The N97 lie

MobileInc tears into the N97 – one of the Symbian smartphones which every Nokiabot was harping on about. It succeeded the N96 which was meant to best the venerable N95 except that they shipped it with a crappy processor and GPU. Nokia, for fuck sake, you’re doing your best to look like idiots here. Related … Continue reading “The N97 lie”

MobileInc tears into the N97 – one of the Symbian smartphones which every Nokiabot was harping on about. It succeeded the N96 which was meant to best the venerable N95 except that they shipped it with a crappy processor and GPU.

Nokia, for fuck sake, you’re doing your best to look like idiots here.

Google attempting to stem Android fragmentation

John Gruber writes: Google has been iterating quickly, but the problem is that carriers aren’t interested in any updates at all for phones they’ve already sold. The carriers have learned nothing from the iPhone, or, maybe they just don’t care about Android as a platform. They don’t care because they didn’t have to pay for … Continue reading “Google attempting to stem Android fragmentation”

John Gruber writes:

Google has been iterating quickly, but the problem is that carriers aren’t interested in any updates at all for phones they’ve already sold. The carriers have learned nothing from the iPhone, or, maybe they just don’t care about Android as a platform.

They don’t care because they didn’t have to pay for it. They’ve got low commitment to the platform, low loyalty to the OS vendor and now reckon they can switch between Symbian, Windows Mobile/Phone and Android at will (not to forget whatever hell Nokia is about to consign maemo to).

He continues:

So, in the end, OS version fragmentation may be less of a problem for Android users — two years from now. Current Android users, except for Nexus One owners, are shit out of luck. Hope you like Android 1.6 if that’s what your phone shipped with.

To be honest, this isn’t a tremendously big problem. Android has bigger fish to fry than satisfying a few early adopters, a large percentage of which either got the phone for free or went Android because it didn’t have an Apple on it.

The Co-Viewing Experience

About a year ago I was fortunate enough to meet with Ewan McIntosh while he was Digital Commissioner for Channel 4’s 4IP project. We waxed in the workshop about how many of us commonly pay attention to three screens at once – when we’re watching TV; we have our laptops and mobile phones beside us. … Continue reading “The Co-Viewing Experience”

About a year ago I was fortunate enough to meet with Ewan McIntosh while he was Digital Commissioner for Channel 4’s 4IP project. We waxed in the workshop about how many of us commonly pay attention to three screens at once – when we’re watching TV; we have our laptops and mobile phones beside us.

4IP’s remit was daring for the time. The core message I got was “no TV”. This wasn’t about audiences, it was about interactive, it might work alongside something that was TV and it might result in TV, but it wasn’t about TV.

Today I see this (emphasis mine):

Magazines and newspapers aren’t the only media eying big benefits upon the iPad’s arrival: TV is poised to use the device in new ways, including creating interactive, social apps designed to be used while watching live programming.

MTV Networks, for example, is developing a “co-browsing app meant to be used while watching live TV,” said one executive familiar with MTV’s iPad plans. “This means the iPad could be the appendage that makes interactive TV a reality.”

“Fifty-nine percent of people are multitasking when watching TV — that’s something we’ve always known,” said Ms. Frank, referring to recent Nielsen data quantifying a longstanding observation. “This is the next evolution.”

Of course it is.

When I watch TV, I have my laptop open. I’m looking up things, referencing actors, events, checking for the locations mentioned. (Frankly, it’s a little bit tiring.) But most importantly this is content that could be sold or advertised upon – it could be monetised by the television station, provided by the content producer on a platform that offers the content alongside the regular programming.

For example, while I’m watching Wonders of the Solar System with the very smart and cheerful Professor Brian Cox. I’m chatting to friends about the content, I’m following the good Professor on Twitter and I’m thinking about stuff such as:

Screen shot 2010-03-30 at 17.14.34

which ended up being answered by the Professor himself. Insanely cool.

TV shows are set to a timetable, we know ahead of time when they stop or start.And there’s more possibility for peripheral web sites to offer content which is synchronised with broadcast. This idea isn’t terribly new – Nico (who now works at UTV) wrote about it on his blog:

Whatever the future of TV, it is clear that online and social media are going to play an increasing part in how and where we consume broadcast media. Being part of a shared media experience, even if you are on your own, will be the shape of things to come.

There’s an opportunity for local television companies to build a much bigger proposition, to actually deliver on the “360” that is buzzword in television commissioning. It should be about the ‘web site’, it’s about the co-viewing experience.

Square is for tomorrow’s mobile workers

Square is a neat solution from one of the Twitter founders, Jack Dorsey. It’s a little dongle that plugs into the audio port and allows you to scan in credit cards and take payments. Anywhere. The launch site was some bohemian coffee shop somewhere in the Valley but the real value is the ability for … Continue reading “Square is for tomorrow’s mobile workers”

Square is a neat solution from one of the Twitter founders, Jack Dorsey. It’s a little dongle that plugs into the audio port and allows you to scan in credit cards and take payments. Anywhere.

Screen shot 2010-03-29 at 21.14.55

The launch site was some bohemian coffee shop somewhere in the Valley but the real value is the ability for anyone providing a service or product to sell wherever they are.

Put it another way. There’s less need for this:

business_cards

When you can take this:

credit-card

It’s a very important distinction. The number of exhibitions and conferences I’ve been to where we come away with pockets full of business cards that we absolutely will follow up. Bollocks to that. Make the sale. They give you money, you give them money and get down to business. After all, it’s all about the business.

Local Brand, Global Vision

I would describe myself as probably more curmudgeonly than most especially when it comes to things on the Internets. Arlene is often able to discern if “someone is wrong on the Internet” due to the posture I assume, the faces I pull and the fury of my key tapping. It’s one of those things, there’s … Continue reading “Local Brand, Global Vision”

I would describe myself as probably more curmudgeonly than most especially when it comes to things on the Internets. Arlene is often able to discern if “someone is wrong on the Internet” due to the posture I assume, the faces I pull and the fury of my key tapping. It’s one of those things, there’s an immediacy to making sure there are wrongs righted. Sometimes it is better to withdraw and do something else. And I promise I’ll try to do that next time.

Credit: XKCD
Credit: XKCD

So, How do you brand something locally without it appearing provincial?

I hate URLs from local companies and organisations that have ‘ni’ in the title (it’s not restricted to the Internet either, I hate it when they put (NI) in the name of the limited company too. And no, hate is not a strong word.

But sadly while we seem to be surviving without the need for IPv6 so far (years after my mentor predicted the end of the IPv4 internet), we are fumbling towards a more final end – the end of the dictionary. Internet companies have been using nonsense names for a decade or more now but I loathe the ‘ni’ thing more than I dislike the ‘r’ thing in Flickr, Tumblr and others or the ‘n+1’ thing, like in Rummble or Dribble. It points to a cataclysm of Babelian (should that be Babylonian?) proportions. And don’t get me started on the www.xxxapp.com style names. Entire domains for ‘apps’ seems wrong and it can be abused. For example:

http://apps.ie was registered last year as a domain for all Irish iPhone developers and designers to represent their work. Sadly one company has gone ahead and branded themselves as ‘appsie’ after the fact and registered a whole slew of …..apps.ie URLs. When I brought this up, I was pretty much told to sling my hook. Suffice to say that’s one company off my Christmas card list.

So how do you brand something that’s new? And doesn’t actively step on the toes of wider initiatives to improve things for everyone?

In many cases is means choosing a URL that is almost entirely unlike your company name. In other cases it means adding a prefix such as “visit” or “weare” or “designby” to your company name or being extremely creative with your domain name extensions – witness the growth in popularity of ‘.io’, ‘.us’ and ‘.tv’. And there’s hundreds more options.

But right now I’m left with attempting to brand a local collaboration network which has local remit but global vision. And hoping to reduce the chance that someone will waltz in and hijack the name for their own purposes and undermine the network.

We got Youtube, Vimeo, CBS, iPlayer and TED. Woohoo!

Mike Cane pointed this out: Think about this – what are the big sites for online video? Youtube and Vimeo (both have H.264 in beta), CBS are trialling it and iPlayer is also there if you’re in the UK. Other than Youtube, Vimeo and iPlayer, I only watch TED videos and now that’s going H.264 … Continue reading “We got Youtube, Vimeo, CBS, iPlayer and TED. Woohoo!”

Mike Cane pointed this out:

TED has gone H.264
TED has gone H.264

Think about this – what are the big sites for online video?

Youtube and Vimeo (both have H.264 in beta), CBS are trialling it and iPlayer is also there if you’re in the UK. Other than Youtube, Vimeo and iPlayer, I only watch TED videos and now that’s going H.264 too.

After this it’s just Hulu for the Americans and what are you really left with? The ITV player? 4OD? Do we care?

I met with the BBC Trust several months ago and recommended that they look at H.264 across the board. I also recommended they push hard to beat their most fervent competitor (video piracy) and offer a better service than can be found on bittorrent. Bittorrent, to the BBC, is little more than a distribution channel they have no control over. It should be in their interest to provide a better service which will give people high quality video that they do have control over, that they can gain useful statistics of, that they can count eyeballs from.

I guessed it fell on deaf ears. Have to see what happens.

Photos from Thursday’s INGAGE

INGAGE = Innovation in Gaming in Education Related posts: So, about that game company… Education and Technology The Gaming Market: time to break in? Integrated Education – Segregated Education

INGAGE = Innovation in Gaming in Education

The iApp Pricing Dilemma

Around a hundred years ago in 1984, I owned a ZX Spectrum 16K (which my Dad had bought for Christmas in 1982). This tiny little computer cost £100 or so, hooked up to your TV and the games had to be loaded over a audio cable from a tape recorder. I remember my Christmas Day … Continue reading “The iApp Pricing Dilemma”

Around a hundred years ago in 1984, I owned a ZX Spectrum 16K (which my Dad had bought for Christmas in 1982). This tiny little computer cost £100 or so, hooked up to your TV and the games had to be loaded over a audio cable from a tape recorder. I remember my Christmas Day was spent with a hairdryer trying to resolve a hilarious problem where any dust inside would cause internal shorts and produce a little row of bombs across the screen. Ah, heady times.

176104-zxspectrum48k_large

The games I bought were sold in two shops. Tandy on the Antrim Road in Lisburn and a video rental store. At the time the full price of a game was around £7.99. The rental store also rented the game for 99p for two nights. This was achievable to my 11 year old mind and I rented the game which caught my eye.

You see.

TRON had been released in 1982 and I was obsessed. (In hindsight I really should have stayed with the computers thing.) And a company called Personal Software Services in Coventry (England) has produced a game called Light Cycle.

LightCycle

Evidently Disney wasn’t paying attention to computer games in 1983. But anyway – this game which entranced me (before I knew what the gameplay looked like), was £7.99. (I know it says it was £5.95 retail on the web site but I tell you, it sold for £7.99 in pre-globalised, pre-internet Lisburn).

So, iApp prices.

I think everyone knows that 59p (99c) is too cheap for anything of value.

That said, the iPhone has proved quite the opposite (and it seems to be everlastingly sustainable) as we fill our home screens with games and utility apps that are, quite frankly, too cheap to be good, but so good you’d be stupid not to try them. I’ve got pages of apps and games which cost very little and yet I get hours and hours of use out of them.

We knew that iPad apps would cost more. Sure, you can run your existing iPhone apps on the iPad by stretching them up to fill the screen, but there’s a heap of new apps coming. Some of them are refreshes of existing iPhone apps with new content but some of them are new and exciting.

So iPad apps and games will cost more.

They’re not going to cost like PC games or console games – between thirty quid and fifty quid for a single game – but they’re also not going to trend towards 59p! As you can see below!

These images are from MacRumors:

142304-ipad_top_revenue

150303-omni

Expect bigger prices from big names. We’re going to see some amazing content on this device. Just be prepared to pay for it.

What would Myth look like on a touch device?

I did a little cut and paste to see what UI elements would look like with a direct port should Bungie/Take2 decide to do something about Myth (and therefore render my efforts almost obsolete): So, have a look at the size of those targets – finger sized if you ask me? It’s unlikely to happen … Continue reading “What would Myth look like on a touch device?”

I did a little cut and paste to see what UI elements would look like with a direct port should Bungie/Take2 decide to do something about Myth (and therefore render my efforts almost obsolete):

War

So, have a look at the size of those targets – finger sized if you ask me?

It’s unlikely to happen so I’m going to keep working on this. Still seeking developers, artists and sound engineers who want to help build something?