Category: social-hardware

Yammer – Microblogging for enterprise?

BBC Yammer

I'm not feeling Yammer.com. Someone suggested it, set it up and now everyones joining on it. Why Yammer over others I don't know. Don't get me wrong its a good idea, Twitter for enterprise but there's some things I'm not so sure about.

First one is the mobile access. Yes there's a iphone client (yawn!) but sms access is restricted to a few American carriers, so realisticlly after the Twitter announcement, yammer are not likely to offer SMS access to the UK. Which means our communication tool for the BBC is crippled. If Yammer were clever they would offer packages which companies pay for, so at least there's the opportunity for SMS/Text.

Second, does Yammer support the open micro-blogging standard? It certainly doesn't look like it. This is bad news, specially seeing how we now have about 70 BBC people using it now. I'm sure tomorrow it will double again.

Third, I did look through the Yammer terms and conditions which seemed ok-ish from a portability and licensing point of view. They have ATOM/RSS feeds for most things but where's the API people? Come on, this is becoming un-acceptable already.

Forth and last for now. What about Laconi.ca? Not only is it enterprise friendly, strictly supports the open microblogging standard and is moving to pure XMPP but it also federates with other services. I was trying to explain federation to someone the other day and they pointed out it works like usenet, email and irc (which bodes well, I think). Anyway, the next thing makes me sure Yammer isn't the right path is Twhirl's new support for Laconi.ca. There's something about the strict tight line between internal and external, which is interesting. At least with laconi.ca, its possible to blend the line in a organised way, but I want to know why I can't use my OpenID and why I can't import BBC people off my friends list elsewhere.

Oh I just noticed James has also blogged about the same thing but he has a totally different view point.

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Even more spam dating emails…

So following from my post about spammers affected dating sites. Here's even more for your viewing pleasure.

From rosewood88 (member since 2008-09-05) – Hello sweet love one

Hello
pls u can get back to my box with my email here angel_mary444@yahoo.com thanks wait
to meet u soon becos i will only hv the chance to check my box ok.
I am angela mary wood, and i am 25 yrs old live in ELTHAM LONDON. seeking for a sexy
and caring partner who has a like minds like i do,simple mature lady,honest, family
oriented,God-fearing. submissive to her man. love gardening, camping and fishing
…like to spend most of her time in working and doing all housechores. my hobbies
include love making,going to the beach side,having fun,fishig,tv,traveling,listening
to music and making love with my husband alone.my Eye Color..black,Hair Color…black,
Height..5'10-(178cm),Body Type.average,Race..white cau,
all kinds of romantic songs,i can also describe myself as
kind/volunteer,sincere,loving,caring,i am ready to meet a man to love and a man who is
ready to care for me …..i just wanna meet a man thats why i decided to show my
beaty up in this site and this is my first time of doing something like this…i
just..wish to meet the right man to marry and settle down with for life.

I

hello ,

i am named as Grace Ansah. i am 30 years of age and very lonely

. i am a lady who is fair and pretty . i am respectful, truthful,

honest , patience, humble, lovely and also nice to all peoples. i

am a lady who is in ghana now . my mum was from the canada and my

dad from ghana. i am in ghana now but for the mean time , i lost

my parents when i was at the age of 28 in a car accident. i lost

them very bad and since from then i stoped schooling .. life

became very bad for me . i have stopped schooling and now living

alone. for the mean time i am alone and now looking for a man to

marry . a man who will love me only and care for me . a man who

will never hurt my feelings . a man who is going to be truthful

and honest with me . a man who will be caring , a man who will

marry and make up a sweet happy family with . i wish and hope to

hear from you to know each otehr aas well. i will be very nice to

hear u so pls reply me back.. this my email adress:

grace_ansah80@yahoo.com . or u can txt or call this number”

00233245483378.

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Social radio listening with Radio Pop

radiopop graph

If you've not checked out Radiopops yet, go sign up now. Its a beta/prototype by the BBC radio labs team. It also shows the type of thing we are thinking and building inside the BBC but can't really make public easily. This is mainly a technical issue about platforms and scaling but I think its better that its made clear this is a prototype that have it hanging around the BBC for years because its not build with the house technologies not the most handy for the job.

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Pictures of Salford Quays

SANY0086.JPG by you.

Someone asked me for pictures of Salford Quays and the MediacityUK site. So here you go…

Patrick Lauke wrote a interesting comment on my picture of the Lowry outlet centre.

captures the loneliness of the fake
“human” environment quite well. no
matter how many bars and cinemas they plonk
in here, i can't see it become the bustling
central location that the planners seem to
have in mind. then again, they also never
really got the idea of planning for actual
people…in this case, for instance, where's
the benches? these empty spaces seem
positively hostile to people sitting down and
relaxing. ah well…

Yep it is a shame. It could be a lovely space. Maybe a market, benches, who knows what. In Bristol there's a area like this called lloyds (its in front of the lloyds building on the docks). Almost exactly the same but its used for lots of great things as its a perfect outdoor amphitheatre for a lot of people. Looking at the plans for mediacityuk there will be a couple of spaces like this but right now its pretty dead around the lowry centres.

My old college Ravensbourne annouced its plan to move to North Greenwich about 5 years ago. And at the same time they talked about lovely human spaces where people could hang out and enjoy such things as free wifi while sipping a triple skinny mocha frappachino. Well its happening but I'm not seeing the lovely human spaces yet. Actually if you walk away from the dome, theres a great little pub in the middle of the peninsula which has a green park next to it and lots of benches around. I've spent many a sunday afternoon there. Its a combination of the man made and natrual, and it just works.

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Werewolf at BarCampLeeds2

Frankly this picture sums up the first game of werewolf, which surprise surprise we didn't finish. Although to be fair we did get in some cracking games the next day in the lobby. A very good one where me and Gemma killed off the village in no time, and the other where it came down to 3 people and I could have saved the game for another round by healing myself. But instead I choose to heal who I trusted and I ended up healing the werewolf while I got killed off.

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Look out twitter friends, I’m now watching…

So finally I've found a Twitter client for my phone which I'm actually happy with. This means I'll be watching twitter a lot more that I use to. To tell the truth I use to only really read the direct messages. Why? Well when I first started using Twitter they had a IM bot, so I could work and watch the conversations. But that went away. I do sometimes use a twitter client on the desktop but generally I have my IM windows open for Ping.FM, Jaiku and AzureusBot.

So anyway, with ceTwit now installed on my phone and running smoothly with updates every 20mins. I'm going to be across twitter a lot more that I was before. What's also great is ceTwit now supports Ping.FM, so I can update all my status from one client and keep an eye on people are talking about.

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Services shutdown, a call for dataportability

I've seen a couple of things recently which has had me screaming data portability.

Yahoo is going to shutdown its DRM licence servers, so if you've bought DRM music from the Yahoo store its going to stop working soon. This already follows the shut down of the unlimited music store a while ago. When MSN did this a while ago they at least switched on another load of servers and promise to keep them running till 2011. Without going into the whole DRM is a stupid idea and killing music debate data portability wise, the only way to get your LEGALLY purchased content to play on your computer in the future is to burn it to a Audio CD and then rip them. For people who have seen my dataportability talk, I have a slide (44) I use to talk about what happens when services shutdown. Well everyone laughs when i talk about one by one transfering images from a online service, well imagine burning 100's of albums to audio cd just so you can rip them again into a free or open format. This is insane and should not be tollerented by people who paid for music. Oh a quick plug, if your affected by this whole thing, give the open rights group a shout.

Its not just Yahoo at it, AOL have also decided to suspend some of their services and give their (in some cases – paying) customers a dilemma over getting there data back. Xdrive, AOL Pictures and Bluestring. There in talks about selling the services and if not AOL have said they will consider burning CDs and DVDs for its customers or allow them to transfer to other services. It will be interested to see if it allows access to other rival services.

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In Fusion, a little gem in the pleasure beach


While on holiday in Blackpool I found myself riding in fusion twenty times through-out the day. Don't get me wrong, there are other good rides in Blackpool pleasure beach but the Pepsi Max Big One was closed due to the high winds, The Iru-bru Revolution is too short and is a poor relation to the classic Thunderlooper. Space invader 2 was also closed but the big dipper, Avalanche and steeplechase did both give me a suprise. But not really enough to want to queue up again. The queue times after 5pm got as low as 5mins and after 6pm you could wait one turn and jump on again. The night got even better with the find of the Ridge Racer 2 arcade going for 30p a credit at the south pier. Now thats what I call a holiday.

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The 3rd Olympic ring (black) is now safe on my bookshelf


Thanks to everyone who was involved in getting this lost (now found) ring. Its sits proudly on top of my bookshelf in the centre of the room. Getting the ring required quite a few people and Tim was the one finally who convinced the woman in the gallery to give it up. I got a small video of the moment Tim came back with the 3rd ring. We were in the great little cafe next door love saves the day. We also went for a couple drink afterwards where we spent a lot of time looking at the esperanto, some mad/eccentric lady (who's meant to be well known in the northern quarter) started to help. Its really the amazing thing about ARGs you can get dragged into it and you maybe do a part and leave again or get really interested and end up playing along. Having the ring sitting there in the middle of the room and knowing there is only 4 more in the world its hard not to keep being involved. Thanks Tobin and Nicole, Tim and Simon, Davemee and the Unfiction forum.

Yes I did do a dance in front of the gallery afterwards with the ring, but the woman was on the phone so she didn't see me I think.

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I Found the 3rd Olympic ring

Found in Manchester's trendy Northern Quarter (with the help of the community) but I wasn't able to take it, today. Some woman with a stick up her behind got all funny because I wasn't what she was expecting.

Join the search for the lost ring… we need people in Manchester tomorrow between 4-6pm who can try and get the ring for us. If that sounds like you, twitter me tomorrow.

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