Category Archives: Media & Technology

Google’s Open Social –> move along, nothing to see

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So there we have it… Google has made a big splash into the social networking arena. Open Social is its name and helping widget developers is its game.

Great news for developers, but no news for users of these sites.Robert Scoble is raving about it something rotten on twitter and his blog, like a surfer riding the big kahuna… I love his excitement but I can’t share it.

End users now get the same “virus apps” spreading across multiple social sites (MySpace, Ning, Hi5, etc) because these apps are can now be built atop the same APIs. The problem is the data remains stuck within the “container”, i.e. the social network site and cannot cross the boundary to another site. For example, the developers of Flixster can now write a single app for all social network sites using the Open Social APIs, however I couldn’t share my Flixster data on Hi5 with my some of my friends on Bebo, eventhough the same app would be available.

Marshall Kirkpatrick hits the nail on the head by saying that Open Social should really be called Open Widget, as it more aptly defines the problem it trying to solve.

Open Social helps developers write apps for multiple platforms. Open Social does nothing to help users connect across multiple platforms.

Soup.io –> Microblogger or Content Aggregator

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Soup.io is a great new web app coming out of the YEurope oven. In short its a little bit of microblogging mixed up content aggregation from other sites such as flickr, twitter, delicious, and in my case WordPress.com (there’s more take a look).

There’s already some chat in the blogosphere comparing it’s microblogging features to twitter and pownce.Soup.io lacks the immediacy of twitter and its desktop & SMS entrypoints, but that’s ok by me.Soup.io to me is a wonderful way to aggregate the content that I’m producing through various web apps, which I would consider “best-of-breed” or more likely “works-best-for-me”.

My flickr stream gets mashed up with my tweets and delicious discoveries – all wrapped around with my rather wordy ramblings on WordPress and presented by to the world via either a nicely templated website or a singular RSS feed.The “cherry on top” is the ability to point a domain such as www.ijonas.com at soup.io and all of a sudden, all of that content is presented through single page on the web.

Once again, open standards are enabling production as well as consumption of content on the internet. In this case I can try out any RSS-enabled service such as Pownce, take the RSS feed my content generates and wire it into my soup.io page. If I stop using the Pownce service, no problem… my soup.io mashups lives on.

So to me soup.io serves me better as aggregator than a microblogging tool. I’m a little confused by their offering of functions that allow you to post messages, pictures, and videos… IMHO the soup.io developers should expand on the site’s ability to aggregate content from more sources and improve the already great look-and-feel customisation/templating features.

soup.io –> recommended!

Former FEMA Chief Michael Brown has a new job sells Snake Oil

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This is funny because its classic case of desigining a black magic product thats scans all the databases in the world in-place using its adaptable plugin modules that enables it to extract hidden terrorist messages from your mum’s recipe spreadsheet in her Documents folder and correlate with credit card spending in Indonesia, via the included plugin module that sits atop of the VISA global credit card database.

My favourite line in the pitch is…. and I guarantee that I’m not taking it out of context:

because its distributed, its totally secure

Nuts! As someone working for a company where writing connectors into external systems is a constant drain on development resource, leaving data in-place is not a guaranteed best practice.

Still goes to show… You could be building complete and utter nonsense and get a discredited person like Michael Brown to sell it as snake oil.

Oh what a world….

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/08/PID_012101/Podtech_Michael_Brown_on_InferX.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/home/3766/former-fema-chief-michael-brown-on-data-mining&totalTime=832000&breadcrumb=18aaed5837da4ebead6f094f122e0d88]

Polar CS300 weblink software, polarpersonaltrainer.com and Mac OS X

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Polar CS300 Cycling ComputerI’m noticing quiet a lot of search results hitting this blog, looking for ideas on how to integrate the Polar CS300 and your trusty old Mac… in my case a MacBook Pro.

Well, I’ve got it working but it isn’t the most elegant of solutions… First of all there is to my knowledge no OS X version of the Polar software, therefore I’ve had to employ the following…

Ingredients

  • 1x copy of Parallels Desktop for Mac (installed on your Mac)
  • 1x copy of Windows XP (installed inside Parallels)
  • 1x Mac Book Pro
  • 1x Polar CS300 watch
  • 1x Polar WebLink SW software installed (installed on Windows XP)

The Polar CS300 computer setup uses a PC microphone to transfer and convert the data held on the watch. The great thing about Parallels is that it comes with microphone support, meaning the Windows environment running inside Parallels gets to hear what’s happening in the outside world.

So all you need is to setup the ‘ingredients’ listed above. Then:

  1. Launch Parallels with Windows XP.
  2. Once your inside Windows launch the WebLink SW software providing the details as per the Polar manual. At this point place the software in transfer mode so that its listening out for data.
  3. Now grab your CS300 and activate ‘Connect’ mode, choosing ‘Send’… SonicLink will start squelching all sorts of little sounds.
  4. Quickly place the watch on top of the microphone. In the case of the MacBook Pro, the microphone is underneath the speaker grill to the left of your keyboard.

If you run into any problems, go ahead and use the comments section below… I’ll see if I can help.

Balance – From the Country to the City and back again.

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PopTech logo.I found myself drawn into Stewart Brand’s presentation on environmentalism and urbanisation…

He makes some really interesting points on how the environmental- or eco-movement will change over the next couple of decades. The movement will change from a grassroots “nice-to-do” group of Western Industrialised tree-huggers and idealists to a global phenomenon of not just romanticised activisim but cold-hard-fact-based politicking. This change will be brought on by two things. Firstly the internet will enable global organised communication to even the remotest parts. Secondly, day-by-day science is improving the knowledge we have of our own planet and how it is changing. So yesterday’s “moral” debates will turn into debates backed up by stats, that can be proved/disproved with proper scientific rigour.

The second interesting assertion he makes is that global population growth will tail off in the next couple of decades due to, of all things – urbanisation. This year 50% of the Earth’s population will reside in cities (as opposed 3%, 200 years ago). As people move into the cities, women stop having as many children, and this has a profound exponential effect. As one woman decides not to have kids, that “burdon” falls on the next woman who needs to have . Populations get older and aren’t replenished with “new stock”.

All very interesting stuff… recommended!!!

Bubble 2.0 – “Don’t Believe The Hype”

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John C. Dvorak writes in his column today:

Every single person working in the media today who experienced the dot-com bubble in 1999 to 2000 believes that we are going through the exact same process and can expect the exact same results—a bust. It’s déjà vu all over again. And since this moment in time is only the beginning of the cycle, the best nuttiness has yet to emerge. Nevertheless, this is not to say that a lot of nuttiness hasn’t already happened.

I can only partially agree him… Yes, the same copycat, cookie-cutter business models exist. Yes, each startup is some form of ad revenue backed search engine, or social-networking functionality to lock in eyeballs for monetisation at a later date – hopefully before the VC money runs out. Yes, there’s a lot of hype in the investment community, most obviously illustrated by plumbing companies like Cisco buying social networking sites such as Tribe.net – nuts!

I disagree with him on the eventual fall out. Bubble 1.0 is different in economic terms to Bubble 2.0. During 1999-2000, each and every half-baked business idea sought several rounds of investment before launching itself on the stock market via an IPO. We saw lots of Bubble 1.0 companies edging out traditional economic giants that had been build up over a century or more. Then when the floor well out of those startups, the stock markets went with them causing the economic down turn.

Bubble 2.0 companies are different, they seek acquisition buy a Bubble 1.0 survivor instead of stockmarket IPO, e.g. Youtube attracting the attention of Google, therefore we’ll avoid the stockmarket collapses of 2000 and social impact of those events in the years following.

Two applications that need writing…

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We are slowly moving to a world where information is readily available, wherever you might be in the world. One of the things that annoys me is that I cannot sync my ‘corporate’ Outlook Calendar with an online calendar such as Google Calendar. There is a RemoteCalendars project on SourceForge, but deals with syncing calendars from the Google Calendar cloud to the desktop. I want to send data in Outlook, running on my desktop, to Google Calendar. This has two benefits…. first it allows me to have access to my calendar from anywhere, secondly… Google Calendar provides a spring board for a whole host of online time management applications.

The second app that needs to be written is a fully functional, and fully usable – I’m talking Apple standards – Virtual Desktops client for Microsoft Vista. I can’t believe there isn’t one available showcasing Vista’s new interface capabilities – both Aero as well as the sidebar.

Oh yes… and finally… IMHO Vista is quite nice! Recommended.

IT Conference Taxonomy

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I’m launching an IT Conference Taxonomy. Its a simple one. Easy to follow and looks like this….

Conference

–> IT Conference

——-> Web 2.0 Conference (people use MacBook’s and blog during sessions)

——-> Enterprisey Conference (people fall asleep in sessions and check their Windows laptop and/or Blackberry during breaks)

Yesterday I was at an Enterprisey Conference. As the taxonomy develops I think I’ll release it under a creative commons license for the public good. ;-)

Hi, I’m Ijonas and I’m a crackberry user.

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Welcome Ijonas (*sound of group clapping*).

Ok so I admit I was vehemently opposed to the very idea of a Blackberry, six months ago. Then I got one and started to see the plus-side of the device. These days I positively rave about the damn thing.

Although I’m not the type to constantly check for messages, which is I think the definition of a crackberry user and their addiction. I must say the whole experience is pretty slick.

This week I spent two days at a conference in London and decided to leave my MacBook Pro at home. Instead opting to use my laptop bag as a shirt-carrying utensil. The Blackberry was my connection to the internet (something I can’t live without any longer). I used instant messaging to talk to people. Used Google maps and its satellite view to figure out which end of Victoria station I was standing at and how to get to the event. Read emails, made appointments, and spoke to a few folk as well.

The only thing I’d like is maybe a blog writing client because I seem to get a lot of fresh new ideas at events like the one I was at.