Written By Stevie - 1 year, 1 month ago add comment
It's just been announced that the popular photo sharing service Instagram has been bought by Facebook for $1 billion. Yep that's right one billion dollars!
This has been happening a lot lately, small companies that offer a great service, get bought out by the bigger players in the industry just because they are worried by a bit of competition. Another recent example is the draw something creators, omgpop, being bought by Zynga.
From what I've read so far, it looks like Facebook will leave the standalone Instagram app alone, and work on integrating it's features with Facebook photos. However I'm willing to bet that the app will slowly get more Facebooky and i'm worried that this will mean it gets more crap. Instagram is great service/app and Facebook would be stupid to mess with it. The old saying "if it aint broke don't fix it" comes to mind.
I don't think anything will change straight away, but I guess only time will tell what Facebook plans are.
At the end of the day, if your offered 1 billion dollars (twice the estimated market value of Instagram) your going to take it, I know I would.
I just don't want the internet to be owned by these big companies, competition is healthy and its what creates innovation.
Written By Stevie - 1 year, 1 month ago add comment
YouTube has been around for years now, when it first started it was a place for the average user to upload a video they had recorded. For the most part early YouTube videos were uploaded "as is", no editing no production. It was more of a fascination that you could put your videos online not how good you can make them.
As the popularity of YouTube increased the quality of the videos increased as well, and with the addition of adverts users could actually make money. Over the last couple of years this has led to a massive increase in the number of "professional" filmmakers producing good quality content on a regular basis. Perhaps the term "professional" is not the best word to use because a lot of the users have self taught themselves how to produce and edit good video content rather than being professional filmmakers.
YouTube for some people is not a hobby anymore, it's a job. They produce multiple videos a day and have a large enough subscriber fan base to produce enough income to live on.
The quality and quality of videos produced by a small group of these users has taken a huge jump in professionalism over the past year. Hat Films and the Yogscast being the 2 I watch most often. Technically speaking Hat Films are professionals so perhaps they don't belong in this blog, but the work they produce is so good they cannot go unmentioned. They plan out a whole series of videos, 98% of which are based around Minecraft. The production levels in their videos are immense, multiple camera angles, cutscenes, CGI, after effects, music, the lot. It takes days if not weeks to produce one episode. Their latest project "Origins" is set to raise the bar even higher and if the preview is anything to go by we will not be disappointed.
Written By Stevie - 1 year 10 months ago comments:(1)
Unless you have been hiding under a rock the past week you should know that Google launched Google+ in their continued fight against Facebook.
I managed to get myself an invite and have been using it for a few days days now. The short version of this blog is, I love Google+. It's clean, its nice to look at, it's easy to use and most of all it's fresh.
Any Facebook user will know that over the past couple of years it's become full of ads, complicated privacy controls and a time line full mostly of stuff you couldn't care less about.
Google+ is a breath of fresh air, you can create "circles" of people, friends, work colleagues etc, your privacy is then based upon that. You can easily decide which circles see your status updates and which don't, this is done per post so its great if you want to say something you don't want a certain circle to see.....
Written By Stevie - 2 years 2 months ago add comment
So it's been a week since i rejoined Twitter and although it still feels a bit odd I'm glad to be back.
I'm glad i rejoined just in time to see the @CharlieSheen meltdown, which is all pretty funny to be honest! I saw today that Comedy Central are playing two and a half men all weekend, so that will be repeats we have already seen more than a million timess!
I've been trying to remember who i used to follow and i can see that a few people have either left or changed their username in the time since I've let. I know that a few people have definitely left. I can't complain though because i did the same thing.
So yeah thanks for people for following me again! ....
Written By Stevie - 2 years 2 months ago comments:(1)
Where do i start? Well I'm back on Twitter.
Most of you are probably asking why, since my departure was pretty much certain.
There are a few reasons.
1. I had made a lot of good friends on twitter, and it was an easy way to communicate with them on there and when i left i didn't really realise how many of them i "cut off" so to speak. Although it remains to be see how many i will talk to this time around.
2. Twitter became a much easier place to get help from various companies. Vodafone for example are much more helpful on twitter, and with my recent phone troubles i really missed not being able to contact them via Twitter. My phone problems are still ongoing despite my previous blog, so hopefully they can help me out.
3. Everything gets posted on twitter these days, and if im not on there i cant see it! this was frustrating at times!. ....
Written By Stevie - 2 years 3 months ago add comment
By here i mean this site.
As some people may be aware using Google Analytics you can track how people get to your website or blog. This includes what they typed into Google. For example if you type in "Gavin & Stacey" then click to visit my site I can tell that's how you got here.
I've just looked at my web stats and there are a few search terms people have entered and ended up here and I feel I should answer them. (The Google searches are written as is don't have a go at my grammar )
1. Welsh girls are great
A. Yes they are!
2. Famous Gavin & Stacey sayings
A. Oh what's occurring
3. What are welsh like
A. They're great
4. Apple store bluewater.
A. Yes there's an Apple store at Bluewater
Written By Stevie - 2 years 4 months ago add comment
Back when i first experienced the Internet, 14 years ago (ish) it was very different from what it is today.
Firstly all we had was dialup, you had to sit there for ages waiting for it to dial whist it made the worst sounds ever, thats wrong, delivering a letter by hand was quicker than sending an email back in those days. If any web page had more than 1 image on it you may as well go and make a cup of tea. Needless to say it was very slow, and to top it off, you were cut off every 2 hours if not before and had to reconnect. Oh and you were charged per minute!
Eventually, free after 6pm or at weekends plans were introduced and then free anytime! This made it a tiny bit more bearable but it was still slower than a sleepy snail!
11 years ago my local exchange was upgraded to ADSL or broadband is most people knew it! Now i had 512Kbs to play with! Wow it was fast, and you could pass the 2 hour mark without getting cut off! ....
Written By Stevie - 2 years 4 months ago add comment
So once again, I'm behind the times! This seems to be happening a lot recently.
Tumblr has been around for years, and a week ago i finally signed up for it. Now either, I'm was never missing anything or i am yet to understand it's purpose!
I know Tumblr is not meant to be a full blog site, and it's not Twitter, so what is it? From what i have seen so far it just looks like a lot of re-blogs, and not much else!
Most of those reposts are just images, but i dont get the urge just to re-blog them all.
Written By Stevie - 2 years 4 months ago add comment
So where do i start? I'm not sure really.
I joined Twitter back in July 2008, when i first started, i didn't understand it and didn't use it to start with. A couple of months later i tried to get into it by doing a few tweets a week. After 6 months though i was addicted, i loved it, it was quick and simple and i found myself updating it all the time.
Over the last 2 and a half years and 32,000 tweets later i have met a lot of good friends, but unfortunately with every community there are a fair share of twats to. It's that minority that has ruined it for me. It's amazing how when someone can change the second they become "anonymous" on a site like formspring. As soon as they know their identity is secret they say bad, horrible things. I hate people being anonymous as being rude and unkind is the only thing people use it for. ....
....
)