This is the first post on a series about challenges for the future internet and new media industries. Think of it as a todo list for web entrepreneurs - problems which need to be solved. Maybe Jason Calacanis could help himself to an idea!

We live in a widely heralded age of new media; anyone can put out a podcast, video or music track on the internet, and make it available to whoever wants it for next to no money, and in many cases hardly any time. Everyone’s doing it as well, right from Oratos with the Gizbuzz Podcast and PodDev to the BBC with From Our Own Correspondent and many other programmes.

What Oratos and the BBC have in common with regards to our publishing of rich media is that we both lack any tools to tell us any meaningful analytics concerning our publications. It is easy to find out how many times a file has been downloaded from your server from your logs. You can do an IP lookup and find out where any given downloader downloaded it from. But that’s about where the definite information ends. (more…)

Smarthouse is reporting that allegedly, Apple are working on a tablet-based Mac which will serve as a platform for applications specifically designed to exploit the tablet format (like home automation software that controls lighting etc). The article also mentions that it’s rumoured that it would also function as a fully-fledged computer, but that’s not so clear. Especially with Apple looking more towards embedded devices (think iTV), it’s not clear whether this would be a functioning ‘computer’ or not (if it ever does come to fruition).

Apple’s normal strategy is not to try and face the dominant product head on, but to take a slightly different angle at the target market (in their recent ads, aiming consumer Macs squarely at the home market, for example, citing they’re better for “life stuff”). If the buzz about this integrating with other Apple devices, like the iTV perhaps, is true then this would seem fairly credible.

In fact, this trend of Apple going for embedded devices and consumer electronics (the iPhone, the iTV) seems to be an attempt by Apple to move from being an obscure computer company in the eyes of the public to a household name in electronics (but no so much mainstream computing). The iPod drove that movement and Apple are apparently now capitalising further on the consumer electronics market.

If I were sceptical, I would say that Apple have realised they may well have lost the battle for personal computers and are aiming in other directions.

[via OSNews]

This is a really good interview, even if we say so ourselves! Peter and I interviewed Jen Mazzon and Sam Schillace, both formerly of Writely, and now part of the Google Docs and Spreadsheets team since Writely was acquired by Google and integrated with their Spreadsheets product. We’ve previously written lots about Writely and subsequently Docs and Spreadsheets, and its a really interesting product.

In the podcast we talk about:

• who uses rich web applications, and who should be using them,
• what their future is,
• whether AJAX is sufficient as a technology for building web apps, and if there is an alternative,
• online office integration,
• the challenges of building web applications for different browsers, and whether it is getting better.

The interview will appeal to you whether you’re just starting to understand what rich web applications are or whether you’re a hardened user of RWAs. If you like this, you might also be interested in our interview with the Chief Architect of Zoho, a competitor with Google in this field, last August.

More great interviews coming, so: Subscribe to the Gizbuzz Podcast
For a quick fix: Download the podcast directly

Enjoy!

The Office User Interface blog is reporting that Microsoft will be offering to licence their new ‘ribbon’ user interface design to third party developers to use in their applications.

It’s free, provided you accept their licence, and that you’re not making a product that competes with any of the Office apps.

It’s an interesting move, as clearly Microsoft do want to push forward this UI change for the future. My personal view on the new Office ribbon UI (which contrasts with Huw’s views) is that it looks terribly inconsistent with the rest of Vista. In fact, to me, Vista looks horribly inconsistent, with some apps having menus, some not… but that’s a different story. What this hopefully will mean will be that in the future we’ll start seeing more consistency among all Windows apps, whether MS or third party.

Unfortunately, it seems Microsoft’s site is experiencing a few problems and I can’t at the moment read the licence terms (I’m also not a lawyer, so it probably wouldn’t be very easy to read).

[via Slashdot]

Hot on the heels of all the other gadget and console releases we’ve seen recently, Nintendo have now launched their next-generation console, the Wii, in the US.

Like the PS3, it’s already sold out, so if you’re one of the people who has got one, consider yourself lucky. Unlike the PS3, however, we haven’t seen the crazy reports of violence, but the waiting lines have still been long.

Let the console wars begin!

I reviewed project management system Teamwork Live a little while ago on Gizbuzz. It didn’t get a good review; despite an excellent, possibly best in class feature set, the UI was a usability disaster. At the time, I said:

Despite this [good feature set], I did not like Teamwork Live, for one simple reason. It suffers from appalling UI design. When using it, I had the feeling that it was created by some fantastic developers able to execute complex features, but that no designers had been involved at any stage. The whole system almost always behaves counter-intuitively, without any obvious reason for doing so. 

Tuyen, the founder of Teamwork Live got in contact, and I have since done some consulting for them [proceed with caution!], laying out specific problems and putting forward ideas for how they could improve. Last week they launched a new version, which is significantly better. I would describe the UI as now neutral (this is a good place to be): it allows intuitive access to all the features, it makes good use of space and does not hinder the user in any way. In my last review I complained that I wasn’t aware of what was contained in each tab. TWL have managed to cut the number of tabs down from 7 to 5, each tab with a meaningful name, making it obvious what each one does. If that isn’t enough, a simple mouse over will display all of the sub-items of that tab.

TWL takes a dual approach to project management; personal and team. Each user has a Personal Workspace and a Team Workspace. I have found that this works nicely, as it makes sense to organise both areas using the same tool, from the point of view of integration. As far as I know this is unique; whilst Zoho have both Planner and Projects, the two do not integrate. This innovative approach, combined with the robust feature set make Teamwork Live an increasingly sensible choice of Project Management Suite.

[note I also have also been given a free premium account on Teamwork Live]

It is the season to launch gadgets, apparently, and just after the Zune announcement a few days ago, Ars Technica is reporting that Sony have debuted their PlayStation 3 console in the US.

At the moment, it’s still very difficult to get hold of the console, and only the early adopters (read: hardcore gamers) that have pre-ordered are easily able to get themselves a console.

But what this means is that the next-gen console fight is now truly on, with Microsoft and Sony battling it out and Nintendo to be joining soon.

Microsoft’s ‘iPod killer’, the Zune, was officially launched in the US yesterday and the media, both conventional and new, are documenting the event.

The BBC have an article on the new player and a quick round-up, while Engadget have unboxing photos and videos of the new media player.

This site also has a brief look at the first impressions of the Zune experience and you can see the official Zune website from Microsoft here.

Unfortunately, it looks like for UK gadget lovers, the Zune will not be arriving until at least next year.

Big in Japan, the company behind social media tools, aimed at ‘prosumers’, such as FeedVault, PodServe, FrankenFeed, elfURL, InstantFeed, QwikPing and SocialMail, have announced that they will be releasing the source code to all their services under the GPL license, other than PodServe (and presumably Fancast, as that is aimed at the enterprise). They will also maintain the hosted version. The reason they have given is that in order to remain relevant the tools need a lot of work, but they are too busy working with paying clients (they also advise corporations on how to ‘do’ social media) to spend that time. (more…)

Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft are starting to roll out Internet Explorer 7 automatically to Windows XP machines via Windows Update.

This means that all machines currently running IE6 that have the default update behaviour of ‘automatically download and install updates’ will automatically download IE7 as a high priority update. It’s a major new release, but I would argue it’s not ‘high priority’ if it’s not a security fix.

They’re currently rolling it out slowly to different target user groups, as they’re apparently not trying to overwhelm IT departments with upgrades. Also it’s worth mentioning that users will be prompted whether they want to go through with the install after the automatic download.

Remember - you can always upgrade manually at Microsoft’s site, but also remember that upgrading in any form requires Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Validation. Enjoy.