whatleydude

Yesterday was a fairly busy day, if you’re a tech-head like me at least; Google+ rolled out their brand pages, the Nokia N9 started updating to the much-heralded mega-fix firmware and, for those that needed it, Spotify dropped onto the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Google+ I’ve covered already (no really, what is it for?), the N9 update I am yet to apply and as for Spotify? Well, what can I say?

Choosing Windows Phone as the last, great, mobile operating system to support, Spotify prepped itself for the promised masses yesterday afternoon (after a preview some six months ago) and boy, is it a beautiful app to use.

First, some caveats:

• Spotify mobile is only available to premium subscribers
• Premium is £9.99 a month. A small price to pay to NEVER PAY FOR ANY MUSIC EVER AGAIN.
• I’ve tried Zune* and, until Spotify dropped, that was fine (if a little alien).

So, to the app itself.

The good stuff:

• WP7 app design: oh my God this app is gorgeous.
• Scrolling, sharing, syncing: all of it rocks my face off.
• It’s Spotify, on my mobile.

The stuff needed in the next update:

• Background colour options
  Windows Phone offers either ‘dark’ or ‘light’, white on black or black on white respectively. Spotify should either match its app’s skin accordingly or at least offer it up as an in-app option. Strangely, while the app offers the light variation, the desktop client offers dark.
• Last.fm integration please
  Syncing tracks listened to in online mode and remembering then uploading my tracks listened to in offline mode.
• Offline playlist filters
  Yeah, love that but, any chance that you filter the playlists by DOWNLOADED FIRST? Having to scroll through all of them in order is a pain.
• Album art on lockscreen
  I mentioned I was on Zune before, one thing that the WP music player does nicely is show album covers on the lock screen while playing music. It’s a nice touch and adds to the overall experience. Spotify should do this too. See below.

 Florence playing through Zune

 Florence playing through Spotify

Overall, great work guys, it’s an awesome service and I’m a big fan. Having it running on my Lumia makes me a very happy bunny indeed. Good job.

Please, continue to iterate, improve and impress.

Danke,
James.

*I signed up for a Zune Pass about a day after first getting my Windows Phone. I like that it covers my Xbox too, but I already have Last.fm there. So it was only really the mobile music angle I needed to cover. Now Spotify is here, I just don’t need it.

Today I created a folder on my Mac marked ‘DKR’.

That is all.

[Private post - made public Dec 14th, 2011]

Splitscreen: A Love Story from JW Griffiths on Vimeo.

This beautiful video is being blogged all over the place at the moment, and for good reason. Splitscreen is the winner of the recent Nokia Shorts competition (disclaimer – 1000heads worked on this project for the big N) and, work associations aside, the video itself is gorgeous.

The winners (along with the other finalists) should be proud; it’s a great project and the output has been fantastic.

Well done to all involved.

Nokia and Microsoft have announced a strategic partnership that will see Nokia hardware running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 software. It’s about eco-systems and, with Google’s Android growing ever-larger, it’s also about a stronger – much more strategic – industry play.

The Nokia community, one that I’ve been a part of for many years (and now spend my days helping to manage), is obviously still in shock. The announcement has been out for 20mins and between ‘MURDER!’, ‘I told you so!‘ and ‘What have you done?!‘ – there are many out there still waiting for their questions to be answered:

- What about Meego?
- Where does this leave Symbian?
- What about the current roadmap?
- When can we expect the first Nokia/WP7 device to ship?

I imagine, over the course of today all of these questions, and more, will slowly be answered; the actual speech from Elop himself isn’t scheduled for another couple of hours and I’m fairly certain that what we’re seeing is just the start of major disruption both internally [for both Microsoft & Nokia employees] and externally for the market as a whole.

For now, I’ve got a couple of Social Media Week events to attend this morning so, I’m going to re-read my WP7 review from last year and spend my tube journey wondering if the bad points I highlighted could quite easily be ticked off by an awesome piece of Nokia hardware…

We are living in interesting times.

Are we over water now? I think so. At least, we should be. I guess we’ve been up for an hour now, maybe longer. My toes hurt.

Damn shoes.

I love my job. Six seats to my right a couple of competition winners sit happily drinking beer, looking forward to their prize; two VIP red blue carpet tickets to the Tron: Legacy ‘World Premiere’ in Hollywood.

I was at the London one last weekend. That was cool. Although Patrick probably nailed it best when he said “Premieres are fun but it’s essentially like going to the cinema with a suit on” – Yes Pat, just like that (if you ignore the Hollywood superstars arriving around you and of course the free popcorn.. that’s always a winner. Let’s not forget that).

LA. Again.

I’ve been there before y’see, although last time was a holiday, this time it’s for work. I think I’ve managed to wangle some down time over the coming week, with both Sunday evening and Monday daytime currently cleared for catching up with some of my favourite Californians. Matt & Jen namely and probably Jeb too, if there’s time.

I love the internetz for stuff like this. Having such a large global network means that more often than not there is always someone to see or meet. Some might see that as an annoyance (and to an extent, I can understand why), however if I ever want to completely escape… utterly switch off… then I know how to do that too.

Obviously you wouldn’t know when those times happen because I don’t actually talk about them. But they are there. Gently. Flowing back and forth.  Slowly. Like a soft breath on the wind…

But I like people. I love people. Even the inconsiderate German chap in front of me on this flight (seat thrown back, feet pushing against the wall in front) I love them all.

Well, I try…

Sorry for the darkness, I’ve been a touch busy…

First, the Nokia C7 Social Challenge is now live – good stuff

Second, N8Producers is out there too…

Oh and last but by no means least, I met Jeff last night…

That was at the Tron: Legacy premiere in London’s Leicester Square. This tweet made me smile a lot, but I think the best thing of all was being able to spring two tickets on a couple of lucky members of the cheering crowd.

I’m still editing that video but I’ll share it when it’s done; trust me, they were very happy

I love making people smile.

So much.

Whatley out.

Moleskine entry: Dec 15th, 2009

What day is it today? 15th? I think so. That’s right, ten days ’til Christmas, I remember.

It’s been a fair while since I emptied my thoughts into this moleskine of mine, but excuses I have none. Instead I have nearly three months of hard work to look back on. 1000heads is treating me well, very well.

It’s hard work, challenging even, but in the best of ways.

I can’t talk about any of of the stuff I’ve working on, obviously. However, let’s just say I am in exactly the right place at the exactly the right time; I’ve seen the future, and it’s very bright indeed.

It strikes me that it might be some months until this entry makes it out onto my blog. So apologies in advance if this seems out of time at all.

I wonder if, in time, I will be able to talk about what I’ve actually worked on, i.e.: projects of the past. I’m finally getting to grips with how fast this place moves; last Wednesday I helped out with creating an invitation for the Ovi Daily App Awards. Between us we nailed the copy, design, look and feel and just for good measure, a comedy QR code to boot.

They were signed off, printed and sent out within 24hrs and, by Friday, blog posts were already springing up. Amazing.

I understand that this might just be par for the course for some of you but, coming from a veritable behemoth of an organisation, this is not how it’s done ‘client side’.

I’m yawning as I write, I must be boring myself.

Writing from a plane (again), we’re headed for Helsinki. There’s a man two seats away who spoke at OpenLabs. Remember that?

Seems like such a long time ago now…

Shot on the N8, edited in iMovie’09 – turn it up to 720p

First Wolverine, now Spidey. I’m detecting a theme…