aka “buy your own fucking glue”

I’ve only recently signed up to Foursquare. It’s a bit of fun and I’m still trying to find my use for it. I don’t mean to single out Foursquare here, it’s merely the latest service for me to sign up for, but one thing really bothered me about the sign-up process: foursquare thought it knew who I wanted to be friends with on foursquare just because I was friends with them elsewhere.

The definition of friends on different services is huge. Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter, all have very different ideas about what a friend or a connection is.

I think It’s time to kill off the “Find people you know from your existing networks” feature. Yup, that handy little tool that slurps in your Facebook, Gmail and Twitter contacts.

My attitude towards sharing and my usage of web services vary remarkable from service to service. Take my two most active networks; Twitter and Facebook. There is less than 10% overlap between my “friends” on both services. My FB is private, and thus probably more intimate, and my Twitter is open and a little more reserved.

My Gmail contacts are again entirely different from my Tumblr followers. Think of your mobile. You’d probably hand out my e-mail address to anyone who asks, but your mobile number? Not so fast.

Every web service has a soul. It has feeling, certain unspoken ground rules to them. By slurping in our contacts we’re not only commoditising that service, we’re wiping out its soul.

Carbon copies of friends lists from other service does not respect that feeling of identity to one service, and does not take into account that people use different services in remarkably different ways.

It’s time to fix that. And the first stop for me, is for new web services to think very hard about the slurp option. It’s not clever and could end up drowning out your service’s soul.

I’ve only had the Nexus One for a day, but I feel compelled to write up how I use it, why I like it, and why I’m likely stick with this phone for a while longer.

For comparison, my old/current phone is a Blackberry Curve and has been for a while. 

Gone Google

Cube, like many companies I guess by now, have Gone Google. My Calendar, Mail, Docs, Contacts are all hosted on Google. This made the setup and transition to the Nexus very easy. I entered my Google credentials and within seconds, my mail, contacts and calendars were all synced up and ready to go. Which, unintentionally or not, makes this a seriously good business phone.

The integration with Google apps is very sweet and seeing that a huge amount of my online productivity activity is associated with Google, this is a big deal.

Android Apps

First up, I don’t really care much for apps. I believe the mobile web will eventually win, and that apps are here as a transitionary measure until we can sort out browsers that are good enough to emulate the web experience on mobile.

However, being able to have multiple apps open simultaneously is a big deal. I’m finally using my phone as an ipod, with Spotify playing in the background and twitter clients pinging me with updates.

My favourite apps, beyond the standard ones installed are Spotify and Foursquare. The Facebook one doesn’t add anything beyond what m.facebook can do, and the Twitter apps also don’t give me much more than the new improved mobile.twitter can do.

Keyboard

I’ve been a bberry curve user for years. I held out on the iphone as it didn’t have a physical keyboard. I’m incredibly slow typing on the Nexus and I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to it.

Voice recognition, however, is pretty cool. I’ve resorted to speaking my text messages, with some good and some hilarious results.

I’m getting better on the virtual keypad and will keep at it for a while longer to see if I can adjust. I hope I can.

Feel the Power

The phone feels powerful. The apps, loading time, everything about it is seriously responsive and you feel that you can throw anything at it. I absolutely can’t wait for Flash 10 to make it to Android. That will totally revolutionise the mobile web experience, and probably kill off apps.

Connectivity

One thing worth noting is that I have a wireless 802.11n setup at home, which the Nexus can’t handle. It can only handle b/g, which I’ve long given up on due to interference issues. The 3.5G is lightning fast on O2 though, so I’m not missing wifi much.

Haptic feedback

Haptic feedback on the keypad is just awesome. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that. 

Overall

I’m really happy with this phone. It’s not really a phone, it’s a computer. It will definitely replace my laptop on journeys, as the bberry has done for a while now. I can see the day where I don’t own a laptop at all coming increasingly closer.

Bberry really have to fix their web browser to get me back on the curve.

I doubt this phone will be competition for the mainstream iphone user. Iphone’s are targeted for the every day user who just wants to pick something out of the box and it works. This phone is a little more powerful than that, and will predominantly be used by geeks until it iterates into more of a mainstream product.

I’m going to stick with the Nexus for a while. The only thing I know I’m going to miss like hell is the bberry BBIM. But with the Android being an open platform, I’m hoping someone can sort that out soon.

Beganifs - Cwcwll

Yr alaw cyntaf ddaw i’r cof / sy’n greadigaeth wrth ein bodd / Yr alaw cyntaf ddaw i’r cof / sy’n stamp ar feddwl yr oll o’r dorf.

Probably one of the best Welsh song ever written.

Cube just launched Double Six Club TV, in partnership with Domino Records and Boomerang Plus.

B.B.King - Better not look down

Better not look down / If you want to keep on flying / Put the hammer down / Keep it full speed ahead

Life’s been a little like this lately.

[This article was first published in the Western Mail on Friday 22 May.]

I sat at a dinner last week with a group of prominent figures in Welsh television past and present. I was listening intently to some great stories passionately told.

Memories always evoke a powerful emotion. One speaker described vividly being woken in the dark of the night to creep downstairs to listen to one of  Mohammed Ali’s fights on the wireless. The affection towards the medium and the memories that played were gripping.

I wondered to myself how long will it be until I sit at one of these dinners and reminisce about the website that streamed the Obama inauguration, or the Twitter user who sent the first pictures of the Hudson plane miracle?

As wonderful as memories are, they are also our biggest obstacle to change.

This week we’ve witnessed the final act of the prolonged ITV Wales drama. The demise of ITV has been widely predicted, debated and feared. Although a terribly sad and desperate situation for all involved, it marks what I believe will become known as the watershed moment, the moment of fundamental shift in attitude towards broadcasting as we previously knew it, in Wales.

There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief

It is now time to move on from mourning the demise of ITV in Wales. This is quite possibly the best singe opportunity for us in living memory. An opportunity to re-define, re-shape and re-boot our tired broadcasting and media landscape.

It was H.L. Mencken who once said “Never argue with a man whose job depends upon not being convinced” and those words ring true more now than ever before, as we must seek to solve digital problems with digital solutions, and not just prolong our analogue past.

This downturn will be marked in history as the time where many of the business models built in the industrial era finally collapse as a result of being undermined by the information age. It is inevitable and we can’t fight it. Technology and information forces are unstoppable and they will reshape the world as we know it regardless of whether or not we want them to.

The times they are a-changin’

The time has come for radical thinking and answers. The type of answer born out of the internet age, that carries the principles of the new media economy: partnerships, transparency, speed and action.

This week has itself demonstrated what happens when old institutions try to come to the digital party without reconstructing themselves. The cataclysmic results are highly visible and damaging.

What Wales certainly doesn’t need is another re-heated commission, a body whose decisions are worthy, thoughtful and slow moving. We mustn’t let ourselves sleepwalk into an analogue commission, another arts council of the airwaves in a post-airwave world.

Act small, think big and see the world differently

It is well within our reach for Wales to become a ferocious player in the UK digital landscape. The base for creative and radical digital solutions for dogged problems that we’ve been wrestling with for some time – news, plurality, children’s provision and even Wales focussed content.

Instead of arguing for quotas and protectionist practices that guarantees Welsh or Wales-looking content, wouldn’t it be far more exciting to posses a powerful media entity in Wales operating fast, powerfully and confidently on a UK level?

Look at the potential, for example, of the S4C model. A robust, competitive and pluralistic commissioner of digital cross-platform content and services for Wales. It’s a youthful existing vehicle for change.

Wales needs a post-media company, championing and puffing itself in a digital converged marketplace. A company defined by its spirit, its strategy and ambition.

Whatever the model, we need a nimble, flexible, confident structure to operate in the harsh realities of a fast-changing digital world. A structure that needs to move at great speed to pilot, deploy and manage exciting new revolutionary services.

Stop the past, create the future

In his book, What would Google do?, Jeff Jarvis takes aim at a number of large analogue businesses. He tries to apply the thought patterns of the most successful company around and one of the truly global companies, in order to harness the power of the digital economy.

Do you think for a second Google would have stopped and thought, how do we resurrect this old model that worked pretty well for us in an age we are no longer in?

I’m looking at Wales and I believe that it is within its reach to create that post-media company operating ferociously on a UK level deploying revolutionary new products and services first. From Wales, for Wales. And beyond.

We’re just getting started.