Image courtesy apple.com

Capes, masks and laserbeam-projecting eyes. Super strength, shape-shifting and characters from throughout history and the future. All this and more exists within the Marvel Multiverse. Yes, you read correctly… multiverse. How could all of this fit into one small device? Believe it or not, the tech geniuses at Marvel Comics have managed to cram all of this and more into the pocket-sized device that is the Apple iPhone.

The new Marvel Comics iPhone app arrived in the iPhone app store in early April of this year. The app allows users to download free and paid (approximately $1.99) comics for reading and archiving on their iPhone. Zooming, rotation and easy navigation between panels are just some of the features that make the comic reading experience on iPhone truly unique. The app was also released for the iPad, which boasts a significantly larger screen than the iPhone, more than likely better suited to eBook and comic book reading.

You see? The iPhone screen is too small for reading!

Incorrect. I thought this as well when I first looked at the Marvel Comics app. The screen is the perfect size for reading comics on the go. Any panels that are really wide can be read by rotating the screen horizontally. I find that I rarely have to zoom in on a panel to read the speech bubbles. While it may not be the same as holding pages in both hands, or the smell of a new comic, the experience within the stories is the same, in my opinion.

Okay, so where’s the catch?

At this point, digital comics purchased on Marvel.com are not synchronised with the app. Thus, a user would have to re-purchase any comics they would like to read on the app. I believe this synchronisation feature is in the pipeline and, plus, it doesn’t really concern me, as I don’t have a digital comics subscription with Marvel. The free comics available through the app are excellent reads and enough to keep one entertained and to afford the user the opportunity of deciding whether or not they like the app through actually experiencing it, instead of forcing the user to purchase comics from the outset, limiting the user’s potential experience within the app.

If you have an iPhone or iPad, I’d definitely recommend getting the Marvel Comics app for it. Give it a whirl and let me know your thoughts.

P.S I’d recommend starting off reading the New Avengers #1 and #2. Both are free within the app at the time of writing this.

The “Foursquare everywhere” service allows users to specify their current city via a text box instead of a dropdown selection menu of available cities. When logged in, however, it is displayed as “elsewhere”. Some form of moderated city addition would be really beneficial here, in my opinion. There are definite pro’s and con’s to the choice of retaining exclusivity within Foursquare. It is due to this choice, I believe, that many potential Foursquare users have chosen Gowalla, which has no restriction of exclusivity on their service and allows check-ins at any point as well as point creation, stamps for checking in, pins for accomplishments and various other features similar to those of Foursquare.

Over the last few years, each year or two has seemed to have had a “buzz word”. The last year or so was Twitter, the concept of tweeting and how it all worked and integrated into the average internet user’s daily online life. Before that was the Facebook craze, people finding old friends from their school days and joining groups about going out on the weekend, discussing popular topics of the moment or how much they love kittens. These trends don’t seem to fade away, but rather seem to overlap in a way, retaining their status while the next big one rises to the fore.

I see 2010 as the “year of the check in”. People will use services like Foursquare, Gowalla and any other services that arise from this growing trend, to share their experiences, find new places, meet people who share common interests and, essentially, as another tool in their social networking tool belt. Geo-tagging of images and tweets, Google Maps extensions for Flickr, Tumblr and WordPress.com exist. This (although having been around for some time now) seems to be the logical next step.

“New! Lists. A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts. (BETA)

Lists are timelines you build yourself, consisting of friends, family, co-workers, sports teams, you name it. You’re part of a small group receiving this feature, so don’t tweet about it yet!”

This looks like it will be quite an interesting feature to work with. It can also allow Twitter users to follow conversations between various groups of people as well as to create an interesting list (for example, South African bands on Twitter) and to share that list with others who may find it of interest (by the way, check out my first Twitter list).

Twitter lists can, in a way, be thought of as similar to groups on other social platforms. They allow users to follow tweets by a group of users with a single click.

I look forward to seeing this feature rolled out fully and to see how it gets used by the Twitter community.

The other day, my mom discovered blogs. This got me thinking; how many people discover blogs and blogging for the first time every day?

I had one or two things to sort out with the phone when I got it. I’ll write another post listing those and how I resolved them.

P.S Written on my iPhone.

Internet users of today are part-taking in a social web, connecting and interacting with other internet users on a global scale. This has caused users to want to write more frequently, letting others know what they are up to via status updates on various social networks. In addition to writing more frequently, users seem to be writing less in many respects. Shorter snippets of content, designed to communicate in as simple a way as possible (140 characters, as a popular example) the message that they are wishing to share. Due to this shortened nature of content, users are also sharing more photographs and content of different types, enabling the same level of communication through an alternate medium.

In addition to the above, various features are become more common-place on social networks, such as a stream of updates by users to which you are connected, as well as status updates and connecting with other users in the first place.

Enter Tumblr.

Tumblr, as mentioned above, enables users to share information of various content types with other users. Reblogging (similar to retweeting on Twitter), a content stream of posts by friends and a custom page theme are all built-in features. Users are able to setup a free Tumblr blog (hosted by Tumblr as well), which can be up and running in under 10 minutes. Tumblr posts can also easily be shared via Twitter at the click of a button.

With new features and updates to the system released on a regular basis, Tumblr is also showing signs of progression.

From a developer’s perspective, the Tumblr API is clean and easy to understand. This enables the reading, writing, updating and general management of one’s Tumblr blog from an outside resource, such as your WordPress blog.

Therefore, in conclusion, if you want to write and don’t need a huge blog (or don’t know how/want to go through the process of setting one up), get yourself a Tumblr blog. After all, it’s the next big thing.

Here’s mine. What does your Wordle look like?

To briefly explain “www.”, it is what is refered to as a subdomain on the domain you are visiting. It has become the accepted convention for “www.matty.co.za” and “matty.co.za” to point to the same website. In theory, however, “www.matty.co.za”, “matty.co.za” and “musicrocks.matty.co.za” could all point to different websites entirely.

Knowing this, I ask; How often do you type “www.” or “http://” in your web browser?

I don’t think typing “www.” will ever truly phase out and become non-existant. I do believe that website owners will become more aware of the website without “www.” and will make sure their website works without a subdomain as well as with the “www.”.

What are your thoughts on this?

Does this make for a good CMS?

Yes and no, in my opinion. On the one hand, it affords a wider audience the opportunity to create a customised CMS that allows for more streamlined updating of content. On the other hand, however, would this cause an effective “end” to programming on the web?

I believe a good CMS is one that achieves balance. The ability for users to be able to create custom content types with ease (possibly point-and-click) as well as all the essential core elements (content hierarchy, user management and authentication, etc) being taken care of. In addition to this, the ability to allow developers to hook in their own custom-written code, without having to code the core elements every time they need a new CMS for a project.

I believe the above approach is a step towards truly enabling developers. By “enabling”, I mean allowing developers to focus on the bits of code that make their projects awesome, to learn and excel at what they do.

That’s my thought for the day. What do you guys think?

Perch is lightweight and easy to install and integrate into any website– new or existing. It allows the administrator to create custom content types (eg: one for pages and another for a single block on the website’s homepage) as well as providing a clean, customisable and easy to use system for the client user to work with. 

Perch retails at 35 Pounds per license. This looks like a potentially strong contender in the CMS market, despite it’s youth. I’d be keen to see a working demo version on their website. The video is quite explanatory, although there’s nothing quite like browsing through a CMS yourself on a demo version.