In its press release announcing the open sourcing of webOS, HP said all the right things. It will continue to invest and be an active participant. It will provide inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation. It will be purely open source. Those almost seems to be conflicting statements. HP may think that it is trying to create a new Android ecosystem, but HP and Google's approaches to mobile are going in opposite directions.

So, HP is now distancing itself from webOS under the guise of making it open source. It presumably could not find a company willing to buy the platform so now it is taking the only avenue that is available. HP now has very little way to make money off of webOS. As a licensed open source project, it is not going to be able to sell licenses to the platform, the way Microsoft does with Windows Phone. Nor does it have Google's clout in the advertising world to monetize webOS the way Android does. HP must pin its hope on the notion that developers, OEMs and carriers will pay HP for its software and cloud services in the development of webOS applications.

Herein lays the problem. As an open source project, developers will be able to choose whatever cloud and development tools they want. The fact that webOS is so closely tied to the Web does not help either because there are a variety of solutions to make HTML5 Web apps outside of HP. From the startup realm with companies like appMobi, Sencha, Appcelerator to enterprise developer companies like IBM and SAP, HP has no way to tie the development process to itself in an open source environment. Google has accepted this fact and lets the Android ecosystem do as it pleases because as long as people have Android devices in their hands, Google stands to make money from when and how they use the Web and native apps on the device.

Android may be open source, but Google ties itself very closely to how and when it can be used by OEMs and carriers. Throughout 2011, Google has moved to bind Android more closely to it, such as the fact that the Honeycomb version 3.0 was never made available to the public. This is where Google differs from HP. Google is tying Android closer to its home base. HP, out of necessity, has to push webOS away.

That may be a bad thing for HP, but it is not necessarily a bad consequence for the mobile ecosystem. By pushing webOS away, HP all of a sudden gives the mobile ecosystem an instantly viable platform to build off. This is not some half-baked project like MeeGo or Tizen. Palm and webOS have the code base to produce high quality smartphones now. Look for Samsung, HTC, LG and other OEMs to all of a sudden become very interested in what they can do with webOS.

As they say, another one bites the dust. Or does it?

HP is getting out of the mobile hardware business. This comes a week after Nokia said that it would discontinue Symbian phones in the U.S. In reality this does not change the U.S. (or global) mobile ecosystem at all. WebOS had almost no market share despite the fact that it is a well-made operating system from a once popular mobile vendor. Palm could not support it and HP cannot market it. News surfaced yesterday that Best Buy has 250,000 HP TouchPads (the tablet based on webOS) sitting in stock that it cannot get rid of. Yet, what exactly does it mean for HP to "continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward"?

HP wants (or wanted) to put webOS on to computers. In theory, this was to help support the mobile hardware division. Yet, the real play for HP with webOS is in cloud functionality. Just because HP is not making hardware anymore does not mean that they are just going to throw away their billion-dollar investment. HP can support webOS in the same way that Google supports Android - as a platform provider and application evangelist. Freeing the hardware from HP means that webOS will probably be offered as a licensed operating system to any original equipment manufacturers.

So, the idea is that by giving up webOS, we will theoretically be able to see more of webOS on actual devices if HP licenses it to the likes of HTC, Samsung, LG and others (and they decide to actually produce viable handsets). Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies has been calling for HP to license webOS and get out of the mobile hardware business all summer. It looks like he might get his wish.

With the Motorola/Google partnership (and the impact that could have on the Android ecosystem) and the dismal sales of the TouchPad, this is precisely the move that HP should be making at precisely the right time.

HP's decision to get out of the hardware business (which looks like it could include PCs as well) would be a significant evolution for the company. It can license webOS and help create an ecosystem around it while providing cloud support, infrastructure and software. As one ReadWriteWeb staffer put it, "Looks like (CEO Leo) Apotheker is making HP into SAP II." SAP is a software and infrastructure supplier to the enterprise and does quite well. HP has more resources than SAP and it has one big chip in webOS, if it ever figures out what it really wants to do with it.

Cyrus Farivar has done much the same thing with his book, "The Internet of Elsewhere: The Emergent Effects of a Wired World."

Instead of focusing on the capital of the Web, Silicon Valley, or even on one of the Silicon Valleys outside of the original, like Bangalore, India, Farivar has taken a look at our wired world through the lenses of South Korea, Senegal, Estonia and Iran.

There is a tendency to think of the Internet as being a priori and sui generis. This is a new world so powerful and so game-changing that it effects history and culture, no matter where one stands. Farivar's argument, and it is a well-made one, is that like any other element of the human experience, the Internet is effected by history and culture. If we ignore that fact, if we let ourselves believe that the Internet, not history, is more of a determining factor in our future, we are liable to be surprised by it to an excessive degree.

Each of the places he covers are important to our understanding of the Internet because their histories and cultures have influenced how they have embraced it. In a way, the countries he has chosen to profile are reflections of each other, Senegal of South Korea and Estonia of Iran.

South Korea

South Korea has innovated two things: professional gaming leagues and citizen journalism. With a block on much of the tech coming out of Japan (given how Japan treated Korea in World War II the restrictions are many), Korea's game of choice is StarCraft. Ohmynews was like a new planet when it burst on the scene in 2004.

Both of these things are direct results of the history of Korea, that is, its past (its geopolitical position and struggle with Japan) and its present, where it is one of the greatest providers of free broadband Internet access to its citizens.

Senegal

Although Senegal is the most wired country in Africa, it does not have the infrastructure in Korea, meaning that most computing is done inefficiently in Internet cafes. Like Korea, the country's leadership is pro-Internet and focuses a great deal of attention and emphasis on it. But this attention is top-down and insufficiently distributed. No matter how much a country's upper echelons believe in something, if they do not have the capacity to make it possible for everyone to contribute to building that belief, there is a good chance it will die. Even if it does not, it is destined to stagnate, or at least plateau.

Despite being a politically stable, relatively prosperous country, Senegal's reality is Africa's: a raft of intelligent, interested people working against a history of compromised infrastructural elements.

Estonia

Where Korea has widespread, fast and reasonably-priced broadband, Estonia has widespread, fast and reasonably-priced (often free) Wi-Fi. This in part explains the success of Estonian companies, with Skype in the lead, only 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union. The half-century occupation left Estonia an apparently broken country.

But its history of facing, and considering itself part of, the West, was not easily expunged. When the opportunities were available again, mostly when the obstacles were removed, Estonians went crazy innovating Web tools and companies. Now it has one of the highest rates of Internet penetration in the world, as well as a lot of time to make up. Like South Korea and Senegal, this access to an almost complete national Wi-Fi blanket is both an expression of citizen will and an expression of political will at the highest levels.

Iran

Although China probably has to receive the Palm D'Or of online repression, Iran is competing in the same league. Using the same combination of tools pioneered by the Chinese - laws, social checks and technological filtering - Iran's Internet has been rendered a third-class communications network. The Iranian leadership recognized early on that they had a citizenry with a long history of intellectual and technological competence and that the Internet was going to prove important in the future. Members of the Iranian leadership began to utilize social media to promote their points of view and continue to do so today.

Big Three

The three big ideas I took away from this book were these.

1. History matters. As "disruptive" as web technology is, the history of a country or region, right down to the present moment, profoundly and tangibly affects how that place and its people will respond to that disruption. Farivar did a particularly good job of outlining the relationship between each of these countries' histories and their relationship to the wired world.
2. Political will. The will of a country's leadership is important but it is not enough. The innovation of a ruling group must either reflect its people's will, or inspire their imagination.
3. Opportunity. Human beings are experimental and (in the broadest sense) entrepreneurial. If their impulse toward giving the Web a go are checked, due to lack of connectedness, unaffordability or overt limitation, it will check intellectual and financial prosperity. Individuals, whether app programmers in Senegal or dissidents in Iran, will move forward, but the society as a whole will not.

But according to Bradley, tablets aren't all HP has in store for webOS.  He spoke of the operating system coming to more devices, "everything from smartphones to tablets to PCs to potentially other large screen devices."  PCs? TVs? What does HP have planned?

HP's webOS Plans

When asked how HP will differentiate itself from its competitors like the iPad, Bradley said "you and I will talk about that on the 9th," referring to the February press conference the company will soon hold in San Francisco where the focus will be on webOS.

The statement also practically confirms that the announcement will involve the unveiling of HP's new tablet computer.

And that won't be all, says Bradley. "We're totally focused on the tablet market... but the tablet is one piece of that ecosystem, one piece of that connected experience we're going to create," he said.

So how does the PC fit into HP's plans? Are we moving away from the PC?, the interviewer asked.

"I would say that we're not moving away from the PC," said Bradley. "I would say that our focus...is really connected devices - it's mobile, it's portable...how do we create that connected experience that allows you to safely, seamlessly access that content that is so important to you?"

He then explained how tablets are great for content consumption, and PCs are great for content creation, and that the tablet market was not cannibalizing the PC market - it was adjacent to it. It comes down to the purpose of what you need the product for: consumption or creation. "It's not a generational shift," Bradley said, responding to a question about the demographics of tablet users, "it's optimization of usage."

Last week, HP invited select press to attend "an exciting webOS announcement" scheduled for Feb. 9 in San Francisco. The tagline for the event - "Think Big. Think Small. Think Beyond." - makes even more sense in light of Bradley's comments about the mobile operating system's multi-platform future.

Other Devices?

While it's expected that an iPad rival is top on the list as to what's being revealed next month, it's clear that HP has much more planned for webOS. Given Bradley's hints about "other devices," we're interested in learning how exactly HP has integrated webOS components into its PC line, for example. Will there be a webOS layer that can run on top of Windows? Will you have dual-booting machines? Will webOS power small screens embedded in a notebook's shell? Will there actually be desktop or notebook PCs running just webOS?

And what's this about webOS on other large screen devices? Larger than a PC? Well that means TV, of course. What's HP working on there? Its own Apple TV/Google TV rival?

Dropping broad hints about HP's iPad rival, a known entity at this point, almost throws us off course from the bigger news here. HP's most exciting reveal may be its webOS ecosystem plans, not the webOS  tablet itself. This news is bound to shake up the industry - a Windows OEM pushing a new operating system throughout its product line, from tablets to PCs and more, instead of just building a tablet alone? Very interesting.

You can watch the video for yourself here:

Via PreCentral

Dion Almaer is one of the best-known cutting edge developers focused on emerging Open Web technologies, like HTML5. When Almaer joined Palm just over a year ago, it was big news. Today Almaer announced that he and his long-time cohort Ben Galbraith are leaving the company to found their own startup.

Almaer spent time as the Open Web Advocate at Google and the Director of Developer Tools at Mozilla before taking a position as Director of Developer Relations at Palm. He and Galbraith co-founded the popular developer blog Ajaxian. Almaer used his announcement as an opportunity to make some strong statements about the importance of the Open Web.

We are so lucky to be in a position where a massive global platform is Open. If you look at our history with mainframes, PCs, and gaming consoles, they have all be closed proprietary systems. As developers we have been beholden to the vendors. When we are both aligned, things can work out, but as soon as the company has a change in strategy and we misalign, developers are often left by the wayside. This mirrors the world of dictatorships. If you could guarantee your dictator is fully aligned with you there is a good chance that the system will be far more efficient than a democracy. History has taught us though that 99.9% of the time this isn't the case. The Open Web gives us an escape valve. It has its own problems and complexities (just as democracy), but that is all critically worth it.

Being "open" isn't enough, and we need to have a platform that works for developers. We need to be able to make money. We need to be able to create amazing experiences for our users. The Web has a huge new challenge vis a vie the "app economies" out there, but it behooves us to all push the Web forward and make it work for us.

The Web has the opportunity to be THE unifying platform that can give us the best opportunities.

PreCentral, a leading blog covering the Palm Pre mobile platform, writes that the departure of these two leading developer advocates is just the latest of many severe blows to the WebOS world. That site also reports that the first consulting client served by Almaer and Galbraith will be HP, the new owner of Palm.

The news of their departure may be bad for Palm, but it will likely be appreciated as good news for HTML5 advocates at many other companies.

Photo from jsconf.

What's New in webOS 2.0

The release of webOS 2.0 represents the biggest update yet, notes the page on Palm's Developer Center detailing the new features. And, by the looks of it, the list does include several compelling upgrades:

Stacks

The new Stacks feature extends Palm's "card" metaphor that allows users to interact with screens as if they were individual cards. To close an app, for example, you just drag the card off the screen and "poof!" the program is closed. With Stacks, webOS 2.0 will automatically group related cards in an effort to reduce clutter and to allow for quickly switching between tasks. Users can also manually create stacks via drag-and-drop to manage them outside of operating system control. Developers don't have to do anything special to use Stacks - new cards resulting from user actions within an app will be automatically grouped with the app's main card.

Just Type

Just Type is the new name for webOS's Universal Search feature which allows users to search for things both on the device and the Web. One of the new enhancements to this feature is something called "Quick Actions." This lets users perform routine tasks like updating their Facebook status, setting reminders, adding items to a shopping list, start an email and other common tasks. Also new is an ability for developers to expand their app's capabilities by hooking into Just Type either through indexing of data stored on the device or through the creation of their own custom Quick Actions.

Exhibition

Exhibition is a screensaver-like program that runs when the phone is docked. It can display slideshows, a clock, stock updates, news, or sports tickers but can also be customized through apps created by developers.

Synergy APIs

Synergy is remembered as the feature which merged Facebook contacts into the Palm Pre's address book, but it also supports Google, Microsoft Exchange, LinkedIn and Yahoo. Contacts are pulled into the phone's address book to show things like birthdays, work and personal calendars side-by-side, IM and text messages combined into a single conversation and more. In webOS 2.0, Synergy APIs are being made available to developers for use with connectors for contacts, calendar and Messaging and later for other webOS data types too. For example, developers can use the connectors to connect a chat or IM app with the webOS Messaging app, access contacts stored on a social network or online community into the Contacts app, or access other calendars or online events within the built-in Calendar app.

Under-the-Hood: HTML 5, JavaScript, PDK Plug-ins

Other advances in under-the-hood technologies include support for HTML5 features like enhanced canvas, Web storage, geolocation and application cache. Also new is built -in support for the Node.js runtime environment and PDK Plug-ins, which allow developers to build games and other immersive apps in C/C++. This latter feature is currently in beta, but with webOS 2.0 the beta period will end and developers can begin to distribute apps that use these plug-ins.

Does HP Have a Shot with webOS?

Before Google's Android emerged as the iPhone rival it is today, many saw Palm's WebOS as a possible contender to take the iPhone down a notch from its dominant position among smartphones. Wall St. Journal's Walt Mossberg even called the Pre "a powerful competitor" to the iPhone when it launched as well as a "beautiful, innovative and versatile hand-held computer." He wasn't alone in this sentiment.

The idea of the Pre as an upstart "iPhone killer" soon lost its appeal, though, when the webOS-powered phone and its smaller sibling the Pixi, simply didn't sell. It was said that the lackluster sales may have had more to do with the hardware used, the carrier or the lack of developer buy-in, and not the OS itself, however.

But HP, desperately needing to re-enter the mobile game, clearly thought webOS still had potential, and not just for mobile, but for tablet computing as well. In July, HP registered the trademark "PalmPad" and, earlier this month, confirmed its plans to ship a webOS-based tablet early next year. For the most part, the tech community's initial reaction was positive, upon hearing the acquisition news this April, with most hoping that HP could be the company to breathe new life into the dying, but delightful, webOS platform.

What remains to be seen, however, is whether or not tablet computing will actually take hold as a new trend in computing, regardless of the operating system powering the device, or if the iPad is simply another example of Apple releasing a product (like its iPod) that dominates a market. Android, although now outpacing iPhone shipments in many markets, most notably the U.S., has yet to emerge as the OS of choice on any iPad rival. There are many Android tablets in the works and some for sale in limited markets, but no major releases as of yet. It's far too soon to say if an Android tablet will overtake the iPad or vice versa. In fact, it's just as possible that HP's "PalmPad" could be the real iPad competitor, for that matter. That's what HP is hoping for, of course. But it is notable that HP, a personal computing powerhouse in this industry, has embraced a new operating system that's not Microsoft Windows. If marketed well, priced appropriately and - most importantly - if HP's brand name clout can attract developer attention, it's fair to say the "PalmPad" has a real shot.

The new tablet, to be possibly introduced in Q3, is code-named Hurricane and will run on Palm's mobile operating system. HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion last month.

Maybe the Hurricane will be as fast as its namesake. Or maybe it will just blow through and leave a mess behind.

Below we've posted some of most interesting short ruminations on the news, from the first few moments after the announcement, from smart industry thought leaders. There are a lot of different reactions out there, what are your thoughts about these ones?

Dion Almaer, well known innovative web developer at Palm, is excited.

Joe Hewitt, the man who built the Facebook iPhone app, gives Palm's mobile OS a thumbs up.

That's a great question, so we asked it of HP. Senior VP of Strategy Brian Humphries told us today that "the issue over the years has been Palm's ability to prove financial viability and with HP in the picture those concerns go away. We'll invest substantially in building a developer community. Further, you take this OS onto other platforms and you give people an opportunity to participate in an ecosystem play."

Mobile developer Tim Sears sees a potential iPad competitor.

Blogger Mark Hopkins points out that HP is on an acquisition roll. Deals we've spotted over the last 12 months include: cluster file storage software vendor IBRIX, global consulting company EYP Mission Critical Facilities and network infrastructure manufacturer 3Com $2.7b.

Lon Seidman, startup founder, points to a missed opportunity by Microsoft. Many people agree. Business Insider says this is all about HP trying to "end its reliance on Microsoft Windows as the basis for its hardware gadgets."

Was it a bad deal for the investors? Leading financial blogger Dan Primack does some quick evaluation of the impact for Elevation Partners, the VC firm that singer Bono is a part of that put hundreds of millions into Palm. Primack says the sky has not fallen.

Former Autodesk and Edelman PR exec Caroline Kawashima is unmoved. Tech media guru Sam Whitmore retweets.

Huffington Post's Adam Clark Estes makes a good joke.

According to an April 12 SEC filing, Abbott, Vice President of Software and Services for the company, will be boxing his knick-knacks on the 23rd.

Similar packages are common in a sale situation. They help to maintain continuity during a change-over. They also avoid the flight that may give potential buyers, media and customers the appearance of a wholesale flight by major decision-makers who might be "in the know."

The Palm Pre Plus and the Palm Pixi Plus are both on sale for a single red cent (U.S.) in conjunction with the service agreement.

The original Pre price on Amazon was $699.98 and the Pixi was offered at $399.98. The service agreement is through Verizon Wireless.

Given that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing sometimes in even small companies, to say nothing of companies the size of Palm, and given the news that Palm is apparently for sale, it's impossible to decide that this is part of an overall strategy or just a little left-hand action.

Palm's SEC disclosure indicates Harbinger, a New York-based private hedge fund, has purchased 16 million shares of Palm common stock.

Because it was a common stock purchase, it does not come with voting rights, and the purchase did not have a significant effect on Palm stock, which was up 3.1% at the end of trading.

Palm has reportedly secured Goldman Sachs in order to lure a buyer for the struggling company.

Among the top five mobile platforms (RIM, Apple, Microsoft, Palm and Google), Palm lost the largest amount of market share in the last few months. Palm, the current number four, now owns 6.1% of the US mobile market (down from 8.3% in September). With Google's Android rapidly growing in popularity, it's only a matter of time before Google will overtake Palm in the United States.

As we reported in January, according to ChangeWave Research, a growing number of US consumers plans to buy an Android device in the next few months. In September, Android was still tied with Palm as the least-preferred mobile platform. Today, Palm remains in last place, with Android now being the second-most preferred platform - right behind Apple.

In the Beginning

When handheld computers went mainstream, developers had only one choice: Palm Pilot. Within five years, they had Symbian and Pocket PC (later Windows Mobile) to consider also. By 2009, there were no less than eight major operating systems for smartphones: two versions of Windows Mobile, two versions for Blackberry, iPhone, Android, Symbian, and webOS, not to mention traditional feature phones running various flavors of Java.

The Impact

Developers were forced to make the tough choice of which operating system to develop for. Making it harder, customers were scattered and were requesting versions of a variety of platforms, with no one platform controlling the market, unlike the desktop world. Until a few months ago, they had only one choice: develop for each platform independently, picking and choosing which to support, each with huge costs and unknown payback.

That, however, is changing. Developers now have three ways to develop cross-platform. And while these technologies are still in their early days, they will evolve rapidly.

HTML 5 and the Mobile Web

One option is to forgo installed applications altogether and develop mobile Web applications. HTML 5, with its access to local databases, makes this possible. There are two major obstacles to this strategy right now: first, ubiquity of HTML 5-enabled browsers and, second, a willingness among customers to accept it as a standard.

While the first will be solved with time and pressure from other OS platforms, the second is a bigger problem. The customer's willingness to accept Web-based applications is a psychological change that takes years to evolve. Device owners have been trained that cell phone connections are inherently unstable. In many places the connection disappears, and until that is resolved this mental adjustment cannot begin to take hold.

Flash

Adobe recently announced its push into the mobile space, with Flash-enabled browsers for most platforms and a Flash-to-iPhone-app compiler for Apple's smartphones and handhelds. This would allow developers to write all of their apps in Flash and then deploy on multiple mobile browsers and the iPhone via a compiled application.

This still suffers from many of the same disadvantages of HTML 5, because it requires a psychological change in customers to accept running apps in the browser. In addition, Apple's hard-nosed stance against Flash in the browser will impede this movement because it will require two completely separate creation processes.

Finally, for Flash to take hold, operating system manufacturers will have to start treating Web-enabled applications the same as non-Web-enabled ones. For example, launching Web apps from the home page must become standard.

JavaScript Native Apps

A new class of applications has arisen. These are native applications that are compiled for a specific platform but that use Web technologies for the user interface. This has the most potential. The most prominent one currently is PhoneGap. Other solutions include Appcelerator and Rhomobile, which uses the Ruby on Rails Web development language.

These technologies, all open sourced, enable developers to write back-end processes in the native code and all of the user interfaces in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This application is then compiled into a native application. It can be uploaded to app stores, distributed via downloading and installed directly to the device.

The fundamental problem with mobile development isn't the back end, though. The backbone of all of these platforms is C or Java, which is generally portable if written with that intention. The problem is user interface development, which requires deep knowledge and understanding of each mobile device. Making the UI cross-platform solves the vast majority of problems associated with this kind of development. If you had to point to where the approach falls short, it would be that cross-platform applications don't feel "native," a shortcoming that would be solved by good design and better CSS work!

Conclusion

As the smartphone market evolves, we are unlikely to see a clear winner as we did in the PC business; and because of that, developers will be forced to write for multiple platforms. But for the first time in a decade, developers have options for multiple-device development. The cost and learning curve associated with writing native apps for every platform can finally be mitigated.

While all of these technologies are early to market, the writing is clearly on the wall. After more than a decade of discussion, the combination of Flash, HTML 5 and JavaScript will make "write once, use everywhere" a reality.

Guest author: Elia Freedman is the CEO of Infinity Softworks, the leading provider of software calculators, with over 15 million distributed. In its 13-year history, Infinity Softworks has developed applications for iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows, Palm OS and Windows Mobile. Elia writes about tech, mobile and running a business on his blog, eliainsider.com.

In January, 20 million people were accessing Facebook on their mobile phones. By September, that number had more than tripled to a whopping 65 million mobile users. As the company continues to upgrade the mobile user experience, the rate of content generation appears poised for unlimited growth. To test the redesigned mobile site visit touch.facebook.com.

Senior Wired Magazine editor Robert Capps penned an article titled "The Good Enough Revolution" for Wired's September 2009 edition. The print edition included the daring (and perhaps intentionally provocative) subtitle "Why lo-fi tech will rule the world."

This rings of an absolutism, and such rings set off our antennae.

The best example, the Flip video, "nail(s) all three of those... traits." But not every product does. Take the computer market. Sure, netbooks sell like hotcakes while most of the rest of the market takes a beating. But there's a fly in the ointment: Apple.

Apple hasn't lowered its prices or jumped on the netbook bandwagon... yet (we'll keep our ears open for any announcements on that). Yet the company's fortunes continue to soar in the face of deplorable market conditions, which Capps asserts should make lo-fi tech spread faster.

New York Times columnist David Pogue gave a convincing talk on this subject, which he called "Simplicity Sells," and between rousing musical numbers he returned several times to the things Apple does right.

Pogue also mentioned a discussion he had with a "tap counter" while visiting a Palm facility in the 1990s. According to Pogue, this person counted taps for each feature that Palm put into its PDA. If a process took more than three taps, it had to be redesigned.

On this point, Pogue and Capps largely agree. Pogue, however, wisely sidesteps the land mines of "lo-fi," "price," and any other down-market connotation.

That's because "good enough" in technology means "accessible" and "easy to use." "Cheaper" is a nice bonus, but millions of people continue to prove that they will pay a higher initial cost to make sure that what they get is good enough. Capps stumbled only in neglecting this price-elasticity counter-argument.

Read his excellent article anyway (and check out David Pogue at TED) and get inspired. In any case, whatever you offer:

• Make it easy to use,
• Make it accessible,
• And above all, make sure it satisfies the needs of your clientele.

Do all of this, and higher prices might not bother potential customers as much as you fear.

Does this logic apply to your business? Let us know. We'd love to hear your opinion.