Ready to embrace another arbitrary holiday - or just looking for an excuse to slack off and eat cake? Who isn’t?

This Saturday, May 25, is internationally known as Geek Pride Day. “But, Pi Day and Star Wars Day already happened,” you might be thinking. Which leads me to retort, “Do you want this holiday or not?” In actuality, Geek Pride Day is the only one of the bunch that works overtime as a general celebration of all types of geekery. 

3 Reasons To Geek Out

In fact, there is a trifecta of different reasons May 25 is considered the geekiest day in the year. 

1. It’s Towel Day, the day two weeks after Douglas Adams’ passed in 2001 in which fans celebrate by keeping a towel handy a la The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
2. It’s the anniversary of the very first Star Wars movie, Episode IV: A New Hope, which was released on May 25, 1977.
3. It marks the Glorious 25th of May, on which fans of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books wear lilac and raise awareness of Alzheimer’s, following the author’s 2007 diagnosis. 

Geek Pride Day has been celebrated in dorky masses since 2006, when it originated in Spain as "Día del Orgullo Friki.” (That’s “Day of Geek Pride” in Spanish, natch.) The Internet did the rest, and today it’s an (unofficial) celebration all over the world. Here are a few of ways you can commemorate it:

Geek Stats

For three years running, IT recruitment agency Modis has conducted an annual Geek Pride survey in honor of the holiday. More than 1,000 American adults shared their thoughts about all things geek. Some of this year’s findings:

• The majority of Americans (87%) are proud of their geeky hobbies. Or, as the survey cringingly puts it, most “don’t sneak their geek.” 
• Good news for Google Glass! More than half of respondents (60%) are interested in “wearable tech,” with 56% specifically interested in “smart glasses.”
• You might want to dial it back a bit with the Doctor Who in-jokes. While 74% of self-identified geeks rated themselves “very funny,” only 53% of non-geeks agreed.

Learn A New Geek Skill

Historically, we’ve used “geek” to refer to people “who are unabashedly interested in learning and will eventually be our bosses.” (And before that it referred to sideshow spectacles, but let’s not get into that.) What better day to encourage your own intellectual curiosity? 

ReadWrite has covered many online programs that can teach anyone — even kids — how to become programmers. But one we didn’t cover, Code School, is offering a free trial specifically in commemoration of Geek Pride Day. Sign up on its celebration page to dabble in Ruby, JavaScript, HTML/CSS or iOS for free over the weekend. 

Acquire, Collect & Consume Geekiness

Where would our economy be without geeks lining up in droves to snag the foil-cover limited-edition 3D-capable Blu-ray copy of The Avengers? Embrace capitalism while ensuring that any date you invite to your apartment will have to stare down your anime figurines first. 

Predictably, ThinkGeek has an annual Geek Pride Day promotion. Just like last year, it's shipping out freebies and holding a giveaway. Redbubble is also kicking off a geeky weekend sale. Actually, just Google “Geek Pride Day Sale” and you’ll find tons of companies hungry to snatch up your nerdy, nerdy money. 

Meet Up, Geekily

Not one, not two, but eleven different science fiction, fandom, gaming and anime conventions take place on the weekend of Geek Pride Day 2013. From San Jose’s FAnime Con to Houston’s Comicpalooza to Toronto’s Anime North, the convention centers of Northern America are bound to be crawling with fellow geeks. 

It should be easy to find people out and about who are celebrating Geek Pride Day in particular. If Twitter (#GeekPrideDay) and Facebook aren't enough, just look for people inexplicably carrying lightsabers, lilacs and towels. 

 

Photo by betsyweber.

We hear a lot about design these days.  Apple products are probably the most popular examples.  The idea is that Apple became one of the most valuable companies in the world, in part, because they focus on the design of their products.   But what does that mean, really? What do organizations who focus on design do differently?   Recently the TV show 60 Minutes featured the design company IDEO, which was founded by David Kelley. At multiple points in the interview, Kelley mentions an idea that is at the core of design and design thinking.  The word is empathy.    The central tenet of design thinking, according to Kelley, isn't one of aesthetic or utility, but of empathy and human observation. "Be empathetic," Kelley explained to CBS' Charlie Rose. "Try to understand what people really value." Doing that, he says, will lay the foundation for more intuitive designs.   This got me thinking. When I talk about the most fundamental ideas that make explanations work, I use very similar language.  To make something easy to understand, you must empathize.  Put yourself in the audience’s shoes and try to understand how your communication sounds to them.  Only by empathizing can you create an explanation that works.    Could it be that explanation and design have a lot more in common? I think so, and here’s one way to look at it.     We are all designers. If you’ve ever made a paper airplane, taken a photo or built a fire, you’ve designed something. You had a goal and you made decisions about how to accomplish that goal using a specific medium. We are all designers.   Likewise, we are all explainers. Every day we communicate ideas with the goal to help people understand.  We explain why traffic was bad, why the CEO made a decision, why people sneeze more at springtime.  We are all explainers.   Now, being a designer or explainer does not necessarily mean we are good at it. The rubber hits the road, in both cases, when we learn about quality and what goes into a good design or explanation. The goal is not simply to have done it, but to have done it well. And that’s where we find the big difference between the two.   Design thinking has developed over many years. It is a profession and a focus of attention and care. People study it, practice it and refine it over a lifetime.  Some individuals have a talent for it and apply it to products we use every day. As a culture, we’re learning to appreciate good design and the designers who make it happen.   Unfortunately, this is not currently the case with explanation. While technical writers, teachers and journalists are often amazing explainers, we don't often think about these professions through the lens of explanation. We know they are great teachers, for example, but we don't necessarily point out explanation as a skill that makes them especially great. To me, this is like saying that an iPod is a useful gadget without recognizing that design is the element that makes it so useful.   My point is this: Communicators have an opportunity to think about the role of explanation like we think about the role of design. It's a skill that can be defined, developed, practiced and put to work in solving problems. Over time, we may see that a focus on explanation develops into something akin to design, where explainers emerge and inspire others to think differently about making ideas easy to understand.   It's possible that one key to explanation is applying design thinking to communication. By learning to empathize with our audience and understanding their needs, we can design communications that solve specific problems. The more this is the focus, the more we'll see that great explanations can become a new goal for professionals - something we can use to create change.    The next time you’re communicating something complex - remember - you’re a designer, too.    Here's the 60 Minutes segment about David Kelley and IDEO:

You probably already knew this, but a new report from Forrester wants to emphasize this seemingly obvious point: Tablets are not simply larger touchscreen smartphones. There are significant difference in where people use them, how they use them and for how long - all of which have big implications for app developers, marketers, tablet makers and a lot of other folks.

As the table market continues its white-hot growth - nearly 50 million tablets were sold last quarter alone - these differences will force  both innovation and disruption in publishing, advertising, retail, gaming and work, as people optimize apps, media and services specifically for tablet use.

Tablet Usage: The Little Differences 

The majority of tablet users use their gadgets primarily in the living room and bedroom of their homes. This is true even for tablets with cellular connectivity, not just Wi-Fi. 

Even outside the home, Forrester's data reveal that tablet usage is concentrated in "fixed" locations. These include coffee shops, airports and hotels.

Whereas smartphones are highly personal devices, used mostly "on-the-go" and in short "snackable" sessions, tablets are more likely to be shared with others inside the home. Tablets are also used for longer stretches of time. 

Forrester's data also show that tablet users are wealthier and better educated than typical smartphone users. In addition, tablet users are more likely to discuss their opinions of products on social media and other online services.

Forrester's research also reveals the versatility of these devices. Reading, email, watching video, playing games and taking pictures are all common activities. Across their 15 primary activity categories, browsing the web was most common - undertaken by 68% of individuals polled in Forrester's survey - and note-taking was least common, though still undertaken by a respectable 26% of respondents. At present, there is no one specific task driving people to purchase a tablet.

Though the market is relatively new, the report also suggests that users will embrace tablets for controlling numerous home-based technologies - such as entertainment systems, energy monitoring and more. 

Tablets As Second Screens

Tablets are preferred over smartphones as the "second screen" - i.e., as something else to look at while the TV is on. And it turns out that people also use tablets and smartphones differently as second screens. 

According to Forrester's data, web browsing, product research and watching videos online are all more likely to be tablet-based second-screen activities. Social networking and chatting while watching television, however, are the province of the smartphone.

This raises an intriguing possibility: Tablets might actually have a big impact television advertising. As a second screen, tablets offer advertisers new possibilities for integrating their marketing efforts across seemingly disparate media. Some app makers are already jumping on this bandwagon.

For instance, Shazam just updated its "what's that song" app to tag and identify live TV events by "listening" to them. On one hand, that lets the app provide more information about the show or sports game you're watching, including links to related information. On the other, though, the app will also tag the commercials, potentially opening up a new way for advertisers to reach you through the tablet as well as the big screen.

It's not all about play, either. The Forrester study found the people actually report using tablets for "work" surprisingly often. A full 58% of surveyed users report spending an average of 2.5 hours per day on their tablets for work from home. There is, of course, a possibility of responder bias; some people might be inclined to say they're working on their tablets even if they're not.

Assuming those numbers are solid, though, that finding could provide an opening for makers of apps and even tablet hardware focused on personal productivity. Wait, did someone just say... Microsoft?

Shazam, an app best known for identifying songs playing around you, is making a big move into identifying all kinds of media playing around you.

That promises to move Shazam from our pockets, where its smartphone apps mostly identify songs, to our living rooms—and hence to the tablets we typically keep near our TVs. Those tablets are becoming known as "second screens"—and Shazam wants to have a big presence on them.

The most intriguing aspect of Shazam's latest version is its added capability to tag events on live TV in the U.S., a clear sign that Shazam wants to be the gateway app for second-screen use. As you watch a TV show, Shazam can listen and identify it, revealing information about the show and linking to related content. Commercials will be tagged as well, giving advertisers another channel to reach you.

(See Why The Future of Shazam Is TV, Not Music.)

iPad users will also now get to use auto-tagging and lyrics delivered through Shazam's LyricPlay system. Those features were previously available on other platforms, but not the iPad version.

The social aspects of the new version of the app are not to be ignored. The home screen on the iPad app will have real-time updates on what shows and songs people find popular. Shazam users on both iPhones and iPads will now be able to explore a map of tagged music, presumably to discover what the people around them like.

Shazam for iOS 6.0.0 on the iPad

Playing around with the app today, I found most of the features worked as advertised, though there was a period where the app's tagging did not work—the app thought I wasn't connected to the Internet. (I was.) Live TV tagging picked up very quickly—though it does need to be live, I discovered. Some shows I have on Amazon Prime didn't get tagged when played back on my Roku player.

I appreciated Shazam's integration with Rdio, the streaming-music service, but if I wanted to connect to Spotify (or Pandora), I would have to pay a one-time fee of $6.99 for the Encore edition.

Beyond the new features for iPad users, the new version of Shazam offers a sneak peek into a potential future of online entertainment: a strong blend of social and multimedia content designed to make us forget the time when we ever watched TV through a single, lonely screen.

Google is reducing Datastore prices by up to 25%, according to an announcement on their Cloud Platform Blog. This price change impacts both App Engines HRD and the new Cloud Datastore introduced last week at I/O. The price decrease is sure to capture the attention of Amazon Web Services, perhaps even to the point of a small cloud price war.

(Also read How Amazon's Rising Headwaters Could Threaten Google.)

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) polices are increasingly popular as a way for companies to let workers use the hardware they like best and are most productive with. But according to a new study from Cisco, that not be the best way to think about BYOD.

Implement a strong BYOD policy, Cisco says, and your organization could save $1,300 per year per mobile user. Users meanwhile, report that they are happier and more productive - even though they may end up paying more out of their own pockets!

(See also Worried Workers: BYOD Or You're SOL [Infographic])

Happier, More Productive, But Poorer?

The survey, released Wednesday by Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) consulting unit, polled 2,415 users in six countries to determine the effects of letting employees bring their own devices into the office. The results indicate that employees around the world were very interested in BYOD, and they were even willing to pay for it: On average, workers said they would spend $965 out of pocket for their own devices and another $734 annually for the data plans to go with them.

Here's why: Workers with their own devices said they were happier and (more objectively) reported significant productivity gains. In the U.S., BYOD participants saved 81 minutes of time per week - just over 70 hours a year.

Not every country noted such productivity increases, and use of employee devices also had negative effects, such as increased administration, downtime and distractions that dragged the overall efficiency down, explained Jeff Loucks, senior manager at IBSG. 

Most of the devices in question were phones: 81% of device bringers reported they uses smartphones, 56% brought tablets and 37% brought their own laptops. On average, each of the estimated 198 million BYOD users around the world had 1.7 devices, said Loucks.

BYOD Keeps Growing

The number of BYOD users is expected to swell to 406 million by 2016. Even though the U.S. leads in BYOD use right now, by 2016, China alone is expected to have 166 million alone, compared to the 106 million in the U.S. and 76 million in India.

Companies fared best, Cisco discovered, when they implemented a strategic BYOD plan, rather than stick than just trying to keep up with devices coming into the organization. Such reactive policies tend to make users figure everything out for themselves, often working with an IT department that only grudgingly allows such devices into the organization.

Want to realize those promised cost benefits? Get ahead of users with a proactive BYOD policy that enables employees to quickly access corporate tools and data, perhaps featuring a self-service help system. Such policies also help organizations keep better security on corporate data.

(See also ReadWrite Survey Results: What A Typical BYOD Program Really Looks Like.)

Be Careful What You Wish For - BYOD Edition

As much as workers seem willing to pay their own way to get the devices they want without their employers' interference (only 30% said they would be willing to work with corporate-provisioned devices - often called Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled, or COPE), it's hard to shake the feeling that even though employees are more satisfied and productive, there's something unsettling if they end up footing the bill for this innovation. 

(See also Forget Bring Your Own Device - Try Corporate Owned, Personally Enabled.)

It's not an idle question: A recent Gartner survey of CIOs found that 38% said their companies planned stop providing employees with devices by 2016. Gartner also expects that nearly 50% of employers will demand employees provide their own devices for work purposes - out of pocket - by 2017.

Companies are increasingly willing to explore BYOD policies - but it seems that the reasons may not be entirely altruistic. Letting employees use the tools they prefer is clearly a good idea, but making them pay for the privilege doesn't seem right. 

 

Despite Google Android's long market-share rise against Apple iOS, developers continued to stick with iOS as their first deployment target. While Android offered superior volume, that volume was fragmented between different versions of the OS and disparate hardware. Meanwhile, Apple offered better development tools plus clearer, more profitable revenue options. Even open-source developers tended to congregate on highly proprietary iOS.

Something changed in 2012, however, and Android-related open-source development exploded.

According to new research from Black Duck Software, new Android-related mobile open-source projects outstripped open source iOS projects by a factor of four in 2012, growing by more than 96% each year since 2007. New iOS project growth, on the other hand, was just 32% from 2011 to 2012.

Over 15,000 new Android mobile projects were launched in 2012, bringing the total number of Android projects Black Duck tracks to more than 28,000. New projects associated with the iOS platform numbered nearly 2,500 in 2012, with a cumulative total of more than 7,000 projects. All other mobile platforms accounted for fewer than 500 new projects in 2012, for a total of fewer than 2,000 projects over the 2007 - 2012 period.   To be clear, the bulk of developers still prefer iOS, as Appcelerator's Mobile Developer Survey highlights:

This makes sense, given the target audience for mobile applications: consumers. Even though open source now permeates server-side computing, and drives industry trends like cloud computing and Big Data, it has had a negligible impact on the desktop, where mainstream users don't want access to source code and simply want polished products that work. Hence, despite the impressive efforts to clone Microsoft Office with OpenOffice and now LibreOffice, the world still happily gives Microsoft billions of dollars of Office profit each quarter. 

It's easier to stay on that beaten path.

Hence, while I don't expect open-source developer affinity for Android to squash iOS anytime soon, it's still a troubling sign for Apple. Even on the desktop, many mainstream applications are open source, including Adium (IM client for the Mac), VLC Media Player, Handbrake, and more. And if Android is the place open-source developers target for their innovations, we're likely to see the next Big Data-like trend emerge on Android, not on iOS, just as Linux is the home of cloud computing and Big Data on the server.

Open-source developers matter. And, apparently, they matter most to Android. 

Square, the mobile payment service that has been making strong inroads within the North American retail sector, has announced the availability of its service in Japan. The company is already processing $15 billion in annualized payments, and this move into Asia is expected to greatly increase the popularity and profitability of the service.

You can't have a conversation about Big Data for very long without running into the elephant in the room: Hadoop. This open source software platform managed by the Apache Software Foundation has proven to be very helpful in storing and managing vast amounts of data cheaply and efficiently.

But what exactly is Hadoop, and what makes it so special? Basically, it's a way of storing enormous data sets across distributed clusters of servers and then running "distributed" analysis applications in each cluster.

It's designed to be robust, in that your Big Data applications will continue to run even when individual servers — or clusters — fail. And it's also designed to be efficient, because it doesn't require your applications to shuttle huge volumes of data across your network.

Here's how Apache formally describes it:

The Apache Hadoop software library is a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models. It is designed to scale up from single servers to thousands of machines, each offering local computation and storage. Rather than rely on hardware to deliver high-availability, the library itself is designed to detect and handle failures at the application layer, so delivering a highly available service on top of a cluster of computers, each of which may be prone to failures.

Look deeper, though, and there's even more magic at work. Hadoop is almost completely modular, which means that you can swap out almost any of its components for a different software tool. That makes the architecture incredibly flexible, as well as robust and efficient.

Hadoop Distributed Filesystem (HDFS)

If you remember nothing else about Hadoop, keep this in mind: It has two main parts - a data processing framework and a distributed filesystem for data storage. There's more to it than that, of course, but those two components really make things go.

The distributed filesystem is that far-flung array of storage clusters noted above - i.e., the Hadoop component that holds the actual data. By default, Hadoop uses the cleverly named Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), although it can use other file systems as well.

HDFS is like the bucket of the Hadoop system: You dump in your data and it sits there all nice and cozy until you want to do something with it, whether that's running an analysis on it within Hadoop or capturing and exporting a set of data to another tool and performing the analysis there.

Data Processing Framework & MapReduce

The data processing framework is the tool used to work with the data itself. By default, this is the Java-based system known as MapReduce. You  hear more about MapReduce than the HDFS side of Hadoop for two reasons:

1. It's the tool that actually gets data processed.
2. It tends to drive people slightly crazy when they work with it.

In a "normal" relational database, data is found and analyzed using queries, based on the industry-standard Structured Query Language (SQL). Non-relational databases use queries, too; they're just not constrained to use only SQL, but can use other query languages to pull information out of data stores. Hence, the term NoSQL.

But Hadoop is not really a database: It stores data and you can pull data out of it, but there are no queries involved - SQL or otherwise. Hadoop is more of a data warehousing system - so it needs a system like MapReduce to actually process the data.

MapReduce runs as a series of jobs, with each job essentially a separate Java application that goes out into the data and starts pulling out information as needed. Using MapReduce instead of a query gives data seekers a lot of power and flexibility, but also adds a lot of complexity.

There are tools to make this easier: Hadoop includes Hive, another Apache application that helps convert query language into MapReduce jobs, for instance. But MapReduce's complexity and its limitation to one-job-at-a-time batch processing tends to result in Hadoop getting used more often as a data warehousing than as a data analysis tool.

(See also Hadoop Adoption Accelerates, But Not For Data Analytics.)

Scattered Across The Cluster

There is another element of Hadoop that makes it unique: All of the functions described act as distributed systems, not the more typical centralized systems seen in traditional databases.

In a database that uses multiple machines, the work tends to be divided out: all of the data sits on one or more machines, and all of the data processing software is housed on another server (or set of servers).

On a Hadoop cluster, the data within HDFS and the MapReduce system are housed on every machine in the cluster. This has two benefits: it adds redundancy to the system in case one machine in the cluster goes down, and it brings the data processing software into the same machines where data is stored, which speeds information retrieval. 

Like we said: Robust and efficient.

When a request for information comes in, MapReduce uses two components, a JobTracker that sits on the Hadoop master node, and TaskTrackers that sit out on each node within the Hadoop network.

The process is fairly linear: The Map part is accomplished by the JobTracker dividing computing jobs up into defined pieces and shifting those jobs out to the TaskTrackers on the machines out on the cluster where the needed data is stored. Once the job is run, the correct subset of data is Reduced back to the central node of the Hadoop cluster, combined with all the other datasets found on all of the cluster's machines.

HDFS is distributed in a similar fashion. A single NameNode tracks where data is housed in the cluster of servers, known as DataNodes. Data is stored in data blocks on the DataNodes. HDFS replicates those data blocks, usually 128MB in size, and distributes them so they are replicated within multiple nodes across the cluster.

This distribution style gives Hadoop another big advantage: Since data and processing live on the same servers in the cluster, every time you add a new machine to the cluster, your system gains the space of the hard drive and the power of the new processor.

Kit Your Hadoop

As mentioned earlier, users of Hadoop don't have to stick with just HDFS or MapReduce. For its Elastic Compute Cloud solutions, Amazon Web Services has adapted its own S3 filesystem for Hadoop. DataStax' Brisk is a Hadoop distribution that replaces HDFS with Apache Cassandra's CassandraFS.

To get around MapReduce's first-in-first-out limitations, the Cascading framework gives developers an easier tool in which to run jobs and more flexibility to schedule jobs.

Hadoop is not always a complete, out-of-the-box solution for every Big Data task. MapReduce, as noted, is enough of a pressure point that many Hadoop users prefer to use the framework only for its capability to store lots of data fast and cheap.

But Hadoop is still the best, most widely used system for managing large amounts of data quickly when you don't have the time or the money to store it in a relational database. That's why Hadoop is likely to remain the elephant in the Big Data room for some time to come.

(See also ReadWrite's Hadoop coverage.)

What has Mailbox founder Gentry Underwood and his team been up to since selling the email-app maker to Dropbox for a reported $100 million in March?

Mostly working on new versions of the product - like an iPad version of the app, which is coming out Thursday morning on Apple's App Store.

Like the original iPhone version, which attracted a million users at breakneck speed, Mailbox for iPad lets you swipe messages off to the right or left to handle them. A short swipe to the right archives them, while a long swipe deletes them; a short swipe to the left "snoozes" messages for later reading, while a long swipe puts them in folders based on actions: "to read," "to buy," or "to watch."

Mailbox for iPad doesn't change that basic concept for email handling, but it does add a column to let you read messages alongside a list of messages in your inbox.

 

Resisting Design Temptation

ReadWrite sat down recently with Underwood to talk about the challenges of rethinking an app originally meant for smartphones for tablets. Underwood, a former designer at Ideo, had lots of thoughts.

"[Tablets] are these weird hybrid devices that sit in between," said Underwood. "They're part luxury mobile phone, and they're part makeshift desktop experience."

That made it harder, not easier, he said.

"Constraint is the friend of design," Underwood said. "It's easier for us to create a simple mail experience [for the phone]. We have to resist the temptation to take all these pixels and put in all these bells and whistles."

 

That echoes comments recently made by Luke Wroblewski, creator of a polling app called Polar. For Polar's Web version, Wroblewski left the center of the screen largely blank, rather than alter the app's core function—because filling up pixels didn't add to the user's experience.

Dropbox founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi have given the Mailbox team permission to ignore suggestions from their new colleagues for cool new features, Underwood said. When Underwood showed Houston and Ferdowsi mockups of all the design suggestions and asked what the Mailbox team should work on, Houston told him, "That's something you have to answer. What's best for the customer?"

Putting Gmail On Notice

What would be really exciting, though, is an Android version. Underwood acknowledged that Mailbox was working on Android next, but didn't reveal any specific plans for the product.

(See also How Google Is Wooing Developers To Make Apps For Android First.)

Anyone familiar with Android, though, can see clearly where Mailbox is headed - and why it would be a killer app, challenging Google's Gmail on its own turf.

That's because Android's notification system is superior to the notification functions built into Apple's iOS mobile operating system in a key way: Developers, if they choose, can add functional features to the notifications that drop down on the screen, allowing users to take actions without having to launch into the app.

For Mailbox, that would likely mean that its swipe-right-or-left convention for email handling could be ported into notifications, allowing users to swiftly handle emails as they come in without leaving the task they're working on. (I suggested this to Underwood, but he declined to comment on the notion.)

Dealing with email purely through notifications is not something that Mailbox could do today on Apple's iPhone or iPad. But it's such a logical extension of the email app's design brilliance, it's unimaginable that Underwood and team aren't thinking about it.

Photo by TechCrunch

This post is the second in the ReadWrite series Making Android Pay, in which we explore the opportunities and challenges mobile developers face trying to make money from Android apps.

How do you get mobile developers to love you? Give them free tools and pad their wallets. 

One of the big themes for Google last week at its I/O developers conference was helping developers make more money creating apps for Android. That included a variety of tools to help them engage with their users and process transactions as well as optimization tips to monetize Android.

Monetization is a big challenge for Android developers. Developers who make Android apps earn a fraction of what they make from Apple's iOS, which paid developers nearly $1 billion alone in January this year and $8 billion total as of February. Android developers can only dream of such riches. 

(See also How Google Is Wooing Developers to Make Apps For Android First.)

Yet there is hope. Google's VP of Android product management Hugo Barra told I/O attendees last week that Google had paid more to Android developers in the past 4 months than the previous 12 months before that combined. This increase has been driven by a renewed focus by Google to give developers more tools to make money, culminating in a slurry of announcements to the Google Play Developer Console last week.

"Everything from the analytics integration we have shown to you could imagine other things that Google could put together," said Ellie Powers, product manager for Google Play in an interview with ReadWrite.

Powers continued:

I think that is sort of the next thing. They want to have deeper insights. They want to know exactly what they should work on. And I think [with] the things that we are doing we can continue enhancing them. Developers always want more stuff. They are always really hungry and we are hearing from more and more developers. They are saying they want to invest more because you [Google] give us such great data we are able to use that to understand our users better and invest more in the Android platform.

New Tools In The Google Play Developer Console

Specifically, Google issued six new features to Google Play to help Android developers optimize towards monetization:

1. App translation service: The ability to translate an app into a different language directly from Google Play Developer Console. This is an agency approach (human, not machine) that Google purposefully chose because it found the human touch of translations provided better results on the local level.
2. Revenue graphs: A new tab in the Developer Console gives developers a summary of their app global app revenue over time.
3. Alpha and beta testing and staged rollouts: Perhaps the biggest announcement for Android developers last week, beta and staged rollouts are unique to Android. This should encourage developers to take bigger risks knowing that they will not be rolling out a bug-laden app to 100% of its users.
4. Optimization tips: Based on analytics from Google Play, optimization tips will point developers towards market segments that could benefit them, like launching in a new country or developing specifically for tablets, which make 1.7-times more revenue per user than do Android smartphones.
5. Google Analytics: Mobile data on usage, time spent and a variety of cohorts as Google Analytics for Mobile is integrated straight into the Developer Console.
6. Referral tracking: Where are your installs coming from? Did getting written about by the major tech publications give you a bump? How about that in-app advertising? Referral tracking will tell you.

More Ways To Pay: Simplifying The Billing Infrastructure

Overlooked in the improvements made to the Google Play Developer Console were several infrastructure tweaks to the way Google processes payments for developers. The purchase flow (from app discovery to payment) has been simplified with the new user interface in Google Play, making it easier for users to pay in a variety of ways. Those include expanded gift cards and pre-paid options (which Google announced at I/O 2012 and has been improving on ever since). 

Google is working hard to get Android users to overcome their relative reluctance to paid purchases by promoting gift cards and other pre-paid mechanisms - like Google Play promotional credits with mobile device purchases. While Google acknowledged at I/O that "the barriers to success for a paid title is very high," making a purchase with a free credit seems to help encourage users to keep buying even when the credits run out. 

(See also Google Is Making Life Easier For Android Developers.)

The company is also boosting options for direct-carrier billing in markets around the world. One reason for the success of Apple's App Store is that the company already has every user's credit card number. Because Google doesn't make or sell Android devices, it may not necessarily have that information. In developing markets, especially, credit cards are either non-existent or not popular. Direct-carrier billing gives Google a popular, easy-to-use payment method almost everywhere. About 50% of Android's daily active users now have access to direct-carrier billing, the company said.

"We went from having 20 countries or so that could pay to what is it? 130 or so," Powers said. "So that is amazing. I think with a lot of developers they are only thinking about people in their own countries but it turns out that there are billions of people in the world... So helping developers reach into new markets really helps there too."

From a developer's perspective, of course, it doesn't really matter what option a user pays with - as long as they pay. Google takes care of the entire payments infrastructure on the backend - the developer doesn't even need to know what option was used. The ongoing problem, of course, is that even with the improvements, Google Play still can't match the ease of use of the App Store, which licenses Amazon's 1-Click payment patent. Even as Android eclipses Apple's iOS in many ways, playing catch-up in this area is likely to be an ongoing effort for Google.

Top image by Nick Statt: Google's Android head Sundar Pichai announces 900 million Android installations at I/O 2013.

Aligning itself aesthetically more along the lines of social networks like Facebook and Google+, LinkedIn has introduced a new navigation bar to its website. The aim is in line with the company's simplification efforts, which so far have included redesigns of the homepage and profile pages and as an overhaul of its mobile apps and the discovery news page LinkedIn Today. 

(Read more: With Pulse, LinkedIn Is Becoming The Newspaper Of The Future)

The company released this video that details how users can best use the new navigation addition: 

Hey, developers! Do you feel like you're in demand? Apparently you should.

HubSpot, a Cambridge-based marketing software-as-a-service venture, has started a new initiative to handsomely compensate anyone who can refer a developer friend. “If you do, and we end up hiring them, we’ll thank you with a big, fat check for $30,000,” its Refer A Dev program promises. 

HubSpot’s solution may seem like an extreme one, but not if you’ve been looking at the numbers. In 2010, there were 913,000 U.S. jobs for software developers, and that number is expected to grow by 30% from 2012 to 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Expected job growth across all U.S. occupations over that time? Just 14%.

Heck, see for yourself:

Even just compared to the rest of the growing tech industry, developers are among the most wanted. According to Wanted Analytics, a data firm that analyzes help-wanted ads:

[a]pplication [d]evelopers were the most in-demand technology occupation in April, reaching a new high in the number of job ads. Demand for this talent has grown 16% from April of 2012 and more than 190% from 4 years ago.

Irvine, Calif.-based IT recruiting firm CyberCoders conducted a study of 10,000 tech companies and their hiring requirements. Their findings revealed that out of all their recruits, those who had development skills — especially mobile, front-end, and open source development skills — were most in demand in today’s job market. 

“Everyday we see the engineers with these skills getting an average of four to five job offers,” the CEO and founder of CyberCoders, Heidi Golledge, wrote in the company blog post.

If the ratio of offer to engineer is indeed five to one, that means a lot of engineers are being paid well, and a lot of companies are going home empty handed. 

With a growing glut of learn-to-code companies eager to teach customers the requisite skills, it’s hard to say how long developers will remain the golden geese of the job market. But if you’re a mobile, front-end, or open-source developer working today, maybe it’s time to reconsider your options.

Just tell me first, so I can make $30,000 when you get hired at HubSpot.

Image via Flickr user Moyan_Brenn, CC 2.0

In a pure case of closing the barn doors after the horses have come home (and so many corporate Twitter accounts have been hacked), Twitter has announced today the option to implement two-factor authentication. If users opt-in, any sign-on from a new computer will require a code texted to their phone. 

The feature hasn't been made universally available yet, so keep checking your settings if you want this added security feature.

(See Two-Factor Authorization Is Awesome - Until You Lose the Damn Token.)

If we needed an event to wake people up to the power of native advertising, it's surely Yahoo's $1.1-billion purchase of Tumblr.

We'll be talking about this a lot at AdNatively, a one-day conference I'm emceeing in New York on Thursday, May 23.

So what is native advertising? A quick, simple definition: It's an ad whose form and delivery is identical to the content environment in which it is served.

The opposite, in other words, of interruptive advertising: billboards, takeovers, and big banners that take up space on the page but don't otherwise relate.

Tumblr's Real Value

So why did Yahoo buy Tumblr? People talk about the hip, cool vibe of Tumblr's network of millions of blogs. Or the younger demographic Tumblr has attracted, which Yahoo desperately needs.

But Yahoo doesn't need blogs and young'uns for their own sake: It needs them because marketers need them. And the only way marketers can reach Tumblr users is through Tumblr posts, which advertisers will pay to feature on Tumblr users' "dashboards" - the stream of posts from accounts they follow.

That's more theory than practice at this point. Yahoo hopes to turbocharge Tumblr's revenues through its large sales force, which has been itching to have more native advertising formats to sell. 

Tumblr investor Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures is delivering a keynote address at AdNatively. I'm keenly interested in what he'll have to say.

Wilson is also an investor in Twitter, which has a similar native model: Advertisers can pay to promote a tweet so it's seen by more people, or on Facebook, where sponsored posts get more prominent play in users' News Feeds.

Fuck Yeah, Native Ads

Native advertising is not without its controversies. A big one is the learning curve: Marketers must master each potential advertising environment and learn its intricacies, from Tumblr users' love for animated GIFs and the phrase "fuck yeah," to Twitter's peculiar language of retweets and replies to Facebook's maddening algorithms.

It's no wonder that some give up and just buy banner ads, which can be bought and sold by machine, almost like stocks. Native-ad environments are catching up, opening up their ads to automated buying and selling through application programming interfaces, but there's no question that native ads add complexity.

Native ads seem inevitable, though, as content consumption goes mobile and social. Back in 1994, when Wired's HotWired website sold the first banner ad, that little rectangle was arguably a native format adapted to the new medium of the Web. But Web browsing has evolved. If we're changing how we design interactive experiences for touch interfaces and screens of all sizes, shouldn't we change how marketers fit in, too?

Full disclosure: ReadWrite and its owner and publisher, Say Media, are actively thinking about the native-advertising question. ReadWrite runs ad formats, like sponsored posts, which some observers include in the native-advertising mix. So we're not just curious bystanders. But I promise you that ReadWrite will do its best to cover native advertising objectively and disclose when we have a stake in the game.

The conversation at AdNatively promises to be a rousing debate. If you're in New York for Internet Week, please join me, Fred Wilson, and others - ReadWrite readers get a 50% discount on attendance.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Google really, really wants us to like Google+. Google is embedding Google+ into each of its products, making it increasingly difficult to use its services without embracing the Google+ borg, whether you want to or not.

Judging by Google+'s still stagnant market share, you generally do not want to use the social service, or whatever it is.

When prodded by complaints that Google is forcing Google+ into its disparate products, despite not necesssarily fitting very well, Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president over Google+, rejected the criticism at Google I/O:

I'm not sure that [the integration is] forced. I think there are some people who may have a misunderstanding of what we're trying to accomplish... One of the core insights we had when we started Google+ was that Google itself was deeply fragmented. 

So what did Google do? It invented Google+ as "a way for Google to get to know [its] users," according to David Glazer, director of engineering for the Google+ platform. This is fine, so far as it goes, but this speaks to Google+'s value for Google, not its users. 

For example, I use Zagat, a restaurant rating service that Google acquired in 2011, all the time. And each time that I use it now, I get this obnoxious prompt:

This wouldn't be a huge problem except that it pops up every single time I visit Zagat.com. Including when I'm on my mobile device. See that little X in the top right? That's much harder to see/find on an iPhone.

Even worse, if I click on "Start now" Google takes me away from Zagat entirely and into Google Local, orienting me into whichever city I'm currently sitting in, rather than letting me get back to the location I was actually interested in (often New York, as I experiment with new restaurants). 

Google, in short, is foisting Google+ on me for its good. Not mine.

As Forbes' Robert Hof highlights, Google can't seem to articulate why users should want to use Google+. They seem to have the party line down as to why it's good for Google (see above), but for users? Google draws a blank.

Which is surprising, given how good Google is at convincing us to use its different products. Maps? It's amazing, and much better than Apple's Maps application. Search? Been the gold standard for years. Now? Revolutionary, and is sorely tempting me to dump my iPhone. Even Google+ features like Hangouts are increasingly services that I turn to for quick collaboration with colleagues.

But Google+ as a forced integration between Google's products? It just gets in my way and slows me down. Until Google figures out why I should want to use it, rather than have to use it, Google+ will remain a social also-ran, however much Google tries to force it.

Smartphone manufacturer HTC is in disarray. According to a report from The Verge, the company is hemorrhaging executives from its Seattle-based office amid poor sales, internal turmoil and controversy. Within the last several months, HTC has lost its chief produdct officer Kouji Kodera, VP of global communications Jason Gordon and product strategy manager Eric Lin among several others. 

In a classic "the sky is falling" scenario, everybody is blaming everybody else. Many in HTC blame Facebook for the problems selling the HTC First - "The Facebook Phone" - while others blame erratic snap decisions from CEO and co-founder Peter Chou. 

To all my friends still at @htc - just quit. leave now. it’s tough to do, but you’ll be so much happier, I swear.

— eric L (@ericlin) May 20, 2013

See Also:

• HTC's Financial Woes Put Pressure On Microsoft & Facebook
• HTC's New Smartphones Are Great - Let's Hope The Company Survives
• HTC's Problems Go Way Beyond Marketing
• HTC Earnings Reveal New Foray Into Emerging Markets

The debate about app design largely centers around screen size.

What if designers worried about digit size instead?

Luke Wrobleski, a respected designer who sold a company to Twitter and more recently founded Polar, an app maker, thinks it's time to reconsider mobile design principles. Instead of worrying about questions like whether to upsize smartphone apps for tablets, designers should start by asking how their users will physically interact with their devices when using an app.

The technical term for this is input type—keyboard versus touchscreen, one-handed or two-handed interactions, and the like. This requires designers to think about how a device is held, which fingers are used, and how the app in question can optimize the experience for users' dexterity. 

The Beginning: Start With Responsive Design

For a smartphone, the primary input type has become a single hand with a single finger, typically the thumb. For tablets, it's two hands with two inputs, typically both thumbs. And for desktops, it's still restricted largely to the mouse, trackpad, and keyboard, but can branch out in rare circumstances, in the case of devices like the Chromebook Pixel or Microsoft Surface to touchscreen inputs as well. 

Wrobleski's Polar makes an iOS app that lets users poll friends on any topic and then build communities around these topics. Just last week, Polar launched a desktop Web client that is designed to match not just the look but the functionality of the mobile app versions and the input types taken into account with each one. As you change the size of your window, the app morphs from the desktop version to the tablet/touchscreen computer version, and then down to its smartphone version.

If you resize ReadWrite in a browser window, you'll see a similar transformation. This is known as responsive design, and it's an increasingly popular approach to Web design. Last week, at its I/O conference, Google unveiled tools that promise to make it much easier to build responsive websites.

That way, Polar not only looks the same in-app for the iPhone and iPad as it does on the mobile Web, but it adapts for pretty much every platform for optimal use. It's not about scaling the layout of interface objects up and down; it's about scaling the whole experience up or down. 

Next: Think About How We Hold Our Devices

But responsive design has largely been limited to these screen-size adjustments. Input type may be an even more important concept because it factors in both the physical limitations of the device from a display and functionality standpoint as well as how those limitations translate to our physical interactions with the devices. 

Wroblewski detailed the input-type approach to design in a blog post on May 13 that covered the app's new Web client, which lets users quickly scroll through and vote on topic pages related to everything from Star Wars and Game of Thrones to Web design and photography.

"Topic pages on Polar were designed to adapt to not only different screen sizes but to different input types as well," Wroblewski writes. "The end result is a Web interface that aims to fit into the reality of Web use today. In particular, the human ergonomics of how people interact with different devices ..."

It turns out that thinking about ergonomics on mobile devices and adapting design accordingly is not a widely used approach. Steven Hoober, who Wroblewski cites as his primary source for input-type research, published a report earlier this year on UXmatters, "How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices?" that collected two months of observations on how more than 1,300 people used their mobile devices. 

Hoober's report aimed to dispel the myth that designers should follow a "best practices" approach to app design that relies on assumptions that cast the widest net. Instead, Hoober advises that the approach should be far more customized, taking into account the constantly changing nature of mobile use that is contingent on factors like device type and screen size as well as physical location, be it standing or sitting on a bus or in a cafe. 

"The way in which users hold their phone is not a static state," Hoober writes. "Users change the way they’re holding their phone very often—sometimes every few seconds."

While Hoober did verify the assumption that majority of smartphone use is done one-handed with the thumb—49% of the time—he also discovered that designing from that standpoint alone could lead users to alter their behavior and thus deemphasize the very reasons underlying the approach.

"What if a user sees buttons at the top, so switches to cradling his phone to more easily reach all functionality on the screen—or just prefers holding it that way all the time?" he explains.  

Comfort-First Approach

Wroblewski stresses that Polar was designed primarily to be "comfortable to use," incorporating the ideas behind Hoober's findings into the app's design to cover the best input types for every device.  

For instance, Polar's smartphone app contains no left-hand column because users wouldn't typically be able to access it comfortably using one hand and one finger. It does support keyboard use in the event someone is using a large-screen phone-tablet hybrid, also known as a phablet, that's more typically held with two hands.

By contrast, when using Polar on a full tablet, a browsing column is present to take advantage of two-handed use. That's placed strategically on the left edge, with voting options on the right to take advantage of quick thumb access to the left and right sides of the screen. 

The desktop version of Polar mostly matches the mobile app experience. The main difference: When Polar detects a large enough screen, it adds keyboard support.

This type of comfort-first approach has its downsides.

"Looking at the Polar interface on a laptop can be a bit disconcerting because we’ve essentially left the middle of the page 'blank,'" Wroblewski says. This runs contrary to the fill-'et-up instincts of most Web designers, but it's the only way Polar could create something that easily scales down both aesthetically and functionally from a 27-inch monitor to a 4-inch smartphone screen. 

While these methods are very much experimental, they showcase the implementation of a much more sophisticated approach for thinking about mobile app design. We know that the diversity of devices is only increasing. With responsive design, we've scrapped a one-size-fits-all approach to screen size. The next step is to discard one-swipe-fits-all thinking about how we interact with those screens.

Photo by Intel Free Press

This post is the first in the ReadWrite series Making Android Pay, in which we'll explore the opportunities and challenges mobile developers face in trying to make money from Android apps.

In December 2011, Google chairman Eric Schmidt predicted that mobile developers would be building apps for Android first instead of iOS by the middle of 2012. That obviously hasn’t happened. But Google has doubled down on its push for more Android-first apps, largely by making it easier for developers to make money from them.

"It has taken a long time, it is slower than we like, but we are getting there,” Ibrahim Elbouchikhi, a product manager for Google Play Commerce, said during Google I/O last week. 

Up to now, the main sticking point for many app creators has been simple: money. Make that, at least for most Android developers, the lack thereof. Until recently, Google just didn't offer tools that would let developers fully exploit the global Android ecosystem for their own financial advantage.

Developers: Show Us The Money

There's also the fact that, until Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and 4.1 Jelly Bean, Android apps just weren't as good as iOS counterparts. Google first had to give Android feature parity with the iPhone and iPad before it could begin optimizing the ecosystem for money-making.

"Last year was sort of about reaching feature parity with, let’s say, other competitive platforms, where this year it has been all about going up to the next level. Innovating, doing things that are different," Ellie Powers, product manager for Google Play, said in an interview with ReadWrite. "Like now we have the beta testing feature unique to our platform and other sources of analytics coming together."

Google VP of Android Hugo Barra announces new tools at I/O 2013

Such bullishness hasn't yet dispelled doubts remain even among some of Android’s stoutest supporters, including some developers at I/O last week. One grilled Elbouchikhi about how much he could expect to make from a bona fide hit app. There's no easy answer to that question — let's just say that lots of variables are involved in that particular equation — but it's also a sign of just how heavily that question weighs on the minds of developers.

In this series, we'll take a close look at the new tools Google has rolled out to lure developers away from Apple and get them to develop for Android first. Let's just say that the thickness of developer wallets seems to be front and center in Google's thinking.

Aww, What A Cute Widdle Android Baby

Google still thinks of Android as a very young, even though it has been on the market for nearly five years and in development since 2005. "I feel like Android is a baby," said David Burke, engineering director for Android at an I/O session. "I think there is so much more we can do."

If Android itself is a baby, that makes the developer tools and monetization techniques Google has been pushing nearly newborn. The Google Play Developer Console — a suite of tools for publishing and distributing Android apps — was announced at I/O 2012. and the company has only been working on solving developers' biggest issues for about a year and a half.

Google realizes it still has developer issues with Android, from app discovery to user retention to the fundamental act of getting developers paid. But if we learned anything at I/O last week, it is that Google is aware of these problems and working hard to address them. In fact, almost every Android announcement at I/O last week was aimed at boosting Android's standing among developers by addressing its perceived shortcomings vis-a-vis iOS. 

Will that make Android No. 1 in the hearts of mobile developers? We'll see.

"We are still very new. My mother still hasn’t figured out why people would want to buy apps. But most people have. I think there are a lot more business models that are going to develop in the future," Powers said.

What will it take for you to build for Android first? Let us know in the comments. 

Next: New tools in Google Play for getting you paid.

Top image: The Google Android team onstage for a fireside chat at I/O 2013. All photos by Nick Statt for ReadWrite

If the Xbox One is the future of gaming, then that future is as grim as everyone feared.

In an event Tuesday morning that felt like a casual bar conversation compared to Sony's brain-exploding extravaganza back in February, Microsoft unveiled the next-gen Xbox — not in a giant conference center, but in a tent set up on a soccer field at its Redmond campus.

With a hard-line focus on the One's television connectivity and a smart decision to actually show off the physical console, Microsoft pulled off a tight one-hour presentation that glazed over the trickier undercurrents at play. But the devil is in the details, and it's now apparent that while the Xbox One will not require a constant Internet connection [Note: this point is now in dispute - see update further down], as many had feared, it's still the most restrictive console ever made.

(See also: Sim City Launch Disaster Should Kill Online-Only DRM)

As the event highlighted, the One is an aggressive grab for the living room from the get-go. But for gamers, long the core market for the Xbox, two really important questions remain. How much of the hardware we buy do we really own, and how far can and should a manufacturer go in telling us how to use our console?

Microsoft drew some very serious lines in the sand today. It's up to consumers to decide whether or not to play ball. 

Microsoft's Iron Grip

The rumor of a universal always-online requirement was finally quelled, but even more mysterious news boiled up in its place. Microsoft openly revealed that the One will require users to download all games to the console's hard drive to play, but Wired's Chris Kohler reported that to do this a second time with the same disc will require a player to pay an unspecified fee.

(See also: Xbox One: Microsoft's Big Bid To Pwn The Living Room)

Microsoft quickly responded by saying that the Xbox One will "enable customers to trade in and resell games" and that the company will have more details to share later, likely at the Electronic Entertainment Expo next month. But the same spokesperson also added this ominous note in a comment to the game-news site Polygon:

Xbox One’s support for used games and these other scenarios may not look like they have on previous console generations, and that’s what we’ll be explaining as soon as we’re able.

That's as clear as mud, of course. But tacking on fees for re-using an already-purchased game disk could seriously damage the used game market, or even kill it entirely. Not only would used games get more complicated to rebundle and price, resellers would likely offer less for used games in the first place.

That would antagonize retailers and consumers alike. It would be a giant step backward in an era where a game that provides maybe 8-10 hours of gameplay will still cost $60. Such a policy could even boomerang on game developers themselves, since many gamers finance their purchase of new games by trading in their old ones. If the trade-in market vanishes, so does that source of cash for new purchases.

The good news here is that a used game fee was "a surprise" to GameStop President Tony Bartel when he spoke to Polygon. Bartel went on to call the fee requirement "speculation." In a separate statement to ReadWrite, the company replied, "GameStop is working closely with Microsoft to ensure there is an opportunity for customers to take advantage of our popular buy-sell-trade model and provide a seamless transition for consumers to enjoy the next generation of console gaming." 

(See also: Xbox One Photo Gallery)

While the Xbox One will be able to operate without an Internet connection, the always-online issue won't go away entirely. Microsoft announced that it will be handing that ability over to publishers, who can designate certain game functions that will only work on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform — in other words, effectively requiring an Internet connection to play.

This isn't great news, especially considering Electronic Arts took the stage at the One unveiling. EA, voted the worst company in America two years in a row, recently tried to play nice with its consumer base by discontinuing its insane Online Pass program, which charged gamers a fee to access some online levels or items via a used game disk. But you can bet the company will be near the front of the line when it comes time to bake core game functions into the cloud to make an online-only gaming world an unavoidable, and unpleasant, reality.  

Say Goodbye To Your Current Collection

So what about that huge library of Xbox 360 games you've collected so far? Sorry, those won't work on the One. (PlayStation 3 games won't work on Sony's upcoming console, either, so there's plenty of blame to go around on this front.)

But what about all those awesome indie games you've downloaded through Xbox Live Marketplace or the full 360 titles you bought digitally? Those will carry over, right? Nope. It turns out that only music, movies, and TV shows purchased through Xbox Live will follow you to the One. [Note: Microsoft's Don Mattrick has responded to this aspect - see update further down].

Then there's the Kinect. While it sports very impressive voice recognition and motion control, reports quickly surfaced that the updated camera-sensor combo will need to be plugged in at all times to use the One. For starters, that's both annoying and a bit creepy, considering the Kinect will be on all the time watching everything you do. But this bit of news also suggests that the One itself might be pretty pricey, if it comes with the next-generation Kinect bundled.

Your Move, Sony

To be sure, Sony's PlayStation 4 could be equally bad, or even worse; we won't know until Sony really unveils it at E3 next month. For the moment, though, Sony at least stands a chance of offering a more consumer-friendly future for console gaming.

Is it inevitable that both the software and hardware we buy in the gaming realm, be it the new SimCity or the next-gen Xbox, are simply no longer ours to own, let alone to hack and mod and use in the way we're most comfortable? Microsoft may not have come out and said so outright, but it's certainly taken quite a few steps down that gloomy manufacturer- and publisher-dominated road.

Updated 10:15am on 5/22: When asked directly by Kotaku whether or not the Xbox One would have a time limit on its ability to play games offline, Microsoft Vice President Phil Harrison offered these fateful words: 

Kotaku: If I’m playing a single player game, do I have to be online at least once per hour or something like that? Or can I go weeks and weeks?

Harrison: I believe it’s 24 hours.

Kotaku: I’d have to connect online once every day.

Harrison: Correct.

The company immediately backpedaled on Harrison's statement, telling Polygon Wednesday morning that the comments represent only "potential scenarios," adding, "...we have not confirmed any details today, nor will we be."

Updated 11:40am on 5/22: When asked about backwards compatibility by The Wall Street Journal, Don Mattrick, head of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business, said that only 5% of customers play old games on a new system and developing technology to accomdate those players was not worth it. “If you’re backwards compatible, you’re really backwards,” Mattrick added.

Photos by ReadWrite's Taylor Hatmaker for ReadWrite