Well its official. Verizon has gotten its hands on the iPhone.

Its certainly good news for some Apple fans in places like New York City and San Francisco, clear choke points on the AT&T network. But should you run out and buy one? Here are five things to consider:

1. Limited International Roaming Support: The Verizon iPhone can technically roam to other CDMA properties (about 40 countries), including Latin America, China, and Korea but not Europe and many other key international regions.
2. No support for Verizon’s new 4G LTE network. For AT&T or Sprint converts, this means data in the low speed lane.
3. Wi-Fi Hotspot support. The only new (and certainly cool) feature  in the announcement. Using the handset as a WiFi hotspot is a very convenient feature. But buyer beware, if you use the handset in this mode you cannot receive calls.
4. Limited shelf life? Apple is expected to release a new handset this summer that will support the new high-speed networks and other rumored innovations.  You may well have handset envy in 6 months.
5. Termination fees and two year contract locks. For consumers and enterprise executives alike, the cost of switching out of an active contract on AT&T or Sprint is high. And the cost of upgrading to the iPhone 5 this summer may be high without incentives which today don’t seem to be on the radar.

This is a good win for Verizon.  It’s an interesting, if not uncharacteristic distribution response by Apple and likely signals the company’s worry about the wide distribution play of Android.

The Verizon iPhone is not the dream phone at all.
The handset is old phone (especially in mobile terms) on an aging network –EVDO is several years old and as mentioned, Verizon is touting its new LTE which isn’t supported by this new handset.

I would be very surprised if AT&T does not counter the one new feature – hotspot capability – on its own network. It just seems like a no brainer. The AT&T offering would not be handicapped by lack of simultaneous voice and data support.

At the end of the day, the Verizon iPhone appears that it may have a limited shelf life. The real news here is that as the era of handset exclusivity fades, Carriers are increasingly going to be forced less on glimmer and more about performance.

Image via CrunchBase

On the eve of a Verizon press conference where rumors are rampant about “the” iPhone coming to Verizon, something feels wrong.

Without the promise of Long Term Evolution (LTE) network support capability or a major announcement about a mobile payments (ISIS?) offering, everything about this event goes against everything that has defined Apple. In fact, it is embarrassing. Are we to assume, that Apple is so frustrated with AT&T that would it rip the radio out of a 6-month-old handset (in mobile that’s a lifetime) and drop a new CDMA radio to run on Verizon’s aging EVDO network? That is just not Apple’s MO.

I’m not going to defend the subpar performance of the AT&T network, especially in New York City and San Francisco, where even AT&T admits to issues. But while Verizon’s data traffic has grown 1000%, AT&T’s network traffic has grown 5000% in the last two years. Trust me, there are a boat load of very good network traffic engineers at other operators, including Verizon, thinking they are glad its not them…

Then there is the not so little issue that Apple is expected to release a new hardware revision of its phone, the iPhone 5, this summer. So are we to assume that Apple is going to lower itself down from the pulpit, as the mobile innovator of the last decade, and down into the mud slinging and confusion of carrier handset sales and distribution by releasing a bastard iPhone 4? I don’t buy it.

So I think this leaves us with three scenarios:

1. Verizon announces the availability of a new Windows Phone 7 – perhaps the HTC Trophy and maybe even a new tablet. All the iPhone rumors are wrong.
2. Verizon announces that it becomes a primary, but not exclusive, carrier to get the LTE capable iPhone 5 when it is released this summer. Nothing new to buy until then.
3. Verizon takes the wraps off an actual product offering within its ISIS mobile payment initiative, using RFID stickers along with CDMA iPhone 4. (something new, something old)

Any of these three scenarios are a lot more interesting and valuable, than the mere announcement of an old phone on an aging network. What ever happens on Tuesday, my bet is that Apple is going to maintain its dignity and continue to deliver innovative clarity to consumers – and investors. Verizon and AT&T will remain fierce competitors. And Apple is not going to leave AT&T for Verizon

My 18-month-old can aptly manage her way to the Dr. Seuss app on my iPad.

Second-graders carry cell phones.

I know 12-year-olds who have Facebook pages.

It’s no secret that kids today are tech-savvy. And, in most cases, they’re more tech-savvy than their parents. Children are growing up surrounded by technology, and parents just can’t keep up.

So, while many companies at CES are talking about a smarter life through technology, I have to stop for a minute and ask, “How will all these high-tech gadgets impact the safety of our kids?” Is there any way that we can help them grow up reaping the benefits of technology without compromising their security?

One company, Mousemail.com, is tackling this issue head-on.

Mousemail.com is an Internet venue, where parents and their children can create a hub that establishes the conditions of behavioral acceptance and then uses technology to enforce protected activity.   The overarching objective is to guard against cyberbullying, pornography and other inappropriate behavior while children are on the Internet.

The aspiration of the company is to build a series of technologies that encompasses an electronic monitoring and alert engine for activity that occurs not only on its own e-mail servers, but also on third party solutions including AOL, Yahoo, Gmail and text messaging, and eventually on social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, too.

As it stand now, a visitor to the Mousemail site will see no actual functionality, beyond a video and text explaining the aspirations and intents of the company. You can sign up for a free beta test, though. It’s like a “protection fortress,” says Les Ottolenghi, chairman of the board of Safe Communications. The system is “designed to help a parent manage their child’s relationship with the Internet and their relationship, in turn, to their child.”

But, that statement brings up another interesting question. Is Mousemail.com nothing more than a high-tech crutch, a state-of-the-art substitute for old-fashioned good parenting?

Some parents think so.

“The more technology we have the more we as parents need to get back to basics, and those basics mean figuring out how to spend more face-time with your children,” says Alex Brock, a nurse and mother of a 10-year-old, in State College, PA.

According to Ms. Brock, cyberbullying is now so important –and so common –that it has become a topic of conversation in her house almost every night. “In the end, it’s the same problems over new modalities with commercial interests,” she says.

Experts who study cyberbullying say that anonymity provides empowerment to bullies, thus fueling the problem. Ms. Brock has found that within her daughter’s circle of friends, many kids have already figured out a solution. “They ‘facetime’ on Apple iTouch and Skype,” she explains. “They have forced each other to see and hear each other.”

Fancy that. Smart Kids.

Facebook often catches heat as the preeminent venue for cyberbullying. I asked Les Ottolenghi from Mousemail.com how he would approach Mark Zuckerberg with these concerns. If he was sitting with Zuckerberg what would he say?

“I’d say, ‘Mark, help make kids safe in this wonderful thing you have created called Facebook,’” Les said.

I second that motion, and I would be glad to help.

It seems to me that Les and Ms. Brock are both right. We should be building technologies solutions to help kids be safe on the Internet. But, these tools are not a substitution for good parental engagement and guidance.

Has Mousemail.com got the right stuff? I’m not sure. But, one thing is certain: I’m going to start asking more kids about it.

Image via CrunchBase

Steve Ballmer was on a mission tonight during his keynote at CES. It wasn’t the jovial classic Steve Ballmer I was hoping to see at such an event. Instead it was a more serious all business Ballmer.
His mission was twofold. Defend the successes of Microsoft in 2010 and offer a glimpse of what the company intends to do in 2011 and beyond.

Microsoft did have consumer successes in 2010. The company sold more than 50 million Xbox consoles worldwide, and there are now more than 36 million members of the Xbox Live gaming network. 8 million Xbox Kinect sensors, shipped to retailers in the first 60 days worldwide, which seems quite remarkable, but Ballmer stopped short of mentioning actual consumer sales numbers.

Steve talked about nine Windows Mobile phones on six carriers in 30 countries, with 20K registered developers, and 5500 apps in the store, but again, no mentioned about actual consumer purchases. Ballmer announced Windows mobile will get cut and paste features and the work on the device types for Sprint and Verizon will be finished in the first half of 2011– he stopped short of actually saying whether the operators are planning to make the phones available.

Frankly without consumer numbers the defense mission was not only weak, but feels like Ballmer squandered air time in a preeminent spotlight that he could have used to tell the world what Microsoft, the consumer company, was going to become.

On the positive side, Xbox is getting Netflix, Hulu and both will support Kinect gestures. Xbox will get some new games. Frankly theses were expected additions and I consider them table stakes to keep Xbox in the hunt. Another new feature coming is Avatar Kinect, which Xbox Live Gold members will get for free this Spring. The technology uses facial and body recognition to generate the avatars.

The big news from Microsoft was upstaged by its own pre conference press event.
Microsoft is porting a next iteration of Windows to a System on a Chip (SOC). In consumer terms this means it will take everything you know as the Windows operating and put it inside a semiconductor chip the size of your fingernail. The result will be faster performance and longer battery life in handhelds. This is formidable task and will require very close integration and open working relationships with partners. I suspect Ballmer anticipated the raised eyebrows that would come with such announcement by not only naming the active partners including Qualcomm and NVIDIA but also demoing live prototypes. Frankly that took guts. Though frankly when Microsoft announced Windows CE back in the 90’s for industrial class handhelds I thought the company was headed in the direction then – had they – its quite unlikely they would find themselves in the position they are today.

In the end, Ballmer played it safe. He stayed away from the tablet buzz, he didn’t take head on how Microsoft was going to counter Google TV, or Apple TV if at all, and finally I think underserved Microsoft’s interest in their detailing visions for evolving their Azure cloud offerings for consumers.

Did Ballmer get it down? Well no, but he didn’t get hurt either.