Tweets on 2012-04-21

Tweets on 2012-04-20

Tweets on 2012-04-19

Tweets on 2012-04-18

Rain rain

So the tube has been okay mostly for the last week or so which you forget completely when you have to travel 4 stops in the opposite direction to actually get on a tube in the morning. That’s not get on and get a seat that’s physically get on. I might not have time for the gym now 🙁

Tweets on 2012-04-17

iTunes store and gamed reviews

There has been a lot said in the press recently about bad reviews – the NYT recently brought to the attention of Google that one company decormyeyes was actively encouraging bad reviews to gain search engine rankings.

Other sites have been accused of allowing poor reviews which may have a negative effect on their businesses and in fact tripadvisor is being sued over it.

Meanwhile over on the iTunes store they’ve had problems in the past and removed apps from a developer found to be abusing the ratings and review system. Still though it persists.

Does anyone else think it’s suspicious that Union17 manages to review one app ***** (5 star) and NOW TOTALLY RELIABLE! PERFECT!! and writing lots of overly positive (and also in caps with exclamation points) yet at the same time manages to review seven other similar apps all * (1 star) managing to slate them, promote the first app and it’s supposed features int he review and all within a couple of days…
Then there’s Type25 who clearly does work for the developer as any of their apps reviewed are great and any others are poor.

I reckon another developer seems to be trying to game the iTunes store review system which really means you can’t trust the reviews on there until they find a way of preventing developers reviewing on the site.

Gaydar relaunches app, but will it unseat Grindr?

So gaydar have finally relaunched their iPhone application. It’s about time too. They used to be the pioneers in dating websites but have let the likes of Grindr and Bender make inroads into the space.

The previous version of the app was abysmal and buggy, wiping peoples website profiles and generally not what you would expect from QSoft. The new revamped version of the app is slick looking in greys and orange, there are still some niggles though which I’d have liked to see fixed, it’s always confused me why usernames aren’t shown on the thumbnails page.

It’s a vast improvement though. The location settings now seem to work which may yet erode into the website paid service as previously this was part of the premium package. Also unlike the new rivals on the block gaydar still has a pay model carried over from the website. No unlimited profile views like grindr and no unlimited messages like bender. Still it’s a step in the right direction and they have a massive user base already to tap into as well as a marketing budget to match the paid subscriber base.

So it looks like Milo hasn’t checked his facts again

A few months ago I was so enraged about a poorly researched barely disguised homophobic article written Milo Yiannopoulos from the Telegraph I felt the need to write quite a lengthy rant.

Today it would appear he still is in the habit of not fully checking facts. In his article about the law keeping up with technology (and don’t even start me on the spurious nature of the article, seriously 2 tweets and we need new laws apparently), Milo describes the extremely genourous offer from Stephen Fry to pay any fine received by Paul Chambers as “perhaps somewhat opportunistic”.

Milo your article is perhaps somewhat opportunistic – some may say timely of course, but I’ll stick with opportunistic, Stephen Fry made his offer well before the trial or the associated media attention so no this isn’t opportunistic it’s exceedingly generous.

I’ve always wondered about the future

Josh Sanburn then goes and sums it up in a great article for Time.
Somehow they all decided, ‘All right, that’s enough. From now on, this is going to be our outfit: one-piece silver jumpsuit with a V-stripe on the chest and boots. That’s it. We’re going to start visiting other planets and we want to look like a team.’

Read more about Universal Jumpsuits at Time.