Who thinks this is a good idea?

Tribute to Steve Jobs | We are orphan...

One of the most stupidest things I’ve heard of late…

Finding the next steve jobs… Will i am and Simon Cowell cashing in on a dead man’s legacy more like it. Not only is it insulting to the intelligent working on new and cutting edge things but also a nasty thing to do on the 1 year anniversary of steve jobs death in my view.

To be frank its as dumb an idea as offline netflix… At least its not as offensive as Simon Cowell and Will i am jumping on a bandwagon.

Follow the money… or rather follow the naff ideas to eternity? Stupid…!

My new skateboard

My new magenta skateboard

Yes I am over 30 but after Ross and Carley got me one for a joke on my 30th birthday I’ve been thinking about using it for a while. I had a little mess around on the skateboard but the bearings were shot and the whole thing was basically too sucky.

Devil board

I was considering getting a pair of rollerblades but can’t seem to find many my size and frankly I prefer the idea of skateboarding as I use to go everywhere on it for miles. Hopefully with more use of the skateboard I’ll also get fitter and even lose a bit of weight.

The other day I was able to skate from the Media City platform to the Harbour City tram stop and catch the tram coming from Eccles. If I was walking/running there would be no way I could have caught it but with the skateboard I had plenty of time.

My new magenta skateboard

My skateboard is pretty mental. When I was skating year and years ago I swear the bearings and wheel technology wasn’t anywhere as good as these ones. The ride is so smooth and just keeps going for ages.

Yet to fall off it but I did have to loosen the trucks because it was too tight and I’m still not confident enough to skate through traffic or even while people are walking along the street. At this pace, it won’t be long till I’m back skating down the middle of the road and weaving in and out of the human traffic…

I am calling you from Windows… Oh really?

Ars Technica has a great piece about the scammy calls I sometimes get when I pick up my house phone (currently broke).

When the call came yesterday morning, I assumed at first I was being trolled—it was just too perfect to be true. My phone showed only “Private Caller” and, when I answered out of curiosity, I was connected to “John,” a young man with a clear Indian accent who said he was calling from “Windows Technical Support.” My computer, he told me, had alerted him that it was infested with viruses. He wanted to show me the problem—then charge me to fix it.

Thankfully somethings happening to stop this scam

This scam itself is a few years old now, but I had not personally received one of the calls until yesterday—the very day that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a major crackdown on such “boiler room” call center operations. The very day that six civil lawsuits were filed against the top practitioners

Its a shame Ars Technica didn’t record it, but of course I did, twice…!


The Year of Making Love needs me…?

a year of making love band

Fever Media, the Year of Making Love… (remember that crazy dating experience I had) have been in touch again…

They want to use my video diary for the show which looks to go live in time for Valentines day 2013…

However…

They need my signature to use it… They need a licence for existing material.

I later got a email from them with the contract.

Year of Making Love (Working Title) (the “Programme”)
For the purposes of this letter, the “Material” shall mean any and all material in whatever form including without limitation audiovisual so called ‘video diary footage’, and mobile phone screen grabs/footage uploaded by you onto the Year of Making Love web capture site ‘http://yoml.tv/’ (the Website’) and / or otherwise provided to the Year of Making Love Production Team at any time whether prior to or subsequent to the date hereof

We write to confirm our agreement as follows:-

  1. You hereby grant to us and persons authorised by us the non-exclusive right in perpetuity to record, copy, reproduce, broadcast, transmit and perform all or part of the Material for and/or in connection with the production, exploitation, promotion and/or advertising of the Programme throughout the world for the entire period of copyright in the Material and all extensions and renewals thereof by all means and in all media whether now known or hereafter discovered or developed. For the avoidance of doubt and without limitation to the forgoing you agree that the Material may be embedded in the Website.
  2. By submitting the Material to us, you thereby grant to us a worldwide, royalty free, irrevocable licence to use, copy, exploit, manipulate, distribute, reproduce (and to sub-licence such rights) the Material.
  3. You warrant that you are entitled to grant to us the rights referred to in paragraph 1 above and that the exercise of such rights will not (a) infringe the copyright or any other personal or property rights of any person or be in breach of any statute or regulation or (b) entitle any person to claim any payment from us or from any of our licensee.
  4. In full consideration for all rights and benefits hereby granted we shall pay to you the sum of £1 receipt of which is hereby acknowledged.
  5. You are solely responsible for the content of any material submitted, and any consequences of the further publication of such by us. We shall have no liability whatsoever and howsoever arising in respect of Material submitted.
  6. You agree that you shall not submit any Materials which are unlawful, defamatory, offensive or in breach of third party rights.
  7. We shall not be obliged to include the Material in the Programme.
  8. We shall be entitled to assign the benefit of this agreement to any third party but we shall remain liable to you for all of our obligations under this agreement.

What do people think I should do?

If I say no, they will just go and use someone elses
If I say yes, I have no idea how they will edit or mess with it.

Remember the show “how to have more sex” (I chalk that one up to how TV sucks!)

What should I do?

Pacemaker playback

Blackberry Playbook

Some of you may have noticed my tweets about finally getting a Blackberry Playbook.

Some of you maybe wondering why the hell I bought one of those?

Well the truth is the original pacemaker guys (Olof Berglof, Jonas Norberg and Willem Demmers) sent me one after my experience of the pacemaker app during Over The Air earlier in summer. Blackberry/RIM suggested they might send me one but after the blog post, they pretty much didn’t want anything else to do with me. Bear in mind, this was after I asked them to send me the playbook to test out before I got to Over the Air.

Thanks from the Pacemaker Team

Anyway after the blog post, I shared it with the un-official pacemaker community which had started when Tonium wouldn’t answer any of the questions. This is where the original pacemaker guys (now free after Tonium) saw it and got in touch with me.

The guys admitted the version I was using was a early beta and it was a lot more stable now. We got talking and they agreed to send me a playbook maybe they felt it was the right thing to do or they wanted to keep me involved in the pacemaker community. Either way I’m happy to say I got one thanks to the Pacemaker guys! And its running the Pacemaker App Trial right now.

Pacemaker App

I won’t talk about my frustration with the actual playbook. Including how the mass storage mode failed to work on Ubuntu and how I had to transfer my music collection over wifi using Samba till I discovered this USB hack. Weird thing is it was just as slow. I won’t talk about the pain of trying to get the latest OS update but it not letting me till the battery was over 20% (I left it over night charging in the end). Finally I won’t talk about the pain of getting a blackberry ID.

The Pacemaker trial is rightly so much more stable than the version I experienced before. Its not crashed on me and it does seem a lot more together. But I have to say I still find some of the latency problems are still there (maybe Android 4.1 Butter is needed but you would have thought QNX would be ideal for this). For example don’t try and do hard cuts with the crossfader as you will be very disappointed. The layout makes a little more sense now but I’m finding lots of things are missing from the pacemaker device including recording, effects and of course external output to a mixer. The later means everything you do is played out over the headphones or split into mono.

Pacemaker App

The Pacemaker guys are going to put me on the beta list so hopefully I’ll get a feel for changes and progression soon enough. Right now, its a much poorer relation to the pacemaker device. There is no way I could play out with this, only have a play now and then when in the mood. Still early days and the pacemaker guys have done some great stuff, but I do wonder if it will get good at the point the platform goes away or dissolves. Of course the Pacemaker guys can’t/won’t talk about beyond the playbook but I’m already thinking of solutions around the dual stereo output problem involving usb sound cards or even 2 devices (phone and tablet anyone?)

I’m greatful to the Pacemaker guys for what they did, its really cool. Because although I was thinking about buying a cheap playbook, after my experience I was dead set against Blackberry and the playbook. Good to know certainly people can take feedback on the chin and move forward…

Your Tent, My Tent

Sziget 2008: Tent Interior

Tent.is just launched yesterday… Unlike twitter, its a distributed service which means you can run your own or jump on someone else’s. Its not just Microblogging either, its more than just that.

Tent.is is a Tent host. Tent is a protocol for distributed communications. Tent can be used as a personal data vault, a single sign on service, and/or a distributed social network. Anyone can host their own Tent server and/or write Tent apps. In addition to Tent hosting, Tent.is provides a few basic apps to help users get started, a server admin app, and a microblogging app. This was literally the simplest app we could write for Tent. We started with microblogging because we were personally frustrated with the centralized options in the industry. The next set of apps will take Tent much further beyond Twitter-style functionality. Since developers can define new post and profile types, Tent could be used for file backups, video chats, controlling robots, and probably teleporters. Think of Tent as a way to store any kind of information forever, that you control. You might choose to share some of it with friends or colleagues in real time or long after you created it. Most importantly, Tent is yours.

Ade Oshineye has been posting some interesting things about distrubuted microblogging along with myself.

Of course I’m giving Tent a whirl although I’m just connected to the main tent.is server right now. Be keeping an eye on this one in the near future… Be great to see what new service pop up on peoples tent servers.

EPIC Werewolf – Halloween

EPIC Werewolf

Its coming… this Halloween, EPIC Werewolf…

As part of the Manchester Science Festival, myself and Larkin About are going to take a look at Social engineering and Mob rule in the social game of Werewolf. Unlike most games of werewolf, we will feature running commentary from psychologists and behaviour scientists that will culminate in a finale game resticted to one room and broadcasted live to an audience.

Of course because its Halloween, there will be lots of dressing up and to be honest Islington Mill is located in deep and dark Salford. Far from the bright lights of Media City and the Quays.

Exact details are still being worked out but its going to be a great event which you don’t want to miss!

Tickets are available for the players and the audience only.

Anyone can cook a steak after drinking

Got to love Manchester… Great people and some great festivals including the Manchester Food and Drink Festival. Its a great chance to try some great food and sample different drinks. Good food does cost but you can lower the prices by cooking for yourself. Actually I find the prices to be comparable to ordering a takeaway and how much hassle is it to cook a steak? Less time than calling a pizza delivery

A little while ago while walking home from somewhere late night in Manchester. The guys I walked with, wanted to stop at a load of late night fast food places. I said fine but I got a steak with a bag of salad to eat when I finally get home, so I won’t be interested in hanging around fast food joints…

Bit of background…

I made the decision to start putting a steak at the bottom of my fridge (when going out and drinking) with a bag of green salad, so when walking back I don’t get tempted to buy some greasy mixed up kebab or some deep friend chicken. And it works because the temptation is literally gone and eating home cooked steak instead of deep friend whatever is obviously better for you. Specially when you add a bag of green salad.

Phil (the guy sitting on the sofa with the lady iris) challenged me that our friend Dan (his flatmate) could not cook a steak at 4am after a night of heavy drinking. I knew even Dan could with a tiny bit of direction from myself (he never cooked a steak before ever).

Of course I recorded it from the moment he put it in the pan. Watch out for the moment when I thought he was going to burn his fingers off though (so glad he didn’t do so).

I can tell you the steak was nice not like my own efforts.

If Dan can do it anyone can…

What ever happened to the PAN?

Hooping

I remember ages ago when I was at University the concept of a Personal Area Network was heavily talked about but over the last 10 years I have heard very little about it. Now with the internet of things (IoT) coming into full effect, it seems a very good time to revive it from its dormant sleep?

From Wikipedia

A personal area network (PAN) is a computer network used for communication among computerized devices, including telephones and personal digital assistants. PANs can be used for communication among the personal devices themselves (intrapersonal communication), or for connecting to a higher level network and the Internet (an uplink). A wireless personal area network (WPAN) is a PAN carried over wireless network technologies such as IrDA, Bluetooth, Wireless USB, Z-Wave, ZigBee, or even Body Area Network. The reach of a WPAN varies from a few centimeters to a few meters.

The PAN should always operate in your benefit and not against you. Devices can freely communicate within the PAN but not so easily outwards. I imagine it would work something like a 2 way firewall blocking items within it from communicating out and vice-versa. As devices enter the trusted PAN zone, then permissions will be granted to allow external access, etc.

This does beg the question of how you do these type behaviours on a device with no buttons, screen, etc. But to be honest that’s a lovely interaction design problem to solve.

Fancinating to also see where the PAN is in the greater network topology…

Would be great to be able to specify rules based on the position of the thing/device. For example if an thing is classified/identified itself as needing to be on the BAN (body area network) then you can say its only allowed to talk to the PAN and never the NFC layer for example. Maybe it should come with defaults but they are changeable like the permissions used when trying to connect via OAuth.

Once again I’m not sure how to surface this to the user without some kind of external access like how you configure routers and switches now. But someone is working on it now I’m sure of that…

I quite like the Hula Hoop analogy. You can have multiple, some are bigger than others and some will overlap. You can even hula hoop around certain parts of the body rather than just your hips. Hula hoops are also shareable and I guess you can fit more than one person within them. However it still doesn’t explain how you control the wiring/influence/networking of the devices/things…