This is a great little advert from Google to publicise it’s Chrome web browser (which I love btw and have been using for a while now).
The ad, which was made by the company’s UK team and conincide’s with the launch of the brower’s Mac version, has a wonderful slick and creative feel, reminiscent of something from Apple themselves. It’s also achieved an impressive 200,000 YouTube views in a few days…
Twitter has been simmering this morning with news that Orange is going to be selling the iPhone 3GS in the UK by the end of the year.
Now, despite numerous complaints about the service that iPhone users have received under O2, their use of Twitter to quickly respond to and work with users has been pretty impressive: http://twitter.com/o2.
But Orange doesn’t seem to be too far behind. Only hours after the announcement, @conorfromorange has been tweeting and keeping excited iPhone fans abreast of latest developments.
And the iPhone microsite he mentions is a smart move from the carrier, building on the social media buzz that has accompanied the announcement and capturing data about potential customers, even though the phone isn’t available yet.
Personally, as someone that moved from Orange (the only carrier I had ever had a phone with) to O2 when the iPhone launched, I don’t really have any complaints with O2.
But the competition can only be a good thing and will hopefully push prices down.
I like to judge the issues of the day that are particularly relevant to me not by Twitter trending topics or the most read list on BBC.co.uk, but by the articles that crop up in my RSS reader. They are, after all sources I have hand-picked because they are likely to contain content that I find interesting.
And if these are indeed a fair reflection of what is and isn’t hot right now (in my world), then Spinvox is certainly winning at the moment. On both counts!
But, I can’t help being a little bit mystified by all the attention.
Yes, I know the service is one of the darlings of the Web 2.0 world and, here in the UK at least, has been promoted all over the Twitterverse by its social-media-guru-dude, James Whatley. But why all the recent attention?
You probably know the gist of the furore that has encompassed the company in recent weeks. If not, you can read about it here.
The whole incident has generated unprecedented media attention: numerous posts on the BBC website, national newspapers, Techcrunch… the list goes on.
Then yesterday, Spinvox invited its main detractors to attend a demo at its HQ to see for themselves (or not) just what the fuss is (or isn’t) all about.
Which still leaves me with the question – why all the fuss?
I’m not trying to let Spinvox off the hook. They’ve made mistakes and there is a clear lack of transparency there somewhere. I also don’t think the PR has been handled at all well during this little spat (but that’s another post for another time). Anyone that thinks any publicity is good publicity is misguided.
So is this just an example of a media man/company-hunt? Did the lack of a clear and quick response from the company create a mountain out of a molehill or does the company really have something to answer?
It’ll be fascinating to see how they try and recover from here. Despite their buoyant claims about increases in sign-ups following the BBC coverage and their latest funding round, I think it’s going to be a battle.
A few weeks ago, Sky revealed a new iPhone app that will allow users to set Sky+ recordings remotely. Its a great example of how mobile applications can be used to make life that little bit easier. (And yes, I’m jealous that Virgin Media haven’t done the same)
With Android, Blackberry and Nokia all either launching or set to launch their own versions of the Apple App store, mobile applications have really come of age.
The Guardian wrote a big piece on iPhone apps recently, covering the fact that Nine Inch Nails are set to launch their own app allowing their fans and followers better access to music, downloads and everything else they could possibly want. App-mania is upon us.
For those that haven’t experienced apps so far, the obsession may seem odd. After all, aren’t we supposed to moving away from ‘software’ towards cloud computing and web-based applications like Gmail and Salesforce? Well, it seems that mobile apps offer a good comprise between the two, especially on mobiles where, despite improvements, browsers still lack the ease-of-use experienced elsewhere.
Many apps are still dependent on internet access and the best (other than games for obvious reasons) do still embody key ‘cloud’ features. But, as Salesforce demonstrates, creating an app rather than merely an optimised mobile site, does make sense. And when the iPhone 3.0 software launches this summer, iPhone apps will go to the next level.
Having said all of this, there is a flipside. Google has been quite resolute in failing to really support a push into mobile apps, on the iPhone at least. Here, the Google app is nothing more than a portal, linking to the various web pages of Google services – search, Reader, Mail etc. – and whilst you can understand their focus on the ‘web’ it does render the application itself rather useless. Having said that, the new mobile version of Gmail is fantastic and possibly demonstrates that application functionality through mobile browsers is perhaps not as far away as we might imagine.
But until this happens, I hope that more big businesses take the plunge and join fantastic apps like National Rail (despite the price/downtime), Tube Deluxe, Shazam, the New York Times, WSJ etc.
Imagine a BBC or Guardian iPhone app for example. I’m surprised more haven’t followed suit. And yet, you do fear that as more and more app stores open on more and more platforms, the ‘bigger players’ may be forced to focus more on platform-neutral websites (despite handset and browser quirks) and leave app development to independent specialists armed with APIs to create some really exciting and productive tools.
Like every good tech geek, I’m a bit of a magpie when it comes to shiny new things, especially online. So you can imagine my glee when (via Drew) I came across Feedly today.
I love it!
I’m pretty addicted to my feedreader. And my weapon of choice has been Google Reader ever since I started reading blogs. I’ve tried and tested every pretender to the reader-throne, but I haven’t ever been really tempted to migrate my RSS feeds. This is partly due to the inconvenience of moving; the new features would have to be very convincing.
And this is part why Feedly is so great. Its not really a feed reader itself – it’s a Firefox plugin. It simply sits on top of Google Reader and acts as an alternative skin or dashboard. You can still share or star items, add or remove feeds and even change categories. But, in addition, it makes it easier to add posts to social networks and email or tweet interesting snippets.
And it plugs into your existing networks to recommend and suggest content.
You can also use Feedly mini – a little pop-up overlay that appears at the bottom right of every webpage you visit to inform you about how socially-connected the page is and it also allows you to tweet or email content quickly and easily.
All-in-all, a great little tool.
[Few caveats: I've never tried an electronic book reader thingy, I've never seen a Kindle in real life]
Amazon has proudly announced Kindle 2.0 – the electronic book reader which allows you to read books without carrying them all around etc. etc.
But I just don’t really get the appeal. Surely it is just a matter of time until one of the big players puts the ability to read books like this onto an iPhone or equivalent device? Why would I want to pay $300+ to buy something like this this when it could be integrated?
Ok, ok, I hear your shouting – the iPhone is too small, not enough battery and doesn’t have the nicely designed screen that makes reading easy…
I say: all problems that can be overcome.
So come on Amazon, Apple, Nokia, Microsoft – let’s sort it out! There’s surely money to be made… (& I don’t want yet another device I have to carry around with me.