Russian internet giant Yandex has recently released the statistics (in Russian) regarding Twitter usage in Russia and Russian-language internet segment in general and it proves that while Twitter is probably not really huge, its growth rates are so impressive that we should really expect it to become an international online phenomenon as well - and soon.

First of all, Yandex is currently aware of 183 thousand Russian-language accounts on Twitter. Unfortunately it is impossible to claim that this is the exact number of Russian Twitter users as I guess there are quite a number of accounts (mine included) that use English language for some personal or professional reasons and also I’d guess that many people will have multiple accounts because Russian users seem to have learned how to use (and abuse) Twitter for marketing and sales purposes even before Twitter grew actually popular in the country.

It is also worth noting that Russian users are rather active on Twitter as 60% update their microblogs with new tweets daily instead of sticking to the usual online policy of listening more than contributing. This makes me think that an average Russian users is more active than an average Twitter user in general as one third of all Twitter users never tweeted in their lives and 76% of users have less than 5 tweets overall. Also Russian users are very fond of sharing as 67% of all the Twitter updates contain hyperlinks with 8% of all the updates being links to various online publishers.

Yet the most intriguing thing about Twitter that no one seems to ever be tired to discuss is its growth rates - and in Russia it is definitely worth noting. Over this winter the number of Russian-language Twitter users has increased by 46% while the overall growth by 26 times over the last year (March 2009 through March 2010) is definitely difficult to ignore.

The most impressive thing is that unlike the US where you see Twitter discussed in the newspapers and on TV and every consumer company having a link to their Twitter profile in a prominent position on their corporate website, in Russia it definitely does not get any comparable level of attention. Only once in a while we see it mentioned on some geek-targeted TV show and only the most tech-aware newspapers and TV channels actually have their news broadcast to Twitter - and advertise their Twitter streams elsewhere.

The only example that I have personally seen myself of Twitter appearing in a place where you would not really expect to see it was a whole page discussing the microblogging tool in the Russian version of Cosmopolitan - though I have no idea how to evaluate any traffic growth from Russian women to Twitter following the publication.

But even without any mass support of Twitter by Russian traditional media the growth rates are impressive enough not to notice it which makes me think that the rumors about pending localization of Twitter into Russian really have a solid base - and we should expect a real explosion when such localization is actually launched though it will not prevent me from wondering exactly how Twitter will be monetizing this huge crowd on the other side of the ocean.

It is impossible to find any publisher that bothers to report this story (not really a hot one, after all) and somehow fails to mention that this latest model of the popular Apple gadget makes its appearance in Russia with a huge delay - 9 months after its debut in the US, Canada and some European countries. After all, 9 months is perfectly enough to give birth to a child so Apple has definitely taken their time with the gadget.

The huge delay is due to one much-discussed reason: the lengthy negotiations between Apple and the three leading Russian mobile carriers that sold the previous iPhone versions - and did not achieve any impressive results here. I’ve been talking at the time and I will keep insisting on it now that the main reason for the failure is the most obvious one: the price.

No matter how loyal Apple fans here are, I can hardly imagine the vast majority of my friends going and buying a cell phone for almost $1 thousand even if they could afford it - especially after almost everyone who wanted to have it has already purchased one abroad anyway. And without the culture of contracts that could enable carriers to subsidize the expensive gadgets, the price turned into something beyond understanding of most people who could ever consider buying an iPhone in Russia.

But unfortunately people in Apple who are responsible for international sales decided that the reason for the failure was not the price and insisted the gadget was not advertised heavily enough here when the official sales began. Believe me, I’ve been here and I’ve seen it: iPhone ads were basically everywhere on the streets and on TV so you could not really avoid seeing them at all. Yet the buzz did not change one simple fact: the gadget was not affordable at all so no ads could persuade most people to go and buy it.

Now the lengthy negotiations are finally over and iPhone 3GS is ready to make its appearance in Russia with at least one of the carriers (and others will obviously follow in the coming days as reports were that negotiations took place almost simultaneously with the other two largest players in the market) and it is absolutely ready for a very similar failure in the country for the same reason.

Yes, it is actually coming here less expensive than Apple insisted: the Cupertino guys demanded that the 16 GB model should be priced at approximately $1,100 in retail and the official announcement today is that this model will cost about $1,000 while the 32 GB version will be available for about $1,170. So basically the negotiations resulted in something of a success for the Russian partners as Apple agreed to cut the retail price by $100. But will it help?

To me it does not sound any more affordable yet sources claim that Apple hopes proper promotion can change everything: where last time the Russian partners carried out all the advertising campaigns, this time Apple is going to distribute promotion budgets on their own, purchasing the best prime time spots on TV and probably shooting all the outdoor advertising at the potential buyers that they could buy.

But irrespective of who gets control over advertising this time, I have a feeling that sales will hardly be a success again for the very same reason: the price is still too high, especially when you compare it to what you could pay for the gadget in the US. And it looks like even Russian partners don’t believe in their prospects locally as it is reported that the initially imported batch is only 30 - 50 thousand phones for the entire Russian market which is tiny for a huge country like this. I will be happy to admit I’m wrong if local retailers manage to sell dozens upon dozens of thousands of iPhones but for now I think that a delayed gadget with a pricing policy like the one Apple has does not really have any solid prospects in the country.

Via (in Russian)

The latest addition of Google Buzz is no exception, of course, as the blogosphere could not ignore Google trying to popularize the idea of lifestreaming to millions upon millions of users of Gmail, its wildly popular web-based email service. In fact, I think it will be no exaggeration to guess that for quite a number of web users around the world Gmail is the home page in their browsers, the first thing they see when they head online every day. And who will resist clicking that multi-color icon to check what the Buzz is?

Of course the launch of Google Buzz was accompanied by quite a number of criticizing voices about Google jeopardizing users’ privacy (as if it does not all the time by monitoring what we search for and what our email content is) and copying some of the worst FriendFeed features and for numerous other things that left geeks in the tech blogosphere unhappy.

But happy or not, I think we all should admit that Google will now do to lifestreaming what FriendFeed could never achieve - no matter how much we liked the cozy place to chat to our friends and promote each others’ posts over there. It is evident that the number of Gmail users is disproportionately higher than the number of people who ever heard of FriendFeed at all.

And now Google comes and introduces a FriendFeed of its own - a very simple new service that does not seem to need explanation as much as FriendFeed needed when it was first launched, at least because the geeks can help explaining and because the number of connected sites is so limited that you can’t really get lost even if you try to.

Now that I think about it, I can’t help but admire Google’s product policy: they saw something that seemed to be interesting to a number of people, they saw some potential in the idea and they used one of their flagship products, Gmail, to make it truly popular - and make some more millions off Adsense ads wisely integrated into Gmail interface years ago.

Ok, they don’t really want to invent and innovate these days. Instead, they simply follow the market trends and launch their own products to meet demands of their existing user base for these products instead of creating awareness and building new markets. After all, they probably innovated enough after they came up with the best search engine that ever existed, introduced the cleanest possible interface for email and made contextual advertising a hit. Now they definitely can afford following the market trends and launching their own iterations of promising things someone else invites.

Google Buzz is only one example and probably not the most prominent one because only a tiny portion of web users ever knew about FriendFeed - and an even smaller portion actually used the service. But come to think of it, Google’s product policy has not really been about dramatic innovations recently.

When they launched Gmail, internet users knew what email was and many had Yahoo Mail accounts - and the only thing that Google did was packing it all in a much cleaner interface and adding some small unusual features on the road. The growing popularity of their web-based office suite - Google Docs - is not really a wonder either: after all, everyone knows what text processors and spreadsheets are and it’s not really too much of a challenge to explain that it all can be used online via a browser and for free as an additional benefit as opposed to expensive Microsoft products. And was not it logical to launch a web browser of their own? After all, everyone knew what a browser was by the time and many people found the clean interface and speed of Chrome to be very appealing.

Android was their next huge release and again there was nothing revolutionary in it: everyone knows what cell phones and smart phones are and a number of companies develop operating systems for these devices - so Google simply came up with something that would be attractive to their target users, not really inventing but instead improving on others’ products.

Finally, they decided to launch a phone of their own - Nexus One - and again the same pattern: there’s no real need to explain to people what a touch-screen phone is, right? And it only took me 2 minutes to explain to my husband’s younger sister that his new phone actually was a Google phone even though she only heard about Google as a search engine until the moment she borrowed that shiny and new Nexus One to make a call.

The only exception from this policy that I can remember right now is Google Wave that is promised to revolutionize the way we use email - and pretty soon. Right at the moment of Google presenting Wave to bloggers I thought this idea was too complicated to be useful and later on I have never figured out exactly how Wave could improve my life. Google Wave is the service that I’ve received the most questions about from my less techy friends asking what they were supposed to use it for. And the worst part is that I myself could never find any worthy explanation for them. In fact, I have never even given all the invites I have out because I don’t have enough friends who I could explain why they might need it to at all.

But exceptions only confirm the general rules and for Google it looks like a general rule has become this one: follow the market trends, listen to demands, improve on existing ideas and make them work because of the huge user base Google has. After all, everyone needs a text processor, a web-based email, a browser and a phone. And why should not it all be powered by Google?

The countries were chosen based on demand, eBay says. I can definitely confirm that in Russia eBay has already grown popular even without any advertising and with many accompanying restrictions on the road - I know people who have been buying on eBay for a few years now and some of these people signed up for PayPal and opened debit cards in banks specifically to be able to buy things on eBay.

At that the love story between Russian internet users and eBay is quite a peculiar one. eBay has never seemed to do anything to draw customers from Russia yet I know quite a number of web users who only use one international web service - and that will be eBay.

In fact, eBay seemed to do everything to make lives more complicated to the Russian web users, like only accepting PayPal payments for goods. And PayPal is anything but friendly to Russians: the only thing we can do is link a credit card to our personal accounts and send money directly from the cards - no options to receive money but as a refund if a transaction fails for some reason. But at that I do know people who only created PayPal accounts to be able to buy things from eBay as it was the only way for them to use eBay at all.

At that it is obvious that Russian internet entrepreneurs have not stayed idle here throughout all these years - so we have plenty of internet auctions here in Russia that copy eBay business model and do more or less well locally. And unfortunately (for eBay, I mean), I strongly doubt that their business will be damaged by eBay entering the market.

The thing is that eBay seems to think that translating their web interface is sufficient to have sales to Russia boost. The decision to keep PayPal as the only payment option can hardly be described as a wise one - after all, local auctions provide multiple payment options that local users are much better familiar with. And they also have an additional benefit of having local sellers mostly so you don’t send your money to someone in India for a gadget that our unreliable postal service will probably never deliver at all.

Besides, the overall list of limitations for the soon to be launched localized Russian version is pretty extensive. In addition to having to deal with PayPal, Russian users will be unable to bid so only fixed-price items will be available for them to buy (not to mention the usual worldwide shipping limitation).

Another complication is that with the localized version eBay is only targeting one segment - buyers but totally forgets about sellers. And as I’ve mentioned above, Russian users cannot receive money on PayPal so they will be unable to sell anything at all. And what’s the point in an online auction that is so limited that you can’t sell anything and can’t bid on anything?

So the only thing that eBay will offer (with no local support as the company only hired a PR agency to help with promotion) is its international reputation, Russian currency for prices and a convenient web interface. The only thing that could actually boost sales and ensure a solid business for eBay here is full support of PayPal but this is too much to ask as I know how complicated financial regulations are in this country. Time will tell but for now I think eBay needs to do way more to succeed here.

Via

Now imagine my surprise when the first thing I saw on TV yesterday morning was Steve Jobs introducing iPad - that was a story in the Russian news that went live mere hours after the press event took place in California. Honestly, I did not expect Russian TV to react so promptly to an event that did not really sound like anything remotely interesting to the vast majority of people in Russia.

My guess here is that it happened as some sort of an experiment or something from an eager journalist (probably a geek) who was invited to witness the event - probably in Apple’s efforts to generate the famous buzz everywhere and for some reason even here in Russia (I don’t buy any talks about “worldwide availability” in March because Apple devices tend to arrive here much later than people begin buying them abroad and bringing here).

But the irony is that even after the coverage iPad has already received here in Russia (and that it will obviously be further surrounded with), Apple will probably not see any significant successes selling its latest gadget here - most certainly due to its usual strange pricing policy for the country.

Representatives of one of the local retailers that is now negotiating iPad sales in Russia expect to be able to sell iPad at the price that will be twice as high as it is in the US. And those very representatives claim that the device will only enjoy demand here if it is priced under $1,000.

But if it is twice as much as in the US, the $1,000 limit will most certainly be exceeded. At that I have to admit that most Russians don’t really use US dollars when making calculations in mind and this psychological mark of $1,000 does not translate into anything equally psychologically important in rubles - so this is probably not that important in terms of psychology. But it is extremely important in terms of price, of course.

The same representative of the retailer mentioned that they are now negotiating a more appealing price for iPad in Russia without expressing any specific hopes of being able to agree on such a better price with Apple. What’s more, it could very well be possible that these public talks that the price should be under $1,000 could be specifically intended for Apple to notice - and realize that they should be more flexible in the pricing negotiations.

Unfortunately personally I don’t think they will get anything important of a discount given the previous experience with iPhone disastrous sales here. And while Apple has some very loyal followership in Russia, it will not ensure any strong sales for the device if it is not priced any more reasonably, especially given that it is such a specific niche product. Now can anyone explain me why Apple cares so much about its pricing goals in the US and does not care about them internationally?

Via (in Russian)

But the idea of NYT joining those brave publishers that have already chosen to use some sort of a pay wall for their online content is something that cannot leave any online publishers indifferent - so we get another animated discussion and plenty of opinions pro and contra the idea of paid content.

Of course the question that people are now asking their readers everywhere (and all the publishers considering such an opportunity must think about heavily) is simple: are users willing to pay? Everyone is concerned that such initiatives will never result in anything useful to the publishers - and the entire web industry. And the reason is simple: publishers are afraid that users will simply not want to pay for online content because our habit is that everything that is available online should be available for free.

I’ve been to too many quarrels already trying to make my statement that publishers may venture into the field of paid-for content - and eventually the efforts will result in users agreeing to pay for the content provided that the content is actually truly useful and offers enough value for the money. And I know that the discussion is probably a never-ending one so the publishers will hardly ever achieve any agreement with content consumers on this dilemma of paid-for versus free content.

But while I don’t want to get into this discussion again because I know that web users are simply not ready to admit they are willing to consume their news and other information for a fee, I still think there’s one aspect that we should all take into account - and New York Times choosing some sort of a subscription model will influence this particular aspect heavily. My point of view here is simple and straightforward: it is not the issue of whether users are willing to pay for content, it is instead the issue of whether publishers are willing to charge for it.

Of course we can keep talking about how unwilling online users are to pay for information online - and such users will keep insisting they are unwilling to pay. After all, it is not really reasonable to admit that you are willing to pay for some information if this will prompt a publisher to make you pay for what you currently get for free. But why not look at it from another angle? Is there a way to make people pay even if they are unwilling to do so and are not ready to comprehend the concept just yet?

What I am talking about is that actually there’s a very clear way to making people pay irrespective of their willingness to do so (or admit to be willing): if every single publisher (or at least all the most respectful publishers) choose to begin charging for their content, consumers of such content will simply have no other choice but pay.

Just imagine that all the news and valuable resources online can only be accessed if you pay some subscription fee - and only those things that you will hardly ever need or want to read are available for free. Will you still choose not to pay and avoid consuming any valuable and useful content online in the future? My guess here is that most people will decide that they are willing to pay if the content we are talking about here poses enough value for them.

At that of course I understand that the fee should be reasonable and should also be very easy to pay - probably even as part of what you pay to your ISP. Say, you pay $20 to your ISP a month and the ISP will send some $5 to an account from where the money will be distributed to all the publishers based on how many visitors each of them has. I know this may be difficult to implement but given that this can be viewed as a basis for an entirely new approach to online media monetization, it could be worth the time and efforts required to produce a comprehensive system like this.

Actually this discussion has tons of things in common with what we are doing with CancelAds - providing a simple tool for web publishers to be able to begin charging for their content and for ad-free availability of such content to paying subscribers. And while this is a challenging road and plenty of efforts and resources are needed to finally achieve an overall understanding among web users that content is not really meant to be free, I still think that the more publishers choose to go this way (developing their own systems or using third-party tools like the one we offer), the better for the overall industry.

Of course it is totally understandable that many people around the world are now willing to help Haiti relief and many do help with their money sending donations to various charities working in the country. No matter how small a donation is, it is still valuable because if everyone chooses to send something, the final amount may be truly impressive and the results will probably be better than anyone hopes to achieve.

But unfortunately scammers are already here sharking on the empathy of people and attacking us while pretending to actually trying to help Haiti quake victims. Now imagine my disgust when I opened my inbox earlier today to see an email titled “Haiti Aid would like to be paid through PayPal.”

This was actually a very standard notification sent by PayPal to everyone if you choose to be notified when someone sends a money request to your email. Such money requests normally include the email of the person (or company) that wants to be paid and the amount.

In this case the amount was ridiculously small - $5 only - and the email address did not look like anything legitimate at all as it was a Gmail account with two dots in it. Now why not send only $5 for a good purpose even if you have already donated something on official website dedicated for the charities working in Haiti?

Of course $5 is not something you will not want to donate when asked - especially when you have such an easy way to send the payment by simply clicking one link and logging in to your PayPal account. The only problem is that I have very strong doubts that the money will actually be used for the purpose claimed in the email. Instead, someone will be able to get away with a nice amount accumulated by spamming people like me and hoping that they will be naïve enough to send some donations.

I have checked the account on PayPal and it turns to be a personal member based in the US (from my experience, non-US members are clearly identified as such on the payment confirmation page) and nothing suggests that the account has been blocked to prevent the frauds from getting any more money than they could have already got.

I will be sure to report this situation to PayPal right away (too bad they don’t offer any dedicated link to report such scams in the money request emails) though I have a feeling that this is hardly the only tool scammers use to get money of our pockets claiming the money is for Haiti relief - most certainly being nowhere near Haiti or the victims.

In fact, it now turns out that there are multiple things you should avoid not to fall victim of such scams that always accompany disasters. And the worst part about the entire situation is that it definitely does not feel good to know that you should now be cautious even when you want to do something good like donating something or otherwise helping.

Yandex (which is the leading search engine in Russia with a market share much higher than that of Google) has been the search technology of choice for Mail.ru for the previous 3 years but expiration of the contract provoked new negotiations with potential search partners. Rumors are that eventually Google search technology was selected because Google chose to provide unbranded search results - something Yandex was not willing to offer insisting on an attribution.

In addition to use of Google’s search engine itself, Mail.ru also opened its pages to Google AdSense,- hence becoming one of the major publishers for the advertising network in Russia. This extra income was probably the reason for Google to be willing to provide unbranded search technology where Yandex did not want to.

Another appealing factor that probably influenced the decision for Google was the market share in web search held by Mail.ru: its 10% previously served by Yandex were expected to be going directly to Google now - thus increasing the international search giant market share in Russia from its previous 23 per cent to 33 per cent which is much better comparable to 59 per cent that Yandex is supposed to have once Mail.ru switches the search providers.

The Google-powered search (without attribution but still) was supposed to appear on Mail.ru in January 2010 as officially declared in a press release issued by Mail.ru and Google in December. But now that we are half into January already, many of us here in Russia (me included) have been checking Mail.ru search once and again to see the results coming from Google instead of Yandex - and never getting what we expected and thinking that the delay was due to the lengthy holiday vacations.

But now it looks like the only thing that Google has acquired via this much-discussed deal is an increase in revenue due to a huge extra number of AdSense impressions - but the market share will probably remain the same for Google. The thing is that Mail.ru is obviously using another search provider, its own development named gogo.ru - and no Google is to be seen other than in ads.

The conditions of the deal had it that Mail.ru will be able to combine Google search with its own gogo in order for the company to continue developing its own technology. And now Mail.ru is happily using gogo - testing it under heavy loads as Mail.ru representatives claim - monetizing the search pages with AdSense and keeping Google as a backup in case gogo is unable to withstand the heavy load.

The worst part (for Google, I mean) is that Mail.ru representatives now claim that the currently used gogo (absolutely in compliance with the agreement between Mail.ru and Google), actually demonstrates impressive results - much better than expected - so they will probably keep Google as a backup engine and the international giant will not see any increase in its market share due to this deal at all - even if they initially hoped to.

Of course there are people here who already think that Russian authorities may be involved in the entire situation - and insisted on use of a local search engine instead of allowing the international company to grow its market share substantially here. But to me this seems to be unlikely and what it really looks like is Mail.ru funding development of its own search technologies using Google money - and not even violating any terms of the agreement with Google.

Via (in Russian)

Now they make a different decision after they uncovered numerous hacker attacks on Gmail accounts belonging to Google, some other corporations that have not been named (at least 20 of them exist based on the information available to Google) and accounts of human rights activists in China. The damage was not really significant judging by the explanation coming from Google but one thing was clear: the attacks originated in China and the fact that Chinese proponents of human rights were among those under attack suggests that the attacks must be connected to the official authorities of the country.

So as a reaction to these attacks, Google now makes a decision to stop censoring search results for the Chinese people - fully realizing that it will probably mean that all their operations in China may need to be closed because this will hardly be acceptable to the authorities now.

Om Malik went on to point to the amounts that Google will be losing in revenue if they actually exit China - and while the amounts are huge, it is obvious that Google will have to face them if they do decide to act as promised. But in the end of the post Om suggests another point of view that - while cynical and everything - seems to have a basis anyway. He suggests that for some people it may be possible to think that this whole story is merely about exiting the market that is unfavorable for the company.

And while Om brushes the point of view aside as unlikely, unfortunately I can’t help but disagree with him here as the cynic in me suggests that it is somewhat strange to finally decide censorship is not the right thing to do - after censoring search results on Google.cn in China for years only for the chance of getting to China at all.

What’s more, if you really only mean to stop censorship once and for all, what’s the point in reporting on the situation to the Secretary of State - thus initiating official actions and the US government demanding explanation from China? Is it really how they want to fight against censorship in China - something that they have been putting up with since 2006 - with tons of disapproving voices everywhere but still putting up?

So after agreeing to censor search results in China, now they have decided it was time to stop that activity - and briefed the Secretary of State on the situation so Hillary Clinton can now raise concerns regarding censorship and human rights in China and demand an explanation from the Chinese authorities. But can you tell me exactly why Google did not ask for some similar help from the government in the past - when they were discussing the conditions of entering China and agreeing to censor content for the country? Was it that they realized that Chinese government would simply decide to ignore any official demands at the time and would simply deny Google access to the huge market?

No matter how brave Google’s latest decision may look to be, it is pretty difficult not to notice a simple fact: despite of being allowed to enter the country, Google is not really making any significant progress over there - losing the marker share to the local search giant Baidu and obviously losing revenue they expected to see in the country. Is not this latest move an attempt to hide their decision to leave the market that generates nothing but shame over being unable to compete with Baidu?

At that I realize the similarities with Russia where I live and with situation around Google here. The international search giant cannot brag about successes in terms of the market share in web search in Russia, it was even banned from acquiring Russian contextual advertising network Begun which was hardly good for their business in the country. Finally, Russia is known for problems with freedom of speech as our government is not always willing to let people freely express exactly what they think - online or offline.

What’s more, I do realize that Russian hackers tend to be aggressive in the world wide web - so why not identify some attacks from them on Gmail - or any other Google service at that - and initiate a similar campaign against Russia as well? Unfortunately I have a feeling that probability of such a campaign will strongly depend on Google’s business results in the country and on how good they sell ads here and will hardly have anything to do with their “do no evil” motto at all.

The second reason involves SEC and the freshly announced Google’s Nexus One phone (though I still fail to understand why this particular phone deserves to be the Google phone while the very first G1 manufactured by HTC did not). This is a big announcement that seems to be everywhere and many tech blogs eagerly participate in the hype initiated by Google for the device. Of course Google’s hype machine is a powerful one so you can hardly avoid Nexus One online, no matter where you happen to go.

But my New Year’s process of reevaluating the values has made me think of all this hype probably too critically - and ask myself if the hype is truly deserved. After all, does this new device actually change the world or represent any revolution in the human society? Unfortunately I can’t find any reason to say so at all - even though I admit that this is an impressive device that is probably very much worse buying if you really need to buy a new smart phone.

But how many innovations can we count that are truly useful and DO change lives at least for some people? Come to think of it, I don’t think I will really be able to name many of them among those that we have hyped so much over the recent years. The point is that we do see continuous innovations everywhere with new gadgets introduced and progress demonstrated everywhere - but only rare gadgets really deserve the hype they get for the lack of revolution in them.

After all, what does switching from one laptop to a new more powerful one means for you? It will probably increase your productivity but I have to admit it: buying a new laptop every 1.5-2 years is probably a little too frequently. Though I have one excuse that is probably good enough: I always find a buyer for the old one so it is not simply thrown away or something as it keeps working elsewhere while I improve my personal productivity (and working experience) and help laptop manufacturers increase their profits.

But come to think of it, exactly what does buying an iPhone to replace your current phone means to you? Of course, you are staying more connected to the world and can use Twitterific and fabulous Facebook application to update all your friends on your exact location or activities this very moment. But how actually useful is this given that mere months before you thought that a quick phone call or text message to your spouse or parents was perfectly enough to inform people of your whereabouts? And if you secretly spend most of your time on a train or in a traffic jam secretly playing Tetris, I think you’ll simply have to agree that this is hardly an innovation that is worth investing your money and natural resources involved in manufacturing an iPhone.

Really, the only innovation that seems to actually deserve all the hype to me is Kindle and overall popularization of ebook readers pushed by Amazon with its Kindle device and availability of so many book titles to Kindle owners and users of Kindle applications for various platforms (Kindle itself, PC, iPhone). I think that the vast majority of new gadgets introduced only make us switch from one device to a newer one with more functions (many of those we will never use but who cares) without thinking of all the resources wasted to manufacture the new device when your existing one is still pretty good and useful - and you would have been happy with it for a few more years unless the market pushed a shinier alternative your way.

Kindle is different and this is why I insist it is useful: it makes you switch your habits from consuming more and more natural resources to cutting that consumption at least where it comes to paper that your books and magazines are printed on. This only simple habit - if it grows popular enough which I hope it will - will enable us to save many trees on this planet and one-time investment into a reading device will keep you going for years with plenty of books that are 100% green as there is absolutely nothing physical in their manufacture at all and the only thing you buy when you buy an ebook is the content itself, not the paper it needs to be printed on.

At that I have to mention that I myself don’t own a Kindle for now but in the first few days of 2010 I have grown totally addicted to Kindle for iPhone application spending hours reading on my iPod Touch instead of buying the books in paperbacks. I might very well consider buying a Kindle in the future when I know exactly that the habit of reading books electronically is something that I truly enjoy but for now I know for sure that Amazon has done a great job popularizing reading the books electronically - and Kindle (and other ereaders) should really be hyped probably even more than they now are because this device represents one example of consumerism that is actually healthy for the environment which is so rare in innovations that I can’t even name anything equally useful at all. Help me if you can in the comments.