His name is Aral – or rather, @Aral – and tonight he could be found waxing lyrical about the launch of the new Apple iPhone 3GS… in a lot less than 140 characters as his excitement mounted. The penny was starting to drop as to just what this baby could do now…

aralShoot/edit/share video with just your iPhone 3GS. Oh, yes! 6 minutes ago from Tweetie

aralAwesome, “send to YouTube” feature is gonna rock! 6 minutes ago from Tweetie

araliPhone 3GS: 7.2 Mbps HSDPA, 3MP autofocus/tap-to-focus/low-light/auto-macro (~10cm) camera + 30fps VIDEO, ~2x faster, OpenGL|ES

Me, being the sports hack at heart, doesn’t ‘get’ any of the first post.

Whatever, is my instant reaction.

Though even I twig that when the ‘S’ stands for speed, the new iPhone is likely to rock more than just @Aral’s world.

The little phrase, however, that I do ‘get’ is the ‘Send To YouTube’ function.

Because as muchas we might debate endlessly about whether we’re now digital journalists, citizen bloggers or this hybrid bast*rd in between – the ‘jogger’ of the NYT’s worst imaginings – that ‘Send To YouTube’ function now unites us all in one regard.

We’re all digital broadcasters.

And YouTube now looks set to be the default channel of our production choice.

And for the traditional, legacy broadcasters, that’s not good news.

It is, however, the news that Anthony Lilley long ago predicted – that there would be an ‘explosion’ in media participation – one that, you sense, even now is only just beginning.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=26

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=20

A bit of background before we get to the ‘light bulb’ moment.

Our Ian has been otherwise engaged of late; he of Addiply-build fame, has been banging out Apple iPhone apps… the latest of which is ‘Cocktails Made Easy’.

The lad from the WSJ certainly liked it…

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123336498619035515.html

And having sat there in the corner table at The Artichoke this lunchtime and seen it in action on Ian’s iPhone, I can see why.

The fact that you can touch a ‘cabinet’ button and find out what cocktails you can still make from their 500-strong list with the bottles of spirits you’ve actually got left in your house… is genius.

We’re out of gin, all I’ve got left is a bottle of JD, and a can of coke and two slugs of tequila… Touch, touch, touch… Here’s my drink. Superb.

At which point, a penny dropped.

If I put ‘Jack Daniels’, ‘Coke’ and ‘Tequila’ into an Internet search engine, would any web browser have delivered me the same level of service and functionality as just dished up off Ian’s mobile phone?

Er, no.

And given the fact that the likes of Blacberry, Google, Nokia et al are all busily building mobile app stores as fast as their little legs can carry them, the fact that I’m sat there, jaw-dropping, with my Blackberry Storm in hand thinking: ‘Boy that’s good… wish I could do that off my phone…’ hits the nail on the head.

For give it 6 to 12 months and Ian will have re-wired ‘Cocktails Made Easy’ to sit on a Blackberry platform and I’ll be able to do that too.

I won’t need to entrust that job to a web browser; I won’t have to rely on Safari or Opera or whoever else to wade through cloud upon cloud of murky drinks data to pull me out the kind of combinations that my mobile phone now delivers in an instant. And looks sooooo good whilst doing it…

Tailor-made; into the palm of my hand; for $1.99.

It’s a specialist tool; for a specialist need – to deliver me a decent cocktail of flavours and alcohol from whatever bottles we’ve got left in the Waghorn larder.

Go back to that WSJ article and note the step change that the author, Eric Felton, discovers…

‘Several years ago a friend gave me a Bar Master — a faux flask in silver-toned plastic housing a computerized database of drinks. I never used it much, perhaps because I have a horror of carrying faux flasks of silver-toned plastic.

‘But it is a delight to use the technology that has superseded it: A variety of cocktail “apps” have been written for the iPhone, and they make the old Bar Master look like a Kaypro running MS-DOS…’

Got you thinking yet?

Try this… Only insert ‘hyper-local news’ and ‘web browsers’ into the thought process.

‘Comprehensive databases are a great help if you know exactly what you’re searching for.

‘But if you’re just browsing, hunting for something tasty to try, how do you narrow your selections down to a manageable lot? One iPhone app, Cocktails Made Easy, solves that problem admirably.’

Now, what if we created an iPhone app that wasn’t so much a cocktail cabinet stocked with JD and coke, but playground news and planning applications?

If we start to see local news as something that we buy as a mobile phone app; ‘Local News Made Easy’ and then we – as news consumers – can pick and choose the ‘cocktail’ of local news and content that we’d like to consume for ten minutes after we’ve put the kids to bed, doesn’t the world look a different place?

You’re taking the growing confusion and cloudiness of the browser out of the equation; here’s a surgical application that delivers the combination of video, audio and words that I want every night to fill me in with what’s happened in NR2.

Now, let’s say that I’m a football fan. And I live in Norwich. The natural web ‘cluster’ would be to put a link through to MyFootballWriter.com/NorwichCity…

But you know what, I’m a Derby County fan… so I like a different ‘cocktail’ at 7.40pm of an evening; so my app allows me the flexibility to pull in MyFootballWriter.com/DerbyCounty – just as I would pull in a different brand of Tequila; Southern Comfort instead of JD.

It’s fascinating. That if the world may yet start to belong to the mobile phone apps – be they Apple’s, Google’s, Nokia’s or Blackberry’s – maybe it is time that we though app first, web second. Thought about cutting the browser out of our thinking altogether.

Make me ‘appy’; make me a local news app that’s browser-lite, but mobile heavy. �

For those that have missed the previous debate, we’ve touched on it twice before – namely here:

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=43

And again, here…

http://outwithabang.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/if-i-watch-bbc-news24-on-an-apple-iphone-do-i-need-a-tv-licence-discuss/

Because now, of course, BBC News24 and BBC Parliament are not going to be the only ‘live’ channels you can access through everything from your Apple iPhone – soon of course to be the Mark II, 3G version and ergo, even more capable of ‘broadcasting’ Match Of The Day on the late bus home – to your Wii console.

Cos here comes BBC1 itself…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jun/04/bbc.television2

And here comes The Guardian’s interpretation of when we all need a TV Licence; or rather, the BBC’s version of said question culled from Auntie’s own website…

“Despite the move meaning viewers will not need a television to access BBC1, they will still have to pay the licence fee.

“According to the corporation’s licence fee website: “You need a TV licence to use any television receiving equipment such as a TV set, set-top box, video or DVD recorder, computer or mobile phone to watch or record TV programmes as they are being shown on TV.”

I expect we will have to defer to Sao Paulo on this, but to my mind one of the key phrases comes at the end there… as they are being shown on TV… ie being ’simulcast’.

Which is exactly what the BBC have in mind for their flagship channel…

So, access that on your Apple iPhone and you need a TV licence – don’t you?

Sao Paulo has already thrown one fly into an already murky ointment by suggesting that, by the letter of the law, you don’t need a TV licence for ‘battery operated’ receiving equipment which – on that interpretation – rules out mobile phones. But rules ‘in’ Wii consoles?

And rules ‘out’ lap-tops if they are on you lap on the bus home, but rules them ‘in’ if, when I get home, I plug same lap-top in..?

And will the onus now fall on the good people of Apple and Sony to inform their customers that if they are to access BBC1 via their respective phone and game platforms, you’ll need a TV licence you know…

Of late, there’s been a fascinating catty fight over the two, opposing revenue structures heading to a local lawn near you – the bloated BBC with all that licence fee cash; the 300lb gorilla of TrinityMirror’s nightmares as opposed, of course, to all those poor, suffering regional newspapers with just a cover price and some disappearing advertisers for company…

But given the minefield of all the above – and I still suspect there is a whole generation out there in student bed-sit land who will look at their mobile phone, lap-top and Wii and not say: ‘Oooh, that reminds me… must get a TV licence…’ – it must be a moot point as to whose funding foundations are actually resting on the softer sand.

From where I sit at my plugged-in lap-top awaiting the arrival of EastEnders, MotD and Co, there ain’t much in it…

�

For while what’s left of my best liberal intentions might struggle with the general thrust of ‘The Mail On Sunday’, in our household we ‘get’ You and Live. It’s why The Daily Mail has more chance than most of us…

Anyway, the point is that I quite like all the gadgety features that ‘Live’ delivers. Not from a geeky-type, trainspotter kind of angle; rather these days for what it might do for me – or, hopefully, us – as digital journalists.

I’m not sure whether there’s a link, but P41 of this Sunday’s edition proved very much a case in point as Rob Waugh cast his eye over two little gadgets as part of his ‘Live For Tech’ section.

The first is about Intel’s new little baby, the Atom processor. I’m not going to do the numbers that come attached – just the words. The fact that it is ’set to turn the computer in your man bag into the PC in your pocket…’

And here’s the killer line. “The low-cost/low-power-usage Atom series is intended to see service not only in the next generation of small lap-tops, but also in an entirely new class of gadget: mobile internet devices…’

The MID.

Cue a nice glossy pic of the Lenovo IdeaPad U8. Again, read the words. ‘The web, full-fat and fast, in your pocket…’

I’m not pretending for a moment to be any kind of marketing expert. Will the MID prove to be neither one thing nor the other; will it fall between two stools, being neither a UMPC or a PDA..?

Oh, come on… An ultra-mobile PC or a Personal Digital Assistant. Apparently.

I’ve no idea. But someone at Lenovo – and perhaps they’ve looked at the Apple iPhone and decided that it’s web-browser capability is the stand-out feature there – has clearly decided that getting the Net into the palm of your hand is where we’re all head…

That to go back to our cheesy ad slogan… while it’s not in our kids genes with a ‘g’ to read a newspaper what will be in their jeans with a ‘j’ will be a MID…

OK, slung beneath ‘The Mighy Atom’ is a stick to beat your Wi-Fi with – in this case Vodafone’s new super-powered 3G modem.

“The HSDPA modem is a thumb-sized stick that plugs into the USB port of your laptop. If you’re in an HSPDA area (ie, a major city) is offers a 7Mb internet connection. That’s faster than many wired connections…

‘… And with a price of £39 up front plus £15 a month, I could envisage using one of these all the time…’

Here at MFW, we already do. Or rather when we’re sat in the Press box of football grounds up and down the country, we do. The chances of Loddon ever becoming in an HSDPA area are nil. But then I’m wired in at home.

Our Vodafone sticks are last year’s model; they come as part of the boys’ ’starter packs’; I don’t think any of us run at 7Mb yet. And looking at the costings, I need to get back to Vodafone and do a deal…

Put the two together – a MID and a super-fast 3G modem that’s no more than a thumb-sized addition to your nearest laptop – and what are we seeing? That the delivery of news on a digital-only platform is becoming faster, cheaper and simpler with every passing month.

For that 3G modem is print press, delivery van and paper boy all rolled into one. That’s what we have got to keep reminding ourselves – it’s not a geeky gadget, it’s a survival strategy. It’s a way out of the mess we’re in.

And it’s getting faster, cheaper and simpler.

So ask yourself the next question – if I’m a newspaper exec looking at the latest figures from my production and distribution departments, could I say that it is getting faster, cheaper and simpler? What is the price of diesel doing to my bottom line? Can’t we get these kids to pedal their bikes any faster?

There’s our future; there’s our hope. Sat there on P41 of ‘Live’. Cut it out, stick it on the fridge door and cling onto it…

But this debate fascinated me….

http://www.tomski.com/2008/01/dont_own_a_tv_you_might_still.shtml#comments

Not only for the murky legal water that surrounded this whole issue of when is a TV not a TV, but a PC. Or, indeed, when is a TV not a TV, but a screen…

But the other household piece of receiving equipment that appeared to have slipped beneath the radar.

Because if I’m sat on a train somewhere with my shiny new Apple iPhone in the palm of my hand and there’s a points failure just outside Colchester, at what point does the combination of iPlayer and mobile phone qualify for a TV licence?

What if we’re producing a whole generation of kids that will live their lives through what’s sat in the palm of their hand? God clearly forbid, but what in the event of the next 9/11 everyone is sat there watching BBC News24 ‘live’ on their mobiles – does that not now make a mobile phone a TV?

And should the detector vans not now be parked outside every secondary school playground in the country, picking off the kids one by one?

‘But I’ve never used it as a TV, honest, sir…’

‘Ah, but you’re capable of it, aren’t you?’

I’ve no idea. And judging by the well-informed comments cited above, I’m not sure anyone is wholly the wiser.

But there we are – is a TV not a TV when it’s an Apple iPhone?

Discuss.