Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Really happy to be presenting the Living Room of the Future alongside colleagues Lianne and Neelima; at MyData 2018.
Don’t forget the living room is coming to the V&A Museum in London and tickets are still available. You might be like quite a few people wondering what is this living room of the future I keep talking about?
Well a talented colleague make a trailer for it to wet your taste buds…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrNPwYZMS2w
This pacemaker device mix is done during a very busy train ride to the Edinburgh fridge festival. Its a long one at 1 hour 52 minutes, certainly not the longest I have mixed but its a good one. The mix is full of tunes, which I don’t normally play or if they are the alternative mix (b-side)
Photo credit for Gavin Proc’s picture which is used as the cover.
Enjoy!
Twitter is seriously getting up to no good.
Today, our User Streams, Site Streams, and legacy Direct Message endpoints will begin a brief period of degraded service before being retired entirely.
Developers using these services can learn more and find migration guides on the forum: https://t.co/hedzTXO6as
— Twitter API (@TwitterAPI) August 16, 2018
Its super clear the openness of twitter is being stopped, told to stand against a wall with hands up and then shot in the head. Its not good and frankly, I don’t know about you but its starting to pee me off. I recently posted something to my facebook timeline about Facebook’s decision to stop automated posting under a persons account. Another frustrating thing as I was practising the POSSE method from the IndieWeb movement..
Facebook is no longer allowing automatically post to peoples profile. Meaning this timeline is going to get very quiet!
If you want to catch up with things check out www.cubicgarden.com and www.twitter.com/cubicgarden
Because of this my facebook interactions are mainly going to be checking my events including Volleyball training.
All this makes me think its time to double down on Mastodon? Of course I’m not the only one thinking this, cue Adrian and Naomia‘s mastodon 101 podcast.
The more I look at the more I think close my twitter account and just use Mastodon. Although the crossposter was helping till Twitter API changes broke that too.
It will be a shame to say goodbye but the more I see what twitter is about and see what Mastodon users are doing like listing the abuses/hate/rule breaks in different Mastodon instances into Github. I think this is the place to be and the whole setup/framework/infrastructure is what makes it all this possible. Heck with a bunch of the new W3C specs like Webmentions, Fragmention and Micropub; I can see companies which enable/power their users really making amazing sustainable humane services.
Lessons from Starfish & the Spider, lets make a better internet together!
The Pepsi challenge is one of those things people of my generation remember well. It caused a fuss and likely upset a lot of coke-cola fans. But over the decades since, people like Malcolm Gladwell have reasoned why the test its self was broken.
In his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), author Malcolm Gladwell presents evidence that suggests Pepsi’s success over Coca-Cola in the “Pepsi Challenge” is a result of the flawed nature of the “sip test” method. His research shows that tasters will generally prefer the sweeter of two beverages based on a single sip, even if they prefer a less sweet beverage over the course of an entire can.
Regardless Pepsi has decided to do the whole thing again comparing Pepsi Max against full sugar Coca-Cola. The taste test is next week in Manchester at Market Street on Saturday 25th August and then Sunday 26th in Piccadilly Gardens.
I’ll try and make it to one just to see what they do different this time around….
Its been thrown around a lot and if you search for the term public service internet you will click on something from Adrian Hon or Dan Hon. You will see stuff from others like chromatrope and even my own posts in searches. Or good searches will reveal related terms like Digital public space from newspapers like the Guardian and of course straight from Tony Ageh.
But not much from the BBC, so its quite exciting to finally see something more official.
Very proud to be part of a team looking and researching the public service internet #psi
Along side @ReeJo1 @billt @wearesorryfor @mistertim @stento @onpause and others in @BBCRD https://t.co/ezDt6IsO40— Ian Forrester (@cubicgarden) August 14, 2018
BBC R&D researching the public service internet and looking for partners who share similar values.
Public service broadcasting is broadcasting intended for public benefit rather than to serve purely commercial or government interests, and it is the thing the BBC is best known and most loved for. As a publicly funded, public service organisation, the BBC exists to “inform, educate, and entertain”, and radio and TV broadcasting have been the main methods of reaching the public and delivering this mission for much of the BBC’s history.
Expect lots more about the public service internet in the near future…
Its been 11 years since I really went to the Edinburgh festival. Back then I was running BBC Backstage and via some smart people decided to put on the Edinburgh TV Unfestival. I got to a few events but never really got going. So 11 years later, with my partner I was back.
The comedians make a living from word of mouth, I felt it would be wrong not to write a quick summary of what I thought of each one.
On my recent travels to Scandinavia, I took the train from Stockholm to Copenhagen in first class (5 hours on a train is too long without Wifi and Breakfast). I always wanted to cross the Øresund since I first heard about it (never actually watched the bridge TV series). Originally I was thinking about roping some friends into driving across but it didn’t happen, so the next best thing was a train ride.
During the later part of the journey, I opened my Pacemaker and looked did a mix while speeding through the Swedish country side, Malmo and across the Øresund. Originally the mix was much longer but decided the start wasn’t great and so cut off the first 30mins and started at Lost Tribe.
It was quite a journey and here’s the mix to go with it…
Enjoy!
Little update, the mix is currently doing ok in the Mixcloud Techtrance chart. Currently 89th on Monday 6th Aug 2018
My Tamagotchi is everything that went wrong with our future
Is one of those articles you read and shake your head realising the hard truth and how right it is…
The Tamagotchi offers the option to turn off the sound. But if I turn it off, I’ll miss the notifications and accidentally kill my hateful son. At this point, I’ve kept him alive for so long, I’d feel too guilty to pull the plug on my virtual spawn.
And anyway, what’s one more beeping annoyance in my life? The Tamagotchi is just another red dot for me to clear off yet another screen. At least this one doesn’t monetize my engagement through targeted advertising.
My smartphone, I’ve realized, is also a Tamagotchi. My laptop is a Tamagotchi. My tablet is a Tamagotchi. These new Tamagotchis have nicer screens and more than three buttons, but more importantly, they’re hooked into much more elaborate guilt trips. Now it‘s not just a virtual pet at stake; it’s my friends, my family, and my work being held hostage in order to keep me pressing these stupid buttons.
My favorite new development in our terrible Tamagotchi future? The “digital well-being” trend to “fix” smartphone “addiction.” More Tamagotchi buttons, so my Tamagotchis can stay alive longer.
Terrifying vision of the future, by looking at the past… no idea why it persisted in its different forms honestly…