Another new idea for the blog: Video of the week. Again, through a variety of social networks, email forwards and pure boredom, I come across a lot of videos that tickle my fancy.
The first is a viral entitled "Hatfield Hotdog Launcher Documentary" which immediately made me think of my friend Ed ...mainly because he's American and wears white socks with his sneakers.....and deep down even though he's very well educated, smart and sophisticated I know he'd be standing in the crowd screaming for a hotdog with a target painted on his T-shirt.....It's the white socks, see, they just give it away. Anyway, enjoy
Today we have everything from Gizmodo’s gadget gallery, which will apparently feature the Flux Capacitor – you guessed rights kids, the one from Back to the future - right through to a food preparing robot featured on Pink Tentacle. My other two picks – Engadget’s “crap gadgets” selection which will help us avoid putting a few duds in the stocking this Christmas and last but not least, Lexy Klain’s post on the links between social media and emos – not Nemo or Elmo.. though I'm sure they are both avid Facebookers
Apparently July 31 2005 was a pretty cold day in Sydney, but for a Pom that had just got here (Australia) from the UK, I thought it was practically a heat wave. My mate picked me and my partner Malin up from the airport and took us for a tour of Sydney – the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, Kirribilli and Bondi…. I’d never seen a beach like it in my life. Over the past (almost) four years, we have fallen in love with Australia, even got into Rugby League and developed a bit of an Aussie twang. So, it’ll come as a surprise to some that me and Malin have decided to head back to Europe.
What’s behind this decision then? Well, we have decided to expand our family and after having one kid in Australia on our own, we thought we might need a little bit more support this time around. To put this in perspective, in the two and a half years since we’ve had Freja, me and Malin have had a total of one night off as parents, now we love our little bundle of joy, but the odd grandparent’s baby sitting session wouldn’t go a miss! And that’s the other big thing, being so far away from our families.
We’re heading off at the end of the month and it’ll be both a happy and a sad moment for us, Australia has given us so much – especially our little girl Freja. My friend Ed, who also recently left Australia to return home (to America) has inspired my to post this on the blog and I’ll probably be adding a few more posts like this over the coming weeks as the clock count down – things I love about Australia and will miss. So, for the first one – State of Origin. Now, as a Pom I have been spoilt with the English Premier League and the soccer World Cup, but I can hand on heart say that I have never seen a more emotional, intense rivalry in any sporting event. Despite living in NSW for my entire time in Australia, most of my friends are from Queensland and the friend that picked me up from the airport is a born-and-breed Brisbane boy, so from the start I backed Queensland – and thank God! It’s not often that a pom backs a winner!
They first started talking about this when I was still at University, they called in WAP…but WAP was CRAP. Fast forward ten years and we finally have a device and an interface that is capable of providing us with a positive mobile Internet experience…. even if we don’t have the data plans in some countries….big island in the southern hemisphere *cough*
But, news is that mobile Internet use is going through the roof while traditional PC access is slowing, at least that’s what the guys and gals at Nielsen say. I think this is UK data, but according to the findings over 7 million people jumped online using their mobiles during the latter half of 2008, representing an increase of 25 per cent for mobiles compared to a teeny-tiny 3 per cent increase for PC access. Another interesting fact is that 25 per cent of mobile surfers are aged 15-24, while the same age group accessing the web via a PC is just 16 per cent.
MyTake – is this really surprising? No. I remember wanted to surf the net in the WAP days, but found it excruciatingly painful, so I gave up. Then again when 3G was launched, but the limitations around the browsing capabilities again put me off. Having seen the likes of the iPhone, it’s a much more positive experience that doesn’t have the drawbacks of its not-quite-there predecessors. This is exactly what people want and they are taking to it in droves.
I've decided to introduce a new idea (for me) to the blog. OK, it's not a new idea, but I come across so many things on the "tinternet" that I think are cool that I have decided to share the best of them on (an almost) daily basis. So, here's today's offerings:
News is that Facebook is interested in a little birdie….Twitter. There a lot of news doing the rounds out there and the apparent valuation on Twitter is US$500 million, but Biz Stone has refused to comment on the issue so far which would add more fuel to the acquisition fire. The most reputable source so far is the Financial Times in the UK, who have apparently got confirmation from two separate sources.
There’s been chatter about this proposed tie-up for a while now, so the Twitterati won’t be surprised by this talk. What is surprising are the values being placed on companies such as Facebook and Twitter, with the former having a rather lofty valuation slapped on it when Microsoft acquired a part of them earlier in the year. What will happen to our little birdie pal should Facebook snap it up, more importantly – what will happen to the Fail Whale? Well, rest assured my fellow Tweeters, the one thing that Biz Stone did say is that they want to remain an independent messaging service.
MyTake – this is probably going to happen, there are obvious synergies between the two companies and Twitter is approaching the tipping point, so Facebook will want to catch it just before. Living in Australia, Twitter has yet to get the same kind of following it enjoys in the rest of the world, mostly due to the way the telcos charge us for our mobile plans, but it’s still popular and I could see a move like this thrusting it into the limelight.
When I started school, we had those old Victorian style wooden desks with the lift-up lids and holes for ink wells – I’m not kidding. It wasn’t long after that it was out with the old and in with the new (plastic) and progress was being made. Another thing that we didn’t have when I started school was computers. Sure, we had an old Atari at home and a BBC Micro machine, but IT wasn’t being taught at school until I got to secondary school (12 – 18). When I got to University, we were all still on dial-up connections that would work on the odd occasion that it felt like it and the most you could do was check your email.
When I finally got to work I experienced the wonder of high-speed Internet and proper email, but still the majority of our communication was done through fax and phone. So, when I saw this new video from Facebook today, It really made me stop and think how fair we’ve come in such as short space of time, after all, I am still relatively young….cough….
The video features a program that actually visualizes the activity taking place on the Facebook network including everything from status updates, friend requests, pokes, posted links and so on. Named Project Palantir, the program displays the activity on a 3D globe complete with a sun and was developed at Facebook Hackathon XI by a Facebook engineer.
MyTake – What a thing of beauty, to be able to see something like that demonstrates how connected we are all. Go back to 2000 and remember how worried we were about the Y2K bug, or accessing the net using dial-up and now think of this, eight short years and we can map the connected state of the world through a social network. Brilliant
My name is Alan Parker and I’m a 30 year old father of 1.75 children from the UK. I was born in a town called Sutton Coldfield and spent most of my youth devising ways to escape from suburbia. The opportunity to escape came in the form of a University degree which took me as far south as Guildford. At 21 I headed to London to work in PR for the next four years. While in London I spent too much money, ate bad food and drank warm beer. The highlight was that I managed to charm a rather sweet Swedish girl called Malin, who is now my partner and the mother of my child(ren). After our stint in London, we packed-up and moved to Sydney, where we had our fist child, Freja. We spent three and a half wonderful years in Australia and got to see and experience things they don't sell in your average package holiday catalogue. But, the lure of home was too much and we headed back to the UK at the end of 2008 and I am now I am working for a multinational PR company on all things Digital PR. As I hurtle past my 30 birthday, the most inspiring people in my life are still my parents along with Malin, my bis sis Al and her husband Seb and of course, my little daughter Freja.
Today we have everything from Gizmodo’s gadget gallery, which will apparently feature the Flux Capacitor – you guessed rights kids, the one from Back to the future - right through to a food preparing robot featured on Pink Tentacle. My other two picks – Engadget’s “crap gadgets” selection which will help us avoid putting a few duds in the stocking this Christmas and last but not least, Lexy Klain’s post on the links between social media and emos – not Nemo or Elmo.. though I'm sure they are both avid Facebookers
Apparently July 31 2005 was a pretty cold day in Sydney, but for a Pom that had just got here (Australia) from the UK, I thought it was practically a heat wave. My mate picked me and my partner Malin up from the airport and took us for a tour of Sydney – the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, Kirribilli and Bondi…. I’d never seen a beach like it in my life. Over the past (almost) four years, we have fallen in love with Australia, even got into Rugby League and developed a bit of an Aussie twang. So, it’ll come as a surprise to some that me and Malin have decided to head back to Europe.
They first started talking about this when I was still at University, they called in WAP…but WAP was CRAP. Fast forward ten years and we finally have a device and an interface that is capable of providing us with a positive mobile Internet experience…. even if we don’t have the data plans in some countries….big island in the southern hemisphere *cough*
I've decided to introduce a new idea (for me) to the blog. OK, it's not a new idea, but I come across so many things on the "tinternet" that I think are cool that I have decided to share the best of them on (an almost) daily basis. So, here's today's offerings:
News is that Facebook is interested in a little birdie….Twitter. There a lot of news doing the rounds out there and the apparent valuation on Twitter is US$500 million, but Biz Stone has refused to comment on the issue so far which would add more fuel to the acquisition fire. The most reputable source so far is the Financial Times in the UK, who have apparently got confirmation from two separate sources.
When I started school, we had those old Victorian style wooden desks with the lift-up lids and holes for ink wells – I’m not kidding. It wasn’t long after that it was out with the old and in with the new (plastic) and progress was being made. Another thing that we didn’t have when I started school was computers. Sure, we had an old Atari at home and a BBC Micro machine, but IT wasn’t being taught at school until I got to secondary school (12 – 18). When I got to University, we were all still on dial-up connections that would work on the odd occasion that it felt like it and the most you could do was check your email.
