I highly recommend listening to the first part of this with your headphones and eyes closed. The concept of making a rainstorm with the hands is fantastic and sounds excellent. Oh the singing isn't bad either.
Author:
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
Its not just a copy its crime
Everything touches the Blackmarket
Another excellent talk, I would have liked more about Hcommerce but you can't really complain.
Journalist Misha Glenny spent several years in a courageous investigation of organized crime networks worldwide, which have grown to an estimated 15% of the global economy. From the Russian mafia, to giant drug cartels, his sources include not just intelligence and law enforcement officials but criminal insiders.
WTF? Wacom makes the nextbeat
I had forgotten to blog about this a while ago. Wacom have been working on a system called the Nextbeat, which is meant to be the instrument for creative djs.
Wacom known for their award-winning graphics tablets and interactive displays for designers and photographers, has announced the nextbeat system, which is aimed at DJ’s. Wacom’s nextbeat is a fully integrated professional DJ system, incorporating intuitive touch sensor controls and innovative live performance functions.
The nextbeat is a wireless portable control unit that enables performers to move free from the main device, resulting in more dynamic and energetic live performances inside booths promise Wacom.
The price? Well somewhere upwards up of 1500 pounds! And thats one of my problems with the whole thing. Its expensive and large. Also to be frank although it sounds like a good idea, I personally think its kind of daft. I mean the thing is shaped like a mini guitar and it just looks a little silly. Yes I think wireless is a good idea but not to prance around in front of the crowd. Plus there's already many solutions to do wireless audio already, so wheres the uniqueness? If they want to dance around in front of the crowd you need to be a wiij, as thats so much more impressive and expressive, plus it doesn't look like your playing rockband!
I have joined the e-Readers community
So I finally bought myself a Sony e-Reader (PRS-505), after deciding they are at a acceptable level to buy brand new. I was going to go for the new PRS-300 which is the smaller entry level version which Sony just brought out but it was the same price as the older and more smarter 505.
To date, I've been reading the Pirates Dilemma by Matt Mason, and in one day, I have read through 60+ pages. This might not sound like a lot to some people but I'm reading roughly twice as fast as I would if it was a dead tree book. I haven't loaded the reader with ebooks yet, it actually comes with a CD of classic books which I have yet to do anything with. Instead I have been hunting through Creative Commons licensed books and some of the Oreilly Open books. My next stop when I get time will of course be Project Gutenberg.
I got to say so far I'm impressed with the reader, yes its a bit slow but when reading its hardly anytime to flip the page. Wikipedia also clued me into the software called Calibre, which not only controls almost every aspect of the reader but also has scripting ability within the application it self. There is a script which will login to my google reader account and pull down all the unread items and arrange them into a ebook then upload the lot to my device. And because its all just Python, you can do all type of things, for example theres a user recipe which takes your instapaper and turns it into a book for you to read.
The Sony ereader is surprisingly very open. For example copying files is as easy as connecting via miniUSB (charges over it too) then drag files to its internal memory or cards. There are 2 card slots, one memory stick duo (booooo) and the other SD and SDHC (whoooo). The ebook formats it supports is quite large, including PDF, EPUB, LRF, TXT, RTF, LRX, HTML, etc. Via Calibre that list is pretty much endless with even support for files inside of Zip files (but not rar). So far I'm impressed and reading more that ever…
Tunekit is just HTML
As a lot of people know, I'm not the biggest fan of Apple or what Apple does but I'm happy that the more I look into iTunesLP and iTunes Extras, the more I'm liking it. its seems its all underpined in a new thing called Tunekit, which seems to be related to a new framework which some people are calling Cocoa for the web, SproutCore. So generally its all just HTML, CSS and Javascript. So hopefully if all goes well who know where it might go. It certainly beats some nasty things your seeing on Bluray discs. And even better we're back to the internet has won type territory, aka goodbye to disc technology, good stuff Apple.
I certainly think HTML5, CSS and Javascript on the TV screen is a killer move. I can't even imagine what's possible once Canvas and Canvas3D get mixed up in all this too. Adobe should be worried, their open screen project is interesting but being built around extending Flash is a big mistake. In the same category Silverlight scares most people. Nope HTML is good enough. It certainly seems Apple will lead the pack on this one.
Liberation vs Portability
So Data Liberation or Data Portability? They sound like the same thing but one is a adhoc group of people working together and the other is ummmmm, well run out of Google's public policy.
Imagine you want to move out of your apartment. When you ask your landlord about the terms of your previous lease, he says that you are free to leave at any time; however, you cannot take all of your things with you – not your photos, your keepsakes, or your clothing. If you're like most people, a restriction like this may cause you to rethink moving altogether. Not only is this a bad situation for you as the tenant, but it's also detrimental to the housing industry as a whole, which no longer has incentive to build better apartments at all.
Don't get me wrong, the google guys have got the right idea, but this isn't the same scope as the data portability group. Data liberation is Google's attempt to get its house in order but its not trying to change the world. When the Data Portability group started, the group spoke to many companies and other groups. We also looked around and considered the bigger picture. Actually by the time autonomo.us had come around I had already started moved away from the data portability group. My friend Dave isn't a fan at all, but he's a Free software guy and finds anything but Free software too loose and insulting (did I mention he's talking at London Geekdinners on Thursday). In the end its interesting to watch but don't expect any major changes outside the goodge suite, actually autonomo.us have a good look at the Chrome OS in regards to privacy and portability.
TEDxLeeds
TEDxLeeds happened this week at the Rosebowl in Leeds city centre. Like TEDxLiverpool, the whole event was on a day with plenty of sunshine, Imran Ali had planned a event starting from 5pm – 9pm, as maybe not to interfer with those leaving work or wanting to enjoy the last throws of summer. Anyway, about 120-150 people turned up to enjoy the evening. And enjoy the evening we did.
After the begals and coffee, we entered the lecture theatre with short legroom and the event was under way. A slightly nervous and softly spoken Imran Ali kicked off the event with the talk from Chris Anderson welcoming everyone to TEDx. I wasn't sure if he was actually nervous or conserving his energy for later. The now famous Herb Kim joined the introduction and before you knew it we were into the excellent TEDtalk from Kevin Kelly on next 5000 days of the web.. Although a long talk, it was funny and entertaining enough to keep everyone on track.
The first live talk was the fantastic Dr Norman Lewis, who made the point that all research and development labs are deeply lacking in ambition and innovation. Very hard and cutting stuff but actually he was right. We went to moon 40 years ago but where have we been since? Where's our ambition to truly solve the worlds problems?
After break and a short emoticon TEDtalk video, Charles Cecil talked about rebuilding the relationship with the games buying market. The take away was that a lot of the lessons we'd learned in the web world can and should be applied the world of games and play. After another break and a another good TEDtalk video choice about how design can up the circulation of newspapers.
On came Clive Grinyer on the Democratisation Of Design. A very thought provoking talk and to be honest did get me going at points. There was a section about superstar designers which had me almost spitting blood. Can't stand the idea of superstar designers. This is why I found objectified so ummmm frustrating in parts. But then he talked about design as function and process, and showed a example of a redesigned prison to encourage people not to reoffend. In the end, the point of Clive's talk was all about design being too important for it to be left with designers. Or as he puts it nothing is too small to be designed.
After the event we all headed over to Ha Ha bar for social drinks (thanks Herb and Marrisa). TEDxLeeds had some great speakers and it all went pretty smoothly, good work imran, ntileeds and codeworks. I'm going to miss out on the next two TEDxNorth's (sheffield and Newcastle) due to work on TEDxManchester which is looking to be a big event to end the TEDxNorth 2009 season.
Banshee music importing
Following the iTunes9 announcement, someone who wants to stay anonymous pointed out to me that Banshee has had a solution for the home syncing for months now. If you click on the shared music sources, you get what you expect streaming access to all the music and video on that system. But if you right click you can import everything or subsets of the remote music source. You can then setup a rule to automatically do this with mobile devices like the Gphones, ipod, windows mobile, MPD or any mass storage device. Its not quite syncing but its not far off
iTunes 9, yawn…
I remembered yesterday about midnight that Apple had announced something, mainly because a couple of my friends were talking about iTunes9 on twitter. So I had a quick look through the Engadget entry. And to be honest (not bashing apple again) most of it is a yawn. Steve Jobs is back, some tweaks to ipods, don't really care. Ah iTunes, maybe something interesting? As Stowe Boyd writes, would Apple really transform iTunes into a truly social experience for media, something on a par with what Last.fm did years ago?
Well it sounds like Stowe is right, Last.fm of yesteryear. Also whats the massive excitement about home sharing? Didn't itunes always have Bonjour/Zeroconf sharing? I personally use Banshee on all my machines at home and turn on sharing, that works as expected. Ok yes you can move and copy files that way too, but outside the novice market, would anyone use this? XBMC has the ability to move/copy/delete files but how many times have I ever used it? ummmmm once in a very blue moon. Maybe I'm missing something, because my music isn't _controlled_ by iTunes or any media player but I don't see the point beyond sharing/streaming. I'm keeping quiet about iTunesLP, till I see a specification.