New York City, Thursday, June 4th 2009 I checked in to Saigon Grill with several other folks before heading over to Webster Hall, the site of my second check-in and watched a live taping of Diggnation.

I woke up late the next morning for a flight to southern California out of JFK, the site of my 4th check-in. There was a 5th at LAX and a 6th at the Canary Hotel in Santa Barbara. This pattern of arriving and checking in continued until today. 467 check-ins  and 43 mayorships later and I’m calling it quits. Well, maybe.

I have been wondering a lot lately why I bother checking in to these places. Why do I feel compelled to announce my presence or stake my claim of a venue that I’m not really mayor of?

I have spent countless hours updating, merging and adding venues but if asked “Why?” I probably wouldn’t have an answer that made any sense.

“Because I want to make sure there aren’t two of the same Ralph’s Pizza’s on Carrillo St - on my phone-in case someone else wants to announce they’re here-to someone who isn’t here-and become mayor-of the pizza place.” Huh?

I dont have some amazing insight here so if you’re waiting for it I hope you aren’t disappointed. I just have unanswered questions. Well, one, really. Why? Why do I check-in. Why do I care if I’m the mayor. Why do I care if someone goes to that place more than me?

After all my check-ins and time spent on Foursquare I find that I have gotten NOTHING in return. It has never yielded free food or drink. Never yielded a serendipitous rendezvous that led to something great. It has led to an unbalanced relationship. I give and give and give and get nothing.

We expect this balance in everything we do. Go to work, get paid and or satisfaction from performing a task. We give something of ourselves in our relationships hoping for reciprocation. If you’re in a one sided relationship with someone the chances are it won’t last long. We have all been there.

The point I’m trying to make is that I don’t feel like I’m getting ANYTHING AT ALL out of Foursquare. It’s a one sided relationship where I am tired of giving. It’s a game with no winners. It doesn’t even need to be played on the same field. In football, 22 men play on the same field in an effort to score points and win at the end of 4 quarters.

Foursquare lets me check into a venue from my bathroom if I wanted to. I could mayor every joint in town from my toilet and so the fact that people can so easily game the system ruins the gaming aspect for me.

For some a game is enough value but for me I require more for my time and so what I get out of it needs to be a little more substantial. I like Foursquare and respect the team behind it. I’m just struggling to find something I value these days. Maybe I have grown out of it.

I wonder how many others feel like me? If there are many is it only a matter of time before there is an exodus? I think that Foursquare needs to get venues on board to survive. I am curious how they intend to do it. Early on I see that by being 1 of 4 coffee shops on the block that offer a free latte to the Foursquare Mayor will draw some traffic but I don’t see how that works when all shops offer it.

So it seems that Foursquare will need many but not all venues. Many venues participating in some way makes it attractive to users but too many makes it unattractive to venues.

So with that said I am going to give Foursquare until after SXSW to show me something in return or I’ll be checking out for good.

Stay tuned, Mom…

After reading the initial reviews and insights I’m less than excited about the iPad. I own an iPod Nano, 2 iPhones, a Macbook and so I qualify as a mac user.

I think the iPad looks cool but if it doesn’t offer me more than what I have today why should I buy it?

No (real) GPS.

No USB support the way we know and love.

No in-browser flash support

No camera.

No dragon drop file management.

No HDMI out.

No 1080p.

No SD slot.

It has ADHD (No multitasking).

How do you make breakfast beter? Add bacon. Apple needs to use that same recipe for success.

Make it irresistable. Make it tempting.

iPad? iPass this time around.

AT&T is in a great position BECAUSE their network is perceived as unreliable. It’s not that they are on undesirable phones or their customer service is horrible as per a recent study done by the Noit-Mussa Group. It’s easier to fix a network than corporate culture or public sentiment based upon bad customer service experiences.

If AT&T was smart and really wanted to make an impact with their newly announced $2 Billion network upgrade they would put 100 towers in Austin, Texas for SXSW. Then they’d announce their new campaign “No Call Left Behind”.

AT&T would then magically begin monitoring dropped call rates on the networks present. Since most of the tech world and “now web” media will either be at  or monitoring SXSW from afar behind a wall of LCD monitors in their Dr. No-esque lairs, AT&T could leverage the web coverage and boast about their cell coverage, hopefully, announcing that the No Call Left Behind Act was a huge success. Finally Apple should help in this effort because the better the perception of AT&T the fewer excuses people have to not buy an iPad.

As we begin to say goodbye to 2009 it seems every other tweet and blog post is someone offering their unsolicited predictions for 2010.

As if everyone on the web has become the Great Karnak.

Cloud computing, Internet TV and Location based apps are poised to go main stream say several “Karnakians”.

I say, no shit. Many of the predictions being made are simply picking each horse on the track and saying that they will cross the finish line in 2010. Most if not all predictions for 2010 are for technology that has been busy gaining traction of the last couple of years and are showing that they are poised to blow up so it’s not really a prediction to say that Foursquare and Gowalla will be big.

I say, no shit. They are already big. Both are funded which means many people smarter than you or I did their homework on location based apps and saw enough potential to sink their kids’ Xmas present money into them in a down economy. Yeah I’d bet on that horse too if someone with experience had that much faith in it.

Cloud computing? No shit. 

You use the cloud everyday whether you know it or not. Ever use Google, Yahoo, Salesforce, or Amazon? Here’s a link. Get your learn on.

Mobile Payments, Social Gaming and Augmented Reality. No, shit shit & shit!

This all exists and is popular. I think if you are going to make “predictions” they should be for things that don’t yet exists, have traction / funding and or competition that validates the existence.

Guessing whether or not something that is or is likely to be successful isn’t predicting. It’s guessing. The only people that should be guessing but saying they are predicting are weathermen.

You want to give Miss Cleo a run for her money and go out on a limb?

What’s the name of Apple’s tablet?

Will Verizon get the iPhone?

Will Jersey Shore get a season 2?

Tell me when I’m getting my hover board!

Since it’s launch in 2007 over 33 million iPhones have been sold worldwide. Hoards of patrons commandeer the walk ways outside of Apples’ museum-like stores, vying to be the first to get their hands on what Time magazine named “The Invention of the Year” in 2007.

Since then, despite Apple maintaining control of the development 100k apps have been created for iPhone users. A virtual limitless array of helpful tools and some with not so obvious uses have come from this gold rush.

Whether a user, “fanboy” or hater it’s hard to argue the impact that the iPhone has had on the handheld market.

With all that said the iPhone wasn’t the first smart phone and it isn’t the newest either.

Since its inception there have been numerous iPhone “killers”. The David that would inevitably slay Apple’s Goliath.

The Android G1, Palm Pre and Blackberry Storm seemingly had the upper hand in many cases but it seems that the wars waged have been lackluster. But why? These “Davids” have touch screens, apps, better cameras and even real keyboards. Everything the iPhone has and is lacking. How has Apple been able to sell 3 versions of the same device in numbers that far outweigh the competition?

Last week the latest iPhone ‘killer” hit the market and shows great promise. It’s sales in the first 2 weeks (250k) rival those of the iPhones first 2 months (270k).

I have been asking my Twitter peeps why the Droid is better than the iPhone. I keep seeing the latest news, blog posts and hyped up comments like “Droid FTW!” but have no real feedback that makes sense.

People keep citing the “real keyboard”. First of all, a real keyboard is about 10 inches wide and doesn’t require hands the size of tree-dwelling cookie chefs to type comfortably.

Then I was told that it has a 5 megapixel camera. Yes, very true but good luck getting a clear shot. Early reports are in and the camera is slow to fire and processes blurry. This was demonstrated live on Attack of the Show and tested by yours truly.

Turn-by-turn navigation is pretty rad and so is this walking/ transport navi I keep reading about. This is the type of innovation I like to see. Applications that prove useful in real life. Directions and street views via Google maps. Analog interaction via digital means. However, these are things that I either can do now with my iPhone or could do next week or month as soon as an app is created.

So I pose the question again. What can the Droid do that the iPhone can’t?

Sure it runs stuff in the background but as soon as I launch my iPhone apps they update so a saving of a couple seconds isn’t enough to get me to switch. What about battery life? Same. Cost? Same.

Many people responded to my question citing the service. “At&T sucks!” is a popular reply and it’s this popular response that tells me everything I need to know.

The Droid is NOT better than the iPhone. Just like the Pre is not better than the Droid. The Pre has everything the Droid has and arguably a much better OS, multi-touch and sweet charging thingy. When I asked why the Droid was better than the Pre the response was surprisingly not feature based but again service based. “Verizon is better than Sprint”. Sounds a lot like “AT&T sucks”

This leads me to the conclusion that the Droid is not the iPhone killer. AT&T is. Apple is sleeping with the enemy.

It’s monogamous relationship with AT&T is causing a shift. If Apple was able to remove “AT&T sucks!” from the anti-fanboy fanboy’s arguments then the conversation would be reduced to a semantic argument over who has more apps. Droid in this case with 12k apps loses to iPhone’s 100k, for now. With a mere 320 apps, Pre loses to the Droid.

It could be said that Droid users are Google fanboys and that being anti-Apple is the new black.

If you ask me Palm needs to open their eyes and realize they are sitting on a gold mine and open up development and hire some kick-ass ad agency to relaunch the Pre although it’s likely too late.

I roll with a 1G iPhone. I don’t have 3G, though have used one, but don’t feel I need it. I use about 5 apps any given day and have about 20 downloaded.

I’m not sure that being able to cite quantity over quality is the best method for app development but I guest quantity boils down to quality. Like cooking with wine.

For me this is not the Droid I’m looking for. It’s a great step in the right direction and 3.0 will undoubtedly be better. Just remember that as long as we have several companies dueling for our ducats we as consumers win.

The Droid’s success will likely be followed by AT&T improving service or Apple expanding with another carrier. Good for Droid and good for iPhone users.

It’s when we all become fanboys that we lose and give the companies what they want most which is blind devotion. It’s cheap to maintain and very profitable. How many iPods have you owned? They all play the same music.