There are invitations to Phoenix, the new app discussed in this post, set aside for Webware readers. Read on to learn how to get yours.

If you want to try out Phoenix, there are 100 early-bird invitations set aside for Webware readers. Go here to enter your e-mail address. You have to click over from this story to get on the list–cutting and pasting the link won’t work.

Flash has its downsides, of course. It’s yet another layer of platform software for an app to run on. For the most part, today’s overpowered personal computers and fast broadband connections punch through this inefficiency. However, in some cases, Flash just doesn’t offer up enough performance. The personal finance app Voyant, for example, eschews Flash for Java; a Voyant developer told me it’s faster at the math his app needs to perform.

Online apps in general have other advantages. Most offer Web-based storage and built-in access to the world’s largest collaboration network: the Internet. Nobody likes hassling with LAN-based workgroup software installations, and with Web apps you don’t have to.

Flash-based applications are inherently cross-platform, because there are Flash runtimes that work in Internet Explorer and
Firefox; on Macs, Windows, and Linux. (There are even Flash runtimes for mobile phones and set-top boxes, although Adobe’s expensive licensing schemes for those platforms do a lot to keep Flash apps off them.) With Adobe’s new AIR runtime environment being basically a wrapper for Flash and Flex, we can expect that many of these Flash apps will be released as independent app-like products, but with Flash’s cross-platform and Web-native advantages.

In fact, I want to encourage this crazy ambition. If Worth1000 can build a suite of professional media creation and management apps all at once using new Web platforms–and even if it tries but in the end cannot– it could encourage other developers to stretch beyond today’s current Web 2.0 apps. We certainly could use more real Web apps, and fewer me-too social networks or developers’ resumes masquerading as products.

The full rundown of tools the team hopes to build sounds hopelessly ambitious and reminds me of Zoho, which has a too-big suite of not-quite-developed online productivity apps. Probably a better strategy would be to focus on the key moneymakers and open up a plug-in platform so other developers could add to the ecosystem. But I don’t really want to critique the company before the first app is even out of beta.

Even rich media apps will fall

Other Aviary graphics apps to come include a color palette creator, an “algorithm-based pattern generator,” a vector editor (competitor to Adobe Illustrator?), a 3D modeler, and other non-graphics tools such as a word processor, an audio editor, a “music generator,” plus a network file storage system and a marketplace for the exchange of creative works.

And I’ll tell you this: I’m not seeing nearly the same creativity today in traditional software that I am seeing on Flash and in browser-based apps. Flash-based apps are finally beginning to compete head-on with standard software. Many new Flash apps aren’t just different. They’re better.

Case in point: the Aviary suite of graphics apps, coming out soon from the team at Worth1000. The first app, the image editor Phoenix, will make you question the value of your Photoshop license. Not that it’s a drop-in replacement for Photoshop today, but it gives you a strong indication that the need for expensive apps licensed on a per-PC basis is ending.

Who needs Photoshop?

As I reported from Demo 2008, new Flash- and Flex-based Web apps are putting traditional desktop apps to shame. The database Blist, the widget maker Sprout, and the photo manager Joggle are all Web-based apps that give up almost nothing to run inside a browser.

See also: Picnik; and watch for Adobe’s own Photoshop Online.

(Credit:
CNET / Rafe Needleman)

Search and browse YouTube videos on Tooble, then download the ones you like to put on your iPod.

The good news is that it works flawlessly, and for the novice user who wants a highly affordable way of filling up their shiny Apple device with video content, Tooble is hard to beat. The killer app here is the workflow, which lets you queue up multiple videos for downloading at a time. Once finished converting it’ll send the videos straight to iTunes so you don’t manually need to hunt them down and drag them into your library. I’d personally love a way to avoid iTunes altogether for syncing up video content while on the go, but if you’re using Tooble on your home machine, you’re in luck (ed’s note: Tom Merritt has a good Insider’s Secrets video on a workaround here).

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Tooble is
Mac-only for now, although there’s a Windows version on the way which the company is currently beta testing. Additionally if you’re looking to simply grab Flash videos off the Web for personal use on any portable device, there are a handful of services including the latest RealPlayer, Hey!Watch, and Vixy, the latter of which I’d recommend using over Tooble if you’ve got an older machine (read: non-Intel) since it’ll do all the conversion crunching on its servers.

Meanwhile, word began to circulate that McCain had decided on his running mate, though there was no specific indication yet as to which of several likely individuals had made the cut. The Republicans hold their convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul next week.

Earlier in the evening, former President Bill Clinton addressed the party faithful as well.

Catch up on Wednesday night’s developments in this video with Katie Couric of CBS News:

Day three of the Democratic National Convention wasn’t just about speeches. It also marked the official anointing of Barack Obama and Joe Biden as the Democratic ticket for the 2008 presidential election.

(Credit:
IBM)

In June 1995, IBM stunned Lotus with a unsolicited $3 billion buyout bid. At the time, Lotus was in a world of hurt. Sales of the company’s franchise product–its office applications suite–were slumping thanks to stepped-up competition from Microsoft. CEO Jim Manzi knew that the company’s future depended on Lotus Notes, the hot groupware product spearheaded by the company’s star developer, Ray Ozzie.

Manzi instead gave Big Lou the middle finger.

Unfortunately for Lotus, sales of Notes weren’t climbing fast enough to compensate for the accelerating sales slump elsewhere at Lotus. So when IBM launched its unsolicited tender officer, Lou Gerstner expected a welcoming response.

History never repeats itself exactly, but rereading Kevin Johnson’s memo updating the troops on Microsoft’s bid to buy Yahoo, I was struck by the contrast with another software mega-merger saga that dominated headlines 13 years earlier.

Whatever charm Gerstner used to convince Ozzie to stick around, it worked–that and a corporate decision by IBM to up its offer by a half billion dollars. Suddenly, Manzi was all smiles for the cameras, touting the combination with Big Blue as a big win for customers, shareholders, and employees. (Amazing how the same script winds up getting used time and again.)

Money was no object for Lou Gerstner.

Jerry Yang knows the history of the software business. In the absence of a white knight emerging, he doesn’t have a lot of good cards. So for the time being, playing hard to get may the best way to coax a higher bid out of an unwanted suitor. After all, it worked for Manzi.

I’ve often since wondered how Lotus might have fared if it remained an independent company. Would Notes really prove to be Lotus’ savior? Impossible to say, but my back-of-the-envelope recollection is that Microsoft was marshaling its muscle behind its own groupware product. Bill Gates wasn’t strong enough to shove around Gerstner, but he had already shown himself capable of outmaneuvering Manzi’s Lotus. My guess is that Lotus would have wound up no differently than WordPerfect, a one-time software powerhouse also brought low by Microsoft.

And so what followed was a week full of back-and-forth statements and head feints as the real negotiations played out in the back rooms. At one point, Gerstner got on his plane to pay a special call on Ozzie, whose team of developers worked outside the corporate headquarters in the Boston suburb of Beverly. (The biggest historical irony in all this is that Ozzie is now the go-to technology luminary at Microsoft.)

Rod Beckström, 47, is expected to be appointed to the post Thursday and report directly to Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The secretive center was created by a national security directive signed by President Bush in January.

Beckström co-founded CATS Software, a derivatives and risk management software company, in his garage when he was 24, according to his Web site. He recently co-founded Twiki.net, a company that supports open-source wikis.

In the book The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, which he co-authored with Ori Brafman, Beckström wrote about the power of decentralized networks in organizations. He has gone so far as to say the concepts he outlined in the book could help the U.S. government in its dealings with al-Qaida.

No, I don’t mean 22-inch rims. I mean monitors, silly. Why the heck would I be talking about 22-inch rims on Crave? Hmmm, I guess I could be a spy from Car Tech, in which case talking about 22-inch rims wouldn’t seem so out of place.

Alas, no. As much as I’d like to be an Antuan Goodwin, a Wayne Cunningham, or especially a Cooley, I’ll have to settle for boring little old me. Talking endlessly about aspect ratios, color temperature, and bezel widths.

Enough about my life and on to the things that fill my life. This week I took a long, hard look at two 16:10, 22-inch monitors, and I’ve decided that one is actually better than the other. Earlier, I featured both the Dell P2210 and NEC MultiSync EA221WM in slideshows.

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The P2210 is a low-priced 22-incher with features up the DVI port.

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET)

Monitors are really just smaller TVs. Interest in TVs has never been higher and yet, I have to point out on a constant basis where to find monitor reviews (right here —-> Monitor review POWA!!)

The LPlayer comes in white, black, or pink (click the pic for more images).

Iriver first introduced its innovative D-Click interface in 2005 with the release of the U10, the boxy predecessor to the Clix line. The company shows no signs of abandoning the system, which is used to full effect on its latest U.S. release, the LPlayer. This ultracompact MP3 player could be the offspring of a first-gen Clix and the S10, with its similar design and extensive feature list. But the LPlayer isn’t exactly like its predecessors. It comes with a more reasonable starting price point: $110 for the 4GB and $160 for the 8GB. Read the full review.

The cloth is made of a polyethylene fiber that’s allegedly equal to aramid fiber used in body armor, according to the Daily Yomiuri. But if the picture to the left is any indication, the shirt’s not as sci-fi/armor-ey looking as one might expect. Plus, it’s machine-washable.

Nihon Uni, based in Osaka, reportedly came out with the garment in response to a rash of violent crimes against schoolchildren and convenience store clerks. The T-shirt promises to provide superior protection from slashing attacks, but its mesh fabric can be punctured by a sharp point.

The shirt will go on sale in June, with the short-sleeve version starting at about $190 and a long-sleeve T going for $220 and up. Just pair it with a bulletproof backpack, and you should be about ready to hit the mean city streets.

(Credit:
Nihon Uni )

But Arrington also noted that the Bebo buyer, if there in fact is one, could be just about any big name in media or technology, from CBS to Viacom.

Nobody’s commenting, obviously.

The second rumor is a bit more detailed: tech gossip blog Valleywag reported on Wednesday that Plaxo has been sold to cable conglomerate Comcast for $175 million. Last week, the rumor was that Google had bought Plaxo. But Comcast, Valleywag’s Owen Thomas pointed out, already has a deal with Plaxo to handle address book applications for its Internet customers.

“Who’s going to buy Yahoo?” isn’t the only big question in mergers and acquisitions this week. Over the past few days, rumors have circulated that social-networking site Bebo and contacts management site Plaxo are either in negotiations or already sold.

All we need now is another Digg acquisition rumor, and then I’m about ready to call it a week.

One challenge will be convincing customers who are happy to buy shoes from Zappos that they should also turn to the company for other items.

And as Zappos tries to distinguish itself through its customer-service mantra, it’s had to cut back a bit on bargains. The main Zappos store recently changed its policy regarding price guarantees and free overnight shipping. To that end, the company recently acquired 6PM.com from eBags.com, and has designated the 6PM brand as its home for bargains.

“Getting a customer to buy from different categories from you is difficult,” said Patty Freeman Evans, an analyst at Jupiter Research. “We’ve talked to a lot of retailers about that. What we’ve also seen…is that over time consumers have not increased number of categories across online shopping.”

Zappos is hoping the service that keeps customers coming back will have them looking at new categories. On any given day, 75 percent of orders are repeat customers, Hsieh said. The free shipping and customer service department stand in for advertising as well; Zappos does relatively little traditional advertising, spending about 85 percent of its marketing budget on online buys. Besides print ads in magazines, Zappos’ offline buys include ads in airport security trays where passengers place their shoes.

“Frankly I’m kind of surprised that what we put on sells, how our customers find it,” Hsieh said. “The new site is built for easier navigation and searching, with multiple categories in mind.”

“The closest analogy to a brand we might use as a model is Virgin. They’re involved in CDs and airlines and whatever, but the Virgin brand is about being cool and hip,” Hsieh said. “For us it’s about the very best customer service. Hopefully, 10 years from now people won’t even realize we started out selling shoes online.”

The company’s two warehouses in Kentucky hold around 4 million items, but at just under a million square feet, Hsieh says Zappos has plenty of room to grow. And that’s just what he’s planning on; by the end of 2008 the company hopes to be selling footwear, apparel, sunglasses, watches, bags, bedding/linens, cosmetics, luggage, and electronics, according to his blog.

Zappos' current look

“Customers will say, ‘I wish you would start an airline.’ Well, we’re not going to do that. But if they say, ‘I wish you would sell this because I just had a horrible experience somewhere else,’ we’ll look into it,” Hsieh said. “We’re experimenting with a lot of other categories. That’s how we got into sunglasses. We’re taking the same approach–not going out and buying 10 warehouses full of pots and pans, just trying it out.”

“When you redefine who you are it’s critical that you make the connection with the customer,” said Ted Vaughan, a partner in the retail and consumer product practice at consulting service DO Seidman. “What’s going to distinguish them from other companies where (they’re not as well-known), especially as they move into other areas?”

“For some things the technical and customer service supporting a sale is very important to the customer. Whereas maybe a GPS device is less dependent upon that and is more dependent upon pricing,” Vaughan said. “Two clicks away at another Web site they may have the devices, but do they have the convenience? And in the end if you have problems and have returns customer service is critical. Price is always an issue and always going to be an issue but it’s not the only issue.”

The rollout of the user interface, and the expansion into categories including small electronics and cookware, highlight the core of the company’s mind-set: find out what the customer wants, and find the best way to deliver it.

The privately held company reported an operating profit in 2007, and “we exceeded (our goal) a little bit,” Hsieh said. In fact, things are going so well that the company recently told its 1,600 employees they would each receive a bonus equal to 10 percent of their 2007 salary.

“Long term, our plan is to not have any sale items on Zappos,” Hsieh said. “We want it to be more of a premium brand for customers who value service over anything else.”

(Credit:
Zappos.com)

According to Jupiter’s data, consumers on average purchased items from 4.1 categories online in 2001, out of a possible 32. By 2007, that number had grown to just 4.7.

Meanwhile, Zappos is facing challenges on its home turf. Big names like Gap and Amazon have jumped into the online shoe sale business with their Piperlime and Endless stores, respectively.

Sometime in the next few weeks, online shoe seller Zappos.com will launch a new user interface that could soon let consumers buy lipstick and MP3 players along with Birkenstocks and Nikes.

Zappos.com's new user interface

Zappos prides itself on attention to customer service–an 800 number is plastered on every page, along with notes promoting the company’s 24/7 customer service line and 365-day return policy. So far, this approach has been working: Zappos, which launched in 1999, had gross sales of $840 million in 2007, up from $1.6 million in 2000. As of the beginning of April, the company had a customer base of 7.7 million people.

So, is Zappos ready to take on big players like Amazon.com? Hsieh says that’s not the company’s goal, but it’ll certainly be going up against some strong competitors.

That message appears to have sunk in with customers. Zappos came in second in a recent National Retail Federation survey regarding customer service, beating out online and offline brands including Amazon, Land’s End, and customer service legend Nordstrom.

(Credit:
Zappos.com)