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Tech Musings - Mobile Phone Stuff
Feb. 15th, 2010 03:48 pmDespite it only being available via a web client, which I normally hate, I'm really rather linking Google Buzz. There are potential stalking issues with it, I think, especially if I post while at home and forget to turn my location off - that seems disturbingly accurate, but I also love the maps feature where you can see what people nearby are Buzzing about. You can even go to a random bit of the world, say a tourist spot you're familiar with, and see who's buzzing from there, and randomly join in the conversation. I've done a bit of that already and it's proving to be quite an entertaining distraction.
It's also got me back in touch with a couple of people I hadn't talked to in ages, which is a nice and unexpected bonus.
It's starting to get tough to keep track of my various social network bits and pieces though - LJ, Dreamwidth, Faceboook, Twitter, now Buzz, and increasingly I think the single client-per-protocol/site approach is not scaling. I'd really like something like Google Reader for social networking clients - there are lots of apps that allow you to aggregate uploads, so they go to everything, but I haven't yet found anything that aggregates my reading list in one place.
I'd write one myself, but I haven't written much of any software beyond tiny point solution things since I burned out as a professional software engineer in the early noughties, and I'm really not sure I have the motivation to get back into it again.
Anyway, what's also happening at the moment is the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and there's some very interesting stuff coming out of it. Nokia is the largest single player in the smartphone market by far, although you wouldn't know it given their apparent paralysis in the face of Apple and Google's Android. Their earlier attempt at returning to form, the N97 looked promising but lots of people agreed it was a botched delivery. However, it looks like they've been hard at work since, and they may be onto something. Check this out - I think it looks quite sexy:
The biggest shocker to come out of Barcelona for me though has to be Microsoft with their "Windows Phone Series 7", the successor to their current Windows Mobile offering. Windows mobile has its fans, but by and large I don't think it's unfair to say that it's generally regarded as being fourth in a two horse race. Well, they seem to have gone back to basics and come up with a phone system which is quite revolutionary, and looks very interesting indeed. They've also taken a leaf out of Apple's book by specifying very tightly the hardware configuration it should run on, down to screen resolution, number of buttons, processor speed and so on. As Engadget Mobile puts it, "Microsoft has done what would have been unthinkable for the company just a few years ago: started from scratch."
Interesting times indeed - I suspect things will look rather different this time next year when I'm thinking about renewing my contract.
Originally posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/225560.html - you can comment here or there.
It's also got me back in touch with a couple of people I hadn't talked to in ages, which is a nice and unexpected bonus.
It's starting to get tough to keep track of my various social network bits and pieces though - LJ, Dreamwidth, Faceboook, Twitter, now Buzz, and increasingly I think the single client-per-protocol/site approach is not scaling. I'd really like something like Google Reader for social networking clients - there are lots of apps that allow you to aggregate uploads, so they go to everything, but I haven't yet found anything that aggregates my reading list in one place.
I'd write one myself, but I haven't written much of any software beyond tiny point solution things since I burned out as a professional software engineer in the early noughties, and I'm really not sure I have the motivation to get back into it again.
Anyway, what's also happening at the moment is the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and there's some very interesting stuff coming out of it. Nokia is the largest single player in the smartphone market by far, although you wouldn't know it given their apparent paralysis in the face of Apple and Google's Android. Their earlier attempt at returning to form, the N97 looked promising but lots of people agreed it was a botched delivery. However, it looks like they've been hard at work since, and they may be onto something. Check this out - I think it looks quite sexy:
The biggest shocker to come out of Barcelona for me though has to be Microsoft with their "Windows Phone Series 7", the successor to their current Windows Mobile offering. Windows mobile has its fans, but by and large I don't think it's unfair to say that it's generally regarded as being fourth in a two horse race. Well, they seem to have gone back to basics and come up with a phone system which is quite revolutionary, and looks very interesting indeed. They've also taken a leaf out of Apple's book by specifying very tightly the hardware configuration it should run on, down to screen resolution, number of buttons, processor speed and so on. As Engadget Mobile puts it, "Microsoft has done what would have been unthinkable for the company just a few years ago: started from scratch."
Interesting times indeed - I suspect things will look rather different this time next year when I'm thinking about renewing my contract.
Originally posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/225560.html - you can comment here or there.
