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

Day Break has been axed?

Taye Diggs and Victoria Pratt of Daybreak

Oh great! What is it with American networks and getting rid of shows before they get a chance to get going? I'm not saying Daybreak was the next Firefly but you know what – its damm ignoying. I mean its only meant to be a mini series between the break in Lost season 3 but come on. Its actually not that bad and I was looking forward to seeing what else would come from the series. Now I have to watch it on ABC.com via a proxy
because I can't see it in the UK, but it even that looks unlikely.

According to Lost-Media, “Day Break�, the show that was supposed to fill the void during the Lost hiatus, has been pulled by the network.

The entire story-arch of “Day Break� was planned for a single season, so it’s sad to see that ABC doesn’t have the balls to stick with it until the end. Even though the show only attracted around 4.5 million viewers, canceling a show that was going to end pretty soon is both cowardly and unfair to the 4.5 million who watch it and were looking forward to the conclusion.

ABC has said that fans will be able to follow “Day Break� online at ABC.com, but couldn’t promise that all the remaining episodes would be available on the website.

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Buying a new laptop, last minute thoughts

So I'm on the look out for a new laptop. The Apple seems like a good deal (I can also get quite a percentage off). Also from what I've been reading I should get a Intel Core Duo 2 chip, at least for the 4meg Cache and future 64bit processing support but its not essential to get a high clock speed. Hard Drives
have doubled again, so I dont need to worry about that. Here's top of my list at the moment, bearing in mind I only want a 12inch laptop (13 if I'm pushed)

Apple Mac Book = 2GHz Core Duo 2 with 80GB HD and 2gig of memory is £1,014.01 (1 year AppleCare)

Lenovo Thinkpad X60s = 1.66Ghz Core Duo 2 with 80GB HD and 1gig of memory is £1,021.98 (3 years warranty)

Dell XPS M1210 = 2Ghz Core Duo 2 with 120GB HD and 1gig of memory is £960.22 2 years warranty)

Toshiba Satellite Pro U200 = 2Ghz Core Duo 2 with 100GB HD and 1gig of memory is £1,173.83 1 year warranty)

Thoughts?

All support 12.1inch screens (bar Mac with 13.3inch), WXGA (1280px by 800px) except the X60 which has plain XGA, dual layer DVD burners, Wifi and Bluetooth. Although I had to add Bluetooth to the Dell configuration. The 2Ghz models have 4meg Caches. The PC;s have card readers while the Mac does not. The X60 and U200 both come with biometrics. The Dell and Mac have a built in Cameras and those new Express card slots (aka not PCMCIA). All have Firewire and USB2 ports,
the mac only having 2x while the X60 and U200 have 3x and the Dell has 4x. The mac loses out on a lot of things here but I've loaded it with 2gig of memory and its still cheapest machine generally (and thats before my discount even). I even did a test config at 1.87ghz and it came to under £950, but its also got the 13.3 inch screen. I like the Dell and X60 because they both have options for bigger cell batteries (9 cell in the Dell), Svideo and bigger warranties. Generally the U200 is too expensive
and its really down to the Dell, X60 and Mac.

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When the long tail makes the most sense

Friends

Rachel wrote this good post about Twitter.

Twitter is still small enough to be fun – although that may change. Suw today asked if there was an optimum Twitter friend pool size. There probably is, which will vary by person and how much data you can browse. We’ll get the power users, with plenty of friends and far more followers. Others will keep it private and contained. It’s the Long Tail curve all over again.

This certainly says to me, its not good to just add contacts to twitter like most people do on social networks. The more you have the less relevance it has and more noise you will get. And in a service like twitter, this could render it pointless (like watching the public feed). Yes I know you can change who your following but this is a pain like sending a user a direct message (notice how many people use the syntax @username). So generally the degrees of separation are kept small. I mean who wants to pay for
5 updates every minute on their phone? Or even see them in their IM client.

I've noticed this is also very key in another social service. Upcoming.org has this great little feature which shows you all the events your friends/contacts are also watching or attending. This is a interesting feature but like Twitter, you don't want to add too many friends otherwise it becomes like the public feed and has very little relevance.

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The Venice Project

So thanks to Libby Miller, I got my request to join the Venice project fast tracked. I have just loaded it up on my desktop machine and its quite impressive so far. Its by the guys who brought us Skype/Kazaa and is basiclly a streaming IPTV client. Its really made for the full screen TV experience, rather that windowed viewing due to its sofa like interface (think Apple's Frontrow that XBMC or Windows Media
Centre). Anyway, Business week did a bit about it in July and there's more screenshots on Flickr. But expect more details from me with lots of screenshots, once I read the non-disclosure notice again in full.

The Venice project screen

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This week in Media: Content is King

This week in media

This week's podcast from those guys at This week in Media was a great review of the media landscape in 2006. The break points are these…

  1. The move to online video, the rise of YouTube, TV networks put shows on iPods and online, movies beginning to sell via digital download and podcasting grows.
  2. The new media economy. New models emerge for the monitzation of online media, changing distribution models, and the rise of those that will sue rather than change or lose control.
  3. Camera revolution – Red, Silicon Imaging, cheap HD with HDMI, dropping cost and the move to full digital heralding the death of actual film.
  4. HD-DVD and Blue-Ray DOA? Is there a future?
  5. Would you like to play a game? Did Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo lay the groundwork for the future of gaming and interactive media, or did they miss the power up?

Its almost a 2 hour podcast, but its worth every second in my view.

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Live and Direct at Volume

Volume at the V and A, London

I spent some time experiencing Volume today. I took 256meg of pictures and almost 2gig of video (which I'm uploading now). The video is in 720p but medium quality High Definition Mpeg4. If you really want to get a feel for Volume, do check out the non-flash versions which are as smooth as it really gets online. And of course do actually go and experience it yourself. Here's some of best shots with my new
Camera. Its great having a Digital SLR with 12x zoom!

Volume encorages you play

Volume in action

Walking across the grid of Volume

Somone looking up at a pole

People look on



More Camera shots

Look into the light

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I’m in the market for a new Laptop

Yes my Toshiba Protege 3500 TabletPC is pretty much on its last legs when it comes to the CPU fan. It works but rubs against the sides making a nasty noise when the CPU is working. I'm not that bothered about selling it because Sarah could use it at home. But I can't even use it at work because of the noise it makes.

So whats my list of features?

  • 12 or 13 inch screen size (which supports at least 1024×768)
  • 512meg of memory min (upgradable to 2gig)
  • at least 40 gigs of hard drive space (4800-5400 rpm, ideally SATA 150)
  • at least 2 USB 2.0 ports
  • 802.11 b/g Wireless
  • Bluetooth 2.0
  • at least a 1.4ghz Core Duo 2 processor
  • SD reader (8 in one would be better)
  • All this for less that £1000 and interest free credit for at least 6 months.

Currently on my list I have these laptops

There not perfect, but they give you an idea of what I like. Any other suggestions? And please no laughing about the fact I'm considering getting a bloody Mac Book. See I told you I was open minded on these things.

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Are you paying attention? My touchstone review

Touchstone in action on the desktop

I just posted up a review of Touchstone's Alpha on my pipeline blog. While I can't put my finger on exactly what it is, it's self described as a alerts/updates and attention management platform. What ever that is – it is, it's certainly a move forward beyond the standard RSS reader or online aggregator. I just can't wait for it to use less resources and
add more adapters.

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