From GigaOM, popular since 2 weeksTime Warner Cable reported positive second-quarter earnings (PDF) this morning that fell 26 percent but beat Wall Street’s expectations, and said it would split AOL’s dial-up Internet and advertising businesses into two divisions in 2009. Its earnings beat expectations largely because of gains in its film and its cable and networks division, which will Go to site
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Earlier this week, San Francisco-based web publishing software company Six Apart released the newest version of its flagship product, Moveable Type, and pushed the blogging community into taking the first step toward a very social future. It is not a new concept — since their early days blogs were all about sociability. Late last year, we backed Chris Messina’s wild idea that WordPress, the open-source blogging software that we use to power majority of our network blogs, could be become the underpinning for a social network. In January, Automattic, the company behind WordPress and the free hosted blogging service WordPress.com, bought BuddyPress to help bring sociability to blogs. (Disclosure: Automattic was started by Matt Mullenweg, a close friend of mine. We share True Ventures as an investor.)Our friends at ReadWriteWeb theorize that in order for blogging to evolve, the blogging systems need to embrace the newly popular life-streaming services such as Twitter and FriendFeed, along with a growing panoply of personal web services (including the most fabulous, Dopplr). The team at Six Apart has combined the above-mentioned ideas to create Moveable Type Pro, a blog-publishing system with extremely social DNA. (Check out the Six Apart blog for details.)Blogging Needs To EvolveSix Apart is making the right move, for it is time for blogging to evolve. Many of us have forgotten that blogging is not just an act of publishing but also a communal activity. It is more than leaving comments; it is about creating connections. For instance, through comments I met folks like Robert Young, who in turn wrote for the blog, and then in the process became a friend. It is time to re-embrace and extend that philosophy.Establishing those kinds of relationships becomes an even bigger challenge as newer tools emerge, enabling new kinds of sharing. Whether it is Friendfeed or Dopplr, videos or photos, we are constantly figuring out ways to share information about us on the web. In other words, our digital life is spreading out across the web.Blog = Digital Life AggregatorWe have two choices in order to consolidate these — either opt for all-purpose services such as Facebook (as tens of millions have done) or use our blogs as the aggregation point or hub for all these various services. Facebook, for instance allows you to share photos, aggregate your digital droppings, share comments with friends and exchange messages, but it doesn’t give you a unique identity on the web. In contrast, blogs with social features could allow you to do exactly that.Marc Canter has been talking about this digital aggregator forever and has been ahead of the curve, though now pieces have started to fall in place. Robert Scoble is a good example of how and where things might be headed. He uses multiple services, and they are all easily consumable on his blog, where he writes longer, more engaging posts. His short conversational posts of yesteryear have migrated to FriendFeed, his video has bifurcated into long-form or live, short-form videos. I know Scoble is an outlier of this trend, but he was also ahead of the curve six years ago as far as blogging is concerned.The Demographic ShiftAs a society, we are entering an increasingly narcissistic phase, enabled by web technologies — a theory that is articulated in Wired’s recent cover story. As the Wired writer quips, “Like it or not, we are all public figures now ??? famous, as the new clich?? goes, for 15 people.”The evolution of blogging platforms needs to match these societal and demographic changes. I think folks who are blogging now (no, not just tech bloggers) are different from some of us early bloggers — they use different tools and services and have different views of sharing. In many ways MySpace and Facebook have changed what is OK, and what is not OK online.With that as a sub-text, it is good to see the blogging systems start to evolve. Kudos to Six Apart for making the first major move. Suddenly, blogging tools are more fun — and social.Open Question: How will you build the next-generation blogging system? I am going to be discussing this question with various attendees of WordCamp 2008 that is being held in San Francisco this weekend. I am speaking at the camp and have a exciting announcement as well.PS: Get ready for BlogActionDay.org by registering your blogs, watch the new video, and become part of the movement that is about blogs making a change in our world.
The iPhone 3G???s problems are a hot topic of discussion these days, with everyone trying to figure out who’s to blame. Is it the fault of the carrier? The software? Or the chips inside the device? While I have a feeling this is really a witches’ brew of all three, the explanations only add to the mystery. Users are complaining of four basic problems. And notably, they are the same ones that handset makers and carriers in Europe and Asia had to deal with when they started to roll out 3G systems in those regions:Speed of the 3G network is often not as fast as it should be.Switching between the EDGE and 3G networks leads to broken web sessions.For some, the switch between the networks leads to dropped calls.Weak battery life.A report on BusinessWeek.com today sheds more light on the issue, though there is still no official comment from Apple. According to the report, the problem is impacting 2-3 percent of iPhone traffic. BW cites an unnamed source who notes that considering 1 percent of AT&T calls get dropped, this is a problem, but not a catastrophe.AT&T: Network Is Fine AT&T, displaying a classic head-in-the-sand attitude, issued a statement that said, “Overall, the new iPhone is performing just great on our 3G network.” Right, and overall, the Yankees are on target to win the MLB World Series! If it’s performing so well, why are so many people complaining?Ask anyone in San Francisco or New York and they will make your ears bleed with their tales of iPhone 3G woes. When we asked our readers about their experience, a majority said they were getting speeds only marginally better than the original iPhone. BW offers some clues as to what the problem might be:Part of the role of the Infineon chip is to check whether there’s enough 3G bandwidth available in a given area. If 3G isn’t available or there isn’t enough bandwidth, the iPhone will be shifted to a slower network. One source says Apple programmed the Infineon chip to demand a more powerful 3G signal than the iPhone really requires. So if too many people try to make a call or go on the Internet in a given area, some of the devices will decide there’s insufficient power and switch to the slower network???even if there is enough 3G bandwidth available.Apparently this is resulting in problems in areas of high iPhone density — aka San Francisco, Boston etc. — the very markets where Apple has both a strong retail presence and higher-than-average mind share.Antenna & Weak SignalsMeanwhile, Swedish magazine Ny Teknik is citing unnamed experts that have come up with yet another theory:… the most likely cause of the 3G problems is defective adjustments between the antenna and an amplifier that captures very weak signals from the antenna. This could lead to poor 3G connectivity and slower data speeds.And when I tried to test their theory, it made sense. I currently have three 3G handsets — Nokia E71, Nokia N78 and Sony Ericsson U750a — all of which are optimized for the AT&T 3G network. The speeds on those phones are much faster. Similarly, if I pop a 3G SIM card into one of the USB modems, the speeds on AT&T network are quite fast.Its the 3G StupidFinally there is our friend Mike Puchol, who explains how wireless networks work and outlines some of the problems associated with 3G technologies. In his view, the problem is shared bandwidth:…key issue to remember is that the download rate is ???per tower???, not per user. So, if two users using HSDPA are on the same tower, they will each get a maximum throughput of 3.6Mbps. Divide even further, and the more users you have the worse experience everyone gets.His explanation also makes sense, and ties in with an earlier post of mine in which I looked at the backhaul problems facing U.S. 3G networks and asked whether or not they’d be able to withstand the iPhone 3G stress test.I get the feeling that this issue isn’t going to die anytime soon. If you have theories, please share them with us.If this story interests you, check out ourupcoming conference: Mobilize — Mobile Web Today and Tomorrow 
