In the wired magazine style, these are the things I’m thinking about and I’m not. Its not meant to be serious, just a bit of fun! (Honestly!)
Not done one of these since 2004!
Wired
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Tired
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Expired
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Could a robot take care of us when were old?
Watched Robot & Frank… and thought about the elderly care crisis.
A delightful dramatic comedy, a buddy picture, and, for good measure, a heist film. Curmudgeonly old Frank lives by himself. His routine involves daily visits to his local library, where he has a twinkle in his eye for the librarian. His grown children are concerned about their father’s well-being and buy him a caretaker robot. Initially resistant to the idea, Frank soon appreciates the benefits of robotic support – like nutritious meals and a clean house – and eventually begins to treat his robot like a true companion. With his robot’s assistance, Frank’s passion for his old, unlawful profession is reignited, for better or worse.
Its certainly something you might prefer to watch at home than in the cinema but its a really lovely story… And reminds me of something I saw a while ago on Wired.co.uk about how the ageing population could be the key to domestic robots.
Also got me remembering the only real contact I’ve had with domestic robots. Although the Pleo autospy was slightly distressing to see.
Is the mobile phone industry ready for the pure web?
The biggest mobile phone trade faire kicks off in the ever so lovely Barcelona, and the analysis seems to suggest this year it will be about all the mobile platforms tearing down Android and iOS.
My favourites have to be Mobile Ubuntu which I have written about in the past and Firefox OS, which Gigaom has written about.
Love the concept of Firefox OS but interestingly there seems to be a lot of support for Firefox OS from the mobile phone industry. Last time I saw this level of support it was for Android.
From an open standards perspective, the Firefox OS is as pure as it gets right now. The whole thing is based on HTML5 – it’s all about escaping Google and Apple’s walled gardens and frolicking freely in the wilds of the open web. Half the code was written by volunteers.
There will be an official Firefox Marketplace but everyone is free to roll their own, from carriers to games specialists. Any payment method can be implemented – that factor is not in the hands of any one platform sponsor. Apps that run on the platform will also be able to run on rivals that implement HTML5, such as Google’s and Apple’s.
Although I do still ask the question of the mobile phone industry, are you ready to give people the pure web?
So back we come to this idea of the open mobile web. This is an area where luminaries such as Tim Berners-Lee have been on the warpath, pointing out very real problems with the iOS/Android model. These include the inability to share app-based content in a standardized way, and the inability to search across apps. In short: the loss of the level playing field that web technologies represent.
Firefox OS is designed to solve those problems. Weirdly, we can now witness the former walled garden proprietors genuinely extol the virtues of openness. By promoting Firefox OS, they cannot regain control – however, they hope to prise some control from the hands of Google and Apple.
Well I guess we shall see how far Firefox OS gets. Like Ubuntu, my contract is up this year so I could be tempted to switch to one of these phones. Although I’ll be honest and say Google’s extra features are pretty compelling, specially Google Now.
Those bloody Facebook like scams
Where ever there is people being social there’s room for social engineering? Welcome to the Facebook Like scams… A little old but still a pain!
As you may have noticed I’m not exactly a fan of facebook but seeing a few of those crappy “do this now” posts in my timeline irritates me even more. As you can imagine these are just social engineering scams. One of the most common is ‘Press Like if you hate cancer, ignore if you don’t’? but theres many more… Heck even the BBC did a scam to prove it can be done.
The ‘my sister Mallory’ scam
This post stated that someones ‘sister’ Mallory has down syndrome & doesn’t think she’s beautiful. It then asked for ‘likes’ it to show her she is. The REAL story about this little girl is something much different: Read about it here
As usual you can tell by the call to action and social pressure being layered.
- A page is created.
- This page put out a constant stream of heart wrenching and/or mildly amusing images that are shared publicly with a call to action to click, share or comment.
- These posts are initially shared by a big group of people all in the same network who have all built up their edge rank over a period of time that then results in the posts eventually leaking into the newsfeeds of real-life accounts.
- These people share, like or comment which then spreads.
- Eventually a friend of yours hits that little thumbs up button
- It’s in your newsfeed.
And within 3 days a post like this one has 70,000 likes, and someone somewhere is about to make a nice little profit by selling the page to a business wanting some quick wins.
The buyer then changes some of the page details. BAM! Instant fanpage with a big following, lots of likes and an in depth edge rank, capable of pushing out content to a pre-built list of thousands of Facebook users. (edit: Page name cannot be altered after 200 likes, just details of the page).
And there you have it… Facebook scammed
Thanks to my friends who stupidly fell for the scams on multiple times. I’ll be sending them this blog post in future.
Orange extend Orange Wednesday
Wonder what the thinking behind this? I got this on a text today in a text
241: Hi, this week only with Orange Wednesdays enjoy 2 for 1 at PizzaExpress Sun 24-Wed 27 Feb using the same text ticket for 4 days. Terms orange.co.uk/film.
Maybe Pizza Express is making a killing having Orange customers on Wednesdays, so they thought about extending it to other quiet nights? Interesting the cinema offer isn’t also in effect?
Might be useful at some point even though there is no Salford Cinema Club this week.
Every decision is made with Caffeine
Simon said something to me as I left his flat the other day…
Almost every major decision in history is made under the influence of Caffeine…
Its a interesting drug caffeine. Some can’t live without it and some have different levels of allergic reaction to it, as I found out the other day. No I’m not allergic but since my brush with death I’ve keeping an eye on my caffeine intake. Mainly no Coffee at home or work.
I remember seeing caffeine under a high powered microscope ages ago when looking at different drugs under a microscope. But recently I saw the above picture from DIYcouture. Its a pretty amazing drug and you can see the reaction in the shape of the drug.
Creating a site for a vivid lounge
I had it with bloody Facebook… But what I can’t understand is why on earth some businesses rely on it for there business.
Vivid Lounge is one such business.
They do have the domain name vividloungeuk.com (thankfully) but as you can see nothing is there. They do on the other hand have a Facebook page with regular updates. Now I understand running a business is a lot of hard work this is why I decided to do something about it by offering them a website to replace the blank page.
I decided to use Squarespace originally because its pretty quick, solid, smart and I heard good things about it. Using pictures and content from the Facebook I was quickly able to create something useful. Unfortunately Squarespace doesn’t allow you share the site unless you pay the minimum fee. As usual my tweets are copied into facebook and Oli said something quite useful.
I debated doing this for places I likes that didn’t have functional websites. This is too true http://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website
Then a recent follow up he mentioned http://en.wordpress.com/restaurants/. WordPress for restaurants.
It looks ideal but maybe too complex for vivid lounge at this moment but could be useful for future plans
Relationship fuss
People who have been in a relationship of what ever kind for more that 5 years are lucky. Yes they are matched with someone significant but they don’t have to go through the fuss or even hell of announcing it on fb.
Recent research suggests that the decisions people make about whether and how to represent their love lives on Facebook can often be quite telling. For example, my colleagues and I found that people who post a “Single” relationship status on Facebook have more sexual partners between relationships than those who opt out of posting “Single” on their profile. We also found that people who disclose that they are “In a Relationship” on Facebook also report being more committed to that relationship. Even among married people, we found that those whose primary Facebook photos include their spouses are less likely to split up 6 months later
With previous girlfriends, it was carefully chosen when to change fb statuses. I usually change mine to prove I was no longer dating.
The act of publicly publishing your status (even subconsciously) has a massive profound effect… going by this study a positive effect?
I believe this also applies to publishing things like your new years resolutions. Which I have done for years.
The streaming consciousness
I can’t believe Stowe Boyd doesn’t get a single mention in this article about streams…
So although the web has changed out of all recognition in two decades, our underlying metaphor for it probably hasn’t changed that much. And this has the downside that we’re effectively blind to what is actually happening, which is that we are moving from a world of sites and visits to one that is increasingly dominated by streams. The guy who articulates this best is a Yale computer scientist named David Gelernter.
The title of his latest essay on the subject – “The End of the Web, Search, and Computer as We Know It” – conveys the basic idea. “The space-based web we currently have will gradually be replaced by a time-based worldstream,” he writes. “This lifestream — a heterogeneous, content-searchable, real-time messaging stream — arrived in the form of blog posts and RSS feeds, Twitter and other chatstreams and Facebook walls and timelines. Its structure represented a shift beyond the ‘flatland known as the desktop’ (where our interfaces ignored the temporal dimension) towards streams, which flow and can therefore serve as a representation of time.
Shame because he’s been thinking about this stuff a whole lot longer than most…
Join me for Cloud Atlas at the cinema this Friday?
If you weren’t sure about Cloud Atlas, not heard much about it, well watch this from Digital Spy… and…
Tom Hanks has claimed that his new film Cloud Atlas is as complex as Christopher Nolan’s The Castaway star explained that the multi-thread plot of both films challenges the audience.
“There are going to be people out there who are going to say, ‘Who do they think they are to make this movie like this?'” he told The Belfast Telegraph.
“That’s been the case with every great film. I think every audience is yearning to be surprised. I am bored when I walk into the theatre expecting A, B and C, and a movie delivers A, B and C.
“I want to see something brand new that I never anticipated coming a hundred million miles away,” he continued, “And my God, that happens before the words ‘Cloud Atlas’ appear up on the screen on this one.”
Speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times, Hanks added: “I loved that it wasn’t going to be simple for audiences.
“Lord, doesn’t that sound beautiful? A film that is original, creative and makes you think. That’s what movies used to be.
“I think it’s as risky as Inception,” he concluded.
“Inception was a complete one-off. You saw it the first time and said, ‘How many movies are in this thing?'”
Although I wouldn’t say it was quite as epic as inception, its certainly not far off. This is why I said on Salford Cinema Club’s micro blog… I will be going to watch Cloud Atlas at the Odeon Manchester Cinema.
If you are also interested in watching this master piece of storytelling and film, give me a shout on twitter or something… Thinking about the 8:20pm showing?