Chippy's Hiblue Lab

Like the books says, cross the chasm to a small island and build out from there. Or something like that anyway. [Ref: Crossing the Chasm]

I don’t know if many people out there are considering starting a new blog these days but there’s one thing for sure, the only way to do it organically is to focus on a tiny niche and build out from there. Some of you might have noticed my experiments with product blogs recently. I did the MyOmniaPro blog and now I’m doing the XperiaX10 blog. I definitely learnt a lot from the two experiences and see an advantage now in running multiple smaller blogs rather than one big one. The reasons?

• Focused community. All the readers are there for one reason. It build quickly.
• Easier SEO. Naming the blog myomniapro.com brought it to the top of a Google search for Omnia Pro within about three months. I’m currently testing with a sub-domain xperiaX10.carrypad.com in the hope that I get good keyword SEO from the domain name but also add to the value of Carrypad.com which I also own. If that works, I might do further sub-blogs.
• Choose something you love, buy it, blog it. It’s so much fun to learn, to share and to get feedback on something you own.
• Focused advertising. Through Amazon you can place highly targeted ads meaning better chance of clickthrough and conversion. Google is also able to determine the subject of your blog very easily.
• Product-focused forums work well. Much better than forums that focus on a sector.
• When the product dies, move on. If you don’t like the product, be honest, sell it and put the blog on ice. Move on to a new topic.
• You’re not tied to a sector.
• It’s easier to become an expert on a device than on a sector.

One disadvantage is management and time-splicing between multiple blogs.

WordPress MU helps to set sub-blogs up super quickly though so that shouldn’t be a problem. As far as time-splicing goes, focus on what you love but pay attention to stats. If you’re in it for the money, you need to attend to the things that are popular.

Hope those thoughts help you with your blogging plans. I’m off now to post my first impressions of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 – A device I’m really enjoying.

Oh, and by the way, I’m still running two big blogs because they’ve already got traction. I have no plans to spit them up as that would be too much of a risk.

Tags: blogging, niche, seo

In my previous post I pondered over the idea that the Satio might be my next mobile phone. Don’t worry; I’m over it now!

It turns out that the Satio doesn’t run OVI maps (out of the box,) isn’t as fast as the Cortex A8 CPU might have you believe and with a waiting line of Sony Ericsson phones expected, I really don’t see it getting the long term attention it needs from it’s creators.

All that remains now is to wait for Mobile World Congress and if I don’t see anything there, the N82 will likely be my phone for the next year. It’s been good from day 1 and with Gravity, Opera Mobile and Ovi Maps to make it even better, why shouldn’t it be the perfect buddy for another 12 months?

Supplementing the N82 with a MID like the UMID BZ is working out pretty well and we’ve got the Viliv N5 and Dell Mini 5 to look forward to too!

Tags: n82, smartphone

I’m pretty much locked-in when it comes to mobile phone choices. 2 years ago I bought a Nokia N82 and the camera on that is so good that even today I’m having trouble finding an upgrade. I’m so used to taking good quality evening, home and low-light snaps with it that I rarely have any other camera with me. To me, camera, internet and mobile phone go together like bread and butter and if you’ve tasted Xenon flash before, there’s no going back. (It’s not just brightness BTW, the short period of flash helps to freeze movement and results in far sharper low-light captures of people and other moving objects.)

I took a brief look at the Sony Ericsson Satio a while back but it didn’t really register in my ‘want’ list because I didnt know about the CPU. When I found out that it’s got the same CPU in as the iPhone 3GS (AAS Review) I started to get interested again. Today I checked it out in the T-Mobile shop here in Bonn and sure enough, it’s got a lot of potential. The touchscreen is resistive but, like the Nokia N900, gives good haptic-assisted response. The slider-protected (essential) camera is 12MP and the pre-focus is quick and accurate. The only thing I found missing on the camera side (in my 10 minute test) was the ability to force the flash on (for fill-in.)

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Tags: satio, smartphone, sony

I’m not a big believer in convergence. It would be nice but on the whole, it’s a stupid dream. Here are five reasons why it won’t happen. You won’t be buying totally converged smartphones.

Marketing – Does anyone think that marketing teams will let this happen? What are the chances of the marketing team saying this to the board: “We have an idea. Lets stop separate MP3 and digicam sales and just focus on selling the converged device. It’s cheaper for the consumer.”

Buying cycle – The chances are that you’ve just bought one of the devices that your converged device includes. 1) Buying something you’ve already got doesn’t feel good. 2) The chances are that the dedicated device is better.

Pricing – The price of the separate items will drop to the point where you can afford to buy a PMP, MP3, EReader. In many cases the price drops to the point where they can be given as gifts.

Physics – There are physical reasons why everything won’t converge onto a smartphone. It doesn’t take much thought to see that.

Advancing Tech – Developing a converged device requires expertise, industry partners and speed. If you don’t get that converged device to market before the next wave of technology comes along then you’re already behind the curve on launch day.  Developers of dedicated devices will always be ahead of the curve because they have a more efficient focus.

A slim opportunity

There is an opportunity for a large, dynamic, dedicated smartphone manufacturer to create a single device that 1) does not cut across products that exist in their portfolio 2)  is more usable than dedicated devices at the leading edge of technology 3) to reach a big enough scale that the prices can be brought down to ‘no-brainer’ levels.

There aren’t many companies out there that could do this but Nokia is one example. Apple, Samsung, Sony and similar multi-product companies would have problems with this strategy.

Tags: convergence, smartphone