(cross-posted from Made by Many)

We went to mashup* Events Widgets last night. There were about 200 people there, four panelists and some people demo’ing new stuff. I went along to find out what is happening on the widget scene. I was hoping to hear about some concrete examples, and was interested in hearing how people, brands, media owners are making money from widgets. So was everyone else, and the audience attacked.

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We haven’t talked much about Widgets on Knitware. Graham mentioned sharp’s latest Aquos Net widget TV, but I think they probably deserve more dues. I’ve been building a website for my wedding for some time now; I just wanted it to be a simple and easy to use site that tells people where the hotels are and how to get to our little corner of England. The problem is that I was desperately ill equipped to design a website. read full post »

It’s fair to say that somewhere in any digital agency’s business plan is a paragraph about the importance of owning code. This is fine for agencies like Special Moves who see themselves a pure production facility. For traditional digital agencies like Agency.com or AKQA who want to provide strategy and creative ideas this is a BAD idea.

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Yesterday the Taliban gave Afghanistani mobile networks an ultimatum. Shut down your networks at night, or face attack. Landlines are pretty defunct in the country making mobile networks the key method of communication - for the Taliban and Allied Forces. The Allied Forces carry out plenty of their operations at night and this is what the Taliban are trying to restrict. The thing is, as has been pointed out, the Allied Forces use satellite phones too. They don’t need to rely on mobile networks. Surely the Taliban know this? If they don’t maybe they just want a quiet night’s sleep, but chances are, they do and want to put a stranglehold on the country. Where does this leave those companies? read full post »

This week everyone seems to be talking about Youtube and the alleged attempts by Pakistan to block the video hosting site (Source The Inquirer).

It’s easy to forget that Youtube content can be serious, there’s so many fluffy rabbit videos the serious stuff tends to get buried. But dig around in the tube archives and there are treasures to be found.

Here are my top four (crazy) science/technology based clips. Maybe you can suggest some more.

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No, not the little claymation chap who was Tony Hart’s imaginary friend. Morph is “concept device” created by by Nokia Research Center (NRC) in collaboration with the Cambridge Nanoscience Centre (UK) to explore the kinds of devices and benefits that nanoscale technologies have the potential to create. Have a look at this video (I will post it here when our video button is restored…). It shows how Morph can be a watch, a phone, a calculator and a beer mat. It can sense chemicals in the air; it re-charges itself from the power of the sun; it’s self-cleaning and it can turn into jewelery. The video animation depicts user benefits from a personal perspective: a young woman sits outside a cafe on a sunny day sometime in a future set to lame chill-out music. Everything is perfect. Can’t wait.

Netvibes is the most useful site I use online. It lets me read three different email accounts, see what my Facebook notifications are (without having to read the droll mini feed), and catch up on all the blogs I read in one page through RSS feeds. It’s so much easier to read it all on one page than browsing individual sites - Im sure I actually read more blogs as a result. It’s great but it got me thinking - what if, instead of reading lots of different feeds, you just needed one?

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Internet downloads affecting the turnover of Ikea may sound like chaos theory, (that butterfly beating its wings always has seemed to cause all sorts of problems), but think about it for a minute…

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Its gonna be in the shops this Christmas apparently. Head gear that reads your mind, or at least your brain activity, and makes a corresponding command in the game you are playing. You can communicate your emotions like ‘anger’ or ‘calm’ - and you can move objects around Luke Skywalker stylee with just your mind. Interested?

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Another missive from Peter Sells, our reporter at the Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona.

Noticeably absent this year are the mobile TV companies. They’re still here of course flogging their wares from the less high profile (less expensive) stands, but its no longer the hot topic. Mobile TV is not like TV on your mobile, it’s a painful experience that relies on patience, good eyesight and a commitment to consuming content that only exists in business plans. If your telly took 20 seconds to buffer after you turned it on or changed channel, consumed power so you could only watch 40 mins before it died, and the picture regularly froze up, then you wouldn’t get addicted to Eastenders.

The Nokia N96 - which comes with DVB-H as standard (and even a kick-stand to help you watch it)

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