silent the last day or so (oh I hope I didn’t jinx that just now!) and i’ve been catching up on some podcasts, the most recent being This Week in Google #21 where during one bit they talk about how disruptive to businesses Google has become.

What Google is doing is something I’ve been waiting a long time to happen, for some company to beat back the large corporations who are straddle both sides of the fence in the world of content – they are both producers and delivery agents (and also in some cases control the delivery method.)

We really need companies to become tighter in focus – be a delivery pipe and a good one; be a content producer and a good one; be a receiver or client and a good one but just don’t be all three. I’m looking at you now Comcast and Apple.

When we have multiple choices of pipes and can move our phones, netbooks or computers from one to the other without penalty then we can have a proper marketplace of competition.

Ok, that’s the only non-geek podcast I’ll do for another year :)

First, it’s not the “Twitter API” if it’s found on WordPress or Tumblr (not to mention that this API compatibility has been in Identi.ca (aka Laconi.ca) for almost a year now) – it’s just an API that is Twitter-compatible.

Second, the endpoints used to access an API are, at most, 1/3 of what makes up an API – the most important part of an API is the data passed to and also from those endpoints to do the tasks that the endpoints enable.

So sure WordPress and Tumblr have a Twitter-compatible API but what happens when Twitter changes how one of the endpoints work, like they did when they recently changed how since_id works or even how re-tweets work. At best the other sites will be able to make similar changes but the worse case scenario is that they won’t or cannot make the changes and then things start to get ugly. Anyone remember RSS 0.93? or even the blog related API’s to make posts from clients – all suffered from fragmentation.

That is not to say I am not excited to see the API pattern used by Twitter is being more widely adopted, it’s a well thought out and functional API – I just think that crowning it the King of micro-blogging APIs is a bit premature until the *whole* API, data formats and all, is documented.