Spotify Mobile – Google I/O in San Francisco
So I just returned from an awesome week in San Francisco where Anders, Ludvig and I demoed the first version of Spotify mobile on the HTC Magic Android device. We’ve worked very hard on this application for the last few weeks and are pretty pleased with the result. Using it on the trans-atlantic flight was a good test of the offline sync mode, really useful! 😀
I really like the HTC Magic (thanks for giving everyone a free device Google), it’s pretty clear that the form factor is everything when you compare it to the G1. It actually makes my iPhone feel just a little bit big…..
Spotify for Android at Google I/O
The event itself was huge fun. The party on the Wednesday was in true Google style with any and every geek interest represented + ofcourse, the sign of Google, lots of free food and drinks!
I probably don’t need to mention the Google Wave presentation to anyone, how can you have missed it? I would like to say however, that I think the general blogosphere has kind of missed the core of what it is (which is easily done, considering it took 1,5 hours just to demo all the different things it CAN do). But in one sentence, Google wave is about Centralized conversation objects, where everyone edits the same object, rather than the current distributed model, where everyone has local copies of conversations and edits (replies etc) to their individual copy. This basic paradigm difference allows for all of the rest of the features (realtime, simultaneous update, in message editing, collaboration etc). I actually think they should’ve stuck to just the core messaging use case for the demo, to not confuse it too much.
It’s a super ambitious project in itself, but what really blew me away was the fact that they are going after a federated solution right away (i.e. I can have my own Google Wave server), meaning there will be multiple copies of these conversation objects, that need to be kept in sync. I think it was crucial that they did, it just wouldn’t have worked to say that all future communication should be hosted by Google themselvers, but it does make it orders of magnitude more complex I would guess…..
Spotify for Android ftw! 🙂
Im soo convinced that this will kick itunes butt! This is the future. I only have two questions, who do I have to kill to become a beta tester 🙂 and when will it hit the market. But actually I’m not suprised, I have been a premium customer since October and there are very few things that gives you so much value for the 99SEK per moth.
/Johan
Gustav: I had the same thoughts in the shower this morning; isn’t all the hype about wave actually missing the real big thing. That it is one central object that everyone is working with at the same time. I don’t think I’ve seen any comment about that at all…
Hi!, the spotify demo rocks! pretty cool, I really like the service on the web and the side loading feature for mobile I believe it is key from a consumer perspective so, well done! Regarding Google’s wave I agree with the post and comments. However, the first point that came to my mind (honestly I have not thought a lot about wave yet so maybe it is a silly thing) was how the transition from pre-wave to post-wave will be for consumers. Let me explain it, I believe that the concept is quite complex for the average consumer (I think about my father, 65yo, who uses email and a bit of IM or even my wife who is closer to an average user) … how will non-wave users interact or experience wave from the “outside”? .. I am curious to know… I also believe that given that wave is broser based it will provide a competitive advantage to chrome … on top of the obvious implicatons for Microsoft OS and its apps suite…
Gustav, we need to have a coffee and brainstorm as last time we saw each other! 🙂
Congratulations for the blog by the way!
/ Alex
Hey Alex. Will you be at Mobile 2.0 in Barcelona on the 19th?
/Gustav
Loving that you’ve got this application on the mobile device, you’ve just hit the sweet spot for me in terms of using with ads versus paying – I’d not ever be bothere about listening to ads in order to get my favourite music (let’s face it, we’re all used to that) but to get the app on my mobile device, given that I am always listening to music, is an awesome step forward and one that I’d pay for in a flash!
Loving that you’ve broken the model and made people think about ownership versus sharing, and in particular the location of your information. I expect this to really start a sea change in the way people think about data and information.
Good work fella, you’re blazing a path that I’m happy to drive along!