The Android version of the my6sense application was released to the Android market at 8am last Monday (PST) but Louis had given his Google Buzz followers (myself included) the opportunity to download it early and put it through it’s paces. The only condition was that it couldn’t be blogged about or otherwise publicly discussed until after the official 8am release time.

Well, within minutes of launch the blogosphere was littered with buzzes, blog posts and tweets about posts. I couldn’t open any of my social streams without being bombarded by coverage. Good call my6sense – when the Louis Gray engines roll you’d better get out of the way or you’re going to get squashed. Having not had much time to get to grips with the app prior to launch I decided to hold off until I had been able to form a balanced opinion. I fired off some initial thoughts to Louis but didn’t want to make my first impressions public as they would not have been accurate. Also, having my phone die on me and need to be replaced threw an additional spanner in the works.

Back in July 2008 a friend Julian Baldwin coined the term “needstream” – those things we actually need from the web as opposed to frivolous browsing or random consumption. As the social web expands the need for a “needstream” – or personally filtered news – has never been greater. Queue services like my6sense.

This is the news you’re looking for

As you’ve no doubt read elsewhere, and in much greater depth, my6sense is an intelligent feed/stream reader that uses technology and algorithms collectively called “digital intuition” to learn what you like in order to perform jedi mind tricks on your news and social streams (Twitter, Facebook and Buzz) and show you the items you will be most interested in: sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Even though we may be careful with those we follow the chances are that we will not be interested in, or want to read everything those people post; cutting out the irrelevance is, therefore, incredibly welcome.

Patience my young Padawan

my6sense is not for those seeking instant gratification, it takes a while for digital intuition to kick in and even longer for it to really find its feet. The more you use it the better it gets. After using it for a few days I was still only half way up the intuition scale; now I am up to about three quarters.

Fortunately, the app allows you to view your streams in time order (like your traditional news/social clients) as well as by relevance; I personally found that starting out by viewing items sequentially made for faster training in the ways of the digital intuition force. Initially, the application was designed as a news reader with an intelligent consumption engine but, at the behest of Louis and others, there is a push for greater engagement functionality – hence the ability to retweet, share on your social networks and, in the latest incarnation, to comment on Facebook and Buzz posts.

I follow relatively few RSS feeds and people on social networks so probably don’t get the full benefit but, even though my feeds are already very strictly filtered by myself, I can see how digital intuition is altering the way I see things. It does a great job of learning your reading patterns and showing you what is relevant.

I have a bad feeling about this

As I have privately expressed to Louis, my main concern with an application such as my6sense is that it creates a division of labour between itself and whatever application you use to participate on your social networks – in my case this, whilst mobile, is Tweetdeck for Android. my6sense is not intended as – or probably ever will be – a full social client so you need to weigh up what it is you will be doing and whether the application fits in to your daily routine. Personally, I can’t see it replacing the current blend of Tweetdeck and Google Reader but that is just my preference, if you consume a lot of feeds and have a large number of people in your social circle then I would highly recommend that you give it a try, especially if you consume more than you create.

As with any beta product my6sense has its share of bugs and niggles but the team are working hard to get these ironed out. Currently my biggest frustration is that items are brought in inconsistently; sometimes there is full text, others not. Even if the original item is published as a full feed I find that I am frequently jumping out to my browser in order to get the whole story. It also appears to be a bit of a lottery as to whether there are external links to the original item. These problems will no doubt be corrected in upcoming releases.

Rule the galaxy

We all have differing usage scenarios so what works for one may not work for another. To say that products such as this will take over and make other forms of consumption irrelevant is impossible – they are not a one size fits all offering and, therefore, not always applicable even to those who advocate their use. There is a sweet spot between subscription and curation – but that’s for another post.

We can say, however, that relevance engines by whatever name are becoming increasingly important as we are more inundated with information.Without some form of order, the more we try to tighten our grip the more news will slip through our fingers.

The journey

I’ve always been a geek and have spent (too) many an hour just tinkering and tweaking to get something just the way I want it – whether it be a self build PC, website or phone. In fact I spent a long time building custom Windows Mobile 6.5 roms for my old HTC Touch Dual before the OS was released.

When my Touch Dual died (probably as a result of repeatedly re-flashing too many roms) I was still in contract so couldn’t afford another Windows Mobile device. It was disappointing at the time but ultimately did me a big favour. I ended up with a Nokia XM5800 after being surprisingly impressed by the one my wife (@SallyWalker) had bought. Okay, Symbian is far from the best mobile OS but the ability to side load apps from any source was a blessing.

Without a doubt, the best application I have ever used on Symbian is the Twitter client Gravity written by @janole. The interface and design was a masterclass in what Symbian could achieve and should have become a template for how apps look on the platform. I strongly believe that Symbian themselves should really have looked at this and redesigned the OS itself.

Gravity was the perfect Twitter experience for me; it just felt “right”. Using accounts from multiple services, GPS, image sharing and URL shortener integration were all there and the app was, quite honestly, way ahead of the competition and really set the standard for how Twitter clients should be, and not just on the Symbian platform.

Gravity was so good that it was the single reason I was hesitant to ditch my Nokia and move to Android. Ever since I have been searching for that perfect Twitter experience on Android but never found it – that could now be about to change.

A new hope

For some reason I can’t fathom I’ve never been a fan of desktop Twitter apps, don’t ask me why but I’ve just never gotten on with them and always preferred to use the web site. I installed the Tweetdeck desktop application but very soon found myself removing it.

Twitter on a phone is different and, while I have still been using the mobile website from time to time, I believe a client is the way to go to get the best from the service. However, being disappointed with the alternatives I stuck with the default HTC application Peep – it was simple and did the basics reasonably well so why waste space installing something else. Just as with desktop clients the rest didn’t feel right; perhaps I had just been spoilt by Gravity.

I was intrigued when I heard that Tweetdeck would work in a similar way to Gravity: multiple accounts, swiping from side to side to switch between different columns etc. and I am glad to say that I was not disappointed. Tweetdeck feels so much like Gravity to use that it is almost a homecoming.

The current build may still be a beta with a few bugs and an incomplete feature set but I can honestly not now imagine myself using anything else on an Android device. Not a statement I make lightly.

As well as the overall experience fitting the way I see a mobile Twitter client working there are a number of features which instantly resonated:

• performing a search and saving the results as a new column so you can keep an eye on a topic in real time
• the Buzz notifications (I don’t have my Facebook account added but it’s the same thing) in the ‘Me’ timeline indicating, for example, if someone liked your post
• choosing either exact coordinates or a Foursquare “Place” when geotagging
• the little indications when you have unread items: the dots indicating pages and the yellow scroll bar at the side – the longer the bar the more unread items

The beta support forums are busy already and a lot of the requests mirror things I would personally like to see such as improved support for lists (I may even start using them), the ability to separate different services out to different columns and to show which tweets are geotagged directly in the timeline. Don’t get me wrong, the combined Home column works really well with the different colours for the different services you are using but it would nice to have the choice to split them into their own streams.

The single biggest problem with Tweetdeck is the inability to change the refresh times. Currently, the application update your stream every few seconds which, on a device that has known battery life issues, is not a good call and effectively prohibits you from leaving it running in the background. Fortunately, this has already been acknowledged on the support forums so I envisage there being more options in the next build(s).

The future

As long as the key issues get resolved before Tweedeck hits version 1.0 the applications is, in my opinion, streets ahead of any other Twitter client for Android and can only get better.

We have gone beyond just having an opinion and have all become armchair experts in just about everything – it’s no longer just reserved for sports fans thinking they can manage their team better than the “incompetent muppet” standing on the sidelines.

We feel that we can design things and suggest features better than those getting paid to do the job. In some cases users do have valid points and companies have used customer suggestions to improve their products but we should never lose sight of the fact that we are just one person and the designers and developers are catering for the needs of millions. What might be right for you may not be right for some (hmm, wasn’t that in the Different Strokes theme song?)

So, when a new product gets released in beta when does helpful, constructive criticism go too far and border of the realms of being over demanding?

Take Google Chrome for example.

Now I’m not going to remark on the feature set or the pros and cons of the fledgling browser as many others have already done that and better than I could (although I must admit that I like where Google are coming from) but I would like to comment on the reactions and expectations that are being thrown around the web.

Yes, this is Google and we should expect big things – in some respects I think we already have them, but we must never lose sight of the fact that Chrome is just a first beta; it’s an artists sketch before committing to getting the brushes dirty.

The first beta of Chrome has laid the foundations and put down some very good groundwork which will be fleshed out and perfected over the course of development so statements like “Chrome Not Ready For Enterprise” are pointless.

Of course it’s not and no-one should be suggesting otherwise.

Chrome will not be ready for enterprise for quite a while and will not be considered for enterprise use for even longer – at least in any enterprise with any integrity and a decent IT infrastructure. There are many more factors at play that just the features built in to the browser.

An enterprise environment will have procedures in place to test and approve any new software prior to deployment – beta software will never be considered. Not only do you have potential security or data corruption issues but you must also consider the reputation of your company. How would it look if you were connecting to third party services to access and manipulate sensitive data using an incomplete product? Not only would you tarnish your reputation but you would most likely be kicked off the service.

All we are saying…

Give Chrome a chance. Give any new product or service that comes out as beta a chance and stop making ridiculous demands of something which is, by definition, just a work in progress. This is what beta is all about regardless of who is behind it.

First look reviews and constructive criticism should be encouraged but outlandish statements and ridiculous demands get us nowhere.

A public beta is just the external face of a project and there will be a lot more going on behind the scenes both in terms of advancements of the technology involved and where the project is heading. As I have mentioned in the past, just because a company hasn’t said they will be doing X, Y or Z doesn’t mean it isn’t already on the table; you don’t want to give away all your secrets too early. You may not be able to deliver on all your promises (remember the Longhorn saga) so under promise and over deliver but, more importantly, you don’t want to give too much of a heads up to the competition.

No, the real news here is that Adobe are hooking in to the desire to go social. It seems that we are no longer happy with software or services that just do X – we demand more and we are increasingly demanding a social aspect.

The new features announced are as follows:

• flickr integration: you can now import images directly from flickr, edit them in Photoshop Express and then fire them straight back to flickr
• embeddable player: rather than just show off your slide show on the Photoshop Express site you can use an embeddable widget to take you slide show with you across the web.

What’s intersting with the widget is the choice of examples given by Adobe where you would like to display your pictures; they could have mentioned anything but instead refer to ”Facebook, MySpace, and other sites where your audience awaits”. Adobe are obviously trying to cash in on the social movement. How long before we get a Photoshop Express Freemium option? Once you’re hooked in to editing your images online will we get a version which charges you for key functionality post beta? Only time will tell.

Photoshop Express is an ideal target for a social application but I think we should all be concerned if many other applications try to force a social element upon us where it just doesn’t fit to do so.