Being Chatted Up

Apparently WhatsApp, of cross platform messaging fame, has set a new PB for messages sent and received in a day.  27 billion messages handled, that's a big jump from the stats given for April.  Boom.  Well done WhatsApp.

I use WhatsApp, and I also use Line and WeChat and Facebook Messenger and Tango and Google Hangouts and Skype.  Seems the only ones I haven't bothered with Viber and KakaoTalk, although I've been told they're not bad.

I use all these different apps depending on who I'm speaking to.  For example, I use WhatsApp with a few friends but also some people that I know professionally, I use Line exclusively with my wife as she likes their 'stickers', I use WeChat to keep in touch with some Chinese friends, Facebook Messenger mainly for friends, Tango for video calling with my wife when she's away travelling and Hangouts for talking to my Mum back home as she's just got an Android phone and realised she can talk to me at any time with it.

You might think,'you know you can do everything you need with just one'.  You'd be right, I could just pick one.  But my friends, colleagues and family are spread out across all these services.  This means that I've got to have a little folder of apps on my Galaxy Nexus just for all these chat apps.  And I'm ok with that, it works for me, I don't need a one-size-fits-all.

I have a feeling though that once WhatsApp starts asking me to pay for the service, I might be reluctant.  The reason being that I don't have to depend on the app because others do a good job too.  Once my free time with them runs out I can just ask regulars on that one to switch to Line or Tango or Hangouts or whatever.  Simple.

I do however, occasionally use SMS still.  So it's not totally dead for me.  I get some free with my mobile contract as well so I feel obliged to use them. But I still wonder what's next for these apps?  Video calling and messaging never really took off, everyone has already jumped on the 'stickers' bandwagon, so what could come next?  Perhaps more seamless sharing of media and news stories and other content?  Bringing some more of the apps to the desktop like Hangouts?  We'll see.

Glass shmass

Google Glass has been all over the news recently showing off it's cool potential uses, and lots of smiley faced Americans with awesome lives and the most colourful clothes purchasable.  At first I was drawn in, I though 'yeah i want some of those, awesome!'.  But now I've had chance to reflect and actually think about how I'd use Google Glass, I'm not so sure. In fact, I know that I don't want Google Glass.

Privacy issues are one of my main worries.  Yeah, all Prism revelation related things aside, Google are trying to attach cameras to people's lives without people even realising where their photos, videos, LIVES data are going and who can tap into it at any point (Barack, I'm looking at you).  I'm not gonna judge if there are evil intentions directly from Google, but things can only fall into the wrong hands when there are things available to fall into wrong hands; if you get my meaning.

People wearing Google Glass are going to alienate themselves because a) they look weird and b) people are gonna be more self aware when being around someone wearing the device...

Does anyone really need to record everything they're doing?  Or can people not reach into their pocket for their mobile device?  Who really needs this?  If you do, then I'd love to hear from you.as to why?