Jonathan Davies

Even with the release of Firefox 3 I still remain an avid Safari user. Why?

Because when I was using Firefox 2 I was bit two many times with it crashing on me over and over again and it using to much in the way of system resources. I didn’t use any extensions (I don’t feel I found any that I really need to use or enhance my computing experience exponentially).

Yes, I know Firefox 3 has changed all of this, but still. I have no need to. Safari does everything that I need and more. It’s faster, looks better and has better integration with the OS.

It’s a simple reason, but they’re simple problems - sorry Firefox but I’m not about to switch today.

I know a lot of you probably think I’m wrong, why?

Apple as of late have starting working with lots more companies to bring a better experience to its users. They’ve worked with Google on integrating YouTube and Google Maps into the iPhone. Yahoo! have also helped integrate some of their widgets into the iPhone.

There has also been an advent of rumors that Apple is working with Google to add live video streaming to iTunes as well.

An interesting idea which has pushed me to talk about how the tech industry especially, are starting to collaborate a lot of their products. Why would they do this?

Increasing awareness is a major factor. Having that name in the search box every time you want to search is a big selling point. I wonder how much Google pays Mozilla to have their search as the default search in Firefox ?

You’ve also got to think about the people that you are trying to reach, maybe you want to go into a new market where making a brand new product wouldn’t be appropriate. Instead you could confer with another company with a strong product already in that market. Sure, the initial cost might be great but if people start to recognize you as a player then half of the work is already done.

Integration is great for consumers, if they can do something with one app instead of another two others they’re happy. It’s a simple message but can be a lot harder to put into practice.

When you go buy an iPod, do you buy it because it is great at what it does or because its an iPod? Its the same with computers; do you buy a Dell because they’re reliable or because everyone you know has one?

Brand matters.

Consumers rarely care about what they buy because of what it does, you can have something that does more than an iPod for a better price, they don’t care - people will still buy the iPod because everyone has one and they are the cool thing to have. I mean, you don’t pull out your new Zune to show everyone on the school bus do you?

A strong brand means you have a better relationship with the consumer, half the work is you promoting yourself to 50% of the people you encourage. The other 50% of the business you get is because the people you sold to liked your product enough to tell someone else about it. That is how you get a household name.

The hoover, for instance. You might not realize it but the correct term is vacuum-cleaner; the brand hoover has become so recognized that it becomes the name, even if you buy a Dyson.

Unfortunately for most people starting out in the product business; if there is already a massive leader (lets say Microsoft in OS software) there is very little chance that you are going to unseat it in your own life time. To build up your brand you need to innovate and let people know about it! There are probably thousands of great websites and blogs out there that no one knows about but are doing amazing things:

Do them a favor and tell your friends about them, just once.

Technology plays a large roll in my daily activities at school. For some lessons I write my notes on my MacBook Pro, I do a lot of video recording and editing for school events. In fact I am going to be editing a whole load of footage over the next few weeks.

Why do I write a lot of my notes on my computer? To stay organized really. All my notes are arranged specifically to the subject and lesson that I am studying. Most importantly; I know where everything is. I am not very good at manually organizing things. I tend to loose pieces of paper and it can take a long time for me to find stuff. If I can’t find something on my Mac, then I simply use Spotlight and get to it in seconds.

The problem with schools and technology at the moment is simply that teachers don’t seem to trust them as a learning tool totally yet. In all the lessons that I do - only a handful am I allowed to take notes for on my computer.

Why are they like this? I think it is simply because of the situation that my school’s network used to be in. There was a point where files could go missing or magically become deleted. This caused a lot of mistrust about the school’s network that I believe is still present today.

Luckily, things are changing, slowly, for the better. Teachers are becoming more educated and IT is becoming a bigger part of learning at my school. Interactive white boards are in a lot of classrooms and projects are more commonly requested to be presented on a computer.

They are small steps, but it’s still progress non the least.

How is technology treated in your learning environment?

Since the advent of the blog there has been a new kind of journalism, that in which the words of a nobody can reach thousands of people. Even personal blogs where all they talk about is what they had for lunch seem to have an attraction. Be it family members or random strangers who just want to know that there is still innocent things happening in the world. (FYI: I don’t do this!).

It is for this exact reason that podcasting is such a revolution - you don’t need much, you can even get away with paying nothing for your blog - you can just write. Journalism in the last few years has evolved on the internet, the gap between the old media journalist and new media journalist is closing. But there are still some things that have yet to change, and for the public to realize how similar these two forms of journalism are.

It seems that though internet journalism is encroaching on print journalism, old media are continuing to ignore that fact that soon, they will have a problem on their hands. People won’t go to the newspaper to get their news, or watch TV. Instead they will watch on-demand videos and read the news that interests them in their feed reader. All that currently needs to happen for this to take effect is for RSS to reach a wider audience.

Is this a good thing though? Is choosing the stories that you read limiting the wider stretch of the news that is given to you by having random stories you are at least aware of the current state of affairs - you could become shortsighted. Not something you want to do in a world like this.

Sure, baby steps have been made, they have a website where all the articles are published, but they still lack two things: community and personality.

I don’t think that bloggers get the respect that they should either, do you see Apple giving people who are solely bloggers iPhones early? No, instead the big newspapers. I find this interesting when certain blogs probably get more “readers” than some newspapers.

Will this change? I think it should; the facts are showing us that less and less people are buying newspapers and the only real thing that can be associated with it is the rise of the internet.

Do you think bloggers are given enough respect?

A big teen blogger in the blogosphere has made a massive change to the way his online life operates. Glenn Wolsey has decided to alienate his name from his original blog, GlennWolsey.com and move to a new, impersonal blog DesktopVibes.com. I think it’s a pretty interesting, yet risky move to make - though if pulled off well could have major benefits for both him and his readers.

Why did he do this? In his own words:

…the ability to bring in guest writers into the fold, an easier and more structured path to building a brand, and the ability to write abut things I wouldn’t have normally done with the site attached to the GlennWolsey.com domain name.

It’s true, and these are all valid points, but this may come at a price. A “possible” loss of readers. Lets face it, a lot of Glenn’s readers are going to be more casual. Even lazy and will probably never switch to the new feed. The thing is though, starting a blog for a second time is obviously a lot easier. you do have a following - even if you do have a few losses. And of course, you’ve learnt a lot, less mistakes will be made, I sure know this; there are many changes that I would have otherwise done. You’ve got to way up the pros and cons and see if you feel it will be for the better.

And what will happen to GlennWolsey.com?

Moving to Desktop Vibes for technological content and leaving this weblog for personal based entries

I just hope GlennWolsey.com doesn’t become stagnant, even if it does not remain necessarily technology related it would be nice to see an insight into what Glenn is up to. Would I do this myself? Maybe. If I felt that my blog was getting to the point where to add a new angle I would have to separate my personal branding.

What do you think of Glenn’s choice, and would you do it yourself?

Yesterday I was having a conversation about feed readers. I was discussing the way in which people use them, and I have come to an interesting conclusion. Using an RSS Reader could actually limit the exposure to what you get on the internet. Though it is nice having the internet come to you, being able to explore when you go to the internet is amazing as well.

Think about it; all you get is the content through the reader. You miss the design, the comments, the experience that the blog’s author intended to give you. When I am browsing the web I might come across an interesting story, look at the comments and see a great one, click on his website and be exposed to a whole archive of fresh, content.

I think this can be a common symptom of your average feed reader. One way I have tried to tackle this is by using my RSS Reader as simply a way of telling me when someone has published some new content. Sometimes I’ll read it within NetNewsWire, but quite often I’ll click through to read the article - I think it offers a better experience.

That said, I don’t over subscribe - I keep to a few select feeds that I feel allow me to cover a large variation of topics. If something catches my eye, or I’d be interested in seeing other people’s opinions I’ll jump through to the site.

My fear with RSS is that it will alienate the readers of the blog.

Thoughts?

On Friday I returned back home from being away at my grandfather’s. He has no internet connection (yes, I have tried to persuade him to get one!). Being away from the internet for a long time can be troublesome. Though I did not miss it while I was away, the amount of “stuff to catch up on” was out of control - especially in my RSS reader.

Even though, I am happy to say, I try to keep my feed subscriptions down. I still had nearly five-hundred unread items. So I tried something new, I scanned through all the items looking for interesting titles and flagged any that caught my eye. Once I’d been through a folder I marked all as read and moved on.

I’m thinking of doing something similar on a day to day basis. By doing this I can tighten up on the content that I look at and stay ore focused.

Similarly, though for a far longer period of time, Shawn Blanc has also been away. He has posted a few items that caught his eye while he has been away - I think it’s a good idea; so I thought I would do something similar.

• Flickr now does video: Only for 90 seconds and for pro members. It seems the Flickr community is up in arms about this. The best description of Flickr video I can find is by Michael Mistretta.
  

  It will not become a place for video shows or music videos. Instead, it will become a place that, much like twitter, where you are free to express yourself and what you are doing visually. Before, you could only do this through photos. Now, you have photos and video.

• Engadget has had a redesign: There is now a lot more space for the actual content which I like - it was a long time coming.
• Leo Laporte is still having a great time in Tasmania: he has done a great video of the kit he used and some of his photos are breathtaking.
• Final Cut Sever was released: they are only what? Only over half a year late.
• Office Stress Get a Mac ad: I’m kind of getting board of these, I think Apple can do better.

What else did I miss?

I’ve been using Flickr for a few months now and really enjoy it. But, I’ve noticed that there are a couple of trends on how people use it.

Some use Flickr as a way to store ALL of their photos in the cloud - like a backup. Or perhaps as you use it to share pictures with family, perhaps the way it was intended to, where the quality of the image does not matter at all - but the contents of it does. If you have relatives that live across the world, how are you going to show them pictures of your new child, I think we are beyond snail mail at this point.

But lately I have seen Flickr used as a portfolio to showcase people’s best photos - not all of them but the ones that they feel are the best of what they have taken.

Personally I use Flickr to display pretty much any image that I think others, not necessarily friends, would be interested in. I don’t do a lot of editing once taken; I just put them up mostly to show whoever wants to see them. As I previously mentioned, I think that Flickr is primarily geared towards sharing your photographic memories with people you know. Lets face it, most of the tools are designed for that.

While when used as a portfolio it is mainly for critique. Where quite often comments left are about the pictures themselves and not the content.

I think that Flickr remains a healthy community with both types of users, and to tell you the truth I always enjoy looking at the “portfolio” Flickr streams - some of the stuff these guys are capable of is amazing.

How do use Flickr and why?

What is your Twitter Quotient?

Chris Thomson has found a very neat little service that shows you stuff about the people who follow you and the activity that you have. But it also ads a bit of commentary to the situation that is quite interesting.

Here is just one of mine:

It’s people like you that make Twitter so f*cking slow! Shut! Up! Already!