Tag: google

Dj mixes rebooted…

pacemaker_sonar_june_2007_10

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.

Google IO 2011… My thoughts

Google 2011

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…

Google technology is a dyslexic dream

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?

The internet operating system for real

Chrome Extensions

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

Thank you Google for the Android Market Web Store

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!

Google bought youtube and they laughed….

Google is buying video-sharing website YouTube for $1.65bn (£883m) in shares. So is this is a gamble or a winning investment?

Is this the best business model for an internet start-up? Have a clever idea, build a large audience while burning through lots of money, and wait to be bought by Google?

No matter how you look at it, you have to admit Google really did get a bargain with Youtube.com. Its now a corner stone of the web.

Funny enough further in the same piece…

YouTube is not MySpace

A few months ago the number of YouTube users overtook that of the web’s other great networking site, MySpace. Last year, MySpace was snapped up by old media giant Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation for $580m. This, though, is not about who paid more for how many eyeballs. It’s about the underlying dynamics.

Thats pretty funny with the current state of Myspace

Mobile Apps working together to better support the user

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.

Kindle everywhere your ebooks everywhere…

Kindle everywhere

Amazon are really cornering the reader market. Not only do they have one of the best ebook readers, but its also one of the cheapest (using there ability to ship many of them). But what really smashed it for them has to be the app which pretty much runs on everything. From PC’s to Android phones. Windows phone 7 to the ipad. Now there launching a kindle for the web. This will optimise any browser into a ebook reader. Impressive stuff.

But I’m worried…

This all seems to be out of the same play book as Apple and there itunes music ecosystem. I can already imagine the special links being sent around social networks pointing into the kindle ecosystem. The only saving grace is the kindle for the web.

Hopefully Amazon will follow the Google approach with these things and leverage the web not fight against it.

If Amazon screw up, Google seem to be right behind with there own ebook store.

What does this mean for the Kindle device, well this is all good news for the Kindle. Kindle is a fantastic eink device but shouldn’t be the only place to see ebooks. Hopefully more people will make there way through ebooks on devices like their phones then make there way towards reading on a eink device. I use to read my ebooks on my PDA (compaq ipaq) and it was painful but I found myself getting use to it. Now I can’t imagine using a phone or anything LCD like to read large amounts of text. But thats just me…

Its great Kindle is everywhere, and people can choose how they want to view the ebooks, period. Choice is good!

Now if they can just sort out the ability to buy a book and ebook version at the same time that would be great.

The Joy of Data

Via infosthetics,

It was only a matter of time before the mind-changing talk of Hans Rosling would find its way to the television medium. A reincarnation of this talk will be part of "The Joy of Stats", a new television documentary that soon will appear at BBC. This documentary will explore various forms of data gathering and statistical analysis, such as a new application that mashes police department data with the city’s street map to show what crime is being reported street by street, house by house, in near real-time; and Google’s current efforts at the machine translation project

From what I seen of the programme, it should be called the joy of data not stats.

A few things got me smiling the last few days

Google Docs are now editable on Android and iOS devices. This means I can finally go a head with my plans for a special niche type of service.

Paypal unveil Micropayments at 5% per 5cents. No idea how much that will be in pound but it doesn’t sound too bad. Of course Facebook have already signed up hoping to get some virtual good action

Welcome to Steve Jobs distortation field, where open is closed

infrastructures

Steve jobs is a tricky figure, theres no doubt about that. When he talks, you can feel the distortion field emerging from everything chosen word he uses. As I’ve always said Steve Jobs and Apple are against choice and therefore freedom. Evidence? Well theres tons this week…

Steve jobs slagged off Android saying Android is too difficult to build for due to many different types of handsets. He then said "Twitterdeck" (yeah I know – think he meant Tweetdeck, has he got any clue about social media? This wouldn’t be a problem if he didn’t use it as a example) was having a nightmare developing for Android.

Steve Jobs’ amateur sleuthing last night brought up that gorgeous TweetDeck chart showing the vast variety of Android handsets out there, which the Apple CEO used to illustrate the "daunting challenge" he perceives developers have to face when creating apps that work across all devices and OS builds for the platform. Only problem with his assertion (aside from Steve calling the company TwitterDeck)? His opposite number on the TweetDeck team thinks nothing could be further from the truth: "we only have 2 guys developing on Android TweetDeck so that shows how small an issue fragmentation is."

Next evidence.

"Let’s talk about the avalanche of tablets. First, there are only a few credible competitors. And they all have seven-inch screen. This size isn’t sufficient to create great tablet apps."

"And this size is useless unless you include sandpaper so users can sand their fingers down to a quarter of their size. We’ve done extensive testing and 10 inches is the minimum tablet size."

"Given that tablet users will have a smartphone in their pocket, there’s no point in giving up screen size. Seven inch tablets are tweeners — too big to be a phone, and too small to compete with the iPad."

What a load of crap, if people want something smaller then the Android tablets are ideal to serve them. In Steve Jobs head, a 12inch tablet might be ideal but for the rest of us, its too big and too heavy to be really useful. Once again choice is the key word here. If you like the idea of smaller tablets, then Apple isn’t offering you the choice. Most iPad users I speak to wonder when the camera version is coming.

Even more crap…

We think this open versus closed argument is a smokescreen that hides the real question: What’s better for users, fragmented versus integrated?

"We believed integrated will trump fragmented every time."

"We are very committed to the integrated approach, no matter how many times Google characterizes it as closed, and we believe that it will triumph over the fragmented approach, no matter how any times Google characterizes it as open."

Android is fragmented, we all knew it would happen but thats not a excuse to give up your choice. I have friends who would like a physical keyboard why penalize them for this? For some people the touch screen isn’t friendly, but steve jobs doesn’t care about them. In actual fact its "Its my way or the highway!"

iOS is closed and google are right to call it so.

Finally in Q&A

One of these days we’ll eventually learn the Android numbers, and I imagine we’ll compete with them for a very long time. But we have very different approaches — ours is to make devices that just work.

Oh yeah of course just work? I’m very sure Android developers are thinking the same. Your not alone in that steve. No in actual fact your only interested in telling people through hardware and software how to live there lives.

Welcome to the steve jobs distortion field…

Google App Inventor, excellent stuff

Google have really hit it out of the park this time. Google App Inventor (sign up page) allows almost anyone to build a Android application using a simple interface. Now don’t get me wrong, the interface is pretty nasty but heck Google are democratization app development and in my book thats great news for content producers or just people with good ideas and a little time.

This all flies in the face of Apple’s restrictive SLA which prevents apps being made with a application on another system.

I look forward to seeing what other democratization google does in the near future, but boy do google need some good designers, because this looks pretty ugly. Hopefully that won’t put people off. Maybe Google should get Adobe involved in this one?

Google tv redefining TV? Not quite…

I totally missed Google TV and Google IO while I was in Hospital. It was one of the first things I asked for when I woke up, sad but true.

So my manager gave me a cut out about the Google IO event, which seemed to focus on Google TV and the next Android (still exploring). So generally if I was boxee I would be alarmed but not too concerned. They could really take advantage of the standards google’s using to power the remote for example. But lets not forget Google have a massive influence and moving into there area has to be worrysome. Now lets get this all in perspective.

This isn’t about Apple vs Google, its about the open internet vs the closed world of the TV. TV has been tightly controlled for years by the TV producers, etc. Now that wall is falling down.

Other people have written about the hardware and software so I won’t do that, instead I’ll look at the concept.

For a while now the BBC and its content producer partners have been working on spec for the next generation of Television viewing aka Project Canvas. When I first saw this I was surprised because it really lacked the internet and openness. I walked away thinking this is what a broadcast company would put out thinking about the notion of convergence of the web and tv. However this really did my head in because all the clever internet ideas of what Canvas could have been have been picked up Google and the google TV. Which is a shame for the BBC.

However, the weird thing is that although Canvas is what a broadcast company would do. GoogleTV is what a internet company would do if they wanted to converge the TV with the internet. However just thinking about the UK market for now, freeview has a major following and I can’t really see Google TV make much of a dent in that right now. I might be wrong but Google TV is very much a American thing and google haven’t really thought about the other markets as of yet.

So back to Google TV, there partners include Intel, logitech, Sony, bestbuy, dish network, Adobe, plus others. Note none of these are actually Content creaters/producers except of course Sony. The Sony side there talking to seem to be the engineering side rather than the content producing side. There was no deals or even talk about the content side of Sony. There will be a massive push in the states from Best Buy but details about the rest of the world is almost non exist.

Generally GoogleTV is once again interesting (and comes up open trumps here) because it can browse any website instead of the Canvas/XBMC/AppleTV model which is apps or scripts which allow you to access certain sites. There is a real opportunity to make TV aware sites like Youtube TV which was also announced at Google IO 2010. I’m actually very surprised no one has yet wrote a XBMC or Boxee script to take advantage of the new Youtube TV format. Generally this means your site can be viewed by millions and millions of people on there TV while they watch something else. But I wonder with no content producers on board will the likes of Hulu block GoogleTV or provide a crippled experience? In a ideal world I guess Google would suggest that everyone should use YouTube to deliver there content to the world, like channel 4 now do. And thats the killer thing, for everyone who uses youtube and other video sharing sites to distribute there media. Google are tackling the TV problem from both directions. Hardware, software and altering the code of the web.

Its opens the door to all the user generated media out there. TV producers must be somewhat rocking in there seats with a little bit of fear. Google have opened the door to the open web and have the might to keep it open. The problem is the price.

No one knows the price yet but the hardware is going to cost at least £50 or $50 which means its not going to get the penetration it requires. Its mainly going to be a glorified Tivo unless they can get the price down. Those who can afford the box have already got something like a Apple TV, XBMC or Boxee running. It won’t take much for them to adopt the open standards and emulate exactly what a google tv box does.

Theres also a problem when it comes to the social aspect of (or identity of the people watching) TV. Google TV already picks up the bluetooth of the phones of the people watching the TV (in the same room) but is that what you really want? Interestingly in the Google TV primer theres some hints of the problem.

Here are a few tips for those who haven’t designed for TV before. In a television environment, you must:

  • Understand that content is king.
  • Get users to the content as quickly and easily as possible.
  • Don’t interrupt when users are watching TV. Instead, make the viewing experience better.
  • Respect the living room context.
  • Think about what users will and won’t want to do when viewing TV with their family and friends.
  • Remember that TV is social.
  • Consider how groups might use your website or application.

Offer ways for individuals to use your site or apps in social settings.

  • Learn the pros and cons of TV screens and audio.
  • TV screens are wider and colors look different.
  • Text must be readable from a distance.
  • Sound is now a viable interface element.
  • Make it easy.
  • Offer simple choices and make actions obvious and easy to select.
  • Provide navigation that is simple enough for a remote control.

Thats only the start of the problem. Its great what Google has done but I can’t imagine what developed applications made for a phone will be like on a TV. Its goes back a little bit to what I said about the Apple TV.

The Living room is a funny place filled with different people and different exceptions. Google really needs to reach out to the content creation community and listen to what they say. Right now Google TV looks like something a Internet company who don’t fully get the dynamics of the TV/living room would build. Fantastic they have taken the standards route and pushed openness as far as it can go into the living room but now its time to consider the content and the experience. Or at least get some partners who do understand the content and experience. If they don’t I can see the Hulu problem growing and it may cause even more paywalls like the current newspaper situation.

Android 2.0.1 Eclair running on my HTC Blackstone (Touch HD)

Those guys on the XDA developers are seriously geniuses, Android 1.6 is working and very stable it seems on most of the windows mobile phones including my HTC Touch HD (blackstone). But who wants 1.6 when 2.0 is available? Well thats working too now…

Whats not working….Bluetooth. GPS and both Cameras. But everything else works!

I followed this simple guide and only hit a problem with my new 8 gig Micro SD card which I had to swap for a old 1gig Micro SD card which has been floating around in my bag for ever.

Pictures & Videos will follow soon…

Facebook, Google And Plaxo Join The DataPortability Workgroup

Dataportability

Forget Open social, this is huge! This a huge win for interoperability, portability and fair use. Chris told me a while ago but promised to say nothing till now. It also shows how much influence characters like scoble have, but I'm sure these companies were looking at Data portability long before scobles account got suspended.

After publishing an invitation to Facebook to join the DataPortability Working Group January 4, we never thought that Facebook would accept it. Today changes everything you’ve ever thought about social-networking data and lock-in before, because today Facebook, Google and Plaxo have joined the DataPortability Workgroup.

Google and Plaxo joining are a positive, however given that both have previously joined together for platforms such as OpenSocial it’s not that significant, but Facebook is another matter. On January 4 Michael sort of defended Facebook’s stance against Plaxo pulling data from Facebook on the grounds that “Facebook also has a very good reason for protecting email addresses – user privacy.” Today, by joining the DataPortability Working Group Facebook is embracing open standards and open access, and that is a huge fundamental change from its previous stance on being locked in to closed standards.

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