The iPhone, which as close to the holy grail of convergence as we have right now, is also an ebook reader. For the people that utilize smart phones (and that number increases everyday), the question will quickly become: “Why do I need a Kindle when I already have an iPhone or G1?” This is not an idle question, as the ebook readers on the iPhone are already formidable.

There are two iPhone ebook readers that I use, and they are both excellent: Fictionwise’s eReader and Lexcycle’s Stanza. Of course, an excellent device without the content is a recipe for failure, so it is important to note that both Stanza and eReader allow the immediate purchase and loading of ebooks via various sites, including Fictionwise’s ebookstore, which is one of the largest on the Internet. So for users looking to buy and consume ebooks, the Kindle is far from an exclusive answer.

Amazon will (and does) go to great lengths discussing the usability of the Kindle, deriding small screen experiences as hard on the eyes. This is simply not an accurate portrayal of the iPhone reading experience, which—while not as nice as the Kindle—is more than acceptable for 99% of consumers. And, frankly, that’s enough.

Where Amazon can really do some damage is with exclusive deals. Content is and always will be king. Even if the Kindle were much worse than any other ebook reader but it had all the bestsellers while others didn’t, it would be the popular choice. The same goes for Stanza or eReader. If Amazon can arrange deals with authors that block out other ebook sites, Amazon would have a significant advantage. You can expect these deals to be announced soon and for those announcements to increase in frequency. Still, Apple has some significant weight behind their brand, and if they decide to support Fictionwise, for example, this could be an interesting battle.

Update: Amazon is apparantly going to launch a Kindle App for mobile phones. This makes the focus by Amazon much more on the digital bookstore play than the hardware play. This is a very different strategy than Apple, which makes a minimal profit on its music sales when compared to its iPod and iPhone hardware sales. On a certain level it makes sense, as well–the pricing and margins for ebooks are signifcantly better than 99 cent songs.

Yahoo Mail ended 2008 with 91.9 million users, blowing away Microsoft’s offerings (43.5 million) and Gmail (29.6 million). Yahoo Mail’s finish is particularly impressive when you consider that it extended its lead over Gmail, which continues to generate plenty of press. Yahoo added over 9 million users last year, more than Gmail (which added 8.8 million) and Windows Live/Hotmail (which lost 2.2 million users).

Despite Yahoo’s dominance, Gmail continues to make inroads. It’s pace of growth combined with the drop in Windows Live/Hotmail users could lead to Gmail surpassing Hotmail later this year. Still, they have a mammoth hill to climb to beat Yahoo.

Mail is a good indication of how Yahoo’s content assets are significantly undervalued by the business world. From it’s home page portal to Flickr to Delicious to Yahoo Mail and other brands, Yahoo continues to dominate in important online categories. The real question for Yahoo has always been monetizing these assets effectively, something that is the real source of Yahoo’s problems.

Let’s first look at the mythical Twitter spam problem.

Adam Ostrow over at Mashable wrote a piece about a Twitter “spam” software release. He was outraged, stating

Twitter spam is an ongoing issue

I’ve been on Twitter from almost the beginning and have nearly 1,800 updates. I have never received a spam tweet. Never. Now I’ve received spam follow requests, and Ostrow is correct in saying that Twitter should make spam registrations difficult, but that’s a far cry from saying it has a spam problem.

My feeling is that Twitter is probably more frustrating for spammers than users. You can run all the software you want, but it requires someone to follow you back to spam them, and that is–as I said–opt in. Where this starts to fall apart is what I call the “follow and be followed” problem–users who follow tons of people with the hope that they’ll follow them back. 

This isn’t really a problem, as Twitter is such an elegantly simple system that reasonable people can just ignore them. I completely disagree with Michael Pinto, who ranted that “follow and be followed” people are a cancer and must be stopped. It’s really easy to stop them: Just delete their follow requests.

Where the follow and be followed paradigm becomes a problem is in spam. By blindly following everyone who follows you, you open yourselves to a wide swath of dialogue, and that can include spam. But, let’s be honest, that’s the price you pay for being so easy with your attentions. 

Now Ostrow makes the point that unsophisticated users will just follow anyone back, and thus this software and Twitter spamming in general can be effective and not only against those that Pinto railed against. That’s true if you take an unrealistically short view on things. What is more likely to happen is this timeline:

1. New user joins Twitter
2. New users follows anyone that follows them, thinking it’s cool to have a lot of followers even if they don’t know them
3. New user gets a spam tweet from one of these unknown users
4. New user stops following this person.
5. Repeat until lesson is learned.
6. New user is now experienced user and never follows anyone that they don’t know personally or by reputation.

The real issue here is one of education, not platform. Twitter is the perfect anti-spam platform because the flow of information and conversation is entirely under the control of the user. Users just need to be made aware of this.

I’m not sure what to make of people who crave lots of followers. the follow and be followed crowd are in many ways mistaking Twitter for MySpace. Plenty of users of MySpace see it as a competition to have as many friends as possible. The idea of having as many followers as possible (and following them to get them to follow you) seems to be missing the entire personal nature of Twitter. But again–this isn’t anything I need to worry about, as Twitter is entirely opt-in. They can do their thing, and I’ll safely ignore the noise.

1. Themes

Clearly the thing that brings out the most oohs and aahs when you are using your jailbroken iPhone is a theme. There are literally hundreds of themes in the jailbreak app “store” program, Cydia (which, by the way, is as easy to use to add and remove programs as the official app store). The program you use to manage themes is called Winterboard, and it is as powerful as it is simple: You download a theme, and then see them all in a list in Winterboard. You click on the theme, a checkmark appears, and it’s ready to go.

Themes can be quite comprehensive, including the lock screen, the weather app backgrounds, and even the keyboard or SMS bubbles. It truly creates a customized iPhone experience.

Winterboard actually allows the inclusion of multiple themes, with the theme listed on top taking priority. So if you find an icon set that you absolutely love, and you want to combine it with backgrounds and other elements, you simply activate both and drag the icons to the top.

The theme to the left is the one that I use on my iPhone. A couple of notes as you look at it: ClearCam is an iPhone camera replacement that uses a better processing engine to create sharper photos (it is only available via a jailbreak but, alas, did not make the top five list). NemusSync is a Google calender sync that is lightyears better than any of the sync apps in the app store (again, didn’t make the top five but is darn good). Finally, if you take a look at the dock at the bottom you will see five icons there, when the standard iPhone only allows four. That is also courtesy of the jailbreaking process and a special app. That app would be in my top ten but didn’t make the top five.

2. System-wide copy and paste

One of the biggest complaints you hear about the iPhone is that it is an amazing device for utilizing text, from text messages to email to note-taking, but it lacks even a rudimentary copy and paste function. Apps like MagicPad in the app store allow copying and pasting within the application but not across multiple applications within the iPhone. Well, if you jailbreak your iPhone this problem is solved, and it is solved elegantly.

There are a few copy and paste solutions in Cydia, the jailbreak “app store.” My favorite is the simple to use Clippr program. All you do is click on the number/symbol toggle button on the iPhone keyboard, double tap the screen, drag your selection, tap the copy button, go to wherever you want to paste (either within the same application or somewhere else), and then tap the paste button. You can also copy multiple items via the “stack” command.

Simple, effective, awesome.

3.Video recording

In today’s multimedia phone world, quite a few people use their phone as a de facto replacement for their digital camera and–more and more–their video camera. Certainly users of the Nokia N95 can justifiably say they don’t need a digital camera or video camera. Users of the iPhone can live with the camera (and its preponderance on Flickr illustrates that fact), but they are left out in the cold in terms of video.  Not if you have your phone jailbroken.

The video recording app on the iPhone is free and called Cycorder. There is a paid app also available that has more functionality (upload to Youtube being one nice feature). The quality of both programs can’t hold a candle to a phone like the N95, but they are more than adequate for most usage. If you want a quick and easy way to take video of your life, from your kids at school to birthday parties, the iPhone video apps are probably good enough for the average consumer. As with the camera itself, the key is to take video in bright locations.

4. TV Out

Can you imagine if you were able to hook up your iPhone to your TV and use it as a multimedia gateway? The iPhone could be used as a new set top device that could play web videos, downloaded videos, and any media you are able to get on or stream through the device. Well, it can kind of do that now. The iPhone has had the ability to output its content to the TV for some time, but that functionality is confined to the iPhone’s built-in apps, and the reasons are obvious: This requires you to purchase your content via iTunes if you want to watch it on your TV via the iPhone and it also removes the iPhone from competing with Apple’s own Apple TV product. Well, you can remove those limitations if you have a jailbroken iPhone.

The TV Out app allows jailbroken iPhones to output practically everything to your television set via Apple’s TV out cables. Have a bunch of videos you took with Cycorder (see No. 3 above) and want to see them on TV? Now you can. Where this becomes truly powerful is when you combine this functionality with an app like Orblive. Orblive (available in the iPhone app store) allows you to stream media from your PC to your iPhone. Now you can also stream that content directly to your TV via the iPhone. Downloaded movies, TV shows, home videos–any multimedia content you can get on your computer can now be streamed directly to your TV via an iPhone.

While it seems like a minor bit of added functionality, the ability to output video from your iPhone to your TV turns the iPhone into a powerful multimedia gateway, bringing together web, PC, and television. And the fact that it can do it over wifi or 3G means there are no wires to worry about.

5. Running applications in the background/Wifi spoofing (tie)

Another major complaint from people is that they can’t start an application and then have it run in the background while they go off to use another application. Of course you can do this with the Apple applications, but you can’t use this for applications in the app store. Well, with a jailbroken iPhone you can via the Backgrounder application. So for those of you who are playing a game or using an app where a disconnect would be a problem, now you can just hold the home button down and have it run in the background. Bringing it back instantly is just a tap away.

Another annoyance for iPhone users is when they have an application that will only run under wifi. You’re paying for unlimited data with your iPhone plan, right? Why can’t you listen to your streaming music via the Boombox app under 3G? With the wifi spoofing app you now can. This application fakes the iPhone into believing that all data access is happening through wifi, even if it is using EDGE or 3G access. The developer warns that this may cause problems for some applications, but I haven’t found any problems yet.

Jailbreak, then browse Cydia

If you want to jailbreak your iPhone, the process is incredibly easy. In most cases it is as simple as installing a program on your desktop and then running it. A jailbroken iPhone is a few clicks away. Follow this simple guide if you use Windows and this guide if you are using a Mac. Cydia is the equivalent of the iPhone app store for jailbroken iPhones. It is installed automatically when you jailbreak your iPhones, and all of the above apps (and more) can be found there.

This was brought home recently when I was on a conference call between a client and a division of Viacom. As the presentation began, the very first question was, “When will you be out of beta?” The implication was obvious, the media professional was really asking, “When will your product be ready for a big company like ours to adopt it?” Such things can generally be overcome on a conference call by outlining a specific timeline for when the beta period will end, but the danger for companies without experience in dealing with traditional media is that they won’t even get that far–the potential partner won’t even take your call or meeting because they have no interest in working with platforms or services that aren’t ready.

The result is that the beta tag on a product or service can send a completely different message than you may think it does as a web or mobile executive. What you consider as a label that connotes “cutting edge” will often be received as meaning “not ready” or “buggy.” It is very telling that Google’s enterprise platform, Google Apps For Business, is one of the few non-search Google products that is missing the beta tag.  Like Google, you should carefully consider your beta tag when planning a timeline of business development that involves enterprise partners. It just may end up being a stumbling block, and the last thing any young company needs is more difficulty in creating partnerships.

The empowered consumer will always win, and in this instance, station apps are being wasted when used for just streams. An integrated radio streaming app will rise to the top, and it will be the de facto “radio” on the iPhone.