No, it’s not entirely original, there’s Yahoo Answers, Google’s vark.com. Quora does do something different, by aggregating questions into “Topics” (which are essentially Groups) that users can ‘follow’. Yes, that’s right, more following.

I haven’t been active on the service, I haven’t upload a profile pic or filled in a description until today, yet I have 48 follows. I’m also follow at least double that. Mostly automatic following thanks to Twitter/Facebook integration and friend finding, but still – why do we have to follow/be followed on every new site we sign up to these days?

A couple of weeks before signing up to Quora I also signed up to Miso, a website based around tagging of TV programmes and Films that you are currently watching. The idea is to make watching films/tv more of a social experience, by sharing your status with your friends. Friends that I had to follow.

Scribd was another recent find. A social reading website of sorts. The idea is to share ebooks with friends, which works pretty well. You’re supposed to also share what you’re currently reading with your followers, but the site falls flat in that area, resulting to wall comments (no amazon links, no book covers etc.) – this was yet another site I had to re-discover my friends on.

Imagine if we had one single friends list, let’s be old fasioned and call it an address book. Now imagine all your social networks used that data instead of forcing you to re-add the same friends each time. How great would that be?

Of course there are times you want to share certain things with a certain circle of friends and not necessarily another. That’s what groups are for. Facebook is learning this, and programs like Google Contacts have provided this feature for years. It wouldn’t be terribly hard to implement or anything. In fact Twitter’s Jack Dorsey mentioned looking into something like this in the future too.

I understand the value of following and being followed, my only problem is the need to go through the exact same process every time we use a new service. We used to have this problem with ‘Registrations’, but since Google, Facebook and Twitter offered ‘Connect’ login options (also OpenID to some extent) this has become less of a problem. Now can we focus on ‘Friends’?

Apple has been gradually conditioning us. Through the fantastic gadgets that are iPods and iPhones, Apple altered our mentalities from “why should I pay for software” to “oh, it’s only a few pence/cents”. Then with the iPad it become “oh, it’s only a couple of quid/dollars” and now we’re about to see the exact same with desktop apps.

Essentially there’s no different between an app and a program, only the way we think about them. Of course the delivery structure of the App Store is fantastic, compared to the “Next, Next, Next, Finish” method of installing programs on a Windows PC. We’ve seen content distribution systems like this before, Valve’s Steam platform for example is doing tremendously well in the PC gaming industry. App Store is about to do the same thing for Mac software, and I for one thing it’s about time.

I lost so many hours to the Playstation One. A joyful time it was; Lara Croft, Resident Evil, Crash Bandicoot (and especially Crash Team Racing, with a Multi-Tap adapter), Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Medal of Honor. Them were the days…

PS2 was flipping expensive at launch, but you know what I’m like *sigh*. Spent all that money, got the MGS game (see: movie). The PS2′s graphics were exciting and the hint at online play was just mind boggling, to be honest. Sony really could have lead the way.

I remember having a debate at University on our Computer Games course back in 2005, about which platform was going to take over the world. We pretty much all voted PS3, with the boomerang controller and crazy processing power. I think we all underestimated the Xbox 360. That is until Gears of War.

Gears of War was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. At the time, it really yelled *NEXT GENERATION GRAPHICS*. It sold the 360 to me. I went out and bought one of the little buggers and forgot all about the PS3.

Xbox Live is what kept me entertained. Kept my eye off the PS3 – I wasn’t even tempted. Asim, Aaron and others would jibe at me occasionally, saying how I need a PS3 (which is funny, because I’m yet to see them signed on PSN *cough*!!).

I played with Kinect and Move at E3, loved them both, but was far more excited by Kinect. Move to me, as I’ve said before, is just what the Wii should have been. 1080p, 1-to-1 responsiveness, all that fluff.

When Move launched in the UK I finally caved and grabbed myself a 320gb PS3 + Move package at a crazy price (£240 for the lot – Sainsbury’s).

After owning one for over a month I now feel qualified to share my views

As a games console, the PS3 feels really inferior to the Xbox 360. The games may sometimes have slightly better graphics, but they usually tend to have more bugs. The online experience is minimal, it really is. It’s actually amazing what Microsoft have done with Xbox Live, which is why I continue to pay ~£35 a year, 4 years on. Cross-game Party Chat isn’t the only thing missing, simple features like muting players in game are often missing from PS3 titles. Everything on the PS3 just feels rather stand-alone, independent. Where as the Xbox Live experience is more centralised and integrated. That’s what works for me. Others may prefer things the other way around.

I mean, honestly, what is a Trophy? I still don’t understand. They seem so tacked-on and pointless. I actually care about my Achievements on XBL. I want to increase my Gamer Score and compare certain games with certain friends. That all seems like a bit of a hassle on the PS3 at the moment.

Home was a nice addition. But it was too little, far too late. It needed the freedom of user-generated content to make it a useful platform. Of course Sony being Sony (and MS are no better for this) made it a closed platform. To their loss.

As a multi-media device, I feel the Playstation 3 really comes into it’s own. Netflix, LoveFiLM, Vudu, VidStore are all official applications, but then, like the Xbox 360, you have Windows Media Centre streaming and PlayOn compatibility, which work great. Not forgetting the browser, which I was always a little suspect about but I now agree really pushes the PS3 forward, with access to BBC iPlayer and TVCatchup. Oh, and there’s a BluRay player, but to be honest, who uses media disks these days? It’s all about streaming. (HD)DVDs and BluRays are just for collectors editions, things that you really feel the need to own, so I suppose it’s still nice to have the player there if you ever need it.

So the PS3 does get used in my house, but 99.9% of the time it’s only for media (usually TV). We have 5 (soon to be 6 o_0) Xbox 360s in this house, they are what get used when we want to play games. I wont even mention the Wii.

This actually started out as a forum post, but once I get started…

Control. Nobody has control over digital goods and those who believe they do are quite simply naive. Control doesn’t equal revenue anymore – far from it.

Think about it. All of the lovely websites/web apps I mentioned above are only accessible from the United State, that means people all over the world are forced to find alternative methods of accessing the brilliant content they provide. This is why piracy is thriving more than ever.

The control they enforce, often to prevent piracy, is in fact a catalyst for piracy. Instead, imagine if they opened up their platforms to a Worldwide audience. Whether their services are subscription based or advertisements, it doesn’t matter – they’d still be earning a hell of a lot of money.

People don’t want to pirate, people just want to watch good TV shows or listen to popular music. If you won’t provide a legitimate option, people will default to the more questionable options. It’s common sense!

At the moment the best way to access all of this content is to acquire a US VPN account – whether paid or free (with ads). This will allow users to browse the Internet as if they were in the USA, meaning you can log in to Hulu, Pandora, Netflix, Vevo and the rest, watch/listen to their great content while providing them with subscription/advertising revenue at the same time. We shouldn’t have to circumvent the system in order to do this. Especially when the only other option is Bit-torrent/Usenet.

The users are missing out on content, the fat cats are missing out on profit, everyone’s worse off this way. Let’s stop restricting content based on IP addresses and see what happens.

Why should the Internet be segregated? It didn’t used to be this way and in my opinion it’s not supposed to be this way.

The few photos I took with my Nexus One are on Flickr and the videos are on Youtube.

Met some great people, played some fantastic games and ate some bloody good food in LA! Make sure you tune into the next episode of GodisaGeek Podcast to hear our thoughts on the games and our ‘Game of the Show’.

As far as conferences go, I think Nintendo won it this year, with the launch of the 3DS and a bunch of great titles to go with it. Closely followed by Microsoft, who also have a load of brilliant titles and some shiny new hardware (I must get an Xbox 360 Slim). Sony flopped on the conference front this year. Although they had some decent title announcements for their existing franches, they had no new hardware and they lost huge points for the disrespecting of both Microsoft and Nintendo during their conference. This wasn’t funny, and it only highlighted Sony’s insecurities.

The Playstation Move  is essentially an advanced Wiimote. There’s no denying that. I must say, what it does, it does well. This to me, is exactly what the Wii should have been. I didn’t buy a Wii because of the poor graphics and the rubbish responsiveness of the infra-red system. With the Playstation 3′s graphics and some epic responsiveness with the Move, we now have something that could actually interest me.

Xbox Kinect is another kettle of fish altogether. Now this is something new and innovative. Although it came in response to Nintendo’s motion controller, it’s not a direct copy like the Move. This is something new and refreshing. I think Dance Central showed off the Kinect’s potential best, with a dance game that requires you to actually dance (rather than stomping on pads). With dance/yoga/martial arts titles on this platform, gamers will get a lesson or two while playing.

Myself and GodisaGeek‘s Asim Tanvir were asked out thoughts on the Microsoft Kinect at E3:

Xbox Kinect Impressions One
Xbox Kinect Impressions Two

Nintendo did it again with the 3DS. This is why they’re on top. It’s innovation after innovation with this company. There’s no doubt the 3DS will sell well and keep Nintendo at the top of the handheld market for years to come. This is just what they needed, with Apple’s iOS devices creeping up, having already overtaken the Sony PSP. The 3D camera alone is enough to make me want to buy one – fantastic piece of kit! The games may give users a headache after a while, but the 3D aspect can be turned off/down. Nintendo also announced the option of partnering with movie studios to release 3D titles on the device. Interesting!

EA were probably the publisher with the most to offer this E3. Especially with upcoming come-back title Medal of Honor. Their booth was one of the most interesting places in the whole expo, with a whole range of big titles including Crysis 2, Need for Speed, The Sims 3 (for console) and Tiger Woods. I’m not going to talk about their shameless marketing scheme at the event (the Raybans were a lie!).

Don’t forget, tune into GodisaGeek Podcast for our Game of the Show.

Square officially launched yesterday (on the iPad, initially) and the technology is already outdated. Square relies on the old fashioned ‘swipe and sign’ method of accepting credit card payments, which while still accepted in the US, is practically non-existent in the rest of the world. Most countries have either already switched to ‘chip and pin’, or are in the process of adopting this more secure method of accepting credit card payments. The US seems to be lagging behind – but I suspect it won’t be that way forever.

So what does this mean for Square? Does Jack have an ace up his sleeves, or is Square simply going to remain a US-only product, until America joins the rest of the world, with ‘chip and pin’ technology? As brilliantly designed as the Square app and device are – is there a plan for this business to survive in the long-run?

Dropbox keeps all your files in the cloud, important documents and crap alike.
If you want to keep things 100% cloud based of course, there’s Google Documents – now that they allow uploading of any file type.

Spotify is my favourite app, music used to take up so much space on my macbook pro, now it’s all streamed directly from the cloud. If I know I’m going out of coverage, I can mark playlists for offline use. The libraries are vast, and once Spotify allows mp3 imports (which it will, soon), iTunes will be under a great threat.

Everyone’s familiar with Flickr. With programs like iPhoto you can upload all your photos and share them with your friends in a matter of clicks, or mark them as private for your own reference.

The best thing about all of these apps is that they’re not desktop exclusive – I have them all on my Google Nexus One and iPhone too.

I’ve never been very good at backing up – I bought an Apple Time Capsule for that very reason. It takes care of everything for me, in the background. I remember frantically searching through backup DVDs, CDs and even floppy disks, when I suffered a data loss in the past. Bloody hard drives are so unreliable! These days it’s so damn simple.

The ‘Documents’ directory on all my computers is an alias to my Dropbox directory. Everything is saved in the cloud. My mp3s are long gone, backed away on an iPod Classic in a drawer somewhere and all the images I care about are on Flickr. There’s no need for mp3s and photos clogging up disk space when all my devices are running Spotify Premium, Flickr Pro and Dropbox.

Of course, all these subscriptions add up. But when the basic services are so good, there’s not always a need to go pro.

Keep it Cloud™

VoIP on a Smartphone is the key. If you’re always in a WiFi environment, this is even easier for you to setup – if you still require a 3G connection, I’ll get to that later.

If you’re in the US, you can use services like Google Voice for calls. This isn’t available everywhere yet though (including the UK), so we have to look at other options. If you have a Skype number, you could use that – or you can use a SIP Provider like SIPGate. With most SIP providers you can select a telephone number from a selection of countries, and most area codes within those countries. You’re also not forced to stick with one inbound number – you could have several numbers directed to your mobile – one for your customers in the US, one for family in the UK and one for your friends in New Zealand?

Once you have a number, you’ll need to setup some VoIP software on your Smartphone. Skype, SipDroid, Fring, Truphone are a few examples. You can generally call Skype-to-Skype, GTalk-to-GTalk and SIP-to-SIP for free, so depending what services your friends are on, you may not even need to spend a penny. For traditional landline/mobile calls, you can use your SIP provider to make calls at cheaper rates that traditional telecoms can provide (including international), usually on either a pay-as-you-go or pay-monthly service – with no contracts. That’s calls taken care of.

Most of these services provide SMS messaging too (Skype, Google Voice). But with SmartPhones there’s not even a need to use traditional SMS messages. With more and more apps coming out like Ping! and WhatsApp – you can send free messages to your friends, directly from mobile to mobile.

If you do need a 3G connection, there are niche sub-providers like GiffGaff who offer free SMS/Calls inter-network, but more importantly free Data access. All you need to do is top-up £10 every 3 months. That’s £3.33 a month for unlimited data usage. If you pair this with VoIP calls, you could be running your mobile phone for significantly less than what you’re paying at the moment.

During Kevin Holley‘s (co-inventor of SMS) presentation at #140conf London last year, I recall him mentioning that text messages are extremely over-priced. They use up so little bandwidth that the actual cost is practically negligible - which is probably why most networks are quick to bundle these up to entice you into their 18month contracts.

With free Internet access becoming more regularly available, is there even any need to be sending SMS messages? I’m not making a statement, that’s a genuine question.

We have Twitter, Facebook, BlackBerry Messenger, and cross-platform Push-supporting applications like WhatsApp for sending direct messages just as quickly as SMS. Not to forget Instant Messenger programs like GTalk, Skype, AIM, MSN etc. All free. Most of these services offer other benefits – like not having to know your friend’s phone number. We take address books for granted, but if you don’t happen to have your friend’s latest number stored – there’s no way of reaching them. Whereas you can hit them up on Twitter/Facebook/Gtalk/Skype wherever you are, whoever’s phone/Internet connection you’re using.

I think the most important aspect here, is that we don’t need our phones to send quick text messages anymore. We’re using these programs to communicate with our friends all the time on our computers – so when we’re out and about with our phones, it just becomes second nature to continue the conversation over those platforms.

It seems to me that we’re right on the verge of a tipping point. We’ll soon have blanket coverage throughout the whole of the developed world. I think now, the most important question is which technology will become predominant. They can’t all survive, surely?

With 4G connections rivaling adsl and cable broadband speeds, and a lot of our devices being mobile – who needs a home Internet connection? It’s not only the mobile networks that are interested in this technology, in the United States private equity firms are planning to cover the whole country by 2015. The technology is certainly there.

On the other hand, with broadband connections becoming faster due to fiber optic roll-outs everywhere, mobile network speeds will soon be lagging far behind, again. Companies like Google are taking an interest in providing fiber to the home in entire cities. This is after they’ve already demonstrated their blanket wifi capabilities in San Fransisco. If there’s Free wifi everywhere, why would anyone need a mobile phone provider? We could all use VoIP technology straight from our Smartphones. Mobile apps like Skype and Truphone are already available, and most Smartphones also offer VoIP capabilities directly from the handset – not to mention VoIP codecs tend to be of better audio quality than regular GSM calls.

Of course, even Google doesn’t have the bankroll to provide entirely free wifi to the whole country, but with more and more wifi providers resulting to free access models – it’s only a matter of time until we’re totally covered.

So then again the question is raised, which technology will prevail?

Personally I don’t think the mobile network industry has a chance of surviving in the developed world for much longer than a decade, at least with the current business model. I think it’s quite obvious that once free Internet access is available everywhere, more and more people will discover that they don’t actually need to be paying extortionate monthly fees and be tied into 18+month contracts, simply to stay connected.