Bluntly, though, Buzz was a dissapointment. Google have taken Facebook’s status updating functionality, including comments and likes, and added some of Twitter’s best features – such as geotagging. In terms of functionaility, it does nothing more than Twitter and Facebook combined. I had been further excited by being led to believe that Google had integrated Twitter right in. Great, I thought, I can update Twitter straight from my inbox – maybe I can even share links I stumble across?

Unfortunately this is not the case. Twitter integration runs like adding your Twitter Atom feed into Google Reader. Periodically (some time after actually posting) your Tweet shows up in your Buzz timeline. Anything you write in Buzz doesn’t go back to Twitter, in fact Google doesn’t even get you to sign in to Twitter - it just reeds your RSS feed (which won’t work if you keep your profile private, even though Buzz could import your Tweets and post them out using it’s private feature). You can follow people that have Google Mail, but you can’t see the people you follow on Twitter, so Buzz becomes, rather than an aggregator, another service.

The same issues are true for Flickr and YouTube. Add something to Flickr, your Buzz buddies see it. Add media in to a Buzz update, it ain’t going back the way data gets through.

Seriously, how hard would it be to make a single social media site that does … everything? I love the design of the Twitter site, so that’s a definite starting point. Facebook has the best functionality, so that’s got to be there. Flickr is the coolest photo service out there, so you’ve got to be able to see a user’s photostream. The homepage has to be like both Twitter’s and Facebook’s, your friends’/people you follow’s status updates. At the top you should be able to post, anything. A photo should be sent to Flickr, and there should be a way of choosing a set to add it to. Your post should appear in Twitter, and Facebook should get all your media too. The Twitter layout would need the addition of Facebook’s user search bar, and profile pages should have tabs for photos and videos. But the service wouldn’t have to host anything itself – pull statuses out of Twitter, media from everywhere.

Easy…

The best thing about it was, though, for a new Google feature you didn’t have to be a geek to understand it. (All modesty aside, I consider myself to have joined the elite ranks of the geek.)

Case Study

I had to get two PowerPoints to a colleague after a presentation, but their inbox didn’t want my large attachments and I couldn’t see them understanding a compressed folder. So I uploaded them, without converting them, made them public documents and bit.ly’d the links. The landing page for downloads is beautifully simple, with all of Google’s normal meta data tucked away and a big “Download” button centre stage.

My colleague was so impressed that I got an email back, thanking me for the presentations and explaining “that it actually worked”. Sure, you still have to be a geek to get the upload process right, but finally here’s a Google product (or element of) – other than Search – that mere mortals can use.

The most annoying thing about the snow is the pavements. My local council doesn’t have enough grit to do the roads, let alone the pavements, and everyone seems to be fearing legal action if they clear the streets themselves. Maybe we could have a website where everybody pledges not to sue. Although any viral campaign would need a furry creature used to living in a snow laden country to front it. Hmmm, simples.

It looks like we’re in for more snow towards the middle of this week. It’s a bit annoying when the whole of Britain seems to ground to a halt, but being snowed in removes quite a few distractions – those web sites aren’t going to build themselves!

Two new clients are in the offing, which I promise I’ll write about once the deals have been sealed. Work at Quantel is going well too – only one last section of the latest version of some of their Python based software left to debug! I’ve learnt a lot from working in Python recently, and it’s definitely increased by ability to code in general – knowing functions in different languages helps when finding solutions to tricky problems.

Finally, the future looks exciting with a recent tweet from @wossy. Since the last book club meet a mobile version of the site has been launched for iPhone and BlackBerry, some of the site’s been made easier to use with the addition of some AJAX code, the interface has been redesigned to make it cleaner and simpler, the site got a new domain and  it now works better with Twitter. Plus @sardo02 and I have been working on an API to power an Android application for the site.

I hope that everyone had a great Christmas, and are looking forward to the New Year. Bring on 2010!

The main problem I see with it is the Windows native design. It looks okay-ish in Vista, but then Vista can’t support running a browser and you don’t get to see much of it. For those of us who stuck with XP, Safari 4 looks absolutely hideous. The tabs bar is horrid XP blue (or oliver or silver) and the close buttons are far too big. I don’t know about anybody else, but the reason I swapped to Safari in the first place is because of the Cocoa style interface and a slight passion of mine for hating everything Windows. Safari 4 does continue to use Apple fonts – such as Lucida Grande, but if you’ve already got them installed then you’re going to be welcomed with a Times New Roman interface … nice. A button to turn off the XP sillyness and force the Safari 3 interface would be a very welcome addition.

Even worse is Safari’s copy and paste job on the “Page” and “Settings” menus that have been in Internet Explorer since version 7. I would have been happy with them if I could have dragged them out of the menu bar and back in to the customize menu, but to date you’re forced to live with them. I know why, a user needs their functionality, but when I’ve turned on the traditional menu system (File, Edit…) then I really don’t need the repetition. It’s the same in IE, but I had credited Apple with a bit more intuition than that.

Finally, there’s work needed on the rendering engines. It’s not good when even Apple’s own web site doesn’t function properly. It probably looks lovely on a Mac, but why produce something for Windows if it’s going to be a half-hearted attempt. Safari 4 hasn’t moved on that much since 3 either. Sure, Apple have thrown in all your favorite iTunes functions and upgraded the Web-Kit and JavaScript libraries used but where’s the amazing new Apple features we’ve come to expect. With increased competition from Chrome and Firefox, as well as the launch of Windows 7 (unless that doesn’t work either), Apple had better get their thinking caps on.

Then again, Steve’s back.

Google Wave was (inadvertently) launched at i/o last week by it’s developers, headed up by Lars and Jens Rasmussen. Quite a few people have criticised the product launch as it was pretty unrehearsed and pretty poorly presented. Apple’s presentations are always smooth and clean, which is true. But I think these critics are missing the point. The whole reason behind the presentation was to illustrate the product to developers, and it wasn’t supposed to be the official product launch. I suppose then, the mistake was putting the whole keynote address on the front page of wave.google.com, in similar fashion to a product how-to.

After watching the video I was left thinking it looked pretty cool. The system looks awesome: if you wanted to reply to something I had written here (and this was powered by Blogger, which it isn’t) then you’d highlight the word, click the reply option that appeared by your mouse point and your comment would appear inline. Most impressively this would appear in my Google wave account in realtime: each character appears as it’s typed.

Google Chrome was launched as a “reinvention of the browser” – what browsers would look like if they were invented today. Now they’re moving on to email – and I think Wave is how email would look if it were invented this weekend. But nobody’s abandoning email or throwing in the proverbial IM towel – to have a revolution there has to be an uprising. And without everybody sending Waves how do you use it: can you email from it? How do you contact someone with a Hotmail address? How do you send somebody outside of Google Wave a blip (a blip is “a unit of conversation” – lot’s of blips make a wave)? The answer to these questions is that you can’t. External developers have been tasked with creating API applications to meet these demands: that was the purpose of the i/o presentation. But I don’t want to send my emails through an external developers server. Nor do I want my blog falling in to my email account and my friends leaving random comments on my sites. I have enough qualms about sending data from the iPhone OS which is essentially virus proof – I don’t want to be working with third party applications from my desktop.

Everybody’s been asking when Google will make a desktop word processor (I’m becoming addicted to Google Docs) or an operating system – I think this is there answer: they won’t. Rather than take on Microsoft with a rival OS they’ll make something new, revolutionary and unique – a OS in the browser. Maybe this will be the future, but I can’t see it happening tomorrow.

It might have the odd edit, and because I inherited it I couldn’t tell you where.

You can download the theme here (.zip, 240kb).

I’m willing to respond to any support questions if you leave a comment below, but make sure you read the ReadMe first.

A YouTube video posted in February shows a Spotify app being tested in the Apple iPhone SDK. It was leaked on TechDigest back in February and looks pretty complete, so it’s surprising that it hasn’t made it to the App store yet – if it’s real. A little doubt is thrown up by the Spotify blog: a search on iPhone, Mac and Apple provides no noteworthy results.

With any luck an app will appear shortly. Spotify’s great on the desktop, and would be 100% worth it on iPhone (especially if you could download playlists in between hotspots). An app will have to appear soon any way – developers can now use libspotify to develop on Linux, so Spotify has been formatted for external applications and Spotify say they’ll open up more platforms soon. Even without iPhone support an app could, theoretically, connect to a Linux host that manages the API and sends back a tidied up result … maybe.

How long will we have to wait?

Ingredients 4 tbspns flour, 4 tbspns sugar, 2 tbspns cocao, 1 egg, 3 tbspns milk, 3 tbspns oil, 3 tbspns chocolate chips (optional), a splash of vanilla extract

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a large coffee mug. Pour in the egg, milk and oil and mix thoroughly. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and the vanilla extract and mix again. Microwave the mug and contents for 3 minutes (@ 650 watts). The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don’t be alarmed! Allow to cool and tip on to a plate to serve with ice cream.

The best thing about this recipe is that it means you’re never more than 5 minutes away from chocolate cake!

Christmas is looking busy with several exciting projects. I’m working with Tommies Guides (tommiesguides.co.uk), military book specialists to revamp their website using a higher version of shopping cart software and to integrate the old website’s HTML pages and ASP shop in to a new easy-to-navigate system. A few new contracts are pending, some with very exciting opportunities for growth attached. Watch this space!

MS Boat Photos (msboatphotos.com) is now complete. Check out this, even if I say so myself, brilliant web site that brings together admin content management, user photo uploads and managements as well as a super easy shop front. It’s built in PHP and uses the Google Checkout API for retail.

From this web site you can now instant message me when available. Have a look at my contact page if you’d like to bounce some ideas off me rather than spend an age writing out an email.