This month, I decided to trial Spotify Premium. 

The idea of listening to (pretty much) anything I wanted to at any time seemed very appealing. At £9.99 it is the equivalent of buying one album a month from a store like HMV. 

Also, with the Premium package, you have access to the iPhone app. This makes it even more appealing as I can listen to anything on the go.

Saying that, my initial experience has been one of frustration and disappointment.

I feel Spotify falls down at one, simply question: “What shall I listen to?”

In my iTunes library, I can browse through artists, albums etc to see if anything catches my eye. If I need a pick me up then maybe a bit of Relient K to add some cheer. If I want some chilled out music then I can just browse through and choose from a limited selection.

With Spotify, this is almost impossible. There is no way of browsing music in the same way to find something that fits your mood. There is too much choice and no way to filter out this choice. There is only a search field, and searching for “chilled” does not really produce many good results.

It’s as though they expect you to know what you want to listen to before you open up the application.

Also, unless you download a playlist before hand, the iPhone app can be hit and miss at streaming the music. When listening to music on car journeys it often stops periodically to buffer a bit more. This is might frustrating.

It seems my listening habits may have to change slightly. And maybe it’s just teething issues. But so far, not great.

Has anyone else had any issues?

maniacalrage:

Here’s the thing about Facebook that really gets under my skin: They are slowly incorporating the features from every other independent web application on the internet. This is not inherently a problem—companies get bigger and they begin to have the resources to widen their feature set—the issue is that Facebook doesn’t do these features any better. They win simply due to how many users they have. It feels like mass-produced mediocrity.

When Facebook launched Photos, they immediately became the largest photo-sharing site on the internet, eclipsing Flickr nearly overnight. The problem is Facebook’s Photos functionality isn’t nearly as nice as Flickr. They became the largest photo-sharing site immediately because they already had those users who, by and large, spend more time on their site than anywhere else. These users aren’t going to venture out to Flickr if they can just dump their SD cards into Facebook.

The same thing goes for Videos (sub-par compared to Vimeo and even YouTube). Vimeo is one of the best video-sharing applications in the world but it will never have nearly as many users as Facebook, so most people use Facebook instead.

And, most recently, Facebook launched Places, competing with Foursquare and Gowalla (my favorite). Places launched and 20 minutes later nearly everyone in my Facebook friends list had already checked in. It’s not that Facebook’s Places feature is bad, it’s just that it’s boring. It’s nothing special. They didn’t do it better than anyone else.

That’s the problem with Facebook. They are slowly destroying independent web applications with boring versions that immediately win due to Facebook’s population (which at this point is the 3rd largest country on earth). There’s no demand for excellence.

I have realised that my tumblr has been severely neglected and abused over the past few months. This is mainly due to final year of university taking over my life, including my final year project; Odima. 

However, this week on Tuesday I found out that it was all worth as I gained a First in my degree and won an award for Odima. I am really pleased with this, as you can imagine!

And so these past few weeks since finishing uni have been a bit of a roller coaster. I haven’t decided if I’ll write about it all yet but it has been good and it has been bad. Good in the sense that we have partied and I have such a bright and exciting future ahead, bad in the sense that it is the end of an era and security!

However, I aim to revitilise my tumblr to make it more interesting than my listening habits! So I am going to do the 30 days of Tumblr challenge that a couple of people have done. Hopefully, this will get me excited about blogging and sharing again. If not, no worries, but it should be fun.

This will start in July because I am going away with Amy to Brighton on Sunday till Friday and intended not to look at Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or GMail. This will be all about exploring the area and having (more of a) rest!

I may post a couple things between now and then, but this is the plan. Hope you will enjoy it!

Peace.

It is my 23rd birthday on 9th May. I am looking forward to it, although it is slightly marred by my impending finals that start the day after. Every year I get asked the same question; what do you want for your birthday? I am in a very privileged position to have gifts bought for me on this day. However, this year I’d like to do things differently.

A couple months ago, our water stopped working in the house I share with some friends. It was completely cut off. There was a slight uncertainty around as we spoke to the water company and neighbours about the situation; How would we get a cup of tea? How would we shower? How would we flush the loo?

It may sound rather silly, but I realised how great we had it. The fact that I can go to the kitchen and get a glass of water. And that this water was clean and drinkable. So I started to look into those who didn’t have this and what I found was astounding:

Almost a billion people don’t have access to clean water.

Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.

90% of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions are to children under five years old.

This is not ok. I want to do something about this. So this is what I am going to do.

This year for my birthday, I will give all of my monetary birthday gifts to chairty:water. Chairty:water is a “non-profit organisation bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.” 100% of their donations go into their projects, while their staff are funded by outside sources. For more information check out their website: http://www.charitywater.org/

Over the next week I will be posting something every day about charity:water and how providing clean water does more than quench thirst.

I know that some people like to give gifts, and I don’t want to take that away from people. But can I suggest if you would like to get me a gift, then please get a smaller one and give a donation as well. This is what I want for my birthday.

Also, for those who don’t usually give me a gift, but want to give someone access to a basic human need, I will be setting up a Just Giving page for people to give to. 

Thank you all in advance for this.

• Create my own Tumblr theme
• Finish of The Bible App
• Create a decent Facebook app for integrating/uploading Flickr photos
• Go on holiday
• Finish off all the updates to sites I should have done but Uni stole took over my life
• Met up for a coffee/drink with everyone I should have done but Uni stole took over my life
• A day of doing nothing
• Set up the next stage of my life

amysian:

My boyfriend is a geek (Hi Steve).
We have been together for 3 months.
I just commented on how people really shouldn’t make websites in flash (while trying to navigate one via my phone).
I’m scared of what I’m becoming…

Totally worth reblogging.

:)

I would like to take a couple of moments to explain briefly what I will be doing after graduation. I have been asked this quite a lot recently and thought it best to explain it in one place.

As some of you may be aware of, I graduate from Aston University this summer (my last exam is 21st May) and soon I will be out of the bubble of student life and into the big, bad world. Over the past 6 months I have been thinking and praying about what direction to take and now things are becoming more firm I would like to explain to you a little about what I will be doing.

As a Christian, I have felt it important to listen to God on what he wants for my life. I have been praying and fasting trying to discern his will. It wasn’t until a dream I had that it all became clear. The dream was that I was in a cold, dark place in the middle of a snow storm. At first I thought this was Birmingham, but then I saw some people. They weren’t Brummies, they were Inuits. They look lost, wandering around the snow storm. I then heard God say “show them the way Steve.” I then woke up.

This dream has stuck with me and so after careful thought, discussion and prayer I have decided to take a risk. As of September I will be leaving England to go and live with a Christian Inuit family who are currently trying to plant a church in their local Inuit community. The couple I will be living with are called Itigiaq and Kapik. They have 2 children with a third on the way so it will be a pretty full iglo. The idea is that eventually I will get my own iglo, maybe live with some of the Inuits who will join the church as it grows.

So this is it. I know it may come as a bit of a shock to you, but it also came to a bit of a shock to me! I would like you to keep me all in your thoughts for it. I will blogging about my experience over at http://jesus4inuits.wordpress.com If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Also, I will probably be freelancing while I’m over there so if you have any work for a poor missionary then please let me know.

Thanks.
Steve Heyes.

sketchesofadream:

Saw this list, thought it was a good plan

• Day 01 — Your favorite song
• Day 02 — Your favorite movie
• Day 03 — Your favorite television program
• Day 04 — Your favorite book
• Day 05 — Your favorite quote
• Day 06 — Whatever tickles your fancy
• Day 07 — A photo that makes you happy
• Day 08 — A photo that makes you angry/sad
• Day 09 — A photo you took
• Day 10 — A photo of you taken over ten years ago
• Day 11 — A photo of you taken recently
• Day 12 — Whatever tickles your fancy
• Day 13 — A fictional book
• Day 14 — A non-fictional book
• Day 15 — A fanfic
• Day 16 — A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
• Day 17 — An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
• Day 18 — Whatever tickles your fancy
• Day 19 — A talent of yours
• Day 20 — A hobby of yours
• Day 21 — A recipe
• Day 22 — A website
• Day 23 — A YouTube video
• Day 24 — Whatever tickles your fancy
• Day 25 — Your day, in great detail
• Day 26 — Your week, in great detail
• Day 27 — This month, in great detail
• Day 28 — This year, in great detail
• Day 29 — Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
• Day 30 — Whatever tickles your fancy

It begins tomorrow. Hope you enjoy

This looks like fun. I think I shall play too.

This evening I had a very quick play with Tumblr Ask. I thought I would share with you a couple of my thoughts about it.

First off, what is it? Tumblr Ask is a way of asking a tumblr user a question. Simple as that really. As far as I can gather, they seemed to of taken their idea from Form Spring which according to their site is a way of “Send[ing] and receive anonymous questions, and learn more about people you find interesting by following their answers.” I have seen this on a few tumblr blogs but not really bothered much with it, but thought I would try out Tumblrs version.

So my experience with it. Honestly, I found it a little clunky to use. The javascript used to answer a question seems to be very slow and sometimes it took me 3 or 4 attempts to answer a question. I know that it is in testing, so I don’t hold this against them. Also, the counter next to ‘Messages’ in the side menu on the dashboard seemed a little unreliable. Saying that, Tumblr probably have hundreds of users trying this out (they had 843 notes on last check of the post) and are ironing out the bugs.

I do like the design of the posts on the dashboard. Due to how new the functionality, my template doesn’t display them as nice. But that’s fine, it will either get updated, or I will use one which has the functionality built in. That will just take time.

You might be wondering why I am making a deal out of this. Basically, it comes down to user directed development, which seems to be a patten in web applications recently. I would define user directed development as incorporating functionality that the users are already doing or want.

For example, the majority of Twitters current features (@mentions, #hashtags, search, ReTweet, lists etc) have either come form users constantly using the same techniques (@mentions for example) or an in house recreation of a popular web service (search and #hashtags). I think the same kind of thing is happening on Tumblr.

I say this is happening, but I may be getting a head of myself. There is only the one new feature that has been added due to a popular web service being linked with tumblr a lot. However, I do know that the guys at Tumblr HQ go through the stats of what people are blogging, so it wouldn’t surprise me. They have also added a number of functionality that users have suggested (‘J’ & ‘K’ scrolling, video thumbnails) Also, I haven’t been using Tumblr long enough to comment on whether ‘rebloging’ was created because people where already doing it.

So, in conclusion, Tumblr Ask is fun and pretty, if a bit buggy. More interestingly to me is that it is part of a wider pattern of user directed development which is an interesting way of growing an application.