Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
I've seen Bill Shannon before but its great to hear some of his thinking. If you've never seen him before, check out the Pop!tech talk and some of his own work.
Pop!Tech doesn't get the credit it deserves, in my mind its right there with TED. If you can, subscribe to the Pop!tech RSS feeds.
I'm slowly catching up with some of the podcasts I was able to download at the frustrating speed I've recently had. I wanted to give a special mention to a excellent Stack Over Flow show which is a podcast by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky.
Late in the podcast both of them just run through books which should be read or even owned. And there are some classics in the list.
Don't have time to listen to all that jibba-jabba? Here is Joel's short list:
If you don't like the rambling podcast style, there's also a public transcript with more books that you can shake a tree at.
You have till Friday to vote for the new Data Portability logo. Go vote…
DataPortability was sent a Cease and Desist letter regarding the DataPortability logo and its alleged similarity to the Fedora logo? I personally I think their different enough but hey if the logo must change, its easily done and makes little difference to the core message.
Technorati Tags: fedora, dataportability, redhat, logo, copyright
I was listening to FLOSS weekly with the guy who actually created POV Ray (persistence of vision raytracer). It was amazing to listen to because, I along time ago use to run it on my old Atari ST. At the time I never had access to anything else, and frankly everything else was simply crap in when compared to PovRay's efforts. I believe there were all of about 4 3D rendering programs on the Atari 16bit platform and to be honest the ability to write images and animations using a simple notepad application was insane but ever so useful at the time. After a long while I built my first PC which was a 233mhz beasty and PovRay was one of those benchmark software which I used to prove to myself the investment. I could only dream how fast it would be to render scenes on my current workstation and laptop.
The author of POV Ray in the podcast talks about how he made the software freeware and wrote a basic license saying your welcome to modify it but if you do make a change please send it back to the author. This was before the word open source was around and even before the web had taken hold, so POV Ray was distributed on floppy discs, CDs and BBS. It was written before licenses like BSD, GPL and Apache were common, although PovRay 4 is going to be rewritten under the GPL 3 license.
PovRay isn't dead actually there starting to add some well needed features like native mutliprocessor support. In the past you would specify a part of the final image to do on one machine/cpu and the other bit on the other machine/cpu. This may sound very bizarre for a heavy duty raytracing engine but when you had a room full of computers like we sometimes had at college, it meant we could run renders of sizes like 1600×1200 and split the picture up into 4 pieces of 800×600, which were then run over 4x Pentium P133 machines.
The other thing I loved about PovRay was its realism, for year and years I argued that 3Dstudiomax, Lightwave, etc's results were poor compared to PovRay. The main reason was that this applications use to render results not raytrace them. This was why PovRay took so long to render scenes, like the one above. But for the hardcore, PovRay also had true Radiosity support
Actual writing PovRay scenes involves picturing in your mind 3D space and then mapping things based on that space. We use to graph things out on a graph paper and then translate it into C like syntax. It sounds more difficult that it actually is and before long your up and going. I just wish I could find some of my old scenes. Oh the language is a turing-complete language that supports macros and loops. So you can most of the time program effects using maths and logic that by hand.
Now their after a million users…
It's a busy space, that social/local field. Sokratis Papafloratos and co-founder Walid Al Saqqaf said that ploughing their time and energy into TrustedPlaces.com cost the co-founders their girlfriends. But all the struggles and the late nights were vindicated when the start-up scored half a million in funding from the new investors Howzat – a fund launched by the team behind Cheapflights.com.
My hints for a million users. A decent API not just feeds, APML import and export and of course written agreement for data portability for all those million users they will soon have. Go on guys you know you want to…
Technorati Tags: trustedplaces, london, guardian, startup
Happy New Year everyone…So in the usual vein, I'm going to blog my new years resolutions. I don't usually care or do these but I think the process of blogging them will maybe help because you guys might help me stay on track. I'm all about getting things done…
Finally go to Tokyo
I've talked about it for years and seriously know I will just explode when I get there. But have never got anywhere close. If I can go via Hong Kong then even better. So how is this going to happen? Well I'm looking for a site (besides Travelocity) where you can set a specific price on tickets and it will alert you when that price is close no matter which route or time of the year. RSS would be great too.
Not to do another BarCampLondon unless the BBC is the venue
So at BarCampLondon3 I decided I wouldn't want to do another BarCampLondon because people are starting to expect me to do it and thats not fair on others. Also BarCamps are poping up all over the place now (leeds, brighton, cork, etc) so this is a good time to say thanks to everyone who's kick started BarCamps in the UK but now its time for others to take it forward in their own vision.
Work on something very different but cutting edge this year
This is already happening. I think it wouldn't be a secret to say I could be working on an Alternative reality game (ARG). My feeling is that Play is when we are most open to learn and I think ARGs can be used to educate without the usual guff you get about educational games. So look out for that because I think the small team which have formed could pull off something very special.
Dataportability
I'm going to spend more time on this subject next year. Its a worthwhile cause and I think the link between all the trends like open data, the data web, authentication (like openid and oauth), etc is data portability. Giving people not only access to the data but also to move their data around. This was also part of my flow/pipelines concept anyway but much more tangable. I'm also looking to pimp this at a few conferences in the near future.
Small Routines
So I'm going to build up a few routines including reading my rss at regular times and going to certain events and not others. My Blogging has finally picked up which is good but I do need to keep it up. Theres also a bunch of other stuff I'm going to do including visiting friends and family regularlly.
Play a team sport
I've tried many thing to keep fit but what works best for me is playing in a team sport I enjoy. So something like joining Basketball, Volleyball and Handball team would be great. I've been looking around and there seems to be some new teams starting up in Jan.
Geekdinners and Geekvenues
So as you may have all noticed geekdinner.co.uk is down at the moment. I'm going to try and get to the bottom of this really soon but till then I'm going to move the geekdinners blog to my own server. The plan for the future of geekdinners was like the girl geekdinners to make it a charity or non-profit but this has been put off for a while because I need more help on geekdinners. Plus maybe its time to get a little more regular? I've not added enough to geek venues, and I do plan to add a lot more soon.
Start learning Python
So Python seems to be everywhere. From the xbox media centre scripts to conduit provider scripts. This seems like a useful programming language to learn or at least understand enough to hack around with. I'm also liking the idea of python with xslt using something like uche's 4suite.
Use the technologies around me better
I've been making do with some services, but actually I've been compromising with the limits attached to the free account. If I just pay the small fee, it will much more useful and effective. So for example paying for Plaxo means I can now sync between linked-in, plaxo and my windows mobile phone. On top of the syncing between Plaxo, Google Calendar, Outlook and Sunbird.
Go to more comedy clubs
I love comedy and I don't go to enough comedy clubs. So its a no brainer right?
Technorati Tags: newyear, resolutions
I'm sorry but I'm fed up of hearing stupid people ranting about the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. One because its not targeted at them, second because they rant about the price (although I would like them cheaper too) and third they just won't shut up about comparing them to books.
I'm honestly sick of people saying they prefer books to ebooks. Stop comparing them! Its really boring to hear I prefer books because there physical…blah blah blah.
Stop it! If I can stop ranting about the Apple Iphone, you can stop moaning about ebooks. The fact is I prefer reading on screen because of the ability to change line lengths and text size. I would like to read a some what balanced review from someone simular.
Whats caused this little outburst? Well reading some of reviews from stupid people who don't actually own a Kindle yet on Amazon. I would link to them but they don't deserve it. The best review and most honest review of the Kindle so far has been this one and Steve Gibson's reviews. I would like one but there too expensive right now and I would perfer a version of the kindle with either wifi or bluetooth inside of it. Being tied to a mobile network is a no no but I can see the business case behind it. A while back I was excited with the Rex iLiad (yes its real name) but it seemed to have got stomped on by the Sony one which came out at the same time.
Just a quick mention that I will be at the SEMN IP Pitching event later today as one of the judges/dragons? Looking at the line up of companies pitching it should be an interesting event and I think anyone can come and watch?
You are warmly invited to the SEMN Pitching Event on the afternoon of Tuesday 11th December. This event is being run by SEMN in association with Wired Sussex. This is open to existing SEMN Digital Content Knowledge Network
CKN) members and, more widely, to any digital content company, individual or university in the South East of England.
Technorati Tags: pitching, prototypes, semn, ippitching, ip
Ok so this is going to form part of a large group of small posts about BarCampLondon3. I want to keep them small and save a chunky post about the whole event for tomorrow. But come on how great was BarCampLondon3 (geekwonderland)
So I was sitting in the session on 101 uses for Twitter and Paul Johnson mentioned Twitter Tracking. I had never heard of this before, so checked it out later and thought wow this is what I've been waiting for!
Since the beginning of Twitter and more recently, the rebirth of Search, people have said something along the lines of “it'd be awesome to search for certain words and pull up all related twitters.”
Rather than create another ho-hum search, we decided to Twitterize the idea and take it a step further: with Twitter's new tracking feature, you can track any word or concept on Twitter, and have the updates sent to your phone or iM.
This means rather that people following me for BarCampLondon3 tickets they could have just tracked barcamplonon3 or even barcamplondon4 now. This is also super useful if you could read a APML file and maybe take the top 5 concepts / take concepts over a certain number and automaticlly build twitter trackings for them. Maybe this would be cron'ed or scheduled or automated so as you change the APML file, tracks would be removed and new ones added?
In a follow up to the simply amazing The machine is using us. Professor Michael Wesch has started to tackle the subject of students university experience.
a short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.
Its the start of a larger project which we can all take part in.
Thanks Robin for the link to the one I almost missed
I wrote my notes up here on Backstage.
The TTI Vanguard is one of those groups who run conferences you hear about but never get the chance to attend. In actually fact it might be membership or invite only like the Churchill Club. The people who attend and speak at the conferences are simply leaders in their fields and make a special effort to make such conferences. Boston plays host to the wealth of networks conference which includes great speakers such as Dr. Eric Miller (Zepheira), Clay Shirky, Dr. Henry Tirri (Nokia), Nicholas Carr, David Prior (general dynamics uk), Andrew McAfee (Havard) and Yochai Benkler who actually recently wrote a book which influenced the whole conference.
The Tubeless Internet – Not bad, maybe too complex
David Reed, TTI/Vanguard Advisory Board
Starts with a quote from Ted Stevenson, which is complete wrong and is so the wrong way of thinking about the network.
Jon Steward effect = when he goes from channel to channel to get the same words from all the channels. Saying the same thing over and over again.
ARPANET was a packet net, the internet emerged at PARC, MIT, etc. At the time there was only the message switch model and phone company model. At the start no one knew what the internet was for so the creators kept their options open. Putting functions at the edge creates value in the form of options. Pervasive computing, now theres computers everywhere. Failed Pervasive computing – Universal Plug and Play, Bluetooth.
Eggtimer model, Intelligence was at the very edges. Reed talks about Phase. Traffic patterns – Rural and suburban traffic (gas), rush hour (liquid), traffic jam (solid), London (semi-conductor). Non-hierarchical, collective behaviours can and do work. Didn't understand the talk anymore, very complex. But David Reed and David Weinburger have been thinking about Beyond Net Netruality
Customized Mobile Virtual Networks – Good
Juha Christensen, CEO, Sonopia
Virtual Mobile operators. The network as a operating system. Its about the individuals not about the collective. Points out that there are credit cards which are interest and brand based. You can build price plans and do things like send out mass market messages to all subscribers. Affinity mobile gives you a revenue share of 5%. Could be used to provide cheaper or free phone calls. Ant and Heilo are other Affinity in America, while in the UK and Europe. Sonopia enterprise is around the corner.
Web 2.0 Architecture: Offline, Freedom, Open and Participation – Good
John Robb, Vice President, Technology Leadership, Zimbra/Yahoo
Things which are changing. Offline browsing, Software as a service, Freedom of Access and the web as a platform.
Offline browsing – why? Experience, lower tco, local backups, sharing, mashups. Offline solutions include Mozilla's Firefox 3.0, Google gears, Sun Java or Adobe Air. John make it clear that Zimbra will interop with many of the Yahoo services.
Mashup on the Fly – Excellent
David Prior, Chief Technologist, Research & Development, General Dynamics
Demystifying Mashups. There is nothing which the marketing department will understand. http://twickrpedia.com. Demostrated a couple of Mashups in less that 5mins.
Enterprise Knowledge Infrastructures, enabling collective knowledge – bad
Ross Button, Vice President, Technology Leadership, CGI
Connecting people and people to knowledge.
PlanetLab: Catalyzing Network Innovation – Good
Larry Peterson, Director, PlanetLab Consortium
Innovation can come from anywhere.
Most of the internet success is due to its support for at the edge development
There is a high barrier to entry for innovating through-out the net.
Planet Lab allows you to define what happens through-out the net, its all distributed virtualsation. So each project could use a slice of a bunch of servers (up to 600). 2500 users.
Therapy Development in a Networked World – Great
Sean Scott, President, ALS Therapy Development Institute
Build a project out of filemaker database to hunt down the correct drugs for his dying mother, simply an amazing story
Layer 8 Is More Interesting Than You Think – Great
Clay Shirky, Writer and Consultant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_8 – Layer 8, where the users are.
Users will do what you'd never thought someone could do
Individual vs community
Powerlaw signature can be found in many social systems – Links per weblog, tag pairs on digg, edits per user on wikipedia.
Commons based peer production – pluto on wikipedia. adverage of 2.5 edits per user.
80/20 would kill wikipedia, you need the organic division of labor/cooperation without collaboration. If you want good quality work, you need limited collaboration. Jane Jacobs problem – many eyes on one problem, keeps people straight.
the Problem Wikipedia has is down to idenity, but if you make the wiki strict for secuirty you will lock out those who bring good stuff too.
Networks and Social Identity – Excellent
John Clippinger, Senior Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School
The state of identity in social networks
Facebook, email address was your context (.edu), now its open and they've lost the context. In secondlife, people wanted to look like yourself with some slighly changes. Persistence is important. In linked in what does the numbers really mean when you can game the system easily? To build effective social networks you need to solve the identity. Identity is more that security, privacy, compliance, unfeathered rights, decisions. Social signaling is happening all the time, look at myspace. Implicit vs Explicit signals in profiles is a interesting idea. User control is centricity. Higgins = manages identity across multiple applications. If people can build relationships together based on trust and express what they want, you could have reverse auctions. Someone suggests that Facebook causes could be used to indicate your identity. Someone suggests that Facebook causes could be used to indicate your identity. Causes clouds which sits out side the closed networks are interesting. Some interesting URLs. http://eclipse.org/higgins and http://www.cloudtripper.com.
