Ianforrester

Shining a light on your data

Theres a few projects which come along and get me excited… One which got me recently was Mozilla lightbeam.

Lightbeam is a Firefox add-on that uses interactive visualizations to show you the first and third party sites you interact with on the Web. As you browse, Lightbeam reveals the full depth of the Web today, including parts that are not transparent to the average user.

Fascinating stuff… Sounds very familiar to something were doing in BBC R&D (soon to be blogged and I talked about at Oggcamp13). Wonder if Mozilla would be interested in working together? Maybe I missed the chance, when I didn’t go to Mozilla Fest 2013?

Or if not maybe the Ford Foundation would be a good partner?

Ford Foundation focuses on building outreach campaigns to help people understand online data tracking — both the benefits and the issues

Don’t worry I won’t spoil it for you, but you can imagine what were thinking…

Coffee and Bagel, future of online dating?

I heard about coffee meet bagel a while ago while researching online dating. The concept is simple and quite effortless. Less of a dating site and more of a way of dating in the modern world.

Coffee Meets Bagel launched in New York City in 2012, when three sisters decided there must be a better way to date in the Big Apple. They created CMB based on three guiding principles:

Unless you want to tell others, your dating life should remain private.

Your friends are the best conduits for your dates.

Meeting quality people doesn’t have to be so awkward or complicated.

Users sign up through Facebook and receive one match – a.k.a. a ‘Bagel’ – every day at noon that is somehow connected to them. Members then have a time limit in which to respond with a simple LIKE or PASS. If all goes well, Coffee and Bagel are put in touch via a private company texting line and magical breakfast-y sparks will fly.

Reason why I would put bets on this could be the future of online dating is because it seems to hit most of the sticking points right now.

Friends of friends. Leveraging what already exists and what people are doing today anyway. Using the network for the right reasons.
Facebook. How many users does your biggest online dating site have? I bet its a drop in the ocean compared to Facebook.
It could be free, low risk and low effort. No need to create a new profile, lie about your past, its all there in Facebook. And catfishing will drop as your friends really know who you are. And what kind of a person would you be if you recommended a catfish? Your reputation would be crap.

At the moment its not free but it would be simple to bypass the company. This would remove the pressure to squeeze every penny out of the opportunities.

This is what my single friend should have been… (Imho)

Lesser known Google projects

There seems to be a number of projects Google are developing which don’t get a lot of press attention. Here’s a few which have got me thinking…

uProxy

uProxy is a browser extension that lets users share alternative more secure routes to the Internet. It’s like a personalised VPN service that you set up for yourself and your friends. uProxy helps users protect each other from third parties who may try to watch, block, or redirect users’ Internet connections.

This project is an experiment in enabling people to provide each other with a more secure and private connection to the internet. At the moment, it is under active development and we are interested in working with a limitted number of testers to help develop the tool.

Yes can you imagine what fun you could have with uProxy and how easy it makes Proxying? Some Tor clients are simple but this could be really interesting as it adds a social aspect. This is fantastic for those trusted connections, such as friends whose ISP’s are blocking certain sites.

Google+ Ripples

I missed this and I’m sure many others did too. But Google+ Ripples visualises how things are shared on Google+. Now this might sound a bit lame as your not using G+ at the moment but the fact Google are sharing this data with the users, is encouraging.

Handwriting comes to Google

Gmail and Docs offer wide language support, however in some cases using the keyboard is less than ideal. Whether you’re a student trying to include a foreign phrase in your paper or an international consultant hoping to begin your message with a friendly local greeting, now you’ll be able to use your own handwriting to input words directly into Gmail and Google Docs with your mouse or trackpad.

Sound good, can’t wait to try this out. Be fun to try it on my tablet

Celebrating the life we have

I recently attended one of my (many as I discovered) aunties funeral on Friday. Auntie Melrose was very close and we would see each other quite a few times through the year. She was well known and well liked by the huge family and many colleagues in Bristol city council where she worked for 25+ years. She lived in Easton and raised my cousin alone from when she moved to the uk decades ago.

She was a quiet but resilient women who worked hard all her life. She was also the most tech savvy Antie I had.

I learned about her death from a Facebook message from a cousin (chris) in Jamaica. It turned out she was on holiday there visiting the family and while swimming in the beautiful blue sea which surrounds Jamaica. Suffered a bleed on the brain and died in the water. Other members of the family tried to recover/save her of course.

In the funeral a friend of the family stood up and said some words like many many people. But he talked about dying in the seas of the homeland of Jamaica.

Although at first I was a little upset and thought it was a little sore, I started to think about it a little different. I gather Antie never suffered any prolonged pain. As the man said “what a way to go… In the cool calming blue seas of the Caribbean. No pain, no suffering”

Now the observant of you will notice the bleed on the brain is the same thing I had 2.5 years ago (#mybrushwithdeath). Obviously I have some experience of the what its like. But I really want to think about the life she had, and further reminds me of the posts I make about living the life your given/have/want.

I’ve had this tune in my head since I heard about my Antie…
Its called “Fool For Life” by Dash Berlin featuring the strong vocals of Chris Madin. Don’t know if out really sums up anything (she certainly was no fool! But somewhere in the lyrics it may something about us and what we do to ourselves?) but I keep catching myself humming it in my head when thinking about my antie’s death in the warm sunshine, 1000’s miles away… Then thinking I must celebrate life more.

I have an incredible family… Just on my dads side there were 15 siblings! At the funeral I was introduced to so many of dads siblings and there families! I once estimated to Sarah I have 100 cousins. Now I’m wondering if I was being too conservative with that number…! When even I thought I was stretching it a little. And don’t even start on the cousins kids!

I happened to catch the bbc2 programme, this world.

Anita Rani goes on a journey to discover why the Japanese are not having enough babies

Its shocking to see a country like Japan having such serious problems while a little island in the Caribbean is responsible for some incredible characters.

I guess all these combination of things have gotten me thinking hard once again about the purpose of why were here and what I should be doing with my life before it ends.

Rest in peace Antie Melrose…

Continue reading “Celebrating the life we have“

Goo or google Engine?

Goo – Instant Play from Goo Technologies on Vimeo.

Short video clip exemplifying the power of browser based games for virality and instant play. Oh, and yes the game is on HTML5 with no plug-ins or download. Powered by the Goo Engine.

To be honest first time I saw the Goo technologies experiment, I thought it was Google trying to one up Mozilla. Right as the Mozilla Fest is on in London (which I couldn’t attend due to a family funeral).

Goo Engine® is the HTML5 and WebGL based 3D engine capable of powering the next generation of interactive web content. Using Goo Engine enables you to incorporate rich 3D content into your existing website without the need for special browser plugins or software downloads.

It looks impressive and if the editor is as simple to make this stuff, well who knows? Could be great in the right hands, specially hands with lots of time like young people

Aviate your phone?

A while ago I tried out Facebook Home but in the end gave up on it.

The open power of Android does mean it can have a totally different user interface like what HTC, Samsung, etc do. I’m currently running CynaogenMod’s Trebuchet 1.0 on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 7+ and Nemus Launcher on my HTC OneX. So I’m already using a non-standard UI on my devices.

I quite liked FB Home, but I really wanted it to based on my Twitter or Google+ activity not FB. Along comes Aviate and my ears perk up.

Aviate is an intelligent home screen replacement that’s designed to show you relevant information depending on where you are or the time of day. It categorizes your apps so they’re organized, proactively shows you relevant information so you don’t have to look for it, and it looks great in the process.

Many of the home screen and launcher replacements we’ve seen focus primarily on giving you a way to personalize and customize your home screen without focusing too much on utility. That’s fine, but Aviate takes a different approach. If you’re at the gym, it’ll surface your workout apps so you can get to them quickly. When you wake up, it’ll show you what you have going on that day, like the weather, upcoming appointments, and anything you’ve missed overnight. When you get to work, your productivity apps are front and center. Plus, Aviate does all of this by automatically changing your home screen layout so it’s useful whenever you pick up your phone.

The app pays attention to your location, time of day, calendar, and other saved data to adapt to your needs in a proactive way. Each of the “cards” with widgets, information, tools, or app collections can be edited too, so if you don’t like what Aviate is suggesting, you can change it so it suits you. Plus, the app recommends new apps to try that it thinks you’ll love based on the ones you have installed and popular apps among Aviate users.

Sounds good but can I get a invite code? Can I heck…!

Oh well… if you got one, please do send one this way thanks…

Dreamboard starts a trend

Dreamboard I have wrote about a few times before and I have been using the application on my tablet to remember my dreams. But recently people like Simon have been contacting me about shadow which to be fair sounds a lot more like a cross between Dreamboard and Lucidpedia.

Building a community of dreamers sounds cool but very difficult to do. I don’t know if a kickstarter project is the best way, specially when you have the likes of the same information on lucidpedia and many other places across the web. Nope I would suggest something like OKTrends is the way to go. Data like I suggested for mydreamscape would be super valuable to many people including advertisers.

But of course dreamboard are already two steps down that road…

Dreamboard, the largest database of dreams in the world – obtained by a patented system for data collection – has officially entered the second stage of its development: the analysis of the great amount of data collected with a scientific and multidisciplinary approach in order to identify patterns of different nature.

Our scientific team has grown, and is now guided by Professor Patrick McNamara, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine and Dissertation Chair at Northcentral University. He has been active studying sleep and dreams for two decades and is a winner of NIH awards to study sleep and dreams, before becoming Chief Scientific Advisor of Dreamboard. He will work with our first Scientific Advisor, Prof. Bruno Bara, M.D., Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, Director of the Center for Cognitive Science, Director of the Center for Neuroimaging, Director of the Schools of Cognitive Psychotherapy of Como and Torino.

Impressive stuff, I look forward to some serious findings to come from our aggregated data.

It was also good to clarify the Facebook link, which is just to do a login and not share private data.

Does Manchester need a tech night?

My friend Chris has something which has been bugging him. He told me while we had a late breakfast in VividLounge.

There’s something that’s bugged me about events in Manchester’s tech scene for a while. There are a lot of great specialist events, and a lot of networking events, but there appears to be little in between, ones that cross knowledge sharing with networking, other than the now-defunct Social Media Cafe, the Northern Digitals BLAB Talks, and ThoughtWorks’Manchester Geek Nights. However, BLAB Talks are geared more towards the creative side of the industry, rather than the technical side and Manchester Geek Nights speakers appear to be limited to ThoughtWorks.

The specialist events are great, but there’s just so many of them, that it’s impossible to attend even just the ones that are interesting to you, and the networking events tend to be heavily geared around alcohol and drinking, which in itself is problematic and can be exclusionary.

When I lived in Oxford there was a great event I attended frequently, Oxford Geek Nights, which basically has a format that fills a gap that I think Manchester now has, so I’d like to start running a monthly series of nights in this format, and hopefully some other people think this is a good idea too.

When I was in London during the first dot com era, I was also going to many specialist events. Most were around startups and money. When that all fell apart the events dried up or became even more specialised. So London geekdinners was started following some loose events in America by the same name. I’ve already mentioned how much of success the girl geekdinners have and are. Funny enough (I believe) the Oxford geek nights were setup following Nat and Simon (founders of Lanyrd) after they enjoyed going to the London Geekdinner and wanted to bring a slice to Oxford. Similarly Geekup and London Tuttle club (forerunner for Social Media Cafe Manchester)

The main reason why I bring up the past again is because there seems to be a cycle. The cycle seems to be flick between general and specific events. Theres certainly a need for both, but sometimes there feels like theres many more of one that the other. Both type of events are tricky to keep going and seem to

Its great Chris feels the need to setup another event, I think it will go down well. I can help with advice on the venue side, but I honestly think a venue won’t be too much of a problem and I certainly would love to talk at one of the events soon.

Make it so, Chris!

I on the other hand won’t be setting up any other events. Between BarCampEdu, 300 Seconds, Quantified Self and a possible next season of Relationships 2.0 (previously called geeks talk sexy). I have little spare time, plus its great when someone else stands up and does something rather than waiting for others.

Although I’ve been thinking about geekdinners 3.0 (maybe to replace relationships 2.0). The tag would be the geeky side of everything… Maybe next year. Rather than people you expect, we would have people from different areas who talk about the geeky side. For example a chef to explain all those different knives, a street artist to explain the world of street art. I tried to do this with geekdinners before but didn’t push beyond the industry much. Maybe now’s the time…?

Make it do, Ian! Maybe I will…

How to be a right old plonker

Simon seemed to be having a conversation with the writer of the list how to be a fcuking man on twitter. He then added me into the conversation as such. So I had a look at the list which was being talked about. What I found sometimes made me smile and nod but others made me erupt into small bouts of anger.

Ok heres the points I agree with….

Stop talking about where you went to college.
Never stay out after midnight three nights in a row… Unless something really good comes up on the third night.
You will regret your tattoos
Never date an ex of your friend
Join Twitter; become your own curator of information
People are tired of you being the funny, drunk guy.
Ask for a salad instead of fries
When a bartender buys you a round, tip double
One girlfriend at a time is probably enough
Measure yourself only against your previous self
Staying angry is a waste of energy
Always bring a bottle of something to the party
Date women outside your social set. You’ll be surprised.
Never take an ex back. She tried to do better and is settling with you
Eating out alone can be magnificent. Find a place where you can sit at the bar
Read more. It allows you to borrow someone else’s brain, and will make you more interesting at a dinner party – provided that you don’t initiate conversation with, “So, who are you reading…”
Don’t gamble if losing $100 is going to piss you off.

Although I agree with alot of it, there are some which are just not working for me. (still no idea what a small white baggy in a bathroom is about? I assume its to do with drugs)

Always carry cash. Keep some in your front pocket
I’m like the queen, never (ok almost never carry cash) my debit card is very warn out and you can’t read the cvc number at all. Good thing I remember it. Yes it is a pain to go get cash for certain times like going to the market and buying drink at some out of date bars. No idea what the front pocket thing is about, but I will agree my dad says the same thing.
Rebel from business casual. Burn your khakis and wear a suit or jeans
This is crap, wear what your comfortable in but be aware of the situation, aka don’t go in shorts and tshirts to meet someone on the first date. Its your life, don’t waste it living someone elses. Sure I’ve said that a few times.
If riding the bus doesn’t incentivize you to improve your station in life, nothing will
This is ballcrap, ok I just switched from riding the Tram into work everyday to scootering to work, but I won’t lie. I quite liked the time I had to read and think. Now I get to work in 15mins and waste the time I use to have thinking, sleeping. I also enjoyed taking the Metrolink when it worked out. When it was delayed or cancelled it use to drive me nuts. Now I have the option of changing it up, so life is good.
When the bartender asks, you should already know what you want to drink.
No no… This is fine for a pub, but theres nothing better than describing what kind of cocktail your in the mood for and them making it up or suggesting something new. Like the cash issue, I get really peed off when a bar requires cash only. I mean its only 2013! If I’m getting charged £7-9 for a cocktail, I want a card machine!
When people don’t invite you to a party, you really shouldn’t go.  And sometimes even when you are invited, you shouldn’t go
Rubbish, gatecrashing has its ups and downs. I’ve had some great fun gatecrashing and some less interesting fun. If your not invited it could be an oversight or you were not invited because your not. Judge the situation and decide accordingly.
Act like you’ve been there before. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the end zone at the Super Bowl or on a private plane
Nothing wrong being excited about a different experience. Theres many times people say we should adopt a more child like approach to life. Being a man shouldn’t be about having a stiff upper lip
Be a regular at more than one bar and A glass of wine or two with lunch will not ruin your day
Please! Come on, being a man shouldn’t centre around drinking
Own a handcrafted shotgun. It’s a beautiful thing and Buy expensive sunglasses. Superficial? Yes, but so are the women judging you. And it tells these women you appreciate nice things and are responsible enough not to lose them.
You can’t be for real, buying or owning a gun is certainly not going to make you a man. Not anymore than owning a motorbike or a chess set. These things are simply things you own and they don’t make you or at least they shouldn’t. If they make you happy great but don’t buy them to please others or show off
Don’t split a check
You already know what I think about this one. But what makes this worst is the fact theres no context, so I have to assume it means always. Bullcrap! Want to be the big man, well prehistoric man is dead or should be dead. We live in 2013 now, time to get over it. Split the check and be happy and respectful. Also what incase its a friend?
Pretty women who are unaccompanied want you to talk to them and When in doubt, always kiss the girl
Maybe, maybe not. Women are people, people are busy but people don’t mind being interrupted for a decent relevant conversation. As for the kissing one, well maybe.

The image which comes to mind when reading through the last lot of rules is this all adds up to a real plonker. Not really the kind of person I look up to or want to ever be. If I was to write my own rules it would be quite different and a lot shorter. Of course theres a certain amount of culture which is wrapped up in the rules. For example my dad and uncles are not going to own a gun and if they did it wouldn’t be something they polish up and clean all the time..

Too be fair a real plonker might sound bad but its better than being a right old tosser…

First dates hacked

The man who usually trolls me Josh sent me a link to the lifehacker article about first dates.

First dates are tough. You’re trying to make a good impression on someone, but you’re also trying to read the person you’re with and see if they’re worth your time. Dating may not be an exact science, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use a little science to our advantage during that first interaction.

Once again, anyone who says its no big deal obviously has no idea what there on about, or hasn’t been dating in the last decade. Lifehacker has your back…

Here’s what you need to know.

A perfect first date is different for everyone, but you can guess that anyone will want solid conversation skills and a good first impression. Beyond that, though, things start to get complicated. Statistics help, but to really craft that perfect first date you need to know exactly how to handle yourself. This is where that science comes in. A lot of the relationship research out there is pretty useless (with riveting studies about how an unpopular name affects your dating success or women find men more attractive when another woman smiles at them), but we went out to find some of the more useful studies to help us craft that perfect first date. Here are the more useful tips we found.

Without ruining the article it boils down to…

Keep the Conversation Interesting (and Risky)
Absolutely…! This is the part of the date I kinda of enjoy somewhat. Maybe another reason why I quite like speed dating? You start with the basic stuff and before long your in risky territory pouring over past experiences. Its slightly cathartic in nature.
Use the “Right” Amount of Eye Contact
The right amount? Well I tend to look at people mouths because I’m 25% lip reading and 75% listening. But I do tend to look around the face. I agree the right amount of eye contact is important, no one wants to be eyeballed for long periods of time, specially on a date.
Watch for Mimicry (But Don’t Go Overboard)
Ok this is something talked to death about in certain books. Its also called mirroring and its go to hear the downsides to mirroring as well as the good. I know certain people who mirror too much and it comes across as weird. No generally I don’t mirror much but I’m conscious of mirroring.
Mind Your Body Language
Another key one. I don’t generally make a lot of fast or close moves because I don’t want them to feel uncomfortable around me. I’m also not the kind of guy who gets super close at the very start. I know some people will sit side by side instead of ahead from the other. It seems cute but I think its too much.
Be direct with plans
Although I like the idea of this one, I’m not so certain its a good idea. That extra pressure at the end of a date seems like a bad idea, I mean who wants to go home thinking about how they were pressured into a 2nd date?

Generally the advice is good and the links are excellent…. Good work Lifehacker

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