River Song’s Diary iPad Cover

My iPad (latest model) arrived today. I have been saving Amazon vouchers from surveys and every bit of cash forever for it.

I have an inexpensive cover for it, because I’m not idiot enough to walk around with a naked expensive device, but I saw this today and melted. Sadly, it’s way out of my budget. Especially now I’ve spent all said budget on iPad and cheap accessories.

If you don’t watch Doctor Who (what kind of freak are you?), you won’t know that River Song, who is very close to the Doctor, keeps a diary. It was given to her by the Doctor, and is leather bound and styled to look like the TARDIS. Joe V. Leather have made a leather iPad cover (also available for various Kindle models) that looks exactly like it. WANT.

Costiness: $94.99 (about £58.82 at the time of writing) from Joe V. Leather

Versus

iPad 2 versus the Motorola Xoom…

The Xoom is Sindy to iPad’s Barbie – they’re both desirable toys; but the former is slower, clunkier, uglier and doesn’t even have the decency to be properly cheaper. In the ’80s, do-gooder Mums plumped for Sindy to challenge Barbie’s dominance and “shallow” good looks, bigging up her more realistic proportions, but which is the design classic? Sindy was only the best of the Barbie copies, not brilliant in her own right. So it is with the Xoom. One day there may be an iPad killer, or at least an equal. This is not it.

Like Life

Every year, Coca-Cola run a summer camp in Israel. It’s called the Coca-Cola Village and 650 teenagers a day can engage with watersports (not that sort), Coke (not that sort), games (you know) etc for the three days of the festival – a mixture of holiday village, festival and amusement park. This year, they decided that registration would be restricted to people who had signed up via the event’s Facebook page. So far, so normal.

Agency Publicis E-dologic embedded RFID tags and user data (the registrant’s Facebook user name and password) in the wristbands. Now, I’ve been part of something vaguely similar before when the XBox Reverb live event came to Leeds – a corporate-sponsored free entry gig with up and coming bands and DJs plus rooms full of consoles for hot gaming action. We were given passes on lanyards that were chipped and encouraged to give them our Twitter username and password, and touch the pass to one of the many terminals dotted about the venue to update about the event. Uptake was fairly low, however, judging by the live updates screen displayed in one small corner – the social media side worked a lot better in the run-up to the event to give limited “influence” over set lists (choose the cover version the headliners play from a list), venue suggestions, notification of when to register, opportunities to design artwork, win prizes and so on via Twitter and Facebook. There wasn’t that much hanging around time between bands/game competitions, as it was a relatively short evening event, and no real direction to how/why we should use the terminals rather than updating more freely and with fewer privacy concerns using our mobiles.

E-dologic and Coke took it a step further. They placed their swipe points more carefully (at every attraction, clearly signposted) and directed use a bit more, plus made the advantages clearer. So if you were having a massage or queueing for food or watching a band,  you could just swipe and it would update your Facebook status automatically to say where you were and what exactly you were doing, with no need to fill in the details yourself – “Joe Bloggs is going for a swim at Coca-Cola Village”, “Jane Doe is chilling in the sun at Coca-Cola Village”. Users could also trigger a Facebook “Like” from the real world by swiping from a Thumbs Up point – “Joe Bloggs Likes the pool at Coca-Cola Village”, “Jane Doe Likes the awesome burgers” etc.

If someone flashed their wristband while a photo was being taken, the picture would be uploaded to Facebook in real time and the user would be automatically tagged as being in the shot. Over 100,000 Facebook posts were generated for the event. The application was built using just the existing OpenGraph API, and with the addition of the new Facebook Places and future developments, there are many opportunities to do even more at next year’s event.

Social media, brand management and technology experts are going crazy for the idea. Is it good, or bad? Would anyone more cynical than a bunch of teens ever go for it? Where will the mash-up of RFID and social media go next, and can it be used by people who aren’t just pushing a brand or event? What effects will it have on privacy? Will it have applications e.g. at the Disney parks where there are Photopass photographers and ride photos already, and lots of opportunities to spend money and engage with characters within a closed environment (this isn’t a criticism – I love Disneyland Paris, for example)? I’m thinking long and hard about what my Project (effectively a dissertation) will be for my OU degree in Information and Communication Technologies, and I’m interested to see where this will go.

Apposite

One of my favourite record labels, Wichita, have produced a delightfully non-naff free iPhone app with exclusives and stuff. Marvellous. They’ve also just rush-released the digital version of what I think will be one of my albums of the year, Sky Larkin’s new LP Kaleide. I will be pre-ordering the collectors’ edition of the physical record next week (i.e. when I have a small amount of cash available). Immediate digital download.

You can hear the album now on their website (linked above) to boot. It sounds amazing. Like the first one, only more so.  Sky Larkin are one of my favourite bands, which is not an accolade I bandy around lightly. I don’t write about music much on here as I fear the deluge of emails from terrible bands (most bands are terrible) or friends wanting me to write about their projects. Sky Larkin are worth poking my head above the parapet for, I’ve loved them from the earliest demos and they know it. Anjelica Huston is my current top track…

Genies and Pegs

I’ve had my iPhone 3G since the end of March last year. So yeah, I’m a bit behind the times since I’ve not got a 3GS, but I was only able to upgrade to such beauty at all through the power of cashing in my old phone and a bit of Quidco. Hey, it might work out for the best – my contract runs out in October and there’s new software and almost certainly a new model coming in summer…

When it comes to phone accessories, I don’t think I’ve really bothered in the past ten years. When I first got a mobile, in 1998, they didn’t really exist. Then I bought a couple of fun fascias for my first Nokias, and hand decorated a couple…but after that I always got smartphones (7110, several Treos, a couple of Windows Mobile phones – never again, N95…), and never felt the need for more than a plain and easy to use leather case.

With the upgrade to the iPhone came more options. Mostly expensive options. I’d had a couple of radio transmitters with my now sadly deceased iPod 5G, a basic plug in the bottom FM transmitter that drew power from the iPod and ate batteries, and a later model of Griffin iTrip that plugged into the cigarette lighter and charged as well as providing a much better signal from phone to radio. In the car, it was great. It didn’t work with the iPhone. Damn. And the iPhone compatible version? Cost thirty quid even on offer. Too much, more than twice what I’d paid. So I haven’t done more than a case and a headphone upgrade with this, either. I’ve been tempted by a fair few music accessories, but not been convinced by the cost/build quality trade-off. No extras for me.

Until now. MobileFun.co.uk offered to send me one of their iPhone accessories to test. It’s exclusive to them, the Desk Genie Non-Slip Charging Desk Stand, and sadly it’s utter bobbins. £14.99 of bobbins to you.

It’s a stand and charger for your desk, as you might imagine. It comes in a plain white box, with a bag full of adaptors, a few cables and the stand itself. The stand attractively lights up with a gentle blue LED at the bottom when plugged in, and that’s about the only positive thing to say about it. It looks clunky and outdated, the rubber pad that’s supposed to keep your phone in place…doesn’t, and attracts dust and muck like no man’s business (they suggest regularly wiping it, as if that helps and as if you could be bothered). You can’t adjust the angle of the stand so it’s crap for watching video or similar on it on your desk and it’s too bulky and heavy to be worth taking say on a train or plane and using with a seatback table, or propping your phone up in the kitchen to check recipe info. It won’t sync your phone, so you’ve got all this gubbins plugged in just to charge it, it has a pointless card reader built in and the adaptor to make it plug into the iPhone is so badly designed that it doesn’t even fit properly and, worse, feels like it’s doing your phone damage when you try to insert and remove it. None of the other cables fit well. If it worked long-term as a stand, I might at a push just use it as a stand and cable tidy and plug it into the Mac to charge and sync, but since my iPhone kept falling off it and the angle is so awkward…nah. Sorry lovely MobileFun people, it’s rubbish. It tries to do too many things, none of them well, and it’s ugly.

On a more positive note, if you want a cheap and cheerful stand that’s portable, cute and adjustable – try the MoviePeg. It is indeed an ergonomically-designed peg, available in a wide range of colours. Click it onto your iPhone, adjust the angle (yeah, they actually let you) and you’re away. Use it to watch videos on your iPhone from your desk or on the move, prop it up on your desk and use Spotify as a radio, hold your iPhone in position as an alarm clock or to look up recipes, or as a camera tripod… Simple idea, executed brilliantly.

Cost: £4.99 from the MoviePeg website.

Finally, someone linked to the Desk Phone Dock today on Twitter, and it raised a smile.