This video project glass video shows off voice, photo and video capabilities, sharing features, turn-by-turn navigation and Google Now integration.
Seems a lot more realistic than previous stuff…
Month: February 2013
The future’s br0ken black mirror
The romance contraceptive?
Been reading up lots of stuff about dating and social media recently…
One of the most interesting ones has to be this entry from David Wygant a dating and relationship coach and writes for the New York Times.
Social media is what I’d call a romance contraceptive. It prevents romance from happening every single day.
Every day when I’m out and about, I’ll see people in elevators, I’ll see people in grocery stores, coffee shops, and at restaurants. And they’re all checking Facebook! Or they’re tweeting something to their 3.7 followers. We’ve become a society of people who are obsessed with what’s happening in the imaginary world.
Just the other day, I was in a supermarket in Los Angeles and I saw this guy checking out this girl. He was standing next to her in line at the juice bar. He kept looking at her, and she kept looking down … at the Facebook app on her iPhone.
Now, I know some of you right now are thinking, maybe she wasn’t interested. That wasn’t the issue. Because what I’m about to share with you is something most of you have probably done.
He gave up and disappeared. But I was crazy curious so I stood next to her in line and got real close and peeked at what she was typing into her phone.
Her status update: When am I going to meet a nice guy? It seems like all the good men are taken.
Think about what just happened.
She complained about not finding good men, but here was an interested man, standing next to her. Now, granted, nobody knows if the romance would have worked, but think about this: for every moment that you’re checking your Twitter feed, or your so-called friends’ updates on Facebook, you’re missing another opportunity to connect with somebody in real life … which could be another opportunity to fall in love.
I agree to a certain extend. I already gave a 5min presentation to #smc_mcr urging people to do more in real life. Don’t get me wrong, I also sometimes say “I got to tweet this…” but generally I’m not attached to my phone like some people I know.
We are in a world of flux right now, for some people mobile internet access is a good thing and for others its certainly not. Do you blame the technology or the person? I would say its the person.
Need any more #YOML proof?
Useful tweeting from MuzikSnob,
If you need any more proof about the kind of people who signed up to the Year of Making Love.
Darren wasn’t just on Take me out series 2 ep 3?, but also involved in the year of making love episode 3.
You got to wonder how many other things he and others have been on? YOML attracted a number of people who seemed to be attracted to the limelight for maybe the wrong reasons? Who knows?
At least he didn’t mess around with single mother-of-three Olley and had the guts to tell her why. Maybe putting a massive dent in her confidence? Shame for her really
Want To Make A Dating App That Actually Works?
With all the thinking about maybe joining the mobile dating challenge, I remembered seeing this…
Want To Make A Dating App That Actually Works? Design It For The Ladies
Online dating has matured from Internet fringe activity to full-blown phenomenon. Online dating apps? Less so. With the exception of the wildly popular Grindr, hooking up via your smartphone has been an anathema to app developers and a hazard to those looking for mates, a kind of no-man’s-land between skeeze city and sociopath village. “Another day, another creepy mobile app,” observed the New York Times’ Nick Bilton, writing about the spectacularly creepy Girls Around Me app.
There’s a really low perceived value for dating apps right now,” agrees Gene Liebel, chief strategy officer at Brooklyn digital agency Huge and the force behind CrazyBlindDate, a mobile app for OkCupid that launched yesterday. “There’s a lot of failure in this space. But being first to market a thing is overrated. We spent some time on this, and I think in this case, we got it right.”
I actually quite like the idea of Crazy Blind Date.
Crazy blind date reminds me of a cross between OKcupid’s Locale and How about we. Not sure if this is designed for ladies but per-se but I can imagine women being a little more comfortable than whats currently on the market.
If you build it for women, the thinking went, the men will come (the reverse, historically, hasn’t worked so well). “We figure men will endure a little more pain,” says Liebel. “So everything, from the design to the algorithm, is geared to giving women a successful dating experience.” That meant building an infrastructure of safe public places to populate the location list, a safety net against dates gone wrong. It also meant putting the focus on meeting more men, in smaller doses–a romantic test drive to see if things click, rather than weeks of online browsing and messaging
Yatse xbmc remote
Thanks to @richard79d – for dropping me a little pointer to Yatse the xbmc remote. I’m thinking about paying for the complete version already and removing the official xbmc remote.
It has all the same features but its just well built and less clunky.
Times review of the Year of Making Love
Thanks to Teknoteacher for the tweet… alerting me to the Times review
Just as I feared…
Unfortunately very little airtime during new series “The year of making love” is given over to actual “science” involved
Science…! Yes science we all shout…!
@zeonglow said something interesting while I was watching the latest episode.
#yoml isn’t science. They should have matched up half of them at random. That would have been interesting.
All the science in the programme is 2 scientists looking pretty saying comments like, “oh there a good match…” I would suggest the title is quite correct, biology lessons minus the science.
Yes most people who watch BBC Three would yawn but thats part of the reason why I personally took part…
The whole post is online as you’d expect. But I leave you with this fun section…
Unfortunately, very little airtime during new series The Year of Making Love is given over to the actual “science” involved. Essentially, personality-profiler Thomas and behavioural-psychologist Emma have analysed the assembled single masses and paired them off with one another. Imagine Yente, the matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof, if she exchanged the layered shawls for a lab coat.
An experiment in mobile dating…
For years now I’ve been dating using websites and speed dating. I have also at the same time been reading people’s accounts of there dating, such as 52 first dates. Every once in a while I moan about the lack of transparency and data from dating sites and if you know me, sometimes over a couple of drinks I swear I’m going to write a book about my dating experiences.
So with all that in mind, I read the blog post “taking my dating life mobile a social experiment” with a lot of interest.
Basically Senior Writer for ReadWrite.com Dan Rowinski is going to use mobile dating apps to gage there success rates in finding love. Of course there is rules…
I have to set some parameters here, or this type of experiment could completely take over my life. So here are my ground rules:
Parameters
- I will actively use dating apps for at least one month to meet actual people.
- I will use a variety of apps (Android and iOS) to get a good sense of their depth and variety.
What I Will Do
- Approach each connection with an open mind and respect.
- Apply the rule of “half your age plus seven” to how old a date has to be (nobody in their late teens or very early 20s).
- Notify dates that I am writing a series on dating apps.
- If I make a meaningful connection and start a fledgling relationship with someone I meet, I’ll terminate the experiment.
What I Won’t Do
- I won’t actively use the dating apps to just look for a “hookup.” No trolling for sex on my smartphone.
- I won’t recount much in the way of specific details about my dates. Yes, I’ll share a few anecdotes here and there, but if you’re looking for salacious gossip, click elsewhere.
- I won’t do anything to endanger my physical, emotional or financial safety.
- I won’t lie to make myself look better or misrepresent myself in any way.
- I won’t ignore possible connections in real life that didn’t originate on my smartphone.
The Apps I’ll Be Using
I chose the following apps because they represent a good cross section of new, interesting, location-based, social and traditional approaches. I won’t be using any traditional websites affiliated with the services, should they exist. For instance, when I use eHarmony or Match, I’ll only use those sites through their apps and over email to my phone. Here they are:
- Let’s Date – Popular new app that allows to browse anonymously for connections.
- Tinder – Location-based app that allows you to see who’s nearby, their pictures and snippets from their Facebook profiles.
- eHarmony – There should be at least one traditional dating site in here to provide a counter to mobile-only apps.
- OkCupid – It’s free and has a decent app.
- Blendr – Among the several sub-tier dating apps in contention, I’m going with Blendr just because it looks the least troll-y.
- Martini (if applicable) – Group dating app that just came to the Apple App Store.
Now the question is do I join in and try it out for myself?
In the past I have used Okcupid and Plenty of Fishes mobile apps and its been fun in some cases.
Don’t get me wrong I’m interested to find out what could happen and find out if mobile dating is any good or not. Mobile dating is a different take on the same idea? I did propose this as something different a while ago.
Working from the Northern Quarter Fridays
I blogged about how I started working out of the northern quarter quite sometime ago, the massive benefits and the Coffee shop clashes. A lot of people have taken this as “Ian is off on Fridays.” Which is so far from the truth…
A while ago I started using Project Hamster to record roughly how much time I was spending on projects (as I tend to have quite a few projects on the go at the same time, who doesn’t?)
Anyhow, I had a look at the aggregated results recently when sending to my manager (this is not the official way bbc rd does time tracking by the way, just me).
It turns out Fridays are one of my most productive days, even more that Mondays and Thursdays.
Now I know what some of you will be thinking, yes its all manual reporting and I could lie, but why? Its as simple as this. When working from the northern quarter I tend to spend much more time just working away on my laptop. Its no chance this is when I spend the most time writing papers and the like too.
The second thing you might notice is I don’t work 8hour a day. Project hamster checks every 20mins to see if I’m actually active on the machine, so if I get called into a meeting or go for lunch, it will automatically stop. Generally when working from the Northern Quarter, I get less distributed or distracted.
This can be a good and bad thing. You can see the lack of disruption as a good thing but actually its the bouncing around of ideas at work which can be good, for example running into someone at the kitchen and talking for a while. Of course Project Hamster will time out and say I’m up to nothing. And actually its worth pointing out that all meetings (official/adhoc) are not included because its still time when not working actively working on the computer. As you can imagine I’m quite a social person and those adhoc chats over tea do add up.
Its not that I work better in the northern quarter, its that I work differently!
Lifehacker has another great post about working out of coffee shops. Here’s the key parts for myself…
A change of environment stimulates creativity. Even in the most awesome of offices we can fall into a routine, and a routine is the enemy of creativity. Changing your environment, even just for a day, brings new types of input and stimulation, which in turn stimulates creativity and inspiration.
Agreed… I’m not saying Media City isn’t inspiring and full of creativity. But its my norm and if I have to look at that wallpaper again I’ll scream 🙂 Of course I’m joking…
Fewer distractions. It sounds counter-intuitive, but working from a bustling coffee shop can be less distracting than working from a quiet office. Being surrounded by awesome team and officemates means being interrupted for water cooler chats and work questions. Being interrupted kills productivity. The coffee shop environment combines the benefit of anonymity with the dull buzz of exciting activity. Unlike working at home, with the ever-present black hole of solitude and procrastination, a coffee shop provides the opportunity of human interaction, on your terms.
The evidence is all in the data. I actually have lots of less important meetings on Fridays but their under my terms. Meaning I can get lots done in the time between.
Community and meeting new people. Meeting new people always provides me with new ideas, a different perspective at existing problems, or an interesting connection to a new person doing something awesome that inspires me. Today alone I met a top Skillshare teacher whose class I will now take, a sleep consultant, a publicist who offered to help with a project, and a wine consultant who recommended some bars.
One thing I wish I could record is the little meetings and chats I have. Some go nowhere and some go real deep. But generally meeting in the northern quarter means I can get a measure of someone and then refer them to a proper media city meeting or not. And of course there’s those chance encounters which you just can’t qualify an amount of value.
End of the day its not for everyone, but it works for me. Its surprising because I do love my height adjustable desk and fancy media city chair. FYG and North Tea power’s tables are too low and I do sometimes feel the discomfort setting in. But I tend to not notice because I’m just working or talking with someone great. If I had to work from the northern quarter 4 days a week and one day in Media City, I know I would be saying the opposite.
This is all summed up in the lifehacker post,
The experience of working out of coffee shops was so positive that even after we moved into our new home, I made sure to get in a few “coffee shop days” each month. For carpal tunnel related reasons alone, I would not recommend working out of coffee shops every day…
10 things men and women judge each on
When Imran sent me this piece of dating data, I thought on first look… “here we go with the stereotypes…” and is sub 10,000 really enough for a decent amount of data about online dating? I guess theres so little open data, that even 5000 people from Match.com is worthy of looking at? However in some defence its always good to have biological anthropologist Helen Fisher on board somewhere.
After a little read I was surprised how interesting the results were…
Right on the most loved up day of the year… Here’s some data and feedback!
- Bad looking Teeth is a turn off for sure, and I don’t mean the shade. Just bad odd looking teeth. Never really thought of it as an indicator of that persons diet but for example smokers teeth is a total turn off.
- I’m totally rubbish at grammar, but I decided if I can spot something wrong, then there must be something seriously wrong. This is clear to see when using certain sites.
- Hair and Clothes isn’t such a bad thing, but I do look for a unique style. Of course glasses is always a plus, specially the rectangle framed ones.
- Tattoo’s, I’ll be honest and say I can’t stand tattoos. Little tiny ones isn’t so bad but massive ones are just a large turn off for me. Not sure where it comes.
- Nails and hands isn’t such a deal breaker, I do like soft hands.
- Accents are tricky because I’ve been out with woman who I couldn’t even understand. She was lovely but I didn’t get a word she was saying.
- Shoes like clothes and hair, i’m more interested in seeing a bit of unique style, something which speaks about their personality. I would never turn someone down just because they had crappy shoes.
- Couldn’t give a toss what car they drive and frankly most of the woman I’ve dated carry iphones or blackberries. If I dated one which had a rooted Android phone, I honestly would be amazed
Lucidipedia, mydreamscape done correctly
For many years I had wonder when someone was going to create a place for dreams which is tasteful and about the culture of dreaming.
There was Remcloud.com which opened with much fanfare. Although still running, feels spammy and pretty crappy. All the other places I’ve seen have been more about dream dictionaries or forums about dreams. Mydreamscape was meant to be a tasteful, cleverly crafted and a social network about the culture of dreams.
Well I think someone has finally done it… lucidipedia.com feels like a serious site and seems to have some very good tutorials and tips to help you dream and remember them. There’s even an online dream diary section which seems to tick all the right boxes with dataportability and sharing features.
So I guess there is only one way to discover how good it is, yes dive in and try it out…
Fitbit wireless syncing, almost…
I have been using my fit bit everyday to give me feedback of how much exercise I’m getting or rather not getting in most cases. However I have no real log of details because the Fitbit won’t sync on Ubuntu or even my Android devices.
However this seems to be coming to an end…
From Fitbit’s blog
Additionally, we waited until now to launch a wristband because we wanted to be able to offer wireless syncing with Android phones as well as iPhones, iPads, and iPods with Bluetooth 4.0. We’re very excited to announce that our products will start syncing with the Samsung Galaxy SIII and Samsung Note 2 in late January/early February, and more devices will follow soon! Viva la mobile!
Its frustrating still because of course i don’t own of those devices however I noticed a comment on the Fitbit app feedback
I was extremely surprised to discover that Sync works on the Galaxy Note 10.1 (n8010) even though it’s not in the supported device list. Super app, though it does loose one star as the functionality and experience is still so far removed from the desktop interface. A little consistency would be welcome, such as the ability to access activity records. Useful if you want to sync your Fitbit on the go and log driving / traveling or any exercises. Keep up the great work though! Looking forward to the next update
Seems most of the samsung bluetooth stack is supported, so when I tried it out on my Samsung Tab 7+ it almost worked. Can’t quite get the sync working but its trying. While on my HTC One X it doesn’t even give me the option.
Indeed frustrating… but I can’t wait for the next update. Reminds me I need to check in on what happening with LibFitbit
Cloud Atlas is finally coming this way…
I won’t lie, I’ve already seen Cloud Atlas a few times.
I couldn’t wait and I’m very glad I did, as the film is so complex and very true to the book. Everytime I see it I’m amazed in how rich the plot is and how amazingly gorgeous the each scene looks and feels.
As usual I want to see this in the cinema, ideally at the Manchester IMAX.
The Official UK Release date for Cloud Atlas is Friday 22nd Febuary.
I’m not certain it will be in the IMAX but I’m going to watch it on the Friday…
Who’s with me?
Top 10 Good Tech Habits
Lifehacker has a list of 10 good tech habits to have… Luckily I seems to have most of them, however its good to share them because lots of my friends have fallen fowl of some of them.
- Search Google Like a Pro
Absolutely! You got to know how to use search engines fully… - Back Up Your Computer
The amount of friends who don’t do this is terrible. I don’t backup everything but the essential stuff I have backed up on Spideroak. The less important stuff I have backed up on Dropbox. - Use Secure Passwords
If I got a pound for everytime I’ve shouted Keepass! - Know What Maintenance Your Computer Needs (and Doesn’t Need)
Of course building PC’s in the past and still doing bits here and there, I certainly feel like I know my stuff, although since I moved to Ubuntu I’ve kind of lost touch with my Windows background. - Be Smart About Hoaxes, Scams, and Internet Myths
Oh I’m across this, snopes and wikipedia is your friend. Generally if you think its all makes sense - Stay Safe on Public Wi-Fi
I’m aware of the risks and never do anything serious on a non-SSL connection. I’m aware of the sniffers and have been known to throw open wireshark every once in a while. - Avoid Getting Malware (and Spreading It to Others)
Running Ubuntu over Windows means the chances of Malware is less but I’m also very aware of the risks. I usually avoid passing stuff on by just deleting them but I’ve sometimes I report them. Specially banking phishing. - Keep Your Desktop and Hard Drive Free of Clutter
Check, all good… - Know When You’re Paying Too Much for a Product
Yes although I won’t go totally out of my way for a deal, as I put a price on my time and effort - Regularly Audit Your Privacy Settings on Social Networks
My general rule applies… If its private, it shouldn’t be online. No matter what privacy settings you have check the End user licence agreement! That will tell you everything you need to know…
Black mirror s2e1: Be right back
Black Mirror season 2 episode 1
Martha (Hayley Atwell) and Ash (Domhnall Gleeson) are a young couple who move to a remote cottage, where Ash’s parents used to live. Ash is a big user of social media, tapping away on his phone, just a bit too much. Martha doesn’t really mind, she loves him and they’re looking forward to their new life together. The day after the move, Ash is killed, returning the hire van. At the funeral, Sarah (Sinead Matthews), a friend of Martha’s, tells her about a new service that lets you stay in touch with the deceased. By using all his past online communications and social media profiles, a new ‘Ash’ can be created – disarmingly ‘real’ and a help to a grieving partner. Martha is disgusted by the concept and wants nothing to do with it. Martha decides to stay in the cottage, despite her sister, Naomi (Claire Keelen), being worried about her isolation. Then one morning Martha receives an email from ‘Ash’. Sarah has signed her up. Martha is furious and deletes the message. But then she discovers she is pregnant and in a confused and lonely state Martha decides to talk to ‘him’.
*Spoilers ahead, you were warned*
Excellent episode which involves a woman losing her partner. A friend sets up her with a special system which takes all the public data of that person and generates a avatar of the data. So all those public tweets, flickr pictures, etc. First it emulates the voice and then it starts to emulates other aspects. In the end the woman is lured into levelling up to a physical avatar.
While it seems somewhat insane… Its not as far future as you may think.
When I first started watching it, I instantly thought about Weavrs…
Weavrs are your alter egos crafted from the threads of the social web.
Imagine Weavrs + Google Now…! Yes be afraid, be very afraid… You think sleeping with your partner as weavr is bad, wait till you point it at someone eles’s weavr! Or worst pointing it at yourself! Scary and freaky stuff!
Charlie Brooker did a preview showing of black mirror at the BFI last month, which I need to watch when I get a chance (can’t get it to play on my xbmc setup unforgettably). Thanks to tim dobson for reminding me of tomscott’s piece about this a while ago… well worth watching like most of his stuff