Category: design-and-ideas

Makerba.se documents all projects

The Beauty Project

I recently joined makerba.se.

Makerbase is:

  • A place to tell the world what you made, and to find out who made the things you love.

  • Edited by everyone. You can change and add to anything that you see.

  • A way to see projects: Stuff like apps and web sites and digital works of art. (Not companies or employers.)

  • A list of makers: People who create projects, described by what they’vedone, not their job titles.

  • Limited access, for now, while we get things ready for everyone. We’ll add you to the waitlist if someone hasn’t already added you as a maker.

I like the concept, which allows you to document all types of project. When I say project I mean anything you class as a project. This means anything!

A while ago I mentioned documenting geekdinner and the past generally. I tried to do this with Wikipedia but my entries were rejected. Makerbase seems much more apt for this type of thing. The whole thing is a wiki, so you can easily link and join items together. It reminds me of Lanyrd in underlying structure, which is good. But like lanyrd I wondered about building up this tangled web of information and what happens when investment goes into it?

So before I signed up I read through the terms/end user licence agreement which was actually really well written with plain english. Theres nothing about what happens if the service ends, I was looking for a data portability angle but I’m sure its coming… something to tweet them about.

Is this a linkedin killer? No I don’t think so, its filling in the area in between linkedin and the stuff which happens on Github. Neither have the space for things like geeks talk sexy or personal projects like learning a diabolo trick. I can already imagine the links with other sites like meetup and even lanyrd.

I like it and the only thing better would be if it was distributed instead of centralised. It seems worthy of backing.

Manchester Quantified Self, rebooted on 1st June

Fitbit stats

Its been a while since the last Quantified Self Manchester meetup. Mainly because I was away in Tokyo over April, then in May there was the May bank holiday. Its meant to happen every first Monday of the month.

The meetup is always interesting but lacks repeated members, so I rebooted it with themes thanks to Vimla.

The theme for June 1st is Sleep and Wellness and we welcome talks around this including

  • How you do sleep tracking?
  • What are the benefits of sleep tracking?
  • What you do with your data?

We normally start at 7pm with actually talks at 7:20pm, giving you time to meet other people and settle in. This part lasts till about 8.30pm.

If you have been interested in the Quantified Self to understand what self tracking is about or just nosy about what people are doing to improve their wellness. This might be a good time to come along learn more and contribute your experiences.

Decoupling attention and physical proximity

Jason Silva has covered this before but this goes one step beyond.

We’re post-geographical beings, attentional proximity has been decoupled from physical proximity, collapsing geography

Attention proximity is interesting to me, especially because I have been known to be many miles away in attention from where I  physically am.

The decoupling is something which I can relate to…

…fund a lifestyle that makes everyone insanely jealous

Tokyo tower

Yeah I hate that title too but its worst than what I wrote… The full title is What it takes to get paid… and fund a lifestyle that makes everyone insanely jealous.

As I read the post recommended by Dave, not sure for ironic reasons or what. I pretty much hovered over the delete button but I did find a few things which I thought was actually interested.

“What you seek is seeking you” – Rumi

In other words… Imagine if what you really want, deep down – is actually seeking you out at the same time…

It’s a nice thought to hold as you go through tough times because it gives you faith to keep pushing through.

Ok I think this actually nice to remember and think about.

Designing your life so that everything is a pure delight to use

See the most exciting thing about lifestyle design for me, is treating the world like a giant smorgasbord of delicious options. You pick and choose the stuff that RESONATES with you the most. And discard the stuff that doesn’t vibe with you.  I believe in making every single area of your life, from the time you open your eyes and wake up to the moment you go to sleep – an absolute DELIGHT to use.

I quite like this outlook, it makes it loud and clear you are somewhat in control of your own destiny. You need to design/craft your life. The choice about people, places, things and activities is quite key.

When I asked people what I should do in Japan, I included a list of conditions.

  • I speak little or no Japanese, so best not recommend somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
    Very true!
  • I’m also not so big into the traditional culture (don’t hate me, just being honest!) so you may want to limit the amount of shrines.
    Indeed, only went to one.
  • I love metropolis cities, so I’ll spend all day at markets and cafes soaking up the modern culture.
    Oh and so I did!
  • I’ll spend most of the time in Tokyo because theres so much to see…
    I wasn’t wrong there!
  • I also love modern art, manga, people watching, amazing architecture and great landscapes like Mount Fuji.
    Certainly did a lot of these…
  • Love theme parks! and amusements.
    3 theme parks and lots of rides
  • I don’t have a problem just wandering around suspect locations like the red light district in Amsterdam.
    Well I did rub shoulders in Roppongi and Shibuya
  • I’m going in mid April for 2 weeks, so it will be coldish and maybe wet
    I was right at first then it got really hot, sometimes up to 29c!
  • I will get a JR pass, so the trains should be fine
    Well in theory yes, but I wasn’t prepared for the changing of
  • I’m terrified of dying from eating fish, seafood, nuts, beans or peas. So don’t recommend a fish restaurant 🙂
    Enough said…
  • Actually if you can recommend places where they do lovely meat, I’ll be very happy (heard the Korean BBQ’s are perfect for me)
    Enough said once again.

You can look at the list as restrictions on myself but I don’t see it that way, I see it as myself designing my holiday by removing the things which don’t resonate with me.

When I moved to another place when my airbnb screwed me over in the 2nd week. It was important to me, because I just knew it was going to upset my holiday and I wasn’t going to let that happen!

Perceptive advertising is coming…?

not too much h20

Google wants to bring TV ads into the 21st century. The company has quietly announced a new local advertising service for Google Fiber that will make TV ads behave a lot more like internet ads. Using data from its set-top-boxes, Google (and advertisers) will know precisely how many times a particular local ad has been watched in homes with Google Fiber service. That might not sound like a big deal, but the industry-standard Nielsen ratings simply don’t offer that kind of information. Like on the web, Google will only charge for the number of views an ad receives.

We all knew it was coming but I always wondered why Google and the other data driven companies hadn’t really done anything about the massive opportunity of personalised marketing?

It’s not yet clear precisely how the system will work, but, similar to Google’s cornerstone AdWords business, algorithms might determine the best time to show you a certain ad. For instance, if you’re watching the news before flipping over to the football game, the system might determine that you should be served a different ad during halftime than your buddy who switched over to the game from Pawn Stars. Google says it will even be able to swap out ads on DVR’d programs, so you won’t be served an old or irrelevant advertisement if you watch a program a week after it originally aired. Fiber customers will have an option to disable ads based on viewing history

But that is just the start. There is still the notion that the adverts are solid pieces for media which must be played from start to the end. This is a mistake, which will break down over time. Context is king yes, but there is big question about how personal you should get?

Something Doc Searls talks a lot about… and cue the Uncanny Valley graph…

Uncanny_valley

I am worried that in the rush to deliver context sensitive advertising and marketing, there will be too much which falls into the uncanny valley space. So much it will ruin the great uses of data and context like Perceptive Media. I always said it was little friendly touches not a sledgehammer to the face or other senses…

The energy in teams and collaborations

https://twitter.com/ade_oshineye/status/573101236083400704

Saw this tweet from Adewale and it got me thinking…

When thinking about collaborations, I tend to seek out people who provide their own energy and drive to overall project. This sounds simple but its surprising how many people don’t. When it comes to the moments when everything seems to be going slightly wrong, that external energy really can make all the difference.

There’s also so much to be said for generators and capacitors, but even more for the switches and resistors.

A smarter city called Bristol

Giant mirror ball

The city of Bristol has announced a multi-million pound experiment to create the smart city of the future.

As soon as I heard this, I was worried. As there is something about Bristol which I hadn’t really got till I left. Bristol is a city where things are done differently. Where art and business are in conflict with each other and that conflict drives the continuing disruption and creativity.

I needed not worry…

Bristol is Open, the project will effectively turn Bristol into a giant laboratory and look at how big data can be used to solve problems such as airpollution, traffic congestion and assisted living for the elderly. The network could also be used to collect and understand data from the city’s trial of self-driving cars. Bristol is one of four UK cities currently testing driverless car technology as part of a government scheme.

Sensors and other internet of things devices will be hooked up to the network to collect huge amounts of data from the city. In one example it would be possible to use tracking technology to collect location data from vehicles used by the health, education and city transport sectors to try and solve the city’s traffic congestion problems.

I only recently learned Bristol was the 2nd most congested city in the UK and hated by many of car drivers. Hopefully the artistic, creative and playful nature of the city will persist throughout.

Bristol's Park Street water-slide

Got to love Bristol…

Alternative user interfaces

I studied interaction design in university and always had an imprecation for good interaction and interface design. Recently I seen a few examples which have got me a little excited.

Ubuntu’s scopes
I like ubuntu’s unity paradigms of scopes and lens, even though I prefer to use Gnome Shell as my default on the desktop. The scopes and lens really make a lot of sense. It was fascinating to see Ubuntu apply it across their phone and tablet. Be interesting to see how it works on Ubuntu TV if thats still ongoing?

Pebble timeline
When I first saw the pebble time interface, I instantly thought, when are they going to roll that across there existing line of smartwatches? If not, maybe I might invest in one of the new ones. Division of a interface by future, present and the past on a watch makes a lot more sense than anything else I have seen to date including the Apple Watch.

Android Material Design
Ice cream sandwich or Android 4.0 was a massive step up in style for Android but Android 5.0 Lollipop really was the first Android when the interaction design was thought about at a deeper level.

I don’t necessarily  like the style of flat plates of colour for example the Google hangout app is just the wrong kind of green for my pallet but the interaction model is nice. Although I have spotted a few places where the rules are broken by certain apps.

Remix is the future!

Theres the intenet 1% rule which seems to pop up all the time.

I’ve been thinking recently out of 100 people using social media , 1 person will want to create and upload their own media. However 9 people if the user interface is effortless, smooth and simple, would make slight changes to either reflect their own decisions, point of view, etc.

This is reflected in the 1% rule where 90% are lurkers, 9% are contributors and 1% creators.

Its strikes me that many things are missing the 9%. They miss the fact that the 9% can also contribute to the enjoyment of the 90% and be even more interesting than the 1%.

What makes the 9% even more interesting is the fact they are socially creative, sharing as they go.

Everything is a remix and that includes,

  • Git repo forks which is beautiful way to build upon something you’ve seen or used.
  • Creative Commons which encourages you to remix media
  • The fans who spend their own time building on top of the official works to create fan art at places like Deviant Art
  • The millions of meme created pictures which fill social media feeds,  even I became a meme thanks to Tim and Josh.
  • The insane amount of feeds, webservices, APIs and even headless websites which encourage you to build on top of them.
  • The pinterest fans who collect and arrange their pinboards to indicate there choices and style
  • The many fan fiction stories which take characters out of one world and combine them in others

This is why I feel the DJ hackday could be a start of something extra special .

The walls eyes up a design award

BBCRD up for a design award

So happy for Libby, Andrew and Jasmine who worked on the Walls have eyes exhibition within the ethical dilemma cafe at Mozilla Fest last year. Its been a bit of a secret but now its been announced along with the other digital entries.

Mozfest 2014

Knock them over guys! It was a great idea and the images were so great. So happy to have given you guys the space to run it and frankly make us think about the ethics of our personal data some more.

Interestingly while thinking about the ethics of personal data, Doc Searls and David Weinburger recently kindly took time out of their busy schedule to talk about the Cluetrain and NewClues at Commonground. Doc said something which got people going a little…

..what seems to have struck the Chord of Controversy was something I blabbed: “Tracking-based advertising is creepy and wrong… and needs to be wiped out.” Martin Bryant (@MartinSFP)tweeted a video clip and a series of other tweets followed.

Being tracked around spaces is something we did within the ethical dilemma cafe and its a mistake to think others are not doing this already.

The dilemma is what are you going to do? And I’d love to see a proper public debate about this all. Maybe this could be arranged following some of the work I’m about to release…