BlogSat

Last week pictures of Microsoft's coming App Store leaked. The line that stood out for me in this TechCrunch commentary was It looks almost as if Microsoft is ripping off Google ripping off Apple The commentary is both accurate and a little unfair . On the surface, the claims seems valid. You could probably throw the Amazon App Store for Android into the mix as well. The stores have similar elements. A rotating, image-rich banner on the top to promote new/notable/preferred/interesting apps. Lists and modules to show the right slices of apps - a mix of curated and generated collections Individual detailed pages for the apps. The ability to dive into categories Most have reviews and ratings Some support evangelizing/sharing (i.e. tweet/share on facebook etc.) The differences right now are mostly cosmetic (icon design, font sizes, banner designs, graphic elements, consistency with existing products etc.) The comparison that keeps coming to my mind is the similarity to stores in the...

If you care/read about the Internet/mobile/commerce local spaces, the theme of this year is how the combination of local+mobile+social will rock your world. Every VC firm, every second existing Internet company, and every third startup has an opinion and a bet in place in this space. I've been cautiously skeptical of everything I've seen either out of professional curiosity or as a user; I thought most of what I see is incremental and adds a little, but not that much value. My final real-world use of one of these simultaneously proves and disproves my opinion. I was walking back home, when I saw this sign, so I checked-in via Foursquareat this place, realized I could get a small ice-cream for 2 bucks... and so I did. Yay! The technology worked, the offline commerce worked, the consumer (i.e. me) behaved as expected. Everyone wins...except me finally because I just realized I really didn't want ice-cream then and I really, really don't like tasti D-lite much anyway! Sig...