Category: design-and-ideas

A new/different way to collaborate at conferences

Future Everything notes on my kindle

Been thinking for a while about the way I take notes…

I tend to write down short lines of text which tend to make sense to myself only, but I’ve been thinking for a while do I really need my laptop to take notes? Specially since my main laptop battery fails after about 5mins of use (my own fault for buying it cheap on ebay I guess) and my backup battery lasts 20mins maximum.

Here’s my options I’ve been thinking…

  • Use my laptop, bite the bullet and buy yet another laptop, then use Evernote or Tomboynotes
  • Leave my laptop at home, rely on my Android phone. Maybe even buy a spare battery, so I can run it at full power (wifi, bluetooth, etc) all day
  • Leave my laptop at home, rely on my Android phone and work out how to use my bluetooth keyboard with Android. Still need to think about battery however
  • Use my Kindle, which has pretty much endless battery battery and a physical keyboard

Of course I used my Kindle…

Kindle powered

The thought was Amazon added a feature which allows you to add notes to a ebook and share it with other people using the Kindle or Kindle reader. The notes are accessible on the web but theres a problem. The problem is Amazon notes only really work as expected with documents on the Kindle store. This means although I am able to add notes to a PDF of the Future Everything conference. First its a bit crap because its a PDF and secondarily I can’t share the notes publicly very easily (its worth noting Calibre does allow you to pull the notes off the Kindle).

Generally the keyboard on the Kindle is ok, nothing compared to my bluetooth keyboard but slightly better that the onscreen keyboard on my phone. The symbols option is a pain but because I’m writing rough notes, it doesn’t matter so much.

Future Everything notes on my kindle

I also had a little bit of a panic when it seemed like most of my notes had gone. But it seems to be a way the Kindle shows the notes. In the end I was able to bring them all back (well they hadn’t actually gone anywhere). I was writing one set of notes per speaker but you can do more, making it possible to tweet/share the notes too which I might do more of next time.

In the picture above you can just about see the little numbers which are the different notes. The Kindle software assigns a number but it might do something different

So where from now…?

Well the Thinking Digital Conference is in less that two weeks, so I’m gearing up for doing the same with this wonderful conference but…

  1. I’m going to get the conference schedule in a non-PDF format from Herb Kim
  2. I’m going to try and get the schedule posted on Amazon’s Kindle Store, so when I share the notes. The actual document will be partly available instead of the usual message about it being a personal document.

If this works well, I’ll try collaborate editing with someone else in future but also if this does actually work, it will be a really nice way to collaboratively edit notes at a conference and I can certainly see it taking off in the future. Specially if as I suspect you can annotate and collaborate on notes on many different platforms and devices together.

I’m surprised no one else has thought about doing the same really, or maybe its just not possible?

Google technology is a dyslexic dream

There’s a number of things Google is handy for as a person with dyslexia. In actual fact I’m just about to invest in a tablet running Google’s Android for this exact reason.

Some of the guys have suggested a iPad2 but there missing all the lovely little features which make it easier for someone with dyslexia to manage the world around them.

For example… Google just launched a new Google Docs application on the marketplace. On first look it just looks like a pointer to there google docs service but what people miss is the evernote style functionality of being able to turn written text into words.

Today, Google introduced the Google Docs app for Android, finally providing a native environment for the service, as well as some convenient new features.

The app lets you create, edit, upload, and share documents from your phone, and allows for near real-time collaboration.

You can also take a photo of an actual, physical text document and convert it into a Google doc, without the need for a third-party app. This feature should be handy for keeping track of receipts on trips (expense reports, anyone?) or quickly sharing other important textual information with your phone’s contacts.

This is pretty killer functionality and adds to the automatic spell checking, lookup and voice functionality of Google android already. I already have it on my own HTC desire phone.

So the question still remains, what android tablet/slate do I get?

A collection of good talks from the BBC

I got to point to a few good presentations I seen recently from my managers.

The quality of the presentations have certainly got much better in recent times. Its also worth pointing out that Matthew Postgate will be giving a talk at Thinking Digital this year. And of course Matthew is well known to many from his presentation at TedXManchester.

Its all about the Top10?



Been meaning to blog about Harry Jones’s next venture for a while…

I was shown a beta of it a while ago and I got to say upfront I’m a close friend of Harry’s and yes I did teach him in university (Ravensbourne college of design and communication). At the time he was doing lots of Flash stuff and singing from the Adobe/Macromedia song book but I slowly broke that down and I kind of remember one day he turned to me and said he gets it (referring to XHTML) not the actual technology (Harry was very smart and picked it up instantly) but the concept of the web being readable to not just humans but to machines and devices.

Anyway a while he launched Top10.co which is a place for all those crazy top 10’s. Top 10 makes it super easy to create your own list but the magic comes when you remix someone elses. What it does is create an instance of the top 10 someone else did and allows you complete control over the list. So in the video above you can see some artificial but funny disagreement over cheesy 80’s action film between Harry and the other co-founder (don’t give up your day jobs to be actors  guys….). But as its a instance, its still linked to the original, so you can see an aggregated view of everyones top10.

For example I setup a top 10 after my blog post about the films you should have seen in 2010.

Here’s the aggregated view (master list) of everyone who has contributed to the top films in 2010, and of course my top 10.

So interestingly they have catered for both the popular stuff in the actual list but also the long tail in the variety of weird and wonderful lists you can make.

Its all public, so thats great. However there are problems… The first one is the non-ability to embed the top 10 list. I know it supports Facebook and Twitter (in actual fact you sign up using one of them, wheres the openid guys?) but I just want to embed or even copy the information to somewhere which is mine. May seem slightly old fashioned (can’t believe I just said that) but its important. I’d also like to see better use of there blog… When I first saw it I first thought it could be like Okcupid’s OKtrends… You know, “we have 100000 users who picked films of 2010, and we aggregated all the lists together to show the top film choice across all lists is Inception…” type stuff. Right now its just fluff about the company which is a yawn to be frank. Heck even this is the types of films which make it to the top of most film related lists, and here’s the ones which tend to be in the middle ground… Come Harry… Data is the new source code (think I just coined a new saying)

So as a whole I think the concept is good, but it really needs someone to think about uses of the top 10’s. I’d also like to see a format which makes it easily transferable. Like a opml file with top10 extensions… but thats further down the line and I expect most won’t be interested in such a thing. Although when I explain what you can do with such a thing, it gets very interesting… Maybe I harry should pop up one day soon for a chat but he’s one busy son of a gun…

Anyway good luck and good to hear he’s moved on from all that Apple crap which he had to deal with a few years ago. Oh and congrats on getting engaged to the lovely Tiffany…

Comparing Apples to Oranges in advertising

Apples & Oranges - They Don't Compare

Everyone knows I’m not a fan of Apple but after watching the mass hysteria over the ipad2 which was a massive yawn. I’ve been thinking what is it with the iphone/ipad which bugs me. besides the obvious stuff like a closed platform and ecosystem, etc… Then I saw Charlie Brooker on Channel4’s 10 o’clock show ranting about the Apple ipad 2… and trust me the rant is hysterical…

Anyhow it got me thinking… after drying the tears from my eyes (from all the laughing of course) the Apple iphone and ipad adverts kind of suck.

Why? Well let me explain… Here’s a series of iphone adverts.

In my view (and I’m not a advertising exec) the iphone is too in your face. Its all about the iphone and not much else. Heck even the human is reduced down to a hand puppet. Here’s the ipad advert. Shiny Shiny... Yes you have Johny Ive talking but frankly thats not enough to break it up, because he’s talking about the device and not what it could enable.

Here’s the Microsoft Phone 7 advert which to be fair does take the mick out of the people’s use of phones but look how much time the phone actually gets on screen? Microsoft was right, the phone distracts you from whats going on around you. This can be a good thing sometimes but most of the time its a bad thing. Charlie Brooker in his lovely crafted rant hits it right on the mark. You might as well burn down the locations around the users, the users are so distracted by the ipad, they might as well be no where. Its of course not just the ipad and iphone… Here’s the mac book air advert.

Orange a long time ago use (the animals not so much) to create amazing adverts which don’t include technology. Here’s the new range of adverts which don’t include a single phone at all. This one shows some quite difficult concepts using non-tech ideas. Heck even Apple use to create interesting adverts for there ipod range.

Ok I hear the cries of fowl play. Comparing Orange to Apple is like… well comparing Oranges and Apples 🙂 But seriously, Orange are well known for there excellent adverts so maybe its slightly unfair. But you would slightly expect well thought out adverts for a company who prides themselves so much on the obsessive methods they use to make there products and the packaging. So lets look at Sony and Apple.

Sony’s make believe adverts, not quite as good as Orange’s but once again, the technology takes a back seat in the adverts. (of course here’s the new foam one, the paint one and of course the balls one) Its all about what it enables you to do.

Its about enabling and the experiences you could have. For me this is much more seductive and fore-filling than looking at shiny shiny objects.

But heck what do I know, I’m again, not a TV exec!

Beyond the data: making meaning of data

Ian Forrester at Next 09

The Next conference is looking for speakers for 2011 and they have opened a public voting system to seek out the next generation of speakers. Of course I have put a talk based around the Channelography project.

Beyond the data

Data is something we have been working with before it became mainstream a few years ago. We have many projects using data but what are the challenges once you have the data? Using the prototype Channelography (http://channelography.rattlecentral.com/) we will explore the challenges and dangers of collecting data and trying to make meaning of it.

So of course, it would be great if friends could vote for my talk, although there’s some great proposals like this one for OKcupid to talk and Brian Suda’s rally cry to analyse 15 Petabytes of data from the Large Hadron Collider.

Thank you Google for the Android Market Web Store

In my frustrated posts over Okcupid and Match.com, I skipped over the whole Android Honeycomb announcement.

The main thing which strikes me as smart is the Android Market web store.

At long last Google recognises the app store model is broken and they are shattering the model by opening a web store. You can now browse the store using a browser of your choice and when you choice to buy an app, its sent to your phone or tablet. Just the way it should work. Heck you can even using links point to your favourite apps, comments, etc. Genius!

This means finally developers can link to there app and join it up with there own support forums, etc. This thankfully has to be the end of the app store model. And I for one, am thanking Google for killing the model dead!

Like Quora? Try Cwora

I don’t really see the point but even if you do, you got to see the light side of Quora with Cwora

Written by the ever so witty Tom Scott,

A continually spamming collection of unanswered questions created, edited and organized by no-one who uses it.

I specially like the email sign up.

Unless you opt out, we may just blast you with hundreds of messages a day! That’s Web 3.0.

A friend of mine (Tim Dobson) setup a similar "take the piss" site for Facebook called Pokebook. Unfortunately its no where near as witty or clever as Cwora (which is a shame because all the elements are there).

Following the cool kids

Peer Pressure

From Technical Fault two status messages which got me thinking.

Tumblring. Cus it’s what cool kids do. (I prefer Posterous, but the network effect seems stronger on Tumblr atm.) This is like Foursquare vs Gowalla all over again. The better service has a smaller network.

My reply and technical faults reply reposted

Yes > RT @cubicgarden: @technicalfault is that what you do? follow the cool kids instead of making it cool for yourself and others on board?

This is something which is kind of alien to me.

I never like following the cool kids, I’d rather pave my own way and if thats similar to other people around me then great but I won’t be push by social/peer pressure. In actual fact I will admit I tend to be the rebel or (as the cool kids call them now) outlier. Don’t know where it comes from but I get a little fed up of following the established paths which others take.

I understand the whole thing about network effects but then again, I also like the idea that I can bring my own little network effect to a service.

Achieving New Year’s Resolutions

Just discovered Derren Brown is blogging and twittering. One of the things he reblogged was a link to achieve your New Year’s Resolutions.

  1. Make only one resolution – Many people make the mistake of trying to achieve too much
  2. Plan ahead – Don’t wait until New Year’s Eve to think about your resolution
  3. Avoid previous resolutions – Deciding to re-visit a past resolution sets you up for frustration and disappointment
  4. Be specific – Think through exactly what you are going to do, where you are going to do it, and at what time
  5. Set S.M.A.R.T goals – Focus on creating goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time based (SMART).
  6. Carrot not stick – Focus on how much better life will be for you, and those around you, when you achieve your resolution
  7. Go public – Many people keep their New Year’s resolution to themselves.
  8. Be persistent – New habits take time to learn, and once in a while you will slip up and revert to the old you.
  9. Visualise – Visualise yourself doing whatever it takes to achieve you resolution as this will help you believe you can do it and see it through.
  10. Be positive – It is better to think about the good things that will flow from a healthier lifestyle than the bad things that will result from an unhealthy one.

So looking at these recommendations, I’ve pretty much failed on every point except number 7, a bit of 6, 9 and 10.

7. Go Public – Many people keep their New year’s resolution to themselves. Unfortunately, this makes it all too easy to simply forget about them. Instead, go public. For example, write down your resolution on a large sheet of paper, sign it, and place it somewhere prominent in your house. Tell your friends, family and colleagues about your resolution, and ask them to provide you with helpful nudges to assist you in achieving your goal. Either way, do not keep your resolution to yourself.

Discovering lovely workplaces

The old twitter offices

I had message on my flickr mail today. The subject read awesome workplaces. I though it may have been spam at first but I checked it out.

Dear Ian,

I found some great pictures of the Citizen Space workplace here: http://www.officedesigngallery.com/template_permalink.asp?id=154#comments

I would really like to add these pictures to my website: WOVOX.com.

WOVOX is a free and open platform for anyone to show and find workplaces. We want to help people find the workplace of their dreams more easily, but also learn from others and find inspiration for their own workplace.

There is room for credits and a link back to your website or social media profile. Your pictures will be available under an attribute & share alike creative commons license.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Thank you,

Arjen Hoekstra

I totally forgot about the pictures I took of the CitizenSpace, the old twitter offices (see the photo above – yes that how twitter use to look back in 2006ish) and the creative commons office, all in San Francisco. I’ve lot loads more which I forgot about. Good thing about flickr keeping all these photos and of course the creative commons license which is a sign that I’m willing to share.

Wovox.com actually looks pretty sweet. The ethos seems pretty well thought out too. For example heres a bit from the user guideline page.

Authenticity! Better show a few things with spirit than a lot of stuff without depth. A mobile phone pic in the heat of the moment is worth much more than a non-descript €1000 pose shot.

Plus its really good seeing Creative Commons licenses being baked in from day one rather that being an after thought (i’m looking at you mixcloud.com crew).

Seeing all these work places in one place, has somewhat inspired me. I hope to add the BBC media city office to the mix in the near future, it will be interesting to see how it grows as we get more people too.

Forgetting history

Xerox Parc Mouse

One of the things I’m hoping to do a lot more of in the future is working with the hackers of our generation and understand how what there doing now to scratch there own itches will expand to the mainstream. Anyway interestingly I was having a discussion with a guy from my circus workshop class (yeah another day I’ll explain) and he was saying why he liked Apple. One of his reasons was that Apple created the Mouse and that Apple create the best Keyboards and Mice.

I was totally shocked!

Now to be fair he was only 19 but still… one look at the Xerox Parc page on wikipedia page.

Most of these developments were included in the Alto, which added the now familiar SRI-developed mouse unifying into a single model most aspects of now-standard personal computer use.

Shock horror, apple did not develop the mouse. They may have borrowed/stolen the idea once Steve Jobs saw it but it wasn’t developed by them.

Anyway the point is theres a lot of this going around. We cover this on the latest Techgrumps, people ignoring or dismissing the rich history which sits behind most of the things we take for granted.

My good friend Miles use to talk a lot about the fact most blogs would only go surface deep however the blog does make a great place to dispense information. Don’t get me wrong there are some really great blogs with well thought out posts but maybe there isn’t enough?

Sleeping on the weekends

I’ve been doing lots of research into dreams and sleeping and I just wanted to share this nugget of information.

Why is it So Hard to Wake Up in the Morning?

Your clock is controlled by the suprachiasmatic nucleus, a part of the brain that controls the body’s biological rhythms. But, says Jean Matheson, a sleep-disorders specialist at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, these preset natural rhythms often don’t align with daily realities—work or school start times cannot be adjusted to fit a person’s sleep schedule. People who have trouble crawling out of bed probably have an inner clock set to late wake-up and sleep times, a condition known as phase delay.

It is possible to adjust your phase-delayed body clock, Matheson says, but at a price: No sleeping in on the weekends. “When people sleep late on weekends, they revert to their natural phase-delayed rhythm,” she explains. This makes it harder to wake up early on weekdays. You can train yourself to wake up earlier, Matheson says, by setting your alarm 15 minutes earlier each day (and heeding its call).

When I was younger, I use to be able to cycle my body clock on the weekend. So I would sleep in late on the weekends but wake up early on weekdays. Now I’m older, I’ve finally come to the realisation that I can’t do it no longer.

More dream recording news

My lovely hypnotherapist, sent me a clipping from the Metro the other day. Its was a clipping about the ability to record your own dreams.

Although I saw this general thought in a post my boss sent me a while ago, it was good to read something similar in the mainstream press.

I’ve included the text for those who can’t be bothered to read the image.

A real hope of recording our dreams

A real hope of recording our dreams

Dreams could one day be recorded electronically, allowing them to be interpreted, scientists say. Experiments in which volunteers had electrodes surgically implanted deep inside their brains had already allowed researchers to ‘read’ people’s minds, said Dr Moran Cerf. The breakthrough could eventually lead to the development of a dream recorder, he added. ‘We would like to read people’s dreams,’ Dr Cerf said. ‘It would be wonderful to read people’s minds when they cannot communicate, such as people in comas.’

In tests on 12 epilepsy patients, electrodes recorded the activity of neurones in a part of the brain called the medial temporal lobe, which plays a major role in human memory and retention. The volunteers were shown more than 100 familiar images, such as Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson, on a screen. From these, pictures that had triggered responsive neurons in different parts of the subjects’ MTLs were selected.

The patients were then shown two of these images superimposed and told to think about one of them, while the scientists ran the neuron patterns through a decoder. When the decoded information was fed back on to the superimposed images, the one whose neuron was firing more quickly was enhanced, while the other faded.

By watching this online feedback, more than two-thirds of subjects were able to make their targeted image completely visible and entirely eliminate the other picture. By observing which brain cells lit up and when, Dr Cerf and his US colleagues, Christof Koch and Itzhak Fried, said they were in effect able ‘read the subjects’ minds’. The study is published in the journal Nature.

Once again, I really need to get mydreamscape up and running…