Apple’s Sept 1st 2010 Keynote was in my opinion even better than their June 7th presentation when they announced the iPhone 4. It may be a case of expectations being so high for the new “king of the smartphones” announcement that Steve Jobs was really in a no-win situation back in June. But I think with the grand reveal of their new iPod range, Apple TV (let’s please stop calling it iTV now!) and the sneaky dip into social networking with the announcement of Ping, this was one hell of a keynote.

As a side – I think the new nano looks fantastic and integrating a camera into the iPod touch to enable Facetime is a master stroke, but that’s another blog.

I want to talk about Ping. By integrating Ping into iTunes, Apple have opened up Ping to a mere 160m users in one foul swoop, that’s impressive. It’s what Google will do if they base their new social media offering on YouTube, so they must be watching with bated breath to see what happens.

By integrating social media into iTunes, Apple are saying this is “A Social Network for Music”. But I have to wonder how much this is just to keep Facebook happy, as in reality this is a social network for Music, Books, Films and Apps – many of which are Games.
Lets look at that list again…

1. Muisc
2. Books
3. Films
4. Games

Now if we look at what people talk about on Facebook and Twitter, we can see a large portion of that activity is based around those 4 topics.

Therefore we have the platform for wide discussion. Now all we need is to open this up to a wide audience.
Lets consider Apples hardware with iTunes installed ready and waiting, – First we have Macs (1.6m – 1.7m sold per quarter!)
- iPhones (8.7m sold per quarter)
- iPod Touch (3.2m sold per quarter)
So that’s a lot of platforms running iTunes. But wait. Did we miss something? Something that might open up Ping to an even wider audience. Something I’ve probably even already mentioned in this blog… that’s it… Apple TV.

This is where the killer blow could be made. If Apple market their TV offering with all guns blazing they could revolutionise the social networking arena.

Just imagine people networking over their TV. Talking about what Film they are watching. One word. Awesome. Listen to music your friends are into, after all they’re your friends because you probably have similar taste. Read books they like and watch films they are in to.

We could even go a step further and imagine what could happen if we stick a webcam on top of the TV and open up Facetime for Apple TV users. The possibilities are endless.

Apple has seriously lined its ducks up. They could dominate in so many areas – Music consumption, Mobile communications, social networking, TV. Will there really be any hours in the day you don’t find yourself interacting with Apple?

There’s simply too many quality adverts to include them all in a list, it would go on forever and anyone stumbling across this blog at work would surely get the sack should they watch them all. I don’t want to be responsible for making a load of people jobless – so instead I’ve decided to focus my attention on adverts solely within an area close to my main interest and that’s technology.

To give my collection of videos some sense of order, I’ve cast my mind back to my technological journey through life. Looking at all the adverts for every computer and console I’ve had the pleasure to own.

Now some of these adverts actually contributed to me parting with my hard earned monies. Others I never knew existed. But one thing’s for sure – there are some classics here.

I’m going to attack this in chronological order, starting off with a tech-defining product from that bloke who is famous for also inventing one of the worst products of all time, Mr Clive Sinclair. Yes – it’s the…
ZX spectrum 48k and spectrum+

My next tech purchase was to be the last before I ventured into the console world. One thing I could remember about this advert was the tune – quality!

Commodore Amiga 500

For any child of the 80s/90s there is one very important decision to make. Sega or Nintendo. There was never a case in these times of Sonic and Mario meeting in the same game. Never should the two meet as they were sole representatives for two of the biggest rival organisations in the world.
My choice was Sega, step forward the…

Sega Master System

I had already made my choice. The next console was a given, bring on 16Bit gaming and probably the most awesome control pad ever invented.

The Sega Mega Drive

I felt again it would be a natural progression, but how wrong I was.
This was the first ad to really sell a console to me.
“The ultimate games console… that changed everything”
“500MB of power – used only for gameplay!”
…who could resist!

Sega Mega CD

Dissapointed by the lack of games for the Mega-CD, I felt let down by Sega and decided to revert back to my old faithful Commodore. So I brought…

The Amiga CD-32

Once again I was let down by the fact there was about 3 games ever released!

Then came along what had to be the first serious step-up in gaming since the Mega Drive. Although, how it was ever a success with this initial launch advert I’ll never know!

The Sony Playstation

It was a case of history repeating itself. Just like the progression from Master System to Mega Drive, I had to progress from the PS1 to the PS2. Unfortunately Sony also repeated history with another terrible advert.

The PS2

You would think form there I would go on to the PS3. But no. I grew up and bought the far less serious…

Nintendo Wii

OK, I hear you. “Neil – you told us it was 10 Awesome adverts!”.
Well I’m afraid I only brought 9 computers/consoles (minus PCs, Laptops, IPads that kind of thing, but those ads are just dull).

I want to still give you 10 of the best and through my searches for the above ads I’ve been side-tracked onto some absolute gems.
From these gems I’ve picked a diamond to finish this post off and here it is.
This isn’t an ad for a console or computer but rather a game.
A game I enjoyed as a young’un and until now a game that I didn’t realise had such a fantastic ad.

Just check out how the game footage is interspersed with real life footage. It really is a wonder they didn’t have to display a caption of “Not actual game footage”.

The game is…

Pole Position

Bet you’re glad I could fit that one in.

Blockbuster is a fantastic brand – from it’s very simple ticket stub logo to it’s global coverage of its stores and online websites. It may not have been the first company to offer movie rental, but it was certainly the first chain to offer it on such a scale. The Blockbuster concept of a “great night in” which seems to have been lifted shamelessly by Dominoes, altered the way we enjoyed our time infront of the TV at night. Blockbuster cunningly offered up popcorn, chocolate and sweets alongside movie rentals so everything you needed was there in one place.

The first Blockbuster store in the UK opened in March 1989 (Walworth Road, London) and rapidly expanded to it’s 650 stores and over 5,000 staff it currently has in the UK today.

Recently though, the global presence of Blockbusters has suffered, the TV campaigns have halted and stores have closed down. So what went so badly wrong, that has led Blockbuster to recently announce they are working towards bankruptcy?
In my opinion, one word sums up what went wrong for Blockbuster, Innovation.

Blockbuster probably didn’t realise it, but they operated in an area of technology. Or at least an area which has been affected so dramatically recently with the introduction of DVD, blue-Ray, games consoles and more importantly the Internet.

Blockbuster have always reacted to the market and since their launch have never ventured into markets until they are mature.

The killer nail has been the likes of LoveFilm and NetFlix, which have revolutionised the way in which we consume film. Sky Box Office was bad enough for blockbuster, but at least they could be rest-assured they would have more recent films on offer.
Blockbuster.co.uk was launched in 1996! So they were very quick to adopt online. They even offered online rentals as early as 2002, but the one thing they have not been able to master is streaming video. If they had took a risk and been the first to offer streaming, even before home broadband was really good enough for it, with the strength of their brand they would have led in a market that will generate millions in the uk alone.

Just think of the advertising revenue online video streaming will generate once it is commonplace. Blockbuster could have had a slice of that and I would be writing a very different blog.

In the UK all is not lost for Blockbuster. It is a separate company to the US Blockbuster and is not yet staring down the barrel of bankruptcy. It is however, up for sale for a mere £50m!

Problem is, a large portion of the £50m will get you the 650 stores – which to survive is the exact thing Blockbuster don’t want to retain. They want to build on the brand, offer online streaming of movies and pioneer in the integration of targeted advertising online.
To compete with the likes of Netflix is now going to be an uphill battle for the UK Blockbuster, but it’s by no means an impossible battle.

I for one hope it’s something someone somewhere takes on. It will be a real shame if the Blockbuster brand is sent to the great big branding bin in the sky.

Mich Matthews (VP of marketing) – Ok guys, we have a pretty impressive smartphone that we’ve worked pretty damn hard on and I reckon we should let people know it exists. What-da-ya-reckon?

Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) – Good catch Mich, that’s why I pay you $280k+ let’s get our best guys on this baby right away. We need our ducks in a row on this one, we need an xbox success, no repeat of vista… Ok!

Mich – Well, let’s fly some kites, get some serious blue sky going on in here. What made the xbox such a success and vista such a… Um… a…. Well not such a success?

Steve – We never make bad products, it must have been the marketing budgets. How much did we spend marketing xbox?

Mich – $100m

Steve – and vista?

Mich – $500m

Steve – Ah. Vista must have been bad. I hope windows phone 7’s better.

————-

Although Microsoft are reported to be spending $400m on the launch of windows phone 7, this doesn’t ensure it’s success. However, it does show you Microsoft are serious about its new smartphone and by spending serious marketing budget it’s guaranteed every man and his dog are going to hear about this one.

It’s also interesting how close the budgets are between the vista launch and that of windows phone 7. Although when you consider the desktop market is in such decline and the smartphone market is enjoying such growth, it does make sense. Smartphone sales are expected to outstrip those of the desktop by next year, so for me Microsoft have set their budget about right.

The right amount of spend is so important, let’s take the $100m budget of Verizon and Motorola on the original Droid smartphone compared to the non-existent marketing budget for Google’s Nexus One. The Nexus One was a better handset with better software, but was outsold by the Droid – marketing made the Droid a success, simple.

It shows you can have a slightly inferior product, but through marketing tell people repeatedly that it’s good and they will believe you! Apple have been doing it for years… It works! Of course I jest a little, Apples products are damn good, but in all honesty are they the best out there? Or are we blinded slightly by the Apple razzmatazz of it’s marketing campaigns?

Windows phone 7 now has every chance of success. The marketing $’s behind this device plus the fact it isn’t going to be a poor (vista) product is why this could really shake up the smartphone market. This smartphone will support Office, Windows Live services and have the Zune music store. This smartphone will have an innovative UI not a clunky Windows Mobile platform UI. We’re sure to see a Microsoft app store, multitasking and notifications. We’re also going to experience Microsoft making the most of the Xbox Live brand within the handheld for gaming.
The final aspect will be the community. Developers have jumped at the chance to unleash their talents on both the iPhone and Android platforms. If they do the same with vigour for the Windows phone 7, there may be no stopping this new kid on the smartphone block taking the lead.

Microsoft have been quiet recently and has almost slipped into the underdog style status when compared to Apple and Google. Something a decade ago we would never have imagined. We also would never have imagined feeling slightly sorry for Microsoft, but I think there is a new public perception towards them, after all, we love the underdog.

I’m predicting the Windows Phone 7 will be a huge success and with the troubles Apple have had with the iPhone 4, it’s going to make for a very interesting battle!
Most of all though, I’m looking forward to Microsofts marketing campaign for the new phone, I hope they really do fly those kites and make it one to remember!

I found myself in John Lewis at the weekend while looking for a digital camera when something caught my eye (as well as my ears!). It was a family cooing over a Sony 3D TV set up which was in the form of a mock-up front room. John Lewis had done well setting up a nice sofa, 46″ Sony 3D TV and surround sound, it was easy to see why the family were initially impressed.

The first thing that struck me was the kids arguing over who had the pleasure of looking stupid by wearing a very large pair of 3D glasses, the second was how the father took charge, said “just wait your turn” then donned the glasses himself and the final thing was how disappointed he looked when he handed over the glasses to the first child.

The previous week I had been at the Sea Life Centre in Birmingham where I had the pleasure of sitting in a small cinema for 4mins while we watched “The voyage of the turtle”. This was in 3D, but also had water that sprayed out the back of the chair in front, rumble pads in the chairs and wind pipes in the head-rest. It was a really good experience, the 3D was excellent and the extra 4D touches really impressed me. That said, 4mins was long enough for me.

Once the family in John Lewis had finished I thought I would give it a go. The experience was so far removed from that I had just one week earlier I had to question why on earth anyone would spend an awful lot of money to look stupid in their front rooms and enjoy an adequate experience.

Then in dawned on me. It would be because they have been to a cinema, watched Avatar 3D or Toy Story 3 3D and wanted to experience this at home. Well I’m sorry, but no chance.

Sony, Phillips, Samsung, LG and countless others are ploughing a lot of money into this market and I for one think they are wasting their time. 3D may be a good experience, but it has to be on the big screen in an environment removed from usual everyday life with surround sound and popcorn. At home I’ll be sticking to my plasma screen while only being frustrated i can’t find my remote never mind my special glasses as well. 3D… Keep it in the cinema.

Although I feel Firefox has always led in terms of new features which is down to the amazing efforts of an open-source community, for me it boils down to speed and put simply I have always found Firefox that bit faster.
That said, Google Chrome does give it a damn good run for its money which is why I do find myself now and again using Chrome.

The one feature that pulled in the punters for Firefox and set it apart was tabbed browsing. When Firefox introduced this feature way-back-when in 2002 it introduced an easy tabbed interface that helped users browse multiple pages quicker. It wasn’t until IE7 in 2006 Microsoft caught up. For me that’s a long time to react to such a good feature. Safari reacted much faster incorporating tabs in 2003.
Google Chrome launched much later in 2008 and has therefore never known a life without tabs.

So what’s the next big feature in terms of web browsing. Well, un-surprisingly it’s based on the feature that made Firefox one of the worlds favourite browsers… tabs.

The feature was code named Tab Candy, but will be incorporated into the official new release of Firefox as Panorama.
Firefox Panorama allows the user to group tabs together. This is done through the thumbnail tab view and by simply dragging one page over another to group them. You can drag just one page or as many as you want into a new group space and then name the group for easy access later.
If the window’s not big enough for all the pages your compiling together, Firefox cleverly stacks them together and you can select the stack to view the page thumbnails.

Being an iPhone owner I can see the process of dragging one thumbnail over another to make a group isn’t a totally new concept. This is after-all how the new “folder” feature in the new ios4 works to allow users to group apps together. I’m not a big fan of lifting ideas off others (see my last blog post) but this is only part of how Panorama works.

Enabling this grouping will mean you can easily have groups of pages for projects you’re working on or interests you have.
A simple concept, but amazingly powerful. For me though, it builds on a feature that meant quicker more efficient web browsing and that’s what makes me choose a particular browser.

This new feature will be available in Firefox 4 and is already in the Beta release if you want to take a look.

The launch of facebook places is not only significant in the fact that it shows as a company facebook is continually developing and looking for ways to expand it’s platform, but it is also significant in the fact it shows they can take any new idea which has been thought up by them or not and integrate it into facebook to open it up to the largest community on the web.

Facebook places is a way for users to “check in” to locations so their “friends” can see where they’ve been. Users can also add notes against places so their friends can see what they thought of it, what deals they may be able to get there etc, etc… just general info.

All in all, a good idea. Yes. But not an idea of some bright young developer within facebook HQ!

This idea happened to be the brainchild of Dennis Crowley who was named one of the “Top 35 Innovators Under 35″ by MIT’s Technology Review and Naveen Selvadurai.
This pair launched foursquare in march 2009 and now has over 3 million users.
Now, 3 million users all of a sudden doesn’t sound like that many. But that is only because of the monster that is facebook. The majority of websites would be more than happy and may even open a bottle of bubbly at the fact they’ve attracted 3 million users to their website.

The point here is that facebook can take any new idea, such as foursquare, integrate it into facebook and instantly expose it to an audience far greater than anyone else can imagine.

Therefore facebook faces no competition.

Although foursquare’s user base has apparently risen since the launch of facebook places, this will surely not continue. I can only guess this is due to the fact people are now more aware of the concept of “checking in” and are therefore searching for this and discovering foursquare.

Apparently facebook have been developing this for 8 months, so it took them only 9 months to track foursquare’s growth and decide to copy it’s idea.

It’s a shame, but I really feel we won’t see a new successful concept independently run, not integrated into facebook and grow enough to compete with the social giant.
It’s also a shame that more people hadn’t discovered foursquare first. As the 497,000,000 users that are members of facebook and not foursquare will think – cracking idea facebook… Well done.

May 27, 2009 at the Google I/O conference a new development was announced that I felt may cause a decent stir among web users. Something that might not only establish Google as a serious social media player but also change the way we use the web to communicate. Google Wave was described as “a new web application for real-time communication and collaboration”.

The idea was essentially to combine e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking into one real-time environment. It also allowed for spelling/grammar checking and automatic translations, but in the main a wave was a working real-time collaborative message, therefore it could potentially replace email!

Google Wave had 100,000 users in September 2009, each of which were allowed to invite additional users. But it wasn’t until May 19, 2010, Google Wave was released to the general public. This is why it seems strange Google are ditching the development of Wave only 3 months after the full web community could get their hands on it?
One of the main reasons I’ve heard Google are no longer developing Wave is that it simply hasn’t had the traction Google expected? Well, maybe not, but how much marketing has Google put into Wave since it’s been made widely available? Not a lot!

The other reason Wave has failed so badly is because of the perception it has amongst even those tech-savvy web users that have heard of it. It’s seen as a complex application and one that requires studying before anyone can pick it up and use. In this day and age when time is the most precious commodity of all, people just haven’t got the time to learn how to do something new… Like create a Wave.
The only surprise here is how Google missed the fact they had to make Wave at least appear simple. It’s the very fundamental that made Google search such a success – a logo, large search bar and a couple of buttons on a plain white background – that’s all it took before!

So, was Wave a complete failure? No, not completely. It was maybe a little before its time, maybe had the wrong perception amongst users and maybe had a much better development team than marketing team behind it. But it was also a new fresh approach to communicating, collaborating and socialising online and in that sense it has left behind some great ideas that a company like Google can surely build upon to create something special. Maybe that something is just around the corner and google doesn’t want anything to be stealing any limelight, not even Wave.

“Google Me” anyone?

1) Facebook reaching 500,000,000 users. (active? Maybe not – but still!)
2) Facebook beta testing Facebook credits
3) Security researcher Ron Bowes crawling 100,000,000 Facebook urls (maybe blown out of all proportion as the data was publicly available but the the relevancy here is the medias love affair with online security)
4) Neilsen research finding 40 percent of online time is spent on just three activities — social networking, playing games, and e-mailing.
5) Google investing $120 million on Zynga the online game company (responsible for Farmville and Mafia Wars) last month.

The reason these 5 factors are so important. Combined, social networking and online games make up 32.9 percent of the time spent online. Facebook has the largest user base on the Internet. And Facebook credits will be in full release by the end of September 2010.
In my opinion the only issue that could possibly stop Facebook changing the way we pay for purchases online is factor number 3. Do the public trust Facebook enough?

Facebook Credits are currently in beta trial – click on your “Account” link in the top right corner and you can access a Facebook credits section. You may even have some that you’ve earned through playing games within the Facebook platform. However you will soon be able to use these credits for more than just buying virtual gifts. Something that although seems quite pointless to most people, has piloted the concept perfectly for Facebook.

The issue for many companies would be they wouldn’t want their users leaving their website to buy their products – perfectly reasonable. But with the launch of Facebook Connect and using the Open Graph protocol, users can connect to use their Facebook credits from any website that has implemented the necessary code. Problem solved and a massive impact on how we potentially buy products and services online created.

Users will in the main purchase credits within Facebook using their credit card, but there is also the opportunity for brands to incentivise the engagement of their brand through offering credits to users who “like” their business page on facebook or play their social games.

This new “social commerce” may be the way we find ourselves paying for downloading software, games and videos as well as purchasing our shopping or even booking our holidays. Why not? It’s only a variation on how paypal works, but now it’s being applied to a social arena it has led to creative thinking on how developers can issue credits and apply credits to what is now the most common activity on the Internet… Socialising.

One of the first companies to trial social commerce is Procter & Gamble having already started selling Max Factor cosmetics through Facebook. Disney also allowed users to purchase tickets for Toy Story 3 within Facebook using credits.

This isn’t a new concept. Microsoft brought out a Passport scheme that allowed users to store their credit card credits in an account that could be used on multiple websites. However, users didn’t trust the scheme enough back then… So do they now?
This is the only reason social commerce could fail. Because stories such as the recent “security” issue of facebook users details being available on a torrent made the news. It was a pointless story and one that didn’t even register with IT professionals. But not everyone is an IT professional and the media loves Internet scare stories. Therefore hundreds-of-thousands of potential users will be put off by the fear their credits will be stolen because they have them stored on a social network that carelessly puts them in control of their own details! What next? Banks issuing credit cards with a simple 4 digit pin that your not suppose to tell people!

Many people have questioned for some time how Facebook makes it’s money, with the simple answer being advertising. However, this will be small change compared to social commerce if the web community adopts it. It has been stated Facebook will charge a 30% commission for developers using it’s credits. Now that’s revenue!

Even with the large commission charge, developers will not be able to ignore the fact that the largest community on the web are using this new currency and will therefore almost be forced into using the system. Therefore I feel it boils down to the fact that if users trust social commerce it will be how we conduct our business online in future. If not, just like in the late 90’s it will fail again.

I’ve been quite pleased with my purchase of an iPad, but when you spend your hard earned monies you want to be more than quite pleased. The reason I purchased an iPad was because I thought it was a revolutionary device, one that would bring a new dimension to surfing the web, enjoying multimedia and playing simple games.

But most of all I was looking forward to some apps from some highly skilled developers that would take advantage of the amazing apple UI that made the iPhone the best device of our time so far and the quality HD screen that displays bright vivid images beautifully.

Until now, I have been largely disappointed with the apps on offer, until now I have been struggling to find an app that delvers something new and noteworthy. Until now! So what app have I stumbled upon that has urged me to go as far as pick up my iPad and blog about it?
Answer: Flipboard.

Flipboard is a new take on the flip style flash interfaces many catalogue sites such as Next are offering. It allows you to add categorised content that is gathered from multiple sources to your contents page. So, you’re interested in technology? Add the TechCrunch feed, love food Add the smitten kitchen feed. The feeds are then presented in a flip style format, but you can also touch the article you want to read more about to see it in large format. This is presented beautifully with a slick zoom fade animation. If you want to see the full article on the web then a simple click on a web link takes you to the page. The clever part here is that it doesn’t just open up safari, it does this in it’s own browser so that when your finished you can go back easily to where you left off.

As well as adding content from multiple feeds, you can also add your Twitter and Facebook accounts. This again presents your Facebook and Twitter feeds in the same flip magazine style format. As far as Twitter is concerned, for me, this now makes it 100 times more interesting. The reason for this is the tweets from people you are following are pulled in as well as some of the content from links they are including in their tweet. This means you can read a snippet of the information on the URL they’re tweeting and see if you’re bothered enough to read the whole article.

The Facebook feed is also nicely done, allowing you to focus in on certain status updates or photo postings and add your own comments.

From the opening of Flipboard where you are presented in style with pics of the latest articles slowly zooming in and out, to then point you close the app after feasting on the all the content you’ve just flicked through. You know it’s an application you won’t be deleting any time soon.

I wouldn’t like to criticise anything about flipboard. You can see the time and effort that has been put in by the development team with every aspect of the app. I would like to see the option of adding more content boxes on the contents page, but understand this may have performance implications. The only other improvement I can think of is the ability to add urls of any rss feeds that are then pulled into the flipboard environment.

All in all though… What a Flippling good app! (sorry!)