you want to start something?
Another day another small WiFi company - all of them scrabbling for pennies with hotspots measured in the ‘tens’ as opposed to the ‘hundreds’ and the value they bring? Access WiFi in hotels for a few quid an hour. There has to be a better way.
Matt Gemmell writes about the complaints about the iPhone NDA, DRM and requirements for certificates.
You’re talking about Linux, for christ’s sake. What the hell is wrong with you?
If that’s your bag, sod off and install SUSE on your brick and have fun writing your own GPL’d Bluetooth stack. We’ll all still be here, using our teeny-tiny touchscreen motherfucking sex-phone which is actually going to still be around and commercially viable in 2 year’s time. With AppleCare
This is definitely how I feel about the iPhone when related to OpenMoko and the LiMo linux-based phones though I’m somewhat more confident about the Android efforts. While I think Android will have it’s own job cut out for it by entering a marketplace already hard-fought with Nokia’s Symbian, Windows Mobile and Apple’s iPhone (I suppose we can add Palm in there? Maybe?).
Android brings with it a glut of software. Some will be good, some will be bad. What’s missing from the Android solution seems to be a viable ‘business plan’ other than making money from advertising. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again - I’m the only altruist I trust and Google, with their massive advertising network, is not going to be giving an operating system away free. They care about making sure that as the web goes mobile, they own the sidewalk.
The fact remains, however, if you want handset ‘freedom’ then develop for Android or Symbian. But you take your risks when you do that, like anyone else. We don’t know how that market will play out, whether there will be a market for non-free software at all. And being paid in ‘eyeballs’ doesn’t ring right to me.
By ‘market, of course, I mean ‘money’.
The market for web apps seems to be all about ‘attention’. It’s whether you can keep someone’s eyeballs focussed on the screen long enough to provide them with some advertising to look at. Looking at web based applications, I have to still wonder about the business plans and I fear the lonegvity of any business plan that relies on advertising. On the other hand, I can see people paying to avoid advertising, whether that’s to a service/software provider (a la Twitterific) or to a company which will block advertising using proxy/blacklist/DNS hacks.
In contrast, I would hope the market for mobile software (exemplified by the iPhone) seems to be in ‘experience’. I chose my Twitter client for the iPhone based on experience: Twitterific and Twittelator just didn’t cut it for me and Twinkle provides the right amount of access to my tweets with the added advantage of seeing everyone ‘nearby’.
I’ll for the experience and it takes hard work to create an app that provides experience rather than one that just demands attention.
I meant to blog this ages ago. It’s a list of open source social platforms and tools - some of which would be very useful for Digital Circle or similar groups.
Elgg- Social networking engine Elgg coming soon in two flavors - Classic Elgg and the soon to be released Elgg 1.0. Elgg looks very ‘facebook’-y and might be useful for a group of real-world contacts who have a lot of interest together - perhaps a club around a community?
Pligg - An OS content management system providing an interactive website for users to submit, vote and discuss web-based content. This is, more than anything,a DIGG/REDDIT clone. But it’s going to be one way for groups who would normally email each other with news headlines with an RSS-based web site which will provide all those features and more.
Mahara- E-portfolio social networking software developed for the education community, and including a résumé builder/digital CV. The Mahara project is based in New Zealand, with partner organisations in Japan and the UK.. This would seem to be the most suitable for something like Digital Circle - part of the plan is to create some sort of profile of the Northern Ireland industry so that if we need to find skilled people, we need look no further than down the street rather than looking across the seas and oceans.
There are other tools and platforms on that web site - these are just the ones which inspired me.
Well of course a customer can ask for whatever they want and demand whatever they want and throw out whatever proposal they want. Fine, but it’s “their loss.” I’m just mystified why some organizations operate that way, but they do.
When dealing with monolithic organisations you have the choice to do it “their way or the highway” so the post linked above is typical and, frankly, a good pre-amble to going into any public procurement process.
It might even make you laugh.