Techiedog-blog

Starting afresh

2011-01-05T10:06:00.003Z

So, this blog seems somewhat sparse for 2010, thats the effect of a mixture my focus being elsewhere and the blogger service altering its range of publishing options and me only just getting around to switching. The blog has now moved to techiedog.blogspot.com.

Still ... onwards and upwards.

Rhombus live video

2009-12-24T11:57:00.003Z

Here is a clip of us playing live on the London leg of G-Fest earlier this month.

New Rhombus Album

2009-09-14T10:18:00.001+01:00

Latest Eureka Machines video

2009-08-25T21:42:00.004+01:00

Tour dates for anyone so inclined - I heartily recommend making the effort.

Saturday 5 Sep 2009 – BLACKPOOL The Royal Oak
Saturday 12 Sep 2009 – WORCESTER Marrs Bar (with Jackdaw4)
Sunday 13 Sep 2009 – BIRMINGHAM Madhouse (with Jackdaw4)
Thursday 17 Sept 2009 – DONCASTER The Leopard
Friday 25 Sept 2009 – YORK The Speakeasy (with Laika Dog)
Saturday 26 Sept 2009 – NOTTINGHAM The Maze
Sunday 27 Sept 2009 – DERBY Victoria Inn
Friday 2 Oct 2009 – HALIFAX Puzzle Hall, Sowerby Bridge (with Night By Night)
Saturday 3 Oct 2009 – BURY Hark To Towler (with Night By Night)
Sunday 4 Oct 2009 – GRIMSBY Yardbirds (with Night By Night)
Friday 9 Oct 2009 – MANSFIELD Town Mill
Saturday 10 Oct 2009 – LONDON The Gaff, Holloway Road (with Shush)
Friday 16 Oct 2009 – LEEDS Brudenell Social Club (with Micky P Kerr)
Saturday 17 Oct 2009 – HUDDERSFIELD The Parish (with Sorry And The Sinatras)
Thursday 29 Oct 2009 – NEWCASTLE Trillians
Friday 30 Oct 2009 – DURHAM Fish Tank
Wednesday 23 Nov 2009 – LONDON 100 Club
Saturday 28 Nov 2009 – LEEDS Brudenell Social Club (headline)

Check the band web site for alterations/cancellations.

Back on the road

2009-07-27T23:09:00.002+01:00

Last weekend I hit the road as I undertook my first tour since joining the band Rhombus. We had a blast, and I must thank all the people who made me feel so welcome and said very positive things - its always a worry coming into an established band, especially with such a large and loyal fan base but you guys were great.

The first night was playing the Scala in London as main support for The Eden House and as a slight taster, below is a bootleg video of us playing the song 'One Day More'.

I'm the one that looks like this -->

Turn on, Log in, Opt out

2009-07-12T00:29:00.007+01:00

Despite the scare stories and bar stool reasoning which informs so much public opinion, we are only really starting to scratch the surface when it comes to the debate, let alone the understanding of the durability of our digital footprints; Those patterns and trails our online activity leaves for others to find.

We vaguely understand the notion of a 'privacy policy' or data privacy legislation but appreciating when something is in the public domain or not is far from obvious, if one thinks about it at all.

This is of course partly to do with the still nascent technology and culture the Internet has spawned. We have little in the way of societal opinion, no tradition, no common knowledge passed down from parent to child, as is the case with longer hewn technologies.

Telephones on the other hand, we do understand! We understand our phone numbers and we know whether or not we want them freely available.

Generally most people didn't object to their land lines being listed in a directory, even if recently this carried the added admin of having to pay the TPS a visit to minimize cold calls.

However, mobile phones it seems provoke a different response. The cell phone is a much more personal device, the on-device address book acts as much as a representation of identity, peer group allegiance and lifestyle as it does a convenient method for dialing. We are, it seems, much less free and easy giving out our cell phone numbers.

Which is why perhaps that the 118800 service in the UK prompted such emotive reaction.

The service provides a directory of mobile phone numbers, but of course, seeing as mobile operators don't then there is no central source for the contents of 118800 directory. Their contents have been acquired from commercially traded lists, ie all those shops, services, online stores, utilities companies etc whose forms contain small print about 'passing on details to third parties'. Sometimes we opt out, sometime we think we have, some times we forget, but regardless, the notion of data being passed on to 'selected third parties' still requires a conceptual leap to what is essentially placing details such as one's cell phone number in the public domain - the raison d'etre of a directory. To be fair 118 800 doesn't give out the numbers, it just connects you for a fee.

If none of that bothers you then all is well. There are advantages in people being able to look up your number, the same as they could for a land line. Much of it depends on how you use your mobile phone and what job you feel it does for you.

However, those who were concerned about inclusion in the directory were comforted with the knowledge that they could simply visit the 118800 website and have their number removed. Or at least, that was the promise ... unfortunately the web site is currently down! Whether this is because it has crumpled under the sheer volume of traffic from would be 'opt outs' as some reports would suggest, or whether there is some other more mundane problem I can't say, but I suspect that the unsubscribe service will, when active, be pretty popular.

Now, as we do develop a cultural sense of our digital shadows, is the new frontier to be characterized by constant opting out and curating of public and hidden information? Or will we find, we just don't care?

Getting back to it and thinking about Twitter and other things

2009-07-11T14:45:00.004+01:00

How many blog posts are there out there in the world (wide web) which are mostly apologies for the lack of recent posts and the promise to be a little more productive starting ... now?

I've certainly read a lot ... I know that I've written several.

So, I'm not going to explicitly say any of that ;-)

Its true that much of what I would have blogged from a personal interest point of view finds an outlet on Twitter, which I still haven't decided whether its an incredibly useful communications tool or an ill conceived, perhaps even evil distraction.

Its true, that my good friend, colleague and collaborator Imran and I momentarily found our conversation falter when we last met up in person as pretty much every piece of news we had for each other was met with a reply of "Yeah, I know, I saw your Tweet!". Of course many have tried and failed to halt our free ranging, stream of consciousness tangent spinning conversations in the past, and so we were back on track before very long - but the whole experience set me thinking....

... There is a surface level at which Twitter and to a lesser extent facebook status reports and their like, appear to keep one informed as to the activities of one's nearest and dearest (and furthest and not-so-dearest for that matter), but there is of course a great deal of substance and context missing. Imran and I were indeed apprised of each other's news, but it took a proper conversation to understand any of it with any depth. In much the same way that a picture postcard doesn't render the post holiday story conversations superfluous.

A slightly different example occurred last night with reference to my friend Zoonie. Now I consider Zoonie a friend even though we haven't been co-located in at least two and a half years and most of our contact has been through various social network apps rather than direct conversation exchange. I like the fact that I kinda feel abreast of whats going on in her life. However, last night I saw a stream of tweets from her which sounded fascinating but due to a context gap I had absolutely no idea whatsoever as to what the comments were all about. I was left trying to piece things together by cross-referencing all the other places that I know Zoonie's digital life leaves a trail.

A few years ago I was working with the guys at Calico Jack on system which would pull together conversations into contextually related bundles across telephony, email and IM. Throw in things like twitter, social networks and other personal publishing apps, such as Flickr and the concept seems more relevant than ever. Which, of course is what Google wave could start to unlock.

So, I guess right now I can see the value of Twitter as a stream of flags, conceptual pointers or log entries alluding to deeper activity; the missing piece for me right now is the mechanism to explore the depth or at least, fill in the gaps.

Or maybe I should just be happy with twitter supplying a list of topics to talk about next time I get chance to have a proper conversation. The longer I work in technology, the more I discover the 'bits of life' that I don't want an automated solution for.

Its all over

2009-05-16T20:38:00.001+01:00

Eureka Machines

2009-05-11T11:33:00.001+01:00

Finally saw these guys opening for Ginger - most exciting new band I've seen for years!

Ensembli blog

2009-02-25T08:49:00.001Z

Its been a while but we've now got ensembli's blog up and running.

Find it at blog.ensembli.com

URL shortening

2009-01-29T14:33:00.001Z

There is no shortage of URL shortening apps around on t'web. And here is another!

O'Reilly Iginite - Leeds

2009-01-22T13:07:00.002Z

Tonight I'm one of the speakers at the O'Reilly Ignite event in Leeds.

Imran has the schedule and background details up at his blog - though I've changed my talk at the last minute ;-)

OpenCoffee - Huddersfield January 21

2009-01-16T11:22:00.002Z

The first OpenCoffee event of 2009 take place on Wednesday 21st between 10am and 12 noon at The Media Centre. Come along!

Details here

Admitting defeat

2008-12-02T11:24:00.005Z

Weather is against me - today for the first time in 2008 I couldn't get get to work by motorcycle, in fact I couldn't even get as far as the main road for re-frozen slush.

Hiking the hills is going to feature more than biking the hills for a while I guess.

Recovering my bricked iPhone

2008-11-29T10:15:00.003Z

While updating my series one 16GB iPhone to OS version 2.2 it all went TU.

About 20 percent through the update it crashed out.

After 'ejecting', the iphone was stuck in the 'connect to iTunes' icon state.

On reconnecting the phone to my MacBook I was channeled into the only option which was to restore the iPhone however this crashed out at about 20% on the progress bar with an 'Unable to restore iPhone' error code (14) every time I attempted it.

The fix?

So after surfing a load of blogs and forums and trying various options I found the following worked for me:

I created a new user account on my mac*, logged into it, connected the iPhone and hit restore. Once the phone was successfully 'activated' I disconnected, logged back in to my MacBook with usual account, connected the iPhone and voila. Well, almost - I've found by experience that the restore from backup option never works for me, so I hit the 'set up as new phone' option. This is a pain because it takes ages to resync all my data (mostly podcasts) and I had to go and reset my pone preferences, but in the end I ended up with my iPhone pretty much restored to the way it was before.

*
- Select system preferences from the apple menu (top left)
- open the “Accounts” pane
- click the padlock and enter your admin password
- click the “+” (plus) button to create the new user

Legal audio downloads

2008-10-14T17:59:00.002+01:00

OpenCoffe Huddersfield #4

2008-10-09T10:21:00.003+01:00

It's that time again. 4th OpenCoffee event in Huddersfield at the Media Centre, Web Oct 15th - 10:00-12:00.

details

Open Coffee Huddersfield #2 - August

2008-08-05T17:08:00.002+01:00

The 2nd Huddersfield Opencoffee meet with take place on Wednesday Aug 13th at Cafe Ollo in the Media Centre.

More details on Upcoming - do let us know if you are planning on coming along.

OpenCoffee

2008-07-16T14:20:00.002+01:00

The first Huddersfield OpenCoffee got off to a cracking start with 34 people passing through the event and a max concurrent attendance of 26.

We plan to repeat the meet up on the Second Wednesday of every month.

It was a great mix of Entrepreneurs, Engineers, designers, Investors, Legal peeps, and RIA types - a perfect mix. I managed to get around and talk to quite a few people but by no means all, but there were many active conversations happening.

OC Huddersfield date confirmed

2008-06-26T14:16:00.002+01:00

Wednesday 16th July, 10am at the Media Centre Huddersfield.

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/839039/

OpenCoffee comes to Huddersfield

2008-06-19T19:04:00.005+01:00

So, since I first got involved in OpenCoffee events when Imran kicked off the Leeds group early last year, I've made best efforts to attend any I could get to, mainly in Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester. For the last 18 months or so, my main office has been in Huddersfield which has something of a digital hub going on and in fact, I've met many a fellow Huddersfield based tech entrepreneur over in one of Imran's meets.
Its perhaps a little past due that we organized something more local and so I've been working with Ann Storey at the Media Centre to bring OpenCoffee to Huddersfield.

The inaugural Huddersfield event will be in mid July - we are just conflict checking our proposed dates - and you can keep track of things via the Huddersfield OpenCoffee upcoming group.

Come join us.

Recruiting - Developer engineer jobs

2008-05-12T12:03:00.004+01:00

Long time, no post!

Yep, I've been v busy, though the more widely read may have found me posting elsewhere.

Any hoo - to work.

I'm now the CTO for ensembli and I need to build up my engineering team.

I'm looking for self starter, software engineers with a range of experience but no one language or technology is requisite. In fact it you are an expert in one way of doing things then you probably aren't for us.

We'll be basing our offices in Sheffield and have junior and senior posts available.

The job advert can be found here

Google Party - web meme alert!

2008-01-29T16:16:00.000Z

So, I'm sure this is spreading rampantly and most of you have seen it already - but for those that haven't, here is possible the best encapsulation of current web experience I've seen through humorous anthropomorphism. I especially like the annoying Facebook!

Pointless cash-in tat?

2007-12-21T19:59:00.000Z

I spotted this while Christmas shopping:

Lost, the board game.

I didn't look too closely at the rules but I'm assuming that you go round and round the board with each turn seeming like you are getting somewhere but ultimately realize its the same every time. This goes on ad nauseum until one by one the players get bored and wander off only to get excited about 'Heroes the board' game for a while. Eventually however they all end up pining for the great days of 'Firefly the board game' and 'Carnivale the board game' which are far more fun, its just a shame they stopped manufacturing them.

Enterprise Networking Meeting - (post imcomplete)

2007-12-18T15:12:00.000Z

On Tuesday I presented a talk at Huddersfield University to the Enterprise Network.

I took as my theme the importance to SME's of keeping an eye on coming innovations and the tweaking of the variables in the status quo can lead to upsets. Large corporations have the cash to get actively involved in industry wide innovations where as all to often the SME see's paradigm shifting innovation as ssomething that is forced upon them.

Any hoo - I promise I'd publish links to the topics I covered so here they are (this post is a work in progress and I'll keep updating over the next few days).

Introduction/Mental Sorbet

Futurama - New York Worlds fair 1939

Wired article
WiKipedia entry
Film archive
Film clips on YouTube part I, part II

MIT City Car project

Boston Globe article
Guardian article

10 things to keep an eye on

1. The Internet

Or more specifically the move from IPv4 to IPv6
Wikipedia has a pretty exhaustive entry

2. Desk top Fabbing

(links to follow)

3. Phone-a-ma-jigs

(links to follow)

4. Quantum computing

(links to follow)

5. Batteries

Virus built batteries
(more links to follow)

6. The Long Tail

(links to follow)

7. RFIDs & Spimes

(links to follow)

8. Artificial, artificial Intelligence

(links to follow)

9. Communications Convergence

(links to follow)

10. Web 2.0

(links to follow)

Wrap up

Jet boots

The Finnish bird man video.

Funny

2007-12-07T19:09:00.000Z

So, there is a lot of weird and wonderful stuff out there on the Web and plenty capable of raising a chuckle, but my first laugh-out-load moment in some time came courtesy of Binoculars Soccer. Maybe I've been coding too hard over the last couple of weeks but this really amuses me.

Thanks to the ever reliable GromBlog and their fingers, which are fixed as ever firmly on the pulse of any Web Meme for bringing this to my attention.

New Offices

2007-12-07T18:58:00.000Z

I've just completed a week in my new office - the fantastic new energy efficient Friendly Street building at the Media Centre in Huddersfield. After spending the last 8 months or so lurking in a subterranean space in the Lord Street building its great to get some natural light!

I should mention fellow residents Wavestreaming the Internet Radio infrastructure provider who's pic you can see above.

Air scare crunch

2007-11-24T23:56:00.000Z

Fun with HTML, JavaScript and Adobe Air

I've been tracking Adobe Air for a while now, since it was called Apollo in fact, and earlier this year we ran a couple of tests for some of our prototypes. Last Thursday I caught one of Adobe's CS3 roadshows in Sheffield and got an overview of the latest release of Air which brought it back to mind.
For the last few weeks I've been hacking together some sweet AJAX for the interface for our upcoming alpha trial - after running into the same old IE doing it's own sweet thing nightmare I realized that wrapping the whole app up in Air and deploying to the desktop might solve all manor of headaches.

So, easy thought I, simply run my app through the air 'compiler' and ship to all OS's and no longer worry about rogue browser behavior. The current iteration of our app doesn't need any OS interaction, taking as it does only with a Web server, so what could be easier.

Well, its not quite as easy as that. The new version of the Air beta is quite different from the one I was playing with a while back. See, the post load alterations to the 'web page' which is the bread and butter of AJAX have become a security concern, especially when you throw HttpRequest coupled with JSON into the fray. Imagine a suspect JSON payload being eval()ed and doing all manner of nasties - now imagine that running under a framework which can also read and write to you file system - ouch!

So, Adobe have implemented a security model which tries to rectify the issue by running two sandboxes simultaneously:
i) The Classic Sandbox which will run all you good old Web apps but not allow access to the Air API which gives access to the OS etc
ii) The Application Sandbox which gives access to the Air API set but will not stand for any of that AJAX fiddling.

The good news is that you can still have your nice AJAXy interface built the way you like to do it and make use of the API through the use of the 'Sandbox Bridge'.

What all this means is that you can't just take you existing web app and run it through the Air 'compiler' an end up with a desk top app. If you do, your JavaScript won't run and you may see an error such as "Error: Parsing Disallowed". This is because the default mode is to assume the more paranoid (safer) Application Sandbox.

I myself spent hours crawling the web trying to work out why my HTML/CSS/JabaScript app worked perfectly in the browser (IE max-height humour ) but failed to work when compiled to a .air file. All the docs I had were out of date. At first I thought maybe it was something in the JQuery framework I was using - but after building simpler and simpler test models I eventually realized that even an alert box called as a function with 101 JavaScript doesn't work!

Part of the issue was that I abandoned the command line SDK because I was having issues with the path settings - again the result of out of date documentation - and instead added the DreamWeaver Air extension. Now - I'm old school, I started my scripting long before DreamWeaver, GoLive et al came along and so it took me a while to find the 'site' arrangement. Any how, in the end I got my app together and ran it though the Air create extension, which worked smooth enough - but my app didn't work.
It was only after getting a little bash help (I swear I used to know this stuff in the early 90's) and running my tests through the command line SDK that I found the error message "Error: Parsing Disallowed" - which gave me something else to ask The Google. Which lead me eventually to the security model documents and some worked examples!

Now all this sounds a little bit like hard work especially if you have a nice Web app and all you want to do is port it to the desktop to start getting a feel for AIR!

Well, the fact is that it is actually very easy - its just new so there are precious few quick start idiots guides out there.

So if you have been harassing search engines with queries like "Why doesn't my JavaScript work in Air","Air JAVASCRIPT problems" etc, I hope the example below helps you.

So, how is it done?

Well - You create a new HTML file which is the root for your Air app (the file your air XML file calls root) and in this you call your app start page as an IFRAME. Simple as that - well for the base case anyway. This new Root HTML file is the place where you set up the Sandbox bridge and Application Sandbox etc too - but hey you can work up to that.

So by way of a helpful example:

Your App start page:

Lets call this HelloWorld.html

Your Air app root

Lets call this HelloWorldRoot.html

And finally your Application Descriptor File

Lets call this HelloWorld.XML

Download a text file here with all this code in for cutting and pasting.

And thats it - stick these in the same directory at run the Air command line at the XML file - job done!

Now you know how to get your Web app to work on the desk top you can start looking at interacting with the OS through the Air APIs and setting up you Sandbox bridge.

Read about the security model and why here.

See worked examples to help with your next steps here.

More WGC news coverage ...

2007-11-11T19:58:00.000Z

... this time on TV!!!

With the rest of the team quite literally spread across the world last week, it was up to Dave to represent us when 'NewsChannel 9' swept into the office to do a piece on our little start-up. I'm not sure how long this link will work but take a look at the news feature, you'll have to wait through a short ad first.

Also, I believe we made it to the print edition of Business Week last week.

OpenCoffee Leeds {Sei} - The Low Down

2007-11-08T08:35:00.000Z

November 6th was the first Tuesday of the month and that means only one thing ... OpenCoffe Leeds. (Actually it means many things, not the least my Mum's Birthday! - but you get my point)

So the 6th OpenCoffee Leeds, on the 6th of November saw a happy band of loose affiliates and common interest holders once more descend on the venue and partake of the refreshments and WiFi all kindly provided once again by Justin.

Having pulled a couple of all-nighters, the feeble efforts of his ring tone invoked by my incessant stabbing of redial were inadequate to rouse Imran from his well disturbed slumber and so he never made it. Which is a shame, firstly because there were a number of interesting newcomers and secondly because it falls to me to report on the event!

Not the biggest turn out but we did notch up 23 concurrent OpenCoffee-ers (?) and see around 27 people in total pass through at some stage. Word on the street has it that many people were at their home/office frantically working on their demos and presentations for BarCamp.

As per usual we managed a nice spread of geeks, designers, entrepreneurs, academics, Venture and other generally tech related peeps.

It was heartening to see that the new faces doted around the place were getting actively involved in conversations. Had I realized I'd be on point as official correspondent this month I would have made more of an effort to get round everyone, as it is I got drawn into a number of very engaging discussions. However two stories I can recount are illustrative of the day.

1. Richard came along for the first time. He is overseeing the set up of interesting new MVNE company smallPlanet based in Huddersfield, and was fortuitous enough to be able to discuss the ins and outs of making a success of a small Telco player with Plus Net founder and tech business guru Lee Stafford.

2. Paul, a biochemist based in Leeds came along for a very different reason. He has a couple of very intriguing business ideas which he and a partner are currently developing. Paul is a smart guy but not well enough versed in computing to get a handle on the tech requirements of his product and so was seeking some assistance in this regard. Firstly he came away assured that yes indeed, there is more than sufficient talent around the area to help him spec up and build his product. Secondly that it wasn't necessary to blat around Cambridge, London or Silicon Valley to get tech startup funding (I was not the only one present to speak from personal experience on this topic). Finally he came away having met people who could either offer advice, help him directly or refer him to the tech talent he is going to need. And really, thats what this thing is all about.

Best of luck to both Richard and Paul and to all the others in the region who are cracking on and launching their own ventures.

No photos this month I'm afraid!

The December event is set for Tuesday 4th once again at Loftart on Vicar Lane - details of everything cam be found on Upcoming.

In the news!

2007-11-02T09:13:00.000Z

One of my most time consuming gigs this year has been as VP Engineering for startup WGC. We have spent a lot of time hacking away in our 'Lab', talking to potential collaborators and presenting at academic conferences fueled by a mix of visionary angels and belief.

In the new year we are set to unleash our first trial product, which will be installed in a student dorm at Syracuse University, NY. Now that we are on the verge of presenting something real as opposed to our demos and prototypes we are getting a great deal of Interest. Lee and Norman especially are dealing the with daily amourous advances of potential larger investors, industrial partners and customers.

Of course we have all had a strong belief in our technology and vision for some time but its nice when that potential starts to be recognized in wider circles and so I have to admit to being somewhat excited that Business Week saw fit to cover us in a story which pretty much gets the key concepts across.
Of course I'd have liked a little less emphasis on content sharing and more on Personal Infrastructure and hardware resource sharing - but in truth it has taken us a while to work out how to talk about these things in the wild and would probably have bogged down the article.

Quickfoot is up

2007-10-19T13:37:00.000+01:00

There is something about attaining web presence that somehow makes a venture seem more real.

The guys I share and office with run a video production outfit called 'Quickfoot Media' and today they have launched their first corporate web site to announce their wares. Welcome to the online world guys!

So while I'm on the subject I'll give them a plug - anyone needing any video work doing, especially in the Yorkshire area, give them a call - they provide a full service. Check out their web site for more details.

A I

2007-10-15T10:08:00.000+01:00

Open Coffee Leeds - Again

2007-08-08T23:28:00.000+01:00

As per usual Imran's round up of yesterday's event is pretty comprehensive so why post when I can link?

New Grinn Album OUT NOW!!!!!

2007-07-25T12:56:00.000+01:00

Yes, at long last the new Grinn album "Ordinary Day' has been released. It may take some time to make it to a record shop near you, but you can get it right now by ordering from the Grinn online shop. Whats more it will only cost you £6 +P&P.

While you are at it, why not order a T-Shirt or one of the previous albums.

If you are new to Grinn there is a fantastic online only offer to buy all three albums for just £12 and complete your Grinn back-catalogue in one go.

Web Design Companies - The Future

2007-07-08T22:23:00.000+01:00

I've had a lot of queries of late (some prompted by my recent talk) from people in Web Design companies asking about the future of their industry and what they can do to stay competitive.

I initially wrote a long post on this topic, most of it late at night and much of that after several glasses of fine wine and it all became a little rambling. So, at the risk of passing up some consultancy cash*, I deleted that and instead I offer this slightly more succinct and considered Top 5 tips for Web Design Agency survival:

1. Understand what the Web actually is!
The Web is moving from a publishing platform to a global computation platform. This means that the Web site is becoming the Web Application. The Web is becoming the medium through which not only humans, but other web sites and other systems will interact with the organization. The notion of the brochureware site will die for all but the very bottom end of the market.

2. Respect your Geeks!
Firstly, engineers are not unwashed, uncouth social misfits. These are stereotypes perpetuated by a society fundamentally suspicious of science and technology. If a painter is reclusive it is because of artistic temperament, if an engineer prefers quite isolation to work they are deemed socially inept. You will find that your engineers are good at understanding problems and finding ways to solve them - they are trained to do this. They are also well placed to recommend new possibilities. Involve an engineer in your initial client meetings, they are not just the guys to build what others have imagined, they can offer incite into the process. Programming is a fundamentally creative pursuit and as such demands the ability to see things from many angles, capitalise on these abilities.

3. Get to love technology.
How many times has your account director or new business guy uttered a phrase like "I'm not a technology guy" or "I don't really understand how it works!" Shame on you! You are in the technology business now, get over it. And while it is true that the technology should often be hidden from the end user and it is the problem-to-be-solved and not the technology used to solve it that should remain paramount in mind, your job is to demystify the technology for your client not dismiss it. You can only do this properly if you understand it.
If you understand the technology and where it is going you can really offer something useful to your client and solve their problems, as opposed to making their problem fit your understanding. 'If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail in need of a good pounding' - expand your toolbox!

4. Hire designers
Ok, so this one may sound a bit like the teaching of egg sucking to the elderly relatives, but there is a real difference between a fine artist and a designer. Design is essentially the human end of engineering. Not the thinking of how things look and feel but the application of these thoughts to the problem space. Design isn't about competence in any given medium - those are skills a designer should poses - no, design is about problem solving, just as engineering is about problem solving and in this context design is about the engineering of usable interfaces. This is not just about aesthetic layout (though that is important) - it's about 'interaction' design. The page based paradigm is on its last legs, designers need to see the screen as a dynamic atomized pallets of possible state.

5. Reorganize your structure
How many agencies have a design team, an engineering team, a production team, etc all sitting in individual blocks. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Building this stuff is a multidisciplinary endeavor, not a conveyor-belt starting with marker pens and ending in bytecode, so arrange cells of multidisciplinary teams with a competent producer in the lead. A good producer will have a feel for design, understand code, data structures and load balancing and will know how to talk to clients - they are rare but more than worth the investment. Of course birds of a feather need to flock together for support and the development of ideas, engineers need to spend time with engineers and designers with designers etc, but when it comes to the project, mix 'em up.

So, this post may seem a little basic for those well versed in emerging tech, but judging by the contact I've had recently from some small (and some not so small) but ambitious companies it should be of interest to some of you and hopefully of help to a few.

* I am of course available on a consultancy basis to help you realize these ideas within your own organization.

Open Coffee Leeds II

2007-07-05T13:12:00.001+01:00

The second open coffee in Leeds took place this Tuesday at the new venue; The LoftArt Gallery on the Third floor of Flannels on Vicar Lane - Thanks Justin for the venue, coffee and cakes.

Not a bad turn out (max 19 concurrent attendees by my calculations and 21 in total) for the difficult second event and some very animated conversations took place not to mention one or two demos, the venue's free WiFi being a real boon in this respect.

(photo from Imran's Flickr)

Imran has posted a more detailed review here so I won't duplicate.

Keep your eyes on upcoming for news of the next event.

Google docs knocks of socks - but still no docks to OS chops

2007-06-29T12:25:00.000+01:00

I've been traveling about for the last few days and with limited connectivity my online time has mostly been spent dealing with email and other coms rather than 'productivity' applications, so when I got back to my desk this morning and opened up Google Docs to check the progress of a collaboration I got a surprise - a brand spanking new interface.

(pic from ZDnet review)

That is to say that the home/file page has been revamped - the apps themselves remain unaffected.
It is an improvement on the previous incarnation. There is more detail in front of the eye and dragging and dropping has been introduced both of which cut down time and effort. However, as a long time heavy Gmail user the file list layout with its new chronology based view, fires my 'inbox recognition neurons' which is confusing as I keep thinking I'm looking at mail. To my mind it all looks a bit cluttered - although the ability to see file name, shares and access date without extra clicking or mouse movement is welcome. You can also now view the doc list by collaborator as well topic or time frame.
How long before we get the ability to define a 'group' for sharing? That would be useful.
'Folders' have now appeared, which is I guess merely a matter of sticking alternate interfacing on tagging of old; I've heard many a call for the introduction of folders to Google Docs, which I assume is a result of years of conditioning in the desk top construct - will that metaphor never die - and it looks like Google may have succumbed!

As I expected, a quick check of the blogosphere turns up a myriad of rave reviews about the genius of the system and congratulating the Google team for a job well done. Remember guys, the apps themselves haven't changed yet and Zoho and Thinkfree and probably a few others arguably have better offerings, albeit with a much lower profile. [hmmm - future post on the topic of Gmail as gateway drug to seizing the lion's share of the online app market]

So what everyone is raving about then is in fact not the functions of the 'office' apps but the file organization component - the File Manager of the Google OS if you like.
Now within the context of the 'online' application and the Web 2.0 this is fair, if over hyperbolic praise but lets talk a step back for a moment.
In the wider scheme of things, the state of the art in online interfacing has barely achieved things we used to see in Windows 3.1. In short, if 'Google Docs' was running as a desk top app, we'd all point and laugh. Of course, it is unfair to compare the two deployment contexts, at least until Web apps escape the browser - roll on Apollo/Air, Silverlight etc and the potential hybrid web/desk top app.

It is the liminal area between online and offline which interests me most and having made a start on replicating file management devices online I wonder when Google will switch some attention to the device. What I imagine is essentially for Google ( or Zoho, Thinkfree at al) to provide system hooks which allow an OS to treat the file management aspect of their service as a 'virtual drive'. Now if this 'virtual file system' could also play nicely with the OS to the extent that it could be used as a basis for document sharing from the machine, then I'd start to get really excited, but just being able to use the local power of a machine OS to manipulate online files would be a nice start.

For now, it is possible with some effort to get Google Calendar to sync with my desk top, and Gmail can now play nicely with POP3 etc but what I want is one easy to use method to get all the Google productivity and coms apps plumbed into my OS.

All of this raises some interesting questions which I'll probably get around to addressing in a future post but ... What percentage of online app use is taking advantage of the abilities to access from a 'borrowed' terminal? In other words, how important is it to keep online apps non-dependent on client-side capabilities? or When can we start to treat the Web as an extension of a specific device? or Can we throw all the required 'local' requirements/ setup metadata etc down the wire at runtime?

Just fixing my Technorati links

2007-06-24T18:30:00.000+01:00

Technorati Profile

bmedia Presentation materials and links

2007-06-21T21:28:00.000+01:00

Thanks to everyone for being such an engaging audience last night - it was a pleasure to talk to you all. If any one has any questions or wants to argue against anything I said feel free to email me or post a comment here. You won't offend me by disagreeing with anything I said, I welcome debate and am not too proud to surrender to a well reasoned argument - debate helps us all understand better.

As always with these things there are points I realize I should have made and other things I realize I should have expanded upon but time is always such a limited commodity. If any one can make it to the next Leeds open coffee we can talk further.

Thanks for some really interesting questions and conversations after the presentation.

As promised, the presentation (as a PDF) can be download from here:

Also, below is the reading list I recommend and also the list of Web 2.0 apps that are worth taking a look at to see if they can help you in your business. If you find any others you like, please post about them in the comments section and share with everyone else.

Reading List:

Books

Shaping things - Bruce Sterling

WiKinomics - Don Tapscott

Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing - Adam Greenfield

Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution - Howard Rheingold

The Laws of Simplicity - John Maeda

Ambient Findability - Peter Morville

The Long Tail - Chris Anderson

Web

What is Web 2.0 - Tim O'Reilly

Winning with the Enterprise 2.0 - Don Tapscott

Ripe for use - Web 2.0 apps an SME could use right now:

Document Sharing and Archiving
Google Docs

Customer Relationship Managent
Salesforce.com

Publishing
Blogger, Word Press, TypePad

Project collaboration
Basecamp

Invoicing
Blinksale

Meeting Coordination
Time & Date, Dopplr, Calendar Hub

File Transfer
Dropsend, Yousendit

Storage
Xdrive, Omnidrive

News/Feed tracking
Bloglines

Recruitment/Staffing
Linkedin, odesk

Information Tracking/Sharing
Del.icio.us

Event publicity
Upcomming

Social Network
Ning,

Office suite
Zoho, Thinkfree, Google Docs

Collaboration
YuuGuu, Social Text

Conferecing
YuuGuu, Webex

Telephony
Skype, Grand Central

Web 2.0 and the SME @ bmedia

2007-06-21T09:07:00.000+01:00

Tonight I'm doing a talk at bmedia, (West Yorkshire's media, new media and technology network) on the topic of Web 2.0 and how it relates to the SME.
I aim to cut through hype and misunderstanding and unearth the trends that led to Web 2.0, extrapolate these forward and give some pointers as to how it all can or will effect the enterprise.

I'll post up the presentation on this blog after the event.

Web 2.0 and the SME - Exploiting the potential of the 'New Web' for business
Stories about MySpace, Youtube and the new range of Google products abound, but Web 2.0 offers the potential for far more than consumer and entertainment applications. Ian will discuss how the SME can and must take advantage of these new technologies and new ways of thinking in order to stay competitive.

Silicon Valley and Everywhere else

2007-06-19T09:08:00.000+01:00

It has been an interesting month with a lot of exciting work with a lot of smart people taking up my time. I've had my head down and been doing some serious graft and hadn't really noticed the minor details like the fact that I'd bounced between three continents, changed my time zone 8 times and taken eating out with all meals accompanied by technical debate and napkin sketching to be the normal way to consume sustenance.

Then last week I had a reality check when I suddenly realized I was in fact doing for a living something I dreamed of as a kid.
So, what prompted this moment of clarity?

Well, I looked up and found myself hurtling down the 101 between Burlingame and Palo Alto in Silicon Valley in the back of a rented mini-van, MacBook balanced on my knee, hacking some last bits of code together for a product demo I was about to deliver at Stanford University!
Now I may have been doing the relatively easy job from the technical point of view of getting the Rails code of superstar hacker Dave and front end of ex-Hollywood SFX guy George to talk to each other - but that is beside the point! To a young computer obsessed kid growing up in 70s/80s small town Derbyshire, UK, these were almost mythical places and the thought of 'doing computers' for a living tantamount to joining Kirk's crew.

The irony of my working with distance shrinking communications technology and still feeling the gravitational pull of a specific geographical location (and I'm not talking about 'The Mystery Spot') is not lost on me. This is I guess partly to do with my own childhood fascination and partly to do with the fact that despite great work going on elsewhere in the world (and there is lots of it), nowhere else has quite the confluence of smart people, facilities and investment money in such scale.

Over the years of course there have been many examples of attempts to replicate Silicon valley elsewhere, and numerous ongoing debates about why this hasn't or couldn't or shouldn't work and I'm not going to get into that now. Suffice to say that as a tech entrepreneur and innovation consultant the cultural differences between the 'go for it' attitude that prevails in the Valley (and to be fair the US in general) and the risk averse over-caution I meet most often in Europe (there are always exceptions) are extremely vivid.

In Carbon, one of our passions is helping to cultivate a culture of encouragement for innovative thinking and doing, an attitude where a single failure is not perceived as a millstone that must be worn around the neck for public display for the rest of a career and an environment where start-ups, large enterprises, investment and education can all come together with an air of optimism, enthusiasm and excitement and really start to achieve something.
It is heartening that on this quest we are discovering more and more like minded people.

Who knows where these combined efforts could lead, but it would be nice to think that one day, some fresh faced kid from Mountain View CA, might grow up to blog about his adventures hurtling down the M62 in a rented hovercar, while hacking a 3D Holographic interface to a quantum computer driven back-end on their way to demo their product at The University of Huddersfield.

The Art of the state

2007-04-17T15:15:00.000+01:00

A few weeks back I was working with the dev team at WGC on some interface design for our product prototype. We came across a point at which we have to give the user the ability to indicate their desire to save a current state. As we discussed the various ways in which we could visually indicate a 'save' action button, I realized that as a whole the industry has settled on the image of a 'floppy disc' such as this:

Now in this day and age the floppy disk is an anachronism - have any of the myspace generation even ever seen one? It is certainly a few years since the average family PC came with a floppy drive as standard equipment and an online life requires little in the way of tangible media.

- and yet the iconography persists.

The more I thought about this however, the more I came to think that if we needed to provide a user action which is exemplified by an outmoded concept, then maybe we should rethink our interface and indeed application architecture at a deeper level.

When developing interfacing for an online or network based application the notion of 'save' perhaps makes little sense; yes, there are practical reasons such as data storage capacity and data transfer but should we not be thinking of state as a temporal condition, a set of attributes and values at a given point in time? How many layers of 'undo' should we set? Or should we dispense with the 'floppy' disk notion of a hard state and invoke some more contempoary notion of state control such as a play, stop, rewind etc. Is state not just simply a specific point along a constant flow of input and output.

Too much application interfacing is based around the technical solution - this made some sense when computer users were computer scientists, but for a long time computers have been the tools of the every man. We invented the notion of 'computer literacy' so we could teach people how to interface with computer - isn't it about time we started teaching our computers or at least our applications about people? At what point do interfacing conventions which have allowed users to move from computer to computer or application to application with some relative comfort start to hinder the possibility of how computers could work for people?

Returning to the discussion of state saving: Some time back applications started introducing the notion of 'auto save', but even this is insufficient. Like the safety ropes in the sport of rock climbing this only prevents a plummet to certain doom by providing a maximum 'safe' fall distance. Should applications not be more like a staircase of better still, an elevator?

It could be that the humble floppy disk lives on in collective memory as the state saving icon for some time yet - there is a precedent, just look at the road sign we use in the UK to indicate the presence of speed detection cameras:

Does this look anything like the type of camera you'd expect to be capable of taking a high resolution image of a fast moving license plate?

Blogging on my Blog about Blogging or rather not! Or - the nature of my 'Busy'

2007-03-21T01:09:00.000Z

So this blog has been once again rather sparse for a while. There are many, many posts half finished in draft (and some of them are absolute corkers, believe me, you don't know what you're missing) but I just haven't had the time - and "Why's that?" (I imagine) I hear you call. Well, I'm just so darned busy.
Its not just the stuff, but also the traveling to the stuff as well - a thought that also reminds me how much of my cash keeps going to line the exquisitely tailored Telco pockets for the 'privilege' of consuming a bit of WiFi while away from home and office. God bless all you forward thinking coffee shops, hotels, airports, University Campuses and the occasional Foneros (yes, they are out there is you look really hard) for providing a free data life line to a struggling Tech Entrepreneur. Someone really should put together a searchable, location based directory of all these freebies .... no, not me - I'm too busy!
My 'business' right now pretty much consists of me and my MacBook but t'Internet is crucial.
If the money from doing the work covers the costs of remote access then I guess its all manageable, if no less irksome.

But I digress!
Maybe it's the very fact that I can pretty much alway find some form of connection that allows or maybe even forces me to be so busy.

Or maybe I'm just lazy and what I consider busy, someone with a proper job would consider bumming around - nah, I'm definitely busy.

Of course the great thing is that I'm busy, but not on any thing I don't want to be busy on. I've no corporate politics forcing me to do appeasement projects, limited admin nonsense (though those business grants don't apply for themselves) - and most importantly no need to work with any one I don't want to. I could be busier, but I'm learning to prioritize my busy, and eradicate unnecessary busy, distracting busy and most importantly futile busy.
So for the record, this is what is keeping me busy this month.

WGC - I accepted the post of VP of Engineering and Product for this VERY exciting startup. Of course they are based in Syracuse NY which gives me plenty of oportunity to be busy with intercontinental traveling. Also, being 5 hours behind GMT means my working day can be busy for longer (now how's that of optimized busyness?)
Inteleme - my Start-up. Business plans, project plans, funding meetings and prototype coding - very busy.
Carbon - Finally pulling together the plan for clever clogs busying.
Project X - Top secret world changing startup devised by a right smartypants - Product and engineering design busyness
Wireless Grids Research consortium - Delivered the opening Keynote and we also demoed the WGC prototype - And just for extra busy points the meeting was in Palo Alto!
Etel - A great conference with the oportunity of more trans-Atlantic travel busy opportunities thrown in. I also met some great people and put faces to some great hitherto virtual friends.
Monty Dogg Records - My small label is preparing for the next Grinn album and the first in a series of band split EPs - the first being Grinn vs Liquidhead. Busy booking studios, sorting out replication logistics, distribution negotiations, Oh, and designing the cover art.
Grinn - Writing the new album, rehearsing like mad, booking gigs and busying ourselves playing shows.
Novel - Yes I am writing a novel - an historical, comedy crime caper. They say everyone has a book in them, though Barbara Cartland must have skewed the average somewhat. I don't know if anyone will want to read it but hey, it keeps me busy.

Well, that sets the record straight. I can now strive to add more regular (and I hope more worthwhile) blogging to my busyness.

Archives Fixed

2007-03-07T14:32:00.000Z

Some time back I stuffed up the archive links - they are fixed now!

Google Maps Direct-shuns

2007-01-11T12:19:00.000Z

I have generally found Google maps to be an extremely useful tool which has helped my timely arrival at many a new destination when working on both sides of the Atlantic. However this must be the strangest route suggestion I have come across.

I was recently invited to lunch at the Wolsey restaurant in London by a business colleague. Now I have only a passing acquaintance to this area of London so after finding an address for the restaurant I Google Mapped (there's verb creation for you) it and knowing it was somewhere near the Ritz I put that in as a Landmark to help orient myself when I break the surface at Green Park after a subterranean journey.

It turns out that the two places are practically opposite each other, but look at the route Google maps recommends from one to the other - maybe it is assuming I need to work up an appetite.

Now it feels real!

2007-01-11T11:52:00.000Z

Its weird being back in start-up mode again - last time I was in the position was in 1999 when money was secured before the idea was fleshed out!

Things are different now, start-up costs are cheaper (well for the Internet tech anyway), the world is more aware of the Internet and domestic broadband is the norm rather than wishful thinking.
The whole world feels very different.

But what really makes me feel like I'm a free-wheeling tech entrepreneur is the very same thing that reminds me how much the environment has changed and that is the fact that my 'office' is now split between my cubby hole at home and the rather fine Coffee Evolution with its free WiFi - which is where this very post is coming from!

It's all over now baby ... Orange

2006-12-23T00:42:00.000Z

As the working year draws to an end, so too does my current employment contract, which started nearly seven years ago when I joined Freeserve - which re-branded to Wanadoo after France Telecom acquisition and then changed name again to Orange earlier this year.
Its been an interesting ride from fresh faced Dot Com to corporate monster. I initially joined Freeserve (after being pursued for some time by a rabid pack of recruiters) because it seemed like a place with pockets suitably deep enough to offer some shelter from the dot com bubble bursting. However, having made the transition from senior producer to Innovation and technology consultant early on in my tenure I must admit that it turned out to be far more fun than I anticipated.

But now, the time is right to once more venture forward under my own steam, so its back into the heady world of freelance consultancy and start-up stress.

So, I'm going to enjoy a Christmas break at get stuck in on Jan 2nd 2007 when the hang overs clear!

Le Web 3

2006-12-14T14:51:00.000Z

Due to fatherly responsibilities I had to cancel my trip to Le Web 3 at the eleventh hour and I kinda feel that in the end I lucked out. Thus I legitimately get to avoid passing comment on the event which by all accounts was hijacked by French political agendas. There is little point my adding anything to the TCUK debacle 'cept to point you at a couple of posts from my homies.

Monoman: TCUK Farrago
Imran: Le Web day 1

I was however in IM contact with several of my friends and colleagues who were less than impressed. If you want to know more, tap into the blogosphere - it's rife with comment.

Backup, Back down

2006-12-07T14:49:00.000Z

I have, at various times in my career, been tasked to look into the viability and functional specifications of backup systems for domestic computing. There are some pretty good technical solutions out there but this is never an easy sell to the end user. Until you have had a bit of kit go bang, you can't really appreciate the trauma of loosing its contents and capabilities. Would everyone really buy car insurance if it wasn’t compulsory or would they gamble on their driving prowess or the grace of St Christopher?

Even now, when the personal generation and collation of digital media in ever greater quantity on our computers suggests we have more to loose, few indulge in regular back up activities and fewer still are prepared to pay to do so.

To this end I am not sure that backup is something that can or should be sold to the domestic users (there are all sort of compulsions on the corporate world). Rather it perhaps makes sense to charge for retrieval or restoration.
Save for the obvious privacy paranoia (not to belittle these concerns – but this isn’t the time or place for that discussion), how compelling would a free automatic system backup service sound to an end user in this always-on broadband world? Delta indexing can avoid lengthy consumption of system resources for such purposes especially if the service was active from the moment a new system was unboxed and plugged in.
Simplicity is the key to end user adoption so Dell (named purely as exemplar of OEM provider) and their partner ISPs could have everything pre-configured.
The end user is then charged at the point of trauma for retrieval – it sounds cruel, but this is exactly the time in which the immense value of backup becomes blatantly obvious. Pricing would have to be none exploitative however.

Of course if backup were to be such an inherent system component, the model of adding a couple of quid a month to ISP charge for the piece of mind of free retrieval may also be viable.
Trustworthy computing anyone?

There are some steps towards a sense of data security. Photographic memory may be saved by Flickr, conversations forever archived in Gmail and MP3s written to CD (lets not get into a DRM debate now) but in many cases its not just the loss of media that can cause issues, and its not just computing disasters that we can address, what about computing mobility.

The problem I have with most backup systems is in what they encourage the user to back up. The focus in on media files; pictures, text docs, music etc
My biggest source of frustration when moving to a new machine is the sudden lack of those little behaviours to which I have become accustomed, the Firefox extensions, widgets, utilities and applications them-selves which are all part of my customised computer.
[There is of course no mystery why online back up systems don’t tend to encourage backup of applications, for one thing in the Windows world, who knows where to find all of those little library files etc let alone how to restore them into the correct folder structure and system settings tables.]

No, in short what I’d like is my system ‘DNA’ stored in a way which allows me to port it from machine to machine such that I can easily move my interfacing habits. Now, living a wholly online life is one solution, though this is not yet entirely practical, and much as I’ve tried to live like that, I still draw immense value from the customisation of the very browser I use to access those online resources. Now, not being technically inept I do upload my Firefox profile to a secure online locker so that pain at least is reduced – though this is hardly a mass market solution – again, simplicity!

What I want as a user is a stress free way of making any new or recently repaired PC feel like home. I don’t want to get into backup – but I do want the power of retrieval.

Kind of on topic, I just read Paul’s post and thinking about profile backup though my Digital Home research eyes I couldn’t help wondering if this model could be applied to equipment other than PCs. Just where can the Telco live in the data security space?

The Digital Home - The Grid Approach

2006-12-07T10:48:00.002Z

For a few years now one of my research domains has concerned the Future of Home Networking. My interest in this area of technology was I guess, initially sparked as a geeky 10 year old hacking away at my ZX81 with an imagination fuelled by Lucas, Roddenbury et al.
So when I was asked to deliver a keynote at last week’s inaugural Wireless Grids Research Consortium Meeting on the topic of visions for the use of Grids in the home environment, starting with the mental exercise of deconstructing the Star Trek ship's computer seemed only too natural.

From HAL to the USSS Enterprise and beyond, the intelligent Star Ship Computer has become a cliché staple of Science Fiction writing and film. Be the question ‘Computer, what deck is Mr Spok currently on?’ or ‘How long before that planet explodes?’ the Star Ship computer has the answer.
However the computer doesn’t ‘know’ all the answers, it simply ‘understands’ the question, ‘knows’ where to find the information required to present a logic answer and 'understanrds' how to manipulate the physical devices which can supply information about the environment.
This glib (and over long) sentence is of course ascribing simplicity of concept to something complex in practice, but for the sake of illustration consider the oft utilized plot device of a stricken, powerless Star Ship in decaying orbit around a planet. The question ‘Computer, how long before the ship burns up in the atmosphere?’ would more than likely result in a prompt answer of the form ’37.2 minutes!’
If we examine this we can see that in order to answer this question the computer must:

Understand the question and also:

1 Recognise the questioner

2 Recognise their context

Locate information about current speed from ships sensors
Locate information about planet mass from external sensors
Calculate the mass of the ship from ship record and cargo log
Find appropriate equations for planetary physics from some knowledge bank
Apply all the information to the equation in order to calculate the answer.

We can also see here that even the method for calculating the answer, given the other data sources, can be discovered through an information source. The intelligence therefore lies in being able to aggregate the correct information and compile it accordingly.

Now, this may seem ridiculously geeky but it allowed me to make an important point. Home networking technologists are often so concerned with the networking aspect that they neglect to investigate all but the most trite and obvious use cases, such as moving files from one place to another or sharing an internet connection that the notion of what this new 'network/device gestalt' is capable of is often overlooked.
I've lost count of the amount of times some techno savvy type has piped up with an assertion that building a home network is easy and how simple the Windows Network Setup Wizards are etc. Indeed not being alien to technology myself, my own home has boasted some form of computer network for at least 8 years. However, these assertions always fall into the same traps of :

Assuming that the average home user has any interest in building (and more importantly maintaining) a network
Assuming that computers are the only thing that needs networking.
Assuming that is other devices are to be networked it is so they can be exploited by a computer in some scriptable liner process

Beyond the expensive home automation and entertainment integration systems available at the high end market (which are very cool) I would go so far as to say that there is no such thing as a home network at this point in time. Sure, we can scale down an corporate LAN but to my mind any system that requires someone in the home to take on the role of a network administrator can not really be considered a 'home' network.
There is the argument that this could be set up by a third party expert much the same as the electrical or plumbing networks and this would be fine if not for the small matter or reliability. I have not had to touch the core electricity or plumbing networks in my house since installation, yet my computer network needs weekly attention.
I long since coined the term 'the family CTO' to label that person existent in many extended families to which all others turn when computing problems arise, but it is not really viable for network and technology suppliers to rely on their possible existence or assume that there is any interest in domestic systems integration. It is not a new idea that things sell better when they are easy to set up, use and above all understand.

So, getting back to the Star Trek Ship’s Computer, to me the point of home networking goes beyond the relatively simple aspect of connecting devices together- rather the point is to enable the end user to do something previously impossible but to allow them to do this in a simple way. By connecting the computers to other devices with (or potentially with) communications capabilities - games consoles, cell phones, stereos, speakers, TVs, white goods and even the family car - we can start to construct a network of capabilities (resources, in the Grid computing parlance) and think about how abstracting device capabilities from their physical boxes by way of the network generates new possibilities.

If we can some how place the intelligence for connectivity, identity, security, information retrieval and user orchestration into the network we can begin to extract values from the devices found in a home on a level greater than the sum of their parts. This may need some kind of hub, though the notion of making the network itself the ‘hub’ is personally more intriguing.

Maybe this is all science-fiction, I admit at least that this is a longer term vision, but through some of my work with the Wireless Grids community I am starting to see some real possibilities.

Habit Forming and Interfacing Features

2006-11-16T13:35:00.000Z

Isn't it amazing how quickly habits can form?

The last time I used a Mac on a daily basis, OS7 was the new thing and although I've had Macs around since then, my personal machines have all been Windows or Linux (Usually KDE) interfaces. Like many though, Tiger temped me back and so when it came to get myself a new daily machine I went for a MacBook. Given my limited time to spend playing with new toys these days I've been relying on my friend who similarly made the switch a few weeks before me for hints and tips. One of which was the suggestion that I adopt Adium as my IM network aggregator *. Which I did 3 days ago.

Now at first I was a little distressed by the fact that when I opened a new conversation it was realised via a new tab on the conversation window (if one was already open) - that was until I found out that I could grab the tab and drag it off the window to invoke a new one.
This has now become second nature - so much so then when I was writing a paper earlier today with many, many reference tabs open in FireFox I naturally tried to pull one of the tabs off the browser to create a new window so I could view two pages side by side. I'm a long time FireFox user and quite aware of how tabs behave and so it must have been the habit formed through Adium use and the fact that dragging content to form new windows must be such a damned good idea that informed my actions ;-)

Now thinking about this further I pondered how useful it would be to be able to pull bits of web pages or files off of their donor pages to form new instances or even notelets. I await with interest to see what magic micro formats might allow in this area. And that got me thinking about ....

Anyway, I'm looking for other examples of this kind of drag-and-create type functionality if anyone wants to comment any I'd be grateful.

* My next job is to use Growl to aggregate the Adium alerts visually and deactivate the sound, 'cos cute as the little Duckie is, my IM networks have a lot on event traffic (constant stream of people signing on and off) and the constant Quacking is doing my nut!

Jonathan Miller - Leaving AOL

2006-11-16T11:58:00.000Z

I've historically never quite seen eye to eye with AOL; I was no fan of the walled garden Web model, though I can see the point in the simplicity and handholding that this allow the novice user, and lets not even get into the early stages of the Time-Warner deal.

However, recently I had started to think they were at last getting it right. The embracing of Web 2.0 and their complete about face from walled garden to bastion of openness seemed to me to smack of an organisation with renewed vigour and vision. Thus, it is with some surprise that I read of the departure of CEO Jonathan Miller.
It is partly the fact that I've seen Miller speak twice recently (MIT Technology Review Emerging Technology conference and the Web 2.0 Summit) and been impressed by his approach that had given me such a good feeling about AOL's future.

I'll never understand this business!

Web 2.0 Summit: Quick response

2006-11-09T02:16:00.000Z

So the usual problem of flaky WiFi and constricted elbow room has made live blogging difficult - not that I'm quite as adept at the verbose note taking blog form as some of my cohorts.

All in all there is a great deal to take in and quite frankly I'm generating a mass of notes that I need to process before posting. I'll get around to this sometime next week.

There is more than meets the eye going on here and I think some of the early reports emerging into the blogosphere are missing the point somewhat - this year is depth not breath. It's easy to skate along the surface here - but diving a little deeper is going to take me some time to phrase so be patient.

Web 2.0 Summit: Day 1 keynotes

2006-11-08T08:29:00.000Z

Some good stuff here to get us started with the conference proper.

Highlights

A Conversation with Eric Schmidt
A Conversation with Jack Ma

Web 2.0 Summit: Launch Pad

2006-11-08T08:14:00.000Z

Lauchpad was a quickfire product launch pitch session consisting of 13 produces each getting a 5 minute pitch. The lucky 13 were apparently whittled down from around 150 applicants and hence were all of high quality.

I haven't got time to review them all, so please go and see for yourself:

In the Chair - Online music tutorial/practice system
Instructables - A Make-esque system for sharing how to instructions
Klostu - A system for uniting the boardscape (blogosphere for message boards)
Hummingbird from Sharpcast - An online/offline bridge for syncing document states across platforms
Stikkit - Quick note system with context resolution
TURN - Worlds first automatic targeted ad network system
Sphere - Blog search system with context querying
Omnidrive - Desktop/Online/Cross platform data syncing system
Adify - Platform to create vertical ad networks
3b - 3D imersive environment for navigating web pages
Odesk - Trust and reputation based staffing and recruitment system - on demand global workforce
Venyo - Reputation management system
Timebridge - Automated meeting scheduling resolution plugin for outlook

(edit - Now with working links)

Web 2.0 Summit: What Does SOA Have to Do with Web 2.0?

2006-11-08T08:01:00.000Z

IBM presented the usual what is Web 2.o stuff before talking in real terms about how the techniques of Web 2.o can and are being adopted within enterprises.

I've been following SOA for quite a while and TBH I always kinda saw Web 2.o as an implementation of SOA and so I didn't fully understand the title of this session, but the point I think that was being made was that was in the focus of internal IT departments and their ability to switch from the notion of large long term projects to deliver systems to a preguessed requirements list to the more iterative and adaptive systems architectural approach.
Apparently most IT integration projects take a minimum of 6 months but the majority of business relationships last no longer than 12 moths - adopting more Web 2.0 approaches to SOA development paradigms can save a huge amount of time.

Enterprise Challenges to adoption

- Security
- if we can't secure it we won't use it
- protecting privacy and including identity mashups
- Manageability
- Overly complex integration
- Development
- Fast and easy versus well designed and engineered
- Lack of standard development methods, tools and design patterns
- Business value
- Broad business value of social networking?

Web 2.0 Summit: Open AOL

2006-11-08T07:50:00.000Z

AOL has 'enjoyed' the unenviable position for many progressive thinkers in the web space of being the epitome of the closed garden approach, but in the last year they have managed to pull off a complete change of philosophy. Today's session coincided with announcements of AOL's continued move to openness and detailed in particular the APIs and open approach around AIM and video search.
Check out

developer.aim.com

dev.aol.com

If even AOL are becoming open (and in a major way to boot) what does that say about shops that remain closed?

The presentation could have done with more usage examples but this is early days and work to date is still impressive.

Web 2.0 Summit: The Next Internet Infrastructure

2006-11-08T06:44:00.000Z

Its always good to hear Marc Canter speak especially when it's from the front of the room as opposed to bellowing heckles from the floor, and in moderating this panel he was in his element.

A panel consisting of Jonathan Hare from resilient, Chad Dickenson from Yahoo! and Jeff Barr from Amazon discussed with great aplomb the notions of the importance of open, interoperable infrastructures to the ongoing development of the web.
Open was defined as:
- Freely licensed - to anyone
- Freely hostable - by anyone
- Open APIs - to provide extensibility and interoperability

The ideas of what constitutes 'infrastructure' ranged from discussion around the 'undifferentiated muck' that Amazon is seeking to provide though its EC3 to the notions of user data components such as 'reviews' which in many cases are still locked into the systems of the provider.

Yahoo! gave examples of companies based upon its APIs such as Qoop and made the point that now companies are building their systems using yahoo open API's before comming to Yahoo to talk about deals.

There was a lot of discussion over the notion of identify which gave Marc a chance to to outline his people aggregator product but also to challenge the panel on their ideas of where shared identify and related data should or could live.

There was also firm agreement that data ownership should lie with the user/creater and that sucessful systems must allow both imprprt and export features.

The recurrent theme of the session was that openess is its own reward and that companies and systems that fail to open will fall by the wayside.

Covering the Web 2.0 Summit

2006-11-07T19:52:00.000Z

I'm going to blog the things I'm seeing at O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conference, but rather than a single post I'll publish sessions or comments individually.

It's a pretty intensive programme so my posts will be more observations than deep thought and analysis - that will come later when I have more brain time.

Conference Swag

2006-11-07T05:26:00.000Z

So, Web 2.0 starts tomorrow. I nipped down to register this evening to avoid the queues tomorrow morning and in order to collect and sort through my conference goody bag tonight. I don't want to be lugging everything around with me all day tomorrow.

So this year in a weird shopping bag like my Mum used to have (what happened to last year's excellent laptop courier bags) I found:

A computer brush - Fox Interactive Media
Pen with torch - Yahoo
Bottle opener - Open Lazlo
Tin of mints - MyDecide
$5 Starbucks card - IBM
T-shirt - Grassroots.org
Flex 2 30 day trail - Adobe
CD (as yet uninvestigated) - HearHakia
Head Rush Ajax - O'Reilly
15"neoprene laptop sleeve
22 fliers - Various
Conference materials

Bargain!

Widgets Live: Event Report

2006-11-07T03:20:00.000Z

Maybe it's my Crusty Punk past, but much as I love Glastonbury I still hanker for the enthusiast run small free festival. There is something about the sub-mainstream event which harbors a sense of community and honest sense of purpose that just can't be maintained as the crowds get too large.
And so it is with the conference ... Some of the conferences I've attended this year have been great corporate rock festivals of affairs which, have suffered in their laudable strides towards spreading the message to a wider audience from a reduced shared knowledge base such a widened attendee scope engenders. This in turn can lower the quality and value of discussion.

In fact a couple of times I've had the feeling of coming away actually knowing less than I started with.

Today's Widgets Live event has been a real shot in the arm. Rather like Web 2.0 paradigm, the technologies and methods enabling widgets have been around for a few years now but its taken the comparatively recent adoption of a common moniker to focus attention on the paradigm and unite developers of such systems under some palpable notion of industry sector. This despite leading proponents and enablers of the technology variously branding their implementations as widgets, gadgets, modules and parts. Thus we are sufficiently far along the hype curve for an event on the topic to attract a decent attendance and speaker list consisting of those with some domain knowledge but not so far along as to appear on the radar of the completely uninitiated. This higher level or lowest common denominator made for a very stimulating and worthwhile event.
My only real criticism would be that even at this nascent stage the notion of widgets is already in need of sub categorizing into browser bound, desk top, domain specific, open etc.

The event, arranged and organized in just a couple of months was sold out and a quick guestimate suggested around 200 attendees in the room.

First up was the keynote from Arlo Rose of Konfabulator (acquired by Yahoo! Aug 2005) fame who gave a potted history of what ended up as Yahoo! Widgets and generally set the scene as to what Web widgets are all about.
The day's first stab at suggesting business models around widgest prompted by a question for the floor had Rose suggesting the twin drivers of allowing users to move their data anywhere and the publishers ability to reach the user without relying on the browser.

Next up Fox Interactive Media (proud new owners of myspace) announced the launch of Spring Widgets a "widget engine for desk top and web". The product grew out of FIM's own requirement to create a horizontal platform for tie its various services together. Spring Widgets was developed by FIM Labs, a division created to look after acquisitions by providing an environment protected from corporate process thus allowing newly acquired companies to continue to work in the rapid, flexible way they had managed as start ups and small companies.
An SDK is available from springwidgets.com for PC with a Mac version to follow.

Next were a couple of sessions discussing the realities of engineering widgets, firstly adobe giving a quick demo of the ease of development in Flex and the a look at the possibilities and limits developing with open web technologies.

We were then treated to a couple of sessions telling success stories of widget development. Firstly, a look a MeeboMe and the 'widgetisation' of Instant Messaging. Meebo had created a Web base IM client and with their MeenoMe widget they have given the end user the ability to add an IM channel into their own Web pages. The possible uses of such a platform are numerous and the story very impressive.
Next up in this session was a look at how Photobucket has used widgets to gain a presence on other platforms, most notable MySpace. Peter Pham of photobucket mentioned in passing something that may well really start to effect this space, namely the terms and conditions of target platforms which may well effect what widgets introduced to the environment will be permissibly capable of.

The core of the afternoon session was split into three panels sessions which each took on a different deployment segment.
i) Desktop Widget engines (Google desktop, Yahoo! Widgets & Windows vista Sidebar)
ii) Homepage widgets (Live.com, Netvibes, Google homepage)
iii) Blog side bar widgets (Aim pages, Windows live pages, Six Apart, WordPress)

Each session consisted of product overviews followed by a brief Q&A session, mostly covering the same ground of:
i) business models - extending reach
ii) standards - would be good but takes too long
iii) Security - the need for robust security especially to gain a footing in enterprise solutions
iv) Interoperability between platforms - a bit of foot shuffling and whispered toe starting

The Widget aggregators session came next with a quick whip through demos of WidgetBox and Snipperoo. This contracted nicely with the more proprietary and domain specific approaches of the previous sessions and to me at least smacked of the most desirable focus for user adoption promising a more democratized paradigm.

A brief session on mobile widgets featured Nokia presenting Widsets and Opera introducing their browser extensions for widgets with the presentation slides displayed off of a cell phone.

A session on 'Hardware widgets' allowed for a slight change of though direction by looking at Chumby and some of the ideas for embedding proposed by PortalPlayer, providers of the chipsets and firmware behind the ipod among other things.

The day was rounded off with Lightning sessions - Ten 5 minute overviews of new product launches:

1. Gigya - Enhancing email by adding content widgets aimed at making email attractive to the myspace generation.

This idea seems somewhat anachronistic and with scant regard for the extra load on mail servers and space eating of inboxes.

2. Polldaddy - Poll/Questionnaire widget for your web site

This is a very compelling idea and a great example of how a business (Infacta) can use widgets to extend its value, reach and effectiveness.

3. RockYou - Quick overview of widgets for embedding in social network platform pages

Rockview are the most established purveyors of thirds part functionality personalization capability for MySpace.

4. Zazzle - Presented their widget to allow users to embed their 'Zazzle store' product viewer into a web site.

Zazzle is a provider for the long-tail of physical products, offering made to order T-shits etc.Again – a great example of simultaneously extending reach and offering real user benefit.

5. Feedburner - Excellent feed and OPML handling widgets for embedding in web pages, blogs etc

Feedburner have ‘long’ been providing services to allow users to import RSS steams into their blogs and Web pages.

6. GRAZR - GrazrScript easy widget creation for rest functions returning RSS

Potentially very flexible and easy to use method of manipulating RSS.

7. Yahoo! - Announcing publisher.yahoo.com/enhance

8. KLIPFOLIO - Announcing 4.0 release of this widget dashboard, with new docking abilities and cross platform synchronization

9. Freewebs presented their Mooglets widget aggregator

This is a viable attempt at producing an Mac OSX-esque dashboard experience for the browser

10. Goowy - Announcement of yourminis.com browser resident desk top widget environment

Goowy provide an excellent browser based desk top environment this widget focused variant looks to be equally useful and well engineered.

A common theme for the day was the importance of synchronizing of widgets across platforms, such that changes in state made to a widget instance on one computer is reflected on different computer, mobile device or browser. This seems like a no brainer, especially for anyone coming from a 'traditional' web apps approach (where the stateless nature of the environment demands a centralized storage or settings - yes cookies break this model but they aren't a valid approach for systems expecting access from multiple clients) but the reiteration of this point belies an important attribute of the multi-modal widget, namely its straddling of the browser and OS native environment. This new split environmental plane of existence demanding its own code of behavior distinct from a web only or OS only resident app.

And today's conference was brought to your by the number 4000, which seamed to be the claimed number of widgets currently available in many of the environments presented.

One of the questions that remains in my mind is that in a industry predicated on success metrics focused on page impressions, not least because of ad serving requirements of the predominant form of monetization, what happens when users get more of their data directly via widgets? The constrained real estate of widget footprint was constantly mentioned today - there certainly isn't room for bunging banner ads on them!

All in all a very interesting and thought provoking day!

Not all reputation systems are created equal

2006-11-04T13:20:00.000Z

Ooops - posting error - editing (will repost soon)

Fab Dab

2006-11-03T17:08:00.000Z

A couple of years ago I had a bit of a rant about the design of DAB radios. In the end I bought the Pure Evoke.

But given my penchant for Marshall I couldn't let this go uncommented. Pure have released a Marshall styled edition of the Evoke. Nearly as nice as my JCM 2000 TSL.

Torchwood

2006-10-23T14:29:00.000+01:00

I quite liked Doctor Who? as a kid (Tom Baker era), but really didn't have the slightest interest in the recent revived series. I thought however that I'd give spin off Torchwood a go, the first two episodes of which aired back to back last night on BBC3. So this wasn’t exactly the greatest piece of TV or even the greatest piece of Sci-Fi ever but thoroughly entertaining for A Sunday night none-the-less

The most interesting thing though was how beautiful the production had made the city of Cardiff look.

Browzar browser trouser rouser howler

2006-10-10T12:30:00.000+01:00

I've been meaning to comment on this for a while but, frankly I had better things to do!

Browzar a newly released web browser allows you to "search and surf the web without leaving any visible trace on the computer you are using." apparently its a kind of a Winston 'The Wolf' Wolfe for web browsing.

OR SO IT IS CLAIMED!!!

On its launch some of the press go very excited - exhalting the merits of the claims made by the Browzar marketing effort, as did much of the blogosphere, faithfully republishing their stories without reference or critique as is so often the case. I suspect many were swayed by the fact that Ajaz Ahmed 'founder' of Freeserve is behind the venture, indeed Techcrunch UK (in one of the better researched stories) almost admitted as much:

"As one of the UK's better known and most successful entrepreneurs who have to think he has got a cunning plan in mind" (sic).

Then over the next few days some people actually took the radical step of testing the thing before writing about it and lo-and-behold found the safety claims far from sound. Though in the interests of fairness I should point out the Browzar is in Beta and the team there encourage feeback and bug reports.
Bloggers edited their posts and the professional media admitted their mistakes and wrote follow ups to the story.

My interest in this story has little to do with 'private browsing'- though if that floats your boat have a look at Torpark which seems a lot more robust. No, rather I've long been researching the notion of trusted information sources. Tracking this incident I was both alarmed by the ease in which such uncorroborated claims of software capability get published on the web (which is now out there for all time as misinformation) but I was also slightly heartened at the sight of the web 'healing' itself as some of the sources backtracked, apologized and corrected; once again Ted Nelson's notions of how to implement translusion strike a chord.

On a more personal note, I couldn't help but chuckle at the notion of Ajaz still harbouring interest in browsers given the fact that many years ago while running the technical producer team at Freeserve, Ajaz tasked me with the project of building a custom browser. I did eventually manage to kill the project. It seems though in an era when many innovators are dreaming of stable, standard browser environments to use as platforms for Web Applications there are still those trying to lock it down for their own ends - How very Web 1.0!

Finally, apologies for the slightly crude connotations of the post title - not to mention the half rhyme at the end!

Back to business if not 'B'usiness

2006-10-10T09:55:00.000+01:00

So, not much posted here for a while - yes I admit it I've been seeing other blogs - but they meant nothing, really.

Yes well, weird times recently - Working in the Internet/communications industry right now is, er ... interesting. Especially if you are attached to a Telco.
I never joined a Telco, I never asked to be part of a monstrous corporation with all the inherent arse and elbow confusion issues. I was acquired! Plucked from dot com bliss (oh, those rose tinted retro-spectacles) and initiated into the heady world of process and procedure, power games and politics and all the other apparently essential corporate accoutrements which generally distract from the effort of actually doing something worthwhile.

As the Telco industry goes through its biggest evolution/revolution since, well .. ever, turmoil abounds, my attention has been elsewhere and this blog neglected.

The symptoms of the industry wide sea change are all too evident. Where as talk of IP technology and threats from the innovations of Internet and Web companies used to be met by the screwed shut eyed, ear clamping "LA LA LA"ing of denial, such conversation topics now elicit the arm waving , whimpering and on the spot hopping of sheer panic. We have yet to see however whether like that annoying secondary character in a disaster movie who's "I can't do it, I can't do it" hesitancy results in some other less deserving character meeting an untimely end, second act karmic demise or third act redemption awaits. Like I said ... Interesting!

RoboGoogle

2006-06-16T13:33:00.000+01:00

Just been mooching around Google Labs , like you do, and couldn't help noticing that in the recruitment section one of the topic areas they are looking for engineers in is 'Robotics'. I'm niether into Google bashing or Google worship - but I can't help wondering with some interest what kind of a beast a Google Robot would be?

Klaatu barada nikto!

Japanese company promotion campaign spotted in Osaka

2006-05-26T15:13:00.000+01:00

Japanese company promotion campaign spotted in Osaka
Originally uploaded by JJJJJJJ.

Browser Mute

2005-12-19T14:07:00.000Z

So, how often have you been in your own little world, headphones clamped around your head pumping out some fine tunes via iTunes WHY and surfed onto some web page with some god awful sound effects loop or worse a page with content you actually want to read but some multimedia ad keeps asserting itself with some annoying chirp?

It happens to me all the time and leads me to this one question. Where is the 'mute' button on my browser?

Email address purity and Netiquette

2005-12-12T08:59:00.000Z

As with many people who have been using the Internet for some time I have many, many email addresses; ISP pops, web mail etc as well as the addresses I maintain for the domain names I own. Some of the addresses I've had for many years and of these most I no longer use in earnest - often due to the shear volume of spam.
Many of these addresses are purpose specific - I have addresses for each band I run and for my 'record label' etc.

A couple of years ago I set up a new domain and associated email addresses (all of which I access via forwarding to Gmail) and knowing how SPAM works I have made every effort to maintain the purity of my in-box. This is something I had managed to do with some success until about a month ago. Now the trickle of SPAM has turned into a torrent and I can trace the event that triggered it.

One of the music promoters I have worked with had my private email address a while back as I was away from the net for a few days while we were finalising the details of a gig, and unlike my band email address, I can get my personal mail via a cell phone.
Then last month, horror of horrors it arrived - a gig listing mail out with about 100 email addresses IN THE CC FIELD!!!!!
Now thanks to a couple of compromised mail boxes by members on the list the SPAMMERS now have my purest of email addresses.

I don't really blame the promoter in question - BCC is often misunderstood, and the consequences of a large CC list are not really understood by e-mailers at large - but in the interest of all those who don't want to help the SPAMMERS I call on every one to spread the message - 'USE BCC'.
If ever there was a case for the value of netiquette this is it.

Fortunatly I find that Gmail's SPAM filter works very well, but the 'count' next to the SPAM folder link offends my eye and I can't not zero it at every session!

When did you last un-signup?

2005-11-24T15:19:00.000Z

As someone whose both job and natural curiosity with technologies compels me to sign up and experiment with new Internet based services, I've started thinking about this recently.
Why do service providers on the whole not provide an easily accessible method of 'leaving' a service?

Maybe they hope the 'We haven't seen you for a while' type emails I receive periodically will have an anti-churn effect which brings me rushing back, but more often than not they just remind me how many services in which I not longer have any interest , still have my contact details. Of course the digital identity thinkers would have this solved by me revoking the service's licence to my details I guess. But that’s not quite the same thing as a definite notification of intention to leave the service.

Of course one answer is that ‘number of signups’ is a staple, if often misleading, success metric so there is an obvious disincentive to provide any exit button, especially for start-ups trying to justify their existence and funding demands.

I was talking about this to my colleague recently and we both tend toward the same practice or merely stopping visiting a site and assuming that our account will atrophy over time! But do they, and is this enough?
If the service just sits there then all is cool, but I've has some annoyances lately. A social network tool I has a look at has been mailing everyone in my address book regularly with invites to join (Incidentally - sorry is this effected you!!!!!!!!!). Yeah it's my fault for importing my Gmail contact list into the thing, but I was testing the features. I've tried many times to kill the mail outs. I have no ongoing interest in the services......

..... I just want to pull the plug.

Come on service providers - give us the ability to un-signup!

All this of course raises another question about a user's data and any meta-data that they have imported into the system of generated by its use. In reality I would maybe not just wish to leave the service but also to take my data with me!

Playing with Greasemonkey

2005-06-10T13:24:00.000+01:00

I've been aware of Greasemonkey for a while now but only really had a look at hacking with it this morning and seem to have lost several hours!!! All good fun though.

For those who don't know: "Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ('user scripts') to any web page to change its behavior."

Check it out and if you aren't using Firefox (why not??????) get it here. It's my favourite browser of all time and its free!!!

Any how, my first Greasemonkey script (such that it is) that does anything remotely useful is:

Audioscrobbler Refresher

The explanation of what it does is longer than the script itself. And what it does is refresh the audioscrobbler user pages every 3 minutes. So if like me you like to have you audioscrobbler user page open to keep track of your recent tracks and stats but wish you didn't have to keep clicking refresh on you browser well, .... er, now you don't.

If you listen to a lot of short punk songs you may want to reduce the refresh interval. Likewise if 12 minute prog rock epics are your thing you might want to extend the interval somewhat. 3 minutes works pretty well for me!

This really is a very simple script and in fact its only the 'include' tags that stop it being a general page reloader in fact! But, its my first look and my knowledge of the DOM is a little rusty!

Pro-ams, Prosumers and Innovation

2005-06-08T09:03:00.000+01:00

As a team, Technology Research has been paying a great deal of attention to the importance of the end user in the process of innovation and development. We have witnessed over the last couple of years how companies and organizations such as Amazon and Google have benefited by opening up their innovation process to amateur enthusiasts and how others such as Flickr who have made Web Services API's available for experimentation have added value to their product through enhanced capability, flexibility and functionality developed by third parties. And there are many, many other examples.

In concept the hacking, adaption or customization of software is not new. The home computers of the early 1980's practically demanded end-user programming, computer Games 'modding' has been around almost as long as computer games have and the definitive open-source example of Linux shows what can become of enthusiast lead development.
What is new is the fact that smart organizations, rather than hide their 'work in progress' from the end user, have began to welcome them into the fold and open up their innovation process; and it is paying off.
An army of enthusiastic hackers can develop niche functionality with long-tail appeal in a way that a centralized development structure just can't hope to replicate. Bruce Sterling in his recent article Bipolar Innovation, argues the case that such open methodologies will always out-innovate the traditional corporate lab based approach.
For those of us working in the Internet and Telecommunications space we have also seen recently how technology advances have given rise to pod-casting, the first real mass amateurization of a broadcast radio like service, and who's going to bet against a Television version coming soon?
Pod-casting is different from hacking in the important respect that the technical knowledge required is much lower and is thus a creative production rather than creative technical disruption. This illustrates a desire to create and share which reaches beyond the programming activities which have often been dismissed as just geeks doing their thing.

As Technology Researchers we have of course focused our attention of the developments of the 3rd party innovator phenomenon on our home turf, but have not been oblivious to the wider social trend. Yesterday BBC Radio 4's Shop Talk program was dedicated to the topic of the Pro-am - the amateur or enthusiast operating at quasi-professional standards. They discussed the wider trends for 'end-user' or enthusiasts contribution to development and innovation. Yes, the programme discussed Linux and game modding, but also discussed how amateur astronomers, naturalists, scuba divers, photographers and a whole host of other enthusiasts were effecting and furthering their fields of interest. Where as the idea of the amateur scientist was well established especially in Victorian times, since WW2 in particular there has been a trend towards institutionalization and corporatization of science. More barriers to entry came in the escalating costs of scientific experimentation and research and the emergence of increasingly narrow specialist fields.
But things are changing. In Victorian times the 'amateur' scientist for example was an independently wealthy character who's lack of need to work for an income allowed the time to indulge their interests. Now, advances in technology are bringing down the costs of participation. Rejection of TV and other mass distractions by some in favor of more demanding and fulfilling activities on which to focus their more abundant leisure time is also contributing to the volume of Pro-am production.
The programme is available via the BBC's listen again service from the show's web site until next week's show is broadcast. It's only 15 minutes long and well worth a listen.

The end user is not only innovator, adapter and critic, they are also producer, disruptor and potential competitor. Many organizations talk the talk about a user-centric approach to business but few walk the walk or even really know what they mean, and continue to see the customer as passive consumer to be manipulated (to be fair many probably are). Indeed, it could be argued that the whole approach of the music industry in attempting to force users into supporting their old business models through legislation is a Canut-ian mis-adventure attempting to turn the tide of human nature, being as it is an attempt to not only dictate how a product is purchased but also how the customer will behave once they 'own' it.

Instead, the wily organization will come to regard its end user as partner, collaborator and in some circumstances, even colleague.

_____________________________________
Also posted to FT Home Technology Research blog

More thoughts on death and digital media

2005-04-25T10:54:00.000+01:00

Imran made an interesting comment on my Digital Will post about an American GI, Justin Ellsworth, killed in Iraq whose family was attempting to gain access to his Yahoo e-mail account.

A court has just ruled that Yahoo should hand over the password details to give the family access.

There has been a lot of blogging and forum posting on this decision - most that seem to have missed the fact that the email account was apparently being used as a journal - about the rights and wrongs of this. Most opinion seems to be that email is private and as such the next-of-kin has no rights over it.

I tend towards suggesting that awarding access to next of kin to things like flickr accounts makes sense - email however is a tricky one. If the case was won in this specific instance because the contents of the account were actually journal entries that Ellsworth had displayed every intention of sharing with his family then the ruling seems fair, but I can see the worries of those concerned about precedent.

Private letters discovered after death have of course always be accessible to the next of kin and historians have long used them as a valuable source for informing understanding of events and the motivations of those involved. Alas it would seem that as correspondence moves to a more digital or virtual medium that these sources could well be lost if indeed emails die with the author.

Perhaps it is the perception of what email is and thus how it is used that leads to concerns. As a rule people are prone to more flippancy and candor in an email which somehow seems less 'official' than putting pen to paper. Email is a lot more instant, leading to people often sending off a rant filled missive as unconsidered reaction, where as the process of generating hard copy would allow the heat of the moment to dissipate. Email therefore could even be argued to be more honest and perhaps it is the fear of this honesty being exposed that also fuels concern over posthumous readings.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the specific topic of accessing private email, it still seems sensible that a clause in a will stating the wishes of the deceased for access to their digital content should be grounds for a provider to either allow or deny access accordingly. There needs to be a legal framework in place for compelling providers to act in accordance to the wishes of their late customers. Though of course this will only be workable if wills routinely address these issues.
In the wake of the Terry Schaivo legal mess, perhaps this should also apply to living wills.

People has suggested things like always sharing passwords with their next of kin, or writing them down in a 'open upon my death' type envelope, but surely as digital mediums continue to advance their underpinning of our lives, a more elegant solution needs to be considered. If not, we will continue to see more court time be taken up on case after very similar case, I'm sure there are more useful things that our legal systems could be doing.

I still assert that all of this could of course be much simpler if, as I suggested in my Digital Will post that access instructions were built into standard account registration or federated identity.

I suspect that we are currently viewing less than the tip of the iceberg on this issue. However, if it is to be addressed, industry thinkers, sociologists and legislators will need to start factoring these next of kin issues into their thinking about the implications of a society with ever more digital ‘possessions’ very soon indeed.

Small World

2005-03-14T17:31:00.000Z

So, we travel all the way to California and bump into a band from Leeds!!!

Camera phone pic - sorry!

The Music - Caines Bar and Grill, San Diego 13th March 2005.

Digital Will

2005-02-17T15:46:00.000Z

A conversation with a bunch of colleagues yesterday got me to thinking. We were in our usual free form Socratic Dialogue mode and were discussing the drive to digitisation of personal media and what concept, if any, the general public had of the longevity or persistence of their data.

With the human weakness in our inability to empathise with our future selves and the short term focus that a fast moving society engenders, have we really thought things through sufficiently. When I upload my photos to Flickr, I’m just assuming they are going to be there forever or more accurately I don’t perceive of any time at which they won’t be there. If I think about it a little longer I suppose I assume that the Flickr system will ensure a roll with the times and that my pictures will be retrievable and trans-codable into whatever system makes sense as the years go by.
The Urban myth would have us believe that the data which ran the ‘69 Moon landing is no longer readable and we’ve forgotten the format of the tapes – though I’m sure I’ve read that Nasa has migrated this data.

This idea of long term storage and retrieval is a debate in its own right, but it’s a side bar topic I want to discuss here.
Projecting into the future naturally brings forth thoughts of mortality and so linking this with data persistence… What happens to our data after we die?

I’m not concerned so much with the filling of endless servers with the personal media of departed Internet users. Accounts can expire just the same as people and most services have procedures for the cleaning up of dormant data.

What I am more concerned with is the ability to nominate a digital next of kin. Let us for now avoid the thorny issue of DRM and over legislation surrounding collections of online music or video purchases and concentrate on user generated media.

If I store my digital photos online, for backup security reasons, and I am no longer around to maintain the account, how can my wife retrieve the data? Photos are a particularly emotional asset and the thought that certain pictures may be beyond the reach of my family due to lack of login and password information is not a comfortable one. Are we supposed to duplicate all our media?

Social networks allow the sharing of data, but usually only while all party accounts are maintained.

But what about email, diaries, message logs, blog data etc or whatever other data ends up being remote stored as the technology marches on? I guess that writing letters to the service providers with copies of a death certificate is one option, but surely there must be a way of making life easier for the bereaved.

I guess what I am suggesting is that when singing up for a service, one of the bits of profile information I should be able to give is the nomination for a digital next of kin, who has the right to access and retrieve data. In fact it may be useful to have a nominated other who can access my account for many less morbid reasons.

So, maybe digital identity systems (federated or otherwise) need to become more mature, trusted and more widely adopted in order to underpin this system, but it has to be worth thinking about. Should each service make its own provision for such functions or is this a function for a digital identity provider? Maybe your digital next of kin could be logged as a facet of your digital ID profile, essentially giving them access to all your systems as a trusted agent.

Or maybe hard copy will win out! Prints for digital photos certainly seem very popular.

What exactly will happen to all our data when the first digital generation reaches the end of its days?

More Train WiFI

2005-02-17T14:36:00.000Z

T-Mobile is trialing WiMax as a method for providing 'high-speed' Internet access on trains.
The trial is currently running on Southern Trains' London to Brighton route.

"To date, internet access has been connected to on-board Wi-Fi networks through fast satellite links, with slower GPRS connections used as a fall-back when the line of sight between satellite and antenna is blocked. T-Mobile says its WiMax-based set-up, designed and installed by Nomad, will maintain high-speed connectivity throughout the journey."

WiFi Train

2005-02-15T14:01:00.000Z

I like the idea of this a lot more than the practice!!!!

GNER have equipped more of their trains with WiFi Internet access. As a regular traveler on GNER between West Yorkshire and 'that London' I finally got around to giving it a go.

The free trial ran until the end of January so now access is free in First class (not that I'd be able to test that - though I am intrigued as to whether I can sneak onto the freebie by sitting in the 1st standard carriage) and in the First Class lounge at Kings Cross.

If however you work for living you have to pay:

£2.95 - 30 minutes
£4.95 - 1 hour (60 minutes)
£7.95 - 2 hours (120 minutes)
£9.95 - 3 hours (180 minutes )

So what’s it like? Well true to form it not quite as simple as it should be, at least on my XP enabled laptop. "Most Wi-Fi enabled laptops automatically detect the wireless network" boasts the GNER - well yes, my lap top did detect the network, it just couldn't access it - that pesky 'Out of Range' bug! Though it is simple enough to sort it out by opening your control panel and manually adding the network using the network id 'train'. I conducted my test during the freebie period so I'm not sure how the payment process works, all I had to do was open a browser window and bung in an offer code at the GNER network home page (which loads automatically). Server round trips are very slow however and so I'd guess it’s all a bit painful.

And that’s the service in a nutshell really - dog slow. I saw precious few other commuters taking advantage of the connection so I’m sure its not a contention issue. I gave up waiting for Outlook Web Access to download its bits and pieces - Gmail offering a much more comfortable service with its RIA alike client side processing being idea for such a connection. IM was a bit flaky but usable and I didn't even attempt Skype. Web surfing was tough, like going back to a very slow modem speeds - this may be WiFI but it sure isn’t broadband. So no flicking idly through the web, looking at online photos or streaming media.

I'm being unfair - what we've got is a constant Internet presence on the move. More reliable than using a cell phone as a modem. And settling into the use of bloglines to catch up on my RSS subscriptions was quite comfortable and a perfectly viable was of consuming Internet content.

The train gets it’s Internet by flipping between satellite and cell phone technology to maintain a constant connection. GNER acknowledge that the speed will vary depending upon cell coverage and trackside furniture, but I haven’t found and claims as to what speeds you can reasonably hope for.

A more detailed description of the workings can be found here.

GNER should be saluted for their efforts - not just for offering Internet access but also for being very sensible and providing power sockets for your equipment.

So, this is not quite the utopian ubiquitous access dream, but it’s a worthy start. If there is an email that desperately needs to go off then this service could be very useful, though if you're trying to send a lengthy presentation ahead of the meeting you're traveling to attend, the train itself is probably a faster transport medium – to paraphrase “Never under-estimate the bandwidth of a laptop on a train”

I can't say that given my experience I'm in a rush to pay habitually every journey, but I'll have a crack every now and then to see if performance has improved. Bloglines and Gmail mean that I can reasonably get some useful work done on the commute, but the higher bandwidth requirements of my usual entertainment or even distraction consumption are unfortunately out of reach.

Soundtracking update

2005-01-27T15:01:00.000Z

Been getting back into Audioscrobbler recently and have finally pumbed it into my 'soundtrack' sidebar.

Thanks to a couple of useful starting points for PHP scripts to parse the RDF.

An PHP Audioscrobbler feed display script which plugs into MagpieRSS

Find them:

My Audioscrobbler profile is here

The Audioscrobbler plugins are a lot less cluncky than the app I was using before and hence the Sountrack bar is a lot more up to date.

DAB design horror

2004-11-26T13:27:00.001Z

On a wander around town yesterday, and the usually visitations to a series of purveyors of consumer electronics, a started to take an interest in the range of DAB digital radios which are currently available on the high street.

Am I the only person of the opinion that the design of the DAB units are universally awful!

What is it about wood paneling, bulbous 1950's retro styling or 60s modernistic design that offer themselves as the winning look for manufactures. As for leather binding ........

I mean, some of these units are truly hideous.

Just exactly which type of household are these things supposed to fit in?

I can only come to the conclusion that there is either:
a) A desire to make the technology less daunting for users by making them look old fashioned
b) An attempt to make the devices 'date' even more rapidly in an attempt to stimulate further sales.

A report last month suggested the digital radio sales were set to boom - really, looking like this?

Now I'm pretty much a function over form type, and I'm interested in getting a DAB clock radio (I have digital radio via free view elsewhere in the house), but I just can't bring myself to invest in one of these monstrosities.

I mean, just look at these!

So, a look online reveals a greater range of products and some more palatable designs, but the high street stores seem to have gone exclusively for the naff!

Kitsch is kitsch. Ironic design is delusional!!!

Winter Wonderland

2004-11-19T09:59:00.000Z

The first snow of the season fell here yesterday afternoon.

So, I know I'm a 'grown up', but I can't help but get excited by such things.
My Dad always said that people loose the wonder and excitement of snow fall once they have to start commuting to work.
I'm lucky, if I look at the window and the roads are impassable, I don't have to bother heading off to the office. Thanks to the technology of my trade home working is habitual anyway.

Is technology responsible for allowing me to keep a sense of wonder, and enjoy the vagaries of mother nature for what she is, rather than seeing her meteorological mood swings only in terms the effect of my daily grind.

Maybe, or maybe I'm just an entry level weather geek!

Whatever, come lunchtime I'm off to take Monty the dog out to play in the snow!

Ted Nelson - Poet, Philosopher and Rogue

2004-11-16T13:56:00.000Z

One of the great things about my job is that I get to meet people who are smart, interesting, inspiring, legendary, (at least in some circles), challenging and from time to time some or all of the above.

Yesterday my colleagues and I (all four of us) spent a few illuminating hours with Ted Nelson.
He immediately endeared himself to me be mentioning his LP and his claim (as yet undisputed apparently) to have written and staged the first Rock Musical. I raised a rye smile as I considered my own album releases and the unfinished Punk Rock Musical project I've been chipping away at in odd moments over the last five or six years.

Ted Nelson has been called "one of the most influential contrarians in the history of the information age." (Edwards, 1997), and I can see why.

Ted declared himself "Poet, Philosopher and Rogue" at the age of 16, a description I'd say holds true to this day and is probably as apposite a semantic tag as one might hope to find for him.

Credited with coining the term Hypertext, and imagining a system of deep document interconnection as expressed in Project Xanadu - the Web appears to him a real missed opportunity.

As someone who has an active interest in trying to kill the browser and the application I have a great deal of sympathy for his thinking - and I can see also why it annoys so many people.
What was particularly interesting was that some of Ted's ideas gave my colleagues and I an alternative framework for understanding, debating and enhancing some of our own ideas, which are increasingly in conflict with or at least straining at the boundaries of the conventions of current Internet and computing.

I've always had a soft spot for people who force the re-evaluation of accepted truths!

Even the areas of The Semantic Web, Web as a Platform, SOA and Grid computing I am currently engaged in, though seemingly rewriting so many rules and conventions, don't seek to look at so many of the fundamentals.

Do I agree with everything Ted says - well no and I think some of his assertions need reassessing as technology has plugged some of the gaps he sees, for instance there are contemporary examples of cut and paste being reflected by visual moving of text from one place to another - but the sanity of transclusion vs linking, unbreakable links, origin connection, two-way links, deep version management and incremental publishing for example, does strike a chord and offer solutions to some of the short comings of the web as it stands that annoy me on a daily basis.

So, I'm now digging deeper into his ideas and going back to basics and having another read of Vannevar Bush etc and trying to rebuild my own opinions and conclusions of IT from the ground up.

Whether Ted Nelson is wrong or right in his thinking, isn't important to me right now, the spur to reassess my own perceptions is!

--> Wikipedia entry
--> Ted's Webby
--> Project Xanadu
--> ZIGZAG® DOWNLOAD PAGE

All thats wrong with Apple ...

2004-11-16T13:47:00.000Z

At the risk of turning this into a very iPod centric blog I have to comment on this, the most ghastly of pseudo cool iCrap - the Apple iPod Sock. Nooooooooooooooooooo!

I made my own:

Sound Tracking

2004-11-02T14:36:00.000Z

I've now got a 'Sound track' section in the side bar, over there ---> somewhere.

This displays the music I'm currently listening to (last five tracks) or at least the music I'm listening to on with iTunes on any of my Windows PC's running .net framework!!! I guess we'll have to wait for my colleague's dreams to come to fruition in order to blog everything that hits my ears, regardless of source!

I've been fiddling with this idea for a few months now my initial experiments worked but I was relying on poking http Post through a browser from a desk top JavaScript - needless to say that, although the monitoring was spot on, it was less than desirable to spawn a new browser instance everytime a new track was played.

But now I found iTunesBlogger, a nifty little C# app. I've caught the output from the app with an ASP script and iFramed it into the blog template. I also write an RSS(ish) feed to my server but haven't got around to doing anything with it yet!

iTunesBlogger can be a little clunky on my desktop system, occasionally locking up, but it does the job well enough - thanx!

BBC NEWS | Business | How to make money from ideas

2004-11-02T11:23:00.000Z

BBC NEWS | Business | How to make money from ideas: "How to make money from ideas
Opinion
By Anne Miller
Inventor

Anne Miller
Ms Miller: 'R&D is the most important sector within the $2.2 trillion global creative economy'
As part of the East of England's Space for Ideas initiative, inventor Anne Miller, who has registered more than 30 patents during the last 20 years, celebrates Britain's creative minds and asks why the UK is so lousy at making money from them.

The British are recognised internationally as being highly creative.

The workshop of the world may have long since disintegrated, but the UK still has the scientists, the engineers and the creatives to watch out for.

Our problem is that we ourselves often fail to recognise this strength, and most importantly, we are let down by a lack of understanding of how to convert ideas into commercial successes...."

Interesting article, articluating a lot of the frustrations I recognise working in Technology R&D. Read full article here.

Firefox - Rediscover the web

2004-10-29T14:48:00.000+01:00

Firefox - Rediscover the web

A very dark day - RIP John Peel

2004-10-27T01:51:00.000+01:00

myPod home again

2004-10-19T13:16:00.000+01:00

So, I know its a completely different unit - but now its got my media loaded back on it has taken on the identity of myPod - and that'll do me.

I was impressed by the fact that the casing is shiny and scratch free and actually looks newer than myfirstPod did when I first unwrapped it. And, yes its a nice Gen 3!

Only quibbles: The pod arrives Mac formatted, so it took a bit of fiddling to flatten and convert to PC - the desk top updater client couldn't handle it properly but some Apple OSesque windowed version of the updater popped up after docking for the forth time and did the necessary in the end. PC doesn't crash, iTunes syncs automatically and all is well and good - Even those PIL files seam to be playing fine.

My faith in Apple restored - the whole process was pretty painless and because myPod was still under warranty didn't cost me bean.

Return of myPod

2004-10-15T17:14:00.000+01:00

Its back - though not yet in my grubbies, as no one was in when the nice courier came round - so my next door neighbor has it, and we have not caught up yet - I had a late night gigging with Grinn last night and I'm off to play a Smurphs gig tonight straight from work!

So near, yet so far!

myPod update

2004-10-08T13:22:00.000+01:00

Checked the apple support site for progress status - myPod is logged as having been received.

Wake for myPod - consumer electronic bereavement

2004-10-07T13:13:00.000+01:00

myPod is dead;-(

So, never been a Apple fetishist, the endless PC vs. Mac debate bores the tits off me, much in the same way as the C64 vs. Spectrum arguments with the inherent ridiculous diatribes about the relative merits of PEEKing and POKEing against endless CHR$ing wasted many an hour of my youth. I’ve use both Mac and PC in my time and get on with them both. I have a couple of old Performa’s and an LCIIin my loft (though these are skip rescues rather than purchases), but all my machines are PC based, now mostly XP save for a Linux Tosh Laptop. I gotta say all in all I prefer the nuts and bolts of the PC format and do tend towards thinking Apple lean in a little into the form over function. But still, I was happy with myPod.

I bought my wife an iPod for Christmas 2003 and after playing with it for a month bought one for myself, overriding my first digital player choice of the Zen. Although part of this was because I kinda like iTunes and partly because I’d ended up encoding about 500 albums as AAC and was too lazy to covert to MP3!

Certain things about the iPod always bugged me, like there are no hard controls for volume on the unit, but all in all I liked myPod. I even bough it an extra little house for my bedside table so it could charge up over night and the ritual of docking it last thing at night and picking it up with my phone and keys in the morning became ritual. myPod became a dependable friend, accompanying me on trains, planes, the office, walks with the dog and trips to the gym. I got used to being able to make a choice of what to listen to while out and about instead of being expected to predict my mood and plan ahead as with a walkman or portable CD player.

I should point out that myPod was in immaculate conduction due to my complete commitment to using the leatherette belt holster – none of your usual iPod scratches for myPod!

Yes, we were very happy!

That is until three weeks ago. I docked myPod with my PC (firewire) and it crashed the bugger – not MS blue-screening but a full power zap reboot (only it wouldn’t reboot until I removed myPod). This came as something of a surprise after 8 months of functioning perfectly. And so it continued – no intermittent fault this – and all the while wifesPod continued to work like a charm.
I also noticed that although myPod itself seamed to continue working, there were certain albums such as PIL’s Metal Box which refused to play and locked up the unit requiring the MENU+PLAY soft reset to escape. It began to look like some corrupt files, after all if the Belkin FM transmitters subvert the file format/playlist structure to control the frequency selection for the unit, it stands to reason that a knackered file could send myPod into spasm, doesn’t it?

After googling the problem and finding very little, I did come across a couple of stories where people had discovered similar isues with PC and Firewire and it seemed that they has swapped to USB and ‘solved’ the issue. So borrowing a USB cable -thanks dude – I had a crack. No crashing, but real problems mounting. So I went for a ‘restore’. Half way up the barometer I got an ‘error writing to disk’ report. Tried again, and once more for luck – but no, no joy.

So nothing for it but look at shipping back to Apple for repair – it is still under warranty after all. So battling through the apple.com support pages, complete with recursive mis-linking, I eventually manage to put in a service request – “Thank you for submitting your service request. Please print this page for your records” – is it too much trouble for Apple to format this page so it is actually suitable for printing? (select landscape). It wasn’t until after all this that I found the page telling me how the returns actually worked, but I did get a nice email which explained things properly.

That was yesterday! Today a nice man fro UPS showed up at my house at the crack or dawn with all the appropriate packaging and took away myPod. Never to be seen again – Apple replace with a previously refurbished unit rather than repair and return the same unit -
which is a shame, myPod has no distinguishing features (except the lack of scratches) and TBH I couldn’t tell it from any other 3rd generation 20GB iPod but this was myPod.

When I left the house this morning, I kept thinking I’d forgotten something. I’m going cold turkey on my decide-on-demand music selection habit. I could have stolen wifesPod (which has all the same tracks and play lists as we sync to the same home PC), but that isn’t sporting. So I’ll have to wait it out and see whether I was right to flirt with Apple.

First Postings ...

2004-09-24T09:56:00.000+01:00

... are so lame!!

But what 'cha gonna do.