Webonaut

My music now comes largely from Spotify, my games from Steam or OnLive, my movies from NetFlix - Cloud services are taking over... I cannot envisage a future other than where any entertainment form is available anywhere... games, music, video... in car, on my mobile (OnLive player for iOS anyone? Latest console games on my iPad?), on my profile, inside other games / virtual worlds / social media v2 lives 5 Implications of The Move To The Cloud: 1. Consoles: will eventually die out 2. Game shops: will go the way of Video shops (see Blockbuster now filing for bankruptcy... "Game" will follow in a few years) 3. Convergence: of Social Media with games/music/film. Web-plugins for OnLive - or whichever service supercedes it - make the next installation of Call Of Duty embedded into your Facebook page - with hooks into your friends & Social Media 4. Apple Pwn: Expect to see Apple finally crack the missing "serious games" component with a buy out of OnLive - or ...

News from Japan of their smart vending machines gaining - if not quite self-awareness - awareness of others is interesting for a couple reasons. Firstly, being able to identify customers age / gender is COOL and CLEVER, with obvious applications for targetted advertising / shifting more soft-drinks... but it's clear where we're going here: IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE - More automated machines instead of humans - (BAD THING IMO for everything except for shareholder returns) - Even more of those devil-bitch-speaking-auto-tills (that supermarkets so love and customers hate) - The spread of til machine equivalents to everywhere else human-costs can be "saved" - Bank Tellers, Argos, etc LONGER TERM - Social Networking / online identity integration How this final point functions is yet to be determined, but the technology will have OAuth as a forebear. Not sure how these points will identify you yet (the successors of rfID tags/Oyster?), but once it has (and you've given ...

Norwich web-developers Klik appear to have what looks like an HTML5 active logo! It's pretty swish actually - check it out www.klikhome.co.uk It's this sort of thing that makes Flash seem unnecessary - particularly with it's iPad / iPhone friendliness.

We've got the displays to re-create the image, so when will be get dual stereoscopic 3D web-cams? Then we can have that "nearly really there" experience - and in full colour too, not like ol'green holographic Princess Leia...)

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...