Monthly Archive

Googlezon .. a vision of our future?

For those of you who have seen the flash film ‘Googlezon’’, the future is coming.

Google have recently released the Google phone, G1, after blatently denying they were creating it only a year ago. The phone is similar to the iPhone in that it has a large screen and makes viewing the net on your mobile phone easier. The company hopes to generate $US20 billion in revenue this year from selling ads that are shown on mobile devices.

Yahoo and Microsoft are also investing in the mobile market in an attempt to prevent Google from continuing the dominance it already holds in online searches from PCs. 

In a move representative of Googlezon, one of the initial applications on the G1 phone will allow users to download songs from a music store operated by Amazon.Inc. Perhaps as a point of difference, these songs will have no copy protection once they are downloaded, unlike iTunes.

What does this mean? 

Beijing Beat is a site connected to the Washington Post website in the US. The site provides information about Beijing and a snapshot into the lives of people who live there.

The site is quite simple and easy to use, all the information is stored on one page and users  are expected to click into the movie files to find out more about the headlined topic. The site mostly uses broadcast elements to tell the story along with short articles and some statistics at the bottom of the page. The focus for the site is a looping shot of Beijing which at first looks like a photo until you look in closer at the traffic. The picture sets the scene for the accompanying information and takes up most of the first screen of the page. Smaller still shots surround the main picture and show different aspects of life or people in Beijing which you click to play. The movie then appears in the central screen accompanied by a small amount of text.

The stories are well presented and cover a variety of information although the headings don’t really help to understand what you’ll be watching. I guess you could argue that the lack of information next to the movie clips makes you curious, although if you were looking for something particular you might bypass the site as it’s not immediately clear what it is trying to tell you.

I found the site interesting, the more you look, the more you find…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/interactives/beijingbeat/index.html?hpid=multimedia2&hpv=national