I'm (as I expected) really digging my new iPad at the moment (many thanks to Jess for that surprise birthday present!). And the app I was most looking forward to did *not* let me down. That app is Flipboard.

Flipboard

For those who don't know Flipboard (and its like) are part of a new breed of apps which are trying to help us make sense of the ever increasing rush of information which we are expected to consume on a day by day basis; it can be overwhleming so these new apps need to be our intelligent agents; sifting on our behalf.

Flipboard's main take on this is to try and present your (say) Twitter stream in a much more magazine like manner - and boy does it do a good job of it! Pages flip (hence the name) in a pleasing, tactile manner and the content is laid out in different sized sections depending on how *important* Flipboard thinks that particular blob of content is. Images and click-to-play videos flow beautifully with this type of approach. 

(Note: perhaps I'm being thick but I can't yet figure out on Flipboard how to see an aggregated feed of *all* of my stuff - I seem to have to select the 'channel', such as Twitter or Facebook, and then can only see that silo?)

Zite

The other app I'm playing with is Zite which, Flipboard, does a grand job of displaying content in a lovely, non-twitter-feed like way. Zite seems to come at the whole problem from a slightly different angle to that of Flipboard in the sense that, when you configure your Zite account, you select topics that you are generally interested in and, via voting topics up or down as you read them, you can influence the content you see over time; i.e. it tries to learn & adapt from your reading behaviour.

Voting Irregularties

My question, though, is this: how accurate is the Zite voting mechanism in representing and adjusting the overall content flow to my individual tastes? I mean, if I vote "yes" on an article about near field communication (NFC) & foursquare posted on the tech news site Techcrunch, what does that vote actually mean? Does it mean I seem more articles about NFC? Or more location based topics such as foursquare? Or (shudder!) simply more Techcrunch posts? There's a difference.

Be My Outer Perimeter

I do love these content aggregation services such as Flipboard & Zite and I'm all for any methods which can influence it & make my information feed more relevant to me. Anything which helps reduce noise & gives me more signal has got to be a step forward. Funnilly enough, RSS readers never did it for me - I need more intelligence than simply scanning my eye down a list of blogs in Google Reader  - I want the smart people I follow on (typically) Twitter to be my outer perimeter for news: sifting through the firehouse of updates and digging out the nuggets of gold. All for me!

But this whole thing of sorting signal from the noise is not an easy task - making sense of all the faves/retweets etc and turning that in a weighted stream of information? Not a trivial task. How can you programmatically work out what a (say) blog post is actually *about*? What it actually relates to? If (say) Flipboard can take a good stab at working out topics then we've got almost our own personalised newspaper with news, tech, sports sections tailored to our tastes.

I'd like that.

Joel

(note: please shout out if there are any other apps like Zite/Flipboard I should look at)

Ok, the wait is over, my first bash at writing iPhone apps has been released into the app store - hurray!

The 'purpose' of my app is pretty simple; it's to answer the question which a lot of us (who produce websites) get asked: "So, how much does a website cost?" - this seemingly simple question poses problems for us web folk - it's like when Spock get's asked "how do you feel?" - it's not always an easy question to answer - it's like "how much does a house cost?" - it depends - and it's a topic which I've blogged about before on the Jojet company blog.

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As you may or may not know, I'm an avid Instagrammer (my wife Jess would use a different word), so much so that I'll be prattling on about Instagram at an upcoming event (pity those poor fools in advance I say ;)

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With two young kids it was hardly surprisingly that Christmas generated a lot of material for the recycling. Torfaen (where I live) have only just recently begun cardboard collection so that's a step in the right direction but I'm still uneasy about the shear amount of all of this rubbish. This got me thinking...

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Instagram, Apple iPhone App of 2011, is supposedly coming to the Android platform in the very near future. It therefore seems a good time to post some IG pro tips I've accumulated over the year (and by "pro" I mean someone-who-spends-far-too-much-time-fiddling-with-Instagram than anything to do with my level of photography!).

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My social network is spread out over an increasingly large set of websites and services: Twitter (and company account), blogging (x2, this one and my company blog), Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram etc. And I can only see this net widening.

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A friend on Twitter just asked me how things were going at Jojet (my company) and this sparked a post that I've been meaning to do for a while...

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His career & track record of products is pretty bloody impressive: iMac, iPod, iPhone and more recently the iPad. Something you had to admire about him was his certainty of his being right; of him knowing the right way (and not worrying about focus groups) - not giving too much credence to what others say (which, in fairness, must have made him pretty tough to work for). 

His ability to bounce back after being booted out of Apple, to see the value in Pixar and then to come back to Apple and turn things around is a testament to persistence and vision. 

The recent iPad is a great example, he launched it in his typical charismatic fashion at a keynote with many industry experts braying that Jobs & Apple had got it wrong; after all, surely other companies had tried tablet computers before?!

However, it was the industry experts who were wrong...

Jobs knew (and has instilled in many of the top quality  people at Apple - such as Jony Ive) that the products which set the public's imagination alight are the ones that magically craft technology with design; you've got to get the balance just right - too much in either direction and you have a turkey on your hands (and in fairness, Apple had a few of those - but not recently). This appreciation of technology and design (and design with the end user in mind) is what set Apple apart - this and a willingness to do what they think is right - not simply to do what the rest of the industry is doing.

I hope that Jobs instilled the confidence to make such bold decision in Tim Cook and the rest of the senior management - they'll need it.

RIP Steve Jobs - would have been good to see what you would have got up to in the next 15 years but it wasn't to be. Damn shame

The Rugby World cup has kicked off and, as an avid fan, my twitter stream will be full of witty insights (ahem!) and cross chat on the popular #rwc #rwc11 & #rwc2011 hashtags.

However, I want to be sensitive to my regular followers (sweet aren't I?) - some of whom may not give two figs about rugby (it's crazy but true) - surely there is a way to protect them from the barrage of tweets I shall emit when Wales destroy South Africa tomorrow (ahem again!)?

...luckily there is

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Nowadays I tend to describe myself as an Internet Strategist...that's not because I got bored of the term "web designer" and decided for something more poncey sounding - I do this for a very good reason: I tend not to design websites any more. I am  more of the person who works out what is appropriate for a person or business to do online and then gets all of that done. I may do the design, the build, the blog setting up, the training etc etc...or I may not. I may set up a team to do it. It all depends. 

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