Dork Adore » Susi

Facebook Places: Why I won’t be using it

Susi — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:00:43 +0000

People who blog, eh? And tweet? And check-in on Foursquare? Can we all say ‘Oversharers’? Except it seems we’re not. It looks like even the most over-share-y of internet lovers aren’t particularly embracing Facebook Places.

Could it be? Could the Daily Mail, and your mother, be wrong? Maybe we’re not a community willing to subject the whole wide world to banal updates about our lunch, unless our lunch involved tripping up in the street and being laughed at by the local yoof, or some other notable event (perhaps involving bird poo. Or Noel Fielding). Maybe we’re slightly more selective in what we share.

For instance.

If you make friends with me on Foursquare, I will only reciprocate if I know you. This is because, despite what the mainstream media thinks, I do have some degree of awareness that means I don’t actually want complete strangers knowing I’m three hours away from my robbable house. That’s not paranoia – that’s just fact.

But Facebook is another kettle of fishes. There are people on there, ‘Facebook friends’ if you will, who I haven’t seen since secondary school. For all I know, they are now petty criminals. They would probably love nothing more than knowing that I am at the National Portrait Gallery (I’m probably not – I’m probably at the Aberdeen Steakhouse opposite, but within range of, it) so they can rush round to my house and nick my Wii. Probably.

No one cares

But more importantly — I am aware that nobody cares. Facebook isn’t for sharing your daily lunch plans, it’s for sharing photos of you in various stages of drunkenness.

The people who get my Foursquare updates have gone out of their way to find out where I am. And I can only assume that’s because they’re curious people: I’m in contact with all of them and none of them has so far turned out to be a criminal.

What a rubbish media story, Internet Folk Aware That The Majority Of People Don’t Care. You can see why the subs took the red pen to it.

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Frackulous: death to voicemail and default phone browsers!

Susi — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:58:16 +0000

Another busy week full of apps to make your life top banana-like. There are apps to help Emma/Hermione Watson/Granger settle into another year at Uni, something to make voicemail less sucky, and a new game to soak up your spare time even more effectively that Angry Birds. Watch on, for the omnibus to rule all other omnibuses.

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Why Apple’s Ping won’t catch on

Susi — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:04:36 +0000

Twitter/Facebook + iTunes x music = Apple’s Ping

Another end-of-summer evening, another Apple press conference. They have become a way of marking the eternal passage of time and your own undeniable mortality, right morbid gadget fans?

Well, this conference bought the announcement of Ping, which is in no way related to Microsoft’s Bing. Obviously.

Ping is a social network for music lovers. But it’s not Spotify. Obviously. Or MySpace. Obv. This is primarily a social network for music lovers who spend their cash in iTunes.

And here’s why it won’t work.

It’s all about the music you buy. It’s not the music you add to your library or the stuff you already own that you listen to a lot. Imagine if someone tried to decipher your music taste from the stuff you bought in the past two months. Would they get a fair picture? My picture would look suspiciously origins-of-ska heavy, which I can safely safe doesn’t really fit with my folksy roots. I don’t want to know what my friends have bought — I want to know what hidden gems they’ve got that I’m missing.

Who buys from iTunes? If you’re buying your music from iTunes, stop and go and buy it from Amazon — it’s generally cheaper. Or maybe you still buy CDs. Sorry, ripping them won’t contribute to your Ping profile. Or maybe you just ‘acquire’ your music. Well, obviously your stuff’s not going to be added. Pirate.

iTunes makes you want to get in, do what you need to do, and get out. Syncing never works as smoothly as it does in an Apple press conference, and I only open it under duress when it turns out my iPhone is full. It’s not the place to go and while away the hours. Sorry Steve.

In fact, if you want the stuff Ping promises, there are two places to look.

Spotify is an obvious first – not only can you see what your Facebook friends are listening to, you can see what playlists they’ve made and subscribed to. And because they’re not being asked to part with cold hard cash for each album they add, it’s a much more interesting feed. Perhaps it’s just that I’ve managed to only make friends with tightwads.

The other thing you need is Songbird, which has been billed as an alternative iTunes for a good long while now. It’s long had the ability to scan your entire music library and then suggest local gigs you’d be interested in. Which is a step above having to subscribe to every artist you like in order to get updates, a la Ping.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s plenty of stuff that looks like fun in Ping. But in my humble Apple-loving opinion, I don’t think it delves deep enough into your music collection to offer true value, and I don’t feel warm and fuzzy enough to hang out in iTunes to find myself proved wrong. Or am I wrong?

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Frackulous: Scott Pilgrim app fix, Samsung Galaxy Android-brillity and Angry, Angry Birds

Susi — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 10:00:26 +0000

Where else can you get a show to hook you up with both time-wasting and time-saving apps? Scott Pilgrim and Stephen Fry-related apps? A review of possibly the best Android phone available right now? Nowhere. We don’t think. Watch on for a bumper omnibus edition of Frackulous.

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Frackulous: X-Factor apps, social diary apps and QR code apps, oh my!

Susi — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:00:32 +0000

Last week, Frackulous checked out apps to help you organise a night out, apps to help Simon Cowell retain his Mr Nasty title, apps that will allow you to magically control your laptop from the other side of the room, then rounded everything off with some top class QR Code news. How on earth did they fit it all in? Watch on to find out!

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Frackulous: The best new iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps.

Susi — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:48:58 +0000

Each week, we’ll be bringing you a whole week’s worth of app goodness, courtesy of the folks at Frackulous. Whether you’re an Android lover, iPhone officianado or BlackBerry super-user, there’s something for everyone.

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Frackulous: New site for app-addicts

Susi — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:00:07 +0000

Frackulous is new, and it’s going to rock the app world to its very foundations. You heard it here first. Except I would say that, as it’s my own personal baby.

We’ll be releasing an episode each week day (I have just found out how many of those there are in a week – panic!) and each Friday, scooping them all up and delivering them lovingly as an omnibus for your viewing pleasure.

It’s been a fairly hectic launch week – we’ve covered iMovie, Spotify, Camera+ and Flipboard, as well as advising on the best iPhone 4 tariffs and illustrated the iPhone’s antennae problems using a monkey. Phew. This week, we’ll be diversifying into all platforms, although you’ll find the monkey is a constant.

Here’s a handy omnibus, which is perfect for that spare moment on the plane, train or automobile (providing you’re not driving any of them), and if you’d like to see the episodes in smaller two-minute bitesized chunks, just check out www.frackulous.com.

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iPad lessons – one week in

Susi — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:00:36 +0000

Having gone public on my complete bafflement as to what the iPad was supposed to be, it took only 23 hours post-launch for me to find myself in the Apple shop willing to part with proper amounts of cash for one. And I can’t help it – I frickin’ love it.

But you’re definitely a more considered person, which means there’s certain things you should know before diving in.

AKA, I make the mistakes, so you don’t have to:

1. Don’t bother loading up any apps that aren’t optimised for the iPad.

There’s nothing more disheartening than loading an app and finding it appears as a little box in the centre of that beautiful screen – it means you’re going to get a substandard, meh experience, and for the amount of
money you just spent on the thing, that’s going to make you sad. The apps that are iPad-compatible are a thing of beauty, and they make the most of all that lovely screen real estate (or ‘space’ for those uninitiated in tech-wank-speak).

2. It’s not destined to become a commuter-aid

When I get it out in my flat, I find myself looking over my shoulder to see if there’s anyone that looks likely to pinch it. I live alone. You can only imagine the amount of paranoia I had getting the thing home from the shop.

First I was worried I’d be mugged, so I hid the bag under my seat. Then I worried I’d forget it. So I wrapped the bag strap round my wrist. Sitting with your wrist awkwardly hidden under your seat is not the most
ninja-incognito way of travelling, it turns out.

3. Bedtimes are 3,000 times better with an iPad

Whether it’s video you’ve downloaded, looking up all those things that you spent the day thinking ‘ooh, I must Wikipedia that’ or one of the classic books you always meant to read (classics are free, innit) before you know it it’ll be 1.30am, and you’ve got to be up in five and a half hours. So when I said better, maybe I just meant later.

4. Wired magazine on the iPad is… mixed

Some of it’s gorgeous, some of it’s confusing (swipe right or down? Right or down?) and some of it crashes. But you may as well get it at least once to see what all the fuss is about. Who knows, this might be the future of publishing…

5. It’ll make you look a bit of a twat

I have been taking mine to both the gym and Starbucks, all the time being well aware that it’s still enough of a novelty for me to look like the most ostentatious type of early-adopter. Whilst it helped my slog on the treadmill to have the TED talks to watch, I was so busy hiding it when I left the gym I walked straight into the men’s changing rooms. Nothing says ‘nothing to see here’ like a girl wandering into a room of naked and surprised men.

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The final conclusion: Apple or Android? The iPhone vs HTC Legend

Susi — Wed, 12 May 2010 09:12:12 +0000

Following on from last week’s post (Apple or Android? The iPhone vs HTC Legend), I’ve had time to ruminate over my transition, and having given the Legend back a week or so ago, I’ve had time to miss the things that I actually grew to kind of love.

For instance, as much as I love the clean layout of the iPhone, it was useful to be able to sprinkle apps and widgets about, dedicating one page to the apps I used most regularly, one to favourite contacts and one to a calendar overview. It’s a different way of working to the iPhone, but one I found I enjoyed.

I loved Spotify. I really liked the maps, and the addition of a compass which my old skool iPhone lacked (you can’t imagine how gratifying it is not to have to spin in circles on the pavement, trying to work out which direction was which).

But as much as I wanted to, I did not love Android.

My conclusion is that Android is still for early adopters. The marketplace is incredibly disorganised, and lacks the sleek standardisation that Apple’s draconian rules result in. The apps themselves were wildly varying in quality, which is something most app stores suffer from. However, this was highlighted in the Android store by certain apps that promised to do one thing, and once downloaded would just direct you to an advert – just when you thought spamming had nowhere else to go.

The Legend, however, I would be all over if it magically started running the iPhone OS: good to hold, super-bright screen, and fast – ohsofast — compared to my sluggish iPhone 3G. So that’s what I’m pushing for in the inevitable June iPhone announcement — simply a partnership and HTC to bring me the new phone of my dreams. Fingers crossed, eh?

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Apple or Android? The iPhone vs HTC Legend

Susi — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:57:22 +0000

If you’re a lover of air conditioning and cool air, get yourself down to Hell right now. It has temporarily frozen over whilst I temporarily dump my iPhone for an HTC Legend.

When announced, I wrote that the Legend might just have the potential to make the swap from iPhone to Android, but it was always going to be a tough transition. Here’s a little diary on how it’s gone.

Day One
This has officially been the worst day of my life.

What, you want an explanation? Oh alright. I have tried to de-Apple myself, and Googlify my life by swapping my sim to an Android phone. The result? A kabillion duplicated contacts on my iPhone, calendar appointments appearing two or three times and inexplicably adding alarms at every opportunity, an iPhone wiped of music and a whole load of tears. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming Google, and I’m doing my best not to blame Apple. I’m sure there are ways of smoothly transferring all of the above between operating systems, but I’ll be damned if it’s ever happened to me.

Day two
I’ve yet to find the time to take advantage of all the things that make Android phones a compelling option, and I’m still in mourning for my well organised, if slightly Apple-dominated, life. Having said that, I spoke to my mother today, and her review of the phone was as follows: “Buy this phone immediately, Susannah. This is the first time I’ve been able to hear you properly in several years”. I’m thinking of getting her a column in Mobile Reviews.

Day three
The battery seems to be worse than my iPhone, which is saying something, and it takes me a while to realise this is because of that damned multitasking I was so excited about. Exiting to home from the middle of a programme keeps it running, and I’ve now got a dozen things sucking up the battery all at once. A quick Task Killer app installation, and I think I’ve got it sorted.

Day four
Today it came close to clicking. I always thought Spotify was my killer app for an Android, or at least the ability to run it in the background made it leaps and bounds ahead of the iPhone version. I’ve now upgraded Spotify and so could listen to my cached playlists. If I keep the Android handset it’s going to change the way I listen to music – currently I have 2,000 songs on repeat, most of which are old news. With Spotify I can see myself preferring whole albums, simply because the playlists are easier to manage that way. No bad thing, actually, as it might increase my musical concentration from ‘first line….bored of this…skip…hate this one… skip…’.

Find out if Susi survived the week in the next gripping instalment.

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Dork Adore » Susi

Facebook Places: Why I won’t be using it

For instance.

No one cares

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Frackulous: death to voicemail and default phone browsers!

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Why Apple’s Ping won’t catch on

Twitter/Facebook + iTunes x music = Apple’s Ping

And here’s why it won’t work.

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Frackulous: Scott Pilgrim app fix, Samsung Galaxy Android-brillity and Angry, Angry Birds

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Frackulous: X-Factor apps, social diary apps and QR code apps, oh my!

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Frackulous: The best new iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps.

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Frackulous: New site for app-addicts

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iPad lessons – one week in

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The final conclusion: Apple or Android? The iPhone vs HTC Legend

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Apple or Android? The iPhone vs HTC Legend

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