For the first time, Affino runs great on mobiles and tablets. It’s been a long-term project we’ve been working on for the past two years, and it will be a year or so until everything is likely to be perfect across all mobile platforms.

For anyone working in mobile, it’s a minefield, and lots of decisions have to be made along the way. I’ve posted previously about how under-developed mobile browsers are, but that has largely changed in the past year. For the most part they’re now great, in particular Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android.

With Affino 7 out initial target devices are the latest generation IOS (iPhone / iPad) and Android (mobile / tablet) devices. Mobile browsers will continue to improve in their capabilities and standards support.

When we brought out the alpha version of our mobile tech last year we did all kinds of optimisations to work around limitations with iOS 4 / Android Browser. Apple and Google have since then updated their platforms a couple of times (4 in the case of Google) and the browsers are far better than before. A side effect of the updates though was that all of the work-arounds we did for earlier mobile browser versions were broken when those browsers were fixed.

It has lead us to a principle for our mobile platform development which is that we won’t code for mobile browser bugs, instead we will do our best to work around the issues, and if that is not possible then the expectation is that the mobile browsers will be fixed soon enough.

We’ve tested Affino 7 on a lot of mobile devices. Many different Android phones and tablets (most of the leading ones and all Nexus devices), half-a-dozen iOS variants from old iPhones to the latest iPods / iPads and iPhones. We have also tested Affino on Windows Phone 7 and the Kindle HD. Both WP7 and the Kindle have some minor issues, but these issues are platform specific and the expectation is that they will be solved by Microsoft / Amazon respectively.

In practice 90% of users and above should have a great experience using Affino on their mobiles, and now that we’ve completed the initial phase of mobile optimisation, we will be accelerating to roll out mobile optimisations throughout all Affino’s interfaces both on the Control and Display sides.

I am very saddened to hear that Steve Jobs has unfortunately succumbed to pancreatic cancer after a brave fight of some 8 years.

As someone who loves technology, and more importantly loves the benefits that great technology brings - I will be eternally grateful for Steve’s contributions to the world.

Hundreds of millions around the world have benefitted both directly and indirectly from Steve’s input. Steve was never afraid to go his own way, he always believed though we frequently doubted.

From his love of black turtle necks, Levi’s 501s and New Balance 993 trainers, to his stalwart championing of great design - Steve was ever uncompromising in his pursuit of useful and beautifully usable technology - for genuine benefit to the people.

His legacy and trail of innovation will be with us for a very long time to come:

• AirPlay
• AirPort
• Apple II
• Apple TV
• iCloud
• iMac
• iOS
• iPad
• iPhone
• iPod
• iTunes
• MacBook / Air / Pro
• Macintosh
• Mac Mini
• Mac Pro
• NeXT
• OSX
• Pixar
• PowerBook

Our thoughts are of course with his family and friends.

On the latest Millward Brown BrandZ ’Global Top 100’ listing, Apple has overtaken Google by quite a significant margin. No doubt this has a lot to do with the phenomenal sales success of the iPad , as well as continuing strong retail performance across most divisions.

Our own household has slowly and steadily, not particularly deliberately, become rather Apple -fied. It started with iPods and iPhones , then a MacBook Pro or two, and now includes iMacs , iPads and Apple TV . I’m not saying that Apple necessarily make the perfect product in every category, but they do have an uncanny knack of getting the quality, aesthetics and usability just right. Sure there are some quirks here and there, but in each category we have an Apple product, it is significantly the best in that category - and usually for a variety of reasons. I’m certainly not the biggest fan of iTunes , but there is an easy convenience in syncing devices with iTunes and sharing media files. It’s a little suprising how far behind some of the previously dominant competitors have fallen - chiefly I suppose Sony and Nokia in their respective sectors.

Anyway, the top 20 most valuable brands for 2011 is as follows; (Percentage % Change vs 2010 in Parenthesis):

2011 Value in $ Millions

  1.   Apple   153,285   (+84%) 2.   Google   111,498   (-2%) 3.    IBM   100,849   (+17%) 4.    McDonald’s   81,016   (+23%) 5.    Microsoft   78,243   (+2%) 6.   Coca-Cola   73,752   (+8%) 7.   AT&T   69,916   (N/A) 8.   Marlboro   67,522   (+18%) 9.   China Mobile   57,326   (+9%) 10. General Electric   50,318   (+12%) 11. ICBC   44,440   (+1%) 12. Vodafone   43,647   (-2%) 13. Verizon   42,828   (N/A) 14. Amazon.com   37,628   (+37%) 15. Walmart   37,277   (-5%) 16. Wells Fargo   36,876   (+97%) 17. UPS   35,737   (+35%) 18. Hewlett Packard   35,404   (-11%) 19. Deutsche Telecom   29,744  ... More

You may have read a story in the press about how a 7 year old girl indavertently spent $400 (circa £250) in one hour - simply choosing outfits for her pet avatar on Facebook Social Game ’Petville’ - made by Zynga - the same company responsible for the enormously popular ’Farmville’ .

Her father had logged in on Facebook , then logged into PayPal to make some transactions, and then simply handed over the laptop to his 7 year old daughter so that she could play on ’Petville’ . The undoing of the family was three-fold - the fact that Facebook seamlessly syncs with PayPal , the fact that ’Dad’ did not logout from PayPal , and the fact that ’Petville’ is obviously set up for exploiting the unwary and uninitiated. Both parents ’played’ with their daughter and unwittingly helped rack up the ridiculous amount by simply selecting ’virtual outfits’ for their daughter’s ’virtual pet’. I am all for the ability for companies to make money off gaming and social endeavours, but something really stinks about this whole situation.

Several commentators blame Dad for letting his 7 year old daughter play games on his laptop - but that is entirely normal within the dynamic of present day family life. Some blame Dad for foolishly forgetting to logout of PayPal ; that is not entirely without merit. Not many though seem to be questioning how a game largely targeted at kids - with its cutesy graphics and colour-scheme - allows participants to rack up such large charges at all, let alone within just a one hour time frame?

There’s been much in the media recently also about persons buying ’virtual’ goods and properties for investment purposes - whether this is Real Estate in Second Life , Trading Posts in EVE Online or even a virtual club as was recently bought in Entropia Universe for $635,000 (Yes really!). However, these are all adult pursuits and fools and their money are soon parted in every walk of life, even virtual life. After all, the market is simply governed by the value of what someone is willing to pay - exactly the same dynamic that inflates the art market.

For a largely child and teenage -oriented game, it seems totally excessive that $400 can be racked up at all, let alone so quickly. Many have criticised Facebook for its partly walled-off approach, but surely Facebook needs to do some more... More

The Future of Music Retail - Introduction

2 Significant music-related things happened for me in 2009. Firstly, I signed up for the Premium version of streaming service - Spotify ; secondly, I finally succumbed to Apple and bought into the iPhone smartphone. I have several discarded MP3 players and iPods which have somewhat fallen into disuse as I found it a burden to carry around so many devices. The fact that the iPhone comes with iTunes / iPod functionality means that I now always have a subset of my music collection with me (circa 300 albums). However! Neither Spotify or iTunes combined come anywhere close to meeting my broad musical tastes - they just don’t quite cover the range. Moreover, I am still quite captivated by solid formats; I like the ownership of something tangible, the smell of freshly printed vinyl sleeves, the artwork and cover notes. So I end up syncing playlists on Spotify for offline use, buying some music from iTunes , but still largely buying CDs for albums and Vinyl 12"s for singles. In the meantime, the Internet has evolved a vast array of Music-related services, as we will see:

Solid Format Online Music Retail

If you are buying traditional music formats online, you are most likely buying from either Amazon or Play.com  or HMV  or even Tower Records . All have excellent retail catalogue functionality, with Amazon setting the standard for enhanced features, related recommendations and notifications. The holy grail for Online Retail really is automated cross-selling - that is to say - encouraging discovery of like artists and music by way of recommendations and notifications. Most sites now feature ’Customers who bought / liked this also bought / liked this ...’. You are encouraged to set and refine your preferences, with which the site builds a profile to send you notifications for related offers. I use a number of dance specialists sites, including Juno , Phonica , Boomkat , HTFR , Decks.de and HHV.de ; niche music sites Rough Trade , Discovery Records , Piccadilly Records , Music Non Stop and Norman Records ; moreover, I also use specialist music marketplaces (think of them as dedicated eBay-like retail platforms) - Discogs and GEMM . These are my key resources for buying music, and because of my broad tastes, I often end up using upwards of 20 different retail... More