Occasional Thoughts from a Bafta nominated Podcaster, Blogger, Writer and Commentator.
Congrats to Spark Ventures, the UK based investors and Mind Candy, who run the hideously cute Moshi Monsters. Spark Ventures have cashed in half their stake in Mind Candy for $4.9m, but it’s a x15 success story. Mind Candy is now valued at $200m due to the sale, and if British companies keep swinging and hitting singles, that’s a good thing!
Lots of talk about the launch of Google+ ("Google +"? "Google Plus"? "G++?"), you’d best start here. I’m not going to repeat what can be seen in the launch videos, but I want to add one point. Much like the technology industry you can go vertical (and address a specific area top to bottom) and then build up your verticals, or you can go horizontal (and reach over everything, albeit quite thinly) and hope to bulk up. From what I can see, Google+ is going to be a horizontal play, attempting to drape a social layer over every Google product.
It brings on a range of emotions in people, but you can’t argue with the audited numbers of Daily Mail readers, as the publisher today becomes the first to release an audited readership number for their mobile app. ABC have audited 168,507 users of their iPhone application (with a daily readership of around 62,000). That’s on top of 77 million unique browser sessions for May. For all the noise by The Guardian and The Times, watch MailOnline, even if it is through a GreaseMonkey script like Tom Scott’s Camptown News.
Ah, that explains the rationale behind Pottermore, the new website from JK Rowling. There’s lots of talk of social networks, a "safe and unique online reading experience" Dig a little bit further, and you spot the more capitalistic reasoning. Pottermore will be the central (only?) site for buying your ebook copies of the Harry Potter novels – with the interesting news that Rowling retained the electronic rights to the books. Rather than go traditional and sell these to her publisher, she’s decide they’ll go online at the new site, in a single universal format (good luck with that) and with
I don’t think there’s any other way to describe this than "win". The UK’s national library has clinched a deal with Google to include texts dating back to the 18th Century. The library’s collection includes around 14m books – second only to the USA’s Library of Congress – and it holds some 920,000 journal and newspaper titles. The deal with Google will enable readers to view, search and copy works – where the copyright has expired – at no charge. Google will also make the books available through its own portal. With all those texts online we’re sure to see
Apple go into a subtle fight against people unlocking their hardware. Sony, especially in the case of the PSP, throw new firmwares and forced updates to try and keep the system locked down. Microsoft tried that with Windows Phone for a bit before ChevronWP7 was released last year which unlocked the handsets, And Microsoft promptly invited the team to Seattle, and the result is that anyone can unlock their Windows Phone handset to run "homebrew" software in return for a small payment to the Chevron developers (I know, how quaint!). Still, Windows Phone need developers, and if doing smart things
