Alec Saunders SquawkBox

Last Wednesday morning, as guests of Waterloo entrepreneur Randall Howard, Howard and myself had the opportunity to meet Max Dean, the creator of the Robotic Chair.  Dean's Robotic Chair is on display at the Kitchener-Waterloo Children's Museum. 

Performance art or sculpture, the Robotic Chair really defies categorization.  At first glance, it appears to be an ordinary chair sitting in the middle of a room. Then, suddenly, it simply falls apart.  All the pieces come crashing to the floor with a deafening clatter.  A short while later, the seat wakes up and begins looking for the rest of the pieces of the chair in an attempt to reassemble itself.

It's fascinating and fun to watch.  Enjoy the video.

Shot on the Nokia N81, and edited with Windows Movie Maker in Windows Vista.

Facebook has given marketers an powerful new tool for segmenting audience.  It's called Facebook Ads.  Once the "Create Ad" button has been pushed, potential advertisers can slice and dice audience any way they like.  As an advertisers tool it's fabulous.  As a market research tool, it's a gold mine. 

Paul Francis, author of Travels With My Overnight Bag, segmented Facebook users by male / female and country a couple of days ago.  TechCrunch picked this up, proclaiming that 2/3 of Facebook users are female.  However, a number of individuals noted that some Facebook users leave gender unspecified on the profile.  Francis redid his table to show the data more accurately.

I had noted something similar in the process of buying advertising for our 8G iPod promotion (still on, if you'd like enter) over the last week.  In fact, I thought I'd seen a pronounced change as age increases.  As you can see from the table below, it turns out that this is not only true, but a substantial number of older Facebook users decline to specify gender.

Overall, 13% of American and 20% of Canadian Facebook users don't provide gender data.  However, among users aged 25 and up, that number rises substantially.  And of course, there's no clue as to the reason why these older Facebook users might decline to provide gender data. 

Do men decline to give gender information more often than women?  How many of these individuals who have declined to give gender information are playing a role - men posing as women or vice versa?  In Francis' revised table, 50% of Turks decline to give gender information.  Is that because Facebook represents a way for men and women to meet virtually outside the confines of strict Islam?  Who really knows?  All that is clear is that when such a substantial number of individuals decline to give gender information, there's reasonable doubt associated with any claim that says that 2/3 of individuals are one sex or another. 

Bell Canada has some life in it yet.  The Toronto Star reports this morning that, in a dramatic move for the Canadian market, Bell will start offering unlimited data plans for the HTC Touch for just $7/month.  Rather than offer this plan to everyone, Bell is restricting it to consumers only. Business users still get socked for big bucks on devices like BlackBerry:

While Bell's $7 unlimited plan runs the risk of upsetting its subscribers who use competing devices such as the BlackBerry, which don't come with unlimited data options, [Bell VP] Bazerghi stressed that the lack of a full keyboard means the HTC Touch will hold little appeal for email-crazed business-types.

I guess the tean at RIM needs to pay a visit to those crazy Bellheads and let them know, again, that they're in the consumer space now with products like Pearl and Curve.

Over to you, Mr. Rogers.

For the last few days I've been carrying Nokia's answer to iPhone with me — the 8G N81 entertainment phone.  Piano black with brushed aluminum, and a slick slider, it feels solid and comfortable in the hand.  Moreover, it's stuffed with finishing touches like the individual buttons that illuminate on demand for particular applications.  The N81 is a gorgeous device. 

Others have compared this device to the N95, but really it's a successor product to the N91 music phone.  The N91 used a 4G hard disk to store the music; the N81 has 8G of solid state storage.  Like the N91, this phone hides the numeric keypad under the slider.  The slider itself has all of the music controls exposed on the outside, which makes it easy to browse, select and play music.

The media applications are activated via a brushed aluminum button on the front of the phone.  In a nod to Apple, the ring around the D button is also touch sensitive.  When using the media applications, this capability is activated, allowing you to brush your finger around the ring to make selections.  It's cool, but not as well implemented as the iPod.

Like most recent N-series phones, the N81 also sports WiFi.  Early indications are that it may be more power efficient than prior N-series phones, though.  In addition, although Truphone will tell you that their Series 60 client software isn't certified for the N81, it runs just fine.  Within a few minutes of installing it, I was making and receiving calls over the Truphone network.

The N81 also sports a game pad interface, for use with a suite of games that Nokia is planning to market under the nGage brand.  I found the pad a little stiff. Not being a hard core gamer, I don't know if this would be a problem or not.  The nGage site itself is not yet online, however Nokia is promising early December.

Like the nGage site, the Nokia music store isn't online yet either, except in the UK.  However, the music experience is much cleaner than previous Nokia phones. Synchronizing music with Windows Media was a breeze.  In 90 minutes I downloaded 7 gigabytes of music to the device without any hiccups.  The sound quality is excellent, even with the supplied earbuds.  Nokia also has bluetooth stereo headphones available for those who want to be unplugged.

The N81 is $629, and available direct from Nokia.

No doubt this is a beautiful phone.  However, unless you're a hardcore music or gaming fan, you may find that the 8G N95 is more to your liking.  The N95 sports a 5 megapixel camera as compared to the lowly 2 megapixel camera on the N81.  In addition, the N95 has a built-in GPS, and a pretty good media player.  So, are the gaming and music features of the N81 enough to win customers over?  Only you can tell.  But whether you choose the N95 or the N81, they're both amazing phones.

Stuart Henshall surfaced a couple of links this morning showing that VoIP apps are failing on Facebook.  I'm not sure how iotum ended up on that list, since we're not actually a VoIP app, but you know Stuart's absolutely right and the outcome was predictable.  The vast majority of VoIP applications on Facebook are simple click-to-call minute stealers. The vast majority of Facebook users are in the US and Canada, where per minute calling costs are approaching an all-time low.  The majority of Facebook users are students — mobile phone users — as well.  In fact, 27% of Facebook users are users of Facebook mobile. So it's not really a surprise that minute stealers are having a tough time. In fact, I'll go further — anybody who believes that users will really fire up a PC and log into Facebook to make a call when you can just pick up the phone and call for pennies, is deluding themselves.

There are communications applications on Facebook, however, which are succeeding.  Value added applications, in particular, are carving out a niche.  These are the applications that the Voice 2.0 Manifesto predicted would be the successors to the minute stealers.  The conference calling and anonymous calling services, for instance.

Stuart's data was a little bit out of date, relying as it did on a month old post from The Latest Geek Stuff.  Here's an up to date list of current communications applications and usage on Facebook, from Appsoholic.

For what it's worth, our FREE Conference Calling application is hitting its stride as the viral effect kicks in.  We're currently adding over 2,500 new installations per day.  As of a few hours ago, we passed 20,000 installations.  And, we moved into the number three spot on this list today, passing SkypeMe.