Remember the Kangaroo on-demand service that was stopped from launching by the Competitions Commission? Nope? Me neither to be honest, but here’s a very similar service that has seen the light of day offering free content from Channel 4 and 5, and some BBC Worldwide achieve content. ITV is not officially involved, but some shows are available thanks to their independent producers.

SeeSaw boasts a very clean interface

The service is very similar to the BBC’s iPlayer and Channel 4’s 4OD service but it’s a welcome change to have content from several different channels in one site. SeeSaw launched this week with 3000 hours of content for your viewing pleasure, so long as you don’t mind watching a couple of adverts before and during each programme.

Project Kangaroo – from which many of SeeSaw’a assets have come – was cancelled by the Competition Commission because offering content from every channel meant that each channel could not be competitive with their own service. I thought this was a daft decision, but I’m glad to see progress with the launch of SeeSaw.

the range of content is good, with lots more promised

Platform Controller John Keeling said: “What you see today is the tip of the iceberg. Our thirst for great content will further enhance the appeal of SeeSaw to British audiences in the months ahead, ensuring viewers will come back again and again,”

This could well be PR waffle but I’d interested to see just how big this iceberg will become over the following year and what role it will play in the continuous move of broadcasting from the television to the computer.

interface is very similar to the BBC iPlayer, so no complaints here

I presume the content will not be viewable outside of the UK, but that’s just a guess considering the iPlayer is UK-only. If it does work in the US do let me know in the comments below.

Alistair

optional extra: kitchen sink

No, the Nintendo BS isn’t real, but it did get me thinking…

With the introduction of smartphones a few years ago able to make calls, send texts, browse the Internet, take photos and a whole host of other things, do we ever need more than one device in our pockets?

When I got my 1st iPhone it immediately replaced my iPod for carrying music and video content – in fact I flogged my iPod to a friend to fund the imported iPhone. It also replaced my laptop for some tasks too; at least until the novelty value had worn off I’d use my phone to chat on MSN, manage my email and browse the ‘net. Sure, the laptop would be far more comfortable to use, but this was the honeymoon period, I soon learnt that my mobile phone was indeed for mobile use.

Anyway, iPhone aside, does anyone feel comfortable to have just the one device with them, or are you all still carrying an iPod when the music would probably fit on your phone? How’s the music – or video – experience on a Blackberry, or a Nokia?

smartphones: can they do everything?

I’m asking because I think while being able to do everything is nice, we tend to ignore that and stick to what we know, or already have. Try this one; how’s the camera on your phone? Is it your only camera? On a night out or holiday day-trip do you rely on your phone or take a digital camera? I certainly take my SLR with me for proper photos and can always fall back on my iPhone’s shoddy shooter if I need to snap something unexpectedly.

And yet…when buying a new phone what do you look for? Probably stuff like the camera, the memory, the ability to play mp3’s, how quickly it boils an egg etc. Then we don’t use half of these features that convinced us to buy it in the first place.

Of course I could be completely wrong and find we’re all carrying an all-singing, all-dancing phone and nothing else; but I doubt it. Will the mobile phone ever be able to do everything? It’ll need to be more powerful, with a bigger battery, so the size will increase; remember the Nokia 8310 or similar mobiles of the early 2000’s? It was tiny, half the size of current phones.

the 8310 was tiny compared to newer phones

So if they do get bigger with the need to do everything the gap between laptops – or netbooks – and phones will all but disappear. This might be a good thing, but we’re all going to need bigger pockets.

Alistair

Today Microsoft’s CEO Steve Balmer announced the newest mobile phone operating to come out of the Redmond-based computer giant and the focus is on hubs. Hubs are what Microsoft are using to draw boundaries between different aspects of the Phone 7 Series operation system.

While the 7 Series names – which i find awfully clunky – was found out by Engadget using some clever Photoshopping over the weekend, the hubs feature is new to us all. There are  six hubs; People, Pictures, games, Music and Video, Marketplace and Office. Most of these are fairly self-explanatory; People is where you’ll find the phonebook, Twitter, Facebook and any other social networking you might do. Pictures is, well, where your photos are kept – told you this was simple.

The Games section is what first caught my eye with two very striking words; ‘Xbox’ and ‘Live’, but calm down, gamers if you think these phones will be running Call of Duty and Halo then you’ll be disappointed. No, the Xbox Live intergration is merely administrational; you can manage your friends list, see their avatars and achievements lists and send messages. Nice, but nothing more than nice. However, do expect to see plenty of games flooding into your games hub via the Marketplace in the near future.

Music and Video is, again, what it says on the, err, hub. This takes advantage of the Zune music download service operated by Microsoft as a rival to iTunes. As a bonus every Windows 7 phone will have an FM radio included which is something my friends in 2002 are very excited about.

The Marketplace hub will probably be very similar to the AppStore found on Apple’s iPhone, offering a wide range of great and useless applications and games for you to download and annoy friends with until your heart’s content. Expect wild comparisons complaining that Microsoft’s Marketplace has a million times fewer apps than Apple from now until the end of time.

Office is the final hub and is set to offer all the usual clever but ever-so-slightly-boring business applications that Windows phones have always been quite good at. Your email is stored here along with access to Microsoft Office and all those exciting spreadsheets you all love.

When 7 comes to mobile in the UK Orange – who have been lacking in any decent smartphones of late – will be the network to look out for and we’re to expect handsets from Dell, HTC, HP, LG, Samsung, Sony….ok pretty much all of them.

Windows Mobile has been subject to a lot of negative press in recent years, but the 7 upgrade looks to work the same magic that it’s desktop cousin did for the ill-fated Vista.

Today I’d like to introduce you all to a new startup company called Square Up. Square Up is run by one of the blokes behind Twitter and aims to give any Tom, Dick and Harry the hardware and software they need to take debit and credit card payments. Admittedly, this does sound quite dull, but bare with me, because the selling point of Square is that it uses your iPhone, and without the need for a merchants account.

Ok, so you could just use the iPhone to do some online banking, but keep reading… what if you have a market stall, or a table at a tradeshow and need to take card payments? Or maybe you just owe a friend £20 and can’t be bothered logging in to your bank? That’s where Square Up comes into its own.

Square is – unsurprisingly – a square device about the size of a £2 coin that plugs into your iPhone’s headphone jack. The square has a slot to swipe your card through and, well, that’s it; the rest is in the software. When opening the Square Up app you enter the amount to be paid and a note to describe the transaction, plus a photo and even the GPS location of the payment. Once the payment details are entered you just swipe your card, give the app a few seconds to authorise the payment, then sign the screen with your finger, as well as leave an optional tip for the seller.

Once the payment has gone through the seller can email or text the receipt to the buyer, along with the photo and GPS location to avoid any confusion with similar transactions
The application is set to cost $1 – so that’s 79p in the UK – and once the app has been bought Square Up will post you the swiping dongle free of charge. Speak of costs, Square Up will take a 2.9% cut of each payment made, which puts it in line with Paypal. What’s more, if you want Square Up will donate 1p of every transaction to a charity of your choice.

There’s a couple other features thrown in too, like the ability to see a photo of the seller – providing they already have their own Square Up account – before making the payment to confirm their identity.

I’m really excited about Square Up – sure, this might just be my inner geek telling me this is cool, but I’m sure it could be a genuinely useful device. Let’s say you have gone out for a meal with friends, you don’t all have the right cash to split the bill so one of you pays on their card and takes card payments from the others via their iPhone. Or what if a band wants to sell T-shirts at a gig? Bring the square with you and this is easily done.

Square Up was demonstrated by angel investor and Digg creator Kevin Rose last month, and was demonstrated by the Square Up team at the MacWorld convention last week, so hopefully it’ll be available very soon.

Alistair

When the original iPhone was announced back in 2007 I was contacted by a member of the medical industry who believed that the phone, with it’s large touchscreen, Wi-Fi connectivity and simplicity, would be the future for a paperless medical system. He believed that hospital staff would no longer require paper and patients’ notes would never be lost, as all data would be entered on the phones and synced to a server. I agreed with him and, once the AppStore went live, we saw quite a few interesting and clever medical uses for the iPhone and iPod Touch; from reminding patients when to take medication, to keeping track of personal fitness and, most recently, the case where a victim of the Haiti earthquake used an application to assess his wounds and treat himself before rescuers arrived.

While these applications proved useful, no one introduced the iPhone to hospital wards as a replacement for paper. But the iPad, with it’s much larger 9.7” screen has the chance to change this.

As the hype surrounding the iPads announcement subsided I was contacted by Software Advice.com who have conducted a survey asking 178 physicians, nurses, medical students and healthcare IT professionals about what the healthcare industry’s ideal tablet would look like,

When asked if they would buy an iPad or similar for healthcare use – so to actually be used at work, not just at home by someone who happens to be a doctor – 54% said they would be very likely or somewhat likely to purchase a tablet.

With regard to how these medical workers would use their tablet, over 80% said they’d use it for lab orders and results, prescriptions references and notes and memos. That last one, note-taking, is where I think a tablet such as the iPad could be big business in hospital wards. Imagine if each doctor and nurse had a tablet synced up to the hospital server over Wi-Fi and could access notes for every patient on the ward. They could add to and edit these notes as and when required and every tablet would update instantly, allowing all staff to be up-to-date on the status of every patient, all of the time. Staff could also email updates of a patient’s condition to family members who are unable to be at the hospital.

Over half of the 178 medical staff surveyed said that ease of use was their most important feature of a tablet. This is great news forth iPad as I;d imagine many staff already have an iPhone or iPod Touch, so are already very familiar with the software and how the operating system works. Many staff would presumably be put off using a tablet with an unfamiliar user interface.

Despite having a finger touchscreen – favoured to using a stylus by 63% of those surveyed – the iPad will have virtually no medical software when it goes on sale in March, as the vast majority of medical software found in hospitals uses Windows operating systems, not Mac. And with 70% naming a wide selection of medical software as a must-have for the tablet, the iPad starts to fall short of the mark. In fact, of the 10 must-have features suggested by Software Advice the iPad has just two; Wi-Fi access, a light weight and an ergonomic design.

If you’d have asked me 2 weeks ago if the iPad would be a great appliance for a paperless system in hospital wards, I would have said yes; but the lack of crucial hardware like a barcode scanner, fingerprint scanner, integrated camera and Oyster card-style RFID reader makes the iPad unsuitable for most medical situations. Add this to the software issues mentioned above and the iPad seems completely unsuitable for a role in hospital. As Chris Thorman of Software Advice concluded; healthcare wants a tablet, healthcare likes the iPhone, but this does not translate to healthcare liking the iPad. So any Apple fanboy like me reading this; do please remember that your high horse isn’t really that tall and when it’s bolting as fast as Apple’s is, then it’s easy to fall off.

You can find the full survey results at www.softwareadvice.com

Alistair

On January 12, 2010, Google announced that a major attack launched against its network from hackers inside China (aimed at exposing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists) had prompted it to consider abandoning its Chinese operations and reconsider its 2006 agreement with the Chinese government to censor search results in the country.

“Google is failing in its mission to make the world’s information accessible and useful to Chinese Internet users”₁ was a line used by the Vice President for Global Communications and Public Affairs in 2006. Less than four years later in January of 2010 Google announced that due to “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on [their] corporate infrastructure originating from China… [Google is] no longer willing to continue censoring [their] results on Google.cn”₂ . Since then things have progressed. China has completely denied any involvement in the so-called cyber crimes ₃ and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland has said that he hopes “to apply some negotiation or pressure to make things better for the Chinese people.” ₄

So is this Google finally living up to its corporate mantra “Don’t Be Evil” or is it simply corporate positioning of a multinational corporation? The fact that Google entered the Chinese market in 2006 and agreed to censor their results demonstrates the willingness of the company to comply with the law in the countries in which it operates and simultaneously demonstrates its lack of concern for local politics, no matter how controversial. Could the so-called cyber attacks which Google claim were the final straw merely be an ideal opportunity to exit a poorly performing market?

“This wasn’t in my opinion ground-breaking as an attack. We see this fairly regularly,”₅ was a statement by Mikko Hypponen, of security firm F-Secure.  ”This goes on all the time. Of the Fortune 100 companies, all 100 are under some sort of attack all the time”. In fact evidence has recently surfaced that Google actively assists governments in democratic societies with access to its properties including Gmail (it’s online email client). Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and renowned technology author recently announced that “In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access.”₆ “Democratic governments around the world — in Sweden, Canada and the UK, for example — are rushing to pass laws giving their police new powers of Internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell.” So we must now question why did Google decide this particular attack was newsworthy and why take such a monumental step of pulling out of one of the largest potential markets in the world?

In 2005 Google’s market share was 33.3%1 The announcement to censor results in China published in February of 2006 was intended to slow the nose diving market share if not aimed to increase it. However according to Jennifer Li, Baidu’s chief financial officer, “Baidu’s market share for search in China was about 77% in the third quarter [of 2009], up from 75.6% in the second quarter [of the same year]. Google [she says], lost share in China, dropping to 17% in the third quarter, from about 19% in the second quarter.”₇

In summary I believe that Google’s response to China had little to do with their moral stance which has apparently changed significantly since 2006 when they entered the market and which the company seem to forgo in order to continue to operate in democratic countries and more to do with an excellent public relations strategy which took the focus from the company and raised a contentious issue before a public with growing anti-Chinese sentiment.

Related articles

• Schmidt Hopes ‘Some Pressure’ Will Make China See Things Google’s Way (wired.com)
• Google Vs. China: A Bluffing War Begins (slog.thestranger.com)

References

[1] Schrage, E. (2006, 2 15). Testimony: The Internet in China. Retrieved 2 2, 2009, from The Official Google Blog: googleblog.blogspot.com

[2] Drummond, D. (2010, 1 12). A new approach to China. Retrieved 2 2, 2010, from Official Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

[3] Hornby, C. B. (2010, 1 14). China defends censorship after Google threat. Retrieved 2 2, 2010, from Reuters.com: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60C1TR20100114

[4] Fraher, J. (2010, 1 29). Google’s Schmidt Hopes ‘Pressure’ Will Help Chinese People. Retrieved 2 2, 2010, from Bloomberg.com: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6.eNsTFNWSc

[5] Shiels, M. (2010, 1 14). Security experts say Google cyber-attack was routine. Retrieved 2 2, 2010, from BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8458150.stm

[6] Schneier, B. (2010, 1 23). U.S. enables Chinese hacking of Google. Retrieved 2 2, 2010, from CNN.com: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/

[7] Mehta, S. N. (2009, 12 28). Google v. Baidu: Which company will win China? Retrieved 2 2, 2010, from CNNMoney.com: http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/12/28/google-v-baidu-which-company-will-win-china/

The design is drastically different and includes many more features you find on the full web app. The frustrating thing with version 2.5 is most of the items on the news feed were un-clickable (meaning pressing the screen!) and was begging for a little bit more functionality. Thankfully our prayers have been answered.

The first thing you notice is the home screen has a grid of icons rather than starting with the news feed.

The first issue I came across was the fact that videos show previews but the they haven’t been converted to MP4 for the iPhone to play, so you get a very helpful alert box!

The other big additions are Events, video uploads, pages (in addition to just friends) and a much improved inbox. There are some subtle additions too, like a new icon.

Overall the app is very well put together and has some extra touches that just make it classy, even down to the way you can move icons on the home screen just like the actual iPhone home screen, as shown in the screenshot below.

Download it from the App Store

But why has this happened?

What happened?

The impression from tr.im’s homepage and blog post seems to be the following 3 things:

1. No-one wants to buy or invest
2. No-one wants to advertise or see adverts
3. No point in developing the site further

It is pretty conclusive, they are pretty screwed. With the service being popular it was always going to have high costs and no income, which is just a massive spiral that you don’t want to be a part of. They only way they could save themselves would be to get investment, but investors want to know how they will get their money back.

Advertising with short URL services

There are 2 ways that you could do advertising with short URLs. Both of them are intrusive and would most likely push users to another service.

Interstitial
Showing a whole page of advertising for a certain amount of time before redirecting to the target page, this obviously means that the user experience is degraded and with sites like Twitter being a “now” network, who wants to wait 30 seconds before getting to a site they just clicked?

Bar
We all know what has happened with sites that use frames and bars. But what if the bar had a line of Google ads instead of other buttons and info? If it was a small enough ad then I personally wouldn’t care about it. The problem would be getting targeted ads, Google would need to be given info about what the page content is (as its sat in another frame) or using a private ad network.

Custom shortening services

I think these are the way to go. By custom short URL services I mean the way TechCrunch uses tcrn.ch for their short URLs (built on top of awe.sm).  The problem with really popular short URL services are that they aren’t short anymore! Some of them still have a 4+ letter domain name plus 5 letters after. Just look at is.gd or bit.ly they are getting longer. The benefit of a custom short URL  service is the URLs are actually short, you can collect all the stats you like, you can do whatever you like with the URLs. Be it adding advertising, bars/frames or simply collecting details stats. As long as the service does a 301 (or possibly 302) redirect sites like Google and TweetMeme can index sites correctly. So all round there aren’t really any downsides. Obviously this solution is just for businesses, every day users would still need a service to use.

The end of smaller services?

Of course its not the end of URL shortening services. Sites like Bit.ly obviously have the backing from Twitter since they swapped to them from TinyURL for their shortening service of choice. Bit.ly also has a large amount of investment. But what about other services, that are large, but not as large as major shorteners like bit.ly and tinyurl?

My personal opinion is that they will have a tough time staying afloat until they can get investment and make money, and as I have written above, it will be hard for them to find the “correct” way to get money.

I’m really interested in your thoughts so please post your comments below.

Most celebrities just tweet about them selves and use the whole platform for plugging the hell out of their stuff. Almost seeing $$$ signs. I know that is still the case with most celebrities who use Twitter as they have to publicise their stuff somehow, but when you follow someone and you don’t realise its all marketing? For me that’s a good person to follow.

So how does Imogen utilise the power of Twitter? Well I’m writing a blog post about it? So clearly this is only going to work in her favour. I doubt she would ever read this though. But this post is more about good ways or marketing youself on Twitter. So what has Imogen done?

Video blog

I haven’t seen another artist video blog their album creation in so much detail, down to the people who helped out, previews of songs and when she is meeting her record label and what they are going to discus. It’s not giving the album away but its enough of a tease to make me want to learn more about the album and most likely buy it. See the video blogs on her YouTube channel.

Get followers involved

This was done in conjunction with her video blog, twitter and her site. She asked everyone watching/reading to send in ideas for album art for her new album. After users sent theirs in she looked through them all and found someone with the right style and invited them to her house and they would then create the artwork for the album. What a great way of getting people involved?

Have a tweetup

Get your followers to gather altogether and discus the one thing they all have in common, the love of Imogen Heaps music. But don’t forget to turn up yourself! What artist do you know that would get fans together locally and just have a fun evening of chat and music?

Download tweet exchange

By this I mean you send a tweet out from twitter.imogenheap.com publicising the album and get a free HD copy of her “canvas” video (not a single, just a cool video). The system uses OAuth to it makes sure the tweet is actually send and then redirects to the download page. What a neat little way of publicising a free download. The only thing that is missing is downloading a free track or something along the lines of what Coldplay have done.

Overall I think Imogen (and possibly her management, not sure) have done a great job of using social media properly and getting some buzz around her album. I wouldn’t have written this post without it! See the video of “Canvas” below.

They are encouraging hundreds of employees to handle online customer service and company promotions using Twitter. Basically Best Buy employees can use the @twelpforce account and their own Twitter account to register for the service. From then on tweets from the registered account will be displayed in a single stream on the @twelpforce account. All they have to do is append the hashtag #telpforce to tweets on their account.

But what does this mean for general customer support via Twitter?

Why is it effective?

The reason these corporate customer support accounts are run is to help their image on Twitter. As communication via Twtter is so fast they need to have people who know what they are doing and don’t need a script to follow, like a normal call centre. So the people running the account are normally experienced or a few levels above the standard CSO (Customer Service Officer).

The chances are that when you ask one of these accounts a complicated or unusual question it will get answered properly by someone who knows what they are talking about. This was the case with BT (British Telecom). I asked their account about canceling my service and instead of me waiting in a queue on a phone line I simply direct messaged my phone number and account number and they rang me back! No more wasting money ringing a so-called “freephone” number on my mobile/cell and it costing an arm and a leg. I was incredibly impressed with the service I get, despite the fact I was canceling their service.

But what was the secret to that? Well there are a few things that made the service really good:

1. They knew what they were talking about
2. The number of tweets with questions is a tiny fraction of the phone calls they get
3. The CSO’s are higher up and therefore can command people ring back or do things that aren’t in the script. Like using common sense.

What will happen when it gets popular?

As you can see with Best Buy they are now letting their own employees answer questions. This may be wise as they aren’t reading from a script but as soon as they get popular their support quality will deteriorate.

So what is most likely to happen is if the amount of questions to twitter increases corporations will then have to create proper support software in place and that can only lead to more scripting and “dumb” CSO’s. This basically means that if their Twitter based support gets popular they will have to integrate it into their overall customer support strategy, which can only be a bad thing.

How can we help?

They only thing we can do is be selfish! If we have some excellent support don’t tell every single person about it, the more popular it gets the faster the deterioration in support.

Please let me know what you think and I am open to any suggestions you may have. Even if it’s to say I am being totally cynical!

So it is now clear that I need some convincing that 3D video is actually something worth looking at. I have therefore split this article into a few sections. Feel free to add your comments. I am totally open to your suggestions about what it can be used for.

Video quality

Video quality is really important, the ability to see all colours of the spectrum is a must. Sitting at my desk with green/red glasses watching what then looks like a grey video doesn’t fill me with excitement. It really needs to be full colour and not blurriness.

Webcams

There are now webcams being sold that can record in 3D. They have 2 lenses that are a few inches apart, it therefore knows the distance and can work out the angles and produce a live stream of 3D video. So lets say you want to watch a 3D stream, you have to find the stream and get the right glasses. These could be cyan/red, amber/blue or polarising etc. You would then have to buy glasses that matched the stream and hope that other videos are in the correct format.

YouTube

YouTube have the right idea. One of their developers is doing a project to add 3D video. What they are doing is allowing the user to swap how the video is viewed. So you can swap the format the video is in, colours and views all in real-time. This is obviously the way to make the video compatible with all kinds of glasses and viewing techniques. For istance see the video below. You need to view the video on YouTube to see all the viewing options for changing colours and aspect ratio etc.

View the video on YouTube

Digital TV

This is interesting to me. The Sky network in the UK has been testing 3D broadcasting this year and says it might have some programmes out at Christmas. I would love to see how this works and the technology behind it. Does it require 2 simultaneous streams of the same programme for each “eye”? Will they supply viewing equipment? I will definitely expand this post when I find out more.

Please let me know your feelings on the subject. I think that there could be a place for 3D but it needs to be standardised or open to different viewing techniques.

So now that we are all caught up on the news we can start analysing what we actually think of the idea of the Chrome OS. Obviously baring in mind that it has barely started development and won’t even be seen until next year. So lets start with comparing it to Android.

Chrome OS vs Android

So Android is Google’s mobile OS that allows developers to create apps, mainly in Java, that are installed onto the system which means that they don’t need necessarily internet connectivity to be used. These are quite often specialised pieces of software that utilise some of the devices hardware like a bluetooth, 3G, GPS and camera.

But recently some developers (not Google) have managed to port Android onto a netbook (Chrome OS’s initial target market) and use most of the apps (except GPS and camera etc). So already we can see an overlap with their two operating systems but as Google haven’t done this themselves we can be sure that they won’t be doing it in the near future.

Many people have been asking the question “Why have Chrome OS and Android?”. Well I feel the answer is pretty simple. One uses local specialised hardware and one doesn’t. Chrome OS is very likely to have desktop with links to lots of web apps that make use of HTML5/Gears technology and use the cloud extensively. Whereas Android has apps installed on the device that require a completely different language, UI design and marketing.

Chrome OS vs Windows/OSX

So these two popular desktop Operating Systems obviously make use of the local file storage for everything from the users documents to programs they have installed. Will this way of computing change when Google Chrome OS comes out? No way. You can’t run Adobe Photoshop in a web client unless it is a full Java Applet, which to me isn’t a true web technology.

Google Chrome OS wants to use the cloud, which doesn’t require any local storage other than the local OS and any cached files for offline working. This won’t be extensive as it is more likely to be documents and spreadsheets that get stored rather than large media files. Even thinking of a large movie file, how is that handled? When a file is streamed there is a local cached copy placed on the hard drive. I’m interested to see how will they over come this?

I really don’t think Microsoft or Apple have much to worry about. Microsoft may feel that XP (which almost 8 years old) might have some competition in the netbook market, but Chrome provides a completely different solution to the problem and it would be up to the consumer to see which solution suits them better. Cloud computing and web apps or using installed apps and local storage. Obviously there will be a small overlap and is not to be taken literally.

Apps

The apps that will be built for Google Chrome OS are going to be totally different. For starters they will be using different programming languages to the installed apps on other Operating Systems. There will be minimal overlap between desktop programming languages and those that are used on the web (apart from .NET and ASP.NET).

The web apps that are created for the Chrome OS are said to work on all standards compliant browsers. For a starters we know that all browsers are different and that IE should die a painful death. So this must mean that the browsers on other operating systems must be able to accommodate some small local storage for caching of files and small databases. Therefore they need Google Gears or an HTML5 compatible browser. At the moment it seems only Opera, Safari, Firefox and Chrome support a couple of HTML5 standards (like video and audio tags, Safari also supports local database storage without Gears). So by the time Chrome OS comes out all these browsers need to support HTML5 which IE9 most certainly won’t support all of them.

Will Chrome OS take over the world?

Errr…. no! I don’t think it will take over the desktop OS world, though it will have a pretty good stab at the netbook market. It could change the way we work remotely (without a laptop). This is Google, everyone knows them so no matter what they do they will have some traction in any market they choose. I just don’t think the world is ready for complete cloud computing, especially the security aspects of it keeping you personal documents on a server somewhere else on the planet.

Most people don’t realise they use cloud computing. Do you store photos on Flickr/Facebook? Do you use GMail/Hotmail? They you already use cloud computiong, so the change to using pure cloud computing isn’t as great as you think. But still I think Google have a lot to prove and I really look forward to seeing what they come up with.

Please leave any questions of comments below.

I would like to start with my apologies for not writing to this blog for the past month or so. I have been busy with exams and the last few weeks of university fun. As I write I am sat in a bar in Spain piggybacking off the free Wi-Fi and sipping San Miguel.

I am posting a rare personal message today. In the past I have used this blog merely as an outlet for my musings on the financial, business and online world however I have big news which may affect my future perspective and so I thought it relevant. I would like to start writing more personal entries anyway and so I am breaking the ground so-to-speak with this.

My biggest news is that I have been accepted to spend a year at City University in Hong Kong for which I applied several months ago. I embark on the 20th of August and plan to continue with my management course which I started at Lancaster. I applied to study in the Far East because of the paradigm shift we have seen over the past few decades which has seen China, once a country which chose to isolate itself from the world seek the industrialisation similar to what we in Britain experienced in the 1800’s. 1.2 billion people now seek the same level of wealth and status as we in the west have enjoyed for centuries. In 1950 the average Chinese person earned $454 per capita (calculated at 1985 values) at sharp contrast to Western Europeans who were earning $4,902. Since the cultural revolution and Mao’s death however China has been on an unprecedented mission to catch up and has hurtled forward at breakneck speed causing many economists to predict that by 2040 China will surpass the US as the world’s largest economy. Experiencing business in an economy growing so quickly (even in the current climate) will undoubtedly be an invaluable experience.

The more historically or globally aware amongst you may observe that Hong Kong is in fact not a Chinese state. After the British surrendered the colony as recently as 1997 it became a ‘special administration district’ of China and as a result holds a unique position as an anchor between east and west making Hong Kong  - I hope - an ideal place to study Chinese culture without being uncomfortably detached from my own. English is also the second most spoken language (behind Chinese Mandarin).

I plan to continue with all my current obligations (such as the podcast – despite the time difference) and write more on this website perhaps about Hong Kong itself as well as my web-related interests and business observations.

In the old world businesses would make it as difficult as humanly possible for consumers to move from their service to a competitors. This makes economic sense, after all… people are less likely to want to move if it involves effort, if they don’t get the equivalent service elsewhere or if something (such as a blog entry) is lost. So why, in the last few years have we seen a sudden move towards ‘openness’ and transparency. Everything from social networks such as Facebook and MySpace to new blogging platforms such as ‘SquareSpace’ now preach that the users own their data… not the companies.

The answer is simple, it’s what the customer demands. Free and easy movement of information is a fundamental principle of the web and we are now in a position both technically and socially where we as consumers can demand this from our applications. However if indeed sites suddenly become democratised we appear to start on a slippery slope. Where does consumer input stop and the needs of the business start?

Facebook recently asked its users to help rewrite their ‘terms of service‘ after a controversy that hit the web hard. The legal agreement proclaimed:

Although the founder of Facebook responded to the event and said it was simply to cover the company legally, users were quite rightly outraged and Facebook was forced to change the agreement.

This flip-flopping not only demonstrates how passionate users feel about the sites they use but the power they wield over website owners. This therefore leads me to ask at what point sites can act autonomously and wonder whether this continued democratisation spawned by the wiki way back in 2001 will result in a much more open web and a changing model of business for companies now entering the internet arena.

One thing Facebook has learnt in the last few days is the importance of incremental updates rather than one large revolution in design. In a recent survey 94% of Facebook users said they disliked the new site design and Facebook for the first time ever announced that they were listening to users and are going to change the site based on feedback. So what can we learn from this experience?

Most people don’t like change. Generally change is confusing, it’s scary and makes users feel stupid when they can’t find the things they’re used to. Small changes people can cope with. Users won’t like them but if everything else looks the same they can quickly figure out what they want to do.

Warning that changes are coming is a good step for getting your users prepared as well, providing a preview or telling people what will change reduces alarm and thus keeps people happy. Although Facebook probably wont have lost any users from its recent changes it loses goodwill and this is something difficult to regain.

Affluence.org has been proclaimed ‘Facebook for rich people’. Every niche demographic seem to have their own social network and Affluence.org has been designed for rich people who like to talk to rich people… exclusively. It aims to bring ‘the members-only country club‘ mentality to the web but whilst this may sound like a good business model (think how much you could charge for ads that exclusively target rich people) I struggle to understand what these so called ’socially elite’ gain in return. Not making $300,000 a year or having a net worth exceeding $3 million I am (unfortunately) unable to join the site, and so this is a rather unbalanced review however I am interested in what we can learn from the business model.

Scarcity has always been a valued commodity and Affluence.org sells exclusivity.  No social network works if you’re on your own and the site is reportedly gaining about 400 to 500 new members each day. Although this is nothing  in comparison to Facebook’s 700,000 new users each day (as of Dec 2008) it is a fair rate of growth for such a site. From an advertisers point of view every member of Affluence.org  is worth far more than an ordinary user whose average salary (in the US) is $21,350 each year (a minimum of 14 times more in fact).

The site promises free access to a dedicated concierge, ‘invites to the most exclusive events and parties in the world’ and ‘priority access to the world’s most exclusive nightclubs, hotels, and restaurants’ as well as the usual social networking features. However many of these individuals will already have access to many of the above services.

The site really plays on a persons vanity. Everyone likes to feel like they belong to an exclusive club and this is what Affluence provides.This sort of scarcity creates the real value in a site and was something Google utilised in the growth of its GMail service, every member had to be invited and each of those members had 5 (and only 5) invites to pass on. Recipients of invites felt honoured and understood the scarcity which created a demand. The last thing the world needed was another webmail service but Google Mail utilised the value of scarcity to gain huge growth - and we can see this process being emulated by Affluence.org.

Remember FriendsReunited? Back in 2000 the UK spin-off of ‘Classmates.com’  in many ways laid the foundation of today’s biggest sites. It had a business model, a growth rate to rival that of Twitter and even made a profit of £22 million in 2007 - something Facebook and MySpace are still struggling to do.  So what went wrong and what can be learnt from failures of the past?

Cast your mind back to the year 2000. The millennium bug roams the streets, the Internet was at a lightning fast 56k per second for most and we all enjoyed the modem dial sound before being redirected to the Lycos homepage. The Internet was a void filled with Geocities websites, javascript hit counters and Google before it started selling adverts. Images took an average of 2 seconds to load and a full site could take more than 25 seconds.

Users saw the Internet as a peripheral… not as a utility as it is viewed nowadays. FriendsReunited captured the imagination and turned the Internet into something useful. Never before had there been a directory where users could connect and find people they had virtually forgotten about. The genius that built FriendsReunited was sucking people in. Someone once said the art of good business is being a good middle man and boy was this site a good middle man. You could create a profile and search for free… but talking to the guy who used to sit next to you 10 years ago is going to cost you. And people paid (remember back in the day when people paid for the goods and services they received).  They paid in their masses and in December 2005, Friends Reunited had over fifteen million members (which is equivalent to approximatelya quarter of the population of the UK).

So what changed? Firstly competitors arrived on the scene. By 2005 MySpace emerged as the biggest social network of them all, with a staggering  48 million users. With MySpace, users could join for free, they could customise their profile and add music and videos to portray their personality. What is more, it brought social networking to everyone. FriendsReunited was fine for finding your classmates years later, but what if you were still in school, or just wanted to find out what your friends were doing without emailing them? The site fell behind with outdated technology and an unfeasible business model. People could now find their classmates on other social sites and they could do it without paying £5 a year for the luxury. One thing the growth of Facebook has proven is that if you want to make it big… start with the young market. Facebook brought ‘Apps’ to the equation, users could create groups and see what their friends were up to as soon as they wrote it, without the need to email and ask.

ITV, the British broadcaster paid £120m for the site in December 2005. In February this year the value was estimated at just £20 million. A sad demise for a company that just couldn’t keep up.

Related Articles

• Friends Reunited valued at fraction of £175m paid by ITV (telegraph.co.uk)

One conclusion can be drawn from the current economic crisis… no one has a clue what to do. From Keynesian ‘Fiscal Stimulation’ (Plowing money into the economy to sustain jobs and ride the way through the recession until things pick up again. The famous quote is ‘putting money in bottles and burying them underground’ to create jobs for the unemployed) to printing money, there are so many so-called solutions to the current global economic downturn that even seasoned economists are struggling to keep on top of it all.

The problem seems to lie in the fact that our economy is now so global that there is no way to factor in every exogenous variable. And economists know this. President Harry S. Truman once said ‘For pity’s sake, will someone find me a one handed economist!’ and this pretty much sums up the current problem;  No one man can come up with any model to factor in every circumstance and outcome of any one action. Economists can only make recommendations based on what they have examined in the past. Unfortunately this situation is unprecedented… in short we’re flying blind!

Although many parallels can be drawn between the current recession and the great ‘Wall Street Crash’ and the ensuing depression (such as widespread bank failures which make it harder to obtain finance for investment) this time is completely different. In the 1920’s politicians raised taxes and cut spending in order to attempt to combat the fall in GDP. In the post-Keynesian era governments are doing as much as possible to spend money. In the march 2008 the British fiscal deficit was estimated to be £43 billion which works out as 3% of the total GDP. In January this year (2009) net debt was £703.4 billion, equivalent to 47.8 per cent of gross domestic product. This sort of public spending in order to combat the downturn in private investment has never been seen before on this scale.

Although personally I agree with the economic stimulus my point is this. Even the brightest economic minds in the world cannot possibly estimate the full impact (or lack of) that this excessive spending will have on the economy as a whole. And if  the old adage still applies ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ then it has never been more important to look at both sides of the argument and take an even handed approach when pushing forward into the unknown.

About 12 months back I was signed up to a great little tool called DocSycner which found all the word/excel/powerpoint documents on your PC and simply uploaded them to Google Docs. It was quick and easy and I found it incredibly useful as it allowed me to forget about carrying a memory stick from home to work and not concern myself with expensive off-site backup solutions (for the really important stuff such as work anyway).

When I got my new laptop I didn’t bother installing it (as it was the holidays and I had no need for it) but now i’m at university I can really see a use for it. Unfortunatly the company went bust in June 2008. Since then I have been hunting around for a solution. Sure there are plenty of great backup solutions such as Mozy or Jungle Disk but none of them compare to the simplicity of Docsyncer.

It’s sad that there was no way to monetise this technology (i guess they simply couldn’t compete with more advanced solutions) and presumably their business plan was ‘Year 2… be bought by Google’ but this is a loss to the search giant too. I used Google Docs more than ever when my files  were simply ‘there’… it became a replacement for MS Office which is the ultimate intention of the Google Docs Suite. So come on Google… pull your finger out and whip up a solution… my docs wont upload themselves!

Related articles

• Do You Use Google Docs? (geeksugar.com)

When mainstream media begin using twitter as a live feedback mechanism and the general public understand what is going on there is no doubt that we can say Twitter has hit the big time. Today whilst watching ‘The Wright Stuff’, a popular morning discussion programme in the UK the stand-in host (Richard Bacon) told the public to twitter in their responses.

Throughout the show he then read out tweets from his iPhone, intertwined with the usual text’s sent in as well as input from phone calls and the panel.

Although Richard Bacon has been promoting Twitter for a while now it’s part of a large movement in mainstream press to embrace Twitter which, up until fairly recently has been dominated by the US tech industry.

Celebrities such as Stephen Fry, Jonathon Ross and Chris Moyles have been using and abusing the service for weeks and now they are spreading the word. Indeed Stephen Fry now ranks third in the world, just below Barack Obama and CNN accoring to follower tracking site http://twitterholic.com/.

When Twitter is being used in the popular media (indeed the programme has a reputation for being watched by middle aged housewives) as a feedback technique (as sms messaging is) it is no longer a niche tech startup… it is now most definately mainstream.

Related Articles

• Huge UK Twitter increase and UK celebrities now in top 100 most followed Twitter users (nickburcher.com)
• Twitter Becoming A News Breaker (Alistair Charlton)
• Twitter on BBC’s The One Show (YouTube)
• Jonathan Ross introduces Twitter to over 4m Brits on TV (YouTube)
• Twitter on BBC Breakfast News (YouTube)