Tech Blog

[#1]

As we move away from desktops and notebooks to tablets and phones, software developers are looking for new ways to get their wares into our hard drives.

Bloatware is the term used to describe the dozens of programs you find pre-installed when you pick up a windows machine.  Third-party vendors pay the manufacturers to pre load them and you’re left to pick up the pieces removing them as they slow down your system.

Now it’s starting to happen in mobile phones as LG handsets will now have android apps preloaded.  Shazam, the app that identifies songs remotely,  has just cut a dea to offer a free trial of their encore app for a week as it tries to expand beyond the free app offering.

LG buyers will be given a one-week free trial of Shazam Encore, but the party ends quickly.  If a one-time upsell of £2.99 ($4.70 or €3.63) is not achieved, then users are limited to five tags per month. [source]   

The Shazam app is very cool, it's one of my faves and I was lucky to grab it when it was strictly free. You can see how the pre-install is a bait and switch to get people to move the subscription model and that's where bloatware moves from being useful and handy to being deceptive.

This is just the tip of a very a slippery slope and perhaps a reason to stay with Apple, a completely vertical company.

catch the buzz .. pass it on.

[#2]

This is becoming the norm.  In Canada and the US, carriers have long been pushing app downloads to their customers.  For example, Telus, Bell and Rogers each push out around 11 icons (widgets) to their BlackBerry users which lead customers to websites where they can download their apps.  You can't delete the icons (although you can hide them), and there is little that can be done to stop receiving them (as it's up to your carrier if you get them).

This is a smart business for carriers as it essentially acts as free advertising (for their apps) and can bring in more money when they make deals with 3rd party developers.  At the end of the day, it's the same as paying to watch TV and then still having to watch the commercials.

The real interesting one now is how some carriers are starting to force you to use a specific search engine.  For example, Verizon in the US has struck a deal with Microsoft to push Bing as the major search engine used on the Verizon network.  This is even on Android devices.  So expect this to become the norm (including on Apple devices... sorry to say).