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The full content of the email that was — finally — sent out to Fusion members. You have to give him credit for publishing his cell phone number — that takes balls.

MG Siegler on the new GMail app and what it means in the larger picture:

>The faith is gone.

It’s a fantastic post about the trend he is seeing with Google — a trend I also see.

Chris Bowler on the Fusion blog:

>As of today, Fusion Ads is now under the ownership of BuySellAds.

I’ve debated most of the morning about posting this, but it really is bugging me so I decided to post about it. I didn’t find out about this until last night when Chris (no longer with Fusion) emailed me. I like Chris a lot and trust him, not true of BuySellAds because I don’t know them.

As of this writing (10:43a PT) I have yet to hear from BuySellAds — they haven’t contacted me and that doesn’t bode well for them in my book, how can we have a business relationship without communication?

I love Fusion, and the people in the network, they have all been great to me. As with any major change or buyout in the industry I am interested in how the buyer handles the purchase, so far I am not impressed.

Who do I even contact at Fusion now?

I don’t know because no one has told me, that’s not good business.

*(I post this full well knowing it may comprise my arrangement with Fusion. I post this knowing most don’t care. I post this, as with everything else, because I see something happening that I need/want to comment on.)*

**UPDATED**: There’s a bit of confusion, I was told about the sale before it happened (last night) and it was Chris who told me. My complaint is that I have yet to hear from anyone at BSA about this — still. The old Fusion told me this was happening, but the New Fusion has yet to contact me.

**UPDATED** (on Nov 3, 2011 at 13:07): I have been contacted.

Jim Dalrymple has the quote, nice of them to acknowledge this.

Moments later [Federico Viticci noted](http://www.macstories.net/news/apple-releases-ios-5-0-1-beta/) that Apple pushed iOS 5.0.1 beta to developers — here’s hoping it is a better fix than changing the bar size.

John Gruber:

>I’m not arguing that making concept videos directly leads to a lack of traction in the current market. I’m arguing that making concept videos is a sign of a company that has a lack of institutional focus on the present and near-present.

The two big companies producing ‘Future Concept Videos’ right now are Microsoft and RIM — both companies have failed to create new innovative products in the last few years and are, arguably, suffering because of it.

Microsoft is too big, unfocused, and lacking in leadership to put on a new pair of pants. RIM has seemingly just stuck their heads in the sand and are hoping for the best — at least at the `C` level positions.

I personally have no problem with these types of concept videos, because I see them very much in the same light as I see concept cars. The idea is that you push forward some radical things to get people talking about it and then you use these ideas as guidance moving forward. That works well for companies that execute on these plans, like Aston Martin or BMW. Both having pushed out radical concept cars that then ended up seeing the light of day a couple of years later with only minor changes. ((The Aston Martin Rapide for example.))

Here, with Microsoft and RIM, they are fully admitting this is fantasy, instead of admitting this is a direction they are pursuing. That’s the problem I have with these videos: fantasy.

Fantasy is fine in the movies, but for a company you need to have goals. What goal does Microsoft have for the Kinect?

Eliot Van Buskirk writes that the app called ‘gMusic’ (allowing you to play Amazon cloud stored music on the iPhone) was pulled from iTunes. The reason cited was: “legal issues with the music industry.”

I am not sure if Buskirk intentionally is trying to say that competition is partly to blame for the app getting pulled, or not, but it certainly sounds like that is what he is implying.

>However, separating music clouds from their mega-sized motherships turns them into commodities. If you can use all three of these music clouds with the same phone just by tapping a different app, you’re unlikely to develop an exclusive reliance on one or the other, which is what each of these companies hopes will happen […]

The assumption being that Apple wants everyone using iTunes Match and not Google or Amazon for cloud storage.

If that was the case I doubt Apple would have even approved these apps. My guess is that there really were legal issues — one reason it took Apple so long to get in the music stored in the cloud business, and still won’t offer streaming, is the inane restrictions labels impose.

Jad Mouawad:
>One airline did figure out a way to sharply cut boarding time. Spirit Airlines found that passengers got to their seats much more rapidly once it started charging $20 to $40 per carry-on bag. More passengers checked their bags. Celebrating one year of “stress-free boarding” this summer, Spirit said its policy cut boarding time by six minutes on average.

That’s a good policy. It’s not just the boarding times that drive me nuts, but the deplaning times are horrendous. Too many people futzing around trying to carry on and off bags that should have been checked.

My idea: enforce the size limits for carry-ons strictly.

Avram Piltch, LAPTOP Online Editorial Director, on the winner of the “Tablet World Series”:
>With strong features like a scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass display, support for enterprise-level security software / encryption, and an optional active stylus, the ThinkPad Tablet simply dominated the game this weekend. Users were undoubtedly also attracted by the ThinkPad Tablet’s productivity-centric software, including its note-taking app and file manager. Full-size USB ports and SD card slots also helped the ThinkPad tablet’s case.

The iPad 2 didn’t make it through the first round, likely due to that all important lack of an optional stylus. This makes me wonder just how damned good that note-taking app is that the Lenovo is sporting — must be amazing.

Drew Olanoff:
>According to a blog post from Messaging app WhatsApp, the company is now getting over one billion messages sent using its platform a day.

That’s a lot. My wife uses this app to communicate with her cousin while she is studying abroad and said that she likes it for the purpose it serves.

I have to think though, despite the cross platform nature of the app, that iMessage will essentially dominate this market. I can’t imagine that a year from now, text message replacement apps, will have substantial enough use.