This might, finally, get me learning to code again.
Now can someone please gamify learning to play Bluegrass banjo?
Might Apple’s next iPhone actually be the iPhone 6? It will, after all, be the sixth iPhone:
1. iPhone
2. iPhone 3G
3. iPhone 3GS
4. iPhone 4
5. iPhone 4S
6. ????????
The iPhone 4 name made sense, because it was the fourth iPhone. The iPhone 3G made sense because, well, it was 3G.
Perhaps it will be the iPhone 4G, if, as rumoured, it’s a 4G phone. But if Apple go with sequence numbering, rather than a name based on its features, shouldn’t it be the iPhone 6, not the much touted “iPhone 5”?
(PS - I’m sure it won’t be, but thought I’d stake an early claim to some iPhone 6 SEO)
I’ve been investing some time and money in setting up an online art gallery on the side. Part blog, part online store, Klectar’s my opportunity to play with some of the interesting trends in eCommerce directly.
The site blends Groupon’s model of selling a limited product range (one piece of art at a time) with eBay’s marketplace model (the sellers sell the art directly, Klectar takes a commission on the sale). We’ve used chain payments (part of PayPal X’s adaptive payments suite) to handle the transactions, including commission payment and sprinkled in a healthy dose of social features (Facebook log-in, comments, like buttons; Tweet this button).
Time will tell whether there’s any money to be made from the venture. For now I’m just enjoying the experiment.
Two former eBay colleagues today launched their next generation job ad platform Adzuna, offering ‘jobs in London, the UK and beyond’ and integrating some nice social features.
‘Adzuna Connect’ allows you to find out which of your connections work at the companies who are currently hiring: nice to see some social innovation in the recruitment space.
More specifically, one of the six to complain about the BMI Business Class flights ‘offer’
Last year I played a game of Settlers of Catan with my friends Sevitz and Marc plus comedian Dave Gorman at The Ship in Wandsworth. We asked Dave if we were to be the victims of a new book about playing games with strangers, but he denied it. Lo and behold about a month ago Dave Gorman vs. the Rest of the World hit the bookshelves. Here’s where I get introduced. I can’t really complain about the Kiefer Sutherland reference, but home counties? And chinos?
Whilst passing through Gatwick airport recently, I was curious to see the airport using Internet of Things startup StickyBits to keep travellers updated on progress with building works.
I stumbled upon this in the app store today, recommended to me via Genius after I’d downloaded the ‘Do Some Good’ app.
The folk at the London School of Economics behind the Mappiness app are trying to get better data on what makes people happy, using iPhones as data-logging devices to randomly record levels of happiness and the associated circumstances.
George MacKerron explains in more detail at the TEDxBrighton event:
It’s somewhat ironic that two recent incidents have served to highlight how the internet, constructed and architected to provide a robust, fault-tolerant computer network has become susceptible to single points of failure.
Then Amazon’s cloud computing and storage service, EC2 fell-over, bringing down services like Quora, Foursquare and London’s Vzaar video service.
First a pensioner in Georgia reportedly managed to literally cut off Armenia’s internet access by hacking through fibre-optic cables with a spade.
On that note, I’m escaping the world of online for a week to get into the Lake District fells. I’m curious to see if Ambleside is showing the same love for Facebook as Argentina and the Yorkshire Dales.
Source 
In the Social war between Google and Facebook, might egosurfing prove Google’s secret weapon?
Google and Facebook are battling hard over the Social web. Google’s trying hard to catch-up to Facebook’s lead, tying 25% of all of their staff’s bonuses to the firm’s success in this space. With the launch of the +1 button, they’ve belatedly acknowledged the role that social is set to play in their core business, search. And yet, for +1 to be a success, it needs Google to make it truly social, both to help reliably detect spam and make the most of the data generated. Google needs to finally demonstrate that it can ‘do’ social, something at which it’s so far mostly failed.
But might they have a secret weapon in these social wars?
A Pew Internet study in 2007 found that almost half of all people ‘Egosurfed’: they Googled their own name to see what results appeared. I’d bet that proportion is much higher these days. Whether simple curiosity, or a desire to manage your personal brand online, knowing what appears when you search for yourself is basic internet hygiene.
On a recent Egosurfing trip, I noticed something I’d not seen before: my Google Profile page in the first page of results. And it wasn’t just true for me. Googling for Sevitz, and even my dad showed up profile pages in the first screen of results on searches for their names:
Might Google be boosting the ranking of Profile pages in search results to get egosurfers to visit them and update them? I know that’s what it made me do. That would be a bit, well, evil though, surely? So perhaps that’s a yes then.
This relies on people already having Profile pages, but it’s not hard to imagine a more evil version that prompts you to set up a profile for a name search if that’s you.
Google already has several of the key ingredients for a good social network. Google’s Picasa’s arguably a better photo sharing site than Facebook’s (even after the recent revamp); Google’s YouTube videos must be one of the most shared items on Facebook; data from Gmail could help them quickly construct the social graph. I still think they’re playing catch-up, and would still back Facebook to win this war, but egosurfing might help Google in the fight.
