Tech Lunch

A few weeks ago I mentioned the 3-D Web in a post about Second Life. Along these lines, an interesting press release arrived this morning from a company who are launching a three-dimensional visualisation for Web searching – a tool they call SpaceTime.

A quick look at their demonstration shows that after executing a Web search all the relevant webpages are displayed in a three dimensional visualisation – what they call a 3-D stack – stretching away from the viewer. Clicking on a page brings it to the fore. This could be particularly useful for searching for an image as you can ‘thumb’ through the stack looking for the best one and the company says the product will work with Google Images and Yahoo images.

I’ve not had time for a detailed play but what’s interesting is that this way of moving around a connected series of visual images reminds me of a demo I saw a couple of years ago of Ted Nelson’s ZigZag data structures project. The data appeared in a series of connected stacks and you could mine information by spinning around a kind of three-dimensional ‘wheel’ of connected data.

As the amount of information we have to handle at any one time increases, the use of the 3rd dimension is going to become more prevalent.

How extendable is the new Apple iPhone? By this I mean open to modification and the addition of software packages. The iPhone comes with an email client, calculator, calendar, and can read (not write) Word documents and PDFs, but what about other sorts of apps that you can run on your desktop PC or Mac?

Well, er, it’s not good news, I’m afraid. The iPhone platform does not allow the addition of new applications. In fact, it’s even more closed than a normal computer. Much to the chagrin of software developers Apple is not allowing third parties to port (adapt) their applications to the phone.

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The Apple iPhone went on sale in the States this weekend. Over half a million were sold. This is rather a lot—roughly equivalent to one iPhone per head of population of Washington DC and more than twice the expected level of sales.

The reason why there is so much excitement about it is that the iPhone attempts to marry a mobile phone, iPod and handheld computer, with Apple’s “celebrity gadget” appeal. The blogoshere is a-hype with instant reviews, videos etc. (Engadget’s video, for example, was one of the first to show a demo of the working product) and already there are the first signs of a backlash. Concerns are being raised about the speed of Internet access (it uses what is known as 2.5G or EDGE mobile phone access for data transfer—an older, slower version of the 3G system common in Europe), battery life, and the cost and quality of the contract with AT&T, who are providing the telecomms part of the deal (see, for example, New York Times review).

Despite these concerns it does seem to offer a new and exciting platform for accessing the Internet whilst on the move. Steve Jobs gives an interesting insight into his company’s thinking on the iPhone in a hour-long, and under-reported, interview which took place in June at the Wall Street Journal’s D5: All Things Digital conference (which is available through ZDNet as a video). He describes the product as offering three key things: a cell phone, an iPod and “Internet in your pocket”. To me the latter is by far the most interesting.

Here’s why. To date all efforts by mobile phone companies to offer the Internet whilst on the move have been widely derided. The screens are too small, the browsers are not fully featured and the phone companies have often attempted to control (and charge for) access to content (known as the “walled garden” approach). As Jobs points out in his interview, people don’t want this—they want full, unadulterated Web access. The iPhone claims to provide this, with a large screen and a full version of Apple’s Safari Web browser.

Internet access is provided either by WiFi (when in range) or the mobile phone data network. The device allegedly switches seamlessly between the two depending on what’s available. The speed may be an issue when using the mobile phone data network, but perhaps less so in Europe, where the device is likely to be 3G from day one. Incidentally, though, I can’t help wondering whether European mobile phone companies will want the automatic switch from 3G to Wifi, as the need to recoup revenue spent on 3G licence fees is a major issue for them.

Back in March I wrote that Reuter’s had announced plans to develop a corporate version of MySpace for people who work in finance. I said at the time that we might shortly see a rash of ‘grown-up’ uses of Web 2.0-style social networking. This does seem to be happening, and it looks like Facebook is stealing a march.

One of the interesting things about Facebook is that, according to Mark Zuckerberg, its co-founder (see video), its fastest growing segment is the 25+ age group. Facebook seems to be attracting an older, professional user and, indeed, there has been a slew of articles in the press over the last couple of weeks lauding the professional uses of Facebook, with the Observer calling it the current “craze du jour”. Why is this happening?

Firstly, and perhaps ironically, MySpace, which is owned by media giant News International, seems to have dropped the ball with regard to getting journalists to join and use the service. Journalists write technology stories, which readers follow up.

Facebook, for example, hosts the National Union of Journalists, and the BBC’s Facebook work group has over 13,000 members (and only employees with a BBC email address can join). Facebook claims it has over 500 groups for “journalism” although the vast majority are either student journo class groups or the less than serious, “Blondes for better journalism” (47 members), for example. A quick search of MySpace groups using the same term gave me 45 results and, as far as I can see, none (please correct me if I’ve missed something) are serious, professional networks.

Secondly, there has been a huge interest in the potential for innovation that is provided now that Facebook allows third-party programmers to add their own widgets through its Platform development system. These small applications can be made available to any user on Facebook and can even be revenue generating—what The Register calls a “social networking operating system”. High profile and media oriented developers of such widgets include Forbes and the Washington Post. Such a move is in contrast to MySpace, which has been reluctant to allow completely open access to third-party developers through their service.

But Rupert is aware. The Wall Street Journal reports that when asked whether newspaper readers (who tend to be older) were going to MySpace he replied: “I wish they were. They’re all going to Facebook at the moment”. No doubt there will be an impressive response shortly.