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Adam Bowie

Listed below are comments made by Adam Bowie between Thursday, 17th April 2008 and Monday, 28th September 2009.

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Who wins from an Orange iPhone? 1:03pm on 28 Sep 2009 I'm still confused as to why Palm has gone with O2 exclusively with its Pre - especially in light of this news.

Surely every O2 customer who was interested in a state of the art smartphone has already got an iPhone. Are people really going to switch networks for the Pre?

It's good for O2 to retain an exclusive desirable model, but for Palm who want to shift stock, I'm not so sure.

Wouldn't Palm have been better off going to a network like Vodafone?
Twitter tests users with changes 2:19pm on 13 May 2009 I guess that I'm in that 2% then. But I liked the functionality, and given that most people start their replies with @replytoname followed by their message, that means that I'm missing out on a lot of interesting conversations.

Unless there's a massive cost saving involved in not hitting the servers (Amazon S3) quite so much, then I really don't understand why they made the change. Given that Twitter doesn't yet have a revenue model, cost may well count for something.

As I understand it, for new users, the default was to not show @replies.

But I've been on the service longer, I had those responses switched on by default and liked seeing them.

It's interesting that some people think that this is a lot of fuss about nothing. That might be because it's a feature you don't use. If the latest version of Word removes the Table of Index feature, I can honestly say it won't make a jot of difference to me. I've never used it. Most people have never used it. But a few have, and they'd get understandably irate if Microsoft was to do anything so silly. Yet that's effectively what Twitter's done.
A new podcast directory 11:53am on 16 Apr 2009 How about replicating the Swedish Radio podcast timer?

You use the slider to tell them how long your commute is, and the system gives you a suitable length podcast!

http://www.sr.se/rs/english/
My YouTube shame - part two 12:29pm on 15 Apr 2009 Here are my team's (Arsenal) T&Cs which are similar to Wembley's:

2.4 Save as set out in clause 2.5 below, you shall not bring into (or use within) the Ground any equipment which is capable of recording or transmitting (by digital or other means) any audio, visual or audio-visual material or any information or data in relation to a Match or any aspect of it.

2.5 Mobile telephones are permitted within the Ground, provided that they are used for personal and private use only.

At least they list mobile phones as an exclusion since just about everybody in the stadium is likely to be carrying one, and nearly all will be capable of "recording... visual... material".

The reality is that stewards don't like you taking lots of photos of action - particularly with "professional" camaras. That is, DSLR cameras. A friend of mine had his DSLR confiscated before last night's Chelsea game (he got it back).

If you take photos of the ground before or after, nobody's going to complain.

But it's a condition of entry that you don't take photos or video of the action, irrespective of signs pointing it out or not.

That said, I've put plenty of photos on Flickr in the past and nobody's complained. But I know I'm probably breaking the rules.

Interestingly, I recently went to a Wasps game and sat in the front row with my massive DSLR lens and nobody was remotely bothered that I was getting photos.
Is Skype on the iPhone a big deal? 5:12pm on 30 Mar 2009 The problem is surely that the iPhone is underpowered and can't run multiple applications.

3's Skype phones are more interesting because you can keep Skype logged in, and more usefully, when phoning another Skype caller, you're actually using the cellular network as for the first leg of your call. So you're not reliant on 3G which would be a little shaky - if not impossible.

That all said, if you are in a WiFi zone and want to phone someone abroad, it's to be welcomed.
Jade Goody's death 3:53pm on 24 Mar 2009 I'm always a little concerned if (even part) validation for a story is the number of people who've read it on the website. Does this lady's story sell millions of newspapers and magazines? Undoubtedly. There is a public interest. But that doesn't mean that BBC News has to follow those values. I daresay that if BBC News offered a "soap" category it would be very popular. That wouldn't make it appropriate.

Clearly this was a story worthy of coverage, but that coverage should have been more limited.

Indeed overall, I think the "most read" box on the news page is a waste anyway. Inevitably many of the stories are more of the "...and finally" type. As another commenter has said, you're not required to drive page impressions and associated advertising as other newspaper sites now find themselves, driving downwards to a lowest common denominator.
Visual radio launches! 12:37pm on 12 Jan 2009 An impressive debut.

Are the webcams being mixed live by a vision mixer, or is there some terribly clever automation going on - perhaps looking to see which microphones are registering sound and prioritising them?

I assume that the text messages are being manually screened too...
Twitter - the Mumbai myths 7:08pm on 01 Dec 2008 I tend to think that social media networks *can* provide additional information and colour but have to be treated cautiously. People watching on 24 hour TV networks aren't really adding anything.

Indeed, what was also interesting for this tragedy, was watching some if the Indian networks like NDTV and Star which were providing feeds to networks like the BBC and CNN anyway.

Unsubstantiated rumour can spread just as swiftly as facts - particularly when people "tweet-on" things they've already heard to their, perhaps wider, network of friends.

The full picture of what actually happened in Mumbai is still not fully clear several days later, so I'm not sure that this is the coming of age or anything.

It was interesting to hear one of the hotel residents on BBC radio this morning talking about his "Blackberry network" and how he had over 2000 emails sent over the period. Quite what that was and how it works is something to perhaps look at it in more detail. For people holed up in these massive hotels not knowing whether the people running around in the corridors were terrorists or Indian commandos, the micro level detail such a "network" could offer might be invaluable. But beyond those people you already know in the hotel - perhaps fellow businesspeople - I'm unsure how you'd go about setting up such a network in a crisis.

This is something I'd definitely be interested in hearing more about. Perhaps something to look into Rory?
Twitter and the China earthquake 09:40am on 12 May 2008 I felt the very modest recent Lincolnshire quake all the way down here in North London and Twittered it immediately. Upon searching, I quickly found plenty more reports. All of this beat the first Five Live/Sky News reports that took a few more minutes to come through. And Twitter did indeed lead me to the USGS report of the quake.

So Twitter can react very quickly. However, that was for something I actually experienced. Surely what Scoble was doing was providing to links to first-hand reports from established news organisations like the BBC and New York Times.

Now if Twitter was alive with reports from residents from Sichuan then that'd be something different. But in this instance it feels no more revolutionary that someone flicking between all the 24 hour news channels until they begin picking up the story.

Perhaps Twitter is vibrant in China - although I doubt it. Otherwise it remains a live news source in a real sense only for those areas where its users reside. Twitter wasn't much use with regard to the Burma cyclone last week for example.
Toys leave me a-twitter 8:55pm on 17 Apr 2008 Just a note to say that the link to Twhirl above is wrong - it should be twhirl.org.

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