android Archives - Philip Sheldrake

6 January 2016 / 0 Comments

Why can’t Deezer answer simple questions about privacy?

Deezer website screenshot

I've just bought an Onkyo TX-8150 network receiver. Lovely. Especially because it can drive two pairs of speakers, eats so-called hi-res music (24/192 with a 32/384 Hi-Grade DAC), and comes ready to play nice with the likes of Spotify, Airplay and Deezer.

Spotify tarnished its reputation somewhat with its privacy cock-up last year, and doesn't yet entertain hi-res. Apple's Airplay looks neat but doesn't do hi-res either, and totally ignores Android. Hmm. So let's check out Deezer I thought to myself. A rare European Unicorn. And while it describes lossless CD quality as hi-res when that's not really what the term means, I'm not sure my 'listening environment' is that sensitive! Lossless CD quality will do me. Read more

14 April 2011 / 0 Comments

Taptu for iPad – with gorgeous illustration

With a spike in visitors to my blog exceeding 1000% of normal activity, the most popular post of all time on this blog is Content – an illustrated history. That obviously excludes the much greater exposure the illustration by Nic Hinton (@karoshikula) and me will have garnered when Mashable and Wired ran with it, and I've since heard that the illustration is being used to teach university students and school kids, and for the purposes of social media training in organisations.

I mentioned in the updates to that post inserted during the ensuing days that Taptu CEO Mitch Lazar had become smitten with the illustration style and had expressed an interest in applying the style at Taptu in future. Well now they've done just that.

Today, the next generation of the popular and free social news reader comes out for iPhone and iPad (it's already rocking and rolling on Android). Taptu calls it the social news DJ – allowing you to mix your favourite news streams. I've posted some of the illustrations used in the app here, but there's nothing quite like checking the app out for yourself and seeing all of them in all their glory... particularly on the larger screen of the iPad. I've also posted a video of the new iPad version in action.

I consider an app like Taptu to be an indispensable tool in the PR professional's armoury. Do you have a favourite social news reader?

16 July 2010 / 0 Comments

TweetDeck’s Iain Dodsworth at CIPR Social Summer

Last night the CIPR Social Summer series hosted a session on all things TweetDeck. If you haven't tried TweetDeck, try it now. It's free!

According to Twitstat.com today, after simply tweeting at twitter.com, Tweetdeck is the most popular Twitter client globally. Here's the stats I just grabbed from Twitstat:

Rank		Client	% of users	Tweets/user
1	(1)	web	16.80 %	2.90
2	(2)	TweetDeck	9.50 %	3.17
3	(6)	twitterfeed	5.90 %	5.58
4	(3)	foursquare	5.85 %	1.49
5	(4)	Twitter for iPhone	5.85 %	2.38
6	(5)	HootSuite	5.39 %	2.68
7	(8)	Echofon	3.22 %	3.25
8	(25)	API	2.76 %	6.66
9	(7)	Tweetie for Mac	2.55 %	2.38
10	(9)	Seesmic	2.16 %	3.02

But TweetDeck is more than a nice way to shepherd incoming tweets and craft your own. TweetDeck is rapidly becoming the most powerful way to manage your social networking without ever having to log onto each and every social network yourself. It aggregates Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Buzz and Foursquare, and it even lets you watch YouTube videos brought to your attention by your social network in situ.

So I was particularly delighted when TweetDeck MD Iain Dodsworth (@iaindodsworth) accepted our invitation to join us for one of our sessions to share his insights and answer our questions. Read more

11 June 2010 / 0 Comments

CIPR Social Summer on mobile marketing

I'm not a fan of the iPhone, or iPad come to that (more later). But it wasn't until yesterday evening at the CIPR that I learned quite how manic some marketers have become. The following conversation won't be verbatim as I wasn't party to it, but it's a good representation of the story as I heard it last night from those who are having these conversations too regularly:

_________

Marketer: We need an iPhone app?

Mobile marketing expert: Righteo. Why's that?

Marketer: Because they're really cool and cool's where it's at for our target demographic.

Mobile marketing expert: Cool, yes, and who's the target?

Marketer: Teenagers.

Mobile marketing expert: Do you know that iPhone penetration is just 4% in the UK, and that's only 0.5% amongst UK teenagers?

Marketer: Oh :-(

_________

The bring all sorts of people together under one roof for a beer and a chat about specific interesting issues. On conducting a quick straw poll of the super collection of people last night, we had roughly an equal split of Blackberrys, iPhones, Android (mostly HTC) and 'other', making for an unrepresentatively high proportion of smartphones. Read more