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

RSS as the vaseline that’s greasing the wheels of Web 2.0

Jeremy Keith writes about how everything he uses outputs RSS of some kind which can easily be mashed up. Yes this is pretty straight forward and I hope commonly known now but what prompted me to blog was this bit.

At the recent Take Back The Web event here in Brighton, Rob Purdie talked about RSS being the vaseline that’s greasing the wheels of Web 2.0. He makes a good point.

Over the course of any particular day, I could be updating five or six RSS feeds, depending on how much I’m blogging, how many links I’m posting, or how much music I’m listening to. I’d like to take those individual feeds and mush ‘em all up together.

I think were finally at the stage where its accepted that RSS and ATOM can be like RESTful API's. I remember having a email exchange with Jeff Barr about this and he disagreed. Well I'm sorry but it looks I was right.

What Jeremy also talks about is why I love XSL so much. As long as its valid XML and web accessable I can do something with it. I've been asked to be involved in a special project for Christmas to do with XSL, so look out for that soon.

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Web 2.0 Summit coverage

Quick heads up on where to get really iindepth information on the O'reilly Web 2.0 Summit which just finished recently. Richard MacManus from the Read/Write Web has tons of posts which seem to cover pretty much everything. His wrap up post links to everything he's written in notes.

I also have to point to Ben Metcalfe's post about his ignoyance about the people attending the web 2.0 summit. Richard also picks up on this.

Some folks, like Ben Metcalfe, think the conference has lost its edge. Maybe it has, but the Web 2.0 Summit is a different beast now than it was last year – and that's a sign of the times.

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Enterprising Britian : the debate?

Raising the currency of ideas

Well first up, it wasn't a debate, it was a very long series of lectures. And to be fair lectures which were pretty much saying the same thing but not offering any real ways forward. There were some highlights to the day. Talking to Doug Richard was interesting and he had some thoughts about what backstage could be doing with Library House. Kevin Steele chief executive of Enterprise Insight, also put out a call to all community groups around London to get in touch with them, as they have money to fund your community. This event kicks off Enterprise week which has been running for about 4 years now, and there are many events happening around the country this week.

Anyway like the mashup day, I pretty much filmed every I could and have uploaded the results on to Blip.tv.

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End of the road for the Gillmor Gang?

Tom Morris writes

There are rumours flying around about the Gillmor Gang – the whole thing may be wrapping up, or that the show might leave PodShow. Who knows? In Steveland, nothing is constant. Truth is dead! The Gang is dead! Links are dead! Ding dong!

I loved the Gillmor Gang when the likes of Jon Udell were on it. But in the last year its been a mess of ego busting natter. Steve Gillmor seems to be trolling people, while Jason Calacanis seems to suck it all in and blow it back again. Dan Farber and Dana Gardner tend to be very monotone while Mike Arrington and specially Doc Searls sometimes say something of interest. But generally its not enough and its gotten worst recently.

The last straw for me is the crazyness which is going on with the RSS feed. I looked this morning and it had downloaded 600 meg of old Gillmor gang podcasts. I gave up on Gillmor daily ages ago. When I get online again, I'm removing them both from my subscriptions.

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Digital Music is not a loaf of bread which can be stolen

In a long series of things which I've been meaning to blog for a while. I saw this on Torrent Freak.

Singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy is part of the growing group of artists that understands that there’s more to music than selling pieces of plastic, and suing your fans.

In an interview with Wired Magazine (from a while ago), Tweedy said:

A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that’s it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it’s just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work.

Jeff Tweedy is the leadsinger of the popular band Wilco, that won two Grammy’s back in 2005. He doesn’t consider copying and remixing as evil, but as a way to facilitate creativity.

On the official website of the band from Chicago we even see a link to the BitTorrent tracker where Wilco fans actively share high quality recordings.

Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator. People who look at music as commerce don’t understand that. They are talking about pieces of plastic they want to sell, packages of intellectual property. I’m not interested in selling pieces of plastic.

For those who are interested in the copyright debate, here’s a presentation by Larry Lessig titled “Who owns Culture“. The presentation served as an intro to conversation about p2p and free culture by Jeff Tweedy and Larry Lessig (audio link).

This all comes at a time when EMI music CEO and Chairman Alain Levy tells an audience at the London Business School that the CD as we know it is dead. And to top that, the IPPR released a study on why copying of CDs and DVDs for personal use should be legalised.

IPPR Deputy Director Ian Kearns said:

Millions of Britons copy CDs onto their home computers breaking copyright laws everyday. British copyright law is out of date with consumer practices and technological progress.

A recent survey among 2135 British adult consumers shows that most people don’t even know that they are breaking the law. Of all the people that participated in the survey, 55% said that they have ever copied CDs onto other equipment. However, only 19% actually knows that this behavior is illegal.

Well what more can you say? Three interesting stories in the downfall or change of the music industry.

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UK Geospatial Mash up event

Uk Geospatial Mashup

I should have blogged this much earlier but I attended and spoke at the UK Geospatial Mash up event at the Ordnance Survey centre in Southampton. I don't remember much now but there's some really good posts about the whole day here and here. I did however record a few of the sessions and put them on Blip.tv for everyone to enjoy.

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Finally I can ride my new Honda Silverwing Scooter

Honda Silverwing

So yep at long last, I'm riding around on my Silverwing. Its been restricted from 600cc to about 400cc to fit with my 33bhp licence restriction. But even at two-thirds of its full power, its a true rocket on the road. Riding along windy dual carriageways like the A40 are a joy now and I can finally get out in front of the cars and superbikes like you've never seen before due to its automatic gears. Sarah also loves the bike and claims she will go down to Bristol on it if needed. I have not played with the power adapter yet (yes so I can charge my phone while riding) but I'm thinking about adding a USB adapter once I get the box on the back.

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Cheap, hackable Linux smartphone?

Prototype Linux smartphones

One of the world's largest computer and consumer electronics manufacturers will ship a completely open, Linux-based, GPS-equipped, quad-band GSM/GPRS phone direct, worldwide, for $350 or less, in Q1, 2007. First International Computing's (FIC's) “Neo1973” or FIC-GTA001, is the first phone based on the open-source “OpenMoKo” platform.

When I first heard about this, I didn't think much about it but then I started to check out the specs. It sounds and looks a lot like the Windows Mobile devices made by HTC. And to be honest I like the devices but I'm not super keen on the mobile windows operating system. However Symbian for me still isn't great.

The Neo1973 is based on a Samsung S3C2410 SoC (system-on-chip) application processor, powered by an ARM9 core. It will have 128MB of RAM, and 64MB of flash, along with an upgradable 64MB MicroSD card.

Typical of Chinese phone designs, the Neo1973 sports a touchscreen, rather than a keypad — in this case, an ultra-high resolution 2.8-inch VGA (640 x 480) touchscreen. “Maps look stunning on this screen,” Moss-Pultz said.

The phone features an A-GPS (assisted GPS) receiver module connected to the application processor via a pair of UARTs. The commercial module has a closed design, but the API is apparently open.

The Neo1973 will charge when connected to a PC via USB. It will also support USB network emulation, and will be capable of routing a connected PC to the Internet, via its GPRS data connection.

Moss-Pultz notes that the FIC-GTA001, or Neo1973, is merely the first model in a planned family of open Linux phones from FIC. He expects a follow-up model to offer both WiFi and Bluetooth. “By the time one ships, the next one is half done,” he says.

Like most things, its maybe best to skip the first generation and wait for the next one. There's no way I'm getting a phone with no Wifi or Bluetooth. But that super rich VGA is certainly worth checking out.

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