As social networking continues to become a key strategy for businesses and start-ups to promote themselves online, photo sharing is an activity which seems second nature to some but almost entirely ignored by others.  So – from a business point of view – is it worth downloading the latest photo app, snapping away at every opportunity, then posting the results to Facebook or Flickr?

Photo sharing to ‘blend in’

It’s a question which has garnered considerable discussion online recently, not least on the newly launched service Quora.  The most popular answer came from VC Simon Olson who argues that photo sharing can form the ‘base activity of the “social” pyramid’ and that ‘it is one of the most popular activities that users engage in on social networks.’  With this in mind, it then seems logical for anyone eager to establish themselves on any social network to spend some time doing what everyone else is doing, not least to align yourself with the audience you are hoping to communicate with, as well as to highlight that you know what social media is all about, i.e. sharing, not promotion.

So just how big is photo sharing online?

Photo sharing has certainly seen fantastic growth over the last few years.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, Facebook has been the key player, increasing its lead as top photo sharing site (ahead of Photobucket, Picasa and Flickr) at the end of 2008 with users now uploading more than 3 billion pictures each month.  Yet, as Facebook’s dominance may have been seen to be making life difficult for other photo hosting sites such as Flickr, whose traffic started to decline by early last year, the site now boasts five billion photos and has increased steadily at 25% over the last 12 months.

The impact of apps and technology

Of course, photo-orientated smartphone apps and the increasing number of camera phones is having a positive effect on photo sharing – and making it easier for all of us to take better looking pictures and upload them quicker than ever before.  Instagram, Hipstamatic and PhotoShop Express all allow photos to be tinted etc. without the need to upload to your desktop or laptop beforehand.  Following this, it makes even more sense that Facebook is winning the photo sharing race with more than two hundred million users accessing the site via mobile – it figures that we want to put our pictures on this network first straight from our phones.

The case for…

For some, photo sharing is a great way to naturally instigate communications on social networks (especially at the start of a SM campaign), and it is becoming an increasingly quick and easy way to do this.  But is photo sharing worthwhile for any business or start-up with a fledgling web presence?  From an online content point of view, I would add two additional reasons why it may well be: fresh content and transparency.  In simple terms, fresh content is good for keeping both your audience and Google interested in your presence.  If you are active, even with only one piece of content a day – then a photo can be a quick way to achieve that daily goal to remind everyone that you’re still there.

The latter reason, transparency, relates to the earlier point of ‘aligning yourself with the audience you are hoping to communicate with.’  One of the ways businesses and start-ups really succeed with social media is by highlighting the human side of the organization behind the corporate persona which is often presented on the website.  Simply put, evidence of staff events and non-work activities showing that your organization is a diverse bunch of real people is much easier to see in photos rather than text-based blog posts, status updates or tweets.

Or, how a non-developer can make sense of the terminology we sometimes spout… It all starts from a simple question:

Is .NET a programming language?

No, .NET isn’t a programming language, it’s a framework.

Framework! Like Ruby on Rails!

Yes like Ruby on Rails. A framework is a load of bits of code that someone has packaged up to help developers create applications. Ruby on Rails, .NET, Django and Cake PHP are all examples of frameworks.

So frameworks are libraries?

Not really. A library tends to be focused on a particular piece of functionality – for example you might have a libraries that lets your code talk to Twitter.. In the world of Ruby, libraries are often packaged up into gems – little bundles of functionality which you can add to your app. In fact that’s a good way of looking at a library – just a bolt-on of focused functionality.

Right. So what was a programming language again?

The programming language is where it all starts. A programming language, like C#, Ruby, PHP or Python, is used to write libraries and frameworks. The language, the libraries and the frameworks combine to allow you to write an application.

You need a lot of stuff to get started then…

Well really the programming language is the bare minimum – you could write an application using just those bare essentials. But bolt on a framework like Ruby on Rails and you get things like easier ways to access the database or do localisation, and add a library to speak to Facebook and Foursquare. This enables your application to get up and running much more quickly because you don’t have to write all of that code again. You’re standing on the shoulders of giants; you’re not reinventing the wheel.

But what about security? How do you know all of these frameworks and libraries are safe to use?

Two reasons. Firstly, many libraries and frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails and the vast majority of Ruby gems are open source. This means you can look at the code yourself and check that it’s not malicious. Additionally, hundreds of other eyes are looking at that same code – in the case on Ruby on Rails some of the world’s best coders will have had a hand in developing the framework. Secondly, in the case of frameworks such as .NET, a multi-billion dollar organisation will have developed a rigorous Q&A process with automated testing and security auditing to make sure it lives up to its billing. If Microsoft can rely on .NET to run its business, chances are you can too. And recently even Microsoft has begun open-sourcing its code, so you can review it by eye if you want – all 1 bajillion lines of it.

Surely there’s no way to be sure unless I’ve written it myself though?

Possibly, but chances are you’re more likely to fall into the same holes as other developers – for example creating a web framework which falls prey to XSS vulnerabilities or other such security issues. A peer-reviewed third party framework will have been there and done that, with thousands of developers and users checking it for security problems every single day. Like I said – standing on the shoulders of giants.

Ok. I’m getting it. Language > Library/Framework > Application. So what’s a platform?

Oh God. Well a platform is at the top end of the scale. You build applications on a platform, but a platform itself will likely have been built using a framework. Sometimes platforms are applications as well – applications which provide developer APIs for example. A good example is Facebook – technically it’s a vast application, but it also provides lots of ways for developers to build on top of it and interact with the Facebook application and its users.

Excellent. So this new language we’re writing with Facebook on top of the C# library – when will that be ready?

You mus- Ahem. Well now you know so much, you can write it yourself. Get back to me when it’s done, there’s a good manager.

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…And emerging ways to pay online and on mobile

Using the internet to sell products and services is the ultimate goal of many websites we come across each day.  Yet, as an increasing number of businesses and companies move online, emerging technologies are also bringing fresh ways to pay and receive money as well as completely new ways to monetise mobile and web-based content.  While 2010 was dominated by trends such as freemium as used by services like Spotify and Evernote, as we move into 2011 new types of digital currency and payment technologies are appearing and diversifying.  This post aims to define some oft-used but sometimes confusing terms in the new world of money online.

Facebook Credits

At the end of January, social networking supergiant Facebook announced that they will be requiring all social game developers to process payments via their own in-site payment system: Facebook Credits.  The virtual currency, which has been in the works since 2009, allows users to purchase credits (currently costing $1 for 10) which can then be spent on items in Facebook games and other apps.  Advertised as being a safer and easier method of payment, it’s hard to see how the idea won’t increasingly appeal to users – and in order to get developers on board, Facebook are offering a host of cool incentives for app makers.

In-game purchases

Monetising mobile apps is often a matter of tough choices as to whether you offer free versions and advanced (often ad-free) versions, or simply charge for one version from the outset.  For mobile games, in-game purchases are increasing in popularity because they offer a portion of what is paid for, i.e. the first few levels of a game, and give users the opportunity to pay for later levels or other unlockable content.  This also ensures that such games have more chance of being discovered by potential gamers – an important factor for developers as the market becomes increasingly crowded.

Mobile payments, e-wallets and Square

Mobile payments are likely to be a big deal in 2011.  The idea is quite simple, why not leave our credit cards at home and use our 3G enabled smartphones to transfer payments for us?  After all, we all have online bank accounts?  Now, a number of companies are planning on making our wallets redundant.  For paying for items, Visa have announced that they will be rolling out their PayWave system by the end of the year.  On the flipside, Square (part founded by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey) is a smartphone service which allows others to pay you via your mobile.  Less than 18 months after launch, Square are already processing $1m payments a day.  They have also recently made the potentially groundbreaking move to stop charging $0.15 per transaction for merchants, making the new technology (a simple dongle and downloadable app) even more appealing to small businesses, freelancers and workers on the go.

Micro-donations

Micropayments has been a popular term online in reference to simple small payment transactions for a few years now.  Today, however, micro-donations are offering a new way for bloggers and start-ups to monetise content without requesting an outright payment or subscription fee, and by avoiding the sometimes off-putting ‘donate’ method.  New service, Flattr, is a good example which gives web-content providers (i.e. bloggers, journalists, developers) a button for the posts they create (similar to Facebook ‘Like’ buttons), Flattr users who view the site decide how much money to put into their account monthly – and this amount is then shared between the sites that have been ‘liked’ or ‘flattr’d’ at the end of each month.

It is certainly an exciting time for developers to approach charging for web and mobile content, and we are sure to see some intriguing changes over the coming year.  Social media is certainly having a big effect, as well as emerging mobile technologies.  We, here at GoTripod, are curious to see what takes off.

For today’s web developers, start-ups and forward thinking businesses the notion of ‘web content’ and where it’s seen is changing at an incredible rate. Gone are the days of designing and producing a site suitable just for a desktop PC monitor. In 2011 web content must be developed to be viewed and interacted with across a range of screens of varying sizes, from smartphones to the widest flat-screens – and this post should help us to start considering ‘multi-screen thinking’ and its importance.

In the interest of keeping this post quite snappy I have opted to focus on just three types of web content: home pages, e-commerce pages and promotional content (such as blog posts and news articles) which should give us a range of examples. I also wanted to make the information easy to remember, so let me introduce you to:

The 3 “…ables” of multi-screen thinking when creating web content

1. Viewable

The first ‘multi-screen thinking’ question to ask ourselves when creating web content is: will this be viewable across multiple screens? Even before we have moved away from desktop monitors and laptops, it is important to bare in mind the range of browsers web users are using to arrive at your homepage. According to TopTenREVIEWS the top 3 browsers available currently are Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer and it is important to bear in mind that some sites may load slower in certain browsers than others – and if your homepage is not viewable on a certain browser within a few seconds it is likely that user may give up and head somewhere else.

Of course, beyond desktops and laptops, web content needs to be quickly viewable on smaller screens such as smartphones and tablets such as iPad – and the most important information and ‘calls to action’ should ideally be seen as soon as a homepage is loaded.

2. Usable

So if you’re happy that your web content is adequately viewable across all screens (and browsers), the second thing to consider is whether that content is usable too. This is increasingly important with mobile devices in mind. As Internet Retailing reports, 18% of online shopping at Christmas was expected to be done via mobile but only a 23% minority of retailers had sufficient navigable mobile sites or apps in place for this proportion of users.

With more people shopping on mobile, e-commerce sites need to not only ensure that product pages are displaying vital information simply, clearly and concisely – but the checkout process needs to be quick and easy (and must remain safe) for smartphone users as well as traditional internet shoppers. Of course, testing and refining the process on a variety of technologies is key here.

3. Shareable

Aside from simply being viewable and usable across multiple screens, shareability is also a big factor when it comes to web content – and especially content geared towards getting traffic to your site (such as blog posts).

There can be multi-screen issues as simple as formatting, with text size and lengths of articles – but aspects of good shareable posts which really get people “liking” on Facebook or re-tweeting on Twitter, such as data graphs, images and infographics need to transfer well to smaller screens (and across 3G and 4G networks). This is the first step to ensuring prospective sharers are seeing the kinds of things they like to pass to their friends and followers as soon as possible, and on any of their devices. Good fresh content should be seen by as many people as possible, and new tech users are really the last group you want to frustrate by not considering mobile devices when producing content to be shared.

The source code which makes up the software we develop is our most valuable asset. As such, it needs to be treated with love and care. While backing up assets like this is important, with something such as source code – which is changed by multiple developers – you also want something to analyse and manage the changes which these assets go through.

Item number one on Joel Spolsky’s “Joel Test” is: “Do you use Source Control?”. Any software company who do not use source control are not taking appropriate care with their own code and potentially their customer code – and that’s foolhardy at best. At Go Tripod, we use the Git version control system which has gained a lot of traction over the past year or so. Subversion (SVN) used to be the cool kid in this arena, but Git has firmly placed itself at number one on the popularity contest.

Github’s been key to this, because it’s provided a really easy way of working with Git thanks to its excellent guides and documentation. Both myself and Jon have our own modest Github accounts, and while I’ve used Google Code in the past I really want to try and keep with Github as I move forward. Why? Because I think Github promotes healthy projects.

Look at any project on Github and you’ll see two little icons – one to keep watch on a project, to check when there’s any activity, and a second one to fork it. I believe that forking a project is the single strongest part of Github. It enables two things – firstly, for contributors to get involved without having to submit patches or anything like that – all contributions and merges can be done by the project owner by simply pulling in a contributor’s changes.

Secondly, if a project goes dormant, it’s trivial for someone else to fork it and essentially take it over. The most active fork of a project is likely to attract the most attention, so for valuable projects, we could see the end of stale, unmaintained work.

However, forking on Github does have weaknesses. In the above scenario, where a fork ends up becoming the predominant development version of a project, Github doesn’t have any way of transferring ownership of a repo from one person to another. This would make sense – the original developer doesn’t want to maintain a project then it’d really be better to allocate it to another developer rather than that developer having to fork. And in some ways forking can dilute a project, with many users adding their own tweaks and enhancements which never then get pulled back into the master. This is a shame, though ultimately I’m not sure how much of an issue it is.

Anyway, we love Github, warts and all. Look out for some more interesting Labs projects hitting our Go Tripod Github account soon.

This is a pretty straightforward one – Facebook’s messaging solution matters because Facebook matters to its users. Facebook is a compelling platform – keeping in contact with your peers is undeniably important. But here’s the rub – people are more likely to check Facebook than check email. So if I can send someone a Facebook message in the same way I can send them an email – I’m gonna opt for the Facebook method. If I can combine the two… that’s the killer feature. I can email someone and have them receive it when they check Facebook? Yes please.

What does this mean for business though? Facebook does remain a platform for people rather than professionals. Certainly some of the stuff I mention on my Facebook wall, to my trusted Facebook Friends, I wouldn’t want to be exposed in a business context. But at the very least, this announcement means that Facebook users are more likely to receive your email communications, as when they check Facebook, they’re checking their email at the same time. In terms of enabling timely communication, this could be crucial. Facebook’s mobile platform has always been strong, so assuming that they integrate this new feature then that provides another avenue for people to check their Facebook communications from any location.

The consolidation of  various messaging types is very Google Wave-like, but that’s as irrelevant as Google Wave was. The type of communication doesn’t matter – just the fact that it can be seen in a timely fashion in a highly-available interface – that’s the key. In fact, Apple have very slowly been driving at this – by combining MMS and standard text messages in their iPhone application – and ultimately their Facetime platform will most likely merge with this. But they’ve missed the trick that Facebook have understood – the medium is not important. It’s all about the message.

Where is this going to fall down? GMail was a revelation because of threaded messaging and because it disregarded storage limitations. GMail’s spam and phishing filters are very good indeed. So Facebook needs to heed this – organised, unlimited messages with strong filtering of malicious communications will swing this for them. Microsoft and Yahoo are still playing catch-up with GMail five years since its release – this is going to be a massive setback for them. GMail’s recent performance issues indicate that they could be struggling to stay still, let alone advance, so Facebook could capitalise on that.

Ultimately though, Facebook is going to be for personal use and GMail can be happy with corporate usage – it’s just a question of whether Facebook’s move will push email into irrelevance in the medium-term.

iPhone or iPad, Android or Windows Phone 7?  Why it’s important to have an app development strategy

Smartphone applications are a big part of our work here at Go Tripod.  We enjoy working with fresh ideas and knowing that we are contributing to one of the most current, fast advancing and exciting industries out there.  However, we also know how confusing the app market can be for those eager to branch out into this area for the first time – especially as new products and operating systems are launched, and the web becomes full of contradictory opinions on where best to focus your efforts.

Consequently, we believe it is important to outline an app development strategy at the outset of your project – and there are a number of key considerations which must be included:

Consider your goal first

Your goal, or at least an idea of what you want to achieve, should be established early – even before you start thinking of what kind of app to put into development.  With the amount of buzz around apps and new technologies, it is understandable that many businesses might see their competitors launching an iPhone app, decide to do so themselves, and then are faced with having to develop an idea which will fit into an iPhone app shaped hole.

Check out what the competition is doing, then ask yourself what you want out of an app.  This way you are more likely to work out the correct means of hitting that target – whether it’s reaching lots of people or making an app which is more complex/useful/important than any other on the market.

Consider your current audience and where they are

Are you creating this app for the target audience you already have, or are you using the app to reach a different demographic?  This is an important consideration, as any mobile ad specialist will tell you that certain smartphones appeal to certain users – just try and think of a typical Blackberry fan or iPhone user.  Understanding the audience you already have and the handsets they use will likely be a big factor in deciding what type of app to develop.

It is also important to think about where your prospective audience are.  Recent AdMob data highlights country by country differences in popularity of devices and subsequent market share of iPhone, Android and others.  In May this year, Apple’s iOS dominated the UK market with 59% share while Android was the second largest with 26% share – but judging by the US market, things are changing very quickly.

Consider the entire app market

As we know, the app market is advancing and diversifying almost before our eyes – and it goes without saying that we may all be surprised by what platforms take off and just how far-reaching/usable/fashionable each might be a month or two down the line.

The latest 2010 Q3 data from Canalys shows intriguing trends in the US market where the Android operating system has overtaken Apple’s iOS with 44% of smartphones using Android compared to 26% Apple.

This growth has no doubt been helped by Android OS being available on a number of handsets compared to Apple’s only iPhone.  And though it is still fair to say developing an Apple-centric app may be naturally high-profile and more likely to reach a market of tech-savvy super-fans, some analysts such as those at Taptu are estimating that iPhone-only apps may exclude 90% of smartphone users by the end of the year.

With this in mind, the recently launched Windows Phone 7 will also be one to watch by those looking to develop an app over the next year, as Microsoft is set to invest an incredible $500 million in TV advertising for the product alone and claims to have 13,000 registered app developers already.

Only by keeping an eye on projected user trends and emerging technologies (including handsets and tablets such as iPad) and including this research into your app development strategy, can you be certain that your app is most suitable for the local and global market it is launched into – as well as ensuring the users who want it can get it, and that the app itself works as it should.

By the way, did we mention that Go Tripod has its own Twitter account?  Oh, it seems what with moving into our new office in Truro and working away on client projects that we might have forgotten to tell anyone.

However, you probably do know that we are quite active in the Twittersphere with our respective individual accounts.  And for those who choose not to tweet and be tweeted at (or if you just missed some), we thought we would occasionally use this blog to collect some of our “tweets of note” from recent weeks.

So here are some great tweets, retweets and links we thought would be worth sharing again.

@simonashley:  RT @freshbooks The Future of Freelance – What do clients want? – http://bit.ly/9R4oKY

@miletbaker:  Just trying out Sparrow the new lightweight Gmail app for OS X and it is Awesome http://bit.ly/apuLWX

@colinramsay:  RT @bengoldacre Times online readership 50,000, Guardian 37 million: also “future of journalism” etc from @arusbridger http://dlvr.it/8BrF9

@miletbaker:  Good Video on the darker side of positive thinking (i.e. The Secret) by @theRSAorg http://youtu.be/u5um8QWWRvo /via @iOlly

@gotripod:  Check out Cloud Backup for Sage 50 by our friends at @internetware – free until 30th Nov too! http://is.gd/g01V5

@myyada:  I’m enjoying looking at this: http://maps.thinkbroadband.com/ via @tomkiss @jemimakiss

@simonashley:  Ever wondered what colours to use with an image? http://www.pictaculous.com/

@colinramsay:  http://thinkvitamin.com/mobile/new-rails-like-framework-from-37signals-for-html5-mobile-apps/ exciting!

@myyada:  RT @lakey @georgerosier: Really interesting vid of an Augmented Reality future that isn’t all just advertising » http://bit.ly/d45Em5

The second edition of the book written by Shea Frederick, Steve “Cutter” Blades, Nigel White and myself is now available for purchase. Learning Ext JS covers version 3.2+ of the Ext JS JavaScript framework and will give developers who are new to the framework a head-start in creating high-quality rich applications.

The second edition updates the existing content for the latest Ext JS version, and adds new chapters to cover the newest components available in Ext JS 3.2. Go Tripod have been working with Ext JS to create exciting web applications for a number of enterprise customers and our Ext JS consultancy service is proving increasingly popular.

Working on Learning Ext JS was a pleasure and a privilege for me and I’d like to thank Packt, my co-authors, and the developers of Ext JS. Hopefully our customers will continue to be eager for applications in this excellent framework – I’m looking forward to continue working with it in future!

Even though the Tripods are normally beavering away with client work or one of our products, we’re firm believers in taking time out to relax and have fun to break up the working day and provide an outlet for all the excess energy an office worker builds up. Campaign Monitor are one of our favourite companies and they’re famed for including surfing as a big part of their company ethic.

At Go Tripod, we’re lucky enough to be based in Cornwall, UK – home of some of the best surfing spots in the UK. For something a bit more relaxing, there’s always a lazy afternoon of fishing on the cards (take a look at our latest catch out of Falmouth Bay).

For my part, I’ve been spending my evenings running around Falmouth and the surrounding area to blow off some steam and build up my stamina. This Saturday, I’m running a half marathon – the Great North Run – on behalf of the Stroke Association, and getting up to the 20k mark has been a personal challenge as well as a great way of keeping active over the summer.

Dedication to work is important – but a business without a sense of fun and relaxation is one in which the team members won’t be firing on all cylinders.