All About Android 183 - The Appeal of a Diverse Ecosystem

This week I was a guest on All About Android, the TWiT.tv netcast about all things Android. It was great to be back on the show with Gina Trapani, Jason Howell, Ron Richards and Bryan Burnett.

Check out the Youtube video I have embedded below.

In episode 183 we discussed the name of Android 5.0 and called it the day (before?) Lollipop was announced. I also got to speak of my review of the Tesco Hudl 2, and demoed the Skyscanner Hotels app. (Also avalable at http://twit.tv/show/all-about-android/183)

If you like what you have seen of All About Android, you can subscribe to the video and/or audio here: http://twit.tv/show/all-about-android. To vote in the Android App Arena you can go here: http://aaapoll.com/183 (Go Skyscanner Hotels!).

All About Android 165: It's Creepy... Creepy Good

This week I had the honour of being a guest on All About Android, the TWiT.tv show about all things Android. I really enjoyed being on the show with Gina Trapani, Jason Howell, Ron Richards and Bryan Burnett. Discussing some of my favourite subjects on AAA was great! Check out the episode here.

You can also subscribe to All About Android on YouTube, TWiT.tv and on iTunes.

Farewell Google Wave!

This morning I received a sad email from Google which outlined the closure dates for Google Wave.

Waves will all be switched to read-only on January 31st 2012. Wave services from Google will be switched off on April 30th 2012.


Here's the complete email I received:

Dear Wavers,
More than a year ago, we announced that Google Wave would no longer be developed as a separate product. At the time, we committed to maintaining the site at least through to the end of 2010. Today, we are sharing the specific dates for ending this maintenance period and shutting down Wave. As of January 31, 2012, all waves will be read-only, and the Wave service will be turned off on April 30, 2012. You will be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off. We encourage you to export any important data before April 30, 2012.
If you would like to continue using Wave, there are a number of open source projects, including Apache Wave. There is also an open source project calledWalkaround that includes an experimental feature that lets you import all your Waves from Google. This feature will also work until the Wave service is turned off on April 30, 2012.
For more details, please see our help center.
Yours sincerely,
The Wave Team

It is sad for me to see the service Wave off into the sunset (pun intended). I'm sure Gina Trapani, author of the now freely available book The Complete Guide To Google Wave, has already come to terms with this.

Farewell Google Wave, best of luck in your new incarnation as Apache Wave.

You can still read Gina Trapani and Adam Pash's The Complete Guide To Google Wave here.

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.

Habermas-Chipotle-Glee Count From Public Parts

After having listened to the audio book, I have just finished reading the paper edition of Jeff Jarvis' Public Parts.

Here's Amazon's product description which gives you a good idea what it is all about:



"In Public Parts, Jeff Jarvis travels through history to show the amazing parallels of distrust and fear that met the advent of innovations such as the printing press and the camera. He reveals amazing, almost unnerving, connections between our suspicions and discomforts through history as technology has inexorably changed the world and our sense of us within it. Based on extensive interviews, Jarvis introduces us to the men and women building the Internet today. Some of them have become household names-Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's Ev Williams- many more of them may soon be recognized as the industrialists, philosophers, and designers of our online future. He reveals the promising ways in which the Internet is already allowing us to collaborate, organize and create in dazzling ways-how we manufacture and merchandise, buy and sell, teach and learn. It is a world being built on an ethic of transparency and generosity but as Jarvis shows, it is a world that's already impacting economies, industries, human health, and many other facets of humanity in meaningful and measurable ways. Jarvis makes an urgent case that the future of the internet-needs as much protection as the physical space we share. It is a space of the public, for the public and by the public-and it needs respect and protection from all of us, no matter how we use it."



As a This Week in Google (TWiG) viewer/listener, I often play the Habermas-Chipotle-Glee drinking game in the TWiT.tv chat room when I am able to follow the show live. The Habermas-Chipotle-Glee drinking game is a tongue-in-cheek drinking game based on the sometimes extremely topical and relevant, sometimes tangential mentions of Habermas (German sociologist and philosopher), Chipotle (Chain of North American Fast Food Restaurants) and Glee (US TV Series). You have a drink each time one of the three is mentioned.

As I read through Public Parts, I did my best to count mentions of Habermas, Chipotle and Glee. Below are the results I have found. In the spirit of "openness", "collaboration" and "betaness" delineated in Public Parts, I would like to invite anyone who has read the book and counted the H-C-G mentions to please correct me if the count is wrong (leave a comment below please). Even better, if you are Jeff Jarvis and have a more accurate count please let me know. Here are the count results:

1. Habermas (27)
2. Chipotle (3)
3. Glee (0)

Even though I didn't catch a mention of Glee, rest assured that it was present in the spirit of the book ;-) . Assuming your drink of choice is served in 25ml spirit shots be prepared to consume a standard 0.75l bottle of it. If your tipple of choice is wine (in 250ml servings), be prepared to consume 10 bottles of wine... If my H-C-G count is correct, Jeff Jarvis has achieved close to enological-mathematical perfection for the Habermas-Chipotle-Glee drinking game for Public Parts. He must have been practising while writing the book. That would also expalin the #fuckyouwashington trending topic...

Now that I've finished reading the paper edition of Public Parts, I'll send a copy to my mum. It's the sort of book that will clarify issues in and around social media to her while being in a form-factor she is comfortable with: a hardback paper book.


As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below. I look forward to hearing from you.

Jeff Jarvis' Public Parts Now Available

It's a book we've been teased with many an episode on This Week in Google... Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis is now available to order from amazon.co.uk, to download as a Kindle Edition, and to download as an audiobook from Audible.

I downloaded the Public Parts audiobook (read by Jeff himself) last night and have been listening to it while walking in the autumnal sun today.

So far I have thoroughly enjoyed the audiobook and will have to make sure I read the paper edition with a bottle of something to play the Chipotle-Habermas-Glee Drinking Game. In the audiobook I have already caught a mention of Chipotle...

I'll post my full impressions once I've read the hardback copy which should arrive in the post on Friday.

As well as listening to Public Parts, this evening I will be watching This Week in Google (with Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani and Jeff Jarvis) live on TWiT.tv. I think it's a Jarvisian day. Or is it a Jarvite day? Or even a Jarvisite day?

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below!

How I'm Following The London Riots

Today is a sadly eventful one as far as news and the "London Riots" are concerned. This blog post is not about the rights or wrongs, it is not a criticism or condonation of events. I would just like to explain how I'm following what is going on.

Mouse and the two smartphones I'm using at the moment.

While at work today I was on a break. In the staff canteen the TV was on and someone had the SKY HD box on Sky Sports. As usual, I was checking my Twitter and Identica feeds on my smartphone (using Mustard!) and noticed some recent tweets and dents about more "London Riots". We switched the TV over to BBC News 24 and started watching the rioting and looting in the Hackney area of London. Between tweets, dents and the live BBC News 24 coverage it was all very involving.

My computer desktop with the BBC iplayer and Gwibber for Twitter and Identica

I am now at home, and still following the events that are continuing to unfold live. I have realised that the way the news is being reported and the way I am following it are fundamentally different from how I followed news ten years ago. Ten years ago (2001: Genova Riots at the G8 and 9/11) the way I followed the news was entirely passive and curated by the news channels and agencies reporting. Now, as well as the curated BBC News coverage, I am also actively following and engaging with people over Twitter and Identica over the news. It is a completely different experience and in many ways much more engaging.

This is the sort of thing that Gina Trapani, Leo Laporte and Jeff Jarvis discuss often on This Week in Google. Now that I think about it while experiencing it, I understand the whole technological and social shift in news more. Is this just the beginning of a more federated news service/system? With this sort of news technology so widely available, do print newspapers have any point apart for conveying specific journalists' and opinionists' take on the situation? Do most people prefer today's news today or yesterday's news today?

This is not a complete thought train by any means. It is just my ramblings regarding how and by what means news is reaching me now compared to just a few years ago.

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.

This Week in Google reaches episode 100! [Netcast]

Yesterday evening I watched episode 100 of This Week in Google, one of my favourite netcasts.

TWiG Episode 100 as viewed on my Ubuntu laptop.

This Week in Google, also known as TWiG,  is a netcast (or podcast if you prefer the term) available as a live video stream at http://live.twit.tv/ at 2000 UTC weekly on a Wednesday and later as a download from http://twit.tv/twig. TWiG covers the news and views on Google, cloud computing and social networking. The netcast often heads off on tangents that inevitably lead conversation to subjects such as the TV show Glee, the Chipotle fast food restaurant and food, and Jurgen Habermas (a favourite of Jeff Jarvis).

TWiG is usually hosted by Leo Laporte, Gina Trapani and Jeff Jarvis. Often there are guests involved in the websphere of cloud computing and social networking such as Kevin Marks, Chris Di Bona, Kevin Purdy, Matt Cutts and others.

As was said both in the love-fest that was the beginning of episode 100 and in the chat room, congratulations to Gina, Leo and Jeff and all involved in the show. I find it pleasant to watch/listen to and also enjoy the interaction the hosts and guests have with listeners in the chat room and on Twitter.

Here's to another 100000 episodes of This Week in Google!