Started in January 2000, the Brighton New Media Mailing List is a resource aimed at people working within Brighton's new media industry. This site aggregates content created and tagged by the members of the list.
Here's some of what's happening on Planet BNM…
In issue 144 (May 2008) of Web Designer Magazine, 20 texture photos from my website Urban Dirty are included on the free CD and included in the issue’s Photoshop tutorial.
Big thanks to the Web Designer Magazine posse, it’s more great exposure for Urban Dirty.
» Visit urbandirty.com & Issue 144 of Web Designer Magazine
Posted 10 May 2008, 2:10 am
8 Facts is another small just-for-fun personal project that builds on the techniques used in creating Bandnamr. The idea behind 8facts is simple, you submit 8 random facts about yourself, one of which should be made up. I had the idea about a year ago but never did anything with it, the a recent phase of ‘tagging’ people in blogs to publish facts about themseleves spurred me to create the site. Again, this is open to anybody, no sign up required and the submission system uses the ‘honeypot’ method to avoid spam (as mentioned in the Bandnamr summary).
This site was another experiment is a form open to the public, user experience and avoiding spam. I also wanted to try out ‘widgets’ with the facts. This means that after you make a submission, you are able to copy and paste some code into your own blog of website that will display your 8 facts. Adding to the ability to share the information. So far the submissions give a unique and very interesting insight into people’s lives, which was the ultimate intention.
» Visit 8facts.com
Posted 10 May 2008, 1:38 am
Bandnamr is a small fun personal project that acts as an open pool of band names and suggestions. You simply enter your name and the band name idea into the form and submit it. The result is a collection of funny, decent and sometimes downright rude band names.
Behind this simple idea was an oppurtunity to practice a technique called ‘ajax’ and to experiment with a website and form left open to the public. After reading the book ‘Bulletproof Ajax‘ I was keen to try out the techniques involved, so when you submit a band name you will see a smooth seemingly instant procedure, rather than the typical scenario of the whole web page refreshing.
I also tried out something known as the ‘honeypot technique’ to protect the site from spam submissions. This involves including a hidden field named ’subject’ which attracts spamming systems, just as bees would be attracted to a honeypot. When the form is submiited it checks to see if ’subject’ has been filled in, if it has, it ignores the submission… so far so good.
» Visit bandnamr.com
Posted 10 May 2008, 1:06 am
Sometime before turning 20 I had the notion that the word blame had almost no productive use imaginable to me. In communicating with other humans, its sole use seemed to be reassigning responsibility for an incorrect action or behaviour on another, almost always unjustly. Blame's sole use to me then, and perhaps presently, is to justify my behaviour by that of another, and in doing so, finding no wrong in my own actions in need of rectification. It was a convenient way to reward myself with a little self-satisfied dose of seritonin at a time where I should really be feeling the opposite and engaging in some healthy introspection.
Sometime after the eve of my 22nd and freshly out of a hell of a messy relationship, finding myself single and looking for the culprit I remembered this simple idea about blame, and so rather than plough into yet another relationship, blaming it all on the bitch, I took considerable time (2.5 years thus far) to ponder the retrospect through which I'd just travelled. The result being I came to understand a wealth of things that would have perhaps have been buried permanently had I not slowed down for a while.
Since my late teens I've often found myself concerned with this seemingly simple question: what does it mean to be a man and not a boy?, typically pondering it until I'm bored and blue in the face. Is being a man to be the breadwinner, bringing home a healthy sum at the end of each month, or perhaps is it being the rational and understanding gentleman, ready at a moment's notice to satisfy another's whim or need. Perhaps it's simply to display the signature brazen arrogance associated with maturity in our gender, or perhaps being a man means simply to show no emotion.
Finally tonight I find myself considering self-accountability, and in doing so discover that it seems to be the answer to the question I've been seeking all this time. Being a man now seems to be simply nothing more than finding fault in oneself when such finding is due. This tidily sums it up for me. I do not need to be strong, wealthy, stern, arrogant, emotionless, or anything else. I merely need not cry wolf at all and sundry that affects my life in the negative.
This ponderance emerged tonight after listening to yet another person tell me how an ex-partner was to blame for having to repeat a year of university. As quick as I was to jump on this horrid failure to be mature and point out the boy's error, just as quickly I found myself thinking of a plethora of situations where I have done exactly the same thing.
So that is where a man's strength eminates from, or so it seems just now. His ability to take the downs of life and deal with them in a manner that is not puerile, that does not seek to self-comfort by blaming the source of the negative change, and always seeks to reinforce and protect himself by preparing for the same kind of situation in the future.
After that messy relationship I discovered another seemingly interesting contrast: justification versus rationalisation. Here is something that I've
never talked to anyone about before, so you're reading it here first. I noticed that as I attempted to rationalise what happened and whose fault
was it, each time an assertion would fail somewhere in my mind and as I discarded the comforting concept, I'd notice that in years gone by I coud quite
happily have lived comfortably by it. And so I discover the true meaning of rationale: that which through logic and evidence grounded in reality
describes the causalities of a scenario succinctly, without special cases for only some of the events involved (but that time she said...
),
without reliance on opinion (and she was wrong for she used hard drugs...
), and truthfully devoid of any taint of human perception
(the way she looked at him...
).
And in the light of all this I realise, my career choices have all been my own fault. My choice to discontinue education was mine alone. My debts were not the fault of a woman but a fault of mine. My attitude is mine and not inherent in nature, or inherited through gene or meme. My screaming abuse and picking fights after a night of whiskey is my fault for choosing to take the hard drink in the first instance, and not a fault of my body mass. I'm me, I chose my actions as I please, and in doing so, I am accountable for them all.
And with that a new question: at what age should one be considered a man and not a boy? This thought process never ends, and I love every moment of it.
I could write a half million word essay about this; I've thought about it a lot. But if I try to expand or clarify any of the above I'll eventually just give up and not post the article at all, so here it is.
David
Posted 9 May 2008, 9:30 pm
Code Dumper is a personal project of mine that I've used to practise some new skills on.
It's a code dumping repository with a couple of features that I think makes it unique from the other code bins. Where possible, I'll blog about how particular aspects of the project so that they can be re-used - I've already done this with it's OpenID implementation.
I started off using Snipplr, but got frustrated with some of the functionality that didn't seem quite as smooth as it should be. Then it was redesigned and I found it really hard on the eye (regardless of being able to switch from small to large).
I wanted a code bin that was super easy to use and I could provide a full feed of the code dumps to friends or colleagues.
There are other pastie bins which simplify the process right down, but I couldn't keep a complete record of my code snippets.
So Code Dumper, previously known as Todged came about.
These were all features I found desirable:
I've always had more plans for the app, but business beckons and I've got another project I'm working on quietly behind the scenes to help designers.
I'd love to hear any feedback you might have.
Posted 9 May 2008, 7:35 pm
Friday, May 30, 2008 at 5:00 PM
The last Friday of every month we organise After Werk, a social open for anyone to attend. More details for the next one coming soon. In the meantime, have a look at some of the photos from the last event.
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Posted 9 May 2008, 3:28 pm
The Brighton and Hove Business Awards website has been updated and went live a few days ago.
NixonMcInnes are sponsoring the BAHBAs for the fifth year in a row and we are proud to announce the launch of a re-designed and radically different website complete with social media features to support the awards.
Brighton-born-and-bred Managing Director Will McInnes says “Being a Brighton business to our very core, we are fiercely proud of the BAHBAs as a different, riotous and much-deserved celebration of the city’s business community”.
This year we are delighted to be sponsoring the Most Awesome Use of Digital Media Award.
Brighton has long enjoyed its reputation as the digital hub of the UK, being known the world over as Silicon Beach. This new award seeks to identify those individuals, companies and organisations which do most to raise the bar and enhance Brighton’s reputation for delivering digital goodness on a global scale.
If you want to be part of this important (and fun) business networking event in Brighton, make sure to book your place in time, tickets sell out quickly!
You may also want to nominate your business for an award, the closing date is 12 July 2008.
See you there…
Posted 9 May 2008, 2:47 pm
Sean McGrath is delivering the closing keynote at XTech 2008. Sean would like to reach inside and mess with our heads today. He plans to modify our brain structures, talking about the movable Web.
Even though Sean has been doing tech stuff for a long time he freely admits that he doesn’t know what the Web is. He quotes Dylan:
I was so much older then, I’m so much younger now.
Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs is a book by Nicklaus Wirth from 1978. Anyone remember Pascal? Sean went to college here at Trinity in 1983 doing four years of computer science which is where he came across that book.
Computing is all about language …human language. People first, machines second. Information is really about words, not numbers. Words give the numbers context.
Sean used to sit in his student bedsit and think about what algorithms actually are. He was also around at the birth of SGML in 1985. More words, then. Then he got involved in the creation of XML …even more words. Then the Web came along. HTML is, yup, more words. Even JavaScript is words. His epiphany was realising that HTTP was about sending words across the wire. The Web is fundamentally words.
There’s a Bob Dylan documentary called Eat The Document. Sean took this as a sign from God …or at least from Dylan.
Sean explains Ogham stones — horizontal lines from top to bottom. The Book of Ballymote is the Rosetta Stone of Ogham writing. The translation on this
particular stone is If I were you, I would not stand here.
The Irish have been using words for a long time. They’ve also been hacking for a long time.
Dolmens are an example of neolithic hacking.
Illuminated documents demonstrate the long Irish history of writing unit test cases for Cascading Style Sheets. A common thread in books from the Book Of Ballymote up to the Annals of the Four Masters was that they were from a religious background. Joyce came along with the world’s first hypertext novel, Finnegan’s Wake. Sean goes from Yeats to Shane McGowan, quoting Summer In Siam as a sublime piece of Zen metaphysics:
When it’s Summer in Siam then all I really know is that I truly am in the Summer in Siam.
The Irish will even go to war over words. Copyright was a big bone of contention between St. Finnian and his student St. Columba in the 6th Century. St. Columba
ran a proto-Pirate Bay. If you saw him coming, you’d bury your books. There was a war between St. Finnian and St. Columba in which 3,000 people lost their
lives. Finally, the High King of Ireland said As to every cow its calf, so to every book its copy
, the first official statement on copyright. But
because books were actually written on cows (vellum), the statement is ambiguous.
Here’s a picture. Nobody in the room knows what it is. We haven’t had our brains rewired yet.
Sean loves the simplicity of the idea that computing is words. Sadly, it’s just not true. There are plenty of images and video on the Web.
Back to that picture. It’s a cow. One person in the room sees the cow.
Sean likes the idea of the Web as electronic Ogham stones. But he sought the 2nd path to Web enlightenment. He realised that not only is the Web not just all words, the Web doesn’t exist at all.
What is the true nature of the words on the Web? Here’s something Sean created called Finite State Machines for a mobile app called Mission Control that
generated documents based on the user, the device, the location and the network. There were no persistent documents. No words, just evaporation
as
Leonard Cohen said.
There are three models for the world.
Model A exists within Model B which exists within Model C. Model C is the general case. If you have a system that is that dynamic, you could generate Model B and therefore Model A. Look at the way our sites have evolved over time. We used to create Model A websites. Then we switched over to Model B with Web Standards. Now we’re at Model C — we’re not going to create any actual content at all. There is no content but there is also an infinite amount of content at the same time. We generate a tailor-made document for each user but we don’t hold on to that document, we throw it away. So what content actually exists on the Web?
PHP, Django, Rails, Google App Engine …on the Web, Model C wins. It’s even starting to happen on the client side with Ajax, Silverlight and Air. It’s spooky sometimes to view source and see no actual content, just JavaScript to generate the content.
Doing everything dynamically is fine as long it scales. It’s better to solve the problems of scalability than to revert to the static model. The benefits of Model C are just so much greater than Model A.
Amazon are making great services but they are rubbish at naming things, like Mechanical Turk.
So where are all the words? HTTP still delivers words to me but they are generated on the fly. The programs that generate them are hidden.
The Web is becoming a Web of silos. As the Web becomes more dynamic, it’s harder for the little guy to compete (behind me I hear Simon grumble something about Moore’s Law). So we build silos on the client side; so-called Rich Internet Applications. We’re losing URIs.
Model C is Turing complete, user-sensitive, location-sensitive and device-sensitive. It’s scalable if it’s designed right. It’s commercially viable if it’s deployed right.
But we lose hyertext and deep linking as we know it. Perhaps we will lose search. Will the Googlebot download that JavaScript and eval it to
spider it? URIs have emergent properties because they can be bookmarked, tagged and mashed up. We are also losing simplicity: simply surfing documents.
So is it worth it?
Mu. That means I reject the premise of the question.
We have no
choice. We are heading towards Model C whether we want to or not. That’s bad for the librarians such as the Orangutan librarian from Discworld. Read Borges’s
The Garden of Forking Paths. Sean recommends reading Borges first and Pratchett second — it just doesn’t work the other way around. Now Sean
mentions Borges and John Wilkins — Jesus, this is just like my Hypertext talk at Reboot! Everyone has a good
laugh about taxonomies. Model C makes it possible to build the library of Babel — every possible book that is 401 pages long. But the library of
Babel is, in Standish’s view, useless. He says that a library is not useful for the books it contains but for the books that it doesn’t contain — the rubbish
has been filtered out. How will we filter out the rubbish on a Model C Web?
Information content is inversely related to probability said Claude Shannon. George Dyson figured out that the library of Babel would be between a googol and googolplex of books.
Nothing that Sean has seen this week at XTech has rocked his belief that we are marching towards Model C. Our content is going into the cloud, despite what Steven Pemberton would wish for.
When Sean first started using the Web, you had static documents and you had a cgi-bin. Now we generate our documents dynamically. We are at an interesting crossroads right now between Joycean documents and Turing applications. Is there a middle way, a steady-state model? Sean doesn’t think so because he now believes that the Web doesn’t actually exist. The Web is really just HTTP. The value of URIs is that we can name things. It’s still important that we use URIs wisely.
Perhaps HTML is trying to be too clever, to anthropomorphise it. Perhaps HTML, in trying to balance documents and applications, is a jack of all trades and a master of none.
Sean now understands what Fielding was talking about. There is no such thing as a document. All there is is HTTP. Dan Connolly has a URI for his Volkswagen Beetle because it’s on the Web. Sean is now at peace, understanding the real value of HTTP + URIs.
Now Sean will rewire our brains by showing us the cow in the picture. Once we see the cow, we cannot unsee it.
Tagged with xtech xtech08 presentation keynote conference web philosophy hypertext
Posted 9 May 2008, 1:07 pm
Reclaim The Web is a one-day unconference on using participatory web technology for social change. Activists and technologists get together to share ideas, skills and experiences, and to plot and plan future projects. There will be open conversations on topics you suggest, alongside presentations and film showings by seasoned internet activists.
(Limited places available)
Posted 9 May 2008, 11:28 am
Everyday Twitter is becoming a more essential way to communicate with the SEO industry. The ability to quickly & frequently communicate with your peers is truly powerful.
credit:
Ol.v!er [H2vPk] - It really was a photo
finish
I like to think of it as passive intimacy (which I’ll prob write more about in the next weeks) However while it’s all about building relationships with people; it’s always nice to have a old fashioned leader board to see who is the most popular in the industry.
Twitterholic does a good job of tracking who is the most followed users on the whole network but I thought it’d be
interesting to see who in the SEO-Sphere was pulling in the most attention.
Congrats to Neil Patel, far and away the most popular, though Maki, Danny, Jeremy & Andy aren’t too far behind.
Disappointingly there’s no Brits in the top twenty five other than expat Andy Beard, time for us to up our game!
Hat Tip to Marketing Pilgrim’s list of Internet Marketing Twitter users for tracking down people I’m not following.
Posted 9 May 2008, 10:59 am
Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 7:00 PM
Dr. Harry Brignull (Madgex) & Pete Gale (CogApp)
When you tear into the packaging of your newest gadget, the last thing you want to do is stop and read a manual, or sit there scratching your head wondering how to get it working. First impressions count, and although this is commonly known by consumers everywhere, Out Of Box Experience (OOBE) Design has only recently become a hot topic, spurred on by leaders like Apple, Nintendo and Dyson.
Harry and Pete have both had recent experience doing OOBE UX research & consultancy for different clients, so their varying points of view should create an interesting dynamic in this presentation.
Topics will include:
Following Harry's talk there will be an opportunity to show and tell your work.
You don't have to have a polished presentation or anything just spend 5-10 minutes telling the group about something you're working/have worked on.
Posted 9 May 2008, 10:55 am
The enigmatic Steven Pemberton is at XTech to tell us Why you should have a Web site: it’s the law! (and other Web 3.0 issues). God, I hope he’s using Web 3.0 ironically.
Steven has heard many predictions in his time: that we will never have LCD screens, that digital photography could never replace film, etc. But the one he wants to talk about is Moore’s Law. People have been seeing that it hasn’t got long to go since 1977. Steven is going to assume that Moore’s Law is not going to go away in his lifetime.
In the 1980s the most powerful computers were the Crays. People used to say One day we will all have a Cray on our desk.
In fact most laptops are
about 120 Craysworth and mobile phones are about 35 Craysworth.
There is actually an LED correlation to Moore’s Law (brighter and cheaper faster). Steven predicts that within our lifetime all lighting will be LCDs.
Bandwidth follows a similar trend. Jakob Nielsen likes to claim this law; that bandwidth will double every year. In fact the timescale is closer to 10.5 months.
Following on from Moore’s and Nielsen’s laws, there’s Metcalfe’s Law: the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes. This is why it’s really good that there is only one email network and bad that there are so many instant messenger networks.
Let’s define the term Web 2.0 using Tim O’Reilly’s definition: sites that gain value by their users adding data to them. Note that these kinds of sites existed before the term was coined. There are some dangers to Web 2.0. When you contribute data to a web site, you are locking yourself in. You are making a commitment just like when you commit to a data format. This was actually one of the justifications for XML — data portability. But there are no standard ways of getting your data out of one Web 2.0 site and into another. What if you want to move your photos from one website to another? How do you choose which social networking sites to commit to? What about when a Web 2.0 site dies? This happened with MP3.com and Stage6. Or what about if your account gets closed down? There are documented cases of people whose Google accounts were hacked so those accounts were subsequently shut down — they lost all their data.
These are examples of Metcalfe’s law in action. What should really happen is that you keep all your data on your website and then aggregators can distribute it across the Web. Most people won’t want to write all the angle brackets but software should enable you to do this.
What do we need to realize this vision? First and foremost, we need machine-readable pages so that aggregators can identify and extract data. They can then create the added value by joining up all the data that is spread across the whole Web. Steven now pimps RDFa. It’s like microformats but it will invalidate your markup.
Once you have machine-readable semantics, a browser can do a lot more with the data. If a browser can identify something as an event, it can offer to add it to your calendar, show it on a map, look up flights and so on. (At this point, I really have to wonder… why do the RDFa examples always involve contact details or events? These are the very things that are more easily solved with microformats. If the whole point of RDFa is that it’s more extensible than microformats, then show some examples of that instead of showing examples that apply equally well to hCalendar or hCard)
So rather than putting all your data on other people’s Web sites, put all your data on your Web site and then you get the full Metcalfe value. But where can you store all this stuff? Steven is rather charmed by routers that double up as web servers, complete with FTP. For a personal site, you don’t need that much power and bandwidth. In any case, just look at all the power and bandwidth we do have.
To summarise, Web 2.0 is damaging to the Web. It divides the Web into topical sub-webs. With machine-readable pages, we don’t need those separate sites. We can reclaim our data and still get the value. Web 3.0 sites will aggregate your data (Oh God, he is using the term unironically).
Questions? Hell, yeah!
Kellan kicks off. Flickr is one of the world’s largest providers of RDFa. He also maintains his own site. Even he had to deal with open source software that got abandoned; he had to hack to ensure that his data survived. How do we stop that happening? Steven says we need agreed data formats like RDFa. So, Kellan says, first we have to decide on formats, then we have to build the software and then we have to build the aggregators? Yes, says Steven.
Dan says that Web 2.0 sites like Flickr add the
social value that you just don’t get from building a site yourself. Steven points to MP3.com as a counter-example. Okay, says Dan, there are bad sites. Simon
interjects, didn’t Flickr build their API to provide reassurance to people that they could get their data out?
Not quite, says Kellan, it was created
so that they could build the site in the first place.
Someone says they are having trouble envisioning Steven’s vision. Steven says I’m not saying there won’t be a Flickr
— they’ll just be based on
aggregation.
Someone else says that far from being worried about losing their data on Flickr, they use Flickr for backup. They can suck down their data at regular intervals (having written a script on hearing of the Microsoft bid on Yahoo). But what Flickr owns is the URI space.
Gavin Starks asks about the metrics of energy usage increases. No, it drops, says Steven.
Ian says that Steven hit on a bug in social websites: people never read the terms of service. If we encouraged best practices in EULAs we could avoid worst-case scenarios.
Someone else says that our focusing on Flickr is missing the point of Steven’s presentation.
Someone else agrees. The issue here is where the normative copy of your data exists. So instead of the normative copy living on Flickr, it lives on your own server. Flickr can still have a copy though. Steven nods his head. He says that the point is that it should be easy to move data around.
Time’s up. That was certainly a provocative and contentious talk for this crowd.
Tagged with xtech xtech08 conference presentation web2.0 RDFa
Posted 8 May 2008, 5:45 pm
What would happen if you knew where everything was? Or if even the most insignificant items were gifted with rudimentary communication skills? Or if the history of everything was logged and stored in a way you could access from anywhere in the world?
These were some of the questions that I’ve been pondering over the past week, ever since I found out that there are several projects out there that could help make these things happen. More about them in a second, but first, and explanation of how I got there.
It all started back at the Over the Air conference. Chatting to some of the other delegates, we were imagining what a ’smart’ name badge would do, and I envisioned it changing colour or displaying a message as you approached other delegates based on how your interests synced. As to how it would do it, I thought of using an embedded computing device such as the Arduino, plus wireless communication via Bluetooth.
Now this is all very plausible, but has the huge downside of cost: a setup like that would cost well over £50 per person, which, if you had hundreds of delegates, could get very very expensive. Then somebody told me about the OpenBeacon project, and I realised I’d got it all wrong.
OpenBeacon turns this idea on its head: the name badge itself does not do any computation: all it is is an RFID tag, with simple input and output (a button, a buzzer and an LED). Unlike your simple Oyster-card -style RFID, the OpenBeacon variety is ‘active’: this means that battery-power can boost the range at which it can be detected to tens of metres. Once this is coupled with lots of base-stations to detect the tags, you can use triangulation to pin-point the exact position of every person.
This has been used successfully at the Chaos Communication Congress as you can see from these videos.
So there you have it. The objects are still dumb, but they are no longer mute. You can then process and display the information on any device you like: consult your mobile phone or your laptop during an event to physically locate all the people with similar interests, for example.
If all of this sounds a bit Orwellian: you’re right. However, it all depends on who has access to the information, and how much you choose to disclose. If you yourself can get at the data, then I can imagine it being very useful. For example, you could ask the system ‘give me a list of all the people I talked to at that conference I went to two years ago’. (in practice, the exact query would have to be more like ‘get me a list of all the people who remained within a two metre radius of me for more than 5 consecutive minutes’, but you get the idea). Equally, and potentially more relevant to the museum world, you could lend each visitor to your gallery an OpenBeacon badge, and then they could use their mobile to read extra information about the object they are standing next to without having to type in any IDs nor scan QR codes.
With large scale data like this, you also start entering the realm of scientists who look at bee pollination behaviour (or, more prosaically, marketers who look at web site usage statistics): individual events are not particularly significant, but when they are aggregated you can start to infer useful conclusions.
I also found some other projects with similar goals (mainly thanks to Tinker.it’s blog). The Roomware project includes open source code to track items using RFID or Bluetooth. The Pachube project takes things a step further, and aims to monitor any type of object. Pachube (pronounced ‘patch bay’ apparently), is the brainchild of ambient artist Usman Haque, and allows objects to upload information about themselves to a central location using Extended Environments Markup Language (EEML). Read more about it at www.pachube.com.
Once you’ve got a client-server architecture like this, the sky’s the limit. You can have your house communicate with you via twitter, or check your energy usage from anywhere.
And so, finally, we get to the idea of a Spime, which is a neologism coined by Bruce Sterling. According to his speech at SIGGRAPH 2004:
The most important thing to know about Spimes is that they are precisely located in space and time. They have histories. They are recorded, tracked,
inventoried, and always associated with a story.
Spimes have identities, they are protagonists of a documented process.
They are searchable, like Google. You can think of Spimes as being auto-Googling objects.
Sound familiar? All of the things mentioned above seem like proto-spimes to me. And monitoring and logging projects like Pachube, SENSEI and OpenSpime are taking us a step closer.
Bring it on.
P.S. If you’re interested in the technology to get up and running with your proto-spimes, there is a free RFID and Arduino workshop as part of the mini Takeaway Festival at the Science Museum’s Dana centre next Tuesday and Wednesday.
Posted 8 May 2008, 5:34 pm
It’s time for my second Gavin of the day at XTech. Gavin Bell asks Data
portability for whom?
To start with, we’ve got a bunch of great technologies like OpenID and OAuth that we’re using to build an infrastructure of openness and portability but right now, these technologies don’t interoperate very cleanly. Getting a show of hands, everyone here knows of OpenID and OAuth and almost everyone here has an OpenID and uses it every week.
But we’re the alpha geeks. We forget how ahead of the curve we are. Think of RSS. We imagine it’s a widely-accepted technology but most people don’t know what it is. That doesn’t matter though as long as they are using RSS readers and subscribing to content; people don’t need to know what the underlying technology is.
Clay Shirky talked about cognitive surplus recently. We should try to tap into that cognitive surplus as Wikipedia has done. Time for some psychology.
Cognitive psychology as a field is about the same age as the study of artificial intelligence. A core tool is something called a schema, a model of understanding of the world. For example, we have a schema for a restaurant. They tend to have tables, chairs, cutlery, waiters, menus. But there is room for variation. Chinese restaurants have chopsticks instead of knives and forks, for example. We have a schema for the Web involving documents that reside at URLs. Schema congruence is the degree to which our model of the world matches the ideal model of the world.
Schemas change and adapt. Our idea of what a mobile phone is, or is capable of, has changed in the last few years. Schemas teach us that gradual change is better than big bang changes. We need a certain level of stability. When you’re pushing the envelope and changing the mental model of how something can work, you still need to support the old mental model. A good example of mental model extension is the graceful way that Flickr added video support. However, because the change was quite sudden, a portion of people got very upset. Gradual change is less scary.
Cognitive dissonance, a phrase that is often misused, is the unfortunate tension that can result from holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time. On the web, the cognitive dissonance of seeing content outside its originating point is dissipating.
J.J. Gibson came up with the idea of affordances. Chairs afford sitting on. Cups afford liquid to be poured into them. When we’re using affordances, it’s important to stick to common convention. If, on a website, you use a plus sign to allow someone to add something to a cart, you shouldn’t use the same symbol later on to allow an image to be enlarged.
Flow is the immensely enjoyable state of being fully immersed in what you’re doing. This is like the WWILFing experience on Wikipedia. You get it on Flickr too. Now we’re getting flow with multiple sites as we move between del.icio.us and Dopplr and Twitter, etc. Previously we would have experienced cognitive dissonance. Now we’re pivoting.
B.F. Skinner did a lot of research into reinforcement. We are sometimes like rats and pigeons on the Web as we click the buttons in an expectation of change (refreshing RSS, email, etc.).
Experience vs. features …don’t be feature led. A single website is just one part of people’s interaction with one another. Here’s the obligatory iPod reference: they split the features up so that the bare minimum were on the device and the rest were put into the iTunes software.
We’ve all lost count of the number of social networks we’ve signed up to. That’s not true of — excuse me, Brian — regular people. Regular people won’t upgrade their browser for your website. Regular people won’t install a plug-in for their browser. We shouldn’t be trying to sell technologies like OpenID, we should be making the technology invisible.
Gavin uses Leslie’s design of the Satisfaction sign-up process as an example. She never mentions hCard. Nobody needs to know that.
We’re trying lots of different patterns and we often get it wrong. The evil password antipattern signup page on the Spokeo website is the classic example of getting it wrong.
We must remember the hinternet. Here’s a trite but true example: Gavin’s mum …she doesn’t have her own email address. She shares it with Gavin’s dad. According to most social network sites, they are one person. And be careful of exposing stuff publicly that people don’t expect. Also, are we being elitist with things like OpenID delegation that is only for people who have their own web page and can edit it?
Our data might be portable but what about the context? If I can move a picture from Flickr but I can’t move the associated comments then what’s the point?
We’re getting very domain-centric. It would be great if everyone was issued with their own domain name. Most people don’t even think about buying a domain name. They might have a MySpace page or Facebook profile but that’s different.
Some things are getting better. People have stopped mentioning the http:// prefix. But many people don’t even see or care about your lovely URL
structure. Anyway, with portable data, when you move something (like a blog post), you lose the lovely URL path.
Larry Tesler came up with the law of the conversation of complexity. There is a certain basic level of complexity. We are starting to build this basic foundation with OpenID and OAuth — they could be like copy and paste on the desktop.
We built a Web for us, geeks, but we built it in a social way. We are discoverable. We live online. This lends itself well to smaller, narrower, tailored services like Dopplr for travel, Fire Eagle for location, AMEE for carbon emissions. But everything should integrate even better. Why can’t clicking “done” in Basecamp generate an invoice in Blinksale, for example? If they were desktop applications, we’d script something. Simon interjects that if they were open source, we would modify them. That’s what Gavin is agitating for. The boundaries are blurring. We have lots of applications both on and off the Web but they are all connected by the internet. People don’t care that much these days about what application they are currently using or who built it; it’s the experience that’s important.
Here’s something Gavin wants somebody to make: identity brokerage. This builds on his id6 idea from last year. That was about contact portability. Now he wants something to deal with all the invitations he gets from social networks. Now that we’ve got OpenID, why can’t we automate the acceptance or rejection of friend requests?
We are heading towards a distributed future. DiSo points the way. But let’s learn from RSS and make the technology invisible. We need to make sense of the Web for the people coming after us. That may sound elitist but Gavin doesn’t mean it to be.
Kellan asks if we can just change the schema. Gavin says we can but we should change it gradually.
Step-by-step reassurance is important. Get the details right. Magnolia is starting to get this right with its sign-in form which lists the services you can sign in through, rather than the technology (OpenID).
We are sharing content, not making friends. Dopplr gets this right by never using the word friend. Instead it lists people with whom you share your trips. The Pownce approach of creating sub-groups from a master list is close to how people really work.
Scaffolding and gradual change are important. As a child, we are told two apples plus three apples is five apples. Later we learn that two plus three equals five; the scaffolding is removed. We must first build the scaffolding but we can remove it later.
Gavin wraps up and even though the time is up, the discussion kicks off. Points and counterpoints are flying thick and fast. The main thrust of the discussion is whether we need to teach the people of the hinternet about they way things work or to hide all that stuff from them. There’s a feast of food for thought here.
Tagged with xtech xtech08 conference presentation portability psychology
Posted 8 May 2008, 4:57 pm
When I first started working in web agency world in the Jurassic era of 1999, we had a battle on our hands. Because the web was ‘to do with computers’ and a bit new, more often than not it fell to the I.T. folk in our client’s organisations to lead on web strategy, design and development. The I.T. people were really happy talking to us about programming languages and server platforms, but the really important questions like ‘who are your target audience and what do they want?’ were not in their comfort zone.
So the first battle was getting the web into the realm of the marketers, and relegating the I.T. folks to a supporting role. And so began a long-standing, skipping-through-summertime-meadows relationship between marketing managers and directors and us web specialists. Great stuff. But times have changed.
In the last few weeks I have given executive briefings about social media to two very large, but different organisations: One of the UK’s largest transport companies and one of the major highstreet banks. Assembled in the meeting rooms were the people you’d probably expect to see at such an event - marketing and comms people. But in the age of social media, this is not enough. Bring on the second battle!
Unlike the first battle, we don’t want marketers to take a back seat. Far from it. Marketers are more important than ever. But marketing needs to go back to the core of what the discipline is really about. Not just promotion and getting a message out there, but ensuring that customer’s needs are understood and satisfied. And this they cannot do alone in their marketing silo.
Marketers need to reach out to every corner of their organisation to the people who can make a difference to customers, and involve them in their web plans. Not just in the next website redesign process, but ongoing. And I’m not just talking about managers from other departments. We need to include back office staff and others who have been behind the scenes up until now, because it’s these people who most need to engage with their customers online, as they’re the ones who can provide help and answers and change the products and services for the better.
Marketing is no longer the channel between an organisation and the outside world. Marketing people need to facilitate the opening up of the organisation so that customer interactions can happen everywhere.
Posted 8 May 2008, 2:57 pm
These photos are the most recent added to the BNM Flickr Photo pool.
Posted by Josh Russell, on 8 May 2008, 11:02 am
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Posted by Josh Russell, on 8 May 2008, 11:02 am
Posted by Josh Russell, on 8 May 2008, 11:02 am
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Posted by atomicShed, on 6 May 2008, 1:14 pm
Posted by mrmole, on 5 May 2008, 8:08 pm
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Posted by atomicShed, on 5 May 2008, 10:55 am
This list of subject headings is generated from the last 50 posts made to the BNM mailing list which also had a response.
This is a chart of the most listened to artists in the BNM last.fm group. Chart for the week ending Sun, 4 May 2008.
Chart updated every Sunday.
These are links tagged by members of the BNM mailing list with the tag ‘bnm’. If you find something you think other readers may find useful, why not do the same?
Bookmarked by jimcallender on Fri, 9 May 08 at 9:55am
Bookmarked by jimothyc on Mon, 5 May 08 at 9:49pm
Bookmarked by atomicshed on Mon, 28 April 08 at 11:25am
Bookmarked by jimothyc on Sat, 26 April 08 at 4:49am
Bookmarked by delargerock on Thu, 24 April 08 at 11:19pm
Bookmarked by atomicshed on Wed, 23 April 08 at 3:20pm
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Events are taken from the BNM Upcoming Group. There are currently 20 events.
You can download, or subscribe to this schedule.
Monday, September 15th 2008. 12:00am
This is a 3 day Performance Testing course presented by Scott Barber.
To be presented in Brighton in May. Final date, location and prices to be confirmed very soon.
Only rarely are sufficient time, resources and skilled individuals available to teams who are developing commercially driven software systems to effectively apply rigorous approaches to performance test that system. In cases where applying rigorous approaches would not be effective, a risk-based, flexible approach to performance testing is needed. Rigorous or not, any approach to performance testing needs to focus on collecting the data necessary both to assist the development team in identifying, prioritizing, and tuning areas of sub-optimal performance and to assist stakeholders in making sound business decisions related to performance risks.
In this course, you will learn:
* Nine core principles found in most successful performance testing projects
* Concise, universal heuristics and models for rapid application of those principles
* How to determine and apply oracles to software system performance criteria
* How to apply the core principles into your team’s development process
* How to plan ahead without reducing your ability to react to change
* How to communicate performance testing concepts to non-performance testers
* How to rapidly design performance tests that will achieve your performance testing objectives
Added by , on Tuesday January 15th, 2008
Thursday, September 18th 2008. 12:00am
A Performance Testing course presented by Scott Barber.
To be presented in Brighton in May. Final date, location and prices to be confirmed very soon.
In this course, you will learn:
* Nine core principles found in most successful performance testing projects
* How to communicate the application performance aspects of your buisiness objectives
* How to apply the core principles into your team’s development process
* How to plan ahead without reducing your ability to react to change
* How to determine and apply oracles to software system performance criteria
Added by , on Tuesday January 15th, 2008
Wednesday, September 3rd 2008. 12:00am
Don't know the exact venue
Added by , on Friday December 14th, 2007
Wednesday, July 9th 2008. 10:00am—5:00pm
BOOK NOW
A 2-day convention leading the debate in serious games and all contexts it takes including learning, exer-gaming, marketing, awareness, policy, health and defence games : across all sectors and across all platforms including web, virtual worlds and handhelds.
http://www.applyseriousgames.com
Discount Time-Line:
Now- 31st March: Very special Super Early Bird of £199 + vat for the conference on 10th July, plus $£$£ off other scheduled events
31st March - 15th June: Early Bird = Good discounts but not as good as Super Early Bird
After 15th June - the pre-booked fees go up.
The convention includes:
9th July
1-Day Academic & Research Summit
2 x workshops on virtual worlds and web 2.0
10th July
1 Day Apply Serous Games Plenary Conference
Live Demos
Expo
VIP invite-only conference dinner
With more being assembled over the next month.
All bookings through http://asg.eventbrite.com
Added by , on Sunday March 2nd, 2008
Saturday, May 17th 2008. 10:00am—4:30pm
We broke the world. Now what?
Mark Simpkins and Ben Hammersley announce a one day conference in central London, with designers, technologists, artists, architects, policy-makers, explorers, economists and scientists, and clever people like you, to discuss the future and how we'll live in it.
Added by , on Thursday February 28th, 2008
Tuesday, May 13th 2008. 7:00pm
A provisional date (6th and 7th September) has been set for BarCampBrighton3 to again take place at the University of Sussex. This meeting is to ensure that the organisers (TBC) of the event, have an opportunity to extract all the information and connections from the organisers of BarCampBrighton1.
Things we'll cover
- Debreif from the organisers of BarCampBrighton2
- Ideas to make improvements for BarCampBrighton3
- Solidifying plans for BarCampBrighton3
We might meet in a pub or we might meet somewhere a little more interesting. Either way we'll make sure there is some beer.
Added by , on Tuesday April 15th, 2008
Monday, June 2nd 2008. 9:30am—5:00pm
Clearleft and Indi Young: two great tastes that taste great together.
In this full-day workshop, Indi Young, author of Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior, will teach you how to better understand the user experience through the use of mental models before making design and strategic decisions.
Those in the field of cognitive research have been describing and defining mental models for a few decades. Mental models are the most effective way to align design strategy with your users' behavior, and to approach your design from the understanding of the end user. Mental models are representations of people's behavior, philosophies, and emotion around how they accomplish something, regardless of which tools they use.
Indi Young is an applications and navigation guru who began her work in Web applications in 1995. A founding partner of Adaptive Path in 2001, she has worked with an impressive collection of clients.
The workshop costs £395 per person but Early Bird tickets are available until May 7th for £345 per person.
Added by , on Monday April 21st, 2008
Saturday, July 19th 2008. 12:00am
WordCamp is an informal gathering of WordPress bloggers, podcasters, designers and developers.
We’re aiming for Saturday and Sunday 19-20 July 2008 at Birmingham and currently looking for a suitable venue.
Added by , on Tuesday April 22nd, 2008
Friday, May 30th 2008. 6:00pm—8:00pm
Critical Mass Brighton
Free mass bike ride through the heart of Brighton & Hove
Celebrating cycling and promoting a fun, healthy, sustainable alternative to petrol-dependant transport.
Bring bikes, lights and noise!
The ride meets at the Level on the last Friday of every month at 6pm.
Added by , on Saturday February 25th, 2006
Wednesday, June 11th 2008. 7:00pm
A javascript special featuring talks from Simon Willison (Comet) and Remy Sharpe (jQuery).
Sign-up on Eventwax from Monday 12th May
Lots more details to follow...
Added by , on Wednesday April 30th, 2008
Wednesday, July 9th 2008. 7:00pm
Tonight we welcome Mike Stenhouse and Tom Armitage...
Sign-up on Eventwax from Monday 9th June.
Lots more details to follow...
Added by , on Wednesday April 30th, 2008
Saturday, May 24th 2008. 10:00am—5:00pm
Reclaim The Web is a one-day unconference on using participatory web technology for social change. Activists and technologists get together to share ideas, skills and experiences, and to plot and plan future projects. There will be open conversations on topics you suggest, alongside presentations and film showings by seasoned internet activists.
SIGN UP HERE: http://werkshop.eventwax.com/reclaim-the-web/register
(Limited places available)
Added by , on Thursday May 1st, 2008
Tuesday, May 13th 2008. 7:00pm
Dr. Harry Brignull (Madgex) & Pete Gale (CogApp)
When you tear into the packaging of your newest gadget, the last thing you want to do is stop and read a manual, or sit there scratching your head wondering how to get it working. First impressions count, and although this is commonly known by consumers everywhere, Out Of Box Experience (OOBE) Design has only recently become a hot topic, spurred on by leaders like Apple, Nintendo and Dyson.
Harry and Pete have both had recent experience doing OOBE UX research & consultancy for different clients, so their varying points of view should create an interesting dynamic in this presentation.
Topics will include:
* What things are normally done wrong in OOBE design?
* What's an effective design process for achieving user-centred OOBE design?
* What design principles can be usefully applied?
ALSO: SHOW AND TELL
Following Harry's talk there will be an opportunity to show and tell your work.
You don't have to have a polished presentation or anything just spend 5-10 minutes telling the group about something you're working/have worked on.
Added by , on Tuesday May 6th, 2008
Thursday, May 22nd 2008. 9:00am—11:00am
A regular morning meeting at the Sussex Innovation Centre for people interested in conversations about business and technology.
Added by , on Tuesday May 6th, 2008
Thursday, June 5th 2008. 9:00am—11:00am
A regular morning meeting at the Sussex Innovation Centre for people interested in conversations about business and technology.
Added by , on Tuesday May 6th, 2008
Thursday, June 19th 2008. 9:00am—11:00am
A regular morning meeting at the Sussex Innovation Centre for people interested in conversations about business and technology.
Added by , on Tuesday May 6th, 2008
Thursday, July 3rd 2008. 9:00am—11:00am
A regular morning meeting at the Sussex Innovation Centre for people interested in conversations about business and technology.
Added by , on Tuesday May 6th, 2008
Thursday, July 17th 2008. 9:00am—11:00am
A regular morning meeting at the Sussex Innovation Centre for people interested in conversations about business and technology.
Added by , on Tuesday May 6th, 2008
Friday, May 23rd 2008. 5:30pm—9:00pm
Use8- The User Experience Society
presents:
Broadband TV 2.0
Television is in transition from a broadcast medium to a broadband medium. As digital television migrates to new channels of distribution a whole new range of interactive services can be delivered to engage audiences.
With the introduction of interactivity, Television is moving toward new forms of communication that bridge the different worlds of broadcasting and telecommunications. In this transition, passive audiences will become active users adapting themselves to the new lean forward experience of broadband TV.
The challenges in delivering rich experiences and in redefining the future of TV are complex.
Broadband TV 2.0 will explore this new medium of delivery and the user experience considerations for designing new digital TV services for users.
The event is free and will take place on the 23rd of May at the Jurys Inn in Brighton UK.
Speaking at the event are:
CadInteractive
Open TV
PushButton
Global Broadcast Television
Zattoo TV
Serco Usability Services
Brunel University
University of Brighton
To book your place go to:
http://www.use8.net/index.php?pmctsys=us8&pmshow=theevent
Added by , on Tuesday May 6th, 2008
Friday, May 16th 2008. 10:00am
'Plug us in' is the BA Media Practice & Theory Degree Show 2008 for the final year students at the University of Sussex. This Degree Show has been put together by the students, with help from the Media faculty, to showcase their final projects in photography, interactive media and documentary film-making.
The exhibition will be open:
Friday 16th May: 10am - 5pm
Saturday 17th May: 10am-5pm
Monday 19th May: 10am-5pm
Tuesday 20th May: 10am-5pm
Please come along to see a fantastic collection of work. Looking forward to seeing you there!
Added by , on Friday April 25th, 2008
