TwitEye streams ideas for new applications and services based on questions asked by Twitter users, so, for example, “is there a service that lets me translate news feeds into different languages?”. At the moment it is categorising requests related to applications, software, iPhone apps, plug-ins and different services. The idea behind it was that the “idea” isn’t the most difficult part in getting a new product or service together; it’s what happens with the idea that counts.

The latest update to the service is the addition of an ideas blog & RSS feed which will publish a selected idea each day from the stream. With a lot of applications that have limited functionality or aren’t doing something that I immediately “need”, I generally take a look at them once, think “oh, that’s nice”, and then forget about them. The addition of the RSS feed is a way to share some of the good ideas that are coming through the TwitEye stream, without people having to come to the site & watch the stream flow by (although there can be some good stuff in there if you do).

The app itself is at TwitEye.com, and you can find the ideas blog and the link to the daily idea RSS feed at twiteye.com/ideas/ (and if you’re not up for the full commitment of an RSS feed you’ll also get the updates through @twiteyeapp on Twitter!).

The best way to further improve it is through feedback & comments, so don’t be shy…

The idea behind is is that you can upload an image directly, or by a web address, add your comments, and FineTuna sends a link to it off to someone else by email for review….easy.  There’ s a screenshot of a quick one I did below when I was checking out the service (see the original here).

As a way of showing people design work as you go it’s a handy tool. I also installed the Firefox plugin which is really useful – it allows you to send screenshots from your browser into FineTuna for commenting; if I was going to use the service again, it would be because of this tie-in.

Having said that, I think there are a couple of areas that could be improved:

• Because the url to the image is public, I wouldn’t be comfortable sharing commercial design works-in-progress in a way that’s publicly accessible; I’ve seen a few other people mention too…so offering this as a paid service could be a good way to bring in some cash;
• I’m terrible at drawing using a mouse (a sometimes shaky hand). Some basic shapes, such as lines & arrows would make the marked-up image look a lot better than my shaky hand-drawn efforts;
• I saw mentioned on Twitter that a desktop app that ties in with the service would be useful. I’d definitely agree. An alternative service is Skitch, but because I don’t use a Mac, I can’t use Skitch…a FineTuna alternative I could use would be great!

Now, off you go and check out FineTuna.

The Tuesday Push

The Tuesday Push is a community-driven approach to promote innovative Irish tech companies & services. You can nominate your company or product (if it fits the guidelines) using this form linked on this page.

Have a look at some of the other Irish services that got a Push on this blog.

We’re helping emergency services save more lives by making better decisions. Decisions for Heroes is a collaborative rescue team management tool, that helps record and analyse rescue operations

When they say they’ve launched a web application “that saves lives”, it gets you thinking! It does look like they’ve got something that is useful, helpful & worthwhile. I haven’t played with the system itself, but based on the comprehensive system tour given on their site, it looks like a fantastic piece of work.

The service is the first product launched by Bytesurgery, a Dublin based digital media company, who’s founder Robin Blandford is a mountain rescue volunteer. Creating an application based on your own experience gives you a great insight into the needs of those you’re serving, and judging by the early uptakes of the service by rescue teams around the world, it seems to have worked well here.

I saw a very good 120 second pitch by Robin to a panel at Future of Web Apps in Dublin, where he said Decisions for Heroes “was like BaseCamp for Danger” (one of the panel was David Heinemeier Hansson, part of the company behind Basecamp). Based on how he described the market’s size and needs in that pitch, it looks like he’s got a great niche to target.

I particularly like that the application is targeted at a market outside the technology area – there aren’t many web applications that are so far removed from the office environment; it’s something that I think will start to happen more and more as the technologies & the SaaS approach to delivery continues to mature.

Generally when doing these Tuesday Pushes, I try to give some areas for improvement with the application or the interface design. As I haven’t played with the system itself, it’s difficult to do this. I will say that having looked at the screenshots, they’ve gone for a clean & simple design which will suit their users perfectly. It’s summed up in a line on their homepage that says “Nobody likes reading manuals, so we’ve made things really easy“; that’s the perfect way to approach how an application should look & function. Nice work Decisions for Heroes.

[Edit]

Forgot to mention – nice foresight by them too on buying the mis-spelling of their domain name decisionsforheros.com (which is what I linked to earlier on Twitter  ).

The Tuesday Push

The Tuesday Push is a community-driven approach to promote innovative Irish tech companies & services. You can nominate your company or product (if it fits the guidelines) using this form linked on this page.

You can see a listing of other Tuesday Pushes done on this blog.

If you’re looking for your next big idea, TwitEye could be a good place to start. I’ve already had some suggestions for improving it which I’ll be adding in over the coming days. If you’ve got any more feedback, I’d love to hear it.

You can read more about the thinking behind it in the Introducing Twiteye post, or check it out for yourself at twiteye.com

I first saw this being linked to on Twitter when it started out a while ago, and since then, Sxoop have gone into Twitter merchandising by adding a way to get your mosaic printed onto a t-shirt, coffee mug or bag, or having your Twitter profile information added straight onto a business card.

While the service isn’t pretty, it’s a nice & novel way of bringing together people’s growing use of twitter with life away from the computer.  This is the second app I’ve seen by Sxoop to do with Twitter – the first was responsible for putting lots of Santa hats on people’s Twitter profile pictures in the run-up to Christmas.

Watching the development of the service from the outside was also a nice look at how an innovation develops – I’m not sure that they had selling merchandise in mind when developing the application (but maybe I’m wrong).  Creating a simple application like this that ties in with inexpensive products and that will appeal to the millions of Twitter users was a great idea. Also, given the promotion that Twitter is receiving in the media, I’m sure user numbers will keep rising, which is good news for Sxoop and other companies offering services like this.

Staying with the Twitter theme, if you’re in Galway this Thursday, check out Galway’s Twestival; it’s on upstairs in Nimmos and is part of the global Twestival that’s being run for charity in over 175 cities.

[Update (12/2): I said above that the service isn't pretty.....well it is now, after some work by Sabrina Dent it's looking way better.]

I’ve decided to split the findings into two parts due to their length. This first part gives details of peoples’ use of the cameras on their mobile phones, the second part  details their use of the Internet on their mobiles.

152 people were good enough to give me a couple of minutes of their time, and this is what they had to say for themselves:

Where did you hear about this survey?

Sources were mainly from blog posts, with Twitter also figuring highly. Other sources included some people I emailed, friends on Facebook and some respondents from IGO People. In general, the sample is of people who are technically aware, and many are early adopters (see Twitter usage further on). This introduces some bias into the survey, as I wouldn’t regard the sample as being representative of the general population.

Age Profile

Respondents were concentrated around the 25-44 years old age groups, with 82% falling within these groups. The high proportion within this age group is due to the way the survey was promoted.

Does your mobile phone have a camera?

In the last number of years, cameras have become almost a standard on mobiles, so over 96% answering Yes was unsurprising.

How regularly do you use the camera on your phone?

I was surprised by how often people use the camera on their phone, with 47% of people using  it “Several times a day”, “About once a day”, and “More than once a week”. I would have expected the number of those using it only on special occasions to be higher than the 24% found.

What do you usually do with photos you take with your phone?

41% of people upload their photos to the web (either by first transferring them to their computer, or directly from their phone). This bodes well for photo sharing sites like Pix.ie, Flickr. Another explanation for this finding could be the emergence of photo sharing services like TwitPic which allow photos to be shared easily using Twitter (there are a significant number of Twitter users in the sample).

Over 23% of respondents usually keep their photos on their phone. Given the sentimental value with which people used to view photos, I found that a little surprising – do people attach less value to digital images, or is it a lack of knowledge on how to back-up photos from their phone that lead to this?

Have you ever used your phone to take pictures of:

Over 3/4 of respondents have taken pictures of each of the people at an event (which I would have expected), scenery & locations (again, as expected). I hadn’t anticipated such a high number of people taking pictures of “an item they wanted to remember” (I’ve done this in the past and had people look at me strangely!). I’m curious as to what the 6.7% who haven’t taken pictures of any of these things have taken pictures of. Perhaps animals?!

The second part of the survey results, which deals with people’s use of the Internet on their mobile phones, is in a separate post.

The first part of the findings look at mobile phone camera usage and profiles survey respondents.

How do you access the Internet on your Phone?

Key points:

• Only 6% don’t have Internet access on their phone
• Just over 20% never use it
• 34% use WiFi on their phones

The high proportion of respondents using WiFi surprised me. However, it is unlikely to be representative of the population; instead it is likely due to bias in the sample where the sample are generally technically-aware early adopters, (Twitter & RSS adopters). It should be noted that multiple answers were possible, which is why the figures exceed 100%.

How often do you use the Internet on your phone?

Key Points

• 50% of respondents access the Internet on their phone on a daily basis (with 43% accessing it several times a day.
• Almost 25% never access the Internet on their phone.

Again, I do not think the 44% who access the Internet several times a day is representative of the general population; it is more likely due to the profile of those who responded to the survey. It does cast a bit of doubt on the reports that people aren’t that interested in using the mobile internet (via Pat)

What do you use the Internet on your phone for?

Key Points

• 2/3 of people who answered use their phone for general browsing of websites;
• Almost half use it for accessing Twitter, with almost the same number using it for accessing Social Networking sites.
• A quarter of users access productivity tools (such as calendars & to-do lists) through their mobile.

Some of the numbers for “active” use are quite high, such as sending emails (almost 50%), using productivity tools (almost 25%). Given the small size & more limited functionality of mobile phones, I hadn’t expected high levels of this type of active use.

Does your phone have GPS (Global Positioning System)?

GPS is still an early adopter technology and it isn’t widely bundled with phones yet, as shown by the finding of 75% not having it, don’t know if they have it, or have never used it.

So what? Well, this means that location aware applications are still some time away from gaining mass adoption (on mobile devices, where they will be most useful). It’s unlikely that these types of applications will find a mass market until integrated GPS on mobiles becomes more widespread (i.e. bundled in the lower range handsets), and users become comfortable with the technology (by using it in other contexts, for example, in the car where adoption seems to be rising).

Having said that, with one quarter of respondents having used GPS for its most basic application, and just under 10% having used it for geo-tagging photos, there are early adopters out there.

Response Rates

During the time the survey was open, 203 people viewed it, with 152 completing it. This data is available by comparing the stats generated by Short.ie, which shows how many people clicked on the truncated link I circulated, with the total number of responses. (This number has since risen to 310 views).

There were no cases of the survey being abandoned after it had been started (meaning all responses were usable).

Credits

Thank to everyone who took the time to complete the survey; it’s much appreciated. Also, many thanks to Damien Mulley and Joe Scanlon who both promoted the survey on their blogs, which contributed to the high response rate.

I carried out the survey to help fill in the blanks on an idea I had; the good news is that it did, so I’m working away on turning it into something that works. More on that here in the future.  If anyone would like any more details on the results feel free to contact me in the comments, or directly.

I’m doing this based on the Irish web applications I’ve seen released over the last few weeks that I thought were both well designed, and were useful applications; not always an easy combination to have.

Qwitter

First up were two developed by the guys at Contrast in Dublin, for which they’ve already received lots of attention. They released Qwitter a while back which is a really simple tool that lets you know when someone stops following you on Twitter. The design of the service is great, in that it focuses only on the service it provides, and doesn’t make you jump through lots of hoops to use it – you simply add your email address & twitter user-name, and that’s it.

If I had one (small) criticism of the design, it’s the character’s arm that obscures part of the interface. While it’s an innovative idea that I haven’t seen before, I don’t see the value it adds, and it seems to go against the simplicity of the service. The service itself is useful in its simplicity, a fantastic marketing idea, and suitably damaging to your ego when you get one of their mails (I’ve had two, and each made me feel like I died a little). Well, not really. I don’t really think it’s actually likely to damage anyone.

TaskFive

Their second one was the product of Contrast’s App School – TaskFive (above). While the application itself has a great clean design, what impressed me was how it was developed. Taking an application from an idea to a full commercial implementation in 5 days is extremely impressive. And doing it openly (using twitter, blog posts and posting images of the process) was great to see. Although, having worked on an application for a lot longer than 5 days, it’s easy to get jealous! Again, a great marketing idea.

WeddingDates.ie

The next application worthy of a push is a service that helps find a hotel for a wedding reception – WeddingDates.ie. WeddingDates is based in Cork, and launched a couple of weeks ago. The service provides couples with a way to search hotels in their area for the date they’d like to get married, see hotel details, and find other services they’ll need for their big day.  Again I think it has a great design; the site is clean and bright, with its selling points easy to see, and how to use it clearly presented.

Having seen some of the web applications that have been launched in Ireland recently, and the numbers that attended Barcamp Cork, there is a lot happening in the web industry in Ireland at the moment. That is even despite the economic problems, which is great to see.

If you’re interested in some other interesting web applications, you can take a look at other recent Tuesday Pushes on this site.

Live Query utilizes the power of jQuery selectors by binding events or firing callbacks for matched elements auto-magically, even after the page has been loaded and the DOM updated. [from Docs]

So, why would you need Live Query? In cases where you are dynamically adding elements to a page (i.e. DOM) using jQuery, you may want events attached to them. So, for example, I have a page that has been loaded. In response to user actions, I want to add a link that, when clicked on, triggers a “click” event. Because this link element has been generated dynamically, it won’t match any of the CSS declarations or have the same behaviours of elements which were there when the page loaded.

You can see a live (and very simple) example of this. The code behind the example is:

$(document).ready(function()
{
/*
Without Using Live Query:
*/
$('#add_new_box').click(function(){
$('#box_holder').append('<div class="new-box"><a id="add-again" href="#">Add Smaller</a></div>'); });
// a problem here - this doesn't fire as expected...
$('#add-again').click(function(){
$('#add_new_box').append('<div class="small-box"></div>');
});
/*
Using Live Query:
*/
$('#lq_add_new_box').click(function(){
$('#lq_box_holder').append('
<div class="lq-new-box"><a id="lq_add-again" href="#">Add Smaller</a></div>');
});
$('#lq_add-again').livequery('click', function(){
$('#lq_add_new_box').append('<div class="small-box"></div>');
});
});    // end document.ready(function)

In the example, the first link clicked adds a <div> with a link inside it. This new link, when clicked, should add a smaller yellow box. However, because the “Add Smaller” link was added dynamically, it does not have the click behaviour associated with it. It’s here that Live Query comes in.

In the second part of the example, Live Query is used to bind a click event to the link that was dynamically added. This ensures that the (my) expected behaviour of clicking the link in the red box and having a smaller yellow box appear goes to plan.

Having a web application be as responsive as possible is a target that should always be set. Doing so can be achieved in lots of ways, one of them being to minimise the number of page reloads the user needs to sit through. For what I am working on at the moment, Live Query just added a big lump of responsiveness to the interface. A great jQuery plugin.

In the last few days they have launched business services. The pitch for their new offering being that their:

…solutions put customer reviews on your site. We offer a range of systems which scale from one-person companies to global businesses. In every case they help grow your sales and retain customers

Again, another good idea. I think people are always more likely to accept independent reviews, rather than a blurb on a website. By offering companies a simple way to collect and display reviews over the web, as well as providing a way to gather SMS reviews from customers, I think they’re offering some useful services. By moving the way they accept reviews off the web (by SMS), they’re giving companies such as bars and restaurants a way to benefit from technologies that they would not have had experience with in the past.

The last time I wrote about Loudervoice, I said I was impressed with the innovative ways in which they offer their services. As they’ve added more, and a business model that looks sustainable, they deserve the success I’m sure they’ll get. A good starting point for that is that they’ve been short-listed for an Irish Web Award in the Best New Web Application/Service category.