In the last few days, I’ve been hearing some interesting rumours on the social media scene.

The consensus is that Google are working on something behind the scenes that appears to be a direct competitor to Facebook. Supposedly entitled “Google Me”, it’s not entirely surprising that Google are rumoured to be doing this. Probably somewhat taken aback by the rampant growth and traffic that Facebook has been enjoying recently, it would seem that Google need something to prevent Facebook becoming too strong a competitor. They need to compete with Facebook on a level playing field. There’s no doubt about it that whilst Google are the King of Search, Facebook is the King of social media and social media is taking the web world by storm.

Google have dabbled in the social media scene with minimal to moderate success – Wave, Orkut and Buzz. However, they have yet to make any real inroads on this front. It seems that building something similar to Facebook might be the only viable answer for Google.

Whilst Facebook is a massive juggernaut that appears to be almost invincible nowadays, an attempt by Google to topple Facebook seems almost somewhat futile. Having said that, could this go deeper than we realise? Google could have an ace up their sleeve on the social media front. Search. If Google did build and create a social network similar to Facebook, Google could be one step closer to ushering in the semantic web. In a basic nutshell, the semantic web is about relevancy of information to an individual. Whilst elements of the semantic web already exist on the web, it is not yet fully realised.

By creating a social media profile in Google Me, Google could potentially use this information to provide semantic searches across the web that is relevant to the person’s profile. For example, if a person logged into Google Me and referred to their dog on a regular basis, Google could see this information and tailor the person’s search results for them in favour of dogs or dog related information. Facebook already does something similar; it takes information from your profile and tailors various advertisements and notifications to suit you. But, this only happens within the Facebook framework. The defining difference is that Google could tailor search results for you based on your profile across the entire web.

If Google are actually working on a Facebook competitor AND if they play their cards right, this could be a very interesting battle.

Just read a fantastic hypothetical article over at techcrunch. It’s a futuristic look at how various mobile web technologies could potentially integrate with each other to provide a seamless user experience on the mobile web via smartphone enabled devices.

I particularly like the notion of Geofences. These are effectively imaginary borders that are created with Geolocation data points. For example, you could be in one particular area such as the city that has a Geofence around it. Inside this Geofence, certain rules apply to your mobile profile. I could have programmed my mobile to provide me directions to the closest Chinese restaurants when I am in the city because that is what I like to eat when I am there. However as soon as I leave the city Geofence, and enter a different Geofence, a different set of rules apply. I could have programmed my mobile information so when I leave the city and am driving down the highway, my mobile profile will be locating McDonalds restaurants that are in my immediate vicinity on the highway.

Anyhow, for the full article, you can view it here on techcrunch

I was very excited to see a fairly large parcel arrive in the mail for me the other day. Usually the only thing the post man delivers to me in this day and age are bills and get rich quick type letters. So when I saw a box with my name on it, I instantly became very happy. At last, my brand new business cards had arrived.

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Here’s a little tip – If you’re short on time and can’t be bothered checking all of your favourite websites one by one for the latest news and information, this method will help you view a list of articles in your iGoogle page all at once. By doing this, you can find new and useful information that you like quickly and easily. When you see an article link in iGoogle, you can click the link and it takes you to the full article straight away. This is extra handy if you have setup your iGoogle account to be your browser’s default homepage like me. Read more…

There has been a bit of a turf war growing recently. It all came head to head with the release of the Google Nexus One. Apple saw this as a direct threat to the iPhone and their business model. Needless to say, ties between the two companies have soured rapidly as of late.



It was interesting to see just before the release of the Apple iPad, Steve Jobs came out and denounced the use of Adobe Flash and categorically denied that Apple would ever support it. People were wondering why? It’s hard to deny there is large support and demand for Flash Content. Steve Jobs claims that the world is moving towards HTML 5. I do agree that this is the case, however, people are not ready to entirely ditch Flash. It is still a valid platform and integral to the web. Read more…

I stumbled across this very nice tool called Harmony. It’s a great little web application that let’s you draw with some really nice brushes and textures.
The image above is a quick 5 or 6 minute sketch I did using the application.

Hi everyone.

I am in a band called The EAP Collective. We create electronic ambient music. A little while back, we decided to give away our very first album “Rice Paper Odyssey” for free. No strings attached. We had great fun making the album and just wanted to share it with anyone who is interested.

You can download the MP3s for free here or listen to our music on MySpace here Read more…

Let’s get to it. To start with, I’m an iStockphoto contributor. At the moment I contribute vector illustrations, but I’m looking to get into photography at some stage too.

Today, we’re going to find out how to:

1. Find your iStock recent image RSS Feed
2. Use Google Feedburner to embed the iStockphoto RSS feed into your website
3. See how many people are clicking on your feed links

Please note, this method I am about to describe allows you to embed up to 10 images from your iStock recent uploads into your website. Why 10 you ask? Well that’s all that comes out of the iStock feed. Also, I am using Google Feedburner as it lets you get statistical information on click throughs etc plus it automatically updates your website with your most recent images. Feedburner will provide you with a fairly basic looking feed, but you can style it more if you know some CSS coding. If you don’t know CSS maybe find someone who does and they can style it for you.

Whilst this tutorial specifically refers to embedding an iStockphoto RSS feed into your website, you can also apply some of the methods listed here to embed any other RSS feed you may have into your website.
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I am an iStockphoto Contributor. Currently I do vector illustrations but I am aiming to branch out and do some photography as well. If you like my work and would like to use it, feel free to visit my iStock account where you can buy the image to use for yourself. Below are some of my most recent images that link straight through to larger previews on my iStock account. Here you have the option to buy them
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