Mourning the loss of Apple

Since the launch of the first iPhone I've been undergoing a steady switch across to the Apple platform I have an iPhone and iPad a MacBook, an AppleTV, and an iMac, that must be Bingo! A complete change from my Windows life years ago...

However I've always maintained I'm not an apple fanboy. Whenever anyone has asked me how that's true with all the devices I own I've simply said I use the stuff that works, and that's the best in breed.

Until this, or maybe last year I would have agreed with that statement, It was simply true, Apple was best in breed. But it's becoming less and less so. Now more and more every day I'm beginning to wonder whether it's time to make true with my motto and switch to a different path.

It's the end of the world as we know it...

I don't think people understand what's currently happening to us, to human interaction, to our current idea of society. It's very easy, and perhaps all a little too comfortable to percieve the changes happening within the online world, the world of so-called "Social Networking" and the mobile world, to be nothing more than a fad, a new distraction. Which means too few people realise that we're undergoing a fundamental shift, a transformation, a step change in the way our society manages itself.

Hello there...

​Ever heard of Quantified Self? Do you know what you do in an average day? How much you eat? What you weigh?

​I use a set of simple tools to track my behaviours, analyse the results, and effect change in my life.

Cross Platform Persistence

Over the past few weeks I've been setting up and using iCloud, and it got me thinking about how great it's going to be when iOS game saves are stored in the cloud as standard, so I can be playing Hardlines or Jetpack Joyride on my iPad at home, and later be sat on a bus somewhere and pick up the game on my iPhone and carry on from where I left off, just like I do when reading books on my kindle app.

Studios don't make games, people do

Many people in the videogames industry talk about the maturing of the medium. In his fantastic Indecade / Gamecity talk "Beauty and Risk" Richard Lemarchand from Naughty Dog, showed a rather astute representation of the history of the media by Chelsea Howe, ending with the bubble, "Medium Coming of Age"

but are we there yet...​

Why everyone should care about video games

I've primarily been blogging about social media and technology, but I'm going to start to blog about videogames as well. Bizzarely I'm slightly concerned about this, part of me feels I should apologise to those people who have ended up on the site to hear me talk about other things, that you won't care about videogames, and you'll tune out, that you'll roll your eyes and sigh "videogames" and close the browser.

Social Media with personality

​So what's one of the the biggest challenges facing social media over the next few years?

I think it's all about personas.

We all have multiple personas, we wear different hats, some more than others, but everyone amends their behaviour when in different groups of people, out of familiarity, respect, or necessity.

Why i Pad

I feel there are some fundamental misconceptions around the iPad, and many people who still don't understand the device. So I thought I'd talk a little about why I use the iPad and what it has meant to my life, both in business and outside of it.

Feedback Loop

Online, more than anywhere else, we are reverting to our natural state. We're reforming tribes, crowds, muttering out loud, getting feedback from each othe, creating support structures, we're the chimpanzees of the internet.

Disparate connections and diaries for lazy people

For a while I've been playing with Foursquare, it's a location based social networking tool that I use to track where I've been, and keep track of where my friends are. I also tweet quite regularly, and occasionally post pictures to Flickr.

A few months ago I discovered Momento, it's a rather clever little app that pulls together feeds from various social sites and displays them in a nice calendar view, as shown in the pictures.

It got me thinking, how many apps would you need to update and agregate in order to create a complete record of everything you do?

Bandwidth

Sometimesintodaysworldthereissomuchinformationcomingatyoufromsomanydifferentdirectionstha
​titfeelslikepeoplearetalkingwithoutspacesandyouarefightingtokeepupthenthingsgetworseASTHEIN
​TENSITYOFTHEINFORMATIONINCREASESANDITSEEMSLIKETHEYAREALLSHOUTINGTHEBIZZA
​RETHINGISTHATAFTERAWHILEYOUSTARTTOGETUSEDTOITANDEVENTUALLYITSALLYOUCAN
​READ.

Composure

​So, where was I, ah yes...

I stopped blogging because it was too difficult; it isn't really all that hard, but attempting to coordinate the inspiration with the willingness to sit and write and my outside life, just wasn't happening. It's like replying to email from friends, it should be fairly straightforward but is actually rather difficult to manage (well, for me anyway).

But I'm here now and want to make an effort, I have stuff to say, and it doesn't really bother me that no-one is listening because it just feels good to talk :)