Joe Blogs

Sunday, June 14, 2009

New Media Again Proves It's Value

Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr

I haven't really been following the Iran elections as I have been busy this weekend; horse riding, swimming and today I spent a considerable amount of time in the gym. My weekend has been relaxed and calm which is a contrast to events unfolding in Iran due to a contested election.

What is clear is that Twitter is providing better coverage of the situation in Iran than CNN. Another example of how the consumption of real-time news and media reach us faster through social media than through the mainstream news outlets. The top trending topics on Twitter highlight the #iranelection and CNN's failure #CNNfail at reacting to the news story. ReadWriteWeb have a great post on this subject and I have provided the below quotes from the article -

Twenty years ago this month, CNN brought live news about the Tienanmen Square uprising to the world. It's really strange that the network is absent from this story.

Twenty years ago CNN's coverage of Tienanmen Square made its reputation. If in twenty more years it has become consensus that real-time, online, crowdsourced media is the best place to keep up with current events, this incident could be an important part of that history unfolding.

Comparisons between mainstream and new media have become a regularly topic online. Many believe that mainstream media is on borrowed time and that new media is the place to get the latest from the scene. What are your thoughts?

Saturday, June 13, 2009

If You're Reading This..

Image via Wikipedia

If you're reading this, you are the resistance and we survived the Facebook 'Land Grab' and the Twitpocalypse. We can all move along now, nothing to see, although it was entertaining while it lasted.

Firstly the Facebook username launch was successful, Mashable were reporting from the Facebook War Room and in 3 minutes, there were 200,000 usernames registered. In 15 minutes, over half a million, and about 1% of the entire Facebook population have now secured a Vanity URL. I made sure that I was awake at 5:00AM and registered my desired username :)

Twitpocalypse, as it was being referred, didn't pass without incident as several Twitter clients were reportedly experiencing problems. Mashable report that Twitterrific, TweetDeck, Tweetie and Destroy Twitter were all affected. I received a a patched version/update for TweetDeck which is the desktop client that I use for Twitter. The iPhone applications affected by the Twitpocalypse all have to await approval first from Apple so users have to be patient for the time being. I will update this post with further details when they become available!

Friday, June 12, 2009

Vanity URLs, Twitpocalypse and Pomeranians

Image by joedawson via Flickr

This week has been eventful, browsing through the last few blog entries you will see; an introduction to keyboard cat; Apple's WWDC 2009: which included MacBook Updates, Snow Leopard and iPhone 3GS announcements; the London Tube strike which caused travel chaos; Real Madrid's transfer activity [so far]; England cruising through the World Cup qualifying campaign [so far] and tonight we have the Facebook landrush for the Vanity URL's.

Also for good measure we have just purchased a Pomeranian puppy and at some point this evening we are about to hit a Twitpocalypse. Well at least that's what it's being called as every tweet has a unique numeric identifier and tonight we're going to reach the limit. This identifier is about to hit 2,147,483,647 and when that happens it's going to be chaos in the streets, riots and the end of mankind as we know it [/sarcasm]! According to sources this is likely to affect third party Twitter clients so shouldn't have a considerable impact.

Anyway back to the Pomeranian, who we have named Teddy, and he is a cross between a Furby / Mogwai. He's very cautious at the moment but he's going to break some hearts that's for sure as he is definitely cute!! I'm going to catch some sleep now, I have set my alarm for the Facebook Vanity URL launch which takes place at 5:00AM GMT and I'm also interested in what will occur when the Twitpocalypse is upon us!

Thursday, June 11, 2009

The Reign In Spain

Image via Wikipedia

In recent seasons Barcelona have taken the plaudits, the players and last season they completed the treble. That's all about to change!

Real Madrid have been waiting for the proverbial rainy day, I believe that 'rainy day' came when Barcelona lifted the Champions League! That hurt Madrid and next season, they're aim is to be significantly more competitive if their acquisitions are a statement of their intentions.

Re-elected Real Madrid president Florentino Perez signed Kaka from AC Milan Monday for £59 million to begin the next Galactico era. As that reverberated around the football world that was just the beginning of the Spanish clubs transfer activity. They have since followed that with the signing of Christiano Ronaldo for £80 million, smashing the previous transfer record twice in a matter of days. Apparantly they have more funds available to spend and are being linked to Xavi Alonso, Franck Ribery and David Villa. It just got interesting..

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Strike, Strikes..

Image by joedawson via Flickr

What tube strike?! During my journey home I experienced minor delays but there wasn't any significant disruption. I was fortunate as admittedly there have been people seriously affected by the 48 hour strike. This began yesterday as talks broke down between London Underground bosses and the RMT Union.

England fans that defied the strike to travel to Wembley this evening were treated to a few goals. England have now managed to win all of their qualifiers so far and are in good form under Fabio Capello. Wayne Rooney got the first in the fourth minute followed by Lampard who scored an impressive second before Rooney found the back of the net again before the interval. In the second half substitute Jermain Defoe scored twice within five minutes before Peter Crouch finished the rout..

I watched the majority of the football from the Gym, the main stories for this evening for most people were the football and travel chaos, not here though! That's because today my son moved a step closer to becoming a man! He visited the dentist today and had his first tooth removed, when I collected them from their mothers he was all excited to tell me about the occasion. I'm sure he will be even more excited when he awakes tomorrow to see if the tooth fairy has visited.. :)

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Facebook: Vanity URL's

Image via Wikipedia

Across the majority of the social networking/media sites I frequent the username I use to actively contribute is: /joedawson, with a few exceptions, as just like in the movie Highlander:
There can be only one...
Since I joined social networking site Facebook though I am referred to as: profile.php?id=501760832. That's about to change as Facebook are providing vanity URL's from 05:01AM GMT on Saturday, June 13 on a first-come, first-serve basis:

Facebook usernames will be available in basic text forms, and you can only choose a single username for your profile and for each of the Pages that you administer. Your username must be at least five characters in length and only include alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), or a period or full stop ("."). While usernames are currently available only for Romanized text, we're looking at how we might support non-Romanized characters in the future ~ Facebook blog

Choose wisely as once the username has been selected, you won’t be able to change or transfer it and to the other Joe Dawson's; It's most definitely on...

Monday, June 08, 2009

WWDC '09

Image by rb3wreath via Flickr

At the Apple WWDC event, Philip Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing, unveiled the new iPhone 3G S, the new MacBook Pro family, and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Now the MacBook Pro family remain above my price range and the Mac OS X Snow Leopard is too much of a mouthful so the iPhone 3GS was the announcement I was anticipating most.

According to Apple the iPhone 3G S is the fastest iPhone ever, I'm totally sold [/sarcasm] although I'm sure if the announcement stated the handset was slower than the iPhone 3G that would have been a total FAIL. The handset is 2 x faster and more responsive than it's predecessor and quickly launches applications and renders web pages. Providing the ability to shoot, edit and share video and features an upgraded 3 megapixel camera with built-in autofocus. Finally we have cut, copy, and paste which works with words, photos and even acrosss applications. Also MMS functionality is available which I have largely replaced with email since using the iPhone 3G. Other features to note are voice control, compass, search, accessibility and Internet tethering to share the 3G connection on your iPhone with your Mac notebook or PC laptop. Impressive and with the iPhone 3.0 OS launching next week I can't wait to sample the improvements.