Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
More from Twin Cities Brightest
Some more love from Minneapolis Light Painter, Dana Maltby of Twin Cities Brightest. Keep up the good work, buddy.
Friday, June 26th, 2009
The Epic Facebook/Twitter Faceoff
This week Facebook’s new “Messaging Service” went into Beta Mode, allowing users to have any post they make be pushed to the ENTIRE world wide web, just their friends list or just specific friends, another blatant attempt by Facebook to emulate their increasingly popular competition, Twitter.
As of late it feels like Facebook is becoming less and less original, which is what cast them into the forefront in the first place. Facebook was a novel invention that re-cast the mold of ’social networking,’ and now that they have the slightest bit of real competition for users (because, lets be honest, MySpace is long gone the way of the Friendster) they’ve spun into panic mode. Facebook, take a second and relax. Evaluate what it is you do better than Twitter and capitalize on that. Twitter does an amazing job of fulfilling people’s desires to have their random thoughts heard by everyone at any given time, no clutter, simple interface. Facebook excels at creating the complete community aspect where you become part of a group and can interact with friends via messaging, updates, photos, videos, etc, etc. So why try and cram yourself into the one dimensional aspect of Twitter? Twitter was innovative in the sense that it took one simple aspect and made a mountain out of it. Facebook, you’ve got the mountain already, just continue to focus on what makes the WHOLE experience better, not what one component you can change to be more like your competition (a competition who doesn’t provide a fraction of the services you provide, nor intends to).
There. Got that all out in the open and we can all be friends again.
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
Another Android Release
Another Google Android supported phone from device maker HTC was announced today. HTC is currently the only device maker to have successfully launched an Android based phone (two phones, to be precise) with plenty of others on the docket to release ‘later this year.’ Their newest device, the “Hero” is set to launch in the US later this year, again on the T-Mobile platform (which makes a fair amount of us Sevnthsinners quite happy to have stuck with AT&T) and proves to be quite an amazing little device. One of the beauties of the Android platform is its ability to accommodate multiple UI structures, meaning it can look different depending on the device. What’s also nice is it now fully supports multi-touch functionality, something Apple had blocked during its first few releases. I still think it has too many physical buttons, which is an inherent problem with the Android system (it requires a fair amount of physical buttons), but I suppose its always nice to have a physical button to feel for when you’re flailing around for your phone in the middle of the night.
This little YouTube clip shows just how sharp this little guy is gonna be:
More over on Wired.com:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/06/htc-hero/
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
The Closing of the Mobile Web
Today, the concept of the ‘mobile web’ becomes more and more a reality. Every carrier and every phone maker, striving to make smarter, more efficient devices, in a continued effort to lessen the gap between traditional ‘web browsing’ and new mobile web interfacing. To date, four major players have introduced their own “App Stores,” each with their share of titles and subtle nuances that make each store uniquely tuned to that device’s specialties.
HOWEVER, only one player has really triumphed in the market, and that, as we all know, is Apple and their iPhone App Store. First to market and making the process relatively simple and painless for developers to access their developer kit and submit apps, it seems Apple is doing everything the right way. Maybe? Or Maybe not? In the past few months the amount of acclaim has been met with just as much criticism of an increasing amount of inconsistency involved in the ‘approval’ of apps submitted by developers.
Now, we’ve talked about this here before, but again it comes to the forefront, as Apple’s inconsistency is not brought on only by itself, but it now appears their network (remember these guys? The one responsible for limiting many of the new iPhone 3GS features due to a lack of network preparedness in the US?) is pulling some strings as well. Now I understand that they’re running a business, but hey, you’re running a business that opened itself up as a major player in the whole ‘internet’ game. There’s a thing called Net Neutrality and by opening your devices up to use the ‘internet’ and by allowing developers to create applications that utilize this ‘internet’ you can’t just pick and choose what you let happen and what you don’t (outside of the realm of clearly malicious apps, viruses and things like that, of course). That’s not how it works.
There are folks inside the AT&T world who are claiming it stems from an issue of their network being overloaded and that it is in no way an attempt to ‘close’ the mobile web, but this kind of inconsistent behavior has been going on since before the rash increase in iPhone users, and honestly, doesn’t appear to be just a network issue.
Always a hot issue, will it ever be resolved? Who knows? Its just a little frustrating/discouraging to see the worlds most innovative and forward thinking device maker be so restricting and ‘closed’ both by its ‘approval standards’ and network restrictions. Feels a little opposite what they’re trying to do with the technology.
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
This New iPhone
So I realize this all happened two days ago, but I wanted to let it all sink in for a minute first. The new iPhone is coming out, and its a bit lackluster, especially considering all the new devices hitting the streets these days (ie: G1, ion, Magic and Palm Pre). Now, there are some great new additions to the device, most of which these other devices already have, but nothing that really makes any of us say ‘wow, Apple gone and done it again!’ Honestly, it feels a bit like Apple is playing ‘catch up’ this round, and maybe, hopefully, pretty please, releasing a more jaw dropping device late in the year around christmastime or something.
One factor that’s really sad, though, is that some of the many needed additions that actually WERE added this time around, cannot be used by the largest base of iPhone users. That’s right, all of those users locked into AT&T here in the ol’ US of A. The new iPhone supports MMS messaging, AT&T’s network does not support it for the iPhone. The new iPhone supports tethering (allowing a computer/laptop to connect to the iPhone and use the cellular data network as an internet connection), AT&T does not allow tethering on its network. So Apple releases a new device, one that even despite its non-groundbreaking status this time around, will sell millions of devices, HOWEVER, the majority of those users will not be able to use two very prominent features. Its really kinda sad to see one of the worlds most innovative gadget brands being stifled by a network desperately trying to stay relevant in today’s über competitive cell phone industry.
Oh, well. Apple, you didn’t wow anyone this time around, but I feel a little bad you’re getting dumped on by your network too. At least the new operating system is nice.
Saturday, June 6th, 2009
Sevnthsin Independence Day 2009
To celebrate our 3rd year, the lot of us took a trip down to Valley Fair to chip off some crust and temporarily brush off our day to day responsibility. We spent about 5 hours jumping from ride to ride, dodging pre-teen drama (Not Aaron, but any of the 2000 or so 13 year olds running circles around us.) and stuffing candy coated this and that down our pipes. We all had a blast and in my opinion, most definitely calls for a return for round 2 and fresh layer of sun.
