Yeah yeah, you’ve heard it all before, Apple this, iPad that.

Well I’ve finally decided after much wailing and gnashing of teeth that I’m going to get an iPad over an Android alternative.

Why you may ask?

Was it the apps? the OS? the platform? its capabilities?

No… believe it or not it was the keyboard that finally sold it to me. Let me give you the breakdown on why the iPad, at least in my book, is king.

1. I can damn near touch type on the iPad keyboard.

Now this might not seem like a big deal, I’m sure most people will just prod their tablets keyboard with a single digit and be eternally happy doing just that. But for me I want to be able to write on the device.

Near touch typing is almost impossible on any stock Android keyboard, and yes I know you can install multiple methods of input on an Android device, but that isn’t the issue. What is the issue with most Android keyboards for me falls to a couple of key points which are key placement and responsiveness.

I’ve tried using an Android tablet to consistently type on in a side-by-side test with an iPad and every time the results are the same… I spend more time backspacing mistakes on the Android device than I do on an iPad. As for the responsiveness of an Android devices keyboard… well plainly it sucks. Needing to double tap a key to get it to type isn’t what I call responsive, unless you are stabbing each key with a single finger then the usability is severely decreased.

So wanting to take a tablet device with me to the local coffee shop to write a little hinges on the fact that I’d like to get real work done on the device. For that to happen it must be responsive and cause as little resistance to the process as possible.

Sorry Android, so far the iPad has you trumped.

2. Content, Content, Content

Arguably this is a weak reason for me to choose an iPad, but I do find that the content available on the iPad is a little more polished, a little richer than that of current Android offerings.

Yes Android fans I’m sure you can argue the case for Android having just a rich ecosystem of applications and content available, don’t get me wrong I’ve been an Android fan and champion ever since I’ve owned an Android based phone (HTC Desire) but when it comes to tablets I’m not convinced that its worth the hype and heartache.

For me I consume a lot of different source media such as websites, magazines, periodicals, books etc etc… I find that with the iPad I can not only save myself the time and money sourcing a physical subscription to a magazine, but have access to a wider variety of magazines that I would not normally have in physical print.

‘What about Google Currents?’ you might ask… well? what about it? It has come a little too late to the game, most large magazines, trade publications and periodicals have opted to support the Apple iPad News Stand application and while a few may eventually jump the divide and support Google Currents as well, most won’t.

3. It is here, now…

Any Android fan will tell you that they have been waiting for an tablet that is ‘just right’ for them, I’m guilty of waiting for a truly superb Android tablet to wipe the floor with the iPad and crown itself supreme ruler of mobile computing.

Truth is, it just won’t happen.

Device fragmentation, already invested content developers, slow to market updates and poor user experience continue to hurt Android as a platform. Don’t take this as an ‘Android Bashing’, take this as me being fed up with the continual promises, the hype and the consistent disappointment that Android device developers have put the operating systems fan base through.

All in all I do support Android as an OS, what needs to change however is the tablet market needs to take note of the netbook market of yesteryear. Each generation of netbook machines that hit the market generally had similar if not the same specifications across the board, a 1.6 – 1.8ghz processor, 1 gb of ram and a 250 – 500gb hard drive which created a siqmilar experience across these devices.

There are things you just can’t run on a netbook device, just like a tablet, but in the tablet world it is ever more restrictive due to the nature of its primary OS.

In the Android stakes the manufactures should bite the bullet and stack their deck against the iPad by creating a ‘generational’ device market which would aim to unify the performance specifications from tablet to tablet and still allow for unique options like cameras and storage. This would then end the race to the next big thing in tablet tech, significantly lower the device fragmentation and allow app developers to develop truly amazing applications rather than fix bugs for specific devices as they do now.

The bottom line…

Sorry Android, you just aren’t quite there yet for me to accept any of your existing tablet offerings. Your phones are great, I’d be lost without my Android phone, but the tablet game isn’t currently doing you any favours.

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1. Business Time: iPad or Android?

So here I am, listening to some music on the radio and the presenter gives out the address of the band website.

I think “great I might be able to buy their album” so I go to the address, click on the buy album then lo and behold there is an Amazon link.

Now I’ve got credit in the Amazon store, so I figure to buy the mp3 album through the store… do you think I could? Being that I’m located in Australia?

No… no I couldn’t.

Now before anyone yells at me for ‘being ignorant of international copyright laws’, I’m not. That said, it is an Australian band I was listening to. An Australian band I wanted to buy the album of and an Australian band that has made their music available to purchase.

I am so sick of being chastised for not living in the US by companies that either ignore or blatently refuse to deal with the complexities of international copyright laws.

Is it so hard to add a process for international customers to easily navigate the red tape? What about allowing the music publisher to choose countries they are willing to sell their music to, thus shifting the copyright issues back to the publisher and not Amazon?

Come on… its 2012… not 1995… get with it…

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(pauses for shock and awe)

I know, sad, isn’t it just?

That said, I’m only recently single (less than 6 months) and although dating sites like the venerable eHarmony or RSVP.com.au serve a purpose they sure aren’t the kind of place that attractive nerdy women frequent…

Now let me put the brakes on right here. So ok yes, I’m sure there are plenty of kinda nerdy women screaming “HERE I AM!!!” that are all over these sites.

But I’m talking about women who enjoy going out for a drink as much as they like kicking ass at a round of Tekken or some co-op L4D zombie-a-go-go blasting… NOT the prissy, stupidly self-centred women who think they are nerdy because their last boyfriend made them sit through a Lord of the Rings Trilogy marathon or accidentally brushed their arm up against a book which happened to fall open at a particularly rousing rant by Dostoyevsky.

Where the hell are they?

Well mostly, they are all at home playing awesome games or watching some killer scifi, perhaps updating their blog or programming up a storm… that’s right fellow nerds, most of the time they aren’t out at bars or pubs or clubs, you might strike it lucky once in a while but its not the rule, its the exception.

So how do you meet these women and what is the secret to cracking their nerdy girl Da Vinci Code-esque lives?

The answer? Think like a nerdy girl would…

Go to Cons

That is right brothers, conventions are an amazing place to go to meet nerdy girls, yes they may be dressed as Zelda, Princess Mononoke or the traditional Slave-Leia but these are the fields of dreams…

Why are they a great place to meet nerdy women? well duh, first of all nerdy females tend to gravitate towards them, and secondly they are probably single due to their extreme love of <insert nerdy anime/game/book/movie here>.

Most of them are also probably just as socially awkward, if not more socially awkward than you are.

Shy, smoking hot girls who are into stupidly nerdy stuff that have massive self esteem and body image issues. Get it right and your relationship will be amazing, get it wrong and you’ll destroy her dreams forever.

Beware, thar be monsters here…

So you’ve gone to a con and found several attractive members of the opposite sex, good for you! But be warned this is dangerous territory you enter my friends, the nerdy girl can be strange, stranger than even you could fathom.

Be careful when approaching, if in the first 10 minutes of talking to her she gives you her phone number, email address, Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm and/or Tumblr url then run, just drop the conversation and RUN THE FUCK AWAY.

You’ve just met the nerdy girl equivalent of super glue.

Ever get super glue on your fingers? Dries instantly on contact and its a bitch to remove. Even if you have the right solvent it still feels weird after you attempt to clean it off.

Well this girl will be worse, trust me.

You’ve spoken to her, and for her that’s enough. It’s true love at first sight in her eyes, she’s already laser engraved your face into her brain and will have your name tattooed to her inner thigh by lunchtime. She’s the most dangerous person at the whole con, you want to identify her, make your apologies and get the hell out.

Social Media is your friend.

That’s right people, who’d have thought that social media was a good place to meet people?

Albeit it is difficult to find people of common interest on Facebook other than your friends. But that is more an observation on the structure of Facebook’s social media experience rather than the network itself.

Yup, nerdy girls use social media sites, but what I’ve found more specifically is that nerdy girls are more likely to be Twitter users than most other social networks. I’m not sure if its the 140 character limit or the nature of multiple status updates an day/hour/minute that more appealing, but if your looking for nerdy girls then do yourself a favour and get on twitter post haste!

What’s that your are saying, what about other ‘niche’ websites? *DING!* you just hit the nail on the head. Nerdy girls are also more likely to be interested in some pretty nerdy things… like pen pals, or environmentally friendly fashion, or handmade goods.

The moral of the story here is to do your research, you’ll need to dig deep to unearth the women of nerddom.

Tried that, I failed what now?

Ok, you’ve gone to a convention or two and struck out, you’ve found some nice girls online but they either friendzoned you instantly or just live too darn far away.

Here are a few other options:

• Join a freakin’ book club.
• Libraries are also a great place to find nerdy girls.
• Check out the local gaming / LAN party scene.

So what do I do now?

Well unless you are a chronic procrasturbater (and I’m sure some of you are), then get off your arse and start working on your social media profile, organise some friends to go to a con, join that book club that constantly sends you fliers…

Here are my last words of wisdom:

Go forth, live long, prosper and may the force be with you!

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Well today I’ve got some exciting news!

I’ve recently started writing a new story about an anti-gravity racer named Lexan Draal, bred to be the ultimate AG racer in the galaxy, she is virtually unbeatable on the track… but off the track its a different world.

A world of corporate blackmailing, ruthless tyrants, and money.

I’ll be releasing this story in the near future on this site and as a part of my sci-fi anthology I’m working on.

So stay tuned!

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Most people I meet are feeble, failed attempts of humanity that are not much more than squidgy bags of self-obsessed chemicals who manage to squirt an obscene amount of protein at each other in order to reproduce. 

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Anyone who’s ever had to call or attend meetings before, for any reason knows the difference between a good meeting and a bad meeting.

Often though it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic of discussion and everything to do with the attitudes and egos of the people attending. And sometimes to absolutely disastrous effects.

Think back to your last few meetings, how did they go? would they have gone better if a certain person wasn’t invited? or perhaps if a few different people were there instead?

Thus is the art of:

Not inviting people to meetings.

Meeting invites should be treated like dinner party invites, selective and with intent. Often people are not invited just because of their status, but because they can offer something to the party such as stimulating discussion or to raise the profile or tone of the meeting.

This is exactly what you should adopt when calling a meeting in your workplace.

Is there someone senior to you that will do nothing for your meeting? Then don’t bother inviting them. A colleague has a differing point of view on the topic? Then don’t invite them either.

What are the outcomes?

First of all you need to decide on the outcome of the meeting you want to achieve. It won’t always work out this way but with creative selection of people to attend then you have a much better chance that the intended outcome will be achieved.

So ask yourself, “What is the outcome I want to achieve?”

You might want to have people agree to a new arrangement, or deny a request from another department, perhaps to slow or speed up an internal or external process.

No matter what outcome, you want to ensure you have the best chance for it to naturally occur in the meeting without too much guidance, it is best if it happens of its own accord but sometimes a little prompting in the right direction is needed.

What is on your agenda?

Here is where you will carefully craft the items that you wish to speak about in the meeting you propose to others. These are incredibly important, especially if you are inviting select people to affect a specific outcome. Think about the people you want to invite and how they will read each item on your agenda but also remember to follow some simple rules when holding a meeting.

Rules of good meetings:

1. Have a clear purpose to your meeting.
2. ALWAYS stay on topic.
3. A short meeting is a good meeting.
4. Preparation, preparation, preparation.
5. Remember to include everyone.
6. Ensure the participants are available.
7. Never leave without a decision being made.

If you follow these seven rules of good meetings then you shouldn’t have any problem creating an agenda that is not only effective, but maximizes the time spent in the meeting addressing the topics you have brought to the table.

Who should you invite?

The selection of people who will attend your meeting is of course the most crucial step, it is these people that will decide the outcome of your meeting.

Before you add a person to a meeting ask yourself the following questions:

• Is this person relevant to the agenda topics?
• Will this person add to the meeting?
• Is this person agreeable or argumentative?
• Does this person often complicate things?
• Does this person raise the profile of the meeting?
• Is it appropriate this person attend?
• What is the influence this person will exert?

Once you’re able to answer these questions it should be a breeze to assemble a “dream team” for your meeting outcome to be realised.

If you want a positive outcome to help move forward with a topic then you would want a person who is relevant to the topic, generally agreeable who doesn’t complicate processes and raises the profile of the meeting.

However if you want a negative outcome then perhaps an argumentative person who does complicate processes that exerts influence over others in the meeting and also raises the meeting profile may be needed.

Know the people you work with!

The quickest way to achieve the steps outlined above is to know the people you work with. It is no good to call a meeting expecting people to behave a certain way to agree or disagree with agenda items if you don’t know them!

If you have been in your role for quite a while then you should already have a clear picture about the people around you, if not ask your fellow colleagues their opinions of your intended invitees or go for a coffee with your invitee and discuss other items (just don’t stray onto your agenda topics!).

Once you have a picture of the people you work with then you can easily qualify or disqualify people to attend your meeting.

Keep it safe, Keep it secret.

A meeting should be like a well oiled machine, all its parts working synchronously to achieve its purpose, but add too many parts and it becomes a hassle to manage efficiently.

Once you have set your agenda, selected the participants and called the meeting then don’t boast about the things you are going to achieve in the meeting lest it get back to one of the participants.

Avoid speaking about the specifics of the meeting unless approached by an invited person. This will stop other people inviting themselves and derailing your meeting so you can stick to the seven rules of a good meeting above.

It may sound suspicious to keep it secret, but it will work to your advantage to treat it on a “need to know” basis.

You are the chosen one.

Ok so you’ve followed the steps above, now you are staring down the barrel of the proverbial gun that is your meeting. What to do?

First, breathe, don’t fret about what you have just called. Don’t think negatively about the outcome. Don’t worry about the people in the room.

“But I just invited the CEO!” you might be thinking.

Yes, you might have done that, but he or she is just a person, like yourself. Don’t let another person’s position intimidate you as it will only serve to make you doubt yourself when the meeting takes place.

Be positive that the people you have invited are the best people for the outcome you need, think about achieving that goal and how to guide the conversation to the end game you want to see.

Remember, they are attending a meeting you have called. The fact that they have accepted your meeting invitation is indication enough that they are willing to give their time to hear what you have to say.

Use it wisely.

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It is 2012, social networks are the most common way for people to communicate and yet while there are clear leaders such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn there are also hundreds of other services vying for market share on the internet.

Google+ is of course the newest to the leader pack, but even it is suffering the slings and arrows of mediocrity when compared to the established networks.

So why is it failing? and why do so many fail where others succeed?

First a little history.

• 2004 – Facebook launches, limited to Harvard Students.
• mid-2004 – Facebook expands to include other university campuses.
• 2005 – A ‘High School’ version of Facebook is launched.
• 2006 – Twitter is launched limiting its users to only 140 characters per update.
• late-2006 – Facebook is opened to the public.
• 2007 – Twitter’s popularity gains ground with SXSW festival participants.
• 2008 - Twitter has 100 million tweets posted per quarter.
• late-2008 - Facebook sets up international HQ in Dublin, Ireland.
• 2009 - Twitter crash due to  Michael Jacksons death, 100,000 tweets a minute.
• late-2009 - Facebook becomes ‘cash-positive’ for the first time.
• 2010 - Twitter has 65 million tweets a day posted on average.
• 2010 - Facebook’s estimated value calculated to be $41 billion.
• 2011 - 20,000 pages are removed from Facebook per day due to security issues.
• late-2011 - Twitter rolls out its third major design change.

This of course is by no means a full and annotated history of social networks, but it does include several important milestones along the way. Both Twitter and Facebook have had their fair share of scandals and hardships placed upon them due to world events, international legislation and capacity problems, both services however have managed to keep afloat through incoming investments and several venture capital rounds.

You might at this time be wondering why I haven’t mentioned other networks like Bebo, Pownce, Identi.ca or Yammer. Well don’t fret, I’m getting to those…

With the success of the few have come the failure of the many. Plenty of niche services have started up, and even at similar times as other more successful social networks but have failed to capture user or market share, even where they may be a superior offering with better service.

So the question remains, what happens when social networks die?

So a few things happen when a social network ‘dies’, but there are so many different ways it can happen that it can be hard to keep track of what tolled the death knell for the network.

Lets take a look at Myspace as case in point. 

While Myspace is technically still around and I’m sure is still used by some people every day, it is perhaps one of the best examples of a quote unquote ‘dead social network’.

Myspace was insanely popular in its time, it was one of the first sites to merge a personal web space, photo sharing, music sharing, blogging platform and guestbook into a uniquely themed page for people to keep in contact with you.. and for a while Myspace was king.

So what happened? Why did the premier social network fail so badly?

For each social network that has failed to date the reasons for their untimely demise range from financial difficulties and legal battles through to competitive acquisition or obsolescence.

First kid on the block syndrome.

Myspace certainly suffered greatly for a variety of reasons and as they were forging new paths into the social media market. Scandals seemed to plague Myspace for years where people were stalked, suicides announced, murders plotted, social predators emerged and a whole host of other uses that the original developers had not counted on. While the majority of people who used the service remained tame and banal, there were those who sort to exploit the service for their own perverse needs.

Security? What’s that?

Another area that Myspace failed was a lack of implicit security. This is to be expected of a service that forges a path, mistakes can and will be made and can cause great detriment to a social network if they are not quickly addressed either behind the scenes or in the public eye. There were plenty of ways to view so called ‘private’ pages or photos over the years that had to be ironed out over time.

Here’s the keys don’t crash the car.

Public flexibility is also an area that caused downfall, too much user control isn’t always a good thing. When Myspace allowed the use of directly entered HTML to edit profiles it was one of the best and worst moves possible for the site. Not only did designers create amazingly clean and unique profile pages within the constraints of the Myspace system, but the general populace of the network turned to third party theme designers that often produced hideous results that resembled the early days of Geocities and Angelfire.

The use of HTML customisation also led to code and cross-site scripting exploits to run rife throughout Myspace.

Just shove another gimmick in.

Feature bloat was also another problem that was encountered, specifically gimmicky features. Instead of continuous improvement of the existing features available to users, the site was added to, only complicating the already cluttered profiles and hard to operate user settings.

Now don’t get me wrong, there also were a lot of good things that Myspace did for virtual communities across the globe. Unfortunately Myspace didn’t learn from their mistakes, but others took note and led to the rise in popularity of more constrained sites like Facebook and Twitter.

A cavalcade of imitators.

Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin… they all have their imitators. From sites that offer exactly the same feature set to niche networks that specifically cater for the needs of a subset of users.

Social networks that ‘borrow’ the features of the big boys still serve a purpose. For people who don’t want to be a part of the thronging masses present on mainstream networks the smaller more intimately focused social network may be more attractive.

The dangers for these users however are usually higher due to:

• The service may not be as security concious as bigger networks.
• Failure due to lack of funds.
• Extreme lack of administration.
• Selling to another network and integrated / decommissioned.

These factors are among the most common reasons a social network could fail.

Security is in the fore mind of most users and people have become extremely protective of their information so a site that is deemed as insecure or rife with hacking will be quickly disbanded for other alternatives.

Lack of funds may impede upgrades, force cutbacks or indeed prematurely shut down a site all together. Popular social network services are not cheap to run as costs amount quickly when considering domain registration, hosting costs, bandwidth costs, legal costs and more.

Bad administration can cause a loss of faith in a social network service as its users expect timely updates, upgrades, news about changes. If a standard of service is not met and maintained then users will leave in a heartbeat.

Selling is also often a concern, if a social network becomes popular or has popular features then it is always in the interest of the owners to sell the network for profit.

Who loses in the end?… the user.

Ultimately the user loses out when a social network dies, their friends migrate to different services and not necessarily the same services either. This can fragment an existing group or make it difficult to keep in touch with a select few.

Often a user will need to be a part of several social networks to maintain the status quo with friends or interest groups, which puts strain on the relationships already forged.

Worst of all is if the social network was initially started with a purpose.

Lets take a look at a hypothetical case. 

Lets fast forward to 6 months into the networks existence. The service has been successfully started, there are now over 1,000 users who daily talk to others who have similar thoughts and feelings on depression. The administrator announces that in the next few months there will be some changes that will allow people to use the service more freely with the release of an iPhone and Android application.

Another 6 months into the future and the word is out, the service now has 100,000 users, 20 million hits a day and has required the administrator to purchase a higher rated hosting plan to support the users.

Financially the administrator is feeling pressure as he is bearing the cost of the service by himself. He decides to add a donation button to all pages so people can help pay for the service. He also implements perks for those who donate on a regular basis, increasing overhead but hopefully also increasing funding.

12 months later, there are now 500,000 users and 50 million hits per day. The administrator loses his primary job, he posts that he may need to shut down the site for a while so he can focus on finding a new position somewhere to help pay for better hosting to support the site. The community rallies behind the admin and helps pay the operating costs, understanding that there will be no major changes to the service in the mean time.

6 months later the administrator suffers another bout of depression due to his inability to find a new job and decides to either stop running the site or to hand it over to another competent administrator to operate.

Ultimately no one comes forward to administer the site.

The site exists for a while with no administrator mainly moderated by some of the more faithful users, but eventually the donations slow and the web host cancels the account for lack of payment removing all existence of the network, its users and any shared information.

The users are now at a loss, they have no direct alternative to the site, the few people who can still contact each other either through other social networks or websites are now fragmented across different services.

Those people who do not have connections to other people from the site may feel left out, they now have nowhere talk to others who could understand the position they are in and also could fall back into depression or worse.

Obviously this is just a hypothetical circumstance, but it does raise certain concerns where a social network may become quickly popular beyond its initial boundaries and be shut down due to a single point of failure.

Have you ever been a part of a social network that has shut down or had become obsolete?

Put your story into the comments, would love to hear them.

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With the rumour mills firing up to full capacity about the next iPad and its specifications, the time has come to ask the question: Will I buy a tablet?

I personally don’t have a tablet device, I’ve never really needed one for home having both a netbook and desktop machine. Recently though I’ve been toying of the idea of using one for work.

What I’d want to do with a tablet for work:

• Take notes in meetings
• Record meetings (audio)
• Access previous meeting notes
• Access WiFi in meetings
• Create or Access documents in meetings

What I’d like to do with a tablet for home:

• Browse the internet
• Write on-the-go blog posts
• Play games
• Stream movies from network drive

The software I use every day like Dropbox and Evernote and Google Docs are supported on most devices these days so transferring from an Android or Apple device would be easy.

One thing I can see that may be a slight hitch in this plan is that I own an Kindle Keyboard. Now this doesn’t seem like too big a deal, but I do love my Kindle to death so moving to either Kindle for iPad or Kindle for Android may be either an enhanced experience or a degraded experience depending on the circumstances.

In any case I’ll still be keeping my Kindle Keyboard as it is the best travel companion one could ask for, other than some good human company of course!

So here lies the dilemma, jump now? or wait till the next Apple iPad is released?

Decisions, Decisions…

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