Day: 2 January 2008

Steal this film II

Steal this film 2

Steal this film II is out but what's more interesting is the next project the League of Noble Peers are working on – The oil of the 21st Century

'Intellectual property', said Mark Getty, 'is the oil of the twenty first century'. Getty is chairman of Getty Images and one of the world's largest intellectual proprietors. His comment offers a unique perspective on the conflicts evolving around information as it penetrates and shapes every aspects of our lives — from nutrition to medicine, from markets to civil liberties.

Camming the steal this film

This film explores those conflicts. Established and developing
economies wage war on each other through restriction and promulgation of information, with devastating consequences on lives and ways of life. Nations like Britain and the US, once information 'pirates' themselves, now support the rights of massive corporations to protect their pharmaceutical patents at the expense of lives in developing countries. Meanwhile, burgeoning Asian economies exploit difficulties with enforcement to create multi-billion dollar pirate industries that are increasingly seen as a real threat to Hollywood.

oh by the way I noticed the abstract blur was filmed at Ravensbourne College, I have thoughts who the blur could be but I'm not going to say in public.

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The Smartphone…

The Smartphone segment

So over the Christmas period I've been at my parents house and they read the Mirror. I was flicking through the Sunday Mirror's pull out magazine called life and came across six pages of anime about new technology from the Far East. Its a reasonable piece and the illustrations are done by Anime artist Kanako Damerum.

One of the pages talked about the smartphone and showed off the Sharp W-Zero3. Which can scan business cards, includes a 3inch VGA touchscreen and Qwerty keypad. Wifi, 256meg of on board storage and MicroSD expansion. I was a little puzzled, my current phone does all that (I discovered Worldcard Mobile only yesterday). Yes I'm not rocking with a VGA screen (I had planned to get the glofish x850 which does have a vga screen) and the HTC Kaiser is 19mm instead of 17mm but its not far off.

So what I never quite got around to before was the fact that Smartphones are still quite novel in a lot of circles. I pulled out my Kaiser in the pub with some friend during a night out and they were like “what the heck is that? is that a computer or something?” I wasn't do it for effect but I did have it with the keyboard and tilt on (i was answering a couple of texts). I guess add the bluetooth headset blinking in my shirt pocket and they thought I'd gone all futuristic or something. But whats fun about the Windows mobile phones is that HTC make them pretty cheap. So you can get a windows mobile phone for the same price as a LG, Nokia or Motorola. So its not about the phone prices.

Maybe people don't like the complexity of the phone? But I would say the Windows Smartphone platform is no more complex that any other phone. Maybe its the style? Could be on something there, but Ted Baker now have an edition of the HTC Touch, LG Prada anyone and what about the most loved gadget of 2007? The Apple iPhone?

2008 is going to be the year of the Smartphone for sure. There is very little reason not to get one and I'm sure the phone shops will be pushing them harder that ever.

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Magic enchanted objects

Nabaztag

Just a quick post to highlight this great talk from O'reilly's Emerging Tech conference which I attended last year. The talk is titled the coming age of magic by Mike Kuniavsky and here's a quick quote.

Yes, 'magic', meaning enchanted objects. “I do not advocate that we pretend that technology is a kind of magic, but that we use our existing cultural understanding of magic objects as an abstraction to describe the behavior of ubiquitous computing devices,

Mike's discussion about Animism is well worth listening to, later in the talk he points at objects such as the Wiimote, Nabaztags and security wand you see at airport security as examples of enchanted objects. I also found these 7 rules very interesting.

I’ve enumerated the properties of enchanted objects that I believe make them particularly good for
designing ubicomp devices:

  1. They are everyday objects.
  2. We’re familiar with how to use them, at least on a basic level
  3. They are physical. You grab them, you swing them, you twist them, you push them.
  4. They do not have a screen. There isn’t the assumption that somewhere there’s text output.
  5. Behaviorally, magic objects are not humans, and we do not expect them to act human. This is contrast to, say, the implications of something like “ambient intelligence,” another metaphor for ubiquitous computing devices. How smart is that intelligence? Is It like me? It’s not clear.
  6. They are not superhuman. They may be hard to control, but ultimately it is we who are in control, not they, by definition.
  7. There is a healthy disbelief in magic, so it's likely to be treated as an analogy, rather than as the literal truth.

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My New Year Resolutions

Happy New Year everyone…So in the usual vein, I'm going to blog my new years resolutions. I don't usually care or do these but I think the process of blogging them will maybe help because you guys might help me stay on track. I'm all about getting things done…

Finally go to Tokyo
I've talked about it for years and seriously know I will just explode when I get there. But have never got anywhere close. If I can go via Hong Kong then even better. So how is this going to happen? Well I'm looking for a site (besides Travelocity) where you can set a specific price on tickets and it will alert you when that price is close no matter which route or time of the year. RSS would be great too.

Not to do another BarCampLondon unless the BBC is the venue
So at BarCampLondon3 I decided I wouldn't want to do another BarCampLondon because people are starting to expect me to do it and thats not fair on others. Also BarCamps are poping up all over the place now (leeds, brighton, cork, etc) so this is a good time to say thanks to everyone who's kick started BarCamps in the UK but now its time for others to take it forward in their own vision.

Work on something very different but cutting edge this year
This is already happening. I think it wouldn't be a secret to say I could be working on an Alternative reality game (ARG). My feeling is that Play is when we are most open to learn and I think ARGs can be used to educate without the usual guff you get about educational games. So look out for that because I think the small team which have formed could pull off something very special.

Dataportability
I'm going to spend more time on this subject next year. Its a worthwhile cause and I think the link between all the trends like open data, the data web, authentication (like openid and oauth), etc is data portability. Giving people not only access to the data but also to move their data around. This was also part of my flow/pipelines concept anyway but much more tangable. I'm also looking to pimp this at a few conferences in the near future.

Small Routines
So I'm going to build up a few routines including reading my rss at regular times and going to certain events and not others. My Blogging has finally picked up which is good but I do need to keep it up. Theres also a bunch of other stuff I'm going to do including visiting friends and family regularlly.

Play a team sport
I've tried many thing to keep fit but what works best for me is playing in a team sport I enjoy. So something like joining Basketball, Volleyball and Handball team would be great. I've been looking around and there seems to be some new teams starting up in Jan.

Geekdinners and Geekvenues
So as you may have all noticed geekdinner.co.uk is down at the moment. I'm going to try and get to the bottom of this really soon but till then I'm going to move the geekdinners blog to my own server. The plan for the future of geekdinners was like the girl geekdinners to make it a charity or non-profit but this has been put off for a while because I need more help on geekdinners. Plus maybe its time to get a little more regular? I've not added enough to geek venues, and I do plan to add a lot more soon.

Start learning Python
So Python seems to be everywhere. From the xbox media centre scripts to conduit provider scripts. This seems like a useful programming language to learn or at least understand enough to hack around with. I'm also liking the idea of python with xslt using something like uche's 4suite.

Use the technologies around me better
I've been making do with some services, but actually I've been compromising with the limits attached to the free account. If I just pay the small fee, it will much more useful and effective. So for example paying for Plaxo means I can now sync between linked-in, plaxo and my windows mobile phone. On top of the syncing between Plaxo, Google Calendar, Outlook and Sunbird.

Go to more comedy clubs
I love comedy and I don't go to enough comedy clubs. So its a no brainer right?

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