Author: Ianforrester

Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser. Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io

The ebook dilemma

My sister and I spoke on Skype the other day and I said to her I finally got around to reading What the Dog saw by Malcolm Gladwell which she bought for me about 2 years ago at Christmas. Yes about 2 years to read a book (of course it didn’t take that long in reality) but it did take a while in between all the other stuff I was doing. I guess I should have read it while I was in hospital last year.

She said she had watched a programme on BBC Three called Kara Tointon: Don’t Call Me Stupid. It was all about Dyslexia. And she had kind of got it. I had watched the same programme a while ago on demand and to be fair I did think it was going to be crap but actually it was pretty good, even though I had never ever heard of Kara Tointon, and to be slight blunt don’t really care.

I’m a hard person to buy presents for and of course I want to make it as easy as possible for loved ones to buy stuff for me if they would like to. Books are a regular choice but they usually end up on my book shelf and read by myself sometimes up to a year or so later. In actual fact I have a fantastic book which Si Lumb lent me a while ago around late Summer. called Last night a Dj saved my life. Its right by my bedside but I’ve never read more that 5 pages of it so far.

We talked about the possibility of ordering a ebook and sending it to me via Amazon’s Wispernet but it worries me. So far I’ve never bought a kindle book, just uploaded ebooks from elsewhere. My problem with ebooks is simply the DRM. Yes I have a kindle right now and there’s readers on most devices and platforms (no linux client by the way, but there is a web client now) but what happens when I don’t? What happens when Sony bring out a decent ebook reader which is colour and half the weight of the kindle (aka the weight of a feather) or maybe someone develops a foldable eink display… How am I going to move my books from the Kindle to what ever? On top of that, don’t even get me started on the sharing aspect….

So in light of this, I suggested to my sister that she should in future just get me Amazon gift tokens and I can use them for books or ebooks. Its not as personal/nice as buying a book but it also works and theres much more chance of me actually reading it.

New Pacemaker firmware 16219

Pacemaker

Forgot to blog this but it seems like Tonium has pretty much disappeared from the scene but some how they uploaded a secret firmware upgrade package… If you have a Pacemaker and would like to try out the new firmware, here’s the details of how to do it. Bear in mind, this firmware is not official and was found on the pacemaker download site by chance. So its very beta, you have been warned

  1. Point you browser to this address: http://www.pacemaker.net/Default.aspx?documentID=158&
  2. once there you’ll be presented with a XML file… now Copy The sessionID… Then point you browser to this address : www.pacemaker.net/Default.aspx?documentID=159&FirmwareVersion=16219&SessionID=(SESSIONID)&DSN=00AA0xx101XXX
  3. Note Look at the address where is says (PASTE SESSIONID) cut that part and replace it with the ID you got from browsing the other page… once done you’ll can download the firmware file..
  4. Once downloaded, rename it to .ZIP… extract it…. the put the extracted file on you pacemaker in the .pacemaker directory (if you can’t find the .pacemaker directory make sure you can browse hidden files on your OS)… once done unplug the pacemaker and the update will be installedWarning: As there’s no official release, theres no manual as well…

You can also download the firmware here, if you can’t be bother doing the session ID thing.

I’ve installed it on my own and not noticed any side effects except the very small one of losing all my previous setup. After 5mins it was all back to as i remembered it.

New changes seem to be.

  • BeatLock – The beat lock has been much improved according to some people. I always use my ear so it little difference to me.
  • Snapping loops – I think the loops now snap to the beat, making it much easier to loop
  • Beat jumping – You can now skip jump beats if your timing isn’t quite right, this could be useful.

I would have liked to have seen more, but the community is getting organised so we may see some serious hacking very soon. I do wonder if they will respect the GPL by giving us all the source code.

A kindle review by a art direction student

Anna Frew is doing a masters in Art and Design and is majoring in the conflict of ebooks and books. I met her at a Manchester Social Media Cafe in January and found her very intriguing.

So after chatting for a while we got on to the topic of the kindle and ebooks. This was just after BBC Backstage ebook went live. So I had lots of tips how we did the ebooks and how I generally do most of my ebook stuff. Anyway, she wrote up some of the conversation on her blog while reviewing her new Kindle.

I also like how I can alter the line length on the screen. Reading from line to line is something I struggle with in large bodies of text. Often I find myself lost within a text so being able to narrow the text made it much easier to read longer passages. This is problem common for dyslexic people so I think the kindle has great scope as a tool for dyslexic students with long texts to read. I know I would have appreciated being able to do that with some of my readings. Also being able to have all of the texts you need in one place in light weight form will also increase its selling points for students.

The fact that you can very easily put your own work onto the Kindle is also a great plus. Something which is much more difficult with apple products. This is very useful for presenting my work for assessment. Using the hack ‘Calibre’ also has great potential. This is a programme which allows you to turn any online content into an e-book. For example a blog. This means I can put these blog entries straight onto my Kindle for assessment in an organised way, without time consuming reformatting.

Its also very interesting to see her list of positives and negatives for ebooks.

One person to watch in the future I think… (more of this to come soon)

Peer to peer live streaming the next battlefield

From Torrentfreak

So as we near the 10th anniversary of BitTorrent its inventor Bram Cohen is finalizing a new protocol, this time aimed at P2P-live streaming. Although P2P-live streaming is not something new per se, Cohen thinks that his implementation will set itself apart from competitors with both its efficiency and extremely low latency.

“Doing live properly is a hard problem, and while I could have a working thing relatively quickly, I’m doing everything the ‘right’ way,” Bram Cohen told TorrentFreak last year when he announced his plans. He further explained that the BitTorrent protocol had to be redone to make it compatible with live streams, “including ditching TCP and using congestion control algorithms different from the ones we’ve made for UTP”

In the months that followed Cohen figured out most of this complex puzzle and the technology is now mature enough to show to the public.

The demo he shows is, well…ummm… underwhelming to say the least. But to be fair if 10 years ago someone said look this is BitTorrent watching it go. You’d also be scratching your head thinking is that all?

There’s no doubt streaming is due a massive. A lot of the rights owners think they can beat P2P downloads with the experience of streaming. They might even be right.

Streaming is certainly the next battlefield. Theres already some high profile projects in this area including P2PNext, but anything remotely like Bittorrent for P2P streaming could be huge. Talking to some of the engineers at work in BBC R&D, anything which can even the field between the costs per person of traditional broadcast and ip delivery could be truly paradigm shaping.

Is this it? I don’t think so, at least not yet.

Thank you Google for the Android Market Web Store

In my frustrated posts over Okcupid and Match.com, I skipped over the whole Android Honeycomb announcement.

The main thing which strikes me as smart is the Android Market web store.

At long last Google recognises the app store model is broken and they are shattering the model by opening a web store. You can now browse the store using a browser of your choice and when you choice to buy an app, its sent to your phone or tablet. Just the way it should work. Heck you can even using links point to your favourite apps, comments, etc. Genius!

This means finally developers can link to there app and join it up with there own support forums, etc. This thankfully has to be the end of the app store model. And I for one, am thanking Google for killing the model dead!

NO MATCH: Update your okcupid profile now

Send a clear sign to OKCupid… We don’t like what you’ve done…

Add NO MATCH to your profile picture and lets tell them we’re really not happy with what you’ve done choosing to be bought by Match.com

You can download my one here and add your own picture. Mine fits perfectly with the online now sign as you can see above.

Continue reading “NO MATCH: Update your okcupid profile now“

I really want dataportability for online dating as OKcupid gets bought by Match

Tim Dobson sent me a tweet earlier this today but I only saw it recently because he usually sends dodgy and crap stuff (*smile*). Anyway the news threw me…

OkCupid Acquired by Match.com for $50 Million.

I’m shocked… and to be honest I really want to get off OKcupid pretty soon. But I really want to take my data with me. I’m already considering building some kind of scaper so I can get my data out. The only good thing is…

OkCupid co-founder and CEO Sam Yagan will stay on at the site to run operations.

Sam Yagan also recently said

We Will Not Charge Users Following Match.com Acquisition

“Our goal is that [the acquisition] will have no effect whatsoever,” Yagan told us, saying that no positions will change within the company, and that it will continue full-steam ahead as usual — sans censorship or fees.

Sounds great but is this all lip service? To be honest, as some people have already noticed. A article about paid vs free online dating has been taken it down!

Internet denizens have also pointed out that a popular OKCupid article from last year titled “Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating” has been taken down from the company’s blog.

“I chose to take that down. Match didn’t ask,” Yagan says, denying that the other site was attempting to censor OkCupid. Apparently, the story was pieced together from public information, and Yagan has learned that some of the assumptions made in it were untrue.

Also, he says, “It’s a common sense thing to do. We’re joining a bunch of new colleagues, there’s no need to have that post.”

There is the google cache of course. And no wonder it was removed… It starts this way…

Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating

Today I’d like to show why the practice of paying for dates on sites like Match.com and eHarmony is fundamentally broken, and broken in ways that most people don’t realize.

For one thing, their business model exacerbates a problem found on every dating site…

Oi! No wonder it was removed, its a scaving deconstruction of the match.com business model, oh whoops I mean our new boss.

And if that wasn’t so bad enough, this bit will have you in stitches.

Match.com’s numbers are just as grim. They’re a public company, so we can get their exact subscriber info from the shareholder report they file each quarter. Here’s what we have from Q4 20094:

And finally this flow diagram kills it dead. The owners of Match.com must have been having kittens by the point.

Remember, sites like Match and eHarmony are in business to get you to buy a monthly subscription. There’s nothing wrong with profit motive, but the particular way these sites have chosen to make money creates strange incentives for them. Let’s look at how the pay sites acquire new subscribers.

That for me is a clear sign that we’re about to be shafted. Yagan might be right that he was not told to remove the blogs but to be honest the fact he felt that he had to take it down speaks volumes! And its going to be a very bumpy ride down to the bottom, I can feel it now. And I want to get off now.

I want out! And I’m not the only one. I’ll be interested to see what kind of protest the people of okcupid put up. Might be worth starting off a specially branded avatar… Bit like whats been done on flickr before.

Google bought youtube and they laughed….

Google is buying video-sharing website YouTube for $1.65bn (£883m) in shares. So is this is a gamble or a winning investment?

Is this the best business model for an internet start-up? Have a clever idea, build a large audience while burning through lots of money, and wait to be bought by Google?

No matter how you look at it, you have to admit Google really did get a bargain with Youtube.com. Its now a corner stone of the web.

Funny enough further in the same piece…

YouTube is not MySpace

A few months ago the number of YouTube users overtook that of the web’s other great networking site, MySpace. Last year, MySpace was snapped up by old media giant Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation for $580m. This, though, is not about who paid more for how many eyeballs. It’s about the underlying dynamics.

Thats pretty funny with the current state of Myspace

Films you should have seen last year

Inception

I seriously don’t get it. There is no doubt Inception was one of the high lights of last year but the golden globes seemed to skip over inception.

Anyway, this is my list of films you should have seen (or look out for in 2011) in 2010,

  • Inception
    Need I say more?
  • The Social Network
    Didn’t really want to like it, but after seeing it I really liked it. Its certainly one of the best internet/tech to movie translations I’ve witnessed. The tone is just right throughout.
  • Scott Pilgrim vs the world
    This film is simply nuts. A whirlwind of modern film techniques wrapped up in a fantastic coming of age plot with like-able multi faceted characters.
  • Cash
    Simple plot with devastating results. A very heart felt to the characters who end up on the wrong side of this psychopath.
  • Takers
    Stylish heist movie in the vein of Inside man and Lucky number Sleven. Reminds me of Guy Richie’s Revolver crossed with Heat. Tasty stuff.
  • Catfish
    What on earth is going on with this movie? All I can say is its intriguing true or false.
  • Exit through the gift shop
    Like Catfish, a documentary style which could be true or false, don’t really care its just a intriguing tale.
  • Freakonomics: The Movie
    The film based on a few chapters from the famous and popular Freakonomics book. Well worth watching as a introduction to the books.
  • Flipped
    2 children growing up together and learning from each other how life can or should be. Each bit is told from each point of view which makes for a interesting story.
  • Monsters
    Imagine Cloverfield happened 5 years ago, Monsters is what would the future be like after a alien invasion. It is like District 9 in scenario but this is a very slow burning storyline which will lose lots of people expecting more
  • 4,3,2,1
    4 girls different storylines which over lap in places. Noel Clarke has once again outdone himself with this stylish and sometimes quite gritty drama
  • 127 hours
    I wanted to put in both 127hours and buried. But choose 127 hours because although there quite similar, 127 hours isn’t so focused on one scene. The flashbacks are a good break from what was going on.

It still shocks me when I hear people say they haven’t seen inception. I mean I can understand it if you haven’t because of time but the reason I usually hear is because they have heard its a bit of a mind screw.

In actual fact, its actually not that much of a mind screw. Yes you do have to pay attention and quite a lot does indeed happen but its not any more difficult to understand that Twelve monkeys. Put it this way, its nothing like Primer. and that crazy timeline of the film.

For goodness sake if you’ve not seen Inception, go rent it today!

Facebook checkins turned into advertising, quit moaning…

Its intriguing to see ideas you’ve had previously, explored and implemented. I wrote a while ago about mydreamscape and how it was going to make money. One of my suggestions was product and locational placements.

Maybe a lot of people are dreaming about a certain location or a certain product. If you own that location or product you may want to own that page and make it more like yours? So for example http://www.mydreamscape.org/items/buzzlightyear/ – could be a page about buzzlight year in dreams and have images and links to the item its self. This would also be true of locations too for example http://www.mydreamscape.org/location/europe/london/thamesbarrier – would obviously link to the Thames barrier in London with information taken from Wikipedia.org and other open sources. The information architecture of exactly how this would this work needs to be sorted out.

Realizing this in my head, but decided not to include the option of having people who were spokespeople for a certain thing in there dreams. So realistically if I was to consistently have dreams about buzzlight year not only would I be featured on a item page but I’d be highly ranked. So if one of my friends was to have a dream about buzzlight year not only would they have a link to /buzzlightyear but my friends thoughts or dreams would be ranked much higher. Of course this would change once Pixar decided to own that space.

Sounds confusing…?

Well Facebook just included this feature in a slightly different way…

If someone checks you in to a certain place or likes a certain thing. Facebook can and will use your location/like to advertise to your friends that thing/location.

So back to mydreamscape, you would get. Ian Forrester had a dream about the Amazon Kindle automatically but the difference here is Amazon would be able to pick and choose which stories they would use in the advertising. So you don’t get that embarrassing problem, where a person has a negative dream and the advertising is based of it. Just because someone checks into Starbucks doesn’t mean they had a positive experience there, so to run it across a human eye makes sense to me.

Ok now thats out the way, I would agree that the whole process of mining users likes/checkins for data they can use for advertising purposes really sucks. But then again, to be fair to facebook. Its all in there in the EULA. If you don’t like it, for goodness sake switch to something else or stop using it.

Just quit moaning…