Archive → September, 2008
FOWA ToDo List
Future of Web Apps starts next week. Exciting.
Probably my favourite event of the year, and in 2007 it was partly responsible for helping our team really push forward. Just like a really great conference should.
So here’s my (unashamedly honest) FOWA todo list.
- Talk to Kevin Rose without coming across as a babbling fanboy
- Steal a Microsoft bean bag
- Get at least another ten Twitter followers
- Learn amazing stuff from Matt Biddulph
- Try not to lock myself out of my hotel room
- Find some brilliant UI developers who don’t shrink at the mention of ASP.
- Find a really, really talented freelance Facebook developer (or agency)
- Don’t lose all my expenses receipts. Again.
- Stay awake during the Zuckerberg keynote
- Drink lots of Adobe beer. Party.
Are you going? What’s your FOWA strategy? I need more ideas!
Disclaimer: I am totally trying to win this competition.
Twestival Review
Last night was the inaugural Harvest Twestival; organised perfectly by Amanda and Ben and sponsored, in part, by us.
It was the best meetup event I’ve been to for a long time. If not the best night out for ages.
The London Twitter crowd are a genuinely lovely mix of people. A vibrant mix of creatives, webby types, designers, bloggers, developers, musicians, podcasters, PR folk and everything inbetween. We talked about music, user experience, Twitter, iPhones, booze, photography, becoming a MySpace band. Everything.
We met those we’ve followed for ages and got to put faces to usernames. I met friends of friends who I didn’t even know were on Twitter to start with. What more could you want from an event?
All in all it was a brilliant chance to catch up with old friends and acquaintanc
es, as well as a perfect chance to make new friendships and tap into the collective wisdom of our local Twitter scene.
We’re anticipating the next one. No pressure guys!
iPhone iNnoyances – pt. 1 – Where’s my video app at?
The iPod Touch 1G was a shortlived little beast.
I’m sure many folks bought one, like I did, to tide over until the inevitable release of the iPhone 3G. I think we had a rocky nine months together. Residual value dropped pretty quickly. The cost-per-use ratio was not particularly great. The back scratched up quicker than anything, ever.
Since getting StormTrooperPhone (my white 3G), there’s been one small and unaddressed annoyance. And it’s the Video app.
On the Touch, Video is handled by it’s very own application. It’s great for finding all your content in one place.
The real-world use is something like:
- listen to an album for a bit
- start watching a podcast when you’re on the tube
- go back to the album you were listening to when you change stations
- start watching podcast again from where you left off
- rinse and repeat
Trouble is, the 3G has totally hampered this workflow. The video app is tucked away in the recesses of the whole iPod app. So you can’t pause music to watch video. This annoys me every day since the media integration of the two has gone backwards.
Now it works like this:
- create awesome playlist with Genius
- find a few minutes to watch Mahalo Daily
- watch it
- try to go back to playlist. It’s gone.
- weep
I just want my Video app back.
HBOS – On the Inside
Yesterday we dusted off our suits for the Bank of Scotland Entrepreneurial challenge which is worth about £35m in interest-free investment for the winners. Of all the times of the year to go to an event like that. You couldn’t script it any better.
Millions of words have already been written this week about the Lloyd’s / HBOS thing and thousands of jobs are disappearing, probably today.
It was fascinating to hear firsthand from pretty senior HBOS folk (who were mostly sales guys since it’s a clienty PR do) what it’s been like in the office this week. I think some of those who were there last night might be getting their P45s as I write this. They have no idea what’s happening whatsoever, and then when you contrast that with my own working environment, it’s about as far away as you can get.
I think the best quote came from the client manager chap who said:
What, you can actually wear shorts to work? Are you guys hiring?
The other highlight was the venue. I’ve not been to the Imperial War Museum since I was a kid, and eating dinner next to a Polaris missile is, frankly, epic.
Everyone was expecting the Gü Chocolate Puds guy to win. Some recruitment bunch won it in the end.
My takeaway was those of us who work in web, helping people do stuff better and solving problems, have it pretty good really.
Then we went home.
Lose some friends on Facebook
Go on, it’s easy.
Delete some of those people from college that added you and you never spoke to. Or that Italian guy who always does Italian status updates.
My buddy Marc is working on a campaign for the new Simon Pegg movie ‘How to Lose Friends and Alienate People’. It’s based on that Toby guy’s travails as a Brit magazine hack in Manhattan.
Note-perfect casting with Peggster. I really enjoyed the book many years ago so it will be interesting to see how the narrative fits the big screen.
Anyway, they’ve come up with a pretty genius app on the whole losing-and-alienating-friends thing. Here’s a shot:
I think some genuine friends might get irked with this one.
Good work facebook marketeers!
