Junk

I just got this piece of junk mail. Just hovering the mouse, without clicking, shows the address of this e-Card to be leading to some random IP address with a .exe (Windows executable) file at the end masquerading as a picture file. So always check the address by hovering. It’s probably worth blacklisting everything that … Continue reading “Junk”

I just got this piece of junk mail.

Just hovering the mouse, without clicking, shows the address of this e-Card to be leading to some random IP address with a .exe (Windows executable) file at the end masquerading as a picture file. So always check the address by hovering.

It’s probably worth blacklisting everything that mentions hallmark, right?

Just an FYI, Friends don’t send eCards. Spammers do.

Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA)

I mentioned the RSA a few days ago via their iPhone app, RSA Vision. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) is a British multi-disciplinary institution, based in London. The name Royal Society of Arts is frequently used for brevity (and on the building’s frieze The Royal Society of Arts … Continue reading “Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA)”

I mentioned the RSA a few days ago via their iPhone app, RSA Vision.

The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) is a British multi-disciplinary institution, based in London. The name Royal Society of Arts is frequently used for brevity (and on the building’s frieze The Royal Society of Arts – see photo). It was founded in 1754 and was granted a Royal Charter in 1847. Notable members have included Benjamin Franklin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, William Hogarth, John Diefenbaker, Stephen Hawking and Charles Dickens.

While it has the trappings of an Establishment body, at many times in its history the RSA has been a radical body which has sought to challenge the status quo and change the world around it. A prospectus was issued inviting people to form a society in which concerns were expressed that developments in society were leaving too many people behind. Its founding charter expressed the purpose of the society as being to “embolden enterprise, enlarge science, refine art, improve our manufactures and extend our commerce”, but also of the need to alleviate poverty and secure full employment.

Why has it taken 38 years for me to discover this organisation? I really should get out more!

Many Products Suck

Great guest article on Techcrunch on Why Products Suck (And How To Make Them Suck Less) has the following subheadings.: It only takes one person to make your product suck. Nobody ever got fired for sucking. It’s easier to suck more than suck less. There are more ways to suck than to not suck. Customers … Continue reading “Many Products Suck”

Great guest article on Techcrunch on Why Products Suck (And How To Make Them Suck Less) has the following subheadings.:

  1. It only takes one person to make your product suck.
  2. Nobody ever got fired for sucking.
  3. It’s easier to suck more than suck less.
  4. There are more ways to suck than to not suck.
  5. Customers demand sucky products.

Read the article if you want some more info. Great advice from a startup CEO who’s working on making a commonly sucky process into a suck-free product.

Movember update

The Mo is coming along but I’m glad I got a head start by not shaving for a few days in October. If you’re interested in donating to a Prostate Cancer charity, then please follow the link below. http://uk.movember.com/mospace/293694/ From Wikipedia Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland … Continue reading “Movember update”

The Mo is coming along but I’m glad I got a head start by not shaving for a few days in October.

If you’re interested in donating to a Prostate Cancer charity, then please follow the link below.

http://uk.movember.com/mospace/293694/

From Wikipedia

Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. Most prostate cancers are slow growing; however, there are cases of aggressive prostate cancers. The cancer cells may metastasize (spread) from the prostate to other parts of the body, particularly the bones and lymph nodes. Prostate cancer may cause pain, difficulty in urinating, problems during sexual intercourse, or erectile dysfunction.

Sounds absolutely heinous. If you want to contribute to research to help detect, prevent and cure this ‘hidden’ disease, then please donate.

Education should not be an assembly line at a factory

This is an RSA Animate video of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson. Jim Montgomery tweeted this to me: The main message is that our current education system was conceived to support the Industrial Revolution. Education should not be an assembly line at a factory. And that’s utterly unsuitable for the 21st Century. We need … Continue reading “Education should not be an assembly line at a factory”

This is an RSA Animate video of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson.

Jim Montgomery tweeted this to me:

The main message is that our current education system was conceived to support the Industrial Revolution.

Education should not be an assembly line at a factory. And that’s utterly unsuitable for the 21st Century. We need to embrace the aesthetic and not anaesthetise our children through their childhood. We need to stop treating ADHD as an epidemic and embrace the changes our society has wrought which are the cause of it. Drugging our kids to fit into an 18th Century mould of educational theory is not going to benefit them or society.

You can get the RSA iPhone app here

An email sent to a senior person in one of NI’s Health Trusts

Hi, Some of the stuff we were talking about. As you know – I’m funded by InvestNI in assisting media and technology companies in Northern Ireland compete on a global scale. We’ve been looking at areas of “Connected Health (aka Telecare, Telemedicine) to find ways where there can be market pull rather than technology push … Continue reading “An email sent to a senior person in one of NI’s Health Trusts”

Hi,

Some of the stuff we were talking about. As you know – I’m funded by InvestNI in assisting media and technology companies in Northern Ireland compete on a global scale. We’ve been looking at areas of “Connected Health (aka Telecare, Telemedicine) to find ways where there can be market pull rather than technology push for ambient assisted living. We do some work with both the University of Ulster and QUB to find real-world solutions.

We can develop all of this locally with local expertise – we’ve worked hard to develop significant expertise in mobile development (specialising on iPhone and iPad but also including Android and other mobile platforms). Recent developments from DEL have meant there is fully funded training available to qualified organisations in the development of mobile technology plus local businesses are able to avail of innovation vouchers from InvestNI to solve particularly though problems.

And with new guidelines from the Central Procurement Department in the DFP, we’ve been working with DETI to find pathfinder projects for Pre-Commercial Procurement.

We’ve been trying to work with Mencap NI at the moment to find a way where our developers can tie into their perceived needs to provide ambient assistance, travel training, social networks and other products which are slightly more specialised for the individual with learning difficulties. The possibilities are pretty much endless. The idea that an app can ask someone how they feel in the morning (good, bad) and have that reported back and plotted to discover trends is very exciting. The ability to use off-the-shelf hardware to permit safety tracking of vulnerable adults and a social network of carers to assist in the location of a vulnerable adult or child is very close to my heart.

So here are some of the links to give you an idea of what we’re talking about. Very happy to talk to people who are interested in this.

Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures.
http://cimota.com/blog/2009/08/12/global-social-open-mobile-playful-intelligent-and-instantaneous/

As ‘media’ has become disruptive – are there other industries that can be end-to-end digital: created, distributed and consumed – without ever becoming atoms.

Fred suggests:
Consumer Finance – money is already just bits. Why do we still use cash?
Education – education is interactivity, media, straight to the brain. The web as a textbook.
Energy – smart power in the home, renewable energy creating peer-produced micro-grids
Healthcare – self-care reporting, digital doctors, sharing data worldwide about pandemics?
Government – procurement, defence, law enforcement, entitlement, planning, crowd-sourcing?

Think about these areas: they’re incredibly disruptive to large organisations. To banks, schools and universities, power companies, hospitals and health trusts and, of course, the government itself.

The Fund for NHS Innovation
http://www.e-health-insider.com/news/4788/money_found_for_nhs_innovation

Health minister Lord Darzi has unveiled a package of measures to encourage and spread innovation in the NHS.

The Department of Health is creating a £20m prize fund to encourage people working inside and outside the NHS to combat the key health issues facing the nation.
DH information says: The funds will focus largely on promoting innovation in healthcare delivery, health improvement and patient engagement rather than the development of new medicines or devices, for which funds are already available.

New mental-health apps for iPhones like a ‘therapist in your pocket’
http://www.theprovince.com/health/mental+health+apps

The new apps let users track their moods and experiences, and either get instant advice on how to change negative affective states or assist mental-health-care providers with making psychological assessments.

“It gives me an additional source of rich information of what the patient’s life is like between sessions,” University of Pennsylvania researcher Dimitri Perivoliotis told NPR. “It’s almost like an electronic therapist, in a way, or a therapist in your pocket.”

A Doctor’s Review of Rounds with An iPad
http://www.medcitynews.com/2010/06/a-doctors-review-of-rounds-with-an-ipad/

For any provider who is highly mobile this blows the doors off of the COWs (computer on wheels) which is like rolling a file cabinet around. It’s faster, more reliable, insanely long battery life, and goes up stairs (although I have often thought of testing the ’down the stairs’ mode on the COWS when they run out of batter halfway through rounds on CC7) this is the machine to get. If you are office based, there isn’t a reason for this, but if you round on more than a few patients, then it will be invaluable.

iHelp for Autism – from SFWeekly
http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-08-11/news/ihelp-for-autism/all/

Leo is Rosa’s 9-year-old son, and when people ask her about him, she is mindful to explain him in a way that will set appropriate expectations. He is a boy with intense autism, she says. He is not conversational, he learns very slowly, and he has been prone to violent outbursts.

Though scrolling through the icons is easy for most users, the device was not created with special-needs consumers in mind.

So when Leo took it in his small hands as if it were an old friend, and, with almost no training, whizzed through its apps like a technology virtuoso, his mother gasped in amazement. After he began spending 30 minutes at a time on apps designed to teach spelling, counting, drawing, making puzzles, remembering pictures, and more, she sat down at her own computer.

iPhone’s VoiceOver Helps A Blind Person “See”
http://behindthecurtain.us/2010/06/12/my-first-week-with-the-iphone/

Last Wednesday, my life changed forever. I got an iPhone. I consider it the greatest thing to happen to the blind for a very long time, possibly ever. It offers unparalleled access to properly made applications, and changed my life in twenty-four hours. The iPhone only has one thing holding it back: iTunes. Nevertheless, I have fallen in love.

I have seen a lot of technology for the blind, and I can safely say that the iPhone represents the most revolutionary thing to happen to the blind for at least the last ten years. Fifteen or twenty years brings us back to the Braille ‘n Speak, which I loved in the same way, so have a hard time choosing the greater.

The other night, however, a very amazing thing happened. I downloaded an app calledColor Identifier. It uses the iPhone’s camera, and speaks names of colors. It must use a table, because each color has an identifier made up of 6 hexadecimal digits. This puts the total at 16777216 colors, and I believe it. Some of them have very surreal names, such as Atomic Orange, Cosmic, Hippie Green, Opium, and Black-White. These names in combination with what feels like a rise in serotonin levels makes for a very psychedelic experience.

The next day, I went outside. I looked at the sky. I heard colors such as “Horizon,” “Outer Space,” and many shades of blue and gray. I used color cues to find my pumpkin plants, by looking for the green among the brown and stone. I spent ten minutes looking at my pumpkin plants, with their leaves of green and lemon-ginger. I then roamed my yard, and saw a blue flower. I then found the brown shed, and returned to the gray house. My mind felt blown. I watched the sun set, listening to the colors change as the sky darkened. The next night, I had a conversation with Mom about how the sky looked bluer tonight. Since I can see some light and color, I think hearing the color names can help nudge my perception, and enhance my visual experience. Amazing!

Open Data Amazement

I refer you to Louise Kidneys blog post “15 minutes of brain” wherein she explains the usage of some open data hosted at data.gov.uk. 15 minutes and I know Devon and Cornwall have a disproportionately high drug offence rate considering their population, in comparison to their surrounding neighbours of Dorset and Avon & Somerset (yes … Continue reading “Open Data Amazement”

I refer you to Louise Kidneys blog post “15 minutes of brain” wherein she explains the usage of some open data hosted at data.gov.uk.

15 minutes and I know Devon and Cornwall have a disproportionately high drug offence rate considering their population, in comparison to their surrounding neighbours of Dorset and Avon & Somerset (yes I know Avon doesn’t exist as a county any more, they’re slow to catch up down there).

This is just one example of the trending data which comes into view when open data is presented. This sort of analysis can be inspirational to individuals with an interest in the results – either for personal, profit or passion reasons.

Data.gov.uk’s Nigel Shadbolt on the latent power of government data and the drive to open it up.

Corporate Social Responsibility

From Wikipedia: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) … is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. Ideally, CSR policy would function as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby business would monitor and ensure its support to law, ethical standards, and international norms. Consequently, business would embrace responsibility for the impact of its activities on … Continue reading “Corporate Social Responsibility”

From Wikipedia:

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) … is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. Ideally, CSR policy would function as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby business would monitor and ensure its support to law, ethical standards, and international norms.

Consequently, business would embrace responsibility for the impact of its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere. Furthermore, CSR-focused businesses would proactively promote the public interest by encouraging community growth and development, and voluntarily eliminating practices that harm the public sphere, regardless of legality. Essentially, CSR is the deliberate inclusion of public interest into corporate decision-making, and the honoring of a triple bottom line: people, planet, profit.

This is in line with my previous costs on extraordinary possibilities via my own personal interest: code4pizza. Indeed, some companies may choose to see involvement in code4pizza to be an effective demonstration of CSR (though I would hazard it should not be the only one).

But does CSR really mean that the public sector can get “off the hook” when it comes to the provision of public services. Our own work with OpenTranslink would indicate to me that CSR labour is complementary to and not a replacement for public sector investment.

The best example shown to me today from the NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) blog. This is the Chicago Lincoln subway station owned by the cash-strapped Chicago Transit Authority.

Copyright Eric Allix Rogers

And this is the station today after a $4M investment from Apple.
Copyright Steven Vance

Apple took it upon themselves to invest in the subway station because it made the approach to their new retail store that little bit more pleasant, not only for customers but also their staff. Apple also built the plaza in between the North/Clybourn transit station and its new store, which opened in late October.

Copyright Ian Freimuth

“A plaza, with seats. Like these guys weren’t so terrified of homeless people sitting down that they weren’t going to let anyone else sit down, either. And a fountain, that instant supplier of peace. It made me want to sit down on a nice day with a cup of tea and a book. OK, in gratitude to Apple, it should be an iPad, but whatever. I say thank you to Apple.”

I do not exclude the public sector from CSR, of course, because they have some of the largest budgets and the largest numbers of people in employ. I know that Belfast City Council has several installations of public art (which they desperately need to publicise better) and has a remit to make the city more attractive. The same for Derry City Council.

The main driver for this sort of investment is the improvement of a city for staff and customers of large corporate companies. In order to better retain staff, it’s good to be seen to have a wider remit than simply profit. If people are your most important asset (as is the refrain of every company I’ve been employed by), then investing in the infrastructure that surrounds your staff is worthwhile. This is not the same as privatising services – this is about sustaining your working environment.

Just donated part of my face to Movember

If you meet me in the next 30 days, forgive the beardiness and donate. http://uk.movember.com/mospace/293694/ Related posts: Movember update Growing a Mo for charity I want FaceBook out of my face. Brave Face

If you meet me in the next 30 days, forgive the beardiness and donate.

http://uk.movember.com/mospace/293694/