The Google Chrome Comic Book

I stumbled across this comic and thought it might be of interest. A non-techy story of what Google is doing in terms of browser development.


http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/

Is there a Buzz about Google's Social Networking?

For some reason I'm becoming a fan of the instant impression! My iPad post came hot off the heals of Mr Jobs' comfy sofa seminar and now, less than 24 hours after Google launched Buzz I find myself itching to comment!


In short Google Buzz is Google's attempt to move into the social media scene. I'm somewhat confused by my own statement as a few year's ago now I remember having an account with a site called Orkut that I never used and only signed up to because Google had just bought them. Orkut on the face of it is a social networking site, but I didn't really hang around to find out anymore than that.


So back to Buzz. A lot of people have made a lot of noise about Buzz and a lot of the noise has tended to be negative. That seems to be the trend with new technology. Dismiss it out of hand because it is different. To me, it's precisely because it's different that I often find myself enthusiastic.


My first 'buzz' strangely seems to capture my initial thoughts (it wasn't supposed to!):

I stand by my thoughts that it won't be a flash in the pan because Sergey Brin publicised it (although not necessarily for those reasons) and also my thinking that it will never be able to compete with Facebook because it wasn't around when Soical Media needed defining. Facebook was and as such became the standard bearer (in the same way as Hotmail did for web-based email).


However I think Google Buzz will settle down into a popular and effective Social Media tool in time. As my brother commented (a reply via email rather than a 'buzz', which I found strange):

It appears Google has gone for a Social Media aggregator rather than a separate networking or community environment. The feature that stands out most for me is the ability to add 'connected sites' to your Buzz feed. 

The premise seems to be that you connect all of your web based sites where information is dynamic and of interest to other people (the list also includes Blogger, YouTube, Google Chat although crucially not Facebook), and when you change your status on these sites, they are updated through Buzz. The idea being you no longer need to check countless sites to see the latest information, although presumably you need to log into countless sites to update your own status!


If Facebook were added in time this would be a distinct advantage. I can't see Buzz drawing huge amounts of new users to Gmail but I can see it being beneficial to existing Gmail users. My concern would be that this was not the intended outcome Google had in mind when they created Buzz. 


I will probably post again once I've had the chance to use Buzz a bit more, see if my experiences change my initial thoughts.
   


~~ update ~~


This piece has a bit more perspective around the security aspect, something I haven't got round to looking into but would appear important!


http://charman-anderson.com/2010/02/11/google-buzz-not-fit-for-purpose/

iThink iPad iNitial iThought!

My usual modus operandi is to wait. Wait until the dust has settled, the professionals and 'enthusiasts' have had their say and then have mine. And make it different: a different perspective, approach or in short a view adopted given the benefit of time. I like to mull things over, read opinion, see things first hand and reflect before delivering an opinion of my own. However for reasons I'm not entirely sure about I've decided to leap on the iPad bandwagon and release a few initial observations into the fury of comment, speculation and hype.


I like the iPad. Well what I have seen online and the facts I have been able to gleam from other media reporting. I won't buy it though, at least not at first. I want to and should I have the disposal means I probably would, despite the cautions I can see. 


First to the positives:

• I like the design and visual appeal. The Apple touch screen technology I think will differential it from other tablet products
• I understand the primary use case: to access and browse the internet within seconds
• Cater for the limitations of the iPhone: enhanced user experience when using for longer time periods due to improved screen size and ergonomical design    
• A platform on which to build for the future

The iPad is, in my humble opinion, and aspirational product. I want one because I want the feeling and status it would give me. That is a very strong and emotive reason pull on a product and combined with the pull the Apple brand can achieve for its products will make it a commercial success. 

Owning an iPhone I understand how the iPad build upon the concept. I've heard all the Dom Jolly related criticisms about using it as a phone and to be honest I think that's either naive or facetious! In time the iPad will cater for video conferencing and this is where the phone functionality will come into play. Despite the innovate drag, pull and zoom concepts that are expertly delivered into the touch technology of the iPhone when browsing Safari, you can not escape the reality that a bigger screen would help. Not necessarily sat on a crowded tube, but most definitely when sat on the sofa at home. I think it's the 'sat on the sofa at home' users that Apple are targeting. 

Despite my subjective attraction to the iPad I do understand some of the more negative coverage it has received. I think this has been summed up well by Russell Beatie (via @jackschofield) when he said that the people who were disappointed with the iPad really wanted a MacBook. I think that's valid and explains a lot of the criticism. No the iPad doesn't have web cams, the first version doesn't have 3G, there's no USB and SD interface and it's not an open platform by any means. In my opinion they're deliberate omissions. 

Future releases will have 3G (stated by Apple) and in my opinion cameras. But there are reasons it won't support USB or SD cards and that it isn't an open platform. Not exclusively but I think that reason is Google Chrome OS.

I believe the iPad will go up against Google's Chrome OS powered NetBooks. Steve Jobs' criticism of netbooks: slow and with PC software running them. Google's netbooks? TV like response from power to surfing. That impressive lead time already exists within the iPhone and stated for the iPad. If you consider the iPad from this perspective then you can understand why it doesn't support USB/SD cards and isn't an open platfrom: neither will Chrome OS be! By reducing the variety of components the operating system has to support, it makes it quicker to load, smaller and less prone to errors. In short, quicker to access the internet. It's all about the speed and the internet. 

Google stated that the Chrome Netbooks will be a secondary device in the home used for web surfing and other 'cloud' based requirements. The iPad will be used for web surfing and other Apple based uses. The benefit of both devices is that they accompany existing technology and increase user experience but the downside is that because they don't replace existing technology it becomes expensive.

Over time the third type of device that sits in between the smart phone and the laptop will become an amalgamation of the two and laptops will morph into specialist hardware for specialist tasks. Every home that owns hardware to access the internet will use an iPad, Chome OS netbook. Most homes won't need anything else. Cameras and other peripherals will adopt an open and universal protocol for transferring their data to these devices, most likely wirelessly and the days of USB connections and flash based storage media will be behind us. 

Until then, the iPad won't suit everyone but it will be a success. 

Google Voice: A one word confusion?

As branding goes, Google seems to have hit the jackpot. 'Google' is a noun, a verb, synonymous with 'search' to the extent that most people now confess to 'googling' rather than searching. Part one: success. Part two? Expand into other areas of the web, innovate, keep the google brand and concisely describe new feature. Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Calendar, Google Docs. Check! It does exactly what it says on the tin, and it is clear that it was done by Google. 


Moving away from the Google love-in however, and you may well stumble across Google Voice. In theory, voice on the web, by Google. What could be more complicated? Imagine a little deeper and voice on the web can translate into phones, conversations, voicemail. The list is endless. So why has the latest innovation from Google caused so much controversy? Especially as it's not yet here in the UK and most people probably don't know it exists!


A history lesson is called for...


In 2007 Google acquired a company called Grand Central. It was a service that offered customers the opportunity to merge all phone calls to one number. The Grand Central concept and doubtless technology are now the cornerstone of Google Voice. In essence Google Voice lets you filter all your calls to one number and lays out an unprecedented amount of configurable features that govern your entire telephonic communication. Or as their support pages put it:

Google Voice is a service that enhances the existing capabilities of your phone numbers. With it, you can access your voicemail online, read automatic transcriptions of your voicemail, create personalized greetings based on who is calling, make cheap international calls, and more.

Google Voice allows you to have one number to replace all of your existing numbers. When someone calls that number, the phone that rings and the greeting they receive are dependent on the rules you have created. For example, if you contacts are divided into 'work' and 'friends' then you can configure Google Voice to call you work phone if someone calls whose listed in 'work' and your personal mobile if listed in 'friends'. You can even assign contacts individual voicemail greetings and all voicemail is sent to your email in mp3 format and transcribed into text. 


At face value that is quite a proposition and one that has interested me for some time. I've been waiting eagerly for it's deployment in the UK (it's out as an invite-only beta version in the US). It even got a mention when I reviewed the impressive HulloMail voicemail offering.  So what seems to be the problem? As HulloMail pointed out on their recent blog (and no doubt intended to persuade their customers that Google Voice isn't for them!) the reason it is popular in the States and not yet available in the UK comes down to very different market conditions:

Problem is you can’t map a US solution to a Non-US context and expect it to work. Why not? Cos it’s a solution to their problems and not ours – it’s a superb example of what I call ‘the fallacy of misplaced solutions’. What does this mean? Quite literally – it’s a solution ok, but a solution that’s misplaced – ie ‘out of place’ here in the UK. What I mean is, if you’re stateside then you PAY TO RECEIVE CALLS . So let’s take their universal number for all your life and after concept – OK – so from now on your mum calls this number which then calls you – right so how does that get billed then? Over here mobile has developed with different infrastructure, business models, usage patterns and its our main comms line with the world. So the universalist approach that works for Google in search (ie everyone everywhere searches for stuff and you can advertise to them and build a universal solution on the back of that) won’t work for mobile.

Somewhat 'passionately' put, the salient point appears to be that there are two reasons you would adopt Google Voice in the US: the product features stated above and the many listed here, and secondly, the reduction in cost you would achieve. In the US when someone calls you, you pay. When you call someone else, you pay. A two way call is charged to both people. That's an interesting concept and a post for another day. What Google Voice does however, is absorb the cost of the incoming call and charge you that call at cost. The call from Google Voice to any of your nominated phones is always a local call.

In the UK to adopt this model, you would have to pay a local call rate everytime someone called your Google Voice number. This would add extra cost and seems to be the source of HulloMail's pains. It doesn't want to lose customers (like myself) to Google and so is pointing out the downside of their offering, should the same model be implemented in the UK. This would appear to be a strategic decision of theirs as at present they do not make any revenue from me (not directly anyway).

What I think HulloMail and others miss when unraveling this structure is that Google Voice also offers local rate outgoing calls to all numbers. In the UK that would present significant savings. Whether these savings can offset the costs of receiving calls I have no data with which to start any analysis, but they very well might. Of more interest is the effect this would have on the UK telecommunications market, should Google be successful with Google Voice. I can't see me wanting to pay a monthly fee to a mobile network for bundled minutes that I'm not going to use as my calls will be placed by Google Voice. They would charge me and I would pay them. For receiving calls I'd also be charged by them and be unlikely to be able to use my 'free minutes' from the mobile network to pay. The same would go for personal landlines. I'd want both phones as line rental only and manage call charges through Google Voice.

That's not a situation that is going to be taken lightly I don't suspect. In the US customers already pay to receive calls so the mobile networks can keep that revenue from the end user (Google Voice charges network, network charges user).

I can't find any source to confirm or disprove that this assumption is correct so it will have to stand as supposition. However after a bit of thought it does appear logical. The acid test will be whether the features offered by Google (revolutionary in my opinion) are worth the upheaval. Timing may be an issue and the concept may be received in a couple of years where more mobile phones are 'smart phones' and the distinction between landline and mobile has blurred some (it looks like a Google Voice app would be required to manage the service in the event you weren't near the web). O2 are offering a 'mobile landline' and that seems to point the way the industry is heading.

All of the above I can only assume that Google are aware of and will address should the service come to the UK in the future. An assumption!

Geek Alert: Google Chrome OS

I absolutely love Google. I'd like to think I can still be objective when talking about their products and services, but as I agree so much with their philosophy and innovative view of the future I'm not sure whether I'm being objective or subjective! In short I like Google so much because they are the future, they are going to revolutionise the way we use technology and unlike Microsoft before them, I'm able to be a part of it. That sounds yuk, but you get my drift!


That's why I'm so excited to get my hands on Google's Chrome OS. Chrome OS is basically an operating system (alternative to Windows XP and 7 etc.) for people who spend all of their time on the web. It has been designed with the Netbook computers in mind. Netbooks have become increasingly popular in the past 12 months as they strip away non-essential hardware, weight and functionality from a laptop that is only used to browse the web. They become lighter, smaller, more portable and most importantly cheaper than conventional laptops. 


The Chrome OS builds upon the successful Google Chrome web browser, expanding it to become an entire operating system. It's key feature is that everything is web-based and run from within a web browser. All applications run within the Chrome OS are web applications. This fits nicely with Google's strategy for Mail, Calendar, Docs, and photos through Picasa etc. It also replaces the need for traditional applications like Microsoft Office that need installing and updating from CD. As Google have stated in the video and link below, the aim is to get connected to the web as quickly as possible. In essence Google Chrome turns the desktop computing concept on it's head in a similar way that Client/Server architecture did to Mainframe computing. Ironically the mainframe concept is not dissimilar to the 'cloud' concept and Software as a Service (SaaS) concepts that Google is developing. 


There will inevitably be a downside: specialist computing such as music composition and photoshop editing will still require traditional laptops with sufficient processing capabilities. If netbooks do become mainstream then the traditional laptop is likely to become more niche and therefore expensive, which won't suit everyone. However Netbooks will allow affordable computing to households that we previously priced out of the laptop market and Chrome OS will further breakdown traditional barriers with its free web applications replacing paid for software such as Office (sorry to be so hard on office, but you're time is nearing an end!). Adverts while typing your letter or balancing your finances in web based spreadsheets will become common place, but that's a small price to pay for more affordable computing.  


The excellent Official Google Blog introduces the new Chrome OS here, and the video below is taken from that post. It's one of the best explanatory videos for a new concept I've seen, and no surprise it's being used already in blogs and news reports all over the internet. 

Tasks v Calendars: Why can't tasks have reminders?

** WARNING: RANT ALERT! **

I've tried hard to keep rants to a minimum: suppressing anger until it can be reflected upon and emerge as a coherent and consise (if a little damning and judgemental) posting. Posts on Referees in Football, Cricket Referrals and Why Fans Aren't Important in Football spring to mind. I hope others agree that they're more thoughtfull than spleen-venting electronic anger! Up until now these postings have been reserved for sport-related topics but I can't hold back on my loathing of tasks any longer!   

If I had one question to ask anyone in the world right now it would be this:

"Why can't tasks have reminders in them?"

I've searched the web a bit for a definition of Tasks and Events (or more a distinction between the two) and not been able to find any. However I don't think it's too difficult to suggest a couple myself. I believe an event can be described as 'something that has or will happen'. A Task in contrast is probably adequately described as 'something that has to happen'. That's adequate in respect that it could be more concisely described were I not to make the link between the two obvious ('something' and 'happen'). 

Definition aside the real differences between the two categories is functionality: events have people, places, resources and reminders associated with them, whether you are in Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar. Likewise, non-application specific Tasks share descriptions, due dates and status categories. These seem like sensible enough features and appropriate to each category. I doubt a task (cancel the milk, phone the estate agent or finish the draft strategy document) really needs people, resources, scheduling re-occurrences etc. Neither would you expect to need to mark off an event 'corporate hospitality at the football' as complete after the final whistle! I do believe, however, that there is a place for reminders in tasks.  

As someone capable of forgetting my front door in the event I'm not actually looking at it, tasks are important to me. I write down almost everything that is asked of me in a working environment, less I would forget the instant my mind wandered inevitably towards food! Anything not work-related tends to end up as an event in Google Calendar as I use the SMS reminder feature. But they're not events as such (and defined above) they're most definitely tasks. When Google released their Task application I was excited and started to use it. After a couple of days I forgot about it and it wasn't until a chance encounter a week or so later that I remembered it even existed and then came the realisation of what I'd forgotten to do. Each tasks was neatly described and assigned a due date, for what is was worth. That worth turned out to be nothing as it relied on me checking the list every day to see what needed to be done. 


For me a task is not something that should take a large amount of planning, if any. Therefore I find it's best to schedule it for the time I want to execute the task. Having a reminder go off at that time allows that to happen. I get a text, it reminds me to book the tickets so I pick up the phone/find the website and away I go! It seems such a logical and obvious feature I can't believe it's not standard across all applications. Tasks invariably live with Events so the capability is there. It leaves me at an infuriated loss! 


I would love to know why reminders are included in Tasks. Does anyone know?

HulloMail is good, but is it a short-term answer to Google Voice?

Yesterday I stumbled across HulloMail for the first time. (To reference all my sources correctly, it was through an article in The Register that had been posted on Twitter by @allaboutiphone). In short, HulloMail is a service that diverts your voicemail away from the default offering provided by your mobile phone provider to HulloMail. The primary advantage of such a service is that is offers the next generation of voicemail; something only O2 in the UK through the iPhone can even attempt to match through their Visual Voicemail. Essentially visual voicemail works like email in that it gives you a view of who has left a message and the date/time so you can choose what messages you listen to.

Not subscribing to the O2 pay-monthly iPhone tariff visual voicemail is one of the few features of the iPhone that isn't available to me. HulloMail offers a free workaround of this service, and in my opinion it is already better than the iPhone's offering. Firstly, HulloMail uses Gmail technology to store your voicemail messages as mp3's and then emails them directly to your Inbox. You can access your voicemail from any internet enabled location, even when you don't have your mobile to hand. It also offers a customisable text messaging service which is similar to O2's, in that when you have a new voicemail, it send you an SMS and you can call the phone number (local 01 number too!) and listen to your message. It will also tell you if someone called but didn't leave a message. This doesn't interfere with the missed call function on your iPhone, so a full audit of sent/received calls is still available.

An impressive additional feature is that you can sync your contacts with Google and other providers, so instead of a list of numbers you can see names of people who've left you a message. This sounds straight forward when you consider listening to messages from your phone, but it takes on a different and more impressive function when you're checking your messages through your email! In Gmail, HulloMail will also create and label and label all messages as well; keeping things neat and tidy!

The upshot of this new approach is that your voicemail is now more accessible, with greater control over how you listen to your messages and has the added, and

probably key, benefit of being stored forever and simply to retrieve! It's a bold and innovative move from HulloMail and one that I'm sure will catch on to other, bigger players in the market place before too long. Which brings me to my second point...

Like most people who consider themselves to be cool, but in fact others would probably judge as Geeky or techy, I sign up to a lot of innovative service in the beta stage. (I'm currently waiting either to be invited by Google directly to test Google Wave, or for my invite from a very kind @artinliverpool for the invite they sent me to come through!) One service I was looking forward to getting a sneak preview of was Google Voice. Unfortunately when it did come through I was left disappointed as it's currently only available in beta in the US. (I might change my language settings to US, see if that works!)

From the preview information and marketing copy I can find of Google Voice, it's very similar to HulloMail. However and unfortunately for HulloMail, the list of additional features is also very impressive! In addition to shared features of being able to listen to voicemail on the web and receive notifications via email and SMS, Google offers voicemail transcripts to SMS and email as well as a host of calling features, conference calls, call screening and just about everything else you could wish for! The demo really does look exciting (if you like that sort of thing).

I've always been something of a loyal customer when it comes to technology: not afraid to change, but willing to stick with what I've found good service in the past. In theory that should persuade me to stick with HulloMail over Google Voice, but I suspect I won't. As I've posted about previously, I'm a big Google fan. Not only do I like their approach and the applications and services they produce, but increasingly it is becoming easier to adopt Google's version of the latest technology because I'm using so many other Google applications already! (one notable exception is the Andriod phone, but I'm not ruling it out). People may cite Microsoft as a dangerous precedent, but I believe that Google leant many lessons from how Microsoft developed during the 90's and have built a strategy that tries to ensure they won't repeat their mistakes. Their pricing and commercial model, for example, is so different, they shouldn't be labelled as Monopolists (is that a correct noun?) quite as readily as Microsoft were.

However, no amount of Google praising and reassurances that they will be a 'different' will be of much comfort for the likes of HulloMail. A great, innovative product built by small team of both technical and entrepreneurial minds, but still under a very real threat of trailing in the dirt of the new corporate machine.

Google Wave: The 10 Minute Demo!

The other day I posted about Google Sync and Google Wave. That included an 80 minute video demonstration from Google on Wave. Even I couldn't be bothered watching all that!

Courtesy of Lifehacker I've found this condensed, 10 minute version. Hope this is more manageable!

Gmail pushes iPhone, but is it too little too late for traditional mail?

This week has seen the long awaited release of Google Sync's Push Gmail support for the iPhone (and Windows Mobile). Google Sync has previously provided support for Google Calendar and Contacts with the iPhone through the phone's Microsoft Exchange client, but push support for Gmail was conspicuous by it's absence!

While Yahoo have had a push service for a while, there is growing concern that push notifications have been draining battery life. Google identified that as a concern when developing push for Gmail and cited their own efforts to reduce battery use:

While this type of speed is pretty awesome, push connections tend to use more power than fetching at intervals, so don't be surprised if your battery life isn't quite what it used to be. We've done a lot of work to optimize power usage, but if you prefer to save battery life, you can always turn off push in your phone's settings and fetch mail every 30 or 60 minutes instead.

It will be interesting to see how the new feature pans out. I've had it enabled for a few days now and have noticed the battery drain in addition to a couple of other quirks:

• Battery Life is now on average 1 day. This has decreased by almost 50% although unlike a Blackberry, you can turn push on/off and set custom fetch times so this is not really a problem for me
• What I assume is Google's attempt to reduce battery drain manifests itself in the service only checking for new mail and if there is any, placing a unread number with the mail icon and playing the new mail notification. This sounds sensible but when you open the mail app to read it, the app has to check all over again and plays a new mail notification once the message has been downloaded!
• It appears to notify on new mail better than it does re-sync once mail has been read. I haven't been able to read mail in a web browser and see the unread count on the iPhone mail app icon decrease afterwards. Only when you open the app and it checks again does it sort itself out (even then, occasionally it doesn't!)

There's a couple of bugs above that will no doubt be ironed out in the future, but as a first stab it's not bad. The iPhone Facebook app, for example, can't sync consistently when reading Facebook emails through a web-browser (or when switching between accounts) so maybe it's an Apple thing? And despite all that it is handy to have a audio notification go off (and as default a less intrusive one than SMS messages on the iPhone too).

The use of a Microsoft application (Microsoft Exchange) and one that's hardly cutting edge mail technology either suggests that Google aren't planning to hang around for the long term with this platform. A decision [if true] that appears sound in logic.

When Gmail was released in 2004 it was revolutionary: conversation view messaging, 1GB of storage, the famous Google search capabilities just some of the innovations that moved messaging forward. But it didn't, really. Hotmail responded by increasing the capacity of it's storage and others soon followed suit, but in terms of creative innovations to actual messaging, nothing really changed. Not until Facebook arrived and added an messaging capability to mirrored both traditional email and Google's conversation view did anything seriously adapt to Google's new benchmark.

For a while now that has left me with a feeling that perhaps traditional email and perhaps even Gmail is becoming redundant? Maybe not so for corporate world but certainly on a social level, how many of my friends who I talk to regularly are not on Facebook? [one is the answer, and he know's who he is!]. Over the past 12 months my social emailing through Gmail has plummeted! Facebook has definitely taken up that mantle; providing a service that is easy and uniform to use and can be accessed through a variety of mediums (web, mobile, iPhone, text to name a few). As 99% of my friends are on Facebook, I don't need to remember, store and maintain a list of their email addresses (although I still do, not trusting Facebook will be around forever).

Is it any surprise then that a Gmail-styled mailing application is the one that has grown and become more popular than any other over the recent years? Does this mean the end of dedicated mail providers, unable to gain such a monopoly of users as Facebook has managed? I'm not sure it does and it links nicely back to my view that Google is sitting tight on something new. Well not new as a lot of people already know about Google Wave, but new in terms of blowing everyone else out of the marketplace in one majestic swoop? (I couldn't bring myself to indulge in wave puns!)

At first I didn't really understand Google Wave. I think under examination I probably would still fail a 'Google Wave Comprehension Exercise'. The demo's, screen shots and reviews all give me the impression that it is just too busy an interface for you to get a handle on what's happening. I like to be able to 'see the bigger picture' and other clichés that mean 'to take perspectives that aren't spoon fed to you!' The more I look at it though, I'm more convinced it can cater for these desires and also deliver on the obvious benefits it will bring. I've long advocated using messaging services such as Skype or even MSN Messenger in business, arguing that it would free up Email to be exactly that: Electronic Mail. Google Wave would allow people to use it as both an electronic mail solution and a chat-based solution as it has been designed to do that. Microsoft Outlook and the host of traditional mail providers were not designed to handle chats (a post for another rainy day!).

So are Google holding back on their development of services that involve major use of Microsoft Exchange on the iPhone in order to pave the way for Wave, or are they simply reluctant to use Microsoft technology to facilitate their innovations? In a wider context than just the iPhone, will Google Wave end the old-style mail communication format, or will us end users reject such radical change?

Google Sync's Push Gmail could well be the last hurrah for an antiquated way of electronic communication. It saddens me a little to admit I'm really quite excited by that prospect!

BlogPress Lite comes to an iPhone near me!

I've just noticed that there's an App in the App Store that officially supports Blogger.com for the iPhone. Blogger.com is the company Google acquired some time ago and is considered one of the better blogging facilities (in the interest of fairness WordPress is also suposedly very good, but i've never used it).

This post is something therefore if a test, to see how it works and how I can incorporate it into my posts.

A couple of initital thoughts: the most obvious thing to note is length; posting will need to be short and to the point as my finger already aches! [I should learn to use more than one on this device!]. Also I can't immediately see how to add hyperlinks. Even if you could, it's fairly obvious it work take a long time. Finally, I can't easily research and provide references as I try to do when posting online.

However I think it could be a useful feature, certainly one I've been waiting a while for!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Nimbuzz leads the way in Aggregated Social Networking / Chat

It's so simple it's almost genius! The RSS reader of the chat-based world. 10 years ago if you wanted to read an article on a website, you more than likely typed the URL into Internet Explorer and off you went. Today, my Google Reader handles hundreds of feeds from all types of internet sites, organises them and displays them in an easy to read, share and digestible way. So the chat world is following in its footsteps.

For someone who has previously boasted to not really 'do' internet chats, I have an account to do the very same thing with Skype, Google Talk, MSN (or whatever they are called now) and even Facebook has an offering! I use Skype the most although to a limited amount of people, and then Google Talk and occasionally Facebook. Not a heavy user but enough to keep on top of!

A while ago I became aware of a service called Beejive. It basically aggregates your chat logins into a single application, loads your contacts (I can't quite bring myself to say 'buddies') into a screen and you chat to them over the relevant networks, but from the same, single interface. Almost revolutionary! Although it did cost. Not being an excessive user I decided against it.

Now though I have found Nimbuzz and in the short space of time I've been using it, also seen ebuddy which is the same thing. Nimbuzz has one edge over Beejive: it's free on the iPhone! This morning it updated to include push notifications (although not for Skype yet, which is a shame).

This new approach and functionality helps me so I'm sure it will other people! It also seems to be a continuation of transparency being the new driver in innovation. Twitter I believe is the first hugely successful service to let almost anyone and everyone have access to their data. Their own website isn't the number one interface to twitter! Yet this has almost made it successful. The brand and the infrastructure are the value in twitter, how people get there is not. The same can be said for a lot of the chat programs. Skype make their money through calls (which you can do using Nimbuzz too). Therefore it does make sense to make the process of calling as accessible as possible. I haven't used all of Nimbuzz's offerings yet as I've concentrated on the iPhone app but I struggle to see where they make their money from? Maybe they take a cut of skype and other programs calls? I did notice that Skype seem to have a financial interest in Nimbuzz.

Whatever the intracies of the financial model of this new approach, I do believe as a strategy it is probably the right one to follow and will lead the way in the future: organisations opening themselves up to increase their exposure and therefore revenue whilst at the same time making their service more accessible for their users is a pretty good idea to me!

Gmail out of Beta!

I know they have their arguments as to why it has been in Beta for the past five years; continual innovation etc. but Google are one of my all time favourite companies and I'm glad to see GMail, Calendar and Docs are all out of beta nonetheless!

As announced on their Twitter profile, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-apps-is-out-of-beta-yes-really.html