Move over iPhone and Android: there’s a new mobile platform in town. Katie Couric is storming toward media domination launching her own mobile platform for apps. You see, at CBS, you can have your iPhone apps, your Android apps, your Blackberry apps, and then…your Katie Couric apps. She forced CBS to put her new mobile platform on their web site! The Katie Couric app store is tough on developers. You have to know your current events, you have to be literate, and if she calls with questions, you’d better be prepared to answer where you got your source. Katie don’t play.

I really think she’s running a stealth campaign to control the media and the machines. I mean, look at this recent photo:

And then take a look at this:

Skynet better run - Katie Couric is on the move.

[Selected post on Carnival of Mobilists] Recently, I read about the military considering deploying iPads in the field. Soldiers love their iPods. But then, I guess if Al-Qaeda used a common browser plugin for content that the iPad didn’t support, intelligence would be pretty much up the creek. They’d be the non-universal soldier. Al-Qaeda would have an engima machine. And imagine if they don’t deploy their Chaos apps to the iTunes store. If you have to rely on a device to see web content from combatants and competitors, wouldn’t you want it to be open?

But a better question is: will unfriendlies nicely fall into an appropriate subscription or monetization model? iKid.

Lady Ada day rolls around once a year and reminds us to think about Ada’s contributions to technology and women in technology. I took a pledge to blog, celebrating the day. It’s cool to note that women inspire, make great inventions and creations and question and push the world forward: they always have. Whenever people doubt that, and believe that women have just crotcheted on the edges, not inventing “the real serious” things, remind them that it was a woman that invented Kevlar and a woman that holds a patent to the first automatic pistol.

If we were to go back in time, besides thinking “gee, modern dentistry is great,” you’d be blown back at how dismissively certain people got spoken to. They and we still have a narrow view of what success looks like. You know, you had to be from a certain group, you had to be a certain sex, you had to wear certain clothes, be a certain age, from a certain region or country…you know…”the right sort of people.” It still happens. If you are a certain type in a certain slot, there is an invisible line on the door jam - “you can only have ideas this high to ride this ride.” In that place, only some people are permissible to have success.

I’ve taught computer science classes for years, and I’m shocked from the dismissive comments the students tell me made to them by their prior professors, as if they were the keepers of the priesthood. Some have been told “you aren’t the right material” and to give up on a career in technology. I’ve recently gotten my Master’s degree, and it did happen that a graduate professor of mine floated the idea that promoting women was imprudent. This guy was in his forties, if you’re wondering if he was dottery. Perhaps he thought he being was whimsically piquant to the students. Like a bitter, sour pickle at the end of a great meal.

Nobody keeps the priesthood. It’s not a priesthood. It’s open. It’s an open road, the last frontier - the wild west, the expanding universe whose edges and endings race before you. To be inspiring moves the world. Go out and do something and keep going as long as you have the passion.

When my mother went to school, her high school guidance counselor advised her to prepare for a clerical or accounting job. This was as far as her ambitions were allowed go, and the counselor’s job was to do that kinder cut and cut the students into puzzle pieces that would fit the community. But she had broader ambitions and a richer internal life. Luckily there were libraries with tons of content and stories about inspiring people doing work afar - and women like Margaret Mead who had real adventures half way around the world and spoke to her about the real possibilities in herself and the world. Writers and other artists and historians who gave her a world of imagination and possibility when the world got too harsh - which is the more sustaining gift of education - the real equity. When I got my Master’s degree, she was so proud. In my direct family line, I was the first woman to do that. My mother died at the end of last year, and I have not written about it, because nothing seemed worthy.

When I was thinking about who to write about to celebrate Ada, I know of some great women in technology currently like Anu Shukla and Sandy Carter. Success does look like these women. I’ve interviewed them the book I’m writing about technology strategy, Open Strategies. I’ll write about them at length later. But my mind kept circling around back to Jack Kilby. Insistent. Again and again. But Kilby is a dude. But still. At the time, early in his career, he didn’t appear to be what “they” thought the success club member should be. It’s ironic now to think a white guy would face bias, but it just goes to show you that bias can change like a caste fashion. Bias is all about a restriction and a resistance to “certain kinds” of people who can give, create, inspire greatly.  But let’s accept that success has no fashion, and it can come from all sorts of people with all sorts of styles and backgrounds and demographics.

Jack Kilby was a Nobel prize winner for his work leading to the first silicon chip, the integrated circuit, and Jack had the cold experience of his heroes telling him he wasn’t the right demographic, the right kind for the fancy book learnin’ and fancy thinkin’. Jack Kilby came from a small town in Kansas and in his time, the priesthood of technology was judgmental about a guy from a Kansas farming town and product of public schools and public libraries. It seems odd to us now - because he looks to us like a geeky dude, but at the time he wasn’t deemed to be the right kind of man to develop theorical physics. He was told he should give up princely theorical physics and study agriculture or practical electrical engineering. But he pushed ahead anyway. Like women experience in technology, he didn’t look like what success looked like to the keepers of the priesthood. It was impossible to them that he would contribute on a high level - again, did I mention he became a Nobel prize winner?

Jack went to war as a soldier in WWII, and while he was serving, he’d order special books from his heroes in theorical physics at MIT. He’d read them at night, sometimes by flashlight. When he got out of the service, he sought to go to MIT to study with the men who wrote the books. He went to test at MIT and to interview, and he specifically sought out some of his heroes on campus. His test results in mathematics was some points lower than what was common for entrants into the theorical physics program, but still not out of the realm of admission. He went to interviews, and his heroes snobbishly dismissed him, even though he could discuss their ideas, as a young man who could not possibly have the background to make important contributions to theory. He didn’t fit the profile. Jack never forgot this and later in life made encouraging students from different backgrounds a very important part of his mission. He also later said that if he had gone to MIT, they would have taught him that an integrated silicon circuit was impossible. The silicon chip set it off, like a match to gasoline, to new frontiers of living spawning imaginative applications, products, and wealth.

Jack’s speech accepting his Nobel prize was entitled, “Turning Potentials into Realities,” which both speaks to aspirations and a very geeky pun about the mechanism of silicon chips. Architectures, strategies, our technologies, our tools, our participations are all about turning potentials into realities. Our best future relies on throwing off any caste system dictating who looks like success and who may give it to us.

The Japanese are living our future. At CEATEC, the annual Japan high tech show, they tease us with it. Take a look at the Fujitsu concept phone from CEATEC 2009: the Ameboa.

It looks like a piece of crystal and changes its display to a keyboard to an internet browser to controls. There are buttons on four sides of the phone to change modes.

Apparently Fijitsu’s been experimenting with liquid displays. Take a look at the Chameleon, which changes it’s appearance to whatever it is placed against. Great. Now I’ll have more ways to lose my phone…. But it’s a beautiful idea none the less. Now Anna Wintour can get that fur phone she’s always wanted.

Another phone by Fijitsu and DoCoMo, the Separate Keitai by had a two piece keyboard and phone, which I think I’ve seen before in a Microsoft concept ad. Two piece is handy for when you need to talk while keying, but personally, I prefer the nubby keyboard.

But if I’m looking to the future, I’m lookin’ for nub in all the wrong places, because apparently, Sony is going to kill the keyboard. Check out this flexible display:

But if you are too lazy to actually touch your phone,  music player, Hulu session to change the tune or show…NTT DoCoMo invented headphones that respond to your eye movements as controls. These would not work well on your actual phone calls, because if you rolled your eyes at something someone said, you’d hang up on them.

So, if you believe the Japanese Tech community, soon we will be talking into our crystal phones, seeing flexible 3D displays, and controlling things with our eyes. Oh, and there will be robots.  Oh, yes, there will be robots. And they’ll probably need their own mobile phones.

When Melissa Brandts set up her camera to take a picture of her Canadian vacation, at the last second, a squirrel planted right in front of the camera’s lens - fascinated by the whirling sounds of focus. The picture made her and her husband laugh all the way back on the plane and now it’s going out in waves, having a network effect of comedy in the blogosphere.  If that is not worth the price of a camera (with great autofocus), I don’t know what is. Laughter is pretty essential.

But Melissa probably thought the camera was essential - for her vacation or her life to enjoy it. So she made that commitment and purchase.

I’ve been thinking about new devices lately and especially about those people who take on a new device. Not an upgrade, but a new device for them. I’ve been reading about the new netbooks, new e-book readers, and the wonderful secret tablets and wondering - who is going to buy them in these recessionary times? Of course some folks always get the latest device, but let’s face it, in this economy, do you buy that new device? And besides the cost, do you add another device to your menagerie to carry? What is the tipping point that causes a breakthrough in adoption? And how will this change whole ecosystems?

Of course, if you build or sell devices, you’re already thinking about this. But devices drive a lot of new business opportunities for people all throughout the ecosystem. If you are in the tech business, opportunities like new services, apps, accessories, or new ways to do business and live for everyone else.

If you are developing business strategy, it really is gives you an edge to take a bead on what is happening with devices. And the good first place to start is to deeply consider — what is the desire that drives people to buy that new device? Your strategy will be more successful if it’s allied with the drivers of adding a new device to their personal habits. My next posts will discuss some of these drivers, but now, consider the new e-book readers, netbooks and the tablets. What will drive these to be ubiquitous in people’s lives? What makes people decide they have to have it?

The workplace could drive the adoption of new devices, but businesses worry about remote management, durability, and capabilities. The laptop is not going away. But if you need to do work walking around, a smaller device is a natural. What changes could wide adoption cause? Will we change to a more “walking around” workforce or change in some other way if new devices are adopted? Will these changes snowball the need to have the devices? As it is, the laptop changed the work habits of people crouched in conference rooms or coffee shops together. It’s easy to forget how the olds were chained to desktops with really bad microwave popcorn.

On paper, for a business, the analytical questions get down to: is it a good investment? Will we get value out of it?

But — “is it a good investment?” is a different question than, “is it essential?” In the case of investment, will it produce return? Sure. I can measure it. Is it essential? Essential has some emotional weight to it, it does have something to do with desire than just the ROI. And “essential” is required for to make that breakthrough to ubiquitous adoption.

Essential is not necessarily a straightforward calculation. The kingmakers somehow go beyond: “I’ve got to have to do” to “I’ve got to have to be as I want.” When a device like the iPod came out, it was the first music device to make a splash since the WalkMan. It was thin and light and environmentally essential to many people. Sure, music is enjoyable, but since the workplace has gotten crowded and public spaces are crowded, it is essential because it creates an environment where you can think, stay motivated, and tolerate the constant harshes to your mellow. And it was beautiful to carry. And don’t forget, it made the iTunes store essential…

Another dream that device executives have is that, outside of the workplace, kids will make their new devices spread. But it’s a tossup whether in a recession, businesses or parents are tighter with their wallets when it comes to adopting an entirely new device. Just taking cell phones, it’s becoming essential for contact and control for many parents to give their kids cell phones, with the age being the debated factor. But parents worry about investment with destructive wear and tear and loss sometimes even more so than businesses..

In fact, more parents would probably get a more powerful, costly phone for their kid if the loss and wear weren’t such a cost factor. A smarter phone can be argued to be a great investment on paper. For instance, smarter phones could be useful for younger kids for learning. Studies have been done that families with kids commuting to school can learn valuable lessons together about reading through exercises on their phone. You can say a phone is a logical, good investment: there’s a lot of ways to try and make that argument, but is it essential and what kind is essential?

When Palm made a drive through schools with their Pilots in the 1990’s the feeling was, it was essential to move forward. I was a part of some of those projects. The excitement was essential. Some of the sale was made on the savings over printed texts and the consolidation of scheduling and planning for students. But it was really the tech edge felt to be essential. This new technology was like the moon shot for schools the first year or so. What initially moved their first adoption, it was about the shared view that they were essential for kids to be successful and their schools to be “wow” and a point of pride is what really made the capital move on those projects.

When it comes to requiring new devices, colleges have an easier time of creating change, because they can require some things of their students. Also students demand more of technology. It’s a time where people will often jump up to a new laptop or even a smarter phone if they leave home for school. You’ve gotta have a laptop or netbook, and you’ve got to have good battery life to move around in lecture halls without plugs (get on the wifi or cellular broadband and you can drive the professor nuts) and perhaps certain types are fashionable. College school kids are driving the sales of the new netbooks. According to a 2009 study, with 34% of students planning to buy one, they are close to the percentage of those (49%) who plan to get a laptop.

So then, if someone gets a netbook or laptop, the question is: would they get a separate e-book device or tablet? Some have argued that if you can do it on the PC, why get a separate reader? I think it’s not all about consolidation to the PC on the e-book question. To have easy visiblity of a book and a computer screen would be handy. Even better, a drag and drop between them (for notes, of course). The battle for the next really new device, it seems to me, is between a tablet device and the e-book reader.

Between the different readers and tablets, the forces on competition will bring out waves of new products for the next few years. We’re at a special place in history where an entirely new device will be added to people’s habits. What features make it essential? And of course we have to consider captive content and stores swaying the market. We have not worked out permissions and even the format of the files. Would it matter to adoption with younger readers if you could only get the new Twilight book (or whatever) on one? Would it matter if they were more durable and cheaper? It will be an interesting to see what plays out.

Right now, though, it’s not work or school that is driving e-book readers, it’s the smart adult reader who wants it NOW.

 Although Amazon doesn’t publish Kindle sales figures, surveys suggest Kindle users bulge in the over-forties. They are the serious readers, particularly out of the Amazon storefront, with some cash to lay down on a Kindle. Oprah pushes the Kindle and tells stories of downloading the best sellers to her device immediately. She could probably get the head of every publishing house on the phone immediately and get a book personally delivered, but it’s not fast enough. She can have what she wants when she wants in privacy. It has become essential. Therefore, by Oprah edict, it is for you. Resistence is futile…I kid.

Now, I enjoy browsing the local book stores, and unlike a 99 cent music download, I think longer before laying down cash on that content. But for professional research, like Oprah, I want my content NOW and searchable. And my content is multi-media too. And for some books by authors that I know, I want it NOW, instead of browsing and weighing it in a bookstore. So the now factor plays into my desire for one.

I haven’t added a Kindle to my device array yet, although I’ve used one for a time and enjoyed it a lot (an industry perk).  But frankly, it’s a just matter of time until I add a reader or a tablet. For me, it’s not a matter of just doing it all on my PC, so that if I could read on my PC, I would and therefore save the money for a device. It’s not all about cost, although it is a factor. My phone has become a gateway drug to getting a reader or tablet, because I read from my phone. And, really, it’s like reading through a peephole. If you have brief, peephole material, it’s alright, but it’s not great. But the phone reading anywhere creates a desire. It’s not the content, because I can get the content in another way. It’s the new possibility of habit.

Adding that entirely new device has to do with my changing habits that demand content now, search, speed, along with a desire for portable, and a desire to recline — and have a separate mental state for reading.

Take paper magazines. When I get down to it, I like my paper magazines, because they are easy to carry and read reclining or propped up. But essentially, it’s all about mental state. I want to get away from my PC and exhale and get my groove back. And magazines or books can be a kind of a trip, aspirational and inspirational. It’s about what reading was supposed to accomplish. And part of that was a separate mental state from all that is going on in your desktop. When a device becomes essential to creating that experience anywhere in the mad, mad world, readers/tablets will be ubitquitous.

On Thursday (July 30), J.D. Power released its customer satisfaction ratings of wireless prepaid providers and Virgin Mobile (CDMA) is neck in neck with Sprint’s other prepaid brand, Boost (primarily iDen). Taking a closer look at this and other customer satisfaction ratings yields a few insights. Virgin Mobile customers report particularly high satisfaction with customer account management and billing. While Virgin Mobile is ranked high above the average by customers across the board, in last year’s JD Power rankings, Sprint’s Customer satisfaction average or below average, with a particular hit in the customer experience. So even though Virgin Mobile service rode on Sprint’s Network’s, they were consistently rated higher than Sprint.

Behind the scenes, from the start, Virgin Mobile made a strategic choice. It had an opportunity to use Sprint billing and customer services with their brand, but to competitively differentiate, Virgin chose to develop their own customer service experience and succeeded in pleasing customers. Both Boost and Virgin Mobile have independence from management systems that Sprint uses, good independence in the case of Boost, and absolute in the case of Virgin Mobile. Virgin Mobile drove out their own supporting technology as a part of the strategy. 

Can Sprint maintain this good customer satisfaction in the acquisition? Right now, the key is whether Sprint can continue to allow Virgin to maintain the essential level of independence in operations. The danger is the claim of great savings by merging all aspects of their operations, because the Virgin systems have some uniqueness key to their success with customers. 

Virgin Mobile’s systems have made possible a certain agility for their management to create innovative programs such as SugarMama, the program that allows customers to earn service through social media ads propogated by the customers themselves. They also offer an “Esty-like” program of allowing customers to offer their own creations of ring tones and screen savers. Virgin was able to quickly offer features to their customers reflecting the fun they expected from the brand.

The addition of Virgin Mobile offers benefits to Sprint management. The retention of Virgin CEO Dan Schulman to helm Sprint’s prepaid products is exciting and with Matt Carter, the head of Boost, they have impressive brainpower in the race. 

Sprint has an opportunity to create a better platform for both of these prepaid products. Sprint can offer Virgin advantage in vendor and device negotiations and in service pricing direct to Sprint. More types of devices may be offered through Virgin. It already offers prepaid 3G data cards, and 4G prepaid could be a gateway drug to customers using more 4G services through the subscriber Sprint product line. Also, prepaid could be a way for Sprint to expand internationally and Virgin could be the way, especially through multi-modal devices.

Finally, Sprint has the opportunity to offer app developers something unique for the prepaid segment. They can offer some unified development experience across products. Currently, Boost offers limited developers support for iDen services, but Virgin developers exclusively go to the device manufacturers, like Nokia and Samsung.  With its new dominance, Sprint could innovatively redefine the game of prepaid in the US.

** Footnote: hidden benefit examination:
Can Dan Schulman get Sprint executives invited to Richard Branson’s parties? I’m sure this was reviewed before approving the deal.

A first for US carriers, Sprint opened up a few REST services for developers to play with for free at their dev Sandbox (http://www.sprintdevelopersandbox.com/). Developers can access location, simple presence, and send SMS messages through the services to Sprint handsets without requiring any software installed to the handset.

With the services, you can prototype web or mobile apps that query Sprint users and mashup with other data. You could create your own tracking apps for families, groups or businesses, text the users when they go out of bounds or if remind them if they are in range of a location or a commercial service. Mashing up weather info, you could push weather warnings according to dynamic location with simple service calls, and again, no need for installed software on the handset. Developers can use any language to make the service call, and any platform, so they could even develop an wacky iPhone app to query Sprint handsets if they wanted.

The location service returns a lat/long accurate within 100 meters, better in the cities, since it relies on tower triangulation location. You could beef up the lat/long with a mashup app to detailed mapping and address info. On the dev site, you can see a Google mashup of a very simple map with location for a demo. There’s also a presence service, which simply indicates the phone is on or in network range, and an SMS service to send a text and get the status of the message.

Carrier privacy requires a sort of opt-in notification to the services by the “trackees.” Your trackees receive an initial text requiring an opt-in. The trackees can opt-out at anytime at the Sprint account management web site. And just to be sure, the trackees get a text message about monthly reminding them that they are being monitored. So no anonymous tracking is allowed.

On the dev Sandbox, you get 250 hits a day for free, but for better performance and more hits, you can go commercial through an arrangement with one of Sprint service partners, which act as sort of “bucket” shops for purchasing access. Right now, the services are pretty plain and could be more robust in feedback. The performance on the free Sandbox is not the better production quality you can expect if you have purchased commercial access. There are non-REST APIs that are richer. But for free, you can get an idea of what you could do with accurate location mashups that require no clients on the handset. These REST services access only Sprint customers now, but later Boost should be added. It’ll be interesting to see if these services will ultimately extend through Sprint’s partners like Cricket and Virgin.

(First published on Programmableweb.com - Nan Hickman) Art from Sprint Dream ad campaign.)

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Metaphors are powerful. Tonight, Ivan Seidenberg, CEO and Chairman of Verizon visited the Charlie Rose show, and I was struck by his mention several times of Fed Ex as an admirable model for his company. Simply put, it’s as if he thought Verizon was in the business of delivering packets like packages. But his admiration extended to Fed Ex’s international ambitions. Now, telecommunications and transportation businesses like Fed Ex are both capital intensive. They are also about taking fundamental, old-school businesses and doing well with them with service offerings and operational genius.  Seidenberg kept returning to Fed Ex throughout the interview, so it’s clearly a part of his mental model for strategy.

Seidenberg is a cool, unruffled customer to interview. But he got visibly excited about three things: he wants more optical cable and still believes in its growth, he loves FemtoCells, and he has the ambition for Verizon to be more international, which seemed to be the most personally exciting adventure for him.

And rather surprisingly, Seidenberg also wanted Verizon to be in the business of dealing applications and content, and seemed to imply he wanted to be a content ”rights” broker.  I have more thoughts about that which I’ll add later. But if I had to read body language, this content play doesn’t exceed his love for FemtoCells and an International Verizon.

Seidenberg visualizes a world where telecoms will have international “natural” clustering in something like business zones - again, he admires Fed Ex for their international growth. He remarked that governments would do well to work to remove barriers for locality licensing, taxes/tariffs, rules, and international telecom business zones.  He also suggested that 4G will eventually wash standard conflicts clean, but he didn’t linger on the backhaul issue.

When Rose asked, Seidenberg without hesitation commented on the filters that foreign governments like Iran and China try to implement, saying he believed that they will never work completely and over the long term will fall.  He also envisioned that devices would someday be fundamentally similar enough to not be a barrier to international, universal service.  I would bet on fundamental, universal SIM cards, but I still believe that carriers and device makers would still try to differientiate on extended capabilities on the card.

Years from now, I wondered if someday we’d have international business zones that we’d recognize almost equivalently with our national citizenship.  There are a lot of new forces on telecom, water and energy distribution, and even currency - things we associate with local geo-governments, and I wonder if we are going to a place where almost everything is subscribable nearly on a dip in an dip out basis or it would be a syndicate “group plan” business association that will be nearly as important as citizenship? Discuss amongst yourselves…

Or, conversely,  maybe we’ll all be simple Skype and TwitterHead citizens: Oprah picked our US president and she picked Skype as her primary connectivity on her show to her viewers. So…all you need is Skype? However…. Oprah loves her Blackberry, Kindle,  and iPod devices, so it’s impossible to calculate how the delight of a device vs simple service vs. explosive content will continue to pull the market.  Simplicity is great, but you can’t count out invention and customer affection.

In recently in the US, there has been controversy around exclusive device deals and platforms, and I believe there’s a lot of misunderstanding about the nature of mobile business. And the layman mobile chatter volleys without irony between “why can’t I have simple choices …and no boundaries… and be offered the coolest thing ever that totally blows my mind? (i.e. what I heard they have in some town in Korea)”  It’s a great time, because there’s so much vitality and potential. As the economy stablizes and capital investment improves, it’ll just get better. One question from Rose that Seidenberg sort of dodged was aimed at how much R&D investment does Verizon make? Seidenberg was right that it’s harder to quantify when you deal with partners in the ways telecoms do, but R&D investment at this time will tell the future winners. That was the case after the Depression in the US and after the Recession in the 1970’s as well.

Seidenberg discussed his involvement in a US government business roundtable, and government and international affairs is a new facination for him. Maybe he sees it as the new frontier, but across the next decade, it will be interesting to watch to see whether he remains at Verizon or enters some sort of political post.  He seems to have some ambitions to see realized at Verizon, but I bet he would go for it within a few years, if the right one were offered.

The force on the exciting mobile market that could make everything go gray, undifferentiated and uninspired is government. And now we deal with not only our local government, but multi-national pressures. Either, government allows or enforces a monopoly or government does not enable an environment where businesses that take risk are allowed to reasonably enjoy the fruits of that risk. In just one country, a healthy, fertile business environment is a garden that needs constant weeding, but across borders, it will be the remarkable challenge of our generation.

Steve Jobs has been fighting the good fight to get back in the pink of health. We all wish him well. As he sought out the most superior ways to build himself up,  we know the real reason Steve Jobs went to Memphis Tennessee was for the soul food. Nothing will build the chi more than collard greens, cornbread, and sublime barbeque.  Except maybe some great chicken and peach cobbler.

Can Bubba pronounce your product name correctly? Take no chances. I was struck by Microsoft’s new venture in gaming, “Project Natal.” Now, looking at the name dead on, I’d think it was natal, associated with birth, pronounced natal like … “fatal.” But no, the Microsoft rep said it’s Natal like Napal. “Na-tall.” Pronounced similar to femme fatale. It adds an air of high style to pronounce it correctly. But Natal like Napal just invites Bubba to mispronounce the project. Bubba may be freaked out enough by the supernatural body readin’ technology.

Palm took no chances. When they announced the Palm Pre, they made sure to put the long e symbol promotional material, lest Bubba make the mistake of pronouncing it the Palm Pray, instead of with a long e like “Palm Free” or “pommes frites” or “Prius.” It implies “expect more” …. like fancy fried potatoes. Everyone loves chips. Jason Chen already demonstrated that the Palm Pre slices soft cheese, can fancy fried potatoes be far behind? After all, the iPhone is brutally competitive in the category “elegant name simplicity,” but does it imply deliciousness?… Or energy-saving transportation?