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In the last couple of days, rumors have appeared claiming Apple wanted to buy Twitter. At the first glance, this doesn’t make much sense.

It just occurred to me, that there is actually a perfect reason for Apple to buy Twitter. In fact, it could turn Twitter into a massive money making machinery. Let me explain:

Three key elements lead to this perfect deal:

You probably already guessed what I’m going to write next: Twitter will replace SMS on the iPhone! Or in other words: If you have an iPhone, you can send free push notification messages (i.e. Tweets) to other iPhone users AND across the Twitter community. For free! Because of the large user base, there is no chasm to cross or no Metcalfe’s law to deal with.

Who wins? Apple! They have established a new USP for the iPhone with 25m users who can see immediate benefit: free peer-to-peer push messaging!

This is all just a hypothesis. One thing’s for sure though: The operators wouldn’t like that idea.

Nowadays, everybody has understood the power of the Internet. Most people also under stand the convenience and the power of mobile. So needless to say that it is clear that the internet on a mobile device is even more powerful.

However currently there are a few things which have to be sorted out until the Mobile Internet will unleash its full potential.

1. Battery life of the devices has to be better
2. The speed of the download has to improve
3. The screens have to become bigger
4. The input devices need to be more effective
5. Manufacturers and software suppliers need to agree on and stick to standards

In the meantime, there are three different approaches which are being taken in order to get the internet on the mobile devices.:

1.) UK Mobile Operator Vodafone has launched the much discussed Internet on your Mobile campaign in 2007. The idea was that any HTML based website will be re-rendered for mobile devices via a Vodafone Proxy Server. Google took a similar approach: Any site which you search in the Google Mobile search will be re-rendered via a Google Proxy. The advantage of this system is all existing internet content will be available on mobile device immediately. In theory. We’re not discussing how it looks and how well it works. There is no control over design, functionality and anything related to the aesthetics of the page.

2.) Nokia, Apple and some other device manufacturers have taken the approach of getting browsers as we know them on mobile devices. The idea is that you can then use the mobile device to access any internet site as if it was on a computer. This also works only in a very limited way. The screen size for example is a major issue as well as the input devices (no mouse, no QWERTY keyboard). Also are most internet sites completely unaware of context such as location, the handset’s capabilities or connection speed.

3.) The third approach is the approach mobile specific agencies and technology providers are taking. In the long term, this solution is the only sustainable way of marrying up mobile devices and Internet. Mobile internet pages should be created and designed specifically for the devices which are being used to access them. This starts with the detection of the device, the rendering and access to the device’s features such as telephone calling, messaging via click, location, billing, small screen optimized user interface or even making use of Bluetooth or the built in camera. There is no question that the Web as we know it an the Mobile Internet will converge. One day, the stationery computer in the office will just be one of many devices with which you can access a (web-)site. If you want to deliver top quality Mobile Internet at the moment, you need a device database of around 1800 devices and you have to render the page according to those devices. The stationery computer could just be the 1801st device. But until that time comes, we have to keep making mobile sites better and better. Until the borders between them and the web as we know it are completely blurred out. The iPhone with its Web Apps has certainly led in this direction and continued with native Apps even though the latter will never be working cross device in the same way a (web-mobile-converged) Internet page would.

What media does to us. And everyone around us.

This is the most expensive iPhone app I’ve found so far. And check what happened! It’s crazy

Some search engine caught everyone’s attention today. Cuil was supposed to be the next Google according to – well, first of all, … Google. But also the New York Times, the BBC, SlashDot, CNET and much more…

I’ve been working on a “new approach to web search” for a while either, and what Cuil did, I must say, is very clever.

If you search for anything which for sure will not yield in any results, for example jakldfjasdfhjklasdfaajdkfla, you will be facing a error message saying “No results because of high load…”.

I highly doubt that this has to do anything with the load. They are just not prepared to admit that there is simply no result for this query at all.

This rises the question: What is better? Admitting that there is too much load or admitting that there is no result at all? I’d go for the latter. Unless you’re cheating. Meaning, while showing the error message, going sneakingly grabbing results from other search engines and aggregate them. Or why else would you write “Please try your search again.”? You would only do that if you know that the next attempt would return some useful results. Usually, this is the case. Not however with jakldfjasdfhjklasdfaajdkfla.

Of course, the first thing I tried today was the vanity search. At first I got the too much traffic error. At present, I get 1,628 results.

emcons.net gets me currently 398 irrelevant hits. Let’s see how many there will be tomorrow…

Helvetica – the documentary film by Gary Huswit is now available for download in iTunes.

I got myself a limited edition of the movie on DVD last year and saw the movie a couple of times already. Even though it is not exceptionally exciting, it has a few interesting passages. Towards the end of the movie however it’s slightly too long stretched. If you enjoy beautiful fonts though, this is a movie for you. Even just looking at the images makes your heart jump higher … because let’s be honest: Helvetica is the most beautiful typeface ever designed.

What I find striking about the movie being on iTunes are two things:

1.) Distribution has become dirt cheap. Whereas before, you had to produce DVDs including all sorts of material such as DVD packaging, cover design, DVD design and merchandising, nowadays you simply upload it to what is to become the universal gate for software. This is good for the producers, the consumers and above all: Apple. This however is a worry to media distribution companies such as Universal, Sony, Warner and the such.

2.) The second thing that strikes me about this is what I’ve just done can be done easily: recommending or linking to it. This for sure will drive sales as a sale is basically less than 5 clicks or 5 seconds away from here. I find it wrong that I can generate value for all those guys mentioned above (the consumers, the producers and Apple) without seeing a single penny.

Something has to be invented here. I’m working on it. Stay tuned!

I’ve written about Net Neutrality earlier on a more academic angle. The below video also gives you the more popular view on what the issue is all about:

Spread the word! Net Neutrality is where all our innovation bases on.

I have uploaded my Synopse Firefox Extension to the mozilla sandbox and am waiting for any possible feedback or rating.

Please feel free to download Synopse and let me know what you think. You will be able to browse all tagged sites and tags from www.synopse.net

For more information about my Synopse project, check out my master dissertation, which I’ve written at the University of Sussex/Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication last year.

In a nutshell, Synopse consists of two parts:

• A Firefox extension which allows you to tag websites anonymously
• A search engine, which allows you to browse and search for websites as well as tags

It’s simple, straight forward and puts a lot of importance on the “no frills” concept.

I get more and more the feeling, that sophisticated interactive online marketing websites has become increasingly common. Check out a couple of interesting marketing campaigns which probably costed more to produce than a 30 second advertising spot:

Cadbury Chocolate:

Coke Zero:

Smirnoff:

Highe-Chen:

Ikea:

This is a nice speech of Bill Moggridge on the topic of Interaction Design. Quite a few very nice insights.

I still have to check the other videos, but they seem promising as well.