adrian's wall

There has been a lot of discussion recently about whether Google has, in their DNA, what it takes to 'get' social. Well I think I 'get' social but I'm not sure how much my life is improved by getting the news 30 mins ahead of everybody else and I'm pretty certain that I don't need to actually see people go through the arduous process of constructing a reply in real-time. So I'm well disposed to the idea of a ' social layer ' that improves the processes I'm already familiar with - although a better analogy might be a ' social render ' that can be used to fill in the gaps and smooth over the rough transitions. A good test will be how Google contacts are handled. Google contacts is a tremendous asset. With an Android phone, all you need to do is enter your Google credentials and your email, calendar and contacts are there. I've got an iPhone and, with slightly more configuration, you can do the same thing. The thing is that Go...

I don't blog much and I'm curious as to what, on those odd occasions, finally drives me over the edge. It seems to be a desire to clear my head of some on-going irritation or a minor thought that just won't go away and needs to be expressed. Writing it down seems to be a way of exorcising it - just like writing a note to myself and leaving it on the kitchen table helps me sleep if I'm travelling the next day. Of course blogging about it brings in the dubious advantage of turning the whole process into a public display. There is a possible upside - the right to wear an "I told you so" T-shirt when the rest of the world realises that you really did identify the crux of the problem and offered a simple "Why don't they just...." solution. The downsides seem rather more numerous and more likely; people are privy to the odd things that bother you and, worse still, you're not even right about them. I write this because I feel a deep resevoir ...

What does it take to start blogging again? A new year? A new decade? Or the opportunity to pointlessly speculate about an as yet unannounced product? The question that keeps coming back to me is " Can they do it again? " Not " Can they break into a new, billion dollar market? ", not " Can they redefine the way we distribute and buy apps? " but " Can they reinvent the way we interact with mobile devices? " I remember the time before the iPhone was launched. We had an HTC running Windows Mobile in the office with a touch screen and a dinky little stylus - you could use your finger nails if you angled them just right. OK, it was a bit fiddly but it took most of the fear away when entering a long URL into the browser's address bar. But we knew there were better things coming. We had all seen those iPhone mockups - the one's with a virtual, circular scroll-wheel floating over the interface. We couldn't wait. And then there it was ....