Category: socialware-online

Ok so first up Tom Coats talks about the weird context shift of IM on mobile devices. and then Ben Hammersley replys with this. And I see what there saying, actually worst than that. I've actually been trying to deal with mobile IM for the last few months. See GPRS charges are getting low enough to be online in between work and home, so I am. However theres things which just dont work, for example.

Usually when I'm iming, I usually have to tell people i'm on my smartphone or ipaq otherwise they wonder why i'm taking so long to reply. Theres also a tendancy to write large chunks rather than tap tap bang tap tap bang, as im conversations up the screen tend to be a pain to scroll when trying to type at the same time. So I end up coming across really busy and distracted, when i'm actually just sitting on a train listening to podcasts. Saying all that, the opposite is also true. Specially when I'm on IM using my ipaq. I tend to turn off the screen and leave the ipaq on to walk, which means I'm on online but actually very busy or not able to talk right now. And just before I consider ways to solve this problem, one of the tricky problems is leaving im on while at a resturant or cafe. Its not as discreet as sms and a real pain in the ass for the other person trying to get hold of you, thinking your at your desk. At least with sms people expect you may not reply instantly. Its a social convention, for me at least…

Ok I'm sure i've been through this before, I use to think it was about presence management. But its not possible to do so without somekind of technological assistance. For example my smartphone has a nice profile called Automatic which automaticly sliences when your synced calendar says you have a busy meeting. Its simple and works. However i dont sync my phone nearly as much as I use to now I've switched to linux. Which leads me to wonder why my ipaq (which I do sync everyday) doesnt have a option like this?

Off the back of the last question, is it possible for the ipaq to send out a bluetooth message to all bonded devices to say Ian is now busy in a meeting? I know it wouldnt work for everyone because not everyone keeps there calendar up to date. But I bet you would if your mobile devices did something like that. I mean it cant be that hard to write something which switches profiles based on a bluetooth message? Saying that, with all the bluesnarfing attacks and closed api's on the windows mobile platform. It isnt going to work is it? Ok so lets forget bluetooth for a moment then. To get on im you need to be online, so why not some service which defaults your im client into a certain presence depending on your ical calendar? Hummm maybe… nahh…

Ben talks about the fact he's not usually online because people dont respect his presence. Well I'm using PSI which doesnt automaticly pop up a window, thank goodness. And I tend to have the same view of IM as I do for sms. Aka leave it till i'm ready to deal with it. I've been thinking how great it would be to tell if someone is really idle by the client following movement on the screen or something, but thats even more scary that anything else I've suggested. I've also been thinking about somekind of in-between solution. For example, I've got a bot called WeatherBot which tells me all the information I need without actually iming it. Maybe theres something in this? I've looked on the other networks and jabber seems to be the only one which does this, however theres lots of news about msn messeger 7 which is meant to copy yahoo's attention Buzz thing. Personally this is still too much, but shows theres grounds inbetween which can be explored. Oh by the way interesing blog about Jabber and Bots. I think maybe a jabber bot which is a conversation summariser would be difficult but damm useful. Thanks for the idea Miles (we were talking about something on top of aggregation for news).

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Ok so I was listening to a podcast from IT conversations titled Newbies and about 50:20 in [clip with Julie] Julie from BBC Scotland Interactive takes the microphone as a crowd member. Where she talks about Island blogging. This took me by suprised because I was waiting for the 354 Bus and just never thought I would hear any one from BBC at bloggercon. Anyway what else took me by suprise.

She talks about the custom built system for blogging and the frustration with the system. And I'm glad shes very honest about it. It now allows me to vent my pain using and looking at the system for Worldservice. Thats no longer a secret too, because Julie also mentions Worldservice are looking at bring blogging to other parts of the world. Its very interesting Julie thinks other BBC blogs are not blogs because they do not allow for comments, trackbacks, etc. I would agree totally with that point.

I dont feel I am out of line saying that the scottish blogging system is not good. I understand they were under tons of pressure to roll something out for the residents of North Argyll and the experience was more important than the tool. But there moving into stage 2 now, they (we) really need to consider a professional tool. I'm in favoring Blojsom because I can make it work really nicely with our worldservice content management system. But honestly, as long as it can do things like multiple user, multiple blog, external access via xmlrpc, rss/atom. Then were moving in the right direction.
I'm feeling the need to sort out blojsom at work so we can at least get into a decent dialogue going about what we really need…

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Robert Scoble posts some thoughts about getting the green light for blogging within a company. His arguments are very convincing and worth looking at if you feel the fear of webblogging. I keep reflecting back to the fact that I am a BBC employee and my views are not all shared by the BBC. I wonder how many people would care if I did not disclose who I worked for? Anyway theres a follow up by someone from Jupiter research here.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Ever since David announced the blojsom event notification and listener API, I've been thinking about 100's of ways to use it. But before I explore the possibilites I need to at least upgrade to 2.18. And alot of you will be glad to hear that I will be sorting out my feed links which are still relative rather than absolute.

I still need to run tests on blojsom, My aim is to get blojsom to output SSI's for use with the BBC blogs. Talking of which, got some really interesting news about the BBC but I cant tell quite yet. Once I can, I will post it here first before anywhere else.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Flash Lite 1.1 with SVG-Tiny support – how odd. sent via smthingme on a cannon street train with agile jabber and a swift gprs connection via orange.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Nice to see Apple supporting RSS native in there new browser but I feel Opera stole the limelight from Apple on this one.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

So I woke up this morning and looked at my email before rushing off to work, and Miles had sent me a email pointing out that Blojsom and Jabber will come as standard in OSX 10.4 server, which is going to ship end of 2004 or start of 2005. Article here then during mytrain journey to the BBC via Cannon street, I see a link to Blojsom in a slashdot arcticle.

I'm so loving all this, but I'm sure David and Mark are laughing there arse's off. Good one guys looking forward to the Jabber version of Somethingme very soon?

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

So I can finally let out the big secret of the blojsom team. They've been working on a IM to blog service and this is my first blog using the service.
They've been working hard on this service since the days of Blojsim which only worked with blojsom 1.x. Mark always promised to get it working for all blogs not just blojsom, now they've done the job. Excellent work. I'm looking forward to using this on my ipaq to drop down quick thoughts into my bookmarks. And I'm rubbing my hands with glee about SMS and even MMS to blog. Allowing me to blog from my SPV as well as a GPRS connection. Tell the truth that will really open blogging up to a whole new generation of bloggers. Very cool, very cool.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Mark calls it impromptu while David calls it EBS? What ever it is, it seems to allow blogging via xmlrpc and a instant messager client. I'm left wondering if its blojsim sorted out for blojsom 2.x or something alot more. Oh my I never saw your last post Mark, yes would love to do any experiements possible with cocoon and smack if you like. Anyway I hope to know more soon, now I've made my interests public. – by the way how the hell do trackbacks work?

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Seen on my feeds – http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/002692.html. It basicly turns your blog into a printable pdf book. First thing, I could make a xsl-fo stylesheet to do this using cocoon within a afternoon.

Query blojsom for all its entries ever written using the simple ?entries=-1 add flavor=rdf and your well away. Transform the rdf into pdf using xsl-fo and your done. Hey even write a simple webservice so you can submit a url and get a binary file back?

But my question really is why? why oh why would you want a book of your entries? Saying that I'm use to reading on screen so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask the question? By the way I'm reading Cory Doctorow's Standard Eastern Tribe on my ipaq and its an excellent read so far (page 63/128)

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

I was talking to Fravia about browsers and blogging over dinner with Richard Stallman yesterday, we went to the Star of India in Old brompton Street, near Earls Court, West London. Good food but I unfortually didnt feel too well the day after.

Fravia made an interesting statement on Thursday. Opera know what he does but they dont really care because the publicity of using opera is more than enough for them. And on that point I have to say Opera 7.5 is the best browser for advanced web searchers and developers… Some of the noteable features of 7.5, RSS newsfeeds directly in the browser, IRC chat client like Mozilia, better opera mail with spam filtering, New skin and Kiosk mode. Now if only there was a upgrade option I would be very happy.

Fravia mentioned Amazon's A9 search engine in the event. And how it displays the 5 or 10 texts lines before and after your search. Now with automation it is possible to grab the whole book. I never really thought about it but it makes total sense and means yes you can grab almost any book in Amazons store…

I questioned Fravia about blogging and syndication. He felt, he couldnt quite make up his mind on blogging. He felt it might isolate pages off, and so many blogs are written using blogger, typepad or moveable type that they were too simular. I see what he's saying but the instant semantic nature of blogs allow for advance searching beyond the logic of most search engines at the moment. Saying that I did notice Yahoo now searches and knows what RSS is. I've promised to write a piece about the advantages of searching in a blogging landscape very soon. The thing I love is when you add up other technologies like XFN and FOAF with semantic blogging, you got somekind of landscape to search in. Wont even get started on xlink, xpointer and xpath search engines.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Ok I hope to write something here really soon about the event last wednesday. Till then check out the photos of the event, as I didnt bring my camera and it was too dark for my smartphone. I am not happy with that photo of myself. I mean any shot but not when my mouth is wide open please.

I left work at about 19:10 and made my way up to the meeting place through convert garden. On the way I read that Moveable type 3 was out and thought…who cares? Obviously I'm not a MT user and dont really care too much. I think David sums it up best. If you're abandoning moveable type 3.

Anyway back to the event. I got there about 19:30 and got a drink straight away, well actually someone else bought me a shark. If I could remember who it was I would credit them here. Then got talking to Seyed Razavi. I never knew who he was so just chatted generally about alot except actual blogging. My memory gets a little hazy about then. I remember seeing most people run towards Cory when he dropped in. I did shake his hand and he seem suprised that I was the Ian who's been writing to him for the last few months.

I sat with another celeb blogger PixelDiva. I tend to read her blog on and off and did tune in to her spot on Radio 4 a while ago. I'm glad to hear she was very down to earth and very chilled out about the whole radio show. I met lots more people, too many to mention. Ambalance driver who blogs his days, need to find that site! Didnt talk to Tom coats, he was too busy surrounded by a group of people all the way through the event. Missed Annie who won a blogging award for her site. Honestly I never seen the site till recently and thought why would it be interesting? then actually got kind of hooked and thought about doing a simular thing myself about people using technology. Sure I'll catch a few people toothing but I've seen some very interesting uses of technology while going to work everyday.
Other people worth mentioning include a student from Westmister college who understood the whole teaching and learning issue to the T. He actually mentioned Learning about learning while I talked about educational blogging. A guy who was working on a system to rate music, I suggested using metadata in blogs and looking at the slashdot methods. And all the people who stayed till midnight… Good night all round when's the next one James.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

I will be at the London bloggers get together tonight if anyone wants a word with me about cubicgarden or any of my views. Looks like a great line up of people but I will not be staying till 2am sorry… Some of us have to work. But I may make use of the BBC flextime tomorrow morning.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Everyone laughed at me when I said I read the blog of a women called Pixel Diva who works on BBC's Radio 4's women's hour. I knew she was'nt making it up…

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]