Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
Phil and Tamsin‘s date on Channel4’s First dates got me going recently, specially following my blog post and discussion with Chris and others…
In Phil’s own words….
“She’s a lovely girl, she ticks a lot of boxes. But I think there’s a little bit of a player side”
Of course I have clipped the part for your own viewing pleasure… Watch it before its blocked! Too Late, so I uploaded it to Soundcloud
I gather some people easily equate serial dater with player.
From Urban dictionary – Serial Dater
One who engages in the process of systematically dating an obscene amount people in short span of time. This definition encompasses but is not limited to internet dating, bar dating, long distance flirtations, phone service dating, blind dating, expiration dating, match making, one night stands, friends with benefits, and personal ad surfing. Can be considered a politically correct alternative to word “player” both with and without a negative connotation.
From Urban dictionary – Player
A male who is skilled at manipulating (“playing”) others, and especially at seducing women by pretending to care about them, when in reality they are only interested in sex. Possibly derived from the phrases “play him for a fool”, or “play him like a violin”. The term was popularized by hip-hop culture, but was commonly recognized among urban American blacks by the 1970s.
I am simply not a player… I don’t systematically date an obscene amount of people… Ok I have dated quite a lot of woman in the last 5 years since my divorce from my wife 6 years ago. I will admit I was in a low place (I’m sure we both were) but rather than wallow in the pain, I picked myself up and went dating.
When I first started, I have to admit I may not have been ready for what was to happen. I was seeking company and it was obvious to most woman I dated. Some of the early dates were poor, but some were good and I’m still friends with a few of the women.
About this time I moved to Manchester and kept dating but this time I used going out on dates to meet new people and go to new places. Without dating, I wouldn’t have learned about a whole range of places. Yes I owe Kate a lot for showing me around but nothing like walking around with someone your romantically interested in.
I admit you could call me a serial dater in the fact I’ve dated a lot of women via internet dating and speed dating. But I reject the notion that I have systematically done this in the past, now or the future. Also it comes and goes in time. So there are months when I have one date and there are months when its sometimes 6-8. There’s also something underhanded going on when people talk about Player.
This is kind of why I want to write my own accounts and down. Put some light on what’s really going on and my own experiences, even if they are fictionalised.
I loosely call it (working title)
The life and times of a modern geeky gentleman… The confessions and mishaps of an ethical serial dater…
As I have already said to many, its certainly not 50 shades or anywhere close to the sex blogs all over the internet. No I’m imagining something like Adrian Mole’s diary but it depends on how fictional I want it to be. Right now I have written about 3 chapters, but its going to be a slow burner.
My friends from Bristol and maybe some from London would laugh at the suggestion that I’m a player. Heck my cousins would scoff at the notion. Yes I have changed a bit by being more confident and sure of myself. But I’m still the same person underneath it all and my values and thoughts for the opposite sex have not changed.
I am a single sexual liberated geek and I can see how frank and open talking style can cause people to think player. But thats their problem and not really mine. For everyone who has said something derogatory to me about my dating, I’ve had at least one person say how great it is to hear. I’ve helped quite a few women (men tend to ignore my advice) and I’m obviously doing something right…?
ShareTV.org is my hot tip for the future of TV online.
For a long time I've been wishing that Tioti.com (Tape it off the internet) would get its act together, but it never so I gave up on it about 6 months ago. Since then I've noticed ShareTV and TV nanny move closer into the area which Tioti occupied. TV Nanny I don't kow enough about because I don't really like installing clients on my desktop machine and its only windows based.
ShareTV features
Anyway, back to ShareTV. This bit torrent site focuses on yes you guessed it Television programmes. Its clean cut and lacks a style. This makes it super easy to navigate around its pages and discover new areas without feeling lost. Right from the start they included RSS feeds with direct links to the torrent files. Not only a global one but per programme and the last 30 shows feed. Both of these make it really simple to setup a TVRSS setup using Azureus, UTorrent Democracy or something else. Another key feature of ShareTV is it only selects one torrent of each episode of the programme. Aka you don't have to choose which version of the programme you want to download. This might sound like a disadvantage for those who really like downloading those 1gig 720p HD versions of Heroes but for the rest of us its fine. I'm sure in the near future they will build feeds with all HD episodes which can be used.
ShareTV also indexes currently about 100+ shows including UK shows like Jekyll and Doctor Who (which I'm currently missing due to be in Toronto). They rip the details for each show from TV.com so you can get the full details about a show before downloading it. Recently they have included previews so you can get a idea about a show using a streaming flash player in the page. This is being extended by it would seem them watching links in del.icio.us and Youtube pointing to episodes, so you can actually watch the whole show there in your browser if you choose to. I don't know how successful this will be but thats not the most interesting part.
Recently if you log into ShareTV you can do a whole bunch of new stuff. Voting for a show is new and interesting because you are able to gage per show what people thought of the show. You can vote either a thumbs up or thumbs down. Less interesting is the fact you can add comments to each episode. Tv.com has the same thing, so the duplication isn't that welcomed. Now its possible to add your favorite shows to a personal list and keep a track of just those. I didn't notice a RSS feed for them yet but I'm sure thats coming soon. Another nice thing ShareTV does is a calendar view of TV shows like a 9 day TV listings, But it looks possible that this can be applied the shows you favorite too. Meaning you get a personalised TV listing guide.
Getting Social
So most of this is exactly what Tioti does but Tioti was a mess.for things like picking torrents. Whats missing from ShareTV is the social aspect. Now I have my personal schedule or TV listing of my shows. I want to share this with other ShareTV friends or buddies. I also want to share my schedule with the world. You know stick it in my blog or even in my facebook profile. Once you ShareTV allows RSS, this will be easier but I still want some simple to share widget too.
Something which bugged me about Tioti was the show tracker, it required you to say I've seen this episode, I've seen that episode. But it was a pain. I suggest ShareTV use that voting feature to assume people have also seen that episode at the same time. Ideally ShareTV would have a public API behind it but personalised RSS would be a start, so the feed would have up to date metadata about if you watched the episode or not. I was at one point thinking about using a iCal feed with the free/busy status switched if you've seen it or not but it seems over kill.
Points system
I forgot to add this to my first post. ShareTV now have a points system for your account. This level of participation is both playful and community building. Some of the core elements I would say for making the site more social.
You get points by participating in the site. The more points you have the higher priority you get when downloading off our tracker or streaming videos.
Action Points Given Create Account +10 points Rate Show +1 point per Place Comment +2 point per Upload new Torrent +3 points per** Submit new video clip +4 points per** ** You also get plus/minus points for each vote on the torrent or video you submit, so make sure you submit stuff other members would like
Ideally it would still be great if your bit torrent client or mediaplayer device could say if you've seen the episode – You could imagine something like Last.FM for TV (last broadcast) with plugins for the Xbox Media Centre, Windows Media Centre, Apple TV, Democracy, BBC iPlayer etc. But thats a long way off and seems the demand won't be there till we get over the whole downloading TV shows thing. I actually think shareTV would be a great place to try such a service but even if ShareTV could consume someone elses service that would be great.
I mean it would only take ShareTV a while to add some kind of distributed Digg like system through peoples personal desktop widget engines. Or they could create some simple application using Xul or Air (formally known as Adobe Apollo). Geez if there was a API again, I would try writing the other part myself.
These are the things Tioti promised but never quite delivered (or at least got over complex on). I don't want to be harsh to Tioti and Paul Pod (who I hope to meet in Edinburgh) but the illustrations of the features of Tioti were amazing and the result has been a big let down. ShareTV is closer to the vision of Tioti that it may actually know and it would be a shame if it went in a different direction now.