Month: May 2016

Instant Apps are the most fascinating thing

I like Dieter Bohn, was blown away by Google IO’s demonstration of instant apps.

The basic idea is simple: when you click on a link, if that link has an associated Instant App at the URL you get a tiny version of that app instead of the website. We played around with it a bit today at Google IO, and found that it was as fast (if not faster!) than loading up a web page with the same functionality. It works because developers can “modularize” their apps so they only serve you the parts that you need for whatever you clicked on — points on a map, a video, some home listings, a payment system, or whatever.

But take that idea and think on it a second: there’s a whole class of apps that you use once and never want to bother with again. Google’s example is a parking meter app. It works better as an app because it ties into Android Pay, but honestly you don’t want that thing cluttering up your app drawer most of the time.

YES!

This is why I tend to keep my Nexus 5X phone quite clean and clear of apps, I upload apps to my Nexus 7. If at all possible. Its discipline and I’ll be honest a bit of a pain, as my Nexus 7 relies on Wifi for network connectivity, but generally I think through the positives and negatives of installing each app and where it should go before hitting install.

Recently I installed the Easyjet app on my nexus 7, just so I didn’t have to print out my boarding pass (I have no printer and kinda hate printing). I used the app twice over a period of a week and that was it, uninstalled and gone. If I had instant apps, I would have been very happy with using it instead. Theres also other apps I just need for one task, like at a conference to vote (hey Thinking Digital & Herb), instant apps would so solve this problem; and if really that fast…!

Yes I hear the privacy concerns, but maybe it could be a standard android chooser/selector. Go to the play store and install the app, use instant app or force the service to give me a mobile alternative version.

Yes I hear, developers need to write their apps in a more structured way. But there can’t be much wrong with that? I remember back when I was still in Bristol, a talk about streaming apps, well its almost getting there; although I’m sure many will argue the webapp has already made this a reality.

Join us in exploring object-based media making tools


Like visual perceptive media? Like the concept of perceptive radio, like the javascript libraries we have put out in a open and public way? We want you to come on board and join us…!

We (BBC R&D) have been exploring the new reality of creating object based media through a range of prototypes. I have been exploring the implicit uses of data and sensors to change the objects; or as we started calling it a while ago Perceptive Media.

The big issue is to realisticily create and author these new types of stories, requires a lot of technical knowledge and doesn’t easily seat in the standard content creation workflow, or does it? We want to bring together people in a workshop format to explore the potential of creating accessible tools for authors and producers. Ultimately seeding a community of practice, through open experimentation learning from each other.

The core of the workshop will focus on the question…

“Is it desirable and feasible for the community of technical developers and media explorers to build an open set of tools for use by storytellers and producers?”

During the backdrop of the International Sheffield Documentary Festival the workshop on Monday 13th June will bring together, and are putting out a call for interested parties to work together with the aim of understanding how to develop tools which can benefit storytellers, designers, producers and developers.

We are calling for people, universities, startups, hackers and companies with a serious interest in opening up this area; to reach out and join us. Apply for a ticket and we will be in touch.

I backed the Pebble 2 on kickstarter

https://ksr-video.imgix.net/projects/2477202/video-671239-h264_high.mp4

I completely missed the Pebble update, till Matt talked about it at breakfast today. Unlike previous times, I decided I’m bought in (even if that means signing up to Kickstarters painful privacy policy). I went with the Pebble 2, rather than the Pebble time 2. The only reason I was considering the Pebble time previously is because of the timeline OS and the microphone. But even my old pebble has the timeline now and both have microphones. They even have the heart rate tracker, which should be interesting under water.

ef433d2391d654aa37817295ce10f4a0_original

 

My pebble is getting a little long in the tooth, I don’t want a Android wear watch and I was thinking about replacing it with a Pebble time 3rd gen in the year. I was also considering my options around alternatives such as the vector (which I saw in Bucharest Techweek only days previously)

The timeline concept recently won a D&AD award and rightly so… Its pretty great and the icons certainly do bring a little joy to a clever interface paradigm.

Look forward to seeing my new watch in late quarter 3 2016.

Colour eink, but how large?

Colour Eink display

Collagues sent me a link to mashable piece about colour eink. Mainly because I have writtern about large eink/epaper screens in the past and still not had much of an answer.

E ink, the company behind the pigment-based, low-energy monochromatic displays found in many of today’s popular readers finally figured out how to create up to 32,000 colors in what is almost the exact same technology.

The new display, which E Ink will publicly demonstrate for the first time, is a 20-inch, 2500 x 1600 resolution display that actually shares monochrome E Ink’s impressive power capabilities. Mancini told Mashable that it’s equally power-efficient. He explained that it could be used in bus stop signage. “Bus stops are powered with solar cells, you could power this with solar cells,” he said.

He also noted that even though the prototype will be less than 2-feet wide, size is actually only limited by E Ink’s manufacturing capabilities.

It looks impressive although the question still remains about how big? 20inches isn’t bad but when they mention bus stop size, do they mean like the pervious stuff or actually what we all think about when mentioning bus stops. The glass wall currently reserved for posters and in some cases LCD screens?

 

Time for Cities to Talk About Abandoning Meat?

Ikinari Steak
Hummmm I will certainly miss steak…

More calls to reconsider our meat intake for the sake of the planet. Adrian hon a while ago mentioned a similar thing, suggesting eating meat will become like smoking is now? People will do it but looked upon as maybe selfish and causing harm.

I’m confident that in a hundred years, eating meat will be regarded in the negative way we now view racism or sexism – an ugly, demeaning, and unnecessary act. Like smoking, it will simply fall out of fashion because we’ll find better and healthier alternatives, although we’ll still occasionally eat humanely reared-and-killed animals. Note that I still eat meat even though I should know better.

To be fair, although I am very much in favour of eating meat mainly because the alternatives will cause me harm or even kill me (I kid not). I have been professionally advised multiple times not consider being vegetarian for this exact reason. Yes I could survive but it would mean lots of supplements to make up the things I get from meat.

Although I do see this becoming a really big problem and honestly for the sake of sustainability and longevity of the planet I have started limiting my meat intake a little. However in this blog, there is a lot of arguments which seem to indicate a high cost (the real cost) of meat might make people reconsider? Controversial maybe but in the same way sugar tax came into effect in the UK recently, I’ll be interested in the data which comes back. Or other places where they have done this type of thing?

So why cities? The post has some interesting thoughts….

This is where cities come into play. Obesity and climate change are two of the biggest challenges they’ll face in the 21st century. Ninety percent of urban areas are coastal, and their citizens will be the ones to feel the effects of rising sea levels and freak weather most deeply. So, too, will their health services and economies experience undue strain as the majority of their residents tip the scales and become overweight or obese. For cities, the consequences of inertia will be fatal.

But action must be born out of more than just necessity. Cities are also well placed to manage these changes. (The successes mayors have had in promoting activities like cycling, for instance — which also delivers enormous health and environmental benefits — is a testament to this.) The c40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, featuring 40 of the planet’s most influential cities, has claimed that city leaders have the flexibility which nation states lack: “City mayors are directly accountable to their constituents for their decisions, and are more nimble than state and national elected officials to take decisive action — often with immediate and impactful results.”

And this means they can interface with their citizens directly, getting to the root of problems and attitudes — the fact is, one study found that 90 percent of people’s justifications for eating meat boil down to it being “nice, necessary, normal, or natural.” Meanwhile, the majority of “meat-reducers” in the United Kingdom attribute the choice to improving their personal health — not animal welfare. Cities can move the debate beyond the ideological quagmire that governments, media, and activist groups are currently bogged down in.

Lots to think about… and it certainly makes good points about how our cities could be the biggest driver for this all. Of course it’s always great see my home of Bristol mentioned quite a bit in the examples although I’m sure there are many other shiny examples all over. That and the writer might have a bias to Bristol too.

Whats it like to be a Airbnb host in Manchester?

AirBnB kinda sucks

Zoe pointed me to the medium blog One year hosting on Airbnb.

I thought was actually quite interesting, so I thought I’d do something similar but maybe less quantified.

I moved to Manchester 8 years ago and moved to my own flat 6 years ago. I bought a two bedroom flat mainly so I could have family & friends over without building a bed in the living room each time. Originally it was going to be my computer room complete with server and all type of tech. But I ended up putting a sofa bed in there and never really using it much. It was a bit of a waste to be honest, and I always felt a little bad about that.

As one of the earliest movers to Manchester from London as part of the BBC’s move to media city UK. I saw the potential for maybe renting my spare room to people moving up and finding their feet. Heck I’m right by Piccadilly station and they were building a new tram station by me (new Islington) making getting to media city easy as pie. There is a private Facebook group for movers and I kept an eye on that for potential people.

There was quite a few people doing the same and they would list their places on spare room and elsewhere. I was going to do the same but never around to it. I didn’t really want someone for months at an end because I wanted the flexibility if a friend wanted to stay over. I had previously had a flat mate (Tim) and he was great (saving my life and all) but I said to him that I was going to live mainly alone. It was something I just needed to do

I had heard of airbnb but thought of it like couchsurfing which another friend (Dave) had used a lot. It was somewhere between needing to put my spareroom somewhere to show people on the Facebook group and half looking for a flat mate, partly from the guilt of not using the spareroom much. That make me actually look into it and ultimately put up the listing.

Skies above Manchester
Double in Manchester City Centre

My listing was very honest, maybe too honest. The photos are a little crappy and I didn’t stage anything (no ironing of the sheets, photo retouching, etc). I also didn’t use a wide angle lens like airbnb’s photographers do. Nope the room is small but has a proper double bed, some draws and a mini wardrobe. I decided the biggest selling points of the flat was the separate bathroom (I tend to use my on-suite for everything), the amazing views, its location and my flexibility. This is why I made the first photo a sunset from the living room. I keep thinking I need do better about the photos but frankly i’m happy with the little extra money and I’m not doing it to get rich (unlike some people)

On that front, I actually add restrictions to put certain people off.

  • You can not book my room on the day. I had enough of last-minute requests and frankly the kind of people putting in the request seemed a little sketchy. The weirdest one is a man who wrote a message like I had already accepted his request, he wanted to know where to go to meet me!
  • I always get into a conversation with the person. If I get a bad feeling I make an excuse and reject their request. I need to know they are coming to Manchester for a purpose not doss at mine, eat my food (there is a story there) and drink all my cocktail spirits.
  • I wouldn’t do instant book, for the reason above I don’t use instant book, I need to get a feel of who the person is. I’m also ruthless with checking their previous bookings, social media profiles and offline ID. My bare minimum acceptable is a verified phone number, email, at least one social media profile. I need a good photo of the person and one or two positive reviews. If no reviews I’d need to know they have done the offline ID check. It’s off-putting but it’s my home and I want to know exactly who they are. Also I checked with my insurance and this is important if Airbnb’s insurance doesn’t cut it and I need to use my own.
  • All guests need to go through verification. I turned this on because it made sense for me.
  • I charge over the recommended price. Airbnb has data on all the places similar to yours and how well they are doing. The algorithm then calculates a recommended price which will attract people and earn a good return. The problem for me is I don’t want a lot of people, I don’t need the room always in use. It’s optimised to get more people and thats not for me. It also requires you really change it quite a bit or rely on them changing the price. I swear a few times I seen the price go as low as 19 pounds a night, this is not workable for me.
  • I have a list of things which I’m allergic to which I have listed on my profile. The big one is no cooking baked beans in the flat. I can deal with almost anything else but I can’t have that in my flat. To be fair most hosts don’t let people cook, but I think thats pretty tight (imho) and unfair if you are there for over a week.

Some numbers. To date I have had a lot of enquiries for my spareroom (73, I took the time to respond to). Some months it’s every week some months I get nothing. I have had 15 people in the years I have been doing it. The average stay is about 3-4 nights and I mainly get males (unsurprisingly), but had a good number of females. If you count actual bookings, its not far off half. But its only because Caroline rebooked many times. My next guest is female. Exact earnings I do know because Airbnb does tell you but I’d rather not say, but it’s worth saying I did look up the maximum you could earn before paying excess tax and I am quite a way off. Paypal did think I was doing some money laundering and cut me off for a while, which was painful.

Most of my guests are from the UK but I’ve had a couple from the states and western europe. Once again if I was doing things by time, Portugal would be the biggest percentage by far with the UK second and America third. I don’t tend to get many people just wanting to party, mainly becasue of the restrictions I have put in place I believe.

Incidents? Nothing major my front door has been left open, somebody complained I didn’t have enough takeaway menus (I have none to be fair) and I have found something very surprising in the fridge one day.

I have heard of some real bad stories and to be fair my own experience in Japan does remind me how bad things can get. Also how tricky getting help out of Airbnb can be. I would do everything I can to fix things myself before embarking on getting help out of them. Although to be fair they have quickly modified peoples reviews when they break the guidelines (not deliberately or maliciously)

Positive experiences, I have many!

Catherine was the first woman who stayed at mine and she was wonderful, shes also the one who finally convinced me I should finally go to the ballet I was thinking about. Darren was so pleased about the place and was kind enough to let me cousin and friend stay in the living room while he was there. I don’t even know where to start with Caroline…

She certainly stayed the longest at just over 3 months but was a pleasure to be around. We had some great conversations and had a routine of watching the Affair together. She certainly became more like a flat mate than a airbnb guest which was fine, except I needed to redecorate my flat, which also involved storing stuff in the spare room. It was a shame to see her go, but things were not working out for her career wise too.

All of these people wrote me glowing reviews and gave me a lovely present to say thank you. Caroline even wrote me a number of lovely post it notes during the months, one still exists on my noticeboard. Will have to encourage more guests to do this after seeing Rehan’s book.

Having Vivid Lounge downstairs is incredible and always gets super high praises from guests, no wonder it was voted one of the best thai restaurant in Manchester recently. Most of my guests drop in there for drinks or food at some point. I’m actually writing this while sipping a coffee in Vivid, trying to get use to British Summer Time

I would encourage everyone who has a spare bed in their house to list their space on Airbnb (if that’s legal in your country). It’s a great way to boost the economy of a city/country because there are thousands of other tourists who like to visit different cities but are not able to do it because the hotels are too expensive.

As for me, I am deeply honoured to have been a host for the hundreds of guests who stayed at my apartment and gave me a chance to contribute to their first amazing experience of Amsterdam.

I would echo most of Rehan’s thoughts.

But I have to say you have to sensible about everything. I know friends who have taken on Airbnb and been unflexible or not willing to trust the person with keys, etc. Trust is a two way street and my faith in humanity is strong, but I’m not blinded by making huge amounts of money. This is the classic money clouding judgement/decision making process. Yes you could make quite a bit of money but you will end up taking more risky people and do you want the hassle of replacing stuff after someone decides to have a party in your flat with a bunch of friends or even people they met that night?

I know theres a lot of tension about Airbnb, especially with what Berlin did, others are sure to follow suit. Some of the Manchester flats management agents won’t allow Airbnb to happen within their flats. But as I said previously, we need to think differently about the people who are renting a whole apartment or house from those like myself who are renting their spare room or a sofa in the case of Rehan at first. Its a great way to meet different types of people and its always a interesting talking point in conversations, dare I say it could help make you interesting?

Best of Thinking Digital Newcastle 2016

Thinking Digital 2016 Newcastle

Yes I know its actually Gateshead but Herb Kim did call it TDCNCL after the newcastle train station short code? This also cuts out the confusion with Thinking Digital Manchester & London.

I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get to Gateshead for this years Thinking Digital as its harder to justify with the Manchester one right on my doorstep. But there is something about the venue and atmosphere in the Sage which just makes a already excellent conference, great! Hall 2 in the Gateshead Sage is compact but the arrangement of seats just makes everyone feel like part of the event. This year was different as this year Thinking Digital went ahead with the 1.5 day format. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work but it seemed to work…

The workshop on the first day kicked off procedings. I signed up to the clearing the air workshop which I felt could have some good tips for running workshops and meetings in a more formal manner.

I wasn’t disappointed as I came out with lots of different techniques for getting a constructive meeting for all. At one point, I asked a question of Alison and she got where I was going with it down to a tee. You mentioned neurodiversity and started to give tips considering a range of diverse people.

It was Saul Cousins I think, who said this workshop wasn’t his first choice but he was very glad he choose it as a second place. Because I got agreement to come at the last minute, I had less choices but I was very happy with what I got back. I also found parallels with what me and Marie had done at Thinking Digital Manchester last year. We all seemed to be hovering around the same ideas.

As usual I tend to pick out the best talks and give them credit.

Thinking Digital 2016 Newcastle

Mikko has spoken at Thinking Digital Newcastle a few times if I remember correctly and everytime I have nothing but praise for he talks. He’s got a endless supply of stories from the dark side of data security. This time he’s focus was on ransomware, this seamenly new type of crime. Seamenly because as Miko pointed out the AIDS malware was writen many years earlier and did the exact same thing.

During the end of his talk, I was also thinking about the lack of diversity in devices and services. This came after Mikko mentioned some ransomware which searches for Apple time machines and encrypts that too. I guess the job is made easier by most Apple users using the defaults? Easy of use or opionated design being exploited?

Lots to take away, but the main one being don’t click those links in emails (yes this was drummed home through-out the talk)

Thinking Digital 2016 Newcastle

Sarah I hadn’t actually come across before in real life but I was a little bit aware of her in passing through things I had read surrounding ethics of data, blockchains and idenity blogs. Herb set her up and she explained not only what a blockchain was but also why and where they are useful. It was a hard task but Sarah did a good job without getting too lofty.

I caught her briefly afterwards and said what a great job she had done and that we must get together and talk about the databox work, which I believed UCL are a part of. Hopefully next time I’m down in London and schedules work out.

Thinking Digital 2016 Newcastle

Edward is a drummer influced by the prodigy album Music for the Jilted Generation, who then wanted to create house music using drums. Yes it sounds kind of insane but true. I mean how do you bang out a consistent 130 beats per minute over the course of 4-8 minutes? Thats pretty serious before you even consider all the other stuff which goes into house music.

Luckily with the advances in technology, its become a lot easier to control more elements from any interface you are happy to use. Ed performed and showed how it all works. I was certainly bouncing my head around as he played.

Ed contuned the great legacy of music at Thinking Digital.

Thinking Digital 2016 Newcastle

James talk frustrated me mainly because Microsoft Bing seemed to be capturing contextual data but for the simple (I say simple but compared to more interesting uses) sake of a better search result. This wound me up because I’m sure I tweeted something like…

This is only half the puzzle.

This is something I’ll touch on in my presentation in Bucharest. You need both contextual data and adaptive narratives. Google’s effort to understand the semantic meaning behind web pages, allows them to adapt the search results. Hence I ask (regularlly in Manchester) “should I take my umbrella with me?” It knows where I am, knows roughly where I’m going and the weather report. Rather than send me a weather pre made weather report, it answers back with a tailor answer drawn from the data its understood.

I’m not saying this isn’t what Bing is also trying to do but it didn’t come across that way. I felt they were missing the bigger picture.

Thinking Digital 2016 Newcastle

Tom is usually the final talk but after 9 years doing many things including lighting his sweater on fire, coming back from the future and many other interesting antics. He injected his style of famous style of humour into the emoji debate.

Funny and enlighening? Thats Tom Scott.

Thinking Digital 2016 Newcastle

Katherine talked dispelled the crap (litterally) of whats going on in our gut. She talked about the microbiome and how it all worked. It was a good talk which honestly I hadn’t really considered or thougth about before. It was good to hear most fermented veg was as or even better than those probiotics yogurts which are all the rave now. More Kimchi and Miso is something I wrote into my mindmapped notes. Never really been a fan of those yogurts, always left feeling slightly sick.

The best image has the be the one below which sums up more than anyone would ever want.

Thinking Digital 2016 Newcastle

With Tom moved from his regular slot, I was wondering who could possibily end Thinking Digital on a high like previous years? Step forward MT Rainey OBE.

I knew nothing about MT, but it become very clear that she had worked with Apple and Steve Jobs in the very early days. I simply can’t do her talk any justice in my review as she covered many accounts of meeting Steve Jobs. She also touched on the multiple films including the latest one (steve jobs) and the Ashton Kutcher one (Jobs). She felt the latest one (Aaron Sorkin’s) was more correct but Micheal Fassbender got steve very wrong. He was more like Ashton Kutcher, which to be honest makes a lot of sense.

Lovely quote to consider in her talk about Steve Jobs…

Ideas are a powerful patient for a brand

And the observation about lack of woman in Apple and the movies

It was another great Thinking Digital and I got to give John Thorp, Irini Papadimitriou,Will Dracup and Joe Faith credit for some very good talks too. I believe all the talks can be now watched here.

The 1.5 day format worked, my only grumble is when I go to Thinking Digital Newcastle, I tend to take most of the week. This means I’m fully present in the conference, open minded to all the talks and thinking about the connections. With a day lost, I felt the need to get back into emails during my stay, when usually I would leave it to next week. But I do totally understand. So over all it worked…

My beautiful broken brain

I first heard about the documentary my beautiful broken brain via mindhacks. I then tracked it down and finally watched it. Lotje was 34 when she had the same kind of brain injury as myself. I ended up calling it #mybrushwithdeath.

Watching the documentary was unreal not only because there was so much I could relate directly to. The process of what she remembered and what she doesn’t really got me. I was in tears. There is absolutely no doubt I was incredibly lucky. The mix of reality and non-reality was frustrating to say the least, but I certainly didn’t have the big problem Lotje had with reading.

Some people will say why film it? Maybe the same people who asked why I would get on stage and do a TEDx talk about my experience? You only have to read the reviews to start to understand why, telling such a personal story is so important.

As a survivor of multiple strokes including a major hemorrhagic stroke in 1999 just 13 days after my 37th Birthday and a massive hemorrhagic stroke 2011 just before Christmas I can relate to the lady in this film, I went through and I am still going through a lot of what she had experienced from her stroke. I found this movie very good at explaining what we as stroke survivors are going through. I would highly recommend this movie to people who are interested stroke experiences and want to understand what we are going through because it is truly hard for us to explain to others what it is like to live life with our beautiful broken brains.

If I was to sum up the documantary, it would be the line from Lotje herself…

I’ve learned I’m strong, accepted my vurnability and focus on what matters…

Beautifully said…!

A step on the way to Diversity?

https://twitter.com/lheron/status/733758898855940098

I understand why the Huffington Post, posted the picture of their editors meeting and to be fair they never actually said it was about diversity. But myself and others looked at it and thought a few things.

There seems to be a lack of black women at the table. To me this reflected the poor state of diversity in the tech sector generally. It almost seems like the 25-30% asian is right on in this picture too. Then you have the issue of them seeming to be middle class and most likely all from a similar class of university (I’m totally guessing and sure will be proven very wrong). Moss code, spells it out in a way I wouldn’t quite go as far.

The diversity in laptops might seem funny, but its indicates a deeper problem I keep seeing. The lack of diversity of thought, fear of individualism and group think. They might as well be wearing the same clothes and the same style hair. Its like those white ear buds, it went from I’m in the same club to a mass thing and you can’t possibily consider another colour. Sad but true…

It might seem harsh and there is absolutely no disrespect to Liz Heron or the Huffington Post editors team. Honestly I could walk into most places and find far worst, but its important to note we have got a long way to go and I’m more welcoming to diversity which is not simply replacing one group with another.

It had to be said sorry…

Speaking at Bucharest technology week

Bucharest - Dâmbovița River

This week Thursday (26th May 2016), I’ll be speaking at Enterprise-IT Summit during Bucharest Technology Week, a celebration of the positive impact technology can have on our personal and professional lives. Its going to be at the Athénée Palace Hilton, in Bucharest.

I’ll be talking on the future of contextual and adaptive media. Something we are really understanding along with others, as you can see in this call for participation for a workshop on Monday 13th June.

You can browse the event agenda and full speaker line-up on the website.

I have never been to Romania or eastern europe till I went to Poland last year. but I am really looking forward to meeting all the great people involved in the digital & tech scene out there. Will be fun to testing their creative thinking in a little workshop following my talk on the same subject.

Mixed reality with compound documents?

WebVR-Logo

There is something quite exciting which i dont think most people have spotted. VR is nice and getting alot of attention recently. In theory, webvr could be more flexible that other vr engines because it’s the web; the browser’s are use to compound documents. While the other engines have to build all this stuff into their engines. My guess this might be the 2nd or 3rd reason why GearVR supports WebVR? It kinda already works in the lastest Firefox & Chrome, even works on Android Chrome (works for me without the dev version of Chrome, try it yourself)? Although polyfill might have some use here.

The nature of a compound document can enable multiple types of technology to be triggered from the same source. Say for example I could mix webvr with the geolocation api, orientation api and the webaudio api. Can you imagine the crazy experiences you can build with those things? I believe the JavaScript can run at the same time as everything else but this might be browser dependant.

It’s still a bit of a theory, but this could enable true mixed reality or (VisuoHaptic Mixed Reality if you must). Not that crappy stuff you currently see. Still like to see magic leap myself but to be honest Project foxeye interest me.

I’m looking to research this area with a bunch of smart people…

Classic Pebble meets OS 3.0

Late last night my pebble watch got a firmware upgrade to version 3.0 of the Pebble software. It required a reboot and the new pebble app on my phone. I have been wanting this upgrade for a long while since I first saw the timeline feature.

I’m very happy to say its a incredible interface for a smartwatch.

Take back your lunches

lunch

How long do you take for lunch?

Personally, I take a full hour…

I consciously take my full hour or sometimes a little more, to balance the amount of time I sometimes work (I quantify my work time with hamster time tracker, so know how much time I have worked)

I very rarely eat at my desk, although many of my colleagues do it regularly. To be fair I have mentioned eating at the kitchen table (we have communal kitchen tables on each floor) but they always blame meetings or not enough time.

Take Back Your Lunch. In the best of worlds, that’s something we all ought to do every day. At the very least, I want to urge you to take back your lunch on Wednesday, and then on every Wednesday this summer, wherever you are. To find out where people will be gathering – or if you’d like to organize a Take Back Your Lunch Meetup in your city or town

Sounds good to me, reminds me of some of the early breakfast meetups there use to be in London.

Alien intelligence like plant intelligence?

Future Everything 2016

I never got around to writing about the Future Everything conference which is a shame because it was another good conference with plenty of interesting topics and conversation. I really should share my mindmap which is full of interesting thoughts and ideas I picked up while listening to the various sessions.

In the intelligence section Darius Kazemi talked about the bots he creates and how they deliberately don’t have human characteristics. He then raised the question of what is intelligence which is always fascinating (I could spend a whole post just about that alone) but he then pleaded that we should stop trying to humanise them, referring to them as alien intelleigence.

When we are building artificial intelligences, whether they’re corporations or recurrent neural networks, we are building alien intelligences.

There was a bunch of good points like how can we programme them to be human if we don’t really know ourselves? There was also a really good discussion about the ethics, responsibility and diversity of the creator and what is created. This was explored much further by Lydia Nicholas and her work into ethical frameworks for data use.

But I found it interesting to read Matt Locke’s post pretty much saying a similar thing. AI like plants?

…I’m here to talk about a network of conversations that we can’t hear. The garden around us — blossoming fruit trees, thick borders, and fresh cut lawns — is also communicating, an ecosystem sharing information and competing for resources using a grammar and vocabulary that is completely alien to us. Wright thinks we can learn from the way plants talk to design better networks of bots — the intelligent agents that are being hyped as the way we’ll communicate with our tech ecosystems in the future. Instead of building bots like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa in our likeness, he believes the answer might be to stop trying to make bots behave like humans altogether.

It’s also interesting the parallels between Darius’s comment about not really knowing whats going on inside the complex neuronetworks we are generating and Matt talking with Tim about the science of plants communicate and it wasn’t till recently we could understand how this actually worked.

Both are worth listening and reading, then consider the parallels.

Accelerated intimacy & relationships?

There is something which happened last week, which I can’t talk about publicly (yet!). But it has me thinking quite a bit about accelerated intimacy and intense shared experiences.

It’s that swept of your feet feeling, which is amazing; but the question remains if it can turn into something more sustainable and longer running? I’m always reminded of that scene at the end of Speed (1994) with Jack (Keanu Reeves) and Annie (Sandra Bullock).

Jack: I have to warn you, I’ve heard relationships based on intense experiences never work.
Annie: OK. We’ll have to base it on sex then.
Jack: Whatever you say, ma’am.

Ooooeerr!