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Introducing: Volt.
I remember back in October last year, I said to myself “I want to do somthing on the iPad; I want to create an app that natively supports and is designed for the iPad” and since I also really wanted to create my own technology news website I decided to merge the two into the same project. From then on in that fragile idea became Project Pixel. I started off with the naming of the product. To me, branding is everything because its what the reader/user sees in this industry. I came up with some ghastly and quite frankly pathetic names for this website/iPad app, ‘Dizztorted’ being one of them. The logo was complex and the name was shit.
So to stop this from happening again I set out a simple plan:
・It has to be one syllable
・It must relate back to the content I’m presentingBy following this plan, I came up with the name ‘Volt’. It follows the plan perfectly. At that moment I started drawing out a mind map of ideas. Its amazing how the brain can be soo engaged in somthing you know will be pretty awesome. I then came up with the concepts, what I wanted the website to look like, what social elements I’d incorporate etc….
Once I came up with a foundation for the project, I then turned my attention to the app. I wanted to go into the magazine/print sector with this, specifically Apple’s own Newsstand. You might be asking why I’d want to compete with the likes of Esquire and Wired. Well…. to put it simple, there is two reasons. I just want to cast you back to The New iPad announcement earlier this year when Apple said that they’d sold more iPads than any PC manufacturer sold PC’s in 2011, I wanted to make somthing on a device that I feel is more sustainable and better off than physical print as well as on somthing that people are using. I also believe that there is a space in the market for what I want to do; a magazine designed for the iPad. Currently, if you look at Esquires and GQ’s offering of their Newsstand app, its the same as their print version. On an iPad. Whats the point? What the point in releasing somthing the same as the print version when you have all this functionality to play with? Volt will utilise this. Gestures, real-estate…. It will also be adaptable, so if Apple brings out a new feature we’ll be able to incorporate it right into the UX.
Volt will also have a theme to it. Instead of just telling people tech news with an opinion, I want to tell people how the technology that we’re reporting on will benefit their lives not just now, but in the future. I believe this is important because we’re seeing technology growing a rapid pace now, and I really want people to understand what this means, more so then how cool it is. Whether technology will benefit us or not in the future is ultimately how we will cultivate our news.
Volt is not complete yet.
But, if you’re interested in helping me build this awesome brand please email me, rory@rorymitchell.me with the subject “Volt” I’m looking for talented and amazing iOS engineers, along with writers whether you be freelance, experienced or upcoming.
Thank you soo much for reading this entry. If you would like to keep track of Volts progress, head on over to voltprogress.tumblr.com where I will be posting weekly/daily entries of what stage I’m up to, along with detailed job openings for any specific thing [such as iOS development] I will need help in.
Rory :)
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Coldplay are amazing.
Coldplay are simply amazing. They can turn any song into a masterpiece, whatever the genre or beat with their attitude towards making music; the laid back, chill like experience. Their latest tribute to the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch who sadly died on Friday due to cancer, proves this. I’m going to see Coldplay in June. And I won’t be surprised if I have some sort of out-of-body experience when listening to their perfection.
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Google, WTF?
Really Google? Really?
A couple of days ago, Google redesigned their social network. They saw this as the answer to the lack of engagement they’ve been recently getting at Google+. I started using it today and whilst it implements a lot of the features we’re used to seeing on other social networks, it still doesn’t seem right that we’re using them on this social network.
To me, Google+ has always been about discussions and create discussions. I loved going back to it to see what kind of real discussions were taking place as well as seeing my input into some of these discussions being valued and listened to. Then as more and more people used the service, and I started to circle more people just because I knew them or followed them on other networks and wanted to support them, I quickly started to notice that I wasn’t getting content unique to this social network. So… I got bored and went back to my traditional method of checking Twitter and Facebook each day.
With that in mind, you’d think Google would notice this and implement more features that allow for more unique content. Instead, they’ve decided to take a lot of the features we know and like from Twitter and Facebook - like trends and the cover photo - and implement them into the experience. This is probably because they know people coming from these social networks are coming to Google+ and finding it hard to adapt to certain things they can’t do such as hashtag posts to get them noticed more, as well as getting people to circle them so they can post stuff that they want to be discussed. And because of this, we’re seeing a lot of users make accounts, then effectively disowning them because they don’t get the service.
We saw this with Twitter, and to stop this from happening they based their business model around news and how news is presented and refined their social network into something people use to see the latest news whether it be for a sports personality or just general stuff.
With this new redesign, I feel as though Google have tried to be a cross between Twitter and Facebook rather than its independent self it was when it launched. They’ve added something called “Google+ Trends” now that is basically ‘Trending Topics’ on Twitter and has the same boring, troll/spam-esk topics being at the top. They’re not real topics that are actually being discussed by people, its most likely a bot thats posting links to websites that just constantly redirects you. They’ve also added a “Who to Follow” section that only shows major companies and celebrities and not actual users who post relevant and rich content.
I could go on, but hopefully you get my point. This redesign focuses on getting users from other social networks to start using this platform and that has only lead to more of this commercialisation bull shit we see on Twitter and Facebook.
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Why Instagram is Good for Facebook
Facebook’s fundamental purpose is to allow people to share their photos and socialise with one another. Over the years we’ve seen the service expand and introduce status updates and company pages, but they’ve never iterated on their photo service. In comes Instagram, an amazing new way of sharing your photos that allows you to apply ‘filters’ to make it look like a Polaroid Land Camera took the photo.
I know Zuck said that he’s not going to change the service in any way, shape or form in his press release, but you can tell they’re going to integrate their features into the service. I’m thinking they’ll allow you to set instagram style filters when you upload photos to your profile to make them look old-timey. That or have deeper integration with the service, maybe allowing you to tag friends or have FB style ads were they use one of your friends to advertise a service. I could go on for days…
So please, don’t go off on your Twitter or Facebook account, saying you’re deactivating your account for both services. They’ve done nothing to harm you-and honestly, if you’re one of those people who quits something because its become “Too popular” then I hate you. You’re the one that made it popular. Yes you, the person that made the account and told your friends about the cool service and tweeted out or facebooked pictures you made using the service.
