DigitalOutbox Episode 45
In this episode the team discuss Twitter Chirps, iPhone revealed and the Droid Incredible.
Playback
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Shownotes
1:25 – DEBill
– Libdems will call for repeal of digital economy bill
– Hoorah
3:31 – Twitter Chirps
– Launching Promoted tweets
– We are launching the first phase of our Promoted Tweets platform with a handful of innovative advertising partners that include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America—with more to come. Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users.
– You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you
– Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.
– Before we roll out more phases, we want to get a better understanding of the resonance of Promoted Tweets, user experience and advertiser value. Once this is done, we plan to allow Promoted Tweets to be shown by Twitter clients and other ecosystem partners and to expand beyond Twitter search, including displaying relevant Promoted Tweets in your timelines in a way that is useful to you.
– A Promoted Tweet isn’t guaranteed to stay afloat for a long time — if the tweet isn’t tracking well in terms of replies, clicks, and a number of other metrics Twitter is calling “resonance”, it will be pulled, and the advertiser won’t pay for it.
– Twitter Chirp
– Google Rolls Out Twitter Timelines
– http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/14/google-rolls-out-twitter-timelines-in-realtime-search/
– Google is going a different route by adding a timeline view of realtime updates.
– The feature is rolling out over the next few days, and includes more than just Twitter updates
– The timeline lets you go back in time to see what people were saying about any particular topic. It searches updates on Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, and MySpace.
– It is an attempt to recreate the conversation which occurred at a specific point in time about any topic.
– 3 Billion requests a day through API
– Growth – 1500% a year
– Twitter realise that twitter is too hard to use
– For devs, best twitter can do is grow userbase
– 55 million new tweets per day
– 600 million search queries
– Announcing today we’re launching Points of Interest. Actual places, not just lat/long. You’ll be able to click on Palace of Fine arts, see what everyone there is saying.
– User Stream API will give developers access to a feed of user actions on a more granular level than just tweets. The user stream includes mentions, friending and favoriting (the kind of stuff you’re used to seeing in Facebook’s news feed). The API will be available to developers to play with at Twitter’s Chirp Hack Day (which actually starts tonight).
– Annotations feature that will be launching “next quarter” that gives developers much more flexibility around the context of a tweet. The feature will allow developers to “add any arbitrary metadata to any tweet in the system.” So, just like a tweet can today be transmitted along with information about which other tweet it was in reply to, or what location it came from, or what application it was created on, now Twitter will allow developers to make up new stuff. Twitter is looking to see how developers use Annotations before it creates any sort of taxonomy for them, Sarver said.
– Twitter is launching a central developer resource site at dev.twitter.com later today. It includes such features as documentation that’s generated from code, rather than written by hand (this won applause from the Chirp audience), a way to securely build and reference API calls, an official WatchMouse monitor for the Twitter service and a way to search across all the repositories of Twitter developer information.
– Today the Library of Congress is announcing that it’s doing its part to digitally preserve each and every public tweet since the beginning of time … err Twitter. It fittingly broke the news on Twitter earlier today.
– after a six-month delay, “Tweets will be used for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation.”
– @anywhere also launched – http://dev.twitter.com/anywhere
– integrate twitter into your website with ease
14:46 – New Macbook Pros
– i5 and i7 dual cores – not quad core
– Emphasis on battery life rather than all out performance – 13 inch 10 hours, 15, 17 – 8-9 hours
– Screens – glossy 1440×900 screen, or a denser 1680×1050 panel with either glossy or matte coatings
– No need to reboot to swap between integrated and high end video
– 13 inch from £999, 15 from £1499, 17 from £1899
– From El Jobs…We chose killer graphics plus 10 hour battery life over a very small CPU speed increase. Users will see far more performance boost from the speedy graphics.
18:21 – iPad Dealyed in UK
– Now end of May due to greater than anticipated success in US – yeah right!
– Details and pre-orders announced on May 10th
– Makes this close to an iPhone launch
– O2 will also be announcing iPad deals in the coming weeks, also Vodafone and Orange
– really BBC, was it third biggest news in the UK?
21:18 – Opera Mini Approved
– Served through proxy with the sites compressed
– I thought experience was quite poor
– Safari as fast if not faster, GUI very poor too
– Zooming in was hit and miss, many times zooming in far too much
– Does sync bookmarks back to desktop
– So much for the regime
23:14 – iPhone 4G Leaked Lost or Stolen
– What’s new
• Front-facing video chat camera
• Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
• Camera flash
• Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
• Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×460 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
• What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
• Split buttons for volume
• Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic
What’s changed
• The back is entirely flat, made of either glass (more likely) or ceramic or shiny plastic in order for the cell signal to poke through. Tapping on the back makes a more hollow and higher pitched sound compared to tapping on the glass on the front/screen, but that could just be the orientation of components inside making for a different sound
• An aluminum border going completely around the outside
• Slightly smaller screen than the 3GS (but seemingly higher resolution)
• Everything is more squared off
• 3 grams heavier
• 16% Larger battery
• Internals components are shrunken, miniaturized and reduced to make room for the larger battery
– Biggest gadget story of the year…maybe ever?
– Gruber – Apple consider the phone….stolen
– Gizmodo confirm they paid for the phone
– Gizmodo tell the world the name of the engineer that lost the phone…what about the guy that stole/found the phone and sold it for premium? Was that really needed? From now on he’s the guy that lost the iphone. Then they do another post asking Apple not to sack him. Classy.
– Is Gizmodo handling stolen goods?
– Apple wants it back – http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/357361/apple-asks-for-its-iphone-4-back
32:19 – Microsoft Kin
– Today, Microsoft is launching its own Microsoft-branded phones targeted at younger users, “Kin,” also known as Project Pink. 2 phones, Kin 1, Kin 2
– Microsoft has dubbed a group of younger users “sociologists.” They like to share pictures on Facebook, check on their friends via mobile, talk tech and blog. They’re talking about Generation Y. It’s a teenie phone
– The first phone (pictures coming) is almost completely square. Microsoft is demoing the device on stage now, showing off its social features. Your contacts are almost entirely photo-based — it looks like a collage when you look at your favorites or friends.
– The interface is touchscreen: You can do drag-and-drop of links and swipe to open windows such as search. It does have a physical keyboard
– Use Zune video and music service
– 5- and 8-megapixel cameras on the two models, and it shoots video in 720p
– Kin Studio – web component of phone to access all content via slick front end
– Sharp built hardware
– Out in US on Verizon in May
– Autumn in UK on Vodafone
36:24 – Droid Incredible
– Camera at 8MP looks to be very impressive
– Best touch interface found on an android phone
– Sound playback and earpiece excellent
– 8GB internal storage + micro SD slot, therefore 40GB available – many apps don’t see internal storage though, and the phone doesn’t come with a card
– Software – Android 2.1 + Sense interface – well integrated
– In fact reviews say this is best interface found on an Android device
– Browser comes with Flash Lite – lots of problem, If someone was hoping to convince us that Flash could work on a device like this, consider the job unfinished.
– Battery – good but not outstanding for a device like this – get through a day just
– Best Android phone today
– What about tomorrow?
Picks
Ian
Lonely Planet iPhone guides Free
– Free until Thursday 22nd from App Store
– 13 cities – great offer
YoruFukurou (NightOwl)
– Native twitter Client for Mac
– Free, fast, feature rich
Shakeel
Marvel Comics for iPhone
– Good app for downloading and reading comics
– Pretty readable given small screen size
Henry
Free App Calendar
– Get a free app every day
– Nice way to get new content…for FREE
Chris
Geocaching
– but shhh, don’t tell the muggles.
– Not so much an app as a way of life.
– Free “taster” app.
– £5.99 for full app.
– Available across major platforms.
– Essentially a global treasure hunt.