What happens when the marginal cost of serving online customers turns out to be almost zero? Chris Anderson’s Free offers a complete and clever answer to that question, written with the same compelling style of The Long Tail.

It shows how the Web has enabled a brand-new class of business models, and thus become such a Wonder Land of free, high-quality applications and services.

I really loved reading the book. And I got positively impressed even by a speech Anderson recently delivered in Milan, about the disruptive effect of the Internet over so many brick-and-mortar businesses.

So what the hell crossed his mind when he recently wrote and published an article titled The Web is Dead?…

Ok: he wanted to remark the rising power of the Apps, which is undoubtedly a fact. Granted: as editor in chief at Wired, he needs to push the magazine sales even by purposely triggering some buzz and squabble.

But I believe that statement is far too much.

A lot of reasons have already been pointed out by critics across the Web.

In a nutshell, my own can be described as follows:

- yes, the Apps are a big success for their ability to drive dedicated experiences, ideal for handling specific tasks… so no wonder that many companies and organizations are betting on them to attract customers into their own walled gardens, out of the Web…

- but the Web is alive and in very good shape indeed, because it gives its best just where the Apps struggle: universal compatibility. Today I can handle most of my online activities on nearly every devices… regardless of their operating system (and even by borrowing someone else’s laptop for a few minutes or getting in a cyber cafe)… AS LONG AS THEY HAVE A WEB BROWSER.

iPhone, Android and their likes have definitely changed the way we define a smartphone, so quickly that most of the competitors are still struggling to catch up.

Although I consider myself a techno-fan, and I use to act as a first adopter with most consumer technologies, this time I’m sticking with my 3-years-old Nokia E71.

I guess we can call it a smartphone, even though its screen is non-touch… and quite small on current standards. In fact the following points still make it a very good companion:

- comfortable QWERTY keyboard (say what you want, touch-screen-addicted readers, but I bet I can text faster than you!)

- still up-to-date hardware equipment, including wi-fi, 3G, bluetooth and GPS

- embedded Mail-for-Exchange client

- availability of free applications for those features most of us use the most: Gmail, Google Maps, Ovi Maps, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, Nimbuzz (a multi-service chat client)…

Not enough? You’re right.

The final, critical ingredient is Joikuspot. This smart program connects to the Internet in 3G and shares that connection via wi-fi, turning the E71 (and many other phones) into a wi-fi hotspot in a snap.

Only recently added in some smartphones natively, this feature is usually defined “wi-fi tethering”.

Think about the possibilities. I mainly enjoy the latest apps on my iPod Touch and download new content from everywhere on my e-book reader… but one could even surf the Internet with two notebooks at the same time from a beach…

Just get a 3G flat data tariff before!

Recent articles about Blockbuster Video’s upcoming bankruptcy, with Chapter 11 approaching and no apparent strategy for a relaunch, make me pretty sad: I believe it’s such a shame!

Let me explain why. During a couple of business trips I’ve been reading Inside Steve’s Brain, a smart book about a guy who definitely knows how to make a difference: Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs. I already knew how troubled Apple Inc was in the late 1990s, when Jobs took its role back after many years out of the company. Thanks to that book, I discovered some serious similarities between today’s Blockbuster and 15 years ago’s Apple Inc. For instance:

- Apple had a huge set of different products and versions, without anything close to a precise focus or strategy -> Blockbuster has started losing money from its hundreds of shops, and now is acting as a confused late follower in those adjacent markets responsible for its crisis (from online rentals to automated kiosks)

- Jobs immediately identified Apple’s brand as the most valuable asset to start a relaunch from -> Blockbuster’s blue and yellow logo is still synonym of “cinema” across most of the Western countries

Not enough? Sure, it’s hard for everyone to be compared with the cool and innovative Apple we all know. But let’s go back to 1997, when Apple’s logo had rainbow stripes and the Power Macintosh had the appearance you can see here on the left.

Yes, a different era. But Jobs started his unbelievable series of best seller products with the iMac (here on the right) one year later only.
Big step forward, uh?

Blockbuster could start a new course as well, leveraging one of its supposed weaknesses: the shops. I believe an effective recipe should be based on the so-called “Internet of the Things”.

Movies are not common products. Hollywood’s “dream factory” is not just a claim.

One could enter a Blockbuster store, be recognized by a Rfid loyalty card without pulling it out of the wallet… and get amazed by HD trailers, profiled offers and recommendations… with every movie ready to be downloaded on a digital memory in a snap.

A whole new approach, capable of suddenly shifting the company image from the 1980s to 2010 and beyond. Who said customers always want to stay home while choosing a movie? They could be eager to go out, if the shops were able to amuse and entertain them!

When advertisements reach the Super Bowl scene, they’re supposed to push widespread products to the largest audience of the whole year.

Therefore, tech innovations usually run that stage when they’re ready to turn into mass-market wonders.

As far as I remember, a brick-&-mortar content distributor such as Blockbuster has broadcast a Super Bowl ad only once. Well, this year Vizio has shown how its latest TVs can bring both premium video content and web services to the living room. Through the Internet. In a snap.

The rules of the game are definitely changing.

My blog’s ultimate purpose is building a merge between technology and sustainability. I wish I could neither just write about these two topics in different posts, nor simply delve into the technologies eco-friendly products are produced with.

I’d rather love finding out ways in which consumer oriented technology can help developing a cleaner world, by making what the Internet can do best: eliminate barriers.

Here you go with A Real Tree. Just a few taps on your iPhone screen, and for $0.99 a real tree will be planted on your behalf in a developing country facing deforestation. Then the application will give you a real-time (estimated) glimpse on how your tree is doing. Check it out!

The New Year always carries assessments about what happened and resolutions for the following twelve months. Someone also looks back at past predictions, seizing the moment to evaluate them with hindsight.

By applying all of this to consumer electronics, I think Apple’s iPhone has determined the most relevant market trend across 2009, being much more than the excellent niche product someone had initially considered it. While touch screens and widgets/applications have swiftly become a must for everyone out there, I’m asking myself: who’s going to play a similar role in 2010?

My bet is on ebook readers.

On the way to explaining this statement, let’s make one step back. Gartner, a market research firm, believes every technologies go through a hype cycle before gaining a widespread diffusion: after a peak of inflated expectations, there’s a “trough of disillusionment” before the technology reaches the “slope of enlightment”.

In Gartner’s 2009 Hype Cycle Report, issued in July 2009, ebook readers were placed at the maximum level of expectations, just before the disillusionment phase.

Six months later, I believe this phase could be almost over. Using the chart below as an instruction manual, ebook readers are in my opinion where competition increases and second generation products reach the market.

Time (the horizontal axis) is running so fast that ebook readers could be climbing the scope in six months, when Gartner’s next report is expected to be issued.

This technology has the potential to eventually change the way we’ve been reading for centuries. The Internet is already doing it for news and every other short/medium length text. Ebook readers could finish the job.

The huge retailer Amazon, originally born just as a bookshop, is leading the ebook readers market not by accident with its Kindle, whose DX version has gained worldwide 3G coverage just today (the more popular Kindle 2 already had it).

Moreover, the potentially most brilliant competitor happens to be the Nook from Barnes & Noble, a US-based bookseller. The Nook is still young but adds a small LCD touch screen for navigation and is powered by Android operating system, which could support interesting features like (back to the 2009 must-haves) widgets.

This means one thing: content eventually rules over features.

No matter what Sony or others are going to launch in technical terms. A seamless access to books and magazines is definitely the key aspect.

I’m frankly surprised by the lack of recent news about over-the-top video in the US.

While BBC iPlayer is increasingly available on multiple devices in the UK, though not yet in form of mobile network enabled iPhone/Android app, Hulu and its minor competitors appear essentially stuck in the PC world.

Yes, one could connect its computer to the TV screen. Of course it’s not the same thing. I wish I could just receive a feed like the one below onto a widget-enabled STB, press OK on the remote control and play the latest Heroes episode seamlessly…

The amazing aspect of technology-driven markets is how swiftly change happens.

In 1995 Joseph Bower and Clayton Christensen, two researchers at Harvard Business School, felt the need to invent a new term for defining the most radical of those markets’ innovations: disruptive technology.

Of course change isn’t loved by everyone. As Wikipedia states: “Disruptive technologies are particularly threatening to the leaders of an existing market, because they are competition coming from an unexpected direction”. The risk for incumbent companies is that of the proverbial boiling frog: they often can’t guess the right moment to switch to the new technology, until it’s too late.

Now, which is the market heading to the next disruptive change?

My bet is on TV, where some old-fashioned broadcasters seem very unlikely to keep their leadership over the next decade. Yes, of course they’re moving some content to the cloud and granting some sort of on-demand access to their customers. But real competition can reveal tough to deal with… especially whether it comes from copyright owners, suddenly able to speak directly to their viewers.

While video-on-demand has a constant coverage for the continuous release of new projects, from Hulu and iPlayer to the growing number of VoD enabled over-the-top devices, the online music market has been perceived as quite steady during the last few years (with Apple’s iTunes Music Store maintaining a share of over 70%).

Nonetheless, I believe a couple of interesting alternatives have a good chance to gradually increase competition.

1. Napster Music Store

I’ve got a special bond with the Napster brand: it wasn’t only the first peer-to-peer service I bumped into years ago, but also the main topic of my graduation thesis. Everyone probably agrees that it changed forever the way we mean music…

A few months ago, Napster has been relaunched as a legal music store backed by Best Buy. I couldn’t resist: I had to check it out!

Well, for just $5 per month I’ve got not only five DRM-free legal downloads… but also unlimited listening of every song from the catalogue! It’s like merging a traditional store (say Amazon) into the concept of online radio services such as Last.fm or Pandora. Respect to those, Napster has much progress to do in terms of recommendation engine, but grants its users far deeper control: you can select songs or entire albums, put them in a playlist and just listen with no limits.

It’s easy to reckon that the “listening” part comes almost for free (or at $0.05, say), since most songs cost $0.99 on traditional stores.

2. DoubleTwist

I believe part of Apple’s success in the digital music market comes from iTunes, which most iPod users wouldn’t ever replace (well, not even if they could…). Of course iTunes works with its own Music Store only, is based on DRMs and doesn’t manage any devices but the iPods.

Well, now imagine a comparable software which relies on the DRM-free Amazon music store and allows synchronization with nearly every device.

Currently available for Macs only, this all-devices-welcome player (definition borrowed from a Gizmodo article containing also a short video) appears led to a promising evolution.

Whoever has read “The Pillars of the Earth” or “World without End” by Ken Follett, contemporary literary masterpieces set in a rural medieval society, can imagine what it meant to live in a world where Catholic Church had both spiritual authority and temporal power.

As Rick Falkvinge points out, that was possible thanks to a substantial monopoly over information. Mr Falkvinge, founder and leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, reckons that power has always been consequence of an information advantage. Of course new technologies, such as printing press, threatened those advantages and were thus hardly fought… until the United Kingdom, on May 4th 1557, took a different approach and created a monopoly called copyright.

It’s interesting to find similar reactions across history with the subsequent big innovations: TV and radio have always been monopolies until relatively recent times. And even in wealthy countries like Italy, member of the G8 but ranked only 65th in the 2008 Freedom of the Press chart, they’ve just turned into controlled systems with very poor competition.

Of course there’s a notable exception: everybody can be user of unlimited information and even editor of original content through the Internet. No revolution has ever had the potential of the world-wide-web. And the effects are already starting to become clear in the most advanced and free countries.

Yes, the surprising election of Mr Falkvinge to the European Parliament is a very good example, but not the greatest…

Reading advice: Yes We Did! An inside look at how social media built the Obama brand.