Proper Mobile Etiquette And Holidays

I started this blog just after Thanksgiving but I never finished and Christmas is only days away. And yeah, I'm still paying for eating my customary two dinners-weekend. Yeah, I am one of the fortunate ones. But see, I had dinner with a lot of folks not of the iPod or iPhone generation and they're frankly not used to kids taking out their cameras to take quick photos or videos or tweet or update their Facebook status on what kind of gravy they were having.

So when there was interesting conversations, I was pretty engaged. Two weeks ago, I met a new friend from a family acquaintance who works at Facebook. That was interesting. But when the conversation ended up being about politics in the old country, I got bored rather quickly.

I was tempted to pull out my iPod touch and play with my games. That was before I got my iSpot. Now, I am fully capable of surfing the Internet for intervals of four-hours (the life of the battery).

Still, more options for my mobile device does not make it okay to use during dinner and gatherings. So what is the proper etiquette?

Last Thursday, I went on a late dinner-and-snack run with some college and Internet friends. The last one of the year. There were ten of us. I was the only one with the iPod touch while everyone else had an iPhone. One other did not.

Everyone, except the one who had a regular LG flip phone, was constantly checking Yelp, checking into Places and Foursquare, and looking up the latest sports score. I guess in that setting, it was okay.

But dinner with aunts, uncles, and grandparents who you rarely see probably isn't the place to be seeing what your friends are doing on Facebook or what Twitter is feeding you.

So, we've got Christmas and New Year left. I'm guess Christmas will be spent with families while New Year with the iPhone crowd. Pick wisely. You only have to see some folks a few times a year and it might be wise to spend it, for better or worse, focused on them.

Mobile Takeovers: What's Next? Geolocation Companies

Google's got billions in cash. So does Microsoft. Outside of stock buybacks and dividends, the these huge piles of cash simply sit in banks and short-term investments. Or, they can be used for buyouts of tech startups in an attempt of one-upsmanship among the tech giants.

A high profile battle in this version of corporate takeover (of startups) is the Apple-Google land grab of Admob by Google for a dirty cheap $750 million. Okay, I don't know if that was a good deal or not but weeks later, Apple countered with Quattro for about $250. In fact, Businessweek surmised that this was going to be a hot sector in terms of buyouts.

I think there's gonna be another sector that is going to see some activities in 2010: Geolocation companies. Heard of Foursquare. Yup. How about Yelp? That's right. Well, there was rumblings late that year that Google was looking to acquire Yelp for half a billion while Microsoft offered $700 million. Yelp rejected both offers. I'll leave that up to you to decide if it's a decision or not.

However, there are plenty of other location-based services with a lot of momentum in the market such as Foursquare who recently made headlines with a plethora of high profile deals. Because of the potential in this segment of the mobile service market, I am going to predict many of these companies may be snatched off the market.

But why? Isn't Foursquare fine if left to its volition? On its own now, FS can serve as many platforms across the market as long as there is demand. It's huge in the iPhone and is doing well on others with each passing day. Well, there are two reasons for this that I can see.

One, it's about integration. Another way to put it, plugging holes in your mobile offering. For instance, Google wants Yelp so that it can integrate it into its profilio of webapps in hopes of selling us location-based ads and services like search. The second reason is about taking the company off the market so that your competitors can't get to them.

In my opinion, FS has the momentum in the market. There are also other high profile targets. Loopt was one of the pioneers but it largely has not gained in the mindshare of late as FS has with its deals. But Loopt, like Gowalla and MyTown does have a large following, making these three companies in the running as potential targets for cash rich companies.

This could be the beginning of a new mobile and social phenonmenon. Or it maybe Internet Bubble 2.0. The safe bet is that Google, Microsoft, and Apple will be spending a lot of their cash in the coming year on these kinds of buys. But there are others. Remember Nokia? It's also got about $11 billion and it can make a play as well.

So, for you smart energetic folks out there. Go-getter types. Now's your chance.

Note: Yelp. Guys. An ad company that built itself up because of the iPhone app store got $750 million from Google. You ought to hold out and ask for at least just as much if not more.