Month: May 2009

The next mass collaborative platform for the world? Google Wave

Google Wave, yes I want it to have my first born. So I'm sure you've all read or heard about it but I only just watched the whole video over my HSDPA/3G connection due to being away from home in London. I did actually have the chance (thanks Google) to watch the whole Google IO event live from Google Headquarters in London but didn't come out of a meeting till late and decided that by the time I would get to Victoria, it would have been in full swing. And there is nothing worst that coming into packed room late and having to step over everyone to get a seat.

So as you'd imagined, I'm pretty excited by Google Wave and I've not even used it yet. Why? Well for me it stands for almost everything I've been trying to do elsewhere outside of email, but not only that they are right its about time email moved over and it got upgraded to a world where the internet is ubiquitous. I've had James Cridland's blog open for a while because I've been meaning to reply to his post about the email culture of the BBC and how to deal with email. But I don't think I will now because Google Wave has lead me to true realisation that Email is broken. Its not progressed and although its served us well in the past its time to look elsewhere. Elsewhere, seemed to be heading towards the silo groupware products. Even the non silo ones were some what centralised. Google Wave is much closer to the way email works that the project based systems I even use to date. What makes me smile is that Google could have locked this down a lot but instead they allowed you to create plugins and extensions. Then totally threw it to the community by opening the wave protocal. So you can make a Wave client for anything and deploy the server code on anything you like. Just like email. In practice just like email only a few people do run the server but other enterprising types will happily run a server for you and charge you for the uses of it.

I don't want to talk too much about individual parts of Wave because it is early and theres a lot which is covered by the video but there was a couple of bits where I was thinking oh they've really thought about this stuff. The client of Wave working on a command line, the bit where they showed wave via a plugin watching a blog comments (this is going to be so useful for certain people in the BBC) and when they showed the secret option. There's no doubt that Microsoft and others need to quickly jump on Wave and build there own clients and servers. I can't see much which will hold back wave from being adopted once Google get the developers on board. And why wouldn't you? If Wave could be as big as IMAP? There's going be a lot tension as this service opens to the public, I mean if you work on a groupware system like Lotus Notes, this is a total threat, I had thought maybe the likes of Basecamp would also be in trouble, but the thing they need to do is build plugins for wave as soon as possible. I mean imagine having a Doodle plugin which allows you to do planning of meetings in a simple non-intrusive way. Google really have out innovated everything else in this area and made it very hard to not jump on board. A++ to Google….

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Cocoon 2.2 + Google App Engine for Java?

At last Google App Engine is available in a Java flavour. This might not seem like a big deal for most of you guys out there but (I think) for me this means I can carry on doing my development in cocoon and hopefully be able to scale up my code if needed.

The Java environment provides a Java 6 JVM, a Java Servlets interface, and support for standard interfaces to the App Engine scalable datastore and services, such as JDO, JPA, JavaMail, and JCache.

Some of you maybe saying, but hold on Ian. I didn't know you were a Java developer. No I'm not, but the key thing here is the Java Servlet interface, which if I'm reading the documentation correct, means I can deploy servlets/webapps to Google App Engine? I can create these in Cocoon 2.2 which now uses Apache Maven instead of Apache Ant. If this is all true, then excellent, another reason to get back into writing stuff in Cocoon. If I'm wrong, I'll be very disappointed.

I guess the only way to find out for sure is to just build something very small in Cocoon and spend some time playing with Google App Engine.

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Remix the apprentice

Thanks Tim for this link, I was in tears watching this remix of the apprentice. I've seen remixes but this shows such amazing creativity. Its all parody so I assume it should/might be safe from being taken down. (although I 'm not trained to offer any legal advice)

So some content producers will look at this and either go red with anger or white with fear. Because CassetteBoy has done many remixes which totally take the original subject matter out of its original context. This strikes fear into many, and I can already hear the arguments for even tighter control over content. But the thing to remember is a expression of a artist. Enjoy…

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Redbull Cola or is it actually Redbull Coke?

Found via 7Deacons, German food scientist have found traces of Cocaine in Redbull Cola.

About a year ago, the makers of Red Bull, the famous caffeine-loaded energy drink, decided to come out with a soda, unsurprisingly named Red Bull Cola. The shared name implied the same big kick. But could the cola's boost — supposedly “100% natural” — come from something else? Officials in Germany worry that they've found the answer — cocaine. And now they have prohibited the soda's sale in six states across the country and may recommend a nation-wide ban.

Now to be honest I'm a bit shocked and I don't think I can really buy another one till I know for sure what's going on. Don't get me wrong I know its only a trace amount (0.13 micrograms) and you would need to drink liters to feel any effect but I'm going to let this one play out a little more. It would be a shame if it gets banned or they can't redo the formula. Redbull Cola was lovely to drink and strangely moreish (i'm kidding). Tell the honest truth, I've been drinking Pepsi Raw the last few weeks instead of Redbull Cola.

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The Tesla of Motorcycles?

Electric still had the perception of big, clunky and not attractive till Tesla changed all that with there very attractive roadster. Of course people have been building electric motorcycles (and maxi-scooters) but like the Tesla Roadster example, they have been so so till this beast above. Its designed by Yves Béhar who also designed the OLPC XO laptop and can ride up to 150 miles on a 2 hour charge. Forgetting how amazing it looks, it can also do up 150mph and has roughly 100bhp (that's over double my 600cc scooter, but my scooter is very heavy). So its about the speed and power of Kawasaki Ninja I believe. I believe its twist and go (aka no gears) and launches next month. On my full motorcycle licence I could actually ride one of these. So look out, who knows what might happen in the future… Oh by the way I love the tag line on the microsite, its the bike the environment would want you to ride.

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Seth Godin on the tribes we lead

Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so.

A fantastic TED talk which really got me thinking. Seth Godin is highly rated in most circles but I've not really come in contact with anywhere, even in my reading. So in the talk above, Seth gives a presentation about tribes which I gathered he wrote a book on. The core message was about leading a movement, and you know what he's so right. For example, BarCamp is a movement and its growing getting stronger with them popping up and being used for many different things. We have a few pioneers to thank for that. But most of those people have moved on to the next thing. They never stop changing the world which would be a great subtitle to have on your card. These pioneers also fall into the trap of never being able to explain what they actually do.

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Who am I? cubicgarden or ianforrester?

Been thinking about changing my identity a lot recently and even got talking with FactoryJoe I mean Chris Messina about this at Next09. The video sums up the debate pretty well, but I still can't decide if I should use ianforrester instead of cubicgarden.

As Facebook continues dragging the world online using their real names and photos, Chris Messina, David Recordon and John McCrea grab a few minutes to chat with Josh Elman (Facebook) and Kaliya Hamlin (Identity Woman) out on Lake Austin about their philosophical differences when it comes to using your real name versus a pseudonym on the social web.

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Software ahead of the curve: ZOË

Zoe in action

I've been thinking about doing a series of blog post about software and people a head of the curve, so here's number one of many.

I got talking to Dj Adams at a recent Manchester Geekup. Dj Adams is one of those guys who I followed like jon udell and when I was getting into web development and xml. One of the things we talked about was a piece of software called Zoe.

Zoe is a web based e-mail client with a built in SMTP server and Google-like search functionality that lives on your desktop. Zoe is written in java and uses Lucene technology to provided instant searching and threading of your e-mails.

Zoe was a very interesting project but dropped development a few years ago. Looking back on it, there was some guiding principles/concepts which were ahead of the curve. Dj Adams in his blog post talks about Twitter's killer feature, Everything has a URL.

and everything is available via the lingua franca of today’s interconnected systems — HTTP. Timelines (message groupings) have URLs. Message producers and consumers have URLs. Crucially, individual messages have URLs (this is why I could refer to a particular tweet at the start of this post). All the moving parts of this microblogging mechanism are first class citizens on the web. Twitter exposes message data as feeds, too.

Even Twitter’s API, while not entirely RESTful, is certainly facing in the right direction, exposing information and functionality via simple URLs and readily consumable formats (XML, JSON). The simplest thing that could possibly work usually does, enabling the “small pieces, loosely joined” approach that lets you pipeline the web,

Zoe had this feature, now admittedly Zoe was meant to be run locally and not on a public server (there were little or no controls for privacy, it relies on other stack elements like https and certs to do that.) but it was great because every email had a addressable url. Searches and RSS also benefited from having urls which was great. At the time, this wasn't even mentioned as a feature and that might have been because one the focus was on googling email (this is pre-gmail too) and two because the urls were pretty damm ugly. If I understood Java, I would rewrite this part of the application and give it nice clean urls.

Zoe was well ahead of the curve and we're still not even there yet. Stowe Boyd got me thinking about Gabriel García Márquez's quote Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life. I like the idea that I can sometimes share some aspects of my inbox with other people. I also like the idea of being able to delicious some of the stuff I get sent. There are lots of issues around permanence, but of Zoe us just pointing the way. I can see Google adding permalinks to Gmail in the future but there needs to be a killer reason for the change. Right now I can't quite work out exactly what that is/will be.

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My / location /

I like what Stowe's proposing here. I specially like the fact I can now say I'm in /Manchester UK/, which should make pin pointing me much easier that just /Manchester/ alone. It also means you can be more descriptive if there the system or application supports it, such as /Bar TV21 on corner of the northern quarter, Manchester/. This certainly beats L:Manchester.

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Hulu plans its UK domination

US VOD site Hulu is now talking with British broadcasters about creating a UK version of the service, in the wake of failed Project Kangaroo. NBCU International president Peter Smith told me the NBC/News Corp (NYSE: NWS) venture is “talking with all the partners you’d expect”. Smith said the aim was “local partners with local content – put that rich cocktail of local and US content together”.

Hulu is coming to the UK, and it looks like there will be a fight between iPlayer and Hulu. Kangaroo will be eaten alive if this does happen but so will the weaker players like itvplayer, 4od and 5 on demand. Obviously I don't actually know this for sure but it certainly seems that way. The real question is if Youtube and Bit Torrent will ruin Hulu's plans. And will the likes of Boxee and XBMC unite them in a totally different user controlled experience.

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Wake up America, protect your pin

Latest Diggnation includes a story from Tru-TV's (think cheap TV, like Sky3) version of the Real Hustle (yes remember the Real Hustle was first on BBC). The Cash Machine Scam is basically the scam/criminal act of skimming cards at a cashpoint and using a mini camera to spy the pin code. I did try and find the equivalent from the UK's real hustle but its so common and everyone knows it, I don't think the show even bothered. I do however remember a scam where they put a card reader on the outside of the bank's door opener, so you would need to swipe your card to open the door. Most people would swipe there card there going to use inside.

Anyway, the American real hustle video shows a guy putting a skimmer with camera on top of the cashpoint's card entry. A lady comes up and uses the cashpoint, she leaves and the scammer takes the skimmer. Scammer goes to his van, makes a card and then goes to the cashpoint and uses it.

To anyone in the UK, your most properly yawning and thinking so? However in America this is all new, it would seem. Kevin Rose on Diggnation seems to think its some kind of joke. And to be honest, my experience of spending time in America, is consistent with Kevin's thoughts. People don't protect there pin numbers at ATM/Cashpoints. It was natural that the scammers would move in at some point and they must be making a killing there. Time to protect your pin…

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Wolfram Alpha?

There's been lots of talk about this new service, which to be clear isn't a google killer. Its not even a search engine its computable knowledge engine, which aggregates knowledge from data around the web and tries to make sense of it then relays the knowledge back to the user. For me Google returns Information while Wolfram Alpha returns Knowledge.

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

I do wish it had results you could copy and a API or even a feed for results, I mean check out the results for redbull. Sweet but none of the information is actually in text. You can download a PDF but to be honest that's not much use. So technically amazing but the experience needs a lot of tweaking. Step in the direction of the Semantic web? Maybe, maybe not.

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On stage at Next 09

So the guys from Next09 have released all the video from the event 2 weeks ago. The video includes some really good sessions but also me on stage trying to show and talk about R&DTV on someone's Macbook. Thankfully they cut the first 15mins of me trying to get my laptop working after they screwed around with the display. Yes feel the pain, like scratching your nails down a blackboard.

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