Skype, the online telephone and instant messaging app, has bought the GroupMe messaging app in order to compete in the mobile group messaging space.

GroupMe lets users share texts, photos and locations in private groups. It won the ‘Breakout award’ at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive awards.  The conference is a major event in the tech industry and a reliable indicator of its trends.

Skype is rumoured to have bought GroupMe for US$80m (£48.5m). The start-up, which is based in New York, sees 100 million messages a month sent through its platform.

Group messaging is seen to be the next hot trend in social media, with Facebook, Apple and Google all launching their own versions. All of the social media platforms are competing with BlackBerry, whose BBM messaging service is hugely popular, especially with 16-24 year olds.

Tony Bates, chief executive of Skype, said: “We think the mobile group messaging space is very important. It means furthering the breaking down of barriers to global communications.”
Skype itself may be bought out in the near future. In May of this year, Microsoft signed a deal to acquire it for US$8.5bn (£5bn). This is subject to approval by the European Commission before the deal can close. It has already been approved by the US Federal Trade Commission.

Adobe has unveiled its new web design programme.

Muse allows graphic designers to create and publish websites without having to write code or work within restrictive templates.

The programme uses web standards including HTML 5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Its beta version is currently available as a free preview from the Adobe website and then a full version will go on sale in early 2012.

It is targeted primarily at designers and artists who are used to working with print, enabling them to work online without having to learn code. As such, Muse is built on a process that is very similar to InDesign, one of the most popular graphic design programmes on the market.

The programme provides a full set of pre-coded widgets for creating interactive site elements, allowing designers to create effects such as lightboxes and navigation menus. It automatically generates all HTML, CSS and scripting for the design and allows users to publish from within the programme.

In a further bid to make the programme as easy to use as possible, Muse also offers sitemaps, master pages and flexible tools. It also allows users to embed code from sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Google Maps: “Muse was built with the print designer in mind. It allows designers who are not coders to create unique, professional websites as easily as producing a layout in InDesign.

“This is an end-to-end solution with interactive elements like slideshows, tool tips, remote rollovers and lightboxes. It allows the designer to do things that only a hand-coder could do.”

Google has launched a new service designed to improve website loading times by up to 60%.

Page Speed Service is the latest addition to Google’s product portfolio. It is aimed at webmasters hoping to improve their page loading times.

The service works by fetching websites through Google’s service. It then automatically rewrites them using web performance best practice before running them back through Google’s servers to the end user.

The result is a massive reduction in page loading times – something that can make the difference between people staying on your page or leaving because it is taking too long to load.

Google says that it improved website loading speeds by 25 to 60% during its testing phase. It also offers an online test facility to give people an idea of the rate of improvement that they can expect should they use the service.

Experts say that the service is basically a web hosting facility that can work as an effective backup to your own web hosting provision.

The service is running for free for a limited period of time only. Webmasters interested in the service need to sign up as soon as possible in order to benefit from the cost-free phase.

Google has not revealed its cost plans yet, but has stated that the service will be “competitive”.

Think about these, discuss them with colleagues, or write your thoughts and answers in comments…

 1. What will the “essential function” be that transforms QR codes from a nice idea into something most people use every day?

 2. Will newspaper paywalls succeed or eventually be dismantled and regarded as a failure?

 3. What will social media look like 5 years from now? Will Facebook,Twitter and Google+ still exist? Who’ll be biggest? How will they have changed?

 4. Tell me about one Tweet that sticks in your mind.

 5. Am I right to be slightly reluctant about putting everything “in the cloud”?

A visit to my in-laws for Sunday lunch yesterday afternoon culminated in the obligatory look through my father in laws’ photos on his Apple TV.

He’s got it plugged into the  big telly in the living room and played his favourite classical music while the slide show worked its way through years of pictures carefully digitised and stored on his Apple iMac in the study upstairs. The most recent pictures had all been taken in the RAW format and when I looked at the sheer number of pictures along with the massive list of songs available through his Apple TV a question occurred to me.

“How much storage does your iMac have?” I asked. “A terabyte”, he replied.

Suddenly I was transported back to the 3rd year Standard Grade Computing Studies class at school. The teacher was expaining storage. He ran through Bits, Bytes, Kilobytes and Megabytes, and when he got to a thousand Megabytes he said “We would call that a Gigabyte but we’ll never have to worry about them.”

It was 1993 and the rest is history.

Then last night I was reading the new Stuff magazine and their feature on Cloud Computing where of course storage is unlimited and in theory ALL  our music, pictures, newspaper articles can be stored forever and accessed at any time, wherever we are, without taking up any space in the physical world.

And then it hit me. Fast forward 40 years from now (hopefully more) when I’m ready to leave this wonderful world. And I hand over to my children and grandchildren the password for my DropBox account.

Then, they’d be able to access every photo I’ve taken, every piece of music I’ve listened to, everything I’ve written, everything I’ve read; in short, the entire digital input and output of my life from now on.

Imagine we’d had that information about our grandparents, many of whom lived at a time when a colour photograph was seen as a precious commodity. How much more would we know about how they lived, their personalities and what went on? And how much richer will our interactions with our own grandchildren be if they’re able to access what made us tick when we were in our prime instead of trying to work us out from hazy memories and what we feel able to share with them.

Will we all live forever in The Cloud?

Hey folks, it’s Thea here again, ruminating about last Friday. You see, our designer Paul and I attended the rather erroneously-named Highland Fling 2011 Web Conference in Edinburgh! (Now, I know I’m only an American, so my geography can be a little patchy, but since when is Edinburgh considered the Highlands?)

I digress…It was an all day event, with an audience of more than a hundred attendees listening to half a dozen speakers from England, Scotland and a fellow American, too.

There we’re half a dozen talks on Content Management Systems (CMS), HTML5, the Apple Look, Accessibility and even a talk on Why Simple Isn’t. (NOTE: Link to slide presentations that I could find at the bottom of the page).

There were all types of people in the room, from designers and developers, to project managers and company directors – all with one thing in common an interest in Web Development.

I started building websites back in 1995, teaching myself HTML in notepad, moving on to tools like Dreamweaver and later CMSs such as WordPress (or our very on NSBuilder).

Over the last twelve years, I’ve worked for some of the top Web Development companies in Scotland, in a variety of roles, and one thing I’ve learned is how universal the communication challenges are in Web Development.

These “challenges” can be both internal (say, between designers and programmers) and external (for instance between company and client). OY! and don’t even get me started on the challenges of designing for clients with committees! (See Gary’s piece for .Net magazine on that subject!)

I suspect anyone who works in Web Development can relate to my assertions…

(<< – - Example from Remy Sharp’s talk of a challenging design to program.)

OVER THE WALL

One of the internal challenges is that programmers often work separate from the designers, and as was described at the Fling, the designs simply flung “over the wall” to the programmer – who then is forced to find a way to make the designs work from a functionality, back end sort of way. This can be problematic (particularly in larger organisations) as illustrated in the picture above. An example of a  busy (cluttered), high-tech, design that was passed over a programmer to code (in this case Remy Sharp, I believe) – presenting him with a nearly-impossible feat.

A way of bridging this gap might be for the designer and programmer to spend a little time, before the project has even begun, discussing the site’s functionality and frameworks. This, would likely, cut down in frustration and hair pulling as the “build” begins.

Incidentally – just because someone is an artist or even a good graphic designer, doesn’t mean they will be competent or even understand how to best design for the Web. (Thankfully our designers are good at all types of design work – print and web and everything else).

So again – a little time discussing the project before the build – might have save a lot of time (and money!) in the long run. (Note: If work is being done separately and remotely then Gmail chat or Skype video calls could be a solution for the two sides to “speak”).

In a firms such as ours, it helps we have no walls separating us, and we’re all able to work side-by-side, discussing any issues as they arise.

CLIENT AND COMPANY

Communication hiccups can also be common between the web development company and the client. Each side needs to be succinct regarding the scope of the project. It’s the client’s responsibility to have a clean, concise, technical scope (a lesson I’m still learning myself!), and it’s the company’s to work out whether that scope is logistic.

The issue here often is the fact that a technical scope is beyond the capabilities of a vast majority of clients. Most won’t have any idea how to write up a technical scope of what the site should be, or look like, etc. They tend to have rough ideas, at best.

The more a client articulate what the site needs to do, suggestions on how it does it, and the end goals, the better it will be for the programmers to help define how this can be done from a technical standpoint.

With regards to the design, if the client can provide a list of sites, that they do and don’t like, then it’s the far more likely the first draft designs will hit, or at least be closer to, the mark.

Both sides can often be guilty of expecting the other to be a mind reader and most of us aren’t psychic in that respect. So if you’re a client having your website developed, provide as much information as you possibly can.

WEB DEVELOPMENT IS LIKE A RARE ART FORM

In my career, I’ve worked on sites that cost a few hundred pounds, all the way up to ones that have cost a quarter of a million pounds, and, funnily enough, these challenges I’ve written above have been prevalent on all of them.

Having run my own site for eleven years, I’ve been the “client” who’s had her site re-designed and relaunched a handful of times in that period. Each time there have been hurdles to surpass in order to re-launch.

As a result, I’ve realised that seldom does the creation (or re-creation) of a site work in a cut and dry fashion, but rather it’s a dance of one step forward then one back – clarifying expectations and gaining understanding.

It can be a frustrating and sometimes painful process (on both sides) – but once that site goes LIVE, and the client is happy, we’re reminded of why we even do the job. That is because it’s a rewarding job (well, in most cases).

The Highland Fling 2011 – was a chance to not only meet with, but also to learn something from, people who share the same passion as us – namely web development and new technologies.

Though as I said, I’ve been in this New Media field for a long time, it’s constantly evolving for all of us.

We’re all inadvertently forced, in this fast-paced, game-changing industry, to continually learn and expand both our technical skills, but also our communication skills.

That’s why I love attending things like the Highland Fling. You pick up something at every event, seminar, conference or talk. It can be a tip, a technique, a website or business contact, but I don’t think there’s been one event I’ve felt was a waste of time.

So here’s to the Highland Fling 2012 – where we’ll do it all again!

And here are a few photos I snapped for NSDesign on the day.

And here are some links to slide presentations (so far – if you were a speaker and have a link – feel free to add in the comments section and I’ll add you)!

Rachel Andrew’s Slides from her talk on CMS

Remy Sharp’s talk on Implementation Interaction

Speakers & Such:

@ highlandwebconf
@ Steve Marshall
@ Rachel Andrew
@ Mike Rundle
@ Remy Sharp
@ Jack Osborne@ Christian Heilmann
and James Edwards

PS: Bios etc here on the Highland Fling site.

Google Chrome’s new operating system could be the next web service to fall victim to hackers – despite Google’s boasts about its safety and security capabilities.

Researchers from US computer security firm WhiteHat Security have told the Reuters news agency that Chrome PC’s reliance on Web computing make it open to the same attached that have plagued the likes of Sony PlayStation and Citibank in recent weeks.

Google says that its computers are safer than traditional PCs because user data is stored in the Internet cloud, rather than on the machine’s hard drive.

However, the WhiteHat team spotted a flaw that puts this theory in a questionable light.

Matt Johansen, one of the team, said he spotted a fault in a Chrome Os note-taking application that he managed to exploit in order to take control of a Google email account. He reported this flaw to the internet giant and was rewarded with US$1000 for his troubles.

However, Johansen told Reuters that he has since found other Chrome applications with the same security fault.

He claims that the key to hacking Chrome OS is to capture data as it travels between the Chrome browser and the cloud. He explained: “I can get at your online banking or your Facebook profile or your email as it is being loaded in the browsers. If I can exploit some kind of Web application to access that data, then I couldn’t care less what is on the hard drive.”

Johansen and team are set to reveal exactly which applications they think are at risk next month at Black Hat, a hacking conference to be held in Las Vegas, but has revealed that the applications belong to Chrome’s “extensions”, which users can download from the Google Chrome Web Store.

Most extensions are written by independent software developers, rather than by Google.

Johansen said: “The problem with the extensions is related to a design flaw in Google Chrome OS: the operating system gives extensions sweeping rights to access data stored on the cloud.

“Chrome is trusting these extensions more than it would be trusting just another website.”

The findings have implications for all web designers, app designers and software companies and act as further proof that websites and apps need to be absolutely safeguarded against the increasing sophistication of hackers’ methods.

Google says that it is seeking to improve procedures that screen extensions for vulnerabilities before making them publicly available on the Chrome Web Store.

Apple is being sued over the use of the name iCloud for its new cloud storage service.

An American company called iCloud Communications, LLC filed a lawsuit this week in the US District Court of Arizona, claiming trademark infringements against Apple.

The company claims that Apple’s choice to use and promoted the name iCloud is detrimental to its business, removing the branding from it and placing it almost entirely onto Apple.

The lawsuit also alleges that Apple’s services are identical to those being offered by iCloud Communications.

Although the legal papers – which can be viewed on various sites around the internet – do not request a specific amount of money, the lawsuit does ask for “all profits, gains and advantages” along with “all monetary damages sustained”.

The lawsuit also asks Apple to stop using the iCloud name to “deliver for destruction all labels, signs, prints, insignia, letterhead, brochures, business cards, invoices and any other written or recorded material” with the iCloud name.

This is not the first time that Apple has come under fire in the law courts regarding a trademark issue. In fact, this lawsuit alludes to that too, mentioning that Apple has been “wilful” in trademark infringement in the past, citing The Beatles, McIntosh Labs stereo equipment and the cartoon character Mighty Mouse as those who have had an issue with the technology giant.

Apple’s representatives have yet to comment on the issue.

Hello again everyone it’s Thea here again. Welcome to the third, and final, installment of my Silicon Valley Diary - it’s part 3.

Today I thought I’d talk about having lunch at Google the other day, and share a few reasons why I think Google is so Cool.

Well I’m not the only one, it seems, CNN Money had a poll of the Top 100 places to work and Google ranked number 4 (to be honest, seeing the three above them, I am rather surprised they’re as low as #4).

So I met my friend M on his second to the last day at HQ. Though staying with the company, he’s transferring out to New York (closer to his family) to work with a new team, but still within in their software division. It was a perfect time to meet him again, as he was very relaxed wrapping up work in California and looking forward to his move back east. It meant that I was able to spend extra time with him to eat, chat, take pictures/videos, and wander HQ.

So here are a few reasons why I love the odd trip to Google’s HQ.

1) The Free Food is Awesome!

It’s an obvious choice, this. There are a variety of different cafes to choose from at Google for whatever you fancy:- salads, burgers, Mexican, pizzas – you name, they have it, and all FREE for, not just employees, but also their visitors! There’s been much controversy over this particular area of Google practices, but I, for one, am a fan of the FREE lunch. (Who isn’t?)

2) They’ve Got Cute Bikes

Because Google’s Mountain View HQ is so spread out – they have cute little bikes that you can ride between buildings. That’s an awesome little nugget but some unscrupulous people have been nicking them and then flogging them on Craigslist which to my mind is rather naughty. Plus how obvious would be out riding a coloured Google-Plex bike (red, yellow, green and blue) in your own random neighbourhood?

3) Entrepreneurial Spirits

There is something rather exciting about being surrounded by all these creative and gifted minds. Google, apparently, chooses its candidates through a highly-scientific methodology and approach to picking staff. So you get a sense you’re among greatness, or at least I do, when I’m there. I end up hoping some of that greatness will soak into me through osmosis.

You may love Google or loathe it, but you can’t deny it its successes.

4) Inspirational Setting

The campus is in a natural green like setting (trees, grass etc). There are beach-like volleyball pitches, swimming pools, an organic garden (which provides some of it’s ingredients for their cafes), a bronze T-Rex dinosaur, and a garden filled with nautical-inspired statues.

It seems like it would be rather easy to have a little spot of grass to yourself, in or out of the sun, to work on you work. It reminds me of my own Northern California university days, and that’s a good thing.

5) Google’s Liquid Galaxy 3D Simulator

Arguably the most fun part of the trip to Google was the fifteen or so minutes spent in the lobby. Not only are there cool things to look at, like the hanging plane (aka Spaceship One), but they have the most fun 3D panoramic Google Earth  simulator called Liquid Galaxy. You walk into it, there are panels that wrap around, maybe 100 degrees, and are several feet high (it’s hard to explain but this YouTube video shows it clearly and from the outside).

Most people, apparently I learned, choose to look at their house (which I did too), but really took a 3-D look all around Glasgow as a whole, giving my friend a virtual tour of my fair city.

It’s an absolute blast, if a little dizzy-inducing at times. I wish I had one of these things in my living room!

Anyway check out my ’2-min Tour of Google’ video here to see some of the things I talked about above. Thanks for reading about the little trek to Google’s HQ in Mountain View. It’s worth a little visit if you ever get the chance…

Hey everyone it’s Thea here again. Did you know the name Silicon Valley was first used exactly forty years ago by Don C Hoefler** who was writing a series of articles Silicon Valley USA? Rather surprisingly I didn’t until I heard it at the recent, rather inspirational Innovation Journalism (InJo) conference at Stanford.

Here in “the Valley”, like anywhere really, people love to talk about what excites them – music, movies, television shows and especially technology. So I thought I’d pass on to you what’s excited me this past week – just on the off-chance you’ve not heard about them already. (You may have heard of some of these already, but hopefully one or two will be new to you too!)

CitizenTube.com

This one gets mentioned because of an enjoyable panel talk by the main man Steve Grove at CitizenTube – which is YouTube’s News and Politics channel. “How many of you knew we had a news and politics channel?” he asked and few of us raised our hands.

The idea is that citizens of the world are becoming the news curators by being in the right place at the right time (depending on how you look at it) with their camera phones or video recorders. Incidentally, this was a common theme at the Stanford InJo conference, as on a later talk from CNN’s Marisa Gallagher explained their use of iReporters on Open Story.

None of this is dissimilar to what Sky News and the BBC are doing – what’s interesting to me is the trend of this “citizen journalism”.

TuneIn Radio

TuneIn Radio is a website and has a variety of apps for different platforms. It was recommended to me by a fellow music-loving friend Teri. (NOTE: Teri has around 150 apps on her iPhone and sees more concerts than anyone I’ve ever met, so she was the perfect person to recommend this app to me.)

As we sat outside a little coffee shop in downtown Campbell, I download TuneIn radio onto my iPad and, just for kicks, loaded up BBC Radio Scotland’s Morning Briefing with my NSDesign colleague Colin Kelly and we sat and, well, tuned in.

A rather surreal moment that.

Once Magazine

Now this one is a little different, as it’s not yet launched, but am excited to check it out once it goes live. From the website of the young SF-based firm, Once Magazine is a simple concept based around how great photographs look on the iPad. Not only that, it’s apparently a “viable publishing platform in the digital age calls for a new business model”. While it’s subscription based, they’ll be sharing revenue with the photographers. That’s only part of their business model. So Once is one to watch, I think, especially if you’re keen on “long-form narrative photography”. (Don’t you just love all these new buzz terms for everything?)

Awedeitorium – Aural Happiness

At Stanford, after an interesting panel I got chatting to one the panelists @ Justin Ferrel from the Washington Post’s Director of Digital when the gentleman to my right chimed in about an app he loves called Aweditorium. This little app is engaging for music lovers.

FlipBoard

This particular app is getting more raves than anything I’ve heard in ages! As it was released last summer, you may have heard of of this personalised social magazine already, but it was “news” to me. It’s perfect for all you social media lovers who like reading newspapers and magazines. A truly visual app, it looks amazing on the iPad.

Well that’s just a few of what caught my ear and eye this past week.

Next time, on my Silicon Valley Diary Part 3 – I’ll fill you in on a fun, recent trip to Google’s HQ for a “free lunch” with a friend.

*****************

** The term Silicon Valley is credited to Ralph Vaerst a Central California entrepreneur, but was first used by his friend, a journalist, Don C Hoefler in his column for Electronic News.