After a year out of work (bar three months doing what amounted to a project) I will, on Monday re-enter the rat race with Fluid Creativity as an SEO Technician.

It’s fair to say I’m both excited and nervous in equal measure. I’m not nervous about my ability to do the job. The nerves come from getting back into that working routine and how it will affect my life and my relationship. The nerves are unfounded, of course, but still…they exist!

I’m excited simply because I want to get started again and LEARN. I’m more than happy to do so and I won’t be sitting still. This is a role I want to build from and on, hopefully with Fluid.

I’ll be trying my hardest to do my best both for the company and our clients and I want to impress. It’s refreshing to start from the bottom again and get a proper grounding in things.

If you’re interested in who Fluid are and what they do (and especially if you want them to help you out!), check out their various presences here:

@fluidcreativity

Fluid Creativity on Facebook

Fluid Creativity on Vimeo

Fluid Creativity on flickr

Fluid Creativity on LinkedIn

Fluid Creativity Blog

I’ll still be keeping up my own project at Sporting Fare (@sportingfare; Sporting Fare on Facebook) so please do pay regular visits!

Google are, apparently, developing a social networking platform to rival Facebook by, erm, copying Facebook.

Clearly Google Buzz hasn’t worked, Google Wave died on its arse and so now we’ll get Google Me. But how is copying Facebook going to CHALLENGE Facebook?

Ok, Google are running scared of FB at the moment and clearly want to make some impression on its 500 million+ users but this can’t be the right way?! There’s no sense in it.

They could simplify FBs still ridiculously complicated privacy settings, they could import some of their other functions – risking complicating the format in doing so – and they will, no doubt, make it a much prettier place to be. But if it’s still going to be an FB clone I’m really not seeing the logic.

Still…I WILL check it out, I WILL use it and IF it turns out to be another Google flop I WILL abandon it just as quickly as I did Buzz and Wave.

Make or break time for Google on the social media front, either way.

So four students from New York City think they can build a rival social media platform to Facebook and have received the money to do it. I am intrigued.

My feelings about Facebook change constantly. Sometimes I love it. Sometimes I hate it. And sometimes I wonder what the point of it is. But I continue to use it, both personally and as a way of promoting my own website with a Fan Page.

I sometimes feel that Facebook gives too much, shares too much, but the beauty of it is, of course, that you only share what you want to share. It just doesn’t feel like that sometimes. 500 million users can’t be wrong though, right?

Back to these students and Diaspora though. They bill it as “The privacy-aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network”. There’s little else as yet to give us a clue as to what that actually means. Sure, there’s a blog that gives a few hints, but in the main the whole thing is a mystery.

Obviously the guys are picking up on Facebook’s recent privacy problems, promising to give complete control of data to the user. But in all fairness, Facebook do try that – just not very well, not very user-friendly and they probably lay too much open to search engines and the like.

So Diaspora presumably won’t do that. Which is a good thing. But what will it do?! I want to know. And I want to know NOW, dammit! The guys aren’t giving much away as yet and will be spending the summer writing the platform now they’ve got about £160,000 of funding, plus offers of support from all over the place.

Visit joindiaspora.com for an explanation and, unless you are technically gifted, you are left feeling more confused than before you arrived. It’s software. You host your information wherever you like. You’re a seed. I have no idea what they are talking about to be honest. Nevertheless, as I said, I am intrigued.

I have had run-ins with similar things before that never went anywhere. A friend tried (and may still be trying for all I know) to build his own social networking site. Google Wave was supposed to bring a number of technologies into one but it hasn’t done a damn thing, as I ranted about a few weeks back.

I can only hope Diaspora proves more successful.

I don’t for one minute think they will manage to challenge the dominance of Facebook. It’s too entrenched in the world’s psyche now. If you’re not on Facebook, who are you? There are, of course, pockets of resistance, MySpace die hards and the technically inept who will never get on Facebook. Could they be tempted by Diaspora? Possibly. Hard to tell when we know nothing though!

I’ll be keeping an eye on it. It could be the next big thing. It’s good to know people are still pushing the boundaries, at least.

Sort yourselves out, Facebook!

I’ve set up and managed Facebook Pages for two companies now and there is one thing about them that really bugs me. You cannot switch ownership to another Facebook user. This is surely a glaring oversight from the Facebook team and I cannot believe they haven’t addressed it.

There are plenty of people with the same problem on Facebook’s forum pages and many, many requests have been sent via their suggestion facility.

Not only is it annoying but it is potentially damaging for companies. When the employee who set up the page in the first place moves on, your only recourse is to delete the page – or trust that he or she will do it. This could mean thousands of man hours wasted, all your content gone and you have to begin again.

Worst case scenario, your former employee and Facebook Page manager leaves under a cloud and exacts revenge through the page. They, after all, own it and you cannot switch it.

In my case, I deleted the page set up for the first company. There was no other option. I could have been far more malicious – as far as I was concerned I was treated badly when I left that company and it would have been a simple task to ruin the reputation of that particular online company. Instead, a lot of work just ended up going down the toilet and they had to begin again.

As it happens, I would have happily just handed ownership to whoever they wanted me to – but I couldn’t.

In the case of the second company there are two Facebook Pages to consider. But again, all I can do is delete them. There hasn’t been as much work put into these and the company in question is unlikely to want to take ownership anyway, so no harm done overall.

That doesn’t make it right though, does it? What makes it worse is Facebook offers the option of being a business user, which might seem like the solution – but only if you don’t already have a personal account! And who doesn’t have a Facebook account these days? Not many.

So come on Facebook – you’re leaving a lot of companies with no option other than NOT have a Facebook presence and that’s damaging to your business, surely?

One of the most exciting Flickr developments in recent times, the Flickroom application allows desktop browsing of Flickr using the Adobe Air platform.

But this isn’t just another way of viewing Flickr…no, this is to Flickr what Tweetdeck is to Twitter. And its dark, neutral and pleasing appearance is very reminiscent of the Twitter desktop client. Take a look:

Ok, so what does it actually do? First of all, you authorize the app to access your Flickr account. Now you can browse your photostream, your groups, your sets…it is like being logged into the web interface only better presented (depending on your opinion – that’s mine). Across the top of the app are your main menu functions, including:

1. A button to view the most recent uploads of your Flickr contacts
2. A button to open the upload tool in Flickroom
3. A button to access the Flickroom chatroom – IN the app
4. A button to search Flickr – photos AND users
5. A button for the obligatory settings
6. A button to give feedback to the developers

There are a couple of things I want to focus on there.

The Upload Function

This is very, very clever. Easy to use, offers the full features that the Flickr web interface does and allows you to drag and drop onto the app rather than searching through your file structure. You can also add more than one pic at a time, though you can only edit details individually – a limitation of space more than anything else. Clever. As I said.

From there you can title your pic, give it a description, tag it, add it to a set and / or group and set its privacy level. All that before you hit upload.

Flickroom Uploader

The upload time is fast and you can view your new pics in your photostream by clicking the Reload link on the Photostream page.

The Flickroom Chatroom

This COULD prove to be one of the most useful tools offered by Flickroom. It’s certainly an interesting experience chatting with fellow users, learning how they use the app and what sort of things they find interesting on Flickr. It could be a brand new way of finding new users to follow that share the same interests as you. Right now I found it a little quiet and dominated by just a few users.

With the addition of rooms and more users – yes, it could be brilliant.

Browsing

The browsing experience in Flickroom is very good. Already connected to your groups through your account, the search function is strong and the app allows you to comment, favourite, add a note, save to your hard drive and even Tweet about the pic you are viewing.

You can control how much detail about the image is displayed ranging from a simply slideshow appearance to a sidebar with all the description, comments, tags, and EXIF data. From here you can also add the person who posted the pic as a contact.

If you’re looking for an aesthetically pleasing way of viewing Flickr on your desktop this is it – and it does compliment Tweetdeck in appearance, so if you are a style guru it’s ideal. Basically, you should never need to visit Flickr again. Except…if you want video. But you can bet the Flickroom team are working on that too.

Link: Flickroom

Have you been looking for a Flickr desktop app? Have you tried Flickroom? Do you know of any similar apps? Let me know in the comments.

So this is what happened to Twitter today, causing trouble the world over. To lighten your mood, post-Twitterpocalypse…

The social media world is in a state of disarray as Twitter remains down and out – by my own reckoning it’s been unobtainable for almost an hour. Surely the longest time in its history? Even in the dark days of 2007?

Either due to their link up or the thousands and thousands of users flocking to it from Twitter, Facebook too has been struggling. They, however, appear to be handling the problems much better. Normal service was resumed in less than 20 minutes for myself, though it does remain unstable to say the least.

Twitter does not know what is wrong, as they freely admit on their status blog, but the top two trending topics were “Tweets Created” and “Twitter Zombies” – I assume referring to the random new Twitter accounts following people (I had six in less than two minutes this morning”) and the random Tweets some accounts are producing (only one of those for me and I found it amusing).

Someone, it seems, has decided to attack and disable Twitter. One commenter on Mashable.com did, however, point out that the DEFCON hackers convention took place in Vegas only recently…

50,000+ Apps available!

Apple iPhone 3G

That’s what gets screamed at you when you consider an iPhone or even after you’ve bought one and you are wondering what to do with it. It’s a genuine claim – but how many of them are of any use at all?

Let’s take games out of the equation. If you like games, you can spend your own time digging through them for the ones you like. Instead we’ll focus on the social networking, entertainment and news apps to start with. Which are the good ones, the ones that will actually help you? It can be hard to tell and when you’re asked to spend as much as £5.99 in some cases then you need to know.

I have avoided paying for too many apps just yet, so here’s my top 7 FREE iPhone apps for helping you be more productive and informed.

1) Evernote

This is a brilliant app that keeps you in touch with all the notes you’ll ever make. Install the app on your iPhone and the software on your various laptops and PCs and they stay in sync, permanently. So no matter what you use or where you are, you’re up to date. So what is it really?

Evernote allows you to keep ‘notes’ – whether written in, full web pages, snippets of web pages, PDF files, images..as much as you can think of, you can store them through Evernote. The clever thing is that it is fully searchable. Evernote will search within any file – INCLUDING images.

Give it a try. It’ll really keep you organised on the move.

2) ESPN ScoreCenter

For the sports fans this is an absolute must. ESPN ScoreCenter does what it says on the tin. Gives you sports scores for a wide range of sports. There are many like it, of course, but here’s why I prefer this one over the rest. Firstly, it’s ESPN – you can’t go wrong. Secondly you can save your favourite sports, tournaments and even teams so you never have to look around. And finally, the interface is just beautiful. Nothing wasted, it just works.

I love it.

3) Urbanspoon

There are mixed reviews for this but I don’t know why. The app itself is excellent. It’s content is only as good as its users though – in other words, don’t be lazy, if you know a good restaurant, add it to Urbanspoon!

Yes, it’ll find places to eat based on where you are, providing address, phone number, email, website, map and reviews. What more do you need? You can also use it to find by the type of food you like. Mexican restaurant in Camden? Urbanspoon will tell you where, how much and how to get there – assuming someone has entered it into the database of course…

Ok, it’s not infallible – but it’s the best one I can find and it works all over the world. Best results in the UK and US from what I can work out so far in testing.

4) IM+ Lite

For a free app this is pretty powerful. Combine your MSN/Windows Live, AIM,  MySpaceIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber, Twitter and GoogleTalk accounts into one and take it with you wherever you go. IM+ Lite is immense.

It’s simple to use, you can see who is signed in on what chat client and it even includes smileys. Happy days for chat addicts!

Oh, you can also get the paid for version (£5.99) which also includes Skype and Facebook.

5) Shazam

You’re in a pub or club. A tune comes on and you love it. But the name of it escapes you. None of your mates can think of it either and it’s SO good you want to download it. How? Shazam.

Shazam will listen, search and report back with the song title, artist and iTunes download link. It’s never been wrong in my experience either. Nuff said? I think so.

6) TV Guide

One for the UK based (or those with Sky access) only I’m afraid. TV Guide.co.uk is just that. A super comprehensive TV guide for all UK digital terrestrial, satellite and cable channels. What I like about this one is that it is accurate and in depth.

It is based on a Now & Next interface, but tap a channel and you get the full day, with a brief synopsis of each programme on. You couldn’t ask for more. From BBC One through Sky Sports to The Adult Channel. Get it!

And finally…because you have to have SOME fun (and it’s topical)…

7) Terminator Salvation (Lite)

I love the Terminator franchise and to get to play this for free is just fun. Download it yourself and blast some cyborgs away. It is only the Lite version, yes, but it might give you a taste for the full paid for version – £2.99 at your nearest iTunes Store.

What are your favourite free (or paid for if you like) apps that make your life easier? I’m dying to build up a decent set on my iPhone.

Facebook. Google. Apple.

Names already linked with the purchase of Twitter. Microsoft has probably been mooted at some point too.

But the question is – who would be better off buying it?

Who will buy Twitter?

Twitter is a wonderful thing but it is not a business. It is currently unprofitable and I have yet to hear a good enough method of turning that around. Advertising is, of course, the most obvious and would suggest that the best suitor to Twitter is advertising king

Perhaps the question is, then, who needs Twitter more, not who can do more for Twitter.

Google grasps the free and open landscape of the internet, to which Twitter is an integral part. Google’s many fingers are everywhere and it seems unlikely that owning Twitter would enhance their position much. But when did that ever stop them? They bought Blogger and haven’t changed it much. It just rolls on the same as it ever did. It’s done nothing for Google itself though, really.

The same cannot be said for Facebook, Apple or even Microsoft.

Facebook has adopted a Twitter-esque interface in its latest design but I find it hard to understand how they would benefit from Twitter, technically or commercially. Facebook can’t even make itself profitable. Integration could only really mean replacing their current status update model with the Twitter feed. Unless you have any ideas?

Which leaves Apple and Microsoft. Apple is traditionally a hardware company. One of the best. Its online forays, however, have been disappointing at best and completely ignored at worst. Could Twitter, then, give it not so much a new lease of life online as signal its official entrance?

Apple can certainly afford it. Twitter turned down a $500 million cash and share offer from Facebook based on the fact they couldn’t decide how much Facebook stock was worth. A cash-only offer from Apple is a very real possibility, however. And likely to be significantly more than the original $500m offer too.

The iPhone has many Twitter apps, such as Tweetie, which are a nice litte earner for Apple. But the company doesn’t need to OWN Twitter to benefit from it in that sense. This article explains the benefits to Apple better than I could (and credit for sparking this off in my head must go to the author too!).

So finally – Microsoft. To my mind, Microsoft have been strangely silent on the social media front outside of their own endeavours. And their own endeavours, such as Windows Live, have been met with a mixed reaction. While I use Live Messenger, I do not like anything else to do with it. And even Live Messenger is a bloated piece of software, even if it is almost Google-esque in its useability.

The idea that Microsoft would branch out into the wider, freer world is almost unthinkable. It wouldn’t be the first time the company has surprised us though and if they did emerge as a possible suitor to Twitter I wouldn’t be surprised.

Though I may be horrified…

But which one of these would make Twitter profitable? And how? Outside of Google and its advertising model, I’m at a loss.

I’d love to hear your ideas.

yellowBird

Forget your scrolling round static images of streets a la Google StreetMap. Now you can pan around live action video in 360 degrees!

The new concept, developed by Dutch company yellowBird, really does allow 360 degree viewing around a live action video. Imagine taking a drive through downtown Manhattan, for example, able to view either side of the street – or even above you - from the comfort of your own home!

Not only that, you can pause the video and look all around from that point. This is true next generation recording and displaying technology.

It’s not the easiest thing to decribe in printed word, so take a look at this demo produced by yellowBird and shot at Dutch dance music festival Mystery Land.