I’ve never really caught the programming bug. I was taught VB / .NET in college but it was all incredibly tedious and not very interesting. Drag and drop a button, double click it and enter some code, then cross your fingers and hope it runs without exploding. I’m self-taught in php & jQuery although i’m more of a ‘hacker’ than a developer. Html / css is where I’ve least trouble. Why? Because that’s the stuff I enjoy doing… i can see the results of that front end stuff immediately…

Over the past couple of weeks however, I’ve been teaching myself Ruby and getting to grips with Ruby on Rails. I can’t help but ask the question why don’t they teach this in college and why didn’t i learn this sooner… it’s a programming language that actually makes sense with a nice open community to talk to if you get stuck.

Coding Language > Real World Language

There was an article on Mashable recently titled ‘Coding Is 21st Century Literacy‘ and that combined with my recent experience of Ruby on Rails was the catalyst for this blog post, my first in almost 6 weeks. Learning spoken languages has never interested me partly because there was never any incentive for me to learn them. I ‘studied’ French at school for a few years but only because it was compulsory. Same with Irish. Given the choice, i’d have avoided both as I consider them a waste of time (for me, not for everyone)… if you intend living or working in France, learn French. If you want to teach Irish, get a job in TG4 or translating government documents, learn Irish. Tá brón orm, but at 25 I’ve used Irish a grand total of zero times since I finished my last sentence in the 2006 Leaving Cert Irish Paper 2.

Everything has a price over it’s head and we determine whether or not we’re prepared to pay that price. Languages to me are too expensive mainly because i can’t see myself needing or using them enough to warrant spending months or years studying them. If you’d given me an option to swap Irish for a programming language for the Leaving Cert, i’d have snapped your hand off.

When it comes to programming languages however, they take a back seat right up until college. In fact programming isn’t taught at all in Irish education. If you want to learn a programming language, you do it in your own time. Agricultural Science, Music and Religion are quite clearly more important subjects that will prepare you better for the world and for college.

Maths is programming

Myth. This was my only concern when I applied for my course in college. I never liked maths, I couldn’t relate x and y to real world things and ultimately it was my weakest subject in terms of results. Not because I lacked the ability to learn about it and memorise formulas, but because the price over it’s head wasn’t worth paying in my view. Back in my day, higher level maths was worth 100 points. So was everything else. Maths was infinitely harder than other subjects and required more time than subjects for most people so I was happy to drop to ordinary level maths and write it off as my 7th subject (you’re only marked on your best 6 subjects). That system has now changed partly because of people like me who abandoned maths for convenience sake and ignored all the ‘but maths is important’ advice.

The problem with maths in school though is that you need to pass it and in some cases pass it comfortably to get in to college, never mind get in to an IT course. Colleges therefore assume that if you’re not good at maths, you’re not good enough for an IT course. In fact in college IT courses, they still teach you Maths and over my 4 years and 48 modules, a Maths module was the only module I ever failed and had to repeat. Why? Same problem. It didn’t mean anything to me. I bundled myself over the line though, again proving ability wasn’t the problem, it was motivation. “Do just enough to pass” and move on because there’s a massive difference between the effort & discipline required to achieve the same results in maths as in other subjects… that’s my view.

In programming, certain things are like maths…. 2d arrays, 3D arrays, queries, variables, functions, classes… i’ve always had a massive problem simply understanding what all of them are or more importantly why they matter and how they can benefit me… i still don’t understand what all of them are but i understand why, when and where they’re needed.

I think of them as boxes for organising stuff. Just like boxes in real life. They help keep code tidy so that when you have guests staying, the house isn’t just one massive unorganised dump with food in the bathroom and a bed in the living room. That’s the real world problem that would be created if we didn’t have boxes or places for storing things. So that’s what all that programming lark is. Different boxes for different bits of code. A variable is your ‘random junk’ box. A class is the ‘easily accessible box’… arrays are a box split in to little boxes…

And it’s only when you start creating your own analogies like that, does anything even begin to make sense. I’m telling you right now you can pass maths or pass programming classes without having a clue as to what you’re writing or doing. I’ve done it. It’s relatively easy. The thing is, in programming if something doesn’t work, I consider it broken or a failure. In school / college, if something is broken or not working, you get marks for everything you’ve done that isn’t broken. So if you’ve built something and 60% of it works, congratulations, you’ve passed.

The problem with that is that whilst you’ve passed, you haven’t actually learned anything. In your mind, you’ve just been rewarded for building something that doesn’t work which in the real world wouldn’t happen. No client would pay for a website that has an error message on the homepage and can’t process payments correctly. Having 60% of the system right doesn’t cut it. It’s 100% or nothing.

And that’s why programming is not like maths. In maths it doesn’t matter if you mess up some solution to an imaginary problem. Nobody cares other you you and the examiner, for a brief second. In programming, there are no imaginary problems. It’s real world so the stakes are higher, the goal is clear and mistakes generally never go unpunished. That’s why i enjoy it more than maths even though i believe it’s equally if not more challenging.

Where to study Ruby?

I’ve watched & completed two Ruby courses now. Codecademy’s Ruby course and TeamTreeHouse’s “Build a Simple Ruby on Rails Application”. Codecademy is free and a great way to introduce yourself to ruby. TeamTreeHouse’s stuff isn’t free ($25/month but $12.50 for the first month if you signup via this link) but it’s definitely worth paying for at least once and checking out if you’re serious about learning rails. I find watching screencasts or videos of people doing stuff is easier than reading a book. While you’re on TeamTreeHouse, they also have iOS / Android and php stuff along with front end stuff like html / css / jQuery. It’s like having college courses on tap, without the exams.

Why Ruby?

Good question. I suppose it’s like asking why do most people use iPods to listen to music or Google Chrome / Firefox as a browser? There are other services / products that allow you to listen to music and browse the web. Just like there are other programming languages. So when you view languages in that context, you start to understand why people would prefer one over the other. To suggest it ‘doesn’t matter’ what you use or that they’re ‘all the same at the end of the day’ would be like me saying all music playing devices are the same and all web browsers are the same or all cars are the same. It’s an arrogantly simple way of putting it which only developers really have the right to say.

If a non-driver or car owner says that all cars are the same, you won’t take them seriously because you know they’ve *at best* got theoretically knowledge of cars. When buying, repairing, selling, making a car, you’ll most likely discard their input. Back to to Ruby, and this is the most comprehensive answer i’ve seen to the question ‘Why Ruby?’, by David Hansson, creator of Rails. Skip to 36 mins in for

Why Rails?

At this stage i’m very familiar with Ruby but no so familiar with Rails. I initially started off trying to create basic apps in rails but didn’t have a clue what i was doing. I was then advised to leave rails for the time being and focus purely on ruby. It made sense. Now, going back in to rails an making sample apps makes a lot more sense.

One massive incentive for me to learn Rails was this thing called slim. It’s a gem (a gem is basically a rails plugin) which allows you to create templates with a minimal amount of syntax. It does away with opening and closing tags and makes creating layouts and html mockups a breeze. Here’s a comparison between standard html and slim…

and now for the ‘slim’ version…

The latter is so much easier to work with because you never have to worry about closing tags and as a result it’s easier to read, requires no commenting (to explain which closing tag belongs to what opening tag) and ultimately reduces the risk of errors. All of that speeds up development time and makes my life easier. But that’s just one small example of what rails can do or why it’s important to me.

You’ve also got a smooth relationship with Git / Heroku and a massive support community who also build and maintain gems just like ‘slim’. There are numerous others advantages and i’m sure i’ve only just skimmed the surface so far… i am after all, a rails beginner but i know that once i find something i like / enjoy, i tend to use it much more and ultimately understand it better.

The majority of photos I upload online are uploaded to my Flickr account. I now have over 8,500 photos there and all of them have a commercial creative commons licence, meaning they can be used by pretty much anyone. Technically under that licence attribution is required but i really don’t care about attribution, i find it fascinating seeing how and where people use my images but of course it’s nice to get credit for them too…

Flickr Inbox

This is a glimpse in to the kind of messages i get through Flickr from people who stumble upon my work and would like to re-use it in some way… you’d have thought people would just want to republish stuff on their websites but no… I’ve had people ask me can they use my photos in wedding invitations, documentaries, books, magazines, even a small movie….

Websites

I read several tech blogs on an almost daily basis and every now and then I’ll be reading an article with an image attached to it that looks familiar. It usually takes me a few seconds to cop on that it’s actually my image. Generally all of these websites will also credit me by name and link to my Flickr profile. Technically they have to. Most will download the image & upload it on to their own server. Some will crop it slightly to suit. So it’s really difficult to estimate how many people have actually seen my photos but my Flickr stats tell me my photos have been viewed over half a million times. Given the fact most of the really big tech sites host most of their images, Flickr can’t measure those stats so you could safely multiply that 0.5m view count by double or even triple figures…

Below is a list of sites that my photos have been used on at least once. In many cases several of these sites have used more than one of my photos in different articles:

A few examples as ‘proof’ i’m not just making it all up:

How do i find out where my stuff is being used?

Flickr stats are rubbish. Flickr itself is pretty rubbish these days. The one thing it has in its favour is that it’s cheaper than the rest (unlimited uploads & sizes for $25/year), plus it makes it easy to add licences and search for creative commons photos, so it’s still used heavily by content creators. I’m hoping Yahoo will inject a bit of life back in to it soon.

I actually use Google to find out where my images are being used. I simply Google my name and filter searches to within the last 24 hours or last 7 days, last month etc… most of the time I’ll be credited by my full name. Occasionally, people will ask permission before they use my images, just to triple check they’re allowed to – licences can be confusing and intimidating for a lot of people and i feel actually put many people off from using or editing content that’s already out there.

If it’s not online, it won’t exist in the future.

Managing photos and archiving them is still a real problem. Chances are in 20 years time, you’ll have lost most of the photos you took today. That’s because you do a poor job at managing photos, plus you only store them in one location. You probably don’t upload them online or you do, you upload a select few to Facebook. You buy a new computer and all of a sudden you forget what folders your old photos were in and before you know it you’ve accidentally erased some photos you don’t have backups for… When i say ‘you’, i include ‘me’ in that. I’m pretty sure the majority of photos i take never make it online and over time, gradually get lost or dumped in to random folders that i delete at a later date.

Uploading photos to Flickr or Facebook or Google+ is a good idea. It acts as backup tool with the added benefit of being able to share photos with other people quickly. Of course there are privacy concerns, but the convenience is worth the risk. In my case, Flickr serves as a backup tool and i’m more than happy to see my work being used on those sites above…

I upgraded to the iPhone 5 when it was launched here in Ireland a couple of weeks ago. I was switching from an iPhone 4 so this was 2 generations up for me…

Where did i get it?

I’d pre-ordered the iPhone 5 through the carphone warehouse… a flawless experience from ordering to collection on the day. It meant i could waltz in to a shop at noon and pick up what other people were willing to queue for hours for. When i walked in to the shop, the very first thing I heard / seen was a lady being told they’ve no iPhone 5′s in stock and won’t be sure when they’ll get them back in. They didn’t have any iPhone 5′s in stock of course… not at mid-day, unless of course you’d pre-ordered one

First Impressions

When i got the device in my hands the first thing i noticed was the new display. Yeah sure it’s longer but the colours are much sharper. That was a visible improvement. On paper it’s also lighter than the iPhone 4S and much has been made of this but honestly, i struggled to notice a significant difference. There is a noticeable difference but only after you go looking for it and compare the weight of both in your hands multiple times. It does however feel more compact than the iPhone 4S… i certainly noticed the difference in thickness between the iPhone 5 and it’s predecessor. Not a massive difference but enough for me to pick up on instantly.

As i was in the middle of handling it, two other people in the store wanted to see it… i suppose that sums the iPhone 5 up. It’s predecessors have done the hard work, all it has to do is show up and it sells… When you’ve an elderly lady inquiring about a new smartphone on the day it launches, you know you’ve got a special brand.

The Good

There’s a few things i like about the iPhone 5, a few things i don’t like and a few things i’m indifferent to… the best bit for me is the speed. Touch something and it opens instantly. Swipe in any direction and it moves naturally. On my old iPhone 4, swiping was becoming slow and stuttery… i’d scroll down the facebook app with my fingers and half a second later the device might follow my lead. It was the same in the camera app. Taking photos just didn’t seem fast enough. This reason and this reason alone is enough to justify an upgrade. Speed is as important in technology as it’s ever been. I’d comment on 4G / LTE but most of the time i’m lucky if i can pick up a 3G signal here in Ireland. We don’t have 4G anywhere yet.

Another nice thing about the iPhone 5 (although 4S also has it) is the new ‘panorama’ feature in the camera app. I’ve always loved panorama photos and have often spent quite some time in photoshop perfecting them. Over 5 years ago, i published this post called “how to create panoramic images“. 5 years ago, i never could have dreamt my phone would be capable of capturing & creating panoramic images on the fly to a high standard but that’s exactly what you can do today.

The new bundled ‘earpods’ are also an improvement. They fit a bit better but they also sound better. More bass is always welcome.

The final thing i like about the iPhone 5 is the new ‘lightning connector’. It’s got a reversible connection which quite simply saves time and hassle. All connections should be like this…

The Bad

Maps. Apple, what have you done? I’m paraphrasing now but Tim Cook basically admitted Apple Maps was a mistake last week which was a really strange statement for an Apple CEO to make. On the one hand, i’m glad he acknowledges Apple Maps is a step backwards… on the other it doesn’t really help solve the problem. Ideally, Apple would revert to Google Maps instantly or at least give us the option to do so. The world would be a better place. I’d still like to understand why it was approved, who approved it and how somebody thought it was a good idea to replace Google Maps when it appears they could have let the contract with Google run for another year… Anyway, that’s not really a problem with the iPhone 5, more with iOS6.

Indifferent

The longer screen size is something everyone expected and i can see the thinking behind it. It makes sense given the fact the vast majority of apps have vertical scrolling and that’s how we tend to look at websites in a browser too. More screen real estate means less scrolling and more content to absorb.

On the flip side, i can see why for so long Apple haven’t changed the tried and tested dimensions. At times, i do feel my thumb and fingers are strained a little and holding the phone in one hand whilst scrolling and navigating is a little awkward. I still find myself adjusting my hand trying to find a sweet spot but never quite managing it. In my opinion, the iPhone 5 is not comfortable to use in one hand, like it’s designers claim. ‘Tolerable is the best word to describe it. I’m still undecided whether i like it or not… i just can’t figure out whether the extra bit of screen real estate is worth sacrificing the comfortable fit of the older iPhones. This was the main reason why i held off doing a review for a couple of weeks – to see if my opinion would change… but it hasn’t.

Siri was also new to me. I now have Siri on my iPad and iPhone 5. The *only* use i’ve found for Siri so far is to tell it to ‘Activate all my alarms ‘ or ‘Deactivate all my alarms’. It then switches them all on or off. I set about 10 alarms every morning so that saves me a lot of time manually flicking them on and off. Other than that, i’m not a Siri fan nor have i been from the start. The whole concept of voice recognition and processing requests is cool, but it still feels like we’re about 20 years away from being able to rely on it and have it improve our lives… i feel the stuff we have today is almost cringe worthy… much like you’d cringe looking back on an old phone that had WAP on it or cringe looking at clothes people wore 20 years ago. It has that “what were those idiots thinking of” feel to it.

Conclusion

The reality is the iPhone 5 is indeed the best iPhone there has ever been. I either like certain aspects of it or don’t really care about certain aspects of it… there’s nothing bad about it.

I’ve seen several people drool over the iPhone 5′s design and appearance but honestly my opinion on it hasn’t changed now that it’s been in my hands for over a week. To me, it’s a slightly improved version of my old iPhone 4. The only major worthwhile improvement for me is the difference in speed. I’d pay for that. I wouldn’t pay for a lighter, thinner device with a slightly better screen and camera. The iPhone 4 was a work of art and the iPhone 5 is a slightly improved work of art.

It’s definitely worth upgrading from the 4 simply because it seems infinitely faster. I haven’t played with the 4S long enough to get a feel for its responsiveness but i’d imagine it’s probably fast enough to warrant *not* upgrading to the iPhone 5. If you can get the iPhone 5 for free or for cheap (either on bill pay upgrade or by selling your old iPhone) then sure.. why not upgrade… it’s not going to cost you much (if anything)… but if you’re shelling out hundreds of €€€ for the iPhone 5 to replace your iPhone 4S, don’t bother would be my advice. Wait for the 5S next year or wait to see what Samsung might come up with in the meantime…

One big positive about iPhones though is their resale value… i could have traded in my iPhone 4 for for €180 on the spot and judging by sales on ebay / adverts.ie or donedeal.ie, i’d be able to get closer to €300 for it. It seems insane to me that someone would pay €300 for an iPhone 4 or a phone that is 2 years old, but that’s what’s happening.

Here’s my recommendation: If you’re a first time iPhone buyer, buy the 4S and you’ll get a better deal. If you’re an iPhone 4 (or below) owner with an upgrade and hefty discount available, upgrade. If you’re an iPhone 4S user with no upgrade, stay put.

One thing that has always annoyed me is the way mobile phone operators bring out new price plans at a rate of what seems like every 6 months. I’ve noticed there’s a set formula to them…

The rules go something like this:

• Call it something different i.e. if it was ‘Advance Choice 100′, call  the new one ‘Flexi Monster 3000′
• Include more or fewer options than previous the package so a direct comparison cannot be made between new and old packages.
• Make it as difficult as possible for people to compare directly with other operators. i.e. our €40 plan must contain different default options than a competitor’s plan so a direct comparison can’t be made.

Go ahead, check out any phone operator and check out their constantly updating price plans… now try to compare them to their old plans and compare them with competition…. i guarantee you won’t be able to. There’ll be too many variables and this is exactly what prevents people from me about moaning about changes to price plans – i know that i’m getting less value for money but it’s too complex a system to explain to people and the phone operators are smart so even if i do explain things well, there’ll always be an easy defense for the operator – “that’s like comparing apples and oranges… yeah we’ve increased call charges by ‘x’ but our last plan had 15c voicemail, this one is free, plus we’ve reduced the cost of ‘x’ by 2c”… so there’s always an easy escape route for them. It’s nothing new, it’s been like this for as long as i can remember…

iPhone 5

A few days ago, i’d been watching eagerly how all the phone operators were approaching the iPhone 5 launch… anyone familiar with iPhone launches in Ireland will know that it’s about as mysterious as an Apple keynote presentation. No network will release prices until another one releases them first, yet all networks are very quick to get their ‘coming soon’ iPhone 5 pages up to capture your email and phone number.

Today, less than 24 hours before the iPhone is due to launch, three are the only network who have announced any price details. O2 & Vodafone just have a coming soon lead capture page. The end result from a consumer’s perspective is that you can’t compare the different networks and are left with no information until the day of launch. You’re not sure if you can pre-order, not sure if you can upgrade, not sure if you upgrade whether you can keep your old plan etc…

On boards.ie, an o2 rep claimed on their own discussion forum that there would be no pre-ordering system. A few hours later, a pre-order system appeared on o2′s website.

You get the idea… it’s all just one big mess created by management withholding information from the public and o2′s own staff. Yeah sure it may be tactical and nobody may not want to make the first move but a better solution would simply be to state “price plans won’t be released until Friday morning”.

Right now, staff are palming everyone off with the old “we’ll publish information as soon as we get it” which only serves to frustrate people further because there’s no definitive time frame mentioned. It’s like waiting at an airport gate and being told “Your flight will be coming, don’t worry, we’re just not sure when”.

The subject of data plans was talked about on O2′s own official forums and i took the opportunity to share some facts and quotes, most of which i actually blogged about last year. Below is my post and confirmation of my subsequent banning from the O2 forums, presumably because they didn’t like what i had to say.

That was the catalyst for this blog post and made me go out of my way to do even more research on O2 Ireland and highlight what people are getting for their money today -v- what they were getting last year or a few years ago when they were buying older iPhones on older packages.

I think it’s also really important to factor in the changing habits of consumers and the improvements in technology. LTE is a great example. We don’t have it here yet but it can give faster-than-wi-fi speeds which means it’s only going to become quicker and more inviting for users to watch videos or play music on the move, through the cloud etc… any idiot can see that as we rely on technology more and as speeds increase, data usage is obviously going to increase. Average data usage per person will increase… this creates some problems for networks but the main problem is “how do we keep users paying the same amount every month when they’re probably gonna be calling and texting less and using the likes of viber, skype, facebook?”.

A financial report released earlier this year from telefonica gave some indications as to how O2 Ireland were doing… voice traffic was down 7.1% year on year but non-sms data revenue grew by 16.3%. Across Europe, it’s the same story..

“Telefónica’s successful mobile data strategy based on tiered data pricing tariffs and increasing smartphone penetration were the main drivers of top line growth. As a result, in 2011 non-SMS data revenue posted an organic growth of 33.5% year-on-year”

Now keep all that in mind when you view this chart below and let’s join some dots…

This is a chart I created which attempts to do the impossible and compare O2′s bill pay plans since they launched the original iPhone in 2008. It’s not perfect but it never can be due to the fact there’s too many variables in each price plan. So I’ve taken the 4 major components of any price plan – price, texts, minutes & data. In total, i could get my hands on 7 different price plans over the years. All of the data has been taken from screenshots of price plans or reputable news sites / blogs which published price plans at various stages between 2008-2012. I’m also only comparing the €40 plan which has generally been the cheapest over the years.

So starting at the left-most ‘bar’, that represents the first iPhone bill pay package on O2 in 2008. €45, 100 texts, 150 minutes and 1GB Data. Many would argue that’s better value than today’s package (4 years later). The right-most bar is today’s current package… €40, 250 texts, 175 minutes, 350mb data. I realise this can get complicated to read so i’ve also put it in excel format just to make sure we all understand the changes that have been made over the years…

More Minutes

So let’s remind ourselves that according to O2′s own stats, voice traffic was down in 2011 (7.1% in Ireland and 10% across Europe). I’m sure it’s the same in 2012. What did O2 do in 2011? They gave us more minutes. Minutes to other networks increased from 150 minutes to 250 minutes. That doesn’t add up, right? Why give people more of something when you know they’re using less and less of it?

More Texts

The same thing happened with texts. Free texts to other networks went from 100 to 250. It’s unclear whether SMS usage is in decline or not… i could easily provide sources that say it is but i’ll stick to Telefonica / O2 sources. This is from a report released by Telefonica in May 2011…

“On the hot topic about SMS cannibalization, it is true that there is a growing adoption of messaging applications among our customers, but thanks to the right tariff plans we are being able to monetise new usage patterns, and therefore, we are strongly growing our total data revenues”

To me, that suggests that SMS usage is on the decline but O2 are simply trying to delay people from switching to apps like iMessage, Viber, WhatsApp etc… so that could explain the reason for increasing texts from 100 to 250. It’s not because people are using SMS more, it’s simply because O2 don’t want people getting in to the habit of using web based messaging apps, so they offer more free texts in the hope people will use them and stay in the habit of using them.

Less Data

This is the big one. I know it, you know and O2 know it. Back when i got my iPhone 4 in September 2010, I signed up to a package called ‘Advance 150 + 2GB’. At that time, all networks were offering 2GB of data. A couple of months later, that data allowance had decreased from 2GB to 500mb. Not only that, the price of the same package had gone up from €40 to €45. Minutes stayed the same and texts stayed the same. What the hell were O2 thinking??

It remains a mystery… but something in September / October 2010 triggered them in to cutting data significantly. That was when the iPhone 4 was just on the shelves. In November 2010, O2 Ireland’s CFO said this

“We continue to see our customers using more data services, reflecting the growing importance of smartphones and mobile devices to access the internet on the move”.

Data, data, data. The stats say that’s where the growth is, O2 themselves say that’s where the growth is and common sense tells you that’s where the growth is – we’re using smartphones more and more and it’s becoming very difficult to walk in to a shop and buy a phone that isn’t a smartphone.

But since October 2010, O2 have decreased data allowance. Remember, they increased minutes when the facts stated voice traffic was down 7.1%. Suddenly, they decrease data allowance when the same stats say data usage is on the up. It’s the same tactics airlines use…. they’ll put the price of seats up when they know there’s a big event on and demand for seats is going to be high.

Today if you sign up to O2 as a bill pay customer, you’ll pay €55.08 for 2Gb data. You also get 600 mins / 200 texts (or can swap them around to suit). Back when i got my iPhone 4, i paid €40/month for 2GB data. I only got 150 mins / 100 texts but i’ve never actually used more than that. So if you want 2GB data, your only option is to fork out an additional €15 for calls and texts you’re probably not even going to use.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is this…. if you’re a customer who really only wants a large data allowance from a bill pay plan on O2, you’re too late if you want ‘value’. I’d recommend looking elsewhere. Things went downhill  in October 2010 and have continued to go downhill for smartphone users. Less data, higher prices which then pushes you on to a more expensive plan. Three offer unlimited data for €40.66. They’re the best value right now. Meteor offer a 5GB plan for €45.74. Vodafone allow you to build your own package which is more flexible than O2′s system. For example, 1.5GB, 50 texts and 100 mins is €45. O2 is fine if you’re not concerned about data but if you’re a smartphone user, the statistics say you’re using more data and you’re using your phone more often so even if you don’t need much data now, you will in the future and 18-24 months is a hell of a long time to lock yourself in to a contract so choose wisely.

I grew up thinking a vacuum cleaner was called a ‘hoover’ and to ‘hoover’ something meant to suck it up off the ground using a ‘hoover’. I still call it a hoover, most British / Irish people do and everyone knows what I mean. But it’s not a hoover. It’s a vacuum cleaner. A hoover is simply a brand of vacuum cleaner…

Brand today, verb tomorrow

If you’re born today, it’s a similar story when it comes to technology… there are certain brands we use as verbs or that have become so dominant in their area that you kind of forget what the area is called. Let’s run through a few examples… when i think of search, social, video, music and perhaps some other things, i associate those words with a company or a website. I don’t just associate them with a site though, they’re so synonymous with a site that i could almost say ‘social’ and you’d think of the same site. Chances are it’d be Facebook. For search it’s Google, for video it’s YouTube, for music it’s Apple.

Time to change

Time, of course, changes everything and now although i might still call a vacuum cleaner a ‘hoover’, i’d recognise a ‘Dyson’ more than i would any other brand. For mobile phones, 10 years ago i would have said ‘Nokia’… now it’d be different. So because something becomes famous the world over doesn’t mean it’s invincible, let’s get that straight. However, breaking habit and breaking familiarity is not easy. Most people won’t welcome it and quite a few will object or provide fierce opposition. Just ask any government. Try introducing about a 5% tax hike on teachers or nurses or maybe cut student grants… giving people LESS than what they had before is always going to lead to trouble. Nobody wants to live a lifestyle today worse than they were living yesterday.

So if you were a smart government, you may announce cut throat plans like that to let the notion simmer, then introduce much lower cuts on D-Day so the cuts aren’t unexpected… the fact they’re better than what people thought they were going to be will act as a small relief / surprise / comfort. Of course ideally, you don’t want any cuts at all, you want to give people MORE than what they had before. That’s how you impress people…

Apple introduced overnight cuts without warning

We’ve been aware of Apple Maps for quite some time. Developers and journalists had time to play with it, write about it and test it in beta versions of iOS6. In general, nobody really thought it would be a bad thing… the idea of 3D viewing seemed pretty cool and it was expected (taken for granted) that the actual mapping data would be similar if not better than Google Maps which, right now, is the ‘hoover’ of the digital mapping world. Any consumer familiar with Apple, will be familiar with their attention to detail and their relentless pursuit of ‘perfection’ with all of their products. The iPhone 5 is no exception. We were told how they’d done the impossible and made an already small and light phone even smaller and even lighter using cutting edge manufacturing techniques. I joked in an earlier post that we’ve become so used to this ‘smaller, lighter, faster’ headline that it’s no longer news-worthy… it doesn’t impress people because they just take it for granted these days.

What i didn’t expect, however, was Apple Maps to be so poor. Or let me rephrase that… I didn’t expect Apple to release a product that in my mind is an inferior product to the benchmark that is Google Maps. Here’s my local town on Apple Maps and they’ve got the hospital location wrong but who’s cares about the location of hospitals, right? It’s not as if you’re ever going to need the location of hospitals in life or death situations…

I use Google Maps and Streetview quite a bit. I like to be prepared going to places i’ve never been before. On my recent trip to Vegas, i checked out where my hotel was and used Streetview to ‘walk’ along the Las Vegas Strip, helping me to get my bearings and learn how far certain places were from my hotel. I love Streetview for that reason… it offers information no traditional 2D maps can. If i’m approaching a 3 lane roundabout for example in Ireland, the sat nav will just tell me to ‘take the third exit’. Yeah, fat lot of good that is if i’m approaching the roundabout in the left most lane and can’t get over to the right most lane in time. So you can visualise and prepare yourself for those tricky roundabouts and junctions in Streetview – to me that’s it’s most important function.

Apple Maps quite simply doesn’t have that. If has a sort of ‘superman’ version of streetview in that you can use a satellite image to roam around, change your elevation and rotation which could possibly be just as useful if not much better and smarter than Streetview but the problem is Apple Maps doesn’t have enough data. If you’re outside of a major city, you’re screwed if you want streetview-type detail. Furthermore Google Maps provides you with loads of building information which is very useful if you’re on foot. On foot, all buildings look big so if buildings have labels on Maps, you can get your bearings quicker. For example Google Maps might label a church, Apple Maps probably doesn’t. On foot, it’s simple to identify a church so you can get your bearings quicker with Google Maps.

If i were using my iPad or iPhone now to find my hotel in Vegas, first of all, it doesn’t appear in an Apple Maps search if for example i’m currently browsing around Dublin. Not a good start… search isn’t as powerful. If i try to get walking directions from point A to point B, sometimes it can’t process it and a lot of the time it’ll tell me to download a third party app. I love the way Google Maps would give me directions from Ireland to Australia on foot. Even though nobody would ever do it, it still processed the query and came up with the best route and estimated time. There isn’t much you can throw at Google Maps that it can’t find or won’t attempt to answer.

But i shouldn’t have to start justifying why i prefer Google Maps… to me, it’s obvious Google Maps is the better product at the minute. The guys at Apple are smart people. They constantly produce apps, designs and hardware that i could never have imagined. That stuff impresses me. It’s rare i’m disappointed with their stuff and can easily dismiss it as inferior product to a competitors but in this case, that’s exactly what Apple Maps is. That would be fine were it not for the fact that Apple pride themselves on exceedingly high standards.

Apple Maps, for me, is an indication that someone at Apple knowingly approved a below-par product. Or more likely, a whole bunch of people right up to top level approved it at various stages along the way. That’s incredibly worrying as it suggests that a ‘good enough’ attitude is creeping in to or becoming more common inside the Apple. I don’t doubt Apple have the resources and skill to produce a better product than Google Maps, but right now they’re a long way off doing that.

To make matters much worse for them, Google Maps currently don’t have an approved app in the app store meaning there is no way of getting Google Maps back as a native application. Once the Google Maps app does get approved, this won’t be such a big deal but right now the claws are out for Apple and rightly so. It’ll be very interesting to see how Apple Maps develops because i know that right now, once the Google Maps app is released, i’ll be using that exclusively for all of my mapping needs.

It’s easy to say you’re disappointed by something, not so easy to offer up solutions or improvements which requires more thought, effort and risk. iOS6 launched today and having played around with an earlier version, the latest release and having read about all the iPhone 5 has to offer, here are some things i’d like to see in the iPhone 5S & beyond…

Firstly, i’d like to see things like NFC and wireless charging but realise that for various reasons (mainly cost) it may not be practical and introducing those features in to the iPhone would mean rolling them out across all devices or certainly more than just the iPhone itself. So i’ll assume Apple plan on introducing them but haven’t quite figured out when and how best to roll them out. This a list of 11 things i know are achievable / do-able in the immediate future (many of them simple software updates).

1. Fingerprint Verification

The more i think about this, the more i want it. It just makes complete sense. It removes the need to remember passwords, speeds up authentication and is more secure anyway. Want to buy an app? Place your finger on the screen or on the home button and you’re good to go. Same for unlocking the phone. This makes even more sense when it comes to NFC & potentially buying stuff in shops. You can’t have a swipe & buy situation without some kind of ‘are you sure’ message to seek confirmation so a fingerprint scanner would again make this really easy and really secure. We know that Apple are buying a security company that specialise in fingerprint scanning so this stuff isn’t fantasy.

2. Flip to silence

This is a blatent copycat feature from HTC but it’s pretty useful to silence alarms in bed or silence phone calls on an office desk. It means you can silence alerts without needing to look at the screen. You can of course just hit the lock button at the top of the iPhone to do this but the option to silence the phone based on it’s movement would be a nice option to have. Finding that button at the top isn’t always easy if you’re only just awake and your phone is sitting upside down or beside remote controls and other similar-to-touch objects. Flipping it over could also activate the new ‘do not disturb’ feature in iOS 6.

3. Close all open apps with one action

When i first got my iPhone, this was the first ‘problem’ i discovered and i noticed almost immediately. In windows, we’re trained to close a program by clicking on ‘x’. On an iPhone it doesn’t work that way. You’re not encouraged to close apps. Closing apps is a difficult process. This wasn’t really a problem until Apple started introducing multitasking apps i.e. Skype.

If you open skype and don’t close it, it eats up battery life, plus you may leave yourself unknowingly signed in. Typically i never want to just close one app, i want to close all apps. It makes complete sense in my mind to introduce a ‘close all apps’ feature where perhaps all apps could be closed by clicking the home button 3 times or else introduce a ‘close all apps’ icon to the task manager.

4. Double Battery Life

I wouldn’t mind seeing the iPhone increase in weight or dimensions if it meant doubling battery life or something along those lines. I think it would be worth it. Battery life is more important than ever and i don’t think it’s good enough that the iPhone 4, 4s and iPhone 5 all have pretty much the same battery life. Yes the specs have increased dramatically but a phone is no good to anyone if it can’t make it through the day without needing to be charged. We’re using our phones more, we’re only going to continue to use them more so it makes sense to prioritise battery life, even if it does mean getting heavier. I think most people would accept & welcome it. I deliberately don’t use my iPhone as an iPod simply because i feel it would drain my battery. I know i’m not alone.

5. Death to vertical video

This is a really simple change that could be introduced (even i could probably introduce it!) and might seem trivial but it’s genuinely frustrating seeing vertical videos on youtube. By preventing users from recording in vertical format (simply with a message or reminder on screen), Apple would do the world a big favour. It’s mind boggling to think they feel it’s acceptable to allow people to record in portrait format… it’s fine for playback on a phone but nobody records video with the intention of playing it back only on phones.

6. Native Flashlight

There are loads of apps which do this but like every other popular app feature, i think Apple should take this in house and integrate it by default in to the iPhone. Ideally, pressing or holding down a button (perhaps camera buttons) when the phone is locked would enable the flashlight. I know it’s not a proper flashlight, nor is it intended to be used for extended periods of time but they could place a timeout on it. I know i’d use a flashlight app much more if i could access it quickly (with a button press). It’s also an incredibly useful feature; perhaps the most useful feature that was never designed to be a feature at all.

7. Unlimited Apps in Folders

Now that the iPhone 5 is longer than the rest, the fact we’re still restricted to just 12 apps per folder is just silly. Allow unlimited apps per folder (or at least raise the limit to 48 or something significant) and / or introduce folders within folders along with the proposed ‘browse by letter’ feature below…

8. Browse apps by letter

Folders are great for organising apps but if you’re like me, you’ll have loads of folders and still not remember where everything is. The ability to browse apps by alphabet would be a nice touch. At the minute, ‘search’ does a good job of finding apps but you need to know what you’re searching for in order to find it. I’d like a better ‘browse’ option.

9. Multiple User Accounts

Ever have somebody want to play with your iPad or iPhone? Sure you have. The problem with that is you’re basically handing over access to all of your messages, emails, social media conversations & photos. That’s all hugely private stuff and potentially damaging should someone decide to post something without your permission. A simple ‘guest’ account with limited access would help solve that problem and put the owner’s mind at ease.

Years ago, if somebody asked could they make a call, the only thing you were worried about was the bill or your credit. Now, you’ve got a whole lot more to worry about. So much so, you almost have to follow the person around to make sure they are indeed on a call and not up to anything malicious. That or you must *really* trust them.

10. Better Alarm Clock

I use the alarm feature every day. I’m frustrated with it every day. But I know exactly how it *should* work. Sleep is very important to me and i always say the hardest thing i have to do every day is wake up. I always want just one more hour, no matter how much or how little sleep i get. Once i’m awake, i never want to go back to sleep and could easily stay up until the late hours of the morning until i simply burn out. My alarm is usually set every day at the same time in a bid to force myself in to some kind of pattern. I set about 10 alarms all to go off within a few minutes of each other. That amount, combined with snooze presses ensures that i’m *always* awake within about half an hour of that first alarm going off. If Apple asked me to develop a new alarm app, here’s some immediate changes i’d make:

• You should be able to set multiple alarm ‘schedules’ (i.e. 8am Monday-Friday, 10am Saturday-Sunday). Let’s call that alarm schedule ‘Normal Work Week’.
• You should be able to create other alarm schedules with the same parameters but name them whatever you want i.e. ‘Summer Holidays’, ‘Christmas’, ‘Shift Work Week’.
• You should be able to add ‘exceptions’ i.e. bank holidays, sick days etc…
• You should be able to repeat an alarm so that it goes off every ‘x’ minutes until you’ve disabled it (not just cancelled it to stop the noise but disabled it).
• If after ‘x’ snooze presses, alarms are still enabled, the alarm tone should change in a bid to mix it up and change tactic to get you out of bed. It should also be louder & vibrate longer (knowing it would get louder after ‘x’ snooze presses would serve as a threat and probably make me more likely to get up before it reaches max volume).
• On the lock screen, you should see a ‘time left until next alarm’ countdown.

*that’s* what you call an alarm app. Not the trash we have at present. The alarm app is really important and i feel Apple have neglected it and undervalued it. This should not be left to third parties either because it’s too important. It’s just as important as the calendar or reminder apps, both of which Apple have spend a lot of time improving over the years.

11. Change Default Browser

I’ve gotten used to a lot of Apple stuff. Two things I never use are iTunes for the desktop & Safari (on any device). It’s Chrome all the way for me, ever since they launched an iOS app. The problem with that though is that you can’t set Chrome (or anything else) as your default browser on iOS. That means for example that if you browse Facebook or Twitter and want to open a link, you can only do so with Safari. Quite simply, that sucks. It’s the same as Microsoft using Internet Explorer as the default browser – nobody wants it that way and for the benefit of the majority, it makes sense to give users choice and not restrict them to using your inferior products when there’s better stuff out there. Apple do lots of stuff really well but Safari isn’t one of them. The irony of course is Chrome is built on webkit which was developed largely by Apple.

Travel is still a relatively complex and stressful activity. It shouldn’t be… it should be the complete opposite…

The Dream

Booking hotels is relatively simple. Pick dates, search for hotels, choose features, pay… booking flights isn’t as straightforward. It’s a relatively stressful process. Getting to the stage where you get a price is fine… but beyond that, you need specific information that you don’t know off the top of your head. Passport numbers, date of births, full names… then you need to worry about getting it right. Every number, every letter. Get it wrong and the price airlines charge you to correct your mistake could cost more than the flight itself.

Aer Lingus have a new system where you can reserve flights immediately for €5 and then confirm and update with details up to 24 hours. So it gives you time to gather everyone’s information. No need to panic about prices changing or the last few seats selling out. That’s extremely useful in certain circumstances. They also have a book now, pay later service on certain routes. This makes complete sense as if you’re booking flights costing several hundred euro per person, for a large family… most people can’t afford to pay for everything up front but they can afford to pay in installments. The same should apply to flight / hotel combos on the likes of expedia or ebookers but it doesn’t always work that way.

If you’re scheduled on a flight departing in ‘x’ hours, you should be able to get beyond security and board the plane scanning just your passport or perhaps fingerprints. You should also be able to walk right through security, stopping briefly for photo / scan. Like an express checkout lane at a supermarket. You’ll always get people whinging about radiation and violation of privacy but let them queue up the old fashioned way if they wish. Most people prefer convenience over health. Fast food & growing waistlines an excellent example.

Airplanes themselves also need re-thinking. The process of boarding & exiting is painfully slow. If i were an air steward, it would probably make me quit. Seeing people queue up at the gate before the plane even arrives, board first and then sit as close to the front as they can get… taking their time to block up the aisles whilst they struggle to fit bags and jackets and everything but themselves in to the overhead cabins. If the door at the rear is open, it works the same way, only going from back to front. No amount of polite ‘please move down the aisle’ announcements from cabin crew ever work. It’s worse after landing. Could there be a better way of designing a plane whilst not losing seat numbers? That’s the billion dollar question.

Anyway, most of that stuff is fantasy or in the future. Right now, there’s some websites you can use which make travel that little bit easier…

1. Tripadvisor

If you care about where you stay, you’ll read tripadvisor reviews. It doesn’t just give reviews though it’ll suggest things to do and places to see in wherever it is you want to go. Generally, there’ll also be money or time saving tips thrown in to reviews too. It’s so mainstream that many hotels now have someone participate in discussion, respond to criticism and even bad mouth competition if they’re really desperate.

2. Wikipedia

Airports, hotels, cities, attractions… if you want a no nonsense history lesson on something, wikipedia is your friend.

3. Wikitravel

Similar to wikipedia only created & updated by travelers. So it’s more travel-specific information i.e. how to get around, what to see and do and where to eat & sleep. I suppose it’s a cross between wikipedia and tripadvisor.

4. Skyscanner

Booking flights? You just need this site. It’s done to pricing flights what Google has done for search.

5. Expedia

Not necessarily the best for booking flights or hotels but if you’re looking to do both at once, it’s hard to beat Expedia for price as generally they’ll offer a discount if you book both flights & hotels as part of a package. Not to be used without checking other sites, but in my own experience it’s tough to beat them on price.

6. Ebookers

Works the same way as expedia or vice versa. Discounts if you book flights & hotels together. Sometimes the same flights & hotel can work out cheaper than on Expedia, sometimes they don’t. Run searches on both and see for yourself. Then price flights & hotels separately.

7. Google Maps

I honestly don’t know what i’ve had done 20 years ago if i were preparing to go somewhere without Google Maps. Figuring out the distance from airport to hotel and from hotel to attractions, both in walking time and by bus is something we take from granted these days all thanks to Google Maps. It makes the world feel like a smaller place. Before you arrive at some place you’ve never been in before, you probably know exactly what it will look like and how to get from a to b. All thanks to Google Maps and streetview.

8. Tripit

I don’t use it much myself but i know people that swear by it. Email all your travel details to tripit and tripit automatically works it magic to produce a timeline of events for you, highlighting key information. You can then share those details with others through twitter or facebook so i suppose it holds value if you’re visiting friends or family – they’ll know your itinerary in advance.

9. Dropbox

Not an obvious website or service to use for travel but i always dump any travel related stuff in to a dropbox folder i.e. scans of passports, insurance docs, booking confirmations etc… i know it’s there should i need it. Even if i lose everything, i can still log in from anywhere and access all my travel info. That’s never happened and probably never will happen but it’s a form of insurance and is just a good habit to get in to, much like backing up a computer for those ‘just in case’ moments.

10. xe

When converting cash, you always wonder what is a good and bad deal. Are airports ripping you off? Does no commission mean no commission or are they disguising their fees in some other way? XE is a good way of quickly figuring out roughly how much you should be getting -v- how much you’re actually getting. It’s also handy for converting prices in a shop.

There was a lot riding on Wednesday’s iPhone 5 announcement and like many others, I was anticipating something to restore my faith in Apple’s ability to wow people. I don’t think Apple will see a fall in sales any time soon, but I do believe the gap between Apple and everyone else is narrowing…

History Lesson

Apple delayed the launch of the 4S until October 2011 (it was expected by most in June). That delay raised expectations that the 4S wasn’t just going to be an incremental improvement, it would be a complete revamp. When the 4S was launched, it was a bitter disappointment to most people. The only major difference was Siri…

The iPhone 4 was my first iPhone and at the time (summer 2010), didn’t have any real competition. None worth talking about in my mind. It was an easy decision for me. Today, i feel not a whole lot has changed. If you’re an iPhone user now, the overall experience eclipses that of an Android / Samsung or Nokia / Windows. But it doesn’t eclipse them by the same margin it did in 2010. And that’s coming from me, an iPhone owner who should really be slightly biased towards Apple stuff.

Failing to exceed expectations

Firstly, it’s easy to deflect criticism with sales figures & growth stats. That’s the defence Apple fans turn to when faced with criticism. You can pick and choose stats at will to suit whatever picture you’re trying to create but they never explain the full story. Looking beyond sales figures, i’m wondering about Apple’s might as a brand and their ability to produce better products than competition. Have we reached a tipping point? Will the iPhone 5 destroy Apple?

In short, no. I don’t think we have reached a tipping point, but I also think we’re not far away and the iPhone 5 will be the first iPhone that gives the competition a real opportunity to catch up and possibly overtake. The last major innovative product that came from Apple was the iPad (original one). That was a big gamble that paid off handsomely.

The iPhone 4 was also a huge step up from the 3G / 3GS. Since then (summer 2010 on), all we’ve seen have been software improvements, minor upgrades to cameras and generally faster products which is great but not really noteworthy – there’d be something seriously wrong in the IT world if people stopped trying to make things faster and more efficient. It’s something you can (but shouldn’t really) take for granted… Moore’s Law.

On Wednesday, the iPhone 5 was announced. It’s fast, slimmer and longer than previous models. That prompts a “so what” response from me… as someone on twitter put it (sarcastically) “I was just thinking yesterday that I needed an 18% slimmer iPhone”. You see gone are the days when this stuff draws oohs and ahhhs…. we expect stuff to be slimmer and better as time passes. Apple have trained us to expect it. It’s become such a ritual that it’s no longer worth talking about. Would Apple ever say they intend to build a fatter, heavier phone? Of course they’re gonna highlight any potential improvements over an earlier version but for me there was far too much emphasis placed on them, as if Apple expected those improvements alone would be enough to make people upgrade or buy the new iPhone 5. I’d rather have a completely new, useful feature than an 18% lighter phone.

The reality is Apple have failed to add anything significant to the iPhone 5. It’s simply a leaner, slimmer, quicker version of the iPhone 4 which is a two and half year old device.

Early Christmas Present for Network Providers

LTE or 4G capability was also announced in the iPhone 5. No big deal, this was expected. It’ll be commonplace from now on and some manufacturers have already included it. It’s not so much a feature as a technology ‘movement’… like Bluetooth, USB 3.0 etc… had the iPhone 5 NOT included LTE, Apple would’ve had to wait another year watching a whole bunch of competitive devices rolling out that would have an immediate advantage. In Ireland, we’ll probably see LTE by the end of the decade. Outside of urban areas, most places don’t even have 3G coverage yet.

Back in 2010 when i got my iPhone 4, all network providers provided 2GB data in their cheapest pay monthly package. It’s now about 200mb and you pay for add-on packages if you want them. LTE will be hell for customers as it will become much easier / quicker to download & view videos, music or maps on the move. When in Vegas recently I’d have been charged €10.07 PER MEGABYTE had I availed of any web based services so this is where LTE is gonna cause lots of trouble once you roam or go beyond your package limits (which will be much easier to do due to faster connection speeds).

If you’ve plenty of data available though in your package, LTE will spoil you. It’ll probably be faster than what you get at home. Faster is always welcome.

Taller is better

What about the screen size? Did they change anything there? They sure did… they made it taller but not wider which kind of makes sense. It means less scrolling, more viewing. If you’re an app developer or Apple themselves, it also means more room to play around with ads. The ‘retina’ display can’t really get any better – there’s not much point in cramming in more pixels because we won’t notice them. Instead, Apple have focused on colours and they tell us the iPhone 5 has 44% more colour saturation.

Buy me, I’m an iPhone…

Here’s a run down of all improvements:

• longer screen
• LTE
• faster processor
• slimmer
• lighter
• better colour saturation
• new, smaller, reversible connector
• more microphones
• better front facing camera
• slightly better battery life

Everything else is really just software improvements. Does that list ‘wow’ you? For me, it’s underwhelming and it confirms in my mind that Apple are running out of ideas and losing their competitive edge. That or they think that new apps & software upgrades are enough to wow people. This is the 2nd iPhone launch that has failed to live up to expectations. There’s always hype around them but the previous two have been particularly disappointing in my eyes.

They have the market share and i think this iPhone 5 will do just fine, but come the next iteration or two of the iPhone, Apple will have to start pushing the boat out further.

Other devices (out already) include wireless charging & NFC… two technologies you can bank on that will become commonplace in the future. Probably not as we know them today but variations of them. I feel Apple needed to include those types of features (or something else) to bring back the ‘wow’ factor. Other rumored / fantasy features were responsive ‘raised’ buttons and fingerprint scanning to unlock / verify stuff. All of that is a ‘shut up and take my money’ kind of cool that leaves competition scratching their heads and playing catch-up yet again.

We’ll no doubt see it all one day, but i’d have expected some of it on Wednesday from Apple… I don’t think the likes of Samsung or Nokia are going to be scared by the iPhone 5. By sales figures, maybe, but not by the device itself. It lacks the knock out punch a lot of it’s predecessors had. As a consumer, you look around and see similar / better hardware, not too shabby rival operating systems and the decision to stick with Apple is probably now only swayed by two things; familiarity and marketing. It’s hassle to switch to a Samsung / Android or dare i say it Nokia / Windows. It would require something very special from either of those combinations for me to do that. But i believe that ‘something special’ is now within grasp, whereas just a couple of years ago, it wasn’t.

The problem now is that as consumers, we’re spoilt for choice, competitors are getting faster & smarter at producing rival products and it’s very quickly boiling down to a software-only battle. Or app store battle. Having done away with native YouTube and Google Maps apps, it’s clear Apple are trying to freeze Google out which in my opinion could go either way. In Apple’s defense, both apps were pretty rubbish and i’m sure Apple themselves could have done a better job designing them in house. But this could leave Apple in a situation where they’ve got inferior apps just because they wanted to take control over them. They can’t reverse that position so if they get it wrong, it could end up badly (people switching platforms because native Apple apps can’t match native Google apps on Android).

The Mobile Commerce Battle

I would’ve thought Apple would be desperate to replace people’s wallets before anyone else and introduced NFC in a bid to open up a whole new market but they seem content to stick to what they have and take smaller steps forward, testing the waters with what is a sort of ‘virtual’ NFC app in ‘Passbook’. It basically stores & organises receipts & vouchers or anything with a bar code on them from certain partners. So in theory you could have a balance on your McDonalds account, walk in and buy a burger, then scan a bar code located within the Passbook app which would deduct money from your account.

Pretty cool, if merchants will use it but i’m not convinced it’s the future of mobile commerce… it just seems a little ‘stop gap’ for my liking. Really, the same thing could be done by email or in a browser, PassBook is just a neat way of organising bar codes. Having said that, PassBook is easier & cheaper to deploy and update than new NFC hardware plus it buys them a little more time to plan something a bit more ‘revolutionary’ if indeed they’re going to plan it at all…

Predictions

I’ll be upgrading to an iPhone 5 and i predict most iPhone 4 users will (if they’re looking to upgrade at all). The iPhone 5 will probably smash 4S records but Samsung’s next move (less than a year from now) will be very, very interesting. In 12 months time, if Apple launch an iPhone 5S and maintain their minor improvements policy, they may well start to experience a decline in interest & enthusiasm for the iPhone which to me is far more damaging long term than a decline in sales.

From September 1st-9th I was 5,000 miles away from home, on holiday in Las Vegas. Nobody goes that far without stories or photos…

Grand Canyon

We went to the Grand Canyon with the AirBridge Tours. We were picked up at 6am and after a few stops at other hotels were taken to a holding facility / check in place just off the strip. There, we waited the guts of an hour on the bus to get inside because there were so many other buses from the same company waiting to get in. By the time we actually got in to the building, were briefed by a guide, checked in and given our free ‘continental breakfast’ (which consisted of coffee, a small bottle of Sunny D and a single pastry), it was after 7.30am when we were ready to depart, for real this time.

We stopped at Hoover Dam on the way to the Canyon. Once at the back of the Dam where there is a small shop and viewing area and once at the front of the dam which is the more ‘familiar’ view of the dam. We’d ample time to roam around and take photos.

We also stopped in the middle of nowhere at a small shop / place with restrooms. I’m not sure why. It didn’t make any sense as we’d stopped at Hoover Dam less than an hour earlier.

From there we went on to the Canyon only to be told we’d be transferring to another bus.

We switched from a nice, modern bus (above) to what the driver told us he nick names ‘The Garbage Can’. This is because for about 9 miles before you reach the canyon welcome center, you’re travelling on dirt roads. It’s a rough, wobbly ride and the windows and overhead storage units were literally shaking and moving the whole way there. They don’t tell you that of course in the brochures… Once we reached the welcome center, we then checked in and got a helicopter ride down in to the Canyon.

They record the weights of everyone on board and position people accordingly so the chopper doesn’t keel to one side and crash due to uneven weight distribution (I’m reading between the lines there).

Upon take-off, all you can see is a huge rocky landscape, for miles away…

The chopper takes off from within a couple of miles of the canyon so for a while you’re above ‘normal’ ground and then before you know it you go from looking down a few hundred feet to ground to looking down several thousand feet to rocky ground. It’s a surreal experience.

Surrounded by rock, you navigate through more rock and the Colorado river appears…

You then start descending to a landing site where you can get out and take everything in from the ground.

As part of our $300 per person package, we also got a boat trip on the river which was probably the highlight. It’s only then that you can truly take everything in. We accelerated up the river at speed, cut the engine and then let the current take us back downstream, back to where we started.

Red rocks, brown rocks, brown water and the odd flash of grass, bark or cactus. As far as the eye can see in all directions…

Just as we were getting ready to get back on land and return to our helicopter pickup point, dark clouds started to appear. Apparently, the weather can change quickly here and you can see that yourself from the photos. It started to rain and later on, thunder & lightening but luckily we’d got back to base before all that.

That meant the famous skywalk (which we had intended doing) had to be closed however we were stuck for time as it was so we weren’t too disappointed.

There were forks of lightening appearing all over the place, so i thought i’d try my hand at catching one in a photo. I thought i didn’t catch any although i was sure i almost caught one perfectly. Turns out i did catch one although you wouldn’t notice really it… (look to the left of the photo below)

The Canyon (West Rim) has 3 main stops, all serviced by shuttle buses (4 if you include the welcome center). All are a good 5 minute drive from each other. For an attraction of the Grand Canyon’s glamour and status, I fully expected it to be well commercialised but it wasn’t. The shops / facilities / restaurants were disappointingly poor. There was definitely nothing ‘Vegas’ about the Grand Canyon, that’s for sure. The canyon & landscape itself is breathtaking but everything else could do with a major investment / revamp. The skywalk is relatively new so hopefully it’s the first of many new attractions / investments in the place.

We were told be that morning to be on the bus for 4pm so we can depart by 4.15pm. A group of 7 held the bus up and didn’t show up until close to 5pm. Not the tour company’s fault, just idiocy on their client’s behalf. We’d have liked more time to walk around and stop off at all the points but couldn’t because we were pushing to get back for 4pm.

On the way back we switched buses again from the ‘Trash Can’ to ‘Suzie’ after driving the ’9 Miles of Hell’ and didn’t stop once until we got to back to Vegas. Had it been like that on the way out (without the waiting around, breakfast and silly stop in the middle of nowhere), we may have gotten more time at the Canyon itself. So all in all, Hoover Dam and the Grand Canyon were spectacular (especially helicopter & boat trip) but the journey to and from there was only memorable because we’d an entertaining elderly driver who when he heard he had Irish people on board, announced to the bus “Oh, we’ve got the IRA on board, ladies and gentlemen”. There was a mention of leprechauns and luck too so Fáilte Ireland will be glad to hear it wasn’t all terrorist related stereotypes.

The Strip

At first, I thought “Is this it?”. Whilst the hotels are impressive, the strip really just consists of hotels & some shops spread out over a few miles. However, once on the strip and inside Hotels you then begin to realise ‘hotels’ are much more than ‘hotels’.

Vegas redefines the meaning of the word ‘hotel’. Dolphin and wildlife habitats, shark reefs, gondola rides, shopping centers… these places should be called mini towns or cities… we stayed at the Vdara Hotel which is probably the best hotel I’ve ever stayed in. The ‘standard’ rooms would be called ‘premium suites’ in most hotels. Unusually for Vegas, it doesn’t have a casino plus it’s non smoking throughout but that’s the reason why we booked it. It looked & sounded luxurious in reviews and that’s exactly what it was. Having wandered in and out of dozens of hotels during our trip, we wouldn’t have swapped it. I struggle to understand how anyone could give it a poor review. Everyone we dealt with couldn’t have been more helpful.

(yes, that *is* a big bunch of canoes stuck together)…

Connected via a walkway to our Hotel was the equally stunning Bellagio Hotel.

It took about 10 minutes just to walk through it and get out on to The Strip (main street where all the action happens). The place is huge with long, grand corridors and boutique shops around every corner.

It has an indoor garden / conservatory and we usually stopped off at the nearby café for home-made ice cream. Expensive, but everything in it both looks and tastes expensive.

Their extravagant chocolate fountain in the window is enough to draw you over and trap you inside.

Other hotels worth a mention (that I was inside) are The Venetian and Caesars Palace. Loads to do, see & eat. Some other stuff we did:

• Titanic Exhibition in The Luxor
• Dolphin Habitat in the Mirage
• Jersey Boys (show) in the Paris Las Vegas

I’ll let the photos do the talking for the rest of the strip and hotels… ‘random’ would probably be the best word to describe these…

Transport

The strip would be walk-able if it were in Ireland. It’s not walk-able in Vegas. Why? The heat. If you were to walk a couple of miles in 40 degree heat (no wind, low humidity), with glass buildings reflecting sunlight all around you, your feet would either be melted to the pavement or swimming in your own sweat. Then there’s all the pedestrian walkways / bridges which involve walking up and down stairs to bypass about 12 lanes of traffic beneath you. They add to the physical demands of walking around in Las Vegas. Busing or driving is your only real option.

The Duece is a double decker bus that runs up and down the strip and stops at every major hotel. Everyone gets on at the front and you can pay for your ticket at the bus driver’s booth. This means that it’s pretty slow to get moving, particularly at the busier stops.

The SDX is an express bus that runs further up and down the strip  but the stops are further apart. You need to buy your tickets in advance at a ticket machine (located at most stops), plus you can generally get on and off at 3 doors (front, middle & rear). It’s a lot quicker and less hassle to use if you’re prepared to walk (a bit) to where you need to go. Cost for a 24 hour ticket is $7 and you can use that on the Duece, SDX or both if you wish.

Most importantly, they’ve all got nice, cool, air conditioning which is the reason the majority of people use them, or at least i hope it is! Regarding airport transport, McCarron airport is a 5 minute drive from The Strip, almost walk-ably close. In the heat and with luggage though you’ll either get a cab or take a shuttle bus. I wanted to pre-book a shuttle bus online but as of now (Sep 2012) the shuttle bus websites are rubbish. Most are out of date. Terminal 2 doesn’t exist anymore (it’s been replaced by the new terminal 3) yet most companies don’t even mention terminal 3 on their websites (which is where i was landing). The one company that had a decent website are airline limo corp. I went to book something and noticed they ask for credit cards details in non-https format. No thanks. In the end i got tickets from them in the Terminal 3 arrivals hall and yes, they do collect & drop off at terminal 3. Return trip to any strip hotel costs $13.

Some other novelty features include slot machines at departure gates and ‘curbside check-in’ where you can quite literally get a taxi to the airport terminal and get them to drop you off at your airline’s outdoor check-in desk. Going off topic now, but something that’s really annoying these days is the size & location of departure boards in airports. This (scroll down a bit) is the departures board in Gatwick airport once you pass the shops. It’s ridiculously small. I didn’t have my glasses on so couldn’t see it. I put my glasses on and still couldn’t see it. You had to go right over to where those people are in the photo to see it i.e. 3 or 4 feet away from the thing. This results in huge crowding blocking up the main corridor – the only way to get to the departure gates. It’s really terrible design.

Those things should be huge and the first thing you see when you get past security. It’s the most important information you need once you’re past security, not the location of bars and restaurants which you can see dominates the photo below…

Expedia

There are no direct flights to Vegas from Dublin so we went from Dublin to Gatwick with Aer Lingus, stayed a night in London, then flew out the following morning from Gatwick to Vegas with Virgin Atlantic. Everything was booked through expedia (entire package). The only thing i had to book myself was a hotel in London (expedia changed our flight to London from a 9pm flight to 11am one but we didn’t care because we would have had to stay in a hotel anyway or face 10 hours hanging around in an airport).

I was wary of Expedia. What about bags? Checkins? Connections? How does it all work? Can i check-in in advance online? It turns out our flights were booked on the one ticket with Virgin. Virgin and Aer Lingus have an agreement whereby Aer Lingus will honour Virgin’s baggage allowance so that effectively meant we could take a checked in bag for free with Aer Lingus to London. Instantly a saving of €30 per person had i booked that flight separately. Aer Lingus could also have checked the bags straight through to Vegas from Dublin but because we’d almost 24 hours to wait in London, we got them to send them to Gatwick only. We then had to check in as normal at Gatwick.

On the return leg, Virgin checked in our bags from Vegas to Dublin and also printed us boarding cards for our flight from London > Dublin via Aer Lingus.

You’d assume, because we had boarding cards, we could just connect at Gatwick without going through passport control & back through security. Wrong. The guys at the connections place in Gatwick wouldn’t allow us through despite the fact we’d boarding cards printed and also had our bag tags showing bags were checked through to Dublin. Instead we had to queue up at passport control, exit without any bags, then go up to departures and queue up to get through security. We’d about 2 and half hours to kill so weren’t in a mad rush but had there been less time between flights or bigger queues at security, Expedia might have had some questions to answer. The whole ‘procedure’ is unclear and they basically tell you to feck off and check out the rules of the different airlines yourselves.

I’d sent several contact requests to expedia before i booked and none were returned. That’s right, no replies at all to a potential customer willing to spend thousands on a package deal… I had to ring their expensive support number too when THEY changed the flight times on one of our flights. I couldn’t approve or deny that online, they insisted it be done over the phone. I called them in the evening time (within the hours listed in an email they sent me) and was put through to a unit which i’d been told had closed for the day so had to ring back the following day… despite all that nonsense with Expedia, i knew that in reality they had little to no control over everything else so provided they paid everyone for flights & hotels, i wouldn’t need to deal with them again. That was indeed the case. So overall, my experience of Expedia was poor. They’re not clear about exactly what you can and can’t do online i.e. checking in or checking in bags and should provide more than a ‘check with your airline’ footnote. They also don’t tell you what the procedure is for connecting flights, or if indeed they are ‘proper’ connecting flights at all. That said, they were cheaper than everyone else and a lot cheaper than booking things individually. So if you do enough research on what your package involves, you should be ok. I wouldn’t recommend booking ‘blindly’ though. For example you could easily end up with an overnight stay in an airport or having to pay for baggage for one part of a trip.

Trip of a lifetime

It’s great have seen Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon in particular. They’re some of these places that you hear about and see a lot of in movies or books but don’t really appreciate until you’re there studying them with your naked eyes. I’d go back (to both).

I never thought i’d say it but i’m getting a little bored of social media. Average content gets over-shared, automated ‘content’ gets shared whether we like it or not and businesses are becoming predictable in their marketing efforts online… It’s a real problem for the internet as a whole. It’s losing its value as a ‘community’.

We must learn from Digg.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Digg story because it was the first real mainstream ‘community’ in the true sense of the word. Support & loyalty to Digg could only be described as ‘fanatical’. These days you have a similar situation at Reddit. These are social communities that create real value. They’re places where people go out of their way to help other people. Real life meet-ups, secret santas, charity donations… there’s a lot of goodwill floating around and as a user, you can only have tremendous respect for communities like that. You get sucked in to that mentality. It’s somewhat similar to a ‘tidy towns’ atmosphere – everyone does their bit to improve or maintain the community so you’ll think twice about posting up some spam. Post something uninteresting and you and your content will be swiftly be shot down. It’s survival of the fittest. Fittest brains, fittest content.

Digg was eventually infiltrated by power user ‘sell outs’ who sold their influence to advertisers and betrayed the community. Dodgy / average content ended up becoming popular and people couldn’t understand why. It didn’t help when the Digg team tried a few times to dictate what could and couldn’t be posted, which resulted in a few community backlashes. When Digg tinkered with the design and introduced some backwards features, the community lost faith and bailed… most of them, including myself, ended up at Reddit which is now multiple times the size Digg ever was.

If you compare early Digg or today’s Reddit to Myspace / Bebo  / Facebook / Google+ or any other traditional ‘social network’, there’s a big difference in terms of the value being generated. In general, that ‘value’ is original content & discussion based around questions, photos, videos, articles…

That value all comes from users of course but more users doesn’t equal more value. Facebook is a perfect example. They’ve 900m real people on board. If your feed is similar to mine, you’ll probably agree that while the volume of content has increased over time, the same can’t be said for the quality of content. Rather than take a top down approach of Facebook users, i’ll take a bottom up approach and start with my own connections on Facebook.

I get information from:

• Friends
• Relatives
• Businesses
• People i’m subscribed to
• Lists i’m subscribed to

The problem is though, that ‘information’ could be hearing about how someone won a badge in a game or what they liked on youtube. It could be hearing what movie somebody wants to see on rotten tomatoes… is that valuable to me? No, not really. In that bullet point list, the most important content to me is content from the first two – friends & family. These are trusted contacts that i can trust in real life. The other 3 are people or things i vaguely know or have an interest in… most of them don’t know me or care about me. Generally, they post more stuff and that stuff is of less interest to me than stuff friends & relatives post.

The problem with my entire news feed as a whole is that there’s very little original content on it. It’s all automated or semi automated. People no longer post status updates… once in a blue moon they’ll upload photos directly to Facebook. Events / questions are usually designed to promote something rather than create real/genuine value.

The Problem

The problem we face today with social networks is that there is virtually no original content being exchanged (in comparison to content that’s reposted). Why? Because our feeds are full of links to sites we’re not interested in, promotional photos, stuff a distant relative has liked on youtube etc… don’t get me started on games or apps that don’t seemingly do anything other than grow their userbase. I can safely say that whilst my Facebook profile may be busier than ever before, i’m publishing less and less original status updates / photos etc…

I feel Facebook is running in to the exact same problem Digg did. It’s been infiltrated by too many people who’s primary agenda is to get users to buy stuff or sign up for stuff or visit 3rd party websites. Strong social ties have been eroded and it’s become more a louder, more public place.

Logging on to Facebook today is like walking down a street with buskers, chuggers, homeless people and shops surrounding you. Where are my friends? This isn’t a ‘social’ experience. It’s not what i signed up for. It’s become a tacky nightclub where you lose sight of everyone you care about and can’t hear what those you care about are saying because there’s so much noise.

The Solution

1. Get Priorities Straight

Facebooks biggest problem isn’t mobile, as we keep hearing. Facebooks biggest problem is stopping people from walking away from the site. If they fail to do that, they’ll have a much bigger problem than trying to figure out how to monetise mobile. I feel they’re losing focus and falling in to the Digg trap… i feel the value of Facebook to end users is in rapid decline…

Let’s go back to basics… people like people… they like seeing them, hearing about them, talking to them… it’s the reason why most of us signed up years ago. Sure, we might be interested in reading the same article our friends are reading but that’s not ‘news’… i shouldn’t be alerted to that, it should only be there if i want to go looking for it.

2. Ban ads that link to external sites

This is high risk strategy but hey, this is me owning facebook for the purpose of this blog post and calling the shots so we’ll run with it i feel it’s in the community’s best interests. The problem with ads right now is that not many of us click on them. Why? Because we know they’re ads and most ads are boring, repetitive or selling stuff. Plus unlike on Google, they’re less targeted. Google know i’m searching for cars, so there’s a good chance i might like to buy or sell one.

Facebook can only serve me ads based on my interests which at any given time could be wildly inaccurate. For example i might have liked a few web hosting companies in the past and listed by job as IT manager. Maybe now i’m unemployed, broke and no longer own websites so serving me hosting ads doesn’t make any sense. It’s a waste of money for advertisers and it only serves to annoy me because the ads aren’t relevant so any time i do look at them i’m reinforcing my opinion that facebook ads are rubbish and are therefore less likely to even glance at them next time.

• *If* i knew that all ads linked to Facebook pages, i’d know that;
• The page design will be the same and i’ll still be on facebook (good for me, good for facebook)
• Advertisers will be forced to maintain their facebook page (good for the community & good for customers becomes businesses can’t ignore them)
• Facebook could lower the price of ads for advertisers based on their page’s value (more likes, more content, more interaction with community = more value for end user therefore advertiser should pay lower price – it is in effect rewarding advertisers for adding value to the facebook community)

3. Threaded Comments & Comment Sorting
This is a pet hate of mine. Why bother having likes on comments if you can’t sort the comments by the number of likes? And why bother having comments if they’re not threaded? Introduce these two simple features and you instantly add more value to end users. Top comments get rewarded with more exposure, spam comments don’t get a look in. By threading comments it’s also easier to figure out who replied to who and what comments are related to the original content and what are related to another comment. YouTube are another social giant who get comments all wrong imo.

On Facebook i know that if i comment on a popular article, the value of my comment is almost zero because nobody will read it. It will get lost in among the hundreds of other comments. It’s slightly different on youtube because you can sort by ‘newest’ and the top rated comments stay fixed in position, that acts as a reward for commenting although youtube don’t allow you to view all comment easily and rank them all by top rated, which is what they should do. Does it take things off topic? Yes. That’s not a bad thing… it’s a natural thing. If somebody leaves a stupid comment or a controversial comment, that’s much more likely to prompt me to respond. But on Facebook you can’t dislike comments nor can you respond to comments (maintaining the context) so i just won’t bother…

4. Dislike Button
Give the people what they want. Allow them to punish poor content. Allow them to dislike businesses (disliking users would be a step too far, although i’d like to see that too). Take Ryanair. Do you like or dislike them? Does that opinion change from time to time? Sure it does. You should be able to like & dislike them and monitor their popularity over time… This is more ‘real’ than the current cotton wool rating system that protects companies that at times don’t deserve to be protected. If more people dislike a company than like it, let the records know that.

This bold move would cause instant mayhem and inject a huge amount of energy in to the community. It would rattle advertisers, businesses and send a message out that nobody messes with the community. If they do, they’ll face a backlash. That empowers users. Rather than a simple dislike button, you should only be able to dislike something provided you give a reason, simply to stop abuse of the system and to stop competitors buying 50,000 dislikes for their rival