Vesper

Following on from my theme of 'Cult of personality' within the Apple Community… Yesterday a new iPhone app was released called Vesper from the wonderfully named company Q Branch (love that bit)..
At any rate Vesper is yet another 'Store your thoughts' app.. these are without doubt THE most common form of 'Serious User' app out there. I guess the king of the hill for sometime has been Evernote which is a massively versatile and flexible storage and Data aggregation system. I have converted many clients over from paper or Abandonware solutions to Evernote and all have been been overjoyed. Before Evernote I used Yojimbo from Bare Bones Software. Loved this, only at the time it didn't have an IOS client and has never had the 3rd party support Evernote has enjoyed.
Suffice it to say there's many and various flavours of this sort of App.So to have another one announced..thats iPhone only is of little interest to me. What makes this one different is that one of it's three creators is Daring Fireball 'Rockstar' John Gruber. His name alone being attached to this app has given it exposure, and from what I've read he hasn't even done any coding on it!!! See this review:http://www.tuaw.com/2013/06/06/vesper-simply-collects-and-organizes-your-thoughts/ Within the 2nd paragraph they mention Gruber..and Gruber before the other guys.. The Inner Circle (see previous blog post)

So Vesper is a clean (read basic)note taking/organising app. One of literally hundreds and is worth no more exposure than it's myriad kin...

The Inner Circle

I like Podcasts, and I listen to alot. Much more than I listen to music these days. But I've begun to notice something... The same names keep cropping up, and a slowly expanding list of names seem to be doing the circuit. A new name will appear on a given Podcast and they will appear on more and more other podcasts and eventually (it seems) they will begin there own Podcast once they feel they have enough momentum to support it. I actually feel abit..err.. sympathetic towards Dan Benjamin of 5by5. His network created (to the best of my knowledge..) a style of tech Podcast unlike anything before it. A casual style where the Podcast just begins almost mid sentence, and the participants seemingly just chat in a relaxed fashion.. sometimes in a very unfocused fashion, weaving in, out & around subjects. Dan's 5by5 network brought to prominence a number of Developers and Journalists who didnt have a voice before and mad them 'Geek Stars'. (Sorry Geeks a much overused word... I've seen hipsters call themselves Geeks cause they've read a comic once...) Now a number of these have realised that they have some influence and have broken away to start there own networks/shows. I guess this is due to the entrepreneurial nature of the Dev mindset these days, and maybe I'm too old skool to think this is a cool thing todo. (I don't) And now they are circling each other like Coyotes, interviewing each other and namechecking each other.. It's very incestuous. And more importantly will not be sustainable. Guys lets look outside the Goldfish Bowl your in...just fyi..


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The False Gods

I've had abit of an wake up over the past few days. I've come to realise that the journalists who report on tech have attempted to position themselves as rock stars and I'm here to show the falsity of this...

Here's what brought this about. I found a worldwide tech issue was occurring with one of the biggest TV manufacturers on the globe. There internet interface was having serious issues and twitter was alive with people worldwide having the same issue as myself. Liking abit of the Apple vs Samsung, Apple vs google banter I reported what the we (the effected people) were seeing to a number of tech journalists I followed via twitter thinking they would make a nice fuss over this. The best I got back was a short tweet saying: Link? Link??? I'm giving you live issues and you want to see another website that has already reported on this?
Anyway the issue was sorted after roughly 3 days... I can only think that none of the 'journalists' where affected by this..or maybe it didn't affect users in the states.. and of course the world revolves around San Francisco doesn't it? Doesn't it??....

Today the whole thing was reinforced when a well known (in tech circles) Journalist quietly announced.. well on a website and on twitter (shouting from the highest hilltop in other words) that he had changed from a certain mobile device platform to the main contender's platform.. And it just so happened that this occurred on the same day he records his most popular Internet radio show... I actually followed some of these guys on twitter for awhile.. I suggested that he should consider giving up his position on this (platform specific) internet show as he no longer was a user of the platform. Strangely I got no reply.. I finally come to realise that these designers of trends are just that.. They have less technical ability than me and any number of other on the ground techies yet they are held in high esteem simple for being able to string a sentence together. So I urge you.. by all means watch/listen to these podcast's but plz understand they are journalists like any other.. and they write/broadcast because they cant do the real tech work. treat it as entertainment..


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The Apple TV is being obsoleted....

One of the things I've loved using my Apple TV for is to play Youtube videos onto my TV from the iPad or iPhone. The latest Youtube app now allows you to stream directly to a supported smart TV (mine's a Samsung 5300) just by pairing the Youtube app on the mobile device with the Youtube App on the TV.




Now Google/Samsung aren't stupid. If anyone thinks that this will stop here they are in cloud cuckoo land. Having a setop box is going to become a thing of the past in years to come as the TV will be a computer...Sorry IS already a computer and takes away the need for an intermediary device.
Once more I find myself pointing at Apple and saying..Come on find the killer app for the Apple TV. So much potential..untapped..


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