I have blogged a few times lately about attempts publishers are making the price of content on the internet (here and here, if you’re interested). Traditional media sources and content producers have always struggled with creating a profitable online model, and the rise of the smartphone and the tablet both highlights the issues they are facing, and presents new opportunities for a solution. Two more attempts at this solution have been getting publicity recently. First, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has announced it’s plans for a new, national US publication designed specifically for the iPad. The publication is will feature short, snappy news stories (take this to mean lots of pictures, little in the way of analysis) and has been created with the goal of “having young people read newspapers”. The second thing which got me thinking about it was a story about a series of new magazines created specifically for tablets, called Nomad Editions. Basically, the idea behind is that they’ll produce 5 “editions” around specific topics (food, movies, surfing, viral video, etc), published weekly, which users will be able to subscribe to. It will be built using an interesting technology called Treesaver , which allows users to view ther same content, using the same addresses, on their desktop or mobile device.
These are both nice ideas, but they both seem inspired by a premise I’m not sure I agree with. Mark Edmiston, CEO of Nomad, claimed that Nomad was borne of that fact that “…people reading on their iPads, they’re reading a different way”. Rupert Murdoch made similar claims about his national newspaper concept. The implication in both cases is that the new technology necessitates new content, as well as new content delivery. (more…)
And here’s a few awesome Safari extensions so far!
Google fonts in safari
Change your fonts to all google fonts, Droid Serif is a personal favourite
Built With - right click to check out the stats of how a site is built… view info on which Analytics and Tracking are installed, Advertising, Widgets and more
Gmail checker
Displays your unread msg’s count in the toolbar
A site I stumbled across recently is HTML 5 Readiness, a beautiful site which annotates the progress of HTML 5 and CSS 3 over the last three years.
HTML5 is the next generation of HTML. As HTML switches to an unversioned development model, there may never be a HTML 6.
“HTML is an unbroken line stretching back almost two decades, and version numbers are a vestige of an older development model for standards that never really matched reality very well anyway. HTML5 is so last week. Let’s talk about what’s next.” Mark Pilgrim, Google
Browser support is still fragmented, Can I Use is another great reference for compatibilty features for HTML 5, CSS 3 and SVG. You can also check out HTML5 test to see how well your browser of choice rates in the HTML5 support stakes.
Another great tool is Modernizr – a lightweight and simple JavaScript library that helps you take advantage of emerging web technologies (CSS3, HTML 5) using feature detection.
A few of the features I am pretty excited about for HTML5 include:
- The geolocation API It’s an opt in basis, so the obvious privacy consideration for users is taken into account in the spec.
- Microdata – “Professor Markup says….” Microdata allows us to use name / value pairs from custom vocabularies and add them to documents.
Any other HTML 5 / CSS 3 tools, features and sites to add?
After a bit of grovelling and negotiating I’ve finally been allowed to ditch the iPhone and replace it with the new HTC Desire (w00t!), and I thought now would be a good time to document my Android experience thus far. So here are my thoughts about it from the first few days..
So Apple’s WWDC has finally been announced and will run from June 7 to 11 at the Moscone Center West, San Francisco. Apple is calling this year “The Center of the App Universe”, which presumably means there will be a big focus on the app driven platforms; iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch. The WWDC has always been Steve Jobs’ big chance to tell the world what he’s been up to in his awed keynote, but has Gizmodo’s leak taken the thunder out of the party?
Last Wednesday night (St Pat’s) Social Media Club Melbourne (SMCMelb) ran their second event “Building Brand Buzz” And with not a single green t-shirts or sloppy green hat to be seen, the 80+ strong crowd were given an insight to the how three Melbourne entrepreneurs have used social media to build significant communities around their business. On hand to share their stories were;
Scott Kilmartin from Haul, Steve Sammartino from Rentoid and Sahil Merchant from Magnation
An interesting debate emerged from the panel around the concept of who should, can or is, the person behind the social media voice of a brand. The panel were quite divided in their opinions. One side trusting all involved with the company to be contributors whilst the other believing that the voice of the brand needs consistency and can therefore not be managed by anyone other than the main man at the top. It was an interesting debate that raised a number of significant issues around social media and its relationship with a brand.
What do you think? Do you let people tweet etc on you or your brands behalf?
Well done to SMCMelb for putting on a great, free (yep you heard me, free) event. The location worked, the food was good and “Dirty ‘Ole Town’ wasn’t being blasted to the crowd.
If you are interested in getting down to the next SMCMelb event, and you should, make sure you follow SMCMelb for updates. (#smcmelb to follow the tweet stream)
Now, time to put the iphone down and head out to join the green, drunk rabble.
I’ve now been working at Igloo for a little over a month, and it has been a massive career change for me. Learning the web development role has been fun and exciting, and the job has both similarities and differences to what I was used to, video game development.
One big change for me was the programming language used in web development, C#. (pronounced see-sharp).
I’m used to programming in C++, and only played with C# a little bit at home. The games industry generally only uses C# for game tools, and not for actual game code, and my work in that area was very minimal.
Twitter and everyone digital are going crazy over Apple’s announcement of the ipad today, as it tries to blur the lines further between an ipod, a netbook and an eReader. But initial reports have received it poorly, labeling it as a “jack of some trades, a master of none”. Here are some of the obvious shortfalls:
No camera- Video calling would be awesome on the ipad. It has a microphone, allowing it to make voip/skype calls over your wifi connection, but then with no camera- skype is out.
No multi-tasking- with the ipad packing some serious processing punch, you would expect to be able to tab between your apps the way you would on a netbook. Mr. Jobs appears to disagree.
No flash- internet browsing on the ipad will feel natural and exciting, but without background processing and flash support will just feel like a super-sized iphone.
Gaming- yes, they look cool and all, but with a world so in love at the community aspect of gaming (xbox live) and interactivity with the Nintendo Wii and Project Natal the ipad will be used in the same way as on the iphone: a gimmicky-time waster.
No USB ports: the inability to upload via USB is a major oversight by Apple. Obviously it is an attempt to limit the piracy of ebooks, music and movies, but it cripples everyone who would want to transfer anything on-the-go. Isn’t that what being portable is all about?
At the end of the day, the ipad will not replace anything like the laptop or smartphone did, it will be complementary to existing technologies that are commonplace in our lives. Hardly revolutionary at the moment, but remember that the initial iphone was slammed when it was first released and we all know how that ended..
