Author Archives: Richard Gregory

OUYA – The Raspberry Pi of the gaming world

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Back in July 2012 I decided to fund what was looking to be an innovative new entrant to the games console market.

kickstarter ouya

I’ve been a casual console (xbox) gamer for years and a big android fan since the launch of the first Nexus phone, so the idea of combining these two technologies seemed perfect to me.

11 months later DHL delivered my backer’s edition of the OUYA so itwas time to try it out…

The device has a lovely design, and it’s amazingly simple to set-up…once you’ve worked out how to add the batteries to the controller.

It’s easy to forget that this is a $99 device at launch

Even the crazy set-up screens are entertaining.

Once you’ve added your wifi details, and the latest updates have been applied, your presented with a very simple home page.

But from here the disappointment begins. You hit the “Discover” screen to download games and apps, but what you’re presented with is a really basic and poor UI. What’s even more disappointing is the small choice of apps and games, that seems to mainly consist of low budget indie games (nothing really wrong there) and console emulators.

Where are the games shown in the Kickstarter page? Shadowgun?

Now let’s be clear, this is the backers edition of the device and it’s early days for the product so I’m pretty sure things will improve over the coming months.

It’s also possible to side-load a variety of Android games & apps, but to the uninitiated (or busy) it’s going to seem like one hell of a task. Also bear in mind that most of these apps have been developed for a 4″ screen so don’t look to great on the bit TV in your lounge.

So, until we see a better dashboard/launcher and a wider selection of high quality games it’s currently not much better than this…

I’m going to leave mine alone for a few weeks in the hope that, when I next turn it on, there will be a whole host of updates that bring the device up the level pitched by its creators.

My 5 Essential Google+ communities to join

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Back in December Google launched communities for Google Plus and I’ve been experimenting with a few of these over time.

In my opinion it’s key to add the right amount of communities so that you don’t get swamped with lots of social “noise”. Google has tried to limit this by providing the option to control the volume of posts you see from your chosen communities.

community post frequency

Even with this control I found myself leaving a number of large communities because the sheer volume of posts was ridiculous.

Worried about missing something? Don’t be. Google+’s What’s Hot recommendations seems pretty good at flagging important content.

As I result I’ve found the following 5 communities the most helpful for me:

Google Drive and Docs – While Microsoft Office is still the stock software in our agency, we’re using more and more Google Docs for collaboration. This product is developing at a hell of a pace so this community is great to highlight new functionality and providing some great tips & tricks.

Evernote Life – Evernote is possibly the second most important app on my phone, after email itself.

SAScon - alright, as co-founder of the event I have a vested interest here, but it is genuinely a good community, and it’s actually been an interest learning curve managing one of these communities.

State of Search – One of the most comprehensive communities for Search Engine Marketing.

The Verge – …and finely my favourite tech community.

These are obviously just my favourite communities, let me know any better ones in the comments below.

Foursquare goes infographic crazy with the Time Machine

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I’ve been a big fan of 4sq for a while (since 2010 apparently) so the opportunity to illustrate and animate my 2000+ check-ins was immense. Give it a go here.

It’s also a great opportunity for some viral marketing from Samsung.

foursquare-the-next-big-thing RG

Yeah, I guess I probably shouldn’t share this, but if the NSA have it I’m sure other people can get their grubby mitts on it.

5 Great Google Glass videos

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Now that Google Glass are out in the wild being tested we’re getting closer to a consumer launch, so here are a selection of videos to help you decide if this is a great innovation or just a gimmick.

Riding a Rollercoaster with Google Glass….luckily they didn’t fall off

The Washington Post team get to play around with an explorer set

Searching with Google Glass

UBER GEEK SPECIAL! Touring the Large Hadron Collider with Google Glass.

And there will always be parodies…

Want to see more?

I’ve created a YouTube playlist with a growing selection Project Glass videos for you to peruse.

 

SAScon 2013 The Chair’s Perspective

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Last week saw the fourth SAScon event in Manchester, with 30 panels and four keynotes running across two days.

If you missed it…tough. It was great.

Ok, if you really want you can see the excellent write-ups from State of Search for Day 1 and Day 2. You can download some of the presentations, or you can see loads of photos on the SAScon Google+ page.

As chair of the event, I had a different perspective to most people on the event so I wanted to jot down a few quick thoughts for posterity.

      • The new venue was tremendous. Being in a lecture theatre certainly added a more professional experience to each session. Especially when you’re looking at this audience.
      • Interviewing Mike Little, the co-founder of WordPress was nerve-racking, so much so that I didn’t dare drink at the social event the night before! I needn’t have worried. Mike was a great speaker, a fantastic interviewee and amazingly humble in light of his achievement.

SONY DSC

    • Questions – my god SAScon attendees are a vocal lot. In just about every session we ran out of time to field every question. The breaks between sessions become really important since they allow the debate to spill over outside the lecture theatre.
    • Presenters delivering something unexpected is priceless. I was amazed by Clancy Child’s last-minute demo of Google Analytics Realtime on his Pebble Watch, and Matmi’s dancing monkeys were brilliant.
    • Like any event, there are always a couple of last-minute speaker drop-outs, through illness, travel disruptions etc. As always the team coped really well with these and I specifically want to thanks Neil Hardy, Bryan Adams (no, not that one), Gemma Birch and Mike Litson for embracing the challenge!

And if the evening social is more your style…here’s two videos from each end of the 100 double-row Jaeger Train…choo! choo!

Google Slides – Now available offline, but still not enterprise worthy

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I know this isn’t technically a digital marketing post, but like most marketers I spend a lot of time producing PowerPoint slides.

I’ve played with Prezi (although too many transitions in this format can make your audience sick) and I’m always looking for new ways of presenting.

I’ve wanted to use Google Slides before but you can never be too sure how good the Wi-Fi will be at the conference venue. Thankfully, Google Slides are now available offline if you’re using a Chrome Browser of the Chrome OS.

It’s good progress, but there are still a few things that prevent Google Slides being a true enterprise tool, IMHO.

I’d be keen to see the following improvements in 2013:

  • Ability to upload custom fonts
  • Better theme/template design, including the ability to upload pre-built templates from PowerPoint
  • Mobile editing.

Am I missing the point? Are you using Google Slides?