Month: August 2014

Redecentralize this…

Nurri-network

Adewale once said  (I wouldn’t be surprised if he gives me a kick next time he sees me, but I think this quote sums up so much. And its only the start of the smart things he thinks and talks about)

People’s enthusiasm for federated decentralised $WHATEVER seems inversely proportional to the practicality of their plan for achieving it

However a share I recently was tagged on to revealed Jon Udells post and a giant list of projects trying to solve the problem decentralised social networking.

Going under the notion of the Alternative Internet, there are some quite interesting projects including…

Ampify is an open source, decentralised, social platform. It is intended as a successor to the Open Web and as a replacement for closed platforms like iOS and Facebook by providing a web application framework to create social apps on top of a secure, decentralised core.

ClearSkies is a peer-to-peer file sync program. It is inspired by BitTorrent Sync, but has an open and fully-documented protocol. ClearSkies is a sync program similar to DropBox, The protocol is layered in such a way that other applications can take advantage of it for purposes other than file sync.

Movim is a decentralized open source social network based on XMPP.

Peerm Anonymous P2P inside browsers, no installation, encrypted and secure. The browsers are talking the Tor protocol extended to P2P and are connecting to the nodes using WebSockets, multi-sources and streaming are supported.

Trovebox community edition. Wrote about this many times but didn’t know there was a community edition too.

Twister is a secure and fully-decentralized P2P microblogging platform based on concepts and code from Bitcoin and Libtorrent (as described in this whitepaper).

pump.io Self described as “a stream server that does most of what people really want from a social network”. It’s a social stream with support for federated comunication.

trsst looks and feels like twitter but encrypted and anonymized and decentralized and only you hold the keys.

Plenty of cool projects but very little traction unfortunately, however theres quite a few which can be used to connect to the centralised networks. Looking at the list, I’m left wondering if Diaspora*, Wave and  Tent has gone through the trough of disillusion and might be coming out the other end? A while ago I thought WordPress was going to make moves in this area of decentralised social networking.

Do you really think Facebook will be around in 15 years?

me on facebook

I still have this strange relationship with Facebook. I don’t really like it but I end up using it because lots of friends are on it and for them its a core part of the Internet (rightly or wrongly). My volleyball teams also use Facebook to book sessions (yes so popular is volleyball in Manchester) and I do get comments from many more friends when I post things into  Facebook.

In the past I used Facebook as massive dumping ground and didn’t really care to login. My view that Facebook is the modern equivalent of the walled gardens of AOL. Although I still stand by this, I have also noticed my usage increasing too.

So when I read the piece titled I Left Facebook, And You Can Too. I reflected on my own increase usage.

Imagine, for a moment, that you must quit using Facebook forever, starting right now. No more posting to Facebook or checking Facebook for the rest of your life. But don’t worry, you can still e-mail all those friends. Does that make you feel panicky? If you’re panicky, it’s a clue. Maybe you’ve been on Facebook for most of your life, so this kind-of-addicted feeling seems normal to you. It’s not normal. I was talking with a woman in her 50s this weekend, who said to me, “I wish I could quit Facebook but it’s so addictive: ‘Oh, this person said this, that person said that, and oh, this person is taking boating lessons, let’s look at all the pictures of the boat,’ and then before I know it two hours have passed and I don’t even KNOW the person taking boating lessons!” This is what it feels like when your connections with a platform are being strengthened, as opposed to the connections with the people you love: you can spend two hours on Facebook looking at the boating lessons of people you don’t even know. This is very convenient for Facebook.

I barely look at the timeline/newsfeed as I’m generally just looking at the notifications. I can feel the lure of the notifications in facebook, this is why I removed Facebook from my mobile phone and only had it on my tablet (plus it was a massive battery hog). Then very recently I removed Facebook messenger from my phone too.

One of the things I have been thinking about recently is, Facebook as a dating site? The evidence is lots of people meet through facebook and lets be honest, its not any worst than the dating sites? The same sites which say they don’t really know what they are doing…

Anyway the question I pose, is if Facebook will be around in 15years? Their move to split up the mobile app is frustrating but I can imagine a Facebook dating app in the next few years. Along with their photos app (I said it first!).
The next 15 years, I expect it will still be around but I’m expecting the innovators dilemma to come into effect at some point. And even splitting up the experiences into more niches won’t save them.

Instapaper added video support, since when?

The Magazine

I switched from Pocket/Read it later ages ago when instapaper started supporting Kindle deliver. I use it all the time and at some points, its been the main reason for having my paperwhite kindle. The nice thing is its pretty much automatic, and I tend to just turn the kindle on and it automatically gets the latest instapaper over wifi.

I side stepped the Kindle’s annotation system by having the same document on my phone and being able tweet it directly. Its all pretty great, although I did consider using diigo’s readitlater feature, especially now the mobile app is better.

However I have wanted a solution for saving non youtube videos (I use watch later for youtube at the moment). The amount of times someones posted a video to Vimeo and I have had to bookmark it or something else.

Well it seems somewhere in the updates, they added support for video from youtube and vimeo! Great stuff my pro payment is well spent, not only that the ifttt channel has been updated with a number of improvements, but I really need to start using the highlights/annotation feature more.

Little social test, how men on tinder react to makeup?

graffiti, Shoreditch
Tim is once again on a roll with this  little test of the effect of makeup on profile pictures in the domain of online dating. Or how men on tinder reacted to three different levels of makeup.

As many of you know, on Tinder you cannot view any reciprocated likes (matches) until you indicate your interest in that person by swiping to the right. So, when planning my experiment, I decided to swipe right for the first 100 suggested matches per account, then allow one hour afterward to see what kind of messages and matches it turned up. I then counted the reciprocated likes, messages and ages of my matches to see any general trends when it came to my level of cosmetic “enhancement.”

To be clear this isn’t a scientific in anyway… but the results did surprise me and the conclusions were slightly interesting… I say slightly…

Despite my reservations about the entire concept, however, the guys on Tinder surprised me. More men flocked to a bare-faced girl than a heavily made up one, yet they seemed most aggressively interested in a face adorned in average levels of makeup. Their language seemed to reflect what they thought of the woman behind the makeup, treating my bare-faced account as a friend before a hook-up. While it’s unfortunate to me that many of these men treated a woman as more sexualized because of her cosmetics, their cordiality in most of the messages was refreshing.

Part of this could be the out of your league thing? Or maybe its a good thing for once…? Because heck nothing else good seems to come from Tinder 🙂

Dropbox as furniture design company

This Alabamiana Library Is A Beaut

Dropbox as furniture design company” – @iledigital (Jon Rogers)

When Jon first said this to me, I had to think for a second. Then I got it.

Amazon, ibooks, etc all have their own proprietary ways of holding your ebook. But imagine if you  used many different sources to gather books and organise them. Some digital and some physical (like I do) These are sync’ed using Dropbox or other syncing systems and instead of being displayed as files, appear like dropbox’s photos stream. A far more useful way to display books you have and heck why not make it sharable while your at it?

Next leap… Instead of it being just a digital thing, how about as a physical manifestation? Dropbox could sync the physical and digital together, like a wispersync for binding digital and physical items. Maybe it slots a bookmark into position or folds over the top edge of a page?

But one thing you don’t want is some ugly as sin apple skeuomorphism bookshelf in your living room. It would need to fit with the rest of the furniture and surrounds. Making Dropbox a furniture design company. Not such a massive leap in imagination I would say…

Expectation control on deploy or die!

Joi Ito at SIME'08

Somebody pointed me at a piece from Oreilly’s Solid conference. Like most others I would have loved to have gone but to be fair there would have been people I would rather have gone ahead of myself.

Joi ito I have a lot of respect for and I remember meeting him in London over 10 years ago. But I take a little issue with something Joi says…

the Media Lab’s emphasis is on projects that go all the way to manufacturing and distributing: moving from “demo or die” to “deploy or die,” as Joi puts it. Projects that deploy can be vastly more impactful than those that just demo — putting thousands of devices into the hands of users rather than just a couple. Plus, the manufacturing process is a crucial source of both constraints and creative possibility. Joi says, “Understanding manufacturing is going to be key to design, just like understanding the Internet has become key to running a company.”

Deploy or die is a nice idea but there’s issues which are associated with deployment. I understand the cost of manufacturing is getting cheaper however you need to be open and honest with the end user. User experience needs to be great otherwise people will simply drop it or kick it to the bin. Whats the point in putting it in peoples hands if they just put it in the bin?

Saying this is a demo, beta or prototype sets the expectation and this is a important stage which you shouldn’t ignore. Its the reason why Gmail had a beta tag for 10 years.

I’m in agreement the prototype shouldn’t be thrown away once you go into production. The prototype should embody as much of the real thing as possible. Its important to remember, someone needs to support the final thing. If you’re a research institute, this is not what you should be doing… This is the kind of thing which gets in the way of progression and researching the next problem/question.

Also I would point out that Joi is mainly talking about physical things which has always had a problem with being open and putting things out there for people to play with. This is something the internet has over the real world… A place to try stuff in the comfort of your own home.

Whats really needed is a safe place where people can play and try new things, which people understand don’t have the complete story or supply chain behind it. That space shouldn’t be a lab tucked away, it should be somewhere neutral like the number of community spaces which are popping up all over the place. In such a space, you can deploy or die to your hearts content. It shouldn’t be a genius bar either, it should be something comfortable and welcoming.

Yes it doesn’t scale too well but I think you will get more qualitative and qualitative feedback as a result

HBO’s Rethinking Dyslexia

Somebody suggested I seek out HBO’s one hour special on rethinking dyslexia. The special is called the big picture movie and had me in slight tears to be honest.

From IMDB…

Successful leaders in Business, law, and Politics reflect on their Dyslexic experiences as we follow the story of Dylan, a high school senior who is must overcome the challenges of Dyslexia to achieve his dream of getting into a competitive college. By following his journey as well as other children, we come to see how many myths and misconceptions there are about Dyslexia, and how it offers gifts as well as challenges. Recent findings in neuroscience reveal for the first time that Dyslexia is physiological challenge, and Drs. Sally and Bennett Shaywitz, top experts, explain how Dyslexia works and what the opportunities are. Written by bronyaur

And the two reviews are excellent too.

The film does a great job at allowing the viewer to understand many of the challenges faced by dyslexics. Most don’t realize what dyslexia really is and how many people it effects. I wish the film offered solutions or let people know that they can deal with dyslexia if their school teaches them correctly. People need to know that they can learn to read and spell much better if the proper method is used. Specifically the Orton-Gillingham method or the Wilson method works. Whole language method is an absolute failure for anyone with dyslexia or a dyslexia related issue. This film is inspiring for dyslexics but should be watched by all. Fight for your children. Don’t let the school systems label your kid as LD, instead make sure they know your kid is dyslexic, and as such needs specific OG methods to learn properly.

The documentary is excellent and I have already sent a link to my parents and sister. Hopefully give them more insight into how I think and go about things.

I recently bought the Dyslexia the advantage (although I got to say its not very dyslexic friendly from a quick look, so as usual I got the ebook version too) and am looking into different methods which I have never heard of including the the Orton-Gillingham method and  Wilson method. The more I learn, the more I wish I knew back when I was in school. There is a level of regret but like in the documentary my character was changed (maybe) for the better because of the mountains I had to climb as a result?

Is it our drugs are all digital now or digital is the new ecstasy?

My Generation by 0100101110101101.ORG

Sometimes I bite at these headlines written for maximum bite value. This one reads… Now All Drugs are Digital

Obviously this is a lie, there are many synthetic drugs hitting the market which are being sold through the web.  But its a  interesting concept nonetheless from Children of the Machine.

The PC is the LSD of the ‘90s,” stated Timothy Leary in his last book, Chaos and Cyber Culture. Your first-ever desktop was acid. Think about your iPhone. Think about Oculus Rift. These are the 21st century’s digital super-strains. Let’s get wired.

Interestingly when thinking about the headline I instantly linked it to my post from a while ago, computers are the new ecstasy.

Which one is it… our drugs are all digital or the digital is the new ecstasy? They sound similar but I would argue, the later is more true, if you watch people on their phones and online. But then again the software is crafted in a way which encourages lab rat like behavior… maybe thats the new ecstasy?

Dating in the 90’s vs Now, which do you prefer?

Tim continues his run of good quality links on twitter. This time something from Buzzfeed Yellow Youtube channel.

Dating in the 90’s verses now… is a witty look nostalgic trip back to dating in the 90’s (loving the drink reversal btw) Something I see a throw back to in many dating apps. I hear everyday from certain friends, I just want to meet someone like the old days… Well this is a reminder of what it really was like.

I’m not saying things are better now, just different. As I said in my Primeconf talk, the geeks won but it was a pyrrhic victory (not peridoc victory as I thought it was spelled in my talk). People have been left alienated and hurt by the way things have changed. I’m unsure if people will get over it or it will swing back the other way?

Fascinating reading the comments on youtube following the video.

Gareth Ferguson writes…

Virtual dating is for cowards. Nothing says success like meeting a girl somewhere in public, flirt for a lil bit, and get the number. There is no mystery, what you see is what you get. When using the Internet, its common for fat chicks to use old pictures of themselves so they can give the illusion that this is who you are talking with. Where is the confidence in that? Then you get persons who seem to be so interesting online til you meet them in person and its like BORING!!! Give me a real date than a virtual date any day

As you can imagine that caused a massive load of comments… but there are some interesting ones mixed in.

atomic jacob replied with…

it has nothing to do about not having courage, its infact the opposite. women need to stop taking the role of submissive and have the courage or balls go out and get what they want. i admire women who have that sort of courage, and that doesnt make me weak or lacking balls(i liked that term lol)

On balance, I prefer to float between both ways. There is a feeling that a nostalgic look back is waste of time really? And ever so easy, maybe this part of growing old? Sorry things are the way they are, learn to adapt… Change is the only constant.

The fight over dating will rage on, and anyone who manages to get the balance right will make a killing, specially if they don’t manipulate users too…