I wrote about Touiteur a day or so back and how good it was. But I missed Location, it’s not in there right now. I had a positive response on the ‘micro review’ and have spotted a few other people using the tool too. But I like the location aspect of Twitter and feel as if some functionality is missing. Actually it’s not a big deal, but I still feel as is I’m missing out. Twidroyd is about to get twitlonger support I noticed which is interesting. So this is a two horse race now, with Twidroyd just with it’s nose in front, come on Touiteur, you just told me location is coming.

Google have launched tools to allow the creation of simple apps for Android devices, they’re not available just yet though, they are still in private beta. There are already several “it’s not going to produce much of value” posts our there, take this one from the Guardian.

Personally, having just spend the past three years learning to code for various platforms (including iOS), it is easy to be skeptical over these short cuts to writing applications

But I think they are missing the point, this is for children or young adults at least. It’s about getting kids interesting in Android, using Android and building apps that they may use, but it’s looking to the future.

I also agree that the next amazing twitter app will not emerge from this tool, but the person who develops that app, may have grown up on this, cut his or her teeth so to speak on it.

The form which allows you to register interest, is littered with references to education, Google’s aim is getting Android in to schools and used by kids as they grow up. Apple already does this it already offers free lessons for several of it’s apps for 8 to 10 year olds over the summer vacation, i.e. it’s starting the early.

To be honest, I’m keen to have a go, I haven’t done any programming since Uni and a bit of small talk on my IBM graduate training program, that’s it. But what I’m most keen to do is let my 6 year old daughter loose on it. She can use MS Paint, MS Word and do some interesting things, so I’m sure it won’t take her too long to pick this up.

The cat video might also spark a bit of interest, for the cat alone, but it’s about what she and kids her age will do with this. It gives them tools to make things not just out of paper and cello tape but allows them to make usable (if basic) software, that’s what this is about sparking an interest in the developers and entrepreneurs of the future.

If’ your running with an Android device and are a twitter user then check out Touiteur (it’s twitter pronounced with a french accent). I’ve been a user of Twidroyd (formerly Twidroid), Seesmic, HTC Peep, Twicca (and a horrid looking one that lasted just a few minutes, but it’s name alludes me) for a day and this beats all of them in terms of looks and functionality.

The official twitter app, isn’t really a power user app, it’s away into twitter for the first time for people, who move onto the apps mentioned here.

The look and feel of Touiteur is nice, ie, dark with light font. The inclusion of threaded conversations is one of my fav features, when you go to the replies tab, it shows underneath the replies to the previous tweets all as part of that conversation, nice.

The widgets are pretty neat too, tap the corner of the widget to refresh, or leave it and it’ll refresh every 20 seconds.  There’s maybe not as much in the settings as say twidroyd and I miss the hit the bar to jump to the top of seesmic, but otherwise, it’s my new best twitter app.

I’m still looking for some of these to add in Google Buzz for instance, but they are coming on huge leaps and bounds, Gravity for S60 is still probably leader of the pack, but Touiteur is as good as it get’s on Android.

Looks like the impact of the cut in the twitter API rate from 350 to 175 is visible here even, my Tweetmeme counter hasn’t changed and I guess that’s why.

For those who follow me on Twitter will have noticed I paid a visit to the “sloany pony” on Wednesday evening to visit an old University pal who works for IPC. We had a great time over some nice beer catching up and discussing amongst other things social media, radio6 and it’s plight. The reason it was so interesting I was able to see the other side of the story, the ‘dead tree’ people’s side.

Anyway, a great evening during which I was given some sheets of dead tree (sorry Chris!) in the form of Uncut magazine. During the conversation we’d talked about music and how I’d shifted away from buying CD’s to renting my music from Spotify and that as a result I’d started to listen to much more music and to bands I’d have never have bought. Chris confessed to buying music purely on the cover, which is a risky business, but with Spotify (there are others of course) that cost of discovery is almost zero. I listed bands such as ‘the xx’, ‘two door cinema club’ that I’d probably never would have found or enjoyed if I’d have had to take a risk and pay 9.99 for.

So I’m home now and have Uncut in front of me and I’m dropping the 4 star album reviews into Spotify and happily checking out the albums at almost no cost to me. Most of the time, I’ll listen for a few weeks, get bored of it and move on. However, there are some albums that are just too good to rent and I’ll buy them for keeps.

Maybe they should bundle a subscription of Spotify when you subscribe to Uncut, surely doable, and cheaper than sending out those CD’s stuck to the cover and an easier way to get more people listening to more good music…I’ve discovered Lissie in the last 5 minutes..awesome.

I’ve been travelling around London today and on one of the legs of the journey, a guy on the Tube pulled out his iPad, not sure what he had in the way of connectivity, we were underground, but nobody pointed, nobody stared, nobody seamed that interested…the novelty has warn off already.

Anyway, traveling to my meetings, I’ve been using Google Navigation, it’s great, you simply enter the postcode on your laptop/desktop, check it’s the right place and then save it to my maps, when you get near to where you need to be, just fire up Google maps, select layers, my maps, select the saved map and bingo, the address you need to get to is highlighted. You simply select it and choose navigate if your walking or directions if your driving.

Two strange offices found with a minimum of fuss, having a device this integrated and with you all times is just awesome.

Looks like Google ME is real, even though I was fed up with the hype yesterday, it looks real, so imagine the integration with location that Google can provide and their own handsets, it looks like a more interesting platform than facebook. I just hope they get the privacy right (buzz started out on the wrong foot) though.

right, it’s fast approaching beer o’clock…the pub is in my saved maps, I’m off!

I accidentally deleted the Google code when I updated my theme, so lost a few days stats. I’ve put in the stats plugin now instead to see if more data can be gained over what Google gives.

I’d put a new XML site map in to make it easier for Google to find stuff, when I looked at the stats for yesterday and it was 0 I figured I’d stuffed something up.

WordPress 3.0 is nice too, all upgraded smoothly and I’ve been using WPDB-Manager to archive the database and then mail me a copy to gmail, where it get’s filtered out of the inbox nicely and stored away.

So all in all a nice tweak of the site, putting a bit more effort into the tags too. Just need to update my profiles on a few of the other blogs to link back here now too.

The Orange Live event had several really great keynote’s with a particular highlight being Peter Sondargaard. A common theme through the keynotes was Social Computing and engaging with both customers and also generation Y as they enter the workforce. As a result Sondargaard pointed out, if you have any policy to block access to sites that encourage the conversation then you need to remove them pretty quickly.

So this almost constant mention of social computing and the importance of the conversation inspired some people to come along and check out the social media team at the event and find out what was happening and how. Several customers called in and asked to speak to people who could help them engage with their customers and we were more than willing to help. We also had a participant who owned the communication channel between his business and his top 35 customers and asked if we could help him engage and take the communication with his top customers to a new level, exciting stuff.

I’m sure we could learn more about social computing and having the 10 external bloggers who’ve links to initiatives such as Amplified, Organic and Media Aces it certainly helped me to expand my horizons as to what can be achieved and how. Maybe next year one of the breakout sessions will be social computing and we’ll get a chance to take the time to explain directly to the Execs present exactly what we’re doing at Orange Business, if you can’t wait till then get in touch or simply leave a comment.

Finally found some time to tidy up Flickr a little bit and pulled some of my favorite pictures into a single set, which is here

looks like Twitter’s move to oauth has caused certain twitter tools to stop working, so I’ve replace my old tool with a new oauth tool, it took 5 mins to set up with various keys, but hopefully it’s now working.