Another amazing photo from Flickr!

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There has been a lot of heavy-breathing over the iPad since it was launched, and no shortage of hand-wringing over the lack of multitasking and they ability to view Flash laden webpages. The iPhone, iTouch and iPad (I need to come up with a word for all three, maybe iOS?) are really new expressions in user interfaces. The UI is designed so well in the iPhone, it never occurs to me that the device is not a multitasking device. I don’t really think I have ever broken down and cried like a child on BART when I launch Spore and pick up where I left off. By the looks of the blogging panic-o-sphere, others do. Flash on a website I am glad to do without. Yes, I know my day job is in advertising and strategy and that must seem like some sort of heresy coming from me, but I am sick to death of auto-expanding ads, fly-out ads, ads that creep across your screen and purposefully hide the close button. And please, how many times I have had to talk a client OUT of adding a Flash splash page to their website I cannot count.

I think Flash as part of webpages has become archaic and antiuser-friendly. But Flash on iOS devices will continue to grow and prosper thanks to the Flash Dev team at Adobe. Last year at Adobe’s MAX conference, they announced the Packager for iPhone, a part of their Flash deployment due out this year as part of Creative Suite 5 that will allow the publishing of self-contained Flash apps in the App store. These apps will appear as any other app on your iOS device. The development opportunities for app developers and content creators will be explosive. Anyone can now publish an iPad app and sell their product. And since development is in Flash, deployment across other mobile devices will allow the developer to get a better return on their investment and development. But there will be losers, Facebook and Zynga come to mind.

The deletion of Flash on the iPad will have a large impact in the short term on ad agencies – we will need to learn to use HTML 5 instead of relying on Flash to push the client’s message. But the long term impact will be felt the worst by Facebook and Zynga. Most traffic on Facebook is from one of the many, annoying, pointless and never-ending wall inclusions Zynga Games. Notices of lost sheep in Farmville, requests for Boss help in Moscow from Mafia Wars and alerts that someone you know made too many radish cakes sit in my wall and separate me from my friends and family (who also play these games). Cafeworld by Zynga is a game where you cook food, and serve it to customers – it is a huge Flash game and even bigger resource hog. It will not even load on my wife’s Macbook. Can you imagine trying to send that file across AT&T’s weak 3G network to thousands of people? One trend I have noticed is that Facebook users will sign up for a couple of these, go big for awhile and then move on to better, more challenging games on the web – games that are still based in Flash, but are well designed, playable and challenging. These types of games will be where the iPad will have its best use. Do I want to use an iPad to play Farmville or something much more stimulating like Evony?

I too grew out of the Zynga ecosystem and found a game called Evony, a mix of real time strategy, Sim City and social gaming. It is a Flash based game that can currently be played via the web, but because it is Flash-based, it could easily be translated to an iPad application and available on the Apple App store for download. I can see me casually playing Evony while the commercials play on TV. Would I rather watch the Scope commercial or add some archers to my vile ranks of plunderers, prepping myself for the next big battle. Yes Elton, I am coming for you!

Evony and companies like them with well developed IT infrastructure, can easily roll out expanded titles, new titles or dip their toe in completely new genres. And because they use social gaming models with purchasable enhancements to the game (more wood, fancy trinkets to enhance the gaming experience) make this a great new model for business – and the iPad will be the center of these new universes. Yes, I can’t live without my daily dose of World Of Warcraft, but there is a lot more to the world of gaming than WoW. Going back to the Evony example, they could leverage their current user base and IT technology to produce a social RTS game based on WWII and they could quickly build that new user base by using smart social media marketing.

There are some complaints about the gaming mechanics behind Evony but I have not seen them as overwhelming as they have been described by critics. One measure that I think is good for any developer is revenue, and from what I have seen, Evony has a business model that brings home the bacon without stooping to Zynga’s model of scam offers and illicit mobile phone billing.

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We launched a new project today – Jely (http://je.ly). You may get some invites from me today, please sign up and remember to import your contacts so they can follow you. This release of Jely creates Tweetable URLs for travel and the locations of things. For example, you can type in “pizza” and your ZIP code, and you will get a tweetable link for Pizza in your neighborhood.

You can do the same for longitude, latitude, even your closest airport (http://je.ly/sfo). Want the weather at your house? Just type in your ZIP code and tweet away!

This is a public alpha release so use our contact form for any problems you run into.

OK… I am going to damn bed.

SB

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Seriously, not for the faint and not so faint of heart.

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Just an amazing photo.

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Somewhere in Iran, there are terabytes of data – unseen photos, unwatched videos and unread words that have captured events that have yet to be seen by those of us in the “West.”

The Ahmadinejad regime has struggled to tamp out communication among the Iranian people, now keeping it to a very slow drip. Hardly anything comes out from Iran these days, unlike the deluge that we have seen in the past. Keep in mind, Iran is the biggest blogging nation in the world outside of the United States. The culture there, with a majority of the population being young, is a wired culture. Hell, we are a wired planet, so why should Iran be any different?

Inside Iran blogs are down, tweets are non-existent, cell phone service is a joke and the web is a firewalled ghost town. But here comes the problem – the Ahmadinejad regime knows the people of Iran are pissed beyond belief and the people know what the government did to the people – those images of Neda are NOT going to go away anytime soon. The regime also knows that they are sitting on a powder keg of frustration and their only move is to keep the internet out of the hands of the people. It isn’t a question of blocking the West, the incriminating data is inside the country – on cell phones, cameras and camcorders and all sorts of digital recording devices. The data is stored in Iran and the regime cannot afford to allow it to leak to the West or even to the west side of Tehran. An Azure Curtain, an analogy to the Soviet’s Iron Curtain, has to fall across Iran and the regime has to hope that will be enough, but it won’t.

The Ahmadinejad regime is screwed long term (maybe even short term). They cannot hope to keep a smart, empowered population like Iran in the dark for long. Data will start flowing with the use of USB drives, CDs and home produced DVDs that will contain unseen images – all of which will spread like a virus. But knowing Iranians, this is probably already underway. Then someone will sneak a thumbdrive out of the country and more stuff will be dumped to the web.

Iran cannot hope to remain a modern country without the web. Hospitals, educators, manufacturers, banks, shopkeepers, everyone in that country benefits from the web and the only way the Ahmadinejad regime can keep control is to shut off the web and drive their population to the level of North Korea – a complete sequestration of Iranians from the world and each other – that is the regime’s only viable step.

The regime cannot stay in power when a huge swath of their population are bloggers and citizen journalists. Benjamin Franklin would be proud, Khamenei is probably horrified.

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IRAN: A Nation Of Bloggers from ayrakus on Vimeo.

Since the early days of Apple, before the “PC Revolution” and even before the web, I have had a snarky quote about computers and their relevance to the power of the people. “You will take my laptop when you pry it from my cold dead fingers!” Yes, it is a rip from the insensible NRA slogan about gun control.

With the advent of the web, browsers, blogs, Twitter, mobiles, digital cameras and all the rest, interpersonal communication has been the foundation of modern revolution. The most recent example is the Iranian elections. The above video was produced a year or so ago, but look today at what it has yielded.

This video was shot yesterday from the riotous streets of Iran.

The media has been a total failure on reporting these events. I guess since Jimmy Carter isn’t in office, there is no need to cover the action. Check out the stream on Twitter about the MSM’s failure on this issue.

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I attended the 140TC Twitter conference this week in Mountain View and @dexin from TwitterBrian.com wanted the Je.ly logo in pink, using the colors used in branding of the Snog yogurt shops in London.

Well, here it is!

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Perfect!

NOTE: Since CBS cheaped out and killed their video after a period of time, I substituted the old CBS video with the YouTube version. Why CBS is being so bone-headed about this I will never know. NBC still has skits from the election still up and the folks over at Comedy Central has ALL of the episodes of South Park, Daily Show and Colbert up and embeddable. CBS is just being clueless by limiting their content’s exposure.

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