Connected Social: Design based thinking

My parents were deeply worried that I was doing too much again. Specially after what happened to me with mybrushwithdeath almost two and half years ago. I can tell you and them that my blood pressure is normal…

So what have I been up to…? Because my blog has also suffered due to the hectic schedule.

On Tuesday 30th Connected Social and 31st EpicWerewolf…

BBC Connected Social

BBC Connected Social

I stopped arranging events because frankly my skill isn’t in arranging or managing them. Something Matt Cashmore was much better at than myself. However I’m good at being the spark and inspiration for the event in the first point.

After watching a few Connected Studios it become clear something was need to make it a more complete experience for people involved. Hence I convinced my manager of this need and we tried out Connected Social in July. That went well and after a bit of a break it made sense to bring it back.

The evening was all ignite style talks around the theme of design based thinking.

BBC Connected Social

It was a good night of talks and further concentrated the need for a social event following the connected studio events in my mind. Maybe a little shorter and around one set of talks instead but everyone still enjoyed it.

Of course by the end of the night I was glad it went well and I was able to create a good informative event for people, however I was already thinking about Epic Werewolf…

My perceptive tracks end in Istanbul

My parents were deeply worried that I was doing too much again. Specially after what happened to me with mybrushwithdeath almost two and half years ago. I can tell you and them that my blood pressure is normal…

So what have I been up to…? Because my blog has also suffered due to the hectic schedule.

Generally I’ve been up and down the country and beyond telling people about Perceptive Media. The later part of that schedule is coming to a close but I went to Oreilly’s Tools of Change conference in Frankfurt and Nemsummit in Istanbul. Istanbul wasn’t what I was expecting in anyway. Although it marks the furthest I have been east in the world, before that it was Sweden.

Istanbul

Along with being chased by a big wild dog, hating the food, avoid nuts/fish and not really feeling very comfortable with the conference, I just didn’t get a sense of wow I’m out of Europe and in the middle east. Which was a shame and I’m sure if I went back it would be different. To be honest I didn’t get out of the tourist part and check out the old town part of Istanbul.

Istanbul

What shocked me was the food. I was expecting lots of lovely meats with lots of seasoning and the like. What I experienced was a diced chicken which was boiled and had never seen any kind of seasoning, at one part of my trip. This won’t have been so bad if I wasn’t so bloody hungry after suffering the nut filled flight from Zurich to Istanbul for 2hours.

Istanbul

I was expecting something like you get in Turkish restaurants but got something boring and plain everytime. Someone did say I was in wrong part of Turkey for good meats and the like. Instead this part was best known for sea food (which I can’t eat either). Breakfast was also very tricky because a massive part of the food had nuts involved in someway, so I kept to breads, cheeses and plastic looking meats.

Even at the conference there was lunches with cheeses and the like but with nuts thrown over the top. Nightmare!

Although I’m grateful to go to Istanbul for work, I just wasn’t feeling it at all. It might be down to the conference rather than the country. NemSummit was nothing like Tools of Change or anything that level. It makes you realise what a hard job it is getting the small things right…

I think to be honest if I’m going east again, I’d rather skip over the middle east and head to Asia. Japan, Korea and even China…

Post Pam Warhurst to Wikipedia

Pam Warhurst

I received this in my Flickr Mail the other day…

Have you thought about uploading one of your Pam Warhurst pictures to Wikipedia? Her profile (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Warhurst) doesn’t have one and I think www.flickr.com/photos/37421747@N00/7323713702 would be a good fit.

FYI: I am publishing a quote using this picture, credited, on Feb. 27 on my blog yahooeysblog.wordpress.com/

Must have been a slight mistake because looking for the quote I had to do a tag search for Pamela Warhurst. Finally I found this page. Right day wrong month.

“There’s so many people that don’t really recognize a vegetable unless it’s in a bit of plastic with an instruction packet on the top.” — Pamela Warhurst, How we can eat our landscapes

To be honest I’d love to have one of my pictures used for the wikipedia entry but its a real pain uploading to wikipedia when you forgot the account details (*smile*). So once I sort out the login, I’ll make the changes to Pamela’s entry. May have to do the same for a few other people…

Done….

Epic Werewolf – This Halloween…

EPIC Werewolf

This Halloween, there is only one place to be…

Four times the deception, four times the lies and four times the paranoia. It’s a social game which you can easily pick up but is impossible to master. This Halloween we show social engineering like never before…

Islington Mill for some Epic Werewolf with Larkin About… All part of the Manchester Science Festival

Decentralised networking is hard, no really?

Sydney, January 2009

Straight out of the “No Sh*t Sherlock…” book….

Although I think its amazing what developers do, I can imagine how hard it must be to write decent decentralised software. The Diaspora guys spell out how difficult it is… which Adwale likes to make sure I and others fully understand.

  • If you build a decentralized application, you actually need to ship software. You need to package, test, create installers, test on a variety of platforms, write defensive code to work around misconfigurations your customers are likely to create, etc. For a centralized website, you can often edit files in place on the production server.
    Result: decentralized is 10x harder at least.
  • Somebody somewhere will run every single version of your app that you ever shipped. It will be badly out of date, full of security holes (you fixed years ago), outmoded graphics etc. It will cost you additional support, and your brand will suffer. Almost nobody upgrades to the latest and greatest within a life time it seems.
    Result: decentralized is less functional, less pretty, and less secure.
  • Decentralized software is much harder to monetize. You can’t run ads on somebody else’s installation. You can’t data mine your users (because most of them aren’t in a place that you have access to, it’s somebody else’s installation). You can’t do cross-promotions and referrals etc. You can charge those people who install your software, but there’s a reason most websites are free: much better business.
    Result: decentralized produces less money for you, so you have less investment dollars at your disposal.
  • Database migrations and the like for decentralized apps have to be fully productized, because they will be run by somebody else who does not know what to do when something fails 15 minutes into an ALTER TABLE command.
    Result: decentralized is 10x harder at least.
  • Same thing for performance optimizations and the like: it’s much easier to optimize your code for your own server farm than trying to help Joe remotely whose installation and servers you don’t have access to.
    Result: decentralized is slower, more expensive, and harder.

Frankly although I take the points… If you want to stand out in a clearly over crowded field, and one which has a major elephant using up all the space. You need to think differently (to quote someone we all know too well).

This means doing the difficult things which no one understands and owning the platform!

Your business model should/could be charging other developers to build and be creative on top of your platform. App.net have got the right idea, charge the developers who then create the experiences. Your focus should be on managing the platform and supporting their creativity. Anything else is greed and/or lack of focus.

What do I mean by creativity? Think about Tweetdeck…

Tweetdeck innovated on top of the Twitter platform and in the end the platform twitter bought them (stupid move). Tweetdeck for a lot of people made twitter usable at long last. The amount of news rooms I’ve been to and seen tweetdeck with a million panels open is untrue. The same isn’t true now… Tweetdeck guys innovated on top of Twitter and instead of sharing revenue with them or something. They bough them…!

A quote which comes to mind is something like…

The train company thought they were in the railroad business, what they didn’t get was that they were actually in the transportation business.

I really like twitter but frankly their control/greed/whatever is getting out of control. While on a panel yesterday at the London transmedia festival in Ravensbourne College. I was sat with Danielle from Tumblr, Bruce from Twitter, Cat from BBC and Doug Scott from Ogilvy. Although its tempting to make a few comments about there change in stance, I passed. Although I did notice say something which could be seen as slightly negative. Doug said how useful Twitter is for understanding users and I agreed but I said,

“Well its important to remember Twitter is only explicit data, implicit data is the stuff people really want to get there hands on…”

Anyway, the point stands and its hard to see how Twitter will get into the implicit data game at this point. If they acted like a platform, maybe someone else would do the innovation for them. But back to the main point why would you do it on someone closed system?

Decentralised network systems are harder but will drive much more interesting creativity… I can see how this might be at odds with setting up a business, startup and having investors etc… But I’m sure I could make a argument that its better in the long run…

Okcupid turns matchmaker with your Roommate?

Old flatmate search

The last time I seeked a flatmate properly…

This surprised me when I first heard that Okcupid was going to have a go at fixing the roommates market…

Not satisfied with running the best dating site on the planet, OkCupid parent company Humor Rainbow appears to be launching a service to help match up potential roommates. If Humor Rainbow can pull it off, the process of searching, finding and vetting potential roommates is about to get a whole easier, fun and more interesting.

I think they can pull it off because they understand data and like the devastating effecting they’ve had on the dating market, they are not just drinking the Tim Oreilly’s Coolaid but living by it.

Data is the Intel inside – Tim Oreilly

Its a real shame they got bought by Match.com because I would have loved to see how far they would have gone with there data stance (heck someones got to do something)

Its maybe a good time to say I’m considering a flatmate again…(last time having one may have saved my life – Thanks Tim) Specially now I have a bed in the spare room which doesn’t eat up all the space in the small 2nd bedroom. Ideally its suited to BBC Staff coming up from London and wanting somewhere to live before getting to know Manchester (and deciding to live in Cholton or Didsbury)

Of course if the right person came along I’d consider a longer term arrangement, but we’ll see…

Do Location-Based Dating Apps Really Matter?

Good question…

I wrote about OkCupid locals beta a while ago and said it was quite interesting to see the person on the phone in real life. This isn’t anything new but to see the hetrosexual world get there own thing even for a short while was interesting. Now there’s too many of them… Okcupid, Plenty of Fish, Meetmoi and even Zoosk has gotten into the field. You can now have that Bluetooting experience you’ve always wanted thanks to these apps… However are they actually used beyond having a giggle with your friends?

Another good question…

Well it seems like all this stuff, with so many different networks, the love of your life could be sitting next to you and you wouldn’t know because of the lack of interoperability between the services and their apps.

The reason why grindr did so well is because every gayman up for a bit of fun had it installed. Pushing out all the rest of the apps. If you were available and up for it, grindr was the app to have.

But back to the original question… Do they really matter?

I personally have removed Okcupid’s app from my phone because of the drain on battery and to be honest many people I know turn off the functionality. Privacy concerns and the fear of being stalked by some crazy ex may have a massive effect here? But frankly few people are openly using it and even if they are… there very unlikely to be on the same network as you.

I hate to say it but it looks like this one was the bluetoothing story all over again. Some people will have fun with the idea but for most people it will be another dream/fantasy/nightmare waiting to happen…

Pacemaker device upgrade

Pacemaker Device

If you’ve not seen the Pacemaker Device (pmd) had a official firmware update over the last few months. This is great news because this shows pacemaker device isn’t dead, and there might still be a lot more life in this ground breaking device.

The firmware is beta but to be honest it feels very stable to me just like the leak pacemaker firmware from over 3 years ago. One of the major additions is the ability to scratch which I’ve not played with yet, but theres plenty more stuff…

  • Scratching (Vinyl Mode) – Enable it under (Settings, Mix Control, Vinyl Mode). Simply touch the edges of the navigation pad on the Pacemaker to scratch your music.
  • Beat Lock/Sync Mode – Enable beat lock by holding the P-Button down and pressing Play on the second deck. The second deck will be synced to the same tempo as the first and held there until this process is repeated.
  • Sync Tempo – Hold the P-Button down and press Cue on the second deck. The second decks tempo will now match the tempo of the first deck.
  • Beat Jump – Enable beat jump by holding the P-Button down and pressing ‘REW’ on a deck. ‘Beat Jump Enabled’ will be displayed. Repeat this process to jump backward in time in the track or hold the P-Button down and press ‘FWD’ to jump forward in the track. You can change the length of the jump by holding the P-Button down and pressing the ‘REW’ and ‘FWD’ buttons simultaneously. Great for creating a ‘stutter effect’.
  • Fixed Loop Length – Set Fixed Loop Lengths in (Settings, Mix Control, Fixed Loop Length) and all loops you create will default to that length.
  • Snap Loops – Set this on under (Settings, Mix Control, Snap Loops) and all loops that are created will be snapped to the nearest beat.
  • Digital Output (Play mode only) – Requires an A/V cable (Digital out where video should be) and this mode only works on the line-out channel (Hardware limitation)

Its quite easy to upgrade and on Linux, you just need to follow the Mac instructions.

Ensure your Pacemaker has at least 20% charge before starting this process. Download the firmware by clicking here

  1. Connect your Pacemaker Device to your PC via a mini USB cable.
  2. View the Pacemaker drive so you can see the folders on the device (like you would with a memory stick)
  3. Find the .Pacemaker folder (it might be a hidden folder so you might have to enable viewing of hidden folders).
  4. Copy the firmware you downloaded into this folder.
  5. Safely Eject the Pacemaker Device
  6. Your Pacemaker should now reboot and install the firmware – this might take several minutes. Do not unplug your device during this process.
  7. Once completed the device may either need to be ejected again from the computer, or it may display a screen as if it has just been turned on and is ready to mix.
  8. You’re done – Let’s Mix.
  9. Be sure to post your comments over in the official forum thread here, to show your support to the team.

Pacemaker upgrade complete

Here’s my pacemaker with the latest Firmware updated…

Firestarting Oreilly’s Tools of change

I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at Oreilly’s Tools of Change conference in Frankfurt last week.

Tools of change or TOC for me has become the place for interesting innovations centred around publishing. Of course it makes sense because Oreilly themselves are mainly a publisher and are leading the field.

The sessions I mainly attended were around innovation in the publishing space. However a bulk of the talks centred around DRM (restrictions and rights) and moving digital workflow through-out. There was a feeling that something wasn’t being talked about and that thing was Amazon. In the same way Apple came into the music market with the savour, there was a feeling the same might be coming true.

I attended quite a few sessions but I didn’t speak up till I attended a session titled… Innovators Track: Innovative Business Models. I started tweeting some things which I thought were fair. And then I thought, well I’m going to make my feelings known rather than stay silent. The crux of my complaint was I felt like we were at a sales pitch and I wasn’t the only one who felt it. A guy I was standing next to turned to me and said, “never send your sales staff to a conference…” And you know what he was darn right… Anyway I asked my question, which was something like “Ummmmm, wheres the innovation and creativity in what you guys are doing?” That didn’t go down too well but Sophie Rochester who was due to chair the panel I would be on later, skillfully asked the question and also make it clear this wasn’t really about creativity and innovations and our session later would be the place for that. She also suggested that from a outsiders perspective it may not look like much but it was. I say nothing more, but people at lunch kept saying agreeing with me…

After lunch I went to the Outsmarting Piracy session with Ruediger Wischenbart; Jens Klingelhöfer; Sergey Anuriev; Richard Mollet; Joe Wikert. It was very interesting… At one point I was shaking my head thinking goodness this is more head in the sand stuff but then they spoke to Sergey who was russian and gave a good talk about the fact 90% of all ebooks are traded over the dark/under net. They actually work with the pirates to advertise and learn more about there audience.

Some people scoffed, but its the best they can/could do… This was followed up with Joe Wikert from Oreilly who gave the non-DRM rational. Richard Mollet piped up and said how he was advising the UK government against relaxing DRM and the like. Some lady asked the question of the panel, are any of you guys pirates? Everyone was a little startled. Then one by one, they said yes I have done something in the past which could be classed as piracy. Everyone except Richard Mollet. He refused the notion that he may have engaged in any level of piracy. I think that was when I lost it and asked/told the question saying.

“I am ashamed to be British and have you and people like you advising the UK government without any knowledge or understanding of the hardship and pain the average person has to endure with the likes of DRM!!!”

He used the crappy excuse that he’s never killed anyone but can still have a view on the punishment.

Anyway this DRM discussion carried on in the main hall as the DRM Debate with Joe Wikert and Bill McCoy.
Clearly the Book/Publishing industry is trying to grapple with DRM and those who get rid earlier will thrive at the expense of those who are too late to change.

The reason why I was speaking is because my panel session was centred around the concept of Perceptive Media or more specifically Perceptive publishing. Slides are of course on Slideshare. I shared the panel which was titled Innovations in Storytelling with Dan Franklin from Random House; Justin Keenan and Jennifer Lee from Plympton. It was moderated by Sophie Rochester again.

Sophie Rochester gathers together an incredibly talented group of creators in a panel devoted to innovations in storytelling! From the futuristic personalization taking place at the BBC’s Perceptive Media, to the masterfully interactive work of RH’s Dan Franklin, to the engagingly addictive genre fiction serialization of Plympton – this session will give you a glimpse at how some of our best technologists and storytellers are working together to craft ever richer “reading” experiences.

The session was genuinely full of interesting ideas and innovations from all around. I think I tweeted I would really like to work with the rest of panel one day.

Oreilly conferences are so well put together and I felt well looked after but not smothered. Oh have I missed them… Look forward to attending another one with more innovation from BBC R&D.