First off- I want to wish everyone a very happy 2009. It’s a strange thing that most of the important people in my life, for all manner of reasons, have been looking forward to the start of this year or the end of 2008. The opportunity to start the new year with a fresh mindset is something that I’ve decided to fully embrace in all it’s clichéd glory and give Future Me a great year to lok back on. So here’s the plan.

I’ve got a couple of typical resolutions in mind; concentrate more on my friends and relationships, cook more food rather than buying in, no alcohol for the whole of January, give blood - the usual stuff. Plus, there are more specific goals I’m definately pushing for; a couple of websites I’m really looking forward to getting involved in, a few changes to this site to better reflect the direction I want to take it, and there’s a couple of personal aspects of my life that I’m definately looking forward to getting on with over the next year - if all goes well, you’ll be hearing a LOT about them over the next year!

I also plan to start doing some dedicated learning this year - the Simple Dollar has a great article on this very matter. It’s just a case of now deciding which two to choose! Here’s the shortlist so far:

• Playing the ukulele (comedy musical instruments have huge appeal)
• Improving my PHP skills (2008 was the year of .net languages for me and I relish the idea of change)
• Learn to cook more Japanese food at home (my Wagamamas trips need to be cut down!)
• Improve my javascripting (I worry I’m getting too reliant on frameworks and would like to keep my skills more focussed on the core language rather than, say, jQuery)
• Invest more time in Twittering (I finally got Twittering in 2008 and I plan use it a whole shed-load more over the next year.)
• Learn some sweet-ass card magic tricks really well.
• Rediscover my passion for Flash Actionscripting (it was the thing that got me into web-technologies in the first place, and I’m very aware that my skills in that arena have waned in the last year or so..)

I’m going to give it a few more days of thought before choosing my final two - but I’m going to aim for a balance between marketable career skills and something that can keep me entertained (and enable me to show off to others, obviously). In the meantime, if anyone has any thoughts on learning a skill I hadn’t considered and am possibly missing out on, let me know!

Sometimes, mere words are overrated.

Ode To Joy from Beaker on Vimeo.

The one of the nicer problems in modern life these days is that there’s too much choice. Name a product and there are at least three alternatives vying for your attention with their respective thumbs stuck in different parts of the growth-share matrix. Hell, name anything and that’ll happen. Unless you’re naming American Banks*.

In a month where Google Chrome was released to the rapturous cries of “why?” from people that were perfectly happy with Firefox and maybe not so au fait with the underlying ideas of market forces and innovation, there is definately a case where a wide choice is very obviously a good thing.

Mobile phones - sorry, I’ll clarify that - Mobile SuperWebCameraMP3ColdFusionReactor phones are possibly one of the few exceptions right now. There’s technically choice out there to compete with the IPhone, but no matter how much they may protest, anyone that has a Blackberry or Prada phone will find their eyes slipping across to watch the bloke sitting next to them on the Tube playing Monkeyball on his Jobs machine.
In the short term, Apple are sorted. There is nothing realistically out there to ITouch the IPhone in terms of pure desirability - and if something more technically adept comes along, it’s going to have a struggle against HMS Apple and her Great Marketing Armada. But then there’s Google’s upcoming Android.

The first potential genuine competition to Apple is coming along soon, and to my mind is looking goooood. It does all the things I personally want from a SuperWebCameraMP3C… modern phone (I can’t be the only one that spent most of my time thinking “why do I want that?” on the IPhone specification), it isn’t trying to compete with the IPhone directly, but modifying the better ideas and running with them in their own direction. And like Chrome, this bad boy’s open source - letting any Rod, Jane or Freddy have a muck about with it and see what they can bring to the party.

THIS is competition! One company chasing another doesn’t help - it just increases the chance of running down a technological cul-de-sac. Companies going in different directions with the same basic premise can only be a good thing - mistakes made, lessons learned, cross fertilisation of ideas blah-de-blah - the product type as a whole benefits.

The IPhone isn’t the perfect phone for all users, neither is Android - the knowledge that someone somewhere else could be just about to come up with something better is what drives the innovation onwards and make the next generation that little bit better. Is Google/the Open Handset Alliance** primarily out to take over the IPhone’s market? I don’t think so - just like I don’t think Google are trying to take over Firefox’s share of the browser market with Chrome - but they’re making the right people try harder, and that’s surely going to be to the benefit of us all.

I’ve ended posts like this before, but as much as I try to properly understand Google’s underlying long term strategy, the more I think that they genuinely are out to make the future the one with all the rocket packs, hover cars and robot man-servants.
Just before they crack out the 20-Foot Destruct-o-bots with the web enabled Death Rays…

^{*Zing!
**Anyone else hope these guys all meet up in a space station hovering about the planet all wearing capes?}