Twitter's dev team and its app community must be working overtime at the moment--there seems to be a flurry of news about improvements, whole new features and various spit-and-polish activity. We've rounded it up for you.
U.K.'s Tweeps To Be on TV's Cutting Edge?
This is possibly the biggest news of the day, and it comes courtesy of one of Britain's big mobile phone operators Orange. The company today switched on its SMS-Twitter link, joining the other big national networks, but also added in a whole new feature: MMS picture sharing. The feature was announced in Twitter's blog with the flattering phrase "The U.K. has had an outsized cultural impact on the world. From music to sports to literature...and now--MMS with Twitter." It works by having cell phone users snap a pic with their phone, then send it to a special number that's linked to Orange's photo sharing Snapshot site. From there it gets Tweeted like a pic through regular systems like Twitpic--but in this case it's perfect for the legion of tweens who have feature phones that can't do smartphone full-Twitter tricks.
No surprises that image-integration into Tweets is becoming a big thing, though: Kodak (yes, really) has tapped the sharing power of Twitter, and struck up a partnership with Tweetphoto to boost real-time photo taking events and pic-sharing on the Web by co-developing apps.
But back to Orange, which handles cell phones in France, Spain, and Poland too: It also announced it's made deals with U.K. TV operators to integrate Twitter into news programs, films, regular TV shows, and (horror of horror!) football games. That's real football, with lots of foot-on-the-ball action--a sport held sacred by Brits. Hasn't Orange heard of Fox's terrible Glee and Fringe live TV-Twittering debacle? "We plan to enrich shows by allowing people to Tweet while the watch their favorite programmes" is how Orange's director development and partnerships, Stephanie Hospital, puts it. But toying with footie is a risky game, and if Orange messes it up like Fox did, then "hospital" may suddenly be a very apt word.
Proper People Search in Twitter Apps
Most people access Twitter via a desktop or smartphone-top third-party app rather than visiting its home site, but until now these have only had limited functionality to help you find people you know on Twitter. That's just changed, as Twitter's announced a some new custom API handles to improve the search experience.
The idea is that you'll be able to access the beefier search options offered in-site via the third-party software--things like search by business. This is likely to seriously improve Twitter's functionality as more and more businesses leap aboard the social media service to either promote, defend, or address problems with their wares.
Me-Tweet and Other Chaff Filtering by Klout
Klout is one of that cloud of outside-Twitter apps that offer you a service that tackles Tweets in a different way: Klout's trick is to calculate a metric that measures the influencing powers (clout, get it?) of individual Tweeps. The calculation is complex, but Klout suggests it's a good way to "find the people the world listens to" on the social Web. Right off the bat, that's a pretty clever way to filter through all the zero-content, zero-link and zero-importance me-Tweeters on the system.
But Klout's just added a new trick that takes it to a new level: By working with Twitter's new Lists function (and associated APIs) Klout also now lets you see the most influential Tweeters on a particular topic of choice, and then you can build a Twitter list of the results. It's a tool with massive potential, obviously. Say there's a breaking news item that's spreading over Twitter--you'd be able to fashion a list of the key influencing players in the piece without having to trawl through Twitter or read lots of me-too Tweets. It's exactly the kind of emergent use of Twitter that's making the site better and better...I wonder if Twitter will take it officially aboard, like it did for Re-Tweeting?
Xbox Twittering
As we reported, and noted again last week, today the Xbox Live system is getting an update that'll integrate Facebook and Twitter powers directly into your online gaming experience. It's hard not to point out how important this might be for Twittering gamers.
The specially-tailored interface will let you do standard 140-character Tweets, and it'll be a valuable cross-over for gamers who are also into social media, but don't want to disconnect from their console. And that's to say nothing of the potential for game related Tweet conversations--boasts, challenges, and tricks'n'tips. With around 20 million gamers on Xbox Live, that could bring a whole new audience to Twitter too.
There is also confirmation today from Sony's blog that the PS3 is getting itself some mainstream social-media attention...with a basic Facebook integration. Are we crazy to assume that where Facebook apps go, a Twitter app will surely follow? I think not--the chaps at Sony are savvy.
With the launch of disaster/apocalypse movie 2012 last weekend, a new question has popped up on the Net: Are dystopian movies more popular when the world is already gloomy from an economic depression? You'd think perhaps yes, wouldn't you?
The Wall Street Journal has noted that 2012 is just "one of a flood of postapocalyptic stories" (hohoho) on the way to the big and little screens, where you can expect to see your heroes "fending off cannibals, picking up day-to-day survival skills and struggling to maintain their humanity amid the ruins." On first thoughts it would seem reasonable that the global economic downturn is probably behind this impending slew of disaster films--perhaps the creative types behind them are being influenced towards negative thoughts, or they're tapping into the current social feeling in the population, feeding them films that match that mood.
Daniel Drezner over at ForeignPolicy.com asks that very question, and notes that the last time he remembers a big bunch of dystopian flicks all coming at once was "in the 1970's, another period of economic and political upheaval." Drezner mentions the Poseidon Adventure, Towering Inferno, Meteor, and Virus as examples.
But here's the surprising beef: The link between economic upheaval and dystopian movie releases actually goes the other way: When times are shiny and happy in a global financial sense, that's when dystopian pictures get made. Well, io9 did all the legwork and analyzed 30 years worth of movies to produce this graph.
Its conclusions are obvious: The biggest spike in disaster movies in the U.S. was in 1995-1998, when the American economy was "at its bounciest." (io9 also looked at trends in post-apocalyptic fiction going back 200 years, and the results show a dramatic change starting 20 years ago.)
The psychology behind this is fascinating, but it's probably an impenetrable problem to tackle scientifically. Shall we just imagine that when times are good movie audiences like to see a film that reminds them of how bad things can be? Either to boost our feelings of contentment, or worry us that everything's probably going to get worse--take your optimistic or pessimistic pick.
We mentioned Zugara's neat augmented reality clothes shopping experiment before--noting how cool it could make online shopping by letting you try out virtual clothes. Well, it's an experiment no more: Online fashion store Tobi has launched it for real.
It has been redubbed Fashionista (much better than the original Webcam Social Shopper) and it works pretty much how you'd think it would: When you've chosen an item of clothing you like the look of, you print out a special AR barcode-like tag and hold it up in front of you while you stand before your Webcam. Zugara's software then displays an image of the clothing you're interested in superimposed on your body. By maneuvering the AR tag around you can position the apparel exactly how you want it to match your body--so you get to see a rough image of what you'd look like wearing the actual garment.
It doesn't stop there: You can take a snapshot of what you look like, and the system includes motion-capture so you can make gestures and selections by waving your arms, much as you do when using Sony's Eye toy on the PlayStation. You can also give the clothes a thumbs up or thumbs down so it can recommend more for you--something a bit like a physical version of Amazon's "you might also like" service (or a live personal shopper). And, of course, you can buy the items you select. Not content with using one hot-topic technology, Zugara has also given Fashionista a dash of social media interactivity--you can post the snapshots you take onto Facebook, presumably to garner the opinion of your friends. Or you can add them to your profile on the site where your shopper friends can comment.
The upshot is that you get an online equivalent of taking your pals to the mall to check out some new threads, all from the comfort of your own PC and with a little added zing of social media. Sure, you'll miss out on the face-to-face chatter with your friends, the tasty frapuccinos, and the ability to twirl in a new dress...but it's the future, right?
Google's Book deal is so controversial it makes fascinating news every time the story takes another turn. But for Google, things have just turned pretty sour: Due to huge legal pressure, it's chopping foreign texts from the archive.
Google published its revised settlement terms on the deal this past Friday just before midnight, and while it's not a coup de grâce for Books itself, it's a massive concession to the numerous foreign governments and bodies that have been calling for changes to the allegedly wicked financial deal Google managed to finesse through the courts.
As a result of the changes, Google Books will not contain foreign-language books. Only texts published within the U.K., Australia, Canada, and those that fall under U.S. copyright will be part of the digital archive. There's more, too: Named plaintiffs in the settlement now include authors in the U.K., Australia, and Canada, who'll gain representation by the Book Rights Registry Board in order to acquire their share of cash from Google. The Rights Registry is also required to actually seek out authors "who have not yet come forward" from now on--it's amazing that this wasn't the case beforehand. The modified deal even adds a legal representative for unclaimed or "orphan" books; the rep is charged with protecting author's rights. Also in the deal is more scope for authors who want their books to be available for free (rather than sold via Google's partner companies) and who wish to tag them with creative commons or other licenses.
That all sounds about right. Google's original deal to get the Books service working--while trumpeted by the search company as being amazingly progressive and good for education, humankind, and the future and history of the written word--was seen to be a weasely-worded trick that effectively gave Google carte blanche to do what ever it wished with millions of published texts. The fact it was a U.S.-based settlement that covered books published everywhere also raised the ire of authors and rights bodies outside the U.S. Those people will no doubt be satisfied at the changes. The fact that the deal has now been gutted, refined, and injected with considerable amounts of fairness should also please pretty much everyone with a vested interest in Books.
There is a downside, though: For those thinkers who champion Books as being indicative of the future for publishing (including Google, which is reportedly still "very excited" about it all) the lack of foreign texts will be a blow. Think of all those potentially useful, interesting, historic texts that won't be available now. Still, que sera sera, eh?
Motorola's Droid smartphone got serious chunk of press coverage when it launched a few weeks back, and no wonder--it's possibly Motorola's one and only chance for a comeback. But how well did it sell?
Flurry did the hard number crunching to work out the sales figures for Droid, by examining how many times apps connected to Flurry's system were run on iPhone 3G S and Android-powered Droid and myTouch3G phones, and detecting how many new handsets were activated in each device's first week. The plain numbers make the situation pretty clear:
The iPhone 3G S leads the pack with 1.6 million first-week sales, with the myTouch3G trailing at a tiny 60,000 units. The Droid beat the myTouch and sold a significant 250,000 even though that's six times smaller than Apple's sales figure. But this isn't representative of how successful the Droid's sales really were: Apple's 3G S was launched over an installed user base of some 27 million existing iPhones (by Flurry's calculation), riding the wave of all the good publicity surrounding the previous incarnations of the device. And while Droid benefitted from the PR of prior Android handsets from other makers, it was a brand new gizmo for Motorola. Flurry notes that the 3G S also launched in eight countries, while Droid hit the shelves in the US alone, giving Apple a significant advantage, and suggesting that if Motorola had tried the same trick its first week sales figures may well have rivaled Apple's.
But does this data represent a significant win for Droid and Motorola? Perhaps not. The 3G S was a relatively small-step upgrade over the previous iPhone 3G which sold a million units in its first weekend. And despite the plethora of good write-ups for the Droid in the media, it's possible that Droid's high profile is a bit of a sham--numerous later assessments of the phone have called its design into question, there's a possible issue with sound quality, and U.K. cell phone network O2 (which previously had iPhone exclusivity there) said it wouldn't be selling the Droid because it failed the company's tests.
Instead, we should probably think of the figures as being a boon for Android itself, rather than the Droid. This is the fastest-selling Android-powered smartphone to date, and that really suggests that the OS is only going to expand its market share as other manufacturer's release smartphones that beat the Droid--which is just a matter of time.
Both IBM and AT&T have unveiled new schemes that put their giant processing power and vast data storage facilities at the disposal of the little guy (or business) with a Net connection.
IBM's entry into the cloud-computing service market has seemed surprisingly late for such a technology-leading mega-company, especially with players like Amazon already offering a huge suite of virtual computing systems. Perhaps that's why the new Smart Analytics Cloud that IBM's launching is being applied internally to the company before being rolled out to the rest of the world--where it's apparently dubbed the Blue Insight system.
As the name betrays, the SAC is more sophisticated than the remote-computing/cloud-storage system that you tend to think of when reading the term "cloud computing"--it's a business analytics package that drags together different pieces of business-critical information from various locations within the company. It will cover everything from finances to inventory data, and this broad reach means it'll consist of over a petabyte of data.
In contrast, AT&T's Synaptic Computing As A Service is more traditional: It's a cloud-based processing system, which AT&T says can be used for "cloudbursting" apps to users or as a test and development environment. According to AT&T's VP for Hosting and Cloud Services Steve Caniano, it can be configured either as a public or private cloud, which in the latter case is connected to the end users over AT&T's network--connections that "many companies will already have with AT&T."
AT&T's goal seems to be to leverage its big-name status and existing business relationships to attract potential customers who may be wary of cloud computing from other providers, due to data security issues and cybercrime events like Distributed Denial of Service attacks. AT&T will roll out the service to U.S. networks first, and then onto its global data centers so it can be sold to clients around the world.
Why's this interesting? Though both AT&T and IBM are huge names in the tech business, it seems they're lagging far behind Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft's efforts at making cloud computing work. Amazon recently launched a particularly clever Virtual Private Machine cloud computing solution that lets companies run workstations in Amazon's cloud, but which are actually an integrated part of the existing network within the company.
We've been following the development of Layar, the cross-platform smartphone augmented reality app-- because it just might be a model for the future of AR. Its utility has been zooming, and it just hit its 200th AR geotagged data layer.
The 200th layer is a system that helps users find the real-time availability of public rental bicycles that are part of the Le Vélo STAR system in Rennes, France. The add-in to Layar, developed by In Cité Solution, gives you the location of the nearest bike parking spot, and handily tells you how many bikes are available at the moment.
Neat and eco-friendly, it's a near-perfect demonstration of the power of AR apps to improve day-to-day life. In Cité has plans to develop their Layar apps further by adding social networking powers for Rennes. They may also expand the service for bike, bus, and metro systems in other cities, and will release part of their solution as open-source so other developers can build similar apps for their own locations.
Western society's habits, according to a new survey, are resulting in overly individualistic behavior that makes us depressed. But before that news makes you sad, a different piece of research says the social networking boom may be able to help.
The Northwestern University study examined depression and anxiety in different nations around the world, comparing in particular individualistic nations like those in the West, and collectivist nations like China. Interestingly the U.K. came top in individualism (that stiff upper lip perhaps?), followed by the U.S., Australia, and Western Europe. And though you may think that's a good thing, it comes at a price: Around one in ten Brits are sufferers of depression and anxiety, compared to one in twelve in Europe and a mere one in 25 in China. Though there's likely to be a genetic component in action, it seems likely that Western individualism is causing stress and sadness.
So what's to blame? Is it our social habits? The change in society that means kids no longer play together in the park? Or is it the rise in mobile phones, Internet use and social networking--in some minds evil technology that are mainly a solo habit and which must be inherently bad for you?
Well, according to the American Life project and Pew Internet, it's not the latter. Mobile phone users have a 12% larger circle of close friends than people who don't use mobiles (are there any of them left, anyway?). People who engage in life-sharing activities via systems like Facebook or Twitter, posting status updates or pics of their activities have 9% bigger friendship groups than those who avoid social nets. And though there's a knock-on negative effect of less interactivity with your physical neighbors, there's an unexpected diversity bonus: Social networkers are much more likely to be friends with people from different backgrounds. With the social networking phenomenon currently exploding in popularity, it might be a good sign for our society.
As is usual when a transformational technology arrives and starts impacting on society, there's inevitable hand-wringing and calls for a return to the old status quo from some quarters (remember how TV was supposed to kill real person-to-person communication?). But as these studies show, the effects of our technology are both positive and negative, and most likely highly unpredictable on a individual basis (individuals as in people, and as in different technologies.) And the upshot of that conclusion is simple: Don't Panic. Enjoy the opportunities our technological world has to offer: There's bound to be another surprising development just over the horizon.
Though Time Warner's CEO Jeff Bewkes has his own agenda to push regarding the future of TV, speaking to the Daily Beast recently he mentioned the future of free-to-air TV. He thinks it hasn't got one, and he may have a point.
Among various other pronouncements on Time Warner's business, Bewkes was asked about how free TV's future might go, and he didn't mince his words: "their business model is becoming increasingly not viable" before long, if they don't enforce some kind of carriage fee they "may not survive."
Is Bewkes merely trotting out the same old line about the future of the TV (and newspapers and books and...) being on the Internet and as paid-for content? Kinda. But he backs up his thinking with some sensible points: Fewer people are watching the free broadcast networks, they're doing so for fewer hours each day, and ratings are sliding ever downwards. In terms of money the advertising revenues are down (probably a knock-on from the economic low as well as real-term decline) and that leads to reduced earnings, and thus lower spend on shows. And that is the point at which you begin to get a death-spiral: Less cash spent on programming can easily translate into less attractive shows, which then pushes viewing figures further downwards. Factor in news like Oprah Winfrey's thoughts on moving her top-rated show from broadcast TV to a future cable channel she owns with Discovery Communications, and the future does look slightly bleak for broadcast television.
Did the Internet do all this? Not really--it's a combination of things, including streaming shows over Net-TV systems like Hulu, but also the recession, aggressive tactics from cable TV companies and booming technology. Which Bewkes thinks is actually a good thing for the media industry as a whole. He sees consumers becoming used to accessing their content over many different platforms: Set-top boxes, netbooks, TV-connected PCs, tablets, and smartphones. He also suggests that consumers will be getting a double-whammy from media in the future: You'll have to pay for it, and you'll also get advertising forced on you.
That's a way of thinking that's extremely U.S.-centric, since in the U.K. the venerable old BBC manages a free-to-air broadcast of two separate domestic channels (and a huge rag-bag of extra content channels over free-to-view digital TV and paid cable and satellite systems) thanks to income from the tax-like TV licensing system. No one's suggesting that Time Warner, or any other U.S. operator, would ever switch to this sort of system but the BBC does deliver its programming (highly regarded around the globe) without adverts as a reward for paying the license access fee. Free to air TV is also likely to continue being successful across Europe, where there are fewer monopolistic cable and satellite companies--like Bewkes' one--placing a stranglehold on free broadcast networks.
If you could earn virtual coin in exchange for doing simple real world tasks, would you do it? Now there's a way to find out: Gambit, a company that specializes in monetizing social gaming, has teamed with Crowdflower, which manages crowd-sourced tasks for clients to create a weirdly novel hybrid system. Players who complete tasks for Crowdflower companies can earn social gaming credits in exchange for their work.
The system, dubbed Gambit Tasks, is a simple mechanical turk-like problem-solver. As Gambit puts it, imagine a Crowdflower client company has thousands of images it needs checking for copyright. They'd submit the task to Crowdflower, who'd forward it to Gambit and it would appear as an offer to Gambit players.
Basically, instead of relying on advertising or strangely spam-like commercial product tie-ins as some social gaming sites are doing (like the controversial Zynga games on Facebook) Gambit has realized there's money to be made by renting-out its gamers' time. From a gamer point of view, the system would seem to have significant benefits: Should you feel like upgrading an element of the game you're playing, you don't have to fork over any cash, subject yourself to extra advertising or sign up to some Internet-advertised service you don't really want--you merely have to be one member of the crowd solving a problem for Crowdflower. In the case of the example, you'd have to check a certain number of images for copyright to earn game credits in Gambit.
The idea is seemingly very simple, but will it work? One advantage in its favor is that younger games players (who surely make up a significant percentage of Gambit's customers) can take part, and gain enhanced game credits even without access to a credit card, or parental permission to sign up to unwanted Net deals. It's crowdsourcing put to a sensible use, versus the way designers use it sometimes, and it's much less scammy than some of the other social game credit systems out there.
U.K.'s Tweeps To Be on TV's Cutting Edge?
Me-Tweet and Other Chaff Filtering by Klout
The specially-tailored interface will let you do standard 140-character Tweets, and it'll be a valuable cross-over for gamers who are also into social media, but don't want to disconnect from their console. And that's to say nothing of the potential for game related Tweet conversations--boasts, challenges, and tricks'n'tips. With around 20 million gamers on Xbox Live, that could bring a whole new audience to Twitter too.
The system, dubbed 
