Thursday 31 July 2008

pimms o'clock



its harder and harder to get really excited about new widgets/applications these days.

but Pimms seem to have created one of the best little widgets i have come across in a long time.


the application allows users to simply type in your post code and the widget will search and display your nearest pubs and parks.


but the smart bit is that it also displays exactly which hours the pub/park is in direct sunshine for. This is obviously based on it being a sunny day!


Ticks all the boxes, its fun, easy to use and most of all its actually quite useful (could do with a few more locations but I think they are adding), oh and its still London only at moment.

idiots



So, you get half a million people around the world playing your game and at the same time reviving a typically dying breed of board game among a young, entirely new generation of players.
What do you do then? You make a blindingly obvious mistake.
Wonder how long it will be for them to make an “official Scrabble” widget, and then wonder how long it will take for them to realize that no one downloads it as you have single handedly pissed off every player – oh well, learn the hard way eh?

Friday 4 July 2008

Pinger


Ive just read about a new service called Pinger.
Pinger basically allows you to dial a UK number and leave a short voice message then send the message on to any number of your mobile contacts in one go.
Sounds like a nifty piece of kit and Andy at Playpen explains how he can see the service being used as a form of voice Twitter. Im not so sure and when I think about it I really don’t see the use of this.


Firstly if I had voice messages for every Tweet that I get in a day it would do my head in! the nice thing about Twitter is that you can quickly scan Tweets to see whats going on in the Twitter world. Also, Twitter allows you to simply share useful links via tinyurl, imagine mumbling a url down the phone while your mate scrambles to find a pen to jot down the interesting link, nice.
I think it’s a nice idea but im not sure about it becoming a voice form of Twitter and I don’t really see the need for it generally as if you need to let a load of your mates know where you are, simply text, no hassle with having to bumble your way through a message.

I may be totally off the mark and it becomes an overnight success and everyone will point and laugh at me.

(rant over)