Geek Dinner with Tim O’Reilly – Thursday 13th October

Tim O'Reilly



Geek dinner with Tim O'Reilly: Thursday October 13, at the Hogs Head, 11 Dering Street, Westminster, London

Tim O'Reilly is stopping over in London for a few days before the Euro OSCON conference.

The venue is the quiet and chilled out Hogs Head 11 Dering Street, near Oxford Street. We have the whole lower floor which seats up to 60 people and there is a nice cover charge of one pound for the finger buffet, which is payable on the door.

We have the downstairs bar from 7pm till 11pm. Tim is expected to get to the venue about 7:30pm and is looking forward to meeting London geeks and bloggers.

Lee has now changed the geekdinner.co.uk blog. So leave a comment here or on the geekdinner blog, if your interested in going.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

The Daily Show coming to UK Digital TV soon

Jon Stewart on the Daily show

I'm sorry but the fact that the Daily Show is downloaded and viewed more times online that there are viewers of the comedy central cable network, has got to have a influence on Channel4 picking up the Daily Show for their new Adult Digital TV channel – 4more. A recent quote from a wired interview with Jon Stewart and Ben Karlin (The Daily Show's executive producer).

The Daily Show really exemplifies that sort of new model. It's on a cable network, not broadcast. It's among the most popular shows traded online. People download and watch the whole thing, every day. Were you guys aware of that?

Ben Karlin: Not only am I not aware of that, I don't want to be aware of that.

Well, don't go shutting it down.

Stewart: We're not going to shut it down – we don't even know what it is. I'm having enough trouble just getting porn.

Karlin: If people want to take the show in various forms, I'd say go. But when you're a part of something successful and meaningful, the rule book says don't try to analyze it too much or dissect it. You shouldn't say: “I really want to know what fans think. I really want to understand how people are digesting our show.” Because that is one of those things that you truly have no control over. The one thing that you have control over is the content of the show. But how people are reacting to it, how it's being shared, how it's being discussed, all that other stuff, is absolutely beyond your ability to control.

I'm pretty sure the daily show on 4more will not be the Global edition which I saw on CNN Europe when I was last time in Germany. The global edition is funny too but is not as long removes the interviews and is more a round up of the Daily shows of the week. On the same tip 4more will also have 30 days which was on the subscription only FX channel a while ago. Although, me and Sarah have seen 30 days and download the Daily show automaticly every week. Its going to be great to actually say to our friends “did you see last night's daily show?”

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

New social software i’m using

Simac : Semantic Interaction with Music Audio Contents

I've been checking out the huge range of Web API's available recently for a project I have in mind. But I've been sidetracked by two new social software/networks.

The first one is upcoming.org which is a place to publish events. It support RSS syndication through-out and ical for events which are easily synced with modern Calendar applications like Sunbird and Apple iCal. Like most social software my events and stuff is public. I'm now checking out eventful which someone recommended to me over upcoming.

The second one is SIMAC: Semantic Interaction with Music Audio Contents. Its self described as “foafing the music.” I call it Audioscrobbler with extra semantic meaning. Interestingly, it actually uses Audioscrobbler, webjay and your live journal or home made foaf profile (Its about bloody time!) to build up a profile of you. I'm sure someday it will be possible to enter your blog url and it will work out the rest – maybe? But back to audioscrobbler a second. Simac, actually uses your standard audioscrobbler plugin to collect your music information. Which for me is great because I can now update last.fm and simac at the same time but also still use the audioscrobbler webservices.

The transision from Audioscrobbler to Last.fm has been a odd one, and honestly the recommendation and tagging in Last.fm is ever so backwards. On the other side, Simac is much more logical and is doing a much better job recommending new music to me. However the interface for Simac really needs some greasemonkeying around. Unlike other social software, there seems to be no rss, webapi or public profile, but then again Audioscrobbler has all this. Now if only pandora was built on top of simac and acted like a plugin in iTunes we would have something very interesting.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

More than enough memory formats to ponder on?

Ok so correct me if I miss one.
CF, SD, SM, MMC, XD, RS-MMC, miniSD, MS, MS pro, MG, MG pro, ATA and of course MS duo. All make up the complex, confusing and nightmare eco-system of Flash memory.

I personally think Sony memory stick is the worst of all of them with 4 different types of Flash memory formats which seem largely incompatable with each other. The licencing also keeps Memory Stick(s) prices quite high and I believe there are only 4-6 makers which can actually legally make them. I like what Sony do sometimes (psp and playstation) but come on now, its time to let go of memory stick and let the market decide. Ok enough about Memory stick for now. MMC, ghezz dont start me off. Why didnt it just merge into SD? MMC looks the same, acts the same but has odd voltages which dont work with certain devices, SD just works plus it has IO capbilities. Honestly I dont care if its called SD or MMC but they should have sorted it out before the mini's were produced. MiniSD fits smoothly into SD but is the true of Reduced sized MMC? I've not seen any sign of such a smooth interchange. Oh well, at least Smart media is slowly going away but the very odd xD has replaced it. I dont know why xD is around, what advantage does it have over SD and MMC? Lower voltage? What's the point?

On a positive finishing, Flash memory is getting really cheap now. 1gig SD and CF is about 35 pounds now and USB thumb drives are really becoming ubiquious. The 4 gig Flash memory in the ipod nano sounds like a lot now, but Samsung have already showed off 4x the space (16gig). With all this in mind, 2-4gig could be just around the corner but I assume other formats are also just around the corner too. Some suggestions for new names. xD nano, SD micro, SD-MMC, Mini Micro MMC, reduced micro sized SD, Memory stick super duo magic gate pro. Nahh, it will never catch on.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

iTunes on windows mobile

Itunes 5 on the pocketpc

So when I first saw these screenshots, I was thinking those guys at Aspect software have done a great job with wifitunes. But no the screenshots are actually from a special build just for Windows mobile 5 devices. Apple are really gunning for the mobile market.

Looking at the blog post, there seems to be no iTunes sharing (zeroconf) but iTunes store ability seems to be just around the corner. This is all pretty straight forward when you consider that iTunes has had Mobile phone syncing cabilities since 4.9. But lets step back for a moment, maybe the whole thing is a hoax? Engadget are certainly considering it. I personally think its a early build and maybe true, specially if you consider the next Razr could include iTunes.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

My next mobile could be a Nokia…

People who know me well, also know I had Ericsson preference when it came to mobile phones. But I've been looking around for the next phone I should upgrade to, and honestly theres not much out there.

I said I would go back to Windows mobile but there are so few of them which support 3G (UMTS) and are not really mini pocketpcs. And I dont think any SPV type smartphone form factors are coming till after the new year. So I'm forced to look elsewhere.

So I spotted the Nokia N90, which was previewed in Engadget in April. I think you will agree this certainly looks like a phone for 2006.

Nokia N90 in camera mode

Nokia N90 fits in the palm of your hand

Of course its got the spec to go with it. Just the screen rez alone out does my PocketPC and current Sanyo 3G phone. 128px x 128px in 65k colour on the outside of the phone and 352px x 416px in 262k colour on the main screen. 2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens. Not big fan of RS-MMS because of the price and lack of compatablity with most of my SD enabled devices, but I'll live with it. Triband and 3G support tops off a quite large but very interesting phone. (Theres a huge review on mobile review by the way) But I'm wondering if I should just wait for the Hard drive enabled Nokia N91 instead? Which I hear has been delayed again, but sounds like a phone worth having

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Blogs? whats that then?

The revolution has begun

So just recently the British mainstream media have been touted a survey where they have discovered less of the British public know about blogging than dogging. In Blogging vs Dogging (yeah the title says it all really) the facts of the survey are teased out and require a subscription

More than 1,000 people were surveyed, which included taxi drivers, hairdressers and pub workers for the advertising agency DDB.

Seven out of 10 people don't know what a blog is. While 40 percent say they understood the expression dogging. 10 percent said they knew about podcasting. 56 percent said they were aware of happy slapping. Less than 10 percent of people surveyed were aware of Flashmobbing.

My thoughts on the survey…

First up, its a survey of over a 1000 people. I'm not a big fan of these survey's and wonder about where they get the people from, I mean how many people do you know who were involved in these surveys? So I take these things with a huge chunk of salt. That a-side, blogging the word and movement is still in its early years. Paul explained it best the other day, “10 years ago, people never heard of the internet, now look where we are today.” And you know what Paul is so right, who gives a crap what people say right now. Its going to be huge and there is nothing which the mainstream media can do about it. Surveys, jokes, off the cuff remarks are all part of a dying beast turning in its grave.

A couple of related Cluetrain's

#20 – Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them. In the same way, I'm now laughing at this survey.

#57 – Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner. Luckly working for the BBC, I'm seeing this happen more and more.

#72 – We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it. Self explaining I would say.

Blogs may just be "inarticulate ramblings of wannabe journos" to some, but to a growing audience of socialable internet read/writers its a revolution. In actual fact, we like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Separated (or even lost) at birth?

Did Channel4 just copy the winning formula of the Donnie Darko website with there Lost untold website? According to my wife (sarah) the Channel4 untold site has more clues than the official ABC website, and fans are flocking to it because it contains tons of produced content (channel4 even got a news reader to do a piece for it). Copy or no copy, I guess the meme is out there and well established now. Talking of Lost, I'm looking forward to ep2 of the second series. I cant believe the UK is still half a season behind, what did we do before the internet? I'll avoid posting theorys and spoilers on cubicgarden for now.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Do you Firefox beta or Deer Park alpha it?

I've been using Deer Park alpha 2 for quite sometime now, but recently with the Firefox 1.5 beta publicly available I've been tempted to change. So after reading Uche's review of Firefox 1.5 beta I decided to actually install both of them on my machine. I have not used SVG for quite some time, but svg plus xforms seems like a logical step forward for browser technology

I still have not got around to installing IE7 or even Opera 8.5 free edition. But I'm sure there time will come.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]