Visual Marketing Is Here – 5 Ways You Can Use It To Sell Your Ideas

For a long while I thought about marketing as wordsmithing – putting an abstract idea into a sentence, picking just the right words. But then things started to change – less text please, more graphics – we’d rather see it than read it. This year more than ever, visual content is going mainstream. Pinterest is using imagery as its main content, and within a few months hundreds of different websites have adopted a ‘Pinterest like’ design. Companies are switching to Tumblr instead of traditional blogs, with little text and lots of imagery. Facebook is making your profile more visual with the Timeline and the new image gallery, not to mention Instagram. There’s a change in the air and this time you don’t need to smell it – you can actually see it.

I have to admit that I started using visual marketing not because I identified a trend but because as an architect by trade that’s the way I think – visually. I founded two companies where visual marketing is used as a main marketing strategy. To make things more interesting, both companies are as far away from being visual as you can possibly get – a B2B app for engineers and a Cloud/Big Data tool for developers. Here are 5 ways you can use visuals to increase traffic, get more buzz and reach more users:

“Say Cheese” – How A Team Picture Helped Us Get Better Reviews On The App Store

After every update to the App Store/Google Play we used to send a newsletter to our user base, highlighting the newest features and asking to review the version. On one release, after sending the newsletter we got 3X more reviews than usual (although there was nothing extraordinary about that version). It took us a while to figure out the reason. For that release we placed a picture of the team – the engineers who worked on the app right next to the ‘review us’ link. While traditional marketing uses people’s faces for just about everything (why do you always see smiling faces next to cheese, cars or real estate?), startups tend to restrict their team pictures to the ‘about us’ page. People are immediately attracted to human faces and react to action, when they feel it is called for by real people.

Want People To Remember Your Product? Look Different

When introducing a new product to a market, one of the main challenges is to have users remember your product and easily tell it from others. You want potential users to remember reading about your product two months ago, or recall seeing it being used by a colleague. Using a memorable image or a unique visual language is a great way to do just that. MailChimp is bringing their brand to life using a humoristic visual of a mailman monkey. DropBox is using childlike illustrations as a visual language, and by doing so differentiate themselves from other storage services. Heroku is using Japanese elements from Origami to Japanese mythology, so people would remember and emotionally relate to their product (which BTW has nothing to do with Japan).

[DropBox and Heroku using memorable visual styles]

Reality Check – Show Your Product In A Real World Context

Look at a screenshot of your product. Now take a step backward and look at the full picture. What does the user look like? Is the product being used at the office, at home or outdoors? Is it daytime or nighttime? When the product is displayed in context users can understand much more within seconds. This method is also more credible, as once you see a product used in a real world scenario it makes it harder to doubt it. For example, on Square’s homepage the main content is an image of the product being used in a farmers’ market. This picture is the main message and they’re not backing it up with text. With just a glimpse users can understand how the product works, where you’d likely use it and eliminate the ‘who needs it’ reaction.

Having A Hard Time Getting To Bloggers? Great Visuals Might Help

There’s no magic trick when it comes to getting media coverage. A great product and a trendy market surely help, but so do beautiful and funny images. A common mistake is to send bloggers product screenshots. Most screenshots don’t capture the essence and magic of a product. In fact, you’re asking the reader to work pretty hard to understand your product by looking at a screenshot. When placed in a minimized/cut version it will most likely become a ‘generic’ screenshot, looking like any other app or website you’ve seen before. Here’s an example from our first product where we tried to capture the essence of a localization feature with visuals, and without screenshots -

“Ouch, That Looks Painful” – Explain The Pain Using A Visual Analogy

Explaining the pain is always a main challenge when introducing a new product – no one really wants to hear what’s wrong with the way they work now. You can probably recall numerous videos of new products where almost half of the video is dedicated to telling you how much your life is a mess. With our second company, Takipi, the pain we’re trying to present is complex software debugging – looking for the source of a problem in the code. We’re not telling developers what they do today is wrong or difficult, but rather use a fun analogy for debugging and the pain they’re experiencing every day.

Leap Motion : say good bye to keyboard and mouse

Facebook Adds Organ Donor Oand ption to Timeline

facebook on Tuesday unveiled an organ donor status option for Timeline, a move designed to help more than 114,000 people in the U.S. and millions more around the world who are waiting for a live-saving heart, kidney or liver transplant.
“Many of those people — an average of 18 people per day –- will die waiting, because there simply aren’t enough organ donors to meet the need,” Facebook notes in a blog entry explaining the move. “Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis.”
As the video above explains, designating yourself as an organ donor is easy. All you need to do is go to your Timeline, click on “Life Event” and then “Health & Wellness.” Then, you’ll see the option for “Organ Donor.” At that point, you can add when and where you registered and your personal story.
For those who aren’t organ donors, Facebook is providing a link to the appropriate registry. As with other Timeline entries, you can make your organ donor status public or private.

The move, which Facebook had alluded to on Monday, comes as the 901 million-strong social network has adopted more socially conscious policies of late, including an anti-bullying initiative and a referral system for friends expressing suicidal thoughts.
Update: In the video below, Zuckerberg explained his motivation for the program with Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts. Among the driving factors was Zuckerberg’s friendship with Steve Jobs, whose life was extended following a liver transplant.

Gideon Sundback's 132nd birthday: Google unzips the doodle

As you click on the doodle on the Google home page, honouring Gideon Sundback, the page unzips to reveal a search engine results page on the Swedish-born engineer.
Sundback's invention, the zipper, has been holding together much of the parts of our lives for about a century now.
Sundback (born April 24, 1880) had emigrated to the United States a job switch later, he started working for a company that designed and manufactured fasteners.

Sundback's design, that he finalised in 1913, had a zipper with interlocking oval scoops (earlier designs made use of hooks) that could be easily interlocked by moving a slider. The patent application for the new invention was filed in 1914 and issued in 1917.
At the time of its invention the zipper wasn't called a zipper and instead referred to as a 'separable fastener'. The word zipper was later made popular by the BF Goodrich Company, that used Sundback's 'separable fastener' for its products.
The zipper regularly finds a place in lists of inventions that shaped the world.
Tuesday's Google Gideon Sundback's 132nd birthday doodle gives the appearance of a jacket front that has the Google logo embroidered on it and a zipper runs through the middle of the Google logo, separating the second 'o'. To get to know what the doodle is all about users can either click on the logo or better, unzip to reveal what lies within.

Microsoft announces Windows 8 and offers up the consumer preview

Change has been brewing in Redmond for awhile, and today at Mobile World Congress Microsoft revealed Windows 8 in its consumer preview entirety. Here's a look at everything we now know about the new operating system.

After much ado, Microsoft finally officially announced Windows 8 at its Mobile World Congress press conference this morning. Windows 8 has become increasingly important to Microsoft, a sort of reperations to address the consumer complaints and flaws of past operating system releases. Now the consumer preview download is available, and you can expect to find a whole new beast in Windows 8.
The term the team tossed around most at the announcement was “fast and fluid” – two things even the most ardent Windows lovers might not be quick to call the platform. But Windows 8 is all about change and Microsoft is not shying away from making big moves here. President of Microsoft’s Windows Division, Steve Sinofsky, said Windows 8 represents a “generational change,” and that the last update of this significance was Windows 95 – which if you do your math correctly was 16 years ago.
As can be expected, Microsoft offered a thorough look at how Windows 8 will translate between screens, unifying its tablet, laptop, and desktop presence. This means touchscreen or not, consumers will finally be able to find the same experience regardless of device, a division that’s previously plagued Windows users and kept Microsoft from seriously competing in the new wave of electronics flooding the market. Now your usage will move from screen to screen with you so you have a sort of permanence across devices: Microsoft showed how bookmarks, pins, apps, everything moves with you from your phone to your tablet to your laptop to your desktop.
A big introduction and something that Microsoft has been mentioning for awhile is Charms. These are essentially icons that make it quicker and easier to get around Windows 8. Swiping from the right edge of a device, or moving your mouse to the upper right hand corner, reveals these Charms and their basic tasks – like Start, Share, Search, and Settings. Really, they’re just shortcuts,  but they are easily identified and quick to get to.
Windows 8 is also bringing apps to your devices via the Windows Store – all of which Microsoft announced will be free for the Consumer Preview. So download away.
In the meantime, a few other things worth mentioning from today’s press conference:

• Goodbye CTRL+ALT+DELETE. Windows 8 will get rid of the all too familiar login key code. Now you’ll just have to hit “Enter.”
• Windows to home. Hitting the Windows icon key will now take you to your home screen.
• Marrying inputs. Windows 8 is essentially Microsoft’s first attempts to address how we use multiple electronics. Thankfully it’s not entirely isolating traditionalists and going all touch. You can use touch, a mouse, and a keyboard all at once if you like, something demoed during the press conference.
• Universal search. Microsoft has showed us this before, most recently at CES. Anything you search for brings up everything about it: video, Web, document results – you name it.
• SoCs. Microsoft announced Windows 8 will run on four SoCs: the Nvidia Tegra 3, the Qualcomm Snapdragon, the Texas Instruments OMAP, and the Intel Cloverfield. All apps are chip independent, so they will work on ARM or x86 – developers can use the same code.
• Rebirth of the Surface? Microsoft also brought out an 82-inch, Gorilla Glass Microsoft Surface running Windows 7 and claimed that up to 10 people could use it at the same time.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview: What works and what doesn’t

Our unfiltered thoughts on the good and bad aspects of Microsoft's newly released Windows 8 Consumer Preview. It's looking better, but we've got a long way to go before this is ready for prime time.

It’s a dangerous prospect, given how many times it’s already crashed, but I’m typing this on a Windows 8 laptop. Yesterday, Microsoft released the next free public version of its new Windows 8 operating system. Though it’s called a “Consumer Preview,” I can’t help but note how much more like a beta it feels. It’s come a long way since the Developer Preview was released a few months ago. If you have a spare Intel-based laptop or tablet (we installed it on an HP Folio 13 Ultrabook), you can download and install it for free, but we must warn you: It’s still riddled with bugs and incomplete functionality. Then again, can we expect otherwise?

What is Windows 8?

Before I begin my diatribe on what is good and bad in the new pre-release of Windows 8, perhaps I should explain what it is. Windows 8 is Microsoft’s attempt to bring the many fantastic and sensible innovations that Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android, and Microsoft’s Windows Phone smartphones have brought to the world of computing. And it’s also an attempt to rework Windows as a “touch-first” operating system, meaning that its interface is simple and designed to be used in touch tablets similar to the iPad. Future laptops and PCs will likely have touchscreens as well. That’s just the direction things are headed. So Microsoft’s goal is to create one platform that can serve a keyboard and mouse just as well as a touchscreen.
It’s a difficult problem to solve and there is no easy solution, but Microsoft has taken a uniquely Microsoft approach. It is hoping to please everybody by including a near-complete version of Windows 7 and a brand-new interface based almost entirely on Windows Phone 7. The new Windows Phone “Metro-style” user interface has all of the best features of smartphones: apps that install (and uninstall) with ease, a more flexible homescreen, an app store, much simpler menus, an email app, a calendar app, other basic apps, and the ability to perform tasks while the computer is ‘sleeping.’ These are just a few benefits, of many. The only downside is that smartphones and tablets have not yet been home to the complex, professional applications and features that PCs are known for. It may be more fun to check your email in one of these interfaces, but when you want to use Photoshop, there’s just no way. This is why the Windows 7-like desktop is also present. Microsoft calls this mishmash “no compromises,” and it may be right, in a way, but it ain’t “no complaints.” Not just yet.
Below are the good and bad points of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

The Good

In a recent article, I laid out five features Microsoft should add to Windows 8 in the Consumer Preview. These included a proper app list, usable multitasking, a cleaner classic desktop, more flexible live tiles, and alternatives to the Windows 8 store. Surprisingly, many of these points were fixed. Perhaps my demands were too reasonable?

An Apps List: In the Developer Preview, there was no list of installed apps — something that’s present in Windows Phone. The Consumer Preview fixes this. A full list of apps is now accessible with a right click, and it is glorious. You can uninstall apps, pin them to the Start Screen, and perform a number of other actions from this screen. Easy peasie. Better still, Windows 7 apps and features are also in this list.
Right clicking: Speaking of right clicking, Microsoft has added it in. When you right click (or swipe down from the top or bottom of the screen on a tablet), menus will pop up on the top or bottom filled with app-specific options. This opens up a lot of possibilities for app creators.
Charms bar: Swiping in from the right side of the screen (or moving your mouse to the lower or upper right corners of the screen) brings up the improved charms bar, which has app-specific settings, PC settings like Wi-Fi and volume, a sharing button, and a devices button as well as a link to the Start Screen, if ya need it. The app-specific settings do seem a bit repetitive since the right-click menus should accomplish that, but oh well. The Charms bar actually works.
Start Screen customization: You can’t yet resize pinned Live Tiles, but you can now move them around with ease and create your own groups of apps. If you want to name those groups, just hit the zoom out button on the lower right corner of the screen and right click the group you wish to name. It’s all quite intuitive.

Windows 8 App Store: The app store is quite new, but it’s already working out well. Installing apps is a one-click process, as is removing them. The Windows Store will have paid content when W8 launches, but for now, you can download anything. There are about 100 apps — perhaps a few less. Windows 7 applications can also be downloaded and installed in much the same way that they have been installed since Windows 95. You can download Windows 7 applications from the Web, or install them in all the ways that you used to like CD, DVD, USB, or SD.
Multitasking: There are still problems with multitasking, but you can now grab more than just your previous app by swiping in from the left side of the screen (or moving your mouse to the upper left). A listof the last six or so open apps displays on the left, much like how Android tablets or Windows Phone displays previously used apps. Alt + Tab now works as well, so you can swap between apps that way as well.
Windows 7 is a bit better looking: The Windows 7 theme has been reworked ever-so-slightly to look more square.
Flow: This is an ugly little color-pipe-connection game, but dammit, it’s addictive. I’m on level 31 and I cannot stop playing. I’m a Flow master. Try it out.

what full Windows 8 Metro application

While users have been testing out Windows 8 Consumer Preview, XGMedia redesigned Skype to give future users an idea about what Windows 8 apps will look like, and the design principals behind Metro.

With the arrival of Windows Metro in Windows 8, developers must begin working around new design principals. But what will third-party Metro-style apps look like? XGMedia, coming off of the latest Microsoft conference to educate developers on the Metro-style design principals, took to redesigning Skype as a functional case study.
As Microsoft explicitly states in its developer’s guide, “Content is the heart of Metro-style apps, and putting content before chrome is fundamental to the design of Metro style apps. Everything else is accessory—or chrome—that helps present and enable interaction with the content.”
While some may argue that Windows Metro style isn’t the most desirable interface, Microsoft must be credited for forcing developers to design in a way that strips away the complexities that exist in navigating an application to view its content. Metro-style apps are in fact meant to be designed to be used with our fingers. You can even say that Metro seeks out the minimalist in developers.

Yahoo versus the hedge fund billionaire: A Silicon Valley soap opera

As Yahoo! struggles to stay relevant to a changing Internet, hedge-fund billionaire Daniel S. Loeb is vying to take control of the company.

Yahoo!’s homepage was, until recently, the most heavily trafficked website on the planet — although its titular portal, Yahoo.com, recently fell to number 4 — behind Google, Facebook, and YouTube. Yahoo!’s search engine — monstrously popular throughout much of the oughts — is still competing with Bing for the number 2 spot. And its news website is the most visited in the world, maintaining an average of 110,000,000 unique monthly users — compare that to the venerable New York Times, which got about 59,000,000 uniques in March. The steady decline of the once-pioneering tech company, however, can be attributed to many things, depending on whom you ask: A failure of leadership, improperly sizing up competition, lack of innovation — but the sudden announcement last week that Yahoo! had laid off 2,000 of its nearly 14,000 employees was an ominous signal that the Sunnyvale, CA company may have more problems than ways to solve them.
Enter Daniel S. Loeb. He’s a New York hedge-fund guy that couldn’t fit the mold of the cocky, 1 percent, Wall-Streeter any better if he jumped off the pages of a Bret Easton Ellis novel. He bid up the asking price for his company’s Madison Avenue office space so that he could claim the 4,000 foot terrace, “perfect for walking Biggie, his miniature pinscher,” according to a New York Magazine article.
Loeb started his hedge-fund, Third Point LLC, in 1995 with a little over $3 million from family and friends, and even though you’ve likely never heard his name before this moment, he has since turned that business into one of the most successful on Wall Street — he and his partners now manage nearly $9 billion. Among the various complicated financial instruments, bonds, shorts, and everything else that Loeb uses to continuously generate astonishing amounts of capital for himself and his clients, Third Point also happens to own 5.8 percent of Yahoo! stock, making it the single largest shareholder in the web company, with an estimated value of over a billion dollars.

CISPA is not the new SOPA

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is being compared to SOPA for the outrage it's generating online. But a few key differences between the fight against SOPA and the fight against CISPA should give any opponent pause.

 “the Internet has a new enemy,” and its name is CISPA, short for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011. And it’s true: this poorly crafted piece of “cybersecurity” legislation is irking concerned Web citizens the world over.

Using our Chartbeat analytics tool, I saw wave after wave of users flood into the article, from all parts of the globe. North Dakota, Sweden, Portugal, Mexico, New York — everybody, it seems, is interested and concerned about this bill that critics (rightly) believe could threaten the types of information we can access online, as well as our privacy and freedom of speech.

In less than 24 hours, a petition on Avaaz.org entitled, “Save the Internet from the US,” has racked up more than 300,000 signatures, asking the federal government to drop CISPA. By the time you read this article, that number will likely be well over half a million, or more. And the anti-CISPA movement already has its own hashtag, a sure sign of meme-ability, which is vital to any online campaign.

And yet, I can’t shake the feeling that the Internet community will lose this battle, that CISPA will pass — that there will be no blackout, this time around.

The first problem is the nature of the threat this bill poses: At its core, CISPA is about companies and the government sharing information. Now, to anyone concerned with privacy, this is a big issue, especially considering that CISPA places absolutely no explicit limits on the type of information that may be shared with the government, or between private companies, as long as it is somehow related to cyber threats. To me, and a lot of you, that’s terrifying.

For most people, however, sharing information about ourselves is just the way things work nowadays. We post every aspect of our lives online, from what we’re eating to our location to all the gritty details of last night. These companies already know all our secrets. In other words: privacy just ain’t what it used to be. And I just don’t see every Jack, Jill, and John getting their knickers in a knot over something that sounds like what they do on a regular basis — share information — or which many people believe is already happening: that Facebook, Google, Twitter, and every other Web company out there hands over our private information the second Uncle Sam looks at them funny. We are in Brave New World, not 1984.

Second — and this is the real problem — the CISPA opposition does not yet have the technology industry on its side. In fact, many of the most important players, the ones with the big scary guns, have already embedded themselves in the enemy’s camp. Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Intel, AT&T, Verizon — all of them (and many others) have already sent letters to congress voicingsupport for CISPA. And that should come as no surprise. Whereas SOPA and PIPA were bad for many companies that do business on the Internet, and burdened them with the unholy task of policing the Web (or facing repercussions if they did’t), this bill makes life easier for them; it removes regulations and the risk of getting sued for handing over our information to The Law. Not to mention doing what the bill says it’s going to do: protecting them from cyber threats.

In short: Supporting CISPA is in these companies’ interest. Supporting SOPA/PIPA was not.

This means that the Internet community is on its own. No technology company is going to buy a full-page ad in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal condemning CISPA by their own volition— unless we somehow force them to. And the only way to do that is to set our sights on them first, and on the actual bill second.

Unfortunately, such a scenario creates a political problem for the CISPA opposition. By scrambling to get the Internet and technology industries on the side of the Internet users, it creates an opportunity for the bill’s many supporters in Washington to push forward without the hassle of a concerted resistance.

Now, I could very well be wrong about this. I hope I’m wrong — I hope all of you reading this prove me wrong. I would be absolutely giddy if everything I’ve just said is rendered moot by the shock and awe with which the CISPA opposition fights against this bill. CISPA is a terrible piece of legislation, one that very well could result in the government blocking access to websites on the basis of copyright infringement, or sites like Wikileaks under the guise of national security. And just because I’m playing the defeatist doesn’t mean that the masses are incapable of rising up against CISPA, and bury it away in the catacombs of legislative hell — they, we, absolutely are. But until I see more than online petitions and Twitter hashtags, my bet is on the bad guys.

Wi-Fi is evolving, should you keep up? What 802.11ac means for you

Wi-Fi will be getting up to four times more bandwidth with 802.11ac, and gear supporting it will be hitting shelves in just a few months. Here's what you need to know before taking the plunge.

Wi-Fi has become an essential part of our lives. For most of us, it’s second nature to tap into wireless Internet from our homes and offices, and we’re all too familiar with the “where can I get free Wi-Fi without having to buy something?” dance when out and about. For both traditional notebook computers and mobile devices like phones, gaming devices, and and tablets, Wi-Fi has revolutionized the way we access the Internet. In most homes, it has even replaced the need for wired networks: Why bother with Ethernet, hubs, and complicated cabling when so much can be handled via Wi-Fi? Desktop computers, televisions, game consoles, set-top boxes — heck, even thermostats all routinely rely on Wi-Fi.

These days, most Wi-Fi is 802.11n, technology that started to roll out in 2007 and theoretically offers wireless throughput of up to 300 megabits per second per stream. However, Wi-Fi is about to get an upgrade in the form of 802.11ac, which will not only offer a boost in bandwidth (up to 433 or 867 megabits per second per stream, depending on channel width) but should offer more reliable connections.

Even though the 802.11ac standard isn’t set to be finalized until 2013, 802.11ac gear should start to appear on shelves in the next few months. What are the advantages? Should you jump on board right away, or wait until the technology matures?

Wait — the standard isn’t even done?

The Wi-Fi standards process is a little counter-intuitive. The complete specification for 802.11ac, the next generation of Wi-Fi, isn’t likely to be completely defined until late in 2013. The process is largely controlled by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a trade consortium that owns the Wi-Fi trademark. However, at this January’s CES trade show in Las Vegas, device makers were already showing off products based on the technology, and the first devices claiming to support 802.11ac will be on same by mid-year.

Something similar happened with 802.11n Wi-Fi. Device makers were eager to jump on the faster Wi-Fi technology, so they began building so-called “draft N” hardware based on draft versions of the 802.11n specification, essentially gambling that the final version of the specification would not be so different that their early products would be incompatible. Draft-N hardware hit the market in 2007, and the Wi-Fi Alliance started certifying devices compatible based on the second draft of the spec. However, the final 802.11n spec wasn’t published until October 2009, by which point 802.11n devices had been on the market for almost two years. Device makers were in a rock and a hard place: Either jump the gun on the spec and risk building hardware incompatible with the final technology, or wait and be locked out of a potentially very lucrative market. After all, everybody wanted faster, more-reliable Wi-Fi.

The same thing is happening with 802.11ac. Work on the specification has already been underway for years, and the Initial Technical Specification (draft 0.1!) was published over a year ago. In the last few months, Quantenna, Redpine, and Broadcom have all announced 802.11ac technology targeting everything from base stations to smartphones. Even though the standard likely won’t be finalized until the end of 2013, device makers are already rushing to get their 802.11ac to market — they don’t want to be left behind.

What is 802.11ac?

802.11ac Wi-Fi promises to be an improvement on the same scale as the transition from 802.11g to today’s nearly ubiquitous 802.11n Wi-Fi. In very loose terms, 802.11ac should offer about four times the bandwidth of todays’ 802.11n Wi-Fi. That means faster downloads, and that could translate directly to better use of battery power, since devices’ Wi-Fi radios will be able to process more data in less time.

Folks who have embraced 802.11n Wi-Fi won’t have to throw anything away: 802.11ac is backward compatible with 802.11n. Those relying on 802.11n won’t see any improvements, but bringing 802.11ac devices or base stations into the mix won’t be disruptive.

Looking a little bit deeper, 802.11ac Wi-Fi offers some major improvements over 802.11n that will help networks support a larger number of high-bandwidth devices as well as make connections more reliable.

Less interference — 802.11n (and all earlier Wi-Fi standards) operate in the unlicensed 2.4GHz frequency band, which is famously shared by everything from cordless phones to Bluetooth devices to baby monitors to microwave ovens. Basically, tons of things can interfere with today’s Wi-Fi, and anyone who has tried to get a reliable Wi-Fi connection in a location filled with 2.4GHz devices knows how frustrating that can be. 802.11ac shifts Wi-Fi up to to the 5GHz band, away from common forms of interference. Thus, 802.11ac connections should be more reliable, particularly in homes, offices, and other environments that use other forms of wireless technology. Furthermore, in many cases the 5GHz band offers better penetration of ceilings and walls, enabling better reception in buildings.

Shifting to the 5GHz band doesn’t mean 802.11ac will be magically immune to interference. Some cordless phones and things like WHDI wireless high-def video also run in the 5GHz band, and existing dual-band Wi-Fi solutions are already operating there. (Normally, this is to separate 802.11n traffic from slowpokes running 802.11g or earlier — “pure” 802.11n networks can stay out of the 2.4GHz space entirely.) The 5GHz band is currently much less crowded than the 2.4 Ghz band, meaning 802.11ac will be more reliable than Wi-Fi solutions that have to rely on 2.4 GHz channels.

More speed — Existing 802.11n Wi-Fi has a maximum channel width of 40MHz (actually, two 20MHz channels). 802.11ac can double or even quadruple that to 80MHz or 160MHz per channel, thanks to operating entirely in the 5GHz band. In the 2.4GHz band, a 40MHz channel consumes more than 80 percent of the unlicensed band, which just isn’t practical in many locations. Quite a lot more frequency bandwidth is available up in the 5 GHz band, and 802.11ac leverages it.

A single 80MHz channel running 802.11ac can theoretically handle up to 433Mbps — that’s already faster than a typical 802.11n configuration. However, just like 802.11n, both access points and devices can theoretically pack multiple antennas, giving them more connections and more throughput. As you might expect, a two-antenna system running 80MHz channels offers double the theoretical bandwidth of a one-antenna system, so 867 Mbps. Bump that up to four antennas and you’re up to 1.73Gbps. Eight antennas? In theory, you’re up to 3.47Gbps — but, of course, most people aren’t going to have to devices with eight antennas, each talking communicating with each other exclusively. However, these figures only account for 80MHz channels: If the devices support the optional 160 MHz channels, you can double these theoretical bandwidth figures again. So, a single 160MHz channel running 802.11ac should peak at 867Mbps. That’s in the same category as wired gigabit (1000Base-T) Ethernet. A dual antenna system with 160MHz channels could double that: 1.73 Gbps.

Of course, reality won’t usually be so snappy. Those figures reflect optimum conditions and assume just a single pair of Wi-Fi devices. Reality is rarely so neat. Nonetheless, 802.11ac technology should be a significant improvement over 802.11n in most situations.

Improved stream management — On the geekiest end of the spectrum, 802.11ac also builds on technologies introduced with 802.11n to better manage data streams. Each 802.11ac device (regardless of the number of antennas) will be able to transmit or received independent data streams at the same time. Furthermore, those streams will be separated spatially, rather than by frequency. Spacial stream resolution is kind of science-fictional stuff, and is similar to MIMO technologies in 802.11n: In a nutshell, devices have smart antennas that enable them to determine the approximate locations of devices in an area, and tailor their transmission toward those devices using phased array technologies — so, instead of broadcasting all data to everything in range, devices are able to target their transmissions, significantly improving efficiency and performance while reducing interference.

Does faster Wi-Fi mean faster Internet?

So 802.11ac means Wi-Fi devices will have faster Internet, right? Well, not necessarily — and for most home users, the answer is probably “no.”

Although 802.11ac Wi-Fi may be able to tick along at speeds approaching (or in excess) of gigabit Ethernet, most users’ home Internet connections don’t run at anywhere near that capacity. Even top-tier home Internet services like Verizon FiOS and Comcast can deliver up to 100Mbps or 150Mbps in bandwidth. That’s about one fifth to one tenth of the bandwidth 802.11ac can handle. In other words, even the fastest home broadband connections will be a bottleneck to an 802.11ac network. Data from the Internet isn’t going to reach 802.11ac Wi-Fi devices appreciably faster than it reaches 802.11n (or even 802.11g) devices.

Of course, most Americans with home broadband operate at considerably slower speeds: Akamai’s most recent State of the Internet report (for the third quarter of 2011) found the average broadband connection speed in the United States was 6.14Mbps. The figure for home users would be even lower, since Akamai’s average includes bandwidth-endowed universities, government agencies, and corporations.

However, 802.11ac does mean users will be able to push data around their home networks faster — particularly if (any) wired portions of that network use gigabit Ethernet. That means arduous tasks like backing up your entire media collection will take substantially less time; it also means that synchronizing data, offloading photos and videos from mobile devices to a computer, and even streaming video to set-top boxes and game consoles will be much smoother, and more of that activity can happen at the same time without stutters or hiccups.

For businesses, schools, and organizations that have gone to the trouble to install high-capacity networks and major Internet bandwidth at their sites, 802.11ac technology could very well yield a significant improvement in overall Internet performance.

Should you buy 802.11ac?

Since most everyday technology users probably aren’t going to see tremendous immediate benefits from 802.11ac technology, I recommend holding off. As users replace computers, smartphones, tablets, and other Wi-Fi devices, those will gradually come with 802.11ac built-in, just as devices come with 802.11n Wi-Fi as standard tech now. As those devices multiply, there may come an obvious point where upgrading base stations or routers to 802.11ac makes sense. For users already on 802.11n networks, that day may never come: Their new devices with 802.11ac Wi-Fi may spend their entire useful lives operating on 802.11n networks.

For folks who still haven’t upgraded their home networks to 802.11n — we know you’re out there! — now might be a good time to pick up a dual-mode 802.11n router. You’ll have backward compatibility with existing 802.11b/g devices, but be able to support 802.11n and (when they come out) 802.11ac devices.

People building new networks — whether for homes or business — should consider going with 802.11ac as long as they don’t need to support pre-N devices. You may be able to “future-proof” your network well into the future — it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect a 802.11ac network to serve your Wi-Fi needs adequately through 2017. However, until the standard is finalized, there’s always the chance your gear may be left behind — and no guarantee the manufacturer will be able to upgrade it to support the final standard. So choose your gear carefully, and make sure manufacturers are wiling to update their gear, if necessary, to match the final 802.11ac standard.

Is Spotify a viable app platform? Brings 100,000 users to Songkick

Songkick says Spotify's app platform has helped it gain 100,000 users in the past three months.

In late November 2011, Spotify unveiled its new app platform. Now, any Spotify user can install apps that enhance their music experience in different ways. Is it working? Well, we know that 100,000 people are using it. Songkick announced on its blog that Spotify has helped his service gain more than 100,000 users in the past three months. 

“We’re both focused on changing the music industry for the better,” CEO Ian Hogarth told Forbes. “Whenever you launch something, it’s always a question of whether it’s going to catch … and this is really promising.”

Songkick is the only concert-finding service currently available on Spotify and was available at the launch of the company’s platform. It scans users playlists and compiles a calendar of possible concerts they could attend in their area. Other notable apps at launch included Billboard, Last.fm, TuneWiki (provides lyrics), Rolling Stone, Soundrop, and others. 

Of course, Spotify’s platform is a bit of a chain itself. The idea was likely inspired by Facebook’s own incorporating of Spotify and other music services into its platform, which helped the music streaming company become a much more visible name in the United States, while also helping Facebook earn some music cred. Spotify hopes it will have a symbiotic relationship with its own app providers. Once it gets enough subscribers, maybe Songkick can open up its own platform and give some other service 10,000 new users, and so on. 

Not everyone is happy with the Swedish start up. The Black Keys were very vocal about their distaste for the service, which they say doesn’t give nearly enough money to artists and record labels. Their anger was also fueled by the fact that Napster co-founder Sean Parker is on the Spotify board.