iphone Archives - Philip Sheldrake

9 April 2015 / 0 Comments

Different kinds of privacy, empowerment and autonomy – centralized versus decentralized

qs-watch [Originally posted to the hi:project blog.]

In an article in the Guardian last week, Professor Alex 'Sandy' Pentland mooted the potential for Google to cleave in two, with one part dedicated to providing a regulated bank-like service for data. Pentland directs the MIT Human Dynamics Lab and co-leads both the Big Data and the Personal Data and Privacy initiatives of the World Economic Forum, and I'm surprised how often his name crops up in my hi:project related research, yet I find it difficult to reconcile his observation here with his fluency in the power of decentralized networks:

Social physics strongly suggest that the [Adam Smith’s] invisible hand is more due to trust, cooperation and robustness properties of the person-to-person network of exchanges than it is due to any magic in the workings of the market. If we want to have a fair, stable society, we need to look to the network of exchanges between people, and not to market competition.

Pentland continues under the heading: How can we move from a market-centric to a human-centric society? 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?

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

18 September 2007 / 1 Comment

The new mobile revenue split

So O2 has won the exclusive right to iPhone in the UK; but what a price! With the battle heating up between operators, device manufacturers and content providers to divide the spoils of user revenue, this seems to be a massive concession for a UK operator.

[gratuitous picture of an iPhone... in case you can't recall how attractive it is]

iPhone

Capitulating 40% of iPhone associated revenues can't make sense to anyone vaguely familiar with thin operator margins. Vodafone definitely wasn't having any of it. But maybe this is just a big step along the ultimately inevitable path to complete commoditisation of mobile operations. The time has come for the rise of the device and equally the content now reachable following the relatively recent collapse of the walled gardens. This shift in the landscape also represents exciting opportunities to the marketing communicator looking to extend brand presence into consumers' mobile life.