It’s all starting to come together. A few weeks ago I discovered a peculiar thing. I’ve always carried a small camera with me ever since the days of the original Cannon Ixus, more for a sense of ‘it’ll be there when I need it’ than any really coherent plan. I’ve worked my way up from film to digital to really proper 5 megapixel + digital. And the more digital and costless it’s become the more I’ve been using it. However, recently I’ve been leaving it at home and there it sits getting ever more lonely.
So what has brought about this change? Have I just stopped taking pictures or what? Obviously if you look at this blog or my Flickr photostream you’ll see I haven’t, so what is going on?
The fact is I’ve downgraded, or not so much downgraded as sidestepped. I’m still carrying a camera only instead of boasting super focusing and loads of manual control like the Ixus, it boasts pretty crap resolution but a host of fantastic add-ons. It is of course my iPhone. And the single most compelling reason for using it as my main camera is the ability it gives me to adapt, publish and share my pictures.
Using relatively inexpensive apps, like ColorSplash, Photogene, and Mobile Fotos, I can take pictures, colour correct them, crop them and play with them, then upload them immediately to my Flickr page. It’s a revelation.
Of course it would be doubly great if the camera in the iPhone wasn’t such a dog, but what really surprised me was that I found the immediacy offered by the iPhone/app/Flickr combination far outweighed the superiority of the Ixus images. Sure I’ll still use the Ixus for my big Hockneyesque collages, but for everything else the apps have it.

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Another neat little app for the iPhone, Colorspash is probabably the best £1.19 I’ve spent recently.
Colorsplash strips the colours from your iPhone photos, then lets you put it back in a finger painting style. Simple to use and with the best help system of any app I’ve played with, this is both powerful and fun to use. It is also highly versitile, allowing me to fine tune the feathers of The Diva’s boa.
There has been a growing trend for apps that make the iPhone into a truly creative platform – painting and photographic ones especially – and Colorsplash is a great,fun addition to these.

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After a minor hiatus for snowboarding – one fantastic day, one shite day and generally a big step forward in skill over last year – it’s back to regular life in London.
Some things I’ve noticed recently. First, London Transport seems incapable of running the underground effectively over the weekend. Endless delays, station closures and just basic uselessness make travelling on the tube during the weekend a real pain in the arse. I was making my annual trip to Docklands for the International Dive Show and it filled me with dispair. As always the Docklands Toy Train reminds me of the Gatwick Shuttle rather than a real bit of public transport. Crammed full of people it makes you wonder how anyone expected Canary Wharf to accommodate 40,000 people. It doesn’t even go to the right stations so you have to constantly change trains.
The Dive Show was more like a big shop and less like a ‘show’ than ever. You got the feeling that the Excel Centre was more interested in getting ready for the arrival of Obama and co than in accommodating the Show. Still managed to get the stuff I wanted in less time than ever. Now I just can’t wait to use my new wing when I next go UK diving.
Finally, just got hold of the WordPress app for my iPhone, so this is coming in from my phone. Nice app.

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Yeah, poor form to have ignored the whole of September I know. But it wasn’t such a class act as it turned out. Anyway, there I was thinking that Watchmen sounded like a really good film adaptation of a really, really good comicbook, so I decided to check out 300, Zack Snyder’s last comicbook revision.

I also decided to try using iTunes’ music store to actually buy it (it was a slow day, I was bored, it was only about a fiver). As far as the store goes it’s not bad at all – downloaded fast, slipped easily onto my iPhone (so I can watch it on the train going ‘THIS IS SPARTA’ as commuters look at me in a combination of awe and repugnance) and so far it hasn’t worried too much about being migrated all over the place.

As far as the film goes, stylistically it’s great, way more effective than Sin City, and manages to combine a sort of comic super-reality with some kind of emotional connection, which again Sin City just never accomplished. And it has many good bits, not least The Wire’s Dominic West once again playing a deceitful womanising political whore and David Whenham once again playing a grovellingly obsequious sidekick. And it does have that sense of super-realism that started to come in vogue with The Matrix and colour timing and really great greenscreen work. It also works as a story.

But no matter how good it is, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator still shits on it. Visually way more expansive, better story, better plot, better acting, more emotionally engaging and it even has better lines. So while 300 gives us “Give them nothing, but take from them everything”, Gladiator gives us “What we do in life echoes in eternity”.

Still looking forward to Watchmen though.

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So what would you do if you were trying to provide a ‘special offer’ to some of your most ardent, most evangelical customer? You know the kind who aren’t shy about coming forward and telling their friends what a bang up job you’re doing with that great piece of Apple kit that (currently) no one else can provide. The kind of early adopter people who appreciate technology and great design.

Personally speaking, I’d make some sort of effort, but then I’m not O2, the spanish telephone company that has the lock on the iPhone in the UK. They thought of a very special way of making their customers’ iPhone upgrade memorable. First you send them a text message at 8 in the morning telling them you’re offering them a special deal. It’s so special it’s a web only deal.. You tell them that it’s extremely limited and demand is expected to be high. You tell them it’s first come, first served. You direct them to a part of your website that is 3 clicks away from where they get to sign up. And then.

Your server crashes at 8:02.

How bad is that? Well. It’s pretty bad. Admittedly it’s not bad in a ‘Hover, we practically blew the company on that free flights offer’ way, but it is bad. Bad in so many other ways. Bad in a ‘we had a chance to marry our brand (which no one gives a toss about) with Apple’s (one of the world’s best brands) and we decided we’d rather stab our customers in their eyes than take the opportunity’ kind of way. Bad in a ‘aren’t we supposed to be, like, a telecoms company?’ kind of way. Bad in a ‘shouldn’t we have some idea of extendable server systems’ kind of way. Bad in a ‘do you think anyone will trust us to set up ANY kind of internet sort of thing EVER again’ kind of way. And very, very bad in a ‘do you think they’ll notice’ kind of way. Hmm, let’s ponder that last one. Nope, I think they’ll definitely notice. But just in case they don’t, let’s redirect them to look at our iPhone tarrifs, I mean they’re all only going to be EXISTING IPHONE CUSTOMERS. They’re only currently paying for the service, so they’ll probably have AN IDEA of your bloody tarrifs.

So O2, the telecoms company that thinks it’s better to sponsor the millennium dome than actually provide a, get this, mobile telephone service, this is how badly you’ve blown it. You’ve managed to convince ALL the early iPhone adopters in the UK that you’re systemically unable to live up to the Apple brand. You’ve managed to convince us that you know NOTHING about technology, NOTHING about the internet and NOTHING about your customers – except that apparently it’s OK to treat them like scum. You’ve managed to convert an opportunity into a catastrophe in a way that can only be described as self-inflicted. You’ve demonstrated an incompetence of planning that is somehow also deeply, deeply strategic. This is long term brand-nuking stuff. This is a well known major supermarket selling poisoned food manufactured in sweat shops by slaves to children and exposed in a popular Sunday tabloid. This is incompetence, ignorance and technical illiteracy as core brand values. This is ‘Ratners sells crap’, but sent by text message, individually to each of your customers. This is getting really, really, really close and personal with them and then, giving them a full-on blowback of your festering halitosis.

Compare and contrast with the Nike +, a partnership with Apple that worked for both partners, where Nike win a Palme d’Or at Cannes, while Apple reinforce the iPod as the natural choice for runners. Here Apple must be really pleased to work with people who can’t even keep a server running. I mean Apple only sells billions of tunes via iTunes and here’s its specialist mobile partner and they can’t even keep a website up. For the morning. This makes Apple look like twats for selecting this bunch of amateurs for their partners. Worse, it makes Apple look like stupid twats. It makes Jobs look like an asshole. And you’ve got to think, How long is he going to tolerate that?

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