So Much Has Been Going On The Garden And I have Had No Time To Keep Up Blogging!

The Garden is still going mental with the onset of summer! I am struggling with time to keep up the blogging though! I need to add a backlog and slowly cross things off the list when I get a chance to write them up. So here is a gardening backlog, well sort of a backlog ;-)

• The hedge cuttings are taking hold, but which ones worked best?
• Recap on last autumns scarifying. Here's a quick summary - it's worked a treat!
• The hollyhocks, my favourites, are back with a flourish!
• The survival of the lupins after the slug attacks - there is talk of a movie about this ;-) The lupins will be 100 feet tall and the slugs at least 50 ;-)
• Learning about compost - this is a doozy ;-)
• The holly being attacked by mould and protective ants!
• Identifying the many plants that spring up out of nowhere in my garden - I don't do this particularly well but I try.

I tell you it never lets up in the Summer garden.

Oh well must dash again. Need to water the pot plants and cuttings as they will be suffering after all of this heat! Sure we have had a couple of weeks of rain, but it doesn't take long for the plots to dry out!

Ciao for now

Cheers

m

Summer's First Hollyhock!

Today the first flower on our Hollyhocks came into bloom. These plants are possibly my favorites in our garden. I will post more details about them later, but for now they are finally coming into bloom. You can see a few more buds about to burst free above the first.

Looking around the rest of our garden there is only one other plant so far showing signs of blooming, so a lot more still to come.

Oh, I also potted the final hedge cuttings I took about a month ago. This last batch I had standing in water for the past month to see if they would root. They don't seem to have, at least not very well, but I have potted them anyway. Let's see how they all go. Quite a few of the others I have taken have not made it, but there are still some on the go.

Anyway busy, busy, busy at the moment so not a great deal of time to post!

More later,

Have fun,

Cheers

m

Now Even Apple Are Late Adopters Of The Group Messaging Fad

So yesterday at the Apple WWDC Apple announced iOS 5. iMessage forms part of this release which provides access to group messaging and unlimited text messaging via WiFi or 3G. It's built into the messages application and provides features such as sending:

• text
• video
• photos and
• location

to groups of friends. You can get delivery notifications and see if someone is typing a reply to you. In essence BBM for the iPhone.

Only trouble is it is limited to the iPhone (to be fair a load of people have these ;-) but in a social group, unless you all live in Islington, not everyone has one!) and doesn't work if you are not on a data network. there is no SMS integration. SMS is the lowest common denominator across all mobiles. At the moment it is still the only medium, other than calling people (which I believe that most mobiles do as well ;-) ), that can reach an entire group of mobile users.

So Apple are now a player in the Group Messaging fad, but it doesn't necessarily mean all of the cross platform group messaging apps will necessarily be quaking in their boots. Sure they will have to work harder to differentiate their service, but if they can keep a strong foothold on non iPhone platforms, they will be able to compete with iMessage.

SMS is STILL the lowest common denominator, accessible across almost all mobiles, when it comes to group messaging. Even now with Apple on board, there is STILL room for the carriers to make a dent in this market. Yes EVEN STILL! They should act quickly though before the market becomes completely saturated and folks have made their decision with which platform or app their social scene sits with. By the time those decisions are made and firmly imprinted, it's hard for folks to change their minds!

Cheers

m

Astronomically Spring Might Not Be Over But It Has Still Been An Amazing Season!

OK so Astronomically speaking Spring might not end until June 20th with the Summer Solstice, but for me Spring has always been March, April, May. By March it's light enough in the UK for the plants to start swarming into life and by June, if you are lucky, it's sometimes warm enough to think it's Summer! OK, for many years, the last two NOT included, it has been incredibly wet in June but this normally means it's Summer in the UK anyway ;-)

So for arguments sake lets just say Spring ended May 31st! What a fantastic Spring it has been too. If anything a little too warm and dry, although really I should not complain! It has been incredibly dry though which is not the best for the garden but we'll make do with it!

It's also the first full Spring we have had in our garden. It has been truly magical watching it spring back into life as well. So much going on that if you miss a day's inspection it seems as though you have missed something blossom, or burst back into life. Miss three days and it seems the entire garden has changed! So much going on.

The photo above highlights most of the activity in the garden over the last three months. If you click on the photo it will take you to flickr. On flickr each of the images of the plants, that I can identify, have been annotated such that you can see what they are.

Quickly though the Spring transition has involved:

• The Peonies kicking off,
• The Daffodils exploding onto the scene,
• Tulips,
• The Poppies, or some kind of aliens ;-), taking over,
• The Hedges starting to require trimming once again,
• The Aphids making a comeback trying to spoil the show,
• The Bees coming back en mass to enjoy the pleasure of the poppy ;-),
• The Clematis coming back,
• The Roses coming back in force,
• The Peonies requiring help once again and
• The ferns making a comeback from seeming near death!

... to name just a few! Such a fantastic burst of colour and life this Spring. It has been a real joy to watch and be part of :-)

Looking forward to the Summer now and more welcome returns! Fingers crossed the weather stays the same, although a little more rain, only in the late evening and early morning, would also be very welcome! ;-)

Have fun!

Cheers

m

Disco, Disco, Disco! Another Group Messaging App Only Available In The US

SMS is not dead! ;-)

Disco is another group messaging app, this time provided by Google. I would love to be able to use it, but at this stage it is only available in the US! I guess this is as SMS costs prevent this from being a globally scalable solution? This is only an assumption, happy for it to be shot down!

Maybe Google could cover the messaging costs to make this truly global? The issue is though SMS is free to send in the states, the receiver pays. In the rest of the world though the sender pays. For me though, this should not prevent group messaging apps. The cost is not significant. In fact in most instances the cost comes from a Customers SMS allowances that most Customers don't completely consume. If they do, then the Customer can make the decision to be a group messaging player or not. Alternativly they can use their data tariff to consume group messaging via data trafifc.

Below is another screenshot from Android's Disco. I would love to be able to download and test and review the app, but alas, not being in the US I am not allowed to ;-)



I listened in to to the Why SMS Outranks Apps webinar on Thursday 2nd of June. There were some interesting stats raised:

• SMS sent via applications in 2010 - 208 billion (a lot!)
• SMS sent via applications in 2015 (projected) 534 billion (even more!)
• BBM has 40 million users globally! Hello!
• Kik has grows to 3 million users in 6 months!
• Kakao Talk has 13 million users in a year!
• T-Mobile Netherlands reports that 70% of its smartphone users had installed WhatsApp in 3 months! Hello!
• O2 has 2 million opted-in customers for mobile marketing and advertising.

Just a swathe of statistics that make for interesting reading. Well interesting reading for SMS junkies. ;-) There was a load more stats, however multitasking prevented me from keeping up. all very interesting stuff and more evidence that although smartphones are increasing in their market penetration, only SMS is a true distribution medium that can be used across almost every mobile.

One other stat from the webinar - it was stated that by 2015 smartphones would have 41% market penetration. Whoah! That's huge! Oh hang on, that means there's still 59% of phones globally that could also be served by SMS. That's quite a few phones to increase ones application reach! Hello! ;-)

That's all for now ;-). Oh that and perhaps once more SMS IS NOT DEAD! ;-)

Oh and perhaps a link back to Group Messaging Apps are This Years Check-In Apps. But Where Are The Mobile Networks ;-)

Have fun!

Cheers

m