Tech

We’re a good two hours into FOWA and the conference is steaming ahead at full blast. The coffee is flowing, the conversations are buzzing and the presentations are engaging.

I’m currently floating about the place, snapping photos, grabbing interviews and generally having a good time. Throughout the day I’ll be continuing to upload photos to Flickr, Tweet and the videos will no doubt be posted this evening.

If there’s anything in particular that you’d like to see from my coverage, please tweet me (@leydon) or drop a line in the comments.

Chris Leydon.

This year’s Future of Web Apps conference (FOWA) is upon us. Once again London will be flooded with web app developers and entrepreneurs from across the globe, gathering to have a glimpse into the future to see if there’s going to be a new Twitter, Facebook, TinyGrab, etc. Oh, and to party, mustn’t forget the party.

Started in 2008 by Ryan Carson’s Carsonified, FOWA has quickly established itself as one of the very few must attend conferences of the web industry calendar.

This year I shall be in attendance to cover all of the latest and greatest that FOWA has to offer. Follow me on Twitter for live updates and keep visiting BiG! throughout Tuesday and Wednesday for posts, photos, videos and audio updates. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to see covered, please shoot me your suggestions in the comments below.

Chris Leydon.

Last night I was in a pub, at a freelancer’s meet up, in Brighton. I’m still sightly recovering from the events of the evening as I write this post. Many conversations around tech were held, as always, but one comment particularly sticks out in my mind and forms the basis of this post.

Boys like to talk about their toys, that much is certain and is well regarded as fact. The conversation swung around to the topic of smart phones and consequently the forthcoming Apple iPhone event. A voice perked up from the crowd: “So what do you guys think is better?”, our drinking buddy slurred. “The iPhone 5 or the Samsung Galaxy S II?”. Immediately I took issue with this ridiculous comment and retorted with, “Hang on, you’re asking us to compare a Samsung Galaxy S II to a device that hasn’t actually been announced, or officially exists yet?”. This seemed like perfect logic to me, after all how can you compare a device to one that doesn’t exist and you know nothing about? It reminds me of the primary school playground conversations I had when I was a kid; being told that Microsoft’s soon to be announced Xbox could play PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2, N64 AND GameBoy games, along with its own platform’s offerings. A completely magical and made up device that of course turned out to be nothing more than a child’s dream.

The conversation baffled me for the rest of the evening and for the rest of this morning. I couldn’t quite comprehend this person’s logic. He’d already decided that he was going to purchase an iPhone 5. “I’ve been waiting for months.” he said as he waved his Motorola brick around. “No matter what the cost or the hardware specs I’m getting one.”. This brand loyalty is often found amongst Apple fanboys, even the technically brilliant ones. There had to be more to it.

Catching up on the news of Amazon’s newly announced tablet offering, it suddenly occurred to me why my drunken pub friend would buy the iPhone 5, the iPad 3, the iTurd whatever. It’s the same reason why Amazon’s Kindle Fire will set the alternative iPad world alight. It’s all about the experience and the features. Although Apple heavily deny that their mobile devices are “feature phones”, they in fact are.

The simplicity of purchasing and organising music through iTunes has often been attributed as the key “feature” in the iPod’s success. With the iPhone it is without a doubt the iOS App Store which has been the root of the device’s mass uptake. The Amazon Kindle Fire will rise to a mass uptake and success because of its ability to tie in with all of Amazon’s digital media services.

Watching back through the Amazon keynote reminds eerily of an Apple event. Amazon’s focus isn’t on the hardware of the Kindle Fire, after all it’s pretty much just a rebadged BlackBerry Playbook; instead they focus on what the device can actually do, giving us demo after demo of the really cool interaction it has with existing services.

Apple has proven time and time again that integration with existing media offerings make a product and device succeed. Have a healthy media ecosystem around your offerings and you’ve got a winning product. $199 for a Kindle Fire, a 7 inch tablet on which you can stream movie’s from Amazon’s vast library, stream or store your music and browse the web at blazing speeds, is sure to make a lot of people strongly consider buying one.

Chris Leydon.

In a time where most websites and services are looking to assimilate all Borg-esque into each other, the US film rental company Netflix has taken an interesting move and decided to split its company and services in half.

Netflix is a US based service which allowed its users to pay a subscription fee to have DVD rentals sent to their house through the postal system, or to stream the films online with their successful and pioneering web service. On Sunday evening Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, announced that they would be spinning off their DVD rental service and turning it into a new company called Qwikster; leaving their streaming service under the Netflix brand.

Poor diabolical and illogical choices of name aside, I do understand and support Netflix’s move in creating Qwikster. As Hastings said in his blog post announcing the split, in order for a company to be truly great they need to have complete focus and their DVD by post service wasn’t allowing them to do it. What baffles me though is the company’s choice to completely separate the two services and demand that users now have two accounts, two queues and two billing entries; all in an age where every other web service and company is preaching for unity.

The company often applauded for its unity of services, even if it can be rather creepy at times, is Apple. Every device and service that you have ties in nicely with your Apple ID. Imagine if suddenly one day Tim Cook, the new CEO, woke up and decided that actually it made sense if you had different logins for iTunes, the iOS App store and the Mac App Store; because they all do slightly different things and are different divisions. This move would create mass confusion and would probably encourage a drop in sales.

As much as I hate centralisation and fear the big bad evil database where my entire existence is logged to be looked over by anyone who wishes; I have to agree that as a consumer it’s made my life much easier. Separate your companies Netflix, sure that makes sense, but why not create a unified ID and billing system to make things easier for your consumers? Better still use something like Facebook Connect, so that when the CIA or MI5 decide that they want their big bad central databases to go live they can peruse through my awful taste in movie rentals.

Chris Leydon.

Earlier this week Microsoft demoed and made available to developers the next version of its operating system, Windows 8. This forthcoming release promises to re-imagine the computer as we see it. Whilst Steve Jobs and Apple are preaching about the Post-PC world, Microsoft have embraced the once blackened term “PC” and are using it to describe ALL devices. That Windows desktop you have? It’s a PC. That Windows laptop you have? It’s a PC. That Windows tablet you’re going to have? It’s a PC. Windows 8, it appears, will lead the way in defragmenting the device and OS version market. No longer will you have many devices running different OSes, you’ll have multiple devices running the same OS; Windows 8. At least this is what Microsoft is aiming for.

The tablet PC is a concept that Microsoft had been pushing for many years. It wasn’t until the iPad caught the imagination of the mainstream consumer market that the idea of a device in-between a smartphone and a laptop became a viable and interesting one. Previously there had been poor attempts at tablet computing with Windows, featuring clunky hardware and buggy software at best with poor implementation. Windows 8 promises to flip the market on its head again.

When Apple announced and released their latest OS, Lion, they were criticised for ‘dumbing down’ a powerful operating system and implementing features and skills that they’d learned in developing their mobile iOS. Apple has a fragmented system, currently, with iOS for mobile devices (of which there are a further two classes) and OS X. Microsoft, for whom fragmentation is usually somewhat of a joke, appear to be leaning in the direction of “one OS to rule them all”.

Windows 8, at the moment, has two layers. The top layer is inspired by touch screen devices and uses Microsoft’s new design style, Metro, beautifully. This layer allows users to run full screen apps, much in the same way that they would on an iPad or Android slate device. However underneath this top layer lays the familiar Windows desktop and a “conventional” PC. It appears that Microsoft is targeting a one device, one OS, market something that, it could be argued, is incredibly unfamiliar with the company.

The Microsoft we see today is certainly a very different Microsoft to the one in 2005 released Vista to the world. They’ve quickly learned from their mistakes and picked up on the strengths that they have with Xbox and the incredibly promising Windows Phone 7 platform. It’s interesting to note that Microsoft and Apple are often at polar opposite sides of the industry from each other. Whilst one is fast becoming the market leader in a number of areas, and is acting like the unfriendly giant, the other is quietly tinkering away re-imagining the computer industry as we know it. Microsoft, I’m happy to say, appears to be on the up again and Windows 8, from what I’ve seen, is promising to be the start of the unified PC experience.

Chris Leydon.

Snog.com is a UK social network that first started blowing up in January 2011. Initially I was skeptical about the “network”, assuming that it was only a fad viral app for Twitter and Facebook, however 9 months on I’ve been convinced by its founder (Will Pierce) to give it a go. So here’s the oh so tabloidesque question; am I going to Snog, Marry or Avoid Snog.com?

The premise is simple, users sign up and then ask the world if it wants to snog, marry or avoid them. This morning, against the better judgement of my friends, I signed up for Snog.com and asked the world to rate me. The sign up process was a little tricky. I was asked to Connect with my Facebook account then following this I was presented with a “Signup for Snog.com” form. It appears that Connecting with Facebook doesn’t actually create an account on the site, you have to go through the sign up process regardless.

Once signed up, signed in and my profile was filled out, I waited and I waited… and I waited some more. Nothing was happening. I’d visit the homepage of the site and it would show me a very blank page with what seemed to be my profile in an editable mode. It wasn’t until I got an email telling me that I’d received my first “Snog, Marry or Avoid” answer that the site “unlocked” and actually allowed me to use the network. See the screenshots below for before and after examples. Perhaps a poor oversight by the site’s designers, but very confusing from a user interface perspective.

Signed up. Profile Filled out. Now what?

Much better! A usable site and profile!

Finally able to use Snog.com in all of its full glory I set up the “show me a random profile” filters to display guys between the ages of 18 and 24. If I’ve got to use a network aimed at finding out who I’m interested in, I may as well do it properly. My conclusion, after 10 minutes of seeing random profiles that matched my filter settings, is that there don’t seem to be that many attractive guys on the site, but maybe I’m just picky? Having said that, I can feel the addiction and rush that Snog’s loyal users claim on the front page. It’s fun to be a bitch at times.

Last month Snog launched its official iPhone app and as of writing it’s currently the 6th most downloaded social app for the iPhone in the world. Running Windows Phone 7 exclusively, I’m yet to play about with the app so can’t pass judgement. Snog claims to be getting an impressive 1.5 million hits with 300,000 answers being given daily; not bad for a site that’s less than a year old. No wonder Reinvent Inc have invested a six figure sum in the British networking app.

If I were to rate Snog.com on its own terms of “Snog, Marry or Avoid” which would I choose? Snog. – The site, whilst fun once you get through the hurdle of getting started, doesn’t have a pull factor for me or longevity. Frankly I don’t see enough substance to commit to the app and “Marry” it, but as a one time fling? Sure it was fun.

I expect to see some great things in the future, but until then it’s a reinvention and spin of “Hot or Not”, very much in the same way that Facebook initially started out (if The Social Network is to be believed). Admittedly I’m not in Snog’s target profile, not being a 14 year old girl and instead being a gay 22 year old guy, but I still had fun. Snog.com is great for passing time on those wet, rainy and cold afternoons. I’m not going to lie, I enjoyed my Snog and passing fling but I shan’t be hitting that “Marry” button just yet. I’ll wait to see what the Snog team have got up their sleeves to be released in the coming months.

Chris Leydon.

Photo by Beacon Radio (Flickr)

These past three nights London, and now other parts of the UK, have been victim to extreme riots by a disenfranchised youth who seem intent on causing chaos with no clear demands. According to the Metropolitan Police, the BBC, The Guardian and various other independent sources, the majority of the organising of the riots has taken place through RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger service (BBM).

BlackBerry Messenger is a platform that allows users and owners of BlackBerry handsets to send private and public messages to each other. Users are identified by a screename and a PIN. BBM is believed to be the preferred method for the London Riot organisers because it’s essentially a private social network where almost all messages are encrypted when they leave the sender’s phone – meaning that many messages are untraceable by the authorities. RIM, the creators of the BlackBerry, has previously insisted that it cannot decrypt users’ messages when sent on the devices. According to a recent OFCOM study BlackBerry devices account for 37% of the teenage smartphone market.

Yesterday afternoon rumours started to circulate throughout Twitter, Facebook and other social networks, that RIM were going to blackout and close down its BBM service over London for the evening, in an attempt to roadblock the organising of further riots. This rumoured blackout was denied by RIM and never happened, but it raises an interesting point. With the increasing reliance on private social networks and platforms to organise protests, events, and other acts of freedom of speech; what happens when a company is ordered to close down a network for ‘national security’ matters?

In June Apple announced its own take on a private social network for iPhone users, iMessage. Many other handset manufacturers have started to integrate Facebook’s Chat platform into their devices. With this move away from open standards, such as SMS, to privately closed networks we’re gaining many new features but are we sacrificing the open communication platform that we all call for in times of need or free protest?

Unfortunately with the riots in London, and across the UK, freedom of speech will suffer. Instead of addressing the issues with the materialistic capitalist system, which encourages an obsession with wealth, possessions and leads to looting when angry; it will be freedom of speech and civil rights that will be affected. Looting is predominantly a western-world problem. When the “free world” gets angry it takes what it feels it’s entitled to, possessions. When oppressed nations and people get angry and speak out they take what they feel entitled to, civil liberties. A stark contrast.

Since starting this article this morning, reports have started to appear that mobile internet access is being restricted by authorities in the West Midlands and Birmingham, in an attempt to prevent users from communicating through the BBM service.

What do you think the implications are when we rely on closed privately controlled networks to control with each other? Should there be some sort of unrestricted back-channel that can always be relied on for private and open communication?

Chris Leydon.

Two years ago over an August weekend at Google’s London Victoria offices, young developers (under the age of 19) were brought together to see what they could create given 48 hours and access to open government data. The result was around 20 high quality, innovative applications and ideas that could better serve the public. The weekend was called Young Rewired State and next week it’s taking place again. This time Young Rewired State is on a national scale with centres for young developers to work from up and down the country; before they all descend on Microsoft’s London HQ on Friday to show their peers, the world and an esteemed panel of judges, what they’ve managed to build given one week and open government data.

Young Rewired State calls itself a hack week, on the front it’s all about young developers honing their skills, learning new ones and building cool stuff; but it’s so much more than that. For the past two years I’ve been an observer of Young Rewired State, always attending their presentation afternoons to see what’s been created. For the past two years I’ve been blown away by what I’ve seen and experienced. The applications that come out of this event are outstanding and often have commercial viability. From natural language parsers (Wolfram Alpha for your local government statistics) to location aware public transport journey planners; Young Rewired State has churned out some truly amazing applications, some of which have gone on to be adopted by the government and commercial organisations since.

Building things, honing your skills and learning new ones are all well and good but a vital part of what Young Rewired State offers its young developers is often overlooked. Young Rewired State offers a community, a place for these young developers to get together, meet new people, share experiences and build long lasting friendships and potential business partnerships. Young Rewired State isn’t JUST about building cool stuff, it’s about helping these young people to build better relationships with their peers and those who share common interests. Participants at Young Rewired State aren’t just hacking cool apps together, their hacking friendships together and, as a supporter of this programme over the past few years, that’s the most important and unique part of Young Rewired State that stands out for me.

I encourage all young developers, designers or even those with cool ideas, to get involved in Young Rewired State 2011. There are centres based all over the UK, you can even work at home if you can’t find your own centre and YRS will make sure that you can get to the presentation ceremony on the Friday (last year they even flew someone down from Scotland). More information can be found at Young Rewired State’s official website for Under 18 year olds (http://youngrewiredstate.org/yrs2011/18-or-under/). Now isn’t too late to get involved, but leave it a few more days and you might miss out.

Chris Leydon.