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

Too important for one company to rule the field

Thats how I generally feel about a lot of things. Microblogging included. Slate have a post (found via @tdobson via @technicalfault about the recent Twitter outage, which I've not really talked about too much yet.

Twitter is run by a single company in a single office building in San Francisco. When you send out a message, it flies about Twitter's servers and then alights in all your Twitter pals' cell phones and Tweetdecks. The system is fast and technologically simple, which helps explain its exponential growth.

But for Twitter, centralization is also a curse. In its early days, the site was known for its regular brokenness—its error-page logo, the “fail whale,” became a cultural shorthand for suckiness. Twitter went down so often because the idea behind Twitter—sending out short status updates to the world—became too popular for one company to handle.

I know Twitter's strategy is to connect everyone, but I don't see it. The big systems are interconnected with interoperable standards and work although on paper they wouldn't. Email, Newsgroups and the internet generally are good examples. All too important for one company to rule.

The rest of the post switches into looking towards alternatives. On one foot you got the open microblogging platforms such as Laconi.ca and Jaiku Engine. But then on the other you got the RSS extensions such as RSS Cloud and Google's new pubsubhubbub. Both approaches are valid and I can see room for both. I'd like to see pubsubhubbub in my desktop reader one day soon.

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The remixes, the contests

Pacemaker summer mix contest

Just seen there's a couple of interesting remix competitions which some people might not be aware of. Felix Da Housecat has a remix contest around we all wanna be prince. Then I also spotted Skint records have one for the Speed garage classic Double 99 – Ripgroove.

Its not just music makers getting in on the action, There's also a few dj contests I've spotted and may enter. Dirty smart have a Dj competition but its not going to be the right type of music for myself. I just missed the In Trance we trust dj contest but I'm not too late for the Pacemaker summer contest it seems.

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Wall of Fame: Napster vs iTunes

napster

The Gadget show's wall of fame again and this time its the battle of music download sites. Thankful this time they picked the right one. Napster.

In the red corner: Napster. A bit of a rebel it shook the music industry to its core and changed the way we thought about music for ever. Devised by an 18-year-old college student, Napster launched in 1999. It combined a music search function with a file-sharing system, which effectively meant you had access to all the music on all the hard drives of computers connected to Napster. It was bit dodgy, infringing on copyright law, and the music industry had it shut down in 2001. But Napster lives on in an online music store, and it’s the legacy of the original site that makes it so great.

In the blue corner: iTunes! Proclaiming to be the daddy of online music, iTunes is like having a massive music and video warehouse in your bedroom. It originally launched in 2001 as a digital music player before it converted to an online store. It makes transferring music to your iPod easy as! And it’s this simplicity that’s led to its dominance of the online music world with over four billion songs sold!

Putting my hate for the itunes store and its locked in ecosystem a side, itunes would never have come about unless Napster had come on the scene. Napster took all the risks and got finally sued so much that it went legit. iTunes has a massive audience but its just a large download store and isn't ground breaking. Even the removal of DRM came late to iTunes. No doubt Napster deserves the position on the wall of fame.

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Northern Exposure

I don't mind being asked about my time in Manchester, I've come to really enjoy Manchester even with its changeable weather. So changeable that I usually keep my sunglasses on my head even when its raining. Anyhow I was interviewed by Ariel which is BBC's internal weekly newspaper about my move to Manchester. As usual what was printed does not truly reflect what was said. For example at the end, its writen that there are things you couldn't do in London such as hold meetings in the bar. Well actually no, I said there's lots you can not do in London such as host external usergroups from around the region in our bar and meeting rooms after hours. The picture isn't too bad, but I did think there were many better ones which reflected Manchester better that a tatty billboard with club flyers over it. We did shoot pictures inside the bars on deansgate locks but instead they picked that one. in Anyway its done and I'm left feeling that lack of trust again for mainstream media. If your interesting in reading the whole piece, you can read it here.

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TEDxLiverpool

TEDx Liverpool

TEDx Liverpool happened yesterday (Aug 7th) at Liverpool's ICDC. Being the first one of five is no mean feat but the TEDx Liverpool team pulled it off nicely. The line up included Steve Clayton from Microsoft, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino from Tinker.it and Alison Gow from Liverpool's Daily Post. The concept of TEDx is that there are live speakers crossed with pre-recorded talks from the real TED events. The choice of videos was good and mixed well with the live speakers, I did wonder if it would work as smoothly but it did. I would say there was about 100+ people at the event, but a lot of people did drop out for one reason or another. So anyway the friendly challenge of one upping each other is off to a great start. I took some nice pictures of the event.

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The Case Against Apple–in Five Parts

Jason Calacanis has wrote a extra long essay about why the love affair with Apple is over. Its a good read and hopefully adds to the mounting public pressure. The essay is broken dowin into 5 main points.

  1. Destroying MP3 player innovation through anti-competitive practices
  2. Monopolistic practices in telecommunications
  3. Draconian App Store policies that are, frankly, insulting
  4. Being a horrible hypocrite by banning other browsers on the iPhone
  5. Blocking the Google Voice Application on the iPhone

Of course I've been writing similar things for a while but its always good to hear Mac fans coming to there senses.

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The fiery warm snap mix

Another mix, this time on the more chilled side of the trance spectrum. It was recorded at about midnight while sitting on my balcony watching the trains go by. It was a warm night and I was sipping a Diet Ginger beer while mixing. Its a good mix, lots of lesser known tunes with some new ones. I did make one mistake in the middle where I pressed the pause button on the wrong track but otherwise its all good. Let me know what you guys think… The artwork for mix cover is from – Burn Blue under CC licence of course.

  2. She wants him (Blake Jarrells Panty Dropper Remix) – Moussa Clark & Terrafunka
  3. Fallen (Gabriel & Dresden Anti-Gravity Remix) – Sarah McLachlan
  4. Made of Love – Ferry Corsten feat Betsie Larkin
  5. Body of Conflict /images/emoticons/laugh.gifub mix) – Cosmic Gate
  6. Isn't Life Wonderful (Flat 6 mix) – Alex D'ella vs E-Bop Allstars
  7. Into Something – Richard Durand
  8. Language (Santiago Nino Dub Tech Mix) – Hammer and Bennett
  9. Minimalistix (Club mix) – Close Cover
  10. Unprepared – Marco V
  11. Silver Bath – Plastic Boy
  12. The Situation (Liquid life remix) – A Situation
  13. Radio Crush (extended mix) – Ferry Corsten
  14. Can't Sleep – Marcel Wood Feat Elles De Graaf
  15. It's time (Ferry Corsten's flashover mix) – Ferry Corsten

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ESPN needs to get on the Cluetrain

ESPN Tells Employees They Can Only Tweet About ESPN, as reported by Mashable. Shocking stuff I would say. Telling your employees that they must talk about only your business is bad news. It feels unhuman. I'm so happy that the BBC are more forward looking than this. Here's some cluetain's which seem to fit.

36. Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end.

38. Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.

55. As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.

57. Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.

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