What Is Self-Hosting?

Before helping to decide if self-hosting is right for you, it’s worth describing what I mean by the term. Basically, self-hosting is where you have your own WordPress installation on a web server that you have access to. It’s more commonly applied where you hire a company to provide you with a web hosting service (more on this later), although it can also be where you run your own server at work or at home.

Self-hosting doesn’t include the premium services that you can buy for a blog hosted at WordPress.com. Although these are great, they still don’t give you the full control that you have when you self-host.

Why Self-Host

This is possibly the most important question that you need to ask yourself – why self-host instead of using either a free service or one that provides premium services for a small fee? In the mian, there are a handful of reasons why you might want to consider self-hosting:

• Full control of your blog’s layout and appearance. Normal hosted options limit you to a selection of themes, and although these can usually be tweaked there’s a limit to the amount of possible customisation. If you’re determined to get your own look, you’ll need to self-host.
• Integration with other site services, such a forum, gallery, etc. Even if true integration isn’t available, it’s often possible to simulate it using plugins or bridging software to link the two together.
• Full advertising control. If you have a particular advertising partner or set of partners that you want to work with, self-hosting will give you the freedom to do this. It also helps if you’re looking at affiliate schemes such as those run by Amazon and want to make use of the widgets they provide.
• Full plugin control – if you want to expand your blog to host a podcast or embed video, you can do it with a few clicks. There’s a ton of other plugins available to do everything from pick up your Twitter stream to calculating your mortgage interest payments, but you can only access all of them if you self-host. Also, if you don’t like how a plugin works, you’re free to go in and change the code to your liking.

Problems and Pitfalls

Going self-hosted isn’t always a bed of roses. There are a number of problems that can conspire to make what seems like a good idea into an absolute nightmare. It’s important to plan carefully, and to understand what might happen if your blog starts to become popular.

• Although your host will normally take backups of your blog, it’s worth checking. Some hosts will only use backups if they have a hardware failure themselves, rather than letting you request a restore from backup. Either way, it’s good practice to take a backup of your site periodically.
• Most hosts give you a set amount of bandwidth per month. Bandwidth is like petrol – if you only have a small amount of visitors or only host simple content (mostly text and a few pictures) then a small bandwidth allowance is fine. If you’re likely to get a large amount of visitors, you might want to go for a larger bandwidth allowance to give yourself a cushion. It’s also worth keeping an eye on your bandwidth usage – if your site grows in popularity or suddenly gets linked from a much larger site then you might find your costs increasing to pay for all that bandwidth. By contrast, places like WordPress.com give your site unlimited bandwidth.
• In an effort to make your humble blog even more amazing, you will occasionally break stuff. In order to avoid breaking your blog completely, you might want to set up a little test blog or sandbox for you to experiment. If you must experiment on your live blog, take backups first…
• Hotlinking is where someone takes a cool photo or screenshot you’ve taken and embeds it on their website. It basically means they’re using your bandwidth to show your pictures to their visitors, and you’re not even getting any credit for it! There are a few ways you can prevent hotlinking, but by far the best one is to watermark your images with a logo or blog name.
• The temptation to do more. Once you’ve set up one blog, you might be tempted to spawn others, or start new projects, or similar. It can be an all-consuming enterprise, forever tweaking, changing or adding new things. Don’t try to do too much – let your blog find it’s place first and let people grow used to it before trying to add a million new parts to it.

Finding A Host

If you’ve decided to take the plunge and go for a self-hosted setup, one of the most difficult decisions will be finding a host that’s right for you. It’s worth taking your time over this, as you’re likely to be a customer of theirs for a number of years. Treat it with the care you’d apply when looking at a mobile phone or cellphone contract.

Hosting is made up of three parts: a domain name (in my case gazimoff.com), a hosting environment and a backend database. You can usually get all three components from the same supplier, with the hosting and database usually coming together as a package that you pay for monthly. The domain name is also registered centrally, meaning that you can move it to point to another supplier just like you’d move your phone number when moving from one cellphone provider to another.

When finding a host, there’s a couple of things to bear in mind.

• Technical Specs: do they provide the facility to run WordPress? As a minimum you’re going to need php version 4.3 – this is the scripting language that WordPress is written in. Your database also needs to be MySQL version 4.1.2 in order to store all your blogposts. You also need to check for something called “mod_rewrite” – this is a web server module that allows you to have nice neat web addresses, like /about/ instead of /index.php?page=42. You can find a complete technical specs page here.
• Get Recommendations: ask around for recommendations on particular hosts. Get a feel for the kind of sites they hosts, how long they’ve been in business and how much they cost. Also, do your homework – search around and see if they’re generally well liked or if they have a history of problems. As always though, remember to take regular backups in case something happens!
• Speak to them before taking the plunge. Let them know what you’re looking to do before you sign on the dotted line. Get a feel for them – if any of the responses make you feel nervous then again, don’t sign on the line.
• Check bandwidth cap policies – does hosting come with a bandwidth cap? What happens when you reach the cap – does your site get throttled (slows down) or does it just go off-air?
• If you’re running a blog already, look at your number of visitors per month and work out how much bandwidth they’re likely to use based on the average page size. As an example, the home page of manaobscura.com is about 2MB in size due to the amount of graphics, screenshots etc. You want to make sure you have a healthy cushion above whatever number you come up with, just to cater for those days when a major site links to you and you’re flooded with new visitors. The last thing you want is for your work to get recognised, only for you to vanish off the internet by a sudden rush of interest.
• Future-proof your package: are there options for your package to grow as your site does, or are you tied down to your initial choice? Likewise, if you’ve hugely overestimated your choice, can you step down a little?

Making The Move

Once you’ve decided your plan and signed up to your new host, you’ll need to export all your blogposts, install WordPress and import all your content in your new home. Most blogging platforms come with an export facility, and WordPress has a handy install guide. In order to manage moving your files back and forth, I recommend using the free FileZilla program for both Windows and Mac, as it’s both easy to use and fully featured.

Most hosts will provide you with a web based control panel to monitor and administer your website. A popular method is cPanel, whcih comes with full documentation and tutorial videos. Using this tool you should be able to set up things like mailboxes, databases and so on.

If you’re not sure about anything, it’s worth having a trusted expert on standby that can help you out if things go wrong, or if things are unclear.

Further Reading

That’s it for this guide. In future ones, I’ll be giving tips on how to keep your costs down and the best ways to choose a domain name. If you have any questions in the meantime, leave them in the comments!

Luckily there’s a whole range of free software around to help you put together your ideal site. Before you begin, it’s worth spending some time drawing up a blueprint about what you’re hoping to achieve. It doesn’t matter if you’re a business, a sole trader or even an individual wanting to share information – it’s worth sketching out what you hope to achieve.

It’s also important to think about where you’re hoping to take the site if it becomes successful. Would you be wanting to add further features or will it always remain the same? All these things are worth bearing in mind, as once you start down a particular path it can be tricky to change course.

WordPress

Possibly the most popular blogging software available, WordPress is the package of choice for a large chunk of writers with an audience. It’s ideal for all corners, from individuals through to large corporations. It has a large library of plugins available to extend it’s capabilities. It’s also possible to completely customise the look and feel, allowing you to tie it in with that business brand or your individual style.

WordPress is great for anyone producing regularly updated content, as well as being able to handle static pages for information that doesn’t change. A common use is to have business announcements on a front page together with static product, company info and contact page. The great thing is that the structure is flexible and easy to manage, allowing content to be added and manipulated easily.

The community aspect comes in to play by allowing your readers to comment on articles and pages, providing feedback and sharing their views with both you and others. There are a range of moderation options available, from an “anything goes” approach through to being able to approve all comments prior to publication.

There are some things that you can pay for with WordPress. Some plugins charge extra for premium versions, while others are free but will accept minor donations to the author. You can also get help developing a theme or style for your WordPress installation, giving it a unique look and feel. Most web designers should be able to work with WordPress.

phpBB

A long running forum software, phpBB is fantastic for building online communities, particularly for common interest groups and niche discussion topics. It tends to work very well where there’s already a critical mass of community that already exists, such as a hobby group that already knows eachother. It’s also great for providing a team of people that chats regularly on Twitter somewhere more permanent to share thoughts and ideas.

As a forum phpBB can be themed to suit your own style in the same way as WordPress, as well as supporting a range of modifications that extend functionality. Mods aren’t as easy to manage as with WordPress, but work just as tightly.

Forums have a downfall in that they require a large amount of activity to become self-sustaining, usually from a core of users. If you don’t have a community that can sustain this, you may want to consider alternatives. A forum that isn’t regularly visited or updated can quickly become a ghost town instead of a vibrant nexus.

Mediawiki

If you’ve ever used Wikipedia, you’ve used Mediawiki. The software that powers one of the world’s top ten websites is available free for your own use. It’s fantastic for acting as a repository for images and documents, as well as being a great collaboration tool for articles and pages. If you’re looking at having a team of people work on a  central resource that would make a great reference, this might be something to look at.

Like the others, Mediawiki can be styled to suit your needs. That said, it isn’t the easiest thing to do and may present a challenge to any web designer you might be looking to hire. It also has a number of idiosyncrasies that need to be learned before you can really get the hang of using it, as well as needing a number of extensions before becoming useful. If you’ve got the time to learn it properly, it can be a useful tool.

A Hodgepodge Approach

You might be reading this and thinking that you’d like a bit of blog, a bit of forum and a bit of wiki. That’s an understandable approach – it’s rare that once size fits all. If you fall in to this camp, there’s a couple of approaches that you can take.

The first is to pick your core area (like a blog) and then look for ways to extend it out to provide the features you need. This might be through the use of plugins, or through the use of bridging software between two distinct software packages. Bridging software typically allows things like single sign-on, shared databases and so on.

The second approach is to use an integrated content management system such as Drupal or Joomla. Both of these work on a framework of modules that can be bolted together to give your site the structure and layout that you want. There are modules for blogs, forums wikis and many more besides.

The main drawback with this is the “jack of all trades” approach. While your site will feel tightly integrated and focused, you’ll also find that it lacks features that can be found in packages focused on a single role. If your aim is to provide a range of services for your users, a CMS might be the perfect choice. If not, you might prefer to focus on your key area first.

Going Full Circle

Remember, being aware of the social web is all about keeping in touch with people in ways that suits them. Don’t pour all your effort into your website, only to ignore your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Keep things balanced, but make sure you keep fresh and active on all fronts.

Another area to note is in tying things together. Mention new posts or topics of interest on Twitter. By reverse, remind your readers to follow your account on Twitter, or to take a look at your Facebook page. This way you’re not treating each group as an isolated bunch, but are instead encouraging them to mingle with eachother. Think of it as one grand cocktail party instead of three separate buffets.

So what’s been going on? Why the “radio silence” on Twitter these past six months or more? And why no blog updates since February? Well, all these and more are intertwined together in a rather short-sighted mess that I’m beginning to wish I handled better now. But as they say, you learn from experience. Allow me to recap with what happened and how things have progressed.

Back in March I decided to put a rigid split between my various videogame twitterings and the rest of my social media usage. As a result, Mana Obscura was born. Based heavily on my experiences playing World of Warcraft, the new website quickly gained a following.  I enjoy creating new articles on a subject that still fascinates me, and for some reason people enjoy reading them.

At about this time, I started the @GamerGaz twitter account in order to impose a further separation. The videogaming blogging community has an awful lot of support available to it, plus a huge amount of infectious enthusiasm. I found a large amount of intelligent, articulate people who are brilliant users of social media, yet they’d never class themselves as such. They just pick up the tools they can find to form communities and share common interests and passions. Only natural, when you think about it.

One thing of course leads to another. The blog led to a podcast, which led to a forum, which may lead to who knows where. Everything that I previously talked about people doing, I was now doing for myself. And it’s all been easier said than done – the podcast has been a right royal pain to set up, and is still going through pains even though we’ve started broadcasting live every week.

That said, I’ve been amazed by the interest in it all. The blog attracts something like 200-400 readers a day, while the podcast has about 200 listeners a week. It constantly surprises me, and it’s something that I’m aware I’m very lucky to have.

So where has this all ended up? Well, it means I’ve neglected where I came from, what started it all. This blog hasn’t seen an update since Feb, with my original Twitter account suffering a similar fate. I’ve stopped networking, stopped sharing knowledge and generally fallen out of the loop. When you’re doing social networking, that’s a bad state to be in.

As a result, I’m going to be talking a bit more about my own experiences of social networking and social media, and what it means to me as someone who’s actually using them in anger rather than just someone who’s pontificating from the sidelines.

I’m also going to be looking at ways to help people manage more than one online presence. I found it very easy to take my eye off the ball when I started this new project. I’m keen to ensure that others don’t repeat the mistake, so if you have any thoughts then feel free to pipe up!

I’ll still be talking about tech and social media, just expect it to have a bit more context. I’ll also be talking about the balancing act and struggles I have of managing this online brand that I’ve somehow created.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving every minute of where I am. I just think I could have done things better. So I’m working on it. The first step is the new coat of paint here, with more to come in the pipeline. It’s going to be an interesting balancing act, but probably doable.

In the meantime, don’t be a stranger!

Despite the new mobile OS being heralded as a return to form for Microsoft, the main features of WinPhone 7 aren’t the ones I’m most excited about. Instead, there’s a whole clutch of features that I think are going to be incredibly useful for anyone who uses their phone for social networking. The big one is the way that the phone integrates all your contacts from various networks into one place. While it’s great to see Facebook and Windows Live statuses sitting side by side, I’m hoping to see plugins for Twitter and maybe LinkedIn appear on here as well. I’m also hoping that it’ll play nice with Google’s Mail, Contacts and Calendar push services, although these will probably go through an Exchange-style interface.

The People hub: OS-level social network integration

The great thing for me here is that I can unlock the phone and see what’s going on – I don’t have to treat each service separately by going into it’s individual app. Since I started heavily using Twitter, I’ve almost abandoned Facebook and the huge number of contacts I have there. I’m hoping that centralised services like this will help to bring me back the other way and reconnect with my Facebook friends. More than this though, I’m hoping that it’ll allow for some great cross-pollination of ideas. Being able to forward posts from one service to another would be incredibly useful.

The other great thing for me is the integration of XBox Live. It finally means that the people I hook up with for videogaming don’t get treated as a separate entity but instead get pulled in to my other social networks. The inclusion of multiplayer gaming on the handset is great news as well – I think that turn based games such as Chess, Poker and even Civilization will work well on the platform. Although gaming has taken off in a big way on the iPhone, it still remains very much a single player affair. By introducing social gaming to the platform’s core, more multiplayer titles should start to emerge.

The Game hub: Finally, XBox Live integration

The way that WinPhone 7 draws social networks together and integrates them is a big plus. Microsoft aren’t the only people who have spotted this trend – Google recently launched their Buzz service in order to achieve much the same thing. The key difference though is in the level of integration – Microsoft are unifying the networks together, but not adding anything further on top of it. Google on the other hand are encapsulating all merged content with a Buzz wrapper, allowing comments and ratings to be added on almost anything regardless of where it came from. The key challenge for Google will be to mimic the level of integration into Android in a way that doesn’t upset an established userbase – not a straightforward challenge at all. There’s also a groundswell of opinion that goes against

I’m looking forward to getting some hands-on time with the Windows Phone when it comes out later this year. While it’s unlikely to be an iPhone killer, I think that having an alternative way of doing things and a different product in the market can only be a good thing. I think it will encourage more people to take the smartphone plunge, sitting alongside the iPhone and Android as a viable option. That said, the next smartphone battle isn’t going to be for users. With several directly competing platforms each competing for a developer’s attention, getting them on board and developing apps for one system in favour of another is going to be challenging.

The problem is that as gaming takes on more co-operative multiplayer aspects, it becomes less a discrete or isolated activity and more a part of that player’s social network. Although the underlying technology is different, there’s not much difference between challenging a friend to a game of Scrabble on Facebook or inviting them to play a few rounds with you on Street Fighter 4 on a console.

Uncharted 2: one way Twitter flow.

When you move to MMO or virtual world gaming, a player might build up a list of tens or even hundreds of social contacts based on the various activities that player might take part in. A player might also have a social network on Facebook, Twitter or Bebo that’s completely isolated. Where games do connect with social networks, it’s all one-way.

There are ways around this problem: PC gamers can run their games in a window in order to track their various social networks. Console gamers have it slightly easier – the Xbox 360 for example has integration with Windows Live Messenger but it’s limited to that single service. It’s not an elegant solution, which is why many gamers turn to separate devices to monitor their social networks.

The interesting thing is that this kind of activity, where you’re displaying small snippets of personalised information to a user, has been around for a while in the smartphone and web industries. A widget engine, can create an environment for small applications to run, which can then interface with services running on the internet. All you would need is for the widget engine to be incorporated either into the console or the PC operating system. Developing and publishing widgets is then a fairly simple affair.

There are several challenges that immediately become apparent when trying to encourage widgets as a platform for displaying external information in-game.

• Controlling the user experience: Developers are keen to refine and protect the look and feel of a game. System alerts are acceptable, but others are kept to the background. There’s no reason though why developers couldn’t extend the widget API in order to control look and feel, allowing widgets to blend in with the game interface. There are even imaginative ways this could be used, such as projecting messages onto in-game scenery before fading away, or adding Flickr photostream images as poster backdrops.
• Gaining mindshare: Persuading developers to take this on might be challenging. There is evidence though from the PC gaming platform that gamers are willing to learn the skills needed to customise their own gaming experience. These customisations can be shared with others, and there are already established networks such as Curse.com available for users to upload, rate and share addons.
• Allowing shutoff: Just like when you watch a film at the cinema, sometimes you want to switch off contact from the outside world. Features like whitelisting for important messages or contacts might also be an idea.
• Being extensible: New networks and utilities come online all the time, and it’s important for any framework to be flexible enough to cope with new additions. Likewise, being able to control which networks you interface with is pretty crucial.

Games have already started publishing updates to social networks. If these changes come into play, our social networks can start updating our games as well.

Windows Media Center: Possibly the cleanest Microsoft UI

Microsoft hasn’t always been wedded to the idea of menus that either drop down or scroll up. Back in 2005 they released Windows Media Center, an application that ran on top of Windows XP. WMC was intended for use as a home entertainment hub, with an iTunes style music interface and video capture amongst it’s features. The original release never really caught on in the UK, with capability being replaced by either the Sky or Virgin Media set top boxes, or by videogame consoles like the XBox.

The interface itself was specifically designed for use on a large widescreen TV and would be controlled by a remote. Options were bright and bold, with information sliding into view. In terms of control, it worked as an opposite to regular version of Windows: slick, clean and uncluttered. It still exists today, available in both Windows Vista and as an improved and cleaner version in Windows 7.

Zune HD: Notice something familiar?

It’s clear that Microsoft have taken cues from Media Center and incorporated them into other products. The Zune HD, a portable media player only available in the US, has all the hallmarks of a device styled by the same team. Despite being the same size as an iPod Touch, the unique style and interface make it unique and desirable. Unfortunately the device is unlikely to hit European shores, as the content the supports many of the functions isn’t available outside of North America. That said, it does seem to indicate that Microsoft is willing to develop embedded operating systems that feel completely different to the standard Windows Mobile interface we’ve been used to.

With both these things in place, you can’t help but feel it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for Microsoft to develop a superb touch-based tablet interface, either by expanding on the Zune HD or the Media Center technology they already have. There are even hints on the direction they’ll move in, with Seesmic Look being a strong example of what an MS tablet based app would feel like. Add to that the rumours that Microsoft will be announcing a Zune Phone later this month and it begins to feel like potential is building up.

My concern out of all of this is the sporadic nature with which development has happened. It’s taken five years to go from a large screen interface to a personal media player. Will it take the same time again to produce a high quality interface, leaving Apple to clean up in the tablet market? Will Microsoft surprise us with a restyled interface to sit inside the HP Slate? Will the stylus finally make it to the dustbin of history? Chanses are, 2010 will hold all the answers.

Nowadays life is somewhat simpler. I wear a jacket and carry around an iPhone and a Palm Pre, one in each pocket. My music, photos, games and internet all fit into a single device that pretty much encompasses my personal life, while the other one holds everything I need for my work. Technology is moving from devices that perform a single function to those that are multi-purpose – after all, why buy, carry and maintain several devices when one will do the job?

Yesterday Apple announced the iPad, their new tablet computer. Designed to fill the gap between a smartphone and a laptop computer, their goal was to create a new device with a small set of core strengths. These start off with web browsing and email, but head into directions such as e-books, movies and other forms of entertainment. There’s even a productivity suite in the form of iWork, providing the capability to show and edit presentations, spreadsheets and documents.

There’s also been a lot of early criticism of the device, much as there was with the launch of the original iPhone. It doesn’t handle voice calls, it doesn’t support Flash, it doesn’t have a camera and it doesn’t support multitasking. While some of those are fair, it’s worth cutting beyond the surface and looking at the strategy behind the device and how it’s likely to evolve.

The easiest one is the comparison to e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle. The latest Kindle DX is priced at $489 and is arguably designed with a primary purpose of showing books. This means that if you want to carry around your book collection, the Kindle needs to be in your bag alongside your laptop and other gadgets. The iPad starts at just ten dollars more, and yet is in full colour. Amazon are already facing competition in the marketplace from a number of competing e-ink readers like the Nook from Barnes & Noble. There’s also a huge number that were announced at CES, all competing on just that single function. From a strategic point of view, it makes more sense to bundle books with other capabilities than it does to compete directly with an established device.

It’s not designed for use as a phone. The Kindle doesn’t support it, while it remains to be seen if the upcoming Android tablets will. Besides, anyone who remembers the Nokia N-gage will recall what it feels like to hold a generously proportioned device to your head. Yes, most of us have headsets these days, but it’s the feel of the thing. Besides, wouldn’t it be annoying if you’re in mid-flow typing out a blogpost or similar, when suddenly the application minimises just because someone’s calling you? There’s already talk of VOIP applications such as Skype making their way from the iPhone to the iPad, but I see this more as a mobile internet (like the Nokia Booklet 3G) than a mobile phone.

The lack of support for Adobe Flash may well be a problem to some. There are concerns that some Flash apps can be a resource hog (Zynga’s Farmville being a typical example of an app that grabs your browser and refuses to let go), while others may represent security risks (Twitter recently disabled some Flash widgets due to a security problem). Developers also now have a range of other creative elements such as Javascript, CSS and HTML5 in order to make websites more dynamic. Don’t forget, Apple also have their own video and audio codecs, and it’s possible that the iPad and iPhone will be used to drive support of these formats.

The inclusion of iWork for just under $10 doesn’t just offer a basic productivity suite, it also doubles up as a statement of intent to developers. By showing that the iPad can be used for business related tasks, developers are encouraged to consider what other work related apps would be suitable. The demo of Brushes at yesterday’s keynote really emphasised this direction of looking at how existing tasks could be redesigned to run on a tablet. I’m hoping for a lot of interesting software to come from this, from advanced blogging software to some creative design and project management tools. Pitched properly, this could become a strong collaborative tool and replace the netbook or laptop for small client meetings. Again, it makes strategic sense – Apple have obtained a chunk of consumer apps, but really want to stimulate growth in more business oriented directions.

Probably the biggest disappointment for mass media was the absence of an out-of-the-box newspaper or magazine subscription service to sit alongside iBooks. I’ve no doubt that it’ll happen – the New York Times demonstration shows as much – but I think they’ll have to work a touch harder to get a solution that works in an integrated way. There may well be demand for subscription based services, but publishing houses may well need to rally together in order to launch a service that consumers will buy in to. The presentation mechanism is mostly there – all that remains is delivery and pricing.

Looking on, what can we expect to see in the iPad’s future? I think that sooner or later some camera management capability will arrive, either in the form of a clip-on camera or by using Bluetooth to pair with a camera and support direct image capture and manipulation. I think we’ll also see advanced collaboration tools to allow owners to cluster together and share content through simple gestures. I also think that iBooks may even open up as a self-publishing mechanism, allowing authors to produce their own books, guides and manuals for sale on the platform.

The HP Slate: Fresh interface needed?

The big losers out of this are the other tablet manufacturers. Google’s Android OS may provide great access to all of their services, but there’s still a gap when it comes to managing and providing access to a large amount of entertainment. That said, by licensing Android out to manufacturers, Google effectively minimises their own risk. Devices like the JooJoo now feel dead in the water, while the HP Slate may struggle due to the Windows 7 interface. Just like with Windows mobile phones, we may see the Slate emerge with an overlay interface to make it easy to use. Netbooks will still survive – as Steve Jobs said they’re just smaller, cheaper laptops.

The other big loser out of this is Adobe’s Flash technology. After being the mainstay of interactive and elegant applications on the Internet for a number of years and providing t he technology behind services like YouTube, it finally seems that the end may be approaching. Google are working on their own streaming video technology that will perform natively in the browser, while tools such as AJAX are encroaching on another front. Security conscious surfers and those with adblocking software routinely block Flash objects. It may well be in a few years time that Flash starts to fade from our screens in the same way that Real Media has.

iPhone: Complex kit

I’ve recently handled a number of queries from friends and family about problems with their iPhones. These issues can be as simple as the battery indicator not updating. They can also be as serious as the phone not waking out of standby to alert you of an incoming call, or refusing to charge or sync when docked. While some problems can be ignored, others can make the phone unusable.

The good news is that in all the cases I’ve seen, the iPhone has been easy to fix without any professional help or even opening the device.

Symptoms that I’ve seen include:

• Refusing to charge, either when docked for syncing or plugged directly into the mains
• Refusing to sync when docked
• Not updating battery/signal strength
• Apps not loading, or attempting to load then crashing
• Not receiving incoming calls
• Not receiving text messages, or the receipt being delayed

Notifications: They all add up

The reason for all these problems is usually straightforward. Almost all phones have two halves – a radio side which manages the network connection and a user interface side which controls how you interact with the phone. As smartphones become increasingly powerful, the software they run grows in complexity. They behave more like mini-computers than simple mobile phones, running a range of apps developed by third parties. They can accept incoming connections and push notifications. All of these require a slice of the phone’s limited resources to use

If a phone runs out of resources it might not be able to handle a request. This request might be an incoming call or message, a push notification, a charging signal or launching an app. You can try to free up resources by pausing the music player or closing some web pages. This isn’t always effective – you might be using an app that has a memory leak, meaning that resources are never freed up when the app is closed.

One advantage the iPhone 3GS has over the 3G and original iPhone is the internal memory available. The 3GS has 256MB of internal memory, compared to 128MB in the 3G and classic iPhone. As a result resource conflicts should in theory occur less often on the newer 3GS.

Power cycling: a hidden trick

The solution is probably what you’d expect if you were dealing with a regular computer – in most cases simply switching it off and on again will do the trick. There are two ways you can do this:

• Hold down the power/lock button for about 5 seconds. A “slide to power off” button should appear. Switch the phone off, then switch it back on once it has finished shutting down
• If the “slide to power off” button does not appear, hold down the power/lock button and the home button (the one with the square on it) together for about 10 seconds. The phone should shut down instantly. You can then use the power button to restart the phone normally.

There are also some steps that you can take in order to keep your phone running smoothly and should be part of your regular maintenance cycle.

• Restart the phone to clear out any memory leaks. You should look to do this at least once a month.
• Be ruthless about push notifications and deactivate the ones you don’t really need.
• Regularly clean out the emails you have stored on your phone, archiving them offline if you need to.
• Remove apps that you’re not using, or tried once but never re-used. You can keep them in iTunes in case you want to use them again.
• Track your app usage – if you continue having problems, it might be down to an app you commonly use. Try to narrow it down from your usage patterns and feedback the app has received on iTunes and elsewhere
• Try not to have too many web pages open – close down the ones you’re not using.

It’s worth pointing out that these aren’t faults with the iPhone. The issues it faces are the same as with any other complex computing device that runs third-party apps. Recognising it as such, instead of the more simplistic mobile phones we’ve grown up with, helps to shape how we keep the device running smoothly. Just like with a computer, persistent problems may be an indication of needing to restore the phone from a backup or even reformat it completely to factory defaults. You may have a hardware fault, in which case it’s well worth going back to either the store you bought it from or your local Apple store. Hopefully though, these tips above will help you in being able to eliminate most of the common problems.

Ever heard of the phrase “end-to-end”? It’s what service providers use when trying to test out new products that they’re looking to bring to market. They test out every step of the process, be it order fulfilment, streaming entertainment or real-time data services. Part of that process is about catching the weakpoints and improving them, but it’s also about ensuring that adequate customer support mechanisms are there in order to catch things when they go wrong. Your perfectly designed product may start to fall apart when unexpected system behaviour creeps in, especially if the interactions between systems are complex and non-trivial. It’s therefore surprising when a firm seems to have dropped on this.

It became inevitable that Google would release the Nexus One once the period of “dogfooding” was completed. I’ve heard it more eloquently put as “drinking one’s own champagne”, but the process is the same. It may have been that this was little more than a holiday gift to its employees, as there’s little time to test anything between it starting on 12th December and going on sale on 5th January, especially with Christmas in the middle.

On paper the Nexus One has all the makings of a great phone. An OLED touchscreen, noise cancelling microphone and full speech-to-text tick a fair few boxes, along with a 3D capable display and turn by turn navigation. There is the glaring omission of multitouch and the limitation of only 512MB being made available for app storage, but on the whole it’s a solid package. Where things start to come unstuck is in the overall “service wrap”, or how you’re looked after as a customer once you have it.

As Google is selling the phone directly to customers, the margin of responsibility has become blurred. Early indications are that Google, htc (the manufacturer) and T-Mobile aren’t clear on the structure of this relationship themselves, with customers being the ones losing out, both with reception issues and ordering/storefront problems. Unsurprisingly there’s been a bit of a backlash from this, with some consumers feeling bitter about forking out $530 for a device that costs $174 to make.

Google are learning the hard way just what it means to have your name on the hardware, and how having integrated support for that hardware is important.It’s for this reason, above the technical considerations, why going for an iPhone or Palm Pre may be a more sensible choice at present. The bleeding edge is exactly that, with various improvements required before that edge becomes dulled. That said, there’s no reason why this is a bad thing for Google, Apple, or the smartphone market in general.

The competition between Google, Apple, Palm and RIM is certainly a good thing for the smartphone marketplace, and for consumers in general. With it quality should go up, while the price of this advanced technology should go down. Firms like Motorola who plan to use Andriod for all their future devices may feel threatened by Google’s stance. This may provide Microsoft with an opportunity to move back into the game when it releases Windows Mobile 7 later this year.

A gap is also emerging between smartphones such as Apple, Palm and Andriod, and those made by other firms such as Nokia, Samsung and LG. While the low-tech and low end area of the market can be a legitimate place to target, it’s usually where handset margins are squeezed. Traditional phone manufacturers need to be wary about being squeezed into this space by newcomers dominating the smartphone end. Richard Scoble probably has the right idea when he says that there is more likely to be competition between the web-friendly smartphone sector and the boxed-in group in the middle of the market. These phones with Facebook and Twitter apps “built-in” are likely to be squeezed out of the market as smartphones move to the middle-range.

I’ve described below my 5 ideas for 2010. Some are almost certainties, while some are aspirational concepts that may never appear. Either way, I hope that they at least provide food for thought.

New Sky Player

I’ve mentioned this before, but I’d really like an easier way of buying and watching what Sky have to offer. I can’t have a dish due to stringent building controls and don’t really want Virgin Media due to the heavy push they have behind their telephone and broadband offerings, neither of which I want. Sky have recently put together packages for both the iPhone and XBox Live which sound tempting, but once I dug the surface a little deeper I discovered that it just wasn’t what I was after.

So what I’d like to do is give Sky sat £20 a month. This will then allow me to download TV shows from their platform, and keep them for say two weeks after I first watch them. If I download a show, it charges me a quid or so. If I buy a series, it charges me a batch price. If I watch one show, it might offer me a deal to pick up the rest. Operate it on a prepay basis, where I pay for things in advance, then spend money and chip away at the built up credit.

The key thing here is to offer everything – all the channels that Sky broadcast on general release. Not just the Sky branded channels, but other things as well. Build a recommendation engine around it – “If you like this show, why not try this other one”. Get to know what your customer watches on a much more intimate level and make unique targeted promotions around it. Also, let me take it anywhere – make it work with portable handsets. Expand your iPhone client so that it works with this, and so that if I’m halfway through watching something on one machine that it remembers where I am when it starts to play it elsewhere.

More integration

How many times have you seen a new service launch that seems to be an island, stuck in isolation from everything else? I’d really like to see service start to become more integrated and actively seek other tools that they could link to. I’d also like to see developers start asking for APIs and SDKs to be available as a matter of course, not as a special additional feature. As a mirror to that, I’d really like to see the online security problem solved by third parties wanting their authentication mechanism to become standard.

As these new services start springing up, I’d like to see more work going into cataloguing and organising them in order for developers to have a one-stop shop for information and advice. Places like Programmable Web have started to do this, but I’d like to see more focus on it as a meaningful endeavour. I’d also like to see groups recognised for producing useful APIs as much as the teams that go on to produce something innovative off the back of them.

Alternative Crowdsourcing

The phrases “There’s a book in everyone” or “Everyone has their fifteen minutes of fame” are almost commonplace. Less common but no less valid is “Everyone has an idea”. It seems these days that everyone has an idea or concept that they’re desperate to share, but have no clue how to see it evolve or get it to the right people. Some people rightly want to safeguard their idea and nurture it in order to see it to fruition, while others tend to throw ideas out into the open just to see what others think of them and if they’re viable.

Currently crowdsourcing efforts are generally limited to companies looking for a solution to a particular problem – large innovation websites post grand rewards for the individuals or teams that come up with solutions that meet the clients requirements. While this is quite valid, I’d also like to see a way that ideas can be proposed with no client in mind, just to expose them and gain feedback. If the idea gets picked up and becomes an innovation as a result then we all benefit from new technology becoming available.

Charity Innovation

There’s a feel these days that people meet up, share ideas and network with the goal of developing a service to offer. I can’t help but feel though that the various charitable institutions tend to miss out on the innovative ideas that people have to offer. Sometimes I think that while we might donate money to good causes, or hand down our unwanted clothing to charity shops, that the cycle doesn’t change.

But why do we have to donate money? Couldn’t we donate our time, our ideas or our ingenuity in being able to help charities with being able to do whatever it is that they do in a better way? If we could come up with ways for them to generate more funding, or for the funding that they receive to stretch further, surely that would be worth more than a few coins in their bucket as we pass by?

I’d love for charity-focused innovation events to start happening, and I reckon that there are some pretty smart people out there who would love to be able to help them just through doing what they normally do.

Taking the Tablet

I think that 2010 will be the year of the tablet, either from Google using a modified variant of Andriod, or by Apple and a hybrid OSX-iPhone OS. While netbooks have been the surprising runaway device for 2008/09, the smaller form factor of a portable device seems to have an allure of it’s own.

We’ve already seen a couple of shots fired in the form of the Fusion Garage Joojoo, but I don’t think that a pure Internet device is what the market is crying out for. Both Conde Nast and Time Inc are working on a universial standard for placing magazine content on a tablet form factor. Website managers are already starting to provide views of their content tailored for iPhone browsers. Publications like The Guardian and Huffington Post are releasing applications specifically designed to deliver their content to popular devices.

While I’m expecting a number of flat touch-screen devices to emerge next year, I think that the ones that survuve will be those that offer a unique or compelling experience beyond simple web browsing. Anything else will probably be discarded as an irrelevant gadget that fails to attract more than a core of early adopters.