American Airline A300, With WiFi Please

In what will now become a great tradition, well okay this is only the second year, I hereby list my top three (not too much to ask right?) digital ideals that I would like realised and wrapped in a pretty bow fro Christmas 2009:

1. OpenScrobble: I appear to have a bewilderingly large number of media sources in my life. Last.fm for work, an iPhone when I’m on the move and Boxee/FrontRow/iTunes at home, I’m also soon to be investing in an AppleTV for my telly-box. I love the way boxee has a social element and I love the way my iPhone scrobbles back to last.fm but I want it for all my media players. Thusly I propose ‘OpenScrobble’ an open standard for sending, storing and receiving media player information inc. plays, rating etc.
2. Decentralised Social Networks: This one is a rollover from 2008 and I’ll continue to blab about the user id/password anti-pattern and the annoyances behind walled-garden approaches (without sounding too much like @psd. This is particularly interesting when combined with Christmas want no. one.
3. Wireless skies: I know American Airlines are already trialing this with mobile phones but I beleive there is no reason why a fat 3G pipe cannot be carried from the plane along an ethernet to each seat on the craft. I think I speak for all digiphiles when I say the most irritating thing about a long haul flight is that you must consider your entertainment options long before you board. Come to think about it I’d be happy if all airports themselves had WiFi too a la Bratislava, Slovakia.

And that’s it… lets wait and see what Santa’s Elves can do!

AppleTV, you know you can't resist!

Way back when I forst started blogging (January 2008) I wrote a post called ‘All I Want (For Christmas)’ where I outlined a few desires for the end of the year, to sum it up I wanted:

• On demand television that works
• Decentralised social networking
• No more Mickey Mouse Wifi services

So did I get what I want? Well, sort of. Firstly on demand television; Virgin, Sky and BT all offer these services from their own libraries but for me there are now two contenders that are really starting to make some headway. The iTunes has finally brought DVD Rental to the UK which pleases me but more importantly a XMCC based Boxee has emerged to become an all singing, all dancing, all platform multi-media centre. Based on the Xbox Media Control Centre (for hacked first gen XBoxes) Boxee incorporates the usual local netoworked media but also fires out to popoular social media packages such as last.fm, vimeo, YouTube etc. It also comes with a rich social layer of recommendaions and watch lists enabling you to check out what your friends are watching or listening to and reccommend something they might like. Best yet, it works as a menu item on an AppleTV! I’m off to the shops…

Secondly, decentralised social networking; what a downer… Facebook is still at large with it’s password antipattern and numerous annoying applications. However there have been a few gleaming lights this year namely in the shape of Twitter, possibly the most talked about application of 2008, since it looked sure-fire to go under at the start of the year. Using Twitter as a ‘data on-ramp’ (Courtesy of JayFresh) I use services such as Dopplr to publish my location, travel plans and numerous hints on life… I’m loving it.

Finally proper WiFi… this one is a bit of a misnomer since 3G was around last year, however this year it’s really taken off. Laptops are coming packed with an unlocked 3G SIM deep inside (Toshiba are doing this) and if you haven’t got one of those then a USB dongle can provide the rest. It would appear that there is no need to free up the Analog spectrum for WiFi, but it would have been a good corporate ploy for any telecommunications firm with no mobile arm *cough*.

So, with the year firmly behind us what do I want for Christmas 2009!?

The best part of Chrsitmas... honestly

So, I wrote this post once on IE at work and, well, I’m never going to post from work again, else this little bit wouldn’t be here. So it begins. In light of Jon Lister posting his Christmas 2008 desires over here I thought I’d follow suit… I dunno, seemed like a good idea at the time. Here goes, oh and don’t worry, Im not as complex as Jay:

• Firstly I’d like to see an on-demand television service that works. I value my time and often miss things because I refuse to have my habits dictated by a snotty BBC scheduling executive. The recent AppleTV upgrade in the US has interested me. If only they could arrange a rental contract for the rest of the world.
• Secondly, and in full awareness that I’m following Jon Lister very closely on this, is that I’d like to see decentralised social networking come unstuck. However I think Jay missed a bit here. The way I see it, in order to have a successful, open social networking platform you need three things; an open identity management system, standardisation of the interfaces between open social platforms and (potentially) computer friendly semantics. Now I realise that, in order to keep a social network alive you need to include your users, but this is a Christmas list, and who ever got what they really wanted when they were ten? I sure as well didn’t get ‘Blossom’ to stay at a sleep over now, did I?
• Finally, and most importantly, I’d like to see WiFi take off. I’m sick of all this Mickey Mouse WiFi hotspot madness. I think I must hop in and out of about ten networks on my way to work. I hear WiMax making big noises over in there garden but, there are a few physical barriers to be overcome, for instance concrete. I could be very boring on this subject for a very long time so I’ll leave it at that. All I’ll say for now is this; Analog television spectrum up for auction next month… interesting?

So that’s it really, three things, can’t be hard can it? It’s not like I’m asking for a solution to the P=NP? problem am I?