Next Manchester Werewolf Chapter – Wed 28th March

Were back for another Manchester Werewolf Chapter with the guys at Larkin About again.

On Wednesday March 28th, the Manchester Werewolf Chapter and Larkin’ About will be running another Werewolf game at Barcelona Bar in the Northern Quarter. For FREE!

Werewolf is a simple game of strategy and deception, played by a large group of people.
The game is all about making accusations, lying, bluffing, second-guessing, and social engineering.

All are welcome! We have a great location with a bar because we all know lying is very thirsty work. The event is suitable for all levels of experience from absolute newbie to Werewolf expert.

The Pancakes and Cocktails are worth it alone… And its happy hour right up till 9pm…

To register your interest, please visit our Facebook event page, or send us an email to larkin.about2009@gmail.com.

The pacemaker is back baby…

Pacemaker meets Playbook

The original pacemaker team did say on a forum of pacemaker fans they were working on a mobile app but I had no idea about this…

Found via Guy West on twitter, Engadget broke the news that the pacemaker was coming back as a RIM blackberry app.

News just in this morning, however, is that the DJ tool is back as a PlayBook app thanks to an exclusive collaboration with the tablet’s maker. Details are sparse right now, as the information spilled at RIM’s event this morning at MWC, but we do know that there will be auto beatmatching, vinyl mode with scratching, digital mode, looping, loop travel, pitch control, beat skip and “pro level” effects. All we have in terms of availability is that it will be out this spring, with no word on price.

On the pacemaker teams facebook page and Pacemaker forum for more details…

Today we proudly announced a partnership with RIM / BlackBerry at a press conference at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. As a result, we’re porting the technology of Pacemaker® Device onto the BlackBerry PlayBook.
After investigating a wide range of mobile platforms to make a digital transition we selected the PlayBook due to its highly responsive user interface. DJ’s requires very low latency and the PlayBook delivers very well on that aspect.

For those who don’t own a BlackBerry PlayBook please stay tuned as we have future plans for other platforms as well.

Btw, our next stop will be the South By South West festival in Austin Texas, so if you’re there, let us know 🙂

I’m very tempted to go down to CEX and pick up a 2nd hand Blackberry Playbook but I’m sure Android isn’t far behind…?

HTC One X coming to Orange

HTC One X and S in Orange Store confirmed

Updated, with the new orange store screenshot

I was considering switching network while I wait for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus but yesterday Engadget broke the news about the HTC One X and One S and that it was coming to Orange in the UK.

Not sure how I feel about the 4.7 inch screen of the HTC One X but the HTC One S’s 4.3 inch screen is but much more pocketable. The One S also looks like my old HTC Desire but much nicer and bigger. Quad core running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) coupled with HTC’s final decision to unlock all bootloaders makes these phones very attractive and a long term investment.

Certainly glad I waited and didn’t go for the Samsung Galaxy S2 or one of Sony’s other Gingerbread phones. If the Galaxy S3 does come, I can always still switch network if its a One X beater

Google Schemer: Inspiration networking

Schemier

I like most things which are about inspiring you and people around you. I remember seeing Happiest at Thinking Digital and thinking now thats really interesting but I felt the way they were going about it was maybe not quite right. They seemed to be going the way of Facebook, which is fine if your planning to build a whole network like Path.

I am I do on the other hand is much more like twitter. Everything is public by default and it does one thing very well. What that thing is, no one can quite put there finger on as of yet (just like early twitter). I am I do has the potential to be the platform not the whole network.

Schemer is a interesting service which seems to plonk its self somewhere between Happiest and iamido.

Schemer lets you define goals and mark the things you’ve already accomplished. You can inspire other people, find people who have the same goals and join the conversation. To make it easier to find a scheme, you can add tags and locations.

Its a social goal management done really well. The by product being inspiring goals which get you thinking. And what really intrigues me is the notion that Schemer is actually a Google+ app.

Schemer is actually a Google+ app and it’s likely that you’ll be able to use it inside Google+ in the future.

Leveraging Google+ in the right way instead of the app sitting within Google+ like Facebook apps makes sense (although maybe facebook connect does this too?). Actually if I was Happiest I would suggest doing the exact same thing instead of building there own network. I am I do could do the same quite easily.

Google+ seems to have everything in place to be the pipes rather than the network, and I’m intrigued if mydreamscape could work in a similar vain?

Inspiring the next generation…

I am a geek

On Wednesday I’ve been invited to Albion High School for their World of Work as part of the BBC’s outreach programme. Its something I’ve always wanted to do more of but till now not really done anything about till now.

I’ll be talking with year 9, considering there options for GCSEs next year. I have roughly a hour with each group and they will shuffle around each hour. It was suggested if I wanted to give a presentation of what I do, that might be good. However I’m unsure what exactly I would present if I did…

This is consistent with the new economy of work and dare I say it rework. How can/do you explain what you do to people outside this new economy? I have this problem all the time when meeting new people or going on dates.

Most of the time saying I work for the BBC tends to throw up many more questions like “which TV show do you work on?” I then explain I work at BBC R&D and ask if they have an idea what R&D means? After a second or so, I chip in with its Research & Development. They usually start saying, “oh you research for which programme?” To which I tend have to try and explain I’m work on technology which underpin what the BBC does and will do into the future.

If I’m feeling a little more playful, I will say something like “I work in the grey area between legal and illegal, seeking out emerging technology/opportunities which hackers, startups, early adopters are working on to scratch their own itches.” Although stretching the truth its not far wrong.

So back to the main question… How best to communicate what I do and the opportunities available to the next generation?

Ultimately I’m really hoping to bring out the geek in each one of them (tall order in less than a hour), convince them they can follow their passion no matter what it may be, because frankly life is too short (oh good video to show).

I’m tempted to show i am i do the all new Google Schemer, and maybe some podcast videos then talk about different aspects of my work life/aspirations. Hopefully it will inspire some questions and if not I can ask the young people about their media/social habits?

If this goes well, hopefully I’ll do some more as the BBC does quite a lot of outreach.

Official apology from Fevermedia for Year of making love

Funny I missed this all together… and it wasn’t till someone left a comment on my personal OKcupid blog where I made reference to the debacle in the light a question about maths in matching people.

To everyone who attended The Year Of Making Love launch event.

First of all, thank you very much for attending. As you know, hundreds of people joined us on Saturday in Bedfordshire. Whilst the vast majority of people enjoyed their day, I am well aware that some people’s experiences were disappointing which is something I deeply regret. I and the entire team are extremely sorry for the difficulties you faced.

By way of explanation I want to say a few things about the day. We invited 1000 people to the event, all of whom had been carefully matched in advance by our experts. You held up your side of the deal by coming along on Saturday. Unfortunately, we were surprised by the high number of people who did not arrive at the venue. This was entirely unexpected, since every single person who was invited had confirmed their attendance with the production team in the days prior to the event. The contributors who did not turn up caused a large number of problems for us throughout the day, and had a serious knock on effect on the smooth running of the event.

When it became clear early on Saturday morning that some contributors had not got onto their coach, our team immediately began to call around those individuals to try to get them to the venue. As the day progressed more and more people were turning up who had not got on their original coach but had instead made their own way to the venue. This meant people’s matches were arriving throughout the day and in some cases we didn’t know for sure whether a match was on their way until rather late in the day. We also decided to delay some coaches to give people more time to get to the venue. This meant people were arriving later and in larger numbers than planned which caused queues and a delay in the registration process.

Later in the afternoon, it did become clear that for a number of you, your match was unfortunately not going to turn up. At this point we could tell by checking each individual’s number that there were many strongly compatible people in the room and we created new couples using the same scientific data from the personality tests that had been used originally. Unfortunately, a number of people who had registered on the day left the venue during the afternoon without first informing anyone on the production team. This meant many of our new matches would not be possible as one of half of the match had actually already left the event – although of course we didn’t yet have that information.

This is the first time an event like this has ever been attempted before and whilst many had a fantastic day I am aware that some people’s day was a big disappointment. If you are one of those people I hope you trust we tried to do what we could in difficult circumstances. From my point of view, having one unhappy contributor is not acceptable, so I am extremely disappointed that some of our contributors feel let down. We could not have made this event happen without our contributors and I do thank you for being there on the day.

I should also let you know that we will be contacting everyone who did not turn up on the day to try to find out why. We are also looking in to the possibility of putting people in contact with their original matches but this is entirely dependant on two way consent.

Finally, should you wish to share your thoughts with us, I would genuinely welcome your feedback. Over the next few weeks I’m asking our team to get in touch with everyone and I will ensure that each and every one of you receives a reply to your questions and concerns. We are working through the emails we have received, but if you have anything more to add the best way to reach us is at yoml-update@fevermedia.co.uk.

The Year Of Making Love launch day was an ambitious event and whilst the majority of people successfully met their match, we are fully committed to try and make amends for those that didn’t.
Thank you again for taking part and please accept our apologies.

Fever Media

Finally a better understanding of what was going on in the background. If only this was made clear during the event instead of keeping it a bloody secret. That was the biggest problem, very little very information or communication to us, the participations/contributors.

Frankly its a very poor apology, it still doesn’t address why we were so delayed getting off the coaches and never given a break, food or drink for a good 6-8 hours. Theres also no information to say if the show will go ahead in its current form or greatly changed?

Fevermedia once again blame us and not themselves. Are they really surprised people started leaving when there was no communication?

They must have known the risks, this is why they had researchers calling us up right to the last moment. One of the guys I met on the day from Manchester, received a call on the coach up from one of the researchers asking if he was on the coach or not. I guess it does explain why the coach were 50% capacity on the way up…

I never can explain to people who were not there how frustrating the whole event was… Even now a week later (8pm) its crazy to think at this time last week I had not eaten or drank for close to 8 hours. The intriguing nature of meeting my perfect match kept me at the venue and there should have been a system or solution to keep people informed if they went away, even to the toilet. The idea of matching people in front of the cameras blindsided the whole process till it became very clear it was totally impossible. Not sure when Fevermedia caught on to this fact but it was certainly hours after everyone else.

As I said previously, usually TV is created under a dictatorship. These guys (director/producer/etc) keep things so usually tight, so it was very eyeopening to see public wifi, etc available. However although I enjoyed the openness of this type of thing, they totally dropped the ball for event management. No apology for that anywhere to see…

Torrents & Magnets with dropbox

Bit torrent is changing if you hadn’t noticed already…

Torrent files are going the way of cds while magnet links are taking over.

When you download a .torrent file, you’re essentially downloading a small file that contains information on the larger files you want to download. The torrent file tells your torrent client the names of the files being shared, a URL for the tracker, and more. Your torrent client then calculates a hash code, which is a unique code that only that torrent has—kind of like an ISBN or catalog number. From there, it can use that code to find others uploading those files, so you can download from them.

A magnet link does away with the middleman. A magnet link is essentially a hyperlink containing the hash code for that torrent, which your torrent client can immediately use to start finding people sharing those files. Magnet links don’t require a tracker (since it uses DHT, which you can read more about here), nor does it require you to download a separate file before starting the download, which is convenient.

Magnet links are certainly a lot better in many cases, the piratebay demonstrated this by fitting the whole site into a 90meg file. But I have a problem which I don’t seem to be able to find a answer for…

Torrent files + Dropbox is a killer combination, it means no matter where you are as long as you got a internet connection you can fire up your torrent system without messing with firewalls, etc. As we move to Magnet links, that infrastructure just crumbles and everyone seems to suggest the hole in the firewall solution.

So if anyone knows a better way to replicate dropbox + torrents or a solution which doesn’t require punching a hole in my firewall, I’m all ears, like many people…

Wasted human effort, what’s a responsible citizen to do?

a bike that can only run on special roads.

I had to connect two things together earlier today.

Found via Brooksoid, the oatmeal comic about trying to watch game of thrones. And Torrentfreak’s A Responsible Citizen Not Only Shares Culture, But Destroys The Copyright Industries.

…sharing became a matter of being responsible as a citizen. Sharing culture was not only a good deed in humankind, it was also taking civil responsibility for preservation of our common heritage, a responsibility that neither the industry nor governments took on themselves to fulfill.

Framerate show is a good show for this type of thing, shame its very American centric.

I find the grey area which a responsible citizen inhabits, very interested. So many interests and so much money and time is spent on protecting a system which is impossible to protect. This is certainly why things like Creative Commons and micropayment systems like Flattr gives me such joy…

Funny enough

Moon Venus Mercury & Mars

Me and Simon were walking home the other day talking about the patent nightmare (as you do) and Simon said,

We could be on Mars by now but instead we’re wasting effort stopping people stealing Coldplay records!

Although Simon was slightly confusing or at least mixing up the patent problem with the copyright problem, that sentence alone is pretty elegant and sums up a lot of thinking I’ve had over the years.

The next day, I pursued him to mention it and it got re-tweeted by people like myself. He then came back with this

Everything and anything that prevents the progress of our species in the pursuit of profit.

Ant Miller followed up with…

@cubicgarden @si_lumb can I have that on a t-shirt please…

You can just imagine a brand of Tshirts with Copyright and Patent reform slogans… (remember when Google and Patent reform was hot on peoples lips).

This also drives me to once again have a UK version of Framerate… the issues are different enough. Cristiano Betta and myself have talked about a techgrumps for films, tv and media for a long while, maybe the tipping point is nearing?

So how about it people?

The Story of Me featured on Slideshare

Slideshare feature

I was featured on Slideshare.net today and Dianavcarrico left me a tweet

Hi Ian, just saw your featured slideshare presentation and I hope you’re doing fine right now! Inspiring for sure! *

Great to know its still inspiring people… Can’t wait for the TedXManchester Video, because I’ll certainly be sharing it with my family and friends. I’ve also been asked to maybe do it again at another event, so look out for the same but less tears…

Other peoples thoughts on the year of making love

Rome visit, June 2008 - 57

Now on my 4th blog entry for the year of making love… Its hard to see how it went from this to this

Others have started blogging their thoughts. So I thought it would be worth sharing them, partly to show I’m not the only one and highlight other thoughts.

Whats love got to do with it

I was number 2004, therefore expecting to be quite early on in the process, however the first few groups came and went and I was still left sat there in my seat.  This happened to Adam and one of the Richards as well.  When my number was skipped a second time, I began to wonder if Miss 1004 was even in the room.   Turns out she wasn’t, and I ended up being paired off with a different girl, who, though being nice enough, was not my type at all, and it was clearly obvious I wasn’t hers as well!  Martyn had a similar story with his match, no chemistry, and Adam decided he would rather not be matched with a random girl, not his perfect match, and dint stay to go up on the stage!

Making love on Camera

It started off fairly promising as some of the couples looked well suited, but as the process was drawn out a lot of the matches seemed completely bizarre pairings, and it didn’t take long before couples were showing obvious signs of disapproval on stage in front of the 1000 person crowd. In fact I half expected Jeremy Kyle to spring up at one point as a lad walked off about 5 paces in front of his ‘match’ to a chorus of boos.

I should point out that this went on for a good 4 hours due to the stop-start nature of calling up couples to the stage, and by this time many had lost interest. I felt faint and tired due to not eating or drinking, but just as my eyes were starting to close Adam tapped me and said ‘they’ve just called your number!’ I picked myself up and headed behind the screen to the side of the stage. Whilst the 5 of us lads waited like lambs to the slaughter, we exchanged a bit of last-minute banter, but this is where the nerves began to creep in.

Interesting to read what a gay guy also at the event thought of the whole thing

I entered this endeavour ready to tell horror stories of how we were herded like cattle (which we were), where no one got what they wanted (one guy left out of frustration of having to wait to be part of the 901st couple to be matched), and where the only people involved were just desperate to be on the telly (this happened a lot – me and the boy in question traded stories from the boys and girls sides respectively), but my personal experience was nothing like the sceptical versions we tell ourselves as an audience member: I found someone I genuinely liked, who seemed to like me back, and who I could actually see as a potential partner. Bollocks.

And now Channel4 are jumping in with there own Dating show… Geez, do I have to say anything more!?

Interestingly a breach of contract seems to be effective, so maybe I can remove the disclaimer? According to one person on FB

my sister is a lawyer and she said if i dont hear anything by the end of the week she will send a stern and threatening letter. they broke their contract by saying we will leave the venue by 6pm i left at 8:15. so i will defo get it back

And from the Facebook group Matthew Stokes said,

TV programes are made for the viewers, not for the people taking part. A few digrunteled people, however justified, are not going to be a big concern to the production company, their parent company, and certainly not to the BBC. Don’t kid yourselves. Sorry, but I wouldnt waste too much of your time ranting, complaining, and kicking up a fuss. You are best turning that into positive energy, meeting some cool and sexy people on here, making plans to meet up, and going to one of the events we have arranged ourselves. Its a great display of the human condition that in adversity, groups like this crop up and we are moving on to bigger better sexier things!

The producers clearly didnt set out to upset people, but their main aim is to make a good TV progamme, not to keep 1000 random people entertained. Yes, they will HAVE to arrange to film specific people, yes some of it will be a little contrived, and yes sadly some peoples time will have been wasted. Trust me, if Saturday could have gone any better/smoother/easier than it did, they would have been far happier too. I for-warned them of the issues they were going to face last Thursday on the phone, and I got the impression that they knew it was going to be a toughie. Sadly, it seems that some programme makers are not the best at people management, time management, or logistics! All of this being said, we were there FOR THE PROGRAM. No one paid anything to be there, no one had any guarantees, and we all knew what the concept of the show was. Anyone expecting a second event to meet matches, or payments, or compensation will be sadly disappointed. The apology that we have received is all that we will get, and I do feel bad for people that waited all day, had bad journeys getting home, and spent money to be there.

And this is where I get very twitchy and slightly on my high horse.

It is great positive things come out of adversity however I reject the fact TV programmes HAVE to be about exploitation of people. There is certainly a reason why I work for the BBC