Webonaut

Apple's event today was notable not for the shiny new MacBook Air (lovely as the expensive little netbook is) but for the meteoric rise of the Mac laptop. Presumably the growth (to 1 in 5 computers sold being a Mac) comes from a shift in customer perception of Apples as "weird" - a charge led by the myriad Apple Stores popping up, but principally due to consumers getting and loving iPhones and iPads, reasoning other Apple products must also be good. Sadly, as I've noted before the desktop Mac OSX has some quirks that make it frustrating for long-time users, let along the confusion of newbies. Apple must have been reading blogs like this, as they appear to be addressing some of these foibles with OSX Lion (due in Summer 2011). I hoping that the importance of change on the desktop is not lost on the folks in Cupertino - customers want as easy an experience with OSX as on their iOS devices. If Steve can fix it so that a) Launching applications is much more intuitive (i....

Which is best for marketing - Twitter or Facebook? Most CEOs don't know the difference apparently, and some predict there can be only one winner. That's clearly NOT the case, and the differences are marked and intractable (i.e. neither side can easily develop their applications to incorporate the good points of the other). Here are the 3 big differences: 1. Facebook focuses on the individual - Twitter focuses on the information . For example, you get photo albums (and massive amounts of other information) on Facebook (but not Twitter) which means: a) With Facebook you get a load of information about each person, with some fluff about how they've just eaten an oatcake and got a new cow on FarmVille - with Twitter you get what each person wants to say without the distractions b) Facebook a voyeur's dream - the boys I know use it to goggle at the girls in their life - the girls to compete with how good / shit their life is and marvel / secretly cheer at other people's...

US GAMES CONSOLES SOLD IN SEPTEMBER XBox 360: 484,000 units PS3: 312,000 Wii: 254,000 So, this was a surprise to me today when NPD released the figures... not because of the decline of the Wii (it's not a) looking any shorter in the tooth b) has had 26% less releases in 2010 c) everyone who would want one has pretty much got one d) it's losing it's main natural controller USP to Sony's Move and Microsoft's Natal tech). No, the big shock was Microsoft out-pacing PS3, considering it's motion tech offers by most accounts an inferior experience. The controller-less tech is clever, but offers no easy way to actually walk about - with games forced to move "automatically" (making everything seem like TimeCrisis). I suppose they could capture walking-on-the-spot motion, which would have the added bonus of making players look like a minister from Monty Pythons MoSW . Nice. How are Sony failing to convey the message that their faintly silly looking illuminated b...

Couldn't find a straightforward tool to simply capitalise text on google, so I knocked one up: http://www.klikhome.co.uk/tools/capitalise.html actually very useful to me this morning, despite it's 5-minute dev simplicity - so perhaps it will be useful to someone else (IF Google spiders it.)

This is completely anecdotal, but my female friends on the whole opt for Facebook and my male friends Twitter. This could be a coincidence, but the girls seem to like the more voyeuristic nature of Facebook, with it's photos and insight into other people's calendars. A lot of it reads like a female coffee-shop discussion, with lots of personal issues and details being aired and shared. However Twitter, although still suffering from the banal, is more condensed, takes less time and is less personal. These may seem like negatives - but to us Boys, it fits in nicely with our more emotionally closed natures and desire to get straight to the point without all the chaff. Are Social Networks evolving rough gender lines? (Ian informs me that Facebook still has a place for goggling at pictures of hot friends though, apparently.)

Got the below message from Twitter this morning. The devil is in the detail, and once again a big company has tried to bury their more controversial changes in the small print. Here's the big deal: When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time. The competition is on: who will know the most about you? Google? Facebook? Or now, Twitter? Hi @jamestinman, Over the coming weeks, we will be making two important updates that will impact how you interact with Twitter applications. We are sending this notice to all Twitter users to make sure you are aware of these changes. What are applications? There are over 250,000 applications built using the Twitter API. To use most applications, you first authorize the application to access your Twitter account, after which you can use it to read and post Tweets, discover new users and more. Applications come in...

We've just completed our first foray into HTML5 at primvintagefashion.com It's a simple HTML5 intro, true, but for me it was an education in what is possible / what is not with HTML5. There's lots of HTML5 functionality crammed into this small space - the CANVAS tag (which scales to fit the screensize of the device visiting) - animation loop - CSS3 (that Typewriter font is downloaded - and rendered - by your machine on the fly) and the AUDIO tag. SO, HOW WAS IT? Well, the javascript extensions for HTML5 are actually pretty fun. Lower level than AS3 but way more powerful than what straight javascript/jQuery offer. It's always going to take longer to build something than with Flash, but with practice you could probably get it down to about 125% of the effort. That sounds bad, but it's much better than my original thoughts of double the effort. DRAWBACKS? - Well, the big one - and a surprise - was the differences between HTML5 engines. It's not as standard as Jobs ...