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Three Killer "Pants-Based Computing" ApplicationsJune 3

Erica at The Unofficial Apple Weblog introduced me to my new favorite phrase: pants-based computing.  Come one, which would you rather carry around?  A mobile phone (think Zack Morris) or a pants-based computing device? 

Anyway, the point of the article is that the combination of a GPS-enabled iPhone along with a seamless way to download 3rd party apps (AppStore), a new development trend is about to begin:

The iPhone is a platform that lives in your pocket. So you can pull it out, check your options and make some decisions without all the overhead associated with laptop use. It’s this fundamental difference in the way we use the iPhone with “pants-based computing,” with a device that travels with us and knows where we are, that powers this paradigm shift. We’re sitting at the edge of a location-based computing revolution, and the iPhone is pulling us there. From our pockets.

So in honor of the forthcoming revolution and in homage to my previous blogging contributions, here are some ideas for three killer PBC apps.

          1. Stadiu.ms - A Temporary Social Network for Stadiums 

For people who are all gathered toge

Everything I Know About Twitter I Learned on Prom NightJune 2

Scoble highlighted a great comment by the CTO of a microblogging service called Grazr.  I’d encourage you to read the full comment, but can basically be summed up with this sentence:

The truth is, we like to talk about scaling, but without steady growth and something people find compelling, all the scaling in the world won’t help you.

Don’t ask me why, but after reading this comment, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to a typical high school prom.  Not sure how things operated when you were (or still are) in school, but for me, the prom queen was much more likely to be physically attractive as opposed to being just regular-looking with an amazing personality.  If the web held a prom, who do you think would be crowned the queen, Twitter or Grazr?

Don’t worry, Grazr.  I’ll save a spot next to me at the next math club meeting.

Why FriendFeed Deserves a Billion Dollar ValuationMay 31

I know, I know.  They’ve been around for less than a year, so how could they possibly be worth a billion dollars?  It’s basically just a Twitter clone that’s a little bit faster and doesn’t go down as often, right?  Despite the surface similarities, FriendFeed has the potential to become one of the more valuable services on the Internet, and here’s why.  Google’s primary goal is to index the world’s information.  FriendFeed’s primary goal is to index the world’s conversations.  We all know the value that Google created out of their index.  Here’s a quick overview of how FriendFeed can do the same.

Phase 1: Grow a Rabid User Base

In order for FriendFeed to build up a index of the world’s conversations, they first needed to create a front end with two important components.  First, it needed to be as easy as possible for people to pull in their conversations from all over the web, and to do it in the most automated format possible.  Second, they needed to build in a viral distribution model that would allow them to build up their user base as quickly as possible.  My guess is that somewhere in the FriendFeed offices, they have a graph on the wall that shows two curves.  One is an exponential growth curve that represents their predicted growth (based on power laws and estimated viral coefficients) with a clearly defined upper threshold.  The other is a line showing the