What's all this fuss about the iPhone huh? Do people really want convergence? Don't people like carrying around several different electronic devices on them to do everything they want? Wait. Scratch that.
Seriously though, has the world gone convergence mad? Is there any demand left for divergence? Well, I look at my hi-fi system and I see a perfect example. Now, I'm no expert, but since I had my first job stacking shelves at the local supermarket, I've bought hi-fi separates. I've bought good components and upgraded as I've gone along. I pay for what I want, and don't pay for what I don't. Want a kick ass amp? Hell yeah! Want a DAB digital radio? Not really.
When I look at social web apps like Facebook, I see massive convergence. Yes, developers are writing third party apps, but it feels like I get trapped in the Facebook mini-web. I like being able to choose what web apps I want to use and how to use them, and yes, I even pay for some of those (Flickr Pro rocks!). All of those apps are online and interact-able over the web and some even over SMS (e.g. Twitter and Dopplr).
This leads me onto another thought. None of the apps send me an email to tell me something has changed on their site and that I need to go to their site to see that. I can just get that straight through that email, or through other means like RSS (which means I can stick with my favourite RSS reader).
I mention this as I was sent this brilliant blog post at telepocalyse.net which reads like a web manifesto, and one I can sign up to.
In Facebook, I've got my 'friends' sorted and they can see any changes in state, application notifications and lots of other crap. I don't have to tell my friends about each application which is good, but means I get loads of crap I'm not interested in and find it hard to filter that out.
That was for the first point, I think I've touched on some of the others and you can easily see what the post is describing with the others. I can totally understand the point about OpenID though. Please, please, please, if you're reading this and are building a web app, for the love of god let me use OpenID.
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