Social Media Wars Told in 'Game of Thrones' Style.

I promised a while back to not post any more infographics here but really when this good and this appropriate, rules can be bent. A fun and factual breakdown of the ongoing battle for your social attention through the eyes of Game Of Thrones.

Useful for many who have no idea the battle for your eyeballs rolls on.

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Get A 'Sticky Beak' Into Some Great Content Via Other People's Houses...Launched Today.

So full disclosure, I know the owner of this site, but genuinely wanted to share it with others as it celebrates it's launch today. I've seen first hand the hours of work, the thought, the designs, the materials discussed (all of which have incredible stories behind them) as well as the other contributing authors that have been involved, and most of all the pure passion this site has behind it, and that is coming in it's future.

Other People's Houses describes itself as;

"A blog about the things I enjoy – interior design, art, food, fashion, gardening, photography, books and movies, a spot of shopping and, mostly, stickybeaking in other people’s houses…"

The site owner and key blogger is modest as always, but she truly has impeccable taste in everything (which I seem to be spoiled in having many friends who share this) yet remains fully grounded and realistic. I've had the fortune to see some of the items in this blog first hand, and been privy to the behind the scenes hard work. A good blog is hard work and the collecting, photographing and curating the content has been rigorous. With guest authors it truly is, some really stylish, yet often quite accessible pieces of art, food, fashion, and more.

Highly recommend you take a peek at the site and hopefully if you like it you'll spread the word, because lets face it, we all like a 'sticky beak' into Other People's Houses.

Wordpress. Sayonara To Sloppy UX

After trying to help a friend with their blog set up recently I now have possibly the lowest opinion of Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org.

I've used a wordpress.com site as a backup for many, many years but never tinkered much or needed more than the sheer basics. I always found it lacking in clarity of it's user experience and for years seemingly bolting on menus and services to the point I just didn't use it.

Hence accounts I used were always free. I presumed the paid versions would be slicker and offer more.
Wow, was I wrong.

A good friend invested time and money in setting up a blog and paid for many of the premium features and designs.  They ran into some trouble, asked me for some help and after diving deeper to fix several issues, I am just stunned (to the point of writing words here) at the cluster%$*k express it has become.

A simply beyond sloppy and confusing UX and overly complex support. Wordpress.com vs. Wordpress.org? Ugh, who's running this, Microsoft? Reminds me of the six versions of Vista. Yes Six! Is that really what the customer wants? Or Microsoft and their email client naming; first it was Hotmail, then it was 'MSN' then it was 'Live', now Outlook.

Microsoft aside, Wordpress seem to also go out their way to avoid any support for Google products e.g. forwarding domain email to gmail, and don't try and add Google analytics to a Wordpress.com site. It's sacrilege it seems not to use their own stats. Lack of choice for customers yet again.

I understand Google is competition to Wordpress but people are confused and using a plethora of workarounds to try to get what they need. When you read the Wordpress support section you see so many  customers who pay the bills who are asking for solutions, simply get on many occasions snarky responses or support channels closed. I'm not alone in seeing this.

On principle the Wordpress sites I have, I'm shutting down, and recommend you do not use the service if you have not as yet. Blogger is my preference, and I'm sure many may poke holes in it, but you sure as hell won't waste much time working out how to get it to do what you want.

Still Building iOs Only Apps & Ignoring Customer Choice? Welcome to Doucheclub.

I see it everyday. Stores and businesses proclaiming 'download our app!'  but yet it excludes me and millions of others. And whilst small business have some weak form of excuse or ignorance of the market, large organisations are just losing customers by the day and have no clear mobile strategy. Take a look at the stats above which are only for Q1 2013.

Like it or like it not, choice and change are two words you need to learn and waken up to in the mobile and tablet space, but often some people in charge of mobile and tablet apps for large organisations let their feelings, preferences and misguided news, skewed infographics and agencies tell them differently.

You must have at least two platforms. Choice is needed as these are your customers! Gartner paints it very clearly;

Gartner has finished crunching the smartphone numbers for the first quarter of 2013, and the results are quite favorable for the Android regime. Beginning with worldwide smartphone sales by OS, Android accounted for 74.4% of smartphone units sold in Q1, a huge jump from the 56.9% it enjoyed in the same quarter a year ago. The closest competitor was Apple’s iOS, with the bitten fruit OS taking up just 18.2% of the sales compared to 22% a year ago.

25% growth in one year. So still not willing to change? Welcome to Doucheclub.

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Google Glass. The Possibilities Are Very Clear...

So Google Glass already has its haters and many Apple fanboys are not happy at Google taking what has traditionally been Apple leading this type of innovation. Bad mouthers and bitter old farts aside, you must be literally devoid of all senses to not at least appreciate some of the positive possibilities of Glass...

Whilst the product is still very much in Alpha testing mode for developers, the Toronto-based creative agency Playground, has envisioned many possibilities for Glass and created a video showing what could be the future.

Altogether not that far fetched, and in practice with the huge dominance of Android software and leaps and bounds its talking through speech recognition, this video is looking more like the next six to twelve months than when my flying car may finally arrive.

Apple Elitist's ' Lifejacket Of Bullshit' & How Things Are Getting Even More Childish In Smartphone Land

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All I see these days is quality data from places like Forbes above telling us time and time again, that factually Android is outselling Apple. No biggie, just a continual change in the Smartphone world as it balances out. The techology is now neck and neck, the apps are near identical in number, just pick a platform and enjoy it. There is room for others in this market, and life would be dull with no choices, so whats the fuss?

Well whilst there are deep rooted feelings on both sides of the two platforms, I'd have thought just friendly rivalry, but it seems some high profile Apple fans are taking this to incredibly childish, and angry levels.

Sam Biddle on Gizmodo ran an article called “Android Is Popular Because It’s Cheap, Not Because It’s Good,” illustrated with a photo of a homeless man sleeping next to a shopping cart. Really? You stay classy Sam! You put your name to that article??

Some really poor articles aside, these 'will die for Apple' elitist fanboys are embarrassing beyond belief. Remember the really sad tweets when Instagram came to Android? (And doubled Instagram's user base BTW) It's just stunning how low these people will go.

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If you read what I write you'll know I changed a long time ago from Apple just because of this religious cultist elitism, (and the walled garden of iTunes) and frankly carry on as you are Apple elitists, you are  driving down Apple's stock price daily with this childish strop. I still have some Apple devices and they two can live together, again there is room for others in this market!

However, it seems some just will not be beat and to those Apple elitist diehards, I salute you as you continue to cling on to your 'lifejacket of bullshit'.