Month: May 2017

Imagine 60db with Object based media?

60dB logo

When I first heard about 60dB, I thought great someones finally made a object based podcasting client.

60dB brings you today’s best short audio stories – news, sports, entertainment, business and technology, all personalized for you.

Unfortunately I was wrong.

Its a bit like stitcher which is well loved by some people.s

It does seem to pick and play news stories. But the sources are specially crafted (ready for syndication like this) rather than the client processing the audio and picking out the parts most relevant to your listening preferences.

Its understandable because to do this you would need well thought-out metadata created by the original author/production. Without it you can’t have objects, without objects you are reliant on serious processing of the audio to build the metadata which the player can use (that or some serious computational power).

I had heard and thought it was a logical move for Google Play’s podcasting support would include some kind of basic automated metadata/transcript but it never happened. Another missed opportunity to show off the power of google and make themselves a essential part of the podcasting landscape, like how Apple did with itunes.

Seems like a great opportunity for some enterprising startup, specially since podcasting might save the world. Dare I say it again, perceptive podcasts could be incredible for all the reasons podcasting originally captured peoples attention.

 

Ollies tearing up the road mix

My friend Oli asked me nicely if I could do a mix for his new car, after the last mix which I did for his Mazda MX5

Of course, any reason to do a good mix while taking planes and trains over the last month. I did this one while sat in Helsinki Airport but made a bit of a mistake with the crossfader which meant doing it again.

The mix is a weird of mix trance and dub steppy type tunes. I kind thought of Oli tearing up the road on a summers day. So theres moments of uplifting trance alongside some of dirty dub step. I’ve been playing it while riding around on the scooter and it great.

Hope you enjoy Oli… play it loud!

  1. Bobby Orlando: The’O’Melody Felix Da Housecat – 2 Many DJs
  2. Rage Valley – Knife Party
  3. Ten (Club mix) – Sander Van Doorn, Mark Knight & Underworld
  4. My Beat (Jan Driver mix) – Blaze
  5. Megalodon – Dash Berlin
  6. Humming the lights – Armin Van Buuren pres Gala
  7. Grotesque (Alex MORPH and RAM mix) – RAM
  8. Shadow World – Thomas Bronzwaer
  9. Helsinki Scorching (Alex MORPH remix) – Super8 vs Tab
  10. Grooveline (Matt Darey remix) – Blockster
  11. Hello (Jerome Isma-Ae Remix) – Above & Beyond
  12. Shivers (Alex MORPH remix) – Armin Van Buuren
  13. Laser Beams – Mogusa
  14. Out of the Blue – System F
  15. Breeze – Ferrin & Low
  16. Revive (Kenneth Thomas remix) – Factoria
  17. Heaven Scent (proper mix) – Bedrock
  18. EDM Death Machine – Knife Party
  19. Nervous Breakdown – The Shrink

Imagine if burgers were more like sushi

Taken from lernertandsander.com/cubes

To be honest I hate burgers, they feel so lazy and the trend of burger everywhere is out of control. Ok I don’t hate them but I really have gotten tired of them along time ago.

If it was wired’s little section of wired, tired and expired; burgers would be in the expired time for the local recycling/composite heap. I frankly don’t care how big or pink the burgers are, how many layers of mustard you have or what type of buns you use. Its frankly incremental nonsense and needs to go away.

Wheres the creativity?

While slightly ranting about them at work, Roberto suggested Ian’s Angry burgers and then Jimmy suggested cube burgers to fit with Cubicgarden.

This is when I thought why can’t burgers be more like Sushi? (Don’t you dare mention those miniburgers!)

Sushi

Small cleverly crafted pieces which combined make a full meal. So instead of slapping stuff into a burger bun and hoping it will stay intact, you can make super tastie mini pieces. It could be that you make them like lego or the little piece itself is the burger as such (like Sushi)

Yes its not a burger but heck its about time we moved on and frankly burgers are not going away, so lets try something different…

Welcome to Ian’s Square burger bites… maybe?

I freely admit I always wanted to eat sushi but can’t due to allergies, so maybe this is whats missing. The care and attention of sushi but with something simple like burgers?

Decentralise or Decentralize this and everything?

Silicon Valley season 4

Decentralise or Decentralize that is always a question I have… Of course being British, the first one is correct (I joke!)

Its fair to say I have been thinking about decentralisation quite a lot recently, but its not the first time. Conversations with Adewale has always got me thinking about this all.

Partly due to Mozfest/Mozretreat this year and thinking about it in terms of power structures; which I’ll explain more in another blog post soon. But I found a number of interesting points about decentralisation which I thought I’d share….

I’ve been thinking about the differences between Centralised, Decentralisation, Distributed and Federated; as I joined Mastodon and thought a lot about Jabber, Status.net and Laconica. Can the user the experience be better than the centralised services? Theres potential but is the will there?

Kevin Marks shared a link to a piece about Silicon Valley series 4 and how the main character Richard is interested in building a more decentralised internet.

In the first episode of the new season (Season 4) of HBO’s Silicon Valley, beleaguered entrepreneur Richard Hendricks, asked by eccentric venture capitalist Russ Hanneman, what, given unlimited time and resources, he would want to build.

“A new Internet,” says Hendricks.

“Why?” asks Hanneman.

Hendricks babbles about telescopes and the moon landing and calculators and the massive computing power in phones today, and says: “What if we used all those phones to build a massive network?… We use my compression algorithm to make everything small and efficient, to move things around…. If we could do it, we could build a completely decentralized version of our current Internet with no firewalls, no tolls, no government regulation, no spying. Information would be totally free in every sense of the word.”

Hel-lo! Decentralized Internet? That’s a concept I’ve heard bubbling around the tech world for a while now, but not so much in the consciousness of the general public. Is HBO’s Silicon Valley about to take the push for a Decentralized Web mainstream?

Of course decentralisation isn’t a panacea and shifting the power from a centralised power comes with roles and lots more responsibility. It also relies on correctly informed citizens. This is why the distributed and federated models are much more interesting in my mind…

A couple people mentioned Brexit is a type of decentraisation, and I guess it is but further encourages thoughts about distributed and federated. Manchester recently got its first Mayor because of the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016 which is a type of decentralisation I guess.

Its clear the internet could do with less centralisation but unless its as good or better a experience for people; why would they switch? That warm fuzzy feeling is powerful but not strong enough, you only have to look at the wake of decentralised social networks to see evidence of this.

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

And thats just the developers, goodness knows what the users enthusiasm levels are like? Surely one day it will just work and users won’t even know its been built that way.

Dare I mention my thoughts about distributed online dating? Imagine that!

Changing perceptions of dyslexia #Madebydyslexia

#madebydylexia
Jody shared with me news of Richard Branson’s new charity Made by Dyslexia…

Sir Richard Branson launched a new charity, Made by Dyslexia, at the world’s first “dyslexic sperm bank” this week, a concept created and produced by Y&R London. Made by Dyslexia is a global charity led by successful and famous dyslexics, and its purpose is to help the world properly understand and support dyslexia.

Absolutely!

Made by Dyslexia will campaign to change perceptions, so that dyslexia is seen as a different way of thinking rather than as a disadvantage. Working with experts and successful dyslexics, it will develop campaigns, tools and tests to explain dyslexic thinking. Many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, artists, and tech professionals are dyslexic, including Sir Richard Branson, demonstrating that dyslexic people can achieve great things when they focus on their strengths and get the right support in school.

Indeed… Recent reading of the dyslexic advantage further confirmed to me what I already knew. Dyslexia in the right environment can be a huge advantage.

The “sperm bank”, while not accepting actual donors, was chosen as a theme and setting for the launch because some sperm banks have not let dyslexics donate until very recently, and have even described dyslexia as a “neurological disease”, highlighting how far peoples’ understanding of dyslexia still needs to change. One in ten people are dyslexic, accounting for more than 6.5 million people in the United Kingdom, so this is a major issue.

Yes that sperm bank which was deeply depressing news and I already wrote about.

So great to poke fun at the stupidity of that sperm bank story.

I joined mastodon microbloging service, not the rock band!

mastodonI have always been a big fan of Jabber, Laconi.ca and Status.net. All are federated services which go well beyond the centralised and even decentralised ideas. But they all were second fiddle to the centralised services like Twitter mainly down to user experience.

So I’m wondering if Mastondon will be any different? Of course theres only one way to find out, and thats to try it out.

So I am… but what is it?

Mastodon is a fast-growing Twitter-like social network that seeks to re-create the service’s best parts while eliminating its whale-sized problems. The distributed, open-source platform offers better tools for privacy and fighting harassment than Twitter does, but it also comes with a learning curve. Mastodon’s federated nature means there’s no single website to use, and learning how to wade through its timeline of tweets (which it calls toots) takes some time to adjust to.

But for anyone who misses “the old Twitter” — the days of purely chronological timelines, no ads, and an inescapable flood of harassment — Mastodon can feel like a haven

Old twitter was great I’ll be honest but its not that I long for the old days of twitter. Its just I can feel the their business model imposed from their backers/investors infringing on why I originally used twitter. There is a blog drafted which is all about how business models imposed by VC/backers/etc ruins services/products. For example Pebble, Evernote, Twitter, etc.

So I’m cubicgarden on mastodon.cloud, which should federate across to other Mastondon server instances. Feel free to say hi…

2nd May 2016, the day when I undressed on TV

are you a good kisser - undressed

It feels so weird that a year ago (Monday 2nd May) I took part in TLC’s Undressed programme. Family and friends said I was crazy; heck even I started to think I might be a little crazy stepping too far out my comfort zone.

Most people haven’t seen the show but its episode 9 of series 1 if you subscribe to TLC UK. I did try and do some showings at my house but also did a showing at BarCampManchester7 which went alot better than I’d thought it would.

The whole experience was certainly unique and I did end up writing most of it on the train home to Manchester right before the next day catching a 6am flight to Berlin for Mozretreat (this year it was earlier and in Tallinn). Me and Jess also recorded a podcast which is worth listening to. I still think my undressed misunderstanding is undertandable?

Now my contract with TLC is up (well it was up the moment it was on TV really), I am seriously thinking about revisiting the idea of First Dates as a background dater. Originally I was going ahead with it then Undressed got in touch and the contract (see I read those contracts) didn’t allow you to be on another dating show (although I did declare the Horizon dating experiment too but they didn’t seem to care).

Its not about being on TV as I keep saying… Its those experiences which take you out of your comfort zone. Its seems consistenly every year there is at least something. 2015: Japan, Listening Project & Horizon, 2016: Undressed, 2017: Ireland in a Camper Van, 2018: who know?

Watch this space!

The escape room craze?

The Crystal Maze

I do find the whole escape room thing a little odd, mainly because when I first heard about it I thought of something more like the movie Cube (less cube 2 and cube 0) . The reality is far less dangerous of course, but they also lack the lateral thinking which more excites me. Maybe this is why I find The Cube (how ironic) a little more interesting in this regards?

The Crystal maze is pretty much a series of escape rooms dressed up – let’s be honest! Due to the cult popularity and the mad rush for escape room experiences; its back without Richard O’Brian of course.

Someone at ARGnet has wrote a piece analysing the rise of the escape room. It doesn’t go into much detail but an interesting short read regardless. I find it interesting how big the craze of escape rooms has moved and so quickly. I was listening to some people in Tallinn, Estonia talking about an escape room in the airport which prompted me to write my thoughts.

I’d love to see something more like Exam.

The final candidates for a highly desirable corporate job are locked together in an exam room and given a test so simple and confusing that tension begins to unravel.

More lateral and freeform. I’d also like to see people given roles (like Werewolf I guess, heck you could pay more to be the stodge?) to make things really interesting. Yes you could include stooges too.

Exam

Escape rooms currently feel too formulaic and logical, a bit like some of the less interesting Alternative Reality games which drag you from task to task rather than responding and giving you lots of space to think. I think there is a lot to learn from ARGs and maybe, who knows I’ll be raving about one…