I’ve been saying for such a long time now that I thought Apple should compete with Google in cloud services. Mobile me simply did not make sense when compared to Google’s free services like Gmail, Google calendar and documents among others. Sure, they were good but they cost money they probably weren’t worth.

iCloud takes everything good that Mobile Me did, makes it free and adds more besides. Whether me.com email addresses can challenge the traditional heavyweights in email like hotmail, yahoo, aol and gmail is another question, but I suppose just the fact that the domain is only two characters should help its cause somewhat. Whether they actually gain substantial market share in all of these cloud services is beside the point, just the fact that it’s free is great and it makes them competitive at least.

iCloud also expands on Mobile Me’s original syncing concept and takes things a lot further and really puts them far ahead of anyone else in terms of mainstream cloud syncing services. Not only does in sync the usual things, contacts, calendars and mail, but also practically everything else you could think of. Your photos, videos, iWork documents, a complete backup of all of your device settings and data from your apps.

These things are all fantastic, but the real star of the show here is the automatic syncing and backup of your purchases from all three of Apple’s stores. All of your music, apps and books will automatically download to all of your devices. No more syncing and homesharing across numerous devices and computers, and no worrying about backing up your precious music. If in future you somehow lose your music on all of your devices, you can just download it again for no extra charge. Apple say that there’s no limit to how many times you can re-download purchases but I assume they’ll be fairly lenient as long as you don’t abuse the function.

For me, this will completely change my purchasing of music in the future. Recently, I’ve been going exclusively to Amazon MP3 for my music, as it’s generally quite a bit cheaper than iTunes for almost everything, and sometimes by a very significant amount. However, the extra value you get from not having to worry about syncing anything and keeping a library in perfect order, as well as the peace of mind of not having to back up purchases make it worth the extra money in my opinion.

At first, I was a bit surprised that Apple didn’t do something more elaborate with iTunes in the cloud in the same vein as Spotify or possibly a locker type arrangement like Amazon cloud player or Google Music. When I thought about it more, I understood why they went in the direction they did.

The reason why they didn’t go with a locker type arrangement is because it’s complex, involves uploading an entire library to the cloud which is far from ideal and wastes storage space with potentially a huge number of copies of the same song being uploaded. I think the Spotify streaming model would make more sense but Ap[ple have traditionally stayed away from the renting model for music as they like people to feel that they own the music they download. The iTunes Match service is essentially the happy medium between these two options. It scans your library for music that wasn’t downloaded on iTunes. AKA: from another online service, ripped from CDs or obtained in less than legal ways and looks for matches in Apple’s catalogue. You pay a flat fee and any music you have that is available in iTunes match is either upgraded to 256kbps if it’s lower quality, or if the music is not on iTunes, those select songs will be uploaded. Everything will then be treated as if you bought it from iTunes originally, and will be synced to all of your devices automatically. This is a nice idea and I’m sure Apple will make it as easy to understand as possible, but it remains to be seen what will happen if you don’t renew your subscription. Hopefully you’ll get to keep any music that was upgraded in the new form, and perhaps even still be able to keep uploaded music synced, but that’s a long shot.

Either way, I can’t wait to check out iCloud when it launches in the autumn. Just the small taster we’ve been given in the UK of being able to sync Apps and books but not not music has got me excited to check out the whole package.

Image by andysternberg via Flickr

I honestly don’t understand the pricing strategy on the new Samsung based Google Chromebooks. These go for £350 and £400 and are primarily cloud computers. The £400 3G model may be worth the price if you do get the 3G service for free, although that may be a limited time offer or for the long term but with a strict usage cap.

I really expected these to be very affordable computers, at around the £200 to £300 mark so I’m a bit disillusioned by these prices. Of course, it’s entirely possible that they vastly outperform their cheaper netbook counterparts but even that is beside the point for me. The reason I would buy one of these would be because I want a cheap but reliable and simple laptop to do the essentials of computing. If I wanted to get a more powerful laptop that I could use to do more strenuous things, then I’d buy another MacBook to replace my original one. It’s totally grounded now as it has a battery that no longer works and broken wi-fi. It won’t even run Mac OS Lion.

Overall, I think that Google will have thought everything through and I’m sure the OS itself is a pleasure to use, but I hope they get some other manufacturers to make more affordable hardware to make Chrome OS a more attractive proposition for more potential buyers. After all, it’s going to be extremely tough for them to make an impression in the market even at lower prices. Even the might of Google don’t enter the public’s mind when it comes to computer hardware and software.

AOL wants to buy Yahoo!

This is I think good news. They are both very similar companies and to me at least, it makes sense to create one bigger one to help them both better take on Microsoft and Google. At one stage, AOL even directly copied Yahoo’s own homepage so I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult to integrate both of their services together if this were to happen.

BlackBerry Playbook Announced

You may say that this deserves a post of it’s own, but if you want to read that then you’d be on Engadget, TechCrunch, Gizmodo and all of the others. Personally, while I think it’s cool and probably a smart play for a very quickly maturing market, I can’t say I’m very excited for it.

From what I’ve always heard, touch screens by companies other than Apple tend to be more frustrating and hard to press than the multi-touch displays that are such a joy to use. On the software and hardware sides, I can’t see them making anything that can genuinely rival what Apple can do. I liken this to Android in a way. It tries to be mainstream but ends up being too geeky and confusing for a lot of that audience.

Android is making steps forward so it’s not to say Blackberry can’t do the same. I feel the same way about tablets from companies like Samsung. I just doubt whether they really have what it takes to go head to head with Apple, but we’ll find out soon.

Google Launches goo.gl URL Shortening Service Publically

This is hardly huge news, I just wish they had done it much earlier because now they are way too far behind everyone else to compete. Bit.ly, J.mp, fb.me, wp.me and many more including now Twitter‘s own t.co service are all established now and I don’t think Google are going to be able to get a foothold in the market.

In order for them to really be successful with this, they need to get two things started. Firstly, they need to get integrated into Twitter and other news apps on Apple’s and other devices so that more people will be likely to choose to use it. They also need to give users a bookmarklet so that they can shorten links much quicker. Currently, you have to copy the URL, visit goo.gl and paste it in the box to get the short code.

While they are some way behind the competition in the process or shortening the links, where they do shine is in the stats they provide. Google have the best servers in the world and they put them to good use here, tracking data such as clicks, browsers, locations and platform used.

I don’t think until they make the changes I’ve noted, they can challenge the heavyweights of this growing category of service, but it’s Google. If they wanted to take it seriously, they could surely trounce everyone else pretty easily.

My IGN Updates

MY IGN is the cool social networking service built into IGN.com. It replaces the original community aspect of the site and makes it much better. I’ve written a detailed post on it before, so check that out if you need to get up to speed on what it does.

The new updates now allow peace of mind regarding blogging. At first, they had stated that all blog posts written in the new wordpress powered blogging system would be deleted when the service left beta. That is now not an issue and all posts written with either platform will be kept. This is great news.

They have also made the service more stable, have given more security options to prevent people from spamming your wall by only allowing people you follow to do so. You can also block users now.

Finally, you can see who you follow and who follows you and quite a few other improvements including post deletion. I’m really excited to see how they keep improving MY IGN going forward, because it definitely fills a void in the social media market as I’ve said before, and it has great potential.

The next thing I’d like to see them do is integrate the service into the IGN app for iPhone and maybe their m.ign.com mobile site which appears to be inspired by YouTube‘s mobile version.

Apple Updates iTunes Ping

This happened quite a while ago now, but essentially what Apple did was remove the genius sidebar, which I and probably most other people never used to begin with, and replaced it with the Ping sidebar. The new sidebar shows your recent activity from bands or friends you follow. When you click on a song in your library you get the option to like or comment on that song in the sidebar, or by clicking a button next to the track you have highlighted.

When the artist of the song you’ve highlighted has a profile on Ping, you’ll be provided a link to that in the sidebar as well, which is useful if you didn’t know before that they were active on the social network or not, or if you want to quickly check their activity.

It’s not a major upgrade to Ping but it makes sense and probably should have been there from the start. Genius never really needed the sidebar so it’s good that they’re putting that space to better use now.

iChat has been ignored for quite a while now. FaceTime could give it a new lease of life. Image via Wikipedia

This is interesting news. It seems the next logical step is to bring the technology to the desktop and laptop space by incorporating it into iChat on Mac and maybe as a separate app on Windows. With the advances in browser-based communication and HTML 5, it may even be possible to bring all of this straight there with no plug-ins or software.

Surely we’ll see an iPad with a front facing camera soon. If FaceTime is adopted as a standard for video calling, we will likely see devices such as phones from many manufacturers and even games consoles like the 3DS and a new PSP that all take advantage of it.

It’s probably not going to be too long before we see video chat of some description take off in the TV space with products like internet enabled TVs with Skype, and products like Google TV as well as games consoles that have potential to offer this functionality.

Whether or not FaceTime will become the standard for all internet-based video calling is another question entirely though, as power players like Skype would have to get on board with it, as well as relative newcomers like Google who offer it in the browser with Gmail.

Image via CrunchBase

Google have been teasing a big new announcement for a few days now. They had the dynamic doodle with coloured balls, then the following day they teased instant search further by introducing another doodle which started off gray, but coloured in each letter of the logo as you typed.

Later on Wednesday they launched instant search, and on paper it looks like a very cool and interesting innovation in search, and perhaps the logical next step. On first impressions, I’m not entirely convinced. While they say it definitely improves your search time and while that is true to a point, to me it seems very distracting to be shown all of the results as you’re typing as it takes your mind off the original text you were planning to input. It also must be using a lot of extra server power to compute and send these results in real time and I don’t know whether if the benefits are worth the effort for Google.

I also think that the service seems a bit buggy at the moment and there may be a few questionable design choices. When you visit the Google homepage now, you still have the same logo (albeit considerably larger), the same search box, and the same two buttons underneath it. The problem is, the search button is useless now as the results load before you can even think to click it. If you click on the I’m feeling lucky button now, you get taken to the Google Doodles history page. This seems like a kind of last minute addition as something else to use the old button for.

Once you settle on your desired search term and can see your results, you still end up with a drop down box of possibly related searches. While this may prove useful I just find it so fiddly and not really as streamlined as it could be. You also have the ability to perform an I’m feeling lucky operation when you hover over the right side of each. This is where the function has gone, and it seems to have taken a back seat in this new design.

This box also gets in the way of seeing the results further down the page which to me isn’t what I want. You can remove it with an enter press, but it feels like a hassle even though you’re still only pressing enter once just like before. Somehow it doesn’t feel as quick as it used to be, but maybe it’s just a question of getting used to the change.

The one other bug I found with the new search is that when you delete your text from the box, the search page remains but becomes mostly blank. I think it would have been a nice touch to take you back to the homepage if you empty the box completely. When I just tried this, the page even has scollbars to go quite a long way down an empty white page. This looks quite unfinished and shoddy by Google’s standards. It’s not a major problem that breaks the experience, but still, I wish it was a bit more polished before they released it to the world.

The buttons still exist on the instant search page either for aesthetics, or for purpose if non-instant search shares the same page. However, from what I’ve seen, the pages do look different. When I disabled instant, the logo became smaller and the search box narrower which would indicate that you are redirected based on your browser compatibility or preferences. This seemingly shows that the keeping of the buttons is purely a style and tradition based decision rather than for a purpose.

If this is the case, I’d like to see the buttons gone to help to further differentiate instant from traditional search and to give a more minimal look. Especially for people who use a custom background, who will value clean space more than most. Hopefully Google will take steps to make the experience as smooth and simple as possible. I don’t think it’s quite there yet but it just needs a little bit of fine tuning and it’ll be perfect.

The next new addition was the integration of Google Voice technology into gmail. You can make free US and Canada calls from within the email window, and you don’t need a Google Voice account. You do need one if you want to have a number that can be called from other phones, similar to Skype‘s online number, or if you want to call other countries. Since the product isn’t officially available outside the US and Canada yet it’s probably not recommended.

It’s not a new concept to call phones from the internet or even receiving calls from phones on your computer thanks to Skype and their pioneering efforts. However, this is the first time we’ve really seen an implementation of VOIP in a browser like this. It’s quite hard to get your head around the fact that you can do this now, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as the future of internet based communication looks set to integrate tightly with landline phones and maybe even replace them in the longer term.

Shortly following the voice update, Google have turned their attention to revolutionising the humble inbox. Nothing has really changed in how email inboxes work for many years, essentially they’ve remained unchanged since email began almost. Google have now launched Priority Inbox, a new view in GMail which is optional. What it does is group email into defined groups in the same inbox view. Important messages appear at the top. Starred messages in the middle and everything else underneath. You can modify the groups to work to your preferences, but those are the default settings, and they work well.

After you’ve set up priority inbox to your specific tastes, you then just use your email as normal. Gmail will learn from how you interact with your mail which is important and which isn’t, and you can give it a helping hand by manually tagging messages as important or unimportant. Hopefully it will end up successfully sorting important mail from newsletters and other throwaway messages to give the greatest effect. It’s definitely a nice improvement to Gmail and I would suggest all users go and update their accounts straight away. There should be a link in red in the top right of the screen, you can then watch an intro video and get started.

The chrome web store is a natural progression of web apps and makes them accessible in a way more akin to traditional applications. You can “install” apps to your new tab page in either chrome browser or chrome OS. Installing is really only installing a high resolution icon which acts as a bookmark to the app itself, although parts of the apps may be installed onto the local drive for offline access, but that’s pure speculation on my part.

I think this is something which really lends itself well to the minimalist, predominantly online nature of chrome OS and I think it’s an important step in allowing the average user to be able to keep tabs on their email, calendar, documents, social networking sites and more, which are all browser based in their primary form. I think it’s important to differentiate real web apps from regular web sites and have a separate place for all your most used tools.

I can’t wait to see what HTML5 will allow us to do in the near future, and the web store rekindles my excitement for chrome OS.

Android has really been picking up steam recently and I have to say I didn’t expect it to start challenging Apple so soon. Yes, it has been 18 months, but that isn’t really that long when you’re faced with a monumental task of creating a brand new mobile operating system from scratch. Not only that, but trying to get a foothold in the marketplace with many established companies already creating impressive stuff of their own. Finally, they had to forge relationships with as many device manufacturers and mobile carriers as possible all over the world.

The stats that Google had to present at Google IO were very impressive. 100,000 new phone activations per day is a huge number. They are also now lead in US mobile browser usage, beating out the iPhone. Of course Apple only sell one phone and google have many partners making android handsets, but even so, this is impressive.

Another reason why this is impressive is because until recently, and to some extent even now, Android in my opinion is more of a geeky and less mainstream OS than the iPhone, and far less polished in terms of performance or intuitiveness. Maybe I’m just out of the loop and this is old news, but it appears that Froyo is taking further big steps in improving these areas. iPhone and Apple in general always seem to do the little things exceptionally well, and this is an area Google need to work on. The integration with iTunes is a huge selling point. The way everything syncs, including contacts and calendars with the desktop versions of those apps is so seamless. No other mobile company can match it, or at least until now potentially.

I use Google for a lot of things. If they can integrate their services such as contacts and mail to an extent where it is smooth enough to compare well with Apple’s syncing solution, then maybe Android can equal Apple in that department. In that vein, Google announced a multitude of changes intended to bring them right up to par with the iPhone OS. They’ve improved the browser considerably, even claiming that it is now the fastest mobile browser. I’m not sure I believe that but if it’s true then it’s fantastic for them. Other improvements include updating of apps on the device itself including auto-updating as well as a new desktop browser store which can instigate downloads over-the-air which is a nice feature.

There are many other smaller but significant improvements. These include better enterprise features, the ability to install apps on an SD card and a number of new APIs including a new advanced push notification system which takes Apple’s interpretation a step further with notifications that can automatically open apps and perform tasks on their own.

Overall, Android is very much on the up and Apple should be very wary of their threat. Google are not to be underestimated. They have an unorthodox business model but it seems to work well for them and Android seems to be very close to the level of Apple’s iPhone OS. I think it’s going to take them another 6 months to a year to catch up fully if they can at all, but with the market penetration they now have, the developers are going to be coming thick and fast in support.

There appear to be two main things that appear to differentiate this product from Apple TV and many other competitors. The first is that it actually embraces traditional cable or satellite set-top boxes by providing tight integration with the TV guide and DVR functions rather than ignore traditional TV like Apple have done so far. The second is that Google are trying to make the system as open as possible with a full web browser and support for Android Applications.

The big question on my mind is can they make this system scalable enough for casual TV users to be able to understand it as easily as current TV services, while still being able to provide more savvy web content watchers with the more sophisticated tools that they’re looking for? I think they can but it’s going to take time.

Google TV I think is really an experimental product and is bridging the gap until this type of technology becomes the norm for TV in general. It’s almost inevitable that at first there will be quite a lot of confusion about how to use the product and what exactly it’s capable of. Google are really pushing HTML5 and Flash in the browser as ways to provide specially modified experiences for known websites like YouTube and others. However, they’re also pushing Android Apps as another way of doing the same kind of thing, so it may be confusing at first as to what method to use for creating custom experiences for the TV screen.

I think when you compare this product to something like Apple TV, it’s clear that Google have the right idea. Apple are simply being too restrictive with their overpriced set-top box. It’s due for an update and I’m sure they’re going to try something similar to what Google are now, but Apple’s neglect of their device seems to be catching up with them now.

Google have a tough task ahead to convince the general public that this is what they need for their TVs, but for the tech savvy among us, I think it could be a hit in due course if they continue to develop it with a clear goal in mind and not over-complicating things. The full web browser should really be the secondary method for content viewing as I think designated apps are really what people are looking for when they’re operating the system from their couches. With that said, it’s hard to fault the inclusion of a fully compatible browser for situations where it isn’t yet possible to view content in a bespoke TV optimised way.

This product, including the set-top box and TVs with it built in will be shipping sometime in the Autumn. So I would suggest that you should probably avoid buying an Apple TV in the meantime unless Apple do a monumental refresh of that device before then. It would seem unlikely with Apple more focused on their iPhone, iPod and Mac operations.

The future of TV really does appear to be up in the air at the moment. How will cable, satellite and freeview fit in to the increasingly web based streaming model?

Can Google succeed in bringing this kind of service to the mainstream where Apple haven’t done exceptionally well as of yet with the Apple TV.

Google are taking the same approach here as they are with Android in that they are making their software available on many different platforms and devices as opposed to Apple who like to keep things strictly integrated into their own ecosystem of products.

If Android continues to be successful and Google TV takes off then we may see Apple having to branch out and embrace other companies more as well, but it seems unlikely that they would unless they really had to.