“Let’s talk iPhone” event Oct 5. No new iPhone ?
Posted Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 3:26 am by Jason Cartwright
Apple have finally confirmed a special invite-only iPhone Event on October 4th 10:00 am (US Pacific time), which will be October 5th Australian time. John Paczkowski over at All Things D reported the news a short time ago. The invite graphic has a very basic grid of 4 default iPhone applications with the text ‘Let’s talk iPhone’ below.
While it is great to have an iPhone-related event locked-in, there is something about the invite feels strange. There’s no teasing image of an iPhone 5 silhouette, which could be done without revealing critical information. Reading between the lines, the very blunt statement, Let’s talk iPhone, combined with picture of app icons, almost sounds like Apple will not launch a new iPhone but focus on iOS 5 on the iPhone.
It is telling that this event will take place to a small invite-only select crowd at Apple’s Cupertino campus, rather than at WWDC in front of thousands at a larger venue like Moscone West Centre like they have in the past. Let’s hope this event isn’t Apple’s way of letting us down gently that iPhone 5 is delayed. Time will tell.
More info @ All Things D.
Is it really time to stand and work ?
Posted Monday, September 26, 2011 at 6:24 pm by Jason Cartwright
There is a growing trend in technology startups to use a new style of working. Standing desks are design so you can work at your desk while standing. This is achieved in one of 2 ways, either the monitor and keyboard move up to your standing height, or the entire desk surface can be raised. Human beings are after all, designed to be standing, so it does make sense, but are we ready to stand and work ?
At CeBit earlier this year, JustStand.org were showing off a number of standing desks to the local IT Industry. According to research, standing while you work lets you not only maintain a more ergonomically correct posture, allowing internal organs to function better and burn calories while you work. If you think about it, most singers would stand up while performing as sitting down compresses your body and effects airflow and circulation.
While all that sounds great, the reality is many positions already require employees to be on their feet all day. Most people will complain about leg and foot pain from standing all day, so is there really merit in standing while you work ?
What do you think of the idea? Great or ridiculous ? Tell us in the comments.
More info on standing desks @ http://juststand.org
Hands-on with Facebook Timeline
Posted Friday, September 23, 2011 at 5:28 am by Jason Cartwright
At the end of the F8 keynote, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook developers would get access to the Timeline beta today. Well true to his word, developers can indeed opt-in to the beta. One important note, during the beta phase, only other developers will see your new Timeline, normal users will see your traditional profile page.
If you have ever build an application at http://developers.facebook.com then you should now have access. I have had a strange issue in that viewing it on this laptop works, but logging in on the PC, still shows the old profile even after clearing the cache.
With that out of the way, is the new Timeline something that you want ? Answer, Yes. After spending a few minutes with it, Timeline actually makes a lot of sense. I could absolutely see myself going back through my digital photo library and completing my timeline. I started shooting digital photos in 2002 with a 4 Megapixel Kodak D4900, yet my Facebook photos only start in 2007.
The banner image at the top of your profile page is known as a Cover. You can upload a new photo or choose from an existing photo from any of your photo galleries. This makes the process of changing it very simple. To those people and services that selected the 5 profile pics at the top of your profile, sorry but they are gone.
Facebook prompts you to complete your timeline based on the information you have already completed in your profile. Take my high school for example. If you want to take it to the extreme you can add a photo at birth.
Facebook Friends, Likes, Places other social interactions are are all displayed in sections of the new dual-pane Timeline view. Having dual columns combined with the new photo tiles for albums, makes displaying a lot of information in a relatively small space. To navigate this mass of information, you use the navigation on the right to drill down not only in years, but months as well.
It is now clear that Facebook just made a massive change. Not only is it a Social Networking service, but with Timeline, it just became an archive of your life. I feel sorry for the service Memolane, the 800 pound gorilla just stomped all over you. Sure Memolane supports more than just Facebook activity, but for most users, think the benefits of sharing and archiving your life on Facebook will be enough.
If your not a developer and want to see the new Timeline ‘in action’, you can at least get a demo at https://facebook.com/about/timeline
Facebook Developer site updated. Open Graph Beta available
Posted Friday, September 23, 2011 at 4:46 am by Jason Cartwright
If you’re a developer and keen to take advantage of the newly updated Open Graph, then your should check out the Facebook Developer’s site. While the keynote is still going, the dev site has already been updated.
Open graph will also support ratings. This means that application interactions posted to user’s walls, will provide analytics back to developers about what is most engaging and most annoying. This information can inform future development decisions.
Those who aren’t developers may also want to check out the site, as it contains a lot of information and images about today’s F8 announcements.
More info @ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/beta/
Discover music and movies through friends on Facebook. Maybe.
Posted Friday, September 23, 2011 at 4:19 am by Jason Cartwright
Music service Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek took the stage to discuss the way Spotify are taking advantage of Facebook to allow users to discover new music. “Today is a big day for music” and “a big day for the music industry.”
Ek dropped a couple of bombshells without much reaction. He announced Facebook now has 800Million users, up from the previous 750 Million in July. He went on to say that Spotify will be available around the world. Currently Spotify only supports the US, UK, Sweden, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, France and Finland.
We’ll need some further clarification on just what Ek meant by his statements, particularly if that includes Australia, lets hope so. Discovering new music via your Facebook friends is a neat idea, but the experience will be really broken if we end up seeing ‘I’m sorry your friend lives in a unsupported country’. In fact some of the best ways to discover new music is to watch the US or UK charts, so it makes sense this would be supported.
We’re all too familiar with how messed up media licensing is, something that seriously needs to be sorted for the innovation of tomorrow to take place. Facebook’s slide of initial media partners working on the new Open Graph, doesn’t showcase any Australian companies.. Alarm bells.
‘Read a book’, ‘Watch a movie’, Facebook Open Graph evolves
Posted Friday, September 23, 2011 at 4:04 am by Jason Cartwright
Application developers can now use verbs in their applications. Previously the Facebook Open Graph only allowed for a limited set of ‘Likes’, but now you can ‘do’ something with ‘something’. Facebook believe this change will lead to a completely new class of social apps that weren’t possible before.
Clicking ‘Like’ on a Book or Movie will become ‘Jason watched Transformers 3: Darkside of the Moon’ for example. This makes a lot of sense, but don’t expect this immediately, developers will need some time to update their apps.
Another important change in the Open Graph, is that applications won’t interrupt your use of an application with an annoying permission request. Zuckerberg says we should think about adding an application as joining an application and your Timeline. The initial permission request will essentially grant access to an application to publish updates to your wall. A lot of applications already require this to use the app, but require multiple requests.
Having application permissions dealt with in a single dialog does simplify things, it does set alarm bells about just how much it will post. Of course if an app is posting content you don’t want, you can revoke permissions in your settings.
