Disqus - Latest Comments for colinwalker

Re: Other blogs like Scripting News?

colinwalker — Sun, 25 Sep 2016 06:31:31 -0000

I wrote recently about my surprise/shock when I cleaned out my feeds and over 75% of my subscriptions were dead and I just hadn't realised. There are less and less decent personal blogs out there or getting it's harder to find them - it's quite depressing.

Dave, yours is pretty unique among those I have in my reader- I don't think anyone else quite has the variety you do.

I agree about Seth Godin's blog but he is pretty focused - it's good to see him still writing so regularly though.

I really refocused on my blog in May rather than posting elsewhere (although I still auto cross post to Medium) but it's not as varied as here.

Re: Why Do Apple iOS Mail and Calendar Apps Suck?

colinwalker — Fri, 20 May 2016 11:17:17 -0000

My favourite iOS mail app is currently Airmail. Don't use a calendar often enough to have changed that.

Re: Feature Friday: GBoard

colinwalker — Fri, 20 May 2016 08:22:43 -0000

This is just a localisation thing. They are supposed to be extending the release soon.

Re: Feature Friday: GBoard

colinwalker — Fri, 20 May 2016 07:43:44 -0000

Apple does not allow third party keyboards to access the microphone.

Re: Feature Friday: GBoard

colinwalker — Fri, 20 May 2016 06:56:29 -0000

As highlighted by Jon Gruber, the amount of data actually sent back to Google (at least for now) is minimal - https://daringfireball.net/...

When Google announced Allo at I/O my immediate reaction was that Gboard was the bait to Allo's hook - get people excited about what you can do with the keyboard then imagine what it would be like unleashed within it's own app with the added bonus of Google Assistant thrown in.

A potentially clever play by Google to disrupt the messaging market.

Re: The End Of Blogging?

colinwalker — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 12:34:07 -0000

Ironic, then, that I came here to read this because it popped up in my RSS reader ;) But then I'm old school like that as well.

I did, however, effectively put my blog out to pasture in 2013 then last year wrote a post a day over on Google+ as that's where I was and where my connections/readers were. It seemed to work.

I don't think the argument about needing to own your own house for "branding" purposes holds weight these days as social brands are just as (if not more) powerful but there is an inherent danger to writing in rented spaces (not that we expect the likes of Facebook to collapse any time soon) but it's not necessarily the danger we might always think.

In April this year I deleted my Google+ account after having been on board since day 3 of the closed beta. All those posts, all that content gone at the click of a button. From my perspective it's not so bad as all of last years posts were composed offline in a note app so not lost. What WAS lost, however, was the engagement around them, the conversation and the ideas that were spawned. This was highlighted to me by someone catching up on LinkedIn asking what happened as he wanted to refer back to some of his comments in work he was doing.

But, that same danger also exists with blogs as owners could take them down at any point - at least there is a safety net when the blog uses Disqus etc.

Re: Google+ is Testing a New “Collections” Feature That Seems to be Part Pinterest, Part Blogging

colinwalker — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 07:25:10 -0000

I'm sure Google would like to know who breached the NDA ;)

Re: Why You Need to See ‘Her’ (Or, ‘Her’ Again)

colinwalker — Tue, 03 Jun 2014 01:29:44 -0000

I finally got round to seeing this a couple of weeks back and wrote afterwards that I couldn't remember the last time I was so profoundly affected by a story.

It's not a film about technology, despite how it's dressed up, rather it is essentially about what it is to be human. Samantha's growth and personal realisations sitting alongside Theodore's angst and offloading of his emotional failings onto technology are perfectly paralleled.

It definitely demands multiple viewings and maybe even to be used as study material. There is a lot there, it all depends how far you want to follow down the rabbit hole.

Re: How To Find The Day That You Joined Twitter (And See Your Very First Tweet)

colinwalker — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 16:55:12 -0000

Weird. 2nd of Jan is the oldest - I have to go to page 3 (when sorted by oldest) to get it. A glitch in the matrix.

Still, I know when and what my first tweet was any way ;)

Re: How To Find The Day That You Joined Twitter (And See Your Very First Tweet)

colinwalker — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:51:36 -0000

Does their database not go back beyond 2007? I get a "No tweets found" error going back beyond that.

Re: A Month of Android Instead of iOS

colinwalker — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 12:14:14 -0000

With KitKat on the N5 there is now a lot less need to customise things. Built in apps are much better and there is a far greater sense of it "just working" than a couple of years back (which is when I went iOS out of frustration). I think you'll enjoy it a lot more now.

Re: A Month of Android Instead of iOS

colinwalker — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 11:16:58 -0000

Agree with Pete here. My own Android experience in the past was unsatisfactory but the most recent versions (especially KitKat) have solved those gripes.

Re: A Month of Android Instead of iOS

colinwalker — Fri, 27 Dec 2013 09:02:26 -0000

I made the move from iPhone to the Nexus 5 a couple of weeks back - it's a great phone. The battery life can sometimes leave something to be desired but now that I've moved up to the 5 inch screen (which is awesome by the way) I can't see myself going back - even the larger screen on the iPhone 5S just seems tiny by comparison.

As I tend to live in the Google ecosystem it just seemed to make sense - plus the geek in me wanted something different (already being on iOS7 on the iPhone 4S, it didn't seem like much of an upgrade/change moving to the 5S).

The phone is just a tool - most of the core experience is the same as far as the common apps go; it's pretty much platform agnostic from that respect. The extra sharing capabilities in Android are a boon and having Google Now etc. integrated at the system, level is great.

I had to sacrifice Mailbox and Drafts when moving away from the iPhone but found a decent Markdown editor to replace Drafts and the Gmail app serves well enough.The only thing I miss is delaying mails until later in Mailbox. Boomerang can do the same thing on Android but I don't like the way it does it.

I found a great little app called "I'm Sleeping" which replicates the Do Not Disturb feature in iOS7.

I used to use Android a couple of years ago before switching to the iPhone citing app availability and design inconsistency as my two main reasons. Okay, some apps are still iOS only but the gap is much smaller. Also, witht he past few iterations of Android and developers following the common design principles, I no longer have an issue there either.

Re: Why a Klout score may be an appropriate marketing metric

colinwalker — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 06:55:53 -0000

I take very much the same standpoint as you, Mark, and have written such in the past that saying Klout is any kind of standard for influence is wrong but it does give an indication of activity. While this can be gamed, if you know you're not then it can certainly be used as a metric to show spread and how your actions affect that spread.

Just as long as it is not considered the only thing you need.

Re: Markdown and RSS

colinwalker — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 16:19:27 -0000

Dave,

The end of line details is in the spec: just end a line with two or more spaces.

Re: The Why of Where I Write

colinwalker — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 03:12:50 -0000

When I first started blogging properly (I'd had other sites that were updated regularly but I wasn't really aware of blogging per se) it was on self-hosted SharePoint on a server at home.

I did outsourced support for Microsoft in the UK for a few years so was really into MS technology for a while.

I had to make a lot of modifications myself to make it passable. This meant I got to speak to a couple of Softies working on the SharePoint team but even after they introduced the blogging templates progress was still too slow for it to be considered viable as a public facing blogging platform once social integration became important.

There were a number of other shortcomings such as permalinks that changed based on how you accessed a given post so I felt it was time to move.

My wife had already been working with WordPress for a while so the decision to switch over was obvious, it also coincided with a total rebranding when I decided to shift my blogging focus from general tech (90% MS based) to social.

I've tried other platforms and have been looking for something more minimal. I'd considered applying to Svbtle, looked at Tumblr, even had a Posterous blog for a while and posted an item at Medium but writing at outposts rather than the home blog felt wrong.

I had looked at Blogger but always felt that it was a bit basic and limited when compared to WordPress. The recent development of Blogger has actually interested me and, as I have been heavily invested in Google+ since it first opened in beta, I have gone on record as saying that if Blogger received FULL G+ integration (by which I mean cross-posting between the two platforms rather than just shared comments and blogging support from within the network itself) then I would switch again.

Re: The Writing Wall

colinwalker — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 07:24:20 -0000

I get it regularly and just have to step away - I have no other option and if I try to force anything it becomes rubbish and I just end up even more frustrated.

I've had up to an 18 month hiatus in the past where I just gave up - your choice of the word malaise is perfect.

Writing is incredibly habit forming and the longer you distance yourself from it the harder it is to get back in the grove. I find that my emotional state largely dictates when I can write and if I don't finish something while I'm "in the zone" then I can't replicate the though processes later and complete it.

Re: An Apology To My RSS Readers – But I Had To Do It. (Updated)

colinwalker — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 02:55:35 -0000

I always prefer full feed but, having been the victim of RSS scraping myself a number of times (and it seems to be increasing), I can certainly understand the frustration.

I've been lucky that I've managed to get a number of sites to stop publishing my stuff but the truly automated sites aren't going to care about takedown notices etc. - they'll just throw up another site if the current one gets removed.

Re: The # Discover Tab

colinwalker — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 06:59:14 -0000

This is something that will improve the more you use Twitter. I've not been a very heavy user lately so I think it's having some problems with relevance but that should improve if I start to tweet and interact more.

I've been saying for almost a year that I can envisage #discover becoming the default view for Twitter as we continue to use an increasingly visual web. Twitter Cards make a lot of sense in this scenario.

Re: Medium: Why You Should Watch Two Twitter Co-Founders' New Idea - by Jon Mitchell

colinwalker — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 07:53:43 -0000

I received my invitation last week and have been excited about this since launch. (I've not felt compelled to contribute yet)

I wrote a while back that it is part of a paradigm shift in social to get away from "who" and on to "what" - the subject not the author - but wonder if the ego-fuelled content creators are ready for it and willing to give up a sense of ownership to their contributions.

Re: Why do rich people get better service on the web?

colinwalker — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 08:25:43 -0000

It's not always the case but can business take the risk?

Re: Why do rich people get better service on the web?

colinwalker — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 07:56:49 -0000

Let's face it, if you're rich then you're most likely successful and, therefore, likely to command a lot of influence.

You do not want this kind of person bad mouthing your business as they invariably have large followings who will try to ingratiate themselves and jump on any bandwagon that person rolls out in front of them.

Re: Why Klout and Kred Fail

colinwalker — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 01:02:24 -0000

I am reading up on network science and initial impressions are ringing a number of bells. It is also easy to see how Facebook has made a lot of decisions about how the network functions based on the general principles.

Re: Why Klout and Kred Fail

colinwalker — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 14:35:54 -0000

Here you go:

http://colinwalker.me.uk/th...

It's an embedded PDF but you can also download it should you wish.

Re: Why Klout and Kred Fail

colinwalker — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 13:21:36 -0000

Must admit it's not something I've specifically looked into. Will have to do so. I just have an idea of how I envision things ;)

Off to do some research.