It’s quite unlike me to be behind with the latest Internet craze, really unlike me intact. I used Twitter before it was endorsed on TV by Stephen Fry, I used Facebook well before the new layout, I had GMail in the first 2 days of developer preview, but I just didn’t get into the latest craze at the time I had the opportunity to.

Google Wave, the next evolutionary step for communication

The craze I’m on about is something you might have heard of, “Google Wave”. Now recently, Google hasn’t impressed me due to some issues with products of theirs that involve money, so when I read this blog post last night about whether Google Wave will replace Twitter, I was very skeptical. At the end of it there was a video of the Google IO developer conference.

I tried as hard as I could to hate the bloke running the conference, but I don’t know whether is was the tech he was showing or him, I just couldn’t help but like the whole idea of Wave.

So what does it do? Well, Wave does what Google does best. It takes something that we’re really used to, takes a sideways look at it and proceeds to change it. But it changes it in such a way that makes it new, fun and somehow easier, even though it has a million new features.

Put simply, it makes conversations, plain and simple conversations. It moves away from the conventional method of relay communication that we’re so used to and makes Wave a truely interactive experience, as if you were talking in real life, but with pictures and rich media.

There’s far too much for me to explain what it does in one post (it took Google an hour to explain it), so I’ll leave it to this video to explain:

What I’m really interested in though, is how it’s going to change our lives and is it really a good idea to have one company be able to control a majority of a major communication channel. It’s true that companies like BizStone, who own Twitter own one major communication channel, but if Wave is really set to replace as fundamental and business critical as email, then having one business control all of that communication is a bit scary.

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What’s the one thing you couldn’t live without? Some would say food, others might be as pathetic to say their girlfriend / boyfriend, some might even say toast, but for me it’s my laptop (or as my friends like to call it my Mactop).

Why’s this relevant you might be thinking? Well it’s trying times my friends. My Mactop has had to go in for repair. Now normally if a computer went wrong I’d fix it myself, but the fact of the matter is that if I did I’d invalidate my warrenty and my Applecare insurance meaning if it got totally written off I’d be screwed.

So I took it to a service provider, the only one in the North East of England – 20 miles away. Luckily my Applecare means that I don’t pay a penny, but I’m not geting it back till Monday – I practically wanted to cry when he said I’d have to part from my laptop for that long.

But it got me thinking and gave me a bit of a challenge: I have to now use my iPod as my primary computing device until Monday, which surprise surprise, I’m using to write this blog post. Unfortunately though I can’t position content like I usually do an I can’t format text or put a “more” button in.

But what I really wan to know is if I can manage websites, adwords campaigns, book writing and other stuff from this pocket computer. If I can I may let Apple use me as an example

I think it’s going to be interesting trying to do routine computer activities on my iPod – time to take a dig around to app store – I’ll post the results up tomorrow .

Till then!!
X

Facebook , the second most visited website on the internet, behind Google, with over 240 million users you’d think that it couldn’t get much better. Unfortunately though, some of us like me just don’t use all of the features that Facebook provides, to be honest the things that I do use are fairly basic and I really don’t need the “excess baggage” that Facebook provides.

All is not lost though, because Facebook being a nice company who listens to the wants and needs of it’s customers has introduced Facebook Lite – a version of Facebook that isn’t as graphic intensive, one that doesn’t constantly bug you about people asking you to tell them what you think about them through stupid little quizzes and apps that just get right on my nerves.

Facebook launches a Lite Version of it's service.

So, Facebook Lite, what about it?  Well, you can access it via www.lite.facebook.com, and it’s just come out today (in the UK) and is now in beta. It lets you do the bare basics of Facebook such as:

• Add Friends, Pictures and Videos
• Edit your profile
• See events
• Read your mail
• See your news feed
• Post Updates
• Change Settings
• Search for friends
• Write on walls
• Comment / like updates and pictures
• Become Fans of Pages

If there’s something not on that list that you like to do on Facebook, then just don’t use it, but if all that is adequate enough for you then, I’d strongly recommend that you use it.

On another note – it’s very zippy, even on mobile broadband. Page load speeds and getting around the whole system is a lot easier compared to the normal Facebook, when on mobile broadband – you’d think that they’d made it for us mobile users! So if you’re like me and use mobile broadband, then it’s a must.

Oh and lastly: vanity URLs still work, so to see my profile and to add me as a friend, visit lite.facebook.com/roryclapham.

Mobile Broadband for a whole week, sponsored by Vodafone.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, get ready for the second leg of my mobile broadband experiment. If you aren’t familiar with what I’m taking about, I’ll explain once again. Last time I did this, it was to see whether an internet junkie such as myself can use mobile broadband exclusively as a primary internet connection or a week. The first leg ended a few weeks back, and this is now the second leg. If you want, you can read the posts below to find out a little bit more.

This time I’m not just doing it for one, but two whole weeks. Last time was a very big learning experience, getting to grips with what sorts of things the connection could handle, and also getting used to the things that it couldn’t. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to write up a full report, but this time I will do – promise.

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Low signal? Stop. Smart management of the connection, cuts off bad connections. Image © XiXiDu

Well for the pat few days I haven’t updated, though there is a reason for it. Firstly I haven’t been on the internet very much for a few days so there wouldn’t have been very much to talk about and secondly, when I have managed to get onto the net, my broadband hasn’t been able to hold up the connection very well.

As far as I can figure there’s a reason for this, too. The signal that I’ve been exposed to for the past few days has been very limited, below 10% in most cases, because of this it’s likely that there will be a lot of data being lost in transmission and therefore the broadband, being smart, figures that there’s no point in trying to maintain a connection where pieces of data are going to be lost – no connection is better than a faulty connection.

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Day three in my experiment and things went a little bit down hill. It took me up to five minutes sometimes to find a signal, even though I knew there was one around and even once I’d connected I experienced problems.

I’m not sure whether it’s a network mechanism or not. What I mean by this is, because I’ve been a very heavy user (an hours worth of Skype calling and I’d uploaded 1GB of data) the network might have measures in place to make sure the weight of dragging me along didn’t affect other users. This could make a lot of sense, by cutting off and slowing down heavy users at peak times, you encourage them to use their home internet or not to use it at all.

Having said this, I did manage to get a few successful connections that stayed open until I myself closed them. I didn’t really perform any really heavy tasks yesterday, simply because the speed and availability wasn’t always there.

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Interesting, is all I can say about day two. After the performance of broadband on day one I was really looking forward to firing it up yesterday and having a good play on it. Speed again, wasn’t really an issue at all, when I was connected it was all 3G and going pretty fast. There was one random disconnection during the day and then rather a lot of them later in the evening.

As the day moved on I had to go to the Silverlink retail park in North Shields to get a bit of reading material. Silverlink is home to a Borders store, and most Borders shops have a nice little Starbucks in there – where better to do a bit of public browsing. The signal in Starbucks was low at best, but it didn’t really slow me down. I had a look on the Ofcom Sitefinder again to find out where the closest masts were and that sort of explained why the signal was low, take a look:

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