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

First night in Amsterdam

Hotel room from my Bathroom

I'm telling you I love this city, yes its full of shadey people at night and theres the hard drug pushers walking around offering tourist all types of anything but you cant beat the vibe in this city. Anyway I have to report that the Lloydhotel maybe quite a bit from Central Station (about 25mins walking, 5mins by taxi) but its certainly worth it. I'm using there very fast and free broadband connection which is plugged into every single guest room. Yep on the wall there is a nice network connection just waiting for you to plug in. I can pick up the 4 different Wireless nodes which are placed downstairs in public places like the bar and lounge areas. But being on the 3rd floor makes the signal a bit weak. Anyhow for some reason my ipaq seems to do a better job picking it while walking around the hotel. It seriously takes some getting use to. Being surrounded by free wireless while away from home does not quite compute in my own mind. But dont worry, I'll be taking full advantage. I already have noticed someones elses iTunes playlist is available via the local lloyd network. But I can not for the life of me connect to Jabber, skype is fine but not jabber. Its almost like the ports have been blocked… Email is also fine, so email me on my hotpop or rave address if you want to tell me something urgently.

The actual room and hotel are pretty good and this wireless aside has to be the best hotel I've been in. its not the biggest (vegas hotel room at Lady Luck was huge). But this hotel is smooth, simple, clever and stylish. Theres little touches like the lights which can be moved around the wall using strong magenets and a set of spare enthernet cables just in case you forget to bring or buy one. Sarah asked me to explain the room and hotel and I answered simple, sensible and clever. You can tell the designers had a great time.

I have to spare a thought for Matt biddulph, whos hotel did not have wireless and needed to go down the RAI centre to get some. I now have my stuff together and should be ready for tomorrow's talk. Just like Dodds, I also extended the week into the weekend so I wont need to rush home after the conference. Sarah is coming over so we can spend the weekend together in Amsterdam.

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XTECH 2005, less that a week off now…

Xtech Conference 2005

I noticed a new comment on the blogdigger development blog from Xslf.

Re: On Language

Hey, that was fun- seeing some Hebrew here 🙂 This issue indeed is painful. My blog publishes feeds in utf-8/Hebrew, and half the RSS readers out there have problems displaying them (esp. post titles) in proper RTL (even though my feed has dir=rtl in the right places). Speaking of Hebrew problems- I just attempted to create a blogdigger group with a Hebrew name/description, and all the system gave me after I submitted the form was question marks 🙁 Seems that the server here did not like Hebrew input (the group can be found at: http://groups.blogdigger.com/groups.jsp?id=2051 ) An English language group that I had opened ( http://groups.blogdigger.com/groups.jsp?id=2044 ) works fine. Sigh 🙁

This is almost exactly the crux of my presentation at Xtech. Right to Left Language RSS is so painful. Why is Hebrew language so difficult to work with for seriously most of the RSS readers out there? Xslf is one of a larger group of people who are puzzled why they can not communicate in there own native language with the modern tools and applications around them. One of my points is Unicode is an enabler, and it really is! But being unicode is not some magic bullet, much great language consideration needs to go into the whole process.

I had a quick peek around Shoshannah Forbes blog http://www.Xslf.com, I can not read Hebrew but I know a friend who does (whos coming around tomorrow). Anyhow I looked at her RSS feeds just out of interest to see if she was doing anything interesting, as her HTML meta-data was neat and considered. Shoshannah is basicly using RSS 2.0 with added modules which are common in RSS 1.0. She describes Hebrew by one head-level dc:language element and then inputs a div with HTML directional code inside like this < div dir="rtl" >. This is what we tried avoid at the World Service because we felt it broke RSS validation, caused presentation vs structure issues and generally did not work in most of the RSS readers on the fragmented RSS market. I recommend Shoshannah read some of the blogs I linked to in Languages in RSS a while ago. It would be great to hear what she makes of the whole Language RSS debate.

Do not forget XTECH is next week and I will presentating along side the other 3 BBC presentations (BBC News, Radio and Music, Backstage BBC). XTECH looks to be a great conference this year, its seems a crying shame that no one is going to be seriously podcasting or even recording the event and speakers. But I maybe wrong?

Anyhow here's my plan for the conference, remixed to show my choices using XSLT of course. All I quickly did, was add an attribute named choice then slotted 1st, 2nd, 3rd or even 4th. Here's my modified XML and XSL. For some reason I couldnt get the external css stylesheet working so I just inlined it in the short term. Do not forget there are many ways to get involved in .

I know theres free wireless at the conference and I'm bringing my pocket wireless hub in a aid to help extent the range but I dont know if electricity will be a problem because my laptop only lasts 1hour without being plugged in. If you happen to be sitting near me in the conference with a laptop, please tap me on a hand as I will have a English 3 way power adapter plugged in where I can.

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Jabber support in OSX 10.4, may not be as ideal

Jabber lightbulb

Is it safe to say Jabber support in OSX 10.4 (Tiger) is not all its cracked up to be? Apple did a good thing embedding Jabber support in not only the client (iChatAV) but also the OSX 10.4 server. But according this article it certainly sounds like it.

Apple chose to leave a few other pieces of Jabber functionality out of its client as well: Though it's able to use them if they've already been set up on another Jabber client, there's no option within iChat to do the service discovery needed to access Jabber gateways.

Off the back of this, iChat users have been sharing hacks around the gateway problem.

Whether iChat offers the ability to register with Jabber gateways or not, iChat users have been busy figuring out how to use third party clients to sign on to public servers, register with those gateways, then return to using iChat.

It was also noted by developer Missig, that iChat diverges from the XHTML-IM specification. Apple are using some kind of rich text which will need to be hacked or reverse engineered to allow for compatable applications elsewhere.

Yes before people start, most of these things are nitty picking and yes if Microsoft even dared to do anything like this it would likely be so far removed from the standard. Not that Jabber will ever come to the core of Windows ever, specially with Microsoft fully behind the Sip/Simple specification.

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New version of Konfabulator

After installing it and playing with the new version for a matter of minutes, I have noticed an increase in general speed and performance. But anyhow, here's the official list of whats new…

Whats New in Konfabulator 2.0 for users
Multi-Pane Preferences dialogs for Widgets
New Widgets
Improved Proxy support for web resources (AutoProxy)

Whats New in Konfabulator 2.0 for authors
COM support
Inter-Widget messaging
Image Tiling/Scaling
ClipRects on Images
vAlign on images and text areas
Colorization (colorize, hsl adjustment, hsl tinting)
Context menu addition support
filesystem.read/writeFile (utf-8 only)
filesystem.volumes array of currently mounted volumes
filesystem.move/copy
filesystem.getFileInfo
filesystem.getDisplayName
chooseFile/chooseFolder dialog functions
saveAs dialog function
chooseColor dialog function
Trash/Recycle Bin open/empty
Multiple Window support
Multi-Click handling
New Timer object

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Geek dinner with the scoble

Robert Scoble

Quick note to all who contacted me after reading about the last Geek Dinner
. There is only 24 places left for the next one which is planned for 7th June in the Texas Embassy Cantina, near Leicester Square and the Mall. So if I was you I would seriously make up your minds and get your name down on the wiki sharpish. It should be a good night, lots of bloggers, geeks and interesting people (not to say bloggers and geeks are not of course).

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The Play’s the thing…

Channel4 have launched a competition titled The play's the thing. Its an opportunity to write a play which may be performed in London's West end if its good enough. Now I like theatre but love cinema because I find theatre quite stuffy and out of touch (my thoughts). But I do like the idea of live theatre. So this strikes me as a chance to do something about my thoughts.

Me and Sarah have come up with a cracker of idea for a play which brings it right up to date and sends a message out about the society were in today and tomorrow. Yep you bet your bottom dollar its got something for the net generation but its also got something for people who just read about the internet in papers. Obviously once me and Sarah thrash through ideas and develop something concerete which we will submit. I'll open up the idea and development on my blog. Maybe if its a little too riskque for Channel4 someone else may be interested in the idea. Submission has to be done by 1st July 2005 which is the same deadline for the Microsoft IP video thing, hence I only got time to do one or the other.

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Backstage.BBC.co.uk launches into public beta

BBC Logo

So many things happen when you go away on Holiday for one week. Yep this is kinda of late news, but that secret project which I was not really able to talk about on my blog has gone live now.

backstage.bbc.co.uk is the BBC's new developer network, providing content feeds for anyone to build with. Alternatively, share your ideas on new ways to use BBC content. This is your BBC. We want to help you play.

Taken from the about page.

Backstage is part of the BBC’s wider remit to “build public value” by sharing our content for others to use creatively. How do you “build public value”? One of the ways is through supporting innovation as the BBC Governors response to the Graf report of BBC online makes clear:

“The BBC will support social innovation by encouraging users’ efforts to build sites and projects that meet their needs and those of their communities … The BBC will also be committed to using open standards that will enable users to find and repurpose BBC content in more flexible ways”.

backstage.bbc.co.uk aims to promote innovation amongst the design and developer community: if people are able to do interesting, productive things with the content then we’d like to support them. Finally and as a useful by-product of the above, backstage.bbc.co.uk is an opportunity to identify talent in the online community.

I have been aware of backstage bbc.co.uk for quite some time, but didnt take part in the closed beta due to work load. I urge everyone else to check it out and join the email discussion list which should be a friendly place for developers and designers to suggest ideas and team up with like minded people. I certainly will be on there with my designer/developer hats on.

I have to give a lot of credit to the backstage team. WELL DONE! Ben Metcalfe, James Boardwell and Tom Loosemore. Who all worked really hard to make this happen and without the concerns and conditions which could have been plagued the whole project and idea. I know lots more people were involved but these guys lived and died by this project.

Looking around so far, backstage got metioned on Channel9, Guardian Unlimited online Blog, The Oreilly Radar (cool!), Boingboing (double cool!), P2Pweblog (odd?) and even BBC News. The question still remains if they are ready for a slashdotting? Too late they already were via Stefan Magdalinski of course.

It time to crank out my Cocoon book and get working with the tons of open APIs and RSS feeds which now cover the web 2.0 landscape.

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…I come back and some torrents sites are gone?

MPAA - you can click but you cant hide properganda

So yes, I come back from a nice holiday away expecting all my TV programmes to be downloaded ready to watch through-out the rest of the week but oh no, the bloody MPAA have targeted TV torrent sites. Damm you! I use to use ShunTV and BTefnet for all my American Television fixes now I'm going to gave to look elsewhere. Some good news is that PQRT has changed to http://www.rokanova.com and http://www.seedler.org has just launched. Shame there trying to be jack of all suprnova trades, and seedler does not have rss feeds. Oh well, as Sarah says, there will be others and there are other ways to get TV shows that just these sites. It also seems BTefnet was sued according to the IRC channel. Someone left a comment, saying BT Website is currently down. Releases are on hold until we have a better understanding of the current situation. We have NOT been sued or been contacted by the MPAA! More information about the closures can be found here at Slyck or the P2P website. It looks like either http://www.demonoid.com, http://www.torrentspy.com or http://www.zonatracker.com are the places to go for TV torrents now.

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How would you feel if someone stole your IP?

Thought Thieves - short film competition

Thought Thieves is about people stealing and profiting from your creation or innovation. Think about it: how would you feel if you saw your hard work being passed off as the property of someone else? What would you do?

As I said to Dave and Miles over email a while ago, I swear, I am so tempted to enter this competition just so I can make a film which expresses the advantages of the opening your ideas to the world. IP is not a black and white issue, I very much douht many of the videos will speak in favour of opening thoughts. I could be wrong though… Honestly if I won, I would get myself a decent DV camera and then give away the rest to my previous college.
Were not the only one who noticed the thought thieves competition, NTK.net are running there own competition off the back off thought police, umm I mean thieves.

The 1400-word terms and conditions for MSN.CO.UK's strong-IP “Thought Thieves” film competition are quite the read, even if you're not the 14-17 year-old they're intended to be read and understood by and complied with in their therein bywhich entirety. Entries must be the “sole work and creation of the person submitting the film” (no sharing your precious intellectual property fluids with your cameraman, Mr Auteur); must not “use third party intellectual property rights” (no furniture, no architecture, only clouds as background); the entry form additionally specifies “Should I be selected as a finalist […] I will formally licence on terms acceptable to Microsoft, all intellectual property rights in my film and agree to waive all moral rights in relation to my film if requested to do so”. But what we made us wonder was: where exactly did Microsoft get this “Thought Thieves” idea from?
The idea that people can “steal your thoughts” is surely not original. We're hoping for a class-action by paranoid schizophrenics, who we think came up with the idea that others are stealing the very THOUGHTS FROM YOUR MIND a good few years before Microsoft started losing theirs.

http://www.msn.co.uk/thoughtthieves/
– send us a copy of your entry. We'll do prizes.
http://www.the-future-of-ideas.com/excerpts/index.shtm
– Lessig's book starts at the exact point the T&C gets ridiculous

Are you shitting me? Indeed, I love the category Copyfight put the competition under, yep IP Abuse. P2P weblog suggests the winner will end up on Bit torrent, which would be poetic justice in some odd way. There was or is some discussion on Channel 9 but its not exactly saying much we didnt know. It also seems it was slashdotted along with boingboing'ed (is that the right name for it?) at some point in the past according to Loren.
I'm sure this will not be the end of the thought police thievies.

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xbox 360 baby!

Being away on holiday without a decent connection had its disadvantages. I knew and saw the MTV preview trailer for xbox 360 online a few days before I left london and knew sometime friday all would be reveled. But it wasn't till I got back on the road and enter Devon again that i could get a decent 3g connection and get my email again. Tony sent me a email titled xbox 360 baby!

Xbox 360,

Boy oh boy!, Roll on November…………

Xenon 3.2Ghz with 3 Cores WHAT!!!!! and 512 Ram this will surely piss on the PS3 or PS4 or PS9999.

I can't wait to pre-order one.

Cheers Tony

Well well, triple core 3.2ghz cpu and 512 meg of system memory for the next xbox which is going to launch late this year. What is triple core? Well I guess its 3 xeon (my mistake from when the details were still a little short in cornwall) IBM G5 type processors sharing the same level 1, 2 and 3 cache across the whole processor board. Certainty in any case the cpu sounds quite amazing. After some time I was able to get online and check out Full coverage of everything xbox 360 at team xbox

  • Xbox 360 Watercooled
  • Microsoft's Official press release
  • Fact sheets, online specs and Peripherals details for the xbox 360
  • Nice selection of xbox 360 screenshots
  • Poster for xbox 360
  • Lots of links surrounding the launch of xbox 360
  • Microsoft's disruptive marketing researched and papered by Forrester
  • Yuk! The official website of Xbox 360
  • Engadget covers the MTV launch

    • Some under played news around the xbox 360 launch. Neon the light synthesiser by Llamasoft will be built directly in the rom of the xbox 360. Wicked stuff which I'll look forward to playing with. I actually bought some earlier light synthesisers (Trip a Tron and Colourspace) for my Atari ST all that time ago, the Atari Jaguar was the last console to see a decent light synthesiser.
    Sony Reaction to Xbox360 Unveiling could mean Playstation 3 or Playstation Cell will be released sooner that later.

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