Sharing geo-based data as part of people’s usual social media is becoming more popular. Location based services like Gowalla and Foursquare have encouraged people to be more open with their whereabouts, allowing them to publish to Twitter and Facebook. Add the improved map feature on Flickr and the iPhone into the mix and we’re one step closer to seamless, timely, location-based information and images to share with our friends and family on the most popular (and/or appropriate) social media sites.

I don’t like doing major iPhone updates as there hasn’t been an update yet where I’ve not heard stories of iPhones crashing and generally being worse than before. Fortunately, I’ve managed to avoid any problems and get to experience the new features as though I’d opened a brand new iPhone!

I’ll be honest, the update last year wasn’t all that great in my opinion, the features I found useful day-to-day could have probably been counted on one hand. Since hearing about the new features of iOS4 I’ve been waiting in anticipation to play with the new features and already putting together a small list of things I love about it…

Folders

Folders is an easy one to start with as they’re pretty self explanatory. Basically, iOS4 allows you to group your apps together making your home screen less cluttered and more organised. The automatic naming of folders (using the apps you’re grouping to find their common category eg. Games, Social etc) makes the process quick and easy to do.

5x Optical Zoom

My experience in the past with Digital Zoom on any kind of camera has been less than fun. The results were often poor and pixelated making it about as useful at capturing an image as a Rhino with a paintbrush.

With it’s reputation already tarnished, I wasn’t expecting much when I took a few test shots and for a moment I was again left disappointed. I opened the camera app and pointed it to a random subject and zoomed in. The onscreen representation was pixelated and poor quality at which I huffed with disgust, then I went into my photo album to check the end result. The image was good quality and relatively sharp for a digitally zoomed image. My opinion of digital zoom was swiftly changed, it can be done!

Photos and Places

The photo album on iPhone has gone pretty much untouched (as far as I can tell) for the last few years so I was pleasantly surprised to see that Apple started to use geo-tagging in a way that’s useful to iPhone users. When browsing your photo album there is a new icon named “Places”, touching this brings to you a map view. Geo-tagged data is retrieved from the photos stored on the iPhone and applied to map based on where they were taken. I think it’s a different but useful way to view photos. With this feature I can quickly find photos I took at my wedding venue,  a friend’s wedding or on a recent trip to London.

Personally, I think Places is the best improvement I’ve discovered so far. It gives additional functionality and an alternative way view photos while encouraging iPhone users (whether they know directly or not) to apply more useful data into their photos, which in the fast world of the Web could lead to new and interesting applications for viewing photos.

We’ve been around a while, in fact we’ve been around pretty much since the explosion of the Internet in the late 90’s and during that time we’ve seen our fair share of snake oil come and go. There is one subject that stirs up more than it’s fair share of opinions and that’s SEO…or Search Engine Optimization if you’ve lived under rock for the last 10 years.

Never been a fan really, pretty much decided early on that if you follow the Search Engines’ (read: Google) guidelines and build sites using best practice then you’ll work out nice and dandy. But there does seem to be a huge following and the most diverse advice in this field, so much so that almost every SEO ’specialist’ will give you different and conflicting advice (for a price, mind).

I do accept that there are some tricks and neat stunts that, to a certain extent, can pull the wool over the engines’ eyes but not usually for long and not usually with any kind of long-term gain. So, making me chuckle this week, then, is SEOMoz telling us all that there is a science to how well you rank. Really? Fantastic!

Except, if you elect to use science to ‘prove’ something then you had better get the science right. SEOMoz may have misunderstood statistics and, worse still, cloaked this bad science in sciencey-sounding words like Mean Spearman Correlation. This has generated a flurry of arguments discussing the various merits of using different methodologies to analyses data. Worth the read, but only if you’re secretly hiding a love of stats.

Some nice rebuts too from Ted Dziuba and Dr E. Garcia – both who warn about paying attention to this kind of science. Alternatively, you can read how Google suggest you go about working with search engines (PDF).

We’ll let you know the outcome!

Next week is vinyl week, followed by old photo week. Keep an eye out for some of the fun! Any suggestions for the following weeks?

Sometimes whilst down the pub, I get asked what I do. Depending who I’m talking to and in what context, it’s sometimes easier – and a bit of fun – to use a pseudonym.

So… Hi, I’m Andy and I design sports biscuits. Generally, people love it, “really?!!”, I’ve even been asked “can you design one with me on please?”

The iPlayer is as popular as ever, enjoying its best month to date in April 2010, with 123m requests for TV and radio programmes.

The homepage now has ’sliding drawers’ which open to reveal more content in each of the categories; featured, most popular, friends, and ‘for you’.

Other changes include a complete separation of TV and radio content to make it clearer for users, while you can also flick easily between channels while watching live TV.

The best improvements for me are the personalisation features. I use iPlayer regularly and it should know what I like based on my viewing habits, so making use of this data to produce recommendations would have been a welcome step.

Instead of simply learning from previous viewing habits though, it seems that the new iPlayer relies on users adding programmes into their ‘favourites’ folder, and then lines these up in a playlist for you.

The introduction of social network integration is another welcome step; while viewing any programmes, you can click to recommend it on iPlayer, as well as sharing it on Twitter or Facebook via the recommend button:

The addition of user recommendations should also make content discovery much easier, as you can now read other users’ reviews of programmes, and see the most recommended in chart form.

Other developments to come include the addition of links to programmes from ITV Player, 4OD, Clic, Demand Five and SeeSaw, meaning that the iPlayer can direct users to these other websites, while also making the iPlayer a more attractive destination.

Key new features

Simple

* Cleaner user experience, with three discovery areas:

–Sliding drawers: Featured, For you, Most popular, Friends

–TV Channels: TV listings page, showing what’s on now

–Categories: browse by genre and sub-genre

* Separate TV & Radio

–No longer grouped together, easier to browse

–Radio console

–Pop-up console runs while you browse

* Channel-hop whilst watching live

–Quick links in viewing window, one-click to flip between channels

* BBC iPlayer Desktop

–Download favourites in advance to save time

–Easier to watch favourite programmes offline

* Improved viewing experience

–Fewer buttons

–Larger screen

–Higher quality video

Personal

* Favourites

–Tell BBC iPlayer what you like, and it will line programmes up in a convenient playlist

–New programmes, expiring programmes and unwatched programmes are flagged so it’s easier to keep track

* Improved recommendations based on what you watch and listen to

–Stored in local cookies, or via BBC iD

–Families can log in through separate IDs: individual experiences through the same machine

–Improved programme alerts delivered via email, so you don’t miss a thing

* Roam with BBC iD

–Log in to store preferences, so you pick up where you left off on another computer

* Customisable EPG

–List your favourite channels and stations

Connected

* Connect with Facebook

–Post content directly to your wall to recommend and share with friends

* Sync with Twitter

–Auto-tweet to recommend and pass links to friends

* Live chat with friends using Windows Live Messenger

–Log in to Windows Live Messenger through BBC iPlayer

–Forward links to others online: watch on-demand at the same time

–Comment live on programmes as they air

European law is now going to be tested to, in effect, allow people to opt-out forever from being watched on web-sites and with the introductions of Google’s new secure search engine (why exactly did it take them so long to introduce it?) are we seeing the beginning of the end for Google’s free web analytics (and more importantly, the hundreds of other uninspiring client-side, me-too, analytics applications that are peddled by myopic organisations). Clearly the Register think so.

It is interesting to see Google effectively “switch sides” on this and move closer to loving it’s users and somewhat leaving it’s corporate customers out in the cold. Yes, they will say that Google Analytics is free and provided “as is” but so many organisations have (maybe rashly) decided to use it as the standard reporting platform. What are they going to do now, I wonder? The ball is gaining some momentum with a company providing a browser plug-in to disable GA from your session. How long before that is a standard part of the browser and requires opt-in to activate it?

The recent furore over Google’s grabbing of personal data during the StreetView programme, Facebook’s alleged abuse of personal information and now the forcing of explicit opt-in for any cookie will change the game. Cookies are not evil, many organisations put them to really good and productive effect so the challenge for organisations now is to show really good reasons why they should track visitors and do so in an open transparent way and really add value.

Oh, and stop using random free services that are not well understood and have huge privacy issues – it’s just being lazy and treating your customer rather shoddily.

The reason? because energy and imagination can be engaged rather than a big budget.

Typically, guerrilla campaigns are unexpected and unconventional, quick to deploy, and potential recruits are targeted in unexpected places.

Guerrilla Flyposting

The objective of a guerrilla ‘Flyposter’ campaign is to create an engaging and thought-provoking instant desire to generate a phone call from the viewer, and, potentially turn the message viral.

Guerrilla ‘Flyposting’ involves unusual & mildly illegal tactics such as attaching posters to telegraph poles, windows & walls in public places.

Strategically placed, where potential candidates may pass, with a strong call to action, a name & contact number.

This method of recruiting is intended to get maximum results from minimal resources.

Any lurking gorillas out there?

We need a hand building and delivering our unique VITES back-end. You’ll probably have a good understanding of JavaScript/AJAX technology, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Ruby and comfortable with Linux.

£25-30k     Call Andy: 07590 293666

More info:

The downside of this is that Apple is now coming under increasing scrutiny from the various regulatory bodies around the world regarding it’s anti-competition strategy.

We require a back-end web programmer : £25-30k

Call Andy: 07590 293666

We are a small team of creative, fun-loving, ethical, sharing, bright, honest and forward-thinking people. We are also really rather busy helping our clients deal with some of the thornier problems they face on the Internet so we really need a hand or two to help us out.

The right people will want to help us to help our clients and enjoy the journey in the process so we’d love to hear from you if you think you can help.

Based in the historical wool-town of Halifax on top of the beautiful Yorkshire Pennines, we call the award-winning Dean Clough Mills our home, a stunning converted 18th Century carpet mill with art galleries, restaurants and a theatre on-site.

What We Need

We need a hand building and delivering our unique VITES back-end. You’ll probably have a good understanding of JavaScript/AJAX technology, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Ruby and comfortable with Linux. Based in our Dean Clough offices for a couple of days a week our ideal candidate will excel at home working.

You’re probably working at a software house that is highly web-enabled or a top web development agency and have a good understanding of the web, best practices and where it’s going. Self motivated, collaborative, comfortable with client contact, flexible and with an attention to detail you’ll find comfort in structure and the opportunity to work in small project-based teams delivering multi-million pound web assets.

We’re a lovely, social, bunch that appreciate work/life balance. We offer around 40 days annual holiday, flexible working, telecommuting and a great opportunity to grow in the future. When can you start?

Background

Founded in 1997 by Martin Dower and Jerry Pank, Connected is a private partnership operating zero-debt, a cash-flow positive financial model with no borrowings and no outside investors. Visit the team page to see who you might be calling colleagues.