Read the BGR article above – it says it all. What’s particularly off about the whole thing is when Andy Lark demonstrates his complete lack of understanding when he talks about decking the iPad out with keyboard and mouse as if that’s the only way anyone will ever interface with an electronic device.

If I was about to launch a major tablet device, if anything I’d talking up the iPad, after all, for most people the iPad defines the tablet market right now.

A 6.3 on the Hayward blunder scale

Building on its alternative app store for Android, it looks like the people at Amazon are making yet another play to own content provision for Android. There are two new products – Cloud Drive and Cloud Player – essentially, it’s an online, iTunes-esque eco system that isn’t quite so infuriatingly restrictive. You can upload / download files to your cloud drive, buy songs from Amazon MP3 directly to the cloud, stream / download to Android etc… etc…

The major draw back to begin with is that, at only 5 Gb for the free version, they’re not going to attract that many switchers from iTunes – I’m guessing that most libraries will be bigger than that. However, there is a Caveat. Songs bought directly from Amazon MP3 never count towards your storage limit.

I’ll have a play over the next few days and update.

I’ve been watching Twitter and Ditto feeds of people at SxSW, and, from a distance, I get a distinct sense of the social anxiety and FOMO that’s going on there. “FOMO” stands for “fear of missing out” and it’s what happens everywhere on a typical Saturday night, when you’re trying to decide if you should stay in, or muster the energy to go to the party. At SxSW I see people wondering if they’re at the wrong party—the party where they are is lame, feels uncool, has too much brand advertising or doesn’t have anyone there they’d want to hook up with—and so they move on to the next party where they have to wait in line too long, can’t get a beer, or don’t find their friends, and so move on to the next venue where…and so on.

FOMO —Fear of Missing Out— is a great motivator of human behavior, and I think a crucial key to understanding social software, and why it works the way it does. Many people have studied the game mechanics that keep people collecting things (points, trophies, check-ins, mayorships, kudos). Others have studied how the neurochemistry that keeps us checking Facebook every five minutes is similar to the neurochemistry fueling addiction. Social media has made us even more aware of the things we are missing out on. You’re home alone, but watching your friends status updates tell of a great party happening somewhere. You are aware of more parties than ever before. And, like gym memberships, adding Bergman movies to your Netflix queue and piling up unread copies of the New Yorker, watching these feeds gives you a sense that you’re participating, not missing out, even when you are.

There is a company that sells radar equipment to the police as well as radar detectors to the public. Clorox is one of the world’s worst polluters of water, and also sells Brita filters to get the bad stuff out of the water again. Lawyers create mazes that you have to hire a lawyer to escape. Similarly social software both creates and cures FOMO. If you didn’t know that party was going on, you’d be home contentedly reading your latest New Yorker. But since you do, you hungrily watch each new tweet.

It’s an age-old problem, exacerbated by technology. To be always filled with craving and desire (defilement, affliction) is one of the Three Poisons of Buddhism, called kilesa, and it makes you a slave. There is true meaning in social media—real connections, real friendships, devotion, humor, sacrifice, joy, depth, love. And this is what we are looking for when we log on. Most of the world is profane, not sacred, in the Mircea Eliade sense. So it is. But within it is the Emmy award speech of Mister Rogers, a Japanese man being rescued at sea, Abraham Lincoln, moms who comfort sick children, the earnest love that dogs have for people…

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The more I read, the more convinced I am that some of the most elegant descriptions of online behaviour will come from an understanding of game mechanics. I’ll do a proper post on this soon but for now read the above. it will get you thinking.

I first saw this on Neville Hobson’s blog, and, following a quick dig, I reckon we might be in a little more trouble than even Nev suggests. As I understand it mobile devices attached to LTE networks will migrate towards using IP adresses to identify them.

When you consider that in 2010 alone the top five manufacturers between them shipped about 1.3 billion handsets – that’s only going to rise and there are already countries where there are more mobiles than people so population growth doesn’t seem to be a barrier. Add this to the fact that recycling the ip-addresses of old handsets will be nigh on impossible and suddenly even the 340 undecillion combinations doesn’t look like a permanent solution.

Me, I often sit down to watch a few adverts, and the advertising is the only reason I buy GQ. My favourite though, my abs totes fave, is when I get to tell a brand what’s making me happy today or, even better (and I can barely write this for the shaking of my excited hands), I get to give them free photography and video content in return for the ridicule of my peers, because that’s… engagement.

Of course consumers don’t follow brands on social media sites and of course not many make purchases directly from twitter or facebook, that’s not what they’re there for.

The truth is that as things stand, 90% of brands’ “engagement” in social media only fulfils one purpose – the hitting of internal KPIs in the marketing department.

The value in “social media” (or the internet) isn’t held within the sales department; it is about understanding your consumer, understanding a totally new pattern of behaviour, protecting your reputation and ultimately making better products and / or becoming better at whatever it is you do.

Sorry. Rant over.

ps. Thanks to @jangles for the link…

Just skimmed through this (excellent if slightly long) presentation on how social mechanics affect multiplayer game design. The overriding impression it left me with was that there are huge parallels between the mechanics of social games and interaction between members of discreet social networks.

Here’s an exercise – go through the pdf (skim it) and as you pass each section think of someone who’s online behaviour it describes. It won’t be difficult.