Category Archives: Tech Stuff

Apple’s Flashy iPod Touch Ad

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There’s a iPod Touch advert on Wired’s homepage that’s very smart.

Anyone not in the digital media industry, will likely look at the advert and not be overly impressed, but technically, this ad is very impressive, as it extends beyond what you assume is it’s frame, the iPod covers the menu bar above (which remains active), and that my friend is really neat, in a very geeky way.

I’m assuming it’s done with a combination of still graphics synced perfectly with the video below, but I could be wrong. Although the question to ask now, is whether this is all done in HTML5, or did Apple use Flash?

The Next Train Will Arrive in the Vegetable Aisle

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Hate grocery shopping? Hate waiting for public transport? Then why not combine them and make them twice as bad? ah, but elementary maths tells us that adding two negatives creates a positive!

This is a really simple, yet very effective way to get customers to try out Tesco’s online retail store. Perfect for South Korea, where 80% of the population have web enabled smart phones. Unfortunately Tesco would unlikely have the same success on their home turf, with no mobile reception and crowded rush hour platforms, the London Underground would be an impossible test bed.

There Can Be Only One!

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aha, I got a few responses/questions to my post last week about the death of email, so thought I’d explain it a little clearer.

Email may be being used less and less but we need email addresses, as they’re the most widely used open standard that we can use to uniquely identify ourselves on the internet. Of course Mr Zuckerberg would like to change that, and make having to have a Facebook ID the defacto ID and login for the web. That won’t happen as the web community naturally resists when a monopoly gets too big. Ironically you still need an email address to create a Facebook ID initially, although I’m sure it won’t be long before you can use just your mobile number to do it.

So why do I think needing an email address is likely to become a thing of the past, let’s look at phone numbers and domain names first.

When you purchase a mobile phone or have a landline installed, you get a unique number for your country or area, these numbers have in turn been allocated to the service provider you’ve chosen. If you choose to change service provider you can usually transfer the mobile number to the new one, thus retaining your number.

When you purchase a domain name, you choose a registrar that offers the services you need and pay them annually to retain it. If you decide to have a website you point the domain name at an IP address allocated to the service provider. The IP address is the unique ID number for the webserver that will host your website, 217.77.185.55 is an example. NB every device that connects to a network has a unique IP address.

So what? Well imagine this…

You go to a service provider that gives you a unique number, just like getting a mobile phone or a domain name, but unlike a mobile number, this number replaces your mobile, email, domain name, message service, voice calls, Twitter ID, Facebook ID, in fact any social network you choose to register it with.

If your number were +878101393436328

http://n.878101393436328 is your domain
@878101393436328 is you email, instant message ID
+878101393436328 is your phone number and entering the number is how you’re found on social networks (the same way someone finds you using your email address or mobile number)

You control how your messages are routed the same way you decide who hosts your website, or handles your email. So if someone calls +878101393436328 you decide if it gets routed to a mobile, landline, desktop, TV, tablet (or they could all ring at once, or in sequence), same when someone sends you an SMS, email, instant message, Tweet, Skype etc, it makes no difference how the message originated, as long as it’s routed correctly… the same way someone can call you on your mobile from the other side of the world using their phone / Skype, the audio gets routed to you instantly, no matter where you both are.

This will only be possible when the standards are open, there’s no monopoly and it’s available to everyone. That’s when email addresses or having to be on the same social network or instant message service or same VOIP service will become obsolete and a thing of the past.

Further reading: The ITU (International Telephone Union) introduced a universal personal telephone number (UPT) +878 in 2001 (wikipedia), controlled by VISIONng. ENUM is the process of converting a telephone number into an internet name space.

Email Est Mort, Vive Le Email

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I’ve been pondering the longevity of email for the past few years, wondering whether it’s time was numbered due to the ease and rise of messaging and social networks. And I’m certainly not the only one that’s considered this, there’s been plenty of opinions and debates about this online. Mark Zuckerberg said email was dead a few weeks ago (oh really, well you try signing up for Facebook without an email address, then let me know how you get on), plus on monday the CEO of Atos put a ban on email within his organisation stating employees should all be using social networks and SMS instead! (yeah that’s gonna work isn’t it… the staff will love having their work colleagues on their social networks!)

But think about this, email and messages in whatever format remains, but the days for having an “email address” are numbered! mmm, now that’s an interesting idea isn’t it.

But that won’t be until the various telephone, email services and social networks agree an open standard for messages and voice to flow freely and seamlessly between them, and that is unlikely to happen without coercion. The reason email has survived so long and is so prevalent is the same reason phone calls and SMS have proved so effective and robust, because they rely on open standards that anyone can use without restriction or more importantly, additional licensing costs.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could compose a message and send it, without worrying how the recipients have chosen to receive it, be it on their mobile as SMS, on a social network, as email, or whatever else they’ve decided upon.

Apple are making moves into this area, although very slowly, I write a text message on my iPhone, as I would any SMS, to a friend and it arrives on their iOS device, but it may have been routed to them as data (not an SMS), so via email servers but displays in their Messages app as an SMS.

Doesn’t sound that amazing at first, mainly because Apple have made it so effortless, but when you really think about it, the underlying principle is in fact ground-breaking. I send an SMS, and the recipient still receives it, even if they’re not on a telephone network or have reception (as long as they have internet connectivity)

But let’s take this one small step further, what if you had a single ID (not separate email addresses, mobile, landline, Skype, messaging, Facebook, twitter etc), a single way for people to contact you regardless whether the contact was voice, text, image, email, instant-message etc. How cool would that be? (of course you could still have a separate one for personal and home).

You give someone your unique ID (probably numbers 0-9 only, so it can be input using a phone), then they call, SMS, email, message you and you receive it regardless of the device you’re using, if you preferred you could split the incoming messages so voice goes to your mobile/landline/desktop/tablet/TV, SMS and messages to your messaging app, email to your email app… whatever you want, it’s your choice, the sender doesn’t need to know, it makes no difference to them… it just works.

So how cool would it be to have a single ID… mmmm, now where have I heard that idea mentioned before ;)

Hello World… Ahem, Hello Carrier IQ

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How would you feel if your every location, keystroke, button push, SMS, URL and Web search you made on your mobile was monitored, read and stored by a piece of factory pre-installed software that automatically sends it to a company you’ve never heard of, plus this software cannot be switched off or removed? AKA a *rootkit

You wouldn’t like it would you? Well, if you have a modern Android, BlackBerry or Nokia phone, then that’s exactly what’s been happening from the first time you switched it on.

And when I say every keystroke, I mean EVERY single keystroke! so yes every login and password you’ve made, even over HTTPS, has been recorded and is now stored by Carrier IQ

Don’t believe that’s possible, then check out this Wired article, plus the video below (although jump to 11 mins in for the good / scary stuff!)

Trevor Eckhart original post. The root kit creator Carrier IQ

* “rootkit,” a security term that refers to software installed at a low-level on a device, without a user’s consent or knowledge, in order to secretly intercept the device’s workings. Malware such as keyloggers and trojans are two examples.

UPDATE: there’s a Twitter hashtag for this now #CIQ

ID me at Early bird registrations!

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ID me at is an identity aggregator I’ve been working on for a while that I’m hoping to launch in the coming months. I’m currently putting a front-end site together that explains what “ID me at” is (which I’ll upload when completed).

But I wanted to give those of you who know me an early opportunity to pre-register for your username, as in similar style to Twitter and Facebook, once someone’s grabbed a username, it’s gone for good! So grab yours on Friday, you can set a reminder here

In essence “ID me at” is an identity aggregator, that lets you share your contact details from a single personalised profile, so your contacts automatically get your latest information whenever you change or update it (because it’s automatically pushed to their own address books, either online on their desktop or mobile).

You get a unique domain www.idme.at/yourname for your personalised homepage, onto which you can easily embed links for all your social networks and personal contact details, then include the domain in your email signature or place it on your stationery for a business card that will never go out of date!

Visitors have the option of downloading .VCF’s (virtual card files) and scanning QR codes containing all your contact details, so avoiding any mistyping, plus they can synchronise everything to their own personal address book of choice… and best bit of all, you get to control who gets access to what about you!

We’ve all been there, new email, new phone number, moved house… it’s a hassle informing everyone that needs to know and making sure they’re up to date, the same is try when someone sends us their new details, we have to input it into our address book and copy it to our phone etc… but why waste time doing that when you can update all this information in a single place and it’s pushed automagically to all of your contacts… plus they can do the same to you with their details. You’re never have to manually update an address book again!

for an example you can idme@brendan

Oh and did I mention, it’s all completely free!

Please help spread the word by liking and sharing the Facebook page and following and tweeting on Twitter

 

 

eBooks Are For Weirdos

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According to a new survey by Harris Interactive 1 in 6 Americans now use an eReader with 1 in 6 likely to purchase one within the next 6 months. That’s 15%, which is almost double what it was this time last year, 8%. Also eBook readers purchase more books and read on average more than paper book readers!

I should know, since I purchased my first Sony eReader I started reading more, and now with the books from my Kindle available on my Mac, iPhone, iPad I purchase and read more than ever!

A case in point, Seth Godin released a new book today entitled, We Are All Weird, but rather than purchase the hard back and wait for it to be delivered (which I’ve not done in many many years!), I clicked the link to the Amazon Kindle store, clicked the “Buy now with one click” and had it on my Kindle before my kettle boiled this morning! Two Clicks and I had the book, why would anyone purchase a book in any other way, and why would an author sell their book any other way?

I’ve been saying this for years, it’s part of my no paper mantra, but it would appear Seth believes the same:

My new book, We Are All Weird goes on sale today. We only have 11,000 hardcover copies on sale at Amazon, with no plans to print more. I wanted you to have first dibs. (PS, Outside the USA? click here). Why limit the number printed?

Conventional publishing wisdom says that the first 10,000 copies are the hardest. In fact, you don’t make money until after that. The goal is to prime the pump and then, if you get lucky, sell millions and millions of hardcovers, day after day, year after year. That’s what pays the bills at all the large publishing houses. The thing is, digital is better at infinity than paper ever will be. Digital is easy to keep in stock, easy to replenish, easy to connect with. Paper, on the other hand, benefits from scarcity.

The Cosmonaut is The Write Stuff

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I posted about the Scribbly a while ago, but I just stumbled on the Cosmonaut by Studio Neat, the guys that created the Glif, which in case you missed it is a cool iPhone tripod mount and stand, that had a very successful Kickstarter launch. Well it looks like they’ve done it again with another great idea, the Cosmonaut, as it rocketed (sorry about that), past it’s goal of $50,000 to secure $134,236 in funding!

I can’t wait to grab one myself (actually it’s given me an idea for a no paper add on)

Don’t Build It and They Will Come, 90k Of Them!

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That appears to be Martin Hasek’s philosophy, the creator of Noteslate, and it appears to be working. I posted about the Noteslate back in January, I was sceptical then and unfortunately my scepticism was founded, as this CNN report confirmed shortly afterwards, but that doesn’t appear to have stopped 64,000 people clicking the like button on their homepage, 10,000 following them on Twitter, plus over 17,000 optimistic hopefuls liking the Noteslate Facebook page (there were only 500 when I hit the like button!), most of which are keen to see a real noteslate in production, although some are flagging a bit now on the Facebook page, and posting negative and frustrated comments.

So why do this? Surely Martin is going to anger a lot of people when he comes 100% clean, or will he? After all he’s proven without doubt that his college industrial design project (apparently that’s where it all started) has a market, one that may make investors very interested in the concept, although without any IP protection, I’m not sure how interested they’d be… although if you do the maths, based on the original price of $100 per unit (highly unlikely), that’s still 90k fans & likes x $100 = $9m… not bad for vapourware! Plus if Noteslate don’t release it, someone else undoubtedly will.

Either way, I’d personally love to see a noteslate type of device, without doubt I’d use it everyday, it dovetails perfectly with our no paper philosophy, we’d certainly look at ways of communicating with it and automating syncing with our own systems.

One thing Noteslate highlights and proves to us at no paper, is that people have no problem imagining a world where they don’t use or rely on paper, of course we’ve believed that for a long time, but it’s nice to know others believe and feel the same!

more dis-information at noteslate

more information at no paper