Cubicgarden.com
Yes its that time again… Time for the phone upgrade and I’m really not sure which one to go for?
I want to get another Android phone but I don’t want to get another Gingerbread (Android 2.3) phone because thanks to Cyanogen I’m already enjoying Gingerbread on my HTC Desire. This means the HTC Sensation is a no and the LG Optimus is heck no running Froyo. I’m also thinking although I really like the Samsung Galaxy S2, and it will be upgrading to Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4). I’m interested to see what else might be hitting the market soon… No idea when the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is coming to Orange but I might wait and see what comes in the next few months.
What would you do…?
I’ve said nothing about recently Steve Jobs, his death was very sad just like anyone who dies earlier than there potential age. His cancer wasn’t just life threatening it was a killer.
Saying all that, however I do have serious problems with his late view point on the world and I have a lot of agreements.
He was a smart guy and what he did for Apple and the industry speaks for its self but…. there’s some things which I can’t help but remember…
“I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said.
“I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
What on earth…? Who says this kind of thing and really mean it? Frankly I would suggest rightly or wrongly, a psychopath? This psychopathic nature is something most people ignore or overlook. I can’t, I mean can you imagine Bill Gates saying the same about Linux, with such venom? (I’m assuming not, but I’m sure someone will prove me wrong).
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Yes this is quite spooky but I’ll be honest and say death will do that kind of thing to you.
When I was lying in bed after my brush with death last year, I thought damn hard about my life and made quite a few decisions.
It sounds like Jobs had a similar thing but I can’t understand why he would hold on to his fear about Android?
As Yoda says…
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
It pains/saddens me that he went to his death bed worrying about the challenge of Android. Letting go is essential and not doing so, just seems like a very sad thing.
He seemed to have forgotten his own words…
all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
I never want to go to my death bed thinking how I wanted to right the wrong of Apple. Its ludicrous… Yes I’m not a fan but you know what I’m not a fan of a lot of things including crappy fluff filled TV. I would never want to go to my death bed thinking must see a end of Xfactor or something.
Sure some of you are saying, yes but you almost went to your death bed hating Apple? Well not really, even in previous blog posts I’ve expressed happy feelings for Apple. The question should be, if I could stop Apple with all the money I owned, would I do it? Answer is a absolutely NO!
The plan was to buy the Steve Jobs book which was released but frankly I won’t really read it (plus the media has pretty much uncovered most of the book for us all) and as I said before, its very tragic but I’m personally not going to dwell.
He was a genius but also made other peoples lives hell and frankly if he was doing this still after learning about his cancer, he has certainly gone down in my estimations.
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
I know he strived for perfection but at what cost? The misery of others around him, was it really worth it in the end? Remember the way he treated his child? Once again was it really worth it in the end?
Life is such a precious thing and so many people never face the reality of how precious life really is…
I will remember Steve Jobs as a super smart man who was driven, who even on his death bed loved what he did, and did everything he could to building his own personal dream. I’m still convinced he was nuts to fight the opening up of the world and the more human engagement everyone is finally adopting…
RIP Steve Jobs…
I’m in total limbo when it comes to Google and my friends
Google Plus delivered a new way to classify your friends (although it was first seen in diaspora’s aspects) but I was using Gmail’s Contacts with the tagging previously.
What this boils down to is Taxonomy vs Folksonomy and credit goes to Stowe Boyd, Thomas Wanderwal and others.
I’ve been thinking about the merits of both approaches and concluded that even if Google included the ability to have circles within circles, it wouldn’t be as flexible as a purely tagging/folksonomy based system. The problem seems to center around classifying friends and people full stop. Categories, Circles or rather Taxonomy’s are too ridged and forced. Which to be frank classifying your relationship with people isn’t.
I refer to this table…
| Taxonomy | Folksonomy |
| Brittle | Flexible |
| Accurate (if done well) | Less reliable |
| Compliance must be forced | Rewards but doesn’t force compliance |
| Hard to add to | Easy to add to |
| Centrally controlled | Democratically controlled |
| Predictable | Organic |
The attributes of Folksonomies sound a lot closer to the emergent nature of relationships than Taxonomies.
There is a question which remains however… What happens if Google do adopt Circles within Circles? Or even follow the Twitter lists way of doing things?
Hopefully Google will adopt their own Gmail folksonomy approach in the future, but it does looks very unlikely…?
The ever lasting effect of the Internet on Television, or as I call it the TV post Internet.
See Eric Schmidt’s Edinburgh Festival Keynote which can be read in full on PaidContent.
The concept and idea of a BBC Micro for the 21st Century, which some are saying could be the Raspberry Pi.
Been thinking about this stuff deeply recently for work and what I’ll be doing in the near future… You might be interested in some of the Top10′s I’ve been creating on top10.co
I have a theory… and it was fully baked in my mind but now I got it
Google is launching Google TV to the UK and Europe in 2012 and it needs content from companies such as the BBC.
The logical place to have a presence is (of course I would argue is) MediaCityUK.
Doesn’t seem that baked now…
A survey went around R&D today and after answering all the questions there was a blank area for other comments…
I’m sure I haven’t thought of all the weird software/network combinations that are in use. Please use this box to add any info you think I need to know.
To which I wrote
I have machines on multiple networks…
One on the R&D network,
One on the BBC internal network
One on the plain Internet.I tend to keep the BBC internal one (running Windows 7 – which I have Admin rights) at work because its useless outside the BBC due to the constraints placed on it.
The R&D one has two profiles on it. One profile is setup for the R&D network and the other is setup to use the plain internet wifi. This means I don’t need to carry around multiple machines just one and user switch profile on Ubuntu 11.04.The software I use is Thunderbird for email mainly on the R&D network because Evolution (my usual mail client) doesn’t support Socks5 proxies. I tried to get Evolution working because I really wanted to get the BBC network/Exchange calendar working in Evolution but it wouldn’t work without root access!
Its important to have a plain internet connection because I tend to work at home and from different places. The Webmail without the SecureID pass has made life a lot easier but I really would like to have some kind of 2 step authentication. I’ve enabled it for my Google Mail account for example.
I tend to send emails for calendar requests to my gmail, just so I can sync my Google Calendar with my BBC calendar. Google Calendar Sync seems to fail maybe because I have too many items or it might be the two step authentication? End of the day its not as reliable as send it to my gmail.
Its interesting because things are really starting to change and it starts with the change of outlook on the systems people use and work with everyday. Gone are the days of strict control of the employees machines… This surely has to be a good thing?
I’m now on Google Plus which seems pretty good but I got issues with it.
First up I like the circles methodology but what bugs me is the fact that those circles only exist within the Google plus ecosystem and thats even with the Google plus application on my Android phone. Weirdly enough I already tagged most of my contacts in Gmail and that does sync with my phone.
Ideally Google plus would understand the tags I’ve assigned to people in Gmail and allow me to automatically translate those into circles.
Google Plus also feels like a early Facebook right now, everything is deep inside its walls. It looks like Google might be catching up with Facebook by not making the same mistakes. But I do wonder about the integration with other Google products? I noticed the profile is synced with your Google profile so thats good, it looks like Buzz makes up the Stream part and I think I saw Google Talk somewhere on the stream bit.
One of my biggest complaints is the ability to send twitter microblogs into Buzz/Stream. I wrote on the stream space something like that. Just on a off point, it is great to see the privacy options in Google Plus, hence why I can actually link directly to the thread of discussion. In the end Adewale send a link to Unlink your feeds.
You need to unlink your feeds.
I understand why you did it. I’ve made the same mistake myself. But it’s hurting your friends, it’s hurting you, and it’s hurting the Internet. You need to stop.
You need to stop automatically dumping your feeds from one account into another.
Look, I know it’s tempting. New service, not sure how you’ll keep up with the ever demanding maw and there’s the “import your content” button, right there in the sign-up process. A quick trip through a login screen or an OAuth link and there you are: All your stuff automatically aggregated into a new one-stop-shop of the genius things that pop out of your head.
No muss, no fuss, right?
This is an illusory solution. It’s a false idol. It’s contributing to noise pollution on the Internet and the only people it helps are company execs who want to make spurious claims about “user engagement”. It’s diminishing the quality of your output and of others’ experiences.
You need to unlink your feeds and put a tiny bit more effort into using each service for what it is.
So I disagree and I’ll give you my reasons why… Of course this may only apply to me… And I understand this may not be true for everyone.
My friends are very divided and so those on facebook don’t use twitter, so there’s little duplication. I get the spamming idea but frankly if I didn’t dump my twitter into facebook, I would say little to nothing on facebook. This might also sum up how I feel about facebook generally…
Oh agreed but we covered the lack of respect I have for facebook. I would also add why the heck would I spend so much time on crafting messages which work in favor of the company hosting the social network? If there was an argument for a distributed social network, this would be it.
"Stop thinking like a spammer and starting thinking like a person." Well I would say this is nonsense. I’m one person and what I say is generally what I would say in a public space. Facebook isn’t a public space (or at least it mixes the public and walled garden too much) ideally I would be able to link (maybe even xinclude) my comment.
I know some of my friends on Facebook do wonder whats with the # and @ but they’ve mainly got over it now. Hopefully one day it will be easier to almost xinclude your thoughts from one to another and slightly alter it. Right now a linked feed is the best way to do this…
At last something we do agree on…
I have a vision of a new social networking paradigm. Handcrafted social networks.
I imagine a world where people take each network for what it is and participate (or not) on those terms. Instead of a firehose slurry of everything buckets, I imagine separate streams of purified whatever-it-is-each-service-does. I envision users that post when they’re inspired and don’t mind skipping a few days if nothing particularly interesting comes up.
I’m like Thumper’s mother. “If you can’t think of anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.”
I imagine people taking the extra 10 seconds to reformat a post for each service if the message is so relevant and important that it needs to show up more than once. I imagine being able to choose who I follow and what subset of their postings I get with a high degree of granularity.
There may come a day when this vision gets implemented on the server side. When all the social networks give me fine grain control for hiding subsets of the updates sent out by my contacts. But until that day comes, it’s gotta be solved on the client side.
I thought Google plus would be along this line but its not. It does a lot of things right including Dataportability, thanks to the Data Liberation front’s Data takeout service.
So my general thoughts is Google plus has got the basics kind of right but there overlooking some of the advantages they could bring to plus like Gmail contact sync and the Android application. The Facebook application on Android is pretty poor to say the least (i don’t even know why I got it on my phone), and frankly Google+ is even worst. Where’s the contract syncing once again? And heck why is no one doing event syncing?
I noticed Google plus does actually have my connections to Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, etc but isn’t make use of them at all. I know there’s conflict between Google and Facebook but hey if I choose to pull stuff from these other services to Google plus, thats my decision.
Google plus does feel a lot more open (and funny enough a lot like Diaspora) that the closed wall system of Facebook but they really do need to improve on certain aspects before I use it fully.
So everyone’s going crazy about Google Plus right now but am I the only one to notice, Google just rolled over and crushed Prezi. And to be honest, I’m glad they did or might do because that Prezi technology (if you can call it that) needed a good solid kick off the web. Like I said before, the concept is not bad but the actual process is a joke and not realistic for giving presentations. I’ll refer you to the conversation me and Nancy Duarte had at Thinking Digital.
The interesting part is, I don’t think Google is even thinking about it in that way. So Prezi lives on for now. But if Google was to license there technology or make it easy for people to build there own google maps like layers, it would be all over for Prezi… And once again, good riddens.
Counting from a few posts ago, I’ve been thinking…
A while ago I suggested to Mixcloud the concept of mobile playlists tailored for Mixes, but they didn’t really see the point. But recently I suggested the same thing to Dirty Si and he was a lot more receptive to the concept. Right now when I do a mix, I tend to create a piece of metadata to go with the mix. The NFO file (yep straight out of the darknet) contains the playlist order and any other metadata I feel is required. I would use PLS, M3U or even XSPF but I’ve just done something to scratch my own itch. I might switch to using XSPF with a namespace for my own metadata and add the SMIL namespace. There’s a whole bunch of hacking which needs to be done in this area…
Playlists do not equal mixes…
I’ve been thinking about this even more recently since Google and Amazon’s music locker systems.
Everyones been thinking about singles or albums. But I’m thinking way beyond that. What about mixes? Imagine if the necessary metadata was in place to create extra special experiences around mixes?
But why even mess around with the metadata when you can mess with the actual mix its self?
The Pacemaker (for example) right now, stores the actions of the dj and then recreates the mix using the tunes on the host machine. I’m wondering if you could grab that data and turn it into something like MIDI then you could really do some revolutionary things to dj mixes.
Would it be possible to setup a Amazon EC2/Google app instance which could read the midi data and use the raw tunes to create a stream in real time? What effect would this have on listen to mixes?
Once again, I’d really like to hack around with this stuff if I had the time.
About a year ago, I woke up in hospital and I asked my boss Adrian, "What did Google launch at Google IO 2010?"
Yeah crazy times but its weirdly true, maybe its all consistent with my memory of a series of dreams being in a Google run Hospital…
Anyhow, this year I was happily alive to be able to experience 2011′s Google IO (from the stream of course)
These are the highlights I saw…
- Android 3.1 Available on the Google TV with Apps!
At last a decent set top box with decent application framework. Plus the ability to create your own apps and deploy them to your own TV. Dare I say it BBC Micro for the 21 century? Plus Android will be the same on Mobile, Tablet and TV, very interesting for design challenges. - Android@Home framework for home automation
Amazing move by Google to bring some automation standard to the area. Shame its there own standard instead of supporting someone elses. But I can’t wait for Google to create a very simple web application to take advantage of this framework - Google Chrome web store across the board including paid for webapps
The web store is already making a difference to the way I am using my machines. Mozilla has backtracked on there Prism framework and are also creating a webapps store. - Android Open accessory standard
Just the Android@Home framework, its great to see Android part of something much greater. The demos of a Xbox and Playstation remote plugged into an Android device is great. I can’t wait to see Bluetooth Keyboards as standard and using that NFC chip with other things. This also must mean the end of Microsoft’s Windows CE framework? - The Android Arduino ADK
This is just simply cool, Arduino is well used and well loved. Mixing this up with Android is a good move. - Google Music beta locker system
Amazon lead the way on this one, must of the Apple fan’s are saying so what? The difference is its my music! Its also what Google is good at doing… Adding meaning and machine metadata to your content. Now if only Amazon or Google would open it up to the UK and Europe. I’d love to upload my music to one of there lockers. Specially when uploading mixes…! - Google Ice Cream Sandwich merges Tablet and Phone OS
Google finally answered the question of opening the sources of Android. It will "all be open source" said Google. - Google Film & Music store with offline viewing
Interesting but not as interesting as all the other stuff…
There’s a number of things Google is handy for as a person with dyslexia. In actual fact I’m just about to invest in a tablet running Google’s Android for this exact reason.
Some of the guys have suggested a iPad2 but there missing all the lovely little features which make it easier for someone with dyslexia to manage the world around them.
For example… Google just launched a new Google Docs application on the marketplace. On first look it just looks like a pointer to there google docs service but what people miss is the evernote style functionality of being able to turn written text into words.
Today, Google introduced the Google Docs app for Android, finally providing a native environment for the service, as well as some convenient new features.
The app lets you create, edit, upload, and share documents from your phone, and allows for near real-time collaboration.
You can also take a photo of an actual, physical text document and convert it into a Google doc, without the need for a third-party app. This feature should be handy for keeping track of receipts on trips (expense reports, anyone?) or quickly sharing other important textual information with your phone’s contacts.
This is pretty killer functionality and adds to the automatic spell checking, lookup and voice functionality of Google android already. I already have it on my own HTC desire phone.
So the question still remains, what android tablet/slate do I get?
I switched to Ubuntu over 4 years ago, and its been pretty smooth.
But its recently got even smoother thanks to Google’s Chrome browser.
Why? A lot of people don’t even know Chrome supports extensions like Firefox…
Evernote winds me up no end… I started using Nevernote. Its a java client which mainly works with evernote but to be fair its quite bulky and a little slow. However Google launched there web store and a whole bunch of html5 apps have made it into the web store. A few of the apps include Evernote clients which not only connect to Evernote but also keep a local store of the notes. Making Evernote finally fully usable and reliable on a Ubuntu laptop.
As you can also see, its not only Evernote, its also Tweetdeck without installing Adobe Air (because when I last checked the 64bit version was bad, and who wants it on there machine?). I actually stopped using Gwibber because of Tweetdeck in Chrome (sorry to say…) Readitlater, Dropbox, etc are more like Firefox extensions than full applications. I guess Mozilla’s Prism is more like the chrome applications. I did try a while ago to run Evernote in Prism but it really wasn’t built for it, maybe things have changed now but I’m using Chrome more and more, although I also use Firefox 3.6 still for most of my general stuff.
There’s a lot of low level chatter about the internet operating system but google are doing a great job actually making it happen… you can see why the concept of chrome os is fascinating
In my frustrated posts over Okcupid and Match.com, I skipped over the whole Android Honeycomb announcement.
The main thing which strikes me as smart is the Android Market web store.
At long last Google recognises the app store model is broken and they are shattering the model by opening a web store. You can now browse the store using a browser of your choice and when you choice to buy an app, its sent to your phone or tablet. Just the way it should work. Heck you can even using links point to your favourite apps, comments, etc. Genius!
This means finally developers can link to there app and join it up with there own support forums, etc. This thankfully has to be the end of the app store model. And I for one, am thanking Google for killing the model dead!
I just started using Astrid on my HTC Desire (Running android 2.2) and I’m very impressed. The thing which amazes me is the integration with Locale.
Yes it a task app but the difference is with Locale, you can set conditions. Conditions like show me this task when I’m in certain location. Show me this task when you walk into a wifi signal with a certain SSID. Show me a task when blah blah blah…
Unfortunately it seems I’m behind the curve on this one. The locale team blogged about this last year.
I put on my todo list all sorts of tasks. Sometimes they are work tasks like “fill out my expense report.” Occasionally, I add random ideas like “ask the dentist about electric toothbrushes.” More frequently I add personal tasks like “get bananas.” With Locale + Astrid, I get reminders for these tasks when I can do something about them. By tagging tasks as “groceries” and connecting the tag to a situation in Locale (for example when I am near my local Trader Joe’s), Astrid will remind me to get bananas the next time I’m near the store. In the same way I can limit Astrid’s pestering me about my expense report to times I am in the office. And the next time I am sitting in the dentist chair, Astrid can alert me to get his take on the latest teeth-cleaning gadget.
While there are many tools that provide a place to save information you want to remember, most of them lack reminders when you need them. Locale gives Astrid the power to do this in an amazingly simple way, making Astrid less annoying and much more useful.
Exactly!
So theres a interesting trend of apps building on other apps. I noticed this with Dropbox. I got a feeling that because Dropbox has been out for the iPhone for longer, there might be more tightly integration that on android at the moment. But I noticed quite a few apps are using dropbox as there syncing method instead of creating there own. Its not just syncing there’s a lot more that comes with using dropbox as the storage method.
Whats also weird is I’m now expecting dropbox syncing as standard in a lot of the apps I download. After that I’m also expecting some kind of locale ability.
In actual fact, if I was to improve Astrid, I would indeed the ability to use dropbox and create tasks using a very simple XML format. It currently syncs with Google Tasks but I’ve not really got that syncing with Evolution or anything else yet, so something else would be great.
I’ll be watching this trend of apps working off the back of other apps more closely.
