Ianforrester

Tracking fingers with the Wiimote

One of the guys at BBC R&I sent this around today. I only just watched this today but I'm really amazed. This is awesome stuff and reminds me I need to get my Wiimote working with my Ubuntu boxes.

I've also been thinking, everyones using that pinch movement/behaviour to indicate scale but what other interactions/behaviours? Is there more which have yet to become standard? Maybe a cycle of the fingers in tandum could indicate master volume or something more? Maybe 3 fingers down the screen could indicate something which should be deleted and 3 up something to be uploaded. The beauty of this low cost setup is that anyone can play and make up there own commands, its no longer just in the research labs. This is great and I'm always in favor of that.

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Suicide bombings virtually, same as in reality?

Found via Bruce Schneier's blog. An awesome thought about how the psychological make up of being the underdog in a asymmetrical war forces you to rethink the sacrifice involved.

Interesting and thoughtful article about suicide attacks in the online video game Halo 3:

Whenever I find myself under attack by a wildly superior player, I stop trying to duck and avoid their fire. Instead, I turn around and run straight at them. I know that by doing so, I'm only making it easier for them to shoot me — and thus I'm marching straight into the jaws of death. Indeed, I can usually see my health meter rapidly shrinking to zero.

But at the last second, before I die, I'll whip out a sticky plasma grenade — and throw it at them. Because I've run up so close, I almost always hit my opponent successfully. I'll die — but he'll die too, a few seconds later when the grenade goes off. (When you pull off the trick, the game pops up a little dialog box noting that you killed someone “from beyond the grave.”)

It was after pulling this maneuver a couple of dozen times that it suddenly hit me: I had, quite unconsciously, adopted the tactics of a suicide bomber — or a kamikaze pilot.

It's not just that I'm willing to sacrifice my life to kill someone else. It's that I'm exploiting the psychology of asymmetrical warfare.

Because after all, the really elite Halo players don't want to die. If they die too often, they won't win the round, and if they don't win the round, they won't advance up the Xbox Live rankings. And for the elite players, it's all about bragging rights.

I, however, have a completely different psychology. I know I'm the underdog; I know I'm probably going to get killed anyway. I am never going to advance up the Halo 3 rankings, because in the political economy of Halo, I'm poor.

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Open Standards for Open Data Portability

I love it when technology you've been backing finally start to mesh together to form a better experience. Well in that same vein, comes dataportability.org – the open standards stack for the ubiquitous sharing and remixing of data.

All the expected standards are there including OpenID and RSS. Theres a nod towards inclusion of ubiquitous microformats like hcard and xfn which is a good idea. I would have liked to have seen FoaF and ATOM but Opml is also included which is used wide enough for it to be included. Then we have the newer kids on the block. Oauth, APML and Yadis.

I learned quite a lot about Oauth while in Berlin so can certainly give it the thumbs up now. Its basiclly like Open ID for data exchange. The best example of how it works is like how Flickr allows 3rd party applications to talk to it by authenticating them via the user first. So for example you could allow a upload tool read and write to your flickr but only let Moo.com read from them. APML i'm a large backer of from day one, when I discovered it in Particls/Touchstone (at the time). Yadis is new to me but I see its made up of things like LID and OpenID. Its bascilly a way to tie together your identies online. So you can specify openID and lightweight ID in the same file. I'm sure you could even add things like Jabber ids and other type things in the future.

Anyway, all these specs are very open and worth palying

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Taking a real holiday

I've not blogged for a while due to taking some time out to try and relax while in Berlin. This has caused a serious amount of back log in my email, calendar and general view of whats going on out there.

On top of being on holiday, my work phone (Nokia N80) is pretty much screwed now. It only works when using speaker phone. At least a while ago it still worked with my bluetooth headset but now even that doesn't work. This means if you've been trying to call me and not getting through or getting through, I've not been able to reply to you.

I finally got my bike taxed and recieved a stupid amount of real mail (mainly informational stuff) but also some stuff which is critical. All I can say is I will do them but I'm currently on a train heading up to Newcastle for BBC Innovation Labs and it only starts there. Edinburgh and Glasgow are Wednesday and Thursday. Thankfully I can enjoy the weekend – fixing my home servers.

Yeah came back to also find my home server with a Linux error about a read only file system. Almost the exact problem I had with my laptop while I was in Boston, so hopefully I can fix that myself. Unfortually this might mean dragging the thing down from the loft (trust me if you had 4 LBA hard drives in a dell beige case too it, you would moan). I've also decided that its time to upgrade to Smoothwall Express 3.0 for the firewall/router setup i have. Hopefully having a Wireless Zone will also help with the problem my flatmate has been having

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Talking about Corporate Communications 2.0, BBC Internet blog launch

So this is great I'm sitting in the front row of a talk about Corporate Communications 2.0. The blurb goes like this.

Today's successful corporate communications and PR efforts are moving faster and faster towards the Web 2.0 channels of the day. Even some of the largest companies are using blogs, podcasts, videos – even Twitter and Jaiku – to reach customers, employees, and shareholders. Many of these efforts have had excellent results, others not so much. How does PR and corporate communications operate today, in a world full of direct communication with customers via web sites, email, blogs, and video?In order to use update your corporate communications plan, you need to consider corporate blogging practices that fit your company and situation, understand the variety of channel and tools available, and learn to blend the old with the new.Through a variety of corporate case studies, find out how businesses can use blogs and other forms of online communication to reach out and inform their customers, connect with their employees and their community, and create conversations and relationships that last.

So I thought, hummm I wonder if the BBC Internet Blog has launched yet? Yes that thing I've been closed lipped about for ages is now online for all to see. Enjoy!

I see Ashley has wrote a entry about Linux Figures off the back of the Podcast which was done recently. Well 151 comments later its turned a little nasty…

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indigenous content

Stowe gave a great talk from the Web 2.0 expo which I'll expand on later but during the talk he used the term Indigenous content which caught my ear. After a quick chat with Stowe, he pointed me to the source. I actually like the term and the background of it By the tribe, for the tribe.

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Mozilla Prism (Web Runner)

Prism lets users add their favorite web apps to their desktop environment

Yes I know its old but I saw Prism recently working and I was very impressed. Combine this with Google Gears or Offline Dojo and wow. Till then, this is perfect for my parents who really have problems with typing in urls.

Prism isn’t a new platform, it’s simply the web platform integrated into the desktop experience. Web developers don’t have to target it separately, because any application that can run in a modern standards-compliant web browser can run in Prism. Prism is built on Firefox, so it supports rich internet technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and

And while Prism focuses on how web apps can integrate into the desktop experience, we’re also working to increase the capabilities of those apps by adding functionality to the Web itself, such as providing support for offline data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware.

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(Lazyweb) Can someone port over to Linux RSSsaver

For the love of god, mankind, whatever can someone please attempt to or help port over the almost open source project RSSsaver. Its killing me that there is no decent RSS screensaver for Linux and RSSsaver is getting quite mature now, hell even the owner of the project wants it ported and free software based.

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Bad bad day and its only 3mins to 8am

Ok what the hell am I doing up at 3mins to 8am? Yes this is so wrong on so many levels. Someone set a meeting for 10:30am then changed it to 9:00am. Ok I can live with that but setting the meeting all the way down almost near the M25 in a place only accessable by car or only one train is insane. Basiclly it meant I had to get up 6:30am, be out of the house by 7am (yes no time for breakfast, oh I long for those days when it use to take me 10mins to shower and get changed). Anyway the train from Woolwich Arsenal was due to leave at 7:10am and did. Luckly thanks to shouting at the guy who was screwing around with his travelcard ticket I was on it. If I wasn't I would be screwed. Now let me take a moment out to say to those who would say to me, why didn't you get the one before so you can be certain you would be there on or before time. Well let me fill you in, if I was to do that. I would have had to be on the 6:55am train (which to the sounds of it my flatmate used). That would have required me to get up at 6:15am and the train is the slow one which means I would have got there all of 5mins earlier that the other one. So screw that, i'm sorry I'm not getting up 15mins earlier so I can get there 5mins earlier. Sorry I'm being harsh and grumpy but I got other issues.

In the mornings the trains are bloody packed to the max, not even standing room, only squeeze room. But what really put me in a bad mood today was my windows mobile phone. Yesterday I restart my phone and for some reason during booting up it crashed when loading up egress my rss reader. Why it was loading it up so early I don't know but it got upset with some update and bang off it went. After a series of restarts and charges I decided to leave it over night. Wake up to find its still screwed, so I had no option but to do a cold restart and wipe everything off it. Yes this is what Steve f'ing jobs was talking about but screw him, my phone is my phone and its pretty useless without the additional 3rd party applications – even if there is the risk they might kill the phone. And lets be honest phones go wrong anyway. Because today my work phone a Nokia N80 didn't work when making a call. It makes call but I then have to switch it to speaker phone to hear the other person. I haven't put anything on the phone and I've done nothing with it. Its even still got a standard 128meg memory card in it, which is insane because I have 1gig cards hanging around in my bedroom. About 4 months ago it wouldn't full sync with my computer and 2months after that it certain applications such as mail kept freezing up, ultimately requiring a reboot. How does Apple and Steve 'my way or the highway' Jobs think his device is going to survive the test of time? Anyhow I've digressed too much.

Some of you smarter folks are maybe asking what happened to your scooter Ian? Well its in the bike shop being MOT'ed and I was meant to pick it up yesterday. But I called to check at 4pm and they said call back at 5pm when I found out yes its ready but I need to pick it up before 6pm. Now White City to Liverpool Street and a short bus ride or walk should be do able in 30mins. But oh no, it took all of 45mins and by the time I got to Liverpool Street when i could call them, it was after 6pm already and they were not answering there phones at all. So yes I had no bike. This wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't going to Berlin early tomorrow and had not a ton of other things to do today including picking up my bike, repairing my phone, arranging a geekdinner and packing.

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