Tiger Woods Teaches Me A Lesson: The Pain Of Mobile Monogamy - Steve Rosenbaum - MediaBizBloggers

OK, confessions are never easy. But I need to get this off my chest.

After watching Tiger Woods come clean on national television last week, I feel like I too need to confess.

I've been cheating.

It started as a brief flirtation. But now, well, I'm just not so sure.

Let me explain.

I've been in love with the iPhone since before I can remember. The Classic, the 2G, the 3G; I've been faithful. And along the way I've kept true to all of the things that Apple requires in order for that love to remain pure. I'm in a committed relationship with iTunes, my pictures are on iPhoto. My mail is on Apple Mail. I'm a mobile-monogamous man.

But then, I met the Nexus One. It was an innocent flirtation at first. I was given the phone as a gift. And there were a bunch of free minutes on a T-Mobile card. "What would it hurt?" I thought. Heck, AT&T has let me down time and time again. So, I figured my iPhone wouldn't mind (or wouldn't know) if I just did some innocent exploring with the cute little Nexus One.

That's where the story gets tricky.

You see, the Nexus One's Android Operating system is looking for more than a one night stand or a chance to be 'the extra phone on the side.' Nexus, oh Nexus, you too have a collection of apps that want my data committed to you.

First it was photos. I shot some on the Nexus One and wanted to put them in my iPhoto collection. Harmless, right? But no, it turns out the Nexus One wants my photos to go to their Picasa application. Remember Picasa? I didn't, but it turns out I had an old Picasa account, and there I was shooting pictures on the Nexus One (far better quality than my beloved iPhone as it turns out) and uploading them to Picasa. Now I'm in deep.

Mail? Well, that's Gmail of course.

Music? No iTunes on the Nexus One (music is a bit of problem it turns out).

Apps? Hmm... lots of them. Maps, data, news, all on the Nexus One.

Now I'm struggling. It seems that T-Mobile has a phone network that actually works! Yes, I know all those funny jokes about getting cut off on AT&T are hilarious, but they're getting a bit old if you actually want to talk on the phone. So, iPhone, we're going to need to get some counseling and you're going to need to work on the "Phone" part of your name, because right now you're iWeb or iData, but iPhone? - not so much.

But don't think that the Nexus One is a total flirtation without costs. It seems like Google wants more of my data than Apple. And the whole advertising thing around Gmail is still freaking me out a bit. Google Buzz - don't even get me started there.

So, I'm deep in a committed relationship with my iPhone, but I'm seeing my Nexus One on the side. Something's got to give. And honestly, in the world of mobile devices, playing the field isn't an option.

Tiger Woods' solution was to get into a program and get clean. Is there a program that promotes mobile monogamy? If so, I may need to sign up before my data gets out of hand.

Steven Rosenbaum is the CEO and Co-Founder of Magnify.net - a fast-growing video publishing platform that powers more than 50,000 web sites, media companies, and content entrepreneurs to aggregate and curate web video from a wide variety of web sources. Currently Magnify.net publishes over 50,000 channels of Curated-Consumer Video, and is working closely with a wide variety of media makers, communities, and publishers in evolving their content offerings to include content created by, sorted and reviewed by community members. Rosenbaum is a serial entrepreneur, Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, and well known innovator in the field of user-generated media production. Rosenbaum Directed and Executive Produced the critically acclaimed 7 Days In September, and his MTV Series Unfiltered is widely regarded as the first commercial use of Consumer Generated Video in US mass media. Steve can be contacted at steve@magnify.net Follow Steve Rosenbaum on Twitter: www.twitter.com/magnify

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