Pacemaker playback

Blackberry Playbook

Some of you may have noticed my tweets about finally getting a Blackberry Playbook.

Some of you maybe wondering why the hell I bought one of those?

Well the truth is the original pacemaker guys (Olof Berglof, Jonas Norberg and Willem Demmers) sent me one after my experience of the pacemaker app during Over The Air earlier in summer. Blackberry/RIM suggested they might send me one but after the blog post, they pretty much didn’t want anything else to do with me. Bear in mind, this was after I asked them to send me the playbook to test out before I got to Over the Air.

Thanks from the Pacemaker Team

Anyway after the blog post, I shared it with the un-official pacemaker community which had started when Tonium wouldn’t answer any of the questions. This is where the original pacemaker guys (now free after Tonium) saw it and got in touch with me.

The guys admitted the version I was using was a early beta and it was a lot more stable now. We got talking and they agreed to send me a playbook maybe they felt it was the right thing to do or they wanted to keep me involved in the pacemaker community. Either way I’m happy to say I got one thanks to the Pacemaker guys! And its running the Pacemaker App Trial right now.

Pacemaker App

I won’t talk about my frustration with the actual playbook. Including how the mass storage mode failed to work on Ubuntu and how I had to transfer my music collection over wifi using Samba till I discovered this USB hack. Weird thing is it was just as slow. I won’t talk about the pain of trying to get the latest OS update but it not letting me till the battery was over 20% (I left it over night charging in the end). Finally I won’t talk about the pain of getting a blackberry ID.

The Pacemaker trial is rightly so much more stable than the version I experienced before. Its not crashed on me and it does seem a lot more together. But I have to say I still find some of the latency problems are still there (maybe Android 4.1 Butter is needed but you would have thought QNX would be ideal for this). For example don’t try and do hard cuts with the crossfader as you will be very disappointed. The layout makes a little more sense now but I’m finding lots of things are missing from the pacemaker device including recording, effects and of course external output to a mixer. The later means everything you do is played out over the headphones or split into mono.

Pacemaker App

The Pacemaker guys are going to put me on the beta list so hopefully I’ll get a feel for changes and progression soon enough. Right now, its a much poorer relation to the pacemaker device. There is no way I could play out with this, only have a play now and then when in the mood. Still early days and the pacemaker guys have done some great stuff, but I do wonder if it will get good at the point the platform goes away or dissolves. Of course the Pacemaker guys can’t/won’t talk about beyond the playbook but I’m already thinking of solutions around the dual stereo output problem involving usb sound cards or even 2 devices (phone and tablet anyone?)

I’m greatful to the Pacemaker guys for what they did, its really cool. Because although I was thinking about buying a cheap playbook, after my experience I was dead set against Blackberry and the playbook. Good to know certainly people can take feedback on the chin and move forward…

Your Tent, My Tent

Sziget 2008: Tent Interior

Tent.is just launched yesterday… Unlike twitter, its a distributed service which means you can run your own or jump on someone else’s. Its not just Microblogging either, its more than just that.

Tent.is is a Tent host. Tent is a protocol for distributed communications. Tent can be used as a personal data vault, a single sign on service, and/or a distributed social network. Anyone can host their own Tent server and/or write Tent apps. In addition to Tent hosting, Tent.is provides a few basic apps to help users get started, a server admin app, and a microblogging app. This was literally the simplest app we could write for Tent. We started with microblogging because we were personally frustrated with the centralized options in the industry. The next set of apps will take Tent much further beyond Twitter-style functionality. Since developers can define new post and profile types, Tent could be used for file backups, video chats, controlling robots, and probably teleporters. Think of Tent as a way to store any kind of information forever, that you control. You might choose to share some of it with friends or colleagues in real time or long after you created it. Most importantly, Tent is yours.

Ade Oshineye has been posting some interesting things about distrubuted microblogging along with myself.

Of course I’m giving Tent a whirl although I’m just connected to the main tent.is server right now. Be keeping an eye on this one in the near future… Be great to see what new service pop up on peoples tent servers.

EPIC Werewolf – Halloween

EPIC Werewolf

Its coming… this Halloween, EPIC Werewolf

As part of the Manchester Science Festival, myself and Larkin About are going to take a look at Social engineering and Mob rule in the social game of Werewolf. Unlike most games of werewolf, we will feature running commentary from psychologists and behaviour scientists that will culminate in a finale game resticted to one room and broadcasted live to an audience.

Of course because its Halloween, there will be lots of dressing up and to be honest Islington Mill is located in deep and dark Salford. Far from the bright lights of Media City and the Quays.

Exact details are still being worked out but its going to be a great event which you don’t want to miss!

Tickets are available for the players and the audience only.

Anyone can cook a steak after drinking

Got to love Manchester… Great people and some great festivals including the Manchester Food and Drink Festival. Its a great chance to try some great food and sample different drinks. Good food does cost but you can lower the prices by cooking for yourself. Actually I find the prices to be comparable to ordering a takeaway and how much hassle is it to cook a steak? Less time than calling a pizza delivery

A little while ago while walking home from somewhere late night in Manchester. The guys I walked with, wanted to stop at a load of late night fast food places. I said fine but I got a steak with a bag of salad to eat when I finally get home, so I won’t be interested in hanging around fast food joints…

Bit of background

I made the decision to start putting a steak at the bottom of my fridge (when going out and drinking) with a bag of green salad, so when walking back I don’t get tempted to buy some greasy mixed up kebab or some deep friend chicken. And it works because the temptation is literally gone and eating home cooked steak instead of deep friend whatever is obviously better for you. Specially when you add a bag of green salad.

Phil (the guy sitting on the sofa with the lady iris) challenged me that our friend Dan (his flatmate) could not cook a steak at 4am after a night of heavy drinking. I knew even Dan could with a tiny bit of direction from myself (he never cooked a steak before ever).

Of course I recorded it from the moment he put it in the pan. Watch out for the moment when I thought he was going to burn his fingers off though (so glad he didn’t do so).

I can tell you the steak was nice not like my own efforts.

If Dan can do it anyone can…

What ever happened to the PAN?

Hooping

I remember ages ago when I was at University the concept of a Personal Area Network was heavily talked about but over the last 10 years I have heard very little about it. Now with the internet of things (IoT) coming into full effect, it seems a very good time to revive it from its dormant sleep?

From Wikipedia

A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network used for communication among computerized devices, including telephones and personal digital assistants. PANs can be used for communication among the personal devices themselves (intrapersonal communication), or for connecting to a higher level network and the Internet (an uplink). A wireless personal area network (WPAN) is a PAN carried over wireless network technologies such as IrDA, Bluetooth, Wireless USB, Z-Wave, ZigBee, or even Body Area Network. The reach of a WPAN varies from a few centimeters to a few meters.

The PAN should always operate in your benefit and not against you. Devices can freely communicate within the PAN but not so easily outwards. I imagine it would work something like a 2 way firewall blocking items within it from communicating out and vice-versa. As devices enter the trusted PAN zone, then permissions will be granted to allow external access, etc.

This does beg the question of how you do these type behaviours on a device with no buttons, screen, etc. But to be honest that’s a lovely interaction design problem to solve.

Fancinating to also see where the PAN is in the greater network topology…

Would be great to be able to specify rules based on the position of the thing/device. For example if an thing is classified/identified itself as needing to be on the BAN (body area network) then you can say its only allowed to talk to the PAN and never the NFC layer for example. Maybe it should come with defaults but they are changeable like the permissions used when trying to connect via OAuth.

Once again I’m not sure how to surface this to the user without some kind of external access like how you configure routers and switches now. But someone is working on it now I’m sure of that…

I quite like the Hula Hoop analogy. You can have multiple, some are bigger than others and some will overlap. You can even hula hoop around certain parts of the body rather than just your hips. Hula hoops are also shareable and I guess you can fit more than one person within them. However it still doesn’t explain how you control the wiring/influence/networking of the devices/things…

Friend of a Friend Dining, starts at Jamies Italian

foaf dining: Jamie's Italian

I had hoped to be using or pioneering social fork in Manchester but it just wasn’t to be…

So instead I’m back to doing a number of social events in Manchester starting with Friend Of a Friend Dining…

If your interested in coming along, all the details will be on the eventbrite site.

Of course its only meant to be a little bit of fun, nothing serious. But its a good excuse for people I know to get to know each other too. And as the name suggests maybe we’ll get to meet a whole bunch of new people too.

Friend of a friend dining is arranged by Ian Forrester and friends, aiming to go dining in the best restaurants in the city & meet new friends.

I’m sure the FOAF guys (dan & libby) will let me off for abusing the term which I’ve always liked.

Lots of BBC staff who have come up recently to Manchester don’t really know there way around let alone know many people outside of the company. This seems to me like a crying shame and if I can do something to help, then I will.

Reinvent content and the tools

A number of things on my mind recently centring around narrative again. There also connected (at least in my mind they are)

George Entwhistle today gave a speech to BBC Staff… (read the whole thing) where he mentions reinventing content

In a bold first-day speech, the BBC’s new boss says the corporation must stop thinking that online innovation means repurposing broadcast content and instead ‘create genuinely digital content for the first time’.

As we increasingly make use of a distribution model – the internet – principally characterised by its return path, its capacity for interaction, its hunger for more and more information about the habits and preferences of individual users, then we need to be ready to create content which exploits this new environment – content which shifts the height of our ambition from live output to living output.

Adam Curtis argues TV needs better techniques

Television no longer has the dramatic techniques to explain today’s world, according to leading documentary-maker Adam Curtis.

At a masterclass session at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television festival, Curtis will claim that the traditional techniques television uses, such as the identifying of good and bad guys and a linear narrative, are obsolete.

Apple was awarded a patent on a broadcast device that uses implicit acts to decide if you’re going to be interested in a section of the content (thanks Tony)

A user … may not be interested in every media item provided as part of a broadcast stream. For example, a user may not like a particular song broadcast by a radio station, or may not like a particular segment of a talk radio station (eg, the user does not like the topic or guest of the segment). As another example, a user may not be interested in content originally generated by sources other than the media source (eg, advertisement content). Because the user has no control over the media broadcast, the user can typically only tune to a different media broadcast, or listen to or consume the broadcast content that is not of interest.

A tale or two about piracy

Speeding car

I really wanted to work with Musicmetric to do something like they have now done. Gain some real insight into what media habits people really are and highlight the very interesting innovation happening on the dark/undernet.

Interestingly Manchester was named the biggest UK city for piracy.

The research said there were more illegal downloads per person in the city than any other in the country, followed by Nottingham and Southampton. The statistics, from monitoring service Musicmetric, conclude that in the first half of 2012, UK users illegally shared over 40 million albums and singles.

Well I never… Whats that quote again?

Manchester does today what the rest of the world does tomorrow?

Looking at actual downloads is also interesting. Even Armin Van Buuren gets a high rating… of course I wouldn’t know anything about this…

Outside of this massive amount of music piracy data, it would be great to do the same for TV and Films.

In related news… I saw this in a few places (BBC) and (torrentfreak)… How the pirate bay got started.

By the end of 2004, a year after the site launched, the tracker was tracking a million peers and over 60,000 torrent files. Around the same time the founders also noticed that it was not only Scandinavians developing interested in their site.

In fact, by now 80% of their users came from other parts of the world. Because of increasing worldwide popularity The Pirate Bay team completely redesigned the site, which became available in several languages in July 2005.

For me personally I remember going to Sweden to visit Anna, a friend of Sarah’s. Anna’s boyfriend and me got talking about computers and he showed me the crazy speed available to them in 2004. I remember plugging into his network switch and be shocked to find a real IP (non-Nat). Then he showed me a site with a pirate ship. It didn’t say Piratebay but something like it in Swedish (maybe Piratbyrån). At the time SuperNova was all the rage and I did scoff at the idea. He then showed me how fast he could download a ISO of Debian. The speeds were not only shocking but earth shattering to me on my 512k ADSL line. 10meg/sec download in 2004 was unreal.

If only I had understood what a force this site would become… Specially when I came back in 2010 to find my flatmate (tim) and a bunch of people (loz and others) surrounded by boxes and boxes of 50k of pirate party flyers!

Perceptive publishing?

The reader

There was a reason why I decided to use Media oppose to TV or Radio.

The core concept of Perceptive Media can be applied at many different levels and different outputs.

How would Perceptive publishing work? Well if you imagine you have a ebook which can be read on a system which is also connected to the web and/or has sensors of its own. Imagine if that ebook reader has API’s which can exposes certain data to the ebook its self.

The way you hold the ereader, landscape, portrait, ambient temperature, time, geolocation, ambient noise, etc, etc. I have a feeling Perceptive Publishing may actually be a lot easier than Perceptive Broadcast…

You get the picture… and so do Oreilly who have put Perceptive Media into their Tools of Change conference in October.

I was interviewed about Perceptive Media and how it could work in publishing…

In the early days, Perceptive Media is being applied to broadcast technology. What potential applications for Perceptive Media do you envision in the publishing industry?

Ian Forrester: We have only scratched the surface and do not know what else it can be adapted toward. In BBC R&D, we watch trends by looking at early innovators. It’s clear as day that ebook reading is taking off finally, and as it moves into the digital domain, why does the concept of a book have to be static? Skeuomorphism is tragic and feels like a massive step back. But Perceptive Media is undoing the limitations of broadcast. It certainly feels like we can overcome the limitations of publishing, too.
Tools of Change for Publishing (http://s.tt/1nB8P)

Ecstasy

Ecstasy Facts

My experience with Ecstasy is not like you would imagine.

I have never ever taken Ecstasy or for that fact taken any other illegal drugs. Even though I was surrounded by the ecstasy filled rave scene. Me personally I was very much into the music and the experience of dancing in time with people of all cultures and backgrounds. However I won’t be lie and say I never noticed the amount of drugs going around. In actual fact I have some interesting experiences off the back of ecstasy.

Channel4 are putting Ecstasy on trail in another one of their grand experiments.

Nearly half a million people are believed to take the Class A drug ecstasy every year in Britain and the country was dubbed the ‘drug-taking capital of Europe’ in a recent EU Drugs Agency report.

Now, in a UK television first, two live programmes will follow volunteers as they take MDMA, the pure form of ecstasy, as part of a ground-breaking scientific study.

Presented by Jon Snow and Dr Christian Jessen, the programmes aim to cut through the emotional debate surrounding the issue and accurately inform the public about the effects and potential risks of MDMA.

When I was in school, I had strongly held believes that Ecstasy should be decriminalised and even legalised for many reasons. Most of it is about getting drugs out of the drug dealers hands. But even more to get a base-level quality. Ecstasy use to be cut with all types of crap including brick dust, ketamine, asprin, sugar, etc, etc. So what your buying could be anything. In the past there was rumours of Ecstasy being sold with a coat of LSD. End of the day, you had no idea.

Ecstasy was new on the scene and was instantly demionised by the press. Then Leah Betts died and all hell broke loose. The notion that she had drunk 7-8 litres of water in 90mins was ignored or never came out till much later. After that the war on drugs went into overdrive and by the mid millennium ecstasy was being replaced by other drugs. The point I guess I’m making is it was never tested in lab conditions to see the full effect, who would be allergic to it and the long term effects.

You could say I’m a total hypocrite because I’ve never taken it and never will. But I’d suggest that I can have an opinion and I’ve seen more that enough use in my time.

In times when I rubbed up against ecstasy use. I’ve never seen anyone die, I have seen some admitted to hospital to have there stomach pumped however, I remember spending time in First Aid with a asthmatic attack talking with a girl who had eaten 11 ecstasy pills (of course who knows what were in them) but she was chatting away and hugging people while chewing her lips off. Not a good thing but certainly not what the war on drugs wants you to see and think.

I welcome the Channel4 trial but to be honest I don’t think it will be scientific enough. Ecstasy has been used for many things in the past including a tool for couples having relationship problems. Fact is street ecstasy is nothing like you see in the lab. This is why I was a massive fan of those people who went to raves and clubs and tested ecstasy in the wild. I was also part of the Drugs Awareness Campaign in Bristol and dj’ed for them in many different venues (good to hear it still exists)

Its all about cutting through the hype, crap and frankly bull. Giving people frank honest information. Something the war on drugs never learned…

It upsets me so many people are fed dis-information saying “Just say no…” Hopefully Channel4 can raise a light to this massive issue.

The audience vs twitter…

Mainstream

Channel4 is known for some very interesting social experiments including something which really gets at something which I have a lot of opinions about

However before I talk about that TV programme. Let me give you my thoughts on The Audience

If you don’t know it, its basically… A bunch of people follow a chosen person for a week and help solve there problems.

People with life-changing decisions to make – from ‘should I give up the family business?’ to ‘should I have a gastric band fitted?’ or ‘should I consider fostering?’ – are followed around by 50 strangers for a week. These strangers must then agree on a decision and deliver their verdict on the path to take. For the person with the dilemma the process is emotional, sometimes difficult and often eye-opening. And the audience holding this enormous responsibility have to navigate through layers of heartache, resistance and personal revelations, as well as the nights out, kitchens and cramped offices of the people they’re trying to help.

Although I’ve not quite watched the first one yet… It strikes me as odd because frankly…

Isn’t this just Twitter???

I say twitter oppose to your social network because its people who you don’t know. The stranger advice is a well known human effect. People generally prefer to confide in the stranger.

Or maybe I’m wrong…?

I know this requires a level of transparency and openness which most people are not willing to disclose but personally I’ve had very good things happen from being so open and asking questions of strangers…

Why we build, is it in the narrative?

IMG_2247

I had the pleasure of seeing Rowan Moore talk live about his book why we build in Manchester with someone special.

As she said herself, its a interesting way to give some insight into the world of the architect. Something I originally wanted to be a long long time ago but I choose Design instead.

Anyway as Rowan was talking about positives and negative in different architecture decisions. I started seeing a slight pattern in the positives. Originally I put it down to playfulness of buildings and spaces but then I started thinking its about the narrative. What do I mean?

As an architect, you lay the foundations of how the space is going to be used in the same way as storytellers/game creators imagine the world the narrative is formed in. They then plan routes/journeys people and things go through that space. In the same way a book lays the foundation and the person’s mind takes it on to different level.

Its a thought and maybe very wrong (specially because everyday work I assume is pretty mundane) but I think about my best examples of good architecture and think about how it leads you on a path but allows you to explore without getting in the way.

Its like being taken on a journey. In fact, the features or sticking points are also like social objects or talking points.

The Street at PQIMG_2227

Pacific Quay in Glasgow is BBC Scotland’s headquarters and I was in love with the Street idea. I seen a similar idea in 8-House’s Ørestad District, Copenhagen. The street for me is a narrative through the complexity of a building. But not only that, its a talking point (social object) and a great place to bump into people and have the conversations you get in corridors.

TechHub sets sights on Manchester

I always said Manchester is a great city, and there’s plenty of talent not only in Manchester but further a field around the North of England. Well I’m not the only one which says this

TechHub, the shared workspace for startups, is launching a site in Manchester in November. The new space will be the first UK-location outside of London.

The hub has agreed terms with property investment firm Town Centre Securities (TCS) for office space over two floors at Carver’s Warehouse in Piccadilly Basin.

My thought is this has to be a great thing for uniting the many different communities in and around the city. Can’t wait to see it open and where things go into the future. The guys behind it are great, full of spirit. They took the time to thank myself and martin for our talks at TedXManchester2 which may have kick started some of this.

Can I also just say, I called it right 2 months ago when I tweeted something connecting TechHub with Manchester. TechhubManchester it is…

TedXBristol live – Saturday 15th Sept

I have the pleasure of talking at TedXBristol next weekend. This follows another excellent talk at Canvas Conference on Friday in Birmingham.

The whole of TedXBristol will be streamed live, so you can get a idea of the richness of the talks yourself.

In the meanwhile there’s a cheeky little interview with me on the TedXBristol blog.

If your one of my lovely friends from around Bristol, I’ll be going for drinks and a meal on Saturday night. So get in touch if you want to join us…