Recently I’ve been quite heavily engaged with the things I’d like to be doing. The things I’d like to get my teeth into, explore and all out consume! To list a few :-S

• The words ‘Ruby’ and  ‘Rails’ have been idling on my dashboard stickies for some months with the intention of exploring what everyone seems to swear by and recommend. Well, I got around to doing a bit of research last night and came acorss this: http://media.rubyonrails.org/video/rails_take2_with_sound.mov. I’ll just say that this mov did it all! - The title of this post echoed nicely in conjunction with my intended point! - Well, well! worth a look for anyone interested as a very quick-fire, almost comical route to web development.
• As mentioned before I’m really getting into the AS3 side of creative development, and have felt myself being drawn to API’s such as flickr, youtube, facebook, and even google. - Luckily these are things I hope to incorporate into my final projects this term so I’ll get around to these in the near future.
• I’m a grand fan of php myself as my lang/tool of choice, however I must get to grips with the OO side of this alongside Smarty as a way of pushing this skill and developing my own library/system…..that would be swell.
• Second to last is the exploration of AJAX, which will hopefully come hand-in-hand with either the push of OOP PHP / Ruby on Rails.
• I was going to mention Flex and AIR, but yea….I’ll keep them on the burner for now
• Of course, the list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the iphone’s SDK! and so once I get my hands on an iphone I’m all over this. I guess this spawns learning Cocoa and everything attached to it too so this is one I’m really looking forward to.

I for one have sure been waiting for this for a while! Jobs announced today at an Apple ’special event’ that the next gen of iPods are here.

You can read the full transcription here.

Even though the design for the new multi-touch model is a little predictable (iPhone!) I still think it works really well and can’t wait for UK availability.

Oh and the best part, a partnership with Starbucks! great nifty feature which syncs with any nearest store’s playlist although I reckon every iPod should come with a free Starbucks coffee ‘output’ port……

http://unype.com/

I for one am starting to get a little annoyed with Facebook apps, and to be honest I am not sure what I think of this one. Perhaps as a theory its kool, the fact you can locate the people you interact with via another interface…..a 3D one at that.

I’ve just installed this myself and as with a lot of these new apps/services/tools etc etc there are not a lot of users currently online. I think the fact that this uses Google Earth is in itself a great feature, combining technology and exploring new ways of using it, especially if future developments with Google Earth include adding more detailed imagery and 3D visuals.

I posted previously about weblin, and this is a similar concept, however here we see it integrated into an existing ’space’. Including having the capability of talking to other users via Skype. Although, is this just going beyond cross-technology integration and overloading an app for the sake of it…? Interesting non the less, we seem to be seeing a lot of these types of multi-user platforms emerging. Mass participation, social interaction tools etc etc

Heard of weblin?

An intriguing new app I have just discovered. I was hoping to download this and share my thoughts about its use first hand, however unfortunately it is only compatible on windows, So i’ll have to wait until I can get access to the dark side.

Worth a look anyway and for anyone running windows, I’d be really interested to hear how this is acknowledged, and if it just ends up being uninstaled because all you get it annoying people randomly talking to you!

I suppose this could be an invasion of privacy, after all most of the sites we go on are for information, for research right? I wouldn’t want to stay talking to someone when I just wanted a simgle piece of script.  Saying that, what if this tool is used as a method of learning, after all you are in effect looking for the same thing someone else is.

Again though, here’s another thought, this relies entirely upon mass participation, and if it doesn’t get it then it will fail.

http://www.weblin.com/

Yea this is really useful, Apple finally jumps on board and reveals its own social music widgets.

We have been noticing these widgets creeping onto the social networking scene in the form of apps such as ‘iLike’. Personally I havn’t used these simply because they are just ‘another app’ which needs to be managed and maintained. Its got to the point where you are updating multiple sources of information with the same new data.

I really see this new Apple feature being one that is used rather successfully.

All the data in one place and maintained automatically.

2006 became the year of online social networking with sites such as MySpace setting the trend and thereafter its competitors such as Facebook and others breaking onto the commercial market.

I keep wondering what is going to be the next trend for 2007 and came across this:

http://bliin.com/

Social networking goes real time, on the move and on my connection; a little slow when rendering.

Turns out there are a few other sites pushing this trend using other types of imaging technology. I.e. Google maps. See http://www.trackut.com/

An interesting area to watch in the future. Nice.

Ok seems like the multi-touch interaction technology is running ripe at the moment, and although the concept has been around for some while, I thouht I’d post Gates’ version.

It would be interesting to have a play with one of these on location I must admit.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

Okismokes lets get posting, I found this browsing around digg.

http://digg.com/programming/Google_Maps_new_feature_Street_View

I think this is just great! It really shows you the scope of the things to come.

Not sure about the video though, lol.