So after all the fuss about twitter rank, someone else has build a popularity contest which is starting to make the rounds on Twitter. Twittergrader is like twitter rank but (and this is the important part) doesn't require your twitter password. Twitter elite is the popularity part and interestingly enough it also does it per city. So although someone like myself will never be able to rank among the Scoble's, Lapour's, etc. In London I was in the top 10 believe it or not (not bad for a man who's not a big fan of twitter). In Manchester i'm number one, but like I said before I don't really care about popularity contests. Search is well search based around people and rankings. The twittergrader badge shows your own rank and points you to people you might also find interesting to follow. Generally the whole service is actually not bad, specially since no private information has to be given. Other services take note, this is a meme which you can't shake.
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
Bristol crowned European City of the Year?
I'm in the European city of the year for the weekend. No thats not a invite to break into my Manchester Pad but a interesting fact I picked up from the local paper (the evening post) today. I can't work out if this is the same award as the European Green City award which Bristol is also in the line-up for. Either way, congrats Bristol, you even beat out my current Home Manchester which does need some work doing on it in some areas. Bristol is a great city, don't get me wrong. Its got everything but I just wish it was bigger and had more tech/internet jobs. Between HP research Labs, University of West England (UWE) and the watershed, you could imagine some very cool things happening but generally it seems quite slow. But hey thats a outsiders point of view looking inwards, I maybe be very wrong.
Amplified or are some people tone deaf?
So I attended Amplified 2008 at Nesta yesterday. It was a interesting event for many reasons, but I had one burning question.
As expected it was like a mini BarCamp but over 4 hours. Yes only 4 hours. This was certainly not your democratic barcamp structure where everyone was expected to talk or our at least given the opportunity to talk. Instead the Nesta offices were split up into 9 areas and there was enough room for 3x 45min talks with tons of time for breaks between. So yes in total there were 27 slots for a room of about 80 (I think). I thought this is so weird that I might not give a talk at all because I'm sure there will be fighting for places. Most people were happy to just check out stuff with there two ears. But after the first session I went to (the future of the book) I got frustrated by one of the organisers who cut the session dead because time was out. The conversation was going toward something interest and for it to die flat like that, we deserved another session. So walked to the board and thought of something which would attract peoples imagination.
I'm a pirate and what are you going to do about it? It was a late entry on the board but we still gathered a crowd of about 12. Before long we were admitting to each about our darknet collections and ways of getting more stuff. We went in that angle and came out thinking about ways the licensing should change for the good of the commons and industry. It was a good idea, had wished I had put it on there earlier and I didn't have to miss all the other sessions which were on at the same time.
The last session was me working with Nicole in her session about a match making agency for entrepreneurs and developers. Nicole with a bit of prompting did write a ton of notes down on her moblog, so I won't go into a ton of detail. Anyway I think its a good idea and most people agree, but as we already know its about the way its done.
After a final wrap session where everyone had to say one word which they we thinking and that was pretty much it. Thanks now bugger off to the pub around the corner. My one word was BarCamp. Why? Because I don't understand lots of these people would come to Amplified but never a BarCamp. Everyone seemed to enjoy the format, although you could tell people were not happy about the general room noise during slots, specially whoevers idea it was to put four talks in the same room with no barriers! sometimes people were shouting over each other to be heard and that's worst that BarCampBerlin3.
There were lots people who I've never seen at a BarCamp before and I wonder why? Is it because there community driven, BarCamp is associated with different circles, the event was arranged by Nesta, they never heard of BarCamp? It weird at a time when BarCamps are blowing up all over the place were not attracting some of these people along too. I'm sure they would totally dig it. I'm not taking anything away from the Nesta Team, they did a great job. I guess I like the idea of us not having to wait for the big names to run such events for us. We the people can self organise and setup things ourselves. Nesta and others can help but don't need to own it.
Drm, simply say no
Another reason not to buy a apple laptop me thinks.
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP)—you can't live with it, but you practically can't buy an HD-capable device anymore without it. While HDCP is typically used in devices like Blu-ray players, HDTVs, HDMI-enabled notebooks, and even the Apple TV in order to keep DRMed content encrypted between points A and B, it appears that Apple's new aluminum MacBook (and presumably the MacBook Pro) are using it to protect iTunes Store media as well.
And in other news Blu-Ray has been cracked again…. so the endless war looms onwards.
Rich Kid Poor Kid
Channel4's Cutting Edge documentary Rich Kid Poor Kid was quite something. I only heard about it from a comment someone made. Generally the idea of the show was to question two kids who live on the same street in South London, about there lives. One lives in a nice leafy area with 6 bedroom houses and goes to private school, the other lives in a council house and left school at 15. Then bring them together and see what happens.
It is a winning formula but there was something quite humbling about the fact these girls could get on, share experiences and find a certain amount of respect for each other. Its something I really believe in, once people come in contact with each other its really hard for them to hold there sometimes extreme views. So in this example the rich girls views on kids that don't go to private school starts to soften after meeting the poor girl. In the face of all the BNP stuff earlier in the week, its refreshing to think we can and will get along the more time we all spend together.
Things have gone a bit wrong
Ok need to keep this short because I'm typing on the small keyboard of the acer aspire. Its ok for my fat fingers but certainly not like my lovely dell keyboard or even better my ibm keyboard at home.
So I tried to do a few things over the last few days, and maybe wrongly rushed them.
- I did change the partition on my old dell using the live ubuntu 8.10 cd. Everything worked but i over wrote the master boot record and had to install grub again. My idea of booting into xbmc from the media direct button is put on hold for now.
- I also somehow while playing with resolutions and multiple screens during a video conference call yesterday, killed my xorg.configue settings and can't seem to get them back to a state where I can actual login to ubuntu. So i'm currently backing everything up (something i should have done when doing the partitions really) ready for a clean install of ubuntu 8.10 tomorrow. This means little email, twittering, etc for the next few days sorry.
- I decided to upgrade the ram on both the dell and acer. The dell now has 4gig and the acer 1.5gig. It took me 5mins to do the dell and a best part of a hour to do the Acer. I filmed it which I'll put on online later
So I bought one… Acer Aspire A110L
150 pounds from Comet in White City, Manchester. The box was opened so I got a discount. Otherwise the machine is brand new. Its the basic model with Linux, 8gig Solid state drive and only 512meg of Ram. I'm expecting once I do the 4gig upgrade on my Dell to pass on the memory to this machine, then maybe stick in a small bluetooth dongle. I'm also checking out how to get ubuntu or xubuntu on it. But generally I'm planning to use this device for im, rss reading, ebooks and general web use.
Emma’s guide to great BarCamping
I picked this up via a twitter from Nicole Simon and had a quick read while getting ready to go out for a lunch meeting. Emma's at tons of BarCamp including the tiny ones. I'm actually surprised she's not put one on yet.
A couple of comments however. I love step one and that step four cancels it out if needed. Its very frustrating to hear people say, I've got nothing to talk about when your suggesting they fill the board with talks. Sometimes I feel like saying, what the bloody hell are you doing here if your not going to participate. The small group thing is a good idea, or try and go to sessions not run by your friends just because there your friend. Don't get me wrong its nice to support friends but sometimes, they need to get jump in the deepend.
Getting up early (step 3) is painful specially after a conference party the previous day. But Emmas right, from the orgainser's point of view there's nothing worst than people new turning up late who don't know what to do. Us rehular barcampers should also make a effort, to remind orgainsers of certain things they forget.
Step 5 about hijacking or leaving a session is so important and most organisers don't mention it which is a problem. In BarCampBerlin3 I turned up to a session about CSS frameworks and it turned out to be a big plug for a framework the guys was working on. Nothing wrong with that if it was advertised that way but it wasn't and although me and Nicole were the only english speakers and had asked for the session to be in english at the start. We still left because it was putting us (or rather me) to sleep.
Keeping in touch and having no plans is essential. But having fun is so forgotten. Sometimes I look around and think to myself, wow BarCamp is like geek paradise – where else would you want to be? I guess this is why the idea of Geekcamp or Geekholidays is coming back into focus within my mind.
And finally, yes please spend sometime and think about running your own BarCamp. Some people still ask me why I stopped running them in London. Well its because its something I believe other people should experience for themselves. When Ben Metcalfe asked me to be his partner in crime for BarCampLondon1 I wasn't sure what to expect (hell I don't think any of us were) but it worked out really well (some still say it was the best barcamp). But there's new areas and places to try BarCamps in. I'm already getting involved in a possible BarCampManchester2 which might be Backstage funded and a possible BarCampHuddersfield which came about through a discussion with Lisa from Futuresonic. There's also more concerete plans for BarCampNorthEast2 which to date has been the only overnight BarCamp in the north of england! Shame on the north of england… Someone should do something about that. Well if I get either Manchester2 or Huddersfield going, fear not – they will be overnighters….
Print and the internet
I love what David Sifry and team have done in Offbeat guides.
Offbeat Guides create personalized, up-to-date travel guides that cover over 30,000 travel destinations, using a combination of search technology and curation by both amateur and professional travel experts. Our guides scour the web to find the best, most up-to-date information about your destination. You can personalize the information you want based on your travel dates, preferences, and destination. The guides come with local maps, festivals and events going on while you're there, exchange rates, key phrases in the city's language, weather forecasts and more.
It kind of reminds me of Idiomag but the business model is a little more straight forward and I like the fact you only really pay if you want the PDF or book. Unlike Idiomag however there's no APML being built in the background and you can't point to other services you may use. I mean it would be super handy if offbeat guides would look at my dopplr account and see when I'm next going somewhere new and might need a guide. It could also take hints and tips from friends and add those to the list. Can I also say once again, outside the iphone bubble there are many other types of phones which they could also support using textual/tagged PDF.
There’s still life in the old laptop
So I've been thinking about getting a Netbook (or cloud terminal as I like to call them). Mainly because of weight and portability. The Acer Inspire really grabs me with its cheap price and solid state memory drive. But I started thinking I should invest in something a little more solid like the Dell Mini 9. But after some time I've come around to the fact my Dell XPS M1210, although one of the most heavy 12 inch laptops you can get, still has a lot of life inside of it.
Currently the 9 Cell battery is 2 years old and lasts 2.25 hours on usual operation. If I turn off Bluetooth and Wifi it can go up to 3 hours. But looking on ebay, replacement 9 cell batteries are about 50 pounds. Which means I can go back to enjoying 6-7 hour battery times again.
I choose the 120gig SATA harddrive and to be honest, only fill it up when I'm going somewhere and I pile on podcasts and films. Generally I gave 20gigs left at anytime. I also use to use my laptop for transfering stuff, but now I got the pacemaker with also 120gig of space and I'm only using 15% of that. So I usually have mass storage on me and don't need to use the laptop. But whats also weird is the way Dell partitioned the drive. The first partition is a FAT drive of less that a gig with Dell utils on it. Second partition use to be my data drive for Windows which I recently converted from NTFS to EXT3 and is about 100gigs big. Third partition is EXT3 and is where the root ubuntu install exists, its also about 10gig big. The last partition is 4.5gig and is currently where my swap file sits. Yes thats crazy, I hear your saying. I've only got 2gig of memory and to be fair the swap never gets used even with all the applications I have open at once. The problem with the last partition is it was where Dell MediaDirect use to be. Media direct is a media player which will start if you press the correct button on startup. Its useful if you want to just play a dvd or listen to music without booting up the operating system. Well as you can imagine I've used this option all of twice over 2 years. So what I need really is somehting like partition magic to shift everything around a little. Gpart and a couple other open source utils don't seem to be able to shift around stuff so easily. If anyone knows of something different which will please shout.
I've also been thinking it would be a good idea to replace the dell utils with xbmc, so I could boot into something actually useful even if my ubuntu was broken. I'm not totally sure how to do this yet but I'll have a try.
The last thing I think I need to do to my machine is give it 4gig of memory. Its fine with 2gig but I do sometimes wonder if ubuntu is living within that tight limit. 4gig means things like RSSOwl & Snackr which currently loads 400+ RSS feeds each can be stored in memory rather that cache surely? Eitherway, 4gig is now as low as 40 pounds for the 667mhz type, I opted for the 533mhz version when i was in the states last. Hopefully the extra bandwidth will also help with speed, although I got to say the dual core 2 processors are fast enough for most things I do on it. Even High-def encoding isn't out of the question. I was thinking also if I did get a acer ainspire one I could stick the old memory from the dell into the ainspire to boost its standard 512meg of memory.
Someone was saying to me, I should also clean install Ubuntu on the machine because I've upgrade it since Ubuntu 7.04 and although ubuntu and linux generally is good at cleaning up after its self. I could make all the changes I want and get rid of legacy config files, etc.
So in total the upgrades will be less that 100 pounds and quite a bit of my time. Seems worth it to me.