Never be fooled. Things always take a lot longer to change than you think they will – particularly where the mass adoption of a new technology is concerned.
The PVR lesson
When I started writing about TiVo back in 2001, I saw “PVR’s are a vital piece in the jigsaw.”
Nick Curtis has written a poorly-researched piece in the Evening Standard that attempts to take a chunk out of Twitter, while asking if ‘Twitter is the new Facebook.’
Why poorly-researched? Well, he starts the piece saying that Tweets are 160 characters long – and as anyone who has ever looked at the sevice will know, they’re 140, the large ‘140’ beneath the input box being the clue. He then moves to tell us all how he didn’t really understand it.
It’s interesting how a couple of months can change the view you hold of a collection of companies.
These in particular center around Kevin Rose and the companies that he has an involvement in – Digg, Revision3 and Pownce.
It’s not long ago – back in March 08 – that there were rumours that Digg was subject to a bidding war between Microsoft and Google. The tech giants were – rumours told us – battling to outbid each other for the blessed Digg. Figures of $200 million were floated, although the accuracy of the rumours was questioned by Digg’s CEO Jay Adelson.
Pownce, a competitor to Twitter, has announced that it is shutting the service on 15 December – Just two weeks notice.
The two main people behind the service, Leah Culver and Mike Malone, will be going to work with blog company, Six Apart.
Two more of the Pownce team, Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka will be all ‘la de da’ and become advisers to Six Apart.
Yahoo has published their “Year in Review,” covering search over 2008.
They’re keen to point out that it isn’t just what the top 10 searches were, but Top 10s of lots of catagories.
Beyond the Top 10s there’s also some analysis of what those things could have meant.
Every day more people are accessing data services from their mobile phones, like Internet browsing, Twittering, checking Facebook.
Virgin Mobile are to be offering a 30p per day Internet tariff from 8 December to tempt people to their network, or indeed keep them.
If you’re looking to expand your network of Twitter friends, but are finding that it’s taking more time that you thought it would, or aren’t able to find that time, Twollow could be a solutions for you.
The Met Office, well-know weather forecasters, are to offer a world’s first – a free-of-charge (beyond any of your own mobile data charges), video on-demand weather service to your mobile phone.
Access will be via a branded portal (lovely to hear that phrase again :) ), giving access to weather forecasts that will be updated several times a day – currently the mobile site is saying it’s three times a
day.
I’m on my way to Amplified 08, a new UK event that brings together people who want to actively contribute to the conference/event that they’re going to – Think BarCamp/ unconferenced events.
Essential to the event is the lack of hierarchy to the organisation of the event – you don’t have a self-appointed panel of ‘experts’ that decide what is going to be the important things to tell the great unwashed about when they come along – as many ‘official’ conferences are structured.
Cable subscribers in France, Spain, Finland, the Netherlands and Belgium are in for a treat.
Cable Europe, the self-described body representing leading Cable operators in Europe, have announced that they will be bring 100 Mbps Broadband services to their customers.