It's 2011, seemingly "the year of Social". We have Facetime, Google+ Hangouts/Huddles, Facebook video chat, Twitter and iMessage built into iOS, Messenger built into WP7. It sounds like we're making great progress in improving the way we can communicate with our friends. Super!

I really like Google+. I use it a lot. However I think they really screwed up a few things with their launch:

• Restricted invite-only launch (you can't be social without your friends)
• No apps for iOS/WP7 at launch
• No tablet apps at launch
• When iOS app finally launched, won't even install on iPad/iPod Touch (for seemingly no reason)
• No access to huddles in web app/desktop/iPad
• Google Talk and Huddles are not the same...?

Anyway, getting back on track... Not having access to Huddles on my iPad, my iPod Touch, my Windows Phone or my desktop got me thinking about the state of instant messaging... I wondered whether any of the networks actually work on all popular mobile platforms... There are third party client for most networks on most platforms, however they almost always require you hand over the login details to an account that controls far more than just chat. This is completely unacceptable in 2011, the year Sony got ripped to shreds by hackers.

I posted earlier on Google+ that I found it quite incredible that in 2011 nobody had bothered to make their platforms support all instant messaging networks, or that no instant messaging networks had bothered to make sure their network was available on all platforms. Is it so difficult to comprehend that I might want to organise a night out with a group of friends via instant messaging? Google+ Huddles seem to have been designed specifically for this sort of thing, yet you'll see in the table below that it fails, badly.

I created a table to compare the various instant messaging options across platforms. There are a few basic requirements that must be met for a network/platform combination to be considered fulfilled.

• Access must not require handing over a password that controls more than just chat to anyone other than the owner of the network, or the device/OS.
• Access must be "native" to the platform (eg. no iPhone apps on iPad).
• Must be true "instant messaging" that gives useful alerts/push notification (eg. Email notification does not count).

Here are my findings so far. If you spot a mistake, please let me know and I'll update accordingly.

Edit: Added Skype, GTalk on Android Tablet, G+ stuff on iPod Touch.

Network	Win	Mac OS	Web	iPad	iPhone	iPod	Android Tablet	Android Phone	Windows Phone	Blackberry	Num Platforms
Messenger											7
Skype											7
Facebook*											6*
GTalk	*										4*
iMessage											3
G+ Huddle											3
G+ Hangout											1
AIM											3
BBM											1

Items marked * do not support group chat :o(

To me, this is a pretty poor show. Out of 10 popular platforms, not one service is available across them all with built-in/first-party apps (third party apps excluded on security grounds). Messenger and Skype seem to come closest with support on 7 platforms, though Messenger has no support for tablets - you know, those things that are massive this year :-( It's particularly annoying for me to have Messenger on my Windows Phone and have to respond to messages on a tiny on-screen keyboard with my iPad sat next to me doing nothing!

I think the most shocking stat here is that Google have launched Google+ as a social network and have not only introduced two new chat/messaging protocols, but the support for them across platforms is pretty poor. (Please don't give me shit about it being "preview". If my mum can join, it's public. Putting a preview/beta on something is not an excuse for poor support. If it's not ready, don't start shouting about it and letting us all pile in).

The Official Blackpool Guide for iPhone and iPod Touch is now live in the Apple App Store!

This is the third tourism app that I've worked on, joining Cardiff and NewcastleGateshead.

These applications are all official, with the data being supplied directly by the tourist board. If you try out the app, please be sure to leave a review in iTunes, and if you have feedback or suggestions, please send them in!

There will surely be more where these came from, so be sure to follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my RSS feed for notifications!

It's taken a while, but the first iPhone app I've worked on was recently approved by Apple! It's the Official NewcastleGateshead City Guide, available on the app store for £1.19 :-)

I can't say Objective-C ranks high on my list of easiest languages to code in, but having another language/framework under the belt always useful, especially when it comes to mobile platforms!

If you do check it out, honest feedback/ratings would be appreciated :-)

Over the last few years, I've picked up a few O'Reilly books on my iPhone from the App Store. It's not particularly fun reading on an iPhone screen (especially pre-iPhone4), but the books are crazy cheap. Like £3 cheap!

I figured that the reason these books were so cheap, was that they're locked to the iPhone, and you can't read them on your PC or other device. So I was pretty made up when I realised that any (most) iPhone apps work sync to the iPad!

Unfortunately, I didn't realise the iPad would render text so nastily at double-size (I'm hoping iOS4 will fix this).

Nevermind. Today, I found a gem on the official O'Reilly site. How to extract EPUB books from those cheap book-apps we've been buying. This will allow you to read them in your browser, or any other device that supports the EPUB format. This means you can read those books in iBooks on your iPad :)

For the less technical, I've put together some screenshots showing how to do this. First, find the app in the Apps section of iTunes. Right-click and choose "Show in Explorer/Finder".

Windows Explorer (or Finder, if you're on a Mac) will open, and highlight the file for this book. Right-click and choose Copy.

Paste the file somewhere temporary, and rename it to end in ".zip".

Double-click the zip file, and navigate to the Payload folder.

Inside the Payload folder, you'll see a .app folder. Navigate into that.

Inside, you'll find a folder called "book". This is the interesting one. Right-click, and choose Copy.

Paste the folder somewhere, and navigate inside it. You'll see three items: A folder called "META-INF", a folder called "OEBPS" and a file called "mimetype". Highlight these files, right-click and choose Send To -> Zipped folder.

Rename the new folder to end with the extension ".epub" and copy it to a folder where you would like to store your books. Then from within iTunes, choose "File -> Add Folder to Library" and select this new folder. Alternatively, you can drag the epub file into iTunes.

That's it! Now your book will appear in the Books section of iTunes, and will sync into iBooks on your iPad. You can also transfer the file to other devices that can read this format.

This makes those very-attractive O'Reilly books look even more attractive!

Note: As I post this, Balloons! has been reduced to £0.59 for the paid version. Get it while it lasts!

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to participate in the beta of Balloons! for iPhone. Since it's now available to buy, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the app here.

Balloons! is purely for entertainment, though it doesn't really fall into the category of games. The basic idea is that you pick a balloon and attach a message and/or photo to the label, and launch it into the air. The balloon will travel around the globe (electronically, of course) to be caught by other Balloons! users. When someone catches your balloon, they may attach their own message and photo and relaunch it into the sky for someone else to catch.

I've included a few screenshots below, and although you can see the level of polish Balloons! has, unfortunately you can't see the subtle animations that really bring the app to life. The official website has a video that might give you a better idea of how it looks.

The Balloons! menu screen.

When you launch a balloon, you get to choose how it looks from a selection ranging from normal round balloons to heart and bear-shaped balloons.

Catching a balloon is easy. You can catch balloons from all over the world, though realistically, they have to have been travelling for some time to get from one side of the globe to the other!

The Balloon Tracker allows you to see all balloons you've launched, along with the messages and photos that have been attached to them. This is only available in the paid version.

If you click on a balloon in the Balloon Tracker, you get to see the original message/photo, along with any other messages added to it.

Paid vs Free

Like most apps on the App Store, there's a free version and a paid version of Balloons! With the exception of ads, the only difference is the "Balloon Tracker", which lets you see all balloons you've launched, and the messages that have been added to them. It's well worth paying for this additional feature, or you'll be left wondering whether anyone has caught and added messages to your balloons!