Google Plus iPhone App
TC: After less than 24 hours the Google Plus iPhone app has hit the #1 free spot in the Apple app store; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusiPhoneApp
TC: After less than 24 hours the Google Plus iPhone app has hit the #1 free spot in the Apple app store; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusiPhoneApp
The official StatusNet application is now available in the iPhone App Store; http://j.mp/d4x8RE
Economist: The internet has been a great unifier. Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it; http://j.mp/a3Rwse
Dumenco: How (and why) Facebook and Twitter became recess for grown-ups; http://j.mp/cdCYnU
The iPad changes everything, again: even the lack of multitasking is a feature; http://j.mp/aoA92h
Hedlund: “Probably the strongest of these is the focus the iPad creates for me. The lack of multitasking is a feature. I thought I’d miss this, and thought Android’s work on multitasking might be a strong counterpoint. It’s not. I love how focused I am using an iPad, versus working on a laptop. New mail isn’t constantly arriving; tweets aren’t Growling into view; I don’t even have an RSS reader installed. Instead I’m just reading a book or just playing a game or maybe just working. This is a huge relief, an antidote to interruption. (I’m sure having more than just one app running, as promised in OS 4.0, will be a benefit in some ways, but for today I love not having it.)”
VB: “The iPad is redefining how people gather around their media, creating shared experiences where they did not exist before. The social stigma of disappearing from the family unit and burying yourself in the laptop disappears. When someone is consuming media on an iPad, it is a shared experience by default: just ask anyone who has tried to get 10 uninterrupted minutes using their iPad at an airport, but instead has fielded a steady stream of oohs, aahs, and questions for passersby. With the form factor of a tablet, a small group of friends can all watch a video at the same time, laughing along in unison, instead of passing a cumbersome and fragile laptop around the room from person to person.”
TC: “The only thing that can stop the iPad is Apple. … Carr extended on that question, asking if maybe the iPad itself would just be a device where you consume content on the web rather than through apps? Hippeau says that’s up to Apple. Clearly they want to push people towards apps, behind their wall, he believes. The problem with this is that Apple doesn’t give back nearly as much data as having your own website would, Hippeau says. He thinks Apple will have to learn that media organizations live off of this data. ‘They’ll have to open it up more,’ he says.“
Schonfeld: Is Steve Jobs ignoring history, or trying to rewrite it? http://j.mp/buaNKQ
Wired: HTML5 + iTunes will form the centerpieces of the iPad content creation strategy; http://j.mp/akukhR (via @heinz)
Economist: “The first internet boom, a decade and a half ago, resembled a religious movement. Omnipresent cyber-gurus, often framed by colourful PowerPoint presentations reminiscent of stained glass, prophesied a digital paradise in which not only would commerce be frictionless and growth exponential, but democracy would be direct and the nation-state would no longer exist. One, John-Perry Barlow, even penned ‘A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’. … First, governments are increasingly reasserting their sovereignty. … Second, big IT companies are building their own digital territories, where they set the rules and control or limit connections to other parts of the internet. Third, network owners would like to treat different types of traffic differently, in effect creating faster and slower lanes on the internet. – It is still too early to say that the internet has fragmented into “internets”, but there is a danger that it may splinter along geographical and commercial boundaries. … China is by no means the only country erecting borders in cyberspace. The Australian government plans to build a firewall to block material showing the sexual abuse of children and other criminal or offensive content. … Discussion of these proprietary platforms is only beginning. A lot of ink, however, has already been spilt on another form of balkanisation: in the plumbing of the internet. Most of this debate, particularly in America, is about ‘net neutrality‘. … If, however, the internet continues to go the other way, this would be bad news. Should the network become a collection of proprietary islands accessed by devices controlled remotely by their vendors, the internet would lose much of its ‘generativity’, warns Harvard’s Mr Zittrain. Innovation would slow down and the next Amazon, Google or Facebook could simply be, well, Amazon, Google or Facebook.“