The turning of the clock to 2012 means a new beginning for many. I am happy with simply tweaking what has been working by making things simpler and thus better. So as I look ahead, I hope that over the next few months, some of the technology products that I use the most will make incremental changes that could make life better for the people who use their products.
Here is my wish list, not in any specific order:
1). Twitter Sync.
Twitter is trying its very best to make its service more accessible to what some call “normals.” It is a good aspiration to have. In the interim, what Twitter needs is the ability to “sync” across multiple devices and platforms.
How many times do I need to read the same “direct message” or “@ replies?” The fact of the matter is that syncing across platforms is table stakes in today’s modern & highly mobile web. And if they have trouble developing this, maybe Amazon can license it to them.
2). Amazon Match
This holiday season, I signed up for iTunes Match and now I have nearly all of my music in the iCloud. Now Amazon needs to build something similar — for lack of a better word, let’s call it Amazon Match. I have bought hundreds of books from the Seattle-based online retailing giant. What I want them to do is make all of them (or at least the ones that are available online as e-books) sync to my Kindle account.
If they want to charge me an annual fee, I am perfectly fine with that. It is one way of keeping me loyal to the Kindle platform and keeping me using it more often. Kindle as a front end for my cloud-based book library isn’t far fetched: they are making videos & music one acquires through Amazon available on Amazon Prime, so why not books?
3). Instagram-to-Blog
Instagram just might be the most used social app on my iPhone (after Twitter.) I love using it because it allows me to cross-post photos to various platforms – Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Foursquare. However, there is nothing I want more than for Instagram to build support for WordPress (& other blogging platforms such as Squarespace) so I can post my photos directly to my personal blog at the same time as I do on other services. It allows me to share my experiences with others who are not on Instagram and allows me to keep a permanent record of those experiences.
4). Connect the Apps
In December 2011, Path relaunched and with it created a unified social and mobile experience. It combined photo sharing with location, video sharing and a whole lot of other little incremental changes that basically helped the Dave Morin project recover from its early blunders.
However, the biggest take away from Path is that we need ways for mobile apps to connect with each other better and create enhanced experiences across platforms. Right now, mobile users need to enter data (photos, locations etc) into different applications multiple times. The ability to mix and match the data from other apps is going to help us realize that “data is the new plastic.”
5). Un-Swiped
My iPad has become my preferred way of consuming information — video, text and photos — and has started to suck time away from my Macbook Air. This move to iPad has created many new reading experiences and some of them like the Flipboard and Zite are quite spectacular. And then there are the OnSwipe-enabled WordPress.com blogs, which are a lot less so. It is the one iPad-centric view that needs to be retired — or at the very least it shouldn’t be the default setting for those blogs.
What is on your wishlist? Share with us.
Disclosure: Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.
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With the recent launches of Google Music, Amazon Cloud Player and iCloud, there has never been an easier time to buy a song. Each service is different, though, and each has their strengths and weaknesses. Depending on your phone, listening habits and geekiness, you are better off going with one service over another. Here is a handy guide to help you choose which service is best for you.
