I have been able to update my iPod with the latest App for Facebook. It’s really nice and since leaving my blackberry behind I find this app even more intuitive to use than the the blackberry one.
I have not noticed any great new features but the layout is much nicer and what I want to happen does so more often than not.
Popularity: 8% [?]
So I have been goofing off on Twitter and possibly “writing cheques my body can’t cash”. @darenbbc has been talking about an incident regarding an intern (working for the furniture retailer Habitiat, click here for more info) who tried to over hype his/her employer’s tweets by doing some #hashtag spamming. TO be honest on the level that we work at http://www.flipcurve.com that is fair game. We have so few readers if we offended someone by using #iranelection inappropriately I would be quite happy with the publicity it would generate. I understand that as a large company with a real profile to protect that isn’t the case and the intern clearly acted outside of the company’s communications policy (I type that, laughing, safe in the knowledge that Twitter as a whole will be outside the comms policy of all but the most enlightened PLCs).
I have promised said intern a chance to admin the Twitter account for http://www.flipcurve.com if they come forward. I really hope they do, and I hope to be able to share what I know about marketing using social media with them (I could fit all of that into one tweet if I am honest). I also want to keep a little of the Internet’s wild west spirit alive in doing do. I really hate the way everything has been commercialised beyond enjoyment on the majority of websites, that’s why I stopped using Myspace and never got into Bebo. Facebook is much the same but I like the interaction with people I know I have there. Twitter is still mostly a free-space, but it wont stay that way forever.
Which websites or online tools do you think keep the wild-west spirit of the internet alive?
Popularity: 7% [?]
It’s no secret that Google has been striving for a few years now towards the cloud computing initiative. That is, Google has been developing data-central, cohesive, and collaborative computing experiences. Google’s latest initiative, somewhat oddly dubbed “Wave”, is a new open-source web-based application that will take that initiative to a whole new level.
Wave, designed by Lars and Jens Rasmussen, is designed to “reinvent” the way we communicate online and is intended as a replacement for typical e-mail and instant messaging. Although still in its early stages, this new system blends many forms of communication together to create a unique but still very familiar feeling. The central tenet behind Wave is to shift the onus from the method by which we communicate to the conversation itself. That is, any conversation can be viewed as an object to which certain parties are privy and the actual method (be it IM, Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail) should be irrelevant.
That probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to you, until you see the video (search Google Wave on Youtube – it should be the first video and it’s 1 hour 20 minutes long). Each conversation is hosted on a centralized server with real-time updates as you’re typing. So, for example, suppose I wanted to arrange a trip to Las Vegas with a friend of mine. I’d go to Google Wave and select the appropriate contact which would display if he’s online or offline. If he’s offline, he’ll get the message when he signs in much like an e-mail or IM. If he’s online, then as I’m typing the message, it gets displayed, character by character, on his screen. Then he can respond to either my full message or just parts of it.
So for example, suppose my message was:
“Hey, I’m looking to go to Vegas this Saturday. Of course, you know, we’ll make it big this time. You looking to come as well?”
He could then respond with a format that looks like this:
“Me: Hey, I’m looking to go to Vegas this Saturday. Of course, you know, we’ll make it big this time.
Him: Yeah, right. That’s what you said the last time you wasted your paycheck!
Me: You looking to come as well?
Him: Sure, I could use the break from work!”
As you can see the conversation gets split up and communication starts to become more efficient, blending many of the best aspects of instant messaging with the convenience of e-mail. It’s hard to convey as text, which is why I’d strongly recommend that you watch the first little bit of the video. Although I can say that it looks really impressive (save of course for the obvious privacy issues that are inherent with any centralized solution).
Popularity: 1% [?]
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