Stephen Chinnadorai

I’m currently registered on over 25 social networks - only 5 of which I use on a regular basis: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Digg and Last.fm. New social networking websites are being created right now, to compete with the expansive number of other social networking websites currently in the cloud.

I agree with Brad Fitz and his “social graph” theory.

“The goal is not to build a social networking site or anything that’s fun for the end-user. Rather, the goal is to build the guts that allow a thousand new social applications to bloom, like Dopplr, etc. Do one thing and do it well. It will be most powerful to instead merge little isolated social graphs into one big social graph and spread it far and wide, for all to enjoy.”

Creating another Facebook is not the right thing to do - there is not a social network for everything, and there never will be. Facebook is extremely close to being that with its support for third-party applications - but still doesn’t include everything in one.

However, I have noticed that there are several new social networks appearing that have the same purpose as others. I don’t believe this is the way forward. If Twitter already exists, why make another one? There are enough photo and video sharing websites out there - you can’t beat Flickr or YouTube by just re-branding a clone of them; you have to think different; do something new and innovative.

I’m happy for there to be many social networks out there, all with a different single purpose: Twitter for status updates, Flickr for photos, Dopplr for travel, Vimeo for videos. But creating a clone of something that already exists and does the job well is not the way forward, and these sites will fail.

As an avid iPod and Mac user, the most obvious choice for buying music would be the iTunes Store - now the world’s most popular music destination online. However, I recently gave up with the iTunes Store; there are plenty of other alternatives out there offering more reasonable prices and higher bitrate tracks - with no DRM.

7Digital is the site I’m now trying. Its library is almost as comprehensive as iTunes’, but the quality of tracks is much better. I can get 320kbps DRM-free MP3s from 7Digital, for the same price as a 128kbps DRM AAC track from Apple’s iTunes Store.

There are really no advantages to buying from iTunes - the only minor one I can think of is that it’s all integrated into one piece of software. Apple don’t even let you download the song more than once - unless you contact them and plead for them to allow you to download it again. With 7Digital, and many other music stores, you can simply visit your downloads “locker” and download it again - as many times as you want - forever. 

For me, PayPal is an extremely important feature. I don’t have a credit card, and therefore rely on PayPal for all my payments. iTunes in the UK does not support PayPal, 7Digital does.

The iTunes Store has improved since it startred. Apple now offer DRM-free AAC tracks at 256kbps - but their selection is limited, and the price is 10p extra. Obviously, iTunes is still the only place to buy music videos and TV shows that I can think of. 

The message of this blog post is: You don’t have to stick with iTunes. There are plenty of other alternatives out there - some better, some worse. I highly recommend 7Digital for those in the UK and Europe.

Of course, you don’t have to buy music; if you feel like being a pirate, head over to the dozens of BitTorrent trackers or warez sites.

[I apologize for the horribly rendered photoshop job above - it's all I could throw together in 30 seconds. Of course I'm not part of those 60% of Photoshop users who pirated it *cough*. As you can see, with my skills, it's not worth the $6oo price tag - that's my excuse.]

If you’ve been following the Apple blogs and rumor websites recently, you will have noticed a sudden surge in rumors about product launches in June. It all started with MacBook and MacBook Pro revision rumors expected to launch at the WWDC, and lead to 3G iPhone rumors in June, too. Here’s a list of everything so far:

The Mac Mini is not dead yet - it’s going to live on with more processor upgrades, and possibly a smaller case redesign.

[AppleInsider], [MacRumors], [MacScoop]

Penryn iMacs are expected to be launched, after the success of the newly-launched Penryn MacBook Pros - don’t expect a redesign, though.

[MacRumors], [9to5Mac]

MacBooks and MacBook Pros have both been recently updated, but only in terms of internal specifications -the design still remains the same. Many are expecting a complete redesign of the MacBook and MacBook Pro in June, most likely launched at the WWDC.

[MacRumors 1, 2], [AppleInsider], [Ars Technica]

Last but not least is the iPhone. Walt Mossberg recently caused a lot of speculation when, during a conversation about IPTV & Broadband, he said that “the 3G iPhone is coming in 60 days“. Well, now he’s saying quite the opposite. However, analysts still predict a 3G iPhone worldwide for June.

Out of all the rumors mentioned above, this is the most likely one - AT&T’s CEO even said it himself.

[MacRumors], [Gizmodo], [TimesOnline], [Stuff.tv]

What do you think: Will any of these products come out in June, or will Apple wait until later this year?

Flickr yesterday released video compatibility to their hugely popular photo-sharing website. Flickr has caused a lot of controversy in the blogosphere due to video - some think it’s a great idea - some think Flickr was made for photos, and always will be.

Flickr video is different to most other video-sharing websites; it limits you to 90 seconds of video on 150MBs. So obviously Flickr isn’t going after the same type of content found on YouTube - the largest video website in the world, with limits ranging from 10 minutes to unlimited (with a director account). There is also no HD video support in Flickr’s video - in fact most of the video I’ve seen looks worse quality than YouTube.

Flickr has its reasons for restricting you to 90 seconds of video. It’s not looking for music videos, or video shows - Flickr is looking for short, simple videos that will praise your photos. For example, a photoset of a vacation could include some short video clips to give the viewer more explanation.

Right now, Flickr users around the world are playing around with video. I don’t think many people have got the concept yet, and neither have I entirely. But I figure in less than a few weeks people will know exactly what to use Flickr’s new video feature for. Flickr with video is certainly not just another video-sharing site - it’s the same old Flickr community as we knew it; with the addition of short, 90-second video clips to compliment your photos.

Whatever it is you do, you need to backup your data. Until recently, there was no easy way to do this on the Mac - without having to buy third party software that backed up on a schedule. Luckily, Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) has something called Time Machine built-in. Time Machine backs up everything on your hard drive hourly, so that you can “go back in time” and recover files that you may have mistakenly deleted. This works great, but takes up a lot of space. I have Time Machine backing up my MacBook to a Western Digital My Book Studio Edition - a 500GB FireWire drive.

For Windows users, Vista offers some backup facilities, but not anywhere near as intricate as the Mac’s. However, Windows users do have a vast choice of third party applications for backups.

But most of us only backup internally, to a drive connected locally to your computer. What if your house were to burn down? Your data would go with it. Fortunately, there are some solutions out there. Online backups are becoming better all the time . Mozy is supposedly a great service for doing just that, as is a free alternative, DropBox.

But online backups have one major downside for most of us: Speed. Even with today’s fastest broadband, upload speeds vary from 256kbps to 1mbps. Until fiber optic broadband with the same up-speed as down arrives, online backups aren’t going to be efficient for files over 100mb.

I haven’t really answered the question, “What is the best backup method”. There simply isn’t one right now. I would back up as much as possible, where possible - but keep it safe.

We all saw this coming - iTunes is now the top music retailer in the U.S. This means iTunes digital downloads are now surpassing physicals ones from the ex-number one Wal-mart. Whilst only 29.1 percent of all music sold is through downloads, this is still a massive achievement - expect this number to steadily increase over the years.

Via [Appletell]

When I first read this article, I thought it was an April fool’s joke - apparently not. Over sixteen major manufacturers are prototyping mini LCD projectors that can be hooked up to an iPod or mobile phone, and display content on most flat surfaces. This means not only will you have to put up with phone calls on an airplane, you’ll have the pleasure of viewing other people’s mini-projector screens.

These miniature projectors will be powerful enough to scale up to a screen of 50 or 60 inches, but using the latest LED technology to use minimal battery. They are to cost around $350 - but are expected to drop in price to $250.

I think it would be even better to see these mini-projectors embedded into devices like iPods and mobile phones, so that there’s no need to carry an extra device that just plugs into another. I can’t see this taking off though. The quality of most people’s mobile content is at such a low resolution that it would be blurred on a 50-inch screen. I think it would make much more sense just to have LCD screens on planes that you can plug your iPod into. I think this is nothing more than another useless gadget.

Read [TelecomTV]